heroes who have endured the heavy labour of reading to the end the story of the unpresentable appearance of colonel crane are aware that his achievement was the first of a series of feats counted impossible, like the quests of the arthurian knights. for the purpose of this tale, in which the colonel is but a secondary figure, it is enough to say that he was long known and respected, before his last escapade, as a respectable and retired military man in a residential part of surrey, with a sunburnt complexion and an interest in savage mythology. as a fact, however, he had gathered the sunburn and the savage myths some time before he had managed to collect the respectability and the suburban residence. in his early youth he had been a traveller of the adventurous and even restless sort; and he only concerns this story because he was a member of a sort of club or clique of young men whose adventurousness verged on extravagance. they were all eccentrics of one kind or another, some professing extreme revolutionary and some extreme reactionary opinions,[40] and some both. among the latter may be classed mr. robert owen hood, the somewhat unlegal lawyer who is the hero of this tale.
robert owen hood was crane’s most intimate and incongruous friend. hood was from the first as sedentary as crane was adventurous. hood was to the end as casual as crane was conventional. the prefix of robert owen was a relic of a vague revolutionary tradition in his family; but he inherited along with it a little money that allowed him to neglect the law and cultivate a taste for liberty and for drifting and dreaming in lost corners of the country, especially in the little hills between the severn and the thames. in the upper reaches of the latter river is an islet in which he loved especially to sit fishing, a shabby but not commonplace figure clad in grey, with a mane of rust-coloured hair and a long face with a large chin, rather like napoleon. beside him, on the occasion now in question, stood the striking contrast of his alert military friend in full travelling kit; being on the point of starting for one of his odysseys in the south seas.
“well,” demanded the impatient traveller in a tone of remonstrance, “have you caught anything?”
“you once asked me,” replied the angler placidly, “what i meant by calling you a materialist. that is what i meant by calling you a materialist.”
“if one must be a materialist or a madman,” snorted the soldier, “give me materialism.”
[41]“on the contrary,” replied his friend, “your fad is far madder than mine. and i doubt if it’s any more fruitful. the moment men like you see a man sitting by a river with a rod, they are insanely impelled to ask him what he has caught. but when you go off to shoot big game, as you call it, nobody asks you what you have caught. nobody expects you to bring home a hippopotamus for supper. nobody has ever seen you walking up pall mall, followed respectfully by a captive giraffe. your bag of elephants, though enormous, seems singularly unobtrusive; left in the cloak-room, no doubt. personally, i doubt if you ever catch anything. it’s all decorously hidden in desert sand and dust and distance. but what i catch is something far more elusive, and as slippery as any fish. it is the soul of england.”
“i should think you’d catch a cold if not a fish,” answered crane, “sitting dangling your feet in a pool like that. i like to move about a little more. dreaming is all very well in its way.”
at this point a symbolic cloud ought to have come across the sun, and a certain shadow of mystery and silence must rest for a moment upon the narrative. for it was at this moment that james crane, being blind with inspiration, uttered his celebrated prophecy, upon which this improbable narrative turns. as was commonly the case with men uttering omens, he was utterly unconscious of anything[42] ominous about what he said. a moment after he would probably not know that he had said it. a moment after, it was as if a cloud of strange shape had indeed passed from the face of the sun.
the prophecy had taken the form of a proverb. in due time the patient, the all-suffering reader, may learn what proverb. as it happened, indeed, the conversation had largely consisted of proverbs; as is often the case with men like hood, whose hearts are with that old english country life from which all the proverbs came. but it was crane who said:
“it’s all very well to be fond of england; but a man who wants to help england mustn’t let the grass grow under his feet.”
“and that’s just what i want to do,” answered hood. “that’s exactly what even your poor tired people in big towns really want to do. when a wretched clerk walks down threadneedle street, wouldn’t he be really delighted if he could look down and see the grass growing under his feet; a magic green carpet in the middle of the pavement? it would be like a fairy-tale.”
“well, but he wouldn’t sit like a stone as you do,” replied the other. “a man might let the grass grow under his feet without actually letting the ivy grow up his legs. that sounds like a fairy-tale too, if you like, but there’s no proverb to recommend it.”
“oh, there are proverbs on my side, if you come to that,” answered hood laughing. “i might remind[43] you about the rolling stone that gathers no moss.”
“well, who wants to gather moss except a few fussy old ladies?” demanded crane. “yes, i’m a rolling stone, i suppose; and i go rolling round the earth as the earth goes rolling round the sun. but i’ll tell you what; there’s one kind of stone that does really gather moss.”
“and what is that, my rambling geologist?”
“a gravestone,” said crane.
there was a silence, and hood sat gazing with his owlish face at the dim pool in which the dark woods were mirrored. at last he said:
“moss isn’t the only thing found on that. sometimes there is the word resurgam.”
“well, i hope you will,” said crane genially. “but the trumpet will have to be pretty loud to wake you up. it’s my opinion you’ll be too late for the day of judgment.”
“now if this were a true dramatic dialogue,” remarked hood, “i should answer that it would be better for you if you were. but it hardly seems a christian sentiment for a parting. are you really off to-day?”
