Chapter I
How
the Great Wind Came to Beacon HouseA
wind sprang high in the west, like a wave of unreasonable
happiness,
and tore eastward across England, trailing with it the frosty scent
of forests and the cold intoxication of the sea. In a million holes
and corners it refreshed a man like a flagon, and astonished him
like
a blow. In the inmost chambers of intricate and embowered houses it
woke like a domestic explosion, littering the floor with some
professor's papers till they seemed as precious as fugitive, or
blowing out the candle by which a boy read "Treasure Island"
and wrapping him in roaring dark. But everywhere it bore drama into
undramatic lives, and carried the trump of crisis across the world.
Many a harassed mother in a mean backyard had looked at five
dwarfish
shirts on the clothes-line as at some small, sick tragedy; it was
as
if she had hanged her five children. The wind came, and they were
full and kicking as if five fat imps had sprung into them; and far
down in her oppressed subconscious she half-remembered those coarse
comedies of her fathers when the elves still dwelt in the homes of
men. Many an unnoticed girl in a dank walled garden had tossed
herself into the hammock with the same intolerant gesture with
which
she might have tossed herself into the Thames; and that wind rent
the
waving wall of woods and lifted the hammock like a balloon, and
showed her shapes of quaint clouds far beyond, and pictures of
bright
villages far below, as if she rode heaven in a fairy boat. Many a
dusty clerk or cleric, plodding a telescopic road of poplars,
thought
for the hundredth time that they were like the plumes of a hearse;
when this invisible energy caught and swung and clashed them round
his head like a wreath or salutation of seraphic wings. There was
in
it something more inspired and authoritative even than the old wind
of the proverb; for this was the good wind that blows nobody
harm.The
flying blast struck London just where it scales the northern
heights,
terrace above terrace, as precipitous as Edinburgh. It was round
about this place that some poet, probably drunk, looked up
astonished
at all those streets gone skywards, and (thinking vaguely of
glaciers
and roped mountaineers) gave it the name of Swiss Cottage, which it
has never been able to shake off. At some stage of those heights a
terrace of tall gray houses, mostly empty and almost as desolate as
the Grampians, curved round at the western end, so that the last
building, a boarding establishment called "Beacon House,"
offered abruptly to the sunset its high, narrow and towering
termination, like the prow of some deserted ship.The
ship, however, was not wholly deserted. The proprietor of the
boarding-house, a Mrs. Duke, was one of those helpless persons
against whom fate wars in vain; she smiled vaguely both before and
after all her calamities; she was too soft to be hurt. But by the
aid
(or rather under the orders) of a strenuous niece she always kept
the
remains of a clientele, mostly of young but listless folks. And
there
were actually five inmates standing disconsolately about the garden
when the great gale broke at the base of the terminal tower behind
them, as the sea bursts against the base of an outstanding
cliff.All
day that hill of houses over London had been domed and sealed up
with
cold cloud. Yet three men and two girls had at last found even the
gray and chilly garden more tolerable than the black and cheerless
interior. When the wind came it split the sky and shouldered the
cloudland left and right, unbarring great clear furnaces of evening
gold. The burst of light released and the burst of air blowing
seemed
to come almost simultaneously; and the wind especially caught
everything in a throttling violence. The bright short grass lay all
one way like brushed hair. Every shrub in the garden tugged at its
roots like a dog at the collar, and strained every leaping leaf
after
the hunting and exterminating element. Now and again a twig would
snap and fly like a bolt from an arbalist. The three men stood
stiffly and aslant against the wind, as if leaning against a wall.
