CHAPTER IV
Humphrey Baskerville still sought to determine his need, and sometimes supposed that he had done so. More than once he had contemplated the possibility of peace by flight; then there happened incidents to change his mind.
Of late the idea of a home further from distracting influences had again seemed good to him. More than once he considered the advantages of isolation; more than once he rode upon the Moor and distracted his gloom with visions of imaginary dwellings in regions remote.
The folly of these thoughts often thrust him with a rebound into the life of his fellow-beings, and those who knew him best observed a rhythmic alternation in Humphrey.
After periods of abstention and loneliness would follow some return to a more sociable style of living. From a fierce hectic of mind that sent him sore and savage into the heart of the wilderness, he cooled and grew temperate again as the intermittent fever passed.
And then, when the effort towards his kind had failed by his own ineptitude and the world's mistrust, he retreated once more to suffer, and banished himself behind the clouds of his own restless soul.
Humanity has no leisure to decipher these difficult spirits; the pathos of their attempts must demand a philosophic eye to perceive it; and unless kind chance offers the key, unless opportunity affords an explanation, the lonely but hungry heart passes away unfathomed, sinks to the grave unread and unreconciled.
Inner darkness turned Baskerville to the Moor again, and he rode—where often he had already ridden: to inspect the ruin of an old dwelling upon the side of a great hill above the waters of Plym.
Brilliant summer smiled upon this pilgrimage, and as he went, he fell in with a friend, where Jack Head tramped the high road upon his way to Trowlesworthy. Jack now dwelt at Shaugh, but was head man of Saul Luscombe's farm and rabbit warren.
"A fine day," said Humphrey as he slowed his pony.
"Yes, and a finer coming," answered the other. Mr. Baskerville was quick to note the militant tone.
"Been at your silly books again, I warrant," he said. "There's one book I could wish you'd read along with t'others, Jack. 'Tis the salt to all other books, for all you scorn it."
"Bible's a broken reed, master, as you'll live to find out yet."
"No, Jack. 'Tis what makes all other writing but a broken reed. A fountain that never runs dry, I promise you. No man will ever get the whole truth out of the Bible."
"No, by Gor! Because it ban't there," said the other.
"It's there all right—hidden for the little children to find it. You bandage your eyes and then you say you can't see—a fool's trick that."
"I can see so far as you. 'Tis you put coloured spectacles on your nose to make things look as you'd have 'em. Your book be played out, master. Let the childer read it, if you like, along with the other fairy tales; but don't think grown men be going to waste their time with it. The whole truth is that the book be built on a lie. There never was no Jehovah and never will be. Moses invented Him to frighten the folk from their naughtiness, same as you invent a scarecrow to frighten the birds from the seed. And the scarecrow works better than Jehovah did, by all accounts."
"You talk out of your narrow, bitter books, Jack."
"No need to call my books names. That's all your side can do. Why don't they try to answer 'em instead of blackguarding 'em?"
"'Tis a great danger to the poor that they begin to think so much."
"Don't you say that. Knowledge be the weapon the poor have been waiting for all these years and years. 'Tis the only weapon for a poor man. And what will it soon show 'em? It'll show 'em that the most powerful thing on this earth be the poor. They are just going to find it out; then you rich people will hear of something that will terrible astonish you."
"You're a rank Socialist, Jack. I've no patience with you."
"There you are: 'no patience!' But that's another thing we men of the soil be going to teach you chaps who own the soil. 'Patience,' you say. There's a time coming when the rich people will have to be mighty patient, I warn you! And if you're impatient—why, 'tis all one to us, for never was heard that any impatient man could stop the tide flowing."
"I believe that," said Baskerville grimly. "You'll pay us presently for teaching you, and clothing you, and helping to enlarge your minds. When you're learned enough, you'll turn round, like the snake, and bite the hand that fed you. Gratitude the common soul never knows and never will, whatever else it may learn. Knowledge is poison to low natures, and we ought to have kept you ignorant and harmless."
Jack Head stared.
"That's a pretty speech!" he said. "That's a good healthy bit of Christian charity—eh? Why for should you ax so much credit for your side? Take me. What's the rich man done for me? A workhouse boy I was."
"And look at you now—a prosperous man and saving money. Who fed you and taught you and brought you up? The State. Society saved you; society played mother to you; and now you want to kick her. That's how you'd pay your debts. You take a base and a narrow view—dishonest too. The State have got to look after the rich as well as the poor. Why not? The poor aren't everybody. You're the sort that think no man can be a decent member of society unless he was born in a gutter. Class prejudice 'tis called, and some of the chaps who think they're the salt of the earth, stink of it."