“yes, to-night,” replied his friend. “sure you won’t come with me to the cannibal islands?”
“i prefer my own island,” said mr. owen hood.
when his friend had gone he continued to gaze abstractedly at the tranquil topsy-turvydom in the green mirror of the pool, nor did he change his[44] posture and hardly moved his head. this might be partly explained by the still habits of a fisherman; but to tell the truth, it was not easy to discover whether the solitary lawyer really wanted to catch any fish. he often carried a volume of isaak walton in his pocket, having a love of the old english literature as of the old english landscape. but if he was an angler, he certainly was not a very complete angler.
but the truth is that owen hood had not been quite candid with his friend about the spell that held him to that particular islet in the upper thames. if he had said, as he was quite capable of saying, that he expected to catch the miraculous draught of fishes or the whale that swallowed jonah, or even the great sea-serpent, his expressions would have been merely symbolical. but they would have been the symbol of something as unique and unattainable. for mr. owen hood was really fishing for something that very few fishermen ever catch; and that was a dream of his boyhood, and something that had happened on that lonely spot long ago.
years before, when he was a very young man, he had sat fishing on that island one evening as the twilight turned to dark, and two or three broad bands of silver were all that was left of the sunset behind the darkening trees. the birds were dropping out of the sky and there was no noise except the soft noises of the river. suddenly and without a sound,[45] as comes a veritable vision, a girl had come out of the woods opposite. she spoke to him across the stream, asking him he hardly knew what, which he answered he hardly knew how. she was dressed in white and carried a bunch of bluebells loose in her hand; her hair in a straight fringe of gold was low on her forehead; she was pale like ivory, and her pale eyelids had a sort of flutter as of nervous emotion. there came on him a strangling sense of stupidity. but he must have managed to speak civilly, for she lingered; and he must have said something to amuse her, for she laughed. then followed the incident he could never analyse, though he was an introspective person. making a gesture towards something, she managed to drop her loose blue flowers into the water. he knew not what sort of whirlwind was in his head, but it seemed to him that prodigious things were happening, as in an epic of the gods, of which all visible things were but the small signs. before he knew where he was he was standing dripping on the other bank; for he had splashed in somehow and saved the bunch as if it had been a baby drowning. of all the things she said he could only recall one sentence, that repeated itself perpetually in his mind: “you’ll catch your death of cold.”
he only caught the cold and not the death; yet even the notion of the latter did not somehow seem disproportionate. the doctor, to whom he was[46] forced to give some sort of explanation of his immersion, was much interested in the story, or what he heard of it, having a pleasure in working out the pedigrees of the county families and the relationships of the best houses in the neighbourhood. by some rich process of elimination he deduced that the lady must be miss elizabeth seymour from marley court. the doctor spoke with a respectful relish of such things; he was a rising young practitioner named hunter, afterwards a neighbour of colonel crane. he shared hood’s admiration for the local landscape, and said it was owing to the beautiful way in which marley court was kept up.
“it’s land-owners like that,” he said, “who have made england. it’s all very well for radicals to talk; but where should we be without the land-owners?”
“oh, i’m all for land-owners,” said hood rather wearily. “i like them so much i should like more of them. more and more land-owners. hundreds and thousands of them.”
it is doubtful whether dr. hunter quite followed his enthusiasm, or even his meaning; but hood had reason later to remember this little conversation; so far as he was in a mood to remember any conversations except one.
anyhow, it were vain to disguise from the intelligent though exhausted reader that this was probably[47] the true origin of mr. hood’s habit of sitting solidly on that island and gazing abstractedly at that bank. all through the years when he felt his first youth was passing, and even when he seemed to be drifting towards middle age, he haunted that valley like a ghost, waiting for something that never came again. it is by no means certain, in the last and most subtle analysis, that he even expected it to come again. somehow it seemed too like a miracle for that. only this place had become the shrine of the miracle; and he felt that if anything ever did happen there, he must be there to see. and so it came about that he was there to see when things did happen; and rather queer things had happened before the end.
one morning he saw an extraordinary thing. that indeed would not have seemed extraordinary to most people; but it was quite apocalyptic to him. a dusty man came out of the woods carrying what looked like dusty pieces of timber, and proceeded to erect on the bank what turned out to be a sort of hoarding, a very large wooden notice-board on which was written in enormous letters: “to be sold,” with remarks in smaller letters about the land and the name of the land agents. for the first time for years owen hood stood up in his place and left his fishing, and shouted questions across the river. the man answered with the greatest patience[48] and good-humour; but it is probable that he went away convinced that he had been talking to a wandering lunatic.
that was the beginning of what was for owen hood a crawling nightmare. the change advanced slowly, by a process covering years, but it seemed to him all the time that he was helpless and paralysed in its presence, precisely as a man is paralysed in an actual nightmare. he laughed with an almost horrible laughter to think that a man in a modern society is supposed to be master of his fate and free to pursue his pleasures; when he has not power to prevent the daylight he looks on from being darkened, or the air he breathes from being turned to poison, or the silence that is his full possession from being shaken with the cacophony of hell. there was something, he thought grimly, in dr. hunter’s simple admiration for agricultural aristocracy. there was something in quite primitive and even barbarous aristocracy. feudal lords went in fitfully for fights and forays; they put collars round the necks of some serfs; they occasionally put halters round the necks of a few of them. but they did not wage war day and night against the five senses of man.
