Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (440 page)

In every age and in every period, when and where Fate has called upon men and women to play the man, human nature has not been found wanting. They were a poor lot, those French aristocrats that the Terror seized: cowardly, selfish, greedy had been their lives. Yet there must have been good, even in them. When the little things that in their little lives they had thought so great were swept away from them, when they found themselves face to face with the realities; then even they played the man. Poor shuffling Charles the First, crusted over with weakness and folly, deep down in him at last we find the great gentleman.

I like to hear stories of the littleness of great men. I like to think that Shakespeare was fond of his glass. I even cling to the tale of that disgraceful final orgie with friend Ben Jonson. Possibly the story may not be true, but I hope it was. I like to think of him as poacher, as village ne’er-do-well, denounced by the local grammar-school master, preached at by the local J. P. of the period. I like to reflect that Cromwell had a wart on his nose; the thought makes me more contented with my own features. I like to think that he put sweets upon the chairs, to see finely-dressed ladies spoil their frocks; to tell myself that he roared with laughter at the silly jest, like any East End ‘Arry with his Bank Holiday squirt of dirty water. I like to read that Carlyle threw bacon at his wife and occasionally made himself highly ridiculous over small annoyances, that would have been smiled at by a man of well-balanced mind. I think of the fifty foolish things a week
I
do, and say to myself, “I, too, am a literary man.”

I like to think that even Judas had his moments of nobility, his good hours when he would willingly have laid down his life for his Master. Perhaps even to him there came, before the journey’s end, the memory of a voice saying—”Thy sins be forgiven thee.” There must have been good, even in Judas.

Virtue lies like the gold in quartz, there is not very much of it, and much pains has to be spent on the extracting of it. But Nature seems to think it worth her while to fashion these huge useless stones, if in them she may hide away her precious metals. Perhaps, also, in human nature, she cares little for the mass of dross, provided that by crushing and cleansing she can extract from it a little gold, sufficient to repay her for the labour of the world. We wonder why she troubles to make the stone. Why cannot the gold lie in nuggets on the surface? But her methods are secrets to us. Perchance there is a reason for the quartz. Perchance there is a reason for the evil and folly, through which run, unseen to the careless eye, the tiny veins of virtue.

Aye, the stone predominates, but the gold is there. We claim to have it valued. The evil that there is in man no tongue can tell. We are vile among the vile, a little evil people. But we are great. Pile up the bricks of our sins till the tower knocks at Heaven’s gate, calling for vengeance, yet we are great — with a greatness and a virtue that the untempted angels may not reach to. The written history of the human race, it is one long record of cruelty, of falsehood, of oppression. Think you the world would be spinning round the sun unto this day, if that written record were all? Sodom, God would have spared had there been found ten righteous men within its walls. The world is saved by its just men. History sees them not; she is but the newspaper, a report of accidents. Judge you life by that? Then you shall believe that the true Temple of Hymen is the Divorce Court; that men are of two classes only, the thief and the policeman; that all noble thought is but a politician’s catchword. History sees only the destroying conflagrations, she takes no thought of the sweet fire-sides. History notes the wrong; but the patient suffering, the heroic endeavour, that, slowly and silently, as the soft processes of Nature re-clothing with verdure the passion-wasted land, obliterate that wrong, she has no eyes for. In the days of cruelty and oppression — not altogether yet of the past, one fears — must have lived gentle-hearted men and women, healing with their help and sympathy the wounds that else the world had died of. After the thief, riding with jingle of sword and spur, comes, mounted on his ass, the good Samaritan. The pyramid of the world’s evil — God help us! it rises high, shutting out almost the sun. But the record of man’s good deeds, it lies written in the laughter of the children, in the light of lovers’ eyes, in the dreams of the young men; it shall not be forgotten. The fires of persecution served as torches to show Heaven the heroism that was in man. From the soil of tyranny sprang self-sacrifice, and daring for the Right. Cruelty! what is it but the vile manure, making the ground ready for the flowers of tenderness and pity? Hate and Anger shriek to one another across the ages, but the voices of Love and Comfort are none the less existent that they speak in whispers, lips to ear.

