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diff --git a/old/1718.txt b/old/1718.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..297ce94 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/1718.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6775 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Manalive, by G. K. Chesterton + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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 www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Manalive + +Author: G. K. Chesterton + +Release Date: August 3, 2005 [EBook #1718] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MANALIVE *** + + + + +Electronic edition MANALIV0 published 1993 by Jim Henry III +Edited by Martin Ward (Martin.Ward@durham.ac.uk) + + + + + + + + Manalive + + by G. K. Chesterton + + + + + + + +First published 1912 by Thomas Nelson and Sons + +Electronic edition MANALIV0 published 1993 by Jim Henry III +Edited by Martin Ward (Martin.Ward@durham.ac.uk) + + +PLEASE report any typos you may happen to notice, such as misplaced +punctuation and the like, to + +Martin Ward (Martin.Ward@durham.ac.uk) + +and + +Jim Henry III 405 Gardner Road Stockbridge, GA 30281-1515 + +Or send email to JIM HENRY on + +Digital Publishing Association BBS (205) 854-1660 Faster-than-Light BBS +(404) 292-8761 + +ILink Bookmark conference Annex Library conference + +Thank you! I hope you enjoy reading _Manalive_ as much as I have. +I will soon be releasing _Tales of the Long Bow_, also by G. K. Chesterton. + + + + + + Table of Contents + + + Part I: The Enigmas of Innocent Smith + I. How the Great Wind Came to Beacon House + II. The Luggage of an Optimist + III. The Banner of Beacon + IV. The Garden of the God + V. The Allegorical Practical Joker + + + Part II: The Explanations of Innocent Smith + I. The Eye of Death; or, the Murder Charge + II. The Two Curates; or, the Burglary Charge + III. The Round Road; or, the Desertion Charge + IV. The Wild Weddings; or, the Polygamy Charge + V. How the Great Wind went from Beacon House + + + + Part I + + The Enigmas of Innocent Smith + + + + Chapter I + + How the Great Wind Came + to Beacon House + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _Punch_ 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. + +"It's enough to blow your head off," said the young woman in white, +going to the looking-glass. + +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. + +"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. + +"Only your hat, I think," said Diana Duke, "but I dare say that is +sometimes more important." + +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." + +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. + +"Somebody once told me," said Rosamund Hunt, "that it's easier +to keep one's head when one has lost one's heart." + +"Oh, don't talk such rubbish," said Diana with savage sharpness. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"Inglewood," said Michael Moon, with his blue eye on the bird, +"have you any friends?" + +Dr. Warner mistook the person addressed, and turning a broad +beaming face, said,-- + +"Oh yes, I go out a great deal." + +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. + +"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." + +"Quite so," assented Dr. Warner stolidly; "insanity is generally incurable." + +"So is sanity," said the Irishman, and studied him with a dreary eye. + +"Symptoms?" asked the doctor. "What was this telegram?" + +"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.'" + +"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." + +"And people in their senses?" asked Warner, smiling. + +"Oh, they ought to be kicked," said Michael with sudden heartiness. + +"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." + +"Three legs," said Michael Moon, "would be very convenient in this wind." + +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. + +"Somebody's lost a good hat," said Dr. Warner shortly. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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 ~pas de quatre~. 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!" + +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. + +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. + +"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!" + +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 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-- + + "For valour. Is not love a Hercules, + Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?" + + +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. + +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." + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +"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--" + +"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?" + +The stranger, so far as so loud a person was capable of it, +appeared to grow confidential. + +"Well, it's a trick of my own," he confessed candidly. +"I do it by having two legs." + +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. + +"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." + +"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." + +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. + + + + + Chapter II + + The Luggage of an Optimist + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +"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." + +"He can clear a wall neatly," said Michael Moon; "I saw him do it." + +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?" + +"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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"Hope there's no intrusion," said the beaming Moses with a glow +of good nature, but not the airiest tinge of apology. + +"The truth is," said Michael Moon with comparative courtesy, +"we thought we might see if they had made you comfortable. +Miss Duke is rather--" + +"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." + +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. + +"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. + +"Rather a small box for you, sir," said the waggish Mr. Gould. + +"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?" + +"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. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"Inglewood," said Michael Moon, "have you ever heard that I +am a blackguard?" + +"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." + +"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." + +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. + +"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. + +"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--" + +"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--" + +"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." + +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. + +Rosamund's voice came up rich and strong in the words of some fatuous, +fashionable coon song:- + + "Darkies sing a song on the old plantation, + Sing it as we sang it in days long since gone by." + + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +"Let us..." he said, and was suddenly silent. + +"Let us what?" asked Arthur Inglewood, rising equally quick though somewhat +more cautiously, for his friend seemed to find some difficulty in speech. + +"Let us go and do some of these things we can't do," said Michael. + +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." + +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. + +"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?" + +"Oh, that!" said