there had appeared first on the river-bank small sheds and shanties, for workmen who seemed to be rather lengthily occupied in putting up larger sheds and shanties. to the very last, when the factory[49] was finished, it was not easy for a traditional eye to distinguish between what was temporary and what was permanent. it did not look as if any of it could be permanent, if there was anything natural in the nature of things, so to speak. but whatever was the name and nature of that amorphous thing, it swelled and increased and even multiplied without clear division; until there stood on the river-bank a great black patchwork block of buildings terminating in a tall brick factory chimney from which a stream of smoke mounted into the silent sky. a heap of some sort of débris, scrapped iron and similar things, lay in the foreground; and a broken bar, red with rust, had fallen on the spot where the girl had been standing when she brought bluebells out of the wood.
he did not leave his island. rural and romantic and sedentary as he may have seemed, he was not the son of an old revolutionist for nothing. it was not altogether in vain that his father had called him robert owen or that his friends had sometimes called him robin hood. sometimes, indeed, his soul sank within him with a mortal sickness that was near to suicide, but more often he marched up and down in a militant fashion, being delighted to see the tall wild-flowers waving on the banks like flags within a stone’s-throw of all he hated, and muttering, “throw out the banners on the outward wall.” he had already, when the estate of marley court was[50] broken up for building, taken some steps to establish himself on the island, had built a sort of hut there, in which it was possible to picnic for considerable periods.
one morning when dawn was still radiant behind the dark factory and light lay in a satin sheen upon the water, there crept out upon that satin something like a thickening thread of a different colour and material. it was a thin ribbon of some other liquid that did not mingle with the water, but lay on top of it wavering like a worm; and owen hood watched it as a man watches a snake. it looked like a snake, having opalescent colours not without intrinsic beauty; but to him it was a very symbolic snake; like the serpent that destroyed eden. a few days afterwards there were a score of snakes covering the surface; little crawling rivers that moved on the river but did not mix with it, being as alien as witch’s oils. later there came darker liquids with no pretensions to beauty, black and brown flakes of grease that floated heavily.
it was highly characteristic of hood that to the last he was rather hazy about the nature and purpose of the factory; and therefore about the ingredients of the chemicals that were floating into the river; beyond the fact that they were mostly of the oily sort and floated on the water in flakes and lumps, and that something resembling petrol seemed to predominate,[51] used perhaps rather for power than raw material. he had heard a rustic rumour that the enterprise was devoted to hair-dye. it smelt rather like a soap factory. so far as he ever understood it, he gathered that it was devoted to what might be considered as a golden mean between hair-dye and soap, some kind of new and highly hygienic cosmetics. there had been a yet more feverish fashion in these things, since professor hake had written his great book proving that cosmetics were of all things the most hygienic. and hood had seen many of the meadows of his childhood now brightened and adorned by large notices inscribed “why grow old?” with the portrait of a young woman grinning in a regrettable manner. the appropriate name on the notices was bliss, and he gathered that it all had something to do with the great factory.
resolved to know a little more than this about the matter, he began to make inquiries and complaints, and engaged in a correspondence which ended in an actual interview with some of the principal persons involved. the correspondence had gone on for a long time before it came anywhere near to anything so natural as that. indeed, the correspondence for a long time was entirely on his side. for the big businesses are quite as unbusinesslike as the government departments; they are no better in efficiency and much worse in manners. but he obtained his interview[52] at last, and it was with a sense of sour amusement that he came face to face with four people whom he wanted to meet.
one was sir samuel bliss, for he had not yet performed those party services which led to his being known to us all as lord normantowers. he was a small, alert man like a ferret, with bristles of grey beard and hair, and active or even agitated movements. the second was his manager, mr. low, a stout, dark man with a thick nose and thick rings, who eyed strangers with a curious heavy suspicion like a congested sense of injury. it is believed that he expected to be persecuted. the third man was something of a surprise, for he was no other than his old friend dr. horace hunter, as healthy and hearty as ever, but even better dressed; as he now had a great official appointment as some kind of medical inspector of the sanitary conditions of the district. but the fourth man was the greatest surprise of all. for it appeared that their conference was honoured by so great a figure in the scientific world as professor hake himself, who had revolutionized the modern mind with his new discoveries about the complexion in relation to health. when hood realized who he was, a light of somewhat sinister understanding dawned on his long face.
on this occasion the professor advanced an even more interesting theory. he was a big, blond man[53] with blinking eyes and a bull neck; and doubtless there was more in him than met the eye, as is the way with great men. he spoke last, and his theory was expounded with a certain air of finality. the manager had already stated that it was quite impossible for large quantities of petrol to have escaped, as only a given amount was used in the factory. sir samuel had explained, in what seemed an irascible and even irrelevant manner, that he had presented several parks to the public, and had the dormitories of his work-people decorated in the simplest and best taste, and nobody could accuse him of vandalism or not caring for beauty and all that. then it was that professor hake explained the theory of the protective screen. even if it were possible, he said, for some thin film of petrol to appear on the water, as it would not mix with the water the latter would actually be kept in a clearer condition. it would act, as it were, as a cap; as does the gelatinous cap upon certain preserved foods.
