BELLOC-HILLS AND THE SEA - THE ARENA
It was late, and the day was already falling when I came, sitting my
horse Monster, to a rise of land. We were at a walk, for we had gone
very far since early morning, and were now off the turf upon the hard
road; moreover, the hill, though gentle, had been prolonged. From its
summit I saw before me, as I had seen it a hundred times, the whole of
the weald.
But now that landscape was transfigured, because many influences had met
to make it, for the moment, an enchanted land. The autumn, coming late,
had crowded it with colours; a slight mist drew out the distances, and
along the horizon stood out, quite even and grey like mountains, the
solemn presence of the Downs. Over all this the sky was full of storm.
In some manner which language cannot express, and hardly music, the
vision was unearthly. All the lesser heights of the plain ministered to
one effect, a picture which was to other pictures what the marvellous is
to the experience of common things. The distant mills, the edges of
heath and the pine trees, were as though they had not before been caught
by the eyes of travellers, and would not, after the brief space of their
apparition, be seen again. Here was a countryside whose every outline
was familiar; and yet it was pervaded by a general quality of the
uplifted and the strange. And for that one hour under the sunset the
county did not seem to me a thing well known, but rather adored.
The glow of evening, which had seemed to put this horizon into another
place and time than ours, warned me of darkness; and I made off the road
to the right for an inn I knew of, that stands close to the upper Arun
and is very good. Here an old man and his wife live easily, and have so
lived for at least thirty years, proving how accessible is content.
Their children are in service beyond the boundaries of the county, and
are thus provided with sufficiency; and they themselves, the old people,
enjoy a small possession which at least does not diminish, for, thank
God, their land is free. It is a square of pasture bordered by great
elms upon three sides of it, but on the fourth, towards the water, a
line of pollard willows; and off a little way before the house runs
Arun, sliding as smooth as Mincius, and still so young that he can
remember the lake in the forest where he rose.
On such ancestral land these two people await without anxiety what they
believe will be a kindly death. Nor is their piety of that violent and
tortured kind which is associated with fear and with distress of earlier
life; but they remain peasants, drawing from the earth they have always
known as much sustenance for the soul as even their religion can afford
them, and mixing that religion so intimately with their experience of
the soil that, were they not isolated in an evil time, they would have
set up some shrine about the place to sanctify it.
The passion and the strain which must accompany (even in the happiest
and most secluded) the working years of life, have so far disappeared
from them, that now they can no longer recall any circumstances other
than those which they enjoy; so that their presence in a room about one,
as they set rood before one or meet one at the door, is in itself an
influence of peace.
In such a place, and with such hosts to serve him, be wears of the world
retire for a little time, from an evening to a morning; and a man can
enjoy a great refreshment. In such a place he will eat strongly and
drink largely, and sleep well and deeply, and, when he saddles again for
his journey, he will take the whole world new; nor are those intervals
without their future value, for the memory of a complete repose is a
sort of sacrament, and a viaticum for the weary lengths of the way.
The stable of this place is made of oak entirely, and, after more than
a hundred years, the woodwork is still sound, save that the roof now
falls in waves where the great beams have sagged a little under the
pressure of the tiles. And these tiles are of that old hand-made kind
which, whenever you find them, you will do well to buy; for they have a
slight downward curve to them, and so they fit closer and shed the rain
better than if they were flat. Also they do not slip, and thus they put
less strain upon the timber. This excellent stable has no flooring but a
packed layer of chalk laid on the ground; and the wooden manger is all
polished and shining, where it has been rubbed by the noses of ten
thousand horses since the great war. That polishing was helped, perhaps,
by the nose of Percy's horse, and perhaps by the nose of some wheeler
who in his time had dragged the guns back aboard, retreating through the
night after Corunna. It is in every way a stable that a small peasant
should put up for himself, without seeking money from other men. It is,
therefore, a stable which your gaping scientists would condemn; and
though as yet they have not got their ugly hands upon the dwellings of
beasts as they have upon those of men, yet I often fear for this stable,
and am always glad when I come back and find it there. For the men who
make our laws are the same as those that sell us our bricks and our land
and our metals; and they make the laws so that rebuilding shall go on:
and vile rebuilding too.
