According to Ruskin
BY
HARRIET WELLES
ACCORDING TO RUSKIN12
By HARRIET WELLES
During the first few days after the Armistice was signed I seemed, for some strange reason, to wish to sit idly in my room in the London hotel where I was temporarily domiciled.
Ever since I had left my home in America, the days in war-time England had been so full, so tensely crowded, that each seemed crammed with events—events, occurring somehow in an eternal twilight that will always recur to me with the memory of the unbearable, shadowy premonition of an approaching night; the sight of troops marching across the city under faint stars, dim against the afterglow; laden lorries lumbering, convoy wagons creaking, through the dusk; constantly returning ambulances, with their endless gleanings, seeming to leave a perceptible shadow long after they had passed. Even the pot of parrot tulip bulbs, purchased to brighten my window sill, finally blossomed, and contributed to my illusion of twilight by producing wan, colorless flowers.
And then the Armistice was signed, and I awakened from my doze to find it bright morning with dazzling sunshine! Small wonder that most of us drew a long breath and, blinking uncertainly, hesitated....
But, after a few days, old ties reasserted themselves. I had been too busy, too harassed, before, to look up old friends; now, I sat down and wrote the one for whom, during a year in the Orient where her husband and mine each held an official position, I had grown to have a very deep admiration and affection. “It will be pleasant to see a real English family in their own home, during the first days of peace,” I planned, remembering my friend, her pleasant husband, and their three sons and one pretty daughter.
Before her answering letter, urging me to make them a long visit, came, my plans were suddenly changed, my sailing date hastened. I was able to arrange for only one afternoon with her in the cathedral town where she lived, near London.
The only books on sale at the railroad station book stall were war literature, for which, now that the nightmare was so recently over, I had a deep repugnance, so I dug out from a pile of miscellaneous books a cheap paper-covered volume of Ruskin’s essays, and settled myself to improve my mind, while the toy train moved leisurely on its punctual way.
My friend waved to me from a wicker pony cart as I alighted from the train at her station. She bridged the years which stretched between our last meeting, half a world away, and the present, by the friendliness of her greeting, the sincere warmth of her welcome. “There wasn’t anyone to hold this fractious beast, or I wouldn’t be sitting here,” she apologized as she kissed me.
“He looks peaceful enough,” I commented, taking the seat beside my hostess.
“She isn’t! Since our horses were commandeered, and we were allowed only eight gallons of petrol a month for the motor, we’ve had to depend on this pony. She’s put on a lot of side since she realized that she was a war-worker,” volunteered my friend as the pony shied heraldically at a baby carriage. “She’s seen that perambulator—or others like it—every day for the last fifteen years, and never noticed until now.”
The pony, suddenly bored by her own antics, slowed down to a jog trot; we rounded a grove of trees, and came upon a typical English village dominated by a gray cathedral. “How quaint—how peaceful!” I exclaimed with unfeigned enthusiasm.
“Yes, it is a dear old place,” she agreed, and hesitated: “I suppose that, in a way, it’s peaceful, too, if you can overlook the sorrow or suffering in every house. Our older men will have to stay in harness and bear the burdens much longer than heretofore; the middle generation is wiped out. We must wait for the lads who are children now. There isn’t one young man left, in this village, who isn’t lame or blind,” she said, and indicated with her whip a cottage doorway. On the step a blond boy leaned idly against a post. Something in his lack of cognizance of us made me look more closely. “Blind, deaf from ‘shellshock,’ and his right arm gone,” my friend explained.
I mentally searched for a pleasanter subject. “You haven’t told me of your family—your husband, Daphne, the boys? I was so excited at seeing you that I waited to ask,” I said.
We were passing the green cloister of the cathedral. Above us towered the gray pile with its buttresses, gargoyles and columns; from an unseen belfry a deep-toned bell sounded the hour, a silvery chime supplemented the old canticle: “He... watching over Israel... slumbers not... nor sleeps.”
My friend listened intently. “Sometimes, when bad news arrived, or the severely wounded came home, I’ve wondered. I’ve questioned,” she said. I knew that she referred to the message of the bells.
