A Poor Man's House Part 11

"What's the matter, Jim-Jim? Do 'er feel leery?"

If Jimmy volunteers a remark, nothing is the matter. But if he merely answers "No-o-o!" he means _yes_, and in order to stave off sea-sickness he must be given a line.

[Sidenote: _EDUCATION EVILS_]

Then is Jimmy 'proper all right.' Then does he brighten up. "How many have us catched?" he asks. The sight of him fishing in the stern-sheets re-a.s.sures me as to his future, about which I am sometimes fearful, just as some men are depressed by a helpless baby because they foresee, imaginatively, the poor little creature's life and all possible troubles before it. When I watch Jimmy in house, rather naughty perhaps, or when I hear Bessie, fresh from the twaddle that they put into her head at school, saying, "If Dad'd earn more money, mother, us could hae a shop an' he could buy me a pi-anno;" or when, as I am out and about with the boats, a grubby small hand is suddenly slipped into mine and a joyful chirping voice says, "What be yu 'bout?"--then, and at a score of other times, I am fearful of what they may be led to do with Jimmy; fearful lest they may put the little chap to an inland trade where he is almost bound to become a lesser man than his father, be removed from the enlarging influence of the sea, and have it given him as the height of ambition to grow up a dram-drinking or psalm-smiting, Sunday-top-hatted tradesmen. Then I desire savagely to have the power of a G.o.d, not that I might direct his life--he can sail his own boat better than I,--but that I might keep the ring clear for him to fight in, and prevent foul play. What indeed would I not do to remove some of the guilt of us educated men and women who force our ideas on people without asking whether they need them, without caring how maimed, stultified and potent for evil the ideas become in process of transmission, without seeing that for the age-old wisdom of those whom we call the uneducated we are subst.i.tuting a jerry-built knowledge--got from books--which we only half believe in ourselves? New lamps for old! The pity of it! The farce!

But when I watch Jimmy fishing, I grow confident that the sea has its grip on him; that it will drag him to itself as it dragged his father from the grocery store; that whatever happens, it will always be part of his life to keep trivialities, meannesses and education from quite closing in around him.

17

[Sidenote: "_THE FISHER FATHER AND CHILD_"]

_The Fisher Father and Child_

As I pulled the boat across a loppy sea-- The b.u.mping and splashing boat, With the sail flapping round my head, And the pile of mackerel amidships ever growing larger and lovelier in the light-- And the sun rose behind the cliffs to eastward, and the sky became lemon-yellow (A graciously coloured veil twixt the earth and all mystery beyond), And the wavelets sparkled and darted like ten thousand fishes at play in the ambient dawn,-- It seemed that the sky and the sea and the earth gathered themselves together, And became one vast kind eye, looking into the stern of the boat, At the father and boy.

Navy-blue guernsey, and trousers stained by the sea, scarce hiding the ribbed muscles; Tan-red face, the fresh blood showing through; Blue eyes, all of a flash with fishing and the joy of hauling 'em in; now on the luff of the sail (out of habit, there being hardly a sail-full of air), now to wind'ard, and again smiling on the child; Big pendulous russet hands, white in the palms from salt water, and splashed with scales-- Hands that seem implements rather, appearing strangely no part of the man, but something, like the child, that has grown away from him and has taken a life of its own-- Strong for a sixteen-foot sweep, delicate to handle the silken snood of a line-- A man that the winds and the spray have blown on, gnarled and bent to the sea's own liking, The Father!

And the boy-- Like delicate dawn to the sunset was the child to his father-- A st.u.r.dy slight little figure, as straight as the mast, A grey and more gently coloured figure, glancing round with the father's self-same gestures softened, and with childish trustful sea-blue eyes; Pattering with naked feet on the stern-sheets, and hauling the fish with a wary cat-like motion....

O splendid and beautiful pair!

O man of the sea! O child growing up to the sea!

You have given yourselves to the waters, and the waters have given of their spirit to you, And I know when you speak that the sea is speaking through you, And I know when I look at the sea, 'tis the likeness of your souls, And I know that as I love you, I am loving also the sea-- O splendid and beautiful portions of the sea!

18

[Sidenote: _MRS FINN'S PROFESSIONS_]

Mrs Pinn has put aside her respectful defiance, has ceased addressing me as _sir_, and turns out to be a most jolly old woman, possessed of any amount of laughing _camaraderie_. She frankly explains the change thus: "I used to think yu was reeligious. Yu du look a bit like a pa.s.son [parson] sometimes. Do 'ee know 't?--No, not now; be blow'd if yu du! Yu'm so wicked as the rest of 'em, _I_ believe, but yu ben't like they ol' pa.s.sons. I'll 'llow yu'm better'n they." My own recollection, however, runs back to the evening when she brought her damped-down washing round, and I turned the mangle for her. It is hardish work. 'Tis a wonder how she, an old woman, can do it when, if births are scarce, she is reduced to taking in washing for a week or two. Tony calls her the Tough Old Stick. Excellent name! I can picture her in her cottage up on land, bringing up her long family with much shouting, much hard common sense, some swearing and a deal of useful prejudice. Now, in her second youth--not second childhood--she is mainly a lace-worker and midwife. One night, Tony and myself broke into her cottage, locked the door behind us and helped ourselves to what supper we could find--which was pickled beetroot and raw eggs. Grannie Pinn climbed in upon us through the little window, and afterwards, to gain breath, she sat down to her lace pillow. Her dexterity was marvellous. She _threw_ the bobbins about. I could not follow them with my eyes. She makes stock patterns only; refuses to be taught fresh patterns at her time of life, and cannot read them up for herself because she has never learned to read. The b.u.t.terfly is her masterpiece. Working from early morning till evening's gossip-time, she can earn no less than nine pennies a day. What the lace-selling shop makes out of her, the lace-selling shop does not state.