Smith, throwing it a single glance; "I deal life +out of that," and he went bounding down the stairs. + + + + + + Chapter III + + The Banner of Beacon + + +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. + +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,-- + + "Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control-- + These three alone will make a man a prig." + + -- Tennyson. + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +"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." + +"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." + +"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." + +"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--" + +The good-humoured Rosamund was almost choking with laughter. +"All is not gold that glitters," she said, "and besides--" + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +"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. + + "All is gold that glitters-- + Tree and tower of brass; + Rolls the golden evening air + Down the golden grass. + Kick the cry to Jericho, + How yellow mud is sold; + All is gold that glitters, + For the glitter is the gold." + + +"And who wrote that?" asked Rosamund, amused. + +"No one will ever write it," answered Smith, and cleared the rockery +with a flying leap. + +"Really," said Rosamund to Michael Moon, "he ought to be sent to an asylum. +Don't you think so?" + +"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. + +"I only said Mr. Smith ought to go to an asylum," repeated the lady. + +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." + +"What do you mean?" asked Rosamund quickly. "Why not?" + +"Because he is in one now," answered Michael Moon, in a quiet but ugly voice. +"Why, didn't you know?" + +"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. + +"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." + +"Knew what?" + +"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." + +"You daren't say such a thing!" cried Rosamund in a rage. +"You daren't suggest that I--" + +"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." + +"I don't believe you," broke out his companion, not without agitation. +"I've heard you had some bad habits--" + +"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." + +"It's a lie," cried Rosamund furiously. "I never was mean about money." + +"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." + +"You brute!" said Rosamund, quite white. "And is this true?" + +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." + +"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." + +"Victrix causa deae--" said Michael gloomily; and this angered +her more, as, not knowing what it meant, she imagined it +to be witty. + +"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. + +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. + +"You are busy," said Arthur, oddly embarrassed with what he had seen, +and wishing to ignore it. + +"There's no time for dreaming in this world," answered the young lady +with her back to him. + +"I have been thinking lately," said Inglewood in a low voice, +"that there's no time for waking up." + +She did not reply, and he walked to the window and looked out on the garden. + +"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." + +"Well," said the girl solidly, "what is there to wake up to?" + +"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?" + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +"What is the matter?" asked Diana, rather sharply, but moving +forward like one used to be called upon for assistance. + +"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." + +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. + + + + + Chapter IV + + The Garden of the God + + +Diana Duke seemed inexplicably irritated at the abrupt entrance +and utterance of the other girl. + +"Well," she said shortly, "I suppose Miss Gray can decline him if she +doesn't want to marry him." + +"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." + +"Perhaps," said Diana icily, "but I really don't see what we can do." + +"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." + +"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." + +"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. + +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. + +"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." + +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." + +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." + +"Is that one of your jokes?" asked the young lady. +"Do say what you really mean." + +"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..." + +"Really," said Rosamund stoutly, "I don't know what you mean." + +"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." + +"Really, Mr. Moon..." said Rosamund, rather more faintly. + +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." + +"It is no good," said Rosamund, with real tears in her eyes; +"one can never go back." + +"I can go where I damn please," said Michael, "and I can carry +you on my shoulder." + +"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--" + +"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." + +"You see all this," said Rosamund, with a grand sincerity in her solid face, +"and do you really want to marry me?" + +"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." + +"Michael," said Miss Hunt, in a very soft voice, "if you won't talk so much, +I'll marry you." + +"It's no time for talking," cried Michael Moon; "singing is the only thing. +Can't you find that mandoline of yours, Rosamund?" + +"Go and fetch it for me," said Rosamund, with crisp and sharp authority. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"Leave me alone, Mr. Inglewood--leave me alone; that's not the way to help." + +"But I can help you," said Arthur, with grinding certainty; +"I can, I can, I can..." + +"Why, you said," cried the girl, "that you were much weaker than me." + +"So I am weaker than you," said Arthur, in a voice that went +vibrating through everything, "but not just now." + +"Let go my hands!" cried Diana. "I won't be bullied." + +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." + +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. + +"Do you mean you want to marry me?" she said. + +"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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"Oh," said Diana, "what lovely air!" + +"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." + +"Oh, it isn't like anything but itself!" answered Diana, breathing deeply. +"Why, it's all cold, and yet it feels like fire." + +"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. + +"And now," cried Moon quite suddenly, stretching out a hand on each side, +"let's dance round that bush!" + +"Why, what bush do you mean?" asked Rosamund, looking round with a sort +of radiant rudeness. + +"The bush that isn't there," said Michael--"the Mulberry Bush." + +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. + +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. + +"Why, it's Warner!" he shouted, waving his arms. "It's jolly old Warner-- +with a new silk hat and the old silk moustache!" + +"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!" + +"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. + +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. + +"Inglewood!" cried Dr. Warner, fixing his former disciple with a stare, +"are you mad?" + +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." + +"What do you mean?" asked the great doctor stiffly--"what discovery?" + +"I've