It was autumn in London, that blessed season between the harshness of
winter and the insincerities of summer; a trustful season when one buys
bulbs and sees to the registration of one’s vote, believing perpetually
in spring and a change of Government.
Morton Crosby sat on a bench in a secluded corner of Hyde Park, lazily
enjoying a cigarette and watching the slow grazing promenade of a pair of
snow-geese, the male looking rather like an albino edition of the
russet-hued female. Out of the corner of his eye Crosby also noted with
some interest the hesitating hoverings of a human figure, which had
passed and repassed his seat two or three times at shortening intervals,
like a wary crow about to alight near some possibly edible morsel.
Inevitably the figure came to an anchorage on the bench, within easy
talking distance of its original occupant. The uncared-for clothes, the
aggressive, grizzled beard, and the furtive, evasive eye of the new-comer
bespoke the professional cadger, the man who would undergo hours of
humiliating tale-spinning and rebuff rather than adventure on half a
day’s decent work.
For a while the new-comer fixed his eyes straight in front of him in a
strenuous, unseeing gaze; then his voice broke out with the insinuating
inflection of one who has a story to retail well worth any loiterer’s
while to listen to.
“It’s a strange world,” he said.
As the statement met with no response he altered it to the form of a
question.
“I daresay you’ve found it to be a strange world, mister?”
“As far as I am concerned,” said Crosby, “the strangeness has worn off in
the course of thirty-six years.”
“Ah,” said the greybeard, “I could tell you things that you’d hardly
believe. Marvellous things that have really happened to me.”
“Nowadays there is no demand for marvellous things that have really
happened,” said Crosby discouragingly; “the professional writers of
fiction turn these things out so much better. For instance, my
neighbours tell me wonderful, incredible things that their Aberdeens and
chows and borzois have done; I never listen to them. On the other hand,
I have read ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ three times.”
The greybeard moved uneasily in his seat; then he opened up new country.
“I take it that you are a professing Christian,” he observed.
“I am a prominent and I think I may say an influential member of the
Mussulman community of Eastern Persia,” said Crosby, making an excursion
himself into the realms of fiction.
The greybeard was obviously disconcerted at this new check to
introductory conversation, but the defeat was only momentary.
“Persia. I should never have taken you for a Persian,” he remarked, with
a somewhat aggrieved air.
“I am not,” said Crosby; “my father was an Afghan.”
“An Afghan!” said the other, smitten into bewildered silence for a
moment. Then he recovered himself and renewed his attack.
“Afghanistan. Ah! We’ve had some wars with that country; now, I
daresay, instead of fighting it we might have learned something from it.
A very wealthy country, I believe. No real poverty there.”
He raised his voice on the word “poverty” with a suggestion of intense
feeling. Crosby saw the opening and avoided it.
“It possesses, nevertheless, a number of highly talented and ingenious
beggars,” he said; “if I had not spoken so disparagingly of marvellous
things that have really happened I would tell you the story of Ibrahim
and the eleven camel-loads of blotting-paper. Also I have forgotten
exactly how it ended.”
“My own life-story is a curious one,” said the stranger, apparently
stifling all desire to hear the history of Ibrahim; “I was not always as
you see me now.”
“We are supposed to undergo complete change in the course of every seven
years,” said Crosby, as an explanation of the foregoing announcement.
“I mean I was not always in such distressing circumstances as I am at
present,” pursued the stranger doggedly.
“That sounds rather rude,” said Crosby stiffly, “considering that you are
at present talking to a man reputed to be one of the most gifted
conversationalists of the Afghan border.”
“I don’t mean in that way,” said the greybeard hastily; “I’ve been very
much interested in your conversation. I was alluding to my unfortunate
financial situation. You mayn’t hardly believe it, but at the present
moment I am absolutely without a farthing. Don’t see any prospect of
getting any money, either, for the next few days. I don’t suppose you’ve
ever found yourself in such a position,” he added.
“In the town of Yom,” said Crosby, “which is in Southern Afghanistan, and
which also happens to be my birthplace, there was a Chinese philosopher
who used to say that one of the three chiefest human blessings was to be
absolutely without money. I forget what the other two were.”
“Ah, I daresay,” said the stranger, in a tone that betrayed no enthusiasm
for the philosopher’s memory; “and did he practise what he preached?
That’s the test.”
“He lived happily with very little money or resources,” said Crosby.
“Then I expect he had friends who would help him liberally whenever he
was in difficulties, such as I am in at present.”
“In Yom,” said Crosby, “it is not necessary to have friends in order to
obtain help. Any citizen of Yom would help a stranger as a matter of
course.”
The greybeard was now genuinely interested.
The conversation had at last taken a favourable turn.
“If someone, like me, for instance, who was in undeserved difficulties,
asked a citizen of that town you speak of for a small loan to tide over a
few days’ impecuniosity—five shillings, or perhaps a rather larger
sum—would it be given to him as a matter of course?”
“There would be a certain preliminary,” said Crosby; “one would take him
to a wine-shop and treat him to a measure of wine, and then, after a
little high-flown conversation, one would put the desired sum in his hand
and wish him good-day. It is a roundabout way of performing a simple
transaction, but in the East all ways are roundabout.”
The listener’s eyes were glittering.
“Ah,” he exclaimed, with a thin sneer ringing meaningly through his
words, “I suppose you’ve given up all those generous customs since you
left your town. Don’t practise them now, I expect.”
“No one who has lived in Yom,” said Crosby fervently, “and remembers its
green hills covered with apricot and almond trees, and the cold water
that rushes down like a caress from the upland snows and dashes under the
little wooden bridges, no one who remembers these things and treasures
the memory of them would ever give up a single one of its unwritten laws
and customs. To me they are as binding as though I still lived in that
hallowed home of my youth.”
“Then if I was to ask you for a small loan—” began the greybeard
fawningly, edging nearer on the seat and hurriedly wondering how large he
might safely make his request, “if I was to ask you for, say—”
“At any other time, certainly,” said Crosby; “in the months of November
and December, however, it is absolutely forbidden for anyone of our race
to give or receive loans or gifts; in fact, one does not willingly speak
of them. It is considered unlucky. We will therefore close this
discussion.”
“But it is still October!” exclaimed the adventurer with an eager, angry
whine, as Crosby rose from his seat; “wants eight days to the end of the
month!”
“The Afghan November began yesterday,” said Crosby severely, and in
another moment he was striding across the Park, leaving his recent
companion scowling and muttering furiously on the seat.
“I don’t believe a word of his story,” he chattered to himself; “pack of
nasty lies from beginning to end. Wish I’d told him so to his face.
Calling himself an Afghan!”
The snorts and snarls that escaped from him for the next quarter of an
hour went far to support the truth of the old saying that two of a trade
never agree.