The Gale of the World

by Henry Williamson

  “I can illustrate it better by saying that I read a chapter of Schopenhauer, then a chapter of The Water Wanderer. Both stand up to each other.” She looked at Phillip, who felt her beauty upon him.

  “Of course I know Phillip’s book, but I can’t see its relationship to philosophy,” said Riversmill.

  “O please shut up, Anda!” said the boy. “I want to talk to Cousin Hugh about his Bentley.”

  “Come on upstairs with me, Roger, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  Molly gave her daughter an orange. The girl rolled it over the floor, cats and goat sprang up, and slithered about on the polished parquet. The goat picked it up in its mouth and brought the orange to Miranda.

  “The goat retrieves!” cried Riversmill. “Well I’m damned!”

  “Capella likes cricket, Cousin Phillip,” said Miranda. “So do all the other goats—the young ones, I mean.”

  “Goats, like all animals, have a sense of fun.”

  “Darling, we can’t have Capella in here,” said Molly. With the orange in its mouth, the goat was led to the door and put outside.

  “I’m still in the dark,” complained Riversmill.

  “You’re in good company then, with your friend Moses,” said Mrs. Riversmill.

  This was a needling reference to her husband’s everlasting tirade against the iniquity of art-dealers.

  “Who asked you to speak? Go on, Miranda. Tell me why Phillip’s book is philosophical.”

  Miranda continued softly, “In The Water Wanderer Cousin Phillip puts his own subjectivity upon Lutra, the otter. But to become whole one must pass through nature fully aware, then one can perceive an aspect of eternity, as Richard Jefferies did in The Story of My Heart. That way he by-passed the unreal self which is only identifiable by dialogue—”

  “What’s this confounded ‘dialogue’, Miranda?”

  “Argument.”

  “There you are, you argue from your unreal self, Riversmill,” remarked the painter’s wife.

  “I’m not arguing, you fathead! Go on, Miranda.”

  “Well, by passing beyond subjectivism, man gains the essential relationship between the totality of the world and the whole being.”

  “Beats me,” said Riversmill.

  “In accepting the world as it is, he accepts himself as he is,” said Phillip. “He becomes calm—a spiritual being—an artist in action.”

  “Bravo!” cried Riversmill. “If Phillip edited Bradshaw’s Railway Guide, he’d make it interesting.”

  “Miranda cleared the way,” said Phillip. “I’ve never read a word of Schopenhauer.”

  “That’s dialogue,” said Molly, putting an arm round her daughter. She said to Riversmill, “Anda’s won an Exhibition at Oxford, haven’t you, my cygnet?”, as she kissed her before standing back to admire the happy girl.

  Riversmill was admiring her, too. “Look at that figure under the gown! By God, I’d like to paint you as you are now, young woman.”

  “You’re a horse painter!” cried Mrs. Riversmill.

  “What are you going to read in college?’ asked ‘Buster’, coming down the open stairs. “Philosophy?”

  “Modern history. Cousin Hugh. The last fifty years, from the late Victorians to the Edwardian and Georgian periods—from nineteen hundred to nineteen forty-five—the beginning and the end of the British conspiracy to destroy Germany.”

  After hesitation, Phillip looked at her and said, “That’s the period to be covered by my novel series.”

  “I know,” replied Miranda, as quietly. “That’s why I’ve just chosen it.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Because it is your life.”

  In the silence which followed, ‘Buster’ took from his pocket the book he had been reading when Phillip had first seen him in the Medicean.

  “I wonder, Molly, if I may read you something from this book? It has a bearing on what has been said, I think.”

  “Who wrote it?” asked Riversmill.

  “I’ll leave you to guess.”

  “Come round the hearth, everybody,” said Molly.

  They sat down on the floor, the three children staring into beechwood flames.

  “I may as well start here. I quote—‘Nature works always to higher forms on earth. If one purpose of life in this world be individual development with a view to immortality, or successive incarnations directed to the same purpose, the most effective process of that individual development in this life is clearly the service of God’s purpose in this world as revealed by nature: which is the evolution to higher forms on earth’.”