Anyhow, this stable yet stands; and in none does the horse, Monster,
take a greater delight, for he also is open to the influence of
holiness. So I led him in, and tied him by the ancient headstall, and I
rubbed him down, and I washed his feet and covered him with the rough
rug that lay there. And when I had done all that, I got him oats from
the neighbouring bin; for the place knew me well, and I could always
tend to my own beast when I came there. And as he ate his oats, I said
to him: "Monster, my horse, is there any place on earth where a man,
even for a little time, can be as happy as the brutes? If there is, it
is here at the Sign of The Lion." And Monster answered: "There is a
tradition among us that, of all creatures that creep upon the earth, man
is the fullest of sorrow."
I left him then, and went towards the house. It was quite dark, and the
windows, with their square, large panes and true proportions, shone out
and made it home. The room within received me like a friend. The open
chimney at its end, round which the house is built, was filled with
beech logs burning; and the candles, which were set in brass, mixed
their yellow light with that of the fire. The long ceiling was low, as
are the ceilings of Heaven. And oak was here everywhere also: in the
beams and the shelves and the mighty table. For oak was, and will be
again, the chief wood of the weald.
When they put food and ale before me, it was of the kind which has been
English ever since England began, and which perhaps good fortune will
preserve over the breakdown of our generation, until we have England
back again. One could see the hops in the tankard, and one could taste
the barley, until, more and more sunk into the plenitude of this good
house, one could dare to contemplate, as though from a distant
standpoint, the corruption and the imminent danger of the time through
which we must lead our lives. And, as I so considered the ruin of the
great cities and their slime, I felt as though I were in a fortress of
virtue and of health, which could hold out through the pressure of the
war. And I thought to myself: "Perhaps even before our children are men,
these parts which survive from a better order will be accepted as
models, and England will be built again."
This fantasy had not time, tenuous as it was, to disappear, before there
came into that room a man whose gesture and bearing promised him to be
an excellent companion, but in whose eyes I also perceived some light
not ordinary. He was of middle age, fifty or more; his hair was crisp
and grey, his face brown, as though he had been much upon the sea. He
was tall in stature, and of some strength. He saluted me, and, when he
had eaten, asked me if I also were familiar with this inn.
"Very familiar," I said; "and since I can enter it at any hour freely,
it is now more familiar to me even than the houses that were once my
homes. For nowadays we, who work in the State and are not idle, must be
driven from one place to another; and only the very rich have certitude
and continuity. But to them it is of no service; for they are too idle
to take root in the soil."
"Yet I was of their blood," he said; "and there is in this county a home
which should be mine. But nothing to-day is capable of endurance. I have
not seen my home (though it is but ten miles from here) since I left it
in my thirtieth year; and I too would rather come to this inn, which I
know as you know it, than to any house in England; because I am certain
of entry, and because I know what I shall find, and because what I find
is what any man of this county should find, if the soul of it is not to
disappear."
"You, then," I answered (we were now seated side by side before the fire
with but one flickering candle behind us, and on the floor between us a
port just younger than the host), "you, then, come here for much the
same reason as do I?"
"And what is that?" said he.
"Why," said I, "to enjoy the illusion that Change can somewhere be
arrested, and that, in some shape, a part at least of the things we love
remains. For, since I was a boy and almost since I can remember,
everything in this house has been the same; and here I escape from the
threats of the society we know."
When I had said this, he was grave and silent for a little while; and
then he answered:
"It is impossible, I think, after many years to recover any such
illusion. Just as a young man can no longer think himself (as children
do) the actor in any drama of his own choosing, so a man growing old (as
am I) can no longer expect of any society--and least of all of his
own--the gladness that comes from an illusion of permanence."
"For my part," I answered in turn, "I know very well, though I can
conjure up this feeling of security, that it is very flimsy stuff; and
I take it rather as men take symbols. For though these good people will
at last perish, and some brewer--a Colonel of Volunteers as like as
not--will buy this little field, and though for the port we are drinking
there will be imperial port, and for the beer we have just drunk
something as noisome as that port, and though thistles will grow up in
the good pasture ground, and though, in a word, this inn will become a
hotel and will perish, nevertheless I cannot but believe that England
remains, and I do not think it the taking of a drug or a deliberate
cheating of oneself to come and steep one's soul in what has already
endured so long because it was proper to our country."