“You needn’t question any more. Now, you know!” I comforted.
“Yes,” she agreed, “now I know—it had to be. All English mothers are sure of that.”
There was in her tone quiet and sincere earnestness that any comment seemed superfluous and impertinent, so in silence we drove on down the long road and passed through a stone gateway and up a curving avenue to the most perfect Georgian house that I have ever seen. She smiled at my enthusiastic admiration.
“I used to get so homesick for it, in China,” she volunteered; “my great-great-grandfather built it on the ruins of an older place of ours which had burned.”
An old stableman hobbled up to take the reins. We went in past an elderly parlor maid who had opened the door, and I instantly succumbed to the perfection of the sunshiny hall, with its floor of black and white marble, and the square, paneled rooms opening off on either side of it.
“We’ve had tea in the garden every afternoon, it has been such a beautiful, open autumn. But perhaps you’d prefer having it in the house?” suggested my friend.
“I’d much rather have it in the garden,” I agreed, reluctantly detaching my attention from the Adam mantelpiece and turning to examine the carved corners of the old wall panels. The rooms were veritable museums of rare and beautiful furnishings; they showed a finished perfection of detail, from the wax candles in the crystal chandeliers to the faded needle-point upholstering on the Chippendale chair seats.
“Just think of the generations of discriminating people whose taste is represented in your home! Didn’t any of them ever make mistakes and buy black walnut horrors?” I cried, and added, “What a magnificent heritage to hand down, unspoiled, to your children!”
She did not answer. I turned and found her staring down at the sturdy carving on a superb oak bench. “My great-great-great-great-grandfather’s favorite seat,” she explained, rousing herself. “He sailed with Drake... and was a firm believer in the unalterable greatness of England, and England’s future... as I am a believer in it!” She paused. “But sometimes I wonder... what will become of our household gods....”
“Become of them?” I cried. She interrupted me.
“Must you really go back to London this afternoon?” she asked, and at my reluctant affirmative continued, “I’ve ordered tea early for that reason. Shall we go out into the garden?... Ah, Daphne!”
I turned to greet the daughter of the house as she came down the stairs, and drew a deep breath of pleasure. She had been a pretty girl, but now she was even lovelier, and while the contrast between her soft dress and lace hat and her mother’s severely plain attire was striking, I felt thankful that, in war-weary England, Beauty was encouraged.
“Daphne—and grown up!” I greeted her.
She smiled. “Were you at my wedding?” she asked.
“Why, no! I didn’t even know that you had been married,” I commented. Her mother interposed: “We hadn’t time to look up addresses or have invitations engraved. George’s leave was so short.”
Daphne was not listening; now, she interrupted, “Tea—so soon? In the garden?” And without waiting for an answer glanced at the shabby volume still clasped in my hand. “Book? Any pictures?” she asked. I smiled. “You haven’t grown up at all!” I told her, and added, “Ruskin’s essays—without illustrations!”
The parlor maid appeared in the doorway. “Tea is served,” she announced. We followed her to the garden entrance. “Everything here is so quiet!” I said as we went through the gate. “Oh!” I cried, “this is as perfect as the house!” and gazed entranced at the long vistas of box-lined paths, the grouped battalions of clipped yews, and the massed planting of cosmos, chrysanthemums, and flaming dahlias.
My friend smiled. “You should see it in August when the white lilies make a mist of blossoms along the walls, and forget-me-nots are reflected in the pool,” she said.
“And the poppies!” cried Daphne.
Almost sharply her mother denied: “Not poppies. Daphne. Never again poppies! I’ve given orders for the poppies to be weeded out as fast as they come up.”
She gave careful attention to the making of the tea. “Not such good tea as we had in the Orient,” she apologized.
