XII
A BIT OF WOOD
He found himself in Meran with some cousins who had various slightailments, but, being rich and imaginative, had gone to a sanatoriumto be cured. But for its sanatoria, Meran might be a cheerful place;their ubiquity reminds a healthy man too often that the air is reallygood. Being well enough himself, except for a few mental worries,he went to a Gasthaus in the neighbourhood. In the sanatorium hiscousins complained bitterly of the food, the ignorant "sisters," theinattentive doctors, and the idiotic regulations generally--whichproves that people should not go to a sanatorium unless they are reallyill. However, they paid heavily for being there, so felt that somethingwas being accomplished, and were annoyed when he called each day fortea, and told them cheerfully how much better they looked--whichproved, again, that their ailments were slight and quite curable by thelocal doctor at home. With one of the ailing cousins, a rich and prettygirl, he believed himself in love.
It was a three weeks' business, and he spent his mornings walking inthe surrounding hills, his mind reflective, analytical, and ambitious,as with a man in love. He thought of thousands of things. He mooned.Once, for instance, he paused beside a rivulet to watch the buttercupsdip, and asked himself, "Will she be like this when we're married--soanxious to be well that she thinks fearfully all the time of gettingill?" For if so, he felt he would be bored. He knew himself accuratelyenough to realise that he never could stand _that_. Yet money wasa wonderful thing to have, and he, already thirty-five, had littleenough! "Am I influenced by her money, then?" he asked himself ... andso went on to ask and wonder about many things besides, for he was ofa reflective temperament and his father had been a minor poet. AndDoubt crept in. He felt a chill. He was not much of a man, perhaps,thin-blooded and unsuccessful, rather a dreamer, too, into the bargain.He had L100 a year of his own and a position in a PhilanthropicInstitution (due to influence) with a nominal salary attached. He meantto keep the latter after marriage. He would work just the same. Nobodyshould ever say _that_ of him----!
And as he sat on the fallen tree beside the rivulet, idly knockingstones into the rushing water with his stick, he reflected upon thosebanal truisms that epitomise two-thirds of life. The way littleunimportant things can change a person's whole existence was the onehis thought just now had fastened on. His cousin's chill and headache,for instance, caught at a gloomy picnic on the Campagna three weeksbefore, had led to her going into a sanatorium and being advised thather heart was weak, that she had a tendency to asthma, that gout was inher system, and that a treatment of X-rays, radium, sun-baths and lightbaths, violet rays, no meat, complete rest, with big daily fees toexperts with European reputations, were imperative. "From that chill,sitting a moment too long in the shadow of a forgotten Patrician'stomb," he reflected, "has come all this"--"all this" including hisdoubt as to whether it was herself or her money that he loved, whetherhe could stand living with her always, whether he need _really_ keephis work on after marriage, in a word, his entire life and future, andher own as well--"all from that tiny chill three weeks ago!" And heknocked with his stick a little piece of sawn-off board that lay besidethe rushing water.
Upon that bit of wood his mind, his mood, then fastened itself. It wastriangular, a piece of sawn-off wood, brown with age and ragged. Onceit had been part of a triumphant, hopeful sapling on the mountains;then, when thirty years of age, the men had cut it down; the restof it stood somewhere now, at this very moment, in the walls of thehouse. This extra bit was cast away as useless; it served no purposeanywhere; it was slowly rotting in the sun. But each tap of the stick,he noticed, turned it sideways without sending it over the edge intothe rushing water. It was obstinate. "It doesn't want to go in," helaughed, his father's little talent cropping out in him, "but, by Jove,it shall!" And he pushed it with his foot. But again it stopped, stuckend-ways against a stone. He then stooped, picked it up, and threw itin. It plopped and splashed, and went scurrying away downhill withthe bubbling water. "Even that scrap of useless wood," he reflected,rising to continue his aimless walk, and still idly dreaming, "eventhat bit of rubbish may have a purpose, and may change the life ofsomeone--somewhere!"--and then went strolling through the fragrantpine woods, crossing a dozen similar streams, and hitting scores ofstones and scraps and fir cones as he went--till he finally reached hisGasthaus an hour later, and found a note from _her_: "We shall expectyou about three o'clock. We thought of going for a drive. The othersfeel so much better."
