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THE FOUR MEN

THE FOUR MEN

A FARRAGO

BY

H. BELLOG

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The Southern Hills and the South Sea

They blow such gladness into me,

That when I get to Burton Sands

And smell the smell of the Home Lands,

My heart is all renewed and fills

With the Sovihern Sea and the South Hills.

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fet

Bn& 3 will eing (Sol s ier !

THOMAS NELSON AND SONS LONDON, EDINBURGH, DUBLIN NEW YORK, PARIS, AND LEIPZIG

TO

Mrs. WRIGHT-BIDDULPH

OP BUETON IN THE COUNTY OF SUSSEX, UNDER

WHOSE ROOF SO MUCH OF THIS

BOOK WAS WRITTEN

I

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PREFACE

My County, it has been proved in the life of every man that though his loves are human, and therefore changeable, yet in proportion as he attaches them to things unchangeable, so they mature and broaden.

On this account, Dear Sussex, are those women chiefly dear to men who, as the seasons pass, do but continue to be more and more themselves, attain balance, and abandon or forget vicissitude. And on this account, Sussex, does a man love an old house, which was his father's, and on this account does a man come to love with all his heart, that part of earth which nourished his boy- hood. For it does not change, or if it changes,

viii PREFACE

it changes very little, and he finds in it the character of enduring things.

In this love he remains content until, per- haps, some sort of warning reaches him, that even his own County is approaching its doom. Then, believe me, Sussex, he is anxious in a very different way; he would, if he could, preserve his land in the flesh, and keep it there as it is, forever. But since he knows he cannot do that, ** at least," he says, " I will keep her image, and that shall remain." And as a man will paint with a peculiar passion a face which he is only permitted to see for a little time, so will one passionately set down one's own horizon and one's fields before they are forgotten and have become a different thing. Therefore it is that I have put down in writing what happened to me now so many years ago, when I met first one man and then another, and we four bound ourselves together and walked through all your land, Sussex, from end to end. For many years I have meant to write it down and have not; nor would I write it down now, or issue this book at all, Sussex, did I not know that

PREFACE

IX

you, who must like all created things decay, might with the rest of us be very near your ending. For I know very well in my mind that a day will come when the holy place shall perish and all the people of it and never more be what they were. But before that day comes, Sussex, may your earth cover me, and may some loud-voiced priest from Arundel, or Grinstead, or Crawley, or Storrington, but best of all from home, have sung Do Mi Fa Sol above my bones.

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THE TWENTY-NINTH OF OCTOBER 1902

THE FOUR MEN

THE TWENTY -NINTH OF OCTOBER

1902

Nine years ago, as I was sitting in the " George " at Robertsbridge, drinking that port of theirs and staring at the fire, there arose in me a multitude of thoughts through which at last came floating a vision of the woods of home and of another place — the lake where the Arun rises.

And I said to myself, inside my own mind :

" What are you doing ? You are upon

some business that takes you far, not even

4 THE BEGINNING

for ambition or for adventure, but only to earn. And you will cross the sea and earn your money, and you will come back and spend more than you have earned. But all the while your life runs past you like a river, and the things that are of moment to men you do not heed at all."

As I thought this kind of thing and still drank up that port, the woods that overhang the reaches of my river came back to me so clearly that for the sake of them, and to enjoy their beauty, I put my hand in front of my eyes, and I saw with every delicate appeal that one's own woods can offer, the steep bank over Stoke, the valley, the high ridge which hides a man from Arundel, and Arun turning and hurrying below. I smelt the tide.

Not ever, in a better time, when I had seen it of reality and before my own eyes living, had that good picture stood so plain ; and even the colours of it were more vivid than they commonly are in our English air ; but because it was a vision there was no sound, nor could I even hear the rustling of

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OF THE JOURNEY 5

the leaves, though I saw the breeze gusty on the water-meadow banks, and ruffling up a force against the stream.

Then I said to myself again :

" What you are doing is not worth while, and nothing is worth while on this unhappy earth except the fulfilment of a man's desire. Consider how many years it is since you saw your home, and for how short a time, perhaps, its perfection will remain. Get up and go back to your own place if only for one day ; for you have this great chance that you are already upon the soil of your own county, and that Kent is a mile or two behind."

As I said these things to myself I felt as that man felt of whom everybody has read in Homer with an answering heart: that "he longed as he journeyed to see once more the smoke going up from his own land, and after that to die."

Then I hit the table there with my hand, and as though there were no duty nor no engagements in the world, and I spoke out loud (for I thought myself alone). I said •

" I will go from this place to my home."

(1,655) B

6 I MEET

When I had said this the deeper voice of an older man answered :

" And since I am going to that same place, let us journey there together."

I turned round, and I was angry, for there had been no one with me when I had entered upon this reverie, and I had thought myself alone.

I saw then, sitting beyond the table, a tall man and spare, well on in years, vigorous ; his eyes were deep set in his head; they were full of travel and of sadness; his hair was of the colour of steel ; it was curled and plentiful, and on his chin was a strong, full beard, as grey and stiff as the hair of his head.

"I did not know that you were here," I said, "nor do I know how you came in, nor who you are; but if you wish to know what it was made me speak aloud although I thought myself alone, it was the memory of this county, on the edge of which I happen now to be by accident for one short hour, till a train shall take me out of it."

WITH GRIZZLEBEARD 7

Then he answered, in the same grave way that he had spoken before :

*' For the matter of that it is my county also — and I heard you say more than that."

" Yes, I said more than that, and since you heard me you know what I said. I said that all the world could be thrown over but that I would see my own land again, and tread my own county from here and from now, and since you have asked me what part especially, I will tell you. My part of Sussex is all that part from the valley of Arun, and up the Western Rother too, and so over the steep of the Downs to the Norewood, and the lonely place called No Man's Land."

He said to me, nodding slowly :

" I know these also," and then he went on. "A man is more himself if he is one of a number ; so let us take that road together, and, as we go, gather what company we can find."

I was willing enough, for all companionship is good, but chance companionship is the best of all ; but I said to him, first :

" If we are to be together for three days or

8 THE BAPTIZING OF

four (since it will take us that at least to measure the whole length of Sussex), tell me your name, and I will tell you mine."

He put on the little smile which is worn by men who have talked to very many different kinds of their fellows, and he said :

" My name is of a sort that tells very little, and if I told it it would not be worth telling. What is your name ? "

" My name," I said to him, " is of import- ance only to those who need to know it ; it might be of importance to my masters had I such, but I have none. It is not of import- ance to my equals. And since you will not tell me yours, and we must call each other something, I shall call you Grizzlebeard, which fixes you very well in my mind."

"And what shall I call you," he said, *' during so short a journey ? "

"You may call me Myself," I answered, " for that is the name I shall give to my own person and my own soul, as you will find when I first begin speaking of them as occa- sion serves."

It was agreed thus between us that we

MYSELF AND GRIZZLEBEARD 9

should walk through the whole county to the place we knew, and recover, while yet they could be recovered, the principal joys of the soul, and gather, if we could gather it, some further company ; and it was agreed that, as our friendship was chance, so chance it should remain, and that these foolish titles should be enough for us to know each other by.

When, therefore, we had made a kind of pact (but not before) I poured out a great deal of my port for him into a silver mug which he habitually kept in his pocket, and drinking the rest from my own glass, agreed with him that we would start the next day at dawn, with our faces westward along the Brightling road — that is, up into the woods and to the high sandy land from which first, a long way off, one sees the Downs.

All this was on the evening of the 29th October in the year 1902 ; the air was sharp, but not frosty, and, outside, drove the last clouds of what had been for three days a great gale.

Next morning, having slept profoundly, without giving a warning to any one who had

10

WE DETERMINE

engaged us or whom we had engaged, but cutting ourselves quite apart from care and from the world, we set out with our faces westward, to reach at last the valley of the Arun and the things we knew.

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THE THIRTIETH OF OCTOBER 1902

THE THIRTIETH OF OCTOBER

1902

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

14 WE MEET

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 our- selves 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

THE SAILOR 15

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."

16 WE MEET

" 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 Bright- ling, which, though it lies so far from the most and the best of our county, is in a way a shrine of it."

Chizzlebeard. " This I never heard of Brightling, but of Hurstmonceaux."

Myself. " There may be shrines and shrines on any land, and sanctities of many kinds.

THE SAILOR 17

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

18 SQUIRE FULLER

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

OF BRIGHTLING 19

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 Uke 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 cer- tainly 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."

20 SQUIRE FULLER

Myself. "Now you have stopped me ii 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 1 Golier I ' 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 West- minster, very soon there was a day in which

*y

OF BRIGHTLING 21

the Big-wigs 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 power- fully 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

(1,655> „

22 SQUIRE FULLER

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 FuUei 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

OF BRIGHTLING 28

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 what- soever 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 FuUer 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 1 hope you wiU 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

24 WE MEET WITH

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 wool-gathering, 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 know- ing 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

THE POET 25

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 Hmbs 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

26 WE MEET WITH

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 hum- ming 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

THE POET 27

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 H.B. 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 Grizzle- beard, handing him a pencil in better condi- tion. '* 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.

G^izzlebeard. " 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."

28 WE MEET WITH

The Sailor (with a groan). " He has for- gotten his own name I " ( Then more loudly), " Poet I 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 affec- tionately, 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.

THE POET 29

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 shame- facedly that he had no money, except three shillings and a French penny, which last some one 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 dis- port myself, why, I shall be very glad to drive that bargain with you."

Myself. " Poet ! That shall be understood between us 1 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 sove- reign for a shilling beyond Brede, and, in Battle (it must have been) I forgot to pick

80 WE COME

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 I "

The Sailor. " What ? More luck ? Be cer- tain of this much I We will not turn back- wards 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 ? "

l^he 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

TO HEATHFIELD 31

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 May- field 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

32 STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN

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 sub-deacon 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 pre- ferred 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

STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN 33

laymen to fall, to his vast amusement but to their discomfiture, through the rotten floor- ing of a barn. And this memorable thing was his pulling of the Devil by the nose.

For you must know that the Devil, desir- ing 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

34 STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN

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 sea- water 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 1 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

STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN 35

contractors and the original master of over- seers 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, west- ward 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 south- wards, 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 such like falsehoods.

But no sooner was it dark than the Devil, getting a great spade sent him from his

36 STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN

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, bu most of them upon Cissbury, and that i 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 throuqh and drown us all.

But St. Dunstan (who knew aU this), offer- ing up the prayer, Populiis Tuus Domine (which is the prayer of Nov. 8, Pp. alba 42,

STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN 37

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 bewilder- ment, 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

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38 STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN

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 May field. Though how the Holy Man got there in so short a time 1 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 whisk- ing 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 duel"

*' Why, how is that ? " said St. Dunstan in a pleased surprise.

STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN 39

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, notwithstand- ing, 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 argu- ments, 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

40 STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN

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 orna- mentry, 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 argu- ments 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 I Proceed I . . . But I have an argument against all of this 1 " Until at last the Devil, stung by so simple a reply repeated, said :

** Why, then, let us see your argument I 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

STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN 41

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 I 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 I Plead I All this is not to the issue before the Court ! Let it be yes or no I 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

42 STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN

could stand no more, and so, when St. Dun- stan unclappered his cHppers, 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 any one 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.

THE AWFUL TOWNS 43

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 any one 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 1 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

44 AND HOW TO

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 remember- ing " 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

OUTFLANK THEM 45

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 sud- denly 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

46 WE FIND THE FOREST

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 I^ondon people that had lost their way.

So we climbed into his cart, and we were driven through the night by cross roads, pass- ing 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

WE REACH THE HUT 47

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 ingle-nook, and there were two rugs there. But for these things there was nothing in the hut whatso- ever, no book or furniture at all, except the candlestick, and the floor was of beaten earth.

48 THE FIRE

"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

THE WORST THING 49

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

50 THE WORST THING

are. The thing of which 1 am speaking is the gradual weakening, and at last the sever- ance, 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 Uve. 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."

IN THE WORLD 51

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 somno- lescence, and of dechne. 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 condi- tions 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. Grizzle- beard, I should have thought that the loss of honour was worse than the loss of friends."

Ch^izzlebeai'd. " 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)

52 THE WORST THING

who sought that relief on account of the loss of a human heart."

Tlie Poet. " When I said * it ' was the worst thing in the world just now so angrily, I was foolish. I should have remembered the tooth- ache."

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 I 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 talk- ing 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 con- tradiction 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

IN THE WORLD 53

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 w^orld 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 com- monly 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

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54 THE WORST THING

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 philo- sophy ; 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

IN THE WORLD 55

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 I Anything duller than the loss of a friend ! Why, it is like writing a poem on boredom or like sing- ing 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

56 THE WORST THING

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

IN THE WORLD 57

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 Ut 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

58 THE FAIRY MASS

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

THE FAIRY MASS 59

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 Ught 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 im- poverished 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."

60 THE BEST THING

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

IN THE WORLD 61

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

62 THE MONEY-DEVIL

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 com- bine 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

THE GREAT SLOTH 63

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 every one 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

64 THE GREAT SLOTH

mix myself a great bowl of mulled wine with nutmegs, and to fill a pipe, and to sit me down in a great arm-chair 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 land- falls 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 / 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 for- gotten that I It is indeed an admirable

OF DIGGING AND FILLING 65

pastime, and for some, perhaps for many, it is the best thing in the world 1"

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 re-grow, 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 clean- sing, and the building of houses to pull them down again, and the making of wars for de- feat 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

66 THE BEST THING IN

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 I All coming in procession, two by two, Hke the old maids of Midhurst troop- ing out of church of a Sunday morning I 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

THE WORLD IS SLEEP

67

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.

