Chapter IV: Part 4

Then he added more gravely: “And if, as I gather, your clerical friend is really a friend worth having, I do seriously advise you to keep an eye on him just now. Writing letters upside-down is all very well, and I shouldn’t be alarmed about that. Lots of people think they’ve explained things in previous letters they never wrote. I don’t think it matters who Snowdrop is, or what sort of children or animals he chooses to be fond of. That’s all being eccentric in the good old English fashion, like poetical tinkers and mad squires. You’re both of you eccentric in that sort of way, and it’s one of the things I like about you. But just because I naturally knock about more among the new people, I see something of the new eccentricities. And believe me, they’re not half so nice as the old ones. I’m a student of scientific aviation, which is a new thing itself, and I like it. But there’s a sort of spiritual aviation that I don’t like at all.”

“Sorry,” observed Crane. “Really no notion of what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you haven’t,” answered Pierce with engaging candour; “that’s another thing I like about you. But I don’t like the way your clerical friend talks about new visions and larger religions and light and liberty from the East. I’ve heard a good many people talk like that, and they were mountebanks or the dupes of mountebanks. And I’ll tell you another thing. It’s a long shot even with the long bow we used to talk about. It’s a pretty wild guess even in this rather wild business. But I have a creepy sort of feeling that if you went down to his house and private parlour to see Snowdrop, you’d be surprised at what you saw.”

“What should we see?” asked the Colonel, staring.

“You’d see nothing at all,” replied the young man.

“What on earth do you mean?”

“I mean,” replied Pierce, “that you’d find Mr. White talking to somebody who didn’t seem to be there.”

* * * * *

Hilary Pierce, fired by his detective fever, made a good many more inquiries about the Rev. Wilding White, both of his two old friends and elsewhere.

One long legal conversation with Owen Hood did indeed put him in possession of the legal outline of certain matters, which might be said to throw a light on some parts of the strange letter, and which might in time even be made to throw a light on the rest. White was the vicar of a parish lying deep in the western parts of Somersetshire, where the principal landowner was a certain Lord Arlington. And in this case there had been a quarrel between the squire and the parson, of a more revolutionary sort than is common in the case of parsons. The clergyman intensely resented that irony or anomaly which has caused so much discontent among tenants in Ireland and throughout the world; the fact that improvements or constructive work actually done by the tenant only pass into the possession of the landlord. He had considerably improved a house that he himself rented from the squire, but in some kind of crisis of defiance or renunciation, he had quitted this more official residence bag and baggage, and built himself a sort of wooden lodge or bungalow on a small hill or mound that rose amid woods on the extreme edge of the same grounds. This quarrel about the claim of the tenant to his own work was evidently the meaning of certain phrases in the letter--such as the timber coming from the other end of the county, the sort of work being a man’s own affair, and the general allusion to somebody’s flunkeys or sycophants who attempted to boycott the discontented tenant. But it was not quite clear whether the allusions to a new arrangement, and how it worked, referred to the bungalow or to the other and more elusive mystery of the presence of Snowdrop.

One phrase in the letter he found to have been repeated in many places and to many persons without becoming altogether clear in the process. It was the sentence that ran: “I was afraid at first it would really be an encumbrance, as you know it’s always supposed to be.” Both Colonel Crane and Owen Hood, and also several other persons whom he met later in his investigations, were agreed in saying that Mr. White had used some expression indicating that he had entangled himself with something troublesome or at least useless; something that he did not want. None of them could remember the exact words he had used; but all could state in general terms that it referred to some sort of negative nuisance or barren responsibility. This could hardly refer to Snowdrop, of whom he always wrote in terms of tenderness as if she were a baby or a kitten. It seemed hard to believe it could refer to the house he had built entirely to suit himself. It seemed as if there must be some third thing in his muddled existence, which loomed vaguely in the background through the vapour of his confused correspondence.

Colonel Crane snapped his fingers with a mild irritation in trying to recall a trifle. “He said it was a--you know, I’ve forgotten the word--a botheration or embarrassment. But then he’s always in a state of botheration and embarrassment. I didn’t tell you, by the way, that I had a letter from him too. Came the day after I heard yours. Shorter, and perhaps a little plainer.” And he handed the letter to Hood, who read it out slowly:

“‘I never knew the old British populace, here in Avalon itself, could
be so broken down by squires and sneaking lawyers. Nobody dared help
me move my house again; said it was illegal and they were afraid
of the police. But Snowdrop helped, and we carted it all away in
two or three journeys; took it right clean off the old fool’s land
altogether this time. I fancy the old fool will have to admit there
are things in this world he wasn’t prepared to believe in.’”

“But look here,” began Hood as if impulsively, and then stopped and spoke more slowly and carefully. “I don’t understand this; I think it’s extremely odd. I don’t mean odd for an ordinary person, but odd for an odd person; odd for this odd person. I know White better than either of you can, and I can tell you that, though he tells a tale anyhow, the tale is always true. He’s rather precise and pedantic when you do come to the facts; these litigious quarrelsome people often are. He would do extraordinary things, but he wouldn’t make them out more extraordinary than they were. I mean he’s the sort of man who might break all the squire’s windows, but he wouldn’t say he’d broken six when he’d broken five. I’ve always found when I’d got to the meaning of those mad letters that it was quite true. But how can this be true? How could Snowdrop, whatever she is, have moved a whole house, or old White either?”

