Afoot in England Part 13

From the poor bird-boy with his roasted sloes

to the miserable state of those who are confined in dungeons, deprived of daylight and the sight of the green earth, whose minds perpetually travel back to happy scenes,

Trace and retrace the beaten worn-out way,

whose chief bitterness it is to be forgotten and see no familiar friendly face.

"Winter" is, I think, the best of the four parts it gives the idea that the poem was written as it stands, from "Spring" onwards, that by the time he got to the last part the writer had acquired a greater ease and a.s.surance. At all events it is less patchy and more equal. It is also more sober in tone, as befits the subject, and opens with an account of the domestic animals on the farm, their increased dependence on man and the compa.s.sionate feelings they evoke in us. He is, we feel, dealing with realities, always from the point of view of a boy of sensitive mina and tender heart--one taken in boyhood from this life before it had wrought any change in him. For in due time the farm boy, however fine his spirit may be, must harden and grow patient and stolid in heat and cold and wet, like the horse that draws the plough or cart; and as he hardens he grows callous. In his wretched London garret if any change came to him it was only to an increased love and pity for the beasts he had lived among, who looked and cried to him to be fed. He describes it well, the frost and bitter cold, the hungry cattle following the cart to the fields, the load of turnips thrown out on the hard frozen ground; but the turnips too are frozen hard and they cannot eat them until Giles, following with his beetle, splits them up with vigorous blows, and the cows gather close round him, sending out a cloud of steam from their nostrils.

The dim short winter day soon ends, but the sound of the flails continues in the barns till long after dark before the weary labourers end their task and trudge home. Giles, too, is busy at this time taking hay to the housed cattle, many a sweet mouthful being s.n.a.t.c.hed from the load as he staggers beneath it on his way to the racks. Then follow the well-earned hours of "warmth and rest" by the fire in the big old kitchen which he describes:--

For the rude architect, unknown to fame, (Nor symmetry nor elegance his aim), Who spread his floors of solid oak on high, On beams rough-hewn from age to age that lie, Bade his wide fabric unimpaired sustain The orchard's store, and cheese, and golden grain; Bade from its central base, capacious laid, The well-wrought chimney rear its lofty head Where since hath many a savoury ham been stored, And tempests howled and Christmas gambols roared.

The tired ploughman, steeped in luxurious heat, by and by falls asleep and dreams sweetly until his chilblains or the snapping fire awakes him, and he pulls himself up and goes forth yawning to give his team their last feed, his lantern throwing a feeble gleam on the snow as he makes his way to the stable. Having completed his task, he pats the sides of those he loves best by way of good-night, and leaves them to their fragrant meal. And this kindly action on his part suggests one of the best pa.s.sages of the poem. Even old well-fed Dobbin occasionally rebels against his slavery, and released from his chains will lift his clumsy hoofs and kick, "disdainful of the dirty wheel." Short-sighted Dobbin!

Thy chains were freedom, and thy toils repose, Could the poor post-horse tell thee all his woes; Show thee his bleeding shoulders, and unfold The dreadful anguish he endures for gold; Hired at each call of business, l.u.s.t, or rage, That prompts the traveller on from stage to stage.

Still on his strength depends their boasted speed; For them his limbs grow weak, his bare ribs bleed; And though he groaning quickens at command, Their extra shilling in the rider's hand Becomes his bitter scourge....

The description, too long to quote, which follows of the tortures inflicted on the post-horse a century ago, is almost incredible to us, and we flatter ourselves that such things would not be tolerated now.

But we must get over the ground somehow, and I take it that but for the invention of other more rapid means of transit the present generation would be as little concerned at the pains of the post-horse as they are at the horrors enacted behind the closed doors of the physiological laboratories, the atrocity of the steel trap, the continual murdering by our big game hunters of all the n.o.blest animals left on the globe, and finally the annual ma.s.sacre of millions of beautiful birds in their breeding time to provide ornaments for the hats of our women.

"Come forth he must," says Bloomfield, when he describes how the flogged horse at length gains the end of the stage and, "trembling under complicated pains," when "every nerve a separate anguish knows," he is finally unharnessed and led to the stable door, but has scarcely tasted food and rest before he is called for again.

Though limping, maimed and sore; He hears the whip; the chaise is at the door...

The collar tightens and again he feels His half-healed wounds inflamed; again the wheels With tiresome sameness in his ears resound O'er blinding dust or miles of flinty ground.

