Faces in the Fire Part 6

III

But the prohibition goes much farther than that. It enshrines a tremendous principle, a principle that is nowhere else so clearly stated. Sir Walter Scott evidently saw that; and no exposition could be clearer than his. The circ.u.mstances were, briefly, these. The Countess of Leicester was a prisoner. Just outside her room at the castle was a trapdoor. It was supported by iron bolts; but it was so arranged that even if the bolts were drawn, the trapdoor would still be held in its place by springs. Yet the weight of a mouse would cause it to yield and to precipitate its burden into the vault below. Varney and Foster decided to draw these bolts so that, if the Countess attempted to escape, the trap would destroy her. Later on, Foster heard the tread of a horse in the court-yard, and then a whistle similar to that which was the Earl's usual signal. The next moment the Countess's chamber opened, and instantly the trapdoor gave way. There was a rushing sound, a heavy fall, a faint groan, and all was over! At the same instant Varney called in at the window, 'Is the bird caught? Is the deed done?' Deep down in the vault Foster could see a heap of white clothes, like a snowdrift. It flashed upon him that the noise that he had heard was not the Earl's signal at all, but merely Varney's imitation, designed to deceive the Countess and lure her to her doom. She had rushed out to welcome her husband, and had miserably perished. In his indignation, Foster turned upon Varney. 'Oh, if there be judgement in heaven, thou hast deserved it,' he said, 'and wilt meet it! Thou hast destroyed her by means of her best affections. _It is a seething of the kid in the mother's milk!_'

At that touchstone the inner meaning of the interdict stands revealed.

The mother's milk is Nature's beautiful provision for the life and sustenance of the kid. Thou shalt not pervert that which was intended to be a ministry of life into an instrument of destruction. The wifely instinct that led the Countess to rush forth to welcome her lord was one of the loveliest things in her womanhood, and Varney used it as the agency by which he destroyed her. She was lured to her doom by means of her best affections. Charles Lamb points out, in his _Tales from Shakespeare_, that Iago compa.s.sed the death of the fair Desdemona in precisely the same way. 'So mischievously did this artful villain lay his plots to turn the gentle qualities of this innocent lady into her destruction and make a net for her out of her own goodness to entrap her!' It is this that the prohibition forbids. Thou shalt not take the most sacred things in life and apply them to base and ign.o.ble ends.

_Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk._

IV

The possibilities of application are simply infinite. There is nothing high and holy that cannot be converted into an engine of destruction. A girl is fond of music. The impulse is a lofty and admirable one. But it may easily be used to lure her away from the best things into a life of frivolity, voluptuousness, and sensation. A boy is fond of Nature. He loves to climb the mountain, row on the river, or scour the bush.

Nothing could be better. But if it leads him to forsake the place of worship, to forget G.o.d, to fling to the winds the faith of his boyhood, and to settle down to a life of animalism and materialism, he has been destroyed by means of his best affections. Or take our love of society and of revelry. There are few things more enjoyable than to sit by the fireside, or on the beach, with a few really congenial companions, to talk, and tell stories, and recall old times; to laugh, to eat, and to drink together. Talking and laughing and eating and drinking seem inseparable at such times. And yet out of that human, and therefore divine, impulse see the evils that arise! Look at our great national drink curse, with its tale of squalor and misery and shame! Did these men mean to be drunkards when first they entered the gaily lit bar-room?

Nothing was farther from their minds. They were following a true instinct--the desire for companionship and congenial society. They have been lured to their doom, like Sir Walter Scott's heroine, by means of their best affections.

V

And what about Love? Love is a lovely thing, or why should we be so fond of love-stories? The love of a man for a maid, and the love of a maid for a man, are surely among the very sweetest and most sacred things in life. No story is so fascinating as the story of a courtship. And that is good, altogether good. Every man who has won the affection of a true, sweet, beautiful girl feels that a new sanction has entered into life.