The two ladies disappeared into the house; rather, to speak truly,
they were blown into the house. Their two frocks, blue and white,
looked like two big broken flowers, driving and drifting upon the
gale. Nor is such a poetic fancy inappropriate, for there was
something oddly romantic about this inrush of air and light after a
long, leaden and unlifting day. Grass and garden trees seemed
glittering with something at once good and unnatural, like a fire
from fairyland. It seemed like a strange sunrise at the wrong end
of
the day.The
girl in white dived in quickly enough, for she wore a white hat of
the proportions of a parachute, which might have wafted her away
into
the coloured clouds of evening. She was their one splash of
splendour, and irradiated wealth in that impecunious place (staying
there temporarily with a friend), an heiress in a small way, by
name
Rosamund Hunt, brown-eyed, round-faced, but resolute and rather
boisterous. On top of her wealth she was good-humoured and rather
good-looking; but she had not married, perhaps because there was
always a crowd of men around her. She was not fast (though some
might
have called her vulgar), but she gave irresolute youths an
impression
of being at once popular and inaccessible. A man felt as if he had
fallen in love with Cleopatra, or as if he were asking for a great
actress at the stage door. Indeed, some theatrical spangles seemed
to
cling about Miss Hunt; she played the guitar and the mandoline; she
always wanted charades; and with that great rending of the sky by
sun
and storm, she felt a girlish melodrama swell again within her. To
the crashing orchestration of the air the clouds rose like the
curtain of some long-expected pantomime.Nor,
oddly, was the girl in blue entirely unimpressed by this apocalypse
in a private garden; though she was one of most prosaic and
practical
creatures alive. She was, indeed, no other than the strenuous niece
whose strength alone upheld that mansion of decay. But as the gale
swung and swelled the blue and white skirts till they took on the
monstrous contours of Victorian crinolines, a sunken memory stirred
in her that was almost romance—a memory of a dusty volume of
Punch in an aunt's
house in infancy: pictures of crinoline hoops and croquet hoops and
some pretty story, of which perhaps they were a part. This
half-perceptible fragrance in her thoughts faded almost instantly,
and Diana Duke entered the house even more promptly than her
companion. Tall, slim, aquiline, and dark, she seemed made for such
swiftness. In body she was of the breed of those birds and beasts
that are at once long and alert, like greyhounds or herons or even
like an innocent snake. The whole house revolved on her as on a rod
of steel. It would be wrong to say that she commanded; for her own
efficiency was so impatient that she obeyed herself before any one
else obeyed her. Before electricians could mend a bell or
locksmiths
open a door, before dentists could pluck a tooth or butlers draw a
tight cork, it was done already with the silent violence of her
slim
hands. She was light; but there was nothing leaping about her
lightness. She spurned the ground, and she meant to spurn it.
People
talk of the pathos and failure of plain women; but it is a more
terrible thing that a beautiful woman may succeed in everything but
womanhood."It's
enough to blow your head off," said the young woman in white,
going to the looking-glass.The
young woman in blue made no reply, but put away her gardening
gloves,
and then went to the sideboard and began to spread out an afternoon
cloth for tea."Enough
to blow your head off, I say," said Miss Rosamund Hunt, with the
unruffled cheeriness of one whose songs and speeches had always
been
safe for an encore."Only
your hat, I think," said Diana Duke, "but I dare say that
is sometimes more important."Rosamund's
face showed for an instant the offence of a spoilt child, and then
the humour of a very healthy person. She broke into a laugh and
said,
"Well, it would have to be a big wind to blow your head
off."There
was another silence; and the sunset breaking more and more from the
sundering clouds, filled the room with soft fire and painted the
dull
walls with ruby and gold."Somebody
once told me," said Rosamund Hunt, "that it's easier to
keep one's head when one has lost one's heart.""Oh,
don't talk such rubbish," said Diana with savage sharpness.Outside,
the garden was clad in a golden splendour; but the wind was still
stiffly blowing, and the three men who stood their ground might
also
have considered the problem of hats and heads. And, indeed, their
position, touching hats, was somewhat typical of them. The tallest
of
the three abode the blast in a high silk hat, which the wind seemed
to charge as vainly as that other sullen tower, the house behind
him.
The second man tried to hold on a stiff straw hat at all angles,
and
ultimately held it in his hand. The third had no hat, and, by his
attitude, seemed never to have had one in his life. Perhaps this
wind
was a kind of fairy wand to test men and women, for there was much
of
the three men in this difference.The
man in the solid silk hat was the embodiment of silkiness and
solidity. He was a big, bland, bored and (as some said) boring man,
with flat fair hair and handsome heavy features; a prosperous young
doctor by the name of Warner. But if his blondness and blandness
seemed at first a little fatuous, it is certain that he was no
fool.
