It was the old clerk, of whose services and devotion to our parish I have previously written, who gave the Biblical name to the little village that lies near the boundary of the great city that is steadily creeping towards us, and ever threatening to engulf us. Its own name is singularly pleasant to the ear and redolent of the sound of running waters, but it is unnecessary to burden the memory with it. Though it is now many years ago, I remember, as it were yesterday, the first time I heard the word on the old clerk's lips. I was sitting warming myself by the fire in the ticket-collector's office. The ticket-collector was ostensibly waiting to provide tickets, but as everybody in our parish has a season ticket, that part of his duty is almost a sinecure.
Thus it happens that the ticket-collector has leisure, just before the trains pass through, to give his friends the fruits of his researches in the realms of philosophy. That particular day he was speaking of the changes he had seen. "I was brought up," said he, closing his argument, "on the Shorter Catechism and porridge. I dinna haud any longer by the Catechism, but I havena lost my faith in porridge."
It was then that the clink of coppers was heard on the sill of the ticket window. In the aperture was framed the face of the clerk, with the trimmed grey beard and the small twinkling eyes. He held three pennies deftly in his thumbless hand. "Return, Sodom," said he. The ticket-collector pushed back his cap, stretched out his right hand as if he were beginning to speak, then thought better of it. Out of his case, without a word, he produced a return ticket for Sodom, clinked it in his machine, and passed it through the window. The old clerk received it with a grim chuckle.
Away below the bridge there came a rumble. "Train," said the ticket-collector, closing the aperture with a snap, and making for the door. And I have never forgotten the hoarse voice of the old clerk with an acid edge to it as he clinked his three coppers, saying "Return, Sodom."
It is an amazing thing how within the circuit of the same parish, removed by one mile from one another, there can live together two eras so remote from each other in the order of human development, as the world of the red-roofed houses on the slopes of the hills, and the village at their base where the gorge, worn by the little river through the travail of immemorial centuries, debouches on the great central plain that runs across Scotland.
Every morning the dwellers on the slopes are borne by the railway on a great span of arches over the little village, and they look down on the roofs of its houses. On the slopes there lies the world in which the fringes of life are embroidered—a world where men and women talk of books, pictures and plays. It is a world of hyphenated names. But in all the village there is not so much as one hyphenated name. It is a refuse-heap of humanity. Many diverse races are crowded in it. The city fathers clean out slums without providing first for the slum-dwellers, and, swept before the broom of so-called social reformers, homeless men and women have drifted to the village, and there reconstituted their slum.
From the glens of the north broken Highlanders, driven out to make room for sheep, have drifted hither to work in the quarries, and the speech of their children's children still bears the trace of their ancient language pure and clean; over the sea Irishmen have come to reap the harvest fields of the Lothians, and they have been deposited by the tide in the village. Stray Poles have come hither and straggling Czechs; a man from Connemara neighbours a shaggy giant from Lewis; and a dour stone-cutter from Aberdeen is door by door with an Italian who sells what looks like a deadly mixture from a hand-cart.
Here you can see humanity in its primitive state, before it began to adorn the fringes of life, and make for itself sanctuaries of privacy. Between the slopes and the base of the hill there yawns an invisible chasm. Centuries separate them. Thus it comes that the slope-dweller passes on the top of the arches, scanning his newspaper, without so much as seeing the huddle of houses which constitute the village.
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 thingsAnd 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.
"Nae doubt," went on the ticket-collector; "nae doubt. He was always giving me tracts. Tracts—faugh!—poor stuff, nae style, nae logic, and nae philosophee in them. But I aye took them and thanked him—for he is a nice man, though a perfect babe in matters of understanding. And I found them useful for spills. The other day he handed me this..." and he waved a blue paper-covered booklet.
"Mahn," he exclaimed, pushing his peaked cap back from his grey head, and sweeping his brass buttons down with his hand; "mahn, this has fair hit me between the eyes." Then he opened the pamphlet and began to read passages that he had heavily scored with blue pencil. The Czar has abolished the sale of vodka for ever! What is the result?
