The Thirtieth of October
There was still wind in the sky, and clouds shaped to it, and driving before it in the cold morning as we went up the lane by Scalands Gate and between the leafless woods; and still the road rose until we came to Brightling village, and there we thought that we would step into the inn and breakfast, for we had walked four miles, and all that way up hill we had hardly said a word one to the other.
But when we were come into the inn we found there a very jovial fellow with a sort of ready smile behind his face, and eyes that were direct and keen. But these eyes of his were veiled with the salt of the sea, and paler than the eyes of a landsman would have been; for by the swing of his body as he sat there, and the ease of his limbs, he was a sailor. So much was very clear. Moreover, he had a sailor’s cap on with a shiny peak, and his clothes were of the sailor’s cut, and his boots were not laced but were pulled on, and showed no divisions anywhere.
As we came in we greeted this man and he us. He asked us whence we had come; we said from Robertsbridge; he told us that for his part he had slept that night in the inn, and when he had had breakfast he was setting out again, and he asked us whither we were going. Then I said to him:
“This older man and I have inclined ourselves to walk westward with no plan, until we come to the better parts of the county, that is, to Arun and to the land I know.”
The Sailor. “Why, that will suit me very well.”
Grizzlebeard. “How do you mean that will suit you very well?”
The Sailor. “Why, I mean that it is my intention also to walk westward, for I have money in my pocket, and I think it will last a few days.”
Myself. “Doubtless you have a ship in Portsmouth or in Southampton, which, if you come with us, you will join?”
The Sailor. “No, nor in Bosham either, of which the song says, ‘Bosham that is by Selsea.’ There is no little ship waiting for me in Bosham harbour, but I shall fall upon my feet. So have I lived since I began this sort of life, and so I mean to end it.”
Grizzlebeard. “It will not end as you choose.”
When I had asked for breakfast for us two as well as for him, I said to the Sailor, “If you are to walk with us, by what name shall we call you?”
“Why that,” said the Sailor, “will depend upon what name you bear yourselves.”
“Why,” said I, “this older man here is called Grizzlebeard. It is not his family’s name, but his own, and as for myself, my name is Myself, and a good name too—the dearest sounding name in all the world.”
“Very well,” said the Sailor, pulling his chair up to the table and pouring himself out a huge great bowl of tea, “then you may call me Sailor, which is the best name in the world, and suits me well enough I think, for I believe myself to be the master sailor of all sailors, and I have sailed upon all the seas of the world.”
Grizzlebeard. “I see that you will make a good companion.”
The Sailor. “Yes, for as long as I choose; but you must not be surprised if I go off by this road or by that at any hour, without your leave or any other man’s; for so long as I have money in my pocket I am determined to see the world.”
Myself. “We are well met, Sailor, you and Grizzlebeard and I in this parish of Brightling, which, though it lies so far from the most and the best of our county, is in a way a shrine of it.”
Grizzlebeard. “This I never heard of Brightling, but of Hurstmonceaux.”
Myself. “There may be shrines and shrines on any land, and sanctities of many kinds. For you will notice, Grizzlebeard, or rather you should have noticed already, having lived so long, that good things do not jostle.”
The Sailor. “But why do you say this of Brightling? Is it perhaps because of these great folds of woods which are now open to the autumn and make a harp to catch the wind? Certainly if I’d woken here from illness or long sleep I should know by the air and by the trees in what land I was.”
Grizzlebeard. “No, he was thinking of the obelisk which draws eyes to itself from Sussex all around.”
Myself. “I was thinking of something far more worthy, and of the soul of a man. For do you not note the sign of this inn by which it is known?”
The Sailor. “Why, it is called ‘The Fuller’s Arms’; there being so many sheep I take it, and therefore so much wool and therefore fulling.”
Myself. “No, it is not called so for such a reason, but after the arms or the name of one Fuller, a squire of these parts, who had in him the Sussex heart and blood, as had Earl Godwin and others famous in history. And indeed this man Fuller deserves to be famous and to be called, so to speak, the very demigod of my county, for he spent all his money in a roaring way, and lived in his time like an immortal being conscious of what was worth man’s while during his little passage through the daylight. I have heard it said that Fuller of Brightling, being made a Knight of the Shire for the County of Sussex in the time when King George the Third was upon the throne, had himself drawn to Westminster in a noble great coach, with six huge, hefty, and determined horses to draw it, but these were not of the Sussex breed, for there is none. And he—”
Grizzlebeard. “You say right that they were not ‘Sussex horses,’ for there are only two things in Sussex which Sussex deigns to give its name to, and the first is the spaniel, and the second is the sheep. Note you, many kingdoms and counties and lands are prodigal of their names, because their names are of little account and in no way sacred, so that one will give its name to a cheese and another to a horse, and another to some kind of ironwork or other, and another to clotted cream or to butter, and another to something ridiculous, as to a cat with no tail. But it is not so with Sussex, for our name is not a name to be used like a label and tied on to common things, seeing that we were the first place to be created when the world was made, and we shall certainly be the last to remain, regal and at ease when all the rest is very miserably perishing on the Day of Judgment by a horrible great rain of fire from Heaven. Which will fall, if I am not mistaken, upon the whole earth, and strike all round the edges of the county, consuming Tonbridge, and Appledore (but not Rye), and Horley, and Ockley, and Hazelmere, and very certainly Petersfield and Havant, and there shall be an especial woe for Hayling Island; but not one hair of the head of Sussex shall be singed, it has been so ordained from the beginning, and that in spite of Burwash and those who dwell therein.”
Myself. “Now you have stopped me in the midst of what I was saying about Fuller, that noble great man sprung from this noble great land.”
