Chapter XX: §1 (1)

It was the Christmas party at Heighton that was one of the turning-points in Perkins' life. The Duchess had sent him a three-page wire in the hyperbolical style of her class, conveying a vague impression that she and the Duke had arranged to commit suicide together if Perkins didn't "chuck" any previous engagement he had made. And Perkins had felt in a slipshod sort of way--for at this period he was incapable of ordered thought--he might as well be at Heighton as anywhere....

The enormous house was almost full. There must have been upwards of fifty people sitting down to every meal. Many of these were members of the family. Perkins was able to recognise them by their unconvoluted ears--the well-known Grifford ear, transmitted from one generation to another. For the rest there were the usual lot from the Front Benches and the Embassies. Evesham was there, clutching at the lapels of his coat; and the Prescotts--he with his massive mask of a face, and she with her quick, hawk-like ways, talking about two things at a time; old Tommy Strickland, with his monocle and his dropped g's, telling you what he had once said to Mr. Disraeli; Boubou Seaforth and his American wife; John Pirram, ardent and elegant, spouting old French lyrics; and a score of others.

Perkins had got used to them by now. He no longer wondered what they were "up to," for he knew they were up to nothing whatever. He reflected, while he was dressing for dinner on Christmas night, how odd it was he had ever thought of Using them. He might as well have hoped to Use the Dresden shepherds and shepherdesses that grinned out in the last stages of refinement at him from the glazed cabinets in the drawing-rooms.... Or the Labour Members themselves....

True there was Evesham. He had shown an exquisitely open mind about the whole thing. He had at once grasped the underlying principles, thrown out some amazingly luminous suggestions. Oh yes, Evesham was a statesman, right enough. But had even he ever really _believed_ in the idea of a Provisional Government of England by the Female Foundlings?

To Perkins the whole thing had seemed so simple, so imminent--a thing that needed only a little general good-will to bring it about. And now.... Suppose his Bill _had_ passed its Second Reading, suppose it had become Law, would this poor old England be by way of functioning decently--after all? Foundlings were sometimes naughty....

What was the matter with the whole human race? He remembered again those words of Scragson's that had had such a depressing effect on him at the Cambridge Union--"Look here, you know! It's all a huge nasty mess, and we're trying to swab it up with a pocket handkerchief." Well, he'd given up trying to do that....

§2.

During dinner his eyes wandered furtively up and down the endless ornate table, and he felt he had been, in a sort of way, right in thinking these people were the handiest instrument to prise open the national conscience with. The shining red faces of the men, the shining white necks and arms of the women, the fearless eyes, the general free-and-easiness and spaciousness, the look of late hours counteracted by fresh air and exercise and the best things to eat and drink--what mightn't be made of these people, if they'd only Submit?

Perkins looked behind them, at the solemn young footmen passing and repassing, noiselessly, in blue and white liveries. _They_ had Submitted. And it was just because they had been able to that they were no good.

"Damn!" said Perkins, under his breath.

§3.

One of the big conifers from the park had been erected in the hall, and this, after dinner, was found to be all lighted up with electric bulbs and hung with packages in tissue paper.

The Duchess stood, a bright, feral figure, distributing these packages to the guests. Perkins' name was called out in due course and the package addressed to him was slipped into his hand. He retired with it into a corner. Inside the tissue-paper was a small morocco leather case. Inside that was a set of diamond and sapphire sleeve-links--large ones.

He stood looking at them, blinking a little.

He supposed he must put them on. But something in him, some intractably tough bit of his old self, rose up protesting--frantically.

If he couldn't Use these people, at least they weren't going to Use _him_!

"No, damn it!" he said under his breath, and, thrusting the case into his pocket, slipped away unobserved.

§4.

He flung himself into a chair in his bedroom and puffed a blast of air from his lungs.... Yes, it had been a narrow escape. He knew that if he had put those beastly blue and white things on he would have been a lost soul....

"You've got to pull yourself together, d'you hear?" he said to himself. "You've got to do a lot of clear, steady, merciless thinking--now, to-night. You've got to persuade yourself somehow that, Foundlings or no Foundlings, this regeneration of mankind business may still be set going--and by _you_."

He paced up and down the room, fuming. How recapture the generous certitudes that had one by one been slipping away from him? He found himself staring vacantly at the row of books on the little shelf by his bed. One of them seemed suddenly to detach itself--he could almost have sworn afterwards that he didn't reach out for it, but that it hopped down into his hand....

"Sitting Up For The Dawn"! It was one of that sociological series by which H.G. W*lls had first touched his soul to finer issues when he was at the 'Varsity.

He opened it with tremulous fingers. Could it re-exert its old sway over him now?

The page he had opened it at was headed "General Cessation Day," and he began to read....

"The re-casting of the calendar on a decimal basis seems a simple enough matter at first sight. But even here there are details that will have to be thrashed out....

"Mr. Edgar Dibbs, in his able pamphlet 'Ten to the Rescue,'[1] advocates a twenty-hour day, and has drawn up an ingenious scheme for accelerating the motion of this planet by four in every twenty-four hours, so that the alternations of light and darkness shall be re-adjusted to the new reckoning. I think such re-adjustment would be indispensable (though I know there is a formidable body of opinion against me). But I am far from being convinced of the feasibility of Mr. Dibbs' scheme. I believe the twenty-four hour day has come to stay--anomalous though it certainly will seem in the ten-day week, the fifty-day month, and the thousand-day year. I should like to have incorporated Mr. Dibbs' scheme in my vision of the Dawn. But, as I have said, the scope of this vision is purely practical....

