Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 231
She stood in the tiny kitchen that was also a bathroom, tall and unhurried, wiping the fragments of chopped herbs from the steel blade of the chopper. Against the light of the frosted window she had the air of a Madonna of domesticity; a tin clock ticked on the wooden table at her side; she glanced at it, and observed that in five minutes she must set the rabbit upon the gas stove.
And yet she was hardly a Madonna of domesticity any more than her husband was an inspired teacher. It was what came to her hand. If making the bed, sweeping the floors, shaking the rugs out on the roof, washing the plates, and executing the cookery took, as a rule, three hours of her day; if meditating a great deal upon how it was really best — as distinguished from the educational fashion of the day — to teach small children the rudiments of knowledge so that, in after life, with awakened intelligences they might assimilate these knowledges — if these actions and meditations occupied the greater part of her day, she would have preferred to be able to meditate upon other things.
But with a conscience that would have been almost grim had her personality been more angular or swift in its motions, during the whole day she would consider whether a plasticine model of a watershed was really the best method of teaching a child to appreciate the functions of mountains. She would run over in her mind the several hundreds of children whose utterances on these subjects she remembered; she would compare those utterances with what she could remember of her impressions as a child. (She considered, for instance, that the use of the word watershed, which the manuals compelled her to employ, might possibly be detrimental, because, when she had been at home as a child, her father had had a shed which contained a large tank, and was called “the water-shed.” This for many years had caused her to think of the origins of all springs and rivers as black, tarred structures, with corrugated iron roofs, into which water was pumped by an old, blind horse, walking round and round with a bar behind him.) And these annotations, negative and subjective, of children’s thoughts she would endeavour, after reading passages on the same subjects in the work of Froebel and the educators, to condense into a paragraph of a few lines, writing slowly and with much conscientious difficulty in the desire to express herself exactly. So that when, perhaps half an hour before Alfred’s return, she would take the typewriter from the little room where she wrote into the kitchen, where she typewrote with an eye to the supper upon the stove, she had seldom more than a page and a half of a large handwriting to show for a day of restraint and of effort And, though it was all in the day’s work, it is not to be thought that she did not sometimes remember a long poem on the history of a wood that, in a drawer of the sideboard in the dining-room, had a line added to it day by day, sometimes at intervals of many weeks.
It allured her, this History of a Wood of hers, though she was never concerned to think whether it would allure any other soul in the universe. It allured her because, when she could write long lines, and still more, when she could think the big thoughts, she seemed to be turning in, off a lane, in between the boles of huge and tranquil trees into thick, peopled, and historic undergrowths. It brought her thoughts of the scampering tails of rabbits, of the harsh cries of jays, of pheasants that ran furtive and noiseless before the footstep. It gave her inklings of the thoughts that the trees would have, reaching up, as if asleep and dreaming, to the stars of winter nights. It gave her thoughts of the woodcutters, of the hurdlers shaving spiles, of the cottages hidden between coppices; of the gods these men had created, the dryads, the nymphs, the fauns, of the little people and of the gods that had created these men, these trees, and the little wood-flowers that, for years and years, slept beneath fallen leaves until, the woodcutters letting in the light, frail and crowded blossoms for a time looked again out at the skies and heard the night-cry of the foxes. And so for years they would go to sleep again, the flowers; the unnumbered leaves would fall, the unconsidered men would die.
All these things she sought to register in her long and slow poem that was meant for the eye of no man. But since the Thursday — and it was then Wednesday evening — it had troubled her by being more present to her. On the Sunday she had written no less than thirty lines of the history of Daphne. It was, of course, the name of her guest that had brought into her mind the history of the maiden loved by a god who became at his pursuit a tree of poet’s bay.
And as her chopper had crushed the leaves of bay that she was to rub over the dismembered rabbit, the History of a Wood came into her head. There ran through her head thoughts that were very disturbing.
“Imagine then’ — she said to herself—” a corner of my wood,
Down in a sheltered nook too steep for cartage,
So that the cutters seldom there set foot.
And here a pie, supping on bay berries,
From a garden near, comes here and drops a seed.
And so a bay tree. And in years and years
More bay trees, till as years and years moved by
There came a thicket, odorous and green,
With the dark leafage of the poet’s tree,
A darkling thicket in a hidden nook,
‘Neath the high woods....”
And whilst she stood, motionless, looking down on the chopper and the cloth with which she had been wiping it, there came into her mind the swift thought of a girl, glimpsing like a lapwing, through her wood, avoiding the eyes of a too hot pursuer, all glorious in his youth. And the girl, running downwards through the hanging woods, drops suddenly and noiselessly to ground disappearing in the odorous, dark trees of the thicket.... And so the legend of the bay tree.
A passion of verse, loose in texture, but big in sound, came into her mind. She could not resist it; she looked down still, but she felt her eyes dilate. Then she knew that the claimant to Godhead was standing in the doorway.