The Sailor. “You left him going up to Westminster in a coach with six great horses, to sit in Parliament and be a Knight of the Shire.”
Myself. “That is so, and, God willing, as he went he sang the song ‘Golier! Golier!’ and I make little doubt that until he came to the Marches of the county, and entered the barbarous places outside, great crowds gathered at his passage and cheered him as such a man should be cheered, for he was a most noble man, and very free with all good things. Nor did he know what lay before him, having knowledge of nothing so evil as Westminster, nor of anything so stuffy or so vile as her most detestable Commons House, where men sit palsied and glower, hating each other and themselves: but he knew nothing yet except broad Sussex.
“Well then, when he had come to Westminster, very soon there was a day in which the Bigwigs would have a debate, all empty and worthless, upon Hot Air, or the value of nothingness; and the man who took most money there out of the taxes, and his first cousin who sat opposite and to whom he had promised the next wad of public wealth, and his brother-in-law and his parasite and all the rest of the thieves had begun their pompous folly, when great Fuller arose in his place, full of the South, and said that he had not come to the Commons House to talk any such balderdash, or to hear it, but contrariwise proposed, then and there, to give them an Eulogy upon the County of Sussex, from which he had come and which was the captain ground and head county of the whole world.
“This Eulogy he very promptly and powerfully began, using his voice as a healthy man should, who will drown all opposition and who can call a dog to heel from half a mile away. And indeed though a storm rose round him from all those lesser men, who had come to Westminster, not for the praise or honour of their land, but to fill their pockets, he very manfully shouted and was heard above it all, so that the Sergeant-at-Arms grew sick with fear, and the Clerk at the Table wished he had never been born. But the Speaker, whose business it is to keep the place inane (I do not remember his name, for such men are not famous after death), stood up in his gown and called to Fuller that he was out of order. And since Fuller would not yield, every man in the House called out ‘Order!’ eight or nine hundred times. But when they were exhausted, the great Fuller, Fuller of Brightling, cried out over them all:
“ ‘Do you think I care for you, you insignificant little man in the wig? Take that!’ And with these words he snapped his fingers in the face of the bunch of them, and walked out of the Commons House, and got into his great coach with its six powerful horses, and ordering their heads to be set southwards he at last regained his own land, where he was received as such a man should be, with bells ringing and guns firing, little boys cheering, and all ducks, hens, and pigs flying from before his approach to the left and to the right of the road. Ever since that day it has been held a singular honour and one surpassing all others to be a squire of Brightling, but no honour whatsoever to be a member of the Commons House. He spent all his great fortune upon the poor of Sussex and of his own parish, bidding them drink deep and eat hearty as being habits the best preservative of life, until at last he also died. There is the story of Fuller of Brightling, and may we all deserve as well as he.”
The Sailor. “The great length of your story, Myself, has enabled me to make a very excellent breakfast, for which I shall pay, bidding you and Grizzlebeard pay each for your own, as is the custom of the parish where I was born, and one I hope you will admire while I still have cash, but forget when I have spent it. And if in talking so much you have eaten little, I cannot help it, but I must take the road.”
So saying the Sailor rose up and wiped his lips very carefully with his napkin, and put down a sum of money upon which he had agreed with the landlord, and we also paid for ourselves, and then we all three set out under the high morning for Heathfield, and were ready to talk of Jack Cade (who very nearly did for the rich, but who most unfortunately came by a knock on the head in these parts), when we perceived upon the road before us a lanky fellow, moving along in a manner quite particular to men of one sort throughout the world, men whose thoughts are always woolgathering, and who seem to have no purpose, and yet in some way are by the charity of their fellows kept fed and clothed.
“Mark you that man,” said Grizzlebeard, “for I think we can make him of our company, and if I am not mistaken he shall add to it what you (speaking to the Sailor) and Myself there, and I also lack. For this morning has proved us all three to be cautious folk, men of close speech and affectation, knaves knowing well our way about the world, and careful not to give away so much as our own names: skinflints paying each his own shot, and in many other ways fellows devoted to the Devil. But this man before us, if I mistake not, is of a kind much nearer God.”
As Grizzlebeard said this, we watched the man before us more closely, and we saw that as he walked his long limbs seemed to have loose joints, his arms dangled rather than swang, he steered no very straight course along the road, and under his felt hat with its narrow brim there hung tawny hair much too long, and in no way vigorous. His shirt was soft, grey and dirty, and of wool, and his collar made one with it, the roll of which just peeped above his throat, and his coat was of velveteen, like a keeper’s, but he was not like a keeper in any other way, and no one would have trusted him with a gun.
“Who knows but this thing may be an artist?” said the Sailor in an awed voice to me, as we came nearer.
Myself. “I do not think so. An artist would not be so nonchalant. Even in youth their debts oppress them, and they make certain fixed and firm gestures, for they are men that work with their hands. But this thing is loose hung, and though I will make certain he has debts, I will be certain also that he cares nothing for them, and could not tell you their amount to within half of the true total.”
By this time, since we walked steadily, and he shambling, as I have said, we had nearly come up with him, and we heard him crooning to himself in a way that might have irritated any weary listener, for the notes of his humming were not distinct at all, and he seemed to care little where the tune began or ended. Then we saw him stop suddenly, pull a pencil out of some pocket or other, and feel about in several more for paper as we supposed.
“I am right,” said Grizzlebeard in triumph. “He is a Poet!”
