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The Spike: or, Victoria University College Review October 1911

By the Wayside

page 13

By the Wayside.

The spring wind was warm, the sun was hot in the sky, the roads were white and dusty, so I was glad to fling myself down to rest on a green bank by the wayside. The bank was already occupied by am man in a Norfolk suit, with a knapsack slung over his shoulder and a stout walking stick by his side. A farmer's cart passed us slowly, the driver whistling cheerily and bidding us good morning with a beaming smile.'

"That," I said to the man in the Norfolk suit, "is a smile like a benediction."

I received in reply a slow, embarrassing stare. "What do you think you mean?" said he.

"Well," I returned, slightly nettled, "I mean what I say. That man looked so absolutely happy and pleased with life that his smile did one good to see."

"It didn't do me good to see," returned the man, vehemently. "It made me sick, and if the gods who made this planet bothered to look down on it occasionally it ought to make hem blush in shame to see a man pleased with their rotten gift of Life!"

"What's wrong with you?" I demanded. "Can you look around on all this"—I waved my hand, showman like at the prospect—"and yet talk like that."

My companion leaned forward and looked slowly and comprehensively at the view before us; at the green and lovely fields; the sea blue in the distance; the winding hill-road, bordered with golden gorse. He turned to me. "Yes, it's because I look at all this that I talk as I do. I look further than you. I see the rottenness of things. That underneath this show of beauty is ugliness. There's that silver river," nodding his head in its direction, "eating away for all it's worth at the fields of either side of it. There's the beautiful golden gorse growing all over poor men's property. There," pointing to a cobweb, "is a delicate gauze net hung to catch an innocent fly. There's a thrush—you'll say its singing a hymn of gladness to the Sunlight. I say it's chortling over a nice, fat, harmless snail. There's a silly flower flaunting to attract a bee, which soon will make its beauty wither. There are bursting buds thrusting aside poor, withered brown leaves that sought to shelter them. Everywhere rivalry and death!"

page 14

"Come!" I remonstrated, "you're looking at one side of things."

"No!" was the quick rejoinder, "I'm looking at both—I'm seeing the light and the dark—but there's more of the latter."

"There's not much 'rivalry and death' about that, anyway," I said, triumphantly, pointing to a rosy child who came puffing round a bend in the road, holding a fistful of primroses.

"Pardon me," he said, triumphantly in his turn, "It's as much a bird of prey as anything else. It has picked those yellow primroses; doesn't care whether they live or die; it's dropping them to wither on the road."

So it was. If it kept on dropping them conscientiously, one would be able to track it for miles.

"Beside," added my jovial acquaintance, "I wager if that child saw a butterfly it would grab it."

Very probably," I assented.

That moment a woman came into view.

"Now," said he of the Norfolk jacket in a disgusted tone, "there's a woman."

She was carrying a drowsy, flower-faced little urchin, and looked hot but quite pleased with her lot.

What's the matter with her? "I enquired. She looks happy."

That's the worst of 'em!" grumbled the man.

"Are you a—er—misogynist?" (That word has always been hard for me to get out.)

"No," he returned, "I pity women too much to make love to them."

"You have a queer pity, then. Most of them like having love made to them."

"Yes they're never happy unless they're running their heads into a noose." Replied he.

"It's what our friend, G.B.S., calls the Life Force," said I. "Aren't you ever impelled by it?". He looked at me somewhat wanly. "I'll confess I am at times—but then, everyone born is a fool!"

"Really," I said, exasperated, "You are a miserable pessimist. Can't you see the underlying principle of things? The thing beneath both the beauty and decay? The Law fixed and unalterable? Can't you learn the lesson of Life—acquiescence—that what happens must be?"

page 15

"Acquiescence!" he ejaculated so sharply that I almost started back. "Acquiescence, say you? And you call me a pessimist. 'Tis you and all like you that are the cumberers of the Earth. You sit by with your calm philosophy. 'Nous verrons ce que nous verrons,' say you. You walk in your gardens and watch the flowers fade and the seeds ripen and you moralise on Life and Death. You read of crime in your newspaper and think 'The sins of the fathers are visited on the children.' You say you see both the beauty and the ugliness of life—you acknowledge that both exist—but you take care that more of the beauty comes your way. But it's men like me"—his eyes glowed with purpose—"men like me whom you call pessimists. We fight the evil, for we see it, and the seeing makes us sad and purposeful. You are too comprehensive to select a way to betterment. I narrow my view. I will not see further, but I act. I speak and do more than I think, else I would be paralysed like you and your kind. He rose to his feet, frowning at me. All kinds of retorts rose to my lips, but I checked them.

"My dear fellow," I merely said, "I hope you'll do more good than harm, and now good-day." I nodded farewell and took out my pocket Omar Khayyam. The man in the Norfolk suit returned my good-day curtly and swung on his way down the road, stopping, however, to pick up the wilting primroses and pinning them tenderly and carefully to the lapel of his coat. —M.L.N.