"All that you say," he answered, "is but part of the attempt to escape
Necessity. Your very frame is of that substance for which permanence
means death; and every one of all the emotions that you know is of its
nature momentary, and must be so if it is to be alive."
"Yet there is a divine thirst," I said, "for something that will not so
perish. If there were no such thirst, why should you and I debate such
things, or come here to The Lion either of us, to taste antiquity? And
if that thirst is there, it is a proof that there is for us some End and
some such satisfaction. For my part, as I know of nothing else, I cannot
but seek it in this visible good world. I seek it in Sussex, in the
nature of my home, and in the tradition of my blood."
But he answered: "No; it is not thus to be attained, the end of which
you speak. And that thirst, which surely is divine, is to be quenched in
no stream that we can find by journeying, not even in the little rivers
that run here under the combes of home."
MYSELF: "Well, then, what is the End?"
HE: "I have sometimes seen it clearly, that when the disappointed quest
was over, all this journeying would turn out to be but the beginning of
a much greater adventure, and that I should set out towards another
place where every sense should be fulfilled, and where the fear of
mutation should be set at rest."
MYSELF: "No one denies that such a picture in the mind haunts men their
whole lives through, though, after they have once experienced loss and
incompletion, and especially when they have caught sight a long way off
of the Barrier which ends all our experience, they recognise that
picture for a cheat; and surely nothing can save it? That which reasons
in us may be absolute and undying; for it is outside Time. It escapes
the gropings of the learned, and it has nothing to do with material
things. But as for all those functions which we but half fulfil in life,
surely elsewhere they cannot be fulfilled at all? Colour is for the eyes
and music is for the ears; and all that we love so much comes in by
channels that do not remain."
He: "Yet the Desire can only be for things that we have known; and the
Desire, as you have said, is a proof of the thing desired, and, but for
these things which we know, the words 'joy' and 'contentment' and
'fulfilment' would have no meaning."
MYSELF: "Why yes; but, though desires are the strongest evidence of
truth, yet there is also desire for illusions, as there is a waking
demand for things attainable, and a demand in dreams for things
fantastic and unreal. Every analogy increasingly persuades us, and so
does the whole scheme of things as we learn it, that, with our passing,
there shall also pass speech and comfortable fires and fields and the
voices of our children, and that, when they pass, we lose them for
ever."
He: "Yet these things would not be, but for the mind which receives
them; and how can we make sure what channels are necessary for the mind?
and may not the mind stretch on? And you, since you reject my guess at
what may be reserved for us, tell me, what is the End which we shall
attain?"
MYSELF: "Salva fide, I cannot tell."
Then he continued and said: "I have too long considered these matters
for any opposition between one experience and another to affect my
spirit, and I know that a long and careful inquiry into any matter must
lead the same man to opposing conclusions; but, for my part, I shall
confidently expect throughout that old age, which is not far from me,
that, when it ceases, I shall find beyond it things similar to those
which I have known. For all I here enjoy is of one nature; and if the
life of a man be bereft of them at last, then it is falsehood or
metaphor to use the word 'eternal.'"
"You think, then," said I, "that some immortal part in us is concerned
not only with our knowledge, but with our every feeling, and that our
final satisfaction will include a sensual pleasure: fragrance, and
landscape, and a visible home that shall be dearer even than these dear
hills?"
"Something of the sort," he said, and slightly shrugged his shoulders.
They were broad, as he sat beside me staring at the fire. They conveyed
in their attitude that effect of mingled strength and weariness which is
common to all who have travelled far and with great purpose, perpetually
seeking some worthy thing which they could never find.
The fire had fallen. Flames no longer leapt from the beech logs; but on
their under side, where a glow still lingered, embers fell.
It is not true that the close of a life which ends in a natural
fashion--life which is permitted to put on the pomp of death and to go
out in glory--inclines the mind to repose. It is not true of a day
ending nor the passing of the year, nor of the fall of leaves. Whatever
permanent, uneasy question is native to men, comes forward most
insistent and most loud at such times.