	...J	^L
	n		ism
■5I	n		■ '"S	^"5^ i
	"'■')/	■^	"iM	^

I.'

,IP#^-^'^-^

THE THIRTY-FmST OF OCTOBER 1902

(1,666)

THE THIRTY-FIRST OF OCTOBER

1902

I WOKE next morning to the noise, the plea- sant noise, of water boiling in a kettle. May God bless that noise and grant it to be the most sacred noise in the world. For it is the noise that babes hear at birth and that old men hear as they die in their beds, and it is the noise of our households all our long Uves long ; and throughout the world, wherever men have hearths, that purring and that singing, and that humming and that

72 THE KETTLE SINGS

talking to itself of warm companionable water to our great ally, the fire, is home.

So thought I, half awake, and half asleep upon the hard dry earth of that floor. Yet, as I woke, my mind, not yet in Sussex, thought I was sleeping in an open field, and that there were round me comrades of the regiment, and that the embers that warmed my feet were a bivouac fire. Then I sat up, broad awake, and stiff after such a lodging, to find the Sailor crouching over the renewed flames of two stout logs on which he had established a kettle and water from a spring. He had also with him a packet of tea and some sugar, a loaf, and a little milk.

Grizzlebeard, stiff and stark upon his back along the bench, his head fallen flat, unsup- ported, his mouth open, breathing but slightly, seemed like a man dead. As for the Poet, he lay bunched up as would a man who had got the last bit of warmth he could ; and he was still in a dead sleep, right up against the further corner of the fire.

I shook my coat from me and stood up.

THE TROLL 78

** Sailor," I said, " how long have you been awake ? "

To which the Sailor answered :

" Ever since I was born : worse luck ! I never sleep."

" Where did you get those things," said I, "that tea, that milk, that sugar, and that loaf?"

I yawned as I said it, and then I stretched my hands, which sleep had numbed, towards the rising life of the fire. The Sailor was still crouching at the kettle as he answered me slowly and with care :

" Why, you must know that near this house there lives a Troll, who many many years ago when he was young was ensnared by the love of a Fairy, upon that heath called Over-the- world. And he brought her home to be his bride, and lives close by here in a hut that is not of this world. He is my landlord, as it were, and he it was that gave me this tea, this milk, this sugar, and this loaf, but it is no good your asking where, for no one can find that warlock house of theirs but me."

" That was a long lie to tell," said I, ♦* for

74 THE POET IS KICKED

I certainly should not have bothered myself to find out where the things came from, so only that I can get them free."

"You are right," said the Sailor, "and I also got them free."

And having said that he upset the packet of tea, and the sugar, and the milk, right into the kettle, so that I cried out to him in alarm :

" What are you at ? "

But he told me, as he took the kettle off:

*' That is the way the Troll - tea was brewed by the Master-maid upon the heath called Over-the-world. I have been there, so I know."

And with that he gave a great kick at the Poet, who sat up suddenly from his lump of clothes, looked wild for a moment, then knew where he was, and said " Oh I "

*' It doesn't rhyme," said the Sailor, " but you shall have some tea."

He poured out from the kettle, into the common mug we carried, a measure of the tea, and with his jack-knife he cut off a slice of bread.

AND ALL PUT ORDERLY 75

Our talk had awakened Grizzlebeard. That older man rose painfully from sleep, as though to see the day again were not to one of his years any very pleasing thing. He sat upon the bench, and for him, as to the one of honour, the tea was next poured out into that silver mug of his, and then was handed to him the next slice of bread. Then I drank and ate, and then the Sailor, and when aU this was done we made things orderly in the hut, the Sailor and I. We folded the blankets and stood up the unburnt logs. We poured the kettle out and drank the milk, and stood the loaf upon the ingle-nook, and bidding fare- well to that unknown place we left it, to converse with it no more. But the reason we had to put all things in order so, was (the Sailor told me) that if we angered the Troll he might never let us sleep there again.

" You are wonderful company, Sailor I " said I.

" For others, perhaps," said he, as he locked the door and put the key in his pocket, " but not for myself; and yet that is the only thing that matters 1 "

76 THE SAILOR TAKES US

By this time we were all upon the forest path again, turning this way and that as the Sailor might lead us. Sometimes we crossed a great ride without turning down it, and once the broad high road. But we went straight across that, and we passed many signs where it said that any common man found in these woods would be imprisoned, and some where it said that any one not rich and yet wander- ing here might find themselves killed by engines. But the Sailor dodged his way nimbly about, making westward through it all, but so cunningly that even I, who know my County well, grew puzzled. I could not guess in what part of the wood we were until we came to a bottom through which a stream ran, and then I knew that this stream was the rising of the Mole, and that we were in Tilgate. Then I said to my companions : *' Now the woods smell of home ! "

But Grizzlebeard said that, considering what the world was like outside the County, all the County was home. And the Poet said that here were homing bits in the forest, and there were homing bits, and others that were stranger

THROUGH THE WOOD 77

to him, and had not the spirit of our land.

But the Sailor said nothing, only leading us forward by clever paths so that the servants of the rich could not do us any hurt, and then he got us into an open glade, and there we sat and rested for a moment, with our breath drawing in the morning.

For the morning was not as the night had been, full of wind and hurrying clouds, but it was the morning after a gale, in which, on these high hills and among these lifting trees, the air was ambassadorial, bringing a message of life from the sea. But it was a halted air. It no longer followed in the pro- cession of the gale, but was steady and arrived. So that the sky above us was not clouded, and had in it no sign of movement, but was pale with a wintry blue. And there was a frost and a bite all about, although it was so early in the year and winter hardly come. But the leaves had fallen early that year, and the forest was already desolate.

When we had rested ourselves a moment in this glade we followed the Sailor again by a

78 ABOUT ST. LEONARD

path which presently he left, conducting us with care through untouched underwood, until we came to a hedge, and there across the hedge was the great main road and Pease Pottage close at hand.

" I have led you through this wood," the Sailor said, " and now you may take what road you will."

Myself. " Now, indeed, I know every yard of the way ; and 1 will take you down towards our own country. But I will take you in my own fashion, for I know the better places, and the quiet lands, and a roof under which we shall be free to sleep at evening. You shall follow me."

" You know all this ? " said Grizzlebeard to me curiously, " then can you tell me why all these woods are called St. Leonard's Forest ? "

Myself. "Why, certainly; they are called St. Leonard's Forest after St. Leonard."

The Poet. " Are you so sure ? "

Myself. "Without a doubt! For it is certain that St. Leonard lived here, and had a little hermitage in the days when poor men might

AND HIS CELL 79

go where they willed. And this hermitage was in that place to which I shall presently take you, from which it is possible to worship at once both our County, and God who made it."

Saying which I took them along the side road which starts from Pease Pottage (and in those days the old inn was there), but before doing so I asked them severally whether they had any curse on them which forbade them to drink ale of a morning.

This all three of them denied, so we went into the Swan (which in those days I say again was the old inn), and we drank ale, as St. Leonard himself was used to do, round about nine or ten o'clock of an autumn morning. For he was born in these parts, and never went out of the County except once to Germany, when he would convert the heathen there; of whom, returning, he said that if it should please God he would rather be off to hell to convert devils, but that anyhow he was tired of wandering, and there- upon set up his hermitage in the place to which I was now leading my companions.

For when we had gone about a mile by the

80 ABOUT ST. LEONARD

road I knew, we came to that place where the wood upon the left ends sharply upon that height and suddenly beneath one's feet the whole County lies revealed.

There, a day's march away to the south, stood the rank of the Downs.

No exiles who have seen them thus, coming back after many years, and following the road from London to the sea, hungry for home, were struck more suddenly or more suddenly uplifted by that vision of their hills than we four men so coming upon it that morning, and I was for the moment their leader; for this was a place I had cherished ever since I was a boy.

*' Look," said I to Grizzlebeard, " how true it is that in this very spot a man might set his seat whence-from to worship all that he saw, and God that must have made it."

"You are right," said Grizzlebeard ; " I see before me the Weald in a tumbled garden, Wolstonbury above New Timber and Highden and Rackham beyond " (for these are the names of the high hills), " and far away west- ward I see under Duncton the Garden of Eden, 1 think, to which we are bound. And sitting

AND HIS CELL 81

crowned in the middle place I see Chancton- bury, which, I think, a dying man remem- bers so fixed against the south, if he is a man from Ashurst, or from Thakeham, or from the pine-woods by the rock, whenever by some evil-fortune a Sussex man dies far away from home."

" Tell me," said the Sailor, " can you fix for us here the place where St. Leonard built his hermitage ? "

"Certainly," said I, and they gathered round.

" Here," said I, " was the cella " (drawing a circle with my stick upon the ground), " and here " (moving off a yard or two) " was his narthex or carfax^ as some call it, and here to the right" (and here I moved backwards and drew my stick across some sand) " was the bibulatium ; but all the ruins of this monument have disappeared through quarrying and the effects of time, saving always such traces as can be distinguished by experts, and I am one."

Then, wishing to leave them no time for wrangling, I took them down away through

82 THE LAKE WHERE

Shelley Plain, and when I had gone a mile or so I said :

"Is not the river to which we are bound the river of Arun ? "

The Poet. ** Why, yes. If it were not so I would never have joined you."

The Sailor. " Certainly we are bound for Arun, which, when a man bathes in it, makes him forget everything that has come upon him since his eighteenth year — or possibly his twenty-seventh.

"Yes," said Grizzlebeard, more gravely, " we are bound for the river of Arun, which is as old as it is young, and therein we hope to find our youth, and to discover once again the things we knew."

"Why, then," said I, "let me mock you and cover you with disillusion, and profane your shrines, and disappoint your pilgrimage I For that trickle of water below you to the left in the dale, and that long lake you see with a lonely wood about either shore is the place where Arun rises."

Grizzlebeard. "That is nothing to me as we go along our way. It is not httle baby

ARUN RISES 83

Arun that I come to see, but Arun in his majesty, married to salt water, and a king."

The Sailor. "For my part I am glad to have assisted at the nativity of Arun. Prosper, beloved river I It is your business (not mine) if you choose to go through so many doubt- ful miles of youth, and to grope uncertainly towards fruition and the sea."

The Poet. " There is always some holiness in the rising of rivers, and a great attachment to their springs."

By this time we had come to the lake foot, where a barrier holds in the water, and the road crosses upon a great dam. And we watched as we passed it the plunge of the cascade ; and then passing over that young river we went up over the waste land to the height called Lower Beeding, which means the lower place of prayer, and is set upon the very summit of a hill. Just as Upper Beeding is at the very lowest point in the whole County of Sussex, right down, down, down upon the distant marshes of Adur, flush, as you may say, with the sea.

For when Adam set out (with the help of

84 HOW ADAM NAMED

Eve) to name all the places of the earth (and that is why he had to live so long), he desired to distinguish Sussex, late his happy seat, by some special mark which should pick it out from all the other places of the earth, its inferiors and vassals. So that when Paradise might be regained and the hopeless genera- tion of men permitted to pass the Flaming Sword at Shiremark Mill, and to see once more the four rivers, Arun and Adur, and Cuckmere and Ouse, they might know their native place again and mark it for Paradise. And the best manner (thought Adam) so to establish by names this good peculiar place, this Eden which is Sussex still, was to make her names of a sort that should give fools to think. So he laid it down that whatever was high in Sussex should be called low, and whatever was low should be called high, and that a hill should be called a plain, and a bank should be called a ditch, and the North wood should be south of the Downs, and the Nore Hill south of the wood, and South water north of them all, and that no one in the County should pronounce " th," " ph," or " sh," but

ALL SUSSEX 85

always " h " separately, under pain of damna- tion. And that names should have their last letters weighed upon, contrariwise to the custom of all England.

So much for our names, which any man may prove for himself by considering Bos-ham, and Felp-ham, and Hors-ham, and Arding-ly, and the square place called " Roundabout." Or the Broadbridge, which is so narrow that two carts cannot pass on it. God knows we are a single land !

We had passed then, we four (and hungry, and stepping strongly, for it was downhill), we had passed under the cold pure air of that good day from Lower Beeding down the hill past Leonard's Lee, and I was telling my companions how we might hope to eat and drink at the Crabtree or at Little Cowfold, when the Sailor suddenly began to sing in a manner so loud and joyful that in some more progressive place than the County he would most certainly have been thrown into prison. But the occasion of his song was a good one, for debouching through the wooded part of the road we had just come upon

(1,656) Q

86

THE FIRST

that opening whence once more, though from a lower height, the open Weald and the magnificence of the Downs is spread out to glorify men's eyes. He sang that song, which is still native to this land, through all the length of it, and we who had heard it each in our own place first helped him with the chorus, and then swelled it alto- gether in diverse tones. He beginning : —

" On Sussex hills where I was bred. When lanes in autumn rains are red. When Arun tumbles in his bed, And busy great gusts go by ; When branch is bare in Burton Glen And Bury Hill is a whitening, then, I drink strong ale with gentlemen ; Which nobody can deny, deny. Deny, deny, deny, deny.

Which nobody can deny !

DRINKING SONG 87

II

" In half-November off I go. To push my face against the snow, And watch the winds wherever they blow.