He is conscious of a new stimulus towards purity and goodness. And every girl who has won the heart of a good, brave, great-hearted man feels that life has become a grander and a holier thing for her. As Shakespeare says:

Indeed I know Of no more subtle master under heaven Than is the maiden pa.s.sion for a maid, Not only to keep down the base in man, But to teach high thoughts and amiable words, And courtliness, and the desire for fame, And love of truth, and all that makes a man.

Lord Lytton ill.u.s.trates this magic force in his _Last Days of Pompeii_.

He tells us that Glaucus, the Athenian, 'had seen Ione, bright, pure, unsullied, in the midst of the gayest and most profligate gallants of Pompeii, charming rather than awing the boldest into respect, and changing the very nature of the most sensual and the least ideal as, by her intellectual and refining spells, she reversed the fable of Circe, and converted the animals into men.' Here, then, is something altogether good. It is clearly designed to minister new life to all who come beneath its spell. And yet the sordid fact remains that, through the degradation of this same high and holy impulse, thousands of young people make sad shipwreck.

VI

But of all things designed to minister life to the world, the Cross is the greatest and most awful. Its possibilities of regeneration are simply infinite; and in its case the danger is therefore all the greater. 'We preach Christ crucified,' wrote Paul, 'unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness, but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of G.o.d and the wisdom of G.o.d.' It is the most urgent and insistent note of the New Testament that a man may convert into the instrument of his condemnation and destruction that awful sacrifice which was designed for his redemption.

It is the sin of sins; the sin unpardonable; the sin so impressively forbidden by that ancient and thrice reiterated commandment whose significance Sir Walter Scott pointed out to me in the cave by the side of the sea.

V

AN OLD MAID'S DIARY

_Christmas Eve, 1973._ Christmas-time once more! The season strangely stirs the memory, and the ghosts of Christmases long gone by haunt my solitary soul to-night. Somehow, a feeling creeps over me that this Christmas will be my last. Am I sorry? Yes, one cannot help feeling sorry, for life is very sweet. On the whole, I have been happy, and have, I think, done good. But oh, the loneliness! And every year has made it more unbearable. The friends of my girlhood have married, or gone away, or died, and each Christmas has made this desperate loneliness more hard to endure. Did G.o.d mean women to come into the world, to feel as I have felt, to long as I have longed, and then, after all, to die as I must die? None of the things for which women seem to be made have come to me. And now I have no husband to shelter me; no daughters to close my eyes; no tall sons to bear this poor body to its burial. I have pretended to satisfy myself by mothering other people's children; but it was cruel comfort, and often only made my heart to ache the more. And now it is nearly over; I have come to my very last Christmas. I have always loved to sit by the fire for a few minutes before lighting the lamp; and to-night as I do so something reminds me of the old days long gone by.

This little room, neat and cosy, but so quiet and so lonely, somehow brings back to my mind a dream that I had as a girl. Was it one dream, or was it several? Dear me, how the memory begins to piece it all together when once it gets a start! I wonder if I can trace it in my journal? I have always kept a journal--just for company. It runs into several big volumes now, and the handwriting has strangely altered with the years. I shall tear them all up and burn them to-morrow; it will be one way of spending my last Christmas! I have said things to this old journal of mine that a woman could not say to any soul alive. It has done me good just to tell these old books all about it. But my dream or dreams; when did they come? It must be sixty years ago, although, despite my loneliness, it really does not seem so long. But it can be no less, for it was in the days of the Great War. The war broke out in 1914--I was eighteen then!--but my dream came months afterwards when things were at their worst. It must have been in 1915. I remember that I had been watching the men in khaki. Everybody seemed to be going to the front. My brothers went; the tradesmen who called for orders; the men who served us in the shops; everybody was enlisting. All our menfolk had become soldiers. And, thinking about all this, I dreamed. I wonder if I entered it in my journal? And, if so, I wonder if I can find it? Yes; here it is. Ah, I thought so. It was a series of dreams; night after night for a week, Sunday alone excepted. I don't know why no dream came on Sunday. I will copy these six entries here, so that I can destroy the old volumes with their secrets without making an end of this. The dreams began on Monday.