discovered that health really is catching, like disease," +answered Arthur. + +"Yes; sanity has broken out, and is spreading," said Michael, +performing a ~pas seul~ with a thoughtful expression. +"Twenty thousand more cases taken to the hospitals; +nurses employed night and day." + +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?" + +"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." + +"I should suggest Mrs. Duke," said Michael. + +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. + +"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." + +"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." + +"Where is Mr. Smith?" asked Warner of Inglewood very sharply. + +Arthur started; he had forgotten all about the central figure of their farce, +who had not been visible for an hour or more. + +"I--I think he's on the other side of the house, by the dustbin," he said. + +"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. + +"I hope," said Rosamund, "he won't really interfere with Mr. Smith." + +"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." + +"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." + +It was Rosamund who spoke, restlessly tracing circles in the grass +with the point of her white shoe. + +"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." + +"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. + +"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--" + +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. + +"Murder!" he shrieked, in a high and feminine but very penetrating voice. +"Stop that murderer there!" + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +And under the guard of the three natural philosophers the disarmed Smith +was led tactfully into the house, still roaring with laughter. + +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. + +"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." + +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?" + +"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." + +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. + + + + + Chapter V + + The Allegorical Practical Joker + + +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. + +"Miss Hunt," said Dr. Warner, "this is Dr. Cyrus Pym." + +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. + +"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--" + +"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?" + +"Or by your telegram," said Herbert Warner, smiling. + +"Oh, you don't understand," cried the girl impatiently. +"Why, he's done us all more good than going to church." + +"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." + +"But how do you know," cried Rosamund desperately, "that Mr. Smith +is a known criminal?" + +"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." + +"I have seen them," said Warner solidly, "I can assure you +that all this is correct." + +"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." + +"Quite so," said Warner, with a smile that seemed moulded in marble--"that +we all have to thank you very much for that telegram." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +"Rosamund," she cried in despair, "what shall I do with her?" + +"With her?" cried Miss Hunt, with a violent jump. "O lord, +he isn't a woman too, is he?" + +"No, no, no," said Dr. Pym soothingly, as if in common fairness. +"A woman? no, really, he is not so bad as that." + +"I mean your friend Mary Gray," retorted Diana with equal tartness. +"What on earth am I to do with her?" + +"How can we tell her about Smith, you mean," answered Rosamund, her face +at once clouded and softening. "Yes, it will be pretty painful." + +"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." + +"But it's impossible!" ejaculated Rosamund. "Why, Mary is +really religious. She--" + +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. + +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. + +"O Diana," cried Rosamund in a lower voice and altering her phrase; +"but how did you tell her?" + +"It is quite easy to tell her," answered Diana sombrely; +"it makes no impression at all." + +"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." + +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. + +"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." + +"All?" repeated Mary, with a low and curious intonation; +"why, that must be awfully exciting." + +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. + +"To begin with," he said, "this man Smith is constantly attempting murder. +The Warden of Brakespeare College--" + +"I know," said Mary, with a vague but radiant smile. +"Innocent told me." + +"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--" + +"Oh, but there were two curates," cried Mary, with a certain gentle eagerness; +"that was what made it so much funnier." + +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. + +"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." + +"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." + +"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." + +"He is really rather naughty sometimes," said Mary Gray, +laughing softly as she buttoned her old gray gloves. + +"Oh, this is really mesmerism, or something," said Rosamund, +and burst into tears. + +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." + +"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." + +"But it IS our cab," persisted Mary. "Why, there's Innocent's yellow +bag on the top of it." + +"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?" + +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?" + +"Oh, get out of the way!" cried Warner, almost good-humouredly. +"You can lean on the gate any time." + +"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." + +"Michael!" cried Arthur Inglewood in a kind of agony, "are you going to get +out of the way?" + +"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. + +"Hullo!" he called out suddenly; "what are you doing to Mr. Smith?" + +"Taking him away," answered Warner shortly, "to be examined." + +"Matriculation?" asked Moon brightly. + +"By a magistrate," said the other curtly. + +"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?" + +"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." + +"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--'" + +"Out of the way!" cried Warner with sudden fury, "or we will force +you out of it." + +"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. + +"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-- + +"Ou pour l'honneur de Dieu, ou pour le droit de mon prince, Navre, +poitrine ouverte, au bord de mon province." + + +"Sakes alive!" said the American gentleman, almost in an awed tone. +Then he added, "Are there two maniacs here?" + +"No; there are five," thundered Moon. "Smith and I are the only +sane people left." + +"Michael!" cried Rosamund; "Michael, what does it mean?" + +"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." + +"But, my dear Moon," began Inglewood in his modest manner, "these gentlemen--" + +"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?" + +"But it isn't only their word, Michael," reasoned Rosamund; +"they've got evidence too." + +"Have you looked at it?" asked Moon. + +"No," said Rosamund, with a sort of faint surprise; "these gentlemen +are in charge of it." + +"And of everything else, it seems to me," said Michael. "Why, you +haven't even had the decency to consult Mrs. Duke." + +"Oh, that's no use," said Diana in an undertone to Rosamund; "Auntie can't +say `Bo!' to a goose." + +"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." + +"Mrs. Duke?" repeated Inglewood doubtfully. + +"Yes, Mrs. Duke," said Michael firmly, "commonly called the Iron Duke." + +"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." + +"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." + +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. + +"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? + +"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." + +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. + +"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 ~prostratus in horto~? 