Rubble and Roseleaves, and Things of That Kind. Frank Boreham
of Contents
A fearful and wonderful contrivance is a front-door bell. The wire attached to my front-door bell is the line of communication between me and the universe. The universe knows it—and so do I. The front-door bell is the one thing about a private dwelling that is public property. If a stranger walked in at the front gate and began to push or pull at anything else, I should instantly send for the police; but if, with all the confidence of proprietorship, he walks straight to the front-door bell, and begins to push or pull at it, I regard the position as perfectly normal. No man living may enter my gate in order to inspect the roses, to admire the view or to stroke the cat. But any one has a perfect right to walk boldly up the path and ring the front-door bell. A man may do what he will with his own; and the bell is his. It is more his than mine. It is perfectly true that I ordered the bell to be put there, and that I paid for it; but it is also true that I am the only person on the planet to whom it is of no use at all. A visitor from Mars, seeing the bellhangers working to my order, might be pardoned for supposing that I was gratifying in this way my insatiable passion for music. Not at all. In giving the order for the bell, I was actuated by no selfish motive. The bell at my front door is not my bell. It is everybody's bell—everybody's, that is to say, but mine.
That is why such a thrill runs through the house when the bell rings. It is one of the sensations of the commonplace. A ring at the front-door bell is a bolt from the blue, a call from the vast, a message from out of the infinite. It presents to the imagination such a boundless range of possibilities. There are fifteen hundred million people on the planet, and this may be any one of them. It may be a hawker with the inevitable cake of soap—a cake of soap that he, poor man, appears to need so much more than I do. It may be the telegraph-boy with some startlingly pleasant or poignantly painful message. It may be the very man I want to see or the very man I don't. Or, then again, it may be 'only Sam.' Everybody knows the accents of ineffable disdain in which it is announced that the ringer of the bell is simply a member of the family circle. It may be anybody; that is the point. When the front-door bell rings, you are prepared for anything. You feel, as you await the announcement, that you have suddenly dipped your hand into the lucky-bag of the universe, and you are in a flutter of curiosity as to what you are about to draw. Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor; rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief; why is the girl so long in returning from the door? Smiles, frowns, laughter tears; they may any of them come with the ringing of the front-door bell. When the bell rings, you are eating your dinner, or reading the paper, or romping with the children, or chatting easily beside the fire. The atmosphere is perfectly tranquil; all the wheels are running smoothly; life is without a thrill. The bell rings; all eyes are lifted; each member of the household glances inquiringly at all the others; is anybody expecting anybody? We vaguely feel, when the bell rings, that life is about to enter upon a fresh phase. Whether the change will be for weal or for woe, for better or for worse, we cannot tell. We only know that things are not likely to be quite the same again. Somebody will come in, or somebody will be called out, or something fresh will have to be done. The cards of life are all shuffled and dealt afresh at the ringing of the front-door bell.
But it was not of my own bell that I set out to write. My own bell is not my own bell; why, then, should I write of it? I prefer to write of the bells that do belong to me. The next-door bell is my bell; and the bell of the house beyond that; and so on to the end of space. For, if it is humiliating to reflect that the bell at my own door is not mine, it is extremely gratifying to be reminded that, beyond my door, there are millions and millions of bells that I can proudly call my own. I am not generally considered musical; but I spend a good deal of my time in bell-ringing. And I propose to describe one or two instruments on which, at some time or other, I have performed.
I
To begin with, there is the bell that is not working. To all outward appearance, the mechanism may be complete. You press the neat little button and then airily turn your back upon it, happy in the conviction that you have sent a delicious flutter through every soul on the premises. In point of fact you have done nothing of the kind. Things within are going on just as they were when you opened the gate; nobody has the slightest suspicion that you are cooling your heels on the doormat. The electric battery is exhausted. Beyond a scarcely perceptible click when your fingers pressed the button, you made no noise at all. That is the worst of life's most tragic collapses. There is nothing to indicate the break-down. The failure does not advertise itself. 'Samson said, I will go out as at other times and shake myself; and he wist not that the Lord was departed from him.' The button and the bell were there; how was he to know that the current had vanished? The preacher enters his pulpit as of old; who could have suspected that the invisible force, without which everything is so pitifully ineffective, had forsaken him. The worker is still in his place; who would have dreamed that, having lost his old power, his influence now counts for so little? Lots of people fancy that a button and a bell complete the requisites of life. Because the external appliances are in good order, they take it for granted that everything is working satisfactorily. It is a woeful blunder. The button may be there; and the bell may be there; yet the entire outfit may be destitute of all practical utility. I called at a house last week. Outside there was a button and inside there was a bell. I pressed the button several times and only discovered afterwards that the mechanism to which it was attached gave the lady of the house no intimation of my presence at her door. The bell was not working.
A bell that is out of action represents a broken line of communication between the individual and the universe. Some time ago my bell broke down. I heard every day of people who had called and gone away, fancying that nobody was at home. I wondered every night what I had missed during the day through being out of touch with the world. The broken bell had turned me into a hermit, an exile, a recluse. People might want me never so badly; they could not get at me. I might want them never so badly; they left the door without my seeing them.
The saddest case of this kind that ever came under my notice occurred at Hobart. A gentleman called one day and made it clear that his business was marked by gravity and urgency.
'My name,' he said, 'is McArthur. My mother is lying very ill at the Homeopathic Hospital. It would be a great comfort to us all, and to her, if you could run up and see her. She has often asked us to send for you; but we have always put it off. It seemed like encouraging her in the notion that her days were few. But now we shall be very glad if you will go. I ought to tell you, though, that my mother is very deaf. You will not be able to make her hear. But you will find a slate and pencil at the bedside. If you write on it whatever you wish to say, she will be able to read it and reply to you.'
I went at once. When I told the matron that I had come to see Mrs. McArthur, a strange look overspread her face and she drew me into her private room.
'Is she dead?' I asked, 'or unconscious?'
'Oh, no,' the matron replied, 'she is alive and quite conscious. But during the last few hours her sight has failed her. She can only see us like shadows between herself and the window. I don't know how you will be able to communicate with her.'
I never felt so helpless in my life. As I stood by her bedside she seemed so near, yet so very far away. I stroked her forehead and she smiled; but that was all. I was standing on the doormat pressing the button; but the bell was not working. I could not establish communication with the soul within. It is a way that bells have. The current becomes exhausted sooner or later. It is clearly intended that, while we are in touch with the universe, we should learn all that the universe can teach us, so that, when the line of communication collapses, we shall be independent of the universe and need its messages no more.
Then there is the bell that, when I press the button, rings without my hearing it. One day last week I called at a house in Winchester Avenue. I pressed the button several times, listening intently. I could hear no sound within. I tapped; but still everything was silent. I was just stooping to slip my card under the door when, suddenly, I heard a rush and a commotion within, and in a moment, Mrs. Finch, full of charming apologies, stood before me. She had heard the bell each time; but her maid was out; she