_Tuesday, October 5, 1915._ I had such a strange dream last night. I thought I was at the front. Whether I was a nurse or not I have no idea; but you never know such things in dreams. Anyhow, I was there. I saw Fred and Charlie in the trenches as plainly as I have ever seen anything, and Tom the butcher-boy, and the young fellow who used to bring the groceries. And with them, and evidently on the best of terms with them, I saw a tall fellow with fair hair--such a gentlemanly fellow!--and after I had seen him I seemed to have no eyes for the others. If I looked to Fred, he only pointed to the boy with the fair hair. If I turned to Charlie, he nodded to the lad with the fair hair.

Tom and the grocer's a.s.sistant did the same. And then the fellow with the fair hair looked up, and I saw his face--such a handsome face! He smiled--such a lovely smile!--and I felt myself blush. My confusion awoke me; and I knew it was a dream.

_Wednesday, October 6, 1915._ Would you believe it, you credulous old journal, I dreamed of my white-haired boy again last night! Isn't it silly? He was home from the war, wounded, but well again. And we were being married; only think of it! I can see it all now as plainly as I can see the white page before me as I write. The commotion at home; the drive to the church; the church itself; the ceremony; how plain it all was! Fred was best man; my white-haired boy evidently had no brothers.

Jessie, my own sweet little sister, was my bridesmaid, although she looked a good deal older. It seemed funny to see her with her hair up, and with long skirts. The church seemed full of soldiers. Everybody who had known him, served with him, camped with him, or fought with him, simply worshipped him. At weddings I have always looked at the bride, and taken very little notice of the bridegroom. But at our wedding everybody was looking at my white-haired boy--so tall, so handsome, so fine--like a knight out of one of the tales of chivalry. And I was glad that they were all looking at him. And I was so happy, oh, so very, very happy! I was happy to think that everybody was so proud of my white-haired boy. And I was still more happy to think that my white-haired boy was mine, my very, very own. I was so happy that I cried, cried as though my heart would break for joy and pride and thankfulness. And my crying must have awakened me, for when I sat up and stared round my old bedroom in surprise there were tears in my eyes still. I wonder if I shall ever dream of my bridegroom again?

_Thursday, October 7, 1915._ I did; I really did! I dreamed of him again! I saw the home in which we lived, a beautiful, beautiful home. I do not mean that it was big, but that it was sweet and comfortable, and everything so nice! I thought that he was walking with me on the lawn.

He was older, a good bit older; I should think twice as old as when I first saw him in the trenches. But he was still the same, still tall, still fair, and oh, such a perfect gentleman! What care he took of me!

How proud and devoted he seemed! And how he gloried in the children! For I thought we had children, five of them! The eldest and the youngest were boys, Arthur, so like his father as I saw him first, and the youngest, Harry, such a romp! The three girls, too, were the light of his eyes and the brightness of his life. What times we all had together! I saw him once scampering across the fields with the children, whilst I sat among the cowslips knitting and awaiting the return of my merry madcaps. I saw him sitting with the rest of us around the fire in winter, whilst he told tales of the things that he did at the war. How the boys listened, almost worshipping! And again I saw him on the Sunday at the church. He sat next the aisle. I was so happy in being beside him, with the children on my right. What more, I wondered, could any woman want to fill her cup up to the brim? And, wondering, I awoke.