We spoke of our winter in Hong-Kong and the visiting dignitaries. “Wonder what has become of the Austrian duchess who wore the silver dress and huge diamonds at the dinner at Government House?” or, “Did you ever hear again of Mrs. Carson, who ran away with that young German? I was told that they are living in Tasmania,” or, “How did the Llewellyn marriage turn out? You remember we didn’t think it would be a success?” And recalled the terrible typhoon which had come up so suddenly that hundreds of unprepared, helpless sampans and junks were swept into the port of lost ships. “I’ll never forget the abject terror of some of those Chinese sailors who, as the junks swept by, were chanting their appeal to the sea-god,” I said.
She agreed soberly, remembering the tragic day. “I like to think of that incongruous Scotch regiment with the bagpipes, marching gayly along the walks bordered with tall blossoming poinsettias that flamed against the brown banks,” she supplemented. We relived a summer in the mountains of Japan, and laughed over the memories of various mishaps when we had tried, unavailingly, to “hustle the East.” “I’ve never been able to look a hard-boiled egg in the eye since we patronized those Chuzenji tea houses,” I said; “if all the embryo chickens I devoured were suddenly to appear—”
“Heaven forbid!” agreed my friend. We laughed together.
Daphne had wandered off. I could see her white figure, misty against the rosy mauve of the cosmos; I wondered if she had lost interested memory of the Japanese holidays she had so much enjoyed. She had not spoken of them or recalled our former friendship and now, oblivious of me, I could hear her happily humming an old song. I felt chilled, grieved, and mystified; Daphne had been very much attached to me during the old days; I had looked eagerly forward to seeing her again, and now she treated me as though I were the most casual acquaintance, I thought; then took myself sharply in hand. “You’re stupid!” I accused mentally. Aloud, I said, “How happy Daphne seems! I suppose that you expect her husband back any time, now?”
My friend set the teapot down; for a second, as she did not answer but sat gazing across the sunshiny garden. I thought that she had not heard. Then she turned and faced me. “No—” she commenced.
Daphne had come up behind me. “Tea?” she asked, and took the cup that her mother had prepared for me, then, sitting down, she asked, “Were you at my wedding?”
“No,” I answered; “tell me about it.”
“Flowers! We had flowers, and there were flags. I had a white dress—” she began, then stopped blankly.
Her mother took up the account. “We made it as pretty as we could,” she said. “Of course, last year, no one had much heart for celebrating except at a wedding! Daphne’s two cousins were the bridesmaids; they carried big loose bunches of moss-roses from this garden—somehow garden flowers seemed more suitable for weddings during those days when home, and all that homes stand for, were the real issue of the war.”
She paused, then went on: “My husband came down from his training camp and gave Daphne away. I’d been working two days a week, for over three years, among the widows and mothers of sailors, at Deptford. Poor bereaved souls! Daphne’s wedding was the first thing that had awakened interest in some of them. They’d grown used to me; then fond of me; then part of my family; and they wanted to see my daughter’s wedding. They filled nearly half of the church—silent women, in their decent black, rightful heirs to the glory of the old flags draped against the pillars and the bronze commemorative tablets set in the walls.”
She seemed for a moment to have forgotten me, then, remembering, went on, “It hadn’t occurred to me until, as I sat in the old church waiting for Daphne’s wedding, that never, since England has had a navy, has there been a time when a son of our family has not served in it.”
“A fine tradition,” I praised, “a glorious promise for the future years!”
There was silence. Across it the bell in the cathedral tower called the hour; the chimes spoke.
My friend waited until the last echo died away, then faced me. “You never saw Hugh, my second son? He had already entered the navy when we went to Hong-Kong.” Her voice was carefully emotionless and clear. “Our place on the navy lists is vacant. Hugh went down in the ‘Invincible’ during the Jutland battle,” she said, then added, “Our boys commence their naval training very early. Hugh was such a wee lad when he said good-by... and now—” Her voice lowered to a whisper—“Sometimes, in my dreams, I see the horror and confusion of that sinking ship... the greedy rush of the gray waters—” She regained her composure. “Curious things, dreams?” she inquired conversationally.
I gasped. “My dear! Why didn’t you tell me—instead of letting me blunder on? Are Jeffrey and Wallace too old to begin a naval career? But of course they are,” I floundered on.
Daphne had wandered back to us. “I’ll have some more tea,” she said.
