CHAPTER LINKS
| [ I. ] [ II. ] [ III. ] [ IV. ] [ V. ] [ VI. ] [ VII. ] [ VIII. ] [ IX. ] [ X. ] [ XI. ] [ XII. ] [ XIII. ] [ XIV. ] [ XV. ] [ XVI. ] [ XVII. ] [ XVIII. ] [ XIX. ] |
CHAPTER I.
Joseph Wimble was the only son of an analytical chemist, who, having made considerable profits out of an Invisible Sticking Plaster, sent the boy to Charterhouse and Cambridge in the hope that he would turn out a gentleman. When Joseph left Cambridge his father left business, referred to himself as Expert, used a couple of letters after his name, and suggested making the Grand Tour of Europe together as a finishing touch. 'To talk familiarly of Rome and Vienna and Constantinople as though you knew them,' he explained, 'is a useful thing. It helps one with the women, and to be helped by women in life is half the battle.' His ambitions for his son were considerable, including above all a suitable marriage. The abrupt destruction of these ambitions, accordingly, was so bitter a disappointment that he felt justified in giving the lad a nominal sum and mentioning that he had better shift for himself. For Joseph married secretly the daughter of a Norfolk corn-chandler, announcing the news to his father upon the very eve of starting for the Grand Tour. Joseph found himself with £500 and a wife.
Joseph himself was of that placid temperament to which things in life just came and went apparently without making very deep impressions. He was a careless, indifferent sort of fellow even as a boy, careless of consequences, indifferent to results: not irresponsible, yet very easy-going. There was no intensity in him; he did not realise things. 'Oh, it's much the same to me,' would be his reply to most proposals. 'I'd as soon as not.' There was something fluid in his nature that accepted life nonchalantly, as if all things were one to him; yet, again, not that he was devoid of feeling or desires, but that he did not realise life in the solid way of the majority. At school he did not realise that he was what the world calls 'not quite a gentleman,' although the boys made a point of proving it to him. At Cambridge he did not realise that to pass his Little-go, or acquire the letters B.Sc., was of any importance, although various learned and older men received good pay in order to convince him of the fact. He just went along in a loose, careless, big-hearted way of living, and took whatever came—exactly as it came. He had a delightful smile and put on fat; shared his money with one and all; existed in a methodical way as most other fellows of his age existed, and grew older much as they did. So ordinary was he in fact, so little distinguished from the rest of his kind, that men who knew him well would stop and think when questioned if they numbered Joseph Wimble among their acquaintances. 'Wimble, lemme see—oh yes, of course! Why, I've known him for a couple of years!' That was Joseph Wimble. Only it made no difference to him whether they remembered him or not. He behaved rather as if everything was one to him in a very literal sense; as if the whole bewildering kaleidoscope of life conveyed a single vast impression; there was no reason to get excited over particular details; in the end it was literally all one. His smattering of physics taught him that all things could be expressed, more or less, in terms of one another. That was his attitude, at any rate. 'Take it as a whole,' he would say vaguely, 'and it's all right. It's all the same.'
