News From Nowhere or An Epoch of Rest
by William Morris
Chapter 28 The Little River
We started before six o'clock the next morning, as we
were still twenty-five miles from our resting-place, and Dick wanted to
be there before dusk. The journey was pleasant, though to those who do
not know the upper Thames, there is little to say about it. Ellen and I
were once more together in her boat, though Dick, for fairness' sake, was
for having me in his, and letting the two women scull the green toy.
Ellen, however, would not allow this, but claimed
[Page
219]
me as the interesting person of the company. "After
having come so far," said she, I will not be put off with a companion who
will always be thinking of somebody else than me: the guest is the only
person who can amuse me properly. I mean that really," said she, turning
to me, "and have not said it merely as a pretty saying."
Clara blushed and looked very happy at all this;
for I think up to this time she had been rather frightened of Ellen. As
for me I felt young again, and strange hopes of my youth were mingling
with the pleasure of the present; almost destroying it, and
quickening it into something like pain.
As we
passed through the short and winding reaches of the now quickly lessening
stream, Ellen said: "How pleasant this little river is to me, who am used
to a great wide wash of water; it almost seems as if we shall have to
stop at every reach-end. I expect before I get home this evening I shall
have realised what a little country England is, since we can so soon get
to the end of its biggest river."
"It is not
big," said I, but it is pretty.
"Yes," she
said, and don't you find it difficult to imagine the times when this
pretty country was treated by its folk as if it had been an ugly
characterless waste, with no delicate beauty to be guarded, with no heed
taken of the ever fresh pleasure of the recurring seasons, and changeful
weather, and diverse quality of the soil, and so forth? How could people
be so cruel to themselves?"
"And to each
other," said I. Then a sudden resolution took hold of me, and I said:
"Dear neighbour, I may as well tell you at once that I find it easier to
imagine all that ugly past than you do, because I myself have been part
of it. I see both that you have divined something of this in me; and also
[Page 220]
I think you will believe me when I tell you
of it, so that I am going to hide nothing from you at all."
She was silent a little, and then she said: "My
friend, you have guessed right about me; and to tell you the truth I have
followed you up from Runnymede in order that I might ask you many
questions, and because I saw that you were not one of us; and that
interested and pleased me, and I wanted to make you as happy as you could
be. To say the truth, there was a risk in it," said she, blushing -- "I
mean as to Dick and Clara; for I must tell you, since we are going to be
such close friends, that even amongst us, where there are so many
beautiful women, I have often troubled men's minds disastrously. That is
one reason why I was living alone with my father in the cottage at
Runnymede. But it did not answer on that score; for of course people came
there, as the place is not a desert, and they seemed to find me all the
more interesting for living alone like that, and fell to making stories
of me to themselves -- like I know you did, my friend. Well, let that
pass. This evening, or to-morrow morning, I shall make a proposal to you
to do something which would please me very much, and I think would not
hurt you."
I broke in eagerly, saying that I
would do anything in the world for her; for indeed, in spite of my years
and the too obvious signs of them (though that feeling of renewed youth
was not a mere passing sensation, I think) -- in spite of my years, I
say, I felt altogether too happy in the company of this delightful
girl, and was prepared to take her confidences for more than they meant
perhaps.
She laughed now, but looked very
kindly on me. "Well," she said, "meantime for the present we will let it
be; for I must look at this new country that we are passing through. See
how the river has
[Page 221]
changed character
again: it is broad now, and the reaches are long and very slow-running.
And look, there is a ferry!"
I told her the
name of it, as I slowed off to put the ferry-chain over our heads; and on
we went passing by a bank clad with oak trees on our left hand, till the
stream narrowed again and deepened and we rowed on between walls of tall
reeds, whose population of reed sparrows and warblers were delightfully
restless, twittering and chuckling as the wash of the boats stirred the
reeds from the water upward in the still, hot morning.
She smiled with pleasure, and her lazy enjoyment
of the new scene seemed to bring out her beauty doubly as
she leaned back amidst the cushions, though she was far from languid; her
idleness being the idleness of a person, strong and well-knit both in
body and mind deliberately resting.
"Look!"
she said, springing up suddenly from her place without any obvious
effort, and balancing herself with exquisite grace and ease; "look at the
beautiful old bridge ahead!"
"I need scarcely
look at that," said I, not turning my head away from her beauty. "I know
what it is; though"(with a smile) "we used to call it the Old Bridge time
agone."
She looked on me kindly, and said,
"How well we get on now you are no longer on your guard against me!"
And she stood looking thoughtfully at me still,
till she had to sit down as we passed under the middle one of the row of
little pointed arches of the oldest bridge across the Thames.
"O the beautiful fields!" she said; I had no idea
of the charm of a very small river like this. The smallness of the
scale of everything, the short
[Page 222]
reaches, and
the speedy change of the banks, give one a feeling of going somewhere, of
coming to something strange, a feeling of adventure which I have not felt
in bigger waters."
I looked at her
delightedly; for her voice, saying the very thing that I was thinking,
was like a caress to me. She caught my eye and her cheeks reddened under
their tan, and she said simply:
"I must tell
you, my friend, that when my father leaves the Thames this summer he will
take me away to a place near the Roman wall in Cumberland; so that this
voyage of mine is farewell to the south; of course with my goodwill in a
way; and yet I am sorry for it. I hadn't the heart to tell Dick yesterday
that we were as good as gone from the Thames-side; but somehow to you I
must needs tell it."
