‘Ho!’ said the Bull, ‘so you have been told these things too. Which of the Houses holds your death?’
Leo pointed upwards to the dark House of the Crab and groaned: ‘And he will come for the Girl too,’ he said.
‘Well,’ said the Bull, ‘what will you do?’
Leo sat down on the dyke and said that he did not know.
‘You cannot pull a plough,’ said the Bull, with a little touch of contempt. ‘I can, and that prevents me from thinking of the Scorpion.’
Leo was angry and said nothing till the dawn broke, and the cultivator came to yoke the Bull to his work.
‘Sing,’ said the Bull, as the stiff muddy ox-bow creaked and strained. ‘My shoulder is galled. Sing one of the songs that we sang when we thought we were all Gods together.’
Leo stepped back into the cane-brake and lifted up his voice in a song of the Children of the Zodiac – the war-whoop of the young Gods who are afraid of nothing. At first he dragged the song along unwillingly, and then the song dragged him, and his voice rolled across the fields, and the Bull stepped to the tune, and the cultivator banged his flanks out of sheer light-heartedness, and the furrows rolled away behind the plough more and more swiftly. Then the Girl came across the fields looking for Leo and found him singing in the cane. She joined her voice to his, and the cultivator’s wife brought her spinning into the open and listened with all her children round her. When it was time for the nooning, Leo and the Girl had sung themselves both thirsty and hungry, but the cultivator and his wife gave them rye-bread and milk, and many thanks, and theBull found occasion to say: ‘You have helped me to do a full half-field more than I should have done. But the hardest part of the day is to come, brother.’
Leo wished to lie down and brood over the words of the Crab. The Girl went away to talk to the cultivator’s wife and baby, and the afternoon ploughing began.
‘Help us now,’ said the Bull. ‘The tides of the day are running down. My legs are very stiff. Sing if you never sang before.’
‘To a mud-spattered villager?’ said Leo.
‘He is under the same doom as ourselves. Are you a coward?’ said the Bull. Leo flushed and began again with a sore throat and a bad temper. Little by little he dropped away from the songs of the Children and made up a song as he went along; and this was a thing he could never have done had he not met the Crab face to face. He remembered facts concerning cultivators, and bullocks, and rice-fields, that he had not particularly noticed before the interview, and he strung them all together, growing more interested as he sang, and he told the cultivator much more about himself and his work than the cultivator knew. The Bull grunted approval as he toiled down the furrows for the last time that day, and the song ended, leaving the cultivator with a very good opinion of himself in his aching bones. The Girl came out of the hut where she had been keeping the children quiet, and talking woman-talk to the wife, and they all ate the evening meal together.
‘Now yours must be a very pleasant life,’ said the cultivator, ‘sitting as you do on a dyke all day and singing just what comes into your head. Have you been at it long, you two – gipsies?’
‘Ah!’ lowed the Bull from his byre. ‘That’s all the thanks you will ever get from men, brother.’
‘No. We have only just begun it,’ said the Girl; ‘but we are going to keep to it as long as we live. Are we not, Leo?
‘Yes,’ said he, and they went away hand-in-hand.
‘You can sing beautifully, Leo,’ said she, as a wife will to her husband.
‘What were you doing?’ said he.
‘I was talking to the mother and the babies,’ she said. ‘You would not understand the little things that make us women laugh.’
‘And – and I am to go on with this – this gipsy-work?’ said Leo.
‘Yes, dear, and I will help you.’
