This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on Oct. 28, 1939.
I have been at three organizational meetings for war work this week, read every word of war news in the newspaper, listened to the radio each night until everyone around the stations had signed off and gone home except the night watchman.
But last night when all was over and the night sounds had died down to the drowsy whispers of birds, with the occasional outburst from some of the neighbours’ roosters, I vowed that I would take a day off, and pretend to myself that there was no war anywhere.
To that end, I arose in the grey dawn, to a world that was drowsy and grey and innocent; the evergreens across the road were perfectly still, as quiet as a row of freshly dressed children waiting for Santa Claus, and warned that one whisper would drive him away.
No wonder people’s hearts turn to the country in time of anxiety. There is a healing in quiet fields, and in the motionless trees. Just now the sumach burns red, with still enough of the green to give it life; the lavender is putting out fresh blooms, deceived by this warm October.
The fire was crackling in the stove when I came into the kitchen, and the new kettle with the red handle, boiling, so I made coffee and spread the red and white checked cloth on the kitchen table.
Soon the bacon was sending out its matchless odour, and the toaster was all set for action. Then I went out to call the person, who, for certain activities in the garden, has been called the Hoe Worm.
Now on this particular day, set apart for quiet thought, I had promised the H.W. I would help him dismantle the garden.
I had two good reasons for this. I wanted to work with my hands, as a means of release, and I wanted to be sure that nothing was dug up that should be left.
He has a heavy hand with plants, as I have said before, and I am still sensitive to what happened to the tamarisk tree this spring. He gave it a pruning that robbed it of two years’ growth. When caught red-handed, he gave the lame excuse that it was an eyesore to have a tree that would not grow straight.
Years ago, when that delightful play Alf’s Button was shown, we got a word, which expresses this tendency to do things too well. Alf was a British soldier, who, quite by accident, found there was magic in the buttons on his tunic. When he rubbed them, there appeared before him a weird little genie who performed great and wonderful feats. Alf had only to express a wish to have it come to pass. Alf could not remember his real name and so called him “Eustace.”
When the war was over, and Alf was going home to England, he expressed a wish that he might have a little house, a wife and children. Rubbing his buttons, he summoned Eustace, and explained his entirely worthy ambition.
Eustace waved his arms in incantation, and behold there arrived from nowhere a neat English cottage, with a rose above the door, and an aspedistra in the hall. Then came the faithful Jenny, the girl he left behind him, lovelier than ever.
Alf was about to rush forward to greet his long-lost sweetheart, when an outsized perambulator blocked his way, and from it issued some lusty cries. Alf put back the hood and found not one baby, but a neat row of three.
Then it was that Alf muttered his first word of criticism.
“Eustace,” he said sternly. “I don’t forget all you’ve done, but you are so ’olesale.”
That name “Eustace” has passed into the language of our family and it is a good word, we needed it. It is used not only as a proper noun, but as a verb. For example: We had a nice bed of daisies beside our house this summer. I had seen them growing in the Butchart Gardens last year, bought a package of seed, and planted them in hope.
Many of them came up and bloomed. They lacked the lavish magnificence of their ancestors, but they were nice little flowers, yellow with brown hearts, white with purple hearts, and some had striped petals of yellow and brown. In July, they passed their zenith and began to wither.
One day, I found the H.W. pulling them out. I protested, saying they would bloom again in the fall if they were just cut down, but not uprooted. He justified himself by saying he would rather see a nice piece of clean, well-cultivated soil than untidy stalks. I managed to save three or four of the little plants that he missed in the first purge.
Now, late in October, these little plants are in full bloom, bigger and better than before, in lovely shades of cream and brown and burnt orange. I will admit I have looked after them well. I have cultivated around the stalks with a kitchen fork, and watered them when the weather was dry. But I think I deserve honourable mention for not saying a word when they bloomed.
I was afraid he hadn’t noticed them at all, so presented him with one for his button hole. He asked me if I did this in affection or retaliation, so then I knew that he realized what a mass of bloom we would have had if he had not “eustaced” them.
We worked all morning, cutting down hollyhock stalks, almost as high as the beanstalk Jack climbed. At the bottom of each is a cluster of green shoots, and some have buds almost ready for blooming.
We carried stalks to the compost pit, and raked the grass where the cherries had fallen, and when noon time came my hands were sore, for I have never learned to work with gloves, but the swept lawn, the tidy flower beds and border atoned for my discomfort.
For the whole afternoon I sat around in mellow meditation, reading from an anthology of modern verse, and all went well until the newspaper came in at 6 o’clock.
When I opened it, one picture sprang at me. It was a picture taken by a war correspondent of an old peasant woman in Poland standing on a road, looking at her little home in flames. Even in the newspaper picture the stark terror in her eyes is registered. All she had worked for and loved, her stake, her shelter from the rain and cold — burning before her eyes! Hit by an incendiary bomb.
No, there can be no peace for any of us in a world where tragedies like this can happen. Peace is not something that can be found like a diamond ring that has fallen behind the radio. It has to be made. By common people like you and me — in all countries. And it is costly. It will come only by sacrifice and humility and great patience and high endeavour.