"The old women in the villages," read the ticket-collector, "can hardly believe their own eyes, so changed are their menfolk.... Everywhere peace, kindness and industry. War is said to be hell; but this is like a foretaste of heaven."
"Listen to this," cried the collector, his arm outstretched. "A newspaper correspondent writes, since the sale of vodka stopped the old night population (in the doss-houses) seems to have vanished." Every passage he read bore the same testimony.
"And what are we doing?" he exclaimed. "We have stopped nothing; we surround our soldiers with the old temptations, and we leave their defenceless wives exposed to the same temptations; I know all about it. Mahn, it was Ruskin that said, 'There is no wealth but life,' and we leave all our wealth of life at the mercy of every evil. It's a fair scandal. Do you ken the conclusion I've come to! It is that the best form of government is a benevolent despotism. Oor men are afraid of this and that—losing votes—but an autocrat with a stroke of a pen can sweep away the power of hell. If they would only make King George an autocrat for a few years.... That would be grand!"
He insisted on lending me the blue-covered pamphlet, and it being his hour off he walked with me across the bridge. The valley was now dark. The snuff-manufacturer's house down below was wrapped in gloom. Lights twinkled on the slopes. Below a lamp-post at the far end of the bridge two men stood. When he saw them the ticket-collector stood fast.
"Mahn," said he, "I've come to a great resolution. I'm too old to fight; and they canna get at me in ony way. No Income-tax for me; and threepence on the tea is naething, for I never take it; I want to feel that I am worth men dying for me; and I am going to be tee-total till the end of the war. I'll give the money to help the soldiers' weans. It's the weans that pull at my heart-strings."
And he turned on his heel and walked rapidly back across the bridge.
Under the lamp-post stood the roadman and the beadle, looking after him. I spoke to them, for since the war began we all speak to each other in our parish.
"Has he forgotten ony thin'?" asked the roadman, waving a hand towards the retreating form of the ticket-collector.
"I don't think so," I answered, "he just said that he was going to be tee-total till the end of the war."
"Tee-total!" echoed the roadman mournfully; "there gangs anither lost soul!"
My two friends went sadly down the steep brae, and I turned up the long flight of stone steps that leads to the road above. On the top of the first flight I turned and looked after them. When they came opposite the door of the village inn, they slowed down ... and then went resolutely past, down into the hollow. The two of them have probably resolved to join the company of the "lost souls."
I have read the ticket-collector's pamphlet, and I feel a little dazed. It is such an odd world, and the strange thing is that I never realised its queerness before. A Grand Duke is murdered in a place of which I never heard before, and whose name I cannot even now trust myself to write down correctly, and here, a thousand miles away, the result is that I am brought face to face for the first time with the problem that lay twice a day under my feet—the problem of the Cities of the Plain. A flood of light seems to have fallen on things which were aforetime hazy. Events stand out luridly and arrestingly. Here is one. I was in a far Hebridean isle when war broke out. All of a sudden there sounded the drum,
"Saying Come,Freemen, come,Ere your heritage be wasted! said thequick alarming drum."
And the manhood of the island sprang to their feet. Mothers gave their sons, sending them away with sobs and tears, but in the name of God.
On a drizzling morning the little steamer lay at the pier, crowded with men and horses, going out to fight and die. The hawsers were loosed. The steamer churned and backed and crept away. A girl stood near me crying softly. A youth with clean-cut features, and the yearning no tongue can utter shining in his eyes, leant over the taffrail and called to her, "Not crying, Jessie?" And she wiped her cheek with the moist handkerchief, and turned a smiling face to him and said, "No, I am not crying." And the paddles churned faster, and they passed into the drizzle and the haze. Weeks later I read how one man of that regiment—the regiment of my own county—killed another ... and a few days later I read that he had done so in a drunken brawl. He was not from the island, that man, and I know not who he is. His mother doubtless sent him forth to fight as a hero for his King, and he became a murderer under the fostering of the State.
