BELLOC-On Nothing & kindred subjets - ON IGNORANCE
Harmonides of Ephesus says in one of his treatises upon method (I
forget which, but I think the fifth) that a matter is very often
more clearly presented by way of example than in the form of a
direct statement and analysis. I have determined to follow the
advice of this great though pagan authority in what you will now
read or not read, according to your inclination.
As I was sitting one of these sunny mornings in my little Park,
reading an article upon vivisection in the Tablet newspaper,
a Domestic [Be seated, be seated, I pray you!] brought me a letter
upon a Silver Salver [Be covered!]
Which reminds me, why do people say that silver is the only perfect
spondee in the English language? Salver is a perfectly good spondee;
so is North-Cape; so is great-coat; so is High-Mass; so is
Wenchthorpe; so is forewarp, which is the rope you throw out from
the stem to the little man in the boat who comes to moor you along
the west gully in the Ramsgate Harbour; so is Longnose, the name of
a buoy, and of a reef of rocks just north of the North Foreland; so
are a great many other words. But I digress. I only put in these
words to show you in case you had any dissolving doubts remaining
upon the matter, that the kind of stuff you read is very often all
nonsense, and that you must not take things for granted merely
because they are printed. I have watched you doing it from time to
time, and have been torn between pity and anger. But all that is
neither here nor there. This habit of parenthesis is the ruin of
good prose. As I was saying, example clearly put down without
comment is very often more powerful than analysis for the purpose of
conviction.
The Domestic brought me a letter upon a Silver Salver. I took it and
carefully examined the outside.
They err who will maintain through thick and thin upon a mere theory
and without any true experience of the world, that it matters not
what the outside of a letter may be so long as the contents provoke
terror or amusement. The outside of a letter should appeal to one.
When one gets a letter with a halfpenny stamp and with the flap of
the letter stuck inside, and with the address on the outside
typewritten, one is very apt to throw it away. I believe that there
is no recorded case of such a letter containing a cheque, a summons,
or an invitation to eat good food, and as for demand notes, what are
they? Then again those long envelopes which come with the notice,
"Paid in bulk," outside instead of a stamp--no man can be moved by
them. They are very nearly always advertisements of cheap wine.
Do not misunderstand me: cheap wine is by no means to be despised.
There are some sorts of wine the less you pay for them the better
they are--within reason; and if a Gentleman has bought up a bankrupt
stock of wine from a fellow to whom he has been lending money, why
on earth should he not sell it again at a reasonable profit, yet
quite cheap? It seems to be pure benefit to the world. But I
perceive that all this is leading me from my subject.
I took up the letter, I say, and carefully examined the outside. It
was written in the hand of an educated man. It was almost illegible,
and had all the appearance of what an honest citizen of some culture
might write to one hurriedly about some personal matter. I noticed
that it had come from the eastern central district, but when you
consider what an enormous number of people live there during the
day, that did not prejudice me against it.
Now, when I opened this letter, I found it written a little more
carefully, but still, written, not printed, or typewritten, or
manifolded, or lithographed, or anything else of that kind. It was
written.
The art of writing ... but Patience! Patience!...
It was written. It was very cordial, and it appealed directly, only
the style was otiose, but in matters of the first importance style
is a hindrance.
Telephone No. 666.
The Mercury,
15th Nishan 5567.
Dear Sir,--Many people wonder, especially in your profession,
[what is It?] why a certain Taedium Vitae seizes them towards
five o'clock in the afternoon. The stress and hurry of modern life
have forced so many of Us to draw upon Our nervous energy that We
imagine that [Look at that 'that'! The whole Elizabethan
tradition chucked away!] We are exceeding our powers, and when
this depression comes over Us, we think it necessary to take a rest,
and Let up from working. This is an erroneous supposition. What it
means is that Our body has received insufficient nutriment during
the last twenty-four hours, and that Nature is craving for more
sustenance.
We shall be very happy to offer you, through the medium of this
paper, a special offer of our Essence of The Ox. This offer will
only remain open until Derby Day, during which period a box of our
Essence of The Ox will be sent to you Free, if you will enclose the
following form, and send it to Us in the stamped envelope, which
accompanies this letter.