If Rosamund Hunt was the only person there with much money, he was
the only person who had as yet found any kind of fame. His treatise
on "The Probable Existence of Pain in the Lowest Organisms"
had been universally hailed by the scientific world as at once
solid
and daring. In short, he undoubtedly had brains; and perhaps it was
not his fault if they were the kind of brains that most men desire
to
analyze with a poker.The
young man who put his hat off and on was a scientific amateur in a
small way, and worshipped the great Warner with a solemn freshness.
It was, in fact, at his invitation that the distinguished doctor
was
present; for Warner lived in no such ramshackle lodging-house, but
in
a professional palace in Harley Street. This young man was really
the
youngest and best-looking of the three. But he was one of those
persons, both male and female, who seem doomed to be good-looking
and
insignificant. Brown-haired, high-coloured, and shy, he seemed to
lose the delicacy of his features in a sort of blur of brown and
red
as he stood blushing and blinking against the wind. He was one of
those obvious unnoticeable people: every one knew that he was
Arthur
Inglewood, unmarried, moral, decidedly intelligent, living on a
little money of his own, and hiding himself in the two hobbies of
photography and cycling. Everybody knew him and forgot him; even as
he stood there in the glare of golden sunset there was something
about him indistinct, like one of his own red-brown amateur
photographs.The
third man had no hat; he was lean, in light, vaguely sporting
clothes, and the large pipe in his mouth made him look all the
leaner. He had a long ironical face, blue-black hair, the blue eyes
of an Irishman, and the blue chin of an actor. An Irishman he was,
an
actor he was not, except in the old days of Miss Hunt's charades,
being, as a matter of fact, an obscure and flippant journalist
named
Michael Moon. He had once been hazily supposed to be reading for
the
Bar; but (as Warner would say with his rather elephantine wit) it
was
mostly at another kind of bar that his friends found him. Moon,
however, did not drink, nor even frequently get drunk; he simply
was
a gentleman who liked low company. This was partly because company
is
quieter than society: and if he enjoyed talking to a barmaid (as
apparently he did), it was chiefly because the barmaid did the
talking. Moreover he would often bring other talent to assist her.
He
shared that strange trick of all men of his type, intellectual and
without ambition—the trick of going about with his mental
inferiors. There was a small resilient Jew named Moses Gould in the
same boarding-house, a man whose negro vitality and vulgarity
amused
Michael so much that he went round with him from bar to bar, like
the
owner of a performing monkey.The
colossal clearance which the wind had made of that cloudy sky grew
clearer and clearer; chamber within chamber seemed to open in
heaven.
One felt one might at last find something lighter than light. In
the
fullness of this silent effulgence all things collected their
colours
again: the gray trunks turned silver, and the drab gravel gold. One
bird fluttered like a loosened leaf from one tree to another, and
his
brown feathers were brushed with fire."Inglewood,"
said Michael Moon, with his blue eye on the bird, "have you any
friends?"Dr.
Warner mistook the person addressed, and turning a broad beaming
face, said,—"Oh
yes, I go out a great deal."Michael
Moon gave a tragic grin, and waited for his real informant, who
spoke
a moment after in a voice curiously cool, fresh and young, as
coming
out of that brown and even dusty interior."Really,"
answered Inglewood, "I'm afraid I've lost touch with my old
friends. The greatest friend I ever had was at school, a fellow
named
Smith. It's odd you should mention it, because I was thinking of
him
to-day, though I haven't seen him for seven or eight years. He was
on
the science side with me at school— a clever fellow though queer;
and he went up to Oxford when I went to Germany. The fact is, it's
rather a sad story. I often asked him to come and see me, and when
I
heard nothing I made inquiries, you know. I was shocked to learn
that
poor Smith had gone off his head. The accounts were a bit cloudy,
of
course, some saying that he had recovered again; but they always
say
that. About a year ago I got a telegram from him myself. The
telegram, I'm sorry to say, put the matter beyond a doubt.""Quite
so," assented Dr. Warner stolidly; "insanity is generally
incurable.""So
is sanity," said the Irishman, and studied him with a dreary
eye."Symptoms?"