This is over and done with simply because the post-horse is no longer wanted, and we have to remember that no form of cruelty inflicted, whether for sport or profit or from some other motive, on the lower animals has ever died out of itself in the land. Its end has invariably been brought about by legislation through the devotion of men who were the "cranks," the "faddists," the "sentimentalists," of their day, who were jeered and laughed at by their fellows, and who only succeeded by sheer tenacity and force of character after long fighting against public opinion and a reluctant Parliament, in finally getting their law.

Bloomfield's was but a small voice crying in the wilderness, and he was indeed a small singer in the day of our greatest singers. As a poet he was not worthy to unloose the buckles of their shoes; but he had one thing in common with the best and greatest, the feeling of tender love and compa.s.sion for the lower animals which was in Thomson and Cowper, but found its highest expression in his own great contemporaries, Coleridge, Sh.e.l.ley, and Wordsworth. In virtue of this feeling he was of their ill.u.s.trious brotherhood.

In conclusion, I will quote one more pa.s.sage. From the subject of horses he pa.s.ses to that of dogs and their occasional reversion to wildness, when the mastiff or cur, the "faithful" house-dog by day, takes to sheep-killing by night. As a rule he is exceedingly cunning, committing his depredations at a distance frown home, and after getting his fill of slaughter he sneaks home in the early hours to spend the day in his kennel "licking his guilty paws." This is an anxious time for shepherds and farmers, and poor Giles is compelled to pay late evening visits to his small flock of heavy-sided ewes penned in their distant fold. It is a comfort to him to have a full moon on these lonely expeditions, and despite his tremors he is able to appreciate the beauty of the scene.

With saunt'ring steps he climbs the distant stile, Whilst all around him wears a placid smile; There views the white-robed clouds in cl.u.s.ters driven And all the glorious pageantry of heaven.

Low on the utmost bound'ry of the sight The rising vapours catch the silver light; Thence fancy measures as they parting fly Which first will throw its shadow on the eye, Pa.s.sing the source of light; and thence away Succeeded quick by brighter still than they.

For yet above the wafted clouds are seen (In a remoter sky still more serene) Others detached in ranges through the air, Spotless as snow and countless as they're fair; Scattered immensely wide from east to west The beauteous semblance of a flock at rest.

This is almost the only pa.s.sage in the poem in which something of the vastness of visible nature is conveyed. He saw the vastness only in the sky on nights with a full moon or when he made a telescope of his hat to watch the flight of the lark. It was not a hilly country about his native place, and his horizon was a very limited one, usually bounded by the hedgerow timber at the end of the level field. The things he depicts were seen at short range, and the poetry, we see, was of a very modest kind. It was a "humble note" which pleased me in the days of long ago when I was young and very ignorant, and as it pleases me still it may be supposed that mentally I have not progressed with the years.

Nevertheless, I am not incapable of appreciating the greater music; all that is said in its praise, even to the extremest expressions of admiration of those who are moved to a sense of wonder by it, find an echo in me. But it is not only a delight to me to listen to the lark singing at heaven's gate and to the vesper nightingale in the oak copse--the singer of a golden throat and wondrous artistry; I also love the smaller vocalists--the modest shufewing and the lesser whitethroat and the yellowhammer with his simple chant. These are very dear to me: their strains do not strike me as trivial; they have a lesser distinction of their own and I would not miss them from the choir. The literary man will smile at this and say that my paper is naught but an idle exercise, but I fancy I shall sleep the better tonight for having discharged this ancient debt which has been long on my conscience.

Chapter Twenty-Five: My Friend Jack

My friend rack is a retriever--very black, very curly, perfect in shape, but just a retriever; and he is really not my friend, only he thinks he is, which comes to the same thing. So convinced is he that I am his guide, protector, and true master, that if I were to give him a downright scolding or even a thrashing he would think it was all right and go on just the same. His way of going on is to make a companion of me whether I want him or not. I do not want him, but his idea is that I want him very much. I bitterly blame myself for having made the first advances, although nothing came of it except that he growled. I met him in a Cornish village in a house where I stayed. There was a nice kennel there, painted green, with a bed of clean straw and an empty plate which had contained his dinner, but on peeping in I saw no dog. Next day it was the same, and the next, and the day after that; then I inquired about it--Was there a dog in that house or not? Oh, yes, certainly there was: Jack, but a very independent sort of dog. On most days he looked in, ate his dinner and had a nap on his straw, but he was not what you would call a home-keeping dog.