Very faithfully yours,
It seemed to me a most extraordinary thing. I had never written for
Ullmo and his Mercury, and I could do them no good in the world,
either here or in Johannesburg. I was never likely to write for
him at all. He is not very pleasant; He is by no means rich; He is
ill-informed. He has no character at all, apart from rather unsuccessful
money-grubbing, and from a habit of defending with some virulence,
but with no capacity, his fellow money-grubbers throughout the
world. However, I thought no more about it, and went on reading
about "Vivisection."
Two days later I got a letter upon thick paper, so grained as to
imitate oak, and having at the top a coat-of-arms of the most
complicated kind. This coat-of-arms had a little lamb on it,
suspended by a girdle, as though it were being slung on board ship;
there were also three little sheaves of wheat, a sword, three
panthers, some gules, and a mullet. Above it was a helmet, and there
were two supporters: one was a man with a club, and the other was
another man without a club, both naked. Underneath was the motto,
"Tout à Toi." This second letter was very short.
Dear Sir,--Can you tell me why you have not answered Our letter
re the Essence of the Ox? Derby Day is approaching, and the
remaining time is very short. We made the offer specially to you,
and we had at least expected the courtesy of an acknowledgment. You
will understand that the business of a great newspaper leaves but
little time for private charity, but we are willing to let the offer
remain open for three days longer, after which date--
How easy it would be to criticise this English! To continue:
--after which date the price will inevitably be raised to One
Shilling.--We remain, etc.
I had this letter framed with the other, and I waited to see what
would happen, keeping back from the bank for fear of frightening the
fish, and hardly breathing.
What happened was, after four or five days, a very sad letter which
said that Ullmo expected better things from me, but that He knew
what the stress of modern life was, and how often correspondence
fell into arrears. He sent me a smaller specimen box of the Essence
of The Ox. I have it still.
And there it is. There is no moral; there is no conclusion or
application. The world is not quite infinite--but it is
astonishingly full. All sorts of things happen in it. There are all
sorts of different men and different ways of action, and different
goals to which life may be directed. Why, in a little wood near
home, not a hundred yards long, there will soon burst, in the spring
(I wish I were there!), hundreds of thousands of leaves, and no one
leaf exactly like another. At least, so the parish priest used to
say, and though I have never had the leisure to put the thing to the
proof, I am willing to believe that he was right, for he spoke with
authority.
I appeal loudly to the Muse of History (whose name I forget and you
never knew) to help me in the description of this house, for--
The Muse of Tragedy would overstrain herself on it;
The Muse of Comedy would be impertinent upon it;
The Muse of Music never heard of it;
The Muse of Fine Arts disapproved of it;
The Muse of Public Instruction ... (Tut, tut! There I was nearly
making a tenth Muse! I was thinking of the French Ministry.)
The Muse of Epic Poetry did not understand it;
The Muse of Lyric Poetry still less so;
The Muse of Astronomy is thinking of other things;
The Muse Polyhymnia (or Polymnia, who, according to Smith's
Dictionary of Antiquities, is commonly represented in a
pensive attitude) has no attribute and does no work.
And as for little Terpsichore whose feet are like the small waves in
summer time, she would laugh in a peal if I asked her to write,
think of, describe, or dance in this house (and that makes eleven
Muses. No matter; better more than less).
Yet it was a house worthy of description and careful inventory, and
for that reason I have appealed to the Muse of History whose
business it is to set down everything in order as it happens,
judging between good and evil, selecting facts, condensing
narratives, admitting picturesque touches, and showing her further
knowledge by the allusive method or use of the dependent clause.
Well then, inspired, I will tell you exactly how that house was
disposed. First, there ran up the middle of it a staircase which,
had Horace seen it (and heaven knows he was the kind of man to live
in such a house), he would have called in his original and striking
way "Res Angusta Domi," for it was a narrow thing. Narrow do I call
it? Yes--and yet not so narrow. It was narrow enough to avoid all
appearance of comfort or majesty, yet not so narrow as to be quaint
or snug. It was so designed that two people could walk exactly
abreast, for it was necessary that upon great occasions the ladies
should be taken down from the drawing-room by the gentlemen to the
dining-room, yet it would have been a sin and a shame to make it
wider than that, and the house was not built in the days of
crinolines. Upon these occasions it was customary for the couples to
go down in order and in stately fashion, and the hostess went last;
but do not imagine that there was any order of precedence. Oh, no!