_Friday, October 8, 1915._ My dreams are getting to be like parts of a serial story. How real my white-haired boy seems to be! He has come into my life, and I cannot believe that he is only a dream-thing. I went for a walk yesterday with mother and Jessie, and they said I was silent and absent-minded. The truth was that I was thinking about him, yet how could I tell them? n.o.body knows but my journal and myself. And last night--it seems scarcely possible--I saw him again! It was not quite so nice, for I thought we were very old. He was no longer tall and erect, but slightly bent, though stately still. And I leaned heavily upon his arm. And the children came, and brought their children--such a lot of them there seemed to be. He grew as young as ever in playing with these troops of happy little people. And for them there was no fun like a game with grandpapa. And as I sat and watched them, I liked to think that all these boys and girls would have something of him about them, and would grow up to cherish his dear memory as their ideal of all that a Christian gentleman should be. And sometimes I thought of their children, and their children's children, till I saw, floating before my fancy, hundreds and thousands of children yet to be; and I speculated idly as to how far his fine influence would carry down these coming generations. And once more I awoke.

_Sat.u.r.day, October 9, 1915._ Oh, my journal, my journal! I dreamed of my white-haired boy again! How I wish I never had! If only I had always been able to think of him as I saw him on Wednesday night and Thursday!

I was once more at the war. You know what funny things dreams are. In the trenches I again saw Fred and Charlie and Tom the butcher-boy, and the young fellow who used to bring the groceries. But this time they were all in action; when I saw them before they were resting. The air was heavy with battle-smoke; the great guns roared and reverberated; sh.e.l.ls screamed and burst about me. It was like night, although I knew that it was daytime. As I stood and watched--looking for somebody--four Red Cross men pa.s.sed me. They were bearing a stretcher, and on the stretcher was a mangled form. His face was hidden by his arm, half lying across his eyes. A strange impulse seized me. I sprang forward, raised his arm in the semi-darkness; there was a sudden flash caused by I know not what, and in the light of that fearful and revealing flash I recognized my white-haired boy! I trudged beside the stretcher to the hospital, knowing neither what I did nor what I said. And when we reached the hospital, my white-haired boy was dead! My white-haired boy, my white-haired boy, my white-haired boy was dead! Oh that I had never dreamed again!

_Sunday, October 10, 1915._ I dreamed once more, but not of my white-haired boy. I dreamed of myself; pity me that I had nothing better to dream of! I am only a girl; but in my dream I saw myself an old woman, old and lonely! Oh, so very, very lonely! I was sitting, I thought, in the dusk beside a bright and cheery fire in a neat and cosy little room. Neat and cosy, but oh, so lonely; and I felt sorry for myself, very sorry. For the self that I saw in my dream was a sad old self, a disappointed old self, a self that had fought bravely against being soured, but a self that had, after all, only partly succeeded. It was not a nice dream; the nice dreams that I had earlier in the week will never come again. No, it was not a nice dream, and I awoke feeling uneasy and unhappy; and my head was aching.

_Christmas Eve, 1973._ And so, with a shaky, withered hand, I have copied into the last pages of my journal the entries that I made in the first of these old volumes. What did they mean, those dreams that came to me so long ago? Was there a white-haired boy at the war, a white-haired boy who, if there had been no war, or if just one cruel sh.e.l.l had failed to explode, would have been the glory of my life and the father of my children? But there _was_ a war, and the fatal sh.e.l.l _did_ burst, and my white-haired boy and I never met, _never met_. The five happy children--those two fine boys and the three lovely girls--will never now gladden these dim old eyes of mine. Those troops of grandchildren, and those hosts of unborn generations that I saw in my happy fancy, will never leave the land of dreams and alight on this old world. In the days of the war, I remember how people wept with the widows, and sorrowed with the mothers whose brave sons were stricken down. And, G.o.d knows, none of that sympathy was wasted. Oh, it was heart-breaking to see the l.u.s.ty women who would never see their husbands again; and the broken mothers who would never even have the poor consolation of visiting the graves of their fallen sons. And I was only a girl, a girl of nineteen. And n.o.body wept with me. I did not even weep for myself. n.o.body knew about my white-haired boy. I did not know. But I know now. Yes, _I know now_. And G.o.d knows; I pillow my poor tired old head on that, G.o.d knows, _G.o.d knows_! And so this, then, is to be my last Christmas! Ah, well, so be it! And perhaps--who can tell?--perhaps, in a world where we women shall know neither wars, nor weddings, nor widowhood, I shall before next Christmas have found the face of my girlish dreams!

