Petals of wild cherry blossom were flying on a soft rush of wind that swept through the beech wood. Little bright sheathlets lay, brown and shining, at the feet of the smooth silver-green boles of the trees. The leaves, not yet rid of the silky soft fringes of their babyhood, fluttered like little flags, and glowed like green flame; they were not yet thick enough to hide the misty blue sky, laced with feathery cloudlets. Light seemed to flow from the little leaves—the light of life, the life of spring-time. The “Fire of God” was aflame in the wood world; a green mist of colour was aglow in the very air that pulsed between the beech-tree boles. In every dell the bracken sprang up straightly, uncurling its brown heads to spread abroad the branches of its later summer greenery. The first blue-bells were there too, covering the ground with tender blue mist, and filling the air with an ecstasy of perfume that smote the senses with the pain that attends the inexpressible and almost intangible; for the soul of all joy, of all sweetness, whether of perfume, sight, or sound, is ever hidden away in the heart of things, whereof all that can be smelt, or seen, or heard, does but torment us with a deeper, eternally elusive longing.
On a bough a blue tit hung head downwards, and beneath the bough, half hidden in a crisp bed of last year’s leaves, lay a child who watched the tit with half-shut eyes, and shook with a delight he did not understand, which was akin to pain. A queer, lonely, shy child, lying in a wood, trembling with a force which was trying to express itself through him. He was the motherless son of an old country vicar, who took scarcely any notice of him until the boy was old enough to read the books his father loved, who let the child “run wild” from sunrise to sunset, and after.
Those who commented on the matter said it was very bad for a boy to have no young companions, and to dream alone in a wood all day. This was true, but circumstances alter cases. The training, or rather the lack of any training from the world of men, happened to be just what this particular child needed; this was probably the reason he was placed where he was, to struggle through a short life alone. People were as shadows to the boy—shadows whom he greeted kindly, to whom he meekly submitted himself in much, for he was docile in most matters, partly because there were so few things of the outer world for which this queer child really cared. When the outer things were forced upon his notice, he observed all manner of traits in people which others did not see. But for the most part he did not live in the world of men at all, but in the life of the beech wood, and in the life of that which the wood partly expressed—a life after which he reached continually without knowing or finding it.
He lay in the withered leaves and quivered with the thoughts and dim sensations that came about him like living presences; a power, not his own, seemed to press upon the child, till the wood vanished from his eyes; it was as though the wide sky had suddenly stooped to the boy and engulfed him in a flood of quivering, living light.
Vague longings, longings to express somewhat that lurked within and ever eluded him, compassed the child about; until at last the knowledge stole upon him that he could put a shadow of his thought into rhythmic words; words with a cadence that should tell of brooks and whispering leaves, and the songs and rustling of the birds in the beech wood.
It was about this time that the father saw that his child was not as other children; when he saw it he gave the boy no less liberty, but he bestowed upon him freely such knowledge as was his, and let him learn from the poets of past and present the power that lies in deftly wielded words.
So this boy, Fletewode Garth, lived in the quiet old vicarage house, surrounded by the beech woods and the meadows, and dreamed, and wrote, and read such books as his father possessed, which were less numerous than well chosen. His father, the gentlest, simplest, most unworldly of men, never speculated as to his boy’s future. Nor did the lad himself dream, as yet, of giving his thoughts to the world; of fame to be or money making he never thought at all.
The day came (it was when Fletewode was twenty years old) that the mild old vicar, having finished his appointed course as pastor of Beechenfield, sat down peacefully to smoke and doze under the shade of a trellised Crimson Rambler in the vicarage garden, and there he fell asleep and never woke up again. Then it was found that save for the sum of £100 in the Bank, his son was left penniless; very well read in English literature, with much delicacy of taste in art and poetry, with such classical attainments as the old vicar had himself possessed, and with no other qualifications for making his way in the world—save genius. So that it is obvious he ran a very good chance of starving.
