The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow
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Jerome K. Jerome >> The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow
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"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 anticipated, 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 breasts. 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
bloody 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 passing jest of
the Gods, 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 pass 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 space?
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 Duchess; 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 God'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 passed 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.
"Two and a penny," he remarked, bitterly. "I'll sell it for a third
of what it cost me."
"You have put your money into the wrong machine," I suggested.
"Well, I know that!" he answered, a little crossly, as it seemed to
me--he was not a nice man: had there been any one else to talk to I
should have left him. "It isn't losing the money I mind so much;
it's getting this damn thing, that annoys me. If I could find that
idiot Id ram it down his throat."
We walked to the end of the platform, side by side, in silence.
"There are people like that," he broke out, as we turned, "people
who will go about, giving advice. I'll be getting six months over
one of them, I'm always afraid. I remember a pony I had once." (I
judged the man to be a small farmer; he talked in a wurzelly tone.
I don't know if you understand what I mean, but an atmosphere of
wurzels was the thing that somehow he suggested.) "It was a
thoroughbred Welsh pony, as sound a little beast as ever stepped.
I'd had him out to grass all the winter, and one day in the early
spring I thought I'd take him for a run. I had to go to Amersham on
business. I put him into the cart, and drove him across; it is just
ten miles from my place. He was a bit uppish, and had lathered
himself pretty freely by the time we reached the town.
"A man was at the door of the hotel. He says, 'That's a good pony
of yours.'
"'Pretty middling,' I says.
"'It doesn't do to over-drive 'em, when they're young,' he says.
"I says, 'He's done ten miles, and I've done most of the pulling. I
reckon I'm a jolly sight more exhausted than he is.
"I went inside and did my business, and when I came out the man was
still there. 'Going back up the hill?' he says to me.
"Somehow, I didn't cotton to him from the beginning. 'Well, I've
got to get the other side of it,' I says, 'and unless you know any
patent way of getting over a hill without going up it, I reckon I
am.'
"He says, 'You take my advice: give him a pint of old ale before you
start.'
"'Old ale,' I says; 'why he's a teetotaler.'
"'Never you mind that,' he answers; 'you give him a pint of old ale.
I know these ponies; he's a good 'un, but he ain't set. A pint of
old ale, and he'll take you up that hill like a cable tramway, and
not hurt himself.'
"I don't know what it is about this class of man. One asks oneself
afterwards why one didn't knock his hat over his eyes and run his
head into the nearest horse-trough. But at the time one listens to
them. I got a pint of old ale in a hand-bowl, and brought it out.
About half-a-dozen chaps were standing round, and of course there
was a good deal of chaff.
"'You're starting him on the downward course, Jim,' says one of
them. 'He'll take to gambling, rob a bank, and murder his mother.
That's always the result of a glass of ale, 'cording to the tracts.'
"'He won't drink it like that,' says another; 'it's as flat as ditch
water. Put a head on it for him.'
"'Ain't you got a cigar for him?' says a third.
"'A cup of coffee and a round of buttered toast would do him a sight
more good, a cold day like this,' says a fourth.
"I'd half a mind then to throw the stuff away, or drink it myself;
it seemed a piece of bally nonsense, giving good ale to a
four-year-old pony; but the moment the beggar smelt the bowl he
reached out his head, and lapped it up as though he'd been a
Christian; and I jumped into the cart and started off, amid cheers.
We got up the hill pretty steady. Then the liquor began to work
into his head. I've taken home a drunken man more than once and
there's pleasanter jobs than that. I've seen a drunken woman, and
they're worse. But a drunken Welsh pony I never want to have
anything more to do with so long as I live. Having four legs he
managed to hold himself up; but as to guiding himself, he couldn't;
and as for letting me do it, he wouldn't. First we were one side of
the road, and then we were the other. When we were not either side,
we were crossways in the middle. I heard a bicycle bell behind me,
but I dared not turn my head. All I could do was to shout to the
fellow to keep where he was.
"'I want to pass you,' he sang out, so soon as he was near enough.
"'Well, you can't do it,' I called back.
"'Why can't I?' he answered. 'How much of the road do YOU want?'
"'All of it and a bit over,' I answered him, 'for this job, and
nothing in the way.'
"He followed me for half-a-mile, abusing me; and every time he
thought he saw a chance he tried to pass me. But the pony was
always a bit too smart for him. You might have thought the brute
was doing it on purpose.
"'You're not fit to be driving,' he shouted. He was quite right; I
wasn't. I was feeling just about dead beat.
"'What do you think you are?' he continued, 'the charge of the Light
Brigade?' (He was a common sort of fellow.) 'Who sent YOU home with
the washing?'
