The Garden of Survival

by Algernon Blackwood

  VI

  I RETURNED to England with an expectant hunger born of this love ofbeauty that was now ingrained in me. I came home with the belief thatmy yearning would be satisfied in a deeper measure; and more--that,somehow, it would be justified and explained. I may put it plainly,if only to show how difficult this confession would have been to anyone but yourself; it sounds so visionary from a mere soldier and manof action such as I am. For my belief included a singular dream that,in the familiar scenes I now revisited, some link, already halfestablished, would be strengthened, and might probably be realized,even proved.

  In Africa, as you know, I had been set upon the clue at home inEngland. Among the places and conditions where this link had beenfirst established in the flesh, must surely come a fuller revelation.Beauty, the channel of my inspiration, but this time the old sweetEnglish beauty, so intimate, so woven through with the fresh wonderof earliest childhood days, would reveal the cause of my firstfailure to respond, and so, perhaps, the intention of those finalpathetic sentences that still haunted me with their freight ofundelivered meaning. In England, T believed, my "thrill" must bringauthentic revelation.

  I came back, that precarious entity, a successful man. I was to bethat thing we used to laugh about together in your Cambridge days, adistinguished personality; I should belong to the breed of littlelions. Yet, during the long, tedious voyage, I realized that thisheld no meaning for me; I did not feel myself a little lion, the ideaonly proved that the boy in me was not yet dead. My one desire,though inarticulate until this moment of confessing it, was to renewthe thrills, and so to gather from an intenser, sweeter beauty somemeasure of greater understanding they seemed to promise. It was apersonal hope, a personal desire; and, deep at the heart of it,Memory, passionate though elusive, flashed her strange signal of apersonal love. In this dream that mocked at time, this yearning thatforgot the intervening years, I nursed the impossible illusion that,somehow or other, I should become aware of Marion.

  Now, I have treated you in this letter as though you were a woman whoreads a novel, for in my first pages I have let you turn to the endand see that the climax is a happy one, lest you should faint by theway and close my story with a yawn. You need not do that, however,since you already know this in advance. You will bear with me, too,when I tell you that my return to England was in the nature of afailure that, at first, involved sharpest disappointment. I wasunaware, as a whole, of the thrills I had anticipated with suchlonging. The sweet picture of English loveliness I had cherished withsentimental passion during my long exile hardly materialized.

  That I was not a lion, but an insignificant quasi-colonial adventureramong many others, may have sprinkled acid upon my daily diet ofsensation, but you will do me the justice to believe that thiswounded vanity was the smallest item in my disenchantment. Ten years,especially in primitive, godforsaken Africa, is a considerableinterval; I found the relationship between myself and my belovedhome-land changed, and in an unexpected way.

  I was not missed for one thing, I had been forgotten. Except from ourmother and yourself, I had no welcome. But, apart from this immediatecircle, and apart from the deep, comfortable glow experienced at thefirst sight of the "old country," I found England and the Englishdull, conventional, and uninspired. There was no poignancy. Thehabits and the outlook stood precisely where I had left them. TheEnglish had not moved. They played golf as of yore, they went to theraces at the appointed time and in the appointed garb, they gaveheavy dinner-parties, they wrote letters to the Times, and ignored anoutside world beyond their island. Their estimate of themselves andof foreigners remained unaltered, their estimate of rich orinfluential neighbours was what it always had been, there were manymore motor-cars and a few more peers, it was more difficult thanformerly to get into a good club; but otherwise, God bless them, theywere worthier than ever. The "dear old country," that which "outthere" we had loved and venerated, worked and fought for, was stolidand unshaken; the stream of advancing life that elsewhere rushed, hadleft England complaisantly unmoved and unresponsive.

  You have no idea how vividly--and in what curious minor details--thegeneral note of England strikes a traveller returning after aninterval of years. Later, of course, the single impression ismodified and obscured by other feelings. I give it, therefore, beforeit was forgotten. England had not budged. Had it been winter insteadof early spring, I might sum up for you what I mean in one shortsentence: I travelled to London in a third-class railway carriagethat had no heating apparatus.

  But to all this, and with a touch of something akin to pride in me, Ispeedily adjusted myself. I had been exiled, I had come home. As ourold nurse, aged and withered, but otherwise unaltered, said to mequietly by way of greeting: "Well, they didn't kill you, MasterRichard!" I was, therefore, alive. It was for me, the unimportantatom, to recover my place in the parent mass. I did so. I wasEnglish. I recovered proportion. I wore the accustomed mask; I hidboth my person and my new emotions, as was obviously expected of me.Having reported my insignificance to the Foreign Office.... I camedown to the Manor House.