[Footnote 1: Published by the Young Self-Helpers' Press, Ipswich.]

"Mr. Albert Baker, in a paper[2] read before the South Brixton Hebdomadals, pleads that the first seven days of the decimal week should retain their old names, the other three to be called provisionally Huxleyday, Marxday, and Tolstoiday. But, for reasons which I have set forth elsewhere,[3] I believe that the nomenclature which I had originally suggested[4]--Aday, Bday, and so on to Jday--would be really the simplest way out of the difficulty. Any fanciful way of naming the days would be bad, as too sharply differentiating one day from another. What we must strive for in the Dawn is that every day shall be as nearly as possible like every other day. We must help the human units--these little pink slobbering creatures of the Future whose cradle we are rocking--to progress not in harsh jerks, but with a beautiful unconscious rhythm....

[Footnote 2: "Are We Going Too Fast?"]

[Footnote 3: "A Midwife For The Millennium." H.G. W*lls.]

[Footnote 4: "How To Be Happy Though Yet Unborn." H.G. W*lls.]

"There must be nothing corresponding to our Sunday. Sunday is a canker that must be cut ruthlessly out of the social organism. At present the whole community gets 'slack' on Saturday because of the paralysis that is about to fall on it. And then 'Black Monday'!--that day when the human brain tries to readjust itself--tries to realise that the shutters are down, and the streets are swept, and the stove-pipe hats are back in their band-boxes....

"Yet of course there must be holidays. We can no more do without holidays than without sleep. For every man there must be certain stated intervals of repose--of recreation in the original sense of the word. My views on the worthlessness of classical education are perhaps pretty well known to you, but I don't underrate the great service that my friend Professor Ezra K. Higgins has rendered by his discovery[5] that the word recreation originally signified a re-creating--i.e.,[6] a time for the nerve-tissues to renew themselves in. The problem before us is how to secure for the human units in the Dawn--these giants of whom we are but the foetuses--the holidays necessary for their full capacity for usefulness to the State, without at the same time disorganising the whole community--and them.

[Footnote 5: "Words About Words." By Ezra K. Higgins, Professor of
Etymology, Abraham Z. Stubbins University, Padua, Pa., U.S.A. (2
vols.).]

[Footnote 6: "_Id est_"--"That is."]

"The solution is really very simple. The community will be divided into ten sections--Section A, Section B, and so on to Section J. And to every section one day of the decimal week will be assigned as a 'Cessation Day.' Thus, those people who fall under Section A will rest on Aday, those who fall under Section B will rest on Bday, and so on. On every day of the year one-tenth of the population will be resting, but the other nine-tenths will be at work. The joyous hum and clang of labour will never cease in the municipal workshops....

"You figure the smokeless blue sky above London dotted all over with airships in which the holiday-making tenth are re-creating themselves for the labour of next week--looking down a little wistfully, perhaps, at the workshops from which they are temporarily banished. And here I scent a difficulty. So attractive a thing will labour be in the Dawn that a man will be tempted not to knock off work when his Cessation Day comes round, and will prefer to work for no wage rather than not at all. So that perhaps there will have to be a law making Cessation Day compulsory, and the Overseers will be empowered to punish infringement of this law by forbidding the culprit to work for ten days after the first offence, twenty after the second, and so on. But I don't suppose there will often be need to put this law in motion. The children of the Dawn, remember, will not be the puny self-ridden creatures that we are. They will not say, 'Is this what I want to do?' but 'Shall I, by doing this, be (a) harming or (b) benefiting--no matter in how infinitesimal a degree--the Future of the Race?'

"Sunday must go. And, as I have hinted, the progress of mankind will be steady proportionately to its own automatism. Yet I think there would be no harm in having one--just one--day in the year set aside as a day of universal rest--a day for the searching of hearts. Heaven--I mean the Future--forbid that I should be hide-bound by dry-as-dust logic, in dealing with problems of flesh and blood. The sociologists of the past thought the grey matter of their own brains all-sufficing. They forgot that flesh is pink and blood is red. That is why they could not convert people....

"The five-hundredth and last day of each year shall be a General Cessation Day. It will correspond somewhat to our present Christmas Day. But with what a difference! It will not be, as with us, a mere opportunity for relatives to make up the quarrels they have picked with each other during the past year, and to eat and drink things that will make them ill well into next year. Holly and mistletoe there will be in the Municipal Eating Rooms, but the men and women who sit down there to General Cessation High-Tea will be glowing not with a facile affection for their kith and kin, but with communal anxiety for the welfare of the great-great-grand-children of people they have never met and are never likely to meet.

"The great event of the day will be the performance of the ceremony of 'Making Way.'

"In the Dawn, death will not be the haphazard affair that it is under the present anarchic conditions. Men will not be stumbling out of the world at odd moments and for reasons over which they have no control. There will always, of course, be a percentage of deaths by misadventure. But there will be no deaths by disease. Nor, on the other hand, will people die of old age. Every child will start life knowing that (barring misadventure) he has a certain fixed period of life before him--so much and no more, but not a moment less.

"It is impossible to foretell to what average age the children of the Dawn will retain the use of all their faculties--be fully vigorous mentally and physically. We only know they will be 'going strong' at ages when we have long ceased to be any use to the State. Let us, for sake of argument, say that on the average their facilities will have begun to decay at the age of ninety--a trifle over thirty-two, by the new reckoning. That, then, will be the period of life fixed for all citizens. Every man on fulfilling that period will avail himself of the Municipal Lethal Chamber. He will 'make way'....