VI

THE RIVER

It is my great good fortune to dwell on the green and picturesque banks of a broad and n.o.ble river. 'Rivers,' says an old Spanish proverb which Izaak Walton quotes with a fine smack of approval, 'rivers were made for wise men to contemplate and for fools to pa.s.s by without consideration.'

Let us beware lest we fall beneath the Spaniard's lash. For myself, I can at least affirm that I never saunter beside these blue, fast-flowing waters without feeling that the lines have fallen unto me in pleasant places. It is wonderful how, after awhile, the winding river seems to weave itself into the very texture and fabric of one's life. You stroll by it, bathe in it, row on it, fish in it, until every rock and every bank, every crag and every cliff, every twist and every bay, every deep and every shallow, takes its place among the intimacies and fond familiarities of life. It is one of the wonders of the world that this little island in the southern seas should pour into the Pacific so many fine majestic streams. And here, beside the lordliest of them all, I have made my home. It is good to stand on these green banks, to survey the great expanse of gleaming waters, and to see the stately ships glide in and out. I often think of that early morning when John Forster found Carlyle standing beside the Thames at Chelsea, lost in an evident reverie of admiration. 'I should as soon have thought of a.s.saulting him as of addressing him,' says Forster. To be sure! We do lots of things in this life of which we have no reason to be ashamed, things that are indeed altogether to our credit, yet in the performance of which we do not care to be discovered. It would be a sad old world, for example, if love-making went out of fashion; but no man cares to be caught in the act, for all that. Carlyle was caught making love to the Thames, as I have often made love to the Derwent, and he keenly resented the intrusion. 'He abruptly turned away,' adds the offender, 'and moved across the roadway toward Cheyne Row, with that curious slow shuffle habitual with him, and I saw him no more.'

Why, my very Bible seems a new book as I ponder its pages by the banks of the Derwent. What a different story the Old Testament would have had to tell if Jerusalem had stood by the side of a river like this! The Jews never forgave the frowning Providence that denied to their fair city a river. They heard how Babylon stood proudly surveying the shining waters of the Euphrates, how Nineveh was beautified by the lordly Tigris, how Thebes glittered in stately grandeur on the Nile, and how Rome sat in state beside the Tiber; and they were consumed with envy because no broad river protected them from their foes, and bore to their gates the wealthy merchandise of many lands. I never noticed until I dwelt by these blue waters how all the Psalms and prophecies are coloured by this phase of Judean life. The prophets were for ever dreaming of the river; the psalmists were for ever singing of the river.

Nothing delighted the people like a vision, such as visited Ezekiel, of a broad river rushing out from Jerusalem. No greater or more glowing message ever reached the disconsolate and riverless people than when Isaiah proclaimed, 'The glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams, wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pa.s.s thereby!' Jehovah, that is to say, shall impart to Jerusalem all the advantages of a river without any of its attendant dangers. Many a faithless river, by bearing the destroyer on its bosom to the city gates, had proved the undoing of the people after all. But no such fate shall overwhelm Jerusalem. And, hearing this, the riverless city was comforted.

It is recorded of the Right. Hon. John Burns that, in the days when he was President of the Local Government Board, he found himself strolling on the Terrace of the House of Commons, surveying, with all the transports of a born Londoner, the shining waters of the Thames. His reverie was, however, rudely interrupted by a supercilious American who was inclined to regard with scornful contempt the object of Mr. Burns'

ecstatic admiration. 'After all,' the American demanded, 'what is it but a ditch compared with the Missouri or the Mississippi?' This was more than even a Cabinet Minister could be expected to stand. 'The Missouri and the Mississippi!' Mr. Burns exclaimed in a fine burst of patriotic indignation. 'The Missouri and the Mississippi are water, sir, and nothing but water; but that,' pointing to the Thames, '_that_, sir, is liquid history, _liquid history_!' Yes, Mr. Burns is quite right. The Thames has a glory of its own among the world's historic streams, although it is only a matter of degree. All rivers are liquid history.

