We must, however, be perfectly honest; and to deal honestly with our subject we must not ignore the classical example, even though that example may not prove particularly attractive. The classical example is, of course, Madame Defarge. Madame Defarge was the wife of Jacques Defarge, who kept the famous wine-shop in A Tale of Two Cities. When first we are introduced to the wine-shopkeeper and his wife, three customers are entering the shop. They pull off their hats to Madame Defarge. ‘She acknowledged their homage by bending her head, and giving them a quick look. Then she glanced in a casual manner round the wine-shop, [253] took up her knitting with great apparent calmness and repose of spirit, and became absorbed in it.’ Everybody who is familiar with the story knows that here we have the stroke of the artist. Madame Defarge, be it noted, took up her knitting with apparent calmness and repose of spirit, and became absorbed in it. As a matter of fact, Madame Defarge was absorbed, not in the knitting, but in the conversation; and all that she heard with her ears was knitted into the garment in her hands. The knitting was a tell-tale register.
‘“Are you sure,” asked one of the wine-shopkeeper’s accomplices one day, “are you sure that no embarrassment can arise from our manner of keeping the register? Without doubt it is safe, for no one beyond ourselves can decipher it; but shall we always be able to decipher it—or, I ought to say, will she?”
‘“Man,” returned Defarge, drawing himself up, “if Madame, my wife, undertook to keep the register in her memory alone, she would not lose a word of it—not a syllable of it. Knitted, in her own stitches, and her own symbols, it will always be as plain to her as the sun. Confide in Madame Defarge. It would be easier for the weakest poltroon that lives to erase himself from existence than to erase one letter of his name or crimes from the knitted register of Madame Defarge.”’
[254]
Oh those tell-tale needles! Up and down, to and fro, in and out they flashed and darted, Madame seeming all the time so preoccupied and inattentive! Yet into those innocent stitches there went the guilty secrets; and when the secrets were revealed the lives and deaths of men hung in the balance! Here, then, is a philosophy of fancy-work that will carry us a very long way. The stitches are always a matter of life and of death, however innocent or trivial they may seem. Whether I do a row of stitches, or drive a row of nails, or write a row of words, I am a little older when I fasten the last stitch, or drive the last nail, or write the last word, than I was when I began. And what does that mean? It means that I have deliberately taken a fragment of my life and have woven it into my work.
That is the terrific sanctity of the commonest toil. It is instinct with life. ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend,’ and whenever I drive a nail, or write a syllable, or weave a stitch for another, I have laid down just so much of my life for his sake.
But when we begin to exploit the possibilities of a Philosophy of Fancy-work, we shall find our feet wandering into some very green pastures and beside some very still waters. Fancy-work will lead us to think about friendship, than which few themes are more attractive. For the loveliest idyll of friendship [255] is told in the phraseology of fancy-work. ‘And it came to pass that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David.’ Knitting, knitting, knitting; up and down, to and fro, in and out, see the needles flash and dart! Every moment that I spend with my friend is a weaving of his life into mine, and of my life into his; and pity me, men and angels, if I entangle the strands of my life with a fabric that mars the pattern of my own! And pity me still more if the inferior texture of my life impairs the perfection and beauty of my friend’s! Into the sacred domain of our sweetest friendships, therefore, has this unpromising matter of fancy-work conveyed us. But it must take us higher still. For ‘there is a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother,’ and the web of my life will look strangely incomplete at the last unless the fabric of my soul be found knit and interwoven with the fair and radiant colours of His.
[256]
VI
A
PAIR OF BOOTS
There seems to be very little in a pair of boots—except, perhaps, a pair of feet—until a great crisis arises; and in a great crisis all things assume new values. When the war broke out, and empires found themselves face to face with destiny, the nations asked themselves anxiously how they were off for boots. When millions of men began to march, boots seemed to be the only thing that mattered. The manhood of the world rose in its wrath, reached for its boots, buckled on its sword, and set out for the front. And at the front, if Mr. Kipling is to be believed, it is all a matter of boots.