Yet his indifference to things was not so colourless as it appeared; but was due, perhaps, to the transference of his interests elsewhere. His centre of gravity hardly seemed on earth is one way of expressing it. Behind the apparent stolidity hid something that danced and sang; something almost flighty. It was laborious explanation that he dreaded and despised, as though things capable of being 'explained' were of small importance to him. He was eager to know things he wanted to know, yet in a way he was too intensely curious, too impatient certainly, to put himself to much trouble to find out. He refused to work, to 'grind' he knew not how; yet he absorbed a good deal of knowledge; information came to him, as it were. He figured to himself vaguely that there was another surer way of learning than by memorising detail,—a flashing, darting, sudden way, like the way of a bird. To follow a line of information to its bitter end was a wearisome, stultifying business, the reality he sought was lost sight of in the process. The main idea had interest for him, but not the details, for the details blurred and obscured it. Proof was a stupid word that blocked his faculties. He did not despise or reject it exactly, but he refused to recognise it. In a sense he overlooked it. Of answers to the important questions millions have been asking for thousands of years there was no proof obtainable. Of survival, for instance, or the existence of the soul, there was no 'proof,' yet for that very reason he believed in both. He could 'prove' a stone, a tree, a dog. He could name and weigh and describe it. The senses of hearing, sight, and touch reported upon it, yet these reports he knew to be but vibrations of the respective nerves that brought them to his brain. They were at best indirect reports, and at worst referred to a mere collection of unverified appearances. Logic, too, the backbone of philosophy, affected him with weariness, just as his respect for reason was shockingly undeveloped. And argument could prove anything, hence argument for him was also futile. He jumped to the conclusion always. Thus at school, and even more at Cambridge, he liked to know what other fellows thought and believed, but as a whole and in outline only. A general idea of 'what and why' was enough for him—just to catch the drift.
This faculty of catching the drift of any knowledge that he cared about came to him naturally, as it seemed. They called him talented but lazy; for he took the cream off; he swooped like a bird, caught it flying, and was off upon another quest. Since there was no real proof of any of the important things, why toil to master the tedious arguments and facts of either side? There was somewhere a swifter, lighter way of knowing things, a direct and instantaneous way. He was sure of it. Thus the ordinary things of life he did not realise—quite as other people realised them. They passed him by.
One thing and one only, it seemed, he desired to realise, and that was birds. It was a passion in him, a mania. He had a yearning desire to understand the mystery of bird-life—not ornithology but birds. Anything to do with birds changed the expression of his face at once; the fat and placid indifference gave way to an emotion that, judging by his expression, caused him a degree of wonder that was almost worship, of happiness nearly painful. Their intense vitality inspired him, their equality stirred respect. Anything to do with their flight, their songs, their eggs, their habits fascinated him. And this fascination he realised. He indulged it furiously, if of necessity secretly, since to study bird-life fields and hedges must be visited without company. But here again he took no particular pains, it seemed. As is usual with an overmastering tendency, his knowledge of his subject was instinctive. Before he went to Charterhouse he knew the size and colouring of every egg that ever lay in a British nest, and by the time he left that school he could imitate with marvellous accuracy the singing notes and whistles of any bird he had heard once. He devoured books about them, studied their differing ways of flight, knew every nest within a radius of miles about his house in a given neighbourhood, and above all was moved to a kind of ecstasy of wonder over the magic of their annual migration. That in particular touched him into poetry. He thought dumbly about it, but his imagination stirred. Inarticulateness increased his accumulating store of wonder. The Grand Tour! Rome, Vienna, Constantinople, indeed! What were the capitals of Europe compared to the Southern Tour they made! That deep instinct to hurry after the fading sun, to keep in touch with their source of life, to follow colour, heat, light, and beauty. That vast autumnal flight! The marvel of the great return, entranced by the southern sun, intoxicated with the music of the southern winds! That such tiny bodies could dare four thousand miles of trackless space, travelling for the most part in the darkness, carelessly carrying nothing with them, and rush back in the spring to the very copse or hedgerow left six months before—that was a source of endless wonder to his mind. There was pathos and loneliness in their absence. England seemed empty once the birds had flown. The sky was dead without the swallows. Of course the land was dark and silent when they left, and of course it burst into colour, rhythm, movement, and singing when they showered back upon it in the spring!
The sweet passion of woodland music caught his heart. He realised that birds had a secret and mysterious life of their very own, and that the world they lived in was a happy and desirable world. That strange knowledge at a distance men called instinct, puzzled him. A new method of communication belonged to it too. It had its laws and customs, its joys and terrors, its habits, rules, and purposes; but these all were strangely different from anything that solid earth-life knew. Freedom, light, and swiftness were the characteristics of that existence, and joy its outstanding quality. Its universal telepathy exhilarated. No other beings in the universe expressed themselves naturally by singing.