“Three cups, Daphne!” I chided, glad of the interruption.
“You really shouldn’t drink so much strong tea, Daphne,” her mother admonished absently.
To my amazement Daphne struck the table violently with her clenched fist. “Tea!” she demanded. Her mother, without comment, poured it out. “How Daphne has changed—and her mother, too! She used to be so severe with her children about any lack of courtesy,” I thought.
My friend broke the silence. “Do you remember Mrs. Gordon, whose husband was on the ‘Tamar’ at Hong-Kong?”
I nodded.
“Commander Gordon was with the ships that went down off your South American coast,” she said. “For some time we thought that he was lost; but later the news came. He had been rescued. Mrs. Gordon was so splendid through it all! Her happiness has been the one warming thing.... Do you know, I don’t believe that some of our women will really realize the bitterness of their loss until they see other women’s husbands and sons coming home.”
“I’m so glad for Mrs. Gordon,” I said, remembering the tall commander and his gentle, pretty wife.
My friend made no comment. A little silence fell. Across the peaceful old garden some rooks, homeward bound, called from the oaks; the bitter tonic scent of chrysanthemums and box lingered in the still air. It was so quiet that we could hear the organ and choir commencing vespers at the cathedral. War, its agonies, tortures, and despair were mere unmeaning words—transparent nightmares of speech, illusive as dreams against the background of this noble, serene, and tangible English landscape, which breathed of centuries of peace.
I sighed with thankfulness for my friend; in spite of her sailor son’s death, her world seemed full of the promise of happiness in the advancing years. Then I glanced at my watch and saw that my visit was nearly over. “Do you think that your war-working pony will consent to another trip to the depot—or shall I walk?” I asked.
She smiled. “You won’t have to walk,” she promised. I gathered up my gloves and purse, while she stood idly turning the pages of the volume of Ruskin’s essays. A paragraph caught her interest. She glanced at it, then, with attention, read aloud:
“I shall therefore divide the war of which I would speak to you under three heads. War for exercise or play; war for dominion; and, war for defense.”
“H’m’m,” I commented grimly, “Ruskin’s dead; if he were alive I doubt if he would have found anything very playful about this war.”
She made no comment, but read on:
“Now, remember, whatever virtue or goodliness there may be in this game of war, rightly played, there is none when you thus play it with a multitude of human pawns.... If you, the gentlemen of this or any other kingdom, choose to make your pastime of contest, do so, and welcome; but set not up these unhappy peasant-pieces upon the checker of forest and field. If the wager is to be of death, lay it on your own heads, not theirs. A goodly struggle in the Olympic dust, though it be the dust of the grave, the gods will look upon and be with you in; but they will not be with you if you sit on the sides of the amphitheatre, whose steps are the mountains of earth, whose arena its valleys, to urge your peasant millions into gladiatorial war.”
“I suppose he means compulsory military training,” I said.
She did not answer. “Human beings are very pitiful, I think,” she said, “striving, hurrying, grasping—and for such paltry rewards.” She turned to me. “How many times, during your life, have you been completely, unquestioningly happy?” she demanded.
“Well—” I parried uneasily.
“You can’t remember once,” accused my friend, “no one can! If, for a few minutes, out of doors in the sunshine you are happy, how soon the old worries, the old fears, the old griefs, come flooding back. What’s it all about?”
I answered soberly, “Surely there is a cure—a way out of such a condition,” I said.
“How American—how practical!” she commented dryly, and added: “Don’t forget to let me know when you discover it.”
I felt queerly uneasy, worried and unhappy. “You won’t get anywhere by slumping,” I scolded.
“I wasn’t getting anywhere, before,” she retorted; then questioned: “Wonder if those women feel that the second-hand furniture, pictures, and half-worn underclothes their husbands looted, at their behest, are worth what they have cost?”
I was startled. “What women?” I asked.
She flipped open my dog-eared book. “Do you just buy Ruskin? Why don’t you read him?” she asked, and hunted for a place. “Now listen!” she said, going on in her quiet, clear voice.
