in the scriptures and the chronicles of the league of the long bow, or fellowship of foolish persons doing impossible things, it is recorded that owen hood, the lawyer, and his friend crane, the retired colonel, were partaking one afternoon of a sort of picnic on the river-island that had been the first scene of a certain romantic incident in the life of the former, the burden of reading about which has fallen upon other readers in other days. suffice it to say that the island had been devoted by mr. hood to his hobby of angling, and that the meal then in progress was a somewhat early interruption of the same leisurely pursuit. the two old cronies had a third companion, who, though considerably younger, was not only a companion but a friend. he was a light-haired, lively young man, with rather a wild eye, known by the name of pierce, whose wedding to the daughter of the innkeeper of the blue boar the others had only recently attended.
he was an aviator and given to many other forms of skylarking. the two older men had eccentric tastes of their own; but there is always a difference[114] between the eccentricity of an elderly man who defies the world and the enthusiasm of a younger man who hopes to alter it. the old gentleman may be willing, in a sense, to stand on his head; but he does not hope, as the boy does, to stand the world on its head. with a young man like hilary pierce it was the world itself that was to be turned upside-down; and that was a game at which his more grizzled companions could only look on, as at a child they loved playing with a big coloured balloon.
perhaps it was this sense of a division by time, altering the tone, though not the fact, of friendship, which sent the mind of one of the older men back to the memory of an older friend. he remembered he had had a letter that morning from the only contemporary of his who could fitly have made a fourth to their party. owen hood drew the letter from his pocket with a smile that wrinkled his long, humorous, cadaverous face.
“by the way, i forgot to tell you,” he said, “i had a letter from white yesterday.”
the bronzed visage of the colonel was also seamed with the external signs of a soundless chuckle.
“read it yet?” he asked.
“yes,” replied the lawyer; “the hieroglyphic was attacked with fresh vigour after breakfast this morning, and the clouds and mysteries of yesterday’s laborious hours seemed to be rolled away. some portions of the cuneiform still await an expert translation;[115] but the sentences themselves appear to be in the original english.”
“very original english,” snorted colonel crane.
“yes, our friend is an original character,” replied hood. “vanity tempts me to hint that he is our friend because he has an original taste in friends. that habit of his of putting the pronoun on the first page and the noun on the next has brightened many winter evenings for me. you haven’t met our friend white, have you?” he added to pierce. “that is a shock that still threatens you.”
“why, what’s the matter with him?” inquired pierce.
“nothing,” observed crane in his more staccato style. “has a taste for starting a letter with ‘yours truly’ and ending it with ‘dear sir’; that’s all.”
“i should rather like to hear that letter,” observed the young man.
“so you shall,” answered hood, “there’s nothing confidential in it; and if there were, you wouldn’t find it out merely by reading it. the rev. wilding white, called by some of his critics ‘wild white,’ is one of those country parsons, to be found in corners of the english countryside, of whom their old college friends usually think in order to wonder what the devil their parishoners think of them. as a matter of fact, my dear hilary, he was rather like you when he was your age; and what in the world you would be like as a vicar in the church of england,[116] aged fifty, might at first stagger the imagination; but the problem might be solved by supposing you would be like him. but i only hope you will have a more lucid style in letter-writing. the old boy is always in such a state of excitement about something that it comes out anyhow.”
it has been said elsewhere that these tales are, in some sense, of necessity told tail-foremost, and certainly the letter of the rev. wilding white was a document suited to such a scheme of narrative. it was written in what had once been a good handwriting of the bolder sort, but which had degenerated through excessive energy and haste into an illegible scrawl. it appeared to run as follows:
“‘my dear owen,—my mind is quite made up; though i know the sort of legal long-winded things you will say against it; i know especially one thing a leathery old lawyer like you is bound to say; but as a matter of fact even you can’t say it in a case like this, because the timber came from the other end of the county and had nothing whatever to do with him or any of his flunkeys and sycophants. besides, i did it all myself with a little assistance i’ll tell you about later; and even in these days i should be surprised to hear that sort of assistance could be anything but a man’s own affair. i defy you and all your parchments to maintain that it[117] comes under the game laws. you won’t mind me talking like this; i know jolly well you’d think you were acting as a friend; but i think the time has come to speak plainly.’”
“quite right,” said the colonel.
