“since the colonel ate his hat the lunatic asylum has lacked a background.”
the conscientious scribe cannot but be aware that the above sentence standing alone and without reference to previous matters, may not entirely explain itself. anyone trying the experiment of using that sentence for practical social purposes; tossing that sentence lightly as a greeting to a passer-by; sending that sentence as a telegram to a total stranger; whispering that sentence hoarsely into the ear of the nearest policeman, and so on, will find that its insufficiency as a full and final statement is generally felt. with no morbid curiosity, with no exaggerated appetite for omniscience, men will want to know more about this statement before acting upon it. and the only way of explaining it, and the unusual circumstances in which it came to be said, is to pursue the doubling and devious course of these narratives, and return to a date very much earlier, when men now more than middle-aged were quite young.
[148]it was in the days when the colonel was not the colonel, but only jimmy crane, a restless youth tossed about by every wind of adventure, but as yet as incapable of discipline as of dressing for dinner. it was in days before robert owen hood, the lawyer, had ever begun to study the law and had only got so far as to abolish it; coming down to the club every night with a new plan for a revolution to turn all earthly tribunals upside-down. it was in days before wilding white settled down as a country parson, returning to the creed though not the conventions of his class and country; when he was still ready to change his religion once a week, turning up sometimes in the costume of a monk and sometimes of a mufti, and sometimes in what he declared to be the original vestments of a druid, whose religion was shortly to be resumed by the whole british people. it was in days when their young friend hilary pierce, the aviator, was still anticipating aviation by flying a small kite. in short, it was early in the lives even of the elders of the group that they had founded a small social club, in which their long friendships had flourished. the club had to have some sort of name, and the more thoughtful and detached among them, who saw the club steadily and saw it whole, considered the point with ripe reflection, and finally called their little society the lunatic asylum.
“we might all stick straws in our hair for dinner,[149] as the romans crowned themselves with roses for the banquet,” observed hood. “it would correspond to dressing for dinner; i don’t know what else we could do to vary the vulgar society trick of all wearing the same sort of white waistcoats.”
“all wearing strait-waistcoats, i suppose,” said crane.
“we might each dine separately in a padded cell, if it comes to that,” said hood; “but there seems to be something lacking in it considered as a social evening.”
here wilding white, who was then in a monastic phase, intervened eagerly. he explained that in some monasteries a monk of peculiar holiness was allowed to become a hermit in an inner cell, and proposed a similar arrangement at the club. hood, with his more mellow rationalism, intervened with a milder amendment. he suggested that a large padded chair should represent the padded cell, and be reserved like a throne for the loftiest of the lunatics.
“do not,” he said gently and earnestly, “do not let us be divided by jealousies and petty ambitions. do not let us dispute among ourselves which shall be dottiest in the domain of the dotty. perhaps one will appear worthier than us all, more manifestly and magnificently weak in the head; for him let the padded throne stand empty.”
jimmy crane had said no more after his brief[150] suggestion, but was pacing the room like a polar bear, as he generally did when there came upon him a periodical impulse to go off after things like polar bears. he was the wildest of all those wild figures so far as the scale of his adventures was concerned, constantly vanishing to the ends of the earth nobody knew why, and turning up again nobody knew how. he had a hobby, even in his youth, that made his outlook seem even stranger than the bewildering successive philosophies of his friend white. he had an enthusiasm for the myths of savages, and while white was balancing the relative claims of buddhism and brahmanism, crane would boldly declare his preference for the belief that a big fish ate the sun every night, or that the whole cosmos was created by cutting up a giant. moreover, there was with all this something indefinable but in some way more serious about crane even in these days. there was much that was merely boyish about the blind impetuosity of wilding white, with his wild hair and eager aquiline face. he was evidently one who might (as he said) learn the secret of isis, but would be quite incapable of keeping it to himself. the long, legal face of owen hood had already learned to laugh at most things, if not to laugh loudly. but in crane there was something more hard and militant like steel, and as he proved afterwards in the affair of the hat, he could keep a secret even when it was a joke. so that when he finally went off on[151] a long tour round the world, with the avowed intention of studying all the savages he could find, nobody tried to stop him. he went off in a startlingly shabby suit, with a faded sash instead of a waistcoat, and with no luggage in particular, except a large revolver slung round him in a case like a field-glass, and a big, green umbrella that he flourished resolutely as he walked.