Far from it, they went as they were directed.
This staircase filled up a kind of Chimney or Funnel, or rather
Parallelepiped, in the house: half-way between each floor was a
landing where it turned right round on itself, and on each floor a
larger landing flanked by two doors on either side, which made four
altogether. This staircase was covered with Brussels carpet (and let
me tell you in passing that no better covering for stairs was ever
yet invented; it wears well and can be turned, and when the uppers
are worn you can move the whole thing down one file and put the steps
where the uppers were. None of your cocoanut stuff or gimcracks for
the honest house: when there is money you should have Brussels, when
you have none linoleum--but I digress). The stair-rods were of brass
and beautifully polished, the banisters of iron painted to look like
mahogany; and this staircase, which I may take to be the emblem of a
good life lived for duty, went up one pair, and two pair, and three
pair--all in the same way, and did not stop till it got to the top.
But just as a good life has beneath it a human basis so this (heaven
forgive me!) somewhat commonplace staircase changed its character
when it passed the hall door, and as it ran down to the basement had
no landing, ornament, carpet or other paraphernalia, but a sound
flight of stone steps with a cold rim of unpainted metal for the hand.
The hall that led to these steps was oblong and little furnished.
There was a hat-rack, a fireplace (in which a fire was not lit) and
two pictures; one a photograph of the poor men to whom the owner
paid weekly wages at his Works, all set out in a phalanx, or rather
fan, with the Owner of the House (and them) in the middle, the other
a steel engraving entitled "The Monarch of the Forest," from a
painting by Sir Edwin Landseer. It represented a stag and was very
ugly.
On the ground floor of the House (which libel, for it was some
feet above the ground, and was led up to by several steps, as the
porch could show) there were four rooms--the Dining-room, the
Smoking-room, the Downstairs-room and the Back-room. The Dining-room
was so called because all meals were held in it; the Smoking-room
because it was customary to smoke all over the house (except the
Drawing-room); the Back-room because it was at the back, and the
Downstairs-room because it was downstairs. Upon my soul, I would
give you a better reason if I had one, but I have none. Only I may
say that the Smoking-room was remarkable for two stuffed birds, the
Downstairs-room from the fact that the Owner lived in it and felt at
ease there, the Back-room from the fact that no one ever went into
it (and quite right too), while the Dining-room--but the Dining-room
stands separate.
The Dining-room was well carpeted; it had in its midst a large
mahogany table so made that it could get still larger by the
addition of leaves inside; there were even flaps as well. It had
eleven chairs, and these in off-times stood ranged round the wall
thinking of nothing, but at meal times were (according to the number
wanted) put round the table. It is a theory among those who believe
that a spirit nourishes all things from within, that there was some
competition amongst these chairs as to which should be used at
table, so dull, forlorn and purposeless was their life against the
wall. Seven pictures hung on that wall; not because it was a mystic
number, but because it filled up all the required space; two on each
side of the looking-glass and three large ones on the opposite wall.
They were all of them engravings, and one of them at least was that
of a prominent statesman (Lord Beaconsfield), while the rest had to
do with historical subjects, such as the visit of Prince Albert to
the Exhibition of 1851, and I really forget what else. There was a
Chiffonier at the end of the room in which the wines and spirits
were kept, and which also had a looking-glass above it; also a white
cloth on the top for no reason on earth. An arm-chair (in which the
Owner sat) commonly stood at the head of the table; this remained
there even between meals, and was a symbol that he was master of the
house. Four meals were held here. Breakfast at eight, dinner at one,
tea at six, and a kind of supper (when the children had gone to bed)
at nine or so. But what am I saying--quo Musa Historiae
tendis?--dear! dear! I thought I was back again in the old
times! a thousand pardons. At the time my story opens--and closes
also for that matter (for I deal of the Owner and the House in
articulo mortis so to speak; on the very edge of death)--it was
far otherwise. Breakfast was when you like (for him, however, always
at the same old hour, and there he would sit alone, his wife dead,
his son asleep--trying to read his newspaper, but staring out from
time to time through the window and feeling very companion-less).
