Kitabı oku: «Leaves in the Wind», sayfa 2

ON A COUNTRY PLATFORM

The fields lie cheek-by-jowl with the station, and a group of high elms, in which dwells a colony of rooks, throws its ample shade over the "down" platform.

From the cornfield that marches side by side with the station there comes the cheerful music of the reaper and the sound of the voices of the harvesters, old men, some women and more children – for half of the field has been reaped and is being gathered and gleaned. They are so near that the engine-driver of the "local" train exchanges gossip with them in the intervals of oiling his engine. They talk of the crops and the bad weather there has been and the change that has come with September, and the news of boys who are fighting or have fallen…

A dozen youths march, two by two, on to the "up" platform. They are in civilian dress, but behind them walks a sergeant who ejaculates "left – left – left" like the flick of a whip. They are the latest trickle from this countryside to the great whirlpool, most of them mere boys. They have the self-consciousness of obscure country youths who have suddenly been thrust into the public eye and are aware that all glances are turned critically upon their awkward movements. They shamble along with a grotesque caricature of a dare-devil swagger, and laugh loud and vacantly to show how much they are at ease with themselves and the world. It is hollow gaiety and suggests the animation of a trout with a hook in its throat.

The booking-clerk, lounging at the door of the booking-office, passes a half-contemptuous remark upon them to a companion.

"Wait till they come for you, Jimmy," says the other. "You won't find it so funny then."

Jimmy's face falls at the reminder, for he is nearly ripe for the great harvest, and the reaper will soon come his way…

A few people drift in from outside as the time for the departure of the London train approaches. Among them, a young woman, hot and flushed and carrying a country basket, is greeted by an acquaintance with surprise.

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm going to London – just as I am – a telegram from Tom – he's got leave from the front – isn't it glorious – and all so unexpected – couldn't change, or even drop my basket – the messenger met me in the street – hadn't a moment to lose to catch the train." …

A little group brushes by her with far other emotions. A stalwart soldier, a bronzed, good-looking fellow, with three stripes, who has evidently seen much service, is returning from leave. His wife, neatly dressed and with head down, wheels a perambulator beside him. Inside the perambulator is a child of three years or so. Two other children, of perhaps five and six, walk with the soldier, each clasping a hand. The little procession passes in silence to the end of the platform, full of that misery which seeks to be alone with itself…

Over the wooden bridge that connects the two platforms comes a solitary soldier, laden with his belongings. He has come in from some other village by the local train. He flings himself down on the form and stares gloomily at the elms and the cornfield and the sunshine. A comfortable-looking, elderly man, who has a copy of the London Corn Circular in his hand, turns to him with that amiable desire to be friendly which elderly people have in the presence of soldiers.

"And how long have you been out at the war, sonny?" he asks, much as he might ask how long holiday he had had.

"I'm sick of the bloody war," says the soldier, without even turning his head.

The comfortable, elderly man collapses into silence and the Corn Circular…

A young officer who has been driven up in a dog-cart comes on to the platform accompanied by a dog with tongue lolling from its mouth and with the large, brown, affectionate eyes of the Airedale.

The train thunders in, and the officer opens a carriage door. The dog tries to enter with his master.

"No, no, old chap," says the latter, gently patting him and pulling him back. "Go home. They don't want you where I'm going."

The dog stands for a moment on the platform, panting and gazing at his master as if hoping that he will relent. Then he turns and trots away, throwing occasional glances back on the off-chance of a whistle of recall…

The moment has come for the separation of the little family at the end of the platform. The soldier leans from the carriage window and his wife clings about his neck. The two children stand by the perambulator. They are brave little girls and remember that they have not to cry. The train begins to move and the woman unclasps herself, leaving her husband at the window, smiling his hardest and throwing kisses to the children. The train gathers speed and takes a curve and the soldier has vanished. The mother turns to the perambulator and seeks to hide her face as she hurries with her little charges along the platform and through the gate. The two little girls stifle their sobs in their aprons, but the child in the carriage knows nothing of public behaviour. He knows in that dim way that is the affliction of childhood that something terrible is happening, and as the forlorn little group hurries by to escape into the lane hard by where grief can have its fill he rends the air with his sobs and cries of "Poor dada, poor dada!"