“well, he’ll come back a queerer figure than he went, i suppose,” said wilding white.
“he couldn’t,” answered hood, the lawyer, shaking his head. “i don’t believe all the devil-worship in africa could make him any madder than he is.”
“but he’s going to america first, isn’t he?” said the other.
“yes,” said hood. “he’s going to america, but not to see the americans. he would think the americans very dull compared with the american indians. possibly he will come back in feathers and war-paint.”
“he’ll come back scalped, i suppose,” said white hopefully. “i suppose being scalped is all the rage in the best red indian society?”
“then he’s working round by the south sea islands,” said hood. “they don’t scalp people there; they only stew them in pots.”
“he couldn’t very well come back stewed,” said white, musing. “does it strike you, owen, that we should hardly be talking nonsense like this if we[152] hadn’t a curious faith that a fellow like crane will know how to look after himself?”
“yes,” said hood gravely. “i’ve got a very fixed fundamental conviction that crane will turn up again all right. but it’s true that he may look jolly queer after going fantee for all that time.”
it became a sort of pastime at the club of the lunatics to compete in speculations about the guise in which the maddest of their madmen would return, after being so long lost to civilization. and grand preparations were made as for a sort of walpurgis night of nonsense when it was known at last that he was really returning. hood had received letters from him occasionally, full of queer mythologies, and then a rapid succession of telegrams from places nearer and nearer home, culminating in the announcement that he would appear in the club that night. it was about five minutes before dinnertime that a sharp knock on the door announced his arrival.
“bang all the gongs and the tom-toms,” cried wilding white. “the lord high mumbo-jumbo arrives riding on the nightmare.”
“we had better bring out the throne of the king of the maniacs,” said hood, laughing. “we may want it at last,” and he turned towards the big padded chair that still stood at the top of the table.
as he did so james crane walked into the room. he was clad in very neat and well-cut evening[153] clothes, not too fashionable, and a little formal. his hair was parted on one side, and his moustache clipped rather close; he took a seat with a pleasant smile, and began talking about the weather.
he was not allowed, however, to confine his conversation to the weather. he had certainly succeeded in giving his old friends the only sort of surprise that they really had not expected; but they were too old friends for their friend to be able to conceal from them the meaning of such a change. and it was on that festive evening that crane explained his position; a position which he maintained in most things ever afterwards, and one which is the original foundation of the affair that follows.
“i have lived with the men we call savages all over the world,” he said simply, “and i have found out one truth about them. and i tell you, my friends, you may talk about independence and individual self-expression till you burst. but i’ve always found, wherever i went, that the man who could really be trusted to keep his word, and to fight, and to work for his family, was the man who did a war-dance before the moon where the moon was worshipped, and wore a nose-ring in his nose where nose-rings were worn. i have had plenty of fun, and i won’t interfere with anyone else having it. but i believe i have seen what is the real making of mankind, and i have come back to my tribe.”
this was the first act of the drama which ended in[154] the remarkable appearance and disappearance of mr. enoch oates, and it has been necessary to narrate it briefly before passing on to the second act. ever since that time crane had preserved at once his eccentric friends and his own more formal customs. and there were many among the newer members of the club who had never known him except as the colonel, the grizzled, military gentleman whose severe scheme of black and white attire and strict politeness in small things formed the one foil of sharp contrast to that many-coloured bohemia. one of these was hilary pierce, the young aviator; and much as he liked the colonel, he never quite understood him. he had never known the old soldier in his volcanic youth, as had hood and white, and therefore never knew how much of the fire remained under the rock or the snows. the singular affair of the hat, which has been narrated to the too patient reader elsewhere, surprised him more than it did the older men, who knew very well that the colonel was not so old as he looked. and the impression increased with all the incidents which a fanatical love of truth has forced the chronicler to relate in the same connexion; the incident of the river and of the pigs and of the somewhat larger pet of mr. wilding white. there was talk of renaming the lunatic asylum as the league of the long bow, and of commemorating its performances in a permanent ritual. the colonel was induced to wear a crown of cabbage[155] on state occasions, and pierce was gravely invited to bring his pigs with him to dine at the club.
“you could easily bring a little pig in your large pocket,” said hood. “i often wonder people do not have pigs as pets.”