It was a revealing touch--the way she put it on "the others." He madehis mind up then and there--thus tiny things divide the course oflife--that he could never be happy with such an "affected creature."He went for that drive, sat next to her consuming beauty, proposed toher passionately on the way back, was accepted before he could changehis mind, and is now the father of several healthy children--and justas much afraid of getting ill, or of _their_ getting ill, as she wasfifteen years before. The female, of course, matures long, long beforethe male, he reflected, thinking the matter over in his study once....
And that scrap of wood he idly set in motion out of impulse also wentits destined way upon the hurrying water that never dared to stop.Proud of its new-found motion, it bobbed down merrily, spinning andturning for a mile or so, dancing gaily over sunny meadows, brushingthe dipping buttercups as it passed, through vineyards, woods, andunder dusty roads in neat, cool gutters, and tumbling headlong overlittle waterfalls, until it neared the plain. And so, finally, itcame to a wooden trough that led off some of the precious water to asawmill where bare-armed men did practical and necessary things. At theparting of the ways its angles delayed it for a moment, undecided whichway to take. It wobbled. And upon that moment's wobbling hung tragicissues--issues of life and death.
Unknowing (yet assuredly not unknown), it chose the trough. It swunglight-heartedly into the tearing sluice. It whirled with the gush ofwater towards the wheel, banged, spun, trembled, caught fast in theside where the cogs just chanced to be--and abruptly stopped the wheel.At any other spot the pressure of the water must have smashed it intopulp, and the wheel have continued as before; but it was caught inthe _one_ place where the various tensions held it fast immovably. Itstopped the wheel, and so the machinery of the entire mill. It jammedlike iron. The particular angle at which the double-handed saw, held bytwo weary and perspiring men, had cut it off a year before just enabledit to fit and wedge itself with irresistible exactitude. The pressureof the tearing water combined with the weight of the massive wheelto fix it tight and rigid. And in due course a workman--it was theforeman of the mill--came from his post inside to make investigations.He discovered the irritating item that caused the trouble. He put hisweight in a certain way; he strained his hefty muscles; he swore--andthe scrap of wood was easily dislodged. He fished the morsel out, andtossed it on the bank, and spat on it. The great wheel started with amighty groan. But it started a fraction of a second before he expectedit would start. He overbalanced, clutching the revolving framework witha frantic effort, shouted, swore, leaped at nothing, and fell intothe pouring flood. In an instant he was turned upside down, suckedunder, drowned. He was engaged to be married, and had put by a thousand_kronen_ in the _Tiroler Sparbank._ He was a sober and hard-workingman....
There was a paragraph in the local paper two days later. TheEnglishman, asking the porter of his Gasthaus for something to wrapup a present he was taking to his cousin in the sanatorium, used thatvery issue. As he folded its crumpled and recalcitrant sheets withsentimental care about the precious object his eye fell carelessly uponthe paragraph. Being of an idle and reflective temperament, he stoppedto read it--it was headed "Ungluecksfall," and his poetic eye, inheritedfrom his foolish, rhyming father, caught the pretty expression"fliessandes Wasser." He read the first few lines. Some fellow, witha picturesque Tyrolese name, had been drowned beneath a mill-wheel;he was popular in the neighbourhood, it seemed; he had saved somemoney, and was just going to be married. It was very sad. "Our readers'sympathy" was with him.... And, being of a reflective
temperament,the Englishman thought for a moment, while he went on wrapping up theparcel. He wondered if the man had really loved the girl, whethershe, too, had money, and whether they would have had lots of childrenand been happy ever afterwards. And then he hurried out towards thesanatorium. "I shall be late," he reflected. "Such little, unimportantthings delay one...!"