We have done wrong, oh, ye witnessing Heavens, but we have done good. We claim justice. We have laid down our lives for our friends: greater love hath no man than this. We have fought for the Right. We have died for the Truth — as the Truth seemed to us. We have done noble deeds; we have lived noble lives; we have comforted the sorrowful; we have succoured the weak. Failing, falling, making in our blindness many a false step, yet we have striven. For the sake of the army of just men and true, for the sake of the myriads of patient, loving women, for the sake of the pitiful and helpful, for the sake of the good that lies hidden within us, — spare us, O Lord.

ON THE MOTHERLINESS OF MAN

It was only a piece of broken glass. From its shape and colour, I should say it had, in its happier days, formed portion of a cheap scent-bottle. Lying isolated on the grass, shone upon by the early morning sun, it certainly appeared at its best. It attracted him.

He cocked his head, and looked at it with his right eye. Then he hopped round to the other side, and looked at it with his left eye. With either optic it seemed equally desirable.

That he was an inexperienced young rook goes without saying. An older bird would not have given a second glance to the thing. Indeed, one would have thought his own instinct might have told him that broken glass would be a mistake in a bird’s nest. But its glitter drew him too strongly for resistance. I am inclined to suspect that at some time, during the growth of his family tree, there must have occurred a mesalliance, perhaps worse. Possibly a strain of magpie blood? — one knows the character of magpies, or rather their lack of character — and such things have happened. But I will not pursue further so painful a train: I throw out the suggestion as a possible explanation, that is all.

He hopped nearer. Was it a sweet illusion, this flashing fragment of rainbow; a beautiful vision to fade upon approach, typical of so much that is un-understandable in rook life? He made a dart forward and tapped it with his beak. No, it was real — as fine a lump of jagged green glass as any newly-married rook could desire, and to be had for the taking. SHE would be pleased with it. He was a well-meaning bird; the mere upward inclination of his tail suggested earnest though possibly ill-directed endeavour.

He turned it over. It was an awkward thing to carry; it had so very many corners. But he succeeded at last in getting it firmly between his beak, and in haste, lest some other bird should seek to dispute with him its possession, at once flew off with it.

A second rook who had been watching the proceedings from the lime tree, called to a third who was passing. Even with my limited knowledge of the language I found it easy to follow the conversation: it was so obvious.

“Issachar!”

“Hallo!”

“What do you think? Zebulan’s found a piece of broken bottle. He’s going to line his nest with it.”

“No!”

“God’s truth. Look at him. There he goes, he’s got it in his beak.”

“Well, I’m —— !”

And they both burst into a laugh.

But Zebulan heeded them not. If he overheard, he probably put down the whole dialogue to jealousy. He made straight for his tree. By standing with my left cheek pressed close against the window-pane, I was able to follow him. He is building in what we call the Paddock elms — a suburb commenced only last season, but rapidly growing. I wanted to see what his wife would say.

At first she said nothing. He laid it carefully down on the branch near the half-finished nest, and she stretched up her head and looked at it.

Then she looked at him. For about a minute neither spoke. I could see that the situation was becoming strained. When she did open her beak, it was with a subdued tone, that had a vein of weariness running through it.

“What is it?” she asked.

He was evidently chilled by her manner. As I have explained, he is an inexperienced young rook. This is clearly his first wife, and he stands somewhat in awe of her.

“Well, I don’t exactly know what it’s CALLED,” he answered.

“Oh.”

“No. But it’s pretty, isn’t it?” he added. He moved it, trying to get it where the sun might reach it. It was evident he was admitting to himself that, seen in the shade, it lost much of its charm.

“Oh, yes; very pretty,” was the rejoinder; “perhaps you’ll tell me what you’re going to do with it.”

The question further discomforted him. It was growing upon him that this thing was not going to be the success he had anticipated. It would be necessary to proceed warily.

“Of course, it’s not a twig,” he began.

“I see it isn’t.”

“No. You see, the nest is nearly all twigs as it is, and I thought—”

“Oh, you did think.”