Dinner was no longer dinner; there was "luncheon" to which nobody
came except on Saturdays. Then there was another thing (called by
the old name of dinner) at half-past seven, and what had happened to
supper no one ever made out. Some people said it had gone to
Prince's, but certainly the Owner never followed it there.
On the next floor was the Drawing-room, noted for its cabinet of
curiosities, its small aquarium, its large sofa, its piano and its
inlaid table. The back of the drawing-room was another room beyond
folding doors. This would have been convenient if a dance had ever
been given in the house. On the other side were the best bedroom and
a dressing-room. Each in its way what might be expected, save that at
the head of the best bed were two little pockets as in the time of our
grandfathers; also there was a Chevalier looking-glass and on the
dressing-table a pin-cushion with pins arranged in a pattern. The
fire-place and the mantelpiece were of white marble and had on them
two white vases picked out in bright green, a clock with a bronze
upon it representing a waiter dressed up partly in fifteenth-century
plate and partly in twelfth-century mail, and on the wall were two
Jewish texts, each translated into Jacobean English and illuminated
with a Victorian illumination. One said: "He hath prevented all my
ways." The other said: "Wisdom is better than Rubies." But the gothic
"u" was ill made and it looked like "Rabies." There was also in the
room a good wardrobe of a kind now difficult to get, made out of cedar
and very reasonable in arrangement. There was, moreover (now it occurs
to me), a little table for writing on; there was writing paper with
"Wood Thorpe" on it, but there were no stamps, and the ink was dry in
the bottles (for there were two bottles).
Well, now, shall I be at the pains of telling you what there was
upstairs? Not I! I am tired enough as it is of detailing all these
things. I will speak generally. There were four bedrooms. They were
used by the family, and above there was an attic which belonged to
the servants. The decoration of the wall was everywhere much the
same, save that it got a little meaner as one rose, till at last, in
the top rooms of all, there was nothing but little photographs of
sweethearts or pictures out of illustrated papers stuck against the
walls. The wall-paper, that had cost 3s. 3d. a piece in the hall and
dining-room, and 7s. 6d. in the drawing-room, suddenly began to
cost 1s. 4d. in the upper story and the attic was merely whitewashed.
One thing more there was, a little wooden gate. It had been put
there when the children were little, and had remained ever since at
the top of the stairs. Why? It may have been mere routine. It may
have been romance. The Owner was a practical man, and the little
gate was in the way; it was true he never had to shut and open it on
his way to bed, and but rarely even saw it. Did he leave it there
from a weak sentiment or from a culpable neglect? He was not a
sentimental man; on the other hand, he was not negligent. There is a
great deal to be said on both sides, and it is too late to discuss
that now.
Heaven send us such a house, or a house of some kind; but Heaven
send us also the liberty to furnish it as we choose. For this it was
that made the Owner's joy: he had done what he liked in his own
surroundings, and I very much doubt whether the people who live in
Queen Anne houses or go in for timber fronts can say the same.
The other day I noticed that my Muse, who had long been ailing,
silent and morose, was showing signs of actual illness.
Now, though it is by no means one of my habits to coddle the dogs,
cats and other familiars of my household, yet my Muse had so pitiful
an appearance that I determined to send for the doctor, but not
before I had seen her to bed with a hot bottle, a good supper, and
such other comforts as the Muses are accustomed to value. All that
could be done for the poor girl was done thoroughly; a fine fire was
lit in her bedroom, and a great number of newspapers such as she is
given to reading for her recreation were bought at a neighbouring
shop. When she had drunk her wine and read in their entirety the
Daily Telegraph, the Morning Post, the Standard, the Daily
Mail, the Daily Express, the Times, the Daily News, and
even the Advertiser, I was glad to see her sink into a profound
slumber.
