Poet and Lunatics

The Poet and The Lunatics

EPISODES IN THE LIFE OF GABRIEL GALE

G. K. CHESTERTON

CONTENTS

I THE FANTASTIC FRIENDS II THE YELLOW BIRD III THE SHADOW OF THE SHARK IV THE CRIME OF GABRIEL GALE V THE FINGER OF STONE VI THE HOUSE OF THE PEACOCK VII THE PURPLE JEWEL VIII THE ASYLUM OF ADVENTURE

I

THE FANTASTIC FRIENDS

THE inn called the Rising Sun had an exterior rather suggesting the title of the Setting Sun. It stood in a narrow triangle of garden, more grey than green, with broken-down hedges mingling with the melancholy reeds of a river; with a few dark and dank arbours, of which the roofs and the seats had alike collapsed; and a dingy dried-up fountain, with a weather-stained water-nymph and no water. The house itself seemed rather devoured by ivy than decorated with it; as if its old bones of brown brick were slowly broken by the dragon coils of that gigantic parasite. On the other side it looked on a lonely road leading across the hills down to a ford across the river; now largely disused since the building of a bridge lower down. Outside the door was a wooden bench and table, and above it a wooden sign, much darkened, with the gold of the sun’s disc faded to a brown; and under the sign stood the inn-keeper, gazing gloomily up the road. His hair was black and flat, and his face, of a congested purple, had all the sombreness, if not all the beauty, of sunset.

The only person in the place who exhibited any liveliness was the person who was leaving it. He was the first and last customer for many months; a solitary swallow who had conspicuously failed to make a summer; and the swallow was now flitting. He was a medical man on a holiday; young, and of an agreeable ugliness, with a humorous hatchet face and red hair; and the cat-like activity of his movements contrasted with the stagnant inertia of the inn by the ford. He was strapping up his own bag on the table under the sign; and neither his host, who stood a yard off, nor the single servant, who moved heavily and obscurely within, offered to help him; possibly through sulkiness, possibly merely through dreaminess and disuse.

The long silence, idle or busy, was broken for the first time by two sharp and explosive sounds. The first was the abrupt bursting of the strap which the doctor was tightening round the bag on the table; and the second was the loud and cheerful “Damn!” which was his comment upon it.

“Here’s a pretty go,” observed the medical gentleman, who went by the name of Garth; “I shall have to tie it up with something. Have you got a cord or a rope or anything?”

The melancholy inn-keeper turned very slowly and went indoors, coming out presently with a length of dusty rope in a loop like a halter, probably for tethering a donkey or a calf.

“That’s all I’ve got,” he said; “I’m pretty well at the end of my own tether anyhow.”

“You seem a bit depressed,” observed Dr. Garth; “you probably want a tonic. Perhaps this medicine chest burst open to give you one.”

“Prussic acid is the kind of tonic I feel inclined for,” answered the landlord of the Rising Sun.

“I never recommend it,” observed the doctor cheerfully. “It’s very pleasant at the moment, no doubt; but I never feel I can guarantee a complete recovery afterwards. But you certainly seem down in the mouth; you didn’t even brighten up when I indulged in such an eccentricity as paying my bill.”

“Much obliged to you, sir,” observed the other gruffly, “but it would want a lot more bills to keep this rotten old show from going to pot. It was a good business once, when the right-of-way was open beyond the river, and everybody used this ford. But the last squire shut up the path somehow; and now everything goes by the new bridge a mile away. Nobody comes this way; and, saving your presence, I don’t know why anybody should.”

“Well, they say the new squire is nearly bankrupt himself,” observed Dr. Garth. “So history brings its revenges. Westermaine’s his name, isn’t it? I’m told there’s a brother and sister living in the big house over there, with precious little to live on. I suppose the whole countryside’s rather gone downhill. But you’re wrong about nobody coming here,” he added suddenly, “for there are two men coming over the hill now.”

The road ran across the valley at right angles to the river; beyond the ford the forgotten right-of-way could be traced more faintly up the slope to where the ruined gate that marked Westermaine Abbey stood dark against clouds of a pallor that was faintly lurid, as with a hint of storm. But on the other side of the valley the sky was clear; and the early afternoon seemed as bright and brisk as morning. And on this side, where the white road curved over the hill, two figures were advancing, which seemed, even when they were hardly more than dots in the distance, to be markedly dissimilar.

As they came nearer to the inn, the contrast increased, and was accentuated by the very fact of their air of mutual familiarity; as if they were almost walking arm in arm. One was comparatively short and very sturdy; the other unusually tall and slender. They were both fair; but the blond hair of the shorter man was neatly parted and smoothly plastered down; while that of the other stood up in erratic wisps and tufts that looked fantastic. The shorter man had a full square face sharpened by a very pointed nose, and a pair of bright, bird-like eyes, that made it look like a small beak. There was something of the cock sparrow about him; and, indeed, he seemed more of a town bird than a country bird. His clothes were as neat and commonplace as a clerk’s; and he carried a business-like little bag as if he was going up to the City; while his tall companion had bundled on his back a loose knapsack, and what was evidently the paraphernalia of a painter. He had a long, slightly cadaverous face, with absent-minded eyes; but the chin beneath jutted forward, almost as if it had formed an unconscious resolution of its own, of which the blank blue eyes were still unaware. They were both young; and they both walked without hats, probably through the heat of walking; for the one held a hard straw hat in his hand, and the other had a loose grey felt stuffed anyhow into his knapsack.

They came to a halt before the inn; and the shorter man said jovially to his companion, “Here’s a field for your efforts, anyhow.”

Then he called out with breezy civility to the inn-keeper, asking him to bring out two pots of ale; and when that gloomy character had disappeared into his gloomy place of entertainment, he turned to the doctor with the same radiant loquacity:

“My friend’s a painter,” he explained, “but rather a special sort of painter. You might call him a house-painter; but he’s not quite what most people mean by one. It may surprise you, sir, but he’s an R.A., and not the stuffy sort that sometimes suggests, either. One of the first among the young geniuses, and exhibits at all their cranky galleries. But his whole aim and glory in life is to go about repainting inn-signs. There; you don’t meet a genius with that little fancy every day. What’s the name of this pub?”

And he stood on tiptoe, craning and peering at the blackened sign with an extraordinary contained vivacity in his curiosity.

“The Rising Sun,” he commented, turning eagerly again to his silent friend. “That’s what you would call an omen, after what you were saying this morning about reviving the real inns. My friend is very poetical; and he said it would make a sunrise all over England.”

“Well, they say the sun never sets on the British Empire,” observed the doctor, with a laugh.

“I don’t feel it about the Empire so much,” said the painter simply, breaking his silence like one spontaneously thinking aloud. “After all, one doesn’t fancy an English inn on the top of Mount Everest, or somewhere on the Suez Canal. But one’s life would be well spent in waking up the dead inns of England and making them English and Christian again. If I could do it, I would do nothing else till I die.”

“Of course you can do it,” replied his travelling companion. “A picture by an artist like you, and hung outside a public-house, makes it fashionable for miles round.”

“Is it really true, then,” inquired Dr. Garth, “that you employ all your serious powers on subjects like public-house signs?”

“What finer subjects are there, even as subjects?” asked the painter; he was now evidently full of his favourite subject and he was one of those who are either abstractedly silent or ardently argumentative. “Is it more dignified to paint an Academy portrait of some snobbish mayor in a gold chain, or some swindling millionaire’s wife in a diamond tiara, than to paint the heads of great English admirals, to be toasted in good ale? Is it better to paint some nepotistical old noodle wearing his George and Garter than to paint St. George himself in the very act of killing the Dragon? I’ve repainted six old signs of St. George and the Dragon, or even the Dragon without St. George; a sign called the Green Dragon is usually very suggestive to anybody with a little imagination; you can make him a sort of spirit and terror of tropical forests. Even a Blue Boar is suggestive; something nocturnal with stars like the Great Bear; like that dim monstrous boar that stood for chaos and old night in the Celtic mythology.”

And he reached for his pewter pot, and applied himself to it with absorption.

“He’s a poet as well as a painter, you know,” explained the smaller man, still regarding his companion with an absurd air of proprietorship, as if he himself were the keeper and showman of some singular wild animal; “You’ve probably heard of the poems of Gabriel Gale, illustrated by himself? I can get you a copy if you are interested in these things. I’m his agent and business man; my name’s Hurrel… James Hurrel. People laugh at us and call us the Heavenly Twins, because we’re inseparable, and I never let him out of my sight. Have to look after him… eccentricities of genius, you know.”

The painter took his face off the pewter pot, a face fiery with controversy.

“Genius oughtn’t to be eccentric!” he cried in some excitement. “Genius ought to be centric. It ought to be in the core of the cosmos, not on the revolving edges. People seem to think it a compliment to accuse one of being an outsider, and to talk about the eccentricities of genius. What would they think, if I said I only wish to God I had the centricities of genius?”

“I fear they would think it was the beer,” replied Dr. Garth, “that had slightly confused your polysyllables. Well, it may be a romantic idea to revive the old signs, as you say. Romance is not much in my line.”

Mr. Hurrel, the agent, cut in sharply, and even eagerly. “But it isn’t only a romantic idea,” he explained; “it’s a real, practical idea, too. I’m a business man, and you may believe me it’s really a business proposition. Not only for us, but for the other people too… for the inn-keepers and the villagers and the squires, and everybody. Why, look at this broken-down ale-house they call the Rising Sun. If everyone would work together, they could have this empty hole humming like a hive in a year. If the squire would open the old road and let people visit the ruins, if he’d build a bridge here by the inn and hang out a sign painted by Gabriel Gale, you’d have all the cultivated sightseers in Europe stopping here for lunch.”

“Hullo!” cried the doctor. “It looks as if they were coming to lunch already. Really, our pessimistic friend inside talked as if this were a ruin in the desert; but I begin to believe it does a trade like the Savoy.”

They had all been standing with their backs to the road, looking at the dark tavern under discussion; but even before the doctor began to speak, Gabriel Gale, the painter and poet, had become in some odd fashion conscious of an addition to the company. Perhaps it was because the elongated shadows of a horse and two human figures had for some little time rested on the sunny road beside him. He turned his head over his shoulder, and remained staring at what he saw.

A high dog-cart had drawn up on the other side of the road. The reins were in the gloved hands of a tall, dark young lady, clad in dark blue of the tailor-made type, neat but not particularly new. By her side was a man, perhaps ten years older than herself, but seeming in many ways much more, for his high-featured face was wasted as with sickness, and there was a great anxiety in his large grey eyes.

In the momentary silence the clear voice of the girl came like an echo of the doctor’s phrase, saying: “I am sure we can get some lunch here.” She slipped lightly to the ground and stood by the horse’s head, while her companion descended with a little more hesitation. He was dressed in light tweeds, which seemed somehow slightly incongruous with his invalid air, and he addressed Hurrel with a rather nervous smile.

“I hope you won’t regard me as an eavesdropper, sir; but you were not exactly speaking as if you were talking secrets.”

Hurrel, indeed, had been talking as if he were a cheap-jack dominating the noise of the fair; and he smiled and answered quite pleasantly:

“I was only saying what anybody might about what a squire might do with a property like this. I don’t in the least mind anybody listening who happens to be interested.”

“I happen to be a little interested,” answered the man in tweeds, “because, as it happens, I am the squire if there are any squires nowadays.”

“I sincerely apologize,” answered the agent, still smiling; “but, if you will play Haroun Alraschid…”

“Oh, I’m not at all offended,” answered the other. “To tell the truth, I’m rather wondering whether you aren’t quite right.”

Gabriel Gale had been looking at the girl in dark blue rather longer than was quite polite; but painters and absent-minded persons may sometimes be excused in such cases. His friend would probably have infuriated him by calling it one of the eccentricities of genius, but it might have been disputed whether his admiration was entirely eccentric. Lady Diana Westermaine would have made a most satisfactory sign for an inn… a bush worthy of the best wine… or might even have uplifted the lowly estate of an Academy picture, though it was long since her unfortunate family could have easily afforded one. She had hair of a curious dark brown, which in ordinary shades looked black, while the lights in it looked almost red; her dark eyebrows had a touch of temper both in the good and the bad sense; her eyes were even larger and greyer than her brother’s, but less filled with mere worry and more with a more spiritual weariness. Gale had the sense that her soul was more hungry than her body. But he had also the thought that people are only hungry because they are healthy. He thought all this in the brief moments before he remembered his manners, and turned to consider the other group.

When he had left off looking at her, she began looking at him, but with a somewhat cooler curiosity.

Meanwhile, Mr. James Hurrel had been working wonders, not to say miracles. With something more than the tenacity of a tout, with something of the eloquence of the born diplomatist, he had already wound round the squire a web of suggestions and proposals and possibilities. There was really something about him of that imaginative business man of whom we hear so much and see so little. Affairs which a man like Westermaine could never normally have conceived as being settled except by long lawyers’ letters extending over several months, seemed to be arranging themselves before him in several minutes. A new bridge of the most artistic woodwork seemed already to point across the river to the open road; a new and higher class of rents seemed already to be dotting the valley with artistic villages; and a new golden sign of the Rising Sun, with the signature of Gabriel Gale, already blazed above them, a symbol that the sun had risen indeed.

Before they knew where they were the whole company had been bustled in the most friendly fashion through the inn, and set down to a luncheon that was really a committee round the table in the dreary garden beside the river. Hurrel was drawing plans on the wooden table and making calculations on pieces of paper, and reeling off figures and answering objections and growing every moment more restless and radiant. He had one piece of magic for making others believe… the fact that he evidently believed himself; and the squire, who had never met such a person before, had no weapons with which to fight him, even if it had been his interest to do so. Amid all this whirl Lady Diana looked across at Gale, who sat at the opposite corner of the table, somewhat detached and dreamy.

“What do you think of it, Mr. Gale?” she said; but Mr. Gale’s business adviser answered for him, as he answered for everybody and answered for everything.

“Oh, it’s no good asking him about business,” he cried boisterously. “He’s only one of the assets; he brings in all the artistic people. He’s a great painter; but we only want a painter to paint. Lord bless you, he won’t mind my saying that; he never minds what I say, or what anybody says, for that matter. He doesn’t answer a question for about half an hour, as a rule.”

Nevertheless, the painter answered the lady’s question under the time specified; but all he said was, “I think we ought to consult the inn-keeper.”

“Oh, very well,” cried the resilient Hurrel, leaping up. “I’ll do that now, if you like. Back in a minute.” And he disappeared again through the dark interior of the inn.

“Our friend is very eager,” said the squire, smiling; “but, after all, those are the sort of people who get things done. I mean practical things.”

The lady was again looking at the painter with a slightly constricted brow; she seemed to be almost sorry for him in his comparative eclipse; but he only smiled and said: “No, I’m no good at practical things.”

Almost as he spoke a noise like a sort of cry came through the inn from the road beyond, and Dr. Garth sprang to his feet and stood peering in at the door. The next moment Gale also seemed to rouse himself with a sort of sudden agitation; and the moment after that the others were all following the doctor, who had already started through the house. But when he came to the front door Gale turned for a moment, barring the exit with his tall figure, and said:

“Don’t let the lady come out.”

The squire had already seen over the painter’s shoulder a horrible instantaneous image. It was the black figure of a man hanging from the signboard of the Rising Sun.

It was only instantaneous; for the next moment Dr. Garth had cut him down, with the assistance of Hurrel, who had presumably uttered the first cry of alarm. The man over whom the doctor was bending was the unfortunate inn-keeper; and this was apparently the form in which he took his prussic acid.

After being busy in silence for a few moments, the doctor gave a grunt of relief and said:

“He’s not dead; in fact he’ll be all right presently.” Then he said, with a sort of disgust: “Why the devil did I leave that rope there instead of tying up my bag like a tidy professional man? I forgot all about it in all this fuss. Well, Mr. Hurrel, the sun nearly rose too late for somebody.”

Hurrel and the doctor carried the unfortunate inn-keeper into his inn, the latter declaring that the would-be suicide would soon be in a position to be questioned, if questioning was necessary. Gale paced up and down outside in his aimless fashion, frequently frowning at the sign that had served as a gallows (and the table that had probably served as the proverbial stool kicked away) with a frown that seemed not only pained but puzzled.

“This is a most distressing business,” said the squire. “Of course I am a magistrate and all that, but I should hate to have to trouble the poor fellow with the police.” At the sound of the word, Gabriel Gale swung round and said in a loud harsh voice:

“Oh, I forgot the police. Of course, he must be locked up in a cell to show him that life is worth living after all, and the world a bright, happy place to live in.”

He laughed shortly and frowned heavily, and then after ruminating a moment, said with a certain abruptness:

“Look here, I want to ask you a favour, which may seem an odd one. I want you to let me question this poor chap when he comes to. Give me ten minutes alone with him, and I will promise to cure him of suicidal mania better than a policeman could.”

“But why you especially?” asked the doctor, in some natural annoyance.

“Because I am no good at practical things,” answered Gale, “and you have got beyond practical things.”

There was another silence, and he spoke again with the same strange air of authority.

“What you want is an unpractical man. That is what people always want in the last resort and the worst conditions. What can practical men do here? Waste their practical time in running after the poor fellow and cutting him down from one pub sign after another? Waste their practical lives watching him day and night, to see he doesn’t get hold of a rope or a razor? Do you call that practical? You can only forbid him to die. Can you persuade him to live? Believe me, that is where we come in. A man must have his head in the clouds and his wits wool-gathering in fairyland, before he can do anything so practical as that.”

The group felt a growing bewilderment at his new attitude; it seemed to fill the stage in a strange fashion; nor was it lessened when he actually or apparently fulfilled his undertaking, coming out of the inn twenty minutes afterwards, and cheerfully announcing that the inn-keeper would not hang himself again. The next moment he had jumped on to the table under the sign with a large piece of chalk in his hand, and was making sketchy and slashing strokes of design on the brown face of the Rising Sun.

Lady Diana was looking on at the operation with a dark and watchful face. She was of a type more intellectual than the others, and she recognized a real thread of thought running through all that seemed to them transcendental tomfoolery. She had understood the implied irony of his first reference to their host; the moral that had come before the frightful fable. After all, they had certainly been thinking of everything about the inn except the inn-keeper. She could see there was an intelligent case, and a practical example, of the occasions when the poet can be more useful than the policeman. But she was conscious also of something baffling about him above and beyond all this; of a disquiet in him with some deeper cause, and something in his eye that belied the new levity of his manner. His draughtsmanship, however, was proceeding in the most dashing and even dazzling fashion, when Lady Diana spoke:

“I can’t think how you can do it,” she said, “on the very place where a man has hung himself like Judas.”

“It was the treason, not the despair of Judas, that was really bad,” he answered. “I was just thinking of something like that for the picture. I prefer it to Apollo and all that, for a treatment of the sunrise. Look here, you have a big head blocked in with some shadows, in the centre,” and he made some bold markings on the sun’s disc. “His dark face hidden in his hands like that, but a burst of golden dawn behind like a glory. Red bars of level cloud and a red cock, just there. The greatest of sinners and of saints; his reproach the cock, and his halo the Rising Sun.”

The nameless shadow seemed to have fallen from him as he talked and worked; and by an almost symbolic coincidence the strong afternoon sun fell with a strange fullness and splendour upon him and his work, which shone out against a blackening background of clouds continually gathering and darkening on the stormy side of the valley, beyond the ford. Against those masses of sinister purple and indigo, his figure looked like that of some legendary craftsman clad in gold and painting the frescoes of a golden chapel. The impression increased as the head and halo of St. Peter grew under his hand; and the lady was of the sort not disinclined to dream herself back in some distant period, about which she did not know too much. She felt herself back among the sacred arts and crafts of the medieval world; which were all she knew of the medieval world.

Unfortunately, a shadow came between her and the sun in a shape that did not remind her of the medieval world. Mr. James Hurrel, the agent, his stiff hat a little on one side, jumped on to the same table on which the artist stood, and sat within two yards of him, with dangling legs, and somewhat aggressive cigar. “Always have to keep an eye on him, your ladyship, or he’d be giving ‘em away,” he called out, and somehow his voice and figure failed to fit in with the picture of pious and primitive craftsmanship.

Diana Westermaine explained to herself lucidly that she had no sort of reason to be angry; but she was exceedingly angry. The conversation of the two had been of no particular intimacy; but its increase to three had a very practical and painful effect of intrusion. She could not imagine why the artist, who was a gentleman, should go about with such a little bounder as his business adviser; and she wanted to hear more about the picture of St. Peter, or something interesting. As the agent sat down he had audibly observed something about making room for a little one. If he, at that moment, had been suddenly suspended from the sign, it is doubtful if the lady would have cut him down.

At this moment a much quieter voice said in her ear: “Excuse me, but might I have one word with you?”

She turned and found Dr. Garth, with his bag in his hand, evidently about to resume his journey at last.

“I’m going,” he said, “and I feel I really ought to tell you something before I go.”

He drew her a little way up the road of his departure, and then turned with an abrupt and hurried air of farewell.

“Doctors are often in delicate situations,” he said, “and a troublesome sense of duty drives me to saying a rather delicate thing. I tell it to you and not your brother, because I think you have a long way the better nerve of the two. There is something I suspect about those two men who go about painting signs.”

From where they stood on the higher ground she could still see the sign itself shining with its new accretion of colours, and the tall, actively moving figure, shining also with sunlight, and from that distance altogether dwarfing the small and dingy figure near his feet. There returned on her still more strongly the vision of a true creator, making pure colours in the innocent morning of the world.

“They are called the Heavenly Twins,” went on the doctor, “because they are inseparable. Well, there are many kinds of couples that are inseparable, and many causes for their never separating. But there is one sort that specially concerns me, and I should be sorry to see mixed up with you.”

“I haven’t the least idea what you mean,” replied Lady Diana.

“What about a lunatic and his keeper?” said the doctor, and walked on rapidly along the road, leaving her behind him.

She had the sensation of furiously flinging a suggestion from her, from the top of a high tower to the bottom of an abyss, combined with the sensation that the tower was not high enough nor the abyss deep enough; she even had the novel sensation that there was something weak about her throwing. While the tower of her mind was still rocking with the effort, she was interrupted by her brother, who came hastily, and even excitedly, towards her.

“I’ve just asked these gentlemen across to our place,” he said, “to fix up this business better. And we’d better be starting, for there’s a storm beating up, and even the ford sometimes gets pretty dicky. As it is, we shall have to cross two at a time in our own rotten old cart.”

It was in a sort of dream that she found herself again untethering the horse and again taking the reins. It was in a dream that she heard the voice that irritated her so much saying, “Heavenly Twins, you know, Heavenly Twins; we mustn’t be parted”; and then the voice of the squire replying, “Oh, it’ll only be for a minute, anyhow; she’ll send Wilson back with the dog-cart at once. There’s only room for two at a time, I’m afraid.” They stood a little way back in the doorway of the inn as they talked, and Gabriel Gale had just stepped from the table and was standing nearer to the dog-cart.

Then there surged up in her suddenly she knew not what movement of impatience or defiance; and she said in a matter-of-fact tone: “Are you coming first, Mr. Gale?”

The face of the artist blanched as if he were blasted with white lightning in the sun-light. He gave one look over his shoulder and then leapt into the seat beside her, and the horse threw up his head and began to move towards the ford. The rain must have already fallen further upstream, for there was already the sensation of water flowing more deeply about the horse’s legs; and, though they were only fording a river, she had a hazy sensation of crossing a Rubicon.

Enoch Wilson, the groom, one of the small group left at Westermaine Abbey, died and was gathered to his fathers without having the faintest notion of the determining part which he played in the dark events of that night. And his private life, though, like that of other immortal spirits, of an intense interest, does not in any other point affect this story. It is enough to say that he was rather deaf, and, like many grooms, more sympathetic with the moods of horses than of men. Lady Diana sought him out in the stable, which stood far from the house and near the river, and told him to take the dog-cart back for the rest of the party. She spoke hurriedly and told him to hurry, because the rain would soon make the ford difficult; and her phrases, combined with his own bias, turned his mind chiefly to a consideration of the horse. He drove across under the gathering storm, and as he drew near the dark inn he heard high and excited voices. Mr. Hurrel was evidently hot upon his hobby or campaign. The groom got the impression that there was a quarrel; and took a few testy words from his master as meaning that he was not to be disturbed. So the careful Wilson took the horse back across the ford and back into the stable, congratulating himself on having saved the valuable quadruped from the worst inconveniences of what threatened to be a flood. Then he betook himself to his own occupations, leaving a trail of destiny behind him.

Meanwhile Diana Westermaine had left the stable and made her way across the grounds to rejoin the guest who had gone in front of her. As she went up through a lane of hollyhocks and tall plants, she saw the vast flying island or continent of rain cloud, with its volcanic hues and outline, come sailing slowly over the dark, wooded ridge that was the wall of the valley. There was already something faintly lurid about the twilight with which it covered the rich colours of the garden; but higher up the climbing path a strip of lawn was golden in a chance gleam of sunlight, and against it she saw the figure she had come to seek. She recognized it by the light-brown clothes that had looked like gold in the evening light, but there was something very extraordinary about the shape as distinct from the colour. He seemed to be waving his arms slowly like branches in a breeze, and she fancied the arms were unnaturally long. For an instant she had the ugly fancy that the figure was deformed; and yet the more unearthly fancy that it had no head. Then the nightmare turned into ordinary nonsense, for the man threw a sort of cartwheel and alighted on his feet laughing. He had actually been standing on his head, or rather on his hands.

“Excuse me,” he said, “I often do that. It’s a very good thing for a landscape-painter to see the landscape upside down. He sees things then as they really are; yes, and that’s true in philosophy as well as art.” He brooded and then explained explosively.

“It’s all very well to talk about being topsy-turvy. But when the angels hang head downwards, we know they come from above. It’s only those that come from below that always have their noses in the air.”

Despite his hilarious manner, she approached him with a certain sub-conscious fear; which was not lessened when he lowered his voice and added: “Shall I tell you a secret?”

At the same moment were heard overhead the first heavy movements of the thunder, through which his voice came, perhaps, with an accidental air as of loud whispering.

“The world is upside down. We’re all upside down. We’re all flies crawling on a ceiling, and it’s an everlasting mercy that we don’t drop off.”

At that instant the twilight turned to a white blaze of lightning; and she was shocked to see that his face was quite serious.

She said with a sort of irritation, “You do say such crazy things,” and the next moment her voice was lost in the thronging echoes of the thunder, which seemed to shake everything, shouting the same word again and again… crazy, crazy, crazy. She had unconsciously given a word for the worst thought in her mind.

As yet no rain had fallen on the garden slopes, though the noise of it was already troubling the river beyond. But even had it done so, she herself doubted if the man would have noticed it. Even in more normal moments he seemed to be one who singly pursued a solitary train of thought, and he was still talking, like a man talking to himself, about the rationality of topsy-turvydom.

“We were talking about St. Peter,” he said; “you remember that he was crucified upside down. I’ve often fancied his humility was rewarded by seeing in death the beautiful vision of his boyhood. He also saw the landscape as it really is: with the stars like flowers, and the clouds like hills, and all men hanging on the mercy of God.”

Then a heavy drop of rain fell on him; and the effect of it was indescribable. It seemed to sting him like a wasp and wake him out of a trance. He started and stared round; and then said in a new and more natural voice:

“My God, where is Hurrel? What are the others doing? Aren’t they here yet?”

With an impulse not to be analysed, Diana dashed through the swaying plants to the top of a neighbouring hillock, and looked across the valley to the inn of the Rising Sun. And she saw flowing between them and that place a heavier and wider flood, which in that wild moment looked impassable, like the river of death.

In a strange way it seemed to her a symbol of something greater than the mere grim realism that would have told her, now only too plainly, that she was left alone with a lunatic. Somehow it seemed that the lunacy itself was only a sort of abominable accident and obstacle between her and something that might have been beautiful and a satisfaction of the soul. Another dark river was flowing between her and her own fairyland.

At the same moment Gabriel Gale gave a terrible cry; he also had seen afar off the sundering flood.

“You were right, after all,” he said. “You spoke of Judas, when I dared to speak of Peter. I have blasphemed and done the unpardonable sin. I am the traitor now.” Then he added in lower and heavier tones: “Yes, I am the man who sold God.”

The girl’s mind was growing clearer with the cold pain of reality. She had heard that maniacs sometimes accused themselves of the unpardonable sin. Something of her natural courage returned also, and she was ready to do anything, though she did not yet see very clearly what to do. As she was fighting for a solution, the question was settled for her in some degree by her companion himself, who started running down the slope.

“I must get across again if I swim the river,” he said. “I ought never to be away from Hurrel like this. I can never tell what will happen next.”

She followed his descent, and was rather surprised to see him deflect it to dart towards the stable. Before she knew where she was, he was struggling with the horse and dragging it out into the shafts; and she felt an irrational pleasure in the fact that he had the strength of a man, if it was the strength of a madman. But her own high spirit and self-respect had returned to her, and there rose in her a furious refusal to be a passive spectator of what might well be merely a suicide. After all, however mad he might be, the man was doing the right thing in trying to rejoin his medical attendant; and she would not have the last effort of his sanity frustrated by the antics of his disease.

“I’ll drive if we must,” she said in a ringing tone. “He’ll go better with me.”

The sun had set behind the hills opposite, and night was already deepening the darkness of the storm. As the rocking vehicle splashed up to the hub of its wheel in the eddying water, she could only faintly see the long water-rushes streaming with the stream, as if they were indeed the shades of the underworld hovering without hope beside the Styx. But she had no longer need to call it, merely in metaphor, a river of death. Death was driving hard against horse and cart, staggering the insecure foothold of the one, and swaying the human burden of the other; the thunder was about their ears, and on their dreadful path scarce any light but the lightning; and her human companion was a man uttering a monologue, of which she heard snatches, more shocking than the thunder. All the reason and realism in her told her that he might at any moment tear her in pieces. But underneath all such things there was something else contrary and incredible; something in the need and the companionship, and the courage and heroism she was showing; and it was too deep in her dizzy soul for her to know that it was exultation.

The horse almost fell just as they came to the end of the ford, but Gale sprang from the cart and held it, standing knee-deep in water.

In a lull in the noise of the storm she heard for the first time voices from the inn beside the river… voices high, and even shrill, as if the altercation that the groom had heard had risen steadily like the rise of the storm. Then there came what sounded like the crash of a falling chair. Gale dragged the horse to land with the energy of a demon, then dropped the bridle, and set off running towards the inn.

Even as he did so a piercing shriek rose into the night from the doors of that solitary and sinister tavern by the river. It died away in a wailing echo along the reedy banks of the river itself, as if the reeds were indeed the lost spirits by the river of Hades; and the very thunder seemed to have stopped and held its breath to hear it. Then before the thunder moved again came one wide flash of lightning, as wide as an instantaneous daylight, picking out the most minute details of the distance, of the branches and twigs upon the wooded heights, and the clover in the flat fields beside the river. And with the same clarity she saw for an instant something incredible and abominable, and yet not wholly new or unfamiliar… something that returned in the waking world as a detested nightmare will return in sleep. It was the black figure of a man dangling from the painted gallows of the Rising Sun. But it was not the same man.

Diana was convinced for the moment that she herself had gone mad. She could only imagine dully that her own mind had snapped under the strain, and that the dark objects she saw were but dancing dots upon a void. But one of those black dots had certainly seemed to be the figure of her own brother thus lassoed to the beam; and the other black dot, literally a dancing dot, had been the figure of that energetic business man, Mr. James Hurrel. For just then his energy was taking the form of dancing; he was hopping and capering with excitement in front of that frightful signboard.

Darkness followed the flash, and a moment after she heard the great voice of Gale himself, a larger and louder voice than she had imagined him to possess, bellowing through the darkness and the stress of wind. “It’s all right… he’s quite safe now.” Little as she understood of anything yet, she understood with a cold thrill that they had come just in time.

She was still dazed when she staggered somehow through the din and distraction of the tempest into the inn parlour, with a smoky lamp on the table, and the three figures of that frustrated tragedy around it. The squire, her brother, in a sort of collapse of convalescence, sat or lay in an arm-chair with a stiff dose of brandy in front of him. Gabriel Gale was standing up, like one who had taken command, with a face as white but as hard as marble. He was speaking to the man named Hurrel in low level, and quiet tones, but with one finger pointed, as when a man speaks to a dog.

“Go over there and sit by the window,” he said. “You must keep quite quiet.”

The man obeyed, taking a seat at the other end of the room, and looked out of the window at the storm, without hearing or seeking to hear the talk of the others.

“What does it all mean?” asked Diana at last. “I thought you… the truth is Dr. Garth gave me a hint that you were only a lunatic and his keeper.”

“And so we are, as you see,” answered Gale; “but the keeper has behaved far worse than the lunatic.”

“But I thought you were the lunatic,” she said with simplicity.

“No,” he replied; “I am the criminal.”

They had drawn nearer to the doorway, and their voices also were covered by the noise of the elements, so that they were almost as much alone as when they stood beyond the river. She remembered the earlier dialogue, and the violent and mysterious language he had used in it; and she said doubtfully:

“You said things like that and worse over the other side, and that’s what made me think so. I couldn’t understand why you should say such wild things against yourself.”

“I suppose I do talk rather wildly,” he said. “Perhaps you were not so wrong, after all, and I have a streak of sympathy with lunatics… and that’s why I can manage them. Anyhow, I happen to be the only person who can manage this particular lunatic. It’s a long story, and perhaps I shall tell it some day. This poor fellow once did me a great service, and I feel I can only repay it by looking after him and saving him from the infernal brutality of officials. You see, the truth is they say I have a talent for it… a sort of psychological imagination. I generally know what they’re going to do or fancy next. I’ve known a lot of them, one way or another… religious maniacs who thought they were divine or damned, or what not, and revolutionary maniacs, who believed in dynamite or doing without clothes; or philosophical lunatics, of whom I could tell you some tall stories, too… men who behaved as if they lived in another world and under different stars, as I suppose they did. But of all the maniacs I have tried to manage, the maddest of all maniacs was the man of business.”

He smiled rather sourly, and then the tragedy returned to his face as he went on:

“As for your other question, I may have talked wildly against myself, but I didn’t talk worse than I deserve. Hadn’t I deserted my post, like a traitor? Didn’t I leave my wretched friend in the lurch, like a Judas? It’s true he’d never broken out like this before; but I was sure in my heart there was one of his antics mixed up with that first affair of the inn-keeper. But the inn-keeper really was suicidal, and I fancy Hurrel only helped him, so to speak; but it was that that put the damnable notion in his head. I never dreamed he would break out against your brother, or I would… but why do I try to make excuses when there is no excuse? I followed my own will till it went within an inch of murder; and it’s I who ought to be hanging from the wooden sign, if hanging weren’t too good for me.”

“But why…” she began automatically, and then stopped dead, with the sense of a whole new world surging up against her.

“Ah, why,” he repeated with a changed voice; “but I think you know why. It is not your fault, but you know why. You know what has often made a sentinel leave his post. You know what brought Troilus out of Troy and perhaps Adam out of Eden. And I have neither the need nor the right to tell you.”

She stood looking out into the darkness, and her face wore a singular smile.

“Well, there’s the other story you promised to tell some day,” she said. “Perhaps you will tell it me if we meet again.” And she held out her hand in farewell.

The sinister and fantastic partners had set off again next morning when the sun first shone upon the road; the storm had rolled away along the valley and the birds were singing after the rain. Stranger things yet were to happen before he and she should meet again; but for the moment she had a curious relapse into repose and contemplation. She reminded herself of the words about the world being upside down; and thought it had indeed turned upside down many times in that single night. And she could not analyse the sensation that, in spite of everything, it had come the right side up.

II

THE YELLOW BIRD

FIVE men had halted at the top of a hill overlooking a valley beautiful enough to be called a vision, but too neglected ever to have been vulgarised by being called a view. They were a sketching club on a walking tour; but when they had come to that place they did no more walking, and, strangely enough, very little sketching. It was as if they had come to some quiet end of the world; that corner of the earth seemed to have a curious effect on them, varying with their various personalities, but acting on all as something arresting and vaguely final. Yet the quality was as nameless as it was unique; there was nothing definably different from twenty other wooded valleys in those western shires upon the marches of Wales. Green slopes dived into a fringe of dark forests that looked black by comparison, but the grey columns of which were mirrored in the curving river like a long winding colonnade. Only a little way along, on one side of the river, the bank was cleared of timber, and formed a platform for old gardens and orchards, in the midst of which stood an old tall house, of a rich brown brick with blue shutters, and rather neglected creepers clinging to it, more like moss to a stone than like flowers to a flower-bed. The roof was flat, with a chimney near the centre of it, from which a thin thread of smoke was drawn up into the sky; the only sign that the house was not wholly deserted. Of the five men who looked down at the landscape, only one had any special reason for looking at the house.

The eldest of the artists, a dark, active, ambitious man in spectacles, destined to be famous afterwards under the name of Luke Walton, was affected by the place in a curious fashion. It seemed to tease him like a fly or something elusive; he could not please himself with a point of view, but was perpetually shifting his camp-stool from place to place, crossing and recrossing the theatre of these events amid the jeers of his companions. The second, a heavy, fair-haired man named Hutton, stared at the scene in a somewhat bovine fashion, made a few lines on a sketching block, and then announced in a loud voice that it was a good place for a picnic, and that he was going to have his lunch. The third painter agreed with him; but as he was said to be a poet as well as a painter, he was expected to show a certain fervour for any opportunities of avoiding work. Indeed, this particular artist, whose name was Gabriel Gale, did not seem disposed even to look at the landscape, far less to paint it; but after taking a bite out of a ham sandwich, and a swig at somebody else’s flask of claret, incontinently lay down on his back under a tree and stared up at the twilight of twinkling leaves; some believing him to be asleep, while others more generously supposed him to be composing poetry. The fourth, a smaller and more alert man named Garth, could only be regarded as an honorary member of the artistic group; for he was more interested in science than in art, and carried not a paint-box but a camera. Nevertheless, he was, not without an intelligent appreciation of scenery, and he was in the act of fixing up his photographic apparatus so that it covered the angle of the river where stood the neglected garden and the distant house. And at that moment the fifth man, who had not yet moved or spoken, made so abrupt and arresting a gesture that one might say that he struck up the camera, like a gun pointed to kill.

“Don’t,” he said; “it’s bad enough when they try to paint it.”

“What’s the matter?” asked Garth. “Don’t you like that house?”

“I like it too much,” said the other, “or rather, I love it too much to like it at all.”

The fifth man who spoke was the youngest of the party, but he had already at least some local success and celebrity; partly because he had devoted his talent to the landscape and legends of that countryside, and partly because he came of a family of small squires whose name was historic in those hills. He was tall, with dark-brown hair and a long brown face, with a high-bridged nose that looked rather distinguished than handsome; and there was a permanent cloud of consideration on his brow that made him seem much older than his years. He alone of all these men had made no gesture, either of labour or relaxation, on coming to the crest of the hill. While Walton went to and fro, and Hutton started cheerfully on his meal, and Gale flung himself on the couch of leaves to look up into the tree-tops, this man had stood like a statue looking across the valley to the house, and it was only when Garth pointed his camera that he had even lifted a hand.

Garth turned on him a humorous face, in spite of its hard angular features; for the little scientist was a man of admirable good temper.

“I suppose there’s a story about it,” he said; “you look as if you were in quite a confidential mood. If you like to tell me, I assure you I can keep a secret. I’m a medical man and have to keep secrets, especially those of the insane. That ought to encourage you.”

The younger man, whose name was John Mallow, continued to gaze moodily across the valley, but there was something about him that suggested that the other had guessed right, and he was about to speak.

“Don’t bother about the others,” said Garth, “they can’t hear; they’re too busy doing nothing. Hutton,” he called out in much more strident tones, “Gale, are you fellows listening?”

“Yes; I’m listening to the birds,” came the half-buried voice of Gale out of his leafy lair.

“Hutton’s asleep,” observed Garth with satisfaction. “No wonder, after all that lunch. Are you asleep, Gale?”

“Not asleep, but dreaming,” answered the other. “If you look up long enough, there isn’t any more up or down, but a sort of green, dizzy dream; with birds that might as well be fishes. They’re just odd shapes of different colours against the green, brown and grey, and one of them looks quite yellow.”

“A yellow-hammer, I suppose,” remarked Garth.

“It doesn’t look like a hammer,” said Gale, sleepily; “not such an odd shape as all that.”

“Ass!” said Garth briefly. “Did you expect it to look like an auctioneer’s hammer? You poets who are so strong about Nature are generally weak in natural history. Well, Mallow,” he added, turning to his companion, “you’ve nothing to fear from them, if you like to talk in an ordinary voice. What about this house of yours?”

“It’s not mine,” said Mallow. “As a matter of fact, it belongs to an old friend of my mother’s, a Mrs. Verney, a widow. The place has very much run to seed now, as you see, for the Verneys have got poorer and poorer, and don’t know what to do next, which is the beginning of the trouble. But I have passed happier times there than I shall probably ever have again.”

“Was Mrs. Verney so enchanting a character?” asked his friend softly; “or may I take the liberty of supposing there was a rising generation?”

“Unfortunately for me, it is a very rising generation,” replied Mallow. “It rises in a sort of small revolution; and it rises rather above my head.” Then, after a silence, he said somewhat abruptly, “Do you believe in lady doctors?”

“I don’t believe in any doctors,” answered Garth. “I’m one myself.”

“Well, it isn’t exactly lady doctors, I believe, but it’s something of that sort,” went on Mallow; “study of psychological science, and so on. Laura has got it very badly, and is helping some Russian psychologist or other.”

“Your narrative style is a little sketchy,” remarked Dr. Garth, “but I suppose I may infer that Laura is a daughter of Mrs. Verney, and also that Laura has some logical connexion with the happy days that will not return.”

“Suppose it all, and have done with it,” replied the young man. “You know what I mean; but the real point is this. Laura has all the new ideas, and has persuaded her mother to come down off the high horse of genteel poverty in all sorts of ways. I don’t say she’s not right in that; but as it works out there are some curious complications. For one thing, Laura not only earns her own living but earns it in the laboratory of this mysterious Muscovite; and for another, she has bounced her mother into taking a paying guest. And the paying guest is the mysterious Muscovite again, who wants a quiet rest in the country.”

“And I suppose, I may take it,” said the doctor, “that you feel there is a little too much of the Muscovite in your young life?”

“As a matter of fact, he moved into the house late last night,” continued Mallow, “and I suppose that’s really why I drifted in this direction this morning, trailing you all at my heels. I said it was a beautiful place, and so it is; but I don’t want to paint it, and I don’t even want to visit it; but all the same, I had a vague sort of feeling I should like to be somewhere near.”

“And, as you couldn’t get rid of us, you brought us along,” said Garth with a smile. “Well, I think I can understand all that. Do you know anything about this Russian professor?”

“I know nothing whatever against him,” answered the other. “He is a very famous man both in science and politics. He escaped from a Siberian prison in the old days, by blowing up the wall with a bomb of his own construction; it’s quite an exciting story, and he must at least be a man of courage. He has written a great book called The Psychology of Liberty, I believe; and Laura is very keen on his views. It’s rather an indescribable thing altogether; she and I are very fond of each other, and I don’t think she mistakes me for a fool, and I don’t think I am a fool. But whenever we have met lately it has been literally like a meeting on a high road, when two people are going opposite ways. And I think I know what it is; she is always going outwards, and I am always going inwards. The more I see of the world, and the more men I meet or books I read or questions I answer, the more I come back with increased conviction to those places where I was born or played as a boy, narrowing my circles like a bird going back to a nest. That seems to me the end of all travel, and especially of the widest travel… to get home. But she has another idea in her mind. It’s not only that she says that old brown brick house is like a prison, or that the hills are like walls shutting her in; I dare say things do get pretty dull in such a place. There’s a theory in it, too, which I suppose she’s got from her psychological friend. She says that even in her own valley, and in her own garden, the trees only grow because they radiate outwards, which is only the Latin for branching. She says the very word ‘radiant’ shows it is the secret of happiness. There is something in it, I suppose; but I radiate inwards, so to speak; that is why I paint all my pictures of this little corner of the world. If I could only paint this valley, I might go on to paint that garden; and, if only I could paint that garden, I might be worthy to paint the creeper under her window.”

The sleeping Hutton awoke with an uproarious yawn, and lifting himself from his bed of leaves, wandered away to where the more industrious Walton had at last settled down to work on the other side of the hill. But the poet Gale still lay gazing at his topsy-turvydom of tree-tops. And the only reply he would make to a further challenge from Garth was to say heavily. “They’ve driven the yellow one away.”

“Who have driven what away?” demanded Mallow, rather irritably.

“The other birds attacked the yellow one and drove it away,” said the poet.

“Regarded it as an undesirable alien, no doubt,” said Garth.

“The Yellow Peril,” said Gale, and relapsed into his dreams.

Mallow had already resumed his monologue:

“The name of this psychologist is Ivanhov, and he’s said to be writing another great book in his country retreat; I believe she is acting as his secretary. It is to embody some mathematical theory about the elimination of limits and…”

“Hullo!” cried Garth. “This moated grange of yours is actually coming to life. Somebody is actually beginning to open a window.”

“You haven’t been looking at it as I have,” answered Mallow quietly. “Just round the angle on the left there’s a little window that’s been open all the time. That belongs to the little sitting-room out of the spare bedroom. It used to be Laura’s room, and still has a lot of her things in it; but I think they give it now to their guests.”

“Including, doubtless, their paying guest,” observed Garth.

“He’s a queer sort of guest. I only hope he’s a paying one,” returned the other. “That big window where they just opened the shutters is at the end of the long library; all these windows belong to it. I expect they’ll stick the philosopher in there if he wants to philosophise.”

“The philosopher seems to be philosophical about draughts,” observed Dr. Garth; “he or somebody else has opened three more windows, and seems to be struggling with another.”

Even as he spoke the fifth window burst open, and even from where they stood they could see a creeper that had strayed across it snap and drop with the gesture. It had the look of the snapping of some green chain securing the house like a prison. It had almost the look of the breaking of the seal of a tomb.

For Mallow, against all his prejudices, felt the presence and pressure of that revolutionary ideal which he recognized as his rival. All along the shattered façade of the old brown house the windows were opening one after another like the eyes of an Argus waking from his giant sleep. He was forced to admit to himself that he had never seen the place thus coming to life from within, as a plant unfolds itself. The last three windows were now open to the morning; the long room must already be full of light, to say nothing of air. Garth had spoken of a philosopher enduring draughts; but it seemed more as if a pagan priest had been turned into a temple of the winds. But there was more in that morning vision than the mere accident of a row of windows open when they were commonly closed. The same fancy about unfolding life seemed to fill the whole scene like a new atmosphere. It was as if a fresh air had streamed out of the windows instead of into them. The sun was already fairly high, but it came out of the morning mists above the house with something of the silent explosion of daybreak. The very shapes of the forest trees, spreading themselves like fans, seemed to repeat the original word “radiant”, which he had thought of almost as a Latin pun. Sailing over his head, as if sent flying by a sort of centrifugal force, the clouds still carried into the height of noon the colours of sunrise. He felt all the fresh things that he feared coming at him by an irrepressible expansion. Everything seemed to enlarge itself. Even when his eye fell on a stunted gate-post standing alone in the old garden, he could fancy that it swelled as he stared at it.

A sharp exclamation from his friend woke him from his unnatural day-dream, which might rather be called, by a contradiction, a white nightmare of light.

“By blazes! he’s found another window,” cried the doctor; “a window in the roof.”

There was, indeed, the gleam of a skylight which caught the sun at an angle as it was forced upwards, and out of the opening emerged the moving figure of a man. Little could be seen of him at that distance, except that he was tall and slim and had yellow hair which looked like gold in the strong sun. He was dressed in some long, light-coloured garment, probably a dressing-gown, and he stretched his long limbs as if with the sleepy exultation of one arisen from sleep.

“Look here!” said Mallow suddenly, an indescribable expression flashing across his face and vanishing; “I’m going to pay a call.”

“I rather thought you might,” answered Garth. “Do you want to go alone?”

As he spoke he looked round for the rest of the company, but Walton and Hutton were still chatting some distance away on the other side of the hill, and only Gale still lay in the shadow of the thick trees staring up at the birds, as if he had never stirred. Garth called to him by name, but it was only after a silence that Gale spoke. What he said was:

“Were you ever an isosceles triangle?

“Very seldom,” replied Garth with restraint. “May I ask what the devil you are talking about?”

“Only something I was thinking about,” answered the poet, lifting himself on to one elbow. “I wondered whether it would be a cramping sort of thing to be surrounded by straight lines, and whether being in a circle would be any better. Did anybody ever live in a round prison?”

“Where do you get these cracked notions?” inquired the doctor.

“A little bird told me,” Gale said gravely. “Oh, it’s quite true.”

He had risen to his feet by this time, and came slowly forward to the brow of the hill, looking across at the house by the river. As he looked his dreamy blue eyes seemed to wake up, like the windows opening in the house he gazed at.

“Another bird,” he said softly, “like a sparrow on the house-tops. And that fits in with it exactly.”

There was some suggestion of truth in the phrase, for the strange figure was standing on the very edge of the roof, with space below him and his hands spread out almost as if he wished to fly. But the last sentence, and still more the strange manner in which it was spoken, puzzled the doctor completely.

“Fits in with what?” he asked, rather sharply.

“He’s like that yellow bird,” said Gale vaguely. “In fact, he is a yellow bird, with that hair and the sun on him. What did you say you thought it was… a yellow-hammer?”

“Yellow-hammer yourself,” retorted Garth; “you’re quite as yellow as he is. In fact, with your long legs and straw-coloured hair, you’re really rather like him.”

Mallow, in his more mystical mood, looked strangely from one to the other, for indeed there was a certain vague similarity between the two tall, fair-haired figures, the one on the house and the other on the hill.

“Perhaps I am rather like him,” said Gale quietly. “Perhaps I’m just sufficiently like him to learn not to be like him, so to speak. We may both be birds of a feather, the yellow feather; but we don’t flock together, because he likes to flock by himself. And as to being a hammer, yellow or otherwise, well, that also is an allegory.”

“I decline to make head or tail of your allegories,” said Dr. Garth shortly.

“I used to want a hammer to smash things with,” continued Gale; “but I’ve learnt to do something else with a hammer, which is what a hammer is meant for; and every now and then I manage to do it.”

“What do you mean by that?” inquired the doctor.

“I can hit the right nail on the head,” answered the poet.

It was not, in fact, until later in the day that Mallow paid his call at Mrs. Verney’s house. Mrs. Verney was going up to the neighbouring village for the afternoon; and Mallow had more than one motive for making his attack when the stranger was alone with his secretary. He had a general idea of using his friends to detach or detain the stranger while he himself sought for explanation from the secretary; so he dragged Garth and Gale along with him to Mrs. Verney’s drawing-room; or rather he would have done so if Gale had been an easy person to drag successfully anywhere. But Gale had a tendency to get detached from any such group, and was always being left behind. Large as he was, he had a way of getting mislaid. His friends forgot him, as they had almost forgotten him when he was lying under the tree. It was not that he was unsociable; on the contrary, he was very fond of his friends and very fond of his opinions, and always delighted to detail the latter to the former. Strangers would have said that he was very fond of the sound of his own voice, but friends who were fond of him knew better. They knew that he had hardly ever heard his own voice, in the sense of listening to it. What made his movements incalculable was that his thinking or talking would start from any small thing that seemed to him a large thing. What are to most men impressions, or half impressions, were to him incidents; and the chief incidents of the day. Many imaginative people know what is meant by saying that certain empty rooms or open doors are suggestive; but he always acted on the suggestion. Most of them understand that there can be something vaguely inviting about a gap in a garden hedge, or the abrupt angle of a path; but he always accepted the invitation. The shape of a hill, or the corner of a house, checked him like a challenge. He wrestled with it seriously till it had given up something of its secret, till he could put something like a name to his nameless fancy; and these things were the active adventures of his life. Hence it was that he would sometimes follow one train of thought for hours, as steadily as a bird winging its way homewards. But it might start anywhere; and hence, in his actual movements, he looked more like a floating tuft of thistledown caught upon any thorn.

On this occasion his friends lost him, or left him behind, as they turned the corner of the house just after passing an old-fashioned bow-window looking out on the garden. Inside the window stood a small round table on which was a bowl of goldfish; and Gale stopped abruptly and stared at it as if he had never seen such a thing before. He had often maintained that the main object of a man’s life was to see a thing as if he had never seen it before. But in this case the twilight of the little empty room, touched here and there with the late afternoon sunlight, seemed somehow a subtle but suitable background for the thing that he saw. The heart of a dark green sphere was alive with little living flames.

“Why the devil do they call them goldfish?” he asked almost irritably. “They’re a much more gorgeous colour than gold; I’ve never seen it anywhere except in very rare red clouds in a sunset. Gold suggests yellow, and not the best yellow either; not half so good as the clear lemon yellow of that bird I saw today. They’re more like copper than gold. And copper is twenty times finer than gold. Why isn’t copper the most precious metal, I wonder?”

He paused a moment and then said reflectively:

“Would it do, I wonder, when one changed a cheque into gold, to give a man coppers instead, and explain that they have more of the rich tones of sunset?”

His inquiry remained unanswered, for he made it to the empty air. His companions were deficient in his sense of the importance of goldfish, and had gone on impatiently to the main entrance of the house, leaving him lingering by the bowl near the bow-window. He continued to look at it for a considerable time, and when at last he turned away, it was not to follow his friends, but to pace the paths of the garden in the deepening and darkening twilight, revolving in his mind some occult romance beginning with a bowl of fish.

Meanwhile, his more practical friends, pursuing the main purpose of the story, had penetrated into the house and found at least some members of the household. There had been many things in the garden or the gateway over which Mallow also might have been disposed to linger if his mood had been merely sentimental; an old swing standing by the corner of the orchard, the angle of a faded tennis lawn, the fork of a pear-tree, all of which had stories attached to them. But he was possessed of a passionate curiosity far too practical for sentiment of the merely reminiscent sort; he was resolved to run to earth the mystery of the new man in the old house. He felt that a change had come over everything with the man’s mere presence; and wished to know how far that change had gone. He half expected to see those familiar rooms swept bare, or filled with strange furniture where the stranger had passed.

Accident, indeed, gave to their passage through those empty rooms an air of pursuit, as if something were escaping. For, as they passed from an outer room into the long library, the stranger, who was at the other end by the window, emphasized his restless love of the open air by putting one long leg over the low window-sill and stepping out on to the lawn. He had evidently, however, no real desire to avoid them, for he stood there smiling in the sunlight, and uttered some greeting very pleasantly with a slight foreign accent. He was still wearing the long lemon-coloured dressing-gown which, along with his yellow hair, had suggested the comparison of a yellow bird. Under the yellow hair his brow was broad but not high, and the nose was not only long and straight, but came down in a single line from the forehead in the manner that may be seen on many Greek coins and carvings, but which has an unnatural and even sinister symmetry when seen in real life. There was nothing else eccentric or exuberant about him; his manners were casual, but not ungraceful; and nothing contradicted the sunny ease of his situation and demeanour except, perhaps, a slightly strained look in the eyes, which were eager and prominent. Until his acquaintances grew accustomed to it, as a fixed involuntary feature of his face, they occasionally had a sort of shock when catching his quiet face in shadow and realizing that the round eyes were standing out of his head.

The first thing the eyes seemed to encounter was Dr. Garth’s hand-camera; and, as soon as introductions and salutations had passed, he plunged into talk about photography. He prophesied its extension at the expense of painting, and brushed aside the objection, which even the doctor offered, that painting had the superiority in colour.

“Colour-photography will soon be completed,” he said hastily; “or rather, it will never be completed, but will always be improved. That is the point of science. You know more or less finally what can be done, well or ill, with a draughtsman’s chalk or a sculptor’s chisel. But with us the instruments themselves are always changing. That’s the real triumph of a telescope… that it is telescopic.”

“Well,” said Mallow grimly, “I shall wait for one more change in the camera as a scientific instrument before I cut up my old easel for firewood.”

“What change is that?” asked the Russian with a kind of eagerness.

“I shall wait till one of those tall cameras walks on its own three legs along a country lane to pick out the view it likes best.”

“Even something like that may be more possible than you think,” replied the other. “In these days when a man has his eyes and ears at the end of long wires; his own nerves, so to speak, spread over a city in the form of telephones and telegraphs. A great modern city will become a great machine with its handle in the human hand. Thus only can a man become a giant.”

John Mallow looked at the man rather darkly for a moment, and then said:

“If you are so very fond of a big modern city,” he said, “why do you hide yourself in such a quiet little hole in the country?”

For a flash the stranger’s face seemed to wince and alter in the white sunlight; but the next instant he was still smiling, though he spoke a little more apologetically.

“There is certainly more space” he answered. “I confess I like a lot of space. But even there the science of the city will ultimately provide its own remedy. The answer is in one word… aviation.”

Before the other could reply the speaker went on, his prominent eye kindling and his whole figure filling out with animation. He made a movement with his hand like a man throwing a stone into the air.

“It’s upwards the new extension will be,” he cried. “That road is wide enough, and that window is always open. The new roads will stand up like towers. The new harbours will stand far out in that sea above our heads… a sea you can never find the end of. It would only be a beginning to conquer the planets and colonize the fixed stars.”

“I think,” said Mallow, “that you will have conquered the remotest star before you really conquer this one old corner of the earth. It has a magic of its own which I think will outlast all such conjuring tricks. This was the house of Merlin; and, though they say Merlin himself fell under a spell, it was not that of Marconi.”

“No,” answered the stranger, still smiling. “We all know the spell under which Merlin fell.”

Mallow knew enough about Russian intellectuals not to be surprised at the wide knowledge of the poetry and culture of the West; but here it seemed the almost satiric symbol of a deeper familiarity, and a mocking whisper told him what might have chained this magician in that western valley.

Laura Verney was coming across the garden towards them with some papers in her hand. She was of a red-haired, full-blooded type, handsome in a fashion which seemed to have a certain pagan exuberance till she came near enough to show the concentrated seriousness of her clear eyes; she might be called a pagan with the eyes of a puritan. She saluted her guests without any change of countenance, and handed the papers to the professor without any word of comment. Something in her automatic manner seemed to sting Mallow to a final impatience; and, picking up his hat from the window-sill, he called out in a loud and careless voice:

“Laura, will you show me the way out of this garden? I’ve forgotten the way.”

It was some time afterwards, however, that he said any sort of final farewell to her, under the shadow of the outer wall, and near the ultimate gate of the garden. In the somewhat bitter intensity of his mood, he seemed rather to be exaggerating the finality of the farewell; not only touching herself, but all the things which he had always felt to be full of her presence.

“You will pull down that old swing, I suppose?” he had said as they went through the garden, “and put up an electric steel swing that will take anybody in ten seconds to the moon.”

“I can’t pull down the moon, anyhow,” replied the girl, with a smile, “and I don’t know that I want to.”

“That’s rather reactionary of you,” remarked Mallow. “The moon is a very extinct volcano, valuable only to old-fashioned romanticists. And I suppose you’ll turn our old lawn-tennis lawn into a place where tennis can be played by machinery, by pressing buttons a hundred miles away. I’m not sure whether they’ve yet finished the plans for a pear-tree that grows pears by electricity.”

“But surely,” she replied, looking a little troubled, “the world can go on without losing the things it seems to leave behind. And, after all, surely the world must go on; at least, it must go on growing. I think that’s where you misunderstand. It isn’t only going on; it’s more like growing outwards.

“It’s expansion, that’s the word; growing broader, always describing wider and wider circles; but that only means more self-fulfilment, and therefore serenity and peace; it means…”

She stopped short, as if at a spoken answer, but it was only because the moon had flung a new shadow across her. It was from a figure standing on the wall. The moonshine made a halo of pale yellow round the head; and for a moment they thought it was the Russian, standing on the wall as he had stood on the roof. Then Mallow looked more closely at the face in shadow, and uttered, with some astonishment, the name of Gale.

“You must get away from here at once,” said the poet sharply; “everybody who can must get away from this house. There’s no time to explain.”

As he spoke, he sprang from the wall and alighted beside them, and his friend, catching his face in a new light, saw that it was quite pale.

“What’s the matter with you?” he demanded. “Have you seen a ghost?”

“The ghost of a fish,” answered the poet; “three little grey ghosts of three little fishes. We must get away at once.”

Without turning his head again, he led the way up the rising ground beyond the garden towards the clump of trees where the party had first encamped. Both Mallow and the girl pursued him with questions; but to only one of them did he give any answer. When Laura insisted on knowing whether her mother had come home yet, he answered shortly, “No; thank God! I sent Garth off to stop her on the road from the village. She’s all right, anyhow.”

But Laura Verney was a lady who could not be indefinitely dragged at the tail of a total stranger talking in a tone of authority; and by the time they came to the top of a hill, and the trees in whose shadow the poet had indulged in his meditations on birds, she halted and resolutely demanded his reasons.

“I won’t go a step farther,” she said firmly, “till you’ve given me some sort of proofs.”

He turned with passion in his pale face.

“Oh, proofs!” he cried; “I know the sort of proofs you want. The foot-prints of the remarkable boots. The bloody finger-print carefully compared with the one at Scotland Yard. The conveniently mislaid matchbox, and the ashes of the unique tobacco. Do you suppose I’ve never read any detective stories? Well, I haven’t got any proofs… of that sort. I haven’t got any proofs at all, in that sense. If I told you my reasons, you’d think them the most rambling nonsense in the world. You must either do as I tell you and thank me afterwards; or you must let me talk as I like, and as long as I like, and thank your God you’ve come as far as this towards safety.”

Mallow was looking at the poet in his quiet and intense fashion; and after a moment’s pause, he said:

“You’d better tell us your own reasons in your own way. I know you generally have pretty good ones, really.”

Gale’s eyes wandered from the staring face of the girl to that of his friend, and then to the drift of dead leaves under the tree where he had once rested.

“I was lying there looking up at the sky, or, rather, the tree-tops,” he said slowly. “I didn’t hear what the others were talking about, because I was listening to the birds and looking at them. You know what happens when you go on staring at something like that; it turns into a sort of pattern like a wall-paper; and this was a quiet pattern of green and grey and brown. It seemed as if the whole world was that pattern; as if God had never made anything except a world of birds; of tree-tops hung in space.”

Laura made a half-protest that sounded like a laugh, but Mallow said steadily: “Go on!”

“And then I slowly became conscious that there was a spot of yellow in the pattern. I slowly realized that it was another bird, and then what sort of bird. Somebody said it must be a yellow-hammer; but, little as I knew about it, I knew better than that. It was a canary.”

The girl, who had already turned away, looked back at him with her first flash of interest.

“I wondered vaguely how a canary would get on in the world of birds, and how it had got there. I didn’t think of any human being in particular. Only I saw in a sort of vision, somewhere against the morning sky, a window standing open, and the door of a cage standing open. Then I saw that all the brown birds were trying to kill the yellow one, and that started my thoughts off as it might anybody’s. Is it always kind to set a bird at liberty? What exactly is liberty? First and foremost, surely, it is the power of a thing to be itself. In some ways the yellow bird was free in the cage. It was free to be alone. It was free to sing. In the forest its feathers would be torn to pieces and its voice choked for ever. Then I began to think that being oneself, which is liberty, is itself limitation. We are limited by our brains and bodies; and if we break out, we cease to be ourselves, and, perhaps, to be anything. That was when I asked you whether an isosceles triangle felt itself in prison, and if there were such a thing as a round prison. We shall hear more of the round prison before this story is over.

“Then I saw the man on the roof, with his hands spread like wings to the sky. I knew nothing of him; but I knew on the instant that he was the man who had given a bird its freedom at any risk. As we went down the hill I heard a little more about him; how he had escaped by blowing up his prison; and I felt that one fact had filled all his life with a philosophy of emancipation and escape. Always at the back of his mind, I was certain, was that one bursting moment when he saw white daylight shining through the shattered wall. I knew why he let birds out of cages and why he had written a book on the psychology of liberty. Then I stopped outside a window to stare at those gorgeous goldfish, merely because I had a fancy for such things; they coloured my thoughts, so to speak, with a sort of orange or scarlet, for long afterwards. And long afterwards I was again passing that window; and I found their colours were faded and their positions changed. At that time it was already dark, with a rising moon; and what forms I could see scattered in the shadow seemed almost grey, and even outlined in lines of grey light, which might have been moonlight, but I think was the corpse-light of phosphorescence. They lay scattered at random on the round table; and I saw by the faint glimmer that the glass bowl was broken. So I found my romance when I returned to it; for those fantastic fishes had been to me like the hieroglyphics of a message, which the fiery finger of God had thus written in red-hot gold. But when I looked again, the finger had written another lesson in letters of an awful and ashen silver. And what the new message said was: ‘The man is mad.’

“Perhaps you think I am as mad as he; and I have told you that I am at once like him and unlike him. I am like him because I also can go on the wild journeys of such wild minds, and have a sympathy with his love of liberty. I am unlike him because, thank God, I can generally find my way home again. The lunatic is he who loses his way and cannot return. Now, almost before my eyes, this man had made the great stride from liberty to lunacy. The man who opened the bird-cage loved freedom; possibly too much; certainly very much. But the man who broke the bowl merely because he thought it a prison for the fish, when it was their only possible house of life… that man was already outside the world of reason, raging with a desire to be outside everything. In a most literal and living sense, he was out of his wits. And there was another thing revealed to me by the grey ghosts of the fishes. The rise of the insanity had been very rapid and steep. To send the bird into danger was only a disputable kindness, to fling the fish to death was a dance of raving destruction. What would he do next?

“I have spoken of a round prison. After all, to any mind that can move parallel to a mood like this, there really is a round prison. The sky itself, studded with stars, the serene arch of what we call infinity…”

As he spoke he staggered, clutched at the air, and fell all his great length on the grass. At the same moment Mallow was hurled against a tree, and the girl collapsed against him, clinging to him in a way which even in that blinding whirl, was an answer to many of his questionings. It was only when they had picked themselves up and pulled themselves together that they were fully conscious that the valley was still resounding with echoes of one hideous and rending uproar; or that the darkness had just shut down upon a blaze that blinded them like red lightning. For the instant that it lasted it was a standing glory, like a great sunrise. There rose to the surface of Mallow’s memory only one word for it; the word radiant.

Mallow found himself reflecting in a dull fashion that it was lighter than it might have been at that hour, because of a friendly flame that was licking itself in a lively fashion a few yards away. Then he saw that it was the smouldering ruin of the blue wooden gate-post at which he had gazed that morning, flung all the way through the air like a flaming thunderbolt. They had come just far enough from the house to be out of danger. Then he looked again at the blue-painted wood curling with golden flames, and for the first time began to tremble.

The next moment he caught sight of the faces of his other friends, Walton and Hutton, pale in the flame as they hurried up the road from the remoter inn to which they had retired for the evening.

“What was it?” Walton was calling out.

“An explosion,” said Hutton rather hazily.

“An expansion,” replied Mallow, and mastered himself with the effort of a grim smile.

By this time, more people were running out from remote cottages, and Gabriel Gale turned his face to something like a small crowd.

“It was only the prison gun,” he said, “the signal that a prisoner has escaped.”

III

THE SHADOW OF THE SHARK

IT is notable that the late Mr. Sherlock Holmes, in the course of those inspiring investigations for which we can never be sufficiently grateful to their ingenious author, seems only twice to have ruled out an explanation as intrinsically impossible. And it is curious to notice that in both cases the distinguished author himself has since come to regard that impossible thing as possible, and even as positively true. In the first case the great detective declared that he never knew a crime committed by a flying creature. Since the development of aviation, and especially the development of German aviation, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, patriot and war historian, has seen a good many crimes committed by flying creatures. And in the other case the detective implied that no deed need be attributed to spirits or supernatural beings; in short, to any of the agencies to which Sir Arthur is now the most positive and even passionate witness. Presumably, in his present mood and philosophy, the Hound of the Baskervilles might well have been a really ghostly hound; at least, if the optimism which seems to go with spiritualism would permit him to believe in such a thing as a hell-hound. It may be worth while to note this coincidence, however, in telling a tale in which both these explanations necessarily played a part. The scientists were anxious to attribute it to aviation, and the spiritualists to attribute it to spirits; though it might be questioned whether either the spirit or the flying-man should be congratulated on his utility as an assassin.

A mystery which may yet linger as a memory, but which was in its time a sensation, revolved round the death of a certain Sir Owen Cram, a wealthy eccentric, chiefly known as a patron of learning and the arts. And the peculiarity of the case was that he was found stabbed in the middle of a great stretch of yielding sand by the sea-shore, on which there was absolutely no trace of any foot-prints but his own. It was admitted that the wound could not have been self-inflicted; and it grew more and more difficult even to suggest how it could have been inflicted at all. Many theories were suggested, ranging, as we have said, from that of the enthusiasts for aviation to that of the enthusiasts for psychical research; it being evidently regarded as a feather in the cap either of science or spiritualism to have effected so neat an operation. The true story of this strange business has never been told; it certainly contained elements which, if not supernatural, were at least supernormal. But to make it clear, we must go back to the scene with which it began; the scene on the lawn of Sir Owen’s seaside residence, where the old gentleman acted as a sort of affable umpire in the disputes of the young students who were his favourite company; the scene which led up to the singular silence and isolation, and ultimately to the rather eccentric exit of Mr. Amos Boon.

Mr. Amos Boon had been a missionary, and still dressed like one; at any rate, he dressed like nothing else. His sturdy, full-bearded figure carried a broad-brimmed hat combined with a frock-coat; which gave him an air at once outlandish and dowdy. Though he was no longer a missionary, he was still a traveller. His face was brown and his long beard was black; there was a furrow of thought in his brow and a rather strained look in his eyes, one of which sometimes looked a little larger than the other, giving a sinister touch to what was in some ways so commonplace. He had ceased to be a missionary through what he himself would have called the broadening of his mind. Some said there had been a broadening of his morals as well as of his mind; and that the South Sea Islands, where he had lived, had seen not a little of such ethical emancipation. But this was possibly a malicious misrepresentation of his very human curiosity and sympathy in the matter of the customs of the savages; which to the ordinary prejudice was indistinguishable from a white man going fantee. Anyhow, travelling about alone with nothing but a big Bible, he had learned to study it minutely, first for oracles and commandments, and afterwards for errors and contradictions; for the Bible-smasher is only the Bible-worshipper turned upside down. He pursued the not very arduous task of proving that David and Saul did not on all occasions merit the Divine favour; and always concluded by roundly declaring that he preferred the Philistines. Boon and his Philistines were already a byword of some levity among the young men who, at that moment, were arguing and joking around him.

At that moment Sir Owen Cram was playfully presiding over a dispute between two or three of his young friends about science and poetry. Sir Owen was a little restless man, with a large head, a bristly grey moustache, and a grey fan of hair like the crest of a cockatoo. There was something sprawling and splayfooted about his continuous movement which was compared by thoughtless youth to that of a crab; and it corresponded to a certain universal eagerness which was really ready to turn in all directions. He was a typical amateur, taking up hobby after hobby with equal inconsistency and intensity. He had impetuously left all his money to a museum of natural history, only to become immediately swallowed up in the single pursuit of landscape painting; and the groups around him largely represented the stages of his varied career. At the moment a young painter, who was also by way of being a poet, was defending some highly poetical notions against the smiling resistance of a rising doctor, whose hobby was biology. The data of agreement would have been difficult to find, and few save Sir Owen could have claimed any common basis of sympathy; but the important matter just then was the curious effect of the young men’s controversy upon Mr. Boon.

“The subject of flowers is hackneyed, but the flowers are not,” the poet was insisting. “Tennyson was right about the flower in the crannied wall; but most people don’t look at flowers in a wall, but only in a wall-paper. If you generalize them, they are dull, but if you simply see them they are always startling. If there’s a special providence in a falling star, there’s more in a rising star; and a live star at that.”

“Well, I can’t see it,” said the man of science, good-humouredly; he was a red-haired, keen-faced youth in pince-nez, by the name of Wilkes. “I’m afraid we fellows grow out of the way of seeing it like that. You see, a flower is only a growth like any other, with organs and all that; and its inside isn’t any prettier or uglier than an animal’s. An insect is much the same pattern of rings and radiations. I’m interested in it as I am in an octopus or any sea-beast you would think a monster.”

“But why should you put it that way round?” retorted the poet. “Why isn’t it quite as logical the other way round? Why not say the octopus is as wonderful as the flower, instead of the flower as ordinary as the octopus? Why not say that crackens and cuttles and all the sea-monsters are themselves flowers; fearful and wonderful flowers in that terrible twilight garden of God. I do not doubt that God can be as fond of a shark as I am of a buttercup.”

“As to God, my dear Gale,” began the other quietly, and then he seemed to change his form of words. “Well, I am only a man… nay, only a scientific man, which you may think lower than a sea-beast. And the only interest I have in a shark is to cut him up; always on the preliminary supposition that I have prevented him from cutting me up.”

“Have you ever met a shark?” asked Amos Boon, intervening suddenly.

“Not in society,” replied the poet with a certain polite discomposure, looking round with something like a flush under his fair hair; he was a long, loose-limbed man named Gabriel Gale, whose pictures were more widely known than his poems.

“You’ve seen them in the tanks, I suppose,” said Boon; “but I’ve seen them in the sea. I’ve seen them where they are lords of the sea, and worshipped by the people as great gods. I’d as soon worship those gods as any other.”

Gale the poet was silent, for his mind always moved in a sort of sympathy with merely imaginative pictures; and he instantly saw, as in a vision, boiling purple seas and plunging monsters. But another young man standing near him, who had hitherto been rather primly silent, cut in quietly; a theological student, named Simon, the deposit of some epoch of faith in Sir Owen’s stratified past. He was a slim man with sleek, dark hair and darting, mobile eyes, in spite of his compressed lips. Whether in caution or contempt, he had left the attack on medical materialism to the poet, who was always ready to plunge into an endless argument with anybody. Now he intervened merely to say:

“Do they only worship a shark? It seems rather a limited sort of religion.”

“Religion!” repeated Amos Boon, rudely; “what do you people know about religion? You pass the plate round, and when Sir Owen puts a penny in it, you put up a shed where a curate can talk to a congregation of maiden-aunts. These people have got something like a religion. They sacrifice things to it… their beasts, their babies, their lives. I reckon you’d turn green with fear if you’d ever so much as caught a glimpse of Religion. Oh, it’s not just a fish in the sea; rather it’s the sea round a fish. The sea is the blue cloud he moves in, or the green veil or curtain hung about him, the skirts of which trail with thunder.”

All faces were turned towards him, for there was something about him beyond his speech. Twilight was spreading over the garden, which lay near the edge of a chalk cliff above the shore, but the last light of sunset still lay on a part of the lawn, painting it yellow rather than green, and glowing almost like gold against the last line of the sea, which was a sombre indigo and violet, changing nearer land to a lurid, pale green. A long cloud of a jagged shape happened to be trailing across the sun; and the broad-hatted, hairy man from the South Seas suddenly pointed at it.

“I know where the shape of that cloud would be called the shadow of the shark,” he cried, “and a thousand men would fall on their faces ready to fast or fight, or die. Don’t you see the great black dorsal fin, like the peak of a moving mountain? And then you lads discuss him as if he were a stroke at golf; and one of you says he would cut him up like birthday cake; and the other says your Jewish Jehovah would condescend to pat him like a pet rabbit.”

“Come, come,” said Sir Owen, with a rather nervous waggishness, “we mustn’t have any of your broad-minded blasphemies.”

Boon turned on him a baneful eye; literally an eye, for one of his eyes grew larger till it glowed like the eye of the Cyclops. His figure was black against the fiery turf, and they could almost hear his beard bristling.

“Blasphemy!” he cried in a new voice, with a crack in it. “Take care it is not you who blaspheme.”

And then, before anyone could move, the black figure against the patch of gold had swung round and was walking away from the house, so impetuously that they had a momentary fear that he would walk over the cliff. However, he found the little wooden gate that led to a flight of wooden steps; and they heard him stumbling down the path to the fishing village below.

Sir Owen seemed suddenly to shake off a paralysis like a fit of slumber. “My old friend is a little eccentric,” he said. “Don’t go, gentlemen; don’t let him break up the party. It is early yet.”

But growing darkness and a certain social discomfort had already begun to dissolve the group on the lawn; and the host was soon left with a few of the most intimate of his guests. Simon and Gale, and his late antagonist, Dr. Wilkes, were staying to dinner; the darkness drove them indoors, and eventually found them sitting round a flask of green Chartreuse on the table; for Sir Owen had his expensive conventions as well as his expensive eccentricities. The talkative poet, however, had fallen silent, and was staring at the green liquid in his glass as if it were the green depth of the sea. His host attacked with animation the other ordinary topics of the day.

“I bet I’m the most industrious of the lot of you,” he said. “I’ve been at my easel on the beach all day, trying to paint this blessed cliff, and make it look like chalk and not cheese.”

“I saw you, but I didn’t like to disturb you,” said Wilkes. “I generally try to put in an hour or so looking for specimens at high tide: I suppose most people think I’m shrimping or only paddling and doing it for my health. But I’ve got a pretty good nucleus of that museum we were talking about, or at least the aquarium part of it. I put in most of the rest of the time arranging the exhibits; so I deny the implication of idleness. Gale was on the sea-shore, too. He was doing nothing as usual; and now he’s saying nothing, which is much more uncommon.”

“I have been writing letters,” said Simon, in his precise way, “but letters are not always trivial. Sometimes they are rather tremendous.”

Sir Owen glanced at him for a moment, and a silence followed, which was broken by a thud and a rattle of glasses as Gale brought his fist down on the table like a man who had thought of something suddenly.

“Dagon!” he cried, in a sort of ecstasy.

Most of the company seemed but little enlightened; perhaps they thought that saying “Dagon” was his poetical and professional fashion of saying “Damn”. But the dark eyes of Simon brightened, and he nodded quickly.

“Why, of course you’re right,” he said. “That must be why Mr. Boon is so fond of the Philistines.”

In answer to a general stare of inquiry, he said smoothly: “The Philistines were a people from Crete, probably of Hellenic origin, who settled on the coast of Palestine, carrying with them a worship which may very well have been that of Poseidon, but which their enemies, the Israelites, described as that of Dagon. The relevant matter here is that the carved or painted symbol of the god seems always to have been a fish.”

The mention of the new matter seemed to reawaken the tendency of the talk to turn into a wrangle between the poet and the professional scientist.

“From my point of view,” said the latter, “I must confess myself somewhat disappointed with your friend Mr. Boon. He represented himself as a rationalist like myself, and seemed to have made some scientific studies of folk-lore in the South Seas. But he seemed a little unbalanced; and surely he made a curious fuss about some sort of a fetish, considering it was only a fish.”

“No, no, no!” cried Gale, almost with passion. “Better make a fetish of the fish. Better sacrifice yourself and everybody else on the horrible huge altar of the fish. Better do anything than utter the star-blasting blasphemy of saying it is only a fish. It’s as bad as saying the other thing is only a flower.”

“All the same, it is only a flower,” answered Wilkes, “and the advantage of looking at these things in a cool and rational way from the outside is that you can…”

He stopped a moment and remained quite still, as if he were watching something. Some even fancied that his pale, aquiline face looked paler as well as sharper.

“What was that at the window?” he asked. “Is anybody outside this house?”

“What’s the matter? What did you see?” asked his host, in abrupt agitation.

“Only a face,” replied the doctor, “but it was not… it was not like a man’s face. Let’s get outside and look into this.”

Gabriel Gale was only a moment behind the doctor, who had impetuously dashed out of the room. Despite his lounging demeanour, the poet had already leapt to his feet with his hand on the back of the chair, when he stiffened where he stood; for he had seen it. The faces of the others showed that they had seen it too.

Pressed against the dark window-pane, but only wanly luminous as it protruded out of the darkness, was a large face looking at first rather like a green goblin mask in a pantomime. Yet it was in no sense human; its eyes were set in large circles, rather in the fashion of an owl. But the glimmering covering that faintly showed on it was not of feathers, but of scales.

The next moment it had vanished. The mind of the poet, which made images as rapidly as a cinema, even in a crisis of action, had already imagined a string of fancies about the sort of creature he saw it to be. He had thought involuntarily of some great flying fish winging its way across the foam, and the flat sand and the spire and roofs of the fishing village. He had half-imagined the moist sea air thickening in some strange way to a greener and more liquid atmosphere in which the marine monsters could swim about in the streets. He had entertained the fancy that the house itself stood in the depths of the sea, and that the great goblin-headed fishes were nosing round it, as round the cabin windows of a wreck.

At that moment a loud voice was heard outside crying in distinct accents:

“The fish has legs.”

For that instant, it seemed to give the last touch to the monstrosity. But the meaning of it came back to them, a returning reality, with the laughing face of Dr. Wilkes as he reappeared in the doorway, panting.

“Our fish had two legs, and used them,” he said. “He ran like a hare when he saw me coming; but I could see plainly enough it was a man playing you a trick of some sort. So much for that psychic phenomenon.”

He paused and looked at Sir Owen Cram with a smile that was keen and almost suspicious.

“One thing is very clear to me,” he said. “You have an enemy.”

The mystery of the human fish, however, did not long remain even a primary topic of conversation in a social group that had so many topics of conversation. They continued to pursue their hobbies and pelt each other with their opinions; even the smooth and silent Simon being gradually drawn into the discussions, in which he showed a dry and somewhat cynical dexterity. Sir Owen continued to paint with all the passion of an amateur. Gale continued to neglect to paint, with all the nonchalance of a painter. Mr. Boon was presumably still as busy with his wicked Bible and his good Philistines as Dr. Wilkes with his museum and his microscopic marine animals, when the little seaside town was shaken as by an earthquake with the incomprehensible calamity which spread its name over all the newspapers of the country.

Gabriel Gale was scaling the splendid swell of turf that terminated in the great chalk cliff above the shore, in a mood consonant to the sunrise that was storming the skies above him. Clouds haloed with sunshine were already sailing over his head as if sent flying from a flaming wheel; and when he came to the brow of the cliff he saw one of those rare revelations when the sun does not seem to be merely the most luminous object in a luminous landscape, but itself the solitary focus and streaming fountain of all light. The tide was at the ebb, and the sea was only a strip of delicate turquoise over which rose the tremendous irradiation. Next to the strip of turquoise was a strip of orange sand, still wet, and nearer the sand was a desert of a more dead yellow or brown, growing paler in the increasing light. And as he looked down from the precipice upon that plain of pale gold, he saw two black objects lying in the middle of it. One was a small easel, still standing, with a camp-stool fallen beside it; the other was the flat and sprawling figure of a man.

The figure did not move, but as he stared he became conscious that another human figure was moving, was walking over the flat sands towards it from under the shadow of the cliff. Looking at it steadily, he saw that it was the man called Simon; and in an instant he seemed to realize that the motionless figure was that of Sir Owen Cram. He hastened to the stairway down the cliff and so to the sands; and soon stood face to face with Simon; for they both looked at each other for a moment before they both looked down at the body. The conviction was already cold in his heart that it was a dead body. Nevertheless, he said sharply: “We must have a doctor; where is Dr. Wilkes?”

“It is no good, I fear,” said Simon, looking away at the sea.

“Wilkes may only confirm our fears that he is dead,” said Gale, “but he may have something to say about how he died.”

“True,” said the other, “I will go for him myself.” And he walked back rapidly towards the cliff in the track of his own foot-prints.

Indeed, it was at the foot-prints that Gale was gazing in a bemused fashion at that moment. The tracks of his own coming were clear enough, and the tracks of Simon’s coming and going; and the third rather more rambling track of the unmistakable boots of the unfortunate Sir Owen, leading up to the spot where his easel was planted. And that was all. The sand was soft, so that the lightest foot would disturb it; it was well above the tides; and there was not the faintest trace of any other human being having been near the body. Yet the body had a deep wound under the angle of the jaw; and there was no sign of any weapon of suicide.

Gabriel Gale was a believer in commonsense, in theory if not always in practice. He told himself repeatedly that these things were the practical clues in such a case; the wound, the weapon or absence of weapon, the foot-prints or absence of foot-prints. But there was also a part of his mind which was always escaping from his control and playing tricks; fixing on his memory meaningless things as if they were symbols, and then haunting him with them as mysteries. He made no point of it; it was rather sub-conscious than self-conscious; but the parts of any living picture that he saw were seldom those that others saw, or that it seemed sensible to see. And there were one or two details in the tragedy before him that haunted him then and long afterwards. Cram had fallen backwards in a rather twisted fashion, with his feet towards the shore; and a few inches from the left foot lay a starfish. He could not say whether it was merely the bright orange colour of the creature that irrationally riveted his eye, or merely some obscure fancy of repetition, in that the human figure was itself spread and sprawling flat like a starfish, with four limbs instead of five. Nor did he attempt to analyse this aesthetic antic of his psychology; it was a suppressed part of his mind which still repeated that the mystery of the untrodden sands would turn out to be something quite simple; but that the starfish possessed the secret.

He looked up to see Simon returning with the doctor, indeed with two doctors; for there was more than one medical representative in the mob of Sir Owen’s varied interests. The other was a Dr. Garth, a little man with an angular and humorous face; he was an old friend of Gale’s but the poet’s greeting was rather distrait. Garth and his colleague, however, got to work on a preliminary examination, which made further talk needless. It could not be a full examination till the arrival of the police, but it was sufficient to extinguish any hope of life, if any such had lingered. Garth, who was bent over the body in a crouching posture, spoke to his fellow physician without raising his head.

“There seems to be something rather odd about this wound. It goes almost straight upwards, as if it was struck from below. But Sir Owen was a very small man; and it seems queer that he should be stabbed by somebody smaller still.”

Gale’s sub-consciousness exploded with a strange note of harsh mockery.

“What,” he cried, “you don’t think the starfish jumped up and killed him?”

“No, of course not,” said Garth, with his gruff good humour. “What on earth is the matter with you?”

“Lunacy, I think,” said the poet, and began to walk slowly towards the shore.

As time went on he almost felt disposed to fancy that he had correctly diagnosed his own complaint. The image began to figure even in his dreams, but not merely as a natural nightmare about the body on the sea-shore. The significant sea creature seemed more vivid even than the body. As he had originally seen the corpse from above, spread flat out beneath him, he saw it in his visions as something standing, as if propped against a wall or even merely drawn or graven on a wall. Sometimes the sandy ground had become a ground of old gold in some decoration of the Dark Ages, with the figure in the stiff agonies of a martyr, but the red star always showed like a lamp by his feet. Sometimes it was a hieroglyphic of a more Eastern sort, as of some stone god rigidly dancing; but the five-pointed star was always in the same place below. Sometimes it seemed a rude, red-sandstone sort of drawing; yet more archaic; but the star was always the reddest spot in it. Now and again, while the human figure was as dry and dark as a mummy, the star would seem to be literally alive, waving its flaming fingers as if it were trying to tell him something. Now and then even the whole figure was upside down, as if to restore the star to its proper place in the skies.

“I told Wilkes that a flower was a living star,” he said to himself. “A starfish is more literally a living star. But this is like going crazy. And if there is one thing I strongly object to, it is going crazy. What use should I be to all my brother lunatics, if I once really lost my balance on the tight-rope over the abyss?”

He sat staring into vacancy for some time, trying to fit in this small and stubborn fancy with a much steadier stream of much deeper thoughts that were already driving in a certain direction. At last, the light of a possibility began to dawn in his eyes; and it was evidently something very simple when it was realized; something which he felt he ought to have thought of before; for he laughed shortly and scornfully at himself as he rose to his feet.

“If Boon goes about everywhere introducing his shark and I go into society always attended by my starfish,” he murmured to himself, “we shall turn the world into an aquarium bigger and better than Dr. Wilkes is fixing up. I’m going down to make some inquiries in the village.”

Returning thence across the sands at evening, after several conversations with skippers and fishermen, he wore a more satisfied expression.

“I always did believe,” he reflected, “that the foot-print business would be the simplest thing in the affair. But there are some things in it that are by no means simple.”

Then he looked up, and saw far off on the sands, lonely and dark against the level evening light, the strange hat and stumpy figure of Amos Boon.

He seemed to consider for a moment the advisability of a meeting; then he turned away and moved towards the stairway up the cliff. Mr. Boon was apparently occupied in idly drawing lines on the sand with his shabby umbrella; like one drawing plans for a child’s sand-castle, but apparently without any such intelligent object or excuse. Gale had often seen the man mooning about with equally meaningless and automatic gestures; but as the poet mounted the rocky steps, climbing higher and higher, he had a return of the irrational feeling of a visionary vertigo. He told himself again, as if in warning, that it was his whole duty in life to walk on a tight-rope above a void in which many imaginative men were swallowed up. Then he looked down again at the drop of the dizzy cliffs to the flats that seemed to be swimming below him like a sea. And he saw the long, loose lines drawn in the sand unified into a shape, as flat as a picture on a wall. He had often seen a child, in the same fashion, draw on the sand a pig as large as a house. But in this case he could not shake off his former feeling of something archaic, like a palaeolithic drawing, about the scratching of the brown sand. And Mr. Boon had not drawn a pig, but a shark; conspicuous with its jagged teeth and fin like a horn exalted.

But he was not the only person overlooking this singular decorative scheme. When he came to the short railings along the brow of the cliff in which the stairway terminated, he found three figures leaning on it and looking down; and instantly realized how the case was closing in. For even in their outlines against the sky he had recognized the two doctors and an inspector of police.

“Hullo, Gale,” observed Wilkes, “may I present you to Inspector Davies; a very active and successful officer.”

Garth nodded. “I understand the inspector will soon make an arrest,” he said.

“The inspector must be getting back to his work and not talking about it,” said that official good-humouredly. “I’m going down to the village. Anybody coming my way?”

Dr. Wilkes assented and followed him, but Dr. Garth stopped a moment, being detained by the poet, who caught hold of his sleeve with unusual earnestness.

“Garth,” he said, “I want to apologise. I’m afraid I was wool-gathering when we met the other day, and didn’t hail you as I ought to hail an old friend. You and I have been in one or two queer affairs together, and I want to talk to you about this one. Shall we sit down on that seat over there?”

They seated themselves on an iron seat set up on the picturesque headland; and Gale added, “I wish you could tell me roughly how you got as far as you seem to have got.”

Garth gazed silently out to sea, and said at last:

“Do you know that man Simon?”

“Yes,” replied the poet, “that’s the way it works is it?”

“Well, the investigation soon began to show that Simon knew rather more than he said. He was on the spot before you; and for some time he wouldn’t admit what it was he saw before you turned up. We guessed it was because he was afraid to tell the truth; and in one sense he was.”

“Simon doesn’t talk enough,” said Gale thoughtfully. “He doesn’t talk about himself enough; so he thinks about himself too much. A man like that always gets secretive; not necessarily in the sense of being criminal, or even of being malicious, but merely of being morbid. He is the sort that is ill-treated at school and never says so. As long as a thing terrified him, he couldn’t talk about it.”

“I don’t know how you guessed it,” said Garth, “but that is something like the line of discoveries. At first they thought that Simon’s silence was guilt, but it was only a fear of something more than guilt; of some diabolic destiny and entanglement. The truth is, that when he went up before you to the cliff-head at daybreak, he saw something that hag-rode his morbid spirit ever since. He saw the figure of this man Boon poised on the brink of the precipice, black against the dawn, and waving his arms in some unearthly fashion as if he were going to fly. Simon thought the man was talking to himself, and perhaps even singing. Then the strange creature passed on towards the village and was lost in the twilight; but when Simon came to the edge of the cliff he saw Sir Owen lying dead far out on the sands below, beside his easel.”

“And ever since, I suppose,” observed Gale, “Simon has seen sharks everywhere.”

“You are right again,” said the doctor. “He has admitted since that a shadow on the blind or a cloud on the moon would have the unmistakable shape of the fish with the fin erect. But, in fact, it is a very mistakable shape; anything with a triangular top to it would suggest it to a man in his state of nerves. But the truth is that so long as he thought Boon had dealt death from a distance by some sort of curse or spell, we could get nothing out of him. Our only chance was to show him that Boon might have done it even by natural means. And we did show it, after all.”

“What is your theory, then?” asked the other.

“It is too general to be called a theory yet,” replied the doctor; “but, honestly, I do not think it at all impossible that Boon might have killed a man on the sands from the top of a cliff, without falling back on any supernatural stuff. You’ve got to consider it like this: Boon has been very deep in the secrets of savages, especially in that litter of islands that lie away towards Australia. Now, we know that such savages, for all they are called ignorant, have developed many dexterities and many unique tools. They have blow-pipes that kill at a considerable distance; they harpoon and lasso things, and draw them in on a line. Above all, the Australian savages have discovered the boomerang that actually returns to the hand. Is it quite so inconceivable that Boon might know some way of sending a penetrating projectile from a distance, and even possibly of recovering it in some way? Dr. Wilkes and I, on examining the wound, found it a very curious one: it was made by some tapering, pointed tool, with a slight curve; and it not only curved upwards, but even slightly outwards, as if the curve were returning on itself. Does not that suggest to you some outlandish weapon of a strange shape, and possibly with strange properties? And always remember that such an explanation would explain something else as well, which is generally regarded as the riddle. It would explain why the murderer left no foot-prints round the body.”

Gale gazed out to sea in silence, as if considering; then he said simply:

“An extremely shrewd argument. But I know why he left no foot-prints. It is a much simpler explanation than that.”

Garth stared at him for a few moments; and then observed gravely:

“May I then ask, in return, what is your theory?”

“My theory will seem a maze of theories, and nothing else,” said Gale. “It is, as many would say, of such stuff as dreams are made of. Most modern people have a curious contradiction; they abound in theories, yet they never see the part that theories play in practical life. They are always talking about temperament and circumstances and accident; but most men are what their theories make them; most men go in for murder or marriage, or mere lounging because of some theory of life, asserted or assumed. So I can never manage to begin my explanations in that brisk, pointed, practical way that you doctors and detectives do. I see a man’s mind first, sometimes almost without any particular man attached to it. I could only begin this business by describing a mental state… which can’t be described. Our murderer or maniac, or whatever you call him, is certainly affected by some of the elements attributed to him. His view has reached an insane degree of simplicity, and in that sense of savagery. But I doubt whether he would necessarily transfer the savagery from the end to the means. In one sense, indeed, his view might be compared to the barbaric. He saw every creature and even every object naked. He did not understand that what clothes a thing is sometimes the most real part of it. Have you ever noticed how true is that old phrase, ‘clothed and in his right mind’? Man is not in his right mind when he is not clothed with the symbols of his social dignity. Humanity is not even human when it is naked. But in a lower sense it is so of lesser things, even of lifeless things. A lot of nonsense is talked about auras; but this is the truth behind it. Everything has a halo. Everything has a sort of atmosphere of what it signifies, which makes it sacred. Even the little creatures he studied had each of them its halo; but he would not see it.”

“But what little creatures did Boon study?” asked Garth in some wonder. “Do you mean the cannibals?”

“I was not thinking about Boon,” replied Gabriel Gale.

“What do you mean?” cried the other, in sudden excitement. “Why, Boon is almost in the hands of the police.”

“Boon is a good man,” said Gale, calmly; “he is very stupid; that is why he is an atheist. There are intelligent atheists, as we shall see presently; but that stunted, stupid, sort is much commoner, and much nicer. But he is a good man; his motive is good; he originally talked all that tosh of the superiority of the savage because he thought he was the under-dog. He may be a trifle cracked, by now, about sharks and other things; but that’s only because his travels have been too much for his intellect. They say travel broadens the mind; but you must have the mind. He had a mind for a suburban chapel, and there passed before it all the panorama of gilded nature-worship and purple sacrifice. He doesn’t know if he’s on his head or his heels, any more than a good many others. But I shouldn’t wonder if heaven is largely populated with atheists of that sort, scratching their heads and wondering where they are.

“But Boon is a parenthesis; that is all he is. The man I am talking about is very much the point, and a sharp one at that. He dealt in something very different from muddled mysticism about human sacrifice. Human sacrifice is quite a human weakness. He dealt in assassination; direct, secret, straight from a head as inhuman as hell. And I knew it when I first talked to him over the tea-cups and he said he saw nothing pretty in a flower.”

“My dear fellow!” remonstrated Dr. Garth.

“I don’t mean that a man merely dissecting a daisy must be on the road to the gallows,” conceded the poet, magnanimously, “but I do say that to mean it as he meant it is to be on a straight road of logic that leads there if he chooses to follow it. God is inside everything. But this man wanted to be outside everything; to see everything hung in a vacuum, simply its own dead self. It’s not only not the same, it’s almost the opposite of scepticism in the sense of Boon or the Book of Job. That’s a man overwhelmed by the mysteries; but this man denies that there are any mysteries. It’s not, in the ordinary sense, a matter of theology, but psychology. Most good pagans and pantheists might talk of the miracles of nature; but this man denies that there are any miracles, even in the sense of marvels. Don’t you see that dreadful dry light shed on things must at last wither up the moral mysteries as illusions, respect for age, respect for property, and that the sanctity of life will be a superstition? The men in the street are only organisms, with their organs more or less displayed. For such a one there is no longer any terror in the touch of human flesh, nor does he see God watching him out of the eyes of a man.”

“He may not believe in miracles, but he seems to work them,” remarked the doctor. “What else was he doing, when he struck a man down on the sand without leaving a mark to show where he stood?”

“He was paddling,” answered Gale.

“As high up on the shore as that?” inquired the other.

Gale nodded. “That was what puzzled me; till something I saw on the sand started a train of thought that led to my asking the seafaring people about the tides. It’s very simple; the night before we found the body was a flood-tide, and the sea came up higher than usual; not quite to where Cram was sitting, but pretty near. So that was the way that the real human fish came out of the sea. That was the way the divine shark really devoured the sacrifice. The man came paddling in the foam, like a child on a holiday.”

“Who came?” asked Garth; but he shuddered.

“Who did go dredging for sea-beasts with a sort of shrimping-net along the shore every evening? Who did inherit the money of the old man for his ambitious museum and his scientific career? Who did tell me in the garden that a cowslip was only a growth like a cancer?”

“I am compelled to understand you,” said the doctor gloomily. “You mean that very able young man named Wilkes?”

“To understand Wilkes you must understand a good deal,” continued his friend. “You must reconstruct the crime, as they say. Look out over that long line of darkening sea and sand, where the last light runs red as blood; that is where he came dredging every day, in the same bloodshot dusk, looking for big beasts and small; and in a true sense everything was fish that came to his net. He was constructing his museum as a sort of cosmos; with everything traced from the fossil to the flying fish. He had spent enormous sums on it, and had got quite disinterestedly into debt; for instance he had had magnificent models made, in wax or papier maché, of small fish magnified, or extinct fish restored; things that South Kensington cannot afford, and certainly Wilkes could not afford. But he had persuaded Cram to leave his money to the museum, as you know; and for him Cram was simply a silly old fool, who painted pictures he couldn’t paint, and talked of sciences he didn’t understand; and whose only natural function was to die and save the museum. Well, when every morning Wilkes had done polishing the glass cases of his masks and models, he came round by the cliff and took a turn at the fossils in the chalk with his geological hammer; then he put it back in that great canvas bag of his, and unslung his long shrimping-net and began to wade. This is where I want you to look at that dark red sand and see the picture; one never understands anything till one sees the picture. He went for miles along the shallows of that desolate shore, long inured to seeing one queer creature or another stranded on the sand; here a sea-hedgehog, and there a starfish, and then a crab, and then another creature. I have told you he had reached a stage when he would have looked at an angel with the eye of an ornithologist. What would he think of a man, and a man looking like that? Don’t you see that poor Cram must have looked like a crab or a sea-urchin; his dwarfed, hunched figure seen from behind, with his fan of bristling whiskers, his straggling bow legs and restless twisting feet all tangled up with the three legs of his stool; making him look as if he had five limbs like a starfish? Don’t you see he looked like a Common Object of the Sea-shore? And Wilkes had only to collect this specimen, and all his other specimens were safe. Everything was fish that came to his net, and…

“He stretched out the long pole in his hand to its full extent, and drew the net over the old man’s head as if he were catching a great grey moth. He plucked him backwards off his stool so that he lay kicking on his back on the sand; and doubtless looking more like a large insect than ever. Then the murderer bent forward, propped by one hand upon his pole, and the other armed with his geological hammer. With the pick at the back of that instrument he struck in what he well knew to be a vital spot. The curve you noticed in the wound is due to that sharp side of the hammer being shaped like a pickaxe. But the unusual position of it, and the puzzle of how such a blow could be struck upwards, was due to the queer posture of the two figures. The murderer struck at a head that was upside down. It could only occur as a rule if the victim were standing on his head, a posture in which few persons await the assassin. But with the flourish and sweep of the great net, I fancy a starfish caught in it fell out of it, just beyond the dead man’s foot. At any rate, it was that starfish and the accident of its flying so high on the shore, that set my mind drifting in the general direction of tides; and the possibility of the murderer having been moving about in the water. If he made any prints the breakers washed them out; and I should never have begun to think of it but for that red five-fingered little monster.”

“Then do you mean to tell me,” demanded Garth, “that all this business about the shadow of the shark had nothing to do with it?”

“The shadow of the shark had everything to do with it,” replied Gale. “The murderer hid in the shadow of the shark, and struck from under the shadow of the shark. I doubt if he would have struck at all, if he had not had the shadow of that fantastic fin in which to hide. And the proof is that he himself took the trouble to emphasize and exaggerate the legend of poor Boon dancing before Dagon. Do you remember that queer incident of the fish’s face at the window? How did anybody merely playing a practical joke get hold of a fish’s face? It was very life-like; for it was one of the masks modelled for the Wilkes museum; and Wilkes had left it in the hall in his great canvas bag. It seems simple, doesn’t it, for a man to raise an alarm inside a house, walk out to see, and instantly put on a mask and look in at a window? That’s all he did; and you can see his idea, from the fact that he proceeded to warn Sir Owen of an enemy. He wanted all this idolatrous and mystical murder business worked for all it was worth, that his own highly reasonable murder might not be noticed. And you see he has succeeded. You tell me that Boon is in the hands of the police.”

Garth sprang to his feet. “What is to be done?” he said.

“You will know what to do,” said the poet. “You are a good and just man, and a practical man, too. I am not a practical man.” He rose with a certain air of apology. “You see, you want an unpractical man for finding out this sort of thing.”

And once more he gazed down from the precipice into the abysses below.

IV

THE CRIME OF GABRIEL GALE

DR. BUTTERWORTH, the famous London physician, was sitting in his summer-house in his shirt sleeves, for it was a hot day and he had been playing tennis on the sunny lawns outside. He had a solid face and figure and carried everywhere an atmosphere of bodily health and good humour which helped him not a little in his profession; but he was not serious or self-conscious about it. He was not one of those in whom health has degenerated into hygiene. He played tennis when he felt inclined and left off when he felt inclined; as on the present occasion, when he had retired to smoke a pipe in the shade. He enjoyed a game as he enjoyed a joke; which was interpreted by some as meaning that he would never be a player, and by himself as meaning that he would always be able to play. And he enjoyed a joke very much, even the most minute and trivial joke that his roving eye encountered; and at this moment it encountered a quaint detail, which was something of a quaint contrast, in the glowing garden outside. Framed in the dark doorway of the summer-house, like a lighted scene on the stage, was the perspective of a garden path, bordered with very gay and flamboyant beds of tulips, having something of the gorgeous formality of the borders of a Persian illumination. And down the centre of the central path was advancing a figure that looked by comparison almost completely black, with black top-hat, black clothes and black umbrella; it might have been the mythical Black Tulip come to life and a walking parody of the tall, top-heavy garden flowers. The next moment all such fancies had faded from the doctor’s day-dream; for he had recognized a familiar face under the top-hat; he knew that the contrast was not merely grotesque; and was shocked with the gravity of the visitor’s eyes.

“Hullo, Garth,” he said in a hearty manner, “sit down and tell us all about yourself. You look as if you were going to a funeral.”

“So I am,” replied Dr. Garth, putting his black hat on a chair; he was a small, red-haired, shrewd-faced man and he looked pale and harassed.

“I am so sorry,” said Butterworth quickly, “if I spoke without thinking. I’m afraid you’re really rather cut up.

“I am going to a queer sort of funeral,” said Dr. Garth grimly; “the sort of funeral where we take special precautions to ensure premature burial.”

“What in the world do you mean?” asked his colleague, staring.

“I mean I’ve got to bury a man alive,” said Garth with a ghastly calm. “But it’s the sort of burial that requires two doctors’ certificates instead of one.”

Butterworth stared at the patch of sun-light and sucked in his cheeks with a soundless whistle. “Oh… I see,” he said.

Then he added abruptly: “Of course it’s always a sad business; but I’m afraid it’s rather personal for you. A friend of yours?”

“One of my best friends, I think, barring yourself,” replied Garth; “and one of the best and brightest young men of our time as well. I was afraid something of the sort might happen; but I hoped it wouldn’t be so bad as this.” He stopped for an instant and then said almost explosively:

“It’s poor old Gale; and he’s done it once too often.”

“Done what?” asked Dr. Butterworth.

“It’s rather difficult to explain, unless you know him,” said Garth. “Gabriel Gale is a poet, also a painter and other wild things of that sort; but he has also a wild theory of his own about how to cure lunatics. In short, the amateur set up as a mad doctor and now the doctor is really mad. It’s a horrid tragedy; but really he was asking for it.”

“I don’t yet understand what it’s all about,” said the other doctor patiently.

“I tell you he had a theory,” said Garth. “He thought he could cure cracked people by what he called sympathy. But it didn’t mean what you would mean by sympathy; he meant following their thoughts and going half-way with them, or all the way with them if he could. I used to joke with him, poor fellow, and say that if a lunatic thought he was made of glass, Gale would try hard to feel a little transparent. Anyhow, that was his notion, that he could really look at things to some extent from the lunatic’s point of view; and talk to him in his own language. He admitted himself that it was a risky business, to walk on the edge of the precipice like that; and now, as I say, he’s done it once too often. I always distrusted it myself.”

“I should think so,” said Dr. Butterworth, all his solid sanity stiffening against the suggestion. “He might as well say that a doctor ought to limp all the way to cure a lame man, or shut his eyes in order to help the blind.”

“If the blind lead the blind,” assented the other gloomily. “Well, he’s fallen into the ditch this time.”

“Why especially this time?” asked Butterworth.

“Well, if he doesn’t go to an asylum, he’ll go to jail,” said Garth grimly. “That’s why I’m in such a hurry to have him certified; God knows I don’t like doing that. But he’s broken out this time in a way he never did before. He was always fanciful and eccentric, of course; but I’m bound to say he had a very sane streak in him somewhere. It’s exactly because he’s never done anything like this before that I’m sure the end has really come. For one thing, he’s committed a perfectly crazy assault and apparently tried to murder a man with a pitchfork. But what hits me much harder, who knew him, is that he tried to murder a perfectly mild and shy and inoffensive person; in fact a rather gauche youth from Cambridge, half developed into a curate. Now that’s quite unlike Gabriel, even at his maddest. The men with whom he wrestled in spirit, if not in body, were intellectual bullies or mesmerists, the sort of men who wanted somebody to stand up to them; like that thin-lipped Dr. Wilkes, or that Russian Professor. I can no more see him savaging somebody like poor young Saunders than I can see him kicking a crippled child. And yet I did see him do it. The only explanation is that he wasn’t himself.