“a pig in a poke, in fact,” said pierce. “well, so long as you have the tact to avoid the indelicacy of having pork for dinner that evening, i suppose i could bring my pig in my pocket.”
“white’d find it rather a nuisance to bring his elephant in his pocket,” observed the colonel.
pierce glanced at him, and had again the feeling of incongruity at seeing the ceremonial cabbage adorning his comparatively venerable head. for the colonel had just been married, and was rejuvenated in an almost jaunty degree. somehow the philosophical young man seemed to miss something, and sighed. it was then that he made the remark which is the pivot of this precise though laborious anecdote.
“since the colonel ate his hat,” he said, “the lunatic asylum has lacked a background.”
“damn your impudence,” said the colonel cheerfully. “do you mean to call me a background to my face?”
“a dark background,” said pierce soothingly. “do not resent my saying a dark background. i mean a grand, mysterious background like that of night; a sublime and even starry background.”
[156]“starry yourself,” said crane indignantly.
“it was against that background of ancient night,” went on the young man dreamily, “that the fantastic shapes and fiery colours of our carnival could really be seen. so long as he came here with his black coat and beautiful society manners there was a foil to our follies. we were eccentric, but he was our centre. you cannot be eccentric without a centre.”
“i believe hilary is quite right,” said owen hood earnestly. “i believe we have made a great mistake. we ought not to have all gone mad at once. we ought to have taken it in turns to go mad. then i could have been shocked at his behaviour on mondays, wednesdays, and fridays, and he could have been shocked at my behaviour on tuesdays, thursdays, and saturdays. but there is no moral value in going mad when nobody is shocked. if crane leaves off being shocked, what are we to do?”
“i know what we want,” began pierce excitedly.
“so do i,” interrupted hood. “we want a sane man.”
“not so easy to find nowadays,” said the old soldier. “going to advertise?”
“i mean a stupid man,” explained owen hood. “i mean a man who’s conventional all through, not a humbug like crane. i mean, i want a solid, serious business man, a hard-headed, practical man of affairs, a man to whom vast commercial interests are[157] committed. in a word, i want a fool; some beautiful, rounded, homogeneous fool, in whose blameless face, as in a round mirror, all our fancies may really be reflected and renewed. i want a very successful man, a very wealthy man, a man——”
“i know! i know!” cried young pierce, almost waving his arms. “enoch oates!”
“who’s enoch oates?” inquired white.
“are the lords of the world so little known?” asked hood.
“enoch oates is pork, and nearly everything else; enoch oates is turning civilization into one vast sausage-machine. didn’t i ever tell you how hilary ran into him over that pig affair?”
“he’s the very man you want,” cried hilary pierce enthusiastically. “i know him, and i believe i can get him. being a millionaire, he’s entirely ignorant. being an american, he’s entirely in earnest. he’s got just that sort of negative nonconformist conscience of new england that balances the positive money-getting of new york. if we want to surprise anybody we’ll surprise him. let’s ask enoch oates to dinner.”
“i won’t have any practical jokes played on guests,” said the colonel.
“of course not,” replied hood. “he’ll be only too pleased to take it seriously. did you ever know an american who didn’t like seeing the sights? and if you don’t know you’re a sight with that cabbage[158] on your head, it’s time an american tourist taught you.”
“besides, there’s a difference,” said pierce. “i wouldn’t ask a fellow like that doctor, horace hunter——”
“sir horace hunter,” murmured hood reverently.
“i wouldn’t ask him, because i really think him a sneak and a snob, and my invitation could only be meant as an insult. but oates is not a man i hate, nor is he hateful. that’s the curious part of it. he’s a simple, sincere sort of fellow, according to his lights, which are pretty dim. he’s a thief and a robber of course, but he doesn’t know it. i’m asking him because he’s different; but i don’t imagine he’s at all sorry to be different. there’s no harm in giving a man a good dinner and letting him be a background without knowing it.”