Because my heart is high : Till I settle me down in Steyning to sing Of the women I met in my wandering. And of all that I mean to do in the spring. Which nobody can deny, deny, Deny, deny, deny, deny.

Which nobody can deny 1

III

" Then times be rude and weather be rough. And ways be foul and fortune tough. We are of the stout South Country stuff, That never can have good ale enough.

And do this chorus cry ! From Crowboro' Top to Ditchling Down, From Hurstpierpoint to Arundel town. The girls are plump and the ale is brown : Which nobody can deny, deny. Deny, deny, deny, deny !

If he does he tells a lie ! "

When we had all done singing and were

near the Crabtree, the Sailor said : " Now, was not that a good song ? " " Yes," said I, " and well suited to this

morning and to this air, and to that broad

88 THE PLACES WHERE

sight of the lower land which now spreads out before us."

For even as I spoke we had come to that little shelf on which the Crabtree stands, and from which one may see the Downs all stretched before one, and Bramber Gap, and in the notch of it the high roof of Lancing ; and then onwards, much further away, Arundel Gap and the hills and woods of home. It was certainly in the land beneath us, and along the Weald, which we over- looked, that once, many years ago, a young man must have written this song.

Grizzlebeard. " In what places. Myself, do you find that you can sing ? "

Myself. *' In any place whatsoever."

The Sailor. " As, for instance, at the table of some rich money-lending man who has a few men friends to dinner that night, with whom he would discuss Affairs of State, and who has only asked you because you were once a hanger-on of his great-nephew's. This would seem to me an excellent occasion on which to sing ' Golier ! ' "

Tlie Poet. " Yes, or again, when you are

MEN MAY SING 89

coming (yourself small and unknown) to the reception of some wealthy hostess from whom you expect advancement. It was in such a place and at such a time that Charlie Rib- ston, now in jail, did first so richly produce his song, * The Wowly Wows,' which has that jolly chorus to it."

Grizzlebeard. " The reason I asked you where you could sing was, that I thought it now impossible in any place, I mean in this realm, and in our dreadful time. For is there not a law, and is it not in force, whereby any man singing in the open, if he be overheard by the police, shall be certified by two doctors, imprisoned, branded, his thumb marks taken, his hair shaved off, one of his eyes put out, all his money matters carefully gone into backwards and forwards, and, in proportion to the logarithm of his income a large tax laid on ? And after all this the duty laid upon him under heavy pains of reporting himself every month to a local committee, with the parson's wife up top, and to a politician's jobber, and to all such other authorities as may see fit, pursuant to

90 THE GLORY OF

the majesty of our Lord the King, his crown and dignity ? I seem to have heard some- thing of the kind."

" Yes, you are right enough," said I ; " but when a man comes to lonely places, which are like islands and separate from this sea of tyranny, as, for instance, this road by Leonard's Lee, why a man can still sing."

The Sailor. *' Yes, and in an inn."

" In a few inns," said I, " under some con- ditions and at certain times."

Grizzlebeard. " Very well, we will choose upon this march of ours such inns and such times. And is this one ? " he added, point- ing to the Crabtree.

" Not outside," I answered cautiously, *• nor at this hour."

" However," said the Poet, " we will eat."

So we sat outside there upon the benches of the Crabtree Inn, eating bread and cheese.

Now when we had eaten our bread and cheese in that cold, still air, and overlook- ing so great a scene below us, and when we had drunk yet more of the ale, and also of

THE CRABTKEE 91

a port called Jubilee (for the year of Jubilee was, at the time this walk was taken, not more than five years past), the Sailor said in a sort of challenging tone :

" You were saying, I think, that a man could only sing to-day in certain lonely places, such as all down that trim hedge- row, which is the roadside of Leonard's Lee, and when Grizzlebeard here asked whether a man might sing outside the Crabtree, you said no. But I will make the experiment ; and by way of compromise, so that no one may be shocked, my song shall be of a re- ligious sort, dealing with the great truths. And perhaps that will soften the heart of the torturers, if indeed they have orders, as you say, to persecute men for so simple a thing as a song."

Grizzlebeard. " If your song is one upon the divinities, it will not go with ale and with wine, nor with the character of an inn."

The Sailor. "Do not be so sure. Wait until you have heard it. For this song that I am proposing to sing is of a good loud

92

THE DRINKING SONG

roaring sort, but none the less it deals with the ultimate things, and you must know that it is far more than one thousand years old. Now it cannot be properly sung unless the semi-chorus (which I will indicate by raising my hands) is sung loudly by all of you together, nor unless the chorus is bellowed by the lot of you for dear life's sake, until the windows rattle and the populace rise. Such is the nature of the song."

Having said so much then, the Sailor, lean- ing back, began in a very full and decisive manner to sing this

Song of the Pelagian Heresy for the Strengthening OF Men's Backs and the very Robust Out- thrusting OF Doubtful Doctrine and the Uncer- tain Intellectual.

Pelagius lived in Kardanoel,

And taught a doctrine there, How whether you went to Heaven or Hell,

It was your own affair.

OF PELAGIUS 98

How, whether you found eternal joy

Or sank forever to burn, It had nothing to do with the Church, my boy,

But was your own concern.

Grizzlebeard. " This song is blasphemous." The Sailor. "Not at all — the exact con- trary, it is orthodox. But now I beg of you do not interrupt, for this is the semi-chorus."

[Semi-chorus. '\

Oh, he didn't believe In Adam and Eve,

He put no faith therein ! His doubts began With the fall of man.

And he laughed at original sin !

In this semi-chorus we all joined, catching it up as he went along, and then the Sailor, begging us to put all our manhood into it, launched upon the chorus itself, which was both strong and simple.

[Chorus.^

With my row-ti-tow, ti-oodly-ow, He laughed at original sin I

When we had got as far as this, which was the end of the first verse, and defines the

94 THE DRI^^KING SONG

matter in hand, the very extravagant noise of it all brought out from their dens not a few of the neighbourhood, who listened and waited to see what would come. But the Sailor, not at all abashed, continued, approaching the second verse.

Whereat the Bishop of old Auxerre

(Germanus was his name), He tore great handfuls out of his hair.

And he called Pelagius Shame : And then with his stout Episcopal staff

So thoroughly thwacked and banged The heretics all, both short and tall.

They rather had been hanged.

[Semt-chorus.^

Oh, he thwacked them hard, and he banged them long,

Upon each and all occasions. Till they bellowed in chorus, loud and strong, Their orthodox persuasions !

[Chorus.]

With my row-ti-tow, ti-oodly-ow.

Their orthodox persu-a-a-sions '

At the end of this second verse the crowd had grown greater, and not a few of them had dropped their lower jaws and stood with their mouths wide open, never having heard a song of this kind before. But the Sailor,

OF PELAGIUS 95

looking kindly upon them, and nodding at them, as much as to say, " You will under- stand it all in a minute," took on the third verse, with still greater gusto, and sang : —

Now the Faith is old and the Devil is bold.

Exceedingly bold indeed; And the masses of doubt that are floating about

Would smother a mortal creed. But we that sit in a sturdy youth.

And still can drink strong ale. Oh — let us put it away to infallible truth.

Which always shall prevail !

[^Semi-chorus. ]

And thank the Lord For the temporal sword,

And howling heretics too ; And whatever good things Our Christendom brings.

But especially barley brew !

[Chorus.^

With my row-ti-tow, ti-oodly-ow. Especially barley brew !

When we had finished this last chorus in a louder mode than all the rest, you may say that half the inhabitants of that hill were standing round. But the Sailor, rising smartly and putting money down upon the table to pay for our fare and somewhat

96 THE GOOD GOVERNMENT

over, bade us all rise with him, which we did, and then he spoke thus to the assembly : —

"Good people I I trust you clearly heard every word of what we have just delivered to you, for it is Government business, and we were sent to give it to you just as we had ourselves received it of the Cabinet, whose envoys we are. And let me add for your comfort that this same Government of our Lord the King (his crown and dignity), ever solicitous for the welfare of poorer folk, has given us monies wherewith to refresh all the people of Sussex all our way along. On which account I have left here upon the table, in the name of the aforesaid Right Honourables, a sum of five shillings, against which you may order ale to the breaking point, and so good- day to you. But you are strictly charged that you do not follow us or molest us in any fashion, to the offence of those good Ministers who lie awake at night, consider- ing the good of the people, and the service of our Lord the King (his crown and dignity). Oyez 1 Le Roi le veulL ! "

HABAKKUK'S PROPHECY 97

And having said this he beckoned us to follow him, and as we strode down the road we heard them all cheering loudly, for they thought that time had come which is spoken of by the Prophet Habakkuk, "When the poor shall be filled and the rich shall be merry." A thing that never yet was since the beginning of the world.

• •••••

As we swung down the road which leads at last to Little Cowfold, Grizzlebeard, thinking about that song, said :

" I cannot believe, Sailor, that your song is either old or true ; for there is no such place as Kardanoel, and Pelagius never lived there, and his doctrine was very different from what you say, and the blessed Germanus would not have hurt a fly. As witness that battle of his somewhere in Flint, where he discomforted the Scotch, of all people, by talking Hebrew too loud, although he only knew one word of the tongue. Then, also, what you say of ale is not ecclesiastical, nor is it right doctrine to thank the Lord for heresy."

Tlie Sailor. " Anything you will I But

98 WE COME TO

every church must have its customs within reason, and this song, or rather hymn, is of Breviary, and very properly used in the diocese of Theleme upon certain feast days. Yes, notably that of Saints Comus and Hilarius, who, having nothing else to do, would have been cruelly martyred for the faith had they not contrariwise, as befits Christian men, be-martyred and banged to death their very persecutors in turn. It is a prose of the church militant, and is ascribed to Dun-Scotus, but is more probably of tradi- tional origin. Compare the * Hymn to the Ass,' which all good Christian men should know."

Ghizzlebeard. "Nevertheless I doubt if it be for the strengthening of souls, but rather a bit of ribaldry, more worthy of the Martyrs' Mount which you may know, than of holy Sussex."

When we had come to Little Cowfold, which we did very shortly, it was already past three in the afternoon, and therefore in such early weather (more wintry than autumn) the air had a touch of evening, and looking at the

LITTLE COWFOLD 99

church there and admiring it, we debated whether we should stop in that place a little while and pick a quarrel with any one, or lacking that, sing another song, or lacking that, drink silently. For Virgil says, " Pro- pria quae Cowfold Carmen Cervisia Ludus."

But as it was so late we thought we would not do any of these things, but take the way along to Henfield and get us near to the Downs, though how far we should go that night we none of us could tell. Only we were settled on this, that by the next day, which would be All-Hallows, we must come upon the river Arun and the western part of the County, and all the things we knew.

So we went on southward towards Henfield, and as we went, Grizzlebeard, who was strid- ing strongly, reminded us that it was All Halloween. On this night of all nights in the year there is most stir and business among the things that are not seen by men, and there is a rumour in all the woods ; and very late, when men are sleeping, all those who may not come to earth at any other time, come and hold their revels. The Little

100 THE LITTLE PEOPLE

People who are good for the most part, dance this night in the meadows and undergrowth, and move in and out of the reeds along the river bank, and twine round and round in rings holding hands upon the flat pastures, the water meadows, and the heaths that are nearer the sea. It is this dancing of theirs that leaves upon the grass its track in a brighter green, and marks the fields with those wheels and circles which convince un- believing men.

The Poet said that he had seen the Little People, but we knew that what he said was false.

Grizzlebeard said that though he had not seen them he believed, in reward for which the Little People had blest him all his life. And that was why (he told us) he was so rich, for though his father had left him plenty, the Little People had increased it, because he had neither doubted them nor ever wished them ill.

The Sailor. *' Then you were lucky I For it is well known that those who come upon the Little People dancing round and round are

THE LITTLE PEOPLE 101

caught by them in the middle of the ring. And the Little People laugh at them with a noise like very small silver bells. And then, as though to make amends for their laughter, they lead the mortal away to a place where one can go underground. And when they get there, in a fine hall where the Queen sits with Oberon, it is ordered that the man shall be given gold. They bring him a sack, and he stuffs it full of the gold pieces, full to the neck, and he shoulders it and makes to thank them, when, quite suddenly, he finds he is no longer in that hall, but on the open heath at early morning with no one about, and in an air quite miserably cold. Then that man, shiver- ing and wondering whether ever he saw the Little People or no, says to himself, ' At least I have my gold.' But when he goes to take the sack up again he finds it very light, and pouring out from it upon the ground he gets, instead of the gold they gave him, nothing but dead leaves; the round dead leaves and brown of the beech, and of the hornbeam, for it is of this sort that they mint the fairy gold. They say that as he leaves

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102 WHAT THE LITTLE PEOPLE

it there, disappointed and angry at his adven- ture, he seems to hear again, though it is day- Ught, far down beneath the ground, the slight tinkle of many tinj'' silver bells, and knows that it is the Little People laughing."

Grizzlebeard, " So it may be for those who have the great misfortune to see the Little People, but, as I told you, I have never seen them, and with me it has been the other way about. Year after year have I picked up the dead leaves, until all the leaves of my life were dead, and year after year I have found between my hands gold and more gold."

The Poet. " I tell you again I have seen them, and when I was a younger man I saw them often, and 1 would be with them for hours in that good place of theirs where nothing matters very much and no one goes away."

The Sailor. " And what did they give you beyond that loon look which is the mark of all your tribe ? "

The Poet. " Why, they gave me the power to conceive good verse, and this I still retain."

