The Moon Endureth: Tales and Fancies Part 21

"'Then he turned to us and spoke in English. "Get back to the mines h.e.l.l-for-leather, and tell them what's happening, and see that you get up some kind of a show for to-morrow at noon. I will bring the chiefs, and we'll feast them. Get all the bands you can, and let them play me in. Tell the mines fellows to look active for it's the chance of their lives. "Then he says to the Labonga, "My men will return he says, "but as for me I will spend the night with my children. Make ready food, but let no beer be made, for it is a solemn occasion."

"'And so we left him. I will not describe how I spent last night mysel', but I have something to say about this remarkable phenomenon.

I could enlarge on the triumph of mind over matter. ....

"Mackay did not enlarge. He stopped, c.o.c.ked his ears, and looked down the road, from which came the strains of 'Annie Laurie,' played with much spirit but grievously out of tune. Followed 'The British Grenadiers,' and then an attempt at 'The March of the Priests.' Mackay rose in excitement and began to crane his disreputable neck, while the band--a fine scratch collection of instruments--took up their stand at the end of the street, flanked by a piper in khaki who performed when their breath failed. Mackay chuckled with satisfaction. 'The deevils have entered into the spirit of my instructions,' he said. 'In a wee bit the place will be like Falkirk Tryst for din.

"Punctually at twelve there came a great hullabaloo up the road, the beating of drums and the yelling of natives, and presently the procession hove in sight. There was Tommy on his horse, and on each side of him six savages with feather head-dress, and s.h.i.+elds and war-paint complete. After him trooped about thirty of the great chiefs, walking two by two, for all the world like an Aldershot parade.

They carried no arms, but the bodyguard shook their spears, and let yells out of them that would have scared Julius Caesar. Then the band started in, and the piper blew up, and the mines people commenced to cheer, and I thought the heavens would fall. Long before Tommy came abreast of me I knew what I should see. His uniform looked as if it had been slept in, and his orders were all awry. But he had his head flung back, and his eyes very bright, and his jaw set square. He never looked to right or left, never recognised me or anybody, for he was seeing something quite different from the red road and the white shanties and the hot sky."

The fire had almost died out. Thirlstone stooped for a moment and stirred the peats.

"Yes," he said, "I knew that in his fool's ear the trumpets of all Asia were ringing, and the King of Bokhara was entering Samarkand."

BABYLON

(The Song of NEHEMIAH'S Workmen)

How many miles to Babylon?

'Three score and ten.

Can I get there by candle-light?

Yes, and back again.

We are come back from Babylon, Out of the plains and the glare, To the little hills of our own country And the sting of our kindred air; To the rickle of stones on the red rock's edge Which Kedron cleaves like a sword.

We will build the walls of Zion again, To the glory of Zion's lord.

Now is no more of dalliance By the reedy waters in spring, When we sang of home, and sighed, and dreamed, And wept on remembering.

Now we are back in our ancient hills Out of the plains and the sun; But before we make it a dwelling-place There's a wonderful lot to be done.

The walls are to build from west to east, From Gihon to Olivet, Waters to lead and wells to clear, And the garden furrows to set.

From the Sheep Gate to the Fish Gate Is a welter of mire and mess; And southward over the common lands 'Tis a dragon's wilderness.

The Courts of the Lord are a heap of dust Where the hill winds whistle and race, And the n.o.ble pillars of G.o.d His House Stand in a ruined place In the Holy of Holies foxes lair, And owls and night-birds build.

There's a deal to do ere we patch it anew As our father Solomon willed.

Now is the day of the ordered life And the law which all obey.

We toil by rote and speak by note And never a soul dare stray.

Ever among us a lean old man Keepeth his watch and ward, Crying, "The Lord hath set you free: Prepare ye the way of the Lord."

A goodly task we are called unto, A task to dream on o' nights, --Work for Judah and Judah's G.o.d, Setting our lands to rights; Everything fair and all things square And straight as a plummet string.

--Is it mortal guile, if once in a while Our thoughts go wandering?...

We were not slaves in Babylon, For the gate of our souls lay free, There in that vast and sunlit land On the edges of mystery.

Daily we wrought and daily we thought, And we chafed not at rod and power, For Sinim, Ssabea, and dusky Hind Talked to us hour by hour.

The man who lives in Babylon May poorly sup and fare, But loves and lures from the ends of the earth Beckon him everywhere.

Next year he too may have sailed strange seas And conquered a diadem; For kings are as common in Babylon As crows in Bethlehem.

Here we are bound to the common round In a land which knows not change Nothing befalleth to stir the blood Or quicken the heart to range; Never a hope that we cannot plumb Or a stranger visage in sight,-- At the most a sleek Samaritan Or a ragged Amorite.

Here we are sober and staid of soul, Working beneath the law, Settled amid our father's dust, Seeing the hills they saw.

All things fixed and determinate, Chiselled and squared by rule; Is it mortal guile once in a while To try and escape from school?

We will go back to Babylon, Silently one by one, Out from the hills and the laggard brooks To the streams that brim in the sun.

Only a moment, Lord, we crave, To breathe and listen and see.-- Then we start anew with muscle and thew To hammer trestles for Thee.