“There was another thing which made me sure he wasn’t himself. The weather had been very trying for everybody for some time; hot and stormy and electric; but it was the first time I’ve ever known him upset by such storms. I’ve known him to do the silliest things; I’ve known him stand on his head in the garden; but that was only showing that he was not affected by the storm. But this time I’m sure these queer semi-tropical tempests have been too much for him; so that even the very subject of the storm upset him in some way. For this tragedy arose out of the most trivial sort of triviality. The whole terrible unnatural business began with talking about the weather.

“Lady Flamborough said to a guest at her rather damp garden-party, ‘You brought bad weather with you.’ Anybody might say that to anybody; but she did say it to young Herbert Saunders, who is awfully awkward and shy, one of those long, loose boys with large feet, who seem to have outgrown their clothes and their wits; the last sort of person who would want to be singled out by any remark, however trifling. So Saunders only gaped and gurgled or was dumb, but somehow the lady’s remark seemed to get on Gale’s nerves from the first. A little while afterwards Gale met Lady Flamborough again, at another reception where it was raining, and he suddenly pointed, like some comic conspirator, at the tall ungainly figure of Saunders in the distance and said: ‘He still brings bad weather.’ Then happened one of those coincidences that are quite natural but seem to drive madmen really mad. The next time all that set happened to get together was on a really beautiful afternoon at Mrs. Blakeney’s; with a clear blue sky without a cloud in it, so that old Blakeney went pottering round and showed all the first comers his gardens and glasshouses. But after that they all went in to tea, which was served in the great peacock-green drawing-room in the middle of the house; and so it happened that Saunders came late and there was a good deal of laughter as he sat down, much to his embarrassment; because the weather joke had been repeated and people were quite pleased to see it falsified for once. Then they all went out into the rooms nearer the entrance; and Gabriel Gale was walking towards the doorway. Between two pillars he caught sight of one of the outer windows and stood rooted to the spot, rigidly pointing with one arm. That gesture alone warned me that something was really rather wrong with him; but when I looked I could hardly help sharing his shock of surprise. For the windows that had been painted blue with summer sky were painted black with rain. On every side of the house the rain dripped and pattered as dismally as if it had been raining for a hundred years. And ten minutes before the whole garden had seemed a garden of gold like the Hesperides. Gale stood staring at this flying storm from nowhere, that had so suddenly struck the house; then he turned slowly and looked, with an expression not to be forgotten, at the man who was standing a few yards away. It was Herbert Saunders.

“You can imagine it’s not much in my line to believe in witchcraft or magicians who control the elements; but there did really seem something funny about that cloudless day having so rapidly overclouded, with the coming of the one man whose name was already associated with it, if only by a jest. It was a mere coincidence, of course; but what worried me was the possible effect on my friend’s already rather rickety psychology. He and Saunders were both standing and staring out of the same wide window, looking at the deluge-darkened garden and the swaying and tormented trees; but Saunder’s simple face seemed to express only amiable bewilderment; indeed, he was smiling vaguely and shyly, as he did when he received a compliment. For he was one of those whose face after a compliment always looks as if it has received a buffet. He obviously saw nothing in it but a repetition of the joke; perhaps he thought that the English climate was keeping up the joke. And, compared with his face, the face of Gabriel was like the face of a fiend. So it seemed at least, as it sprang white out of the growing dark to meet the first white burst of the lightning; then there followed only thunder and the noise of the roaring rain; but I knew that he stood there rocking with that inexplicable excitement. Through the thunder I heard his voice saying, ‘It makes one feel like God.’

“Immediately under the windows a little path ran on the edge of some meadow land attached to the garden, where the Blakeneys had been getting in their hay; and a moderately large mound of hay looked almost mountainously dark against that low and lowering sky; a two-pronged pitchfork lying across it had certainly something grim about its black outline, which may have captured poor Gale’s fancy; for he was always prone to be taken by odd sights as if they were signals. Anyhow at that moment the host and hostess and other guests came hurrying by; the old man lamenting over the ruin of his hay; but the lady of the house apparently much more concerned about the fate of some highly ornamental garden-chairs, which had apparently been left out on the lawn just adjoining the meadow, under the large apple-tree whose boughs were now tossing and twisting in the storm.

“Gabriel Gale, when in his right mind, is the most chivalrous of men, and would have regained the lady’s chairs at a bound. But now he could do nothing but glare at the unfortunate Saunders; who awoke trembling to his social duties, in that agony of self-consciousness in which a man is afraid to do the right thing and afraid not to do it. At length, however, he jerked himself forward, fumbled with the door, flung it open and ran out into the reverberating rain. Then Gale followed him to the open door and shouted something after him. For most of the company, I think, it was lost in the din; but even if they had heard it, they certainly could not have understood it. I heard it; and I thought I understood it only too well. For what Gale shouted through the storm was, ‘Why don’t you call the chairs and they’ll come to you.’

“A second or so afterwards he added, as if it were an afterthought, ‘You might as well tell the tree to come here as well.’ Naturally there was no answer; and indeed Saunders, partly by his natural clumsiness and partly in the distraction of the driving elements, seemed for the moment to have lost his way and was staggering up the steeper path of the meadow some way to the left of the tree. I could just see his long figure and angular awkward elbows traced against the sky. Then followed the sudden, violent and utterly unintelligible incident. A rope happened to lie half round one of the swathes in the foreground; and Gale, leaping out of the door, caught it up and seemed to be knotting it in a sort of savage haste. The next moment there swept across the sky the great swirling curves of a noose thrown in the manner of a lasso. And I could see the wavering figure on the dark ridge alter its attitude and rear up as against an invisible obstacle, as the rope tightened and tugged it back.

“I looked round for assistance; and was surprised and somewhat alarmed to find I was alone. The host and hostess, and the others, having despatched the obliging Saunders after the chairs, had rushed off to summon the servants or secure other doors and windows, or look after other fittings threatened by the weather; and there was no one but myself to watch the unmeaning and apparently imbecile tragedy outside. I saw Gale drag Saunders like a sack at the end of a rope along the whole length of windows and disappear round a corner of the house. But I turned cold with a new fear when, even as he rushed past, he snatched the hay-fork from the mound and seemed to disappear brandishing it, like the fabulous fork of a demon. I rushed after them, but slipping on the wet stones, hurt my foot and had to limp; the raving storm seemed to have swallowed up that lunatic and all his antics; and it was not until some time afterwards that men found how that dance had ended. Herbert Saunders was found tied to a tree, still alive and even unwounded, but presenting the appearance of having barely missed a murderous attack; for the prongs of the pitchfork were driven by sheer fury into the tree on each side of his neck, holding him pinned there as by an iron ring. Gabriel Gale was not found for nearly a day, until after the storm was spent and the sunshine had returned; and he was loitering about in an adjoining meadow blowing the clocks off dandelions. I have seldom known him so serene.”

There was a short silence. “How is the other fellow… Saunders?” asked Butterworth, after a pause of frowning consideration. “Was he much hurt?”

“Had a shock and is still shaky, of course,” answered Garth. “Had to go for a rest-cure or something; but I believe he’s all right now. Only you can hardly expect a harmless person who’s been half murdered in a raving attack like that to feel very friendly or forgiving. So I’m afraid they will make it a case of attempted murder unless we can get our friend off on medical grounds. As a matter of fact, I have him waiting outside in the car.”

“Very well,” said the London doctor, rising with abrupt composure and buttoning up his coat. “We had better go along to see him now and get it over.”

The interview between Gale and the two doctors, at an adjacent hotel, was so short and so extraordinary that they went away with their very level heads turning like wind-mills. For Gale displayed nothing even of the merely childish innocence of levity attributed to him in the tale of the dandelions. He listened with patience, and a humorous and benevolent mildness which made the two doctors, who were considerably his seniors, feel as if they were being treated as juniors. When Garth began to break it to him gently that some sort of rest-cure was required in his own interests, he laughed heartily and anticipated all such periphrases.

“Don’t be nervous, old man,” he said, “you mean I ought to be in a madhouse; and I’m sure you mean well.”

“You know I am your friend,” said Garth earnestly; “and all your friends would say what I say.”

“Indeed,” said Gale, smiling. “Well, if that is the opinion of my friends, perhaps it would be better to get the opinion of my enemies.”

“What do you mean,” demanded the other. “Of your enemies?”

“Shall we say of my enemy?” continued Gale in level tones. “Of the man to whom I have done this perfectly outrageous thing. Well, really, that is all I ask; that before you lock me up for this outrage, you ask Herbert Saunders himself what he thinks about it.”

“Do you mean,” broke in Butterworth rather impatiently, “that we are to ask him whether he liked being half-throttled and impaled on a pitchfork?”

“Yes,” said Gale nodding, “I want you to ask him whether he liked being half throttled and impaled on a pitchfork.”

He slightly knitted his brows as if considering a new and merely practical point and then, added:

“I should send him a telegram now… say anything… ‘How do you like being lassoed?’ or, ‘What price pitchforks?’ or something playful of that sort.”

“We could telephone, if it comes to that,” said Garth.

The poet shook his head. “No,” he said, “that sort of man feels much more free in writing. He will only stammer on the telephone. He won’t stammer anything like what you imagine, even then; but he will stammer. But writing with his head in one of those little cubicles at the telegraph office, he will feel as free as in a confessional box.”

The two doctors, when they parted in some bewilderment, but tacitly accepting this suggestion of a respite, lost no time in fulfilling the condition required. They sent off a carefully worded telegram to Saunders, who had now returned home to his mother’s house, asking him what were his impressions and views about the extraordinary conduct of Gabriel Gale. The reply came back with remarkable promptitude; and Garth came to Butterworth with the open telegram in his hand and a rather dazed expression on his face. For the exact terms of the message were:

“Can never be sufficiently grateful to Gale for his great kindness which more than saved my life.”

The two doctors looked at each other in silence; and in almost as complete a silence got into a car and drove across the hills once more to the Blakeney’s house, where Gale was still staying.

They drove across the hilly country and descended into the wide and shallow valley where stood the house which sheltered that dangerous character, Mr. Gabriel Gale. Garth could recall, and Butterworth could imagine, all the irony suggested to the imagination by such a story about such a scene. The house of the Blakeneys stood high and plain just beyond the river; it was one of those houses that strike the eye as old-fashioned and yet not old. Certainly it was not old enough to be beautiful; but it had everything that recalls, to those that faintly remember them, the last traditions of Early Victorian lingering into Mid-Victorian times. The tall pillars looked so very pallid; the long plain windows looked in dismally upon high-ceilinged rooms; the curtains that hung parallel with the pillars were strips of dull red; and even from that distance the humorous Butterworth was certain that they had heavy and quite useless tassels. It was a strange house to have been the scene of an incredible crime or lunacy. It was an even stranger house to have been, as was alleged, the scene of a yet more incredible or mysterious mercy. All about it lay its ordered gardens and its mown or unmown meadows; its plantations of trees and deep alleys and shrubberies; all the things which on that wild night had been given over to the withering splendour of the lightning and the wind. Now the whole landscape was laid bare in a golden calm of summer; and the blue heavens above it were so deep and still that the sound of a humming fly hung there and was heard as far away as the skylark. Thus glittered in the sun, all solid and objective, the stage properties of that hideous farce. Garth saw all the blank and staring windows which he had last beheld streaming with rain and swept by the wind and the wild dance of the lunatic and his victim. He saw the forked tree to which the victim had been bound, still with the two black holes in it where the fork had pierced it, looking like the hollow eyes of a skull, and making the whole seem like some horned goblin. There was the heaped up hay, still to some extent disordered and scattered as by the dizzy dance of a small cyclone; and beyond it rose the high green wall of the unmown and standing grass of the next meadow. From the very thick of this mild jungle or miniature forest, a long thin line of smoke was drawn up into the sky; as if from a very small fire of weeds. Nothing else human or alive was visible in the sultry summer landscape; but Garth seemed to know and recognize the significance of the smoke. He sent a far halloo across the fields, calling out, “Is that you, Gale?”

Two feet pointed skyward and two long legs upside down rose vertically out of the tall grass, just beyond the smoke; and waved to them like arms, as if according to a preconcerted science of signalling. Then the legs seemed to give a leap and dive and the owner of the legs came the right side up and rose or surged slowly out of the depths of green, gazing across at them with a misty and benevolent expression. He was smoking a long thin cigar: the fire behind the smoke.

He received them and their news with no air of triumph, still less of surprise. Abandoning his grassy nest, he sat down with them on the garden-chairs which had also played their part in the mystery; and only smiled a little as he handed back the telegram.

“Well,” he said; “do you still think I am mad?”

“Well,” said Butterworth, “I can’t help wondering whether he is.”

Gale leaned across, showing his first eagerness, and said, “He isn’t. But he jolly nearly was.”

Then he leaned slowly back again and stared abstractedly at a daisy on the lawn, almost as if he had forgotten their presence. When he spoke again it was in a clear but rather colourless tone, like a lecturer:

“A very large number of young men nearly go mad. But nearly all of them only nearly do it; and normally they recover the normal. You might almost say it’s normal to have an abnormal period. It comes when there’s a lack of adjustment in the scale of things outside and within. Lots of those boys, those big healthy schoolboys you hear about, who care for nothing but cricket or the tuckshop, are bursting with a secret and swelling morbidity. But in this young man it was rather symbolically expressed even in the look of him. It was like his growing out of his clothes, or being too big for his boots. The inside gets too big for the outside. He doesn’t know how to relate the two things; and generally he doesn’t relate them at all. In one way his own mind and self seem to be colossal and cosmic and everything outside them small or distant. In another way the world is much too big for him; and his thoughts are fragile things to be hidden away. There are any number of cases of that disproportionate secretiveness. You know how silent boys have been about incredible abuses in bad schools. Whether or no it’s false to say a girl can’t keep a secret, it’s often really the ruin of a boy that he can keep a secret.

“Now in that dangerous time, there’s a dreadfully dangerous moment; when the first connexion is made between the subjective and objective: the first real bridge between the brain and real things. It all depends what it is; because, while it confirms his self-consciousness, it may happen to confirm his self-deception. That young man had never really been noticed by anybody until Lady Flamborough happened to tell him that he had brought the bad weather. It came just at the moment when his whole sense of proportions and possibilities had gone wild. I think the first thing that made me suspect he was… By the way,” added Gale abruptly, “what was it that made you first suspect me of being mad?”

“I think,” said Garth slowly, “it was when you were staring out of the window at the storm.”

“The storm? Was there a storm?” asked Gale vaguely. “Oh yes, now I come to think of it, there was.”

“But, hang it all,” replied the doctor, “what else could you have been staring out of the window at, except the storm?”

“I wasn’t staring out of the window,” answered Gale.

“Really, my dear fellow,” remonstrated Dr. Garth.

“I was staring at the window,” said the poet. “I often stare at windows. So few people ever look at windows, unless they are stained glass-windows. But glass is a very beautiful thing, like diamonds; and transparency is a sort of transcendental colour. Besides, in this case there was something else; and something far more awful and thrilling than a thunderstorm.”

“Well, what were you looking at, that was more awful than a thunderstorm?”

“I was looking at two raindrops running down the pane,” said Gale. “And so was Saunders.”

Seeing the others staring at him he continued: “Oh yes, it’s quite true; as the poet says,” and he recited with great and unusual gravity:

“‘Little drops of water, Little grains of sand, Make the soul to stagger Till the stars can hardly stand.’

“Haven’t I told you a thousand times,” he continued with increasing earnestness and animation, “that I always find myself looking at some little thing, a stone or a starfish or what not, and that’s the only way I can ever learn anything? But when I looked at Saunders, I saw his eyes were fixed on the same spot on the window-pane; and I shuddered from head to foot, for I knew I had guessed right. He was wearing a certain kind of unobtrusive smile.

“You know that incurable gamblers sometimes bet on a race between two raindrops. But there is this specially about the sport; that it is abstract and equal and gives one a sense of impartiality. If you bet on a dog-fight, you may find you really sympathize with a Scotch terrier against an Irish terrier, or vice versa; you may like the look of a billiard player or even the colours of a jockey. Therefore the event may go against your sympathies; and you will realize your limitations. But in the case of those two crystal spheres hung in a void of transparency, there is something like the equal scales of an abstract justice; you feel that whichever wins might be the one you had chosen. You may easily, in a certain secret megalomania, persuade yourself it is the one you have chosen. It is easy to imagine oneself controlling things hung so evenly. That was when I said to him, to test whether I was following his train of thought, ‘It makes you feel like God.’ Did you think I was talking about the storm? Storm! Pooh! Why should a storm make a man think he’s God? If he’d got any sense it might make him feel he wasn’t. But I knew that Saunders was just at the delicate crisis, where he was half trying to believe he was. He was half trying to think he had really changed the weather and might change everything; and a game like that of the raindrops was just the thing to encourage him. He really felt as if he were Omnipotence looking at two falling stars: and he was the special providence in them.

“Remember that there is always something double about morbidity; the sound old popular phrase said the madman was ‘beside himself’. There is a part of him encouraging itself to go mad; and a part that still doesn’t quite believe in the mania. He would delight in easy self deceptions, as in the raindrops. He would also sub-consciously avoid tests too decisive. He would avoid wanting to want something incredible; as that a tree should dance. He would avoid it; partly for fear it should and partly for fear it shouldn’t. And I was suddenly and furiously certain, with every cell of my brain, that he must stop himself instantly, violently, by telling the tree to dance; and finding it wouldn’t.

“That was when I shouted to him to tell the chairs and the tree to move. I was certain that unless he learnt his human limitations sharply and instantly, something illimitable and inhuman would take hold of him in that very hour. He took no notice; he rushed out into the garden; he forgot all about the chairs; he ran up that steep meadow with a leap like that of a wild goat; and I knew he had broken loose from reality and was out of the world. He would go careering through waste places, with the storm within and without; and when he returned from that country walk he would never be the same again. He would leap and dance on that lonely road; he would be horribly happy; nothing would stop him. I was already resolved that something must stop him. It must be something abrupt, arresting, revealing the limit of real things; the throttling shock with which a thing comes to the end of its tether. Then I saw the rope and threw it, catching him back like a wild horse. Somehow there rose in my imagination the image of the pagan Centaur rearing backwards, bridled, and rampant against heaven: for the Centaur, like all paganism, is at once natural and unnatural; a part of nature-worship and yet a monster.

“I went through with the whole wild business; and I was sure I was right; as he himself is now sure I was right. Nobody knew but I how far he had already gone along that road; and I knew that there was nothing for it but acute, practical, painful discovery that he could not control matter or the elements; that he could not move trees or remove pitchforks; that he could struggle for two hours with a rope and a pair of prongs and still be bound.

“It was certainly rather a desperate remedy; there is really nothing to be said for it except that it was a remedy. And I believe profoundly that there was no other remedy. Anything in the nature of soothing or quieting him would only have made him yet more secretive and yet more swollen-headed. As for humouring him, it’s the very worst thing to do with people who are losing their sense of humour. No; there was something he was beginning to believe about himself; and it was still possible to prove that it wasn’t true.”

“Do you think,” asked Dr. Butterworth, frowning, “that there was really anything in that theological imagery in the matter? Do you suppose he put it in the form that he could bring the rain and thunder because he was God Almighty? Of course there are cases of religious mania that are rather like that.”

“You must remember,” said Gale, “that he was a theological student and was going to be a clergyman; and he may have brooded upon doubt and inspiration and prophecy till they began to work the wrong way. The worst is always very near the best; there is something much worse than atheism which is Satanism; otherwise known as Being God. But as a matter of mere philosophy, apart from theology, the thing is much nearer to the nerve of all thinking than you might think. That’s why it was so insinuating and so difficult to see or to stop. That’s what I mean when I say I had a sympathy with the young lunatic. After all, it was a very natural mistake.”

“My dear Gale,” protested his friend Garth. “You are getting a little too fond of paradox. A young tadpole of a curate thinks he can control the skies and uproot trees and call up the thunder and you call it a natural mistake.”

“Have you ever lain on your back in a field and stared at the sky and kicked your heels in the air?” asked the poet.

“Not in a public or professional way,” answered the doctor. “It’s not generally considered the best bedside manner. But suppose I did?”

“If you think like that, and go back to primitive things,” said Gale, “you will find yourself wondering why you can control some things and not others. After all, your legs look a long way off when you wave them in the sky. You can wave legs about, but you can’t wave trees about. I’m not sure it’s so unnatural, in the abstract, for a man to fancy the whole material universe is his own body; since it all seems equally, in one sense, to be outside his own mind. But when he is in hell is when he fancies it is inside his own mind.”

“I’m afraid I don’t bother much about all this metaphysical business,” said Butterworth. “I suppose I really don’t understand it. I know what I mean by a man being outside his mind in the sense of being out of his mind; and I suppose you’re right in saying that Saunders was morbid enough to be nearly out of his mind. And as for being outside his body, I know what it means in the sense of his blowing his brains out or his body being left for dead. And really, to be candid, you seem to have come precious near to knocking him out of his body to cure him of being out of his mind. It certainly was an exceedingly desperate remedy; and though it may have been defensible, I shouldn’t much like to have to go into a law-court as an expert witness to defend it. I can only go by results, and he certainly seems to be all the better for it. But when it comes to all your mystical explanations, about how it is hell to have everything inside your mind, frankly I give up trying to follow. I’m afraid I’m rather a materialist.”

“Afraid!” cried Gale, as if with indignation; “afraid you are a materialist! You haven’t got much notion of what there really is to be afraid of! Materialists are all right; they are at least near enough to heaven to accept the earth and not imagine they made it. The dreadful doubts are not the doubts of the materialist. The dreadful doubts, the deadly and damnable doubts, are the doubts of the idealist.”

“I always imagined you were an idealist,” said Garth.

“I use the word idealist in its philosophical sense. I mean the real sceptic who doubts matter and the minds of others and everything except his own ego. I have been through it myself; as I have been through nearly every form of infernal idiocy. That is the only use I am in the world; having been every kind of idiot. But believe me, the worst and most miserable sort of idiot is he who seems to create and contain all things. Man is a creature; all his happiness consists in being a creature; or, as the Great Voice commanded us, in becoming a child. All his fun is in having a gift or present; which the child, with profound understanding, values because it is ‘a surprise’. But surprise implies that a thing comes from outside ourselves; and gratitude that it comes from someone other than ourselves. It is thrust through the letter-box; it is thrown in at the window; it is thrown over the wall. Those limits are the lines of the very plan of human pleasure.

“I also dreamed that I had dreamed of the whole creation. I had given myself the stars for a gift; I had handed myself the sun and moon. I had been behind and at the beginning of all things; and without me nothing was made that was made. Anybody who has been in that centre of the cosmos knows that it is to be in hell. And there is only one cure for it. Oh, I know that people have written all kinds of cant and false comfort about the cause of evil; and of why there is pain in the world. God forbid that we should add ourselves to such a chattering monkey-house of moralists. But for all that, this truth is true; objectively and experimentally true. There is no cure for that nightmare of omnipotence except pain; because that is the thing a man knows he would not tolerate if he could really control it. A man must be in some place from which he would certainly escape if he could, if he is really to realize that all things do not come from within. That is the meaning of that mad parable or mystery play you have seen acted here like an allegory. I doubt whether any of our action is really anything but an allegory. I doubt whether any truth can be told except in a parable. There was a man who saw himself sitting in the sky; and his servants the angels went to and fro in coloured garments of cloud and flame and the pageant of the seasons; but he was over all and his face seemed to fill the heavens. And, God forgive me for blasphemy, but I nailed him to a tree.”

He had risen to his feet in a suppressed and very unusual excitement; and his face was pale in the sunlight. For he spoke indeed in parables; and the things of which he was thinking were far away from that garden or even from that tale. There swelled up darkly and mountainously in his memory the slopes of another garden against another storm. The skeleton arch of a ruined abbey stood gaunt against the ghastly light, and beyond the racing river was the low and desolate inn among the reeds; and all that grey landscape was to him one purple patch of Paradise… and of Paradise Lost.

“It is the only way,” he kept repeating; “it is the only answer to the heresy of the mystic; which is to fancy that mind is all. It is to break your heart. Thank God for hard stones; thank God for hard facts; thank God for thorns and rocks and deserts and long years. At least I know now that I am not the best or strongest thing in the world. At least I know now that I have not dreamed of everything.”

“You look very strange,” said his friend Garth.

“I know it now,” said Gale. “For there is one who would be here, if dreaming could do it.”

There was again an utter stillness in which the fly could be heard buzzing in the blue; and when he spoke again, though in the same brooding vein, they had an indescribable intuition that a door in his mind had stood open for an instant and had now again closed finally with a clang. He said after the long silence:

“We are all tied to trees and pinned with pitchforks. And as long as these are solid we know the stars will stand and the hills will not melt at our word. Can’t you imagine the huge tide of healthy relief and thanks, like a hymn of praise from all nature, that went up from that captive nailed to the tree, when he had wrestled till the dawn and received at last the great glorious news; the news that he was only a man?”

Dr. Butterworth was looking across the table with a restrained but somewhat amused expression; for the poet’s eyes were shining like lamps and he was speaking on a note not often heard in any man speaking prose.

“If I hadn’t got a good deal of special knowledge and experience,” he said, rising, “I should think there was a bit of a doubt about you after all.”

Gabriel Gale looked sharply over his shoulder and the note of his voice changed once more.

“Don’t say that,” he said rather curtly. “That’s the only sort of danger I really run.”

“I don’t understand,” said Butterworth. “Do you mean the danger of being certified?”

“Certify me till all is blue,” said Gale contemptuously. “Do you suppose I should particularly mind if you did? Do you suppose I couldn’t be reasonably happy in a lunatic asylum, so long as there was dust in a sunbeam or shadows on a wall… so long as I could look at ordinary things and think how extraordinary they are? Do you suppose I couldn’t praise God with tolerable piety for the shape of my keeper’s nose or anything else calculated to give pleasure to a thoughtful mind? I should imagine that a madhouse would be an excellent place to be sane in. I’d a long sight rather live in a nice quiet secluded madhouse than in intellectual clubs full of unintellectual people, all chattering nonsense about the newest book of philosophy; or in some of those earnest, elbowing sort of Movements that want you to go in for Service and help to take away somebody else’s toys. I don’t much mind to what place I may wander to think in, before I die; so long as the thoughts do not wander too much; or wander down the wrong road. And what you said just now does touch the real danger. It does touch the danger that Garth was really thinking about, when he suggested that I had reclaimed lunatics and might myself become a castaway. If people tell me they really do not understand what I mean… if they say they cannot see so simple a truth as that it is best for a man to be a man, that it is dangerous to give oneself divine honours… if they say they do not see that for themselves, but imagine it to be some sort of mysticism out of my own head, then I am myself again in peril. I am in peril of thinking something that may be wilder and worse than thinking I am God Almighty.”

“And still I don’t understand,” said the smiling physician.

“I shall think I am the only sane man,” said Gabriel Gale.

There was a sort of sequel which came to Garth’s ears long afterwards; an epilogue to the crazy comedy of the pitchfork and the apple-tree. Garth differed from Gale in having a more obvious turn for the rational, or at least the rationalistic; and he often found himself debating with the sceptics of various scientific clubs and groups; finding them a very worthy race, often genuinely hard-headed and sometimes tending rather to be wooden-headed. In a particular country place, the name of which is not material, the post of village atheist had become vacant, so to speak, by the regrettable perversity of the cobbler in being a Congregationalist. His official functions were performed by a more prosperous person named Pond, a worthy hatter who was rather more famous as a cricketer. On the cricket field he was often pitted against another excellent cricketer, who was Vicar of the parish; indeed they contended more frequently on the field of cricket than on the field of spiritual speculation. For the clergyman was one of the type that is uproariously popular and successful chiefly by his proficiency in such sports. He was the sort of parson whom people praise by saying he is not a bit like a parson. He was a big, beefy, jolly man, red-faced and resolute of manner; still young but the father of a boisterous family of boys, and in most ways very like a boy himself. Nevertheless, as was natural, certain passages of chaff, that could hardly be called controversy, occasionally passed between the parson and the village atheist. There was no need to commiserate the clergyman upon the pin-pricks of the scientific materialist; for a pin has no effect on a pachyderm. The parson was the sort of man who seems to be rolled in layers within layers of solid substance resisting anything outside his own cheery and sensible mode of life. But one curious episode had clung to the memory of Pond, and he recounted it to Garth, in something of the puzzled tone in which a materialist tells a ghost story. The rival cricketers had been chipping each other in the usual friendly fashion, which did not go very much below the surface. The Vicar was doubtless a sincere Christian, though chiefly what used to be called a muscular Christian. But it is not unfair to him to say that he was more deeply moved in saying that some action was not Cricket than in saying it was not Christianity. On this and other occasions, however, he relied chiefly on ragging his opponent with rather obvious jokes; such as the oft-repeated inquiry as to how often the hatter might be expected to do the hat-trick. Perhaps the repetition of this epigram eventually annoyed the worthy freethinker; or perhaps there was something in the deeper and more positive tones with which the parson dealt with more serious matters, that had the same effect. It was with more than his usual breeziness that the reverend gentleman on this occasion affirmed the philosophy of his life. “God wants you to play the game,” he said. “That’s all that God wants; people who will play the game.”

“How do you know?” asked Mr. Pond rather snappishly and in unusual irritation. “How do you know what God wants? You never were God, were you?”

There was a silence; and the atheist was seen to be staring at the red face of the parson in a somewhat unusual fashion.

“Yes,” said the clergyman in a queer quiet voice. “I was God once; for about fourteen hours. But I gave it up. I found it was too much of a strain.”

With these words the Rev. Herbert Saunders went back to the cricket tent, where he mingled with Boy Scouts and village girls with all his usual heartiness and hilarity. But Mr. Pond the atheist, sat for some time staring, like one who has seen a miracle. And he afterwards confided to Garth that for a moment the eyes of Saunders had looked out of his red, good-humoured face as out of a mask; with an instantaneous memory of something awful and appalling, and at the same time empty; something the other man could only figure to himself in vague thoughts of some flat stark building with blank windows in a blind alley; and peering out of one of the windows the pale face of an idiot.

V

THE FINGER OF STONE

THREE young men on a walking tour came to a halt outside the little town of Carillon, in the south of France; which is doubtless described in the guide books as famous for its fine old Byzantine monastery, now the seat of a university; and for having been the scene of the labours of Boyg. At that name, at least, the reader will be reasonably thrilled; for he must have seen it in any number of newspapers and novels. Boyg and the Bible are periodically reconciled at religious conferences; Boyg broadens and slightly bewilders the minds of numberless heroes of long psychological stories, which begin in the nursery and nearly end in the madhouse. The journalist, writing rapidly his recurrent reference to the treatment meted out to pioneers like Galileo, pauses in the effort to think of another example, and always rounds off the sentence either with Bruno or with Boyg. But the mildly orthodox are equally fascinated, and feel a glow of agnosticism while they continue to say that, since the discoveries of Boyg, the doctrine of the Homoousian or of the human conscience does not stand where it did; wherever that was. It is needless to say that Boyg was a great discoverer, for the public has long regarded him with the warmest reverence and gratitude on that ground. It is also unnecessary to say what he discovered; for the public will never display the faintest curiosity about that. It is vaguely understood that it was something about fossils, or the long period required for petrifaction; and that it generally implied those anarchic or anonymous forces of evolution supposed to be hostile to religion. But certainly none of the discoveries he made while he was alive was so sensational, in the newspaper sense, as the discovery that was made about him when he was dead. And this, the more private and personal matter, is what concerns us here.

The three tourists had just agreed to separate for an hour, and meet again for luncheon at the little café opposite; and the different ways in which they occupied their time and indulged their tastes will serve for a sufficient working summary of their personalities. Arthur Armitage was a dark and grave young man, with a great deal of money, which he spent on a conscientious and continuous course of self-culture, especially in the matter of art and architecture; and his earnest aquiline profile was already set towards the Byzantine monastery, for the exhaustive examination of which he had already prepared himself, as if he were going to pass an examination rather than to make one. The man next him, though himself an artist, betrayed no such artistic ardour. He was a painter who wasted most of his time as a poet; but Armitage, who was always picking up geniuses, had become in some sense his patron in both departments. His name was Gabriel Gale; a long, loose, rather listless man with yellow hair; but a man not easy for any patron to patronize.

He generally did as he liked in an abstracted fashion; and what he very often liked to do was nothing. On this occasion he showed a lamentable disposition to drift towards the café first; and having drunk a glass or two of wine, he drifted not into the town but out of it, roaming about the steep bare slope above, with a rolling eye on the rolling clouds; and talking to himself until he found somebody else to talk to, which happened when he put his foot through the glass roof of a studio just below him on the steep incline. As it was an artist’s studio, however, their quarrel fortunately ended in an argument about the future of realistic art; and when he turned up to lunch, that was the extent of his acquaintance with the quaint and historic town of Carillon.

The name of the third man was Garth; he was shorter and uglier and somewhat older than the others, but with a much livelier eye in his hatchet face; he stepped much more briskly, and in the matter of a knowledge of the world, the other two were babies under his charge. He was a very able medical practitioner, with a hobby of more fundamental scientific inquiry; and for him the whole town, university and studio, monastery and café, was only the temple of the presiding genius of Boyg. But in this case the practical instinct of Dr. Garth would seem to have guided him rightly; for he discovered things considerably more startling than anything the antiquarian found in the Romanesque arches or the poet in the rolling clouds. And it is his adventures, in that single hour before lunch, upon which this tale must turn.

The café tables stood on the pavement under a row of trees opposite the old round gate in the wall, through which could be seen the white gleam of the road up which they had just been walking. But the steep hills were so high round the town that they rose clear above the wall, in a more enormous wall of smooth and slanting rock, bare except for occasional clumps of cactus. There was no crack in that sloping wilderness of stone except the rather shallow and stony bed of a little stream. Lower down, where the stream reached the level of the valley, rose the dark domes of the basilica of the old monastery; and from this a curious stairway of rude stones ran some way up the hill beside the watercourse, and stopped at a small and solitary building looking little more than a shed made of stones. Some little way higher the gleam of the glass roof of the studio, with which Gale had collided in his unconscious wanderings, marked the last spot of human habitation in all those rocky wastes that rose about the little town.

Armitage and Gale were already seated at the table when Dr. Garth walked up briskly and sat down some what abruptly.

“Have you fellows heard the news?” he asked.

He spoke somewhat sharply, for he was faintly annoyed by the attitudes of the antiquarian and the artist, who were deep in their own dreamier and less practical tastes and topics. Armitage was saying at the moment:

“Yes, I suppose I’ve seen today some of the very oldest sculpture of the veritable Dark Ages. And it’s not stiff like some Byzantine work; there’s a touch of the true grotesque you generally get in Gothic.”

“Well, I’ve seen today some of the newest sculpture of the Modern Ages,” replied Gale, “and I fancy they are the veritable Dark Ages. Quite enough of the true grotesque up in that studio, I can tell you.”

“Have you heard the news, I say?” rapped out the doctor. “Boyg is dead.”

Gale stopped in a sentence about Gothic architecture, and said seriously, with a sort of hazy reverence:

“Requiescat in pace. Who was Boyg?”

“Well, really,” replied the doctor, “I did think every baby had heard of Boyg.”

“Well, I dare say you’ve never heard of Paradou,” answered Gale. “Each of us lives in his little cosmos with its classes and degrees. Probably you haven’t heard of the most advanced sculptor, or perhaps of the latest lacrosse expert or champion chess player.”

It was characteristic of the two men that while Gale went on talking in the air about an abstract subject, till he had finished his own train of thought, Armitage had a sufficient proper sense of the presence of something more urgent to relapse into silence. Nevertheless, he unconsciously looked down at his notes; at the name of the advanced sculptor he looked up.

“Who is Paradou?” he asked.

“Why, the man I’ve been talking to this morning,” replied Gale. “His sculpture’s advanced enough for anybody. He’s no end of a chap; talks more than I do, and talks very well. Thinks too; I should think he could do everything except sculpt. There his theories get in his way. As I told him, this notion of the new realism…”

“Perhaps we might drop realism and attend to reality,” said Dr. Garth grimly. “I tell you Boyg is dead. And that’s not the worst either.”

Armitage looked up from his notes with something of the vagueness of his friend the poet. “If I remember right,” he said, “Professor Boyg’s discovery was concerned with fossils.”

“Professor Boyg’s discovery involved the extension of the period required for petrifaction as distinct from fossilization,” replied the doctor stiffly, “and thereby relegated biological origins to a period which permits the chronology necessary to the hypothesis of natural selection. It may affect you as humorous to interject the observation ‘loud cheers’, but I assure you the scientific world, which happens to be competent to judge, was really moved with amazement as well as admiration.”

“In fact it was petrified to hear it couldn’t be petrified,” suggested the poet.

“I have really no time for your flippancy,” said Garth. “I am up against a great ugly fact.”

Armitage interposed in the benevolent manner of a chairman. “We must really let Garth speak; come, doctor, what is it all about? Begin at the beginning.”

“Very well,” said the doctor, in his staccato way. “I’ll begin at the beginning. I came to this town with a letter of introduction to Boyg himself; and as I particularly wanted to visit the geological museum, which his own munificence provided for this town, I went there first. I found all the windows of the Boyg Museum were broken; and the stones thrown by the rioters were actually lying about the room within a foot or two of the glass cases, one of which was smashed.”

“Donations to the geological museum, no doubt,” remarked Gale. “A munificent patron happens to pass by, and just heaves in a valuable exhibit through the window. I don’t see why that shouldn’t be done in what you call the world of science; I’m sure it’s done all right in the world of art. Old Paradou’s busts, and bas-reliefs are just great rocks chucked at the public and…”

“Paradou may go to…Paradise, shall we say?” said Garth, with pardonable impatience. “Will nothing make you understand that something has really happened that isn’t any of your ideas and isms? It wasn’t only the geological museum; it was the same everywhere. I passed by the house Boyg first lived in, where they very properly put up a medallion; and the medallion was all splashed with mud. I crossed the market-place, where they put up a statue to him just recently. It was still hung with wreaths of laurel by his pupils and the party that appreciates him; but they were half torn away, as if there had been a struggle, and stones had evidently been thrown, for a piece of the hand was chipped off.”

“Paradou’s statue, no doubt,” observed Gale. “No wonder they threw things at it.”

“I think not,” replied the doctor, in the same hard voice. “It wasn’t because it was Paradou’s statue, but because it was Boyg’s statue. It was the same business as the museum and the medallion. No, there’s been something like a French Revolution here on the subject; the French are like that. You remember the riot in the Breton village where Renan was born, against having a statue of him. You know, I suppose, that Boyg was a Norwegian by birth, and only settled here because the geological formation, and the supposed mineral properties of that stream there, offered the best field for his investigations. Well, besides the fits the parsons were in at his theories in general, it seems he bumped into some barbarous local superstition as well; about it being a sacred stream that froze snakes into ammonites at a wink; a common myth, of course, for the same was told about St. Hilda at Whitby. But there are peculiar conditions that made it pretty hot in this place. The theological students fight with the medical students, one for Rome and the other for Reason; and they say there’s a sort of raving lunatic of a Peter the Hermit, who lives in that hermitage on the hill over there, and every now and then comes out waving his arms and setting the place on fire.”

“I heard something about that,” remarked Armitage. “The priest who showed me over the monastery; I think he was the head man there… anyhow, he was a most learned and eloquent gentleman… told me about a holy man on the hill who was almost canonized already.”

“One is tempted to wish he were martyred already; but the martyrdom, if any, was not his,” said Garth darkly. “Allow me to continue my story in order. I had crossed the market-place to find Professor Boyg’s private house, which stood at the corner of it. I found the shutters up and the house apparently empty, except for one old servant, who refused at first to tell me anything; indeed, I found a good deal of rustic reluctance on both sides to tell a foreigner anything. But when I had managed to make the nature of my introduction quite plain to him, he finally broke down; and told me his master was dead.”

There was a pause, and then Gale, who seemed for the first time somewhat impressed, asked abstractedly:

“Where is his tomb? Your tale is really rather strange and dramatic, and obviously it must go on to his tomb. Your pilgrimage ought to end in finding a magnificent monument of marble and gold, like the tomb of Napoleon, and then finding that even the grave had been desecrated.”

“He has no tomb,” replied Garth sternly, “though he will have many monuments. I hope to see the day when he will have a statue in every town, he whose statue is now insulted in his own town. But he will have no tomb.”

“And why not?” asked the staring Armitage.

“His body cannot be found,” answered the doctor; “no trace of him can be found anywhere.”

“Then how do you know he is dead?” asked the other.

There was an instant of silence, and then the doctor spoke out in a voice fuller and stronger than before:

“Why, as to that,” he said, “I think he is dead because I am sure he is murdered.”

Armitage shut his note book, but continued to look down steadily at the table. “Go on with your story,” he said.

“Boyg’s old servant,” resumed the doctor, “who is a queer, silent, yellow-faced old card, was at last induced to tell me of the existence of Boyg’s assistant, of whom I think he was rather jealous. The Professor’s scientific helper and right-hand man is a man of the name of Bertrand, and a very able man, too, eminently worthy of the great man’s confidence, and intensely devoted to his cause. He is carrying on Boyg’s work so far as it can be carried on; and about Boyg’s death or disappearance he knows the little that can be known. It was when I finally ran him to earth in a little house full of Boyg’s books and instruments, at the bottom of the hill just beyond the town, that I first began to realize the nature of this sinister and mysterious business. Bertrand is a quiet man, though he has a little of the pardonable vanity which is not uncommon in assistants. One would sometimes fancy the great discovery was almost as much his as his master’s; but that does no harm, since it only makes him fight for his master’s fame almost as if it were his. But in fact he is not only concerned about the discovery; or rather, he is not only concerned about that discovery. I had not looked for long at the dark bright eyes and keen face of that quiet young man before I realized that there was something else that he is trying to discover. As a matter of fact, he is no longer merely a scientific assistant, or even a scientific student. Unless I am much mistaken, he is playing the part of an amateur detective.

“Your artistic training, my friends, may be an excellent thing for discovering a poet, or even a sculptor; but you will forgive me for thinking a scientific training rather better for discovering a murderer. Bertrand has gone to work in a very workmanlike way, I consider, and I can tell you in outline what he has discovered so far. Boyg was last seen by Bertrand descending the hillside by the watercourse, having just come away from the studio of Gale’s friend the sculptor, where he was sitting for an hour every morning. I may say here, rather for the sake of logical method than because it is needed by the logical argument, that the sculptor at any rate had no quarrel with Boyg, but was, on the contrary, an ardent admirer of him as an advanced and revolutionary character.”

“I know,” said Gale, seeming to take his head suddenly out of the clouds. “Paradou says realistic art must be founded on the modern energy of science; but the fallacy of that…”

“Let me finish with the facts first before you retire into your theories,” said the doctor firmly. “Bertrand saw Boyg sit down on the bare hillside for a smoke; and you can see from here how bare a hillside it is; a man walking for hours on it would still be as visible as a fly crawling on a ceiling. Bertrand says he was called away to the crisis of an experiment in the laboratory; when he looked again he could not see his master, and he has never seen him from that day to this.

“At the foot of the hill, and at the bottom of the flight of steps which runs up to the hermitage, is the entrance to the great monastic buildings on the very edge of the town. The very first thing you come to on that side is the great quadrangle, which is enclosed by cloisters, and by the rooms or cells of the clerical or semi-clerical students. I need not trouble you with the tale of the political compromise by which this part of the institution has remained clerical, while the scientific and other schools beyond it are now entirely secular. But it is important to fix in your mind the fact itself: that the monastic part is on the very edge of the town, and the other part bars its way, so to speak, to the inside of the town. Boyg could not possibly have gone past that secular barrier, dead or alive, without being under the eyes of crowds who were more excited about him than about anything else in the world. For the whole place was in a fuss, and even a riot for him as well as against him. Something happened to him on the hillside, or anyhow before he came to the internal barrier. My friend the amateur detective set to work to examine the hillside, or all of it that could seriously count; an enormous undertaking, but he did it as if with a microscope. Well, he found that rocky field, when examined closely, very much what it looks even from here. There are no caves or even holes, there are no chasms or even cracks in that surface of blank stone for miles and miles. A rat could not be hidden in those few tufts of prickly pear. He could not find a hiding-place; but for all that, he found a hint. The hint was nothing more than a faded scrap of paper, damp and draggled from the shallow bed of the brook, but faintly decipherable on it were words in the writing of the Master. They were but part of a sentence, but they included the words, ‘will call on you tomorrow to tell you something you ought to know.’

“My friend Bertrand sat down and thought it out. The letter had been in the water, so it had not been thrown away in the town, for the highly scientific reason that the river does not flow uphill. There only remained on the higher ground the sculptor’s studio and the hermitage. But Boyg would not write to the sculptor to warn him that he was going to call, since he went to his studio every morning. Presumably the person he was going to call on was the hermit; and a guess might well be made about the nature of what he had to say. Bertrand knew better than anybody that Boyg had just brought his great discovery to a crushing completeness, with fresh facts and ratifications; and it seems likely enough that he went to announce it to his most fanatical opponent, to warn him to give up the struggle.”

Gale, who was gazing up into the sky with his eye on a bird, again abruptly intervened.

“In these attacks on Boyg,” he said, “were there any attacks on his private character?”

“Even these madmen couldn’t attack that,” replied Garth with some heat. “He was the best sort of Scandinavian, as simple as a child, and I really believe as innocent. But they hated him for all that; and you can see for yourself that their hatred begins to appear on the horizon of our inquiry. He went to tell the truth in the hour of triumph; and he never reappeared to the light of the sun.”

Armitage’s far-away gaze was fixed on the solitary cell half-way up the hill. “You don’t mean seriously,” he said, “that the man they talk about as a saint, the friend of my friend the abbot, or whatever he is, is neither more nor less than an assassin?”

“You talked to your friend the abbot about Romanesque sculpture,” replied Garth. “If you had talked to him about fossils, you might have seen another side of his character. These Latin priests are often polished enough, but you bet they’re pointed as well. As for the other man on the hill, he’s allowed by his superiors to live what they call the eremitical life; but he’s jolly well allowed to do other things, too. On great occasions he’s allowed to come down here and preach, and I can tell you there is Bedlam let loose when he does. I might be ready to excuse the man as a sort of a maniac; but I haven’t the slightest difficulty in believing that he is a homicidal maniac.”

“Did your friend Bertrand take any legal steps on his suspicions?” asked Armitage, after a pause.

“Ah, that’s where the mystery begins,” replied the doctor.

After a moment of frowning silence, he resumed. “Yes, he did make a formal charge to the police, and the Juge d’Instruction examined a good many people and so on, and said the charge had broken down. It broke down over the difficulty of disposing of the body; the chief difficulty in most murders. Now the hermit, who is called Hyacinth, I believe, was summoned in due course; but he had no difficulty in showing that his hermitage was as bare and as hard as the hill-side. It seemed as if nobody could possibly have concealed a corpse in those stone walls, or dug a grave in that rocky floor. Then it was the turn of the abbot, as you call him, Father Bernard of the Catholic College. And he managed to convince the magistrate that the same was true of the cells surrounding the college quadrangle, and all the other rooms under his control. They were all like empty boxes, with barely a stick or two of furniture; less than usual, in fact, for some of the sticks had been broken up for the bonfire demonstration I told you of. Anyhow, that was the line of defence, and I dare say it was well conducted, for Bernard is a very able man, and knows about many other things besides Romanesque architecture; and Hyacinth, fanatic as he is, is famous as a persuasive orator. Anyhow, it was successful, the case broke down; but I am sure my friend Bertrand is only biding his time, and means to bring it up again. These difficulties about the concealment of a corpse…Hullo! why here he is in person.”

He broke off in surprise as a young man walking rapidly down the street paused a moment, and then approached the café table at which they sat. He was dressed with all the funereal French respectability: his black stove-pipe hat, his high and stiff black neck-cloth resembling a stock, and the curious corners of dark beard at the edges of his chin, gave him an antiquated air like a character out of Gaboriau. But if he was out of Gaboriau, he was nobody less than Lecocq; the dark eyes in his pale face might indeed be called the eyes of a born detective. At this moment, the pale face was paler than usual with excitement, and as he stopped a moment behind the doctor’s chair, he said to him in a low voice:

“I have found out.”

Dr. Garth sprang to his feet, his eyes brilliant with curiosity; then, recovering his conventional manner, he presented M. Bertrand to his friends, saying to the former, “You may speak freely with us, I think; we have no interest except an interest in the truth.”

“I have found the truth,” said the Frenchman, with compressed lips. “I know now what these murderous monks have done with the body of Boyg.”

“Are we to be allowed to hear it?” asked Armitage gravely.

“Everyone will hear it in three days’ time,” replied the pale Frenchman. “As the authorities refuse to reopen the question, we are holding a public meeting in the market-place to demand that they do so. The assassins will be there, doubtless, and I shall not only denounce but convict them to their faces. Be there yourself, monsieur, on Thursday at half-past two, and you will learn how one of the world’s greatest men was done to death by his enemies. For the moment I will only say one word. As the great Edgar Poe said in your own language, ‘Truth is not always in a well.’ I believe it is sometimes too obvious to be seen.”

Gabriel Gale, who had rather the appearance of having gone to sleep, seemed to rouse himself with an unusual animation.

“That’s true,” he said, “and that’s the truth about the whole business.”

Armitage turned to him with an expression of quiet amusement.

“Surely you’re not playing the detective, Gale,” he said. “I never pictured such a thing as your coming out of fairyland to assist Scotland Yard.”

“Perhaps Gale thinks he can find the body,” suggested Dr. Garth laughing.

Gale lifted himself slowly and loosely from his seat, and answered in his dazed fashion:

“Why, yes, in a way,” he said; “in fact, I’m pretty sure I can find the body. In fact, in a manner of speaking, I’ve found it.”

Those with any intimations of the personality of Mr. Arthur Armitage will not need to be told that he kept a diary; and endeavoured to note down his impressions of foreign travel with atmospheric sympathy and the mot juste. But the pen dropped from his hand, so to speak, or at least wandered over the page in a mazy desperation, in the attempt to describe the great mob meeting, or rather the meeting of two mobs, which took place in the picturesque market-place in which he had wandered alone a few days before, criticising the style of the statue, or admiring the sky-line of the basilica. He had read and written about democracy all his life; and when first he met it, it swallowed him like an earthquake. One actual and appalling difference divided this French mob in a provincial market from all the English mobs he had ever seen in Hyde Park or Trafalgar Square. These Frenchmen had not come there to get rid of their feelings, but to get rid of their enemies. Something would be done as a result of this sort of public meeting; it might be murder, but it would be something.

And although, or rather because, it had this militant ferocity, it had also a sort of military discipline. The clusters of men voluntarily deployed into cordons, and in some rough fashion followed the command of leaders. Father Bernard was there, with a face of bronze, like the mask of a Roman emperor, eagerly obeyed by his crowd of crusading devotees, and beside him the wild preacher, Hyacinth, who looked himself like a dead man brought out of the grave, with a face built out of bones, and cavernous eye-sockets deep and dark enough to hide the eyes. On the other side were the grim pallor of Bertrand and the rat-like activity of the red-haired Dr. Garth; their own anti-clerical mob was roaring behind them, and their eyes were alight with triumph. Before Armitage could collect himself sufficiently to make proper notes of any of these things, Bertrand had sprung upon a chair placed near the pedestal of the statue, and announced almost without words, by one dramatic gesture, that he had come to avenge the dead.

Then the words came, and they came thick and fast, telling and terrible; but Armitage heard them as in a dream till they reached the point for which he was waiting; the point that would awaken any dreamer. He heard the prose poems of laudation, the hymn to Boyg the hero, the tale of his tragedy so far as he knew it already. He heard the official decision about the impossibility of the clerics concealing the corpse, as he had heard it already. And then he and the whole crowd leapt together at something they did not know before; or rather, as in all such riddles, something they did know and did not understand.

“They plead that their cells are bare and their lives simple,” Bertrand was saying, “and it is true that these slaves of superstition are cut off from the natural joys of men. But they have their joys; oh, believe me, they have their festivities. If they cannot rejoice in love, they can rejoice in hatred. And everybody seems to have forgotten that on the very day the Master vanished, the theological students in their own quadrangle burnt him in effigy. In effigy.”

A thrill that was hardly a whisper, but was wilder than a cry, went through the whole crowd; and men had taken in the whole meaning before they could keep pace with the words that followed.

“Did they burn Bruno in effigy? Did they burn Dolet in effigy?” Bertrand was saying, with a white, fanatical face. “Those martyrs of the truth were burned alive for the good of their Church and for the glory of their God. Oh, yes, progress has improved them; and they did not burn Boyg alive. But they burned him dead; and that is how they obliterated the traces of the way they had done him to death. I have said that truth is not always hidden in a well, but rather high on a tower. And while I have searched every crevice and cactus bush for the bones of my master, it was in truth in public, under the open sky, before a roaring crowd in the quadrangle, that his body vanished from the sight of men.”

When the last cheer and howl of a whole hell of such noises had died away, Father Bernard succeeded in making his voice heard.

“It is enough to say in answer to this maniac charge that the atheists who bring it against us cannot induce their own atheistic Government to support them. But as the charge is against Father Hyacinth rather than against me, I will ask him to reply to it.”

There was another tornado of conflicting noises when the eremitical preacher opened his mouth; but his very tones had a certain power of piercing, and quelling it. There was something strange in such a voice coming out of such a skull-and-cross-bones of a countenance; for it was unmistakably the musical and moving voice that had stirred so many congregations and pilgrimages. Only in this crisis it had an awful accent of reality, which was beyond any arts of oratory. But before the tumult had yet died away Armitage, moved by some odd nervous instinct, had turned abruptly to Garth and said, “What’s become of Gale? He said he was going to be here. Didn’t he talk some nonsense about bringing the body himself?”

Dr. Garth shrugged his shoulders. “I imagine he’s talking some other nonsense at the top of the hill somewhere else. You mustn’t ask poets to remember all the nonsense they talk.”

“My friends,” Father Hyacinth was saying, in quiet but penetrating tones. “I have no answer to give to this charge. I have no proofs with which to refute it. If a man can be sent to the guillotine on such evidence, to the guillotine I will go. Do you fancy I do not know that innocent men have been guillotined? M. Bertrand spoke of the burning of Bruno, as if it is only the enemies of the Church that have been burned. Does any Frenchman forget that Joan of Arc was burned; and was she guilty? The first Christians were tortured for being cannibals, a charge as probable as the charge against me. Do you imagine because you kill men now by modern machinery and modern law, that we do not know that you are as likely to kill unjustly as Herod or Heliogabalus? Do you think we do not know that the powers of the world are what they always were, that your lawyers who oppress the poor for hire will shed innocent blood for gold? If I were here to bandy such lawyer’s talk, I could use it against you more reasonably than you against me. For what reason am I supposed to have imperilled my soul by such a monstrous crime? For a theory about a theory; for a hypothesis about a hypothesis, for some thin fantastic notion that a discovery about fossils threatened the everlasting truth. I could point to others who had better reasons for murder than that. I could point to a man who by the death of Boyg has inherited the whole power and position of Boyg. I could point to one who is truly the heir and the man whom the crime benefits; who is known to claim much of the discovery as his own; who has been not so much the assistant as the rival of the dead. He alone has given evidence that Boyg was seen on the hill at all on that fatal day. He alone inherits by the death anything solid, from the largest ambitions in the scientific world, to the smallest magnifying glass in his collection. The man lives, and I could stretch out my hand and touch him.”

Hundreds of faces were turned upon Bertrand with a frightful expression of inhuman eagerness; the turn of the debate had been too dramatic to raise a cry. Bertrand’s very lips were pale, but they smiled as they formed the words:

“And what did I do with the body?”

“God grant you did nothing with it, dead or alive,” answered the other. “I do not charge you; but if ever you are charged as I am unjustly, you may need a God on that day. Though I were ten times guillotined, God could testify to my innocence; if it were by bidding me walk these streets, like St. Denis, with my head in my hand. I have no other proof. I can call no other witness. He can deliver me if He will.”

There was a sudden silence, which was somehow stronger than a pause; and in it Armitage could be heard saying sharply, and almost querulously:

“Why, here’s Gale again, after all. Have you dropped from the sky?”

Gale was indeed sauntering in a clear space round the corner of the statue with all the appearance of having just arrived at a crowded At Home; and Bertrand was quick to seize the chance of an anti-climax to the hermit’s oratory.

“This,” he cried, “is a gentleman who thinks he can find the body himself. Have you brought it with you, monsieur?”

The joke about the poet as detective had already been passed round among many people, and the suggestion received a new kind of applause. Somebody called out in a high, piping voice, “He’s got it in his pocket”; and another, in deep sepulchral tones, “His waistcoat pocket.”

Mr. Gale certainly had his hands in his pockets, whether or no he had anything else in them; and it was with great nonchalance that he replied:

“Well, in that sense, I suppose I haven’t got it. But you have.”

The next moment he had astonished his friends, who were not used to seeing him so alert, by leaping on the chair, and himself addressing the crowd in clear tones, and in excellent French:

“Well, my friends,” he said, “the first thing I have to do is to associate myself with everything said by my honourable friend, if he will allow me to call him so, about the merits and high moral qualities of the late Professor Boyg. Boyg, at any rate, is in every way worthy of all the honour you can pay to him. Whatever else is doubtful, whatever else we differ about, we can all salute in him that search for truth which is the most disinterested of all our duties to God. I agree with my friend Dr. Garth that he deserves to have a statue, not only in his own town, but in every town in the world.”

The anti-clericals began to cheer warmly, while their opponents watched in silence, wondering where this last eccentric development might lead. The poet seemed to realize their mystification, and smiled as he continued:

“Perhaps you wonder why I should say that so emphatically. Well, I suppose you all have your own reasons for recognizing this genuine love of truth in the late Professor. But I say it because I happen to know something that perhaps you don’t know, which makes me specially certain about his honesty.”

“And what is that?” asked Father Bernard, in the pause that followed.

“Because,” said Gale, “he was going to see Father Hyacinth to own himself wrong.”

Bertrand made a swift movement forward that seemed almost to threaten an assault: but Garth arrested it, and Gale went on, without noticing it.

“Professor Boyg had discovered that his theory was wrong after all. That was the sensational discovery he had made in those last days and with those last experiments. I suspected it when I compared the current tale with his reputation as a simple and kindly man. I did not believe he would have gone merely to triumph over his worst enemy; it was far more probable that he thought it a point of honour to acknowledge his mistake. For, without professing to know much about these things, I am sure it was a mistake. Things do not, after all, need all those thousand years to petrify in that particular fashion. Under certain conditions, which chemists could explain better than I, they do not need more than one year, or even one day. Something in the properties of the local water, applied or intensified by special methods, can really in a few hours turn an animal organism into a fossil. The scientific experiment has been made; and the proof is before you.”

He made a gesture with his hand, and went on, with something more like excitement:

“M. Bertrand is right in saying that truth is not in a well, but on a tower. It is on a pedestal. You have looked at it every day. There is the body of Boyg!”

And he pointed to the statue in the middle of the market-place, wreathed with laurel and defaced with stones, as it had stood so long in that quiet square, and looked down at so many casual passers-by.

“Somebody suggested just now,” he went on, glancing over a sea of gaping faces, “that I carried the statue in my waistcoat pocket. Well, I don’t carry all of it, of course, but this is a part of it,” and he took out a small object like a stick of grey chalk; “this is a finger of it knocked off by a stone. I picked it up by the pedestal. If anybody who understands these things likes to look at it, he will agree that the consistency is precisely the same as the admitted fossils in the geological museum.”

He held it out to them, but the whole mob stood still as if it also was a mob of men turned to stone.

“Perhaps you think I’m mad,” he said pleasantly. “Well, I’m not exactly mad, but I have an odd sort of sympathy with madmen. I can manage them better than most people can, because I can fancy somehow the wild way their minds will work. I understand the man who did this. I know he did, because I talked to him for half the morning; and it’s exactly the sort of thing he would do. And when first I heard talk of fossil shells and petrified insects and so on, I did the same thing that such men always do. I exaggerated it into a sort of extravagant vision, a vision of fossil forests, and fossil cattle, and fossil elephants and camels; and so, naturally, to another thought: a coincidence that somehow turned me cold. A Fossil Man.

“It was then that I looked up at the statue; and knew it was not a statue. It was a corpse petrified by the curious chemistry of your strange mountain-stream. I call it a fossil as a loose popular term; of course I know enough geology to know it is not the correct term. But I was not exactly concerned with a problem of geology. I was concerned with what some prefer to call criminology and I prefer to call crime. If that extraordinary erection was the corpse, who and where was the criminal? Who was the assassin who had set up the dead man to be at once obvious and invisible; and had, so to speak, hidden him in the broad daylight? Well, you have all heard the arguments about the stream and the scrap of paper, and up to a point I have entirely followed them. Everyone agreed that the secret was somewhere hidden on that bare hill where there was nothing but the glass-roofed studio and the lonely hermitage; and suspicion centred entirely upon the hermitage. For the man in the studio was a fervent friend of the man who was murdered, and one of those rejoicing most heartily at what he had discovered. But perhaps you have rather forgotten what he really had discovered. His real discovery was of the sort that infuriates friends and not foes. The man who has the courage to say he is wrong has to face the worst hatred; the hatred of those who think he is right. Boyg’s final discovery, like our final discovery, rather reverses the relations of those two little houses on the hill. Even if Father Hyacinth had been a fiend instead of a saint, he had no possible motive to prevent his enemy from offering him a public apology. It was a believer in Boygism who struck down Boyg. It was his follower who became his pursuer and persecutor; who at last turned in unreasonable fury upon him. It was Paradou the sculptor who snatched up a chisel and struck his philosophical teacher, at the end of some furious argument about the theory which the artist had valued only as a wild inspiration, being quite indifferent to the tame question of its truth. I don’t think he meant to kill Boyg; I doubt whether anybody could possibly prove he did; and even if he did, I rather doubt whether he can be held responsible for that or for anything else. But though Paradou may be a lunatic, he is also a logician; and there is one more interesting logical step in this story.

“I met Paradou myself this morning; owing to my good luck in putting my leg through his skylight. He also has his theories and controversies; and this morning he was very controversial. As I say, I had a long argument with him, all about realism in sculpture. I know many people will tell you that nothing has ever come out of arguments; and I tell you that everything has always come out of arguments; and anyhow, if you want to know what has come out of this, you’ve got to understand this argument. Everybody was always jeering at poor old Paradou as a sculptor and saying he turned men into monsters; that his figures had flat heads like snakes, or sagging knees like elephants, or humps like human camels. And he was always shouting back at them, ‘Yes, and eyes like blindworms when it comes to seeing your own hideous selves! This is what you do look like, you ugly brutes! These are the crooked, clownish, lumpish attitudes in which you really do stand; only a lot of lying fashionable portrait-painters have persuaded you that you look like Graces and Greek gods.’ He was at it hammer and tongs with me this morning; and I dare say I was lucky he didn’t finish that argument with a chisel. But anyhow the argument wasn’t started then. It all came upon him with a rush, when he had committed his real though probably unintentional killing. As he stood staring at the corpse, there arose out of the very abyss of his disappointment the vision of a strange vengeance or reparation. He began to see the vast outlines of a joke as gigantic as the Great Pyramid. He would set up that grim granite jest in the market-place, to grin forever at his critics and detractors. The dead man himself had just been explaining to him the process by which the water of that place would rapidly petrify organic substances. The notes and documents of his proof lay scattered about the studio where he had fallen. His own proof should be applied to his own body, for a purpose of which he had never dreamed. If the sculptor simply lifted the body in the ungainly attitude in which it had actually fallen, if he froze or fixed it in the stream, or set it upon the public pedestal, it would be the very thing about which he had so bitterly debated; a real man, in a real posture, held up to the scorn of men.

“That insane genius promised himself a lonely laughter, and a secret superiority to all his enemies, in hearing the critics discuss it as the crazy creation of a crank sculptor. He looked forward to the groups that would stand before the statue, and prove the anatomy to be wrong, and clearly demonstrate the posture to be impossible. And he would listen, and laugh inwardly like a true lunatic, knowing that they were proving the utter unreality of a real man. That being his dream, he had no difficulty in carrying it out. He had no need to hide the body; he had it brought down from his studio, not secretly but publicly and even pompously, the finished work of a great sculptor escorted by the devotees of a great discoverer. But indeed, Boyg was something more than a man who made a discovery; and there is, in comparison, a sort of cant even in the talk of a man having the courage to discover it. What other man would have had the courage to undiscover it? That monument that hides a strange sin, hides a much stranger and much rarer virtue. Yes, you do well to hail it as a true scientific trophy. That is the statue of Boyg the Undiscoverer. That cold chimera of the rock is not only the abortion born of some horrible chemical change; it is the outcome of a nobler experiment, which attests for ever the honour and probity of science. You may well praise him as a man of science; for he, at least, in an affair of science, acted like a man. You may well set up statues to him as a hero of science; for he was more of a hero in being wrong than he could ever have been in being right. And though the stars have seen rise, from the soils and substance of our native star, no such monstrosity as that man of stone, heaven may look down with more wonder at the man than at the monster. And we of all schools and of all philosophies can pass it like a funeral procession taking leave of an illustrious grave and, like soldiers, salute it as we pass.”

VI

THE HOUSE OF THE PEACOCK

IT happened that some years ago, down a sunny and empty street of suburban gardens and villas, a young man was walking; a young man in rather outlandish clothes and almost prehistoric hat; for he was newly come to London from a very remote and sleepy small town in the West Country. There was nothing else especially remarkable about him, except what happened to him; which was certainly remarkable, not to say regrettable. There cannonaded into him an elderly gentleman running down the street, breathless, bare-headed, and in festive evening dress, who immediately caught him by the lapels of his antiquated coat and asked him to dinner. It would be truer to say that he implored him to come to dinner. As the bewildered provincial did not know him, or anybody else for miles round, the situation seemed singular; but the provincial, vaguely supposing it to be a hospitable ceremony peculiar to London town, where the streets were paved with gold, finally consented. He went to the hospitable mansion, which was only a few doors down the road; and he was never seen again in the land of the living.

None of the ordinary explanations would seem to have fitted the case. The men were total strangers. The man from the country carried no papers or valuables or money worth mentioning; and certainly did not look in the least as if he were likely to carry them. And, on the other hand, his host had the outward marks of almost offensive prosperity; a gleam of satin in the linings of his clothes, a glitter of opalescent stones in his studs and cuff-links, a cigar that seemed to perfume the street. The guest could hardly have been decoyed with the ordinary motive of robbery, or of any form of fraud. And indeed the motive with which he really was decoyed was one of the queerest in the world; so queer that a man might have a hundred guesses before he hit on it.

It is doubtful whether anyone ever would have hit on it, but for the extra touch of eccentricity which happened to distinguish another young man, who happened to be walking down the same street an hour or two afterwards on the same sunny afternoon. It must not be supposed that he brought to the problem any of the dexterities of a detective; least of all of the usual detective of romance, who solves problems by the closest attention to everything and the promptest presence of mind. It would be truer to say of this man that he sometimes solved them by absence of mind. Some solitary object he was staring at would become fixed in his mind like a talisman, and he stared at it till it began to speak to him like an oracle. On other occasions a stone, a starfish, or a canary had thus riveted his eye and seemed to reply to his questions. On the present occasion his text was less trivial from an ordinary standpoint; but it was some time before his own standpoint could be ordinary. He had drifted along the sunny suburban road, drinking in a certain drowsy pleasure in seeing where the laburnum made lines of gold in the green, or patches of white or red thorn glowed in the growing shadows; for the sunshine was taking on the tinge of sunset. But for the most part he was contented to see the green semicircles of lawn repeat themselves like a pattern of green moons; for he was not one to whom repetition was merely monotony. Only in looking over a particular gate at a particular lawn, he became pleasantly conscious, or half-conscious, of a new note of colour in the greenness; a much bluer green, which seemed to change to vivid blue, as the object at which he was gazing moved sharply, turning a small head on a long neck. It was a peacock. But he had thought of a thousand things before he thought of the obvious thing. The burning blue of the plumage on the neck had reminded him of blue fire, and blue fire had reminded him of some dark fantasy about blue devils, before he had fully realized even that it was a peacock he was staring at. And the tail, that trailing tapestry of eyes, had led his wandering wits away to those dark but divine monsters of the Apocalypse whose eyes were multiplied like their wings, before he had remembered that a peacock, even in a more practical sense, was an odd thing to see in so ordinary a setting.

For Gabriel Gale, as the young man was called, was a minor poet, but something of a major painter; and, in his capacity of celebrity and lover of landscape, he had been invited often enough into those larger landscape gardens of the landed aristocracy, where peacocks as pets are not uncommon. The very thought of such country seats brought back to him the memory of one of them, decayed and neglected indeed compared with most, but having for him the almost unbearable beauty of a lost paradise. He saw standing for a moment in such glimmering grass a figure statelier than any peacock, the colours of whose dress burned blue with a vivid sadness that might indeed be symbolized by a blue devil. But when intellectual fancies and emotional regrets had alike rolled away, there remained a more rational perplexity. After all, a peacock was an unusual thing to see in the front garden of a small suburban villa. It seemed somehow too big for the place, as if it would knock down the little trees when it spread its tail. It was like visiting a maiden lady in lodgings, who might be expected to keep a bird, and finding that she kept an ostrich.

These more practical reflections in their turn had passed through his mind before he came to the most practical reflection of all… that for the last five minutes he had been leaning on somebody else’s front gate with all the air of repose and finality of a rustic leaning on his own stile. Comment might have been aroused if anybody had come out; but nobody came out. On the contrary, somebody went in. As the peacock again turned its tiny crown and trailed away towards the house, the poet calmly opened the garden gate and stepped across the grass, following in the track of the bird. The darkening twilight of that garden was enriched by masses of red may, and altogether the villa had the look of being cruder and more cockney than the grounds in which it stood. Indeed, it was either actually unfinished or undergoing some new alterations and repairs, for a ladder leaned against the wall apparently to allow workmen to reach an upper storey and, moreover, there were marks of bushes having been cut or cleared away, perhaps for some new plan of building. Red bunches thus gathered from the bushes were stacked on the window-sill of the upper storey, and a few petals seemed to have dropped on the ladder, indicating that they had been carried up by that route. All these things the gaze of Gale gradually took in, as he stood with a rather bewildered air at the foot of the ladder. He felt the contrast between the unfinished house with the ladder and the rich garden with the peacock. It was almost as if the aristocratic birds and bushes had been there before the bourgeois bricks and mortar.

He had a curious innocence which often appeared as impudence. Like other human beings, he was quite capable of doing wrong knowingly and being ashamed of it. But so long as he meant no wrong, it never even occurred to him that there could be anything to be ashamed of. For him burglary meant stealing; and he might have strolled, so to speak, down the chimney into a king’s bed-chamber, so long as he had no intent to steal. The invitation of the leaning ladder and the open window was something almost too obvious even to be called an adventure. He began to mount the ladder as if he were going up the front steps of an hotel. But when he came to the upper rungs he seemed to stop a moment, frowned at something; and, accelerating his ascent, slipped quickly over the window-sill into the room.

The twilight of the room seemed like darkness after the golden glare of the evening sunlight, and it was a second or two before the glimmer of light reflected from a round mirror opposite enabled him to make out the main features of the interior. The room itself seemed dusty and even defaced; the dark blue-green hangings, of a peacock pattern, as if carrying out the same scheme as the living decoration of the garden, were themselves, nevertheless, a background of dead colours; and, peering into the dusty mirror, he saw it was cracked. Nevertheless, the neglected room was evidently partly redecorated for a new festivity, for a long table was elaborately laid out for a dinner-party. By every plate was a group of quaint and varied glasses for the wines of every course; and the blue vases on the table and the mantelpiece were filled with the same red and white blooms from the garden which he had seen on the window-sill. Nevertheless, there were odd things about the dinner-table, and his first thought was that it had already been the scene of some struggle or stampede, in which the salt-cellar had been knocked over and, for all he knew, the looking-glass broken. Then he looked at the knives on the table, and a light was beginning to dawn in his eyes, when the door opened and a sturdy, grey-haired man came rapidly into the room.

And at that he came back to common sense like a man flung from a flying ship into the cold shock of the sea. He remembered suddenly where he was and how he had got there. It was characteristic of him that, though he saw a practical point belatedly… and, perhaps, too late… when he did see it he saw it lucidly in all its logical ramifications. Nobody would believe in any legitimate reason for entering a strange house by the window instead of knocking at the door. Also, as it happened, he had no legitimate reason… or none that he could explain without a lecture on poetry and philosophy. He even realized the ugly detail that he was at that very moment fidgeting with the knives on the table, and that a large number of them were silver. After an instant of hesitation, he put down the knife and politely removed his hat.

“Well,” he said at last, with inconsequent irony, “I shouldn’t shoot if I were you; but I suppose you’ll send for the police.”

The new-comer, who was apparently the householder, was also fixed for the moment in a somewhat baffling attitude. When first he opened the door he had given a convulsive start, had opened his mouth as if to shout, and shut it again grimly, as if he was not even going to speak. He was a man with a strong, shrewd face, spoilt by painfully prominent eyes which gave him a look of perpetual protest. But by some accident it was not at these accusing eyes that the sleepy blue eyes of the poetical burglar were directed. The trick by which his rambling eye was so often riveted by some trivial object led him to look no higher at the moment than the stud in the old gentleman’s shirt-front, which was an unusually large and luminous opal. Having uttered his highly perverse and even suicidal remark, the poet smiled as if in relief, and waited for the other to speak.

“Are you a burglar?” asked the owner of the house at last.

“To make a clean breast of it, I’m not,” answered Gale. “But if you ask me what else I am, I really don’t know.”

The other man came rapidly round the table towards him, and made a motion as if offering his hand, or even both his hands.

“Of course you’re a burglar,” he said; “but it doesn’t matter. Won’t you stay to dinner?”

Then, after a sort of agitated pause, he repeated:

“Come, you really must stay to dinner; there’s a place laid for you.”

Gale looked gravely along the table and counted the number of places laid for dinner. The number disposed of any final doubts he might have had about the meaning of this string of eccentricities. He knew why the host wore opals, and why the mirror had been deliberately broken and why the salt was spilt, and why the knives shone on the table in a pattern of crosses, and why the eccentric householder brought may into the house, and why he decorated it with peacocks’ feathers, and even had a peacock in the garden. He realized that the ladder did not stand where it did to permit people to climb by it to the window, but merely that they might pass under it on entering the door. And he realized that he was the thirteenth man to sit down at that banquet.

“Dinner is just coming in,” said the man with the opals with eager amiability. “I’m just going down to fetch the other fellows up. You’ll find them very interesting company, I assure you; no nonsense about them; shrewd, sharp fellows out against all this superstitious nonsense. My name is Crundle. Humphrey Crundle, and I’m pretty well known in the business world. I suppose I must introduce myself in order to introduce you to the others.”

Gale was vaguely conscious that his absent-minded eye had often rested on the name of Crundle, associated with some soap or lozenge or fountain-pen; and, little as he knew of such things, he could imagine that such an advertiser, though he lived in a little villa, could afford peacocks and five different kinds of wine. But other thoughts were already oppressing his imagination, and he looked in a somewhat sombre fashion out on to the garden of the peacock, where the sunset light was dying on the lawn.

The members of the Thirteen Club, as they came trooping up the stairs and settled into their seats, seemed for the most part to be at least quite ready for their dinner. Most of them had a rather rollicking attitude, which in some took the more vivid form of vulgarity. A few who were quite young, clerks and possibly dependents, had foolish and nervous faces, as if they were doing something a little too daring. Two of them stood out from the company by the singularity of being obviously gentlemen. One of these was a little dried-up old gentleman, with a face that was a labyrinth of wrinkles, on the top of which was perched a very obvious chestnut wig. He was introduced as Sir Daniel Creed, and was apparently a barrister of note in his day, though the day seemed a little distant. The other, who was merely presented as Mr. Noel, was more interesting: a tall, stalwart man of dubious age but indubitable intelligence, even in the first glance of his eyes. His features were handsome in a large and craggy fashion; but the hollows of the temples and the sunken framework of the eyes gave him a look of fatigue that was mental and not physical. The poet’s impalpable intuitions told him that the appearance was not misleading… that the man who had thus come into this odd society had been in many odd societies, probably seeking for something more odd than he had ever found.

It was some time, however, before any of these guests could show anything of their quality, owing to the abounding liveliness and loquacity of their host. Mr. Crundle may, perhaps, have thought it appropriate in a President of a Thirteen Club to talk thirteen to the dozen. Anyhow, for some time he talked for the whole company, rolling about in his chair in radiant satisfaction, like a man who has at last realized his wildest vision of happiness. Indeed, there was something almost abnormal about the gaiety and vivacity of this grey-haired merchant; it seemed to be fed from a fountain within him that owed nothing to the circumstances of festivity. The remarks with which he pelted everybody were often rather random, but always uproariously entertaining to himself. Gale could only dimly speculate on what he would be like when he had emptied all the five glasses in front of him. But, indeed, he was destined to show himself in more than one strange aspect before those glasses were emptied.

It was after one of his repeated assertions that these stories about bad luck were all the same sort of damned nonsense that the keen though quavering voice of old Creed got a word in edgeways.

“There, my dear Crundle, I would make a distinction,” he said in a legal manner. “They are all damned nonsense, but they are not all the same sort of damned nonsense. As a point of historical research, they seem to me to differ in rather a singular fashion. The origin of some is obvious, of others highly obscure. The fancies about Friday and thirteen have probably a religious basis; but what, for instance, can be the basis of objecting to peacocks’ feathers?”

Crundle was replying with a joyful roar that it was some infernal rubbish or other, when Gale, who had quickly slipped into a seat beside the man called Noel, interposed in a conversational manner.

“I fancy I can throw a little light on that. I believe I found a trace of it in looking at some old illuminated manuscripts of the ninth or tenth century. There is a very curious design, in a stiff Byzantine style, representing the two armies preparing for the war in heaven. But St. Michael is handing out spears to the good angels; while Satan is elaborately arming the rebel angels with peacocks’ feathers.”

Noel turned his hollow eyes sharply in the direction of the speaker. “That is really interesting,” he said; “you mean it was all that old theological notion of the wickedness of pride?”

“Well, there’s a whole peacock in the garden for you to pluck,” cried Crundle in his boisterous manner, “if any of you want to go out fighting angels.”

“They are not very effective weapons,” said Gale gravely, “and I fancy that is what the artist in the Dark Ages must have meant. There seems to me to be something that rather hits the wrong imperialism in the right place, about the contrast in the weapon; the fact that the right side was arming for a real and therefore doubtful battle, while the wrong side was already, so to speak, handing out the palms of victory. You cannot fight anybody with the palms of victory.”

Crundle showed a curious restlessness as this conversation proceeded; and a much less radiant restlessness than before. His prominent eyes shot questions at the speakers, his mouth worked, and his fingers began to drum on the table. At last he broke out:

“What’s all this mean, eh? One would think you were half on the side of all the stuff and nonsense… all of you talking about it with those long faces.”

“Pardon me,” interposed the old lawyer, with a relish for repeating the logical point, “my suggestion was very simple, I spoke of causes, not of justifications. I say the cause of the peacock legend is less apparent than that of the bad luck of Friday.”

“Do you think Friday unlucky?” demanded Crundle, like one at bay, turning his starting eyes on the poet.

“No, I think Friday lucky,” answered Gale. “All Christian people, whatever their lighter superstitions, have always thought Friday lucky. Otherwise they would have talked about Bad Friday instead of Good Friday.”

“Oh, Christians be…” began Mr. Crundle with sudden violence; but he was stopped by something in the voice of Noel that seemed to make his violence a vain splutter.

“I’m not a Christian,” said Noel in a voice like stone. “It is useless now to wonder whether I wish I were. But it seems to me that Mr. Gale’s point is a perfectly fair one; that such a religion might well actually contradict such a superstition. And it seems to me also that the truth might be applied yet further. If I believed in God, I should not believe in a God who made happiness depend on knocking over a salt-cellar or seeing a peacock’s feather. Whatever Christianity teaches, I presume it does not teach that the Creator is crazy.”

Gale nodded thoughtfully, as if in partial assent, and answered rather as if he were addressing Noel alone, in the middle of a wilderness.

“In that sense of course you are right,” he said. “But I think there is a little more to be said on the matter. I think most people, as I say, have really taken these superstitions rather lightly, perhaps more lightly than you do. And I think they mostly referred to lighter evils, in that world of rough-and-tumble circumstance which they thought of rather as connected with elves than with angels. But, after all, Christians admit more than one kind even of angels; and some of them are fallen angels… like the people with the peacocks’ feathers. Now I have a feeling that they might really have to do with peacocks’ feathers. Just as lower spirits play low tricks with tables and tambourines, they might play low tricks with knives and salt-cellars. Certainly our souls do not depend on a broken mirror; but there’s nothing an unclean spirit would like better than to make us think so. Whether he succeeds depends on the spirit in which we break it. And I can imagine that breaking the mirror in a certain moral spirit… as, for instance, a spirit of scorn and inhumanity… might bring one in touch with lower influences. I can imagine that a cloud might rest on the house where such a thing was done, and evil spirits cluster about it.”

There was a rather singular silence, a silence that seemed to the speaker to brood and settle even upon the gardens and streets beyond; no one spoke; the silence was punctuated at last by the thin and piercing cry of a peacock.

Then it was that Humphrey Crundle startled them all with his first outbreak. He had been staring at the speaker with bursting eyeballs; at length, when he found his voice, it was so thick and hoarse that the first note of it was hardly more human than the bird’s. He stuttered and stammered with rage, and it was only towards the end of the first sentence that he was even intelligible. ”… Coming here and jabbering blasted drivel and drinking my burgundy like a lord; talking rubbish against our whole… against the very first… why don’t you pull our noses as well? Why the hell don’t you pull our noses?”

“Come, come,” cut in Noel in his trenchant tones, “you are getting unreasonable, Crundle; I understand that this gentleman came here at your own invitation, to take the place of one of our friends.”

“I understood Arthur Bailey sent a wire that he was detained,” observed the more precise lawyer, “and that Mr. Gale had kindly taken his place.”

“Yes,” snapped Crundle, “I asked him to sit down as thirteenth man, and that alone smashes your superstition; for considering how he came in, he’s jolly lucky to get a good dinner.”

Noel again interposed with a remonstrance; but Gale had already risen to his feet. He did not seem annoyed, but rather distrait; and he addressed himself to Creed and Noel, neglecting his excitable host.

“I am much obliged to you gentlemen,” he said, “but I think I shall be going. It is quite true that I was invited to the dinner, but hardly to the house… well, I can’t help having a curious notion about it.”

He played for a moment with the crossed knives on the table; then he said, looking out into the garden…

“The truth is I’m not sure the thirteenth man has been so lucky after all.”

“What do you mean?” cried his host sharply. “Dare you say you haven’t had a good dinner? You’re not going to pretend you’ve been poisoned.”

Gale was still looking out of the window; and he said without moving:

“I am the fourteenth man, and I did not pass under the ladder.”

It was characteristic of old Creed that he could only follow the logical argument in a literal fashion, and missed the symbol and the spiritual atmosphere which the subtler Noel had already understood. For the first time the old lawyer in the red wig really looked a little senile. He blinked at Gale and said querulously: “You don’t mean to say you’d bother to keep all those rules about ladders and things?”

“I’m not sure I should bother to keep them,” replied Gale, “but I am sure I shouldn’t bother to break them. One seems to break so many other things when one begins to break them. There are many things that are almost as easy to break as a looking-glass.” He paused a moment, and added as if in apology: “There are the Ten Commandments, you know.”

There was another abrupt accidental silence, and Noel found himself listening with irrational rigidity for the ugly voice of the beautiful bird outside. But it did not speak. He had the sub-conscious and still more meaningless fancy that it had been strangled in the dark.

Then the poet for the first time turned his face to Humphrey Crundle, and looked straight into the goggling eyes as he spoke.

“Peacocks may not be unlucky; but pride is unlucky. And it was in insolence and contempt that you set yourself to trample on the traditions or the follies of humbler men; so that you have come to trample on a holier thing at last. Cracked mirrors may not be unlucky; but cracked brains are unlucky; and you have gone mad on reason and common sense till you are a criminal lunatic this day. And red may need not be unlucky; but there is something that is more red and much more unlucky; and there are spots of it on the window-sill and on the steps of the ladder. I took it for the red petals myself.”

For the first time in his restless hour of hospitality the man at the head of the table sat perfectly still. Something in his sudden and stony immobility seemed to startle all the rest into life, and they all sprang to their feet with a confused clamour of protest and question. Noel alone seemed to keep his head under the shock.

“Mr. Gale,” he said firmly, “you have said too much or too little. A good many people would say you were talking a lot of lurid nonsense, but I have a notion that what you talk is not always such nonsense as it sounds. But if you leave it as it is, it will be simply unsupported slander. In plain words you say there has been a crime here. Whom do you accuse; or are we all to accuse each other?”

“I do not accuse you,” answered Gale, “and the proof is that if it must be verified, you had better verify it yourself. Sir Daniel Creed is a lawyer, and may very properly accompany you. Go and look yourselves at the marks on the ladder. You will find some more in the grass round the foot of the ladder, leading away in the direction of that big dust-bin in the corner of the garden. I think it would be as well if you looked in the dust-bin. It may be the end of your search.”

Old Crundle continued to sit like a graven image; and something told them that his goggle eyes were now, as it were, turned inward. He was revolving some enigma of his own which seemed to baffle and blind him, so that the whole disordered scene broke about him unnoticed. Creed and Noel left the room and could be heard running down the stairs and talking in low voices under the window. Then their voices died away in the direction of the dust-bin; and still the old man sat with the opal on his breast, as still as an Eastern idol with its sacred gem. Then he seemed suddenly to dilate and glow as if a monstrous lamp had been lit within him. He sprang to his feet, brandished his goblet as if for a toast, and brought it down again on the table so that the glass was shattered and the wine spilt in a blood-red star.

“I’ve got it; I was right,” he cried in a sort of exaltation. “I was right; I was right after all. Don’t you see, all of you? Don’t you see? That man out there isn’t the thirteenth man. He’s really the fourteenth man, and the fellow here is the fifteenth. Arthur Bailey’s the real thirteenth man, and he’s all right, isn’t he? He didn’t actually come to the house, but why should that matter? Why the devil should that matter? He’s the thirteenth member of the club, isn’t he? There can’t be any more thirteenth men afterwards, can there? I don’t care a curse about all the rest; I don’t care what you call me or what you do to me. I say all this fool’s poetical stuff goes to pot, because the man in the dust-bin isn’t number thirteen at all, and I challenge anybody…”

Noel and Creed were standing in the room with very grim faces as the man at the head of the table gabbled on with a frightful volubility. When he gasped and choked for a moment with the rush of his own words, Noel said in a voice of steel:

“I am sorry to say that you were right.”

“Most horrible thing I ever saw in my life,” said old Creed, and sat down suddenly, lifting a liqueur glass of cognac with a shaking hand.

“The body of an unfortunate man with his throat cut has been concealed in the dust-bin,” went on Noel in a lifeless voice. “By the mark on his clothes, which are curiously old-fashioned for a comparatively young man, he seems to have come from Stoke-under-Ham.”

“What was he like?” asked Gale with sudden animation.

Noel looked at him curiously. “He was very long and lank, with hair like tow,” he replied. “What do you mean?”

“I guessed he must have looked a little like me,” answered the poet.

Crundle had collapsed in his chair again after his last and strangest outbreak, and made no attempt at explanation or escape. His mouth was still moving, but he was talking to himself; proving with ever-increasing lucidity and repetition that the man he had murdered had no right to the number thirteen. Sir Daniel Creed seemed for the moment almost as stricken and silent a figure; but it was he who broke the silence. Lifting his bowed head with its grotesque wig, he said suddenly: “This blood cries for justice. I am an old man, but I would avenge it on my own brother.”

“I am just going to telephone for the police,” said Noel quietly. “I can see no cause for hesitation.” His large figure and features looked notably less languid, and his hollow eyes had a glow in them.

A big florid man named Bull, of the commercial traveller type, who had been very noisy and convivial at the other end of the table, now began to take the stage like the foreman of a jury. It was rather typical of him that he waited for more educated people to lead, and then proceeded to lead them.

“No cause for hesitation. No case for sentimentalism,” he trumpeted as healthily as an elephant. “Painful business, of course; old member of the club and all that. But I say I’m no sentimentalist; and whoever did this deserves hanging. Well, there’s no doubt of who did it. We heard him practically confess a minute ago, when these gentlemen were out of the room.”

“Always thought he was a bad lot,” said one of the clerks; possibly a clerk with an old score of his own.

“I am all for acting at once,” said Noel. “Where is the telephone?”

Gabriel Gale stepped in front of the collapsed figure in the chair, and turned his face to the advancing crowd.

“Stop,” he cried, “let me say a word.”

“Well, what is it?” asked Noel steadily.

“I do not like boasting,” said the poet, “but unfortunately the argument can only take that form. I am a sentimentalist, as Mr. Bull would say; I am by trade a sentimentalist; a mere scribbler of sentimental songs. You are all very hard-headed, rational, sensible people who laugh at superstitions; you are practical men, and men of common sense. But your common sense didn’t discover the dead body. You would have smoked your practical cigars and drunk your practical grog and gone home all over smiles, leaving it to rot in the dust-bin. You never found out where your rational sceptical road can lead a man, as it has led that poor gibbering idiot in the chair. A sentimentalist, a dabbler in moonshine, found out that for you; perhaps because he was a sentimentalist. For I really have a streak in me of the moonshine that leads such men astray; that is why I can follow them. And now the lucky sentimentalist must say a word for the unlucky one.”

“Do you mean for the criminal?” asked Creed in his sharp but shaky voice.

“Yes,” replied Gale. “I discovered him and I defend him.”

“So you defend murderers, do you?” demanded Bull.

“Some murderers,” answered Gale calmly. “This one was a rather unique sort of murderer. In fact, I am far from certain that he was a murderer at all. It may have been an accident. It may have been a sort of mechanical action, almost like an automaton.”

The light of long-lost cross-examinations gleamed in Creed’s aged eyes, and his sharp voice no longer shook.

“You mean to say,” he said, “that Crundle read a telegram from Bailey, realized there was a vacant place, went out into the street and talked to a total stranger, brought him in here, went somewhere to fetch a razor or a carving knife, cut his guest’s throat, carried the corpse down the ladder, and carefully covered it with the lid of the dust-bin. And he did all that by accident, or by an automatic gesture.”

“Very well put, Sir Daniel,” answered Gale; “and now let me put you a question, in the same logical style. In your legal language, what about motive? You say he could not assassinate a total stranger by accident; but why should he assassinate a total stranger on purpose? On what purpose? It not only served no end he had in view; it actually ruined everything he had in view. Why in the world should he want to make a gap in his Thirteen Club dinner? Why in the name of wonder should he want to make the thirteenth man a monument of disaster? His own crime was at the expense of his own creed, or cranky doubt, denial, or whatever you call it.”

“That is true,” assented Noel, “and what is the meaning of it all?”

“I do believe,” replied Gale, “that nobody can tell you but myself; and I will tell you why. Do you realize how full life is of awkward attitudes? You get them in snapshots; I suppose the new ugly schools of art are trying to snap them; figures leaning stiffly, standing on one leg, resting unconscious hands on incongruous objects. This is a tragedy of awkward positions. I can understand it because I myself, this very afternoon, was in the devil of an awkward position.

“I had climbed in through that window simply out of silly curiosity, and I was standing at the table like a fool, picking up the knives and putting them straight. I still had my hat on, but when Crundle came in I made a movement to take it off with the knife still in my hand; then I corrected myself and put the knife down first. You know those tiny confused movements one sometimes has. Now Crundle, when he first saw me, and before he saw me close, staggered as if I had been God Almighty or the hangman waiting in his dining-room; and I think I know why. I am awkward and tall and tow-haired, too; and I was standing there dark against the daylight where the other had stood. It must have seemed as if the corpse had lifted the dust-bin lid and crawled back up the ladder, and taken up his station like a ghost. But meanwhile my own little irresolute gesture with the half-lifted knife had told me something. It had told me what really happened.

“When that poor rustic from Somerset strayed into this room he was what perhaps none of us can be, he was shocked. He came of some old rural type that really did believe in such omens. He hastily picked up one of the crossed knives and was putting it straight when he caught sight of the heap of spilt salt. Possibly he thought his own gesture had spilt it. At that crucial instant Crundle entered the room, adding to the confusion of his guest and hastening his hurried attempt at doing two things at once. The unhappy guest, with fingers still clutched round the knife-handle, made a grab at the salt and tried to toss some of it over his shoulder. In the same flash the fanatic in the doorway had leapt upon him like a panther and was tugging at the lifted wrist.

“For all Crundle’s crazy universe was rocking in that instant. You, who talk of superstitions, have you realized that this house is a house of spells? Don’t you know it is chock full of charms and magic rites, only they are all done backwards, as the witches said the Lord’s Prayer? Can you imagine how a witch would feel if two words of the prayer came right by accident? Crundle saw that this clown from the country was reversing all the spells of his own black art. If salt was once thrown over the shoulder, all the great work might yet be undone. With all the strength he could call from hell he hung on to the hand with the knife, caring only to prevent a few grains of silver dust from drifting to the floor.

“God alone knows if it was an accident. I do not say it as an idle phrase. That single split second, and all that was really hidden in it, lies open before God as large and luminous as an eternity. But I am a man and he is a man; and I will not give a man to the gallows, if I can help it, for what may have been accidental or automatic or even a sort of self-defence. But if any of you will take a knife and a pinch of salt and put yourself in the poor fellow’s position, you will see exactly what happened. All I say is this; that at no time and in no way, perhaps, could things have been precisely in that posture, and the edge of a knife been so near to a man’s throat without intention on either side, except by this one particular tangle of trivialities that has led up to this one particular tragedy. It is strange to think of that poor yokel setting out from his far-off Somerset village, with his little handful of local legends, and this brooding eccentric and scoffer rushing out of this villa full of rage of his hobby, and their ending locked in this one unique and ungainly grapple, a wrestle between two superstitions.”

The figure at the head of the table had been almost forgotten like a piece of furniture; but Noel turned his eyes slowly towards it, and said with a cold patience as if to an exasperating child: “Is all this true?”

Crundle sprang unsteadily to his feet, his mouth still working, and they saw at the edge of it a touch of foam.

“What I want to know,” he began in a resonant voice; and then the voice seemed to dry up in his throat and he swayed twice and pitched forward on the table amid the wreck of his own wine and crystal.

“I don’t know about a policeman,” said Noel; “but we shall have to send for a doctor.”

“You will want two doctors for what will have to be done to him,” said Gale; and walked towards the window by which he had come in.

Noel walked with him to the garden gate, past the peacock and the green lawn, that looked almost as blue as the peacock under a strong moonlight. When the poet was outside the gate, he turned and said a last word.

“You are Norman Noel, the great traveller, I think. You interest me more than that unfortunate monomaniac did; and I want to ask you a question. Forgive me if I imagine things for you, so to speak; it is a way I have. You have studied superstitions all over the world, and you have seen things compared with which all that talk of salt and table-knives is like a child’s game of consequences. You have been in the dark forests over which the vampire seems to pass more vast than a dragon; or in the mountains of the werewolf, where men say a man can see in the face of his friend or his wife the eyes of a wild beast. You have known people who had real superstitions; black, towering, terrific superstitions; you have lived with those people; and I want to ask you a question about them.”

“You seem to know something about them yourself,” answered Noel; “but I will answer any question you like.”

“Were they not happier men than you?”

Gale paused a moment as he put the question, and then went on. “Did they not in fact sing more songs, and dance more dances, and drink wine with more real merriment? That was because they believed in evil. In evil spells, perhaps, in evil luck, in evil under all sorts of stupid and ignorant symbols; but still in something to be fought. They at least read things in black and white, and saw life as the battlefield it is. But you are unhappy because you disbelieve in evil, and think it philosophical to see everything in the same light of grey. And I speak to you thus tonight; because tonight you have had an awakening. You saw something worthy of hate and you were happy. A mere murder might not have done it. If it had been some old man about town, or even some young man about town, it might never have touched the nerve. But I know what you felt; there was something shameful beyond speech in the death of that poor clumsy country cousin.”

Noel nodded. “I think it was the shape of his coat-tails,” he said.

“I thought so,” answered Gale. “Well, that is the road to reality. Good night.”

And he continued his walk along the suburban road, unconsciously taking in the new tint of the lawns by moonlight. But he did not see any more peacocks; and it may be accounted probable that he did not want to see any.

VII

THE PURPLE JEWEL

GABRIEL GALE was a painter and poet; he was the last person to pretend to be even a very private detective. It happened that he had solved several mysteries; but most of them were the sort of mysteries more attractive to a mystic. Nevertheless, it also happened once or twice that he had to step out of the clouds of mysticism into the more brisk and bracing atmosphere of murder. Sometimes he succeeded in showing that a murder was a suicide, sometimes that a suicide was a murder; sometimes he was even involved in the study of lighter occupations like forgery and fraud. But the connexion was generally a coincidence; it concerned some point at which his imaginative interest in men’s strange motives and moods happened to lead him, or at any rate them, across the border-line of legality. And in most cases, as he himself pointed out, the motives of murderers and thieves are perfectly sane and even conventional.

“I am no good at such a sensible job,” he would say. “The police could easily make me look a fool in any practical matter such as they discuss in detective stories. What is the good of asking me to measure the marks made by somebody’s feet all over the ground, to show why he was walking about, or where he was going? If you will show me the marks of somebody’s hands all over the ground, I will tell you why he was walking upside down. But I shall find it out in the only way I ever do find out anything. And that is simply because I am mad, too, and often do it myself.”

A similar brotherhood in folly probably led him into the very baffling mystery of the disappearance of Phineas Salt, the famous author and dramatist. Some of the parties involved may have accepted the parallel of setting a thief to catch a thief, when they set a poet to find a poet. For the problem did involve, in all probability, some of the purely poetical motives of a poet. And even practical people admitted that these might possibly be more familiar to a poet than to a policeman.

Phineas Salt was the sort of man whose private life was rather a public life; like that of Byron or D’Annunzio. He was a remarkable man, and perhaps rather remarkable than respectable. But there was much to be really admired in him; and there were of course any number of people who admired even what was not so admirable. The pessimistic critics claimed him as a great pessimist; and this was widely quoted in support of the theory that his disappearance was in fact a suicide. But the optimistic critics had always obstinately maintained that he was a True Optimist (whatever that may be) and these in their natural rosy rapture of optimism, dwelt rather on the idea that he had been murdered. So lurid and romantic had his whole career been made in the eyes of all Europe, that very few people kept their heads enough to reflect, or summoned their courage to suggest, that there is no particular principle in the nature of things to prevent a great poet falling down a well or being attacked by cramp while swimming at Felixstowe. Most of his admirers, and all those who were by profession journalists, preferred more sublime solutions.

He left no family, of the regular sort, except a brother in a small commercial way in the Midlands, with whom he had had very little to do; but he left a number of other people who stood to him in conspicuous spiritual or economic relations. He left a publisher, whose emotions were of mingled grief and hope in the cessation of his production of books and the high-class advertisement given to those already produced. The publisher was himself a man of considerable social distinction, as such distinctions go today; a certain Sir Walter Drummond, the head of a famous and well-established firm; and a type of a certain kind of successful Scotchman who contradicts the common tradition by combining being business-like with being extremely radiant and benevolent. He left a theatrical manager in the very act of launching his great poetical play about Alexander and the Persians; this was an artistic but adaptable Jew, named Isidore Marx, who was similarly balanced between the advantages and disadvantages of an inevitable silence following the cry of “Author”. He left a beautiful but exceedingly bad-tempered leading actress, who was about to gain fresh glory in the part of the Persian Princess; and who was one of the persons, not indeed few, with whom (as the quaint phrase goes) his name had been connected. He left a number of literary friends; some at least of whom were really literary and a few of whom had really been friendly. But his career had been itself so much like a sensational drama on the stage that it was surprising, when it came to real calculations about his probable conduct, how little anybody seemed to know about the essentials of his real character. And without any such clue, the circumstances seemed to make the poet’s absence as disturbing and revolutionary as his presence.

Gabriel Gale, who also moved in the best literary circles, knew all this side of Phineas Salt well enough. He also had been in literary negotiations with Sir Walter Drummond. He also had been approached for poetical plays by Mr. Isidore Marx. He had managed to avoid having “his name connected” with Miss Hertha Hathaway, the great Shakespearean actress; but he knew her well enough, in a world where everybody knows everybody. But being somewhat carelessly familiar with these noisy outer courts of the fame of Phineas, it gave him a mild shock of irony to pass into the more private and prosaic interior. He owed his connexion with the case, not to this general knowledge he shared with the world of letters, but to the accident that his friend, Dr. Garth, had been the family physician of the Salts. And he could not but be amused, when he attended a sort of family council of the matter, to discover how very domestic and even undistinguished the family council was; and how different from the atmosphere of large rumour and loose reputation that roared like a great wind without. He had to remind himself that it is only natural, after all, that anybody’s private affairs should be private. It was absurd to expect that a wild poet would have a wild solicitor or a strange and fantastic doctor or dentist. But Dr. Garth, in the very professional black suit he always wore, looked such a very family physician. The solicitor looked such a very family solicitor. He was a square-faced, silver-haired gentleman named Gunter; it seemed impossible that his tidy legal files and strong-boxes could contain such material as the prolonged scandal of Phineas Salt. Joseph Salt, the brother of Phineas Salt, come up specially from the provinces, seemed so very provincial. It was hard to believe that this silent, sandy-haired, big, embarrassed tradesman, in his awkward clothes, was the one other remaining representative of such a name. The party was completed by Salt’s secretary, who also seemed disconcertingly secretarial to be closely connected with such an incalculable character. Again Gale had to remind himself that even poets can only go mad on condition that a good many people connected with them remain sane. He reflected, with a faint and dawning interest, that Byron probably had a butler; and possibly even a good butler. The disconnected fancy crossed his mind that even Shelley may have gone to the dentist. He also reflected that Shelley’s dentist was probably rather like any other dentist.

Nevertheless, he did not lose the sense of contrast in stepping into this inner chamber of immediate and practical responsibilities. He felt rather out of place in it; for he had no illusions about himself as a business adviser, or one to settle things with the private secretary and the family lawyer. Garth had asked him to come, and he sat patiently looking at Garth; while Gunter, the solicitor, laid the general state of things before the informal committee.

“Mr. Hatt has been telling us,” said the lawyer, glancing for a moment at the secretary who sat opposite, “that he last saw Mr. Phineas Salt at his own flat two hours after lunch on Friday last. Until about an hour ago, I should have said that this interview (which was apparently very short) was the last occasion on which the missing man had been seen. Rather more than an hour ago, however, I was rung up by a person, a complete stranger to me, who declared that he had been with Phineas Salt for the six or seven hours following on that meeting at the flat and that he was coming round to this office as soon as possible, to lay all the facts before us. This evidence, if we find it in any way worthy of credit, will at least carry the story a considerable stage further and perhaps provide us with some important hint about Mr. Salt’s whereabouts or fate. I do not think we can say much more about it until he comes.”

“I rather fancy he has come,” said Dr. Garth. “I heard somebody answering the door; and that sounds like boots scaling these steep legal stairs”; for they had met in the solicitor’s office in Lincoln’s Inn.

The next moment a slim, middle-aged man slipped rather than stepped into the room; there was indeed something smooth and unobtrusive about the very look of his quiet grey suit, at once shabby and shiny and yet carrying something like the last glimmer of satin and elegance. The only other seizable thing about him was that he not only had rather long dark hair parted down the middle, but his long olive face was fringed with a narrow dark beard, which was also parted in the middle, drooping in two separated strands. But as he entered he laid on a chair a soft black hat with a very large brim and a very low crown; which somehow called up instantly to the fancy the cafés and the coloured lights of Paris.

“My name is James Florence,” he said in a cultivated accent. “I was a very old friend of Phineas Salt; and in our younger days I have often travelled about Europe with him. I have every reason to believe that I travelled with him on his last journey.”

“His last journey,” repeated the lawyer, looking at him with frowning attention; “are you prepared to say that Mr. Salt is dead, or are you saying this for sensationalism?”

“Well, he is either dead or something still more sensational,” said Mr. James Florence.

“What do you mean?” asked the other sharply. “What could be more sensational than his death?”

The stranger looked at him with a fixed and very grave expression and then said simply: “I cannot imagine.”

Then, when the lawyer made an angry movement, as if suspecting a joke, the man added equally gravely: “I am still trying to imagine.”

“Well,” said Gunter, after a pause, “perhaps you had better tell your story and we will put the conversation on a regular footing. As you probably know, I am Mr. Salt’s legal adviser; this is his brother, Mr. Joseph Salt, whom I am advising also; this is Dr. Garth, his medical adviser. This is Mr. Gabriel Gale.”

The stranger bowed to the company and took a seat with quiet confidence.

“I called on my old friend Salt last Friday afternoon about five o’clock. I think I saw this gentleman leaving the flat as I came in.” He looked across at the secretary, Mr. Hatt, a hard-faced and reticent man, who concealed with characteristic discretion, the American name of Hiram; but could not quite conceal a certain American keenness about the look of his long chin and his spectacles. He regarded the newcomer with a face of wood, and said nothing as usual.

“When I entered the flat, I found Phineas in a very disordered and even violent condition, even for him. In fact somebody seemed to have been breaking the furniture, a statuette was knocked off its pedestal and a bowl of irises upset; and he was striding up and down the room like a roaring lion with his red mane rampant and his beard a bonfire. I thought it might be merely an artistic mood, a fine shade of poetical feeling; but he told me he had been entertaining a lady. Miss Hertha Hathaway, the actress, had only just left.”

“Here, wait a minute,” interposed the solicitor. “It would appear that Mr. Hatt, the secretary, had also only just left. But I don’t think you said anything about a lady, Mr. Hatt.”

“It’s a pretty safe rule,” said the impenetrable Hiram. “You never asked me about any lady. I’ve got my own work to do and I told you how I left when I’d done it.”

“This is rather important, though,” said Gunter doubtfully. “If Salt and the actress threw bowls and statues at each other… well, I suppose we may cautiously conclude there was some slight difference of opinion.”

“There was a final smash-up,” said Florence frankly. “Phineas told me he was through with all that sort of thing and, as far as I could make out, with everything else as well. He was in a pretty wild state; I think he had been drinking a little already; then he routed out a dusty old bottle of absinthe and said that he and I must drink it again in memory of old days in Paris; for it was the last time, or the last day, or some expression of that sort. Well, I hadn’t drunk it myself for a long time; but I knew enough about it to know that he was drinking a great deal too much, and it’s not a thing like ordinary wine or brandy; the state it can get you into is quite extraordinary; more like the clear madness that comes from hashish. And he finally rushed out of the house with that green fire in his brain and began to get out his car; starting it quite correctly and even driving it well, for there is a lucidity in such intoxication; but driving it faster and faster down the dreary vistas of the Old Kent Road and out into the country towards the south-east. He had dragged me with him with the same sort of hypnotic energy and uncanny conviviality; but I confess I felt pretty uncomfortable spinning out along the country roads with twilight turning to dark. We were nearly killed several times; but I don’t think he was trying to be killed… at least not there on the road by an ordinary motor accident. For he kept on crying out that he wanted the high and perilous places of the earth; peaks and precipices and towers; that he would like to take his last leap from some such pinnacle and either fly like an eagle or fall like a stone. And all that seemed the more blind and grotesque because we were driving further and further into some of the flattest country in England, where he certainly would never find any mountains such as towered and toppled in his dream. And then, after I don’t know how many hours, he gave a new sort of cry; and I saw, against the last grey strip of the gloaming and all the flat land towards the east, the towers of Canterbury.”

