No More Learning

A man when he rises from the grave will take with him only
the things that he is in himself. He will leave behind the things that
he merely possesses, learning and information not less than money and
high estate. They will stay behind with his house and his clothes and
his body. A collection of facts will no more help him than a collection
of stamps. The learned will not get into heaven as readily as the
flute-player, or even as the man who smokes a cigarette gracefully.
Now, you are not learned, but you have been brought up almost as badly
as if you were. In that wretched town they told you that education was
to know that Russia is bounded on the north by the Arctic Sea, and
on the west by the Baltic Ocean, and that Vienna is situated on the
Danube, and that William the Third came to the throne in the year
1688. They have never taught you any personal art. Even chess-playing
might have helped you at the day of judgment. '

'I am really not a worse chess-player than you. I am only more
careless. '

There was a slight resentment in Sherman's voice. The other noticed it,
and said, changing his manner from the insolent air of a young beauty
to a self-depreciatory one, which was wont to give him at times a very
genuine charm: 'It is really a great pity, for you Shermans are a deep
people, much deeper than we Howards. We are like moths or butterflies,
or rather rapid rivulets, while you and yours are deep pools in the
forest where the beasts go to drink. No! I have a better metaphor.
Your mind and mine are two arrows. Yours has got no feathers, and mine
has no metal on the point. I don't know which is most needed for right
conduct. I wonder where we are going to strike earth. I suppose it
will be all right some day when the world has gone by and they have
collected all the arrows into one quiver. '

He went over to the mantelpiece to hunt for a match, as his cigarette
had gone out. Sherman had lifted a corner of the blind and was gazing
over the roofs shining from a recent shower, and thinking how on such
a night as this he had sat with Mary Carton by the rectory fire
listening to the rain without and talking of the future and of the
training of village children.

'Have you seen Miss Leland in her last new dress from Paris? ' said
Howard, making one of his rapid transitions. 'It is very rich in
colour, and makes her look a little pale, like Saint Cecilia. She is
wonderful as she stands by the piano, a silver cross round her neck.
We have been talking about you. She complains to me. She says you are
a little barbarous. You seem to look down on style, and sometimes--you
must forgive me--even on manners, and you are quite without small talk.
You must really try and be worthy of that beautiful girl, with her
great soul and religious genius. She told me quite sadly, too, that you
are not improving. '

'No,' said Sherman, 'I am not going forward; I am at present trying to
go sideways like the crabs. '

'Be serious,' answered the other. 'She told me these things with the
most sad and touching voice. She makes me her confidant, you know, in
many matters, because of my wide religious experience. You must really
improve yourself. You must paint or something. '

'Well, I will paint or something. '

'I am quite serious, Sherman. Try and be worthy of her, a soul as
gentle as Saint Cecilia's. '

'She is very wealthy,' said Sherman. 'If she were engaged to you and
not to me you might hope to die a bishop. '

Howard looked at him in a mystified way and the conversation dropped.
Presently Howard got up and went to his room, and Sherman, resetting
the chess-board, began to play again, and, letting longer and longer
pauses of reverie come between his moves, played far into the morning,
cheating now in favour of the red men, now in favour of the white.


V

The next afternoon Howard found Miss Leland sitting, reading in an
alcove in her drawing-room, between a stuffed parroquet and a blue De
Morgan jar. As he was shown in he noticed, with a momentary shock, that
her features were quite commonplace. Then she saw him, and at once
seemed to vanish wrapped in an exulting flame of life. She stood up,
flinging the book on to the seat with some violence.

'I have been reading the "Imitation of Christ," and was just feeling
that I should have to become a theosophist or a socialist, or go and
join the Catholic Church, or do something. How delightful it is to see
you again! How is my savage getting on? It is so good of you to try
and help me to reform him. '

They talked on about Sherman, and Howard did his best to console her
for his shortcomings. Time would certainly improve her savage. Several
times she gazed at him with those large dark eyes of hers, of which the
pupils to-day seemed larger than usual. They made him feel dizzy and
clutch tightly the arm of his chair. Then she began to talk about her
life since childhood--how they got to the subject he never knew--and
made a number of those confidences which are so dangerous because so
flattering. To love--there is nothing else worth living for; but then
men are so shallow. She had never found a nature deep as her own.
She would not pretend that she had not often been in love, but never
had any heart rung back to her the true note. As she spoke her face
quivered with excitement. The exulting flame of life seemed spreading
from her to the other things in the room. To Howard's eyes it seemed as
though the bright pots and stuffed birds and plush curtains began to
glow with a light not of this world--to glimmer like the strange and
chaotic colours the mystic Blake imagined upon the scaled serpent of
Eden. The light seemed gradually to dim his past and future, and to
make pale his good resolves. Was it not in itself that which all men
are seeking, and for which all else exists?