when mr. enoch oates in due course accepted the invitation and presented himself at the club, many were reminded of that former occasion when a stiff and conventional figure in evening dress had first appeared like a rebuke to the revels. but in spite of the stiff sameness of both those black and white costumes, there was a great deal of difference between the old background and the new background. crane’s good manners were of that casual kind that are rather peculiarly english, and mark an aristocracy at its ease in the saddle. curiously enough, if the american had one point in common[159] with a continental noble of ancient lineage (whom his daughter might have married any day), it was that they would both be a little more on the defensive, living in the midst of democracy. mr. oates was perfectly polite, but there was something a little rigid about him. he walked to his chair rather stiffly and sat down rather heavily. he was a powerful, ponderous man with a large sallow face, a little suggestive of a corpulent red indian. he had a ruminant eye, and equally ruminant manner of chewing an unlighted cigar. these were signs that might well have gone with a habit of silence. but they did not.
mr. oates’s conversation might not be brilliant, but it was continuous. pierce and his friends had begun with some notion of dangling their own escapades before him like dancing dolls before a child; they had told him something of the affair of the colonel and his cabbage, of the captain and his pigs, of the parson and his elephants; but they soon found that their hearer had not come there merely as a listener. what he thought of their romantic buffooneries it would be hard to say; probably he did not understand them, possibly he did not even hear them. anyhow, his own monologue went on. he was a leisurely speaker. they found themselves revising much that they had heard about the snap and smartness and hurry of american talk. he spoke without haste or embarrassment, his eye boring[160] into space, and he more than fulfilled mr. pierce’s hopes of somebody who would talk about business matters. his talk was a mild torrent of facts and figures, especially figures. in fact the background was doing all it could to contribute the required undertone of common commercial life. the background was justifying all their hopes that it would be practical and prosaic. only the background had rather the air of having become the foreground.
“when they put that up to me i saw it was the proposition,” mr. oates was saying. “i saw i’d got on to something better than my old regulation turnover of eighty-five thousand dollars on each branch. i reckoned i should save a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in the long run by scrapping the old plant, even if i had to drop another thirty thousand dollars on new works, where i’d get the raw material for a red cent. i saw right away that was the point to freeze on to; that i just got a chance to sell something i didn’t need to buy; something that could be sort of given away like old match-ends. i figured out it would be better by a long chalk to let the other guys rear the stock and sell me their refuse for next to nix, so i could get ahead with turning it into the goods. so i started in right away and got there at the first go-off with an increase of seven hundred and fifty-one thousand dollars.”
“seven hundred and fifty-one thousand dollars,”[161] murmured owen hood. “how soothing it all seems.”
“i reckon those mutts didn’t get on to what they were selling me,” continued mr. oates, “or didn’t have the pep to use it that way themselves; for though it was the sure-enough hot tip, it isn’t everybody would have thought of it. when i was in pork, of course, i wanted the other guys out; but just now i wasn’t putting anything on pork, but only on just that part of a pig i wanted and they didn’t want. by notifying all your pig farmers i was able to import nine hundred and twenty-five thousand pigs’ ears this fall, and i guess i can get consignments all winter.”
hood had some little legal experience with long-winded commercial witnesses, and he was listening by this time with a cocked eyebrow and an attention much sharper than the dreamy ecstasy with which the poetic pierce was listening to the millionaire’s monologue, as if to the wordless music of some ever-murmuring brook.
“excuse me,” said hood earnestly, “but did i understand you to say pigs’ ears?”
“that is so, mr. hood,” said the american with great patience and politeness. “i don’t know whether i gave you a sufficiently detailed description for you to catch on to the proposition, but——”
“well,” murmured pierce wistfully, “it sounded to me like a detailed description.”
[162]“pardon me,” said hood, checking him with a frown. “i really want to understand this proposition of mr. oates. do i understand that you bought pigs’ ears cheap, when the pigs were cut up for other purposes, and that you thought you could use them for some purpose of your own?”
“sure!” said mr. enoch oates, nodding. “and my purpose was about the biggest thing in fancy goods ever done in the states. in the publicity line there’s nothing like saying you can do what folks say can’t be done. flying in the face of proverbs instead of providence, i reckon. it catches on at once. we got to work, and got out the first advertisement in no time; just a blank space with: ‘we can do it’ in the middle. got folks wondering for a week what it was.”
“i hope, sir,” said pierce in a low voice, “that you will not carry sound commercial principles so far as to keep us wondering for a week what it was.”
“well,” said oates, “we found we could subject the pigskin and bristles to a new gelat’nous process for making artificial silk, and we figured that publicity would do the rest. we came out with the second set of posters: ‘she wants it now.’... ‘the most wonderful woman on earth is waiting by the old fireside, hoping you’ll bring her home a pig’s whisper purse.’”
