Its light was the same. It was not only untarnished by such knowledge as we brought with us, it was radiant. Yet it was not without its memory of the disaster. We went into the church, whose porch had been restored; symbolical, perhaps, of our entry into a world from which, happily, the old things had passed. The church was empty, for this was market day. Through its gloom, as through the penumbra of antiquity, shone faintly the pale forms of a few recumbent knights, and the permanent appeal of their upturned hands and faces kept the roof aware of human contrition. Above one of the figures was a new Union Jack, crowned with laurels. The sun made too vivid a scarlet patch of one of its folds.
Just below the church was the theatre, now a cinema hall. This was market day, and the house was full. A poster outside pictured a bridge blowing up, and a motor-car falling into space. The midday sun was looking full at Torhaven’s High Street, which runs south and downhill steeply to the quay; a schooner filled the bottom of the street that day. Anything a not too unreasonable man could desire was offered in the shops of that thoroughfare. This being a time of change, when our thoughts are all unfixed and we have had rumours of the New Jerusalem, the side window of a fashionable jeweller’s was devoted to tiny jade pigs, minute dolls, silver acorns, and other propitiators of luck which time and experience have tested. Next door to the jeweller’s was a studio supporting the arts, with local pottery shaped as etiolated blue cats and yellow puppies; and there one could get picture postcards of the London favourites in revue, and some water-colour paintings of the local coast which an advertisement affirmed were real.
That was not all. Opposite was the one bookshop of the town. Its famous bay front and old diamond panes frankly presented the new day with ladies’ handbags, ludo and other games, fountain pens, mounted texts from Ella Wilcox, local guide books, and apparently a complete series—as much as the length of the window would hold, at least—of Hall Caine’s works; and in one corner prayer-books in a variety of bindings.
Down on the quay, sitting on a bollard, with one leg stretched stiffly before him, was a young native I had not met since one day on the Menin Road. I had known him, before that strange occasion, as an ardent student of life and letters. He had entered a profession in which sound learning is essential, though the reward is slight, just when the War began. Then he believed, in high seriousness, as young and enthusiastic students did, all he was told in that August; and his professional career is now over.
He pointed out to me mildly, and with a little reproach, that I was wrong in supposing Torhaven had not changed. I learned that the War had made a great change there. Motor-cars were now as commonly owned as bicycles used to be, though he admitted that it did not seem that the queue waiting to buy books, our sort of books, was in need of control by the police. But farmers who had been tenants when Germany violated the independence of Belgium were now freeholders. Men who were in essential industries, and so could not be spared for the guns, were now shipowners. We could see for ourselves how free and encouraging was the new wealth in this new world; true, the size of his pension did not fairly reflect the new and more liberal ideas of a better world, but we must admit he had no need to travel to Bond Street to spend it. “Why fear,” he asked me, pointing with his crutch up the busy High Street behind us, “that what our pals in France learned was wrong with that old Europe which made the War, will not be known there? Have you seen,” he said, “our bookshop, our cinema, and the new memorial porch of our church?”
Near us was waiting a resplendent motor-car, in which reposed a young lady whose face decorates the covers of the popular magazines every month, and as the wounded soldier finished speaking it moved away with a raucous hoot.
XXVIII. Literary Critics
MARCH 27, 1920. The last number of the Chapbook, containing “Three Critical Essays on Modern English Poetry,” by three well-known critics of literature, I read with suspiciously eager attention, for I will confess that I have no handy rule, not one that I can describe, which can be run over new work in poetry or prose with unfailing confidence. My credentials as a literary critic would not, I fear, bear five minutes’ scrutiny; but I never cease to look for that defined and adequate equipment, such as even a carpenter calls his tool-chest, full of cryptic instruments, each designed for some particular task, and every implement named. It is sad to have to admit it, but I know I possess only a home-made gimlet to test for dry-rot, and another implement, a very ancient heirloom, snatched at only on blind instinct, a stone ax. But these are poor tools, and sooner or later I shall be found out.