But I found something worse. The minds of the living who did not know what I knew in France were worse to me. I couldn"t remember the friends I"d lost and remain where I was with those people about me. It was more awful than that German--did you ever meet him?--who lay just the other side of the parapet for weeks and weeks."
His only companion now is a paraffin stove, which does not, perhaps, require a gas-mask to aid in its companionship, though about that I won"t be sure. The only conversation he hears is that of the curlews; subdued, cheerful, and very intimate voices, having just that touch of melancholy which intimacy, when it is secure and genuine, is sure to give, however jolly the intimacy may be. He said that at first he was afraid he could not live on what little money he had, and must earn casually, after buying the boat, but "it"s easier to live than I thought. There"s not nearly as much worry needed as I used to suppose. It is surprising how much one can do without. I was rather scared at first when I got rid of my sense of duty. But, after all, it is not so hard to be free. Perhaps the world already has more soft and easy people than is good for it. I find one benefit of this life is that, being free of the crowd, I feel indifferent about the way the crowd chooses to go. I don"t care now what the public does--that"s its own affair, and I hope it will enjoy it."
After a silence he said: "That sounds selfish, I know. And I"m not sure yet that it isn"t. Anyhow, if one could help one"s fellows one would.
But is it possible to help them? When did they last listen to reason? The only guides they will listen to are frauds obvious enough to make an a.s.s lay back his ears. Well, I think I"ll wait here till the crowd knows enough to stop before it gets to the edge of the steep place--if it can stop now."
I asked him what he read. "Very little. I fish more than I read. You"d think it would take only a week to learn all there is here. I should have thought so once. I see now that I shall never thoroughly know this estuary. It"s a wonderful place. Every tide is a new experience. I am beginning to feel right again." In the boat, going round to the village, he learned I was a writer, rested on his oars, and drifted with the tide.
"I"ll give you a job," he said. "Write a book that will make people hate the idea that the State is G.o.d as Moloch was at last hated. Turn the young against it. The latest priest is the politician. No ritual in any religion was worse than this new worship of the State. If men don"t wake up to that then they are doomed." He began then to pull me towards humanity again.
x.x.xII. Barbellion
DECEMBER 18, 1920. When posterity feels curious to discover what may have caused the disaster to our community it will get a little light from the merry confessions of our contemporary great folk. Let it read Colonel Repington"s _Diary_, Mrs. Asquith"s book, and the memoirs of General French. The general, of course, implies that he was so puzzled by the neutrality of time and s.p.a.ce, and by the fact that the treacherous enemy was in trenches and used big guns. Our descendants may learn from these innocent revelations what quality of knowledge and temper, to be found only in a superior caste, guided the poor and lowly, and shaped our fate for us. They will know why wars and famines were inevitable for us, and why nothing could avert doom from the youth of our Europe. There is no disputing the importance of these confessions. But their relationship to literature? For that matter they might be linoleum. Yet there has been a book of confessions published recently which may be read as literature when the important gossip with the vast sales is merely curious evidence for historians equipped for psychological a.n.a.lysis. I mean Barbellion"s _Journal of a Disappointed Man_.
It will interest our descendants to learn that outside the circle which Colonel Repington reports at its dinner-tables where the ladies were so diverting, the fare usually excellent, and the gentlemen discussed the "combing out" of mere men for places like Ypres, there was genuine knowledge and warm understanding. Beyond those cheerful dinner-tables, and in that outer darkness of which the best people knew nothing except that it was possible to rake it fruitfully with a comb, there was a host of young men from which could be manifested the courageous intellectual curiosity, the ardour for truth, the gusto for life, and the love of earth, which we see in Keeling"s letters and Barbellion"s diary. All is shown in these two books in an exceptional degree, and, in Barbellion"s diary, is expressed with a remarkable wit and acuteness, and not seldom, as in the description of a quarry, of a Beethoven Symphony, of a rock-pool of the Devon coast, with a beauty that is startling.
Keeling was killed in the War. Barbellion (who, as we know now, was Bruce c.u.mmings) never went to France, for he was dying, though he did not know it, when he presented himself for medical examination. But it is clear that though secluded from the turmoil in a country cottage, paralyzed, and his trunk already dead, Barbellion"s sensitive mind and imaginative sympathy knew more of what was happening to his fellows in France, and what it meant for us all, than the combined Cabinet in Downing Street.
