It is only a week ago that, like the old clerk, I took out a return ticket for the "Cities of the Plain." (For the old clerk had a two-fold formula. When he was going to one village he said, "Return, Sodom," but when he meant to go to the quarries beside the village he said, "Return, Cities of the Plain.") It was to visit an old soldier that I thus descended into the plains. He lives in a rookery in which many families are crowded one on the top of the other—a rabbit-warren infested by many and strange odours. He used to come up the slopes and do odd jobs, tidying up gardens, and he loved to talk of
"unhappy far-off things
And battles long ago,"
in a language which I also could speak. So I got to know him. And as I sat by his bed I heard a moan from the adjoining room. It began in a low cry, and then rose into a wail that seemed charged with all the woes of humanity. The old man sat up in bed trembling. The cry of woe now changed into a chorus; other voices swelled it. It was the act of a moment to open the door, and in the dim landing find the door of this other room.
I opened it, and there I saw three children huddled before a grate which contained nothing but ashes. On an iron bed, stretched on straw, lay a woman sunk in sleep.... A foetid air was laden with the fumes of alcohol.... There was no food.... A broken chair, a stool or two, and a box that did duty for a table.... The old soldier told me what to do, and I did it. A kindly woman brought coal and food, and the wailing was silenced. The old man explained it all. The woman sunk in the stupor is the wife of a soldier now in the trenches. She did not belong to our parish; but only came a week or two before, swept before the broom of the "social reformers" from the city. The mothers of the Parish, the old soldier declared, were heroines. One such, when her son asked her consent to enlist, said, "Eh, laddie, I dinna want ye to gang; I dinna want ... but if I were ye I wud gang mysel'." Our own wives and mothers were splendid—but those who came from the city, flotsam and jetsam borne on the tide, staying for a little and then carried away again, of whom there were three or four in the village—these were different. They meet each other eager for news. They are depressed, and feel the need for cheering. One suggests a stimulant ... and the result is this.
He is no Puritan—the old soldier lying on his bed, his campaigning done—and he spoke out of an understanding heart. It was only poor human nature, overtaken by thick darkness and misery, trying to open a window towards the realm of sunshine.
And I came out into the roadway and turned towards the station. I did not see them before, but I saw them now. A few yards separating them, I pass two shops licensed to sell the means for opening windows towards this realm of happiness; and two houses with gaudy lights called the villagers to enter the region where all cares and worries are forgotten. In the street pale-faced, ill-clad children played at being soldiers, marching with heads erect. The gorge was already dark with the evening shadows, but the lamps in the village were lit.
When the village was passed I stood and looked back. In the west the setting sun had thrown over the heavens a glow. A well of liquid fire glowed over Torfionn, and its rays spread fan-like, so that they spanned the horizon, and, touching the rounded mass of Corstarfin, went forth over the firth. Against this background stood silhouetted the great arches that carry the railway across the hollow, and behind these the arches that bear the canal. The piers stood as a gigantic forest. These mighty arches might have been the work of the Romans. A soft, luminous haze fell on the village. Window after window was lit up. The door of a cottage near me was opened, and a flood of light streamed out. A woman stood in the door, and looking up the road shouted "Jim," and a little boy, leaving his fellow-soldiers, rushed to her, and she clasped him in her arms and closed the door.... In that moment the little village seemed to me as if it were an outpost of Paradise. Nature threw as a benediction the mantle of its loveliness over it. What nature meant to be a sanctuary of beauty, man had changed into Sodom.
The ticket-collector stood at his post and scanned the passengers as they went through. He knew them all, and had only a stray ticket to collect. I was last, and duly gave up my "return" from the "Cities of the Plain." But he did not let me through the gate. "I want to show you something," said the ticket-collector, and he led me into his office and produced a pamphlet.
"I got it from the man who goes to Keswick," said the ticket-collector; "you know him." I knew him, the best of men.