GAVE THE POET 103

The Sailor. " Now indeed, Poet, I believe, which I did not at first, that you have seen the Little People. For what you have just said proves it to me. You also have handled fairy gold — and there are many like you. For the Little People gave you verse that seemed well minted, sterling and sound, and you put it into your sack and you bore it away. But when you came out into man's- world and tasted the upper air, then, as all your hearers and your readers know, this verse turned out to be the light and worthless matter of dead leaves. Oh, do not shake your head ! We know that verse of youth which the fairies give us in mockery ; only we, when we grow up, are too wise to cherish the bag-full. We leave it for the wind to scatter, for it is all dead leaves. Only you poets hang on to your bag and clutch it and carry it with you, making fools of yourselves all your lives long, while we sturdy fellows in a manly fashion turn to the proper things of men in man's -world, and take to lawyering and building, and the lend- ing of money and horse-doping, and every other work that befits a man."

104 LUNA DIES ET NOX

Grizzlebeard. " And you, Myself, have you ever seen the Fairies ? "

Myself. " I do not think so. I do not think I have ever seen them : alas for me ! But I think I have heard them once or twice, murmuring and chattering, and patter- ing and clattering, and flattering and mocking at me, and alluring me onwards towards the perilous edges and the water-ledges where the torrent tumbles and cascades in the high hills."

The Sailor. " What did they say to you ?'*

Myself. " They told me I should never get home, and I never have."

As we so talked the darkness began to gather, for we had waited once or twice by the way, and especially at that little lift in the road where one passes through a glen of oaks and sees before one great flat water meadows, and beyond them the high Downs quite near.

The sky was already of an apple green to the westward, and in the eastern blue there were stars. There also shone what had not yet appeared upon that windless day, a few small wintry clouds, neat and defined in

ET NOCTIS SIGNA SEVERA 105

heaven. Above them the moon, past her first quarter but not yet full, was no longer pale, but began to make a cold glory; and all that valley of Adur w^as a great and solemn sight to see as we went forward upon our adventure that led nowhere and away. To us four men, no one of whom could know the other, and who had met by I could not tell what chance, and would part very soon for ever, these things were given. All four of us together received the sacrament of that wide and silent beauty, and we ourselves went in silence to receive it.

• ■ • • • •

And so when it was full dark we came to Henfield, and determined that it was time for bread, and for bacon, and for ale — a night meal inspired by the road and by the tang of the cold. For you must know that once again, though it was yet so early in the year, a very slight frost had nipped the ground.

We made therefore for an inn in that place, and asked the mistress of it to fry us bacon, and with it to give us bread and as much ale as four men could drink by her

106 OF THE HOG AND

judgment and our own ; and while we sat there, waiting for this meal, the Sailor said to me :

*' Come now, Myself, since you say that you know the County so well, can you tell us how Hog is made so suitable to Man ? "

Grizzlebeard. " Why, no man can tell that, for we only know that these things are so. But some men say that in the beginning the horse was made for man to ride, and the cow for man to milk, and the hog for man to eat; with wheat also, which was given him to sow in a field, just as those stars and that waxing moon were given him to lift his eyes towards heaven, and the sun to give him light and warmth by day. But others say that all things are a jumble, and that the stars care nothing for us, and that the moon, if only the truth were known, is a very long way off, and a use- less beast (God forgive me I It is not I that speak thus, but they I), and that we just happened upon horses (which I can well believe when I see some men ride), and that even that most-perfectly-fitting creature and

HIS GREAT SERVICE 107

manifestly-adapted-to-man, that hale four- footed one, the Hog, was but an accident, and is not an end in himself for us, but may, in the change of human affairs, be replaced by some other more suitable thing. All things are made for an end, but who shall say what end ? "

Myself. " Those who talk thus, Grizzlebeard, have not carefully considered the works of man, nor his curious ways, which betray in him the reflection of his Creator, and mark him for an artist. The curing of Hog Flesh till it become bacon is a sure evidence of the creed. There are those, I know, who still pretend that the pin and the needle, the hammer and the saw, and even the violin, grew up and were fashioned bit by bit, man stumbling towards them from experiment to experiment. At these atheists I howl, be- lieving verily and without doubt that in the beginning, when grandfather and grand- mother were turned out of Eden, and were compelled by some Order in Council or other to leave this County (but we are now re- turned), they were very kindly presented by the authorities with the following : —

108 MAN'S FURNISHING

" One tool-box. A cock and six hens.

Some paint and brushes and a tube of sepia. Six pencils, running from BB. to 4H. Tobacco in a tin. A Greek Grammar and Lexicon. Half-hours with the best writers of Enjiflish

verse and prose, excluding thing-um-bob. A little printing-press. A Bible.

The Elements of Jurisprudence. A compact travelling medicine chest. A collection of seeds, with A pamphlet that should accompany these, and Two Pigs.

" These last also were saved in the Ark, as witness Holy Writ, and one of them later accompanied St. Anthony, and is his ritual beast on every monument."

" But all this," said the Sailor, as he began eating his bacon, "tells us nothing of the curing of pigs, which art, you say, is a proof of man's original instruction, and of the in- tentions of Providence.

Myself. "And I said it very truly, for how of himself could man have discovered such a thing ? There is revelation about it,

THE DEAD PIG CURED 109

and the seeming contradiction which inhabits all mysterious gifts."

Grizzlebeard. "You mean that there is no curing a pig until the pig is dead ? For though that is the very moment when our materialists would say that he was past all healing, yet (oh, marvel !) that is the very time most suitable for curing him."

The Poet. " Well, but beyond the theology of the matter, will you not tell us how a pig is cured, for I long to learn one useful thing in my life."

Myself. " You will not learn it in the mere telling for what says the Philosopher ? * If you would be a Carpenter you must do Car- penter's work.' However, for the enduring affection I bear you, and also for my delight in the art, I will expound this thing.

" First, then, you cut your pig in two, and lay each half evenly and fairly upon a smooth well-washed board of deal, oak, ash, elm, walnut, teak, mahogany, ebony, rosewood, or any other kind of wood ; and then, taking one such half you put by on one side a heap of saltpetre, and gathering a handful of

no THE MANNER OF

this saltpetre you very diligently rub it into the flesh, and, rubbing, have a care to rub it rubbedly, as rub should, and show your- self a master rubber at rubbing. And all this you must do on the inside and not on the out, for that is all covered over with hair.

" When, therefore, you have so rubbed in a rubbard manner until your rubment is aglow with the rubbing, why then desist ; hang up your half pig on a hook from a beam, and wash your hands and have done for that day.

** But next day you must begin again in the same manner (having first consecrated your work by a prayer), and so on for thirty days; but each day a little less than the last, until, before the curing is ended, you are taking but a tithe of the saltpetre you took at the beginning.

" When all this is over your half pig is as stiff as a prude, and as salt as sorrow, and as incorruptible as a lawyer, and as tough as Tacitus. Then may you lift it up all of one piece, like a log, and put it to smoke over

CURING A PIG 111

a wood fire, as the giants did in old time, or you may pack it between clean layers of straw, as the Germans do to this day, or you may do whatever you will, and be damned to it ; for no matter what you do, you will still have a pig of pigs, and a pork perfect, that has achieved its destiny and found the fruit of its birth : a scandal to Mahound, and food for Christian men."

The Sailor. " All that you say is true enough, but what of the bristles of the pig ? What of his hair ? Are not bristles better in brushes than in bacon ? "

Myself. " You speak truth soundly, though perhaps a little sharply, when you ask, ' How about hair?' For the pig, like all brutes, differs from man in this, that his hide is covered vidth hair. On which theme also the poet Wordsworth, or some such fellow, com- posed a poem which, as you have not previ- ously heard it, let me now tell you (in the fashion of Burnand) I shall at once proceed to relate ; and I shall sing it in that sort of voice called by Italians ' The Tenore Stridente,' but by us a Hearty Stave."

112 THE SONG CALLED "HIS HIDE

" The dog is a faithful, intelligent friend, But his hide is covered with hair ; The cat will inhabit the house to the end. But her hide is covered with hair.

" The hide of the mammoth was covered with wool. The hide of the porpoise is sleek and cool. But you'll find, if you look at that gambolling fool. That his hide is covered with hair.

" Oh, I thank my God for this at the least, I was bom in the West and not in the East, And He made me a human instead of a beast. Whose hide is covered with hair ! "

Grizzlebeard {with interest). " This song is new to me, although I know most songs. Is it your own ? "

Myself. " Why, no, it's a translation, but a free one I admit, from Anacreon or Theo- critus, I forget which. . . . What am I say- ing ? Is it not Wordsworth's, as we said just now ? There is so much of his that is but little known ! Would you have further verses ? There are many ..."

IS COVERED WITH HAIR" 118

The Sailor. *'No."

Myself. " Why, then, I will immediately continue.

" The cow in the pasture that chews the cud, Her hide is covered with hair."

The Sailor. "Halt!"

** And even a horse of the Barbary blood. His hide is covered with hair !

" The camel excels in a number of ways. And travellers give him unlimited praise — He can go without drinking for several days — But his hide is covered with hair."

G?izzlebeard. " How many verses are there of this ? "

Myself'. " There are a great number. For all the beasts of the field, and creeping things, and furred creatures of the sea come into this song, and towards the end of it the Hairy Ainu himself. There are hundreds upon hundreds of verses.

" The bear of the forest that lives in a pit. His hide is covered with hair ; The laughing hyena in spite of his wit. His hide is covered with hair !

114 THE AUTHORSHIP

" The Barbary ape and the chimpanzee. And the lion of Africa, verily he. With his head like a wig, and the tuft on his knee. His hide . . ."

Grizzleheard (rising). *' Enough ! Enough ! These songs, which rival the sea-serpent in length, are no part of the true poetic spirit, and I cannot believe that the conscientious Wordsworth, surnamed tVxo/ce'^aXof, or Horse Face, wrote this, nor even that it is any true translation of Anacreon or the shining Theo- critus. There is some error! This manner of imagining a theme, to which innumerable chapters may be added in a similar vein, is no part of poetry ! It is rather a camp-habit, worthy only of a rude soldiery, to help them along the road and under the heavy pack. For I can understand that in long marches men should have to chant such endless things with a pad and a beat of the foot to them, but not we. I say enough, and enough I "

I answered him, getting up also as he had, and making ready for the road. " Why, Grizzleheard, this is not very kind of you, for though you had allowed me but fifteen

OF THE SONG 115

verses more I could have got through the Greater Carnivoise, and perhaps, before the closure, we could have brought in the Wart Hog, who loves not war, but is a Pacifist."

The Poet {rising also). " It may be so, good Myself, but remember that you bear them all in store. Nothing is really lost. You will rediscover these verses in eternity, and no doubt your time in hell will be long enough to exhaust, in series, all the animals that ever were."

The Sailor (rising last). " Grizzlebeard has saved us all 1 "

With this condemnation of a noble song they moved out of doors on to the road, a little aimlessly, gazing out towards the high Downs, under the now bright-burnished moon, and doubtful whither they should proceed. Grizzlebeard proposed in a gentle fashion that we should go on to an inn at Bramber and sleep there, but the Sailor suddenly said, " No I "

He said it with such violence and determi- nation that we were all surprised, and looked at him with fear. Then he went on :

116 A FUGUE ON THE

" No, we will not go to the inn at Bramber, nor breathe upon embers which are now so nearly extinguished ; we will not go and walk in the woods whence all the laurels have been cut away, nor will we return to emotions which in their day were perhaps but vaguely divine, but which the lapse of time has ren- dered sacred. It is the most perilous of human endeavours, is this attempt to return to the past ; should it fail, it breeds the most woeful of human woes. I know as well as you the gardens of Bramber, and I, too, have sat there eating and drinking upon summer even- ings between the last light and the dark. I, too, have watched a large star that began to show above Buttolph Combe; and I, also, have seen the flitter-mice darting above me in an air like bronze. Believe me, I have heard the nightingale in Bramber, but I will not return."

The Poet "But 1"

The Sailor. "Be silent! ... I will not return. ... It was the best of inns ! . . . You talk of the inn at Saint Girons, where the wine was good in the days of Arthur

INNS OF THE WORLD 117

Young, and is still good to-day — not the same wine, but the grandson of the same wine — and you speak favourably of that inn under the pass coming in from Val Carlos. You talk justly of the famous inn at Urgel, known as the Universal Inn, from which a man can watch under a full moon the vast height of the Sierra del Cadi; and you perpetually re- peat the praises of the inn at the Sign of the Chain of Gold, under a large ruined castle, by a broad and very peaceful river in Normandy. You do well to praise them, but all these inns together could not even stand at the knees of what was once the inn at Bramber."

