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THE HAWKS’ NEST

It is a lonely little place — a kind of shooting-box — up among the grim and silent hills. You never saw such an endless panorama of bush as that which you survey from the four verandahs of ‘The Hawks’ Nest,’ The tangle of green spreads itself out at your feet, and stretches away — north, south, east, and west — to every point of the horizon. At night, unless you have company, the solitude is almost eerie.

I

Jack Hawkins was really an excellent sportsman and a capital fellow. Send him up to “The Hawks’ Nest”; give him a sharp, fresh morning; put his rifle in his hand; and he will snap his fingers at monarchs and millionaires. He is in paradise. Keen as a hound on the scent, he will never abandon the chase till, with a flush of glorious exaltation, he has triumphantly brought down the game. Once go fairly on the track of his quarry, he forgets that he is mortal. His eye flashes with suppressed excitement. Up hill and down dale he prowls, stalks, crouches, climbs, creeps, or runs, according to the way of the wind and the conditions of the hunt. He takes risks, without knowing that he takes them, that would freeze the blood of an onlooker. He never for a moment flags or falters. He forgets alike the passage of time and the demands of appetite. Hunger, thirst, and weariness are the elements of some other world ; he has left all such mundane things behind him. Then at length there comes to him a tense and fateful moment that compensates him for all his prodigal expenditure of thought and energy. The game has vanished over the crest of the hill, but, scenting danger and not knowing its exact locality, it has lifted its head and pricked its ears to take observations. For the fraction of a second that head is silhouetted against the sky. Instantly the rifle leaps to the shoulder; the report echoes and reverberates among the lonely hills ; and the graceful creature falls with a crash among the tangle of shrubs at its feet. With a glow of pride that a conqueror might envy, Jack sits down and surveys his prize. And, sitting down, he shivers. It is evening — and chilly. He suddenly remembers that he is human. He feels famished and faint; every sinew throbs with fatigue. The west is all aglow, and “The Hawks’ Nest” is far away. He staggers home with his burden; but, arriving there, lacks the energy to cook it. He throws it down ; sits for awhile over his pipe ; then goes to bed hungry. He reminds you of the words of a very shrewd philosopher: ‘The slothful man roasteth not that which he took in hunting.’ It is worth thinking about.

II

Most of us are excellent huntsmen, but execrable cooks. We know how to bring down the game; but to save our lives we cannot roast it. We are smart at acquiring, but dull at enjoying. See, for example, how a nation will pour out its richest blood in order to secure to itself certain rights and liberties ; but the moment those precious privileges have been won, it will cease to prize them! The game is down ; why cook it? The experience of Jack Hawkins makes it clear as noonday to me that I must observe some sense of proportion in the investment of my energies. It is absurd so to exhaust myself in the chase as to have no strength left with which to roast and enjoy the hard-won fruit of my exertions. It is exasperating to arrive home with the prey too tired to cook it. Amidst the excitement of the hunt I must remember the claims of the hearth. The field must not lead me to forget the fireside. I must husband strength with which to roast that which I take in hunting. A miser, for instance, is a man who is able to acquire, but not able to enjoy. He knows how to bring down the game, but he has no idea as to how it should be roasted. 

Is there not something infinitely pathetic about a story like that of Sir Titus Salt? He is nearly seventy years of age, and, by dint of ceaseless activities and exertions, has amassed an enormous fortune. On a certain Sunday morning he saunters about his beautiful garden. He comes upon a cluster of sweet-peas. As he stoops to admire them his eye is attracted by a snail climbing painfully up one of the sticks by which the peas were supported. At last it reaches the top. It turns round and round; but there is nothing there. It turns, disappointed, and slowly descends. ‘It is a picture of myself,’ remarked the millionaire. ‘I have been all my life toiling and saving, and am now too old and too weary to enjoy the wealth I have accumulated!’ Principal Forsyth declared recently that this condition of things is very common. Few successful men, he said, know how to enjoy their retirement. Their long-looked-for leisure, when at length it comes, is a disappointment to them. Many a prosperous merchant loiters about the house in his later day much less happy than when he went to the city every morning. He takes his leisure — as an Englishman is said to take his pleasure — sadly. The majority of such men find old age to be the dullest part of life. Many of them die after a year or two, unable to endure any longer the tedium of it all. And why? The reason is not far to seek. A thing without the spirit of the thing is a weariness to the flesh. A man who has cultivated no fondness for cricket will find a cricket-match the quintessence of boredom. To enjoy the game he must bring to it the spirit of the game. And to enjoy leisure you must bring to your leisure a leisurely spirit. The man who has spent his life restlessly will find rest intolerable.

