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diff --git a/1718-h/1718-h.htm b/1718-h/1718-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5c708ca --- /dev/null +++ b/1718-h/1718-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,8280 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>Manalive | Project Gutenberg</title> +<link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> +<style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: 90%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +p.right {text-align: right; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> +</head> +<body> + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Manalive, by G. K. Chesterton</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Manalive</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: G. K. Chesterton</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: April, 1999 [eBook #1718]<br /> +[Most recently updated: April 28, 2023]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Jim Henry III, Martin Ward and David Widger</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MANALIVE ***</div> + +<h1>MANALIVE</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">By G. K. Chesterton </h2> + +<h4><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/> +THOMAS NELSON AND SONS<br/> +1912</h4> + +<hr /> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<table> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_PART"><b>Part I</b> — THE ENIGMAS OF INNOCENT SMITH</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0001">Chapter I — How the Great Wind Came to Beacon House</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0002">Chapter II — The Luggage of an Optimist</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0003">Chapter III — The Banner of Beacon</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0004">Chapter IV — The Garden of the God</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0005">Chapter V — The Allegorical Practical Joker</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_PART2"><b>Part II</b> — THE EXPLANATIONS OF INNOCENT SMITH</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0006">Chapter I — The Eye of Death; or, the Murder Charge</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0007">Chapter II — The Two Curates; or, the Burglary Charge</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0008">Chapter III — The Round Road; or, the Desertion Charge</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0009">Chapter IV — The Wild Weddings; or, the Polygamy Charge</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0010">Chapter V — How the Great Wind Went from Beacon House</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<hr /> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_PART" id="link2H_PART"></a> +PART I<br/> +THE ENIGMAS OF INNOCENT SMITH</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"></a> +Chapter I<br/> +How the Great Wind Came to Beacon House</h3> + +<p> +A wind sprang high in the west, like a wave of unreasonable happiness, and tore +eastward across England, trailing with it the frosty scent of forests and the +cold intoxication of the sea. In a million holes and corners it refreshed a man +like a flagon, and astonished him like a blow. In the inmost chambers of +intricate and embowered houses it woke like a domestic explosion, littering the +floor with some professor’s papers till they seemed as precious as +fugitive, or blowing out the candle by which a boy read “Treasure +Island” and wrapping him in roaring dark. But everywhere it bore drama +into undramatic lives, and carried the trump of crisis across the world. Many a +harassed mother in a mean backyard had looked at five dwarfish shirts on the +clothes-line as at some small, sick tragedy; it was as if she had hanged her +five children. The wind came, and they were full and kicking as if five fat +imps had sprung into them; and far down in her oppressed subconscious she +half-remembered those coarse comedies of her fathers when the elves still dwelt +in the homes of men. Many an unnoticed girl in a dank walled garden had tossed +herself into the hammock with the same intolerant gesture with which she might +have tossed herself into the Thames; and that wind rent the waving wall of +woods and lifted the hammock like a balloon, and showed her shapes of quaint +clouds far beyond, and pictures of bright villages far below, as if she rode +heaven in a fairy boat. Many a dusty clerk or cleric, plodding a telescopic +road of poplars, thought for the hundredth time that they were like the plumes +of a hearse; when this invisible energy caught and swung and clashed them round +his head like a wreath or salutation of seraphic wings. There was in it +something more inspired and authoritative even than the old wind of the +proverb; for this was the good wind that blows nobody harm. +</p> + +<p> +The flying blast struck London just where it scales the northern heights, +terrace above terrace, as precipitous as Edinburgh. It was round about this +place that some poet, probably drunk, looked up astonished at all those streets +gone skywards, and (thinking vaguely of glaciers and roped mountaineers) gave +it the name of Swiss Cottage, which it has never been able to shake off. At +some stage of those heights a terrace of tall gray houses, mostly empty and +almost as desolate as the Grampians, curved round at the western end, so that +the last building, a boarding establishment called “Beacon House,” +offered abruptly to the sunset its high, narrow and towering termination, like +the prow of some deserted ship. +</p> + +<p> +The ship, however, was not wholly deserted. The proprietor of the +boarding-house, a Mrs. Duke, was one of those helpless persons against whom +fate wars in vain; she smiled vaguely both before and after all her calamities; +she was too soft to be hurt. But by the aid (or rather under the orders) of a +strenuous niece she always kept the remains of a clientele, mostly of young but +listless folks. And there were actually five inmates standing disconsolately +about the garden when the great gale broke at the base of the terminal tower +behind them, as the sea bursts against the base of an outstanding cliff. +</p> + +<p> +All day that hill of houses over London had been domed and sealed up with cold +cloud. Yet three men and two girls had at last found even the gray and chilly +garden more tolerable than the black and cheerless interior. When the wind came +it split the sky and shouldered the cloudland left and right, unbarring great +clear furnaces of evening gold. The burst of light released and the burst of +air blowing seemed to come almost simultaneously; and the wind especially +caught everything in a throttling violence. The bright short grass lay all one +way like brushed hair. Every shrub in the garden tugged at its roots like a dog +at the collar, and strained every leaping leaf after the hunting and +exterminating element. Now and again a twig would snap and fly like a bolt from +an arbalist. The three men stood stiffly and aslant against the wind, as if +leaning against a wall. The two ladies disappeared into the house; rather, to +speak truly, they were blown into the house. Their two frocks, blue and white, +looked like two big broken flowers, driving and drifting upon the gale. Nor is +such a poetic fancy inappropriate, for there was something oddly romantic about +this inrush of air and light after a long, leaden and unlifting day. Grass and +garden trees seemed glittering with something at once good and unnatural, like +a fire from fairyland. It seemed like a strange sunrise at the wrong end of the +day. +</p> + +<p> +The girl in white dived in quickly enough, for she wore a white hat of the +proportions of a parachute, which might have wafted her away into the coloured +clouds of evening. She was their one splash of splendour, and irradiated wealth +in that impecunious place (staying there temporarily with a friend), an heiress +in a small way, by name Rosamund Hunt, brown-eyed, round-faced, but resolute +and rather boisterous. On top of her wealth she was good-humoured and rather +good-looking; but she had not married, perhaps because there was always a crowd +of men around her. She was not fast (though some might have called her vulgar), +but she gave irresolute youths an impression of being at once popular and +inaccessible. A man felt as if he had fallen in love with Cleopatra, or as if +he were asking for a great actress at the stage door. Indeed, some theatrical +spangles seemed to cling about Miss Hunt; she played the guitar and the +mandoline; she always wanted charades; and with that great rending of the sky +by sun and storm, she felt a girlish melodrama swell again within her. To the +crashing orchestration of the air the clouds rose like the curtain of some +long-expected pantomime. +</p> + +<p> +Nor, oddly, was the girl in blue entirely unimpressed by this apocalypse in a +private garden; though she was one of most prosaic and practical creatures +alive. She was, indeed, no other than the strenuous niece whose strength alone +upheld that mansion of decay. But as the gale swung and swelled the blue and +white skirts till they took on the monstrous contours of Victorian crinolines, +a sunken memory stirred in her that was almost romance—a memory of a +dusty volume of <i>Punch</i> in an aunt’s house in infancy: pictures of +crinoline hoops and croquet hoops and some pretty story, of which perhaps they +were a part. This half-perceptible fragrance in her thoughts faded almost +instantly, and Diana Duke entered the house even more promptly than her +companion. Tall, slim, aquiline, and dark, she seemed made for such swiftness. +In body she was of the breed of those birds and beasts that are at once long +and alert, like greyhounds or herons or even like an innocent snake. The whole +house revolved on her as on a rod of steel. It would be wrong to say that she +commanded; for her own efficiency was so impatient that she obeyed herself +before any one else obeyed her. Before electricians could mend a bell or +locksmiths open a door, before dentists could pluck a tooth or butlers draw a +tight cork, it was done already with the silent violence of her slim hands. She +was light; but there was nothing leaping about her lightness. She spurned the +ground, and she meant to spurn it. People talk of the pathos and failure of +plain women; but it is a more terrible thing that a beautiful woman may succeed +in everything but womanhood. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s enough to blow your head off,” said the young woman in +white, going to the looking-glass. +</p> + +<p> +The young woman in blue made no reply, but put away her gardening gloves, and +then went to the sideboard and began to spread out an afternoon cloth for tea. +</p> + +<p> +“Enough to blow your head off, I say,” said Miss Rosamund Hunt, +with the unruffled cheeriness of one whose songs and speeches had always been +safe for an encore. +</p> + +<p> +“Only your hat, I think,” said Diana Duke, “but I dare say +that is sometimes more important.” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund’s face showed for an instant the offence of a spoilt child, and +then the humour of a very healthy person. She broke into a laugh and said, +“Well, it would have to be a big wind to blow your head off.” +</p> + +<p> +There was another silence; and the sunset breaking more and more from the +sundering clouds, filled the room with soft fire and painted the dull walls +with ruby and gold. +</p> + +<p> +“Somebody once told me,” said Rosamund Hunt, “that it’s +easier to keep one’s head when one has lost one’s heart.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, don’t talk such rubbish,” said Diana with savage +sharpness. +</p> + +<p> +Outside, the garden was clad in a golden splendour; but the wind was still +stiffly blowing, and the three men who stood their ground might also have +considered the problem of hats and heads. And, indeed, their position, touching +hats, was somewhat typical of them. The tallest of the three abode the blast in +a high silk hat, which the wind seemed to charge as vainly as that other sullen +tower, the house behind him. The second man tried to hold on a stiff straw hat +at all angles, and ultimately held it in his hand. The third had no hat, and, +by his attitude, seemed never to have had one in his life. Perhaps this wind +was a kind of fairy wand to test men and women, for there was much of the three +men in this difference. +</p> + +<p> +The man in the solid silk hat was the embodiment of silkiness and solidity. He +was a big, bland, bored and (as some said) boring man, with flat fair hair and +handsome heavy features; a prosperous young doctor by the name of Warner. But +if his blondness and blandness seemed at first a little fatuous, it is certain +that he was no fool. If Rosamund Hunt was the only person there with much +money, he was the only person who had as yet found any kind of fame. His +treatise on “The Probable Existence of Pain in the Lowest +Organisms” had been universally hailed by the scientific world as at once +solid and daring. In short, he undoubtedly had brains; and perhaps it was not +his fault if they were the kind of brains that most men desire to analyze with +a poker. +</p> + +<p> +The young man who put his hat off and on was a scientific amateur in a small +way, and worshipped the great Warner with a solemn freshness. It was, in fact, +at his invitation that the distinguished doctor was present; for Warner lived +in no such ramshackle lodging-house, but in a professional palace in Harley +Street. This young man was really the youngest and best-looking of the three. +But he was one of those persons, both male and female, who seem doomed to be +good-looking and insignificant. Brown-haired, high-coloured, and shy, he seemed +to lose the delicacy of his features in a sort of blur of brown and red as he +stood blushing and blinking against the wind. He was one of those obvious +unnoticeable people: every one knew that he was Arthur Inglewood, unmarried, +moral, decidedly intelligent, living on a little money of his own, and hiding +himself in the two hobbies of photography and cycling. Everybody knew him and +forgot him; even as he stood there in the glare of golden sunset there was +something about him indistinct, like one of his own red-brown amateur +photographs. +</p> + +<p> +The third man had no hat; he was lean, in light, vaguely sporting clothes, and +the large pipe in his mouth made him look all the leaner. He had a long +ironical face, blue-black hair, the blue eyes of an Irishman, and the blue chin +of an actor. An Irishman he was, an actor he was not, except in the old days of +Miss Hunt’s charades, being, as a matter of fact, an obscure and flippant +journalist named Michael Moon. He had once been hazily supposed to be reading +for the Bar; but (as Warner would say with his rather elephantine wit) it was +mostly at another kind of bar that his friends found him. Moon, however, did +not drink, nor even frequently get drunk; he simply was a gentleman who liked +low company. This was partly because company is quieter than society: and if he +enjoyed talking to a barmaid (as apparently he did), it was chiefly because the +barmaid did the talking. Moreover he would often bring other talent to assist +her. He shared that strange trick of all men of his type, intellectual and +without ambition—the trick of going about with his mental inferiors. +There was a small resilient Jew named Moses Gould in the same boarding-house, a +man whose negro vitality and vulgarity amused Michael so much that he went +round with him from bar to bar, like the owner of a performing monkey. +</p> + +<p> +The colossal clearance which the wind had made of that cloudy sky grew clearer +and clearer; chamber within chamber seemed to open in heaven. One felt one +might at last find something lighter than light. In the fullness of this silent +effulgence all things collected their colours again: the gray trunks turned +silver, and the drab gravel gold. One bird fluttered like a loosened leaf from +one tree to another, and his brown feathers were brushed with fire. +</p> + +<p> +“Inglewood,” said Michael Moon, with his blue eye on the bird, +“have you any friends?” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Warner mistook the person addressed, and turning a broad beaming face, +said,— +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, I go out a great deal.” +</p> + +<p> +Michael Moon gave a tragic grin, and waited for his real informant, who spoke a +moment after in a voice curiously cool, fresh and young, as coming out of that +brown and even dusty interior. +</p> + +<p> +“Really,” answered Inglewood, “I’m afraid I’ve +lost touch with my old friends. The greatest friend I ever had was at school, a +fellow named Smith. It’s odd you should mention it, because I was +thinking of him to-day, though I haven’t seen him for seven or eight +years. He was on the science side with me at school— a clever fellow +though queer; and he went up to Oxford when I went to Germany. The fact is, +it’s rather a sad story. I often asked him to come and see me, and when I +heard nothing I made inquiries, you know. I was shocked to learn that poor +Smith had gone off his head. The accounts were a bit cloudy, of course, some +saying that he had recovered again; but they always say that. About a year ago +I got a telegram from him myself. The telegram, I’m sorry to say, put the +matter beyond a doubt.” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite so,” assented Dr. Warner stolidly; “insanity is +generally incurable.” +</p> + +<p> +“So is sanity,” said the Irishman, and studied him with a dreary +eye. +</p> + +<p> +“Symptoms?” asked the doctor. “What was this telegram?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a shame to joke about such things,” said Inglewood, in +his honest, embarrassed way; “the telegram was Smith’s illness, not +Smith. The actual words were, ‘Man found alive with two +legs.’” +</p> + +<p> +“Alive with two legs,” repeated Michael, frowning. “Perhaps a +version of alive and kicking? I don’t know much about people out of their +senses; but I suppose they ought to be kicking.” +</p> + +<p> +“And people in their senses?” asked Warner, smiling. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, they ought to be kicked,” said Michael with sudden heartiness. +</p> + +<p> +“The message is clearly insane,” continued the impenetrable Warner. +“The best test is a reference to the undeveloped normal type. Even a baby +does not expect to find a man with three legs.” +</p> + +<p> +“Three legs,” said Michael Moon, “would be very convenient in +this wind.” +</p> + +<p> +A fresh eruption of the atmosphere had indeed almost thrown them off their +balance and broken the blackened trees in the garden. Beyond, all sorts of +accidental objects could be seen scouring the wind-scoured sky—straws, +sticks, rags, papers, and, in the distance, a disappearing hat. Its +disappearance, however, was not final; after an interval of minutes they saw it +again, much larger and closer, like a white panama, towering up into the +heavens like a balloon, staggering to and fro for an instant like a stricken +kite, and then settling in the centre of their own lawn as falteringly as a +fallen leaf. +</p> + +<p> +“Somebody’s lost a good hat,” said Dr. Warner shortly. +</p> + +<p> +Almost as he spoke, another object came over the garden wall, flying after the +fluttering panama. It was a big green umbrella. After that came hurtling a huge +yellow Gladstone bag, and after that came a figure like a flying wheel of legs, +as in the shield of the Isle of Man. +</p> + +<p> +But though for a flash it seemed to have five or six legs, it alighted upon +two, like the man in the queer telegram. It took the form of a large +light-haired man in gay green holiday clothes. He had bright blonde hair that +the wind brushed back like a German’s, a flushed eager face like a +cherub’s, and a prominent pointing nose, a little like a dog’s. His +head, however, was by no means cherubic in the sense of being without a body. +On the contrary, on his vast shoulders and shape generally gigantesque, his +head looked oddly and unnaturally small. This gave rise to a scientific theory +(which his conduct fully supported) that he was an idiot. +</p> + +<p> +Inglewood had a politeness instinctive and yet awkward. His life was full of +arrested half gestures of assistance. And even this prodigy of a big man in +green, leaping the wall like a bright green grasshopper, did not paralyze that +small altruism of his habits in such a matter as a lost hat. He was stepping +forward to recover the green gentleman’s head-gear, when he was struck +rigid with a roar like a bull’s. +</p> + +<p> +“Unsportsmanlike!” bellowed the big man. “Give it fair play, +give it fair play!” And he came after his own hat quickly but cautiously, +with burning eyes. The hat had seemed at first to droop and dawdle as in +ostentatious langour on the sunny lawn; but the wind again freshening and +rising, it went dancing down the garden with the devilry of a <i>pas de +quatre</i>. The eccentric went bounding after it with kangaroo leaps and bursts +of breathless speech, of which it was not always easy to pick up the thread: +“Fair play, fair play... sport of kings... chase their crowns... quite +humane... tramontana... cardinals chase red hats... old English hunting... +started a hat in Bramber Combe... hat at bay... mangled hounds... Got +him!” +</p> + +<p> +As the wind rose out of a roar into a shriek, he leapt into the sky on his +strong, fantastic legs, snatched at the vanishing hat, missed it, and pitched +sprawling face foremost on the grass. The hat rose over him like a bird in +triumph. But its triumph was premature; for the lunatic, flung forward on his +hands, threw up his boots behind, waved his two legs in the air like symbolic +ensigns (so that they actually thought again of the telegram), and actually +caught the hat with his feet. A prolonged and piercing yell of wind split the +welkin from end to end. The eyes of all the men were blinded by the invisible +blast, as by a strange, clear cataract of transparency rushing between them and +all objects about them. But as the large man fell back in a sitting posture and +solemnly crowned himself with the hat, Michael found, to his incredulous +surprise, that he had been holding his breath, like a man watching a duel. +</p> + +<p> +While that tall wind was at the top of its sky-scraping energy, another short +cry was heard, beginning very querulous, but ending very quick, swallowed in +abrupt silence. The shiny black cylinder of Dr. Warner’s official hat +sailed off his head in the long, smooth parabola of an airship, and in almost +cresting a garden tree was caught in the topmost branches. Another hat was +gone. Those in that garden felt themselves caught in an unaccustomed eddy of +things happening; no one seemed to know what would blow away next. Before they +could speculate, the cheering and hallooing hat-hunter was already halfway up +the tree, swinging himself from fork to fork with his strong, bent, grasshopper +legs, and still giving forth his gasping, mysterious comments. +</p> + +<p> +“Tree of life... Ygdrasil... climb for centuries perhaps... owls nesting +in the hat... remotest generations of owls... still usurpers... gone to +heaven... man in the moon wears it... brigand... not yours... belongs to +depressed medical man... in garden... give it up... give it up!” +</p> + +<p> +The tree swung and swept and thrashed to and fro in the thundering wind like a +thistle, and flamed in the full sunshine like a bonfire. The green, fantastic +human figure, vivid against its autumn red and gold, was already among its +highest and craziest branches, which by bare luck did not break with the weight +of his big body. He was up there among the last tossing leaves and the first +twinkling stars of evening, still talking to himself cheerfully, reasoningly, +half apologetically, in little gasps. He might well be out of breath, for his +whole preposterous raid had gone with one rush; he had bounded the wall once +like a football, swept down the garden like a slide, and shot up the tree like +a rocket. The other three men seemed buried under incident piled on +incident— a wild world where one thing began before another thing left +off. All three had the first thought. The tree had been there for the five +years they had known the boarding-house. Each one of them was active and +strong. No one of them had even thought of climbing it. Beyond that, Inglewood +felt first the mere fact of colour. The bright brisk leaves, the bleak blue +sky, the wild green arms and legs, reminded him irrationally of something +glowing in his infancy, something akin to a gaudy man on a golden tree; perhaps +it was only a painted monkey on a stick. Oddly enough, Michael Moon, though +more of a humourist, was touched on a tenderer nerve, half remembered the old, +young theatricals with Rosamund, and was amused to find himself almost quoting +Shakespeare— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“For valour. Is not love a Hercules,<br/> +Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?” +</p> + +<p> +Even the immovable man of science had a bright, bewildered sensation that the +Time Machine had given a great jerk, and gone forward with rather rattling +rapidity. +</p> + +<p> +He was not, however, wholly prepared for what happened next. The man in green, +riding the frail topmost bough like a witch on a very risky broomstick, reached +up and rent the black hat from its airy nest of twigs. It had been broken +across a heavy bough in the first burst of its passage, a tangle of branches in +torn and scored and scratched it in every direction, a clap of wind and foliage +had flattened it like a concertina; nor can it be said that the obliging +gentleman with the sharp nose showed any adequate tenderness for its structure +when he finally unhooked it from its place. When he had found it, however, his +proceedings were by some counted singular. He waved it with a loud whoop of +triumph, and then immediately appeared to fall backwards off the tree, to +which, however, he remained attached by his long strong legs, like a monkey +swung by his tail. Hanging thus head downwards above the unhelmed Warner, he +gravely proceeded to drop the battered silk cylinder upon his brows. +“Every man a king,” explained the inverted philosopher, +“every hat (consequently) a crown. But this is a crown out of +heaven.” +</p> + +<p> +And he again attempted the coronation of Warner, who, however, moved away with +great abruptness from the hovering diadem; not seeming, strangely enough, to +wish for his former decoration in its present state. +</p> + +<p> +“Wrong, wrong!” cried the obliging person hilariously. +“Always wear uniform, even if it’s shabby uniform! Ritualists may +always be untidy. Go to a dance with soot on your shirt-front; but go with a +shirt-front. Huntsman wears old coat, but old pink coat. Wear a topper, even if +it’s got no top. It’s the symbol that counts, old cock. Take your +hat, because it is your hat after all; its nap rubbed all off by the bark, +dears, and its brim not the least bit curled; but for old sakes’ sake it +is still, dears, the nobbiest tile in the world.” +</p> + +<p> +Speaking thus, with a wild comfortableness, he settled or smashed the shapeless +silk hat over the face of the disturbed physician, and fell on his feet among +the other men, still talking, beaming and breathless. +</p> + +<p> +“Why don’t they make more games out of wind?” he asked in +some excitement. “Kites are all right, but why should it only be kites? +Why, I thought of three other games for a windy day while I was climbing that +tree. Here’s one of them: you take a lot of pepper—” +</p> + +<p> +“I think,” interposed Moon, with a sardonic mildness, “that +your games are already sufficiently interesting. Are you, may I ask, a +professional acrobat on a tour, or a travelling advertisement of Sunny Jim? How +and why do you display all this energy for clearing walls and climbing trees in +our melancholy, but at least rational, suburbs?” +</p> + +<p> +The stranger, so far as so loud a person was capable of it, appeared to grow +confidential. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it’s a trick of my own,” he confessed candidly. +“I do it by having two legs.” +</p> + +<p> +Arthur Inglewood, who had sunk into the background of this scene of folly, +started and stared at the newcomer with his short-sighted eyes screwed up and +his high colour slightly heightened. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, I believe you’re Smith,” he cried with his fresh, +almost boyish voice; and then after an instant’s stare, “and yet +I’m not sure.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have a card, I think,” said the unknown, with baffling +solemnity—“a card with my real name, my titles, offices, and true +purpose on this earth.” +</p> + +<p> +He drew out slowly from an upper waistcoat pocket a scarlet card-case, and as +slowly produced a very large card. Even in the instant of its production, they +fancied it was of a queer shape, unlike the cards of ordinary gentlemen. But it +was there only for an instant; for as it passed from his fingers to +Arthur’s, one or another slipped his hold. The strident, tearing gale in +that garden carried away the stranger’s card to join the wild waste paper +of the universe; and that great western wind shook the whole house and passed. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"></a> +Chapter II<br/> +The Luggage of an Optimist</h3> + +<p> +We all remember the fairy tales of science in our infancy, which played with +the supposition that large animals could jump in the proportion of small ones. +If an elephant were as strong as a grasshopper, he could (I suppose) spring +clean out of the Zoological Gardens and alight trumpeting upon Primrose Hill. +If a whale could leap from the sea like a trout, perhaps men might look up and +see one soaring above Yarmouth like the winged island of Laputa. Such natural +energy, though sublime, might certainly be inconvenient, and much of this +inconvenience attended the gaiety and good intentions of the man in green. He +was too large for everything, because he was lively as well as large. By a +fortunate physical provision, most very substantial creatures are also +reposeful; and middle-class boarding-houses in the lesser parts of London are +not built for a man as big as a bull and excitable as a kitten. +</p> + +<p> +When Inglewood followed the stranger into the boarding-house, he found him +talking earnestly (and in his own opinion privately) to the helpless Mrs. Duke. +That fat, faint lady could only goggle up like a dying fish at the enormous new +gentleman, who politely offered himself as a lodger, with vast gestures of the +wide white hat in one hand, and the yellow Gladstone bag in the other. +Fortunately, Mrs. Duke’s more efficient niece and partner was there to +complete the contract; for, indeed, all the people of the house had somehow +collected in the room. This fact, in truth, was typical of the whole episode. +The visitor created an atmosphere of comic crisis; and from the time he came +into the house to the time he left it, he somehow got the company to gather and +even follow (though in derision) as children gather and follow a Punch and +Judy. An hour ago, and for four years previously, these people had avoided each +other, even when they had really liked each other. They had slid in and out of +dismal and deserted rooms in search of particular newspapers or private +needlework. Even now they all came casually, as with varying interests; but +they all came. There was the embarrassed Inglewood, still a sort of red shadow; +there was the unembarrassed Warner, a pallid but solid substance. There was +Michael Moon offering like a riddle the contrast of the horsy crudeness of his +clothes and the sombre sagacity of his visage. He was now joined by his yet +more comic crony, Moses Gould. Swaggering on short legs with a prosperous +purple tie, he was the gayest of godless little dogs; but like a dog also in +this, that however he danced and wagged with delight, the two dark eyes on each +side of his protuberant nose glistened gloomily like black buttons. There was +Miss Rosamund Hunt, still with the fine white hat framing her square, +good-looking face, and still with her native air of being dressed for some +party that never came off. She also, like Mr. Moon, had a new companion, new so +far as this narrative goes, but in reality an old friend and a protegee. This +was a slight young woman in dark gray, and in no way notable but for a load of +dull red hair, of which the shape somehow gave her pale face that triangular, +almost peaked, appearance which was given by the lowering headdress and deep +rich ruff of the Elizabethan beauties. Her surname seemed to be Gray, and Miss +Hunt called her Mary, in that indescribable tone applied to a dependent who has +practically become a friend. She wore a small silver cross on her very +business-like gray clothes, and was the only member of the party who went to +church. Last, but the reverse of least, there was Diana Duke, studying the +newcomer with eyes of steel, and listening carefully to every idiotic word he +said. As for Mrs. Duke, she smiled up at him, but never dreamed of listening to +him. She had never really listened to any one in her life; which, some said, +was why she had survived. +</p> + +<p> +Nevertheless, Mrs. Duke was pleased with her new guest’s concentration of +courtesy upon herself; for no one ever spoke seriously to her any more than she +listened seriously to any one. And she almost beamed as the stranger, with yet +wider and almost whirling gestures of explanation with his huge hat and bag, +apologized for having entered by the wall instead of the front door. He was +understood to put it down to an unfortunate family tradition of neatness and +care of his clothes. +</p> + +<p> +“My mother was rather strict about it, to tell the truth,” he said, +lowering his voice, to Mrs. Duke. “She never liked me to lose my cap at +school. And when a man’s been taught to be tidy and neat it sticks to +him.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Duke weakly gasped that she was sure he must have had a good mother; but +her niece seemed inclined to probe the matter further. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve got a funny idea of neatness,” she said, “if +it’s jumping garden walls and clambering up garden trees. A man +can’t very well climb a tree tidily.” +</p> + +<p> +“He can clear a wall neatly,” said Michael Moon; “I saw him +do it.” +</p> + +<p> +Smith seemed to be regarding the girl with genuine astonishment. “My dear +young lady,” he said, “I was tidying the tree. You don’t want +last year’s hats there, do you, any more than last year’s leaves? +The wind takes off the leaves, but it couldn’t manage the hat; that wind, +I suppose, has tidied whole forests to-day. Rum idea this is, that tidiness is +a timid, quiet sort of thing; why, tidiness is a toil for giants. You +can’t tidy anything without untidying yourself; just look at my trousers. +Don’t you know that? Haven’t you ever had a spring cleaning?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, sir,” said Mrs. Duke, almost eagerly. “You will find +everything of that sort quite nice.” For the first time she had heard two +words that she could understand. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Diana Duke seemed to be studying the stranger with a sort of spasm of +calculation; then her black eyes snapped with decision, and she said that he +could have a particular bedroom on the top floor if he liked: and the silent +and sensitive Inglewood, who had been on the rack through these cross-purposes, +eagerly offered to show him up to the room. Smith went up the stairs four at a +time, and when he bumped his head against the ultimate ceiling, Inglewood had +an odd sensation that the tall house was much shorter than it used to be. +</p> + +<p> +Arthur Inglewood followed his old friend—or his new friend, for he did +not very clearly know which he was. The face looked very like his old +schoolfellow’s at one second and very unlike at another. And when +Inglewood broke through his native politeness so far as to say suddenly, +“Is your name Smith?” he received only the unenlightening reply, +“Quite right; quite right. Very good. Excellent!” Which appeared to +Inglewood, on reflection, rather the speech of a new-born babe accepting a name +than of a grown-up man admitting one. +</p> + +<p> +Despite these doubts about identity, the hapless Inglewood watched the other +unpack, and stood about his bedroom in all the impotent attitudes of the male +friend. Mr. Smith unpacked with the same kind of whirling accuracy with which +he climbed a tree—throwing things out of his bag as if they were rubbish, +yet managing to distribute quite a regular pattern all round him on the floor. +</p> + +<p> +As he did so he continued to talk in the same somewhat gasping manner (he had +come upstairs four steps at a time, but even without this his style of speech +was breathless and fragmentary), and his remarks were still a string of more or +less significant but often separate pictures. +</p> + +<p> +“Like the day of judgement,” he said, throwing a bottle so that it +somehow settled, rocking on its right end. “People say vast universe... +infinity and astronomy; not sure... I think things are too close together... +packed up; for travelling... stars too close, really... why, the sun’s a +star, too close to be seen properly; the earth’s a star, too close to be +seen at all... too many pebbles on the beach; ought all to be put in rings; too +many blades of grass to study... feathers on a bird make the brain reel; wait +till the big bag is unpacked... may all be put in our right places then.” +</p> + +<p> +Here he stopped, literally for breath—throwing a shirt to the other end +of the room, and then a bottle of ink so that it fell quite neatly beyond it. +Inglewood looked round on this strange, half-symmetrical disorder with an +increasing doubt. +</p> + +<p> +In fact, the more one explored Mr. Smith’s holiday luggage, the less one +could make anything of it. One peculiarity of it was that almost everything +seemed to be there for the wrong reason; what is secondary with every one else +was primary with him. He would wrap up a pot or pan in brown paper; and the +unthinking assistant would discover that the pot was valueless or even +unnecessary, and that it was the brown paper that was truly precious. He +produced two or three boxes of cigars, and explained with plain and perplexing +sincerity that he was no smoker, but that cigar-box wood was by far the best +for fretwork. He also exhibited about six small bottles of wine, white and red, +and Inglewood, happening to note a Volnay which he knew to be excellent, +supposed at first that the stranger was an epicure in vintages. He was +therefore surprised to find that the next bottle was a vile sham claret from +the colonies, which even colonials (to do them justice) do not drink. It was +only then that he observed that all six bottles had those bright metallic seals +of various tints, and seemed to have been chosen solely because they have the +three primary and three secondary colours: red, blue, and yellow; green, violet +and orange. There grew upon Inglewood an almost creepy sense of the real +childishness of this creature. For Smith was really, so far as human psychology +can be, innocent. He had the sensualities of innocence: he loved the stickiness +of gum, and he cut white wood greedily as if he were cutting a cake. To this +man wine was not a doubtful thing to be defended or denounced; it was a +quaintly coloured syrup, such as a child sees in a shop window. He talked +dominantly and rushed the social situation; but he was not asserting himself, +like a superman in a modern play. He was simply forgetting himself, like a +little boy at a party. He had somehow made the giant stride from babyhood to +manhood, and missed that crisis in youth when most of us grow old. +</p> + +<p> +As he shunted his big bag, Arthur observed the initials I. S. printed on one +side of it, and remembered that Smith had been called Innocent Smith at school, +though whether as a formal Christian name or a moral description he could not +remember. He was just about to venture another question, when there was a knock +at the door, and the short figure of Mr. Gould offered itself, with the +melancholy Moon, standing like his tall crooked shadow, behind him. They had +drifted up the stairs after the other two men with the wandering gregariousness +of the male. +</p> + +<p> +“Hope there’s no intrusion,” said the beaming Moses with a +glow of good nature, but not the airiest tinge of apology. +</p> + +<p> +“The truth is,” said Michael Moon with comparative courtesy, +“we thought we might see if they had made you comfortable. Miss Duke is +rather—” +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” cried the stranger, looking up radiantly from his bag; +“magnificent, isn’t she? Go close to her—hear military music +going by, like Joan of Arc.” +</p> + +<p> +Inglewood stared and stared at the speaker like one who has just heard a wild +fairy tale, which nevertheless contains one small and forgotten fact. For he +remembered how he had himself thought of Jeanne d’Arc years ago, when, +hardly more than a schoolboy, he had first come to the boarding-house. Long +since the pulverizing rationalism of his friend Dr. Warner had crushed such +youthful ignorances and disproportionate dreams. Under the Warnerian scepticism +and science of hopeless human types, Inglewood had long come to regard himself +as a timid, insufficient, and “weak” type, who would never marry; +to regard Diana Duke as a materialistic maidservant; and to regard his first +fancy for her as the small, dull farce of a collegian kissing his +landlady’s daughter. And yet the phrase about military music moved him +queerly, as if he had heard those distant drums. +</p> + +<p> +“She has to keep things pretty tight, as is only natural,” said +Moon, glancing round the rather dwarfish room, with its wedge of slanted +ceiling, like the conical hood of a dwarf. +</p> + +<p> +“Rather a small box for you, sir,” said the waggish Mr. Gould. +</p> + +<p> +“Splendid room, though,” answered Mr. Smith enthusiastically, with +his head inside his Gladstone bag. “I love these pointed sorts of rooms, +like Gothic. By the way,” he cried out, pointing in quite a startling +way, “where does that door lead to?” +</p> + +<p> +“To certain death, I should say,” answered Michael Moon, staring up +at a dust-stained and disused trapdoor in the sloping roof of the attic. +“I don’t think there’s a loft there; and I don’t know +what else it could lead to.” Long before he had finished his sentence the +man with the strong green legs had leapt at the door in the ceiling, swung +himself somehow on to the ledge beneath it, wrenched it open after a struggle, +and clambered through it. For a moment they saw the two symbolic legs standing +like a truncated statue; then they vanished. Through the hole thus burst in the +roof appeared the empty and lucid sky of evening, with one great many-coloured +cloud sailing across it like a whole county upside down. +</p> + +<p> +“Hullo, you fellows!” came the far cry of Innocent Smith, +apparently from some remote pinnacle. “Come up here; and bring some of my +things to eat and drink. It’s just the spot for a picnic.” +</p> + +<p> +With a sudden impulse Michael snatched two of the small bottles of wine, one in +each solid fist; and Arthur Inglewood, as if mesmerized, groped for a biscuit +tin and a big jar of ginger. The enormous hand of Innocent Smith appearing +through the aperture, like a giant’s in a fairy tale, received these +tributes and bore them off to the eyrie; then they both hoisted themselves out +of the window. They were both athletic, and even gymnastic; Inglewood through +his concern for hygiene, and Moon through his concern for sport, which was not +quite so idle and inactive as that of the average sportsman. Also they both had +a light-headed burst of celestial sensation when the door was burst in the +roof, as if a door had been burst in the sky, and they could climb out on to +the very roof of the universe. They were both men who had long been +unconsciously imprisoned in the commonplace, though one took it comically, and +the other seriously. They were both men, nevertheless, in whom sentiment had +never died. But Mr. Moses Gould had an equal contempt for their suicidal +athletics and their subconscious transcendentalism, and he stood and laughed at +the thing with the shameless rationality of another race. +</p> + +<p> +When the singular Smith, astride of a chimney-pot, learnt that Gould was not +following, his infantile officiousness and good nature forced him to dive back +into the attic to comfort or persuade; and Inglewood and Moon were left alone +on the long gray-green ridge of the slate roof, with their feet against gutters +and their backs against chimney-pots, looking agnostically at each other. Their +first feeling was that they had come out into eternity, and that eternity was +very like topsy-turvydom. One definition occurred to both of them—that he +had come out into the light of that lucid and radiant ignorance in which all +beliefs had begun. The sky above them was full of mythology. Heaven seemed deep +enough to hold all the gods. The round of the ether turned from green to yellow +gradually like a great unripe fruit. All around the sunken sun it was like a +lemon; round all the east it was a sort of golden green, more suggestive of a +greengage; but the whole had still the emptiness of daylight and none of the +secrecy of dusk. Tumbled here and there across this gold and pale green were +shards and shattered masses of inky purple cloud, which seemed falling towards +the earth in every kind of colossal perspective. One of them really had the +character of some many-mitred, many-bearded, many-winged Assyrian image, huge +head downwards, hurled out of heaven—a sort of false Jehovah, who was +perhaps Satan. All the other clouds had preposterous pinnacled shapes, as if +the god’s palaces had been flung after him. +</p> + +<p> +And yet, while the empty heaven was full of silent catastrophe, the height of +human buildings above which they sat held here and there a tiny trivial noise +that was the exact antithesis; and they heard some six streets below a newsboy +calling, and a bell bidding to chapel. They could also hear talk out of the +garden below; and realized that the irrepressible Smith must have followed +Gould downstairs, for his eager and pleading accents could be heard, followed +by the half-humourous protests of Miss Duke and the full and very youthful +laughter of Rosamund Hunt. The air had that cold kindness that comes after a +storm. Michael Moon drank it in with as serious a relish as he had drunk the +little bottle of cheap claret, which he had emptied almost at a draught. +Inglewood went on eating ginger very slowly and with a solemnity unfathomable +as the sky above him. There was still enough stir in the freshness of the +atmosphere to make them almost fancy they could smell the garden soil and the +last roses of autumn. Suddenly there came from the darkening room a silvery +ping and pong which told them that Rosamund had brought out the long-neglected +mandoline. After the first few notes there was more of the distant bell-like +laughter. +</p> + +<p> +“Inglewood,” said Michael Moon, “have you ever heard that I +am a blackguard?” +</p> + +<p> +“I haven’t heard it, and I don’t believe it,” answered +Inglewood, after an odd pause. “But I have heard you were—what they +call rather wild.