"Well, he was making me wild by this time. 'What's the good of
talking to me?' I shouted back. 'Come and blackguard the pony if
you want to blackguard anybody. I've got all I can do without the
help of that alarm clock of yours. Go away, you're only making him
worse.'
"'What's the matter with the pony?' he called out.
"'Can't you see?' I answered. 'He's drunk.'
"Well, of course it sounded foolish; the truth often does.
"'One of you's drunk,' he retorted; 'for two pins I'd come and haul
you out of the cart.'
"I wish to goodness he had; I'd have given something to be out of
that cart. But he didn't have the chance. At that moment the pony
gave a sudden swerve; and I take it he must have been a bit too
close. I heard a yell and a curse, and at the same instant I was
splashed from head to foot with ditch water. Then the brute bolted.
A man was coming along, asleep on the top of a cart-load of windsor
chairs. It's disgraceful the way those wagoners go to sleep; I
wonder there are not more accidents. I don't think he ever knew
what had happened to him. I couldn't look round to see what became
of him; I only saw him start. Half-way down the hill a policeman
holla'd to me to stop. I heard him shouting out something about
furious driving. Half-a-mile this side of Chesham we came upon a
girls' school walking two and two--a 'crocodile' they call it, I
think. I bet you those girls are still talking about it. It must
have taken the old woman a good hour to collect them together again.
"It was market-day in Chesham; and I guess there has not been a
busier market-day in Chesham before or since. We went through the
town at about thirty miles an hour. I've never seen Chesham so
lively--it's a sleepy hole as a rule. A mile outside the town I
sighted the High Wycombe coach. I didn't feel I minded much; I had
got to that pass when it didn't seem to matter to me what happened;
I only felt curious. A dozen yards off the coach the pony stopped
dead; that jerked me off the seat to the bottom of the cart. I
couldn't get up, because the seat was on top of me. I could see
nothing but the sky, and occasionally the head of the pony, when he
stood upon his hind legs. But I could hear what the driver of the
coach said, and I judged he was having trouble also.
"'Take that damn circus out of the road,' he shouted. If he'd had
any sense he'd have seen how helpless I was. I could hear his
cattle plunging about; they are like that, horses--if they see one
fool, then they all want to be fools.
"'Take it home, and tie it up to its organ,' shouted the guard.
"Then an old woman went into hysterics, and began laughing like an
hyena. That started the pony off again, and, as far as I could
calculate by watching the clouds, we did about another four miles at
the gallop. Then he thought he'd try to jump a gate, and finding, I
suppose, that the cart hampered him, he started kicking it to
pieces. I'd never have thought a cart could have been separated
into so many pieces, if I hadn't seen it done. When he had got rid
of everything but half a wheel and the splashboard he bolted again.
I remained behind with the other ruins, and glad I was to get a
little rest. He came back later in the afternoon, and I was pleased
to sell him the next week for a five-pound-note: it cost me about
another ten to repair myself.
"To this day I am chaffed about that pony, and the local temperance
society made a lecture out of me. That's what comes of following
advice."
I sympathized with him. I have suffered from advice myself. I have
a friend, a City man, whom I meet occasionally. One of his most
ardent passions in life is to make my fortune. He button-holes me
in Threadneedle Street. "The very man I wanted to see," he says;
"I'm going to let you in for a good thing. We are getting up a
little syndicate." He is for ever "getting up" a little syndicate,
and for every hundred pounds you put into it you take a thousand
out. Had I gone into all his little syndicates, I could have been
worth at the present moment, I reckon, two million five hundred
thousand pounds. But I have not gone into all his little
syndicates. I went into one, years ago, when I was younger. I am
still in it; my friend is confident that my holding, later on, will
yield me thousands. Being, however, hard-up for ready money, I am
willing to part with my share to any deserving person at a genuine
reduction, upon a cash basis. Another friend of mine knows another
man who is "in the know" as regards racing matters. I suppose most
people possess a friend of this type. He is generally very popular
just before a race, and extremely unpopular immediately afterwards.
A third benefactor of mine is an enthusiast upon the subject of
diet. One day he brought me something in a packet, and pressed it
into my hand with the air of a man who is relieving you of all your
troubles.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Open it and see," he answered, in the tone of a pantomime fairy.
I opened it and looked, but I was no wiser.
"It's tea," he explained.
"Oh!" I replied; "I was wondering if it could be snuff."
"Well, it's not exactly tea," he continued, "it's a sort of tea.
You take one cup of that--one cup, and you will never care for any
other kind of tea again."
He was quite right, I took one cup. After drinking it I felt I
didn't care for any other tea. I felt I didn't care for anything,
except to die quietly and inoffensively. He called on me a week
later.
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