She stopped and seemed
very thoughtful for a wile, and then said, smiling:
"I must say that I don't like moving about from
one home to another; one gets so pleasantly used to all the detail of the
life about one; it fits so harmoniously and happily into one's own life,
that beginning again, even in a small way, is a kind of pain. But I
daresay in the country which you come from, you would think this petty
and unadventurous and would think the worse of me for it."
She smiled at me caressingly as she spoke, and I
made haste to answer: "O no, indeed; again you echo my very thoughts. But
I hardly expected to hear you speak so. I gathered from all I have
heard that there was a great deal of changing of abode amongst you in
this country."
"Well," she said, of course
people are free to move about; but except for pleasure-parties,
especially in harvest and hay-time, like this of ours, I don't think they
do so much. I admit that I also have
[Page 223]
other moods than that of stay-at-home, as I hinted just now, and I should
like to go with you all through the west country -- thinking of nothing,"
concluded she, smiling.
"I should have
plenty to think of," said I.
Chapter 29 A Resting-Place on the Upper Thames
Presently at a place where the river flowed round a
headland of the meadows, we stopped a while for rest and victuals, and
settled ourselves on a beautiful bank which almost reached the dignity of
a hill-side: the wide meadows spread before us, and already the scythe
was busy amidst the hay. One change I noticed amidst the quiet beauty of
the fields -- to wit, that they were planted with trees here and there,
often fruit-trees, and that there was none of the niggardly begrudging of
space to a handsome tree which I remembered too well; and
though the willows were often polled (or shrowded, as they call it in the
countryside), this was done with some regard to beauty: I mean that there
was no polling of rows on rows so as to destroy the pleasantness of
half a mile of country, but a thoughtful sequence in the cutting, that
prevented a sudden bareness anywhere. To be short, the fields were
everywhere treated as a garden made for the pleasure as well as the
livelihood of all, as old Hammond told me was the case.
On this bank or bent of the hill, then, we had our
midday meal; somewhat early for dinner, if that mattered, but we had been
stirring early: the slender stream of the Thames winding below us
between the garden of a country I have been telling of; a furlong
[Page 224]
from us was a beautiful little islet begrown
with graceful trees; on the slopes westward of us was a wood of varied
growth overhanging the narrow meadow on the south side of the river;
while to the north was a wide stretch of mead rising very gradually from
the river's edge. A delicate spire of an ancient building rose up from
out of the trees in the middle distance, with a few grey houses clustered
about it; while nearer to us, in fact not half a furlong from the water
was a quite modern stone house -- a wide quadrangle of one story, the
buildings that made it being quite low. There was no garden between it
and the river, nothing but a row of pear-trees still quite young and
slender; and though there did not seem to be much ornament about it, it
had a sort of natural elegance, like that of the trees themselves.
As we sat looking down on all this in the sweet
June day, rather happy than merry, Ellen, who sat next me, her hand
clasped about one knee, leaned sideways to me, and said in a low voice
which Dick and Clara might have noted if they had not been busy in
happy wordless love-making: "Friend, in your country were the houses of
your field-labourers anything like that?"
I
said: "Well, at any rate the houses of our rich men were not; they were
mere blots upon the face of the land."
"I find
that hard to understand," she said. I can see why the workmen, who were
so oppressed, should not have been able to live in beautiful houses; for
it takes time and leisure, and minds not over-burdened with care, to make
beautiful dwellings; and I quite understand that these poor people were
not allowed to live in such a way as to have these (to us) necessary good
things. But why the rich men who had the time and the leisure and the
materials for
[Page 225]
building, as it would be in
this case, should not have housed themselves well, I do not understand as
yet. I know what you are saying to me," she said, looking me full in
the eyes and blushing, "to wit that their houses and all belonging to
them were generally ugly and base, unless they chanced to be ancient like
yonder remnant of our fo
refathers' work" (pointing to the spire); "that they were -- let me
see; what is the word?"
"Vulgar," said I. We
used to say, said I, "that the ugliness and vulgarity of the rich men's
dwellings was a necessary reflection from the sordidness and bareness of
life which they forced upon the poor people."
She knit her brows as in thought; then turned a
brightened face on me, as if she had caught the idea, and said: "Yes,
friend, I see what you mean. We have sometimes -- those of us who look
into these things -- talked this very matter over; because, to say the
truth, we have plenty of record of the so-called arts of the time before
Equality of Life; and there are not wanting people who say that the state
of that society was not the cause of all that ugliness; that they were
ugly in their life because they liked to be, and could have had beautiful
things about them if they had chosen; just as a man or a body of men now
may, if they please, make things more or less beautiful -- Stop! I know
what you are going to say."
"Do you?"said I,
smiling, yet with a beating heart.
