Quality and Other Studies and Essays

J >> John Galsworthy >> Quality and Other Studies and Essays


Slowly Fate prepares for each of us the religion that lies coiled in our
most secret nerves; with such we cannot trifle, we do not even try! But
how shall a man grudge any one sensations he has so keenly felt? Let
such as have never known those curious delights, uphold the hand of
horror--for me there can be no such luxury. If I could, I would still
perhaps be knowing them; but when once the joy of life in those winged
and furry things has knocked at the very portals of one's spirit, the
thought that by pressing a little iron twig one will rive that joy out of
their vitals, is too hard to bear. Call it aestheticism, squeamishness,
namby-pamby sentimentalism, what you will it is stronger than oneself!

Yes, after one had once watched with an eye that did not merely see, the
thirsty gaping of a slowly dying bird, or a rabbit dragging a broken leg
to a hole where he would lie for hours thinking of the fern to which he
should never more come forth--after that, there was always the following
little matter of arithmetic: Given, that all those who had been shooting
were "good-fair" shots--which, Heaven knew, they never were--they yet
missed one at least in four, and did not miss it very much; so that if
seventy-five things were slain, there were also twenty-five that had been
fired at, and, of those twenty-five, twelve and a half had "gotten it"
somewhere in their bodies, and would "likely" die at their great leisure.

This was the sum that brought about the only cleavage in our lives; and
so, as he grew older, and trying to part from each other we no longer
could, he ceased going to Scotland. But after that I often felt, and
especially when we heard guns, how the best and most secret instincts of
him were being stifled. But what was to be done? In that which was left
of a clay pigeon he would take not the faintest interest--the scent of it
was paltry. Yet always, even in his most cosseted and idle days, he
managed to preserve the grave preoccupation of one professionally
concerned with retrieving things that smell; and consoled himself with
pastimes such as cricket, which he played in a manner highly specialised,
following the ball up the moment it left the bowler's hand, and sometimes
retrieving it before it reached the batsman. When remonstrated with, he
would consider a little, hanging out a pink tongue and looking rather too
eagerly at the ball, then canter slowly out to a sort of forward short
leg. Why he always chose that particular position it is difficult to
say; possibly he could lurk there better than anywhere else, the
batsman's eye not being on him, and the bowler's not too much. As a
fieldsman he was perfect, but for an occasional belief that he was not
merely short leg, but slip, point, midoff, and wicket-keep; and perhaps a
tendency to make the ball a little "jubey." But he worked tremendously,
watching every movement; for he knew the game thoroughly, and seldom
delayed it more than three minutes when he secured the ball. And if that
ball were really lost, then indeed he took over the proceedings with an
intensity and quiet vigour that destroyed many shrubs, and the solemn
satisfaction which comes from being in the very centre of the stage.

But his most passionate delight was swimming in anything except the sea,
for which, with its unpleasant noise and habit of tasting salt, he had
little affection. I see him now, cleaving the Serpentine, with his air
of "the world well lost," striving to reach my stick before it had
touched water. Being only a large spaniel, too small for mere heroism,
he saved no lives in the water but his own--and that, on one occasion,
before our very eyes, from a dark trout stream, which was trying to wash
him down into a black hole among the boulders.

The call of the wild-Spring running--whatever it is--that besets men and
dogs, seldom attained full mastery over him; but one could often see it
struggling against his devotion to the scent of us, and, watching that
dumb contest, I have time and again wondered how far this civilisation of
ours was justifiably imposed on him; how far the love for us that we had
so carefully implanted could ever replace in him the satisfaction of his
primitive wild yearnings: He was like a man, naturally polygamous,
married to one loved woman.

It was surely not for nothing that Rover is dog's most common name, and
would be ours, but for our too tenacious fear of losing something, to
admit, even to ourselves, that we are hankering. There was a man who
said: Strange that two such queerly opposite qualities as courage and
hypocrisy are the leading characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon! But is not
hypocrisy just a product of tenacity, which is again the lower part of
courage? Is not hypocrisy but an active sense of property in one's good
name, the clutching close of respectability at any price, the feeling
that one must not part, even at the cost of truth, with what he has
sweated so to gain? And so we Anglo-Saxons will not answer to the name
of Rover, and treat our dogs so that they, too, hardly know their
natures.

