CHAPTER XIII
IN WHICH MRS. DUCKIE DISCUSSES THE DUTIES OF LIFE, AND MR. BEMERTON INTRODUCES ME TO CERTAIN VILLAGE PESSIMISTS
For old sake's sake I look in now and then on Mr. Bemerton and bring away a book, and recently I exchanged a few words with Mrs. Duckie, who is now very lonely by day, Be-trice having gone on to the music-hall stage under the name of Lazie Glee, a serio-comic singer, and Ern having thrown up a situation in a garage in order to join a troupe in the same profession who are known as "The Four Uglies."
Mrs. Duckie naturally began by asking after my young lady. "The pretty dear," she said, "I hope she's well, and that you're comfortable where you are. Sorry we were to lose you. And are there any little ones? Not yet—but there will be, I hope and trust. Such a sweet lady and such a nice gentleman, it would be a sin not to have any. So many people to-day aren't having any, and I call it a crying shame. But you're not like that. There must be one little Master Falconer at any rate, if not two, and a little Miss Falconer as well. One of each is best. Single children get spoiled and too clever too: no give-and-take and always hearing their parents talk; not good for a child. No, a noisy nursery is best, with a good quarrel now and then. That's the way to make men and women. The next time you call I hope you'll be able to bring the good news," the honest creature concluded.
She went on—without interruption—to talk of her own family. "Why all my children should be so bitten by the music halls I can't think," she remarked mournfully. "I never cared for the places myself, and my husband is all for serious music when he gets the chance; while their grandfather on their father's side was a local preacher, and my father, God bless him, as quiet a man as you'd find anywhere, and so little ear that he didn't know the 'Old Hundredth' from 'Home, Sweet Home.' It just shows what a wonderful thing this heredity is. I suppose there must have been someone in the family somewhere who was more skittish. Of course one never knows all about anyone. Perhaps Duckie's father sang a bit loose before he took to religion."
"Your mother didn't sing?" I asked.
"No, bless her heart, she didn't. But I've heard her say, now I come to think of it, that her mother was famous in 'Sir Roger.' Perhaps that's where it all started. But it makes me very unhappy. There's Be-trice now, these two houses a night just wear her out. And Ern calling himself an 'Ugly,' it's dreadful. Such a pretty child as he was too, with fair curls down to his shoulders. I don't know what the world's coming to."
I asked after Mr. Duckie.
"He's very well," said Mrs. Duckie, "but tired. Always on his poor feet, you know. He's got a great idea of finding someone with a little money to join him in starting an eating-house of his own, and though of course it's very risky I almost wish he could; for he's getting on in years and it's a shame he should spend his whole life in making money for someone else. I wonder if you know of anyone with a little capital, sir?"
"I'll think about it," I said, at once remembering both the unoccupied Mr. Wiles and Lacey's cold chop scheme.
Mr. Bemerton was somewhat depressed too. Old-book buying, he said, was declining steadily. Reprints were hitting him very hard, but the love of pleasure harder. People spent their money now on entertainment and food, where they once used not only to dine at home but sit at home all the evening reading. Now if they sat at home they played bridge. He wouldn't be so pessimistic as to say that England was going to the dogs, but he would like to see something happen to make us pull ourselves together. His niece, Miss Waghorn, had left him. Married a mild young man in a hosier's, ten years her junior, and the pair of them reminded Mr. Bemerton of nothing so much as a cruet: oil and vinegar. "But I dare say they'll mix," he said. "They met in a lodging-house at Margate: nothing like such places to settle one's hash. With no home comforts one gets desperate for company, and then Cupid begins to shoot.
"I've got a little book for you," said Mr. Bemerton, "that I've been keeping till you came in. A privately printed one. It would be too much to say that they are the best books, but they often have a quality that the others haven't. Sometimes of course they're merely the result of vanity, but here and there, as in the present case, they contain a very special kind of record, such as a modest observer with a humorous sense of character might like to preserve for her friends but not wish the world at large to see, lest perhaps some of the simple folk described in the pages might get to know of it and be hurt."
Mr. Bemerton, who had been turning a little volume over and over in his hands all this time, while mine were stretched out and withdrawn and again outstretched to take it, here opened it.
"It's the modestest little thing," he said. "Just a few pages of talk among villagers in the Midlands; but it's a jewel of literature. Among its very great admirers when it appeared was Mr. Gladstone. Now, I've only one copy and I can't get another; but I'll lend it to you. You must treat it as if it were a black pearl."
I have done so and allowed no one but Naomi to see it. It is a strange little book and might well cease to be private, although one likes to think of a few good things being withheld from the world at large. Miss A., the author or recorder of these conversations, was an invalid lady living in the country, to whom her humble neighbours were a perpetual joy; she helped them, she sympathized with them, and she laughed at their little foibles afterwards. In these pages she has preserved certain of their odd speeches, the period being chiefly early in the eighteen sixties. But the type is eternal.
Although we meet several characters in the book, most of them have a family resemblance in that they have had a hard time, and expect nothing better, and do not always make the best of it. No doubt Miss A. had neighbours who were more optimistic or less sardonic; but to her these did not appeal as those others did. All artists have preferences in types, and the humorous grumbler was hers. But it is not discontent that gives this little book its unity; it is marriage. Almost every page touches upon that imperfect state, so that by the end an impressionable reader would as soon think of entering the bonds as of sitting voluntarily in the electrocuting chair; that is, if marriage did not chance to be the one hazard in the world from which no one person can withhold another.
Here are Miss A. and Mary Powell, a labourer's wife, together, in Mary Powell's cottage, as reported by Miss A.:
Miss A. "How have you and John agreed together since I left Bewley?"
Mary. "Well, ma'am, those words of yours when we parted have hacted very well. 'Mary,' says you, 'when John's in a bad temper you be in a good 'un; for it's both on you being in a bad temper together as does the mischief.' So mony a time when he's contraried me I've said to myself, 'Now I'll be on Miss A.'s plan;' and we've had nothing but bits of houts since—never no fighting—and a very good thing we've left it off. For, ye see, a man's hand falls very heavy on a woman, and mony a time I've been black and blue; only he was a deal more careful where he hit me at after he had that seven-and-sixpence to pay for them leeches to my side. You remember it, don't you, ma'am? I'd been saying summat again his mother—he calls her all to pieces himself, only he wunna let me—so he knocked me hoff the chair, and it caused himplamation; and fine and foolish John looked when the doctor shook his head at him. But he niver said he was sorry; he's too stupid for that."
Miss A. "Have you taken my advice on the other point—about going to church?"
