Page images
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]

At this point, Pobolo was constrained to regale himself with laughter. "Now, who ever heard anybody so far away? It is laugh-laugh to listen to this Lean-face talker. He is like one who jabbers in his sleep. He tells what is not."

"Then he came near-next to me," resumed Lean-face. "But I could not see him, even though it was daylight."

Pobolo walked in a circle and laughed. "This must be the way monkeys talk," he said to Ugwuf. "Monkey-talk," he repeated. "Let us kill this Lean-face lest he talk more."

[ocr errors]

"Wah-wah said he is my friend. He will fight with his fire when he is angry," stated the traveler.

Pobolo was perplexed; Ugwuf, agitated. "What more did he say to you?" interrogated the latter.

"Many things," replied Lean-face. "But he said not to tell people all at one time. I tell soon. Look here!" Leanface pointed to the flint, while the others crowded around. "He made this for me, quick, like birds fly. Wah-wah said, 'Look! And I looked, but did not see. And then he said: 'Look again!' and I looked and saw this knife. And I said, 'Good Wah-wah, show me yourself.' And he said, 'No; not now. But look on the knife, and you will see Wah-wah and Ainu like looking in the water. On the stone will be little shadow-persons like look-in-thewater persons. But the shadow on the stone never go away." The king looked. Forthwith, as had Lean-face, he saw nothing. When he saw, he drew back.

Long-face continued assuredly: "Many things Wah-wah told me. This much I tell now. He said about fire, 'Fire is not treated well; so Wah-wah is angry like fire and fire is wild like lion.' He said, 'You, Lean-face, must always keep fire, because I like you, and it is my fire. Never let any man say that the fire is not Wahwah's fire. Every time the moon is round like the sun, men must bring Lean-face meat, to use Wah-wah's fire.'

"Wah-wah also said, 'Pobolo is good, but not good as Lean-face. Whatever Lean-face speaks to Ugwuf, Ugwuf to do before Pobolo speaks. If Lean-face does not speak, then Pobolo to speak; but not of the same things. Pobolo speaks about many men; Lean-face tells of only one, which is Wah-wah!'

"Wah-wah also said, 'Lean-face to wear cord around waist with leaves of trees, to show how Wah-wah came with fire.'

"Wah-wah also said, 'Whatever Wahwah says is to be done first, and other things afterwards.'

"And Wah-wah said many other things, which Lean-face will tell when it is good."

Then quoth Pobolo, "The next time you speak with Wah-wah, Pobolo will go and speak with you."

Lean-face looked very sad. "No," he asserted; "Wah-wah is angry from his teeth to his hands. He would put you to the never-wake-up sleep. By and by he may become kind and Lean-face will ask about you."

Pobolo was quiet.

"Then," inquired Ugwuf, "if we do all that Wah-wah says, will he be friend of us ?"

"Oh, yes," exclaimed Lean-face.

"It is well," said the chief.

"And Wah-wah said, 'Lean-face shall have ten cows from Ugwuf.'"

At this there was silence. But the chief seemed willing to maintain his compact of friendship with the absent one, and repeated, "It is well. Lean-face will wear the cord of trees and come take two handsful of cows," by which latter he meant ten. "Ugwuf likes Wah-wah and likes to do as he says," added the chief.

"Ugwuf will be the better for it," replied Lean-face.

CHAPTER IV.

The moving grace of human nature is to be as unnatural as possible. When the trait is developed selfishly and for one's own peculiar amusement, it is eccentricity. When the artificial is successfully forced upon others, making them revolve around the new center of thought, the result is leadership. This is the demand for power. It takes form variously, under many pretexts and precepts, for instances, in the father of a family, the employer, the school

master, the exalted master of a secret society, the judge, the jailer, the general, and the king. Now and then the satellites move away, yet reorganize themselves in other orbits with a different name in the center of the system.

