The Moon Endureth: Tales and Fancies Part 19

PLAIN FOLK

Since flaming angels drove our sire From Eden's green to walk the mire, We are the folk who tilled the plot And ground the grain and boiled the pot.

We hung the garden terraces That pleasured Queen Semiramis.

Our toil it was and burdened brain That set the Pyramids o'er the plain.

We marched from Egypt at G.o.d's call And drilled the ranks and fed them all; But never Eschol's wine drank we,-- Our bones lay 'twixt the sand and sea.

We officered the brazen bands That rode the far and desert lands; We bore the Roman eagles forth And made great roads from south to north; White cities flowered for holidays, But we, forgot, died far away.

And when the Lord called folk to Him, And some sat blissful at His feet, Ours was the task the bowl to brim, For on this earth even saints must eat.

The serfs have little need to think, Only to work and sleep and drink; A rover's life is boyish play, For when cares press he rides away; The king sits on his ruby throne, And calls the whole wide world his own.

But we, the plain folk, noon and night No surcease of our toil we see; We cannot ease our cares by flight, For Fortune holds our loves in fee.

We are not slaves to sell our wills, We are not kings to ride the hills, But patient men who jog and dance In the dull wake of circ.u.mstance; Loving our little patch of sun, Too weak our homely dues to shun, Too nice of conscience, or too free, To prate of rights--if rights there be.

The Scriptures tell us that the meek The earth shall have to work their will; It may be they shall find who seek, When they have topped the last long hill.

Meantime we serve among the dust For at the best a broken crust, A word of praise, and now and then The joy of turning home again.

But freemen still we fall or stand, We serve because our hearts command.

Though kings may boast and knights cavort, We broke the spears at Agincourt.

When odds were wild and hopes were down, We died in droves by Leipsic town.

Never a field was starkly won But ours the dead that faced the sun.

The slave will fight because he must, The rover for his ire and l.u.s.t, The king to pa.s.s an idle hour Or feast his fatted heart with power; But we, because we choose, we choose, Nothing to gain and much to lose, Holding it happier far to die Than falter in our decency.

The serfs may know an hour of pride When the high flames of tumult ride.

The rover has his days of ease When he has sacked his palaces.

A king may live a year like G.o.d When prostrate peoples drape the sod.

We ask for little,-leave to tend Our modest fields: at daylight's end The fires of home: a wife's caress: The star of children's happiness.

Vain hope! 'Tis ours for ever and aye To do the job the slaves have marred, To clear the wreckage of the fray, And please our kings by working hard.

Daily we mend their blunderings, Swachbucklers, demagogues, and kings!

What if we rose?--If some fine morn, Unnumbered as the autumn corn, With all the brains and all the skill Of stubborn back and steadfast will, We rose and, with the guns in train, Proposed to deal the cards again, And, tired of sitting up o' nights, Gave notice to our parasites, Announcing that in future they Who paid the piper should call the lay!

Then crowns would tumble down like nuts, And wastrels hide in water-b.u.t.ts; Each lamp-post as an epilogue: Would hold a pendent demagogue: Then would the world be for the wise!--

But ah! the plain folk never rise.

VIII

THE KINGS OF ORION

"An ape and a lion lie side by side in the heart of a man."

--PERSIAN PROVERB

Spring-fishing in the North is a cold game for a man whose blood has become thin in gentler climates. All afternoon I had failed to stir a fish, and the wan streams of the Laver, swirling between bare grey banks, were as icy to the eye as the sharp gusts of hail from the north-east were to the fingers. I cast mechanically till I grew weary, and then with an empty creel and a villainous temper set myself to trudge the two miles of bent to the inn. Some distant ridges of hill stood out snow-clad against the dun sky, and half in anger, half in dismal satisfaction, I told myself that fishing to-morrow would be as barren as to-day.

At the inn door a tall man was stamping his feet and watching a servant lifting rodcases from a dog-cart. Hooded and wrapped though he was, my friend Thirlstone was an unmistakable figure in any landscape. The long, haggard, brown face, with the skin drawn tightly over the cheek-bones, the keen blue eyes finely wrinkled round the corners with staring at many suns, the scar which gave his mouth a humorous droop to the right, made up a whole which was not easily forgotten. I had last seen him on the quay at Funchal bargaining with some rascally boatman to take him after mythical wild goats in Las Desertas. Before that we had met at an emba.s.sy ball in Vienna, and still earlier at a hill-station in Persia to which I had been sent post-haste by an anxious and embarra.s.sed Government. Also I had been at school with him, in those far-away days when we rode nine stone and dreamed of cricket averages. He was a soldier of note, who had taken part in two little wars and one big one; had himself conducted a political mission through a hard country with some success, and was habitually chosen by his superiors to keep his eyes open as a foreign attache in our neighbours' wars. But his fame as a hunter had gone abroad into places where even the name of the British army is unknown. He was the hungriest shikari I have ever seen, and I have seen many. If you are wise you will go forthwith to some library and procure a little book ent.i.tled "Three Hunting Expeditions," by A.W.T. It is a modest work, and the style is that of a leading article, but all the lore and pa.s.sion of the Red G.o.ds are in its pages.

The sitting-room at the inn is a place of comfort, and while Thirlstone warmed his long back at the fire I sank contentedly into one of the well-rubbed leather arm-chairs. The company of a friend made the weather and scarcity of salmon less the intolerable grievance they had seemed an hour ago than a joke to be laughed at. The landlord came in with whisky, and banked up the peats till they glowed beneath a pall of blue smoke.

"I hope to goodness we are alone," said Thirlstone, and he turned to the retreating landlord and asked the question.

"There's naebody bidin' the nicht forbye yoursels," he said, "but the morn there's a gentleman comin'. I got a letter frae him the day.