"I thought at one time that it would be best for every man to 'make way' on the actual day when he reaches the age-limit. But I see now that this would savour of private enterprise. Moreover, it would rule out that element of sentiment which, in relation to such a thing as death, we must do nothing to mar. The children and friends of a man on the brink of death would instinctively wish to gather round him. How could they accompany him to the lethal chamber, if it were an ordinary working-day, with every moment of the time mapped out for them?

"On General Cessation Day, therefore, the gates of the lethal chambers will stand open for all those who shall in the course of the past year have reached the age-limit. You figure the wide streets filled all day long with little solemn processions--solemn and yet not in the least unhappy.... You figure the old man walking with a firm step in the midst of his progeny, looking around him with a clear eye at this dear world which is about to lose him. He will not be thinking of himself. He will not be wishing the way to the lethal chamber was longer. He will be filled with joy at the thought that he is about to die for the good of the race--to 'make way' for the beautiful young breed of men and women who, in simple, artistic, antiseptic garments, are disporting themselves so gladly on this day of days. They pause to salute him as he passes. And presently he sees, radiant in the sunlight, the pleasant white-tiled dome of the lethal chamber. You figure him at the gate, shaking hands all round, and speaking perhaps a few well-chosen words about the Future...."

§5.

It was enough. The old broom hadn't lost its snap. It had swept clean the chambers of Perkins' soul--swished away the whole accumulation of nasty little cobwebs and malignant germs. Gone were the mean doubts that had formed in him, the lethargy, the cheap cynicism. Perkins was himself again.

He saw now how very stupid it was of him to have despaired just because his own particular panacea wasn't given a chance. That Provisional Government plan of his had been good, but it was only one of an infinite number of possible paths to the Dawn. He would try others--scores of others....

He must get right away out of here--to-night. He must have his car brought round from the garage--now--to a side door....

But first he sat down to the writing-table, and wrote quickly:

_Dear Duchess,_

_I regret I am called away on urgent political business...._

_Yours faithfully_ _J. Perkins...._

He took the morocco leather case out of his pocket and enclosed it, with the note, in a large envelope.

Then he pressed the electric button by his bedside, almost feeling that this was a signal for the Dawn to rise without more ado....

SOME DAMNABLE ERRORS ABOUT CHRISTMAS

_By_

G.K. CH*ST*RT*N

That it is human to err is admitted by even the most positive of our thinkers. Here we have the great difference between latter-day thought and the thought of the past. If Euclid were alive to-day (and I dare say he is) he would not say, "The angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal to one another." He would say, "To me (a very frail and fallible being, remember) it does somehow seem that these two angles have a mysterious and awful equality to one another." The dislike of schoolboys for Euclid is unreasonable in many ways; but fundamentally it is entirely reasonable. Fundamentally it is the revolt from a man who was either fallible and therefore (in pretending to infallibility) an impostor, or infallible and therefore not human.

Now, since it is human to err, it is always in reference to those things which arouse in us the most human of all our emotions--I mean the emotion of love--that we conceive the deepest of our errors. Suppose we met Euclid on Westminster Bridge, and he took us aside and confessed to us that whilst he regarded parallelograms and rhomboids with an indifference bordering on contempt, for isosceles triangles he cherished a wild romantic devotion. Suppose he asked us to accompany him to the nearest music-shop, and there purchased a guitar in order that he might worthily sing to us the radiant beauty and the radiant goodness of isosceles triangles. As men we should, I hope, respect his enthusiasm, and encourage his enthusiasm, and catch his enthusiasm. But as seekers after truth we should be compelled to regard with a dark suspicion, and to check with the most anxious care, every fact that he told us about isosceles triangles. For adoration involves a glorious obliquity of vision. It involves more than that. We do not say of Love that he is short-sighted. We do not say of Love that he is myopic. We do not say of Love that he is astigmatic. We say quite simply, Love is blind. We might go further and say, Love is deaf. That would be a profound and obvious truth. We might go further still and say, Love is dumb. But that would be a profound and obvious lie. For love is always an extraordinarily fluent talker. Love is a wind-bag, filled with a gusty wind from Heaven.

It is always about the thing that we love most that we talk most. About this thing, therefore, our errors are something more than our deepest errors: they are our most frequent errors. That is why for nearly two thousand years mankind has been more glaringly wrong on the subject of Christmas than on any other subject. If mankind had hated Christmas, he would have understood it from the first. What would have happened then, it is impossible to say. For that which is hated, and therefore is persecuted, and therefore grows brave, lives on for ever, whilst that which is understood dies in the moment of our understanding of it--dies, as it were, in our awful grasp. Between the horns of this eternal dilemma shivers all the mystery of the jolly visible world, and of that still jollier world which is invisible. And it is because Mr. Shaw and the writers of his school cannot, with all their splendid sincerity and, acumen, perceive that he and they and all of us are impaled on those horns as certainly as the sausages I ate for breakfast this morning had been impaled on the cook's toasting-fork--it is for this reason, I say, that Mr. Shaw and his friends seem to me to miss the basic principle that lies at the root of all things human and divine. By the way, not all things that are divine are human. But all things that are human are divine. But to return to Christmas.