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." + +"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." + +"Dr. Pym!" cried Warner in a sort of sudden anger. +"Dr. Pym! you aren't really going to admit--" + +"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?" + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"Why, here's little Nosey Gould," he exclaimed. "Isn't the mere +sight of him enough to banish all your morbid reflections?" + +"Really," replied Dr. Warner, "I really fail to see how Mr. Gould +affects the question; and I once more demand--" + +"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." + +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. + +"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." + +"If he is mad," began Inglewood. + +"Well," said Moses, "when a cove gets out on the tile the first night +there's generally a tile loose." + +"You never objected before," said Diana Duke rather stiffly, +"and you're generally pretty free with your complaints." + +"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." + +"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." + +"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." + +"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. + +"Catchin' flies?" inquired the affable Moses. + +"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--" + +"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." + +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. + +"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." + +"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!" + +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." + +"Well, Innocent must have his bag, you know," said Mary with a smile. +"I dare say the cabman would get it down for us." + +"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. + +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. + +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,-- + +"This is what comes of the Court of Beacon, Mr. Moon. You have let +loose a maniac on the whole metropolis." + +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. + +"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." + +"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. + +"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." + +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. + +"I refuse to listen to any such proposal," he said; "you have lost +this ruffian, and I must find him." + +"I don't ask you to listen to any proposal," answered Moon quietly; +"I only ask you to listen." + +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. + +"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?" + +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?" + +"I do," said Michael, "very much." + +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. + +"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. + +"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." + +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. + +"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." + +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?" + +"Well, really," cried Inglewood, left behind in a collapse of humour, +"have I noticed anything else?" + +"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." + +"My dear Michael," cried Inglewood, in a rising irritation which increased +with the rising wind, "you are getting absurdly fanciful." + +"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." + +"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!--" + +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. + +"Who is there?" shouted Arthur. "Who are you? Are you Innocent?" + +"Not quite," answered an obscure voice among the leaves. +"I cheated you once about a penknife." + +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. + +"But are you Smith?" asked Inglewood as in an agony. + +"Very nearly," said the voice out of the tossing tree. + +"But you must have some real names," shrieked Inglewood in despair. +"You must call yourself something." + +"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--" + +"But, manalive!" began Inglewood in exasperation. + +"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. + + + + + Part II + + The Explanations of Innocent Smith + + + + + Chapter I + + The Eye of Death; + or, the Murder Charge + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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." + +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." + +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. + +"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." + +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:-- + + +"Sir,--Hi am the Sub-Warden of Brikespeare College, Cambridge--" + + +"Lord have mercy on us," muttered Moon, making a backward movement as men +do when a gun goes off. + + +"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. + + +"The other letter," continued Gould in a glow of triumph, "is from the porter, +and won't take long to read. + + +"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." + + +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. + +"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." + +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--" + +"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." + +"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?" + +"I am sure," said Mrs. Duke, bridling, with something almost +like a shaky authority, "Mr. Moon may have what aunts he likes." + +"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--" + +"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'." + +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?" + +"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." + +"Would it have much authority?" asked Pym, sitting down. + +"Oh, authority!" said Moon lightly; "that depends on a fellow's religion." + +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." + +"Not of mine," said Moon mournfully, shaking his head. +"I've never experienced such a thing in all my life." + +"Well, really," said Dr. Pym, and sat down sharply amid a crackle of papers. + +"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. + + +"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. + + +"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:-- + + +"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. + + +"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." + +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. + +"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." + +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." + +"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--" + +"While you're standing up," said Moon, in the same almost sleepy style, +"perhaps I might ask you a question." + +"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." + +"I think you said," observed Moon absently, "that none of the prisoner's +shots really hit the doctor." + +"For the cause of science," cried the complacent