“I suppose you know what I think,” said Pierce. “I told you that Snowdrop, whatever else she is, is invisible. I’m certain your friend has gone Spiritualist, and Snowdrop is the name of a spirit, or a control, or whatever they call it. The spirit would say, of course, that it was mere child’s play to throw the house from one end of the county to the other. But if this unfortunate gentleman believes himself to have been thrown, house and all, in that fashion, I’m very much afraid he’s begun really to suffer from delusions.”

The faces of the two older men looked suddenly much older, perhaps for the first time they looked old. The young man seeing their dolorous expression was warmed and fired to speak quickly.

“Look here,” he said hastily, “I’ll go down there myself and find out what I can for you. I’ll go this afternoon.”

“Train journey takes ages,” said the Colonel, shaking his head. “Other end of nowhere. Told me yourself you had an appointment at the Air Ministry to-morrow.”

“Be there in no time,” replied Pierce cheerfully. “I’ll fly down.”

And there was something in the lightness and youth of his vanishing gesture that seemed really like Icarus spurning the earth, the first man to mount upon wings.

Perhaps this literally flying figure shone the more vividly in their memories because, when they saw it again, it was in a subtle sense changed. When the other two next saw Hilary Pierce on the steps of the Air Ministry, they were conscious that his manner was a little quieter, but his wild eye rather wilder than usual. They adjourned to a neighbouring restaurant and talked of trivialities while luncheon was served; but the Colonel, who was a keen observer, was sure that Pierce had suffered some sort of shock, or at least some sort of check. While they were considering what to say Pierce himself said abruptly, staring at a mustard-pot on the table:

“What do you think about spirits?”

“Never touch ’em,” said the Colonel. “Sound port never hurt anybody.”

“I mean the other sort,” said Pierce. “Things like ghosts and all that.”

“I don’t know,” said Owen Hood. “The Greek for it is agnosticism. The Latin for it is ignorance. But have you really been dealing with ghosts and spirits down at poor White’s parsonage?”

“I don’t know,” said Pierce gravely.

“You don’t mean you really think you saw something!” cried Hood sharply.

“There goes the agnostic!” said Pierce with a rather weary smile. “The minute the agnostic hears a bit of real agnosticism he shrieks out that it’s superstition. I say I don’t know whether it was a spirit. I also say I don’t know what the devil else it was if it wasn’t. In plain words, I went down to that place convinced that poor White had got some sort of delusions. Now I wonder whether it’s I that have got the delusions.”

He paused a moment and then went on in a more collected manner:

“But I’d better tell you all about it. To begin with, I don’t admit it as an explanation, but it’s only fair to allow for it as a fact--that all that part of the world seems to be full of that sort of thing. You know how the glamour of Glastonbury lies over all that land and the lost tomb of King Arthur and time when he shall return and the prophecies of Merlin and all the rest. To begin with, the village they call Ponder’s End ought to be called World’s End; it gives one the impression of being somewhere west of the sunset. And then the parsonage is quite a long way west of the parish, in large neglected grounds fading into pathless woods and hills; I mean the old empty rectory that our wild friend has evacuated. It stood there a cold empty shell of flat classical architecture, as hollow as one of those classical temples they used to stick up in country seats. But White must have done some sort of parish work there, for I found a great big empty shed in the grounds--that sort of thing that’s used for a schoolroom or drill-hall or what not. But not a sign of him or his work can be seen there now. I’ve said it’s a long way west of the village that you come at last to the old house. Well, it’s a long way west of that that you come to the new house--if you come to it at all. As for me, I came and I came not, as in some old riddle of Merlin. But you shall hear.

“I had come down about sunset in a meadow near Ponder’s End, and I did the rest of the journey on foot, for I wanted to see things in detail. This was already difficult as it was growing dusk, and I began to fear I should find nothing of importance before nightfall. I had asked a question or two of the villagers about the vicar and his new self-made vicarage. They were very reticent about the former, but I gathered that the latter stood at the extreme edge of his original grounds on a hill rising out of a thicket of wood. In the increasing darkness it was difficult to find the place, but I came on it at last, in a place where a fringe of forest ran along under the low brows of a line of rugged cliffs, such as sometimes break the curves of great downlands. I seemed to be descending a thickly wooded slope, with a sea of tree-tops below me, and out of that sea, like an island, rose the dome of the isolated hill; and I could faintly see the building on it, darker against the dark-clouded sky. For a moment a faint line of light from the masked moon showed me a little more of its shape, which seemed singularly simple and airy in its design. Against that pallid gleam stood four strong columns, with the bulk of building apparently lifted above them; but it produced a queer impression, as if this Christian priest had built for his final home a heathen temple of the winds. As I leaned forward, peering at it, I overbalanced myself and slid rapidly down the steep thicket into the darkest entrails of the wood. From there I could see nothing of the pillared house or temple or whatever it was on the hill; the thick woods had swallowed me up literally like a sea, and I groped for what must have been nearly half an hour amid tangled roots and low branches, in that double darkness of night and shadow, before I found my feet slipping on the opposite slope and began to climb the hill on the top of which the temple stood. It was very difficult climbing, of course, through a network of briars and branching trees, and it was some little time afterwards that I burst through the last screen of foliage and came out upon the bare hill-top.

