TO THE OTHER MAN
MR PHILIP KERSHAW
_There were once two men. They were men of might and breeding. They were
young, they were intolerant, they were hale. Were there for humans as
there is for dogs a tribunal to determine excellence; were there judges
of anthropoidal points and juries to, give prizes for manly race,
vigour, and the rest, undoubtedly these two men would have gained the
gold and the pewter medals. They were men absolute._
_They loved each other like brothers, yet they quarrelled like
Socialists. They loved each other because they had in common the bond of
mankind; they quarrelled because they differed upon nearly all other
things. The one was of the Faith, the other most certainly was not. The
one sang loudly, the other sweetly. The one was stronger, the other more
cunning. The one rode horses with a long stirrup, the other with a
short. The one was indifferent to danger, the other forced himself at
it. The one could write verse, the other was quite incapable thereof.
The one could read and quote Theocritus, the other read and quoted
himself alone. The high gods had given to one judgment, to the other
valour; but to both that measure of misfortune which is their Gift to
those whom they cherish._
_From this last proceeded in them both a great knowledge of truth and a
defence of it, to the tedium of their friends: a demotion to the beauty
of women and of this world; an outspoken hatred of certain things and
men, and, alas! a permanent sadness also. All these things the gods
gave them in the day when the decision was taken upon Olympus that these
two men should not profit by any great good except Friendship, and that
all their lives through Necessity should jerk her bit between their
teeth, and even at moments goad their honour._
_The high gods, which are names only to the multitude, visited these
men. Dionysus came to them with all his company once, at dawn, upon the
Surrey hills, and drove them in his car from a suburb whose name I
forget right out into the Weald. Pallas Athene taught them by word of
mouth, and the Cytherean was their rosy, warm, unfailing friend. Apollo
loved them. He bestowed upon them, under his own hand the power not only
of remembering all songs, but even of composing light airs of their own;
and Pan, who is hairy by nature and a lurking fellow afraid of others,
was reconciled to their easy comradeship, and would accompany them into
the mountains when they were remote from mankind. Upon these occasions
he revealed to them the life of trees and the spirits that haunt the
cataracts, so that they heard voices calling where no one else had ever
heard them, and that they saw stones turned into animals and men._
_Many things came to them in common. Once in the Hills, a thousand miles
from home, when they had not seen men for a very long time, Dalua
touched them with his wing, and they went mad for the space of thirty
hours. It was by a stream in a profound gorge at evening and under a
fretful moon. The next morning they lustrated themselves with water, and
immediately they were healed._
_At another time they took a rotten old leaky boat they were poor and
could afford no other--they took, I say, a rotten old leaky boat whose
tiller was loose and whose sails mouldy, and whose blocks were jammed
and creaking, and whose rigging frayed, and they boldly set out together
into the great North Sea._
_It blew a capful, it blew half a gale, it blew a gale: little they
cared, these sons of Ares, these cousins of the broad daylight! There
mere no men on earth save these two who would not have got her under a
trysail and a rag of a storm-jib with fifteen reefs and another: not so
the heroes. Not a stitch would they take in. They carried all her
canvas, and cried out to the north-east wind: "We know her better than
you! She'll carry away before she capsizes, and she'll burst long before
she'll carry away." So they ran before it largely till the bows were
pressed right under, and it was no human poser that saved the gybe. They
went tearing and foaming before it, singing a Saga as befitted the place
and time. For it was their habit to sing in every place its proper
song--in Italy a Ritornella, in Spain a Segeduilla, in Provence a
Pastourou, in Sussex a Glee, but an the great North Sea a Saga. And they
rolled at last into Orford Haven on the very tiptop of the highest tide
that ever has run since the Noachic Deluge; and even so, as they crossed
the bar they heard the grating of the keel. That night they sacrificed
oysters to Poseidon._
_And when they slept the Sea Lady, the silver-footed one, came up
through the waves and kissed them in their sleep; for she had seen no
such men since Achilles. Then she went back through the waves with all
her Nereids around her to where her throne is, beside her old father in
the depths of the sea._
_In their errantry they did great good. It was they that rescued
Andromeda, though she lied, as a woman will, and gave the praise to her
lover. It was they, also, who slew the Tarasque on his second
appearance, when he came in a thunderstorm across the broad bridge of
Beaucaire, all scaled in crimson and gold, forty foot long and twenty
foot high, galloping like an angry dog and belching forth flames and
smoke. They also hunted down the Bactrian Bear, who had claws like the
horns of a cow, and of whom it is written in the Sacred Books of the
East that:_
_A Bear out of Bactria came,
And he wandered all over the world,
And his eyes were aglint and aflame,
And the tip of his caudal was curled._
_Oh! they hunted him down and they cut him up, and they cured one of his
hams and ate it, thereby acquiring something of his mighty spirit....
And they it was who caught the great Devil of Dax and tied him up and
swinged him with an ash-plant till he swore that he would haunt the
woods no more._
_And here it is that you ask me for their names. Their names! Their
names? Why, they gave themselves a hundred names: now this, now that,
but always names of power. Thus upon that great march of theirs from
Gascony into Navarre, one, on the crest of the mountains, cut himself a
huge staff and cried loudly:_
_"My name is URSUS, and this is my staff DREADNOUGHT: let the people in
the Valley be afraid!"_
_Whereat the other cut himself a yet huger staff, and cried out in a yet
louder voice:_
_"My name is TAURUS, and this is my staff CRACK-SKULL: let them tremble
who live in the Dales!"_
_And when they had said this they strode shouting down the
mountain-side and conquered the town of Elizondo, where they are
worshipped as gods to this day. Their names? They gave themselves a
hundred names!_
_"Well, well," you say to me then, "no matter about the names: what are
names? The men themselves concern me!... Tell me," you go on, "tell me
where I am to find them in the flesh, and converse with them. I am in
haste to see them with my own eyes."_
_It is useless to ask. They are dead. They will never again be heard
upon the heaths at morning singing their happy songs: they will never
more drink with their peers in the deep ingle-nooks of home. They are
perished. They have disappeared. Alas! The valiant fellows!_
_But lest some list of their proud deeds and notable excursions should
be lost on earth, and turn perhaps into legend, or what is worse, fade
away unrecorded, this book has been got together; in which will be found
now a sight they saw together, and now a sight one saw by himself, and
now a sight seen only by the other. As also certain thoughts and
admirations which the second or the first enjoyed, or both together: and
indeed many other towns, seas, places, mountains, rivers, and
men--whatever could be crammed between the covers._
_And there is an end of it._
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Many of these pages have appeared in the "Speaker,"
the "Pilot," the "Morning Post," the "Daily News."
the "Pall Mall Magazine," the "Evening Standard,"
the "Morning Leader," and the "Westminster Gazette."
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