He leant forward and took her hand, timidly and doubtingly. She did
not draw it away. He leant nearer and kissed her on the forehead. She
gave a joyful cry, and, casting her arms round his neck, burst out,
'Ah! you--and I. We were made for each other. I hate Sherman. He is
an egotist. He is a beast. He is selfish and foolish. ' Releasing one
of her arms she struck the seat with her hand, excitedly, and went
on, 'How angry he will be! But it serves him right! How badly he is
dressing. He does not know anything about anything. But you--you--I
knew you were meant for me the moment I saw you. '

That evening Howard flung himself into a chair in the empty
smoking-room. He lighted a cigarette; it went out. Again he lighted
it; again it went out. 'I am a traitor--and that good, stupid fellow,
Sherman, never to be jealous! ' he thought. 'But then, how could I
help it? And, besides, it cannot be a bad action to save her from a
man she is so much above in refinement and feeling. ' He was getting
into good-humour with himself. He got up and went over and looked
at the photograph of Raphael's Madonna, which he had hung over the
mantelpiece. 'How like Margaret's are her big eyes! '


VI

The next day when Sherman came home from his office he saw an envelope
lying on the smoking-room table. It contained a letter from Howard,
saying that he had gone away, and that he hoped Sherman would forgive
his treachery, but that he was hopelessly in love with Miss Leland, and
that she returned his love.

Sherman went downstairs. His mother was helping the servant to set the
table.

'You will never guess what has happened,' he said. 'My affair with
Margaret is over. '

'I cannot pretend to be sorry, John,' she replied. She had long
considered Miss Leland among accepted things, like the chimney-pots on
the roof, and submitted, as we do, to any unalterable fact, but had
never praised her or expressed liking in any way. 'She puts belladonna
in her eyes, and is a vixen and a flirt, and I dare say her wealth is
all talk. But how did it happen? '

Her son was, however, too excited to listen.

He went upstairs and wrote the following note:

'MY DEAR MARGARET:

'I congratulate you on a new conquest. There is no end
to your victories. As for me, I bow myself out with
many sincere wishes for your happiness, and remain,

Your friend,
JOHN SHERMAN. '

Having posted this letter he sat down with Howard's note spread
out before him, and wondered whether there was anything mean and
small-minded in neatness--he himself was somewhat untidy. He had
often thought so before, for their strong friendship was founded in a
great measure on mutual contempt, but now immediately added, being in
good-humour with the world, 'He is much cleverer than I am. He must
have been very industrious at school. '

A week went by. He made up his mind to put an end to his London life.
He broke to his mother his resolve to return to Ballah. She was
delighted, and at once began to pack. Her old home had long seemed to
her a kind of lost Eden, wherewith she was accustomed to contrast the
present. When, in time, this present had grown into the past it became
an Eden in turn. She was always ready for a change, if the change came
to her in the form of a return to something old. Others place their
ideals in the future; she laid hers in the past.

The only one this momentous resolution seemed to surprise was the old
and deaf servant. She waited with ever-growing impatience. She would
sit by the hour wool-gathering on the corner of a chair with a look
of bewildered delight. As the hour of departure came near she sang
continually in a cracked voice.

Sherman, a few days before leaving, was returning for the last time
from his office when he saw, to his surprise, Howard and Miss Leland
carrying each a brown-paper bundle. He nodded good-humouredly, meaning
to pass on.

'John,' she said, 'look at this brooch William gave me--a ladder
leaning against the moon and a butterfly climbing up it. Is it not
sweet? We are going to visit the poor. '

'And I,' he said, 'am going to catch eels. I am leaving town. '

He made his excuses, saying he had no time to wait, and hurried off.
She looked after him with a mournful glance, strange in anybody who had
exchanged one lover for another more favoured.