"Class be damned," said Mr. Head. "Class is all stuff and nonsense. There are only two classes—good men and bad ones. The difference between a duke and me be difference between a pig with a ring in his nose and another without one. We'm built the same to the last bone in our bodies, and I've got more sense than half the dukes in the kingdom."
"And t'other half have got more sense than you," returned the rider. "It's summed up in a word. Class there will be, because class there must be. The poor we have always with us—you know that well enough. Your books, though they deny most things, can't deny that."
"Another of your silly Christian sayings. We have got the poor with us—but it won't be always. So long as we have the rich with us, we shall have the poor, and no longer. No longer, master! Finish off the one and you'll finish off t'other. That's a bit of home-grown wisdom, that is got from no book at all."
"Wisdom, you call it! And what power is going to root out the rich? How are you clever folk going to alter human nature, and say to this man you shan't save your money and to this man you shall save yours? While some men and women are born to thrift and sense, and some to folly and squandering, there must be rich and poor; and while men are born to hunger for power, there must be war. These things can't be changed. And you can't say where any man can reach to; you can't put up a mark and tell your fellow-man, 'you shan't go higher than that.'"
"Granted. You can't say where they shall reach to; but you can say where they shall start from. Half the world's handicapped at the starting-post. I only ax for the race to be a fair one. I only ax for my son to start fair with yours. If yours be the better man, then let him win; but don't let him win because he's got too long a start. That's not justice but tyranny. Give every man his chance and make every man work—that's all I ask. If a man's only got the wits to break stones, then see that he breaks 'em; and let them who can do better and earn better money not grudge the stone-breaker a little over and above what his poor wits earn in the market."
"I grant that's good," admitted Baskerville. "Let the strong help the weak. 'Twas Christ found that out, not you Socialists."
"'Tis found out anyway," said Jack Head. "And 'tis true; and therefore it will happen and we can't go back on it. And it follows from that law of strong helping weak that nobody ought to be too rich, any more than they ought to be too poor. Let the State be a millionaire a million times over, if you like—and only the State. So long as the hive be rich, no bee is poor."
Humphrey did not immediately reply. He was following Head's argument to a still larger conclusion.
"And you'd argue that as the strong man can help the weak one, so in time the strong State might help the weak one instead of hindering it, and the powerful of the earth give of their abundance to strengthen the humble and feeble?"
"Why not? Instead of that, the great Powers be bristling with fighting men, and all the sinews of the world be wasted on war. And it shows the uselessness of the Book, anyway, that the Christian nations—so-called—keep the biggest armies and the largest number of men idle, rotting their bodies and souls away in barracks and battleships."
Baskerville nodded.
"There's sense of a lop-sided sort in much that you say, Jack. But 'tisn't the Book that's to blame—'tis the world that misunderstands the Book and daren't go by the Book—because of the nations around that don't go by it."
"Then why do they pretend they'm Christians? They know if they went by the Book they'd go down; yet they want to drive it into the heads of the next generation. The child hears his father damning the Government because they ban't building enough men-of-war, and next day when the boy comes home with a black eye, his father turns round and tells him to mind his Bible and remember that the peacemakers be blessed."
"I could wish a Government would give Christianity a chance," confessed Mr. Baskerville; "but I suppose 'tis much the same thing as Free Trade—a fine thing if everybody played the game, but a poor thing for one nation if t'others are all for Protection."
"That's a lie," answered Mr. Head. "We've shown Free Trade is a fine thing—single-handed we've shown it, and why? Because Free Trade's a strong sword; but Christianity's rusty and won't stand the strain no longer. We've passed that stage; and if we was to start Christianity now and offer the cheek to the smiter—well, he'd damn soon smite, and then where are we?"
They chattered on and set the world right according to their outlook, instinct, and understanding. Then the conversation turned into personal channels, and Mr. Baskerville, while admitting the justice of much that Jack asserted, yet blamed him for a certain impatience and bitterness.
"If evolution is going to set all right and the unborn will come into a better world, why get so hot?" he asked.
"Because I'm a thinking, feeling man," answered the other. "Because I hate to see wrong done in the name of right. And you're the same—only you haven't got as much sense as me seemingly. I'm useful—you only want to be useful and don't see how."
