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Title:      Experiments (1925)
Author:     Norman Douglas
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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title:      Experiments (1925)
Author:     Norman Douglas





CONTENTS

ARABIA DESERTA
THE CORRECT THING
BLIND GUIDES
AT THE FORGE
EDGAR ALLAN POE
BELLADONNA
NOCTURNE
INTELLECTUAL NOMADISM
THE LAST WORD
A MAD ENGLISHMAN
QUEER!
ANACREONTIC
POSTSCRIPT: A PLEA FOR BETTER MANNERS




ARABIA DESERTA

[_Arabia Deserta_ By Charles M. Doughty. With an introduction by T. E.
Lawrence. New Edition.]

Not long ago there was sent me a recently-published French book about
Morocco--_Marrakech_, by the brothers Tharaud, then already in its
twenty-fifth edition. What did I think of it? And why could we not
write such things in English?

Well, I thought it good, despite that unseasonable military
atmosphere--decidedly good of its kind; the story grows livelier and
impressive towards the end. Moreover, thank Heaven, it exhales but
faintly the familiar odour of Parisian patchouli; there are some
luminous and suggestive metaphors and a moment of real tragedy. For
the rest: head-work, self-conscious glitter, a virtuosity bordering on
the precious. One detects only the frailest link of human sympathy
between the authors and the scenes they describe. A wealth of
outlandish customs and figures has been noted down by the pen of a
scrupulous journalist and then distilled into elaborately-tinted
phrases. It is almost wearisome, all this material, where so much is
seen, so little felt. I recall, for instance, that suffocating chapter
"La Place Folle." "Qu'il est donc malaisé," say the authors in one
place, "de peindre avec justesse le charme de l'Orient! A inventorier
ces beautés ... on a l'air d'un pédagogue." Exactly! An artist should
never "inventorier." Why therefore this endless cataloguing in
_Marrakech_? Why?  Because the authors, as Frenchmen, were unable to
do what they should have done--unable to make their readers really
feel the life they depict. Your Gaul is a centripetal fellow, a bad
nomad. His affinities with foreign folk are only skin-deep--aesthetic
rather than constitutional. One suspects that, while gadding abroad,
he is pretty frequently homesick. One knows it. He will tell you so
himself.

As to writing such things in English, the feat is not impossible. We
must try, first and foremost, to be more logical, to rid ourselves of
that lamentable haziness, of those iridescent flashes of thought and
feeling that can be struck out of a single word; we must learn, in
short, to content ourselves with a vocabulary such as our neighbours
possess. Cut down to a quarter of its size that preposterous
dictionary of ours, throw on the scrap-heap all those mellow verbal
forms, and consign the residue into the hands of a conscience-stricken
Academy that shall stereotype the meaning and prescribe the proper
usage of every item--the thing is done. There will be no more
half-tones, no more interplay of shades. We shall step from twilight
into sunshine. For what is the chief secret of French precision? Lack
of words. To be sure, their writers are mostly professionals--_gens du
métier_; they know how to handle those few words.

That is why, generally speaking, they produce such mediocre travel
books.

The _homme de lettres_, of whatever nationality, is handicapped in
this department; he can never more attain to a jovial heedlessness of
expression.  His schooling militates against it; he knows for whom he
writes; he has learnt to play to the gallery.  The personal note (an
impersonal travel-book is a horror) becomes him ill; there is apt to
be something spectacular and meretricious in the work. This applies
particularly to Frenchmen. Having an old-established literary
tradition of what is good and bad--how to compass the one and avoid
the other--they shine at objective narrative. When they write, as they
sometimes do, in the first person, they often fail to ring true; art
decays into artifice; it is as if, accustomed to producing fictional
characters in their tales and romances, they would now read fictitious
characters into themselves. Or else, as in _Marrakech_, they leave a
mere blur so far as personality is concerned. The ideal author of
travel-books is the inspired, or at least enthusiastic, amateur. One
would not take it amiss, furthermore, were he obsessed by some hobby
or grievance, by idiosyncrasies and prejudices not common to the rest
of us. And it goes without saying that he must be gloriously
indifferent to the opinions of his fellow-creatures. Can professionals
ever fulfil these conditions? No! They should therefore never attempt
to write travel-books.  They have lost their innocence.

It was at a friend's house near a green English village, in the heart
of a green English summer long ago--years before the abridged edition
of _Arabia Deserta_ appeared--that I became acquainted with the
original Doughty. And these, you may instantly divine, are the
conditions most favourable to an appreciation of his merits. That
gaunt Odyssey reads mighty well in comfortable England.  Amid verdant
fields and streamlets, and opulence for the body, and a sense of
immemorial tranquillity, how pleasant it is to conjure up visions of
the traveller's marches under the flaming sky and of all his other
hazards in a land of hunger and blood and desolation! I opened the
first volume not quite at the commencement, and remember taking some
little credit to myself (one was younger, in the middle 'nineties) for
persisting to read to the last word of the second.

A tough, elemental, masculine performance.  _Man muss sich
hineinlesen_, as the Germans say.  The author himself calls his book
"not milk for babes." Far from it! Stuff to be humbly and patiently
masticated--an unwelcome occupation to our democratic age which, among
other symptoms of senility, has lost the use of its teeth and now
draws sustenance, ready chewed and half digested, pepsinised, out of
the daily Press. Open _Arabia Deserta_ where you please, and you find
yourself stumbling among thought-laden periods that might have been
hacked out of Chaos by some demoniac craftsman in the youth of the
world. Strange, none the less, how that sense of anfracuosity
evaporates.  The theme, by subtle alchemy, justifies the style.  Those
harsh particles of language--so it seemed to me--were wondrously
adapted to mirror the crudeness of Arabian landscape and character.

Be that as it may, I felt, on closing the book, as one who has been
forcefully led through all the harassments of a dream--a weary,
lingering dream; one of those that refuse to relax their hold upon the
imagination, haunting our daylight moments with a vague presentiment
of danger and disquietude.  Here is no glint of mirth, no mockery; a
spirit of sombre truthfulness broods over the scene. The book is
oppressive by weight of thought and length of text. That might well be
appropriate from an artistic point of view. Nothing short of eleven
hundred pages could do justice to this toilsome, nightmarish epic. "I
passed this one good day in Arabia; and all the others were evil
because of the people's fanaticism." One good day in two years!  Nor
is it a featureless monster, like Pallas' Russian travels. A
well-jointed monster, on the contrary, of spiky carapace and
deliberate gait--pensively alert, harmonious.

Of one thing I was soon convinced: Doughty's outlook was not mine.
Never could I have attained to his infinite capacity of suffering
fools gladly.  My days would have been short among those empty and
elvish creatures whose only inducement (as often as not) to offer
their far-famed hospitality is that they count on you to feed them
another day--which would be almost impossible if they had obeyed their
consciences and cut your throat.  Dangers of rock or ice or desert may
well be tempting, but such fuddled fanaticism grows insupportable. Can
there be a greater torture of mind than to travel month after month
among peevishly ferocious bigots, repressing an altogether
praiseworthy inclination to laugh at them or hit them on the head? In
default of being murdered I should have succumbed to cerebral
congestion. Doughty's feat calls for quite a peculiar temper:

The mad sherif had the knife again in his hand! and his old gall
rising, "Show me all thou hast," cries he, "and leave nothing; or now
will I kill thee."--Where was Maabûb? whom I had not seen since
yester-evening; in him was the faintness and ineptitude of Arab
friends.--"Remember the bread and salt which we have eaten together,
Salem!"--"Show it all to me, or now by Ullah I will slay thee with
this knife." More bystanders gathered from the shadowing places: some
of them cried out, "Let us hack him in morsels, the cursed one! what
hindcrs?--fellows, let us hack him in morsels!"--"Have patience a
moment, and send these away." Salem, lifting his knife, cried, "Except
thou show me all at the instant, I will slay thee!"....

Charming people!

Endeavouring at this distance of time to recall my first impression of
_Arabia Deserta_--to delve, that is, through multiple layers of
experience which have accumulated since those green summer days of
long ago--I remember being vastly pleased with the motives which
allured Doughty into these stricken regions. He went not in search of
disused emerald mines or to open up commercial markets; he took with
him no commission from the home authorities, no theories to air, no
gospel to preach.  His purport is refreshingly anti-utilitarian. What
drove him, besides a Homeric love of adventure, to undergo these
hardships was pure intellectual curiosity, the longings of a brain
that feeds on disinterested thought. "Other men," said the Arabs to
him, "jeopardy somewhat in hope of winning, but thou wilt adventure
all, having no need." He hoped, he now tells us, "to add something to
the common fund of Western knowledge." A certain Mahmud, describing
the rock-hewn sculptures of Medain Salih, "was the father of my
painful travels in Arabia." All thanks to Mahmud!  Burckhardt's
discovery of Petra may have helped to ignite the train; and also the
Bible, full as it is of lore and legends of those more reasonable
Semites who lived here in olden times, who revered letters and song,
and planted the vine, an'd built cities of stone, before the blight of
Islam fell upon the land.  That mysterious and romantic background of
the past cannot but appeal to the imagination.  Doughty's book, so
dispassionately worded, is a truthful indictment of Mahomed turning
his country into a wilderness. What a creed can do! So Borrow's
account of Spanish savagery reflects the achievement of those
inquisitors who, in the name of a kindly God, brought to
withering-point the kindliness of nature and of man.

And I likewise remember saying to myself, "_Haec olim meminisse_ . . .
who would not envy this man his memories?"

Ideas such as these will have flitted through the minds of all the
early admirers of Doughty. They must have realized that his volumes do
provoke thought in no common degree. Here is not only information;
here is character, a human document.  The image of the poet-traveller
is no blur.  Doughty has etched his lonely figure against this
desolation of sand and lava-crag, and we are glad to see how the thing
has been accomplished; it does one good to be in contact with a
companion full of natural resources and listen to his tale; one leaves
him with regret, as one bids farewell to some friend of robust and
well-stored mind, perceiving that, all unconsciously, his words have
been of use in revealing us to ourselves. They have helped us to
rectify and clarify our own perspective. (Can anything be called a
book unless it forces the reader by one method or another, by contrast
or sympathy, to discover himself?) So _Arabia Deserta_ is the
antithesis of the purely pictorial _Marrakech_, inasmuch as therein we
enjoy that feeling of intimacy for which every sensitive person must
crave, while wandering with his author through strange places.  It
seems to me that the reader of a good travel-book is entitled not only
to an exterior voyage, to descriptions of scenery and so forth, but to
an interior, a sentimental or temperamental voyage, which takes place
side by side with that outer one; and that the ideal book of this kind
offers us, indeed, a triple opportunity of exploration--abroad, into
the author's brain, and into our own. The writer should therefore
possess a brain worth exploring; some philosophy of life--not
necessarily, though by preference, of his own forging--and the courage
to proclaim it and put it to the test; he must be naïf and profound,
both child and sage. Who is either the one or the other in these days,
when the whole trend of existence makes for the superficial and
commonplace, when a man writes with one eye on his publisher and the
other on his public?

This may account for the insipid taste of many travel-books printed
just now: lack of personality on the part of their authors. It is not
enough to depict, in however glowing hues, the landscape and customs
of distant regions, to smother us in folklore and statistics and
history, and besprinkle the "pages with imaginary conversations or
foreign idioms by way of generating local colour." It is not enough.
We want to take our share in that interior voyage and watch how these
alien sights and sounds affect the writer. If he lacks that compulsion
of the spirit which is called character, or lets his mind linger on
contingencies hostile to frank utterance, he will be unable to supply
that want and leave us dissatisfied. Doughty is rich in character,
self-consistent, never otherwise than himself. Press him to the last
drop, it has the same taste as the first; whereas Palgrave, for
instance, who traversed some of these same regions, is by no means
always Palgrave; and Burton--what of Burton? A driving-force void of
savour or distinction; drabness in excelsls; a glorified Blue Book. A
man who could write at one and the same time ten (was it ten?)
different volumes on as many different subjects. . . .  [Footnote: I
am far from suggesting that all moderns are drab.  There is, for
instance, the _Haji Abdullah Mansur_--Mr. Wyman Bury--of Aden. Why are
those first two volumes of his so short, especially the second one?
What exigencies of time or space or cost or officialdom were at the
back of this mischievous curtailment? One does not encounter every day
a Haji so brilliant and multi-faceted.]

The modern author of travel-literature one suspects to be a greyish
little person, uncommonly wide awake, perky and plausible, but
somewhat deficient in humanity--a kind of reporter, in fact, ready to
adopt anybody's philosophy or nobody's in particular. Those earlier
ones were not of this sort.  They derived, to begin with, from another
stock, for voyages used to be costly undertakings; they were
gentleman-scholars who saw things from their own individual angle.
Their leisurely aristocratic flavour, their wholesome discussions
about this or that, their waywardness and all that mercurial touch of
a bygone generation--where is it now? How went it? An enquiry which,
rightly solved, might explain the rarity of types like Doughty.