I will confess that the jealousy which is easily aroused among
servants when one of their number is treated with any special
courtesy gave me some concern, and I was at the pains of explaining
to the household not only the grave indisposition from which the
Muse suffered, but also the obligation I was under to her on account
of her virtues: which were, her long and faithful service, her
willingness, and the excess of work which she had recently been
compelled to perform. Her fellow-servants, to my astonishment and
pleasure, entered at once into the spirit of my apology: the still-room
maid offered to sit up with her all night, or at least until the
trained nurse should arrive, and the groom of the chambers, with
a good will that I confess was truly surprising in one of his proud
nature, volunteered to go himself and order straw for the street
from a neighbouring stable.
The cause of this affection which the Muse had aroused in the whole
household I subsequently discovered to lie in her own amiable and
unselfish temper. She had upon two occasions inspired the knife-boy
to verses which had subsequently appeared in the Spectator,
and with weekly regularity she would lend her aid to the cook in the
composition of those technical reviews by which (as it seemed) that
domestic increased her ample wages.
The Muse had slept for a full six hours when the doctor arrived--a
specialist in these matters and one who has before now been called
in (I am proud to say) by such great persons as Mr. Hichens, Mr.
Churchill, and Mr. Roosevelt when their Muses have been out of
sorts. Indeed, he is that doctor who operated for aphasia upon the
Muse of the late Mr. Rossetti just before his demise. His fees are
high, but I was willing enough to pay, and certainly would never
have consented--as have, I regret to say, so many of my unworthy
contemporaries--to employ a veterinary surgeon upon such an
occasion.
The great specialist approached with a determined air the couch
where the patient lay, awoke her according to the ancient formula,
and proceeded to question her upon her symptoms. He soon discovered
their gravity, and I could see by his manner that he was anxious to
an extreme. The Muse had grown so weak as to be unable to dictate
even a little blank verse, and the indisposition had so far affected
her mind that she had no memory of Parnassus, but deliriously
maintained that she had been born in the home counties--nay, in the
neighbourhood of Uxbridge. Her every phrase was a deplorable
commonplace, and, on the physician applying a stethoscope and
begging her to attempt some verse, she could give us nothing better
than a sonnet upon the expansion of the Empire. Her weakness was
such that she could do no more than awake, and that feebly, while
she professed herself totally unable to arise, to expand, to soar,
to haunt, or to perform any of those exercises which are proper to
her profession.
When his examination was concluded the doctor took me aside and
asked me upon what letters the patient had recently fed. I told him
upon the daily Press, some of the reviews, the telegrams from the
latest seat of war, and occasionally a debate in Parliament. At this
he shook his head and asked whether too much had not recently been
asked of her. I admitted that she had done a very considerable
amount of work for so young a Muse in the past year, though its
quality was doubtful, and I hastened to add that I was the less to
blame as she had wasted not a little of her powers upon others
without asking my leave; notably upon the knife-boy and the cook.
The doctor was then good enough to write out a prescription in Latin
and to add such general recommendations as are commonly of more
value than physic. She was to keep her bed, to be allowed no modern
literature of any kind, unless Milton and Swift may be admitted as
moderns, and even these authors and their predecessors were to be
admitted in very sparing quantities. If any signs of inversion,
archaism, or neologistic tendencies appeared he was to be summoned
at once; but of these (he added) he had little fear. He did not
doubt that in a few weeks we should have her up and about again, but
he warned me against letting her begin work too soon.
"I would not," he said, "permit her to undertake any effort until
she can inspire within one day of twelve hours at least eighteen
quatrains, and those lucid, grammatical, and moving. As for single
lines, tags, fine phrases, and the rest, they are no sign whatever
of returning health, if anything of the contrary."
He also begged that she might not be allowed any Greek or Latin for
ten days, but I reassured him upon the matter by telling him that
she was totally unacquainted with those languages--at which he
expressed some pleasure but even more astonishment.
At last he told me that he was compelled to be gone; the season had
been very hard, nor had he known so general a breakdown among the
Muses of his various clients.
I thought it polite as I took him to the door to ask after some of
his more distinguished patients; he was glad to say that the
Archbishop of Armagh's was very vigorous indeed, in spite of the age
of her illustrious master. He had rarely known a more inventive or
courageous female, but when, as I handed him into his carriage, I
asked after that of Mr. Kipling, his face became suddenly grave; and
he asked me, "Have you not heard?"