Out of the clean countryside they were taken, these men, and the State that summoned them, and whose call they answered, surrounded them with temptations. Away from the influence of mother and sister and sweetheart, wearied and worn with the hard toil of preparation, the State opened the canteen and said, "Take your ease thus," and they did so. The Secretary of War made appeals to them. "Be sober," said he, "avoid alcohol, that the State, through your self-denial, may live." But the State said, "See, I have made ample provision for you, so that you may disregard the noble advice my servant gives you." They came in their thousands across the Atlantic from the far North-West at the call of their mother—clean and sober—and their mother opened the canteen for their benefit on the plain. Such a world as that dwelt in the imagination of Dean Swift—I never imagined that it could exist here and now. And in that world of the cities of the plain, what reward are we preparing for the men who are baring their breasts to the arrows, standing between us and death? When they come back, war-worn, to what will they return? To homes in which the fires are extinguished, the candles burnt down to the socket; the cupboards bare, the children famished and neglected? Is that to be the guerdon of their sacrifice; is it for that that they have gone down into hell? Surely it cannot be for that! A wave has passed over us, raising us to the realisation of the higher values of things. Words live for us now which were dead yesterday. A beam of light has fallen into the chamber of imagery, and the wordTemperancehas risen from the couch on which it lay dying, and it claims us for its own. Through it we can make the world know that we are worth fighting for—worth that the young, the strong, and the brave should take everything they hold dear—their ideals, their love, their little children unborn—and throw them into the trench, and there give themselves and their dreams to death for us. We must see to it that we are worthy the sacrifice.
***
It seemed to me hitherto that I was a citizen of the country endowed with the greatest freedom on earth. But the ticket-collector has proved to me that that was a dream. Here in our parish I have no power to control this thing that matters so vitally in the Cities of the Plain. We have a Parish Council and a County Council, and I don't know how many other dignified and honourable authorities, whom we elect. But we elect nobody to control this. A body of unelected Justices, of whom we know nothing, settle for us that down yonder in the Cities of the Plain there shall be half a dozen State-regulated places for the manufacturing of paupers and criminals. (The laws change with such kaleidoscopic swiftness in those days that I may be wrong.) And here am I, newly awakened by the ticket-collector to that enormity, and I am not free to do anything. It is surely a mad world. We needed to be awakened; and we have been awakened with the shriek of shells and the crying of the perishing! And the result of the awakening will be regeneration for the Cities of the Plain.
***
The ticket-collector has deprived me for the time being of my peace of mind. My conversion is so recent that I am afraid of falling into the fanaticism of the newly converted. I followed the General the other day into the railway carriage, and as we were passing over Sodom, lying there under our feet, I spoke to him about it. He looked at me with cold eyes.
"Do you want to sacrifice the freedom of the individual?" he asked in his curt military tones; "do you think that you can make saints of people by Act of Parliament? They would be mere plaster-saints."
I was reduced to silence. My new-born zeal seemed to ooze out at every pore. There was a touch of amused scorn in the General's eye as he glanced at me. The General is a man of experience, and he is quite right. Acts of Parliament will never make saints of the people. But the State can see to it that the people are not surrounded by temptations through the operations of Acts of Parliament; that, if the State is impotent to make saints, it shall not, on the other hand, set itself deliberately to make devils. That, it seems to me, is what the State is now doing in the Cities of the Plain.
In ten thousand schools the State sanctions that its children be taught to pray—"Lead us not into temptation," and that same State encircles the path of its children by legalised temptations at every corner. It is the maddest of worlds. I may be wrong and the General wholly right. But as the ticket-collector said the last time I saw him—"I would like to see the man who could convince me that I am wrong." And I don't know whether to be grateful to the ticket-collector or not. He has deprived me of some of my sleep; he has made my head ache with thinking of problems which I am not fit to cope with; and, most unlooked for of all, he has made a tee-totaler of me till the end of the war. There is a plaintive note in the ticket-collector's voice, which strikes a chord in my heart, when he invariably adds: "I hope the war won't last long." For, if it does, there will be the danger of the ticket-collector and myself becoming teetotalers for altogether. And it is such an ugly word—tee-totaler! If only the ticket-collector would coin a new and beautiful word to connote his new and beneficent state of mind! It is a pity that great causes should be burdened by the weight of ugly words.