"I want to do my part in the world; but just the right way is difficult to choose out among the many roads that offer, Jack. You are positive, and that saves a deal of trouble, no doubt. The positive people go the furthest—for good or evil. But I'm not so certain. I see deeper than you because I've been better educated, though I'm not so clever by nature. Then there's another thing—sympathy. People don't like me, and to be disliked limits a man's usefulness a lot."
"That's stuff," answered Jack; "no more than a maggot got in your head. If they don't like you, there's a reason. They'm feared of your sharp tongue, and think 'tis the key to a hard heart. Then 'tis for you to show 'em what they can't see. I'll tell you what you are: you'm a man sitting hungry in a wheat-field, because you don't know and won't larn how to turn corn into bread. That's you in a word."
Trowlesworthy was reached and Jack went his way.
"You might come and drink a dish of tea some Sunday," said Mr. Baskerville, and the other promised to do so. Then Humphrey proceeded beside the river, and presently ascended a rough slope to his destination. The ruin that alternately drew and repelled him lay below; but for the moment he did not seek it. He climbed to the high ground, dismounted, turned his pony loose, and took his pipe out of his pocket.
The great cone of granite known as Hen Tor lies high upon the eastern bank of Plym, between that streamlet and the bog-foundered table-land of Shavercombe beyond. From its crown the visitor marked Cornwall's coastline far-spreading into the west, and Whitsand Bay reflecting silver morning light along the darker boundaries of earth.
Spaces of grass and fern extended about the tor, and far below a midget that was a man moved along the edge of the ripe bracken and mowed it down with a scythe.
Half a dozen carrion crows took wing and flapped with loud croaking away as Humphrey ascended the tor and sat upon its summit. Again he traversed the familiar scene in his mind, again perceived the difficulties of transit to this place. Occasionally, before these problems, he had set to work obstinately and sought solutions.
Once he had determined to rebuild the ruin in the valley, so that he might turn his back on man and make trial of the anchorite's isolation and hermit's bastard peace; but to-day he was in no mood for such experiments; his misanthropic fit passed upon the west wind, and his thoughts took to themselves a brighter colour.
Where he sat two roof-trees were visible, separated by the distant height of Legis Tor. Trowlesworthy and Ditsworthy alone appeared, and for the rest the river roamed between them, and flocks and herds wandered upon the hills around. The man still moved below, and long ribbons of fallen fern spread regularly behind him.
A foul smell struck on Baskerville's nostrils, and he saw death not far distant, where the crows had been frightened from their meal. He climbed away from the main pile of the tor and sat in a natural chair hollowed from the side of an immense block of granite that stands hard by. He smoked, and his pony grazed.
A storm of rain fell and passed. The sun succeeded upon it, and for a little while the moor glittered with moisture. Then the wind dried all again. The old man was now entirely out of tune with any thought of a dwelling here. He did not even descend the hill and inspect the ruin beneath. But he had come to spend the day alone, and was contented to do so. His mind busied itself with the last thing that a fellow-man had said to him. He repeated Jack Head's word over and over to himself. Presently he ate the food that he had brought with him, drank at a spring, and walked about to warm his body. The carrion crows cried in air, soared hither and thither, settled again on the rocks at hand and waited, with the perfect patience of unconscious nature, for him to depart. But he remained until the end of the day.
Then occurred a magnificent spectacle. After gold of evening had scattered the Moor and made dark peat and grey rock burn, there rolled up from the south an immense fog, that spread its nacreous sea under the sunset. Born of far-off fierce heat upon the ocean, it advanced and enveloped earth, valley by valley, and ridge by ridge. Only the highest peaks evaded this flood of vapours, and upon them presently sank the sun. His light descending touched many points and uplifted sprays of mist; whereon, like magic, a thousand galleons rode over the pearl and advanced in a golden flotilla upon this fleeting sea. The rare, brief wonder passed, and the sky above it faded; the sun sank; the fog rolled forward—heavy, cold, a burden for the wet wings of night.
Humphrey set off, and the carrion crows, full hungry, returned to sup.
In Baskerville's mind certain words reverberated still, as they had often done since they were spoken during the morning. They chimed to the natural sounds that had fallen upon his ear throughout the day; they were echoed in the wind and the distant water-murmur; in the cry of birds and call of beasts; in the steady rasping of his pony's teeth through the herbage; and now, in its hoof-beat as it trotted by a sheep-track homeward.
And louder than all these repetitions of it, louder than the natural music that seemed to utter the words in many voices, there came the drumming of his own pulse, laden with the same message, and the answering beat of his heart that affirmed the truth of it.
"A man sitting hungry in a wheat-field, because you don't know and won't learn how to turn corn into bread."