I select at random two of the more obvious fallacies that obtain. One is that Christmas should be observed as a time of jubilation. This is (I admit) quite a recent idea. It never entered into the tousled heads of the shepherds by night, when the light of the angel of the Lord shone about them and they arose and went to do homage to the Child. It never entered into the heads of the Three Wise Men. They did not bring their gifts as a joke, but as an awful oblation. It never entered into the heads of the saints and scholars, the poets and painters, of the Middle Ages. Looking back across the years, they saw in that dark and ungarnished manger only a shrinking woman, a brooding man, and a child born to sorrow. The philomaths of the eighteenth century, looking back, saw nothing at all. It is not the least of the glories of the Victorian Era that it rediscovered Christmas. It is not the least of the mistakes of the Victorian Era that it supposed Christmas to be a feast.

The splendour of the saying, "I have piped unto you, and you have not danced; I have wept with you, and you have not mourned" lies in the fact that it might have been uttered with equal truth by any man who had ever piped or wept. There is in the human race some dark spirit of recalcitrance, always pulling us in the direction contrary to that in which we are reasonably expected to go. At a funeral, the slightest thing, not in the least ridiculous at any other time, will convulse us with internal laughter. At a wedding, we hover mysteriously on the brink of tears. So it is with the modern Christmas. I find myself in agreement with the cynics in so far that I admit that Christmas, as now observed, tends to create melancholy. But the reason for this lies solely in our own misconception. Christmas is essentially a _dies iræ_. If the cynics will only make up their minds to treat it as such, even the saddest and most atrabilious of them will acknowledge that he has had a rollicking day.

This brings me to the second fallacy. I refer to the belief that "Christmas comes but once a year." Perhaps it does, according to the calendar--a quaint and interesting compilation, but of little or no practical value to anybody. It is not the calendar, but the Spirit of Man that regulates the recurrence of feasts and fasts. Spiritually, Christmas Day recurs exactly seven times a week. When we have frankly acknowledged this, and acted on this, we shall begin to realise the Day's mystical and terrific beauty. For it is only every-day things that reveal themselves to us in all their wonder and their splendour. A man who happens one day to be knocked down by a motor-bus merely utters a curse and instructs his solicitor, but a man who has been knocked down by a motor-bus every day of the year will have begun to feel that he is taking part in an august and soul-cleansing ritual. He will await the diurnal stroke of fate with the same lowly and pious joy as animated the Hindoos awaiting Juggernaut. His bruises will be decorations, worn with the modest pride of the veteran. He will cry aloud, in the words of the late W.E. Henley, "My head is bloody but unbowed." He will add, "My ribs are broken but unbent."

I look for the time when we shall wish one another a Merry Christmas every morning; when roast turkey and plum-pudding shall be the staple of our daily dinner, and the holly shall never be taken down from the walls, and everyone will always be kissing everyone else under the mistletoe. And what is right as regards Christmas is right as regards all other so-called anniversaries. The time will come when we shall dance round the Maypole every morning before breakfast--a meal at which hot-cross buns will be a standing dish--and shall make April fools of one another every day before noon. The profound significance of All Fool's Day--the glorious lesson that we are all fools--is too apt at present to be lost. Nor is justice done to the sublime symbolism of Shrove Tuesday--the day on which all sins are shriven. Every day pancakes shall be eaten, either before or after the plum-pudding. They shall be eaten slowly and sacramentally. They shall be fried over fires tended and kept for ever bright by Vestals. They shall be tossed to the stars.

I shall return to the subject of Christmas next week.

A SEQUELULA TO "THE DYNASTS"[7]

_By_

TH*M*S H*RDY

[Footnote 7: _This has been composed from a scenario thrust on me
by some one else. My philosophy of life saves me from sense of
responsibility for any of my writings; but I venture to hold
myself specially irresponsible for this one._--TH*M*S H*RDY.]

The Void is disclosed. Our own Solar System is visible,
distant by some two million miles.

Enter the Ancient Spirit and Chorus of the Years, the Spirit
and Chorus of the Pities, the Spirit Ironic, the Spirit
Sinister, Rumours, Spirit-Messengers, and the Recording Angel.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES.

_Yonder, that swarm of things insectual_
_Wheeling Nowhither in Particular--_
_What is it?_

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS.

_That? Oh that is merely one_
_Of those innumerous congeries_
_Of parasites by which, since time began,_
_Space has been interfested._

SPIRIT SINISTER.

_What a pity_
_We have no means of stamping out these pests!_

SPIRIT IRONIC.

_Nay, but I like to watch them buzzing round,_
_Poor little trumpery ephaeonals!_

CHORUS OF THE PIETIES (aerial music).

_Yes, yes!_
_What matter a few more or less?_
_Here and Nowhere plus_
_Whence and Why makes Thus._
_Let these things be._
_There's room in the world for them and us._

_Nothing is,_
_Out in the vast immensities_
_Where these things flit,_
_Irrequisite_
_In a minor key_
_To the tune of the sempiternal It._

SPIRIT IRONIC.

_The curious thing about them is that some_
_Have lesser parasites adherent to them--_
_Bipedular and quadrupedular_
_Infinitesimals. On close survey_
_You see these movesome. Do you not recall,_
_We once went in a party and beheld_
_All manner of absurd things happening_
_On one of those same--planets, don't you call them?_

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS (screwing up his eyes at the Solar System).

_One of that very swarm it was, if I mistake not._
_It had a parasite that called itself_
_Napoléon. And lately, I believe,_
_Another parasite has had the impudence_
_To publish an elaborate account_
_Of our (for so we deemed it) private visit._

SPIRIT SINISTER.

_His name?_

RECORDING ANGEL.

_One moment._

(Turns over leaves.)