“that is a very interesting view,” observed hood; “i suppose you will write another book about that?”
“i think we are all the more privileged,” remarked bliss, “in hearing of the discovery in this personal fashion, before our expert has laid it before the public.”
“yes,” said hood, “your expert is very expert, isn’t he—in writing books?”
[54]sir samuel bliss stiffened in all his bristles. “i trust,” he said, “you are not implying any doubt that our expert is an expert.”
“i have no doubt of your expert,” answered hood gravely, “i do not doubt either that he is expert or that he is yours.”
“really, gentlemen,” cried bliss in a sort of radiance of protest, “i think such an insinuation about a man in professor hake’s position——”
“not at all, not at all,” said hood soothingly, “i’m sure it’s a most comfortable position.”
the professor blinked at him, but a light burned in the eyeballs under the heavy eyelids.
“if you come here talking like that—” he began, when hood cut off his speech by speaking across him to somebody else, with a cheerful rudeness that was like a kick in its contempt.
“and what do you say, my dear doctor?” he observed, addressing hunter. “you used to be almost as romantic as myself about the amenities of this place. do you remember how much you admired the landlords for keeping the place quiet and select; and how you said the old families preserved the beauty of old england?”
there was a silence, and then the young doctor spoke.
“well, it doesn’t follow a fellow can’t believe in progress. that’s what’s the matter with you, hood; you don’t believe in progress. we must move with[55] the times; and somebody always has to suffer. besides, it doesn’t matter so much about river-water nowadays. it doesn’t even matter so much about the main water-supply. when the new bill is passed, people will be obliged to use the bulton filter in any case.”
“i see,” said hood reflectively. “you first make a mess of the water for money, and then make a virtue of forcing people to clean it themselves.”
“i don’t know what you’re talking about,” said hunter angrily.
“well, i was thinking at the moment,” said hood in his rather cryptic way. “i was thinking about mr. bulton. the man who owns the filters. i was wondering whether he might join us. we seem such a happy family party.”
“i cannot see the use of prolonging this preposterous conversation,” said sir samuel.
“don’t call the poor professor’s theory preposterous,” remonstrated hood. “a little fanciful, perhaps. and as for the doctor’s view, surely there’s nothing preposterous in that. you don’t think the chemicals will poison all the fish i catch, do you, doctor?”
“no, of course not,” replied hunter curtly.
“they will adapt themselves by natural selection,” said hood dreamily. “they will develop organs suitable to an oily environment—will learn to love petrol.”
[56]“oh, i have no time for this nonsense,” said hunter, and was turning to go, when hood stepped in front of him and looked at him very steadily.
“you mustn’t call natural selection nonsense,” he said. “i know all about that, at any rate. i can’t tell whether liquids tipped off the shore will fall into the river, because i don’t understand hydraulics. i don’t know whether your machinery makes a hell of a noise every morning, for i’ve never studied acoustics. i don’t know whether it stinks or not, because i haven’t read your expert’s book on ‘the nose.’ but i know all about adaptation to environment. i know that some of the lower organisms do really change with their changing conditions. i know there are creatures so low that they do survive by surrendering to every succession of mud and slime; and when things are slow they are slow, and when things are fast they are fast, and when things are filthy they are filthy. i thank you for convincing me of that.”
he did not wait for a reply, but walked out of the room after bowing curtly to the rest; and that was the end of the great conference on the question of riparian rights and perhaps the end of thames conservancy and of the old aristocratic england, with its good and ill.
the general public never heard very much about it; at least until one catastrophic scene which was to follow. there was some faint ripple of the question[57] some months later, when dr. horace hunter was standing for parliament in that division. one or two questions were asked about his duties in relation to river pollution; but it was soon apparent that no party particularly wished to force the issue against the best opinions advanced on the other side. the greatest living authority on hygiene, professor hake, had actually written to the times (in the interests of science) to say that in such a hypothetical case as that mentioned, a medical man could only do what dr. hunter had apparently done. it so happened that the chief captain of industry in that part of the thames valley, sir samuel bliss, had himself, after gravely weighing the rival policies, decided to vote for hunter. the great organizer’s own mind was detached and philosophical in the matter; but it seems that his manager, a mr. low, was of the same politics and a more practical and pushful spirit; warmly urging the claims of hunter on his work-people; pointing out the many practical advantages they would gain by voting for that physician, and the still more practical disadvantages they might suffer by not doing so. hence it followed that the blue ribbons, which were the local badges of the hunterians, were not only to be found attached to the iron railings and wooden posts of the factory, but to various human figures, known as “hands,” which moved to and fro in it.