Poor little mite, he is beginning his apprenticeship to this rough, insane world betimes…

And now the platform is empty, and the only sound of life is the whirr of the reaping machine and the voices from the harvest field. Through the meadow that leads to the village the dog is slowly trotting home, still casting occasional glances backwards on the chance…

ON A DISTANT VIEW OF A PIG

Yes, I would certainly keep a pig. The idea came to me while I was digging. I find that there is no occupation that stimulates thought more than digging if you choose your soil well. Digging in the London clay does not stimulate thought; it deadens thought. It is good exercise for the body, but it is no exercise for the mind. You can't play with your fancies as you plunge your spade into this stiff and stubborn medium. But in the light, porous soil of my garden on the chalk hills digging goes with a swing and a rhythm that set the thoughts singing like the birds. I feel I could win battles when I'm digging, or write plays or lyrics that would stun the world, or make speeches that would stir a post to action. Ideas seem as plentiful as blackberries in the autumn, and if only I could put down the spade and capture them red-hot I feel that I could make The Star simply blaze with glory.

It was in one of these prolific moments that I thought of the pig. Like all great ideas there was something inevitable about it. The calculations of Le Verrier and Adams proved the existence of Neptune before that orb was discovered. They knew it was there before they found it. My pig was born without my knowledge. In the furnace of my mind he took shape merely by the friction of facts. He was a sort of pig by divine right. It happened thus. In the midst of my digging Jim Squire, passing up the lane, had paused on the other side of the hedge to discuss last night's frost. I straightened my back for a talk, and naturally we talked about potatoes. If you want to get the best out of Jim Squire you must touch him on potatoes. There are some people who find Jim an unresponsive and suspicious yokel. That is because they do not know how to draw him out. Mention potatoes, or carrots, or the best way of dealing with slugs, or the right manure for a hot-bed, or any sensible subject like these, and he simply flows with wisdom and urbanity.

He observed that I should have a tidy few potatoes, what with the garden I was digging, and the piece I'd turned over in the orchard, and that there bit o' waste land on the hillside which he had heard as I was getting Mestur Wistock to plough up for me. Yes, there'd be a niceish lot. And he did hear I was going to set King Edwards and Arran Chiefs. Rare and fine potatoes they were too. He had some King Edwards last year – turned out wonderful, they did. One root he pulled up weighed 12 lb. Yes, Miss Mary weighed 'em for him in the scale at the farm – just for a hobby like as you might say. It was like this. He'd seen a bit in the paper about a man as had 8 lb. on a root, and he (Jim) said to himself, "This root beats that by a long chalk I know." And Miss Mary come by and she said she'd weigh 'em. And she did. And it was 12 lb. full, she said. If anything, she said, 'twas a shade over. She said as they'd have took a prize anywhere – that's what she said… Well, you couldn't have too many potatoes these days. Wonderful good food they were, for man and pig…

As he went on up the lane my spade took up that word like a refrain. At every rhythmic stroke it seemed to cry "pig" with increasing vehemence.

 
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies,
When a new planet swims into his ken.
 

A pig? Why not? – and I straightened my back again. I felt that something prodigious was taking shape. My eye wandered across the orchard. There were the hives standing in a row – three of them, to be increased to twelve as fast as the expert, who has set up her carpenter's shop in the barn, can get the parts to put together. And beyond the hives three sheds – one for poultry, one for the hot-bed for mushrooms, the third – why, the very thing… Concrete the floor and it would be a very palace for a pig.

I took a turn up the garden to look this thing squarely in the face, and at the gate I saw the farmer's wife coming down the lane. We stopped, and she talked about her cows and about an order she had got from the Government to plough up more pasture, and then – as if echoing the very thought that was drumming in my head – about the litter of pigs she was expecting and of her wish to get the cottagers to keep pigs. Why, this was a very conspiracy of circumstance, thought I. It seemed as though man and events alike were engaged in a plot to make me keep a pig.