"Yes," she
said; you are answering me, teaching me, in some way or another, although
you have not spoken the words aloud. You are going to say that in times
of inequality it was an essential condition of the life of these rich men
that they should not themselves
[Page 226]
make what
they wanted for the adornment of their lives, but should force those to
make them whom they forced to live pinched and sordid lives; and that as
a necessary consequence the sordidness and pinching, the ugly barrenness
of those ruined lives, were worked up into the adornment of the lives
of the rich, and art died out amongst men? Was that what you would say,
my friend?"
"Yes, yes," I said, looking at her
eagerly; for she had risen and was standing on the edge of the bent, the
light wind stirring her dainty raiment, one hand laid on her bosom, the
other arm stretched downward and clenched in her earnestness.
"It is true," she said, it is true! We have proved
it is true!"
I think amidst my -- something
more than interest in her, and admiration for her, I was beginning to
wonder how it would all end. I had a glimmering of fear of what might
follow; of anxiety as to the remedy which this new age might offer for
the missing of something one might set one's heart on. But now Dick rose
to his feet and cried out in his hearty manner: "Neighbour Ellen, are
you quarreling with the guest, or are you worrying him to tell you things
which he cannot properly explain to your ignorance?"
"Neither, dear neighbour," she said. I was so far
from quarreling with him that I think I have been making him good
friends both with himself and me. Is that so, dear guest?" she said,
looking down at me with a delightful smile of confidence in being
understood.
"Indeed it is," said I.
"Well, moreover," she said, I must say for him
that he has explained himself to me very well indeed, so that I quite
understand him."
"All right," quoth Dick. When
I first set eyes
[Page 227]
on you at Runnymede I knew
that there was something wonderful in your keenness of wits. I don't say
that as a mere pretty speech to please you," said he quickly, "but
because it is true; and it made me want to see more of you. But, come, we
ought to be going; for we are not half way, and we ought to be in well
before sunset."
And therewith he took Clara's
hand, and led her down the bent. But Ellen stood thoughtfully looking
down for a little, and as I took her hand to follow Dick, she turned
round to me and said:
"You might tell me
a great deal and make many things clear to me, if you would."
"Yes," said I, I am pretty well fit for that, --
and for nothing else -- an old man like me."
She did not notice the bitterness which, whether I
liked it or not, was in my voice as I spoke, but went on: "It is not so
much for myself; I should be quite content to dream about past times, and
if I could not idealise them, yet at least idealise some of the people
who lived in them. But I think sometimes people are too careless of the
history of the past -- too apt to leave it in the hands of old learned
men like Hammond. Who knows? happy as we are, times may alter; we may be
bitten with some impulse towards change, and many things may seem too
wonderful for us to resist, too exciting not to catch at, if we do not
know that they are but phases of what has been before; and withal
ruinous deceitful, and sordid."
As we went
slowly down toward the boats she said again: "Not for myself alone, dear
friend; I shall have children; perhaps before the end a good many; -- I
hope so. And though of course I cannot force any special kind of
knowledge upon them, yet, my friend, I cannot help but thinking that just
as they might be like me in body, so I might impress upon them
[Page 228]
some part of my ways of thinking; that is,
indeed, some of the essential part of myself; that part which was not
mere moods, created by matters and events round about me. What do you
think?"
Of one thing I was sure, that her
beauty and kindness and eagerness combined, forced me to think as she
did, when she was not earnestly laying herself open to receive my
thoughts. I said, what at the time was true, that I thought it most
important; and presently stood entranced by the wonder of her grace as
she stepped into the light boat and held out her hand to me. And so on
we went up the Thames still -- or whither?
Chapter 30 The Journey's End
On we went. In spite of my new-born excitement about
Ellen, and my gathering fear of where it would land me I could not help
taking abundant interest in the condition of the river and its banks; all
the more as she never seemed weary of the changing picture, but looked at
every yard of flowery bank and gurgling eddy with the same affectionate
interest which I myself once had so fully, as I used to think, and
perhaps had not altogether lost even in this strangely changed society
with all its wonders. Ellen seemed delighted with my pleasure at this,
that, or the other piece of carefulness in dealing with the river: the
nursing of pretty corners; the ingenuity in dealing with difficulties of
water-engineering so that the most obviously useful works looked
beautiful and natural also. All this, I say, pleased me hugely, and she
was pleased at my pleasure -- but rather puzzled too.
[Page
229]
"You seem astonished," she
said, just after we had passed a mill* which spanned all the stream save
the waterway for traffic, but which was as beautiful in its way as a
Gothic cathedral "you seem astonished at this being so
pleasant to
look at." Note: *I should have said that all along the Thames
there were abundance of mills used for various purposes; none of which
were in any degree unsightly, and many strikingly beautiful; and the
gardens about them marvels of loveliness.
"Yes," I said, in a way I am; though I don't see
why it should not be."
"Ah!" she said,
looking at me admiringly, yet with a lurking smile in her face, "you know
all about the history of the past. Were they not always careful about
this little stream which now adds so much pleasantness to the
countryside? It would always be easy to manage this little river. Ah! I
forgot, though," she said, as her eye caught mine, "in the days we are
thinking of pleasure was wholly neglected in such matters. But how did
they manage the river in the days that you -- " Lived in was what she was
going to say; but correcting herself, said: "in the days of which you
have record?"