Mary. "Well, ma'am, I did go twice after my brother died; but I can scarce ever find time, betwixt waiting on the cow, and the pig, and John—and he taks as much as t'other two put together; he won't so much as reach out his hand to reach hisself a cup or a saucer. I gets up at four o'clock on Sundays to milk cow, and then there's John's boots to be blacked, and a deal of mud scraped off 'em first, and breakfast to get in time for him to go to chapel at nine (and he scolds me finely if he's late), and then pig to be fed and our dinner to get. I said to John one Sunday, when he'd been saying, 'Woman, thou'lt go to Fire and Brimstone as sure as thou'rt born, for thou niver goest to church nor chapel;' 'Very well,' says I, 'then thou must feed pig thyself to-day.' 'I'll let him starve first,' says John; and, sure enough, pig would have starved if I had na' crep out at night to feed him. So when I come back I thought I'd have it out wi' John, so I says, 'I'm not a bit likelier to go to Fire and Brimstone than thou art, with all thy blaating and praying; and as for them Methodies, I hates 'em, with all them collections, sixpence here and sixpence there; and I have read in a book that John Wesley did not improve of their axing folks for money.' So John says quite scornful, 'I wonder where you got that much larning, woman.' 'When I had the hopportunity,' I says quite scornful back again. You know, Miss A., I'd read it in a book as was full of all manner of things about railroads and such like. I suppose, ma'am, you've seen London Bridge. Eh! dear, what a place it must be! They say the railway carriages, and carriages and cabs with horses, are all running together upon the rails, and it's nothing but them pints as keeps them from all being smashed together."
Again, two years later:
Miss A. "How have you and John been getting on since I saw you?"
Mary. "Pretty well; indeed, I darsna fly into them passions; the doctor says it'll be present death if I do. Mine is the white passions as drives the blood hinwards and causes bad palpulation at the heart. Mr. Walker, the doctor, come in one day just as I'd knocked John back'ards at the door for coming in with dirty shoes just when I'd been two hours on my hands and knees cleaning the floor; but, you know, Miss A., a hot temper is naterally grounded in me. My mother had a hawful temper; I've seen her empty a shovel full of hot ashes on my father's head. Now, I won't say but what I've thrown a ash or two at John, but they've been could 'uns; and one day my mother snatched up a gown as I had been buying for myself, and put it on the fire, and her said, 'There now, and next time I'll put you on the fire too, if you buy finery without my jurydiction.' Eh! how I cried when I see'd them beautiful pink and yallow stripes kindling; but her was a good mother at the root for all her was so strict; and when I sees girls nowadays fithered and flounced up, and pomped out so as when they comes swelling along one's obliged to get out o' the road, I often thinks to myself, it's a pity there's not some mothers in Bewley like mine. John often says to me, 'Thou'rt the very model of thy mother, Mary, temper and all.' 'Yes, John,' says I, 'and didn't her warn thee that I'd a foul temper; and didn't thee say, like a big fool, "I wull have her, temper and all." Thou conceitedst thou couldst master me, but thou hast larnt different.' 'I have that,' said John. He often fetches texes out of Scripture about women doing their juties, to clench me with, and he knows it taks me a long time to pick out a tex to clench him with. There was no natteral schools whin I was yong."
The next year:
Mary. "I hope you're better of the lombagger, Miss A. John had it wunst, and he was cured with some stuff he got gracious from Doctor Woods; it was uncommon strong, for he could feel it playing back'ards and forrards about his heart afore it went down. John's mother is dead at last, but she lay a long while; you know sick folks canna go hoff unless they're kept nice and clean; I'll be bound her'd have died a deal sooner if I'd had the tending of heir, because I should always have been fettling and washing of her. For all her'd been so wicked, her died like a good 'un, and said her was going to Glory; but I'm partly of your opinyan, Miss A., that according as folks live, so they'll die."
So much for Mary Powell. Now for Anne Williams:
Miss A. "I think you seem as cheerful as ever."
Anne. "Yes! as Mary James says, I'm always at the top o' the tree, and so I ought to be, for the Lord has been very good to me. You would not have conceited as He would listen to the prayers of a poor hignorant woman like me, but I've pruven as He did; for many a time as my husband has rampaged out of the house door like a lion, I've felled on my knees, and he's come back like a lamb. I never used to tell him what it was as had peacified him, because I knew that 'ud cause him to break out worse till ever; and now when he's a bit for wrangling, I only just say, 'Daniel, we wasn't paired to tear up one another's minds, but to live comfortable.' I should like you to see my youngest girl; she's not out o' the way handsome, for you know, ma'am, I'm hard-featured, and Daniel is long-featured (though he looks pretty well when he's tidied up a bit), but she has the loveliest tongue for a child of two and a half as ever anybody heard. Whatever we say, long or short, she has it in a minute, and specially if there's a bad word said she's sure not to miss it; and then, if I hoffer to beat her, her'll cry out, 'If mother beats Hemma, Hemma'il tell daddy, and then daddy'll beat mother': really, I say such an admyrable little creatur is more than nateral. I shall be taking her with me to chapel by-and-bye; we attends the Primities."
Miss A. "Are those the Ranters?"
Anne. "Oh! no, ma'am, the Ranters jump, and the Primities only shouts. I don't hold with jumping myself, though to be sure wasn't it St. Paul—oh no, it was King David—as danced before the ark? The shouting is a realality, depend upon it, Miss A., for you know when the facts of the Lord works into one's inside one cannot help but shout."
The next cottage is a stonemason's. The stonemason is ill and his wife receives the visitor:
"My husband is very bad indeed, ladies; indeed, I thought it was a done job with him last week, and him unconvarted yet. He was very near getting his convarsion last winter; he came in from the public one Saturday night near ten o'clock, and he says to me, 'Anne, it's plain enough thy prayers isn't strong enough for me, and I'm determined to try what they can do for me at Cresbrook Chapel, and we'll set out this very night, to be ready for the meeting in the morning.' So we set out, and as we passed the Nag's Head I could hear him saying, 'Be off with ye,'—that was to the Devil, you know, ladies. It was twelve o'clock when we got to Cresbrook to my mother's; and as soon as morning came my husband said, 'I'll go to cousin Jane, as has axed me so often to go to chapel, and if her axes me again, I'll go.' So he went, but her never axed him, so I took it that the Lord had not appinted this time for Ned, so we come home again, and he soon took to drink worse than ever; but he's better to me than he used to be, for when I knelt down to say my prayers he'd often pull me up again by the roots of my hair. He's coming downstairs now, ladies. Ned, thou must tell these ladies what ails thee, though they'll scarce understand such broad talk as thine, but thou must speak thy best and they'll excuse it."
Ned. "The doctor says the muscles of my liver is set fast, and he ordered me a hot slivver bath to loosen 'em; so I borrowed one, and while I was in it two or three of the neighbours looked in, and they kept saying, 'Stop in a bit longer, lad, it'll fatch the grease out of thy boones;' so I stopped and stopped till I was well-nigh jead, and I have been going worse ever since."
Miss A. "Have you been subject to these attacks before?"
Ned. "Yes, ma'am, since I was a lad. I was 'prentice to my uncle, a stonmason, and one day when I was at the top of a ladder, thirty feet high, me and the big ston I was carrying come down together; and when I laid on the ground half-stunned, the first words my uncle said was, 'The ston's not brocken;' he never axed me if I was hurt, and as soon as I could move, he said, 'Up with it again, lad;' so I went, but afore I was half-way up I fainted right away, and fell to the ground with the ston atop of me that time, and I was in bed eleven weeks. My uncle was a bit of a rogue, but he grew to be quite a big sort of a man afterwards, and used to ax me to dinner, and very handsome victuals he set before me, but I niver felt right in the stomach till I'd said summat about the big ston. However, I niver said much, for I kept thinking to myself, 'The words as one has not yet spooken, one has got yet for to say.'"