Maister Wiston, they ca him. Maybe ye ken him?"

I started at the name, which I knew very well. Thirlstone, who knew it better, stopped warming himself and walked to the window, where he stood pulling his moustache and staring at the snow. When the man had left the room, he turned to me with the face of one whose mind is made up on a course but uncertain of the best method.

"Do you know this sort of weather looks infernally unpromising? I've half a mind to chuck it and go back to town."

I gave him no encouragement, finding amus.e.m.e.nt in his difficulties.

"Oh, it's not so bad," I said, "and it won't last. To-morrow we may have the day of our lives."

He was silent for a little, staring at the fire. "Anyhow," he said at last, "we were fools to be so far up the valley. Why shouldn't we go down to the Forest Lodge? They'll take us in, and we should be deucedly comfortable, and the water's better."

"There's not a pool on the river to touch the stretch here," I said.

"I know, for I've fished every inch of it."

He had no reply to this, so he lit a pipe and held his peace for a time. Then, with some embarra.s.sment but the air of having made a discovery, he announced that his conscience was troubling him about his work, and he thought he ought to get back to it at once. "There are several things I have forgotten to see to, and they're rather important. I feel a beast behaving like this, but you won't mind, will you?"

"My dear Thirlstone," I said, "what is the good of hedging? Why can't you say you won't meet Wiston!"

His face cleared. "Well, that's the fact--I won't. It would be too infernally unpleasant. You see, I was once by way of being his friend, and he was in my regiment. I couldn't do it."

The landlord came in at the moment with a basket of peats. "How long is Capt.--Mr. Wiston staying here?" I asked.

"He's no bidin' ony time. He's just comin' here in the middle o' the day for his denner, and then drivin' up the water to Altbreac. He has the fishin' there."

Thirlstone's face showed profound relief. "Thank G.o.d!" I heard him mutter under his breath, and when the landlord had gone he fell to talking of salmon with enthusiasm. "We must make a big day of it to-morrow, dark to dark, you know. Thank Heaven, our beat's down-stream, too." And thereafter he made frequent excursions to the door, and bulletins on the weather were issued regularly.

Dinner over, we drew our chairs to the hearth, and fell to talk and the slow consumption of tobacco. When two men from the ends of the earth meet by a winter fire, their thoughts are certain to drift overseas.

We spoke of the racing tides off Vancouver, and the lonely pine-clad ridges running up to the snow-peaks of the Selkirks, to which we had both travelled once upon a time in search of sport. Thirlstone on his own account had gone wandering to Alaska, and brought back some bear-skins and a frost-bitten toe as trophies, and from his tales had consorted with the finest band of rogues which survives unhanged on this planet. Then some casual word took our thoughts to the south, and our memories dallied with Africa. Thirlstone had hunted in Somaliland and done mighty slaughter; while I had spent some never-to-be forgotten weeks long ago in the hinterland of Zanzibar, in the days before railways and game-preserves. I have gone through life with a keen eye for the discovery of earthly paradises, to which I intend to retire when my work is over, and the fairest I thought I had found above the Rift valley, where you had a hundred miles of blue horizon and the weather of Scotland. Thirlstone, not having been there, naturally differed, and urged the claim of a certain glen in Kashmir, where you may hunt two varieties of bear and three of buck in thickets of rhododendron, and see the mightiest mountain-wall on earth from your tent door. The mention of the Indian frontier brought us back to our professions, and for a little we talked "shop" with the unblushing confidence of those who know each other's work and approve it. As a very young soldier Thirlstone had gone shooting in the Pamirs, and had blundered into a Russian party of exploration which contained Kuropatkin. He had in consequence grossly outstayed his leave, having been detained for a fortnight by an arbitrary hospitality; but he had learned many things, and the experience had given him strong views on frontier questions. Half an hour was devoted to a masterly survey of the East, until a word pulled us up.

"I went there in '99" Thirlstone was saying,--"the time Wiston and I were sent--" and then he stopped, and his eager face clouded. Wiston's name cast a shadow over our reminiscences.

"What did he actually do?" I asked after a short silence.

"Pretty bad! He seemed a commonplace, good sort of fellow, popular, fairly competent, a little bad-tempered perhaps. And then suddenly he did something so extremely blackguardly that everything was at an end.

It's no good repeating details, and I hate to think about it. We know little about our neighbours, and I'm not so sure that we know much about ourselves. There may be appalling depths of iniquity in every one of us, only most people are fortunate enough to go through the world without meeting anything to wake the devil in them. I don't believe Wiston was bad in the ordinary sense. Only there was something else in him-somebody else, if you like--and in a moment it came uppermost, and he was a branded man. Ugh! it's a gruesome thought."

Thirlstone had let his pipe go out, and was staring moodily into the fire.

"How do you explain things like that?" he asked. "I have an idea of my own about them. We talk glibly of ourselves and our personality and our conscience, as if every man's nature were a smooth, round, white thing, like a chuckie-stone. But I believe there are two men-perhaps more-in every one of us. There's our ordinary self, generally rather humdrum; and then there's a bit of something else, good, bad, but never indifferent,--and it is that something else which may make a man a saint or a great villain."

"'The Kings of Orion have come to earth,'" I quoted.

Something in the words struck Thirlstone, and he asked me what was the yarn I spoke of.

"It's an old legend," I explained. "When the kings were driven out of Orion, they were sent to this planet and given each his habitation in some mortal soul. There were differences of character in that royal family, and so the alter ego which dwells alongside of us may be virtuous or very much the reverse. But the point is that he is always greater than ourselves, for he has been a king. It's a foolish story, but very widely believed. There is something of the sort in Celtic folk-lore, and there's a reference to it in Ausonius. Also the bandits in the Bakhtiari have a version of it in a very excellent ballad."