There is no written record of the life of Leo and of the Girl, so we cannot tell how Leo took to his new employment which he detested. We are only sure that the Girl loved him when and wherever he sang; even when, after the song was done, she went round with the equivalent of a tambourine, and collected the pence for the daily bread. There were times too when it was Leo’s very hard task to console the Girl for the indignity of horrible praise that people gave him and her – for the silly wagging peacock feathers that they stuck in his cap, and the buttons and pieces of cloth that they sewed on his coat. Womanlike, she could advise and help to the end, but the meanness of the means revolted. ‘What does it matter,’ Leo would say, ‘so long as the songs make them a little happier?’ And they would go down the road and begin again on the old old refrain: that whatever came or did not come the children of men must not be afraid. It was heavy teaching at first, but in process of years Leo discovered that he could make men laugh and hold them listening to him even when the rain fell. Yet there were people who would sit down and cry softly, though the crowd was yelling with delight, and there were people who maintained that Leo made them do this; and the Girl would talk to them in the pauses of the performance and do her best to comfort them. People would die too, while Leo was talking, and singing, and laughing, for the Archer, and the Scorpion, and the Crab, and the other Houses were as busy as ever. Sometimes the crowd broke, and were frightened, and Leo strove to keep them steady by telling them that this was cowardly; and sometimes they mocked at the Houses that were killing them, and Leo explained that this was even more cowardly than running away. In their wanderings they came across the Bull, or the Ram,or the Twins, but all were too busy to do more than nod to each other across the crowd, and go on with their work. As the years rolled on even that recognition ceased, for the Children of the Zodiac had forgotten that they had ever been Gods working for the sake of men. The Star Aldebaran was crusted with caked dirt on the Bull’s forehead, the Ram’s fleece was dusty and torn, and the Twins were only babies fighting over the cat on the doorstep. It was then that Leo said: ‘Let us stop singing and making jokes.’ And it was then that the Girl said ‘No—’ but she did not know why she said ‘No’ so energetically. Leo maintained that it was perversity, till she herself, at the end of a dusty day, made the same suggestion to him, and he said ‘most certainly not,’ and they quarrelled miserably between the hedgerows, forgetting the meaning of the stars above them. Other singers and other talkers sprang up in the course of the years, and Leo, forgetting that there could never be too many of these, hated them for dividing the applause of the children of men, which he thought should be all his own. The Girl would grow angry too, and then the songs would be broken, and the jests fall flat for weeks to come, and the children of men would shout: ‘Go home, you two gipsies. Go home and learn something worth singing!’
After one of these sorrowful shameful days, the Girl, walking by Leo’s side through the fields, saw the full moon coming up over the trees, and she clutched Leo’s arm, crying: ‘The time has come now. Oh, Leo, forgive me!’
‘What is it?’ said Leo. He was thinking of the other singers.
‘My husband!’ she answered, and she laid his hand upon her breast, and the breast that he knew so well was hard as stone. Leo groaned, remembering what the Crab had said.
‘Surely we were Gods once,’ he cried.
‘Surely we are Gods still,’ said the Girl. ‘Do you not remember when you and I went to the House of the Crab and – were not very much afraid? And since then … we have forgotten what we were singing for – we sang for the pence, and, oh, we fought for them! – We, who are the Children of the Zodiac’
‘It was my fault,’ said Leo.
‘How can there be any fault of yours that is not mine too?’ said the Girl. ‘My time has come, but you will live longer, and …’ The look in her eyes said all she could not say.
‘Yes, I will remember that we are Gods,’ said Leo.
It is very hard, even for a Child of the Zodiac, who has forgotten his Godhead, to see his wife dying slowly and to know that he cannot help her. The Girl told Leo in those last months of a
ll that she had said and done among the wives and the babies at the back of the roadside performances, and Leo was astonished that he knew so little of her who had been so much to him. When she was dying she told him never to fight for pence or quarrel with the other singers; and, above all, to go on with his singing immediately after she was dead.