That mercurial touch disappears naturally when the conditions which
gave it birth are at an end.  We have ceased to be what we were, that
is all.  Year by year our hard-won domestic privileges have been
gnawed or lopped away; the recent history of the English citizen is
one long wail of liberties forfeited; we are being continentalised,
standardised--a process which cannot but reflect itself in life and
literature. It blunts our peculiar edges. Singularity, the hall-mark
of that older Anglo-Saxon, is hardly perceptible in our modern bearing
or writing. We have ceased to be "mad "; none but a flatterer would
still call us eccentric. All kinds of other factors have contributed
to this result, such as improved world-communications.  Dr. Arnold,
again, that merciless pruner of youthful individualism, has wrought a
miracle of destruction so far as originality is concerned, for his
energies hit hardest the very class from whom those sturdy and
idiomatic, and sometimes outrageous, opinions used to come.

Doughty seems to have escaped the contagion; he goes so far as to call
the Universities "shambles of good wits." His edges are intact. He
sees clearly, and feels deeply, and warily chooses his words. There is
a morning freshness in that gift of investing the ordinary phenomena
of life with an extraordinary interest--a kind of bloom, I should call
it.

No matins here of birds; not a rock partridge-cock, calling with
blithesome chuckle over the extreme waterless desolation. Grave is
that giddy heat upon the crown of the head; the ears tingle with a
flickering shrillness, a subtle crepitation it seems, in the
glassiness of this sun-stricken nature: the hot sand-blink is in the
eyes, and there is little refreshment to find in the tents' shelter;
the worsted booths leak to this fiery rain of sunny light.  Mountains
looming like dry bones through the thin air, stand far around about
us: the savage flank of Ybba Moghrair, the high spire and ruinous
stacks of el-Jebal, Chebàd, the coast of Helwàn! Herds of weak nomad
camels waver dispersedly, seeking pasture in the midst of this hollow
fainting country, where but lately the swarming locusts have fretted
every green thing. This silent air burning about us, we endure
breathless till the assr: when the dozing Arabs in the tents revive
after their heavy hours. The lingering day draws down to the
sun-setting; the herdsmen, weary of the sun, come again with the
cattle, to taste in their menzils the first sweetness of mirth and
repose. . . .

Now what do Frenchmen think of such language? And why cannot they
convey these shades of meaning in their own?

Well, even Fromentin will give you a taste of that dumb ache which
rends and racks the human frame under a sun-drenched sky. But one has
only to name him--and that is precisely and solely why I am referring
to these folk--in order to appraise Doughty at his right worth. Or
glance into another of them: Loti's _Désert_. What of it? A cloying
and tinkling performance; as voiceless, almost as voiceless, as a
picture on a wall. Where, you ask, where is the shrewd wit, the
insight, the humanity of Montaigne? And that other one about
Constantinople, or about Morocco: how prettily constructed, how
unconvincing! Yet Loti is a writer of renown; there is no gainsaying
those exquisite gifts. What militates against his, and his.
countrymen's, veracity in a personal relation like _Le Désert_ is
professionalism--and one or two other little things. Lack of humility,
for instance; or call it simple imperviousness to foreign languages
and ideals. They are curiously incurious, again, as to matters
non-human; even the Goncourt's _Journal_ is full of queer blunders of
observation; they seem to have inherited somewhat from those old
Troubadours to whom the human element was everything, and who would
now utilise nature as a mere scenic decoration against which to
display their emotions, their "sensations d'Orient" or whatever it
might be.  French schooling, too, does not encourage the seeing eye.
Their children are saturated with Racine and other full-mouthed
rhetoricians; the taint clings to them in later years, vitiating their
outlook and making them unduly concerned about stage-effect--a
preoccupation which ruins the intimate note essential to every good
travel-book.

To carry off that intimate note demands independence; what we call
cussedness. Think of the cussedness of Doughty in doing what he did
among those stark, God-struck zealots; note the cussedness in every
word he writes. Such a man, strong in reserves, can afford to be
veracious, and himself. His charm resides in sincerity, and you feel
that, however much he gives, he is withholding still more.  [Foonnote:
One would like to know, for example, something about the features of
those with whom he came iti contact; there are all too few
descriptions of physiognomy in the book. We could also have been given
glimpses into certain secret things, certain customs of profound
significance in Oriental life and of interest to European students.
Doughty, with a kind of maidenly modesty, barely hints at their
existence. Well! A travel-book is not an encyclopaedia.]

Latin authors of the subjective variety seldom produce that sense of
reserve. Their personalities are less marked, their mutual
divergencies fewer, and their reserves, if they have any, are apt to
be blown into stylistic fireworks.

Their personalities are less marked: here lies, maybe, the core of the
matter. The Anglo-Saxon has a laxer literary discipline, commendable
distrust of authority, a language that lends itself gaily to the
unburdening of extremest individualism; and not only that. His
educational system (despite the efforts of that old disciplinarian and
prayer-monger) and the very laws of his country induce him to break
away from the parent-stock. He is centrifugal.  Without abdicating an
ounce of self-respect he can merge himself into anything and
assimilate what you please. He makes a good nomad. His sympathies with
alien races are broad and deep; there is, at times, something
intuitional or prophetic about them. Could any foreigner have written
_Haji Baba_? Which of them has looked clean through the Spaniard like
Mr. Havelock Ellis, or through the Neapolitan as did Charles Grant in
his Stories of the Camorra? And there occurs to me, at this moment, a
volume by Mr. Lowes Dickinson--I forget its title; quite an
unpretentious little thing; notes, I fancy, from a travelling diary.
Unpretentious, but symptomatic; one questions whether anybody but an
Anglo-Saxon could have achieved such a point of view. It is to the
credit of our race that, knowing itself to be the Salt of the Earth,
it can yet survey strange people in so benign and intelligent a
fashion. Doughty is another example of this artlessly sublime
detachment.  Will a French Doughty ever appear?

The phenomenon is not inconceivable. Borne on the wings of opium, or
tossed over the sea by some black fury of despair, a certain one of
them may presently unveil for us the throbbing heart of the Far East.
There, among those steamy forests and many-hued native folk, he may
cut the cable that binds him to the boulevards; there he may learn to
squeeze new and glamorous colour-effects out of that old
mother-tongue, provided--provided he forgets the solemn Academy
everlastingly engaged upon its blithe topiarian tactics. Must
language, a child of necessity, be clipped and groomed like a box
hedge? Must a living organism be at the mercy of a pack of dismal
gentlemen in frock coats? Why not let it grow freely under the sun and
stars, to thrive or suffer with the rest of them, throwing out buds
and blossoms, bending to the winds, and discarding outworn members
with painless ease?

Then appeared the abridged version of _Arabia Deserta_, of which I
promptly bought a copy, anticipating what actually happened--that
another would soon be called for, and wondering, at the same time, how
many of those to whom this book was a revelation took the trouble to
thank Mr. Edward Garnett for performing so well his odiously
uncongenial task of dismemberment.

And here is the new full edition.

Moving once more among those sinewy articulations of speech to revisit
familiar scenes, I become aware of a change. Something has happened.
That worldly-calm mood of the 'nineties is fled.  One has travelled in
the interval, no doubt, and suffered, and learnt to see with other
eyes. It may be the inevitable passage of years; that, and our recent
European shattering which affects each of us in diverse fashion,
according to his peculiar mentality.

Whatever the cause, I now go through these pages with a more hearty
sympathy for the bedouins that "merry crew of squalid wretches,
iniquitous, fallacious, fanatical"--and a feeling of resentment
(others, it appears, are conscious of something similar) against our
Occidental institutions; a distrust of those white people who can make
such an exhibition of themselves as they have done of late. And now
they are multiplying indiscriminately once more, springing out of the
earth like the dragon-brood of Cadmus and invading all its fair
places, ready to begin again. The world is growing too narrow;
congested, and crammed with unpleasantness and deified "masses"; we
gasp for fresh air; more deserts, fewer men. For deserts have their
uses. Had Arabia been anything but a bleak kind of country, where
would our Doughty be? And is he not worth a legion of those others?

>From this sense of revolt and dislocation I take refuge in passages
like the following:

I had nearly outworn the spite of fortune at Kheybar; and might now
spend the sunny hours, without fear, sitting by the spring
Ayn-er-Reyih, a pleasant place little without the palms, and where
only the eye has any comfort in all the blackness of Kheybar. Oh, what
bliss to the thirsty soul is in that sweet light water, welling soft
and warm as milk from the rock! And I heard the subtle harmony of
Nature, which the profane cannot hear, in that happy stillness and
solitude. Small bright dragonflies, azure, dun and vermilion, sported
over the cistern water ruffled by a morning breath from the figgera,
and hemmed in the solemn lava rock. The silver fishes glance beneath,
and white shells lie at the bottom of this water world. I have watched
there the young of the thob shining like scaly glass and speckled:
this fairest of saurians lay sunning, at the brink, upon a stone; and
oft-times moving upon them and shooting out the tongue he snatched his
prey of flies without ever missing.

I re-peruse the opening lines: straightway that exacerbation is
stilled.

To hear the "subtle harmony" and respond to the gentle promptings of
the _genius loci_, the unseen presence, is what Doughty found to be a
talisman.  So might others find; but never will, among the unseemly
and restless conditions of modern life.  Industrialism has been raised
to a bad eminence.  We do well to take note of certain venerable
strains in our being that call for a different environment; our
teachers should recognise the inspirational value of self-communion in
lonely places. There is in most of us a lyric germ or nucleus which
deserves respect; it bids a man ponder, or create; and in this dim
corner of himself he can take refuge and find consolations which the
society of his fellow-creatures does not provide. The obscure
anti-social or disruptive instinct to be alone, which haunts us
chiefly in youth, should not be thwarted as it is; for solitude has a
refining and tonic influence; there we wrestle with our thoughts and
set them in order; there we nurture the imagination and sow the seeds
of character. A person who hears nothing of that "subtle harmony"
because his ears are belaboured day and night by the clash of other
men's voices will never attain to any remarkable depth or insight. Now
those places where the spirit loves to dwell are made to minister to
the wants of an ever-increasing humanity, the nymphs are driven from
the woodlands, and deserts irrigated, and everything scientifically
explored and exploited.

There was an awful rainbow once in Heaven--We know her woof, her
texture; she is given in the dull catalogue of common things..,.

The drying-up of the fountains of mythopoesis, the elimination of
mystery, might well sadden and sterilise a poetic soul. And one hears
it said at times that this would be a matter of small moment, since
these inspirers of olden days have degenerated into a purely
ornamental adjunct to life and lost their authority and significance.
Is there no prosperity other than material? It is surely time to have
done with this utilitarian nonsense; to reverse the proposition and
argue, if need be, in favour of the value of _mere illusions_. An
argument of sufficient force when one realises, for instance, that
much of what is best in our literary tradition--that heritage of
beauty to which a man will cling when he has learnt to forsake and
deride all his other natal gods--has its roots in dreams, in
nature-worship, the communion between man and wild things; and could
never have come into being but for that subtle harmony "which the
profane cannot hear." There may well be fewer listeners now than
formerly; the din of commercialism is overwhelming; we fail to sense
those mild and genial stimulations from otherwhere. Hence our
complacency. Hence, too--and this is ominous from another point of
view--a considerable shallowness of judgment in practical matters.
Thoughts such as these will have occurred to every reader of Doughty.
But the subject is not easily exhausted. . . .

I recall my first view of the Chott country, that sterile salt
depression in Tunisia, and my feeling of relief at the idea that this
little speck of the globe, at least, was irreclaimable for all time;
never to be converted into arable land or even pasture; safe from the
intrusion of potato-planters or what not: the despair of the
politician, the delight of any dreamer who might care to people its
melancholy surface with phantoms, mere illusions, of his own.  And
to-day one reads that an immense tract of South Africa is
sinking--yes, sinking into unproductive desert, even as Australia has
already sunk. It seems that the rivers out there are not behaving as
Providence obviously meant them to behave; they are flowing all askew;
in fact, the situation calls for prompt and costly measures if the
national exchequer is not to suffer. Long may it sink! May it be
utterly unexploitable and uninhabitable to the crack of doom! Then
perhaps Africa will come into her own again, and grow to be fertile
mother of monsters. _Ex Africa semper aliquid novi_. And then will
start afresh the now interrupted reign of those joyous liars who, from
Herodotus onward, have gladdened men's hearts with their tales. How
many healthy and well-conducted colonists, think you, could I be
bribed to accept in exchange for a single Sir John Mandeville? Good
news, too, comes from Arabia.  We learn, not from Doughty but from
another "reliable source," that the so-called _Empty Quarter_, the
Great Red Desert, has not yet been seen by Western eyes. Long may it
remain invisible, a solace for future generations! Deserts have their
uses, and the _Empty Quarter_, let us hope, will sooner or later
demonstrate its _raison d'être_ by stirring that first intrepid
beholder, as he gazes down upon its trackless ocean of billowing
dunes, into some rare utterance--a paragraph or two, a sonnet, or some
poignant little epigram: an epigram that shall justify the existence
of a myriad leagues of useless sand, and the non-existence of several
myriad useful cultivators.

Let us be thankful, in the meantime, for visions such as this:

Descending in the steep passage we encountered a gaunt desert man
riding upward on a tall thelûl and leading a mare: he bore upon his
shoulder the wavering horseman's shelfa, Maatuk [his companion] shrank
timidly in the saddle; that witch-like armed man was a startling
figure, and might be an Aûfy. Roughly he challenged us, and the rocks
resounded the magnanimous utterance of his leathern gullet: he seemed
a manly soul who had fasted out his life in that place of torment
which is the Hejâz between the Harameyn, so that nothing remained of
him but the terrific voice!--wonderfully stern and beetle-browed was
his dark visage. He espied a booty in my bags; and he beheld a
stranger. "Tell me," he cries, "what men ye be?"--Maatuk made answer
meekly, "Heteymy I, and thou?"--"I Harby, and ugh!" cries the perilous
anatomy, "who he with thee?" "A Shâmy trading among the Aarab."--"Aye
well, and I see him to be a Shâmy, by the guise of his clothing." He
drew his mare to him, and in that I laid hand to the pistol in my
bosom, lest this Death-on-a-horse should have lifted his long spear
against us. Maatuk reined aside; but the Harby struck his dromedary
and passed forth.

