Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  The aquarium was paved with pieces of spa which we had picked up at Torquay the year before, and bright smooth sea pebbles. I am afraid the caddices would have preferred a little wholesome mud, but that was not to be thought of. Round the edge crept the water snails, and the caddice-worms hid among the spa and pebbles, and walked over each other, with a fine disregard of the laws of politeness. But the king of our water world was the stickleback: it is a very common fish, but to us there was only one, and that one was ours.

  Every other day the aquarium used to be emptied out and fresh water was put in. This operation required some delicacy of handling. The water was strained through a very narrow piece of netting into the little drain outside the coach-house. Snails, caddice-worms, and stickleback were caught in the netting, and instantly placed in a temporary hotel, in the shape of an old washing basin, filled with water. Two tadpoles, which also belong to this period, used to cause us some uneasiness at such times. They would hide among the spa, at the bottom of the aquarium, at the imminent risk of being crushed as it was tilted up; besides this, the stickleback used to make short runs at them, and they did not get on at all well together. What we were to do when they became frogs, was a momentous question. If I had known French, I should have expressed my feelings about them by saying that they would be likely to have become déclasses by living with our stickleback in a palace of spa: as it was, I simply felt that it would be unsuitable to turn them back into the somewhat dirty pool from which they came, but that the impropriety of their continuing to live as frogs with the stickleback and the caddice-worms was more glaring still. They were decidedly of a different class; as long as they were tadpoles it did not matter; all classes meet as children. Again, they would soon be several sizes too large for the aquarium, and as our nurse said, they would be “all over.”

  It was during one of these cleanings out that the great catastrophe happened. The stickleback, according to custom, was swimming fiercely and defiantly round the sinking water in the aquarium. He would always do this till there was scarcely any left, then make a sudden rush against the netting and try to swim through it, a feat which he never accomplished, but which he never perceived was impossible. How it happened I do not quite know, something caused me to let the water out less discreetly than usual; the last pint came with a sudden rush, and my sister who was holding the netting, dropped one corner of it. At this moment the stickleback charged, and for once passed the netting, and the next moment the flow of water had carried him down the drain.

  For a space we sat silent, and then my sister said, with a curious tone in her voice which I had never heard before, but which I now associate with other griefs which we have been through together, “It is gone.”

  We silently placed the netting with the caddice-worms and water snails in the basin, and extracted the tadpoles from the spa. We had not got the heart to arrange and clean out the aquarium, and it lay there empty, with the spa and pebbles scattered over the cobbled yard.

  Later in the morning we came back again, and arranged it as usual. As our heads were bent together over it, while we placed the pebbles at the bottom, I saw two large tears roll from her eyes on to the red earthenware rim of the bowl, and when we had finished, we both looked at the little drain-hole where the stickleback had vanished, and our eyes met. We had not spoken about it since she said “It is gone.”

  “I am so sorry,” she whispered, “oh, why did I let go of the net?” and another tear ran down her cheek.

  “Don’t mind so much,” I said, “it was more my fault than yours. Something jogged my elbow.”

  But we never caught another stickleback.

  AUTUMN AND LOVE

  THERE is a day, I had almost said a moment, in every year when summer definitely stops. It dies a sudden death, and we seldom notice that the end is near, until it has come. This year it was even more sudden than usual. It occurred yesterday evening, while I was sitting out on the lawn below the terrace walk reading the account of the horrible scenes in Hamburg during the cholera there. A strange little wind swept across the still air, and a rose-leaf from the great climbing creeper fluttered down on to the page, and at that moment summer stopped —

  I awoke this morning from a deep dreamless sleep, which, with a strange mixture of cruelty and kindness, often follows on some great sorrow. It is no doubt a relief to lose, though only for a few hours, the sense of suffering, yet when we wake, we find that sleep has brought us a doubtful gift, for it has only quickened our capabilities for suffering. The first few moments of conscious thought are often the slow involuntary gathering up of the threads of our interrupted sensations, and it was with a vague reminiscence of some change which had taken place, that I began to piece together the events of the preceding evening. An old servant had come in late the night before to tell me that his little daughter, who had been slowly dying of consumption for months past, was just dead. He felt it to be a release, but that did not make it less sad: if she was only to have so few summers here, they might at least have been more full of that unthinking receptive happiness, which is the birthright of children, but which so few retain beyond childhood. He had asked me to come in and see the poor little face once more. “She looks so happy and peaceful,” he said, with that strange unreserve that many poor people have about death, “her arms are lying just as they were when she died, she had crossed them on her breast, as she used to do when she was saying her prayers to her mother. I could fancy that she had been saying them, and had fallen asleep so.”

  The poor fellow evidently found a vague consolation in this. Death, which so closely resembled life, was partly robbed of its horror for him. It is a merciful arrangement.

