Uppingham by the Sea Part 5

Elsewhere the storm-wave had worked more havoc. At Ynyslas, a flock of one hundred and fifteen sheep were caught in their pastures, and drowned, the farmer rescuing only eleven. The cottagers were driven to their lofts, while the tide s.n.a.t.c.hed away their furniture, doors, window-frames, and tables, and strewed them along the railway banks.

There was flotsam and jetsam on what was now once more the coast-line at the village of Taliesin, where in old days the bard's cradle had been washed ash.o.r.e; here one poor woman recovered her parlour-table of heavy oak; her chairs had travelled farther yet to the door of a farmhouse in the extreme corner of the marsh. These people were greater sufferers than our villagers, but we could only help them by a subscription to replace their losses.

For ourselves, we suffered nothing except a temporary scarcity of coals and oil from the interruption of the railway traffic. It was a fortnight before the next train ran on the stretch between us and Machynlleth, and in the meanwhile the gap was bridged by a coach service. From four miles of embankment the ballast had been sapped away, and the sleepers and rails collapsing into the void presented a dismal picture of wreck.

Yes, we suffered one other privation. It was long before our football- field rose again from the deeps, and was dry enough for play. Its goalposts p.r.i.c.king up mournfully through the floods were a landmark which the boys recognised with rueful eyes in the midst of the drowned and deformed landscape.

More substantial measures than the patching up of the barricades in which we a.s.sisted must be taken if Borth is to remain permanently in the roll of Welsh villages. Our storm-wave was but part of a system of aggression which the sea is carrying out upon these coasts. Older residents remember a coach-road under the promontory, where now there is nothing but rock and seaweed, and look forward gloomily to a day when Borth will be "disturbed;" for so they euphemistically describe the catastrophe which is finally to wash it away. But an acquaintance of ours, who claims one of the longest memories in the place, is more confident. He has known Borth seventy years and as he has never seen it destroyed during all that time, does not think it will be now. His own house is safe on the hill of Old Borth, so he judges with all the calm of conscious security. His conviction, however, is not shared by his townsfolk, who were soon busy holding meetings, and considering schemes for the provision of something better than these moral guarantees.

Heartily do we hope that funds and measures will be found to save our friends from another and more calamitous "disturbance." But a letter from Borth, a year later, speaks of the sea as again threatening their security. "We are not afraid of him, though," the correspondent, one of our landladies, devoutly adds, "for he is under a Master." All the same, we should like to hear of a stout sea-wall as well.

Once again the elements caused us alarm. A heavy gale got up in the evening of February 19th, and roared all night upon the roof of the hotel, tearing up the fluttering tiles in patches, and sending them adrift through the air, till the master who slept under the leads, in charge of the top storey, began to doubt whether the straining roof would last overhead till morning. It was small consolation that this time he and his neighbours should at least "die a dry death," so the inmates of the floor were summoned from their beds in the small hours to spend the rest of the night in a bivouack on the ground-floor. One or another of those luckless youngsters will, in after days, remember, as a cheerful incident, the arrival on the scene of the Headmaster, with a store of biscuits and such supplies as could be requisitioned at the moment, to provision the watch. Your schoolboy, he reflected, is hungry at all times; what must he be at night when dragged from bed to save his life, and forced to sit up, rather cold and very empty, for several hours before daybreak. Solaced, however, by these beguilements, the hours pa.s.sed cheerfully away.

CHAPTER XII.--FAREWELL.

_The primal sympathy_, _Which_, _having been_, _must ever be_.

WORDSWORTH.

Thenceforward the weeks rolled smoothly on, unmarked by moving incident, till they gladdened us with the growing light of spring, and brought us within near sight of our home. Must the truth be told? We are all of us loyal sons of Uppingham, but not all of us were glad to find our return to the mother-country was at last arriving. So far away from the offence, we need not fear attainder if we confess, some few of us, that our hearts were not whole in their welcome of the long-deferred event. It belonged to the irony that waits on all lives which are not too dull a material for fortune's jests, that we should cease to desire our home just when long patience and often-thwarted efforts, and

The slow, sad hours which bring us all things ill, And all good things from evil,

had brought its coveted security at last within our reach. For so it was with some of us. Perhaps the air of sea and mountain had got into the blood, and infected it with a certain disrelish for the restraints, the even decorum, and the tamer surroundings of our life in the Midlands.