“a purse!” gasped hilary.
[163]“i see you’re on the notion,” proceeded the unmoved american. “we called ’em pig’s whisper purses after the smartest and most popular poster we ever had: ‘there was a lady loved a swine.’ you know the nursery rhyme, i guess; featured a slap-up princess whispering in a pig’s ear. i tell you there isn’t a smart woman in the states now that can do without one of our pig-silk purses, and all because it upsets the proverb. why, see here——”
hilary pierce had sprung wildly to his feet with a sort of stagger and clutched at the american’s arm.
“found! found!” he cried hysterically. “oh, sir, i implore you to take the chair! do, do take the chair!”
“take the chair!” repeated the astonished millionaire, who was already almost struggling in his grasp. “really, gentlemen, i hadn’t supposed the proceedings were so formal as to require a chairman, but in any case——”
it could hardly be said, however, that the proceedings were formal. mr. hilary pierce had the appearance of forcibly dragging mr. enoch oates in the direction of the large padded arm-chair, that had always stood empty at the top of the club table, uttering cries which, though incoherent, appeared to be partly apologetic.
“no offence,” he gasped. “hope no misunderstanding ... honoris causa ... you, you alone[164] are worthy of that seat ... the club has found its king and justified its title at last.”
here the colonel intervened and restored order. mr. oates departed in peace; but mr. hilary pierce was still simmering.
“and that is the end of our quiet, ordinary business man,” he cried. “such is the behaviour of our monochrome and unobtrusive background.” his voice rose to a sort of wail. “and we thought we were dotty! we deluded ourselves with the hope that we were pretty well off our chump! lord have mercy on us! american big business rises to a raving idiocy compared with which we are as sane as the beasts of the field. the modern commercial world is far madder than anything we can do to satirize it.”
“well,” said the colonel good-humouredly, “we’ve done some rather ridiculous things ourselves.”
“yes, yes,” cried pierce excitedly, “but we did them to make ourselves ridiculous. that unspeakable man is wholly, serenely serious. he thinks those maniacal monkey tricks are the normal life of man. your argument really answers itself. we did the maddest things we could think of, meaning them to look mad. but they were nothing like so mad as what a modern business man does in the way of business.”
“perhaps it’s the american business man,” said[165] white, “who’s too keen to see the humour of it.”
“nonsense,” said crane. “millions of americans have a splendid sense of humour.”
“then how fortunate are we,” said pierce reverently, “through whose lives this rare, this ineffable, this divine being has passed.”
“passed away for ever, i suppose,” said hood with a sigh. “i fear the colonel must be our only background once more.”
colonel crane was frowning thoughtfully, and at the last words his frown deepened to disapproval. he puffed at his smouldering cigar and then, removing it, said abruptly:
“i suppose you fellows have forgotten how i came to be a background? i mean, why i rather approve of people being backgrounds.”
“i remember something you said a long time ago,” replied hood. “hilary must have been in long-clothes at that time.”
“i said i had found out something by going round the world,” said crane. “you young people think i am an old tory; but remember i am also an old traveller. well, it’s part of the same thing. i’m a traditionalist because i’m a traveller. i told you when i came back to the club that i’d come back to the tribe. i told you that in all the tribes of the world, the best man was the man true to his tribe. i told you the best man was the man who wore a nose-ring where nose-rings were worn.”
[166]“i remember,” said owen hood.
“no, you forget,” said crane rather gruffly. “you forget it when you talk about enoch oates the american. i’m no politician, thank god, and i shall look on with detachment if you dynamite him for being a millionaire. as a matter of fact, he doesn’t think half so much of money as old normantowers, who thinks it’s too sacred to talk about. but you’re not dynamiting him for being a millionaire. you’re simply laughing at him for being an american. you’re laughing at him for being national and normal, for being a good citizen, a good tribesman, for wearing a nose-ring where nose-rings are worn.”