“I wonder,” said Gabriel Gale suddenly, like a man coming out of a dream, “how they did upset the statuette. Surely the woman threw it, if anybody did. He’d hardly have done a thing like that, even if he was drunk.”

Then he turned his head slowly and stared rather blankly at the equally blank face of Mr. Hatt; but he said no more and, after a slightly impatient silence, the man called Florence went on with his narrative.

“Of course I knew that the moment he saw the great Gothic towers of the cathedral they would mingle with his waking nightmare and in a way fulfil and crown it. I cannot say whether he had taken that road in order to reach the cathedral; or whether it was merely a coincidence; but there was naturally nothing else in all that landscape that could so fit in with his mood about steep places and dizzy heights. And so of course he took up his crazy parable again and talked about riding upon gargoyles, as upon demon horses, or hunting with hell-hounds above the winds of heaven. It was very late before we reached the cathedral; and though it stands more deeply embedded in the town than is common in cathedral cities, it so happened that the houses nearest to us were all barred and silent and we stood in a deep angle of the building, which had something of seclusion and was covered with the vast shadow of the tower. For a strong moon was already brightening behind the cathedral and I remember the light of it made a sort of ring in Salt’s ragged red hair like a dull crimson fire. It seemed a rather unholy halo; and it is a detail I remember the more, because he himself was declaiming in praise of moonshine and especially of the effect of stained-glass windows seen against the moon rather than the sun, as in the famous lines in Keats. He was wild to get inside the building and see the coloured glass, which he swore was the only really successful thing religion ever did; and when he found the cathedral was locked up (as was not unusual at that hour) he had a grand final reaction of rage and scorn and began to curse the dean and chapter and everyone else. Then a blast of boyish historical reminiscence seemed to sweep through his changing mind; and he caught up a great ragged stone from the border of the turf and struck thunderous blows on the door with it, as with a hammer, and shouted aloud, ‘King’s men! King’s men! Where is the traitor? We have come to kill the archbishop.’ Then he laughed groggily and said, ‘Fancy killing Dr. Randall Davidson. … But Becket was really worth killing. He had lived, by God! He had really made the best of both worlds, in a bigger sense than they use the phrase for. Not both at once and both tamely, as the snobs do. But one at a time and both wildly and to the limit. He went clad in crimson and gold and gained laurels and overthrew great knights in tournaments; and then suddenly became a saint, giving his goods to the poor, fasting, dying a martyr. Ah, that is the right way to do it! The right way to live a Double Life! No wonder miracles were worked at his tomb.’ Then he hurled the heavy flint from him; and suddenly all the laughter and historical rant seemed to die out of his face and to leave it rather sad and sober; and as stony as one of the stone faces carved above the Gothic doors. ‘I shall work a miracle tonight,’ he said stolidly, ‘after I have died.’

“I asked him what in the world he meant; and he made no answer. But he began abruptly to talk to me in quite a quiet and friendly and even affectionate way; thanking me for my companionship on this and many occasions; and saying that we must part; for his time was come. But when I asked him where he was going, he only pointed a finger upwards; and I could not make out at all whether he meant metaphorically that he was going to heaven or materially that he was going to scale the high tower. Anyhow, the only stairway for scaling it was inside and I could not imagine how he could reach it. I tried to question him and he answered, ‘I shall ascend…; I shall be lifted up… but no miracles will be worked at my tomb. For my body will never be found.’

“And then, before I could move, and without a gesture of warning, he leapt up and caught a stone bracket by the gateway; in another second he was astride it; in a third standing on it; and in a fourth vanished utterly in the vast shadow of the wall above. Once again I heard his voice much higher up and even far away, crying, ‘I shall ascend.’ Then all was silence and solitude. I cannot undertake to say whether he did ascend. I can only say with tolerable certainty that he did not descend.”

“You mean,” said Gunter gravely, “that you have never seen him since.”

“I mean,” answered James Florence equally gravely, “that I doubt whether anybody on earth has seen him since.”

“Did you make inquiries on the spot?” pursued the lawyer.

The man called Florence laughed in a rather embarrassed fashion. “The truth is,” he said, “that I knocked up the neighbours and even questioned the police; and I couldn’t get anybody to believe me. They said I had had something to drink, which was true enough; and I think they fancied I had seen myself double, and was trying to chase my own shadow over the cathedral roofs. I dare say they know better now there has been a hue and cry in the newspapers. As for me, I took the last train back to London.”

“What about the car?” asked Garth, sharply; and a light of wonder or consternation came over the stranger’s face.

“Why, hang it all!” he cried. “I forgot all about poor Salt’s car! We left it backed into a crack between two old houses just by the cathedral. I never thought of it again till this minute.”

Gunter got up from his desk and went into the inner room in which he was heard obscurely telephoning. When he came back, Mr. Florence had already picked up his round black hat in his usual unembarrassed manner and suggested that he had better be going; for he had told all that he knew about the affair. Gunter watched him walking away with an interested expression; as if he were not quite so certain of the last assertion as he would like to be. Then he turned to the rest of the company and said:

“A curious yarn. A very curious yarn. But there’s another curious thing you ought to know, that may or may not be connected with it.” For the first time he seemed to take notice of the worthy Joseph Salt, who was present as the nearest surviving relative of the deceased or disappearing person. “Do you happen to know, Mr. Salt, what was your brother’s exact financial position?”

“I don’t,” said the provincial shopkeeper shortly, and contrived to convey an infinite degree of distance and distaste. “Of course you understand, gentlemen, that I’m here to do anything I can for the credit of the family. I wish I could feel quite certain that finding poor Phineas will be for the credit of the family. He and I hadn’t much in common, as you may imagine; and to tell the truth, all these newspaper stories don’t do a man like me very much good. Men may admire a poet for drinking green fire or trying to fly from a church tower; but they don’t order their lunch from a pastry-cook’s shop kept by his brother; they get a fancy there might be a little too much green fire in the ginger-ale. And I’ve only just opened my shop in Croydon; that is, I’ve bought a new business there. Also,” and he looked down at the table with an embarrassment rather rustic but not unmanly, “I’m engaged to be married; and the young lady is very active in church work.”

Garth could not suppress a smile at the incongruous lives of the two brothers; but he saw that there was, after all, a good deal of common sense in the more obscure brother’s attitude.

“Yes,” he said, “I quite see that; but you can hardly expect the public not to be interested.”

“The question I wanted to ask,” said the solicitor, “has a direct bearing on something I have just discovered. Have you any notion even a vague one, of what Phineas Salt’s income was, or if he had any capital?”

“Well,” said Joseph Salt reflectively, “I don’t think he really had much capital; he may have had the five thousand we each of us got from the old dad’s business. In fact, I think he had; but I think he lived up to the edge of his income and a bit beyond. He sometimes made big scoops on a successful play or so; but you know the sort of fellow he was; and the big scoop went in a big splash. I should guess he had two or three thousand in the bank when he disappeared.”

“Quite so,” said the solicitor gravely. “He had two thousand five hundred in the bank on the day he disappeared. And he drew it all out on the day he disappeared. And it entirely disappeared on the day he disappeared.”

“Do you think he’s bolted to foreign climes or something?” asked the brother.

“Ah,” answered the lawyer, “he may have done so. Or he may have intended to do so and not done so.”

“Then how did the money disappear?” asked Garth.

“It may have disappeared,” replied Gunter, “while Phineas was drunk and talking nonsense to a rather shady Bohemian acquaintance, with a remarkable gift of narration.”

Garth and Gale both glanced sharply across at the speaker; and both, observant in such different ways, realized that the lawyer’s face was a shade too grim to be called merely cynical.

“Ah,” cried the doctor with something like a catch in his breath. “And you mean something worse than theft.”

“I have no right to assert even theft,” said the lawyer, without relaxing his sombre expression; “but I have a right to suspect things that go rather deep. To begin with, there is some evidence for the start of Mr. Florence’s story, but none for its conclusion. Mr. Florence met Mr. Hatt; I take it, from the absence of contradiction, that Mr. Hatt also met Mr. Florence.”

On the poker face of Mr. Hatt there was still an absence of contradiction; that might presumably be taken for confirmation.

“Indeed, I have found some evidence corroborating the story of Salt starting with Florence in the car. There is no evidence corroborating all that wild moonlight antic on the roads of Kent; and if you ask me, I think it very likely that this particular joy-ride ended in some criminal den in the Old Kent Road. I telephoned a moment ago to ask about the car left in Canterbury; and they cannot at present find traces of any such car. Above all, there is the damning fact that this fellow Florence forgot all about his imaginary car, and contradicted himself by saying that he went back by train. That alone makes me think his story is false.”

“Does it?” asked Gale, looking at him with childlike wonder. “Why, that alone makes me think his story is true.”

“How do you mean?” asked Gunter; “that alone?”

“Yes,” said Gale; “that one detail is so true that I could almost believe the truth of all the rest, if he’d described Phineas as flying from the tower on a stone dragon.”

He sat frowning and blinking for a moment and then said rather testily: “Don’t you see it’s just the sort of mistake that would be made by that sort of man? A shabby, impecunious man, a man who never travels far except in trains, is caught up for one wild ride in a rich friend’s car, drugged into a sort of dream of absinthe, dragged into a topsy-turvy mystery like a nightmare, wakes up to find his friend caught up into the sky and everybody, in broad daylight, denying that the thing had ever happened. In that sort of chilly, empty awakening, a poor man talking to contemptuous policemen, he would no more have remembered any responsibility for the car than if it had been a fairy chariot drawn by griffins. It was part of the dream. He would automatically fall back on his ordinary way of life and take a third-class ticket home. But he would never make such a blunder in a story he had entirely made up for himself. The instant I heard him make that howler, I knew he was telling the truth.”

The others were gazing at the speaker in some mild surprise, when the telephone bell, strident and prolonged, rang in the adjoining office. Gunter got hastily to his feet and went to answer it, and for a few moments there was no sound but the faint buzz of his questions and replies. Then he came back into the room, his strong face graven with a restrained stupefaction.

“This is a most remarkable coincidence,” he said; “and, I must admit, a confirmation of what you say. The police down there have found the marks of a car, with tyres and general proportions like Phineas Salt’s, evidently having stood exactly where James Florence professed to have left it standing. But what is even more odd, it has gone; the tracks show it was driven off down the road to the south-east by somebody. Presumably by Phineas Salt.”

“To the south-east,” cried Gale, and sprang to his feet. “I thought so!”

He took a few strides up and down the room and then said: “But we mustn’t go too fast. There are several things. To begin with, any fool can see that Phineas would drive to the east; it was nearly daybreak when he disappeared. Of course, in that state, he would drive straight into the sunrise. What else could one do? Then, if he was really full of that craze for crags or towers, he would find himself leaving the last towers behind and driving into flatter and flatter places; for that road leads down into Thanet. What would he do? He must make for the chalk cliffs that look down at least on sea and sand; but I fancy he would want to look down on people, too; just as he might have looked down on the people of Canterbury from the cathedral tower… I know that south-eastern road…”

Then he faced them solemnly and, like one uttering a sacred mystery, said, “Margate.”

“And why?” asked the staring Garth.

“A form of suicide, I suppose,” said the solicitor dryly. “What could a man of that sort want to do at Margate except commit suicide?”

“What could any man want at Margate except suicide?” asked Dr. Garth, who had a prejudice against such social resorts.

“A good many millions of God’s images go there simply for fun,” said Gale; “but it remains to be shown why one of them should be Phineas Salt… there are possibilities… those black crawling masses seen from the white cliffs might be a sort of vision for a pessimist; possibly a dreadful destructive vision of shutting the gates in the cliffs and inundating them all in the ancient awful sea… or could he have some cranky notion of making Margate glorious by his creative or destructive acts; changing the very sound of the name, making it heroic or tragic for ever? There have been such notions in such men… but wherever this wild road leads I am sure it ends in Margate.”

The worthy tradesman of Croydon was the first to get to his feet after Gale had risen, and he fingered the lapels of his outlandish coat with all his native embarrassment. “I’m afraid all this is beyond me, gentlemen,” he said, “gargoyles and dragons and pessimists and such are not in my line. But it does seem that the police have got a clue that points down the Margate road; and if you ask me, I think we’d better discuss this matter again when the police have investigated a little more.”

“Mr. Salt is perfectly right,” said the lawyer heartily. “See what it is to have a business man to bring us back to business. I will go and make some more inquiries; and soon, perhaps, I may have a little more to tell you.”

If Gabriel Gale was, and felt himself to be, an incongruous figure in the severe framework of leather and parchment, of law and commerce, represented by the office of Mr. Gunter, it might well have been supposed that he would feel even more of a fish out of water in the scene of the second family council. For it was held at the new head-quarters of the family, or all that remained of the family; the little shop in Croydon over which the lost poet’s very prosaic brother was presiding with a mixture of the bustle of a new business and the last lingering formalities of a funeral. Mr. J. Salt’s suburban shop was a very suburban shop. It was a shop for selling confectionery and sweetmeats and similar things; with a sort of sideshow of very mild refreshments, served on little round shiny tables and apparently chiefly consisting of pale green lemonade. The cakes and sweets were arranged in decorative patterns in the window, to attract the eye of Croydon youth, and as the building consisted chiefly of windows, it seemed full of a sort of cold and discolouring light. A parlour behind, full of neat but illogical knicknacks and mementoes, was not without a sampler, a testimonial from a Provident Society and a portrait of George V. But it was never easy to predict in what place or circumstances Mr. Gale would find a certain intellectual interest. He generally looked at objects, not objectively in the sense of seeing them as themselves, but in connexion with some curious trains of thought of his own; and, for some reason or other, he seemed to take quite a friendly interest in Mr. Salt’s suburban shop. Indeed, he seemed to take more interest in this novel scene than in the older and more serious problem which he had come there to solve. He gazed entranced at the china dogs and pink pincushions on the parlour mantelpiece; he was with difficulty drawn away from a rapt contemplation of the diamond pattern of lemon-drops and raspberry-drops which decorated the window; and he looked even at the lemonade as if it were as important as that pale green wine of wormwood, which had apparently played a real part in the tragedy of Phineas Salt.

He had been indeed unusually cheerful all the morning, possibly because it was a beautiful day, possibly for more personal reasons; and had drawn near to the rendezvous through the trim suburban avenues with a step of unusual animation. He saw the worthy confectioner himself, stepping out of a villa of a social shade faintly superior to his own; a young woman with a crown of braided brown hair, and a good grave face, came with him down the garden path. Gale had little difficulty in identifying the young lady interested in church work. The poet gazed at the pale squares of lawn and the few thin and dwarfish trees with quite a sentimental interest, almost as if it were a romance of his own; nor did his universal good humour fail him even when he encountered, a few lamp-posts further down the road, the saturnine and somewhat unsympathetic countenance of Mr. Hiram Hatt. The lover was still lingering at the garden gate, after the fashion of his kind, and Hatt and Gale walked more briskly ahead of him towards his home. To Hatt the poet made the somewhat irrelevant remark: “Do you understand that desire to be one of the lovers of Cleopatra?”

Mr. Hatt, the secretary, indicated that, had he nourished such a desire, his appearance on the historical scene would have lacked something of true American hustle and punctuality.

“Oh, there are plenty of Cleopatras still,” answered Gale; “and plenty of people who have that strange notion of being the hundredth husband of an Egyptian cat. What could have made a man of real intellect, like that fellow’s brother, break himself all up for a woman like Hertha Hathaway?”

“Well, I’m all with you there,” said Hatt. “I didn’t say anything about the woman, because it wasn’t my business; but I tell you, sir, she was just blue ruin and vitriol. Only the fact that I didn’t mention her seems to have set your friend the solicitor off on another dance of dark suspicions. I swear he fancies she and I were mixed up in something; and probably had to do with the disappearance of Phineas Salt.”

Gale looked hard at the man’s hard face for a moment and then said irrelevantly: “Would it surprise you to find him at Margate?”

“No; nor anywhere else,” replied Hatt. “He was restless just then and drifted about into the commonest crowds. He did no work lately; sometimes sat and stared at a blank sheet of paper as if he had no ideas.”

“Or as if he had too many,” said Gabriel Gale.

With that they turned in at the confectioner’s door: and found Dr. Garth already in the outer shop, having only that moment arrived. But when they penetrated to the parlour, they came on a figure that gave them, indescribably, a cold shock of sobriety. The lawyer was already seated in that gimcrack room, resolutely and rather rudely, with his top hat on his head, like a bailiff in possession; but they all sensed something more sinister, as of the bearer of the bowstring.

“Where is Mr. Joseph Salt?” he asked. “He said he would be home at eleven.”

Gale smiled faintly and began to fiddle with the funny little ornaments on the mantelpiece. “He is saying farewell,” he said. “Sometimes it is rather a long word to say.”

“We must begin without him,” said Gunter. “Perhaps it is just as well.”

“You mean you have bad news for him?” asked the doctor, lowering his voice. “Have you the last news of his brother?”

“I believe it may fairly be called the last news,” answered the lawyer dryly. “In the light of the latest discoveries…Mr. Gale, I should be much obliged if you would leave off fidgeting with those ornaments and sit down. There is something that somebody has got to explain.”

“Yes,” replied Gale rather hazily. “Isn’t this what he has got to explain?”

He picked up something from the mantelpiece and put it on the central table. It was a very absurd object to be stared at thus, as an exhibit in a grim museum of suicide or crime. It was a cheap, childish, pink and white mug, inscribed in large purple letters, “A Present from Margate.”

“There is a date inside,” said Gale, looking down dreamily into the depths of this remarkable receptacle. “This year. And we’re still at the beginning of the year, you know.”

“Well, it may be one of the things,” said the solicitor. “But I have got some other Presents from Margate.”

He took a sheaf of papers from his breast-pocket and laid them out thoughtfully on the table before he spoke.

“Understand, to begin with, that there really is a riddle and the man really has vanished. Don’t imagine a man can easily melt into a modern crowd; the police have traced his car on the road and could have traced him, if he had left it. Don’t imagine anybody can simply drive down country roads throwing corpses out of cars. There are always a lot of fussy people about, who notice a little thing like that. Whatever he did, sooner or later the explanation would probably be found; and we have found it.”

Gale put down the mug abruptly and stared across, still open-mouthed, but as it were more dry-throated, coughing and stammering now with a real eagerness.

“Have you really found out?” he asked. “Do you know all about the Purple Jewel?”

“Look here!” cried the doctor, as if with a generous indignation; “this is getting too thick. I don’t mind being in a mystery, but it needn’t be a melodrama. Don’t say that we are after the Rajah’s Ruby. Don’t say, oh, don’t say, that it is in the eye of the god Vishnu.”

“No,” replied the poet. “It is in the eye of the Beholder.”

“And who’s he?” asked Gunter. “I don’t know exactly what you’re talking about, but there may have been a theft involved. Anyhow, there was more than a theft.”

He sorted out from his papers two or three photographs of the sort that are taken casually with hand-cameras in a holiday crowd. As he did so he said:

“Our investigations at Margate have not been fruitless; in fact they have been rather fruitful. We have found a witness, a photographer on Margate beach, who testifies to having seen a man corresponding to Phineas Salt, burly and with a big red beard and long hair, who stood for some time on an isolated crag of white chalk, which stands out from the cliff, and looked down at the crowds below. Then he descended by a rude stairway cut in the chalk and, crossing a crowded part of the beach, spoke to another man who seemed to be an ordinary clerk or commonplace holiday-maker; and, after a little talk, they went up to the row of bathing-sheds, apparently for the purpose of having a dip in the sea. My informant thinks they did go into the sea; but cannot be quite so certain. What he is quite certain of is that he never saw the red-bearded man again, though he did see the common-place clean-shaven man, both when he returned in his bathing-suit and when he resumed his ordinary, his very ordinary, clothes. He not only saw him, but he actually took a snapshot of him, and there he is.”

He handed the photograph to Garth, who gazed at it with slowly rising eyebrows. The photograph represented a sturdy man with a bulldog jaw but rather blank eyes, with his head lifted, apparently staring out to sea. He wore very light holiday clothes, but of a clumsy, unfashionable cut; and, so far as he could be seen under the abrupt shadow and rather too jaunty angle of his stiff straw hat, his hair was of some light colour. Only, as it happened, the doctor had no need to wait for the development of colour photography. For he knew exactly what colour it was. He knew it was a sort of sandy red; he had often seen it, not in the photograph, but on the head where it grew. For the man in the stiff straw hat was most unmistakably Mr. Joseph Salt, the worthy confectioner and new social ornament to the suburb of Croydon.

“So Phineas went down to Margate to meet his brother,” said Garth. “After all, that’s natural enough in one way. Margate is exactly the sort of place his brother would go to.”

“Yes; Joseph went there on one of those motor-charabanc expeditions, with a whole crowd of other trippers, and he seems to have returned the same night on the same vehicle. But nobody knows when, where or if his brother Phineas returned.”

“I rather gather from your tone,” said Garth very gravely, “that you think his brother Phineas never did return.”

“I think his brother never will return,” said the lawyer, “unless it happens (by a curious coincidence) that he was drowned while bathing and his body is some day washed up on the shore. But there’s a strong current running just there that would carry it far away.”

“The plot thickens, certainly,” said the doctor. “All this bathing business seems to complicate things rather.”

“I am afraid,” said the lawyer, “that it simplifies them very much.”

“What,” asked Garth sharply. “Simplifies?”

“Yes,” said the other, gripping the arms of his chair and rising abruptly to his feet. “I think this story is as simple as the story of Cain and Abel. And rather like it”.

There was a shocked silence, which was at length broken by Gale, who was peering into the Present from Margate, crying or almost crowing, in the manner of a child.

“Isn’t it a funny little mug! He must have bought it before he came back in the charabanc. Such a jolly thing to buy, when you have just murdered your own brother.”

“It does seem a queer business,” said Dr. Garth frowning. “I suppose one might work out some explanation of how he did it. I suppose a man might drown another man while they were bathing, even off a crowded beach like that. But I’m damned if I can understand why he did it. Have you discovered a motive as well as a murder?”

“The motive is old enough and I think obvious enough,” answered Gunter. “We have in this case all the necessary elements of a hatred, of that slow and corroding sort that is founded on jealousy. Here you had two brothers, sons of the same insignificant Midland tradesman; having the same education, environment, opportunities; very nearly of an age, very much of one type, even of one physical type, rugged, red-haired, rather plain and heavy, until Phineas made himself a spectacle with that big Bolshevist beard and bush of hair; not so different in youth but that they must have had ordinary rivalries and quarrels on fairly equal terms. And then see the sequel. One of them fills the world with his name, wears a laurel like the crown of Petrach, dines with kings and emperors and is worshipped by women like a hero on the films. The other… isn’t it enough to say that the other has had to go on slaving all his life in a room like this?”

“Don’t you like the room?” inquired Gale with the same simple eagerness. “Why, I think some of the ornaments are so nice!”

“It is not yet quite clear,” went on Gunter, ignoring him, “how the pastry-cook lured the poet down to Margate and a dip in the sea. But the poet was admittedly rather random in his movements just then, and too restless to work; and we have no reason to suppose that he knew of the fraternal hatred or that he in any way reciprocated it. I don’t think there would be much difficulty in swimming with a man beyond the crowd of bathers and holding him under water, till you could send his body adrift on a current flowing away from the shore. Then he went back and dressed and calmly took his place in the charabanc.”

“Don’t forget the dear little mug,” said Gale softly. “He stopped to buy that and then went home. Well, it’s a very able and thorough explanation and reconstruction of the crime, my dear Gunter, and I congratulate you. Even the best achievements have some little flaw; and there’s only one trifling mistake in yours. You’ve got it the wrong way round.”

“What do you mean?” asked the other quickly.

“Quite a small correction,” explained Gale. “You think that Joseph was jealous of Phineas. As a matter of fact, Phineas was jealous of Joseph.”

“My dear Gale, you are simply playing the goat,” said the doctor very sharply and impatiently. “And let me tell you I don’t think it’s a decent occasion for doing it. I know all about your jokes and fancies and paradoxes, but we’re all in a damned hard position, sitting here in the man’s own house, and knowing we’re in the house of a murderer.”

“I know… it’s simply infernal,” said Gunter, his stiffness shaken for the first time; and he looked up with a shrinking jerk, as if he half expected to see the rope hanging from that dull and dusty ceiling.

At the same moment the door was thrown open and the man they had convicted of murder stood in the room. His eyes were bright like a child’s over a new toy, his face was flushed to the roots of his fiery hair, his broad shoulders were squared backwards like a soldier’s; and in the lapel of his coat was a large purple flower, of a colour that Gale remembered in the garden-beds of the house down the road. Gale had no difficulty in guessing the reason of this triumphant entry.

Then the man with the buttonhole saw the tragic faces on the other side of the table and stopped, staring.

“Well,” he said at last, in a rather curious tone. “What about your search?”

The lawyer was about to open his locked lips with some such question as was once asked of Cain by the voice out of the cloud, when Gale interrupted him by flinging himself backwards in a chair and emitting a short but cheery laugh.

“I’ve given up the search,” said Gale gaily. “No need to bother myself about that any more.”

“Because you know you will never find Phineas Salt,” said the tradesman steadily.

“Because I have found him,” said Gabriel Gale. Dr. Garth got to his feet quickly and remained staring at them with bright eyes.

“Yes,” said Gale, “because I am talking to him.” And he smiled across at his host, as if he had just been introduced.

Then he said rather more gravely: “Will you tell us all about it, Mr. Phineas Salt? Or must I guess it for you all the way through?”

There was a heavy silence.

“You tell the story,” said the shopkeeeper at last. “I am quite sure you know all about it.”

“I only know about it,” answered Gale gently, “because I think I should have done the same thing myself. It’s what some call having a sympathy with lunatics… including literary men.”

“Hold on for a moment,” interposed the staring Mr. Gunter. “Before you get too literary, am I to understand that this gentleman who owns this shop, actually is the poet, Phineas Salt? In that case, where is his brother?”

“Making the Grand Tour, I imagine,” said Gale. “Gone abroad for a holiday, anyhow; a holiday which will be not the less enjoyable for the two thousand five hundred pounds that his brother gave him to enjoy himself with. His slipping away was easy enough; he only swam a little bit further along the shore to where they had left another suit of clothes. Meanwhile our friend here went back and shaved off his beard and effected the change of appearance in the bathing-tent. He was quite sufficiently like his brother to go back with a crowd of strangers. And then, you will doubtless note, he opened a new shop in an entirely new neighbourhood.”

“But why?” cried Garth in a sort of exasperation. “In the name of all the saints and angels, why? That’s what I can’t make any sense of.”

“I will tell you why,” said Gabriel Gale, “but you won’t make any sense of it.”

He stared at the mug on the table for a moment and then said: “This is what you would call a nonsense story; and you can only understand it by understanding nonsense; or, as some politely call it, poetry. The poet Phineas Salt was a man who had made himself master of everything, in a sort of frenzy of freedom and omnipotence. He had tried to feel everything, experience everything, imagine everything that could be or could not be. And he found, as all such men have found, that that illimitable liberty is itself a limit. It is like the circle, which is at once an eternity and a prison. He not only wanted to do everything. He wanted to be everybody. To the Pantheist God is everybody: to the Christian He is also Somebody. But this sort of Pantheist will not narrow himself by a choice. To want everything is to will nothing. Mr. Hatt here told me that Phineas would sit staring at a blank sheet of paper; and I told him it was not because he had nothing to write about, but because he could write about anything. When he stood on that cliff and looked down on that mazy crowd, so common and yet so complex, he felt he could write ten thousand tales and then that he could write none; because there was no reason to choose one more than another.

“Well, what is the step beyond that? What comes next? I tell you there are only two steps possible after that. One is the step over the cliff; to cease to be. The other is to be somebody, instead of writing about everybody. It is to become incarnate as one real human being in that crowd; to begin all over again as a real person. Unless a man be born again…

“He tried it and found that this was what he wanted; the things he had not known since childhood; the silly little lower middle-class things; to have to do with lollipops and ginger-beer; to fall in love with a girl round the corner and feel awkward about it; to be young. That was the only paradise still left virgin and unspoilt enough, in the imagination of a man who has turned the seven heavens upside down. That is what he tried as his last experiment, and I think we can say it has been a success.”

“Yes,” said the confectioner with a stony satisfaction, “it has been a great success.”

Mr. Gunter, the solicitor, rose also with a sort of gesture of despair. “Well, I don’t think I understand it any better for knowing all about it,” he said; “but I suppose it must be as you say. But how in the world did you know it yourself?”

“I think it was those coloured sweets in the window that set me off,” said Gale. “I couldn’t take my eyes off them. They were so pretty. Sweets are better than jewellery: the children are right. For they have the fun of eating rubies and emeralds. I felt sure they were speaking to me in some way. And then I realized what they were saying. Those violet or purple raspberry drops were as vivid and glowing as amethysts, when you saw them from inside the shop; but from outside, with the light on them, they would look quite dingy and dark. Meanwhile, there were plenty of other things, gilded or painted with opaque colours, that would have looked much more gay in the shop-window, to the customer looking in at it. Then I remembered the man who said he must break into the cathedral to see the coloured windows from inside, and I knew it in an instant. The man who had arranged that shop-window was not a shopkeeper. He was not thinking of how things looked from the street, but of how they looked to his own artistic eye from inside. From there he saw purple jewels. And then, thinking of the cathedral, of course I remembered something else. I remembered what the poet had said about the Double Life of St. Thomas of Canterbury; and how when he had all the earthly glory, he had to have the exact opposite. St. Phineas of Croydon is also living a Double Life.”

“Well,” broke out Gunter, heaving with a sort of heavy gasp, “with all respect to him, if he has done all this, I can only say that he must have gone mad.”

“No,” said Gale, “a good many of my friends have gone mad and I am by no means without sympathy with them. But you can call this the story of ‘The Man Who went Sane’.”

VIII

THE ASYLUM OF ADVENTURE

A VERY small funeral procession passed through a very small churchyard on the rocky coast of Cornwall; carrying a coffin to its grave under the low and windy wall. The coffin was quite formal and unobtrusive; but the knot of fishermen and labourers eyed it with the slanted eyes of superstition; almost as if it had been the misshapen coffin of legend that was said to contain a monster. For it contained the body of a near neighbour, who had long lived a stone’s throw from them, and whom they had never seen.

The figure following the coffin, the chief and only mourner, they had seen fairly often. He had a habit of disappearing into his late friend’s house and being invisible for long periods, but he came and went openly. No one knew when the dead man had first come, but he probably came in the night; and he went out in the coffin. The figure following it was a tall figure in black, bare-headed, with the sea-blast whistling through his wisps of yellow hair as through the pale sea grasses. He was still young and none could have said that his mourning suit sat ill upon him; but some who knew him would have seen it with involuntary surprise and felt that it showed him in a new phase. When he was dressed, as he generally was, in the negligent tweeds and stockings of the pedestrian landscape-painter, he looked merely amiable and absent-minded; but the black brought out something more angular and fixed about his face. With his black garb and yellow hair he might have been the traditional Hamlet; and indeed the look in his eyes was visionary and vague; but the traditional Hamlet would hardly have had so long and straight a chin as that which rested unconsciously on his black cravat. After the ceremony, he left the village church and walked towards the village post office, gradually lengthening and lightening his stride, like a man who, with all care for decency, can hardly conceal that he is rid of a duty.

“It’s a horrible thing to say,” he said to himself, “but I feel like a happy widower.”

He then went in to the post office and sent off a telegram addressed to a Lady Diana Westermaine, Westermaine Abbey: a telegram that said: “I am coming tomorrow to keep my promise and tell you the story of a strange friendship.”

Then he went out of the little shop again and walked eastwards out of the village, with undisguised briskness, till he had left the houses far behind, and his funeral hat and habit were an almost incongruous black spot upon great green uplands and the motley forests of autumn. He had walked for about half a day, lunched on bread and cheese and ale at a little public-house, and resumed his march with unabated cheerfulness, when the first event of that strange day befell him. He was threading his way by a river that ran in a hollow of the green hills; and at one point his path narrowed and ran under a high stone wall. The wall was built of very large flat stones of ragged outline, and a row of them ran along the top like the teeth of a giant. He would not normally have taken so much notice of the structure of the wall; indeed he did not take any notice of it at all until after something had happened. Until (in fact) there was a great gap in the row of craggy teeth, and one of the crags lay flat at his feet, shaking up dust like the smoke of an explosion. It had just brushed one of his long wisps of light hair as it fell.

Looking up, a shade bewildered by the shock of his hairbreadth escape, he saw for an instant in the dark gap left in the stone-work a face, peering and malignant. He called out promptly:

“I see you; I could send you to jail for that!”

“No you can’t,” retorted the stranger, and vanished into the twilight of trees as swiftly as a squirrel.

The gentleman in black, whose name was Gabriel Gale, looked up thoughtfully at the wall, which was rather too high and smooth to scale; besides the fugitive had already far too much of a start. Mr. Gale finally said aloud, in a reflective fashion: “Now I wonder why he did that!” Then he frowned with an entirely new sort of gravity, and after a moment or two of grim silence he added: “But after all its much more odd and mysterious that he should say that.”

In truth, though the three words uttered by the unknown person seemed trivial enough, they sufficed to lead Gale’s memories backwards to the beginning of the whole business that ended in the little Cornish churchyard; and as he went briskly on his way he rehearsed all the details of that old story, which he was to tell to the lady at his journey’s end.

Nearly fourteen years before, Gabriel Gale had come of age and inherited the moderate debts and the small freehold of a rather unsuccessful gentleman farmer. But though he grew up with the traditions of a sort of small squire, he was not the sort of person, especially at that age, to have no opinions except those traditions. In early youth his politics were the very reverse of squires’ politics; he was very much of a revolutionary and locally rather a firebrand. He intervened on behalf of poachers and gipsies: he wrote letters to the local papers which the editors thought too eloquent to be printed. He denounced the county magistracy in controversies that had to be impartially adjudged by the county magistrates. Finding, curiously enough, that all these authorities were against him, and seemed to be in legal control of all his methods of self-expression, he invented a method of his own which gave him great amusement and the authorities great annoyance. He fell, in fact, to employing a talent for drawing and painting which he was conscious of possessing, along with another talent for guessing people’s thoughts and getting a rapid grasp of their characters, which he was less conscious of possessing, but which he certainly possessed. It is a talent very valuable to a portrait-painter: in this case, however, he became a rather peculiar sort of portrait-painter. It was not exactly what is generally called a fashionable portrait-painter. Gale’s small estate contained several outhouses with white-washed walls or palings abutting on the high road; and whenever a magnate or magistrate did anything that Gale disapproved of, Gale was in the habit of painting his portrait in public and on a large scale. His pictures were hardly in the ordinary sense caricatures, but they were portraits of souls. There was nothing crude about the picture of the great merchant prince now honoured with a peerage; the eyes looking up from under lowered brows, the sleek hair parted low on the forehead, were hardly exaggerated; but the smiling lips were certainly saying: “And the next article?” One even knew that it was not really a very superior article. The picture of the formidable Colonel Ferrars did justice to the distinction of the face, with its frosty eyebrows and moustaches; but it also very distinctly discovered that it was the face of a fool, and of one sub-consciously frightened of being found to be a fool.

With these coloured proclamations did Mr. Gale beautify the countryside and make himself beloved among his equals. They could not do very much in the matter; it was not libel, for nothing was said; it was not nuisance or damage, for it was done on his own property, though in sight of the whole world. Among those who gathered every day to watch the painter at work, was a sturdy, red-faced, bushy-whiskered farmer, named Banks, seemingly one of those people who delight in any event and are more or less impenetrable by any opinion. He never could be got to bother his head about the sociological symbolism of Gale’s caricatures; but he regarded the incident with exuberant interest as one of the great stories calculated to be the glory of the country, like a calf born with five legs or some pleasant ghost story about the old gallows on the moor. Though so little of a theorist he was far from being a fool, and had a whole tangle of tales both humorous and tragic, to show how rich a humanity was packed within the four corners of his countryside. Thus it happened that he and his revolutionary neighbour had many talks over the cakes and ale, and went on many expeditions together to fascinating graves or historic public-houses. And thus it happened that on one of these expeditions Banks fell in with two of his other cronies, who made a party of four, making discoveries not altogether without interest.

The first of the farmer’s friends, introduced to Gale under the name of Starkey, was a lively little man with a short stubbly beard and sharp eyes, which he was in the habit however of screwing up with a quizzical smile during the greater part of a conversation. Both he and his friend Banks were eagerly interested in the story of Gale’s political protests, if they regarded them only too much as practical jokes. And they were both particularly anxious to introduce a friend of theirs named Wolfe, always referred to as Sim, who had a hobby, it would seem, in such matters, and might have suggestions to make. With a sort of sleepy curiosity which was typical of him, Gale found himself trailed along in an expedition for the discovery of Sim; and Sim was discovered at a little obscure hostelry called the Grapes a mile or so up the river. The three men had taken a boat, with the small Starkey for coxswain; it was a glorious autumn morning but the river was almost hidden under high banks and overhanging woods, intersected with great gaps of glowing sunlight, in one of which the lawns of the little riverside hotel sloped down to the river. And on the bank over-hanging the river a man stood waiting for them; a remarkable looking man with a fine sallow face rather like an actor’s and very curly grizzled hair. He welcomed them with a pleasant smile, and then turned towards the house with something of a habit of command or at least of direction. “I’ve ordered something for you,” he said. “If we go in now it will be ready.”

As Gabriel Gale brought up the rear of the single file of four men going up the straight paved path to the inn door, his roaming eye took in the rest of the garden, and something stirred in his spirit, which was also prone to roaming, and even in a light sense to a sort of rebellion. The steep path was lined with little trees, looking like the plan of a sampler. He did not see why he should walk straight up so very straight a path, and many things in the garden took his wandering fancy. He would much rather have had lunch at one of the little weather-stained tables standing about on the lawn. He would have been delighted to grope in the dark and tumble-down arbour in the corner, of which he could dimly see the circular table and semi-circular seat in the shadow of its curtain of creepers. He was even more attracted by the accident by which an old children’s swing, with its posts and ropes and hanging seat, stood close up to the bushes of the river bank. In fact, the last infantile temptation was irresistible; and calling out, “I’m going over here,” he ran across the garden towards the arbour, taking the swing with a sort of leap on his way. He landed in the wooden seat and swung twice back and forth, leaving it again with another flying leap. Just as he did so, however, the rope broke at its upper attachment, and he fell all askew, kicking his legs in the air. He was on his feet again immediately, and found himself confronted by his three companions who had followed in doubt or remonstrance. But the smiling Starkey was foremost, and his screwed-up eyes expressed good humour and even sympathy.

“Rotten sort of swing of yours,” he said. “These things are all falling to pieces,” and he gave the other rope a twitch, bringing that down also. Then he added: “Want to feast in the arbour, do you? Very well; you go in first and break the cobwebs. When you’ve collected all the spiders, I’ll follow you.”

Gale dived laughing into the dark corner in question and sat down in the centre of the crescent-shaped seat. The practical Mr. Banks had apparently entirely refused to carouse in this leafy cavern; but the figures of the two other men soon darkened the entrance and they sat down, one at each horn of the crescent.

“I suppose that was a sudden impulse of yours,” said the man named Wolfe, smiling. “You poets often have sudden impulses, don’t you?”

“It’s not for me to say it was a poet’s impulse,” replied Gale; “but I’m sure it would need a poet to describe it. Perhaps I’m not one; anyhow I never could describe those impulses. The only way to do it would be to write a poem about the swing and a poem about the arbour, and put them both into a longer poem about the garden. And poems aren’t produced quite so quickly as all that, though I’ve always had a notion that a real poet would never talk prose. He would talk about the weather in rolling stanzas like the storm-clouds, or ask you to pass the potatoes in an impromptu lyric as beautiful as the blue flower of the potato.”

“Make it a prose poem, then,” said the man whose name was Simeon Wolfe, “and tell us how you felt about the garden and the garden-swing.”

Gabriel Gale was both sociable and talkative; he talked a great deal about himself because he was not an egoist. He talked a great deal about himself on the present occasion. He was pleased to find these two intelligent men interested and attentive; and he tried to put into words the impalpable impulses to which he was always provoked by particular shapes or colours or corners of the straggling road of life. He tried to analyse the attraction of a swing, with its rudiments of aviation; and how it made a man feel more like a boy, because it made a boy feel more like a bird. He explained that the arbour was fascinating precisely because it was a den. He told them at some length of the psychological truth; that dismal and decayed objects raise a man’s spirits higher, if they really are already high. His two companions talked in turn; and as luncheon progressed and passed they turned over between them many strange strata of personal experience, and Gale began to understand their personalities and their point of view. Wolfe had travelled a great deal, especially in the East; Starkey’s experiences had been more local but equally curious, and they both had known many psychological cases and problems about which to compare notes. They both agreed that Gale’s mental processes in the matter, though unusual, were not unique.

“In fact,” observed Wolfe, “I think your mind belongs to a particular class, and one of which I have had some experience. Don’t you think so, Starkey?”

“I quite agree,” said the other man, nodding.

It was at that moment that Gale looked out dreamily at the light upon the lawn, and in the stillness of his inmost mind a light broke on him like lightning; one of the terrible intuitions of his life.

Against the silver light on the river the dark frame of the forsaken swing stood up like a gallows. There was no trace of the seat or the ropes, not merely in their proper place, but even on the ground where they had fallen. Sweeping his eye slowly and searchingly round the scene, he saw them at last, huddled and hidden in a heap behind the bench where Starkey was sitting. In an instant he understood everything. He knew the profession of the two men on each side of him. He knew why they were asking him to describe the processes of his mind. Soon they would be taking out a document and signing it. He would not leave that arbour a free man.

“So you are both doctors,” he observed cheerfully, “and you both think I am mad.”

“The word is really very unscientific,” said Simeon Wolfe in a soothing fashion. “You are of a certain type which friends and admirers will be wise to treat in a certain way, but it need in no sense be an unfriendly or uncomfortable way. You are an artist with that form of the artistic temperament which is necessarily a mode of modified megalomania, and which expresses itself in the form of exaggeration. You cannot see a large blank wall without having an uncontrollable appetite for covering it with large pictures. You cannot see a swing hung in the air without thinking of flying ships careering through the air. I will venture to guess that you never see a cat without thinking of a tiger or a lizard without thinking of a dragon.”

“That is perfectly correct,” said Gale gravely; “I never do.”

Then his mouth twisted a little, as if a whimsical idea had come into his mind. “Psychology is certainly very valuable,” he said. “It seems to teach us how to see into each other’s minds. You, for instance, have a mind which is very interesting: you have reached a condition which I think I recognize. You are in that particular attitude in which the subject, when he thinks of anything, never thinks of the centre of anything. You see only edges eaten away. Your malady is the opposite to mine, to what you call making a tiger out of a cat, or what some call making a mountain out of a molehill. You do not go on and make a cat more of a cat; you are always trying to work back and prove that it is less than a cat; that it is a defective cat or a mentally deficient cat. But a cat is a cat; that is the supreme sanity which is so thickly clouded in your mind. After all, a molehill is a hill and a mountain is a hill. But you have got into the state of the mad queen, who said she knew hills compared with which this was a valley. You can’t grasp the thing called a thing. Nothing for you has a central stalk of sanity. There is no core to your cosmos. Your trouble began with being an atheist.”

“I have not confessed to being an atheist,” said Wolfe staring.

“I have not confessed to being an artist,” replied Gale, “or to have uncontrolled artistic appetites or any of that stuff. But I will tell you one thing: I can only exaggerate things the way they are going. But I’m not often wrong about the way they are going. You may be as sleek as a cat but I knew you were evolving into a tiger. And I guessed this little lizard could be turned by black magic into a dragon.”

As he spoke he was looking grimly at Starkey and out under the dark arch of the arbour, as out of a closing prison, with these two ghouls sitting on each side of the gate. Beyond was the gaunt shape like a gallows and beyond that the green and silver of the garden and the stream shone like a lost paradise of liberty. But it was characteristic of him that even when he was practically hopeless, he liked being logically triumphant; he liked turning the tables on his critics even when, so to speak, they were as abstract as multiplication tables.

“Why, my learned friends,” he went on contemptuously, “do you really suppose you are any fitter to write a report on my mind than I am on yours? You can’t see any further into me than I can into you. Not half so far. Didn’t you know a portrait-painter has to value people at sight as much as a doctor? And I do it better than you; I have a knack that way. That’s why I can paint those pictures on the wall; and I could paint your pictures as big as a house. I know what is at the back of your mind, Doctor Simeon Wolfe; and it’s a chaos of exceptions with no rule. You could find anything abnormal, because you have no normal. You could find anybody mad; and as for why you specially want to find me mad… why that is another disadvantage of being an atheist. You do not think anything will smite you for the vile treachery you have sold yourself to do today.”

“There is no doubt about your condition now,” said Dr. Wolfe with a sneer.

“You look like an actor, but you are not a very good actor,” answered Gale calmly. “I can see that my guess was correct. These rack-renters and usurers who oppress the poor, in my own native valley, could not find any pettifogging law to prevent me from painting the colours of their souls in hell. So they have bribed you and another cheap doctor to certify me for a madhouse. I know the sort of man you are. I know this is not the first dirty trick you have done to help the rich out of a hole. You would do anything for your paymasters. Possibly the murder of the unborn.”

Wolfe’s face was still wrinkled with its Semitic sneer, but his olive tint had turned to a sort of loathsome yellow. Starkey called out with sudden shrillness, as abrupt as the bark of a dog.

“Speak more respectfully!”

“There is Dr. Starkey, too,” continued the poet lazily. “Let us turn our medical attention to the mental state of Dr. Starkey.”

As he rolled his eyes with ostentatious languor in the new direction, he was arrested by a change in the scene without. A strange man was standing under the frame of the swing, looking up at it with his head on one side like a bird’s. He was a small, sturdy figure, quite conventionally clad; and Gale could only suppose he was a stray guest of the hotel. His presence did not help very much; for the law was probably on the side of the doctors; and Gale continued his address to them.

“The mental deficiency of Dr. Starkey,” he said, “consists in having forgotten the truth. You, Starkey, have no sceptical philosophy like your friend. You are a practical man, my dear Starkey; but you have told lies so incessantly and from so early an age that you never see anything as it is, but only as it could be made to look. Beside each thing stands the unreal thing that is its shadow; and you see the shadow first. You are very quick in seeing it; you go direct to the deceptive potentialities of anything; you see at once if anything could be used as anything else. You are the original man who went straight down the crooked lane. I could see how quickly you saw that the swing would provide ropes to tie me up if I were violent; and that going first into this arbour, I should be cornered, with you on each side of me. Yet the swing and the arbour were my own idea; and that again is typical of you. You’re not a scientific thinker like the other scoundrel; you have always picked up other men’s ideas, but you pick as swiftly as a pickpocket. In fact, when you see an idea sticking out of a pocket you can hardly help picking it. That’s where you’re mad; you can’t resist being clever, or rather borrowing cleverness. Which means you have sometimes been too clever to be lucky. You are a shabbier sort of scamp; and I rather fancy you have been in prison.”

Starkey sprang to his feet, snatching up the ropes and throwing them on the table.

“Tie him up and gag him,” he cried; “he is raving.”

“There again,” observed Gale, “I enter with sympathy into your thoughts. You mean that I must be gagged at once; for if I were free for half a day, or perhaps half an hour, I could find out the facts about you and tear your reputation to rags.”

As he spoke he again followed with an interested eye the movements of the strange man outside. The man had recrossed the garden, calmly picking up a chair from one of the little tables, and returned carrying it lightly in the direction of the arbour. To the surprise of all, he set it down at the round table in the very entrance of that retreat, and sat down on it with his hands in his pockets, staring at Gabriel Gale. With his face in shadow, his square head, short hair and bulk of shoulders took on a new touch of mystery.

“Hope I don’t interrupt,” he said. “Perhaps it would be more honest to say I hope I do interrupt. Because I want to interrupt. Honestly, I think you medical gentlemen would be very unwise to gag your friend here, or try to carry him off.”

“And why?” asked Starkey sharply.

“Only because I should kill you if you did,” replied the stranger.

They all stared at him; and Wolfe sneered again as he said: “You might find it awkward to kill us both at once.”

The stranger took his hands out of his pockets; and with the very gesture there was a double flash of metal. For the hands held two revolvers which pointed at them, fixed them like two large fingers of steel.

“I shall only kill you if you run or call out,” said the strange gentleman pleasantly.

“If you do you’ll be hanged,” cried Wolfe violently.

“Oh, no, I shan’t,” said the stranger; “not unless two dead men can get up and hang me on that nursery gallows in the garden. I’m allowed to kill people. There’s a special Act of Parliament permitting me to go about killing anybody I like. I’m never punished, whatever I do. In fact, to tell you the truth, I’m the King of England, and the Constitution says I can do no wrong.”

“What are you talking about?” demanded the doctor. “You must be mad.”

The stranger uttered a sudden shout of laughter that shook the shed and the nerves of all three hearers.

“You’ve hit it first shot,” he cried. “He said you were quick, didn’t he? Yes, I’m mad all right; I’ve just escaped from the same sanatorium next door, where you want to take your friend to. I escaped in a way of my own; through the chief doctor’s private apartments; and he’s kind enough to keep two pistols in his drawer. I may be recaptured; but I shan’t be hanged. I may be recaptured; but I particularly don’t want your young friend to be captured at all. He’s got his life before him; I don’t choose he should suffer as I’ve suffered. I like the look of him; I like the way he turned all your medical tomfoolery upside down. So you’ll understand I am at present wielding the power of a perfectly irresponsible sultan. I shall merely be rounding off a very pleasant holiday by blowing both your brains out, unless you will sit quite still and allow your young friend to tie you up with the ropes. That will give us a good start for our escape.”

How he passed through the topsy-turvy transformation scene that followed Gale could afterwards barely remember; it seemed like a sort of dream pantomime, but its results were solid enough. Ten minutes later he and his strange deliverer were walking free in the woods beyond the last hedge of the garden, leaving the two medical gentlemen behind them in the arbour, tied up like two sacks of potatoes.

For Gabriel Gale the wood in which he walked was a new world of wonders. Every tree was a Christmas tree bearing gifts; and every gap in the woods was like a glimpse through the curtain for a child with a toy theatre. For a few moments before all these things had nearly disappeared in the darkness of something worse than death; till heaven had sent him a guardian angel in the shape of an escaped lunatic.

Gale was very young and his youth had not then found its vent and vocation by falling in love. There was in him something of those young Crusaders who made wild vows not to cut their hair till they found the Holy City. His liberty was looking and longing for something to bind itself; and at this moment he could think of but one thing in the world.

Two hundred yards along the path by the river he halted and spoke to his companion:

“It is you who have given me all this,” he said. “Under God, and so far as my life goes, it is you who have created heaven and earth. You set up along my triumphal way these trees like seven-branched candlesticks with their grey branches silver in the sun. You spread before my feet these red leaves that are better than roses. You shaped clouds. You invented birds. Do you think I could enjoy all these things when I knew you were back again in the hell that you hate? I should feel I had tricked you out of everything you have given me. I should feel like a thief who had stolen the stars. You shan’t go back there if I can help it; you saved me and I am going to save you. I owe you my life and I give it you; I vow I will share anything you suffer; God do so to me and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.”

Thus were spoken in that wild place the wild words that determined the life of Gabriel Gale for so many years afterwards; and the walk that began in that wood turned into a wandering over the whole country by those two fantastic outlaws. As a matter of fact a sort of armed truce fell between them and their enemies, for each had something to fear from the other. Gale did not use all he discovered against the two doctors lest they should press the pursuit of his friend; and they did not press it lest he should retaliate with his own revelations. Thus the two came to roam practically unmolested until the day of that adventure, already described in the beginning of all these things, when he fell in love, and his crazy companion fell into a paroxysm which went very near to murder.

In every sense that dreadful day had changed all. That murderous outbreak had at last convinced a sadder and wiser Gabriel that he had other responsibilities besides those of his chivalric vow to his companion-in-arms; and he concluded that their companionship could only be rightly continued in some safe and more secluded form. Then it was that he put his friend into the comfortable and secret house in Cornwall, and spent most of his own time there, leaving a trustworthy servant on guard during his brief absences. His companion, whose name was James Hurrel, had been a business man of great ability and even audacity, until his schemes grew a little too big for his brain; and he lived happily enough in Cornwall, covering the tables with prospectuses and the walls with posters relative to various financial enterprises of the most promising kind. There he died, to all appearance equally happily; and Gale walked back from his funeral a free man.

---

Next morning, after a few hours’ walking a rise and change in the rolling and wooded country told him that he was on the borders of his enchanted ground. He remembered something in the grouping of the trees, and how they seemed to huddle and stand on tiptoe with their backs to him, looking into the happy valley. He came to where the road curved over the hill, as he had come with his friend in former times; and saw below him the meadows falling steeply as thatched roofs and flattening out till they reached the wide and shallow river, and the ford and the dark inn called the Rising Sun.

The gloomy inn-keeper of old days was gone, having found it less gloomy to take service in some stables in the neighbourhood; and a brisker individual with the look of a groom was the recipient of Gale’s expansive praises of the beauty of the scene. Gale was good enough to inform the inn-keeper of the beauty of the skies in the neighbourhood of his own inn, telling how he, Gale, had once seen a sunset in that valley quite peculiar to it and unequalled anywhere in the world; and how even the storm that had followed the sunset had been something very sublime in that style. His generalizations however were somewhat checked and diverted by a note which the inn-keeper put into his hand, a note from the great house across the river. It was without any formal opening, as if the writer had hesitated about a form of address; and it ran:

“I want to hear the story and hope you will come over tomorrow (Thursday). I fear I shall be out today, as I have to go to see a Dr. Wilson in Wimbledon about some work I have a chance of doing. I suppose you know we are pretty hard up in these days. D.W.”

The whole landscape seemed to him to darken for an instant as he read the letter, but he did not lose his brisk demeanour and breezy mode of speech.

“I find I made a mistake,” he said, putting the note in his pocket, “and I must leave here almost at once. I have to visit another spot, if possible more picturesque and poetical than this one. It is Wimbledon that has skies of a strange and unique character at the present time. The sunsets of Wimbledon are famous throughout the world. A storm in Wimbledon would be an apocalypse. But I hope I shall come back here again sooner or later. Good-bye.”

The proceedings of Mr. Gale after this were rather more calculated and peculiar. First he sat on a stile and frowned heavily as if thinking hard. Then he sent off a telegram to a certain Dr. Garth, who was a friend of his, and one or two other telegrams to persons in rather responsible positions. When he got to London he went into the offices of the vulgarest and most sensational newspaper he knew, and looked up the back files for the details of forgotten crimes. When he got to Wimbledon he had a long interview with a local house agent and ended up towards evening, outside a high garden wall with a green door, in a wide but empty and silent suburban road. He went quietly up to the door and barely touched it with his finger, as if seeing if the paint were wet. But the door, which was barred across with bands of decorative metal work and had every appearance of being shut, immediately fell ajar, showing the patchy colours of garden beds within. “I thought so,” said Gale to himself and slipped into the garden, leaving the door ajar behind him.

The suburban family which he was presumably visiting, and with which the impoverished Diana Westermaine was presumably to take some post as governess or secretary, was evidently the sort who combined a new neatness with a certain early Victorian comfort and indifference to cost. The conservatories were of antiquated pattern, but full of rich and exotic things; there were things still more old-fashioned, such as a grey and rather featureless classical statue in the centre. Within a few yards of it were things so Victorian as croquet hoops and croquet mallets, as if a game had been in progress, and beyond it under the tree was a table set out with tea things, for people for whom tea was not a trifle. All these human things, unused at the moment by human beings, seemed to emphasize the emptiness of the garden. Or rather, so far as he was concerned, they emphasized the fact that it was almost empty, save for the one thing that could so strangely fill it with life. For far away down one of the paths pointing towards the kitchen garden he saw a figure moving as yet unconsciously towards him. It came out under an arch crowned with creepers and there, after so many years, they met. There seemed something symbolical of seriousness and crisis in the accident that they were both in black.

He had always been able to call up the memory of her dark vivid eyebrows and the high-tinted distinction of her face in connexion with corners of the blue dress she had worn; but when he saw her again he wondered that the face had not always annihilated all its lesser associations. She looked at him for a moment with bright motionless eyes and then said:

“Well, really. You seem to be a rather impatient person.”

“Possibly,” he replied; “and yet I have waited four years.”

“They are coming out to tea in a moment,” she said somewhat awkwardly. “I suppose I must introduce you to them. I only accepted the post this morning; but they asked me to stay. I was going to wire to you.”

“Thank God I followed you,” he answered. “I doubt if the wire would have reached me… from this house.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, “and how did you follow?”

“I did not like your Wimbledon address,” he said: and with that, strange figures began to fill the garden, and she walked across to the tea-table. Her face was somewhat paler and more severe than it used to be, but in her grey eyes there was a light not altogether extinguished, curiosity still shot with defiance. By the time they reached the table two or three people had collected round it; and the somewhat irregular visitor had saluted them in a regular and even punctilious fashion.

The host or hostess had apparently not yet become visible; there were only three gentlemen, presumably guests and perhaps members of a house-party. One was introduced as Mr. Wolmer, a young man with a fair moustache and a tall fine figure that made his head look small; with a fine bridged nose that ought to have been like a hawk’s if the prominence of the eyes and some deficiency of the chin had not somehow made it more like a parrot’s. The second was a Major Bruce, a very short man with a very long head streaked with iron grey hair, and an expression which suggested, truly enough, that he very seldom opened his mouth. The third was an elderly person with a black skull-cap on his bald head and a fringe or fan of red beard or whiskers; he was evidently a person of some importance and known as Professor Patterson.

Gale partook of tea and indulged in polite conversation in quite an animated fashion, wondering all the time who it was who ought to have been at the head of the table, where Diana Westermaine was pouring out the tea. The demeanour of the man named Wolmer was rather restless; and in a little while he stood up and began, as if from the necessity of doing something, to knock the croquet balls about on the lawn. Gale, who was watching him with some interest, followed suit by picking up a mallet and trying some particular trick of putting two balls through a hoop. It was a trick which needed a test of some minuteness, for he went down on his hands and knees to examine the position more closely.

“Going to put your head through the hoop?” asked Wolmer rudely; for he had been growing more and more impatient, almost as if he had taken a mysterious dislike to the newcomer.

“Not quite,” answered Gale good-humouredly as he rolled the balls away. “Uncomfortable position, I should think. Like being guillotined.”

Wolmer was glaring balefully at the hoop and said something in a thick voice that sounded like “Serve you right.” Then he suddenly whirled his mallet above his head like a battle-axe and brought it down with a crash on the hoop, driving it deep into the turf. There was something indescribably shocking about the pantomime, following instantly on the image that had just been suggested of a human head in the hoop. They felt as if an act of decapitation had been done before their very eyes.

“Better put down that mallet now,” said the professor in a soothing voice, putting a rather shaky hand on the other’s arm.

“Oh, I’ll put it down then,” said Wolmer, and slung it away over his shoulder like a man putting the hammer at the Highland Sports. It flew through the air like a thunderbolt, striking the forlorn plaster statue in the centre and breaking it off short at the top. Mr. Wolmer laughed in a rather uncontrolled fashion; and then strode away into the house.

The girl had been watching these things with her dark brows bent and her pallor growing somewhat more marked. There was an unpleasant silence, and then Major Bruce spoke for the first time.

“It’s the atmosphere of this place,” he said. “It is not very wholesome.”

The atmosphere of the suburban garden as a matter of fact was very clear, sunny and pleasant, and Diana looked round with a growing and even creeping mystification at the gay flower-pots and the lawns golden in the evening light.

“Perhaps it is my own misfortune,” resumed the Major reflectively. “The truth is there is something serious the matter with me. I have a malady which makes this particular place rather awful.”

“What do you mean?” she asked quickly.

There was a short silence and then he answered stolidly.

“I am sane.”

Then she looked once more at the warm sunshiny garden and began to shudder as if with cold. A thousand things came back to her out of the last few hours. She knew why she had dimly distrusted her new home. She knew now that there is only one place in the world where men say that they are sane.

As the little man with the long head walked away as stiffly as a wooden automaton, she looked round for Gale and found he had vanished. An appalling emptiness, a vast vacuum of terror, opened around her on every side. In that moment she had admitted many things to herself that had been but half conscious: and no one on earth mattered but the man who had vanished into a void. For the moment she balanced the possibility that she was really mad against the possibility that nobody else was sane; when she caught sight, through the gap of a hedge, of figures moving at the other end of the garden. The old professor in the skull-cap was moving rapidly but with trepidation, as if running on tiptoe, his long lean hands flapping like fins and his red chin-beard wagging in the wind. And behind him following, equally softly and swiftly, at the distance of a few yards, was the long grey figure of Gabriel Gale. She could fit together no fancy about what it all meant; she could only continue to stare across the flower-beds at the glass-houses full of monstrous flowers and be vaguely conscious of a sort of symbol in the headless statue in the centre; the god of that garden of unreason.

The next moment she saw Gale reappear at the other extremity of the long hedge and come towards her smiling in the sunshine. He stopped when he saw her white face.

“Do you know what this place is?” she whispered. “It is a madhouse.”

“It’s a very easy one to escape from,” said Gale in a serene manner. “I’ve just seen the professor escape from it. He escapes regularly; probably on Wednesdays and Saturdays.”

“This is no time for your jokes,” she cried. “I tell you we’ve been trapped inside a madhouse.”

“And I tell you we shall soon be outside the madhouse,” he replied firmly. “And under those circumstances, I don’t mind telling you that I regret to say it is not a madhouse.”

“What do you mean?”

“It is something worse,” replied Gale.

“Tell me what you mean,” she repeated. “Tell me what you know about this horrible place.”

“For me it will always be a holy place,” he said. “Was it not under that arch there that you appeared out of the abyss of memory? And after all, it’s a beautiful garden and I’m almost sorry to leave it. The house, too, makes a romantic background; and really we might be very comfortable here… if only it were a madhouse.” And he sighed with regret.

Then after a pause he added, “I might say all I want to say to you in a nice, friendly, comfortable lunatic asylum… but not in a place like this. There are practical things to be done now; and here come the people who will do them!”

She was never able to fit together again the fragments of that bad dream and its wilder way of breaking up. To her astonishment she beheld a new group advancing up the garden path; in front was a red-haired man in a top hat, whose shrewd and good-humoured features were faintly familiar to her; behind were two stalwart figures, obviously in “plain clothes”, and between them the unexpected apparition of Professor Patterson in handcuffs.

“Caught him setting fire to a house,” said the red-haired man briefly. “Valuable documents.”

Later in that bewildering stretch of hours, the friends seated themselves on a garden seat for explanations. “You remember Dr. Garth, I think,” said Gale to the lady. “He has been helping me to clear up this queer business. The truth is, the police have suspected the nature of this Wimbledon retreat for some time. No; it is not a lunatic asylum; it is a den of very accomplished professional criminals. They have hit on the ingenious idea of being certified as irresponsible by a medical confederate; so that the worst that can happen is that he may be censured for laxity in letting them escape. Look up the records, and you will find them responsible, or irresponsible, for quite a long catalogue of crimes. I happened to follow the notion up, because I happened to guess where the notion came from. By the way, I suppose this is the gentleman who engaged you as a typist.”

As he spoke a small alert figure strode out of the house and across the lawns; his short beard thrust forward with something of the gesture of a terrier.

“Yes, that is Dr. Wilson; I made arrangements with him only this morning,” answered Diana, still staring.

The doctor came to a halt in front of them, turning his head right and left in the terrier fashion, and looking at them with wrinkled brows and lids.

“So this is Dr. Wilson,” said Gale politely. “Good day, Dr. Starkey.”

Then as the plain-clothes men shifted and closed round the doctor, Gale added reflectively:

“I knew you would never fail to take a hint.”

A street or two away from the strange madhouse there was a sort of toy park, not much bigger than a back garden, but laid out in ornamental paths and planted with flowering shrubs, as an oasis for nomadic nurses trailing about the babies of that suburb. It was also ornamented with long seats with curly backs, and one of these seats in its turn was ornamented by a couple clad in black and endeavouring, with some bewilderment, to appear respectable. Wild as were the events of that afternoon, they had moved very rapidly and it was barely evening. The sunset was settling down about the corners of the sky and of the quaint little public garden, and there was little noise except the shrill but faint calling of some children lingering over some long-drawn-out-game.

It was here that he told her the whole story of the rash vow and all that happened between the rescue in the riverside garden and the funeral in the Cornish churchyard.

“The only thing I don’t understand,” she said at last, “is why you thought they had got me to that place; or why you thought there was any such place.”

“Why, because,” he said looking at the gravel path with a slight embarrassment, “because I really was not bragging when I told Starkey at the beginning that I understood the sort of mind he had, and could exaggerate it in the way it was going. Starkey never missed a chance of applying or misapplying an idea, especially anybody else’s idea. When poor Jimmy Hurrel boasted of being free from punishment because he was an escaped lunatic, I was sure that a seed had been sown in Starkey’s mind that would sprout. I was sure he would follow it up and use it, as he used my fancy for the swing or the arbour. While Jim was alive he knew I had a motive for silence; but the moment Jim died he struck. He was very quick; his mind is like a flash of lightning; quick but crooked. He sent one of his chartered maniacs to brain me with a stone on my way to you. He intercepted my telegram, and lured you away before you could be told the whole story. But what I want to know is what you think of the whole story.”

“The vow was certainly rash enough,” she said. “All that time you might have been painting pictures and doing all sorts of good. It doesn’t seem right that a genius should be tied to a lunatic by a few words.”

He sat up very suddenly. “For God’s sake don’t say that!” he cried. “Don’t say one oughtn’t to tie oneself to a lunatic by a few words! Don’t say that’s wrong, I implore you, whatever else you say! A shocking thought! A perfectly foul idea!”

“What do you mean?” she asked. “Why not?”

“Because,” he said, “I want you to make a rash vow. I want you to tie yourself with a few words to a lunatic.”

There was a silence, at the end of which she smiled suddenly and put her hand on his arm.

“No,” she said, “only a silly… I always liked you, even when I thought you really were a lunatic; that day when you stood on your head. But now I don’t think my vow will be so very rash… What on earth are you doing now?… Oh, I say… for heaven’s sake…”

“What else should I do,” he answered calmly, “after what you have just said? I’m going to stand on my head again.”

The children in the corner of the little garden gazed with interest at a gentleman in funeral full-dress behaving in a somewhat unusual manner.

THE END

THE FANTASTIC FRIENDS

THE inn called the Rising Sun had an exterior rather suggesting the title of the Setting Sun. It stood in a narrow triangle of garden, more grey than green, with broken-down hedges mingling with the melancholy reeds of a river; with a few dark and dank arbours, of which the roofs and the seats had alike collapsed; and a dingy dried-up fountain, with a weather-stained water-nymph and no water. The house itself seemed rather devoured by ivy than decorated with it; as if its old bones of brown brick were slowly broken by the dragon coils of that gigantic parasite. On the other side it looked on a lonely road leading across the hills down to a ford across the river; now largely disused since the building of a bridge lower down. Outside the door was a wooden bench and table, and above it a wooden sign, much darkened, with the gold of the sun’s disc faded to a brown; and under the sign stood the inn-keeper, gazing gloomily up the road. His hair was black and flat, and his face, of a congested purple, had all the sombreness, if not all the beauty, of sunset.

The only person in the place who exhibited any liveliness was the person who was leaving it. He was the first and last customer for many months; a solitary swallow who had conspicuously failed to make a summer; and the swallow was now flitting. He was a medical man on a holiday; young, and of an agreeable ugliness, with a humorous hatchet face and red hair; and the cat-like activity of his movements contrasted with the stagnant inertia of the inn by the ford. He was strapping up his own bag on the table under the sign; and neither his host, who stood a yard off, nor the single servant, who moved heavily and obscurely within, offered to help him; possibly through sulkiness, possibly merely through dreaminess and disuse.

The long silence, idle or busy, was broken for the first time by two sharp and explosive sounds. The first was the abrupt bursting of the strap which the doctor was tightening round the bag on the table; and the second was the loud and cheerful “Damn!” which was his comment upon it.

“Here’s a pretty go,” observed the medical gentleman, who went by the name of Garth; “I shall have to tie it up with something. Have you got a cord or a rope or anything?”

The melancholy inn-keeper turned very slowly and went indoors, coming out presently with a length of dusty rope in a loop like a halter, probably for tethering a donkey or a calf.

“That’s all I’ve got,” he said; “I’m pretty well at the end of my own tether anyhow.”

“You seem a bit depressed,” observed Dr. Garth; “you probably want a tonic. Perhaps this medicine chest burst open to give you one.”

“Prussic acid is the kind of tonic I feel inclined for,” answered the landlord of the Rising Sun.

“I never recommend it,” observed the doctor cheerfully. “It’s very pleasant at the moment, no doubt; but I never feel I can guarantee a complete recovery afterwards. But you certainly seem down in the mouth; you didn’t even brighten up when I indulged in such an eccentricity as paying my bill.”

“Much obliged to you, sir,” observed the other gruffly, “but it would want a lot more bills to keep this rotten old show from going to pot. It was a good business once, when the right-of-way was open beyond the river, and everybody used this ford. But the last squire shut up the path somehow; and now everything goes by the new bridge a mile away. Nobody comes this way; and, saving your presence, I don’t know why anybody should.”

“Well, they say the new squire is nearly bankrupt himself,” observed Dr. Garth. “So history brings its revenges. Westermaine’s his name, isn’t it? I’m told there’s a brother and sister living in the big house over there, with precious little to live on. I suppose the whole countryside’s rather gone downhill. But you’re wrong about nobody coming here,” he added suddenly, “for there are two men coming over the hill now.”

The road ran across the valley at right angles to the river; beyond the ford the forgotten right-of-way could be traced more faintly up the slope to where the ruined gate that marked Westermaine Abbey stood dark against clouds of a pallor that was faintly lurid, as with a hint of storm. But on the other side of the valley the sky was clear; and the early afternoon seemed as bright and brisk as morning. And on this side, where the white road curved over the hill, two figures were advancing, which seemed, even when they were hardly more than dots in the distance, to be markedly dissimilar.

As they came nearer to the inn, the contrast increased, and was accentuated by the very fact of their air of mutual familiarity; as if they were almost walking arm in arm. One was comparatively short and very sturdy; the other unusually tall and slender. They were both fair; but the blond hair of the shorter man was neatly parted and smoothly plastered down; while that of the other stood up in erratic wisps and tufts that looked fantastic. The shorter man had a full square face sharpened by a very pointed nose, and a pair of bright, bird-like eyes, that made it look like a small beak. There was something of the cock sparrow about him; and, indeed, he seemed more of a town bird than a country bird. His clothes were as neat and commonplace as a clerk’s; and he carried a business-like little bag as if he was going up to the City; while his tall companion had bundled on his back a loose knapsack, and what was evidently the paraphernalia of a painter. He had a long, slightly cadaverous face, with absent-minded eyes; but the chin beneath jutted forward, almost as if it had formed an unconscious resolution of its own, of which the blank blue eyes were still unaware. They were both young; and they both walked without hats, probably through the heat of walking; for the one held a hard straw hat in his hand, and the other had a loose grey felt stuffed anyhow into his knapsack.

GLI AMICI FANTASTICI

La locanda chiamata Sole Nascente aveva un aspetto esteriore che suggeriva piuttosto il nome di Sole Calante. Sorgeva in uno stretto triangolo di giardino, più grigio che verde, con siepi diroccate che si mescolavano ai malinconici canneti di un fiume; con alcuni pergolati scuri e umidi, i cui tetti e sedili erano ugualmente crollati; e una squallida fontana prosciugata, con una ninfa d’acqua macchiata dalle intemperie e senz’acqua. La casa stessa sembrava più divorata dall’edera che ornata da essa; come se le sue vecchie ossa di mattone bruno fossero lentamente spezzate dalle spire draconiche di quel gigantesco parassita. Dall’altro lato guardava su una strada solitaria che attraversava le colline scendendo a un guado sul fiume; ormai in gran parte abbandonato dopo la costruzione di un ponte più a valle. Fuori dalla porta c’erano una panca e un tavolo di legno, e al di sopra un’insegna di legno, molto annerita, con l’oro del disco solare sbiadito in un bruno; e sotto l’insegna stava il locandiere, che scrutava tetro lungo la strada. I suoi capelli erano neri e lisci, e il suo volto, di un purpureo congesto, aveva tutta la cupezza, se non tutta la bellezza, del tramonto.

L’unica persona del luogo che mostrasse una qualche vivacità era la persona che se ne stava andando. Era il primo e l’ultimo cliente da molti mesi; una solitaria rondine che aveva vistosamente mancato di fare estate; e la rondine ora se ne volava via. Era un medico in vacanza; giovane, e di una gradevole bruttezza, con un volto spigoloso e spiritoso e capelli rossi; e l’attività felina dei suoi movimenti contrastava con l’inerzia stagnante della locanda presso il guado. Stava allacciando la propria borsa sul tavolo sotto l’insegna; e né il suo oste, che stava a un passo di distanza, né l’unico servo, che si muoveva pesante e oscuro all’interno, si offrì di aiutarlo; forse per malumore, forse semplicemente per svagatezza e disuso.

Il lungo silenzio, ozioso o operoso, fu rotto per la prima volta da due suoni secchi ed esplosivi. Il primo fu l’improvviso spezzarsi della cinghia che il dottore stava stringendo attorno alla borsa sul tavolo; e il secondo fu il sonoro e allegro «Maledizione!» che ne fu il commento.

«Bell’affare», osservò il signore medico, che rispondeva al nome di Garth; «dovrò legarla con qualcosa. Avete uno spago o una corda o qualcosa del genere?»

Il malinconico locandiere si voltò molto lentamente ed entrò in casa, uscendone poco dopo con un pezzo di corda polverosa avvolto in un cappio come una cavezza, probabilmente per legare un asino o un vitello.

«È tutto ciò che ho», disse; «e comunque sono proprio alla fine della mia corda.»

«Sembrate un po’ depresso», osservò il dottor Garth; «probabilmente vi serve un tonico. Forse questa cassetta dei medicinali si è aperta di scatto per darvene uno.»

«L’acido prussico è il genere di tonico verso cui mi sento incline», rispose l’oste del Sole Nascente.

«Non lo raccomando mai», osservò il dottore allegramente. «È molto piacevole sul momento, senza dubbio; ma non mi sento mai di poter garantire una completa guarigione in seguito. Ma di certo sembrate giù di corda; non vi siete rallegrato nemmeno quando mi sono concesso l’eccentricità di saldare il conto.»

«Molto obbligato, signore», osservò l’altro burbero, «ma ci vorrebbero ben più conti per impedire a questa vecchia baracca marcia di andare in rovina. Un tempo era un buon affare, quando il diritto di passaggio era aperto oltre il fiume, e tutti usavano questo guado. Ma l’ultimo signorotto ha chiuso il sentiero in qualche modo; e ora tutto passa dal ponte nuovo un miglio più in là. Nessuno viene da questa parte; e, con rispetto parlando, non so perché qualcuno dovrebbe.»

«Beh, dicono che lo stesso signorotto nuovo sia quasi in bancarotta», osservò il dottor Garth. «Così la storia porta le sue vendette. Westermaine è il suo nome, non è vero? Mi dicono che ci sono un fratello e una sorella che vivono nella grande casa laggiù, con ben poco di che vivere. Suppongo che l’intera campagna sia piuttosto andata in declino. Ma vi sbagliate sul fatto che nessuno venga qui», aggiunse d’un tratto, «perché ci sono due uomini che stanno scavalcando la collina proprio ora.»

La strada attraversava la valle ad angolo retto rispetto al fiume; oltre il guado il dimenticato diritto di passaggio si poteva rintracciare più debolmente su per il pendio fino al punto in cui il cancello in rovina che segnava l’Abbazia di Westermaine si ergeva scuro contro nubi di un pallore vagamente sinistro, come con un accenno di tempesta. Ma dall’altro lato della valle il cielo era limpido; e il primo pomeriggio sembrava luminoso e vivace come il mattino. E da questo lato, dove la bianca strada curvava oltre la collina, avanzavano due figure che sembravano, anche quando erano appena più che puntini in lontananza, marcatamente dissimili.

Man mano che si avvicinavano alla locanda, il contrasto cresceva, ed era accentuato dal fatto stesso della loro aria di reciproca familiarità; come se camminassero quasi a braccetto. Uno era relativamente basso e molto robusto; l’altro insolitamente alto e slanciato. Erano entrambi biondi; ma i capelli biondi dell’uomo più basso erano ben divisi e lisciati con cura all’indietro; mentre quelli dell’altro si drizzavano in ciuffi e bioccoli erratici dall’aspetto fantastico. L’uomo più basso aveva un volto pieno e squadrato, reso più affilato da un naso molto appuntito, e un paio di occhi vivaci e simili a quelli di un uccello, che lo facevano somigliare a un piccolo becco. C’era in lui qualcosa del passero maschio; e, in effetti, sembrava più un uccello di città che di campagna. I suoi abiti erano ordinati e comuni come quelli di un impiegato; e portava una borsetta dall’aria professionale come se stesse andando in città; mentre il suo alto compagno si era caricato sulle spalle uno zaino sciolto, e quella che era evidentemente l’attrezzatura di un pittore. Aveva un volto lungo, lievemente cadaverico, con occhi trasognati; ma il mento sottostante sporgeva in avanti, quasi come se avesse formato una propria inconscia risoluzione, di cui gli occhi azzurri e vuoti erano ancora ignari. Erano entrambi giovani; ed entrambi camminavano senza cappello, probabilmente per il calore del cammino; poiché l’uno teneva in mano un rigido cappello di paglia, e l’altro aveva un molle feltro grigio ficcato alla meglio nel suo zaino.

They came to a halt before the inn; and the shorter man said jovially to his companion, “Here’s a field for your efforts, anyhow.”

Then he called out with breezy civility to the inn-keeper, asking him to bring out two pots of ale; and when that gloomy character had disappeared into his gloomy place of entertainment, he turned to the doctor with the same radiant loquacity:

“My friend’s a painter,” he explained, “but rather a special sort of painter. You might call him a house-painter; but he’s not quite what most people mean by one. It may surprise you, sir, but he’s an R.A., and not the stuffy sort that sometimes suggests, either. One of the first among the young geniuses, and exhibits at all their cranky galleries. But his whole aim and glory in life is to go about repainting inn-signs. There; you don’t meet a genius with that little fancy every day. What’s the name of this pub?”

And he stood on tiptoe, craning and peering at the blackened sign with an extraordinary contained vivacity in his curiosity.

“The Rising Sun,” he commented, turning eagerly again to his silent friend. “That’s what you would call an omen, after what you were saying this morning about reviving the real inns. My friend is very poetical; and he said it would make a sunrise all over England.”

“Well, they say the sun never sets on the British Empire,” observed the doctor, with a laugh.

“I don’t feel it about the Empire so much,” said the painter simply, breaking his silence like one spontaneously thinking aloud. “After all, one doesn’t fancy an English inn on the top of Mount Everest, or somewhere on the Suez Canal. But one’s life would be well spent in waking up the dead inns of England and making them English and Christian again. If I could do it, I would do nothing else till I die.”

“Of course you can do it,” replied his travelling companion. “A picture by an artist like you, and hung outside a public-house, makes it fashionable for miles round.”

“Is it really true, then,” inquired Dr. Garth, “that you employ all your serious powers on subjects like public-house signs?”

“What finer subjects are there, even as subjects?” asked the painter; he was now evidently full of his favourite subject and he was one of those who are either abstractedly silent or ardently argumentative. “Is it more dignified to paint an Academy portrait of some snobbish mayor in a gold chain, or some swindling millionaire’s wife in a diamond tiara, than to paint the heads of great English admirals, to be toasted in good ale? Is it better to paint some nepotistical old noodle wearing his George and Garter than to paint St. George himself in the very act of killing the Dragon? I’ve repainted six old signs of St. George and the Dragon, or even the Dragon without St. George; a sign called the Green Dragon is usually very suggestive to anybody with a little imagination; you can make him a sort of spirit and terror of tropical forests. Even a Blue Boar is suggestive; something nocturnal with stars like the Great Bear; like that dim monstrous boar that stood for chaos and old night in the Celtic mythology.”

And he reached for his pewter pot, and applied himself to it with absorption.

“He’s a poet as well as a painter, you know,” explained the smaller man, still regarding his companion with an absurd air of proprietorship, as if he himself were the keeper and showman of some singular wild animal; “You’ve probably heard of the poems of Gabriel Gale, illustrated by himself? I can get you a copy if you are interested in these things. I’m his agent and business man; my name’s Hurrel… James Hurrel. People laugh at us and call us the Heavenly Twins, because we’re inseparable, and I never let him out of my sight. Have to look after him… eccentricities of genius, you know.”

The painter took his face off the pewter pot, a face fiery with controversy.

“Genius oughtn’t to be eccentric!” he cried in some excitement. “Genius ought to be centric. It ought to be in the core of the cosmos, not on the revolving edges. People seem to think it a compliment to accuse one of being an outsider, and to talk about the eccentricities of genius. What would they think, if I said I only wish to God I had the centricities of genius?”

“I fear they would think it was the beer,” replied Dr. Garth, “that had slightly confused your polysyllables. Well, it may be a romantic idea to revive the old signs, as you say. Romance is not much in my line.”

Mr. Hurrel, the agent, cut in sharply, and even eagerly. “But it isn’t only a romantic idea,” he explained; “it’s a real, practical idea, too. I’m a business man, and you may believe me it’s really a business proposition. Not only for us, but for the other people too… for the inn-keepers and the villagers and the squires, and everybody. Why, look at this broken-down ale-house they call the Rising Sun. If everyone would work together, they could have this empty hole humming like a hive in a year. If the squire would open the old road and let people visit the ruins, if he’d build a bridge here by the inn and hang out a sign painted by Gabriel Gale, you’d have all the cultivated sightseers in Europe stopping here for lunch.”

“Hullo!” cried the doctor. “It looks as if they were coming to lunch already. Really, our pessimistic friend inside talked as if this were a ruin in the desert; but I begin to believe it does a trade like the Savoy.”

They had all been standing with their backs to the road, looking at the dark tavern under discussion; but even before the doctor began to speak, Gabriel Gale, the painter and poet, had become in some odd fashion conscious of an addition to the company. Perhaps it was because the elongated shadows of a horse and two human figures had for some little time rested on the sunny road beside him. He turned his head over his shoulder, and remained staring at what he saw.

Si fermarono davanti alla locanda; e l’uomo più basso disse gioviale al suo compagno: «Ecco comunque un campo per i tuoi sforzi.»

Poi chiamò con vivace cortesia il locandiere, chiedendogli di portare fuori due boccali di birra; e quando quel tetro personaggio fu scomparso nel suo tetro luogo di ristoro, si rivolse al dottore con la stessa raggiante loquacità:

«Il mio amico è un pittore», spiegò, «ma un pittore piuttosto particolare. Potreste chiamarlo un imbianchino di case; ma non è affatto ciò che la maggior parte della gente intende con questo. Vi sorprenderà, signore, ma è un membro della R.A., e nemmeno di quella specie tronfia che a volte questo suggerisce. Uno dei primi tra i giovani geni, ed espone in tutte le loro stravaganti gallerie. Ma tutto il suo scopo e la sua gloria nella vita è andare in giro a ridipingere le insegne delle locande. Ecco; non tutti i giorni s’incontra un genio con una fisima simile. Come si chiama questa taverna?»

E si alzò sulla punta dei piedi, tendendo il collo e scrutando l’insegna annerita con una straordinaria e trattenuta vivacità nella sua curiosità.

«Il Sole Nascente», commentò, voltandosi di nuovo con ardore verso il suo silenzioso amico. «Ecco quello che tu chiameresti un presagio, dopo ciò che dicevi stamattina sul far rivivere le vere locande. Il mio amico è molto poetico; e ha detto che avrebbe fatto sorgere un’alba per tutta l’Inghilterra.»

«Beh, dicono che il sole non tramonta mai sull’Impero britannico», osservò il dottore, con una risata.

«Non lo sento tanto a proposito dell’Impero», disse il pittore semplicemente, rompendo il suo silenzio come chi pensa ad alta voce spontaneamente. «Dopotutto, non si immagina una locanda inglese in cima al Monte Everest, o da qualche parte lungo il Canale di Suez. Ma la propria vita sarebbe ben spesa a risvegliare le locande morte d’Inghilterra e a renderle di nuovo inglesi e cristiane. Se potessi farlo, non farei altro fino alla morte.»

«Certo che puoi farlo», rispose il suo compagno di viaggio. «Un quadro di un artista come te, appeso fuori da una osteria, la rende alla moda per miglia intorno.»

«È davvero vero, allora», domandò il dottor Garth, «che voi impiegate tutte le vostre serie facoltà su soggetti come le insegne delle osterie?»

«Quali soggetti più belli esistono, anche solo come soggetti?» chiese il pittore; era ormai evidentemente pieno del suo argomento prediletto ed era uno di quelli che o stanno astrattamente in silenzio o discutono con ardore. «È più dignitoso dipingere un ritratto d’Accademia di qualche sindaco snob con una catena d’oro, o della moglie di qualche milionario truffatore con un diadema di diamanti, che dipingere le teste dei grandi ammiragli inglesi, da brindare con buona birra? È meglio dipingere qualche vecchio babbeo nepotista che indossa il suo Giorgio e la sua Giarrettiera, che dipingere san Giorgio stesso nell’atto di uccidere il Drago? Ho ridipinto sei vecchie insegne di san Giorgio e il Drago, o perfino del Drago senza san Giorgio; un’insegna chiamata il Drago Verde è di solito molto suggestiva per chiunque abbia un po’ d’immaginazione; puoi farne una sorta di spirito e terrore delle foreste tropicali. Perfino un Cinghiale Azzurro è suggestivo; qualcosa di notturno con stelle come l’Orsa Maggiore; come quel fosco e mostruoso cinghiale che rappresentava il caos e l’antica Notte nella mitologia celtica.»

E allungò la mano verso il suo boccale di peltro, e vi si applicò con assorto raccoglimento.

«È un poeta oltre che un pittore, sapete», spiegò l’uomo più piccolo, continuando a osservare il suo compagno con un’assurda aria di proprietà, come se lui stesso fosse il custode e l’esibitore di qualche singolare animale selvatico; «avrete probabilmente sentito parlare delle Poesie di Gabriel Gale, illustrate da lui stesso? Posso procurarvene una copia se vi interessano queste cose. Sono il suo agente e uomo d’affari; il mio nome è Hurrel… James Hurrel. La gente ride di noi e ci chiama i Gemelli Celesti, perché siamo inseparabili, e non lo perdo mai di vista. Devo badare a lui… eccentricità del genio, sapete.»

Il pittore staccò il volto dal boccale di peltro, un volto infiammato di polemica.

«Il genio non dovrebbe essere eccentrico!» gridò con una certa concitazione. «Il genio dovrebbe essere centrico. Dovrebbe stare nel nucleo del cosmo, non sui bordi che ruotano. La gente sembra credere che sia un complimento accusare uno di essere un estraneo, e parlare delle eccentricità del genio. Che cosa penserebbero, se dicessi che vorrei soltanto, per Dio, avere le centricità del genio?»

«Temo penserebbero che è la birra», rispose il dottor Garth, «ad aver leggermente confuso i vostri polisillabi. Beh, può essere un’idea romantica far rivivere le vecchie insegne, come dite. Il romanticismo non è molto nelle mie corde.»

Il signor Hurrel, l’agente, intervenne bruscamente, e perfino con ardore. «Ma non è soltanto un’idea romantica», spiegò; «è anche un’idea reale, pratica. Sono un uomo d’affari, e potete credermi che è davvero una proposta commerciale. Non solo per noi, ma anche per gli altri… per i locandieri e i paesani e i signorotti, e per tutti. Ma guardate questa cadente osteria di birra che chiamano il Sole Nascente. Se tutti lavorassero insieme, potrebbero far ronzare questo buco vuoto come un alveare nel giro di un anno. Se il signorotto aprisse la vecchia strada e lasciasse che la gente visitasse le rovine, se costruisse un ponte qui presso la locanda e appendesse un’insegna dipinta da Gabriel Gale, avreste tutti i turisti colti d’Europa a fermarsi qui per pranzo.»

«Ehilà!» gridò il dottore. «Sembra che stiano già venendo a pranzo. Davvero, il nostro pessimista amico lì dentro parlava come se questa fosse una rovina nel deserto; ma comincio a credere che faccia affari come il Savoy.»

Erano rimasti tutti in piedi con le spalle alla strada, guardando la buia taverna in questione; ma ancor prima che il dottore cominciasse a parlare, Gabriel Gale, il pittore e poeta, era divenuto in qualche strano modo consapevole di un’aggiunta alla compagnia. Forse era perché le ombre allungate di un cavallo e di due figure umane si erano da qualche tempo posate sulla soleggiata strada accanto a lui. Voltò la testa oltre la spalla, e rimase a fissare ciò che vedeva.

A high dog-cart had drawn up on the other side of the road. The reins were in the gloved hands of a tall, dark young lady, clad in dark blue of the tailor-made type, neat but not particularly new. By her side was a man, perhaps ten years older than herself, but seeming in many ways much more, for his high-featured face was wasted as with sickness, and there was a great anxiety in his large grey eyes.

In the momentary silence the clear voice of the girl came like an echo of the doctor’s phrase, saying: “I am sure we can get some lunch here.” She slipped lightly to the ground and stood by the horse’s head, while her companion descended with a little more hesitation. He was dressed in light tweeds, which seemed somehow slightly incongruous with his invalid air, and he addressed Hurrel with a rather nervous smile.

“I hope you won’t regard me as an eavesdropper, sir; but you were not exactly speaking as if you were talking secrets.”

Hurrel, indeed, had been talking as if he were a cheap-jack dominating the noise of the fair; and he smiled and answered quite pleasantly:

“I was only saying what anybody might about what a squire might do with a property like this. I don’t in the least mind anybody listening who happens to be interested.”

“I happen to be a little interested,” answered the man in tweeds, “because, as it happens, I am the squire if there are any squires nowadays.”

“I sincerely apologize,” answered the agent, still smiling; “but, if you will play Haroun Alraschid…”

“Oh, I’m not at all offended,” answered the other. “To tell the truth, I’m rather wondering whether you aren’t quite right.”

Gabriel Gale had been looking at the girl in dark blue rather longer than was quite polite; but painters and absent-minded persons may sometimes be excused in such cases. His friend would probably have infuriated him by calling it one of the eccentricities of genius, but it might have been disputed whether his admiration was entirely eccentric. Lady Diana Westermaine would have made a most satisfactory sign for an inn… a bush worthy of the best wine… or might even have uplifted the lowly estate of an Academy picture, though it was long since her unfortunate family could have easily afforded one. She had hair of a curious dark brown, which in ordinary shades looked black, while the lights in it looked almost red; her dark eyebrows had a touch of temper both in the good and the bad sense; her eyes were even larger and greyer than her brother’s, but less filled with mere worry and more with a more spiritual weariness. Gale had the sense that her soul was more hungry than her body. But he had also the thought that people are only hungry because they are healthy. He thought all this in the brief moments before he remembered his manners, and turned to consider the other group.

When he had left off looking at her, she began looking at him, but with a somewhat cooler curiosity.

Meanwhile, Mr. James Hurrel had been working wonders, not to say miracles. With something more than the tenacity of a tout, with something of the eloquence of the born diplomatist, he had already wound round the squire a web of suggestions and proposals and possibilities. There was really something about him of that imaginative business man of whom we hear so much and see so little. Affairs which a man like Westermaine could never normally have conceived as being settled except by long lawyers’ letters extending over several months, seemed to be arranging themselves before him in several minutes. A new bridge of the most artistic woodwork seemed already to point across the river to the open road; a new and higher class of rents seemed already to be dotting the valley with artistic villages; and a new golden sign of the Rising Sun, with the signature of Gabriel Gale, already blazed above them, a symbol that the sun had risen indeed.

Before they knew where they were the whole company had been bustled in the most friendly fashion through the inn, and set down to a luncheon that was really a committee round the table in the dreary garden beside the river. Hurrel was drawing plans on the wooden table and making calculations on pieces of paper, and reeling off figures and answering objections and growing every moment more restless and radiant. He had one piece of magic for making others believe… the fact that he evidently believed himself; and the squire, who had never met such a person before, had no weapons with which to fight him, even if it had been his interest to do so. Amid all this whirl Lady Diana looked across at Gale, who sat at the opposite corner of the table, somewhat detached and dreamy.

“What do you think of it, Mr. Gale?” she said; but Mr. Gale’s business adviser answered for him, as he answered for everybody and answered for everything.

“Oh, it’s no good asking him about business,” he cried boisterously. “He’s only one of the assets; he brings in all the artistic people. He’s a great painter; but we only want a painter to paint. Lord bless you, he won’t mind my saying that; he never minds what I say, or what anybody says, for that matter. He doesn’t answer a question for about half an hour, as a rule.”

Nevertheless, the painter answered the lady’s question under the time specified; but all he said was, “I think we ought to consult the inn-keeper.”

“Oh, very well,” cried the resilient Hurrel, leaping up. “I’ll do that now, if you like. Back in a minute.” And he disappeared again through the dark interior of the inn.

“Our friend is very eager,” said the squire, smiling; “but, after all, those are the sort of people who get things done. I mean practical things.”

The lady was again looking at the painter with a slightly constricted brow; she seemed to be almost sorry for him in his comparative eclipse; but he only smiled and said: “No, I’m no good at practical things.”

Un alto calesse si era fermato dall’altro lato della strada. Le redini erano nelle mani inguantate di una giovane donna alta e bruna, vestita di blu scuro in stile sartoriale, ordinata ma non particolarmente nuova. Al suo fianco c’era un uomo, forse dieci anni più vecchio di lei, ma che sembrava per molti versi assai di più, poiché il suo volto dai lineamenti marcati era consunto come dalla malattia, e c’era una grande ansia nei suoi grandi occhi grigi.

Nel silenzio momentaneo la voce chiara della ragazza giunse come un’eco della frase del dottore, dicendo: «Sono certa che possiamo trovare qualcosa da pranzo qui.» Scivolò leggera a terra e si fermò accanto alla testa del cavallo, mentre il suo compagno scendeva con un po’ più di esitazione. Era vestito di leggero tweed, che sembrava in qualche modo lievemente incongruo con la sua aria d’invalido, e si rivolse a Hurrel con un sorriso piuttosto nervoso.

«Spero non mi considererete un origliatore, signore; ma non stavate esattamente parlando come se rivelaste segreti.»

Hurrel, in effetti, aveva parlato come un cantastorie da fiera che sovrasta il frastuono del mercato; e sorrise e rispose in modo del tutto cortese:

«Stavo solo dicendo ciò che chiunque potrebbe dire su quel che un signorotto potrebbe fare con una proprietà come questa. Non m’importa affatto che ascolti chiunque si trovi ad esservi interessato.»

«Mi trovo ad essere un poco interessato», rispose l’uomo in tweed, «perché, come càpita, io sono il signorotto, se di signorotti ce ne sono ancora al giorno d’oggi.»

«Mi scuso sinceramente», rispose l’agente, ancora sorridendo; «ma, se volete fare Harun al-Rashid…»

«Oh, non sono affatto offeso», rispose l’altro. «A dire la verità, mi sto piuttosto domandando se non abbiate del tutto ragione.»

Gabriel Gale aveva guardato la ragazza in blu scuro un po’ più a lungo di quanto fosse del tutto educato; ma ai pittori e alle persone distratte si può a volte perdonare in simili casi. Il suo amico lo avrebbe probabilmente fatto infuriare chiamandola una delle eccentricità del genio, ma si sarebbe potuto contestare se la sua ammirazione fosse interamente eccentrica. Lady Diana Westermaine avrebbe fatto un’insegna quanto mai soddisfacente per una locanda… una frasca degna del miglior vino… o avrebbe perfino potuto nobilitare l’umile condizione di un quadro d’Accademia, benché fosse ormai lungo tempo che la sua sventurata famiglia avrebbe potuto permettersene facilmente uno. Aveva capelli di un curioso bruno scuro, che nelle tonalità ordinarie sembravano neri, mentre i riflessi in essi sembravano quasi rossi; le sue scure sopracciglia avevano un tocco di temperamento sia nel senso buono che in quello cattivo; i suoi occhi erano ancora più grandi e grigi di quelli del fratello, ma meno colmi di mera preoccupazione e più di una stanchezza più spirituale. Gale ebbe la sensazione che la sua anima fosse più affamata del suo corpo. Ma ebbe anche il pensiero che le persone hanno fame solo perché sono sane. Pensò tutto questo nei brevi istanti prima di ricordarsi delle buone maniere, e si voltò a considerare l’altro gruppo.

Quando ebbe smesso di guardarla, lei cominciò a guardare lui, ma con una curiosità alquanto più fredda.

Nel frattempo, il signor James Hurrel aveva compiuto meraviglie, per non dire miracoli. Con qualcosa di più della tenacia di un imbonitore, con qualcosa dell’eloquenza del diplomatico nato, aveva già avvolto attorno al signorotto una rete di suggerimenti e proposte e possibilità. C’era davvero in lui qualcosa di quell’uomo d’affari fantasioso di cui tanto sentiamo parlare e così poco vediamo. Faccende che un uomo come Westermaine non avrebbe mai potuto normalmente concepire come definibili se non con lunghe lettere di avvocati estese su parecchi mesi, sembravano sistemarsi davanti a lui in parecchi minuti. Un nuovo ponte del più artistico legname sembrava già puntare attraverso il fiume verso la strada aperta; una nuova e più alta classe di affitti sembrava già punteggiare la valle di villaggi artistici; e una nuova aurea insegna del Sole Nascente, con la firma di Gabriel Gale, già fiammeggiava sopra di loro, un simbolo che il sole era davvero sorto.

Prima ancora di rendersene conto, l’intera compagnia era stata sospinta nel modo più amichevole attraverso la locanda, e fatta sedere a un pranzo che era in realtà un comitato attorno al tavolo nel tetro giardino accanto al fiume. Hurrel disegnava piani sul tavolo di legno e faceva calcoli su pezzi di carta, e snocciolava cifre e rispondeva alle obiezioni e diventava ogni momento più irrequieto e raggiante. Aveva un elemento di magia per far credere gli altri… il fatto che evidentemente credeva lui stesso; e il signorotto, che non aveva mai incontrato una persona simile prima, non aveva armi con cui combatterlo, anche se fosse stato suo interesse farlo. In mezzo a tutto questo turbinìo Lady Diana guardò dall’altra parte verso Gale, che sedeva all’angolo opposto del tavolo, alquanto distaccato e trasognato.

«Che cosa ne pensate, signor Gale?» disse lei; ma il consulente d’affari del signor Gale rispose per lui, come rispondeva per tutti e per tutto.

«Oh, non serve chiedergli di affari», gridò rumorosamente. «È solo uno degli attivi; porta tutta la gente artistica. È un grande pittore; ma a un pittore chiediamo solo di dipingere. Dio vi benedica, non gli dispiacerà che io lo dica; non gli dispiace mai ciò che dico, o ciò che chiunque dice, del resto. Di regola non risponde a una domanda per circa mezz’ora.»

Ciononostante, il pittore rispose alla domanda della signora entro il tempo specificato; ma tutto ciò che disse fu: «Penso che dovremmo consultare il locandiere.»

«Oh, molto bene», gridò l’elastico Hurrel, balzando in piedi. «Lo farò subito, se volete. Torno tra un minuto.» E scomparve di nuovo attraverso il buio interno della locanda.

«Il nostro amico è molto zelante», disse il signorotto, sorridendo; «ma, dopotutto, sono quel genere di persone che portano a termine le cose. Intendo le cose pratiche.»

La signora guardava di nuovo il pittore con la fronte lievemente corrugata; sembrava provare quasi pena per lui nella sua relativa eclissi; ma egli si limitò a sorridere e a dire: «No, non sono buono nelle cose pratiche.»

Almost as he spoke a noise like a sort of cry came through the inn from the road beyond, and Dr. Garth sprang to his feet and stood peering in at the door. The next moment Gale also seemed to rouse himself with a sort of sudden agitation; and the moment after that the others were all following the doctor, who had already started through the house. But when he came to the front door Gale turned for a moment, barring the exit with his tall figure, and said:

“Don’t let the lady come out.”

The squire had already seen over the painter’s shoulder a horrible instantaneous image. It was the black figure of a man hanging from the signboard of the Rising Sun.

It was only instantaneous; for the next moment Dr. Garth had cut him down, with the assistance of Hurrel, who had presumably uttered the first cry of alarm. The man over whom the doctor was bending was the unfortunate inn-keeper; and this was apparently the form in which he took his prussic acid.

After being busy in silence for a few moments, the doctor gave a grunt of relief and said:

“He’s not dead; in fact he’ll be all right presently.” Then he said, with a sort of disgust: “Why the devil did I leave that rope there instead of tying up my bag like a tidy professional man? I forgot all about it in all this fuss. Well, Mr. Hurrel, the sun nearly rose too late for somebody.”

Hurrel and the doctor carried the unfortunate inn-keeper into his inn, the latter declaring that the would-be suicide would soon be in a position to be questioned, if questioning was necessary. Gale paced up and down outside in his aimless fashion, frequently frowning at the sign that had served as a gallows (and the table that had probably served as the proverbial stool kicked away) with a frown that seemed not only pained but puzzled.

“This is a most distressing business,” said the squire. “Of course I am a magistrate and all that, but I should hate to have to trouble the poor fellow with the police.” At the sound of the word, Gabriel Gale swung round and said in a loud harsh voice:

“Oh, I forgot the police. Of course, he must be locked up in a cell to show him that life is worth living after all, and the world a bright, happy place to live in.”

He laughed shortly and frowned heavily, and then after ruminating a moment, said with a certain abruptness:

“Look here, I want to ask you a favour, which may seem an odd one. I want you to let me question this poor chap when he comes to. Give me ten minutes alone with him, and I will promise to cure him of suicidal mania better than a policeman could.”

“But why you especially?” asked the doctor, in some natural annoyance.

“Because I am no good at practical things,” answered Gale, “and you have got beyond practical things.”

There was another silence, and he spoke again with the same strange air of authority.

“What you want is an unpractical man. That is what people always want in the last resort and the worst conditions. What can practical men do here? Waste their practical time in running after the poor fellow and cutting him down from one pub sign after another? Waste their practical lives watching him day and night, to see he doesn’t get hold of a rope or a razor? Do you call that practical? You can only forbid him to die. Can you persuade him to live? Believe me, that is where we come in. A man must have his head in the clouds and his wits wool-gathering in fairyland, before he can do anything so practical as that.”

The group felt a growing bewilderment at his new attitude; it seemed to fill the stage in a strange fashion; nor was it lessened when he actually or apparently fulfilled his undertaking, coming out of the inn twenty minutes afterwards, and cheerfully announcing that the inn-keeper would not hang himself again. The next moment he had jumped on to the table under the sign with a large piece of chalk in his hand, and was making sketchy and slashing strokes of design on the brown face of the Rising Sun.

Lady Diana was looking on at the operation with a dark and watchful face. She was of a type more intellectual than the others, and she recognized a real thread of thought running through all that seemed to them transcendental tomfoolery. She had understood the implied irony of his first reference to their host; the moral that had come before the frightful fable. After all, they had certainly been thinking of everything about the inn except the inn-keeper. She could see there was an intelligent case, and a practical example, of the occasions when the poet can be more useful than the policeman. But she was conscious also of something baffling about him above and beyond all this; of a disquiet in him with some deeper cause, and something in his eye that belied the new levity of his manner. His draughtsmanship, however, was proceeding in the most dashing and even dazzling fashion, when Lady Diana spoke:

“I can’t think how you can do it,” she said, “on the very place where a man has hung himself like Judas.”

“It was the treason, not the despair of Judas, that was really bad,” he answered. “I was just thinking of something like that for the picture. I prefer it to Apollo and all that, for a treatment of the sunrise. Look here, you have a big head blocked in with some shadows, in the centre,” and he made some bold markings on the sun’s disc. “His dark face hidden in his hands like that, but a burst of golden dawn behind like a glory. Red bars of level cloud and a red cock, just there. The greatest of sinners and of saints; his reproach the cock, and his halo the Rising Sun.”

The nameless shadow seemed to have fallen from him as he talked and worked; and by an almost symbolic coincidence the strong afternoon sun fell with a strange fullness and splendour upon him and his work, which shone out against a blackening background of clouds continually gathering and darkening on the stormy side of the valley, beyond the ford. Against those masses of sinister purple and indigo, his figure looked like that of some legendary craftsman clad in gold and painting the frescoes of a golden chapel. The impression increased as the head and halo of St. Peter grew under his hand; and the lady was of the sort not disinclined to dream herself back in some distant period, about which she did not know too much. She felt herself back among the sacred arts and crafts of the medieval world; which were all she knew of the medieval world.

Quasi mentre parlava un rumore simile a una specie di grido giunse attraverso la locanda dalla strada al di là, e il dottor Garth balzò in piedi e rimase a scrutare dentro la porta. L’istante dopo anche Gale parve riscuotersi con una sorta di improvvisa agitazione; e l’istante ancora successivo gli altri seguivano tutti il dottore, che aveva già preso ad attraversare la casa. Ma quando giunse alla porta d’ingresso Gale si voltò per un momento, sbarrando l’uscita con la sua alta figura, e disse:

«Non lasciate uscire la signora.»

Il signorotto aveva già visto, oltre la spalla del pittore, un’immagine orribile e istantanea. Era la figura nera di un uomo che pendeva dall’insegna del Sole Nascente.

Fu solo istantanea; poiché l’istante dopo il dottor Garth lo aveva tirato giù, con l’assistenza di Hurrel, che aveva presumibilmente lanciato il primo grido d’allarme. L’uomo su cui il dottore si chinava era lo sventurato locandiere; e questa era a quanto pare la forma in cui prendeva il suo acido prussico.

Dopo essersi affaccendato in silenzio per qualche momento, il dottore emise un grugnito di sollievo e disse:

«Non è morto; anzi tra poco starà benissimo.» Poi disse, con una sorta di disgusto: «Perché diavolo ho lasciato quella corda lì invece di allacciare la mia borsa come un professionista ordinato? Me ne sono completamente dimenticato in tutto questo trambusto. Beh, signor Hurrel, il sole è quasi sorto troppo tardi per qualcuno.»

Hurrel e il dottore portarono lo sventurato locandiere dentro la sua locanda, e quest’ultimo dichiarava che l’aspirante suicida sarebbe presto stato in condizione di essere interrogato, se un interrogatorio fosse necessario. Gale andava su e giù fuori nel suo modo svagato, aggrottando spesso la fronte davanti all’insegna che era servita da forca (e al tavolo che aveva probabilmente fatto da proverbiale sgabello scalciato via) con un cipiglio che pareva non solo addolorato ma perplesso.

«È una faccenda quanto mai penosa», disse il signorotto. «Certo io sono magistrato e tutto il resto, ma detesterei dover disturbare il pover’uomo con la polizia.» Al suono della parola, Gabriel Gale si voltò di scatto e disse con voce alta e aspra:

«Oh, dimenticavo la polizia. Certo, dev’essere rinchiuso in una cella per mostrargli che dopotutto la vita vale la pena di essere vissuta, e che il mondo è un luogo luminoso e felice in cui vivere.»