"No," said I; but I had a fatal presentiment of what was to follow,
and indeed I was almost prepared for it when he answered in solemn
tones:
"She is dead."
There lives in the middle of the Weald upon the northern edge of a
small wood where a steep brow of orchard pasture goes down to a
little river, a Recluse who is of middle age and possessed of all
the ordinary accomplishments; that is, French and English literature
are familiar to him, he can himself compose, he has read his
classical Latin and can easily decipher such Greek as he has been
taught in youth. He is unmarried, he is by birth a gentleman, he
enjoys an income sufficient to give him food and wine, and has for
companion a dog who, by the standard of dogs, is somewhat more
elderly than himself.
This dog is called Argus, not that he has a hundred eyes nor even two,
indeed he has but one; for the other, or right eye, he lost the sight
of long ago from luxury and lack of exercise. This dog Argus is neither
small nor large; he is brown in colour and covered--though now but
partially--with curly hair. In this he resembles many other dogs, but
he differs from most of his breed in a further character, which is
that by long association with a Recluse he has acquired a human manner
that is unholy. He is fond of affected poses. When he sleeps it is with
that abandonment of fatigue only naturally to be found in mankind. He
watches sunsets and listens mournfully to music. Cooked food is dearer
to him than raw, and he will eat nuts--a monstrous thing in a dog and
proof of corruption.
Nevertheless, or, rather, on account of all this, the dog Argus is
exceedingly dear to his master, and of both I had the other day a
singular revelation when I set out at evening to call upon my
friend.
The sun had set, but the air was still clear and it was light enough
to have shot a bat (had there been bats about and had one had a gun)
when I knocked at the cottage door and opened it. Right within, one
comes to the first of the three rooms which the Recluse possesses,
and there I found him tenderly nursing the dog Argus, who lay
groaning in the arm-chair and putting on all the airs of a Christian
man at the point of death.
The Recluse did not even greet me, but asked me only in a hurried
way how I thought the dog Argus looked. I answered gravely and in a
low tone so as not to disturb the sufferer, that as I had not seen
him since Tuesday, when he was, for an elderly dog, in the best of
health, he certainly presented a sad contrast, but that perhaps he
was better than he had been some few hours before, and that the
Recluse himself would be the best judge of that.
My friend was greatly relieved at what I said, and told me that he
thought the dog was better, compared at least with that same
morning; then, whether you believe it or not, he took him by the
left leg just above the paw and held it for a little time as though
he were feeling a pulse, and said, "He came back less than twenty-four
hours ago!" It seemed that the dog Argus, for the first time in fourteen
years, had run away, and that for the first time in perhaps twenty or
thirty years the emotion of loss had entered into the life of the
Recluse, and that he had felt something outside books and outside
the contemplation of the landscape about his hermitage.
In a short time the dog fell into a slumber, as was shown by a
number of grunts and yaps which proved his sleep, for the dog Argus
is of that kind which hunts in dreams. His master covered him
reverently rather than gently with an Indian cloth and, still
leaving him in the armchair, sat down upon a common wooden chair
close by and gazed pitifully at the fire. For my part I stood up and
wondered at them both, and wondered also at that in man by which he
must attach himself to something, even if it be but a dog, a
politician, or an ungrateful child.
When he had gazed at the fire a little while the Recluse began to
talk, and I listened to him talking:
"Even if they had not dug up so much earth to prove it I should have
known," said he, "that the Odyssey was written not at the beginning
of a civilisation nor in the splendour of it, but towards its close.
I do not say this from the evening light that shines across its
pages, for that is common to all profound work, but I say it because
of the animals, and especially because of the dog, who was the only
one to know his master when that master came home a beggar to his
own land, before his youth was restored to him, and before he got
back his women and his kingship by the bending of his bow, and
before he hanged the housemaids and killed all those who had
despised him."
"But how," said I (for I am younger than he), "can the animals in
the poem show you that the poem belongs to a decline?"