Royalty is the soul materialized in gold and purple. It is an extension of the inmost self upon the wills of others. The performance is so beautiful that the others forget their spiritual subjection in admiration of the imperial weapons. This is as it should be. For there must be one acknowledged supreme in order to suppress the turbulent supremacies in others. Besides, if a man would not endure being a servant, he must go and be a king. The only way to escape all is to subjugate all.

"I am king," say I.

"You are king," say they.

"Nay; I am not king because you say it, but because I will it. Therefore, I shall be a despot, inflicting you with continual evidence of me royal."

It is thus that he thinks. It is thus, knows he that understands the entrails of the soul.

There is one king; yet there are many tiny images of his power. For we give devotion to riches, influence, patronage, credits, reputes, fames, honors, notes. And some among these arise to assert, "My kingdom is greater than the king's.'

[ocr errors]

In Ugwuf of the Heaviest Spear was the reign of the arm. The arm was crowned before the diadem was removed to the head. Muscle wore its armlet before the jeweled symbol of authority was raised upon the brain. Ugwuf collected many privileges as his rugged head could devise. He mastered well the rudiments of the age.

as

His will and its execution slept and flew in his spear. Then came Pobolo, who had only words for his weapon. Ugwuf by force, Pobolo maintained himself by wisdom. Ugwuf Ugwuf had strength; had strength; Pobolo directed it. The latter's greed for authority was satisfied with its own means of acquisition. Ugwuf called Pobolo his Fat Speaker. Unto his Fat Speaker he was the Ignorant Fighter.

Now. with the division of these matters between the king and his minister of State, it seemed as if there were no other

glory left for the all-as-rapacious Leanface. But this advanced mind soon discovered a basis of supremacy great as, or greater than, any known; to wit, the unknown.

Every one beheld Ugwuf's courage; they came to know Pobolo's sagacity. And now, as against these, appears Leanface with his dependence upon matters which none of them could behold or know. It was at first puzzling, even to Lean-face, that the more the tribe was puzzled the more it was delighted; the less it knew the less it doubted.

Devoutly interested in these traits, Lean-face was the first to touch with subtle finger the fonder places of the human heart. Ugwuf signified force; Pobolo had made words forcible; Lean-face made words fascinating.

As he was interested in the innovation, constantly he applied new tests and satisfactions of it. He interfered with every habit of the tribe, and gave it customs instead, conformable to some plan or virtue or emolument.

When a child was born, it was Leanface who was asked whether Wah-wah welcomed it to the use of Wah-wah's fire. When a tribesman died, Lean-face assisted at the burial, for it was Wah-wah's will that the dead be inhumed: otherwise they would return and annoy their breth

ren.

Everything belonged to Wah-wah, for he had the power of destroying everything. He had invented fire that could burn up the forests, frighten away the game and consume the fruits, as once it did. Mountains had been mountains before this falsifier came into power; now they were the abode of Wah-wah. Leanface had turned the world into a stamping ground for the imagination. He falsified the earth with thought. He gave mind its first apple to eat.

He loved to intimidate his assembly. The king could make them cower by pointing his spear; the statesman, by threatening to inform the king. friend of Wah-wah could terrify his fellows by telling them of extravagant acts which they begged him not to perform.

The

One of his actual feats had a beneficial effect. Taking the head of a cow, he scraped out the interior and walked about with his own head within. The result

[ocr errors]

was a panic. He spoke through the cow's mouth and pretended to gore with the horns. The spectators fell to earth and writhed in fear.

To remove the mask, Lean-face returned to his cave, for he knew enough of illusion not to become himself again in their presence.

Subsequently he was minded to go further than that, by scraping the flesh from the whole carcass. He set his woman to the task. When she had divested the meat from half of the skin and hair, Lean-face, observing the thick texture of the hide, reflected that it could be stripped from the body instead of gouging out the interior. The flaying was readily accomplished. Then he slew the woman that she might not divulge the secret process and the manner of its evolvement.

[ocr errors]

With this novelty, he went to the king. "Wah-wah came to me in the night,' said Lean-face, "and showed me this: to take the hair from cow. See all hair. Wah-wah says, when Ugwuf fights, Ugwuf wear cow's head and hair. It is good to take food from enemies when Ugwuf is hungry and does not like long fight. Everybody run fast away."