“Yes; upon the bare hill-top. Rank grasses grew on it, and the wind blew them about like hair on a head; but for any trace of anything else, that green dome was as bare as a skull. There was no sign or shadow of the building I had seen there a little time before; it had vanished like a fairy palace. A broad track broken through the woods seemed to lead up to it, so far as I could make out in that obscurity; but there was no trace of the building to which it led. And when I saw that, I gave up. Something told me I should find out no more; perhaps I had some shaken sense that there were things past finding out. I retraced my steps, descending the hill as best I might; but when I was again swallowed up in that leafy sea, something happened that, for an instant, turned me cold as stone. An unearthly noise, like long hooting laughter, rang out in vast volume over the forest and rose to the stars. It was no noise to which I could put a name; it was certainly no noise I had ever heard before; it bore some sort of resemblance to the neighing of a horse immensely magnified; yet it might have been half human, and there was triumph in it and derision.

“I will tell you one more thing I learnt before I left those parts. I left them at once, partly because I really had an appointment early this morning, as I told you; partly also, I think, because I felt you had the right to know at once what sort of things were to be faced. I was alarmed when I thought your friend was tormented with imaginary bogies; I am not less alarmed if he had got mixed up with real ones. Anyhow, before I left that village I had told one man what I had seen, and he told me he had seen it also. But he had seen it actually moving, in dusk turning to dark; the whole great house, with its high columns, moving across the fields like a great ship sailing on land.”

Owen Hood sat up suddenly, with awakened eyes, and struck the table.

“Look here,” he cried, with a new ring in his voice, “we must all go down to Ponder’s End and bring this business to a finish.”

“Do you think you will bring it to a finish?” asked Pierce gloomily; “or can you tell what sort of a finish?”

“Yes,” replied Hood resolutely. “I think I can finish it, and I think I know what the finish will be. The truth is, my friend, I think I understand the whole thing now. And as I told you before, Wilding White, so far from being deluded by imaginary bogies, is a gentleman very exact in his statements. In this matter he has been very exact. That has been the whole mystery about him--that he has been very much too exact.”

“What on earth do you mean by that?” asked Pierce.

“I mean,” said the lawyer, “that I have suddenly remembered the phrase he used. It was very exact; it was dull, literal truth. But I can be exact, too, at times, and just now I should like to look at a time-table.”

* * * * *

They found the village of Ponder’s End in a condition as comically incongruous as could well be with the mystical experiences of Mr. Hilary Pierce. When we talk of such places as sleepy, we forget that they are very wide-awake about their own affairs, and especially on their own festive occasions. Piccadilly Circus looks much the same on Christmas Day or any other; but the marketplace of a country town or village looks very different on the day of a fair or bazaar. And Hilary Pierce, who had first come down there to find in a wood at midnight the riddle that he thought worthy of Merlin, came down the second time to find himself plunged suddenly into the middle of the bustling bathos of a jumble sale. It was one of those bazaars to provide bargains for the poor, at which all sorts of odds and ends are sold off. But it was treated as a sort of fête, and highly-coloured posters and handbills announced its nature on every side. The bustle seemed to be dominated by a tall dark lady of distinguished appearance, whom Owen Hood, rather to the surprise of his companions, hailed as an old acquaintance and managed to draw aside for a private talk. She had appeared to have her hands full at the bazaar; nevertheless, her talk with Hood was rather a long one. Pierce only heard the last words of it:

“Oh, he promised he was bringing something for the sale. I assure you he always keeps his word.”

All Hood said when he rejoined his companion was: “That’s the lady White was going to marry. I think I know now why things went wrong, and I hope they may go right. But there seems to be another bother. You see that clump of clod-hopping policemen over there, inspector and all. It seems they’re waiting for White. Say he’s broken the law in taking his house off the land, and that he has always eluded them. I hope there won’t be a scene when he turns up.”

If this was Mr. Hood’s hope, it was ill-founded and destined to disappointment. A scene was but a faint description of what was in store for that hopeful gentleman. Within ten minutes the greater part of the company were in a world in which the sun and moon seemed to have turned topsy-turvy and the last limit of unlikelihood had been reached. Pierce had imagined he was very near that limit of the imagination when he groped after the vanishing temple in the dark forest. But nothing he had seen in that darkness and solitude was so fantastic as what he saw next in broad daylight in a crowd.