  Yet, having changed, and knowing that I had changed, I was aware of acleft between me and my native stock. Something un-English was alivein me and eager to assert itself. Another essence in my blood hadquickened, a secret yearning that I dared not mention to my kind, anew hunger in my heart that clamoured to be satisfied, yet remained,speaking generally, un-nourished. Looking for beauty among mysurroundings and among my kith and kin, I found it not; there was nogreat Thrill from England or from home. The slowness, the absence ofcolour, imagination, rhythm, baffled me, while the ugliness of commonthings and common usages afflicted my new sensitiveness. Not that Iam peculiarly alert to beauty, nor claim superior perception--I am noartist, either by virtue of vision or power of expression--but that acertain stagnant obtuseness, a kind of sordid and conservativeveneration of the ugly that the English favour, distressed and eventortured me in a way I had never realized formerly. They were soproud to live without perception. An artist was a curiosity, not aleader, far less a prophet. There was no imagination.

  In little things, as I said, a change was manifest, however. Much thattradition had made lovely with the perfume of many centuries I foundmodernized until the ancient spirit had entirely fled, leaving ashell that was artificial to the point of being false. The sanctionof olden time that used to haunt with beauty was deceived by a mockeryI found almost hideous. The ancient inns, for instance, adapted toweek-end motor traffic, were pretentious and uncomfortable, their"menus" of inferior food written elaborately in French. Thecourtliness had vanished, and the cost had come. Telephoneseverywhere not only destroyed privacy, but brought dismay intocountless gentle intimacies, their nuisance hardly justified by theirusefulness. Life, it seemed, in a frantic hurry, had been cheapened,not improved; there was no real progress, but only more unrest.England--too solid to go fast, had made ungainly efforts; but she hadmoved towards ungraciousness where she had moved at all; I found hera cross between a museum and an American mushroom town thatadvertises all the modern comforts with a violent insistence that ismeant to cloak their very absence.

  This, my first impression, toned down, of course, a little later; butit was my first impression. The people, however, even in thecountryside, seemed proud both of mushroom and museum, and commercialugliness, greedy and unashamed, now distorted every old-worldvillage. The natives were pleased to the point of vanity.

  For myself, I could not manage this atrocious compromise, and lookingfor the dear old England of our boyhood days, I found it not. Thechange, of course, was not in the country only, but in myself. Thesoul in me, awakened to a new standard, had turned round to faceanother way.

  The Manor House was very still when I arrived from London--& late Mayevening between the sunset and the dark. Mother, as you know, met meat the station, for they had stopped the down-train by specialorders, so that I stepped out upon the deserted platform of thecountryside quite alone, a distinguished man, with my rug andumbrella. A strange footma
n touched his hat, an old, stooping porterstared hard at me, then smiled vaguely, while the guard, eyeingrespectfully the individual for whom his train had halted, waved hisred flag, and swung himself into the disappearing van with theapproved manner we once thought marvellous. I left the emptyplatform, gave up my ticket to an untidy boy, and crossed the gloomybooking-hall. The mournfulness of the whole place was depressing. Iheard a blackbird whistle in a bush against the signal-box. It seemedto scream.

  Mother I first saw, seated in the big barouche. She was leaning back,but sat forwards as I came. She looked into my face across the wideinterval of years now ended, and my heart gave a great boyish leap,then sank into stillness again abruptly. She seemed to me exactlythe same as usual--only so much smaller. We embraced with a kind ofdignity:

  "So here you are, my boy, at last," I heard her say in a quiet voice,and as though she had seen me a month or two ago, "and very, verytired, I'll be bound."

  I took my seat beside her. I felt awkward, stiff, self-conscious;there was disappointment somewhere.

  "Oh, I'm all right, mother, thanks," I answered. "But how are you?" Andthe next moment, it seemed to me, I heard her asking if I washungry;--whereupon, absurd as it must sound, I was aware of an immenseemotion that interfered with my breathing. It broke up through somerepressive layer that had apparently concealed it, and made mefeel--well, had I been thirty-five years younger, I could havecried--for pleasure. Mother, I think, forgot those years perhaps. To herI was still in overalls and wanted food. We drove, then, in comparativesilence the four miles behind the big pair of greys, the only remarkthat memory credits me with being an enquiry about the identity of thecoachman whose dim outline I saw looming in the darkness just above me.The lamplight showed one shoulder, one arm, one ear, the rest concealed;but the way he drove was, of course, unmistakeable; slowly, morecautiously, perhaps, but with the same flourish of the whip, the sameair of untold responsibility as ever. And, will you believe it, my chiefmemory of all that scene of anticipated tenderness and home-emotion isthe few words he gave in reply to my enquiry and recognition when atlength the carriage stopped and I got out:

  "Well, Brown, I'm glad to see you again. All well at home, I hope?"followed by something of sympathy about his beloved horses.

  He looked down sideways at me from the box, touching his cockade withthe long yellow whip in his thick, gloved hand. I can hear his warm,respectful answer now; I can see the gleam of proud pleasure in his eye:

  "Yes, sir, thank you, Sir Richard, and glad to see you back again, sir,and with such success upon you."

  I moved back to help our mother out. I remember thinking how calm, howsolid, how characteristically inarticulate it all was. Did I wish itotherwise? I think not. Only there was something in me beating its wingsimpatiently like a wild bird that felt the bars close round it....Mother, I realized, could not have said even what the old coachman hadsaid to save her life, and I remember wondering what would move her intothe expression of natural joy. All that half-hour, as the hoofs echoedalong the silence of the country road, and the old familiar woods andfields slid past, no sign of deep emotion had escaped her. She had askedif I was hungry....