asked the doctor. "What was this telegram?""It's
a shame to joke about such things," said Inglewood, in his
honest, embarrassed way; "the telegram was Smith's illness, not
Smith. The actual words were, `Man found alive with two
legs.'""Alive
with two legs," repeated Michael, frowning. "Perhaps a
version of alive and kicking? I don't know much about people out of
their senses; but I suppose they ought to be kicking.""And
people in their senses?" asked Warner, smiling."Oh,
they ought to be kicked," said Michael with sudden
heartiness."The
message is clearly insane," continued the impenetrable
Warner."The
best test is a reference to the undeveloped normal type.Even
a baby does not expect to find a man with three legs.""Three
legs," said Michael Moon, "would be very convenient in this
wind."A
fresh eruption of the atmosphere had indeed almost thrown them off
their balance and broken the blackened trees in the garden. Beyond,
all sorts of accidental objects could be seen scouring the
wind-scoured sky—straws, sticks, rags, papers, and, in the
distance, a disappearing hat. Its disappearance, however, was not
final; after an interval of minutes they saw it again, much larger
and closer, like a white panama, towering up into the heavens like
a
balloon, staggering to and fro for an instant like a stricken kite,
and then settling in the centre of their own lawn as falteringly as
a
fallen leaf."Somebody's
lost a good hat," said Dr. Warner shortly.Almost
as he spoke, another object came over the garden wall, flying after
the fluttering panama. It was a big green umbrella. After that came
hurtling a huge yellow Gladstone bag, and after that came a figure
like a flying wheel of legs, as in the shield of the Isle of
Man.But
though for a flash it seemed to have five or six legs, it alighted
upon two, like the man in the queer telegram. It took the form of a
large light-haired man in gay green holiday clothes. He had bright
blonde hair that the wind brushed back like a German's, a flushed
eager face like a cherub's, and a prominent pointing nose, a little
like a dog's. His head, however, was by no means cherubic in the
sense of being without a body. On the contrary, on his vast
shoulders
and shape generally gigantesque, his head looked oddly and
unnaturally small. This gave rise to a scientific theory (which his
conduct fully supported) that he was an idiot.Inglewood
had a politeness instinctive and yet awkward. His life was full of
arrested half gestures of assistance. And even this prodigy of a
big
man in green, leaping the wall like a bright green grasshopper, did
not paralyze that small altruism of his habits in such a matter as
a
lost hat. He was stepping forward to recover the green gentleman's
head-gear, when he was struck rigid with a roar like a
bull's."Unsportsmanlike!"
bellowed the big man. "Give it fair play, give it fair play!"
And he came after his own hat quickly but cautiously, with burning
eyes. The hat had seemed at first to droop and dawdle as in
ostentatious langour on the sunny lawn; but the wind again
freshening
and rising, it went dancing down the garden with the devilry of a
~pas de quatre~. The eccentric went bounding after it with kangaroo
leaps and bursts of breathless speech, of which it was not always
easy to pick up the thread: "Fair play, fair play… sport of
kings… chase their crowns… quite humane… tramontana…
cardinals chase red hats… old English hunting… started a hat in
Bramber Combe… hat at bay… mangled hounds… Got him!"As
the wind rose out of a roar into a shriek, he leapt into the sky on
his strong, fantastic legs, snatched at the vanishing hat, missed
it,
and pitched sprawling face foremost on the grass. The hat rose over
him like a bird in triumph. But its triumph was premature; for the
lunatic, flung forward on his hands, threw up his boots behind,
waved
his two legs in the air like symbolic ensigns (so that they
actually
thought again of the telegram), and actually caught the hat with
his
feet. A prolonged and piercing yell of wind split the welkin from
end
to end. The eyes of all the men were blinded by the invisible
blast,
as by a strange, clear cataract of transparency rushing between
them
and all objects about them. But as the large man fell back in a
sitting posture and solemnly crowned himself with the hat, Michael
found, to his incredulous surprise, that he had been holding his
breath, like a man watching a duel.While
that tall wind was at the top of its sky-scraping energy, another
short cry was heard, beginning very querulous, but ending very
quick,
swallowed in abrupt silence. The shiny black cylinder of Dr.