"They mismanaged
it," quoth I. Up to the first half of the nineteenth century, when it was
still more or less of a highway for the country people, some care was
taken of the river and its banks; and though I don't suppose any one
troubled himself about its aspect, yet it was trim and beautiful. But
when the railways -- of which no doubt you have heard -- came into
power, they would not allow the people of the country to use either the
natural or artificial waterways, of which the latter there were a great
many. I suppose when we get higher up we shall see one of these; a very
important one, which one of these railways entirely closed to the public,
so that they
[Page 230]
might force people to send
their goods by their private road, and so tax them as heavily as they
could."
Ellen laughed heartily. "Well,", she
said, that is not stated clearly enough in our history-books, and it is
worth knowing. But certainly the people of those days must have been a
curiously lazy set. We are not either fidgety or quarrelsome now, but if
any one tried such a piece of folly on us, we should use the said
waterways, whoever gainsayed us: surely that would be simple enough.
However, I remember other cases of this stupidity: when I was on the
Rhine two years ago, I remember they showed us ruins of old castles,
which, according to what we heard, must have been made for pretty much
the same purpose as the railways were. But I am interrupting your history
of the river: pray go on."
"It is both short
and stupid enough," said I. The river having lost its practical or
commercial value -- that is being of no use to make money of -- "
She nodded. "I understand what that queer phrase
means," said she. "Go on!"
"Well, it was
utterly neglected till at last it became a nuisance -- "
"Yes," quoth Ellen, I understand: like the
railways and the robber baron knights. Yes?"
"So then they turned the makeshift business on to
it, and handed it over to a body up in London, who from time to time, in
order to show that they had something to do, did some damage here and
there, -- cut down trees, destroying the banks thereby; dredged the river
(where it was not needed always), and threw the dredgings on the fields
so as to spoil them; and so forth. But for the most part they practised
`masterly inactivity,' as it was then called -- that is, they drew their
salaries, and let things alone."
[Page 231]
"Drew their salaries," she said. I know that means
that they were allowed to take an extra lot of other people's goods for
doing nothing. And if that had been all, it really might have been worth
while to let them do so, if you couldn't find any other way of keeping
them quiet; but it seems to me that being so paid, they could not help
doing something, and that something was bound to be mischief, --
because," said she, kindling with sudden anger, "the whole business was
founded on lies and false pretensions. I don't mean only those
river-guardians, but all those master-people I have read of."
"Yes,"said I, how happy you are to have got out of
the parsimony of oppression!"
"Why do you
sigh?" she said, kindly and somewhat anxiously. "You seem to think that
it will not last?"
"It will last for you,"
quoth I.
"But why not for you?" said she.
Surely it is for all the world; and if
your country is somewhat backward, it will come into line before long.
Or," she said quickly, "are you thinking that you must soon go back
again? I will make my proposal which I told you of at once, and so
perhaps put an end to your anxiety. I was going to propose that you
should live with us where we are going. I feel quite old friends with
you, and should be sorry to lose you." Then she smiled on me, and said:
"Do you know, I begin to suspect you of wanting to nurse a sham sorrow,
like the ridiculous characters in some of those queer old novels that I
have come across now and then."
I really had
almost begun to suspect it myself, but I refused to admit so much; so I
sighed no more but fell to giving my delightful companion what little
pieces of history I knew about the river and its
[Page
232]
borderlands; and the time passed pleasantly enough; and
between the two of us (she was a better sculler than I was, and seemed
quite tireless) we kept up fairly well with Dick, hot as the afternoon
was, and swallowed up the way at a great rate. At last we passed under
another ancient bridge; and through meadows bordered at first with huge
elm-trees mingled with sweet chestnut of younger but very elegant growth;
and the meadows widened out so much that it seemed as if the trees must
now be on the bents only, or about the houses except for the growth of
willows on the immediate banks; so that the wide stretch of grass was
little broken here. Dick got very much excited now, and often stood up in
the boat to cry out to us that this was such and such a field and so
forth; and we caught fire at his enthusiasm for the hay-field and its
harvest, and pulled our best.
At last we
were passing through a reach of the river where on the side of the
towing-path was a highish bank with a thick whispering bed of reeds
before it, and on the other side a higher bank, clothed with willows that
dipped into the stream and crowned by ancient elm-trees, we saw bright
figures coming along close to the bank, as if they were looking for
something; as, indeed, they were, and we -- that is, Dick and his
company -- were what they were looking for. Dick lay on his oars, and we
followed his example. He gave a joyous shout to the people on the bank,
which was echoed back from it in many voices, deep and sweetly shrill;
for there were above a dozen persons, both men, women, and children. A
tall handsome woman, with black wavy hair and deep-set grey eyes, came
forward on the bank and waved her hand gracefully to us, and said:
"Dick, my friend, we have almost had to wait for
you? What excuse have you to make for your
[Page 233]
slavish punctuality? Why didn't you take us by surprise, and come
yesterday?"
"O," said Dick, with an almost
imperceptible jerk of his head toward our boat, "we didn;t want to come
too quickly up the water; there is so much to see for those who have not
been up here before."
"True, true," said the
stately lady, for stately is the word that must be used for her; "and we
want them to get to know the wet way from the east thoroughly well, since
they must often use it now. But come ashore at once, Dick, and you, dear
neighbours; there is a break in the reeds and a good landing-place just
round the corner. We can carry up your things, or send some of the lads
after them."