A fearsome apparition; nowise contemptible.  For this desert man
cherishes a sense we are in danger of losing; he feels the need of
liberty. See him riding grimly forth, a law unto himself, while we sit
here in hushed adoration of _orderliness_: fetich dear to withered,
unimaginative folk. Here we sit, huddled together like cattle in a
pen, each one duly labelled as to his potential worth to the
community, and controlled by a horde of guardians so increasingly
large that the shepherds will presently outnumber the sheep. Blissful
sight!  What is everybody doing? A person who has tangled himself into
so ignoble a knot as to think our present state of affairs a
desirable, or respectable, or endurable one, who feels thoroughly at
home among the malodorous crowd and bows the head to all its
humiliating extortions and conventions--what shall be done to such a
product of civilisation? Pitch him into the _Empty Quarter_! Deserts
have their uses. The desert may yet make a man of him.

Meanwhile I watch with envious eye that Harby, that perilous anatomy,
that manly soul and Death-on-a-horse, stalking solitary into the
waste, and ask myself whether a few drops of his wild blood transfused
into ours might medicine our sickness.  Would they heal that
valetudinarian itch for being nursed and supervised, and drive out the
incubus of duties to be performed towards neighbours undeserving, of
sacrifices to be made for causes perverse? Or are we doomed to an
imbecile herd-life till the very word "freedom" sound exotic and
bedouish to our ears? Britons never shall be slaves. . . . What else
are we?

These be the thoughts, somewhat incongruous, engendered by my latest
reading of _Arabia Deserta_.





THE CORRECT THING

NOBODY dreamt that Alberique would ever marry. He was too old, too
selfish, too delicate--far too delicate.

Yet now, at the end of two years, his friends were obliged to confess
that the union was as much of a success as could have been expected in
view of the different ages and characters of the parties concerned.
She was almost a child--a child to treasure. For in his selection of a
wife he had displayed his usual penetration and knowledge of the fair
sex. Silvia, with all those charms to which no one had been more
susceptible than her husband, could have done with him whatever she
pleased--dissipated his means, turned him to ridicule, converted him
into ten times the vicious old devil he already was. She did none of
these things: which proved that he had not read amiss the signs of
good breeding in her features.

Who was Alberique? Nobody, so far as mere wealth was concerned. Yet
not altogether a useless person. While serving under the Colonial
Office he distinguished himself by brilliant administrative talents:
as Governor of Upper Somnolia, more especially, he had developed a
disquieting energy that convulsed the Permanent Staff who still spoke
in an awed whisper of that Reign of Terror. All that was long ago!
Since his retirement he had devoted himself to certain historical
studies, and his writings were appreciated by a select few who could
sympathise with his passion for _chroniques scandaleuses_ in high
places--a passion the origin of which may be traced to a justifiable
pride in the many romantic vicissitudes that his own race had
undergone. It was one of those families renowned of old for intrigues
and escapades and adventures in which, as a rule, the eternal feminine
played no inconspicuous part. He ought to have been born in the
gallant days of the Restoration. There was nothing in common between
himself and the musty ideals of his contemporaries.

For the rest, he had glided through life unobserved by the many.
Feebleness of constitution, a hereditary disposition to amorous
excesses, were counterbalanced by other qualities envied of most men
who can only acquire by patience or bitter experience what he likewise
inherited from that long line of ancestors--tact, insight, taste.  He
was quick to judge of a man's worth as of a woman's beauty. His tact
was equal to the most embarrassing situations. Alberique could always
be relied upon to do the right thing at the right moment.
Self-centred? Doubtless: but courteous at the same time and generous
to all mankind, particularly to pretty women. Ill-health unhappily had
somewhat soured his temper of late, and drawn more frequent lines
about his smooth-shaven, once handsome features. His hair was of the
thin texture of one who has lived too well.

They had just returned from a winter in Egypt.  The pale, ungenerous
rays of an early spring afternoon penetrated through the curtains of
their London drawing-room. Silvia, standing at the window, drew them
aside to let in more light. She had never found England so gloomy
before. She was still dazzled with the remembrance of the glowing
sunsets, the desert, the monstrous carvings, and all those other
experiences of the last months, for she was none too old to feel
wonder, nor too affected to profess indifference. She had been brought
up unacquainted with the world, its marvels, its realities. Like some
hot-house flower she had hitherto breathed the tepid atmosphere of
English society, knowing nothing of the storms of life, nothing of its
intenser joys. Impulsive and ambitious by nature, she had early
accustomed herself to demure ways.

The recollection of that wonderland of Egypt had aroused new interests
in her: vague yearnings, hitherto unfelt, for another existence.

She ventured to open the window, after casting a look to assure
herself that Alberique was well protected from the air. Moist warmth
poured in, and with it came wafted all the seductive lassitude of
spring, the hopes, the fears, the tender longings that penetrate on
such days to the soul of man, even through the smoky shell of a great
city. A passive life! She had expected more of marriage.  She wondered
what ailed her. Looking around, she saw contentment everywhere save in
her own heart. Outside, the street passengers passed one another
briskly before her eyes, each intent upon his own particular duty. The
cars, emerging with cheerful din from the bluish haze, splashed
through the river of gold at her feet and vanished again like streaks
of light. Some children were playing on the glittering wet asphalt.
She listened awhile to their merry young laughter, and then closed the
window sadly. At such moments Silvia had an intuition of what life
might have been. There was a void somewhere, a great void, in her
existence.  If she were at least allowed to continue her music. . . .

Alberique's voice, frail, high-pitched, but of peculiar charm, broke
in upon her meditations.

"You will require cheering up in this melancholy place. You must take
to your yiolin again, Silvia."

"How can I?" she replied regretfully. "You know the noise--"

"Allow me, dearest, to apologise for my mistake and my unkindness.
There is no reason whatever why your pleasure should be thwarted
because I happen to have no sense of music. Sheer selfishness! But you
must bear with me, and pardon the unamiable caprice of an invalid. You
don't know what it is to be an old wreck like myself." And he
sighed--a very sincere sigh.  "Now take to your violin again, do! I
only wish ... I wish . . ."

Silvia did not always fathom his wishes. Just then he may have been
wishing for youth, or better health.

Upon that score Alberique allowed himself to cherish no illusions. He
was approaching the ninth climacteric beyond which he could hardly
hope to pass. Certain fainting fits had warned him of serious organic
trouble, and the weakness had become more apparent since his marriage.
For alas, the union, though a happy one, had been in other respects a
grievous miscalculation. Alberique had drooped and faded away like
some tender flower in that glorious sunshine. He had hoped to enter
upon a second youth, an infusion of new life. It came contrariwise. He
gave all, receiving nothing in return. The lovely vampire, innocent of
intent, drained away his life. Egypt, he already felt, had done him no
good.

Presently he renewed the subject.

"I suppose, after this long break in your studies, you will require a
teacher again--at least at first?"

No answer. Silvia was thinking of her former teacher, Lennox, a young
Scotsman of more than common talent. Looking back upon the past days
of their intercourse, she felt that he had gained more influence over
her than she cared to admit.

Indeed the Scotch Paganini, as they called him, exerted a strange
power over all who could appraise the high aims of his life. Born of a
good family, he had chosen the art of the violin as a profession and
pursued his studies stubbornly, with that craving after perfection,
that determination to excel, without which genius is an empty name.
His infrequent appearances on the concert platform were the signal for
unwonted outpourings on the part of the Scottish press. The critics,
with patriotic fervour, compared him to some youthful high priest,
pale with the scourge of study, about to initiate an unbelieving world
into the mysteries of which he was the chosen interpreter. . . .
Silvia was wondering what had become of Lennox. No doubt he had
already forgotten his former pupil among the interests of an active
professional life.

"Why not Lennox?"

She started at the sound of his name. But Alberique was smiling an
enigmatical smile. It was really as if he had mentioned Lennox on
purpose; as if he had led her thoughts up to this point for some
object of his own. What that object might be she could not even guess.
She remained silent, but her husband insisted--"What if you wrote to
Lennox?"

He was looking at her now in a manner that almost scared her. There
was mingled defiance and regret in his eyes. Was it love? Some
composite emotion no doubt, that he could not, or would not,
formulate.

Why speak of Lennox at all? Why speak of him, the unfolder of her
talents, to whom she had looked up with childlike veneration, whose
name conjured up the forbidden fairyland of art, whose remembrance she
had erased from her young mind not without a sigh? To be permitted to
take up music again was almost too good to be true. But why Lennox?

Alberique persisted:

"I have blamed myself all this time for discouraging your love of
music. No, don't thank me! I am only doing what I ought to have done
ages ago. Forgive me, rather, for having been so miserably selfish. I
met him once or twice--Lennox, I mean. Seems a gentleman. You were his
favourite pupil, they tell me, and if so, I feel sure you will become
his favourite pupil again.  You can go on with him, you know, where
you left off. He looks as if he could appreciate favourite pupils of
your style." Here he laughed, and soon added: "Write to him at once,
dear, and make an appointment."

This speech confused her considerably.  Alberique had a way of making
allusions to her person that were ambiguous, incomprehensible.  She
tried to puzzle out his meaning. He seemed to be expecting her to say
something.

"Really?" she faltered at last. And then, more resolutely, "Why
Lennox?"

"Why not?"

Now Silvia, instead of rejoicing, grew sad.  She beheld, advancing
towards her, some ill denned phantom that threatened her future peace
and happiness.


II

Since her marriage she had never seen the Scotch Paganini. She only
knew that at the time of this event he, had unaccountably broken off
all his English engagements and left London for the Continent in order
to perfect his already highly chastened style (so the newspapers
announced) under a certain master in the Belgian capital.

This was true enough. There, locked in his room, violin in hand, he
wrestled with his old opponent, struggled with the brute material of
string and bow; purged away, through sheer physical exhaustion, every
other remembrance of life. Here was an adversary worthy of himself,
endowed with more than human obstinacy, one who gave no advantages:
all the yielding must be on _his_ side. . . .

THE CORRECT THING	37

But Silvia did not know--how could she know?--that Lennox now lived
like one who, gazing long in the sun, yet sees its spectral image
burning wherever his glance may stray; that amid the mazes of Tartini
and Saint-Saëns there mingled and floated and glowed persistently,
before his mental eye, the picture of her own smile, the golden
witchery of her hair.

For his character was primitive as Alberique's was complex. He was one
of those men of natural purity who, oppressed with disappointment and
temptation, are not led away by the allurements of _Venus vulgivaga_,
but cling to their first ideal and exalt it with all the devotion of
their simple nature. And in the interval of those two years he had
experienced in his own person a singular phenomenon. In proportion as
he schooled his judgment and delved deeper into the mysteries of
musical art, the image of Silvia likewise became clearer and more
lovely. His taste, refined and exclusive, enabled him now to discover
charms in her person which had hitherto escaped his appreciation. He
could detect no discordant note in that roseate symphony. One might
have said that day by day, as the artist grew more discerning, Silvia
on her part shook off the attributes of common mortality and resolved
herself into the incarnation of all harmony and proportion. From being
beautiful, she had become flawless.

And after these visions--the Reality!

Lennox, who used to have faith in his Star and believe in the ultimate
adjustment of Fate, was growing sadly despondent. But when, on the eve
of his departure for England, he emerged from the long fray emaciated
as with monkish self-chastisement, when he had deposited his violin
for the last time in its case and asked himself wearily, _what
next_?--his eye, roving round the room in a farewell glance, happened
to fall upon a letter that lay at his elbow.

It must have arrived that very evening. . . .

If in a moment of self-delusion Lennox imagined that he owed his
introduction into Alberique's household to some machinations on the
part of Silvia, he was soon undeceived by her demeanour which rebuked
such an assumption.  To whom, then, was he indebted for the pleasure?
He took to observing Alberique closely. But Alberique wore a mask; he
had met his advances with dignified ease, and professed to take the
greatest pleasure in bringing Silvia and himself together. Was
Alberique then, the far-seeing, grown blind? To their bluets he often
listened with well-simulated interest; at other times he leaned back
on a couch, book in hand, and seeme'd to doze.  Perhaps he marched in
imagination with the scarred veterans of Pizarro upon some incredible
expedition across the Peruvian sierras, or saw himself gliding
pliantly, obsequiously, among the gilded pageantry of Versailles.
Perhaps--who knows?--he was watching Silvia all the time out of the
corner of his eye and extracting a kind of subtle relish from the
spectacle of her resistance to his attacks--a malicious amusement, but
characteristic of his complex nature. Or was it all generosity on
Alberique's part? Generosity to himself? A perverse form of
generosity, and a risky one.