That spark of dying light was aware when the luminaries on whom we depended were blind and ignorant. In his _Last Diary_, and within a day or two of his death, he wrote of the Peace Treaty (May, 1919): "After all the bright hopes of last autumn, justice will be done only when all the power is vested in the people. Every liberal-minded man must feel the shame of it." But did such men feel the shame of it? Refer to what the popular writers, often liberal-minded, said about the shame they felt at the time, and compare. To Barbellion, by the light of his expiring lamp, was revealed what was hidden from nearly all experienced and active publicists. Is there any doubt still of the superiority of imagination over hard-headedness?
Imagination instantly responds. Percolation is a slow process in the hard head of the worldly-wise. When we know that in the elderly, the shrewd, and the practical, the desire for material power and safety, qualified only by fear, served as their subst.i.tute for the City of G.o.d during the War, it is heartening to remember that there were select though unknown young men, mere subjects for "combing" like Barbellion, who made articulate an immense rebellious protest that was in the best of our boys; who showed a mocking intuition into us and our motives, as though we were a species apart; a scorn of the world we had made for them, a cruel knowledge of the cowardice and meanness at the back of our warlike minds, and a yearning for that world of beauty which might have been, but which the acts of the clever and the practical have turned into carrion among the ruins. Would it matter now if we were bankrupt, and our Empire among the things that were, if only we were turning to sackcloth and ashes because of that dousing of the glim in the heart of the young?
This last diary of Bruce c.u.mmings is sad enough, for he could but lie inert, listen to the last news of the War, and wonder incidentally who would come to him first--the postman bringing the reviews of his first book, or the bony old gentleman bringing the scythe. He felt, of course, the mockery of this frustration of his powers. He thought--and, it seemed, with good reason--that he was a tragic failure. But was he? Read his books, and admit that he accomplished a little that is beautiful and enduring, and that he did it obscurely at a time when they who held most of the fearful attention of the world were but working gravely on what their children would execrate.
Some critics find in the diary of Barbellion"s last days evidence that he remembered he was writing for an audience. It may be there, but it is not plain to me. It is likely that if we were writing a paragraph while doubtful whether the hair which held the sword over us would last till we had finished, we might find we were not so joyously abandoned to pure art as we used to be. The interest of the book is that it is some more of Bruce c.u.mmings when we could not have expected another line from him.
Apart even from their literary value, it seems to me that some day his three volumes may prove to bear historic witness as important as that of Colonel Repington"s diary. It was just such minds as Barbellion"s, not uncommon in the youth of our war time--though in his case the unusual intuitions and adventurous aspirations were defined by genius--it was such minds that the war-mongers condemned and destroyed. Those men were selected for sacrifice because they had the very qualities which, when lost to the community, then it dies in its soul. They were candid with themselves, and questioned our warranty with the same candour, but were modest and reticent; they were kindly to us when they knew we were wooden and wrong, and did our bidding, judging it was evil. In France they subdued their insurgent thoughts--and what that sacrifice meant to them in the lonely night watches I have been privileged to learn--and surrendered, often in terrible derision, to our will; and then in cool and calculated audacity devised the very tasks in which the bravest and most intelligent would be the first to die.
x.x.xIII. Breaking the Spell
APRIL 8, 1921. My seat by the Serpentine was under a small and almost impalpable cloud of almond petals. The babbling of ducks somewhere in the place where the water seemed a pale and wavering fire was like the sound of the upwelling of the hidden spring of life. This was the spot where I could sit and there quietly match the darker shades of trouble in the afternoon papers, the time being April in England, and the sky ineffable.
There was not a trace of mourning in the sky; not a black-edged cloud.
But human life, being an urgent and serious affair, and not a bright blue emptiness like Heaven; human life being a state of trial in which, as favoured beings, we are "heated hot with burning fears and dipped in baths of hissing tears" for our own good, could not be expected to look as pleasant, during so severe a necessary process, as almond trees in blossom. So I sat down and prepared to measure, from the news in the papers, the depth of the present border on our daily memorial card.
The black border was rather a deep one, when measured. The fears were fairly hot. There were no noticeable signs of any tears in the papers, so far, but one could guess there would be a deep extinguishing bath of them ready to hiss presently, if all went well, and our affairs had uninterrupted development under the usual clever guides. And we had the guides. I could see that. The papers were loud with the inspirations of friends of ours who had not missed a single lesson of the War for those who were not in it; who were still resolute in that last and indispensable ditch which no foe is ever likely to reach. But by now the almond"s cloud had vanished. I no longer heard the bubbling of the well of life.