The history of his one wandering, for which no respectable reason can be
assigned, will never, of course, be known. It was in London, of an
October evening, when we were told he had slipped out and was not
anywhere. Then began those four distressful hours of searching for that
black needle in that blacker bundle of hay. Hours of real dismay and
suffering for it is suffering, indeed, to feel a loved thing swallowed up
in that hopeless haze of London streets. Stolen or run over? Which was
worst? The neighbouring police stations visited, the Dog's Home
notified, an order of five hundred "Lost Dog" bills placed in the
printer's hands, the streets patrolled! And then, in a lull snatched for
food, and still endeavouring to preserve some aspect of assurance, we
heard the bark which meant: "Here is a door I cannot open!" We hurried
forth, and there he was on the top doorstep--busy, unashamed, giving no
explanations, asking for his supper; and very shortly after him came his
five hundred "Lost Dog" bills. Long I sat looking at him that night
after my companion had gone up, thinking of the evening, some years
before, when there followed as that shadow of a spaniel who had been lost
for eleven days. And my heart turned over within me. But he! He was
asleep, for he knew not remorse.

Ah! and there was that other time, when it was reported to me, returning
home at night, that he had gone out to find me; and I went forth again,
disturbed, and whistling his special call to the empty fields. Suddenly
out of the darkness I heard a rushing, and he came furiously dashing
against my heels from he alone knew where he had been lurking and saying
to himself: I will not go in till he comes! I could not scold, there was
something too lyrical in the return of that live, lonely, rushing piece
of blackness through the blacker night. After all, the vagary was but a
variation in his practice when one was away at bed-time, of passionately
scratching up his bed in protest, till it resembled nothing; for, in
spite of his long and solemn face and the silkiness of his ears, there
was much in him yet of the cave bear--he dug graves on the smallest
provocations, in which he never buried anything. He was not a "clever"
dog; and guiltless of all tricks. Nor was he ever "shown." We did not
even dream of subjecting him to this indignity. Was our dog a clown, a
hobby, a fad, a fashion, a feather in our caps that we should subject him
to periodic pennings in stuffy halls, that we should harry his faithful
soul with such tomfoolery? He never even heard us talk about his
lineage, deplore the length of his nose, or call him "clever-looking."
We should have been ashamed to let him smell about us the tar-brush of a
sense of property, to let him think we looked on him as an asset to earn
us pelf or glory. We wished that there should be between us the spirit
that was between the sheep dog and that farmer, who, when asked his dog's
age, touched the old creature's head, and answered thus: "Teresa" (his
daughter) "was born in November, and this one in August." That sheep dog
had seen eighteen years when the great white day came for him, and his
spirit passed away up, to cling with the wood-smoke round the dark
rafters of the kitchen where he had lain so vast a time beside his
master's boots. No, no! If a man does not soon pass beyond the thought
"By what shall this dog profit me?" into the large state of simple
gladness to be with dog, he shall never know the very essence of that
companion ship which depends not on the points of dog, but on some
strange and subtle mingling of mute spirits. For it is by muteness that
a dog becomes for one so utterly beyond value; with him one is at peace,
where words play no torturing tricks. When he just sits, loving, and
knows that he is being loved, those are the moments that I think are
precious to a dog; when, with his adoring soul coming through his eyes,
he feels that you are really thinking of him. But he is touchingly
tolerant of one's other occupations. The subject of these memories
always knew when one was too absorbed in work to be so close to him as he
thought proper; yet he never tried to hinder or distract, or asked for
attention. It dinged his mood, of course, so that the red under his eyes
and the folds of his crumply cheeks--which seemed to speak of a touch of
bloodhound introduced a long way back into his breeding--drew deeper and
more manifest. If he could have spoken at such times, he would have
said: "I have been a long time alone, and I cannot always be asleep; but
you know best, and I must not criticise."

He did not at all mind one's being absorbed in other humans; he seemed to
enjoy the sounds of conversation lifting round him, and to know when they
were sensible. He could not, for instance, stand actors or actresses
giving readings of their parts, perceiving at once that the same had no
connection with the minds and real feelings of the speakers; and, having
wandered a little to show his disapproval, he would go to the door and
stare at it till it opened and let him out. Once or twice, it is true,
when an actor of large voice was declaiming an emotional passage, he so
far relented as to go up to him and pant in his face. Music, too, made
him restless, inclined to sigh, and to ask questions. Sometimes, at its
first sound, he would cross to the window and remain there looking for
Her. At others, he would simply go and lie on the loud pedal, and we
never could tell whether it was from sentiment, or because he thought
that in this way he heard less. At one special Nocturne of Chopin's he
always whimpered. He was, indeed, of rather Polish temperament--very gay
when he was gay, dark and brooding when he was not.