“yes,” said young pierce, with a rather vague expression, “i’m glad he feels that the time has come to speak plainly.”
“quite so,” observed the lawyer drily; “he continues as follows:
“‘i’ve got a lot to tell you about the new arrangement, which works much better even than i hoped. i was afraid at first it would really be an encumbrance, as you know it’s always supposed to be. but there are more things, and all the rest of it, and god fulfils himself, and so on and so on. it gives one quite a weird asiatic feeling sometimes.’”
“yes,” said the colonel, “it does.”
“what does?” asked pierce, sitting up suddenly, like one who can bear no more.
“you are not used to the epistolary method,” said hood indulgently; “you haven’t got into the swing of the style. it goes on:
“‘of course, he’s a big pot down here, and all sorts of skunks are afraid of him and pretend[118] to boycott me. nobody could expect anything else of those pineapple people, but i confess i was surprised at parkinson. sally of course is as sound as ever; but she goes to scotland a good deal and you can’t blame her. sometimes i’m left pretty severely alone, but i’m not downhearted; you’ll probably laugh if i tell you that snowdrop is really a very intelligent companion.’”
“i confess i am long past laughter,” said hilary pierce sadly; “but i rather wish i knew who snowdrop is.”
“child, i suppose,” said the colonel shortly.
“yes; i suppose it must be a child,” said pierce. “has he any children?”
“no,” said the colonel. “bachelor.”
“i believe he was in love with a lady in those parts and never married in consequence,” said hood. “it would be quite on the lines of fiction and film-drama if snowdrop were the daughter of the lady, when she had married another. but there seems to be something more about snowdrop, that little sunbeam in the house:
“‘snowdrop tries to enter into our ways, as they always do; but, of course, it would be a little awkward if she played tricks. how alarmed they would all be if she took it into her head to walk about on two legs, like everybody else.’”
[119]“nonsense!” ejaculated colonel crane. “can’t be a child—talking about it walking about on two legs.”
“after all,” said pierce thoughtfully, “a little girl does walk about on two legs.”
“bit startling if she walked about on three,” said crane.
“if my learned brother will allow me,” said hood, in his forensic manner, “would he describe the fact of a little girl walking on two legs as alarming?”
“a little girl is always alarming,” replied pierce.
“i’ve come to the conclusion myself,” went on hood, “that snowdrop must be a pony. it seems a likely enough name for a pony. i thought at first it was a dog or a cat but alarming seems a strong word even for a dog or a cat sitting up to beg. but a pony on its hind legs might be a little alarming, especially when you’re riding it. only i can’t fit this view in with the next sentence: ‘i’ve taught her to reach down the things i want.’”
“lord!” cried pierce. “it’s a monkey!”
“that,” replied hood, “had occurred to me as possibly explaining the weird asiatic atmosphere. but a monkey on two legs is even less unusual than a dog on two legs. moreover, the reference to asiatic mystery seems really to refer to something else and not to any animal at all. for he ends up by saying: ‘i feel now as if my mind were moving in much larger and more ancient spaces of time or[120] eternity; and as if what i thought at first was an oriental atmosphere was only an atmosphere of the orient in the sense of dayspring and the dawn. it has nothing to do with the stagnant occultism of decayed indian cults; it is something that unites a real innocence with the immensities, a power as of the mountains with the purity of snow. this vision does not violate my own religion, but rather reinforces it; but i cannot help feeling that i have larger views. i hope in two senses to preach liberty in these parts. so i may live to falsify the proverb after all.’
“that,” added hood, folding up the letter, “is the only sentence in the whole thing that conveys anything to my mind. as it happens, we have all three of us lived to falsify proverbs.”
hilary pierce had risen to his feet with the restless action that went best with his alert figure. “yes,” he said; “i suppose we can all three of us say we have lived for adventures, or had some curious ones anyhow. and to tell you the truth, the adventure feeling has come on me very strong this very minute. i’ve got the detective fever about that parson of yours. i should like to get at the meaning of that letter, as if it were a cipher about buried treasure.”
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[121] 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[122] 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[123] 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[124] 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[125] 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[126] 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[127] 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.”
[128]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.
[129]“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[130] 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[131] 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?”[132] 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[133] 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[134] 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[135] 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[136] 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.
[137]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.[138] “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[139] 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[140] 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[141] 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.”
[142]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——”
[143]“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.”
[144]“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.