Rise brevemente e aggrottò pesantemente la fronte, e poi, dopo aver rimuginato un momento, disse con una certa bruschezza:

«Sentite, voglio chiedervi un favore, che potrà sembrare bizzarro. Voglio che mi lasciate interrogare questo pover’uomo quando rinviene. Datemi dieci minuti da solo con lui, e prometto di guarirlo dalla mania suicida meglio di quanto potrebbe un poliziotto.»

«Ma perché proprio voi?» chiese il dottore, con un certo naturale fastidio.

«Perché io non sono buono nelle cose pratiche», rispose Gale, «e voi avete oltrepassato le cose pratiche.»

Ci fu un altro silenzio, ed egli parlò di nuovo con la stessa strana aria di autorità.

«Ciò di cui avete bisogno è un uomo poco pratico. È ciò che la gente vuole sempre in ultima istanza e nelle peggiori condizioni. Che cosa possono fare qui gli uomini pratici? Sprecare il loro pratico tempo a correre dietro al pover’uomo e a tirarlo giù da un’insegna di taverna dopo l’altra? Sprecare le loro pratiche vite a sorvegliarlo giorno e notte, per vedere che non metta le mani su una corda o un rasoio? Chiamate questo essere pratici? Potete solo proibirgli di morire. Potete persuaderlo a vivere? Credetemi, è qui che entriamo in gioco noi. Un uomo deve avere la testa fra le nuvole e l’ingegno a spasso nel paese delle fate, prima di poter fare qualcosa di tanto pratico.»

Il gruppo provò un crescente sconcerto davanti al suo nuovo atteggiamento; sembrava riempire la scena in uno strano modo; né esso diminuì quando egli effettivamente o apparentemente adempì l’impegno assunto, uscendo dalla locanda venti minuti dopo, e annunciando allegramente che il locandiere non si sarebbe più impiccato. L’istante dopo era balzato sul tavolo sotto l’insegna con un grosso pezzo di gesso in mano, e tracciava colpi abbozzati e vigorosi di disegno sulla bruna faccia del Sole Nascente.

Lady Diana osservava l’operazione con un volto scuro e vigile. Era di un tipo più intellettuale degli altri, e riconosceva un vero filo di pensiero che percorreva tutto ciò che a loro sembrava trascendentale buffoneria. Aveva colto l’ironia implicita del suo primo riferimento al loro ospite; la morale che era venuta prima della spaventosa favola. Dopotutto, avevano certamente pensato a tutto ciò che riguardava la locanda tranne che al locandiere. Poteva vedere che c’era un caso intelligente, e un esempio pratico, delle occasioni in cui il poeta può essere più utile del poliziotto. Ma era consapevole anche di qualcosa di sconcertante in lui al di sopra e al di là di tutto questo; di un turbamento in lui con qualche causa più profonda, e di qualcosa nel suo sguardo che smentiva la nuova leggerezza dei suoi modi. Il suo disegno, tuttavia, procedeva nel modo più brillante e perfino abbagliante, quando Lady Diana parlò:

«Non riesco a capire come possiate farlo», disse, «proprio nel luogo dove un uomo si è impiccato come Giuda.»

«Fu il tradimento, non la disperazione di Giuda, ad essere davvero malvagio», rispose lui. «Stavo giusto pensando a qualcosa del genere per il quadro. Lo preferisco ad Apollo e a tutto il resto, per una raffigurazione del sorgere del sole. Ecco, avete una grande testa abbozzata con qualche ombra, al centro», e fece alcune audaci marcature sul disco del sole. «Il suo volto scuro nascosto tra le mani in quel modo, ma un’esplosione di aurea alba dietro come una gloria. Rosse barre di nubi orizzontali e un rosso gallo, proprio lì. Il più grande dei peccatori e dei santi; suo rimprovero il gallo, e sua aureola il Sole Nascente.»

L’ombra senza nome pareva essere caduta da lui mentre parlava e lavorava; e per una coincidenza quasi simbolica il forte sole pomeridiano cadde con una strana pienezza e splendore su di lui e sulla sua opera, che risplendeva contro uno sfondo annerito di nubi che continuamente si radunavano e si oscuravano sul lato tempestoso della valle, oltre il guado. Contro quelle masse di sinistro purpureo e indaco, la sua figura sembrava quella di qualche leggendario artigiano vestito d’oro e intento a dipingere gli affreschi di una dorata cappella. L’impressione cresceva man mano che la testa e l’aureola di san Pietro nascevano sotto la sua mano; e la signora era di quella specie non aliena dal sognarsi indietro in qualche epoca lontana, su cui non sapeva troppo. Si sentiva tornata tra le sacre arti e mestieri del mondo medievale; che erano tutto ciò che sapeva del mondo medievale.

Unfortunately, a shadow came between her and the sun in a shape that did not remind her of the medieval world. Mr. James Hurrel, the agent, his stiff hat a little on one side, jumped on to the same table on which the artist stood, and sat within two yards of him, with dangling legs, and somewhat aggressive cigar. “Always have to keep an eye on him, your ladyship, or he’d be giving ‘em away,” he called out, and somehow his voice and figure failed to fit in with the picture of pious and primitive craftsmanship.

Diana Westermaine explained to herself lucidly that she had no sort of reason to be angry; but she was exceedingly angry. The conversation of the two had been of no particular intimacy; but its increase to three had a very practical and painful effect of intrusion. She could not imagine why the artist, who was a gentleman, should go about with such a little bounder as his business adviser; and she wanted to hear more about the picture of St. Peter, or something interesting. As the agent sat down he had audibly observed something about making room for a little one. If he, at that moment, had been suddenly suspended from the sign, it is doubtful if the lady would have cut him down.

At this moment a much quieter voice said in her ear: “Excuse me, but might I have one word with you?”

She turned and found Dr. Garth, with his bag in his hand, evidently about to resume his journey at last.

“I’m going,” he said, “and I feel I really ought to tell you something before I go.”

He drew her a little way up the road of his departure, and then turned with an abrupt and hurried air of farewell.

“Doctors are often in delicate situations,” he said, “and a troublesome sense of duty drives me to saying a rather delicate thing. I tell it to you and not your brother, because I think you have a long way the better nerve of the two. There is something I suspect about those two men who go about painting signs.”

From where they stood on the higher ground she could still see the sign itself shining with its new accretion of colours, and the tall, actively moving figure, shining also with sunlight, and from that distance altogether dwarfing the small and dingy figure near his feet. There returned on her still more strongly the vision of a true creator, making pure colours in the innocent morning of the world.

“They are called the Heavenly Twins,” went on the doctor, “because they are inseparable. Well, there are many kinds of couples that are inseparable, and many causes for their never separating. But there is one sort that specially concerns me, and I should be sorry to see mixed up with you.”

“I haven’t the least idea what you mean,” replied Lady Diana.

“What about a lunatic and his keeper?” said the doctor, and walked on rapidly along the road, leaving her behind him.

She had the sensation of furiously flinging a suggestion from her, from the top of a high tower to the bottom of an abyss, combined with the sensation that the tower was not high enough nor the abyss deep enough; she even had the novel sensation that there was something weak about her throwing. While the tower of her mind was still rocking with the effort, she was interrupted by her brother, who came hastily, and even excitedly, towards her.

“I’ve just asked these gentlemen across to our place,” he said, “to fix up this business better. And we’d better be starting, for there’s a storm beating up, and even the ford sometimes gets pretty dicky. As it is, we shall have to cross two at a time in our own rotten old cart.”

It was in a sort of dream that she found herself again untethering the horse and again taking the reins. It was in a dream that she heard the voice that irritated her so much saying, “Heavenly Twins, you know, Heavenly Twins; we mustn’t be parted”; and then the voice of the squire replying, “Oh, it’ll only be for a minute, anyhow; she’ll send Wilson back with the dog-cart at once. There’s only room for two at a time, I’m afraid.” They stood a little way back in the doorway of the inn as they talked, and Gabriel Gale had just stepped from the table and was standing nearer to the dog-cart.

Then there surged up in her suddenly she knew not what movement of impatience or defiance; and she said in a matter-of-fact tone: “Are you coming first, Mr. Gale?”

The face of the artist blanched as if he were blasted with white lightning in the sun-light. He gave one look over his shoulder and then leapt into the seat beside her, and the horse threw up his head and began to move towards the ford. The rain must have already fallen further upstream, for there was already the sensation of water flowing more deeply about the horse’s legs; and, though they were only fording a river, she had a hazy sensation of crossing a Rubicon.

Enoch Wilson, the groom, one of the small group left at Westermaine Abbey, died and was gathered to his fathers without having the faintest notion of the determining part which he played in the dark events of that night. And his private life, though, like that of other immortal spirits, of an intense interest, does not in any other point affect this story. It is enough to say that he was rather deaf, and, like many grooms, more sympathetic with the moods of horses than of men. Lady Diana sought him out in the stable, which stood far from the house and near the river, and told him to take the dog-cart back for the rest of the party. She spoke hurriedly and told him to hurry, because the rain would soon make the ford difficult; and her phrases, combined with his own bias, turned his mind chiefly to a consideration of the horse. He drove across under the gathering storm, and as he drew near the dark inn he heard high and excited voices. Mr. Hurrel was evidently hot upon his hobby or campaign. The groom got the impression that there was a quarrel; and took a few testy words from his master as meaning that he was not to be disturbed. So the careful Wilson took the horse back across the ford and back into the stable, congratulating himself on having saved the valuable quadruped from the worst inconveniences of what threatened to be a flood. Then he betook himself to his own occupations, leaving a trail of destiny behind him.

Sfortunatamente, un’ombra si frappose tra lei e il sole in una forma che non le richiamava alla mente il mondo medievale. Il signor James Hurrel, l’agente, con la sua bombetta un po’ inclinata da un lato, saltò sullo stesso tavolo su cui stava l’artista, e si sedette a meno di due metri da lui, con le gambe penzoloni e un sigaro alquanto aggressivo. «Bisogna sempre tenerlo d’occhio, vostra signoria, altrimenti finirebbe per regalarli», esclamò, e in qualche modo la sua voce e la sua figura non si accordavano con l’immagine di un artigianato pio e primitivo.

Diana Westermaine spiegò lucidamente a se stessa di non avere alcuna ragione di essere adirata; ma era adiratissima. La conversazione dei due non era stata di alcuna particolare intimità; ma il suo aumentare a tre ebbe un effetto assai pratico e doloroso d’intrusione. Non riusciva a immaginare perché l’artista, che era un gentiluomo, andasse in giro con un tale zoticello come suo consulente d’affari; e desiderava sentir dire di più sul quadro di san Pietro, o qualcosa d’interessante. Mentre l’agente si sedeva, aveva osservato udibilmente qualcosa a proposito di far posto a un piccoletto. Se in quel momento fosse stato improvvisamente appeso all’insegna, è dubbio che la signora lo avrebbe tirato giù.

In quel momento una voce assai più tranquilla le disse all’orecchio: «Mi scusi, ma potrei scambiare una parola con lei?»

Si voltò e trovò il dottor Garth, con la borsa in mano, evidentemente sul punto di riprendere finalmente il suo viaggio.

«Sto partendo», disse, «e sento che davvero dovrei dirle una cosa prima di andarmene.»

La condusse un poco su per la strada della sua partenza, e poi si voltò con un’aria brusca e affrettata di congedo.

«I dottori si trovano spesso in situazioni delicate», disse, «e un fastidioso senso del dovere mi spinge a dire una cosa piuttosto delicata. La dico a lei e non a suo fratello, perché penso che lei abbia di gran lunga il migliore sangue freddo dei due. C’è qualcosa che sospetto riguardo a quei due uomini che vanno in giro a dipingere insegne.»

Da dove si trovavano, sul terreno più elevato, poteva ancora vedere l’insegna stessa risplendere della sua nuova aggiunta di colori, e l’alta, attivamente mobile figura, risplendente anch’essa di luce solare, e da quella distanza rimpicciolire del tutto la piccola e sudicia figura vicino ai suoi piedi. Le ritornò ancora più forte la visione di un vero creatore, che formava puri colori nel innocente mattino del mondo.

«Li chiamano i Gemelli Celesti», proseguì il dottore, «perché sono inseparabili. Ebbene, vi sono molte specie di coppie che sono inseparabili, e molte cause del loro non separarsi mai. Ma ve n’è una specie che mi riguarda in modo particolare, e mi dispiacerebbe vederla mescolata a lei.»

«Non ho la minima idea di che cosa lei intenda», replicò Lady Diana.

«Che ne dice di un pazzo e del suo custode?» disse il dottore, e proseguì rapidamente lungo la strada, lasciandosela alle spalle.

Ebbe la sensazione di scagliare furiosamente lontano da sé un’insinuazione, dalla cima di un’alta torre fino al fondo di un abisso, unita alla sensazione che la torre non fosse abbastanza alta né l’abisso abbastanza profondo; ebbe persino la nuova sensazione che ci fosse qualcosa di debole nel suo lancio. Mentre la torre della sua mente oscillava ancora per lo sforzo, fu interrotta da suo fratello, che venne verso di lei frettolosamente, e persino concitatamente.

«Ho appena invitato questi signori da noi», disse, «per mettere a posto meglio questa faccenda. E faremmo meglio ad avviarci, perché sta montando una tempesta, e persino il guado a volte diventa piuttosto malsicuro. Così com’è, dovremo attraversare due alla volta sul nostro sgangherato vecchio carro.»

Fu in una sorta di sogno che si ritrovò di nuovo a slegare il cavallo e a prendere di nuovo le redini. Fu in un sogno che udì la voce che tanto la irritava dire: «Gemelli Celesti, sa, Gemelli Celesti; non dobbiamo essere separati»; e poi la voce dello squire che rispondeva: «Oh, sarà solo per un minuto, in ogni caso; manderà indietro Wilson con il calessino subito. C’è posto soltanto per due alla volta, temo.» Stavano un poco arretrati sulla soglia della locanda mentre parlavano, e Gabriel Gale era appena sceso dal tavolo e si trovava più vicino al calessino.

Allora sorse in lei d’un tratto non seppe quale moto d’impazienza o di sfida; e disse in tono pratico: «Viene lei per primo, signor Gale?»

Il volto dell’artista sbiancò come se fosse stato colpito da un bianco fulmine alla luce del sole. Diede un’occhiata da sopra la spalla e poi balzò sul sedile accanto a lei, e il cavallo alzò la testa e cominciò a muoversi verso il guado. La pioggia doveva essere già caduta più a monte, poiché già c’era la sensazione dell’acqua che scorreva più profonda intorno alle zampe del cavallo; e, sebbene stessero soltanto guadando un fiume, ebbe una vaga sensazione di attraversare un Rubicone.

Enoch Wilson, lo stalliere, uno del piccolo gruppo rimasto all’abbazia di Westermaine, morì e fu riunito ai suoi padri senza avere la più pallida idea della parte determinante che egli giocò negli oscuri eventi di quella notte. E la sua vita privata, benché, come quella di altri spiriti immortali, di un intenso interesse, non tocca sotto nessun altro punto questa storia. Basti dire che era piuttosto sordo, e, come molti stallieri, più in sintonia con gli umori dei cavalli che con quelli degli uomini. Lady Diana lo cercò nella stalla, che si trovava lontano dalla casa e vicino al fiume, e gli disse di riportare indietro il calessino per il resto della comitiva. Parlò frettolosamente e gli disse di sbrigarsi, perché la pioggia avrebbe presto reso difficile il guado; e le sue frasi, combinate con la sua stessa inclinazione, rivolsero la sua mente principalmente a una considerazione del cavallo. Egli attraversò guidando sotto la tempesta che si radunava, e mentre si avvicinava alla buia locanda udì voci alte e concitate. Il signor Hurrel era evidentemente infervorato nel suo pallino o nella sua campagna. Lo stalliere ebbe l’impressione che ci fosse un litigio; e prese alcune parole stizzose del suo padrone come a significare che non doveva essere disturbato. Così l’accorto Wilson riportò il cavallo al di là del guado e di nuovo nella stalla, congratulandosi con se stesso per aver salvato il prezioso quadrupede dai peggiori disagi di quella che minacciava di essere un’inondazione. Poi si dedicò alle proprie occupazioni, lasciandosi dietro una scia di destino.

Meanwhile Diana Westermaine had left the stable and made her way across the grounds to rejoin the guest who had gone in front of her. As she went up through a lane of hollyhocks and tall plants, she saw the vast flying island or continent of rain cloud, with its volcanic hues and outline, come sailing slowly over the dark, wooded ridge that was the wall of the valley. There was already something faintly lurid about the twilight with which it covered the rich colours of the garden; but higher up the climbing path a strip of lawn was golden in a chance gleam of sunlight, and against it she saw the figure she had come to seek. She recognized it by the light-brown clothes that had looked like gold in the evening light, but there was something very extraordinary about the shape as distinct from the colour. He seemed to be waving his arms slowly like branches in a breeze, and she fancied the arms were unnaturally long. For an instant she had the ugly fancy that the figure was deformed; and yet the more unearthly fancy that it had no head. Then the nightmare turned into ordinary nonsense, for the man threw a sort of cartwheel and alighted on his feet laughing. He had actually been standing on his head, or rather on his hands.

“Excuse me,” he said, “I often do that. It’s a very good thing for a landscape-painter to see the landscape upside down. He sees things then as they really are; yes, and that’s true in philosophy as well as art.” He brooded and then explained explosively.

“It’s all very well to talk about being topsy-turvy. But when the angels hang head downwards, we know they come from above. It’s only those that come from below that always have their noses in the air.”

Despite his hilarious manner, she approached him with a certain sub-conscious fear; which was not lessened when he lowered his voice and added: “Shall I tell you a secret?”

At the same moment were heard overhead the first heavy movements of the thunder, through which his voice came, perhaps, with an accidental air as of loud whispering.

“The world is upside down. We’re all upside down. We’re all flies crawling on a ceiling, and it’s an everlasting mercy that we don’t drop off.”

At that instant the twilight turned to a white blaze of lightning; and she was shocked to see that his face was quite serious.

She said with a sort of irritation, “You do say such crazy things,” and the next moment her voice was lost in the thronging echoes of the thunder, which seemed to shake everything, shouting the same word again and again… crazy, crazy, crazy. She had unconsciously given a word for the worst thought in her mind.

As yet no rain had fallen on the garden slopes, though the noise of it was already troubling the river beyond. But even had it done so, she herself doubted if the man would have noticed it. Even in more normal moments he seemed to be one who singly pursued a solitary train of thought, and he was still talking, like a man talking to himself, about the rationality of topsy-turvydom.

“We were talking about St. Peter,” he said; “you remember that he was crucified upside down. I’ve often fancied his humility was rewarded by seeing in death the beautiful vision of his boyhood. He also saw the landscape as it really is: with the stars like flowers, and the clouds like hills, and all men hanging on the mercy of God.”

Then a heavy drop of rain fell on him; and the effect of it was indescribable. It seemed to sting him like a wasp and wake him out of a trance. He started and stared round; and then said in a new and more natural voice:

“My God, where is Hurrel? What are the others doing? Aren’t they here yet?”

With an impulse not to be analysed, Diana dashed through the swaying plants to the top of a neighbouring hillock, and looked across the valley to the inn of the Rising Sun. And she saw flowing between them and that place a heavier and wider flood, which in that wild moment looked impassable, like the river of death.

In a strange way it seemed to her a symbol of something greater than the mere grim realism that would have told her, now only too plainly, that she was left alone with a lunatic. Somehow it seemed that the lunacy itself was only a sort of abominable accident and obstacle between her and something that might have been beautiful and a satisfaction of the soul. Another dark river was flowing between her and her own fairyland.

At the same moment Gabriel Gale gave a terrible cry; he also had seen afar off the sundering flood.

“You were right, after all,” he said. “You spoke of Judas, when I dared to speak of Peter. I have blasphemed and done the unpardonable sin. I am the traitor now.” Then he added in lower and heavier tones: “Yes, I am the man who sold God.”

The girl’s mind was growing clearer with the cold pain of reality. She had heard that maniacs sometimes accused themselves of the unpardonable sin. Something of her natural courage returned also, and she was ready to do anything, though she did not yet see very clearly what to do. As she was fighting for a solution, the question was settled for her in some degree by her companion himself, who started running down the slope.

“I must get across again if I swim the river,” he said. “I ought never to be away from Hurrel like this. I can never tell what will happen next.”

She followed his descent, and was rather surprised to see him deflect it to dart towards the stable. Before she knew where she was, he was struggling with the horse and dragging it out into the shafts; and she felt an irrational pleasure in the fact that he had the strength of a man, if it was the strength of a madman. But her own high spirit and self-respect had returned to her, and there rose in her a furious refusal to be a passive spectator of what might well be merely a suicide. After all, however mad he might be, the man was doing the right thing in trying to rejoin his medical attendant; and she would not have the last effort of his sanity frustrated by the antics of his disease.

Nel frattempo Diana Westermaine aveva lasciato la stalla e si era fatta strada attraverso il parco per raggiungere l’ospite che l’aveva preceduta. Mentre saliva attraverso un viale di malvarose e alte piante, vide la vasta isola volante o continente di nuvola di pioggia, con le sue tinte e i suoi contorni vulcanici, avanzare lentamente veleggiando sopra l’oscuro crinale boscoso che era la parete della valle. C’era già qualcosa di vagamente sinistro nel crepuscolo con cui esso ricopriva i ricchi colori del giardino; ma più in alto lungo il sentiero in salita una striscia di prato era dorata in un caso di sole, e contro di essa vide la figura che era venuta a cercare. La riconobbe dagli abiti color marrone chiaro che erano sembrati oro nella luce della sera, ma c’era qualcosa di assai straordinario nella forma, a differenza del colore. Sembrava agitare le braccia lentamente come rami in una brezza, e le parve che le braccia fossero innaturalmente lunghe. Per un istante ebbe la brutta impressione che la figura fosse deforme; e tuttavia l’impressione ancor più sovrannaturale che non avesse testa. Poi l’incubo si mutò in ordinaria assurdità, poiché l’uomo fece una specie di ruota e atterrò sui piedi ridendo. In effetti era stato in piedi sulla testa, o piuttosto sulle mani.

«Mi scusi», disse, «lo faccio spesso. È un’ottima cosa per un paesaggista vedere il paesaggio a testa in giù. Allora vede le cose come realmente sono; sì, e questo è vero in filosofia come pure nell’arte.» Meditò e poi spiegò con foga esplosiva.

«Va tutto molto bene parlare dell’essere a gambe all’aria. Ma quando gli angeli pendono a testa in giù, sappiamo che vengono dall’alto. Sono solo quelli che vengono dal basso ad avere sempre il naso per aria.»

Nonostante il suo fare ilare, lei gli si avvicinò con una certa paura subcosciente; che non fu diminuita quando egli abbassò la voce e aggiunse: «Devo dirle un segreto?»

Nello stesso momento si udirono in alto i primi pesanti movimenti del tuono, attraverso i quali la sua voce giunse, forse, con un’aria accidentale come di un forte bisbiglio.

«Il mondo è a testa in giù. Siamo tutti a testa in giù. Siamo tutti mosche che strisciano su un soffitto, ed è una perpetua misericordia che noi non cadiamo giù.»

In quell’istante il crepuscolo si mutò in un bianco bagliore di fulmine; e lei fu sconvolta nel vedere che il suo volto era del tutto serio.

Disse con una sorta di irritazione: «Lei dice davvero cose così folli», e un istante dopo la sua voce si perse negli echi accalcati del tuono, che parve scuotere ogni cosa, gridando la stessa parola ancora e ancora… folle, folle, folle. Lei aveva inconsciamente dato una parola al pensiero peggiore della sua mente.

Fino a quel momento nessuna pioggia era caduta sui pendii del giardino, benché il rumore di essa già turbasse il fiume più in là. Ma anche se lo avesse fatto, lei stessa dubitava che l’uomo se ne sarebbe accorto. Persino in momenti più normali sembrava uno che perseguiva solitario un singolo filo di pensiero, e stava ancora parlando, come un uomo che parla a se stesso, della razionalità del capovolgimento.

«Stavamo parlando di san Pietro», disse; «rammenta che fu crocifisso a testa in giù. Ho spesso immaginato che la sua umiltà fosse ricompensata col vedere nella morte la bella visione della sua fanciullezza. Anche lui vide il paesaggio come realmente è: con le stelle come fiori, e le nuvole come colline, e tutti gli uomini appesi alla misericordia di Dio.»

Poi una pesante goccia di pioggia gli cadde addosso; e l’effetto di essa fu indescrivibile. Parve pungerlo come una vespa e destarlo da una trance. Sussultò e si guardò intorno; e poi disse con una voce nuova e più naturale:

«Dio mio, dov’è Hurrel? Che cosa stanno facendo gli altri? Non sono ancora qui?»

Con un impulso da non analizzare, Diana si slanciò attraverso le piante ondeggianti fino alla cima di un poggio vicino, e guardò al di là della valle verso la locanda del Sole Nascente. E vide scorrere tra loro e quel luogo una piena più pesante e più larga, che in quel momento selvaggio appariva invalicabile, come il fiume della morte.

In modo strano le parve un simbolo di qualcosa di più grande del mero cupo realismo che le avrebbe detto, ormai fin troppo chiaramente, che era rimasta sola con un pazzo. In qualche modo pareva che la pazzia stessa fosse soltanto una sorta di abominevole incidente e ostacolo tra lei e qualcosa che avrebbe potuto essere bello e un appagamento dell’anima. Un altro oscuro fiume scorreva tra lei e il suo stesso paese delle fate.

Nello stesso momento Gabriel Gale diede un grido terribile; anch’egli aveva visto in lontananza la piena che divideva.

«Aveva ragione, dopotutto», disse. «Ha parlato di Giuda, quando io osai parlare di Pietro. Ho bestemmiato e ho commesso il peccato imperdonabile. Sono io il traditore, ora.» Poi aggiunse in tono più basso e più pesante: «Sì, sono io l’uomo che ha venduto Dio.»

La mente della ragazza si andava schiarendo col freddo dolore della realtà. Aveva sentito che i maniaci a volte si accusano del peccato imperdonabile. Qualcosa del suo naturale coraggio tornò anch’esso, ed ella era pronta a fare qualsiasi cosa, benché non vedesse ancora molto chiaramente che cosa fare. Mentre lottava per una soluzione, la questione fu risolta per lei in qualche misura dal suo stesso compagno, che si mise a correre giù per il pendio.

«Devo attraversare di nuovo anche a costo di nuotare nel fiume», disse. «Non dovrei mai stare lontano da Hurrel così. Non posso mai sapere che cosa succederà dopo.»

Lo seguì nella sua discesa, e fu piuttosto sorpresa di vederla deviare per lanciarsi verso la stalla. Prima che sapesse dov’era, egli stava lottando con il cavallo e trascinandolo fuori tra le stanghe; e lei provò un irrazionale piacere nel fatto che egli avesse la forza di un uomo, seppure fosse la forza di un pazzo. Ma il suo stesso alto spirito e amor proprio le erano tornati, e in lei sorse un furioso rifiuto di essere spettatrice passiva di quello che poteva ben essere un semplice suicidio. Dopotutto, per quanto pazzo egli fosse, l’uomo stava facendo la cosa giusta nel cercare di raggiungere il suo medico assistente; e lei non avrebbe permesso che l’ultimo sforzo della sua ragione fosse frustrato dalle stravaganze della sua malattia.

“I’ll drive if we must,” she said in a ringing tone. “He’ll go better with me.”

The sun had set behind the hills opposite, and night was already deepening the darkness of the storm. As the rocking vehicle splashed up to the hub of its wheel in the eddying water, she could only faintly see the long water-rushes streaming with the stream, as if they were indeed the shades of the underworld hovering without hope beside the Styx. But she had no longer need to call it, merely in metaphor, a river of death. Death was driving hard against horse and cart, staggering the insecure foothold of the one, and swaying the human burden of the other; the thunder was about their ears, and on their dreadful path scarce any light but the lightning; and her human companion was a man uttering a monologue, of which she heard snatches, more shocking than the thunder. All the reason and realism in her told her that he might at any moment tear her in pieces. But underneath all such things there was something else contrary and incredible; something in the need and the companionship, and the courage and heroism she was showing; and it was too deep in her dizzy soul for her to know that it was exultation.

The horse almost fell just as they came to the end of the ford, but Gale sprang from the cart and held it, standing knee-deep in water.

In a lull in the noise of the storm she heard for the first time voices from the inn beside the river… voices high, and even shrill, as if the altercation that the groom had heard had risen steadily like the rise of the storm. Then there came what sounded like the crash of a falling chair. Gale dragged the horse to land with the energy of a demon, then dropped the bridle, and set off running towards the inn.

Even as he did so a piercing shriek rose into the night from the doors of that solitary and sinister tavern by the river. It died away in a wailing echo along the reedy banks of the river itself, as if the reeds were indeed the lost spirits by the river of Hades; and the very thunder seemed to have stopped and held its breath to hear it. Then before the thunder moved again came one wide flash of lightning, as wide as an instantaneous daylight, picking out the most minute details of the distance, of the branches and twigs upon the wooded heights, and the clover in the flat fields beside the river. And with the same clarity she saw for an instant something incredible and abominable, and yet not wholly new or unfamiliar… something that returned in the waking world as a detested nightmare will return in sleep. It was the black figure of a man dangling from the painted gallows of the Rising Sun. But it was not the same man.

Diana was convinced for the moment that she herself had gone mad. She could only imagine dully that her own mind had snapped under the strain, and that the dark objects she saw were but dancing dots upon a void. But one of those black dots had certainly seemed to be the figure of her own brother thus lassoed to the beam; and the other black dot, literally a dancing dot, had been the figure of that energetic business man, Mr. James Hurrel. For just then his energy was taking the form of dancing; he was hopping and capering with excitement in front of that frightful signboard.

Darkness followed the flash, and a moment after she heard the great voice of Gale himself, a larger and louder voice than she had imagined him to possess, bellowing through the darkness and the stress of wind. “It’s all right… he’s quite safe now.” Little as she understood of anything yet, she understood with a cold thrill that they had come just in time.

She was still dazed when she staggered somehow through the din and distraction of the tempest into the inn parlour, with a smoky lamp on the table, and the three figures of that frustrated tragedy around it. The squire, her brother, in a sort of collapse of convalescence, sat or lay in an arm-chair with a stiff dose of brandy in front of him. Gabriel Gale was standing up, like one who had taken command, with a face as white but as hard as marble. He was speaking to the man named Hurrel in low level, and quiet tones, but with one finger pointed, as when a man speaks to a dog.

“Go over there and sit by the window,” he said. “You must keep quite quiet.”

The man obeyed, taking a seat at the other end of the room, and looked out of the window at the storm, without hearing or seeking to hear the talk of the others.

“What does it all mean?” asked Diana at last. “I thought you… the truth is Dr. Garth gave me a hint that you were only a lunatic and his keeper.”

“And so we are, as you see,” answered Gale; “but the keeper has behaved far worse than the lunatic.”

“But I thought you were the lunatic,” she said with simplicity.

“No,” he replied; “I am the criminal.”

They had drawn nearer to the doorway, and their voices also were covered by the noise of the elements, so that they were almost as much alone as when they stood beyond the river. She remembered the earlier dialogue, and the violent and mysterious language he had used in it; and she said doubtfully:

“You said things like that and worse over the other side, and that’s what made me think so. I couldn’t understand why you should say such wild things against yourself.”

“I suppose I do talk rather wildly,” he said. “Perhaps you were not so wrong, after all, and I have a streak of sympathy with lunatics… and that’s why I can manage them. Anyhow, I happen to be the only person who can manage this particular lunatic. It’s a long story, and perhaps I shall tell it some day. This poor fellow once did me a great service, and I feel I can only repay it by looking after him and saving him from the infernal brutality of officials. You see, the truth is they say I have a talent for it… a sort of psychological imagination. I generally know what they’re going to do or fancy next. I’ve known a lot of them, one way or another… religious maniacs who thought they were divine or damned, or what not, and revolutionary maniacs, who believed in dynamite or doing without clothes; or philosophical lunatics, of whom I could tell you some tall stories, too… men who behaved as if they lived in another world and under different stars, as I suppose they did. But of all the maniacs I have tried to manage, the maddest of all maniacs was the man of business.”

He smiled rather sourly, and then the tragedy returned to his face as he went on:

“As for your other question, I may have talked wildly against myself, but I didn’t talk worse than I deserve. Hadn’t I deserted my post, like a traitor? Didn’t I leave my wretched friend in the lurch, like a Judas? It’s true he’d never broken out like this before; but I was sure in my heart there was one of his antics mixed up with that first affair of the inn-keeper. But the inn-keeper really was suicidal, and I fancy Hurrel only helped him, so to speak; but it was that that put the damnable notion in his head. I never dreamed he would break out against your brother, or I would… but why do I try to make excuses when there is no excuse? I followed my own will till it went within an inch of murder; and it’s I who ought to be hanging from the wooden sign, if hanging weren’t too good for me.”

“But why…” she began automatically, and then stopped dead, with the sense of a whole new world surging up against her.

“Ah, why,” he repeated with a changed voice; “but I think you know why. It is not your fault, but you know why. You know what has often made a sentinel leave his post. You know what brought Troilus out of Troy and perhaps Adam out of Eden. And I have neither the need nor the right to tell you.”

She stood looking out into the darkness, and her face wore a singular smile.

“Well, there’s the other story you promised to tell some day,” she said. “Perhaps you will tell it me if we meet again.” And she held out her hand in farewell.

The sinister and fantastic partners had set off again next morning when the sun first shone upon the road; the storm had rolled away along the valley and the birds were singing after the rain. Stranger things yet were to happen before he and she should meet again; but for the moment she had a curious relapse into repose and contemplation. She reminded herself of the words about the world being upside down; and thought it had indeed turned upside down many times in that single night. And she could not analyse the sensation that, in spite of everything, it had come the right side up.

II

«Guiderò io, se dobbiamo proprio», disse con tono squillante. «Andrà meglio con me.»

Il sole era tramontato dietro le colline di fronte, e la notte già approfondiva l’oscurità della tempesta. Mentre il veicolo traballante schizzava fino al mozzo della sua ruota nell’acqua vorticante, poteva scorgere solo debolmente i lunghi giunchi d’acqua fluttuanti con la corrente, come se fossero davvero le ombre degli inferi che aleggiavano senza speranza accanto allo Stige. Ma non aveva più bisogno di chiamarlo, meramente per metafora, un fiume della morte. La Morte spingeva forte contro cavallo e carro, facendo vacillare l’insicuro appoggio dell’uno, e facendo oscillare l’umano fardello dell’altro; il tuono era intorno alle loro orecchie, e sul loro tremendo cammino quasi nessuna luce se non il fulmine; e il suo umano compagno era un uomo che pronunciava un monologo, di cui udiva frammenti, più sconvolgenti del tuono. Tutta la ragione e il realismo in lei le dicevano che egli avrebbe potuto in qualsiasi momento farla a pezzi. Ma sotto tutte queste cose c’era qualcos’altro di contrario e incredibile; qualcosa nel bisogno e nella compagnia, e nel coraggio e nell’eroismo che stava mostrando; ed era troppo profondo nella sua anima vertiginosa perché ella sapesse che era esultanza.

Il cavallo quasi cadde proprio mentre giungevano alla fine del guado, ma Gale balzò dal carro e lo tenne, stando immerso nell’acqua fino alle ginocchia.

In una pausa nel frastuono della tempesta udì per la prima volta voci provenienti dalla locanda accanto al fiume… voci alte, e persino stridule, come se l’alterco che lo stalliere aveva udito fosse cresciuto costantemente come il crescere della tempesta. Poi giunse quello che parve lo schianto di una sedia che cade. Gale trascinò il cavallo a riva con l’energia di un demone, poi lasciò cadere le briglie, e si mise a correre verso la locanda.

Proprio mentre lo faceva un urlo lacerante si levò nella notte dalle porte di quella solitaria e sinistra taverna presso il fiume. Si spense in un’eco lamentosa lungo le rive canneose del fiume stesso, come se le canne fossero davvero gli spiriti perduti presso il fiume dell’Ade; e persino il tuono parve essersi fermato e aver trattenuto il fiato per udirlo. Poi, prima che il tuono si muovesse di nuovo, giunse un ampio lampo di fulmine, ampio come una luce di giorno istantanea, che faceva risaltare i più minuti dettagli della lontananza, dei rami e dei ramoscelli sulle alture boscose, e il trifoglio nei piatti campi accanto al fiume. E con la medesima chiarezza vide per un istante qualcosa di incredibile e abominevole, e tuttavia non del tutto nuovo o sconosciuto… qualcosa che ritornava nel mondo della veglia come un detestato incubo ritornerà nel sonno. Era la nera figura di un uomo che pendeva dalla dipinta forca del Sole Nascente. Ma non era lo stesso uomo.

Diana fu convinta per un momento di essere lei stessa impazzita. Poteva soltanto immaginare confusamente che la sua stessa mente si fosse spezzata sotto lo sforzo, e che gli scuri oggetti che vedeva non fossero altro che puntini danzanti sul vuoto. Ma uno di quei puntini neri era certamente sembrato essere la figura di suo fratello così legato al lazo alla trave; e l’altro puntino nero, letteralmente un puntino danzante, era stato la figura di quell’energico uomo d’affari, il signor James Hurrel. Poiché proprio in quel momento la sua energia stava prendendo la forma di una danza; saltellava e si sbizzarriva d’eccitazione davanti a quella spaventosa insegna.

L’oscurità seguì il lampo, e un momento dopo udì la gran voce di Gale stesso, una voce più ampia e più forte di quanto avesse immaginato egli possedesse, che tuonava attraverso l’oscurità e l’impeto del vento. «Va tutto bene… adesso è al sicuro.» Per poco che ancora comprendesse di ogni cosa, comprese con un freddo brivido che erano giunti giusto in tempo.

Era ancora stordita quando in qualche modo si trascinò attraverso il frastuono e la confusione della tempesta nel salotto della locanda, con una lampada fumosa sul tavolo, e le tre figure di quella tragedia sventata intorno a essa. Lo squire, suo fratello, in una sorta di collasso da convalescenza, sedeva o giaceva in una poltrona con una robusta dose di brandy davanti a sé. Gabriel Gale stava in piedi, come uno che avesse preso il comando, con un volto bianco ma duro come marmo. Stava parlando all’uomo chiamato Hurrel in tono basso, piano e tranquillo, ma con un dito puntato, come quando un uomo parla a un cane.

«Vada là e si sieda accanto alla finestra», disse. «Deve starsene del tutto tranquillo.»

L’uomo obbedì, prendendo posto all’altra estremità della stanza, e guardò fuori dalla finestra la tempesta, senza udire o cercare di udire il discorso degli altri.

«Che cosa significa tutto questo?» chiese Diana alla fine. «Pensavo che lei… la verità è che il dottor Garth mi ha lasciato intendere che lei era soltanto un pazzo e il suo custode.»

«E così siamo, come vede», rispose Gale; «ma il custode si è comportato assai peggio del pazzo.»

«Ma io pensavo che lei fosse il pazzo», disse con semplicità.

«No», replicò; «io sono il criminale.»

Si erano avvicinati alla soglia, e anche le loro voci erano coperte dal rumore degli elementi, così che erano quasi tanto soli quanto quando stavano al di là del fiume. Ella ricordò il dialogo precedente, e il violento e misterioso linguaggio che egli vi aveva usato; e disse con dubbio:

«Ha detto cose simili e peggiori dall’altra parte, ed è questo che me lo ha fatto pensare. Non riuscivo a capire perché lei dovesse dire cose così folli contro se stesso.»

«Suppongo di parlare piuttosto follemente», disse. «Forse lei non aveva poi così torto, dopotutto, e io ho una vena di simpatia per i pazzi… ed è per questo che so gestirli. Comunque sia, mi càpita di essere l’unica persona in grado di gestire questo particolare pazzo. È una lunga storia, e forse un giorno la racconterò. Questo pover’uomo un tempo mi rese un grande servigio, e sento di poterlo ripagare soltanto prendendomi cura di lui e salvandolo dall’infernale brutalità dei funzionari. Vede, la verità è che dicono che io abbia un talento per questo… una sorta di immaginazione psicologica. Di solito so che cosa stanno per fare o immaginare dopo. Ne ho conosciuti parecchi, in un modo o nell’altro… maniaci religiosi che si credevano divini o dannati, o che so io, e maniaci rivoluzionari, che credevano nella dinamite o nel fare a meno dei vestiti; o lunatici filosofici, sui quali potrei raccontarle anch’io qualche storia grossa… uomini che si comportavano come se vivessero in un altro mondo e sotto stelle diverse, come suppongo facessero. Ma di tutti i maniaci che ho cercato di gestire, il più pazzo di tutti i maniaci era l’uomo d’affari.»

Sorrise piuttosto acido, e poi la tragedia tornò sul suo volto mentre proseguiva:

«Quanto all’altra sua domanda, posso aver parlato follemente contro me stesso, ma non ho parlato peggio di quanto meriti. Non avevo forse abbandonato il mio posto, come un traditore? Non avevo forse lasciato il mio disgraziato amico nei guai, come un Giuda? È vero che non era mai scoppiato in questo modo prima; ma ero certo in cuor mio che una delle sue stravaganze fosse mescolata a quella prima faccenda del locandiere. Ma il locandiere era davvero suicida, e immagino che Hurrel lo abbia soltanto aiutato, per così dire; ma fu quello a mettergli in testa la dannata idea. Non avrei mai immaginato che sarebbe scoppiato contro suo fratello, o avrei… ma perché cerco scuse quando non c’è scusa? Ho seguito la mia stessa volontà finché non è arrivata a un pelo dall’omicidio; e sono io che dovrei pendere dalla insegna di legno, se l’impiccagione non fosse troppo buona per me.»

«Ma perché…» cominciò lei automaticamente, e poi si fermò di colpo, con la sensazione di un intero mondo nuovo che sorgeva contro di lei.

«Ah, perché», ripeté lui con voce mutata; «ma penso che lei sappia perché. Non è colpa sua, ma lei sa perché. Lei sa che cosa ha spesso spinto una sentinella ad abbandonare il proprio posto. Lei sa che cosa ha fatto uscire Troilo da Troia e forse Adamo dall’Eden. E io non ho né il bisogno né il diritto di dirglielo.»

Ella stava guardando fuori nell’oscurità, e il suo volto recava un sorriso singolare.

«Ebbene, c’è l’altra storia che ha promesso di raccontare un giorno», disse. «Forse me la racconterà se ci incontreremo di nuovo.» E tese la mano in segno di congedo.

I sinistri e fantastici soci ripartirono di nuovo il mattino seguente quando il sole risplendette per la prima volta sulla strada; la tempesta era rotolata via lungo la valle e gli uccelli cantavano dopo la pioggia. Cose ancor più strane sarebbero accadute prima che lui e lei si incontrassero di nuovo; ma per il momento ella ebbe una curiosa ricaduta nella quiete e nella contemplazione. Si rammentò delle parole sul mondo che era a testa in giù; e pensò che esso si era davvero capovolto molte volte in quella sola notte. E non riusciva ad analizzare la sensazione che, malgrado tutto, esso fosse tornato dal verso giusto.

II

THE YELLOW BIRD

FIVE men had halted at the top of a hill overlooking a valley beautiful enough to be called a vision, but too neglected ever to have been vulgarised by being called a view. They were a sketching club on a walking tour; but when they had come to that place they did no more walking, and, strangely enough, very little sketching. It was as if they had come to some quiet end of the world; that corner of the earth seemed to have a curious effect on them, varying with their various personalities, but acting on all as something arresting and vaguely final. Yet the quality was as nameless as it was unique; there was nothing definably different from twenty other wooded valleys in those western shires upon the marches of Wales. Green slopes dived into a fringe of dark forests that looked black by comparison, but the grey columns of which were mirrored in the curving river like a long winding colonnade. Only a little way along, on one side of the river, the bank was cleared of timber, and formed a platform for old gardens and orchards, in the midst of which stood an old tall house, of a rich brown brick with blue shutters, and rather neglected creepers clinging to it, more like moss to a stone than like flowers to a flower-bed. The roof was flat, with a chimney near the centre of it, from which a thin thread of smoke was drawn up into the sky; the only sign that the house was not wholly deserted. Of the five men who looked down at the landscape, only one had any special reason for looking at the house.

The eldest of the artists, a dark, active, ambitious man in spectacles, destined to be famous afterwards under the name of Luke Walton, was affected by the place in a curious fashion. It seemed to tease him like a fly or something elusive; he could not please himself with a point of view, but was perpetually shifting his camp-stool from place to place, crossing and recrossing the theatre of these events amid the jeers of his companions. The second, a heavy, fair-haired man named Hutton, stared at the scene in a somewhat bovine fashion, made a few lines on a sketching block, and then announced in a loud voice that it was a good place for a picnic, and that he was going to have his lunch. The third painter agreed with him; but as he was said to be a poet as well as a painter, he was expected to show a certain fervour for any opportunities of avoiding work. Indeed, this particular artist, whose name was Gabriel Gale, did not seem disposed even to look at the landscape, far less to paint it; but after taking a bite out of a ham sandwich, and a swig at somebody else’s flask of claret, incontinently lay down on his back under a tree and stared up at the twilight of twinkling leaves; some believing him to be asleep, while others more generously supposed him to be composing poetry. The fourth, a smaller and more alert man named Garth, could only be regarded as an honorary member of the artistic group; for he was more interested in science than in art, and carried not a paint-box but a camera. Nevertheless, he was, not without an intelligent appreciation of scenery, and he was in the act of fixing up his photographic apparatus so that it covered the angle of the river where stood the neglected garden and the distant house. And at that moment the fifth man, who had not yet moved or spoken, made so abrupt and arresting a gesture that one might say that he struck up the camera, like a gun pointed to kill.

“Don’t,” he said; “it’s bad enough when they try to paint it.”

“What’s the matter?” asked Garth. “Don’t you like that house?”

“I like it too much,” said the other, “or rather, I love it too much to like it at all.”

The fifth man who spoke was the youngest of the party, but he had already at least some local success and celebrity; partly because he had devoted his talent to the landscape and legends of that countryside, and partly because he came of a family of small squires whose name was historic in those hills. He was tall, with dark-brown hair and a long brown face, with a high-bridged nose that looked rather distinguished than handsome; and there was a permanent cloud of consideration on his brow that made him seem much older than his years. He alone of all these men had made no gesture, either of labour or relaxation, on coming to the crest of the hill. While Walton went to and fro, and Hutton started cheerfully on his meal, and Gale flung himself on the couch of leaves to look up into the tree-tops, this man had stood like a statue looking across the valley to the house, and it was only when Garth pointed his camera that he had even lifted a hand.

Garth turned on him a humorous face, in spite of its hard angular features; for the little scientist was a man of admirable good temper.

“I suppose there’s a story about it,” he said; “you look as if you were in quite a confidential mood. If you like to tell me, I assure you I can keep a secret. I’m a medical man and have to keep secrets, especially those of the insane. That ought to encourage you.”

The younger man, whose name was John Mallow, continued to gaze moodily across the valley, but there was something about him that suggested that the other had guessed right, and he was about to speak.

“Don’t bother about the others,” said Garth, “they can’t hear; they’re too busy doing nothing. Hutton,” he called out in much more strident tones, “Gale, are you fellows listening?”

“Yes; I’m listening to the birds,” came the half-buried voice of Gale out of his leafy lair.

“Hutton’s asleep,” observed Garth with satisfaction. “No wonder, after all that lunch. Are you asleep, Gale?”

“Not asleep, but dreaming,” answered the other. “If you look up long enough, there isn’t any more up or down, but a sort of green, dizzy dream; with birds that might as well be fishes. They’re just odd shapes of different colours against the green, brown and grey, and one of them looks quite yellow.”

L’UCCELLO GIALLO

CINQUE uomini si erano fermati in cima a una collina che dominava una valle abbastanza bella da poter essere chiamata una visione, ma troppo trascurata perché fosse mai stata volgarizzata dall’essere chiamata un panorama. Erano un circolo di disegnatori in gita a piedi; ma quando furono giunti in quel luogo non fecero altro cammino, e, stranamente, ben poco disegno. Era come se fossero giunti a una quieta fine del mondo; quell’angolo della terra pareva avere un curioso effetto su di loro, variando con le loro varie personalità, ma agendo su tutti come qualcosa che arresta e in modo vago è definitivo. Eppure la qualità era tanto senza nome quanto era unica; non c’era nulla di definibilmente diverso da altre venti valli boscose in quelle contee occidentali sui confini del Galles. Verdi pendii si tuffavano in una frangia di scure foreste che apparivano nere al confronto, ma le cui grigie colonne si specchiavano nel fiume sinuoso come un lungo colonnato serpeggiante. Solo un poco più avanti, su un lato del fiume, la riva era sgombra di alberi, e formava una piattaforma per vecchi giardini e frutteti, in mezzo ai quali sorgeva una vecchia alta casa, di un ricco mattone bruno con imposte azzurre, e rampicanti piuttosto trascurati aggrappati a essa, più come muschio a una pietra che come fiori a un’aiuola. Il tetto era piatto, con un comignolo vicino al suo centro, dal quale un sottile filo di fumo veniva tirato su nel cielo; l’unico segno che la casa non fosse del tutto abbandonata. Dei cinque uomini che guardavano giù verso il paesaggio, uno solo aveva qualche speciale ragione di guardare la casa.

Il più anziano degli artisti, un uomo scuro, attivo, ambizioso con gli occhiali, destinato a diventare celebre in seguito sotto il nome di Luke Walton, era colpito da quel luogo in modo curioso. Sembrava tormentarlo come una mosca o qualcosa di sfuggente; non riusciva a soddisfarsi con un punto di vista, ma spostava perpetuamente il suo seggiolino da campeggio da un posto all’altro, attraversando e riattraversando il teatro di questi eventi tra le beffe dei suoi compagni. Il secondo, un uomo pesante, dai capelli biondi, di nome Hutton, fissava la scena in un modo alquanto bovino, tracciò poche linee su un blocco da disegno, e poi annunciò a gran voce che quello era un buon posto per un picnic, e che stava per fare colazione. Il terzo pittore concordò con lui; ma poiché si diceva che fosse un poeta oltre che un pittore, ci si aspettava che mostrasse un certo fervore per qualsiasi occasione di evitare il lavoro. Infatti questo particolare artista, il cui nome era Gabriel Gale, non pareva disposto neppure a guardare il paesaggio, tanto meno a dipingerlo; ma dopo aver dato un morso a un panino al prosciutto, e una sorsata alla fiaschetta di chiaretto di qualcun altro, si sdraiò incontinente supino sotto un albero e fissò in su il crepuscolo delle foglie scintillanti; alcuni credendolo addormentato, mentre altri più generosamente supponevano che stesse componendo poesia. Il quarto, un uomo più piccolo e più sveglio di nome Garth, poteva soltanto essere considerato un membro onorario del gruppo artistico; poiché era più interessato alla scienza che all’arte, e portava non una cassetta di colori ma una macchina fotografica. Nondimeno, non era senza un’intelligente apprezzamento del paesaggio, ed era nell’atto di sistemare il suo apparecchio fotografico in modo che coprisse l’angolo del fiume dove sorgevano il trascurato giardino e la lontana casa. E in quel momento il quinto uomo, che non si era ancora mosso né aveva parlato, fece un gesto così brusco e sorprendente che si sarebbe potuto dire che egli abbatté la macchina fotografica, come un fucile puntato per uccidere.

«Non lo faccia», disse; «è già abbastanza brutto quando cercano di dipingerla.»

«Che cosa c’è?» chiese Garth. «Non le piace quella casa?»

«Mi piace troppo», disse l’altro, «o piuttosto, l’amo troppo per riuscire a farmela piacere affatto.»

Il quinto uomo che parlò era il più giovane della comitiva, ma aveva già almeno un certo successo e una certa celebrità locali; in parte perché aveva dedicato il suo talento al paesaggio e alle leggende di quella campagna, e in parte perché veniva da una famiglia di piccoli squire il cui nome era storico su quelle colline. Era alto, con capelli castano scuro e un lungo volto bruno, con un naso dal dorso alto che appariva piuttosto distinto che bello; e c’era una permanente nube di riflessione sulla sua fronte che lo faceva sembrare assai più vecchio dei suoi anni. Egli solo di tutti questi uomini non aveva fatto alcun gesto, né di lavoro né di riposo, giungendo sulla cresta della collina. Mentre Walton andava avanti e indietro, e Hutton cominciava allegramente il suo pasto, e Gale si gettava sul giaciglio di foglie per guardare su tra le cime degli alberi, quest’uomo era rimasto come una statua a guardare attraverso la valle verso la casa, e fu solo quando Garth puntò la sua macchina fotografica che egli persino alzò una mano.

Garth volse verso di lui un volto scherzoso, malgrado i suoi duri lineamenti angolosi; poiché il piccolo scienziato era un uomo di ammirevole buon carattere.

«Immagino che ci sia una storia al riguardo», disse; «lei ha l’aria di essere in un umore piuttosto confidenziale. Se le fa piacere raccontarmela, le assicuro che so mantenere un segreto. Sono un uomo di medicina e devo mantenere segreti, specialmente quelli dei folli. Questo dovrebbe incoraggiarla.»

Il più giovane, il cui nome era John Mallow, continuò a fissare imbronciato attraverso la valle, ma c’era qualcosa in lui che suggeriva che l’altro aveva indovinato, ed egli stava per parlare.

«Non si preoccupi degli altri», disse Garth, «non possono sentire; sono troppo occupati a non far nulla. Hutton», gridò in tono assai più stridente, «Gale, state ascoltando, ragazzi?»

«Sì; sto ascoltando gli uccelli», giunse la voce mezzo sepolta di Gale dalla sua tana frondosa.

«Hutton dorme», osservò Garth con soddisfazione. «Non c’è da stupirsi, dopo tutta quella colazione. Dormi, Gale?»

«Non dormo, ma sogno», rispose l’altro. «Se guardi su abbastanza a lungo, non c’è più alcun su o giù, ma una sorta di verde, vertiginoso sogno; con uccelli che potrebbero benissimo essere pesci. Sono soltanto strane forme di diversi colori contro il verde, il bruno e il grigio, e uno di essi appare del tutto giallo.»

“A yellow-hammer, I suppose,” remarked Garth.

“It doesn’t look like a hammer,” said Gale, sleepily; “not such an odd shape as all that.”

“Ass!” said Garth briefly. “Did you expect it to look like an auctioneer’s hammer? You poets who are so strong about Nature are generally weak in natural history. Well, Mallow,” he added, turning to his companion, “you’ve nothing to fear from them, if you like to talk in an ordinary voice. What about this house of yours?”

“It’s not mine,” said Mallow. “As a matter of fact, it belongs to an old friend of my mother’s, a Mrs. Verney, a widow. The place has very much run to seed now, as you see, for the Verneys have got poorer and poorer, and don’t know what to do next, which is the beginning of the trouble. But I have passed happier times there than I shall probably ever have again.”

“Was Mrs. Verney so enchanting a character?” asked his friend softly; “or may I take the liberty of supposing there was a rising generation?”

“Unfortunately for me, it is a very rising generation,” replied Mallow. “It rises in a sort of small revolution; and it rises rather above my head.” Then, after a silence, he said somewhat abruptly, “Do you believe in lady doctors?”

“I don’t believe in any doctors,” answered Garth. “I’m one myself.”

“Well, it isn’t exactly lady doctors, I believe, but it’s something of that sort,” went on Mallow; “study of psychological science, and so on. Laura has got it very badly, and is helping some Russian psychologist or other.”

“Your narrative style is a little sketchy,” remarked Dr. Garth, “but I suppose I may infer that Laura is a daughter of Mrs. Verney, and also that Laura has some logical connexion with the happy days that will not return.”

“Suppose it all, and have done with it,” replied the young man. “You know what I mean; but the real point is this. Laura has all the new ideas, and has persuaded her mother to come down off the high horse of genteel poverty in all sorts of ways. I don’t say she’s not right in that; but as it works out there are some curious complications. For one thing, Laura not only earns her own living but earns it in the laboratory of this mysterious Muscovite; and for another, she has bounced her mother into taking a paying guest. And the paying guest is the mysterious Muscovite again, who wants a quiet rest in the country.”

“And I suppose, I may take it,” said the doctor, “that you feel there is a little too much of the Muscovite in your young life?”

“As a matter of fact, he moved into the house late last night,” continued Mallow, “and I suppose that’s really why I drifted in this direction this morning, trailing you all at my heels. I said it was a beautiful place, and so it is; but I don’t want to paint it, and I don’t even want to visit it; but all the same, I had a vague sort of feeling I should like to be somewhere near.”

“And, as you couldn’t get rid of us, you brought us along,” said Garth with a smile. “Well, I think I can understand all that. Do you know anything about this Russian professor?”

“I know nothing whatever against him,” answered the other. “He is a very famous man both in science and politics. He escaped from a Siberian prison in the old days, by blowing up the wall with a bomb of his own construction; it’s quite an exciting story, and he must at least be a man of courage. He has written a great book called The Psychology of Liberty, I believe; and Laura is very keen on his views. It’s rather an indescribable thing altogether; she and I are very fond of each other, and I don’t think she mistakes me for a fool, and I don’t think I am a fool. But whenever we have met lately it has been literally like a meeting on a high road, when two people are going opposite ways. And I think I know what it is; she is always going outwards, and I am always going inwards. The more I see of the world, and the more men I meet or books I read or questions I answer, the more I come back with increased conviction to those places where I was born or played as a boy, narrowing my circles like a bird going back to a nest. That seems to me the end of all travel, and especially of the widest travel… to get home. But she has another idea in her mind. It’s not only that she says that old brown brick house is like a prison, or that the hills are like walls shutting her in; I dare say things do get pretty dull in such a place. There’s a theory in it, too, which I suppose she’s got from her psychological friend. She says that even in her own valley, and in her own garden, the trees only grow because they radiate outwards, which is only the Latin for branching. She says the very word ‘radiant’ shows it is the secret of happiness. There is something in it, I suppose; but I radiate inwards, so to speak; that is why I paint all my pictures of this little corner of the world. If I could only paint this valley, I might go on to paint that garden; and, if only I could paint that garden, I might be worthy to paint the creeper under her window.”

The sleeping Hutton awoke with an uproarious yawn, and lifting himself from his bed of leaves, wandered away to where the more industrious Walton had at last settled down to work on the other side of the hill. But the poet Gale still lay gazing at his topsy-turvydom of tree-tops. And the only reply he would make to a further challenge from Garth was to say heavily. “They’ve driven the yellow one away.”

“Who have driven what away?” demanded Mallow, rather irritably.

“The other birds attacked the yellow one and drove it away,” said the poet.

“Regarded it as an undesirable alien, no doubt,” said Garth.

“The Yellow Peril,” said Gale, and relapsed into his dreams.

Mallow had already resumed his monologue:

“The name of this psychologist is Ivanhov, and he’s said to be writing another great book in his country retreat; I believe she is acting as his secretary. It is to embody some mathematical theory about the elimination of limits and…”

«Un fringuello giallo, immagino», osservò Garth.

«Non sembra un martello», disse Gale con sonnolenza; «non ha una forma così strana».

“Somaro!” disse Garth brevemente. “Ti aspettavi che sembrasse il martelletto di un banditore? Voi poeti, così forti riguardo alla Natura, siete generalmente deboli in storia naturale. Bene, Mallow,” aggiunse, rivolgendosi al suo compagno, “non hai nulla da temere da loro, se ti piace parlare con una voce normale. E questa tua casa?”

«Non è mia», disse Mallow. «In realtà appartiene a un’antica amica di mia madre, una certa signora Verney, vedova. Come vede, il posto è andato in rovina perché i Verney sono sempre più poveri e non sanno cosa fare, ed ecco da dove nasce il problema. Ma ho trascorso lì dei momenti felici che probabilmente non avrò mai più».

«La signora Verney era un personaggio così affascinante?» chiese il suo amico con dolcezza; «o posso permettermi di supporre che ci fosse una generazione emergente?»

«Purtroppo per me è una generazione molto in ascesa», rispose Mallow. «Si eleva in una specie di piccola rivoluzione; e si eleva piuttosto sopra la mia testa.» Poi, dopo un silenzio, disse con certa bruschezza: «Crede nelle dottoresse?»

«Non credo in nessun medico», rispose Garth. «Sono un medico io stesso».

«Beh, non sono esattamente dottoresse donne, credo, ma è qualcosa del genere», continuò Mallow; «studio della scienza psicologica e così via. Laura l’ha presa molto male ed aiuta un certo psicologo russo o altro».

«Il suo stile narrativo è un po’ approssimativo», osservò il dottor Garth, «ma immagino di poter dedurre che Laura sia una figlia della signora Verney e anche che Laura abbia qualche legame logico con i giorni felici che non torneranno.»

“Supponga tutto e facciamola finita”, rispose il giovane. “Sapete cosa voglio dire; ma la vera questione è questa: Laura ha tutte le nuove idee ed ha persuaso sua madre a scendere dal piedistallo della povertà distinta in tutti i modi possibili. Non dico che non abbia ragione; ma come si è evoluta la situazione ci sono alcune strane complicazioni. Per prima cosa, Laura non solo guadagna da vivere, ma lo fa nel laboratorio di questo misterioso moscovita; e in secondo luogo ha convinto sua madre ad accettare un ospite pagante. E l’ospite pagante è ancora una volta il misterioso moscovita che vuole riposarsi tranquillamente in campagna.”

“E immagino”, disse il dottore, “che lei pensi che ci sia un po’ troppo moscovita nella sua giovane vita?”

“Di fatto si è trasferito nella casa ieri sera tardi,” continuò Mallow, “e immagino che sia proprio per questo che questa mattina mi sono ritrovato a vagare in questa direzione, con tutti voi alle calcagna. Ho detto che era un posto bellissimo e lo è davvero; ma non voglio dipingerlo né tanto meno visitarlo; eppure, avevo una vaga sensazione di voler essere da qualche parte nelle vicinanze.”

“E dato che non potevate liberarvi di noi, ci avete portato con voi”, disse Garth sorridendo. “Ebbene, credo di poter capire tutto questo. Sapete qualcosa su questo professore russo?”

«Non so nulla contro di lui», rispose l’altro. «È un uomo molto famoso sia nella scienza che in politica. Nei vecchi tempi è evaso da una prigione siberiana facendo saltare il muro con una bomba di sua costruzione; è una storia davvero emozionante, e deve essere almeno un uomo di coraggio. Ha scritto un grande libro intitolato La psicologia della libertà, credo; e Laura è molto entusiasta delle sue idee. È una cosa piuttosto indescrivibile in generale; lei e io ci vogliamo molto bene, e non penso che mi scambi per uno stupido, e non penso di essere uno stupido. Ma ogni volta che ci siamo incontrati ultimamente è stato letteralmente come un incontro su una strada maestra, quando due persone vanno in direzioni opposte. E credo di sapere cosa sia; lei va sempre verso l’esterno, e io vado sempre verso l’interno. Più vedo il mondo, più uomini incontro o libri leggo o domande rispondo, più torno con convinzione rinnovata a quei luoghi dove sono nato o ho giocato da bambino, restringendo i miei cerchi come un uccello che torna al suo nido. Questo mi sembra il fine di tutti i viaggi, e specialmente del più ampio dei viaggi… tornare a casa. Ma lei ha un’altra idea in mente. Non è solo che dice che quella vecchia casa di mattoni marroni è come una prigione, o che le colline sono come mura che la chiudono; ammetto che le cose possano diventare piuttosto noiose in un posto del genere. C’è anche una teoria, credo presa dal suo amico psicologo. Dice che anche nella sua valle e nel suo giardino, gli alberi crescono solo perché si irradiano verso l’esterno, che è il latino per ramificarsi. Dice che la stessa parola “radioso” dimostra che questo è il segreto della felicità. Ci sarà qualcosa di vero, immagino; ma io irradio verso l’interno, per così dire; per questo dipingo tutti i miei quadri di questo piccolo angolo del mondo. Se potessi dipingere questa valle, potrei passare a dipingere quel giardino; e se solo potessi dipingere quel giardino, potrei essere degno di dipingere l’edera sotto la sua finestra.»

Hutton, che dormiva, si svegliò con uno sbadiglio fragoroso e alzandosi dal suo letto di foglie vagabondò fino a dove il più laborioso Walton si era finalmente messo all’opera dall’altra parte della collina. Ma il poeta Gale giaceva ancora, fissando la sua confusione capovolta di cime d’albero. E l’unica risposta che diede a un ulteriore rimprovero da parte di Garth fu dire con voce grave: “Hanno scacciato quello giallo.”

«Chi ha scacciato che cosa?» chiese Mallow in tono piuttosto irritato.

“Gli altri uccelli attaccarono quello giallo e lo scacciarono”, disse il poeta.

«Lo considerava un estraneo indesiderato, senza alcun dubbio», disse Garth.

“Il pericolo giallo”, disse Gale e ricadde nei suoi sogni.

Mallow aveva già ripreso il suo monologo:

“Il nome di questa psicologa è Ivanhov e si dice che stia scrivendo un altro grande libro nella sua residenza fuori città; credo che lei funzioni da segretaria. Il libro dovrebbe incarnare una teoria matematica sull’eliminazione dei limiti…”

“Hullo!” cried Garth. “This moated grange of yours is actually coming to life. Somebody is actually beginning to open a window.”

“You haven’t been looking at it as I have,” answered Mallow quietly. “Just round the angle on the left there’s a little window that’s been open all the time. That belongs to the little sitting-room out of the spare bedroom. It used to be Laura’s room, and still has a lot of her things in it; but I think they give it now to their guests.”

“Including, doubtless, their paying guest,” observed Garth.

“He’s a queer sort of guest. I only hope he’s a paying one,” returned the other. “That big window where they just opened the shutters is at the end of the long library; all these windows belong to it. I expect they’ll stick the philosopher in there if he wants to philosophise.”

“The philosopher seems to be philosophical about draughts,” observed Dr. Garth; “he or somebody else has opened three more windows, and seems to be struggling with another.”

Even as he spoke the fifth window burst open, and even from where they stood they could see a creeper that had strayed across it snap and drop with the gesture. It had the look of the snapping of some green chain securing the house like a prison. It had almost the look of the breaking of the seal of a tomb.

For Mallow, against all his prejudices, felt the presence and pressure of that revolutionary ideal which he recognized as his rival. All along the shattered façade of the old brown house the windows were opening one after another like the eyes of an Argus waking from his giant sleep. He was forced to admit to himself that he had never seen the place thus coming to life from within, as a plant unfolds itself. The last three windows were now open to the morning; the long room must already be full of light, to say nothing of air. Garth had spoken of a philosopher enduring draughts; but it seemed more as if a pagan priest had been turned into a temple of the winds. But there was more in that morning vision than the mere accident of a row of windows open when they were commonly closed. The same fancy about unfolding life seemed to fill the whole scene like a new atmosphere. It was as if a fresh air had streamed out of the windows instead of into them. The sun was already fairly high, but it came out of the morning mists above the house with something of the silent explosion of daybreak. The very shapes of the forest trees, spreading themselves like fans, seemed to repeat the original word “radiant”, which he had thought of almost as a Latin pun. Sailing over his head, as if sent flying by a sort of centrifugal force, the clouds still carried into the height of noon the colours of sunrise. He felt all the fresh things that he feared coming at him by an irrepressible expansion. Everything seemed to enlarge itself. Even when his eye fell on a stunted gate-post standing alone in the old garden, he could fancy that it swelled as he stared at it.

A sharp exclamation from his friend woke him from his unnatural day-dream, which might rather be called, by a contradiction, a white nightmare of light.

“By blazes! he’s found another window,” cried the doctor; “a window in the roof.”

There was, indeed, the gleam of a skylight which caught the sun at an angle as it was forced upwards, and out of the opening emerged the moving figure of a man. Little could be seen of him at that distance, except that he was tall and slim and had yellow hair which looked like gold in the strong sun. He was dressed in some long, light-coloured garment, probably a dressing-gown, and he stretched his long limbs as if with the sleepy exultation of one arisen from sleep.

“Look here!” said Mallow suddenly, an indescribable expression flashing across his face and vanishing; “I’m going to pay a call.”

“I rather thought you might,” answered Garth. “Do you want to go alone?”

As he spoke he looked round for the rest of the company, but Walton and Hutton were still chatting some distance away on the other side of the hill, and only Gale still lay in the shadow of the thick trees staring up at the birds, as if he had never stirred. Garth called to him by name, but it was only after a silence that Gale spoke. What he said was:

“Were you ever an isosceles triangle?

“Very seldom,” replied Garth with restraint. “May I ask what the devil you are talking about?”

“Only something I was thinking about,” answered the poet, lifting himself on to one elbow. “I wondered whether it would be a cramping sort of thing to be surrounded by straight lines, and whether being in a circle would be any better. Did anybody ever live in a round prison?”

“Where do you get these cracked notions?” inquired the doctor.

“A little bird told me,” Gale said gravely. “Oh, it’s quite true.”

He had risen to his feet by this time, and came slowly forward to the brow of the hill, looking across at the house by the river. As he looked his dreamy blue eyes seemed to wake up, like the windows opening in the house he gazed at.

“Another bird,” he said softly, “like a sparrow on the house-tops. And that fits in with it exactly.”

There was some suggestion of truth in the phrase, for the strange figure was standing on the very edge of the roof, with space below him and his hands spread out almost as if he wished to fly. But the last sentence, and still more the strange manner in which it was spoken, puzzled the doctor completely.

“Fits in with what?” he asked, rather sharply.

“He’s like that yellow bird,” said Gale vaguely. “In fact, he is a yellow bird, with that hair and the sun on him. What did you say you thought it was… a yellow-hammer?”

“Yellow-hammer yourself,” retorted Garth; “you’re quite as yellow as he is. In fact, with your long legs and straw-coloured hair, you’re really rather like him.”

«Ehilà!» gridò Garth. «Questa sua magione col fossato sta effettivamente prendendo vita. Qualcuno sta effettivamente cominciando ad aprire una finestra.»

«Non l’avete guardata come ho fatto io», rispose Mallow tranquillamente. «Proprio all’angolo sulla sinistra c’è una piccola finestra che è rimasta aperta tutto il tempo. Appartiene al salottino attiguo alla camera degli ospiti. Era la stanza di Laura, e conserva ancora molte delle sue cose; ma penso che ora la diano ai loro ospiti.»

«Compreso, senza dubbio, il loro ospite a pagamento», osservò Garth.

«È uno strano tipo d’ospite. Spero soltanto che sia uno che paga», ribatté l’altro. «Quella grande finestra dove hanno appena aperto le imposte è all’estremità della lunga biblioteca; tutte queste finestre le appartengono. Suppongo che ci piazzeranno il filosofo là dentro se vuole filosofeggiare.»

«Il filosofo pare essere filosofico riguardo alle correnti d’aria», osservò il dottor Garth; «lui o qualcun altro ha aperto altre tre finestre, e pare stia lottando con un’altra.»

Proprio mentre parlava la quinta finestra si spalancò, e persino da dove si trovavano poterono vedere un rampicante che si era smarrito attraverso di essa spezzarsi e cadere con quel gesto. Aveva l’aspetto dello spezzarsi di una qualche verde catena che assicurava la casa come una prigione. Aveva quasi l’aspetto della rottura del sigillo di una tomba.

Poiché Mallow, contro tutti i suoi pregiudizi, sentiva la presenza e la pressione di quell’ideale rivoluzionario che riconosceva come suo rivale. Lungo tutta la sconquassata facciata della vecchia casa bruna le finestre si aprivano una dopo l’altra come gli occhi di un Argo che si sveglia dal suo gigantesco sonno. Fu costretto ad ammettere a se stesso di non aver mai visto quel luogo prendere così vita dall’interno, come una pianta che si dischiude. Le ultime tre finestre erano ora aperte al mattino; la lunga stanza doveva già essere piena di luce, per non dire di aria. Garth aveva parlato di un filosofo che sopportava le correnti d’aria; ma sembrava piuttosto che un sacerdote pagano fosse stato trasformato in un tempio dei venti. Ma c’era di più in quella visione mattutina che il mero caso di una fila di finestre aperte quando erano comunemente chiuse. La stessa fantasia sulla vita che si dischiude pareva riempire l’intera scena come una nuova atmosfera. Era come se un’aria fresca fosse fluita fuori dalle finestre invece che dentro di esse. Il sole era già abbastanza alto, ma usciva dalle nebbie mattutine sopra la casa con qualcosa della silenziosa esplosione dell’alba. Le stesse forme degli alberi della foresta, che si spiegavano come ventagli, sembravano ripetere l’originaria parola «radiante», a cui aveva pensato quasi come a un gioco di parole latino. Veleggiando sopra la sua testa, come spinte in volo da una sorta di forza centrifuga, le nuvole portavano ancora nell’altezza del mezzogiorno i colori dell’alba. Sentiva tutte le fresche cose che temeva venirgli incontro con un’irreprimibile espansione. Ogni cosa pareva ingrandirsi. Persino quando il suo occhio cadde su un tozzo palo di cancello che stava solo in mezzo al vecchio giardino, poteva immaginare che si gonfiasse mentre lo fissava.

Una brusca esclamazione del suo amico lo destò dal suo innaturale sogno a occhi aperti, che si sarebbe potuto piuttosto chiamare, per una contraddizione, un bianco incubo di luce.

«Perdinci! ha trovato un’altra finestra», gridò il dottore; «una finestra nel tetto.»

C’era, in effetti, il luccichio di un lucernario che coglieva il sole con un’angolazione mentre veniva forzato verso l’alto, e dall’apertura emergeva la figura in movimento di un uomo. Poco si poteva scorgere di lui a quella distanza, tranne che era alto e slanciato e aveva capelli gialli che sembravano oro nel sole forte. Era vestito di una lunga veste di colore chiaro, probabilmente una vestaglia, e stendeva le sue lunghe membra come con la sonnolenta esultanza di uno che si è alzato dal sonno.

«Senta un po’!» disse Mallow all’improvviso, un’espressione indescrivibile guizzandogli sul volto e svanendo; «vado a fare una visita.»

«Immaginavo che potesse», rispose Garth. «Vuole andare solo?»

Mentre parlava si guardò intorno cercando il resto della compagnia, ma Walton e Hutton stavano ancora chiacchierando a una certa distanza dall’altra parte della collina, e solo Gale giaceva ancora nell’ombra dei fitti alberi fissando su verso gli uccelli, come se non si fosse mai mosso. Garth lo chiamò per nome, ma fu solo dopo un silenzio che Gale parlò. Quello che disse fu:

«Sei mai stato un triangolo isoscele?

«Assai di rado», replicò Garth con misura. «Posso chiedere che diavolo tu stia dicendo?»

«Solo qualcosa a cui stavo pensando», rispose il poeta, sollevandosi su un gomito. «Mi domandavo se sarebbe una cosa opprimente essere circondati da linee rette, e se essere in un cerchio sarebbe meglio in qualche modo. Qualcuno ha mai vissuto in una prigione rotonda?»

«Dove le prendi queste idee balzane?» s’informò il dottore.

«Me l’ha detto un uccellino», disse Gale gravemente. «Oh, è del tutto vero.»

Si era rialzato in piedi a questo punto, e venne lentamente avanti fino al ciglio della collina, guardando dall’altra parte verso la casa presso il fiume. Mentre guardava i suoi sognanti occhi azzurri parvero destarsi, come le finestre che si aprivano nella casa che egli fissava.

«Un altro uccello», disse dolcemente, «come un passero sui tetti delle case. E questo vi si accorda esattamente.»

C’era qualche accenno di verità nella frase, poiché la strana figura stava in piedi sull’orlo stesso del tetto, con lo spazio sotto di sé e le mani tese quasi come se desiderasse volare. Ma l’ultima frase, e ancor più lo strano modo in cui essa fu pronunciata, sconcertarono completamente il dottore.

«Si accorda con che cosa?» chiese, piuttosto secco.

«È come quell’uccello giallo», disse Gale vagamente. «Anzi, è un uccello giallo, con quei capelli e il sole addosso. Che cosa hai detto che pensavi fosse… uno zigolo giallo?»

«Zigolo giallo sarai tu», ribatté Garth; «sei giallo tanto quanto lui. Anzi, con le tue lunghe gambe e i capelli color paglia, gli assomigli davvero parecchio.»

Mallow, in his more mystical mood, looked strangely from one to the other, for indeed there was a certain vague similarity between the two tall, fair-haired figures, the one on the house and the other on the hill.

“Perhaps I am rather like him,” said Gale quietly. “Perhaps I’m just sufficiently like him to learn not to be like him, so to speak. We may both be birds of a feather, the yellow feather; but we don’t flock together, because he likes to flock by himself. And as to being a hammer, yellow or otherwise, well, that also is an allegory.”

“I decline to make head or tail of your allegories,” said Dr. Garth shortly.

“I used to want a hammer to smash things with,” continued Gale; “but I’ve learnt to do something else with a hammer, which is what a hammer is meant for; and every now and then I manage to do it.”

“What do you mean by that?” inquired the doctor.

“I can hit the right nail on the head,” answered the poet.

It was not, in fact, until later in the day that Mallow paid his call at Mrs. Verney’s house. Mrs. Verney was going up to the neighbouring village for the afternoon; and Mallow had more than one motive for making his attack when the stranger was alone with his secretary. He had a general idea of using his friends to detach or detain the stranger while he himself sought for explanation from the secretary; so he dragged Garth and Gale along with him to Mrs. Verney’s drawing-room; or rather he would have done so if Gale had been an easy person to drag successfully anywhere. But Gale had a tendency to get detached from any such group, and was always being left behind. Large as he was, he had a way of getting mislaid. His friends forgot him, as they had almost forgotten him when he was lying under the tree. It was not that he was unsociable; on the contrary, he was very fond of his friends and very fond of his opinions, and always delighted to detail the latter to the former. Strangers would have said that he was very fond of the sound of his own voice, but friends who were fond of him knew better. They knew that he had hardly ever heard his own voice, in the sense of listening to it. What made his movements incalculable was that his thinking or talking would start from any small thing that seemed to him a large thing. What are to most men impressions, or half impressions, were to him incidents; and the chief incidents of the day. Many imaginative people know what is meant by saying that certain empty rooms or open doors are suggestive; but he always acted on the suggestion. Most of them understand that there can be something vaguely inviting about a gap in a garden hedge, or the abrupt angle of a path; but he always accepted the invitation. The shape of a hill, or the corner of a house, checked him like a challenge. He wrestled with it seriously till it had given up something of its secret, till he could put something like a name to his nameless fancy; and these things were the active adventures of his life. Hence it was that he would sometimes follow one train of thought for hours, as steadily as a bird winging its way homewards. But it might start anywhere; and hence, in his actual movements, he looked more like a floating tuft of thistledown caught upon any thorn.

On this occasion his friends lost him, or left him behind, as they turned the corner of the house just after passing an old-fashioned bow-window looking out on the garden. Inside the window stood a small round table on which was a bowl of goldfish; and Gale stopped abruptly and stared at it as if he had never seen such a thing before. He had often maintained that the main object of a man’s life was to see a thing as if he had never seen it before. But in this case the twilight of the little empty room, touched here and there with the late afternoon sunlight, seemed somehow a subtle but suitable background for the thing that he saw. The heart of a dark green sphere was alive with little living flames.

“Why the devil do they call them goldfish?” he asked almost irritably. “They’re a much more gorgeous colour than gold; I’ve never seen it anywhere except in very rare red clouds in a sunset. Gold suggests yellow, and not the best yellow either; not half so good as the clear lemon yellow of that bird I saw today. They’re more like copper than gold. And copper is twenty times finer than gold. Why isn’t copper the most precious metal, I wonder?”

He paused a moment and then said reflectively:

“Would it do, I wonder, when one changed a cheque into gold, to give a man coppers instead, and explain that they have more of the rich tones of sunset?”

His inquiry remained unanswered, for he made it to the empty air. His companions were deficient in his sense of the importance of goldfish, and had gone on impatiently to the main entrance of the house, leaving him lingering by the bowl near the bow-window. He continued to look at it for a considerable time, and when at last he turned away, it was not to follow his friends, but to pace the paths of the garden in the deepening and darkening twilight, revolving in his mind some occult romance beginning with a bowl of fish.

Meanwhile, his more practical friends, pursuing the main purpose of the story, had penetrated into the house and found at least some members of the household. There had been many things in the garden or the gateway over which Mallow also might have been disposed to linger if his mood had been merely sentimental; an old swing standing by the corner of the orchard, the angle of a faded tennis lawn, the fork of a pear-tree, all of which had stories attached to them. But he was possessed of a passionate curiosity far too practical for sentiment of the merely reminiscent sort; he was resolved to run to earth the mystery of the new man in the old house. He felt that a change had come over everything with the man’s mere presence; and wished to know how far that change had gone. He half expected to see those familiar rooms swept bare, or filled with strange furniture where the stranger had passed.

Mallow, nel suo umore più mistico, guardava stranamente dall’uno all’altro, poiché in effetti c’era una certa vaga somiglianza tra le due alte figure dai capelli chiari, l’una sulla casa e l’altra sulla collina.

«Forse gli assomiglio davvero», disse Gale tranquillamente. «Forse gli assomiglio appena a sufficienza per imparare a non assomigliargli, per così dire. Potremmo entrambi essere uccelli della stessa penna, la penna gialla; ma non voliamo in stormo insieme, perché a lui piace far stormo da solo. E quanto all’essere un martello, giallo o d’altro genere, ebbene, anche questo è un’allegoria.»

«Rifiuto di trovare capo o coda nelle tue allegorie», disse il dottor Garth seccamente.

«Un tempo volevo un martello per fracassare le cose», continuò Gale; «ma ho imparato a fare qualcos’altro con un martello, che è ciò per cui un martello è fatto; e di tanto in tanto riesco a farlo.»

«Che cosa vuoi dire con questo?» s’informò il dottore.

«So piantare il chiodo giusto sulla testa», rispose il poeta.

Non fu, in effetti, fino a più tardi nella giornata che Mallow fece la sua visita alla casa della signora Verney. La signora Verney stava andando al vicino villaggio per il pomeriggio; e Mallow aveva più di un motivo per sferrare il suo attacco quando lo straniero fosse solo con il suo segretario. Aveva l’idea generale di usare i suoi amici per staccare o trattenere lo straniero mentre lui stesso cercava spiegazioni dal segretario; così trascinò con sé Garth e Gale fino al salotto della signora Verney; o piuttosto lo avrebbe fatto se Gale fosse stato una persona facile da trascinare con successo in qualsiasi luogo. Ma Gale aveva la tendenza a staccarsi da qualsiasi gruppo del genere, e restava sempre indietro. Per quanto grosso fosse, aveva il modo di smarrirsi. I suoi amici lo dimenticavano, come lo avevano quasi dimenticato quando giaceva sotto l’albero. Non che fosse asociale; al contrario, era assai affezionato ai suoi amici e assai affezionato alle sue opinioni, e sempre lieto di esporre le seconde ai primi. Gli estranei avrebbero detto che era assai affezionato al suono della propria voce, ma gli amici che gli erano affezionati sapevano il vero. Sapevano che egli non aveva quasi mai sentito la propria voce, nel senso di ascoltarla. Ciò che rendeva imprevedibili i suoi movimenti era che il suo pensare o parlare sarebbe partito da qualsiasi piccola cosa che a lui sembrasse una grande cosa. Ciò che per la maggior parte degli uomini sono impressioni, o mezze impressioni, erano per lui avvenimenti; e i principali avvenimenti della giornata. Molte persone immaginative sanno che cosa s’intende dicendo che certe stanze vuote o porte aperte sono suggestive; ma lui agiva sempre sul suggerimento. La maggior parte di esse comprende che ci può essere qualcosa di vagamente invitante in un varco in una siepe di giardino, o nell’angolo brusco di un sentiero; ma lui accettava sempre l’invito. La forma di una collina, o l’angolo di una casa, lo fermava come una sfida. Lottava seriamente con essa finché non avesse ceduto qualcosa del suo segreto, finché non potesse dare qualcosa come un nome alla sua fantasia senza nome; e queste cose erano le attive avventure della sua vita. Di qui veniva che a volte seguiva un filo di pensiero per ore, con la costanza di un uccello che vola verso casa. Ma poteva partire da qualsiasi luogo; e di qui, nei suoi movimenti reali, somigliava più a un ciuffo fluttuante di lanugine di cardo colto su una spina qualsiasi.

In questa occasione i suoi amici lo persero, o lo lasciarono indietro, mentre svoltavano l’angolo della casa proprio dopo aver oltrepassato un’antiquata bovindo che dava sul giardino. Dentro la finestra stava un piccolo tavolino rotondo su cui c’era una boccia di pesci rossi; e Gale si fermò di colpo e la fissò come se non avesse mai visto una cosa simile prima. Aveva spesso sostenuto che l’oggetto principale della vita di un uomo fosse vedere una cosa come se non l’avesse mai vista prima. Ma in questo caso il crepuscolo della piccola stanza vuota, sfiorata qua e là dalla luce del tardo pomeriggio, sembrava in qualche modo uno sfondo sottile ma adatto per la cosa che egli vedeva. Il cuore di una scura sfera verde era vivo di piccole fiamme viventi.

«Perché diavolo li chiamano pesci rossi?» chiese quasi irritato. «Sono di un colore assai più splendido dell’oro; non l’ho mai visto in nessun luogo tranne che in nuvole rosse assai rare in un tramonto. L’oro fa pensare al giallo, e nemmeno al migliore giallo; nemmeno la metà buono quanto il chiaro giallo limone di quell’uccello che ho visto oggi. Somigliano più al rame che all’oro. E il rame è venti volte più fine dell’oro. Perché il rame non è il metallo più prezioso, mi domando?»

Si fermò un momento e poi disse riflessivo:

«Andrebbe bene, mi domando, quando si cambia un assegno in oro, dare a un uomo dei soldi di rame invece, e spiegare che hanno più delle ricche tonalità del tramonto?»

La sua domanda rimase senza risposta, poiché la rivolse all’aria vuota. I suoi compagni erano carenti del suo senso dell’importanza dei pesci rossi, ed erano proseguiti impazientemente verso l’ingresso principale della casa, lasciandolo indugiare presso la boccia vicino al bovindo. Egli continuò a guardarla per un tempo considerevole, e quando alla fine si voltò via, non fu per seguire i suoi amici, ma per percorrere i sentieri del giardino nel crepuscolo che si faceva più profondo e più scuro, rimuginando nella sua mente qualche occulto romanzo che cominciava con una boccia di pesci.

Nel frattempo, i suoi amici più pratici, perseguendo lo scopo principale della storia, erano penetrati nella casa e avevano trovato almeno alcuni membri della famiglia. C’erano state molte cose nel giardino o presso il cancello su cui anche Mallow avrebbe potuto essere disposto a indugiare se il suo umore fosse stato meramente sentimentale; una vecchia altalena che stava presso l’angolo del frutteto, l’angolo di un campo da tennis sbiadito, la biforcazione di un pero, tutte cose a cui erano legate delle storie. Ma egli era posseduto da una curiosità appassionata assai troppo pratica per un sentimentalismo del tipo meramente rievocativo; era risoluto a stanare il mistero del nuovo uomo nella vecchia casa. Sentiva che un mutamento era sopraggiunto su ogni cosa con la mera presenza dell’uomo; e desiderava sapere fin dove quel mutamento fosse arrivato. Quasi si aspettava di vedere quelle familiari stanze spazzate a nudo, o riempite di strani mobili là dove lo straniero era passato.

Accident, indeed, gave to their passage through those empty rooms an air of pursuit, as if something were escaping. For, as they passed from an outer room into the long library, the stranger, who was at the other end by the window, emphasized his restless love of the open air by putting one long leg over the low window-sill and stepping out on to the lawn. He had evidently, however, no real desire to avoid them, for he stood there smiling in the sunlight, and uttered some greeting very pleasantly with a slight foreign accent. He was still wearing the long lemon-coloured dressing-gown which, along with his yellow hair, had suggested the comparison of a yellow bird. Under the yellow hair his brow was broad but not high, and the nose was not only long and straight, but came down in a single line from the forehead in the manner that may be seen on many Greek coins and carvings, but which has an unnatural and even sinister symmetry when seen in real life. There was nothing else eccentric or exuberant about him; his manners were casual, but not ungraceful; and nothing contradicted the sunny ease of his situation and demeanour except, perhaps, a slightly strained look in the eyes, which were eager and prominent. Until his acquaintances grew accustomed to it, as a fixed involuntary feature of his face, they occasionally had a sort of shock when catching his quiet face in shadow and realizing that the round eyes were standing out of his head.

The first thing the eyes seemed to encounter was Dr. Garth’s hand-camera; and, as soon as introductions and salutations had passed, he plunged into talk about photography. He prophesied its extension at the expense of painting, and brushed aside the objection, which even the doctor offered, that painting had the superiority in colour.

“Colour-photography will soon be completed,” he said hastily; “or rather, it will never be completed, but will always be improved. That is the point of science. You know more or less finally what can be done, well or ill, with a draughtsman’s chalk or a sculptor’s chisel. But with us the instruments themselves are always changing. That’s the real triumph of a telescope… that it is telescopic.”

“Well,” said Mallow grimly, “I shall wait for one more change in the camera as a scientific instrument before I cut up my old easel for firewood.”

“What change is that?” asked the Russian with a kind of eagerness.

“I shall wait till one of those tall cameras walks on its own three legs along a country lane to pick out the view it likes best.”

“Even something like that may be more possible than you think,” replied the other. “In these days when a man has his eyes and ears at the end of long wires; his own nerves, so to speak, spread over a city in the form of telephones and telegraphs. A great modern city will become a great machine with its handle in the human hand. Thus only can a man become a giant.”

John Mallow looked at the man rather darkly for a moment, and then said:

“If you are so very fond of a big modern city,” he said, “why do you hide yourself in such a quiet little hole in the country?”

For a flash the stranger’s face seemed to wince and alter in the white sunlight; but the next instant he was still smiling, though he spoke a little more apologetically.

“There is certainly more space” he answered. “I confess I like a lot of space. But even there the science of the city will ultimately provide its own remedy. The answer is in one word… aviation.”

Before the other could reply the speaker went on, his prominent eye kindling and his whole figure filling out with animation. He made a movement with his hand like a man throwing a stone into the air.

“It’s upwards the new extension will be,” he cried. “That road is wide enough, and that window is always open. The new roads will stand up like towers. The new harbours will stand far out in that sea above our heads… a sea you can never find the end of. It would only be a beginning to conquer the planets and colonize the fixed stars.”

“I think,” said Mallow, “that you will have conquered the remotest star before you really conquer this one old corner of the earth. It has a magic of its own which I think will outlast all such conjuring tricks. This was the house of Merlin; and, though they say Merlin himself fell under a spell, it was not that of Marconi.”

“No,” answered the stranger, still smiling. “We all know the spell under which Merlin fell.”

Mallow knew enough about Russian intellectuals not to be surprised at the wide knowledge of the poetry and culture of the West; but here it seemed the almost satiric symbol of a deeper familiarity, and a mocking whisper told him what might have chained this magician in that western valley.

Laura Verney was coming across the garden towards them with some papers in her hand. She was of a red-haired, full-blooded type, handsome in a fashion which seemed to have a certain pagan exuberance till she came near enough to show the concentrated seriousness of her clear eyes; she might be called a pagan with the eyes of a puritan. She saluted her guests without any change of countenance, and handed the papers to the professor without any word of comment. Something in her automatic manner seemed to sting Mallow to a final impatience; and, picking up his hat from the window-sill, he called out in a loud and careless voice:

“Laura, will you show me the way out of this garden? I’ve forgotten the way.”

It was some time afterwards, however, that he said any sort of final farewell to her, under the shadow of the outer wall, and near the ultimate gate of the garden. In the somewhat bitter intensity of his mood, he seemed rather to be exaggerating the finality of the farewell; not only touching herself, but all the things which he had always felt to be full of her presence.

Il caso, in verità, diede al loro passaggio attraverso quelle stanze vuote un’aria d’inseguimento, come se qualcosa stesse fuggendo. Poiché, mentre passavano da una stanza esterna alla lunga biblioteca, lo straniero, che era all’altra estremità presso la finestra, sottolineò il suo irrequieto amore per l’aria aperta scavalcando con una lunga gamba il basso davanzale della finestra e uscendo sul prato. Non aveva evidentemente, tuttavia, alcun reale desiderio di evitarli, poiché stava là sorridendo alla luce del sole, e pronunciò un saluto assai piacevolmente con un lieve accento straniero. Indossava ancora la lunga vestaglia color limone che, insieme ai suoi capelli gialli, aveva suggerito il paragone con un uccello giallo. Sotto i capelli gialli la sua fronte era larga ma non alta, e il naso non era soltanto lungo e diritto, ma scendeva in un’unica linea dalla fronte alla maniera che si può vedere su molte monete e sculture greche, ma che ha una simmetria innaturale e persino sinistra quando la si vede nella vita reale. Non c’era nient’altro di eccentrico o esuberante in lui; i suoi modi erano disinvolti, ma non sgraziati; e nulla contraddiceva la solare disinvoltura della sua situazione e del suo contegno tranne, forse, un’espressione lievemente tesa negli occhi, che erano ansiosi e prominenti. Finché le sue conoscenze non vi si abituarono, come a un fisso involontario tratto del suo volto, avevano di tanto in tanto una sorta di scossa quando coglievano il suo volto quieto nell’ombra e si rendevano conto che gli occhi tondi gli sporgevano fuori dalla testa.

La prima cosa che gli occhi parvero incontrare fu la macchina fotografica a mano del dottor Garth; e, non appena furono passate presentazioni e saluti, egli si tuffò in un discorso sulla fotografia. Ne profetizzò l’estensione a spese della pittura, e mise da parte l’obiezione, che persino il dottore avanzò, che la pittura avesse la superiorità nel colore.

«La fotografia a colori sarà presto perfezionata», disse in fretta; «o piuttosto, non sarà mai perfezionata, ma sarà sempre migliorata. Questo è il punto della scienza. Sapete più o meno definitivamente che cosa si può fare, bene o male, con il gesso di un disegnatore o lo scalpello di uno scultore. Ma per noi gli strumenti stessi mutano di continuo. Questo è il vero trionfo di un telescopio… che è telescopico.»

«Ebbene», disse Mallow cupo, «aspetterò ancora un mutamento nella macchina fotografica come strumento scientifico prima di fare a pezzi il mio vecchio cavalletto per legna da ardere.»

«Quale mutamento?» chiese il russo con una sorta di ansia.

«Aspetterò finché una di quelle alte macchine fotografiche non camminerà sulle proprie tre gambe lungo un sentiero di campagna per scegliersi il panorama che più le piace.»

«Persino qualcosa del genere può essere più possibile di quanto pensiate», replicò l’altro. «In questi giorni in cui un uomo ha i suoi occhi e le sue orecchie all’estremità di lunghi fili; i suoi stessi nervi, per così dire, distesi su una città sotto forma di telefoni e telegrafi. Una grande città moderna diverrà una grande macchina con la sua manovella nella mano umana. Solo così un uomo può diventare un gigante.»

John Mallow guardò l’uomo piuttosto cupamente per un momento, e poi disse:

«Se lei è così affezionato a una grande città moderna», disse, «perché si nasconde in un così quieto piccolo buco in campagna?»

Per un lampo il volto dello straniero parve trasalire e alterarsi nella bianca luce del sole; ma l’istante dopo stava ancora sorridendo, benché parlasse un po’ più in tono di scusa.

«C’è certamente più spazio», rispose. «Confesso che mi piace molto lo spazio. Ma persino là la scienza della città fornirà alla fine il proprio rimedio. La risposta è in una sola parola… aviazione.»

Prima che l’altro potesse replicare, l’oratore proseguì, il suo prominente occhio accendendosi e la sua intera figura riempiendosi di animazione. Fece un movimento con la mano come un uomo che lancia una pietra in aria.

«È verso l’alto che avverrà la nuova espansione», gridò. «Quella strada è abbastanza ampia, e quella finestra è sempre aperta. Le nuove strade si ergeranno come torri. I nuovi porti staranno lontano là fuori in quel mare sopra le nostre teste… un mare di cui non si può mai trovare la fine. Sarebbe soltanto un inizio conquistare i pianeti e colonizzare le stelle fisse.»

«Penso», disse Mallow, «che lei avrà conquistato la più remota stella prima di conquistare davvero questo solo vecchio angolo della terra. Esso ha una magia tutta sua che, credo, sopravvivrà a tutti questi giochi di prestigio. Questa era la casa di Merlino; e, sebbene dicano che Merlino stesso cadde sotto un incantesimo, non fu quello di Marconi.»

«No», rispose lo straniero, sempre sorridendo. «Sappiamo tutti l’incantesimo sotto cui cadde Merlino.»

Mallow sapeva abbastanza degli intellettuali russi da non sorprendersi dell’ampia conoscenza della poesia e della cultura dell’Occidente; ma qui pareva il simbolo quasi satirico di una più profonda familiarità, e un beffardo sussurro gli disse che cosa poteva aver incatenato questo mago in quella valle occidentale.

Laura Verney stava attraversando il giardino verso di loro con alcuni fogli in mano. Era di un tipo dai capelli rossi, sanguigno, bella in una foggia che pareva avere una certa pagana esuberanza finché non si avvicinava abbastanza da mostrare la concentrata serietà dei suoi occhi limpidi; la si sarebbe potuta chiamare una pagana con gli occhi di una puritana. Salutò i suoi ospiti senza alcun mutamento di espressione, e porse i fogli a il professore senza una parola di commento. Qualcosa nel suo fare automatico parve pungere Mallow fino a una finale impazienza; e, raccogliendo il suo cappello dal davanzale della finestra, esclamò con voce alta e noncurante:

«Laura, vuoi mostrarmi la via d’uscita da questo giardino? Ho dimenticato la strada.»

Fu qualche tempo dopo, tuttavia, che egli le disse una sorta di finale addio, sotto l’ombra del muro esterno, e presso l’ultimo cancello del giardino. Nella intensità alquanto amara del suo umore, sembrava piuttosto esagerare la definitività dell’addio; non solo riguardo a lei stessa, ma a tutte le cose che aveva sempre sentito essere piene della sua presenza.

“You will pull down that old swing, I suppose?” he had said as they went through the garden, “and put up an electric steel swing that will take anybody in ten seconds to the moon.”

“I can’t pull down the moon, anyhow,” replied the girl, with a smile, “and I don’t know that I want to.”

“That’s rather reactionary of you,” remarked Mallow. “The moon is a very extinct volcano, valuable only to old-fashioned romanticists. And I suppose you’ll turn our old lawn-tennis lawn into a place where tennis can be played by machinery, by pressing buttons a hundred miles away. I’m not sure whether they’ve yet finished the plans for a pear-tree that grows pears by electricity.”

“But surely,” she replied, looking a little troubled, “the world can go on without losing the things it seems to leave behind. And, after all, surely the world must go on; at least, it must go on growing. I think that’s where you misunderstand. It isn’t only going on; it’s more like growing outwards.

“It’s expansion, that’s the word; growing broader, always describing wider and wider circles; but that only means more self-fulfilment, and therefore serenity and peace; it means…”

She stopped short, as if at a spoken answer, but it was only because the moon had flung a new shadow across her. It was from a figure standing on the wall. The moonshine made a halo of pale yellow round the head; and for a moment they thought it was the Russian, standing on the wall as he had stood on the roof. Then Mallow looked more closely at the face in shadow, and uttered, with some astonishment, the name of Gale.

“You must get away from here at once,” said the poet sharply; “everybody who can must get away from this house. There’s no time to explain.”

As he spoke, he sprang from the wall and alighted beside them, and his friend, catching his face in a new light, saw that it was quite pale.

“What’s the matter with you?” he demanded. “Have you seen a ghost?”

“The ghost of a fish,” answered the poet; “three little grey ghosts of three little fishes. We must get away at once.”

Without turning his head again, he led the way up the rising ground beyond the garden towards the clump of trees where the party had first encamped. Both Mallow and the girl pursued him with questions; but to only one of them did he give any answer. When Laura insisted on knowing whether her mother had come home yet, he answered shortly, “No; thank God! I sent Garth off to stop her on the road from the village. She’s all right, anyhow.”

But Laura Verney was a lady who could not be indefinitely dragged at the tail of a total stranger talking in a tone of authority; and by the time they came to the top of a hill, and the trees in whose shadow the poet had indulged in his meditations on birds, she halted and resolutely demanded his reasons.

“I won’t go a step farther,” she said firmly, “till you’ve given me some sort of proofs.”

He turned with passion in his pale face.

“Oh, proofs!” he cried; “I know the sort of proofs you want. The foot-prints of the remarkable boots. The bloody finger-print carefully compared with the one at Scotland Yard. The conveniently mislaid matchbox, and the ashes of the unique tobacco. Do you suppose I’ve never read any detective stories? Well, I haven’t got any proofs… of that sort. I haven’t got any proofs at all, in that sense. If I told you my reasons, you’d think them the most rambling nonsense in the world. You must either do as I tell you and thank me afterwards; or you must let me talk as I like, and as long as I like, and thank your God you’ve come as far as this towards safety.”

Mallow was looking at the poet in his quiet and intense fashion; and after a moment’s pause, he said:

“You’d better tell us your own reasons in your own way. I know you generally have pretty good ones, really.”

Gale’s eyes wandered from the staring face of the girl to that of his friend, and then to the drift of dead leaves under the tree where he had once rested.

“I was lying there looking up at the sky, or, rather, the tree-tops,” he said slowly. “I didn’t hear what the others were talking about, because I was listening to the birds and looking at them. You know what happens when you go on staring at something like that; it turns into a sort of pattern like a wall-paper; and this was a quiet pattern of green and grey and brown. It seemed as if the whole world was that pattern; as if God had never made anything except a world of birds; of tree-tops hung in space.”

Laura made a half-protest that sounded like a laugh, but Mallow said steadily: “Go on!”

“And then I slowly became conscious that there was a spot of yellow in the pattern. I slowly realized that it was another bird, and then what sort of bird. Somebody said it must be a yellow-hammer; but, little as I knew about it, I knew better than that. It was a canary.”

The girl, who had already turned away, looked back at him with her first flash of interest.

“I wondered vaguely how a canary would get on in the world of birds, and how it had got there. I didn’t think of any human being in particular. Only I saw in a sort of vision, somewhere against the morning sky, a window standing open, and the door of a cage standing open. Then I saw that all the brown birds were trying to kill the yellow one, and that started my thoughts off as it might anybody’s. Is it always kind to set a bird at liberty? What exactly is liberty? First and foremost, surely, it is the power of a thing to be itself. In some ways the yellow bird was free in the cage. It was free to be alone. It was free to sing. In the forest its feathers would be torn to pieces and its voice choked for ever. Then I began to think that being oneself, which is liberty, is itself limitation. We are limited by our brains and bodies; and if we break out, we cease to be ourselves, and, perhaps, to be anything. That was when I asked you whether an isosceles triangle felt itself in prison, and if there were such a thing as a round prison. We shall hear more of the round prison before this story is over.

«Immagino che abbatterai quella vecchia altalena» aveva detto mentre attraversavano il giardino, «e ci metterai un’altalena elettrica d’acciaio che porterà chiunque in dieci secondi fino alla luna.»

«La luna non posso abbatterla, in ogni caso» rispose la ragazza, con un sorriso, «e non so nemmeno se lo vorrei.»

«Questo è piuttosto reazionario da parte tua» osservò Mallow. «La luna è un vulcano quanto mai estinto, prezioso solo per i romantici all’antica. E immagino che trasformerai il nostro vecchio campo da tennis in un luogo dove il tennis potrà essere giocato a macchina, premendo pulsanti a cento miglia di distanza. Non sono sicuro che abbiano già finito i progetti per un pero che produca pere per via elettrica.»

«Ma di certo» rispose lei, con aria un po’ turbata, «il mondo può andare avanti senza perdere le cose che sembra lasciarsi alle spalle. E, dopotutto, di certo il mondo deve andare avanti; per lo meno, deve continuare a crescere. Penso che sia qui che tu fraintendi. Non è soltanto un andare avanti; è più simile a un crescere verso l’esterno.

«È espansione, ecco la parola; crescere sempre più ampi, descrivendo sempre cerchi più larghi e più larghi; ma questo significa soltanto più autorealizzazione del sé, e dunque serenità e pace; significa…»

Si interruppe di colpo, come a una risposta pronunciata, ma fu solo perché la luna aveva gettato una nuova ombra su di lei. Veniva da una figura ritta sul muro. Il chiaro di luna faceva un alone di giallo pallido attorno al capo; e per un istante pensarono che fosse il russo, ritto sul muro come era stato ritto sul tetto. Poi Mallow guardò più da vicino il volto in ombra, e pronunciò, con una certa sorpresa, il nome di Gale.

«Dovete andarvene subito da qui» disse il poeta bruscamente; «chiunque possa deve andarsene da questa casa. Non c’è tempo di spiegare.»

Mentre parlava, saltò giù dal muro e atterrò accanto a loro, e il suo amico, cogliendone il volto in una luce nuova, vide che era del tutto pallido.

«Che cos’hai?» domandò. «Hai visto un fantasma?»

«Il fantasma di un pesce» rispose il poeta; «tre piccoli grigi fantasmi di tre piccoli pesci. Dobbiamo andarcene subito.»

Senza voltare di nuovo il capo, li guidò su per il pendio in salita oltre il giardino verso il gruppo di alberi dove la compagnia si era accampata la prima volta. Sia Mallow sia la ragazza lo inseguirono con domande; ma a una sola di esse egli diede risposta. Quando Laura insistette per sapere se sua madre fosse già tornata a casa, egli rispose secco: «No; grazie a Dio! Ho mandato Garth a fermarla sulla strada dal villaggio. Lei sta bene, in ogni caso.»

Ma Laura Verney era una signora che non poteva essere trascinata a tempo indeterminato dietro a un perfetto sconosciuto che parlava con tono d’autorità; e quando, col volgere del tempo, giunsero in cima a una collina, e agli alberi nella cui ombra il poeta si era abbandonato alle sue meditazioni sugli uccelli, lei si fermò e con fermezza gli chiese le sue ragioni.

«Non farò un passo di più» disse risoluta, «finché non mi avrai fornito qualche sorta di prova.»

Egli si voltò con passione nel volto pallido.

«Oh, prove!» esclamò; «so bene che genere di prove volete. Le impronte di stivali notevoli. L’insanguinata impronta digitale accuratamente confrontata con quella a Scotland Yard. La scatola di fiammiferi convenientemente smarrita, e le ceneri del tabacco unico. Credete che io non abbia mai letto storie di detective? Ebbene, non ho prove… di quel genere. Non ho prove affatto, in quel senso. Se vi dicessi le mie ragioni, le giudichereste le più sconclusionate sciocchezze del mondo. Dovete o fare come vi dico e ringraziarmi poi; oppure lasciarmi parlare come mi pare, e finché mi pare, e ringraziare il vostro Dio di esservi spinti fin qui verso la salvezza.»

Mallow guardava il poeta nel suo modo quieto e intenso; e dopo una pausa di un momento, disse:

«Faresti meglio a raccontarci le tue ragioni a modo tuo. So che di solito ne hai di piuttosto buone, davvero.»

Gli occhi di Gale vagarono dal volto attonito della ragazza a quello del suo amico, e poi al cumulo di foglie morte sotto l’albero dove un tempo aveva riposato.

«Ero disteso là a guardare in su verso il cielo, o piuttosto verso le cime degli alberi» disse lentamente. «Non sentivo di che cosa parlassero gli altri, perché stavo ascoltando gli uccelli e li guardavo. Sapete che cosa succede quando si continua a fissare qualcosa in quel modo; si trasforma in una specie di disegno come una carta da parati; e questo era un quieto disegno di verde e grigio e marrone. Sembrava che il mondo intero fosse quel disegno; come se Dio non avesse mai creato nient’altro che un mondo di uccelli; di cime d’alberi sospese nello spazio.»

