Mundane Musings

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 376, 9 June 1928, Page 20

Mundane Musings

The Banner

There are days when nothing seems worth while. Quite a number of them go to the year for those of us who live alone, no matter how hard one works or how much good will one tries to put into the daily doing. On such days the ground is asphalt and the skies are brass. On such days one is not a valiant humble creature meritoriously keeping up one’s end but a pit pony; a silly squirrel in' a cage treading an interminable wheel; a laborious noodle mounting steps that never-endingly lead nowhere, and stopping only to ask the fool’s question, “What’s the use?” On one of these days I left my house late, having worked from six to six with the question nagging steadily; turned my back upon the thoughts that had all swarmed up to substantiate the argument of futility, and w r alked away to catch a car that would take me to a spot that was empty of my own affairs at any rate. It was Saturday and quite late. The dusk had sped. As I crossed the road I heard a sound of tramping and of squeaky singing, and I hurried so that I might get over before this dimlyseen army should cut me off from the opposite shore. Getting up steam I crossed their bows and landed safely ahead of them, which brought me into line with them for walking. I don’t know whether they were Scouts or some other brand of the some adventurers. Although it must have been the end of a hard day there was no sound of weariness in either the steady trudge of their feet or the jubilant chirrup of their voices. They walked on the road beside the kerb, and on the kerb marched their superior officers, a man, tliirty-five-ish, carrying a small suit-case which might have held grub or band scores or any kind of tackle that belongs to buccaneering, on busy Saturdays, and two girls in their early teens wearing the blue uniform and turned-up hat of official womanhood. The marchers sang. What the song was I could not find out. It sounded like a hymn by the shape of it, but it was of so fragmentary a nature that only a master of every hymnal in existence could have decided the quality of the noise. Every now and then the voice of the man would break in with a, sort of abstracted intent of pulling them together, but it came to nothing. When they themselves realised that the jig was, for the moment, up, little gusts of squeaky laughter would break out of the dusk; the motor would, so to speak, run down gaspingly, and when the last trickle of sound would have split itself there would be silence until one more ambitious or with better bellows than the rest would open up again and the vocal contest would renew itself. The man walked absorbed and a little aloof, swinging his suit-case and seemingly lost in thought, but you felt that every child was held to him by an invisible thread. The girls walked nearer in thought, as the nurses might be nearer than the father, who. from his distance, made all things safe for them. But they were care-free young nurses, who gave one no sight of the iron hand that must, as grave and responsible officers, be hidden in the velvet of their soft young paws. The laughter of the children was reflected mildly in their smiling faces. For these as yet no surly question had thrust its snake’s head into their Eden. They walked gaily as under a banner. And the banner over them was love. The love of the grown man for his little brother, causing him to give his own freedom up to their training; the love of the young girls for a service that had so much of interest

in it that no service was felt. And the love of the children for the good things that Nature was heaping upon them this fine new day.

We came to a parting of the ways at the corner of the street. The man, towering like a masthead above his little brood, was disappearing in the curve of the road as the tail of the squad passed under the street lamp. If the company had not been complete it was utterly complete now. In the arras of the last girl lay, contented and serene, a little brown mongrel with sleek skin and shining eyes. One knew the love and pride that was vested in him, and the part he played in their communal living. He had gone out with them in their adventuring. He had put in a long day following their fortunes and giving his help wherever he thought it was needed, which, if one watches a dog with human beings, one knows is every time and without ceasing. And because the day had been long and the road was hard upon little dogs’ feet, love took him up and carried him. I watched his eyes eagerly scanning the children marching beside him, and turning to search the face of the mistress who bore him in her arms. And I wept a little in the dark on my way for my own happiness which had so gently been handed back to me.