One day I found him in, and after we had looked for about a minute at each other, I squatting before the kennel, he with chin on paws pretending to be looking through me at something beyond, I addressed a few kind words to him, which he received with the before-mentioned growl. I p.r.o.nounced him a surly brute and went away. It was growl for growl. Nevertheless I was well pleased at having escaped the consequences in speaking kindly to him. I am not a "doggy" person nor even a canophilist. The purely parasitic or degenerate pet dog moves me to compa.s.sion, but the natural vigorous outdoor dog I fear and avoid because we are not in harmony; consequently I suffer and am a loser when he forces his company on me. The outdoor world I live in is not the one to which a man goes for a const.i.tutional, with a dog to save him from feeling lonely, or, if he has a gun, with a dog to help him kill something. It is a world which has sound in it, distant cries and penetrative calls, and low mysterious notes, as of insects and corncrakes, and frogs chirping and of gra.s.shopper warblers--sounds like wind in the dry sedges. And there are also sweet and beautiful songs; but it is very quiet world where creatures move about subtly, on wings, on polished scales, on softly padded feet--rabbits, foxes, stoats, weasels, and voles and birds and lizards and adders and slow-worms, also beetles and dragon-flies. Many are at enmity with each other, but on account of their quietude there is no disturbance, no outcry and rushing into hiding. And having acquired this habit from them I am able to see and be with them. The sitting bird, the frolicking rabbit, the basking adder--they are as little disturbed at my presence as the b.u.t.terfly that drops down close to my feet to sun his wings on a leaf or frond and makes me hold my breath at the sight of his divine colour, as if he had just fluttered down from some brighter realm in the sky. Think of a dog in this world, intoxicated with the odours of so many wild creatures, dashing and splashing through bogs and bushes! It is ten times worse than a bull in a china-shop. The bull can but smash a lot of objects made of baked clay; the dog introduces a mad panic in a world of living intelligent beings, a fairy realm of exquisite beauty. They scuttle away and vanish into hiding as if a deadly wind had blown over the earth and swept them out of existence. Only the birds remain--they can fly and do not fear for their own lives, but are in a state of intense anxiety about their eggs and young among the bushes which he is dashing through or exploring.

I had good reason, then, to congratulate myself on Jack's surly behaviour on our first meeting. Then, a few days later, a curious thing happened. Jack was discovered one morning in his kennel, and when spoken to came or rather dragged himself out, a most pitiable object. He was horribly bruised and sore all over; his bones appeared to be all broken; he was limp and could hardly get on his feet, and in that miserable condition he continued for some three days.

At first we thought he had been in a big fight--he was inclined that way, his master said--but we could discover no tooth marks or lacerations, nothing but bruises. Perhaps, we said, he had fallen into the hands of some cruel person in one of the distant moorland farms, who had tied him up, then thrashed him with a big stick, and finally turned him loose to die on the moor or crawl home if he could. His master looked so black at this that we said no more about it. But Jack was a wonderfully tough dog, all gristle I think, and after three days of lying there like a dead dog he quickly recovered, though I'm quite sure that if his injuries had been distributed among any half-dozen pampered or pet dogs it would have killed them all. A morning came when the kennel was empty: Jack was not dead--he was well again, and, as usual, out.

Just then I was absent for a week or ten days then, back again, I went out one fine morning for a long day's ramble along the coast. A mile or so from home, happening to glance back I caught sight of a black dog's face among the bushes thirty or forty yards away gazing earnestly at me.

It was Jack, of course, nothing but his head visible in an opening among the bushes--a black head which looked as if carved in ebony, in a wonderful setting of shining yellow furze blossoms. The beauty and singularity of the sight made it impossible for me to be angry with him, though there's nothing a man more resents than being shadowed, or secretly followed and spied upon, even by a dog, so, without considering what I was letting myself in for, I cried out "Jack" and instantly he bounded out and came to my side, then flew on ahead, well pleased to lead the way.

"I must suffer him this time," I said resignedly, and went on, he always ahead acting as my scout and hunter--self-appointed, of course, but as I had not ordered him back in trumpet tones and hurled a rock at him to enforce the command, he took it that he was appointed by me. He certainly made the most of his position; no one could say that he was lacking in zeal. He scoured the country to the right and left and far in advance of me, crashing through furze thickets and splashing across bogs and streams, spreading terror where he went and leaving nothing for me to look at. So it went on until after one o'clock when, tired and hungry, I was glad to go down into a small fishing cove to get some dinner in a cottage I knew. Jack threw himself down on the floor and shared my meal, then made friends with the fisherman's wife and got a second meal of saffron cake which, being a Cornish dog, he thoroughly enjoyed.