'Poor fellow,' murmured Howard, 'he is broken-hearted. '

'Nonsense,' answered Miss Leland, somewhat snappishly.


FIFTH PART

JOHN SHERMAN RETURNS TO BALLAH


I

This being the homeward trip, SS. _Lavinia_ carried no cattle, but many
passengers. As the sea was smooth and the voyage near its end, they
lounged about the deck in groups. Two cattle-merchants were leaning
over the taffrail smoking. In appearance they were something between
betting-men and commercial travellers. For years they had done all
their sleeping in steamers and trains. A short distance from them a
clerk from Liverpool, with a consumptive cough, walked to and fro, a
little child holding his hand. Shortly he would be landed in a boat
putting off from the shore for the purpose. He had come hoping that
his native air of Teeling Head would restore him. The little child
was a strange contrast--her cheeks ruddy with perfect health. Further
forward, talking to one of the crew, was a man with a red face and
slightly unsteady step. In the companion-house was a governess, past
her first youth, very much afraid of sea-sickness. She had brought her
luggage up and heaped it round her to be ready for landing. Sherman
sat on a pile of cable looking out over the sea. It was just noon;
SS. _Lavinia_, having passed by Tory and Rathlin, was approaching the
Donegal cliffs. They were covered by a faint mist, which made them loom
even vaster than they were. To westward the sun shone on a perfectly
blue sea. Seagulls came out of the mist and plunged into the sunlight,
and out of the sunlight and plunged into the mist. To the westward
gannets were striking continually, and a porpoise showed now and then,
his fin and back gleaming in the sun. Sherman was more perfectly happy
than he had been for many a day, and more ardently thinking. All
nature seemed full of a Divine fulfilment. Everything fulfilled its
law--fulfilment that is peace, whether it be for good or for evil, for
evil also has its peace, the peace of the birds of prey. Sherman looked
from the sea to the ship and grew sad. Upon this thing, crawling slowly
along the sea, moved to and fro many mournful and slouching figures.
He looked from the ship to himself and his eyes filled with tears. On
himself, on these moving figures, hope and memory fed like flames.

Again his eyes gladdened, for he knew he had found his present. He
would live in his love and the day as it passed. He would live that
his law might be fulfilled. Now, was he sure of this truth--the saints
on the one hand, the animals on the other, live in the moment as it
passes. Thitherward had his days brought him. This was the one grain
they had ground. To grind one grain is sufficient for a lifetime.


II

A few days later Sherman was hurrying through the town of Ballah. It
was Saturday, and he passed down through the marketing country people,
and the old women with baskets of cakes and gooseberries and long
pieces of sugarstick shaped like walking-sticks, and called by children
'Peggie's leg. '

Now, as two months earlier, he was occasionally recognized and greeted,
and, as before, went on without knowing, his eyes full of unintelligent
sadness because the mind was making merry afar. They had the look we
see in the eyes of animals and dreamers. Everything had grown simple,
his problem had taken itself away. He was thinking what he would say
to Mary Carton. Now they would be married, they would live in a small
house with a green door and new thatch, and a row of beehives under
a hedge. He knew where just such a house stood empty. The day before
he and his mother had discussed, with their host of the Imperial
Hotel, this question of houses. They knew the peculiarities of every
house in the neighbourhood, except two or three built while they were
away. All day Sherman and his mother had gone over the merits of the
few they were told were empty. She wondered why her son had grown so
unpractical. Once he was so easily pleased--the row of beehives and the
new thatch did not for her settle the question. She set it all down to
Miss Leland and the plays, and the singing, and the belladonna, and
remembered with pleasure how many miles of uneasy water lay between the
town of Ballah and these things.

She did not know what else beside the row of beehives and the new
thatch her son's mind ran on as he walked among the marketing country
people, and the gooseberry sellers, and the merchants of 'Peggie's
leg,' and the boys playing marbles in odd corners, and the men in
waistcoats with flannel sleeves driving carts, and the women driving
donkeys with creels of turf or churns of milk. Just now she was trying
to remember whether she used to buy her wool for knitting at Miss
Peter's or from Mrs. Macallough's at the bridge. One or other sold
it a halfpenny a skein cheaper. She never knew what went on inside
her son's mind, she had always her own fish to fry. Blessed are the
unsympathetic. They preserve their characters in an iron bottle while
the most of us poor mortals are going about the planet vainly searching
for any kind of a shell to contain us, and evaporating the while.