  “You’re right!” cried Riversmill. “And the present anti-life craze is served by formless daubers exploited by the art dealers’ rackets to feather their own nests!”

  “Hold your hobby-horse!” demanded his wife.

  “And you hold yours! Go on, ‘Buster’.”

  ‘Buster’ smiled at Mrs. Riversmill, as much as to say, These temperamental artists.

  “‘It is by service that man both develops his own character and aids this purpose of God. No conflict exists between individual development and service of humanity: that was the error of the brilliant Nietzsche in posing a conflict between the character of his higher type of man and the interests of the people. On the contrary, the type beyond his Will to Power, which is the Will to Achievement, finds his self-development under the impulse of the derided compassion in his long striving to lift all earthly existence to a higher level, at which the attainment of a higher form is possible. In this sense, the purpose of life is not self-development, in vacuo, but the development of self in Achievement, as an artist in action and life, who creates, also, for humanity. The proud words, ‘I serve’, are to such a man also the highest expression of self-development’.”

  “Bravo!” cried Riversmill. “‘The hero of Norfolk’ wrote that!” “No, ‘The hero of Brixton’,” replied Phillip.

  ‘Buster’ said, “Roger, I feel I’ve left you entirely out in the cold.”

  “No, go on, Cousin Hugh, I like it. Honestly, I do. I like what you write!”

  ‘Buster’ smiled as he turned pages. “This is at the end of the book, wherein the whole Idea is worked out—the analysis of failure through European conflict—the failure both of Fascism and of its opponent, Financial Democracy. This is how the book ends:—‘So, we approach the conclusion of a practical creed, which is, at once, a creed of dynamic action, summoned into existence by the urgent necessity of a great and decisive epoch; a creed of science which is based on the observed operation of a higher purpose on earth, as revealed by modern knowledge in an intelligible pattern—’”

  “Space ships!” cried Roger, from the top of the stairs.

  “Well, yes; but first the space ships of the mind, Roger. This, you see, is a sort of blue print. To continue—‘and the creed of a spiritual movement, which is derived from the accumulated culture and original faith of Europe. Our creed is both a religion and a science, the final synthesis: nothing less can meet the challenge of the greatest age within known time’.

  “‘Our task is to preserve and to build. If the Fatherland of Europe is lost, all is lost. That home of the soul of man must be saved by any sacrifice. First, the world of the spirit must unite to resist that final doom of material victory. But, beyond lies the grave duty imposed by the new Science.’”

  “I want to be a new scientist,” said Roger.

  “Well, it will be up to you to become one of the new men, Roger,” said ‘Buster’, with quiet patience.

  “Roger darling, it’s past your bed-time,” said Molly.

  “Oh Mummy, this is part of my education, really it is!”

  “Well, try to listen, darling, while Cousin Hugh reads to us.”

  “‘It is not only to build a world worthy of the new genius of man’s mind, and secure from present menace. It is to evoke from the womb of the future a race of men fit to live in that new age. We must deliberately accelerate evolution: it is no longer a mat
ter of volition but of necessity. Is it a sin to strive in union with the revealed purpose of God? Is it a crime to hasten the coming in time of the force which in the long slow term of unassisted nature, may come too late? We go with nature: but we aid her: is that not nearer the purpose of God than the instinct to frustrate instead of to fulfil? Is not the hastening of our labouring nature the purpose for which this great efflorescence in man’s intelligence has been allowed to him? How wonderfully the means has coincided with the necessity. Will man now use it? A new dynamism in the will to higher forms is the hard and practical requirement of an age which commands him to rise higher or to sink for ever. He can no longer stand still: he must transcend himself; this deed will contain both the glory of sacrifice and the triumph of fulfilment. It is the age of decision in which the long striving of the European soul will reach to fulfilment, or plunge to final death. Great it is to live in this moment of Fate, because it means this generation is summoned to greatness in the service of high purpose. From the dust we rise to see a vision that came not before. All things are now possible; and all will be achieved by the final order of the European.’”

  *

  ‘Buster’ closed the book.

  “Cousin Phillip wrote it,” said Miranda.