_Hardy, Mr. Thomas,_
_Novelist. Author of "The Woodlanders,"_
_"Far from the Madding Crowd," "The Trumpet Major,"_
_"Tess of the D'Urbervilles," etcetera,_
_Etcetera. In 1895_
_"Jude the Obscure" was published, and a few_
_Hasty reviewers, having to supply_
_A column for the day of publication,_
_Filled out their space by saying that there were_
_Several passages that might have been_
_Omitted with advantage. Mr. Hardy_
_Saw that if that was so, well then, of course,_
_Obviously the only thing to do_
_Was to write no more novels, and forthwith_
_Applied himself to drama, and to Us._

SPIRIT IRONIC.

_Let us hear what he said about Us._

THE OTHER SPIRITS.

_Let's._

RECORDING ANGEL (raising receiver of aerial telephone).

_3 oh 4 oh oh 3 5, Space.... Hulloa._
_Is that the Superstellar Library?_
_I'm the Recording Angel. Kindly send me_
_By Spirit-Messenger a copy of_
_"The Dynasts" by T. Hardy. Thank you._

A pause. Enter Spirit-Messenger, with copy of "The Dynasts."

_Thanks._

Exit Spirit-Messenger. The Recording Angel reads "The Dynasts"
aloud.

Just as the reading draws to a close, enter the Spirit of Mr.
Clement Shorter and Chorus of Subtershorters. They are visible
as small grey transparencies swiftly interpenetrating the
brains of the spatial Spirits.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES.

_It is a book which, once you take it up,_
_You cannot readily lay down._

SPIRIT SINISTER.

_There is_
_Not a dull page in it._

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS.

_A bold conception_
_Outcarried with that artistry for which_
_The author's name is guarantee. We have_
_No hesitation in commending to our readers_
_A volume which--_

The Spirit of Mr. Clement Shorter and Chorus of Subtershorters
are detected and expelled.

_--we hasten to denounce_
_As giving an entirely false account_
_Of our impressions._

SPIRIT IRONIC.

Hear, _hear_!

SPIRIT SINISTER.

Hear, _hear_!

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES.

_Hear_!

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS.

_Intensive vision has this Mr. Hardy,_
_With a dark skill in weaving word-patterns_
_Of subtle ideographies that mark him_
_A man of genius. So am not I,_
_But a plain Spirit, simple and forthright,_
_With no damned philosophical fal-lals_
_About me. When I visited that planet_
_And watched the animalculae thereon,_
_I never said they were "automata"_
_And "jackaclocks," nor dared describe their deeds_
_As "Life's impulsion by Incognizance."_
_It may be that those mites have no free will,_
_But how should I know? Nay, how Mr. Hardy?_
_We cannot glimpse the origin of things,_
_Cannot conceive a Causeless Cause, albeit_
_Such a Cause must have been, and must be greater_
_Than we whose little wits cannot conceive it._
_"Incognizance"! Why deem incognizant_
_An infinitely higher than ourselves?_
_How dare define its way with us? How know_
_Whether it leaves us free or holds us bond?_

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES.

_Allow me to associate myself_
_With every word that's fallen from your lips._
_The author of "The Dynasts" has indeed_
_Misused his undeniably great gifts_
_In striving to belittle things that are_
_Little enough already. I don't say_
_That the phrenetical behaviour_
_Of those aforesaid animalculae_
_Did, while we watched them, seem to indicate_
_Possession of free-will. But, bear in mind,_
_We saw them in peculiar circumstances--_
_At war, blinded with blood and lust and fear._
_Is it not likely that at other times_
_They are quite decent midgets, capable_
_Of thinking for themselves, and also acting_
_Discreetly on their own initiative,_
_Not drilled and herded, yet gregarious--_
_A wise yet frolicsome community?_

SPIRIT IRONIC.

_What are these "other times" though? I had thought_
_Those midgets whiled away the vacuous hours_
_After one war in training for the next._
_And let me add that my contempt for them_
_Is not done justice to by Mr. Hardy._

SPIRIT SINISTER.

_Nor mine. And I have reason to believe_
_Those midgets shone above their average_
_When we inspected them._

A RUMOUR (tactfully intervening).

_Yet have I heard_
_(Though not on very good authority)_
_That once a year they hold a festival_
_And thereat all with one accord unite_
_In brotherly affection and good will._

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS (to Recording Angel).

_Can you authenticate this Rumour?_

RECORDING ANGEL.

_Such festival they have, and call it "Christmas."_

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES.

_Then let us go and reconsider them_
_Next "Christmas."_

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS (to Recording Angel).

_When is that?_

RECORDING ANGEL (consults terrene calendar).

_This day three weeks._

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS.

_On that day we will re-traject ourselves._
_Meanwhile, 'twere well we should be posted up_
_In details of this feast._

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES (to Recording Angel).

_Aye, tell us more._

RECORDING ANGEL.

_I fancy you could best find what you need_
_In the Complete Works of the late Charles Dickens._
_I have them here._

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS.

_Read them aloud to us._

The Recording Angel reads aloud the Complete Works of Charles
Dickens.

RECORDING ANGEL (closing "Edwin Drood").

_'Tis Christmas Morning._

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS.

_Then must we away._

SEMICHORUS I. OF YEARS (aerial music).

_'Tis time we press on to revisit_
_That dear little planet,_
_To-day of all days to be seen at_
_Its brightest and best._

_Now holly and mistletoe girdle_
_Its halls and its homesteads,_
_And every biped is beaming_
_With peace and good will._

SEMICHORUS II.