Hearing our voices for the first time the youth turned slowly round, and when we saw his eyes we knew indeed that Grizzlebeard was right. His eyes were arched and large as though in a perpetual surprise, and they were of a warm grey colour. They did not seem to see the things before them, but other things beyond; and while the rest of his expression changed a little to greet us, his eyes did not change. Moreover they seemed continually sad.
Before any of us could address this young man, he asked suddenly for a knife.
“Do you think it safe to let him have one?” said the Sailor to me.
“It is to sharpen this pencil with,” said the stranger, putting forth a stub of an HB much shorter than his thumb. He held it forward rather pitifully and uncertainly, with its blunt, broken point upwards.
“You had better take this,” said Grizzlebeard, handing him a pencil in better condition. “Have you no knife of your own?”
“I have lost it,” said the other sadly. His voice was mournful as he said it, so I suppose it had been his friend.
Grizzlebeard. “Well, take mine and write down quickly what you had to write, for such things I know by my own experience to be fugitive.”
The stranger looked at him a moment and then said:
“I have forgotten what I was going to say … I mean, to write.”
The Sailor (with a groan). “He has forgotten his own name!” (Then more loudly),
“Poet! Let us call you Poet, and come your way with us. We will look after you, and in return you shall write us verse: bad verse, oughly verse into which a man may get his teeth. Not sloppy verse, not wasty, pappy verse; not verse blanchified, but strong, heavy, brown, bad verse; made up and knotty; twisted verse of the fools. Such verse as versifiers write when they are moved to versifying by the deeper passions of other men, having themselves no facilities with the Muse.”
The Poet. “I do not understand you.”
But Grizzlebeard took his arm affectionately, as though he were his father, and said, “Come, these men are good-natured enough, but they have just had breakfast, and it is not yet noon, so they are in a hunting mood, and for lack of quarry hunt you. But you shall not reply to them. Only come westward with us and be our companion until we get to the place where the sun goes down, and discover what makes it so glorious.”
On hearing this the Poet was very pleased. He had long desired to find that place, and said that he had been walking towards it all his life. But he confessed to us a little shamefacedly that he had no money, except three shillings and a French penny, which last someone had given him out of charity, taking him for a beggar a little way out of Brightling that very day.
“If, however,” he said, “you are prepared to pay for me in all things no matter what I eat or drink or read or in any other way disport myself, why, I shall be very glad to drive that bargain with you.”
Myself. “Poet! That shall be understood between us! And you shall order what you will. You shall not feel constrained. It is in the essence of good fellowship that the poor man should call for the wine, and the rich man should pay for it.”
“I am not a poor man,” said the Poet in answer to me gently, “only I have forgotten where I left my money. I know I had three pounds yesterday, but I think I paid a sovereign for a shilling beyond Brede, and, in Battle (it must have been) I forgot to pick up my change. As for the third pound it may turn up, but I have looked for it several times this morning, and I am beginning to fear that it is gone. … Now I remember it!”
The Sailor. “What? More luck? Be certain of this much! We will not turn backwards for your one pound or for five of them.”
The Poet. “No, not that. When I said ‘I remember,’ I meant something else. I meant the line I had in my head as you came along and changed my thoughts.”
The Sailor. “I do not want to hear it.”
The Poet. “It was,
‘I wonder if these little pointed hills’ …”
Grizzlebeard. “Yes, and what afterwards?”
The Poet (a little pained). “Nothing, I am afraid.” He waved his hands limply towards the north. “But you will perceive that the little hills are pointed hereabouts.”
The Sailor. “I never yet thanked my parents for anything in my life, but now I thank them for that which hitherto has most distressed me, that they set me to the hard calling of the sea. For if I had not been apprenticed, Bristol fashion, when I was a child to a surly beast from Holderness, I might have been a Poet, by the wrath of God.”
Grizzlebeard. “Do not listen to him, Poet, but see! We have come into Heathfield. I think it is time either to eat or drink or do both, and to consider our companionship joined, and the first stage of our journey toward the West accomplished.”
Now in those days Heathfield was a good place for men, and will be again, for this land of Sussex orders all things towards itself, and will never long permit any degradation.
So we sat down outside the village at the edge of a little copse, which was part of a rich man’s park, and we looked northward to the hill of Mayfield, where St. Dunstan pulled the Devil by the nose; and they keep the tongs wherewith he did it in Mayfield to this day.
Now as the story of the way St. Dunstan pulled the Devil by the nose has, in the long process of a thousand years, grown corrupt, distorted, and very unworthily changed from its true original, and as it is a matter which every child should know and every grown man remember for the glory of religion and to the honour of this ancient land, I will set it down here before I forget it, and you shall read it or no, precisely as you choose.
St. Dunstan, then, who was a Sussex man (for he was born a little this side of Ardingly, whatever false chroniclers may say against it, and was the son of Mr. Dunstan of the Leas, a very honest man), St. Dunstan, I say, having taken orders, which was his own look out, and no business of ours, very rapidly rose from subdeacon to deacon, and from deacon to priest, and from priest to bishop, and would very certainly have risen to be pope in due time, had he not wisely preferred to live in this dear county of his instead of wasting himself on foreigners.
Of the many things he did I have no space to tell you (and as it is, my story is getting longer than I like—but no matter), but one chief thing he did, memorable beyond all others. Yes, more memorable even than the miracle whereby he caused a number of laymen to fall, to his vast amusement but to their discomfiture, through the rotten flooring of a barn. And this memorable thing was his pulling of the Devil by the nose.
For you must know that the Devil, desiring to do some hurt to the people of Sussex, went about asking first one man, then another, who had the right of choice in it, and every one told him St. Dunstan. For he was their protector, as they knew, and that was why they sent the Devil to him, knowing very well that he would get the better of the Fiend, whom the men of Sussex properly defy and harass from that day to this, as you shall often find in the pages of this book.