  “No,” replied ‘Buster’. “As Phillip inferred, it was written in Brixton prison by the Englishman most despised and hated in England during the war, Hereward Birkin.”

  “If you lend me your copy, I’ll review it in The New Horizon‚” said Phillip. “Just before I came here, Wallington Christie gave the magazine to me, and I’m going to edit it.”

  “Bravo!” cried Riversmill. “Hereward Birkin is a great man. I heard him speak once at the Corn Hall in Fenton just before the war. Phillip was there—weren’t you? Birkin was all for developing the Empire then, and creating the Welfare State people are now talking about. Indeed, he had the same ideas soon after the Armistice of nineteen eighteen. And Phillip has had the guts to stick to him all through, like Kurvenal to Tristan.”

  “Who’s Tristan?” asked the boy.

  “The hero of a Cornish legend,” said Miranda.

  “A man in whom an immovable sense of honour was struck by the irresistible forde of a love potion,” said Phillip, keeping his eyes from Miranda, while feeling her spirit upon him.

  “Sir Hereward Birkin,” Phillip went on, “was released from prison only when he was seen to be dying. And if Ernest Bevin had had his way, he—Bevin—would have brought down the Government by calling out the Trades Union, and getting rid of Churchill. It was Winston, you see, who insisted that Birkin be let out of prison, where he had been held during three and a half years without charge, and without trial. He was released while Churchill was in the United States. Attlee sent Winston a signal.”

  “Good for Winston!” cried Riversmill. “When I was president of the Painters Guild, Winston was my guest at the inaugural banquet. We had a long talk.”

  “Yes, and you got drunk, you idiot,” remarked the painter’s wife. “You tried to drag Winston into agreeing with your tirade against Picasso! But Winston had far too much sense to be dragged into anything by a screeching old jay like yourself!”

  “Who asked you to speak?” the painter yelled.

  “Who asked you to speak for Winston, you mean! Go on, ‘Buster’, don’t let Riversmill drag you into an argument.” She looked at her husband. “If it hadn’t been for me looking after your money, you’d have been in the gutter by now, you mouldy old dog-fox!”

  At this Riversmill pointed his nose at the ceiling and let out a prolonged high-pitched scream, as of a vixen calling a dog-fox under the moon. Everyone laughed. Peace was restored.

  “Talking about goats, Molly,” said Mrs. Riversmill, “What are you going to do with the Brockholes herd? You surely can’t keep them all here.”

  “Perry wrote the other day and said he’d offered them to the Devon County Council. Peregrine”, she went on, turning to Phillip, “is my husband, at present in Kenya, shooting big game. The goats used to live in the park at Brockholes, but now the place is sold, we’ve no scope for them.”

  Riversmill said, “Lynton will want them, Molly, I fancy. All the other goats in the Valley of Rocks disappeared during the war. Poached, of course, and sent up to London hotels as venison. Some venison! Still, we ate anything in those days.” Then turning to Phillip, he said, “Where’s Birkin now, d’you know?”

  “Living in Berkshire, under police protection, or rather surveillance.”

  “Good God! Can’t the Government let him alone now the war’s over?”

  “They don’t want him murdered by some fanatic,” said ‘Buster’.

  Riversmill looked at Phillip. “Some madman may track you down to your shepherd’s cot one day, and then—”

  “Oh no!” cried Miranda, sitting on the floor, swaddled in the long gown, as she turned to hide her face against her mother’s knees.

  Chapter 11

  THE NEW HORIZON

  Chimney smoke veering to the south-west. Dragging nimbus overcast; water running everywhere. Runners a-splash with hen salmon, colour of bronze, attended by cock-fish with flanks of copper, some yellow-patched with fungus. Females extruding eggs while male fish shed their milt in water so shallow that their back-fins were exposed.

  One morning a man with clotted hair arrived, in a butt drawn by a moorland pony, beside the head-waters. With a four-tined dung fork he began a search for fish. Soon he had transfixed a decayed salmon, and jerked it into his small cart.