The second half of the day was very much like the first, altogether a blank day for me, although a very full one for Jack, who had filled a vast number of wild creatures with terror, furiously hunted a hundred or more, and succeeded in killing two or three.

Jack was impossible, and would never be allowed to follow me again. So I sternly said and so thought, but when the time came and I found him waiting for me his brown eyes bright with joyful antic.i.p.ation, I could not scowl at him and thunder out No! I could not help putting myself in his place. For here he was, a dog of boundless energy who must exercise his powers or be miserable, with nothing in the village for him except to witness the not very exciting activities of others; and that, I discovered, had been his life. He was mad to do something, and because there was nothing for him to do his time was mostly spent in going about the village to keep an eye on the movements of the people, especially of those who did the work, always with the hope that his services might be required in some way by some one. He was grateful for the smallest crumbs, so to speak. House-work and work about the house--milking, feeding the pigs and so on--did not interest him, nor would he attend the labourers in the fields. Harvest time would make a difference; now it was ploughing, sowing, and hoeing, with nothing for Jack. But he was always down at the fishing cove to see the boats go out or come in and join in the excitement when there was a good catch. It was still better when the boat went with provisions to the lighthouse, or to relieve the keeper, for then Jack would go too and if they would not have him he would plunge into the waves and swim after it until the sails were hoisted and it flew like a great gull from him and he was compelled to swim back to land. If there was nothing else to do he would go to the stone quarry and keep the quarrymen company, sharing their dinner and hunting away the cows and donkeys that came too near. Then at six o'clock he would turn up at the cricket-field, where a few young enthusiasts would always attend to practise after working hours.

Living this way Jack was, of course, known to everybody--as well known as the burly parson, the tall policeman, and the lazy girl who acted as postman and strolled about the parish once a day delivering the letters.

When Jack trotted down the village street he received as many greetings as any human inhabitant--"Hullo, Jack!" or "Morning, Jack," or "Where be going, Jack?"

But all this variety, and all he could do to fit himself into and be a part of the village life and fill up his time, did not satisfy him.

Happiness for Jack was out on the moor--its lonely wet th.o.r.n.y places, pregnant with fascinating scents, not of flowers and odorous herbs, but of alert, warm-blooded, and swift-footed creatures. And I was going there--would I, could I, be so heartless as to refuse to take him?

You see that Jack, being a dog, could not go there alone. He was a social being by instinct as well as training, dependent on others, or on the one who was his head and master. His human master, or the man who took him out and spoke to him in a tone of authority, represented the head of the pack--the leading dog for the time being, albeit a dog that walked on his hind legs and spoke a bow-wow dialect of his own.

I thought of all this and of many things besides. The dog, I remembered, was taken by man out of his own world and thrust into one where he can never adapt himself perfectly to the conditions, and it was consequently nothing more than simple justice on my part to do what I could to satisfy his desire even at some cost to myself. But while I was revolving the matter in my mind, feeling rather unhappy about it, Jack was quite happy, since he had nothing to revolve. For him it was all settled and done with. Having taken him out once, I must go on taking him out always. Our two lives, hitherto running apart--his in the village, where he occupied himself with uncongenial affairs, mine on the moor where, having but two legs to run on, I could catch no rabbits--were now united in one current to our mutual advantage. His habits were altered to suit the new life. He stayed in now so as not to lose me when I went for a walk, and when returning, instead of going back to his kennel, he followed me in and threw himself down, all wet, on the rug before the fire. His master and mistress came in and stared in astonishment. It was against the rules of the house! They ordered him out and he looked at them without moving. Then they spoke again very sharply indeed, and he growled a low buzzing growl without lifting his chin from his paws, and they had to leave him! He had transferred his allegiance to a new master and head of the pack. He was under my protection and felt quite safe: if I had taken any part in that scene it would have been to order those two persons who had once lorded it over him out of the room!