There is a house in my own county which is built of stone, whose gardens
are fitted to the autumn. It has level alleys standing high and banked
with stone. Their ornaments were carved under the influence of that
restraint which marked the Stuarts. They stand above old ponds, and are
strewn at this moment with the leaves of elms. These walks are like the
Mailles of the Flemish cities, the walls of the French towns or the
terraces of the Loire. They are enjoyed to-day by whoever has seen all
our time go racing by; they are the proper resting-places of the aged,
and their spirit is felt especially in the fall of leaves.
At this season a sky which is of so delicate and faint a blue as to
contain something of gentle mockery, and certainly more of tenderness,
presides at the fall of leaves. There is no air, no breath at all. The
leaves are so light that they sidle on their going downward, hesitating
in that which is not void to them, and touching at last so imperceptibly
the earth with which they are to mingle, that the gesture is much
gentler than a salutation, and even more discreet than a discreet
caress.
They make a little sound, less than the least of sounds. No bird at
night in the marshes rustles so slightly; no man, though men are the
subtlest of living beings, put so evanescent a stress upon their sacred
whispers or their prayers. The leaves are hardly heard, but they are
heard just so much that men also, who are destined at the end to grow
glorious and to die, look up and hear them falling.
* * * * *
With what a pageantry of every sort is not that troubling symbol
surrounded! The scent of life is never fuller in the woods than now, for
the ground is yielding up its memories. The spring when it comes will
not restore this fullness, nor these deep and ample recollections of the
earth. For the earth seems now to remember the drive of the ploughshare
and its harrying; the seed, and the full bursting of it, the swelling
and the completion of the harvest. Up to the edge of the woods
throughout the weald the earth has borne fruit; the barns are full, and
the wheat is standing stacked in the fields, and there are orchards all
around. It is upon such a mood of parentage and of fruition that the
dead leaves fall.
The colour is not a mere splendour: it is intricate. The same unbounded
power, never at fault and never in calculation, which comprehends all
the landscape, and which has made the woods, has worked in each one
separate leaf as well; they are inconceivably varied. Take up one leaf
and see. How many kinds of boundary are there here between the stain
which ends in a sharp edge against the gold, and the sweep in which the
purple and red mingle more evenly than they do in shot-silk or in
flames? Nor are the boundaries to be measured only by degrees of
definition. They have also their characters of line. Here in this leaf
are boundaries intermittent, boundaries rugged, boundaries curved, and
boundaries broken. Nor do shape and definition ever begin to exhaust the
list. For there are softness and hardness too: the agreement and
disagreement with the scheme of veins; the grotesque and the simple in
line; the sharp and the broad, the smooth, and raised in boundaries. So
in this one matter of boundaries might you discover for ever new things;
there is no end to them. Their qualities are infinite. And beside
boundaries you have hues and tints, shades also, varying thicknesses of
stuff, and endless choice of surface; that list also is infinite, and
the divisions of each item in it are infinite; nor is it of any use to
analyse the thing, for everywhere the depth and the meaning of so much
creation are beyond our powers. And all this is true of but one dead
leaf; and yet every dead leaf will differ from its fellow.
That which has delighted to excel in boundlessness within the bounds of
this one leaf, has also transformed the whole forest. There is no number
to the particular colour of the one leaf. The forest is like a thing so
changeful of its nature that change clings to it as a quality, apparent
even during the glance of a moment. This forest makes a picture which is
designed, but not seizable. It is a scheme, but a scheme you cannot set
down. It is of those things which can best be retained by mere copying
with a pencil or a brush. It is of those things which a man cannot fully
receive, and which he cannot fully re-express to other men.
It is no wonder, then, that at this peculiar time, this week (or moment)
of the year, the desires which if they do not prove at least
demand--perhaps remember--our destiny, come strongest. They are proper
to the time of autumn, and all men feel them. The air is at once new and
old; the morning (if one rises early enough to welcome its leisurely
advance) contains something in it of profound reminiscence. The evenings
hardly yet suggest (as they soon will) friends and security, and the
fires of home. The thoughts awakened in us by their bands of light
fading along the downs are thoughts which go with loneliness and prepare
me for the isolation of the soul.
It is on this account that tradition has set, at the entering of autumn,
for a watch at the gate of the season, the Archangel; and at its close
the day and the night of All-Hallows on which the dead return.