_With good will and why not with free will?_
_If clearly the former_
_May nest in those bosoms, then why not_
_The latter as well?_
_Let's lay down no laws to trip up on,_
_Our way is in darkness,_
_And not but by groping unhampered_
_We win to the light._

The Spirit and Chorus of the Years traject themselves, closely
followed by the Spirit and Chorus of the Pities, the Spirits
and Choruses Sinister and Ironic, Rumours, Spirit Messengers,
and the Recording Angel.

There is the sound of a rushing wind. The Solar System is seen
for a few instants growing larger and larger--a whorl of dark,
vastening orbs careering round the sun. All but one of these
is lost to sight. The convex seas and continents of our planet
spring into prominence.

The Spirit of Mr. Hardy is visible as a grey transparency
swiftly interpenetrating the brain of the Spirit of the Years,
and urging him in a particular direction, to a particular
point.

The Aerial Visitants now hover in mid-air on the outskirts of
Casterbridge, Wessex, immediately above the County Gaol.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS.

_First let us watch the revelries within_
_This well-kept castle whose great walls connote_
_A home of the pre-eminently blest._

The roof of the gaol becomes transparent, and the whole
interior is revealed, like that of a beehive under glass.
Warders are marching mechanically round the corridors of
white stone, unlocking and clanging open the iron doors of
the cells. Out from every door steps a convict, who stands at
attention, his face to the wall.

At a word of command the convicts fall into gangs of twelve,
and march down the stone stairs, out into the yard, where they
line up against the walls.

Another word of command, and they file mechanically, but not
more mechanically than their warders, into the Chapel.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES.

_Enough!_

SPIRITS SINISTER AND IRONIC.

_'Tis more than even we can bear._

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES.

_Would we had never come!_

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS.

_Brother, 'tis well_
_To have faced a truth however hideous,_
_However humbling. Gladly I discipline_
_My pride by taking back those pettish doubts_
_Cast on the soundness of the central thought_
_In Mr. Hardy's drama. He was right._
_Automata these animalculae_
_Are--puppets, pitiable jackaclocks._
_Be't as it may elsewhere, upon this planet_
_There's no free will, only obedience_
_To some blind, deaf, unthinking despotry_
_That justifies the horridest pessimism._
_Frankly acknowledging all this, I beat_
_A quick but not disorderly retreat._

He re-trajects himself into Space, followed closely by his
Chorus, and by the Spirit and Chorus of the Pities, the
Spirits Sinister and Ironic with their Choruses, Rumours,
Spirit Messengers, and the Recording Angel.

SHAKESPEARE AND CHRISTMAS

_By_

FR*NK H*RR*S

That Shakespeare hated Christmas--hated it with a venom utterly alien to the gentle heart in him--I take to be a proposition that establishes itself automatically. If there is one thing lucid-obvious in the Plays and Sonnets, it is Shakespeare's unconquerable loathing of Christmas. The Professors deny it, however, or deny that it is proven. With these gentlemen I will deal faithfully. I will meet them on their own parched ground, making them fertilise it by shedding there the last drop of the water that flows through their veins.

If you find, in the works of a poet whose instinct is to write about everything under the sun, one obvious theme untouched, or touched hardly at all, then it is at least presumable that there was some good reason for that abstinence. Such a poet was Shakespeare. It was one of the divine frailties of his genius that he must be ever flying off at a tangent from his main theme to unpack his heart in words about some frivolous-small irrelevance that had come into his head. If it could be shown that he never mentioned Christmas, we should have proof presumptive that he consciously avoided doing so. But if the fact is that he did mention it now and again, but in grudging fashion, without one spark of illumination--he, the arch-illuminator of all things--then we have proof positive that he detested it.

I see Dryasdust thumbing his Concordance. Let my memory save him the trouble. I will reel him off the one passage in which Shakespeare spoke of Christmas in words that rise to the level of mediocrity.

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is the time.

So says Marcellus at Elsinore. This is the best our Shakespeare can vamp up for the birthday of the Man with whom he of all men had the most in common. And Dryasdust, eternally unable to distinguish chalk from cheese, throws up his hands in admiration of the marvellous poetry. If Dryasdust had written it, it would more than pass muster. But as coming from Shakespeare, how feeble-cold--aye, and sulky-sinister! The greatest praiser the world will ever know!--and all he can find in his heart to sing of Christmas is a stringing-together of old women's superstitions! Again and again he has painted Winter for us as it never has been painted since--never by Goethe even, though Goethe in more than one of the _Winter-Lieder_ touched the hem of his garment. There was every external reason why he should sing, as only he could have sung, of Christmas. The Queen set great store by it. She and her courtiers celebrated it year by year with lusty-pious unction. And thus the ineradicable snob in Shakespeare had the most potent of all inducements to honour the feast with the full power that was in him. But he did not, because he would not. What is the key to the enigma?

For many years I hunted it vainly. The second time that I met Carlyle I tried to enlist his sympathy and aid. He sat pensive for a while and then said that it seemed to him "a goose-quest." I replied, "You have always a phrase for everything, Tom, but always the wrong one." He covered his face, and presently, peering at me through his gnarled fingers, said "Mon, ye're recht." I discussed the problem with Renan, with Emerson, with Disraeli, also with Cetewayo--poor Cetewayo, best and bravest of men, but intellectually a Professor, like the rest of them. It was borne in on me that if I were to win to the heart of the mystery I must win alone.

The solution, when suddenly it dawned on me, was so simple-stark that I was ashamed of the ingenious-clever ways I had been following. (I learned then--and perhaps it is the one lesson worth the learning of any man--that truth may be approached only through the logic of the heart. For the heart is eye and ear, and all excellent understanding abides there.) On Christmas Day, assuredly, Anne Hathaway was born.