Then she died, and after he had buried her he went down the road to a village that he knew, and the people hoped that he would begin quarrelling with a new singer that had sprung up while he had been away. But Leo called him ‘my brother.’The new singer was newly married – and Leo knew it – and when he had finished singing, Leo straightened himself and sang the ‘Song of the Girl,’ which he had made coming down the road. Every man who was married or hoped to be married, whatever his rank or colour, understood that song – even the bride leaning on the new husband’s arm understood it too – and presently when the song ended, and Leo’s heart was bursting in him, the men sobbed. ‘That was a sad tale,’ they said at last, ‘now make us laugh.’ Because Leo had known all the sorrow that a man could know, including the full knowledge of his own fall who had once been a God – he, changing his song quickly, made the people laugh till they could laugh no more. They went away feeling ready for any trouble in reason, and they gave Leo more peacock feathers and pence than he could count. Knowing that pence led to quarrels and that peacock feathers were hateful to the Girl, he put them aside and went away to look for his brothers, to remind them that they too were Gods.
He found the Bull goring the undergrowth in a ditch, for the Scorpion had stung him, and he was dying, not slowly, as the Girl had died, but quickly.
‘I know all,’ the Bull groaned, as Leo came up. ‘I had forgotten too, but I remember now. Go and look at the fields I ploughed. The furrows are straight. I forgot that I was a God, but I drew the plough perfectly straight, for all that. And you, brother?’
‘I am not at the end of the ploughing,’ said Leo. ‘Does Death hurt?’
‘No, but dying does,’ said the Bull, and he died. The cultivator who then owned him was much annoyed, for there was a field still unploughed.
It was after this that Leo made the Song of the Bull who had been a God and forgotten the fact, and he sang it in such a manner that half the young men in the world conceived that they too might be Gods without knowing it. A half of that half grew impossibly conceited, and died early. A half of the remainder strove to be Gods and failed, but the other half accomplished four times more work than they would have done under any other delusion.
Later, years later, always wandering up and down and making the children of men laugh, he found the Twins sitting on the bank of a stream waiting for the Fishes to come and carry them away. They were not in the least afraid, and they told Leo that the woman of the House had a real baby of her own, and that when that baby grew old enough to be mischievous he would find a well-educated cat waiting to have its tail pulled. Then the Fishes came for them, but all that the people saw was two children drowned in a brook; and though their foster-mother was very sorry, she hugged her own real baby to her breast and was grateful that it was only the foundlings.
Then Leo made the Song of the Twins, who had forgotten that they were Gods and had played in the dust to amuse a foster-mother. That song was sung far and wide among the women. It caused them to laugh and cry and hug their babies closer to their hearts all in one breath; and some of the women who remembered the Girl said ‘Surely that is the voice of Virgo. Only she could know so much about ourselves.’ After those three songs were made, Leo sang them over andover again till he was in danger of looking upon them as so many mere words, and the people who listened grew tired, and there came back to Leo the old temptation to stop singing once and for all. But he remembered the Girl’s dying words and persisted.
One of his listeners interrupted him as he was singing. ‘Leo,’ said he, ‘I have heard you telling us not to be afraid for the past forty years. Can you not sing something new now?’
‘No,’ said Leo, ‘it is the only song that I am allowed to sing. You must not be afraid of the Houses, even when they kill you.’ The man turned to go, wearily, but there came a whistling through the air, and the arrow of the Archer was seen skimming low above the earth, pointing to the man’s heart. He drew himself up, and stood still waiting till the arrow struck home.
‘I die,’ he said quietly. ‘It is well for me, Leo, that you sang for forty years.’
‘Are you afraid?’ said Leo, bending over him.
‘I am a man, not a God,’ said the man. ‘I should have run away but for your songs. My work is done, and I die without making a show of my fear.’
‘I am very well paid,’ said Leo to himself. ‘Now that I see what my songs are doing, I will sing better ones.’
He went down the road, collected his little knot of listeners, and began the Song of the Girl. In the middle of his singing he felt the cold touch of the Crab’s claw on the apple of his throat. He lifted his hand, choked, and stopped for an instant.
‘Sing on, Leo,’ said the crowd. ‘The old song runs as well as ever it did.’
Leo went on steadily till the end with the cold fear at his heart. When his song was ended, he felt the grip on his throat tighten. He was old, he had lost the Girl, he knew that he was losing more than half his power to sing, he could scarcely walk to the diminishing crowds that waited for him, and could not see their faces when they stood about him. None the less, he cried angrily to the Crab:
‘Why have you come for me now?’