Well, we are not the only emigrants who have preferred their backwoods to the streets of the mother city, nor the first campaigners who have come back to home-quarters a trifle spoiled by adventure. And, moreover, while everything about us was a reminder of what we must forego, there was nothing to tell us of what a greeting our townsmen were preparing for us, or of the solid mutual good which filled the vista beyond that auspicious welcome.

However, alike for those who were impatient and those who were half reluctant to attain it, the equal-handed hours brought the end of our exile. On one of our last evenings, April 6th, a reading was given in the school-room, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with Mendelssohn's music; no unfit close, we said, to our _annns mirabilis_. For, indeed, its incidents had been "such stuff as dreams are made of," as whimsical if not quite as harmless, as if their plot had been directed by the blithe goblin of Shakespeare's fantasy. The chorus of readers and of singers were so far encouraged by their success, as to offer a second recital as a farewell entertainment to the good people of Borth. They enjoyed it hugely. Doubtless some of the simpler members of that audience would follow the drift of the Sa.s.senach poet only at a certain distance; but Bottom's "transformed scalp," a pasteboard a.s.s's-head, come all the way from Nathan's, was eloquent without help of an interpreter. "Oh! that donkey, he was beautiful," was the dramatic criticism of an esteemed friend, a fisher's wife. The criticism was at least sincere; from the moment of the monster's entry she had been in one rapture of laughter, till her "face was like a wet cloak ill laid up." Well, the kind soul had reason good enough for her merriment. But had the reason been less, our neighbours would not have lost the occasion of dropping the shyness of intercourse in a frank outburst of good fellowship.

But we took a more solemn farewell on the morrow, the 10th of April. The parts were reversed now, and we were the spectators. Just at sundown of a day of clear spring weather, the school was gathered at their doors watching a long procession of villagers advancing up the street towards them. We had heard whispers in the morning of a "demonstration," and now it was come. Through the dust we caught sight of banners flying at the head of the column; under them marched the choir of children singing, and behind them the whole village was a-foot. The people of Borth, of every age and degree, from the first householders and yeomen of the place to the fishermen's boys and girls, had come to wish us G.o.d speed. Reaching the school quarters they halted, the boys lining the roadway on each side of them, and filling the broad flight of steps before the hotel doors.

When the cheers for "Uppingham" and our answering cheers for "Borth" had rung out across the sands to seaward, there was an interval, filled up with songs by the children, while they waited the arrival of the spokesmen, whom they had charged with their valediction. When these arrived, a deputation of the villagers moved into the school-room shed, and there presented a brief address, which ran thus: "We, the inhabitants of Borth, beg to tender our most sincere thanks to Dr. Thring, and all the masters and scholars of the celebrated Uppingham School, for the very many generous acts and kindly feelings exhibited to us during their sojourn here." The address was introduced and explained by speeches marked by refined feeling, and delivered with a noticeable grace of manner. We will here cite, though for another reason, a few words of the speaker who moved the address; he commented on the discipline which (from the evidence of their conduct when at large) seemed to rule the school; naively but pointedly he noted that no offence had ever been given; "No boy had laughed at the villagers, if they were old and queer-looking or queerly dressed; there had been no disorder, no shabby act, nothing _un_decent" (so he put it in his unpractised English) "during the whole twelve months we had spent among them." We give his testimony without note or comment, sure that the facts would not be better told in words less simple. They were little things he witnessed to; was it a little thing that the witness could be truly borne?

The boys were not present to hear the speeches, but they will like well to remember the scene without doors at that unlooked-for reunion of school and village. It was a scene made up of homely elements enough, but somehow, in our own memory at least, few pictures will remain printed in such fast colours. Clearly, as on that evening, we shall always see, distinct in the quiet light of the afterglow, the ranks of serious faces, touched and stilled by the surprise of a contagious sympathy, as English boys and Welsh cottagers looked each other in the face, and felt, if for the s.p.a.ce of a few heartbeats only, an outflash of that ancient kinship which binds man and man together more than race and circ.u.mstance divide.