And, lastly, here is an old Welsh widower:
Miss A. "I hear that you lost your wife ten years ago. You must have led a sad, lonely life since her death."
David. "Quite the other way, ma'am. I'd never no peace at all till she went. I prayed to the Lord night and day for thirty years that He would please to part us; but I left it to Him which way it should be. I was quite ready to go myself; but He took her at last, and right thankful I was indeed."
Miss A. "I suppose you were always quarrelling?"
David. "I had a hot temper enough before I was married; but when I see what an awful woman she was, I says to myself, 'Now, two fires cannot burn together;' and I grew as quiet as could be, and never contraried her no ways. But she was a most awful woman; indeed, she did throw a coffee-pot just off the fire at my head one day."
Miss A. "I hope she repented before she died."
David. "Indeed, I don't know. I did often say to her when she lay a-dying, 'My dear, I hope the Lord will forgive your sins; but I do not know as He will, for you have been a most awful woman indeed, my dear."
They ring very true, these grumbles, do they not? And they all add to the wish which so many reflective persons must have entertained at one time or other, that the Perfect Man had not narrowed His earthly experiences and diminished the variety of His example by remaining single.
CHAPTER XIV
IN WHICH A JOVIAL PARTY JOIN ENGLAND'S ANNUAL SATURNALIA AND A NEW KNIGHT PHILOSOPHIZES ON HIS GREATNESS
Naomi's young friend Dollie Heathcote, who goes everywhere and does all the doggy things, as he calls them, was so shocked to find that I had never been to the Derby that, in order to save his reason, which seemed to be tottering under the blow, I said we would accompany him there, on condition that he took care of us.
"Very well, then," he said. "I'll make up a jolly party. Wow, wow!"
For some time past he has been including this insane exclamation in most of his remarks. From what I can understand, the intention is to signify that the speaker is capable of all—ready for any emergency, and particularly a convivial one.
"We go, I suppose, in a hearse," I said, when he came to announce that all the plans were settled.
"Great Heavens, no," replied Dollie. "That's all over. We go in a motor brake, and my friend Farrar's got a box for us in the Grand Stand."
"All right," I said. "But I always understood that one should go to the Derby in a hearse, wearing a green puggeree. You see, I was out of England so long, I don't really know."
"I hope you'll be able to bear up without your green puggeree next Wednesday," said Dollie, with real anxiety. These young men, for all their "wow-wows," are very scrupulous dressers and anxious company-keepers nowadays, I notice.
"I'll try," I said.
"But, look here," he added, "I don't want to bore you, you know, but I hope that when we're there you're all going to bet. You haven't any rotten objections, have you?"
I said that I knew of none. For my own part I would cheerfully put something on.
Dollie was immensely relieved. "That's all right, then," he said. "Racing without betting's like oysters without lemon. Some people pretend to like it for the sport only; but there isn't any sport. There's only a great, sweltering crowd that lasts for hours, and every half-hour a brown rush which lasts a second that you can't see because someone's in the the way. That's racing when you don't bet. But when you do bet it is interesting all the while. You don't notice the crowd and you do notice the merry little gees."
"But isn't betting very bad for people?" Naomi inquired.
"Bad for those who can't afford to be pipped," said Dollie, "yes. But I don't know that it's done me much harm. Whisky and soda instead of vino veritas, now and then, I'll admit; but when you chance to hop on to a winner, what ho, for the ancient vintage. The awful thing about betting," Dollie continued, "is, that no matter whether you lose or whether you win, you always reproach yourself. You always say, 'If only I'd done so and so."
"But you had what's called a tip, I suppose," said Naomi, with, I thought, strange knowledge.
"Yes, but a man who bets is always in two minds. That's the second tragic thing about it. The third is that he's always superstitious. I'll give you an instance. You've got a strong tip for a horse called Knucklebones. But there's another horse in it called Bobby. Well, you're just crossing the road to send a telegram to your bookie to back Knucklebones (or perhaps you've sent it), when a policeman grabs your arm and snatches you out of the way of a taxi. After that how can you possibly not back Bobby?"
"Why?" Naomi inquired blankly.
"Because of the policeman—Bobby—don't you see?"
"Poor things," said Naomi, with real anguish. "How difficult you make life for yourselves, and how sorry we ought to be for you. I never thought before how racing men suffer. And some people are so down on them too!"
"Oh," said Dollie, "if you want to pity us I can give you plenty more material. If you only knew what I suffer before I send the telegrams. Which bookie to send to, for example. If I lost the last time, I wonder whether I hadn't better change to another; for everyone has more than one. And then the post offices: which one to go to, because some have been luckier than others. And even which hand to take the stamps with when you lick them on."
"Poor Dollie, poor Dollie," said Naomi.
"And then," Dollie continued, "think what it must be to have a tip for a horse and put your shirt on it in a telegram, and then, not long before the race, meet another man whose information is usually good who gives you a totally different tip! There's misery for you!"
"And what do you do?" Naomi asked.
"Do?" said Dollie. "Nothing, only suffer and wait for the result. Haven't you ever watched men's faces after they've bought the evening paper? Some men with a lot at stake daren't look at the paper at all in the street. I've carried a paper about for an hour, myself, before I could bring myself to learn the worst."
"Poor Dollie," said Naomi, "and I have always thought you so frivolous."
"Few people have more serious times than I do," he replied. "Often I can't sleep at all wondering if I've done right about a gee. And then there's scratching."
"Dollie!" exclaimed Naomi reprovingly.
"No, no, I don't mean that," said Dollie. "Scratching means taking a horse out of a race beforehand. If you've backed him and then he's scratched, you lose your money just as if he had run and lost."
"I don't think that's fair," said Naomi.
"Well, it's the rule anyhow," said Dollie.
"Don't tell me any more," said Naomi. "I shall get you on my mind and lose my sleep too. But answer just this one question. It's about the saying 'If only I'd done so and so.' How is it that all you poor dears say that if you win as well as if you lose?"
"Well, if you lose," said Dollie, "you say, 'If only I'd backed that other gee instead;' but if you win you say, 'If only I'd put on a tenner instead of a fiver.' Don't you see? You can't get away from it. The words 'If only I'd' are engraven on every betting man's heart."
"Then really I almost wonder you don't give up betting," Naomi replied.
"Give up betting? Good Heavens! You must do something," said Dollie, in alarm. "How could one get through the day without a little flutter? I don't mean at the races only, but in town? It just keeps you going. You pick out your fancies in the morning, and then you go on buying the evening papers all through the day. That's life."
"I am afraid I have sadly misspent mine," I said. "I haven't had a bet for thirty years."
"We must get you into good habits again on Wednesday," said Dollie.
The ride to the Derby was amusing, but to have chartered a motor was the height of foolishness. The motor's recommendation is its speed; but owing to the congestion of the road we rarely proceeded above a walking pace after the first few miles. As a matter of fact, a donkey barrow with three passengers kept ahead of us for an hour.