"No, no," said Dick; it is easier
going by water, though it is but a step. Besides, I want to bring my
friend here to the proper place. We will go on to the Ford; and you can
talk to us from the bank as we paddle along."
He pulled his sculls through the water, and on we
went, turning a sharp angle and going north a little. Presently we saw
before us a bank of elm-trees, which told us of a house amidst them,
though looked in
vain for the grey walls that I expected to see there. As we went, the
folk on the bank talked indeed, mingling their kind voices with the
cuckoo's song, the sweet strong whistle of the blackbirds and the
ceaseless note of the corn-crake as he crept through the long grass of
the mowing-field; whence came the waves of fragrance from the flowering
clover amidst of the ripe grass.
In a few
minutes we had passed through a deep eddying pool into the sharp stream
that ran from the ford, and beached our craft on a tiny strand of
limestone-gravel, and stepped ashore into the arms of our up-river
friend, our journey done.
[Page 234]
I disentangled myself from the merry throng, and
mounting on the cart-road that ran along the river some feet above the
water, I looked round about me. The river came down through a wide meadow
on my left, which was grey now with the ripened seeding grasses; the
gleaming water was lost presently by a turn of the bank, but over the
meadow I could see the mingled gables of a building where I knew the lock
must be, and which now seemed to combine a mill with it. A low wooded
ridge bounded the river-plain to the south and south-east, whence we had
come, and a few low houses lay about its feet and up its slope. I turned
a little to my right, and through the hawthorn sprays and long shoots of
the wild roses could see the flat country spreading out far away under
the sun of the calm evening, till something that might be called hills
with a look of sheep-pastures about them bounded it with a soft blue
line. Before me, the elm-boughs still hid most of what houses there might
be in this river-side dwelling of men; but to the right of the cart-road
a few grey buildings of the simplest kind showed here and there.
There I stood in a dreamy mood, and rubbed my eyes
as if I were not wholly awake, and half expected to see the gay-clad
company of beautiful men and women change to two or three spindle-legged
back-bowed men and haggard, hollow-eyed, ill-favoured women, who once
wore down the soil of this land with their heavy hopeless feet, from day
to day, and season to season, and year to year. But no change came as
yet, and my heart swelled with joy as I thought of all the beautiful grey
villages, from the river to the plain to the uplands, which I could
picture to myself so well, all peopled now with this happy and lovely
folk, who had cast away riches and attained to wealth.
[Page
235]
Chapter 31 An Old House Amongst New Folk
As I stood there Ellen detached herself from our happy
friends who still stood on the little strand and came up to me. She took
me by the hand, and said softly, "Take me on to the house at once; we
need not wait for the others: I had rather not."
I had a mind to say that I did not know the way
thither, and that the river-side dwellers should lead; but almost without
my will my feet moved on along the road they knew. The raised way led us
into a little field bounded by a backwater of the river on one side; on
the right hand we could see a cluster of small houses and barns, new and
old, and before us a grey stone barn and a wall partly overgrown with
ivy, over which a few grey gables showed. The village road ended in the
shallow of the aforesaid backwater. We crossed the road, and again almost
without my will my hand raised the latch of a door in the wall, and we
stood presently on a stone path which led up to the old house to which
fate in the shape of Dick had so strangely brought me in this new world
of men. My companion gave a sigh of pleased surprise and enjoyment; nor
did I wonder, for the garden between the wall and the house was redolent
of the June flowers, and the roses were rolling over one another with
that delicious super-abundance of
small well-tended gardens which at first sight takes away all thought
from the beholder save that of beauty. The blackbirds were singing their
loudest, the doves were cooing on the roof-ridge, the rooks in the high
elms-trees beyond were garrulous among the young leaves, and the swifts
[Page 236]
wheeled whining about the gables. And the
house itself was a fit guardian for all the beauty of this heart of
summer.
Once again Ellen echoed my thoughts as
she said: "Yes, friend, this is what I came out for to see; this
many-gabled old house built by the simplest of country-folk of the
long-past times, regardless of all the turmoil that was going on in
cities and courts, is lovely still amidst all the beauty which these
latter days have created; and I do not wonder at our friends tending it
carefully and making much of it. It seems to me as if it had waited for
these happy days, and held in it the gathered crumbs of happiness of the
confused and turbulent past."
She led me up
close to the house, and laid her shapely sun-browned hand and arm on the
lichened wall as if to embrace it and cried out, "O me! O me! How I love
the earth, and the seasons, and weather, and all things that deal with
it, and all that grows out of it, -- as this has done!"
I could not answer her, or say a word. Her
exultation and pleasure were so keen and exquisite, and her beauty, so
delicate, yet so interfused with energy, expressed it so fully, that any
added word would have been commonplace and futile. I dreaded lest the
others should come in suddenly and break the spell she had cast about me;
but we stood there a while by the corner of the big gable of the house,
and no one came. I heard the merry voices some way off presently, and
knew that they were going along the river to the great meadow on the
other side of the house and garden.