At one extreme edge of the crowd there was a sudden movement--a wave of recoil and wordless cries. The next moment it had swept like a wind over the whole populace, and hundreds of faces were turned in one direction--in the direction of the road that descended by a gradual slope towards the woods that fringed the vicarage grounds. Out of those woods at the foot of the hill had emerged something that might from its size have been a large light grey omnibus. But it was not an omnibus. It scaled the slope so swiftly, in great strides, that it became instantly self-evident what it was. It was an elephant, whose monstrous form was moulded in grey and silver in the sunlight, and on whose back sat very erect a vigorous middle-aged gentleman in black clerical attire, with blanched hair and a rather fierce aquiline profile that glanced proudly to left and right.

The police inspector managed to make one step forward, and then stood like a statue. The vicar, on his vast steed, sailed into the middle of the marketplace as serenely as if he had been the master of a familiar circus. He pointed in triumph to one of the red and blue posters on the wall, which bore the traditional title of “White Elephant Sale.”

“You see I’ve kept my word,” he said to the lady in a loud, cheerful voice. “I’ve brought a white elephant.”

The next moment he had waved his hand hilariously in another direction, having caught sight of Hood and Crane in the crowd.

“Splendid of you to come!” he called out. “Only you were in the secret. I told you I’d got a white elephant.”

“So he did,” said Hood; “only it never occurred to us that the elephant was an elephant and not a metaphor. So that’s what he meant by Asiatic atmosphere and snow and mountains. And that’s what the big shed was really for.”

“Look here,” said the inspector, recovering from his astonishment and breaking in on these felicitations. “I don’t understand all these games, but it’s my business to ask a few questions. Sorry to say it, sir, but you’ve ignored our notifications and evaded our attempts to----”

“Have I?” inquired Mr. White brightly. “Have I really evaded you? Well, well, perhaps I have. An elephant is such a standing temptation to evasion, to evanescence, to fading away like a dewdrop. Like a snowdrop perhaps would be more appropriate. Come on, Snowdrop.”

The last word came smartly, and he gave a smart smack to the huge head of the pachyderm. Before the inspector could move or anyone had realized what had happened, the whole big bulk had pitched forward with a plunge like a cataract and went in great whirling strides, the crowd scattering before it. The police had not come provided for elephants, which are rare in those parts. Even if they had overtaken it on bicycles, they would have found it difficult to climb it on bicycles. Even if they had had revolvers, they had omitted to conceal about their persons anything in the way of big-game rifles. The white monster vanished rapidly up the long white road, so rapidly that when it dwindled to a small object and disappeared, people could hardly believe that such a prodigy had ever been present, or that their eyes had not been momentarily bewitched. Only, as it disappeared in the distance, Pierce heard once more the high nasal trumpeting noise which, in the eclipse of night, had seemed to fill the forest with fear.

It was at a subsequent meeting in London that Crane and Pierce had an opportunity of learning, more or less, the true story of the affair, in the form of another letter from the parson to the lawyer.

“Now that we know the secret,” said Pierce cheerfully, “even his account of it ought to be quite clear.”

“Quite clear,” replied Hood calmly. “His letter begins, ‘Dear Owen, I am really tremendously grateful in spite of all I used to say against leather and about horse-hair.’”

“About what?” asked Pierce.

“Horse-hair,” said Hood with severity. “He goes on, ‘The truth is they thought they could do what they liked with me because I always boasted that I hadn’t got one, and never wanted to have one; but when they found I had got one, and I must really say a jolly good one, of course it was all quite different.’”

Pierce had his elbows on the table, and his fingers thrust up into his loose yellow hair. He had rather the appearance of holding his head on. He was muttering to himself very softly, like a schoolboy learning a lesson.

“He had got one, but he didn’t want one, and he hadn’t got one and he had a jolly good one.”

“One what?” asked Crane irritably. “Seems like a missing word competition.”

“I’ve got the prize,” observed Hood placidly. “The missing word is ‘solicitor.’ What he means is that the police took liberties with him because they knew he would not have a lawyer. And he is perfectly right; for when I took the matter up on his behalf, I soon found that they had put themselves on the wrong side of the law at least as much as he had. In short, I was able to extricate him from this police business; hence his hearty if not lucid gratitude. But he goes on to talk about something rather more personal; and I think it really has been a rather interesting case, if he does not exactly shine as a narrator of it. As I dare say you noticed, I did know something of the lady whom our eccentric friend went courting years ago, rather in the spirit of Sir Roger de Coverley when he went courting the widow. She is a Miss Julia Drake, daughter of a country gentleman. I hope you won’t misunderstand me if I say that she is a rather formidable lady. She is really a thoroughly good sort; but that air of the black-browed Juno she has about her does correspond to some real qualities. She is one of those people who can manage big enterprises, and the bigger they are the happier she is. When that sort of force functions within the limits of a village or a small valley, the impact is sometimes rather overpowering. You saw her managing the White Elephant Sale at Ponder’s End. Well, if it had been literally an army of wild elephants, it would hardly have been on too large a scale for her tastes. In that sense, I may say that our friend’s white elephant was not so much of a white elephant. I mean that in that sense it was not so much of an irrelevancy and hardly even a surprise. But in another way, it was a very great relief.”

“You’re getting nearly as obscure as he is,” remonstrated Pierce. “What is all this mysterious introduction leading up to? What do you mean?”