Laura fece una mezza protesta che suonò come una risata, ma Mallow disse fermamente: «Va’ avanti!»

«E poi lentamente mi resi conto che c’era una macchia di giallo nel disegno. Lentamente compresi che era un altro uccello, e poi che genere di uccello. Qualcuno disse che doveva essere uno zigolo giallo; ma, per poco che ne sapessi, lo sapevo meglio di così. Era un canarino.»

La ragazza, che si era già voltata dall’altra parte, tornò a guardarlo con il suo primo lampo d’interesse.

«Mi domandai vagamente come se la sarebbe cavata un canarino nel mondo degli uccelli, e come ci fosse finito. Non pensai a nessun essere umano in particolare. Solo che vidi in una specie di visione, da qualche parte contro il cielo del mattino, una finestra aperta, e lo sportello di una gabbia aperto. Poi vidi che tutti gli uccelli bruni cercavano di uccidere quello giallo, e questo avviò i miei pensieri come avrebbe fatto con quelli di chiunque. È sempre gentile mettere un uccello in libertà? Che cos’è esattamente la libertà? Prima di tutto, di certo, è il potere di una cosa di essere se stessa. Per certi versi l’uccello giallo era libero nella gabbia. Era libero di essere solo. Era libero di cantare. Nella foresta le sue piume sarebbero state fatte a pezzi e la sua voce soffocata per sempre. Poi cominciai a pensare che l’essere se stessi, che è libertà, è esso stesso limitazione. Siamo limitati dai nostri cervelli e dai nostri corpi; e se ne rompiamo i confini, cessiamo di essere noi stessi, e, forse, di essere alcunché. Fu allora che vi chiesi se un triangolo isoscele si sentisse in prigione, e se esistesse una cosa come una prigione rotonda. Sentiremo ancora parlare della prigione rotonda prima che questa storia sia finita.

“Then I saw the man on the roof, with his hands spread like wings to the sky. I knew nothing of him; but I knew on the instant that he was the man who had given a bird its freedom at any risk. As we went down the hill I heard a little more about him; how he had escaped by blowing up his prison; and I felt that one fact had filled all his life with a philosophy of emancipation and escape. Always at the back of his mind, I was certain, was that one bursting moment when he saw white daylight shining through the shattered wall. I knew why he let birds out of cages and why he had written a book on the psychology of liberty. Then I stopped outside a window to stare at those gorgeous goldfish, merely because I had a fancy for such things; they coloured my thoughts, so to speak, with a sort of orange or scarlet, for long afterwards. And long afterwards I was again passing that window; and I found their colours were faded and their positions changed. At that time it was already dark, with a rising moon; and what forms I could see scattered in the shadow seemed almost grey, and even outlined in lines of grey light, which might have been moonlight, but I think was the corpse-light of phosphorescence. They lay scattered at random on the round table; and I saw by the faint glimmer that the glass bowl was broken. So I found my romance when I returned to it; for those fantastic fishes had been to me like the hieroglyphics of a message, which the fiery finger of God had thus written in red-hot gold. But when I looked again, the finger had written another lesson in letters of an awful and ashen silver. And what the new message said was: ‘The man is mad.’

“Perhaps you think I am as mad as he; and I have told you that I am at once like him and unlike him. I am like him because I also can go on the wild journeys of such wild minds, and have a sympathy with his love of liberty. I am unlike him because, thank God, I can generally find my way home again. The lunatic is he who loses his way and cannot return. Now, almost before my eyes, this man had made the great stride from liberty to lunacy. The man who opened the bird-cage loved freedom; possibly too much; certainly very much. But the man who broke the bowl merely because he thought it a prison for the fish, when it was their only possible house of life… that man was already outside the world of reason, raging with a desire to be outside everything. In a most literal and living sense, he was out of his wits. And there was another thing revealed to me by the grey ghosts of the fishes. The rise of the insanity had been very rapid and steep. To send the bird into danger was only a disputable kindness, to fling the fish to death was a dance of raving destruction. What would he do next?

“I have spoken of a round prison. After all, to any mind that can move parallel to a mood like this, there really is a round prison. The sky itself, studded with stars, the serene arch of what we call infinity…”

As he spoke he staggered, clutched at the air, and fell all his great length on the grass. At the same moment Mallow was hurled against a tree, and the girl collapsed against him, clinging to him in a way which even in that blinding whirl, was an answer to many of his questionings. It was only when they had picked themselves up and pulled themselves together that they were fully conscious that the valley was still resounding with echoes of one hideous and rending uproar; or that the darkness had just shut down upon a blaze that blinded them like red lightning. For the instant that it lasted it was a standing glory, like a great sunrise. There rose to the surface of Mallow’s memory only one word for it; the word radiant.

Mallow found himself reflecting in a dull fashion that it was lighter than it might have been at that hour, because of a friendly flame that was licking itself in a lively fashion a few yards away. Then he saw that it was the smouldering ruin of the blue wooden gate-post at which he had gazed that morning, flung all the way through the air like a flaming thunderbolt. They had come just far enough from the house to be out of danger. Then he looked again at the blue-painted wood curling with golden flames, and for the first time began to tremble.

The next moment he caught sight of the faces of his other friends, Walton and Hutton, pale in the flame as they hurried up the road from the remoter inn to which they had retired for the evening.

“What was it?” Walton was calling out.

“An explosion,” said Hutton rather hazily.

“An expansion,” replied Mallow, and mastered himself with the effort of a grim smile.

By this time, more people were running out from remote cottages, and Gabriel Gale turned his face to something like a small crowd.

“It was only the prison gun,” he said, “the signal that a prisoner has escaped.”

III

«Poi vidi l’uomo sul tetto, con le mani spalancate come ali verso il cielo. Non sapevo nulla di lui; ma seppi all’istante che era l’uomo che aveva dato a un uccello la sua libertà a ogni costo. Mentre scendevamo la collina sentii dire qualcosa di più su di lui; come fosse evaso facendo saltare la sua prigione; e sentii che quel solo fatto aveva riempito tutta la sua vita di una filosofia di emancipazione e di fuga. Sempre, sul fondo della sua mente, ne ero certo, c’era quell’unico esplosivo momento in cui vide la bianca luce del giorno splendere attraverso il muro squarciato. Sapevo perché lasciava uscire gli uccelli dalle gabbie e perché aveva scritto un libro sulla psicologia della libertà. Poi mi fermai davanti a una finestra a guardare quei magnifici pesci rossi, semplicemente perché avevo un capriccio per simili cose; essi colorarono i miei pensieri, per così dire, di una sorta di arancione o scarlatto, per lungo tempo in seguito. E molto tempo dopo passai di nuovo davanti a quella finestra; e trovai che i loro colori erano sbiaditi e le loro posizioni mutate. A quel momento era già buio, con una luna nascente; e le forme che riuscivo a vedere sparse nell’ombra sembravano quasi grigie, e persino delineate in linee di luce grigia, che avrebbe potuto essere chiaro di luna, ma che credo fosse la luce cadaverica della fosforescenza. Giacevano sparse a caso sulla tavola rotonda; e vidi al debole bagliore che la boccia di vetro era rotta. Così ritrovai la mia Storia quando vi tornai; poiché quei fantastici pesci erano stati per me come i geroglifici di un messaggio, che il dito di fuoco di Dio aveva così scritto in oro incandescente. Ma quando guardai di nuovo, il dito aveva scritto un’altra lezione in lettere di uno spaventoso e cinereo argento. E ciò che il nuovo messaggio diceva era: “L’uomo è pazzo.”

«Forse pensate che io sia pazzo quanto lui; e vi ho detto che sono al tempo stesso simile a lui e diverso da lui. Gli sono simile perché anch’io posso intraprendere i selvaggi viaggi di menti così selvagge, e ho una simpatia per il suo amore della libertà. Gli sono diverso perché, grazie a Dio, in genere so ritrovare la via di casa. Il lunatico è colui che perde la strada e non può tornare. Ora, quasi sotto i miei occhi, quest’uomo aveva compiuto il grande passo dalla libertà alla follia. L’uomo che aprì la gabbia degli uccelli amava la libertà; forse troppo; certamente moltissimo. Ma l’uomo che ruppe la boccia soltanto perché la riteneva una prigione per i pesci, quando era la loro unica dimora di vita possibile… quell’uomo era già fuori dal mondo della ragione, smaniante di un desiderio di essere fuori da ogni cosa. In un senso quanto mai letterale e vivo, era fuori di senno. E c’era un’altra cosa che mi fu rivelata dai grigi fantasmi dei pesci. L’ascesa della pazzia era stata assai rapida e ripida. Mandare l’uccello incontro al pericolo era solo una discutibile gentilezza, scagliare il pesce verso la morte era una danza di delirante distruzione. Che cosa avrebbe fatto poi?»

«Ho parlato di una prigione rotonda. Dopotutto, a ogni mente che sappia muoversi parallela a uno stato d’animo come questo, esiste davvero una prigione rotonda. Il cielo stesso, tempestato di stelle, la serena volta di ciò che chiamiamo infinito…»

Mentre parlava barcollò, artigliò l’aria, e cadde per tutta la sua grande lunghezza sull’erba. Nello stesso istante Mallow fu scagliato contro un albero, e la ragazza si accasciò contro di lui, aggrappandosi a lui in un modo che, persino in quel vortice accecante, era una risposta a molte delle sue domande. Fu solo quando si furono rialzati e ripresi che divennero pienamente coscienti che la valle risuonava ancora degli echi di un solo orrendo e lacerante frastuono; o che l’oscurità si era appena richiusa su una vampata che li aveva accecati come un rosso fulmine. Per l’istante che durò fu una gloria immobile, come una grande alba. Alla superficie della memoria di Mallow salì soltanto una parola per essa; la parola radioso.

Mallow si ritrovò a riflettere in modo ottuso che c’era più luce di quanta ve ne sarebbe potuta essere a quell’ora, per via di una fiamma amica che si leccava vivacemente a pochi metri di distanza. Poi vide che era il rudere fumante del palo azzurro di legno del cancello che aveva contemplato quel mattino, scagliato per tutta l’aria come una folgore fiammeggiante. Si erano allontanati dalla casa quel tanto che bastava per essere fuori pericolo. Poi guardò di nuovo il legno dipinto d’azzurro che si arricciava tra fiamme dorate, e per la prima volta cominciò a tremare.

Un istante dopo scorse i volti degli altri suoi amici, Walton e Hutton, pallidi nella fiamma mentre risalivano di fretta la strada dalla locanda più remota in cui si erano ritirati per la serata.

«Che cos’era?» andava gridando Walton.

«Un’esplosione» disse Hutton piuttosto vagamente.

«Un’espansione» replicò Mallow, e si dominò con lo sforzo di un sorriso torvo.

A questo punto altra gente accorreva dai cottage lontani, e Gabriel Gale volse il volto verso qualcosa come una piccola folla.

«Era solo il cannone della prigione» disse, «il segnale che un prigioniero è evaso.»

III

THE SHADOW OF THE SHARK

IT is notable that the late Mr. Sherlock Holmes, in the course of those inspiring investigations for which we can never be sufficiently grateful to their ingenious author, seems only twice to have ruled out an explanation as intrinsically impossible. And it is curious to notice that in both cases the distinguished author himself has since come to regard that impossible thing as possible, and even as positively true. In the first case the great detective declared that he never knew a crime committed by a flying creature. Since the development of aviation, and especially the development of German aviation, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, patriot and war historian, has seen a good many crimes committed by flying creatures. And in the other case the detective implied that no deed need be attributed to spirits or supernatural beings; in short, to any of the agencies to which Sir Arthur is now the most positive and even passionate witness. Presumably, in his present mood and philosophy, the Hound of the Baskervilles might well have been a really ghostly hound; at least, if the optimism which seems to go with spiritualism would permit him to believe in such a thing as a hell-hound. It may be worth while to note this coincidence, however, in telling a tale in which both these explanations necessarily played a part. The scientists were anxious to attribute it to aviation, and the spiritualists to attribute it to spirits; though it might be questioned whether either the spirit or the flying-man should be congratulated on his utility as an assassin.

A mystery which may yet linger as a memory, but which was in its time a sensation, revolved round the death of a certain Sir Owen Cram, a wealthy eccentric, chiefly known as a patron of learning and the arts. And the peculiarity of the case was that he was found stabbed in the middle of a great stretch of yielding sand by the sea-shore, on which there was absolutely no trace of any foot-prints but his own. It was admitted that the wound could not have been self-inflicted; and it grew more and more difficult even to suggest how it could have been inflicted at all. Many theories were suggested, ranging, as we have said, from that of the enthusiasts for aviation to that of the enthusiasts for psychical research; it being evidently regarded as a feather in the cap either of science or spiritualism to have effected so neat an operation. The true story of this strange business has never been told; it certainly contained elements which, if not supernatural, were at least supernormal. But to make it clear, we must go back to the scene with which it began; the scene on the lawn of Sir Owen’s seaside residence, where the old gentleman acted as a sort of affable umpire in the disputes of the young students who were his favourite company; the scene which led up to the singular silence and isolation, and ultimately to the rather eccentric exit of Mr. Amos Boon.

Mr. Amos Boon had been a missionary, and still dressed like one; at any rate, he dressed like nothing else. His sturdy, full-bearded figure carried a broad-brimmed hat combined with a frock-coat; which gave him an air at once outlandish and dowdy. Though he was no longer a missionary, he was still a traveller. His face was brown and his long beard was black; there was a furrow of thought in his brow and a rather strained look in his eyes, one of which sometimes looked a little larger than the other, giving a sinister touch to what was in some ways so commonplace. He had ceased to be a missionary through what he himself would have called the broadening of his mind. Some said there had been a broadening of his morals as well as of his mind; and that the South Sea Islands, where he had lived, had seen not a little of such ethical emancipation. But this was possibly a malicious misrepresentation of his very human curiosity and sympathy in the matter of the customs of the savages; which to the ordinary prejudice was indistinguishable from a white man going fantee. Anyhow, travelling about alone with nothing but a big Bible, he had learned to study it minutely, first for oracles and commandments, and afterwards for errors and contradictions; for the Bible-smasher is only the Bible-worshipper turned upside down. He pursued the not very arduous task of proving that David and Saul did not on all occasions merit the Divine favour; and always concluded by roundly declaring that he preferred the Philistines. Boon and his Philistines were already a byword of some levity among the young men who, at that moment, were arguing and joking around him.

At that moment Sir Owen Cram was playfully presiding over a dispute between two or three of his young friends about science and poetry. Sir Owen was a little restless man, with a large head, a bristly grey moustache, and a grey fan of hair like the crest of a cockatoo. There was something sprawling and splayfooted about his continuous movement which was compared by thoughtless youth to that of a crab; and it corresponded to a certain universal eagerness which was really ready to turn in all directions. He was a typical amateur, taking up hobby after hobby with equal inconsistency and intensity. He had impetuously left all his money to a museum of natural history, only to become immediately swallowed up in the single pursuit of landscape painting; and the groups around him largely represented the stages of his varied career. At the moment a young painter, who was also by way of being a poet, was defending some highly poetical notions against the smiling resistance of a rising doctor, whose hobby was biology. The data of agreement would have been difficult to find, and few save Sir Owen could have claimed any common basis of sympathy; but the important matter just then was the curious effect of the young men’s controversy upon Mr. Boon.

L’OMBRA DELLO SQUALO

È degno di nota che il defunto signor Sherlock Holmes, nel corso di quelle ispirate indagini per le quali non potremo mai essere sufficientemente grati al loro ingegnoso autore, sembri aver soltanto due volte escluso una spiegazione come intrinsecamente impossibile. Ed è curioso osservare che in entrambi i casi lo stesso illustre autore è poi giunto a considerare quella cosa impossibile come possibile, e persino come positivamente vera. Nel primo caso il grande investigatore dichiarò di non aver mai conosciuto un delitto commesso da una creatura volante. Dopo lo sviluppo dell’aviazione, e specialmente lo sviluppo dell’aviazione tedesca, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, patriota e storico della guerra, ha visto un buon numero di delitti commessi da creature volanti. E nell’altro caso l’investigatore lasciò intendere che nessuna azione va attribuita agli spiriti o a esseri soprannaturali; in breve, a nessuna di quelle agenzie di cui Sir Arthur è oggi il più deciso e persino appassionato testimone. Presumibilmente, nel suo presente stato d’animo e filosofia, il Mastino dei Baskerville avrebbe ben potuto essere un mastino davvero spettrale; per lo meno, se l’ottimismo che sembra accompagnarsi allo spiritismo gli permettesse di credere a una cosa come un mastino infernale. Può valere la pena di notare questa coincidenza, tuttavia, nel raccontare un racconto in cui entrambe queste spiegazioni ebbero necessariamente una parte. Gli scienziati erano ansiosi di attribuirlo all’aviazione, e gli spiritisti di attribuirlo agli spiriti; benché ci si potesse domandare se lo spirito o l’uomo volante meritasse di essere lodato per la sua utilità come assassino.

Un mistero che può ancora perdurare come ricordo, ma che fu ai suoi tempi una sensazione, ruotava attorno alla morte di un certo Sir Owen Cram, un ricco eccentrico, noto soprattutto come mecenate del sapere e delle arti. E la peculiarità del caso era che egli fu trovato pugnalato in mezzo a una grande distesa di sabbia cedevole in riva al mare, sulla quale non vi era assolutamente traccia di alcuna impronta se non la sua. Si ammetteva che la ferita non poteva essere stata auto-inflitta; e diveniva sempre più difficile persino ipotizzare come potesse essere stata inflitta affatto. Molte teorie furono avanzate, spaziando, come abbiamo detto, da quella degli entusiasti dell’aviazione a quella degli entusiasti della ricerca psichica; essendo evidentemente considerato un vanto per la scienza o per lo spiritismo l’aver effettuato un’operazione tanto pulita. La vera storia di questa strana faccenda non è mai stata raccontata; conteneva certamente elementi che, se non soprannaturali, erano per lo meno sovrannormali. Ma per renderla chiara, dobbiamo tornare alla scena con cui ebbe inizio; la scena sul prato della residenza balneare di Sir Owen, dove il vecchio gentiluomo fungeva da una sorta di affabile arbitro nelle dispute dei giovani studenti che erano la sua compagnia prediletta; la scena che condusse al singolare Silenzio e all’isolamento, e infine alla piuttosto eccentrica uscita di scena del signor Amos Boon.

Il signor Amos Boon era stato un missionario, e ancora vestiva come tale; in ogni caso, non vestiva come nient’altro. La sua figura tarchiata e dalla folta barba portava un cappello a tesa larga abbinato a una redingote; il che gli dava un’aria a un tempo strampalata e sciatta. Benché non fosse più un missionario, era ancora un viaggiatore. Il suo volto era bruno e la sua lunga barba era nera; c’era un solco di pensiero sulla sua fronte e uno sguardo piuttosto teso negli occhi, uno dei quali talvolta appariva un po’ più grande dell’altro, conferendo un tocco sinistro a ciò che per certi versi era tanto comune. Aveva cessato di essere missionario attraverso quello che egli stesso avrebbe chiamato l’ampliamento della propria mente. Alcuni dicevano che vi fosse stato un ampliamento della sua morale oltre che della sua mente; e che le Isole dei Mari del Sud, dove aveva vissuto, avessero visto non poco di tale emancipazione etica. Ma questa era forse una malevola travisazione della sua quanto mai umana curiosità e simpatia in fatto di costumi dei selvaggi; che al pregiudizio comune era indistinguibile da un uomo bianco che si imbarbariva. Comunque, viaggiando in giro solo con nient’altro che una grande Bibbia, aveva imparato a studiarla minuziosamente, dapprima per oracoli e comandamenti, e poi per errori e contraddizioni; poiché il demolitore della Bibbia non è che l’adoratore della Bibbia capovolto. Perseguiva il compito non troppo arduo di dimostrare che Davide e Saul non in ogni occasione meritarono il favore Divino; e sempre concludeva dichiarando tondo tondo che preferiva i Filistei. Boon e i suoi Filistei erano già un motto di una certa leggerezza tra i giovani che, in quel momento, discutevano e scherzavano attorno a lui.

In quel momento Sir Owen Cram presiedeva scherzosamente a una disputa tra due o tre dei suoi giovani amici circa scienza e poesia. Sir Owen era un ometto irrequieto, con una grossa testa, ispidi baffi grigi, e un ventaglio grigio di capelli come la cresta di una cacatua. C’era qualcosa di goffo e di sciancato nel suo continuo movimento, che la gioventù sventata paragonava a quello di un granchio; e corrispondeva a una certa universale bramosia che era davvero pronta a volgersi in ogni direzione. Era un tipico dilettante, che intraprendeva hobby dopo hobby con eguale incostanza e intensità. Aveva impetuosamente lasciato tutto il suo denaro a un museo di storia naturale, solo per essere immediatamente inghiottito nell’unica ricerca della pittura di paesaggio; e i gruppi attorno a lui rappresentavano in gran parte le tappe della sua variegata carriera. In quel momento un giovane pittore, che era anche in un certo qual modo un poeta, difendeva alcune nozioni assai poetiche contro la sorridente resistenza di un promettente medico, il cui hobby era la biologia. I dati di un accordo sarebbero stati difficili da trovare, e ben pochi tranne Sir Owen avrebbero potuto rivendicare una qualche base comune di simpatia; ma la faccenda importante in quel momento era il curioso effetto della controversia dei giovani sul signor Boon.

“The subject of flowers is hackneyed, but the flowers are not,” the poet was insisting. “Tennyson was right about the flower in the crannied wall; but most people don’t look at flowers in a wall, but only in a wall-paper. If you generalize them, they are dull, but if you simply see them they are always startling. If there’s a special providence in a falling star, there’s more in a rising star; and a live star at that.”

“Well, I can’t see it,” said the man of science, good-humouredly; he was a red-haired, keen-faced youth in pince-nez, by the name of Wilkes. “I’m afraid we fellows grow out of the way of seeing it like that. You see, a flower is only a growth like any other, with organs and all that; and its inside isn’t any prettier or uglier than an animal’s. An insect is much the same pattern of rings and radiations. I’m interested in it as I am in an octopus or any sea-beast you would think a monster.”

“But why should you put it that way round?” retorted the poet. “Why isn’t it quite as logical the other way round? Why not say the octopus is as wonderful as the flower, instead of the flower as ordinary as the octopus? Why not say that crackens and cuttles and all the sea-monsters are themselves flowers; fearful and wonderful flowers in that terrible twilight garden of God. I do not doubt that God can be as fond of a shark as I am of a buttercup.”

“As to God, my dear Gale,” began the other quietly, and then he seemed to change his form of words. “Well, I am only a man… nay, only a scientific man, which you may think lower than a sea-beast. And the only interest I have in a shark is to cut him up; always on the preliminary supposition that I have prevented him from cutting me up.”

“Have you ever met a shark?” asked Amos Boon, intervening suddenly.

“Not in society,” replied the poet with a certain polite discomposure, looking round with something like a flush under his fair hair; he was a long, loose-limbed man named Gabriel Gale, whose pictures were more widely known than his poems.

“You’ve seen them in the tanks, I suppose,” said Boon; “but I’ve seen them in the sea. I’ve seen them where they are lords of the sea, and worshipped by the people as great gods. I’d as soon worship those gods as any other.”

Gale the poet was silent, for his mind always moved in a sort of sympathy with merely imaginative pictures; and he instantly saw, as in a vision, boiling purple seas and plunging monsters. But another young man standing near him, who had hitherto been rather primly silent, cut in quietly; a theological student, named Simon, the deposit of some epoch of faith in Sir Owen’s stratified past. He was a slim man with sleek, dark hair and darting, mobile eyes, in spite of his compressed lips. Whether in caution or contempt, he had left the attack on medical materialism to the poet, who was always ready to plunge into an endless argument with anybody. Now he intervened merely to say:

“Do they only worship a shark? It seems rather a limited sort of religion.”

“Religion!” repeated Amos Boon, rudely; “what do you people know about religion? You pass the plate round, and when Sir Owen puts a penny in it, you put up a shed where a curate can talk to a congregation of maiden-aunts. These people have got something like a religion. They sacrifice things to it… their beasts, their babies, their lives. I reckon you’d turn green with fear if you’d ever so much as caught a glimpse of Religion. Oh, it’s not just a fish in the sea; rather it’s the sea round a fish. The sea is the blue cloud he moves in, or the green veil or curtain hung about him, the skirts of which trail with thunder.”

All faces were turned towards him, for there was something about him beyond his speech. Twilight was spreading over the garden, which lay near the edge of a chalk cliff above the shore, but the last light of sunset still lay on a part of the lawn, painting it yellow rather than green, and glowing almost like gold against the last line of the sea, which was a sombre indigo and violet, changing nearer land to a lurid, pale green. A long cloud of a jagged shape happened to be trailing across the sun; and the broad-hatted, hairy man from the South Seas suddenly pointed at it.

“I know where the shape of that cloud would be called the shadow of the shark,” he cried, “and a thousand men would fall on their faces ready to fast or fight, or die. Don’t you see the great black dorsal fin, like the peak of a moving mountain? And then you lads discuss him as if he were a stroke at golf; and one of you says he would cut him up like birthday cake; and the other says your Jewish Jehovah would condescend to pat him like a pet rabbit.”

“Come, come,” said Sir Owen, with a rather nervous waggishness, “we mustn’t have any of your broad-minded blasphemies.”

Boon turned on him a baneful eye; literally an eye, for one of his eyes grew larger till it glowed like the eye of the Cyclops. His figure was black against the fiery turf, and they could almost hear his beard bristling.

“Blasphemy!” he cried in a new voice, with a crack in it. “Take care it is not you who blaspheme.”

And then, before anyone could move, the black figure against the patch of gold had swung round and was walking away from the house, so impetuously that they had a momentary fear that he would walk over the cliff. However, he found the little wooden gate that led to a flight of wooden steps; and they heard him stumbling down the path to the fishing village below.

Sir Owen seemed suddenly to shake off a paralysis like a fit of slumber. “My old friend is a little eccentric,” he said. “Don’t go, gentlemen; don’t let him break up the party. It is early yet.”

But growing darkness and a certain social discomfort had already begun to dissolve the group on the lawn; and the host was soon left with a few of the most intimate of his guests. Simon and Gale, and his late antagonist, Dr. Wilkes, were staying to dinner; the darkness drove them indoors, and eventually found them sitting round a flask of green Chartreuse on the table; for Sir Owen had his expensive conventions as well as his expensive eccentricities. The talkative poet, however, had fallen silent, and was staring at the green liquid in his glass as if it were the green depth of the sea. His host attacked with animation the other ordinary topics of the day.

«Il tema dei fiori è trito, ma i fiori non lo sono» insisteva il poeta. «Tennyson aveva ragione a proposito del fiore nel muro screpolato; ma la maggior parte della gente non guarda i fiori in un muro, bensì soltanto in una carta da parati. Se li si generalizza, sono insipidi, ma se semplicemente li si vede sono sempre sorprendenti. Se c’è una speciale Provvidenza in una stella cadente, ce n’è di più in una stella nascente; e per giunta in una stella viva.»

«Beh, io non lo vedo» disse l’uomo di scienza, di buon umore; era un giovane dai capelli rossi e dal viso acuto, con il pince-nez, di nome Wilkes. «Temo che noialtri ci disabituiamo a vederlo così. Vedete, un fiore è solo una crescita come qualunque altra, con organi e tutto il resto; e il suo interno non è più bello o più brutto di quello di un animale. Un insetto è per lo più lo stesso disegno di anelli e raggiere. Mi interessa come mi interessa un polpo o qualunque bestia marina che voi considerereste un mostro.»

«Ma perché dovreste metterla in quel verso?» ribatté il poeta. «Perché non è del tutto altrettanto logico nell’altro verso? Perché non dire che il polpo è meraviglioso quanto il fiore, invece che il fiore ordinario quanto il polpo? Perché non dire che i kraken e le seppie e tutti i mostri marini sono essi stessi fiori; terribili e meravigliosi fiori in quel tremendo crepuscolare giardino di Dio. Non dubito che Dio possa essere altrettanto affezionato a uno squalo quanto io lo sono a un ranuncolo.»

«Quanto a Dio, mio caro Gale» esordì l’altro pacatamente, e poi parve cambiare la forma delle proprie parole. «Beh, io sono solo un uomo… anzi, solo un uomo di scienza, che voi potreste ritenere più basso di una bestia marina. E l’unico interesse che ho per uno squalo è quello di sezionarlo; sempre sulla preliminare supposizione di avergli impedito di sezionare me.»

«Avete mai incontrato uno squalo?» chiese Amos Boon, intervenendo di colpo.

«Non in società» rispose il poeta con una certa cortese scompostezza, guardandosi intorno con qualcosa come una vampata sotto i capelli chiari; era un uomo lungo e dalle membra sciolte di nome Gabriel Gale, i cui quadri erano più largamente noti delle sue poesie.

«Li avrete visti nelle vasche, immagino» disse Boon; «ma io li ho visti nel mare. Li ho visti là dove essi sono signori del mare, e adorati dalla gente come grandi dèi. Adorerei quei dèi tanto quanto qualunque altro.»

Gale il poeta rimase in silenzio, poiché la sua mente si muoveva sempre in una sorta di simpatia con immagini puramente fantastiche; ed egli vide all’istante, come in una visione, ribollenti mari purpurei e mostri che si tuffavano. Ma un altro giovane in piedi accanto a lui, che fino ad allora era rimasto piuttosto compostamente silenzioso, si intromise pacatamente; uno studente di teologia, di nome Simon, il deposito di qualche epoca di Fede nel passato stratificato di Sir Owen. Era un uomo esile dai capelli lisci e scuri e dagli occhi guizzanti e mobili, malgrado le labbra serrate. Fosse per prudenza o per disprezzo, aveva lasciato l’attacco al materialismo medico al poeta, che era sempre pronto a tuffarsi in un’interminabile discussione con chiunque. Ora si intromise soltanto per dire:

«Adorano soltanto uno squalo? Pare piuttosto un genere di religione limitato.»

«Religione!» ripeté Amos Boon, rudemente; «che ne sapete voialtri di religione? Fate girare il piattino, e quando Sir Owen ci mette un penny, tirate su un capannone dove un curato possa parlare a una congregazione di zitelle. Quella gente ha qualcosa che somiglia a una religione. Le sacrificano cose… le loro bestie, i loro bambini, le loro vite. Scommetto che diventereste verdi dalla paura se aveste anche solo scorto un barlume di Religione. Oh, non è soltanto un pesce nel mare; piuttosto è il mare attorno a un pesce. Il mare è la nube azzurra in cui esso si muove, o il verde velo o sipario appeso attorno a lui, i cui lembi si trascinano col tuono.»

Tutti i volti si volsero verso di lui, poiché c’era qualcosa in lui al di là delle sue parole. Il crepuscolo si andava spandendo sul giardino, che sorgeva presso l’orlo di una scogliera di gesso sopra la riva, ma l’ultima luce del tramonto giaceva ancora su una parte del prato, tingendola di giallo più che di verde, e ardendo quasi come oro contro l’ultima linea del mare, che era di un cupo indaco e violetto, mutandosi più vicino a terra in un livido, pallido verde. Una lunga nube di forma frastagliata si trovava per caso a passare davanti al sole; e l’uomo dal cappello a tesa larga e villoso venuto dai Mari del Sud d’improvviso la additò.

«So dove la forma di quella nube sarebbe chiamata l’ombra dello squalo» gridò, «e mille uomini cadrebbero faccia a terra pronti a digiunare o a combattere, o a morire. Non vedete la grande pinna dorsale nera, come la vetta di una montagna in movimento? E poi voi ragazzi discutete di lui come se fosse un colpo a golf; e uno di voi dice che lo taglierebbe a fette come una torta di compleanno; e l’altro dice che il vostro Jehovah ebraico si degnerebbe di accarezzarlo come un coniglietto domestico.»

«Suvvia, suvvia» disse Sir Owen, con una faconda piuttosto nervosa, «non vogliamo nessuna delle vostre blasfemie a mente aperta.»

Boon volse su di lui un occhio funesto; letteralmente un occhio, poiché uno dei suoi occhi si ingrandì fino a splendere come l’occhio del Ciclope. La sua figura era nera contro il tappeto erboso infuocato, e quasi si poteva udire la sua barba rizzarsi.

«Blasfemia!» gridò con una voce nuova, spezzata. «Badate che non siate voi a bestemmiare.»

E allora, prima che alcuno potesse muoversi, la figura nera contro la chiazza d’oro si era voltata di scatto e si allontanava dalla casa, tanto impetuosamente che ebbero per un momento il timore che camminasse oltre la scogliera. Tuttavia, trovò il cancelletto di legno che conduceva a una rampa di scalini di legno; e lo udirono inciampare giù per il sentiero verso il villaggio di pescatori più in basso.

Sir Owen parve d’improvviso scuotersi di dosso una paralisi come un accesso di sonno. «Il mio vecchio amico è un po’ eccentrico» disse. «Non andatevene, signori; non lasciate che sciolga la compagnia. È ancora presto.»

Ma l’oscurità crescente e un certo disagio sociale avevano già cominciato a dissolvere il gruppo sul prato; e l’ospite fu presto lasciato con alcuni dei più intimi tra i suoi ospiti. Simon e Gale, e il suo tardo antagonista, il dottor Wilkes, si trattennero a cena; l’oscurità li spinse al chiuso, e infine li ritrovò seduti attorno a una bottiglia di verde Chartreuse sulla tavola; poiché Sir Owen aveva le sue costose convenzioni tanto quanto le sue costose eccentricità. Il loquace poeta, tuttavia, era caduto in silenzio, e fissava il liquido verde nel suo bicchiere come se fosse la verde profondità del mare. Il suo ospite affrontò con animazione gli altri comuni argomenti del giorno.

“I bet I’m the most industrious of the lot of you,” he said. “I’ve been at my easel on the beach all day, trying to paint this blessed cliff, and make it look like chalk and not cheese.”

“I saw you, but I didn’t like to disturb you,” said Wilkes. “I generally try to put in an hour or so looking for specimens at high tide: I suppose most people think I’m shrimping or only paddling and doing it for my health. But I’ve got a pretty good nucleus of that museum we were talking about, or at least the aquarium part of it. I put in most of the rest of the time arranging the exhibits; so I deny the implication of idleness. Gale was on the sea-shore, too. He was doing nothing as usual; and now he’s saying nothing, which is much more uncommon.”

“I have been writing letters,” said Simon, in his precise way, “but letters are not always trivial. Sometimes they are rather tremendous.”

Sir Owen glanced at him for a moment, and a silence followed, which was broken by a thud and a rattle of glasses as Gale brought his fist down on the table like a man who had thought of something suddenly.

“Dagon!” he cried, in a sort of ecstasy.

Most of the company seemed but little enlightened; perhaps they thought that saying “Dagon” was his poetical and professional fashion of saying “Damn”. But the dark eyes of Simon brightened, and he nodded quickly.

“Why, of course you’re right,” he said. “That must be why Mr. Boon is so fond of the Philistines.”

In answer to a general stare of inquiry, he said smoothly: “The Philistines were a people from Crete, probably of Hellenic origin, who settled on the coast of Palestine, carrying with them a worship which may very well have been that of Poseidon, but which their enemies, the Israelites, described as that of Dagon. The relevant matter here is that the carved or painted symbol of the god seems always to have been a fish.”

The mention of the new matter seemed to reawaken the tendency of the talk to turn into a wrangle between the poet and the professional scientist.

“From my point of view,” said the latter, “I must confess myself somewhat disappointed with your friend Mr. Boon. He represented himself as a rationalist like myself, and seemed to have made some scientific studies of folk-lore in the South Seas. But he seemed a little unbalanced; and surely he made a curious fuss about some sort of a fetish, considering it was only a fish.”

“No, no, no!” cried Gale, almost with passion. “Better make a fetish of the fish. Better sacrifice yourself and everybody else on the horrible huge altar of the fish. Better do anything than utter the star-blasting blasphemy of saying it is only a fish. It’s as bad as saying the other thing is only a flower.”

“All the same, it is only a flower,” answered Wilkes, “and the advantage of looking at these things in a cool and rational way from the outside is that you can…”

He stopped a moment and remained quite still, as if he were watching something. Some even fancied that his pale, aquiline face looked paler as well as sharper.

“What was that at the window?” he asked. “Is anybody outside this house?”

“What’s the matter? What did you see?” asked his host, in abrupt agitation.

“Only a face,” replied the doctor, “but it was not… it was not like a man’s face. Let’s get outside and look into this.”

Gabriel Gale was only a moment behind the doctor, who had impetuously dashed out of the room. Despite his lounging demeanour, the poet had already leapt to his feet with his hand on the back of the chair, when he stiffened where he stood; for he had seen it. The faces of the others showed that they had seen it too.

Pressed against the dark window-pane, but only wanly luminous as it protruded out of the darkness, was a large face looking at first rather like a green goblin mask in a pantomime. Yet it was in no sense human; its eyes were set in large circles, rather in the fashion of an owl. But the glimmering covering that faintly showed on it was not of feathers, but of scales.

The next moment it had vanished. The mind of the poet, which made images as rapidly as a cinema, even in a crisis of action, had already imagined a string of fancies about the sort of creature he saw it to be. He had thought involuntarily of some great flying fish winging its way across the foam, and the flat sand and the spire and roofs of the fishing village. He had half-imagined the moist sea air thickening in some strange way to a greener and more liquid atmosphere in which the marine monsters could swim about in the streets. He had entertained the fancy that the house itself stood in the depths of the sea, and that the great goblin-headed fishes were nosing round it, as round the cabin windows of a wreck.

At that moment a loud voice was heard outside crying in distinct accents:

“The fish has legs.”

For that instant, it seemed to give the last touch to the monstrosity. But the meaning of it came back to them, a returning reality, with the laughing face of Dr. Wilkes as he reappeared in the doorway, panting.

“Our fish had two legs, and used them,” he said. “He ran like a hare when he saw me coming; but I could see plainly enough it was a man playing you a trick of some sort. So much for that psychic phenomenon.”

He paused and looked at Sir Owen Cram with a smile that was keen and almost suspicious.

“One thing is very clear to me,” he said. “You have an enemy.”

The mystery of the human fish, however, did not long remain even a primary topic of conversation in a social group that had so many topics of conversation. They continued to pursue their hobbies and pelt each other with their opinions; even the smooth and silent Simon being gradually drawn into the discussions, in which he showed a dry and somewhat cynical dexterity. Sir Owen continued to paint with all the passion of an amateur. Gale continued to neglect to paint, with all the nonchalance of a painter. Mr. Boon was presumably still as busy with his wicked Bible and his good Philistines as Dr. Wilkes with his museum and his microscopic marine animals, when the little seaside town was shaken as by an earthquake with the incomprehensible calamity which spread its name over all the newspapers of the country.

«Scommetto che sono il più industrioso di tutti voi» disse. «Sono stato al mio cavalletto sulla spiaggia tutto il giorno, cercando di dipingere questa benedetta scogliera, e di farla sembrare gesso e non formaggio.»

«Vi ho visto, ma non mi andava di disturbarvi» disse Wilkes. «Di solito cerco di dedicare un’oretta o giù di lì a cercare esemplari con l’alta marea: immagino che la maggior parte della gente pensi che io stia pescando gamberetti o soltanto sguazzando e facendolo per la mia salute. Ma ho un discreto nucleo di quel museo di cui parlavamo, o per lo meno della parte acquario. Impiego gran parte del resto del tempo a disporre gli esemplari; così nego l’accusa di ozio. Anche Gale era sulla riva del mare. Non faceva niente come al solito; e ora non dice niente, il che è molto più insolito.»

«Ho scritto lettere» disse Simon, nel suo modo preciso, «ma le lettere non sono sempre banali. Talvolta sono piuttosto tremende.»

Sir Owen lo guardò un momento, e ne seguì un silenzio, che fu rotto da un tonfo e da un tintinnio di bicchieri quando Gale abbatté il pugno sulla tavola come un uomo che abbia pensato d’improvviso a qualcosa.

«Dagon!» gridò, in una sorta di estasi.

La maggior parte della compagnia parve ben poco illuminata; forse pensavano che dire «Dagon» fosse il suo modo poetico e professionale di dire «Dannazione». Ma i neri occhi di Simon si illuminarono, ed egli annuì rapidamente.

«Ma certo che avete ragione» disse. «Dev’essere per questo che il signor Boon è tanto affezionato ai Filistei.»

In risposta a un generale sguardo interrogativo, disse con scioltezza: «I Filistei erano un popolo venuto da Creta, probabilmente di origine ellenica, che si stabilì sulla costa della Palestina, portando con sé un culto che poteva ben essere quello di Poseidone, ma che i loro nemici, gli Israeliti, descrivevano come quello di Dagon. Ciò che qui rileva è che il simbolo scolpito o dipinto del dio sembra essere stato sempre un pesce.»

L’accenno al nuovo argomento parve ridestare la tendenza del discorso a trasformarsi in un battibecco tra il poeta e lo scienziato di professione.

«Dal mio punto di vista» disse quest’ultimo, «devo confessare di essere alquanto deluso dal vostro amico signor Boon. Si presentava come un razionalista al pari di me, e pareva aver fatto alcuni studi scientifici di folclore nei Mari del Sud. Ma pareva un po’ squilibrato; e di sicuro fece un curioso chiasso attorno a una specie di feticcio, considerato che era solo un pesce.»

«No, no, no!» gridò Gale, quasi con passione. «Meglio fare un feticcio del pesce. Meglio sacrificare voi stessi e chiunque altro sull’orribile immane altare del pesce. Meglio fare qualunque cosa piuttosto che proferire la blasfemia distruggi-stelle di dire che è soltanto un pesce. È altrettanto grave che dire che l’altra cosa è soltanto un fiore.»

«Ciononostante, è soltanto un fiore» rispose Wilkes, «e il vantaggio di guardare queste cose in modo freddo e razionale dall’esterno è che si può…»

Si arrestò un momento e rimase del tutto immobile, come se stesse osservando qualcosa. Alcuni immaginarono persino che il suo volto pallido e aquilino apparisse ancora più pallido oltre che più affilato.

«Che cos’era quello alla finestra?» chiese. «C’è qualcuno fuori da questa casa?»

«Che succede? Che cosa avete visto?» chiese l’ospite, in brusca agitazione.

«Solo un volto» rispose il dottore, «ma non era… non era come il volto di un uomo. Usciamo e andiamo a vedere di che si tratta.»

Gabriel Gale era solo un momento dietro al dottore, che si era precipitato impetuosamente fuori dalla stanza. Nonostante il suo fare indolente, il poeta era già balzato in piedi con la mano sullo schienale della sedia, quando si irrigidì là dove stava; poiché lo aveva visto. I volti degli altri mostravano che lo avevano visto anch’essi.

Premuto contro la scura lastra della finestra, ma solo fiocamente luminoso mentre sporgeva dall’oscurità, c’era un grande volto che dapprima somigliava piuttosto a una verde maschera da folletto in una pantomima. Eppure non era in alcun senso umano; i suoi occhi erano posti in grandi cerchi, piuttosto alla maniera di un gufo. Ma il luccicante rivestimento che vi si intravedeva debolmente non era di piume, bensì di squame.

Un istante dopo era svanito. La mente del poeta, che formava immagini con la rapidità di un cinematografo, persino in un momento critico d’azione, aveva già immaginato una serie di fantasie sul genere di creatura che aveva veduto. Aveva pensato involontariamente a qualche grande pesce volante che alava il suo volo attraverso la schiuma, e la piatta sabbia e la guglia e i tetti del villaggio di pescatori. Aveva mezzo immaginato l’umida aria marina che si addensava in qualche strano modo in un’atmosfera più verde e più liquida in cui i mostri marini potessero nuotare in giro per le strade. Aveva accarezzato la fantasia che la casa stessa sorgesse nelle profondità del mare, e che i grandi pesci dalla testa di folletto la annusassero, come attorno agli oblò della cabina di un relitto.

In quel momento una forte voce si udì fuori gridare con distinti accenti:

«Il pesce ha le gambe.»

Per quell’istante, parve dare l’ultimo tocco alla mostruosità. Ma il senso di ciò tornò loro, una realtà che riaffiorava, col volto ridente del dottor Wilkes mentre ricompariva sulla soglia, ansimando.

«Il nostro pesce aveva due gambe, e le adoperava» disse. «È corso via come una lepre quando mi ha visto arrivare; ma potevo vedere abbastanza chiaramente che era un uomo che vi giocava un tiro di qualche sorta. Tanto per quel fenomeno psichico.»

Si fermò e guardò Sir Owen Cram con un sorriso acuto e quasi sospettoso.

«Una cosa mi è molto chiara» disse. «Voi avete un nemico.»

Il mistero del pesce umano, tuttavia, non rimase a lungo neppure un argomento primario di conversazione in un gruppo sociale che aveva così tanti argomenti di conversazione. Continuarono a inseguire i loro hobby e a bersagliarsi a vicenda con le loro opinioni; persino il liscio e silenzioso Simon veniva a poco a poco trascinato nelle discussioni, in cui mostrava una secca e alquanto cinica destrezza. Sir Owen continuava a dipingere con tutta la passione di un dilettante. Gale continuava a trascurare di dipingere, con tutta la noncuranza di un pittore. Il signor Boon era presumibilmente ancora indaffarato con la sua malvagia Bibbia e i suoi buoni Filistei quanto il dottor Wilkes con il suo museo e i suoi microscopici animali marini, quando la cittadina di mare fu scossa come da un terremoto dall’incomprensibile calamità che diffuse il suo nome su tutti i giornali del paese.

Gabriel Gale was scaling the splendid swell of turf that terminated in the great chalk cliff above the shore, in a mood consonant to the sunrise that was storming the skies above him. Clouds haloed with sunshine were already sailing over his head as if sent flying from a flaming wheel; and when he came to the brow of the cliff he saw one of those rare revelations when the sun does not seem to be merely the most luminous object in a luminous landscape, but itself the solitary focus and streaming fountain of all light. The tide was at the ebb, and the sea was only a strip of delicate turquoise over which rose the tremendous irradiation. Next to the strip of turquoise was a strip of orange sand, still wet, and nearer the sand was a desert of a more dead yellow or brown, growing paler in the increasing light. And as he looked down from the precipice upon that plain of pale gold, he saw two black objects lying in the middle of it. One was a small easel, still standing, with a camp-stool fallen beside it; the other was the flat and sprawling figure of a man.

The figure did not move, but as he stared he became conscious that another human figure was moving, was walking over the flat sands towards it from under the shadow of the cliff. Looking at it steadily, he saw that it was the man called Simon; and in an instant he seemed to realize that the motionless figure was that of Sir Owen Cram. He hastened to the stairway down the cliff and so to the sands; and soon stood face to face with Simon; for they both looked at each other for a moment before they both looked down at the body. The conviction was already cold in his heart that it was a dead body. Nevertheless, he said sharply: “We must have a doctor; where is Dr. Wilkes?”

“It is no good, I fear,” said Simon, looking away at the sea.

“Wilkes may only confirm our fears that he is dead,” said Gale, “but he may have something to say about how he died.”

“True,” said the other, “I will go for him myself.” And he walked back rapidly towards the cliff in the track of his own foot-prints.

Indeed, it was at the foot-prints that Gale was gazing in a bemused fashion at that moment. The tracks of his own coming were clear enough, and the tracks of Simon’s coming and going; and the third rather more rambling track of the unmistakable boots of the unfortunate Sir Owen, leading up to the spot where his easel was planted. And that was all. The sand was soft, so that the lightest foot would disturb it; it was well above the tides; and there was not the faintest trace of any other human being having been near the body. Yet the body had a deep wound under the angle of the jaw; and there was no sign of any weapon of suicide.

Gabriel Gale was a believer in commonsense, in theory if not always in practice. He told himself repeatedly that these things were the practical clues in such a case; the wound, the weapon or absence of weapon, the foot-prints or absence of foot-prints. But there was also a part of his mind which was always escaping from his control and playing tricks; fixing on his memory meaningless things as if they were symbols, and then haunting him with them as mysteries. He made no point of it; it was rather sub-conscious than self-conscious; but the parts of any living picture that he saw were seldom those that others saw, or that it seemed sensible to see. And there were one or two details in the tragedy before him that haunted him then and long afterwards. Cram had fallen backwards in a rather twisted fashion, with his feet towards the shore; and a few inches from the left foot lay a starfish. He could not say whether it was merely the bright orange colour of the creature that irrationally riveted his eye, or merely some obscure fancy of repetition, in that the human figure was itself spread and sprawling flat like a starfish, with four limbs instead of five. Nor did he attempt to analyse this aesthetic antic of his psychology; it was a suppressed part of his mind which still repeated that the mystery of the untrodden sands would turn out to be something quite simple; but that the starfish possessed the secret.

He looked up to see Simon returning with the doctor, indeed with two doctors; for there was more than one medical representative in the mob of Sir Owen’s varied interests. The other was a Dr. Garth, a little man with an angular and humorous face; he was an old friend of Gale’s but the poet’s greeting was rather distrait. Garth and his colleague, however, got to work on a preliminary examination, which made further talk needless. It could not be a full examination till the arrival of the police, but it was sufficient to extinguish any hope of life, if any such had lingered. Garth, who was bent over the body in a crouching posture, spoke to his fellow physician without raising his head.

“There seems to be something rather odd about this wound. It goes almost straight upwards, as if it was struck from below. But Sir Owen was a very small man; and it seems queer that he should be stabbed by somebody smaller still.”

Gale’s sub-consciousness exploded with a strange note of harsh mockery.

“What,” he cried, “you don’t think the starfish jumped up and killed him?”

“No, of course not,” said Garth, with his gruff good humour. “What on earth is the matter with you?”

“Lunacy, I think,” said the poet, and began to walk slowly towards the shore.

As time went on he almost felt disposed to fancy that he had correctly diagnosed his own complaint. The image began to figure even in his dreams, but not merely as a natural nightmare about the body on the sea-shore. The significant sea creature seemed more vivid even than the body. As he had originally seen the corpse from above, spread flat out beneath him, he saw it in his visions as something standing, as if propped against a wall or even merely drawn or graven on a wall. Sometimes the sandy ground had become a ground of old gold in some decoration of the Dark Ages, with the figure in the stiff agonies of a martyr, but the red star always showed like a lamp by his feet. Sometimes it was a hieroglyphic of a more Eastern sort, as of some stone god rigidly dancing; but the five-pointed star was always in the same place below. Sometimes it seemed a rude, red-sandstone sort of drawing; yet more archaic; but the star was always the reddest spot in it. Now and again, while the human figure was as dry and dark as a mummy, the star would seem to be literally alive, waving its flaming fingers as if it were trying to tell him something. Now and then even the whole figure was upside down, as if to restore the star to its proper place in the skies.

Gabriel Gale stava scalando la splendida ondulazione di tappeto erboso che terminava nella grande scogliera di gesso sopra la riva, in uno stato d’animo consono all’alba che stava dando l’assalto ai cieli sopra di lui. Nubi aureolate di sole veleggiavano già sopra il suo capo come inviate a volo da una fiammeggiante ruota; e quando giunse al ciglio della scogliera vide una di quelle rare rivelazioni in cui il sole non sembra essere semplicemente l’oggetto più luminoso in un paesaggio luminoso, bensì esso stesso il solitario fuoco e la sorgente zampillante di ogni luce. La marea era al riflusso, e il mare era soltanto una striscia di delicato turchese sopra la quale si levava la tremenda irradiazione. Accanto alla striscia di turchese c’era una striscia di sabbia arancione, ancora bagnata, e più vicino alla sabbia c’era un deserto di un giallo o bruno più spento, che impallidiva nella luce crescente. E mentre guardava giù dal precipizio su quella piana d’ oro pallido, vide due oggetti neri distesi nel bel mezzo di essa. Uno era un piccolo cavalletto, ancora eretto, con uno sgabello da campo caduto accanto; l’altro era la figura piatta e sdraiata di un uomo.

La figura non si muoveva, ma mentre fissava divenne consapevole che un’altra figura umana si muoveva, camminava sulle sabbie piatte verso di essa da sotto l’ombra della scogliera. Guardandola con attenzione, vide che era l’uomo chiamato Simon; e in un istante gli parve di comprendere che la figura immobile era quella di Sir Owen Cram. Si affrettò alla scalinata giù per la scogliera e così alle sabbie; e presto si trovò faccia a faccia con Simon; poiché entrambi si guardarono l’un l’altro per un momento prima che entrambi guardassero giù verso il corpo. La convinzione era già fredda nel suo cuore che fosse un corpo morto. Ciononostante, disse bruscamente: «Ci vuole un dottore; dov’è il dottor Wilkes?»

«È inutile, temo» disse Simon, distogliendo lo sguardo verso il mare.

«Wilkes potrà solo confermare i nostri timori che sia morto» disse Gale, «ma potrebbe avere qualcosa da dire su come sia morto.»

«Vero» disse l’altro, «andrò io stesso a chiamarlo.» E ritornò rapidamente verso la scogliera sulla traccia delle proprie impronte.

In effetti, era alle impronte che Gale stava fissando in modo trasognato in quel momento. Le tracce del suo stesso arrivo erano abbastanza chiare, e le tracce dell’andata e ritorno di Simon; e la terza traccia piuttosto più serpeggiante degli inconfondibili stivali dell’infelice Sir Owen, che conduceva fino al punto dove era piantato il suo cavalletto. E questo era tutto. La sabbia era soffice, sicché il più lieve piede l’avrebbe smossa; era ben al di sopra delle maree; e non c’era la più debole traccia di alcun altro essere umano che si fosse avvicinato al corpo. Eppure il corpo aveva una profonda ferita sotto l’angolo della mascella; e non c’era segno di alcuna arma da suicidio.

Gabriel Gale era un credente nel buon senso, in teoria se non sempre nella pratica. Si ripeteva più volte che queste cose erano gli indizi pratici in un caso simile; la ferita, l’arma o l’assenza d’arma, le impronte o l’assenza d’impronte. Ma c’era anche una parte della sua mente che sempre sfuggiva al suo controllo e giocava tiri; fissando nella sua memoria cose prive di senso come se fossero simboli, e poi ossessionandolo con esse come misteri. Non ne faceva un caso; era piuttosto subconscio che autocosciente; ma le parti di ogni quadro vivente che egli vedeva erano di rado quelle che vedevano gli altri, o che sembrava sensato vedere. E c’erano uno o due particolari nella tragedia davanti a lui che lo ossessionarono allora e per lungo tempo in seguito. Cram era caduto all’indietro in modo piuttosto contorto, con i piedi verso la riva; e a pochi centimetri dal piede sinistro giaceva una stella marina. Non avrebbe saputo dire se fosse semplicemente il vivace colore arancione della creatura ad avergli irrazionalmente inchiodato l’occhio, o semplicemente qualche oscura fantasia di ripetizione, per il fatto che la figura umana era essa stessa distesa e sdraiata piatta come una stella marina, con quattro arti invece di cinque. Né tentò di analizzare questo estro estetico della sua psicologia; era una parte repressa della sua mente che ancora ripeteva che il mistero delle sabbie non calpestate si sarebbe rivelato qualcosa di quanto mai semplice; ma che la stella marina possedeva il segreto.

Alzò lo sguardo e vide Simon che tornava con il dottore, anzi con due dottori; poiché c’era più di un rappresentante della medicina nella folla dei variegati interessi di Sir Owen. L’altro era un certo dottor Garth, un ometto dal viso angoloso e faceto; era un vecchio amico di Gale, ma il saluto del poeta fu piuttosto distratto. Garth e il suo collega, tuttavia, si misero al lavoro su un esame preliminare, che rese superfluo ogni altro discorso. Non poteva essere un esame completo fino all’arrivo della polizia, ma bastò a estinguere ogni speranza di vita, se pur qualcuna ne fosse rimasta. Garth, che era chino sul corpo in una postura accovacciata, parlò al suo collega medico senza sollevare il capo.

«Sembra esserci qualcosa di piuttosto strano in questa ferita. Va quasi dritta verso l’alto, come se fosse stata inferta dal basso. Ma Sir Owen era un uomo molto piccolo; e pare strano che debba essere stato pugnalato da qualcuno ancora più piccolo di lui.»

Il subconscio di Gale esplose con una strana nota di aspra beffa.

«Come» gridò, «non penserete mica che la stella marina sia balzata su e l’abbia ucciso?»

«No, certo che no» disse Garth, con il suo burbero buon umore. «Che diamine vi prende?»

«Follia, credo» disse il poeta, e cominciò a camminare lentamente verso la riva.

Col passare del tempo si sentì quasi disposto a immaginare di aver correttamente diagnosticato il proprio male. L’immagine cominciò a figurare persino nei suoi sogni, ma non semplicemente come un naturale incubo sul corpo in riva al mare. La significativa creatura marina sembrava persino più vivida del corpo. Poiché aveva originariamente veduto il cadavere dall’alto, disteso piatto sotto di lui, lo vedeva nelle sue visioni come qualcosa in piedi, come se fosse appoggiato contro un muro o persino soltanto disegnato o inciso su un muro. Talvolta il terreno sabbioso era divenuto un fondo d’oro antico in qualche decorazione dei Secoli Bui, con la figura nelle rigide agonie di un martire, ma la stella rossa appariva sempre come una lampada ai suoi piedi. Talvolta era un geroglifico di specie più orientale, come di qualche dio di pietra che danzasse rigidamente; ma la stella a cinque punte era sempre nello stesso posto in basso. Talvolta sembrava un rozzo disegno in arenaria rossa; ancora più arcaico; ma la stella era sempre la macchia più rossa in esso. Di tanto in tanto, mentre la figura umana era secca e scura come una mummia, la stella sembrava essere letteralmente viva, agitando le sue dita fiammeggianti come se cercasse di dirgli qualcosa. Di tanto in tanto persino l’intera figura era capovolta, come per restituire la stella al suo giusto posto nei cieli.

“I told Wilkes that a flower was a living star,” he said to himself. “A starfish is more literally a living star. But this is like going crazy. And if there is one thing I strongly object to, it is going crazy. What use should I be to all my brother lunatics, if I once really lost my balance on the tight-rope over the abyss?”

He sat staring into vacancy for some time, trying to fit in this small and stubborn fancy with a much steadier stream of much deeper thoughts that were already driving in a certain direction. At last, the light of a possibility began to dawn in his eyes; and it was evidently something very simple when it was realized; something which he felt he ought to have thought of before; for he laughed shortly and scornfully at himself as he rose to his feet.

“If Boon goes about everywhere introducing his shark and I go into society always attended by my starfish,” he murmured to himself, “we shall turn the world into an aquarium bigger and better than Dr. Wilkes is fixing up. I’m going down to make some inquiries in the village.”

Returning thence across the sands at evening, after several conversations with skippers and fishermen, he wore a more satisfied expression.

“I always did believe,” he reflected, “that the foot-print business would be the simplest thing in the affair. But there are some things in it that are by no means simple.”

Then he looked up, and saw far off on the sands, lonely and dark against the level evening light, the strange hat and stumpy figure of Amos Boon.

He seemed to consider for a moment the advisability of a meeting; then he turned away and moved towards the stairway up the cliff. Mr. Boon was apparently occupied in idly drawing lines on the sand with his shabby umbrella; like one drawing plans for a child’s sand-castle, but apparently without any such intelligent object or excuse. Gale had often seen the man mooning about with equally meaningless and automatic gestures; but as the poet mounted the rocky steps, climbing higher and higher, he had a return of the irrational feeling of a visionary vertigo. He told himself again, as if in warning, that it was his whole duty in life to walk on a tight-rope above a void in which many imaginative men were swallowed up. Then he looked down again at the drop of the dizzy cliffs to the flats that seemed to be swimming below him like a sea. And he saw the long, loose lines drawn in the sand unified into a shape, as flat as a picture on a wall. He had often seen a child, in the same fashion, draw on the sand a pig as large as a house. But in this case he could not shake off his former feeling of something archaic, like a palaeolithic drawing, about the scratching of the brown sand. And Mr. Boon had not drawn a pig, but a shark; conspicuous with its jagged teeth and fin like a horn exalted.

But he was not the only person overlooking this singular decorative scheme. When he came to the short railings along the brow of the cliff in which the stairway terminated, he found three figures leaning on it and looking down; and instantly realized how the case was closing in. For even in their outlines against the sky he had recognized the two doctors and an inspector of police.

“Hullo, Gale,” observed Wilkes, “may I present you to Inspector Davies; a very active and successful officer.”

Garth nodded. “I understand the inspector will soon make an arrest,” he said.

“The inspector must be getting back to his work and not talking about it,” said that official good-humouredly. “I’m going down to the village. Anybody coming my way?”

Dr. Wilkes assented and followed him, but Dr. Garth stopped a moment, being detained by the poet, who caught hold of his sleeve with unusual earnestness.

“Garth,” he said, “I want to apologise. I’m afraid I was wool-gathering when we met the other day, and didn’t hail you as I ought to hail an old friend. You and I have been in one or two queer affairs together, and I want to talk to you about this one. Shall we sit down on that seat over there?”

They seated themselves on an iron seat set up on the picturesque headland; and Gale added, “I wish you could tell me roughly how you got as far as you seem to have got.”

Garth gazed silently out to sea, and said at last:

“Do you know that man Simon?”

“Yes,” replied the poet, “that’s the way it works is it?”

“Well, the investigation soon began to show that Simon knew rather more than he said. He was on the spot before you; and for some time he wouldn’t admit what it was he saw before you turned up. We guessed it was because he was afraid to tell the truth; and in one sense he was.”

“Simon doesn’t talk enough,” said Gale thoughtfully. “He doesn’t talk about himself enough; so he thinks about himself too much. A man like that always gets secretive; not necessarily in the sense of being criminal, or even of being malicious, but merely of being morbid. He is the sort that is ill-treated at school and never says so. As long as a thing terrified him, he couldn’t talk about it.”

“I don’t know how you guessed it,” said Garth, “but that is something like the line of discoveries. At first they thought that Simon’s silence was guilt, but it was only a fear of something more than guilt; of some diabolic destiny and entanglement. The truth is, that when he went up before you to the cliff-head at daybreak, he saw something that hag-rode his morbid spirit ever since. He saw the figure of this man Boon poised on the brink of the precipice, black against the dawn, and waving his arms in some unearthly fashion as if he were going to fly. Simon thought the man was talking to himself, and perhaps even singing. Then the strange creature passed on towards the village and was lost in the twilight; but when Simon came to the edge of the cliff he saw Sir Owen lying dead far out on the sands below, beside his easel.”

«Ho detto a Wilkes che un fiore era una stella vivente» disse tra sé. «Una stella marina è più letteralmente una stella vivente. Ma questo è come impazzire. E se c’è una cosa a cui mi oppongo con forza, è impazzire. A che servirei io a tutti i miei fratelli lunatici, se una buona volta perdessi davvero l’equilibrio sulla fune tesa sopra l’abisso?»

Rimase seduto a fissare il vuoto per qualche tempo, cercando di far combaciare questa piccola e ostinata fantasia con una corrente assai più costante di pensieri assai più profondi che già si dirigevano in una certa direzione. Alla fine, la luce di una possibilità cominciò ad albeggiare nei suoi occhi; ed era evidentemente qualcosa di molto semplice una volta compreso; qualcosa a cui sentiva che avrebbe dovuto pensare prima; poiché rise breve e sprezzante di se stesso mentre si levava in piedi.

«Se Boon va in giro dappertutto presentando il suo squalo e io vado in società sempre accompagnato dalla mia stella marina» mormorò tra sé, «trasformeremo il mondo in un acquario più grande e migliore di quello che il dottor Wilkes sta allestendo. Vado giù a fare qualche indagine nel villaggio.»

Tornando di là attraverso le sabbie sul far della sera, dopo diverse conversazioni con capitani e pescatori, aveva un’espressione più soddisfatta.

«Ho sempre creduto» rifletté, «che la faccenda delle impronte sarebbe stata la cosa più semplice dell’affare. Ma ci sono alcune cose in esso che non sono affatto semplici.»

Poi alzò lo sguardo, e vide lontano sulle sabbie, solitaria e scura contro la piatta luce serale, lo strano cappello e la tozza figura di Amos Boon.

Parve considerare per un momento l’opportunità di un incontro; poi si voltò e si mosse verso la scalinata su per la scogliera. Il signor Boon era apparentemente occupato a tracciare oziosamente linee sulla sabbia con il suo malandato ombrello; come uno che disegni progetti per un castello di sabbia di un bambino, ma apparentemente senza alcuno scopo o pretesto tanto intelligente. Gale aveva spesso veduto quell’uomo gironzolare con gesti altrettanto insensati e automatici; ma mentre il poeta saliva i gradini rocciosi, arrampicandosi sempre più in alto, ebbe un ritorno dell’irrazionale sensazione di una vertigine visionaria. Si ripeté di nuovo, come per avvertimento, che era il suo intero dovere nella vita camminare su una fune tesa sopra un vuoto in cui molti uomini di fantasia erano stati inghiottiti. Poi guardò di nuovo giù verso il salto delle vertiginose scogliere fino alle distese che sembravano nuotare sotto di lui come un mare. E vide le lunghe, sciolte linee tracciate nella sabbia unificarsi in una forma, piatta come un quadro su un muro. Aveva spesso veduto un bambino, allo stesso modo, disegnare sulla sabbia un maiale grande come una casa. Ma in questo caso non riusciva a scrollarsi di dosso la precedente sensazione di qualcosa di arcaico, come un disegno paleolitico, in quel graffiare della sabbia bruna. E il signor Boon non aveva disegnato un maiale, ma uno squalo; cospicuo con i suoi denti frastagliati e la pinna come un corno innalzato.

Ma egli non era l’unico ad affacciarsi su questo singolare schema decorativo. Quando giunse alla breve ringhiera lungo il ciglio della scogliera in cui terminava la scalinata, trovò tre figure appoggiate ad essa che guardavano in giù; e comprese all’istante come il caso si stesse stringendo attorno. Poiché persino nei loro contorni contro il cielo aveva riconosciuto i due dottori e un ispettore di polizia.

«Salve, Gale» osservò Wilkes, «posso presentarvi all’ispettore Davies; un funzionario quanto mai attivo e di successo.»

Garth annuì. «Ho inteso che l’ispettore procederà presto a un arresto» disse.

«L’ispettore farebbe meglio a tornare al suo lavoro e a non parlarne» disse quel funzionario di buon umore. «Vado giù al villaggio. Qualcuno viene dalla mia parte?»

Il dottor Wilkes acconsentì e lo seguì, ma il dottor Garth si fermò un momento, trattenuto dal poeta, che lo afferrò per la manica con insolita serietà.

«Garth» disse, «voglio scusarmi. Temo di essere stato tra le nuvole quando ci siamo incontrati l’altro giorno, e di non avervi salutato come avrei dovuto salutare un vecchio amico. Voi e io ci siamo trovati insieme in un paio di strane faccende, e voglio parlarvi di questa. Ci sediamo su quella panchina laggiù?»

Si sedettero su una panca di ferro collocata sul pittoresco promontorio; e Gale aggiunse: «Vorrei che mi diceste per sommi capi fin dove siete arrivato, per quel che pare aver raggiunto.»

Garth guardò in silenzio verso il mare, e disse alla fine:

«Conoscete quell’uomo, Simon?»

«Sì» rispose il poeta, «è così che funziona, dunque?»

«Ebbene, l’indagine cominciò presto a mostrare che Simon sapeva piuttosto più di quel che diceva. Era sul posto prima di voi; e per qualche tempo non volle ammettere ciò che aveva visto prima che voi arrivaste. Immaginammo che fosse perché aveva paura di dire la verità; e in un certo senso era così.»

«Simon non parla abbastanza» disse Gale pensosamente. «Non parla abbastanza di se stesso; così pensa troppo a se stesso. Un uomo così diventa sempre riservato; non necessariamente nel senso di essere criminale, o persino di essere malevolo, ma semplicemente di essere morboso. È il tipo che viene maltrattato a scuola e non lo dice mai. Finché una cosa lo atterriva, non riusciva a parlarne.»

«Non so come l’abbiate indovinato» disse Garth, «ma è qualcosa di simile alla linea delle scoperte. Dapprima pensarono che il silenzio di Simon fosse colpa, ma era soltanto un timore di qualcosa di più della colpa; di qualche diabolico destino e groviglio. La verità è che quando salì prima di voi alla cima della scogliera sul far del giorno, vide qualcosa che da allora tormentò il suo spirito morboso. Vide la figura di quest’uomo Boon librata sull’orlo del precipizio, nera contro l’alba, che agitava le braccia in modo ultraterreno come se stesse per volare. Simon pensò che l’uomo parlasse tra sé, e forse persino cantasse. Poi la strana creatura proseguì verso il villaggio e si perse nel crepuscolo; ma quando Simon giunse all’orlo della scogliera vide Sir Owen giacere morto lontano sulle sabbie in basso, accanto al suo cavalletto.»

“And ever since, I suppose,” observed Gale, “Simon has seen sharks everywhere.”

“You are right again,” said the doctor. “He has admitted since that a shadow on the blind or a cloud on the moon would have the unmistakable shape of the fish with the fin erect. But, in fact, it is a very mistakable shape; anything with a triangular top to it would suggest it to a man in his state of nerves. But the truth is that so long as he thought Boon had dealt death from a distance by some sort of curse or spell, we could get nothing out of him. Our only chance was to show him that Boon might have done it even by natural means. And we did show it, after all.”

“What is your theory, then?” asked the other.

“It is too general to be called a theory yet,” replied the doctor; “but, honestly, I do not think it at all impossible that Boon might have killed a man on the sands from the top of a cliff, without falling back on any supernatural stuff. You’ve got to consider it like this: Boon has been very deep in the secrets of savages, especially in that litter of islands that lie away towards Australia. Now, we know that such savages, for all they are called ignorant, have developed many dexterities and many unique tools. They have blow-pipes that kill at a considerable distance; they harpoon and lasso things, and draw them in on a line. Above all, the Australian savages have discovered the boomerang that actually returns to the hand. Is it quite so inconceivable that Boon might know some way of sending a penetrating projectile from a distance, and even possibly of recovering it in some way? Dr. Wilkes and I, on examining the wound, found it a very curious one: it was made by some tapering, pointed tool, with a slight curve; and it not only curved upwards, but even slightly outwards, as if the curve were returning on itself. Does not that suggest to you some outlandish weapon of a strange shape, and possibly with strange properties? And always remember that such an explanation would explain something else as well, which is generally regarded as the riddle. It would explain why the murderer left no foot-prints round the body.”

Gale gazed out to sea in silence, as if considering; then he said simply:

“An extremely shrewd argument. But I know why he left no foot-prints. It is a much simpler explanation than that.”

Garth stared at him for a few moments; and then observed gravely:

“May I then ask, in return, what is your theory?”

“My theory will seem a maze of theories, and nothing else,” said Gale. “It is, as many would say, of such stuff as dreams are made of. Most modern people have a curious contradiction; they abound in theories, yet they never see the part that theories play in practical life. They are always talking about temperament and circumstances and accident; but most men are what their theories make them; most men go in for murder or marriage, or mere lounging because of some theory of life, asserted or assumed. So I can never manage to begin my explanations in that brisk, pointed, practical way that you doctors and detectives do. I see a man’s mind first, sometimes almost without any particular man attached to it. I could only begin this business by describing a mental state… which can’t be described. Our murderer or maniac, or whatever you call him, is certainly affected by some of the elements attributed to him. His view has reached an insane degree of simplicity, and in that sense of savagery. But I doubt whether he would necessarily transfer the savagery from the end to the means. In one sense, indeed, his view might be compared to the barbaric. He saw every creature and even every object naked. He did not understand that what clothes a thing is sometimes the most real part of it. Have you ever noticed how true is that old phrase, ‘clothed and in his right mind’? Man is not in his right mind when he is not clothed with the symbols of his social dignity. Humanity is not even human when it is naked. But in a lower sense it is so of lesser things, even of lifeless things. A lot of nonsense is talked about auras; but this is the truth behind it. Everything has a halo. Everything has a sort of atmosphere of what it signifies, which makes it sacred. Even the little creatures he studied had each of them its halo; but he would not see it.”

“But what little creatures did Boon study?” asked Garth in some wonder. “Do you mean the cannibals?”

“I was not thinking about Boon,” replied Gabriel Gale.

“What do you mean?” cried the other, in sudden excitement. “Why, Boon is almost in the hands of the police.”

“Boon is a good man,” said Gale, calmly; “he is very stupid; that is why he is an atheist. There are intelligent atheists, as we shall see presently; but that stunted, stupid, sort is much commoner, and much nicer. But he is a good man; his motive is good; he originally talked all that tosh of the superiority of the savage because he thought he was the under-dog. He may be a trifle cracked, by now, about sharks and other things; but that’s only because his travels have been too much for his intellect. They say travel broadens the mind; but you must have the mind. He had a mind for a suburban chapel, and there passed before it all the panorama of gilded nature-worship and purple sacrifice. He doesn’t know if he’s on his head or his heels, any more than a good many others. But I shouldn’t wonder if heaven is largely populated with atheists of that sort, scratching their heads and wondering where they are.

“But Boon is a parenthesis; that is all he is. The man I am talking about is very much the point, and a sharp one at that. He dealt in something very different from muddled mysticism about human sacrifice. Human sacrifice is quite a human weakness. He dealt in assassination; direct, secret, straight from a head as inhuman as hell. And I knew it when I first talked to him over the tea-cups and he said he saw nothing pretty in a flower.”

«E da allora, suppongo,» osservò Gale, «Simon ha visto squali dappertutto.»

«Ha di nuovo ragione,» disse il dottore. «Da allora ha ammesso che un’ombra su una tenda o una nuvola sulla luna avrebbero l’inconfondibile forma del pesce con la pinna dritta. Ma, in realtà, è una forma tutt’altro che inconfondibile; qualunque cosa con una punta triangolare la suggerirebbe a un uomo nel suo stato di nervi. Ma la verità è che finché egli pensava che Boon avesse inflitto la morte a distanza con una sorta di maledizione o incantesimo, non riuscivamo a cavargli nulla. La nostra unica possibilità era mostrargli che Boon avrebbe potuto farlo anche con mezzi naturali. E gliel’abbiamo mostrato, dopotutto.»

«Qual è dunque la sua teoria?» chiese l’altro.

«È troppo generale per poter ancora essere chiamata teoria,» replicò il dottore; «ma, onestamente, non credo affatto impossibile che Boon possa aver ucciso un uomo sulla sabbia dalla cima di una scogliera, senza ricorrere ad alcunché di soprannaturale. Bisogna considerarla così: Boon è penetrato molto a fondo nei segreti dei selvaggi, specialmente in quella nidiata di isole che si stendono verso l’Australia. Ora, sappiamo che tali selvaggi, per quanto siano detti ignoranti, hanno sviluppato molte destrezze e molti strumenti unici. Hanno cerbottane che uccidono a distanza considerevole; arpionano e prendono al laccio le cose, e le tirano a sé con una lenza. Soprattutto, i selvaggi australiani hanno scoperto il boomerang che effettivamente ritorna alla mano. È davvero tanto inconcepibile che Boon possa conoscere qualche modo di lanciare un proiettile penetrante da lontano, ed eventualmente perfino di recuperarlo in qualche maniera? Il dottor Wilkes e io, esaminando la ferita, la trovammo assai curiosa: era stata prodotta da uno strumento affusolato e appuntito, con una lieve curva; e non solo curvava verso l’alto, ma anche leggermente verso l’esterno, come se la curva ritornasse su se stessa. Non le suggerisce forse qualche arma bizzarra di strana forma, e forse dotata di strane proprietà? E ricordi sempre che una simile spiegazione spiegherebbe anche qualcos’altro, per giunta, che generalmente viene considerato l’enigma. Spiegherebbe perché l’assassino non ha lasciato impronte attorno al corpo.»

Gale fissò il mare in silenzio, quasi riflettesse; poi disse semplicemente:

«Un ragionamento estremamente acuto. Ma io so perché non ha lasciato impronte. È una spiegazione molto più semplice di quella.»

Garth lo fissò per qualche istante; poi osservò gravemente:

«Posso allora chiederle, a mia volta, qual è la sua teoria?»

«La mia teoria sembrerà un labirinto di teorie, e nient’altro,» disse Gale. «È fatta, come molti direbbero, della stessa sostanza di cui son fatti i sogni. La maggior parte della gente moderna ha una curiosa contraddizione; abbonda di teorie, eppure non vede mai la parte che le teorie giocano nella vita pratica. Parlano sempre di temperamento e circostanze e caso; ma la maggior parte degli uomini è ciò che le sue teorie la fanno; la maggior parte degli uomini si dà all’omicidio o al matrimonio, o al puro oziare, a causa di qualche teoria della vita, dichiarata o presunta. Così non riesco mai a cominciare le mie spiegazioni in quel modo svelto, incisivo, pratico che avete voi dottori e detective. Io vedo prima la mente di un uomo, talvolta quasi senza alcun uomo particolare attaccato a essa. Potrei cominciare questa faccenda solo descrivendo uno stato mentale… che non si può descrivere. Il nostro assassino o maniaco, o come lo si voglia chiamare, è certamente influenzato da alcuni degli elementi che gli sono attribuiti. La sua visione ha raggiunto un grado folle di semplicità, e in tal senso di ferocia. Ma dubito che egli trasferisca necessariamente la ferocia dal fine ai mezzi. In un certo senso, invero, la sua visione potrebbe essere paragonata a quella barbarica. Egli vedeva ogni creatura e perfino ogni oggetto nudo. Non capiva che ciò che riveste una cosa è talvolta la sua parte più reale. Ha mai notato quanto sia vera quella vecchia frase, ‘vestito e in perfetto senno’? L’uomo non è in perfetto senno quando non è rivestito dei simboli della sua dignità sociale. L’umanità non è nemmeno umana quando è nuda. Ma in un senso inferiore ciò vale per cose minori, perfino per cose inanimate. Si dicono molte sciocchezze sulle aure; ma questa è la verità che vi sta dietro. Ogni cosa ha un alone. Ogni cosa ha una sorta di atmosfera di ciò che significa, che la rende sacra. Perfino le piccole creature che egli studiava avevano ciascuna il proprio alone; ma egli non voleva vederlo.»

«Ma quali piccole creature studiava Boon?» chiese Garth con un certo stupore. «Intende i cannibali?»

«Non stavo pensando a Boon,» replicò Gabriel Gale.

«Che cosa vuol dire?» esclamò l’altro, in improvvisa eccitazione. «Ma se Boon è quasi nelle mani della polizia!»

«Boon è un brav’uomo,» disse Gale, con calma; «è molto stupido; per questo è ateo. Ci sono atei intelligenti, come vedremo tra poco; ma quella specie tozza e stupida è assai più comune, e assai più simpatica. Ma è un brav’uomo; il suo movente è buono; in origine ha spiattellato tutte quelle fandonie sulla superiorità del selvaggio perché credeva di essere lui il perdente. Può darsi che ormai sia un po’ toccato, riguardo agli squali e ad altre cose; ma solo perché i suoi viaggi sono stati troppo per il suo intelletto. Dicono che i viaggi allarghino la mente; ma bisogna avere la mente. Egli aveva una mente da cappella suburbana, e davanti a essa è sfilato tutto il panorama del dorato culto della natura e del sacrificio purpureo. Non sa se stia sulla testa o sui piedi, non più di tanti altri. Ma non mi stupirei se il cielo fosse largamente popolato di atei di quella sorta, che si grattano la testa domandandosi dove sono.

«Ma Boon è una parentesi; non è altro. L’uomo di cui sto parlando è invece proprio il punto, e per giunta acuminato. Egli trafficava in qualcosa di assai diverso dal confuso misticismo del sacrificio umano. Il sacrificio umano è una debolezza tutta umana. Egli trafficava in assassinio; diretto, segreto, sgorgato da una mente disumana come l’inferno. E lo capii la prima volta che gli parlai davanti alle tazze di tè e mi disse che non vedeva nulla di bello in un fiore.»

“My dear fellow!” remonstrated Dr. Garth.

“I don’t mean that a man merely dissecting a daisy must be on the road to the gallows,” conceded the poet, magnanimously, “but I do say that to mean it as he meant it is to be on a straight road of logic that leads there if he chooses to follow it. God is inside everything. But this man wanted to be outside everything; to see everything hung in a vacuum, simply its own dead self. It’s not only not the same, it’s almost the opposite of scepticism in the sense of Boon or the Book of Job. That’s a man overwhelmed by the mysteries; but this man denies that there are any mysteries. It’s not, in the ordinary sense, a matter of theology, but psychology. Most good pagans and pantheists might talk of the miracles of nature; but this man denies that there are any miracles, even in the sense of marvels. Don’t you see that dreadful dry light shed on things must at last wither up the moral mysteries as illusions, respect for age, respect for property, and that the sanctity of life will be a superstition? The men in the street are only organisms, with their organs more or less displayed. For such a one there is no longer any terror in the touch of human flesh, nor does he see God watching him out of the eyes of a man.”

“He may not believe in miracles, but he seems to work them,” remarked the doctor. “What else was he doing, when he struck a man down on the sand without leaving a mark to show where he stood?”

“He was paddling,” answered Gale.

“As high up on the shore as that?” inquired the other.

Gale nodded. “That was what puzzled me; till something I saw on the sand started a train of thought that led to my asking the seafaring people about the tides. It’s very simple; the night before we found the body was a flood-tide, and the sea came up higher than usual; not quite to where Cram was sitting, but pretty near. So that was the way that the real human fish came out of the sea. That was the way the divine shark really devoured the sacrifice. The man came paddling in the foam, like a child on a holiday.”

“Who came?” asked Garth; but he shuddered.

“Who did go dredging for sea-beasts with a sort of shrimping-net along the shore every evening? Who did inherit the money of the old man for his ambitious museum and his scientific career? Who did tell me in the garden that a cowslip was only a growth like a cancer?”

“I am compelled to understand you,” said the doctor gloomily. “You mean that very able young man named Wilkes?”

“To understand Wilkes you must understand a good deal,” continued his friend. “You must reconstruct the crime, as they say. Look out over that long line of darkening sea and sand, where the last light runs red as blood; that is where he came dredging every day, in the same bloodshot dusk, looking for big beasts and small; and in a true sense everything was fish that came to his net. He was constructing his museum as a sort of cosmos; with everything traced from the fossil to the flying fish. He had spent enormous sums on it, and had got quite disinterestedly into debt; for instance he had had magnificent models made, in wax or papier maché, of small fish magnified, or extinct fish restored; things that South Kensington cannot afford, and certainly Wilkes could not afford. But he had persuaded Cram to leave his money to the museum, as you know; and for him Cram was simply a silly old fool, who painted pictures he couldn’t paint, and talked of sciences he didn’t understand; and whose only natural function was to die and save the museum. Well, when every morning Wilkes had done polishing the glass cases of his masks and models, he came round by the cliff and took a turn at the fossils in the chalk with his geological hammer; then he put it back in that great canvas bag of his, and unslung his long shrimping-net and began to wade. This is where I want you to look at that dark red sand and see the picture; one never understands anything till one sees the picture. He went for miles along the shallows of that desolate shore, long inured to seeing one queer creature or another stranded on the sand; here a sea-hedgehog, and there a starfish, and then a crab, and then another creature. I have told you he had reached a stage when he would have looked at an angel with the eye of an ornithologist. What would he think of a man, and a man looking like that? Don’t you see that poor Cram must have looked like a crab or a sea-urchin; his dwarfed, hunched figure seen from behind, with his fan of bristling whiskers, his straggling bow legs and restless twisting feet all tangled up with the three legs of his stool; making him look as if he had five limbs like a starfish? Don’t you see he looked like a Common Object of the Sea-shore? And Wilkes had only to collect this specimen, and all his other specimens were safe. Everything was fish that came to his net, and…

“He stretched out the long pole in his hand to its full extent, and drew the net over the old man’s head as if he were catching a great grey moth. He plucked him backwards off his stool so that he lay kicking on his back on the sand; and doubtless looking more like a large insect than ever. Then the murderer bent forward, propped by one hand upon his pole, and the other armed with his geological hammer. With the pick at the back of that instrument he struck in what he well knew to be a vital spot. The curve you noticed in the wound is due to that sharp side of the hammer being shaped like a pickaxe. But the unusual position of it, and the puzzle of how such a blow could be struck upwards, was due to the queer posture of the two figures. The murderer struck at a head that was upside down. It could only occur as a rule if the victim were standing on his head, a posture in which few persons await the assassin. But with the flourish and sweep of the great net, I fancy a starfish caught in it fell out of it, just beyond the dead man’s foot. At any rate, it was that starfish and the accident of its flying so high on the shore, that set my mind drifting in the general direction of tides; and the possibility of the murderer having been moving about in the water. If he made any prints the breakers washed them out; and I should never have begun to think of it but for that red five-fingered little monster.”

“Then do you mean to tell me,” demanded Garth, “that all this business about the shadow of the shark had nothing to do with it?”

“The shadow of the shark had everything to do with it,” replied Gale. “The murderer hid in the shadow of the shark, and struck from under the shadow of the shark. I doubt if he would have struck at all, if he had not had the shadow of that fantastic fin in which to hide. And the proof is that he himself took the trouble to emphasize and exaggerate the legend of poor Boon dancing before Dagon. Do you remember that queer incident of the fish’s face at the window? How did anybody merely playing a practical joke get hold of a fish’s face? It was very life-like; for it was one of the masks modelled for the Wilkes museum; and Wilkes had left it in the hall in his great canvas bag. It seems simple, doesn’t it, for a man to raise an alarm inside a house, walk out to see, and instantly put on a mask and look in at a window? That’s all he did; and you can see his idea, from the fact that he proceeded to warn Sir Owen of an enemy. He wanted all this idolatrous and mystical murder business worked for all it was worth, that his own highly reasonable murder might not be noticed. And you see he has succeeded. You tell me that Boon is in the hands of the police.”

Garth sprang to his feet. “What is to be done?” he said.

“You will know what to do,” said the poet. “You are a good and just man, and a practical man, too. I am not a practical man.” He rose with a certain air of apology. “You see, you want an unpractical man for finding out this sort of thing.”

And once more he gazed down from the precipice into the abysses below.

IV

«Mio caro amico!» protestò il dottor Garth.

«Non voglio dire che un uomo che semplicemente disseziona una margherita debba trovarsi sulla strada della forca,» concesse il poeta, magnanimo, «ma dico che intenderlo come lo intendeva lui significa trovarsi su una diritta strada di logica che vi conduce, se sceglie di seguirla. Dio è dentro ogni cosa. Ma quest’uomo voleva essere fuori da ogni cosa; vedere ogni cosa sospesa nel vuoto, semplicemente il proprio morto sé. Non solo non è lo stesso, è quasi l’opposto dello scetticismo nel senso di Boon o del Libro di Giobbe. Quello è un uomo sopraffatto dai misteri; ma quest’uomo nega che vi siano misteri. Non è, nel senso ordinario, una questione di teologia, ma di psicologia. La maggior parte dei buoni pagani e panteisti potrebbe parlare dei miracoli della natura; ma quest’uomo nega che vi siano miracoli, anche nel senso di prodigi. Non vede che quella spaventosa luce arida gettata sulle cose deve alla fine inaridire i misteri morali come illusioni, il rispetto per l’età, il rispetto per la proprietà, e che la sacralità della vita diverrà una superstizione? Gli uomini per la strada sono soltanto organismi, con i loro organi più o meno esibiti. Per uno come lui non c’è più alcun terrore nel contatto con la carne umana, né egli vede Dio che lo osserva dagli occhi di un uomo.»

«Può non credere ai miracoli, ma pare che li compia,» osservò il dottore. «Che altro faceva, quando ha abbattuto un uomo sulla sabbia senza lasciare un segno a indicare dove si trovasse?»

«Sguazzava,» rispose Gale.

«Così in alto sulla riva?» domandò l’altro.

Gale annuì. «Era ciò che mi lasciava perplesso; finché qualcosa che vidi sulla sabbia avviò un filo di pensiero che mi portò a interrogare la gente di mare sulle maree. È semplicissimo; la notte prima che trovassimo il corpo c’era stata l’alta marea, e il mare era salito più del solito; non proprio fino al punto dove sedeva Cram, ma abbastanza vicino. Ecco dunque il modo in cui il vero pesce umano uscì dal mare. Ecco il modo in cui il divino squalo davvero divorò il sacrificio. L’uomo venne sguazzando nella schiuma, come un bambino in vacanza.»

«Chi venne?» chiese Garth; ma rabbrividì.

«Chi andava a dragare bestie marine con una sorta di retino da gamberetti lungo la riva ogni sera? Chi ereditò il denaro del vecchio per il suo ambizioso museo e la sua carriera scientifica? Chi mi disse nel giardino che una primula non era che un’escrescenza come un cancro?»

«Sono costretto a capirla,» disse il dottore cupamente. «Intende quel giovanotto molto capace di nome Wilkes?»

«Per capire Wilkes bisogna capire parecchio,» continuò l’amico. «Bisogna ricostruire il delitto, come si dice. Guardi laggiù su quella lunga linea di mare e di sabbia che si oscura, dove l’ultima luce corre rossa come il sangue; è là che veniva a dragare ogni giorno, nel medesimo crepuscolo sanguigno, in cerca di bestie grandi e piccole; e in un senso vero tutto era pesce che finiva nella sua rete. Stava costruendo il suo museo come una sorta di cosmo; con tutto tracciato dal fossile al pesce volante. Vi aveva speso somme enormi, e s’era del tutto disinteressatamente indebitato; per esempio aveva fatto fabbricare magnifici modelli, in cera o cartapesta, di piccoli pesci ingranditi, o di pesci estinti ricostruiti; cose che South Kensington non può permettersi, e certo Wilkes non poteva permettersi. Ma aveva persuaso Cram a lasciare il suo denaro al museo, come sapete; e per lui Cram era semplicemente uno sciocco vecchio scemo, che dipingeva quadri che non sapeva dipingere, e parlava di scienze che non capiva; e la cui unica funzione naturale era morire e salvare il museo. Ebbene, quando ogni mattina Wilkes aveva finito di lucidare le teche di vetro delle sue maschere e dei suoi modelli, veniva su lungo la scogliera e dava una mano ai fossili nella creta col suo martello geologico; poi lo rimetteva in quel suo gran sacco di tela, sganciava il suo lungo retino da gamberetti e cominciava a guadare. È qui che voglio che guardi quella sabbia rosso scuro e veda il quadro; non si capisce mai nulla finché non si vede il quadro. Andava per miglia lungo le secche di quella riva desolata, da lungo tempo avvezzo a vedere ora questa ora quella strana creatura arenata sulla sabbia; qui un riccio di mare, là una stella marina, e poi un granchio, e poi un’altra creatura. Vi ho detto che era giunto a uno stadio in cui avrebbe guardato un angelo con l’occhio di un ornitologo. Che cosa avrebbe pensato di un uomo, e di un uomo fatto in quel modo? Non vede che il povero Cram doveva sembrare un granchio o un riccio di mare; la sua figura nana e ingobbita vista da dietro, col suo ventaglio di basette irsute, le gambe arcuate e divaricate e i piedi irrequieti e contorti tutti aggrovigliati con le tre gambe del suo sgabello; sì da farlo apparire dotato di cinque arti come una stella marina? Non vede che sembrava un Comune Oggetto del Litorale? E a Wilkes bastava raccogliere questo esemplare, e tutti gli altri suoi esemplari erano al sicuro. Tutto era pesce che finiva nella sua rete, e…

«Egli distese la lunga pertica che aveva in mano in tutta la sua estensione, e trascinò la rete sopra la testa del vecchio come se catturasse una grande falena grigia. Lo strappò all’indietro dallo sgabello sì che rimase a scalciare supino sulla sabbia; e senza dubbio somigliando più che mai a un grosso insetto. Poi l’assassino si chinò in avanti, puntellato con una mano sulla pertica, e l’altra armata del suo martello geologico. Con la punta sul dorso di quello strumento colpì in quello che ben sapeva essere un punto vitale. La curva che avete notato nella ferita è dovuta a quel lato affilato del martello, foggiato come un piccone. Ma la posizione insolita di essa, e l’enigma di come un tale colpo potesse essere inferto verso l’alto, era dovuto alla strana postura delle due figure. L’assassino colpì una testa che era capovolta. Ciò potrebbe accadere di regola solo se la vittima stesse ritta sulla testa, una postura in cui poche persone attendono l’assassino. Ma con lo slancio e l’ampio movimento della gran rete, immagino che una stella marina rimastavi impigliata ne cadesse fuori, appena oltre il piede del morto. In ogni caso, fu quella stella marina e il caso del suo essere volata così in alto sulla riva, che avviò la mia mente nella direzione generale delle maree; e alla possibilità che l’assassino si fosse mosso nell’acqua. Se lasciò impronte, i frangenti le cancellarono; e non avrei mai cominciato a pensarci se non fosse stato per quel rosso piccolo mostro dalle cinque dita.»

«Vuol dunque dirmi,» incalzò Garth, «che tutta questa faccenda sull’ombra dello squalo non c’entrava nulla?»

«L’ombra dello squalo c’entrava eccome,» replicò Gale. «L’assassino si celò nell’ombra dello squalo, e colpì da sotto l’ombra dello squalo. Dubito che avrebbe colpito affatto, se non avesse avuto l’ombra di quella fantastica pinna in cui nascondersi. E la prova è che egli stesso si prese la briga di sottolineare ed esagerare la leggenda del povero Boon che danzava davanti a Dagon. Ricorda quello strano episodio della faccia di pesce alla finestra? Come poteva chi giocasse semplicemente uno scherzo procurarsi una faccia di pesce? Era assai realistica; giacché era una delle maschere modellate per il museo di Wilkes; e Wilkes l’aveva lasciata nell’atrio nel suo gran sacco di tela. Sembra semplice, vero, che un uomo dia l’allarme dentro una casa, esca a vedere, e istantaneamente indossi una maschera e sbirci a una finestra? È tutto ciò che fece; e potete cogliere la sua idea dal fatto che passò poi ad avvertire Sir Owen di un nemico. Voleva che tutta questa faccenda dell’omicidio idolatrico e mistico fosse sfruttata per quanto valeva, affinché il suo omicidio del tutto ragionevole non venisse notato. E come vedete c’è riuscito. Voi mi dite che Boon è nelle mani della polizia.»

Garth balzò in piedi. «Che cosa si deve fare?» disse.

«Saprà lei che cosa fare,» disse il poeta. «Lei è un uomo buono e giusto, e per giunta un uomo pratico. Io non sono un uomo pratico.» Si alzò con una certa aria di scusa. «Vede, per scoprire questo genere di cose ci vuole un uomo poco pratico.»

E ancora una volta guardò giù dal precipizio negli abissi sottostanti.

IV

THE CRIME OF GABRIEL GALE

DR. BUTTERWORTH, the famous London physician, was sitting in his summer-house in his shirt sleeves, for it was a hot day and he had been playing tennis on the sunny lawns outside. He had a solid face and figure and carried everywhere an atmosphere of bodily health and good humour which helped him not a little in his profession; but he was not serious or self-conscious about it. He was not one of those in whom health has degenerated into hygiene. He played tennis when he felt inclined and left off when he felt inclined; as on the present occasion, when he had retired to smoke a pipe in the shade. He enjoyed a game as he enjoyed a joke; which was interpreted by some as meaning that he would never be a player, and by himself as meaning that he would always be able to play. And he enjoyed a joke very much, even the most minute and trivial joke that his roving eye encountered; and at this moment it encountered a quaint detail, which was something of a quaint contrast, in the glowing garden outside. Framed in the dark doorway of the summer-house, like a lighted scene on the stage, was the perspective of a garden path, bordered with very gay and flamboyant beds of tulips, having something of the gorgeous formality of the borders of a Persian illumination. And down the centre of the central path was advancing a figure that looked by comparison almost completely black, with black top-hat, black clothes and black umbrella; it might have been the mythical Black Tulip come to life and a walking parody of the tall, top-heavy garden flowers. The next moment all such fancies had faded from the doctor’s day-dream; for he had recognized a familiar face under the top-hat; he knew that the contrast was not merely grotesque; and was shocked with the gravity of the visitor’s eyes.

“Hullo, Garth,” he said in a hearty manner, “sit down and tell us all about yourself. You look as if you were going to a funeral.”

“So I am,” replied Dr. Garth, putting his black hat on a chair; he was a small, red-haired, shrewd-faced man and he looked pale and harassed.

“I am so sorry,” said Butterworth quickly, “if I spoke without thinking. I’m afraid you’re really rather cut up.

“I am going to a queer sort of funeral,” said Dr. Garth grimly; “the sort of funeral where we take special precautions to ensure premature burial.”

“What in the world do you mean?” asked his colleague, staring.

“I mean I’ve got to bury a man alive,” said Garth with a ghastly calm. “But it’s the sort of burial that requires two doctors’ certificates instead of one.”

Butterworth stared at the patch of sun-light and sucked in his cheeks with a soundless whistle. “Oh… I see,” he said.

Then he added abruptly: “Of course it’s always a sad business; but I’m afraid it’s rather personal for you. A friend of yours?”

“One of my best friends, I think, barring yourself,” replied Garth; “and one of the best and brightest young men of our time as well. I was afraid something of the sort might happen; but I hoped it wouldn’t be so bad as this.” He stopped for an instant and then said almost explosively:

“It’s poor old Gale; and he’s done it once too often.”

“Done what?” asked Dr. Butterworth.

“It’s rather difficult to explain, unless you know him,” said Garth. “Gabriel Gale is a poet, also a painter and other wild things of that sort; but he has also a wild theory of his own about how to cure lunatics. In short, the amateur set up as a mad doctor and now the doctor is really mad. It’s a horrid tragedy; but really he was asking for it.”

“I don’t yet understand what it’s all about,” said the other doctor patiently.

“I tell you he had a theory,” said Garth. “He thought he could cure cracked people by what he called sympathy. But it didn’t mean what you would mean by sympathy; he meant following their thoughts and going half-way with them, or all the way with them if he could. I used to joke with him, poor fellow, and say that if a lunatic thought he was made of glass, Gale would try hard to feel a little transparent. Anyhow, that was his notion, that he could really look at things to some extent from the lunatic’s point of view; and talk to him in his own language. He admitted himself that it was a risky business, to walk on the edge of the precipice like that; and now, as I say, he’s done it once too often. I always distrusted it myself.”

“I should think so,” said Dr. Butterworth, all his solid sanity stiffening against the suggestion. “He might as well say that a doctor ought to limp all the way to cure a lame man, or shut his eyes in order to help the blind.”

“If the blind lead the blind,” assented the other gloomily. “Well, he’s fallen into the ditch this time.”

“Why especially this time?” asked Butterworth.

“Well, if he doesn’t go to an asylum, he’ll go to jail,” said Garth grimly. “That’s why I’m in such a hurry to have him certified; God knows I don’t like doing that. But he’s broken out this time in a way he never did before. He was always fanciful and eccentric, of course; but I’m bound to say he had a very sane streak in him somewhere. It’s exactly because he’s never done anything like this before that I’m sure the end has really come. For one thing, he’s committed a perfectly crazy assault and apparently tried to murder a man with a pitchfork. But what hits me much harder, who knew him, is that he tried to murder a perfectly mild and shy and inoffensive person; in fact a rather gauche youth from Cambridge, half developed into a curate. Now that’s quite unlike Gabriel, even at his maddest. The men with whom he wrestled in spirit, if not in body, were intellectual bullies or mesmerists, the sort of men who wanted somebody to stand up to them; like that thin-lipped Dr. Wilkes, or that Russian Professor. I can no more see him savaging somebody like poor young Saunders than I can see him kicking a crippled child. And yet I did see him do it. The only explanation is that he wasn’t himself.

IL DELITTO DI GABRIEL GALE

Il DOTT. BUTTERWORTH, il celebre medico di Londra, sedeva nel suo padiglione estivo in maniche di camicia, giacché era una giornata calda ed egli aveva giocato a tennis sui prati soleggiati lì fuori. Aveva un viso e una figura solidi e portava ovunque con sé un’atmosfera di salute fisica e di buon umore che non poco lo aiutava nella sua professione; ma non ne era serio né preso da sé. Non era di quelli in cui la salute è degenerata in igiene. Giocava a tennis quando ne aveva voglia e smetteva quando ne aveva voglia; come nella presente occasione, in cui si era ritirato a fumare la pipa all’ombra. Godeva d’una partita come godeva d’uno scherzo; il che veniva interpretato da alcuni come segno che non sarebbe mai stato un giocatore, e da lui stesso come segno che sarebbe sempre stato in grado di giocare. E godeva moltissimo di uno scherzo, anche del più minuto e banale scherzo in cui incappasse il suo occhio errante; e in quel momento incappò in un curioso particolare, che era una sorta di curioso contrasto, nel giardino sfolgorante là fuori. Incorniciata nella scura soglia del padiglione estivo, come una scena illuminata sul palcoscenico, stava la prospettiva di un sentiero di giardino, bordato di aiuole di tulipani assai vivaci e sgargianti, con qualcosa della sontuosa formalità dei margini di una miniatura persiana. E lungo il centro del sentiero centrale avanzava una figura che al confronto appariva quasi completamente nera, col cilindro nero, gli abiti neri e l’ombrello nero; poteva essere il mitico Tulipano Nero venuto in vita e una parodia ambulante degli alti, sbilenchi fiori da giardino. L’istante dopo tutte quelle fantasie erano svanite dalla fantasticheria del dottore; poiché aveva riconosciuto un volto familiare sotto il cilindro; sapeva che il contrasto non era meramente grottesco; ed era turbato dalla gravità degli occhi del visitatore.

«Salve, Garth,» disse cordialmente, «siediti e raccontaci tutto di te. Hai l’aria di andare a un funerale.»

«È proprio così,» rispose il dottor Garth, posando il suo cappello nero su una sedia; era un uomo piccolo, dai capelli rossi, dal viso astuto, e appariva pallido e tormentato.

«Mi dispiace tanto,» disse in fretta Butterworth, «se ho parlato senza pensare. Temo che tu sia davvero piuttosto abbattuto.

«Vado a un funerale d’una specie ben strana,» disse cupo il dottor Garth; «il genere di funerale in cui prendiamo speciali precauzioni per assicurarci la sepoltura prematura.»

«Che diamine vuoi dire?» chiese il collega, fissandolo.

«Voglio dire che devo seppellire vivo un uomo,» disse Garth con una calma spettrale. «Ma è il genere di sepoltura che richiede i certificati di due medici anziché uno.»

Butterworth fissò la chiazza di sole e succhiò le guance in un fischio silenzioso. «Oh… capisco,» disse.

Poi aggiunse bruscamente: «Naturalmente è sempre una triste faccenda; ma temo che per te sia piuttosto personale. Un tuo amico?»

«Uno dei miei migliori amici, credo, te escluso,» rispose Garth; «e uno dei migliori e più brillanti giovani del nostro tempo, per giunta. Temevo che potesse accadere qualcosa del genere; ma speravo non fosse grave come questo.» Si fermò un istante e poi disse quasi esplodendo:

«È il povero vecchio Gale; e l’ha fatta una volta di troppo.»

«Fatto cosa?» chiese il dottor Butterworth.

«È piuttosto difficile da spiegare, se non lo conosci,» disse Garth. «Gabriel Gale è un poeta, e anche un pittore e altre cose stravaganti di quella sorta; ma ha pure una sua sfrenata teoria su come curare i pazzi. In breve, il dilettante s’è messo a fare l’alienista e ora l’alienista è davvero pazzo. È un’orribile tragedia; ma se l’è proprio cercata.»

«Non capisco ancora di che cosa si tratti,» disse pazientemente l’altro dottore.

«Ti dico che aveva una teoria,» disse Garth. «Riteneva di poter curare le persone toccate con ciò che chiamava simpatia. Ma non significava ciò che tu intenderesti per simpatia; intendeva seguire i loro pensieri e andare con loro a metà strada, o per tutta la strada se poteva. Solevo scherzare con lui, pover’uomo, e dirgli che se un pazzo si credeva fatto di vetro, Gale si sarebbe sforzato di sentirsi un po’ trasparente. Comunque, quella era la sua idea, che potesse davvero guardare le cose in qualche misura dal punto di vista del pazzo; e parlargli nella sua stessa lingua. Ammetteva egli stesso che era una faccenda rischiosa, camminare così sull’orlo del precipizio; e ora, come dico, l’ha fatta una volta di troppo. Io stesso ne ho sempre diffidato.»

«Lo credo bene,» disse il dottor Butterworth, tutta la sua solida sanità mentale irrigidendosi contro l’idea. «Tanto varrebbe dire che un medico dovrebbe zoppicare per tutta la strada per curare uno zoppo, o chiudere gli occhi per aiutare i ciechi.»

«Se il cieco guida il cieco,» assentì l’altro cupamente. «Ebbene, questa volta è caduto nel fosso.»

«Perché proprio questa volta?» chiese Butterworth.

«Ebbene, se non va in manicomio, finirà in prigione,» disse Garth cupamente. «Ecco perché ho tanta fretta di farlo interdire; Dio sa quanto non mi piaccia farlo. Ma questa volta è sbottato in un modo che non aveva mai fatto prima. Era sempre stato fantasioso ed eccentrico, s’intende; ma devo dire che aveva da qualche parte una vena assai sana. È proprio perché non ha mai fatto nulla di simile prima che sono certo che la fine sia davvero giunta. Anzitutto, ha commesso un’aggressione perfettamente folle e a quanto pare ha tentato di uccidere un uomo con un forcone. Ma ciò che mi colpisce assai più duramente, che lo conoscevo, è che ha tentato di uccidere una persona perfettamente mite e timida e inoffensiva; anzi un giovanotto piuttosto goffo venuto da Cambridge, mezzo avviato a diventare curato. Ora, questo è del tutto insolito per Gabriel, anche nel colmo della sua follia. Gli uomini con cui lottava nello spirito, se non nel corpo, erano prepotenti intellettuali o mesmeristi, il genere d’uomini che voleva qualcuno che tenesse loro testa; come quel dottor Wilkes dalle labbra sottili, o quel professore russo. Non posso immaginarlo infierire su qualcuno come il povero giovane Saunders più di quanto possa immaginarlo prendere a calci un bambino storpio. Eppure l’ho visto farlo. L’unica spiegazione è che non era in sé.

“There was another thing which made me sure he wasn’t himself. The weather had been very trying for everybody for some time; hot and stormy and electric; but it was the first time I’ve ever known him upset by such storms. I’ve known him to do the silliest things; I’ve known him stand on his head in the garden; but that was only showing that he was not affected by the storm. But this time I’m sure these queer semi-tropical tempests have been too much for him; so that even the very subject of the storm upset him in some way. For this tragedy arose out of the most trivial sort of triviality. The whole terrible unnatural business began with talking about the weather.

