I met A----- the other evening, and asked him to dine with me on Monday.
I don"t know why I ask A----- to dine with me, but about once a month I do. He is an uninteresting man.
"I can"t," he said, "I"ve got to go to the B-----s"; confounded nuisance, it will be infernally dull."
"Why go?" I asked.
"I really don"t know," he replied.
A little later B----- met me, and asked me to dine with him on Monday.
"I can"t," I answered, "some friends are coming to us that evening. It"s a duty dinner, you know the sort of thing."
"I wish you could have managed it," he said, "I shall have no one to talk to. The A-----s are coming, and they bore me to death."
"Why do you ask him?" I suggested.
"Upon my word, I really don"t know," he replied.
But to return to our rooks. We were speaking of their social instincts.
Some dozen of them--the "scallywags" and bachelors of the community, I judge them to be--have started a Club. For a month past I have been trying to understand what the affair was. Now I know: it is a Club.
And for their Club House they have chosen, of course, the tree nearest my bedroom window. I can guess how that came about; it was my own fault, I never thought of it. About two months ago, a single rook--suffering from indigestion or an unhappy marriage, I know not--chose this tree one night for purposes of reflection. He woke me up: I felt angry. I opened the window, and threw an empty soda-water bottle at him. Of course it did not hit him, and finding nothing else to throw, I shouted at him, thinking to frighten him away. He took no notice, but went on talking to himself. I shouted louder, and woke up my own dog. The dog barked furiously, and woke up most things within a quarter of a mile. I had to go down with a boot-jack--the only thing I could find handy--to soothe the dog. Two hours later I fell asleep from exhaustion. I left the rook still cawing.
The next night he came again. I should say he was a bird with a sense of humour. Thinking this might happen, I had, however, taken the precaution to have a few stones ready. I opened the window wide, and fired them one after another into the tree. After I had closed the window, he hopped down nearer, and cawed louder than ever. I think he wanted me to throw more stones at him: he appeared to regard the whole proceeding as a game. On the third night, as I heard nothing of him, I flattered myself that, in spite of his bravado, I had discouraged him. I might have known rooks better.
What happened when the Club was being formed, I take it, was this:
"Where shall we fix upon for our Club House?" said the secretary, all other points having been disposed of. One suggested this tree, another suggested that. Then up spoke this particular rook:
"I"ll tell you where," said he, "in the yew tree opposite the porch. And I"ll tell you for why. Just about an hour before dawn a man comes to the window over the porch, dressed in the most comical costume you ever set eyes upon. I"ll tell you what he reminds me of--those little statues that men use for decorating fields. He opens the window, and throws a lot of things out upon the lawn, and then he dances and sings. It"s awfully interesting, and you can see it all from the yew tree."
That, I am convinced, is how the Club came to fix upon the tree next my window. I have had the satisfaction of denying them the exhibition they antic.i.p.ated, and I cheer myself with the hope that they have visited their disappointment upon their misleader.
There is a difference between Rook Clubs and ours. In our clubs the respectable members arrive early, and leave at a reasonable hour; in Rook Clubs, it would appear, this principle is reversed. The Mad Hatter would have liked this Club--it would have been a club after his own heart. It opens at half-past two in the morning, and the first to arrive are the most disreputable members. In Rook-land the rowdy-dowdy, randy-dandy, rollicky-ranky boys get up very early in the morning and go to bed in the afternoon. Towards dawn, the older, more orderly members drop in for reasonable talk, and the Club becomes more respectable. The tree closes about six. For the first two hours, however, the goings-on are disgraceful. The proceedings, as often as not, open with a fight. If no two gentlemen can be found to oblige with a fight, the next noisiest thing to fall back upon is held to be a song. It is no satisfaction to me to be told that rooks cannot sing. _I_ know that, without the trouble of referring to the natural history book. It is the rook who does not know it; HE thinks he can; and as a matter of fact, he does. You can criticize his singing, you can call it what you like, but you can"t stop it--at least, that is my experience. The song selected is sure to be one with a chorus. Towards the end it becomes mainly chorus, unless the soloist be an extra powerful bird, determined to insist upon his rights.