Dollie had charge of the party. With him was Ann Ingleside; Algy Farrar and his wife Gwen, whom it appeared Naomi had known and liked at school; Naomi; I; and, to my great pleasure, Ann's father, Sir Gaston Ingleside, who had been induced to go, much, he said, against his will and, he feared, in his country's time, he being a Whitehall magnate; but he thought it only right, as a good parent, to participate in some of Ann's actions.
"But what I am chiefly doing," he said, "is marvelling at the change that has come over life in my time. I can no more fancy my father taking me to the Derby than to an opium den; yet here am I placidly seated in the same dissolute vehicle as my unmarried daughter, on our way to the great reprehensible annual carnival of vice."
"Yes," said Ann, "and you one of the newest K.C.B.s too, fresh from the King's presence."
"By the way," said Dollie, "the King will be there to-day. He always goes to the Derby. Perhaps you'll meet, sir. You know each other now, don't you?"
"I shall never forget him as long as I live," said Sir Gaston; "but even if he, as is likely, has forgotten my face, the spectacle of my legs, in hired knee-breeches, walking perilously backwards with a sword between them, must be indelibly printed on his memory."
"Do tell me," said Naomi. "Was it very dreadful?"
"Very," said Sir Gaston. "We did our best to hearten each other, but the dentist is nothing to it. Decent fellows we were, most of us: brewers, music hall managers, actors, Party-plutocrats, caterers, and so forth, all armed to the teeth, all conscious of clothes we had never worn before and should probably never wear again—which is in itself an embarrassment—and all on the brink of changing our identity for ever."
"How do you mean?" Naomi asked.
"Why, all my life until then, or a few days before (but unofficially, of course, since the accolade had not been bestowed), I have been to the world Mr. Ingleside. My Christian name, which always seemed to me a strangely affected one and was due to my mother as a young woman having deplorable romantic tendencies, I have done my best to suppress. And now the Ingleside alone goes for ever, and everyone is entitled to call me Sir Gaston."
"I almost wonder you accepted the title," Naomi said.
"My dear Mrs. Falconer," said Sir Gaston, "I wonder, too, now; but at the time there seemed to be several rather good reasons. Perhaps the best of all was that I was a widower."
Sir Gaston gave me a sidelong glance here which I greatly esteemed. Here was good company; old in bottle. The joke was lost, I fear, on Naomi, who puckered her beautiful forehead over it in vain. As for the rest, they had not been listening to us at all but were busy watching the occupants of the other carriages, with some of whom Dollie and Farrar were on very familiar terms.
We reached the course at last and the Grand Stand, where Farrar, who seems to be a millionaire, had a box for the week, in which not only were chairs but a very attractive lunch.
I thanked him later in the day for being so hospitable to strangers.
"That's all right," he said, almost as if I had apologized for something.
A curious young man, one of those mixtures of sagacity and apathy, thoughtfulness and blankness, which the idle classes throw up so easily and which make an expensive education look so foolish. His passion is motoring, but he has leanings towards the air, which, however, his wife discourages. He therefore does not fly himself, although he has been up as a passenger once or twice, but spends most of his time between Brooklands and Hendon, being convivial with his aviating friends while they are alive, and following them loyally to the grave when they fall.
"What is it like in the air?" I once asked him.
"Ripping," he said.
"But the sensations?" I continued. "How do you feel?"
"Ripping," he said.
"And what does the world look like down below as you rush along?"
"Ripping," he said.
CHAPTER XV
IN WHICH I AM INITIATED INTO THE MYSTERIES OF THE RING, AND AM MORE BEWILDERED THAN USUAL BY MY COUNTRYMEN'S AVOIDANCE OF FACTS
The scene from our box was remarkable. Beneath was stretched an undulating mass of people such as it is usual to call, in descriptive articles, a sea of humanity, and in the present instance the simile has peculiar propriety, for from it rose a persistent, murmuring roar very like the waves in certain moods. This sound proceeded chiefly from the breakers—or bookmakers—immediately beneath us, in the privileged enclosure where gambling is a duty. Then came the course, and then a square mile of rabble, black in the main, like all crowds, but chequered with brighter colours, and broken by booths and roundabouts and all the fun of the fair.
We began our lunch at once and ate through the first race, on which Dollie was not betting. Then Dollie invited me down among the bookies, and the men of us went, except Ingleside.
"No," he said, "so many of the staid young gentlemen in my department are absent to-day owing to domestic troubles, that I am nervous. It would hurt me too much to run into any of them. It is too crowded, too," he added. "The fact is, I am an anti-social animal and it's no use disguising the fact. I like a few persons very much; but all the rest affright me. Write me as one who loves his fellow-men but is very easily bored by them."
So we fought our way into the enclosure in the very centre of the competitive clamour. Never have I heard such a noise; never seen human faces so distorted by vociferousness. It was a remarkable scene. Everyone there was doing a thing which it is generally agreed by statesmen and sociologists is bad, and which, if it is done outside the course, is illegal. Some of the leading men in the land were here, and the Monarch and Defender of the Faith was in a box just above. Enough money to endow all the hospitals of the country was changing hands lightly over the issue of a contest between a dozen horses; and not one penny of it was going to the country, except indirectly, later on, in the form of death duties or income tax. For we do not make racing men or bookmakers pay a farthing towards the exchequer for their amusement. Even France, which has never pretended that betting was wrong and holds its most popular race-meetings on Sunday, makes the betting class pay two and a half per cent. of its winnings to the hospitals of the land; but in England we allow this great source of revenue to go untouched.
I afterwards asked Sir Gaston how this was.
"Simple enough," he said. "If you tax betting you legalize it; and then you have all Nonconformity in arms against you."
"But we let it go on," I said.
"Yes," he replied, "but that's England. We have a profound aptitude as a nation for closing one eye."
"The odd thing about England in that respect," I said, "is that, individually, all the Englishmen that one meets agree that we are absurdly illogical if not hypocritical; yet in the mass these hypocrisies are encouraged. How is that? In France the units are representative of the national feeling; in England the units are not representative."
"I don't know," said Sir Gaston. "The same problem has perplexed me. I'm not proud of the anomaly."
"Are they all Jews?" I asked Dollie, in the ring.
"Nearly all, and the owners, too," said Dollie; "but that's all right. What's the matter with Jews? They're good enough Christians, most of them. Here's a tip-topper anyway," and he stopped to speak to an eager anxious man in a white hat who, if he was not a Jew, had been vaccinated with Hebrew lymph.
I was introduced to the tip-top Christian and he wished me a lucky day.
"No money about," he said, "compared with what it used to be."
"Do you mean there's less betting?" I inquired.
"Oh no, much more," he said, "but; it's chiefly S.P. now. They don't do it here as they used."
"Starting price, that means," Dollie explained. "The law allows starting-price betting anywhere, but betting of this kind only on race-courses. The difference is that in S.P. betting you don't know what the odds are until the race is finished, and in course betting you try to get the best odds you can. S.P. betting is chiefly done by telegram, and no money may change hands till after the race, otherwise it's illegal. They say the post office would smash if it weren't for betting."