Warner's
official hat sailed off his head in the long, smooth parabola of an
airship, and in almost cresting a garden tree was caught in the
topmost branches. Another hat was gone. Those in that garden felt
themselves caught in an unaccustomed eddy of things happening; no
one
seemed to know what would blow away next. Before they could
speculate, the cheering and hallooing hat-hunter was already
halfway
up the tree, swinging himself from fork to fork with his strong,
bent, grasshopper legs, and still giving forth his gasping,
mysterious comments."Tree
of life… Ygdrasil… climb for centuries perhaps… owls nesting in
the hat… remotest generations of owls… still usurpers… gone to
heaven… man in the moon wears it… brigand… not yours… belongs
to depressed medical man… in garden… give it up… give it
up!"The
tree swung and swept and thrashed to and fro in the thundering wind
like a thistle, and flamed in the full sunshine like a bonfire. The
green, fantastic human figure, vivid against its autumn red and
gold,
was already among its highest and craziest branches, which by bare
luck did not break with the weight of his big body. He was up there
among the last tossing leaves and the first twinkling stars of
evening, still talking to himself cheerfully, reasoningly, half
apologetically, in little gasps. He might well be out of breath,
for
his whole preposterous raid had gone with one rush; he had bounded
the wall once like a football, swept down the garden like a slide,
and shot up the tree like a rocket. The other three men seemed
buried
under incident piled on incident— a wild world where one thing
began before another thing left off. All three had the first
thought.
The tree had been there for the five years they had known the
boarding-house. Each one of them was active and strong. No one of
them had even thought of climbing it. Beyond that, Inglewood felt
first the mere fact of colour. The bright brisk leaves, the bleak
blue sky, the wild green arms and legs, reminded him irrationally
of
something glowing in his infancy, something akin to a gaudy man on
a
golden tree; perhaps it was only painted monkey on a stick. Oddly
enough, Michael Moon, though more of a humourist, was touched on a
tenderer nerve, half remembered the old, young theatricals with
Rosamund, and was amused to find himself almost quoting
Shakespeare—"For
valour. Is not love a Hercules, Still
climbing trees in the Hesperides?"Even
the immovable man of science had a bright, bewildered sensation
that
the Time Machine had given a great jerk, and gone forward with
rather
rattling rapidity.He
was not, however, wholly prepared for what happened next. The man
in
green, riding the frail topmost bough like a witch on a very risky
broomstick, reached up and rent the black hat from its airy nest of
twigs. It had been broken across a heavy bough in the first burst
of
its passage, a tangle of branches in torn and scored and scratched
it
in every direction, a clap of wind and foliage had flattened it
like
a concertina; nor can it be said that the obliging gentleman with
the
sharp nose showed any adequate tenderness for its structure when he
finally unhooked it from its place. When he had found it, however,
his proceedings were by some counted singular. He waved it with a
loud whoop of triumph, and then immediately appeared to fall
backwards off the tree, to which, however, he remained attached by
his long strong legs, like a monkey swung by his tail. Hanging thus
head downwards above the unhelmed Warner, he gravely proceeded to
drop the battered silk cylinder upon his brows. "Every man a
king," explained the inverted philosopher, "every hat
(consequently) a crown. But this is a crown out of heaven."And
he again attempted the coronation of Warner, who, however, moved
away
with great abruptness from the hovering diadem; not seeming,
strangely enough, to wish for his former decoration in its present
state."Wrong,
wrong!" cried the obliging person hilariously. "Always wear
uniform, even if it's shabby uniform! Ritualists may always be
untidy. Go to a dance with soot on your shirt-front; but go with a
shirt-front. Huntsman wears old coat, but old pink coat. Wear a
topper, even if it's got no top. It's the symbol that counts, old
cock. Take your hat, because it is your hat after all; its nap
rubbed
all off by the bark, dears, and its brim not the least bit curled;
but for old sakes' sake it is still, dears, the nobbiest tile in
the
world."Speaking
thus, with a wild comfortableness, he settled or smashed the
shapeless silk hat over the face of the disturbed physician, and
fell
on his feet among the other men, still talking, beaming and
breathless."Why
don't they make more games out of wind?" he asked in some
excitement."Kites
are all right, but why should it only be kites? Why, I
thoughtof
three other games for a windy day while I was climbing that