  There had been a slight frost in the night, the first of the year, and from the little chestnut tree in front of my windows unseen hands were stripping off the yellow leaves. There is something ironical in this yearly death of vegetation, which makes the fall of the leaves doubly dreadful to us, to whom, when autumn comes, no spring will bring a renewal of life. I had half hoped last night that I had been wrong about the death of the summer, the air was so mild, and the wind stirred so softly in the shrubbery, but this morning it is no longer possible to doubt; the freshness of the air cannot be mistaken for the coolness of a summer morning, it is the forerunner of cold and mist and long dark evenings.

  After breakfast I went down to the old man’s cottage. The dead girl had been his only daughter; she was the child of old age, and nothing was left him now. By a former marriage he had one son, who had died in infancy, and his second wife had died in giving birth to this daughter. Life and death often walk hand in hand, and when we clasp the hand of life, we cannot but feel that we accept death as part of our union.

  The father asked me to go in to see the dead child’s face; it was wonderfully dignified with the dignity that only can come to complete tranquillity; and he then took me back to his little front room, and told me the saddest story I have ever heard.

  “I was sitting,” he said, “late last night in the room where she is lying, and I had gone to sleep, for I was very tired with the watching and the short nights. I had left the door ajar I suppose; for I was awakened by a scratching sound, and soon I saw her little dog, Tiny she called him, pushing through the crack. I was tired and weary, and I sat still and watched him. He put his two paws on the bed, and tried to lick her hand, but it was out of his reach. And he whined as dogs do, when they want to attract their master’s attention, and gave a little short bark. Then he got down on to the floor again, and sat up to beg, as she had taught him to do. He used to dislike it, and she often had trouble to make him do it, when she wanted him to show off to strangers and suchlike. But he couldn’t understand, I expect, why she took no notice of him, and he wanted to make her attend to him.”

  He paused a moment, seeming half uncertain whether I wanted to hear him go on.

  “It’s nothing in the telling,” he said, but it went to my heart to see the dog do so. He seemed to wonder why she didn
’t speak to him. There was one other trick he used to do when he was younger, but I reckon he is getting old like the rest of us, and his joints are a bit stiff. He would turn head over his heels for all the world like a clown you see at the circus, but it must be a year and more since she tried to make him do it, for she saw it hurt him.

  “But I reckon he couldn’t understand how it was she took no notice of him, for she had always petted him, and given him a bit of biscuit or something when he did his tricks well, his lessons, she used to call them, poor lamb! though it seemed to me he cared more for her attention than a bit of biscuit: so what should the dog do, but try to turn head over heels, as he hadn’t done for a year and more. But he was too stiff, and he fell over. He wagged his tail, and looked up at the bed, as if he should say he’d tried his best, and when he saw she didn’t notice him, he gave a whine like a thing in pain, and lay down by the bed. But he couldn’t rest, but he must keep jumping up and trying to get up on to the bed, until I took him down with me and gave him his supper. But he wouldn’t so much as look at it, and this morning when I came downstairs, he was lying at the door, instead of in his basket in the kitchen. And when I went to him, I found he was quite dead. I reckon he was getting old, and he didn’t feel to care for anything no more now she wasn’t there to pet him and tease him.”

  The old man sat silent for a minute or two, looking into the fire in dry-eyed sorrow. The old do not shed tears very easily; they have learnt that it does no good. But in a few minutes the blessed relief came, and he sobbed like a little child.

  “It seemed to bring it home to me that she was dead,” he said, “when I saw her not taking any notice of her Tiny.”

  The horror of utter helplessness was upon me. The unfathomable mystery of death never seemed to me before to so utterly defy scrutiny. I tried to make him feel that though I could offer him no consolation, I wished to share his sorrow, and he talked on for an hour or so.

  The sun was warm as I walked back, and the rime frost had completely disappeared. But the cruel glory of the dying woodland was there in all its thoughtless splendour; like some great lady, whose beauty has shone for a short hour or two in some dark hovel, where a servant or friend lies dying, the splendid trees mock us with their yearly renewal of loveliness, and when they pass from us in the autumn, we know that their glory will shine on in years to come, while we are left in the dark house, with the coffin and the pall and all the grim apparatus of death.

  It is evening again, and as I sit by the open window, the faint sweet smells from the glimmering flower beds are wafted in with the sighing of the wind. This long melancholy day is drawing to a close, and everything is lying hushed beneath the benediction of evening. The same strange little wind that woke in the bushes last night, again stirs in the dusk, and strikes a sudden shiver in the still evening air. The birds call to each other in the shrubbery with low flute-like notes, and by-and-by a great yellow moon swings into sight. White winged moths hover noiselessly over the dim flowers, and pass away out of sight among the dark masses of the trees. One can almost believe in the possibility of peace on such a night as this, a burning brain and an aching heart seem almost a desecration; yet in that cottage beyond the dark meadow below, in the window of which there has just now sprung up a faint tiny light, there lies a dead child, and in the garden there is a small newly turned piece of turf, and under it sleeps a dumb dog, who could not make his mistress hear or see his little attempts to please her, and into whose soul such dim mysterious anguish entered that he could not live without her. I cannot but wonder and doubt whether there is anything in the world so strong as that necessity that made him die with her, and which we call love. If so, there is hope even in this still autumn evening, the absolute peace of which is so full of the presage of death.