In what year she was born I do not know nor care. I take it she was not less than thirty-eight when she married Shakespeare. This, however, is sheer conjecture, and in no way important-apt to our inquiry. It is not the year, but the day of the year, that matters. All we need bear in mind is that on Christmas Day that woman was born into the world.

If there be any doubting Thomas among my readers, let him not be afraid to utter himself. I am (with the possible exception of Shakespeare) the gentlest man that ever breathed, and I do but bid him study the Plays in the light I have given him. The first thing that will strike him is that Shakespeare's thoughts turned constantly to the birthdays of all his Fitton-heroines, as a lover's thoughts always do turn to the moment at which the loved one first saw the light. "There was a star danced, and under that" was born Beatrice. Juliet was born "on Lammas Eve." Marina tells us she derived her name from the chance of her having been "born at sea." And so on, throughout the whole gamut of women in whom Mary Fitton was bodied forth to us. But mark how carefully Shakespeare says never a word about the birthdays of the various shrews and sluts in whom, again and again, he gave us his wife. When and were was born Queen Constance, the scold? And Bianca? And Doll Tearsheet, and "Greasy Jane" in the song, and all the rest of them? It is of the last importance that we should know. Yet never a hint is vouchsafed us in the text. It is clear that Shakespeare cannot bring himself to write about Anne Hathaway's birthday--will not stain his imagination by thinking of it. That is entirely human-natural. But why should he loathe Christmas Day itself with precisely the same loathing? There is but one answer--and that inevitable-final. The two days were one.

Some soul-secrets are so terrible that the most hardened realist of us may well shrink from laying them bare. Such a soul-secret was this of Shakespeare's. Think of it! The gentlest spirit that ever breathed, raging and fuming endlessly in impotent-bitter spleen against the prettiest of festivals! Here is a spectacle so tragic-piteous that, try as we will, we shall not put it from us. And it is well that we should not, for in our plenary compassion we shall but learn to love the man the more.

[Mr. Fr*nk H*rr*s is very much a man of genius, and I should
be sorry if this adumbration of his manner made any one
suppose that I do not rate his writings about Shakespeare
higher than those of all "the Professors" together.--M.B.]

SCRUTS

_By_

ARN*LD B*NN*TT

I.

Emily Wrackgarth stirred the Christmas pudding till her right arm began to ache. But she did not cease for that. She stirred on till her right arm grew so numb that it might have been the right arm of some girl at the other end of Bursley. And yet something deep down in her whispered "It is _your_ right arm! And you can do what you like with it!"

She did what she liked with it. Relentlessly she kept it moving till it reasserted itself as the arm of Emily Wrackgarth, prickling and tingling as with red-hot needles in every tendon from wrist to elbow. And still Emily Wrackgarth hardened her heart.

Presently she saw the spoon no longer revolving, but wavering aimlessly in the midst of the basin. Ridiculous! This must be seen to! In the down of dark hairs that connected her eyebrows there was a marked deepening of that vertical cleft which, visible at all times, warned you that here was a young woman not to be trifled with. Her brain despatched to her hand a peremptory message--which miscarried. The spoon wabbled as though held by a baby. Emily knew that she herself as a baby had been carried into this very kitchen to stir the Christmas pudding. Year after year, as she grew up, she had been allowed to stir it "for luck." And those, she reflected, were the only cookery lessons she ever got. How like Mother!

Mrs. Wrackgarth had died in the past year, of a complication of ailments.[8] Emily still wore on her left shoulder that small tag of crape which is as far as the Five Towns go in the way of mourning. Her father had died in the year previous to that, of a still more curious and enthralling complication of ailments.[9] Jos, his son, carried on the Wrackgarth Works, and Emily kept house for Jos. She with her own hand had made this pudding. But for her this pudding would not have been. Fantastic! Utterly incredible! And yet so it was. She was grown-up. She was mistress of the house. She could make or unmake puddings at will. And yet she was Emily Wrackgarth. Which was absurd.

[Footnote 8: See "The History of Sarah Wrackgarth," pp. 345-482.]

[Footnote 9: See "The History of Sarah Wrackgarth," pp. 231-344.]

She would not try to explain, to reconcile. She abandoned herself to the exquisite mysteries of existence. And yet in her abandonment she kept a sharp look-out on herself, trying fiercely to make head or tail of her nature. She thought herself a fool. But the fact that she thought so was for her a proof of adult sapience. Odd! She gave herself up. And yet it was just by giving herself up that she seemed to glimpse sometimes her own inwardness. And these bleak revelations saddened her. But she savoured her sadness. It was the wine of life to her. And for her sadness she scorned herself, and in her conscious scorn she recovered her self-respect.

It is doubtful whether the people of southern England have even yet realised how much introspection there is going on all the time in the Five Towns.

Visible from the window of the Wrackgarths' parlour was that colossal statue of Commerce which rears itself aloft at the point where Oodge Lane is intersected by Blackstead Street. Commerce, executed in glossy Doultonware by some sculptor or sculptors unknown, stands pointing her thumb over her shoulder towards the chimneys of far Hanbridge. When I tell you that the circumference of that thumb is six inches, and the rest to scale, you will understand that the statue is one of the prime glories of Bursley. There were times when Emily Wrackgarth seemed to herself as vast and as lustrously impressive as it. There were other times when she seemed to herself as trivial and slavish as one of those performing fleas she had seen at the Annual Ladies' Evening Fête organised by the Bursley Mutual Burial Club. Extremist!

