The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Galsworthy

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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.




STUDIES AND ESSAYS

By John Galsworthy

"Je vous dirai que l'exces est toujours un mal."
--ANATOLE FRANCE

CONCERNING LETTERS

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY
SOME PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA
MEDITATION ON FINALITY
WANTED--SCHOOLING
ON OUR DISLIKE OF THINGS AS THEY ARE
THE WINDLESTRAW




A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY

Once upon a time the Prince of Felicitas had occasion to set forth on a
journey. It was a late autumn evening with few pale stars and a moon no
larger than the paring of a finger-nail. And as he rode through the
purlieus of his city, the white mane of his amber-coloured steed was all
that he could clearly see in the dusk of the high streets. His way led
through a quarter but little known to him, and he was surprised to find
that his horse, instead of ambling forward with his customary gentle
vigour, stepped carefully from side to side, stopping now and then to
curve his neck and prick his ears--as though at some thing of fear
unseen in the darkness; while on either hand creatures could be heard
rustling and scuttling, and little cold draughts as of wings fanned the
rider's cheeks.

The Prince at last turned in his saddle, but so great was the darkness
that he could not even see his escort.

"What is the name of this street?" he said.

"Sire, it is called the Vita Publica."

"It is very dark." Even as he spoke his horse staggered, but, recovering
its foothold with an effort, stood trembling violently. Nor could all the
incitements of its master induce the beast again to move forward.

"Is there no one with a lanthorn in this street?" asked the Prince.

His attendants began forthwith to call out loudly for any one who had a
lanthorn. Now, it chanced that an old man sleeping in a hovel on a
pallet of straw was, awakened by these cries. When he heard that it was
the Prince of Felicitas himself, he came hastily, carrying his lanthorn,
and stood trembling beside the Prince's horse. It was so dark that the
Prince could not see him.

"Light your lanthorn, old man," he said.

The old man laboriously lit his lanthorn. Its pale rays fled out on
either hand; beautiful but grim was the vision they disclosed. Tall
houses, fair court-yards, and a palm grown garden; in front of the
Prince's horse a deep cesspool, on whose jagged edges the good beast's
hoofs were planted; and, as far as the glimmer of the lanthorn stretched,
both ways down the rutted street, paving stones displaced, and smooth
tesselated marble; pools of mud, the hanging fruit of an orange tree, and
dark, scurrying shapes of monstrous rats bolting across from house to
house. The old man held the lanthorn higher; and instantly bats flying
against it would have beaten out the light but for the thin protection of
its horn sides.

The Prince sat still upon his horse, looking first at the rutted space
that he had traversed and then at the rutted space before him.

"Without a light," he said, "this thoroughfare is dangerous. What is
your name, old man?"

"My name is Cethru," replied the aged churl.

"Cethru!" said the Prince. "Let it be your duty henceforth to walk with
your lanthorn up and down this street all night and every night,"--and he
looked at Cethru: "Do you understand, old man, what it is you have to
do?"

The old man answered in a voice that trembled like a rusty flute:

"Aye, aye!--to walk up and down and hold my lanthorn so that folk can see
where they be going."

The Prince gathered up his reins; but the old man, lurching forward,
touched his stirrup.

"How long be I to go on wi' thiccy job?"

"Until you die!"

Cethru held up his lanthorn, and they could see his long, thin face, like
a sandwich of dried leather, jerk and quiver, and his thin grey hairs
flutter in the draught of the bats' wings circling round the light.

"'Twill be main hard!" he groaned; "an' my lanthorn's nowt but a poor
thing."

With a high look, the Prince of Felicitas bent and touched the old man's
forehead.

"Until you die, old man," he repeated; and bidding his followers to light
torches from Cethru's lanthorn, he rode on down the twisting street. The
clatter of the horses' hoofs died out in the night, and the scuttling and
the rustling of the rats and the whispers of the bats' wings were heard
again.