Myself. "I have never mentioned one of these inns 1 "

The Sailor, "There is not upon earth so good a thing as an inn ; but even among good things there must be hierarchy. The angels, they say, go by steps, and I am very ready to believe it. It is true also of inns. It is not for a wandering man to put them in their order ; but in my youth the best inn of the inns of the world was an inn forgotten in the trees of Bramber. It is on this account

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118 A FUGUE ON THE

that I will not return. The famous Tuscan inns have tempted many men to praise them, some (as I think) extravagantly. And of the lesser inns of seaports sailors (though they never praise in prose or verse) know and speak of the Star of Yarmouth — I mean of Great Yarmouth — and the County Inn of the other Yarmouth — I mean of Little Yarmouth — and especially in loud voices do they commend the Dolphin at Southampton, which is a very noble inn with bow windows, and second to no house in the world for the opportunity of composing admirable verse and fluent prose. Then also, lying inland one day's march from the sea, how many inns have not sailors known I Is there not the Bridge Inn of Am- berley and the White Hart of Storrington, the Spread Eagle of Midhurst, that oldest and most revered of all the prime inns of this world, and the White Hart of Steyning and the White Horse of Storrington and the Swan of Petworth, all of which it may be our business to see ? They were mortal inns, human inns, full of a common and a reasonable good ; but round the inn at

INNS OF THE WORLD 119

Bramber, my companions, there hangs a very different air. Memory bathes it and the drift of time, and the perpetual ob- session of youth. So let us leave it there. I will put up the picture of an early love ; I will hear with mixed sorrow and delight the songs that filled my childhood ; but I will not deliberately view that which by a process of sanctification through time has come to be hardly of this world. I will not go sleep in the inn at Bramber — the gods forbid me.

" Nay, apart from all of this which you three perhaps (and especially the Poet) are not of a stuff to comprehend, apart from these rare and mysterious considerations, I say, there is an evident and an easy reason for not stirring the leaves of memory. Who knows that we should find it the same ? Who knows that the same voices would be heard in that garden, or that the green paint on the tables would still be dusty, blistered, and old ? That the chairs would still be rickety, and that cucumber would still be the prin- cipal ornament of the feast? Have you not learnt in your lives, you two that are one

120 A FUGUE ON THE

young, one middle-aged, and you, the third, who are quite old, have you not learnt how everything is a function of motion; how aU things only exist because they change ? And what purpose would it serve to shock once more that craving of the soul for certitude and for repose? With what poignant and terrible grief should we not wrestle if the contrast of that which was once the inn at Bramber should rise a terrible ghost and challenge that which is the inn at Bramber now I Of what it was and what it has become might there not rise a dual picture before our minds — a picture that should torture us with the doom of time? I will not play with passions that are too strong for men ; I will not go sleep to-night at the inn of Bramber.

" Is not the world full of other inns wherein a man can sleep deeply and wake as it were in a new world ? Has not heaven set for us, like stars in the sky, these points of isolation and repose all up and down the fields of Christendom ? Is there not an inn at the Land's End where you can lie awake in a rest that is better than slumber, listening to the

INNS OF THE WORLD 121

noise of the sea upon the Longships and to the Atlantic wind ? And is there not another inn at John o' Groats to which you may bicycle if you choose (but so shall not I) ? Is there not the nameless inn famous for its burgundy in Llanidloes ? Is there no Uni- corn in Machynlleth? Are there not in Dolgelly forty thousand curious inns and strong? And what of the Feathers at Lud- low, where men drink so often and so deeply after the extinguishing of fires, and of its sister inn at Ledbury? And what of the New Inn at Gloucester, which is older than the New College at Oxford or the New Bridge at Paris ? And by the way, if Oxford itself have no true inns, are there not inns hanging like planets in a circle round the town ? The inns of Eynsham, of Shillingford, of Dorchester, of Abingdon, the remarkable inn at Nuneham, and the detestable inn at Wheatley which fell from grace some sixty years ago, and now clearly stands for a mark of reprobation to show what inns may become, when, though possessed of free will and destined to eternal joy, they fail to fulfil their hostelarian destiny.

122 A FUGUE ON THE

. . . Yes, indeed, there are inns enough in the world among which to choose without being forced by evil fate or still more evil curiosity to pull out in the organ of the soul the deep but — oh ! the fast and inviolable — the forbidden stops of resurrection and of accomplished loving. For no man may re-live his youth, nor is love fruitful altogether to man."

Grizzlebeard (musing). " If it were not so far I should proceed this very night to the Station Hotel at York, which of all the houses 1 know is the largest and the most secure."

The Poet. " And I to the Fish, Dog, and Duck where the Ouse comes in to the Cam, or to the Grapes on the hills above Cor- bridge before you venture upon the loneliness of Northumberland ; both excellent inns."

Myself. "But I, to the sign of the Lion, up on Arun, which no man knows but me. There should I approach once more the ancient riddle, and hear, perhaps, at last, the voices of the dead, and know the dooms of the soul."

INNS OF THE WORLD 123

The Sailor. " You would all three do well. For inns are as men and women are, with character and fate infinitely diversified, and to one an old man goes for silence and repose, to another a younger man for adventure or for isolation, to a third a poet for no reason save to lay up a further store of peevish impotence, which is the food upon which these half-men commonly feed. So also there are inns coquettish, inns brutal, inns obvious, inns kindly, and inns strong — each is for a mood. But as in every life there is one emotion which may not be touched and to which the common day is not sufficient, so with inns. For me one is thus sacred, which is that inn at Bramber. Thither therefore, as I think I have said before, I will not go."

Myself. "Now that all the affectation of your talk is spent, 1 may tell you that you might have saved your breath, for close at hand I kndw of a little house, empty but well furnished and full of stores for winter. Sailor — I say this to you — the Trolls are not my friends. Yet of such little houses all up and down the County I alone possess the keys.

124 WE COME TO A

We will go, then, to this httle house of mine, for it is not a mile across the water-meadows." This we did, and as we passed the wooden bridge we saw below us my Uttle river, the river Adur, slipping at low tide towards the sea.

So we went on over the water-meadows. It was very cold, and the moon rode over Chanctonbury in a clear heaven. We did not speak. We plodded on all four, in single file, myself leading, along the .narrow path by the bare hedge-side. The frost had touched the grass, and the twigs of quickset were sharp in the moonlight like things engraved upon metal. We came out upon the Ashurst road. The mill was all sound in those days, and the arms of it stood against the sky. We walked abreast, but still in silence: the Poet slouched and Grizzlebeard let his stick trail along the ground, and even the Sailor had a melancholy air, though his strong legs carried him well. As for me I still pressed onwards a little ahead of the line, for I knew my goal near at hand, while for my three companions it was but an aimless

LITTLE HOUSE I KNOW 125

trudge through the darkness after a long day's journey. So did we near that little house which God knows 1 love as well as any six or seven little houses in the world.

We came to the foot of a short hill: tall elms stood out against the sky a short way back from the road and beyond a little green. Beneath them shone the thatch of a vast barn, and next it a sight which I knew very well . . . the roof and chimney. I turned from the road to cross the green, and I took from my pocket a great key, and when my companions saw this their merriment returned to them, for they knew that I had found the shelter.

Grizzlebeard said : " Look how all doors in the County open to you ! "

" Not all," I answered, " but certainly four or five."

I turned the key in the lock, and there, within, when I had struck a match, appeared the familiar room. The beam of the ceiling was a friend to me and the great down- fire- place inhabited the room. There, in that recess, lay on the dogs and the good pile of

126 THAT INN CALLED

ashes, a faggot and four or five huge logs of cord wood, of oak from the clay of the Weald : I lit beneath all these a sheaf of verse I had carried about for months, but which had disappointed me, and the flames leapt up, in shape like leaves of holly. It was a good sight to see.

With the fire humanity returned ; we talked, we spread our hands ; one pulled the curtains over the long low window of the room, another brought the benches near the blaze, benches with high backs and dark with age ; another put the boards on the trestles before it; another lit two candles and stood them in their own grease upon the boards. We were in a new mood, being come out of the night and seeing the merriment of the fire.

Next we would send to the Fountain for drink. For the inn of Ashurst is called the Fountain Inn. It is not the Fountain called the " Fount of Gold " of which it is written —

" This is that water from the Fount of Gold — Water of youth and washer out of cares."

The Fountain of Ashurst runs, by God's grace, with better stuff than water.

THE FOUNTAIN INN 127

Nor is it that other Fountain which is called

" Fountain of years and water of things done."

For though there are honourable years round the Fountain of Ashurst, yet most certainly there are no regrets. It is not done for yet. Binge ! Fountain, binge !

Nor is it the Fountain of Vaucluse, nor that of Moulton Parva or Thames -head, which ran dry when George III. died and has never run since : nor the Bandusian Spring. No, nor Helicon, which has been tapped so often that it gave out about thirty- five years ago, and has been muddy ever since.

Nor is it of those twin fountains, of hot water the one and of cold the other, where the women of Troy were wont to wash their linen in the old days of peace ere ever Greek came to the land.

No, it was none of these but the plain Fountain of Ashurst, and thither did we plan to send for bread and cheese and for ale with which this fountain flows.

As for whom we should send, it was a

128 THE SAILOR IS SENT

selection. Not Grizzlebeard, out of the re- spect for age, but one of the other three. Not I, because I alone knew the house, and was busy arranging all, but one of the other two. Not the Poet, because, all suddenly, the Muse had him by the gullet and was tearing him. Already he was writing hard, and had verse almost ready for us, and said that this sort of cooking should not be disturbed.

Therefore it was the Sailor who was sent, though he hated the thought of the cold.

He rose up and said : " When in any company one man is found more courageous and more merry, more manly, more just, and more considerate, stronger, wiser, and much more holy than his peers, very generous also, yet firm and fixed in purpose, of good counsel, kind, and with a wide, wide heart, then if (to mention smaller things) he is also of the most acute intelligence and the most powerful in body of them all, it is he that is made the drudge and the butt of the others."

With that he left us, carrying a great two gallon can, and soon returned with it

TO THE FOUNTAIN 129

full of Steyning ale, and as he put it down he said : *' The Fountain runs, but not with com- mon water. It shall become famous among Fountains, for I shall speak of it in rhyme." Then he struck the Poet a hearty blow, and asked after the health of his poem.

TJie Poet. " It is not quite completed." The Sailor (sitting down near the fire and pouring out the ale). " It is better so I Let us have no filling up of gaps. Beware of perfection. It is a will-o'-the-wisp. It has been the ruin of many."

Grizzlebeard. " Is there a tune ? " The Poet. " There is a sort of dirge." Myself. '* Begin to sing." The Poet—

" Attend, my gentle brethren of the Weald, Whom now the frozen field Does with his caking shell your labour spurn. And turn your shares and turn Your cattle homeward to their lazy byres ; "

The Sailor. " Oh I Lord I It is a dirge I The man chaunts like old Despair on a fast day ! Come let us "

Myself. "No, the Poet must end; let him continue."

130 AND A THRENODY

The Poet, when he had looked reproach- fully at the Sailor, filled his lungs a little fuller than before, and went on :

" Your cattle homeward to their lazy byres ; Oh ! gather round our fires And point a stave or scald a cleanly chum The while

With ritual strict and nice observance near, We weave in decent rhyme A Threnody for the Departing Year."

The Sailor. " ' Decent ' is bad ; and you cannot have a threnody for something that is not dead."

The Poet {continuing) —

" And you that since the weary world began. Subject and dear to man. Have made a living noise about our homes. You cows and geese and pigs and sheep and

all the crew Of mice and coneys too

And hares and all that ever lurks and roams From Harting all the way to Bodiam bend. Attend '

It is a solemn time. And we assembled here Advance in honourable rhyme With ritual strict and nice observance near Our Threnody for the Departing Year. The year shall pass, and yet again the year Shall on our reeds return The tufted reeds to hurrying Arun dear. . . ,"

IS CHAUNTED 181

Here the Poet stopped and looked at the fire.

" Have you made an end ? " said the Sailor with a vast affectation of solicitude.

"I have stopped," said the Poet, "but I have not finished."

" Why, then," said the Sailor, *' let me help you on," and he at once began impromptu :

" As I was passing up your landing towns I heard how in the South a goddess lay."

Then he added : " I can't go on." The Poet—

" She ends our little cycle with a pall."

Grizzlebeard. " Who does ? "

The Poet. " Why, that goddess of his ; I shall put her in and make her wind it up. The Sailor is not the only man here who can compose ofF-hand. I promise you . . .

" She ends our little cycle with a pall : The winter snow — the winter snow shall reverently

fall On our beloved lands. As on Marana dead a winding sheet Was laid to hide the smallness of her hands. And her lips virginal : Her virginal white feet."

When that dirge had sunk and they, as

132 THE DEAD REVISIT

they sat or lay before the fire, had nodded one by one, sleep came upon them all three, weary with the long day's going and the keenness of the air. They had in their minds, that All Hallowe'en as sleep took them, the Forest of the high -land and the great Weald all spread below and the road downward into it, and our arrival beneath the nightly majesty of the Downs. They took their rest before the fire.

But I was still wakeful, all alone, remem- bering All-Hallows and what dancing there was in the woods that night, though no man living might hear the music, or see the dancers go. 1 thought the fire- lit dark- ness was alive. So I slipped to the door very quietly, covering the latch with my fingers to dumb its noise, and I went out and watched the world.

The moon stood over Chanctonbury, so removed and cold in her silver that you might almost have thought her careless of the follies of men ; little clouds, her attendants, shone beneath her worshipping, and they presided together over a general silence. Her

MEN IN DREAMS 138

light caught the edges of the Downs. There was no mist. She was still frosty-clear when I saw her set behind those hills. The stars were more brilliant after her setting, and deep quiet held the valley of Adur, my little river, slipping at low tide towards the sea.

When I had seen all this I went back within doors, as noiselessly as I had come out, and I picked through the sleepers to my own place, and I wrapped myself in my cloak before the fire. Sleep came at last to me also ; but that night dead friends visited me in dreams.

