The next Summer was more glorious than any before. Only, the ships never came. The sea was quiet as the earth, as blue as the sky. The white clouds rose up out of the sea, but never one sail. Ivor went to the high places to watch, and lifted a child upon his shoulders to watch for him. No ship came. Ivor went no more to the cliffs, but stayed always on the topmost towers of the castle, walking to and fro, watching, while down below men were bringing in the harvest and the songs had begun.
When at last the west wind blew, and one ship arrived, it was not in the harbour but on the rocks, and it was full of dead men. Ivor and all the people of the castle went down to see the ship and the dead men. When they returned at nightfall the wind had blown the leaves from the castle trees into the rooms so that they were almost filled. The strange birds of the castle were thronging the air, in readiness to fly over the sea. The strange animals of the castle had left their comfort and were roaming in the villages, where they were afterwards killed. The old men prophesied terrible things. The women were afraid. The children stood, pale and silent, watching the dead leaves swim by like fishes, crimson and emerald and gold, and they pretended that they were mermen and mermaids sitting in a palace under the sea. But the women took the children away along the road where the old men had already gone. Led by Ivor, the young men descended to the shore to repair the ship.
It was a winter of storm: men could not hear themselves speak for the roaring of sea, wind, and rain, and the invisible armies of the air. With every tide bodies of men and of the strange birds that had set out over the sea were washed up. Men were not glad to see Ivor and his dark companions at last departing in the mended ship. The granaries were full, and no one starved, but time passed and no more ships arrived. No man could work. The castle stood empty of anything but leaves, and in their old cottages men did not love life. The Spring was an ill one; nothing was at work in the world save wind and rain; now the uproar of the wind drowned that of the rain, now the rain drowned the wind, and often the crying of women and children drowned both. Men marked the differences, and hoped for an end which they were powerless to pursue. When the one ship returned, its cargo was of birds and beasts such as had escaped in the falling of the leaves. Ivor alone was glad of them. He had few followers — young men all of them — up to the castle. Others came later, but went down again with loads of corn. It was now seen that the granaries would some day be emptied. People began to talk without respect of Ivor. They questioned whence his wealth had come, by what right he had built the castle, why he had concealed his birth. The young men living with him quarrelled among themselves, then agreed in reproaching the master. At last they left the castle in twos and threes, accusing him of magic, of causing them to forget their gratitude to God. In the villages everyone was quarrelling except when the talk turned to blaming Ivor. He made no reply, nor ever came down amongst them, but stayed in the inmost apartment with his remaining birds. One of the complaints against him was that he fed the birds on good grain. Yet the people continued to go up to the granaries at need. The beggars and robbers of the mountains were beginning to contest their right to it, and blood was shed in many of the rooms and corridors. No one saw the master. They said that they did not care, or they said that he was dead and buried up in leaves; but in truth they were afraid of his white hair, his quiet eye, and the strange birds and beasts. Between them, the robbers and the young men who had served him plundered the house. Some even attempted to carry off the masonry, but left most of it along the roadside where it lies to this day. At length, nothing worth a strong man’s time had been overlooked. A few beggars were the latest visitors, cursing the empty granary, trembling at the footsteps of leaves treading upon leaves in all the rooms. They did not see Ivor, sitting among leaves and spiders’ webs. A pack of hounds, hunting that way, chased the stag throughout the castle but lost it; for it entered the room where Ivor was sitting, and when the horn was blown under the new moon the hounds slunk out bloodless yet assuaged, and the hunter thrashed them for their lack of spirit, and cursed the old man for his magic, yet ventured not in search of him along those muffled corridors. The very road up to the castle was disappearing. The master, it was believed, had died. The old men who had known him were dead; the young men were at the wars. When a white-haired beggar stumbled into Abercorran from the hills few admitted, though all knew in their hearts, that it was Ivor ap Cadogan. For a year or two he was fed from door to door, but he wearied his benefactors by talking continually about his birds that he had lost. Some of the rich remembered against him his modesty, others his ostentation. The poor accused him of pride; such was the name they gave to his independent tranquillity. Perhaps, some thought, it was a judgment — the inhabitants of the Castle of Ophir had been too idle and too happy to think of the shortness of this life and the glory to come. So he disappeared. Probably he went to some part where he was not known from any other wandering beggar. ‘Wonderful long white beards,’ said Ann, ‘men had in those days longer — than that old harper’s, and to-day there are none even like him. Men to-day can do a number of things which the old ages never dreamed of, but their beards are nothing in comparison to those unhappy old days when men with those long white beards used to sit by the roadsides, looking as if they had come from the ends of the earth, like wise men from the East, although they were so old that they sat still with their beards reaching to the ground like roots. Ivor ap Cadogan was one of these.’
