Bab Bab 9 · A HARVESTING

. A HARVESTING

The year was in its yellowing time, and the face of Nature a study in

old gold. “A field or, semee, with garbs of the same:” it may be false

Heraldry--Nature's generally is--but it correctly blazons the display

that Edward and I considered from the rickyard gate, Harold was not

on in this scene, being stretched upon the couch of pain; the special

disorder stomachic, as usual.

The evening before, Edward, in a fit of unwonted amiability, had deigned

to carve me out a turnip lantern, an art-and-craft he was peculiarly

deft in; and Harold, as the interior of the turnip flew out in scented

fragments under the hollowing knife, had eaten largely thereof:

regarding all such jetsam as his special perquisite. Now he was dreeing

his weird, with such assistance as the chemist could afford. But Edward

and I, knowing that this particular field was to be carried to-day,

were revelling in the privilege of riding in the empty waggons from the

rickyard back to the sheaves, whence we returned toilfully on foot,

to career it again over the billowy acres in these great galleys of

a stubble sea. It was the nearest approach to sailing that we inland

urchins might compass: and hence it ensued, that such stirring scenes as

Sir Richard Grenville on the Revenge, the smoke-wreathed Battle of the

Nile, and the Death of Nelson, had all been enacted in turn on these

dusty quarter decks, as they swayed and bumped afield.

Another waggon had shot its load, and was jolting out through the

rickyard gate, as we swung ourselves in, shouting, over its tail.

Edward was the first up, and, as I gained my feet, he clutched me in a

death-grapple. I was a privateersman, he proclaimed, and he the captain

of the British frigate Terpsichore, of--I forget the precise number

of guns. Edward always collared the best parts to himself; but I was

holding my own gallantly, when I suddenly discovered that the floor we

battled on was swarming with earwigs. Shrieking, I hurled free of him,

and rolled over the tail-board on to the stubble. Edward executed a

war-dance of triumph on the deck of the retreating galleon; but I cared

little for that. I knew HE knew that I wasn't afraid of him, but that

I was--and terribly--of earwigs, “those mortal bugs o' the field.” So

I let him disappear, shouting lustily for all hands to repel boarders,

while I strolled inland, down the village.

There was a touch of adventure in the expedition. This was not our own

village, but a foreign one, distant at least a mile. One felt that

sense of mingled distinction and insecurity which is familiar to

the traveller: distinction, in that folk turned the head to note you

curiously; insecurity, by reason of the ever-present possibility of

missiles on the part of the more juvenile inhabitants, a class eternally

conservative. Elated with isolation, I went even more nose-in-air than

usual: and “even so,” I mused, “might Mungo Park have threaded the

trackless African forest and...” Here I plumped against a soft, but

resisting body.

Recalled to my senses by the shock, I fell back in the attitude every

boy under these circumstances instinctively adopts--both elbows well up

over the ears. I found myself facing a tall elderly man, clean-shaven,

clad in well-worn black--a clergyman evidently; and I noted at once

a far-away look in his eyes, as if they were used to another plane of

vision, and could not instantly focus things terrestrial, being suddenly

recalled thereto. His figure was bent in apologetic protest: “I ask a

thousand pardons, sir,” he said; “I am really so very absent-minded. I

trust you will forgive me.”

Now most boys would have suspected chaff under this courtly style of

address. I take infinite credit to myself for recognising at once

the natural attitude of a man to whom his fellows were gentlemen all,

neither Jew nor Gentile, clean nor unclean. Of course, I took the blame

on myself; adding, that I was very absent-minded too,--which was indeed

the case.

“I perceive,” he said pleasantly, “that we have something in common. I,

an old man, dream dreams; you, a young one, see visions. Your lot is

the happier. And now--” his hand had been resting all this time on a

wicket-gate--“you are hot, it is easily seen; the day is advanced, Virgo

is the Zodiacal sign. Perhaps I may offer you some poor refreshment, if

your engagements will permit.”

My only engagement that afternoon was an arithmetic lesson, and I had

not intended to keep it in any case; so I passed in, while he held

the gate open politely, murmuring “Venit Hesperus ite, capellae: come,

little kid!” and then apologising abjectly for a familiarity which (he

said) was less his than the Roman poet's. A straight flagged walk led up

to the cool-looking old house, and my host, lingering in his progress at

this rose-tree and that, forgot all about me at least twice, waking up

and apologising humbly after each lapse. During these intervals I put

two and two together, and identified him as the Rector: a bachelor,

eccentric, learned exceedingly, round whom the crust of legend was

already beginning to form; to myself an object of special awe, in that

he was alleged to have written a real book. “Heaps o' books,” Martha,

my informant, said; but I knew the exact rate of discount applicable to

Martha's statements.

We passed eventually through a dark hall into a room which struck me

at once as the ideal I had dreamed but failed to find. None of your

feminine fripperies here! None of your chair-backs and tidies! This man,

it was seen, groaned under no aunts. Stout volumes in calf and vellum

lined three sides; books sprawled or hunched themselves on chairs and

tables; books diffused the pleasant odour of printers' ink and bindings;

topping all, a faint aroma of tobacco cheered and heartened exceedingly,

as under foreign skies the flap and rustle over the wayfarer's head

of the Union Jack--the old flag of emancipation! And in one corner,

book-piled like the rest of the furniture, stood a piano.