hood took no interest in the election; but while[58] it was proceeding he followed the matter a little further in another form. he was a lawyer, a lazy, but in some ways a learned one; for, his tastes being studious, he had originally learned the trade he had never used. more in defiance than in hope, he once carried the matter into the courts, pleading his own cause on the basis of a law of henry the third against frightening the fish of the king’s liege subjects in the thames valley. the judge, in giving judgment, complimented him on the ability and plausibility of his contention, but ultimately rejected it on grounds equally historic and remote. his lordship argued that no test seemed to be provided for ascertaining the degree of fear in the fish, or whether it amounted to that bodily fear of which the law took cognizance. but the learned judge pointed out the precedent of a law of richard the second against certain witches who had frightened children; which had been interpreted by so great an authority as coke in the sense that the child “must return and of his own will testify to his fear.” it did not seem to be alleged that any one of the fish in question had returned and laid any such testimony before any proper authority; and he therefore gave judgment for the defendants. and when the learned judge happened to meet lord normantowers (as he was by this time) out at dinner that evening, he was gaily rallied and congratulated by that new nobleman on the lucidity and finality of[59] his judgment. indeed, the learned judge had really relished the logic both of his own and hood’s contention; but the conclusion was what he would have come to in any case. for our judges are not hampered by any hide-bound code; they are progressive, like dr. hunter, and ally themselves on principle with the progressive forces of the age, especially those they are likely to meet out at dinner.
but it was this abortive law case that led up to something that altogether obliterated it in a blaze of glory, so far as mr. owen hood was concerned. he had just left the courts, and turning down the streets that led in the direction of the station, he made his way thither in something of a brown study, as was his wont. the streets were filled with faces; it struck him for the first time that there were thousands and thousands of people in the world. there were more faces at the railway station, and then, when he had glanced idly at four or five of them, he saw one that was to him as incredible as the face of the dead.
she was coming casually out of the tea-room, carrying a handbag, just like anybody else. that mystical perversity of his mind, which had insisted on sealing up the sacred memory like something hardly to be sought in mere curiosity, had fixed it in its original colours and setting, like something of which no detail could be changed without the vision dissolving. he would have conceived it almost impossible[60] that she could appear in anything but white or out of anything but a wood. and he found himself turned topsy-turvy by an old and common incredulity of men in his condition; being startled by the coincidence that blue suited her as well as white; and that in what he remembered of that woodland there was something else; something to be said even for teashops and railway stations.
she stopped in front of him and her pale, fluttering eyelids lifted from her blue-grey eyes.
“why,” she said, “you are the boy that jumped in the river!”
“i’m no longer a boy,” answered hood, “but i’m ready to jump in the river again.”
“well, don’t jump on the railway-line,” she said, as he turned with a swiftness suggestive of something of the kind.
“to tell you the truth,” he said, “i was thinking of jumping into your railway-train. do you mind if i jump into your railway-train?”
“well, i’m going to birkstead,” she said rather doubtfully.
mr. owen hood did not in the least care where she was going, as he had resolved to go there; but as a matter of fact, he remembered a wayside station on that line that lay very near to what he had in view; so he tumbled into the carriage if possible with more alacrity; and landscapes shot by them as[61] they sat looking in a dazed and almost foolish fashion at each other. at last the girl smiled with a sense of the absurdity of the thing.
“i heard about you from a friend of yours,” she said; “he came to call on us soon after it happened; at least that was when he first came. you know dr. hunter, don’t you?”
“yes,” replied owen, a shadow coming over his shining hour. “do you—do you know him well?”
“i know him pretty well now,” said miss elizabeth seymour.
the shadow on his spirit blackened swiftly; he suspected something quite suddenly and savagely. hunter, in crane’s old phrase, was not a man who let the grass grow under his feet. it was so like him to have somehow used the incident as an introduction to the seymours. things were always stepping-stones for hunter, and the little rock in the river had been a stepping-stone to the country house. but was the country house a stepping-stone to something else? suddenly hood realized that all his angers had been very abstract angers. he had never hated a man before.
at that moment the train stopped at the station of cowford.
“i wish you’d get out here with me,” he said abruptly, “only for a little—and it might be the last time. i want you to do something.”
[62]she looked at him with a curious expression and said in a rather low voice, “what do you want me to do?”
“i want you to come and pick bluebells,” he said harshly.
she stepped out of the train, and they went up a winding country road without a word.
“i remember!” she said suddenly. “when you get to the top of this hill you see the wood where the bluebells were, and your little island beyond.”
“come on and see it,” said owen.
they stepped on the crest of the hill and stood. below them the black factory belched its livid smoke into the air; and where the wood had been were rows of little houses like boxes, built of dirty yellow brick.
hood spoke. “and when you shall see the abomination of desolation sitting in the holy of holies—isn’t that when the world is supposed to end? i wish the world would end now; with you and me standing on a hill.”
she was staring at the place with parted lips and more than her ordinary pallor; he knew she understood something monstrous and symbolic in the scene; yet her first remark was jerky and trivial. on the nearest of the yellow brick boxes were visible the cheap colours of various advertisements; and larger than the rest a blue poster proclaiming “vote for hunter.” with a final touch of tragic pathos,[63] hood remembered that it was the last and most sensational day of the election. but the girl had already found her voice.