His father’s cousin, a prosperous man of business, desired to do well by him. He offered to obtain for him a clerkship in the city. Fletewode thanked him; then he pointed out that he was very unbusinesslike, that arithmetic was not his strong point, in fact he was in the habit, when necessity arose, of adding up on his fingers; also that he wrote a very unclerkly hand. Moreover, he said: “I want to write about the things of which I think, and I believe that is the only thing I can really do well.”
His relative regarded him as a fool, and did not take the trouble to hide the fact. Fletewode was quite unruffled by this, which annoyed his kinsman still more. There is nothing to be done with a person who does not mind what you think of, or say to, him, and it makes you appear as though you were of little account in his eyes. Fletewode’s relative was unpleasantly conscious of this, nevertheless he tried again to rouse the impracticable youth to a sense of realities; he asked him how he proposed to live. Fletewode replied that he possessed £100; he supposed he could live on that for some time; perhaps he should earn money by the things he wrote; he had not considered the matter deeply, and, after all, money was of secondary importance. To speak disrespectfully of other people’s Gods is unjustifiable; Fletewode’s relative, very properly, cursed him in the names of Worldly Wisdom, and Business and Commonsense; also he said he washed his hands of him, when he was starving in the gutter he would come to his senses. Fletewode smiled like one who is occupied with more important questions, but lends a kindly ear to childlike babblings; then he went out to sit under the Crimson Rambler, where his father died. The crimson petals lay thickly on the walk, and in a crook of the thorny boughs a flycatcher was feeding a youthful family.
A week later Fletewode left the vicarage, and the roses, the beech wood and the birds, and went to London with a sheaf of manuscripts and a few books. At the end of a year he had written a great deal, but no one heeded him. Who was to be expected to turn aside from the press of life to see whether this shabbily dressed young man, who couched all manner of wild, mystical thoughts of God and humanity and nature in melodious verse, that made one think of the murmur of the wind through a perfumed wood on a June night—who was to take much trouble, I say, to see whether there was any truth in the words, or genius in the soul, of such a country lad as this?
At the end of a year the £100 was nearly gone; not that Fletewode had recklessly spent the whole of this enormous sum on himself, but he found (it is not an unusual experience) many people in the not too magnificent street where he rented a room who were poorer than he; these people looked upon him as a man of fortune, and they explained to him the duty of the rich towards the poor.
On a day in spring Fletewode Garth sat in his room and shivered with nervousness and hunger, while he faced the fact that he had but three shillings left.
Soon he would not be able to buy ink and paper; his work was beginning to suffer a little by reason of lack of food, and anxiety. It was for that reason the sheet of paper on the table before him was angrily torn across, and stained, moreover, with tears. He could not think; the halting of his brain, the blunting of his perceptions were the keenest tortures life could bring a soul like Fletewode Garth. He had altered during his year of town life; the child-look, which had lingered in his eyes despite his twenty years, was gone. He was no longer semi-unconscious of his surroundings and steeped in dreams of the things beyond. He was nervously, irritably, bitterly conscious of his world. Life—the seamy side of it—had made him look on the things men call the realities of existence; the ugliest, most sordid, most evil side of life. He had looked to some purpose, looked till his heart was sickened, till his heart was weary with pain and hopelessness. Looked till the pressure of the sordid-seeming struggle without, and the strong constraining power of that mystic something within, a power which was laid on him despite himself, sometimes strained his nerves to breaking point.
Now, too, a dread seized him. The sight of the world’s sorrow had made him tremblingly anxious that his human comrades should hear him speak of the fairer things; of that which he felt to be true, which once had been the whole of life for him. For the first time he desired to comfort and to succour, and though he knew it not, this longing gave to his work the last touch it needed—the human touch, the power of speech from heart to heart.