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you have heard that I am wild, you can contradict the rumour,” +said Moon, with an extraordinary calm; “I am tame. I am quite tame; I am +about the tamest beast that crawls. I drink too much of the same kind of whisky +at the same time every night. I even drink about the same amount too much. I go +to the same number of public-houses. I meet the same damned women with mauve +faces. I hear the same number of dirty stories— generally the same dirty +stories. You may assure my friends, Inglewood, that you see before you a person +whom civilization has thoroughly tamed.” +</p> + +<p> +Arthur Inglewood was staring with feelings that made him nearly fall off the +roof, for indeed the Irishman’s face, always sinister, was now almost +demoniacal. +</p> + +<p> +“Christ confound it!” cried out Moon, suddenly clutching the empty +claret bottle, “this is about the thinnest and filthiest wine I ever +uncorked, and it’s the only drink I have really enjoyed for nine years. I +was never wild until just ten minutes ago.” And he sent the bottle +whizzing, a wheel of glass, far away beyond the garden into the road, where, in +the profound evening silence, they could even hear it break and part upon the +stones. +</p> + +<p> +“Moon,” said Arthur Inglewood, rather huskily, “you +mustn’t be so bitter about it. Everyone has to take the world as he finds +it; of course one often finds it a bit dull—” +</p> + +<p> +“That fellow doesn’t,” said Michael decisively; “I mean +that fellow Smith. I have a fancy there’s some method in his madness. It +looks as if he could turn into a sort of wonderland any minute by taking one +step out of the plain road. Who would have thought of that trapdoor? Who would +have thought that this cursed colonial claret could taste quite nice among the +chimney-pots? Perhaps that is the real key of fairyland. Perhaps Nosey +Gould’s beastly little Empire Cigarettes ought only to be smoked on +stilts, or something of that sort. Perhaps Mrs. Duke’s cold leg of mutton +would seem quite appetizing at the top of a tree. Perhaps even my damned, +dirty, monotonous drizzle of Old Bill Whisky—” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be so rough on yourself,” said Inglewood, in serious +distress. “The dullness isn’t your fault or the whisky’s. +Fellows who don’t— fellows like me I mean—have just the same +feeling that it’s all rather flat and a failure. But the world’s +made like that; it’s all survival. Some people are made to get on, like +Warner; and some people are made to stick quiet, like me. You can’t help +your temperament. I know you’re much cleverer than I am; but you +can’t help having all the loose ways of a poor literary chap, and I +can’t help having all the doubts and helplessness of a small scientific +chap, any more than a fish can help floating or a fern can help curling up. +Humanity, as Warner said so well in that lecture, really consists of quite +different tribes of animals all disguised as men.” +</p> + +<p> +In the dim garden below the buzz of talk was suddenly broken by Miss +Hunt’s musical instrument banging with the abruptness of artillery into a +vulgar but spirited tune. +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund’s voice came up rich and strong in the words of some fatuous, +fashionable coon song:— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Darkies sing a song on the old plantation,<br/> +Sing it as we sang it in days long since gone by.” +</p> + +<p> +Inglewood’s brown eyes softened and saddened still more as he continued +his monologue of resignation to such a rollicking and romantic tune. But the +blue eyes of Michael Moon brightened and hardened with a light that Inglewood +did not understand. Many centuries, and many villages and valleys, would have +been happier if Inglewood or Inglewood’s countrymen had ever understood +that light, or guessed at the first blink that it was the battle star of +Ireland. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing can ever alter it; it’s in the wheels of the +universe,” went on Inglewood, in a low voice: “some men are weak +and some strong, and the only thing we can do is to know that we are weak. I +have been in love lots of times, but I could not do anything, for I remembered +my own fickleness. I have formed opinions, but I haven’t the cheek to +push them, because I’ve so often changed them. That’s the upshot, +old fellow. We can’t trust ourselves— and we can’t help +it.” +</p> + +<p> +Michael had risen to his feet, and stood poised in a perilous position at the +end of the roof, like some dark statue hung above its gable. Behind him, huge +clouds of an almost impossible purple turned slowly topsy-turvy in the silent +anarchy of heaven. Their gyration made the dark figure seem yet dizzier. +</p> + +<p> +“Let us...” he said, and was suddenly silent. +</p> + +<p> +“Let us what?” asked Arthur Inglewood, rising equally quick though +somewhat more cautiously, for his friend seemed to find some difficulty in +speech. +</p> + +<p> +“Let us go and do some of these things we can’t do,” said +Michael. +</p> + +<p> +At the same moment there burst out of the trapdoor below them the cockatoo hair +and flushed face of Innocent Smith, calling to them that they must come down as +the “concert” was in full swing, and Mr. Moses Gould was about to +recite “Young Lochinvar.” +</p> + +<p> +As they dropped into Innocent’s attic they nearly tumbled over its +entertaining impedimenta again. Inglewood, staring at the littered floor, +thought instinctively of the littered floor of a nursery. He was therefore the +more moved, and even shocked, when his eye fell on a large well-polished +American revolver. +</p> + +<p> +“Hullo!” he cried, stepping back from the steely glitter as men +step back from a serpent; “are you afraid of burglars? or when and why do +you deal death out of that machine gun?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, that!” said Smith, throwing it a single glance; “I deal +life out of that,” and he went bounding down the stairs. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"></a> +Chapter III<br/> +The Banner of Beacon</h3> + +<p> +All next day at Beacon House there was a crazy sense that it was +everybody’s birthday. It is the fashion to talk of institutions as cold +and cramping things. The truth is that when people are in exceptionally high +spirits, really wild with freedom and invention, they always must, and they +always do, create institutions. When men are weary they fall into anarchy; but +while they are gay and vigorous they invariably make rules. This, which is true +of all the churches and republics of history, is also true of the most trivial +parlour game or the most unsophisticated meadow romp. We are never free until +some institution frees us; and liberty cannot exist till it is declared by +authority. Even the wild authority of the harlequin Smith was still authority, +because it produced everywhere a crop of crazy regulations and conditions. He +filled every one with his own half-lunatic life; but it was not expressed in +destruction, but rather in a dizzy and toppling construction. Each person with +a hobby found it turning into an institution. Rosamund’s songs seemed to +coalesce into a kind of opera; Michael’s jests and paragraphs into a +magazine. His pipe and her mandoline seemed between them to make a sort of +smoking concert. The bashful and bewildered Arthur Inglewood almost struggled +against his own growing importance. He felt as if, in spite of him, his +photographs were turning into a picture gallery, and his bicycle into a +gymkhana. But no one had any time to criticize these impromptu estates and +offices, for they followed each other in wild succession like the topics of a +rambling talker. +</p> + +<p> +Existence with such a man was an obstacle race made out of pleasant obstacles. +Out of any homely and trivial object he could drag reels of exaggeration, like +a conjurer. Nothing could be more shy and impersonal than poor Arthur’s +photography. Yet the preposterous Smith was seen assisting him eagerly through +sunny morning hours, and an indefensible sequence described as “Moral +Photography” began to unroll about the boarding-house. It was only a +version of the old photographer’s joke which produces the same figure +twice on one plate, making a man play chess with himself, dine with himself, +and so on. But these plates were more hysterical and ambitious—as, +“Miss Hunt forgets Herself,” showing that lady answering her own +too rapturous recognition with a most appalling stare of ignorance; or +“Mr. Moon questions Himself,” in which Mr. Moon appeared as one +driven to madness under his own legal cross-examination, which was conducted +with a long forefinger and an air of ferocious waggery. One highly successful +trilogy—representing Inglewood recognizing Inglewood, Inglewood +prostrating himself before Inglewood, and Inglewood severely beating Inglewood +with an umbrella— Innocent Smith wanted to have enlarged and put up in +the hall, like a sort of fresco, with the inscription,— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control—<br/> +These three alone will make a man a prig.”<br/> +                    T<small>ENNYSON</small>. +</p> + +<p> +Nothing, again, could be more prosaic and impenetrable than the domestic +energies of Miss Diana Duke. But Innocent had somehow blundered on the +discovery that her thrifty dressmaking went with a considerable feminine care +for dress—the one feminine thing that had never failed her solitary +self-respect. In consequence Smith pestered her with a theory (which he really +seemed to take seriously) that ladies might combine economy with magnificence +if they would draw light chalk patterns on a plain dress and then dust them off +again. He set up “Smith’s Lightning Dressmaking Company,” +with two screens, a cardboard placard, and box of bright soft crayons; and Miss +Diana actually threw him an abandoned black overall or working dress on which +to exercise the talents of a modiste. He promptly produced for her a garment +aflame with red and gold sunflowers; she held it up an instant to her +shoulders, and looked like an empress. And Arthur Inglewood, some hours +afterwards cleaning his bicycle (with his usual air of being inextricably +hidden in it), glanced up; and his hot face grew hotter, for Diana stood +laughing for one flash in the doorway, and her dark robe was rich with the +green and purple of great decorative peacocks, like a secret garden in the +“Arabian Nights.” A pang too swift to be named pain or pleasure +went through his heart like an old-world rapier. He remembered how pretty he +thought her years ago, when he was ready to fall in love with anybody; but it +was like remembering a worship of some Babylonian princess in some previous +existence. At his next glimpse of her (and he caught himself awaiting it) the +purple and green chalk was dusted off, and she went by quickly in her working +clothes. +</p> + +<p> +As for Mrs. Duke, none who knew that matron could conceive her as actively +resisting this invasion that had turned her house upside down. But among the +most exact observers it was seriously believed that she liked it. For she was +one of those women who at bottom regard all men as equally mad, wild animals of +some utterly separate species. And it is doubtful if she really saw anything +more eccentric or inexplicable in Smith’s chimney-pot picnics or crimson +sunflowers than she had in the chemicals of Inglewood or the sardonic speeches +of Moon. Courtesy, on the other hand, is a thing that anybody can understand, +and Smith’s manners were as courteous as they were unconventional. She +said he was “a real gentleman,” by which she simply meant a +kind-hearted man, which is a very different thing. She would sit at the head of +the table with fat, folded hands and a fat, folded smile for hours and hours, +while every one else was talking at once. At least, the only other exception +was Rosamund’s companion, Mary Gray, whose silence was of a much more +eager sort. Though she never spoke she always looked as if she might speak any +minute. Perhaps this is the very definition of a companion. Innocent Smith +seemed to throw himself, as into other adventures, into the adventure of making +her talk. He never succeeded, yet he was never snubbed; if he achieved +anything, it was only to draw attention to this quiet figure, and to turn her, +by ever so little, from a modesty to a mystery. But if she was a riddle, every +one recognized that she was a fresh and unspoilt riddle, like the riddle of the +sky and the woods in spring. Indeed, though she was rather older than the other +two girls, she had an early morning ardour, a fresh earnestness of youth, which +Rosamund seemed to have lost in the mere spending of money, and Diana in the +mere guarding of it. Smith looked at her again and again. Her eyes and mouth +were set in her face the wrong way—which was really the right way. She +had the knack of saying everything with her face: her silence was a sort of +steady applause. +</p> + +<p> +But among the hilarious experiments of that holiday (which seemed more like a +week’s holiday than a day’s) one experiment towers supreme, not +because it was any sillier or more successful than the others, but because out +of this particular folly flowed all of the odd events that were to follow. All +the other practical jokes exploded of themselves, and left vacancy; all the +other fictions returned upon themselves, and were finished like a song. But the +string of solid and startling events— which were to include a hansom cab, +a detective, a pistol, and a marriage licence—were all made primarily +possible by the joke about the High Court of Beacon. +</p> + +<p> +It had originated, not with Innocent Smith, but with Michael Moon. He was in a +strange glow and pressure of spirits, and talked incessantly; yet he had never +been more sarcastic, and even inhuman. He used his old useless knowledge as a +barrister to talk entertainingly of a tribunal that was a parody on the pompous +anomalies of English law. The High Court of Beacon, he declared, was a splendid +example of our free and sensible constitution. It had been founded by King John +in defiance of the Magna Carta, and now held absolute power over windmills, +wine and spirit licences, ladies traveling in Turkey, revision of sentences for +dog-stealing and parricide, as well as anything whatever that happened in the +town of Market Bosworth. The whole hundred and nine seneschals of the High +Court of Beacon met once in every four centuries; but in the intervals (as Mr. +Moon explained) the whole powers of the institution were vested in Mrs. Duke. +Tossed about among the rest of the company, however, the High Court did not +retain its historical and legal seriousness, but was used somewhat +unscrupulously in a riot of domestic detail. If somebody spilt the Worcester +Sauce on the tablecloth, he was quite sure it was a rite without which the +sittings and findings of the Court would be invalid; or if somebody wanted a +window to remain shut, he would suddenly remember that none but the third son +of the lord of the manor of Penge had the right to open it. They even went to +the length of making arrests and conducting criminal inquiries. The proposed +trial of Moses Gould for patriotism was rather above the heads of the company, +especially of the criminal; but the trial of Inglewood on a charge of +photographic libel, and his triumphant acquittal upon a plea of insanity, were +admitted to be in the best tradition of the Court. +</p> + +<p> +But when Smith was in wild spirits he grew more and more serious, not more and +more flippant like Michael Moon. This proposal of a private court of justice, +which Moon had thrown off with the detachment of a political humourist, Smith +really caught hold of with the eagerness of an abstract philosopher. It was by +far the best thing they could do, he declared, to claim sovereign powers even +for the individual household. +</p> + +<p> +“You believe in Home Rule for Ireland; I believe in Home Rule for +homes,” he cried eagerly to Michael. “It would be better if every +father COULD kill his son, as with the old Romans; it would be better, because +nobody would be killed. Let’s issue a Declaration of Independence from +Beacon House. We could grow enough greens in that garden to support us, and +when the tax-collector comes let’s tell him we’re self-supporting, +and play on him with the hose.... Well, perhaps, as you say, we couldn’t +very well have a hose, as that comes from the main; but we could sink a well in +this chalk, and a lot could be done with water-jugs.... Let this really be +Beacon House. Let’s light a bonfire of independence on the roof, and see +house after house answering it across the valley of the Thames! Let us begin +the League of the Free Families! Away with Local Government! A fig for Local +Patriotism! Let every house be a sovereign state as this is, and judge its own +children by its own law, as we do by the Court of Beacon. Let us cut the +painter, and begin to be happy together, as if we were on a desert +island.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know that desert island,” said Michael Moon; “it only +exists in the ‘Swiss Family Robinson.’ A man feels a strange desire +for some sort of vegetable milk, and crash comes down some unexpected cocoa-nut +from some undiscovered monkey. A literary man feels inclined to pen a sonnet, +and at once an officious porcupine rushes out of a thicket and shoots out one +of his quills.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you say a word against the ‘Swiss Family +Robinson,’” cried Innocent with great warmth. “It +mayn’t be exact science, but it’s dead accurate philosophy. When +you’re really shipwrecked, you do really find what you want. When +you’re really on a desert island, you never find it a desert. If we were +really besieged in this garden, we’d find a hundred English birds and +English berries that we never knew were here. If we were snowed up in this +room, we’d be the better for reading scores of books in that bookcase +that we don’t even know are there; we’d have talks with each other, +good, terrible talks, that we shall go to the grave without guessing; +we’d find materials for everything— christening, marriage, or +funeral; yes, even for a coronation— if we didn’t decide to be a +republic.” +</p> + +<p> +“A coronation on ‘Swiss Family’ lines, I suppose,” said +Michael, laughing. “Oh, I know you would find everything in that +atmosphere. If we wanted such a simple thing, for instance, as a Coronation +Canopy, we should walk down beyond the geraniums and find the Canopy Tree in +full bloom. If we wanted such a trifle as a crown of gold, why, we should be +digging up dandelions, and we should find a gold mine under the lawn. And when +we wanted oil for the ceremony, why I suppose a great storm would wash +everything on shore, and we should find there was a Whale on the +premises.” +</p> + +<p> +“And so there IS a whale on the premises for all you know,” +asseverated Smith, striking the table with passion. “I bet you’ve +never examined the premises! I bet you’ve never been round at the back as +I was this morning— for I found the very thing you say could only grow on +a tree. There’s an old sort of square tent up against the dustbin; +it’s got three holes in the canvas, and a pole’s broken, so +it’s not much good as a tent, but as a Canopy—” And his voice +quite failed him to express its shining adequacy; then he went on with +controversial eagerness: “You see I take every challenge as you make it. +I believe every blessed thing you say couldn’t be here has been here all +the time. You say you want a whale washed up for oil. Why, there’s oil in +that cruet-stand at your elbow; and I don’t believe anybody has touched +it or thought of it for years. And as for your gold crown, we’re none of +us wealthy here, but we could collect enough ten-shilling bits from our own +pockets to string round a man’s head for half an hour; or one of Miss +Hunt’s gold bangles is nearly big enough to—” +</p> + +<p> +The good-humoured Rosamund was almost choking with laughter. “All is not +gold that glitters,” she said, “and besides—” +</p> + +<p> +“What a mistake that is!” cried Innocent Smith, leaping up in great +excitement. “All is gold that glitters— especially now we are a +Sovereign State. What’s the good of a Sovereign State if you can’t +define a sovereign? We can make anything a precious metal, as men could in the +morning of the world. They didn’t choose gold because it was rare; your +scientists can tell you twenty sorts of slime much rarer. They chose gold +because it was bright—because it was a hard thing to find, but pretty +when you’ve found it. You can’t fight with golden swords or eat +golden biscuits; you can only look at it—and you can look at it out +here.” +</p> + +<p> +With one of his incalculable motions he sprang back and burst open the doors +into the garden. At the same time also, with one of his gestures that never +seemed at the instant so unconventional as they were, he stretched out his hand +to Mary Gray, and led her out on to the lawn as if for a dance. +</p> + +<p> +The French windows, thus flung open, let in an evening even lovelier than that +of the day before. The west was swimming with sanguine colours, and a sort of +sleepy flame lay along the lawn. The twisted shadows of the one or two garden +trees showed upon this sheen, not gray or black, as in common daylight, but +like arabesques written in vivid violet ink on some page of Eastern gold. The +sunset was one of those festive and yet mysterious conflagrations in which +common things by their colours remind us of costly or curious things. The +slates upon the sloping roof burned like the plumes of a vast peacock, in every +mysterious blend of blue and green. The red-brown bricks of the wall glowed +with all the October tints of strong ruby and tawny wines. The sun seemed to +set each object alight with a different coloured flame, like a man lighting +fireworks; and even Innocent’s hair, which was of a rather colourless +fairness, seemed to have a flame of pagan gold on it as he strode across the +lawn towards the one tall ridge of rockery. +</p> + +<p> +“What would be the good of gold,” he was saying, “if it did +not glitter? Why should we care for a black sovereign any more than for a black +sun at noon? A black button would do just as well. Don’t you see that +everything in this garden looks like a jewel? And will you kindly tell me what +the deuce is the good of a jewel except that it looks like a jewel? Leave off +buying and selling, and start looking! Open your eyes, and you’ll wake up +in the New Jerusalem. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“All is gold that glitters—<br/> +    Tree and tower of brass;<br/> +Rolls the golden evening air<br/> +    Down the golden grass.<br/> +Kick the cry to Jericho,<br/> +    How yellow mud is sold;<br/> +All is gold that glitters,<br/> +    For the glitter is the gold.” +</p> + +<p> +“And who wrote that?” asked Rosamund, amused. +</p> + +<p> +“No one will ever write it,” answered Smith, and cleared the +rockery with a flying leap. +</p> + +<p> +“Really,” said Rosamund to Michael Moon, “he ought to be sent +to an asylum. Don’t you think so?” +</p> + +<p> +“I beg your pardon,” inquired Michael, rather sombrely; his long, +swarthy head was dark against the sunset, and, either by accident or mood, he +had the look of something isolated and even hostile amid the social +extravagance of the garden. +</p> + +<p> +“I only said Mr. Smith ought to go to an asylum,” repeated the +lady. +</p> + +<p> +The lean face seemed to grow longer and longer, for Moon was unmistakably +sneering. “No,” he said; “I don’t think it’s at +all necessary.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean?” asked Rosamund quickly. “Why not?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because he is in one now,” answered Michael Moon, in a quiet but +ugly voice. “Why, didn’t you know?” +</p> + +<p> +“What?” cried the girl, and there was a break in her voice; for the +Irishman’s face and voice were really almost creepy. With his dark figure +and dark sayings in all that sunshine he looked like the devil in paradise. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sorry,” he continued, with a sort of harsh humility. +“Of course we don’t talk about it much... but I thought we all +really knew.” +</p> + +<p> +“Knew what?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” answered Moon, “that Beacon House is a certain rather +singular sort of house—a house with the tiles loose, shall we say? +Innocent Smith is only the doctor that visits us; hadn’t you come when he +called before? As most of our maladies are melancholic, of course he has to be +extra cheery. Sanity, of course, seems a very bumptious eccentric thing to us. +Jumping over a wall, climbing a tree—that’s his bedside +manner.” +</p> + +<p> +“You daren’t say such a thing!” cried Rosamund in a rage. +“You daren’t suggest that I—” +</p> + +<p> +“Not more than I am,” said Michael soothingly; “not more than +the rest of us. Haven’t you ever noticed that Miss Duke never sits +still—a notorious sign? Haven’t you ever observed that Inglewood is +always washing his hands— a known mark of mental disease? I, of course, +am a dipsomaniac.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t believe you,” broke out his companion, not without +agitation. “I’ve heard you had some bad habits—” +</p> + +<p> +“All habits are bad habits,” said Michael, with deadly calm. +“Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling +down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed. YOU +went mad about money, because you’re an heiress.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a lie,” cried Rosamund furiously. “I never was +mean about money.” +</p> + +<p> +“You were worse,” said Michael, in a low voice and yet violently. +“You thought that other people were. You thought every man who came near +you must be a fortune-hunter; you would not let yourself go and be sane; and +now you’re mad and I’m mad, and serve us right.” +</p> + +<p> +“You brute!” said Rosamund, quite white. “And is this +true?” +</p> + +<p> +With the intellectual cruelty of which the Celt is capable when his abysses are +in revolt, Michael was silent for some seconds, and then stepped back with an +ironical bow. “Not literally true, of course,” he said; “only +really true. An allegory, shall we say? a social satire.” +</p> + +<p> +“And I hate and despise your satires,” cried Rosamund Hunt, letting +loose her whole forcible female personality like a cyclone, and speaking every +word to wound. “I despise it as I despise your rank tobacco, and your +nasty, loungy ways, and your snarling, and your Radicalism, and your old +clothes, and your potty little newspaper, and your rotten failure at +everything. I don’t care whether you call it snobbishness or not, I like +life and success, and jolly things to look at, and action. You won’t +frighten me with Diogenes; I prefer Alexander.” +</p> + +<p> +“Victrix causa deæ—” said Michael gloomily; and this angered +her more, as, not knowing what it meant, she imagined it to be witty. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I dare say you know Greek,” she said, with cheerful +inaccuracy; “you haven’t done much with that either.” And she +crossed the garden, pursuing the vanished Innocent and Mary. +</p> + +<p> +In doing so she passed Inglewood, who was returning to the house slowly, and +with a thought-clouded brow. He was one of those men who are quite clever, but +quite the reverse of quick. As he came back out of the sunset garden into the +twilight parlour, Diana Duke slipped swiftly to her feet and began putting away +the tea things. But it was not before Inglewood had seen an instantaneous +picture so unique that he might well have snapshotted it with his everlasting +camera. For Diana had been sitting in front of her unfinished work with her +chin on her hand, looking straight out of the window in pure thoughtless +thought. +</p> + +<p> +“You are busy,” said Arthur, oddly embarrassed with what he had +seen, and wishing to ignore it. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s no time for dreaming in this world,” answered the +young lady with her back to him. +</p> + +<p> +“I have been thinking lately,” said Inglewood in a low voice, +“that there’s no time for waking up.” +</p> + +<p> +She did not reply, and he walked to the window and looked out on the garden. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t smoke or drink, you know,” he said irrelevantly, +“because I think they’re drugs. And yet I fancy all hobbies, like +my camera and bicycle, are drugs too. Getting under a black hood, getting into +a dark room—getting into a hole anyhow. Drugging myself with speed, and +sunshine, and fatigue, and fresh air. Pedalling the machine so fast that I turn +into a machine myself. That’s the matter with all of us. We’re too +busy to wake up.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said the girl solidly, “what is there to wake up +to?” +</p> + +<p> +“There must be!” cried Inglewood, turning round in a singular +excitement—“there must be something to wake up to! All we do is +preparations—your cleanliness, and my healthiness, and Warner’s +scientific appliances. We’re always preparing for +something—something that never comes off. I ventilate the house, and you +sweep the house; but what is going to HAPPEN in the house?” +</p> + +<p> +She was looking at him quietly, but with very bright eyes, and seemed to be +searching for some form of words which she could not find. +</p> + +<p> +Before she could speak the door burst open, and the boisterous Rosamund Hunt, +in her flamboyant white hat, boa, and parasol, stood framed in the doorway. She +was in a breathing heat, and on her open face was an expression of the most +infantile astonishment. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, here’s a fine game!” she said, panting. “What am +I to do now, I wonder? I’ve wired for Dr. Warner; that’s all I can +think of doing.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is the matter?” asked Diana, rather sharply, but moving +forward like one used to be called upon for assistance. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s Mary,” said the heiress, “my companion Mary Gray: +that cracked friend of yours called Smith has proposed to her in the garden, +after ten hours’ acquaintance, and he wants to go off with her now for a +special licence.” +</p> + +<p> +Arthur Inglewood walked to the open French windows and looked out on the +garden, still golden with evening light. Nothing moved there but a bird or two +hopping and twittering; but beyond the hedge and railings, in the road outside +the garden gate, a hansom cab was waiting, with the yellow Gladstone bag on top +of it. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"></a> +Chapter IV<br/> +The Garden of the God</h3> + +<p> +Diana Duke seemed inexplicably irritated at the abrupt entrance and utterance +of the other girl. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” she said shortly, “I suppose Miss Gray can decline +him if she doesn’t want to marry him.” +</p> + +<p> +“But she DOES want to marry him!” cried Rosamund in exasperation. +“She’s a wild, wicked fool, and I won’t be parted from +her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps,” said Diana icily, “but I really don’t see +what we can do.” +</p> + +<p> +“But the man’s balmy, Diana,” reasoned her friend angrily. +“I can’t let my nice governess marry a man that’s balmy! You +or somebody MUST stop it!—Mr. Inglewood, you’re a man; go and tell +them they simply can’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“Unfortunately, it seems to me they simply can,” said Inglewood, +with a depressed air. “I have far less right of intervention than Miss +Duke, besides having, of course, far less moral force than she.” +</p> + +<p> +“You haven’t either of you got much,” cried Rosamund, the +last stays of her formidable temper giving way; “I think I’ll go +somewhere else for a little sense and pluck. I think I know some one who will +help me more than you do, at any rate... he’s a cantankerous beast, but +he’s a man, and has a mind, and knows it...” And she flung out into +the garden, with cheeks aflame, and the parasol whirling like a Catherine +wheel. +</p> + +<p> +She found Michael Moon standing under the garden tree, looking over the hedge; +hunched like a bird of prey, with his large pipe hanging down his long blue +chin. The very hardness of his expression pleased her, after the nonsense of +the new engagement and the shilly-shallying of her other friends. +</p> + +<p> +“I am sorry I was cross, Mr. Moon,” she said frankly. “I +hated you for being a cynic; but I’ve been well punished, for I want a +cynic just now. I’ve had my fill of sentiment—I’m fed up with +it. The world’s gone mad, Mr. Moon—all except the cynics, I think. +That maniac Smith wants to marry my old friend Mary, and she— and +she—doesn’t seem to mind.” +</p> + +<p> +Seeing his attentive face still undisturbedly smoking, she added smartly, +“I’m not joking; that’s Mr. Smith’s cab outside. He +swears he’ll take her off now to his aunt’s, and go for a special +licence. Do give me some practical advice, Mr. Moon.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Moon took his pipe out of his mouth, held it in his hand for an instant +reflectively, and then tossed it to the other side of the garden. “My +practical advice to you is this,” he said: “Let him go for his +special licence, and ask him to get another one for you and me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is that one of your jokes?” asked the young lady. “Do say +what you really mean.” +</p> + +<p> +“I mean that Innocent Smith is a man of business,” said Moon with +ponderous precision—“a plain, practical man: a man of affairs; a +man of facts and the daylight. He has let down twenty ton of good building +bricks suddenly on my head, and I am glad to say they have woken me up. We went +to sleep a little while ago on this very lawn, in this very sunlight. We have +had a little nap for five years or so, but now we’re going to be married, +Rosamund, and I can’t see why that cab...” +</p> + +<p> +“Really,” said Rosamund stoutly, “I don’t know what you +mean.” +</p> + +<p> +“What a lie!” cried Michael, advancing on her with brightening +eyes. “I’m all for lies in an ordinary way; but don’t you see +that to-night they won’t do? We’ve wandered into a world of facts, +old girl. That grass growing, and that sun going down, and that cab at the +door, are facts. You used to torment and excuse yourself by saying I was after +your money, and didn’t really love you. But if I stood here now and told +you I didn’t love you—you wouldn’t believe me: for truth is +in this garden to-night.” +</p> + +<p> +“Really, Mr. Moon...” said Rosamund, rather more faintly. +</p> + +<p> +He kept two big blue magnetic eyes fixed on her face. “Is my name +Moon?” he asked. “Is your name Hunt? On my honour, they sound to me +as quaint and as distant as Red Indian names. It’s as if your name was +‘Swim’ and my name was ‘Sunrise.’ But our real names +are Husband and Wife, as they were when we fell asleep.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is no good,” said Rosamund, with real tears in her eyes; +“one can never go back.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can go where I damn please,” said Michael, “and I can +carry you on my shoulder.” +</p> + +<p> +“But really, Michael, really, you must stop and think!” cried the +girl earnestly. “You could carry me off my feet, I dare say, soul and +body, but it may be bitter bad business for all that. These things done in that +romantic rush, like Mr. Smith’s, they— they do attract women, I +don’t deny it. As you say, we’re all telling the truth to-night. +They’ve attracted poor Mary, for one. They attract me, Michael. But the +cold fact remains: imprudent marriages do lead to long unhappiness and +disappointment— you’ve got used to your drinks and things—I +shan’t be pretty much longer—” +</p> + +<p> +“Imprudent marriages!” roared Michael. “And pray where in +earth or heaven are there any prudent marriages? Might as well talk about +prudent suicides. You and I have dawdled round each other long enough, and are +we any safer than Smith and Mary Gray, who met last night? You never know a +husband till you marry him. Unhappy! of course you’ll be unhappy. Who the +devil are you that you shouldn’t be unhappy, like the mother that bore +you? Disappointed! of course we’ll be disappointed. I, for one, +don’t expect till I die to be so good a man as I am at this minute— +a tower with all the trumpets shouting.” +</p> + +<p> +“You see all this,” said Rosamund, with a grand sincerity in her +solid face, “and do you really want to marry me?” +</p> + +<p> +“My darling, what else is there to do?” reasoned the Irishman. +“What other occupation is there for an active man on this earth, except +to marry you? What’s the alternative to marriage, barring sleep? +It’s not liberty, Rosamund. Unless you marry God, as our nuns do in +Ireland, you must marry Man—that is Me. The only third thing is to marry +yourself— yourself, yourself, yourself—the only companion that is +never satisfied— and never satisfactory.” +</p> + +<p> +“Michael,” said Miss Hunt, in a very soft voice, “if you +won’t talk so much, I’ll marry you.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s no time for talking,” cried Michael Moon; +“singing is the only thing. Can’t you find that mandoline of yours, +Rosamund?” +</p> + +<p> +“Go and fetch it for me,” said Rosamund, with crisp and sharp +authority. +</p> + +<p> +The lounging Mr. Moon stood for one split second astonished; then he shot away +across the lawn, as if shod with the feathered shoes out of the Greek fairy +tale. He cleared three yards and fifteen daisies at a leap, out of mere bodily +levity; but when he came within a yard or two of the open parlour windows, his +flying feet fell in their old manner like lead; he twisted round and came back +slowly, whistling. The events of that enchanted evening were not at an end. +</p> + +<p> +Inside the dark sitting-room of which Moon had caught a glimpse a curious thing +had happened, almost an instant after the intemperate exit of Rosamund. It was +something which, occurring in that obscure parlour, seemed to Arthur Inglewood +like heaven and earth turning head over heels, the sea being the ceiling and +the stars the floor. No words can express how it astonished him, as it +astonishes all simple men when it happens. Yet the stiffest female stoicism +seems separated from it only by a sheet of paper or a sheet of steel. It +indicates no surrender, far less any sympathy. The most rigid and ruthless +woman can begin to cry, just as the most effeminate man can grow a beard. It is +a separate sexual power, and proves nothing one way or the other about force of +character. But to young men ignorant of women, like Arthur Inglewood, to see +Diana Duke crying was like seeing a motor-car shedding tears of petrol. +</p> + +<p> +He could never have given (even if his really manly modesty had permitted it) +any vaguest vision of what he did when he saw that portent. He acted as men do +when a theatre catches fire—very differently from how they would have +conceived themselves as acting, whether for better or worse. He had a faint +memory of certain half-stifled explanations, that the heiress was the one +really paying guest, and she would go, and the bailiffs (in consequence) would +come; but after that he knew nothing of his own conduct except by the protests +it evoked. +</p> + +<p> +“Leave me alone, Mr. Inglewood—leave me alone; that’s not the +way to help.