But Lennox soon, very soon, desisted from attempting to solve the
enigma of Alberique and confined himself to Silvia. He thanked God for
this opportunity of seeing her, whoever its immediate author might be,
and made the most of it. He was no lover of the sugar-water type.
Lennox, the dreamer in Brussels, had changed considerably since his
arrival. All the energy stored up during those two years was released
at the sight of his ideal. He never attempted to conceal from Silvia
the state of his heart; he grew bold, impetuous, reckless.

She was ill at ease. She could not help inwardly blaming her husband
for exposing her to this temptation. But whatever her thoughts may
have been, her conduct remained irreproachable, although at times she
felt her powers of resistance giving way before the passionate desire
of the other one.  What rendered her defence doubly difficult was his
assumption that she had loved him from the first--him, and him only;
and that she loved him still.  How disprove what she almost confessed
to be true? To this embarrassment was added her own susceptibility to
an art of which the exponent and personification alike was Lennox,
whose genius she revered, whose single-hearted devotion to herself she
could not but recognise with respect. Her acute sensibility to music
unstrung her reserve and opened vistas to the spiritual eye at which
she trembled deliciously. There came upon her, under that spell,
visions that she would have bidden linger for ever, visions of a
celestial dawn, of the blossoming, as it were, of some proximate,
unspeakable bliss.

Looking up in such moments she would find his eyes fixed upon her in a
steadfast gaze. He had guessed the truth! And their thoughts thus
coinciding, their lips unmoved would say:

"Our joy: our hope--how shall we conceal it from him?"

Conceal it?

Alberique knew everything. He knew of their growing infatuation and
its inevitable consequence.  But he thought Silvia would keep the
Scotsman within bounds so long as he lived, at least; and if they went
too far--why, he could easily recall them to their senses with one of
his proverbially tactful remarks. Alberique never made a mistake in
such matters. He could rely upon himself to do the correct thing under
any emergency. Soon enough he would be dead, and then they might do
what they liked. Another year or two, and then--the odious change. In
the contemplation of that change he recoiled; his worldly yet
sensitive mind, that had dwelt long upon the theme of horror,
shuddered at the thought of his own body becoming a masterless,
meaningless heap: a clod, to be handled irreverently by common persons
and thrust at last into a coffin--the end of all things or rather not
the end, but only the beginning of a yet more hideous transformation
beyond. How inconceivably hateful was the prospect! Alberique was
loath to part with life: he had never despised the pleasures of the
world; he only deplored his inability, his hopeless inability, to
enjoy them as heretofore. Those fainting fits. . . .  To console
himself, therefore, he now invented a pastime intelligible only to
self-indulgent, hyper-sensuous natures like his own. The temptation
had been too strong to resist. The spectacle of those two lovers ready
to swoon within one another's arms, a spectacle that would have driven
to desperation most men in his position, afforded him a voluptuous
relish, a new zest in life. He had arranged it specially for himself.
Alberique was no spendthrift, no drunkard. At a race-meeting, at Monte
Carlo, he could afford to laugh at the weaknesses of his
fellow-creatures. Transport him to a desert island, and he would have
shared his last crust with some shipwrecked sailor. But to anticipate
in the person of Lennox certain joys that he himself could no longer
taste; to watch, with vicariously sensual interest, a faltering
rehearsal of the drama which would be played immediately after his
death--this was an amusement after his own heart.

And he enjoyed the jest prodigiously; its bitter after-taste only
served to tickle his appetite. It possessed, besides, the requisite
spice of wrongness, of perversity, without which Alberique's pleasures
had long ago become insipid. For some time past he had been engaged
upon a careful study of their characters. He often looked from one to
the other and pictured to himself how they would act--their words,
their caresses. Thus, and thus (he would say), thus, and nowise
differently. Then he would take note of their present exasperation. It
was like perfume to his senses, and almost compensated for his regret
at leaving the world.

Yet occasionally he grew tired of his comedy and told himself the
truth. He envied their health, their youth. He was afraid of death.
And his pleasant little smile would then crystallise into a hard grin
of defiance that distorted those still attractive features.



III

It was a remarkably dull tune they were playing.  Or rather, no tune
at all. Bach, very likely. . . .

Upon an ottoman under a stately drooping palm, his head upon one hand,
his feet crossed, he reclined in a calm and languid attitude which had
something of the rigid grace of the leaves that shadowed him. Little
could be seen of him save the sinuous outlines of his figure.

But he lost nothing of what was going on, and his eyes were fixed upon
Silvia when she stood, violin in hand, beside an immense lamp whose
rosy shade tinged her white shoulders with a warmer glow. They
followed the vigorous motion of her arm glancing in the light, and
rested, occasionally, upon her scarlet lips parted in emotion. He
surveyed her as a connoisseur might survey some masterpiece of
statuary, from her well-poised head refulgent in golden glory down to
the 'dainty feet encased, at that moment, in slippers of a peculiarly
appetising description. She was throbbing with young life. The pose,
he thought, was absolutely perfect. As for her colouring . . . She had
all the loveliness of a Naiad, and nothing of her chill.  Oh, yes!
There was no denying her beauty, damn it, and if he were only twenty
years younger, or even ten. . . . She had actually improved, he
thought, since her marriage.

And his glance wandered in the direction of the Scotsman who, under
some pretext, had laid aside his instrument and contrived to take up,
at the piano, a position convenient for eyeing Silvia. He played a
listless accompaniment, accentuating a phrase here and there.
Alberique, while admiring the young man's adroitness, began to feel
almost sorry for his continued repulses at the hand of Silvia. In his
present cheerless mood he needed some kind of distraction; more
movement in the play; a little incident that might have called forth
one of his withering observations and allowed him to exult over their
subsequent discomfiture. They were such correct lovers. He felt tired,
just then, of their correctness.

Lennox, far from being animated, had become grave. He was marvelling
at Silvia's music, for she certainly played that evening as she never
played before. It was an artistic problem that absorbed him. He had
lost sight of the woman and saw only the performer. And as she
proceeded, his astonishment at her mastery over the instrument grew
apace. He was surprised at her technique and control of expression;
amazed at the loftiness of her interpretation. Seldom had he heard
Bach unriddled after this fashion. The heated London room, with its
atmosphere of weary refinement, was invaded by Silvia's music as with
a breath of clean spring air.

Then, gazing into her face, he saw that it was irradiated with
joy--transfigured by the magic of love. Her heart came out upon those
strains.

The older man had not been slow to detect the alteration in her
features and how the dull melody swelled into a paean of life. His
sensitive mind guessed the import of the change. Silvia was breaking
down her reserve, casting aside her veil of demureness and assumed
indifference, taking the lead and encouraging her lover. Here was a
contingency for which he had not provided. How would it end?

He knew her nature too well to think that, once roused, she would rest
content with half measures.  And what then? As Silvia's husband he had
been amused by her secret love for the other; as her master he was
irritated by this confession of it. He began to dislike the parade of
her beauty; and this parade of her sentiments, under the disguise of
music, was yet more obnoxious to him. With a sudden revulsion of
feeling he told himself that the joke had gone far enough--too far. He
saw his mistake. How amend it? He would gladly have spoken and put an
end to the tension. How set about it? Silvia played on, regardless of
his menacing look.

And then that thought, upon which he had often dwelt with a kind of
insane pleasure, thrust itself upon him in its most offensive aspect.

"I shall be dead soon, dead--the food of worms. Ah, the sinister
transformation! And they? Thus and thus. ... Ah, curse! Curse their
folly and my own!"

The blood was leaving his face, upon which a malignant look had
settled. His breath came rapidly, and he leaned forwards, grasping in
his long fingers a wisp of silken hair. He still endeavoured to
control his agitation, knowing its pernicious effect upon his health.

Silvia played on, unaware, in her exaltation, of his existence.

When at last she laid down her instrument, it seemed to Lennox as
though a curtain were drawn aside: the artist had melted away from
before his eyes and he beheld again the woman whom he loved, radiant
and adorable. And he knew the truth. This was her answer to his
pleading, an answer altogether plain. Love given and returned: what
was lacking? Nothing was lacking save--the occasion. But for the
faded, frivolous form crouching yonder. . . .

Meanwhile a profound silence lay upon them all. Neither of the men
seemed inclined to speak.  Then Lennox remarked:

"A superb rendering."

How hollow the words sounded! How trivial, tactless, almost
impertinent--false. False indeed; he should have said _surrendering_.
For Silvia knew that she would now yield at the first touch of her
lover's hand. Distance of space alone kept her upright. And Lennox was
also aware how unworthy his speech had been of the dignity of the
moment, but he was determined to break the spell, for in that silence
he heard the beating of his heart, and felt himself drawn towards her
person by some power stronger than his own will.

Silvia made no answer.

There was another long pause. Alberique said never a word. So far as
she could see, he was grinning from ear to ear in a cynical and
meaningless fashion.

The strain became intense, intolerable.

Then she observed with dismay that Lennox was rising to his feet and
taking a step in her direction. He came still nearer, trembling with
passion. He was now almost at arm's length.  Heavens! Had he lost all
control over himself?

With a supreme effort she shook off the fascination and remembered
Alberique. She quickly faced about and turned to her husband for
comfort and support. Gladly enough, in that moment, would she have
thrown her arms about Alberique and cried beseechingly in his ear:

"Save me! Take me from him! Save me before it is too late! Once in his
arms I am lost to you--lost for evermore. Are you blind? Why sit there
and say nothing? Oh, Alberique--one word!"

Surely, she thought, Alberique would redeem the situation. He was
notorious for his consummate tact. Alberique could always be relied
upon to do the right thing at the right moment.

What had he now done?

Alberique had fainted away. . . .





BLIND GUIDES

BLIND guides are those that cannot see whither they conduct us, those
who--perhaps with the best intentions--are apt to lead us astray. And
I ask myself whether the youngsters for whom a recently published Life
of Nelson seems to be primarily intended are not likely to be misled
by a remark concerning our hero to the effect that "during the
exercise of his duty as High Commissioner for King Ferdinand he hanged
a double-dyed traitorous villain called Caracciolo, and this with a
promptitude that Jarvie might have envied." [Footnote: I cannot
remember the title of this book or the author's name. It was published
in the spring of 1913.] Surely Caracciolo's life and character have
been thrashed out by this time! A double-dyed traitorous villain.... 
Are all the investigations of the past hundred years to end in a
palpable misstatement of this kind?

It is nonsense, of course; and might have been dismissed as such, had
it stood alone. But it does not stand alone; it recurs in one or two
other modern biographies of the hero; it is symptomatic nonsense.
Symptomatic nonsense is always interesting, even when it only shows,
as in this case, how easily historical writers can allow their
judgment to be infected with that gutter-patriotism which ought to be
confined to the mob.

If that be not a correct explanation, one would be glad to learn the
reason for this modern change of view in regard to the Naples episode.
For we all remember the old-fashioned condemnatory judgments of
Southey, Palmerston, and their contemporaries; we all know what Foote
meant when he wrote: "Be assured, dear sir, that the less is said
about Lord Nelson's conduct in the Bay of Naples, the better." Has
anything been brought to light in the meantime which might cause us to
revise those opinions? On the contrary, minute and painstaking
researches by scholars of various nationalities now enable us to
approach the subject from fresh sides; and from whatever side we
approach it, we are repelled. The local Neapolitan records, as
recently disclosed in the writings of Sansone, Spinazzola, Croce, and
the rest of them--not forgetting Mr. Badham--read like a nightmare.
It was a tyranny, says Lomonaco, "the like of which has not existed
within the memory of man."

And this Bourbon tyranny, this unique fabric of vice and incapacity,
is what Mr. Gutteridge, another modern encomiast of Nelson, calls
"simplicity itself." Mr. Gutteridge has a pretty facetiousness.
Briefly stated, the simplicity consisted in this: Thirty thousand
citizens, the majority innocent of any criminal _intent_, languished
in the prisons of Naples alone; the executions were so frequent that
the authorities contracted with the hangman for a monthly salary
instead of paying for each execution separately; without Nelson's
active co-operation, none of these massacres could have taken place.
These are incontrovertible facts. Though some points still remain to
be cleared up--certain documents seem to have been deliberately
destroyed or abstracted--yet the archives are there; they cannot be
distorted; they may be consulted by all who so desire. We no longer
live in an age of oral tradition.

This is fortunate for those who care to ascertain data. For oral
tradition alone can create demi-gods--hence their mysterious
disappearance in these latter days of memoirs and newspapers. Were it
otherwise, our British mythopceic faculty might by this time have
elaborated out of Nelson and Caracciolo a saint and a devil
respectively. But _scripta manent_. We are moderns. And yet there is a
smack of the dim heroic ages in the labours of some well-wishers of
Nelson, though their efforts are not directed to such useful ends as
those of Hercules when he whitewashed certain other stables of yore,
nor have they his prospects of success. Why not take a bolder course
and treat Caracciolo as a solar myth? He was contemporary of Napoleon,
and the thing might be contrived on the lines of Feres' "Grand
Erratum," that amazing _jeu d'esprit_ which proved the Man of St.
Helena never to have existed.

This would simplify matters--in the same fashion, it is true, as the
Bourbons, simplified the art of government.

Admiral Mahan treats the episode with seriousness, but has managed to
involve his hero in a cloud of rhetoric out of which, so far as I can
see, two plain statements emerge. Speaking of the execution, he says:
"Commander Jeaffreson Miles, of the British Navy, writing in 1843, was
one of the first, if not the very first, to clear effectually Nelson's
reputation from the stigma of treachery, and of submission to unworthy
influences, at this time." And a little later on: "The abrupt
execution of Caracciolo was an explosion of fierce animosity long
cherished, pardonable perhaps in a Neapolitan royalist; but not in a
foreign officer only indirectly interested in the issues at stake...."