The records of the world's great rivers const.i.tute themselves, to all intents and purposes, the history of the race. To take a single ill.u.s.tration, it is obvious that the student who has mastered the history and hydrography of the Niger, the Congo, the Zambesi, the Orange, and the Nile has little more to learn about Africa. From the times of which Herodotus writes, when Cyrus lost his temper with the Tigris, and turned it out of its channel for drowning one of his sacred white horses, rivers have loomed very largely in the annals of human history. Indeed, Professor Shailer Mathews, in _The Making of To-morrow_, says that there never was, until recent times, a nation that did not paddle or sail its way into history. Civilization, he says, got its first start on water. 'In the early days rivers were thoroughfares, and they continued to be thoroughfares until the middle of last century.

Even the United States was born on water. It was easier to get to New Orleans from Montreal by way of the Mississippi than overland.' One has only to conjure up the wealthy historical traditions that cl.u.s.ter about the names of the Euphrates and the Nile, the Indus and the Volga, the Rhine and the Danube, the Tiber and the Thames, in order to convince himself that the records of the world's great waterways are inextricably interwoven with the annals of the human race.

We cannot, however, disguise from ourselves the fact that the affection that we feel for our rivers is not based solely, or even primarily, on utilitarian considerations. n.o.body supposes that it is the navigable qualities of the Ganges that have led the Hindus to believe that to die on its banks, or to drink before death of its waters, is to secure to themselves everlasting felicity. Yet, when we attempt to account in so many words for the fascination of the river, the task becomes intricate and difficult. Macaulay spent his thirty-eighth birthday on the banks of the Rhone, and transferred his impressions to his journal. 'I was delighted,' he says, 'by my first sight of the blue, rushing, healthful-looking river. I thought, as I wandered along the quay, of the singular love and veneration which rivers excite in those who live on their banks; of the feeling of the Hindus about the Ganges, of the Hebrews about the Jordan, of the Egyptians about the Nile, of the Romans about the Tiber, and of the Germans about the Rhine. Is it that rivers have, in a greater degree than almost any other inanimate object, the appearance of animation, and something resembling character? They are sometimes slow and dark-looking; sometimes fierce and impetuous; sometimes bright, dancing, and almost flippant.' However that may be, the fact itself remains; and it is surprising that our literature does not more adequately reflect this marked peculiarity. Macaulay himself felt the lack, and dreamed of writing a great epic poem on the Thames.

'I wonder,' he said, 'that no poet has thought of writing such a poem.

Surely there is no finer subject of the sort than the whole course of the river from Oxford downwards.' But a century has gone by and the poem has not been penned. Shakespeare dwelt beside the Avon; Goethe loved to stroll among the willows on the banks of the Lahn; Coleridge was born, and spent the most impressionable years of his life in the beautiful valley of the Otter. And one of the tenderest idylls of our literary history is the picture of Wordsworth wandering hand in hand with Dorothy among the most delightful river scenery of which even England can boast.

Yet, beyond a few sonnets and snippets, nothing came of it all. Neither the laughing little streams nor the more majestic and historic waterways have ever yet found their laureates.

But there are compensations. If the bards have been strangely and unaccountably irresponsive to the music of the waters, our great prose writers have caught its murmur and its meaning. Two particularly, John Bunyan and Rudyard Kipling, have given us the cla.s.sics of the river.

Bunyan's river--the river that all the pilgrims had to cross--is too familiar to need more than the merest mention. And as for Mr. Kipling, he, like Bunyan, is a writer of both poetry and prose. As a poet he has failed to do justice to the river, as all the poets have failed. He has given us a snippet, as all the poets have done. He makes the Thames tells its own tale, and a wonderful tale it is.