“You have come back,” she said. “I thought you would never come back from that pleasanter world.”
“Child,” he said, “they are too like gods. I could experience nothing from them.”
“Then what do you want of us?” she answered. “We are such poor people.”
“And what,” he said, “do you suppose that I should desire of you?”
It could not be said that Frances Milne had expected that he would come back: it could not indeed be said that she had ever expected to see him again. Only she had had that frame of mind in which one says, “It can’t be that we shall never see so and so again!”
She had discussed the matter with her husband: they had viewed it in various planes. If you considered it from the merely material standpoint of social contacts there had not been much hope. He was a stranger — a wonderful man even. He had made the chance acquaintance of Alfred Milne during a chance visit to a chance friend. He had come in to pay an evening call: he had paid it and had gone, leaving several new ideas awakened in their minds. But he had simply gone, taking a chance lift in a chance motor-car. And they weren’t — either she or Alfred — the persons to follow up a chance visitor. They couldn’t imagine themselves — it never, indeed, entered their heads — inquiring of Eugene Durham if he had found out where this gentleman lived or who were his friends, so that they might arrange casual meetings. He had simply gone.
And they had nothing to offer for his return: they were such poor people, with such simple ideals. You could not imagine a wonderful man, and a man obviously wealthy and likely to be beloved by many people — you could not imagine him seeking out, of his own volition, two poor school teachers whose uttermost visions were bounded by an already fading white dream of a school-house in Wiltshire.
They had nothing to offer him. And it must be remembered that neither Alfred nor Frances Milne had any touch, either by birth, tradition, or upbringing, of that romantic strain that makes many of us believe in a special providence — a special providence who will cause an indefinable “something” to “turn up.” Nothing that would turn up entered into their scale of ideas: they calculated solely upon their own efforts. Life for them was cause and effect: what they did to-day would earn for them what they would enjoy or suffer from to-morrow. They hadn’t either of them, as children or young people, read novels enough to imagine — as so many of us will imagine — that their lives would be rounded up, connected, or helped, by a benevolent fate, over stiles. If they went lame they would have to bear it.
It was, however, at this point that the first divergence from her attitude began to manifest itself to Frances in her husband. He took it more lying down than she. For him this Mr. Apollo was just gone: there was nothing, nothing at all, to bring him back. For her, there was just one thing: their admiration, their feeling, their love for the stranger.
Alfred said — and the weariness of his tone first gave her the idea that he was going to be ill —
“Yes; we admire him. But what does that do? We admired G. F. Watts, but that didn’t bring him to us. It’s a case in which admiration does not help us.”
“But still,” she had pleaded with him, “if he had known, if we could have let him know, how fervently we admired, how entirely we felt his ideas were our ideas, might not we have got some sign from him?”
It was on the Sunday: Alfred Milne was very tired: the day before he had taken his boys to play in Regent’s Park a cricket match against some boys from a Peckham school. It had rained: he had already the beginnings of a feverish cold. To please his boys, he had let them play on through a heavy shower, he himself standing at the wicket and umpiring the cricket match, but the match, though he had attended it voluntarily, had stopped his and Frances’s attending at a Social Political meeting that had turned out to be more than usually interesting. For though it was no more than a meeting of the Chelsea Branch, it had happened that Mr. John Ball, the brilliant Mr. John Ball, had attended it, brought by a young enthusiast, more especially to make the acquaintance of the Alfred Milnes. And, because Alfred and Frances had not been there, they were told by young Jepson, Mr. Ball had formed a very poor idea of the Chelsea Branch. It had been a poor meeting: Mr. Ball was not likely to come again. They would never meet him. It was a missed opportunity.
“No,” Alfred Milne had said — and it was the renewed weariness in his voice that again gave Frances Milne the idea that he was going to be ill—”we’re like subordinates going through a corridor full of closed doors. We can’t expect the great people to come out of them and invite us in. They get all the admiration and all the sympathy they want from the people inside. They do not need ours.”
“Oh yes,” she answered, “I have thought that too. Exactly the same idea occurred to me. But still....”
She had been sitting at the table writing her verses when they had begun to talk. It was in the little room with the truckle-bed, the books, and the typewriter. He was lying on the bed, covered with a grey rug, for he had felt chilly. She rose, large-limbed and slow, to fetch a pillow from the bedroom.
“You will feel better if your head’s higher,” she said when she came back. Having placed it beneath his head, she stood looking down at him. And suddenly she felt herself to be the more robust, the larger-limbed, the broader-chested of the two. She, it came to her with a sudden conviction, could support the life they led better than he. It wasn’t that she did not work, as long and at work as uncongenial. It was that he could not so well stand the strain of the going backwards and forwards and out and in on the asphalt and the paving-stones that were always their ground to walk on. Perhaps it was because she was a woman and more tranquil; perhaps it was because she was in truth more broad in the chest and longer in the limb....