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THE FIRST OF NOVEMBER

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THE FIRST OF NOVEMBER

1902

Next morning when I woke it was because the Poet was timidly walk- ing about the room, making as much noise as he dared, but unwill- ing to be longer alone. The fire was out, and the small place looked mournful under that grey dawn. I could see through the win- dow that the weather had changed and the air was warmer. All the

138 THE BREAKFASTING OF

sky was hurrying cloud, and there would be ram I thought from one time to another on that day. But it would be a good day I thought, for it was All-Hallows, which balances the year, and makes a counter- weight, as it were, to All Fools' in her earlier part, when she is light and young, and when she has forgotten winter and is glad that summer is near, and has never heard the name of autumn at all, or of the faU of leaves.

Grizzlebeard also stirred and woke, and then, last, the Sailor, rather stupored, and all of them looked at me as much as to say: " Have you no breakfast here ? " But I, seeing what was in their minds, met them at once determinedly, and said :

** In this house we breakfast after the fashion of the heroes, our fathers, that is, upon last night's beer, and the bread and cheese of our suppers. So did they breakfast who fought with De Montfort up on Mount Harry at the other end of the county six hundred years ago and more, when they had marched all the day before as it was, and were marshalled against the king with the

OUR FATHERS 189

morning. Sorely against their will ! For there is no fight in a man until it is past nine o'clock, and even so he is the better for coffee or for soup. But to-day there is no fighting, but only trudging, so let us make our breakfast thus and be off."

They were none of them content, but since I would have it so and since there was no help for it, they drank that stale beer, a mug each, with wry faces, and nibbled a little at the stale bread. Then we left the rest of the loaf and the cheese for the mice, who keep house for me there when I am away, and frighten off new-comers by pretending that they are the spirits of the dead.

So we went out through the door and across the little green to a wobble road that is there, and by a way across the fields to Steyning, where we should find the high road to Washington and Storrington and Amberley Bridge, and so over to the country beyond Arun and the things we knew.

As we went south over those fields, with the new warmth of the hurrying clouds above us and the Downs growing higher and higher,

140 THE CURSING OF

the Poet saying what the others had spared to say, began to grumble. For he said that beer was no breakfast for a man, but give him rather tea.

The Sailor. " Poet, 1 think you must be a vegetarian, and very probably (like most men of your luxury) you are yet afraid of your body — a lanky thing, I grant."

Myself. " Burn me those men who are afraid of the Flesh ! Water-drinkers also, and caterwauling outers, and turnip mumblers, enemies of beef, treasonable to the imme- morial ox and the tradition of our human kind ! Pifflers and snifflers, and servants of the meanest of the devils, tied fast to halting, knock-kneed Baphomet, the coward's god, and chained to the usurers as is a mangy dog to a blind man I "

The Sailor. " Come, let us take it up I Hunt me them over the hills with horn and with hound ! Drive them, harry them, pen them, drown them in the river, and rid me them from our offended soil ! They are the betrayers of Christendom I They are the traducers of those mighty men our fathers,

THE WATER-DRINKERS 141

who upon the woodwork of the Table and the Bed, as upon twin pillars, founded the Commonweal."

Myself. *' Come, Poet, are you not con- vinced ? "

The Poet. " Of what ? That I should have a decent respect for my body ? "

The Sailor. " Respect go hang itself by the heels until it gets some blood into its pale face, and then take a basting to put life into it ! "

Grizzlebeard. "Do you not know. Poet, that by all these anti-belly tricks of yours you would canalise mankind into the trench that leads to hell? For there is nothing that cannot be made to serve the Master of Evil by abuse, nor anything which cannot by a just and reasonable enjoyment be made to glorify God. Have you any lack of pleasure in this rush of the clouds above us. Or does he seem to you a niggler, the fellow that rides the south-west wind ? "

The Poet. " What is all this flood of yours, you three? What have I said about or against the Body ? "

Myself. "Nay, Poet, but we will tell you

142 LITTLE BODY I

more than you care to hear! Consider that glorious great tube a gun, whence shells may be lobbed at such as are worthy of the game. Your man that smirks his hatred of war is he that potters into the dirty adventures against the very weak (but by God's providence his aim is damnable), and he is the man that fees lawyers to ruin the poor."

The Sailor. " What all this may have to do with the Body! know not. But this I say : Give it due honour — treat it well, keep it with care. It is a complicated thing — you could not have made it, and if you hurt it it is hard to mend. . . . Oh, my succinct and honourable Body I I cherish you ! you are my friend ! I cannot do without you ! On the day I have to do without you I shall be all at sea ! With the eyes in you do I read books written by women with a grievance, and with the ears of you do I hear the noise of the vulgarians, and with the feet of you do I enter the houses of the rich but fly the presence of fools ! Most pro- fitable, consistent, homogeneous, and worthy Body ! I salute you ; I take comfort in you ; I am glad indeed they gave you to me for

LITTLE BODY! 148

this brief mortal while ! Little Body I Little Body I Believe me, were I wealthy I would cram you with good things ! Nor was I ever better pleased than when I heard from a Franciscan in Crawley that when they hang me I shall not lose you altogether, but that you will return to me some time or another; — but when exactly was never fully set down. Anyhow, I shall catch on to you again and recover you very properly set up and serviceable, without bump or boss, a humpless, handsome thing ! "

The Poet. " All this is quite beside the mark, and you have vented upon me nothing but your temper for lack of breakfast. Never in my life have I believed the things which you would have me believe, nor said a word against this vessel which holds my soul as tight as a bottle does a cork, and of which I know so much, but of my soul so little, though my soul is my only companion."

Grizzlebeard. *' The Body is a business which we all know too well, but the Soul is another matter. For I knew a man once (not of this county) who said there was no soul, and

144 THERE IS A SOUL

would have proved it. He had once long ago by an apparatus of his tried to prove there was a soul — but the proof was lacking. So next he naturally thought there could be no soul, and he set out to prove that on his four fingers and his thumb, without gim- cracks, pragmatically, and in a manner con- vincing to the blind. And he set out with an apparatus to find proof that there was no soul — but that proof was also lacking. So let us have done with all this, and find our way through this tall screen of trees to Steyning, and to the good house that is there, and have something Christian to pre- pare us for our road. For the Lord knows that Myself and Queen Elizabeth were wrong in making small, stale beer and bread a proper breakfast for a man. Strong beer and beef are the staple."

The Sailor. *' Besides which All-Hallows is a great feast, and feeding goes with feasting. We will knock at Myself s door when we are next worried by the duty of fasting for some great evil to be atoned, or when ugly Lent comes round."

THE HIDEOUS BEING 145

When we had got into the town of Steyn- ing, the Sailor, the Poet, Grizzlebeard, and I, we went into the inn, hotel, guest-house, or hostelry, and there very prettily asked as we passed the host that cold meat and ale might be served us in the smoking-room.

But when we got into the smoking-room, the Sailor, the Poet, Grizzlebeard, and I, we were not a little annoyed to see in a corner of the room, crouched up against the fire in a jolly old easy-chair, which little suited his vile and scraggy person, a being of an un- pleasant sort. He had a hump which was not his fault, and a sour look which was. He was smoking a long churchwarden pipe through his sneering lips. There was very little hair upon his face, though he did not shave, and the ear turned towards us, the left ear, had been so broken that it looked pointed, and made one shudder. The sneer on his lips was completed by the long slyness of his eye. His legs were as thin as sticks, and he had one crossed over the other ; his boots had elastic sides to them, and horrible tags fore and aft, and above them were measly grey

146 THE HIDEOUS BEING

socks thin and wrinkled. He did not turn nor greet us as we appeared.

It was our fashion during this memorable walk to be courteous with all men and familiar with none — unless you call that familiarity when the Poet threw beer at a philosopher to baptize him and wake him into a new world, as you shall later read.

We therefore sat awkwardly round the edges of the table, the Poet at the end of it opposite to the window that gives on the stable-yard, Myself next to him at the corner, next to me the Sailor, and beyond him Grizzlebeard, who seemed the most contented of us all, and was in no way put out by the blasted being near the fire, but rather steeped himself in memories of his own, and had eyes that looked further than the walls. We, the younger men, drummed our fingers a little upon the table till the beer was brought in, and then began to wonder what wines were kept in so old a house, and the Poet and the Sailor alternately told lies ; the Poet telling of rare wines he had found in the houses of the rich, the Sailor talking of wines

THE HIDEOUS BEING 147

that never were in ports far off beyond the wide peril of the seas. Grizzlebeard, hearing them confusedly, said that his father had bought a Tokay in 1849 at 204s. the dozen. This also was a He. And I, to please them, spoke of true wines, notably of that wine which comes from the inside of a goat-skin in Val d'Aran, Sobrarbe, and the roots of Aragon : the vilest and most tonic wine in the world, alive with the power of the goat.

While we thus spoke (in a quiet way so as not to offend) the beer came in, and our talk drifted on to the price of wines, and from that to those who could afford the price of wine, and from that to the rich, and from that to the very rich. And at last the Poet said :

" I should like to be very rich."

Whereupon, to the annoyance of us all, the nasty fellow next to the fire took his long, silly pipe out of his mouth, blew a little blue wisp of smoke without body in it from his lips, and said :

" Ugh ! What do you call very rich ? "

The Poet was by nature a hesitating man,

148 THE HIDEOUS BEING

and he was frightened by one speaking to him unexpectedly — and one so hideous I So he said vaguely :

" Oh I not to have to think of things ; and not to be for ever in the jeopardy of honour ; to be able to dip when one liked into one's , purse and to pay for what one wanted, and to succour the needy, and to travel or rest at pleasure." Then he added, as men will who are of infinite imagination and crammed with desires, " My wants are few."

He was thinking, perhaps, of a great house upon an eastern hill that should overlook the Mediterranean Sea, and yet be easily in touch with London, and yet again be wholly iso- lated from the world, and have round it just so many human beings as he might wish to have there, and all at his command.

I, sitting next to him, took up the con- versation as in a game of cards, and began :

" That can't be done ! When you are wish- ing for wealth you are by the nature of things wishing for what man allows and controls. You are wishing, therefore "

*' Don't preach I " said the Person by the

THE HIDEOUS BEING 149

fire. The Sailor, to make things pleasanter, began hurriedly ;

"If I were very rich I should want a number of definite things, as this gentle- man said," waving his hands towards that gentleman to avoid all unpleasantness, which is a way they have in the foc'sle.

"He didn't say it," I murmured. ** I said it."

Whereat the Sailor kicked vigorously and wide under the table by way of hint, and caught the Poet, who howled aloud. Then only was the Person by the fire moved to a single gesture. He looked round sharply with his head and a twist of his eyes, not changing a muscle of his body, but glanc- ing as an animal glances, and moving as an animal moves.

" Go on 1" he commanded.

The Sailor was a combative man: but he mastered himself, and went on gradually ;

" Oh I I should like to give big dinners pretty often and to go to plays."

Which was a silly sentence, but true enough. He corrected it, adding:

(1,65&) L

150 THE HIDEOUS BEING

"And I should like to have a jolly little house, and five or ten or twenty or thirty, or perhaps a hundred acres of land; and there would have to be wood upon it. And I should hate to be near a railway, so I would have a motor; and I must have a telephone, but it must not bring people to the place, so I would have a private tele- phone wire stretching for miles. And one must have water on one's place. And I should like electric light for the offices, but one wants candles for the rooms."

When he had got thus far the man near the fire jerked his head over his shoulder at Grizzlebeard. The Sailor stopped astonished, and Grizzlebeard, a little frightened I think, said rapidly :

'* Really, I don't know I I don't think I want to be very rich. I suppose I am very rich by any good standard. My house has twenty-three rooms in it, counting the old scullery, which is now a cellar. And I have quite four acres of dug garden -land, and undug land not to be counted. I am a gentleman also, and I can put up as

THE HIDEOUS BEING 151

many of my friends as care to come and see me. I have four horses, money in the bank, and no debts. I burn my own wood, and build with my own timber ; and I quarry my stone out of my own ground. Really I need no more ! "

He remembered something, however, and he said :

" It would be a good thing to help the nations. It would be a good thing to en- franchise the nations which are caught in the usurer's hellish web."

He was silent. Many memories moved in him, but he was too old to think that much could be done with the world ; and how could money do much against the abominations of the world ?

It was the Sailor who found courage enough to tackle the Johnnie in the chair.

" And what would you do," he said aggres- sively, " if you were very rich ? "

The Man in the Chair did not move.

" I am talking to you, sir," said the Sailor sharply.

** I know that," snarled the Man in the

152 THE HIDEOUS BEING

Chair in an inhuman way. Then, just be- fore the Sailor exploded, he added,

" I should sit here in this chair smoking this pipe with this very tobacco in it and looking at this very fire. Thafs what I should do, and there would be you four men behind me."

** Oh, you would, would you ? " said the SaUor. " And how do you know that you would be just as you are?"

" Because I am very rich already," said the Man in the Chair in a low metaUic voice, fuU of dirty satisfaction. ..." I am exceed- ingly rich. I have more money than any other man in the large town of the north where I was born. Yes, I'm rich enough."

He leaned forward towards the fire for a moment, then he took out a card and tossed it to the Sailor.

" That's my name," he said. And we bade him " Good day," and all went out.

We took the road so as not to go through Wiston Park, for though the house there is as good a sight as any in England, why, it was not ours, and we went past that field

THE WHEELBARROW SAINT 153

where the Saint wheeled his mother in a wheelbarrow, and cursed the haymakers, so that it always rains there in mowing time.