Nelson's reputation is cleared; and yet the act is unpardonable.

_Cui bono_? Who was to profit by the death of Caracciolo? The King and
Queen. They hated him. Writes her Majesty: "The only one among the
guilty scoundrels whom I do not wish to go to France is the unworthy
Caracciolo," etc.  And Ferdinand's characteristic echo a day later:
"... To spare those savage vipers, and especially Caracciolo, who
knows every inlet of our coast-line, might inflict the greatest damage
on us." But they could not injure him, they could not touch him,
without Nelson's help. They got this help, and Caracciolo was hanged.
A submission to worthy influences, this?

Mr. Gutteridge, more reckless, speaks of the "generosity towards his
opponents which was one of Nelson's most conspicuous virtues." This
language will never do when applied to the Caracciolo case, which was
the murder of an honest man committed with indecent haste--_a
promptitude that Jarvie might have envied_--and amid other
circumstances of needless ferocity. To put it at the mildest, it was
an ungenerous and unsportsmanlike proceeding.

The question of Nelson's authority for this and other arbitrary acts
rests upon a quibble hardly worth discussing. Though Admiral Mahan
considers the commission under which he acted "regrettably uncertain,"
we may all be quite ready to concede that, from the side of the
Bourbons, he was invested with plenary authority; that with the fleet
to enforce his wishes if required, and their sentiments so admirably
agreeing as to render this step unnecessary, he received "oral
instructions" from that panic-stricken crew to hang, draw, and quarter
the whole kingdom if he saw fit in the interests of "law and order."
But we must still decide whether he was duly commissioned by his own
Government. In fact, we are confronted by a variety of questions, such
as: Can a British officer accept similar "instructions" from a foreign
Sovereign? Or this: Under what conditions, if any, can the British
Government confer authority upon one of its subjects to interfere by
force in the internal affairs of a State of peace with itself? Or
this: When may an English warship be made the scene of a court-martial
upon a foreign officer tried by foreign judges? Also this conundrum,
which arises out of Ruffo's simultaneous existence as High
Commissioner: Can Ferdinand of Naples, or any other human being, have
more than one _alter ego_ at the same time? And likewise this one:
When is a treaty not a treaty?  [Footnote: The answer is obvious: when
it can be broken with impunity. It needs little penetration to see
that the words of Ferdinand blaming Rufio for treating with rebels
"contrary to his orders" are an _ex post facto_ inspiration of
Caroline. Rufio's position at the time when he concluded the treaty is
clearly laid down in the first part of the letter from Acton to
Hamilton of June 25th. The displacement of Ruffo by Nelson is due to
the fact that the two ladies expected to find the latter less
scrupulous in furthering their designs (nor were they disappointed);
and in this connection I would echo the surprise of a reviewer (Arch.
Stor. Nap. xxix, p. 122) that it should have been reserved for him,
the Italian, to discover documents in the British Museum dealing with
this case which have escaped the eye of Mr. Gutteridge.]

These and similar questions will be asked.  Meanwhile we may ponder
upon this: the blackest of the thousand iniquities of Ferdinand, that
of breaking faith with his own people, was committed, and could only
have been committed, by the aid of the British fleet. For Nelson was
love-blinded from the first moment. On his arrival at Naples, says a
contemporary, "the cries of joy were such that one could not refrain
from tears, thinking of the consolation." [Footnote: MS. in San
Martine Library, Naples.]

But how quickly he undeceived those oppressed citizens, of whom he
naively writes that they welcomed him as "our liberator"!  Micheroux,
though he perjured himself for the worthless Méjean, had at least a
certain tolerance; Ruffo, though he had little tolerance, could at
least respect a treaty; these and other men were bound to the Bourbon
cause by sentiments of loyalty and the hope of preferment, and yet
Nelson the outsider, who was not paid for his services nor nursed in
traditions of Continental Court-slavery, surpassed them all in
obsequiousness, even to the extent of becoming chief executioner. That
_Ewig-Weibliche_!  True, he had his material reward, unasked but not
undeserved.

I spoke of Caracciolo as an honest man. Let us have no
misunderstandings or word-entanglements on this point. If honour
means, any thing, then rebels such as he were honourable men, inasmuch
as they identified themselves with a movement which has triumphed and
gained the approval of posterity.  What are rebels? They are, says
Adam Smith, "those unlucky persons who, when things have come to a
certain degree of violence, have the misfortune to be of the weaker
party." It is therefore odd to think that Caracciolo would never have
been a "rebel" at all but for Nelson's interference in Neapolitan
affairs--since the Bourbons were already muzzled when this saviour of
theirs appeared on the scene. Or, for the sake of perfect clearness, I
will put it axiomatically: to thwart the cause of a monster like
Ferdinand is the duty of an honest man. Thus Caracciolo, who deserted
what was wrong to follow what was right (and the rupture of sundry old
associations involved in this step caused him no small grief of mind),
was simply an honest man.

Nelson reports the execution in a postscript: casually, as it were.
One dislikes this postscript: It is either disingenuous or
illustrative of that brutality which characterized much of his
behaviour at that time: witness the joke as to _tria juncta in uno_,
or "See that some proper heads are taken off," or "Your news of the
hanging of the thirteen Jacobins gave us great pleasure, and the three
priests, I hope, return in the Aurora to dangle on the tree best
adapted to their weight of sins." All this has a profound
significance. The _bête humaine_ emerging under the erotic stimulus of
Emma Hamilton's charms, certain unlovely concomitants of the older
(military) class of virtues make their appearance, such as the
savagery displayed in the above passages, the ridiculous vanity which
at Naples and Palermo led him to act like some pampered _prima donna_,
and, interpenetrating everything, the flamboyant piety of his
sentiments.  In this last respect he resembles many of the great land
and sea pirates who have made the political map of the world. Impelled
by that blind selective force which makes for efficiency and of which
they are the tangible expression, these race-instruments are apt to be
genuinely convinced of the Deity's approval of their actions. They do
not hesitate, like ordinary mortals, as to what is best--they _know_;
the "best" is what their instincts prompt them to do, and it is a
quite natural anthropomorphism that they should identify this "best"
with the wishes of some superior being.  Nevertheless, a few of the
mightiest conquerors of mankind have cherished no illusions on the
score of God Almighty, and it is to be observed that this kind of
phraseology, which sounds well enough in the mouth of a Mahomet, and
was wondrously to the taste of Nelson, has become rather rare in the
despatches of modern admirals.

"Down, down with the damned Frenchmen" is perfectly intelligible when
one bears in mind that during those momentous years England lived in a
state of frenzy bordering on insanity. Our agents in the Mediterranean
doubtless failed to realise that, though we must crush the French,
there were nations to whom French rule was nevertheless beneficial:
nations who, as an Englishman then wrote, would have welcomed "Satan
himself as deliverer" from Bourbon despotism. Excess of patriotic zeal
may well have led Nelson to execute Caracciolo, or Sidney Smith to
give to the scoundrel chosen by Caroline for the assassination of King
Joseph a written order enjoining on all British commanders by land and
sea to respect and protect his person.  [Footnote: See p. 66 of _Le
Trame del Reazionarii_, Naples, 1861.] Which only proves that excesses
should be avoided.

How far the oppression of Napoleon necessitated the oppression of
humane aspirations developing outside the immediate sphere of our
warlike activity, might form the subject of erudite disquisitions;
certain it is that we have changed our minds since then. Our poets
were right and our politicians wrong--as politicians ever will be,
when they put back the hands of the clock. We no longer disparage
Italians for committing acts upon which we, as Englishmen, have always
prided ourselves; we cheerfully admit that in this extinction of
national liberalism our Government played the part of the wicked fairy
in the tale. It does one good to realise that Nelson was the last, the
very last, of his race to be taken in by the Bourbons, and that God
Almighty Himself grew to be favourably disposed towards those "rebels"
and their perverse strivings. Subsequent events, at least, point to
that conclusion.

That being so, why do we seek to round off the anfractuosities of an
historical figure like his as if it were designed for some special
purpose of fiction?  For two reasons, I think. In the first place, we
have woven a mystic net of feeling around him and ourselves; he is the
symbol of our courage, our patriotism; and if we hear him accused of
anything of which we consider ourselves incapable, such as the
Caraccioli murder, we resent it as an imputation upon our own
characters and exculpate him with all the shifts and subterfuges which
we would employ in such a case. And then--his virtues and vices are
those of the old military caste. The moral delinquencies of a great
man like Bacon leave us cool, because he was a thinker whose traits
correspond to a more recent development of our neural organisation.
Bacon was a mere civilian. But the bellicose disposition of Nelson is
a venerable specific quality, deeply engrained. Hence the detachment
which is easily accomplished in order to review the case of a
philosopher only succeeds, in that of a warrior, after something of a
struggle.  The roots of feeling, superficial in our sense of civic
honour, lie far down and are hard to disengage where military honour
is concerned.

None the less, were we not so incurably romantic, we might profitably
set up a time-limit for the deification of heroes. It may still be
odious to speak the truth concerning the lamented General Gordon, who
brought destruction on himself and other brave men through
disobedience and incapacity; but Trafalgar is a long way off and,
after all, what a relatively small matter it was, this Naples episode!

It may be said that I am "going for" Nelson even as Sir H. Johnston
lately "went for" Drake.  Nothing of the kind. I care not a fig about
Nelson.  I am only entering a humble protest against the principle of
"useful mendacity." My contention is that as a nation we are quite
sentimental enough and quite sufficiently tainted with Mafeking-night
neurasthenia to enable us to dispense with such questionable methods
of education as are exemplified in the sentence which was quoted at
the outset. Boys are naturally prone to hero-worship; the reverence
for sheer truth wherever it may lead is what they ought to learn at
college.  Nor am I doubting the writer's good intentions, which are
self-evident; he is making for the best by the light of inner
ratiocination; to instil patriotism is, _a priori_, a laudable motive.
But I question the utility of falsehood of Jesuitical
misrepresentation under any conditions. The end does not justify the
means; and this particular fable about Caracciolo will be exploded by
every lad who becomes interested in our hero and cares to look up the
subject for himself--with what consequence?  He will learn to distrust
and possibly despise an otherwise excellent teaching system. He will
say what most of us have said: Those masters of ours--what frauds they
were!

Altogether, the time has come when the task of artificially cleansing
the makers of history from their natural imperfections--the task of
dividing what cannot be divided, an in-dividuality--be it undertaken
in never so charitable a spirit, is one which no self-respecting man
will assume. _De mortuis nil nisi verum_. We have learnt to condemn
the teaching of many hopeless irrationalities, and the life of an
English admiral is not to be written after the fashion of the
forty--or is it fifty?--biographies of Saint Patrick. Panegyric stands
on the level of the pious fraud. Shall evil be done that good may come
of it; has anything ever been gained by denying a well-established
fact? Surely the lesson of all history is that the propagation of
non-truths is unprofitable to humanity.

That nameless protean evil, which refuses to see _things as they are_,
sometimes takes the shape of patriotic emotionalism, and then produces
an acute and contagious disorder that can nowise be tolerated in
polite society. It calls for instant isolation. Fortunately a specific
is at hand nowadays in the shape of that modern spirit of veracity
from which none of us can wholly withdraw ourselves--no, not even the
ambiguous Mr. Gladstone. So it is worth while comparing his attitude
towards the Bourbons with that of Nelson. Patriots both, they stand at
opposite poles of thought, and it is quite impossible to conceive
Gladstone writing (another Nelsonian postscript): "I must beg leave to
warn you to be careful how you mention the characters of such
excellent Sovereigns as the King and Queen of Naples"; he spoke, if I
remember rightly, of the "negation of God erected into a system." Some
persons, to be sure, are to be considered as atavisms. Thus, after
reading Gladstone's just and tremendous _j'accuse_, it is well to
peruse the apologists _Gondon et confrères_. No cause so vile, that
some human being will not be found to defend it.

It has been said that the morality of great men cannot be judged by
ordinary standards. They create the types; it remains for posterity,
that sees them in their true perspective, to select what is good, to
approve or condemn. I conjecture that the shade of Nelson is now
wandering in meads of asphodel beyond Lethe, utterly indifferent to
our opinions. I conjecture, moreover, that in condoning his errors we
do not honour him, but merely dishonour ourselves; that the only thing
which discredits neither party is to seek the truth, and to speak it,
without passion or prejudice. In so doing, it behoves us to remember
that the Nelson of Aboukir and of Naples is one and the same person;
he cannot be taken to pieces and separately appraised; he is not a
kind of corralline growth, the minutest portion of which is but a
sample of the whole. The older class of historians will explain that
there are two Nelsons, and therewith dismiss the subject; as for
ourselves, we grant that he is one and indivisible, but shrug our
shoulders at the hopeless task of reconciling his actions. In other
words, we are like those mediaeval schoolmen who co-ordinated facts
instead of subordinating them. When we have ceased to isolate two
incidents in a man's life as if there were no organic connection
between them--when we can demonstrate Nelson's peculiar mentality to
have been such that without Neapolitan abominations Trafalgar could
not have been won--then at last history may be entitled to its claim
to be called a science.