But there was no doubt in her mind, as she stood looking down upon him, that the long monotony of the days that she supported had wearied and dispirited him. And, though she still stood and still looked, there came to her, tranquil as ever, the first pang of her life, the first quick and anguishing thought. She felt herself suddenly as it were his mother, and, again for the first time, there came into her head the idea of an appeal — for his sake — to some one, to something, that was greater and more potent than they two.
It was as if, whilst she had considered themselves as comrades, she relied simply on their efforts alone, but as soon as, in that flash, she felt that her function was to be, as well as his comrade, his paraclete, his comforter, there came to her, unformed, the idea of prayer. She wanted to make an appeal to some principle, to some person, outside, to restore to him his courage, his health, his morale.
And to whom could she appeal for this?
She sat down again at the table to her writing; she resisted an impulse to set her cheek against his brow. They were a couple very sparing of acts and even of words of endearment. They hardly ever said “Dear” the one to the other. But she felt the desire, and she resisted it because it might show him that she thought he was ill, discouraged, and weakening.
He was ill, discouraged, and weakening. But to whom could she appeal? They had their several wealthy and affectionate friends. These would give her money for him. Mr. Clarges, she knew, would give him enough to take a holiday — a long holiday, for two, for three, for four years. She knew he would do this, for she knew that deep down in the old, sharp heart was the feeling that he had ruined them, and he was ready to take their burdens upon him.
But it was not a holiday that was wanted; it was a holiday that would be worst of all, for would that not be a confession of failure? What was wanted was something that would restore to him a faith in himself. She held her pen and looked across the table at his form covered with the grey blanket that had a dull red stripe where it came up to his shoulders. He had closed his eyes; there was a weary constriction about his brows; he had, she knew, a touch of temperature.
No, a holiday would be worst of all. He required to have it shown to him that, still, he had the faculty to attract, to soothe, to influence. He had the faculty; she knew they had it between them. His pupils at the school “did well”; he showed a greater individual number of “passes” amongst his boys than did any other teacher; and more than that, which was not much, his boys, in offices, in other schools, or even across the waters of several seas, “did well,” wrote him letters, referred to “the old shop” with gratitude and affection. He might be fully conscious that, in his own way, he had an “influence.” And they kept their friends, they added to them. These things could be proved by mere numbers.
Only, what are mere numbers to a weary man? Life was a thing so gradual and so slow; it was like gliding down a stream. She was just strong enough to stand it; he not quite strong enough, unless, as it were, there came some sign from the bank of the stream. From outside; from some one with a totally different outlook. And who was there? To whom could she pray? There did not come into her view of the scheme of things a deity to whom she could look for a sign. A little before she would have considered it against her principles to look for a sign. Now, moved by this sudden pang, by the idea of her functions, of motherhood and of a comforter, she would have prayed. But to whom? What she most loved in the world was in danger — for need of the proof that he was lovable.
CHAPTER II
IT was then that she was most aware of the change that was coming over her. For she desired to pray — and she desired to pray, unknown to him, before his wearied face, his closed eyes, his relaxed brows. It was in a sense a division from him; it was in a sense — because it was a more perfect performance of her part in their union — a union more perfect. I have said that they would never have done anything to bring about a new meeting with their strange guest. They would never have done it; but to her the idea came — to do it: to write an appealing letter, explaining just what his coming again to them might mean to her husband; explaining how much his words had moved them; how much effort they could be trusted, poor people as they were, to give to spreading whatever his message might be. Let him constitute them, as it were, his preachers; they could influence many people....
The idea that this would be a proceeding behind her husband’s back had restrained her so far. But there could be little doubt that, by the Wednesday, if he were little worse, he was no better. He slept ill; he tossed in his sleep. It was difficult with drugs to keep down his temperature, and each day he must set to work again. And finally, standing above the herb-chopper, there had come at the moment the resolve to act. Interspersed with the idea of the geography for small children and the eightpenny dishes for gas-stove users there had come a sudden boldness, a sudden resolve. She was going to the telephone in the porters’ lodge; she was going to ask Eugene Durham if he had the address of their friend. She was going to write to him, carefully and deliberately.
And the idea that he would come, that he must come, was so strong that when upon the kitchen threshold she felt the unmistakable presence with the unknown features — for she had never been able to remember how he looked — she had only a sense that the inevitable had come true.
She said, after she had said that they were such poor people —
“I left the front door on the latch because when Alfred is tired it does not keep him waiting so long.”
And he answered —
“It is well at times to leave your door upon the latch, that a desired visitant may not pass by to other doors than yours.”
“I was upon the point of begging you to come,” she said.
“So I came,” he answered. “And what would you have said in your prayers?”
He came in and sat beside the little table, his elbow beside the chopping-board against the clock.
“You cannot sit here,” she said.
He gazed round him: at the gas stove that was between the table and the window; at the cistern above the sink; at the bath that was covered by a draining-board; at the rack that held plates and dishes.