For he was, as the phrase goes in those parts, a Holy Man, and had great power. But as he was very poor, no one guessed it. And first, in following God, he sold his motor to buy a brougham, and then he sold his brougham to buy a dog-cart, and then he sold his dog-cart to buy a broken down, paint- scratched, nasty go-cart ; and then, still serv- ing God, not man, he sold his go-cart and his nag and bought a wheelbarrow. For some thing he must have to take his old mother to church in. Now all this happened in the year of our Lord 713, just after Sussex got the Faith and hundreds of years before she lost it again, and a little before St. Leonard cursed the nightingales.

So he was taking his mother to church in the wheelbarrow when the haymakers laughed at him as he passed, and the Saint said : " Laugh men, weep heaven." And immedi- ately there fell on that field only two inches of rain in half-an-hour, and that on the two-

154 THE HIDEOUS MAN'S NAME

day swathes all ready for Tedding, and Lord I how they did curse and swear! And from that day to this, whether hay time come in May month or in June, it rains in the hay time on that one field.

Now when we had gone about a mile from Steyning and had so turned into the Wash- ington Road, the Sailor bethought him of the card, and pulled it out, and there was written —

Mr. Deusipsenotaviti

Brooks's.

The Sailor looked at it right away up, and upside down, and sideways, and held it up to the light so as to look through it as well, and then said :

" It is a foreign name."

Grizzlebeard took it from him, and after a close view of it said :

" It is a Basque name : it is agglutinative."

And we all went on to Washington, talking of a thousand things.

THE GOOD RAIN 155

As we so talked there came over the edge of the high hills that stood like a wall above us, and from the hurrying clouds before the south-west wind, the first drops of rain, and the Poet said :

" What ! Must we go forward on this road although it is raining ? "

The Sailor. "Yes, Ninny-lad, most cer- tainly I What else were roads made for but to give a man hard going over wet land ? "

The Poet. " Well, I say there is a time for everything, and rain-time is not the time for walking on a road."

The Sailor. ** Why, then, you mean that autumn days, such as these, are not to be taken at their full measure, nor to give us their full profit, but that we are to go down to dry death without knowing the taste of Sussex air in the rain ? "

The Poet. " No, I say it aloud, there are days for everything, although we do not know the reason why, and that is why I never will be shaved on a Sunday, for I count it unlucky.

" You may have noticed up and down Eng-

156 THE RHYME OF

land some men with nasty little undergrowths upon their upper lips alone, and others with great wild beards like Grizzlebeard here, and others with moth-eaten beards as it were — the worst of all; depend upon it they shaved, each of them, at some time or another of a Sunday.

" It is a day of rest, and there is no labour like shaving. It is a day of dignity, and there is no grimacing, sour-faced, donnish occupa- tion like that of shaving. So I say : ' There is a day for everything, and everything has its lucky time except burial.' "

Myself. " There now ! And that was the very thing I was going to say had its most varying days! For does not the old rhyme go:

' Buried on Monday, buried for health, Buried on Tuesday, buried for wealth ; Buried on Wednesday, buried at leisure, Buried on Thursday, buried for pleasure ; Buried on Friday, buried for fun, Buried on Saturday, buried at one.' "

The Sailor. "Why?"

Myself. "There you show yourself what you are, a man that follows the sea. For on

LUCKY BURIAL-DAYS 157

land here we knock off work at twelve on Saturday — that is parsons, gravediggers, coffin-carriers, mourners, and the rest, who very wiUingly dispose of the dead between seven and five of a week day, but do claim their half-holiday. But you sailors may claim your half till you are black in the face, another disposes of your time I And even if a law were passed that you should loll about from eight bells on Saturday noon to the dog watch of Monday, as we do on land, that other would tickle you up with a snorter before you had lit your pipes. Tumble up there the lot ! Watch ? I'll watch you, watch or no watch ! Tumble up there and take it lively! Run up and clew them in till your hands freeze I Pull, you lubbers, pull ! Squirm over the yard like a row of tumblers at a fair, and make fast and be damned to you ! Better for you than for me. " Then the song goes on (for us jolly people on land ; as for you at sea, you may die and drown as you will) :

' Buried on Sunday after eleven, You get the priest and you go to heaven.* "

158 ON ABSOLUTION

Grizzlebeard. " This is rank folly, for abso- lution is for living men."

Myself. " There you go, Grizzlebeard, verba- lising and confumbling, and chopping logic like the Fiend I exegetic and neo-scholastic, hypograstic, defibulating stuff! An end to true religion ! Soft, old man, soft ; the bless- ing over a coffin does no man any harm, and is a great solace to uneasy spirits. You are for ever running into the very gate of heresy with your determinations. It is a bad and a feverish state you have fallen into. Make amends while you yet have time I Or perhaps when you come to die you shall have no candles round your coffin and no large black cloth over it spangled with silver tears, and no bishop to sprinkle it; nay, who knows, not even a monk nor a parish priest, nor so much as a humble little curate from the castle.

" When death is on you, Grizzlebeard, I would have you write out in large black letters on a big white board, ' This man BELIEVED,' and hang it round your neck and so die. In this way there will be no error.

THE WORRIED GHOST 159

** For errors are made in this matter I assure you, and one man, though secretly devout (he came from near my own farm), was by such an error buried anyhow and in common fashion with prayers only, so that he had to haunt Normans (as they called the house) on the Dial Post Road. And a job it was, I can tell you ! For the people in that house feared ghosts, and when he walked, though he walked never so gently, they would give great blood-curdling shrieks, such as threw him into a trembling and a sweat — poor spirit I — until the ghost-masters who set the uncomforted dead such tasks had mercy on him, and let him go haunt the Marine Parade at Worthing, where no man minded him."

The Poet. "Then how was he rested at last?"

Myself. " Why, in the usual fashion ; by the drawing of a pentagon upon the sand and the sacrificing in its middle of a pure white hen. I have done."

The Sailor. " It is as well, for it has stopped raining."

160 THE VERY OLD ROAD

And so it had. To our comfort and the changing of our minds.

• .••••

So all along the road under Chanctonbury, that high hill, we went as the morning broadened : along a way that is much older than anything in the world : a way that leads from old Pevensey Port through the Vale of Glynde and across Cuckmere and across Ouse, and then up to the height of Lewes, and then round the edge of the Combe, and then down on to the ledge below the Downs, making Court House and Plumpton Corner, West Meston, Clinton, and Hollow Pie Combe (though between these two it branches and meets again, making an island of Wolstonbury Hill), and then on by Poynings and Fulking and Edburton, and so to the crossing of the water and the Fort of Bramber, and so along and along all under the Downs until it passes Arun at Houghton Bridge, and so by Bury and Westburton, and Sutton and Duncton, GrafFham and Cocking, and Diddling and Harting — all Sussex names and all places where the pure water having dripped through

THE WASHINGTON INN 161

the chalk of the high hills, gushes out in fountains to feed that line of steadings and of human homes. By that way we went, by walls and trees that seemed as old as the old road itself, talking of all those things men talk of, because men were made for speech and for companionship, until we came to the cross-roads at Washington ; and there, said I to my companions:

Myself. " Have you heard of Washington Inn?"

Grizzlebeard. " Why, yes, all the world has heard of it ; and when Washington the Vir- ginian, a general overseas, was worriting his army together a long time ago, men hearing his name would say : ' Washington ? . . . Washington ? . . . I know that name.' Then would they remember the inn at Washing- ton, and smile. For fame is of this character. It goes by the sound of names."

The Poet. " For what, then, is the inn of Washington famous ? "

The Sailor. '* Not for a song, but for the breeder of songs. You shall soon learn."

And when he had said that we all went in

162 "THE SWIPES THEY TAKE IN

together, and, in the inn of Washington, we put it to the test whether what so many men had sung of that ale were true or no. But hardly had the Sailor put his tankard down, when he cried out in a loud voice : " It is true, and I believe I " Then he went on further : '* Without any doubt whatsoever this nectar was brewed in the waxing of the moon and of that barley which Brutus brought hither in the first founding of this land 1 And the water wherein that barley-corn was brewed was May-day dew, the dew upon the grass before sunrise of a May-day morning. For it has all the seven qualities of ale, which are : —

K Aleph = Clarity,

3 Beth = Savour,

3 Gimel = A lively hue,

*i Daleth = Lightness,

n He = Profundity,

) Vau = Strength retained, and lastly, t Zayin, which is Perfection and The End.

" It was seeking this ale, I think, that Alexander fought his way to Indus, but

AT THE WASHINGTON INN 163

perished miserably of the colic in the flower of his age because he did not find it.

*' Seeking this ale, I think it was, that moved Charlemagne to ride both North and South, and East and West, all his life long in those so many wars of his whereof you may read in old books; for he lived to be two hundred years and more, and his bramble beard became as white as sea-foam and as tangled, and his eyes hollow with age. And yet he would not abandon the quest for Mitchell's Ale which they sell at Washington : but he could not find it, and so died at last of chagrin.

" And hearing of this ale from a FamiUar, Aldabaran sought Saragossa in disguise, and filled ten years full, planning and devising how to get it from the Emir of El Kazar, who was in league with the Evil One ; then, in the very moment of his triumph, and as he was unlocking that cellar door, a guardian slave slew him with a sword, and his soul went forth, leaving the cask untasted.

" So also St. OfFa, of Swinestead in Mercia, fainting at the thought of this ale which tempting demons had let him smell in a

164 IS THE VERY BEST

dream, was near to missing his salvation. He left his cell and went out beyond Kent, over the narrow seas into the Low Countries, and wandered up and down for seven years, until at last he went distracted and raving for lack of the liquor. But at last he was absolved at Rome.

" Then you have that Orlando, whose fury was aroused by nothing else but a passionate need for this same brew. For he had led a peaceful life as a cobbler in Upper Beeding until he heard by chance of this ale, and immediately he set out to seek it, and in so doing was led to all his heroic deeds and also to wounds and dissolution at last, and died without ever putting his lips to the tankard.

*' Shall I make mention of Gastos or of Clemens ? Of Artaxerxes, of Paulus or Ramon, who all expected and desired this thing in vain ? Or recall Praxiteles or Zeno his cousin, Periscopolos the Pirate, Basil of Cyrene, or Milo ? They also wasted themselves upon that same endeavour. But to me who am nobler than them all, it has been granted to drink it, and now I know that it resolves

BEER I KNOW" 165

all doubts, and I shall go to my great death smiling. It is the satisfaction of all yearnings, and the true end of all philosophies. Of the Epicurean, for it is a final happiness. Of the Stoic, for it leaves me indifferent to every earthly thing. Of the Hegelian, for it is It. And I see in the depths of it, the conclusion of desire and of regret, and of recollection and of expectation, and of wonder. This is that of which the great poets sang when they said that time itself should be dissolved, of which the chief of them has written :

* Till one eternal moment stops his powers : Time being past then all time past is ours.'

It is indeed good beer; and when we leave our valleys we will all drink it together in Paradise."

Grizzlebeard. " You are right." The Poet. " Yes, you are." Myself. " We are all right together." Grizzlebeard. " It is little wonder that for such as this or worse, the Sons of the Acheans fought ten long years round Troy, or that, nourished by this royal thing, the men of

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166 CADWALLA THE KING

Sussex in old time defeated all their foes, and established themselves firmly upon this ancient land."

Myself, " Yes, indeed ! Cadwalla, who was the fiirst King of Sussex to learn the true Faith, and who endeared himself for ever to St. Wilfrid and to the Pope, by giving to the one ten thousand, but to the second twenty thousand barrels of this most admir- able and impossible -to -be -too -much -praised Cervisian nectar (you may find his tomb in Rome), was moved to extend our power right over sea, even to the Isle of Wight. When he had subdued that land, he took the twb princes that were the heirs to its throne, and put them to death. And he conquered all Sussex and all Kent and was mighty before his thirtieth year — all on the ale of Washington, Mitchell's Ale of the Washington Inn ! Of such potency it was I "

I looked through the window as I so con- cluded, and there again had come the storms of rain.

*' We will not start," I said. *' It is rain- ing."

THE VICTORIES 167

The Poet. " But just now . . ."

Myself. " Oh, Poet I will you also be teasing us with logic, or have you not learnt in your little life how one man may drive off for a game a whole drove of horses, while another may not so much as glance over a little new set maple hedge no higher than his knee ? So it is ! Let us hear no more of justice and the rest, but sit here snug in the middle of the world, and make Grizzle- beard do the talking. He has lived longest and knows most, yet has he given us neither a story nor a song."

" You have told us," said Grizzlebeard wilUngly enough, "the story of Cadwalla, who had that fine imperial instinct in him which made him chafe even within the wide limits of his Sussex kingdom, and sail over the sea with that great expedition of his to conquer and annex the Isle of Wight, the two princes, heirs to which, he also very imperially murdered. Your story made me think of all those other times in history when the armies and the banners of this immortal county have shown themselves in distant lands."

168 OF SUSSEX

The Sailor. "It is interesting that you should know so much, dear Grizzlebeard, but those are far-off things, and we have no true record of them."

Myself. "Yet, Grizzlebeard, since you are upon this topic, I very often have much desired to know how it is that this county of ours seems everywhere to exceed its natural boundaries, and to have planted a foot north, east, and west in the territory of others; guarding itself, as it were, by bastions and belts of territory not its own, and preserving them as symbols and guarantees of its great military power."

The Poet. " Nay, doubtless, the county of Sussex would have expanded southward were it not that it was there contained by the sea, which will brook no man's foot."