So the Devil went up into the Weald of a May morning when everything was pleasant to the eye and to the ear, and he found St. Dunstan sitting in Cuckfield at a table in the open air, and writing verse in Latin, which he very well knew how to do. Then said the Devil to St. Dunstan: “I have come to give you your choice how Sussex shall be destroyed, for you must know that I have the power and the patent to do this thing, and there is no gainsaying me, only it is granted to your people to know the way by which they should perish.”
And indeed this is the Devil’s way, always to pretend that he is the master, though he very well knows in his black heart that he is nothing of the kind.
Now St. Dunstan was not the fool he looked, in spite of his round face, and round tonsure, and round eyes, and he would have his sport with the Devil before he had done with him, so he answered civilly enough:—
“Why, Devil, I think if we must all pass, it would be pleasanter to die by way of seawater than any other, for out of the sea came our land, and so into the sea should it go again. Only I doubt your power to do it, for we are defended against the sea by these great hills called The Downs, which will take a woundy lot of cutting through.”
“Pooh! bah!” said the Devil, rudely, in answer. “You do not know your man! I will cut through those little things in a night and not feel it, seeing I am the father of contractors and the original master of overseers and undertakers of great works: it is child’s-play to me. It is a flea-bite, a summer night’s business between sunset and dawn.”
“Why, then,” said St. Dunstan, “here is the sun nearly set over Black Down, westward of us, so go to your work; but if you have not done it by the time the cock crows over the Weald, you shall depart in God’s name.”
Then the Devil, full of joy at having cheated St. Dunstan, as he thought, and at being thus able to ruin our land, which, if ever he could accomplish it, would involve the total destruction and effacement of the whole world, flew off through the air southwards, flapping his great wings. So that all the people of the Weald thought it was an aeroplane, of which instrument they are delighted observers; and many came out to watch him as he flew, and some were ready to tell others what kind of aeroplane he was, and suchlike falsehoods.
But no sooner was it dark than the Devil, getting a great spade sent him from his farm, set to work very manfully and strongly, digging up the Downs from the seaward side. And the sods flew and the great lumps of chalk he shovelled out left and right, so that it was a sight to see; and these falling all over the place, from the strong throwing of his spade, tumbled some of them upon Mount Caburn, and some of them upon Rackham Hill, and some here and some there, but most of them upon Cissbury, and that is how those great mounds grew up, of which the learned talk so glibly, although they know nothing of the matter whatsoever. The Devil dug and the Devil heaved until it struck midnight in Shoreham Church, and one o’clock and two o’clock and three o’clock again. And as he dug his great dyke drove deeper and deeper into the Downs, so that it was very near coming out on the Wealden side, and there were not more than two dozen spits to dig before the sea would come through and drown us all.
But St. Dunstan (who knew all this), offering up the prayer, Populus Tuus Domine (which is the prayer of Nov. 8, Pp. alba 42, Double or quits), by the power of this prayer caused at that instant all the cocks that are in the Weald between the Western and the Eastern Rother, and from Ashdown right away to Harting Hill, and from Bodiam to Shillinglee, to wake up suddenly in defence of the good Christian people, and to haul those silly red-topped heads of theirs from under their left wings, and very broadly to crow altogether in chorus, so that such a noise was never heard before, nor will be heard thence afterwards forever; and you would have thought it was a Christmas night instead of the turn of a May morning.
The Devil, then, hearing this terrible great challenge of crowing from some million throats for seventy miles one way and twenty miles the other, stopped his digging in bewilderment, and striking his spade into the ground he hopped up on to the crest of the hill and looked in wonderment up the sky and down the sky over all the stars, wondering how it could be so near day. But in this foolish action he lost the time he needed. For even as he discovered what a cheat had been played upon him, over away beyond Hawkhurst Ridge day dawned—and with a great howl the Devil was aware that his wager was lost.
But he was firm on his right (for he loves strict dealing in oppression) and he flew away over the air this way and that, to find St. Dunstan, whom he came upon at last, not in Cuckfield but in Mayfield. Though how the Holy Man got there in so short a time I cannot tell. It is a mystery worthy of a great saint.
Anyhow, when the Devil got to Mayfield he asked where St. Dunstan was, and they told him he was saying Mass. So the Devil had to wait, pawing and chawing and whisking his tail, until St. Dunstan would come out, which he did very leisurely and smiling, and asked the Devil how the devil he did, and why it was he had not finished that task of his. But the Devil, cutting him short, said:
“I will have no monkishness, but my due!”
“Why, how is that?” said St. Dunstan in a pleased surprise.
Then the Devil told him how the cocks had all begun crowing half-an-hour before the right time, and had unjustly deprived him of his reward. For the dyke (he said) was all but finished, and now stood there nearly through the Downs. And how it was a burning shame that such a trick should have been played, and how he verily believed there had been sharp practice in the matter, but how, notwithstanding, he would have his rights, for the law was on his side.
Then St. Dunstan, scratching his chin with the forefinger of his left hand (which he was the better able to do, because he had not shaved that morning), said to the Devil in answer:
“I perceive that there is here matter for argument. But do not let us debate it here. Come rather into my little workshop in the palace yonder, where I keep all my arguments, and there I will listen to you as your case deserves.”