“Lady Flamborough said to a guest at her rather damp garden-party, ‘You brought bad weather with you.’ Anybody might say that to anybody; but she did say it to young Herbert Saunders, who is awfully awkward and shy, one of those long, loose boys with large feet, who seem to have outgrown their clothes and their wits; the last sort of person who would want to be singled out by any remark, however trifling. So Saunders only gaped and gurgled or was dumb, but somehow the lady’s remark seemed to get on Gale’s nerves from the first. A little while afterwards Gale met Lady Flamborough again, at another reception where it was raining, and he suddenly pointed, like some comic conspirator, at the tall ungainly figure of Saunders in the distance and said: ‘He still brings bad weather.’ Then happened one of those coincidences that are quite natural but seem to drive madmen really mad. The next time all that set happened to get together was on a really beautiful afternoon at Mrs. Blakeney’s; with a clear blue sky without a cloud in it, so that old Blakeney went pottering round and showed all the first comers his gardens and glasshouses. But after that they all went in to tea, which was served in the great peacock-green drawing-room in the middle of the house; and so it happened that Saunders came late and there was a good deal of laughter as he sat down, much to his embarrassment; because the weather joke had been repeated and people were quite pleased to see it falsified for once. Then they all went out into the rooms nearer the entrance; and Gabriel Gale was walking towards the doorway. Between two pillars he caught sight of one of the outer windows and stood rooted to the spot, rigidly pointing with one arm. That gesture alone warned me that something was really rather wrong with him; but when I looked I could hardly help sharing his shock of surprise. For the windows that had been painted blue with summer sky were painted black with rain. On every side of the house the rain dripped and pattered as dismally as if it had been raining for a hundred years. And ten minutes before the whole garden had seemed a garden of gold like the Hesperides. Gale stood staring at this flying storm from nowhere, that had so suddenly struck the house; then he turned slowly and looked, with an expression not to be forgotten, at the man who was standing a few yards away. It was Herbert Saunders.

“You can imagine it’s not much in my line to believe in witchcraft or magicians who control the elements; but there did really seem something funny about that cloudless day having so rapidly overclouded, with the coming of the one man whose name was already associated with it, if only by a jest. It was a mere coincidence, of course; but what worried me was the possible effect on my friend’s already rather rickety psychology. He and Saunders were both standing and staring out of the same wide window, looking at the deluge-darkened garden and the swaying and tormented trees; but Saunder’s simple face seemed to express only amiable bewilderment; indeed, he was smiling vaguely and shyly, as he did when he received a compliment. For he was one of those whose face after a compliment always looks as if it has received a buffet. He obviously saw nothing in it but a repetition of the joke; perhaps he thought that the English climate was keeping up the joke. And, compared with his face, the face of Gabriel was like the face of a fiend. So it seemed at least, as it sprang white out of the growing dark to meet the first white burst of the lightning; then there followed only thunder and the noise of the roaring rain; but I knew that he stood there rocking with that inexplicable excitement. Through the thunder I heard his voice saying, ‘It makes one feel like God.’

“Immediately under the windows a little path ran on the edge of some meadow land attached to the garden, where the Blakeneys had been getting in their hay; and a moderately large mound of hay looked almost mountainously dark against that low and lowering sky; a two-pronged pitchfork lying across it had certainly something grim about its black outline, which may have captured poor Gale’s fancy; for he was always prone to be taken by odd sights as if they were signals. Anyhow at that moment the host and hostess and other guests came hurrying by; the old man lamenting over the ruin of his hay; but the lady of the house apparently much more concerned about the fate of some highly ornamental garden-chairs, which had apparently been left out on the lawn just adjoining the meadow, under the large apple-tree whose boughs were now tossing and twisting in the storm.

“Gabriel Gale, when in his right mind, is the most chivalrous of men, and would have regained the lady’s chairs at a bound. But now he could do nothing but glare at the unfortunate Saunders; who awoke trembling to his social duties, in that agony of self-consciousness in which a man is afraid to do the right thing and afraid not to do it. At length, however, he jerked himself forward, fumbled with the door, flung it open and ran out into the reverberating rain. Then Gale followed him to the open door and shouted something after him. For most of the company, I think, it was lost in the din; but even if they had heard it, they certainly could not have understood it. I heard it; and I thought I understood it only too well. For what Gale shouted through the storm was, ‘Why don’t you call the chairs and they’ll come to you.’

«C’era un’altra cosa che mi rendeva certo che non era in sé. Il tempo era stato assai difficile per tutti già da qualche tempo; caldo e tempestoso ed elettrico; ma era la prima volta che lo vedevo turbato da simili temporali. L’ho visto fare le sciocchezze più grandi; l’ho visto stare a testa in giù nel giardino; ma ciò non faceva che dimostrare che non era influenzato dalla tempesta. Ma questa volta sono certo che queste strane tempeste semitropicali siano state troppo per lui; sì che perfino il soggetto stesso della tempesta lo turbava in qualche modo. Poiché questa tragedia sorse dalla più banale delle banalità. L’intera terribile e innaturale faccenda cominciò col parlare del tempo.

«Lady Flamborough disse a un ospite del suo garden-party piuttosto umido: ‘Avete portato con voi il cattivo tempo.’ Chiunque potrebbe dirlo a chiunque; ma lo disse al giovane Herbert Saunders, che è terribilmente impacciato e timido, uno di quei ragazzi lunghi e sciolti dai grandi piedi, che paiono aver superato in crescita i loro abiti e il loro ingegno; l’ultima persona che vorrebbe essere additata da una qualsiasi osservazione, per quanto insignificante. Così Saunders non fece che restare a bocca aperta e gorgogliare o ammutolire, ma in qualche modo l’osservazione della dama parve dare sui nervi a Gale fin dal principio. Poco dopo Gale incontrò di nuovo Lady Flamborough, a un altro ricevimento dove pioveva, e a un tratto puntò il dito, come un comico cospiratore, verso l’alta e sgraziata figura di Saunders in lontananza e disse: ‘Continua a portare cattivo tempo.’ Poi accadde una di quelle coincidenze che sono del tutto naturali ma paiono far impazzire davvero i pazzi. La volta successiva che tutta quella compagnia si trovò riunita fu in un pomeriggio davvero splendido da Mrs. Blakeney; con un cielo azzurro e limpido senza una nuvola, sì che il vecchio Blakeney andò gironzolando e mostrò a tutti i primi arrivati i suoi giardini e le sue serre. Ma dopo di ciò entrarono tutti a prendere il tè, che fu servito nel gran salotto verde-pavone in mezzo alla casa; e così accadde che Saunders arrivò tardi e ci fu un bel po’ di risate mentre si sedeva, con suo grande imbarazzo; perché lo scherzo sul tempo era stato ripetuto e la gente era ben lieta di vederlo per una volta smentito. Poi uscirono tutti nelle stanze più prossime all’ingresso; e Gabriel Gale stava camminando verso la soglia. Fra due colonne scorse una delle finestre esterne e rimase inchiodato sul posto, puntando rigidamente con un braccio. Quel gesto soltanto mi avvertì che qualcosa in lui non andava davvero; ma quando guardai non potei quasi fare a meno di condividere il suo sussulto di sorpresa. Poiché le finestre che erano state dipinte d’azzurro col cielo d’estate erano dipinte di nero dalla pioggia. Su ogni lato della casa la pioggia gocciolava e picchiettava lugubre come se piovesse da cent’anni. E dieci minuti prima l’intero giardino era parso un giardino d’oro come quello delle Esperidi. Gale rimase a fissare questa tempesta volante venuta dal nulla, che aveva così improvvisamente colpito la casa; poi si volse lentamente e guardò, con un’espressione da non dimenticare, l’uomo che stava a pochi passi di distanza. Era Herbert Saunders.

«Potete immaginare che non sia molto nel mio stile credere alla stregoneria o ai maghi che governano gli elementi; ma pareva davvero esserci qualcosa di strano in quel giorno senza nubi che si era così rapidamente rannuvolato, con l’arrivo dell’unico uomo il cui nome era già associato ad esso, non fosse che per uno scherzo. Era una mera coincidenza, s’intende; ma ciò che mi preoccupava era il possibile effetto sulla psicologia già piuttosto malferma del mio amico. Egli e Saunders stavano entrambi in piedi a fissare fuori dalla stessa ampia finestra, guardando il diluvio che oscurava il giardino e gli alberi ondeggianti e tormentati; ma il volto semplice di Saunders pareva esprimere soltanto un amabile sconcerto; anzi, sorrideva vagamente e timidamente, come faceva quando riceveva un complimento. Poiché era di quelli il cui volto, dopo un complimento, pare sempre aver ricevuto uno schiaffo. Egli evidentemente non vi vedeva altro che una ripetizione dello scherzo; forse pensava che il clima inglese stesse tenendo su lo scherzo. E, in confronto al suo volto, il volto di Gabriel era come il volto di un demonio. Così parve almeno, mentre balzava bianco fuori dall’oscurità crescente per incontrare il primo bianco scoppio del fulmine; poi seguì soltanto il tuono e il fragore della pioggia rombante; ma io sapevo che egli stava là a dondolarsi con quell’inspiegabile eccitazione. Attraverso il tuono udii la sua voce dire: ‘Fa sentire come Dio.’

«Immediatamente sotto le finestre un sentierino correva ai margini di certe terre a prato annesse al giardino, dove i Blakeney avevano raccolto il loro fieno; e un mucchio di fieno moderatamente grande appariva quasi montuosamente scuro contro quel cielo basso e minaccioso; un forcone a due punte posato di traverso su di esso aveva certamente qualcosa di sinistro nel suo nero profilo, che può aver colpito la fantasia del povero Gale; poiché egli era sempre incline a lasciarsi prendere da immagini bizzarre come se fossero segnali. Comunque in quel momento il padrone e la padrona di casa e altri ospiti sopraggiunsero di corsa; il vecchio lamentandosi per la rovina del suo fieno; ma la signora della casa a quanto pareva assai più in ansia per la sorte di certe sedie da giardino assai ornamentali, che a quanto pareva erano state lasciate fuori sul prato proprio accanto al campo, sotto il grande melo i cui rami ora si agitavano e si torcevano nella tempesta.

«Gabriel Gale, quando è in perfetto senno, è il più cavalleresco degli uomini, e avrebbe recuperato le sedie della signora d’un balzo. Ma ora non poteva far altro che fissare torvo lo sventurato Saunders; il quale si destò tremante ai suoi doveri sociali, in quell’agonia di autocoscienza in cui un uomo ha paura di fare la cosa giusta e paura di non farla. Alla fine, tuttavia, si scosse in avanti, armeggiò con la porta, la spalancò e corse fuori nella pioggia rimbombante. Allora Gale lo seguì fino alla porta aperta e gli gridò dietro qualcosa. Per la maggior parte della compagnia, credo, andò perduto nel frastuono; ma anche se l’avessero udito, di certo non avrebbero potuto capirlo. Io lo udii; e credetti di capirlo fin troppo bene. Poiché ciò che Gale gridò attraverso la tempesta fu: ‘Perché non chiami le sedie e verranno da te.’

“A second or so afterwards he added, as if it were an afterthought, ‘You might as well tell the tree to come here as well.’ Naturally there was no answer; and indeed Saunders, partly by his natural clumsiness and partly in the distraction of the driving elements, seemed for the moment to have lost his way and was staggering up the steeper path of the meadow some way to the left of the tree. I could just see his long figure and angular awkward elbows traced against the sky. Then followed the sudden, violent and utterly unintelligible incident. A rope happened to lie half round one of the swathes in the foreground; and Gale, leaping out of the door, caught it up and seemed to be knotting it in a sort of savage haste. The next moment there swept across the sky the great swirling curves of a noose thrown in the manner of a lasso. And I could see the wavering figure on the dark ridge alter its attitude and rear up as against an invisible obstacle, as the rope tightened and tugged it back.

“I looked round for assistance; and was surprised and somewhat alarmed to find I was alone. The host and hostess, and the others, having despatched the obliging Saunders after the chairs, had rushed off to summon the servants or secure other doors and windows, or look after other fittings threatened by the weather; and there was no one but myself to watch the unmeaning and apparently imbecile tragedy outside. I saw Gale drag Saunders like a sack at the end of a rope along the whole length of windows and disappear round a corner of the house. But I turned cold with a new fear when, even as he rushed past, he snatched the hay-fork from the mound and seemed to disappear brandishing it, like the fabulous fork of a demon. I rushed after them, but slipping on the wet stones, hurt my foot and had to limp; the raving storm seemed to have swallowed up that lunatic and all his antics; and it was not until some time afterwards that men found how that dance had ended. Herbert Saunders was found tied to a tree, still alive and even unwounded, but presenting the appearance of having barely missed a murderous attack; for the prongs of the pitchfork were driven by sheer fury into the tree on each side of his neck, holding him pinned there as by an iron ring. Gabriel Gale was not found for nearly a day, until after the storm was spent and the sunshine had returned; and he was loitering about in an adjoining meadow blowing the clocks off dandelions. I have seldom known him so serene.”

There was a short silence. “How is the other fellow… Saunders?” asked Butterworth, after a pause of frowning consideration. “Was he much hurt?”

“Had a shock and is still shaky, of course,” answered Garth. “Had to go for a rest-cure or something; but I believe he’s all right now. Only you can hardly expect a harmless person who’s been half murdered in a raving attack like that to feel very friendly or forgiving. So I’m afraid they will make it a case of attempted murder unless we can get our friend off on medical grounds. As a matter of fact, I have him waiting outside in the car.”

“Very well,” said the London doctor, rising with abrupt composure and buttoning up his coat. “We had better go along to see him now and get it over.”

The interview between Gale and the two doctors, at an adjacent hotel, was so short and so extraordinary that they went away with their very level heads turning like wind-mills. For Gale displayed nothing even of the merely childish innocence of levity attributed to him in the tale of the dandelions. He listened with patience, and a humorous and benevolent mildness which made the two doctors, who were considerably his seniors, feel as if they were being treated as juniors. When Garth began to break it to him gently that some sort of rest-cure was required in his own interests, he laughed heartily and anticipated all such periphrases.

“Don’t be nervous, old man,” he said, “you mean I ought to be in a madhouse; and I’m sure you mean well.”

“You know I am your friend,” said Garth earnestly; “and all your friends would say what I say.”

“Indeed,” said Gale, smiling. “Well, if that is the opinion of my friends, perhaps it would be better to get the opinion of my enemies.”

“What do you mean,” demanded the other. “Of your enemies?”

“Shall we say of my enemy?” continued Gale in level tones. “Of the man to whom I have done this perfectly outrageous thing. Well, really, that is all I ask; that before you lock me up for this outrage, you ask Herbert Saunders himself what he thinks about it.”

“Do you mean,” broke in Butterworth rather impatiently, “that we are to ask him whether he liked being half-throttled and impaled on a pitchfork?”

“Yes,” said Gale nodding, “I want you to ask him whether he liked being half throttled and impaled on a pitchfork.”

He slightly knitted his brows as if considering a new and merely practical point and then, added:

“I should send him a telegram now… say anything… ‘How do you like being lassoed?’ or, ‘What price pitchforks?’ or something playful of that sort.”

“We could telephone, if it comes to that,” said Garth.

The poet shook his head. “No,” he said, “that sort of man feels much more free in writing. He will only stammer on the telephone. He won’t stammer anything like what you imagine, even then; but he will stammer. But writing with his head in one of those little cubicles at the telegraph office, he will feel as free as in a confessional box.”

The two doctors, when they parted in some bewilderment, but tacitly accepting this suggestion of a respite, lost no time in fulfilling the condition required. They sent off a carefully worded telegram to Saunders, who had now returned home to his mother’s house, asking him what were his impressions and views about the extraordinary conduct of Gabriel Gale. The reply came back with remarkable promptitude; and Garth came to Butterworth with the open telegram in his hand and a rather dazed expression on his face. For the exact terms of the message were:

«Un secondo o due dopo aggiunse, quasi fosse un ripensamento: ‘Potresti anche dire all’albero di venir qui, pure.’ Naturalmente non vi fu risposta; e in effetti Saunders, in parte per la sua naturale goffaggine e in parte nella distrazione degli elementi scatenati, pareva per il momento aver smarrito la strada e barcollava su per il sentiero più ripido del prato, un po’ a sinistra dell’albero. Riuscivo appena a scorgere la sua lunga figura e i gomiti angolosi e goffi stagliati contro il cielo. Poi seguì l’improvviso, violento e del tutto incomprensibile episodio. Una corda giaceva per metà attorno a uno dei covoni in primo piano; e Gale, balzando fuori dalla porta, la raccolse e parve annodarla con una sorta di furia selvaggia. L’istante dopo attraversò il cielo la grande curva vorticosa di un cappio lanciato alla maniera di un lazo. E potei vedere la figura vacillante sul crinale scuro mutare atteggiamento e impennarsi come contro un ostacolo invisibile, mentre la corda si tendeva e la strattonava all’indietro.

«Mi guardai attorno in cerca di aiuto; e fui sorpreso e alquanto allarmato di trovarmi solo. Il padrone e la padrona di casa, e gli altri, avendo spedito il compiacente Saunders a recuperare le sedie, s’erano precipitati a chiamare i domestici o ad assicurare altre porte e finestre, o a badare ad altri infissi minacciati dal maltempo; e non c’era nessuno all’infuori di me a osservare l’insensata e apparentemente imbecille tragedia là fuori. Vidi Gale trascinare Saunders come un sacco all’estremità di una corda lungo tutta la fila di finestre e sparire dietro un angolo della casa. Ma gelai per un nuovo terrore quando, proprio mentre passava di corsa, strappò il forcone dal mucchio e parve sparire brandendolo, come la favolosa forca di un demonio. Mi lanciai al loro inseguimento, ma scivolando sulle pietre bagnate, mi feci male a un piede e dovetti zoppicare; l’infuriante tempesta parve aver inghiottito quel pazzo e tutte le sue buffonate; e fu solo qualche tempo dopo che gli uomini scoprirono come quella danza fosse finita. Herbert Saunders fu trovato legato a un albero, ancora vivo e persino illeso, ma con l’aspetto di chi ha appena scampato un attacco micidiale; poiché le punte del forcone erano state conficcate per pura furia nell’albero su ciascun lato del suo collo, tenendolo inchiodato lì come da un anello di ferro. Gabriel Gale non fu ritrovato per quasi un giorno, finché la tempesta non si fu spenta e il sole non fu tornato; e se ne andava bighellonando in un prato attiguo soffiando via i pappi dei tarassachi. Di rado l’ho conosciuto così sereno.»

Vi fu un breve silenzio. «Come sta l’altro tale… Saunders?» chiese Butterworth, dopo una pausa di accigliata riflessione. «Fu ferito gravemente?»

«Ha avuto uno shock ed è ancora malfermo, s’intende,» rispose Garth. «Ha dovuto fare una cura di riposo o qualcosa del genere; ma credo che ora stia bene. Solo, non ci si può aspettare che una persona inoffensiva mezza assassinata in un attacco furioso come quello si senta molto amichevole o indulgente. Perciò temo che ne faranno un caso di tentato omicidio, a meno che non riusciamo a far assolvere il nostro amico per ragioni mediche. A dire il vero, l’ho lasciato ad aspettare fuori in macchina.»

«Molto bene,» disse il dottore di Londra, alzandosi con brusca compostezza e abbottonandosi la giacca. «Faremmo meglio ad andare a vederlo subito e a farla finita.»

Il colloquio fra Gale e i due dottori, in un albergo vicino, fu così breve e straordinario che essi se ne andarono con le loro teste assai equilibrate che giravano come mulini a vento. Poiché Gale non mostrò nulla nemmeno della puerile innocenza di frivolezza attribuitagli nel racconto dei tarassachi. Ascoltò con pazienza, e con una mitezza umoristica e benevola che fece sentire i due dottori, che erano assai più anziani di lui, come se venissero trattati da giovincelli. Quando Garth cominciò a rivelargli con dolcezza che una qualche cura di riposo era richiesta nel suo stesso interesse, egli rise di cuore e prevenne tutte quelle perifrasi.

«Non essere nervoso, vecchio mio,» disse, «vuoi dire che dovrei stare in un manicomio; e sono certo che lo dici per il mio bene.»

«Sai che sono tuo amico,» disse Garth con fervore; «e tutti i tuoi amici direbbero ciò che dico io.»

«Davvero,» disse Gale, sorridendo. «Ebbene, se questa è l’opinione dei miei amici, forse sarebbe meglio ottenere l’opinione dei miei nemici.»

«Che cosa vuoi dire?» incalzò l’altro. «Dei tuoi nemici?»

«Diciamo del mio nemico?» continuò Gale in tono pacato. «Dell’uomo al quale ho fatto questa cosa perfettamente oltraggiosa. Ebbene, davvero, è tutto ciò che chiedo; che prima di rinchiudermi per questo oltraggio, domandiate a Herbert Saunders stesso che cosa ne pensa.»

«Vuoi dire,» interruppe Butterworth piuttosto spazientito, «che dobbiamo chiedergli se gli è piaciuto essere mezzo strangolato e impalato su un forcone?»

«Sì,» disse Gale annuendo, «voglio che gli chiediate se gli è piaciuto essere mezzo strangolato e impalato su un forcone.»

Aggrottò leggermente le sopracciglia come se considerasse un punto nuovo e meramente pratico e poi aggiunse:

«Gli manderei un telegramma adesso… di’ qualunque cosa… ‘Come ti piace essere preso al lazo?’ oppure ‘Quanto si paga per i forconi?’ o qualcosa di scherzoso del genere.»

«Potremmo telefonare, se è per questo,» disse Garth.

Il poeta scosse il capo. «No,» disse, «quel genere d’uomo si sente molto più libero per iscritto. Al telefono non farà che balbettare. Non balbetterà nulla di simile a ciò che immagini, nemmeno allora; ma balbetterà. Ma scrivendo con la testa in una di quelle piccole cabine dell’ufficio telegrafico, si sentirà libero come in un confessionale.»

I due dottori, quando si separarono in un certo sconcerto, ma accettando tacitamente questo suggerimento di una tregua, non persero tempo nell’adempiere alla condizione richiesta. Spedirono un telegramma accuratamente formulato a Saunders, che ora era tornato a casa, nella dimora di sua madre, chiedendogli quali fossero le sue impressioni e i suoi giudizi sulla straordinaria condotta di Gabriel Gale. La risposta tornò con notevole prontezza; e Garth venne da Butterworth col telegramma aperto in mano e un’espressione piuttosto stordita sul volto. Poiché i termini esatti del messaggio erano:

“Can never be sufficiently grateful to Gale for his great kindness which more than saved my life.”

The two doctors looked at each other in silence; and in almost as complete a silence got into a car and drove across the hills once more to the Blakeney’s house, where Gale was still staying.

They drove across the hilly country and descended into the wide and shallow valley where stood the house which sheltered that dangerous character, Mr. Gabriel Gale. Garth could recall, and Butterworth could imagine, all the irony suggested to the imagination by such a story about such a scene. The house of the Blakeneys stood high and plain just beyond the river; it was one of those houses that strike the eye as old-fashioned and yet not old. Certainly it was not old enough to be beautiful; but it had everything that recalls, to those that faintly remember them, the last traditions of Early Victorian lingering into Mid-Victorian times. The tall pillars looked so very pallid; the long plain windows looked in dismally upon high-ceilinged rooms; the curtains that hung parallel with the pillars were strips of dull red; and even from that distance the humorous Butterworth was certain that they had heavy and quite useless tassels. It was a strange house to have been the scene of an incredible crime or lunacy. It was an even stranger house to have been, as was alleged, the scene of a yet more incredible or mysterious mercy. All about it lay its ordered gardens and its mown or unmown meadows; its plantations of trees and deep alleys and shrubberies; all the things which on that wild night had been given over to the withering splendour of the lightning and the wind. Now the whole landscape was laid bare in a golden calm of summer; and the blue heavens above it were so deep and still that the sound of a humming fly hung there and was heard as far away as the skylark. Thus glittered in the sun, all solid and objective, the stage properties of that hideous farce. Garth saw all the blank and staring windows which he had last beheld streaming with rain and swept by the wind and the wild dance of the lunatic and his victim. He saw the forked tree to which the victim had been bound, still with the two black holes in it where the fork had pierced it, looking like the hollow eyes of a skull, and making the whole seem like some horned goblin. There was the heaped up hay, still to some extent disordered and scattered as by the dizzy dance of a small cyclone; and beyond it rose the high green wall of the unmown and standing grass of the next meadow. From the very thick of this mild jungle or miniature forest, a long thin line of smoke was drawn up into the sky; as if from a very small fire of weeds. Nothing else human or alive was visible in the sultry summer landscape; but Garth seemed to know and recognize the significance of the smoke. He sent a far halloo across the fields, calling out, “Is that you, Gale?”

Two feet pointed skyward and two long legs upside down rose vertically out of the tall grass, just beyond the smoke; and waved to them like arms, as if according to a preconcerted science of signalling. Then the legs seemed to give a leap and dive and the owner of the legs came the right side up and rose or surged slowly out of the depths of green, gazing across at them with a misty and benevolent expression. He was smoking a long thin cigar: the fire behind the smoke.

He received them and their news with no air of triumph, still less of surprise. Abandoning his grassy nest, he sat down with them on the garden-chairs which had also played their part in the mystery; and only smiled a little as he handed back the telegram.

“Well,” he said; “do you still think I am mad?”

“Well,” said Butterworth, “I can’t help wondering whether he is.”

Gale leaned across, showing his first eagerness, and said, “He isn’t. But he jolly nearly was.”

Then he leaned slowly back again and stared abstractedly at a daisy on the lawn, almost as if he had forgotten their presence. When he spoke again it was in a clear but rather colourless tone, like a lecturer:

“A very large number of young men nearly go mad. But nearly all of them only nearly do it; and normally they recover the normal. You might almost say it’s normal to have an abnormal period. It comes when there’s a lack of adjustment in the scale of things outside and within. Lots of those boys, those big healthy schoolboys you hear about, who care for nothing but cricket or the tuckshop, are bursting with a secret and swelling morbidity. But in this young man it was rather symbolically expressed even in the look of him. It was like his growing out of his clothes, or being too big for his boots. The inside gets too big for the outside. He doesn’t know how to relate the two things; and generally he doesn’t relate them at all. In one way his own mind and self seem to be colossal and cosmic and everything outside them small or distant. In another way the world is much too big for him; and his thoughts are fragile things to be hidden away. There are any number of cases of that disproportionate secretiveness. You know how silent boys have been about incredible abuses in bad schools. Whether or no it’s false to say a girl can’t keep a secret, it’s often really the ruin of a boy that he can keep a secret.

“Now in that dangerous time, there’s a dreadfully dangerous moment; when the first connexion is made between the subjective and objective: the first real bridge between the brain and real things. It all depends what it is; because, while it confirms his self-consciousness, it may happen to confirm his self-deception. That young man had never really been noticed by anybody until Lady Flamborough happened to tell him that he had brought the bad weather. It came just at the moment when his whole sense of proportions and possibilities had gone wild. I think the first thing that made me suspect he was… By the way,” added Gale abruptly, “what was it that made you first suspect me of being mad?”

«Non potrò mai essere sufficientemente grato a Gale per la sua grande bontà, che più che salvarmi la vita.»

I due dottori si guardarono in silenzio; e in un silenzio quasi altrettanto completo salirono in macchina e attraversarono di nuovo le colline fino alla casa dei Blakeney, dove Gale alloggiava ancora.

Attraversarono la contrada collinosa e discesero nell’ampia e poco profonda valle dove sorgeva la casa che dava rifugio a quel pericoloso individuo, il signor Gabriel Gale. Garth poteva rammentare, e Butterworth poteva immaginare, tutta l’ironia suggerita all’immaginazione da una simile storia in un simile scenario. La casa dei Blakeney sorgeva alta e disadorna appena oltre il fiume; era una di quelle case che colpiscono l’occhio come antiquate eppure non antiche. Certo non era abbastanza vecchia da essere bella; ma aveva tutto ciò che richiama, a coloro che debolmente le rammentano, le ultime tradizioni della prima età vittoriana attardatesi fino ai tempi della media età vittoriana. Le alte colonne apparivano così pallide; le lunghe e disadorne finestre guardavano lugubri dentro stanze dagli alti soffitti; le tende che pendevano parallele alle colonne erano strisce di rosso spento; e perfino da quella distanza l’umoristico Butterworth era certo che avessero pesanti e del tutto inutili nappe. Era una casa ben strana per essere stata teatro di un incredibile delitto o di una incredibile follia. Era una casa ancor più strana per essere stata, come si asseriva, teatro di una misericordia ancor più incredibile o misteriosa. Tutt’intorno ad essa si stendevano i suoi giardini ordinati e i suoi prati falciati o non falciati; le sue piantagioni di alberi e i profondi viali e i boschetti; tutte le cose che in quella selvaggia notte erano state abbandonate allo splendore devastatore del fulmine e del vento. Ora l’intero paesaggio giaceva disteso in una dorata calma d’estate; e i cieli azzurri sopra di esso erano così profondi e immoti che il ronzio di una mosca vi restava sospeso e si udiva lontano quanto l’allodola. Così luccicavano al sole, tutti solidi e oggettivi, gli arredi scenici di quella orrenda farsa. Garth vedeva tutte le vuote e sbarrate finestre che aveva visto per l’ultima volta grondanti di pioggia e sferzate dal vento e dalla selvaggia danza del pazzo e della sua vittima. Vedeva l’albero biforcuto a cui la vittima era stata legata, ancora coi due neri fori in cui il forcone l’aveva trafitto, simili alle orbite cave di un teschio, e che facevano sembrare il tutto una sorta di folletto cornuto. C’era il fieno ammucchiato, ancora in parte scomposto e sparso come dalla vertiginosa danza di un piccolo ciclone; e oltre esso si levava l’alta verde parete dell’erba non falciata e ritta del prato successivo. Dal fitto stesso di questa mite giungla o foresta in miniatura, una lunga e sottile linea di fumo saliva verso il cielo; come da un piccolissimo fuoco di erbacce. Nient’altro di umano o di vivo era visibile nell’afoso paesaggio d’estate; ma Garth pareva conoscere e riconoscere il significato del fumo. Lanciò un lungo richiamo attraverso i campi, gridando: «Sei tu, Gale?»

Due piedi puntati verso il cielo e due lunghe gambe a testa in giù si levarono verticalmente fuori dall’erba alta, appena oltre il fumo; e si agitavano verso di loro come braccia, quasi secondo una concertata scienza dei segnali. Poi le gambe parvero dare un balzo e un tuffo e il proprietario delle gambe risalì dritto e si levò o emerse lentamente dalle profondità del verde, fissandoli con un’espressione nebulosa e benevola. Fumava un lungo e sottile sigaro: il fuoco dietro il fumo.

Li accolse, con la loro notizia, senza alcuna aria di trionfo, e ancor meno di sorpresa. Abbandonando il suo nido erboso, si sedette con loro sulle sedie da giardino che pure avevano avuto la loro parte nel mistero; e non fece che sorridere un poco mentre restituiva il telegramma.

«Ebbene,» disse; «pensate ancora che io sia pazzo?»

«Ebbene,» disse Butterworth, «non posso fare a meno di domandarmi se lo sia lui.»

Gale si sporse in avanti, mostrando il suo primo slancio, e disse: «Non lo è. Ma per poco non lo è stato davvero.»

Poi si riappoggiò lentamente all’indietro e fissò distrattamente una margherita sul prato, quasi avesse dimenticato la loro presenza. Quando riprese a parlare fu in tono chiaro ma piuttosto incolore, come un conferenziere:

«Un gran numero di giovani sfiora la pazzia. Ma quasi tutti la sfiorano soltanto; e normalmente riacquistano la normalità. Si potrebbe quasi dire che è normale attraversare un periodo anormale. Viene quando c’è una mancanza di adattamento nella scala delle cose fuori e dentro. Tanti di quei ragazzi, quei grandi e sani scolari di cui si sente parlare, che non s’interessano d’altro che di cricket o della bottega dei dolciumi, scoppiano di una morbosità segreta e crescente. Ma in questo giovane essa era espressa in modo piuttosto simbolico perfino nel suo aspetto. Era come il suo crescere fuori dagli abiti, o l’essere troppo grande per le proprie scarpe. L’interno diventa troppo grande per l’esterno. Egli non sa come mettere in relazione le due cose; e in genere non le mette affatto in relazione. Per un verso la sua stessa mente e il suo io paiono colossali e cosmici e tutto ciò che è fuori di essi piccolo o distante. Per un altro verso il mondo è troppo grande per lui; e i suoi pensieri sono cose fragili da nascondere. Vi sono innumerevoli casi di quella sproporzionata segretezza. Sapete quanto siano stati silenziosi i ragazzi riguardo a incredibili abusi nelle cattive scuole. Che sia falso o no dire che una ragazza non sa mantenere un segreto, è spesso davvero la rovina di un ragazzo il saper mantenere un segreto.

«Ora, in quel pericoloso periodo, c’è un momento terribilmente pericoloso; quando si stabilisce il primo collegamento fra il soggettivo e l’oggettivo: il primo vero ponte fra il cervello e le cose reali. Tutto dipende da che cosa sia; perché, mentre conferma la sua autocoscienza, può darsi che confermi il suo autoinganno. Quel giovane non era mai stato davvero notato da nessuno finché Lady Flamborough non gli disse per caso che aveva portato lui il cattivo tempo. Giunse proprio nel momento in cui tutto il suo senso delle proporzioni e delle possibilità era impazzito. Credo che la prima cosa che mi fece sospettare che egli fosse… A proposito,» aggiunse Gale bruscamente, «che cosa vi fece per primo sospettare me di essere pazzo?»

“I think,” said Garth slowly, “it was when you were staring out of the window at the storm.”

“The storm? Was there a storm?” asked Gale vaguely. “Oh yes, now I come to think of it, there was.”

“But, hang it all,” replied the doctor, “what else could you have been staring out of the window at, except the storm?”

“I wasn’t staring out of the window,” answered Gale.

“Really, my dear fellow,” remonstrated Dr. Garth.

“I was staring at the window,” said the poet. “I often stare at windows. So few people ever look at windows, unless they are stained glass-windows. But glass is a very beautiful thing, like diamonds; and transparency is a sort of transcendental colour. Besides, in this case there was something else; and something far more awful and thrilling than a thunderstorm.”

“Well, what were you looking at, that was more awful than a thunderstorm?”

“I was looking at two raindrops running down the pane,” said Gale. “And so was Saunders.”

Seeing the others staring at him he continued: “Oh yes, it’s quite true; as the poet says,” and he recited with great and unusual gravity:

“‘Little drops of water, Little grains of sand, Make the soul to stagger Till the stars can hardly stand.’

“Haven’t I told you a thousand times,” he continued with increasing earnestness and animation, “that I always find myself looking at some little thing, a stone or a starfish or what not, and that’s the only way I can ever learn anything? But when I looked at Saunders, I saw his eyes were fixed on the same spot on the window-pane; and I shuddered from head to foot, for I knew I had guessed right. He was wearing a certain kind of unobtrusive smile.

“You know that incurable gamblers sometimes bet on a race between two raindrops. But there is this specially about the sport; that it is abstract and equal and gives one a sense of impartiality. If you bet on a dog-fight, you may find you really sympathize with a Scotch terrier against an Irish terrier, or vice versa; you may like the look of a billiard player or even the colours of a jockey. Therefore the event may go against your sympathies; and you will realize your limitations. But in the case of those two crystal spheres hung in a void of transparency, there is something like the equal scales of an abstract justice; you feel that whichever wins might be the one you had chosen. You may easily, in a certain secret megalomania, persuade yourself it is the one you have chosen. It is easy to imagine oneself controlling things hung so evenly. That was when I said to him, to test whether I was following his train of thought, ‘It makes you feel like God.’ Did you think I was talking about the storm? Storm! Pooh! Why should a storm make a man think he’s God? If he’d got any sense it might make him feel he wasn’t. But I knew that Saunders was just at the delicate crisis, where he was half trying to believe he was. He was half trying to think he had really changed the weather and might change everything; and a game like that of the raindrops was just the thing to encourage him. He really felt as if he were Omnipotence looking at two falling stars: and he was the special providence in them.

“Remember that there is always something double about morbidity; the sound old popular phrase said the madman was ‘beside himself’. There is a part of him encouraging itself to go mad; and a part that still doesn’t quite believe in the mania. He would delight in easy self deceptions, as in the raindrops. He would also sub-consciously avoid tests too decisive. He would avoid wanting to want something incredible; as that a tree should dance. He would avoid it; partly for fear it should and partly for fear it shouldn’t. And I was suddenly and furiously certain, with every cell of my brain, that he must stop himself instantly, violently, by telling the tree to dance; and finding it wouldn’t.

“That was when I shouted to him to tell the chairs and the tree to move. I was certain that unless he learnt his human limitations sharply and instantly, something illimitable and inhuman would take hold of him in that very hour. He took no notice; he rushed out into the garden; he forgot all about the chairs; he ran up that steep meadow with a leap like that of a wild goat; and I knew he had broken loose from reality and was out of the world. He would go careering through waste places, with the storm within and without; and when he returned from that country walk he would never be the same again. He would leap and dance on that lonely road; he would be horribly happy; nothing would stop him. I was already resolved that something must stop him. It must be something abrupt, arresting, revealing the limit of real things; the throttling shock with which a thing comes to the end of its tether. Then I saw the rope and threw it, catching him back like a wild horse. Somehow there rose in my imagination the image of the pagan Centaur rearing backwards, bridled, and rampant against heaven: for the Centaur, like all paganism, is at once natural and unnatural; a part of nature-worship and yet a monster.

“I went through with the whole wild business; and I was sure I was right; as he himself is now sure I was right. Nobody knew but I how far he had already gone along that road; and I knew that there was nothing for it but acute, practical, painful discovery that he could not control matter or the elements; that he could not move trees or remove pitchforks; that he could struggle for two hours with a rope and a pair of prongs and still be bound.

“It was certainly rather a desperate remedy; there is really nothing to be said for it except that it was a remedy. And I believe profoundly that there was no other remedy. Anything in the nature of soothing or quieting him would only have made him yet more secretive and yet more swollen-headed. As for humouring him, it’s the very worst thing to do with people who are losing their sense of humour. No; there was something he was beginning to believe about himself; and it was still possible to prove that it wasn’t true.”

«Credo,» disse Garth lentamente, «che fu quando te ne stavi a fissare fuori dalla finestra la tempesta.»

«La tempesta? C’era una tempesta?» chiese Gale vagamente. «Oh sì, ora che ci penso, c’era.»

«Ma, diamine,» replicò il dottore, «che altro potevi fissare fuori dalla finestra, se non la tempesta?»

«Non stavo fissando fuori dalla finestra,» rispose Gale.

«Ma davvero, mio caro amico,» protestò il dottor Garth.

«Stavo fissando la finestra,» disse il poeta. «Fisso spesso le finestre. Così poca gente guarda mai le finestre, a meno che non siano vetrate colorate. Ma il vetro è una cosa bellissima, come i diamanti; e la trasparenza è una sorta di colore trascendentale. Inoltre, in questo caso c’era qualcos’altro; e qualcosa di assai più tremendo ed elettrizzante di un temporale.»

«Ebbene, che cosa stavi guardando, che fosse più tremendo di un temporale?»

«Stavo guardando due gocce di pioggia che scorrevano giù per il vetro,» disse Gale. «E così faceva Saunders.»

Vedendo gli altri fissarlo continuò: «Oh sì, è verissimo; come dice il poeta,» e recitò con grande e insolita gravità:

“‘Piccole gocce d’acqua, Piccoli granelli di sabbia, Fanno vacillare l’anima Finché le stelle a stento sanno reggersi.’

«Non vi ho detto mille volte,» continuò con crescente fervore e animazione, «che mi ritrovo sempre a guardare qualche piccola cosa, un sasso o una stella marina o che so io, e che è l’unico modo in cui io riesca mai a imparare qualcosa? Ma quando guardai Saunders, vidi che i suoi occhi erano fissi sullo stesso punto del vetro della finestra; e rabbrividii da capo a piedi, poiché sapevo di aver indovinato. Portava un certo tipo di sorriso discreto.

«Sapete che i giocatori incalliti talvolta scommettono su una corsa fra due gocce di pioggia. Ma c’è questo di particolare in tale sport; che è astratto e paritario e dà un senso di imparzialità. Se scommettete su un combattimento di cani, potreste scoprire di parteggiare davvero per un terrier scozzese contro un terrier irlandese, o viceversa; potreste gradire l’aspetto di un giocatore di biliardo o perfino i colori di un fantino. Perciò l’esito può andare contro le vostre simpatie; e vi renderete conto dei vostri limiti. Ma nel caso di quelle due sfere di cristallo sospese in un vuoto di trasparenza, c’è qualcosa come le bilance pari di una giustizia astratta; sentite che qualunque delle due vinca potrebbe essere quella che avevate scelto. Potete facilmente, in una certa segreta megalomania, persuadervi che sia quella che avete scelto. È facile immaginare di controllare cose sospese in modo così equilibrato. Fu allora che gli dissi, per verificare se seguivo il suo filo di pensiero: ‘Fa sentire come Dio.’ Pensavate che parlassi della tempesta? Tempesta! Puah! Perché mai una tempesta dovrebbe far credere a un uomo di essere Dio? Se avesse un po’ di buon senso potrebbe fargli sentire che non lo è. Ma sapevo che Saunders era proprio alla crisi delicata, in cui per metà cercava di credere di esserlo. Per metà cercava di pensare di aver davvero cambiato il tempo e di poter cambiare ogni cosa; e un gioco come quello delle gocce di pioggia era proprio la cosa adatta a incoraggiarlo. Si sentiva davvero come l’Onnipotenza che guarda due stelle cadenti: ed egli era la speciale provvidenza in esse.

«Ricordate che c’è sempre qualcosa di duplice nella morbosità; la sana e vecchia espressione popolare diceva che il pazzo era ‘fuori di sé’. C’è una parte di lui che si incoraggia a impazzire; e una parte che ancora non crede del tutto alla mania. Egli si diletterebbe di facili autoinganni, come nelle gocce di pioggia. E inconsciamente eviterebbe prove troppo decisive. Eviterebbe di voler volere qualcosa di incredibile; come che un albero danzi. Lo eviterebbe; in parte per paura che accadesse e in parte per paura che non accadesse. E fui improvvisamente e furiosamente certo, con ogni cellula del mio cervello, che egli dovesse fermarsi all’istante, violentemente, dicendo all’albero di danzare; e scoprendo che non lo avrebbe fatto.

«Fu allora che gli gridai di dire alle sedie e all’albero di muoversi. Ero certo che, se non avesse appreso i suoi limiti umani bruscamente e all’istante, qualcosa di illimitato e disumano si sarebbe impadronito di lui in quella stessa ora. Non se ne curò; si precipitò fuori nel giardino; dimenticò del tutto le sedie; corse su per quel ripido prato con un balzo simile a quello di una capra selvatica; e capii che si era staccato dalla realtà ed era fuori dal mondo. Sarebbe andato correndo a rotta di collo per luoghi desolati, con la tempesta dentro e fuori; e quando fosse tornato da quella passeggiata in campagna non sarebbe mai più stato lo stesso. Avrebbe saltato e danzato su quella strada solitaria; sarebbe stato orribilmente felice; nulla lo avrebbe fermato. Io ero già risoluto che qualcosa dovesse fermarlo. Doveva essere qualcosa di brusco, di arrestante, che rivelasse il limite delle cose reali; l’urto strangolante con cui una cosa giunge alla fine della sua catena. Allora vidi la corda e la lanciai, tirandolo indietro come un cavallo selvaggio. In qualche modo si levò nella mia immaginazione l’immagine del pagano Centauro che si impenna all’indietro, imbrigliato, e ritto contro il cielo: poiché il Centauro, come tutto il paganesimo, è a un tempo naturale e innaturale; una parte del culto della natura e tuttavia un mostro.

«Portai a termine tutta quella folle faccenda; ed ero sicuro di aver ragione; come egli stesso ora è sicuro che avevo ragione. Nessuno all’infuori di me sapeva quanto lontano fosse già andato lungo quella strada; e sapevo che non c’era altro rimedio se non l’acuta, pratica, dolorosa scoperta che non poteva controllare la materia o gli elementi; che non poteva muovere gli alberi o rimuovere i forconi; che poteva lottare per due ore con una corda e un paio di punte ed essere ancora legato.

«Era certo un rimedio piuttosto disperato; davvero non si può dire nulla a suo favore se non che era un rimedio. E credo profondamente che non ci fosse altro rimedio. Qualunque cosa nella natura del calmarlo o del tranquillizzarlo lo avrebbe reso soltanto ancor più chiuso e ancor più tronfio. Quanto all’assecondarlo, è la cosa peggiore da fare con chi sta perdendo il senso dell’umorismo. No; c’era qualcosa che egli cominciava a credere di sé; ed era ancora possibile provare che non era vero.»

“Do you think,” asked Dr. Butterworth, frowning, “that there was really anything in that theological imagery in the matter? Do you suppose he put it in the form that he could bring the rain and thunder because he was God Almighty? Of course there are cases of religious mania that are rather like that.”

“You must remember,” said Gale, “that he was a theological student and was going to be a clergyman; and he may have brooded upon doubt and inspiration and prophecy till they began to work the wrong way. The worst is always very near the best; there is something much worse than atheism which is Satanism; otherwise known as Being God. But as a matter of mere philosophy, apart from theology, the thing is much nearer to the nerve of all thinking than you might think. That’s why it was so insinuating and so difficult to see or to stop. That’s what I mean when I say I had a sympathy with the young lunatic. After all, it was a very natural mistake.”

“My dear Gale,” protested his friend Garth. “You are getting a little too fond of paradox. A young tadpole of a curate thinks he can control the skies and uproot trees and call up the thunder and you call it a natural mistake.”

“Have you ever lain on your back in a field and stared at the sky and kicked your heels in the air?” asked the poet.

“Not in a public or professional way,” answered the doctor. “It’s not generally considered the best bedside manner. But suppose I did?”

“If you think like that, and go back to primitive things,” said Gale, “you will find yourself wondering why you can control some things and not others. After all, your legs look a long way off when you wave them in the sky. You can wave legs about, but you can’t wave trees about. I’m not sure it’s so unnatural, in the abstract, for a man to fancy the whole material universe is his own body; since it all seems equally, in one sense, to be outside his own mind. But when he is in hell is when he fancies it is inside his own mind.”

“I’m afraid I don’t bother much about all this metaphysical business,” said Butterworth. “I suppose I really don’t understand it. I know what I mean by a man being outside his mind in the sense of being out of his mind; and I suppose you’re right in saying that Saunders was morbid enough to be nearly out of his mind. And as for being outside his body, I know what it means in the sense of his blowing his brains out or his body being left for dead. And really, to be candid, you seem to have come precious near to knocking him out of his body to cure him of being out of his mind. It certainly was an exceedingly desperate remedy; and though it may have been defensible, I shouldn’t much like to have to go into a law-court as an expert witness to defend it. I can only go by results, and he certainly seems to be all the better for it. But when it comes to all your mystical explanations, about how it is hell to have everything inside your mind, frankly I give up trying to follow. I’m afraid I’m rather a materialist.”

“Afraid!” cried Gale, as if with indignation; “afraid you are a materialist! You haven’t got much notion of what there really is to be afraid of! Materialists are all right; they are at least near enough to heaven to accept the earth and not imagine they made it. The dreadful doubts are not the doubts of the materialist. The dreadful doubts, the deadly and damnable doubts, are the doubts of the idealist.”

“I always imagined you were an idealist,” said Garth.

“I use the word idealist in its philosophical sense. I mean the real sceptic who doubts matter and the minds of others and everything except his own ego. I have been through it myself; as I have been through nearly every form of infernal idiocy. That is the only use I am in the world; having been every kind of idiot. But believe me, the worst and most miserable sort of idiot is he who seems to create and contain all things. Man is a creature; all his happiness consists in being a creature; or, as the Great Voice commanded us, in becoming a child. All his fun is in having a gift or present; which the child, with profound understanding, values because it is ‘a surprise’. But surprise implies that a thing comes from outside ourselves; and gratitude that it comes from someone other than ourselves. It is thrust through the letter-box; it is thrown in at the window; it is thrown over the wall. Those limits are the lines of the very plan of human pleasure.

“I also dreamed that I had dreamed of the whole creation. I had given myself the stars for a gift; I had handed myself the sun and moon. I had been behind and at the beginning of all things; and without me nothing was made that was made. Anybody who has been in that centre of the cosmos knows that it is to be in hell. And there is only one cure for it. Oh, I know that people have written all kinds of cant and false comfort about the cause of evil; and of why there is pain in the world. God forbid that we should add ourselves to such a chattering monkey-house of moralists. But for all that, this truth is true; objectively and experimentally true. There is no cure for that nightmare of omnipotence except pain; because that is the thing a man knows he would not tolerate if he could really control it. A man must be in some place from which he would certainly escape if he could, if he is really to realize that all things do not come from within. That is the meaning of that mad parable or mystery play you have seen acted here like an allegory. I doubt whether any of our action is really anything but an allegory. I doubt whether any truth can be told except in a parable. There was a man who saw himself sitting in the sky; and his servants the angels went to and fro in coloured garments of cloud and flame and the pageant of the seasons; but he was over all and his face seemed to fill the heavens. And, God forgive me for blasphemy, but I nailed him to a tree.”

«Pensa davvero,» chiese il dottor Butterworth, aggrottando la fronte, «che in questa faccenda vi fosse veramente qualcosa in quell’immaginario teologico? Suppone che lui lo mettesse nella forma per cui poteva far venire la pioggia e il tuono perché era Dio Onnipotente? Certo, ci sono casi di mania religiosa piuttosto simili a questo.»

«Deve ricordare,» disse Gale, «che era uno studente di teologia e stava per diventare ecclesiastico; e può darsi che abbia rimuginato sul dubbio e sull’ispirazione e sulla profezia finché non hanno cominciato a operare nel verso sbagliato. Il peggio è sempre vicinissimo al meglio; c’è qualcosa di molto peggiore dell’ateismo, ed è il Satanismo; altrimenti detto Essere Dio. Ma come pura questione di filosofia, a prescindere dalla teologia, la cosa è molto più vicina al nervo di ogni pensiero di quanto lei possa credere. Ecco perché era così insinuante e così difficile da vedere o da fermare. È questo che intendo quando dico che provavo una simpatia per il giovane folle. In fondo, era un errore molto naturale.»

«Mio caro Gale,» protestò l’amico Garth. «Ti stai affezionando un po’ troppo al paradosso. Un giovane girino di un curato crede di poter governare i cieli e sradicare gli alberi e chiamare a sé il tuono, e tu lo chiami un errore naturale.»

«Ti sei mai steso supino in un campo a fissare il cielo scalciando i talloni nell’aria?» chiese il poeta.

«Non in modo pubblico o professionale,» rispose il dottore. «Non è generalmente considerato il miglior contegno al capezzale. Ma supponiamo che lo facessi?»

«Se pensi così, e torni alle cose primitive,» disse Gale, «ti ritroverai a chiederti perché puoi governare alcune cose e altre no. Dopotutto, le tue gambe sembrano lontanissime quando le agiti nel cielo. Puoi agitare le gambe, ma non puoi agitare gli alberi. Non sono sicuro che sia così innaturale, in astratto, che un uomo si immagini che l’intero universo materiale sia il proprio corpo; poiché tutto sembra ugualmente, in un certo senso, essere fuori dalla sua stessa mente. Ma quando è all’inferno è quando lo immagina dentro la propria mente.»

«Temo di non curarmi molto di tutta questa faccenda metafisica,» disse Butterworth. «Suppongo di non capirla davvero. So cosa intendo quando dico che un uomo è fuori di mente nel senso di essere uscito di senno; e suppongo che tu abbia ragione a dire che Saunders era abbastanza morboso da essere quasi fuori di senno. E quanto all’essere fuori dal proprio corpo, so cosa significa nel senso di farsi saltare le cervella o di lasciare il proprio corpo per morto. E davvero, per essere sincero, sembra che tu ti sia avvicinato maledettamente a buttarlo fuori dal suo corpo per guarirlo dall’essere fuori di senno. Fu certamente un rimedio estremamente disperato; e per quanto possa essere stato difendibile, non mi piacerebbe granché dover comparire in un tribunale come perito per difenderlo. Posso giudicare solo dai risultati, e lui certo pare tutto migliorato per questo. Ma quando si arriva a tutte le tue spiegazioni mistiche, su come sia un inferno avere ogni cosa dentro la propria mente, francamente rinuncio a tentare di seguirti. Temo di essere piuttosto un materialista.»

«Teme!» esclamò Gale, come con indignazione; «teme di essere materialista! Non ha una gran nozione di ciò di cui c’è davvero da aver paura! I materialisti vanno benissimo; sono per lo meno abbastanza vicini al cielo da accettare la terra e non immaginare di averla fatta loro. I dubbi terribili non sono i dubbi del materialista. I dubbi terribili, i dubbi mortali e dannati, sono i dubbi dell’idealista.»

«Ti ho sempre immaginato un idealista,» disse Garth.

«Uso la parola idealista nel suo senso filosofico. Intendo il vero scettico che dubita della materia e delle menti altrui e di tutto tranne che del proprio io. Ci sono passato io stesso; come sono passato per quasi ogni forma di infernale idiozia. È l’unica utilità che ho al mondo; essere stato ogni sorta di idiota. Ma credimi, la sorta di idiota peggiore e più miserabile è colui che sembra creare e contenere tutte le cose. L’uomo è una creatura; tutta la sua felicità consiste nell’essere una creatura; o, come la Gran Voce ci comandò, nel diventare un bambino. Tutto il suo diletto sta nell’avere un dono o un regalo; che il bambino, con profonda comprensione, apprezza perché è ‘una sorpresa’. Ma la sorpresa implica che una cosa venga da fuori di noi; e la gratitudine che venga da qualcuno diverso da noi. È infilata nella cassetta delle lettere; è gettata dentro dalla finestra; è scagliata oltre il muro. Quei limiti sono le linee del disegno stesso del piacere umano.

«Ho anche sognato di aver sognato l’intera creazione. Mi ero dato le stelle in dono; mi ero consegnato il sole e la luna. Ero stato dietro e al principio di tutte le cose; e senza di me nulla è stato fatto di ciò che è stato fatto. Chiunque sia stato in quel centro del cosmo sa che è essere all’inferno. E c’è un solo rimedio. Oh, so che la gente ha scritto ogni sorta di ipocrisia e falsa consolazione sulla causa del male; e sul perché ci sia dolore al mondo. Dio ci scampi dall’aggiungerci a una simile ciarliera gabbia di scimmie di moralisti. Ma nonostante tutto, questa verità è vera; oggettivamente e sperimentalmente vera. Non c’è cura per quell’incubo di onnipotenza se non il dolore; perché è la cosa che un uomo sa che non tollererebbe se potesse davvero controllarla. Un uomo deve trovarsi in qualche luogo da cui certamente fuggirebbe se potesse, se davvero deve rendersi conto che non tutte le cose provengono dall’interno. Questo è il significato di quella folle parabola o mistero che avete visto recitare qui come un’allegoria. Dubito che alcuna delle nostre azioni sia davvero qualcosa di diverso da un’allegoria. Dubito che si possa dire alcuna verità se non in una parabola. C’era un uomo che vedeva sé stesso seduto nel cielo; e i suoi servi, gli angeli, andavano avanti e indietro in vesti colorate di nuvola e fiamma e nel corteo delle stagioni; ma egli era al di sopra di tutto e il suo volto pareva riempire i cieli. E, Dio mi perdoni la bestemmia, ma io l’ho inchiodato a un albero.»

He had risen to his feet in a suppressed and very unusual excitement; and his face was pale in the sunlight. For he spoke indeed in parables; and the things of which he was thinking were far away from that garden or even from that tale. There swelled up darkly and mountainously in his memory the slopes of another garden against another storm. The skeleton arch of a ruined abbey stood gaunt against the ghastly light, and beyond the racing river was the low and desolate inn among the reeds; and all that grey landscape was to him one purple patch of Paradise… and of Paradise Lost.

“It is the only way,” he kept repeating; “it is the only answer to the heresy of the mystic; which is to fancy that mind is all. It is to break your heart. Thank God for hard stones; thank God for hard facts; thank God for thorns and rocks and deserts and long years. At least I know now that I am not the best or strongest thing in the world. At least I know now that I have not dreamed of everything.”

“You look very strange,” said his friend Garth.

“I know it now,” said Gale. “For there is one who would be here, if dreaming could do it.”

There was again an utter stillness in which the fly could be heard buzzing in the blue; and when he spoke again, though in the same brooding vein, they had an indescribable intuition that a door in his mind had stood open for an instant and had now again closed finally with a clang. He said after the long silence:

“We are all tied to trees and pinned with pitchforks. And as long as these are solid we know the stars will stand and the hills will not melt at our word. Can’t you imagine the huge tide of healthy relief and thanks, like a hymn of praise from all nature, that went up from that captive nailed to the tree, when he had wrestled till the dawn and received at last the great glorious news; the news that he was only a man?”

Dr. Butterworth was looking across the table with a restrained but somewhat amused expression; for the poet’s eyes were shining like lamps and he was speaking on a note not often heard in any man speaking prose.

“If I hadn’t got a good deal of special knowledge and experience,” he said, rising, “I should think there was a bit of a doubt about you after all.”

Gabriel Gale looked sharply over his shoulder and the note of his voice changed once more.

“Don’t say that,” he said rather curtly. “That’s the only sort of danger I really run.”

“I don’t understand,” said Butterworth. “Do you mean the danger of being certified?”

“Certify me till all is blue,” said Gale contemptuously. “Do you suppose I should particularly mind if you did? Do you suppose I couldn’t be reasonably happy in a lunatic asylum, so long as there was dust in a sunbeam or shadows on a wall… so long as I could look at ordinary things and think how extraordinary they are? Do you suppose I couldn’t praise God with tolerable piety for the shape of my keeper’s nose or anything else calculated to give pleasure to a thoughtful mind? I should imagine that a madhouse would be an excellent place to be sane in. I’d a long sight rather live in a nice quiet secluded madhouse than in intellectual clubs full of unintellectual people, all chattering nonsense about the newest book of philosophy; or in some of those earnest, elbowing sort of Movements that want you to go in for Service and help to take away somebody else’s toys. I don’t much mind to what place I may wander to think in, before I die; so long as the thoughts do not wander too much; or wander down the wrong road. And what you said just now does touch the real danger. It does touch the danger that Garth was really thinking about, when he suggested that I had reclaimed lunatics and might myself become a castaway. If people tell me they really do not understand what I mean… if they say they cannot see so simple a truth as that it is best for a man to be a man, that it is dangerous to give oneself divine honours… if they say they do not see that for themselves, but imagine it to be some sort of mysticism out of my own head, then I am myself again in peril. I am in peril of thinking something that may be wilder and worse than thinking I am God Almighty.”

“And still I don’t understand,” said the smiling physician.

“I shall think I am the only sane man,” said Gabriel Gale.

There was a sort of sequel which came to Garth’s ears long afterwards; an epilogue to the crazy comedy of the pitchfork and the apple-tree. Garth differed from Gale in having a more obvious turn for the rational, or at least the rationalistic; and he often found himself debating with the sceptics of various scientific clubs and groups; finding them a very worthy race, often genuinely hard-headed and sometimes tending rather to be wooden-headed. In a particular country place, the name of which is not material, the post of village atheist had become vacant, so to speak, by the regrettable perversity of the cobbler in being a Congregationalist. His official functions were performed by a more prosperous person named Pond, a worthy hatter who was rather more famous as a cricketer. On the cricket field he was often pitted against another excellent cricketer, who was Vicar of the parish; indeed they contended more frequently on the field of cricket than on the field of spiritual speculation. For the clergyman was one of the type that is uproariously popular and successful chiefly by his proficiency in such sports. He was the sort of parson whom people praise by saying he is not a bit like a parson. He was a big, beefy, jolly man, red-faced and resolute of manner; still young but the father of a boisterous family of boys, and in most ways very like a boy himself. Nevertheless, as was natural, certain passages of chaff, that could hardly be called controversy, occasionally passed between the parson and the village atheist. There was no need to commiserate the clergyman upon the pin-pricks of the scientific materialist; for a pin has no effect on a pachyderm. The parson was the sort of man who seems to be rolled in layers within layers of solid substance resisting anything outside his own cheery and sensible mode of life. But one curious episode had clung to the memory of Pond, and he recounted it to Garth, in something of the puzzled tone in which a materialist tells a ghost story. The rival cricketers had been chipping each other in the usual friendly fashion, which did not go very much below the surface. The Vicar was doubtless a sincere Christian, though chiefly what used to be called a muscular Christian. But it is not unfair to him to say that he was more deeply moved in saying that some action was not Cricket than in saying it was not Christianity. On this and other occasions, however, he relied chiefly on ragging his opponent with rather obvious jokes; such as the oft-repeated inquiry as to how often the hatter might be expected to do the hat-trick. Perhaps the repetition of this epigram eventually annoyed the worthy freethinker; or perhaps there was something in the deeper and more positive tones with which the parson dealt with more serious matters, that had the same effect. It was with more than his usual breeziness that the reverend gentleman on this occasion affirmed the philosophy of his life. “God wants you to play the game,” he said. “That’s all that God wants; people who will play the game.”

“How do you know?” asked Mr. Pond rather snappishly and in unusual irritation. “How do you know what God wants? You never were God, were you?”

There was a silence; and the atheist was seen to be staring at the red face of the parson in a somewhat unusual fashion.

“Yes,” said the clergyman in a queer quiet voice. “I was God once; for about fourteen hours. But I gave it up. I found it was too much of a strain.”

With these words the Rev. Herbert Saunders went back to the cricket tent, where he mingled with Boy Scouts and village girls with all his usual heartiness and hilarity. But Mr. Pond the atheist, sat for some time staring, like one who has seen a miracle. And he afterwards confided to Garth that for a moment the eyes of Saunders had looked out of his red, good-humoured face as out of a mask; with an instantaneous memory of something awful and appalling, and at the same time empty; something the other man could only figure to himself in vague thoughts of some flat stark building with blank windows in a blind alley; and peering out of one of the windows the pale face of an idiot.

V

Si era alzato in piedi in un’agitazione repressa e assai insolita; e il suo volto era pallido nella luce del sole. Poiché parlava davvero per parabole; e le cose a cui pensava erano lontane da quel giardino o perfino da quel racconto. Si gonfiavano oscuri e montuosi nella sua memoria i pendii di un altro giardino contro un’altra tempesta. L’arco a scheletro di un’abbazia in rovina si ergeva scarno contro la luce spettrale, e oltre il fiume impetuoso c’era la locanda bassa e desolata tra i canneti; e tutto quel grigio paesaggio era per lui un’unica macchia purpurea di Paradiso… e di Paradiso Perduto.

«È l’unica via,» ripeteva; «è l’unica risposta all’eresia del mistico; che è quella di immaginare che la mente sia tutto. È spezzarsi il cuore. Grazie a Dio per le pietre dure; grazie a Dio per i fatti duri; grazie a Dio per le spine e le rocce e i deserti e i lunghi anni. Almeno ora so di non essere la cosa migliore o più forte del mondo. Almeno ora so di non aver sognato ogni cosa.»

«Hai un aspetto stranissimo,» disse l’amico Garth.

«Ora lo so,» disse Gale. «Poiché c’è qualcuno che sarebbe qui, se il sognare potesse bastare.»

Vi fu di nuovo un silenzio assoluto in cui si poteva udire la mosca ronzare nell’azzurro; e quando parlò di nuovo, sebbene nella stessa vena meditabonda, essi ebbero l’indescrivibile intuizione che una porta nella sua mente fosse rimasta aperta per un istante e ora si fosse di nuovo richiusa definitivamente con un fragore. Disse dopo il lungo silenzio:

«Siamo tutti legati agli alberi e inchiodati con i forconi. E finché questi restano solidi sappiamo che le stelle rimarranno ferme e le colline non si scioglieranno alla nostra parola. Non riesci a immaginare l’enorme ondata di sano sollievo e di gratitudine, come un inno di lode da tutta la natura, che salì da quel prigioniero inchiodato all’albero, quando ebbe lottato fino all’alba e ricevette infine la grande gloriosa novella; la novella che egli era soltanto un uomo?»

Il dottor Butterworth guardava dall’altra parte del tavolo con espressione contenuta ma alquanto divertita; poiché gli occhi del poeta brillavano come lampade ed egli parlava con un tono non spesso udito in un uomo che parli in prosa.

«Se non avessi una buona dose di conoscenze ed esperienza particolari,» disse, alzandosi, «penserei che dopotutto ci sia un po’ di dubbio su di te.»

Gabriel Gale gettò un’occhiata brusca sopra la spalla e il tono della sua voce mutò ancora una volta.

«Non dirlo,» disse piuttosto secco. «È l’unico genere di pericolo che davvero corro.»

«Non capisco,» disse Butterworth. «Intendi il pericolo di essere dichiarato pazzo?»

«Dichiaratemi pazzo fin che vi pare,» disse Gale con disprezzo. «Credete che me ne importerebbe granché se lo faceste? Credete che non potrei essere ragionevolmente felice in un manicomio, finché ci fosse polvere in un raggio di sole o ombre su un muro… finché potessi guardare le cose ordinarie e pensare quanto siano straordinarie? Credete che non potrei lodare Dio con tollerabile pietà per la forma del naso del mio guardiano o per qualunque altra cosa atta a dar piacere a una mente pensosa? Immaginerei che un manicomio sarebbe un luogo eccellente in cui essere sani di mente. Preferirei di gran lunga vivere in un bel manicomio tranquillo e appartato che in circoli intellettuali pieni di gente non intellettuale, tutti a cianciare sciocchezze sull’ultimo libro di filosofia; o in qualcuno di quei Movimenti solerti e gomitanti che vogliono che tu ti dia al Servizio e aiuti a portar via i giocattoli di qualcun altro. Non m’importa molto in quale luogo io possa vagare a pensare, prima di morire; purché i pensieri non vaghino troppo; o non vaghino per la strada sbagliata. E ciò che hai appena detto tocca davvero il pericolo reale. Tocca il pericolo a cui Garth stava davvero pensando, quando ha suggerito che io avessi recuperato dei folli e che io stesso potessi diventare un naufrago. Se la gente mi dice che davvero non capisce cosa intendo… se dicono di non riuscire a vedere una verità tanto semplice come che è meglio per un uomo essere un uomo, che è pericoloso attribuirsi onori divini… se dicono di non vedere questo da sé, ma lo immaginano come una sorta di misticismo uscito dalla mia testa, allora sono io stesso di nuovo in pericolo. Sono in pericolo di pensare qualcosa che potrebbe essere più folle e peggiore del pensare di essere Dio Onnipotente.»

«E ancora non capisco,» disse il medico sorridente.

«Penserò di essere l’unico uomo sano di mente,» disse Gabriel Gale.

Vi fu una sorta di seguito che giunse alle orecchie di Garth molto tempo dopo; un epilogo alla folle commedia del forcone e del melo. Garth differiva da Gale per avere una più evidente inclinazione al razionale, o almeno al razionalistico; e spesso si ritrovava a discutere con gli scettici di vari circoli e gruppi scientifici; trovandoli una razza assai degna, spesso genuinamente dalla testa dura e talvolta piuttosto propensa a essere di legno. In una certa località di campagna, il cui nome non è rilevante, il posto di ateo del villaggio era rimasto vacante, per così dire, per la deplorevole perversità del calzolaio nell’essere un Congregazionalista. Le sue funzioni ufficiali erano svolte da una persona più prospera di nome Pond, un degno cappellaio che era piuttosto più famoso come giocatore di cricket. Sul campo di cricket veniva spesso opposto a un altro eccellente giocatore, che era il Vicario della parrocchia; anzi, si contendevano più di frequente sul campo del cricket che sul campo della speculazione spirituale. Poiché il chierico era del tipo che è clamorosamente popolare e di successo soprattutto per la sua abilità in tali sport. Era il genere di parroco che la gente elogia dicendo che non somiglia affatto a un parroco. Era un uomo grande, robusto, gioviale, dal volto rosso e dai modi risoluti; ancora giovane ma padre di una chiassosa famiglia di ragazzi, e in gran parte molto simile lui stesso a un ragazzo. Ciononostante, com’era naturale, certi passaggi di canzonatura, che difficilmente si potevano dire controversia, passavano di tanto in tanto tra il parroco e l’ateo del villaggio. Non c’era bisogno di compatire il chierico per le punture di spillo del materialista scientifico; poiché uno spillo non ha effetto su un pachiderma. Il parroco era il tipo d’uomo che sembra avvolto in strati dentro strati di solida sostanza che resiste a qualunque cosa esterna al suo allegro e assennato modo di vivere. Ma un curioso episodio si era attaccato alla memoria di Pond, ed egli lo raccontò a Garth, in qualcosa del tono perplesso con cui un materialista narra una storia di fantasmi. I rivali giocatori di cricket si erano punzecchiati a vicenda alla solita maniera amichevole, che non andava molto sotto la superficie. Il Vicario era senza dubbio un cristiano sincero, benché soprattutto quel che si soleva chiamare un cristiano muscolare. Ma non gli si fa torto a dire che era più profondamente commosso nel dire che una certa azione non era Cricket che nel dire che non era Cristianesimo. In questa e in altre occasioni, tuttavia, egli si affidava soprattutto a stuzzicare il suo avversario con scherzi piuttosto ovvi; come la ripetuta domanda su quante volte ci si potesse aspettare che il cappellaio facesse l’hat-trick. Forse la ripetizione di questo epigramma alla fine infastidì il degno libero pensatore; o forse c’era qualcosa nei toni più profondi e più positivi con cui il parroco trattava le questioni più serie, che ebbe lo stesso effetto. Fu con più della sua abituale gioviale spavalderia che il reverendo gentiluomo in quell’occasione affermò la filosofia della sua vita. «Dio vuole che tu stia al gioco,» disse. «È tutto ciò che Dio vuole; gente che stia al gioco.»

«E lei come lo sa?» chiese il signor Pond piuttosto stizzosamente e con insolita irritazione. «Come fa a sapere cosa vuole Dio? Non è mai stato Dio, vero?»

Vi fu un silenzio; e si vide l’ateo fissare il volto rosso del parroco in una maniera alquanto insolita.

«Sì,» disse il chierico con una strana voce sommessa. «Sono stato Dio una volta; per circa quattordici ore. Ma vi ho rinunciato. Ho scoperto che era troppo faticoso.»

Con queste parole il Rev. Herbert Saunders tornò al tendone del cricket, dove si mescolò con i Boy Scout e le ragazze del villaggio con tutta la sua consueta cordialità e ilarità. Ma il signor Pond l’ateo rimase seduto per un po’ di tempo a fissare, come chi ha visto un miracolo. E in seguito confidò a Garth che per un momento gli occhi di Saunders avevano guardato fuori dal suo volto rosso e bonario come da una maschera; con un istantaneo ricordo di qualcosa di terribile e spaventoso, e allo stesso tempo vuoto; qualcosa che l’altro poteva solo raffigurarsi in vaghi pensieri di un edificio piatto e rigido con finestre cieche in un vicolo cieco; e che spiava da una delle finestre il pallido volto di un idiota.

V

THE FINGER OF STONE

THREE young men on a walking tour came to a halt outside the little town of Carillon, in the south of France; which is doubtless described in the guide books as famous for its fine old Byzantine monastery, now the seat of a university; and for having been the scene of the labours of Boyg. At that name, at least, the reader will be reasonably thrilled; for he must have seen it in any number of newspapers and novels. Boyg and the Bible are periodically reconciled at religious conferences; Boyg broadens and slightly bewilders the minds of numberless heroes of long psychological stories, which begin in the nursery and nearly end in the madhouse. The journalist, writing rapidly his recurrent reference to the treatment meted out to pioneers like Galileo, pauses in the effort to think of another example, and always rounds off the sentence either with Bruno or with Boyg. But the mildly orthodox are equally fascinated, and feel a glow of agnosticism while they continue to say that, since the discoveries of Boyg, the doctrine of the Homoousian or of the human conscience does not stand where it did; wherever that was. It is needless to say that Boyg was a great discoverer, for the public has long regarded him with the warmest reverence and gratitude on that ground. It is also unnecessary to say what he discovered; for the public will never display the faintest curiosity about that. It is vaguely understood that it was something about fossils, or the long period required for petrifaction; and that it generally implied those anarchic or anonymous forces of evolution supposed to be hostile to religion. But certainly none of the discoveries he made while he was alive was so sensational, in the newspaper sense, as the discovery that was made about him when he was dead. And this, the more private and personal matter, is what concerns us here.

The three tourists had just agreed to separate for an hour, and meet again for luncheon at the little café opposite; and the different ways in which they occupied their time and indulged their tastes will serve for a sufficient working summary of their personalities. Arthur Armitage was a dark and grave young man, with a great deal of money, which he spent on a conscientious and continuous course of self-culture, especially in the matter of art and architecture; and his earnest aquiline profile was already set towards the Byzantine monastery, for the exhaustive examination of which he had already prepared himself, as if he were going to pass an examination rather than to make one. The man next him, though himself an artist, betrayed no such artistic ardour. He was a painter who wasted most of his time as a poet; but Armitage, who was always picking up geniuses, had become in some sense his patron in both departments. His name was Gabriel Gale; a long, loose, rather listless man with yellow hair; but a man not easy for any patron to patronize.

He generally did as he liked in an abstracted fashion; and what he very often liked to do was nothing. On this occasion he showed a lamentable disposition to drift towards the café first; and having drunk a glass or two of wine, he drifted not into the town but out of it, roaming about the steep bare slope above, with a rolling eye on the rolling clouds; and talking to himself until he found somebody else to talk to, which happened when he put his foot through the glass roof of a studio just below him on the steep incline. As it was an artist’s studio, however, their quarrel fortunately ended in an argument about the future of realistic art; and when he turned up to lunch, that was the extent of his acquaintance with the quaint and historic town of Carillon.

The name of the third man was Garth; he was shorter and uglier and somewhat older than the others, but with a much livelier eye in his hatchet face; he stepped much more briskly, and in the matter of a knowledge of the world, the other two were babies under his charge. He was a very able medical practitioner, with a hobby of more fundamental scientific inquiry; and for him the whole town, university and studio, monastery and café, was only the temple of the presiding genius of Boyg. But in this case the practical instinct of Dr. Garth would seem to have guided him rightly; for he discovered things considerably more startling than anything the antiquarian found in the Romanesque arches or the poet in the rolling clouds. And it is his adventures, in that single hour before lunch, upon which this tale must turn.

The café tables stood on the pavement under a row of trees opposite the old round gate in the wall, through which could be seen the white gleam of the road up which they had just been walking. But the steep hills were so high round the town that they rose clear above the wall, in a more enormous wall of smooth and slanting rock, bare except for occasional clumps of cactus. There was no crack in that sloping wilderness of stone except the rather shallow and stony bed of a little stream. Lower down, where the stream reached the level of the valley, rose the dark domes of the basilica of the old monastery; and from this a curious stairway of rude stones ran some way up the hill beside the watercourse, and stopped at a small and solitary building looking little more than a shed made of stones. Some little way higher the gleam of the glass roof of the studio, with which Gale had collided in his unconscious wanderings, marked the last spot of human habitation in all those rocky wastes that rose about the little town.

Armitage and Gale were already seated at the table when Dr. Garth walked up briskly and sat down some what abruptly.

“Have you fellows heard the news?” he asked.

He spoke somewhat sharply, for he was faintly annoyed by the attitudes of the antiquarian and the artist, who were deep in their own dreamier and less practical tastes and topics. Armitage was saying at the moment:

IL DITO DI PIETRA

TRE giovani in gita a piedi si fermarono appena fuori della cittadina di Carillon, nel sud della Francia; la quale è senza dubbio descritta nelle guide turistiche come celebre per il suo bel vecchio monastero bizantino, ora sede di un’università; e per essere stata teatro dei lavori di Boyg. A quel nome, almeno, il lettore proverà un ragionevole fremito; poiché deve averlo visto in un numero qualsiasi di giornali e romanzi. Boyg e la Bibbia vengono periodicamente riconciliati nei convegni religiosi; Boyg amplia e leggermente sconcerta le menti di innumerevoli eroi di lunghe storie psicologiche, che cominciano nella stanza dei bambini e quasi finiscono nel manicomio. Il giornalista, scrivendo in fretta il suo ricorrente riferimento al trattamento riservato a pionieri come Galileo, si arresta nello sforzo di pensare a un altro esempio, e arrotonda sempre la frase o con Bruno o con Boyg. Ma anche i moderatamente ortodossi ne sono ugualmente affascinati, e sentono un fervore di agnosticismo mentre continuano a dire che, dopo le scoperte di Boyg, la dottrina dell’Omoousion o della coscienza umana non sta più dove stava; ovunque ciò fosse. È inutile dire che Boyg fu un grande scopritore, poiché il pubblico lo ha da tempo guardato con la più calorosa reverenza e gratitudine per questo motivo. È altresì superfluo dire che cosa scoprì; poiché il pubblico non mostrerà mai la minima curiosità al riguardo. Si intende vagamente che si trattava di qualcosa a proposito dei fossili, o del lungo periodo richiesto per la pietrificazione; e che implicava genericamente quelle anarchiche o anonime forze dell’evoluzione che si suppongono ostili alla religione. Ma certamente nessuna delle scoperte che egli fece mentre era in vita fu tanto sensazionale, nel senso giornalistico, quanto la scoperta che fu fatta su di lui quando fu morto. E questa, la questione più privata e personale, è ciò che qui ci riguarda.

I tre turisti avevano appena convenuto di separarsi per un’ora, e di ritrovarsi per il pranzo al piccolo caffè di fronte; e i diversi modi in cui occupavano il loro tempo e assecondavano i loro gusti serviranno da sufficiente sommario di lavoro delle loro personalità. Arthur Armitage era un giovane bruno e serio, con un gran mucchio di denaro, che spendeva in un coscienzioso e continuo corso di auto-coltura, specialmente in materia d’arte e architettura; e il suo grave profilo aquilino era già rivolto verso il monastero bizantino, per l’esauriente esame del quale si era già preparato, come se andasse a sostenere un esame anziché a farne uno. L’uomo accanto a lui, benché egli stesso artista, non tradiva alcun simile ardore artistico. Era un pittore che sprecava gran parte del suo tempo come poeta; ma Armitage, che raccoglieva sempre geni, era in un certo senso divenuto suo patrono in entrambi i campi. Il suo nome era Gabriel Gale; un uomo lungo, sciolto, piuttosto svogliato, dai capelli gialli; ma un uomo non facile da patrocinare per alcun patrono.

Egli generalmente faceva ciò che gli piaceva in maniera distratta; e ciò che assai spesso gli piaceva fare era nulla. In questa occasione mostrò una lamentevole disposizione a derivare dapprima verso il caffè; e avendo bevuto un bicchiere o due di vino, derivò non dentro la città ma fuori di essa, vagando per il ripido pendio spoglio là sopra, con l’occhio roteante sulle nubi ruotanti; e parlando fra sé finché non trovò qualcun altro con cui parlare, il che accadde quando mise il piede attraverso il tetto di vetro di uno studio giusto sotto di lui sul ripido declivio. Trattandosi però dello studio di un artista, la loro lite fortunatamente terminò in una discussione sul futuro dell’arte realistica; e quando comparve al pranzo, quella era l’estensione della sua conoscenza della bizzarra e storica cittadina di Carillon.

Il nome del terzo uomo era Garth; era più basso e più brutto e alquanto più anziano degli altri, ma con un occhio assai più vivace nel suo volto affilato; camminava molto più svelto, e in fatto di conoscenza del mondo, gli altri due erano bambini a lui affidati. Era un medico assai capace, con l’hobby di un’indagine scientifica più fondamentale; e per lui l’intera città, università e studio, monastero e caffè, non era che il tempio del genio tutelare di Boyg. Ma in questo caso l’istinto pratico del dottor Garth pare averlo guidato rettamente; poiché egli scoprì cose considerevolmente più sconcertanti di qualunque cosa l’antiquario trovasse negli archi romanici o il poeta nelle nubi ruotanti. E sono le sue avventure, in quell’unica ora prima del pranzo, quelle attorno a cui questo racconto deve ruotare.

I tavoli del caffè stavano sul selciato sotto una fila di alberi di fronte all’antica porta rotonda nelle mura, attraverso la quale si scorgeva il bianco bagliore della strada su cui avevano appena camminato. Ma le ripide colline erano così alte intorno alla città che si levavano nette sopra le mura, in un più enorme muro di roccia liscia e obliqua, spoglia salvo per occasionali ciuffi di cactus. Non c’era crepa in quella inclinata distesa di pietra tranne il letto piuttosto basso e sassoso di un piccolo ruscello. Più in basso, dove il ruscello raggiungeva il livello della valle, si levavano le scure cupole della basilica del vecchio monastero; e da questa una curiosa scalinata di pietre grezze saliva per un tratto su per la collina lungo il corso d’acqua, e si arrestava a un piccolo e solitario edificio che pareva poco più di una capanna fatta di pietre. Un po’ più in alto il bagliore del tetto di vetro dello studio, con cui Gale si era scontrato nei suoi inconsci vagabondaggi, segnava l’ultimo punto di abitazione umana in tutte quelle rocciose lande che si levavano intorno alla cittadina.

Armitage e Gale erano già seduti al tavolo quando il dottor Garth risalì a passo svelto e si sedette in modo alquanto brusco.

«Avete sentito la notizia, ragazzi?» chiese.

Parlava in modo alquanto tagliente, poiché era lievemente infastidito dagli atteggiamenti dell’antiquario e dell’artista, che erano immersi nei loro gusti e argomenti più sognanti e meno pratici. Armitage stava dicendo in quel momento:

“Yes, I suppose I’ve seen today some of the very oldest sculpture of the veritable Dark Ages. And it’s not stiff like some Byzantine work; there’s a touch of the true grotesque you generally get in Gothic.”

“Well, I’ve seen today some of the newest sculpture of the Modern Ages,” replied Gale, “and I fancy they are the veritable Dark Ages. Quite enough of the true grotesque up in that studio, I can tell you.”

“Have you heard the news, I say?” rapped out the doctor. “Boyg is dead.”

Gale stopped in a sentence about Gothic architecture, and said seriously, with a sort of hazy reverence:

“Requiescat in pace. Who was Boyg?”

“Well, really,” replied the doctor, “I did think every baby had heard of Boyg.”

“Well, I dare say you’ve never heard of Paradou,” answered Gale. “Each of us lives in his little cosmos with its classes and degrees. Probably you haven’t heard of the most advanced sculptor, or perhaps of the latest lacrosse expert or champion chess player.”

It was characteristic of the two men that while Gale went on talking in the air about an abstract subject, till he had finished his own train of thought, Armitage had a sufficient proper sense of the presence of something more urgent to relapse into silence. Nevertheless, he unconsciously looked down at his notes; at the name of the advanced sculptor he looked up.

“Who is Paradou?” he asked.

“Why, the man I’ve been talking to this morning,” replied Gale. “His sculpture’s advanced enough for anybody. He’s no end of a chap; talks more than I do, and talks very well. Thinks too; I should think he could do everything except sculpt. There his theories get in his way. As I told him, this notion of the new realism…”

“Perhaps we might drop realism and attend to reality,” said Dr. Garth grimly. “I tell you Boyg is dead. And that’s not the worst either.”

Armitage looked up from his notes with something of the vagueness of his friend the poet. “If I remember right,” he said, “Professor Boyg’s discovery was concerned with fossils.”

“Professor Boyg’s discovery involved the extension of the period required for petrifaction as distinct from fossilization,” replied the doctor stiffly, “and thereby relegated biological origins to a period which permits the chronology necessary to the hypothesis of natural selection. It may affect you as humorous to interject the observation ‘loud cheers’, but I assure you the scientific world, which happens to be competent to judge, was really moved with amazement as well as admiration.”

“In fact it was petrified to hear it couldn’t be petrified,” suggested the poet.

“I have really no time for your flippancy,” said Garth. “I am up against a great ugly fact.”

Armitage interposed in the benevolent manner of a chairman. “We must really let Garth speak; come, doctor, what is it all about? Begin at the beginning.”

“Very well,” said the doctor, in his staccato way. “I’ll begin at the beginning. I came to this town with a letter of introduction to Boyg himself; and as I particularly wanted to visit the geological museum, which his own munificence provided for this town, I went there first. I found all the windows of the Boyg Museum were broken; and the stones thrown by the rioters were actually lying about the room within a foot or two of the glass cases, one of which was smashed.”

“Donations to the geological museum, no doubt,” remarked Gale. “A munificent patron happens to pass by, and just heaves in a valuable exhibit through the window. I don’t see why that shouldn’t be done in what you call the world of science; I’m sure it’s done all right in the world of art. Old Paradou’s busts, and bas-reliefs are just great rocks chucked at the public and…”

“Paradou may go to…Paradise, shall we say?” said Garth, with pardonable impatience. “Will nothing make you understand that something has really happened that isn’t any of your ideas and isms? It wasn’t only the geological museum; it was the same everywhere. I passed by the house Boyg first lived in, where they very properly put up a medallion; and the medallion was all splashed with mud. I crossed the market-place, where they put up a statue to him just recently. It was still hung with wreaths of laurel by his pupils and the party that appreciates him; but they were half torn away, as if there had been a struggle, and stones had evidently been thrown, for a piece of the hand was chipped off.”

“Paradou’s statue, no doubt,” observed Gale. “No wonder they threw things at it.”

“I think not,” replied the doctor, in the same hard voice. “It wasn’t because it was Paradou’s statue, but because it was Boyg’s statue. It was the same business as the museum and the medallion. No, there’s been something like a French Revolution here on the subject; the French are like that. You remember the riot in the Breton village where Renan was born, against having a statue of him. You know, I suppose, that Boyg was a Norwegian by birth, and only settled here because the geological formation, and the supposed mineral properties of that stream there, offered the best field for his investigations. Well, besides the fits the parsons were in at his theories in general, it seems he bumped into some barbarous local superstition as well; about it being a sacred stream that froze snakes into ammonites at a wink; a common myth, of course, for the same was told about St. Hilda at Whitby. But there are peculiar conditions that made it pretty hot in this place. The theological students fight with the medical students, one for Rome and the other for Reason; and they say there’s a sort of raving lunatic of a Peter the Hermit, who lives in that hermitage on the hill over there, and every now and then comes out waving his arms and setting the place on fire.”

“I heard something about that,” remarked Armitage. “The priest who showed me over the monastery; I think he was the head man there… anyhow, he was a most learned and eloquent gentleman… told me about a holy man on the hill who was almost canonized already.”

«Sì, suppongo di aver visto oggi alcune delle più antiche sculture delle autentiche Età Oscure. E non è rigida come certe opere bizantine; c’è un tocco del vero grottesco che generalmente si trova nel gotico.»

«Beh, io oggi ho visto alcune delle più recenti sculture delle Età Moderne,» rispose Gale, «e mi sa che sono le autentiche Età Oscure. Quanto basta del vero grottesco lassù in quello studio, posso assicurartelo.»

«Avete sentito la notizia, dico?» sbottò il dottore. «Boyg è morto.»

Gale si interruppe in una frase sull’architettura gotica, e disse seriamente, con una sorta di vaga reverenza:

«Requiescat in pace. Chi era Boyg?»

«Beh, davvero,» rispose il dottore, «pensavo che ogni lattante avesse sentito parlare di Boyg.»

«Beh, oserei dire che tu non hai mai sentito parlare di Paradou,» rispose Gale. «Ciascuno di noi vive nel suo piccolo cosmo con le sue classi e i suoi gradi. Probabilmente non hai sentito parlare dello scultore più avanzato, o forse dell’ultimo campione di lacrosse o del campione di scacchi.»

Era caratteristico dei due uomini che, mentre Gale continuava a parlare per aria di un argomento astratto, finché non ebbe terminato il proprio filo di pensiero, Armitage avesse un sufficiente e appropriato senso della presenza di qualcosa di più urgente da ricadere nel silenzio. Ciononostante, guardò inconsciamente i suoi appunti; al nome dello scultore avanzato alzò lo sguardo.

«Chi è Paradou?» chiese.

«Ma l’uomo con cui ho parlato stamattina,» rispose Gale. «La sua scultura è abbastanza avanzata per chiunque. È un tipo straordinario; parla più di me, e parla molto bene. E pensa, pure; direi che saprebbe fare tutto tranne scolpire. Lì le sue teorie gli si mettono di traverso. Come gli ho detto, questa nozione del nuovo realismo…»

«Forse potremmo lasciar perdere il realismo e attendere alla realtà,» disse il dottor Garth cupamente. «Ti dico che Boyg è morto. E non è nemmeno questo il peggio.»

Armitage alzò lo sguardo dai suoi appunti con qualcosa della vaghezza del suo amico poeta. «Se ricordo bene,» disse, «la scoperta del professor Boyg riguardava i fossili.»

«La scoperta del professor Boyg comportava l’estensione del periodo richiesto per la pietrificazione, distinta dalla fossilizzazione,» rispose il dottore rigidamente, «e con ciò relegava le origini biologiche a un periodo che consente la cronologia necessaria all’ipotesi della selezione naturale. Può divertirti interporre l’osservazione ‘grandi applausi’, ma ti assicuro che il mondo scientifico, che per caso è competente a giudicare, fu davvero commosso di stupore oltre che di ammirazione.»

«In effetti si pietrificò nell’apprendere che non poteva essere pietrificato,» suggerì il poeta.

«Non ho davvero tempo per la tua leggerezza,» disse Garth. «Mi trovo di fronte a un grande, brutto fatto.»

Armitage si interpose alla maniera benevola di un presidente. «Dobbiamo davvero lasciar parlare Garth; su, dottore, di che si tratta? Comincia dal principio.»

«Molto bene,» disse il dottore, nel suo modo staccato. «Comincerò dal principio. Giunsi in questa città con una lettera di presentazione per Boyg in persona; e poiché desideravo particolarmente visitare il museo geologico, che la sua stessa munificenza aveva fornito a questa città, vi andai per primo. Trovai che tutte le finestre del Museo Boyg erano rotte; e le pietre lanciate dai rivoltosi giacevano effettivamente per la stanza a un piede o due dalle teche di vetro, una delle quali era in frantumi.»

«Donazioni al museo geologico, senza dubbio,» osservò Gale. «Un munifico mecenate capita di passare, e getta dentro un prezioso reperto attraverso la finestra. Non vedo perché ciò non dovrebbe farsi in quello che tu chiami il mondo della scienza; sono certo che si fa senza problemi nel mondo dell’arte. I busti e i bassorilievi del vecchio Paradou sono soltanto grandi rocce scagliate contro il pubblico e…»

«Paradou può andare a… diciamo, in Paradiso?» disse Garth, con perdonabile impazienza. «Nulla ti farà capire che è davvero accaduto qualcosa che non è una delle tue idee e dei tuoi ismi? Non era solo il museo geologico; era lo stesso dappertutto. Passai davanti alla casa in cui Boyg visse dapprima, dove assai giustamente hanno posto un medaglione; e il medaglione era tutto schizzato di fango. Attraversai la piazza del mercato, dove gli hanno eretto una statua proprio di recente. Era ancora addobbata di ghirlande d’alloro dai suoi allievi e dal partito che lo apprezza; ma erano mezze strappate via, come se ci fosse stata una lotta, ed erano state evidentemente lanciate delle pietre, poiché un pezzo della mano era scheggiato.»

«La statua di Paradou, senza dubbio,» osservò Gale. «Non c’è da stupirsi che le lanciassero addosso delle cose.»

«Credo di no,» rispose il dottore, con la stessa voce dura. «Non era perché fosse la statua di Paradou, ma perché era la statua di Boyg. Era la stessa faccenda del museo e del medaglione. No, c’è stato qui qualcosa come una Rivoluzione Francese sull’argomento; i francesi sono fatti così. Ricordi la sommossa nel villaggio bretone dove nacque Renan, contro l’erigergli una statua. Saprai, suppongo, che Boyg era norvegese di nascita, e si stabilì qui solo perché la formazione geologica, e le presunte proprietà minerali di quel ruscello là, offrivano il campo migliore per le sue indagini. Beh, oltre agli accessi in cui erano i preti per le sue teorie in generale, pare che si sia imbattuto anche in qualche barbara superstizione locale; sul fatto che sarebbe un ruscello sacro che pietrificava i serpenti in ammoniti in un batter d’occhio; un mito comune, s’intende, poiché lo stesso si narrava di Santa Hilda a Whitby. Ma ci sono condizioni peculiari che l’hanno resa una faccenda piuttosto rovente in questo luogo. Gli studenti di teologia si azzuffano con gli studenti di medicina, gli uni per Roma e gli altri per la Ragione; e dicono che ci sia una specie di delirante lunatico di un Pietro l’Eremita, che vive in quell’eremo sulla collina laggiù, e ogni tanto esce agitando le braccia e dando fuoco al luogo.»

«Ho sentito qualcosa in proposito,» osservò Armitage. «Il prete che mi ha fatto da guida per il monastero; credo fosse il capo là… comunque, era un signore assai dotto ed eloquente… mi ha parlato di un sant’uomo sulla collina che era già quasi canonizzato.»

“One is tempted to wish he were martyred already; but the martyrdom, if any, was not his,” said Garth darkly. “Allow me to continue my story in order. I had crossed the market-place to find Professor Boyg’s private house, which stood at the corner of it. I found the shutters up and the house apparently empty, except for one old servant, who refused at first to tell me anything; indeed, I found a good deal of rustic reluctance on both sides to tell a foreigner anything. But when I had managed to make the nature of my introduction quite plain to him, he finally broke down; and told me his master was dead.”

There was a pause, and then Gale, who seemed for the first time somewhat impressed, asked abstractedly:

“Where is his tomb? Your tale is really rather strange and dramatic, and obviously it must go on to his tomb. Your pilgrimage ought to end in finding a magnificent monument of marble and gold, like the tomb of Napoleon, and then finding that even the grave had been desecrated.”

“He has no tomb,” replied Garth sternly, “though he will have many monuments. I hope to see the day when he will have a statue in every town, he whose statue is now insulted in his own town. But he will have no tomb.”

“And why not?” asked the staring Armitage.

“His body cannot be found,” answered the doctor; “no trace of him can be found anywhere.”

“Then how do you know he is dead?” asked the other.

There was an instant of silence, and then the doctor spoke out in a voice fuller and stronger than before:

“Why, as to that,” he said, “I think he is dead because I am sure he is murdered.”

Armitage shut his note book, but continued to look down steadily at the table. “Go on with your story,” he said.

“Boyg’s old servant,” resumed the doctor, “who is a queer, silent, yellow-faced old card, was at last induced to tell me of the existence of Boyg’s assistant, of whom I think he was rather jealous. The Professor’s scientific helper and right-hand man is a man of the name of Bertrand, and a very able man, too, eminently worthy of the great man’s confidence, and intensely devoted to his cause. He is carrying on Boyg’s work so far as it can be carried on; and about Boyg’s death or disappearance he knows the little that can be known. It was when I finally ran him to earth in a little house full of Boyg’s books and instruments, at the bottom of the hill just beyond the town, that I first began to realize the nature of this sinister and mysterious business. Bertrand is a quiet man, though he has a little of the pardonable vanity which is not uncommon in assistants. One would sometimes fancy the great discovery was almost as much his as his master’s; but that does no harm, since it only makes him fight for his master’s fame almost as if it were his. But in fact he is not only concerned about the discovery; or rather, he is not only concerned about that discovery. I had not looked for long at the dark bright eyes and keen face of that quiet young man before I realized that there was something else that he is trying to discover. As a matter of fact, he is no longer merely a scientific assistant, or even a scientific student. Unless I am much mistaken, he is playing the part of an amateur detective.

“Your artistic training, my friends, may be an excellent thing for discovering a poet, or even a sculptor; but you will forgive me for thinking a scientific training rather better for discovering a murderer. Bertrand has gone to work in a very workmanlike way, I consider, and I can tell you in outline what he has discovered so far. Boyg was last seen by Bertrand descending the hillside by the watercourse, having just come away from the studio of Gale’s friend the sculptor, where he was sitting for an hour every morning. I may say here, rather for the sake of logical method than because it is needed by the logical argument, that the sculptor at any rate had no quarrel with Boyg, but was, on the contrary, an ardent admirer of him as an advanced and revolutionary character.”

“I know,” said Gale, seeming to take his head suddenly out of the clouds. “Paradou says realistic art must be founded on the modern energy of science; but the fallacy of that…”

“Let me finish with the facts first before you retire into your theories,” said the doctor firmly. “Bertrand saw Boyg sit down on the bare hillside for a smoke; and you can see from here how bare a hillside it is; a man walking for hours on it would still be as visible as a fly crawling on a ceiling. Bertrand says he was called away to the crisis of an experiment in the laboratory; when he looked again he could not see his master, and he has never seen him from that day to this.

“At the foot of the hill, and at the bottom of the flight of steps which runs up to the hermitage, is the entrance to the great monastic buildings on the very edge of the town. The very first thing you come to on that side is the great quadrangle, which is enclosed by cloisters, and by the rooms or cells of the clerical or semi-clerical students. I need not trouble you with the tale of the political compromise by which this part of the institution has remained clerical, while the scientific and other schools beyond it are now entirely secular. But it is important to fix in your mind the fact itself: that the monastic part is on the very edge of the town, and the other part bars its way, so to speak, to the inside of the town. Boyg could not possibly have gone past that secular barrier, dead or alive, without being under the eyes of crowds who were more excited about him than about anything else in the world. For the whole place was in a fuss, and even a riot for him as well as against him. Something happened to him on the hillside, or anyhow before he came to the internal barrier. My friend the amateur detective set to work to examine the hillside, or all of it that could seriously count; an enormous undertaking, but he did it as if with a microscope. Well, he found that rocky field, when examined closely, very much what it looks even from here. There are no caves or even holes, there are no chasms or even cracks in that surface of blank stone for miles and miles. A rat could not be hidden in those few tufts of prickly pear. He could not find a hiding-place; but for all that, he found a hint. The hint was nothing more than a faded scrap of paper, damp and draggled from the shallow bed of the brook, but faintly decipherable on it were words in the writing of the Master. They were but part of a sentence, but they included the words, ‘will call on you tomorrow to tell you something you ought to know.’

«Si è tentati di augurarsi che fosse già martire; ma il martirio, se ce n’è stato, non fu il suo,» disse Garth cupamente. «Permettetemi di continuare la mia storia in ordine. Avevo attraversato la piazza del mercato per trovare la casa privata del professor Boyg, che sorgeva all’angolo di essa. Trovai le imposte chiuse e la casa apparentemente vuota, tranne per un vecchio servitore, che dapprima rifiutò di dirmi alcunché; anzi, trovai una buona dose di rustica riluttanza da entrambe le parti a dire qualsiasi cosa a uno straniero. Ma quando riuscii a rendergli ben chiara la natura della mia presentazione, alla fine cedette; e mi disse che il suo padrone era morto.»

Vi fu una pausa, e poi Gale, che per la prima volta pareva alquanto colpito, chiese distrattamente:

«Dov’è la sua tomba? Il tuo racconto è davvero piuttosto strano e drammatico, e ovviamente deve proseguire fino alla sua tomba. Il tuo pellegrinaggio dovrebbe concludersi trovando un magnifico monumento di marmo e oro, come la tomba di Napoleone, e poi scoprendo che perfino la fossa era stata profanata.»

«Non ha tomba,» rispose Garth severamente, «benché avrà molti monumenti. Spero di veder giungere il giorno in cui avrà una statua in ogni città, lui la cui statua è ora oltraggiata nella sua stessa città. Ma non avrà tomba.»

«E perché no?» chiese Armitage con lo sguardo fisso.

«Il suo corpo non si trova,» rispose il dottore; «non se ne può trovare traccia da nessuna parte.»

«Allora come sai che è morto?» chiese l’altro.

Vi fu un istante di silenzio, e poi il dottore parlò con voce più piena e più forte di prima:

«Ebbene, quanto a questo,» disse, «penso che sia morto perché sono certo che sia stato assassinato.»

Armitage chiuse il taccuino, ma continuò a guardare fisso in basso verso il tavolo. «Prosegui la tua storia,» disse.

«Il vecchio servitore di Boyg,» riprese il dottore, «che è uno strano, silenzioso, vecchio tipo dal volto giallo, fu alla fine indotto a rivelarmi l’esistenza dell’assistente di Boyg, del quale credo fosse piuttosto geloso. L’aiutante scientifico e braccio destro del Professore è un uomo di nome Bertrand, e anch’egli uomo assai capace, eminentemente degno della fiducia del grand’uomo, e intensamente devoto alla sua causa. Egli porta avanti l’opera di Boyg per quanto la si possa portare avanti; e sulla morte o scomparsa di Boyg sa il poco che si può sapere. Fu quando finalmente lo scovai in una piccola casa piena di libri e strumenti di Boyg, in fondo alla collina appena oltre la città, che cominciai per la prima volta a comprendere la natura di questa sinistra e misteriosa faccenda. Bertrand è un uomo quieto, benché abbia un po’ della perdonabile vanità non insolita negli assistenti. Talvolta si sarebbe portati a immaginare che la grande scoperta fosse quasi tanto sua quanto del suo maestro; ma ciò non fa danno, poiché non fa che indurlo a battersi per la fama del maestro quasi come se fosse la propria. Ma in realtà egli non si preoccupa soltanto della scoperta; o piuttosto, non si preoccupa soltanto di quella scoperta. Non avevo guardato a lungo gli occhi scuri e vivaci e il viso acuto di quel giovane quieto prima di rendermi conto che c’era qualcos’altro che egli cerca di scoprire. In effetti, non è più semplicemente un assistente scientifico, e neppure uno studioso di scienze. A meno che io non m’inganni di molto, egli recita la parte del investigatore dilettante.»

«La vostra formazione artistica, amici miei, può essere una cosa eccellente per scoprire un poeta, o persino uno scultore; ma mi perdonerete se penso che una formazione scientifica sia piuttosto migliore per scoprire un assassino. Bertrand si è messo al lavoro in maniera assai professionale, ritengo, e posso dirvi per sommi capi ciò che ha scoperto finora. Boyg fu visto l’ultima volta da Bertrand mentre scendeva il fianco della collina lungo il corso d’acqua, essendosi appena allontanato dallo studio dello scultore amico di Gale, dove posava per un’ora ogni mattina. Posso dire qui, più per amore del metodo logico che perché sia richiesto dall’argomentazione logica, che lo scultore in ogni caso non aveva alcuna lite con Boyg, ma era, al contrario, un ardente ammiratore di lui come figura avanzata e rivoluzionaria.»

«Lo so,» disse Gale, sembrando tirar fuori all’improvviso la testa dalle nuvole. «Paradou dice che l’arte realistica dev’essere fondata sulla moderna energia della scienza; ma la fallacia di ciò…»

«Lasciami finire prima con i fatti, prima che tu ti ritiri nelle tue teorie,» disse il dottore con fermezza. «Bertrand vide Boyg sedersi sul nudo fianco della collina per una fumata; e potete vedere da qui quanto sia nudo quel fianco di collina; un uomo che vi camminasse per ore sarebbe ancora visibile come una mosca che striscia su un soffitto. Bertrand dice di essere stato chiamato via per la crisi di un esperimento nel laboratorio; quando guardò di nuovo non riuscì a vedere il suo maestro, e non l’ha più visto da quel giorno a oggi.»

«Ai piedi della collina, e in fondo alla rampa di scalini che sale fino all’eremo, c’è l’ingresso ai grandi edifici monastici proprio sull’orlo della città. La primissima cosa a cui si giunge da quel lato è il grande quadrilatero, che è racchiuso da chiostri, e dalle stanze o celle degli studenti clericali o semiclericali. Non ho bisogno di annoiarvi con la storia del compromesso politico per cui questa parte dell’istituzione è rimasta clericale, mentre le scuole scientifiche e le altre al di là di essa sono ora interamente laiche. Ma è importante fissarvi in mente il fatto in sé: che la parte monastica è proprio sull’orlo della città, e l’altra parte ne sbarra la via, per così dire, verso l’interno della città. Boyg non avrebbe potuto in alcun modo oltrepassare quella barriera laica, morto o vivo, senza essere sotto gli occhi delle folle che erano più eccitate per lui che per qualunque altra cosa al mondo. Poiché l’intero luogo era in subbuglio, e persino in tumulto per lui oltre che contro di lui. Qualcosa gli accadde sul fianco della collina, o comunque prima che giungesse alla barriera interna. Il mio amico investigatore dilettante si mise all’opera per esaminare il fianco della collina, o tutto quello che poteva seriamente contare; un’impresa enorme, ma la fece come con un microscopio. Ebbene, trovò quel campo roccioso, esaminato da vicino, molto simile a come appare anche da qui. Non ci sono grotte e neppure buche, non ci sono voragini e neppure crepe in quella superficie di nuda pietra per miglia e miglia. Un topo non potrebbe nascondersi in quei pochi ciuffi di fico d’India. Non riuscì a trovare un nascondiglio; ma nonostante ciò, trovò un indizio. L’indizio non era nient’altro che un brandello di carta sbiadito, umido e inzuppato dal basso letto del ruscello, ma su di esso erano debolmente decifrabili parole nella scrittura del Maestro. Erano solo parte di una frase, ma comprendevano le parole: ‘passerò da voi domani per dirvi qualcosa che dovreste sapere.’

“My friend Bertrand sat down and thought it out. The letter had been in the water, so it had not been thrown away in the town, for the highly scientific reason that the river does not flow uphill. There only remained on the higher ground the sculptor’s studio and the hermitage. But Boyg would not write to the sculptor to warn him that he was going to call, since he went to his studio every morning. Presumably the person he was going to call on was the hermit; and a guess might well be made about the nature of what he had to say. Bertrand knew better than anybody that Boyg had just brought his great discovery to a crushing completeness, with fresh facts and ratifications; and it seems likely enough that he went to announce it to his most fanatical opponent, to warn him to give up the struggle.”

Gale, who was gazing up into the sky with his eye on a bird, again abruptly intervened.

“In these attacks on Boyg,” he said, “were there any attacks on his private character?”

“Even these madmen couldn’t attack that,” replied Garth with some heat. “He was the best sort of Scandinavian, as simple as a child, and I really believe as innocent. But they hated him for all that; and you can see for yourself that their hatred begins to appear on the horizon of our inquiry. He went to tell the truth in the hour of triumph; and he never reappeared to the light of the sun.”

Armitage’s far-away gaze was fixed on the solitary cell half-way up the hill. “You don’t mean seriously,” he said, “that the man they talk about as a saint, the friend of my friend the abbot, or whatever he is, is neither more nor less than an assassin?”

“You talked to your friend the abbot about Romanesque sculpture,” replied Garth. “If you had talked to him about fossils, you might have seen another side of his character. These Latin priests are often polished enough, but you bet they’re pointed as well. As for the other man on the hill, he’s allowed by his superiors to live what they call the eremitical life; but he’s jolly well allowed to do other things, too. On great occasions he’s allowed to come down here and preach, and I can tell you there is Bedlam let loose when he does. I might be ready to excuse the man as a sort of a maniac; but I haven’t the slightest difficulty in believing that he is a homicidal maniac.”

“Did your friend Bertrand take any legal steps on his suspicions?” asked Armitage, after a pause.

“Ah, that’s where the mystery begins,” replied the doctor.

After a moment of frowning silence, he resumed. “Yes, he did make a formal charge to the police, and the Juge d’Instruction examined a good many people and so on, and said the charge had broken down. It broke down over the difficulty of disposing of the body; the chief difficulty in most murders. Now the hermit, who is called Hyacinth, I believe, was summoned in due course; but he had no difficulty in showing that his hermitage was as bare and as hard as the hill-side. It seemed as if nobody could possibly have concealed a corpse in those stone walls, or dug a grave in that rocky floor. Then it was the turn of the abbot, as you call him, Father Bernard of the Catholic College. And he managed to convince the magistrate that the same was true of the cells surrounding the college quadrangle, and all the other rooms under his control. They were all like empty boxes, with barely a stick or two of furniture; less than usual, in fact, for some of the sticks had been broken up for the bonfire demonstration I told you of. Anyhow, that was the line of defence, and I dare say it was well conducted, for Bernard is a very able man, and knows about many other things besides Romanesque architecture; and Hyacinth, fanatic as he is, is famous as a persuasive orator. Anyhow, it was successful, the case broke down; but I am sure my friend Bertrand is only biding his time, and means to bring it up again. These difficulties about the concealment of a corpse…Hullo! why here he is in person.”