“is that dr. hunter?” she asked with commonplace curiosity; “is he standing for parliament?”
a load that lay on hood’s mind like a rock suddenly rose like an eagle; and he felt as if the hill he stood on were higher than everest. by the insight of his own insanity, he knew well enough that she would have known well enough whether hunter was standing, if—if there had been anything like what he supposed. the removal of the steadying weight staggered him, and he had something quite indefensible.
“i thought you would know. i thought you and he were probably—well, the truth is i thought you were engaged, though i really don’t know why.”
“i can’t imagine why,” said elizabeth seymour. “i heard he was engaged to lord normantowers’s daughter. they’ve got our old place now, you know.”
there was a silence and then hood spoke suddenly in a loud and cheerful voice.
“well, what i say is ‘vote for hunter,’” he said heartily. “after all, why not vote for hunter? good old hunter! i hope he’ll be a member of parliament. i hope he’ll be prime minister. i hope he’ll be president of the world state that wells[64] talks about. by george, he deserves to be emperor of the solar system.”
“but why,” she protested, “why should he deserve all that?”
“for not being engaged to you, of course,” he replied.
“oh!” she said, and something of a secret shiver in her voice went through him like a silver bell.
abruptly, all of a sudden, the rage of raillery seemed to leave his voice and his face, so that his napoleonic profile looked earnest and eager and much younger, like the profile of the young napoleon. his wide shoulders lost the slight stoop that books had given them, and his rather wild red hair fell away from his lifted head.
“there is one thing i must tell you about him,” he said, “and one thing you must hear about me. my friends tell me i am a drifter and a dreamer; that i let the grass grow under my feet; i must tell you at least how and why i once let it grow. three days after that day by the river, i talked to hunter; he was attending me and he talked about it and you. of course he knew nothing about either. but he is a practical man; a very practical man; he does not dream or drift. from the way he talked i knew he was considering even then how the accident could be turned to account; to his account and perhaps to mine too; for he is good-natured; yes, he is quite good-natured. i think that if i had taken his hint[65] and formed a sort of social partnership, i might have known you six years sooner, not as a memory, but—an acquaintance. and i could not do it. judge me how you will, i could not bring myself to do it. that is what is meant by being born with a bee in the bonnet, with an impediment in the speech, with a stumbling-block in the path, with a sulky scruple in the soul. i could not bear to approach you by that door, with that gross and grinning flunkey holding it open. i could not bear that suffocatingly substantial snob to bulk so big in my story or know so much of my secret. a revulsion i could never utter made me feel that the vision should remain my own even by remaining unfulfilled; but it should not be vulgarized. that is what is meant by being a failure in life. and when my best friend made a prophecy about me, and said there was something i should never do, i thought he was right.”
“why, what do you mean?” she asked rather faintly, “what was it you would never do?”
“never mind that now,” he said, with the shadow of a returning smile. “rather strange things are stirring in me just now, and who knows but i may attempt something yet? but before all else, i must make clear for once what i am and for what i lived. there are men like me in the world; i am far from thinking they are the best or the most valuable; but they exist, to confound all the clever people and the realists and the new novelists. there has been and[66] there is only one thing for me; something that in the normal sense i never even knew. i walked about the world blind, with my eyes turned inwards, looking at you. for days after a night when i had dreamed of you, i was broken; like a man who had seen a ghost. i read over and over the great and grave lines of the old poets, because they alone were worthy of you. and when i saw you again by chance, i thought the world had already ended; and it was that return and tryst beyond the grave that is too good to be true.”
“i do not think,” she answered in a low voice, “that the belief is too good to be true.”
as he looked at her a thrill went through him like a message too swift to be understood; and at the back of his mind something awoke that repeated again and again like a song the same words: “too good to be true.” there was always something pathetic, even in her days of pride, about the short-sighted look of her half-closed eyes; but it was for other reasons that they were now blinking in the strong white sunlight, almost as if they were blind. they were blind and bright with tears: she mastered her voice and it was steady.
“you talk about failures,” she said. “i suppose most people would call me a failure and all my people failures now; except those who would say we never failed, because we never had to try. anyhow, we’re all poor enough now; i don’t know[67] whether you know that i’m teaching music. i dare say we deserved to go. i dare say we were useless. some of us tried to be harmless. but—but now i must say something, about some of us who tried rather hard to be harmless—in that way. the new people will tell you those ideals were victorian and tennysonian, and all the rest of it—well, it doesn’t matter what they say. they know quite as little about us as we about them. but to you, when you talk like that ... what can i do, but tell you that if we were stiff, if we were cold, if we were careful and conservative, it was because deep down in our souls some of us did believe that there might be loyalty and love like that, for which a woman might well wait even to the end of the world. what is it to these people if we choose not to be drugged or distracted with anything less worthy? but it would be hard indeed if when i find it does exist after all ... hard on you, harder on me, if when i had really found it at last....” the catch in her voice came again and silence caught and held her.
he took one stride forward as into the heart of a whirlwind; and they met on the top of that windy hill as if they had come from the ends of the earth.
