The Whale and the Grasshopper Part 14

KINGS AND COMMONERS

"Well," said Padna, as he rested his elbows on the parapet of Blackrock Castle, and watched the river Lee winding its way towards the ocean, "when I look upon a scene so charming as this, with its matchless beauty, I feel that I am not myself at all, but some mediaeval king or other, surveying my dominions, and waiting for the sound of the hunter's horn to wake me from my revery. If at the present moment, an army of chivalrous archers, with white plumes in their green hats and bows and arrows slung on their shoulders and Robin Hood himself at their head, were to march from out the woods at Glountawn, I wouldn't utter the least note of surprise or exclamation. No, Micus, not a single word would I say, even though they might lay a herd of slaughtered deer at my feet, and pin a falcon's wing on my breast; so much do I feel a part of the good old days when there was no duty on tobacco and whiskey."

"Sometimes," said Micus, "I too feel that I own the whole countryside, and in a sense I do. Because I can get as much pleasure from looking at it, and admiring all its dazzling splendour, as if I had the trouble of keeping it in order and paying rates and taxes. And after all, what does any of us want but the world to look at, enough to eat and drink, and a little diversion when we feel like it?"

"A man with imagination and insight," said Padna, "need never want for entertainment, because he can always appreciate and enjoy the folly of others, without having to pay for it. But be that as it may, 'tis more satisfying still to have a love of nature and all that's beautiful, and a healthy distaste for all that's coa.r.s.e and ugly."

"The world is made up of all kinds of people, who want to enjoy themselves in some way or other," said Micus, "and the spirit of destruction is the Devil's contribution to human happiness. Why, man alive, you could drown the whole German Army, and the Kaiser and all his henchmen, in the depths of beautiful Lough Mahon that stretches before us, and the French wouldn't feel the least sorry. And you could drown the whole French Army and General Joffre, and the Germans wouldn't feel sorry. And you could drown Sir Blunderbluff Carson, and John Redmond wouldn't feel sorry, and you could drown the Russian, French, English and German armies, and the socialists wouldn't be sorry, and you could drown all the socialists and the Salvation Army, and the Devil wouldn't be sorry."

"All the same," said Padna, "'twould be a pity to wound the dignity of the Kaiser by drowning him in a comparatively small and shallow place like Lough Mahon when he could be drowned just as comfortably and easily in the middle of the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean,--or the Dardanelles, for that matter. And as for all the trouble 'twould give the Russians, you could tie him by the heels to a clothesline in your back yard, the way they tied the tails of the Kilkenny cats, and dip his head in a bucket of goat's milk mixed with gunpowder, and let him drown that way."

"There's good and bad in the worst of us," said Micus, "and I am sure the Allies would be sorry to have him drowned at all, when he could be given, for his own private use and benefit, a superabundance of everlasting peace tokens, such as they give the poor devils in the trenches."

"Free samples of poisonous gas, you mean, I presume," said Padna.

"Yes," said Micus. "However, 'tisn't for the likes of us to be discussing the ways of mighty monarchs when we are only poor men ourselves."

"Hard work," said Padna, "never killed the gentry."

"No," said Micus, "nor decency either, and if they were to eat twice as much, 'twouldn't make them any better."

"When you come to think about it," said Padna, "'tis the h.e.l.l of a thing why a man should have to work for himself, or have to work at all."

"Indeed it is, and I always lose my temper when I think of the poor men and women, too, who must get up when it is only time to be going to bed, and work until they fall on the floor from sheer exhaustion and no one to care or bother about them. Sure, there must be something wrong, if that sort of thing is right, and the gentry should be ashamed of themselves for making such conditions possible and they doing nothing but spending money that they never earned, and making laws for the poor."

"'Tis disgusting," said Micus, "to think that we should have to work for any one, even though they might be the Prince of Wales, or the Duke of the North Pole himself."

"I can't see for the life of me," said Padna, "why we couldn't make our living as easy as the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, the insects of the field, or the policemen. Sure, when you come to think of it, a king is no more than any other man, only for all the fuss that does be made about him. And I don't see why one man should be thought better than another when he isn't. Only for the fine clothes that some of us wear, no one would take the least notice of us, and if you were to put a dead king and a dead duke, and yourself and myself beside each other, Micus, on the top of the Galtee Mountains, and exposed our carca.s.ses to the rains and the snow, not to mention the southwesterly gales, for three months, when the experts would come along to identify us, 'tis the way they would think that you were the duke and I was the king, and the duke was no one but yourself, and who could the king be but myself."

"And maybe 'tis the way that they would think that you were only the duke, and that myself was the king," said Padna.

"'Tis true, of course, that a king is no more than one of ourselves when he is dead, but there is no doubt about him being a good deal more when he is alive. Nevertheless, it would be a proud thing for the Padna Dan family to have one of their kinsmen buried with the pomp and ceremony of a mighty monarch, and they never to produce anything more than birdcatchers and bowl players. Yes, Padna, 'twould be a great thing entirely, and ye that always lived in a house that you could put your hand down the chimney and open the front door, if you forgot your latch-key. The mistake would never be discovered till the Judgment Day, and then you'd rise from your grave, glorious and triumphant with a crown of shiny jewels on your head, and a royal sceptre in your hand, and a robe of state that would cover you all over, and you looking as happy and contented as though you were used to wearing overcoats all your lifetime."