He broke off in surprise as a young man walking rapidly down the street paused a moment, and then approached the café table at which they sat. He was dressed with all the funereal French respectability: his black stove-pipe hat, his high and stiff black neck-cloth resembling a stock, and the curious corners of dark beard at the edges of his chin, gave him an antiquated air like a character out of Gaboriau. But if he was out of Gaboriau, he was nobody less than Lecocq; the dark eyes in his pale face might indeed be called the eyes of a born detective. At this moment, the pale face was paler than usual with excitement, and as he stopped a moment behind the doctor’s chair, he said to him in a low voice:

“I have found out.”

Dr. Garth sprang to his feet, his eyes brilliant with curiosity; then, recovering his conventional manner, he presented M. Bertrand to his friends, saying to the former, “You may speak freely with us, I think; we have no interest except an interest in the truth.”

“I have found the truth,” said the Frenchman, with compressed lips. “I know now what these murderous monks have done with the body of Boyg.”

“Are we to be allowed to hear it?” asked Armitage gravely.

“Everyone will hear it in three days’ time,” replied the pale Frenchman. “As the authorities refuse to reopen the question, we are holding a public meeting in the market-place to demand that they do so. The assassins will be there, doubtless, and I shall not only denounce but convict them to their faces. Be there yourself, monsieur, on Thursday at half-past two, and you will learn how one of the world’s greatest men was done to death by his enemies. For the moment I will only say one word. As the great Edgar Poe said in your own language, ‘Truth is not always in a well.’ I believe it is sometimes too obvious to be seen.”

«Il mio amico Bertrand si sedette e ci rimuginò sopra. La lettera era stata nell’acqua, perciò non era stata gettata via in città, per l’altamente scientifica ragione che il fiume non scorre in salita. Sul terreno più elevato restavano solo lo studio dello scultore e l’eremo. Ma Boyg non avrebbe scritto allo scultore per avvertirlo che sarebbe andato a fargli visita, dato che andava al suo studio ogni mattina. Presumibilmente la persona a cui stava per far visita era l’eremita; e si poteva bene fare una congettura sulla natura di ciò che aveva da dire. Bertrand sapeva meglio di chiunque altro che Boyg aveva appena portato la sua grande scoperta a una schiacciante compiutezza, con nuovi fatti e conferme; e pare abbastanza probabile che sia andato ad annunciarla al suo più fanatico oppositore, per avvertirlo di abbandonare la lotta.»

Gale, che fissava il cielo con l’occhio su un uccello, intervenne di nuovo bruscamente.

«In questi attacchi a Boyg,» disse, «vi furono attacchi al suo carattere privato?»

«Neppure questi pazzi poterono attaccarlo,» rispose Garth con un certo calore. «Era il miglior tipo di scandinavo, semplice come un bambino, e credo davvero altrettanto innocente. Ma lo odiavano nonostante tutto; e potete vedere da voi che il loro odio comincia ad apparire all’orizzonte della nostra indagine. Andò a dire la verità nell’ora del trionfo; e non riapparve mai più alla luce del sole.»

Lo sguardo lontano di Armitage era fisso sulla cella solitaria a mezza costa della collina. «Non intenderai sul serio,» disse, «che l’uomo di cui parlano come di un santo, l’amico del mio amico l’abate, o quel che è, non sia né più né meno che un assassino?»

«Tu hai parlato col tuo amico l’abate di scultura romanica,» rispose Garth. «Se gli avessi parlato di fossili, avresti forse visto un altro lato del suo carattere. Questi preti latini sono spesso abbastanza levigati, ma puoi scommettere che sono anche appuntiti. Quanto all’altro uomo sulla collina, i suoi superiori gli permettono di vivere quella che chiamano vita eremitica; ma gli è ben permesso di fare anche altre cose. Nelle grandi occasioni gli è permesso di scendere quaggiù e predicare, e posso dirti che si scatena un manicomio quando lo fa. Sarei disposto a scusare l’uomo come una specie di maniaco; ma non ho la minima difficoltà a credere che sia un maniaco omicida.»

«Il tuo amico Bertrand ha intrapreso qualche passo legale in base ai suoi sospetti?» chiese Armitage, dopo una pausa.

«Ah, è qui che comincia il mistero,» rispose il dottore.

Dopo un momento di silenzio accigliato, riprese. «Sì, presentò una regolare denuncia alla polizia, e il Juge d’Instruction interrogò parecchia gente e così via, e disse che l’accusa non stava in piedi. Cadde per la difficoltà di disfarsi del corpo; la difficoltà principale in gran parte degli omicidi. Ora l’eremita, che si chiama Hyacinth, credo, fu convocato a tempo debito; ma non ebbe difficoltà a dimostrare che il suo eremo era spoglio e duro quanto il fianco della collina. Sembrava che nessuno avesse potuto in alcun modo occultare un cadavere in quelle pareti di pietra, o scavare una fossa in quel pavimento roccioso. Poi venne il turno dell’abate, come lo chiami tu, Padre Bernard del Collegio Cattolico. Ed egli riuscì a convincere il magistrato che lo stesso valeva per le celle che circondavano il quadrilatero del collegio, e per tutte le altre stanze sotto il suo controllo. Erano tutte come scatole vuote, con appena un bastone o due di mobilio; meno del solito, anzi, poiché alcuni dei bastoni erano stati fatti a pezzi per la dimostrazione del falò di cui vi ho parlato. Comunque, quella fu la linea di difesa, e oserei dire che fu ben condotta, poiché Bernard è un uomo assai capace, e conosce molte altre cose oltre all’architettura romanica; e Hyacinth, per quanto fanatico, è famoso come oratore persuasivo. Comunque, ebbe successo, il caso cadde; ma sono certo che il mio amico Bertrand sta solo aspettando il suo momento, e intende riproporlo. Queste difficoltà circa l’occultamento di un cadavere… Ehilà! ma eccolo qui in persona.»

Si interruppe di sorpresa mentre un giovane che scendeva rapidamente per la strada si fermò un momento, e poi si avvicinò al tavolo del caffè a cui sedevano. Era vestito con tutta la funerea rispettabilità francese: il suo cilindro nero, la sua alta e rigida cravatta nera da collo simile a uno stock, e i curiosi angoli di barba scura ai bordi del mento, gli davano un’aria antiquata come un personaggio uscito da Gaboriau. Ma se era uscito da Gaboriau, non era nessun altro che Lecoq; gli occhi scuri nel suo volto pallido potevano davvero dirsi gli occhi di un investigatore nato. In quel momento, il volto pallido era più pallido del solito per l’eccitazione, e mentre si fermava un momento dietro la sedia del dottore, gli disse a bassa voce:

«Ho scoperto.»

Il dottor Garth balzò in piedi, gli occhi brillanti di curiosità; poi, ritrovando i suoi modi convenzionali, presentò il signor Bertrand ai suoi amici, dicendo al primo: «Potete parlare liberamente con noi, credo; non abbiamo alcun interesse tranne un interesse per la verità.»

«Ho trovato la verità,» disse il francese, con le labbra serrate. «So ora cosa questi monaci assassini hanno fatto del corpo di Boyg.»

«Ci sarà concesso di udirlo?» chiese Armitage con gravità.

«Tutti lo udranno nel tempo di tre giorni,» rispose il pallido francese. «Poiché le autorità rifiutano di riaprire la questione, teniamo una pubblica assemblea nella piazza del mercato per esigere che lo facciano. Gli assassini saranno là, senza dubbio, e io non soltanto li denuncerò ma li smaschererò in faccia. Siate là voi stesso, monsieur, giovedì alle due e mezza, e apprenderete come uno dei più grandi uomini del mondo fu messo a morte dai suoi nemici. Per il momento dirò una sola parola. Come disse il grande Edgar Poe nella vostra stessa lingua, ‘la verità non è sempre in un pozzo.’ Credo che talvolta sia troppo ovvia per essere vista.»

Gabriel Gale, who had rather the appearance of having gone to sleep, seemed to rouse himself with an unusual animation.

“That’s true,” he said, “and that’s the truth about the whole business.”

Armitage turned to him with an expression of quiet amusement.

“Surely you’re not playing the detective, Gale,” he said. “I never pictured such a thing as your coming out of fairyland to assist Scotland Yard.”

“Perhaps Gale thinks he can find the body,” suggested Dr. Garth laughing.

Gale lifted himself slowly and loosely from his seat, and answered in his dazed fashion:

“Why, yes, in a way,” he said; “in fact, I’m pretty sure I can find the body. In fact, in a manner of speaking, I’ve found it.”

Those with any intimations of the personality of Mr. Arthur Armitage will not need to be told that he kept a diary; and endeavoured to note down his impressions of foreign travel with atmospheric sympathy and the mot juste. But the pen dropped from his hand, so to speak, or at least wandered over the page in a mazy desperation, in the attempt to describe the great mob meeting, or rather the meeting of two mobs, which took place in the picturesque market-place in which he had wandered alone a few days before, criticising the style of the statue, or admiring the sky-line of the basilica. He had read and written about democracy all his life; and when first he met it, it swallowed him like an earthquake. One actual and appalling difference divided this French mob in a provincial market from all the English mobs he had ever seen in Hyde Park or Trafalgar Square. These Frenchmen had not come there to get rid of their feelings, but to get rid of their enemies. Something would be done as a result of this sort of public meeting; it might be murder, but it would be something.

And although, or rather because, it had this militant ferocity, it had also a sort of military discipline. The clusters of men voluntarily deployed into cordons, and in some rough fashion followed the command of leaders. Father Bernard was there, with a face of bronze, like the mask of a Roman emperor, eagerly obeyed by his crowd of crusading devotees, and beside him the wild preacher, Hyacinth, who looked himself like a dead man brought out of the grave, with a face built out of bones, and cavernous eye-sockets deep and dark enough to hide the eyes. On the other side were the grim pallor of Bertrand and the rat-like activity of the red-haired Dr. Garth; their own anti-clerical mob was roaring behind them, and their eyes were alight with triumph. Before Armitage could collect himself sufficiently to make proper notes of any of these things, Bertrand had sprung upon a chair placed near the pedestal of the statue, and announced almost without words, by one dramatic gesture, that he had come to avenge the dead.

Then the words came, and they came thick and fast, telling and terrible; but Armitage heard them as in a dream till they reached the point for which he was waiting; the point that would awaken any dreamer. He heard the prose poems of laudation, the hymn to Boyg the hero, the tale of his tragedy so far as he knew it already. He heard the official decision about the impossibility of the clerics concealing the corpse, as he had heard it already. And then he and the whole crowd leapt together at something they did not know before; or rather, as in all such riddles, something they did know and did not understand.

“They plead that their cells are bare and their lives simple,” Bertrand was saying, “and it is true that these slaves of superstition are cut off from the natural joys of men. But they have their joys; oh, believe me, they have their festivities. If they cannot rejoice in love, they can rejoice in hatred. And everybody seems to have forgotten that on the very day the Master vanished, the theological students in their own quadrangle burnt him in effigy. In effigy.”

A thrill that was hardly a whisper, but was wilder than a cry, went through the whole crowd; and men had taken in the whole meaning before they could keep pace with the words that followed.

“Did they burn Bruno in effigy? Did they burn Dolet in effigy?” Bertrand was saying, with a white, fanatical face. “Those martyrs of the truth were burned alive for the good of their Church and for the glory of their God. Oh, yes, progress has improved them; and they did not burn Boyg alive. But they burned him dead; and that is how they obliterated the traces of the way they had done him to death. I have said that truth is not always hidden in a well, but rather high on a tower. And while I have searched every crevice and cactus bush for the bones of my master, it was in truth in public, under the open sky, before a roaring crowd in the quadrangle, that his body vanished from the sight of men.”

When the last cheer and howl of a whole hell of such noises had died away, Father Bernard succeeded in making his voice heard.

“It is enough to say in answer to this maniac charge that the atheists who bring it against us cannot induce their own atheistic Government to support them. But as the charge is against Father Hyacinth rather than against me, I will ask him to reply to it.”

There was another tornado of conflicting noises when the eremitical preacher opened his mouth; but his very tones had a certain power of piercing, and quelling it. There was something strange in such a voice coming out of such a skull-and-cross-bones of a countenance; for it was unmistakably the musical and moving voice that had stirred so many congregations and pilgrimages. Only in this crisis it had an awful accent of reality, which was beyond any arts of oratory. But before the tumult had yet died away Armitage, moved by some odd nervous instinct, had turned abruptly to Garth and said, “What’s become of Gale? He said he was going to be here. Didn’t he talk some nonsense about bringing the body himself?”

Gabriel Gale, che aveva piuttosto l’aria di essersi abbandonato al sonno, parve destarsi con un’insolita animazione.

«È vero,» disse, «ed è questa la verità su tutta la faccenda.»

Armitage si volse verso di lui con un’espressione di quieto divertimento.

«Non starai facendo l’investigatore, Gale,» disse. «Non ti ho mai immaginato uscire dal paese delle fate per assistere Scotland Yard.»

«Forse Gale crede di poter trovare il corpo,» suggerì il dottor Garth ridendo.

Gale si sollevò lentamente e mollemente dal suo posto, e rispose nel suo modo stordito:

«Ma sì, in un certo senso,» disse; «anzi, sono abbastanza sicuro di poter trovare il corpo. Anzi, in un certo modo di dire, l’ho trovato.»

Chi abbia una qualche cognizione della personalità del signor Arthur Armitage non avrà bisogno che gli si dica che teneva un diario; e si sforzava di annotare le sue impressioni di viaggio all’estero con simpatia atmosferica e il mot juste. Ma la penna gli cadde di mano, per così dire, o almeno vagò per la pagina in una disperazione labirintica, nel tentativo di descrivere il grande raduno di folla, o piuttosto l’incontro di due folle, che ebbe luogo nella pittoresca piazza del mercato in cui aveva girovagato solo pochi giorni prima, criticando lo stile della statua, o ammirando il profilo della basilica contro il cielo. Aveva letto e scritto di democrazia per tutta la vita; e quando la incontrò per la prima volta, essa lo inghiottì come un terremoto. Una reale e spaventosa differenza divideva questa folla francese in un mercato di provincia da tutte le folle inglesi che avesse mai visto a Hyde Park o Trafalgar Square. Questi francesi non erano venuti là per sbarazzarsi dei loro sentimenti, ma per sbarazzarsi dei loro nemici. Qualcosa sarebbe stato fatto come risultato di questo genere di pubblica assemblea; poteva essere un assassinio, ma sarebbe stato qualcosa.

E benché, o piuttosto perché, aveva questa ferocia militante, aveva anche una sorta di disciplina militare. I gruppi di uomini si schieravano volontariamente in cordoni, e in qualche rozza maniera seguivano il comando dei capi. Padre Bernard era là, con un volto di bronzo, come la maschera di un imperatore romano, avidamente obbedito dalla sua folla di devoti crociati, e accanto a lui il selvaggio predicatore, Hyacinth, che sembrava egli stesso un morto tratto fuori dalla fossa, con un volto costruito d’ossa, e cavernose orbite abbastanza profonde e scure da nascondere gli occhi. Dall’altra parte c’erano il cupo pallore di Bertrand e l’attività da topo del rosso di capelli dottor Garth; la loro stessa folla anticlericale ruggiva dietro di loro, e i loro occhi ardevano di trionfo. Prima che Armitage potesse raccogliersi a sufficienza per prendere appunti adeguati su una qualsiasi di queste cose, Bertrand era balzato su una sedia posta vicino al piedistallo della statua, e aveva annunciato quasi senza parole, con un solo gesto drammatico, di essere venuto a vendicare il morto.

Poi vennero le parole, e vennero fitte e veloci, incisive e terribili; ma Armitage le udì come in un sogno finché non giunsero al punto che egli attendeva; il punto che avrebbe destato qualunque sognatore. Udì i poemi in prosa di lode, l’inno a Boyg l’Eroe, il racconto della sua tragedia per quanto già la conoscesse. Udì la decisione ufficiale sull’impossibilità che i chierici avessero occultato il cadavere, come già l’aveva udita. E poi lui e l’intera folla sobbalzarono insieme a qualcosa che prima non conoscevano; o piuttosto, come in tutti questi indovinelli, qualcosa che conoscevano e non comprendevano.

«Adducono che le loro celle sono spoglie e le loro vite semplici,» stava dicendo Bertrand, «ed è vero che questi schiavi della superstizione sono tagliati fuori dalle gioie naturali degli uomini. Ma hanno le loro gioie; oh, credetemi, hanno le loro festività. Se non possono gioire nell’amore, possono gioire nell’odio. E pare che tutti abbiano dimenticato che proprio il giorno in cui il Maestro scomparve, gli studenti di teologia nel loro stesso quadrilatero lo bruciarono in effigie. In effigie.»

Un brivido che era appena un sussurro, ma era più selvaggio di un grido, percorse l’intera folla; e gli uomini avevano colto tutto il significato prima di poter tenere il passo con le parole che seguirono.

«Bruciarono Bruno in effigie? Bruciarono Dolet in effigie?» stava dicendo Bertrand, con un volto bianco e fanatico. «Quei martiri della verità furono bruciati vivi per il bene della loro Chiesa e per la gloria del loro Dio. Oh, sì, il progresso li ha migliorati; e non bruciarono Boyg vivo. Ma lo bruciarono morto; ed è così che cancellarono le tracce del modo in cui l’avevano messo a morte. Ho detto che la verità non è sempre nascosta in un pozzo, ma piuttosto in alto su una torre. E mentre ho frugato ogni fenditura e ogni cespuglio di cactus in cerca delle ossa del mio maestro, era in verità in pubblico, sotto il cielo aperto, davanti a una folla ruggente nel quadrilatero, che il suo corpo svanì dalla vista degli uomini.»

Quando l’ultimo urrà e ululato di tutto un inferno di simili rumori si fu spento, Padre Bernard riuscì a farsi udire.

«Basti dire in risposta a questa folle accusa che gli atei che la muovono contro di noi non riescono a indurre il loro stesso Governo ateo a sostenerli. Ma poiché l’accusa è contro Padre Hyacinth piuttosto che contro di me, gli chiederò di rispondervi.»

Vi fu un altro tornado di rumori contrastanti quando il predicatore eremita aprì la bocca; ma i suoi stessi toni avevano un certo potere di penetrare, e di sedarlo. C’era qualcosa di strano in una simile voce che usciva da un simile teschio e ossa incrociate di un volto; poiché era inequivocabilmente la voce musicale e commovente che aveva scosso tante congregazioni e pellegrinaggi. Solo che in questa crisi aveva un tremendo accento di realtà, che era al di là di ogni arte oratoria. Ma prima che il tumulto si fosse ancora spento Armitage, mosso da qualche strano istinto nervoso, si era voltato bruscamente verso Garth e aveva detto: «Che ne è stato di Gale? Ha detto che sarebbe stato qui. Non ha forse detto qualche sciocchezza sul portare lui stesso il corpo?»

Dr. Garth shrugged his shoulders. “I imagine he’s talking some other nonsense at the top of the hill somewhere else. You mustn’t ask poets to remember all the nonsense they talk.”

“My friends,” Father Hyacinth was saying, in quiet but penetrating tones. “I have no answer to give to this charge. I have no proofs with which to refute it. If a man can be sent to the guillotine on such evidence, to the guillotine I will go. Do you fancy I do not know that innocent men have been guillotined? M. Bertrand spoke of the burning of Bruno, as if it is only the enemies of the Church that have been burned. Does any Frenchman forget that Joan of Arc was burned; and was she guilty? The first Christians were tortured for being cannibals, a charge as probable as the charge against me. Do you imagine because you kill men now by modern machinery and modern law, that we do not know that you are as likely to kill unjustly as Herod or Heliogabalus? Do you think we do not know that the powers of the world are what they always were, that your lawyers who oppress the poor for hire will shed innocent blood for gold? If I were here to bandy such lawyer’s talk, I could use it against you more reasonably than you against me. For what reason am I supposed to have imperilled my soul by such a monstrous crime? For a theory about a theory; for a hypothesis about a hypothesis, for some thin fantastic notion that a discovery about fossils threatened the everlasting truth. I could point to others who had better reasons for murder than that. I could point to a man who by the death of Boyg has inherited the whole power and position of Boyg. I could point to one who is truly the heir and the man whom the crime benefits; who is known to claim much of the discovery as his own; who has been not so much the assistant as the rival of the dead. He alone has given evidence that Boyg was seen on the hill at all on that fatal day. He alone inherits by the death anything solid, from the largest ambitions in the scientific world, to the smallest magnifying glass in his collection. The man lives, and I could stretch out my hand and touch him.”

Hundreds of faces were turned upon Bertrand with a frightful expression of inhuman eagerness; the turn of the debate had been too dramatic to raise a cry. Bertrand’s very lips were pale, but they smiled as they formed the words:

“And what did I do with the body?”

“God grant you did nothing with it, dead or alive,” answered the other. “I do not charge you; but if ever you are charged as I am unjustly, you may need a God on that day. Though I were ten times guillotined, God could testify to my innocence; if it were by bidding me walk these streets, like St. Denis, with my head in my hand. I have no other proof. I can call no other witness. He can deliver me if He will.”

There was a sudden silence, which was somehow stronger than a pause; and in it Armitage could be heard saying sharply, and almost querulously:

“Why, here’s Gale again, after all. Have you dropped from the sky?”

Gale was indeed sauntering in a clear space round the corner of the statue with all the appearance of having just arrived at a crowded At Home; and Bertrand was quick to seize the chance of an anti-climax to the hermit’s oratory.

“This,” he cried, “is a gentleman who thinks he can find the body himself. Have you brought it with you, monsieur?”

The joke about the poet as detective had already been passed round among many people, and the suggestion received a new kind of applause. Somebody called out in a high, piping voice, “He’s got it in his pocket”; and another, in deep sepulchral tones, “His waistcoat pocket.”

Mr. Gale certainly had his hands in his pockets, whether or no he had anything else in them; and it was with great nonchalance that he replied:

“Well, in that sense, I suppose I haven’t got it. But you have.”

The next moment he had astonished his friends, who were not used to seeing him so alert, by leaping on the chair, and himself addressing the crowd in clear tones, and in excellent French:

“Well, my friends,” he said, “the first thing I have to do is to associate myself with everything said by my honourable friend, if he will allow me to call him so, about the merits and high moral qualities of the late Professor Boyg. Boyg, at any rate, is in every way worthy of all the honour you can pay to him. Whatever else is doubtful, whatever else we differ about, we can all salute in him that search for truth which is the most disinterested of all our duties to God. I agree with my friend Dr. Garth that he deserves to have a statue, not only in his own town, but in every town in the world.”

The anti-clericals began to cheer warmly, while their opponents watched in silence, wondering where this last eccentric development might lead. The poet seemed to realize their mystification, and smiled as he continued:

“Perhaps you wonder why I should say that so emphatically. Well, I suppose you all have your own reasons for recognizing this genuine love of truth in the late Professor. But I say it because I happen to know something that perhaps you don’t know, which makes me specially certain about his honesty.”

“And what is that?” asked Father Bernard, in the pause that followed.

“Because,” said Gale, “he was going to see Father Hyacinth to own himself wrong.”

Bertrand made a swift movement forward that seemed almost to threaten an assault: but Garth arrested it, and Gale went on, without noticing it.

“Professor Boyg had discovered that his theory was wrong after all. That was the sensational discovery he had made in those last days and with those last experiments. I suspected it when I compared the current tale with his reputation as a simple and kindly man. I did not believe he would have gone merely to triumph over his worst enemy; it was far more probable that he thought it a point of honour to acknowledge his mistake. For, without professing to know much about these things, I am sure it was a mistake. Things do not, after all, need all those thousand years to petrify in that particular fashion. Under certain conditions, which chemists could explain better than I, they do not need more than one year, or even one day. Something in the properties of the local water, applied or intensified by special methods, can really in a few hours turn an animal organism into a fossil. The scientific experiment has been made; and the proof is before you.”

Il dottor Garth alzò le spalle. «Immagino stia blaterando qualche altra sciocchezza in cima alla collina, da qualche altra parte. Non si deve chiedere ai poeti di ricordare tutte le sciocchezze che dicono.»

«Amici miei,» stava dicendo padre Giacinto, con tono quieto ma penetrante. «Non ho risposta da dare a questa accusa. Non ho prove con cui confutarla. Se un uomo può essere mandato alla ghigliottina su tali prove, alla ghigliottina andrò. Credete che io non sappia che uomini innocenti sono stati ghigliottinati? Il signor Bertrand ha parlato del rogo di Bruno, come se solo i nemici della Chiesa fossero stati arsi. Dimentica forse qualche francese che Giovanna d’Arco fu arsa; ed era colpevole? I primi cristiani furono torturati per essere cannibali, un’accusa altrettanto probabile quanto quella contro di me. Immaginate che, poiché ora uccidete gli uomini con macchinari moderni e leggi moderne, noi non sappiamo che siete altrettanto propensi a uccidere ingiustamente quanto Erode o Eliogabalo? Credete che non sappiamo che i poteri del mondo sono ciò che sempre furono, che i vostri avvocati che opprimono i poveri per denaro verseranno innocente sangue per oro? Se fossi qui a scambiare simili discorsi da avvocato, potrei usarli contro di voi più ragionevolmente di quanto voi contro di me. Per quale ragione si suppone che io abbia messo in pericolo la mia anima con un delitto così mostruoso? Per una teoria su una teoria; per un’ipotesi su un’ipotesi, per qualche esile fantastica nozione che una scoperta sui fossili minacciasse l’eterna verità. Potrei indicare altri che avevano ragioni migliori per l’omicidio di quella. Potrei indicare un uomo che con la morte di Boyg ha ereditato l’intero potere e la posizione di Boyg. Potrei indicare uno che è veramente l’erede e l’uomo che il delitto avvantaggia; che è noto per rivendicare gran parte della scoperta come propria; che è stato non tanto l’assistente quanto il rivale del morto. Egli solo ha testimoniato che Boyg fu visto sulla collina in quel giorno fatale. Egli solo eredita con la morte qualcosa di solido, dalle più grandi ambizioni nel mondo scientifico, alla più piccola lente d’ingrandimento nella sua collezione. L’uomo vive, e potrei stendere la mano e toccarlo.»

Centinaia di volti si volsero verso Bertrand con una spaventosa espressione di disumana avidità; la svolta del dibattito era stata troppo drammatica per suscitare un grido. Le labbra stesse di Bertrand erano pallide, ma sorrisero mentre formavano le parole:

«E che cosa ho fatto del corpo?»

«Dio voglia che tu non ne abbia fatto nulla, morto o vivo,» rispose l’altro. «Non ti accuso; ma se mai fossi accusato ingiustamente come lo sono io, potresti aver bisogno di un Dio in quel giorno. Anche se fossi ghigliottinato dieci volte, Dio potrebbe testimoniare la mia innocenza; fosse pure ordinandomi di camminare per queste strade, come san Dionigi, con la testa in mano. Non ho altra prova. Non posso chiamare altro testimone. Egli può liberarmi se vorrà.»

Vi fu un improvviso silenzio, che in qualche modo era più forte di una pausa; e in esso si udì Armitage dire bruscamente, e quasi querulo:

«Ma guarda, ecco di nuovo Gale, dopotutto. Sei caduto dal cielo?»

Gale infatti passeggiava con noncuranza in uno spazio libero attorno all’angolo della statua con tutta l’aria di essere appena giunto a un affollato ricevimento mondano; e Bertrand fu pronto a cogliere l’occasione di un anticlimax all’oratoria dell’eremita.

«Questo,» gridò, «è un signore che crede di poter trovare il corpo da sé. L’avete portato con voi, monsieur?»

La battuta sul poeta come investigatore era già stata fatta circolare tra molti presenti, e il suggerimento ricevette un nuovo tipo di applauso. Qualcuno esclamò con voce acuta e squillante: «Ce l’ha in tasca»; e un altro, con tono cupo e sepolcrale: «Nel taschino del panciotto.»

Il signor Gale aveva certamente le mani in tasca, che vi avesse o no anche qualcos’altro; e fu con grande noncuranza che rispose:

«Ebbene, in quel senso, suppongo di non averlo. Ma voi sì.»

L’istante dopo aveva stupito i suoi amici, che non erano abituati a vederlo così sveglio, balzando sulla sedia e rivolgendosi egli stesso alla folla con toni chiari, e in eccellente francese:

«Ebbene, amici miei,» disse, «la prima cosa che devo fare è associarmi a tutto ciò che ha detto il mio onorevole amico, se mi permette di chiamarlo così, sui meriti e le alte qualità morali del defunto professor Boyg. Boyg, in ogni caso, è in ogni modo degno di tutto l’onore che possiate rendergli. Qualunque altra cosa sia dubbia, qualunque altra cosa ci divida, tutti possiamo salutare in lui quella ricerca della verità che è il più disinteressato di tutti i nostri doveri verso Dio. Concordo con il mio amico dottor Garth che egli merita una statua, non solo nella sua città, ma in ogni città del mondo.»

Gli anticlericali cominciarono ad applaudire calorosamente, mentre i loro avversari osservavano in silenzio, chiedendosi dove potesse condurre quest’ultimo eccentrico sviluppo. Il poeta parve rendersi conto del loro sconcerto, e sorrise mentre continuava:

«Forse vi domandate perché io lo dica con tanta enfasi. Ebbene, suppongo che tutti abbiate le vostre ragioni per riconoscere questo genuino amore della verità nel defunto professore. Ma lo dico perché mi capita di sapere qualcosa che forse voi non sapete, e che mi rende particolarmente certo della sua onestà.»

«E che cosa sarebbe?» chiese padre Bernardo, nella pausa che seguì.

«Perché,» disse Gale, «stava andando da padre Giacinto per riconoscersi in errore.»

Bertrand fece un rapido movimento in avanti che parve quasi minacciare un’aggressione: ma Garth lo trattenne, e Gale proseguì, senza farci caso.

«Il professor Boyg aveva scoperto che la sua teoria era sbagliata, dopotutto. Fu questa la sensazionale scoperta che aveva fatto in quegli ultimi giorni e con quegli ultimi esperimenti. Lo sospettai quando confrontai il racconto corrente con la sua reputazione di uomo semplice e gentile. Non credevo che fosse andato semplicemente a trionfare sul suo peggior nemico; era assai più probabile che ritenesse un punto d’onore riconoscere il proprio errore. Poiché, senza pretendere di sapere molto di queste cose, sono certo che fosse un errore. Le cose non hanno, dopotutto, bisogno di tutte quelle migliaia di anni per pietrificarsi in quel modo particolare. In certe condizioni, che i chimici saprebbero spiegare meglio di me, non hanno bisogno di più di un anno, o anche di un solo giorno. Qualcosa nelle proprietà dell’acqua locale, applicata o intensificata con metodi speciali, può davvero in poche ore trasformare un organismo animale in un fossile. L’esperimento scientifico è stato compiuto; e la prova è davanti a voi.»

He made a gesture with his hand, and went on, with something more like excitement:

“M. Bertrand is right in saying that truth is not in a well, but on a tower. It is on a pedestal. You have looked at it every day. There is the body of Boyg!”

And he pointed to the statue in the middle of the market-place, wreathed with laurel and defaced with stones, as it had stood so long in that quiet square, and looked down at so many casual passers-by.

“Somebody suggested just now,” he went on, glancing over a sea of gaping faces, “that I carried the statue in my waistcoat pocket. Well, I don’t carry all of it, of course, but this is a part of it,” and he took out a small object like a stick of grey chalk; “this is a finger of it knocked off by a stone. I picked it up by the pedestal. If anybody who understands these things likes to look at it, he will agree that the consistency is precisely the same as the admitted fossils in the geological museum.”

He held it out to them, but the whole mob stood still as if it also was a mob of men turned to stone.

“Perhaps you think I’m mad,” he said pleasantly. “Well, I’m not exactly mad, but I have an odd sort of sympathy with madmen. I can manage them better than most people can, because I can fancy somehow the wild way their minds will work. I understand the man who did this. I know he did, because I talked to him for half the morning; and it’s exactly the sort of thing he would do. And when first I heard talk of fossil shells and petrified insects and so on, I did the same thing that such men always do. I exaggerated it into a sort of extravagant vision, a vision of fossil forests, and fossil cattle, and fossil elephants and camels; and so, naturally, to another thought: a coincidence that somehow turned me cold. A Fossil Man.

“It was then that I looked up at the statue; and knew it was not a statue. It was a corpse petrified by the curious chemistry of your strange mountain-stream. I call it a fossil as a loose popular term; of course I know enough geology to know it is not the correct term. But I was not exactly concerned with a problem of geology. I was concerned with what some prefer to call criminology and I prefer to call crime. If that extraordinary erection was the corpse, who and where was the criminal? Who was the assassin who had set up the dead man to be at once obvious and invisible; and had, so to speak, hidden him in the broad daylight? Well, you have all heard the arguments about the stream and the scrap of paper, and up to a point I have entirely followed them. Everyone agreed that the secret was somewhere hidden on that bare hill where there was nothing but the glass-roofed studio and the lonely hermitage; and suspicion centred entirely upon the hermitage. For the man in the studio was a fervent friend of the man who was murdered, and one of those rejoicing most heartily at what he had discovered. But perhaps you have rather forgotten what he really had discovered. His real discovery was of the sort that infuriates friends and not foes. The man who has the courage to say he is wrong has to face the worst hatred; the hatred of those who think he is right. Boyg’s final discovery, like our final discovery, rather reverses the relations of those two little houses on the hill. Even if Father Hyacinth had been a fiend instead of a saint, he had no possible motive to prevent his enemy from offering him a public apology. It was a believer in Boygism who struck down Boyg. It was his follower who became his pursuer and persecutor; who at last turned in unreasonable fury upon him. It was Paradou the sculptor who snatched up a chisel and struck his philosophical teacher, at the end of some furious argument about the theory which the artist had valued only as a wild inspiration, being quite indifferent to the tame question of its truth. I don’t think he meant to kill Boyg; I doubt whether anybody could possibly prove he did; and even if he did, I rather doubt whether he can be held responsible for that or for anything else. But though Paradou may be a lunatic, he is also a logician; and there is one more interesting logical step in this story.

“I met Paradou myself this morning; owing to my good luck in putting my leg through his skylight. He also has his theories and controversies; and this morning he was very controversial. As I say, I had a long argument with him, all about realism in sculpture. I know many people will tell you that nothing has ever come out of arguments; and I tell you that everything has always come out of arguments; and anyhow, if you want to know what has come out of this, you’ve got to understand this argument. Everybody was always jeering at poor old Paradou as a sculptor and saying he turned men into monsters; that his figures had flat heads like snakes, or sagging knees like elephants, or humps like human camels. And he was always shouting back at them, ‘Yes, and eyes like blindworms when it comes to seeing your own hideous selves! This is what you do look like, you ugly brutes! These are the crooked, clownish, lumpish attitudes in which you really do stand; only a lot of lying fashionable portrait-painters have persuaded you that you look like Graces and Greek gods.’ He was at it hammer and tongs with me this morning; and I dare say I was lucky he didn’t finish that argument with a chisel. But anyhow the argument wasn’t started then. It all came upon him with a rush, when he had committed his real though probably unintentional killing. As he stood staring at the corpse, there arose out of the very abyss of his disappointment the vision of a strange vengeance or reparation. He began to see the vast outlines of a joke as gigantic as the Great Pyramid. He would set up that grim granite jest in the market-place, to grin forever at his critics and detractors. The dead man himself had just been explaining to him the process by which the water of that place would rapidly petrify organic substances. The notes and documents of his proof lay scattered about the studio where he had fallen. His own proof should be applied to his own body, for a purpose of which he had never dreamed. If the sculptor simply lifted the body in the ungainly attitude in which it had actually fallen, if he froze or fixed it in the stream, or set it upon the public pedestal, it would be the very thing about which he had so bitterly debated; a real man, in a real posture, held up to the scorn of men.

“That insane genius promised himself a lonely laughter, and a secret superiority to all his enemies, in hearing the critics discuss it as the crazy creation of a crank sculptor. He looked forward to the groups that would stand before the statue, and prove the anatomy to be wrong, and clearly demonstrate the posture to be impossible. And he would listen, and laugh inwardly like a true lunatic, knowing that they were proving the utter unreality of a real man. That being his dream, he had no difficulty in carrying it out. He had no need to hide the body; he had it brought down from his studio, not secretly but publicly and even pompously, the finished work of a great sculptor escorted by the devotees of a great discoverer. But indeed, Boyg was something more than a man who made a discovery; and there is, in comparison, a sort of cant even in the talk of a man having the courage to discover it. What other man would have had the courage to undiscover it? That monument that hides a strange sin, hides a much stranger and much rarer virtue. Yes, you do well to hail it as a true scientific trophy. That is the statue of Boyg the Undiscoverer. That cold chimera of the rock is not only the abortion born of some horrible chemical change; it is the outcome of a nobler experiment, which attests for ever the honour and probity of science. You may well praise him as a man of science; for he, at least, in an affair of science, acted like a man. You may well set up statues to him as a hero of science; for he was more of a hero in being wrong than he could ever have been in being right. And though the stars have seen rise, from the soils and substance of our native star, no such monstrosity as that man of stone, heaven may look down with more wonder at the man than at the monster. And we of all schools and of all philosophies can pass it like a funeral procession taking leave of an illustrious grave and, like soldiers, salute it as we pass.”

VI

Fece un gesto con la mano, e proseguì, con qualcosa di più simile all’eccitazione:

«Il signor Bertrand ha ragione nel dire che la verità non è in un pozzo, ma su una torre. È su un piedistallo. L’avete guardata ogni giorno. Ecco il corpo di Boyg!»

E indicò la statua nel mezzo della piazza del mercato, cinta d’alloro e deturpata da sassi, come era stata così a lungo in quella quieta piazza, e guardava dall’alto tanti passanti casuali.

«Qualcuno ha suggerito poco fa,» proseguì, spaziando con lo sguardo su un mare di volti a bocca aperta, «che io portassi la statua nel taschino del panciotto. Ebbene, non la porto tutta, naturalmente, ma questa ne è una parte,» e trasse fuori un piccolo oggetto simile a un bastoncino di gesso grigio; «questo è un dito di essa staccato da un sasso. L’ho raccolto presso il piedistallo. Se qualcuno che se ne intende vorrà guardarlo, converrà che la consistenza è precisamente la stessa dei fossili riconosciuti nel museo geologico.»

Lo tese loro, ma l’intera folla rimase immobile come se anch’essa fosse una folla di uomini tramutati in pietra.

«Forse pensate che io sia pazzo,» disse amabilmente. «Ebbene, non sono esattamente pazzo, ma ho una strana sorta di simpatia per i pazzi. So gestirli meglio della maggior parte della gente, perché riesco in qualche modo a immaginare il modo selvaggio in cui lavorano le loro menti. Capisco l’uomo che ha fatto questo. So che l’ha fatto, perché ho parlato con lui per metà mattinata; ed è esattamente il genere di cosa che farebbe. E quando per la prima volta sentii parlare di conchiglie fossili e insetti pietrificati e così via, feci la stessa cosa che tali uomini fanno sempre. La esagerai in una sorta di visione stravagante, una visione di foreste fossili, e bestiame fossile, ed elefanti e cammelli fossili; e così, naturalmente, giunsi a un altro pensiero: una coincidenza che in qualche modo mi gelò. Un Uomo Fossile.»

«Fu allora che alzai lo sguardo alla statua; e capii che non era una statua. Era un cadavere pietrificato dalla curiosa chimica del vostro strano torrente montano. La chiamo fossile come termine popolare approssimativo; naturalmente conosco abbastanza geologia da sapere che non è il termine corretto. Ma non mi occupavo propriamente di un problema di geologia. Mi occupavo di ciò che alcuni preferiscono chiamare criminologia e io preferisco chiamare crimine. Se quella straordinaria costruzione era il cadavere, chi e dov’era il criminale? Chi era l’assassino che aveva innalzato il morto perché fosse a un tempo evidente e invisibile; e lo aveva, per così dire, nascosto in piena luce del giorno? Ebbene, avete tutti udito gli argomenti sul torrente e sul pezzo di carta, e fino a un certo punto li ho seguiti interamente. Tutti concordavano che il segreto fosse nascosto da qualche parte su quella nuda collina dove non c’era nulla se non lo studio dal tetto di vetro e il solitario eremitaggio; e il sospetto si concentrava interamente sull’eremitaggio. Poiché l’uomo nello studio era un fervente amico dell’uomo che fu assassinato, e uno di quelli che più cordialmente si rallegravano di ciò che egli aveva scoperto. Ma forse avete piuttosto dimenticato ciò che egli aveva davvero scoperto. La sua vera scoperta era del genere che fa infuriare gli amici e non i nemici. L’uomo che ha il coraggio di dire che ha torto deve affrontare l’odio peggiore; l’odio di coloro che pensano che abbia ragione. La scoperta finale di Boyg, come la nostra scoperta finale, capovolge piuttosto i rapporti di quelle due casette sulla collina. Anche se padre Giacinto fosse stato un demonio invece che un santo, non aveva alcun movente possibile per impedire al suo nemico di offrirgli pubbliche scuse. Fu un credente nel boygismo ad abbattere Boyg. Fu il suo seguace a diventarne l’inseguitore e il persecutore; che alla fine gli si rivoltò contro in furia irragionevole. Fu Paradou lo scultore ad afferrare uno scalpello e colpire il suo maestro di filosofia, al termine di qualche furiosa discussione sulla teoria che l’artista aveva apprezzato solo come selvaggia ispirazione, essendo del tutto indifferente alla scialba questione della sua verità. Non credo che intendesse uccidere Boyg; dubito che qualcuno possa in alcun modo provare che lo fece; e anche se lo fece, dubito piuttosto che possa esserne ritenuto responsabile, di ciò o di qualsiasi altra cosa. Ma benché Paradou possa essere un lunatico, è anche un logico; e c’è un ulteriore passo logico interessante in questa storia.»

«Ho incontrato io stesso Paradou stamattina; grazie alla mia fortuna nel cacciare la gamba attraverso il suo lucernario. Anche lui ha le sue teorie e controversie; e stamattina era molto polemico. Come dico, ebbi una lunga discussione con lui, tutta sul realismo nella scultura. So che molti vi diranno che nulla è mai venuto fuori dalle discussioni; e io vi dico che tutto è sempre venuto fuori dalle discussioni; e comunque, se volete sapere che cosa è venuto fuori da questa, dovete comprendere questa discussione. Tutti sbeffeggiavano sempre il povero vecchio Paradou come scultore e dicevano che tramutava gli uomini in mostri; che le sue figure avevano teste piatte come serpenti, o ginocchia cascanti come elefanti, o gobbe come cammelli umani. E lui rimandava sempre loro le grida: ‘Sì, e occhi come orbettini quando si tratta di vedere i vostri stessi orridi sé! Questo è l’aspetto che avete davvero, brutti bruti! Questi sono gli atteggiamenti storti, buffoneschi, goffi in cui realmente state; solo che un mucchio di menzogneri ritrattisti alla moda vi ha persuaso che assomigliate a Grazie e a dèi greci.’ Stamattina era all’attacco con me a spada tratta; e oso dire che fui fortunato che non concludesse quella discussione con uno scalpello. Ma comunque la discussione non cominciò allora. Tutto gli piombò addosso in un impeto, quando ebbe commesso il suo vero benché probabilmente involontario omicidio. Mentre stava fissando il cadavere, sorse dall’abisso stesso della sua delusione la visione di una strana vendetta o riparazione. Cominciò a vedere i vasti contorni di uno scherzo gigantesco come la Grande Piramide. Avrebbe eretto quella tetra beffa di granito nella piazza del mercato, a ghignare per sempre ai suoi critici e detrattori. Il morto stesso gli aveva appena spiegato il procedimento con cui l’acqua di quel luogo avrebbe rapidamente pietrificato le sostanze organiche. Gli appunti e i documenti della sua prova giacevano sparsi per lo studio dove egli era caduto. La sua stessa prova doveva essere applicata al suo stesso corpo, per uno scopo che egli non aveva mai sognato. Se lo scultore semplicemente sollevava il corpo nella sgraziata posizione in cui era effettivamente caduto, se lo congelava o fissava nel torrente, o lo poneva sul pubblico piedistallo, sarebbe stata proprio la cosa su cui aveva così aspramente dibattuto; un uomo reale, in una posa reale, esposto allo scherno degli uomini.»

«Quel genio folle si prometteva una solitaria risata, e una segreta superiorità su tutti i suoi nemici, nell’udire i critici discuterne come la folle creazione di uno scultore stravagante. Pregustava i capannelli che sarebbero rimasti davanti alla statua, e avrebbero provato che l’anatomia era sbagliata, e chiaramente dimostrato che la posa era impossibile. Ed egli avrebbe ascoltato, e riso dentro di sé come un vero lunatico, sapendo che stavano dimostrando l’assoluta irrealtà di un uomo reale. Essendo questo il suo sogno, non ebbe difficoltà a metterlo in atto. Non aveva bisogno di nascondere il corpo; lo fece portare giù dal suo studio, non di nascosto ma pubblicamente e persino pomposamente, l’opera compiuta di un grande scultore scortata dai devoti di un grande scopritore. Ma in verità, Boyg era qualcosa di più di un uomo che fece una scoperta; e c’è, in confronto, una sorta di ipocrisia perfino nel parlare di un uomo che ha il coraggio di scoprirla. Quale altro uomo avrebbe avuto il coraggio di dis-scoprirla? Quel monumento che nasconde uno strano peccato, nasconde una virtù ben più strana e ben più rara. Sì, fate bene a salutarlo come un vero trofeo scientifico. Quella è la statua di Boyg il Dis-scopritore. Quella fredda chimera di roccia non è soltanto l’aborto nato da qualche orribile mutamento chimico; è il frutto di un esperimento più nobile, che attesta per sempre l’onore e la probità della scienza. Potete ben lodarlo come uomo di scienza; poiché egli, almeno, in una faccenda di scienza, agì da uomo. Potete ben erigergli statue come eroe della scienza; poiché fu più eroe nell’avere torto di quanto avrebbe mai potuto esserlo nell’avere ragione. E benché le stelle abbiano visto sorgere, dai suoli e dalla sostanza della nostra stella natale, nessuna mostruosità simile a quell’uomo di pietra, il cielo può guardare dall’alto con più meraviglia all’uomo che al mostro. E noi di tutte le scuole e di tutte le filosofie possiamo passarvi accanto come un corteo funebre che prende congedo da un’illustre tomba e, come soldati, salutarlo al nostro passaggio.»

VI

THE HOUSE OF THE PEACOCK

IT happened that some years ago, down a sunny and empty street of suburban gardens and villas, a young man was walking; a young man in rather outlandish clothes and almost prehistoric hat; for he was newly come to London from a very remote and sleepy small town in the West Country. There was nothing else especially remarkable about him, except what happened to him; which was certainly remarkable, not to say regrettable. There cannonaded into him an elderly gentleman running down the street, breathless, bare-headed, and in festive evening dress, who immediately caught him by the lapels of his antiquated coat and asked him to dinner. It would be truer to say that he implored him to come to dinner. As the bewildered provincial did not know him, or anybody else for miles round, the situation seemed singular; but the provincial, vaguely supposing it to be a hospitable ceremony peculiar to London town, where the streets were paved with gold, finally consented. He went to the hospitable mansion, which was only a few doors down the road; and he was never seen again in the land of the living.

None of the ordinary explanations would seem to have fitted the case. The men were total strangers. The man from the country carried no papers or valuables or money worth mentioning; and certainly did not look in the least as if he were likely to carry them. And, on the other hand, his host had the outward marks of almost offensive prosperity; a gleam of satin in the linings of his clothes, a glitter of opalescent stones in his studs and cuff-links, a cigar that seemed to perfume the street. The guest could hardly have been decoyed with the ordinary motive of robbery, or of any form of fraud. And indeed the motive with which he really was decoyed was one of the queerest in the world; so queer that a man might have a hundred guesses before he hit on it.

It is doubtful whether anyone ever would have hit on it, but for the extra touch of eccentricity which happened to distinguish another young man, who happened to be walking down the same street an hour or two afterwards on the same sunny afternoon. It must not be supposed that he brought to the problem any of the dexterities of a detective; least of all of the usual detective of romance, who solves problems by the closest attention to everything and the promptest presence of mind. It would be truer to say of this man that he sometimes solved them by absence of mind. Some solitary object he was staring at would become fixed in his mind like a talisman, and he stared at it till it began to speak to him like an oracle. On other occasions a stone, a starfish, or a canary had thus riveted his eye and seemed to reply to his questions. On the present occasion his text was less trivial from an ordinary standpoint; but it was some time before his own standpoint could be ordinary. He had drifted along the sunny suburban road, drinking in a certain drowsy pleasure in seeing where the laburnum made lines of gold in the green, or patches of white or red thorn glowed in the growing shadows; for the sunshine was taking on the tinge of sunset. But for the most part he was contented to see the green semicircles of lawn repeat themselves like a pattern of green moons; for he was not one to whom repetition was merely monotony. Only in looking over a particular gate at a particular lawn, he became pleasantly conscious, or half-conscious, of a new note of colour in the greenness; a much bluer green, which seemed to change to vivid blue, as the object at which he was gazing moved sharply, turning a small head on a long neck. It was a peacock. But he had thought of a thousand things before he thought of the obvious thing. The burning blue of the plumage on the neck had reminded him of blue fire, and blue fire had reminded him of some dark fantasy about blue devils, before he had fully realized even that it was a peacock he was staring at. And the tail, that trailing tapestry of eyes, had led his wandering wits away to those dark but divine monsters of the Apocalypse whose eyes were multiplied like their wings, before he had remembered that a peacock, even in a more practical sense, was an odd thing to see in so ordinary a setting.

For Gabriel Gale, as the young man was called, was a minor poet, but something of a major painter; and, in his capacity of celebrity and lover of landscape, he had been invited often enough into those larger landscape gardens of the landed aristocracy, where peacocks as pets are not uncommon. The very thought of such country seats brought back to him the memory of one of them, decayed and neglected indeed compared with most, but having for him the almost unbearable beauty of a lost paradise. He saw standing for a moment in such glimmering grass a figure statelier than any peacock, the colours of whose dress burned blue with a vivid sadness that might indeed be symbolized by a blue devil. But when intellectual fancies and emotional regrets had alike rolled away, there remained a more rational perplexity. After all, a peacock was an unusual thing to see in the front garden of a small suburban villa. It seemed somehow too big for the place, as if it would knock down the little trees when it spread its tail. It was like visiting a maiden lady in lodgings, who might be expected to keep a bird, and finding that she kept an ostrich.

These more practical reflections in their turn had passed through his mind before he came to the most practical reflection of all… that for the last five minutes he had been leaning on somebody else’s front gate with all the air of repose and finality of a rustic leaning on his own stile. Comment might have been aroused if anybody had come out; but nobody came out. On the contrary, somebody went in. As the peacock again turned its tiny crown and trailed away towards the house, the poet calmly opened the garden gate and stepped across the grass, following in the track of the bird. The darkening twilight of that garden was enriched by masses of red may, and altogether the villa had the look of being cruder and more cockney than the grounds in which it stood. Indeed, it was either actually unfinished or undergoing some new alterations and repairs, for a ladder leaned against the wall apparently to allow workmen to reach an upper storey and, moreover, there were marks of bushes having been cut or cleared away, perhaps for some new plan of building. Red bunches thus gathered from the bushes were stacked on the window-sill of the upper storey, and a few petals seemed to have dropped on the ladder, indicating that they had been carried up by that route. All these things the gaze of Gale gradually took in, as he stood with a rather bewildered air at the foot of the ladder. He felt the contrast between the unfinished house with the ladder and the rich garden with the peacock. It was almost as if the aristocratic birds and bushes had been there before the bourgeois bricks and mortar.

LA CASA DEL PAVONE

Accadde che alcuni anni fa, lungo una via soleggiata e deserta di giardini e villini suburbani, camminasse un giovane; un giovane in abiti piuttosto strani e con un cappello quasi preistorico; poiché era giunto da poco a Londra da una cittadina molto remota e sonnolenta del West Country. Non vi era null’altro di particolarmente notevole in lui, tranne ciò che gli accadde; che fu certamente notevole, per non dire deplorevole. Gli piombò addosso, cannoneggiando, un anziano signore che correva giù per la strada, senza fiato, a capo scoperto, e in abito da sera festoso, il quale immediatamente lo afferrò per i risvolti del suo cappotto antiquato e lo invitò a cena. Sarebbe più esatto dire che lo implorò di venire a cena. Poiché lo sconcertato provinciale non conosceva né lui né alcun altro per miglia all’intorno, la situazione pareva singolare; ma il provinciale, supponendo vagamente che fosse una cerimonia ospitale peculiare della città di Londra, dove le strade erano lastricate d’oro, alla fine acconsentì. Andò all’ospitale dimora, che era solo a pochi usci più giù per la strada; e non fu mai più visto nella terra dei vivi.

Nessuna delle spiegazioni ordinarie sembrerebbe adattarsi al caso. I due uomini erano perfetti sconosciuti. L’uomo di campagna non portava con sé documenti od oggetti di valore o denaro degni di menzione; e certamente non aveva affatto l’aria di uno che potesse portarne. E, d’altra parte, il suo ospite recava i segni esteriori di una prosperità quasi offensiva; un luccichio di raso nelle fodere degli abiti, uno scintillio di pietre opalescenti nei bottoni della camicia e nei gemelli, un sigaro che pareva profumare la strada. L’ospite difficilmente avrebbe potuto essere adescato con l’ordinario movente della rapina, o di qualsiasi forma di frode. E in verità il movente con cui fu realmente adescato era uno dei più bizzarri al mondo; così bizzarro che un uomo avrebbe potuto fare cento congetture prima di indovinarlo.

È dubbio che qualcuno l’avrebbe mai indovinato, se non fosse stato per il tocco supplementare di eccentricità che si dava il caso distinguesse un altro giovane, che si dava il caso stesse camminando lungo la stessa via un’ora o due dopo, nello stesso soleggiato pomeriggio. Non si deve supporre che egli portasse al problema alcuna delle destrezze di un investigatore; men che meno del solito investigatore da romanzo, che risolve i problemi con la più stretta attenzione a ogni cosa e la più pronta presenza di spirito. Sarebbe più esatto dire di quest’uomo che talvolta li risolveva per assenza di spirito. Qualche oggetto solitario che stava fissando gli si fissava nella mente come un talismano, e lo fissava finché quello cominciava a parlargli come un oracolo. In altre occasioni una pietra, una stella marina, o un canarino avevano così inchiodato il suo occhio e parevano rispondere alle sue domande. Nella presente occasione il suo testo era meno banale da un punto di vista ordinario; ma passò un certo tempo prima che il suo stesso punto di vista potesse essere ordinario. Si era lasciato andare alla deriva lungo la soleggiata strada suburbana, assaporando un certo sonnolento piacere nel vedere dove il maggiociondolo tracciava linee d’oro nel verde, o chiazze di biancospino bianco o rosso ardevano nelle ombre crescenti; poiché il sole andava assumendo la tinta del tramonto. Ma per la maggior parte si contentava di vedere i verdi semicerchi di prato ripetersi come un motivo di lune verdi; poiché non era uomo per cui la ripetizione fosse mera monotonia. Solo, guardando oltre un certo cancello un certo prato, divenne piacevolmente cosciente, o semi-cosciente, di una nuova nota di colore nel verde; un verde assai più azzurro, che pareva mutare in azzurro vivido, quando l’oggetto che stava fissando si mosse bruscamente, girando una piccola testa su un lungo collo. Era un pavone. Ma aveva pensato a mille cose prima di pensare alla cosa ovvia. L’azzurro ardente del piumaggio sul collo gli aveva ricordato il fuoco azzurro, e il fuoco azzurro gli aveva ricordato qualche cupa fantasia sui diavoli azzurri, prima ancora che avesse pienamente compreso che era un pavone quello che stava fissando. E la coda, quella strascicante tappezzeria di occhi, aveva condotto il suo vagante ingegno lontano, verso quei cupi ma divini mostri dell’Apocalisse i cui occhi erano moltiplicati come le loro ali, prima che si fosse ricordato che un pavone, anche in un senso più pratico, era una cosa strana da vedere in un ambiente così ordinario.

Poiché Gabriel Gale, come si chiamava il giovane, era un poeta minore, ma qualcosa come un pittore maggiore; e, nella sua veste di celebrità e di amante del paesaggio, era stato invitato abbastanza spesso in quei più vasti giardini paesaggistici dell’aristocrazia terriera, dove i pavoni come animali domestici non sono rari. Il solo pensiero di simili residenze di campagna gli riportò il ricordo di una di esse, in verità decaduta e trascurata rispetto alla maggior parte, ma che aveva per lui la bellezza quasi insopportabile di un paradiso perduto. Vide, ergersi per un istante in tale luccicante erba, una figura più maestosa di qualsiasi pavone, i colori del cui abito ardevano d’azzurro con una vivida tristezza che poteva davvero essere simboleggiata da un diavolo azzurro. Ma quando le fantasie intellettuali e i rimpianti emotivi si furono del pari dileguati, rimase una perplessità più razionale. Dopotutto, un pavone era una cosa insolita da vedere nel giardino anteriore di un piccolo villino suburbano. Sembrava in qualche modo troppo grande per il luogo, come se dovesse abbattere gli alberelli quando spiegava la coda. Era come far visita a una zitella in un affittacamere, dalla quale ci si potrebbe aspettare che tenga un uccellino, e scoprire che teneva uno struzzo.

Queste riflessioni più pratiche, a loro volta, gli erano passate per la mente prima che giungesse alla più pratica riflessione di tutte… che negli ultimi cinque minuti si era appoggiato al cancello anteriore di qualcun altro con tutta l’aria di riposo e di finalità di un campagnolo appoggiato alla propria staccionata. Sarebbero potuti sorgere commenti se qualcuno fosse uscito; ma nessuno uscì. Al contrario, qualcuno entrò. Quando il pavone di nuovo girò la sua minuscola corona e si allontanò strascicando verso la casa, il poeta aprì con calma il cancello del giardino e attraversò l’erba, seguendo la traccia dell’uccello. Il crepuscolo oscurantesi di quel giardino era arricchito da masse di biancospino rosso, e nel complesso il villino aveva l’aspetto di essere più rozzo e più cockney del terreno in cui sorgeva. In verità, era o effettivamente incompiuto o in corso di qualche nuova modifica e riparazione, poiché una scala a pioli era appoggiata al muro, apparentemente per permettere agli operai di raggiungere un piano superiore e, per di più, vi erano segni di cespugli tagliati o sradicati, forse per qualche nuovo progetto edilizio. Rossi mazzi così raccolti dai cespugli erano ammucchiati sul davanzale della finestra del piano superiore, e alcuni petali parevano essere caduti sulla scala, indicando che erano stati portati su per quella via. Tutte queste cose lo sguardo di Gale gradualmente colse, mentre stava con aria piuttosto smarrita ai piedi della scala. Sentiva il contrasto tra la casa incompiuta con la scala e il ricco giardino con il pavone. Era quasi come se gli aristocratici uccelli e cespugli fossero stati là prima dei borghesi mattoni e calce.

He had a curious innocence which often appeared as impudence. Like other human beings, he was quite capable of doing wrong knowingly and being ashamed of it. But so long as he meant no wrong, it never even occurred to him that there could be anything to be ashamed of. For him burglary meant stealing; and he might have strolled, so to speak, down the chimney into a king’s bed-chamber, so long as he had no intent to steal. The invitation of the leaning ladder and the open window was something almost too obvious even to be called an adventure. He began to mount the ladder as if he were going up the front steps of an hotel. But when he came to the upper rungs he seemed to stop a moment, frowned at something; and, accelerating his ascent, slipped quickly over the window-sill into the room.

The twilight of the room seemed like darkness after the golden glare of the evening sunlight, and it was a second or two before the glimmer of light reflected from a round mirror opposite enabled him to make out the main features of the interior. The room itself seemed dusty and even defaced; the dark blue-green hangings, of a peacock pattern, as if carrying out the same scheme as the living decoration of the garden, were themselves, nevertheless, a background of dead colours; and, peering into the dusty mirror, he saw it was cracked. Nevertheless, the neglected room was evidently partly redecorated for a new festivity, for a long table was elaborately laid out for a dinner-party. By every plate was a group of quaint and varied glasses for the wines of every course; and the blue vases on the table and the mantelpiece were filled with the same red and white blooms from the garden which he had seen on the window-sill. Nevertheless, there were odd things about the dinner-table, and his first thought was that it had already been the scene of some struggle or stampede, in which the salt-cellar had been knocked over and, for all he knew, the looking-glass broken. Then he looked at the knives on the table, and a light was beginning to dawn in his eyes, when the door opened and a sturdy, grey-haired man came rapidly into the room.

And at that he came back to common sense like a man flung from a flying ship into the cold shock of the sea. He remembered suddenly where he was and how he had got there. It was characteristic of him that, though he saw a practical point belatedly… and, perhaps, too late… when he did see it he saw it lucidly in all its logical ramifications. Nobody would believe in any legitimate reason for entering a strange house by the window instead of knocking at the door. Also, as it happened, he had no legitimate reason… or none that he could explain without a lecture on poetry and philosophy. He even realized the ugly detail that he was at that very moment fidgeting with the knives on the table, and that a large number of them were silver. After an instant of hesitation, he put down the knife and politely removed his hat.

“Well,” he said at last, with inconsequent irony, “I shouldn’t shoot if I were you; but I suppose you’ll send for the police.”

The new-comer, who was apparently the householder, was also fixed for the moment in a somewhat baffling attitude. When first he opened the door he had given a convulsive start, had opened his mouth as if to shout, and shut it again grimly, as if he was not even going to speak. He was a man with a strong, shrewd face, spoilt by painfully prominent eyes which gave him a look of perpetual protest. But by some accident it was not at these accusing eyes that the sleepy blue eyes of the poetical burglar were directed. The trick by which his rambling eye was so often riveted by some trivial object led him to look no higher at the moment than the stud in the old gentleman’s shirt-front, which was an unusually large and luminous opal. Having uttered his highly perverse and even suicidal remark, the poet smiled as if in relief, and waited for the other to speak.

“Are you a burglar?” asked the owner of the house at last.

“To make a clean breast of it, I’m not,” answered Gale. “But if you ask me what else I am, I really don’t know.”

The other man came rapidly round the table towards him, and made a motion as if offering his hand, or even both his hands.

“Of course you’re a burglar,” he said; “but it doesn’t matter. Won’t you stay to dinner?”

Then, after a sort of agitated pause, he repeated:

“Come, you really must stay to dinner; there’s a place laid for you.”

Gale looked gravely along the table and counted the number of places laid for dinner. The number disposed of any final doubts he might have had about the meaning of this string of eccentricities. He knew why the host wore opals, and why the mirror had been deliberately broken and why the salt was spilt, and why the knives shone on the table in a pattern of crosses, and why the eccentric householder brought may into the house, and why he decorated it with peacocks’ feathers, and even had a peacock in the garden. He realized that the ladder did not stand where it did to permit people to climb by it to the window, but merely that they might pass under it on entering the door. And he realized that he was the thirteenth man to sit down at that banquet.

“Dinner is just coming in,” said the man with the opals with eager amiability. “I’m just going down to fetch the other fellows up. You’ll find them very interesting company, I assure you; no nonsense about them; shrewd, sharp fellows out against all this superstitious nonsense. My name is Crundle. Humphrey Crundle, and I’m pretty well known in the business world. I suppose I must introduce myself in order to introduce you to the others.”

Gale was vaguely conscious that his absent-minded eye had often rested on the name of Crundle, associated with some soap or lozenge or fountain-pen; and, little as he knew of such things, he could imagine that such an advertiser, though he lived in a little villa, could afford peacocks and five different kinds of wine. But other thoughts were already oppressing his imagination, and he looked in a somewhat sombre fashion out on to the garden of the peacock, where the sunset light was dying on the lawn.

Aveva una curiosa innocenza che spesso appariva come sfrontatezza. Come gli altri esseri umani, era del tutto capace di fare il male consapevolmente e di vergognarsene. Ma finché non intendeva fare il male, non gli passava nemmeno per la mente che potesse esserci qualcosa di cui vergognarsi. Per lui il furto con scasso significava rubare; e avrebbe potuto passeggiare, per così dire, giù per il camino nella camera da letto di un re, purché non avesse alcuna intenzione di rubare. L’invito della scala appoggiata e della finestra aperta era qualcosa di quasi troppo ovvio persino per essere chiamato un’avventura. Cominciò a salire la scala come se stesse salendo i gradini d’ingresso di un albergo. Ma quando giunse ai pioli superiori parve fermarsi un momento, aggrottò le ciglia davanti a qualcosa; e, accelerando la salita, scivolò rapidamente oltre il davanzale della finestra dentro la stanza.

Il crepuscolo della stanza sembrava oscurità dopo il dorato bagliore della luce serale, e passò un secondo o due prima che il barlume di luce riflesso da un tondo specchio di fronte gli permettesse di distinguere le caratteristiche principali dell’interno. La stanza stessa sembrava polverosa e persino sciupata; i drappeggi blu-verde scuro, di un motivo a pavone, come a proseguire lo stesso schema della decorazione vivente del giardino, erano essi stessi, nondimeno, uno sfondo di colori spenti; e, scrutando nel polveroso specchio, vide che era incrinato. Nondimeno, la stanza trascurata era evidentemente in parte ridecorata per una nuova festività, poiché una lunga tavola era elaboratamente apparecchiata per un pranzo. Presso ogni piatto c’era un gruppo di bicchieri bizzarri e vari per i vini di ogni portata; e i vasi azzurri sulla tavola e sulla mensola del camino erano riempiti degli stessi fiori rossi e bianchi del giardino che aveva visto sul davanzale della finestra. Nondimeno, vi erano cose strane sulla tavola da pranzo, e il suo primo pensiero fu che essa fosse già stata teatro di qualche colluttazione o fuga precipitosa, in cui la saliera era stata rovesciata e, per quel che ne sapeva, lo specchio infranto. Poi guardò i coltelli sulla tavola, e una luce cominciava ad albeggiare nei suoi occhi, quando la porta si aprì e un uomo robusto, dai capelli grigi, entrò rapidamente nella stanza.

E a quello ritornò al buon senso come un uomo scagliato da una nave in volo nel freddo urto del mare. Ricordò all’improvviso dove si trovava e come ci era arrivato. Era caratteristico di lui che, benché vedesse un punto pratico in ritardo… e, forse, troppo tardi… quando lo vedeva lo vedeva lucidamente in tutte le sue ramificazioni logiche. Nessuno avrebbe creduto a una qualsiasi ragione legittima per entrare in una casa estranea dalla finestra invece di bussare alla porta. Inoltre, guarda caso, non aveva alcuna ragione legittima… o nessuna che potesse spiegare senza una conferenza sulla poesia e la filosofia. Si rese conto persino del brutto particolare che in quello stesso momento stava trafficando con i coltelli sulla tavola, e che un gran numero di essi erano d’argento. Dopo un istante d’esitazione, posò il coltello e si tolse educatamente il cappello.

«Ebbene,» disse infine, con incongrua ironia, «non sparerei, se fossi in voi; ma suppongo che manderete a chiamare la polizia.»

Il nuovo venuto, che era apparentemente il padrone di casa, era anch’egli fissato per il momento in un atteggiamento alquanto sconcertante. Quando dapprima aprì la porta aveva avuto un sussulto convulso, aveva aperto la bocca come per gridare, e l’aveva richiusa arcigno, come se non intendesse nemmeno parlare. Era un uomo dal volto forte e sagace, guastato da occhi dolorosamente sporgenti che gli davano un’aria di perpetua protesta. Ma per qualche caso non fu verso questi occhi accusatori che si diressero i sonnolenti occhi azzurri del poetico ladro. Il trucco per cui il suo occhio vagante era così spesso inchiodato da qualche oggetto banale lo indusse a non guardare più in alto, in quel momento, del bottone sullo sparato della camicia del vecchio signore, che era un opale insolitamente grande e luminoso. Avendo pronunciato la sua osservazione altamente perversa e persino suicida, il poeta sorrise come in sollievo, e attese che l’altro parlasse.

«Siete un ladro?» chiese infine il padrone della casa.

«A dirla tutta, non lo sono,» rispose Gale. «Ma se mi chiedete che cos’altro io sia, davvero non lo so.»

L’altro uomo girò rapidamente attorno alla tavola verso di lui, e fece un gesto come per offrire la mano, o persino entrambe le mani.

«Certo che siete un ladro,» disse; «ma non importa. Non volete fermarvi a cena?»

Poi, dopo una sorta di pausa agitata, ripeté:

«Su, dovete proprio fermarvi a cena; c’è un posto apparecchiato per voi.»

Gale guardò gravemente lungo la tavola e contò il numero dei posti apparecchiati per la cena. Il numero fugò ogni dubbio finale che potesse aver avuto sul significato di questa sfilza di eccentricità. Sapeva perché l’ospite portava opali, e perché lo specchio era stato deliberatamente rotto, e perché il sale era rovesciato, e perché i coltelli splendevano sulla tavola in un motivo di croci, e perché l’eccentrico padrone di casa aveva portato biancospino nella casa, e perché la decorava con penne di pavone, e aveva persino un pavone nel giardino. Comprese che la scala non stava dov’era per permettere alla gente di arrampicarvisi fino alla finestra, ma solo perché potessero passarvi sotto entrando dalla porta. E comprese che egli era il tredicesimo uomo a sedersi a quel banchetto.

«La cena sta appena arrivando,» disse l’uomo dagli opali con ansiosa affabilità. «Vado giù a chiamare gli altri compagni. Li troverete una compagnia molto interessante, ve l’assicuro; nessuna sciocchezza in loro; individui accorti, acuti, schierati contro tutte queste sciocchezze superstiziose. Mi chiamo Crundle. Humphrey Crundle, e sono piuttosto ben noto nel mondo degli affari. Suppongo di dovermi presentare per potervi presentare agli altri.»

Gale era vagamente cosciente che il suo occhio distratto si era spesso posato sul nome di Crundle, associato a qualche sapone o pastiglia o penna stilografica; e, per poco che sapesse di tali cose, poteva immaginare che un simile inserzionista, benché vivesse in un piccolo villino, potesse permettersi pavoni e cinque diverse qualità di vino. Ma altri pensieri opprimevano già la sua immaginazione, ed egli guardò in modo piuttosto cupo fuori verso il giardino del pavone, dove la luce del tramonto moriva sul prato.

The members of the Thirteen Club, as they came trooping up the stairs and settled into their seats, seemed for the most part to be at least quite ready for their dinner. Most of them had a rather rollicking attitude, which in some took the more vivid form of vulgarity. A few who were quite young, clerks and possibly dependents, had foolish and nervous faces, as if they were doing something a little too daring. Two of them stood out from the company by the singularity of being obviously gentlemen. One of these was a little dried-up old gentleman, with a face that was a labyrinth of wrinkles, on the top of which was perched a very obvious chestnut wig. He was introduced as Sir Daniel Creed, and was apparently a barrister of note in his day, though the day seemed a little distant. The other, who was merely presented as Mr. Noel, was more interesting: a tall, stalwart man of dubious age but indubitable intelligence, even in the first glance of his eyes. His features were handsome in a large and craggy fashion; but the hollows of the temples and the sunken framework of the eyes gave him a look of fatigue that was mental and not physical. The poet’s impalpable intuitions told him that the appearance was not misleading… that the man who had thus come into this odd society had been in many odd societies, probably seeking for something more odd than he had ever found.

It was some time, however, before any of these guests could show anything of their quality, owing to the abounding liveliness and loquacity of their host. Mr. Crundle may, perhaps, have thought it appropriate in a President of a Thirteen Club to talk thirteen to the dozen. Anyhow, for some time he talked for the whole company, rolling about in his chair in radiant satisfaction, like a man who has at last realized his wildest vision of happiness. Indeed, there was something almost abnormal about the gaiety and vivacity of this grey-haired merchant; it seemed to be fed from a fountain within him that owed nothing to the circumstances of festivity. The remarks with which he pelted everybody were often rather random, but always uproariously entertaining to himself. Gale could only dimly speculate on what he would be like when he had emptied all the five glasses in front of him. But, indeed, he was destined to show himself in more than one strange aspect before those glasses were emptied.

It was after one of his repeated assertions that these stories about bad luck were all the same sort of damned nonsense that the keen though quavering voice of old Creed got a word in edgeways.

“There, my dear Crundle, I would make a distinction,” he said in a legal manner. “They are all damned nonsense, but they are not all the same sort of damned nonsense. As a point of historical research, they seem to me to differ in rather a singular fashion. The origin of some is obvious, of others highly obscure. The fancies about Friday and thirteen have probably a religious basis; but what, for instance, can be the basis of objecting to peacocks’ feathers?”

Crundle was replying with a joyful roar that it was some infernal rubbish or other, when Gale, who had quickly slipped into a seat beside the man called Noel, interposed in a conversational manner.

“I fancy I can throw a little light on that. I believe I found a trace of it in looking at some old illuminated manuscripts of the ninth or tenth century. There is a very curious design, in a stiff Byzantine style, representing the two armies preparing for the war in heaven. But St. Michael is handing out spears to the good angels; while Satan is elaborately arming the rebel angels with peacocks’ feathers.”

Noel turned his hollow eyes sharply in the direction of the speaker. “That is really interesting,” he said; “you mean it was all that old theological notion of the wickedness of pride?”

“Well, there’s a whole peacock in the garden for you to pluck,” cried Crundle in his boisterous manner, “if any of you want to go out fighting angels.”

“They are not very effective weapons,” said Gale gravely, “and I fancy that is what the artist in the Dark Ages must have meant. There seems to me to be something that rather hits the wrong imperialism in the right place, about the contrast in the weapon; the fact that the right side was arming for a real and therefore doubtful battle, while the wrong side was already, so to speak, handing out the palms of victory. You cannot fight anybody with the palms of victory.”

Crundle showed a curious restlessness as this conversation proceeded; and a much less radiant restlessness than before. His prominent eyes shot questions at the speakers, his mouth worked, and his fingers began to drum on the table. At last he broke out:

“What’s all this mean, eh? One would think you were half on the side of all the stuff and nonsense… all of you talking about it with those long faces.”

“Pardon me,” interposed the old lawyer, with a relish for repeating the logical point, “my suggestion was very simple, I spoke of causes, not of justifications. I say the cause of the peacock legend is less apparent than that of the bad luck of Friday.”

“Do you think Friday unlucky?” demanded Crundle, like one at bay, turning his starting eyes on the poet.

“No, I think Friday lucky,” answered Gale. “All Christian people, whatever their lighter superstitions, have always thought Friday lucky. Otherwise they would have talked about Bad Friday instead of Good Friday.”

“Oh, Christians be…” began Mr. Crundle with sudden violence; but he was stopped by something in the voice of Noel that seemed to make his violence a vain splutter.

“I’m not a Christian,” said Noel in a voice like stone. “It is useless now to wonder whether I wish I were. But it seems to me that Mr. Gale’s point is a perfectly fair one; that such a religion might well actually contradict such a superstition. And it seems to me also that the truth might be applied yet further. If I believed in God, I should not believe in a God who made happiness depend on knocking over a salt-cellar or seeing a peacock’s feather. Whatever Christianity teaches, I presume it does not teach that the Creator is crazy.”

I membri del Club dei Tredici, mentre salivano in fila le scale e si sistemavano ai loro posti, sembravano per la maggior parte almeno del tutto pronti per la cena. La maggior parte di essi aveva un atteggiamento piuttosto gioviale, che in alcuni assumeva la forma più vivida della volgarità. Alcuni, che erano assai giovani, impiegati e forse dipendenti, avevano volti sciocchi e nervosi, come se stessero facendo qualcosa di un po’ troppo ardito. Due di loro spiccavano dalla compagnia per la singolarità di essere manifestamente gentiluomini. Uno di questi era un piccolo, rinsecchito vecchio signore, con un volto che era un labirinto di rughe, in cima al quale era appollaiata una assai evidente parrucca castana. Fu presentato come Sir Daniel Creed, ed era apparentemente un avvocato di fama ai suoi tempi, benché quei tempi sembrassero un po’ lontani. L’altro, che fu semplicemente presentato come il signor Noel, era più interessante: un uomo alto, robusto, di età dubbia ma d’indubitabile intelligenza, persino al primo sguardo dei suoi occhi. I suoi lineamenti erano belli, in un modo ampio e rude; ma gli incavi delle tempie e la struttura infossata degli occhi gli davano un’aria di stanchezza che era mentale e non fisica. Le impalpabili intuizioni del poeta gli dissero che l’apparenza non era ingannevole… che l’uomo che era così entrato in quella strana società era stato in molte strane società, probabilmente cercando qualcosa di più strano di quanto avesse mai trovato.

Passò tuttavia un certo tempo prima che alcuno di questi ospiti potesse mostrare qualcosa della propria qualità, a causa della traboccante vivacità e loquacità del loro ospite. Il signor Crundle può forse aver ritenuto opportuno, in un Presidente di un Club dei Tredici, parlare a tredici alla dozzina. Comunque sia, per un certo tempo parlò per l’intera compagnia, rotolandosi sulla sedia in raggiante soddisfazione, come un uomo che ha finalmente realizzato la sua più sfrenata visione di felicità. In verità, c’era qualcosa di quasi anormale nella gaiezza e vivacità di questo mercante dai capelli grigi; sembrava alimentata da una fonte dentro di lui che nulla doveva alle circostanze della festa. Le osservazioni con cui bersagliava tutti erano spesso piuttosto casuali, ma sempre fragorosamente divertenti per lui stesso. Gale poteva solo vagamente speculare su come sarebbe stato quando avesse vuotato tutti e cinque i bicchieri davanti a sé. Ma, in verità, era destinato a mostrarsi in più di un aspetto strano prima che quei bicchieri fossero vuotati.

Fu dopo una delle sue ripetute affermazioni che quelle storie sulla mala sorte erano tutte lo stesso genere di maledette sciocchezze che la voce acuta benché tremula del vecchio Creed riuscì a inserire una parola di traverso.

«Ecco, mio caro Crundle, io farei una distinzione,» disse in maniera legale. «Sono tutte maledette sciocchezze, ma non sono tutte lo stesso genere di maledette sciocchezze. Come punto di ricerca storica, mi sembrano differire in modo piuttosto singolare. L’origine di alcune è ovvia, di altre altamente oscura. Le fantasie sul venerdì e sul tredici hanno probabilmente una base religiosa; ma quale, per esempio, può essere la base dell’obiezione alle penne di pavone?»

Crundle stava rispondendo con un gioioso ruggito che era qualche infernale sciocchezza o altro, quando Gale, che si era rapidamente insinuato in un posto accanto all’uomo chiamato Noel, s’intromise in tono conversevole.

«Credo di poter gettare un po’ di luce su questo. Credo di averne trovato traccia guardando alcuni antichi manoscritti miniati del nono o decimo secolo. C’è un disegno assai curioso, in un rigido stile bizantino, che rappresenta i due eserciti che si preparano alla guerra nel cielo. Ma san Michele sta distribuendo lance ai buoni angeli; mentre Satana sta elaboratamente armando gli angeli ribelli con penne di pavone.»

Noel volse bruscamente gli occhi infossati nella direzione di chi parlava. «Questo è davvero interessante,» disse; «intendete dire che era tutta quella vecchia nozione teologica della malvagità dell’orgoglio?»

«Ebbene, c’è un intero pavone nel giardino da spennare,» gridò Crundle nel suo modo turbolento, «se qualcuno di voi vuole andare a combattere gli angeli.»

«Non sono armi molto efficaci,» disse Gale gravemente, «e immagino che sia questo ciò che l’artista dei Secoli Bui deve aver inteso. Mi pare che ci sia qualcosa che colpisce piuttosto nel punto giusto l’imperialismo sbagliato, riguardo al contrasto nell’arma; il fatto che la parte giusta si armava per una battaglia reale e perciò incerta, mentre la parte sbagliata stava già, per così dire, distribuendo le palme della vittoria. Non si può combattere alcuno con le palme della vittoria.»

Crundle mostrò una curiosa irrequietezza mentre questa conversazione procedeva; e un’irrequietezza assai meno raggiante di prima. I suoi occhi sporgenti scagliavano domande verso gli oratori, la sua bocca si contorceva, e le sue dita cominciarono a tamburellare sulla tavola. Alla fine proruppe:

«Che cosa significa tutto questo, eh? Si direbbe che siate mezzi dalla parte di tutte quelle fandonie e sciocchezze… tutti voi a parlarne con quelle facce lunghe.»

«Perdonatemi,» s’intromise il vecchio avvocato, con il gusto di ripetere il punto logico, «il mio suggerimento era assai semplice, parlavo di cause, non di giustificazioni. Dico che la causa della leggenda del pavone è meno evidente di quella della sfortuna del venerdì.»

«Ritenete il venerdì sfortunato?» incalzò Crundle, come uno alle strette, volgendo i suoi occhi sbarrati sul poeta.

«No, ritengo il venerdì fortunato,» rispose Gale. «Tutti i cristiani, quali che siano le loro più lievi superstizioni, hanno sempre ritenuto il venerdì fortunato. Altrimenti avrebbero parlato di Venerdì Cattivo invece che di Venerdì Santo.»

«Oh, i cristiani siano…» cominciò il signor Crundle con improvvisa violenza; ma fu fermato da qualcosa nella voce di Noel che parve rendere la sua violenza un vano borbottio.

«Non sono un cristiano,» disse Noel con voce come di pietra. «È inutile ora domandarsi se vorrei esserlo. Ma mi sembra che il punto del signor Gale sia perfettamente giusto; che una simile religione potrebbe ben contraddire una simile superstizione. E mi sembra anche che la verità possa essere applicata ancor più oltre. Se credessi in Dio, non crederei in un Dio che facesse dipendere la felicità dal rovesciare una saliera o dal vedere una penna di pavone. Qualunque cosa insegni il cristianesimo, presumo che non insegni che il Creatore è pazzo.»

Gale nodded thoughtfully, as if in partial assent, and answered rather as if he were addressing Noel alone, in the middle of a wilderness.

“In that sense of course you are right,” he said. “But I think there is a little more to be said on the matter. I think most people, as I say, have really taken these superstitions rather lightly, perhaps more lightly than you do. And I think they mostly referred to lighter evils, in that world of rough-and-tumble circumstance which they thought of rather as connected with elves than with angels. But, after all, Christians admit more than one kind even of angels; and some of them are fallen angels… like the people with the peacocks’ feathers. Now I have a feeling that they might really have to do with peacocks’ feathers. Just as lower spirits play low tricks with tables and tambourines, they might play low tricks with knives and salt-cellars. Certainly our souls do not depend on a broken mirror; but there’s nothing an unclean spirit would like better than to make us think so. Whether he succeeds depends on the spirit in which we break it. And I can imagine that breaking the mirror in a certain moral spirit… as, for instance, a spirit of scorn and inhumanity… might bring one in touch with lower influences. I can imagine that a cloud might rest on the house where such a thing was done, and evil spirits cluster about it.”

There was a rather singular silence, a silence that seemed to the speaker to brood and settle even upon the gardens and streets beyond; no one spoke; the silence was punctuated at last by the thin and piercing cry of a peacock.

Then it was that Humphrey Crundle startled them all with his first outbreak. He had been staring at the speaker with bursting eyeballs; at length, when he found his voice, it was so thick and hoarse that the first note of it was hardly more human than the bird’s. He stuttered and stammered with rage, and it was only towards the end of the first sentence that he was even intelligible. ”… Coming here and jabbering blasted drivel and drinking my burgundy like a lord; talking rubbish against our whole… against the very first… why don’t you pull our noses as well? Why the hell don’t you pull our noses?”

“Come, come,” cut in Noel in his trenchant tones, “you are getting unreasonable, Crundle; I understand that this gentleman came here at your own invitation, to take the place of one of our friends.”

“I understood Arthur Bailey sent a wire that he was detained,” observed the more precise lawyer, “and that Mr. Gale had kindly taken his place.”

“Yes,” snapped Crundle, “I asked him to sit down as thirteenth man, and that alone smashes your superstition; for considering how he came in, he’s jolly lucky to get a good dinner.”

Noel again interposed with a remonstrance; but Gale had already risen to his feet. He did not seem annoyed, but rather distrait; and he addressed himself to Creed and Noel, neglecting his excitable host.

“I am much obliged to you gentlemen,” he said, “but I think I shall be going. It is quite true that I was invited to the dinner, but hardly to the house… well, I can’t help having a curious notion about it.”

He played for a moment with the crossed knives on the table; then he said, looking out into the garden…

“The truth is I’m not sure the thirteenth man has been so lucky after all.”

“What do you mean?” cried his host sharply. “Dare you say you haven’t had a good dinner? You’re not going to pretend you’ve been poisoned.”

Gale was still looking out of the window; and he said without moving:

“I am the fourteenth man, and I did not pass under the ladder.”

It was characteristic of old Creed that he could only follow the logical argument in a literal fashion, and missed the symbol and the spiritual atmosphere which the subtler Noel had already understood. For the first time the old lawyer in the red wig really looked a little senile. He blinked at Gale and said querulously: “You don’t mean to say you’d bother to keep all those rules about ladders and things?”

“I’m not sure I should bother to keep them,” replied Gale, “but I am sure I shouldn’t bother to break them. One seems to break so many other things when one begins to break them. There are many things that are almost as easy to break as a looking-glass.” He paused a moment, and added as if in apology: “There are the Ten Commandments, you know.”

There was another abrupt accidental silence, and Noel found himself listening with irrational rigidity for the ugly voice of the beautiful bird outside. But it did not speak. He had the sub-conscious and still more meaningless fancy that it had been strangled in the dark.

Then the poet for the first time turned his face to Humphrey Crundle, and looked straight into the goggling eyes as he spoke.

“Peacocks may not be unlucky; but pride is unlucky. And it was in insolence and contempt that you set yourself to trample on the traditions or the follies of humbler men; so that you have come to trample on a holier thing at last. Cracked mirrors may not be unlucky; but cracked brains are unlucky; and you have gone mad on reason and common sense till you are a criminal lunatic this day. And red may need not be unlucky; but there is something that is more red and much more unlucky; and there are spots of it on the window-sill and on the steps of the ladder. I took it for the red petals myself.”

For the first time in his restless hour of hospitality the man at the head of the table sat perfectly still. Something in his sudden and stony immobility seemed to startle all the rest into life, and they all sprang to their feet with a confused clamour of protest and question. Noel alone seemed to keep his head under the shock.

“Mr. Gale,” he said firmly, “you have said too much or too little. A good many people would say you were talking a lot of lurid nonsense, but I have a notion that what you talk is not always such nonsense as it sounds. But if you leave it as it is, it will be simply unsupported slander. In plain words you say there has been a crime here. Whom do you accuse; or are we all to accuse each other?”

Gale annuì pensieroso, come in parziale assenso, e rispose piuttosto come se si rivolgesse a Noel solo, in mezzo a un deserto.

«In quel senso naturalmente avete ragione,» disse. «Ma penso che ci sia un poco di più da dire sulla questione. Penso che la maggior parte della gente, come dico, abbia davvero preso queste superstizioni piuttosto alla leggera, forse più alla leggera di voi. E penso che per lo più si riferissero a mali più lievi, in quel mondo di circostanze alla rinfusa che essi immaginavano piuttosto connesse con gli elfi che con gli angeli. Ma, dopotutto, i cristiani ammettono più di un genere persino di angeli; e alcuni di essi sono angeli caduti… come la gente con le penne di pavone. Ora, ho la sensazione che essi potrebbero davvero avere a che fare con le penne di pavone. Proprio come gli spiriti inferiori giocano bassi scherzi con tavoli e tamburelli, potrebbero giocare bassi scherzi con coltelli e saliere. Certamente le nostre anime non dipendono da uno specchio rotto; ma non c’è nulla che uno spirito immondo desidererebbe di più che farci pensare così. Se ci riesca dipende dallo spirito con cui lo rompiamo. E posso immaginare che rompere lo specchio in un certo spirito morale… come, per esempio, uno spirito di scherno e disumanità… potrebbe mettere in contatto con influenze inferiori. Posso immaginare che una nube possa posarsi sulla casa dove una tal cosa fosse fatta, e spiriti maligni raggrupparvisi intorno.»

Vi fu un silenzio piuttosto singolare, un silenzio che parve a chi parlava rimuginare e posarsi persino sui giardini e sulle vie al di là; nessuno parlò; il silenzio fu punteggiato alla fine dal sottile e penetrante grido di un pavone.

Fu allora che Humphrey Crundle li fece trasalire tutti con il suo primo scoppio. Aveva fissato chi parlava con i bulbi oculari sporgenti; alla fine, quando trovò la voce, era così densa e roca che la sua prima nota fu appena più umana di quella dell’uccello. Balbettò e tartagliò di rabbia, e fu solo verso la fine della prima frase che divenne persino intelligibile. «… Venire qui a blaterare maledette scempiaggini e bere il mio borgogna come un signore; parlare fandonie contro tutto il nostro… contro il primissimo… perché non ci tirate il naso pure? Perché diavolo non ci tirate il naso?»

«Su, su,» tagliò corto Noel con i suoi toni incisivi, «state diventando irragionevole, Crundle; capisco che questo signore è venuto qui su vostro stesso invito, a prendere il posto di uno dei nostri amici.»

«Ho inteso che Arthur Bailey ha mandato un telegramma dicendo che era trattenuto,» osservò il più preciso avvocato, «e che il signor Gale aveva gentilmente preso il suo posto.»

«Sì,» scattò Crundle, «gli ho chiesto di sedersi come tredicesimo uomo, e questo solo manda in frantumi la vostra superstizione; poiché, considerato come è entrato, è maledettamente fortunato ad avere una buona cena.»

Noel s’intromise di nuovo con una rimostranza; ma Gale si era già alzato in piedi. Non sembrava seccato, ma piuttosto distratto; e si rivolse a Creed e Noel, trascurando il suo eccitabile ospite.

«Vi sono molto obbligato, signori,» disse, «ma penso che me ne andrò. È del tutto vero che fui invitato alla cena, ma difficilmente alla casa… ebbene, non posso fare a meno di avere una curiosa idea al riguardo.»

Giocherellò per un momento con i coltelli incrociati sulla tavola; poi disse, guardando fuori verso il giardino…

«La verità è che non sono sicuro che il tredicesimo uomo sia stato poi così fortunato, dopotutto.»

«Che cosa intendete?» gridò bruscamente il suo ospite. «Osate dire che non avete avuto una buona cena? Non pretenderete di essere stato avvelenato.»

Gale stava ancora guardando fuori dalla finestra; e disse senza muoversi:

«Io sono il quattordicesimo uomo, e non sono passato sotto la scala.»

Era caratteristico del vecchio Creed che potesse seguire l’argomento logico solo in modo letterale, e mancasse il simbolo e l’atmosfera spirituale che il più sottile Noel aveva già compreso. Per la prima volta il vecchio avvocato dalla parrucca rossa sembrò davvero un po’ rimbambito. Sbatté le palpebre verso Gale e disse querulo: «Non vorrete dire che vi disturbereste a osservare tutte quelle regole sulle scale e simili cose?»

«Non sono sicuro che mi disturberei a osservarle,» rispose Gale, «ma sono sicuro che non mi disturberei a infrangerle. Sembra che si infrangano tante altre cose quando si comincia a infrangerle. Ci sono molte cose che sono quasi altrettanto facili da rompere quanto uno specchio.» Fece una pausa un momento, e aggiunse come per scusarsi: «Ci sono i Dieci Comandamenti, sapete.»

Vi fu un altro brusco, accidentale silenzio, e Noel si ritrovò ad ascoltare con irrazionale rigidità la brutta voce del bell’uccello là fuori. Ma esso non parlò. Ebbe la subcosciente e ancor più insensata fantasia che fosse stato strangolato nel buio.

Poi il poeta per la prima volta volse il volto verso Humphrey Crundle, e guardò dritto negli occhi sporgenti mentre parlava.

«I pavoni possono non essere sfortunati; ma l’orgoglio è sfortunato. E fu con insolenza e disprezzo che vi accingeste a calpestare le tradizioni o le follie di uomini più umili; cosicché siete giunto infine a calpestare una cosa più santa. Gli specchi incrinati possono non essere sfortunati; ma i cervelli incrinati sono sfortunati; e vi siete impazzito di ragione e buon senso finché non siete, in questo giorno, un lunatico criminale. E il biancospino rosso può non essere sfortunato; ma c’è qualcosa che è più rosso e assai più sfortunato; e ce ne sono macchie sul davanzale della finestra e sui gradini della scala. Io stesso le presi per i petali rossi.»

Per la prima volta nella sua irrequieta ora di ospitalità l’uomo a capotavola sedette perfettamente immobile. Qualcosa nella sua improvvisa e pietrosa immobilità parve destare alla vita tutti gli altri, ed essi balzarono tutti in piedi con un confuso clamore di protesta e domande. Noel solo parve mantenere la testa a posto sotto lo shock.

«Signor Gale,» disse con fermezza, «avete detto troppo o troppo poco. Molta gente direbbe che state dicendo un mucchio di truci sciocchezze, ma ho l’idea che ciò che dite non sia sempre una sciocchezza tale quale suona. Ma se lo lasciate così com’è, sarà semplicemente calunnia non suffragata. In parole povere, dite che qui c’è stato un delitto. Chi accusate; o dobbiamo accusarci l’un l’altro?»

“I do not accuse you,” answered Gale, “and the proof is that if it must be verified, you had better verify it yourself. Sir Daniel Creed is a lawyer, and may very properly accompany you. Go and look yourselves at the marks on the ladder. You will find some more in the grass round the foot of the ladder, leading away in the direction of that big dust-bin in the corner of the garden. I think it would be as well if you looked in the dust-bin. It may be the end of your search.”

Old Crundle continued to sit like a graven image; and something told them that his goggle eyes were now, as it were, turned inward. He was revolving some enigma of his own which seemed to baffle and blind him, so that the whole disordered scene broke about him unnoticed. Creed and Noel left the room and could be heard running down the stairs and talking in low voices under the window. Then their voices died away in the direction of the dust-bin; and still the old man sat with the opal on his breast, as still as an Eastern idol with its sacred gem. Then he seemed suddenly to dilate and glow as if a monstrous lamp had been lit within him. He sprang to his feet, brandished his goblet as if for a toast, and brought it down again on the table so that the glass was shattered and the wine spilt in a blood-red star.

“I’ve got it; I was right,” he cried in a sort of exaltation. “I was right; I was right after all. Don’t you see, all of you? Don’t you see? That man out there isn’t the thirteenth man. He’s really the fourteenth man, and the fellow here is the fifteenth. Arthur Bailey’s the real thirteenth man, and he’s all right, isn’t he? He didn’t actually come to the house, but why should that matter? Why the devil should that matter? He’s the thirteenth member of the club, isn’t he? There can’t be any more thirteenth men afterwards, can there? I don’t care a curse about all the rest; I don’t care what you call me or what you do to me. I say all this fool’s poetical stuff goes to pot, because the man in the dust-bin isn’t number thirteen at all, and I challenge anybody…”

Noel and Creed were standing in the room with very grim faces as the man at the head of the table gabbled on with a frightful volubility. When he gasped and choked for a moment with the rush of his own words, Noel said in a voice of steel:

“I am sorry to say that you were right.”

“Most horrible thing I ever saw in my life,” said old Creed, and sat down suddenly, lifting a liqueur glass of cognac with a shaking hand.

“The body of an unfortunate man with his throat cut has been concealed in the dust-bin,” went on Noel in a lifeless voice. “By the mark on his clothes, which are curiously old-fashioned for a comparatively young man, he seems to have come from Stoke-under-Ham.”

“What was he like?” asked Gale with sudden animation.

Noel looked at him curiously. “He was very long and lank, with hair like tow,” he replied. “What do you mean?”

“I guessed he must have looked a little like me,” answered the poet.

Crundle had collapsed in his chair again after his last and strangest outbreak, and made no attempt at explanation or escape. His mouth was still moving, but he was talking to himself; proving with ever-increasing lucidity and repetition that the man he had murdered had no right to the number thirteen. Sir Daniel Creed seemed for the moment almost as stricken and silent a figure; but it was he who broke the silence. Lifting his bowed head with its grotesque wig, he said suddenly: “This blood cries for justice. I am an old man, but I would avenge it on my own brother.”

“I am just going to telephone for the police,” said Noel quietly. “I can see no cause for hesitation.” His large figure and features looked notably less languid, and his hollow eyes had a glow in them.

A big florid man named Bull, of the commercial traveller type, who had been very noisy and convivial at the other end of the table, now began to take the stage like the foreman of a jury. It was rather typical of him that he waited for more educated people to lead, and then proceeded to lead them.

“No cause for hesitation. No case for sentimentalism,” he trumpeted as healthily as an elephant. “Painful business, of course; old member of the club and all that. But I say I’m no sentimentalist; and whoever did this deserves hanging. Well, there’s no doubt of who did it. We heard him practically confess a minute ago, when these gentlemen were out of the room.”

“Always thought he was a bad lot,” said one of the clerks; possibly a clerk with an old score of his own.

“I am all for acting at once,” said Noel. “Where is the telephone?”

Gabriel Gale stepped in front of the collapsed figure in the chair, and turned his face to the advancing crowd.

“Stop,” he cried, “let me say a word.”

“Well, what is it?” asked Noel steadily.

“I do not like boasting,” said the poet, “but unfortunately the argument can only take that form. I am a sentimentalist, as Mr. Bull would say; I am by trade a sentimentalist; a mere scribbler of sentimental songs. You are all very hard-headed, rational, sensible people who laugh at superstitions; you are practical men, and men of common sense. But your common sense didn’t discover the dead body. You would have smoked your practical cigars and drunk your practical grog and gone home all over smiles, leaving it to rot in the dust-bin. You never found out where your rational sceptical road can lead a man, as it has led that poor gibbering idiot in the chair. A sentimentalist, a dabbler in moonshine, found out that for you; perhaps because he was a sentimentalist. For I really have a streak in me of the moonshine that leads such men astray; that is why I can follow them. And now the lucky sentimentalist must say a word for the unlucky one.”

“Do you mean for the criminal?” asked Creed in his sharp but shaky voice.

«Non accuso voi,» rispose Gale, «e la prova è che, se dev’essere verificata, fareste meglio a verificarla voi stesso. Sir Daniel Creed è un avvocato, e può assai propriamente accompagnarvi. Andate a guardare voi stessi i segni sulla scala. Ne troverete altri nell’erba attorno ai piedi della scala, che conducono via in direzione di quel grande bidone dell’immondizia nell’angolo del giardino. Penso che sarebbe bene se guardaste nel bidone dell’immondizia. Potrebbe essere la fine della vostra ricerca.»

Il vecchio Crundle continuò a sedere come un’immagine scolpita; e qualcosa disse loro che i suoi occhi sporgenti erano ora, per così dire, rivolti all’interno. Stava rimuginando qualche enigma tutto suo che pareva confonderlo e accecarlo, cosicché l’intera scena scomposta si svolgeva attorno a lui inosservata. Creed e Noel lasciarono la stanza e li si udì scendere di corsa le scale e parlare a bassa voce sotto la finestra. Poi le loro voci si spensero in direzione del bidone dell’immondizia; e ancora il vecchio sedeva con l’opale sul petto, immobile come un idolo orientale con la sua sacra gemma. Poi parve improvvisamente dilatarsi e ardere come se una mostruosa lampada gli fosse stata accesa dentro. Balzò in piedi, brandì il calice come per un brindisi, e lo abbatté di nuovo sulla tavola sì che il vetro si frantumò e il vino si sparse in una stella rossa come il sangue.

«Ci sono; avevo ragione,» gridò in una sorta di esaltazione. «Avevo ragione; avevo ragione dopotutto. Non capite, tutti voi? Non capite? Quell’uomo là fuori non è il tredicesimo uomo. È in realtà il quattordicesimo uomo, e il tale qui è il quindicesimo. Arthur Bailey è il vero tredicesimo uomo, e lui sta bene, no? Non è effettivamente venuto alla casa, ma perché questo dovrebbe importare? Perché diavolo dovrebbe importare? È il tredicesimo membro del club, no? Non ci possono essere altri tredicesimi uomini in seguito, giusto? Non m’importa un accidente di tutto il resto; non m’importa come mi chiamate o che cosa mi fate. Dico che tutta questa poetica robaccia da sciocco va a monte, perché l’uomo nel bidone dell’immondizia non è affatto il numero tredici, e sfido chiunque…»

Noel e Creed stavano in piedi nella stanza con volti assai truci mentre l’uomo a capotavola cianciava con una spaventosa volubilità. Quando ebbe un attimo il fiato mozzo e soffocò nell’impeto delle proprie parole, Noel disse con voce d’acciaio:

«Mi dispiace dire che avevate ragione.»

«La cosa più orribile che abbia mai visto in vita mia,» disse il vecchio Creed, e si sedette all’improvviso, sollevando un bicchierino da liquore di cognac con mano tremante.

«Il corpo di un uomo sventurato con la gola tagliata è stato nascosto nel bidone dell’immondizia,» proseguì Noel con voce spenta. «Dal marchio sui suoi abiti, che sono curiosamente all’antica per un uomo relativamente giovane, sembra provenire da Stoke-under-Ham.»

«Com’era?» chiese Gale con improvvisa animazione.

Noel lo guardò con curiosità. «Era assai lungo e allampanato, con capelli come stoppa,» rispose. «Che cosa intendete?»

«Ho immaginato che dovesse assomigliarmi un poco,» rispose il poeta.

Crundle era di nuovo crollato sulla sedia dopo il suo ultimo e più strano scoppio, e non fece alcun tentativo di spiegazione o di fuga. La sua bocca si muoveva ancora, ma parlava a se stesso; dimostrando con lucidità e ripetizione sempre crescenti che l’uomo che aveva assassinato non aveva diritto al numero tredici. Sir Daniel Creed sembrò per il momento una figura quasi altrettanto colpita e silenziosa; ma fu lui a rompere il silenzio. Sollevando il capo chino con la sua grottesca parrucca, disse all’improvviso: «Questo sangue grida giustizia. Sono un uomo vecchio, ma lo vendicherei sul mio stesso fratello.»

«Sto giusto per telefonare alla polizia,» disse Noel con calma. «Non vedo motivo di esitazione.» La sua grande figura e i suoi lineamenti apparivano notevolmente meno languidi, e i suoi occhi infossati avevano in sé un bagliore.

Un uomo grande e florido di nome Bull, del tipo del commesso viaggiatore, che era stato assai rumoroso e conviviale all’altro capo della tavola, cominciò ora a prendere la scena come il capo dei giurati. Era piuttosto tipico di lui aspettare che persone più istruite prendessero l’iniziativa, e poi procedere a guidarle.

«Nessun motivo di esitazione. Nessun caso per il sentimentalismo,» barrì sano come un elefante. «Faccenda dolorosa, naturalmente; vecchio membro del club e tutto quanto. Ma dico che non sono un sentimentale; e chiunque abbia fatto questo merita l’impiccagione. Ebbene, non c’è alcun dubbio su chi l’abbia fatto. L’abbiamo sentito praticamente confessare un minuto fa, quando questi signori erano fuori dalla stanza.»

«Ho sempre pensato che fosse un poco di buono,» disse uno degli impiegati; forse un impiegato con un vecchio conto suo da regolare.

«Sono tutto per agire subito,» disse Noel. «Dov’è il telefono?»

Gabriel Gale si fece avanti davanti alla figura crollata sulla sedia, e volse il volto verso la folla che avanzava.

«Fermatevi,» gridò, «lasciate che dica una parola.»

«Ebbene, di che si tratta?» chiese Noel con fermezza.

«Non mi piace vantarmi,» disse il poeta, «ma purtroppo l’argomento può assumere solo quella forma. Sono un sentimentale, come direbbe il signor Bull; sono di mestiere un sentimentale; un mero scribacchino di sentimentali canzoni. Voi siete tutte persone assai pratiche, razionali, assennate, che ridete delle superstizioni; siete uomini pratici, e uomini di buon senso. Ma il vostro buon senso non ha scoperto il corpo morto. Avreste fumato i vostri pratici sigari e bevuto il vostro pratico grog e sareste andati a casa tutti sorridenti, lasciandolo a marcire nel bidone dell’immondizia. Voi non avete mai scoperto dove la vostra razionale scettica strada può condurre un uomo, come ha condotto quel povero idiota farfugliante sulla sedia. Un sentimentale, un dilettante di chiaro di luna, l’ha scoperto per voi; forse perché era un sentimentale. Poiché ho davvero in me una vena del chiaro di luna che svia tali uomini; ecco perché posso seguirli. E ora il fortunato sentimentale deve dire una parola per lo sfortunato.»

«Intendete per il criminale?» chiese Creed con la sua voce acuta ma tremante.

“Yes,” replied Gale. “I discovered him and I defend him.”

“So you defend murderers, do you?” demanded Bull.

“Some murderers,” answered Gale calmly. “This one was a rather unique sort of murderer. In fact, I am far from certain that he was a murderer at all. It may have been an accident. It may have been a sort of mechanical action, almost like an automaton.”

The light of long-lost cross-examinations gleamed in Creed’s aged eyes, and his sharp voice no longer shook.

“You mean to say,” he said, “that Crundle read a telegram from Bailey, realized there was a vacant place, went out into the street and talked to a total stranger, brought him in here, went somewhere to fetch a razor or a carving knife, cut his guest’s throat, carried the corpse down the ladder, and carefully covered it with the lid of the dust-bin. And he did all that by accident, or by an automatic gesture.”

“Very well put, Sir Daniel,” answered Gale; “and now let me put you a question, in the same logical style. In your legal language, what about motive? You say he could not assassinate a total stranger by accident; but why should he assassinate a total stranger on purpose? On what purpose? It not only served no end he had in view; it actually ruined everything he had in view. Why in the world should he want to make a gap in his Thirteen Club dinner? Why in the name of wonder should he want to make the thirteenth man a monument of disaster? His own crime was at the expense of his own creed, or cranky doubt, denial, or whatever you call it.”

“That is true,” assented Noel, “and what is the meaning of it all?”

“I do believe,” replied Gale, “that nobody can tell you but myself; and I will tell you why. Do you realize how full life is of awkward attitudes? You get them in snapshots; I suppose the new ugly schools of art are trying to snap them; figures leaning stiffly, standing on one leg, resting unconscious hands on incongruous objects. This is a tragedy of awkward positions. I can understand it because I myself, this very afternoon, was in the devil of an awkward position.

“I had climbed in through that window simply out of silly curiosity, and I was standing at the table like a fool, picking up the knives and putting them straight. I still had my hat on, but when Crundle came in I made a movement to take it off with the knife still in my hand; then I corrected myself and put the knife down first. You know those tiny confused movements one sometimes has. Now Crundle, when he first saw me, and before he saw me close, staggered as if I had been God Almighty or the hangman waiting in his dining-room; and I think I know why. I am awkward and tall and tow-haired, too; and I was standing there dark against the daylight where the other had stood. It must have seemed as if the corpse had lifted the dust-bin lid and crawled back up the ladder, and taken up his station like a ghost. But meanwhile my own little irresolute gesture with the half-lifted knife had told me something. It had told me what really happened.