With an air of idle curiosity I encouraged the farmer's wife to talk on the thrilling theme, and she responded with enthusiasm. The pig, I found, was a grossly maligned animal. It had lain uncomplainingly under imputations that were foul slanders on its innocent and lovable character. Yes, lovable. She had had pigs who were as affectionate as any dog – pigs that followed her about in sheer friendliness. And as for the charge of filthiness, who was to blame? We gave them dirty styes and then called them dirty pigs. But the pig was a clean animal, loved cleanliness, thrived on cleanliness. It was man the dirty who kept the pig foul and then called him unclean. And what a profitable animal. She had had a sow which had produced 108 pigs and 102 of them came to maturity. What an example to Shoreditch, I said. Perhaps they don't give them clean styes in Shoreditch, she said. No, I replied, they give them dirty styes…

I went indoors, suffused with the vision of the transfigured pig, the affectionate, cleanly, intelligent pig, and took up a paper, and the first thing my eye encountered was an article on "The Cottager's Pig." I read it with the frenzy of a new religion and rose filled to the brim with lore about the animal to whose existence (except in the shape of bacon) I had been indifferent so long. And now, fully seized with the idea, it seemed that the world talked of nothing but pig. It was only that my ears were unstopped and my eyes unsealed by an awakened curiosity; but it seemed to me that the pig had suddenly been born into the universe, and that the air was filled with the rumour of his coming. I encountered the subject at every turn. In the Times I read a touching lament over the disappearance of the little black pig. Elsewhere I saw a facsimile letter from Lord Rhondda, in which he declared his loyalty to the pig and denied that he had ever spoken evil of him.

It was a patriotic duty to keep a pig. He was an ally in the war. I saw the whole German General Staff turning pale at his name, as Mazarin was said to turn pale at the name of Cromwell. Arriving in town I met the eminent politician Mr. R – and he began to tell me how he had started all his cottagers in the North growing pig. By nightfall I could have held my own without shame or discredit in any company of pig dealers, and in my dreams I saw the great globe itself resting on the back, not of an elephant, but of a pig with a beautiful curly tail.

*****

Later: I have ordered the pig.

IN DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE

A young man wrote to me the other day lamenting his ignorance and requesting me to tell him what books to read and what to do in order to become learned and wise. I sent him a civil answer and such advice as occurred to me. But I confess that the more I thought of the matter the less assured I felt of my competence for the task. I ceased to be flattered by the implied tribute to my omniscience, and felt rather like a person who gives up a third-class ticket after he has ridden in a first-class carriage might feel. I surveyed my title to this reputation for learning, and was shocked at the poverty of my estate. As I contrasted the mountain of things I didn't know with the molehill of things I did know, my self-esteem sank to zero. Why, my dear young sir, thought I, I cannot pay twopence in the pound. I am nothing but the possessor of a wide-spread ignorance. Why should you come to me for a loan?

I begin with myself – this body of me that is carried about on a pair of cunningly-devised stilts and waves a couple of branches with five flexible twigs at the end of each, and is surmounted by a large round knob with wonderful little orifices, and glittering jewels, and a sort of mat for a covering, and which utters strange noises and speaks and sings and laughs and cries. Bless me, said I, what do I know about it? I am a mere bundle of mysteries in coat and breeches. I couldn't tell you where my epiglottis is or what it does without looking in a dictionary. I have been told, but I always forget. I am little better than the boy in the class. "Where is the diaphragm?" asked the teacher. "Please sir, in North Staffordshire." said the boy. I may laugh at the boy, but any young medical student would laugh just as much at me if I told him honestly what I do not know about the diaphragm. And when it comes to the ultimate mysteries of this aggregation of atoms which we call the human body the medical student and, indeed, the whole Medical Faculty would be found to be nearly as ignorant as the boy was about the diaphragm.

From myself I pass to all the phenomena of life, and wherever I turn I find myself exploring what Carlyle calls the "great, deep sea of Nescience on which we float like exhalations that are and then are not." I see Orion striding across the southern heavens, and feel the wonder and the majesty of that stupendous spectacle, but if I ask myself what I know about it I have no answer. And even the knowledge of the most learned astronomer only touches the fringe of the immensity. What is beyond – beyond – beyond? His mind is balked, as mine is, almost at the threshold of the mighty paradox of a universe which we can conceive neither as finite nor as infinite, which is unthinkable as having limits and unthinkable as having no limits. As the flowers come on in summer I always learn their names, but I know that I shall have to learn them again next year. And as to the mystery of their being, by what miracle they grow and transmute the secretions of the earth and air into life and beauty – why, my dear young sir, I am no more communicative than the needy knife-grinder. "Story? God bless you, I have none to tell, sir."

