Part 12

Then, to my increased astonishment, I saw behind the circles of the birds a number of other animals besides the hare. At least five kinds of deer--the red, the fallow, the roe, the common deer, whose name I’ve forgotten, which one finds in Vancouver Island, and the South African springbok, that swarm in from the Karoo at certain seasons, among which I had that happy week once in Namaqualand, shooting them from horseback after a gallop to cut them off--very good eating as camp fare goes, and making nice rugs if you sew their skins together. There, too, was the hyena I missed, probably not altogether; but he got off, to my chagrin--queer-looking brute! Rabbits of course had come--hundreds and hundreds of them. If--like everybody else--I’ve done such a lot of it, I can’t honestly say I’ve ever cared much for shooting rabbits, though the effect is neat enough when you get them just right and they turn head over heels--and anyway, the prolific little brutes have to be kept down. There, too, actually was my wild ostrich--the one I galloped so hard after, letting off my Winchester at half a mile, only to see him vanish over the horizon. Next him was the bear whose lair I came across at the Nanaimo Lakes. How I did lurk about to get that fellow! And, by Jove! close to him, two cougars. I never got a shot at them, never even saw one of the brutes all the time I was camping in Vancouver Island, where they lie flat along the branches over your head, waiting to get a chance at deer, sheep, dog, pig, or anything handy. But they had come now sure enough, glaring at me with their greenish cats’-eyes--powerful-looking creatures! And next them sat a little meerkat--not much larger than a weasel--without its head! Ah yes!--that trial shot, as we trekked out from Rous’s farm, and I wanted to try the little new rifle I had borrowed. It was sitting over its hole fully seventy yards from the wagon, quite unconscious of danger. I just took aim and pulled; and there it was, without its head, fallen across its hole. I remember well how pleased our “boys” were. And I too! Not a bad little rifle, that!

Outside the ring of beasts I could see foxes moving, not mixing with the stationary creatures, as if afraid of suggesting that I had shot them, instead of being present at their deaths in the proper fashion. One, quite a cub, kept limping round on three legs--the one, no doubt, whose pad was given me, out cubbing, as a boy. I put that wretched pad in my hat-box, and forgot it, so that I was compelled to throw the whole stinking show away. There were quite a lot of grown foxes; it certainly showed delicacy on their part, not sitting down with the others. There was really a tremendous crowd of creatures altogether by this time! I should think every beast and bird I ever shot, or even had a chance of killing, must have been there, and all whispering: “Look at him! The ferocious brute! Oh, look at him!”

Animal lover, as every true sportsman is, those words hurt me. If there is one thing on which we sportsmen pride ourselves, and legitimately, it is a humane feeling toward all furred and feathered creatures--and, as every one knows, we are foremost in all efforts to diminish their unnecessary sufferings.

The corroboree about me which they were obviously holding became, as I grew used to their manner of talking, increasingly audible. But it was the quail’s words that I first distinguished.

“He certainly ate me,” he said; “said I was good, too!”

“I do not believe”--this was the first hare speaking--“that he shot me for that reason; he did shoot me, and I was jugged, but he wouldn’t touch me. And the same day he shot eleven brace of partridges, didn’t he?” Twenty-two partridges assented. “And he only ate two of you all told--that proves he didn’t want us for food.”

The hare’s words had given me relief, for I somehow disliked intensely the gluttonous notion conveyed by the quail that I shot merely in order to devour the result. Any one with the faintest instincts of a sportsman will bear me out in this.

When the hare had spoken there was a murmur all round. I could not at first make out its significance, till I heard one of the cougars say: “We kill only when we want to eat”; and the bear, who, I noticed, was a lady, added: “No bear kills anything she cannot devour”; and, quite clear, I caught the quacking words of a wild duck. “We eat every worm we catch, and we’d eat more if we could get them.”

Then again from the whole throng came that shivering whisper: “Look at him! The ferocious brute! Oh, look at him!”

In spite of their numbers, they seemed afraid of me, seemed actually to hold me in a kind of horror--me, an animal lover, and without a gun! I felt it bitterly. “How is it,” I thought, “that not one of them seems to have an inkling of what it means to be a sportsman, not one, of them seems to comprehend the instinct which makes one love sport just for the--er--danger of it?” The hare spoke again.

