That Very Mab

by May Kendall; Andrew Lang

'Oh, the minority?' said the Democrat. 'Well, it will be all right—you will see how right it will be if you give us a majority. We have everybody's interests at heart—deeply at heart!' he added hopefully. 'We first pass a Bill for the manufacture (National Monopoly) of all the cardinal virtues at reduced prices—may be ordered direct from the Company, carriage paid; and then a Bill for the repression of all the Cardinal Crimes, which the Company is also willing to buy up at market value, for exportation—and then, you see, there we are!'

'Where are you?' said the Professor sharply.

'Where?' replied the Democrat, looking puzzled for a moment, but soon recovering himself triumphantly. 'Where? oh, we are there, you know. There we are!'

'Humph!' ejaculated the Professor, turning on his heel. The Bishop turned away also, saying that he had an engagement, and the Democrat followed him, talking very fast and bringing forward arguments. When they reached the gate there was a sad, perplexed look upon the Bishop's face, and finally shaking off his companion by an effort of the will, he entered the nearest churchyard and began to meditate upon mortality. The Democrat, observing in an acrid voice that he had something better to do with mortality than to meditate upon it, turned away reluctantly from the gate, and began to compose a popular ode, which had tremendous success, and of which the rhymes were dubious but the sentiments unimpeachable. Meanwhile, Queen Mab and the Owl, who had followed un-perceived, perched upon the tower of the church, and surveyed the landscape and the Bishop, who, a venerable appropriate figure in his vestments, had turned naturally to the east, and was standing by a marble cross.

'What a pleasant place!' said Mab. 'The dead must rest quietly here.'

'I am not sure that they don't keep up class distinctions,' said the Owl rather misanthropically. 'They would if they could. But, on the whole, I prefer to think that this place is the goal of the Democrat, where Equality reigns indeed. If so, it will be consoling to him, for I am afraid he will never get equality in life. Death, at present, has the monopoly. Mr. Mallock thinks that Social Equality, if it ever came to pass, would be ruinous to the welfare of the nation; but happily we are in no immediate danger of it. Inequality, he says, is the condition of Progress, and if it is only Inequality that is wanted, Progress ought to be making rapid strides. Oh yes, we have Social Inequality enough to carry us on at the rate of a mile a minute. It would be interesting, would it not, to know in what direction we are progressing—though, of course, the Progress is the chief thing—from good to better or from bad to worse?'

'Very interesting,' said Queen Mab. 'I mean to think that we are progressing from good to better. But do you know that you are a very dismal bird? Are things really as bad as you say they are?'

'Perhaps I am cynical,' replied the Owl. 'The kingfisher says so. The kingfisher is an optimist, and he told me I thought it was clever to be cynical; but that was when we had a few words one day. It is from living in a belfry, doubtless, that I have contracted a habit of looking at things on the dark side; but when one has made allowance for the belfry, the world is not so bad after all. Of course animals can't be expected to know what it means; they are not social philosophers, and men say so many different things. Some think the universe is under a dual control, and some that it is altogether a blunder—a clock running down and the key lost I don't know about that, I am only a bird; but if it is a failure, it is a glorious failure. Sometimes, indeed, the theologians call life a howling wilderness; but that is in comparison with the next world. For they are immortal.'

'I am immortal too,' said Queen Mab proudly.

'So you are,' returned the Owl. 'I was forgetting. I'm not,' he added rather doubtfully. 'But I hope you will enjoy it.'