Upon a hill that overlooks a western plain and is conspicuous at the
approach of evening, there still stands a house of faded brick faced
with cornerings of stone. It is quite empty, but yet not deserted. In
each room some little furniture remains; all the pictures are upon the
walls; the deep red damask of the panels is not faded, or if faded,
shows no contrast of brighter patches, for nothing has been removed from
the walls. Here it is possible to linger for many hours alone, and to
watch the slope of the hill under the level light as the sun descends.
Here passes a woman of such nobility that, though she is dead, the
landscape and the vines are hers.
It was in September, during a silence of the air, that I first saw her
as she moved among her possessions; she was smiling to herself as though
at a memory, but her smile was so slight and so dignified, so genial,
and yet so restrained, that you would have thought it part of everything
around and married (as she was) to the land which was now her own. She
wandered down the garden paths ruling the flowers upon either side, and
receiving as she went autumn and the fruition of her fields; plenitude
and completion surrounded her; the benediction of Almighty God must have
been upon her, for she was the fulfilment of her world.
Three fountains played in that garden--two, next to the northern and the
southern walls, were small and low; they rather flowed than rose. Two
cones of marble received their fall, and over these they spread in an
even sheet with little noise, making (as it were) a sheath of water
which covered all the stone; but the third sprang into the air with
delicate triumph, fine and high, satisfied, tenuous and exultant. This
one tossed its summit into the light, and, alone of the things in the
garden, the plash of its waters recalled and suggested activity--though
that in so discreet a way that it was to be heard rather than regarded.
The birds flew off in circles over the roofs of the town below us. Very
soon they went to their rest.
The slow transfiguration of the light by which the air became full of
colours and every outline merged into the evening, made of all I saw, as
I came up towards her, a soft and united vision wherein her advancing
figure stood up central and gave a meaning to the whole. I will not
swear that she did not as she came bestow as well as receive an
influence of the sunset. It was said by the ancients that virtue is
active, an agent, and has power to control created things; for, they
said, it is in a direct relation with whatever orders and has ordained
the general scheme. Such power, perhaps, resided in her hands. It would
have awed me but hardly astonished if, as the twilight deepened, the
inclination of the stems had obeyed her gesture and she had put the
place to sleep.
As I came near I saw her plainly. Her face was young although she was so
wise, but its youth had the aspect of a divine survival. Time adorned
it.
Music survives. Whatever is eternal in the grace of simple airs or in
the Christian innocence of Mozart was apparent, nay, had increased, in
her features as the days in passing had added to them not only
experience but also revelation and security. She was serene. The posture
of her head was high, and her body, which was visibly informed by an
immortal spirit, had in its carriage a large, a regal, an uplifted
bearing which even now as I write of it, after so many years, turns
common every other sight that has encountered me. This was the way in
which I first saw her upon her own hillside at evening.
With every season I returned. And with every season she greeted my
coming with a more generous and a more vivacious air. I think the years
slipped off and did not add themselves upon her mind: the common doom
of mortality escaped her until, perhaps, its sign was imposed upon her
hair--for this at last was touched all through with that appearance or
gleam which might be morning or which might be snow.
She was able to conjure all evil. Those desperate enemies of mankind
which lie in siege of us all around grew feeble and were silent when she
came. Nor has any other force than hers dared to enter the rooms where
she had lived: it is her influence alone which inhabits them to-day.
There is a vessel of copper, enamelled in green and gilded, which she
gave with her own hands to a friend overseas. I have twice touched it in
an evil hour.
Strength, sustenance, and a sacramental justice are permanent in such
lives, and such lives also attain before their close to so general a
survey of the world that their appreciations are at once accurate and
universal.
On this account she did not fail in any human conversation, nor was she
ever for a moment less than herself; but always and throughout her moods
her laughter was unexpected and full, her fear natural, her indignation
glorious.
Above all, her charity extended like a breeze: it enveloped everything
she knew. The sense of destiny faded from me as the warmth of that
charity fell upon my soul; the foreknowledge of death retreated, as did
every other unworthy panic.
She drew the objects of her friendship into something new; they breathed
an air from another country, so that those whom she deigned to regard
were, compared with other men, like the living compared with the dead;
or, better still, they were like men awake while the rest were tortured
by dreams and haunted of the unreal. Indeed, she had a word given to her
which saved all the souls of her acquaintance.