On the whole, perhaps his life was uneventful for so far-travelling a
dog, though it held its moments of eccentricity, as when he leaped
through the window of a four-wheeler into Kensington, or sat on a
Dartmoor adder. But that was fortunately of a Sunday afternoon--when
adder and all were torpid, so nothing happened, till a friend, who was
following, lifted him off the creature with his large boot.

If only one could have known more of his private life--more of his
relations with his own kind! I fancy he was always rather a dark dog to
them, having so many thoughts about us that he could not share with any
one, and being naturally fastidious, except with ladies, for whom he had
a chivalrous and catholic taste, so that they often turned and snapped at
him. He had, however, but one lasting love affair, for a liver-coloured
lass of our village, not quite of his own caste, but a wholesome if
somewhat elderly girl, with loving and sphinx-like eyes. Their children,
alas, were not for this world, and soon departed.

Nor was he a fighting dog; but once attacked, he lacked a sense of
values, being unable to distinguish between dogs that he could beat and
dogs with whom he had "no earthly." It was, in fact, as well to
interfere at once, especially in the matter of retrievers, for he never
forgot having in his youth been attacked by a retriever from behind. No,
he never forgot, and never forgave, an enemy. Only a month before that
day of which I cannot speak, being very old and ill, he engaged an Irish
terrier on whose impudence he had long had his eye, and routed him. And
how a battle cheered his spirit! He was certainly no Christian; but,
allowing for essential dog, he was very much a gentleman. And I do think
that most of us who live on this earth these days would rather leave it
with that label on us than the other. For to be a Christian, as Tolstoy
understood the word--and no one else in our time has had logic and love
of truth enough to give it coherent meaning--is (to be quite sincere) not
suited to men of Western blood. Whereas--to be a gentleman! It is a far
cry, but perhaps it can be done. In him, at all events, there was no
pettiness, no meanness, and no cruelty, and though he fell below his
ideal at times, this never altered the true look of his eyes, nor the
simple loyalty in his soul.

But what a crowd of memories come back, bringing with them the perfume of
fallen days! What delights and glamour, what long hours of effort,
discouragements, and secret fears did he not watch over--our black
familiar; and with the sight and scent and touch of him, deepen or
assuage! How many thousand walks did we not go together, so that we
still turn to see if he is following at his padding gait, attentive to
the invisible trails. Not the least hard thing to bear when they go from
us, these quiet friends, is that they carry away with them so many years
of our own lives. Yet, if they find warmth therein, who would grudge
them those years that they have so guarded? Nothing else of us can they
take to lie upon with outstretched paws and chin pressed to the ground;
and, whatever they take, be sure they have deserved.

Do they know, as we do, that their time must come? Yes, they know, at
rare moments. No other way can I interpret those pauses of his latter
life, when, propped on his forefeet, he would sit for long minutes quite
motionless--his head drooped, utterly withdrawn; then turn those eyes of
his and look at me. That look said more plainly than all words could:
"Yes, I know that I must go!" If we have spirits that persist--they
have. If we know after our departure, who we were they do. No one, I
think, who really longs for truth, can ever glibly say which it will be
for dog and man persistence or extinction of our consciousness. There is
but one thing certain--the childishness of fretting over that eternal
question. Whichever it be, it must be right, the only possible thing.
He felt that too, I know; but then, like his master, he was what is
called a pessimist.

My companion tells me that, since he left us, he has once come back. It
was Old Year's Night, and she was sad, when he came to her in visible
shape of his black body, passing round the dining-table from the
window-end, to his proper place beneath the table, at her feet. She saw
him quite clearly; she heard the padding tap-tap of his paws and very
toe-nails; she felt his warmth brushing hard against the front of her
skirt. She thought then that he would settle down upon her feet, but
something disturbed him, and he stood pausing, pressed against her, then
moved out toward where I generally sit, but was not sitting that night.

She saw him stand there, as if considering; then at some sound or laugh,
she became self-conscious, and slowly, very slowly, he was no longer
there. Had he some message, some counsel to give, something he would
say, that last night of the last year of all those he had watched over
us? Will he come back again?

No stone stands over where he lies. It is on our hearts that his life is
engraved.
1912.