“this is an epic,” he said, “which is rather an action than a word. i have lived with words too long.”
“what do you mean?”
“i mean you have turned me into a man of action,”[68] he replied. “so long as you were in the past, nothing was better than the past. so long as you were only a dream, nothing was better than dreaming. but now i am going to do something that no man has ever done before.”
he turned towards the valley and flung out his hand with a gesture, almost as if the hand had held a sword.
“i am going to break the prophecy,” he cried in a loud voice. “i am going to defy the omens of my doom and make fun of my evil star. those who called me a failure shall own i have succeeded where all humanity has failed. the real hero is not he who is bold enough to fulfil the predictions, but he who is bold enough to falsify them. and you shall see one falsified to-night.”
“what in the world are you going to do?” she asked.
he laughed suddenly. “the first thing to do,” he cried, swinging round with a new air of resolution and even cheerfulness, “the very first thing to do is to vote for hunter. or, at any rate, help to get him into parliament.”
“but why in the world,” she asked wondering, “should you want so much to get dr. hunter into parliament?”
“well, one must do something,” he said with an appearance of easy good sense, “to celebrate the occasion. we must do something; and after all he[69] must go somewhere, poor devil. you will say, why not throw him into the river? it would relieve the feelings and make a splash. but i’m going to make something much bigger than a splash. besides, i don’t want him in my nice river. i’d much rather pick him up and throw him all the way to westminster. much more sensible and suitable. obviously there ought to be a brass band and a torchlight procession somewhere to-night; and why shouldn’t he have a bit of the fun?”
he stopped suddenly as if surprised at his own words: for indeed his own phrase had fallen, for him, with the significance of a falling star.
“of course!” he muttered. “a torchlight procession! i’ve been feeling that what i wanted was trumpets and what i really want is torches. yes, i believe it could be done! yes, the hour is come! by stars and blazes, i will give him a torchlight procession!”
he had been almost dancing with excitement on the top of the ridge; now he suddenly went bounding down the slope beyond, calling to the girl to follow, as carelessly as if they had been two children playing at hide and seek. strangely enough, perhaps, she did follow; more strangely still when we consider the extravagant scenes through which she allowed herself to be led. they were scenes more insanely incongruous with all her sensitive and even secretive dignity than if she had been changing hats[70] with a costermonger on a bank holiday. for there the world would only be loud with vulgarity, and here it was also loud with lies. she could never have described that saturnalia of a political election; but she did dimly feel the double impression of a harlequinade at the end of a pantomime and of hood’s phrase about the end of the world. it was as if a bank holiday could also be a day of judgment. but as the farce could no longer offend her, so the tragedy could no longer terrify. she went through it all with a wan smile, which perhaps nobody in the world would have known her well enough to interpret. it was not in the normal sense excitement; yet it was something much more positive than patience. in a sense perhaps, more than ever before in her lonely life, she was walled up in her ivory tower; but it was all alight within, as if it were lit with candles or lined with gold.
hood’s impetuous movements brought them to the bank of the river and the outer offices of the factory, all of which were covered with the coloured posters of the candidature, and one of which was obviously fitted up as a busy and bustling committee-room. hood actually met mr. low coming out of it, buttoned up in a fur coat and bursting with speechless efficiency. but mr. low’s beady black eyes glistened with an astonishment bordering on suspicion when hood in the most hearty fashion offered his sympathy and co-operation. that strange subconscious[71] fear, that underlay all the wealthy manager’s success and security in this country, always came to the surface at the sight of owen hood’s long ironical face. just at that moment, however, one of the local agents rushed at him in a distracted fashion, with telegrams in his hand. they were short of canvassers; they were short of cars; they were short of speakers; the crowd at little puddleton had been waiting half an hour; dr. hunter could not get round to them till ten past nine, and so on. the agent in his agony would probably have hailed a margate nigger and entrusted him with the cause of the great national party, without any really philosophical inquiry into the nigger’s theory of citizenship. for all such over-practical push and bustle in our time is always utterly unpractical at the last minute and in the long run. on that night robert owen hood would have been encouraged to go anywhere and say anything; and he did. it might be interesting to imagine what the lady thought about it; but it is possible that she did not think about it. she had a radiantly abstracted sense of passing through a number of ugly rooms and sheds with flaring gas and stacks of leaflets behind which little irritable men ran about like rabbits. the walls were covered with large allegorical pictures printed in line or in a few bright colours, representing dr. hunter as clad in armour, as slaying dragons, as rescuing ladies rather like classical goddesses, and so[72] on. lest it should be too literally understood that dr. hunter was in the habit of killing dragons in his daily round, as a form of field-sport, the dragon was inscribed with its name in large letters. apparently its name was “national extravagance.” lest there should be any doubt about the alternative which dr. hunter had discovered as a corrective to extravagance, the sword which he was thrusting through the dragon’s body was inscribed with the word “economy.” elizabeth seymour, through whose happy but bewildered mind these pictures passed, could not but reflect vaguely that she herself had lately but to practise a good deal of economy and resist a good many temptations to extravagance; but it would never have occurred to her unaided imagination to conceive the action as that of plunging a sword into a scaly monster of immense size. in the central committee-room they actually came face to face for a moment with the candidate, who came in very hot and breathless with a silk hat on the back of his head; where he had possibly forgotten it, for he certainly did not remove it. she was a little ashamed of being sensitive about such trifles; but she came to the conclusion that she would not like to have a husband standing for parliament.