  And then the smells! The sweet, faint garden smell in the Englishtwilight:--of laurels and laurestinus, of lilac, pinks, and the heavyscent of May, wall-flowers and sweet william too--these, with thepoignant aroma of the old childhood house, were the background offamiliar loveliness against which my subsequent disillusion of thehomeland set itself in such afflicting contrast. I remember, as weentered the dim hall, the carriage lamps fell on, the floweringhorse-chestnut by the door; the bats were flitting; a big white mothwhirred softly against the brilliant glass as though you and I wereafter it again with nets and killing-bottles... and, helping mother out,I noticed, besides her smallness, how slow and aged her movements were.

  "Mother, let me help you. That's what I've come home for," I said,feeling for her little hand. And she replied so quietly, so calmly itwas almost frigid, "Thank you, dear boy; your arm, perhaps--a moment.They are so stupid about the lamps in the hall, I've had to speak sooften. There, now! It is an awkward step." I felt myself a giant besideher. She seemed so tiny now. There was something very strong in hersilence and her calm; and though a portion of me liked it, anotherportion resented it and felt afraid. Her attitude was like a refusal, adenial, a refusal to live, a denial of life almost. A tinge ofdepression, not far removed from melancholy, stole over my spirit. Thechange in me, I realized then, indeed, was radical.

  Now, lest this narrative should seem confused, you must understand thatmy disillusions with regard to England were realized subsequently, whenI had moved about the counties, paid many solid visits, and tasted theland and people in some detail. And the disappointment was the keenerowing to the fact that very soon after my arrival in the old Home Place,the "thrill" came to me with a direct appeal that was disconcerting. Forcoming unexpectedly, as it did, in this familiar scene where yetpreviously I had never known it, it had the effect of marking the changein me with a certainty from which there was no withdrawal possible. Itstandardized this change. The new judgment was made uncompromisinglyclear; people and places must inevitably stand or fall by it. And thefirst to fall--since the test lies beyond all control of affection orrespect--was our own dear, faithful mother.

  You share my reverence and devotion, so you will feel no pain that Iwould dishonour a tie that is sacred to us both in the old Bible sense.But, also, you know what a sturdy and typical soul of England she hasproved herself, and that a sense of beauty is not, alas, by any stretchof kindliest allowance, a national characteristic. Culture and knowledgewe may fairly claim, no doubt, but the imaginative sense of beauty is orare among us that its possession is a peculiarity good form wouldsuppress. It is a pose, an affectation, it is unmanly--it is notEnglish. We are too strong to thrill. And that one so near and dear tome, so honoured and so deeply loved, should prove herself to my newstandard thus typically English, while it came as sharpest pain, oughtnot, I suppose, to have caused me the surprise it did. It made me aware,however, of the importance of my new criterion, while at the same timeaware of a lack of sympathy between us that amounted to disenchantment.It was a shock, to put it plainly. A breath of solitude, of isolation,stole on me and, close behind it, melancholy.

  From the smallest clue imaginable the truth came into me, from a clue sosmall, indeed, that you may smile to think I dared draw such bigdeductions from premises so insignificant. You will probably deny me asense of humour even when you hear. So let me say at once, before youjudge me hastily, that the words, and the incident which drew themforth, were admittedly inadequate to the deduction. Only, mark this,please--I drew no deduction. Reason played no part. Cause and effectwere unrelated. It was simply that the truth flashed into me. I knew.

  What did I know? Perhaps that the gulf between us lay as wide as thatbetween the earth and Sirius; perhaps that we were, individually, of akind so separate, so different, that mutual understanding wasimpossible; perhaps that while she was of To-day and proud of it, I wasof another time, another century, and proud of that. I cannot sayprecisely. Her words, while they increased my sense of isolation, ofsolitude, of melancholy, at the same time also made me laugh, asassuredly they will now make you laugh.

  For, while she was behind me in the morning-room, fingering some letterson the table, I stood six feet away beside the open window, listening tothe nightingales--the English nightingales--that sang across the quietgarden in the dusk. The high-pitched clamour of the jungle choruses withtheir monstrous turmoil, their prolific detail, came back to me instartling contrast. This exquisite and delicious sound I now heardbelonged still to England. And it had not changed. "No hungrygenerations tread thee down..." rose in some forgotten corner of mymind, and my yearning that would be satisfied moved forth to catch thenotes.

  "Listen, mother," I said, turning towards her.

  She raised her head and smiled a little before reading the rest of theletter that she held.

&nb
sp; "I only pray they won't keep you awake, dear boy," she answered gently."They give us very little peace, I'm afraid, just now."

  Perhaps she caught some expression in my face, for she added a triflemore quickly: "That's the worst of the spring--our English spring--itis so noisy!" Still smiling, she picked up her letter again, while I,though still listening by the window, heard only the harsh scream andrattle of the jungle voices, thousands and thousands of miles awayacross the world.