“I mean,” replied the lawyer, “that experience has taught me a little secret about very practical public characters like that lady. It sounds a paradox; but those practical people are often more morbid than theoretical people. They are capable of acting; but they are also capable of brooding when they are not acting. Their very stoicism makes too sentimental a secret of their sentimentalism. They misunderstand those they love; and make a mystery of the misunderstanding. They suffer in silence; a horrid habit. In short, they can do everything; but they don’t know how to do nothing. Theorists, happy people who do nothing, like our friend Pierce----”

“Look here,” cried the indignant Pierce. “I should like to know what the devil you mean? I’ve broken more law than you ever read in your life. If this psychological lecture is the new lucidity, give me Mr. White.”

“Oh, very well,” replied Hood, “if you prefer his text to my exposition, he describes the same situation as follows: ‘I ought to be grateful, being perfectly happy after all this muddle; I suppose one ought to be careful about nomenclature; but it never even occurred to me that her nose would be out of joint. Rather funny to be talking about noses, isn’t it, for I suppose really it was her rival’s nose that figured most prominently. Think of having a rival with a nose like that to turn up at you! Talk about a spire pointing to the stars----’”

“I think,” said Crane, interposing mildly, “that it would be better if you resumed your duties as official interpreter. What was it that you were going to say about the lady who brooded over misunderstandings?”

“I was going to say,” replied the lawyer, “that when I first came upon that crowd in the village, and saw that tall figure and dark strong face dominating it in the old way, my mind went back to a score of things I remembered about her in the past. Though we have not met for ten years, I knew from the first glimpse of her face that she had been worrying, in a powerful secretive sort of way; worrying about something she didn’t understand and would not inquire about. I remember long ago, when she was an ordinary fox-hunting squire’s daughter and White was one of Sydney Smith’s wild curates, how she sulked for two months over a mistake about a post-card that could have been explained in two minutes. At least it could have been explained by anybody except White. But you will understand that if he tried to explain the post-card on another post-card, the results may not have been luminous, let alone radiant.”

“But what has all this to do with noses?” inquired Pierce.

“Don’t you understand yet?” asked Hood with a smile. “Don’t you know who was the rival with a long nose?”

He paused a moment and then continued, “It occurred to me as soon as I had guessed at the nature of the nose which may certainly be called the main feature of the story. An elusive, flexible and insinuating nose, the serpent of their Eden. Well, they seem to have returned to their Eden now; and I have no doubt it will be all right; for it is when people are separated that these sort of secrets spring up between them. After all, it was a mystery to us and we cannot be surprised if it was a mystery to her.”

“A good deal of this is still rather a mystery to me,” remarked Pierce, “though I admit it is getting a little clearer. You mean that the point that has just been cleared up is----”

“The point about Snowdrop,” replied Hood. “We thought of a pony, and a monkey, and a baby, and a good many other things that Snowdrop might possibly be. But we never thought of the interpretation which was the first to occur to the lady.”

There was a silence, and then Crane laughed in an internal fashion.

“Well, I don’t blame her,” he said. “One could hardly expect a lady of any delicacy to deduce an elephant.”

“It’s an extraordinary business, when you come to think of it,” said Pierce. “Where did he get the elephant?”

“He says something about that too,” said Hood referring to the letter. “He says, ‘I may be a quarrelsome fellow. But quarrels sometimes do good. And though it wasn’t actually one of Captain Pierce’s caravans----’”

“No hang it all!” cried Pierce. “This is really too much! To see one’s own name entangled in such hieroglyphics--it reminds me of seeing it in a Dutch paper during the war; and wondering whether all the other words were terms of abuse.”

“I think I can explain,” answered Hood patiently. “I assure you the reverend gentleman is not taking liberties with your name in a merely irresponsible spirit. As I told you before, he is strictly truthful when you get at the facts, though they may be difficult to get at. Curiously enough, there really is a connexion. I sometimes think there is a connexion beyond coincidence running through all our adventures; a purpose in these unconscious practical jokes. It seems rather eccentric to make friends with a white elephant----”

“Rather eccentric to make friends with us,” said the Colonel. “We are a set of white elephants.”

“As a matter of fact,” said the lawyer, “this particular last prank of the parson really did arise out of the last prank of our friend Pierce.”

“Me!” said Pierce in surprise. “Have I been producing elephants without knowing it?”

“Yes,” replied Hood. “You remember when you were smuggling pigs in defiance of the regulations, you indulged (I regret to say) in a deception of putting them in cages and pretending you were travelling with a menagerie of dangerous animals. The consequence was, you remember, that the authorities forbade menageries altogether. Our friend White took up the case of a travelling circus being stopped in his town as a case of gross oppression; and when they had to break it up, he took over the elephant.”

“Sort of small payment for his services, I suppose,” said Crane. “Curious idea, taking a tip in the form of an elephant.”

“He might not have done it if he’d known what it involved,” said Hood. “As I say, he was a quarrelsome fellow, with all his good points.”