I cannot put my hand to anything outside my little routine without finding myself meddling with things I don't understand. I was digging in the garden just now and came upon a patch of ground with roots deep down. Some villainous pest, said I, some enemy of my carrots and potatoes. Have at them! I felt like a knight charging to the rescue of innocence. I plunged the fork deeper and deeper and tore at the roots, and grew breathless and perspiring. Even now I ache with the agonies of that titanic combat. And the more I fought the more infinite became the ramifications of those roots. And so I called for the expert advice of the young person who was giving some candy to her bees in the orchard. She came, took a glance into the depths, and said: "Yes, you are pulling up that tree." And she pointed to an ivy-grown tree in the hedge a dozen yards away. Did I feel foolish, young sir? Of course I felt foolish, but not more foolish than I have felt on a thousand other occasions. And you ask me for advice.

I recall one among many of these occasions for my chastening. When I was young I was being driven one day through a woodland country by an old fellow who kept an inn and let out a pony and chaise for hire. As we went along I made some remark about a tree by the wayside and he spoke of it as a poplar. "Not a poplar," said I with the easy assurance of youth, and I described to him for his information the characters of what I conceived to be the poplar. "Ah," he said "you are thinking of the Lombardy poplar. That tree is the Egyptian poplar." And then he went on to tell me of a score of other poplars – their appearance, their habits, and their origins – quite kindly and without any knowledge of the withering blight that had fallen upon my cocksure ignorance. I found that he had spent his life in tree culture and had been forester to a Scotch duke. And I had explained to him what a poplar was like! But I think he did me good, and I often recall him to mind when I feel disposed to give other people information that they possibly do not need.

And the books I haven't read, and the sciences I don't know, and the languages I don't speak, and the things I can't do – young man, if you knew all this you would be amazed. But it does not make me unhappy. On the contrary I find myself growing cheerful in the contemplation of these vast undeveloped estates. I feel like a fellow who has inherited a continent and, so far, has only had time to cultivate a tiny corner of the inheritance. The rest I just wander through like a boy in wonderland. Some day I will know about all these things. I will develop all these immensities. I will search out all these mysteries. In my heart I know I shall do nothing of the sort. I know that when the curtain rings down I shall be digging the same tiny plot. But it is pleasant to dream of future conquests that you won't make.

And, after all, aren't we all allotment holders of the mind, cultivating our own little patch and surrounded by the wonderland of the unknown? Even the most learned of us is ignorant when his knowledge is measured by the infinite sum of things. And the riches of knowledge themselves are much more widely diffused than we are apt to think. There are few people who are not better informed about something than we are, who have not gathered their own peculiar sheaf of wisdom or knowledge in this vast harvest field of experience. That is at once a comfortable and a humbling thought. It checks a too soaring vanity on the one hand and a too tragic abasement on the other. The fund of knowledge is a collective sum. No one has all the items, nor a fraction of the items, and there are few of us so poor as not to have some. If I were to walk out into the street now I fancy I should not meet a soul, man or woman, who could not fill in some blank of my mind. And I think – for I must not let humility go too far – I think I could fill some blank in theirs. Our carrying capacity varies infinitely, but we all carry something, and it differs from the store of any one else on earth. And, moreover, the mere knowledge of things is not necessary to their enjoyment, nor necessary even to wisdom. There are things that every ploughboy knows to-day which were hidden from Plato and Cæsar and Dante, but the ploughboy is not wiser than they. Sir Thomas Browne, in his book on "Vulgar Errors," declared that the idea that the earth went round the sun was too foolish to be controverted. I know better, but that doesn't make me a wiser man than Browne. Wisdom does not depend on these things. I suppose that, on the whole, Lincoln was the wisest and most fundamentally sane man who ever took a great part in the affairs of this planet. Yet compared with the average undergraduate he was utterly unlearned.

Do not, my young friend, suppose I am decrying your eagerness to know. Learn all you can, my boy, about this wonderful caravan on which we make our annual tour round the sun, and on which we quarrel and fight with such crazy ferocity as we go. But at the end of all your learning you will be astonished at how little you know, and will rejoice that the pleasure of living is in healthy feeling rather than in the accumulation of facts. There was a good deal of truth in that saying of Savonarola that "a little old woman who kept the faith knew more than Plato or Aristotle."