Pym, "fortunately not." + +"Yet they were fired from a few feet away." + +"Yes; about four feet." + +"And no shots hit the Warden, though they were fired quite close +to him too?" asked Moon. + +"That is so," said the witness gravely. + +"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." + +"Why, as to that--" began Pym, after an instant of stillness. + +"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?" + +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." + +"Why didn't you get their evidence?" + +"In the case of the actual victims," said Pym, "there was some difficulty +and reluctance, and--" + +"Do you mean," asked Moon, "that none of the actual victims would +appear against the prisoner?" + +"That would be exaggerative," began the other. + +"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." + +"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." + +Moon leaned forward. "You mean, I suppose," he said, "that his statement +was favourable to the prisoner." + +"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." + +"You have no longer, then, any statement signed by the Warden of Brakespeare." + +"No." + +"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." + +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. + +"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:-- + + +"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, + + "Wilfred Emerson Eames, + "Warden of Brakespeare College, Cambridge. + + "Innocent Smith. + + +"The enclosed statement," continued Inglewood, "runs as follows:-- + + +"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. + +"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--" + +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?" + +"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." + +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." + +"Do you, perhaps," inquired Pym with austere irony, "maintain that +your client was a bird of some sort--say, a flamingo?" + +"In the matter of his being a flamingo," said Moon with sudden severity, +"my client reserves his defence." + +No one quite knowing what to make of this, Mr. Moon resumed his seat +and Inglewood resumed the reading of his document:-- + + +"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. + +"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." + + +"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--" + +"Drunkard, eh?" suggested Moses Gould, beginning to enjoy himself. + +"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." + +"In that case," said Dr. Pym, leaning back and sniffing, +"I cannot agree with them that two heads are better than one." + + +"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." + + +Inglewood ignored a somewhat wild expression on the faces of some present, +and continued with eminent cheerfulness:-- + + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"`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--' + +"`All thinkers,' said Eames, `are pessimist thinkers.' + +"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!' + +"`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--' + +"`Oh, hang the common world!' said the sullen Smith, letting his fist +fall on the table in an idle despair. + +"`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.' + +"`Why doesn't he strike us dead?' asked the undergraduate abstractedly, +plunging his hands into his pockets. + +"`He is dead himself,' said the philosopher; `that is where +he is really enviable.' + +"`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.' + +"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. + +"`I'll help you out of your hole, old man,' said Smith, +with rough tenderness. `I'll put the puppy out of his pain.' + +"Emerson Eames retreated towards the window. `Do you mean +to kill me?' he cried. + +"`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.' + +"`Put that thing down,' shouted the Warden. + +"`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. + +"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. + +"`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.' + +"`Help!' cried the Warden of Brakespeare College; `help!' + +"`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. + +"`Smith,' said the philosopher with a sudden change to a sort +of ghastly lucidity, `I shall go mad.' + +"`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.' + +"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. + +"Suddenly he called out with mere querulous authority, +as he might have called to a student to shut a door. + +"`Let me come off this place,' he cried; `I can't bear it.' + +"`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?' + +"`I'd give anything to get back,' replied the unhappy professor. + +"`Give anything!' cried Smith; `then, blast your impudence, +give us a song!' + +"`What song do you mean?' demanded the exasperated Eames; `what song?' + +"`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-- + + "`I thank the goodness and the grace + That on my birth have smiled. + And perched me on this curious place, + A happy English child.' + + +"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. + +"`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.' + +"The celebrated pessimist half articulately expressed his perfect +readiness to thank God for the ducks on the pond. + +"`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.' + +"`All right, all right,' repeated the victim in despair; +`sticks and rags and bones and blinds.' + +"`Spotted blinds, I think we said,' remarked Smith with a +rogueish ruthlessness, and wagging the pistol-barrel at him +like a long metallic finger. + +"`Spotted blinds,' said Emerson Eames faintly. + +"`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.' + +"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.' + +"`Why not' asked the other buoyantly. + +"`Keep them,' asked his companion, `for the next man you meet +who talks as we were talking.' + +"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. + +"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. + +"`Why, what is the matter?' asked Eames, whose own nerves had by this +time twittered themselves quiet, like the morning birds. + +"`I must ask your indulgence,' said Smith, rather brokenly. +`I must ask you to realize that I have just had an escape from death.' + +"`YOU have had an escape from death?' repeated the Professor +in not unpardonable irritation. `Well, of all the cheek--' + +"`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. + +"`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.' + +"`Well,' said Eames hesitatingly, `I think perhaps you confuse--' + +"`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?' + +"`Yes,' said Eames very slowly, `I think you are right. +You shall have a First!' + +"`Right!' cried Smith, springing up reanimated. `I've passed +with honours, and now let me go and see about being sent down.' + +"`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.' + +"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.' + +"`And why not' asked the other. + +"`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.' + +"`You can scarcely be called a skeleton,' said Dr. Eames, smiling. + +"`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 ~memento mori~. 