“Foxes,” it murmured, “kill for the love of killing. Man is a kind of fox.” A violent dissent at once rose from the foxes, till of one them, who seemed the eldest, said: “We certainly kill as much as we can, but we should always carry it all off and eat it if man gave us time--the ferocious brutes!” You cannot expect much of foxes, but it struck me as especially foxy that he should put the wanton character of his destructiveness off on man, especially when he must have known how carefully we preserve the fox, in the best interests of sport. A pheasant ejaculated shrilly: “He killed sixty of us one day to his own gun, and went off that same evening without eating even a wing!” And again came that shivering whisper: “Look at him! The ferocious brute! Oh, look at him!” It was too absurd! As if they could not realise that a sportsman shoots almost entirely for the mouths of others! But I checked myself, remembering that altruism is a purely human attribute. “They get a big price for us!” said a woodcock, “especially if they shoot us early. _I_ fetched several shillings.” Really, the ignorance of these birds! As if modern sportsmen knew anything of what happens after a day’s shooting! All that is left to the butler and the keeper. Beaters, of course, and cartridges must be paid for, to say nothing of the sin of waste. “I would not think them so much worse than foxes,” said a rabbit, “if they didn’t often hurt you, so that you take hours dying. I was seven hours dying in great agony, and one of my brothers was twelve. Weren’t you, brother?” A second rabbit nodded. “But perhaps that’s better than trapping,” he said. “Remember mother!” “Ah!” a partridge muttered, “foxes at all events do bite your head off clean. But men often break your wing, or your leg, and leave you!” And again that shivering whisper rose: “Look at him! The ferocious brute! Oh, look at him!”

By this time the whole thing was so getting on my nerves that if I could have risen I should have rushed at them, but a weight as of lead seemed to bind me to the ground, and all I could do was to thank God that they did not seem to know of my condition, for, though there were no man-eaters among them, I could not tell what they might do if they realised that I was helpless--the sentiments of chivalry and generosity being confined to man, as we all know.

“Yes,” said the capercailzie slowly, “I am a shy bird, and was often shot at before this one got me; and though I’m strong, my size is so against me that I always took a pellet or two away with me; and what can you do then? Those ferocious brutes take the shot out of their faces and hands when they shoot each other by mistake--I’ve seen them; but we have no chance to do that.” A snipe said shrilly: “What I object to is that he doesn’t eat us till he’s had too much already. I come in on toast at the fifth course; it hurts one’s feelings.”

“Ferocious brute, killing everything he sees.”

I felt my blood fairly boil, and longed to cry out: “You beasts! You know that we don’t kill everything we see! We leave that to cockneys, and foreigners.” But just as I had no power of movement, so I seemed to have no power of speech. And suddenly a little voice, high up over me, piped down: “They never shoot us larks.” I have always loved the lark; how grateful I felt to that little creature--till it added: “They do worse; they take and shut us up in little traps of wire till we pine away! Ferocious brutes!” In all my life I think I never was more disappointed! The second cougar spoke: “He once passed within spring of me. What do you say, friends; shall we go for him?” The shivering answer came from all: “Go for him! Ferocious brute! Oh, go for him!” And I heard the sound of hundreds of soft wings and pads ruffling and shuffling. And, knowing that I had no power to move an inch, I shut my eyes. Lying there motionless, as a beetle that shams dead, I felt them creeping, creeping, till all round me and over me was the sound of nostrils sniffing; and every second I expected to feel the nip of teeth and beaks in the fleshy parts of me. But nothing came, and with an effort I reopened my eyes. There they were, hideously close, with an expression on their faces that I could not read; a sort of wry look, every nose and beak turned a little to one side. And suddenly I heard the old fox saying: “It’s impossible, with a smell like that; we could never eat him!” From every one of them came a sort of sniff or sneeze as of disgust, and as they began to back away I distinctly heard the hyena mutter: “He’s not wholesome--not wholesome--the ferocious brute!”

The relief of that moment was swamped by my natural indignation that these impudent birds and beasts should presume to think that I, a British sportsman, would not be good to eat. Then that beastly hyena added: “If we killed him, you know, and buried him for a few days, he might be tolerable.”

An old cock grouse called out at once: “Go back! Let us hang him! _We_ are always well hung. They like us a little decayed--ferocious brutes! Go back!” And once more I felt, from the stir and shuffle, that my fate hung in the balance; and I shut my eyes again, lest they might be tempted to begin on them. Then, to my infinite relief, I heard the cougar--have we not always been told that they were the friends of man?--mutter: “Pah! It’s clear we could never eat him fresh, and what we do not eat at once we do not touch!”

All the birds cried out in chorus: “No! That would be crow’s work.” And again I felt that I was saved. Then, to my horror, that infernal loon shrieked: “Kill him and have him stuffed--specimen of Ferocious Brute! Or fix his skin on a tree, and look at it--as he did with me!”

For a full minute I could feel the currents of opinion swaying over me, at this infamous proposal; then the old black-cock, the one whose tail is in my wife’s hat, said sharply: “Specimen! He’s not good enough!” And once more, for all my indignation at that gratuitous insult, I breathed freely.