So they went together towards the little workshop, St. Dunstan blithely as befits a holy man, but the Devil very grumpily and sourly. And there St. Dunstan gave the Devil a chair, and bade him talk away and present his case, while he himself would pass the time away at little tricks of smithying and ornamentry, which were his delight. And so saying, St. Dunstan blew the bellows and heated the fire of his forge, and put his enamelling tongs therein, and listened while the Devil put before him his case, with arguments so cogent, precedents so numerous, statutes so clear, and order so lucid, as never yet were heard in any court, and would have made a lawyer dance for joy. And all the while St. Dunstan kept nodding gravely and saying:
“Yes! Yes! Proceed! … But I have an argument against all of this!” Until at last the Devil, stung by so simple a reply repeated, said:
“Why, then, let us see your argument! For there is no argument or plea known or possible which can defeat my claim, or make me abandon it or compromise it in ever so little.”
But just as he said this St. Dunstan, pulling his tongs all hot from the forge fire, cried very suddenly and loudly:
“Here is my argument!” And with that he clapped the pincers sharply upon the Devil’s nose, so that he danced and howled and began to curse in a very abominable fashion.
“Come, now!” said St. Dunstan. “Come! This yowling is no pleading, but blank ribaldry! Will you not admit this argument of mine, and so withdraw from this Court non-suited?”
And as he said this he pulled the Devil briskly round and round the room, making him hop over tables and leap over chairs like a mountebank, and cursing the while with no set order of demurrer, replevin, quo warranto, nisi prius, habeas corpus, and the rest, but in good round German, which is his native speech, and all the while St. Dunstan said:
“Argue, brother! Argue, learned counsel! Plead! All this is not to the issue before the Court! Let it be yes or no! We must have particulars!” And as he thus harangued the Devil in legal fashion, he still pulled him merrily round and round the room, taking full sport of him, until, at last, the Devil could stand no more, and so, when St. Dunstan unclappered his clippers, flew instantly away.
And that is why the Devil does to this day feel so extraordinarily tender upon the subject of his nose; and in proof of the whole story (if proof were needed of a matter which is in the Bollandists, and amply admitted of the Curia, the Propaganda, and whatever else you will), in proof of the whole story I say you have:—Imprimis, the Dyke itself, which is still called the Devil’s Dyke, and which still stands there very neatly dug, almost to the crossing of the hills. Secundo, et valde fortior, in Mayfield, for anyone to handle and to see, the very tongs wherewith the thing was done.
And if you find the story long be certain that the Devil found it longer, for there is no tale in the world that can bore a man as fiercely as can hot iron. So back to Heathfield.
Well, as we sat there in Heathfield, we debated between ourselves by which way we should go westward, for all this part of The County is a Jumbled Land.
First, as in duty bound, we asked the Poet, because he was the last comer; and we found that he could not make up his mind, and when we pressed him we found further that he did not know at all by what way a man might go west from these woods. But when he heard that if anyone should go through Burgess Hill and Hayward’s Heath he would be going through towns of the London sort, the Poet said that rather than do that he would leave our company. For he said that in such towns the more one worked the less one had, and that yet, if one did not work at all, one died. So all he had to say upon the matter was that whether we avoided such places by the north or by the south, it was all one to him; but avoid them one way or another we must if we wished him to keep along with us.
When the Poet had thus given his opinion, Grizzlebeard and I next put the question to the Sailor, who frowned and looked very wise for a little time, and then, taking out his pencil, asked the Poet to say again exactly what his objection was; which, as the Poet gave it him, he carefully wrote down on a piece of paper. And when he had done that, he very thoughtfully filled his pipe with tobacco, rolled the paper into a spill, set fire to it, and with it lit his pipe. When he had done all these things, he said he did not care how we went, so only that we got through the bad part quickly.
He thought we might do it in the darkness. But I told him that the places would be full of policemen, who were paid to throw poor and wandering men into prison, especially by night. So he gave up the whole business.
Then Grizzlebeard and I discussed how the thing should be done, and we decided that there was nothing for it but to go by the little lanes to Irkfield, particularly remembering “The Black Boy” where these little lanes began, and then, not sleeping at Irkfield, to go on through the darkness to Fletching, and so by more little lanes to Ardingly. In this way we who knew the county could be rid of the invaders, and creep round them to the north until we found ourselves in the forest.
Having thus decided, we set out along that road in silence, but first we bought cold meat and bread to eat upon our way, and when we came to Irkfield it was evening.
The wind had fallen. We had gone many miles that day. We were fatigued; and nothing but the fear of what lay before us prevented our sleeping in the place. For we feared that if we slept there we should next day shirk the length of the detour, and see those horrible places after all. But the Sailor asked suddenly what money there was between us. He himself, he said, had more than one pound, and he put down on the table of the inn we halted in a sovereign and some shillings. I said that I had more than five, which was true, but I would not show it. Grizzlebeard said that what money he had was the business of no one but himself. The Poet felt in many pockets, and made up very much less than half-a-crown.
Not until all this had been done did the Sailor tell us that he had hired in that same house a little two-wheeled cart, with a strong horse and a driver, and that, for a very large sum, we might be driven all those miles through the night to Ardingly, and to the edge of the high woods, and that for his part we might come with him or not, but he would certainly drive fast through the darkness, and not sleep until he was on the forest ridge, and out of all this detestable part of the county, which was not made for men, but rather for tourists or foreigners, or London people that had lost their way.
So we climbed into his cart, and we were driven through the night by cross roads, passing no village except Fletching, until, quite at midnight, we were on the edge of the high woods, and there the driver was paid so much that he could put up and pass the night, but for our part we went on into the trees, led by the Sailor, who said he knew more of these woods than any other man.
Therefore we followed him patiently, though how he should know these woods or when he had first come upon them he would not tell.