I finished reading the papers. Now I knew our current fate, and felt as if I heard again the gas gong going continuously. I had the feeling in April, unknown to any snail on the thorn, that the park was deafening with the clangour of pallid, tense, and contending lunatics. The Serpentine had receded from this tumult. Its tranquil shimmering was now fatuous and unbelievable. It was but half seen; its glittering was a distant grimacing and mockery at my troubled human intelligence. It was nothing to do with me, and showed it in that impertinent way. Two ducks, two absurd ducks, suddenly appeared before me on the polished water. They were bowing politely to each other--only I was looking at them--and were making soothing noises in imbecile ignorance of the fate overhanging us all. There was a boy not far away. He stood as still as a thought entranced. He was watching a boat with a paper sail. He was as intent as if he were G.o.d observing the progress of Columbus, knowing now that America is about to be found.
If that boy had but guessed what I knew! But he had not read the latest news. It is the privilege of knowledge to be superior and grave; to be able to smile sadly at the dream of a Golden Galleon which childhood sees in April by the Serpentine; for knowledge is aware of the truth, the tumult surrounding us of contentious lunatics, endless, inexplicable; the noise of mankind in its upward journey towards the eclipse, or some other heavenly mystery.
Presently that tinted mist which was a tree in flower began to shine again through the dark noise which the papers had made. The uproar cleared a little. The water came nearer, its glittering growing stronger, its fire burning towards me. I saw in surprise through the gloom in my mind that the fire had touched the elms; their dark ma.s.ses were faintly luminous. And the mallard drake, riding on the outer pulses of that radiation, was purple and emerald. But would the beauty of the spring surprise us, I wonder; would it still give the mind a twinge, sadden us with a nameless disquiet, shoot through us so keen an anguish when the almond tree is there again on a bright day, if we were decent, healthy, and happy creatures? Perhaps not. It is hard to say. It is a great while since our skinless and touchy crowds of the wonderful industrial era, moving as one man to the words of the daily papers, were such creatures. Perhaps we should merely yawn and stretch ourselves, feel revived with the sun a little warmer on our backs, and snuff up a pleasant smell which we remembered; begin to whistle, and grope for an adze.
But we cannot have it so. The spring is not for us. We have been so inventive. We have desired other things, and we have got them. We have cleverly made a way of life that exacts so close an attention, if we would save it from disaster, that we are now its prisoners. Peace and freedom have become but a vision which the imprisoned view through the bars they themselves have made. The spring we see now is in a world not ours, a world we have left, which is still close to us, but is unapproachable. The children are in it, and even, apparently, the ducks.
It is a world we see sometimes, as a reminder--once a year or so--of what we could have made of life, and what we have.
Which is the real world? I worried over that as I was leaving the park. I seemed to be getting nearer to reality near Rotten Row. A rea.s.suring policeman was in sight. Motor-cars that were humiliating with their enamel and crystal were threading about. The fashionable ladies and their consorts seemed to be in no doubt about the world they were in. I began to feel mean and actual. While thus composing my mind I chanced to look backwards. A miniature glade was there, where the tree-trunks were the columns in an aisle. Was it a sward between them? I doubt whether we could walk it. I call it green. I know of no other word. Perhaps the sun was playing tricks with it. It may not have been there. As I kept my eye on it, disbelieving that light--desirous to believe it, but unable to, faith being weak--a rabbit moved into the aisle. I call it a rabbit, for I know no other word. But I declare now that I do not accept that creature. It sat up, and watched me. I don"t say it was there. As far as I know, any rabbit would have been terrified with all those people about.
But not this apparition, its back to the sunset, with an aura and radiant whiskers of gold. It regarded me steadfastly. I looked around to see if I were alone in this.
The policeman was unconscious of it. The lady who sat on the chair opposite, the lady with the noticeable yellow legs, was talking in animation, but I doubt it was about this rabbit. The saunterers were pa.s.sing without a sign. But one little girl stood, her hands behind her, oblivious of all but that admonitory creature in an unearthly light, and was smiling at it. It was the only confirmation I had. I have no recollection now of what I saw in the day"s paper. I have later and better news.
THE END