Sherman began to mount the hill to the vicarage. He was happy. Because
he was happy he began to run. Soon the steepness of the hill made him
walk. He thought about his love for Mary Carton. Seen by the light of
this love everything that had happened to him was plain now. He had
found his centre of unity. His childhood had prepared him for this
love. He had been solitary, fond of favourite corners of fields, fond
of going about alone, unhuman like the birds and the leaves, his heart
empty. How clearly he remembered his first meeting with Mary. They were
both children. At a school treat they watched the fire-balloon ascend,
and followed it a little way over the fields together. What friends
they became, growing up together, reading the same books, thinking the
same thoughts!
As he came to the door and pulled at the great hanging iron
bell-handle, the fire-balloon reascended in his heart, surrounded with
cheers and laughter.


III

He kept the servant talking for a moment or two before she went for
Miss Carton. The old rector, she told him, was getting less and less
able to do much work. Old age had come almost suddenly upon him.
He seldom moved from the fireside. He was getting more and more
absent-minded. Once lately he had brought his umbrella into the
reading-desk. More and more did he leave all things to his children--to
Mary Carton and her younger sisters.

When the servant had gone, Sherman looked round the somewhat gloomy
room. In the window hung a canary in a painted cage. Outside was a
narrow piece of shaded ground between the window and the rectory wall.
The laurel and holly bushes darkened the window a good deal. On a
table in the centre of the room were evangelistic books with gilded
covers. Round the mirror over the mantelpiece were stuck various parish
announcements, thrust between the glass and the gilding. On a small
side-table was a copper ear-trumpet.

How familiar everything seemed to Sherman! Only the room seemed smaller
than it did three years before, and close to the table with the
ear-trumpet, at one side of the fireplace before the arm-chair, was a
new threadbare patch in the carpet.

Sherman recalled how in this room he and Mary Carton had sat in winter
by the fire, building castles in the air for each other. So deeply
meditating was he that she came in and stood unnoticed beside him.

'John,' she said at last, 'it is a great pleasure to see you so soon
again. Are you doing well in London? '

'I have left London. '

'Are you married, then? You must introduce me to your wife. '

'I shall never be married to Miss Leland. '

'What? '

'She has preferred another--my friend William Howard. I have come here
to tell you something, Mary. ' He went and stood close to her and took
her hand tenderly. 'I have always been very fond of you. Often in
London, when I was trying to think of another kind of life, I used to
see this fireside and you sitting beside it, where we used to sit and
talk about the future. Mary--Mary,' he held her hand in both his--'you
will be my wife? '

'You do not love me, John,' she answered, drawing herself away. 'You
have come to me because you think it your duty. I have had nothing but
duty all my life. '

'Listen,' he said. 'I was very miserable; I invited Howard to stay with
us. One morning I found a note on the smoking-room table to say that
Margaret had accepted him, and I have come here to ask you to marry me.
I never cared for anyone else. '

He found himself speaking hurriedly, as though anxious to get the
words said and done with. It now seemed to him that he had done ill
in this matter of Miss Leland. He had not before thought of it--his
mind had always been busy with other things. Mary Carton looked at him
wonderingly.

'John,' she said at last, 'did you ask Mr. Howard to stay with you on
purpose to get him to fall in love with Miss Leland, or to give you an
excuse for breaking off your engagement, as you knew he flirted with
everyone? '

'Margaret seems very fond of him. I think they are made for each
other,' he answered.