  TWO DAYS AFTER

  TWO days have passed, and this after noon they are going to bury the child of whose death I have just told you. Old Ellis came here yesterday, and asked me, ever so timidly, whether I would go with him to the funeral, if it was not too much to ask.

  He expected, he said, a sister of his who lived some ten miles away, the aunt of the dead child, but there would be no one else. He scarcely liked to ask me, but I had known his daughter, and she had always been so pleased when I had come to see her. So, if I would do one thing more — it was pitiful to hear him.

  I arrived at the cottage about two o’clock. I ordered the carriage to wait, because I thought he might like to go in it to the churchyard. But he would not — he wished to follow her more closely; he would not leave her while she was above ground. It was nearly a mile to the church, and I told the coachman to follow us at some distance; I knew he could not manage to walk both ways, for he was very old.

  The blinds were all drawn down, and at the end of the little passage, there stood the coffin, on a dismal-looking truck, round which hovered two men in black. The old man met me at the door, and we went into the room, where his sister was sitting. She was a tall, angular woman, and she was eating seedcake and drinking sherry with mournful alacrity. She stood up when I entered, and made a stiff courtesy to me.

  The old man sat in the window, with his hands crossed on his knees, looking out over the fields with tired, tearless eyes. I talked quietly to him and his sister for a few minutes, until a knock came at the door, and the undertaker looked in.

  Ellis got up from his seat.

  “It’s time we were off, sir,” he said.

  “Ah, poor lamb,” said his sister, opening and shutting her mouth, as if it was worked with a steel snap.

  I had brought with me a wreath of hothouse flowers, which I laid on the coffin as it was being wheeled out. Ellis turned round to me, as I placed them there, and he tried to speak, but it was too much for him, when he thought that all that had been dearest to him was leaving the house for ever, and the bitter dryness of his eyes was flooded.

  “We will wait a few minutes,” I said.

  “Come back here in to the room. Ah, my old friend, I wish I could tell you what I feel for you, but you know it, do you not? Yes, yes.”

  In a few minutes he was quiet again, and grasped my hand.

  “I take it very kind of you, sir,” he said, “to think so much of my poor little lamb; very kind indeed. God bless you for that.” The coffin was waiting by the little garden gate, and we joined his sister again, who had remained in the passage. As soon as we got outside the house, she drew a large handkerchief, made of some very stiff material from her pocket, and held it in front of her nose and mouth all the way to the churchyard. In the other hand she carried a little glass case of white artificial flowers, bought with money that I am sure she could ill-afford, to place on the grave.

  I wonder if there is anyone, of whatever religion or belief, who has heard our English burial service said over one they loved, without feeling strengthened and comforted by its strong security, its patient hope. Poor old Ellis, I know, looked up at the sound of the grave voice, which met us at the gate of the churchyard, and walked more firmly and steadily. In some dim unformulated way he felt that the issues of life and death were in other hands, and in those hands he was content to leave them.

  “They are only words,” you say, “what words are of value, when all love has gone?”

  So be it; but there are those, perhaps the simplest and best among us, who do value them. Would you take their comfort from them, for they are in sore need.

  The service was soon over, and even as we left the grave, a cold drizzle of rain began. The poor people in this village think that it is a good thing if it rains directly after they have buried some one. They say that the sky is weeping for them. That is a beautiful belief, is it not?

  The carriage was waiting at the gate into the churchyard, but just as the old man was stepping into it, he looked back again at the little open grave, which the sexton had already begun to fill in.

  “I must go back, sir, just for a minute,” he said, and with a curious stumbling run, he made his way over the l
ittle mounds, between the white headstones to where he had left his dear child, and by the side of the grave he knelt down, and remained there for a minute or two, with the cold showers beating on to his grey uncovered head. I was suddenly afraid, and went quickly but silently to his side. He saw me, but did not rise from his knees. He was looking earnestly into that horrible cold pit, and his lips moved silently. Then half audibly he whispered:

  “Good-bye, dear lamb, dear lamb.” Then he turned to me.

  “I have kept you waiting, sir, I am afraid,” he said. “I just came back to say good-bye to her once more, and to repeat for her the prayer we have always said together of an evening. I will come now.”

  His sister was sitting in the carriage, with her handkerchief in the same discreet position, and we drove back together to his house.

  This evening he sits there alone. His sister had to go back to her home, for she could not leave the children, and made her departure in an old farm cart, drawn by a shaggy pony, observing the proprieties to the last, and soon afterwards I left him. He wished, I think, to be alone, and get more used to his sorrow.

  Ah, what does it all mean? What is the reason of this weary world? Do you know Heine’s “Old play?”

  “She was loveable, and he loved her, but he was not loveable and she did not love him.”

  The deadly tune of the song of the unwept tear, when one woman alone did not weep, he says is sung in hell. But we are not in hell, we are on this earth, but to day when I think of the old man sitting alone in his cottage, and another sleeping in God’s acre, once more a deadly tune is sung, which I think, is not less sad than Heine’s.

  “She was loveable, and he loved her; he was loveable, and she loved him.”