“i say ... kuklux, you know,” remonstrated wilding white in his hazy way. “americans wouldn’t be flattered——”
“do you suppose you haven’t got a nose-ring?” cried crane so sharply that the clergyman started from his trance and made a mechanical gesture as if to feel for that feature. “do you suppose a man like you doesn’t carry his nationality as plain as the nose on his face? do you think a man as hopelessly english as you are wouldn’t be laughed at in america? you can’t be a good englishman without being a good joke. the better englishman you are the more of a joke you are; but still it’s better to be better. nose-rings are funny to people who don’t wear ’em. nations are funny to people who don’t[167] belong to ’em. but it’s better to wear a nose-ring than to be a cosmopolitan crank who cuts off his nose to spite his face.”
this being by far the longest speech the colonel had ever delivered since the day he returned from his tropical travels long ago, his old friends looked at him with a certain curiosity; even his old friends hardly understood how much he had been roused in defence of a guest and of his own deep delicacies about the point of hospitality. he went on with undiminished warmth:
“well, it’s like that with poor oates. he has, as we see it, certain disproportions, certain insensibilities, certain prejudices that stand out in our eyes like deformities. they offend you; they offend me, possibly rather more than they do you. you young revolutionists think you’re very liberal and universal; but the only result is that you’re narrow and national without knowing it. we old fogeys know our tastes are narrow and national; but we know they are only tastes. and we know, at any rate i know, that oates is far more likely to be an honest man, a good husband and a good father, because he stinks of the rankest hickory patch in the middle west, than if he were some fashionable new yorker pretending to be an english aristocrat or playing the æsthete in florence.”
“don’t say a good husband,” pleaded pierce with a faint shudder. “it reminds me of the grand slap-up[168] advertisement of the pig’s whisper. how do you feel about that, my dear colonel? the most wonderful woman on earth waiting by the old fireside——”
“it makes my flesh creep,” replied crane. “it chills me to the spine. i feel i would rather die than have anything to do with it. but that has nothing to do with my point. i don’t belong to the tribe who wear nose-rings; nor to the tribe who talk through their noses.”
“well, aren’t you a little thankful for that?” asked white.
“i’m thankful i can be fair in spite of it,” answered crane. “when i put a cabbage on my head, i didn’t expect people not to stare at it. and i know that each one of us in a foreign land is a foreigner, and a thing to be stared at.”
“what i don’t understand about him,” said hood, “is the sort of things he doesn’t mind having stared at. how can people tolerate all that vulgar, reeking, gushing commercial cant everywhere? how can a man talk about the old fireside? it’s obscene. the police ought to interfere.”
“and that’s just where you’re wrong,” said the colonel. “it’s vulgar enough and mad enough and obscene enough if you like. but it’s not cant. i have travelled amongst these wild tribes, for years on end; and i tell you emphatically it is not cant. and if you want to know, just ask your extraordinary[169] american friend about his own wife and his own relatively old fireside. he won’t mind. that’s the extraordinary part of it.”
“what does all this really mean, colonel?” asked hilary pierce.
“it means, my boy,” answered the colonel, “that i think you owe our guest an apology.”
so it came about that there was an epilogue, as there had been a prologue, to the drama of the entrance and exit of mr. enoch b. oates; an epilogue which in its turn became a prologue to the later dramas of the league of the long bow. for the words of the colonel had a certain influence on the captain, and the actions of the captain had a certain influence on the american millionaire; and so the whole machinery of events was started afresh by that last movement over the nuts and wine, when colonel crane had stirred moodily in his seat and taken his cigar out of his mouth.
hilary pierce was an aimable and even excessively optimistic young man by temperament, in spite of his pugnacity; he would really have been the last man in the world to wish to hurt the feelings of a harmless stranger; and he had a deep and almost secret respect for the opinions of the older soldier. so, finding himself soon afterwards passing the great gilded gateways of the highly american hotel that was the london residence of the american,[170] he paused a moment in hesitation and then went in and gave his name to various overpowering officials in uniforms that might have been those of the german general staff. he was relieved when the large american came out to meet him with a simple and lumbering affability, and offered his large limp hand as if there had never been a shadow of misunderstanding. it was somehow borne in upon pierce that his own rather intoxicated behaviour that evening had merely been noted down along with the architectural styles and the mellow mediævalism of the pig-sty, as part of the fantasies of a feudal land. all the antics of the lunatic asylum had left the american traveller with the impression that similar parlour games were probably being played that evening in all the parlours of england. perhaps there was something, after all, in crane’s suggestion that every nation assumes that every other nation is a sort of mild mad-house.
mr. enoch oates received his guest with great hospitality and pressed on him cocktails of various occult names and strange colours, though he himself partook of nothing but a regimen of tepid milk.