We went through the dark trees by a long green ride, climbing the gate that a rich man had put up and locked, and passing deeper and deeper into the wild, and in the little that we said to each other, Grizzlebeard, the Sailor and I, we hoped for rest very soon; but the Sailor went on before, knowing his way like a hound, and turning down this path and that until we came suddenly to a blot in the darkness, and a square of black stretching across the trees from side to side. It was a little hut.
The Sailor first tried the door, then, finding it locked, he pulled a key from his pocket and entered, and when he had got inside out of the breeze, he struck a match and lit a candle that was there, standing on a copper stick, and we all came in and looked around.
It was one room, and a small one, of weather boarding on all the four sides. There were two small windows, which were black in the candle light, and on the side to the right of the door a great fireplace of brick, with ashes in it and small wood and logs laid, and near this fireplace was a benched inglenook, and there were two rugs there. But for these things there was nothing in the hut whatsoever, no book or furniture at all, except the candlestick, and the floor was of beaten earth.
“Sailor,” said I, “how did you come to have the key of this place?”
It was wonderful enough that he should have known his way to it. But the Sailor said:
“Why not?” and after that would tell us no more. Only he said before we slept, late as it was, we would do well to light the fire, and put upon it two or three more of the great logs that stood by, since, in the autumn cold, we none of us should sleep however much we wrapped our cloaks about our feet, unless we had our feet to a blaze. And in this he was quite right, for no matter what the weather, and even out in the open, men can always sleep if they have a fire. So we made an agreement between us that Grizzlebeard, being an old man, was to have the bench and the rugs, but that we three were to stretch ourselves before the fire, when it should be lit; and, talking so and still wideawake, we struck matches and tried to coax the flame.
But at first, on account of the wind without, it lit badly, and the small wood was damp and smoked, and the smoke blew into our faces and into the room; and the Sailor, shielding it with his coat and trying to get a draught in that great chimney-place, said that a smoking chimney was a cursed thing.
“It is the worst thing in the world,” said the Poet peevishly; to which the Sailor answered:
“Nonsense! Death is the worst thing in the world.”
But Grizzlebeard, from where he lay on the broad bench with rugs about him, and his head resting on his hand, denied this too, speaking in a deep voice with wisdom. “You are neither of you right,” he said. “The worst thing in the world is the passing of human affection. No man who has lost a friend need fear death,” he said.
The Sailor. “All that is Greek to me. If any man has made friends and lost them, it is I. I lost a friend in Lima once, but he turned up again at Valparaiso, and I can assure you that the time in between was no tragedy.”
Grizzlebeard (solemnly). “You talk lightly as though you were a younger man than you are. The thing of which I am speaking is the gradual weakening, and at last the severance, of human bonds. It has been said that no man can see God and live. Here is another saying for you, very near the same: No man can be alone and live. None, not even in old age.”
He stopped and looked for some little time into the rising fire. Outside the wind went round the house, and one could hear the boughs in the darkness.
Then Grizzlebeard went on:
“When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside which is like the cold of space between the planets. It is an air in which men perish utterly. Absolute dereliction is the death of the soul; and the end of living is a great love abandoned.”
Myself. “But the place heals, Grizzlebeard.”
Grizzlebeard (still more solemnly). “All wounds heal in those who are condemned to live, but in the very process of healing they harden and forbid renewal. The thing is over and done.”
He went on monotonous and grave. He said that “everything else that there is in the action of the mind save loving is of its nature a growth: it goes through its phases of seed, of miraculous sprouting, of maturity, of somnolescence, and of decline. But with loving it is not so; for the comprehension by one soul of another is something borrowed from whatever lies outside time: it is not under the conditions of time. Then if it passes, it is past—it never grows again; and we lose it as men lose a diamond, or as men lose their honour.”
Myself. “Since you talk of honour, Grizzlebeard, I should have thought that the loss of honour was worse than the loss of friends.”
Grizzlebeard. “Oh, no. For the one is a positive loss, the other imaginary. Moreover, men that lose their honour have their way out by any one of the avenues of death. Not so men who lose the affection of a creature’s eyes. Therein for them, I mean in death, is no solution: to escape from life is no escape from that loss. Nor of the many who have sought in death relief from their affairs is there one (at least of those I can remember) who sought that relief on account of the loss of a human heart.”
The Poet. “When I said ‘it’ was the worst thing in the world just now so angrily, I was foolish. I should have remembered the toothache.”
The Sailor (eagerly and contemptuously). “Then there you are utterly wrong, for the earache is much worse.”
The Poet. “I never had the earache.”
The Sailor (still contemptuously). “I thought not! If you had you would write better verse. It is your innocence of the great emotions that makes your verse so dreadful—in the minor sense of that word.”
Grizzlebeard. “You are both of you talking like children. The passing of human affection is the worst thing in the world. When our friends die they go from us, but it is not of their own will; or if it is of their own will, it is not of their own will in any contradiction to ours; or even if it be of their own will in contradiction to ours and the end of a quarrel, yet it is a violent thing and still savours of affection. But that decay of what is living in the heart, and that numbness supervening, and that last indifference—oh! these are not to be compared for unhappiness with any other ill on this unhappy earth. And all day long and in every place, if you could survey the world from a height and look down into the hearts of men, you would see that frost stealing on.”
Myself. “Is this a thing that happens, Grizzlebeard, more notably to the old?”