“Come!” said the lady bear quietly: “Let us dribble on him a little, and go. The ferocious brute is not worth more!” And, during what seemed to me an eternity, one by one they came up, deposited on me a little saliva, looking into my eyes the while with a sort of horror and contempt, then vanished on the moor. The last to come up was the little meerkat without its head. It stood there; it could neither look at me nor drop saliva, but somehow it contrived to say: “I forgive you, ferocious brute; but I was very happy!” Then it, too, withdrew. And from all around, out of invisible presences in the air and the heather, came once more the shivering whisper: “Look at him! The ferocious brute! Oh, look at him!”

I sat up. There was a trilling sound in my ears. Above me in the blue a curlew was passing, uttering its cry. Ah! Thank Heaven!--I had been asleep! My day-dream had been caused by the potted grouse, and the pressure of the _Review_, which had lain, face downwards, on my chest, open at the page where I had been reading about the man-eating lions, and the death of those ferocious brutes. It shows what tricks of disproportion little things will play with the mind when it is not under reasonable control.

And, to get the unwholesome taste of it all out of my mouth, I at once jumped up and started for home at a round pace.

GROTESQUES

Κυνηδόν

I

The Angel Æthereal, on his official visit to the Earth in 1947, paused between the Bank and the Stock Exchange to smoke a cigarette and scrutinise the passers-by.

“How they swarm,” he said, “and with what seeming energy--in such an atmosphere! Of what can they be made?”

“Of money, sir,” replied his dragoman; “in the past, the present, or the future. Stocks are booming. The barometer of joy stands very high. Nothing like it has been known for thirty years; not, indeed, since the days of the Great Skirmish.”

“There is, then, a connection between joy and money?” remarked the Angel, letting smoke dribble through his chiselled nostrils.

“Such is the common belief; though to prove it might take time. I will, however, endeavour to do this if you desire it, sir.”

“I certainly do,” said the Angel; “for a less joyous-looking crowd I have seldom seen. Between every pair of brows there is a furrow, and no one whistles.”

“You do not understand,” returned his dragoman; “nor indeed is it surprising, for it is not so much the money as the thought that some day you need no longer make it which causes joy.”

“If that day is coming to all,” asked the Angel, “why do they not look joyful?”

“It is not so simple as that, sir. To the majority of these persons that day will never come, and many of them know it--these are called clerks; to some amongst the others, even, it will not come--these will be called bankrupts; to the rest it will come, and they will live at Wimblehurst and other islands of the blessed, when they have become so accustomed to making money that to cease making it will be equivalent to boredom, if not torture, or when they are so old that they can but spend it in trying to modify the disabilities of age.”

“What price joy, then?” said the Angel, raising his eyebrows. “For that, I fancy, is the expression you use?”

“I perceive, sir,” answered his dragoman, “that you have not yet regained your understanding of the human being, and especially of the breed which inhabits this country. Illusion is what we are after. Without our illusions we might just as well be angels or Frenchmen, who pursue at all events to some extent the sordid reality known as ‘_le plaisir_,’ or enjoyment of life. In pursuit of illusion we go on making money and furrows in our brows, for the process is wearing. I speak, of course, of the bourgeoisie or Patriotic classes; for the practice of the Laborious is different, though their illusions are the same.”

“How?” asked the Angel briefly.

“Why, sir, both hold the illusion that they will one day be joyful through the possession of money; but whereas the Patriotic expect to make it through the labour of the Laborious, the Laborious expect to make it through the labour of the Patriotic.”

“Ha, ha!” said the Angel.

“Angels may laugh,” replied his dragoman, “but it is a matter to make men weep.”

“You know your own business best,” said the Angel, “I suppose.”

“Ah! sir, if we did, how pleasant it would be. It is frequently my fate to study the countenances and figures of the population, and I find the joy which the pursuit of illusion brings them is insufficient to counteract the confined, monotonous, and worried character of their lives.”

“They are certainly very plain,” said the Angel.

“They are,” sighed his dragoman, “and getting plainer every day. Take for instance that one,” and he pointed to a gentleman going up the steps. “Mark how he is built. The top of his grizzled head is narrow, the bottom of it broad. His body is short and thick and square; his legs even thicker, and his feet turn out too much; the general effect is almost pyramidal. Again, take this one,” and he indicated a gentleman coming down the steps, “you could thread his legs and body through a needle’s eye, but his head would defy you. Mark his boiled eyes, his flashing spectacles, and the absence of all hair. Disproportion, sir, has become endemic.”

“Can this not be corrected?” asked the Angel.

“To correct a thing,” answered his dragoman, “you must first be aware of it, and these are not; no more than they are aware that it is disproportionate to spend six days out of every seven in a counting-house or factory. Man, sir, is the creature of habit, and when his habits are bad, man is worse.”