‘You were born under my care. How can I help coming foryou?’ said the Crab wearily. Every human being whom the Crab killed had asked that same question.
‘But I was just beginning to know what my songs were doing,’ said Leo.
‘Perhaps that is why,’ said the Crab, and the grip tightened.
‘You said you would not come till I had taken the world by the shoulders,’ gasped Leo, falling back.
‘I always keep my word. You have done that three times with three songs. What more do you desire?’
‘Let me live to see the world know it,’ pleaded Leo. ‘Let me be sure that my songs—’
‘Make men brave?’ said the Crab. ‘Even then there would be one man who was afraid. The Girl was braver than you are. Come.’
Leo was standing close to the restless, insatiable mouth.
‘I forgot,’ said he simply. ‘The Girl was braver. But I am a God too, and I am not afraid.’
‘What is that to me?’ said the Crab.
Then Leo’s speech was taken from him and he lay still and dumb, watching Death till he died.
Leo was the last of the Children of the Zodiac. After his death there sprang up a breed of little mean men, whimpering and flinching and howling because the Houses killed them and theirs, who wished to live for ever without any pain. They did not increase their lives, but they increased their own torments miserably, and there were no Children of the Zodiac to guide them; and the greater part of Leo’s songs were lost.
Only he had carved on the Girl’s tombstone the last verse of the Song of the Girl, which stands at the head of this story.
One of the children of men, coming thousands of years later, rubbed away the lichen, read the lines, and applied them to a trouble other than the one Leo meant. Being a man, men believed that he had made the verses himself; but they belong to Leo, the Child of the Zodiac, and teach, as he taught, that whatever comes or does not come we men must not be afraid.
THE LOST LEGION
When the Indian Mutiny broke out, and a little time before the siege of Delhi, a regiment of Native Irregular Horse was stationed at Peshawur on the frontier of India. That regiment caught what John Lawrence called at the time ‘the prevalent mania’ and would have thrown in its lot with the mutineers, had it been allowed to do so. The chance never came, for, as the regiment swept off down south, it was headed off by a remnant of an English corps into the hills of Afghanistan, and there the tribesmen, newly conquered by the
English, turned against it as wolves turn against buck. It was hunted for the sake of its arms and accoutrements from hill to hill, from ravine to ravine, up and down the dried beds of rivers and round the shoulders of bluffs, till it disappeared as water sinks in the sand – this officerless, rebel regiment. The only trace left of its existence today is a nominal roll drawn up in neat round-hand and countersigned by an officer who called himself ‘Adjutant, late – Irregular Cavalry.’ The paper is yellow with years and dirt, but on the back of it you can still read a pencil note by John Lawrence, to this effect: ‘See that the two native officers who remained loyal are not deprived of their estates. – J. L.’ Of six hundred and fifty sabres only two stood the strain, and John Lawrence in the midst of all the agony of the first months of the Mutiny found time to think about their merits.