Grizzlebeard. “No. The old are used to it. They know it, but it is not notable to them. It is notable on the approach of middle age. When the enthusiasms of youth have grown either stale or divergent, and when, in the infinite opportunities which time affords, there has been opportunity for difference between friend and friend, then does the evil appear. The early years of a man’s life do not commonly breed this accident. So convinced are we then, and of such energy in the pursuit of our goal, that if we must separate we part briskly, each certain that the other is guilty of a great wrong. The one man will have it that some criminal is innocent, the other that an innocent man was falsely called a criminal. The one man loves a war, the other thinks it unjust and hates it (for all save the money-dealers think of war in terms of justice). Or the one man hits the other in the face. These are violent things. But it is when youth has ripened, and when the slow processes of life begin that the danger or the certitude of this dreadful thing appears: I mean of the passing of affection. For the mind has settled as the waters of a lake settle in the hills; it is full of its own convictions, it is secure in its philosophy; it will not mould or adapt itself to the changes of another. And, therefore, unless communion be closely maintained, affection decays. Now when it has decayed, and when at last it has altogether passed, then comes that awful vision of which I have spoken, which is the worst thing in the world.”
The Poet. “The great poets, Grizzlebeard, never would admit this thing. They have never sung or deplored the passage of human affection; they have sung of love turned to hatred, and of passion and of rage, and of the calm that succeeds passion, and of the doubt of the soul and of doom, and continually they have sung of death, but never of the evil of which you speak.”
The Sailor. “That was because the evil was too dull; as I confess I find it! Anything duller than the loss of a friend! Why, it is like writing a poem on boredom or like singing a song about Welbeck Street, to try and poetise such things! Turn rather to this fire, which is beginning to blaze, thank God! turn to it, and expect the morning.”
Myself. “You Poet and you Sailor, you are both of you wrong there. The thing has been touched upon, though very charily, for it is not matter for art. It just skims the surface of the return of Odysseus, and the poet Shakespeare has a song about it which you have doubtless heard. It is sung by gentlemen painted with grease paint and dressed in green cloth, one of whom is a Duke, and therefore wears a feather in his cap. They sit under canvas trees, also painted, and drink out of cardboard goblets, quite empty of all wine; these goblets are evidently empty, for they hold them anyhow; if there were real wine in them it would drop out. And thus accoutred and under circumstances so ridiculous, they sing a song called ‘Blow, blow, thou winter wind.’ Moreover, a poet has written of the evil thing in this very County of Sussex, in these two lines:
‘The things I loved have all grown wearisome,
The things that loved me are estranged or dead.’ ”
Grizzlebeard. “ ‘Estranged’ is the word: I was looking for that word. Estrangement is the saddest thing in the world.”
The Sailor. “I cannot make head or tail of all this!”
The Poet. “Have you never lost a friend?”
The Sailor. “Dozens—as I’ve already told you. And the one I most regret was a doctor man whom the owners shipped with us for a run to the Plate and back again. But I have never let it weigh upon my mind.”
Grizzlebeard. “The reason that the great poets have touched so little upon this thing is precisely because it is the worst thing in the world. It is a spur to no good deed, nor to any strong thinking, nor does it in any way emend the mind. Now the true poets, whether they will or no, are bound to emend the mind; they are constrained to concern themselves with noble things. But in this there is nothing noble. It has not even horror nor doom to enhance it; it is an end, and it is an end without fruition. It is an end which leaves no questions and no quest. It is an end without adventure, an end complete, a nothingness; and there is no matter for art in the mortal hunger of the soul.”
And after this sad speech of his we were again silent, lying now at length before the fire, and the Sailor having lit a pipe and smoking it.
Then I remembered a thing I had read once, and I said:
Myself. “I read once in a book of a man who was crossing a heath in a wild country not far from the noise of the sea. The wind and the rain beat upon him, and it was very cold, so he was glad to see a light upon the heath a long way off. He made towards it and, coming into that place, found it to be a chapel where some twenty or thirty were singing, and there was a priest at the altar saying Mass at midnight, and there was a monk serving his Mass. Now this traveller noticed how warm and brilliant was the place; the windows shone with their colours, and all the stone was carved; the altar was all alight, and the place was full of singing, for the twenty or thirty still sang, and he sang with them. … But their faces he could not see, for the priest who said the Mass and the man who served the Mass both had their faces from him, and all in that congregation were hooded, and their faces were turned away from him also, but their singing was loud, and he joined in it. He thought he was in fairyland. And so he was. For as that Mass ended he fell asleep, suffused with warmth, and his ears still full of music; but when he woke he found that the place was a ruin, the windows empty, and the wind roaring through; no glass, or rather a few broken panes, and these quite plain and colourless; dead leaves of trees blown in upon the altar steps, and over the whole of it the thin and miserable light of a winter dawn.
“This story which I read went on to say that the man went on his journey under that new and unhappy light of a stormy winter dawn, on over the heath in the wild country. But though he had made just such a journey the day before, yet his mind was changed. In the interlude he had lost something great; therefore the world was worth much less to him than it had been the day before, though if he had heard no singing in between, nor had seen no lights at evening, the journey would have seemed the same. This advantage first, and then that loss succeeding, had utterly impoverished him, and his journey meant nothing to him any more. This is the story which I read, and I take it you mean something of the kind.”
“Yes, I meant something of the kind,” said Grizzlebeard in answer, sighing. “I was thinking of the light that shines through the horn, and how when the light is extinguished the horn thickens cold and dull. I was thinking of irrevocable things.”
At this the Poet, whom we had thought dozing, started to his feet.
“Oh, let us leave so disheartening a matter,” said he, “and consider rather what is the best thing in the world than what is the worst. For in the midst of this wood, where everything is happy except man, and where the night should teach us quiet, we ought to learn or discover what is the best thing in the world.”