As a midwife, no doubt, she earns more. She must be full of tonic sayings. I am told that when her patients are dying, she takes away the pillow 'so that they can die more proper like,' and also in order that they may get the dying over quicker. What scenes the Tough Old Stick have must been present at! Yet she is spryer by far than those who keep clear of tragedy. When I ask her to tell me truly how many patients she has killed off in her professional career, her eyes glitter and she bursts out: "Aw, yu! What chake yu got, to be sure!"

She has her share of professional pride, but nevertheless I should like to know how many corpses she really has laid out for burial--and what she thought the while.

Usually she comes in just before supper-time:

"Ain't yu gone yet? I know; yu got some mark or other to Seacombe. Come on! which o' the young ladies is't? Out wi' it! Which on 'em is't?"

When I tell her that she is the best girl in Seacombe and that I won't give her the chuck until she finds me a mark as youthful as herself and a hundred times as rich, she says:

"Then yu'm done! her won't hae nort still, 'cause I an't got nort, an'

a hundred times nort be nothing--he-he-he! I knaws thiccy."

The jokes, 'tis true, are poor. But the Tough Old Stick's enjoyment franks them all. You may fling a stinging fact in her face; tell her, if you like, that she could find plenty of marks for herself because, being old, she will have to die soon and then the poor fellow would be free again. "I know't!" she says, and flings you back another stinging fact. Admirable Old Stick! She never flinches at a fact, howsoever grisly it be.

Above all, she revels in a little mild blasphemy; hardly blasphemy--imaginary details, say, about h.e.l.l, in the manner of Mark Twain. "Aw, my dear soul!" she exclaims. "How yu du go on! Aw, my dear soul! Yu'm going to h.e.l.l, sure 'nuff yu be!"

[Sidenote: _AGNOSTICISM_]

But her horror is only a pretence. She does not take such matters seriously. Indeed, few things have surprised me so much as the thoroughgoing agnosticism that prevails here. Uncle Jake is the religious member of the Widger family. For the rest, religion is the business of the clergy who are paid for it and of those who take it up as a hobby, including the impertinent persons who thrust h.e.l.l-fire tracts upon the fisherfolk. "Us can't 'spect to know nort about it,"

says Tony. "'Tain't no business o' ours. May be as they says; may be not. It don't matter, that I sees. 'Twill be all the same in a hunderd years' time when we'm a-grinning up at the daisy roots."

Nevertheless, he is not atheistical, nor even wholly fatalistic. When his first wife was lying dead, he saw her in a dream with one of her dead babies in her arms, and he is convinced that that meant something very spiritual, although what it meant he does not care to enquire. The agnosticism refers not so much to immortality or the existence of a G.o.d, as to the religions, the nature of the G.o.d, the divinity of Christ, and so on.

"Us don' know nort about that, n'eet does anybody else, I believe, an'

all their education on'y muddles 'em when they comes to weigh up thic sort o' thing."

[Sidenote: _SPARROWISM_]

If the sparrows themselves had been acquainted with 'Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall to the ground without your Father,' their att.i.tude towards religion might have resembled Tony's--a mixture of trust and _insouciance_, neither of them driven to any logical conclusion and both tempered by fatalism.

"When yu got to die, yu got tu," says Tony, and it makes little difference to him whether the event has been decreed since the beginning of time, or whether it is to be decreed at some future date by a being so remote as G.o.d. The thing is, to accept the decree courageously.

The children go to Sunday School, of course; it is convenient to have them out of the way while Sunday's dinner is being cooked and the afternoon snooze being taken. Besides, though the Sunday School teaching is a fearful hotch-potch of heaven, h.e.l.l and self-interest, the tea-fights concerts and picnics connected with it are well worth going to. But the household religion remains a pure _sparrowism_, and an excellent creed it is for those of sufficient faith and courage.

Of how the Sunday School teaching is translated by the children into terms of every day life, we had a fine example two or three weeks ago.

Jimmy came home full of an idea that 'if you don' ast G.o.d to stop it, Satant 'll have 'ee,' and Mrs Widger asked him: "What's the difference then between G.o.d an' Satant?"

"Ther ain't nort."

"Yes, there is. What does G.o.d du?"

"G.o.d don't do nort unless yu asks Him."

"An' what does Satant du?"

"Oh--I know!--Satant gets into yer 'art, an' gives 'ee belly-ache an'

toothache."

Not many days afterwards, Tommy was being sent to bed for getting his feet wet. "Yu daring rascal! I'll knock yer head off if yu du it again.

Yu'll die, yu will! An' what'll yu du then?"

"Go to heaven, o' course."

"An' what do you think they'll say to 'ee there? Eh?"

Tommy was puzzled.

"You can ask 'em to send us better weather." I suggested.

"Tell 'ee what I'll do," said Tommy with a prodigiously wise squint.

"I'll take up a buckle-strap to thiccy ol' G.o.d, if 'er don't send better weather, an' then yu won't none on 'ee get sent to bed for wet feet!"

19

At a corner near here, there is a very blank cottage wall, and in the centre of it a little window. Behind the closed window, all day and every day, sits an old woman at her lace pillow. Some portraits--Rembrandt's especially--give one the impression that a shutter has suddenly been drawn aside; that behind the shutter we are allowed to watch for a moment or two a face so full of meaning as to be almost more than human. The same impression is given me by the old lace-maker in the window when I pa.s.s to and fro, and catch sight of her face so still, her hands so active, her bobbins so swift and, because of the intervening gla.s.s, so silent. How nervously the hands speed with the bobbins, how very deliberately with the pins that make the pattern! How hardly human it is!