"Oh, do stop," I said; "you are giving me far too much to think about."
Turning away from this predatory avaricious scene—for it is idle to call it anything else—I made my way to the distant paddock to see the innocent causes of all the trouble, the race-horses. It is one of the strangest mysteries in a world that specializes in such things, that this beautiful, loyal creature should leave behind it such a wake of seaminess and fraud.
After a few minutes in the paddock I returned to the ring where Dollie and Farrar were still busy trying to find longer odds on their fancies; but the horses coming out of the paddock on their way to the starting-point sent Dollie upstairs at the run to see what the girls wanted to back. "Girls," he added, "always choose horses by either the jockey's face or his colours—and I'm hanged if it isn't as good a way as following what we call form."
Dollie was an eternity on his mission, and I had a thousand elbows in my back in my efforts to remain where he had placed me; and I heard, I suppose, a thousand tips as to the winner passing between friends. But one phrase alone impressed me, uttered by a jovial old man to a youthful companion who might have been his nephew, "Always back the favourite to win, my boy," he said, "and the most likely of the outsiders both ways."
Being always open to good counsel I determined to follow this advice; so when Dollie returned and asked me what I wished to back, I said I wanted four pounds on the favourite to win, and three pounds each way on Peppermint.
Dollie opened his eyes. "You seem to know your own mind all right," he said.
"I always determined to follow this rule," I said, "if ever I should take to betting—to back the favourite to win and a likely outsider both ways."
Dollie whistled. "Are you taking me to the Derby or am I taking you?" he asked. "Very well, come and put it on. Naomi is on to Peppermint too; she says the jock's such a little angel. (She ought to hear him in the paddock!) Mrs. Farrar wants old rose and purple—he's on a hopeless ruin named Usquebaugh. See what you can get," Dollie added.
I approached the reputed Christian, who was besieged by clients, and at last secured his ear.
"I want to put four pounds on Paladin," I said.
"Seven pounds to four, Mr. Heathcote's friend," he directed his clerk instantly, without even looking at me, but holding out his hand for the money.
"And three pounds each way Peppermint," I said.
"Twenty-four pounds to three and six pounds to three Peppermint, Mr. Heathcote's friend," he continued, and was taking Dollie's various commissions before I could move.
"That's the way," said Dollie, as we struggled back up the stairs. "Those are the heads! If we only had Cabinet Ministers like that!"
We were in time to see the start through our glasses a mile away over the crowds and the booths. A roar indicated that the horses were off and at once the hubbub below quieted, only to break out afresh into new offers as the horses began to assert themselves.
One race, knowing men often say, is as good as another; only one horse can win anyway, and as desperate efforts to be that horse are made at Lingfield as at Newmarket, Ascot or Epsom. This may be true, on paper, but, as a matter of emotional fact, there is no race like the Derby, because there is no race with so much human interest behind it. These thousands of people cannot be disregarded; each brings something of intensity. And then the stage management of the Derby is so much more elaborate than that of any other race; the steady growth of interest in the horses, the daily bulletins in the press, the sweepstakes, and so forth. And the race itself—all horses starting at the same weight and the same age. No, there may by chance be finer riding in certain races of the year, and closer finishes, but the Derby horses start in an air more heavily charged with human electricity than any other, and, I imagine, always will. For heroic endurance on a great scale, the Grand National; but for the maximum of excitement, the Derby.
An outsider won, and the favourite was not even placed; and immediately we knew the result we all knew why we should have backed it if only we had thought a little longer. But at the Derby thought is not easy; there is so much distraction, and the conditions of life are so upset, that one's ordinary mental processes refuse to work. The winner was a grey filly, and there was every reason why I, for one, should have known it would win, because the only horse that I had specially noticed on the way down was a grey filly rolling in a field. Surely there was the finger of Providence in that! On my mentioning this, Dollie asked with much asperity why I had not told him?
"It meant nothing to me," I said, "partly because I am not a gambler, and not a little because I had no notion that any of the Derby runners were grey or fillies. Had I stayed at home and read the paper I might have known; absurd to bring me to the course and then expect me to know anything of the horses. There was no grey filly in the paddock."
"No," said Dollie, "I'm afraid you're right. No one ever yet saw a real horse in the paddock—at least, not until the race was over."
CHAPTER XVI
IN WHICH FOUR-LEGS MAKE MUCH ANXIETY FOR TWO-LEGS AND SIR GASTON DEVELOPS OCCULT GIFTS
"Well," said Dollie, later in the afternoon, "how do we stand? I personally am forty pounds down. Farrar here is fifteen pounds down. Falconer, having neglected my advice, is several pounds to the good. Mrs. Falconer and Mrs. Farrar, having had the good sense to ignore form and the prophets, and to bet entirely on combinations of colour, have made a little, and Ann saved her face. But if we are going to make anything we must do it now. You study the card while Farrar and I go and do some intelligent eavesdropping."
On their returning they brought news of a likely outsider named Crumpet, ridden by one of the most successful jockeys of the day.
"I've put my shirt on him," said Dollie, "both ways. If he wins I make a lot; if he's only placed I get back my dropped forty."
"And if he loses?" I said.
"We will draw a veil," Dollie replied. "But my favourite poison is prussic and apollinaris."
"Here you are," said Ann Ingleside quietly. "Please put this half-sovereign for me on Witch Hazel to win."
"Why Witch Hazel?" Dollie asked.
"I fancy him," she said.
"Any other orders?" Dollie asked.
"Yes," I said, "here is a five pound note and a sovereign. Heaven knows I need both, but if they go it will make a picturesque topic on which to converse at dinners and such places, and if I win, I dare say I shall find something to do with it. I want you to put four pounds on Ratton's mount for a place, and two pounds to win."
"Why Ratton's?" Dollie asked. Our independence was beginning to tell on him.
"Because Ratton hasn't had a win to-day, and he is in the habit of doing better than that. He will ride like a demon this time because it's the last chance."
"Very well," said Dollie. "But why I've been wasting my breath instructing you about racing, I shall never understand."
Naomi produced ten shillings and asked for it to be put on my horse, five shillings each way.
Downstairs ran Dollie, and we watched him moving from one group to another seeking the largest price—or at least we thought we did, for, from a box at Epsom, every young man in the ring looks alike.
It was a race that I shall never forget. The other races Dollie had watched stolidly enough; but here, with so much at stake, he gave in and disappeared from the room. Men seem to be affected very differently. Some hate to see the horses at all, after the start, and at the close come out of retirement to know the result; others watch every step through their glasses, and either learn their fate early or do not know it till the post; some are silent; others shout instructions to the horses and their riders, quite oblivious to the fact that they are a mile away doing their best.
The field in this race kept very closely together and the horses passed us in a mass of brown and silk from which our eyes could distinguish nothing definite. So we had to wait for the numbers, which went up like this
9
3
7
9 was Palimpsest, ridden by Ratton; 3 was Witch Hazel, and 7 was Crumpet. Dollie came in at this moment and glanced at the board.