We drew
back a little, and looked up at the house: the door and the windows were
open to the fragrant sun-cured air; from the upper window-sills hung
[Page 237]
festoons of flowers in honour of the
festival, as if the others shared in the love for the old house.
"Come in," said Ellen. I hope nothing will spoil
it inside; but I don't think it will. Come! we must go back presently
to the others. They have gone on to the tents pitched for the haymakers
-- the house would not hold a tithe of the folk, I am sure."
She led me to the door, murmuring little above her
breath as she did so, "The earth and the growth of it and the life of it!
If I could but say or show how I love it!"
We went in, and found no soul in any room as we
wandered from room to room, -- from the rose-covered porch to the strange
and quaint garrets amongst the great timbers of the roof, where of old
time the tillers and herdsmen of the manor slept, but which a-nights
seemed now, by the small size of the beds, and the litter of useless and
disregarded matters -- bunches of drying flowers, feathers of birds,
shells of starlings' eggs, caddis worms in mugs, and the like -- seemed
to be inhabited for the time by children.
Everywhere there was but little furniture, and
that only the most necessary, and of the simplest forms. The extravagant
love of ornament which I had noted in this people elsewhere seemed here
to have given place to the feeling that the house itself and its
associations was the ornament of the country life amidst which it had
been left stranded from old times, and that to re-ornament it would but
take away its use as a piece of natural beauty.
We sat down at last in a room over the wall which
Ellen had caressed, and which was still hung with old tapestry,
originally of no artistic value, but now faded into pleasant grey tones
which
harmonised thoroughly well with the quiet of the place, and which would
have
[Page 238]
been ill supplanted by brighter and
more striking decoration.
I asked a few random
questions of Ellen as we sat there, but scarcely listened to her answers
and presently became silent, and then scarce conscious of anything, but
that I was there in that old room, the doves crooning from the roofs of
the barn and dovecot beyond the window opposite to me.
My thought returned to me after what I think was
but a minute or two, but which, as in a vivid dream, seemed as if it had
lasted a long time, when I saw Ellen sitting, looking all the fuller of
life and pleasure and desire from the contrast with the grey faded
tapestry with its futile design, which was now only bearable because it
had grown so faint and feeble.
She looked at
me kindly, but as if she read me through and through. She said:"You have
begun again your never-ending contrast between the past and this present.
Is that not so?"
"True," said I. I was
thinking of what you, with your capacity and intelligence, joined to your
love of pleasure, and your impatience of unreasonable restraint -- of
what you would have been in that past. And even now, when all is won and
has been for a long time, my heart is sickened with thinking of all the
waste of life that has gone on for so many years!"
"So many centuries," she said, so many ages!
"True," I said; too true, and sat silent again.
She rose up and said: "Come, I must not let you go
off into a dream again so soon. If we must lose you, I want you to see
all that you can see first before you go back again."
"Lose me?" I said -- go back again? Am I not to go
up to the North with you? What do you mean?"
She smiled somewhat sadly, and said: "Not yet;
[Page 239]
we will not talk of that yet. Only, what
were you thinking of just now?"
I said
falteringly: "I was saying to myself, The past, the present? Should she
not have said the contrast of the present with the future: of blind
despair with hope?"
"I knew it," she said.
Then she caught my hand and said excitedly, "Come while there is yet
time! Come!" and she led me out of the room; and as we were going
downstairs and out of the house into the garden by a little side door
which opened out of a curious lobby, she said in a calm voice, as if she
wished me to forget her sudden nervousness: "Come! we ought to join the
others before they come in here looking for us. And let me tell you, my
friend, that I can see you are too apt to fall into dreamy musing: no
doubt because you are not yet used to our life of repose amidst of
energy; of work which is pleasure and pleasure which is work."
 
; She paused a little, and as we came out into the lovely garden
again, she said: "My friend, you were saying that you wondered what I
should have been if I had lived in those past days of turmoil and
oppression. Well, I think I have studied the history of them to know
pretty well. I should have been one of the poor, for my father when he
was working was a mere tiller of the soil. Well, I could not have borne
that; therefore my beauty and cleverness and brightness" (she spoke with
no blush or simper of false shame) "would have been sold to rich men, and
my life would have been wasted indeed; for I know enough of that to know
that I should have had no choice, no power of will over my life; and that
I should never have bought pleasure from the rich men, or even
opportunity of action, whereby I might have won some true excitement. I
should have wrecked and wasted in
[Page 240]
one way
or another, either by penury or by luxury. Is it not so?"
"Indeed it is," said I.
She was going to say something else, when a little
gate in the fence, which led into a small elm-shaded field, was opened,
and Dick came with hasty cheerfulness up the garden path, and was
presently standing between us, a hand laid on the shoulder of each. He
said: "Well, neighbours, I thought you two would like to see the old
house quietly without a crowd in it. Isn't it a jewel of a house after
its kind? Well, come along, for it is getting towards dinner-time.
Perhaps you, guest, would like a swim before we sit down to what I fancy
will be a pretty long feast?"
"Yes," I said,
I should like that.
"Well, good-bye for the
present, neighbour Ellen," said Dick. "Here comes Clara to take care of
you, as I fancy she is more at home amongst our friends here."