But our biographers are altogether in an anomalous position. They are
better-class ballad-mongers, who sagaciously dispute the fable of
Romulus, but have yet to learn that certain new theories of conduct
have grown up since they were at school. A few take pleasure in
glacial objectivity, in chaste pen-and-ink sketches, and are safe; as
for the rest, we read them less for what they write than for what they
are. Their moral apparatus--how dim, how far away! If future
historians intend to give us canvasses glowing with all the hues of
subjective culture and feeling, they should seek out dyes that cannot
fade; since that old theocratic system of morality has lost its
colour, its many-tinted woof has been bleached into a worthless rag in
the dry light of to-day. They must take into their service a new and
rational body of ethics; sounder ideas of what is right and wrong, and
why it is right and wrong. Unprovided with this, they will remain what
they are--anachronisms, museum specimens. They may still succeed in
stimulating thought, as does the writer who has led me into this
disquisition, but only as warning examples.

This will apply, above all, to the historians of men like Nelson. A
large part of the crazy ethics that infect our literature is due to
introspection which, instead of purifying, confuses us, and produces a
hypocritical state of mind that amazes other nations. For it is an
open secret that though our English morality, while spontaneous, is of
the highest order, it becomes rapidly vitiated by introspection. And
thus we get a curious phenomenon, which I should call the lesson of
this whole Naples business--to wit, that it is not Nelson or
contemporary English politicians who are deserving of blame; they
fought for a great cause, and what they did amiss was done in the heat
of the fray. Nelson, the unconscious race-instrument, went ahead
without much thought and, despite Caracciolo blunders, ultimately made
for the best from our English point of view. But these blind guides,
his modern panegyrists, in striving to make for the best by the light
of conscious ratiocination, make for the worst. He led us to victory;
they lead us into the ditch.

For the rest, is it not an astonishing fact that races, in making for
this "best," often fall below the standard of the average tradesman?
Events long subsequent to 1799 prove that civilised nations are
capable of actions towards each other that would be reprobated in a
society of Todas. The ethics of modern state-craft: to what hairy
anthropoid must we go back in order to find a justification for them?
Judged by the outlook of the coster-monger, the violation of
contracts, the massacre of the helpless and innocent, are unworthy
proceedings. Carried out by brave fleets and with the smiling approval
of Almighty God, such deeds are straightway stamped with the hall-mark
of national virtue. The fact is, no race has yet been so rich that it
could afford to exhibit the ideal of goodness which is frequently
observed in the individual. The aggregate community lags far behind
its nobler elements.

Yet it moves. New race-qualities arise. We all of us dismiss, as
unfit for the job, a nursery-maid who sees ghosts. But not long ago
mail-clad warriors and princes of the Church believed in a living
devil and other bogies, their minds swaying between insane terror and
insaner hopes; existence was little more than a round of litanies and
assassinations, its monotony enlivened only by the buffoonery of
knight-errantry and occasional visitations of the plague. The
mail-shirts doffed, there arose a brood of melodramatic ruffians whose
very garments reflect their lack of sobriety; a prey to every
impostor, yet hungering, themselves, for every villainy. Let us be
done with this nonsense concerning modern effeminacy, with this
maudlin cult of mediaeval filth and roguery!

Our mental texture, like that of our bodies, is grown both saner and
more stable. The callousness of our ancestors is reprehensible in a
man of to-day.  We find it hard to believe that a few years back our
aristocratic ladies were wont to flock in shoals to see criminals
executed or to jeer at lunatics in Bedlam--these were the same stout
dames who would shriek and swoon away on the appearance of a mouse.
Such hysterical brutality may be picturesque, but it is not the stuff
to breed from.  We demand a nicer sense of measure and decency.  And
as to the degree of sensitiveness required nowadays, what shall be the
test? THIS: A man who can read the details of the Neapolitan massacres
of 1799--even in a short _précis_ like that of Madame
Giglioli--without a feeling of shuddering abhorrence for their
authors, shall be considered to lack the nervous organisation
requisite for modern needs.

An orgy which, but for Nelson's infatuation for an illiterate harlot,
could never have taken place.  . . . This is the truth---an ugly
truth, and one that will bear repetition, for to be of use it must, in
vulgar parlance, be _well rubbed in_; its good effect depends, like
that of certain ointments, upon the pertinacity with which the
operation of inunction is performed. Or if we prefer to take it in the
shape of a pill, why then, in God's name, let us swallow it without
further grimaces and endeavour to assimilate it into our system,
convinced that it will beneficially counteract the virus of crooked
thinking with which some pseudo-historians are trying to inoculate us.

"The list of victims," says Fortunato, writing not in 1800 but in
1900, "is still incomplete--" Enough. We may leave the Market Square
with its engine of horror, merely noting, as we pass, that to dub
these martyrs "Jacobins," after the playful manner of Mr. Gutteridge,
does not alter the fact that no men ever perished in a worthier cause.

What a jovial company they were, meanwhile, at the palace! A little
_mixed_, I fear; but what of that, so long as they were happy?
Caroline, the Hamiltons, Nelson, Spéciale, the adventurer Acton, "my
friend and general" Mammone, the drinker of human blood--kings,
prostitutes, priests, bric-à-brac dealers, queens, cut-throats,
hangmen, heroes--all a jolly family, carousing, hunting, whoring,
murdering, lying, praying all day long and half the night: how the
immortal gods must have laughed at the fun!

Fun for the gods, no doubt. But, humanly considered, a 'detestable
business from beginning to end. . . .





AT THE FORGE

I

THE sun was rising.  Despite his sixty odd years, old Alf was already
afoot; he stood at his doorway, sniffing the air and examining the
weather-signs. A cloudless July morning. It had been fine for weeks:
it would be fine for ever, apparently. The days were slipping by, one
like another, without incident.

"Holding out well," he concluded. There was no fear of a drought in
the district, for countless rivulets descended from the woodland
heights to refresh the fields and orchards at their foot. One of them
ran not far distant through a marshy tract of Alf's ground; a fraction
of its waters had been diverted into a pond where ducks were playing
about.  His eye rested awhile on their movements, and then fell upon a
man who was passing along the road.

"Hullo, Henry!" he called out. "What on earth are you doing down here
at this hour of the morning?"

"Walking," the other replied, as though that explained everything.
"Are you coming up to-day?"

"Maybe--maybe; in the afternoon. Brothers all right?"

Henry was one of three orphan brothers who lived up yonder, on a
green, cultivated patch among the beeches, at the Forge.

"Same as usual," he said. "We'll expect you later on, then. Nice lot
of ducks, old man." And he slouched away.

What was he up to?

Some mischief, no doubt. The farmer could not conceive Henry otherwise
than up to mischief--he had been the same from boyhood. But these
escapades had grown with his growth, and Henry's name had latterly
become a byword among respectable folks. A great borrower of money,
too; probably a thief; but an engaging rascal for all that.
Fortunately he was seldom in the country. He used to arrive like a
comet from San Francisco or God knows where and, after recruiting his
health at his brothers' expense and getting rid of a "sort of homesick
feeling" which, he declared, haunted him even in the gayest capitals,
vanish as suddenly as he had come.

Perhaps his elder brother's behaviour had something to do with these
departures. For after the preliminary outbursts of fraternal love had
calmed down, they used to quarrel like fiends, and Henry, who prided
himself on being a man of the world, was apt to experience some
difficulty in restraining his naturally violent temper. Mathew, the
senior, had an offensively straightforward fashion of alluding to
financial and other delicate matters, especially when he was drunk.

The farmer often found his way up to the Forge, either on foot or on
his old grey pony. It was a long walk, and all up hill. He had a
sentimental attachment to the place and an interest in the three
"boys," as he still called them, since their mother had come from his
village and been his playmate in olden days. He never understood why
the pretty Joan, who could have had her pick of all the youths of the
place, had married that wild man of the Forge, their father. Women do
strange things sometimes.  Well, they were both dead now, the parents.

Yes, he would walk up that afternoon.

They still called it "the Forge," for such had been its purpose in
former times. Now everything was changed. The penurious peasants had
at last built a good road that skirted the foot of the hills and
defied with stout bridges the floods in springtime, and the old
winding path which climbed upwards into the forest between each
settlement and then descended again, was now frequented only by summer
lovers wandering hand in hand under its tangled network of interlacing
boughs, or, in winter, by woodcutters who brought down ponderous
beechen logs on their sledges amid the cracking of whips and cheery
tinkling of bells. No carts ever passed that way now; it was grown
into a narrow green track, invaded by tall weeds, forgotten. And the
occupation of the Forge was quite gone--its very name had become
unfamiliar to the rising generation.

It was an old-fashioned cottage near one of the many streams that
carved themselves a channel down the steep woodlands; a bright garden
and a few fields stood around it. And within, everything had remained
unchanged for years--its smoky wooden wainscoting and air of mellow
prosperity were always the same.

A veritable abode of peace it seemed: so calm and green--so remote
from worldly strife. And there was a horseshoe nailed over the porch;
Alf noticed it each time he entered the door, and wondered how much
longer the fortunes of the house would stand. For they were nearly
always on bad terms, the two elder brothers. He was inclined to blame
Henry, since the other, whatever his failings, was at least
straightforward and honest. Without Mathew's frugal administration,
their patrimony would long ago have crumbled to pieces.

Mathew was a close-fisted, bearded fellow of the
conscientious-melancholy type, with frequent relapses into boisterous
savagery, during which he drank fiercely. He drank not from any love
of good comradeship, but from a kind of solitary, ancestral necessity;
his father, his grandfather--they had all been drunkards in a
respectable, rustic fashion.

Likely enough this primitive trait was what exasperated Henry, who was
a convivial and altogether modern creature: frail of body, with
burning eyes; easy-going in money matters and temperate in food and
drink.

None of the three brothers felt the poetic charm of the Forge like
Henry. He could watch for hours the light-effects upon the vast plain
below and listen to elfish forest-notes all around. It was a rare
change after his feverishly varied experiences of ocean and town-life:
he seemed to come back to his mother's arms and to be an
impressionable child once more.

For the Forge was wonderful at all hours and at all seasons; wonderful
from its sylvan witchery and aerial aloofness from the works of man;
never so full of wonder as on those early summer mornings when the
hush of dawn, the hush of things to be, still lingered among the
dew-drenched beeches, and the plain below, swathed in mists, called up
suggestions of a boundless mere surging in amethystine wavelets. Then,
from behind the hills, a swift ray of gold would issue, unweaving the
mock billows that rolled upwards distractedly, to cling among wet
clefts; while all tender things of night trooped away to seek refuge
under leaves and stones from the eye, the pitiless eye of flame, that
peered down through the green canopy overhead.

This is what Henry would call the "morning mood"; a mood he seldom
saw, being a man of fashion and accustomed--save on certain urgent
occasions--to rise late.

To Henry the sun was a spectacle--a mere spectacle.

Mathew held it to be a divinely-appointed contrivance for ripening the
crops.

And Baby never seemed to see the sun.

Baby was the youngest of the three.

In the exuberance of her joy at the birth of a third infant after so
many years, his mother had given him some strange-sounding name,
Theodosius or what not, which none of the country-folk could pronounce
or remember. So the old one clung to him; and it suited him well
enough, with his cherub-face and ever-ready smile.

Their affection for this boy was the only common bond between the two
elder brothers.

But, nowadays, the sun never shone for Baby.

Something was wrong with him. The school-master had sent word to say
that he was useless at his books. He was changing in appearance, too;
his eyebrows waxed thick, and into the blue eyes came a strange light.
He still smiled, but it was no longer the smile of lively, ingenuous
boyhood; of a doll, rather, or some unfeeling idol. He would have
looked well enough no doubt standing bare-armed at the forge, like
some young Cyclops, smiting the iron amid a shower of incandescent
sparks, for his strength was terrific; but those days were over. The
old anvil sat all awry in a jungle of docks and darnels on its mouldy
stump, and the few implements that had not been sold were rusting,
forgotten, in the shed. Baby meanwhile roamed about aimlessly, and
spoke little. And he had developed singular, bloodthirsty tastes which
Henry, who had been absent for nearly three years, viewed with
considerable disfavour.

"I tell you I don't like it at all," he said to Mathew. "Did you see
how he tortured that fowl yesterday? Seemed to enjoy doing it. He's
going all wrong, that youngster. I know a thing or two--one doesn't
knock about the world for nothing.  He's what you call a--"

"We're none of us perfect."

"You're a great man for commonplaces, brother Mathew."

"And you're a damned fool."

It stands to reason that Henry--sailor, mechanic, waiter,
school-teacher, and professor of various other polite
accomplishments--should know something of the world. But the elder had
noticed the change long ago, though he feigned ignorance. He would not
allow others to find fault with his charge, regarding Baby's education
as his exclusive domain.

Nevertheless, even Alf had observed the same thing. The affectionate
child that used to clamber about his knees and fetch him flowers and
play merrily among the ducks by the waterside whenever his mother
brought him down to the village, had become tainted with a curious
dullness. And he used to be so like Joan, formerly, in looks and
manner--so pretty, so trim and tidy in his little ways. "He'll keep
the house in order," she had once said, "when I'm gone. You should see
how neatly he folds up his clothes every night, all by himself. He's
my favourite, I can tell you."

No wonder; because Mathew at this time was already grown into a
cantankerous youth, dutiful enough and hard-working, but obstinate as
a mule, while the other was at sea somewhere--a hopeless vagabond.