"Why," said he, "because at the end of a great civilisation the air
gets empty, the light goes out of the sky, the gods depart, and men
in their loneliness put out a groping hand, catching at the
friendship of, and trying to understand, whatever lives and suffers
as they do. You will find it never fail that where a passionate
regard for the animals about us, or even a great tenderness for
them, is to be found there is also to be found decay in the State."
"I hope not," said I. "Moreover, it cannot be true, for in the
Thirteenth Century, which was certainly the healthiest time we ever
had, animals were understood; and I will prove it to you in several
carvings."
He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, saying, "In the rough
and in general it is true; and the reason is the reason I have given
you, that when decay begins, whether of a man or of a State, there
comes with it an appalling and a torturing loneliness in which our
energies decline into a strong affection for whatever is constantly
our companion and for whatever is certainly present upon earth. For
we have lost the sky."
"Then if the senses are so powerful in a decline of the State there
should come at the same time," said I, "a quick forgetfulness of the
human dead and an easy change of human friendship?"
"There does," he answered, and to that there was no more to be said.
"I know it by my own experience," he continued. "When, yesterday, at
sunset, I looked for my dog Argus and could not find him, I went out
into the wood and called him: the darkness came and I found no trace
of him. I did not hear him barking far off as I have heard him
before when he was younger and went hunting for a while, and three
times that night I came back out of the wild into the warmth of my
house, making sure he would have returned, but he was never there.
The third time I had gone a mile out to the gamekeeper's to give him
money if Argus should be found, and I asked him as many questions
and as foolish as a woman would ask. Then I sat up right into the
night, thinking that every movement of the wind outside or of the
drip of water was the little pad of his step coming up the
flagstones to the door. I was even in the mood when men see unreal
things, and twice I thought I saw him passing quickly between my
chair and the passage to the further room. But these things are
proper to the night and the strongest thing I suffered for him was
in the morning.
"It was, as you know, very bitterly cold for several days. They
found things dead in the hedgerows, and there was perhaps no running
water between here and the Downs. There was no shelter from the
snow. There was no cover for my friend at all. And when I was up at
dawn with the faint light about, a driving wind full of sleet filled
all the air. Then I made certain that the dog Argus was dead, and
what was worse that I should not find his body: that the old dog had
got caught in some snare or that his strength had failed him through
the cold, as it fails us human beings also upon such nights,
striking at the heart.
"Though I was certain that I would not see him again yet I went on
foolishly and aimlessly enough, plunging through the snow from one
spinney to another and hoping that I might hear a whine. I heard
none: and if the little trail he had made in his departure might
have been seen in the evening, long before that morning the drift
would have covered it.
"I had eaten nothing and yet it was near noon when I returned,
pushing forward to the cottage against the pressure of the storm,
when I found there, miserably crouched, trembling, half dead, in the
lee of a little thick yew beside my door, the dog Argus; and as I
came his tail just wagged and he just moved his ears, but he had not
the strength to come near me, his master."
[Greek: ourae men rh ho g esaene kai ouata kabbalen ampho, asson d
ouket epeita dunaesato oio anaktos elthemen.]
"I carried him in and put him here, feeding him by force, and I have
restored him."
All this the Recluse said to me with as deep and as restrained
emotion as though he had been speaking of the most sacred things, as
indeed, for him, these things were sacred.
It was therefore a mere inadvertence in me, and an untrained habit
of thinking aloud, which made me say:
"Good Heavens, what will you do when the dog Argus dies?"
At once I wished I had not said it, for I could see that the Recluse
could not bear the words. I looked therefore a little awkwardly
beyond him and was pleased to see the dog Argus lazily opening his
one eye and surveying me with torpor and with contempt. He was
certainly less moved than his master.
Then in my heart I prayed that of these two (unless The God would
make them both immortal and catch them up into whatever place is
better than the Weald, or unless he would grant them one death
together upon one day) that the dog Argus might survive my friend,
and that the Recluse might be the first to dissolve that long
companionship. For of this I am certain, that the dog would suffer
less; for men love their dependents much more than do their
dependents them; and this is especially true of brutes; for men are
nearer to the gods.
BELLOC-On Nothing & kindred subjets - ON IGNORANCE