CHAPTER V
THE WUMPS
This job of writing puzzles me. I am like a merchant selling a pearl necklace: will you have my string or my pearls? My threadbare story is that of an obscure man, but illustrates a theme worthy of your attention. That is why I wumble most confusedly.
To make each chapter a coherent story, I have copied the great musical composers. They write a series of "movements," or moods of mental confusion to form a "symphony" or all-round muddle. So do I. The result should appeal to all men, but there is so much immoral wisdom in every woman, that I doubt if one of them will read my book.
Now I am coming to a chapter which will not stand symphonic treatment. It is a sort of footling intermezzo, and the best way to handle it is that of the songs without words. We will have a series of wumps, or songs without music.
The Blackguard's Wump
The Alpuxarras appear to have worried along without me as their marquis. The angels never seemed inclined to pay for my board as their missionary. The devil had not commissioned me as his real-estate agent, or any other business man engaged me for useful work. The police outfit was considered a last refuge for the destitute, but even in that I was not offered so much as a lance-corporal's chevron. Nobody would ever take me seriously.
One of our teamsters who spoke ancient Greek like a native said I was "the dead spit of Pan"; Buckie, to whom the proprieties, deportment and the conventions were all one God, averred me to be sub-human, a faun if only I could learn to behave half decently. I was anything but a gentleman, having, I remember, oiled his hair with birdlime while he slept, so that on waking he could not tear himself from the pillow. As to the other fellow, observing that I was lean, swart, weathered and grotesque, they urged me to pawn my face. Call even a dog by such a name as Blackguard, and you might as well hang him.
Even in those days I knew that I did not belong to the civilized world at all, and that only half of me was serving in the mounted police. That was the half of me which craved for the Burrows woman, and cut her adrift from Sarde without any intention of taking her for myself. Indeed, it was not that particular minx I cared for, but rather an impulse to chase anything in skirts. Low caste women always hunted me because I was the troop jester, the comedian, quick, vital, joyous, of brilliant moods, and blood red-hot with life.
Nobody knew the other half of me—the immortal part which worshiped the memory of Rain, the sacred woman of the Blackfeet, with a lasting growing spiritual homage; the spirit in me which for my mother's honor and Our Lady's glory defended women in the duels with Tail-Feathers and the long feud with Sarde. God made me a patrician pledged to chivalric service, wholly estranged from all material interest, from the ambitions of civilized men.
I was beginning to weary of the noise in camp and barracks, yearning even then at times for the remote hills, the uttermost solitudes. There were moments on lone patrols when I could sense the presence of shy immortal creatures, kin of forgotten gods. I kept silence lest I disturb sweet April watering her buds, or May as she tended her flowers, or June, setting immortal seeds in holy ground, while the big wind gods tumbled their clouds through the celestial heights to bring fresh rains for Eden. To me already the days were notes, the months were chords, the years were phrases of one brave melody sung by flying earth as she cleft the deeps of space, a singer in the choir of the spheres whose adoration fills eternity. I knew that I was a very little spirit which must be kept in tune, free from impurities.