That was more than thirty years ago, and the tribesmen across the Afghan border who helped to annihilate the regiment are now old men. Sometimes a greybeard speaks of his share in the massacre. ‘They came,’ he will say, ‘across the Border, very proud, calling upon us to rise and kill the English,and go down to the sack of Delhi. But we who had just been conquered by the same English knew that they were overbold, and that the Government could account easily for those down-country dogs. This Hindustani regiment, therefore, we treated with fair words, and kept standing in one place till the redcoats came after them very hot and angry. Then this regiment ran forward a little more into our hills to avoid the wrath of the English, and we lay upon their flanks watching from the sides of the hills till we were well assured that their path was lost behind them. Then we came down, for we desired their clothes, and their bridles, and their rifles, and their boots – more expecially their boots. That was a great killing – done slowly.’ Here the old man will rub his nose, and shake his snaky locks, and lick his bearded lips, grinning till the yellow tooth-slumps show. ‘Yea, we killed them because we needed their gear, and we knew that their lives had been forfeited to God on account of their sin – the sin of treachery to the salt which they had eaten. They rode up and down the valleys, stumbling and rocking in their saddles, and howling for mercy. We drove them slowly like cattle till they were all assembled in one place, the flat, wide valley of Sheor Kôt. Many had died from want of water, but there still were many left, and they could not make any stand. We went among them pulling them down with our hands two at a time, and our boys killed them who were new to the sword. My share of the plunder was such and such – so many guns, and so many saddles. The guns were good in those days. Now we steal the Government rifles, and despise smooth barrels. Yes, beyond doubt we wiped that regiment from off the face of the earth, and even the memory of the deed is now dying. But men say—’ At this point the tale would stop abruptly, and it was impossible to find out what men said across the Border. The Afghans were always a secretive race, and vastly preferred doing something wicked to saying anything at all. They would for months be quiet and well-behaved, till one night, without word or warning, they would rush a police-post, cut the throats of a constable or two, dash through a village, carry away three or four women, and withdraw, in the red glare ofburning thatch, driving the cattle and goats before them to their desolate hills. The Indian Government would become almost tearful on these occasions. First it would say, ‘Please be good, and we’ll forgive you.’ The tribe concerned in the latest depredation would collectively put its thumb to its nose and answer rudely. Then the Government would say: ‘Hadn’t you better pay up a little money for those few corpses you left behind you the other night?’ Here the tribe would temporise, and lie and bully, and some of the younger men, merely to show contempt of authority, would raid another police-post and fire into some frontier mud fort, and, if lucky, kill a real English officer. Then the Government would say: – ‘Observe; if you persist in this line of conduct, you will be hurt.’ If the tribe knew exactly what was going on in India, it would apologise or be rude, according as it learned whether the Government was busy with other things or able to devote its full attention to their performances. Some of the tribes knew to one corpse how far to go. Others became excited, lost their heads, and told the Government to ‘come on.’ With sorrow and tears, and one eye on the British taxpayer at home, who insisted on regarding these exercises as brutal wars of annexation, the Government would prepare an expensive little field-brigade and some guns, and send all up into the hills to chase the wicked tribe out of the valleys, where the corn grew into the hill-tops, where there was nothing to eat. The tribe would turn out in full strength and enjoy the campaign, for they knew that their women would never be touched, that their wounded would be nursed, not mutilated, and that as soon as each man’s bag of corn was spent they could surrender and palaver with the English General as though they had been a real enemy. Afterwards, years afterwards, they would pay the blood-money, driblet by driblet, to the Government, and tell their children how they had slain the redcoats by thousands. The only drawback to this kind of picnic-war was the weakness of the redcoats for solemnly blowing up with powder the Afghan fotified towers and keeps. This the tribes always considered mean. Chief among the leaders of the smaller tribes – the meanlittle clans who knew to one penny the expense of moving white troops against them – was a priestly bandit-chief whom we will call the Gulla Kutta Mullah. His enthusiasm for Border murder as an art was almost dignified. He would cut down a mail-runner in pure wantonness, or bombard a mud fort with rifle fire when he knew that our men needed sleep. In his leisure moments he would go on circuit among his neighbours, and try to incite other tribes to devilry. Also, he kept a kind of hotel for fellow-outlaws in his village, which lay in a valley called Bersund. Any respectable murderer of that section of the frontier was sure to lie up at Bersund for it was reckoned an exceedingly safe place. The sole entry to it ran through a narrow gorge which could be converted into a death-trap in five minutes. It was surrounded by high hills, reckoned inaccessible to all save born mountaineers, and here the Gulla Kutta Mullah lived in great state, the head of a colony of mud and stone huts, and in each mud hut hung some portion of a red uniform and the plunder of dead men. The Government particularly wished for his capture, and once invited him formally to come out and be hanged on account of seventeen murders in which he had taken a direct part. He replied:–
The Mark of the Beast and Other Fantastical Tales Page 35