tree.Here's one of
them: you take a lot of pepper—""I
think," interposed Moon, with a sardonic mildness, "that
your games are already sufficiently interesting. Are you, may I
ask,
a professional acrobat on a tour, or a travelling advertisement of
Sunny Jim? How and why do you display all this energy for clearing
walls and climbing trees in our melancholy, but at least rational,
suburbs?"The
stranger, so far as so loud a person was capable of it, appeared to
grow confidential."Well,
it's a trick of my own," he confessed candidly."I
do it by having two legs."Arthur
Inglewood, who had sunk into the background of this scene of folly,
started and stared at the newcomer with his short-sighted eyes
screwed up and his high colour slightly heightened."Why,
I believe you're Smith," he cried with his fresh, almost boyish
voice; and then after an instant's stare, "and yet I'm not
sure.""I
have a card, I think," said the unknown, with baffling
solemnity—"a card with my real name, my titles, offices, and
true purpose on this earth."He
drew out slowly from an upper waistcoat pocket a scarlet card-case,
and as slowly produced a very large card. Even in the instant of
its
production, they fancied it was of a queer shape, unlike the cards
of
ordinary gentlemen. But it was there only for an instant; for as it
passed from his fingers to Arthur's, one or another slipped his
hold.
The strident, tearing gale in that garden carried away the
stranger's
card to join the wild waste paper of the universe; and that great
western wind shook the whole house and passed.
Chapter II
The Luggage of an Optimist
We all remember the fairy tales
of science in our infancy, which played with the supposition that
large animals could jump in the proportion of small ones. If an
elephant were as strong as a grasshopper, he could (I suppose)
spring clean out of the Zoological Gardens and alight trumpeting
upon Primrose Hill. If a whale could leap from the sea like a
trout, perhaps men might look up and see one soaring above Yarmouth
like the winged island of Laputa. Such natural energy, though
sublime, might certainly be inconvenient, and much of this
inconvenience attended the gaiety and good intentions of the man in
green. He was too large for everything, because he was lively as
well as large. By a fortunate physical provision, most very
substantial creatures are also reposeful; and middle-class
boarding-houses in the lesser parts of London are not built for a
man as big as a bull and excitable as a kitten.
When Inglewood followed the
stranger into the boarding-house, he found him talking earnestly
(and in his own opinion privately) to the helpless Mrs. Duke. That
fat, faint lady could only goggle up like a dying fish at the
enormous new gentleman, who politely offered himself as a lodger,
with vast gestures of the wide white hat in one hand, and the
yellow Gladstone bag in the other. Fortunately, Mrs. Duke's more
efficient niece and partner was there to complete the contract;
for, indeed, all the people of the house had somehow collected in
the room. This fact, in truth, was typical of the whole episode.
The visitor created an atmosphere of comic crisis; and from the
time he came into the house to the time he left it, he somehow got
the company to gather and even follow (though in derision) as
children gather and follow a Punch and Judy. An hour ago, and for
four years previously, these people had avoided each other, even
when they had really liked each other. They had slid in and out of
dismal and deserted rooms in search of particular newspapers or
private needlework. Even now they all came casually, as with
varying interests; but they all came. There was the embarrassed
Inglewood, still a sort of red shadow; there was the unembarrassed
Warner, a pallid but solid substance. There was Michael Moon
offering like a riddle the contrast of the horsy crudeness of his
clothes and the sombre sagacity of his visage. He was now joined by
his yet more comic crony, Moses Gould. Swaggering on short legs
with a prosperous purple tie, he was the gayest of godless little
dogs; but like a dog also in this, that however he danced and
wagged with delight, the two dark eyes on each side of his
protuberant nose glistened gloomily like black buttons. There was
Miss Rosamund Hunt, still with the fine white hat framing her
square, good-looking face, and still with her native air of being
dressed for some party that never came off. She also, like Mr.
Moon, had a new companion, new so far as this narrative goes, but
in reality an old friend and a protegee. This was a slight young
woman in dark gray, and in no way notable but for a load of dull
red hair, of which the shape somehow gave her pale face that
triangular, almost peaked, appearance which was given by the
lowering headdress and deep rich ruff of the Elizabethan beauties.