Clara came out of the fields as he spoke; and with
one look at Ellen I turned and went with Dick, doubting, if I must say
the truth whether I should see her again.
Chapter 32 The Feast's Beginning -- The End
Dick brought me at once into
the little field which, as I had seen from the garden, was covered with
gaily-coloured tents arranged in orderly lanes, about which were sitting
and lying in the grass some fifty or sixty men, women, and children, all
of them in the height of good temper and enjoyment -- with their
holiday mood on, so to say.
"You are thinking
that we don't make a great show
[Page 241]
as to
numbers," said Dick; "but you must remember that we shall have more
to-morrow; because in this haymaking work there is room for a great many
people who are not over-skilled in country matters: and there are many
who lead sedentary lives, whom it would be unkind to deprive of their
pleasure in the hay-field -- scientific men and close students generally:
so that the skilled workmen, outside those who are wanted as mowers, and
foremen of the haymaking, stand aside, and take a little downright rest,
which you know is good for them, whether they like it or not: or else
they go to other countrysides, as I am doing here. You see, the
scientific men and historians, and students generally, will not be wanted
till we are fairly in the midst of tedding, which of course will not be
till the day after to-morrow." With that he brought me out of the little
field on to a kind of causeway above the riverside meadow, and thence
turning to the left on to a path through the mowing grass, which was
thick and very tall, led on till we came to the river above the weir and
its mill. There we had a delightful swim in the broad piece of water
above the lock, where the river looked much bigger than its natural size
from its being dammed up by the weir.
"Now
we are in a fit mood for dinner,"
said Dick, when we had dressed and were going through the grass again;
"and certainly of all the cheerful meals in the year, this one of
haysel is the cheerfullest; not even excepting the corn-harvest feast;
for then the year is beginning to fail, and one cannot help having a
feeling behind all the gaiety, of the coming of the dark days, and the
shorn fields and empty gardens; and the spring is almost too far off to
look forward to. It is, then, in the autumn, when one almost believes in
death."
[Page 242]
"How
strangely you talk," said I, of such a constantly recurring and
consequently commonplace matter as the sequence of the seasons." And
indeed these people were like children about such things, and had what
seemed to me a quite exaggerated interest in the weather, a fine day, a
dark night, or a brilliant one, and the like.
"Strangely?" said he. Is it strange to sympathise
with the year and its gains and losses?"
"At
any rate," said I, if you look upon the course of the year as a beautiful
and interesting drama, which is what I think you do, you should be as
much pleased and interested with the winter and its trouble and pain as
with this wonderful summer luxury."
"And am
I not?" said Dick, rather warmly; only I can't look upon it as if I were
sitting in a theatre seeing the play going on before me, myself taking no
part of it. It is difficult," said he, smiling good-humouredly, "for a
non-literary man like me to explain myself properly, like that dear
girl Ellen would; but I mean that I am part of it all, and feel the pain
was well as the pleasure in my own person. It is not done for me by
somebody else, merely that I may eat and drink and sleep; but I myself do
my share of it."
In his way also, as Ellen in
hers, I could see that Dick had that passionate love of the earth which
was common to but few people at least, in the days I knew; in which the
prevailing feeling amongst intellectual persons was a kind of sour
distaste for the changing drama of the year, for the life of earth and
its dealings with men. Indeed, in those days it was thought poetic and
imaginative to look upon life as a thing to be borne, rather than
enjoyed.
So I mused till Dick's laugh brought
me back into
[Page 243]
the Oxfordshire hay-fields.
"One thing seems strange to me," said he -- "that I must needs trouble
myself about the winter and its scantiness, in the midst of the summer
abundance. If it hadn't happened to me before, I should have thought it
was your doing, guest; that you had thrown a kind of evil charm over me.
Now, you know," said he, suddenly, "that's only a joke, so you mustn't
take it to heart."
"All right," said I; I
don't. Yet I did feel somewhat uneasy at his words, after all.
We crossed the causeway this time, and did not
turn back to the house, but went along a path beside a field of wheat now
almost ready to blossom. I said: "We do not dine in the house or
garden, then? for I can see that the houses are mostly very small."
"Yes," said Dick, you are right, they are small in
this countryside: there are so many good old houses left, that people
dwell a good deal in such small detached houses. As to our dinner, we are
going to have our feast in the church. I wish, for your sake, it were as
big and handsome as that of the old Roman town to the west, or the forest
town to the north;* but, however, it will hold us all; and though it is a
little thing, it is beautiful in its way." Note: * Cirencester
and Burford he must have meant.
This was
somewhat new to me, this dinner in a church, and I thought of the
church-ales of the Middle Ages; but I said nothing, and presently we came
out into the
road which ran through the village. Dick looked up and down it, and
seeing only two straggling groups before us, said: "It seems as if we
must be somewhat late; they are all gone on; and they will be sure to
make a point of waiting for you, as the guest of guests, since you come
from so far."
[Page 244]
He
hastened as he spoke, and I kept up with him, and presently we came to a
little avenue of lime-trees which led us straight to the church porch,
from whose open door came the sound of cheerful voices and laughter, and
varied merriment.
"Yes," said Dick, it's the
coolest place for one thing, this hot evening. Come along; they will ge
glad to see you."