The king, who had been growing suspicious of Lean-face's arbitrary methods, now underwent a renewal of faith and gave the theologian full rights to experiment on the royal herd. Ugwuf was about to engage in another war; for he and his subjects had done more eating than breeding of the useful fool-beast, and scouts were out to observe if there were any more cattle in the distance. Moreover, while the pasturing of the cattle had not yet resulted in acquiring useful arts therefrom, it had made the possessors indolent. The peaceful breeding of meat was not to Ugwuf's liking, as the rising powers of the statesman and the priest were removing the glamour from the royal spear. Ugwuf thrived on war.

However, this was not Lean-face's only achievement. It was his custom on overseeing the burial of the dead, to deposit a little wheat on the mound, in order that the dead might eat, if it had a mind to. Prior to that time there had been no planting of cereals, which grew wild, and no connection was remarked between seed and stalk. It was while inspecting one

of the graves, to ascertain if the corpse had made use of the offering, that Leanface beheld grass sprouting from the seed. It was sometime before he experimented himself into the satisfaction that this phenomenon would take place as often as desired.

When ready to inform his followers of the fact, he told them he could and would cause wheat to grow wherever they pleased provided they would bestow upon him a portion of the crop. This they were eager to do. And thus Lean-face gave the first agricultural impetus.

But he was destined to render humanity a more adorable pursuit than the stripping of hides and the planting of seeds. It was he who first removed love from the spoils of war and brawl.

on

There was a young man wont to visit him with drawings of spear-heads bone. He worked with a flint-point and rubbed in the line with black ashes. He practiced his art until able to sketch animals and even men. Hugely susceptible to all of Lean-face's imaginings, unto him the sponsor of the unknown would assert his most cherished thoughts. So talented and sympathetic was the artist that sometimes the prophet confided to him the fact that everything known and unknown was not within Lean-face's knowledge. Now and then he spoke to this soulful Wansakalompo in the form of questions.

"What makes the sun come up and go down?" Lean-face once asked, not to be answered, but to confess his own ignor

ance.

And when Wansakalompo replied, "The sun makes himself go," the priest respected him for a deep thinker.

"What kind of people live in the water and look up at us when we look in the water?" asked Lean-face.

"Dead people come back and look at us from the water," Wansakalompo averred meditatively.

"But how do water people live in the water?"

To which Wansakalompo: "Live man is warm; dead man is cold. When a man dies, his warm goes everywhere."

"But when you, Wansakalompo, look into water, the waterman looks the same as Wansakalompo. How do you think that?"

"I think there are two of me, and one of them goes out of me into the water and looks up and sometimes follows me in the sunlight. It cannot speak, but it wants to speak. It has the want-to-speak behind its mouth."

Even Lean-face's draught on the spiritual had been based on physical grounds. He insisted that Wah-wah was still alive. It was the soul of the artist that divined a rarer spirit. In so much that Lean-face admired him the more and admitted (to himself) that many ideas could be learned. from him.

One day Wansakalom po came in a confusion of ferocity and despair. He did not speak until the friend of Wahwah questioned.

have had

"You know," replied the artist, "I had only one woman. That woman is young, and I like to have her. She sweeps her hair often with the dried fish-bone. She speaks with red lips, reddest of all the women; and Red Lips I named her. She likes to dwell in my

cave."

"Yes," responded Lean-face. "And what?"

"Now," said Wansakalompo, "Ugwuf takes her. To-day I passed near Ugwuf's wide cave. and Red Lips called out to me, 'Wansakalompo, come take me back.' I began to do that, when Ugwuf raised his spear. I raised mine, and all about me fell the spears of his men. I jumped behind a rock, and then, it is hard to tell why, but perhaps because I thought of you, my best friend, that I shouted loud: 'Help me, O Wah-wah!' And all the men settled back afraid. But they had hurt me here, and here. Tell me, Lean-face, that speaks with the Great Wah-wah, tell me how I can get back Red Lips, my beautiful woman. If you do not tell me, I shall let myself know the way of fighting, though I cannot fight so many, and perhaps will be cut open and bleed to die and look up at you from the cold water."