And then, of course, there is our old friend, Dr. Dryasdust. Now Dr. Dryasdust has been all his life learning.

What there is to be known — he knows it,
And what he knows not, is not knowledge.

He has pored over his ponderous tomes until he has ruined his sight and undermined his health. He knows everything. He is a walking — or, at least, a shambling— encyclopaedia. But who is one whit the wiser or the happier or the better for it all? I said that he knows everything. I was wrong. He has learned all things but one. He has never learned to use his learning. It is so easy to acquire knowledge; it is so difficult to make wise use of it. ‘All I have to do now,’ says Henry Rycroft in his old age, ‘is to enjoy the knowledge I have already gained ; the time for acquisition has gone by.’ It is one thing to hunt; it is quite another thing to roast that which we take in hunting.

III

Now Jack Hawkins is a problem. Look at him! Here you have a man who is absolutely indefatigable in the field, yet who is overcome by lassitude at the fireside! He is a bundle of contradictions! The selfsame Jack Hawkins is alert in the daytime, yet inert at night; tireless abroad, yet torpid at home! What mixtures we all are! What sickening depths of depravity you may discover in a saint! What unsuspected gleams of goodness you may find in the most abandoned reprobate! A good man looks very like a bad man — if his dinner is not to his liking! A bad man looks very like a good man — if a comrade needs a hand! We get so confused by the sight of bad men who are often good men, and good men who are often bad men, that we grow a little shy of labelling men either ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ If your good man is often bad, and your bad man is often good, how can you describe either of them as simply ‘good’ or simply ‘bad’? No man is unadulterated. We are mixtures. As Mr. W. B. Yeats says, ‘There is always something in our enemy that we like, and something in our sweetheart that we don’t.’ And, if every man is a mixture of goodness and badness, how can you sort men into two classes, and accurately tie the labels on?

IV

It was whilst I was revolving this riddle in my brain that the wise man met me with his clever proverb: ‘The slothful man roasteth not that which he took in hunting.’ If this means anything, it means that a man is what he is at home. However strenuous he may be abroad, if he is slothful at home, you must write him down as a slothful man. Home is of all places most like heaven. Like heaven, it is, therefore, an exquisitely beautiful place; but, like heaven, it is also a searchingly terrible place. The lights of home are the loveliest beacons that fond eyes ever welcome. Yet at times those selfsame lights flash through a man’s soul like the lights of the judgement seat. Beneath their testing rays there is no seeming or dissembling, no cant and no hypocrisy. The street lights and the shop lights may make base metal look like gold; but the home lights are never deceived.

V

From a purely sentimental point of view, there is something very affecting about the weariness that robs a man of the fruit of his energy. Take Newman for example. What is the impression created on the mind by reading the Apologia? Is it not the impression of a man who, after a long and strenuous chase, is too tired to roast that which he took in hunting ? In the course of his brave quest Newman came face to face with the invisible. 

Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see.

Yet he derives no satisfaction from his lofty faith; he never enters into its enjoyment ; and at last he forgets his vision altogether, and pillows his tired head on the lap of visibility. He no longer says, ‘I do not ask to see.’ ‘Thus,’ as Macaulay says in his History of England, ‘thus we frequently see inquisitive and restless spirits take refuge from their own scepticism in the bosom of a Church which pretends to infallibility; and, after questioning the existence of a Deity, they bring themselves to worship a wafer!’ It is not that they have sought in vain. ‘Lead, kindly Light’ shows that Newman saw the truth for which his heart was aching. The hunt was entirely successful; but the huntsman was exhausted and spent. He had no energy to roast that which he took In hunting.  

VI

Our inspired philosopher has no pity, however, for the huntsman’s weariness. He would say, I suppose, that a man has no right to expend all his energies in the chase and reserve none for the kitchen. He who cannot roast that which he takes in hunting is, he declares, a slothful man. A slothful man! This stern old moralist would, I fancy, be prepared to maintain that, if any man is lost at last, he will be lost through sheer, downright laziness in some form or other. Indeed, he as good as says that it is only the incorrigibly slothful man who fails to appropriate and enjoy the wealthy spoils of life’s great chase. F.W. Boreham