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I can help you,” said Arthur, with grinding certainty; +“I can, I can, I can...” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, you said,” cried the girl, “that you were much weaker +than me.” +</p> + +<p> +“So I am weaker than you,” said Arthur, in a voice that went +vibrating through everything, “but not just now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let go my hands!” cried Diana. “I won’t be +bullied.” +</p> + +<p> +In one element he was much stronger than she—the matter of humour. This +leapt up in him suddenly, and he laughed, saying: “Well, you are mean. +You know quite well you’ll bully me all the rest of my life. You might +allow a man the one minute of his life when he’s allowed to bully.” +</p> + +<p> +It was as extraordinary for him to laugh as for her to cry, and for the first +time since her childhood Diana was entirely off her guard. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean you want to marry me?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, there’s a cab at the door!” cried Inglewood, springing +up with an unconscious energy and bursting open the glass doors that led into +the garden. +</p> + +<p> +As he led her out by the hand they realized somehow for the first time that the +house and garden were on a steep height over London. And yet, though they felt +the place to be uplifted, they felt it also to be secret: it was like some +round walled garden on the top of one of the turrets of heaven. +</p> + +<p> +Inglewood looked around dreamily, his brown eyes devouring all sorts of details +with a senseless delight. He noticed for the first time that the railings of +the gate beyond the garden bushes were moulded like little spearheads and +painted blue. He noticed that one of the blue spears was loosened in its place, +and hung sideways; and this almost made him laugh. He thought it somehow +exquisitely harmless and funny that the railing should be crooked; he thought +he should like to know how it happened, who did it, and how the man was getting +on. +</p> + +<p> +When they were gone a few feet across that fiery grass they realized that they +were not alone. Rosamund Hunt and the eccentric Mr. Moon, both of whom they had +last seen in the blackest temper of detachment, were standing together on the +lawn. They were standing in quite an ordinary manner, and yet they looked +somehow like people in a book. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” said Diana, “what lovely air!” +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” called out Rosamund, with a pleasure so positive that it +rang out like a complaint. “It’s just like that horrid, beastly +fizzy stuff they gave me that made me feel happy.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, it isn’t like anything but itself!” answered Diana, +breathing deeply. “Why, it’s all cold, and yet it feels like +fire.” +</p> + +<p> +“Balmy is the word we use in Fleet Street,” said Mr. Moon. +“Balmy—especially on the crumpet.” And he fanned himself +quite unnecessarily with his straw hat. They were all full of little leaps and +pulsations of objectless and airy energy. Diana stirred and stretched her long +arms rigidly, as if crucified, in a sort of excruciating restfulness; Michael +stood still for long intervals, with gathered muscles, then spun round like a +teetotum, and stood still again; Rosamund did not trip, for women never trip, +except when they fall on their noses, but she struck the ground with her foot +as she moved, as if to some inaudible dance tune; and Inglewood, leaning quite +quietly against a tree, had unconsciously clutched a branch and shaken it with +a creative violence. Those giant gestures of Man, that made the high statues +and the strokes of war, tossed and tormented all their limbs. Silently as they +strolled and stood they were bursting like batteries with an animal magnetism. +</p> + +<p> +“And now,” cried Moon quite suddenly, stretching out a hand on each +side, “let’s dance round that bush!” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, what bush do you mean?” asked Rosamund, looking round with a +sort of radiant rudeness. +</p> + +<p> +“The bush that isn’t there,” said Michael—“the +Mulberry Bush.” +</p> + +<p> +They had taken each other’s hands, half laughing and quite ritually; and +before they could disconnect again Michael spun them all round, like a demon +spinning the world for a top. Diana felt, as the circle of the horizon flew +instantaneously around her, a far aerial sense of the ring of heights beyond +London and corners where she had climbed as a child; she seemed almost to hear +the rooks cawing about the old pines on Highgate, or to see the glowworms +gathering and kindling in the woods of Box Hill. +</p> + +<p> +The circle broke—as all such perfect circles of levity must break— +and sent its author, Michael, flying, as by centrifugal force, far away against +the blue rails of the gate. When reeling there he suddenly raised shout after +shout of a new and quite dramatic character. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, it’s Warner!” he shouted, waving his arms. +“It’s jolly old Warner— with a new silk hat and the old silk +moustache!” +</p> + +<p> +“Is that Dr. Warner?” cried Rosamund, bounding forward in a burst +of memory, amusement, and distress. “Oh, I’m so sorry! Oh, do tell +him it’s all right!” +</p> + +<p> +“Let’s take hands and tell him,” said Michael Moon. For +indeed, while they were talking, another hansom cab had dashed up behind the +one already waiting, and Dr. Herbert Warner, leaving a companion in the cab, +had carefully deposited himself on the pavement. +</p> + +<p> +Now, when you are an eminent physician and are wired for by an heiress to come +to a case of dangerous mania, and when, as you come in through the garden to +the house, the heiress and her landlady and two of the gentlemen boarders join +hands and dance round you in a ring, calling out, “It’s all right! +it’s all right!” you are apt to be flustered and even displeased. +Dr. Warner was a placid but hardly a placable person. The two things are by no +means the same; and even when Moon explained to him that he, Warner, with his +high hat and tall, solid figure, was just such a classic figure as OUGHT to be +danced round by a ring of laughing maidens on some old golden Greek +seashore— even then he seemed to miss the point of the general rejoicing. +</p> + +<p> +“Inglewood!” cried Dr. Warner, fixing his former disciple with a +stare, “are you mad?” +</p> + +<p> +Arthur flushed to the roots of his brown hair, but he answered, easily and +quietly enough, “Not now. The truth is, Warner, I’ve just made a +rather important medical discovery—quite in your line.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean?” asked the great doctor +stiffly—“what discovery?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve discovered that health really is catching, like +disease,” answered Arthur. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; sanity has broken out, and is spreading,” said Michael, +performing a <i>pas seul</i> with a thoughtful expression. “Twenty +thousand more cases taken to the hospitals; nurses employed night and +day.” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Warner studied Michael’s grave face and lightly moving legs with an +unfathomed wonder. “And is THIS, may I ask,” he said, “the +sanity that is spreading?” +</p> + +<p> +“You must forgive me, Dr. Warner,” cried Rosamund Hunt heartily. +“I know I’ve treated you badly; but indeed it was all a mistake. I +was in a frightfully bad temper when I sent for you, but now it all seems like +a dream—and—and Mr. Smith is the sweetest, most sensible, most +delightful old thing that ever existed, and he may marry any one he +likes—except me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should suggest Mrs. Duke,” said Michael. +</p> + +<p> +The gravity of Dr. Warner’s face increased. He took a slip of pink paper +from his waistcoat pocket, with his pale blue eyes quietly fixed on +Rosamund’s face all the time. He spoke with a not inexcusable frigidity. +</p> + +<p> +“Really, Miss Hunt,” he said, “you are not yet very +reassuring. You sent me this wire only half an hour ago: ‘Come at once, +if possible, with another doctor. Man—Innocent Smith—gone mad on +premises, and doing dreadful things. Do you know anything of him?’ I went +round at once to a distinguished colleague of mine, a doctor who is also a +private detective and an authority on criminal lunacy; he has come round with +me, and is waiting in the cab. Now you calmly tell me that this criminal madman +is a highly sweet and sane old thing, with accompaniments that set me +speculating on your own definition of sanity. I hardly comprehend the +change.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, how can one explain a change in sun and moon and everybody’s +soul?” cried Rosamund, in despair. “Must I confess we had got so +morbid as to think him mad merely because he wanted to get married; and that we +didn’t even know it was only because we wanted to get married ourselves? +We’ll humiliate ourselves, if you like, doctor; we’re happy +enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where is Mr. Smith?” asked Warner of Inglewood very sharply. +</p> + +<p> +Arthur started; he had forgotten all about the central figure of their farce, +who had not been visible for an hour or more. +</p> + +<p> +“I—I think he’s on the other side of the house, by the +dustbin,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“He may be on the road to Russia,” said Warner, “but he must +be found.” And he strode away and disappeared round a corner of the house +by the sunflowers. +</p> + +<p> +“I hope,” said Rosamund, “he won’t really interfere +with Mr. Smith.” +</p> + +<p> +“Interfere with the daisies!” said Michael with a snort. “A +man can’t be locked up for falling in love—at least I hope +not.” +</p> + +<p> +“No; I think even a doctor couldn’t make a disease out of him. +He’d throw off the doctor like the disease, don’t you know? I +believe it’s a case of a sort of holy well. I believe Innocent Smith is +simply innocent, and that is why he is so extraordinary.” +</p> + +<p> +It was Rosamund who spoke, restlessly tracing circles in the grass with the +point of her white shoe. +</p> + +<p> +“I think,” said Inglewood, “that Smith is not extraordinary +at all. He’s comic just because he’s so startlingly commonplace. +Don’t you know what it is to be all one family circle, with aunts and +uncles, when a schoolboy comes home for the holidays? That bag there on the cab +is only a schoolboy’s hamper. This tree here in the garden is only the +sort of tree that any schoolboy would have climbed. Yes, that’s the thing +that has haunted us all about him, the thing we could never fit a word to. +Whether he is my old schoolfellow or no, at least he is all my old +schoolfellows. He is the endless bun-eating, ball-throwing animal that we have +all been.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is only you absurd boys,” said Diana. “I don’t +believe any girl was ever so silly, and I’m sure no girl was ever so +happy, except—” and she stopped. +</p> + +<p> +“I will tell you the truth about Innocent Smith,” said Michael Moon +in a low voice. “Dr. Warner has gone to look for him in vain. He is not +there. Haven’t you noticed that we never saw him since we found +ourselves? He was an astral baby born on all four of us; he was only our own +youth returned. Long before poor old Warner had clambered out of his cab, the +thing we called Smith had dissolved into dew and light on this lawn. Once or +twice more, by the mercy of God, we may feel the thing, but the man we shall +never see. In a spring garden before breakfast we shall smell the smell called +Smith. In the snapping of brisk twigs in tiny fires we shall hear a noise named +Smith. Everything insatiable and innocent in the grasses that gobble up the +earth like babies at a bun feast, in the white mornings that split the sky as a +boy splits up white firwood, we may feel for one instant the presence of an +impetuous purity; but his innocence was too close to the unconsciousness of +inanimate things not to melt back at a mere touch into the mild hedges and +heavens; he—” +</p> + +<p> +He was interrupted from behind the house by a bang like that of a bomb. Almost +at the same instant the stranger in the cab sprang out of it, leaving it +rocking upon the stones of the road. He clutched the blue railings of the +garden, and peered eagerly over them in the direction of the noise. He was a +small, loose, yet alert man, very thin, with a face that seemed made out of +fish bones, and a silk hat quite as rigid and resplendent as Warner’s, +but thrust back recklessly on the hinder part of his head. +</p> + +<p> +“Murder!” he shrieked, in a high and feminine but very penetrating +voice. “Stop that murderer there!” +</p> + +<p> +Even as he shrieked a second shot shook the lower windows of the house, and +with the noise of it Dr. Herbert Warner came flying round the corner like a +leaping rabbit. Yet before he had reached the group a third discharge had +deafened them, and they saw with their own eyes two spots of white sky drilled +through the second of the unhappy Herbert’s high hats. The next moment +the fugitive physician fell over a flowerpot, and came down on all fours, +staring like a cow. The hat with the two shot-holes in it rolled upon the +gravel path before him, and Innocent Smith came round the corner like a railway +train. He was looking twice his proper size—a giant clad in green, the +big revolver still smoking in his hand, his face sanguine and in shadow, his +eyes blazing like all stars, and his yellow hair standing out all ways like +Struwelpeter’s. +</p> + +<p> +Though this startling scene hung but an instant in stillness, Inglewood had +time to feel once more what he had felt when he saw the other lovers standing +on the lawn—the sensation of a certain cut and coloured clearness that +belongs rather to the things of art than to the things of experience. The +broken flowerpot with its red-hot geraniums, the green bulk of Smith and the +black bulk of Warner, the blue-spiked railings behind, clutched by the +stranger’s yellow vulture claws and peered over by his long vulture neck, +the silk hat on the gravel, and the little cloudlet of smoke floating across +the garden as innocently as the puff of a cigarette— all these seemed +unnaturally distinct and definite. They existed, like symbols, in an ecstasy of +separation. Indeed, every object grew more and more particular and precious +because the whole picture was breaking up. Things look so bright just before +they burst. +</p> + +<p> +Long before his fancies had begun, let alone ceased, Arthur had stepped across +and taken one of Smith’s arms. Simultaneously the little stranger had run +up the steps and taken the other. Smith went into peals of laughter, and +surrendered his pistol with perfect willingness. Moon raised the doctor to his +feet, and then went and leaned sullenly on the garden gate. The girls were +quiet and vigilant, as good women mostly are in instants of catastrophe, but +their faces showed that, somehow or other, a light had been dashed out of the +sky. The doctor himself, when he had risen, collected his hat and wits, and +dusting himself down with an air of great disgust, turned to them in brief +apology. He was very white with his recent panic, but he spoke with perfect +self-control. +</p> + +<p> +“You will excuse us, ladies,” he said; “my friend and Mr. +Inglewood are both scientists in their several ways. I think we had better all +take Mr. Smith indoors, and communicate with you later.” +</p> + +<p> +And under the guard of the three natural philosophers the disarmed Smith was +led tactfully into the house, still roaring with laughter. +</p> + +<p> +From time to time during the next twenty minutes his distant boom of mirth +could again be heard through the half-open window; but there came no echo of +the quiet voices of the physicians. The girls walked about the garden together, +rubbing up each other’s spirits as best they might; Michael Moon still +hung heavily against the gate. Somewhere about the expiration of that time Dr. +Warner came out of the house with a face less pale but even more stern, and the +little man with the fish-bone face advanced gravely in his rear. And if the +face of Warner in the sunlight was that of a hanging judge, the face of the +little man behind was more like a death’s head. +</p> + +<p> +“Miss Hunt,” said Dr. Herbert Warner, “I only wish to offer +you my warm thanks and admiration. By your prompt courage and wisdom in sending +for us by wire this evening, you have enabled us to capture and put out of +mischief one of the most cruel and terrible of the enemies of humanity— a +criminal whose plausibility and pitilessness have never been before combined in +flesh.” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund looked across at him with a white, blank face and blinking eyes. +“What do you mean?” she asked. “You can’t mean Mr. +Smith?” +</p> + +<p> +“He has gone by many other names,” said the doctor gravely, +“and not one he did not leave to be cursed behind him. That man, Miss +Hunt, has left a track of blood and tears across the world. Whether he is mad +as well as wicked, we are trying, in the interests of science, to discover. In +any case, we shall have to take him to a magistrate first, even if only on the +road to a lunatic asylum. But the lunatic asylum in which he is confined will +have to be sealed with wall within wall, and ringed with guns like a fortress, +or he will break out again to bring forth carnage and darkness on the +earth.” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund looked at the two doctors, her face growing paler and paler. Then her +eyes strayed to Michael, who was leaning on the gate; but he continued to lean +on it without moving, with his face turned away towards the darkening road. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"></a> +Chapter V<br/> +The Allegorical Practical Joker</h3> + +<p> +The criminal specialist who had come with Dr. Warner was a somewhat more urbane +and even dapper figure than he had appeared when clutching the railings and +craning his neck into the garden. He even looked comparatively young when he +took his hat off, having fair hair parted in the middle and carefully curled on +each side, and lively movements, especially of the hands. He had a dandified +monocle slung round his neck by a broad black ribbon, and a big bow tie, as if +a big American moth had alighted on him. His dress and gestures were bright +enough for a boy’s; it was only when you looked at the fish-bone face +that you beheld something acrid and old. His manners were excellent, though +hardly English, and he had two half-conscious tricks by which people who only +met him once remembered him. One was a trick of closing his eyes when he wished +to be particularly polite; the other was one of lifting his joined thumb and +forefinger in the air as if holding a pinch of snuff, when he was hesitating or +hovering over a word. But those who were longer in his company tended to forget +these oddities in the stream of his quaint and solemn conversation and really +singular views. +</p> + +<p> +“Miss Hunt,” said Dr. Warner, “this is Dr. Cyrus Pym.” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Cyrus Pym shut his eyes during the introduction, rather as if he were +“playing fair” in some child’s game, and gave a prompt little +bow, which somehow suddenly revealed him as a citizen of the United States. +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Cyrus Pym,” continued Warner (Dr. Pym shut his eyes again), +“is perhaps the first criminological expert of America. We are very +fortunate to be able to consult with him in this extraordinary +case—” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t make head or tail of anything,” said Rosamund. +“How can poor Mr. Smith be so dreadful as he is by your account?” +</p> + +<p> +“Or by your telegram,” said Herbert Warner, smiling. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, you don’t understand,” cried the girl impatiently. +“Why, he’s done us all more good than going to church.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think I can explain to the young lady,” said Dr. Cyrus Pym. +“This criminal or maniac Smith is a very genius of evil, and has a method +of his own, a method of the most daring ingenuity. He is popular wherever he +goes, for he invades every house as an uproarious child. People are getting +suspicious of all the respectable disguises for a scoundrel; so he always uses +the disguise of—what shall I say—the Bohemian, the blameless +Bohemian. He always carries people off their feet. People are used to the mask +of conventional good conduct. He goes in for eccentric good-nature. You expect +a Don Juan to dress up as a solemn and solid Spanish merchant; but you’re +not prepared when he dresses up as Don Quixote. You expect a humbug to behave +like Sir Charles Grandison; because (with all respect, Miss Hunt, for the deep, +tear-moving tenderness of Samuel Richardson) Sir Charles Grandison so often +behaved like a humbug. But no real red-blooded citizen is quite ready for a +humbug that models himself not on Sir Charles Grandison but on Sir Roger de +Coverly. Setting up to be a good man a little cracked is a new criminal +incognito, Miss Hunt. It’s been a great notion, and uncommonly +successful; but its success just makes it mighty cruel. I can forgive Dick +Turpin if he impersonates Dr. Busby; I can’t forgive him when he +impersonates Dr. Johnson. The saint with a tile loose is a bit too sacred, I +guess, to be parodied.” +</p> + +<p> +“But how do you know,” cried Rosamund desperately, “that Mr. +Smith is a known criminal?” +</p> + +<p> +“I collated all the documents,” said the American, “when my +friend Warner knocked me up on receipt of your cable. It is my professional +affair to know these facts, Miss Hunt; and there’s no more doubt about +them than about the Bradshaw down at the depot. This man has hitherto escaped +the law, through his admirable affectations of infancy or insanity. But I +myself, as a specialist, have privately authenticated notes of some eighteen or +twenty crimes attempted or achieved in this manner. He comes to houses as he +has to this, and gets a grand popularity. He makes things go. They do go; when +he’s gone the things are gone. Gone, Miss Hunt, gone, a man’s life +or a man’s spoons, or more often a woman. I assure you I have all the +memoranda.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have seen them,” said Warner solidly, “I can assure you +that all this is correct.” +</p> + +<p> +“The most unmanly aspect, according to my feelings,” went on the +American doctor, “is this perpetual deception of innocent women by a wild +simulation of innocence. From almost every house where this great imaginative +devil has been, he has taken some poor girl away with him; some say he’s +got a hypnotic eye with his other queer features, and that they go like +automata. What’s become of all those poor girls nobody knows. Murdered, I +dare say; for we’ve lots of instances, besides this one, of his turning +his hand to murder, though none ever brought him under the law. Anyhow, our +most modern methods of research can’t find any trace of the wretched +women. It’s when I think of them that I am really moved, Miss Hunt. And +I’ve really nothing else to say just now except what Dr. Warner has +said.” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite so,” said Warner, with a smile that seemed moulded in +marble—“that we all have to thank you very much for that +telegram.” +</p> + +<p> +The little Yankee scientist had been speaking with such evident sincerity that +one forgot the tricks of his voice and manner— the falling eyelids, the +rising intonation, and the poised finger and thumb—which were at other +times a little comic. It was not so much that he was cleverer than Warner; +perhaps he was not so clever, though he was more celebrated. But he had what +Warner never had, a fresh and unaffected seriousness— the great American +virtue of simplicity. Rosamund knitted her brows and looked gloomily toward the +darkening house that contained the dark prodigy. +</p> + +<p> +Broad daylight still endured; but it had already changed from gold to silver, +and was changing from silver to gray. The long plumy shadows of the one or two +trees in the garden faded more and more upon a dead background of dusk. In the +sharpest and deepest shadow, which was the entrance to the house by the big +French windows, Rosamund could watch a hurried consultation between Inglewood +(who was still left in charge of the mysterious captive) and Diana, who had +moved to his assistance from without. After a few minutes and gestures they +went inside, shutting the glass doors upon the garden; and the garden seemed to +grow grayer still. +</p> + +<p> +The American gentleman named Pym seemed to be turning and on the move in the +same direction; but before he started he spoke to Rosamund with a flash of that +guileless tact which redeemed much of his childish vanity, and with something +of that spontaneous poetry which made it difficult, pedantic as he was, to call +him a pedant. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m vurry sorry, Miss Hunt,” he said; “but Dr. Warner +and I, as two quali-FIED practitioners, had better take Mr. Smith away in that +cab, and the less said about it the better. Don’t you agitate yourself, +Miss Hunt. You’ve just got to think that we’re taking away a +monstrosity, something that oughtn’t to be at all—something like +one of those gods in your Britannic Museum, all wings, and beards, and legs, +and eyes, and no shape. That’s what Smith is, and you shall soon be quit +of him.” +</p> + +<p> +He had already taken a step towards the house, and Warner was about to follow +him, when the glass doors were opened again and Diana Duke came out with more +than her usual quickness across the lawn. Her face was aquiver with worry and +excitement, and her dark earnest eyes fixed only on the other girl. +</p> + +<p> +“Rosamund,” she cried in despair, “what shall I do with +her?” +</p> + +<p> +“With her?” cried Miss Hunt, with a violent jump. “O lord, he +isn’t a woman too, is he?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no, no,” said Dr. Pym soothingly, as if in common fairness. +“A woman? no, really, he is not so bad as that.” +</p> + +<p> +“I mean your friend Mary Gray,” retorted Diana with equal tartness. +“What on earth am I to do with her?” +</p> + +<p> +“How can we tell her about Smith, you mean,” answered Rosamund, her +face at once clouded and softening. “Yes, it will be pretty +painful.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I HAVE told her,” exploded Diana, with more than her +congenital exasperation. “I have told her, and she doesn’t seem to +mind. She still says she’s going away with Smith in that cab.” +</p> + +<p> +“But it’s impossible!” ejaculated Rosamund. “Why, Mary +is really religious. She—” +</p> + +<p> +She stopped in time to realize that Mary Gray was comparatively close to her on +the lawn. Her quiet companion had come down very quietly into the garden, but +dressed very decisively for travel. She had a neat but very ancient blue +tam-o’-shanter on her head, and was pulling some rather threadbare gray +gloves on to her hands. Yet the two tints fitted excellently with her heavy +copper-coloured hair; the more excellently for the touch of shabbiness: for a +woman’s clothes never suit her so well as when they seem to suit her by +accident. +</p> + +<p> +But in this case the woman had a quality yet more unique and attractive. In +such gray hours, when the sun is sunk and the skies are already sad, it will +often happen that one reflection at some occasional angle will cause to linger +the last of the light. A scrap of window, a scrap of water, a scrap of +looking-glass, will be full of the fire that is lost to all the rest of the +earth. The quaint, almost triangular face of Mary Gray was like some triangular +piece of mirror that could still repeat the splendour of hours before. Mary, +though she was always graceful, could never before have properly been called +beautiful; and yet her happiness amid all that misery was so beautiful as to +make a man catch his breath. +</p> + +<p> +“O Diana,” cried Rosamund in a lower voice and altering her phrase; +“but how did you tell her?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is quite easy to tell her,” answered Diana sombrely; “it +makes no impression at all.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid I’ve kept everything waiting,” said Mary +Gray apologetically, “and now we must really say good-bye. Innocent is +taking me to his aunt’s over at Hampstead, and I’m afraid she goes +to bed early.” +</p> + +<p> +Her words were quite casual and practical, but there was a sort of sleepy light +in her eyes that was more baffling than darkness; she was like one speaking +absently with her eye on some very distant object. +</p> + +<p> +“Mary, Mary,” cried Rosamund, almost breaking down, +“I’m so sorry about it, but the thing can’t be at all. +We—we have found out all about Mr. Smith.” +</p> + +<p> +“All?” repeated Mary, with a low and curious intonation; +“why, that must be awfully exciting.” +</p> + +<p> +There was no noise for an instant and no motion except that the silent Michael +Moon, leaning on the gate, lifted his head, as it might be to listen. Then +Rosamund remaining speechless, Dr. Pym came to her rescue in a definite way. +</p> + +<p> +“To begin with,” he said, “this man Smith is constantly +attempting murder. The Warden of Brakespeare College—” +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” said Mary, with a vague but radiant smile. +“Innocent told me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t say what he told you,” replied Pym quickly, +“but I’m very much afraid it wasn’t true. The plain truth is +that the man’s stained with every known human crime. I assure you I have +all the documents. I have evidence of his committing burglary, signed by a most +eminent English curate. I have—” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, but there were two curates,” cried Mary, with a certain gentle +eagerness; “that was what made it so much funnier.” +</p> + +<p> +The darkened glass doors of the house opened once more, and Inglewood appeared +for an instant, making a sort of signal. The American doctor bowed, the English +doctor did not, but they both set out stolidly towards the house. No one else +moved, not even Michael hanging on the gate; but the back of his head and +shoulders had still an indescribable indication that he was listening to every +word. +</p> + +<p> +“But don’t you understand, Mary,” cried Rosamund in despair; +“don’t you know that awful things have happened even before our +very eyes. I should have thought you would have heard the revolver shots +upstairs.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I heard the shots,” said Mary almost brightly; “but I +was busy packing just then. And Innocent had told me he was going to shoot at +Dr. Warner; so it wasn’t worth while to come down.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I don’t understand what you mean,” cried Rosamund Hunt, +stamping, “but you must and shall understand what I mean. I don’t +care how cruelly I put it, if only I can save you. I mean that your Innocent +Smith is the most awfully wicked man in the world. He has sent bullets at lots +of other men and gone off in cabs with lots of other women. And he seems to +have killed the women too, for nobody can find them.” +</p> + +<p> +“He is really rather naughty sometimes,” said Mary Gray, laughing +softly as she buttoned her old gray gloves. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, this is really mesmerism, or something,” said Rosamund, and +burst into tears. +</p> + +<p> +At the same moment the two black-clad doctors appeared out of the house with +their great green-clad captive between them. He made no resistance, but was +still laughing in a groggy and half-witted style. Arthur Inglewood followed in +the rear, a dark and red study in the last shades of distress and shame. In +this black, funereal, and painfully realistic style the exit from Beacon House +was made by a man whose entrance a day before had been effected by the happy +leaping of a wall and the hilarious climbing of a tree. No one moved of the +groups in the garden except Mary Gray, who stepped forward quite naturally, +calling out, “Are you ready, Innocent? Our cab’s been waiting such +a long time.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Dr. Warner firmly, “I must +insist on asking this lady to stand aside. We shall have trouble enough as it +is, with the three of us in a cab.” +</p> + +<p> +“But it IS our cab,” persisted Mary. “Why, there’s +Innocent’s yellow bag on the top of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Stand aside,” repeated Warner roughly. “And you, Mr. Moon, +please be so obliging as to move a moment. Come, come! the sooner this ugly +business is over the better—and how can we open the gate if you will keep +leaning on it?” +</p> + +<p> +Michael Moon looked at his long lean forefinger, and seemed to consider and +reconsider this argument. “Yes,” he said at last; “but how +can I lean on this gate if you keep on opening it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, get out of the way!” cried Warner, almost good-humouredly. +“You can lean on the gate any time.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Moon reflectively. “Seldom the time and the place +and the blue gate altogether; and it all depends whether you come of an old +country family. My ancestors leaned on gates before any one had discovered how +to open them.” +</p> + +<p> +“Michael!” cried Arthur Inglewood in a kind of agony, “are +you going to get out of the way?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, no; I think not,” said Michael, after some meditation, and +swung himself slowly round, so that he confronted the company, while still, in +a lounging attitude, occupying the path. +</p> + +<p> +“Hullo!” he called out suddenly; “what are you doing to Mr. +Smith?” +</p> + +<p> +“Taking him away,” answered Warner shortly, “to be +examined.” +</p> + +<p> +“Matriculation?” asked Moon brightly. +</p> + +<p> +“By a magistrate,” said the other curtly. +</p> + +<p> +“And what other magistrate,” cried Michael, raising his voice, +“dares to try what befell on this free soil, save only the ancient and +independent Dukes of Beacon? What other court dares to try one of our company, +save only the High Court of Beacon? Have you forgotten that only this afternoon +we flew the flag of independence and severed ourselves from all the nations of +the earth?” +</p> + +<p> +“Michael,” cried Rosamund, wringing her hands, “how can you +stand there talking nonsense? Why, you saw the dreadful thing yourself. You +were there when he went mad. It was you that helped the doctor up when he fell +over the flower-pot.” +</p> + +<p> +“And the High Court of Beacon,” replied Moon with hauteur, +“has special powers in all cases concerning lunatics, flower-pots, and +doctors who fall down in gardens. It’s in our very first charter from +Edward I: ‘Si medicus quisquam in horto prostratus—’” +</p> + +<p> +“Out of the way!” cried Warner with sudden fury, “or we will +force you out of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“What!” cried Michael Moon, with a cry of hilarious fierceness. +“Shall I die in defence of this sacred pale? Will you paint these blue +railings red with my gore?” and he laid hold of one of the blue spikes +behind him. As Inglewood had noticed earlier in the evening, the railing was +loose and crooked at this place, and the painted iron staff and spearhead came +away in Michael’s hand as he shook it. +</p> + +<p> +“See!” he cried, brandishing this broken javelin in the air, +“the very lances round Beacon Tower leap from their places to defend it. +Ah, in such a place and hour it is a fine thing to die alone!” And in a +voice like a drum he rolled the noble lines of Ronsard— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Ou pour l’honneur de Dieu, ou pour le droit de mon prince,<br/> +Navré, poitrine ouverte, au bord de mon province.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sakes alive!” said the American gentleman, almost in an awed tone. +Then he added, “Are there two maniacs here?” +</p> + +<p> +“No; there are five,” thundered Moon. “Smith and I are the +only sane people left.” +</p> + +<p> +“Michael!” cried Rosamund; “Michael, what does it +mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“It means bosh!” roared Michael, and slung his painted spear +hurtling to the other end of the garden. “It means that doctors are bosh, +and criminology is bosh, and Americans are bosh— much more bosh than our +Court of Beacon. It means, you fatheads, that Innocent Smith is no more mad or +bad than the bird on that tree.” +</p> + +<p> +“But, my dear Moon,” began Inglewood in his modest manner, +“these gentlemen—” +</p> + +<p> +“On the word of two doctors,” exploded Moon again, without +listening to anybody else, “shut up in a private hell on the word of two +doctors! And such doctors! Oh, my hat! Look at ’em!—do just look at +’em! Would you read a book, or buy a dog, or go to a hotel on the advice +of twenty such? My people came from Ireland, and were Catholics. What would you +say if I called a man wicked on the word of two priests?” +</p> + +<p> +“But it isn’t only their word, Michael,” reasoned Rosamund; +“they’ve got evidence too.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you looked at it?” asked Moon. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Rosamund, with a sort of faint surprise; “these +gentlemen are in charge of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“And of everything else, it seems to me,” said Michael. “Why, +you haven’t even had the decency to consult Mrs. Duke.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, that’s no use,” said Diana in an undertone to Rosamund; +“Auntie can’t say ‘Bo!’ to a goose.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am glad to hear it,” answered Michael, “for with such a +flock of geese to say it to, the horrid expletive might be constantly on her +lips. For my part, I simply refuse to let things be done in this light and airy +style. I appeal to Mrs. Duke—it’s her house.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mrs. Duke?” repeated Inglewood doubtfully. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, Mrs. Duke,” said Michael firmly, “commonly called the +Iron Duke.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you ask Auntie,” said Diana quietly, “she’ll only +be for doing nothing at all. Her only idea is to hush things up or to let +things slide. That just suits her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” replied Michael Moon; “and, as it happens, it just +suits all of us. You are impatient with your elders, Miss Duke; but when you +are as old yourself you will know what Napoleon knew— that half +one’s letters answer themselves if you can only refrain from the fleshly +appetite of answering them.” +</p> + +<p> +He was still lounging in the same absurd attitude, with his elbow on the grate, +but his voice had altered abruptly for the third time; just as it had changed +from the mock heroic to the humanly indignant, it now changed to the airy +incisiveness of a lawyer giving good legal advice. +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t only your aunt who wants to keep this quiet if she +can,” he said; “we all want to keep it quiet if we can. Look at the +large facts—the big bones of the case. I believe those scientific +gentlemen have made a highly scientific mistake. I believe Smith is as +blameless as a buttercup. I admit buttercups don’t often let off loaded +pistols in private houses; I admit there is something demanding explanation. +But I am morally certain there’s some blunder, or some joke, or some +allegory, or some accident behind all this. Well, suppose I’m wrong. +We’ve disarmed him; we’re five men to hold him; he may as well go +to a lock-up later on as now. But suppose there’s even a chance of my +being right. Is it anybody’s interest here to wash this linen in public? +</p> + +<p> +“Come, I’ll take each of you in order. Once take Smith outside that +gate, and you take him into the front page of the evening papers. I know; +I’ve written the front page myself. Miss Duke, do you or your aunt want a +sort of notice stuck up over your boarding-house—‘Doctors shot +here.’? No, no—doctors are rubbish, as I said; but you don’t +want the rubbish shot here. Arthur, suppose I am right, or suppose I am wrong. +Smith has appeared as an old schoolfellow of yours. Mark my words, if +he’s proved guilty, the Organs of Public Opinion will say you introduced +him. If he’s proved innocent, they will say you helped to collar him. +Rosamund, my dear, suppose I am right or wrong. If he’s proved guilty, +they’ll say you engaged your companion to him. If he’s proved +innocent, they’ll print that telegram. I know the Organs, damn +them.” +</p> + +<p> +He stopped an instant; for this rapid rationalism left him more breathless than +had either his theatrical or his real denunciation. But he was plainly in +earnest, as well as positive and lucid; as was proved by his proceeding quickly +the moment he had found his breath. +</p> + +<p> +“It is just the same,” he cried, “with our medical friends. +You will say that Dr. Warner has a grievance. I agree. But does he want +specially to be snapshotted by all the journalists <i>prostratus in horto?</i> +It was no fault of his, but the scene was not very dignified even for him. He +must have justice; but does he want to ask for justice, not only on his knees, +but on his hands and knees? Does he want to enter the court of justice on all +fours? Doctors are not allowed to advertise; and I’m sure no doctor wants +to advertise himself as looking like that. And even for our American guest the +interest is the same. Let us suppose that he has conclusive documents. Let us +assume that he has revelations really worth reading. Well, in a legal inquiry +(or a medical inquiry, for that matter) ten to one he won’t be allowed to +read them. He’ll be tripped up every two or three minutes with some +tangle of old rules. A man can’t tell the truth in public nowadays. But +he can still tell it in private; he can tell it inside that house.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is quite true,” said Dr. Cyrus Pym, who had listened throughout +the speech with a seriousness which only an American could have retained +through such a scene. “It is true that I have been per-ceptibly less +hampered in private inquiries.