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.' + +"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.' + +"`What do you mean?' asked Eames. `What did you know?' + +"`I knew for the first time that murder is really wrong.' + +"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.' + +"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. + +"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. + +"The undersigned persons will now adjourn to `The Spotted Dog' +for beer. Farewell. + + "(Signed) James Emerson Eames, + "Warden of Brakespeare College, Cambridge. + + "Innocent Smith." + + + + + + Chapter II + + The Two Curates; + or, the Burglary Charge + + +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. + +"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." + +"There are promising per-spectives in hypnotism and dual personality," +said Dr. Cyrus Pym dreamily; "the science of criminology is in +its infancy, and--" + +"Infancy!" cried Moon, jerking his red pencil in the air with a gesture +of enlightenment; "why, that explains it!" + +"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." + +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." + +"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." + +"'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." + +"What was Dr. Warner talking about just before the first shot?" +asked Moon sharply. + +"The creature," said Dr. Warner superciliously, "asked me, +with characteristic rationality, whether it was my birthday." + +"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." + +"Something like that," assented the doctor. + +"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?" + +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." + + +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. + +"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." + +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. + +"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--" + +"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." + +"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. + +"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." + +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. + +"Oh, I see!" he cried; "you mean that Smith is a burglar." + +"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. + +"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." + +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. + + +"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. + +"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. + +"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--" + +"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." + +"Really!" said Dr. Pym; "I protest." + +"You must keep quiet, Michael," said Inglewood; "they have a right +to read their story." + +"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. + +"Oh, don't wake the old lady," said Moon, lowering his voice in a moody +good-humour. "I apologize. I won't interrupt again." + +Before the little eddy of interruption was ended the reading +of the clergyman's letter was already continuing. + +"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." + + +With a slight start, Michael rose to his feet, bowed solemnly, +and sat down again. + + +"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. + +"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. + +"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.' + +"`I quite agree,' said Percy; `but I always like to understand things +in theory before I put them into practice.' + +"`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.' + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"`It's a right-of-way,' declared my indefensible informant. +`It's closed to traffic once in a hundred years.' + +"`Mr. Percy, Mr. Percy!' I called out; `you are not going +on with this blackguard?' + +"`Why, I think so,' answered my unhappy colleague flippantly. +`I think you and I are bigger blackguards than he is, +whatever he is.' + +"`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.' + +"`Whether this is a crime or a joke,' I cried, `I desire to be quit of it.' + +"`The ladder is just behind you,' answered the creature +with horrible courtesy; `and, before you go, do let me give +you my card.' + +"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. + +"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. + +"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, + "John Clement Hawkins." + + +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. + +"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. + +"I should like to claim the power permitted by our previous arrangement, +and ask the prosecution two or three questions." + +Dr. Cyrus Pym closed his eyes to indicate a courteous assent. + +"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?" + +"Ho, yus!" called out Gould smartly. "November thirteen, eighteen ninety-one." + +"Have you," continued Moon, "identified the houses in Hoxton up +which they climbed?" + +"Must have been Ladysmith Terrace out of the highroad," +answered Gould with the same clockwork readiness. + +"Well," said Michael, cocking an eyebrow at him, "was there any burglary +in that terrace that night? Surely you could find that out." + +"There may well have been," said the doctor primly, after a pause, +"an unsuccessful one that led to no legalities." + +"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?" + +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. + +"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." + +"It is impossible, then, to trace him?" asked Moon. + +"Impossible," repeated the specialist, shutting his eyes. + +"You are sure it's impossible?" + +"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. + +"Arthur," directed Michael Moon, sitting down, "kindly read +Mr. Raymond Percy's letter to the court." + +"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:-- + + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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--" + +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. + + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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 Clause came, and why he was welcome. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"`Don't do it!' I cried quite incoherently, `Santa Claus--' + +"`Ah,' said the burglar, as he put the decanter on the table +and stood looking at me, `you've thought about that, too.' + +"`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?' + +"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. + +"`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.' + +"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.' + +"He set out two wineglasses from the cupboard, filled them both, +and lifted one of them with a salutation towards his lips. + +"`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?' + +"`It's not the last bottle,' answered my criminal calmly; +`there's plenty more in the cellar.' + +"`You know the house, then?' I said. + +"`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.' + +"`What will do him good?' + +"`The wine I'm drinking,' said the strange person. + +"`Does he drink too much, then?' I inquired. + +"`No,' he answered, `not unless I do.' + +"`Do you mean,' I demanded, `that the owner of this house approves +of all you do?' + +"`God forbid,' he answered; `but he has to do the same.' + +"The dead face of the fog looking in at all three windows +unreasonable 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. + +"`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.' + +"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. + +"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.' + +"`I came in another way,' said the Permeator, somewhat vaguely. +`I'd left my latchkey at home.' + +"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?' + +"`Mine,' said