It pleases the smaller kind of criticism to cheapen the meaning of such incidents as this, and explain them by the easy reference to interested and conventional motives. Wiser men will take occasion to rejoice that human nature is after all so kind; and if this be error, we would rather err with the wise. Take once again our thanks, kind people of Borth, if our thanks are worth your taking. You showed us no little kindness in a strange land, and the day is far off when we shall forget the friendly, gentle people whose name is the memorial of a great ill escaped, of much good enjoyed, in the days that are over, and the landmark of who knows what greater good in the days that are to be.

CONCLUSION.

_Perhaps poetry and romance are as plentiful as ever in the world_, _except for those phlegmatic natures_, _who_, _I suspect_, _would in any age have regarded them as a dull form of erroneous thinking_.

_They exist very easily in the same room with the microscope_, _and even in railway carriages_: _what banishes them is the vacuum in gentleman and lady pa.s.sengers_. _How should all the apparatus of heaven and earth_, _from the farthest firmament to the tender bosom of the mother who nourished us_, _make poetry for a mind that has no movements of awe and tenderness_, _no sense of fellowship which thrills from the near to the distant, and back again from the distant to the near_?

GEORGE ELIOT.

[Greek verse]

ANTIGONE.

All is over now; April was just a twelfth-night old when the school departed. Some of our company have lingered on for business, a few from reluctance to have done with it. But to-day the last group has taken wing for the Midlands. Old "Borth," the colley dog, followed them to the station, and poked his nose into the carriage to take his leave. Old Borth--we had almost forgotten him, and that had been deep ingrat.i.tude for he was not the least warm-hearted of our friends in Wales. His master lived two miles away; but soon after our arrival, Borth had come down from the hills to attach himself to our fortunes, and henceforth became, as it were, our familiar, the pet of the regiment, like the goat of the "23rd." He knew his position, and was a stickler for formalities; he had a wag of the tail for every boy who wore the image of the venerable schoolmaster upon his cap; but if he met him bare-headed, or, by any chance, in an indistinctive head-gear, he would cut that boy dead, were he never so much the same urchin from whose hand he had yesterday eaten a cheese-cake. That was his official rebuke for the irregularity.

By day, Borth would bask in some sunny corner of our quarters; at night, he has been known to venture on a nearer intimacy where doors were left open. We found you once ourselves, Borth, curled up and asleep upon our own bed. You woke up, shook yourself with a modest, but not startled manner, and walked quietly away, like a gentleman.

Ah! kind friend, you showed us the sincerest of flatteries, that of imitation. You left a comfortable home for chance quarters and uncertain fare, that you might be one of us, an outcast among outcasts. Now we must part, for our home will spare us no longer, as neither will yours spare you. And so the last good-bye is said, and you are limping away to your hills again, with dejection expressed in every fibre of your frame, from the drooping ears to the last hair on your tail.

All is over, and the place is very silent, except for the clink of hammers where they are breaking down our wooden walls, and, seaward, the cry and splash of gull and tern dipping for their prey in the shoal of herring-fry which is wandering about the bay. Close insh.o.r.e a porpoise is wallowing, like the jolly sea-pig that he is, in his berth of glistening water. The wild creatures seem to have grown tamer since there are no strollers to keep them aloof. This morning, as we pa.s.sed his pool, the stately heron let us come within twenty yards of him before he got leisurely upon the wing. The village seems even quieter; the people at their doors betray, to our fancy, a certain la.s.situde as if, like merrymakers on the morrow of a revel, they felt somewhat sleepy and sorry, now that the stirring social year is over, and the little fishing town has returned to its "old solitary nothingness."

Yes, the silence has come down again; but it is a silence full of voices.