It was lucky, Alf thought, that Joan never lived to see this sinister
blossoming. Whence had it come?

For there was no doubt about it; the fair boy was growing monstrous;
some alien drop had crept into his blood, churning it all
contrariwise. Alf was old: he remembered three generations at the
Forge, each worse than the last. "Like the rill," he argued, in his
peasant-sagacity. "Clear atop--ends in a bog."

And his eye wandered from the contented ducks in their pond to where,
all wreathed in the ascending mists of morning, the Forge stood.

Yes; he would certainly walk up that afternoon.



II

"You clear out!" Mathew was saying. "I'll have no dirty thief about
here."

Drunk, as usual.

It was his pet theme on such occasions--he always preached, in
liquor--and when he attached himself to an idea there was no shaking
it out of him.  Henry, who was gifted with the rogue's blameless
conscience and a goodnatured view of life, was growing tired of this
eternal moralising. It got on his nerves. And now, when he felt more
than usually cheerful and well-disposed after his midday meal, here
was this gloomy grumbler harping on his old string. He tried to turn
the conversation.

"I saw Alf this morning. He's coming up later on."

"A fine thing, that brain of yours," the other continued, grimly, "but
what's the use of it, if it can't help you to live? Always prowling
about after other men's money or their wives. You clear out!  And
you're spoiling Baby, too. He's all changed, damn you."

"There you're wrong, for once. I like the youngster too well. Who
built his forge, I should like to know? You're jealous."

It was quite true. Ever since Henry, in an idle moment, had erected
beside the stream a miniature water-wheel that worked in connection
with a ceaselessly-palpitating wooden hammer, the boy's awed respect
for this vagrant brother had melted into warm love and admiration.
Mathew, he felt, could never have built such a wonder.

It was a grand plaything which, for some obscure reason, he called his
"Forge." So the name of the old Forge, that once useful establishment,
was still surviving in ominous degeneration--futile movement, with
some little noise.

"Anyhow," Mathew pursued, "you clear out! I can't stand a dirty thief.
Get back to Saint Louis."

"That's no place for an honest man."

Mathew never understood his brother's jokes.

The other, meanwhile, was thinking. There was some sense in the
suggestion--the very same idea had been in his own mind lately. He was
once more growing tired of the Forge; not tired exactly, for he loved
green trees and fields better than the smoke of cities, and a life of
contemplation had ever been his ideal; but the place had its
drawbacks.  Mathew alone was enough to drive anyone mad with his
moodiness. And he looked round the room: it was cheerful enough with
all its old ornaments, unchanged for years, shining brightly and
testifying to Baby's conscientious care, and yet--always the same
thing. Henry yearned, in the intervals between his bucolic moments,
for some of his old pleasures; he was rather too young to bury himself
in this fashion. But, alas! he was a pauper, and they disliked paupers
over there. Here was a chance.

"Buy me out," he said. "Then I'll go for good."

The proposal had an unexpected effect upon Mathew. His glum
countenance expanded into a smile, and presently the man was convulsed
with merriment--he laughed long and loud, rocking himself to and fro.
It was so heartfelt, so infectious, that Henry caught himself smiling
against his will.

"Buy me out," he urged again. "I'm speaking fair."

"Buy you out?" Mathew roared at last. "No!  but I'll tell you what
I'll do. I'll--I'll--ha! ha!  ha!"

He seemed unable to find words. One of his saturnine laughing fits,
Henry concluded.

"Well?" he began.

"Buy you out? No. But I'll--I'll kick you out: there!"

"You'll _what_?" Henry had kept his "beastly temper" well under
control so far. He knew his beastly temper; it had brought him into
trouble more than once. The other, still chuckling hugely,
condescended to explain:

"Break your head: see? Can't stand a dirty thief--"

The refrain seemed to please him.

"Dirty thief," the other growled. He was sick of that phrase. "And
you? Just a drunken swine."

A hairy arm came at him and smote him a stunning blow on the forehead,
between the eyes.  That was Mathew's brotherly answer.

Drunker than usual, in truth; for never till now had he raised his
hand against Henry. There was a silence, while the younger, dazed with
pain and rage, felt a beast within him, struggling to break its
fetters. Then Mathew quietly remarked:

"I've had about enough of you "--as if this simple statement were
intended to close the incident.  He rose unsteadily, and moved towards
the door.

The words had roused the other out of a trance: the beast had emerged.
Distrustful of his own muscles, he looked around for some means of
retaliation. And a shining chisel, hitherto unrevealed, limned itself
out before his eyes. It lay upon the table at arm's length, bright and
comely; a very handy thing. Henry's fingers closed upon it
automatically.

"Not quite enough of me, old man," he replied as, raising himself
forwards, he dealt his brother a mad, downward blow that embedded the
blade below the skull--there, where head joins neck.  Under that
impact the firm flesh yielded like water.  Mathew collapsed as though
his bones had gone from within him; he dropped on his knees, then,
slightly swaying, rolled sideways. And there he lay, all huddled up,
like the fool he was; with a chisel in his back.

Dead, without a doubt. Dead as a doornail.  How easy, how absurdly
easy, it had been.

Henry drew nearer and looked at him. There was nothing perturbing in
the sight; he had seen dozens of them and they were all alike, more or
less, in their stupid way. "You never know what a fool a man can
look," a philosophical transatlantic friend had once observed--"never!
Not till you see him dead." How true! He remembered the occasion of
that remark--the place, the hour; he remembered----

But, by God, this was not your ordinary kind of fool. It was Mathew.
The veil was lifting, and Henry's nimble mind began to work under the
control of will once more. Those last two minutes were disentangling
themselves: out of shapeless sensations they crystallised with
scientific precision, like the ice-flowers on a December window-pane,
into the hideous fabric of his crime. He had killed his brother. It
was a plain affair, though, for aught he could discover as his own
responsibility in the transaction, the whole thing might have been an
idle dream. How had it come about?

"Get my head clear," he muttered, as he walked to the casement and
looked out upon the landscape.

Light: light everywhere--a flood of meridian glory that poured into
the world's innermost recesses.  Mankind was astir among the fields
below, and the chant of ordered life, of things that are, floated
upwards from the teeming plain whose variegated crops, sharply defined
as the countries on a map, trended away towards a dusky line on the
horizon, a belt of forest dimly discernible, where flowed the great
river. The land was outspread in a crazy patchwork of green--greens in
squares and diamond-patterns--greens lusty and frail; the pride of
man, shimmering all velvety under the passionless sun.

The old, old prospect, noonday type of illumination; pleasant enough,
but somewhat trite. He had been desiring a change, he
recollected--well, he was like to get it now. A fine day, none the
less.  And a fine day to-morrow. . . .

Suddenly the instinct of self-preservation, heritage of all sane
creatures, rushed in upon him, devouring every other feeling.

"I'm the fool, and no mistake! Now for a plan.  Think--think!"

He sat down by the table, and thought.

Projects flew through his head, clustering wildly for approval; all
the old tricks he had heard or read of; flight, burnings of bodies,
buryings, hidings--one more preposterous than another. A complicated
business, after all. Baby: that was the trouble.  If Baby were to
appear at that moment, it would ruin everything; there was no thinking
with that boy in the room. And how explain things to him?

He meditated furiously.

A scheme must be elaborated at once and definitely adopted. It was
there, the revelation, if he could but seize it; he felt it hovering
near at hand, a will-o'-the-wisp, eluding capture. "There's a way out
of every mess," another sensible friend of his had once declared, "and
a good way, mark you--if they'll give you time to think it out."

Time! there you have it.

And Baby might be standing at the door even now.

"This won't do!" He bored his fists into his temples and his pulses
ached with the fiery work of concentration.

Was it gone for ever, that wavering inspiration?

A fine thing, that brain of yours, but if it can't help you to live. .
. . Why must the phrase occur to him just then?

And all the while his eyes remained fixed upon the handle of the door,
lest it should turn.

What if it turned?

Now he drew a deep breath of contentment, for an immense effort had
lured the apparition nearer.  It approached shyly,
reluctantly--arrayed in all the grace of an angelic vision, herald of
salvation. For the merest twinkling it stood erect and eyed him
serenely, perfect in loveliness. Yet when he sought to fix the shape
upon his mind, those outlines', erewhile convincing, disdained to
re-clothe themselves in due habiliments. They were hesitating,
elusive.

The main thing, however, was clear.

"Baby," he reflected. "Yes; that's it."

Baby must be implicated; Baby must be transformed into the murderer.
That was the glimpse, the celestial revelation.

But how?

Stare as he might, those luminous contours never coalesced again. On
the contrary, they were forever melting into new combinations; flowing
hither and thither like coloured rills before his eyes, meeting and
dispersing in restless bewilderment.  He began to feel rather dizzy.
Objects flitted aimlessly, reeled and shifted and swam about.
Everything moved; there were noises, too. Then the whole room began to
sway--it was decidedly sickening.

Faint and gasping, he clutched the edge of the table.

The door-handle was turning, like all the rest



III

Baby entered, inanely seraphic.

He had been gardening. One arm was laden with freshly-gathered
lettuces, while the other wiped the glittering drops of perspiration
off his smooth and convex forehead. Perennially moist, this poor tumid
brow; summer and winter Baby was too hot, as if, by some flaw in
construction, a, furnace too ardent had been set within his body. No
one guessed what he suffered at night under his blanket.  Had he known
the bliss of sleeping unclothed on the cool woodland earth like any
other wild creature, with the wind playing about his matted curls and
chilly dew gathering in the hollow places of his back and shoulders,
no power on earth could now have kept him indoors after dark. But his
mother had tamed him young; those were joys unknown, undreamed of.

All engrossed with one idea, he made a methodical heap of lettuces on
the table. Only then did he turn round and espy his brother near the
window and the prostrate form of Mathew lying on the floor. Mathew
looked unhappy.

A cloud fell on his face.

"Oh. Hurt himself!" he cried, perceiving the weapon. Baby was
acquainted with the chisel's idiosyncrasy; "the chisel could cut; the
chisel could cut badly."

The other took no heed whatever. He was thinking--thinking. He had
regained his composure, and was trying to piece together certain
tantalising contours, when Baby's voice briskly broke in upon his
meditations:

"Out with it! Here you are. Oh.  Blood. . . ."

It was exasperating to be interrupted like this.

There was a pause, and Henry began his labour once more. It was
scared, the vision, but the man wooed it fiercely. Now----

"More blood . . . always blood."

Henry pricked up his ears, for the words were followed by low and
bestial purring sounds that caused his hair to stand on end. They
proceeded from Baby's throat. The sight of that oozing mass had struck
a horrid chord in the boy's nature, and all his frame hummed in
unison. There was something in the noise that paralysed Henry's
initiative: hope sank within him. Turning round, he saw Baby on his
knees, bent over the corpse; fascinated, a-tremble.

"Look at him!" he said, addressing some imaginary intellectual
sympathiser. "Look at him!  How the hell is a man to think seriously
with that unholy snarling beast in the room?"

And though Baby's gestures and chatterings, as he continued to gaze
upon that scarlet spot, grew more unpropitious every minute, yet Henry
failed to read the import of the change; he was merely annoyed at the
sight of a human being gloating over a pool of blood. For Henry was
temperamentally nice; his sense of propriety was easily outraged, and
this behaviour was unquestionably not correct.  What was the boy
doing?

Baby was staring himself into ghoulish madness.

Infernally awkward, anyhow.

Devising plans under such conditions was impossible for a man of
Henry's sensitive nerves.  The strain became unendurable--would he
never stop? It was indecent, this jackal business.

"Get up, you young beast!" he said, giving Baby a vicious kick.

The other rose from the ground. But he was ignited--in man-eating
mood, and he took his brother gently by the wrists. Then the snarling
began again. At that sound Henry's blood froze in his veins, and all
his joints were numbed.

"No, Baby," he muttered, lamely.

The pale terror fled as swiftly as it had come, and he realised the
situation. This idiot meant mischief; he must fight for it.

With a wild jerk he freed his right arm, preparatory to dealing a
desperate blow. But Baby was left-handed, and that hand, guided by
some primordial impulse of destruction, forthwith sped to his
brother's throat. It alighted like a caress, in flowery softness; and
there grew fast.

The man's blows rained on air; some thirsty vampire, it seemed, was
clinging to him and flapping black wings of damnation in his face.
Through a confused mist he beheld the lad's smooth features creased
into a mask--the very nightmare of a face; all the while, too, there
played a joyful melody upon his ears, like the ripple of many waters.
Slowly a sombre curtain closed about him. The paean grew hushed, and
he felt himself lifted from earth and borne aloft in the clutches of a
fiend.

They had fallen together.

Baby was uppermost, and as he watched how life, the mystery, tripped
away under the touch of his fingers, a thrilling sensation, a blissful
dream dimly remembered, crept over him. It grew to ecstasy, as though
normal passions hitherto sealed up and folded in the wintry texture of
his mind were at last, under some exotic stimulus, bursting into
flower. All the loves and aspirations denied to his degraded
adolescence converged in that awakening, and he would fain have dwelt
for ever in its glorious sunshine.

Soon the frenzy melted to a faint languor and dissolved away. Baby's
tormented lines relaxed into their wonted bland imbecility; he became
himself again and smilingly disposed towards the universe; almost
lovable. Still he lingered on the Scene.