"Good Heavens," he said, "I've just scraped in, but Falconer's on to the winner. And 3—who's 3?"
"Witch Hazel," said Ann.
"Perhaps you'll tell me," said Dollie, "why you fixed on such an outsider as that?"
"Because," said his betrothed, "Mrs. Boody, our housekeeper, always says that if you're ever in doubt what to do you should try Witch Hazel. I mean when you've hurt yourself."
"Why didn't you tell me that?" Dollie asked with some spirit.
"Because tips of that kind are such personal things. They don't work for others. Anyway, you're all square."
"Yes, but I could only get 3 to 1 for a place on Crumpet, while I got you 4½ to 1. But if I don't hurry we shan't get even what we have won."
Dollie returned laden with gold and five pound notes, which he distributed. To Ann he gave two pounds, fifteen shillings which she took with a little pout, remarking, "If only I'd put it on to win!" while Naomi, when he gave her her ill-gotten gains, remarked, "If only I'd made it a sovereign!"
"Ah," said Sir Gaston, "what you ought to say is, 'If only I hadn't bet at all.' There's an insidious poison in that money. Mark my words. Some day if you go on like this you'll be on the staff of the Star or become a secret cocoa-drinker. If you go to my overcoat, Ann," he continued, "and feel in the right-hand pocket, you'll find the card I marked before this race."
Ann fetched it and gave it to her father. '"I don't insist on your believing me," he said, "but it is true none the less. While you were making up your minds how to lay out your money, I tried my luck at spotting the winner, and here's the result."
He held out the card and, to our astonishment and almost to Dollie's permanent and tragic undoing, we saw that he had named not only the winner but the second horse as well.
"My hat, sir," cried Dollie, "how did you do that?"
Sir Gaston looked inscrutable.
"No, but do tell us," Naomi said. "It's like magic."
"Well," said Sir Gaston, "I'll tell you. But you'll keep the secret, I hope. I first placed the race-card on the table—you could have seen me if you hadn't all been so consumed by the lust for money. I then took my pencil in my right hand, held the card with my left, closed my eyes, and made a dot at random. That was the first horse. Then I made dots for the other two, and you behold the result—two right out of three."
"But why didn't you back your fancy?" Dollie asked. "You've thrown away a fortune."
"For two reasons," said Sir Gaston. "One is that I never bet and don't want to. And the other is that I had no confidence in my prescience."
"Will you try the same thing for me for the Oaks on Friday?" Dollie asked.
"Certainly—if you will promise me something."
"Well?"
"Not to bet on the result."
"Oh, but that's what I want it for."
"Yes, but such lucky shots don't come off twice in one week."
The Farrars came back at this moment in very low spirits, for they had had bad luck all day.
"Well," I said, "I'm rolling, anyway. And you're all going to dine with me to-night and the balance shall go to the hospitals—as though I had won it in France."
"But why don't you follow your luck and put in on a horse?" Dollie gasped.
"Not for another year," I said. "I bet only at the Derby. I couldn't stand the wear and tear of it oftener. It's too exciting. My heart is beating at this moment like a propeller. I want a quiet life. Besides, think of Naomi—you know the miseries in store for a gambler's wife. And another thing—I have it very clearly fixed at the back of my head—and nothing that I have seen to-day alters the feeling—that there is nothing to pluck on a race-course but Dead Sea fruit."
"We will now sing hymn one hundred and forty-two," said Dollie, with great solemnity; "Wow-wow!"
I approached Farrar with an expression of sympathy for his losses.
"Oh, that's nothing," he replied. "I'm still on the right side for the year and I'll pull this round safe enough. Things look blackest before the dawn, don't you know."
"If you take to proverbs," said Sir Gaston, who was standing by, "you'll never know where you are, for there's a neutralizer for every one of them."
"I can give Farrar an example," I said, "that will take some neutralizing—'The grey mare's the better horse.'"
Farrar groaned, but his wife laughed.
"Thank you, Mr. Falconer," she said; "what a pretty compliment!"
Which only shows how we stumble on some of our neatest things.
CHAPTER XVII
IN WHICH AN OLD GAMBLER (RETIRED FROM BUSINESS) TELLS OF A TRIUMPH, AND THE YOUNGER GENERATION IN LOVE COME UNDER REVIEW
On the way back Sir Gaston told us of an incident many years ago, when he did occasionally put something on a horse—not as a habit, but if he heard anything.
He had been staying, he said, with two friends for a fortnight in Ireland, fishing at a man named Regan's. One friend was Glenister, a curious obstinate fellow, now in India; the other was Horace Bradley, the K.C. The day before their last they were driving over to Rushtown to see the races, and on the way Captain O'Driscoll overtook them in his American buggy. I reconstruct Sir Gaston's story.
"'Going to the races?' O'Driscoll asked, as he slowed down for a moment. 'So'm I. See you there.' He clicked on, and then, stopping again, turned round to call out—'Don't forget Blackadder for the College Stakes. Dead cert. Put your shirts on,' and was again off.
"'All very well,' said Glenister thoughtfully, 'but where are our shirts? Speaking personally, my shirt is a return ticket to London and about eighteen shillings, which I shall need.'
"'Yes,' said Bradley. 'And I'm no better off, confound it!'
"'You forget,' said I, 'that I have a five-pound note in my pocket intended as our joint tip to old Rice.' (Rice was Regan's butler.) 'Lucky we decided to put it aside.'
"'Yes,' said Glenister, 'but that's the butler's.'
"'Not till to-morrow,' said I.
"'No,' said Bradley, 'not till to-morrow.'
"'But hang it all,' said Glenister, who was a precisian and adored his conscience, 'where are we if we put it on this horse and the beggar loses? I know these dead certs. It won't be Rice's to-morrow, then, will it? To my mind it's his now, and we ought to respect his ownership. It was to make sure of his having it that we gave it to the Goat to keep.'
"I was the Goat. How funny to think of it now! I haven't been called the Goat for hundreds of years."
"O father," said Ann, "may I call you the Goat?"
"Certainly not," said the Knight. "I admitted that Glenister was logical," he continued, "'but all the same,' I said, 'here's a straight tip, and it's a sin not to use it. One doesn't often get them, and to start a whole menagerie of sophistries in return is the kind of ingratitude that providence doesn't soon forgive.'
"'Of course,' said Bradley. 'The Goat's right. And, after all, there's no sense in being so infernally conscientious. A gamble's a gamble, and old Rice would be almost as pleased to hear that we had put his fiver on a horse as to have it shoved into his hand.'
"Glenister laughed. 'I say no more,' he said. 'You do what you like with the fiver. Personally, I shall have ten shillings on Blackadder to win, although why on earth we all swallow that soldier man's advice so unquestioningly I shall never understand.'
"'If the Goat will lend me two pounds,' said Bradley, 'I will back Blackadder for a pound each way.'
"'The Goat won't,' said I. 'All that the Goat proposes to do is to put the butler's fiver on to win.'
"This, later, I did, having found a bookmaker who was giving 10 to 1; and, true to Captain O'Driscoll's word, Blackadder romped in an easy winner.