X

THE RIME OF TRUE THOMAS

THE TALE OF THE RESPECTABLE WHAUP AND THE GREAT G.o.dLY MAN

This is a story that I heard from the King of the Numidians, who with his tattered retinue encamps behind the peat-ricks. If you ask me where and when it happened I fear that I am scarce ready with an answer. But I will vouch my honour for its truth; and if any one seek further proof, let him go east the town and west the town and over the fields of No mans land to the Long Muir, and if he find not the King there among the peat-ricks, and get not a courteous answer to his question, then times have changed in that part of the country, and he must continue the quest to his Majesty's castle in Spain.

Once upon a time, says the tale, there was a Great G.o.dly Man, a shepherd to trade, who lived in a cottage among heather. If you looked east in the morning, you saw miles of moor running wide to the flames of sunrise, and if you turned your eyes west in the evening, you saw a great confusion of dim peaks with the dying eye of the sun set in a crevice. If you looked north, too, in the afternoon, when the life of the day is near its end and the world grows wise, you might have seen a country of low hills and haughlands with many waters running sweet among meadows. But if you looked south in the dusty forenoon or at hot midday, you saw the far-off glimmer of a white road, the roofs of the ugly little clachan of Kilmaclavers, and the rigging of the fine new kirk of Threepdaidle. It was a Sabbath afternoon in the hot weather, and the man had been to kirk all the morning. He had heard a grand sermon from the minister (or it may have been the priest, for I am not sure of the date and the King told the story quickly)--a fine discourse with fifteen heads and three parentheses. He held all the parentheses and fourteen of the heads in his memory, but he had forgotten the fifteenth; so for the purpose of recollecting it, and also for the sake of a walk, he went forth in the afternoon into the open heather.

The whaups were crying everywhere, making the air hum like the tw.a.n.ging of a bow. Poo-eelie, Poo-eelie, they cried, Kirlew, Kirlew, Whaup, Wha-up. Sometimes they came low, all but brus.h.i.+ng him, till they drove settled thoughts from his head. Often had he been on the moors, but never had he seen such a stramash among the feathered clan. The wailing iteration vexed him, and he shoo'd the birds away with his arms. But they seemed to mock him and whistle in his very face, and at the flaff of their wings his heart grew sore. He waved his great stick; he picked up bits of loose moor-rock and flung them wildly; but the G.o.dless crew paid never a grain of heed. The morning's sermon was still in his head, and the grave words of the minister still rattled in his ear, but he could get no comfort for this intolerable piping. At last his patience failed him and he swore unchristian words. "Deil rax the birds' thrapples," he cried. At this all the noise was hushed and in a twinkling the moor was empty. Only one bird was left, standing on tall legs before him with its head bowed upon its breast, and its beak touching the heather.

Then the man repented his words and stared at the thing in the moss.

"What bird are ye?" he asked thrawnly.

"I am a Respectable Whaup," said the bird, "and I kenna why ye have broken in on our family gathering. Once in a hundred years we foregather for decent conversation, and here we are interrupted by a muckle, sweerin' man."

Now the shepherd was a fellow of great sagacity, yet he never thought it a queer thing that he should be having talk in the mid-moss with a bird.

"What for were ye making siccan a din, then?" he asked. "D'ye no ken ye were disturbing the afternoon of the holy Sabbath?"

The bird lifted its eyes and regarded him solemnly. "The Sabbath is a day of rest and gladness," it said, "and is it no reasonable that we should enjoy the like?"

The shepherd shook his head, for the presumption staggered him. "Ye little ken what ye speak of," he said. "The Sabbath is for them that have the chance of salvation, and it has been decreed that salvation is for Adam's race and no for the beasts that perish."

The whaup gave a whistle of scorn. "I have heard all that long ago.

In my great grandmother's time, which 'ill be a thousand years and mair syne, there came a people from the south with bright bra.s.s things on their heads and b.r.e.a.s.t.s and terrible swords at their thighs. And with them were some lang gowned men who kenned the stars and would come out o' nights to talk to the deer and the corbies in their ain tongue. And one, I mind, foregathered with my great-grandmother and told her that the souls o' men flitted in the end to braw meadows where the G.o.ds bide or gaed down to the black pit which they ca' h.e.l.l. But the souls o'

birds, he said, die wi' their bodies, and that's the end o' them.

Likewise in my mother's time, when there was a great abbey down yonder by the Threepdaidle Burn which they called the House of Kilmaclavers, the auld monks would walk out in the evening to pick herbs for their distillings, and some were wise and kenned the ways of bird and beast.

They would crack often o' nights with my ain family, and tell them that Christ had saved the souls o' men, but that birds and beasts were perishable as the dew o' heaven. And now ye have a black-gowned man in Threepdaidle who threeps on the same overcome. Ye may a' ken something o' your ain kitchen midden, but certes! ye ken little o' the warld beyond it."

Now this angered the man, and he rebuked the bird. "These are great mysteries," he said, "which are no to be mentioned in the ears of an unsanctified creature. What can a thing like you wi' a lang neb and twae legs like stilts ken about the next warld?"

"Weel, weel," said the whaup, "we'll let the matter be. Everything to its ain trade, and I will not dispute with ye on Metapheesics. But if ye ken something about the next warld, ye ken terrible little about this."

Now this angered the man still more, for he was a shepherd reputed to have great skill in sheep and esteemed the nicest judge of hogg and wether in all the countryside. "What ken ye about that?" he asked.

"Ye may gang east to Yetholm and west to Kells, and no find a better herd."