“Yes, my dear. I thought — unless you are of opinion that it’s too showy — I thought we might work it in somewhere.”

Then she flared out.

“Oh, did you? You thought that a good idea. An A1 prize idiot I seem to have married, I do. You’ve been gone twenty minutes, and you bring me back an eight-cornered piece of broken glass, which you think we might ‘work into’ the nest. You’d like to see me sitting on it for a month, you would. You think it would make a nice bed for the children to lie on. You don’t think you could manage to find a packet of mixed pins if you went down again, I suppose. They’d look pretty ‘worked in’ somewhere, don’t you think? — Here, get out of my way. I’ll finish this nest by myself.” She always had been short with him.

She caught up the offending object — it was a fairly heavy lump of glass — and flung it out of the tree with all her force. I heard it crash through the cucumber frame. That makes the seventh pane of glass broken in that cucumber frame this week. The couple in the branch above are the worst. Their plan of building is the most extravagant, the most absurd I ever heard of. They hoist up ten times as much material as they can possibly use; you might think they were going to build a block, and let it out in flats to the other rooks. Then what they don’t want they fling down again. Suppose we built on such a principle? Suppose a human husband and wife were to start erecting their house in Piccadilly Circus, let us say; and suppose the man spent all the day steadily carrying bricks up the ladder while his wife laid them, never asking her how many she wanted, whether she didn’t think he had brought up sufficient, but just accumulating bricks in a senseless fashion, bringing up every brick he could find. And then suppose, when evening came, and looking round, they found they had some twenty cart-loads of bricks lying unused upon the scaffold, they were to commence flinging them down into Waterloo Place. They would get themselves into trouble; somebody would be sure to speak to them about it. Yet that is precisely what those birds do, and nobody says a word to them. They are supposed to have a President. He lives by himself in the yew tree outside the morning-room window. What I want to know is what he is supposed to be good for. This is the sort of thing I want him to look into. I would like him to be worming underneath one evening when those two birds are tidying up: perhaps he would do something then. I have done all I can. I have thrown stones at them, that, in the course of nature, have returned to earth again, breaking more glass. I have blazed at them with a revolver; but they have come to regard this proceeding as a mere expression of light-heartedness on my part, possibly confusing me with the Arab of the Desert, who, I am given to understand, expresses himself thus in moments of deep emotion. They merely retire to a safe distance to watch me; no doubt regarding me as a poor performer, inasmuch as I do not also dance and shout between each shot. I have no objection to their building there, if they only would build sensibly. I want somebody to speak to them to whom they will pay attention.

You can hear them in the evening, discussing the matter of this surplus stock.

“Don’t you work any more,” he says, as he comes up with the last load, “you’ll tire yourself.”

“Well, I am feeling a bit done up,” she answers, as she hops out of the nest and straightens her back.

“You’re a bit peckish, too, I expect,” he adds sympathetically. “I know I am. We will have a scratch down, and be off.”

“What about all this stuff?” she asks, while titivating herself; “we’d better not leave it about, it looks so untidy.”

“Oh, we’ll soon get rid of that,” he answers. “I’ll have that down in a jiffy.”

To help him, she seizes a stick and is about to drop it. He darts forward and snatches it from her.

“Don’t you waste that one,” he cries, “that’s a rare one, that is. You see me hit the old man with it.”

And he does. What the gardener says, I will leave you to imagine.

Judged from its structure, the rook family is supposed to come next in intelligence to man himself. Judging from the intelligence displayed by members of certain human families with whom I have come in contact, I can quite believe it. That rooks talk I am positive. No one can spend half-an-hour watching a rookery without being convinced of this. Whether the talk be always wise and witty, I am not prepared to maintain; but that there is a good deal of it is certain. A young French gentleman of my acquaintance, who visited England to study the language, told me that the impression made upon him by his first social evening in London was that of a parrot-house. Later on, when he came to comprehend, he, of course, recognized the brilliancy and depth of the average London drawing-room talk; but that is how, not comprehending, it impressed him at first. Listening to the riot of a rookery is much the same experience. The conversation to us sounds meaningless; the rooks themselves would probably describe it as sparkling.