'Did you ask him to London on purpose? '

'Well, I will tell you,' he faltered. 'I was very miserable. I had
drifted into this engagement I don't know how. Margaret glitters and
glitters and glitters, but she is not of my kind. I suppose I thought,
like a fool, I should marry someone who was rich. I found out soon that
I loved nobody but you. I got to be always thinking of you and of this
town. Then I heard that Howard had lost his curacy, and asked him up.
I just left them alone and did not go near Margaret much. I knew they
were made for each other. Do not let us talk of them,' he continued,
eagerly. 'Let us talk about the future. I will take a farm and turn
farmer. I dare say my uncle will not give me anything when he dies
because I have left his office. He will call me a ne'er-do-weel, and
say I would squander it. But you and I--we will get married, will we
not? We will be very happy,' he went on, pleadingly. 'You will still
have your charities, and I shall be busy with my farm. We will surround
ourselves with a wall. The world will be on the outside, and on the
inside we and our peaceful lives. '

'Wait,' she said; 'I will give you your answer,' and going into the
next room returned with several bundles of letters. She laid them on
the table; some were white and new, some slightly yellow with time.

'John,' she said, growing very pale, 'here are all the letters you ever
wrote me from your earliest boyhood. ' She took one of the large candles
from the mantelpiece, and, lighting it, placed it on the hearth.
Sherman wondered what she was going to do with it. 'I will tell you,'
she went on, 'what I had thought to carry to the grave unspoken. I have
loved you for a long time. When you came and told me you were going to
be married to another I forgave you, for man's love is like the wind,
and I prayed that God might bless you both. ' She leant down over the
candle, her face pale and contorted with emotion. 'All these letters
after that grew very sacred. Since we were never to be married they
grew a portion of my life, separated from everything and everyone--a
something apart and holy. I re-read them all, and arranged them in
little bundles according to their dates, and tied them with thread. Now
I and you--we have nothing to do with each other any more. '

She held the bundle of letters in the flame. He got up from his
seat. She motioned him away imperiously. He looked at the flame in a
bewildered way. The letters fell in little burning fragments about
the hearth. It was all like a terrible dream. He watched those steady
fingers hold letter after letter in the candle flame, and watched the
candle burning on like a passion in the grey daylight of universal
existence. A draught from under the door began blowing the ash about
the room. The voice said--

'You tried to marry a rich girl. You did not love her, but knew she was
rich. You tired of her as you tire of so many things, and behaved to
her most wrongly, most wickedly and treacherously. When you were jilted
you came again to me and to the idleness of this little town. We had
all hoped great things of you. You seemed good and honest. '

'I loved you all along,' he cried. 'If you would marry me we would
be very happy. I loved you all along,' he repeated--this helplessly,
several times over. The bird shook a shower of seed on his shoulder. He
picked one of them from the collar of his coat and turned it over in
his fingers mechanically. 'I loved you all along. '

'You have done no duty that came to you. You have tired of everything
you should cling to; and now you have come to this little town because
here is idleness and irresponsibility. '

The last letter lay in ashes on the hearth. She blew out the candle,
and replaced it among the photographs on the mantelpiece, and stood
there as calm as a portion of the marble.

'John, our friendship is over--it has been burnt in the candle. '

He started forward, his mind full of appeals half-stifled with despair,
on his lips gathered incoherent words: 'She will be happy with Howard.
They were made for each other. I slipped into it. I always thought I
should marry someone who was rich. I never loved anyone but you. I did
not know I loved you at first. I thought about you always. You are the
root of my life. '

Steps were heard outside the door at the end of a passage. Mary Carton
went to the door and called. The steps turned and came nearer. With a
great effort Sherman controlled himself. The door opened, and a tall,
slight girl of twelve came into the room. A strong smell of garden
mould rose from a basket in her hands, Sherman recognized the child who
had given him tea that evening in the schoolhouse three years before.

'Have you finished weeding the carrots? ' said Mary Carton.

'Yes, Miss. '

'Then you are to weed the small bed under the pear-tree by the
tool-house. Do not go yet, child. This is Mr. Sherman. Sit down a
little. '

The child sat down on the corner of a chair with a scared look in her
eyes. Suddenly she said--

'Oh, what a lot of burnt paper! '

'Yes; I have been burning some old letters. '

'I think,' said John, 'I will go now. ' Without a word of farewell he
went out, almost groping his way.

He had lost the best of all the things he held dear. Twice he had gone
through the fire. The first time worldly ambition left him; the second,
love. An hour before the air had been full of singing and peace that
was resonant like joy. Now he saw standing before his Eden the angel
with the flaming sword. All the hope he had ever gathered about him had
taken itself off, and the naked soul shivered.