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Pym!” cried Warner in a sort of sudden anger. “Dr. Pym! +you aren’t really going to admit—” +</p> + +<p> +“Smith may be mad,” went on the melancholy Moon in a monologue that +seemed as heavy as a hatchet, “but there was something after all in what +he said about Home Rule for every home. Yes, there is something, when +all’s said and done, in the High Court of Beacon. It is really true that +human beings might often get some sort of domestic justice where just now they +can only get legal injustice—oh, I am a lawyer too, and I know that as +well. It is true that there’s too much official and indirect power. Often +and often the thing a whole nation can’t settle is just the thing a +family could settle. Scores of young criminals have been fined and sent to jail +when they ought to have been thrashed and sent to bed. Scores of men, I am +sure, have had a lifetime at Hanwell when they only wanted a week at Brighton. +There IS something in Smith’s notion of domestic self-government; and I +propose that we put it into practice. You have the prisoner; you have the +documents. Come, we are a company of free, white, Christian people, such as +might be besieged in a town or cast up on a desert island. Let us do this thing +ourselves. Let us go into that house there and sit down and find out with our +own eyes and ears whether this thing is true or not; whether this Smith is a +man or a monster. If we can’t do a little thing like that, what right +have we to put crosses on ballot papers?” +</p> + +<p> +Inglewood and Pym exchanged a glance; and Warner, who was no fool, saw in that +glance that Moon was gaining ground. The motives that led Arthur to think of +surrender were indeed very different from those which affected Dr. Cyrus Pym. +All Arthur’s instincts were on the side of privacy and polite settlement; +he was very English and would often endure wrongs rather than right them by +scenes and serious rhetoric. To play at once the buffoon and the knight-errant, +like his Irish friend, would have been absolute torture to him; but even the +semi-official part he had played that afternoon was very painful. He was not +likely to be reluctant if any one could convince him that his duty was to let +sleeping dogs lie. +</p> + +<p> +On the other hand, Cyrus Pym belonged to a country in which things are possible +that seem crazy to the English. Regulations and authorities exactly like one of +Innocent’s pranks or one of Michael’s satires really exist, propped +by placid policemen and imposed on bustling business men. Pym knew whole States +which are vast and yet secret and fanciful; each is as big as a nation yet as +private as a lost village, and as unexpected as an apple-pie bed. States where +no man may have a cigarette, States where any man may have ten wives, very +strict prohibition States, very lax divorce States—all these large local +vagaries had prepared Cyrus Pym’s mind for small local vagaries in a +smaller country. Infinitely more remote from England than any Russian or +Italian, utterly incapable of even conceiving what English conventions are, he +could not see the social impossibility of the Court of Beacon. It is firmly +believed by those who shared the experiment, that to the very end Pym believed +in that phantasmal court and supposed it to be some Britannic institution. +</p> + +<p> +Towards the synod thus somewhat at a standstill there approached through the +growing haze and gloaming a short dark figure with a walk apparently founded on +the imperfect repression of a negro breakdown. Something at once in the +familiarity and the incongruity of this being moved Michael to even heartier +outbursts of a healthy and humane flippancy. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, here’s little Nosey Gould,” he exclaimed. +“Isn’t the mere sight of him enough to banish all your morbid +reflections?” +</p> + +<p> +“Really,” replied Dr. Warner, “I really fail to see how Mr. +Gould affects the question; and I once more demand—” +</p> + +<p> +“Hello! what’s the funeral, gents?” inquired the newcomer +with the air of an uproarious umpire. “Doctor demandin’ something? +Always the way at a boarding-house, you know. Always lots of demand. No +supply.” +</p> + +<p> +As delicately and impartially as he could, Michael restated his position, and +indicated generally that Smith had been guilty of certain dangerous and dubious +acts, and that there had even arisen an allegation that he was insane. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, of course he is,” said Moses Gould equably; “it +don’t need old ’Olmes to see that. The ’awk-like face of +’Olmes,” he added with abstract relish, “showed a shide of +disappointment, the sleuth-like Gould ’avin’ got there before +’im.” +</p> + +<p> +“If he is mad,” began Inglewood. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Moses, “when a cove gets out on the tile the +first night there’s generally a tile loose.” +</p> + +<p> +“You never objected before,” said Diana Duke rather stiffly, +“and you’re generally pretty free with your complaints.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t compline of him,” said Moses magnanimously, +“the poor chap’s ’armless enough; you might tie ’im up +in the garden here and ’e’d make noises at the burglars.” +</p> + +<p> +“Moses,” said Moon with solemn fervour, “you are the +incarnation of Common Sense. You think Mr. Innocent is mad. Let me introduce +you to the incarnation of Scientific Theory. He also thinks Mr. Innocent is +mad.—Doctor, this is my friend Mr. Gould.—Moses, this is the +celebrated Dr. Pym.” The celebrated Dr. Cyrus Pym closed his eyes and +bowed. He also murmured his national war-cry in a low voice, which sounded like +“Pleased to meet you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Now you two people,” said Michael cheerfully, “who both +think our poor friend mad, shall jolly well go into that house over there and +prove him mad. What could be more powerful than the combination of Scientific +Theory with Common Sense? United you stand; divided you fall. I will not be so +uncivil as to suggest that Dr. Pym has no common sense; I confine myself to +recording the chronological accident that he has not shown us any so far. I +take the freedom of an old friend in staking my shirt that Moses has no +scientific theory. Yet against this strong coalition I am ready to appear, +armed with nothing but an intuition—which is American for a guess.” +</p> + +<p> +“Distinguished by Mr. Gould’s assistance,” said Pym, opening +his eyes suddenly. “I gather that though he and I are identical in +primary di-agnosis there is yet between us something that cannot be called a +disagreement, something which we may perhaps call a—” He put the +points of thumb and forefinger together, spreading the other fingers +exquisitely in the air, and seemed to be waiting for somebody else to tell him +what to say. +</p> + +<p> +“Catchin’ flies?” inquired the affable Moses. +</p> + +<p> +“A divergence,” said Dr. Pym, with a refined sigh of relief; +“a divergence. Granted that the man in question is deranged, he would not +necessarily be all that science requires in a homicidal maniac—” +</p> + +<p> +“Has it occurred to you,” observed Moon, who was leaning on the +gate again, and did not turn round, “that if he were a homicidal maniac +he might have killed us all here while we were talking.” +</p> + +<p> +Something exploded silently underneath all their minds, like sealed dynamite in +some forgotten cellars. They all remembered for the first time for some hour or +two that the monster of whom they were talking was standing quietly among them. +They had left him in the garden like a garden statue; there might have been a +dolphin coiling round his legs, or a fountain pouring out of his mouth, for all +the notice they had taken of Innocent Smith. He stood with his crest of blonde, +blown hair thrust somewhat forward, his fresh-coloured, rather short-sighted +face looking patiently downwards at nothing in particular, his huge shoulders +humped, and his hands in his trousers pockets. So far as they could guess he +had not moved at all. His green coat might have been cut out of the green turf +on which he stood. In his shadow Pym had expounded and Rosamund expostulated, +Michael had ranted and Moses had ragged. He had remained like a thing graven; +the god of the garden. A sparrow had perched on one of his heavy shoulders; and +then, after correcting its costume of feathers, had flown away. +</p> + +<p> +“Why,” cried Michael, with a shout of laughter, “the Court of +Beacon has opened—and shut up again too. You all know now I am right. +Your buried common sense has told you what my buried common sense has told me. +Smith might have fired off a hundred cannons instead of a pistol, and you would +still know he was harmless as I know he is harmless. Back we all go to the +house and clear a room for discussion. For the High Court of Beacon, which has +already arrived at its decision, is just about to begin its inquiry.” +</p> + +<p> +“Just a goin’ to begin!” cried little Mr. Moses in an +extraordinary sort of disinterested excitement, like that of an animal during +music or a thunderstorm. “Follow on to the ’Igh Court of Eggs and +Bacon; ’ave a kipper from the old firm! ’Is Lordship complimented +Mr. Gould on the ’igh professional delicacy ’e had shown, and which +was worthy of the best traditions of the Saloon Bar— and three of Scotch +hot, miss! Oh, chase me, girls!” +</p> + +<p> +The girls betraying no temptation to chase him, he went away in a sort of +waddling dance of pure excitement; and had made a circuit of the garden before +he reappeared, breathless but still beaming. Moon had known his man when he +realized that no people presented to Moses Gould could be quite serious, even +if they were quite furious. The glass doors stood open on the side nearest to +Mr. Moses Gould; and as the feet of that festive idiot were evidently turned in +the same direction, everybody else went that way with the unanimity of some +uproarious procession. Only Diana Duke retained enough rigidity to say the +thing that had been boiling at her fierce feminine lips for the last few hours. +Under the shadow of tragedy she had kept it back as unsympathetic. “In +that case,” she said sharply, “these cabs can be sent away.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Innocent must have his bag, you know,” said Mary with a +smile. “I dare say the cabman would get it down for us.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll get the bag,” said Smith, speaking for the first time +in hours; his voice sounded remote and rude, like the voice of a statue. +</p> + +<p> +Those who had so long danced and disputed round his immobility were left +breathless by his precipitance. With a run and spring he was out of the garden +into the street; with a spring and one quivering kick he was actually on the +roof of the cab. The cabman happened to be standing by the horse’s head, +having just removed its emptied nose-bag. Smith seemed for an instant to be +rolling about on the cab’s back in the embraces of his Gladstone bag. The +next instant, however, he had rolled, as if by a royal luck, into the high seat +behind, and with a shriek of piercing and appalling suddenness had sent the +horse flying and scampering down the street. +</p> + +<p> +His evanescence was so violent and swift, that this time it was all the other +people who were turned into garden statues. Mr. Moses Gould, however, being +ill-adapted both physically and morally for the purposes of permanent +sculpture, came to life some time before the rest, and, turning to Moon, +remarked, like a man starting chattily with a stranger on an omnibus, +“Tile loose, eh? Cab loose anyhow.” There followed a fatal silence; +and then Dr. Warner said, with a sneer like a club of stone,— +</p> + +<p> +“This is what comes of the Court of Beacon, Mr. Moon. You have let loose +a maniac on the whole metropolis.” +</p> + +<p> +Beacon House stood, as has been said, at the end of a long crescent of +continuous houses. The little garden that shut it in ran out into a sharp point +like a green cape pushed out into the sea of two streets. Smith and his cab +shot up one side of the triangle, and certainly most of those standing inside +of it never expected to see him again. At the apex, however, he turned the +horse sharply round and drove with equal violence up the other side of the +garden, visible to all those in the group. With a common impulse the little +crowd ran across the lawn as if to stop him, but they soon had reason to duck +and recoil. Even as he vanished up street for the second time, he let the big +yellow bag fly from his hand, so that it fell in the centre of the garden, +scattering the company like a bomb, and nearly damaging Dr. Warner’s hat +for the third time. Long before they had collected themselves, the cab had shot +away with a shriek that went into a whisper. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Michael Moon, with a queer note in his voice; +“you may as well all go inside anyhow. We’ve got two relics of Mr. +Smith at least; his fiancee and his trunk.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you want us to go inside?” asked Arthur Inglewood, in whose +red brow and rough brown hair botheration seemed to have reached its limit. +</p> + +<p> +“I want the rest to go in,” said Michael in a clear voice, +“because I want the whole of this garden in which to talk to you.” +</p> + +<p> +There was an atmosphere of irrational doubt; it was really getting colder, and +a night wind had begun to wave the one or two trees in the twilight. Dr. +Warner, however, spoke in a voice devoid of indecision. +</p> + +<p> +“I refuse to listen to any such proposal,” he said; “you have +lost this ruffian, and I must find him.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t ask you to listen to any proposal,” answered Moon +quietly; “I only ask you to listen.” +</p> + +<p> +He made a silencing movement with his hand, and immediately the whistling noise +that had been lost in the dark streets on one side of the house could be heard +from quite a new quarter on the other side. Through the night-maze of streets +the noise increased with incredible rapidity, and the next moment the flying +hoofs and flashing wheels had swept up to the blue-railed gate at which they +had originally stood. Mr. Smith got down from his perch with an air of +absent-mindedness, and coming back into the garden stood in the same +elephantine attitude as before. +</p> + +<p> +“Get inside! get inside!” cried Moon hilariously, with the air of +one shooing a company of cats. “Come, come, be quick about it! +Didn’t I tell you I wanted to talk to Inglewood?” +</p> + +<p> +How they were all really driven into the house again it would have been +difficult afterwards to say. They had reached the point of being exhausted with +incongruities, as people at a farce are ill with laughing, and the brisk growth +of the storm among the trees seemed like a final gesture of things in general. +Inglewood lingered behind them, saying with a certain amicable exasperation, +“I say, do you really want to speak to me?” +</p> + +<p> +“I do,” said Michael, “very much.” +</p> + +<p> +Night had come as it generally does, quicker than the twilight had seemed to +promise. While the human eye still felt the sky as light gray, a very large and +lustrous moon appearing abruptly above a bulk of roofs and trees, proved by +contrast that the sky was already a very dark gray indeed. A drift of barren +leaves across the lawn, a drift of riven clouds across the sky, seemed to be +lifted on the same strong and yet laborious wind. +</p> + +<p> +“Arthur,” said Michael, “I began with an intuition; but now I +am sure. You and I are going to defend this friend of yours before the blessed +Court of Beacon, and to clear him too—clear him of both crime and lunacy. +Just listen to me while I preach to you for a bit.” They walked up and +down the darkening garden together as Michael Moon went on. +</p> + +<p> +“Can you,” asked Michael, “shut your eyes and see some of +those queer old hieroglyphics they stuck up on white walls in the old hot +countries. How stiff they were in shape and yet how gaudy in colour. Think of +some alphabet of arbitrary figures picked out in black and red, or white and +green, with some old Semitic crowd of Nosey Gould’s ancestors staring at +it, and try to think why the people put it up at all.” +</p> + +<p> +Inglewood’s first instinct was to think that his perplexing friend had +really gone off his head at last; there seemed so reckless a flight of +irrelevancy from the tropic-pictured walls he was asked to imagine to the gray, +wind-swept, and somewhat chilly suburban garden in which he was actually +kicking his heels. How he could be more happy in one by imagining the other he +could not conceive. Both (in themselves) were unpleasant. +</p> + +<p> +“Why does everybody repeat riddles,” went on Moon abruptly, +“even if they’ve forgotten the answers? Riddles are easy to +remember because they are hard to guess. So were those stiff old symbols in +black, red, or green easy to remember because they had been hard to guess. +Their colours were plain. Their shapes were plain. Everything was plain except +the meaning.” +</p> + +<p> +Inglewood was about to open his mouth in an amiable protest, but Moon went on, +plunging quicker and quicker up and down the garden and smoking faster and +faster. “Dances, too,” he said; “dances were not frivolous. +Dances were harder to understand than inscriptions and texts. The old dances +were stiff, ceremonial, highly coloured but silent. Have you noticed anything +odd about Smith?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, really,” cried Inglewood, left behind in a collapse of +humour, “have I noticed anything else?” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you noticed this about him,” asked Moon, with unshaken +persistency, “that he has done so much and said so little? When first he +came he talked, but in a gasping, irregular sort of way, as if he wasn’t +used to it. All he really did was actions—painting red flowers on black +gowns or throwing yellow bags on to the grass. I tell you that big green figure +is figurative— like any green figure capering on some white Eastern +wall.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Michael,” cried Inglewood, in a rising irritation which +increased with the rising wind, “you are getting absurdly +fanciful.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think of what has just happened,” said Michael steadily. +“The man has not spoken for hours; and yet he has been speaking all the +time. He fired three shots from a six-shooter and then gave it up to us, when +he might have shot us dead in our boots. How could he express his trust in us +better than that? He wanted to be tried by us. How could he have shown it +better than by standing quite still and letting us discuss it? He wanted to +show that he stood there willingly, and could escape if he liked. How could he +have shown it better than by escaping in the cab and coming back again? +Innocent Smith is not a madman—he is a ritualist. He wants to express +himself, not with his tongue, but with his arms and legs— with my body I +thee worship, as it says in the marriage service. I begin to understand the old +plays and pageants. I see why the mutes at a funeral were mute. I see why the +mummers were mum. They MEANT something; and Smith means something too. All +other jokes have to be noisy—like little Nosey Gould’s jokes, for +instance. The only silent jokes are the practical jokes. Poor Smith, properly +considered, is an allegorical practical joker. What he has really done in this +house has been as frantic as a war-dance, but as silent as a picture.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose you mean,” said the other dubiously, “that we have +got to find out what all these crimes meant, as if they were so many coloured +picture-puzzles. But even supposing that they do mean something—why, Lord +bless my soul!—” +</p> + +<p> +Taking the turn of the garden quite naturally, he had lifted his eyes to the +moon, by this time risen big and luminous, and had seen a huge, half-human +figure sitting on the garden wall. It was outlined so sharply against the moon +that for the first flash it was hard to be certain even that it was human: the +hunched shoulders and outstanding hair had rather the air of a colossal cat. It +resembled a cat also in the fact that when first startled it sprang up and ran +with easy activity along the top of the wall. As it ran, however, its heavy +shoulders and small stooping head rather suggested a baboon. The instant it +came within reach of a tree it made an ape-like leap and was lost in the +branches. The gale, which by this time was shaking every shrub in the garden, +made the identification yet more difficult, since it melted the moving limbs of +the fugitive in the multitudinous moving limbs of the tree. +</p> + +<p> +“Who is there?” shouted Arthur. “Who are you? Are you +Innocent?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not quite,” answered an obscure voice among the leaves. “I +cheated you once about a penknife.” +</p> + +<p> +The wind in the garden had gathered strength, and was throwing the tree +backwards and forwards with the man in the thick of it, just as it had on the +gay and golden afternoon when he had first arrived. +</p> + +<p> +“But are you Smith?” asked Inglewood as in an agony. +</p> + +<p> +“Very nearly,” said the voice out of the tossing tree. +</p> + +<p> +“But you must have some real names,” shrieked Inglewood in despair. +“You must call yourself something.” +</p> + +<p> +“Call myself something,” thundered the obscure voice, shaking the +tree so that all its ten thousand leaves seemed to be talking at once. “I +call myself Roland Oliver Isaiah Charlemagne Arthur Hildebrand Homer Danton +Michaelangelo Shakespeare Brakespeare—” +</p> + +<p> +“But, manalive!” began Inglewood in exasperation. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s right! that’s right!” came with a roar out of +the rocking tree; “that’s my real name.” And he broke a +branch, and one or two autumn leaves fluttered away across the moon. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_PART2" id="link2H_PART2"></a> +PART II<br/> +THE EXPLANATIONS OF INNOCENT SMITH</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"></a> +Chapter I<br/> +The Eye of Death; or, the Murder Charge</h3> + +<p> +The dining-room of the Dukes had been set out for the Court of Beacon with a +certain impromptu pomposity that seemed somehow to increase its cosiness. The +big room was, as it were, cut up into small rooms, with walls only waist +high—the sort of separation that children make when they are playing at +shops. This had been done by Moses Gould and Michael Moon (the two most active +members of this remarkable inquiry) with the ordinary furniture of the place. +At one end of the long mahogany table was set the one enormous garden chair, +which was surmounted by the old torn tent or umbrella which Smith himself had +suggested as a coronation canopy. Inside this erection could be perceived the +dumpy form of Mrs. Duke, with cushions and a form of countenance that already +threatened slumber. At the other end sat the accused Smith, in a kind of dock; +for he was carefully fenced in with a quadrilateral of light bedroom chairs, +any of which he could have tossed out the window with his big toe. He had been +provided with pens and paper, out of the latter of which he made paper boats, +paper darts, and paper dolls contentedly throughout the whole proceedings. He +never spoke or even looked up, but seemed as unconscious as a child on the +floor of an empty nursery. +</p> + +<p> +On a row of chairs raised high on the top of a long settee sat the three young +ladies with their backs up against the window, and Mary Gray in the middle; it +was something between a jury box and the stall of the Queen of Beauty at a +tournament. Down the centre of the long table Moon had built a low barrier out +of eight bound volumes of “Good Words” to express the moral wall +that divided the conflicting parties. On the right side sat the two advocates +of the prosecution, Dr. Pym and Mr. Gould; behind a barricade of books and +documents, chiefly (in the case of Dr. Pym) solid volumes of criminology. On +the other side, Moon and Inglewood, for the defence, were also fortified with +books and papers; but as these included several old yellow volumes by Ouida and +Wilkie Collins, the hand of Mr. Moon seemed to have been somewhat careless and +comprehensive. As for the victim and prosecutor, Dr. Warner, Moon wanted at +first to have him kept entirely behind a high screen in the corner, urging the +indelicacy of his appearance in court, but privately assuring him of an +unofficial permission to peep over the top now and then. Dr. Warner, however, +failed to rise to the chivalry of such a course, and after some little +disturbance and discussion he was accommodated with a seat on the right side of +the table in a line with his legal advisers. +</p> + +<p> +It was before this solidly-established tribunal that Dr. Cyrus Pym, after +passing a hand through the honey-coloured hair over each ear, rose to open the +case. His statement was clear and even restrained, and such flights of imagery +as occurred in it only attracted attention by a certain indescribable +abruptness, not uncommon in the flowers of American speech. +</p> + +<p> +He planted the points of his ten frail fingers on the mahogany, closed his +eyes, and opened his mouth. “The time has gone by,” he said, +“when murder could be regarded as a moral and individual act, important +perhaps to the murderer, perhaps to the murdered. Science has +profoundly...” here he paused, poising his compressed finger and thumb in +the air as if he were holding an elusive idea very tight by its tail, then he +screwed up his eyes and said “modified,” and let it +go—“has profoundly Modified our view of death. In superstitious +ages it was regarded as the termination of life, catastrophic, and even tragic, +and was often surrounded by solemnity. Brighter days, however, have dawned, and +we now see death as universal and inevitable, as part of that great +soul-stirring and heart-upholding average which we call for convenience the +order of nature. In the same way we have come to consider murder SOCIALLY. +Rising above the mere private feelings of a man while being forcibly deprived +of life, we are privileged to behold murder as a mighty whole, to see the rich +rotation of the cosmos, bringing, as it brings the golden harvests and the +golden-bearded harvesters, the return for ever of the slayers and the +slain.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked down, somewhat affected with his own eloquence, coughed slightly, +putting up four of his pointed fingers with the excellent manners of Boston, +and continued: “There is but one result of this happier and humaner +outlook which concerns the wretched man before us. It is that thoroughly +elucidated by a Milwaukee doctor, our great secret-guessing Sonnenschein, in +his great work, ‘The Destructive Type.’ We do not denounce Smith as +a murderer, but rather as a murderous man. The type is such that its very +life— I might say its very health—is in killing. Some hold that it +is not properly an aberration, but a newer and even a higher creature. My dear +old friend Dr. Bulger, who kept ferrets—” (here Moon suddenly +ejaculated a loud “hurrah!” but so instantaneously resumed his +tragic expression that Mrs. Duke looked everywhere else for the sound); Dr. Pym +continued somewhat sternly—“who, in the interests of knowledge, +kept ferrets, felt that the creature’s ferocity is not utilitarian, but +absolutely an end in itself. However this may be with ferrets, it is certainly +so with the prisoner. In his other iniquities you may find the cunning of the +maniac; but his acts of blood have almost the simplicity of sanity. But it is +the awful sanity of the sun and the elements—a cruel, an evil sanity. As +soon stay the iris-leapt cataracts of our virgin West as stay the natural force +that sends him forth to slay. No environment, however scientific, could have +softened him. Place that man in the silver-silent purity of the palest +cloister, and there will be some deed of violence done with the crozier or the +alb. Rear him in a happy nursery, amid our brave-browed Anglo-Saxon infancy, +and he will find some way to strangle with the skipping-rope or brain with the +brick. Circumstances may be favourable, training may be admirable, hopes may be +high, but the huge elemental hunger of Innocent Smith for blood will in its +appointed season burst like a well-timed bomb.” +</p> + +<p> +Arthur Inglewood glanced curiously for an instant at the huge creature at the +foot of the table, who was fitting a paper figure with a cocked hat, and then +looked back at Dr. Pym, who was concluding in a quieter tone. +</p> + +<p> +“It only remains for us,” he said, “to bring forward actual +evidence of his previous attempts. By an agreement already made with the Court +and the leaders of the defence, we are permitted to put in evidence authentic +letters from witnesses to these scenes, which the defence is free to examine. +Out of several cases of such outrages we have decided to select one— the +clearest and most scandalous. I will therefore, without further delay, call on +my junior, Mr. Gould, to read two letters—one from the Sub-Warden and the +other from the porter of Brakespeare College, in Cambridge University.” +</p> + +<p> +Gould jumped up with a jerk like a jack-in-the-box, an academic-looking paper +in his hand and a fever of importance on his face. He began in a loud, high, +cockney voice that was as abrupt as a cock-crow:— +</p> + +<p> +“Sir,—Hi am the Sub-Warden of Brikespeare College, +Cambridge—” +</p> + +<p> +“Lord have mercy on us,” muttered Moon, making a backward movement +as men do when a gun goes off. +</p> + +<p> +“Hi am the Sub-Warden of Brikespeare College, Cambridge,” +proclaimed the uncompromising Moses, “and I can endorse the description +you gave of the un’appy Smith. It was not alone my unfortunate duty to +rebuke many of the lesser violences of his undergraduate period, but I was +actually a witness to the last iniquity which terminated that period. Hi +happened to passing under the house of my friend the Warden of Brikespeare, +which is semi-detached from the College and connected with it by two or three +very ancient arches or props, like bridges, across a small strip of water +connected with the river. To my grive astonishment I be’eld my eminent +friend suspended in mid-air and clinging to one of these pieces of masonry, his +appearance and attitude indicatin’ that he suffered from the grivest +apprehensions. After a short time I heard two very loud shots, and distinctly +perceived the unfortunate undergraduate Smith leaning far out of the +Warden’s window and aiming at the Warden repeatedly with a revolver. Upon +seeing me, Smith burst into a loud laugh (in which impertinence was mingled +with insanity), and appeared to desist. I sent the college porter for a ladder, +and he succeeded in detaching the Warden from his painful position. Smith was +sent down. The photograph I enclose is from the group of the University Rifle +Club prizemen, and represents him as he was when at the College.— Hi am, +your obedient servant, Amos Boulter. +</p> + +<p> +“The other letter,” continued Gould in a glow of triumph, “is +from the porter, and won’t take long to read. +</p> + +<p> +“Dear Sir,—It is quite true that I am the porter of Brikespeare +College, and that I ’elped the Warden down when the young man was +shooting at him, as Mr. Boulter has said in his letter. The young man who was +shooting at him was Mr. Smith, the same that is in the photograph Mr. Boulter +sends.— Yours respectfully, Samuel Barker.” +</p> + +<p> +Gould handed the two letters across to Moon, who examined them. But for the +vocal divergences in the matter of h’s and a’s, the +Sub-Warden’s letter was exactly as Gould had rendered it; and both that +and the porter’s letter were plainly genuine. Moon handed them to +Inglewood, who handed them back in silence to Moses Gould. +</p> + +<p> +“So far as this first charge of continual attempted murder is +concerned,” said Dr. Pym, standing up for the last time, “that is +my case.” +</p> + +<p> +Michael Moon rose for the defence with an air of depression which gave little +hope at the outset to the sympathizers with the prisoner. He did not, he said, +propose to follow the doctor into the abstract questions. “I do not know +enough to be an agnostic,” he said, rather wearily, “and I can only +master the known and admitted elements in such controversies. As for science +and religion, the known and admitted facts are plain enough. All that the +parsons say is unproved. All that the doctors say is disproved. That’s +the only difference between science and religion there’s ever been, or +will be. Yet these new discoveries touch me, somehow,” he said, looking +down sorrowfully at his boots. “They remind me of a dear old great-aunt +of mine who used to enjoy them in her youth. It brings tears to my eyes. I can +see the old bucket by the garden fence and the line of shimmering poplars +behind—” +</p> + +<p> +“Hi! here, stop the ’bus a bit,” cried Mr. Moses Gould, +rising in a sort of perspiration. “We want to give the defence a fair +run—like gents, you know; but any gent would draw the line at shimmering +poplars.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, hang it all,” said Moon, in an injured manner, “if Dr. +Pym may have an old friend with ferrets, why mayn’t I have an old aunt +with poplars?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am sure,” said Mrs. Duke, bridling, with something almost like a +shaky authority, “Mr. Moon may have what aunts he likes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, as to liking her,” began Moon, “I—but perhaps, as +you say, she is scarcely the core of the question. I repeat that I do not mean +to follow the abstract speculations. For, indeed, my answer to Dr. Pym is +simple and severely concrete. Dr. Pym has only treated one side of the +psychology of murder. If it is true that there is a kind of man who has a +natural tendency to murder, is it not equally true”—here he lowered +his voice and spoke with a crushing quietude and earnestness—“is it +not equally true that there is a kind of man who has a natural tendency to get +murdered? Is it not at least a hypothesis holding the field that Dr. Warner is +such a man? I do not speak without the book, any more than my learned friend. +The whole matter is expounded in Dr. Moonenschein’s monumental work, +‘The Destructible Doctor,’ with diagrams, showing the various ways +in which such a person as Dr. Warner may be resolved into his elements. In the +light of these facts—” +</p> + +<p> +“Hi, stop the ’bus! stop the ’bus!” cried Moses, +jumping up and down and gesticulating in great excitement. “My +principal’s got something to say! My principal wants to do a bit of +talkin’.” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Pym was indeed on his feet, looking pallid and rather vicious. “I +have strictly CON-fined myself,” he said nasally, “to books to +which immediate reference can be made. I have Sonnenschein’s +‘Destructive Type’ here on the table, if the defence wish to see +it. Where is this wonderful work on Destructability Mr. Moon is talking about? +Does it exist? Can he produce it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Produce it!” cried the Irishman with a rich scorn. +“I’ll produce it in a week if you’ll pay for the ink and +paper.” +</p> + +<p> +“Would it have much authority?” asked Pym, sitting down. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, authority!” said Moon lightly; “that depends on a +fellow’s religion.” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Pym jumped up again. “Our authority is based on masses of accurate +detail,” he said. “It deals with a region in which things can be +handled and tested. My opponent will at least admit that death is a fact of +experience.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not of mine,” said Moon mournfully, shaking his head. +“I’ve never experienced such a thing in all my life.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, really,” said Dr. Pym, and sat down sharply amid a crackle +of papers. +</p> + +<p> +“So we see,” resumed Moon, in the same melancholy voice, +“that a man like Dr. Warner is, in the mysterious workings of evolution, +doomed to such attacks. My client’s onslaught, even if it occurred, was +not unique. I have in my hand letters from more than one acquaintance of Dr. +Warner whom that remarkable man has affected in the same way. Following the +example of my learned friends I will read only two of them. The first is from +an honest and laborious matron living off the Harrow Road. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Moon, Sir,—Yes, I did throw a sorsepan at him. Wot then? It +was all I had to throw, all the soft things being porned, and if your Docter +Warner doesn’t like having sorsepans thrown at him, don’t let him +wear his hat in a respectable woman’s parler, and tell him to leave orf +smiling or tell us the joke.—Yours respectfully, Hannah Miles. +</p> + +<p> +“The other letter is from a physician of some note in Dublin, with whom +Dr. Warner was once engaged in consultation. He writes as follows:— +</p> + +<p> +“Dear Sir,—The incident to which you refer is one which I regret, +and which, moreover, I have never been able to explain. My own branch of +medicine is not mental; and I should be glad to have the view of a mental +specialist on my singular momentary and indeed almost automatic action. To say +that I ‘pulled Dr. Warner’s nose,’ is, however, inaccurate in +a respect that strikes me as important. That I punched his nose I must +cheerfully admit (I need not say with what regret); but pulling seems to me to +imply a precision of objective with which I cannot reproach myself. In +comparison with this, the act of punching was an outward, instantaneous, and +even natural gesture.— Believe me, yours faithfully, Burton Lestrange. +</p> + +<p> +“I have numberless other letters,” continued Moon, “all +bearing witness to this widespread feeling about my eminent friend; and I +therefore think that Dr. Pym should have admitted this side of the question in +his survey. We are in the presence, as Dr. Pym so truly says, of a natural +force. As soon stay the cataract of the London water-works as stay the great +tendency of Dr. Warner to be assassinated by somebody. Place that man in a +Quakers’ meeting, among the most peaceful of Christians, and he will +immediately be beaten to death with sticks of chocolate. Place him among the +angels of the New Jerusalem, and he will be stoned to death with precious +stones. Circumstances may be beautiful and wonderful, the average may be +heart-upholding, the harvester may be golden-bearded, the doctor may be +secret-guessing, the cataract may be iris-leapt, the Anglo-Saxon infant may be +brave-browed, but against and above all these prodigies the grand simple +tendency of Dr. Warner to get murdered will still pursue its way until it +happily and triumphantly succeeds at last.” +</p> + +<p> +He pronounced this peroration with an appearance of strong emotion. But even +stronger emotions were manifesting themselves on the other side of the table. +Dr. Warner had leaned his large body quite across the little figure of Moses +Gould and was talking in excited whispers to Dr. Pym. That expert nodded a +great many times and finally started to his feet with a sincere expression of +sternness. +</p> + +<p> +“Ladies and gentlemen,” he cried indignantly, “as my +colleague has said, we should be delighted to give any latitude to the +defence—if there were a defence. But Mr. Moon seems to think he is there +to make jokes— very good jokes I dare say, but not at all adapted to +assist his client. He picks holes in science. He picks holes in my +client’s social popularity. He picks holes in my literary style, which +doesn’t seem to suit his high-toned European taste. But how does this +picking of holes affect the issue? This Smith has picked two holes in my +client’s hat, and with an inch better aim would have picked two holes in +his head. All the jokes in the world won’t unpick those holes or be any +use for the defence.” +</p> + +<p> +Inglewood looked down in some embarrassment, as if shaken by the evident +fairness of this, but Moon still gazed at his opponent in a dreamy way. +“The defence?” he said vaguely—“oh, I haven’t +begun that yet.” +</p> + +<p> +“You certainly have not,” said Pym warmly, amid a murmur of +applause from his side, which the other side found it impossible to answer. +“Perhaps, if you have any defence, which has been doubtful from the very +beginning—” +</p> + +<p> +“While you’re standing up,” said Moon, in the same almost +sleepy style, “perhaps I might ask you a question.” +</p> + +<p> +“A question? Certainly,” said Pym stiffly. “It was distinctly +arranged between us that as we could not cross-examine the witnesses, we might +vicariously cross-examine each other. We are in a position to invite all such +inquiry.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think you said,” observed Moon absently, “that none of the +prisoner’s shots really hit the doctor.” +</p> + +<p> +“For the cause of science,” cried the complacent Pym, +“fortunately not.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yet they were fired from a few feet away.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; about four feet.” +</p> + +<p> +“And no shots hit the Warden, though they were fired quite close to him +too?” asked Moon. +</p> + +<p> +“That is so,” said the witness gravely. +</p> + +<p> +“I think,” said Moon, suppressing a slight yawn, “that your +Sub-Warden mentioned that Smith was one of the University’s record men +for shooting.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, as to that—” began Pym, after an instant of stillness. +</p> + +<p> +“A second question,” continued Moon, comparatively curtly. +“You said there were other cases of the accused trying to kill people. +Why have you not got evidence of them?” +</p> + +<p> +The American planted the points of his fingers on the table again. “In +those cases,” he said precisely, “there was no evidence from +outsiders, as in the Cambridge case, but only the evidence of the actual +victims.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why didn’t you get their evidence?” +</p> + +<p> +“In the case of the actual victims,” said Pym, “there was +some difficulty and reluctance, and—” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean,” asked Moon, “that none of the actual victims +would appear against the prisoner?” +</p> + +<p> +“That would be exaggerative,” began the other. +</p> + +<p> +“A third question,” said Moon, so sharply that every one jumped. +“You’ve got the evidence of the Sub-Warden who heard some shots; +where’s the evidence of the Warden himself who was shot at? The Warden of +Brakespeare lives, a prosperous gentleman.” +</p> + +<p> +“We did ask for a statement from him,” said Pym a little nervously; +“but it was so eccentrically expressed that we suppressed it out of +deference to an old gentleman whose past services to science have been +great.” +</p> + +<p> +Moon leaned forward. “You mean, I suppose,” he said, “that +his statement was favourable to the prisoner.” +</p> + +<p> +“It might be understood so,” replied the American doctor; +“but, really, it was difficult to understand at all. In fact, we sent it +back to him.” +</p> + +<p> +“You have no longer, then, any statement signed by the Warden of +Brakespeare.” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +“I only ask,” said Michael quietly, “because we have. To +conclude my case I will ask my junior, Mr. Inglewood, to read a statement of +the true story—a statement attested as true by the signature of the +Warden himself.” +</p> + +<p> +Arthur Inglewood rose with several papers in his hand, and though he looked +somewhat refined and self-effacing, as he always did, the spectators were +surprised to feel that his presence was, upon the whole, more efficient and +sufficing than his leader’s. He was, in truth, one of those modest men +who cannot speak until they are told to speak; and then can speak well. Moon +was entirely the opposite. His own impudences amused him in private, but they +slightly embarrassed him in public; he felt a fool while he was speaking, +whereas Inglewood felt a fool only because he could not speak. The moment he +had anything to say he could speak; and the moment he could speak, speaking +seemed quite natural. Nothing in this universe seemed quite natural to Michael +Moon. +</p> + +<p> +“As my colleague has just explained,” said Inglewood, “there +are two enigmas or inconsistencies on which we base the defence. The first is a +plain physical fact. By the admission of everybody, by the very evidence +adduced by the prosecution, it is clear that the accused was celebrated as a +specially good shot. Yet on both the occasions complained of he shot from a +distance of four or five feet, and shot at him four or five times, and never +hit him once. That is the first startling circumstance on which we base our +argument. The second, as my colleague has urged, is the curious fact that we +cannot find a single victim of these alleged outrages to speak for himself. +Subordinates speak for him. Porters climb up ladders to him. But he himself is +silent. Ladies and gentlemen, I propose to explain on the spot both the riddle +of the shots and the riddle of the silence. I will first of all read the +covering letter in which the true account of the Cambridge incident is +contained, and then that document itself. When you have heard both, there will +be no doubt about your decision. The covering letter runs as follows:— +</p> + +<p> +“Dear Sir,—The following is a very exact and even vivid account of +the incident as it really happened at Brakespeare College. We, the undersigned, +do not see any particular reason why we should refer it to any isolated +authorship. The truth is, it has been a composite production; and we have even +had some difference of opinion about the adjectives. But every word of it is +true.—We are, yours faithfully, +</p> + +<p class="right"> +“Wilfred Emerson Eames,<br/> +“Warden of Brakespeare College, Cambridge.<br/> +“Innocent Smith. +</p> + +<p> +“The enclosed statement,” continued Inglewood, “runs as +follows:— +</p> + +<p> +“A celebrated English university backs so abruptly on the river, that it +has, so to speak, to be propped up and patched with all sorts of bridges and +semi-detached buildings. The river splits itself into several small streams and +canals, so that in one or two corners the place has almost the look of Venice. +It was so especially in the case with which we are concerned, in which a few +flying buttresses or airy ribs of stone sprang across a strip of water to +connect Brakespeare College with the house of the Warden of Brakespeare. +</p> + +<p> +“The country around these colleges is flat; but it does not seem flat +when one is thus in the midst of the colleges. For in these flat fens there are +always wandering lakes and lingering rivers of water. And these always change +what might have been a scheme of horizontal lines into a scheme of vertical +lines. Wherever there is water the height of high buildings is doubled, and a +British brick house becomes a Babylonian tower. In that shining unshaken +surface the houses hang head downwards exactly to their highest or lowest +chimney. The coral-coloured cloud seen in that abyss is as far below the world +as its original appears above it. Every scrap of water is not only a window but +a skylight. Earth splits under men’s feet into precipitous aerial +perspectives, into which a bird could as easily wing its way as—” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Cyrus Pym rose in protest. The documents he had put in evidence had been +confined to cold affirmation of fact. The defence, in a general way, had an +indubitable right to put their case in their own way, but all this landscape +gardening seemed to him (Dr. Cyrus Pym) to be not up to the business. +“Will the leader of the defence tell me,” he asked, “how it +can possibly affect this case, that a cloud was cor’l-coloured, or that a +bird could have winged itself anywhere?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I don’t know,” said Michael, lifting himself lazily; +“you see, you don’t know yet what our defence is. Till you know +that, don’t you see, anything may be relevant. Why, suppose,” he +said suddenly, as if an idea had struck him, “suppose we wanted to prove +the old Warden colour-blind. Suppose he was shot by a black man with white +hair, when he thought he was being shot by a white man with yellow hair! To +ascertain if that cloud was really and truly coral-coloured might be of the +most massive importance.” +</p> + +<p> +He paused with a seriousness which was hardly generally shared, and continued +with the same fluency: “Or suppose we wanted to maintain that the Warden +committed suicide—that he just got Smith to hold the pistol as +Brutus’s slave held the sword. Why, it would make all the difference +whether the Warden could see himself plain in still water. Still water has made +hundreds of suicides: one sees oneself so very—well, so very +plain.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you, perhaps,” inquired Pym with austere irony, “maintain +that your client was a bird of some sort—say, a flamingo?” +</p> + +<p> +“In the matter of his being a flamingo,” said Moon with sudden +severity, “my client reserves his defence.” +</p> + +<p> +No one quite knowing what to make of this, Mr. Moon resumed his seat and +Inglewood resumed the reading of his document:— +</p> + +<p> +“There is something pleasing to a mystic in such a land of mirrors. For a +mystic is one who holds that two worlds are better than one. In the highest +sense, indeed, all thought is reflection. +</p> + +<p> +“This is the real truth, in the saying that second thoughts are best. +Animals have no second thoughts; man alone is able to see his own thought +double, as a drunkard sees a lamp-post; man alone is able to see his own +thought upside down as one sees a house in a puddle. This duplication of +mentality, as in a mirror, is (we repeat) the inmost thing of human philosophy. +There is a mystical, even a monstrous truth, in the statement that two heads +are better than one. But they ought both to grow on the same body.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know it’s a little transcendental at first,” interposed +Inglewood, beaming round with a broad apology, “but you see this document +was written in collaboration by a don and a—” +</p> + +<p> +“Drunkard, eh?” suggested Moses Gould, beginning to enjoy himself. +</p> + +<p> +“I rather think,” proceeded Inglewood with an unruffled and +critical air, “that this part was written by the don. I merely warn the +Court that the statement, though indubitably accurate, bears here and there the +trace of coming from two authors.” +</p> + +<p> +“In that case,” said Dr. Pym, leaning back and sniffing, “I +cannot agree with them that two heads are better than one.” +</p> + +<p> +“The undersigned persons think it needless to touch on a kindred problem +so often discussed at committees for University Reform: the question of whether +dons see double because they are drunk, or get drunk because they see double. +It is enough for them (the undersigned persons) if they are able to pursue +their own peculiar and profitable theme—which is puddles. What (the +undersigned persons ask themselves) is a puddle? A puddle repeats infinity, and +is full of light; nevertheless, if analyzed objectively, a puddle is a piece of +dirty water spread very thin on mud. The two great historic universities of +England have all this large and level and reflective brilliance. Nevertheless, +or, rather, on the other hand, they are puddles—puddles, puddles, +puddles, puddles. The undersigned persons ask you to excuse an emphasis +inseparable from strong conviction.” +</p> + +<p> +Inglewood ignored a somewhat wild expression on the faces of some present, and +continued with eminent cheerfulness:— +</p> + +<p> +“Such were the thoughts that failed to cross the mind of the +undergraduate Smith as he picked his way among the stripes of canal and the +glittering rainy gutters into which the water broke up round the back of +Brakespeare College. Had these thoughts crossed his mind he would have been +much happier than he was. Unfortunately he did not know that his puzzles were +puddles. He did not know that the academic mind reflects infinity and is full +of light by the simple process of being shallow and standing still. In his +case, therefore, there was something solemn, and even evil about the infinity +implied. It was half-way through a starry night of bewildering brilliancy; +stars were both above and below. To young Smith’s sullen fancy the skies +below seemed even hollower than the skies above; he had a horrible idea that if +he counted the stars he would find one too many in the pool. +</p> + +<p> +“In crossing the little paths and bridges he felt like one stepping on +the black and slender ribs of some cosmic Eiffel Tower. For to him, and nearly +all the educated youth of that epoch, the stars were cruel things. Though they +glowed in the great dome every night, they were an enormous and ugly secret; +they uncovered the nakedness of nature; they were a glimpse of the iron wheels +and pulleys behind the scenes. For the young men of that sad time thought that +the god always comes from the machine. They did not know that in reality the +machine only comes from the god. In short, they were all pessimists, and +starlight was atrocious to them— atrocious because it was true. All their +universe was black with white spots. +</p> + +<p> +“Smith looked up with relief from the glittering pools below to the +glittering skies and the great black bulk of the college. The only light other +than stars glowed through one peacock-green curtain in the upper part of the +building, marking where Dr. Emerson Eames always worked till morning and +received his friends and favourite pupils at any hour of the night. Indeed, it +was to his rooms that the melancholy Smith was bound. Smith had been at Dr. +Eames’s lecture for the first half of the morning, and at pistol practice +and fencing in a saloon for the second half. He had been sculling madly for the +first half of the afternoon and thinking idly (and still more madly) for the +second half. He had gone to a supper where he was uproarious, and on to a +debating club where he was perfectly insufferable, and the melancholy Smith was +melancholy still. Then, as he was going home to his diggings he remembered the +eccentricity of his friend and master, the Warden of Brakespeare, and resolved +desperately to turn in to that gentleman’s private house. +</p> + +<p> +“Emerson Eames was an eccentric in many ways, but his throne in +philosophy and metaphysics was of international eminence; the university could +hardly have afforded to lose him, and, moreover, a don has only to continue any +of his bad habits long enough to make them a part of the British Constitution. +The bad habits of Emerson Eames were to sit up all night and to be a student of +Schopenhauer. Personally, he was a lean, lounging sort of man, with a blond +pointed beard, not so very much older than his pupil Smith in the matter of +mere years, but older by centuries in the two essential respects of having a +European reputation and a bald head. +</p> + +<p> +“‘I came, against the rules, at this unearthly hour,’ said +Smith, who was nothing to the eye except a very big man trying to make himself +small, ‘because I am coming to the conclusion that existence is really +too rotten. I know all the arguments of the thinkers that think +otherwise—bishops, and agnostics, and those sort of people. And knowing +you were the greatest living authority on the pessimist thinkers—’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘All thinkers,’ said Eames, ‘are pessimist +thinkers.’ +</p> + +<p> +“After a patch of pause, not the first—for this depressing +conversation had gone on for some hours with alternations of cynicism and +silence— the Warden continued with his air of weary brilliancy: +‘It’s all a question of wrong calculation. The moth flies into the +candle because he doesn’t happen to know that the game is not worth the +candle. The wasp gets into the jam in hearty and hopeful efforts to get the jam +into him. IN the same way the vulgar people want to enjoy life just as they +want to enjoy gin—because they are too stupid to see that they are paying +too big a price for it. That they never find happiness—that they +don’t even know how to look for it—is proved by the paralyzing +clumsiness and ugliness of everything they do. Their discordant colours are +cries of pain. Look at the brick villas beyond the college on this side of the +river. There’s one with spotted blinds; look at it! just go and look at +it!’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Of course,’ he went on dreamily, ‘one or two men see +the sober fact a long way off—they go mad. Do you notice that maniacs +mostly try either to destroy other things, or (if they are thoughtful) to +destroy themselves? The madman is the man behind the scenes, like the man that +wanders about the coulisse of a theater. He has only opened the wrong door and +come into the right place. He sees things at the right angle. But the common +world—’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Oh, hang the common world!’ said the sullen Smith, letting +his fist fall on the table in an idle despair. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Let’s give it a bad name first,’ said the Professor +calmly, ‘and then hang it. A puppy with hydrophobia would probably +struggle for life while we killed it; but if we were kind we should kill it. So +an omniscient god would put us out of our pain. He would strike us dead.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Why doesn’t he strike us dead?’ asked the +undergraduate abstractedly, plunging his hands into his pockets. +</p> + +<p> +“‘He is dead himself,’ said the philosopher; ‘that is +where he is really enviable.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘To any one who thinks,’ proceeded Eames, ‘the +pleasures of life, trivial and soon tasteless, are bribes to bring us into a +torture chamber. We all see that for any thinking man mere extinction is the... +What are you doing?... Are you mad?... Put that thing down.’ +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Eames had turned his tired but still talkative head over his +shoulder, and had found himself looking into a small round black hole, rimmed +by a six-sided circlet of steel, with a sort of spike standing up on the top. +It fixed him like an iron eye. Through those eternal instants during which the +reason is stunned he did not even know what it was. Then he saw behind it the +chambered barrel and cocked hammer of a revolver, and behind that the flushed +and rather heavy face of Smith, apparently quite unchanged, or even more mild +than before. +</p> + +<p> +“‘I’ll help you out of your hole, old man,’ said Smith, +with rough tenderness. ‘I’ll put the puppy out of his pain.’ +</p> + +<p> +“Emerson Eames retreated towards the window. ‘Do you mean to kill +me?’ he cried. +</p> + +<p> +“‘It’s not a thing I’d do for every one,’ said +Smith with emotion; ‘but you and I seem to have got so intimate to-night, +somehow. I know all your troubles now, and the only cure, old chap.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Put that thing down,’ shouted the Warden. +</p> + +<p> +“‘It’ll soon be over, you know,’ said Smith with the +air of a sympathetic dentist. And as the Warden made a run for the window and +balcony, his benefactor followed him with a firm step and a compassionate +expression. +</p> + +<p> +“Both men were perhaps surprised to see that the gray and white of early +daybreak had already come. One of them, however, had emotions calculated to +swallow up surprise. Brakespeare College was one of the few that retained real +traces of Gothic ornament, and just beneath Dr. Eames’s balcony there ran +out what had perhaps been a flying buttress, still shapelessly shaped into gray +beasts and devils, but blinded with mosses and washed out with rains. With an +ungainly and most courageous leap, Eames sprang out on this antique bridge, as +the only possible mode of escape from the maniac. He sat astride of it, still +in his academic gown, dangling his long thin legs, and considering further +chances of flight. The whitening daylight opened under as well as over him that +impression of vertical infinity already remarked about the little lakes round +Brakespeare. Looking down and seeing the spires and chimneys pendent in the +pools, they felt alone in space. They felt as if they were looking over the +edge from the North Pole and seeing the South Pole below. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Hang the world, we said,’ observed Smith, ‘and the +world is hanged. “He has hanged the world upon nothing,” says the +Bible. Do you like being hanged upon nothing? I’m going to be hanged upon +something myself. I’m going to swing for you... Dear, tender old +phrase,’ he murmured; ‘never true till this moment. I am going to +swing for you. For you, dear friend. For your sake. At your express +desire.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Help!’ cried the Warden of Brakespeare College; +‘help!’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘The puppy struggles,’ said the undergraduate, with an eye +of pity, ‘the poor puppy struggles. How fortunate it is that I am wiser +and kinder than he,’ and he sighted his weapon so as exactly to cover the +upper part of Eames’s bald head. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Smith,’ said the philosopher with a sudden change to a sort +of ghastly lucidity, ‘I shall go mad.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘And so look at things from the right angle,’ observed +Smith, sighing gently. ‘Ah, but madness is only a palliative at best, a +drug. The only cure is an operation—an operation that is always +successful: death.’ +</p> + +<p> +“As he spoke the sun rose. It seemed to put colour into everything, with +the rapidity of a lightning artist. A fleet of little clouds sailing across the +sky changed from pigeon-gray to pink. All over the little academic town the +tops of different buildings took on different tints: here the sun would pick +out the green enameled on a pinnacle, there the scarlet tiles of a villa; here +the copper ornament on some artistic shop, and there the sea-blue slates of +some old and steep church roof. All these coloured crests seemed to have +something oddly individual and significant about them, like crests of famous +knights pointed out in a pageant or a battlefield: they each arrested the eye, +especially the rolling eye of Emerson Eames as he looked round on the morning +and accepted it as his last. Through a narrow chink between a black timber +tavern and a big gray college he could see a clock with gilt hands which the +sunshine set on fire. He stared at it as though hypnotized; and suddenly the +clock began to strike, as if in personal reply. As if at a signal, clock after +clock took up the cry: all the churches awoke like chickens at cockcrow. The +birds were already noisy in the trees behind the college. The sun rose, +gathering glory that seemed too full for the deep skies to hold, and the +shallow waters beneath them seemed golden and brimming and deep enough for the +thirst of the gods. Just round the corner of the College, and visible from his +crazy perch, were the brightest specks on that bright landscape, the villa with +the spotted blinds which he had made his text that night. He wondered for the +first time what people lived in them. +</p> + +<p> +“Suddenly he called out with mere querulous authority, as he might have +called to a student to shut a door. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Let me come off this place,’ he cried; ‘I can’t +bear it.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘I rather doubt if it will bear you,’ said Smith critically; +‘but before you break your neck, or I blow out your brains, or let you +back into this room (on which complex points I am undecided) I want the +metaphysical point cleared up. Do I understand that you want to get back to +life?’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘I’d give anything to get back,’ replied the unhappy +professor. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Give anything!’ cried Smith; ‘then, blast your +impudence, give us a song!’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘What song do you mean?’ demanded the exasperated Eames; +‘what song?’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘A hymn, I think, would be most appropriate,’ answered the +other gravely. ‘I’ll let you off if you’ll repeat after me +the words— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“‘I thank the goodness and the grace<br/> +    That on my birth have smiled.<br/> +And perched me on this curious place,<br/> +    A happy English child.’ +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Emerson Eames having briefly complied, his persecutor abruptly told +him to hold his hands up in the air. Vaguely connecting this proceeding with +the usual conduct of brigands and bushrangers, Mr. Eames held them up, very +stiffly, but without marked surprise. A bird alighting on his stone seat took +no more notice of him than of a comic statue. +</p> + +<p> +“‘You are now engaged in public worship,’ remarked Smith +severely, ‘and before I have done with you, you shall thank God for the +very ducks on the pond.’ +</p> + +<p> +“The celebrated pessimist half articulately expressed his perfect +readiness to thank God for the ducks on the pond. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Not forgetting the drakes,’ said Smith sternly. (Eames +weakly conceded the drakes.) ‘Not forgetting anything, please. You shall +thank heaven for churches and chapels and villas and vulgar people and puddles +and pots and pans and sticks and rags and bones and spotted blinds.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘All right, all right,’ repeated the victim in despair; +‘sticks and rags and bones and blinds.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Spotted blinds, I think we said,’ remarked Smith with a +rogueish ruthlessness, and wagging the pistol-barrel at him like a long +metallic finger. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Spotted blinds,’ said Emerson Eames faintly. +</p> + +<p> +“‘You can’t say fairer than that,’ admitted the younger +man, ‘and now I’ll just tell you this to wind up with. If you +really were what you profess to be, I don’t see that it would matter to +snail or seraph if you broke your impious stiff neck and dashed out all your +drivelling devil-worshipping brains. But in strict biographical fact you are a +very nice fellow, addicted to talking putrid nonsense, and I love you like a +brother. I shall therefore fire off all my cartridges round your head so as not +to hit you (I am a good shot, you may be glad to hear), and then we will go in +and have some breakfast.’ +</p> + +<p> +“He then let off two barrels in the air, which the Professor endured with +singular firmness, and then said, ‘But don’t fire them all +off.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Why not’ asked the other buoyantly. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Keep them,’ asked his companion, ‘for the next man +you meet who talks as we were talking.’ +</p> + +<p> +“It was at this moment that Smith, looking down, perceived apoplectic +terror upon the face of the Sub-Warden, and heard the refined shriek with which +he summoned the porter and the ladder. +</p> + +<p> +“It took Dr. Eames some little time to disentangle himself from the +ladder, and some little time longer to disentangle himself from the Sub-Warden. +But as soon as he could do so unobtrusively, he rejoined his companion in the +late extraordinary scene. He was astonished to find the gigantic Smith heavily +shaken, and sitting with his shaggy head on his hands. When addressed, he +lifted a very pale face. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Why, what is the matter?’ asked Eames, whose own nerves had +by this time twittered themselves quiet, like the morning birds. +</p> + +<p> +“‘I must ask your indulgence,’ said Smith, rather brokenly. +‘I must ask you to realize that I have just had an escape from +death.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘YOU have had an escape from death?’ repeated the Professor +in not unpardonable irritation. ‘Well, of all the cheek—’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Oh, don’t you understand, don’t you +understand?’ cried the pale young man impatiently. ‘I had to do it, +Eames; I had to prove you wrong or die. When a man’s young, he nearly +always has some one whom he thinks the top-water mark of the mind of man— +some one who knows all about it, if anybody knows. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Well, you were that to me; you spoke with authority, and not as +the scribes. Nobody could comfort me if YOU said there was no comfort. If you +really thought there was nothing anywhere, it was because you had been there to +see. Don’t you see that I HAD to prove you didn’t really mean +it?— or else drown myself in the canal.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Well,’ said Eames hesitatingly, ‘I think perhaps you +confuse—’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Oh, don’t tell me that!’ cried Smith with the sudden +clairvoyance of mental pain; ‘don’t tell me I confuse enjoyment of +existence with the Will to Live! That’s German, and German is High Dutch, +and High Dutch is Double Dutch. The thing I saw shining in your eyes when you +dangled on that bridge was enjoyment of life and not “the Will to +Live.” What you knew when you sat on that damned gargoyle was that the +world, when all is said and done, is a wonderful and beautiful place; I know +it, because I knew it at the same minute. I saw the gray clouds turn pink, and +the little gilt clock in the crack between the houses. It was THOSE things you +hated leaving, not Life, whatever that is. Eames, we’ve been to the brink +of death together; won’t you admit I’m right?’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Yes,’ said Eames very slowly, ‘I think you are right. +You shall have a First!’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Right!’ cried Smith, springing up reanimated. +‘I’ve passed with honours, and now let me go and see about being +sent down.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘You needn’t be sent down,’ said Eames with the quiet +confidence of twelve years of intrigue. ‘Everything with us comes from +the man on top to the people just round him: I am the man on top, and I shall +tell the people round me the truth.’ +</p> + +<p> +“The massive Mr. Smith rose and went firmly to the window, but he spoke +with equal firmness. ‘I must be sent down,’ he said, ‘and the +people must not be told the truth.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘And why not’ asked the other. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Because I mean to follow your advice,’ answered the massive +youth, ‘I mean to keep the remaining shots for people in the shameful +state you and I were in last night—I wish we could even plead +drunkenness. I mean to keep those bullets for pessimists—pills for pale +people. And in this way I want to walk the world like a wonderful +surprise— to float as idly as the thistledown, and come as silently as +the sunrise; not to be expected any more than the thunderbolt, not to be +recalled any more than the dying breeze. I don’t want people to +anticipate me as a well-known practical joke. I want both my gifts to come +virgin and violent, the death and the life after death. I am going to hold a +pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill +him—only to bring him to life. I begin to see a new meaning in being the +skeleton at the feast.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘You can scarcely be called a skeleton,’ said Dr. Eames, +smiling. +</p> + +<p> +“‘That comes of being so much at the feast,’ answered the +massive youth. ‘No skeleton can keep his figure if he is always dining +out. But that is not quite what I meant: what I mean is that I caught a kind of +glimpse of the meaning of death and all that—the skull and cross-bones, +the <i>memento mori</i>. It isn’t only meant to remind us of a future +life, but to remind us of a present life too. With our weak spirits we should +grow old in eternity if we were not kept young by death. Providence has to cut +immortality into lengths for us, as nurses cut the bread and butter into +fingers.’ +</p> + +<p> +“Then he added suddenly in a voice of unnatural actuality, ‘But I +know something now, Eames. I knew it when I saw the clouds turn pink.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘What do you mean?’ asked Eames. ‘What did you +know?’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘I knew for the first time that murder is really wrong.’ +</p> + +<p> +“He gripped Dr. Eames’s hand and groped his way somewhat unsteadily +to the door. Before he had vanished through it he had added, ‘It’s +very dangerous, though, when a man thinks for a split second that he +understands death.’ +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Eames remained in repose and rumination some hours after his late +assailant had left. Then he rose, took his hat and umbrella, and went for a +brisk if rotatory walk. Several times, however, he stood outside the villa with +the spotted blinds, studying them intently with his head slightly on one side. +Some took him for a lunatic and some for an intending purchaser. He is not yet +sure that the two characters would be widely different. +</p> + +<p> +“The above narrative has been constructed on a principle which is, in the +opinion of the undersigned persons, new in the art of letters. Each of the two +actors is described as he appeared to the other. But the undersigned persons +absolutely guarantee the exactitude of the story; and if their version of the +thing be questioned, they, the undersigned persons, would deucedly well like to +know who does know about it if they don’t. +</p> + +<p> +“The undersigned persons will now adjourn to ‘The Spotted +Dog’ for beer. Farewell. +</p> + +<p> +“(Signed) James Emerson Eames, “Warden of Brakespeare College, +Cambridge. +</p> + +<p> +“Innocent Smith.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"></a> +Chapter II<br/> +The Two Curates; or, the Burglary Charge</h3> + +<p> +Arthur Inglewood handed the document he had just read to the leaders of the +prosecution, who examined it with their heads together. Both the Jew and the +American were of sensitive and excitable stocks, and they revealed by the +jumpings and bumpings of the black head and the yellow that nothing could be +done in the way of denial of the document. The letter from the Warden was as +authentic as the letter from the Sub-Warden, however regrettably different in +dignity and social tone. +</p> + +<p> +“Very few words,” said Inglewood, “are required to conclude +our case in this matter. Surely it is now plain that our client carried his +pistol about with the eccentric but innocent purpose of giving a wholesome +scare to those whom he regarded as blasphemers. In each case the scare was so +wholesome that the victim himself has dated from it as from a new birth. Smith, +so far from being a madman, is rather a mad doctor— he walks the world +curing frenzies and not distributing them. That is the answer to the two +unanswerable questions which I put to the prosecutors. That is why they dared +not produce a line by any one who had actually confronted the pistol. All who +had actually confronted the pistol confessed that they had profited by it. That +was why Smith, though a good shot, never hit anybody. He never hit anybody +because he was a good shot. His mind was as clear of murder as his hands are of +blood. This, I say, is the only possible explanation of these facts and of all +the other facts. No one can possibly explain the Warden’s conduct except +by believing the Warden’s story. Even Dr. Pym, who is a very factory of +ingenious theories, could find no other theory to cover the case.” +</p> + +<p> +“There are promising per-spectives in hypnotism and dual +personality,” said Dr. Cyrus Pym dreamily; “the science of +criminology is in its infancy, and—” +</p> + +<p> +“Infancy!” cried Moon, jerking his red pencil in the air with a +gesture of enlightenment; “why, that explains it!” +</p> + +<p> +“I repeat,” proceeded Inglewood, “that neither Dr. Pym nor +any one else can account on any other theory but ours for the Warden’s +signature, for the shots missed and the witnesses missing.” +</p> + +<p> +The little Yankee had slipped to his feet with some return of a cock-fighting +coolness. “The defence,” he said, “omits a coldly colossal +fact. They say we produce none of the actual victims. Wal, here is one +victim—England’s celebrated and stricken Warner. I reckon he is +pretty well produced. And they suggest that all the outrages were followed by +reconciliation. Wal, there’s no flies on England’s Warner; and he +isn’t reconciliated much.” +</p> + +<p> +“My learned friend,” said Moon, getting elaborately to his feet, +“must remember that the science of shooting Dr. Warner is in its infancy. +Dr. Warner would strike the idlest eye as one specially difficult to startle +into any recognition of the glory of God. We admit that our client, in this one +instance, failed, and that the operation was not successful. But I am empowered +to offer, on behalf of my client, a proposal for operating on Dr. Warner again, +at his earliest convenience, and without further fees.” +</p> + +<p> +“’Ang it all, Michael,” cried Gould, quite serious for the +first time in his life, “you might give us a bit of bally sense for a +chinge.” +</p> + +<p> +“What was Dr. Warner talking about just before the first shot?” +asked Moon sharply. +</p> + +<p> +“The creature,” said Dr. Warner superciliously, “asked me, +with characteristic rationality, whether it was my birthday.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you answered, with characteristic swank,” cried Moon, shooting +out a long lean finger, as rigid and arresting as the pistol of Smith, +“that you didn’t keep your birthday.” +</p> + +<p> +“Something like that,” assented the doctor. +</p> + +<p> +“Then,” continued Moon, “he asked you why not, and you said +it was because you didn’t see that birth was anything to rejoice over. +Agreed? Now is there any one who doubts that our tale is true?” +</p> + +<p> +There was a cold crash of stillness in the room; and Moon said, “Pax +populi vox Dei; it is the silence of the people that is the voice of God. Or in +Dr. Pym’s more civilized language, it is up to him to open the next +charge. On this we claim an acquittal.” +</p> + +<p> +It was about an hour later. Dr. Cyrus Pym had remained for an unprecedented +time with his eyes closed and his thumb and finger in the air. It almost seemed +as if he had been “struck so,” as the nurses say; and in the +deathly silence Michael Moon felt forced to relieve the strain with some +remark. For the last half-hour or so the eminent criminologist had been +explaining that science took the same view of offences against property as it +did of offences against life. “Most murder,” he had said, “is +a variation of homicidal mania, and in the same way most theft is a version of +kleptomania. I cannot entertain any doubt that my learned friends opposite +adequately con-ceive how this must involve a scheme of punishment more +tol’rant and humane than the cruel methods of ancient codes. They will +doubtless exhibit consciousness of a chasm so eminently yawning, so +thought-arresting, so—” It was here that he paused and indulged in +the delicate gesture to which allusion has been made; and Michael could bear it +no longer. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently, “we admit the chasm. The old +cruel codes accuse a man of theft and send him to prison for ten years. The +tolerant and humane ticket accuses him of nothing and sends him to prison for +ever. We pass the chasm.” +</p> + +<p> +It was characteristic of the eminent Pym, in one of his trances of verbal +fastidiousness, that he went on, unconscious not only of his opponent’s +interruption, but even of his own pause. +</p> + +<p> +“So stock-improving,” continued Dr. Cyrus Pym, “so fraught +with real high hopes of the future. Science therefore regards thieves, in the +abstract, just as it regards murderers. It regards them not as sinners to be +punished for an arbitrary period, but as patients to be detained and cared +for,” (his first two digits closed again as he hesitated)—“in +short, for the required period. But there is something special in the case we +investigate here. Kleptomania commonly con-joins itself—” +</p> + +<p> +“I beg pardon,” said Michael; “I did not ask just now +because, to tell the truth, I really thought Dr. Pym, though seemingly +vertical, was enjoying well-earned slumber, with a pinch in his fingers of +scentless and delicate dust. But now that things are moving a little more, +there is something I should really like to know. I have hung on Dr. Pym’s +lips, of course, with an interest that it were weak to call rapture, but I have +so far been unable to form any conjecture about what the accused, in the +present instance, is supposed to have been and gone and done.” +</p> + +<p> +“If Mr. Moon will have patience,” said Pym with dignity, “he +will find that this was the very point to which my exposition was di-rected. +Kleptomania, I say, exhibits itself as a kind of physical attraction to certain +defined materials; and it has been held (by no less a man than Harris) that +this is the ultimate explanation of the strict specialism and vurry narrow +professional outlook of most criminals. One will have an irresistible physical +impulsion towards pearl sleeve-links, while he passes over the most elegant and +celebrated diamond sleeve-links, placed about in the most conspicuous +locations. Another will impede his flight with no less than forty-seven +buttoned boots, while elastic-sided boots leave him cold, and even sarcastic. +The specialism of the criminal, I repeat, is a mark rather of insanity than of +any brightness of business habits; but there is one kind of depredator to whom +this principle is at first sight hard to apply. I allude to our fellow-citizen +the housebreaker. +</p> + +<p> +“It has been maintained by some of our boldest young truth-seekers, that +the eye of a burglar beyond the back-garden wall could hardly be caught and +hypnotized by a fork that is insulated in a locked box under the butler’s +bed. They have thrown down the gauntlet to American science on this point. They +declare that diamond links are not left about in conspicuous locations in the +haunts of the lower classes, as they were in the great test experiment of +Calypso College. We hope this experiment here will be an answer to that young +ringing challenge, and will bring the burglar once more into line and union +with his fellow criminals.” +</p> + +<p> +Moon, whose face had gone through every phase of black bewilderment for five +minutes past, suddenly lifted his hand and struck the table in explosive +enlightenment. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I see!” he cried; “you mean that Smith is a +burglar.” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought I made it quite ad’quately lucid,” said Mr. Pym, +folding up his eyelids. It was typical of this topsy-turvy private trial that +all the eloquent extras, all the rhetoric or digression on either side, was +exasperating and unintelligible to the other. Moon could not make head or tail +of the solemnity of a new civilization. Pym could not make head or tail of the +gaiety of an old one. +</p> + +<p> +“All the cases in which Smith has figured as an expropriator,” +continued the American doctor, “are cases of burglary. Pursuing the same +course as in the previous case, we select the indubitable instance from the +rest, and we take the most correct cast-iron evidence. I will now call on my +colleague, Mr. Gould, to read a letter we have received from the earnest, +unspotted Canon of Durham, Canon Hawkins.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Moses Gould leapt up with his usual alacrity to read the letter from the +earnest and unspotted Hawkins. Moses Gould could imitate a farmyard well, Sir +Henry Irving not so well, Marie Lloyd to a point of excellence, and the new +motor horns in a manner that put him upon the platform of great artists. But +his imitation of a Canon of Durham was not convincing; indeed, the sense of the +letter was so much obscured by the extraordinary leaps and gasps of his +pronunciation that it is perhaps better to print it here as Moon read it when, +a little later, it was handed across the table. +</p> + +<p> +“Dear Sir,—I can scarcely feel surprise that the incident you +mention, private as it was, should have filtered through our omnivorous +journals to the mere populace; for the position I have since attained makes me, +I conceive, a public character, and this was certainly the most extraordinary +incident in a not uneventful and perhaps not an unimportant career. I am by no +means without experience in scenes of civil tumult. I have faced many a +political crisis in the old Primrose League days at Herne Bay, and, before I +broke with the wilder set, have spent many a night at the Christian Social +Union. But this other experience was quite inconceivable. I can only describe +it as the letting loose of a place which it is not for me, as a clergyman, to +mention. +</p> + +<p> +“It occurred in the days when I was, for a short period, a curate at +Hoxton; and the other curate, then my colleague, induced me to attend a meeting +which he described, I must say profanely described, as calculated to promote +the kingdom of God. I found, on the contrary, that it consisted entirely of men +in corduroys and greasy clothes whose manners were coarse and their opinions +extreme. +</p> + +<p> +“Of my colleague in question I wish to speak with the fullest respect and +friendliness, and I will therefore say little. No one can be more convinced +than I of the evil of politics in the pulpit; and I never offer my congregation +any advice about voting except in cases in which I feel strongly that they are +likely to make an erroneous selection. But, while I do not mean to touch at all +upon political or social problems, I must say that for a clergyman to +countenance, even in jest, such discredited nostrums of dissipated demagogues +as Socialism or Radicalism partakes of the character of the betrayal of a +sacred trust. Far be it from me to say a word against the Reverend Raymond +Percy, the colleague in question. He was brilliant, I suppose, and to some +apparently fascinating; but a clergyman who talks like a Socialist, wears his +hair like a pianist, and behaves like an intoxicated person, will never rise in +his profession, or even obtain the admiration of the good and wise. Nor is it +for me to utter my personal judgements of the appearance of the people in the +hall. Yet a glance round the room, revealing ranks of debased and envious +faces—” +</p> + +<p> +“Adopting,” said Moon explosively, for he was getting +restive—“adopting the reverend gentleman’s favourite figure +of logic, may I say that while tortures would not tear from me a whisper about +his intellect, he is a blasted old jackass.” +</p> + +<p> +“Really!” said Dr. Pym; “I protest.” +</p> + +<p> +“You must keep quiet, Michael,” said Inglewood; “they have a +right to read their story.” +</p> + +<p> +“Chair! Chair! Chair!” cried Gould, rolling about exuberantly in +his own; and Pym glanced for a moment towards the canopy which covered all the +authority of the Court of Beacon. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, don’t wake the old lady,” said Moon, lowering his voice +in a moody good-humour. “I apologize. I won’t interrupt +again.” +</p> + +<p> +Before the little eddy of interruption was ended the reading of the +clergyman’s letter was already continuing. +</p> + +<p> +“The proceedings opened with a speech from my colleague, of which I will +say nothing. It was deplorable. Many of the audience were Irish, and showed the +weakness of that impetuous people. When gathered together into gangs and +conspiracies they seem to lose altogether that lovable good-nature and +readiness to accept anything one tells them which distinguishes them as +individuals.” +</p> + +<p> +With a slight start, Michael rose to his feet, bowed solemnly, and sat down +again. +</p> + +<p> +“These persons, if not silent, were at least applausive during the speech +of Mr. Percy. He descended to their level with witticisms about rent and a +reserve of labour. Confiscation, expropriation, arbitration, and such words +with which I cannot soil my lips, recurred constantly. Some hours afterward the +storm broke. I had been addressing the meeting for some time, pointing out the +lack of thrift in the working classes, their insufficient attendance at evening +service, their neglect of the Harvest Festival, and of many other things that +might materially help them to improve their lot. It was, I think, about this +time that an extraordinary interruption occurred. An enormous, powerful man, +partly concealed with white plaster, arose in the middle of the hall, and +offered (in a loud, roaring voice, like a bull’s) some observations which +seemed to be in a foreign language. Mr. Raymond Percy, my colleague, descended +to his level by entering into a duel of repartee, in which he appeared to be +the victor. The meeting began to behave more respectfully for a little; yet +before I had said twelve sentences more the rush was made for the platform. The +enormous plasterer, in particular, plunged towards us, shaking the earth like +an elephant; and I really do not know what would have happened if a man equally +large, but not quite so ill-dressed, had not jumped up also and held him away. +This other big man shouted a sort of speech to the mob as he was shoving them +back. I don’t know what he said, but, what with shouting and shoving and +such horseplay, he got us out at a back door, while the wretched people went +roaring down another passage. +</p> + +<p> +“Then follows the truly extraordinary part of my story. When he had got +us outside, in a mean backyard of blistered grass leading into a lane with a +very lonely-looking lamp-post, this giant addressed me as follows: +‘You’re well out of that, sir; now you’d better come along +with me. I want you to help me in an act of social justice, such as we’ve +all been talking about. Come along!’ And turning his big back abruptly, +he led us down the lean old lane with the one lean old lamp-post, we scarcely +knowing what to do but to follow him. He had certainly helped us in a most +difficult situation, and, as a gentleman, I could not treat such a benefactor +with suspicion without grave grounds. Such also was the view of my Socialistic +colleague, who (with all his dreadful talk of arbitration) is a gentleman also. +In fact, he comes of the Staffordshire Percys, a branch of the old house and +has the black hair and pale, clear-cut face of the whole family. I cannot but +refer it to vanity that he should heighten his personal advantages with black +velvet or a red cross of considerable ostentation, and certainly—but I +digress. +</p> + +<p> +“A fog was coming up the street, and that last lost lamp-post faded +behind us in a way that certainly depressed the mind. The large man in front of +us looked larger and larger in the haze. He did not turn round, but he said +with his huge back to us, ‘All that talking’s no good; we want a +little practical Socialism.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘I quite agree,’ said Percy; ‘but I always like to +understand things in theory before I put them into practice.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Oh, you just leave that to me,’ said the practical +Socialist, or whatever he was, with the most terrifying vagueness. ‘I +have a way with me. I’m a Permeator.’ +</p> + +<p> +“I could not imagine what he meant, but my companion laughed, so I was +sufficiently reassured to continue the unaccountable journey for the present. +It led us through most singular ways; out of the lane, where we were already +rather cramped, into a paved passage, at the end of which we passed through a +wooden gate left open. We then found ourselves, in the increasing darkness and +vapour, crossing what appeared to be a beaten path across a kitchen garden. I +called out to the enormous person going on in front, but he answered obscurely +that it was a short cut. +</p> + +<p> +“I was just repeating my very natural doubt to my clerical companion when +I was brought up against a short ladder, apparently leading to a higher level +of road. My thoughtless colleague ran up it so quickly that I could not do +otherwise than follow as best I could. The path on which I then planted my feet +was quite unprecedentedly narrow. I had never had to walk along a thoroughfare +so exiguous. Along one side of it grew what, in the dark and density of air, I +first took to be some short, strong thicket of shrubs. Then I saw that they +were not short shrubs; they were the tops of tall trees. I, an English +gentleman and clergyman of the Church of England—I was walking along the +top of a garden wall like a tom cat. +</p> + +<p> +“I am glad to say that I stopped within my first five steps, and let +loose my just reprobation, balancing myself as best I could all the time. +</p> + +<p> +“‘It’s a right-of-way,’ declared my indefensible +informant. ‘It’s closed to traffic once in a hundred years.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Mr. Percy, Mr. Percy!’ I called out; ‘you are not +going on with this blackguard?’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Why, I think so,’ answered my unhappy colleague flippantly. +‘I think you and I are bigger blackguards than he is, whatever he +is.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘I am a burglar,’ explained the big creature quite calmly. +‘I am a member of the Fabian Society. I take back the wealth stolen by +the capitalist, not by sweeping civil war and revolution, but by reform fitted +to the special occasion—here a little and there a little. Do you see that +fifth house along the terrace with the flat roof? I’m permeating that one +to-night.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Whether this is a crime or a joke,’ I cried, ‘I +desire to be quit of it.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘The ladder is just behind you,’ answered the creature with +horrible courtesy; ‘and, before you go, do let me give you my +card.’ +</p> + +<p> +“If I had had the presence of mind to show any proper spirit I should +have flung it away, though any adequate gesture of the kind would have gravely +affected my equilibrium upon the wall. As it was, in the wildness of the +moment, I put it in my waistcoat pocket, and, picking my way back by wall and +ladder, landed in the respectable streets once more. Not before, however, I had +seen with my own eyes the two awful and lamentable facts— that the +burglar was climbing up a slanting roof towards the chimneys, and that Raymond +Percy (a priest of God and, what was worse, a gentleman) was crawling up after +him. I have never seen either of them since that day. +</p> + +<p> +“In consequence of this soul-searching experience I severed my connection +with the wild set. I am far from saying that every member of the Christian +Social Union must necessarily be a burglar. I have no right to bring any such +charge. But it gave me a hint of what such courses may lead to in many cases; +and I saw them no more. +</p> + +<p> +“I have only to add that the photograph you enclose, taken by a Mr. +Inglewood, is undoubtedly that of the burglar in question. When I got home that +night I looked at his card, and he was inscribed there under the name of +Innocent Smith.—Yours faithfully, +</p> + +<p class="right"> +“John Clement Hawkins.” +</p> + +<p> +Moon merely went through the form of glancing at the paper. He knew that the +prosecutors could not have invented so heavy a document; that Moses Gould (for +one) could no more write like a canon than he could read like one. After +handing it back he rose to open the defence on the burglary charge. +</p> + +<p> +“We wish,” said Michael, “to give all reasonable facilities +to the prosecution; especially as it will save the time of the whole court. The +latter object I shall once again pursue by passing over all those points of +theory which are so dear to Dr. Pym. I know how they are made. Perjury is a +variety of aphasia, leading a man to say one thing instead of another. Forgery +is a kind of writer’s cramp, forcing a man to write his uncle’s +name instead of his own. Piracy on the high seas is probably a form of +sea-sickness. But it is unnecessary for us to inquire into the causes of a fact +which we deny. Innocent Smith never did commit burglary at all. +</p> + +<p> +“I should like to claim the power permitted by our previous arrangement, +and ask the prosecution two or three questions.” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Cyrus Pym closed his eyes to indicate a courteous assent. +</p> + +<p> +“In the first place,” continued Moon, “have you the date of +Canon Hawkins’s last glimpse of Smith and Percy climbing up the walls and +roofs?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ho, yus!” called out Gould smartly. “November thirteen, +eighteen ninety-one.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you,” continued Moon, “identified the houses in Hoxton +up which they climbed?” +</p> + +<p> +“Must have been Ladysmith Terrace out of the highroad,” answered +Gould with the same clockwork readiness. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Michael, cocking an eyebrow at him, “was there +any burglary in that terrace that night? Surely you could find that out.” +</p> + +<p> +“There may well have been,” said the doctor primly, after a pause, +“an unsuccessful one that led to no legalities.” +</p> + +<p> +“Another question,” proceeded Michael. “Canon Hawkins, in his +blood-and-thunder boyish way, left off at the exciting moment. Why don’t +you produce the evidence of the other clergyman, who actually followed the +burglar and presumably was present at the crime?” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Pym rose and planted the points of his fingers on the table, as he did when +he was specially confident of the clearness of his reply. +</p> + +<p> +“We have entirely failed,” he said, “to track the other +clergyman, who seems to have melted into the ether after Canon Hawkins had seen +him as-cending the gutters and the leads. I am fully aware that this may strike +many as sing’lar; yet, upon reflection, I think it will appear pretty +natural to a bright thinker. This Mr. Raymond Percy is admittedly, by the +canon’s evidence, a minister of eccentric ways. His con-nection with +England’s proudest and fairest does not seemingly prevent a taste for the +society of the real low-down. On the other hand, the prisoner Smith is, by +general agreement, a man of irr’sistible fascination. I entertain no +doubt that Smith led the Revered Percy into the crime and forced him to hide +his head in the real crim’nal class. That would fully account for his +non-appearance, and the failure of all attempts to trace him.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is impossible, then, to trace him?” asked Moon. +</p> + +<p> +“Impossible,” repeated the specialist, shutting his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“You are sure it’s impossible?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh dry up, Michael,” cried Gould, irritably. “We’d +’ave found ’im if we could, for you bet ’e saw the burglary. +Don’t YOU start looking for ’im. Look for your own ’ead in +the dustbin. You’ll find that—after a bit,” and his voice +died away in grumbling. +</p> + +<p> +“Arthur,” directed Michael Moon, sitting down, “kindly read +Mr. Raymond Percy’s letter to the court.” +</p> + +<p> +“Wishing, as Mr. Moon has said, to shorten the proceedings as much as +possible,” began Inglewood, “I will not read the first part of the +letter sent to us. It is only fair to the prosecution to admit the account +given by the second clergyman fully ratifies, as far as facts are concerned, +that given by the first clergyman. We concede, then, the canon’s story so +far as it goes. This must necessarily be valuable to the prosecutor and also +convenient to the court. I begin Mr. Percy’s letter, then, at the point +when all three men were standing on the garden wall:— +</p> + +<p> +“As I watched Hawkins wavering on the wall, I made up my own mind not to +waver. A cloud of wrath was on my brain, like the cloud of copper fog on the +houses and gardens round. My decision was violent and simple; yet the thoughts +that led up to it were so complicated and contradictory that I could not +retrace them now. I knew Hawkins was a kind, innocent gentleman; and I would +have given ten pounds for the pleasure of kicking him down the road. That God +should allow good people to be as bestially stupid as that— rose against +me like a towering blasphemy. +</p> + +<p> +“At Oxford, I fear, I had the artistic temperament rather badly; and +artists love to be limited. I liked the church as a pretty pattern; discipline +was mere decoration. I delighted in mere divisions of time; I liked eating fish +on Friday. But then I like fish; and the fast was made for men who like meat. +Then I came to Hoxton and found men who had fasted for five hundred years; men +who had to gnaw fish because they could not get meat—and fish-bones when +they could not get fish. As too many British officers treat the army as a +review, so I had treated the Church Militant as if it were the Church Pageant. +Hoxton cures that. Then I realized that for eighteen hundred years the Church +Militant had not been a pageant, but a riot—and a suppressed riot. There, +still living patiently in Hoxton, were the people to whom the tremendous +promises had been made. In the face of that I had to become a revolutionary if +I was to continue to be religious. In Hoxton one cannot be a conservative +without being also an atheist— and a pessimist. Nobody but the devil +could want to conserve Hoxton. +</p> + +<p> +“On the top of all this comes Hawkins. If he had cursed all the Hoxton +men, excommunicated them, and told them they were going to hell, I should have +rather admired him. If he had ordered them all to be burned in the +market-place, I should still have had that patience that all good Christians +have with the wrongs inflicted on other people. But there is no priestcraft +about Hawkins—nor any other kind of craft. He is as perfectly incapable +of being a priest as he is of being a carpenter or a cabman or a gardener or a +plasterer. He is a perfect gentleman; that is his complaint. He does not impose +his creed, but simply his class. He never said a word of religion in the whole +of his damnable address. He simply said all the things his brother, the major, +would have said. A voice from heaven assures me that he has a brother, and that +this brother is a major. +</p> + +<p> +“When this helpless aristocrat had praised cleanliness in the body and +convention in the soul to people who could hardly keep body and soul together, +the stampede against our platform began. I took part in his undeserved rescue, +I followed his obscure deliverer, until (as I have said) we stood together on +the wall above the dim gardens, already clouding with fog. Then I looked at the +curate and at the burglar, and decided, in a spasm of inspiration, that the +burglar was the better man of the two. The burglar seemed quite as kind and +human as the curate was— and he was also brave and self-reliant, which +the curate was not. I knew there was no virtue in the upper class, for I belong +to it myself; I knew there was not so very much in the lower class, for I had +lived with it a long time. Many old texts about the despised and persecuted +came back to my mind, and I thought that the saints might well be hidden in the +criminal class. About the time Hawkins let himself down the ladder I was +crawling up a low, sloping, blue-slate roof after the large man, who went +leaping in front of me like a gorilla. +</p> + +<p> +“This upward scramble was short, and we soon found ourselves tramping +along a broad road of flat roofs, broader than many big thoroughfares, with +chimney-pots here and there that seemed in the haze as bulky as small forts. +The asphyxiation of the fog seemed to increase the somewhat swollen and morbid +anger under which my brain and body laboured. The sky and all those things that +are commonly clear seemed overpowered by sinister spirits. Tall spectres with +turbans of vapour seemed to stand higher than the sun or moon, eclipsing both. +I thought dimly of illustrations to the ‘Arabian Nights’ on brown +paper with rich but sombre tints, showing genii gathering round the Seal of +Solomon. By the way, what was the Seal of Solomon? Nothing to do with +sealing-wax really, I suppose; but my muddled fancy felt the thick clouds as +being of that heavy and clinging substance, of strong opaque colour, poured out +of boiling pots and stamped into monstrous emblems. +</p> + +<p> +“The first effect of the tall turbaned vapours was that discoloured look +of pea-soup or coffee brown of which Londoners commonly speak. But the scene +grew subtler with familiarity. We stood above the average of the housetops and +saw something of that thing called smoke, which in great cities creates the +strange thing called fog. Beneath us rose a forest of chimney-pots. And there +stood in every chimney-pot, as if it were a flower-pot, a brief shrub or a tall +tree of coloured vapour. The colours of the smoke were various; for some +chimneys were from firesides and some from factories, and some again from mere +rubbish heaps. And yet, though the tints were all varied, they all seemed +unnatural, like fumes from a witch’s pot. It was as if the shameful and +ugly shapes growing shapeless in the cauldron sent up each its separate spurt +of steam, coloured according to the fish or flesh consumed. Here, aglow from +underneath, were dark red clouds, such as might drift from dark jars of +sacrificial blood; there the vapour was dark indigo gray, like the long hair of +witches steeped in the hell-broth. In another place the smoke was of an awful +opaque ivory yellow, such as might be the disembodiment of one of their old, +leprous waxen images. But right across it ran a line of bright, sinister, +sulphurous green, as clear and crooked as Arabic—” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Moses Gould once more attempted the arrest of the ’bus. He was +understood to suggest that the reader should shorten the proceedings by leaving +out all the adjectives. Mrs. Duke, who had woken up, observed that she was sure +it was all very nice, and the decision was duly noted down by Moses with a +blue, and by Michael with a red pencil. Inglewood then resumed the reading of +the document. +</p> + +<p> +“Then I read the writing of the smoke. Smoke was like the modern city +that makes it; it is not always dull or ugly, but it is always wicked and vain. +</p> + +<p> +“Modern England was like a cloud of smoke; it could carry all colours, +but it could leave nothing but a stain. It was our weakness and not our +strength that put a rich refuse in the sky. These were the rivers of our vanity +pouring into the void. We had taken the sacred circle of the whirlwind, and +looked down on it, and seen it as a whirlpool. And then we had used it as a +sink. It was a good symbol of the mutiny in my own mind. Only our worst things +were going to heaven. Only our criminals could still ascend like angels. +</p> + +<p> +“As my brain was blinded with such emotions, my guide stopped by one of +the big chimney-pots that stood at the regular intervals like lamp-posts along +that uplifted and aerial highway. He put his heavy hand upon it, and for the +moment I thought he was merely leaning on it, tired with his steep scramble +along the terrace. So far as I could guess from the abysses, full of fog on +either side, and the veiled lights of red brown and old gold glowing through +them now and again, we were on the top of one of those long, consecutive, and +genteel rows of houses which are still to be found lifting their heads above +poorer districts, the remains of some rage of optimism in earlier speculative +builders. Probably enough, they were entirely untenanted, or tenanted only by +such small clans of the poor as gather also in the old emptied palaces of +Italy. Indeed, some little time later, when the fog had lifted a little, I +discovered that we were walking round a semi-circle of crescent which fell away +below us into one flat square or wide street below another, like a giant +stairway, in a manner not unknown in the eccentric building of London, and +looking like the last ledges of the land. But a cloud sealed the giant stairway +as yet. +</p> + +<p> +“My speculations about the sullen skyscape, however, were interrupted by +something as unexpected as the moon falling from the sky. Instead of my burglar +lifting his hand from the chimney he leaned on, he leaned on it a little more +heavily, and the whole chimney-pot turned over like the opening top of an +inkstand. I remembered the short ladder leaning against the low wall and felt +sure he had arranged his criminal approach long before. +</p> + +<p> +“The collapse of the big chimney-pot ought to have been the culmination +of my chaotic feelings; but, to tell the truth, it produced a sudden sense of +comedy and even of comfort. I could not recall what connected this abrupt bit +of housebreaking with some quaint but still kindly fancies. Then I remembered +the delightful and uproarious scenes of roofs and chimneys in the harlequinades +of my childhood, and was darkly and quite irrationally comforted by a sense of +unsubstantiality in the scene, as if the houses were of lath and paint and +pasteboard, and were only meant to be tumbled in and out of by policemen and +pantaloons. The law-breaking of my companion seemed not only seriously +excusable, but even comically excusable. Who were all these pompous +preposterous people with their footmen and their foot-scrapers, their +chimney-pots and their chimney-pot hats, that they should prevent a poor clown +from getting sausages if he wanted them? One would suppose that property was a +serious thing. I had reached, as it were, a higher level of that mountainous +and vapourous visions, the heaven of a higher levity. +</p> + +<p> +“My guide had jumped down into the dark cavity revealed by the displaced +chimney-pot. He must have landed at a level considerably lower, for, tall as he +was, nothing but his weirdly tousled head remained visible. Something again far +off, and yet familiar, pleased me about this way of invading the houses of men. +I thought of little chimney-sweeps, and ‘The Water Babies;’ but I +decided that it was not that. Then I remembered what it was that made me +connect such topsy-turvy trespass with ideas quite opposite to the idea of +crime. Christmas Eve, of course, and Santa Claus coming down the chimney. +</p> + +<p> +“Almost at the same instant the hairy head disappeared into the black +hole; but I heard a voice calling to me from below. A second or two afterwards, +the hairy head reappeared; it was dark against the more fiery part of the fog, +and nothing could be spelt of its expression, but its voice called on me to +follow with that enthusiastic impatience proper only among old friends. I +jumped into the gulf, and as blindly as Curtius, for I was still thinking of +Santa Claus and the traditional virtue of such vertical entrance. +</p> + +<p> +“In every well-appointed gentleman’s house, I reflected, there was +the front door for the gentlemen, and the side door for the tradesmen; but +there was also the top door for the gods. The chimney is, so to speak, the +underground passage between earth and heaven. By this starry tunnel Santa Claus +manages—like the skylark— to be true to the kindred points of +heaven and home. Nay, owing to certain conventions, and a widely distributed +lack of courage for climbing, this door was, perhaps, little used. But Santa +Claus’s door was really the front door: it was the door fronting the +universe. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought this as I groped my way across the black garret, or loft below +the roof, and scrambled down the squat ladder that let us down into a yet +larger loft below. Yet it was not till I was half-way down the ladder that I +suddenly stood still, and thought for an instant of retracing all my steps, as +my companion had retraced them from the beginning of the garden wall. The name +of Santa Claus had suddenly brought me back to my senses. I remembered why +Santa Claus came, and why he was welcome. +</p> + +<p> +“I was brought up in the propertied classes, and with all their horror of +offences against property. I had heard all the regular denunciations of +robbery, both right and wrong; I had read the Ten Commandments in church a +thousand times. And then and there, at the age of thirty-four, half-way down a +ladder in a dark room in the bodily act of burglar, I saw suddenly for the +first time that theft, after all, is really wrong. +</p> + +<p> +“It was too late to turn back, however, and I followed the strangely soft +footsteps of my huge companion across the lower and larger loft, till he knelt +down on a part of the bare flooring and, after a few fumbling efforts, lifted a +sort of trapdoor. This released a light from below, and we found ourselves +looking down into a lamp-lit sitting room, of the sort that in large houses +often leads out of a bedroom, and is an adjunct to it. Light thus breaking from +beneath our feet like a soundless explosion, showed that the trapdoor just +lifted was clogged with dust and rust, and had doubtless been long disused +until the advent of my enterprising friend. But I did not look at this long, +for the sight of the shining room underneath us had an almost unnatural +attractiveness. To enter a modern interior at so strange an angle, by so +forgotten a door, was an epoch in one’s psychology. It was like having +found a fourth dimension. +</p> + +<p> +“My companion dropped from the aperture into the room so suddenly and +soundlessly, that I could do nothing but follow him; though, for lack of +practice in crime, I was by no means soundless. Before the echo of my boots had +died away, the big burglar had gone quickly to the door, half opened it, and +stood looking down the staircase and listening. Then, leaving the door still +half open, he came back into the middle of the room, and ran his roving blue +eye round its furniture and ornament. The room was comfortably lined with books +in that rich and human way that makes the walls seem alive; it was a deep and +full, but slovenly, bookcase, of the sort that is constantly ransacked for the +purposes of reading in bed. One of those stunted German stoves that look like +red goblins stood in a corner, and a sideboard of walnut wood with closed doors +in its lower part. There were three windows, high but narrow. After another +glance round, my housebreaker plucked the walnut doors open and rummaged +inside. He found nothing there, apparently, except an extremely handsome +cut-glass decanter, containing what looked like port. Somehow the sight of the +thief returning with this ridiculous little luxury in his hand woke within me +once more all the revelation and revulsion I had felt above. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Don’t do it!’ I cried quite incoherently, +‘Santa Claus—’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Ah,’ said the burglar, as he put the decanter on the table +and stood looking at me, ‘you’ve thought about that, too.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘I can’t express a millionth part of what I’ve thought +of,’ I cried, ‘but it’s something like this... oh, +can’t you see it? Why are children not afraid of Santa Claus, though he +comes like a thief in the night? He is permitted secrecy, trespass, almost +treachery—because there are more toys where he has been. What should we +feel if there were less? Down what chimney from hell would come the goblin that +should take away the children’s balls and dolls while they slept? Could a +Greek tragedy be more gray and cruel than that daybreak and awakening? +Dog-stealer, horse-stealer, man-stealer—can you think of anything so base +as a toy-stealer?’ +</p> + +<p> +“The burglar, as if absently, took a large revolver from his pocket and +laid it on the table beside the decanter, but still kept his blue reflective +eyes fixed on my face. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Man!’ I said, ‘all stealing is toy-stealing. +That’s why it’s really wrong. The goods of the unhappy children of +men should be really respected because of their worthlessness. I know +Naboth’s vineyard is as painted as Noah’s Ark. I know +Nathan’s ewe-lamb is really a woolly baa-lamb on a wooden stand. That is +why I could not take them away. I did not mind so much, as long as I thought of +men’s things as their valuables; but I dare not put a hand upon their +vanities.’ +</p> + +<p> +“After a moment I added abruptly, ‘Only saints and sages ought to +be robbed. They may be stripped and pillaged; but not the poor little worldly +people of the things that are their poor little pride.’ +</p> + +<p> +“He set out two wineglasses from the cupboard, filled them both, and +lifted one of them with a salutation towards his lips. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Don’t do it!’ I cried. ‘It might be the last +bottle of some rotten vintage or other. The master of this house may be quite +proud of it. Don’t you see there’s something sacred in the +silliness of such things?’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘It’s not the last bottle,’ answered my criminal +calmly; ‘there’s plenty more in the cellar.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘You know the house, then?’ I said. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Too well,’ he answered, with a sadness so strange as to +have something eerie about it. ‘I am always trying to forget what I +know— and to find what I don’t know.’ He drained his glass. +‘Besides,’ he added, ‘it will do him good.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘What will do him good?’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘The wine I’m drinking,’ said the strange person. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Does he drink too much, then?’ I inquired. +</p> + +<p> +“‘No,’ he answered, ‘not unless I do.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Do you mean,’ I demanded, ‘that the owner of this +house approves of all you do?’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘God forbid,’ he answered; ‘but he has to do the +same.’ +</p> + +<p> +“The dead face of the fog looking in at all three windows unreasonably +increased a sense of riddle, and even terror, about this tall, narrow house we +had entered out of the sky. I had once more the notion about the gigantic +genii— I fancied that enormous Egyptian faces, of the dead reds and +yellows of Egypt, were staring in at each window of our little lamp-lit room as +at a lighted stage of marionettes. My companion went on playing with the pistol +in front of him, and talking with the same rather creepy confidentialness. +</p> + +<p> +“‘I am always trying to find him—to catch him unawares. I +come in through skylights and trapdoors to find him; but whenever I find +him—he is doing what I am doing.’ +</p> + +<p> +“I sprang to my feet with a thrill of fear. ‘There is some one +coming,’ I cried, and my cry had something of a shriek in it. Not from +the stairs below, but along the passage from the inner bedchamber (which seemed +somehow to make it more alarming), footsteps were coming nearer. I am quite +unable to say what mystery, or monster, or double, I expected to see when the +door was pushed open from within. I am only quite certain that I did not expect +to see what I did see. +</p> + +<p> +“Framed in the open doorway stood, with an air of great serenity, a +rather tall young woman, definitely though indefinably artistic— her +dress the colour of spring and her hair of autumn leaves, with a face which, +though still comparatively young, conveyed experience as well as intelligence. +All she said was, ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘I came in another way,’ said the Permeator, somewhat +vaguely. ‘I’d left my latchkey at home.’ +</p> + +<p> +“I got to my feet in a mixture of politeness and mania. ‘I’m +really very sorry,’ I cried. ‘I know my position is irregular. +Would you be so obliging as to tell me whose house this is?’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Mine,’ said the burglar, ‘May I present you to my +wife?’ +</p> + +<p> +“I doubtfully, and somewhat slowly, resumed my seat; and I did not get +out of it till nearly morning. Mrs. Smith (such was the prosaic name of this +far from prosaic household) lingered a little, talking slightly and pleasantly. +She left on my mind the impression of a certain odd mixture of shyness and +sharpness; as if she knew the world well, but was still a little harmlessly +afraid of it. Perhaps the possession of so jumpy and incalculable a husband had +left her a little nervous. Anyhow, when she had retired to the inner chamber +once more, that extraordinary man poured forth his apologia and autobiography +over the dwindling wine. +</p> + +<p> +“He had been sent to Cambridge with a view to a mathematical and +scientific, rather than a classical or literary, career. A starless nihilism +was then the philosophy of the schools; and it bred in him a war between the +members and the spirit, but one in which the members were right. While his +brain accepted the black creed, his very body rebelled against it. As he put +it, his right hand taught him terrible things. As the authorities of Cambridge +University put it, unfortunately, it had taken the form of his right hand +flourishing a loaded firearm in the very face of a distinguished don, and +driving him to climb out of the window and cling to a waterspout. He had done +it solely because the poor don had professed in theory a preference for +non-existence. For this very unacademic type of argument he had been sent down. +Vomiting as he was with revulsion, from the pessimism that had quailed under +his pistol, he made himself a kind of fanatic of the joy of life. He cut across +all the associations of serious-minded men. He was gay, but by no means +careless. His practical jokes were more in earnest than verbal ones. Though not +an optimist in the absurd sense of maintaining that life is all beer and +skittles, he did really seem to maintain that beer and skittles are the most +serious part of it. ‘What is more immortal,’ he would cry, +‘than love and war? Type of all desire and joy—beer. Type of all +battle and conquest—skittles.’ +</p> + +<p> +“There was something in him of what the old world called the solemnity of +revels—when they spoke of ‘solemnizing’ a mere masquerade or +wedding banquet. Nevertheless he was not a mere pagan any more than he was a +mere practical joker. His eccentricities sprang from a static fact of faith, in +itself mystical, and even childlike and Christian. +</p> + +<p> +“‘I don’t deny,’ he said, ‘that there should be +priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say that at certain +strange epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, +actually to remind men that they are not dead yet. The intellectuals among whom +I moved were not even alive enough to fear death. They hadn’t enough +blood in them to be cowards. Until a pistol barrel was poked under their very +noses they never even knew they had been born. For ages looking up an eternal +perspective it might be true that life is a learning to die. But for these +little white rats it was just as true that death was their only chance of +learning to live.’ +</p> + +<p> +“His creed of wonder was Christian by this absolute test; that he felt it +continually slipping from himself as much as from others. He had the same +pistol for himself, as Brutus said of the dagger. He continually ran +preposterous risks of high precipice or headlong speed to keep alive the mere +conviction that he was alive. He treasured up trivial and yet insane details +that had once reminded him of the awful subconscious reality. When the don had +hung on the stone gutter, the sight of his long dangling legs, vibrating in the +void like wings, somehow awoke the naked satire of the old definition of man as +a two-legged animal without feathers. The wretched professor had been brought +into peril by his head, which he had so elaborately cultivated, and only saved +by his legs, which he had treated with coldness and neglect. Smith could think +of no other way of announcing or recording this, except to send a telegram to +an old friend (by this time a total stranger) to say that he had just seen a +man with two legs; and that the man was alive. +</p> + +<p> +“The uprush of his released optimism burst into stars like a rocket when +he suddenly fell in love. He happened to be shooting a high and very headlong +weir in a canoe, by way of proving to himself that he was alive; and he soon +found himself involved in some doubt about the continuance of the fact. What +was worse, he found he had equally jeopardized a harmless lady alone in a +rowing-boat, and one who had provoked death by no professions of philosophic +negation. He apologized in wild gasps through all his wild wet labours to bring +her to the shore, and when he had done so at last, he seems to have proposed to +her on the bank. Anyhow, with the same impetuosity with which he had nearly +murdered her, he completely married her; and she was the lady in green to whom +I had recently said ‘good-night.’ +</p> + +<p> +“They had settled down in these high narrow houses near Highbury. +Perhaps, indeed, that is hardly the word. One could strictly say that Smith was +married, that he was very happily married, that he not only did not care for +any woman but his wife, but did not seem to care for any place but his home; +but perhaps one could hardly say that he had settled down. ‘I am a very +domestic fellow,’ he explained with gravity, ‘and have often come +in through a broken window rather than be late for tea.’ +</p> + +<p> +“He lashed his soul with laughter to prevent it falling asleep. He lost +his wife a series of excellent servants by knocking at the door as a total +stranger, and asking if Mr. Smith lived there and what kind of a man he was. +The London general servant is not used to the master indulging in such +transcendental ironies. And it was found impossible to explain to her that he +did it in order to feel the same interest in his own affairs that he always +felt in other people’s. +</p> + +<p> +“‘I know there’s a fellow called Smith,’ he said in his +rather weird way, ‘living in one of the tall houses in this terrace. I +know he is really happy, and yet I can never catch him at it.’ +</p> + +<p> +“Sometimes he would, of a sudden, treat his wife with a kind of paralyzed +politeness, like a young stranger struck with love at first sight. Sometimes he +would extend this poetic fear to the very furniture; would seem to apologize to +the chair he sat on, and climb the staircase as cautiously as a cragsman, to +renew in himself the sense of their skeleton of reality. Every stair is a +ladder and every stool a leg, he said. And at other times he would play the +stranger exactly in the opposite sense, and would enter by another way, so as +to feel like a thief and a robber. He would break and violate his own home, as +he had done with me that night. It was near morning before I could tear myself +from this queer confidence of the Man Who Would Not Die, and as I shook hands +with him on the doorstep the last load of fog was lifting, and rifts of +daylight revealed the stairway of irregular street levels that looked like the +end of the world. +</p> + +<p> +“It will be enough for many to say that I had passed a night with a +maniac. What other term, it will be said, could be applied to such a being? A +man who reminds himself that he is married by pretending not to be married! A +man who tries to covet his own goods instead of his neighbor’s! On this I +have but one word to say, and I feel it of my honour to say it, though no one +understands. I believe the maniac was one of those who do not merely come, but +are sent; sent like a great gale upon ships by Him who made His angels winds +and His messengers a flaming fire. This, at least, I know for certain. Whether +such men have laughed or wept, we have laughed at their laughter as much as at +their weeping. Whether they cursed or blessed the world, they have never fitted +it. It is true that men have shrunk from the sting of a great satirist as if +from the sting of an adder. But it is equally true that men flee from the +embrace of a great optimist as from the embrace of a bear. Nothing brings down +more curses than a real benediction. For the goodness of good things, like the +badness of bad things, is a prodigy past speech; it is to be pictured rather +than spoken. We shall have gone deeper than the deeps of heaven and grown older +than the oldest angels before we feel, even in its first faint vibrations, the +everlasting violence of that double passion with which God hates and loves the +world.—I am, yours faithfully, “Raymond Percy.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, ’oly, ’oly, ’oly!” said Mr. Moses Gould. +</p> + +<p> +The instant he had spoken all the rest knew they had been in an almost +religious state of submission and assent. Something had bound them together; +something in the sacred tradition of the last two words of the letter; +something also in the touching and boyish embarrassment with which Inglewood +had read them— for he had all the thin-skinned reverence of the agnostic. +Moses Gould was as good a fellow in his way as ever lived; far kinder to his +family than more refined men of pleasure, simple and steadfast in his +admiration, a thoroughly wholesome animal and a thoroughly genuine character. +But wherever there is conflict, crises come in which any soul, personal or +racial, unconsciously turns on the world the most hateful of its hundred faces. +English reverence, Irish mysticism, American idealism, looked up and saw on the +face of Moses a certain smile. It was that smile of the Cynic Triumphant, which +has been the tocsin for many a cruel riot in Russian villages or mediaeval +towns. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, ’oly, ’oly, ’oly!” said Moses Gould. +</p> + +<p> +Finding that this was not well received, he explained further, exuberance +deepening on his dark exuberant features. +</p> + +<p> +“Always fun to see a bloke swallow a wasp when ’e’s +corfin’ up a fly,” he said pleasantly. “Don’t you see +you’ve bunged up old Smith anyhow. If this parson’s tale’s +O.K.—why, Smith is ’ot. ’E’s pretty ’ot. We find +him elopin’ with Miss Gray (best respects!) in a cab. Well, what abart +this Mrs. Smith the curate talks of, with her blarsted +shyness—transmigogrified into a blighted sharpness? Miss Gray ain’t +been very sharp, but I reckon she’ll be pretty shy.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be a brute,” growled Michael Moon. +</p> + +<p> +None could lift their eyes to look at Mary; but Inglewood sent a glance along +the table at Innocent Smith. He was still bowed above his paper toys, and a +wrinkle was on his forehead that might have been worry or shame. He carefully +plucked out one corner of a complicated paper and tucked it in elsewhere; then +the wrinkle vanished and he looked relieved. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"></a> +Chapter III<br/> +The Round Road; or, the Desertion Charge</h3> + +<p> +Pym rose with sincere embarrassment; for he was an American, and his respect +for ladies was real, and not at all scientific. +</p> + +<p> +“Ignoring,” he said, “the delicate and considerable knightly +protests that have been called forth by my colleague’s native sense of +oration, and apologizing to all for whom our wild search for truth seems +unsuitable to the grand ruins of a feudal land, I still think my +colleague’s question by no means devoid of rel’vancy. The last +charge against the accused was one of burglary; the next charge on the paper is +of bigamy and desertion. It does without question appear that the defence, in +aspiring to rebut this last charge, have really admitted the next. Either +Innocent Smith is still under a charge of attempted burglary, or else that is +exploded; but he is pretty well fixed for attempted bigamy. It all depends on +what view we take of the alleged letter from Curate Percy. Under these +conditions I feel justified in claiming my right to questions. May I ask how +the defence got hold of the letter from Curate Percy? Did it come direct from +the prisoner?” +</p> + +<p> +“We have had nothing direct from the prisoner,” said Moon quietly. +“The few documents which the defence guarantees came to us from another +quarter.” +</p> + +<p> +“From what quarter?” asked Dr. Pym. +</p> + +<p> +“If you insist,” answered Moon, “we had them from Miss +Gray.” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Cyrus Pym quite forgot to close his eyes, and, instead, opened them +very wide. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you really mean to say,” he said, “that Miss Gray was in +possession of this document testifying to a previous Mrs. Smith?” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite so,” said Inglewood, and sat down. +</p> + +<p> +The doctor said something about infatuation in a low and painful voice, and +then with visible difficulty continued his opening remarks. +</p> + +<p> +“Unfortunately the tragic truth revealed by Curate Percy’s +narrative is only too crushingly confirmed by other and shocking documents in +our own possession. Of these the principal and most certain is the testimony of +Innocent Smith’s gardener, who was present at the most dramatic and +eye-opening of his many acts of marital infidelity. Mr. Gould, the gardener, +please.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Gould, with his tireless cheerfulness, arose to present the gardener. That +functionary explained that he had served Mr. and Mrs. Innocent Smith when they +had a little house on the edge of Croydon. From the gardener’s tale, with +its many small allusions, Inglewood grew certain he had seen the place. It was +one of those corners of town or country that one does not forget, for it looked +like a frontier. The garden hung very high above the lane, and its end was +steep and sharp, like a fortress. Beyond was a roll of real country, with a +white path sprawling across it, and the roots, boles, and branches of great +gray trees writhing and twisting against the sky. But as if to assert that the +lane itself was suburban, were sharply relieved against that gray and tossing +upland a lamp-post painted a peculiar yellow-green and a red pillar-box that +stood exactly at the corner. Inglewood was sure of the place; he had passed it +twenty times in his constitutionals on the bicycle; he had always dimly felt it +was a place where something might occur. But it gave him quite a shiver to feel +that the face of his frightful friend or enemy Smith might at any time have +appeared over the garden bushes above. The gardener’s account, unlike the +curate’s, was quite free from decorative adjectives, however many he may +have uttered privately when writing it. He simply said that on a particular +morning Mr. Smith came out and began to play about with a rake, as he often +did. Sometimes he would tickle the nose of his eldest child (he had two +children); sometimes he would hook the rake on to the branch of a tree, and +hoist himself up with horrible gymnastic jerks, like those of a giant frog in +its final agony. Never, apparently, did he think of putting the rake to any of +its proper uses, and the gardener, in consequence, treated his actions with +coldness and brevity. But the gardener was certain that on one particular +morning in October he (the gardener) had come round the corner of the house +carrying the hose, had seen Mr. Smith standing on the lawn in a striped red and +white jacket (which might have been his smoking-jacket, but was quite as like a +part of his pyjamas), and had heard him then and there call out to his wife, +who was looking out of the bedroom window on to the garden, these decisive and +very loud expressions— +</p> + +<p> +“I won’t stay here any longer. I’ve got another wife and much +better children a long way from here. My other wife’s got redder hair +than yours, and my other garden’s got a much finer situation; and +I’m going off to them.” +</p> + +<p> +With these words, apparently, he sent the rake flying far up into the sky, +higher than many could have shot an arrow, and caught it again. Then he cleared +the hedge at a leap and alighted on his feet down in the lane below, and set +off up the road without even a hat. Much of the picture was doubtless supplied +by Inglewood’s accidental memory of the place. He could see with his +mind’s eye that big bare-headed figure with the ragged rake swaggering up +the crooked woodland road, and leaving lamp-post and pillar-box behind. But the +gardener, on his own account, was quite prepared to swear to the public +confession of bigamy, to the temporary disappearance of the rake in the sky, +and the final disappearance of the man up the road. Moreover, being a local +man, he could swear that, beyond some local rumours that Smith had embarked on +the south-eastern coast, nothing was known of him again. +</p> + +<p> +This impression was somewhat curiously clinched by Michael Moon in the few but +clear phrases in which he opened the defence upon the third charge. So far from +denying that Smith had fled from Croydon and disappeared on the Continent, he +seemed prepared to prove all this on his own account. “I hope you are not +so insular,” he said, “that you will not respect the word of a +French innkeeper as much as that of an English gardener. By Mr. +Inglewood’s favour we will hear the French innkeeper.” +</p> + +<p> +Before the company had decided the delicate point Inglewood was already reading +the account in question. It was in French. It seemed to them to run something +like this:— +</p> + +<p> +“Sir,—Yes; I am Durobin of Durobin’s Cafe on the sea-front at +Gras, rather north of Dunquerque. I am willing to write all I know of the +stranger out of the sea. +</p> + +<p> +“I have no sympathy with eccentrics or poets. A man of sense looks for +beauty in things deliberately intended to be beautiful, such as a trim +flower-bed or an ivory statuette. One does not permit beauty to pervade +one’s whole life, just as one does not pave all the roads with ivory or +cover all the fields with geraniums. My faith, but we should miss the onions! +</p> + +<p> +“But whether I read things backwards through my memory, or whether there +are indeed atmospheres of psychology which the eye of science cannot as yet +pierce, it is the humiliating fact that on that particular evening I felt like +a poet—like any little rascal of a poet who drinks absinthe in the mad +Montmartre. +</p> + +<p> +“Positively the sea itself looked like absinthe, green and bitter and +poisonous. I had never known it look so unfamiliar before. In the sky was that +early and stormy darkness that is so depressing to the mind, and the wind blew +shrilly round the little lonely coloured kiosk where they sell the newspapers, +and along the sand-hills by the shore. There I saw a fishing-boat with a brown +sail standing in silently from the sea. It was already quite close, and out of +it clambered a man of monstrous stature, who came wading to shore with the +water not up to his knees, though it would have reached the hips of many men. +He leaned on a long rake or pole, which looked like a trident, and made him +look like a Triton. Wet as he was, and with strips of seaweed clinging to him, +he walked across to my cafe, and, sitting down at a table outside, asked for +cherry brandy, a liqueur which I keep, but is seldom demanded. Then the +monster, with great politeness, invited me to partake of a vermouth before my +dinner, and we fell into conversation. He had apparently crossed from Kent by a +small boat got at a private bargain because of some odd fancy he had for +passing promptly in an easterly direction, and not waiting for any of the +official boats. He was, he somewhat vaguely explained, looking for a house. +When I naturally asked him where the house was, he answered that he did not +know; it was on an island; it was somewhere to the east; or, as he expressed it +with a hazy and yet impatient gesture, ‘over there.’ +</p> + +<p> +“I asked him how, if he did not know the place, he would know it when he +saw it. Here he suddenly ceased to be hazy, and became alarmingly minute. He +gave a description of the house detailed enough for an auctioneer. I have +forgotten nearly all the details except the last two, which were that the +lamp-post was painted green, and that there was a red pillar-box at the corner. +</p> + +<p> +“‘A red pillar-box!’ I cried in astonishment. ‘Why, the +place must be in England!’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘I had forgotten,’ he said, nodding heavily. ‘That is +the island’s name.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘But, <i>nom du nom</i>,’ I cried testily, +‘you’ve just come from England, my boy.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘They SAID it was England,’ said my imbecile, +conspiratorially. ‘They said it was Kent. But Kentish men are such liars +one can’t believe anything they say.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Monsieur,’ I said, ‘you must pardon me. I am elderly, +and the <i>fumisteries</i> of the young men are beyond me. I go by common +sense, or, at the largest, by that extension of applied common sense called +science.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Science!’ cried the stranger. ‘There is only one good +thing science ever discovered—a good thing, good tidings of great +joy— that the world is round.’ +</p> + +<p> +“I told him with civility that his words conveyed no impression to my +intelligence. ‘I mean,’ he said, ‘that going right round the +world is the shortest way to where you are already.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Is it not even shorter,’ I asked, ‘to stop where you +are?’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘No, no, no!’ he cried emphatically. ‘That way is long +and very weary. At the end of the world, at the back of the dawn, I shall find +the wife I really married and the house that is really mine. And that house +will have a greener lamp-post and a redder pillar-box. Do you,’ he asked +with a sudden intensity, ‘do you never want to rush out of your house in +order to find it?’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘No, I think not,’ I replied; ‘reason tells a man from +the first to adapt his desires to the probable supply of life. I remain here, +content to fulfil the life of man. All my interests are here, and most of my +friends, and—’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘And yet,’ he cried, starting to his almost terrific height, +‘you made the French Revolution!’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Pardon me,’ I said, ‘I am not quite so elderly. A +relative perhaps.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘I mean your sort did!’ exclaimed this personage. +‘Yes, your damned smug, settled, sensible sort made the French +Revolution. Oh! I know some say it was no good, and you’re just back +where you were before. Why, blast it all, that’s just where we all want +to be—back where we were before! That is revolution—going right +round! Every revolution, like a repentance, is a return.’ +</p> + +<p> +“He was so excited that I waited till he had taken his seat again, and +then said something indifferent and soothing; but he struck the tiny table with +his colossal fist and went on. +</p> + +<p> +“‘I am going to have a revolution, not a French Revolution, but an +English Revolution. God has given to each tribe its own type of mutiny. The +Frenchmen march against the citadel of the city together; the Englishman +marches to the outskirts of the city, and alone. But I am going to turn the +world upside down, too. I’m going to turn myself upside down. I’m +going to walk upside down in the cursed upsidedownland of the Antipodes, where +trees and men hang head downward in the sky. But my revolution, like yours, +like the earth’s, will end up in the holy, happy place— the +celestial, incredible place—the place where we were before.’ +</p> + +<p> +“With these remarks, which can scarcely be reconciled with reason, he +leapt from the seat and strode away into the twilight, swinging his pole and +leaving behind him an excessive payment, which also pointed to some loss of +mental balance. This is all I know of the episode of the man landed from the +fishing-boat, and I hope it may serve the interests of justice.— Accept, +Sir, the assurances of the very high consideration, with which I have the +honour to be your obedient servant, “Jules Durobin.” +</p> + +<p> +“The next document in our dossier,” continued Inglewood, +“comes from the town of Crazok, in the central plains of Russia, and runs +as follows:— +</p> + +<p> +“Sir,—My name is Paul Nickolaiovitch: I am the stationmaster at the +station near Crazok. The great trains go by across the plains taking people to +China, but very few people get down at the platform where I have to watch. This +makes my life rather lonely, and I am thrown back much upon the books I have. +But I cannot discuss these very much with my neighbours, for enlightened ideas +have not spread in this part of Russia so much as in other parts. Many of the +peasants round here have never heard of Bernard Shaw. +</p> + +<p> +“I am a Liberal, and do my best to spread Liberal ideas; but since the +failure of the revolution this has been even more difficult. The revolutionists +committed many acts contrary to the pure principles of humanitarianism, with +which indeed, owing to the scarcity of books, they were ill acquainted. I did +not approve of these cruel acts, though provoked by the tyranny of the +government; but now there is a tendency to reproach all Intelligents with the +memory of them. This is very unfortunate for Intelligents. +</p> + +<p> +“It was when the railway strike was almost over, and a few trains came +through at long intervals, that I stood one day watching a train that had come +in. Only one person got out of the train, far away up at the other end of it, +for it was a very long train. It was evening, with a cold, greenish sky. A +little snow had fallen, but not enough to whiten the plain, which stretched +away a sort of sad purple in all directions, save where the flat tops of some +distant tablelands caught the evening light like lakes. As the solitary man +came stamping along on the thin snow by the train he grew larger and larger; I +thought I had never seen so large a man. But he looked even taller than he was, +I think, because his shoulders were very big and his head comparatively little. +From the big shoulders hung a tattered old jacket, striped dull red and dirty +white, very thin for the winter, and one hand rested on a huge pole such as +peasants rake in weeds with to burn them. +</p> + +<p> +“Before he had traversed the full length of the train he was entangled in +one of those knots of rowdies that were the embers of the extinct revolution, +though they mostly disgraced themselves upon the government side. I was just +moving to his assistance, when he whirled up his rake and laid out right and +left with such energy that he came through them without scathe and strode right +up to me, leaving them staggered and really astonished. +</p> + +<p> +“Yet when he reached me, after so abrupt an assertion of his aim, he +could only say rather dubiously in French that he wanted a house. +</p> + +<p> +“‘There are not many houses to be had round here,’ I answered +in the same language, ‘the district has been very disturbed. A +revolution, as you know, has recently been suppressed. Any further +building—’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Oh! I don’t mean that,’ he cried; ‘I mean a +real house—a live house. It really is a live house, for it runs away from +me.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘I am ashamed to say that something in his phrase or gesture moved +me profoundly. We Russians are brought up in an atmosphere of folk-lore, and +its unfortunate effects can still be seen in the bright colours of the +children’s dolls and of the ikons. For an instant the idea of a house +running away from a man gave me pleasure, for the enlightenment of man moves +slowly. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Have you no other house of your own?’ I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“‘I have left it,’ he said very sadly. ‘It was not the +house that grew dull, but I that grew dull in it. My wife was better than all +women, and yet I could not feel it.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘And so,’ I said with sympathy, ‘you walked straight +out of the front door, like a masculine Nora.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Nora?’ he inquired politely, apparently supposing it to be +a Russian word. +</p> + +<p> +“‘I mean Nora in “The Doll’s House,”’ I +replied. +</p> + +<p> +“At this he looked very much astonished, and I knew he was an Englishman; +for Englishmen always think that Russians study nothing but +‘ukases.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘The Doll’s House!’ he cried vehemently; +‘why, that is just where Ibsen was so wrong! Why, the whole aim of a +house is to be a doll’s house. Don’t you remember, when you were a +child, how those little windows WERE windows, while the big windows +weren’t. A child has a doll’s house, and shrieks when a front door +opens inwards. A banker has a real house, yet how numerous are the bankers who +fail to emit the faintest shriek when their real front doors open +inwards.’ +</p> + +<p> +“Something from the folk-lore of my infancy still kept me foolishly +silent; and before I could speak, the Englishman had leaned over and was saying +in a sort of loud whisper, ‘I have found out how to make a big thing +small. I have found out how to turn a house into a doll’s house. Get a +long way off it: God lets us turn all things into toys by his great gift of +distance. Once let me see my old brick house standing up quite little against +the horizon, and I shall want to go back to it again. I shall see the funny +little toy lamp-post painted green against the gate, and all the dear little +people like dolls looking out of the window. For the windows really open in my +doll’s house.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘But why?’ I asked, ‘should you wish to return to that +particular doll’s house? Having taken, like Nora, the bold step against +convention, having made yourself in the conventional sense disreputable, having +dared to be free, why should you not take advantage of your freedom? As the +greatest modern writers have pointed out, what you called your marriage was +only your mood. You have a right to leave it all behind, like the clippings of +your hair or the parings of your nails. Having once escaped, you have the world +before you. Though the words may seem strange to you, you are free in +Russia.’ +</p> + +<p> +“He sat with his dreamy eyes on the dark circles of the plains, where the +only moving thing was the long and labouring trail of smoke out of the railway +engine, violet in tint, volcanic in outline, the one hot and heavy cloud of +that cold clear evening of pale green. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Yes,’ he said with a huge sigh, ‘I am free in Russia. +You are right. I could really walk into that town over there and have love all +over again, and perhaps marry some beautiful woman and begin again, and nobody +could ever find me. Yes, you have certainly convinced me of something.’ +</p> + +<p> +“His tone was so queer and mystical that I felt impelled to ask him what +he meant, and of what exactly I had convinced him. +</p> + +<p> +“‘You have convinced me,’ he said with the same dreamy eye, +‘why it is really wicked and dangerous for a man to run away from his +wife.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘And why is it dangerous?’ I inquired. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Why, because nobody can find him,’ answered this odd +person, ‘and we all want to be found.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘The most original modern thinkers,’ I remarked, +‘Ibsen, Gorki, Nietzsche, Shaw, would all rather say that what we want +most is to be lost: to find ourselves in untrodden paths, and to do +unprecedented things: to break with the past and belong to the future.’ +</p> + +<p> +“He rose to his whole height somewhat sleepily, and looked round on what +was, I confess, a somewhat desolate scene—the dark purple plains, the +neglected railroad, the few ragged knots of malcontents. ‘I shall not +find the house here,’ he said. ‘It is still eastward— further +and further eastward.’ +</p> + +<p> +“Then he turned upon me with something like fury, and struck the foot of +his pole upon the frozen earth. +</p> + +<p> +“‘And if I do go back to my country,’ he cried, ‘I may +be locked up in a madhouse before I reach my own house. I have been a bit +unconventional in my time! Why, Nietzsche stood in a row of ramrods in the +silly old Prussian army, and Shaw takes temperance beverages in the suburbs; +but the things I do are unprecedented things. This round road I am treading is +an untrodden path. I do believe in breaking out; I am a revolutionist. But +don’t you see that all these real leaps and destructions and escapes are +only attempts to get back to Eden— to something we have had, to something +we at least have heard of? Don’t you see one only breaks the fence or +shoots the moon in order to get HOME?’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘No,’ I answered after due reflection, ‘I don’t +think I should accept that.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Ah,’ he said with a sort of a sigh, ‘then you have +explained a second thing to me.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘What do you mean?’ I asked; ‘what thing?’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Why your revolution has failed,’ he said; and walking +across quite suddenly to the train he got into it just as it was steaming away +at last. And as I saw the long snaky tail of it disappear along the darkening +flats. +</p> + +<p> +“I saw no more of him. But though his views were adverse to the best +advanced thought, he struck me as an interesting person: I should like to find +out if he has produced any literary works.—Yours, etc., “Paul +Nickolaiovitch.” +</p> + +<p> +There was something in this odd set of glimpses into foreign lives which kept +the absurd tribunal quieter than it had hitherto been, and it was again without +interruption that Inglewood opened another paper upon his pile. “The +Court will be indulgent,” he said, “if the next note lacks the +special ceremonies of our letter-writing. It is ceremonious enough in its own +way:— +</p> + +<p> +“The Celestial Principles are permanent: Greeting.—I am Wong-Hi, +and I tend the temple of all the ancestors of my family in the forest of Fu. +The man that broke through the sky and came to me said that it must be very +dull, but I showed him the wrongness of his thought. I am indeed in one place, +for my uncle took me to this temple when I was a boy, and in this I shall +doubtless die. But if a man remain in one place he shall see that the place +changes. The pagoda of my temple stands up silently out of all the trees, like +a yellow pagoda above many green pagodas. But the skies are sometimes blue like +porcelain, and sometimes green like jade, and sometimes red like garnet. But +the night is always ebony and always returns, said the Emperor Ho. +</p> + +<p> +“The sky-breaker came at evening very suddenly, for I had hardly seen any +stirring in the tops of the green trees over which I look as over a sea, when I +go to the top of the temple at morning. And yet when he came, it was as if an +elephant had strayed from the armies of the great kings of India. For palms +snapped, and bamboos broke, and there came forth in the sunshine before the +temple one taller than the sons of men. +</p> + +<p> +“Strips of red and white hung about him like ribbons of a carnival, and +he carried a pole with a row of teeth on it like the teeth of a dragon. His +face was white and discomposed, after the fashion of the foreigners, so that +they look like dead men filled with devils; and he spoke our speech brokenly. +</p> + +<p> +“He said to me, ‘This is only a temple; I am trying to find a +house.’ And then he told me with indelicate haste that the lamp outside +his house was green, and that there was a red post at the corner of it. +</p> + +<p> +“‘I have not seen your house nor any houses,’ I answered. +‘I dwell in this temple and serve the gods.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Do you believe in the gods?’ he asked with hunger in his +eyes, like the hunger of dogs. And this seemed to me a strange question to ask, +for what should a man do except what men have done? +</p> + +<p> +“‘My Lord,’ I said, ‘it must be good for men to hold up +their hands even if the skies are empty. For if there are gods, they will be +pleased, and if there are none, then there are none to be displeased. Sometimes +the skies are gold and sometimes porphyry and sometimes ebony, but the trees +and the temple stand still under it all. So the great Confucius taught us that +if we do always the same things with our hands and our feet as do the wise +beasts and birds, with our heads we may think many things: yes, my Lord, and +doubt many things. So long as men offer rice at the right season, and kindle +lanterns at the right hour, it matters little whether there be gods or no. For +these things are not to appease gods, but to appease men.’ +</p> + +<p> +“He came yet closer to me, so that he seemed enormous; yet his look was +very gentle. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Break your temple,’ he said, ‘and your gods will be +freed.’ +</p> + +<p> +“And I, smiling at his simplicity, answered: ‘And so, if there be +no gods, I shall have nothing but a broken temple.’ +</p> + +<p> +“And at this, that giant from whom the light of reason was withheld threw +out his mighty arms and asked me to forgive him. And when I asked him for what +he should be forgiven he answered: ‘For being right.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Your idols and emperors are so old and wise and +satisfying,’ he cried, ‘it is a shame that they should be wrong. We +are so vulgar and violent, we have done you so many iniquities— it is a +shame we should be right after all.’ +</p> + +<p> +“And I, still enduring his harmlessness, asked him why he thought that he +and his people were right. +</p> + +<p> +“And he answered: ‘We are right because we are bound where men +should be bound, and free where men should be free. We are right because we +doubt and destroy laws and customs— but we do not doubt our own right to +destroy them. For you live by customs, but we live by creeds. Behold me! In my +country I am called Smip. My country is abandoned, my name is defiled, because +I pursue around the world what really belongs to me. You are steadfast as the +trees because you do not believe. I am as fickle as the tempest because I do +believe. I do believe in my own house, which I shall find again. And at the +last remaineth the green lantern and the red post.’ +</p> + +<p> +“I said to him: ‘At the last remaineth only wisdom.’ +</p> + +<p> +“But even as I said the word he uttered a horrible shout, and rushing +forward disappeared among the trees. I have not seen this man again nor any +other man. The virtues of the wise are of fine brass. “Wong-Hi.” +</p> + +<p> +“The next letter I have to read,” proceeded Arthur Inglewood, +“will probably make clear the nature of our client’s curious but +innocent experiment. It is dated from a mountain village in California, and +runs as follows:— +</p> + +<p> +“Sir,—A person answering to the rather extraordinary description +required certainly went, some time ago, over the high pass of the Sierras on +which I live and of which I am probably the sole stationary inhabitant. I keep +a rudimentary tavern, rather ruder than a hut, on the very top of this +specially steep and threatening pass. My name is Louis Hara, and the very name +may puzzle you about my nationality. Well, it puzzles me a great deal. When one +has been for fifteen years without society it is hard to have patriotism; and +where there is not even a hamlet it is difficult to invent a nation. My father +was an Irishman of the fiercest and most free-shooting of the old Californian +kind. My mother was a Spaniard, proud of descent from the old Spanish families +round San Francisco, yet accused for all that of some admixture of Red Indian +blood. I was well educated and fond of music and books. But, like many other +hybrids, I was too good or too bad for the world; and after attempting many +things I was glad enough to get a sufficient though a lonely living in this +little cabaret in the mountains. In my solitude I fell into many of the ways of +a savage. Like an Eskimo, I was shapeless in winter; like a Red Indian, I wore +in hot summers nothing but a pair of leather trousers, with a great straw hat +as big as a parasol to defend me from the sun. I had a bowie knife at my belt +and a long gun under my arm; and I dare say I produced a pretty wild impression +on the few peaceable travellers that could climb up to my place. But I promise +you I never looked as mad as that man did. Compared with him I was Fifth +Avenue. +</p> + +<p> +“I dare say that living under the very top of the Sierras has an odd +effect on the mind; one tends to think of those lonely rocks not as peaks +coming to a point, but rather as pillars holding up heaven itself. Straight +cliffs sail up and away beyond the hope of the eagles; cliffs so tall that they +seem to attract the stars and collect them as sea-crags collect a mere glitter +of phosphorous. These terraces and towers of rock do not, like smaller crests, +seem to be the end of the world. Rather they seem to be its awful beginning: +its huge foundations. We could almost fancy the mountain branching out above us +like a tree of stone, and carrying all those cosmic lights like a candelabrum. +For just as the peaks failed us, soaring impossibly far, so the stars crowded +us (as it seemed), coming impossibly near. The spheres burst about us more like +thunderbolts hurled at the earth than planets circling placidly about it. +</p> + +<p> +“All this may have driven me mad; I am not sure. I know there is one +angle of the road down the pass where the rock leans out a little, and on windy +nights I seem to hear it clashing overhead with other rocks— yes, city +against city and citadel against citadel, far up into the night. It was on such +an evening that the strange man struggled up the pass. Broadly speaking, only +strange men did struggle up the pass. But I had never seen one like this one +before. +</p> + +<p> +“He carried (I cannot conceive why) a long, dilapidated garden rake, all +bearded and bedraggled with grasses, so that it looked like the ensign of some +old barbarian tribe. His hair, which was as long and rank as the grass, hung +down below his huge shoulders; and such clothes as clung about him were rags +and tongues of red and yellow, so that he had the air of being dressed like an +Indian in feathers or autumn leaves. The rake or pitchfork, or whatever it was, +he used sometimes as an alpenstock, sometimes (I was told) as a weapon. I do +not know why he should have used it as a weapon, for he had, and afterwards +showed me, an excellent six-shooter in his pocket. ‘But THAT,’ he +said, ‘I use only for peaceful purposes.’ I have no notion what he +meant. +</p> + +<p> +“He sat down on the rough bench outside my inn and drank some wine from +the vineyards below, sighing with ecstasy over it like one who had travelled +long among alien, cruel things and found at last something that he knew. Then +he sat staring rather foolishly at the rude lantern of lead and coloured glass +that hangs over my door. It is old, but of no value; my grandmother gave it to +me long ago: she was devout, and it happens that the glass is painted with a +crude picture of Bethlehem and the Wise Men and the Star. He seemed so +mesmerized with the transparent glow of Our Lady’s blue gown and the big +gold star behind, that he led me also to look at the thing, which I had not +done for fourteen years. +</p> + +<p> +“Then he slowly withdrew his eyes from this and looked out eastward where +the road fell away below us. The sunset sky was a vault of rich velvet, fading +away into mauve and silver round the edges of the dark mountain amphitheatre; +and between us and the ravine below rose up out of the deeps and went up into +the heights the straight solitary rock we call Green Finger. Of a queer +volcanic colour, and wrinkled all over with what looks undecipherable writing, +it hung there like a Babylonian pillar or needle. +</p> + +<p> +“The man silently stretched out his rake in that direction, and before he +spoke I knew what he meant. Beyond the great green rock in the purple sky hung +a single star. +</p> + +<p> +“‘A star in the east,’ he said in a strange hoarse voice like +one of our ancient eagles’. ‘The wise men followed the star and +found the house. But if I followed the star, should I find the house?’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘It depends perhaps,’ I said, smiling, ‘on whether you +are a wise man.’ I refrained from adding that he certainly didn’t +look it. +</p> + +<p> +“‘You may judge for yourself,’ he answered. ‘I am a man +who left his own house because he could no longer bear to be away from +it.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘It certainly sounds paradoxical,’ I said. +</p> + +<p> +“‘I heard my wife and children talking and saw them moving about +the room,’ he continued, ‘and all the time I knew they were walking +and talking in another house thousands of miles away, under the light of +different skies, and beyond the series of the seas. I loved them with a +devouring love, because they seemed not only distant but unattainable. Never +did human creatures seem so dear and so desirable: but I seemed like a cold +ghost; therefore I cast off their dust from my feet for a testimony. Nay, I did +more. I spurned the world under my feet so that it swung full circle like a +treadmill.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Do you really mean,’ I cried, ‘that you have come +right round the world? Your speech is English, yet you are coming from the +west.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘My pilgrimage is not yet accomplished,’ he replied sadly. +‘I have become a pilgrim to cure myself of being an exile.’ +</p> + +<p> +“Something in the word ‘pilgrim’ awoke down in the roots of +my ruinous experience memories of what my fathers had felt about the world, and +of something from whence I came. I looked again at the little pictured lantern +at which I had not looked for fourteen years. +</p> + +<p> +“‘My grandmother,’ I said in a low tone, ‘would have +said that we were all in exile, and that no earthly house could cure the holy +home-sickness that forbids us rest.’ +</p> + +<p> +“He was silent a long while, and watched a single eagle drift out beyond +the Green Finger into the darkening void. +</p> + +<p> +“Then he said, ‘I think your grandmother was right,’ and +stood up leaning on his grassy pole. ‘I think that must be the +reason,’ he said—‘the secret of this life of man, so ecstatic +and so unappeased. But I think there is more to be said. I think God has given +us the love of special places, of a hearth and of a native land, for a good +reason.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘I dare say,’ I said. ‘What reason?’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Because otherwise,’ he said, pointing his pole out at the +sky and the abyss, ‘we might worship that.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘What do you mean?’ I demanded. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Eternity,’ he said in his harsh voice, ‘the largest +of the idols— the mightiest of the rivals of God.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘You mean pantheism and infinity and all that,’ I suggested. +</p> + +<p> +“‘I mean,’ he said with increasing vehemence, ‘that if +there be a house for me in heaven it will either have a green lamp-post and a +hedge, or something quite as positive and personal as a green lamp-post and a +hedge. I mean that God bade me love one spot and serve it, and do all things +however wild in praise of it, so that this one spot might be a witness against +all the infinities and the sophistries, that Paradise is somewhere and not +anywhere, is something and not anything. And I would not be so very much +surprised if the house in heaven had a real green lamp-post after all.’ +</p> + +<p> +“With which he shouldered his pole and went striding down the perilous +paths below, and left me alone with the eagles. But since he went a fever of +homelessness will often shake me. I am troubled by rainy meadows and mud cabins +that I have never seen; and I wonder whether America will endure.— Yours +faithfully, Louis Hara.” +</p> + +<p> +After a short silence Inglewood said: “And, finally, we desire to put in +as evidence the following document:— +</p> + +<p> +“This is to say that I am Ruth Davis, and have been housemaid to Mrs. I. +Smith at ‘The Laurels’ in Croydon for the last six months. When I +came the lady was alone, with two children; she was not a widow, but her +husband was away. She was left with plenty of money and did not seem disturbed +about him, though she often hoped he would be back soon. She said he was rather +eccentric and a little change did him good. One evening last week I was +bringing the tea-things out on to the lawn when I nearly dropped them. The end +of a long rake was suddenly stuck over the hedge, and planted like a +jumping-pole; and over the hedge, just like a monkey on a stick, came a huge, +horrible man, all hairy and ragged like Robinson Crusoe. I screamed out, but my +mistress didn’t even get out of her chair, but smiled and said he wanted +shaving. Then he sat down quite calmly at the garden table and took a cup of +tea, and then I realized that this must be Mr. Smith himself. He has stopped +here ever since and does not really give much trouble, though I sometimes fancy +he is a little weak in his head. “Ruth Davis. +</p> + +<p> +“P.S.—I forgot to say that he looked round at the garden and said, +very loud and strong: ‘Oh, what a lovely place you’ve got;’ +just as if he’d never seen it before.” +</p> + +<p> +The room had been growing dark and drowsy; the afternoon sun sent one heavy +shaft of powdered gold across it, which fell with an intangible solemnity upon +the empty seat of Mary Gray, for the younger women had left the court before +the more recent of the investigations. Mrs. Duke was still asleep, and Innocent +Smith, looking like a large hunchback in the twilight, was bending closer and +closer to his paper toys. But the five men really engaged in the controversy, +and concerned not to convince the tribunal but to convince each other, still +sat round the table like the Committee of Public Safety. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly Moses Gould banged one big scientific book on top of another, cocked +his little legs up against the table, tipped his chair backwards so far as to +be in direct danger of falling over, emitted a startling and prolonged whistle +like a steam engine, and asserted that it was all his eye. +</p> + +<p> +When asked by Moon what was all his eye, he banged down behind the books again +and answered with considerable excitement, throwing his papers about. +“All those fairy-tales you’ve been reading out,” he said. +“Oh! don’t talk to me! I ain’t littery and that, but I know +fairy-tales when I hear ’em. I got a bit stumped in some of the +philosophical bits and felt inclined to go out for a B. and S. But we’re +living in West ’Ampstead and not in ’Ell; and the long and the +short of it is that some things ’appen and some things don’t +’appen. Those are the things that don’t ’appen.” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought,” said Moon gravely, “that we quite clearly +explained—” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, old chap, you quite clearly explained,” assented Mr. Gould +with extraordinary volubility. “You’d explain an elephant off the +doorstep, you would. I ain’t a clever chap like you; but I ain’t a +born natural, Michael Moon, and when there’s an elephant on my doorstep I +don’t listen to no explanations. ‘It’s got a trunk,’ I +says.—‘My trunk,’ you says: ‘I’m fond of +travellin’, and a change does me good.’—‘But the +blasted thing’s got tusks,’ I says.—‘Don’t look a +gift ’orse in the mouth,’ you says, ‘but thank the goodness +and the graice that on your birth ’as smiled.’—‘But +it’s nearly as big as the ’ouse,’ I +says.—‘That’s the bloomin’ perspective,’ you +says, ‘and the sacred magic of distance.’—‘Why, the +elephant’s trumpetin’ like the Day of Judgement,’ I +says.—‘That’s your own conscience a-talking to you, Moses +Gould,’ you says in a grive and tender voice. Well, I ’ave got a +conscience as much as you. I don’t believe most of the things they tell +you in church on Sundays; and I don’t believe these ’ere things any +more because you goes on about ’em as if you was in church. I believe an +elephant’s a great big ugly dingerous beast— and I believe +Smith’s another.