“I have a headache,” said the Angel; “the noise is more deafening than it was when I was here in 1910.”

“Yes, sir; since then we have had the Great Skirmish, an event which furiously intensified money-making. We, like every other people, have ever since been obliged to cultivate the art of getting five out of two-and-two. The progress of civilisation has been considerably speeded-up thereby, and everything but man has benefited; even horses, for they are no longer overloaded and overdriven up Tower Hill or any other.”

“How is that,” asked the Angel, “if the pressure of work is greater?”

“Because they are extinct,” said his dragoman; “entirely superseded by electric and air traction, as you see.”

“You appear to be inimical to money,” the Angel interjected, with a penetrating look. “Tell me, would you really rather own one shilling than five and sixpence?”

“Sir,” replied his dragoman, “you are putting the candidate before the caucus, as the saying is. For money is nothing but the power to purchase what one wants. You should rather be inquiring what I want.”

“Well, what do you?” said the Angel.

“To my thinking,” answered his dragoman, “instead of endeavouring to increase money when we found ourselves so very bankrupt, we should have endeavoured to decrease our wants. The path of real progress, sir, is the simplification of life and desire till we have dispensed even with trousers and wear a single clean garment reaching to the knees; till we are content with exercising our own limbs on the solid earth; the eating of simple food we have grown ourselves; the hearing of our own voices, and tunes on oaten straws; the feel on our faces of the sun and rain and wind; the scent of the fields and woods; the homely roof, and the comely wife unspoiled by heels, pearls, and powder; the domestic animals at play, wild birds singing, and children brought up to colder water than their fathers. It should have been our business to pursue health till we no longer needed the interior of the chemist’s shop, the optician’s store, the hairdresser’s, the corset-maker’s, the thousand-and-one emporiums which patch and prink us, promoting our fancies and disguising the ravages which modern life makes in our figures. Our ambition should have been to need so little that, with our present scientific knowledge, we should have been able to produce it very easily and quickly, and have had abundant leisure and sound nerves and bodies wherewith to enjoy nature, art, and the domestic affections. The tragedy of man, sir, is his senseless and insatiate curiosity and greed, together with his incurable habit of neglecting the present for the sake of a future which will never come.”

“You speak like a book,” said the Angel.

“I wish I did,” retorted his dragoman, “for no book I am able to procure enjoins us to stop this riot, and betake ourselves to the pleasurable simplicity which alone can save us.”

“You would be bored stiff in a week,” said the Angel.

“We should, sir,” replied his dragoman, “because from our schooldays we are brought up to be acquisitive, competitive, and restless. Consider the baby in the perambulator, absorbed in contemplating the heavens and sucking its own thumb. Existence, sir, should be like that.”

“A beautiful metaphor,” said the Angel.

“As it is, we do but skip upon the hearse of life.”

“You would appear to be of those whose motto is: ‘Try never to leave things as you find them,’” observed the Angel.

“Ah, sir!” responded his dragoman, with a sad smile, “the part of a dragoman is rather ever to try and find things where he leaves them.”

“Talking of that,” said the Angel dreamily, “when I was here in 1910, I bought some Marconis for the rise. What are they at now?”

“I cannot tell you,” replied his dragoman in a deprecating voice, “but this I will say: Inventors are not only the benefactors but the curses of mankind, and will be so long as we do not find a way of adapting their discoveries to our very limited digestive powers. The chronic dyspepsia of our civilisation, due to the attempt to swallow every pabulum which ingenuity puts before it, is so violent that I sometimes wonder whether we shall survive until your visit in 1984.”

“Ah!” said the Angel, pricking his ears; “you really think there is a chance?”

“I do indeed,” his dragoman answered gloomily. “Life is now one long telephone call--and what’s it all about? A tour in darkness! A rattling of wheels under a sky of smoke! A never-ending game of poker!”

“Confess,” said the Angel, “that you have eaten something which has not agreed with you?”

“It is so,” answered his dragoman; “I have eaten of modernity, the damnedest dish that was ever set to lips. Look at those fellows,” he went on, “busy as ants from nine o’clock in the morning to seven in the evening. And look at their wives!”

“Ah! yes,” said the Angel cheerily; “let us look at their wives,” and with three strokes of his wings he passed to Oxford Street.

“Look at them!” repeated his dragoman, “busy as ants from ten o’clock in the morning to five in the evening.”

“Plain is not the word for _them_,” said the Angel sadly. “What are they after, running in and out of these shop-holes?”

“Illusion, sir. The romance of business there, the romance of commerce here. They have got into these habits and, as you know, it is so much easier to get in than to get out. Would you like to see one of their homes?”