The Sailor. "Say rather that there was no annexation southward, because the salt sea, being unharvested, there was nothing worth annexing; but, even as it is, the fishermen of Sussex will not have foreigners prying about in their preserves, and from the Owers Bank right away to Dungeness, if you will

AND HER EMPIRE 169

hail a fishing-boat at night he will answer you in the Sussex way. Nor are men of strange seaboards tolerated in that sea."

Myself. " I still desire to ask you, Grizzle- beard, since you are the oldest of us, and have in your house so many papers and records, not to speak of in your mind so many ancient traditions of this inviolate land, how is it that Sussex has sovereignty over and beyond the marsh of the Rother, and over and beyond the ridge of hills wherein take their rise the Adur, the Arun, and the Ouse ? For I have often looked at that flat piece without any boundary of its own beyond Crawley, in which all the men seem to be Surrey men, and which I yet notice to be marked Sussex upon the map. How comes it that we are the masters not only of our own rivers, but also of the head waters of the Snouzling Mole, the Royal Medway, and other lesser streams ? "

" It so happens," answered Grizzlebeard, with immense satisfaction, " that I can answer that question. For this great thing was done at about the time when the tyrant

170 THE GREAT WAR BETWEEN

Napoleon was pursuing his petty ambitions among the beggarly nations of the Continent, and it had its origin and spring in that most beloved part of this beloved county whence I also take my being, and where I also was born — I mean the parts round about Hail- sham, where the flats invite the sea. There has the fate of our county been twice decided. And since also the full story of the Great Fight has been preserved in the diaries and records of my own family, I am well fitted to tell it to you. For the next few hours I will retail it. Though the rain passes over and the sun comes out, still shall I go on, for it is a favourite of mine. I will go on and on, and relate unendingly the same while you yawn and stretch ; nay, though you implore me to cease or attempt to coerce me, yet shall I continue the story until I have com- pleted it.

" You must know, then, that the king who was over Sussex at that time being then in the fortieth year of his age and the twenty- second of his reign, a man not only august but universally loved, and one very tender

SUSSEX AND KENT 171

to the consumers of malt liquor, but a strict governor of brewers (God rest his soul I), a song arose in those parts concerning the tyrant Napoleon and his empty boasting, that when he had conquered Prussia, Russia, Bornesia, Holland, all Italy and Spain, he would challenge the power of Sussex itself before he had done with warfare; and this song, let me tell you, ran as follows."

With this Grizzlebeard, clearing his aged throat, tunefully carolled out the following manly verse in the tune to which all Sussex songs have been set, without exception, since the beginning of time — the tune which is called "Golier."

" If Bonaparte Shud zumraon d'Eart To land on Pevensey Level, I have two sons With our three guns To blarst un to the de-e-vil."

** It is," continued Grizzlebeard, when the

172 THE GREAT WAR BETWEEN

long-drawn notes of the challenge had died away, " a very noble and inspiring song, compared with which * To the North, Merry Boys,' is but music-hall blare, and the ' Mar- seillaise ' a shrieking on a penny whistle.

*'Now this song," he continued, "being of its right virtue and glory a hymn that could not but spread far among men, travelled all over our county, being known and com- mented on in Lewes in the king's own castle, and eastward all along the beach to Hastings, and beyond that to the banks of Brede and over Brede to Rother, which was in those days the boundary of this land ; for we had not then begun to give laws to East Guild- ford, on the left bank of the river mouth.

" As luck would have it, it travelled, per- haps in the speech of pedlars, or printed as a broadside and sold from their packs, all up the valley of Rother and up among the Kentish men, and was soon known in Apple- dore. Small Hythe, and so on, right up to Goudhurst itself, which stands upon a hill. And here it was that ill-fortune lay in wait for the Kentish men, who had always been

SUSSEX AND KENT 173

a proud lot and headstrong, though relying upon St. Thomas of Canterbury and other worthies, and furiously denying that they had tails. For they had no more humour about them than you will find in a cathedral verger, and so much for Kent.

" Well, then, by the time this great song had come up on to Goudhurst, where it stands upon its hill, the Kentish men in their pride and folly, or perhaps only in their ignorance (for I would not do them wrong), turned it to suit their own purpose and vanity and had begun to sing it thus:

' If Bonaparte Shud zummon d'Eart To land on Pevensey Level, There are three men In Horsemonden Will blarst un to the de-e-vil.'

"Which corruption and degradation of so great a strain they very frequently repeated over their cups at evening in the security of their inland homes.

** Now, when news of this came into Sussex and reached the king, where he sat in his castle of Lewes, considering his own great-

174 THE GREAT WAR BETWEEN

ness and the immensity of the world, he could scarcely believe his ears. For that the Kentish men should sing songs of their own and even put on airs when it so suited them, nay, timorously raid over Rother to pinch a pig when the good-man was from home, he thought tolerable enough ; but that they should take the song which was, as it were, the very heart of Sussex, and turn it to their own uses, was, he thought, quite past bearing, and, indeed, as I have said, he could hardly credit it.

" So he very courteously sent a herald mounted upon a Uttle brown donkey and beautifully apparelled, who came to the King of Kent, where he sat or rather sprawled at meat in Canterbury. And this herald, blowing his trumpet loudly in the King of Kent's ear, delivered him the letter of the King of Sussex, and spurring round his steed, very gallantly capered away.

"The King of Kent, as you may well believe, was quite unable to read, but there is no lack of clerks in Canterbury, so he had one brought, who trembling broke open

SUSSEX AND KENT 175

the seal whereon were stamped the arms of Sussex, and read to his master as follows :

" * Brother Kent : We hear, though we will not believe it, that certain of your subjects (without your knowing it, we will swear) have taken to their own use our private anthem, and are singing it wantonly enough in Goudhurst and sundry other of your worthy hamlets; and that, not content with this usurpation of our sovereign right and of the just possessions of our dear people (we are even told, though our soul refuses to entertain it), they have so murdered, changed, and debased this Royal Hymn as to use it in praise of their own selves, and in particular of a steading and sties called Horsemonden, of which neither we nor we think any other man has ever heard.

" * We do you, therefore, to wit, by these presents, brother Kent, that you do instantly command and proclaim by heralds through- out your dominions that under pain of horrible torture and death this practice shall immediately cease, if, indeed, we are rightly informed that it has arisen.

176 THE GREAT WAR BETWEEN

" ' Greetings and fraternal benedictions. — Given by us in our castle of Lewes on the first day of the October brewing, in the year 3010 since Brutus landed from Troy and laid the foundations of our house. — (Signed) Sussex.'

"The King of Kent when this message was read to him ordered the unhappy priest to immediate execution (as is the custom in that county when they deal with clerics), but no sooner had he done so than he re- gretted the act, for not knowing how to write he must needs dictate another letter. So he sent for another priest, who was a long time coming, but when he came bade him write as follows :

" * Brother Sussex, a word in your ear : We may not be book-larned, but we will stand no nonsense, and so sure as hops are hops we will, with some small fragment of our forces, but sufficient to the purpose, come up into your land and harry it, and burn down the steadings and the ricks and carry away all the pigs and cattle; and we will storm your castle, and we will put a new

SUSSEX AND KENT 177

Bishop in Chichester in the place of your Bishop, and we will put our reeves into Midhurst, Horsham, Arundel, and other places, and as for your Koyal seat there we will put our own nephew upon it. But as for you we will keep you in chains. — Kent.*

" This letter he despatched to the King of Sussex, who when he received it conceived it impossible to avoid war.

"Yet he hoped in his honourable and gentle heart that this last extremity should be avoided, and he sent yet another letter, putting it in words even more fair and mannerly than the first, saying that he de- sired no more than peace with his due rights and honour ; and this letter he sent by a herald as he had sent the first. But this second herald the King of Kent put to death, so that now there was no choice but to take arms. So the King of Sussex summoned his army to meet him within fourteen days in the courtyard of the best inn of Lewes, which was in those days called the Turk's Head, but has since been

178 THE BATTLE OF BATTLE

destroyed by those wicked men who hate inns and all other good and lovable things. Marshalling his army there, and seeing to their accoutrements and putting them in good heart, he took the road for Brede, and posted himself upon the height of that hill which has ever since been called Battle, facing towards the rising sun.

"The day was the 14th of October, the hearts of all were merry and high, and every man was prepared to do most dread- ful things. But how the fight was joined, and how it went, and of the wonderful deeds done in it and of its imperishable effects I must next tell you."

The Poet. "I should hke to hear the Kentish version of this tale."

"You must know, then, that the King of Sussex, being thus posted a little before sun- rise upon the hill now called Battle, and look- ing eastward over Brede, he first harangued all his men in proper fashion, and drew them up with skill into a line, urging them what- ever they did not to break their rank until they should have defeated the enemy, which,

THE BATTLE OF BATTLE 179

when they had accomplished it, they were free to pursue. And having so spoken he observed coming across the valley the forces of his enemy, the King of Kent, armed with long hop-poles, and carrying themselves in very fierce demeanour. Nay, as they marched they most insolently sang the song which was the cause of all this quarrel ; and the Horsemonden contingent in particular, which was in the van, or place of honour, gave forth with peculiar violence the new lines they had composed to their own glory.

"Though this sight, as you may imagine, was malt vinegar and pickles to the men of Sussex, they stirred not a foot, and they said not a word, but in a grim and determined manner did they turn up the sleeves of their right arms, spit into their palms, and very manfully clench their ash-plants, wherewith they did thoroughly determine to belabour and bang the invaders of their happy homes. And there should be mentioned, in particular, the men of Hailsham, my dear native place, who on that day carried ash-plants so heavy and huge that ten men of our time could

180 THE BATTLE OF BATTLE

hardly carry one, though they should stagger under it as builders do under a scaffolding pole.

" Now the men of Kent began to climb the hill, the men of Sussex watching them silently

Keutr cuici

;* bifMc^kiKb

from above, and being most careful in their order to preserve all due regard, and not to walk upon the ornamental beds, or to disturb the shrubberies of the kind gentleman who had permitted them to draw up their line in the grounds of Battle Abbey. For in those gardens, note you, is the position which all the great generals of his staff had pointed out

THE BATTLE OF BATTLE 181

to the King of Sussex, saying that it was * a key,' and though he could make no sort of guess what that might mean, there had he drawn up his array.

" When the men of Kent felt the steepness of the hill, their song died away ; they began to pufF and to blow ; and their line, which they had ordered like so many cattle drovers, was all to pieces, so that while the first of their men, and the leanest, were already approach- ing the men of Sussex, the last were still tying up their shoe-laces at the bridge, or arguing with the little old man in green corduroy who kept the level-crossing over the railway. For he was assuring them that a train was signalled, and that their advance was most dangerous ; but they were protesting that if he would but let them through the wicket gate, which stands by the side of the great railway gates, they could pop across before it came.

" This disarray and grievous lack of general- ship in the ranks of Kent was the ruin of that force, seeing that it is laid down in all books of military art that if a line be broken it has

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182 THE BATTLE OF BATTLE

lost its strength. But, as you may guess, the art was all on our side, the folly and misfor- tune upon that of our enemies, whom the God of Battles had already devoted to a complete discomfiture.

" For when the first arrivals of them came to the crest of the hiU, all puffed and blown with their climbing, some were banged in the face, others swiped upon the sides, others heavily pushed in the chest, and others more painfuUy caught upon the point of the chin. Others again were blinded by stout blows in the eye, or turned silly by clever cuts upon the corner of the jaw, whangs upon the noddle, and other tactical feats too numerous to men- tion. For our king, and yet more his staff, and generals and quartermasters too, were great masters of the art of war. In this skilful manner, then, were the foremost men of Kent sophist ically handled, until at last the whole score of them (for the vanguard were at least of that number) broke and ran for cover, and by that action threw into a confusion and stampede the other hundred or so who were still straggling up the hill. Nor was there any

THE BATTLE OF BATTLE 183

heart left in the men of Kent save in the mouths of a few (and their king was one of them), who, having taken refuge in an upper room of the inn that stands by Brede, shouted out mingled encouragement and menace, and bade the fighters in the road below play the man. But these men, considering rather the banging they were getting than the words of their commanders up there in safety, altogether and at one moment fled, bunched into one lump, very frightened and speedy, and spread- ing rumours that their pursuers were not men but devils. And as they ran they threw their hop-poles down to give them greater speed, and some cast off their coats, and many more lost their hats as they ran, and in general they fell into a rout and confusion.

" As you may imagine, the men of Sussex had by this time the word of command to fall upon them and spare them not at all. Which order they obeyed, belabouring the men of Kent vilely with their ash-plants, and herding and harrying and shepherding them together into the narrow pass of the level-crossing, where they all pushed and screamed, and,

184 THE ROUT OF

especially those on the outermost part who were the recipients of the ash-plant blessing, showed an immoderate eagerness to be off.

" At last the train of which I spoke having passed, and the little man in green corduroy who kept the level-crossing having consented to open the gates, they all poured through in a great stream, tearing for their lives with one half of the men of Sussex after them, pursuing and scattering the foe in every direction, while the other half remained behind in Brede, for a purpose I will presently tell you.

" The men of Kent then being broken and dispersed all over that countryside, some took refuge in Egham Wood, and others fled to Inkpin, and the more stalwart but not the more brave worked round as best they could to Robertsbridge, while a dozen or more ran to earth in Staplecross. So all that country- side was strewn with hiding and crouching men, some of whom got away and some of whom were taken prisoners, but none of whom re-formed nor showed themselves able to rally.

" Meanwhile their king and his