“I know of no way of doing that,” said the Sailor, “but by watching the actions of men and seeing to what it is they will chiefly attach themselves. For man knows his own nature, and that which he pursues must surely be his satisfaction? Judging by which measure I determine that the best thing in the world is flying at full speed from pursuit, and keeping up hammer and thud and gasp and bleeding till the knees fail and the head grows dizzy, and at last we all fall down and that thing (whatever it is) which pursues us catches us up and eats our carcases. This way of managing our lives, I think, must be the best thing in the world—for nearly all men choose to live thus.”
Myself. “What you say there, Sailor, seems sound enough, but I am a little puzzled in this point: why, if most men follow their satisfaction, most men come to so wretched an end?”
The Sailor. “Why that I cannot tell. That is their business. But certainly as I have watched men it seems to me that they regard being hunted as the best thing in the world. For one man having as much as would enable him (if he were so inclined) to see the world of God, and to eat all kinds of fruit and flesh, and to drink the best of beer, will none the less start a race with a Money-Devil: a fleet, strong Money-Devil with a goad. And when this Money-Devil has given him some five years start, say until he is nearly thirty years of age, then will that man start racing and careering and bounding and flying with the Money-Devil after him, over hill and valley, field and fen, and wood and waste, and the high heaths and the wolds, until at last (somewhere about sixty as a rule or a little later) he gives a great cry and throws up his hands and falls down. Then does the Money-Devil come and eat him up. Many millions love such a course.
“And there is also that other sort of hunt, in which some appetite or lust sets out a-chasing the jolly human, and puts him at fence and hedge, and gate and dyke, and round the spinney and over the stubble and racing over the bridge, and then double again through copse and close, and thicket and thorn, until he has spent his breath upon the high Downs, and then, after a little respite, a second clear run all the way to the grave. Which, when the hunted human sees it very near at hand, he commonly stops of set purpose, and this thing that has chased him catches him up and eats him, even as did the other. Millions are seen to pursue this lust-hunted course, and some even try to combine it with that other sort of money-devil-huntedness. But the advice is given to all in youth that they must make up their minds which of the two sorts of exercises they would choose, and the first is commonly praised and thought worthy; the second blamed. Why, I do not know. Our elders say to us, ‘Boy, choose the Money-Devil, give that Lord his run.’ Both kinds of sport have seemed to me most miserable, but then I speak only for myself, and I am eccentric in the holidays I choose and the felicity I discover for myself in the conduct of my years.
“For, so far as I am concerned, my pleasure is found rather in having a game with that Great Three-toed Sloth, which is the most amiable of hell’s emissaries, and all my life have I played the jolly game of tickling him forward and lolloping in front of him, now lying down until he has caught me up, and then slouching off until he came near again, and even at times making a spurt that I might have the longer sleep at the end, and give honest Sloth a good long waddle for his money.
“Yet after all, my method is the same as everyone else’s, and will have the same end.
“For when I see the grave a long way off, then do I mean to put on slippers and to mix myself a great bowl of mulled wine with nutmegs, and to fill a pipe, and to sit me down in a great armchair before a fire of oak or beech, burning in a great hearth, within sound of the Southern Sea.
“And as I sit there, drinking my hot wine and smoking my long pipe, and watching the fire, and remembering old storms and landfalls far away, I shall hear the plodding and the paddling and the shuffling and the muffling of that great Sloth, my life’s pursuer, and he will butt at my door with his snout, but I shall have been too lazy to lock it, and so shall he come in. Then the Great Three-toed Sloth will eat me up, and thus shall I find the end of my being and have reached the best thing in the world.”
Myself. “While you were speaking, Sailor, it seemed to me you had forgotten one great felicity, manly purpose, and final completion of the immortal spirit, which is surely the digging of holes and the filling of them up again?”
The Sailor. “You are right! I had forgotten that! It is indeed an admirable pastime, and for some, perhaps for many, it is the best thing in the world!”
Myself. “Yes, indeed, for consider how we drink to thirst again, and eat to hunger again, and love for disappointment, and journey in order to return. And consider with what elaborate care we cut, clip, shave, remove and prune our hair and beard, which none the less will steadfastly regrow, and how we earn money to spend it, and black boots before walking in the mire, and do penance before sinning, and sleep to wake, and wake to sleep; and very elaborately do pin, button, tie, hook, hang, lace, draw, pull up, be-tighten, and in diverse ways fasten about ourselves our very complicated clothes of a morning, only to unbutton, unpin, untie, unhook, let down, be-loosen, and in a thousand operations put them off again when midnight comes. Then there is the soiling of things for their cleansing, and the building of houses to pull them down again, and the making of wars for defeat or for barren victories, and the painting of pictures for the rich blind, and the singing of songs for the wealthy deaf, and the living of all life to the profit of others, and the begetting of children who may perpetuate all that same round. The more I think of it the more I see that the digging of holes and the filling of them up again is the true end of man and his felicity.”
The Poet. “I think you must be wrong.”
Myself. “Well then, since you know, what is the best thing in the world?”
The Poet. “It is a mixture wherein should be compounded and intimately mixed great wads of unexpected money, new landscapes, and the return of old loves.”
The Sailor. “Oh, hear him with his return of old loves! All coming in procession, two by two, like the old maids of Midhurst trooping out of church of a Sunday morning! One would think he had slain a hundred with his eye!”
Grizzlebeard. “All you young men talk folly. The best thing in the world is sleep.”
And having said so much, Grizzlebeard stretched himself upon the bench along one side of the fire, and, pulling his blanket over his head, he would talk to us no more. And we also after a little while, lying huddled in our coats before the blaze, slept hard. And so we passed the hours till morning; now waking in the cold to start a log, then sleeping again. And all night long the wind sounded in the trees.