Lean-face studied the matter in silence. He foresaw that interfering between Ugwuf and a woman would be a dangerous task. He doubted whether the vicarious word of Wah-wah would be revered in that regard. On the other hand, Wansakalompo was a comrade above the ordinary. With thinking he was pleased as with food,

in language he was choice with many words. He did not talk with a grunt. So Lean-face resolved his mind, bore with him the sacred sword of Wah-wah and proceeded to the king, leaving. Wansakalompo to wait.

Approaching the king, Lean-face spake in sudden sorrow: 'Ugwuf, Great Ugwuf of the Flint Belt, First Hunter in the Mountains, and Chief Killer of Enemies, Lean-face is going away."

"Why?" asked the king. "Sometimes," declared

Lean-face,

"when I tell Ugwuf to do, he does. Ugwuf acts my words not because of me, but because Ugwuf and Wah-wah know it is good. Now, I have to say what Ugwuf may think not good. When I say to Wah-wah, Ugwuf will not do; he will be angry with fire. And I will say, 'Burn me up, for I cannot speak to the king of what he will not do.' So now I leave, and Ugwuf himself can deal with Wah-wah. It is too much for me. Farewell."

With that he was departing, but the king recalled him. "Tell me what I will not do," he commanded.

And Lean-face resumed: "It is too much for me. It is too near to Wahwah's best thoughts. He should tell. But, you to know before he comes, I say it -not for me to tell, but for you to know. This: When Wah-wah lived with Ainu, he liked her. When he was gone, Ainu had a

son.

When she lived with Botu she had a daughter. Now, Wah-wah's son caved with a woman who gave forth a son; and Ainu's daughter gave forth another daughter.

And the son's women bore sons, and the daughters bore daughters for their men. So it was until now. When Wahwah gave me the sword, he said: "This picture on the sword is Wah-wah, and this one is Ainu. Sometimes, Lean-face, you will find the son's many-son and the daughter's many-daughter, living near you. Whenever you do, remember to give them this sword, and let them live together and with nobody else. For Wah-wah says it is good that he always have a many-son alive."

"Well," growled Ugwuf, "how is this to me? Have you found these two?" "The many-son is near my cave." "And the many-daughter?" Lean-face did not answer.

"And the many-daughter ?" repeated the king.

"She is in your cave."

"I have many women; take the one you wish." said the king.

Lean-face clasped the hand of RedLips.

"Wah-wah always takes the best," sighed Ugwuf.

And Lean-face led her away.

Soon he brought the couple to the public fire. The tribesmen squatted around them.

"This is the sword of Wah-wah," exploded Lean-face, transported with the magnitude of his emprise. "Wah-wah

[ocr errors]

looks at Wansakalompo and Red Lips, and says, "These two are of him and Ainu. He watches over them. No other man shall take Red Lips or fight for her. She is to be for Wansakalompo even if he does not fight; even when he is too old to fight; for Wah-wah will flatten with a rock any one who steals Red-Lips."

"Wansakalompo, you know this?” "Yes."

"Red-Lips, you know this?" "Yes."

As token of this marriage, he bestowed upon the artist the sacred relic, and the two went wondrously to their cave. (To be Continued.)

A VISION OF HELEN

BEFORE CHAERONEA

BY ETHEL TALBOT

There came a breath as of flowers,
And over the ships and the towers,
Over the sleeping host

Came a strange, beautiful ghost.
Her eyes were like burning flame,
Burning with sorrow and shame.

Her voice like wind in the trees,
And she wandered on through the night
A wailing presence of light,

Over the ships to the seas.

But one of the host awoke,

His thin voice trembled and broke--
He said: "Tis to burn and destroy,

He said: It is Helen of Troy.

« PreviousContinue »