Mr Morgan once, overhearing Ann telling me this tale, said, ‘What the book says is much better. It says that in 1399 a Welshman, named Llewelyn ab Cadwgan, who would never speak of his family, came from the Turkish war to reside at Cardiff; and so great was his wealth that he gave to everyone that asked or could be seen to be in need of it. He built a large mansion near the old white tower, for the support of the sick and infirm. He continued to give all that was asked of him until his wealth was all gone. He then sold his house, which was called the New Place, and gave away the money until that also was at an end. After this he died of want, for no one gave to him, and many accused him of extravagant waste.’ With that Mr Morgan went gladly and, for him, rapidly to his books. Nobody seeing him then was likely to disturb him for that evening. At his door he turned and said ‘Good night’ to us in a perfectly kind voice which nevertheless conveyed, in an unquestionable manner, that he was not to be disturbed.
‘Good night, Mr Morgan,’ said all of us. ‘Good night, Ann,’ said I, and slipped out into a night full of stars and of quietly falling leaves, which almost immediately silenced my attempt to sing ‘O the cuckoo is a pretty bird’ on the way home.
CHAPTER XV. MR STODHAM SPEAKS FOR ENGLAND — FOG SUPERVENES
SOME time after the story of the Castle of Leaves, Mr Morgan took occasion to point out the difference between Ann speaking of the ‘beautiful long white beards’ that men grew in those ‘unhappy old days,’ and Mr Torrance praising the ‘merry’ or ‘good old’ England of his imagination. He said that from what he could gather they were merry in the old days with little cause, while to-day, whatever cause there might be, few persons possessed the ability. He concluded, I think, that after all there was probably nothing to be merry about at any time if you looked round carefully: that, in fact, what was really important was to be capable of more merriment and less ado about nothing. Someone with a precocious sneer, asked if England was now anything more than a geographical expression, and Mr Stodham preached a sermon straight away:
‘A great poet said once upon a time that this earth is “where we have our happiness or not at all.” For most of those who speak his language he might have said that this England is where we have our happiness or not at all. He meant to say that we are limited creatures, not angels, and that our immediate surroundings are enough to exercise all our faculties of mind and body: there is no need to flatter ourselves with the belief that we could do better in a bigger or another world. Only the bad workman complains of his tools.
‘There was another poet who hailed England, his n
ative land, and asked how could it but be dear and holy to him, because he declared himself one who (here Mr Stodham grew very red and his voice rose, and Lewis thought he was going to sing as he recited):
‘“From thy lakes and mountain-hills,
Thy clouds, thy quiet dales, thy rocks and seas,
Have drunk in all my intellectual life,
All sweet sensations, all ennobling thoughts,
All adoration of the God in nature,
All lovely and all honourable things,
Whatever makes this mortal spirit feel
The joy and greatness of its future being?
There lives nor form nor feeling in my soul
Unborrowed from my country. O divine
And beauteous island! thou hast been my sole
And most magnificent temple, in the which
I walk with awe, and sing my stately songs,
Loving the God that made me!”
‘Of course, I do not know what it all means,’ he muttered, but went on: ‘and that other poet who was his friend called the lark:
‘“Type of the wise who soar but never roam,
True to the kindred points of heaven and home.”
Well, England is home and heaven too. England made you, and of you is England made. Deny England — wise men have done so — and you may find yourself some day denying your father and mother — and this also wise men have done. Having denied England and your father and mother, you may have to deny your own self, and treat it as nothing, a mere conventional boundary, an artifice, by which you are separated from the universe and its creator. To unite yourself with the universe and the creator, you may be tempted to destroy that boundary of your own body and brain, and die. He is a bold man who hopes to do without earth, England, family, and self.
Many a man dies, having made little of these things, and if he says at the end of a long life that he has had enough, he means only that he has no capacity for more — he is exhausted, not the earth, not England.
‘I do not think that a man who knows many languages, many histories, many lands, would ask if England was more than a geographical expression. Nor would he be the first to attempt an answer to one that did ask.
‘I do not want you to praise England. She can do without receiving better than you can without giving. I do not want to shout that our great soldiers and poets are greater than those of other nations, but they are ours, they are great, and in proportion as we are good and intelligent, we can respond to them and understand them as those who are not Englishmen cannot. They cannot long do without us or we without them. Think of it. We have each of us some of the blood and spirit of Sir Thomas More, and Sir Philip Sidney, and the man who wrote “Tom Jones,” and Horatio Nelson, and the man who wrote “Love in the Valley.” Think what we owe to them of joy, courage, and mere security. Try to think what they owe to us, since they depend on us for keeping alive their spirits, and a spirit that can value them. They are England: we are England. Deny England, and we deny them and ourselves. Do you love the Wilderness? Do you love Wales? If you do, you love what I understand by “England.” The more you love and know England, the more deeply you can love the Wilderness and Wales. I am sure of it....’ At this point Mr Stodham ran away. Nobody thought how like a very good rat he was during this speech, or, rather, this series of short speeches interrupted by moments of excitement when all that he could do was to light a pipe and let it out. Higgs, perhaps, came nearest to laughing; for he struck up ‘Rule Britannia’ with evident pride that he was the first to think of it. This raised my gorge; I could not help shouting ‘Home Rule for Ireland.’ Whereupon Higgs swore abominably, and I do not know what would have happened if Ann had not said: ‘Jessie, my love, sing Land of my Fathers,’ which is the Welsh national anthem; but when Jessie sang it — in English, for our sakes — everyone but Higgs joined in the chorus and felt that it breathed the spirit of patriotism which Mr Stodham had been trying to express. It was exulting without self-glorification or any other form of brutality. It might well be the national anthem of any nation that knows, and would not rashly destroy, the bonds distinguishing it from the rest of the world without isolating it.