The President knows nothing of this Club. He gets up himself about seven--three hours after all the others have finished breakfast--and then fusses round under the impression that he is waking up the colony, the fat-headed old fool. He is the poorest thing in Presidents I have ever heard of. A South American Republic would supply a better article.
The rooks themselves, the married majority, fathers of families, respectable nestholders, are as indignant as I am. I hear complaints from all quarters.
Reflection comes to one as, towards the close of these chill afternoons in early spring, one leans upon the paddock gate watching the noisy bustling in the bare elms.
So the earth is growing green again, and love is come again unto the hearts of us old sober-coated fellows. Oh, Madam, your feathers gleam wondrous black, and your bonnie bright eye stabs deep. Come, sit by our side, and we"ll tell you a tale such as rook never told before. It"s the tale of a nest in a topmost bough, that sways in the good west wind.
It"s strong without, but it"s soft within, where the little green eggs lie safe. And there sits in that nest a lady sweet, and she caws with joy, for, afar, she sees the rook she loves the best. Oh, he has been east, and he has been west, and his crop it is full of worms and slugs, and they are all for her.
We are old, old rooks, so many of us. The white is mingling with the purple black upon our b.r.e.a.s.t.s. We have seen these tall elms grow from saplings; we have seen the old trees fall and die. Yet each season come to us again the young thoughts. So we mate and build and gather that again our old, old hearts may quiver to the thin cry of our newborn.
Mother Nature has but one care, the children. We talk of Love as the Lord of Life: it is but the Minister. Our novels end where Nature"s tale begins. The drama that our curtain falls upon, is but the prologue to her play. How the ancient Dame must laugh as she listens to the prattle of her children. "Is Marriage a Failure?" "Is Life worth Living?"
"The New Woman versus the Old." So, perhaps, the waves of the Atlantic discuss vehemently whether they shall flow east or west.
Motherhood is the law of the Universe. The whole duty of man is to be a mother. We labour: to what end? the children--the woman in the home, the man in the community. The nation takes thought for its future: why? In a few years its statesmen, its soldiers, its merchants, its toilers, will be gathered unto their fathers. Why trouble we ourselves about the future? The country pours its blood and treasure into the earth that the children may reap. Foolish Jacques Bonhomie, his addled brain full of dreams, rushes with b.l.o.o.d.y hands to give his blood for Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. He will not live to see, except in vision, the new world he gives his bones to build--even his spinning word-whipped head knows that. But the children! they shall live sweeter lives. The peasant leaves his fireside to die upon the battle-field. What is it to him, a grain in the human sand, that Russia should conquer the East, that Germany should be united, that the English flag should wave above new lands? the heritage his fathers left him shall be greater for his sons.
Patriotism! what is it but the mother instinct of a people?
Take it that the decree has gone forth from Heaven: There shall be no more generations, with this life the world shall die. Think you we should move another hand? The ships would rot in the harbours, the grain would rot in the ground. Should we paint pictures, write books, make music? hemmed in by that onward creeping sea of silence. Think you with what eyes husband and wife would look on one another. Think you of the wooing--the spring of Love dried up; love only a pool of stagnant water.
How little we seem to realize this foundation of our life. Herein, if nowhere else, lies our eternity. This Ego shall never die--unless the human race from beginning to end be but a pa.s.sing jest of the G.o.ds, to be swept aside when wearied of, leaving room for new experiments. These features of mine--we will not discuss their aesthetic value--shall never disappear; modified, varied, but in essential the same, they shall continue in ever increasing circles to the end of Time. This temperament of mine--this good and evil that is in me, it shall grow with every age, spreading ever wider, combining, amalgamating. I go into my children and my children"s children, I am eternal. I am they, they are I. The tree withers and you clear the ground, thankful if out of its dead limbs you can make good firewood; but its spirit, its life, is in fifty saplings.
The tree dies not, it changes.
These men and women that pa.s.s me in the street, this one hurrying to his office, this one to his club, another to his love, they are the mothers of the world to come.