IV

The road under his feet felt gritty and barren. He hurried away from
the town. It was late afternoon. Trees cast bands of shadow across the
road. He walked rapidly as if pursued. About a mile to the west of
the town he came on a large wood bordering the road and surrounding
a deserted house. Some local rich man once lived there, now it was
given over to a caretaker who lived in two rooms in the back part. Men
were at work cutting down trees in two or three parts of the wood.
Many places were quite bare. A mass of ruins--a covered well, and the
wreckage of castle wall--that had been roofed with green for centuries,
lifted themselves up, bare as anatomies. The sight intensified, by
some strange sympathy, his sorrow, and he hurried away as from a thing
accursed of God.

The road led to the foot of a mountain, topped by a cairn supposed
in popular belief to be the grave of Maeve, Mab of the fairies, and
considered by antiquarians to mark the place where certain prisoners
were executed in legendary times as sacrifices to the moon.

He began to climb the mountain. The sun was on the rim of the sea. It
stayed there without moving, for as he ascended he saw an ever-widening
circle of water.

He threw himself down upon the cairn. The sun sank under the sea. The
Donegal headlands mixed with the surrounding blue. The stars grew out
of heaven.

Sometimes he got up and walked to and fro. Hours passed. The stars,
the streams down in the valley, the wind moving among the boulders,
the various unknown creatures rustling in the silence--all these were
contained within themselves, fulfilling their law, content to be alone,
content to be with others, having the peace of God or the peace of the
birds of prey. He only did not fulfil his law; something that was not
he, that was not nature, that was not God, had made him and her he
loved its tools. Hope, memory, tradition, conformity, had been laying
waste their lives. As he thought this the night seemed to crush him
with its purple foot. Hour followed hour. At midnight he started up,
hearing a faint murmur of clocks striking the hour in the distant town.
His face and hands were wet with tears, his clothes saturated with dew.

He turned homeward, hurriedly flying from the terrible firmament.
What had this glimmering and silence to do with him--this luxurious
present? He belonged to the past and the future. With pace somewhat
slackened, because of the furze, he came down into the valley. Along
the northern horizon moved a perpetual dawn, travelling eastward as the
night advanced. Once, as he passed a marsh near a lime-kiln, a number
of small birds rose chirruping from where they had been clinging among
the reeds. Once, standing still for a moment where two roads crossed on
a hill-side, he looked out over the dark fields. A white stone rose in
the middle of a field, a score of yards in front of him. He knew the
place well; it was an ancient burying-ground. He looked at the stone,
and suddenly filled by the terror of the darkness children feel, began
again his hurried walk.

He re-entered Ballah by the southern side. In passing he looked at the
rectory. To his surprise a light burned in the drawing-room. He stood
still. The dawn was brightening towards the east, but all round him
was darkness, seeming the more intense to his eyes for their being
fresh from the unshaded fields. In the midst of this darkness shone
the lighted window. He went over to the gate and looked in. The room
was empty. He was about to turn away when he noticed a white figure
standing close to the gate. The latch creaked and the gate moved slowly
on its hinges.

'John,' said a trembling voice, 'I have been praying, and a light has
come to me. I wished you to be ambitious--to go away and do something
in the world. You did badly, and my poor pride was wounded. You do not
know how much I had hoped from you; but it was all pride--all pride and
foolishness. You love me. I ask no more. We need each other; the rest
is with God. '

She took his hand in hers, and began caressing it. 'We have been
shipwrecked. Our goods have been cast into the sea. ' Something in her
voice told of the emotion that divides the love of woman from the love
of man. She looked upon him whom she loved as full of a helplessness
that needed protection, a reverberation of the feeling of the mother
for the child at the breast.




DHOYA


I

LONG ago, before the earliest stone of the Pyramids was laid, before
the Bo tree of Buddha unrolled its first leaf, before a Japanese had
painted on a temple wall the horse that every evening descended and
trampled the rice-fields, before the ravens of Thor had eaten their
first worm together, there lived a man of giant stature and of giant
strength named Dhoya. One evening Fomorian galleys had entered the Bay
of the Red Cataract, now the Bay of Ballah, and there deserted him.