Aurelius, who had been brooding for some time, said:
‘I should never have thought it. Mr Stodham has made me a present of a country. I really did not know before that England was not a shocking fiction of the journalists and politicians. I am the richer, and, according to Mr Stodham, so is England. But what about London fog? what is the correct attitude of a patriot towards London fog and the manufacturers who make it what it is?’
Aurelius got up to look out at the fog, the many dim trees, the single gas lamp in the lane beyond the yard. Pointing to the trees, he asked —
‘“What are these,
So withered and so wild in their attire,
That look not like th’ inhabitants o’ the earth And yet are on’t?”2”
Even so must Mr Stodham’s patriotism, or that of Land of our Fathers, appear to Higgs. His patriotism is more like the “Elephant and Castle” on a Saturday night than those trees. Both are good, as they say at Cambridge.’ And he went out, muttering towards the trees in the fog:
‘“Live you? or are you aught
That man may question? You seem to understand me,
By each at once her choppy fingers laying
Upon her skinny lips: you should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so.”’
For some time we were all silent, until Ann said: ‘Hark.’
‘What is it? another Ripper murder?’ said Higgs. ‘Oh, shut up, Higgs,’ said Philip looking at Ann. ‘Hark,’ said Ann again. It was horrible. Somewhere far off I could hear an angry murmur broken by frantic metallic clashings. No one sound out of the devilish babble could I disentangle, still less, explain. A myriad noises were violently mixed in one muddy, struggling mass of rumbling and jangling. The worst gramophones are infinitely nearer to the cooing of doves than this, but it had in it something strained, reckless, drunken-mad, horror-stricken, like the voice of the gramophone. Above all, the babble was angry and it was inhuman. I had never heard it before, and my first thought was that it was an armed and furious multitude, perhaps a foreign invader, a mile or so distant.
‘Didn’t you know it was Saturday night?’ said Higgs. ‘It is always worse on Saturdays.’
‘What is?’ said I.
‘That noise,’ said Higgs.
‘Hark,’ said Philip anxiously, and we all held our breath to catch it again. There... It was no nearer. It was not advancing. It was always the same. As I realised that it was the mutter of London, I sighed, being a child, with relief, but could not help listening still for every moment of that roar as of interlaced immortal dragons fighting eternally in a pit. It was surprising that such a tone could endure. The sea sounds everlastingly, but this was more appropriate to a dying curse, and should have lasted no more than a few minutes. As I listened it seemed rather to be a brutish yell of agony during the infliction of some unspeakable pain, and though pain of that degree would kill or stupefy in a few minutes, this did not.
‘If you like the “Elephant and Castle,”’said Mr Morgan, ‘you like that. But if you live in London all your lives, perhaps you may never hear it again.
‘For the sound does not cease. We help to make it as we do to make England. Even those weird sisters of Aurelius out in the Wilderness help to make it by rattling branches and dropping leaves in the fog. You will hear the leaves falling, the clock ticking, the fog-signals exploding, but not London.’
I was, in fact, twenty-one before I heard the roar again. Never since have I noticed it. But Ann, it seems, used to hear it continually, perhaps because she went out so seldom and could not become one of the mob of unquestionable ‘inhabitants o’ the earth.’ But when the window had been shut, we, at any rate, forgot all about London in that warm room in Abercorran House, amidst the gleam of china and the glitter of b
rass and silver. Lewis and Harry sat on the floor, in a corner, playing with lead soldiers. The English army — that is to say, Lewis — was beaten, and refused to accept its fate. On being told, ‘But it is all over now,’ he burst out crying. Harry looked on in sympathetic awe. But before his tears had quite come to their natural end a brilliant idea caused him to uncover his face suddenly and say: ‘I know what I shall do. I shall build a tower like David — a real one — in the Wilderness.’
‘Oh, yes, let’s,’ exclaimed Harry.
‘Us,’ said Lewis, ‘I like that. It is I that shall build a tower. But I will employ you.’
‘That,’ mused Harry slowly, ‘means that I build a tower and let you live in it. That isn’t right. Mr Gladstone would never allow it.’
‘What has Mr Gladstone got to do with the Wilderness, I should like to know? We employ him. I should like to see him getting over the fence into the Wilderness. He does not know where it is. Besides, if he did, he could never, never, get into my tower. If he did I would immediately fling myself down from the top. Then I should be safe,’ shrieked Lewis, before entering another of those vales or abysses of tears which were so black for him, and so brief. It was not so agreeable as silence would have been, or as Ann’s sewing was, or the continuous bagpipe music of a kettle always just on the boil. But Philip had gone upstairs, and the book on my knee held me more than Lewis’s tears. This book placed me in a mountain solitude such as that where David Morgan had built his tower, and, like that, haunted by curlews:
Complete Poetical Works of Edward Thomas Page 25