Her surname seemed to be Gray, and Miss Hunt called her Mary, in
that indescribable tone applied to a dependent who has practically
become a friend. She wore a small silver cross on her very
business-like gray clothes, and was the only member of the party
who went to church. Last, but the reverse of least, there was Diana
Duke, studying the newcomer with eyes of steel, and listening
carefully to every idiotic word he said. As for Mrs. Duke, she
smiled up at him, but never dreamed of listening to him. She had
never really listened to any one in her life; which, some said, was
why she had survived.
Nevertheless, Mrs. Duke was
pleased with her new guest's concentration of courtesy upon
herself; for no one ever spoke seriously to her any more than she
listened seriously to any one. And she almost beamed as the
stranger, with yet wider and almost whirling gestures of
explanation with his huge hat and bag, apologized for having
entered by the wall instead of the front door. He was understood to
put it down to an unfortunate family tradition of neatness and care
of his clothes.
"My mother was rather strict
about it, to tell the truth," he said, lowering his voice, to Mrs.
Duke. "She never liked me to lose my cap at school. And when a
man's been taught to be tidy and neat it sticks to him."
Mrs. Duke weakly gasped that
she was sure he must have had a good mother; but her niece seemed
inclined to probe the matter further.
"You've got a funny idea of
neatness," she said, "if it's jumping garden walls and clambering
up garden trees. A man can't very well climb a tree
tidily."
"He can clear a wall
neatly," said Michael Moon; "I saw him do it."
Smith seemed to be regarding
the girl with genuine astonishment."My dear young lady," he said, "I was tidying the tree. You
don't wantlast year's hats there, do you, any more than last year's
leaves?The wind takes off the leaves, but it couldn't manage the
hat; that wind,I suppose, has tidied whole forests to-day. Rum idea this is,
that tidinessis a timid, quiet sort of thing; why, tidiness is a toil for
giants.You can't tidy anything without untidying yourself; just look
at my trousers.Don't you know that? Haven't you ever had a spring
cleaning?"
"Oh yes, sir," said Mrs.
Duke, almost eagerly. "You will find everything of that sort quite
nice." For the first time she had heard two words that she could
understand.
Miss Diana Duke seemed to be
studying the stranger with a sort of spasm of calculation; then her
black eyes snapped with decision, and she said that he could have a
particular bedroom on the top floor if he liked: and the silent and
sensitive Inglewood, who had been on the rack through these
cross-purposes, eagerly offered to show him up to the room. Smith
went up the stairs four at a time, and when he bumped his head
against the ultimate ceiling, Inglewood had an odd sensation that
the tall house was much shorter than it used to be.
Arthur Inglewood followed
his old friend—or his new friend, for he did not very clearly know
which he was. The face looked very like his old schoolfellow's at
one second and very unlike at another. And when Inglewood broke
through his native politeness so far as to say suddenly, "Is your
name Smith?" he received only the unenlightening reply, "Quite
right; quite right. Very good. Excellent!" Which appeared to
Inglewood, on reflection, rather the speech of a new-born babe
accepting a name than of a grown-up man admitting one.
Despite these doubts about
identity, the hapless Inglewood watched the other unpack, and stood
about his bedroom in all the impotent attitudes of the male friend.
Mr. Smith unpacked with the same kind of whirling accuracy with
which he climbed a tree—throwing things out of his bag as if they
were rubbish, yet managing to distribute quite a regular pattern
all round him on the floor.
As he did so he continued to
talk in the same somewhat gasping manner (he had come upstairs four
steps at a time, but even without this his style of speech was
breathless and fragmentary), and his remarks were still a string of
more or less significant but often separate pictures.
"Like the day of judgement,"
he said, throwing a bottle so that it somehow settled, rocking on
its right end. "People say vast universe… infinity and astronomy;
not sure… I think things are too close together… packed up; for
travelling… stars too close, really… why, the sun's a star, too
close to be seen properly; the earth's a star, too close to be seen
at all… too many pebbles on the beach; ought all to b
[...]