For, as it often happens that, when things without are stillest, men hear most audibly the tumult of their own brains, so is it now with us. Action is ended, and memory begins to work. Into the vacuum which the silence makes, the stream of our little history pours in a long backwater. Our thoughts go back to the beginning of it, the hour when, as we were sailing prosperously under press of canvas, the blast struck us suddenly out of a sunny sky. We live again the slow months of enforced vacation, and the brief spell of apparent security, broken by the second stroke. We recall the slow and painful sickening of hope, amid the frustration of attempted remedies; the watchings and communings by late firesides; the morning questionings and bulletins; the deepening of fears, until the moment when the sharp pressure of calamity became the liberating touch, and made a hazardous adventure seem a welcome alternative. Not less distinctly we remember the zest with which the wretched waiting for evil tidings was exchanged for hopeful activity; the rush of preparations; the anxiety which watched their pa.s.sage through the ordeal of practice; the growing sense of security; the mellowing down of novelty and privation into routine and ease; the contrast, all the while, between the outward peace of the colony, and the secret difficulties of finance and commissariat; the long intermittent crisis which gave the administrative no rest; the hopes and efforts for our return home, and the reversal of them; all this, and--and--very much else as well, which was of acutest interest at the time, and which it will become convenient to describe only when it will be of interest to no one. All this pa.s.ses before us in the series of a long dissolving view, full of bright lights, and only less full of unlovely shadows.

And, somehow, as we review the past this evening, pacing the beach in the twilight, the fact accomplished seems to us not smaller, but greater than when we lived in it. There are moments some would say of illusion, some of vision--when the things most familiar to our eyes and thoughts, whether in nature or human society, surprise us with a dignity and beauty not discovered in them before. That glamour is in the air this evening.

Perhaps the night-wind, which creeps to us from over the gra.s.sy tomb of Taliesin, warrior and bard has touched the fancy with a breath out of his heroic days. What wonder if it were so? Thirteen centuries ago the hero became the guardian of the sh.o.r.e; but the story which ends to-day is, perhaps, as worthy note as any he has watched from his hill-side. Those who rate the dignity of human action by other standards than the breadth and conspicuousness of its stage, will not mock us because we find some stuff of romance in the homely circ.u.mstance and not always epic pa.s.sages of this modern episode of school.

But if the stranger who may read the tale will spare his scorn--those for whom we shall tell it would forgive even a bolder word; for some of them were themselves a part of it, and others will make it a part of their heritage in the past. English schools have always honoured their traditions, counting them the better part of their wealth. Some have majestic memories of royal benefactors, or can point to a muster-roll of splendid names, whose greatness was cradled in their walls. Such traditions are not ours. A past, not brief, but not memorable, has denied us these. But a tradition we have henceforward which is all our own and wholly single in its kind. We persuade ourselves that in far-off years those who bear our name will say that, in the memory of a great disaster overcome, no mean heirloom has been left them. They will not be ashamed of a generation which, in an hour of extreme peril, did not despair of the commonwealth, but dared to trust their faith in a further destiny, and saved for those who should come after them a cause which must else have perished in the dark. _Stet fortuna domus_. And stand it will if there is a.s.surance in augury. For the fairy legend has a truth in fact, and the luck of a house, grasped daringly and held fast in an act of venturous hardihood, will not break or be lost again until the sons forget to guard it.

Here and there, at any rate, among the posterity which will sometime fill our ranks, there will not be wanting generous and gifted spirits, _ill.u.s.tres animae nostrumque in nomen iturae_, who will rejoice in making good the forecast that the venture was not made in vain. They will possess more worthily the good which an elder race foresaw and laboured not all unworthily to preserve. To their safe keeping we commend as under a seal, the legacy of hopes which are better left unspoken now.

APPENDIX.

HOW WE LEFT BORTH.

(_From_ "_The Cambrian News_.")

On Tuesday evening, April 10, the inhabitants of Borth, almost to a man, turned out to take part in a farewell demonstration to the masters and scholars of Uppingham School, after their twelve months' residence in Wales. Shortly after seven o'clock a procession of the inhabitants was formed, and, headed by a flag-bearer, made its way to the square in front of the Cambrian Hotel, where several songs were sung by the a.s.sembly under the schoolmaster's (Mr. Jones's) direction; and at the conclusion a hearty round of cheers was given for the Uppingham School, who immediately responded by making the place ring again with three enthusiastic cheers for Borth. The a.s.sembly then adjourned to the wooden building in the hotel-yard, when Mr. Jones, Brynowen, was voted to the chair on the proposition of Mr. Lewis, Post Office, seconded by Mr.