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean to say,” asked Inglewood, “that you still doubt +the evidence of exculpation we have brought forward?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I do still doubt it,” said Gould warmly. “It’s +all a bit too far-fetched, and some of it a bit too far off. ’Ow can we +test all those tales? ’Ow can we drop in and buy the ‘Pink +’Un’ at the railway station at Kosky Wosky or whatever it was? +’Ow can we go and do a gargle at the saloon-bar on top of the Sierra +Mountains? But anybody can go and see Bunting’s boarding-house at +Worthing.” +</p> + +<p> +Moon regarded him with an expression of real or assumed surprise. +</p> + +<p> +“Any one,” continued Gould, “can call on Mr. Trip.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is a comforting thought,” replied Michael with restraint; +“but why should any one call on Mr. Trip?” +</p> + +<p> +“For just exactly the sime reason,” cried the excited Moses, +hammering on the table with both hands, “for just exactly the sime reason +that he should communicate with Messrs. ’Anbury and Bootle of Paternoster +Row and with Miss Gridley’s ’igh class Academy at ’Endon, and +with old Lady Bullingdon who lives at Penge.” +</p> + +<p> +“Again, to go at once to the moral roots of life,” said Michael, +“why is it among the duties of man to communicate with old Lady +Bullingdon who lives at Penge?” +</p> + +<p> +“It ain’t one of the duties of man,” said Gould, “nor +one of his pleasures, either, I can tell you. She takes the crumpet, does Lady +Bullingdon at Penge. But it’s one of the duties of a prosecutor +pursuin’ the innocent, blameless butterfly career of your friend Smith, +and it’s the sime with all the others I mentioned.” +</p> + +<p> +“But why do you bring in these people here?” asked Inglewood. +</p> + +<p> +“Why! Because we’ve got proof enough to sink a steamboat,” +roared Moses; “because I’ve got the papers in my very ’and; +because your precious Innocent is a blackguard and ’ome smasher, and +these are the ’omes he’s smashed. I don’t set up for a +’oly man; but I wouldn’t ’ave all those poor girls on my +conscience for something. And I think a chap that’s capable of deserting +and perhaps killing ’em all is about capable of cracking a crib or +shootin’ an old schoolmaster—so I don’t care much about the +other yarns one way or another.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think,” said Dr. Cyrus Pym with a refined cough, “that we +are approaching this matter rather irregularly. This is really the fourth +charge on the charge sheet, and perhaps I had better put it before you in an +ordered and scientific manner.” +</p> + +<p> +Nothing but a faint groan from Michael broke the silence of the darkening room. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"></a> +Chapter IV<br/> +The Wild Weddings; or, the Polygamy Charge</h3> + +<p> +“A modern man,” said Dr. Cyrus Pym, “must, if he be +thoughtful, approach the problem of marriage with some caution. Marriage is a +stage—doubtless a suitable stage—in the long advance of mankind +towards a goal which we cannot as yet conceive; which we are not, perhaps, as +yet fitted even to desire. What, gentlemen, is the ethical position of +marriage? Have we outlived it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Outlived it?” broke out Moon; “why, nobody’s ever +survived it! Look at all the people married since Adam and Eve—and all as +dead as mutton.” +</p> + +<p> +“This is no doubt an inter-pellation joc’lar in its +character,” said Dr. Pym frigidly. “I cannot tell what may be Mr. +Moon’s matured and ethical view of marriage—” +</p> + +<p> +“I can tell,” said Michael savagely, out of the gloom. +“Marriage is a duel to the death, which no man of honour should +decline.” +</p> + +<p> +“Michael,” said Arthur Inglewood in a low voice, “you MUST +keep quiet.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Moon,” said Pym with exquisite good temper, “probably +regards the institution in a more antiquated manner. Probably he would make it +stringent and uniform. He would treat divorce in some great soul of +steel—the divorce of a Julius Caesar or of a Salt Ring Robinson— +exactly as he would treat some no-account tramp or labourer who scoots from his +wife. Science has views broader and more humane. Just as murder for the +scientist is a thirst for absolute destruction, just as theft for the scientist +is a hunger for monotonous acquisition, so polygamy for the scientist is an +extreme development of the instinct for variety. A man thus afflicted is +incapable of constancy. Doubtless there is a physical cause for this flitting +from flower to flower— as there is, doubtless, for the intermittent +groaning which appears to afflict Mr. Moon at the present moment. Our own +world-scorning Winterbottom has even dared to say, ‘For a certain rare +and fine physical type polygamy is but the realization of the variety of +females, as comradeship is the realization of the variety of males.’ In +any case, the type that tends to variety is recognized by all authoritative +inquirers. Such a type, if the widower of a negress, does in many ascertained +cases espouse <i>en seconde noces</i> an albino; such a type, when freed from +the gigantic embraces of a female Patagonian, will often evolve from its own +imaginative instinct the consoling figure of an Eskimo. To such a type there +can be no doubt that the prisoner belongs. If blind doom and unbearable +temptation constitute any slight excuse for a man, there is no doubt that he +has these excuses. +</p> + +<p> +“Earlier in the inquiry the defence showed real chivalric ideality in +admitting half of our story without further dispute. We should like to +acknowledge and imitate so eminently large-hearted a style by conceding also +that the story told by Curate Percy about the canoe, the weir, and the young +wife seems to be substantially true. Apparently Smith did marry a young woman +he had nearly run down in a boat; it only remains to be considered whether it +would not have been kinder of him to have murdered her instead of marrying her. +In confirmation of this fact I can now con-cede to the defence an +unquestionable record of such a marriage.” +</p> + +<p> +So saying, he handed across to Michael a cutting from the “Maidenhead +Gazette” which distinctly recorded the marriage of the daughter of a +“coach,” a tutor well known in the place, to Mr. Innocent Smith, +late of Brakespeare College, Cambridge. +</p> + +<p> +When Dr. Pym resumed it was realized that his face had grown at once both +tragic and triumphant. +</p> + +<p> +“I pause upon this pre-liminary fact,” he said seriously, +“because this fact alone would give us the victory, were we aspiring +after victory and not after truth. As far as the personal and domestic problem +holds us, that problem is solved. Dr. Warner and I entered this house at an +instant of highly emotional diff’culty. England’s Warner has +entered many houses to save human kind from sickness; this time he entered to +save an innocent lady from a walking pestilence. Smith was just about to carry +away a young girl from this house; his cab and bag were at the very door. He +had told her she was going to await the marriage license at the house of his +aunt. That aunt,” continued Cyrus Pym, his face darkening +grandly—“that visionary aunt had been the dancing +will-o’-the-wisp who had led many a high-souled maiden to her doom. Into +how many virginal ears has he whispered that holy word? When he said +‘aunt’ there glowed about her all the merriment and high morality +of the Anglo-Saxon home. Kettles began to hum, pussy cats to purr, in that very +wild cab that was being driven to destruction.” +</p> + +<p> +Inglewood looked up, to find, to his astonishment (as many another denizen of +the eastern hemisphere has found), that the American was not only perfectly +serious, but was really eloquent and affecting— when the difference of +the hemispheres was adjusted. +</p> + +<p> +“It is therefore atrociously evident that the man Smith has at least +represented himself to one innocent female of this house as an eligible +bachelor, being, in fact, a married man. I agree with my colleague, Mr. Gould, +that no other crime could approximate to this. As to whether what our ancestors +called purity has any ultimate ethical value indeed, science hesitates with a +high, proud hesitation. But what hesitation can there be about the baseness of +a citizen who ventures, by brutal experiments upon living females, to +anticipate the verdict of science on such a point? +</p> + +<p> +“The woman mentioned by Curate Percy as living with Smith in Highbury may +or may not be the same as the lady he married in Maidenhead. If one short sweet +spell of constancy and heart repose interrupted the plunging torrent of his +profligate life, we will not deprive him of that long past possibility. After +that conjectural date, alas, he seems to have plunged deeper and deeper into +the shaking quagmires of infidelity and shame.” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Pym closed his eyes, but the unfortunate fact that there was no more light +left this familiar signal without its full and proper moral effect. After a +pause, which almost partook of the character of prayer, he continued. +</p> + +<p> +“The first instance of the accused’s repeated and irregular +nuptials,” he exclaimed, “comes from Lady Bullingdon, who expresses +herself with the high haughtiness which must be excused in those who look out +upon all mankind from the turrets of a Norman and ancestral keep. The +communication she has sent to us runs as follows:— +</p> + +<p> +“Lady Bullingdon recalls the painful incident to which reference is made, +and has no desire to deal with it in detail. The girl Polly Green was a +perfectly adequate dressmaker, and lived in the village for about two years. +Her unattached condition was bad for her as well as for the general morality of +the village. Lady Bullingdon, therefore, allowed it to be understood that she +favoured the marriage of the young woman. The villagers, naturally wishing to +oblige Lady Bullingdon, came forward in several cases; and all would have been +well had it not been for the deplorable eccentricity or depravity of the girl +Green herself. Lady Bullingdon supposes that where there is a village there +must be a village idiot, and in her village, it seems, there was one of these +wretched creatures. Lady Bullingdon only saw him once, and she is quite aware +that it is really difficult to distinguish between actual idiots and the +ordinary heavy type of the rural lower classes. She noticed, however, the +startling smallness of his head in comparison to the rest of his body; and, +indeed, the fact of his having appeared upon election day wearing the rosette +of both the two opposing parties appears to Lady Bullingdon to put the matter +quite beyond doubt. Lady Bullingdon was astounded to learn that this afflicted +being had put himself forward as one of the suitors of the girl in question. +Lady Bullingdon’s nephew interviewed the wretch upon the point, telling +him that he was a ‘donkey’ to dream of such a thing, and actually +received, along with an imbecile grin, the answer that donkeys generally go +after carrots. But Lady Bullingdon was yet further amazed to find the unhappy +girl inclined to accept this monstrous proposal, though she was actually asked +in marriage by Garth, the undertaker, a man in a far superior position to her +own. Lady Bullingdon could not, of course, countenance such an arrangement for +a moment, and the two unhappy persons escaped for a clandestine marriage. Lady +Bullingdon cannot exactly recall the man’s name, but thinks it was Smith. +He was always called in the village the Innocent. Later, Lady Bullingdon +believes he murdered Green in a mental outbreak.” +</p> + +<p> +“The next communication,” proceeded Pym, “is more conspicuous +for brevity, but I am of the opinion that it will adequately convey the upshot. +It is dated from the offices of Messrs. Hanbury and Bootle, publishers, and is +as follows:— +</p> + +<p> +“Sir,—Yrs. rcd. and conts. noted. Rumour re typewriter possibly +refers to a Miss Blake or similar name, left here nine years ago to marry an +organ-grinder. Case was undoubtedly curious, and attracted police attention. +Girl worked excellently till about Oct. 1907, when apparently went mad. Record +was written at the time, part of which I enclose.— Yrs., etc., W. Trip. +</p> + +<p> +“The fuller statement runs as follows:— +</p> + +<p> +“On October 12 a letter was sent from this office to Messrs. Bernard and +Juke, bookbinders. Opened by Mr. Juke, it was found to contain the following: +‘Sir, our Mr. Trip will call at 3, as we wish to know whether it is +really decided 00000073bb!!!!!xy.’ To this Mr. Juke, a person of a +playful mind, returned the answer: ‘Sir, I am in a position to give it as +my most decided opinion that it is not really decided that 00000073bb!!!!!xy. +Yrs., etc., ‘J. Juke.’ +</p> + +<p> +“On receiving this extraordinary reply, our Mr. Trip asked for the +original letter sent from him, and found that the typewriter had indeed +substituted these demented hieroglyphics for the sentences really dictated to +her. Our Mr. Trip interviewed the girl, fearing that she was in an unbalanced +state, and was not much reassured when she merely remarked that she always went +like that when she heard the barrel organ. Becoming yet more hysterical and +extravagant, she made a series of most improbable statements—as, that she +was engaged to the barrel-organ man, that he was in the habit of serenading her +on that instrument, that she was in the habit of playing back to him upon the +typewriter (in the style of King Richard and Blondel), and that the organ +man’s musical ear was so exquisite and his adoration of herself so ardent +that he could detect the note of the different letters on the machine, and was +enraptured by them as by a melody. To all these statements of course our Mr. +Trip and the rest of us only paid that sort of assent that is paid to persons +who must as quickly as possible be put in the charge of their relations. But on +our conducting the lady downstairs, her story received the most startling and +even exasperating confirmation; for the organ-grinder, an enormous man with a +small head and manifestly a fellow-lunatic, had pushed his barrel organ in at +the office doors like a battering-ram, and was boisterously demanding his +alleged <i>fiancée</i>. When I myself came on the scene he was flinging his +great, ape-like arms about and reciting a poem to her. But we were used to +lunatics coming and reciting poems in our office, and we were not quite +prepared for what followed. The actual verse he uttered began, I think, +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +‘O vivid, inviolate head,<br/> +Ringed—’ +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +but he never got any further. Mr. Trip made a sharp movement towards him, and +the next moment the giant picked up the poor lady typewriter like a doll, sat +her on top of the organ, ran it with a crash out of the office doors, and raced +away down the street like a flying wheelbarrow. I put the police upon the +matter; but no trace of the amazing pair could be found. I was sorry myself; +for the lady was not only pleasant but unusually cultivated for her position. +As I am leaving the service of Messrs. Hanbury and Bootle, I put these things +in a record and leave it with them. (Signed) Aubrey Clarke, Publishers’ +Reader. +</p> + +<p> +“And the last document,” said Dr. Pym complacently, “is from +one of those high-souled women who have in this age introduced your English +girlhood to hockey, the higher mathematics, and every form of ideality. +</p> + +<p> +“Dear Sir (she writes),—I have no objection to telling you the +facts about the absurd incident you mention; though I would ask you to +communicate them with some caution, for such things, however entertaining in +the abstract, are not always auxiliary to the success of a girls’ school. +The truth is this: I wanted some one to deliver a lecture on a philological or +historical question—a lecture which, while containing solid educational +matter, should be a little more popular and entertaining than usual, as it was +the last lecture of the term. I remembered that a Mr. Smith of Cambridge had +written somewhere or other an amusing essay about his own somewhat ubiquitous +name— an essay which showed considerable knowledge of genealogy and +topography. I wrote to him, asking if he would come and give us a bright +address upon English surnames; and he did. It was very bright, almost too +bright. To put the matter otherwise, by the time that he was halfway through it +became apparent to the other mistresses and myself that the man was totally and +entirely off his head. He began rationally enough by dealing with the two +departments of place names and trade names, and he said (quite rightly, I dare +say) that the loss of all significance in names was an instance of the +deadening of civilization. But then he went on calmly to maintain that every +man who had a place name ought to go to live in that place, and that every man +who had a trade name ought instantly to adopt that trade; that people named +after colours should always dress in those colours, and that people named after +trees or plants (such as Beech or Rose) ought to surround and decorate +themselves with these vegetables. In a slight discussion that arose afterwards +among the elder girls the difficulties of the proposal were clearly, and even +eagerly, pointed out. It was urged, for instance, by Miss Younghusband that it +was substantially impossible for her to play the part assigned to her; Miss +Mann was in a similar dilemma, from which no modern views on the sexes could +apparently extricate her; and some young ladies, whose surnames happened to be +Low, Coward, and Craven, were quite enthusiastic against the idea. But all this +happened afterwards. What happened at the crucial moment was that the lecturer +produced several horseshoes and a large iron hammer from his bag, announced his +immediate intention of setting up a smithy in the neighbourhood, and called on +every one to rise in the same cause as for a heroic revolution. The other +mistresses and I attempted to stop the wretched man, but I must confess that by +an accident this very intercession produced the worst explosion of his +insanity. He was waving the hammer, and wildly demanding the names of +everybody; and it so happened that Miss Brown, one of the younger teachers, was +wearing a brown dress—a reddish-brown dress that went quietly enough with +the warmer colour of her hair, as well she knew. She was a nice girl, and nice +girls do know about those things. But when our maniac discovered that we really +had a Miss Brown who WAS brown, his <i>idée fixe</i> blew up like a powder +magazine, and there, in the presence of all the mistresses and girls, he +publicly proposed to the lady in the red-brown dress. You can imagine the +effect of such a scene at a girls’ school. At least, if you fail to +imagine it, I certainly fail to describe it. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, the anarchy died down in a week or two, and I can think of it +now as a joke. There was only one curious detail, which I will tell you, as you +say your inquiry is vital; but I should desire you to consider it a little more +confidential than the rest. Miss Brown, who was an excellent girl in every way, +did quite suddenly and surreptitiously leave us only a day or two afterwards. I +should never have thought that her head would be the one to be really turned by +so absurd an excitement.—Believe me, yours faithfully, Ada Gridley. +</p> + +<p> +“I think,” said Pym, with a really convincing simplicity and +seriousness, “that these letters speak for themselves.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Moon rose for the last time in a darkness that gave no hint of whether his +native gravity was mixed with his native irony. +</p> + +<p> +“Throughout this inquiry,” he said, “but especially in this +its closing phase, the prosecution has perpetually relied upon one argument; I +mean the fact that no one knows what has become of all the unhappy women +apparently seduced by Smith. There is no sort of proof that they were murdered, +but that implication is perpetually made when the question is asked as to how +they died. Now I am not interested in how they died, or when they died, or +whether they died. But I am interested in another analogous question—that +of how they were born, and when they were born, and whether they were born. Do +not misunderstand me. I do not dispute the existence of these women, or the +veracity of those who have witnessed to them. I merely remark on the notable +fact that only one of these victims, the Maidenhead girl, is described as +having any home or parents. All the rest are boarders or birds of +passage—a guest, a solitary dressmaker, a bachelor-girl doing +typewriting. Lady Bullingdon, looking from her turrets, which she bought from +the Whartons with the old soap-boiler’s money when she jumped at marrying +an unsuccessful gentleman from Ulster—Lady Bullingdon, looking out from +those turrets, did really see an object which she describes as Green. Mr. Trip, +of Hanbury and Bootle, really did have a typewriter betrothed to Smith. Miss +Gridley, though idealistic, is absolutely honest. She did house, feed, and +teach a young woman whom Smith succeeded in decoying away. We admit that all +these women really lived. But we still ask whether they were ever born?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, crikey!” said Moses Gould, stifled with amusement. +</p> + +<p> +“There could hardly,” interposed Pym with a quiet smile, “be +a better instance of the neglect of true scientific process. The scientist, +when once convinced of the fact of vitality and consciousness, would infer from +these the previous process of generation.” +</p> + +<p> +“If these gals,” said Gould impatiently—“if these gals +were all alive (all alive O!) I’d chance a fiver they were all +born.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’d lose your fiver,” said Michael, speaking gravely out +of the gloom. “All those admirable ladies were alive. They were more +alive for having come into contact with Smith. They were all quite definitely +alive, but only one of them was ever born.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you asking us to believe—” began Dr. Pym. +</p> + +<p> +“I am asking you a second question,” said Moon sternly. “Can +the court now sitting throw any light on a truly singular circumstance? Dr. +Pym, in his interesting lecture on what are called, I believe, the relations of +the sexes, said that Smith was the slave of a lust for variety which would lead +a man first to a negress and then to an albino, first to a Patagonian giantess +and then to a tiny Eskimo. But is there any evidence of such variety here? Is +there any trace of a gigantic Patagonian in the story? Was the typewriter an +Eskimo? So picturesque a circumstance would not surely have escaped remark. Was +Lady Bullingdon’s dressmaker a negress? A voice in my bosom answers, +‘No!’ Lady Bullingdon, I am sure, would think a negress so +conspicuous as to be almost Socialistic, and would feel something a little +rakish even about an albino. +</p> + +<p> +“But was there in Smith’s taste any such variety as the learned +doctor describes? So far as our slight materials go, the very opposite seems to +be the case. We have only one actual description of any of the prisoner’s +wives— the short but highly poetic account by the aesthetic curate. +‘Her dress was the colour of spring, and her hair of autumn +leaves.’ Autumn leaves, of course, are of various colours, some of which +would be rather startling in hair (green, for instance); but I think such an +expression would be most naturally used of the shades from red-brown to red, +especially as ladies with their coppery-coloured hair do frequently wear light +artistic greens. Now when we come to the next wife, we find the eccentric +lover, when told he is a donkey, answering that donkeys always go after +carrots; a remark which Lady Bullingdon evidently regarded as pointless and +part of the natural table-talk of a village idiot, but which has an obvious +meaning if we suppose that Polly’s hair was red. Passing to the next +wife, the one he took from the girls’ school, we find Miss Gridley +noticing that the schoolgirl in question wore ‘a reddish-brown dress, +that went quietly enough with the warmer colour of her hair.’ In other +words, the colour of the girl’s hair was something redder than red-brown. +Lastly, the romantic organ-grinder declaimed in the office some poetry that +only got as far as the words,— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +‘O vivid, inviolate head,<br/> +Ringed—’ +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +But I think that a wide study of the worst modern poets will enable us to guess +that ‘ringed with a glory of red,’ or ‘ringed with its +passionate red,’ was the line that rhymed to ‘head.’ In this +case once more, therefore, there is good reason to suppose that Smith fell in +love with a girl with some sort of auburn or darkish-red +hair—rather,” he said, looking down at the table, “rather +like Miss Gray’s hair.” +</p> + +<p> +Cyrus Pym was leaning forward with lowered eyelids, ready with one of his more +pedantic interpellations; but Moses Gould suddenly struck his forefinger on his +nose, with an expression of extreme astonishment and intelligence in his +brilliant eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Moon’s contention at present,” interposed Pym, “is +not, even if veracious, inconsistent with the lunatico-criminal view of I. +Smith, which we have nailed to the mast. Science has long anticipated such a +complication. An incurable attraction to a particular type of physical woman is +one of the commonest of criminal per-versities, and when not considered +narrowly, but in the light of induction and evolution—” +</p> + +<p> +“At this late stage,” said Michael Moon very quietly, “I may +perhaps relieve myself of a simple emotion that has been pressing me throughout +the proceedings, by saying that induction and evolution may go and boil +themselves. The Missing Link and all that is well enough for kids, but +I’m talking about things we know here. All we know of the Missing Link is +that he is missing—and he won’t be missed either. I know all about +his human head and his horrid tail; they belong to a very old game called +‘Heads I win, tails you lose.’ If you do find a fellow’s +bones, it proves he lived a long while ago; if you don’t find his bones, +it proves how long ago he lived. That is the game you’ve been playing +with this Smith affair. Because Smith’s head is small for his shoulders +you call him microcephalous; if it had been large, you’d have called it +water-on-the-brain. As long as poor old Smith’s seraglio seemed pretty +various, variety was the sign of madness: now, because it’s turning out +to be a bit monochrome—now monotony is the sign of madness. I suffer from +all the disadvantages of being a grown-up person, and I’m jolly well +going to get some of the advantages too; and with all politeness I propose not +to be bullied with long words instead of short reasons, or consider your +business a triumphant progress merely because you’re always finding out +that you were wrong. Having relieved myself of these feelings, I have merely to +add that I regard Dr. Pym as an ornament to the world far more beautiful than +the Parthenon, or the monument on Bunker’s Hill, and that I propose to +resume and conclude my remarks on the many marriages of Mr. Innocent Smith. +</p> + +<p> +“Besides this red hair, there is another unifying thread that runs +through these scattered incidents. There is something very peculiar and +suggestive about the names of these women. Mr. Trip, you will remember, said he +thought the typewriter’s name was Blake, but could not remember exactly. +I suggest that it might have been Black, and in that case we have a curious +series: Miss Green in Lady Bullingdon’s village; Miss Brown at the Hendon +School; Miss Black at the publishers. A chord of colours, as it were, which +ends up with Miss Gray at Beacon House, West Hampstead.” +</p> + +<p> +Amid a dead silence Moon continued his exposition. “What is the meaning +of this queer coincidence about colours? Personally I cannot doubt for a moment +that these names are purely arbitrary names, assumed as part of some general +scheme or joke. I think it very probable that they were taken from a series of +costumes— that Polly Green only meant Polly (or Mary) when in green, and +that Mary Gray only means Mary (or Polly) when in gray. This would +explain—” +</p> + +<p> +Cyrus Pym was standing up rigid and almost pallid. “Do you actually mean +to suggest—” he cried. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Michael; “I do mean to suggest that. Innocent +Smith has had many wooings, and many weddings for all I know; but he has had +only one wife. She was sitting on that chair an hour ago, and is now talking to +Miss Duke in the garden. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, Innocent Smith has behaved here, as he has on hundreds of other +occasions, upon a plain and perfectly blameless principle. It is odd and +extravagant in the modern world, but not more than any other principle plainly +applied in the modern world would be. His principle can be quite simply stated: +he refuses to die while he is still alive. He seeks to remind himself, by every +electric shock to the intellect, that he is still a man alive, walking on two +legs about the world. For this reason he fires bullets at his best friends; for +this reason he arranges ladders and collapsible chimneys to steal his own +property; for this reason he goes plodding around a whole planet to get back to +his own home; and for this reason he has been in the habit of taking the woman +whom he loved with a permanent loyalty, and leaving her about (so to speak) at +schools, boarding-houses, and places of business, so that he might recover her +again and again with a raid and a romantic elopement. He seriously sought by a +perpetual recapture of his bride to keep alive the sense of her perpetual +value, and the perils that should be run for her sake. +</p> + +<p> +“So far his motives are clear enough; but perhaps his convictions are not +quite so clear. I think Innocent Smith has an idea at the bottom of all this. I +am by no means sure that I believe it myself, but I am quite sure that it is +worth a man’s uttering and defending. +</p> + +<p> +“The idea that Smith is attacking is this. Living in an entangled +civilization, we have come to think certain things wrong which are not wrong at +all. We have come to think outbreak and exuberance, banging and barging, +rotting and wrecking, wrong. In themselves they are not merely pardonable; they +are unimpeachable. There is nothing wicked about firing a pistol off even at a +friend, so long as you do not mean to hit him and know you won’t. It is +no more wrong than throwing a pebble at the sea—less, for you do +occasionally hit the sea. There is nothing wrong in bashing down a chimney-pot +and breaking through a roof, so long as you are not injuring the life or +property of other men. It is no more wrong to choose to enter a house from the +top than to choose to open a packing-case from the bottom. There is nothing +wicked about walking round the world and coming back to your own house; it is +no more wicked than walking round the garden and coming back to your own house. +And there is nothing wicked about picking up your wife here, there, and +everywhere, if, forsaking all others, you keep only to her so long as you both +shall live. It is as innocent as playing a game of hide-and-seek in the garden. +You associate such acts with blackguardism by a mere snobbish association, as +you think there is something vaguely vile about going (or being seen going) +into a pawnbroker’s or a public-house. You think there is something +squalid and commonplace about such a connection. You are mistaken. +</p> + +<p> +“This man’s spiritual power has been precisely this, that he has +distinguished between custom and creed. He has broken the conventions, but he +has kept the commandments. It is as if a man were found gambling wildly in a +gambling hell, and you found that he only played for trouser buttons. It is as +if you found a man making a clandestine appointment with a lady at a Covent +Garden ball, and then you found it was his grandmother. Everything is ugly and +discreditable, except the facts; everything is wrong about him, except that he +has done no wrong. +</p> + +<p> +“It will then be asked, ‘Why does Innocent Smith continue far into +his middle age a farcical existence, that exposes him to so many false +charges?’ To this I merely answer that he does it because he really is +happy, because he really is hilarious, because he really is a man and alive. He +is so young that climbing garden trees and playing silly practical jokes are +still to him what they once were to us all. And if you ask me yet again why he +alone among men should be fed with such inexhaustible follies, I have a very +simple answer to that, though it is one that will not be approved. +</p> + +<p> +“There is but one answer, and I am sorry if you don’t like it. If +Innocent is happy, it is because he IS innocent. If he can defy the +conventions, it is just because he can keep the commandments. It is just +because he does not want to kill but to excite to life that a pistol is still +as exciting to him as it is to a schoolboy. It is just because he does not want +to steal, because he does not covet his neighbour’s goods, that he has +captured the trick (oh, how we all long for it!), the trick of coveting his own +goods. It is just because he does not want to commit adultery that he achieves +the romance of sex; it is just because he loves one wife that he has a hundred +honeymoons. If he had really murdered a man, if he had really deserted a woman, +he would not be able to feel that a pistol or a love-letter was like a +song— at least, not a comic song.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do not imagine, please, that any such attitude is easy to me or appeals +in any particular way to my sympathies. I am an Irishman, and a certain sorrow +is in my bones, bred either of the persecutions of my creed, or of my creed +itself. Speaking singly, I feel as if man was tied to tragedy, and there was no +way out of the trap of old age and doubt. But if there is a way out, then, by +Christ and St. Patrick, this is the way out. If one could keep as happy as a +child or a dog, it would be by being as innocent as a child, or as sinless as a +dog. Barely and brutally to be good—that may be the road, and he may have +found it. Well, well, well, I see a look of skepticism on the face of my old +friend Moses. Mr. Gould does not believe that being perfectly good in all +respects would make a man merry.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Gould, with an unusual and convincing gravity; “I +do not believe that being perfectly good in all respects would make a man +merry.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Michael quietly, “will you tell me one thing? +Which of us has ever tried it?” +</p> + +<p> +A silence ensued, rather like the silence of some long geological epoch which +awaits the emergence of some unexpected type; for there rose at last in the +stillness a massive figure that the other men had almost completely forgotten. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, gentlemen,” said Dr. Warner cheerfully, “I’ve +been pretty well entertained with all this pointless and incompetent tomfoolery +for a couple of days; but it seems to be wearing rather thin, and I’m +engaged for a city dinner. Among the hundred flowers of futility on both sides +I was unable to detect any sort of reason why a lunatic should be allowed to +shoot me in the back garden.” +</p> + +<p> +He had settled his silk hat on his head and gone out sailing placidly to the +garden gate, while the almost wailing voice of Pym still followed him: +“But really the bullet missed you by several feet.” And another +voice added: “The bullet missed him by several years.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a long and mainly unmeaning silence, and then Moon said suddenly, +“We have been sitting with a ghost. Dr. Herbert Warner died years +ago.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"></a> +Chapter V<br/> +How the Great Wind Went from Beacon House</h3> + +<p> +Mary was walking between Diana and Rosamund slowly up and down the garden; they +were silent, and the sun had set. Such spaces of daylight as remained open in +the west were of a warm-tinted white, which can be compared to nothing but a +cream cheese; and the lines of plumy cloud that ran across them had a soft but +vivid violet bloom, like a violet smoke. All the rest of the scene swept and +faded away into a dove-like gray, and seemed to melt and mount into +Mary’s dark-gray figure until she seemed clothed with the garden and the +skies. There was something in these last quiet colours that gave her a setting +and a supremacy; and the twilight, which concealed Diana’s statelier +figure and Rosamund’s braver array, exhibited and emphasized her, leaving +her the lady of the garden, and alone. +</p> + +<p> +When they spoke at last it was evident that a conversation long fallen silent +was being revived. +</p> + +<p> +“But where is your husband taking you?” asked Diana in her +practical voice. +</p> + +<p> +“To an aunt,” said Mary; “that’s just the joke. There +really is an aunt, and we left the children with her when I arranged to be +turned out of the other boarding-house down the road. We never take more than a +week of this kind of holiday, but sometimes we take two of them +together.” +</p> + +<p> +“Does the aunt mind much?” asked Rosamund innocently. “Of +course, I dare say it’s very narrow-minded and—what’s that +other word?— you know, what Goliath was—but I’ve known many +aunts who would think it—well, silly.” +</p> + +<p> +“Silly?” cried Mary with great heartiness. “Oh, my Sunday +hat! I should think it was silly! But what do you expect? He really is a good +man, and it might have been snakes or something.” +</p> + +<p> +“Snakes?” inquired Rosamund, with a slightly puzzled interest. +</p> + +<p> +“Uncle Harry kept snakes, and said they loved him,” replied Mary +with perfect simplicity. “Auntie let him have them in his pockets, but +not in the bedroom.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you—” began Diana, knitting her dark brows a little. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I do as auntie did,” said Mary; “as long as we’re +not away from the children more than a fortnight together I play the game. He +calls me ‘Manalive;’ and you must write it all one word, or +he’s quite flustered.” +</p> + +<p> +“But if men want things like that,” began Diana. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, what’s the good of talking about men?” cried Mary +impatiently; “why, one might as well be a lady novelist or some horrid +thing. There aren’t any men. There are no such people. There’s a +man; and whoever he is he’s quite different.” +</p> + +<p> +“So there is no safety,” said Diana in a low voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I don’t know,” answered Mary, lightly enough; +“there’s only two things generally true of them. At certain curious +times they’re just fit to take care of us, and they’re never fit to +take care of themselves.” +</p> + +<p> +“There is a gale getting up,” said Rosamund suddenly. “Look +at those trees over there, a long way off, and the clouds going quicker.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know what you’re thinking about,” said Mary; “and +don’t you be silly fools. Don’t you listen to the lady novelists. +You go down the king’s highway; for God’s truth, it is God’s. +Yes, my dear Michael will often be extremely untidy. Arthur Inglewood will be +worse—he’ll be untidy. But what else are all the trees and clouds +for, you silly kittens?” +</p> + +<p> +“The clouds and trees are all waving about,” said Rosamund. +“There is a storm coming, and it makes me feel quite excited, somehow. +Michael is really rather like a storm: he frightens me and makes me +happy.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you be frightened,” said Mary. “All over, these +men have one advantage; they are the sort that go out.” +</p> + +<p> +A sudden thrust of wind through the trees drifted the dying leaves along the +path, and they could hear the far-off trees roaring faintly. +</p> + +<p> +“I mean,” said Mary, “they are the kind that look outwards +and get interested in the world. It doesn’t matter a bit whether +it’s arguing, or bicycling, or breaking down the ends of the earth as +poor old Innocent does. Stick to the man who looks out of the window and tries +to understand the world. Keep clear of the man who looks in at the window and +tries to understand you. When poor old Adam had gone out gardening (Arthur will +go out gardening), the other sort came along and wormed himself in, nasty old +snake.” +</p> + +<p> +“You agree with your aunt,” said Rosamund, smiling: “no +snakes in the bedroom.” +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t agree with my aunt very much,” replied Mary simply, +“but I think she was right to let Uncle Harry collect dragons and +griffins, so long as it got him out of the house.” +</p> + +<p> +Almost at the same moment lights sprang up inside the darkened house, turning +the two glass doors into the garden into gates of beaten gold. The golden gates +were burst open, and the enormous Smith, who had sat like a clumsy statue for +so many hours, came flying and turning cart-wheels down the lawn and shouting, +“Acquitted! acquitted!” Echoing the cry, Michael scampered across +the lawn to Rosamund and wildly swung her into a few steps of what was supposed +to be a waltz. But the company knew Innocent and Michael by this time, and +their extravagances were gaily taken for granted; it was far more extraordinary +that Arthur Inglewood walked straight up to Diana and kissed her as if it had +been his sister’s birthday. Even Dr. Pym, though he refrained from +dancing, looked on with real benevolence; for indeed the whole of the absurd +revelation had disturbed him less than the others; he half supposed that such +irresponsible tribunals and insane discussions were part of the mediaeval +mummeries of the Old Land. +</p> + +<p> +While the tempest tore the sky as with trumpets, window after window was +lighted up in the house within; and before the company, broken with laughter +and the buffeting of the wind, had groped their way to the house again, they +saw that the great apish figure of Innocent Smith had clambered out of his own +attic window, and roaring again and again, “Beacon House!” whirled +round his head a huge log or trunk from the wood fire below, of which the river +of crimson flame and purple smoke drove out on the deafening air. +</p> + +<p> +He was evident enough to have been seen from three counties; but when the wind +died down, and the party, at the top of their evening’s merriment, looked +again for Mary and for him, they were not to be found. +</p> + +<p> +The End +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MANALIVE ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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