Suppose, he thought, he died of poverty, and all he had written was swept away unread. Fletewode actually believed that it is possible to sweep out of existence, irrevocably and for all time, a thing which the world needs, or will need. Therefore he grieved; he had no personal ambitions, he did not mind obscurity or death, nor did he greatly mind suffering; but now, at last, he wished people to have the happiness that had vanished from his own life.
He got up with a sigh, took his hat, and went out. He was going to seek a possible patron. John Chalmers, a man whom he once helped with some of the vanished £100, told him “to go and see Scottie; Scottie might put something in his way.”
John Chalmers was a clever man, who would have been a successful artist, save for drink. He drew rather coarse cartoons for inferior comic papers.
“Scottie,” on the other hand, was a prosperous person. He had a talent for inventing jingling refrains which “caught on” with the public; his comic songs, “patriotic” songs, and dance music were whistled by every street boy, and ground out by every piano organ in London.
Fletewode Garth reached the house of this prosperous man; it was a little house in the suburbs, with a lilac tree bursting into bloom in the small front garden. Mr. Scottie had lunched an hour before his visitor’s arrival; but, being conscienceless in such matters, he lied and said he was famished, and luncheon was late. This he did because he knew Fletewode Garth was hungry; for, before he and the public had discovered his gift for tunes, he was a struggling provincial actor, stranded in South Wales by a decamping manager; wherefore he had tramped to the nearest large town, went forty-eight hours without food, and slept under a hayrick in a pelting thunderstorm; this invaluable experience caused him to feel for Fletewode, and also caused him to perceive the signs of famine, and shape his lie in accordance with his observations. Now if some persons had refrained from that lie, it would have indicated in them a high regard for truth; but if Mr. Scottie had refrained from it, it would have argued lack of sympathy rather than morality; for he lied fairly often, and believed it to be necessary; therefore his untruthfulness to Fletewode was an act of unmixed virtue.
After luncheon he told his guest he wanted verses—up-to-date verses—to which he could attach tunes; his old friend Farquharson, who used to write them for him, was dead; would Fletewode try to fill his place. It was pure philanthropy on the part of this patron of poetry; he could get countless jingles of the kind he needed; but he was sorry for the lad, whose white face, hollow eyes, and air of nervous strain, had touched him.
Fletewode said he would try. He went home, and thought for a few minutes. Then he drew from his memory a quaint country tale from his old home; he cast it into the form of a ballad. It was stirring enough; a story of love and heroism, of those elemental passions of the race which are always young, always able to grip the imagination. The next day he took it to his patron, who shook his head.
“My dear chap,” said he amiably, “this won’t do. I want something which will go down at the Rag Bag. Never been to the Rag Bag? Great Scott! How on earth can you write unless you know the world? I’ll give you a pass. You go and see for yourself the kind of thing I want.”
Fletewode went to the Rag Bag; at first the foolish vulgarity of the songs, the dull, sordid atmosphere of the place, wearied him. Then his mind, an ever-plastic machine, adapted itself a little; he began to take a sort of amused pleasure in learning the “trick of the thing.” His cleverness began to prompt him; to show him how easily he could write rhymes much more pointed, much more witty, and considerably more harmful, than the majority of these coarse, imbecile jingles; his genius, which was the power beyond, held his mind back, and said: “Keep these powers holy for me.”
Next day he went to see Scottie, and told him he did not care to do it.
“Why not?” said his patron, a little piqued.
“I don’t care to wade in the gutter mud,” said Fletewode irritably, and indeed, very rudely and ungratefully; but he was over-strung and tormented by various sections of his mental and emotional make-up pulling at him at once, and each in a different direction.
“What bosh,” said the other. “Gutter mud! Gutter mud be hanged! The people want it. Old Farquharson was as decent a fellow as ever breathed. You think the poor old chap has gone below, I suppose, because he wrote these things to keep his missus and kids out of the workhouse? Well! Of all the beastly cant——”
“No, no, I don’t mean that. It was all right for him.”