the burglar, `May I present you to my wife?' + +"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. + +"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.' + +"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. + +"`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.' + +"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. + +"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.' + +"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.' + +"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. + +"`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.' + +"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. + +"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." + + +"Oh, 'oly, 'oly, 'oly!" said Mr. Moses Gould. + +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. + +"Oh, 'oly, 'oly, 'oly!" said Moses Gould. + +Finding that this was not well received, he explained further, +exuberance deepening on his dark exuberant features. + +"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." + +"Don't be a brute," growled Michael Moon. + +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. + + + + + + Chapter III + + The Round Road; + or, the Desertion Charge + + +Pym rose with sincere embarrassment; for he was an American, +and his respect for ladies was real, and not at all scientific. + +"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?" + +"We have had nothing direct from the prisoner," said Moon quietly. +"The few documents which the defence guarantees came to us +from another quarter." + +"From what quarter?" asked Dr. Pym. + +"If you insist," answered Moon, "we had them from Miss Gray. + +"Dr. Cyrus Pym quite forgot to close his eyes, and, instead, +opened them very wide. + +"Do you really mean to say," he said, "that Miss Gray was in possession +of this document testifying to a previous Mrs. Smith?" + +"Quite so," said Inglewood, and sat down. + +The doctor said something about infatuation in a low and painful voice, +and then with visible difficulty continued his opening remarks. + +"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." + +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-- + +"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." + +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. + +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." + +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:-- + + +"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. + +"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! + +"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. + +"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.' + +"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. + +"`A red pillar-box!' I cried in astonishment. `Why, the place must +be in England!' + +"`I had forgotten,' he said, nodding heavily. `That is the island's name.' + +"`But, ~nom du nom~,' I cried testily, `you've just come +from England, my boy.' + +"`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.' + +"`Monsieur,' I said, `you must pardon me. I am elderly, +and the ~fumisteries~ 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.' + +"`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.' + +"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.' + +"`Is it not even shorter,' I asked, `to stop where you are?' + +"`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?' + +"`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--' + +"`And yet,' he cried, starting to his almost terrific height, +`you made the French Revolution!' + +"`Pardon me,' I said, `I am not quite so elderly. +A relative perhaps.' + +"`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.' + +"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. + +"`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.' + +"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." + + +"The next document in our dossier," continued Inglewood, +"comes from the town of Crazok, in the central plains of Russia, +and runs as follows:-- + + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"`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--' + +"`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.' + +"`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. + +"`Have you no other house of your own?' I asked. + +"`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.' + +"`And so,' I said with sympathy, `you walked straight out of the front door, +like a masculine Nora.' + +"`Nora?' he inquired politely, apparently supposing it to be a Russian word. + +"`I mean Nora in "The Doll's House,"' I replied. + +"At this he looked very much astonished, and I knew he was an Englishman; +for Englishmen always think that Russians study nothing but `ukases.' + +"`"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.' + +"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.' + +"`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.' + +"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. + +"`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.' + +"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. + +"`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.' + +"`And why is it dangerous?' I inquired. + +"`Why, because nobody can find him,' answered this odd person, +`and we all want to be found.' + +"`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.' + +"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.' + +"Then he turned upon me with something like fury, and struck the foot +of his pole upon the frozen earth. + +"`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?' + +"`No,' I answered after due reflection, `I don't think I should accept that.' + +"`Ah,' he said with a sort of a sigh, `then you have explained a second +thing to me.' + +"`What do you mean?' I asked; `what thing?' + +"`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. + +"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." + + +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:-- + + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"`I have not seen your house nor any houses,' I answered. +`I dwell in this temple and serve the gods.' + +"`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? + +"`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.' + +"He came yet closer to me, so that he seemed enormous; +yet his look was very gentle. + +"`Break your temple,' he said, `and your gods will be freed.' + +"And I, smiling at his simplicity, answered: `And so, if there be no gods, +I shall have nothing but a broken temple.' + +"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.' + +"`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.' + +"And I, still enduring his harmlessness, asked him why he thought +that he and his people were right. + +"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.' + +"I said to him: `At the last remaineth only wisdom.' + +"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." + + +"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:-- + + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"`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?' + +"`It depends perhaps,' I said, smiling, `on whether you are a wise man.' +I refrained from adding that he certainly didn't look it. + +"`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.' + +"`It certainly sounds paradoxical,' I said. + +"`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.' + +"`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.' + +"`My pilgrimage is not yet accomplished,' he replied sadly. +`I have become a pilgrim to cure myself of being an exile.' + +"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. + +"`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.' + +"He was silent a long while, and watched a single eagle drift +out beyond the Green Finger into the darkening void. + +"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.' + +"`I dare say,' I said. `What reason?' + +"`Because otherwise,' he said, pointing his pole out at the sky and the abyss, +`we might worship that.' + +"`What do you mean?' I demanded. + +"`Eternity,' he said in his harsh voice, `the largest of the idols-- +the mightiest of the rivals of God.' + +"`You mean pantheism and infinity and all that,' I suggested. + +"`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.' + +"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." + + +After a short silence Inglewood said: "And, finally, we desire +to put in as evidence the following document:-- + + +"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.