"And what about yourself, Micus," said Padna, "and you with a red cap on your head, like the dukes wear on state occasions, and a s...o...b..ll in one hand and a bear's claw in the other, the way the people would think you were the Duke of the North Pole and not yourself at all?"

"All the same," said Micus, "I'd rather be a duke at any time than have to work for a living."

"So would I," said Padna. "And in that sense, we only echo the true sentiments of every democrat. Yet, when I was a young man, I never bothered my head about royalty, but I was as full of wild fancies as a balloon is of wind. And there wasn't one from the Old Head of Kinsale to the Giants' Causeway more headstrong and intolerant than myself."

"I believe every word of that," said Micus.

"Like other temperamental and idealistic people, I naturally felt very disappointed and likewise disgusted with the existing order of things, and there and then I ses to myself: 'Padna Dan,' ses I, 'the world is in a wretched condition and badly wants a great reformer.' So with that I appointed myself mediator between good and evil, and indeed, at first I thought it would be possible to form some kind of compromise between those two giant forces that have kept the world in awe ever since Adam was a boy. But subsequently I decided that the best and only thing to do would be to rid the world of evil altogether."

"And how could that be done at all?" said Micus.

"Well, as I was filled with the enthusiasm and ignorance of youth, I tried to make up my mind whether I would follow in the footsteps of Savonarola, St. Francis, or St. Patrick himself, but when I thought of what happened to Savonarola, and after all these years we don't know whether St. Patrick was a Scotchman or an Irishman, but princ.i.p.ally when I took into consideration my own strong sense of personal comfort, and my insignificance withal, when compared to greater men who have suffered so much and accomplished so little, I finally decided to leave the regeneration of mankind to the suffragettes or some one else."

"You're a philosopher," said Micus, "but I'm afraid that you will accomplish no more for humanity with your old talk, than a patent medicine advertis.e.m.e.nt or the police themselves. Sure, every young man with a spark of decency in him must have felt as generous as yourself at some time or other in his life. If we could all reform ourselves before trying to reform others, then there would be some hope for mankind, but generous impulses such as yours, Padna Dan, are only produced by the a.s.similation of black coffee or strong tea, or else an innate conceit. When the Lord made the world, he must have known the kind of people he was going to put there. Hence, Padna, the superabundance of people like yourself to be met with everywhere."

"Well," said Padna, "whether we mean what we say or not, we must keep talking. Sure, 'tis talk that keeps the world going, and if we are not dead in a hundred years, we will be very near it, so it behooves us one and all to enjoy ourselves while we are here, lest it may be unwise to postpone our pleasure until we arrive in the other world."

"This world," said Micus, "in a sense, is good enough for me, and I wouldn't object to living on here for ever, if I could, instead of taking a chance with what's to follow."

"Life is a game of ups and downs, and love very often is an accident. If we did not meet our wives, we never would have married them, of course. And if our wives did not meet us, they might have met some one better. And happy indeed is the man who marries the woman he loves before she marries some one else."

"'Tis sad to think," said Padna, "that when we get sensible enough to appreciate our own folly, the beauties of nature, and the idiosyncracies of our friends and enemies, we find ourselves on the brink of the grave. Yet, we might all be worse off and treated no better than the poor prisoners of Sarduanna."

"We are all prisoners, in a sense, from the very minute we are born, and we may be prisoners after we are dead too, for all any of us know,"

said Micus.

"That may be," said Padna, "but nevertheless, some of us know how to treat ourselves better than the authorities treat the prisoners of Sarduanna."

"And how are they treated at all? Is it the way they get too much to eat and not enough of work, or too much work and not enough to eat?"

"'Tisn't so much one as the other, but something worse than either. They get nothing to eat but pickled pork from one end of the year to the other," said Padna.

"And what do they get to quench their thirst?" said Micus.

"Salt fish," said Padna.

THE FOLLY OF BEING FOOLISH

"What are you doing there?" said Padna Dan to Micus Pat, as he watched him sifting sand between his fingers as he stood on the sh.o.r.e of Bantry Bay.

"I'm doing what n.o.body ever thought of doing before and what no one may ever think of doing again," said Micus. "I'm counting the pebbles of Bantry Bay from Dunboy to Glengarriffe. And that's more than Napoleon thought of doing."

"And why should you be doing the likes of that?" said Padna.

"Well," said Micus, "when they're all counted, I'll know more than before and be as famous as the King of Spain himself."

"You might as well be trying to count all the blades of gra.s.s from Dunkirk to Belgrade, but you'd be dead and forgotten long before you'd have as much as the ten thousandth part of half of them counted,"

said Padna.

"What do you know about counting pebbles or the red skeeories that does be on the white thorn-bushes in the month of August?" said Micus.

"As much as any sensible man wants to know," said Padna. "If you want to be really foolish, you ought to leave the pebbles alone, and start counting all the grains of sand in the world."