This greedy trickster in stocks and shares, he cheats, he lies, he wrongs all men--for what? Follow him to his luxurious home in the suburbs: what do you find? A man with children on his knee, telling them stories, promising them toys. His anxious, sordid life, for what object is it lived? That these children may possess the things that he thinks good for them. Our very vices, side by side with our virtues, spring from this one root, Motherhood. It is the one seed of the Universe. The planets are but children of the sun, the moon but an offspring of the earth, stone of her stone, iron of her iron. What is the Great Centre of us all, life animate and inanimate--if any life be inanimate? Is the eternal universe one dim figure, Motherhood, filling all s.p.a.ce?
This scheming Mother of Mayfair, angling for a rich son-in-law! Not a pleasing portrait to look upon, from one point of view. Let us look at it, for a moment, from another. How weary she must be! This is her third "function" to-night; the paint is running off her poor face. She has been snubbed a dozen times by her social superiors, openly insulted by a d.u.c.h.ess; yet she bears it with a patient smile. It is a pitiful ambition, hers: it is that her child shall marry money, shall have carriages and many servants, live in Park Lane, wear diamonds, see her name in the Society Papers. At whatever cost to herself, her daughter shall, if possible, enjoy these things. She could so much more comfortably go to bed, and leave the child to marry some well-to-do commercial traveller. Justice, Reader, even for such. Her sordid scheming is but the deformed child of Motherhood.
Motherhood! it is the gamut of G.o.d"s orchestra, savageness and cruelty at the one end, tenderness and self-sacrifice at the other.
The sparrow-hawk fights the hen: he seeking food for his brood, she defending hers with her life. The spider sucks the fly to feed its myriad young; the cat tortures the mouse to give its still throbbing carcase to her kittens, and man wrongs man for children"s sake. Perhaps when the riot of the world reaches us whole, not broken, we shall learn it is a harmony, each jangling discord fallen into its place around the central theme, Motherhood.
ON THE INADVISABILITY OF FOLLOWING ADVICE
I was pacing the Euston platform late one winter"s night, waiting for the last train to Watford, when I noticed a man cursing an automatic machine. Twice he shook his fist at it. I expected every moment to see him strike it. Naturally curious, I drew near softly. I wanted to catch what he was saying. However, he heard my approaching footsteps, and turned on me. "Are you the man," said he, "who was here just now?"
"Just where?" I replied. I had been pacing up and down the platform for about five minutes.
"Why here, where we are standing," he snapped out. "Where do you think "here" is--over there?" He seemed irritable.
"I may have pa.s.sed this spot in the course of my peregrinations, if that is what you mean," I replied. I spoke with studied politeness; my idea was to rebuke his rudeness.
"I mean," he answered, "are you the man that spoke to me, just a minute ago?"
"I am not that man," I said; "good-night."
"Are you sure?" he persisted.
"One is not likely to forget talking to you," I retorted.
His tone had been most offensive. "I beg your pardon," he replied grudgingly. "I thought you looked like the man who spoke to me a minute or so ago."
I felt mollified; he was the only other man on the platform, and I had a quarter of an hour to wait. "No, it certainly wasn"t me," I returned genially, but ungrammatically. "Why, did you want him?"
"Yes, I did," he answered. "I put a penny in the slot here," he continued, feeling apparently the need of unburdening himself: "wanted a box of matches. I couldn"t get anything put, and I was shaking the machine, and swearing at it, as one does, when there came along a man, about your size, and--you"re SURE it wasn"t you?"
"Positive," I again ungrammatically replied; "I would tell you if it had been. What did he do?"
"Well, he saw what had happened, or guessed it. He said, "They are troublesome things, those machines; they want understanding." I said, "They want taking up and flinging into the sea, that"s what they want!"
I was feeling mad because I hadn"t a match about me, and I use a lot. He said, "They stick sometimes; the thing to do is to put another penny in; the weight of the first penny is not always sufficient. The second penny loosens the drawer and tumbles out itself; so that you get your purchase together with your first penny back again. I have often succeeded that way." Well, it seemed a silly explanation, but he talked as if he had been weaned by an automatic machine, and I was sawney enough to listen to him. I dropped in what I thought was another penny. I have just discovered it was a two-shilling piece. The fool was right to a certain extent; I have got something out. I have got this."
He held it towards me; I looked at it. It was a packet of Everton toffee.