It is not true that influence of this sort decays or passes into vaguer
and vaguer depths of memory. It does not dissipate. It is not dissolved.
It does not only spread and broaden: it also increases with the passage
of time. The musicians bequeath their spirit, notably those who have
loved delightful themes and easy melodies. The poets are read for ever;
but those who resemble her do more, for they grow out upon the
centuries--they themselves and not their arts continue. There is stuff
in their legend. They are a tangible inheritance for the hurrying
generations of men.
She was of this kind. She was certainly of this kind. She died upon this
day[1] in the year 1892. In these lines I perpetuate her memory.
[Footnote 1: The 22nd of December.]
Upon that shore of Europe which looks out towards no further shore, I
came once by accident upon a certain man.
The day had been warm and almost calm, but a little breeze from the
south-east had all day long given life to the sea. The seas had run very
small and brilliant, yet without violence, before the wind, and had
broken upon the granite cliffs to leeward, not in spouts of foam, but in
a white even line that was thin, and from which one heard no sound of
surge. Moreover, as I was running dead north along the coast, the noise
about the bows was very slight and pleasant. The regular and gentle wind
came upon the quarter without change, and the heel of the boat was
steady. No calm came with the late sunset; the breeze still held, and so
till nearly midnight I could hold a course and hardly feel the pulling
of the helm. Meanwhile the arch of the sunset endured, for I was far to
the northward, and all those colours which belong to June above the
Arctic Sea shone and changed in the slow progress of that arch as it
advanced before me and mingled at last with the dawn. Throughout the
hours of that journey I could see clearly the seams of the deck forward,
the texture of the canvas and the natural hues of the woodwork and the
rigging, the glint of the brasswork, and even the letters painted round
the little capstain-head, so continually did the light endure. The
silence which properly belongs to darkness, and which accompanies the
sleep of birds upon the sea, appeared to be the more intense because of
such a continuance of the light, and what with a long vigil and new
water, it was as though I had passed the edge of all known maps and had
crossed the boundary of new land.
In such a mood I saw before me the dark band of a stone jetty running
some miles off from the shore into the sea, and at the end of it a fixed
beacon whose gleam showed against the translucent sky (and its broken
reflection in the pale sea) as a candle shows when one pulls the
curtains of one's room and lets in the beginnings of the day.
For this point I ran, and as I turned it I discovered a little harbour
quite silent under the growing light; there was not a man upon its
wharves, and there was no smoke rising from its slate roofs. It was
absolutely still. The boat swung easily round in the calm water, the
pier-head slipped by, the screen of the pier-head beacon suddenly cut
off its glare, and she went slowly with no air in her canvas towards the
patch of darkness under the quay. There, as I did not know the place, I
would not pick up moorings which another man might own and need, but as
my boat still crept along with what was left of her way I let go the
little anchor, for it was within an hour of low tide, and I was sure of
water.
When I had done this she soon tugged at the chain and I slackened all
the halyards. I put the cover on the mainsail, and as I did so, looking
aft, I noted the high mountain-side behind the town standing clear in
the dawn. I turned eastward to receive it. The light still lifted, and
though I had not slept I could not but stay up and watch the glory
growing over heaven. It was just then, when I had stowed everything
away, that I heard to the right of me the crooning of a man.
A few moments before I should not have seen him under the darkness of
the sea-wall, but the light was so largely advanced (it was nearly two
o'clock) that I now clearly made out both his craft and him.
She was sturdy and high, and I should think of slight draught. She was
of great beam. She carried but one sail, and that was brown. He had it
loose, with the peak dipped ready for hoisting, and he himself was busy
at some work upon the floor, stowing and fitting his bundles, and as he
worked he crooned gently to himself. It was then that I hailed him, but
in a low voice, so much did the silence of that place impress itself
upon all living beings who were strange to it. He looked up and told me
that he had not seen me come in nor heard the rattling of the chain. I
asked him what he would do so early, whether he was off fishing at that
hour or whether he was taking parcels down the coast for hire or goods
to sell at some other port. He answered me that he was doing none of
those things.
"What cruise, then, are you about to take?" I said.
"I am off," he answered in a low and happy voice, "to find what is
beyond the sea."
"And to what shore," said I, "do you mean to sail?"
He answered: "I am out upon this sea northward to where they say there
is no further shore."