“If you think you’re a better fellow than old Farquharson was, my young friend, you’re jolly well mistaken,” said the other, strumming excruciatingly on the piano, for he was growing annoyed.
“I never said I was better. I never think, or care either, whether I am good, bad, or indifferent. Can’t you see how hideously ugly these songs are? Jingling tunes and Bank Holiday verses! They’re like the smell of withered cabbages and naphtha lamps.”
This was not very courteous to the kindly composer of the said tunes.
“Oh, well,” said he, rather sharply, “as you please. Er—I’m rather busy, Mr. Garth.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Fletewode, starting and colouring. “I’m afraid I’ve been very rude. I’m sorry. Good morning, and—thank you.”
That evening he sat alone as usual, and tried to write his thoughts. He was cold and tired and half-starved. There was only a shilling left. He had written a sonnet, perhaps one of the most difficult forms of poetry, needing the greatest perfection of execution. He read it, sitting near the window, where a streak of the dying sunlight could fall on his numbed frame. The lines halted, they did not even scan; the thoughts were feeble, confused. His work was bad; it was fatally, irredeemably bad. He crushed the paper in his hands, fell on his knees on the floor, and rested his head on the seat of his one wooden chair. There are some agonies of the soul into which it is sacrilege to pry; this was one of them; we will not try to gauge it.
At last Fletewode stood up, went out, spent his last shilling on a meal, and came back penniless. That was no matter, to-morrow Scottie would give him five, perhaps ten shillings.
He sat at the table and wrote; as he wrote he became absorbed in his work, he found himself laughing over it. When it was finished he read it through, he dropped it on the table, rested his head upon it and cried like a child. He had sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, and his life died within him for very shame. The dawn found him asleep in his chair, his head still resting upon the paper.
The next day he sought his patron, apologised for his folly, was easily forgiven by the most placable and kindly of slip-knot-principled men, and tendered his verses. The amiable Scottie took them, read, and chuckled over them appreciatively.
“You jolly humbug!” he said with genuine admiration. “And you got a pass for the Rag Bag out of me to give you a tip!”
“Will they do—these verses?”
“Rather,” still chuckling. “I’ll give you ten shillings for them—yes—I don’t mind giving you ten shillings. They’re very smart. This is your real line, you see; you’ll get on now like a house on fire.”
“Give them to me. I’ll polish them. They’re in the rough. I wrote them quickly.”
“They’ll do.”
“Give them back, I tell you,” said Fletewode irritably. “They might have been raked out of the Thames mud; but, even so, I won’t let them go like that. I’ll polish them. You shall have them to-morrow.”
Scottie handed him the verses and a ten-shilling piece. Fletewode went home to “polish” his production.
He spread the verses out before him. From his window he could see stacks of chimney pots, their crudeness of colour mellowed by the picturesqueness of dirt lit by the benign influence of May sunshine. Through the open window floated the fluty call of a caged thrush, whose cage hung over a great heap of wallflowers on the stall of a greengrocer’s shop.
Fletewode listened awhile, picked up the verses, dropped them, half raised his hands to his head, let them fall, and sat still. His limbs grew numb and heavy, then they vanished from his consciousness; all his life seemed to be focussed to one point, with a great eagerness and yearning, for what he knew not.
The room faded from his sight. Petals of wild cherry blossom, like faery cups fashioned from snowflakes, were flying through the air; the green of the beeches was like living flame; the wood was full of keen strong life. The birds were building; a wren flew by with thistledown in her beak; down by the little stream where marsh marigolds and water forget-me-nots grew, a kingfisher was flashing by; a blackbird was splashing and bathing in the shallows; over the cowslip-spangled meadow beyond, the rooks were flying, and the sheep bells’ clang blended with their sober calling.