"I collected the eleven rustling five-pound notes and stowed them carefully away inside my coat, and in the late afternoon we drove back. Naturally we had a good deal to say about the racing, our fortunate meeting with O'Driscoll, and so forth. And then suddenly Glenister remarked, 'I wonder what the old boy will do with it? Set up as a small tobacconist in Dublin, do you think?'
"'What old boy?' I asked.
"'Why, Rice, of course.'
"'You can't set up as a small tobacconist on five pounds,' said Bradley. 'At least, if you did, you'd be so small a tobacconist that your customers would want a microscope.'
"'Don't be an idiot,' said Glenister. 'He'll have fifty-five pounds, won't he?'
"Bradley and I were silent. This was a proposition that needed thought.
"'I don't see why he should have more than the fiver,' I said at last. 'It was all we were going to give him, wasn't it? You will admit that?'
"'Certainly,' said Glenister. 'It was his fiver, and you were keeping it for him, weren't you? You won't deny that?'
"'In a way I was,' I said.
"'O law!' groaned Bradley. 'What a hair-splitter!'
"'Very well, then,' said Glenister. 'You had Rice's five pounds and you gambled with it—in itself a jolly unprincipled thing to do, as it wasn't yours: poor devils are doing time all over the place for much less; and now, when your flutter turns up trumps, you deny him—who might have been your victim—the benefit! I call it downright mean—squalid, in fact.'
"'You make it sound rotten,' I said, 'but there's a fallacy somewhere. To begin with, as I said before, it isn't the butler's own money till to-morrow. He hadn't earned it till the end of our visit. If it wasn't his it is ours, and we could do as we liked with it. We did, and the result is we have now enough to divide up into sixteen pounds, thirteen shillings, and fourpence each, which I shall be pleased to give you directly we get back, while Rice has his fiver intact.'
"'Not for me,' said Glenister. 'I won five pounds with my own ten bob, and that's all I make out of Blackadder. I can't take your sixteen pounds odd, because it isn't mine. I may snore, as you agree to allege, but I'm not a thief.'
"'O law!' Bradley groaned again. 'My dear Glenister, you're talking like a Herbert Spencer sort of ass. All it means is that the Goat and I will have to take twenty-five pounds each?'
"'No,' said Glenister, 'you can't do that; because a third, at any rate, of the original fiver was mine, or, as I hold, the butler's, and he must have what that share made. You and the Goat can take the sixteen pounds odd each, but the butler must have my third and the original fiver besides. But I don't envy you your explanation to him.'
"'No,' I said after a while, 'either the butler must have all or none. I can see that.'
"'Dash the whole stupid business!' exclaimed Bradley. 'Let him have it all. We'll be generous.'
"'It belongs to him,' said Glenister. 'There's no generosity in the matter. There's nothing but justice or injustice.'
"'Very well,' Bradley snapped out. 'I'm tired of it. Next time I go to a race-meeting I'll take care it's not with a blooming Socrates.'
"'Then that's settled,' I said as cheerfully as I could. 'Rice has the lot.'
"'The lot,' said Glenister. 'I'll admit it's enough, but there's no other course.'
"We rode the rest of the way in disgust and silence, and then"—here Sir Gaston began to laugh—"and then the rummest thing happened. Regan's groom met us at the stable-yard and took the mare's head. He seemed to be unusually excited, and I wondered if he had learned that he too had backed a winner.
"'I'm afraid you'll find the house a bit upset,' he said to Glenister, 'but the fact is, there's been a little trouble while you were away. The butler's bolted. It seems he's been dishonest for a long time, and to-day he thought the game was up and ran.'
"We looked at each other and then a threefold sigh rent the air.
"Bradley suddenly began to roll with laughter.
"Glenister for a while did not speak. Then, 'I'll trouble you,' he said to me, 'for sixteen pounds, thirteen shillings, and fourpence, and the third of a five-pound note."
I wondered what were Sir Gaston's feelings as to his prospective son-in-law's gambling propensities, and later, on the way back, he enlightened me.
"It's an odd business, this," he said, "to you and me, for I take it that you, like myself, were brought up in a middle-class way by quiet and God-fearing parents. Here we are with a lot of young people doing a thing which my father would have heartily disapproved of, and which we should have the greatest difficulty in defending if we were accused of it in public by a professional religious man or enthusiastic philanthropist. You, of course, would have a comparatively easy time. You would come out merely as a retired gentleman from abroad who was interested in social customs. But I—I am a Government servant and the father of a young girl who is going to marry this racing habitué. What sort of a case should I have?"
"Well, if it comes to that," I said, "what sort of case does one ever have while the prosecution is talking? Personally, I always agree with my own censors, although dimly I am conscious that there is another side to the case—mine—if only it could be made articulate. All the same, I too have been considering the question of young Heathcote. When are they going to marry?"
"I haven't a notion," said Sir Gaston. "All I know is that it will be later rather than sooner. My daughter is out for what she calls a good time—by which, of course, she means an irresponsible one. She has enough instinct and good feeling to realize that once she is married irresponsibility will cease. She has not enough emotional dependence to be impatient for marriage. Heathcote seems to me precisely similar in temperament. Hence I look upon them as two of the most enviable creatures living. I sit and watch them at their superficial jokes and superficial wranglings, and most of all at their frivolous plan-makings for the morrow, and consider them the heirs of the ages in the happiest sense. The best of it is that both are really exceedingly sensible, and it only needs a shock—such as standing at the altar steps in their best clothes, with a really serious person in a surplice saying really serious things—to steady them for life. Ann, who has already shown her capacity for work and routine, having learned typing thoroughly in an office, will instantly become a wife and Heathcote instantly a husband. He will adopt regular habits, come home to lunch, and very likely keep accounts. The very harmless form of wild oats that they are sowing now I don't fear in the least. I should be much more alarmed if they were always embracing and whenever they walked out he took her arm and they were both hastening the wedding: then I should fear that the flame might die down too quickly, and trouble follow. But these two—they're all right. They have a public contempt for each other which contains the best promise."
I dare say Sir Gaston is right. He seems to be shrewd. But his remarks caused me to press Naomi's hand under the rug with more than usual fondness.
Yet Ann was not really selfish, even if she shared with her father a perversity which made her willing to appear so; for when once we found ourselves in a block, and were conscious of the crying of a small child, with its mother, father, and two other children in a donkey barrow, it was Ann who saved the situation. Never have I heard such pitiful wailing. The mother was tired and cross, and in no mood to be patient with it; the father was cross too, and the other children began to whimper in sympathy. Before anyone knew what she was about, Ann had jumped out of the car, taken the child from its mother, and was giving it one of Dollie's expensive chocolate creams and saying pretty crooning things to it. The mother and other children had the rest of the box, and in a short time all were happy again.
"But although it amuses me to watch them," Sir Gaston continued, "I can't find much real satisfaction in it. My other daughter, Alison, is completely lost to me, except for letters, for her husband has taken her to Ceylon. And now Ann is going; and deprived of any society of the younger generation, which, however it may irritate us at times, helps us to keep young and in touch with the day (I can say 'topping' with the best of them, although 'wow-wow' is beyond me), I have no alternative but to become old. And old age has no kind of attractiveness. I have no patience with people who profess to enjoy growing old. They merely remind one of those lines of the American poet:
Unto each man comes a day when his favorite sins all forsake him,
And he complacently thinks he has forsaken his sins.