“we’ve rounded up all those people down bleak row,” said dr. hunter. “no good going down the hole and those filthy places. no votes there. streets ought to be abolished and the people too.”
[73]“well, we’ve had a very good meeting in the masonic hall,” said the agent cheerfully. “lord normantowers spoke, and really he got through all right. told some stories, you know; and they stood it capitally.”
“and now,” said owen hood, slapping his hands together in an almost convivial manner, “what about this torchlight procession?”
“this what procession?” asked the agent.
“do you mean to tell me,” said hood sternly, “that arrangements are not complete for the torchlight procession of dr. hunter? that you are going to let this night of triumph pass without kindling a hundred flames to light the path of the conqueror? do you realize that the hearts of a whole people have spontaneously stirred and chosen him? that the suffering poor murmured in their sleep ‘vote for hunter’ long before the caucus came by a providential coincidence to the same conclusion? would not the people in the hole set fire to their last poor sticks of furniture to do him honour? why, from this chair alone——”
he caught up the chair on which hunter had been sitting and began to break it enthusiastically. in this he was hastily checked; but he actually succeeded in carrying the company with him in his proposal, thus urged at the eleventh hour.
by nightfall he had actually organized his torchlight procession, escorting the triumphant hunter,[74] covered with blue ribbons, to the riverside, rather as if the worthy doctor were to be baptized like a convert or drowned like a witch. for that matter, hood might possibly intend to burn the witch; for he brandished a blazing torch he carried so as to make a sort of halo round hunter’s astonished countenance. then, springing on the scrap-heap by the brink of the river, he addressed the crowd for the last time.
“fellow-citizens, we meet upon the shore of the thames, the thames which is to englishmen all that the tiber ever was to romans. we meet in a valley which has been almost as much the haunt of english poets as of english birds. never was there an art so native to our island as our old national tradition of landscape-painting in water-colour; never was that water-colour so luminous or so delicate as when dedicated to these holy waters. it was in such a scene that one of the most exquisite of our elder poets repeated as a burden to his meditations the single line, ‘sweet thames, run softly till i end my song.’
“rumours have been heard of some intention to trouble these waters; but we have been amply reassured. names that now stand as high as those of our national poets and painters are a warrant that the stream is still as clear and pure and beneficent as of old. we all know the beautiful work that mr. bulton has done in the matter of filters. dr.[75] hunter supports mr. bulton. i mean mr. bulton supports dr. hunter. i may also mention no less a man than mr. low. sweet thames, run softly till i end my song.
“but, then, for that matter, we all support dr. hunter. i myself have always found him quite supportable; i should say quite satisfactory. he is truly a progressive, and nothing gives me greater pleasure than to watch him progress. as somebody said, i lie awake at night; and in the silence of the whole universe, i seem to hear him climbing, climbing, climbing. all the numerous patients among whom he has laboured so successfully in this locality will join in a heartfelt expression of joy if he passes to the higher world of westminster. i trust i shall not be misunderstood. sweet thames, run softly till i end my song.
“my only purpose to-night is to express that unanimity. there may have been times when i differed from dr. hunter; but i am glad to say that all that is passed, and i have now nothing but the most friendly feelings towards him, for reasons which i will not mention, though i have plenty to say. in token of this reconciliation i here solemnly cast from me this torch. as that firebrand is quenched in the cool crystal waters of that sacred stream, so shall all such feuds perish in the healing pool of universal peace.”
[76]before anybody knew what he was doing, he had whirled his flambeau in a flaming wheel round his head and sent it flying like a meteor out into the dim eddies of the river.
the next moment a short, sharp cry was uttered, and every face in that crowd was staring at the river. all the faces were visibly staring, for they were all lit up as by a ghastly firelight by a wide wan unnatural flame that leapt up from the very surface of the stream; a flame that the crowd watched as it might have watched a comet.
“there,” cried owen hood, turning suddenly on the girl and seizing her arm, as if demanding congratulations. “so much for old crane’s prophecy!”
“who in the world is old crane?” she asked, “and what did he prophesy? is he something like old moore?”
“only an old friend,” said hood hastily, “only an old friend of mine. it’s what he said that’s so important. he didn’t like my moping about with books and a fishing-rod, and he said, standing on that very island, ‘you may know a lot; but i don’t think you’ll ever set the thames on fire. i’ll eat my hat if you do.’”
but the story of how old crane ate his hat is one upon which some readers at least can now look back as on labour and suffering bravely endured. and if it be possible for any of them to desire to know[77] any more either about mr. crane or mr. hood, then must they gird themselves for the ordeal of reading the story of the unobtrusive traffic of captain pierce, and their trials are for a time deferred.