FELICITY

When God is so good to the fields, of what use are words--those poor
husks of sentiment! There is no painting Felicity on the wing! No way
of bringing on to the canvas the flying glory of things! A single
buttercup of the twenty million in one field is worth all these dry
symbols--that can never body forth the very spirit of that froth of May
breaking over the hedges, the choir of birds and bees, the
lost-travelling down of the wind flowers, the white-throated swallows in
their Odysseys. Just here there are no skylarks, but what joy of song
and leaf; of lanes lighted with bright trees, the few oaks still golden
brown, and the ashes still spiritual! Only the blackbirds and thrushes
can sing-up this day, and cuckoos over the hill. The year has flown so
fast that the apple-trees have dropped nearly all their bloom, and in
"long meadow" the "daggers" are out early, beside the narrow bright
streams. Orpheus sits there on a stone, when nobody is by, and pipes to
the ponies; and Pan can often be seen dancing with his nymphs in the
raised beech-grove where it is always twilight, if you lie still enough
against the far bank.

Who can believe in growing old, so long as we are wrapped in this cloak
of colour and wings and song; so long as this unimaginable vision is here
for us to gaze at--the soft-faced sheep about us, and the wool-bags
drying out along the fence, and great numbers of tiny ducks, so trustful
that the crows have taken several.

Blue is the colour of youth, and all the blue flowers have a "fey" look.
Everything seems young too young to work. There is but one thing busy, a
starling, fetching grubs for its little family, above my head--it must
take that flight at least two hundred times a day. The children should be
very fat.

When the sky is so happy, and the flowers so luminous, it does not seem
possible that the bright angels of this day shall pass into dark night,
that slowly these wings shall close, and the cuckoo praise himself to
sleep, mad midges dance-in the evening; the grass shiver with dew, wind
die, and no bird sing . . . .

Yet so it is. Day has gone--the song and glamour and swoop of wings.
Slowly, has passed the daily miracle. It is night. But Felicity has not
withdrawn; she has but changed her robe for silence, velvet, and the
pearl fan of the moon. Everything is sleeping, save only a single star,
and the pansies. Why they should be more wakeful than the other flowers,
I do not know. The expressions of their faces, if one bends down into
the dusk, are sweeter and more cunning than ever. They have some compact,
no doubt, in hand.

What a number of voices have given up the ghost to this night of but one
voice--the murmur of the stream out there in darkness!

With what religion all has been done! Not one buttercup open; the
yew-trees already with shadows flung down! No moths are abroad yet; it
is too early in the year for nightjars; and the owls are quiet. But who
shall say that in this silence, in this hovering wan light, in this air
bereft of wings, and of all scent save freshness, there is less of the
ineffable, less of that before which words are dumb?

It is strange how this tranquillity of night, that seems so final, is
inhabited, if one keeps still enough. A lamb is bleating out there on
the dim moor; a bird somewhere, a little one, about three fields away,
makes the sweetest kind of chirruping; some cows are still cropping.
There is a scent, too, underneath the freshness-sweet-brier, I think, and
our Dutch honeysuckle; nothing else could so delicately twine itself with
air. And even in this darkness the roses have colour, more beautiful
perhaps than ever. If colour be, as they say, but the effect of light on
various fibre, one may think of it as a tune, the song of thanksgiving
that each form puts forth, to sun and moon and stars and fire. These
moon-coloured roses are singing a most quiet song. I see all of a sudden
that there are many more stars beside that one so red and watchful. The
flown kite is there with its seven pale worlds; it has adventured very
high and far to-night-with a company of others remoter still. . . .

This serenity of night! What could seem less likely ever more to move,
and change again to day? Surely now the world has found its long sleep;
and the pearly glimmer from the moon will last, and the precious silence
never again yield to clamour; the grape-bloom of this mystery never more
pale out into gold . . . .

And yet it is not so. The nightly miracle has passed. It is dawn. Faint
light has come. I am waiting for the first sound. The sky as yet is
like nothing but grey paper, with the shadows of wild geese passing. The
trees are phantoms. And then it comes--that first call of a bird,
startled at discovering day! Just one call--and now, here, there, on all
the trees, the sudden answers swelling, of that most sweet and careless
choir. Was irresponsibility ever so divine as this, of birds waking?
Then--saffron into the sky, and once more silence! What is it birds do
after the first Chorale? Think of their sins and business? Or just
sleep again? The trees are fast dropping unreality, and the cuckoos
begin calling. Colour is burning up in the flowers already; the dew
smells of them.

The miracle is ended, for the starling has begun its job; and the sun is
fretting those dark, busy wings with gold. Full day has come again. But
the face of it is a little strange, it is not like yesterday. Queer-to
think, no day is like to a day that's past and no night like a night
that's coming! Why, then, fear death, which is but night? Why care, if
next day have different face and spirit? The sun has lighted
buttercup-field now, the wind touches the lime-tree. Something passes
over me away up there.

It is Felicity on her wings!
1912.