As he spoke he looked towards that horizon which now stood quite clean
and clear between the pier-heads: his eyes were full of the broad
daylight, and he breathed the rising wind as though it were a promise of
new life and of unexpected things. I asked him then what his security
was and had he formed a plan, and why he was setting out from this small
place, unless, perhaps, it was his home, of which he might be tired.
"No," he answered, and smiled; "this is not my home; and I have come to
it as you may have come to it, for the first time; and, like you, I came
in after the whole place slept; but as I neared I noticed certain shore
marks and signs which had been given me, and then I knew that I had come
to the starting-place of a long voyage."
"Of what voyage?" I asked.
He answered:
"This is that harbour in the North of which a Breton priest once told me
that I should reach it, and when I had moored in it and laid my stores
on board in order, I should set sail before morning and reach at last a
complete repose." Then he went on with eagerness, though still talking
low: "The voyage which I was born to make in the end, and to which my
desire has driven me, is towards a place in which everything we have
known is forgotten, except those things which, as we knew them,
reminded us of an original joy. In that place I shall discover again
such full moments of content as I have known, and I shall preserve them
without failing. It is in some country beyond this sea, and it has a
harbour like this harbour, only set towards the South, as this is
towards the North; but like this harbour it looks out over an unknown
sea, and like this harbour it enjoys a perpetual light. Of what the
happy people in this country are, or of how they speak, no one has told
me, but they will receive me well, for I am of one kind with themselves.
But as to how I shall know this harbour, I can tell you: there is a
range of hills, broken by a valley through which one sees a further and
a higher range, and steering for this hollow in the hills one sees a
tower out to sea upon a rock, and high up inland a white quarry on a
hill-top; and these two in line are the leading marks by which one gets
clear into the mouth of the river, and so to the wharves of the town.
And there," he ended, "I shall come off the sea for ever, and every one
will call me by my name."
The sun was now near the horizon, but not yet risen, and for a little
time he said nothing to me nor I to him, for he was at work sweating up
the halyard and setting the peak. He let go the mooring knot also, but
he held the end of the rope in his hand and paid it out, standing and
looking upward, as the sail slowly filled and his craft drifted towards
me. He pressed the tiller with his knee to keep her full.
I now knew by his eyes and voice that he was from the West, and I could
not see him leave me without asking him from what place he came that he
should set out for such another place. So I asked him: "Are you from
Ireland, or from Brittany, or from the Islands?" He answered me: "I am
from none of these, but from Cornwall." And as he answered me thus
shortly he still watched the sail and still pressed the tiller with his
knee, and still paid out the mooring rope without turning round.
"You cannot make the harbour," I said to him. "It is not of this world."
Just at that moment the breeze caught the peak of his jolly brown sail;
he dropped the tail of the rope: it slipped and splashed into the
harbour slime. His large boat heeled, shot up, just missed my cable; and
then he let her go free, and she ran clear away. As she ran he looked
over his shoulder and laughed most cheerily; he greeted me with his
eyes, and he waved his hand to me in the morning light.
He held her well. A clean wake ran behind her. He put her straight for
the harbour-mouth and passed the pier-heads and took the sea outside.
Whether in honest truth he was a fisherman out for fishes who chose to
fence with me, or whether in that cruise of his he landed up in a
Norwegian bay, or thought better of it in Orkney, or went through the
sea and through death to the place he desired, I have never known.
I watched him holding on, and certainly he kept a course. The sun rose,
the town awoke, but I would not cease from watching him. His sail still
showed a smaller and a smaller point upon the sea; he did not waver. For
an hour I caught it and lost it, and caught it again, as it dwindled;
for half another hour I could not swear to it in the blaze. Before I had
wearied it was gone.
* * * * *
Oh! my companions, both you to whom I dedicate this book and you who
have accompanied me over other hills and across other waters or before
the guns in Burgundy, or you others who were with me when I seemed
alone--that ulterior shore was the place we were seeking in every cruise
and march and the place we thought at last to see. We, too, had in mind
that Town of which this man spoke to me in the Scottish harbour before
he sailed out northward to find what he could find. But I did not follow
him, for even if I had followed him I should not have found the Town.
BELLOC-HILLS AND THE SEA - THE ARENA