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." + + +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. + +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. + +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." + +"I thought," said Moon gravely, "that we quite clearly explained--" + +"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." + +"Do you mean to say," asked Inglewood, "that you still doubt the evidence +of exculpation we have brought forward?" + +"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." + +Moon regarded him with an expression of real or assumed surprise. + +"Any one," continued Gould, "can call on Mr. Trip." + +"It is a comforting thought," replied Michael with restraint; +"but why should any one call on Mr. Trip?" + +"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." + +"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?" + +"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." + +"But why do you bring in these people here?" asked Inglewood. + +"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." + +"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." + +Nothing but a faint groan from Michael broke the silence +of the darkening room. + + + + + Chapter IV + + The Wild Weddings; + or, the Polygamy Charge + + +"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?" + +"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." + +"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--" + +"I can tell," said Michael savagely, out of the gloom. "Marriage is a duel +to the death, which no man of honour should decline." + +"Michael," said Arthur Inglewood in a low voice, "you MUST keep quiet." + +"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 ~en seconde noces~ 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. + +"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." + +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. + +When Dr. Pym resumed it was realized that his face had grown +at once both tragic and triumphant. + +"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." + +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. + +"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? + +"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." + +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. + +"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:-- + + +"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." + + +"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:-- + + +"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. + + +"The fuller statement runs as follows:-- + + +"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.' + + +"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 fiancee. +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, + + `O vivid, inviolate head, + Ringed --' + +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. + + +"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. + + +"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 ~idee fixe~ 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. + +"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. + + +"I think," said Pym, with a really convincing simplicity and seriousness, +"that these letters speak for themselves." + +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. + +"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?" + +"Oh, crikey!" said Moses Gould, stifled with amusement. + +"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." + +"If these gals," said Gould impatiently--"if these gals were all alive +(all alive O!) I'd chance a fiver they were all born." + +"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." + +"Are you asking us to believe--" began Dr. Pym. + +"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. + +"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,-- + + `O vivid, inviolate head, + Ringed --' + +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." + +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. + +"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--" + +"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. + +"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." + +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--" + +Cyrus Pym was standing up rigid and almost pallid. +"Do you actually mean to suggest--" he cried. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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." + +"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." + +"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." + +"Well," said Michael quietly, "will you tell me one thing? +Which of us has ever tried it?" + +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. + +"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." + +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." + +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." + + + + + + Chapter V + + How the Great Wind Went + from Beacon House + + +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. + +When they spoke at last it was evident that a conversation long +fallen silent was being revived. + +"But where is your husband taking you?" asked Diana in her practical voice. + +"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." + +"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." + +"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." + +"Snakes?" inquired Rosamund, with a slightly puzzled interest. + +"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." + +"And you--" began Diana, knitting her dark brows a little. + +"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." + +"But if men want things like that," began Diana. + +"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." + +"So there is no safety," said Diana in a low voice. + +"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." + +"There is a gale getting up," said Rosamund suddenly. +"Look at those trees over there, a long way off, and the +clouds going quicker." + +"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?" + +"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." + +"Don't you be frightened," said Mary. "All over, these men +have one advantage; they are the sort that go out." + +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. + +"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." + +"You agree with your aunt," said Rosamund, smiling: "no snakes +in the bedroom." + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + The End + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Manalive, by G. 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