They were both hurt now; hurt and unhappy looking, and dreadfully
untidy. He wondered what it meant. Then, gradually, the sight of those
two brothers, who never spoke and never stirred, began to disquiet
him. He sprang out of doors, and straightway forgot them. For an
irresistible magnet drew him along the garden path where sunflowers
beamed benignly; it drew him across a dank meadow, and through the
fence to the water side. He sat down on the old, accustomed log.

There it stood, the miracle, the joy.

Shrunk to a summer ribbon of silver, the docile stream was teased
through a mazy dance of pipes and passages towards an artificial
cataract whereunder, attached to a water-wheel, a hammer was beating a
restlessly cheerful measure amid the splashing of angry little waves.
That hammer!  There was nothing like it on earth. Other delights
swarmed about the building; other wheels, and a palisade by the shore,
and pointed stakes to impale storm-tossed leaves and grasses, and a
microscopic window through which you could look down upon the deluded
current gliding to its fall--but this was the chiefest of them. It was
a never-ending marvel: the beating heart of the Forge.  Ceaselessly,
night and day, that pleasurable din resounded; come when he might, at
sunrise, noon or evening, the wheel never tired of its playful
somersaults, nor the sprightly water of licking those smooth round
sides.

Of the original structure hardly a trace was now visible; the boy's
successive embellishments had transformed it into a symbol of his own
mind--an agglomeration of scraps of wood and iron, encrusted with
nails, and submerged under a wilderness of wheels that fulfilled the
inscrutable purposes of his architectural phantasy. There were
ornaments everywhere but never, never enough. The problem where to
affix them was one on which his brothers were always consulted, and
nothing pleased him better than when Mathew sagaciously shook his head
and bent down to correct some error, while Henry approved in lazy and
jocular fashion; or when Alf would slap his back and say:

"That's right, boy! Now for another wheel."

For Alf was his friend from earliest childhood, and took a keen
interest in the masterpiece; he noted everything.

Baby looked up and there, sure enough, was the kindly, grizzled face
of the old farmer peering upon him over the palings.

"Hallo, Baby!" he said. "Let's have a look at the machine."

He entered and examined the works critically.

"Who moved that post?" he inquired, pointing to some innovation.

"Mathew," said Baby.

"Where's Mathew?"

"Inside. Hurt himself."

"Hurt himself? What d'you mean, boy?"

That was the extent of Baby's information.

Alarmed by these words, the farmer walked to the house-door and
entered. The level beams of the sun poured into the chamber and fell
upon certain glistening patches on the floor. And he saw the tragedy.
The two brothers lay side by side; so Baby had willed, like a tidy
boy. Things lying about should always be tidied. But their eyes were
staring and their mouths agape, for a contingency so remote had not
been anticipated in his mother's scheme of education.

Alf stood aghast. Then, by an effort of will, he broke the spell of
horror and, tottering from that tainted room, sat down on the bench
beside the porch. The sight of that transfiguration had made him sick
at stomach.

A long while passed, and still he could not collect his thoughts.
Despite the fearful picture engraved upon his vision, he failed to
acquiesce in the full truth. "Hurt himself. ..." A lie, of course.
There was a practical side to the matter, then. It dawned upon him in
furious intensity.  He must act without delay.

Baby was watching from afar. Then he approached and again halted, for
he could read trouble and displeasure in his friend's face. He came a
few steps nearer, like some diffident animal, and waited once more.
The farmer looked into his eyes.

He remembered Joan, and olden days.

"Oh, Baby!" he said. "They'll hang you for this."

After these words he was stricken dumb.  Another wave of feeling was
passing over him, a wave of shuddering hatred, the loathing of the
pure for what is impure. All the traditions of his race, all the
uprightness of ages of decent law-abiding culture, surged up within
him against this pestilence, this savage, this ravisher of a fair
human life. He would tell the news in the village; men must bring down
the bodies and arrest the brute. He rose from his seat and strode down
the path.

The other could not believe his eyes. He stood leaning against the
sunny paling, one hand outstretched to bid farewell, petrified with
amazement. The farmer walked away without so much as looking round.
Never before had his friend behaved after this manner. Something was
wrong, very wrong, with the world. And now he was gone, actually gone.

The old man had not proceeded far under the trees before other
counsels prevailed. His simple heart, all puzzled and distraught, yet
found the right formula. "After all," he thought, "he's only a
half-witted child. They'll never hang him. And he'll follow me like a
dog."

He returned anon and said authoritatively: "You come back with me.
Now." Baby seemed to ponder the meaning of these words. Then his
glance strayed in the direction of the stream and rested on a
well-known spot.

He shook his head. How could he leave the Forge?

Alf divined his thoughts. He entered the shed, and presently came
forth again, bearing a large sack.

"Look here," he said. "We'll pack your machine into this, every bit of
it, and you shall carry it down and set it up in my water. . . ."

The other listened and understood. His Forge was to be taken away--a
world of unhappiness!  Cowed by the man's firm demeanour, he said
nothing, but his eyes glittered dangerously and he refused to stir
from his place.

"Where the ducks are, you know." Even that did not move him. Sullen
and defiant, he looked on as the wheels and ever-industrious hammer,
the pipes and boards, all of them, one by one, were torn down from
their old places and stowed away, in darkness and confusion, within
the sack. All too soon nothing remained to show where the miracle had
stood; nothing save four mighty piles, firm-planted by the shore,
among the stones.

The little brook, leaping to its forgotten channel in a passionate
eddy of joy, bore off the muddy stains of human interference and sped
away gleaming.

"Come along, Baby; and carry the sack. It's getting late."

And they turned their backs upon the old Forge and crossed the
familiar bridge, the first of many on that winding woodland path.
Neither spoke a word.

The hush of evening, of things that have been, was already nestling
among those dreamy upland beeches. But through the gaps of their
far-spreading foliage they beheld, down below, another and almost
fabulous world, a world of liquid gold, that still throbbed with life.
For the sun was sinking in a radiance that drowned the colour-mosaics
of noonday, and at their feet the plain, interwoven like some
praying-carpet with arabesque delineations of roads and hedges and
waterways, lay weltering in hazy leagues of orange-tawny splendour.
Then a calm fell from on high, an apostolic peace; it streamed
earthwards in showers of dewy benignance, and now nothing told of
mortal man save where some window, smitten by a lingering beam,
flashed into the twilight its fugitive, crimson conflagration.

The evening phase. . . .

And still neither spoke. The farmer trudged along, weighed down by a
load of perplexities to which his long life's experience could suggest
no solution. Since that morning, when he had stood at his doorstep and
glanced up at the Forge all veiled in ascending mists--what an
eternity had passed! And the days, of late, had been slipping by; one
like another, without incident.

He thought of Mathew, whose moral worth had always appealed to him; a
drunkard but a, right-minded fellow; that was past gainsaying. As for
the other--the use and beauty of Henry's perverse intellectual gifts
had ever been a puzzle to the old man who viewed human affairs from a
fixed point, as he viewed the stars; an enigma, a blot in the world's
contriving. Yet in the recollection of those, poor distorted remains
he grew more charitable; the ways of God are dark indeed, and--who
knows?--without men of Henry's stamp there would perhaps be no honest
folk. And then the third, with his attractive face. . . . Baby, a
murderer!  The evil mood returned.

His companion, bent under a heavy material burden, was stepping
blithely forward. Maybe he had visions of a consoling kind--visions of
another Forge-installation, of a sandy beach where amiable fowls
disported themselves on quaintly-fashioned feet or paddled
sententiously about the water. It never struck him that his miracle
would be mute and motionless in that stagnation: its foolish little
heart at rest. And still they marched in silence.  Once or twice the
old man stopped short as though to say something, but he evidently
thought better of it.

Darkness meanwhile came on apace. The blue woodflowers waned to pallid
spectres under its touch; chill breaths of wind were creeping down the
gullies. Their path grew ever narrower in branch-charmed mystery, and
when at last they emerged under the purple dome of Heaven, the lights
of the village had begun to twinkle.





EDGAR ALLAN POE

MUCH has been written of late concerning Poe, but his personality
splits up so much more easily than that of other authors into
separable fractions, that it is still difficult to estimate him as a
harmonious whole, an individual. There is the Poe of French writers,
the Poe of Griswold, the Poe sane or insane (to adopt the
classification of Mr. Willis), Poe the critic, the husband, the
drunkard, the martyr and so forth.  Professor Woodberry has
disentangled and rearranged certain of these aspects with patient but
chill discrimination. To present them in such a manner that their
coherence is seen to be inevitable is the task of a literary
biographer; but before the fabric can be erected, each part must be
considered and appraised in its relation to the whole. Poe's views,
for example, upon domestic architecture and furniture are pronounced;
they form a minute but integral portion of himself. Until they have
been judged in their relation to the other portions, and traced to
their sources in his reading, his age and his heredity, how shall the
picture be complete?  Nor can his literary personality be regarded
otherwise--at this time of the day--than as an expression of bodily
organisation. Enough and to spare has been written upon certain
aspects of his moral life. We all know that he drank. But not all
critics are yet equipped with a knowledge of the pathology of mind
sufficient to enable them to pass judgment upon the sombre, lovable
and mysterious being, as he is depicted by those who sympathised with
him in the closing years when he was tossed on an ocean of vain hopes
and vain regrets. Who is not moved by Mrs. Weiss's account of that
visit to the Hermitage? Some of Poe's epistolary effusions, on the
other hand, leave a bad taste in the mouth. His last years both as a
man and a writer are full of jarring notes, of conflicting elements
which must be separately analysed before they can be welded into a
homogeneous whole. Not every critic possesses the requisite
sensitiveness, veracity and sheer learning for this work of
reconstruction.

The "good woman," unfortunately, has a knack of coming too late upon
the scene, and when at last she does appear, she is apt to eke out
lack of sense with superfluity of feeling. Such was not invariably the
case with the tender ladies whose names are associated with Poe's
later life, yet they certainly failed to understand the case of Edgar
Poe as a whole: how else shall we explain the posthumous publication
of his miserable outpourings to them?  Such an act savours little of
wisdom or womanly modesty. To brandish aloft the scalp of a conquered
enemy may suit the humour of a redskin, but not of a civilised lady
who has been honoured with the confidences of a distraught and dying
genius.

There is Poe the American, whose patriotic labours have perhaps not
been sufficiently appreciated by his countrymen. It is not easy,
nowadays, to realise the low position which American letters then
occupied in the world's opinion, and the slavish adulation with which
every product from the European literary market was greeted in the
United States; not easy, therefore, to estimate the extent of Poe's
labours--how he encouraged American writers of every stamp, coaxed
them, drove them, pushed them the way they should go. Some talk of his
"regrettable scarification" of the New York _literati_. They must have
been a thin-skinned generation, these _literati_!

"'Is there no honour--no chivalry left in the land? Are our most
deserving writers to be forever sneered down, or hooted down, or
damned down with faint praise?"

That does not sound like scarification. Taking his criticisms one by
one, it will be found that the proportion of favourable, indifferent
and unfavourable is, approximately, as 3: 2: 1--showing that for each
unfavourable review there were five not unfavourable. Surely this is a
high allowance, considering the quality of the material before him.
An equal number of similarly incapable British scribblers would not
have been let off so easily.

One author is surprised that none of his critiques is "unreservedly
laudatory." This simply means that they are conscientiously written.

Essentially, however, Poe was both non-American and non-English. The
promptings of his blood were Celtic and Latin. He had a classic sense
of analysis, form and measure. For this _justesse_ he has been held in
high repute by French writers and it is certainly not without a
feeling of propriety that he has given French names and extractions to
the heroes of his tales of ratiocination (Dupin, Le Grand). Truth
_versus_ Goodness is the keynote of his intellectual strivings. He had
a bald love of truth which puzzled and pained many good folk. Lowell
observed that he "seemed wanting in the faculty of perceiving the
profounder ethics of art"--in other words, that scientific criticism,
as Poe conceived it, is in a manner un-moral. Lowell, to be sure,
wrote in 1845. But Mr. Stoddard has also remarked of some of Poe's
tales that "the power of such writing is certain: its good, its
sanity, are not so certain."

Are we never to grow out of this doctrine? A healthy person, who
refuses to be hampered with preconceived notions of wrongness or
ugliness, will find that Poe's ghoulish tales, like many "unhealthy"
writings, deal with interesting subjects in an interesting manner.
What more shall be expected of an author? Doctors tell us that
hypersensitiveness in the matter of what is morbid or immoral is far
from being always a good sign. And it has ever been the misfortune of
writers possessing mathematical consciousness of purpose that they are
exposed to the criticism of others who, in their anxiety to save their
souls from hell-fire, have not acquired the mental outfit necessary
for grasping their initial proposition.

A consideration of Poe's tales would be a good occasion for discussing
the question of local colour in fiction. Where precision in data is
required, no one is more precise than Poe. But it seems to me
indisputable that, for the subjects generally chosen by him, his own
indefinite atmosphere is the most suitable. To-day this is a matter of
sentiment, but the reader of the future, approaching these questions
with increasingly scientific canons of taste, will be enabled to draw
increasingly truthful conclusions from them.

There is a more general agreement that Poe was right as regards the
length of his tales. The English public alone continues to think
somewhat strangely upon this subject, for a generation fed upon the
gross fare of the Victorian epoch has naturally acquired a palate too
vitiated to savour the delicacy of simple tales. To them such
_entremets_, which none save a real chef can prepare, are things of
air--things French, dilettantish. And yet,