nt! Without
sentiment, without that love, each for his own corner, 'the Land' was
lost indeed! Not if all Becket blew trumpets till kingdom came, would
'the Land' be reformed, if they lost sight of that! To fortify men in
love for their motherland, to see that insecurity, grinding poverty,
interference, petty tyranny, could no longer undermine that love--this
was to be, surely must be, done! Monotony? Was that cry true? What work
now performed by humble men was less monotonous than work on the land?
What work was even a tenth part so varied? Never quite the same from
day to day: Now weeding, now hay, now roots, now hedging; now corn, with
sowing, reaping, threshing, stacking, thatching; the care of beasts,
and their companionship; sheep-dipping, shearing, wood-gathering,
apple-picking, cider-making; fashioning and tarring gates; whitewashing
walls; carting; trenching--never, never two days quite the same!
Monotony! The poor devils in factories, in shops, in mines; poor devils
driving 'busses, punching tickets, cleaning roads; baking; cooking;
sewing; typing! Stokers; machine-tenders; brick-layers; dockers; clerks!
Ah! that great company from towns might well cry out: Monotony! True,
they got their holidays; true, they had more social life--a point that
might well be raised at Becket: Holidays and social life for men on the
soil! But--and suddenly Felix thought of the long, long holiday that
was before the laborer Tryst. 'Twiddle his thumbs'--in the words of the
little humanitarian--twiddle his thumbs in a space twelve feet by seven!
No sky to see, no grass to smell, no beast to bear him company; no
anything--for, what resources in himself had this poor creature? No
anything, but to sit with tragic eyes fixed on the wall before him for
eighty days and eighty nights, before they tried him. And then--not till
then--would his punishment for that moment's blind revenge for grievous
wrong begin! What on this earth of God's was more disproportioned, and
wickedly extravagant, more crassly stupid, than the arrangements of his
most perfect creature, man? What a devil was man, who could yet rise to
such sublime heights of love and heroism! What a ferocious brute, the
most ferocious and cold-blooded brute that lived! Of all creatures
most to be stampeded by fear into a callous torturer! 'Fear'--thought
Felix--'fear! Not momentary panic, such as makes our brother animals do
foolish things; conscious, calculating fear, paralyzing the r