There was a silence, and then Pierce said in a musing manner: “It’s odd it should be the sequel of my little pig adventure. A sort of reversal of the _parturiunt montes_; I put in a little pig and it brought forth an elephant.”

“It will bring forth more monsters yet,” said Owen Hood. “We have not seen all the sequels of your adventures as a swineherd.”

But touching the other monsters or monstrous events so produced, the reader has already been warned--nay, threatened--that they are involved in the narrative called the Exclusive Luxury of Enoch Oates, and for the moment the threat must hang like thunder in the air.

V

THE EXCLUSIVE LUXURY OF ENOCH OATES

V

THE EXCLUSIVE LUXURY OF ENOCH OATES

“Since the Colonel ate his hat the Lunatic Asylum has lacked a
background.”

The conscientious scribe cannot but be aware that the above sentence standing alone and without reference to previous matters, may not entirely explain itself. Anyone trying the experiment of using that sentence for practical social purposes; tossing that sentence lightly as a greeting to a passer-by; sending that sentence as a telegram to a total stranger; whispering that sentence hoarsely into the ear of the nearest policeman, and so on, will find that its insufficiency as a full and final statement is generally felt. With no morbid curiosity, with no exaggerated appetite for omniscience, men will want to know more about this statement before acting upon it. And the only way of explaining it, and the unusual circumstances in which it came to be said, is to pursue the doubling and devious course of these narratives, and return to a date very much earlier, when men now more than middle-aged were quite young.

It was in the days when the Colonel was not the Colonel, but only Jimmy Crane, a restless youth tossed about by every wind of adventure, but as yet as incapable of discipline as of dressing for dinner. It was in days before Robert Owen Hood, the lawyer, had ever begun to study the Law and had only got so far as to abolish it; coming down to the club every night with a new plan for a revolution to turn all earthly tribunals upside-down. It was in days before Wilding White settled down as a country parson, returning to the creed though not the conventions of his class and country; when he was still ready to change his religion once a week, turning up sometimes in the costume of a monk and sometimes of a mufti, and sometimes in what he declared to be the original vestments of a Druid, whose religion was shortly to be resumed by the whole British people. It was in days when their young friend Hilary Pierce, the aviator, was still anticipating aviation by flying a small kite. In short, it was early in the lives even of the elders of the group that they had founded a small social club, in which their long friendships had flourished. The club had to have some sort of name, and the more thoughtful and detached among them, who saw the club steadily and saw it whole, considered the point with ripe reflection, and finally called their little society the Lunatic Asylum.

“We might all stick straws in our hair for dinner, as the Romans crowned themselves with roses for the banquet,” observed Hood. “It would correspond to dressing for dinner; I don’t know what else we could do to vary the vulgar society trick of all wearing the same sort of white waistcoats.”

“All wearing strait-waistcoats, I suppose,” said Crane.

“We might each dine separately in a padded cell, if it comes to that,” said Hood; “but there seems to be something lacking in it considered as a social evening.”

Here Wilding White, who was then in a monastic phase, intervened eagerly. He explained that in some monasteries a monk of peculiar holiness was allowed to become a hermit in an inner cell, and proposed a similar arrangement at the club. Hood, with his more mellow rationalism, intervened with a milder amendment. He suggested that a large padded chair should represent the padded cell, and be reserved like a throne for the loftiest of the lunatics.

“Do not,” he said gently and earnestly, “do not let us be divided by jealousies and petty ambitions. Do not let us dispute among ourselves which shall be dottiest in the domain of the dotty. Perhaps one will appear worthier than us all, more manifestly and magnificently weak in the head; for him let the padded throne stand empty.”

Jimmy Crane had said no more after his brief suggestion, but was pacing the room like a polar bear, as he generally did when there came upon him a periodical impulse to go off after things like polar bears. He was the wildest of all those wild figures so far as the scale of his adventures was concerned, constantly vanishing to the ends of the earth nobody knew why, and turning up again nobody knew how. He had a hobby, even in his youth, that made his outlook seem even stranger than the bewildering successive philosophies of his friend White. He had an enthusiasm for the myths of savages, and while White was balancing the relative claims of Buddhism and Brahmanism, Crane would boldly declare his preference for the belief that a big fish ate the sun every night, or that the whole cosmos was created by cutting up a giant. Moreover, there was with all this something indefinable but in some way more serious about Crane even in these days. There was much that was merely boyish about the blind impetuosity of Wilding White, with his wild hair and eager aquiline face. He was evidently one who might (as he said) learn the secret of Isis, but would be quite incapable of keeping it to himself. The long, legal face of Owen Hood had already learned to laugh at most things, if not to laugh loudly. But in Crane there was something more hard and militant like steel, and as he proved afterwards in the affair of the hat, he could keep a secret even when it was a joke. So that when he finally went off on a long tour round the world, with the avowed intention of studying all the savages he could find, nobody tried to stop him. He went off in a startlingly shabby suit, with a faded sash instead of a waistcoat, and with no luggage in particular, except a large revolver slung round him in a case like a field-glass, and a big, green umbrella that he flourished resolutely as he walked.