Jones, Neptune Baths.

The CHAIRMAN said, as the meeting was aware, the object of the demonstration--and he was exceedingly glad to see such a popular demonstration--was, that the Borth people might have a chance of giving public expression to the kind feeling of respect they entertained for Mr.

Thring, the masters, and scholars of Uppingham School before they left Borth, after a twelve months' sojourn there. (Cheers.) When some twelve months ago a rumour came to Borth respecting the advent of Uppingham School, a few old women and nervous people, in the innocence of their hearts, were afraid they would be swamped by an inundation of Goths and Vandals. (Laughter.) The meeting would, however, agree with him that kinder-hearted gentlemen than the masters, and better-behaved boys than the scholars, could not be found. (Hear, hear.) There had been no town- and-gown feeling existing similar to what prevailed in places of greater pretensions. The people of the village and the School had pulled together in a friendly manner, and everything had gone on quite smoothly.

(Hear.) After referring to the progress of the School under the headmastership of Mr. Thring, and remarking that the older schools would have to look to their laurels, as Uppingham was treading close upon their heels, the Chairman said that in some fifteen or twenty years to come many of the boys would be in Parliament, some of them officers in the army or navy, fighting the battles of the nation, some of them would be barristers, seeing that the people got fair play in the courts of law, others would no doubt be eminent merchants, importing the produce of foreign countries, whilst others would be surgeons, like Dr. Childs--(loud cheering)--and physicians. They would therefore exercise an influence over the destinies of the nation. (Cheers.) The people of Borth were exceedingly sorry that the school was going away. Its members would be missed very much indeed. He owed the Uppingham people no ill-feeling, but if a case of smallpox, the cholera, or some other virulent disease broke out in that place and prevented the return of the school, he was sure that Borth people would not feel at all sorry. (Laughter and cheers.) There was the name of a gentleman whom he might mention. That gentleman had earned the grat.i.tude of the Borth people perhaps more than anyone else. He referred to Dr. Childs. (Applause.) He had acted the part of the Good Samaritan thoroughly, responding as readily to the call of the sick and suffering at midnight as at noon. (Cheers.) He would detain them no longer, but ask Mr. Lewis to submit a proposition to the meeting.

Mr. LEWIS, Post Office, said he had very great pleasure in reading the resolution, because he knew it would be heartily responded to by everyone present. It was as follows:--"We, the inhabitants of Borth, beg to tender our most sincere thanks to Dr. Thring, and all the masters and scholars of the celebrated Uppingham School, for the very many generous acts and kindly feelings exhibited towards us during their sojourn here."

Mr. Lewis followed by commenting upon the excellent discipline which evidently ruled the school, judging from their exemplary conduct out of school. He was not aware of any shabby, mean, or ungenerous act committed by the young gentlemen during the whole twelve months they had been at Borth. (Applause.) The meeting would remember the a.s.sistance rendered in the terrific storm in February. Even the ladies came out and helped the people in their distress--(loud applause)--thereby setting an excellent example to the women of Borth. (Cheers.) They had not only worked as hard as they could, but subscribed money among themselves which they distributed to the most needy of those who had sustained loss by the storm. (Applause.) The money then distributed would pa.s.s into other hands in a short time, but the kind feelings the act engendered would last for ever. (Applause.) He only hoped that each and all connected with Uppingham School would enjoy long, prosperous, and useful lives.

(Loud applause.)

Mr. JONES, The Baths, expressed the fears he once entertained, in common with others, that the Uppingham School would take Borth by storm, an opinion he had to change entirely after the boys had been there a week, for instead of laughing at the quaintness of some of the Welsh costumes or the peculiarities of the nation, they had obtained the goodwill of the inhabitants by their gentleness of demeanour, and completely won their hearts on that memorable day when masters and scholars, young and old, turned out to a.s.sist in reducing, as much as possible, the ill-effects of the storm. (Cheers.) He did not exactly wish that some contagious disease would break out at Uppingham, but he hoped that when the School got back it would repent, and so return to Borth. (Laughter and cheers.)