Indeed, in spite of my bath,
I felt the weather more sultry and oppressive than on any day of our
journey yet.
We went into the church, which
was a simple little building with one little aisle divided from the nave
by three rounded arches, a chancel, and a rather roomy transept for so
small a building, the windows mostly of the graceful Oxfordshire
fourteenth-century type. There was no modern architectural decoration in
it; it looked, indeed, as if none had been attempted since the Puritans
whitewashed the mediæval saints and histories on the wall. It was,
however, gaily dressed up for this latter-day festival, with festoons of
flowers from arch to arch and great pitchers of flowers standing about on
the floor; while under the west window hung two cross scythes, their
blades polished white, and gleaming from out of the flowers that wreathed
them. But its best ornament was the crowd of handsome, happy-looking men
and women that were set down to table, and who, with their bright faces
and rich hair over their gay holiday raiment, looked, as the Persian poet
puts it, like a bed of tulips in the sun. Though the church was a small
one, there was plenty of room; for a small church makes a biggish house;
and on this evening there was no need to set cross tables along the
transepts; though doubtless these would be wanted next day, when the
learned men of whom
[Page 245]
Dick has been
speaking should be come to take their more humble part in the haymaking.
I stood on the threshold with the expectant
smile on my face of a man who is going to take part in a festivity which
he is really prepared to enjoy. Dick, standing by me, was looking round
the company with an air of proprietorship in them, I thought. Opposite
me sat Clara and Ellen, with Dick's place open between them: they were
smiling, but their beautiful faces were each turned towards the
neighbours on either side, who were talking to them, and they did not
seem to see me. I turned to Dick, expecting him to lead me forward, and
he turned his face to me; but strange to say, though it was as smiling
and cheerful as ever, it made no response to my glance - nay, he seemed
to take no heed at all of my presence, and I noticed that none of the
company looked at me. A pang shot through me, as of some disaster long
expected and suddenly realised. Dick moved on a little without a word to
me. I was not three yards from the two women who, though they had been my
companions for such a short time, had really, as I thought, become my
friends. Clara's face was turned full upon me now, but she also did not
seem to see me, though I know I was trying to catch her eye with an
appealing look. I turned to Ellen, and she did seem to
recognise me for an instant; but her bright face turned sad directly, and
she shook her head with a mournful look, and the next moment all
consciousness of my presence had faded from her face.
I felt lonely and sick at heart past the power of
words to describe. I hung about a minute longer, and then turned and went
out of the porch again and through the lime-avenue into the road
while blackbirds sang their strongest from the bushes about me in the hot
June evening.
[Page 246]
Once more without any conscious effort of will I
set my face toward the old house by the ford, but as I turned round the
corner which led to the remains of the village cross, I came upon a
figure strangely contrasting with the joyous, beautiful people I had left
behind in the church. It was a man who looked old, but whom I knew from
habit, now half-forgotten, was really not much more than fifty. His face
was rugged, and grimed rather than dirty; his eyes dull and bleared; his
body bent, his calves thin and spindly, his feet dragging and limping.
His clothing was a mixture of dirt and rags long over-familiar to me. As
I passed him he touched his hat with some real goodwill and courtesy, and
much servility.
Inexpressibly shocked, I
hurried past him and hastened along the road that led to the river and
the lower end of the village; but suddenly I saw as it were a black cloud
rolling along to meet me, like a nightmare of my childish days; and for a
while I was conscious of nothing else than being in the dark, and whether
I was walking, or sitting, or lying down, I could not tell.
I lay in my bed in my house at dingy Hammersmith
thinking about it all; and trying to consider if I was overwhelmed with
despair at finding I had been dreaming a dream; and strange to say, I
found that I was not so despairing.
Or indeed
was it a dream? If so, why was I so conscious all along that I
was really seeing all that new life from the outside, still wrapped up in
the prejudices, the anxieties the distrust of this time of doubt and
struggle?
All along, though those friends were
so real to me, I had been feeling as if I had no business amongst them:
as though the time would come when they
[Page 247]
would reject me, and say, as Ellen's last mournful look seemed to say,
"No, it will not do; you cannot be of us; you belong so entirely to the
unhappiness of the past that our happiness even would weary you. Go back
again, now you have seen us, and your outward eyes have learned that in
spite of all the infallible maxims of your day there is yet a time of
rest in store for the world, when mastery has changed into fellowship
- but not before. Go back again, then, and while you live you will see
all round you people engaged in making others live lives which are not
their own, while they themselves care nothing for their own real lives -
men who hate life though they fear death. Go back and be the happier for
having seen us, for having added a little hope to your struggle. Go on
living while you may, striving, with whatsoever pain and labour needs
must be, to build up little by little the new day of fellowship, and
rest, and happiness."
Yes, surely! and if
others can see it as I have seen it, then it may be called a vision
rather than a dream.
THE END
Study
links outside this site
Andrew Roberts' web Study Guide
Picture introduction to this site
Top of
Page
Take a Break - Read a Poem
Click coloured words to go where you want
Andrew Roberts likes to hear from users: To contact him, please
use the Communication
Form
|
Contents List
Time Line 1890
News from Nowhere is William Morris's fantasy about what a communist
society would be like.
|