pierce fell into the confidence of mr. enoch oates with a silent swiftness that made his brain reel with bewilderment. he was staggered like a man who had fallen suddenly through fifteen floors of a sky-scraper and found himself in somebody’s bedroom. at the lightest hint of the sort of thing to which[171] crane had alluded, the american opened himself with an expansiveness that was like some gigantic embrace. all the interminable tables of figures and calculations in dollars had for the moment disappeared; yet oates was talking in the same easy and natural nasal drawl, very leisurely and a little monotonous, as he said:
“i’m married to the best and brightest woman god ever made, and i tell you it’s her and god between them that have made me, and i reckon she had the hardest part of it. we had nothing but a few sticks when i started; and it was the way she stood by that gave me the heart to risk even those on my own judgment of how things were going in the street. i counted on a rise in pork, and if it hadn’t risen i’d have been broke and i dare say in the jug. but she’s just wonderful. you should see her.”
he produced her photograph with a paralysing promptitude; it represented a very regal lady dressed up to the nines, probably for the occasion, with very brilliant eyes and an elaborate load of light hair.
“‘i believe in your star, enoch,’ she said; ‘you stick to pork,’” said oates, with tender reminiscence, “and so we saw it through.”
pierce, who had been speculating with involuntary irreverence on the extreme difficulty of conducting a love-affair or a sentimental conversation in which one party had to address the other as enoch, felt[172] quite ashamed of his cynicism when the star of pork shone with such radiance in the eyes of his new friend.
“it was a terrible time, but i stuck to pork, sometimes feeling she could see clearer than i could; and of course she was right, and i’ve never known her wrong. then came my great chance of making the combination and freezing out competition; and i was able to give her the sort of things she ought to have and let her take the lead as she should. i don’t care for society much myself; but i’m often glad on a late night at the office to ring her up and hear she’s enjoying it.”
he spoke with a ponderous simplicity that seemed to disarm and crush the criticism of a more subtle civilization. it was one of those things that are easily seen to be absurd; but even after they are seen to be absurd, they are still there. it may be, after all, that that is the definition of the great things.
“i reckon that’s what people mean by the romance of business,” continued oates, “and though my business got bigger and bigger, it made me feel kinda pleased there had been a romance at the heart of it. it had to get bigger, because we wanted to make the combination water-tight all over the world. i guess i had to fix things up a bit with your politicians. but congress men are alike all the world over, and it didn’t trouble me any.”
[173]there was a not uncommon conviction among those acquainted with captain hilary pierce that that ingenious young man was cracked. he did a great many things to justify the impression; and in one sense certainly had never shown any reluctance to make a fool of himself. but if he was a lunatic, he was none the less a very english lunatic. and the notion of talking about his most intimate affections, suddenly, to a foreigner in an hotel, merely because the conversation had taken that turn, was something that he found quite terrifying. and yet an instinct, an impulse running through all these developments, told him that a moment had come and that he must seize some opportunity that he hardly understood.
“look here,” he said rather awkwardly, “i want to tell you something.”
he looked down at the table as he continued.
“you said just now you were married to the best woman in the world. well, curiously enough, so am i. it’s a coincidence that often happens. but it’s a still more curious coincidence that, in our own quiet way, we went in for pork too. she kept pigs at the back of the little country inn where i met her; and at one time it looked as if the pigs might have to be given up. perhaps the inn as well. perhaps the wedding as well. we were quite poor, as poor as you were when you started; and to the poor those extra modes of livelihood are often life. we might[174] have been ruined; and the reason was, i gather, that you had gone in for pork. but after all ours was the real pork; pork that walked about on legs. we made the bed for the pig and filled the inside of the pig; you only bought and sold the name of the pig. you didn’t go to business with a live little pig under your arm or walk down wall street followed by a herd of swine. it was a phantom pig, the ghost of a pig, that was able to kill our real pig and perhaps us as well. can you really justify the way in which your romance nearly ruined our romance? don’t you think there must be something wrong somewhere?”
“well,” said oates after a very long silence, “that’s a mighty big question and will take a lot of discussing.”
but the end to which their discussion led must be left to reveal itself when the prostrate reader has recovered sufficient strength to support the story of the unthinkable theory of professor green, which those who would endure to the end may read at some later date.