Cethru, left alone in the dark thoroughfare, sighed heavily; then,
spitting on his hands, he tightened the old girdle round his loins, and
slinging the lanthorn on his staff, held it up to the level of his waist,
and began to make his way along the street. His progress was but slow,
for he had many times to stop and rekindle the flame within his lanthorn,
which the bats' wings, his own stumbles, and the jostlings of footpads or
of revellers returning home, were for ever extinguishing. In traversing
that long street he spent half the night, and half the night in
traversing it back again. The saffron swan of dawn, slow swimming up the
sky-river between the high roof-banks, bent her neck down through the
dark air-water to look at him staggering below her, with his still
smoking wick. No sooner did Cethru see that sunlit bird, than with a
great sigh of joy he sat him down, and at once fell asleep.

Now when the dwellers in the houses of the Vita Publica first gained
knowledge that this old man passed every night with his lanthorn up and
down their street, and when they marked those pallid gleams gliding over
the motley prospect of cesspools and garden gates, over the sightless
hovels and the rich-carved frontages of their palaces; or saw them stay
their journey and remain suspended like a handful of daffodils held up
against the black stuffs of secrecy--they said:

"It is good that the old man should pass like this--we shall see better
where we're going; and if the Watch have any job on hand, or want to put
the pavements in order, his lanthorn will serve their purpose well
enough." And they would call out of their doors and windows to him
passing:

"Hola! old man Cethru! All's well with our house, and with the street
before it?"

But, for answer, the old man only held his lanthorn up, so that in the
ring of its pale light they saw some sight or other in the street. And
his silence troubled them, one by one, for each had expected that he
would reply:

"Aye, aye! All's well with your house, Sirs, and with the street before
it!"

Thus they grew irritated with this old man who did not seem able to do
anything but just hold his lanthorn up. And gradually they began to
dislike his passing by their doors with his pale light, by which they
could not fail to see, not only the rich-carved frontages and scrolled
gates of courtyards and fair gardens, but things that were not pleasing
to the eye. And they murmured amongst themselves: "What is the good of
this old man and his silly lanthorn? We can see all we want to see
without him; in fact, we got on very well before he came."

So, as he passed, rich folk who were supping would pelt him with
orange-peel and empty the dregs of their wine over his head; and poor
folk, sleeping in their hutches, turned over, as the rays of the lanthorn
fell on them, and cursed him for that disturbance. Nor did revellers or
footpads treat the old man, civilly, but tied him to the wall, where he
was constrained to stay till a kind passerby released him. And ever the
bats darkened his lanthorn with their wings and tried to beat the flame
out. And the old man thought: "This be a terrible hard job; I don't seem
to please nobody." But because the Prince of Felicitas had so commanded
him, he continued nightly to pass with his lanthorn up and down the
street; and every morning as the saffron swan came swimming overhead, to
fall asleep. But his sleep did not last long, for he was compelled to
pass many hours each day in gathering rushes and melting down tallow for
his lanthorn; so that his lean face grew more than ever like a sandwich
of dried leather.

Now it came to pass that the Town Watch having had certain complaints
made to them that persons had been bitten in the Vita Publica by rats,
doubted of their duty to destroy these ferocious creatures; and they held
investigation, summoning the persons bitten and inquiring of them how it
was that in so dark a street they could tell that the animals which had
bitten them were indeed rats. Howbeit for some time no one could be
found who could say more than what he had been told, and since this was
not evidence, the Town Watch had good hopes that they would not after all
be forced to undertake this tedious enterprise. But presently there came
before them one who said that he had himself seen the rat which had
bitten him, by the light of an old man's lanthorn. When the Town Watch
heard this they were vexed, for they knew that if this were true they
would now be forced to prosecute the arduous undertaking, and they said:

"Bring in this old man!"

Cethru was brought before them trembling.

"What is this we hear, old man, about your lanthorn and the rat? And in
the first place, what were you doing in the Vita Publica at that time of
night?"

Cethru answered: "I were just passin' with my lanthorn!"

"Tell us--did you see the rat?"

Cethru shook his head: "My lanthorn seed the rat, maybe!" he muttered.

"Old owl!" said the Captain of the Watch: "Be careful what you say! If
you saw the rat, why did you then not aid this unhappy citizen who was
bitten by it--first, to avoid that rodent, and subsequently to slay it,
thereby relieving the public of a pestilential danger?"

Cethru looked at him, and for some seconds did not reply; then he said
slowly: "I were just passin' with my lanthorn."