The Burning Spear | Page 4

first publication he
admitted authorship and it was included in the collected edition of his
works. D.W.]
"With a heart of furious fancies, Whereof I am commander, With a
burning spear and a horse of air In the wilderness I wander; With a
night of ghosts and shadows I summoned am to tourney Ten leagues
beyond the wide world's end For me it is no journey."

TOM O'BEDLAM

THE BURNING SPEAR

I
THE HERO
In the year ---- there dwelt on Hampstead Heath a small thin gentleman
of fifty-eight, gentle disposition, and independent means, whose wits
had become somewhat addled from reading the writings and speeches
of public men. The castle which, like every Englishman, he inhabited
was embedded in lilac bushes and laburnums, and was attached to
another castle, embedded, in deference to our national dislike of
uniformity, in acacias and laurustinus. Our gentleman, whose name was
John Lavender, had until the days of the Great War passed one of those
curious existences are sometimes to be met with, in doing harm to
nobody. He had been brought up to the Bar, but like most barristers had
never practised, and had spent his time among animals and the wisdom
of the past. At the period in which this record opens he owned a young
female sheep-dog called Blink, with beautiful eyes obscured by hair;
and was attended to by a thin and energetic housekeeper, in his
estimation above all weakness, whose name was Marian Petty, and by
her husband, his chauffeur, whose name was Joe.
It was the ambition of our hero to be, like all public men, without fear
and without reproach. He drank not, abstained from fleshly intercourse,
and habitually spoke the truth. His face was thin, high cheek-boned,
and not unpleasing, with one loose eyebrow over which he had no
control; his eyes, bright and of hazel hue, looked his fellows in the face
without seeing what was in it. Though his moustache was still dark, his
thick waving hair was permanently white, for his study was lined from
floor to ceiling with books, pamphlets, journals, and the recorded
utterances of great mouths. He was of a frugal habit, ate what was put
before him without question, and if asked what he would have,
invariably answered: "What is there?" without listening to the reply.
For at mealtimes it was his custom to read the writings of great men.
"Joe," he would say to his chauffeur, who had a slight limp, a green
wandering eye, and a red face, with a rather curved and rather redder
nose, "You must read this."

And Joe would answer:
"Which one is that, sir?"
"Hummingtop; a great man, I think, Joe."
"A brainy chap, right enough, sir."
"He has done wonders for the country. Listen to this." And Mr.
Lavender would read as follows: "If I had fifty sons I would give them
all. "If I had forty daughters they should nurse and scrub and weed and
fill shells; if I had thirty country-houses they should all be hospitals; if I
had twenty pens I would use them all day long; if had ten voices they
should never cease to inspire and aid my country."
"If 'e had nine lives," interrupted Joe, with a certain suddenness, "'e'd
save the lot."
Mr. Lavender lowered the paper.
"I cannot bear cynicism, Joe; there is no quality so unbecoming to a
gentleman."
"Me and 'im don't put in for that, sir."
"Joe, Mr. Lavender would say you are, incorrigible...."
Our gentleman, in common with all worthy of the name, had a
bank-book, which, in hopes that it would disclose an unsuspected
balance, he would have "made up" every time he read an utterance
exhorting people to invest and save their country.
One morning at the end of May, finding there was none, he called in his
housekeeper and said:
"Mrs. Petty, we are spending too much; we have again been exhorted to
save. Listen! 'Every penny diverted from prosecution of the war is one
more spent in the interests of the enemies of mankind. No patriotic
person, I am confident; will spend upon him or herself a stiver which
could be devoted to the noble ends so near to all our hearts. Let us
make every spare copper into bullets to strengthen the sinews of war!'
A great speech. What can we do without?"
"The newspapers, sir."
"Don't be foolish, Mrs. Petty. From what else could we draw our
inspiration and comfort in these terrible days?"
Mrs. Petty sniffed. "Well, you can't eat less than you do," she said; "but
you might stop feedin' Blink out of your rations--that I do think."
"I have not found that forbidden as yet in any public utterance,"
returned Mr. Lavender; "but when the Earl of Betternot tells