“I, for one, would fain join in the cadence of hammer strokes that should beat swords into plowshares; and that this cannot be, is not the fault of us men. It is your fault. Wholly yours. Only by your command, or by your permission, can any contest take place among us. And the real, final reason for all the poverty, misery, and rage of battle, throughout Europe, is simply that you women... are too selfish and too thoughtless to take pains for any creature out of your own immediate circles.... Now I tell you this, that if the usual course of war, instead of unroofing peasants’ houses, and ravaging peasants’ fields, merely broke the china upon your own drawing-room tables, no war in civilized countries would last a week....”
“I don’t consider Germany a civilized country,” I volunteered. “Did Ruskin really write that?” I asked, and reached for the book. “I hope it’s translated into their language,” I supplemented.
“They wouldn’t read it; they don’t need any advice about guarding the looted bric-à-brac on their tables,” she said.
“Be thankful that our returning men can hold their heads proudly erect,” I exulted.
“‘Our returning men’,” she repeated.
We were walking toward the house. “When do you expect Jeffrey and Wallace home? Is Daphne’s husband back?” I asked.
She held the little volume in both hands and looked evenly at me: “Jeffrey was killed at Mons during the first month of the war. Wallace was refused several times on account of his eyes. ‘What would you do if your glasses were broken?’ they asked him the last time he applied. He went out and bought six pairs, and they accepted him. He never needed a second pair,” said my friend in her quiet, emotionless voice.
I laid my hand on her arm. “My dear—” I cried, and could go no further. She turned her head away.
From behind us came Daphne’s voice singing an old song of laughter and love and a garden of roses. She joined us and looked puzzledly at her mother. “What is it?” she questioned.
“We’ve been speaking of your brothers,” I whispered.
She started at me. “Brothers?” she asked.
I glanced at her with astonishment. “Jeffrey and Wallace, who were with you at Hong-Kong,” I said.
“Jeffrey—Wallace—Hong-Kong,” she repeated parrot-like after me, in vague and troubled bewilderment, then brightened: “Were you at my wedding? We had flowers and flags!”
I could only stare at her.
Her mother motioned me into the wide hall. “Daphne and her husband were spending his leave, and their honeymoon, in London; they were just coming out of a theatre when a German air raid started. George was killed... and Daphne struck on the head... by some falling masonry. For days we thought we couldn’t pull her through—then the up-turn came.”
“Oh!” I exclaimed. “Oh!”
“She doesn’t remember. ‘Never will remember,’ the doctors say,” repeated my friend, and laid a comforting hand on my arm. “Of course you couldn’t know,” she said; very earnestly she added: “You see how completely life has finished with me? Well, let me tell you something: If the Huns, and their ideas, had been allowed to dominate the world, it wouldn’t have been a tolerable place for any right-thinking, self-respecting, decent man to live in. And since the only way to remove that menace was through the sacrifice of thousands of boys like our sons... I, who stand bereft, to-day, tell you that I am glad that things are as they are.”
I could not speak.
At the doorway she bade me an affectionate good-by. “My husband will be very sorry to have missed you. Don’t forget that you’ll always find us here, with a welcome for you,” she said. With a wave of her hand she indicated the wide landscape sloping away into far blue hills. “At least we have saved this, untouched,” she added bleakly.
“I’ll be back,” I promised, and turned away to hide the blurring tears.
Saved, untouched; clean hands; a clear conscience; the right to look any man, or woman, in the eyes. A green country with violet-shadowed valleys dreaming in the sunshine; the fairylike chime of cuckoo’s notes calling—calling—calling; woods, and tree tops outlined against the wide sky; lazy cows knee deep in the reeds bordering a silvery brook; homeward-faring pigeons on gleaming wings; the drowsy note of distant church bells; the hum of bees; pearly mists of rain; the ripple of wind over wheat; the blackbirds’ flutelike call; wide-eyed daisies; darting swallows, and the scent of meadow-sweet: England.
And yet—and yet (oh, broken hopes and dreams) the lonely days that stretch ahead! The quiet years.
Young’s Magazine