“Well, he’ll come back a queerer figure than he went, I suppose,” said Wilding White.

“He couldn’t,” answered Hood, the lawyer, shaking his head. “I don’t believe all the devil-worship in Africa could make him any madder than he is.”

“But he’s going to America first, isn’t he?” said the other.

“Yes,” said Hood. “He’s going to America, but not to see the Americans. He would think the Americans very dull compared with the American Indians. Possibly he will come back in feathers and war-paint.”

“He’ll come back scalped, I suppose,” said White hopefully. “I suppose being scalped is all the rage in the best Red Indian society?”

“Then he’s working round by the South Sea Islands,” said Hood. “They don’t scalp people there; they only stew them in pots.”

“He couldn’t very well come back stewed,” said White, musing. “Does it strike you, Owen, that we should hardly be talking nonsense like this if we hadn’t a curious faith that a fellow like Crane will know how to look after himself?”

“Yes,” said Hood gravely. “I’ve got a very fixed fundamental conviction that Crane will turn up again all right. But it’s true that he may look jolly queer after going _fantee_ for all that time.”

It became a sort of pastime at the club of the Lunatics to compete in speculations about the guise in which the maddest of their madmen would return, after being so long lost to civilization. And grand preparations were made as for a sort of Walpurgis Night of nonsense when it was known at last that he was really returning. Hood had received letters from him occasionally, full of queer mythologies, and then a rapid succession of telegrams from places nearer and nearer home, culminating in the announcement that he would appear in the club that night. It was about five minutes before dinnertime that a sharp knock on the door announced his arrival.

“Bang all the gongs and the tom-toms,” cried Wilding White. “The Lord High Mumbo-Jumbo arrives riding on the nightmare.”

“We had better bring out the throne of the King of the Maniacs,” said Hood, laughing. “We may want it at last,” and he turned towards the big padded chair that still stood at the top of the table.

As he did so James Crane walked into the room. He was clad in very neat and well-cut evening clothes, not too fashionable, and a little formal. His hair was parted on one side, and his moustache clipped rather close; he took a seat with a pleasant smile, and began talking about the weather.

He was not allowed, however, to confine his conversation to the weather. He had certainly succeeded in giving his old friends the only sort of surprise that they really had not expected; but they were too old friends for their friend to be able to conceal from them the meaning of such a change. And it was on that festive evening that Crane explained his position; a position which he maintained in most things ever afterwards, and one which is the original foundation of the affair that follows.

“I have lived with the men we call savages all over the world,” he said simply, “and I have found out one truth about them. And I tell you, my friends, you may talk about independence and individual self-expression till you burst. But I’ve always found, wherever I went, that the man who could really be trusted to keep his word, and to fight, and to work for his family, was the man who did a war-dance before the moon where the moon was worshipped, and wore a nose-ring in his nose where nose-rings were worn. I have had plenty of fun, and I won’t interfere with anyone else having it. But I believe I have seen what is the real making of mankind, and I have come back to my tribe.”

This was the first act of the drama which ended in the remarkable appearance and disappearance of Mr. Enoch Oates, and it has been necessary to narrate it briefly before passing on to the second act. Ever since that time Crane had preserved at once his eccentric friends and his own more formal customs. And there were many among the newer members of the club who had never known him except as the Colonel, the grizzled, military gentleman whose severe scheme of black and white attire and strict politeness in small things formed the one foil of sharp contrast to that many-coloured Bohemia. One of these was Hilary Pierce, the young aviator; and much as he liked the Colonel, he never quite understood him. He had never known the old soldier in his volcanic youth, as had Hood and White, and therefore never knew how much of the fire remained under the rock or the snows. The singular affair of the hat, which has been narrated to the too patient reader elsewhere, surprised him more than it did the older men, who knew very well that the Colonel was not so old as he looked. And the impression increased with all the incidents which a fanatical love of truth has forced the chronicler to relate in the same connexion; the incident of the river and of the pigs and of the somewhat larger pet of Mr. Wilding White. There was talk of renaming the Lunatic Asylum as the League of the Long Bow, and of commemorating its performances in a permanent ritual. The Colonel was induced to wear a crown of cabbage on state occasions, and Pierce was gravely invited to bring his pigs with him to dine at the club.

“You could easily bring a little pig in your large pocket,” said Hood. “I often wonder people do not have pigs as pets.”

“A pig in a poke, in fact,” said Pierce. “Well, so long as you have the tact to avoid the indelicacy of having pork for dinner that evening, I suppose I could bring my pig in my pocket.”

“White’d find it rather a nuisance to bring his elephant in his pocket,” observed the Colonel.

Pierce glanced at him, and had again the feeling of incongruity at seeing the ceremonial cabbage adorning his comparatively venerable head. For the Colonel had just been married, and was rejuvenated in an almost jaunty degree. Somehow the philosophical young man seemed to miss something, and sighed. It was then that he made the remark which is the pivot of this precise though laborious anecdote.

“Since the Colonel ate his hat,” he said, “the Lunatic Asylum has lacked a background.”

“Damn your impudence,” said the Colonel cheerfully. “Do you mean to call me a background to my face?”