  So this was Aaron Kedd, owner of the little dog. Phillip had heard of him from the farmer’s wife across the common: a ‘local preacher’ of no denomination whose mind had turned to hell rather than to salvation: a most unhappy man, living alone, his moods varying between bitter silence and near-raving distress. Rather like one of the men on his war-time farm, Jack the Jackdaw, thought Phillip; but Jack never took it out on horse or dog. Jack had kind moments; he could still weep, whereas Kedd seemed to be charred beyond tears.

  Phillip went to talk to him, thinking that perhaps he might be able to aid him in some way or other, and so directly help the odd little dog which stood watching each action of its master in an attitude of detachment and without cocked ears, as though it were thinking about what it saw.

  “These fish have spawned by the look of them, Mr. Kedd. And they’re too far up to be able to get back to the sea, judging by their condition.”

  “Aiy, they’m unclane!” cried the fellow. “They brocks and varxes, aiy, and they craws, wull get’m if I don’t!”, while with turns of wrists he flipped fish after fish into his butt. “They’m unclane, I tell ’ee, like the swine of Gadarene!”

  “What are you going to do with these fish? Rot them down for compost?”

  “What be thaccy?”

  “Dressing.”

  “Noomye! Feed pigs on’m.”

  “That yellow fungus on salmon is the same kind that grows on dying trees.”

  “I don’t know naught about thaccy! I ban’t no ’igh-class gentry, with their flim-flam talking.”

  “Otters come so far up the water, I suppose?”

  “Aiy, they arrters be hellers! They be! One of they girt mousey-coloured fitches stole one of my ducks t’other night! The bliddy dog beside ’ee stood watchin’ of ’n, didn’t even holler!’ A be no more use than a mommet!” He made as if to throw the dung fork at the dog. “You’m no flamin’ gude to me! Yar!” he yelled at the animal cringing among rushes. “Tes no bliddy use to me! Hangin’ around where nought be doin’ save idleness.”

  “A writer works hard, too, in his own way.”

  “I ban’t blind, midear. I see what be goin’ on wi’ visitors.”

  “I’ll give you ten shillings for this dog.”

  The man touched his arm. “Done!”

  The dog stood still as Phillip approached, and wagged its tail stump. It followed him up the slope, and waited in the doorway. It had never been inside a cottage. When Phill
ip called, it remained outside, the line of its back curved. It looked pitiful, so he picked it up, while it held itself stiff, trembling. He nursed it on his lap. It remained still for awhile, then slowly got off and walked away to a far corner. It returned, with a couple of stump-wags, to a saucer of milk. But it stopped lapping when Phillip felt the lumps on its ribs. Had kicks broken the bones, which had set irregularly? He spread a corn sack in front of the hearth. BODGER was the name stencilled on it—relic of Phillip’s farming days—a hundred second-hand corn sacks bought at auction, during the pre-war depression. Bodger dead and turned to clay, to stop a hole to keep the wind away.

  “‘BODGER of GREAT SNORING’. Genuine name, genuine place. I dub you Sir Bodger of Shep Cot, and declare this sack to be your territory.” He transferred the dog to the sack, and lay on the floor beside it, arms round the little body. When Phillip got up, the dog returned to its corner.

  So Phillip moved the sack there. Bodger left to eat bread-and-milk, thereafter returning to his sack. Again Phillip lay beside him, stroking him; then moved away slowly, as though he had forgotten the dog; who remained, on its new territory, its base, curled tightly upon itself.

  “Here we are, a couple of crocks together, old Bodge,” said Phillip, as the dog’s eyes slanted upwards from head on paws, and a tail stump wagged once.

  Comforted by the presence of Old Bodge, Phillip sat at the table, trying to free his mind of the smallholder Kedd, so that an idea might come—a theme—for the editorial of his first number of The New Horizon.

  The idea came. He began writing.

  THE LOST LEGIONS

  ‘One morning, in the winter of 1919–20, I went into a Public Library in a suburb of London, and drew up a chair to a table whereon lay magazines and periodicals. The library, one of many founded on the generosity of a Scots-American millionaire, Andrew Carnegie, was a place where shabby old men and nondescript out-of-work ex-soldiers like myself went to rest and find interest away from drab pavements and street-movements outside, which had little or nothing to do with their lives.