Speeches were also made by Mr. Thomas G. Thomas and Mr. R. Pritchard Roberts, Garibaldi House.

The Rev. E. THRING, M.A., then rose amid cheers and said: Mr. Chairman and our friends at Borth, I have made many speeches in my life since I have been master of this school. Two-and-twenty years of school-mastering gives a good deal of exercise for the tongue from time to time; but never in my life have I stood up to make any speech which I feel so little capable of making as I do to-night; not from want of practice, but because the feelings you have aroused in us are such--and our sojourn here has been such a boon to us (cheers)--that it is impossible for me to tell you the value we set on living here, and the welcome we have received. (Applause.) I never heard anything sweeter to my ear than your singing to-night. The time it must have taken, the goodwill manifested in the songs, and altogether the circ.u.mstances under which they were delivered, and we on our last day here, made them go down into my heart, and into all our hearts with peculiar power. (Cheers.) Never in my life have I had such testimony to the school which I cared so much for, as the testimony you have given to-night. We get our reputation in the English world, but what is that compared to the inner life to which you have borne witness. What signifies it whether we know much or little in comparison with the fact that we have a character of life which you like. It is life answering unto life across all those ties, both of nationality--for I grieve I cannot speak in your native tongue--and also of distance which set gulfs between man and man, but cannot separate life when it is true. (Hear, hear.) If your life is true, and our lives are true, then it flows across and we meet as to-night one united body of living men. (Cheers.) And this is what gives a peculiar value to our being here. You know as none can know what this school is. We came among you as strangers, and you looked upon us with the eyes of strangers; we stayed among you as friends, and we part from you as friends. (Cheers.) Everybody knows that the one thing on earth which makes life pleasant is the friendly atmosphere in which men live--the one thing that makes it hateful is to be surrounded by thoroughly bitter hearts. There is an old saying that "stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage." No, the life within can make any place enjoyable--nay, happy. Yet, I think it is better to be in happy surroundings too. Of this, however, you may be sure: those glorious hills of yours, this sea, and all the happy hours we have spent wandering about, will not easily pa.s.s out of our minds. The jewel of a friendly spirit has also been set in very bright surroundings. We do rejoice in the life we have had here, and all that we have found.

(Cheers.) You have spoken to-night of the good conduct of the school, and have said that we have caused no trouble since our stay here. That like many other questions, has two sides. Is it not a great credit to this place that when between a hundred and seventy and a hundred and eighty strange boys have been put into your cottages and homes, there has not arisen a single difficulty for the whole year? I say it is quite as much a feather in your caps as in ours. I am proud of it--very proud of it. (Applause.) I would also refer to the extensive power which lies in a great school. It is quite true that some few years hence, these boys whom you have looked on with interest will be schoolmasters, barristers, and leaders in every part of the world. (Applause.) There is not a quarter of the globe where we have not our representative. It is now, and not in the future only, that I may venture to say that there is no part of this globe where men are to be found, where, here and there, Borth has not been heard of this year. (Cheers.) I will mention two facts only which may interest you. This very week, quite unconscious of this meeting to-night, I sent a letter to North Canada, with, I may say, a very glowing account of Borth in it--(cheers)--and the day before yesterday, having a little leisure, I wrote to the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Provinces of India, when I mentioned Borth in equally warm terms. (Applause.) That, I need not say, is going on all around us.

These three hundred pens of our school are busy day by day giving to their friends their own views of our life here, and I may no doubt say that on the whole they are pleasant views. (Cheers.) It is not only a pleasant fact to mention, but I hold that where life is working well with life it is a real power for good that goes out into all lands, a sort of missionary force traversing this earth, speaking of us as capable of coming here, and of the welcome you have given us. (Hear, hear.) That, however, would be a slight thing if we did not leave behind us, as I am sure we do, that feeling of happy life which we take away with us.