She was now stirring the pudding with her left hand. The ingredients had already been mingled indistinguishably in that rich, undulating mass of tawniness which proclaims perfection. But Emily was determined to give her left hand, not less than her right, what she called "a doing." Emily was like that.

At mid-day, when her brother came home from the Works, she was still at it.

"Brought those scruts with you?" she asked, without looking up.

"That's a fact," he said, dipping his hand into the sagging pocket of his coat.

It is perhaps necessary to explain what scruts are. In the daily output of every potbank there are a certain proportion of flawed vessels. These are cast aside by the foreman, with a lordly gesture, and in due course are hammered into fragments. These fragments, which are put to various uses, are called scruts; and one of the uses they are put to is a sentimental one. The dainty and luxurious Southerner looks to find in his Christmas pudding a wedding-ring, a gold thimble, a threepenny-bit, or the like. To such fal-lals the Five Towns would say fie. A Christmas pudding in the Five Towns contains nothing but suet, flour, lemon-peel, cinnamon, brandy, almonds, raisins--and two or three scruts. There is a world of poetry, beauty, romance, in scruts--though you have to have been brought up on them to appreciate it. Scruts have passed into the proverbial philosophy of the district. "Him's a pudden with more scruts than raisins to 'm" is a criticism not infrequently heard. It implies respect, even admiration. Of Emily Wrackgarth herself people often said, in reference to her likeness to her father, "Her's a scrut o' th' owd basin."

Jos had emptied out from his pocket on to the table a good three dozen of scruts. Emily laid aside her spoon, rubbed the palms of her hands on the bib of her apron, and proceeded to finger these scruts with the air of a connoisseur, rejecting one after another. The pudding was a small one, designed merely for herself and Jos, with remainder to "the girl"; so that it could hardly accommodate more than two or three scruts. Emily knew well that one scrut is as good as another. Yet she did not want her brother to feel that anything selected by him would necessarily pass muster with her. For his benefit she ostentatiously wrinkled her nose.

"By the by," said Jos, "you remember Albert Grapp? I've asked him to step over from Hanbridge and help eat our snack on Christmas Day."

Emily gave Jos one of her looks. "You've asked that Mr. Grapp?"

"No objection, I hope? He's not a bad sort. And he's considered a bit of a ladies' man, you know."

She gathered up all the scruts and let them fall in a rattling shower on the exiguous pudding. Two or three fell wide of the basin. These she added.

"Steady on!" cried Jos. "What's that for?"

"That's for your guest," replied his sister. "And if you think you're going to palm me off on to him, or on to any other young fellow, you're a fool, Jos Wrackgarth."

The young man protested weakly, but she cut him short.

"Don't think," she said, "I don't know what you've been after, just of late. Cracking up one young sawny and then another on the chance of me marrying him! I never heard of such goings on. But here I am, and here I'll stay, as sure as my name's Emily Wrackgarth, Jos Wrackgarth!"

She was the incarnation of the adorably feminine. She was exquisitely vital. She exuded at every pore the pathos of her young undirected force. It is difficult to write calmly about her. For her, in another age, ships would have been launched and cities besieged. But brothers are a race apart, and blind. It is a fact that Jos would have been glad to see his sister "settled"--preferably in one of the other four Towns.

She took up the spoon and stirred vigorously. The scruts grated and squeaked together around the basin, while the pudding feebly wormed its way up among them.

II.

Albert Grapp, ladies' man though he was, was humble of heart. Nobody knew this but himself. Not one of his fellow clerks in Clither's Bank knew it. The general theory in Hanbridge was "Him's got a stiff opinion o' hisself." But this arose from what was really a sign of humility in him. He made the most of himself. He had, for instance, a way of his own in the matter of dressing. He always wore a voluminous frock-coat, with a pair of neatly-striped vicuna trousers, which he placed every night under his mattress, thus preserving in perfection the crease down the centre of each. His collar was of the highest, secured in front with an aluminium stud, to which was attached by a patent loop a natty bow of dove-coloured sateen. He had two caps, one of blue serge, the other of shepherd's plaid. These he wore on alternate days. He wore them in a way of his own--well back from his forehead, so as not to hide his hair, and with the peak behind. The peak made a sort of half-moon over the back of his collar. Through a fault of his tailor, there was a yawning gap between the back of his collar and the collar of his coat. Whenever he shook his head, the peak of his cap had the look of a live thing trying to investigate this abyss. Dimly aware of the effect, Albert Grapp shook his head as seldom as possible.

On wet days he wore a mackintosh. This, as he did not yet possess a great-coat, he wore also, but with less glory, on cold days. He had hoped there might be rain on Christmas morning. But there was no rain. "Like my luck," he said as he came out of his lodgings and turned his steps to that corner of Jubilee Avenue from which the Hanbridge-Bursley trams start every half-hour.

Since Jos Wrackgarth had introduced him to his sister at the Hanbridge Oddfellows' Biennial Hop, when he danced two quadrilles with her, he had seen her but once. He had nodded to her, Five Towns fashion, and she had nodded back at him, but with a look that seemed to say "You needn't nod next time you see me. I can get along well enough without your nods." A frightening girl! And yet her brother had since told him she seemed "a bit gone, like" on him. Impossible! He, Albert Grapp, make an impression on the brilliant Miss Wrackgarth! Yet she had sent him a verbal invite to spend Christmas in her own home. And the time had come. He was on his way. Incredible that he should arrive! The tram must surely overturn, or be struck by lightning. And yet no! He arrived safely.