“A dark background,” said Pierce soothingly. “Do not resent my saying a dark background. I mean a grand, mysterious background like that of night; a sublime and even starry background.”

“Starry yourself,” said Crane indignantly.

“It was against that background of ancient night,” went on the young man dreamily, “that the fantastic shapes and fiery colours of our carnival could really be seen. So long as he came here with his black coat and beautiful society manners there was a foil to our follies. We were eccentric, but he was our centre. You cannot be eccentric without a centre.”

“I believe Hilary is quite right,” said Owen Hood earnestly. “I believe we have made a great mistake. We ought not to have all gone mad at once. We ought to have taken it in turns to go mad. Then I could have been shocked at his behaviour on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and he could have been shocked at my behaviour on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. But there is no moral value in going mad when nobody is shocked. If Crane leaves off being shocked, what are we to do?”

“I know what we want,” began Pierce excitedly.

“So do I,” interrupted Hood. “We want a sane man.”

“Not so easy to find nowadays,” said the old soldier. “Going to advertise?”

“I mean a stupid man,” explained Owen Hood. “I mean a man who’s conventional all through, not a humbug like Crane. I mean, I want a solid, serious business man, a hard-headed, practical man of affairs, a man to whom vast commercial interests are committed. In a word, I want a fool; some beautiful, rounded, homogeneous fool, in whose blameless face, as in a round mirror, all our fancies may really be reflected and renewed. I want a very successful man, a very wealthy man, a man----”

“I know! I know!” cried young Pierce, almost waving his arms. “Enoch Oates!”

“Who’s Enoch Oates?” inquired White.

“Are the lords of the world so little known?” asked Hood.

“Enoch Oates is Pork, and nearly everything else; Enoch Oates is turning civilization into one vast sausage-machine. Didn’t I ever tell you how Hilary ran into him over that pig affair?”

“He’s the very man you want,” cried Hilary Pierce enthusiastically. “I know him, and I believe I can get him. Being a millionaire, he’s entirely ignorant. Being an American, he’s entirely in earnest. He’s got just that sort of negative Nonconformist conscience of New England that balances the positive money-getting of New York. If we want to surprise anybody we’ll surprise him. Let’s ask Enoch Oates to dinner.”

“I won’t have any practical jokes played on guests,” said the Colonel.

“Of course not,” replied Hood. “He’ll be only too pleased to take it seriously. Did you ever know an American who didn’t like seeing the Sights? And if you don’t know you’re a Sight with that cabbage on your head, it’s time an American tourist taught you.”

“Besides, there’s a difference,” said Pierce. “I wouldn’t ask a fellow like that doctor, Horace Hunter----”

“Sir Horace Hunter,” murmured Hood reverently.

“I wouldn’t ask him, because I really think him a sneak and a snob, and my invitation could only be meant as an insult. But Oates is not a man I hate, nor is he hateful. That’s the curious part of it. He’s a simple, sincere sort of fellow, according to his lights, which are pretty dim. He’s a thief and a robber of course, but he doesn’t know it. I’m asking him because he’s different; but I don’t imagine he’s at all sorry to be different. There’s no harm in giving a man a good dinner and letting him be a background without knowing it.”

When Mr. Enoch Oates in due course accepted the invitation and presented himself at the club, many were reminded of that former occasion when a stiff and conventional figure in evening dress had first appeared like a rebuke to the revels. But in spite of the stiff sameness of both those black and white costumes, there was a great deal of difference between the old background and the new background. Crane’s good manners were of that casual kind that are rather peculiarly English, and mark an aristocracy at its ease in the saddle. Curiously enough, if the American had one point in common with a Continental noble of ancient lineage (whom his daughter might have married any day), it was that they would both be a little more on the defensive, living in the midst of democracy. Mr. Oates was perfectly polite, but there was something a little rigid about him. He walked to his chair rather stiffly and sat down rather heavily. He was a powerful, ponderous man with a large sallow face, a little suggestive of a corpulent Red Indian. He had a ruminant eye, and equally ruminant manner of chewing an unlighted cigar. These were signs that might well have gone with a habit of silence. But they did not.

Mr. Oates’s conversation might not be brilliant, but it was continuous. Pierce and his friends had begun with some notion of dangling their own escapades before him like dancing dolls before a child; they had told him something of the affair of the Colonel and his cabbage, of the captain and his pigs, of the parson and his elephants; but they soon found that their hearer had not come there merely as a listener. What he thought of their romantic buffooneries it would be hard to say; probably he did not understand them, possibly he did not even hear them. Anyhow, his own monologue went on. He was a leisurely speaker. They found themselves revising much that they had heard about the snap and smartness and hurry of American talk. He spoke without haste or embarrassment, his eye boring into space, and he more than fulfilled Mr. Pierce’s hopes of somebody who would talk about business matters. His talk was a mild torrent of facts and figures, especially figures. In fact the background was doing all it could to contribute the required undertone of common commercial life. The background was justifying all their hopes that it would be practical and prosaic. Only the background had rather the air of having become the foreground.