Speaking for myself, who am nearing sixty, I would say that the only piece of satisfaction that the process of ageing has brought to me is the knowledge that the word 'unshrinkable' has no real basis in fact. But I do not call myself really old yet. Not till a young woman offers me her seat in a railway compartment will that tragedy really be mine. At that moment I shall know that all is up."
CHAPTER XVIII
IN WHICH SUSSEX VOICES ARE RAISED IN MELODY, UNCLE JONAH GIVES HIS MEMORY PLAY, AND WE MEET A NAPOLEONIC QUAKER
We have just been down into Sussex to get some songs of which word had reached the Director, whose passion is the search for these ancient melodies. Where others hunt hares or foxes, he pursues the elusive ditty. Village after village he draws blank, without ever losing heart, and then is rewarded by hearing at last of some old gaffer to be met with at the Red Lion or Blue Boar or King's Head, no matter how far away, who once sang a rare good song and can still quaver out the ghost of it. Then the Director rises to his greatest heights, for although deep potations and himself are at enmity, yet in the interests of England and music he has had (to allay suspicion) to consume much ale and stand ever so much more before the melodist was ready to begin.
Of course, not all his singers are in inns; he has found many in cottages, too; but the village public-house naturally remains the happiest hunting-ground.
On this occasion we were bound for a private house to which the singer had been bidden. The party consisted of the Director of course with his little musical notebook, Naomi, and I. My duty was to take down the words, a far more difficult task, as I have pointed out again and again, than to get the music, because all the words are different, whereas, the tune is the same all through. An added difficulty for the word-transcriber is the fact that old Sussex labourers have few or no teeth, and Heaven alone knows what sometimes they sing: certainly they themselves do not.
We were driven from the station in the dark to a rambling house under the hills, and having dined were led to another room in which three elderly brothers were seated and one brother's wife. Two were shepherds, one of whom—Uncle Jonah—still retained the round, or smock, frock. This one, I am pleased to record, could not read, nor could his younger brother, the married one, but the elder brother and the younger brother's wife were "scholards." The elder brother was the chief singer, and while the others played a little at backwardness, he was always ready with whatever song he could remember: a tall man about sixty-seven, with a ruddy, rather mischievous face fringed with whiskers, and a gentle sly humour. He and the shepherd were the pick; the younger brother was slower and more stolid.
It was a successful evening in that it yielded six or seven songs that the Director had not heard before, although the quality, he said, was not equal to that of the West Country. Why, when we all equally have the gift of speech, there is this capriciousness in the bestowal of the gift of song, is a problem and anomaly that have always perplexed and irritated me. Why should one human throat be melodious, and another—my own, for example—emit nothing but dissonance? Again, why should one human creature with a voice be willing to use it, and another hide the gift under a bushel of self-consciousness? But the Director has a way with the shy that sooner or later prevails. He too begins to sing, and by-and-bye the shy enter in, and then gradually the Director drops out and the shy sing on alone and never falter again.
If the Director's methods were bewildering to me, what must they have been to these simple folk? For he takes out pencil and his little notebook ruled with staves, and the instant the singer has done he can go to the piano and play the song word for word, with all its peculiarities of movement, its hurryings and pauses, its unexpected cadences, its curious melancholy. Magic, surely! I can just begin to understand shorthand, but not this mystery. During the first verse he sits intent, with his pencil poised over the paper, waiting to strike. During the second verse he is recording all the time. During the third he makes little refining touches, and the tune is complete.
The words, taken separately, were my department. The words of folk-songs without music are always far enough removed from melody, but the ditty which I copy here, which we may call "Winter's Signs," is, I think, the farthest removed of all, although as a piece of bleak impressionism it is good: indeed, rather like an etching; and yet, as sung by this old man, with his soft musical quavers, it was not only beautiful but hauntingly so. The words are exactly as he had them, all unconscious that they made contradictions and have neither scansion nor rhyme. Here they are:
The trees they're all bare, not one leaf to be seen,
The meadows their beauty's all gone.
And as for the leaves, they're falling from the trees
And the streams they were—and the streams they were—fast
bound by the frost.
In the yards where the oxen all foddered with straw
Send forth their breath like a stream,
The sweet-looking milkmaid she finds she must go;
Flakes of ice finds she—flakes of ice finds she—on her cream.
The poor little small birds to the barn doors fly for food,
Silent they rest on the spray,
The poor innocent sheep from the Downs until the fold
With their fleeces all—with their fleeces all—covered with snow.
The poor little pigeon all shivering with cold,
So loud the north winds do blow;
The poor tiny hares search the woods all for their food
Unless their footsteps their—unless their footsteps
their—innocence betray.
Now Christmas is gone my song is almost sung,
Soon will come the springtime of the year,
Come unto me the glass and let your health go round
And we wish you a—and we wish you a—happy New Year.
That, as I have said, is poor stuff, although it successfully carries its wintry feeling; but now try it with the music.
The trees they're all bare, not one leaf to be seen; The
mea - dows their beau - ty's all gone; And
as for the leaves they're fall - ing from the trees,
And the streams they were, . . And the streams they
were fast bound by the frost.
I assure you that the old man's gentle caressing voice when singing about the poor little pigeon, the poor innocent sheep, and the poor tiny hares, made the situation absolutely poignant.
One other of the songs I am tempted to reproduce: this also with an innocent hare in it; a hunting song. There is something rather pretty about the willingness of the poor to sing hunting-songs—to praise a sport which exists wholly for their masters and in which they cannot participate. At the most they see the horsemen and hounds go by and hear the horn and the shouts; even the hare falls to the pack. But the English peasant is not envious. He accepts his lot quite simply and naturally, and after a long day's work in the fields and the rain, for insufficient shillings to add meat to the family table, is quite cheerfully ready to lift up his voice in praise of the sport which his roystering master has been enjoying. So let it be: I am merely recording the fact.
Here is the merriest and most tuneful of the hunting-songs.
Ye sports-men, rouse the morn - ing fair, The
larks are sing - ing in . . the air; Go
tell your sweet lover the hounds are out, Go
tell your sweet lover the hounds are out; Saddle your hor-ses, your
sad-dles pre-pare, A - way to the covers to look for a hare.
We searched the fields that grows around,
Our trail is lost, our game is found,
Then out she springs, through brake she flies,
Then out she springs, through brake she flies.
Follow, follow the musical horn,
Sing follow, hark follow, the innocent hare.
Our horses go galloping over the ground,
Go breathing all after the torturing hound.
Such a game she has led us four hours or more,
Such a game she has led us four hours or more,
Follow, follow the musical horn,
Sing follow, hark follow, the innocent hare.
Our huntsman blows the joyful sound,
See how he scours over the ground.
Our hare's a sinking, see how she creeps,
Our hare's a sinking, see how she creeps,
Follow, follow, the musical horn,
Sing follow, hark follow, the innocent hare.