This I hailed with a squeal of delight. “Want to strum?” inquired my

friend, as if it was the most natural wish in the world--his eyes were

already straying towards another corner, where bits of writing-table

peeped out from under a sort of Alpine system of book and foolscap.

“O, but may I?” I asked in doubt. “At home I'm not allowed to--only

beastly exercises!”

“Well, you can strum here, at all events,” he replied; and murmuring

absently, Age, dic Latinum, barbite, carmen, he made his way,

mechanically guided as it seemed, to the irresistible writing-able. In

ten seconds he was out of sight and call. A great book open on his knee,

another propped up in front, a score or so disposed within easy reach,

he read and jotted with an absorption almost passionate. I might have

been in Boeotia, for any consciousness he had of me. So with a light

heart I turned to and strummed.

Those who painfully and with bleeding feet have scaled the crags of

mastery over musical instruments have yet their loss in this,--that the

wild joy of strumming has become a vanished sense. Their happiness comes

from the concord and the relative value of the notes they handle:

the pure, absolute quality and nature of each note in itself are only

appreciated by the strummer. For some notes have all the sea in them,

and some cathedral bells; others a woodland joyance and a smell of

greenery; in some fauns dance to the merry reed, and even the grave

centaurs peep out from their caves. Some bring moonlight, and some the

deep crimson of a rose's heart; some are blue, some red, and others will

tell of an army with silken standards and march-music. And throughout

all the sequence of suggestion, up above the little white men leap and

peep, and strive against the imprisoning wires; and all the big rosewood

box hums as it were full of hiving bees.

Spent with the rapture, I paused a moment and caught my friend's eye

over the edge of a folio. “But as for these Germans,” he began abruptly,

as if we had been in the middle of a discussion, “the scholarship

is there, I grant you; but the spark, the fine perception, the happy

intuition, where is it? They get it all from us!”

“They get nothing whatever from US,” I said decidedly: the word German

only suggesting Bands, to which Aunt Eliza was bitterly hostile.

“You think not?” he rejoined, doubtfully, getting up and walking about

the room. “Well, I applaud such fairness and temperance in so young a

critic. They are qualities--in youth--as rare as they are pleasing. But

just look at Schrumpffius, for instance--how he struggles and wrestles

with a simple γἁρ in this very passage here!”

I peeped fearfully through the open door, half-dreading to see some

sinuous and snark-like conflict in progress on the mat; but all was

still. I saw no trouble at all in the passage, and I said so.

“Precisely,” he cried, delighted. “To you, who possess the natural

scholar's faculty in so happy a degree, there is no difficulty at

all. But to this Schrumpffius--” But here, luckily for me, in came the

housekeeper, a clean-looking woman of staid aspect.

“Your tea is in the garden,” she said, as if she were correcting a

faulty emendation. “I've put some cakes and things for the little

gentleman; and you'd better drink it before it gets cold.”

He waved her off and continued his stride, brandishing an aorist over my

devoted head. The housekeeper waited unmoved till there fell a moment's

break in his descant; and then, “You'd better drink it before it

gets cold,” she observed again, impassively. The wretched man cast a

deprecating look at me. “Perhaps a little tea would be rather nice,” he

observed, feebly; and to my great relief he led the way into the garden.

I looked about for the little gentleman, but, failing to discover him, I

concluded he was absent-minded too, and attacked the “cakes and things”

with no misgivings.

After a most successful and most learned tea a something happened which,

small as I was, never quite shook itself out of my memory.

To us at parley in an arbour over the high road, there entered,

slouching into view, a dingy tramp, satellited by a frowsy woman and a

pariah dog; and, catching sight of us, he set up his professional whine;

and I looked at my friend with the heartiest compassion, for I knew

well from Martha--it was common talk--that at this time of day he was

certainly and surely penniless. Morn by morn he started forth with

pockets lined; and each returning evening found him with never a sou.

All this he proceeded to explain at length to the tramp, courteously

and even shamefacedly, as one who was in the wrong; and at last the

gentleman of the road, realising the hopelessness of his case, set to

and cursed him with gusto, vocabulary, and abandonment. He reviled

his eyes, his features, his limbs, his profession, his relatives and

surroundings; and then slouched off, still oozing malice and filth. We

watched the party to a turn in the road, where the woman, plainly weary,

came to a stop. Her lord, after some conventional expletives demanded of

him by his position, relieved her of her bundle, and caused her to hang

on his arm with a certain rough kindness of tone, and in action even a

dim approach to tenderness; and the dingy dog crept up for one lick at

her hand.

“See,” said my friend, bearing somewhat on my shoulder, “how this

strange thing, this love of ours, lives and shines out in the

unlikeliest of places! You have been in the fields in early morning?

Barren acres, all! But only stoop--catch the light thwartwise--and all

is a silver network of gossamer! So the fairy filaments of this strange

thing underrun and link together the whole world. Yet it is not the old

imperious god of the fatal bow--ἔρως ἀνίκατε μάχαν--not that--nor even the placid

respectable στοργή--but something still unnamed, perhaps more

mysterious, more divine! Only one must stoop to see it, old fellow, one

must stoop!”

The dew was falling, the dusk closing, as I trotted briskly homewards

down the road. Lonely spaces everywhere, above and around. Only Hesperus

hung in the sky, solitary, pure, ineffably far-drawn and remote; yet

infinitely heartening, somehow, in his valorous isolation.