But there was a keener, swifter life in the wood than that of opening leaf and building bird. He had always felt its throbbing, but now it waxed perceptible to sight; it flowed like living light through the boles of the trees; they seemed to grow translucent; it thrilled in the air; through the shining vistas of the beechen woods, the gods and dryads of old legends came trooping; and the elfin peoples of the flowers and air, of the water and the moss-decked rock, made good sport in the flitting lights and shadows.
He cast himself, so it seemed, in the old hollow filled with the dead crisp beech leaves; their faint pungent smell and the delicate odour of the opening leaves were all about him in this strange old-new world. About him a presence wove itself; an unreal, most-real, compelling power, without him and within. He felt the pulsing of a stronger life smite upon his. And then, even as when he was a child, the inner and the outer world alike flowed away from him, the great sky seemed to stoop to him in a blinding flood of living light and wrap him round, and “there was neither speech nor language,” only light—light—light—and again more light and keener life.
The next day Mr. Scottie received a note which was left at his door. Out of it dropped a ten-shilling piece. On a sheet of paper was written:
“I can’t do it, I’ve torn them up. To every man his work and his line, this isn’t mine. I must do the work they mean me to do. If you say: ‘Who are they?’ I do not know. If through some fault of mine, or of the world’s, I fail to do as I am meant to do, then let me go. There’s no point in a man’s keeping his body alive by making his brain grind out work for which it wasn’t built. Better work with one’s hands than that, till the hour strikes. That is what I shall try now, and wait results.”
Mr. Scottie was greatly concerned, because his protégé had, as he phrased it, “gone dotty,” and, being as kindly a creature as ever pursued the tasks appointed for him by his past, he took pains to find Fletewode. But Fletewode and his MSS. were gone.
A week later the gardener of a well-to-do literary man, a minor poet, received a shock. Within his master’s grounds was a little clump of beech trees; they grew far away from Fletewode’s old home, but they were fine trees, all bravely decked in their spring green, and at their feet grew bluebells. The gardener found a dead man lying face downwards in a bluebell patch, and beside him was a great bundle of papers tied up in a scarlet and white handkerchief. The gardener gave the alarm; he carried the bundle to his master, and the dead man was laid in the harness room in the stables. There was no clue at all as to the identity of the man; the doctor discovered he had died of heart failure. The minor poet looked through the papers; he said at the inquest there was no clue in the bundle as to who the man was, there were only a few unimportant documents; he would pay the expenses of the poor young fellow’s funeral.
Now the minor poet was an ambitious man, well known in the literary world. His ambitions were larger than his power of performance. He was well known among men of letters as a very good critic of other people’s work. The day of the funeral he sat alone and trembled in the throes of temptation. He did not understand the subtle mystic thought of the poems in the bundle, but he saw their marvellous beauty of expression. He appreciated keenly the lovely lilt and melody of the lines which seemed to ring out from the heart of a fairy haunted wood. The minor poet was not a very righteous man. Three beautiful little books emanated from his pen point, they were finally bound in white vellum and tied chastely with blue ribbons. Those books were widely read. The critics greatly praised the versatility of the minor poet, who had never written anything of that kind before; also they warned him—friendly-wise—against a tendency to mysticism, which ever saps the judgment and emasculates the intellect. The minor poet said he would never fall again into that snare, and indeed he never did so. The thoughts enshrined within those poems struck strongly on the consciousness of four readers only. One was a foreign writer of romance, the second was a great preacher, the third a musician, and the fourth a man of science to whom the world harkened when he spake. And the thought of these four men, and through them the thought of the world, was coloured for all time to come by the work of the minor poet; men who had not heeded that of Fletewode Garth, heard his voice gladly. Thus the wheel that none can stay rolled on, and the world, through the heart failure of Fletewode, and the ambition of an unrighteous man, received the message which it would not receive by other means. For the hour had struck upon the clock of time when it was fit that it should hear, therefore its ears were opened.
But the problem for the wise is this: When sheaves are garnered what shall be the minor poet’s share in the reaping?