XX
THE VALUE OF IDLENESS

“If you want to be quiet,” said my friend, “you had better go and sit up in the old mill.”

I acquiesced at once.

“Just give me a table and a chair,” said I. “I shall be quite comfortable.”

“Are you going to write?” he asked.

I nodded my head.

“What?”

“An essay.”

“On what?”

“The Value of Idleness.”

“You’ll do that well,” said he, and he told the gardener to take up to the mill all that I required.

So here am I, writing the Value of Idleness in the little oak-beamed loft of an old mill.

To do nothing is to be receptive of everything. Idleness of the body alone will serve you not at all. It is only when the mind—but to follow the mood, to understand the drift of this philosophy of idleness, you must see, as I see it, this old white mill in which I sit and write.

Last night, as we walked out in the garden, the moon was in her chariot, whirling in a mad race through the heavens. In and out of a thousand clouds she rode recklessly.

She carries news, thought I, and were she the daughter of Nimshi, she could not drive more furiously.

And there, under her shifting light, with great arms raised appealingly into the wind, stood the old wind-mill, just at the end of the little red-brick path which runs through an avenue of gnarled apple trees.

I touched my friend’s arm and pointed.

“She’s very beautiful,” said I.

“She’s very old,” said he.

Then I suddenly saw in her the figure of a patient woman, who has given up her youth, appealing with passionate arms to God to grant her rest. Another moment and there came a faint moaning sigh falling upon my ears—a sigh like the fluttering of an autumn leaf that eddies slowly to the ground.

“What is that?” I asked.

“The wind-mill,” said my friend. “She’s crying to be set free, to have her arms unloosed.”

As he said that, I saw her as a tired woman no longer. She became majestic in her agony then. So it seemed to me must the women in Siberia cry at night with faces turned, and hands stretched forth towards their native Russia.

“How long has she been idle?” I inquired.

“Oh—many, many years,” said he.

It was this which made me think of writing the Value of Idleness. So here am I, writing my essay on Idleness in the little oak-beamed loft of an old mill.

You cannot think how silent it is. I feel away and above the world. From the wee square window between the beams I can see the miller’s cottage with its broad sloping roof of old red tiles, leaning down until it nearly touches the ground. But beyond that, on one side, stretches the whole weald of Kent and, on the other, lie the Romney marshes spreading forth to meet the sea. And there is the sea—that faint, far margin of blue—a chaplet upon the smooth, broad forehead of the world.

Yet silent and still as it all is, I can nevertheless hear voices. Upon the great oak shaft, the tireless vertebra of this goddess of the wind, there are two initials carved by some patient hand. L.B. are the letters cut, and following them comes the date—1790. There is a voice to be heard from that, if you do but listen well. I can see one of those young millers who, when never a leaf was rustling on the trees and the air was still in a breathless calm, I can see him sitting there in a moment of idleness, carving out his initials and the date in deep, bold characters. Then saying aloud to himself, “Maybe there’ll be some as’ll read that in a hundred years, and wonder who be I.”

I can hear the incisions of his knife as he cut into the stern hard oak, the little silences, the little grunts of his breath as he laboured over each letter. No—for all its stillness, there are voices in this old mill. Up the oak ladder that leads through the ceiling to another floor I can just see the great heavy wheel that turned the shaft. It is grey even now with the dust of flour and, as its sharp teeth gleam down at me out of the darkness, the echoes of those rumbling sounds when the wind was high and the sails were racing round, comes faintly to my ears like thunder afar off.

So here am I, in the midst of these silent voices of the mill—here am I, writing an essay on the Value of Idleness.

“Idleness of the body,” I had begun, “will serve you not at all. It is only when the mind is yielding to the drug of laziness as well, that your ears are attuned to the silent voices and you can speak——”

What was that?

A sudden clatter, a beating of sudden wings around my head!

Only a bat. I watch it as it circles round the old loft. The evening is beginning to fall; I see the cows being driven home along the road. A soft greyness is wrapping its fine web about the world and this little creature is venturing forth from its hiding-place before the day is yet quite dead.

What a wonderful house to live in—this old, old mill! I scarcely wonder at the beauty and simplicity of the “Lettres de mon Moulin” as I sit here with the upper half of the creaking door wide open, and the far hills stretching out to sleep as the night draws round about them.

But now, as the grey light grows deeper and twilight hangs upon a frail thread ere it drops into the lap of darkness; now, as though it were a herald of the night to come, a wind springs up across the land. I hear it as its first whispers begin to tell their secrets in the corners and the crevices. Yet it whispers not for long. Soon, with a loud, insistent voice, it is crying its importunate passion to the mill. But she is chained. The fetters cling unmercifully to her arms. She cannot move. Again and again the wind envelops her in its embrace, but she makes no answer to its passion. Only now and again there comes her faint, despairing cry—the cry of a woman in pain—the cry of a woman in prison. I feel so sorely tempted to set her free, just to see her great generous arms sweeping in a joyous abandonment of life before the wind she loves so well.

And here am I, in this old, old silent mill, writing an essay on the Value of Idleness.

Night is on the verge now. The words run into one another upon the paper. It is so dark that my pen wanders from the faint ruled line and sets out on its own account across the dim grey page.

At last comes the voice of my friend far below.

“Have you finished your idleness yet?”

“It’s finished,” say I with a sense of loss of the moments that have been mine—mine and this dear, sad woman’s in prison. I bolt the doors and come down.

“Come and read it to me now,” says he.

And I read it all.

*****

“But there’s nothing about idleness,” he said. “Where’s the Value of Idleness?”

“Here,” said I, and I threw the papers across to him. “It’s all Idleness. To do nothing is to be receptive of everything. I’ve been doing nothing.”