I didn't really mind his throwing over his master and taking possession of the rug in my sitting-room, but I certainly did very keenly resent his behaviour towards the birds every morning at breakfast-time. It was my chief pleasure to feed them during the bad weather, and it was often a difficult task even before Jack came on the scene to mix himself in my affairs. The Land's End is, I believe, the windiest place in the world, and when I opened the window and threw the sc.r.a.ps out the wind would catch and whirl them away like so many feathers over the garden wall, and I could not see what became of them. It was necessary to go out by the kitchen door at the back (the front door facing the sea being impossible) and scatter the food on the lawn, and then go into watch the result from behind the window. The blackbirds and thrushes would wait for a lull to fly in over the wall, while the daws would hover overhead and sometimes succeed in dropping down and seizing a crust, but often enough when descending they would be caught and whirled away by the blast. The poor magpies found their long tails very much against them in the scramble, and it was even worse with the pied wagtail. He would go straight for the bread and get whirled and tossed about the smooth lawn like a toy bird made of feathers, his tail blown over his head. It was bad enough, and then Jack, curious about these visits to the lawn, came to investigate and finding the sc.r.a.ps, proceeded to eat them all up.

I tried to make him understand better by feeding him before I fed the birds; then by scolding and even hitting him, but he would not see it; he knew better than I did; he wasn't hungry and he didn't want bread, but he would eat it all the same, every sc.r.a.p of it, just to prevent it from being wasted. Jack was doubtless both vexed and amused at my simplicity in thinking that all this food which I put on the lawn would remain there undevoured by those useless creatures the birds until it was wanted.

Even this I forgave him, for I saw that he had not, that with his dog mind he could not, understand me. I also remembered the words of a wise old Cornish writer with regard to the mind of the lower animals: "But their faculties of mind are no less proportioned to their state of subjection than the shape and properties of their bodies. They have knowledge peculiar to their several spheres and sufficient for the under-part they have to act."

Let me be free from the delusion that it is possible to raise them above this level, or in other words to add an inch to their mental stature.

I have nothing to forgive Jack after all. And so in spite of everything Jack was suffered at home and accompanied me again and again in my walks abroad; and there were more blank days, or if not altogether blank, seeing that there was Jack himself to be observed and thought about, they were not the kind of days I had counted on having. My only consolation was that Jack failed to capture more than one out of every hundred, or perhaps five hundred, of the creatures he hunted, and that I was even able to save a few of these. But I could not help admiring his tremendous energy and courage, especially in cliff-climbing when we visited the headlands--those stupendous ma.s.ses and lofty piles of granite which rise like castles built by giants of old. He would almost make me tremble for his life when, after climbing on to some projecting rock, he would go to the extreme end and look down over it as if it pleased him to watch the big waves break in foam on the black rocks a couple of hundred feet below. But it was not the big green waves or any sight in nature that drew him--he sniffed and sniffed and wriggled and twisted his black nose, and raised and depressed his ears as he sniffed, and was excited solely because the upward currents of air brought him tidings of living creatures that lurked in the rocks below--badger and fox and rabbit. One day when quitting one of these places, on looking up I spied Jack standing on the summit of a precipice about seventy-five feet high. Jack saw me and waved his tail, and then started to come straight down to me! From the top a faint rabbit track was, visible winding downwards to within twenty-four feet of the ground; the rest was a sheer wall of rock. Down he dashed, faster and faster as he got to where the track ended, and then losing his footing he fell swiftly to the earth, but luckily dropped on a deep spongy turf and was not hurt.

After witnessing this reckless act I knew how he had come by those frightful bruises on a former occasion. He had doubtless fallen a long way down a cliff and had been almost crushed on the stones. But the lesson was lost on Jack; he would have it that where rabbits and foxes went he could go!

After all, the chief pleasure those blank bad days had for me was the thought that Jack was as happy as he could well be. But it was not enough to satisfy me, and by and by it came into my mind that I had been long enough at that place. It was hard to leave Jack, who had put himself so entirely in my hands, and trusted me so implicitly. But--the weather was keeping very bad: was there ever known such a June as this of 1907? So wet and windy and cold! Then, too, the bloom had gone from the furze. It was, I remembered, to witness this chief loveliness that I came. Looking on the wide moor and far-off boulder-strewn hills and seeing how rusty the bushes were, I quoted--

The bloom has gone, and with the bloom go I,

and early in the morning, with all my belongings on my back, I stole softly forth, glancing apprehensively in the direction of the kennel, and out on to the windy road. It was painful to me to have to decamp in this way; it made me think meanly of myself; but if Jack could read this and could speak his mind I think he would acknowledge that my way of bringing the connection to an end was best for both of us. I was not the person, or dog on two legs, he had taken me for, one with a proper desire to kill things: I only acted according to my poor lights.

Nothing, then, remains to be said except that one word which it was not convenient to speak on the windy morning of my departure--Good-bye Jack.