“When that poor rustic from Somerset strayed into this room he was what perhaps none of us can be, he was shocked. He came of some old rural type that really did believe in such omens. He hastily picked up one of the crossed knives and was putting it straight when he caught sight of the heap of spilt salt. Possibly he thought his own gesture had spilt it. At that crucial instant Crundle entered the room, adding to the confusion of his guest and hastening his hurried attempt at doing two things at once. The unhappy guest, with fingers still clutched round the knife-handle, made a grab at the salt and tried to toss some of it over his shoulder. In the same flash the fanatic in the doorway had leapt upon him like a panther and was tugging at the lifted wrist.

“For all Crundle’s crazy universe was rocking in that instant. You, who talk of superstitions, have you realized that this house is a house of spells? Don’t you know it is chock full of charms and magic rites, only they are all done backwards, as the witches said the Lord’s Prayer? Can you imagine how a witch would feel if two words of the prayer came right by accident? Crundle saw that this clown from the country was reversing all the spells of his own black art. If salt was once thrown over the shoulder, all the great work might yet be undone. With all the strength he could call from hell he hung on to the hand with the knife, caring only to prevent a few grains of silver dust from drifting to the floor.

“God alone knows if it was an accident. I do not say it as an idle phrase. That single split second, and all that was really hidden in it, lies open before God as large and luminous as an eternity. But I am a man and he is a man; and I will not give a man to the gallows, if I can help it, for what may have been accidental or automatic or even a sort of self-defence. But if any of you will take a knife and a pinch of salt and put yourself in the poor fellow’s position, you will see exactly what happened. All I say is this; that at no time and in no way, perhaps, could things have been precisely in that posture, and the edge of a knife been so near to a man’s throat without intention on either side, except by this one particular tangle of trivialities that has led up to this one particular tragedy. It is strange to think of that poor yokel setting out from his far-off Somerset village, with his little handful of local legends, and this brooding eccentric and scoffer rushing out of this villa full of rage of his hobby, and their ending locked in this one unique and ungainly grapple, a wrestle between two superstitions.”

The figure at the head of the table had been almost forgotten like a piece of furniture; but Noel turned his eyes slowly towards it, and said with a cold patience as if to an exasperating child: “Is all this true?”

«Sì», rispose Gale. «Io l’ho scoperto e io lo difendo».

«Così difendete gli assassini, eh?» incalzò Bull.

«Certi assassini», rispose Gale con calma. «Questo era un genere di assassino piuttosto singolare. Anzi, sono lungi dall’esser certo che fosse affatto un assassino. Può essere stato un incidente. Può essere stata una sorta di azione meccanica, quasi come d’un automa».

La luce di lontani controinterrogatori balenò negli occhi invecchiati di Creed, e la sua voce tagliente non tremava più.

«Volete dire», disse, «che Crundle lesse un telegramma di Bailey, si accorse che c’era un posto vacante, uscì in strada e parlò con un perfetto sconosciuto, lo portò qui dentro, andò da qualche parte a prendere un rasoio o un coltello da trinciare, tagliò la gola al suo ospite, trascinò il cadavere giù per la scala a pioli e lo coprì con cura con il coperchio della pattumiera. E fece tutto questo per caso, o con un gesto automatico».

«Detto molto bene, Sir Daniel», rispose Gale; «e ora lasciate che vi ponga una domanda, nello stesso stile logico. Nel vostro linguaggio giuridico, che ne è del movente? Dite che non poteva assassinare un perfetto sconosciuto per caso; ma perché mai dovrebbe assassinare un perfetto sconosciuto di proposito? A quale scopo? Non solo non serviva ad alcun fine che avesse in vista; anzi rovinava tutto ciò che aveva in vista. Perché al mondo dovrebbe voler fare un vuoto alla cena del suo Club dei Tredici? Perché in nome della meraviglia dovrebbe lui voler fare del tredicesimo uomo un monumento del disastro? Il suo stesso delitto andava a scapito del suo stesso credo, o stralunato dubbio, negazione, o come volete chiamarlo».

«Questo è vero», assentì Noel, «e qual è il significato di tutto ciò?»

«Credo davvero», rispose Gale, «che nessuno possa dirvelo se non io stesso; e vi dirò perché. Vi rendete conto di quanto la vita sia piena di atteggiamenti goffi? Li si coglie nelle istantanee; suppongo che le nuove brutte scuole d’arte cerchino di coglierli d’improvviso; figure inclinate rigidamente, ritte su una gamba sola, con mani inconsce posate su oggetti incongrui. Questa è una tragedia di posizioni goffe. Posso comprenderla perché io stesso, proprio questo pomeriggio, mi trovavo in una posizione maledettamente goffa.

«Mi ero arrampicato dentro da quella finestra semplicemente per sciocca curiosità, e me ne stavo al tavolo come uno sciocco, raccogliendo i coltelli e rimettendoli in ordine. Avevo ancora il cappello in testa, ma quando Crundle entrò feci il gesto di togliermelo col coltello ancora in mano; poi mi corressi e prima posai il coltello. Conoscete quei minuscoli movimenti confusi che a volte si hanno. Ora Crundle, quando dapprima mi vide, e prima di vedermi da vicino, vacillò come se fossi stato Dio Onnipotente o il boia in attesa nella sua sala da pranzo; e credo di sapere perché. Sono goffo e alto e coi capelli di stoppa, anch’io; e stavo là ritto, scuro contro la luce del giorno dove l’altro era stato. Deve essergli parso che il cadavere avesse sollevato il coperchio della pattumiera e fosse risalito strisciando su per la scala, prendendo il suo posto come un fantasma. Ma intanto il mio piccolo gesto irresoluto col coltello a mezz’aria mi aveva detto qualcosa. Mi aveva detto ciò che era realmente accaduto.

«Quando quel povero campagnolo del Somerset capitò in questa stanza era ciò che forse nessuno di noi può essere, era sconvolto. Veniva da qualche vecchio ceppo rurale che credeva davvero in simili presagi. Raccolse in fretta uno dei coltelli incrociati e lo stava rimettendo in ordine quando scorse il mucchio di sale versato. Forse pensò che fosse stato il proprio gesto a versarlo. In quell’istante cruciale Crundle entrò nella stanza, accrescendo la confusione del suo ospite e affrettando il suo affannoso tentativo di fare due cose insieme. L’infelice ospite, con le dita ancora strette attorno al manico del coltello, fece un afferrare verso il sale e cercò di gettarne un po’ oltre la spalla. Nel medesimo lampo il fanatico sulla soglia gli era balzato addosso come una pantera e gli tirava il polso levato.

«Poiché tutto il folle universo di Crundle vacillava in quell’istante. Voi, che parlate di superstizioni, vi siete reso conto che questa casa è una casa di incantesimi? Non sapete che è stipata di amuleti e riti magici, solo che sono tutti fatti alla rovescia, come le streghe recitavano la Preghiera del Signore? Riuscite a immaginare come si sentirebbe una strega se due parole della preghiera venissero giuste per caso? Crundle vide che questo buffone di campagna stava rovesciando tutti gli incantesimi della sua stessa arte nera. Se una volta il sale fosse gettato oltre la spalla, tutta la grande opera poteva ancora esser disfatta. Con tutta la forza che poté chiamare dall’inferno si aggrappò alla mano col coltello, curandosi solo d’impedire che pochi granelli d’argentea polvere scivolassero al suolo.

«Solo Dio sa se fu un incidente. Non lo dico come una frase oziosa. Quell’unico frammento di secondo, e tutto ciò che vi era davvero nascosto dentro, giace aperto dinanzi a Dio, grande e luminoso come un’eternità. Ma io sono un uomo ed egli è un uomo; e non consegnerò un uomo alla forca, se posso evitarlo, per ciò che può essere stato accidentale o automatico o persino una sorta di legittima difesa. Ma se qualcuno di voi prenderà un coltello e un pizzico di sale e si metterà nella posizione del pover’uomo, vedrà esattamente ciò che accadde. Tutto ciò che dico è questo; che in nessun momento e in nessun modo, forse, le cose avrebbero potuto essere precisamente in quella postura, e il filo di un coltello essere così vicino alla gola di un uomo senza intenzione da nessuna delle due parti, se non per questo particolare groviglio di banalità che ha condotto a questa unica particolare tragedia. È strano pensare a quel povero villico partito dal suo lontano villaggio del Somerset, con la sua piccola manciata di leggende locali, e a questo tetro eccentrico e schernitore precipitatosi fuori da questa villa pieno della rabbia del suo pallino, e alla loro fine avvinti in questa unica e sgraziata colluttazione, una lotta tra due superstizioni».

La figura a capotavola era stata quasi dimenticata come un pezzo di mobilio; ma Noel volse lentamente gli occhi verso di essa, e disse con una fredda pazienza come a un bambino esasperante: «È tutto vero, questo?»

Crundle sprang unsteadily to his feet, his mouth still working, and they saw at the edge of it a touch of foam.

“What I want to know,” he began in a resonant voice; and then the voice seemed to dry up in his throat and he swayed twice and pitched forward on the table amid the wreck of his own wine and crystal.

“I don’t know about a policeman,” said Noel; “but we shall have to send for a doctor.”

“You will want two doctors for what will have to be done to him,” said Gale; and walked towards the window by which he had come in.

Noel walked with him to the garden gate, past the peacock and the green lawn, that looked almost as blue as the peacock under a strong moonlight. When the poet was outside the gate, he turned and said a last word.

“You are Norman Noel, the great traveller, I think. You interest me more than that unfortunate monomaniac did; and I want to ask you a question. Forgive me if I imagine things for you, so to speak; it is a way I have. You have studied superstitions all over the world, and you have seen things compared with which all that talk of salt and table-knives is like a child’s game of consequences. You have been in the dark forests over which the vampire seems to pass more vast than a dragon; or in the mountains of the werewolf, where men say a man can see in the face of his friend or his wife the eyes of a wild beast. You have known people who had real superstitions; black, towering, terrific superstitions; you have lived with those people; and I want to ask you a question about them.”

“You seem to know something about them yourself,” answered Noel; “but I will answer any question you like.”

“Were they not happier men than you?”

Gale paused a moment as he put the question, and then went on. “Did they not in fact sing more songs, and dance more dances, and drink wine with more real merriment? That was because they believed in evil. In evil spells, perhaps, in evil luck, in evil under all sorts of stupid and ignorant symbols; but still in something to be fought. They at least read things in black and white, and saw life as the battlefield it is. But you are unhappy because you disbelieve in evil, and think it philosophical to see everything in the same light of grey. And I speak to you thus tonight; because tonight you have had an awakening. You saw something worthy of hate and you were happy. A mere murder might not have done it. If it had been some old man about town, or even some young man about town, it might never have touched the nerve. But I know what you felt; there was something shameful beyond speech in the death of that poor clumsy country cousin.”

Noel nodded. “I think it was the shape of his coat-tails,” he said.

“I thought so,” answered Gale. “Well, that is the road to reality. Good night.”

And he continued his walk along the suburban road, unconsciously taking in the new tint of the lawns by moonlight. But he did not see any more peacocks; and it may be accounted probable that he did not want to see any.

VII

Crundle balzò malfermo in piedi, la bocca ancora in movimento, e ne videro all’angolo un lieve tocco di schiuma.

“Quel che voglio sapere,” cominciò con voce sonora; e poi la voce parve inaridirglisi in gola ed egli oscillò due volte e cadde in avanti sulla tavola tra i rottami del suo stesso vino e del suo cristallo.

“Non so se serva un poliziotto,” disse Noel; “ma dovremo mandare a chiamare un medico.”

“Vi occorreranno due medici per ciò che gli andrà fatto,” disse Gale; e si diresse verso la finestra da cui era entrato.

Noel lo accompagnò fino al cancello del giardino, oltre il pavone e il verde prato, che sotto la forte luce lunare pareva quasi azzurro come il pavone. Quando il poeta fu fuori dal cancello, si voltò e disse un’ultima parola.

“Voi siete Norman Noel, il grande viaggiatore, credo. M’interessate più di quanto abbia fatto quell’infelice monomaniaco; e voglio porvi una domanda. Perdonatemi se immagino cose per voi, per così dire; è un mio vezzo. Avete studiato le superstizioni in tutto il mondo, e avete visto cose in confronto alle quali tutto quel discorrere di sale e coltelli da tavola è come un gioco di conseguenze da bambino. Siete stato nelle oscure foreste sulle quali il vampiro sembra passare più immenso di un drago; o tra le montagne del lupo mannaro, dove si dice che un uomo possa scorgere nel volto dell’amico o della moglie gli occhi di una bestia feroce. Avete conosciuto gente che aveva vere superstizioni; nere, torreggianti, terrifiche superstizioni; siete vissuto con quella gente; e voglio porvi una domanda su di essa.”

“Sembra che voi stesso ne sappiate qualcosa,” rispose Noel; “ma risponderò a qualunque domanda vogliate.”

“Non erano forse uomini più felici di voi?”

Gale fece una pausa mentre poneva la domanda, poi proseguì. “Non cantavano forse, in verità, più canzoni, e non ballavano più danze, e non bevevano il vino con più schietta allegria? Ciò perché essi credevano nel male. In malefici incantesimi, forse, in cattiva sorte, nel male sotto ogni sorta di simboli stupidi e ignoranti; ma pur sempre in qualcosa da combattere. Essi almeno leggevano le cose in bianco e nero, e vedevano la vita come il campo di battaglia che essa è. Ma voi siete infelice perché non credete nel male, e ritenete filosofico vedere ogni cosa nella stessa luce grigia. E io vi parlo così stanotte; perché stanotte avete avuto un risveglio. Avete visto qualcosa di degno d’odio e siete stato felice. Un semplice omicidio forse non l’avrebbe fatto. Se fosse stato qualche vecchio damerino, o anche qualche giovane damerino, forse non avrebbe mai toccato il nervo. Ma so ciò che avete provato; c’era qualcosa di vergognoso oltre ogni parola nella morte di quel povero, goffo cugino di campagna.”

Noel annuì. “Credo fosse la forma delle sue code di rondine,” disse.

“Lo pensavo,” rispose Gale. “Ebbene, quella è la strada verso la realtà. Buona notte.”

E proseguì la sua passeggiata lungo la strada suburbana, cogliendo inconsciamente la nuova tinta dei prati al chiaro di luna. Ma non vide altri pavoni; ed è probabile a credersi che non ne volesse vedere altri.

VII

THE PURPLE JEWEL

GABRIEL GALE was a painter and poet; he was the last person to pretend to be even a very private detective. It happened that he had solved several mysteries; but most of them were the sort of mysteries more attractive to a mystic. Nevertheless, it also happened once or twice that he had to step out of the clouds of mysticism into the more brisk and bracing atmosphere of murder. Sometimes he succeeded in showing that a murder was a suicide, sometimes that a suicide was a murder; sometimes he was even involved in the study of lighter occupations like forgery and fraud. But the connexion was generally a coincidence; it concerned some point at which his imaginative interest in men’s strange motives and moods happened to lead him, or at any rate them, across the border-line of legality. And in most cases, as he himself pointed out, the motives of murderers and thieves are perfectly sane and even conventional.

“I am no good at such a sensible job,” he would say. “The police could easily make me look a fool in any practical matter such as they discuss in detective stories. What is the good of asking me to measure the marks made by somebody’s feet all over the ground, to show why he was walking about, or where he was going? If you will show me the marks of somebody’s hands all over the ground, I will tell you why he was walking upside down. But I shall find it out in the only way I ever do find out anything. And that is simply because I am mad, too, and often do it myself.”

A similar brotherhood in folly probably led him into the very baffling mystery of the disappearance of Phineas Salt, the famous author and dramatist. Some of the parties involved may have accepted the parallel of setting a thief to catch a thief, when they set a poet to find a poet. For the problem did involve, in all probability, some of the purely poetical motives of a poet. And even practical people admitted that these might possibly be more familiar to a poet than to a policeman.

Phineas Salt was the sort of man whose private life was rather a public life; like that of Byron or D’Annunzio. He was a remarkable man, and perhaps rather remarkable than respectable. But there was much to be really admired in him; and there were of course any number of people who admired even what was not so admirable. The pessimistic critics claimed him as a great pessimist; and this was widely quoted in support of the theory that his disappearance was in fact a suicide. But the optimistic critics had always obstinately maintained that he was a True Optimist (whatever that may be) and these in their natural rosy rapture of optimism, dwelt rather on the idea that he had been murdered. So lurid and romantic had his whole career been made in the eyes of all Europe, that very few people kept their heads enough to reflect, or summoned their courage to suggest, that there is no particular principle in the nature of things to prevent a great poet falling down a well or being attacked by cramp while swimming at Felixstowe. Most of his admirers, and all those who were by profession journalists, preferred more sublime solutions.

He left no family, of the regular sort, except a brother in a small commercial way in the Midlands, with whom he had had very little to do; but he left a number of other people who stood to him in conspicuous spiritual or economic relations. He left a publisher, whose emotions were of mingled grief and hope in the cessation of his production of books and the high-class advertisement given to those already produced. The publisher was himself a man of considerable social distinction, as such distinctions go today; a certain Sir Walter Drummond, the head of a famous and well-established firm; and a type of a certain kind of successful Scotchman who contradicts the common tradition by combining being business-like with being extremely radiant and benevolent. He left a theatrical manager in the very act of launching his great poetical play about Alexander and the Persians; this was an artistic but adaptable Jew, named Isidore Marx, who was similarly balanced between the advantages and disadvantages of an inevitable silence following the cry of “Author”. He left a beautiful but exceedingly bad-tempered leading actress, who was about to gain fresh glory in the part of the Persian Princess; and who was one of the persons, not indeed few, with whom (as the quaint phrase goes) his name had been connected. He left a number of literary friends; some at least of whom were really literary and a few of whom had really been friendly. But his career had been itself so much like a sensational drama on the stage that it was surprising, when it came to real calculations about his probable conduct, how little anybody seemed to know about the essentials of his real character. And without any such clue, the circumstances seemed to make the poet’s absence as disturbing and revolutionary as his presence.

Gabriel Gale, who also moved in the best literary circles, knew all this side of Phineas Salt well enough. He also had been in literary negotiations with Sir Walter Drummond. He also had been approached for poetical plays by Mr. Isidore Marx. He had managed to avoid having “his name connected” with Miss Hertha Hathaway, the great Shakespearean actress; but he knew her well enough, in a world where everybody knows everybody. But being somewhat carelessly familiar with these noisy outer courts of the fame of Phineas, it gave him a mild shock of irony to pass into the more private and prosaic interior. He owed his connexion with the case, not to this general knowledge he shared with the world of letters, but to the accident that his friend, Dr. Garth, had been the family physician of the Salts. And he could not but be amused, when he attended a sort of family council of the matter, to discover how very domestic and even undistinguished the family council was; and how different from the atmosphere of large rumour and loose reputation that roared like a great wind without. He had to remind himself that it is only natural, after all, that anybody’s private affairs should be private. It was absurd to expect that a wild poet would have a wild solicitor or a strange and fantastic doctor or dentist. But Dr. Garth, in the very professional black suit he always wore, looked such a very family physician. The solicitor looked such a very family solicitor. He was a square-faced, silver-haired gentleman named Gunter; it seemed impossible that his tidy legal files and strong-boxes could contain such material as the prolonged scandal of Phineas Salt. Joseph Salt, the brother of Phineas Salt, come up specially from the provinces, seemed so very provincial. It was hard to believe that this silent, sandy-haired, big, embarrassed tradesman, in his awkward clothes, was the one other remaining representative of such a name. The party was completed by Salt’s secretary, who also seemed disconcertingly secretarial to be closely connected with such an incalculable character. Again Gale had to remind himself that even poets can only go mad on condition that a good many people connected with them remain sane. He reflected, with a faint and dawning interest, that Byron probably had a butler; and possibly even a good butler. The disconnected fancy crossed his mind that even Shelley may have gone to the dentist. He also reflected that Shelley’s dentist was probably rather like any other dentist.

LA GEMMA PURPUREA

GABRIEL GALE era un pittore e un poeta; era l’ultima persona che si sarebbe spacciata anche solo per un investigatore molto privato. Era capitato che avesse risolto parecchi misteri; ma la maggior parte erano il genere di misteri più attraente per un mistico. Ciò nondimeno, gli capitò anche una o due volte di dover uscire dalle nuvole del misticismo per entrare nell’atmosfera più vivace e tonificante dell’omicidio. Talvolta riusciva a dimostrare che un omicidio era un suicidio, talvolta che un suicidio era un omicidio; talvolta si trovava persino coinvolto nello studio di occupazioni più leggere come la falsificazione e la truffa. Ma il legame era in genere una coincidenza; riguardava qualche punto in cui il suo interesse fantasioso per gli strani moventi e umori degli uomini finiva per condurre lui, o comunque loro, oltre la linea di confine della legalità. E nella maggior parte dei casi, come egli stesso faceva notare, i moventi degli assassini e dei ladri sono perfettamente sani e persino convenzionali.

«Non sono affatto adatto a un lavoro così assennato», diceva. «La polizia potrebbe facilmente farmi fare la figura dello sciocco in qualsiasi faccenda pratica come quelle di cui si discute nelle storie di investigatori. A che serve chiedere proprio a me di misurare le impronte lasciate dai piedi di qualcuno per tutto il terreno, per dimostrare perché andasse in giro, o dove fosse diretto? Se mi mostrerete le impronte delle mani di qualcuno sparse su tutto il terreno, vi dirò perché camminava a testa in giù. Ma lo scoprirò nell’unico modo in cui io scopra mai qualcosa. E cioè semplicemente perché anch’io sono matto, e spesso lo faccio io stesso.»

Una simile fratellanza nella follia probabilmente lo condusse dentro il misterioso e sconcertante caso della scomparsa di Phineas Salt, il celebre autore e drammaturgo. Alcune delle persone coinvolte forse accettarono il paragone del mettere un ladro a caccia di un ladro, quando misero un poeta a cercare un poeta. Poiché il problema comportava, con ogni probabilità, alcuni dei moventi puramente poetici di un poeta. E persino le persone pratiche ammettevano che questi potevano forse essere più familiari a un poeta che a un poliziotto.

Phineas Salt era quel genere d’uomo la cui vita privata era piuttosto una vita pubblica; come quella di Byron o di D’Annunzio. Era un uomo notevole, e forse più notevole che rispettabile. Ma in lui c’era molto da ammirare davvero; e c’erano naturalmente moltissime persone che ammiravano perfino ciò che tanto ammirevole non era. I critici pessimisti lo rivendicavano come un grande pessimista; e ciò veniva ampiamente citato a sostegno della teoria che la sua scomparsa fosse in realtà un suicidio. Ma i critici ottimisti avevano sempre ostinatamente sostenuto che egli fosse un Vero Ottimista (qualunque cosa ciò significhi), e costoro, nel loro naturale e roseo rapimento d’ottimismo, si soffermavano piuttosto sull’idea che fosse stato assassinato. Così sinistra e romantica era stata resa la sua intera carriera agli occhi di tutta l’Europa, che pochissimi mantenevano la testa abbastanza lucida da riflettere, o trovavano il coraggio di suggerire, che non vi è alcun principio particolare nella natura delle cose che impedisca a un grande poeta di cadere in un pozzo o di essere colto da un crampo mentre nuota a Felixstowe. La maggior parte dei suoi ammiratori, e tutti coloro che di professione erano giornalisti, preferivano soluzioni più sublimi.

Non lasciava una famiglia, di quelle regolari, se non un fratello con un piccolo commercio nelle Midlands, con cui aveva avuto ben poco a che fare; ma lasciava un certo numero di altre persone che erano legate a lui da cospicui rapporti spirituali o economici. Lasciava un editore, i cui sentimenti erano un misto di dolore e di speranza per la cessazione della sua produzione di libri e per la pubblicità di gran classe conferita a quelli già prodotti. L’editore era a sua volta un uomo di notevole distinzione sociale, per quanto valgano oggi tali distinzioni; un certo Sir Walter Drummond, a capo di una ditta famosa e bene avviata; e un esemplare di quel certo tipo di scozzese di successo che smentisce la tradizione comune unendo il senso degli affari a un’indole straordinariamente radiosa e benevola. Lasciava un impresario teatrale proprio nell’atto di lanciare il suo grande dramma poetico su Alessandro e i Persiani; costui era un ebreo artistico ma adattabile, di nome Isidore Marx, ugualmente in bilico tra i vantaggi e gli svantaggi di un inevitabile silenzio al seguito del grido di «L’autore!». Lasciava una bella ma oltremodo bisbetica prima attrice, che stava per guadagnare nuova gloria nella parte della Principessa persiana; e che era una delle persone, invero non poche, con cui (come vuole la bizzarra formula) il suo nome era stato legato. Lasciava un certo numero di amici letterari; alcuni almeno dei quali erano davvero letterati e pochi dei quali erano davvero stati amici. Ma la sua carriera era stata di per sé tanto simile a un dramma sensazionale sul palcoscenico che stupiva, quando si arrivava a calcoli concreti sulla sua probabile condotta, quanto poco chiunque sembrasse sapere dell’essenza del suo vero carattere. E in mancanza di un simile indizio, le circostanze parevano rendere l’assenza del poeta tanto inquietante e rivoluzionaria quanto la sua presenza.

Gabriel Gale, che pure frequentava i migliori circoli letterari, conosceva bene tutto questo lato di Phineas Salt. Anch’egli aveva intrattenuto trattative letterarie con Sir Walter Drummond. Anch’egli era stato contattato per drammi poetici dal signor Isidore Marx. Era riuscito a evitare che «il suo nome fosse legato» a Miss Hertha Hathaway, la grande attrice shakespeariana; ma la conosceva abbastanza bene, in un mondo in cui tutti conoscono tutti. Ma, essendo in qualche modo distrattamente familiare con questi chiassosi cortili esterni della fama di Phineas, provò un lieve sussulto d’ironia nel passare all’interno più privato e prosaico. Doveva il suo legame con il caso non a questa conoscenza generale che condivideva col mondo delle lettere, ma alla circostanza fortuita che il suo amico, il dottor Garth, era stato il medico di famiglia dei Salt. E non poté fare a meno di divertirsi, quando partecipò a una sorta di consiglio di famiglia sulla faccenda, nello scoprire quanto fosse domestico e persino insignificante quel consiglio di famiglia; e quanto diverso dall’atmosfera di dilaganti dicerie e disinvolta reputazione che rombava come un gran vento là fuori. Dovette ricordare a se stesso che è del tutto naturale, dopotutto, che gli affari privati di chiunque siano privati. Era assurdo aspettarsi che un poeta stravagante avesse un avvocato stravagante o un medico o un dentista strano e fantastico. Ma il dottor Garth, nell’abito nero oltremodo professionale che indossava sempre, aveva tutta l’aria del medico di famiglia. L’avvocato aveva tutta l’aria dell’avvocato di famiglia. Era un signore dal volto squadrato e dai capelli d’argento, di nome Gunter; sembrava impossibile che i suoi ordinati fascicoli legali e le sue casseforti potessero contenere materiale come il prolungato scandalo di Phineas Salt. Joseph Salt, il fratello di Phineas Salt, giunto apposta dalla provincia, sembrava così tanto provinciale. Era difficile credere che questo commerciante silenzioso, dai capelli color sabbia, grosso e imbarazzato, nei suoi abiti goffi, fosse l’unico altro rappresentante superstite di un tal nome. La compagnia era completata dal segretario di Salt, che pure appariva sconcertantemente segretariale per essere in stretto rapporto con un carattere tanto imprevedibile. Di nuovo Gale dovette ricordare a se stesso che perfino i poeti possono impazzire solo a patto che parecchie persone a loro legate restino sane di mente. Rifletté, con un interesse tenue e nascente, che Byron probabilmente aveva un maggiordomo; e forse persino un buon maggiordomo. Gli attraversò la mente la fantasia sconnessa che perfino Shelley potesse essere andato dal dentista. Rifletté inoltre che il dentista di Shelley era probabilmente più o meno come qualsiasi altro dentista.

Nevertheless, he did not lose the sense of contrast in stepping into this inner chamber of immediate and practical responsibilities. He felt rather out of place in it; for he had no illusions about himself as a business adviser, or one to settle things with the private secretary and the family lawyer. Garth had asked him to come, and he sat patiently looking at Garth; while Gunter, the solicitor, laid the general state of things before the informal committee.

“Mr. Hatt has been telling us,” said the lawyer, glancing for a moment at the secretary who sat opposite, “that he last saw Mr. Phineas Salt at his own flat two hours after lunch on Friday last. Until about an hour ago, I should have said that this interview (which was apparently very short) was the last occasion on which the missing man had been seen. Rather more than an hour ago, however, I was rung up by a person, a complete stranger to me, who declared that he had been with Phineas Salt for the six or seven hours following on that meeting at the flat and that he was coming round to this office as soon as possible, to lay all the facts before us. This evidence, if we find it in any way worthy of credit, will at least carry the story a considerable stage further and perhaps provide us with some important hint about Mr. Salt’s whereabouts or fate. I do not think we can say much more about it until he comes.”

“I rather fancy he has come,” said Dr. Garth. “I heard somebody answering the door; and that sounds like boots scaling these steep legal stairs”; for they had met in the solicitor’s office in Lincoln’s Inn.

The next moment a slim, middle-aged man slipped rather than stepped into the room; there was indeed something smooth and unobtrusive about the very look of his quiet grey suit, at once shabby and shiny and yet carrying something like the last glimmer of satin and elegance. The only other seizable thing about him was that he not only had rather long dark hair parted down the middle, but his long olive face was fringed with a narrow dark beard, which was also parted in the middle, drooping in two separated strands. But as he entered he laid on a chair a soft black hat with a very large brim and a very low crown; which somehow called up instantly to the fancy the cafés and the coloured lights of Paris.

“My name is James Florence,” he said in a cultivated accent. “I was a very old friend of Phineas Salt; and in our younger days I have often travelled about Europe with him. I have every reason to believe that I travelled with him on his last journey.”

“His last journey,” repeated the lawyer, looking at him with frowning attention; “are you prepared to say that Mr. Salt is dead, or are you saying this for sensationalism?”

“Well, he is either dead or something still more sensational,” said Mr. James Florence.

“What do you mean?” asked the other sharply. “What could be more sensational than his death?”

The stranger looked at him with a fixed and very grave expression and then said simply: “I cannot imagine.”

Then, when the lawyer made an angry movement, as if suspecting a joke, the man added equally gravely: “I am still trying to imagine.”

“Well,” said Gunter, after a pause, “perhaps you had better tell your story and we will put the conversation on a regular footing. As you probably know, I am Mr. Salt’s legal adviser; this is his brother, Mr. Joseph Salt, whom I am advising also; this is Dr. Garth, his medical adviser. This is Mr. Gabriel Gale.”

The stranger bowed to the company and took a seat with quiet confidence.

“I called on my old friend Salt last Friday afternoon about five o’clock. I think I saw this gentleman leaving the flat as I came in.” He looked across at the secretary, Mr. Hatt, a hard-faced and reticent man, who concealed with characteristic discretion, the American name of Hiram; but could not quite conceal a certain American keenness about the look of his long chin and his spectacles. He regarded the newcomer with a face of wood, and said nothing as usual.

“When I entered the flat, I found Phineas in a very disordered and even violent condition, even for him. In fact somebody seemed to have been breaking the furniture, a statuette was knocked off its pedestal and a bowl of irises upset; and he was striding up and down the room like a roaring lion with his red mane rampant and his beard a bonfire. I thought it might be merely an artistic mood, a fine shade of poetical feeling; but he told me he had been entertaining a lady. Miss Hertha Hathaway, the actress, had only just left.”

“Here, wait a minute,” interposed the solicitor. “It would appear that Mr. Hatt, the secretary, had also only just left. But I don’t think you said anything about a lady, Mr. Hatt.”

“It’s a pretty safe rule,” said the impenetrable Hiram. “You never asked me about any lady. I’ve got my own work to do and I told you how I left when I’d done it.”

“This is rather important, though,” said Gunter doubtfully. “If Salt and the actress threw bowls and statues at each other… well, I suppose we may cautiously conclude there was some slight difference of opinion.”

“There was a final smash-up,” said Florence frankly. “Phineas told me he was through with all that sort of thing and, as far as I could make out, with everything else as well. He was in a pretty wild state; I think he had been drinking a little already; then he routed out a dusty old bottle of absinthe and said that he and I must drink it again in memory of old days in Paris; for it was the last time, or the last day, or some expression of that sort. Well, I hadn’t drunk it myself for a long time; but I knew enough about it to know that he was drinking a great deal too much, and it’s not a thing like ordinary wine or brandy; the state it can get you into is quite extraordinary; more like the clear madness that comes from hashish. And he finally rushed out of the house with that green fire in his brain and began to get out his car; starting it quite correctly and even driving it well, for there is a lucidity in such intoxication; but driving it faster and faster down the dreary vistas of the Old Kent Road and out into the country towards the south-east. He had dragged me with him with the same sort of hypnotic energy and uncanny conviviality; but I confess I felt pretty uncomfortable spinning out along the country roads with twilight turning to dark. We were nearly killed several times; but I don’t think he was trying to be killed… at least not there on the road by an ordinary motor accident. For he kept on crying out that he wanted the high and perilous places of the earth; peaks and precipices and towers; that he would like to take his last leap from some such pinnacle and either fly like an eagle or fall like a stone. And all that seemed the more blind and grotesque because we were driving further and further into some of the flattest country in England, where he certainly would never find any mountains such as towered and toppled in his dream. And then, after I don’t know how many hours, he gave a new sort of cry; and I saw, against the last grey strip of the gloaming and all the flat land towards the east, the towers of Canterbury.”

Ciononostante, non perse il senso del contrasto nel varcare la soglia di questa camera interna di responsabilità immediate e pratiche. Vi si sentiva piuttosto fuori posto; poiché non aveva illusioni su se stesso come consulente d’affari, o come uno adatto a sbrigare le cose col segretario privato e l’avvocato di famiglia. Garth gli aveva chiesto di venire, ed egli sedeva paziente guardando Garth; mentre Gunter, il procuratore, esponeva lo stato generale delle cose dinanzi al comitato informale.

«Il signor Hatt ci ha riferito», disse l’avvocato, gettando per un istante uno sguardo al segretario seduto di fronte, «di aver visto per l’ultima volta il signor Phineas Salt nel suo appartamento due ore dopo pranzo venerdì scorso. Fino a circa un’ora fa, avrei detto che questo colloquio (che a quanto pare fu molto breve) fosse stata l’ultima occasione in cui l’uomo scomparso era stato visto. Poco più di un’ora fa, tuttavia, sono stato chiamato da una persona, per me un perfetto sconosciuto, che ha dichiarato di essere stato con Phineas Salt per le sei o sette ore successive a quell’incontro nell’appartamento e che sarebbe passato per questo ufficio appena possibile, per esporci tutti i fatti. Questa testimonianza, se la riterremo in qualche modo degna di fede, almeno porterà la storia un buon tratto più avanti e forse ci fornirà qualche indizio importante sul luogo o sulla sorte del signor Salt. Non credo che possiamo dire molto di più finché non arriva».

«Ho la netta impressione che sia arrivato», disse il dottor Garth. «Ho udito qualcuno rispondere alla porta; e suona come stivali che scalano queste ripide scale legali»; poiché si erano incontrati nell’ufficio del procuratore a Lincoln’s Inn.

L’istante seguente un uomo snello, di mezza età, scivolò più che entrare nella stanza; vi era in effetti qualcosa di liscio e discreto persino nell’aspetto stesso del suo tranquillo abito grigio, insieme logoro e lustro eppure recante qualcosa come l’ultimo bagliore di raso ed eleganza. L’unica altra cosa afferrabile di lui era che non solo aveva capelli piuttosto lunghi e scuri, con la scriminatura nel mezzo, ma la sua lunga faccia olivastra era orlata da una stretta barba scura, anch’essa divisa nel mezzo, spiovente in due ciocche separate. Ma nell’entrare posò su una sedia un morbido cappello nero dalla tesa molto ampia e dalla calotta molto bassa; il che in qualche modo evocava istantaneamente alla fantasia i caffè e le luci colorate di Parigi.

«Il mio nome è James Florence», disse con accento coltivato. «Ero un vecchissimo amico di Phineas Salt; e nei nostri anni più giovani ho spesso girato l’Europa con lui. Ho ogni ragione di credere di aver viaggiato con lui nel suo ultimo viaggio».

«Il suo ultimo viaggio», ripeté l’avvocato, guardandolo con accigliata attenzione; «siete pronto ad affermare che il signor Salt è morto, o lo dite per sensazionalismo?»

«Beh, o è morto o qualcosa di ancor più sensazionale», disse il signor James Florence.

«Che intendete dire?» chiese l’altro seccamente. «Cosa potrebbe esserci di più sensazionale della sua morte?»

Lo sconosciuto lo guardò con un’espressione fissa e assai grave e poi disse semplicemente: «Non riesco a immaginarlo».

Poi, quando l’avvocato fece un movimento adirato, come sospettando uno scherzo, l’uomo aggiunse con eguale gravità: «Sto ancora cercando di immaginarlo».

«Bene», disse Gunter, dopo una pausa, «forse fareste meglio a raccontare la vostra storia e metteremo la conversazione su un piano regolare. Come probabilmente sapete, io sono il consulente legale del signor Salt; questo è suo fratello, il signor Joseph Salt, che pure consiglio; questo è il dottor Garth, il suo consulente medico. Questo è il signor Gabriel Gale».

Lo sconosciuto s’inchinò alla compagnia e prese posto con tranquilla sicurezza.

«Feci visita al mio vecchio amico Salt venerdì scorso pomeriggio verso le cinque in punto. Credo di aver visto questo signore uscire dall’appartamento mentre entravo». Guardò verso il segretario, il signor Hatt, un uomo dal volto duro e riservato, che nascondeva con caratteristica discrezione il nome americano di Hiram; ma non riusciva del tutto a celare una certa acutezza americana nell’aspetto del suo lungo mento e dei suoi occhiali. Osservò il nuovo venuto con una faccia di legno, e come al solito non disse nulla.

«Quando entrai nell’appartamento, trovai Phineas in condizioni assai scomposte e persino violente, anche per lui. Anzi qualcuno pareva aver rotto i mobili, una statuetta era stata buttata giù dal suo piedistallo e una coppa d’iris rovesciata; ed egli passeggiava su e giù per la stanza come un leone ruggente con la sua rossa criniera irta e la barba un falò. Pensai che potesse essere solo un umore artistico, una fine sfumatura di sentimento poetico; ma mi disse che aveva ricevuto una signora. La signorina Hertha Hathaway, l’attrice, se n’era appena andata».

«Ecco, un momento», interpose il procuratore. «Parrebbe che anche il signor Hatt, il segretario, se ne fosse appena andato. Ma non credo abbiate detto nulla di una signora, signor Hatt».

«È una regola piuttosto sicura», disse l’impenetrabile Hiram. «Non mi avete mai chiesto di alcuna signora. Ho il mio lavoro da fare e vi ho detto come me ne andai quando l’ebbi finito».

«Questo però è piuttosto importante», disse Gunter con dubbio. «Se Salt e l’attrice si scagliavano coppe e statue addosso a vicenda… beh, suppongo possiamo cautamente concludere che ci fosse qualche lieve divergenza d’opinioni».

«Ci fu un fracasso finale», disse Florence francamente. «Phineas mi disse che aveva chiuso con tutta quella roba e, per quanto potei capire, con tutto il resto del pari. Era in uno stato piuttosto selvaggio; credo che avesse già bevuto un poco; poi stanò una polverosa vecchia bottiglia di assenzio e disse che lui e io dovevamo berla di nuovo in memoria dei vecchi giorni di Parigi; poiché era l’ultima volta, o l’ultimo giorno, o qualche espressione del genere. Beh, non ne bevevo io stesso da lungo tempo; ma ne sapevo abbastanza da capire che ne stava bevendo troppo di gran lunga, e non è una cosa come il vino o il brandy ordinari; lo stato in cui può ridurti è del tutto straordinario; più simile alla lucida follia che viene dall’hashish. E alla fine si precipitò fuori di casa con quel verde fuoco nel cervello e cominciò a tirar fuori la sua auto; avviandola in modo del tutto corretto e persino guidandola bene, poiché in una simile ebbrezza c’è una lucidità; ma guidandola sempre più velocemente giù per i tetri panorami della Old Kent Road e fuori verso la campagna a sud-est. Mi aveva trascinato con sé con la medesima sorta d’energia ipnotica e perturbante convivialità; ma confesso che mi sentivo piuttosto a disagio a sfrecciare lungo le strade di campagna col crepuscolo che si mutava in tenebra. Fummo quasi ammazzati parecchie volte; ma non credo che cercasse di farsi ammazzare… almeno non lì sulla strada per un ordinario incidente d’auto. Perché continuava a gridare che voleva i luoghi alti e perigliosi della terra; picchi e precipizi e torri; che gli sarebbe piaciuto spiccare il suo ultimo balzo da qualche pinnacolo di quel genere e o volare come un’aquila o cadere come una pietra. E tutto ciò appariva tanto più cieco e grottesco perché stavamo guidando sempre più addentro in una delle contrade più piatte d’Inghilterra, dove certo non avrebbe mai trovato montagne tali quali torreggiavano e crollavano nel suo sogno. E poi, dopo non so quante ore, emise un nuovo genere di grido; e vidi, contro l’ultima grigia striscia del crepuscolo e tutta la terra piatta verso oriente, le torri di Canterbury».

“I wonder,” said Gabriel Gale suddenly, like a man coming out of a dream, “how they did upset the statuette. Surely the woman threw it, if anybody did. He’d hardly have done a thing like that, even if he was drunk.”

Then he turned his head slowly and stared rather blankly at the equally blank face of Mr. Hatt; but he said no more and, after a slightly impatient silence, the man called Florence went on with his narrative.

“Of course I knew that the moment he saw the great Gothic towers of the cathedral they would mingle with his waking nightmare and in a way fulfil and crown it. I cannot say whether he had taken that road in order to reach the cathedral; or whether it was merely a coincidence; but there was naturally nothing else in all that landscape that could so fit in with his mood about steep places and dizzy heights. And so of course he took up his crazy parable again and talked about riding upon gargoyles, as upon demon horses, or hunting with hell-hounds above the winds of heaven. It was very late before we reached the cathedral; and though it stands more deeply embedded in the town than is common in cathedral cities, it so happened that the houses nearest to us were all barred and silent and we stood in a deep angle of the building, which had something of seclusion and was covered with the vast shadow of the tower. For a strong moon was already brightening behind the cathedral and I remember the light of it made a sort of ring in Salt’s ragged red hair like a dull crimson fire. It seemed a rather unholy halo; and it is a detail I remember the more, because he himself was declaiming in praise of moonshine and especially of the effect of stained-glass windows seen against the moon rather than the sun, as in the famous lines in Keats. He was wild to get inside the building and see the coloured glass, which he swore was the only really successful thing religion ever did; and when he found the cathedral was locked up (as was not unusual at that hour) he had a grand final reaction of rage and scorn and began to curse the dean and chapter and everyone else. Then a blast of boyish historical reminiscence seemed to sweep through his changing mind; and he caught up a great ragged stone from the border of the turf and struck thunderous blows on the door with it, as with a hammer, and shouted aloud, ‘King’s men! King’s men! Where is the traitor? We have come to kill the archbishop.’ Then he laughed groggily and said, ‘Fancy killing Dr. Randall Davidson. … But Becket was really worth killing. He had lived, by God! He had really made the best of both worlds, in a bigger sense than they use the phrase for. Not both at once and both tamely, as the snobs do. But one at a time and both wildly and to the limit. He went clad in crimson and gold and gained laurels and overthrew great knights in tournaments; and then suddenly became a saint, giving his goods to the poor, fasting, dying a martyr. Ah, that is the right way to do it! The right way to live a Double Life! No wonder miracles were worked at his tomb.’ Then he hurled the heavy flint from him; and suddenly all the laughter and historical rant seemed to die out of his face and to leave it rather sad and sober; and as stony as one of the stone faces carved above the Gothic doors. ‘I shall work a miracle tonight,’ he said stolidly, ‘after I have died.’

“I asked him what in the world he meant; and he made no answer. But he began abruptly to talk to me in quite a quiet and friendly and even affectionate way; thanking me for my companionship on this and many occasions; and saying that we must part; for his time was come. But when I asked him where he was going, he only pointed a finger upwards; and I could not make out at all whether he meant metaphorically that he was going to heaven or materially that he was going to scale the high tower. Anyhow, the only stairway for scaling it was inside and I could not imagine how he could reach it. I tried to question him and he answered, ‘I shall ascend…; I shall be lifted up… but no miracles will be worked at my tomb. For my body will never be found.’

“And then, before I could move, and without a gesture of warning, he leapt up and caught a stone bracket by the gateway; in another second he was astride it; in a third standing on it; and in a fourth vanished utterly in the vast shadow of the wall above. Once again I heard his voice much higher up and even far away, crying, ‘I shall ascend.’ Then all was silence and solitude. I cannot undertake to say whether he did ascend. I can only say with tolerable certainty that he did not descend.”

“You mean,” said Gunter gravely, “that you have never seen him since.”

“I mean,” answered James Florence equally gravely, “that I doubt whether anybody on earth has seen him since.”

“Did you make inquiries on the spot?” pursued the lawyer.

The man called Florence laughed in a rather embarrassed fashion. “The truth is,” he said, “that I knocked up the neighbours and even questioned the police; and I couldn’t get anybody to believe me. They said I had had something to drink, which was true enough; and I think they fancied I had seen myself double, and was trying to chase my own shadow over the cathedral roofs. I dare say they know better now there has been a hue and cry in the newspapers. As for me, I took the last train back to London.”

“What about the car?” asked Garth, sharply; and a light of wonder or consternation came over the stranger’s face.

“Why, hang it all!” he cried. “I forgot all about poor Salt’s car! We left it backed into a crack between two old houses just by the cathedral. I never thought of it again till this minute.”

«Mi domando», disse Gabriel Gale d’un tratto, come un uomo che esce da un sogno, «come mai rovesciarono la statuetta. Di certo fu la donna a scagliarla, se qualcuno lo fece. Difficilmente lui avrebbe fatto una cosa simile, anche se era ubriaco».

Poi volse lentamente il capo e fissò con aria alquanto assente la faccia altrettanto inespressiva del signor Hatt; ma non disse altro e, dopo un silenzio lievemente impaziente, l’uomo di nome Florence riprese la sua narrazione.

«Naturalmente sapevo che nel momento in cui avesse visto le grandi torri gotiche della cattedrale esse si sarebbero mescolate al suo incubo a occhi aperti e in un certo modo l’avrebbero compiuto e coronato. Non so dire se avesse imboccato quella strada per raggiungere la cattedrale; o se fu solo una coincidenza; ma naturalmente non c’era nient’altro in tutto quel paesaggio che potesse accordarsi tanto col suo umore sui luoghi scoscesi e le altezze vertiginose. E così, naturalmente, riprese la sua folle parabola e parlò di cavalcare gargolle, come su cavalli demoniaci, o di cacciare con mastini infernali sopra i venti del cielo. Era molto tardi prima che raggiungessimo la cattedrale; e sebbene essa sorga più profondamente incassata nella città di quanto sia comune nelle città con cattedrale, accadde che le case a noi più vicine fossero tutte sbarrate e silenziose e ci trovammo in un profondo angolo dell’edificio, che aveva qualcosa di appartato ed era coperto dalla vasta ombra della torre. Poiché una forte luna già rischiarava dietro la cattedrale e ricordo che la sua luce faceva una sorta d’anello nei ruvidi capelli rossi di Salt come un cupo fuoco cremisi. Sembrava un’aureola piuttosto empia; ed è un dettaglio che ricordo tanto più, perché egli stesso declamava in lode del chiaro di luna e specialmente dell’effetto delle vetrate colorate viste contro la luna anziché il sole, come nei famosi versi di Keats. Smaniava d’entrare nell’edificio e vedere il vetro colorato, che giurava fosse l’unica cosa davvero riuscita che la religione avesse mai fatto; e quando trovò la cattedrale chiusa a chiave (come non era insolito a quell’ora) ebbe una grande reazione finale di rabbia e disprezzo e cominciò a maledire il decano e il capitolo e tutti gli altri. Poi una folata di puerile reminiscenza storica parve attraversare la sua mente mutevole; e afferrò una grande pietra scabra dal bordo del prato e vibrò colpi tonanti sulla porta con essa, come con un martello, e gridò forte: “Uomini del Re! Uomini del Re! Dov’è il traditore? Siamo venuti a uccidere l’arcivescovo.” Poi rise malfermo e disse: “Figurarsi uccidere il dottor Randall Davidson. … Ma Becket valeva davvero la pena di ucciderlo. Aveva vissuto, per Dio! Aveva davvero tratto il meglio da entrambi i mondi, in un senso più ampio di quello in cui usano la frase. Non entrambi in una volta ed entrambi fiaccamente, come fanno gli snob. Ma uno alla volta ed entrambi selvaggiamente e fino al limite. Andò vestito di cremisi e oro e conquistò allori e disarcionò grandi cavalieri nei tornei; e poi d’un tratto divenne un santo, dando i suoi beni ai poveri, digiunando, morendo martire. Ah, ecco il modo giusto di farlo! Il modo giusto di vivere una Doppia Vita! Non c’è da stupirsi che si compissero miracoli alla sua tomba.” Poi scagliò via da sé la pesante selce; e all’improvviso tutto il riso e la tirata storica parvero spegnersi sul suo volto e lasciarlo piuttosto triste e sobrio; e pietroso come una delle facce di pietra scolpite sopra le porte gotiche. “Compirò un miracolo stanotte,” disse impassibile, “dopo che sarò morto.”

«Gli chiesi cosa mai intendesse; ed egli non rispose. Ma cominciò bruscamente a parlarmi in un modo del tutto quieto e amichevole e persino affettuoso; ringraziandomi della mia compagnia in questa e in molte occasioni; e dicendo che dovevamo separarci; poiché era giunta la sua ora. Ma quando gli chiesi dove stesse andando, si limitò a puntare un dito verso l’alto; e non riuscii affatto a capire se intendesse metaforicamente che andava in cielo o materialmente che andava a scalare l’alta torre. Comunque, l’unica scala per scalarla era all’interno e non riuscivo a immaginare come potesse raggiungerla. Cercai d’interrogarlo ed egli rispose: “Ascenderò…; sarò innalzato… ma nessun miracolo si compirà alla mia tomba. Poiché il mio corpo non sarà mai ritrovato.”

«E poi, prima che potessi muovermi, e senza un gesto d’avvertimento, balzò su e afferrò una mensola di pietra presso il portale; in un altro secondo vi era a cavalcioni; in un terzo vi stava ritto; e in un quarto svanì del tutto nella vasta ombra del muro sovrastante. Ancora una volta udii la sua voce molto più in alto e persino lontana, che gridava: “Ascenderò.” Poi tutto fu silenzio e solitudine. Non posso azzardarmi a dire se ascese davvero. Posso solo dire con tollerabile certezza che non discese».

«Volete dire», disse Gunter con gravità, «che non l’avete più visto da allora».

«Voglio dire», rispose James Florence con eguale gravità, «che dubito che chiunque sulla terra l’abbia visto da allora».

«Faceste indagini sul posto?» proseguì l’avvocato.

L’uomo di nome Florence rise in modo piuttosto imbarazzato. «La verità», disse, «è che tirai giù dal letto i vicini e persino interrogai la polizia; e non riuscii a far credere a nessuno. Dissero che avevo bevuto qualcosa, il che era vero abbastanza; e credo si immaginassero che avessi visto me stesso doppio, e cercassi di rincorrere la mia stessa ombra sui tetti della cattedrale. Oso dire che ora la sanno più lunga, dopo che c’è stato un gran clamore sui giornali. Quanto a me, presi l’ultimo treno per Londra».

«E l’auto?» chiese Garth, bruscamente; e una luce di stupore o costernazione passò sul volto dello sconosciuto.

«Perbacco, che sciocco!» esclamò. «Mi ero completamente dimenticato dell’auto del povero Salt! L’avevamo lasciata infilata a marcia indietro in una fessura tra due vecchie case proprio accanto alla cattedrale. Non ci ho più pensato fino a questo momento».

Gunter got up from his desk and went into the inner room in which he was heard obscurely telephoning. When he came back, Mr. Florence had already picked up his round black hat in his usual unembarrassed manner and suggested that he had better be going; for he had told all that he knew about the affair. Gunter watched him walking away with an interested expression; as if he were not quite so certain of the last assertion as he would like to be. Then he turned to the rest of the company and said:

“A curious yarn. A very curious yarn. But there’s another curious thing you ought to know, that may or may not be connected with it.” For the first time he seemed to take notice of the worthy Joseph Salt, who was present as the nearest surviving relative of the deceased or disappearing person. “Do you happen to know, Mr. Salt, what was your brother’s exact financial position?”

“I don’t,” said the provincial shopkeeper shortly, and contrived to convey an infinite degree of distance and distaste. “Of course you understand, gentlemen, that I’m here to do anything I can for the credit of the family. I wish I could feel quite certain that finding poor Phineas will be for the credit of the family. He and I hadn’t much in common, as you may imagine; and to tell the truth, all these newspaper stories don’t do a man like me very much good. Men may admire a poet for drinking green fire or trying to fly from a church tower; but they don’t order their lunch from a pastry-cook’s shop kept by his brother; they get a fancy there might be a little too much green fire in the ginger-ale. And I’ve only just opened my shop in Croydon; that is, I’ve bought a new business there. Also,” and he looked down at the table with an embarrassment rather rustic but not unmanly, “I’m engaged to be married; and the young lady is very active in church work.”

Garth could not suppress a smile at the incongruous lives of the two brothers; but he saw that there was, after all, a good deal of common sense in the more obscure brother’s attitude.

“Yes,” he said, “I quite see that; but you can hardly expect the public not to be interested.”

“The question I wanted to ask,” said the solicitor, “has a direct bearing on something I have just discovered. Have you any notion even a vague one, of what Phineas Salt’s income was, or if he had any capital?”

“Well,” said Joseph Salt reflectively, “I don’t think he really had much capital; he may have had the five thousand we each of us got from the old dad’s business. In fact, I think he had; but I think he lived up to the edge of his income and a bit beyond. He sometimes made big scoops on a successful play or so; but you know the sort of fellow he was; and the big scoop went in a big splash. I should guess he had two or three thousand in the bank when he disappeared.”

“Quite so,” said the solicitor gravely. “He had two thousand five hundred in the bank on the day he disappeared. And he drew it all out on the day he disappeared. And it entirely disappeared on the day he disappeared.”

“Do you think he’s bolted to foreign climes or something?” asked the brother.

“Ah,” answered the lawyer, “he may have done so. Or he may have intended to do so and not done so.”

“Then how did the money disappear?” asked Garth.

“It may have disappeared,” replied Gunter, “while Phineas was drunk and talking nonsense to a rather shady Bohemian acquaintance, with a remarkable gift of narration.”

Garth and Gale both glanced sharply across at the speaker; and both, observant in such different ways, realized that the lawyer’s face was a shade too grim to be called merely cynical.

“Ah,” cried the doctor with something like a catch in his breath. “And you mean something worse than theft.”

“I have no right to assert even theft,” said the lawyer, without relaxing his sombre expression; “but I have a right to suspect things that go rather deep. To begin with, there is some evidence for the start of Mr. Florence’s story, but none for its conclusion. Mr. Florence met Mr. Hatt; I take it, from the absence of contradiction, that Mr. Hatt also met Mr. Florence.”

On the poker face of Mr. Hatt there was still an absence of contradiction; that might presumably be taken for confirmation.

“Indeed, I have found some evidence corroborating the story of Salt starting with Florence in the car. There is no evidence corroborating all that wild moonlight antic on the roads of Kent; and if you ask me, I think it very likely that this particular joy-ride ended in some criminal den in the Old Kent Road. I telephoned a moment ago to ask about the car left in Canterbury; and they cannot at present find traces of any such car. Above all, there is the damning fact that this fellow Florence forgot all about his imaginary car, and contradicted himself by saying that he went back by train. That alone makes me think his story is false.”

“Does it?” asked Gale, looking at him with childlike wonder. “Why, that alone makes me think his story is true.”

“How do you mean?” asked Gunter; “that alone?”

“Yes,” said Gale; “that one detail is so true that I could almost believe the truth of all the rest, if he’d described Phineas as flying from the tower on a stone dragon.”

He sat frowning and blinking for a moment and then said rather testily: “Don’t you see it’s just the sort of mistake that would be made by that sort of man? A shabby, impecunious man, a man who never travels far except in trains, is caught up for one wild ride in a rich friend’s car, drugged into a sort of dream of absinthe, dragged into a topsy-turvy mystery like a nightmare, wakes up to find his friend caught up into the sky and everybody, in broad daylight, denying that the thing had ever happened. In that sort of chilly, empty awakening, a poor man talking to contemptuous policemen, he would no more have remembered any responsibility for the car than if it had been a fairy chariot drawn by griffins. It was part of the dream. He would automatically fall back on his ordinary way of life and take a third-class ticket home. But he would never make such a blunder in a story he had entirely made up for himself. The instant I heard him make that howler, I knew he was telling the truth.”

Gunter si alzò dalla scrivania ed entrò nella stanza interna dove lo si udì telefonare in modo indistinto. Quando tornò, il signor Florence aveva già raccolto il suo tondo cappello nero con la sua consueta disinvoltura e aveva accennato che era meglio andasse; poiché aveva detto tutto ciò che sapeva della faccenda. Gunter lo guardò allontanarsi con espressione interessata; come se non fosse del tutto certo di quest’ultima affermazione quanto avrebbe voluto essere. Poi si volse al resto della compagnia e disse:

«Una storia curiosa. Una storia curiosissima. Ma c’è un’altra cosa curiosa che dovreste sapere, che può esservi connessa o no». Per la prima volta parve accorgersi del degno Joseph Salt, presente come il più prossimo parente superstite del defunto o scomparso. «Sapete per caso, signor Salt, quale fosse l’esatta posizione finanziaria di vostro fratello?»

«Non lo so», disse brevemente il bottegaio di provincia, e riuscì a trasmettere un grado infinito di distanza e disgusto. «Naturalmente capite, signori, che sono qui per fare tutto ciò che posso per l’onore della famiglia. Vorrei poter essere del tutto certo che ritrovare il povero Phineas gioverà all’onore della famiglia. Lui e io non avevamo molto in comune, come potete immaginare; e a dire la verità, tutte queste storie sui giornali non fanno molto bene a un uomo come me. Gli uomini possono ammirare un poeta perché beve fuoco verde o tenta di volare da una torre di chiesa; ma non ordinano il pranzo dalla pasticceria tenuta da suo fratello; gli viene il sospetto che possa esserci un po’ troppo fuoco verde nella ginger-ale. E ho appena aperto la mia bottega a Croydon; cioè, vi ho rilevato un nuovo esercizio. Inoltre», e abbassò lo sguardo sul tavolo con un imbarazzo piuttosto rustico ma non poco virile, «sono fidanzato per sposarmi; e la giovane signora è molto attiva nelle opere di chiesa».

Garth non poté reprimere un sorriso di fronte alle vite incongrue dei due fratelli; ma vide che c’era, dopotutto, un bel po’ di buon senso nell’atteggiamento del fratello più oscuro.

«Sì», disse, «lo capisco benissimo; ma non potete pretendere che il pubblico non sia interessato».

«La domanda che volevo porre», disse il procuratore, «ha attinenza diretta con qualcosa che ho appena scoperto. Avete qualche idea, sia pure vaga, di quale fosse il reddito di Phineas Salt, o se avesse dei capitali?»

«Beh», disse Joseph Salt riflettendo, «non credo che avesse davvero molti capitali; forse aveva le cinquemila che ciascuno di noi ebbe dall’attività del vecchio papà. Anzi, credo che le avesse; ma penso che vivesse fino all’orlo del suo reddito e un po’ oltre. A volte faceva grossi colpi con qualche commedia di successo; ma sapete che tipo era; e il grosso colpo se ne andava in un grosso spreco. Direi che avesse due o tremila in banca quando scomparve».

«Proprio così», disse il procuratore con gravità. «Aveva duemila cinque cento in banca il giorno in cui scomparve. E le ritirò tutte il giorno in cui scomparve. Ed esse scomparvero del tutto il giorno in cui scomparve».

«Pensate che sia fuggito verso climi stranieri o qualcosa del genere?» chiese il fratello.

«Ah», rispose l’avvocato, «può darsi. O può aver avuto l’intenzione di farlo e non averlo fatto».

«E allora come sparì il denaro?» chiese Garth.

«Può essere sparito», rispose Gunter, «mentre Phineas era ubriaco e diceva sciocchezze a una conoscenza bohémienne piuttosto losca, dotata di un notevole talento narrativo».

Garth e Gale gettarono entrambi un rapido sguardo verso chi parlava; ed entrambi, osservatori in modi tanto diversi, si accorsero che il volto dell’avvocato era d’una sfumatura troppo cupa per dirsi semplicemente cinico.

«Ah», esclamò il dottore con qualcosa come un nodo in gola. «E intendete qualcosa di peggio del furto».

«Non ho diritto di affermare nemmeno il furto», disse l’avvocato, senza allentare la sua tetra espressione; «ma ho il diritto di sospettare cose che vanno piuttosto in profondità. Tanto per cominciare, c’è qualche prova per l’inizio della storia del signor Florence, ma nessuna per la sua conclusione. Il signor Florence incontrò il signor Hatt; deduco, dall’assenza di smentita, che anche il signor Hatt incontrò il signor Florence».

Sulla faccia impassibile del signor Hatt c’era ancora un’assenza di smentita; il che presumibilmente poteva prendersi per conferma.

«In verità, ho trovato qualche prova che corrobora la storia di Salt che parte con Florence in auto. Non c’è prova che corrobori tutta quella selvaggia buffonata al chiaro di luna sulle strade del Kent; e se volete il mio parere, ritengo assai probabile che questa particolare scampagnata in auto sia finita in qualche covo criminale della Old Kent Road. Ho telefonato un momento fa per chiedere dell’auto lasciata a Canterbury; e al momento non riescono a trovare tracce di alcuna auto simile. Soprattutto, c’è il fatto schiacciante che questo Florence si è dimenticato completamente della sua auto immaginaria, e si è contraddetto dicendo che tornò in treno. Solo questo mi fa pensare che la sua storia sia falsa».

«Davvero?» chiese Gale, guardandolo con meraviglia fanciullesca. «Ebbene, solo questo mi fa pensare che la sua storia sia vera».

«Che intendete?» chiese Gunter; «solo questo?»

«Sì», disse Gale; «quell’unico dettaglio è così vero che potrei quasi credere alla verità di tutto il resto, anche se avesse descritto Phineas mentre volava dalla torre su un drago di pietra».

Sedette accigliato e sbattendo le palpebre per un momento e poi disse piuttosto stizzito: «Non vedete che è proprio il genere d’errore che commetterebbe quel genere d’uomo? Un uomo squallido e squattrinato, un uomo che non viaggia mai lontano se non in treno, viene trascinato per una corsa sfrenata nell’auto d’un amico ricco, drogato in una sorta di sogno d’assenzio, trascinato in un mistero sottosopra come un incubo, si sveglia per trovare il suo amico rapito in cielo e tutti, in pieno giorno, che negano che la cosa sia mai avvenuta. In quella sorta di gelido, vuoto risveglio, un pover’uomo che parla con poliziotti sprezzanti, non si sarebbe più ricordato d’alcuna responsabilità per l’auto di quanto se ne sarebbe ricordato se fosse stata un cocchio fatato tirato da grifoni. Faceva parte del sogno. Sarebbe tornato automaticamente al suo consueto modo di vivere e avrebbe preso un biglietto di terza classe per casa. Ma non commetterebbe mai un simile abbaglio in una storia che si fosse inventata di sana pianta da sé. Nell’istante in cui gli udii sparare quella castroneria, seppi che diceva la verità».

The others were gazing at the speaker in some mild surprise, when the telephone bell, strident and prolonged, rang in the adjoining office. Gunter got hastily to his feet and went to answer it, and for a few moments there was no sound but the faint buzz of his questions and replies. Then he came back into the room, his strong face graven with a restrained stupefaction.

“This is a most remarkable coincidence,” he said; “and, I must admit, a confirmation of what you say. The police down there have found the marks of a car, with tyres and general proportions like Phineas Salt’s, evidently having stood exactly where James Florence professed to have left it standing. But what is even more odd, it has gone; the tracks show it was driven off down the road to the south-east by somebody. Presumably by Phineas Salt.”

“To the south-east,” cried Gale, and sprang to his feet. “I thought so!”

He took a few strides up and down the room and then said: “But we mustn’t go too fast. There are several things. To begin with, any fool can see that Phineas would drive to the east; it was nearly daybreak when he disappeared. Of course, in that state, he would drive straight into the sunrise. What else could one do? Then, if he was really full of that craze for crags or towers, he would find himself leaving the last towers behind and driving into flatter and flatter places; for that road leads down into Thanet. What would he do? He must make for the chalk cliffs that look down at least on sea and sand; but I fancy he would want to look down on people, too; just as he might have looked down on the people of Canterbury from the cathedral tower… I know that south-eastern road…”

Then he faced them solemnly and, like one uttering a sacred mystery, said, “Margate.”

“And why?” asked the staring Garth.

“A form of suicide, I suppose,” said the solicitor dryly. “What could a man of that sort want to do at Margate except commit suicide?”

“What could any man want at Margate except suicide?” asked Dr. Garth, who had a prejudice against such social resorts.

“A good many millions of God’s images go there simply for fun,” said Gale; “but it remains to be shown why one of them should be Phineas Salt… there are possibilities… those black crawling masses seen from the white cliffs might be a sort of vision for a pessimist; possibly a dreadful destructive vision of shutting the gates in the cliffs and inundating them all in the ancient awful sea… or could he have some cranky notion of making Margate glorious by his creative or destructive acts; changing the very sound of the name, making it heroic or tragic for ever? There have been such notions in such men… but wherever this wild road leads I am sure it ends in Margate.”

The worthy tradesman of Croydon was the first to get to his feet after Gale had risen, and he fingered the lapels of his outlandish coat with all his native embarrassment. “I’m afraid all this is beyond me, gentlemen,” he said, “gargoyles and dragons and pessimists and such are not in my line. But it does seem that the police have got a clue that points down the Margate road; and if you ask me, I think we’d better discuss this matter again when the police have investigated a little more.”

“Mr. Salt is perfectly right,” said the lawyer heartily. “See what it is to have a business man to bring us back to business. I will go and make some more inquiries; and soon, perhaps, I may have a little more to tell you.”

If Gabriel Gale was, and felt himself to be, an incongruous figure in the severe framework of leather and parchment, of law and commerce, represented by the office of Mr. Gunter, it might well have been supposed that he would feel even more of a fish out of water in the scene of the second family council. For it was held at the new head-quarters of the family, or all that remained of the family; the little shop in Croydon over which the lost poet’s very prosaic brother was presiding with a mixture of the bustle of a new business and the last lingering formalities of a funeral. Mr. J. Salt’s suburban shop was a very suburban shop. It was a shop for selling confectionery and sweetmeats and similar things; with a sort of sideshow of very mild refreshments, served on little round shiny tables and apparently chiefly consisting of pale green lemonade. The cakes and sweets were arranged in decorative patterns in the window, to attract the eye of Croydon youth, and as the building consisted chiefly of windows, it seemed full of a sort of cold and discolouring light. A parlour behind, full of neat but illogical knicknacks and mementoes, was not without a sampler, a testimonial from a Provident Society and a portrait of George V. But it was never easy to predict in what place or circumstances Mr. Gale would find a certain intellectual interest. He generally looked at objects, not objectively in the sense of seeing them as themselves, but in connexion with some curious trains of thought of his own; and, for some reason or other, he seemed to take quite a friendly interest in Mr. Salt’s suburban shop. Indeed, he seemed to take more interest in this novel scene than in the older and more serious problem which he had come there to solve. He gazed entranced at the china dogs and pink pincushions on the parlour mantelpiece; he was with difficulty drawn away from a rapt contemplation of the diamond pattern of lemon-drops and raspberry-drops which decorated the window; and he looked even at the lemonade as if it were as important as that pale green wine of wormwood, which had apparently played a real part in the tragedy of Phineas Salt.

He had been indeed unusually cheerful all the morning, possibly because it was a beautiful day, possibly for more personal reasons; and had drawn near to the rendezvous through the trim suburban avenues with a step of unusual animation. He saw the worthy confectioner himself, stepping out of a villa of a social shade faintly superior to his own; a young woman with a crown of braided brown hair, and a good grave face, came with him down the garden path. Gale had little difficulty in identifying the young lady interested in church work. The poet gazed at the pale squares of lawn and the few thin and dwarfish trees with quite a sentimental interest, almost as if it were a romance of his own; nor did his universal good humour fail him even when he encountered, a few lamp-posts further down the road, the saturnine and somewhat unsympathetic countenance of Mr. Hiram Hatt. The lover was still lingering at the garden gate, after the fashion of his kind, and Hatt and Gale walked more briskly ahead of him towards his home. To Hatt the poet made the somewhat irrelevant remark: “Do you understand that desire to be one of the lovers of Cleopatra?”

Gli altri fissavano chi parlava con lieve sorpresa, quando il campanello del telefono, stridulo e prolungato, suonò nell’ufficio attiguo. Gunter si alzò in fretta in piedi e andò a rispondere, e per qualche istante non si udì suono se non il fioco ronzio delle sue domande e risposte. Poi rientrò nella stanza, il suo volto forte scolpito da una stupefazione trattenuta.

«Questa è una coincidenza davvero notevole», disse; «e, devo ammetterlo, una conferma di ciò che dite. La polizia laggiù ha trovato le tracce di un’auto, con pneumatici e proporzioni generali come quelle di Phineas Salt, evidentemente ferma esattamente dove James Florence ha sostenuto d’averla lasciata. Ma cosa ancor più strana, è sparita; le tracce mostrano che fu condotta via giù per la strada verso sud-est da qualcuno. Presumibilmente da Phineas Salt».

«Verso sud-est», gridò Gale, e balzò in piedi. «Lo pensavo!»

Fece qualche passo su e giù per la stanza e poi disse: «Ma non dobbiamo andare troppo in fretta. Ci sono parecchie cose. Tanto per cominciare, qualsiasi sciocco può vedere che Phineas avrebbe guidato verso est; era quasi l’alba quando scomparve. Naturalmente, in quello stato, avrebbe guidato dritto verso il sorgere del sole. Cos’altro si potrebbe fare? Poi, se era davvero pieno di quella smania di rupi o torri, si sarebbe trovato a lasciarsi dietro le ultime torri e a guidare verso luoghi sempre più piatti; poiché quella strada scende giù nel Thanet. Cosa avrebbe fatto? Dovrebbe dirigersi verso le scogliere di gesso che guardano dall’alto almeno il mare e la sabbia; ma immagino che vorrebbe guardare dall’alto anche la gente; proprio come poteva aver guardato dall’alto la gente di Canterbury dalla torre della cattedrale… Conosco quella strada sud-orientale…»

Poi si volse loro solennemente e, come chi proferisce un sacro mistero, disse: «Margate».

«E perché?» chiese Garth con lo sguardo fisso.

«Una forma di suicidio, suppongo», disse il procuratore seccamente. «Cosa potrebbe un uomo di quel tipo voler fare a Margate se non commettere suicidio?»

«Cosa potrebbe volere qualunque uomo a Margate se non il suicidio?» chiese il dottor Garth, che nutriva un pregiudizio contro simili luoghi di villeggiatura.

«Parecchi milioni di immagini di Dio ci vanno semplicemente per divertirsi», disse Gale; «ma resta da dimostrare perché una di esse dovrebbe essere Phineas Salt… ci sono possibilità… quelle nere masse brulicanti viste dalle bianche scogliere potrebbero essere una sorta di visione per un pessimista; forse una spaventosa visione distruttiva di chiudere le porte nelle scogliere e inondarle tutte nell’antico terribile mare… oppure poteva avere qualche stralunata idea di rendere Margate gloriosa coi suoi atti creativi o distruttivi; mutando il suono stesso del nome, rendendolo eroico o tragico per sempre? Ci sono state simili idee in simili uomini… ma ovunque conduca questa selvaggia strada, sono certo che finisce a Margate».

Il degno commerciante di Croydon fu il primo ad alzarsi in piedi dopo che Gale s’era levato, e tastò i risvolti della sua bizzarra giacca con tutto il suo innato imbarazzo. «Temo che tutto questo mi superi, signori», disse, «gargolle e draghi e pessimisti e simili non sono roba mia. Ma pare proprio che la polizia abbia trovato un indizio che punta giù per la strada di Margate; e se volete il mio parere, credo che faremmo meglio a discutere di nuovo la questione quando la polizia avrà indagato un po’ di più».

«Il signor Salt ha perfettamente ragione», disse l’avvocato con calore. «Ecco cosa vuol dire avere un uomo d’affari che ci riporti agli affari. Andrò a fare qualche altra indagine; e presto, forse, potrei avere un po’ di più da dirvi».

Se Gabriel Gale era, e si sentiva, una figura incongrua nella severa cornice di cuoio e pergamena, di legge e commercio, rappresentata dall’ufficio del signor Gunter, si poteva ben supporre che si sarebbe sentito ancor più come un pesce fuor d’acqua nella scena del secondo consiglio di famiglia. Poiché esso si teneva nel nuovo quartier generale della famiglia, o tutto ciò che restava della famiglia; la piccola bottega di Croydon su cui il perduto prosaicissimo fratello del poeta presiedeva con un misto del trambusto di un nuovo esercizio e delle ultime persistenti formalità di un funerale. La bottega suburbana del signor J. Salt era una bottega assai suburbana. Era una bottega per vendere dolciumi e confetti e cose simili; con una sorta di annesso di rinfreschi molto blandi, serviti su piccoli tavoli tondi e lucidi e apparentemente consistenti soprattutto in pallida limonata verde. I dolci e le caramelle erano disposti in motivi decorativi nella vetrina, per attrarre l’occhio della gioventù di Croydon, e poiché l’edificio consisteva principalmente di vetrine, sembrava pieno di una sorta di luce fredda e stinta. Un salottino sul retro, pieno di ninnoli e ricordi ordinati ma illogici, non era privo di un ricamo, un attestato di una Società di Previdenza e un ritratto di Giorgio V. Ma non era mai facile prevedere in quale luogo o circostanza il signor Gale avrebbe trovato un certo interesse intellettuale. Generalmente guardava gli oggetti, non obiettivamente nel senso di vederli come sé stessi, ma in connessione con qualche curioso corso di pensieri suoi propri; e, per una ragione o l’altra, pareva provare un interesse del tutto amichevole per la bottega suburbana del signor Salt. Anzi, pareva prendere più interesse a questa nuova scena che al più vecchio e più serio problema che era venuto lì a risolvere. Fissava incantato i cani di porcellana e i puntaspilli rosa sulla mensola del camino del salottino; a stento lo si distoglieva da una rapita contemplazione del motivo a rombi di caramelle al limone e al lampone che ornavano la vetrina; e guardava persino la limonata come se fosse importante quanto quel pallido vino verde d’assenzio, che apparentemente aveva avuto una parte reale nella tragedia di Phineas Salt.

Era stato in effetti insolitamente allegro per tutta la mattina, forse perché era una bella giornata, forse per ragioni più personali; e si era avvicinato all’appuntamento attraverso i lindi viali suburbani con un passo d’insolita animazione. Vide il degno pasticciere in persona, uscire da una villa di una sfumatura sociale lievemente superiore alla propria; una giovane donna con una corona di trecce di capelli castani, e un bel volto grave, scese con lui lungo il sentiero del giardino. Gale ebbe poca difficoltà a identificare la giovane signora interessata alle opere di chiesa. Il poeta contemplò i pallidi riquadri di prato e i pochi alberelli esili e nani con un interesse del tutto sentimentale, quasi come se fosse un idillio suo proprio; né il suo universale buon umore gli venne meno persino quando incontrò, qualche lampione più giù per la strada, la saturnina e alquanto sgradevole fisionomia del signor Hiram Hatt. L’innamorato indugiava ancora al cancello del giardino, secondo l’usanza della sua specie, e Hatt e Gale camminarono più svelti davanti a lui verso la sua casa. A Hatt il poeta fece l’osservazione alquanto irrilevante: «Comprendete quel desiderio di essere uno degli amanti di Cleopatra?»

Mr. Hatt, the secretary, indicated that, had he nourished such a desire, his appearance on the historical scene would have lacked something of true American hustle and punctuality.

“Oh, there are plenty of Cleopatras still,” answered Gale; “and plenty of people who have that strange notion of being the hundredth husband of an Egyptian cat. What could have made a man of real intellect, like that fellow’s brother, break himself all up for a woman like Hertha Hathaway?”

“Well, I’m all with you there,” said Hatt. “I didn’t say anything about the woman, because it wasn’t my business; but I tell you, sir, she was just blue ruin and vitriol. Only the fact that I didn’t mention her seems to have set your friend the solicitor off on another dance of dark suspicions. I swear he fancies she and I were mixed up in something; and probably had to do with the disappearance of Phineas Salt.”

Gale looked hard at the man’s hard face for a moment and then said irrelevantly: “Would it surprise you to find him at Margate?”

“No; nor anywhere else,” replied Hatt. “He was restless just then and drifted about into the commonest crowds. He did no work lately; sometimes sat and stared at a blank sheet of paper as if he had no ideas.”

“Or as if he had too many,” said Gabriel Gale.

With that they turned in at the confectioner’s door: and found Dr. Garth already in the outer shop, having only that moment arrived. But when they penetrated to the parlour, they came on a figure that gave them, indescribably, a cold shock of sobriety. The lawyer was already seated in that gimcrack room, resolutely and rather rudely, with his top hat on his head, like a bailiff in possession; but they all sensed something more sinister, as of the bearer of the bowstring.

“Where is Mr. Joseph Salt?” he asked. “He said he would be home at eleven.”

Gale smiled faintly and began to fiddle with the funny little ornaments on the mantelpiece. “He is saying farewell,” he said. “Sometimes it is rather a long word to say.”

“We must begin without him,” said Gunter. “Perhaps it is just as well.”

“You mean you have bad news for him?” asked the doctor, lowering his voice. “Have you the last news of his brother?”

“I believe it may fairly be called the last news,” answered the lawyer dryly. “In the light of the latest discoveries…Mr. Gale, I should be much obliged if you would leave off fidgeting with those ornaments and sit down. There is something that somebody has got to explain.”

“Yes,” replied Gale rather hazily. “Isn’t this what he has got to explain?”

He picked up something from the mantelpiece and put it on the central table. It was a very absurd object to be stared at thus, as an exhibit in a grim museum of suicide or crime. It was a cheap, childish, pink and white mug, inscribed in large purple letters, “A Present from Margate.”

“There is a date inside,” said Gale, looking down dreamily into the depths of this remarkable receptacle. “This year. And we’re still at the beginning of the year, you know.”

“Well, it may be one of the things,” said the solicitor. “But I have got some other Presents from Margate.”

He took a sheaf of papers from his breast-pocket and laid them out thoughtfully on the table before he spoke.

“Understand, to begin with, that there really is a riddle and the man really has vanished. Don’t imagine a man can easily melt into a modern crowd; the police have traced his car on the road and could have traced him, if he had left it. Don’t imagine anybody can simply drive down country roads throwing corpses out of cars. There are always a lot of fussy people about, who notice a little thing like that. Whatever he did, sooner or later the explanation would probably be found; and we have found it.”

Gale put down the mug abruptly and stared across, still open-mouthed, but as it were more dry-throated, coughing and stammering now with a real eagerness.

“Have you really found out?” he asked. “Do you know all about the Purple Jewel?”

“Look here!” cried the doctor, as if with a generous indignation; “this is getting too thick. I don’t mind being in a mystery, but it needn’t be a melodrama. Don’t say that we are after the Rajah’s Ruby. Don’t say, oh, don’t say, that it is in the eye of the god Vishnu.”

“No,” replied the poet. “It is in the eye of the Beholder.”

“And who’s he?” asked Gunter. “I don’t know exactly what you’re talking about, but there may have been a theft involved. Anyhow, there was more than a theft.”

He sorted out from his papers two or three photographs of the sort that are taken casually with hand-cameras in a holiday crowd. As he did so he said:

“Our investigations at Margate have not been fruitless; in fact they have been rather fruitful. We have found a witness, a photographer on Margate beach, who testifies to having seen a man corresponding to Phineas Salt, burly and with a big red beard and long hair, who stood for some time on an isolated crag of white chalk, which stands out from the cliff, and looked down at the crowds below. Then he descended by a rude stairway cut in the chalk and, crossing a crowded part of the beach, spoke to another man who seemed to be an ordinary clerk or commonplace holiday-maker; and, after a little talk, they went up to the row of bathing-sheds, apparently for the purpose of having a dip in the sea. My informant thinks they did go into the sea; but cannot be quite so certain. What he is quite certain of is that he never saw the red-bearded man again, though he did see the common-place clean-shaven man, both when he returned in his bathing-suit and when he resumed his ordinary, his very ordinary, clothes. He not only saw him, but he actually took a snapshot of him, and there he is.”

He handed the photograph to Garth, who gazed at it with slowly rising eyebrows. The photograph represented a sturdy man with a bulldog jaw but rather blank eyes, with his head lifted, apparently staring out to sea. He wore very light holiday clothes, but of a clumsy, unfashionable cut; and, so far as he could be seen under the abrupt shadow and rather too jaunty angle of his stiff straw hat, his hair was of some light colour. Only, as it happened, the doctor had no need to wait for the development of colour photography. For he knew exactly what colour it was. He knew it was a sort of sandy red; he had often seen it, not in the photograph, but on the head where it grew. For the man in the stiff straw hat was most unmistakably Mr. Joseph Salt, the worthy confectioner and new social ornament to the suburb of Croydon.

Il signor Hatt, il segretario, lasciò intendere che, se avesse nutrito un simile desiderio, la sua comparsa sulla scena storica sarebbe mancata di qualcosa del vero brio e della puntualità americani.

«Oh, di Cleopatre ce ne sono ancora tante», rispose Gale; «e tanta gente che ha quella strana idea di essere il centesimo marito di una gatta egizia. Cosa può aver spinto un uomo di vero intelletto, come il fratello di quel tale, a rovinarsi del tutto per una donna come Hertha Hathaway?»

«Beh, su questo sono del tutto d’accordo con voi», disse Hatt. «Non dissi nulla della donna, perché non erano affari miei; ma vi dico, signore, che era pura rovina e vetriolo. Solo il fatto che non l’abbia menzionata pare aver lanciato il vostro amico procuratore in un’altra danza di oscuri sospetti. Giuro che s’immagina che lei e io fossimo immischiati in qualcosa; e probabilmente c’entrasse con la scomparsa di Phineas Salt».

Gale fissò intensamente per un momento il volto duro dell’uomo e poi disse fuori tema: «Vi sorprenderebbe trovarlo a Margate?»

«No; né altrove», rispose Hatt. «Era irrequieto proprio allora e vagava tra le folle più comuni. Ultimamente non lavorava affatto; a volte sedeva e fissava un foglio di carta bianco come se non avesse idee».

«O come se ne avesse troppe», disse Gabriel Gale.

Con ciò svoltarono alla porta del pasticciere: e trovarono il dottor Garth già nella bottega esterna, giunto solo in quell’istante. Ma quando penetrarono nel salottino, s’imbatterono in una figura che diede loro, indescrivibilmente, un freddo colpo di sobrietà. L’avvocato sedeva già in quella stanza dozzinale, risoluto e piuttosto scortese, col cilindro in testa, come un ufficiale giudiziario in possesso; ma tutti percepirono qualcosa di più sinistro, come del portatore del laccio.

«Dov’è il signor Joseph Salt?» chiese. «Aveva detto che sarebbe stato a casa alle undici».

Gale sorrise debolmente e cominciò a trastullarsi coi buffi piccoli ninnoli sulla mensola del camino. «Sta dicendo addio», disse. «A volte è una parola piuttosto lunga da dire».

«Dobbiamo cominciare senza di lui», disse Gunter. «Forse è bene così».

«Volete dire che avete cattive notizie per lui?» chiese il dottore, abbassando la voce. «Avete le ultime notizie di suo fratello?»

«Credo si possano ben chiamare le ultime notizie», rispose l’ avvocato seccamente. «Alla luce delle ultime scoperte… signor Gale, vi sarei molto obbligato se smetteste di gingillarvi con quei ninnoli e vi sedeste. C’è qualcosa che qualcuno deve spiegare».

«Sì», rispose Gale piuttosto vagamente. «Non è questo ciò che deve spiegare?»

Raccolse qualcosa dalla mensola del camino e lo posò sul tavolo centrale. Era un oggetto assai assurdo da fissare così, come un reperto in un tetro museo di suicidio o delitto. Era una tazza a buon mercato, puerile, rosa e bianca, con la scritta a grandi lettere purpuree: «Un regalo da Margate».

«Dentro c’è una data», disse Gale, guardando sognante in giù nelle profondità di questo notevole recipiente. «Quest’anno. E siamo ancora all’inizio dell’anno, sapete».

«Beh, può essere una delle cose», disse il procuratore. «Ma ho altri Regali da Margate».

Trasse un fascio di carte dal taschino e le dispose pensosamente sul tavolo prima di parlare.

«Intendete, tanto per cominciare, che c’è davvero un enigma e che l’uomo è davvero svanito. Non immaginate che un uomo possa facilmente dissolversi in una folla moderna; la polizia ha rintracciato la sua auto sulla strada e avrebbe potuto rintracciare lui, se l’avesse lasciata. Non immaginate che chiunque possa semplicemente guidare per strade di campagna gettando cadaveri fuori dalle auto. C’è sempre in giro un mucchio di gente ficcanaso, che nota una cosetta simile. Qualunque cosa abbia fatto, prima o poi la spiegazione probabilmente si troverebbe; e noi l’abbiamo trovata».

Gale posò bruscamente la tazza e fissò dall’altra parte, ancora a bocca aperta, ma per così dire più con la gola secca, tossendo e balbettando ora con vera premura.

«L’avete davvero scoperto?» chiese. «Sapete tutto del Gioiello Purpureo?»

«Sentite un po’!» esclamò il dottore, come con generosa indignazione; «questo sta diventando troppo. Non m’importa d’esser dentro un mistero, ma non c’è bisogno che sia un melodramma. Non ditemi che diamo la caccia al Rubino del Rajah. Non ditemi, oh, non ditemi, che è nell’occhio del dio Vishnu».

«No», rispose il poeta. «È nell’occhio di chi guarda».

«E chi è costui?» chiese Gunter. «Non so esattamente di cosa stiate parlando, ma può esserci stato di mezzo un furto. Comunque, ci fu più di un furto».

Selezionò tra le sue carte due o tre fotografie del genere che si scattano alla buona con macchine a mano in una folla di villeggianti. Mentre lo faceva disse:

«Le nostre indagini a Margate non sono state infruttuose; anzi esse sono state piuttosto fruttuose. Abbiamo trovato un testimone, un fotografo sulla spiaggia di Margate, che attesta d’aver visto un uomo corrispondente a Phineas Salt, robusto e con una gran barba rossa e capelli lunghi, che stette per qualche tempo su un isolato picco di bianco gesso, che sporge dalla scogliera, e guardava dall’alto le folle sottostanti. Poi discese per una rozza scala tagliata nel gesso e, attraversando una parte affollata della spiaggia, parlò a un altro uomo che pareva un comune impiegato o un banale villeggiante; e, dopo un breve discorso, salirono alla fila delle cabine da bagno, apparentemente allo scopo di fare un tuffo in mare. Il mio informatore crede che entrarono davvero in mare; ma non può esserne del tutto certo. Ciò di cui è ben certo è che non vide mai più l’uomo dalla barba rossa, sebbene vedesse il banale uomo sbarbato, sia quando tornò in costume da bagno sia quando riprese i suoi ordinari, ordinarissimi, abiti. Non solo lo vide, ma gli scattò addirittura un’istantanea, ed eccolo qui».

Porse la fotografia a Garth, che la contemplò con le sopracciglia che lentamente s’alzavano. La fotografia rappresentava un uomo robusto con una mascella da bulldog ma occhi piuttosto vacui, col capo sollevato, apparentemente fisso verso il mare. Indossava abiti da vacanza assai leggeri, ma di taglio goffo, fuori moda; e, per quanto lo si potesse vedere sotto l’improvvisa ombra e l’inclinazione un po’ troppo sbarazzina del suo rigido cappello di paglia, i capelli erano di qualche colore chiaro. Solo che, guarda caso, il dottore non aveva bisogno di attendere lo sviluppo della fotografia a colori. Perché sapeva esattamente di che colore fossero. Sapeva che erano una sorta di rosso sabbia; li aveva visti spesso, non nella fotografia, ma sul capo dove crescevano. Poiché l’uomo dal rigido cappello di paglia era, in modo assolutamente inequivocabile, il signor Joseph Salt, il degno pasticciere e nuovo ornamento sociale del sobborgo di Croydon.

“So Phineas went down to Margate to meet his brother,” said Garth. “After all, that’s natural enough in one way. Margate is exactly the sort of place his brother would go to.”

“Yes; Joseph went there on one of those motor-charabanc expeditions, with a whole crowd of other trippers, and he seems to have returned the same night on the same vehicle. But nobody knows when, where or if his brother Phineas returned.”

“I rather gather from your tone,” said Garth very gravely, “that you think his brother Phineas never did return.”

“I think his brother never will return,” said the lawyer, “unless it happens (by a curious coincidence) that he was drowned while bathing and his body is some day washed up on the shore. But there’s a strong current running just there that would carry it far away.”

“The plot thickens, certainly,” said the doctor. “All this bathing business seems to complicate things rather.”

“I am afraid,” said the lawyer, “that it simplifies them very much.”

“What,” asked Garth sharply. “Simplifies?”

“Yes,” said the other, gripping the arms of his chair and rising abruptly to his feet. “I think this story is as simple as the story of Cain and Abel. And rather like it”.

There was a shocked silence, which was at length broken by Gale, who was peering into the Present from Margate, crying or almost crowing, in the manner of a child.

“Isn’t it a funny little mug! He must have bought it before he came back in the charabanc. Such a jolly thing to buy, when you have just murdered your own brother.”

“It does seem a queer business,” said Dr. Garth frowning. “I suppose one might work out some explanation of how he did it. I suppose a man might drown another man while they were bathing, even off a crowded beach like that. But I’m damned if I can understand why he did it. Have you discovered a motive as well as a murder?”

“The motive is old enough and I think obvious enough,” answered Gunter. “We have in this case all the necessary elements of a hatred, of that slow and corroding sort that is founded on jealousy. Here you had two brothers, sons of the same insignificant Midland tradesman; having the same education, environment, opportunities; very nearly of an age, very much of one type, even of one physical type, rugged, red-haired, rather plain and heavy, until Phineas made himself a spectacle with that big Bolshevist beard and bush of hair; not so different in youth but that they must have had ordinary rivalries and quarrels on fairly equal terms. And then see the sequel. One of them fills the world with his name, wears a laurel like the crown of Petrach, dines with kings and emperors and is worshipped by women like a hero on the films. The other… isn’t it enough to say that the other has had to go on slaving all his life in a room like this?”

“Don’t you like the room?” inquired Gale with the same simple eagerness. “Why, I think some of the ornaments are so nice!”

“It is not yet quite clear,” went on Gunter, ignoring him, “how the pastry-cook lured the poet down to Margate and a dip in the sea. But the poet was admittedly rather random in his movements just then, and too restless to work; and we have no reason to suppose that he knew of the fraternal hatred or that he in any way reciprocated it. I don’t think there would be much difficulty in swimming with a man beyond the crowd of bathers and holding him under water, till you could send his body adrift on a current flowing away from the shore. Then he went back and dressed and calmly took his place in the charabanc.”

“Don’t forget the dear little mug,” said Gale softly. “He stopped to buy that and then went home. Well, it’s a very able and thorough explanation and reconstruction of the crime, my dear Gunter, and I congratulate you. Even the best achievements have some little flaw; and there’s only one trifling mistake in yours. You’ve got it the wrong way round.”

“What do you mean?” asked the other quickly.

“Quite a small correction,” explained Gale. “You think that Joseph was jealous of Phineas. As a matter of fact, Phineas was jealous of Joseph.”

“My dear Gale, you are simply playing the goat,” said the doctor very sharply and impatiently. “And let me tell you I don’t think it’s a decent occasion for doing it. I know all about your jokes and fancies and paradoxes, but we’re all in a damned hard position, sitting here in the man’s own house, and knowing we’re in the house of a murderer.”

“I know… it’s simply infernal,” said Gunter, his stiffness shaken for the first time; and he looked up with a shrinking jerk, as if he half expected to see the rope hanging from that dull and dusty ceiling.

At the same moment the door was thrown open and the man they had convicted of murder stood in the room. His eyes were bright like a child’s over a new toy, his face was flushed to the roots of his fiery hair, his broad shoulders were squared backwards like a soldier’s; and in the lapel of his coat was a large purple flower, of a colour that Gale remembered in the garden-beds of the house down the road. Gale had no difficulty in guessing the reason of this triumphant entry.

Then the man with the buttonhole saw the tragic faces on the other side of the table and stopped, staring.

“Well,” he said at last, in a rather curious tone. “What about your search?”

The lawyer was about to open his locked lips with some such question as was once asked of Cain by the voice out of the cloud, when Gale interrupted him by flinging himself backwards in a chair and emitting a short but cheery laugh.

“I’ve given up the search,” said Gale gaily. “No need to bother myself about that any more.”

“Because you know you will never find Phineas Salt,” said the tradesman steadily.

“Because I have found him,” said Gabriel Gale. Dr. Garth got to his feet quickly and remained staring at them with bright eyes.

«Così Phineas scese a Margate per incontrare suo fratello», disse Garth. «Dopotutto, in un certo senso è abbastanza naturale. Margate è esattamente il genere di posto dove suo fratello andrebbe».

«Sì; Joseph vi andò in una di quelle gite in torpedone, con tutta una folla d’altri gitanti, e pare sia tornato la stessa notte sullo stesso veicolo. Ma nessuno sa quando, dove o se suo fratello Phineas sia tornato».

«Deduco piuttosto dal vostro tono», disse Garth con molta gravità, «che pensiate che suo fratello Phineas non sia mai tornato».

«Penso che suo fratello non tornerà mai», disse l’avvocato, «a meno che non accada (per una curiosa coincidenza) che sia annegato mentre faceva il bagno e il suo corpo venga un giorno gettato a riva. Ma proprio lì corre una forte corrente che lo porterebbe lontano».

«La trama s’infittisce, certo», disse il dottore. «Tutta questa faccenda del bagno pare piuttosto complicare le cose».

«Temo», disse l’avvocato, «che le semplifichi moltissimo».

«Cosa», chiese Garth bruscamente. «Semplifichi?»

«Sì», disse l’altro, afferrando i braccioli della sedia e alzandosi bruscamente in piedi. «Penso che questa storia sia semplice quanto la storia di Caino e Abele. E le assomigli parecchio».

Ci fu un silenzio scioccato, che alla fine fu rotto da Gale, che scrutava dentro il Regalo da Margate, esclamando o quasi cinguettando, alla maniera di un bambino.

«Che buffa tazzina! Deve averla comprata prima di tornare col torpedone. Che cosa allegra da comprare, quando hai appena assassinato tuo fratello».

«Pare proprio una faccenda strana», disse il dottor Garth accigliandosi. «Suppongo che si possa ricavare qualche spiegazione di come lo fece. Suppongo che un uomo possa annegarne un altro mentre fanno il bagno, anche al largo di una spiaggia affollata come quella. Ma che io sia dannato se riesco a capire perché lo fece. Avete scoperto un movente oltre che un omicidio?»

«Il movente è abbastanza antico e credo abbastanza ovvio», rispose Gunter. «Abbiamo in questo caso tutti gli elementi necessari di un odio, di quella specie lenta e corrosiva che si fonda sulla gelosia. Qui avevate due fratelli, figli dello stesso insignificante commerciante delle Midlands; con la stessa educazione, ambiente, opportunità; quasi coetanei, molto dello stesso tipo, persino dello stesso tipo fisico, rudi, dai capelli rossi, piuttosto insignificanti e pesanti, finché Phineas non si fece uno spettacolo con quella gran barba bolscevica e quella zazzera di capelli; non tanto diversi in gioventù da non aver dovuto avere ordinarie rivalità e liti su termini abbastanza pari. E poi guardate il seguito. Uno di loro riempie il mondo col suo nome, porta un alloro come la corona del Petrarca, cena con re e imperatori ed è adorato dalle donne come un eroe del cinema. L’altro… non basta dire che l’altro ha dovuto continuare a sgobbare tutta la vita in una stanza come questa?»

«Non vi piace la stanza?» s’informò Gale con la stessa semplice premura. «Ma via, trovo che alcuni ninnoli siano così graziosi!»

«Non è ancora del tutto chiaro», proseguì Gunter, ignorandolo, «come il pasticciere abbia adescato il poeta fino a Margate e a un tuffo in mare. Ma il poeta era, va detto, piuttosto casuale nei suoi movimenti proprio allora, e troppo irrequieto per lavorare; e non abbiamo ragione di supporre che sapesse dell’odio fraterno o che lo ricambiasse in alcun modo. Non credo che ci sarebbe molta difficoltà a nuotare con un uomo oltre la folla dei bagnanti e a tenerlo sotto l’acqua, finché tu non potessi mandare il suo corpo alla deriva su una corrente che scorre via dalla riva. Poi tornò indietro e si vestì e prese con calma il suo posto nel torpedone».

«Non dimenticate la cara tazzina», disse Gale sommessamente. «Si fermò a comprarla e poi tornò a casa. Beh, è una spiegazione e ricostruzione del delitto assai abile e minuziosa, mio caro Gunter, e mi congratulo con voi. Anche i migliori risultati hanno qualche piccola pecca; e nel vostro c’è un solo insignificante errore. L’avete preso alla rovescia».

«Che intendete dire?» chiese l’altro rapidamente.

«Una correzione piuttosto piccola», spiegò Gale. «Voi pensate che Joseph fosse geloso di Phineas. In realtà, era Phineas a essere geloso di Joseph».

«Mio caro Gale, state semplicemente facendo il buffone», disse il dottore assai aspramente e con impazienza. «E lasciate che vi dica che non credo sia un’occasione decente per farlo. So tutto dei vostri scherzi e fantasie e paradossi, ma siamo tutti in una posizione maledettamente difficile, seduti qui nella casa stessa dell’uomo, e sapendo di essere nella casa di un assassino».

«Lo so… è semplicemente infernale», disse Gunter, la sua rigidità scossa per la prima volta; e alzò lo sguardo con uno scatto d’esitazione, come se si aspettasse quasi di vedere la corda pendere da quel smorto e polveroso soffitto.

Nel medesimo istante la porta fu spalancata e l’uomo che avevano condannato per omicidio comparve nella stanza. I suoi occhi erano lucenti come quelli di un bambino davanti a un nuovo giocattolo, il suo volto era arrossato fin alle radici dei suoi capelli di fuoco, le sue larghe spalle erano squadrate all’indietro come quelle di un soldato; e all’occhiello della giacca aveva un grande fiore purpureo, di un colore che Gale ricordava nelle aiuole del giardino della casa più giù per la strada. Gale non ebbe difficoltà a indovinare la ragione di questo trionfante ingresso.

Poi l’uomo con l’occhiello vide i volti tragici dall’altra parte del tavolo e si fermò, fissandoli.

«Beh», disse infine, in un tono piuttosto curioso. «E la vostra ricerca?»

L’avvocato stava per aprire le labbra serrate con una domanda simile a quella che una volta fu rivolta a Caino dalla voce fuori dalla nube, quando Gale lo interruppe gettandosi all’indietro su una sedia ed emettendo una risata breve ma allegra.

«Ho rinunciato alla ricerca», disse Gale gaiamente. «Non c’è più bisogno che me ne dia pensiero».

«Perché sapete che non troverete mai Phineas Salt», disse il commerciante con fermezza.

«Perché l’ho trovato», disse Gabriel Gale. Il dottor Garth si alzò rapidamente in piedi e rimase a fissarli con occhi lucenti.

“Yes,” said Gale, “because I am talking to him.” And he smiled across at his host, as if he had just been introduced.

Then he said rather more gravely: “Will you tell us all about it, Mr. Phineas Salt? Or must I guess it for you all the way through?”

There was a heavy silence.

“You tell the story,” said the shopkeeeper at last. “I am quite sure you know all about it.”

“I only know about it,” answered Gale gently, “because I think I should have done the same thing myself. It’s what some call having a sympathy with lunatics… including literary men.”

“Hold on for a moment,” interposed the staring Mr. Gunter. “Before you get too literary, am I to understand that this gentleman who owns this shop, actually is the poet, Phineas Salt? In that case, where is his brother?”

“Making the Grand Tour, I imagine,” said Gale. “Gone abroad for a holiday, anyhow; a holiday which will be not the less enjoyable for the two thousand five hundred pounds that his brother gave him to enjoy himself with. His slipping away was easy enough; he only swam a little bit further along the shore to where they had left another suit of clothes. Meanwhile our friend here went back and shaved off his beard and effected the change of appearance in the bathing-tent. He was quite sufficiently like his brother to go back with a crowd of strangers. And then, you will doubtless note, he opened a new shop in an entirely new neighbourhood.”

“But why?” cried Garth in a sort of exasperation. “In the name of all the saints and angels, why? That’s what I can’t make any sense of.”

“I will tell you why,” said Gabriel Gale, “but you won’t make any sense of it.”

He stared at the mug on the table for a moment and then said: “This is what you would call a nonsense story; and you can only understand it by understanding nonsense; or, as some politely call it, poetry. The poet Phineas Salt was a man who had made himself master of everything, in a sort of frenzy of freedom and omnipotence. He had tried to feel everything, experience everything, imagine everything that could be or could not be. And he found, as all such men have found, that that illimitable liberty is itself a limit. It is like the circle, which is at once an eternity and a prison. He not only wanted to do everything. He wanted to be everybody. To the Pantheist God is everybody: to the Christian He is also Somebody. But this sort of Pantheist will not narrow himself by a choice. To want everything is to will nothing. Mr. Hatt here told me that Phineas would sit staring at a blank sheet of paper; and I told him it was not because he had nothing to write about, but because he could write about anything. When he stood on that cliff and looked down on that mazy crowd, so common and yet so complex, he felt he could write ten thousand tales and then that he could write none; because there was no reason to choose one more than another.

“Well, what is the step beyond that? What comes next? I tell you there are only two steps possible after that. One is the step over the cliff; to cease to be. The other is to be somebody, instead of writing about everybody. It is to become incarnate as one real human being in that crowd; to begin all over again as a real person. Unless a man be born again…

“He tried it and found that this was what he wanted; the things he had not known since childhood; the silly little lower middle-class things; to have to do with lollipops and ginger-beer; to fall in love with a girl round the corner and feel awkward about it; to be young. That was the only paradise still left virgin and unspoilt enough, in the imagination of a man who has turned the seven heavens upside down. That is what he tried as his last experiment, and I think we can say it has been a success.”

“Yes,” said the confectioner with a stony satisfaction, “it has been a great success.”

Mr. Gunter, the solicitor, rose also with a sort of gesture of despair. “Well, I don’t think I understand it any better for knowing all about it,” he said; “but I suppose it must be as you say. But how in the world did you know it yourself?”

“I think it was those coloured sweets in the window that set me off,” said Gale. “I couldn’t take my eyes off them. They were so pretty. Sweets are better than jewellery: the children are right. For they have the fun of eating rubies and emeralds. I felt sure they were speaking to me in some way. And then I realized what they were saying. Those violet or purple raspberry drops were as vivid and glowing as amethysts, when you saw them from inside the shop; but from outside, with the light on them, they would look quite dingy and dark. Meanwhile, there were plenty of other things, gilded or painted with opaque colours, that would have looked much more gay in the shop-window, to the customer looking in at it. Then I remembered the man who said he must break into the cathedral to see the coloured windows from inside, and I knew it in an instant. The man who had arranged that shop-window was not a shopkeeper. He was not thinking of how things looked from the street, but of how they looked to his own artistic eye from inside. From there he saw purple jewels. And then, thinking of the cathedral, of course I remembered something else. I remembered what the poet had said about the Double Life of St. Thomas of Canterbury; and how when he had all the earthly glory, he had to have the exact opposite. St. Phineas of Croydon is also living a Double Life.”

“Well,” broke out Gunter, heaving with a sort of heavy gasp, “with all respect to him, if he has done all this, I can only say that he must have gone mad.”

“No,” said Gale, “a good many of my friends have gone mad and I am by no means without sympathy with them. But you can call this the story of ‘The Man Who went Sane’.”

VIII

«Sì», disse Gale, «perché sto parlando con lui». E sorrise al suo ospite dall’altra parte, come se gli fosse appena stato presentato.

Poi disse in tono piuttosto più grave: «Vuole raccontarci tutto quanto, signor Phineas Salt? Oppure devo indovinarlo io per lei fino in fondo?»

Ci fu un pesante silenzio.

«Racconti lei la storia», disse infine il negoziante. «Sono ben certo che lei sa tutto».

«Lo so soltanto», rispose Gale con dolcezza, «perché credo che avrei fatto la stessa cosa io stesso. È ciò che alcuni chiamano avere una simpatia per i folli… uomini di lettere compresi».

«Un momento», interpose Mr. Gunter con lo sguardo fisso. «Prima che lei diventi troppo letterario, devo intendere che questo signore, il proprietario di questo negozio, è davvero il poeta Phineas Salt? In tal caso, dov’è suo fratello?»

«A fare il Grand Tour, immagino», disse Gale. «Partito all’estero per una vacanza, in ogni caso; una vacanza non meno godibile per le duemilacinquecento sterline che suo fratello gli ha dato perché se la spassasse. Svignarsela fu abbastanza facile; nuotò solo un poco più in là lungo la riva, fin dove avevano lasciato un altro completo di vestiti. Nel frattempo il nostro amico qui presente tornò indietro, si rase la barba e operò il mutamento d’aspetto nella tenda da bagno. Somigliava a suo fratello quanto bastava per tornare insieme a una folla di sconosciuti. E poi, come noterete senza dubbio, aprì un nuovo negozio in un quartiere del tutto nuovo».

«Ma perché?» gridò Garth in una sorta di esasperazione. «In nome di tutti i santi e gli angeli, perché? È questo che non riesco a capire in alcun modo».

«Vi dirò perché», disse Gabriel Gale, «ma non ci capirete nulla».

Fissò per un momento il boccale sul tavolo e poi disse: «Questa è ciò che chiamereste una storia insensata; e potete comprenderla solo comprendendo l’insensatezza; o, come alcuni la chiamano cortesemente, la poesia. Il poeta Phineas Salt era un uomo che si era reso padrone di ogni cosa, in una sorta di frenesia di libertà e onnipotenza. Aveva cercato di sentire tutto, sperimentare tutto, immaginare tutto ciò che potesse o non potesse essere. E scoprì, come tutti gli uomini di quel genere hanno scoperto, che quella libertà illimitata è essa stessa un limite. È come il cerchio, che è a un tempo un’eternità e una prigione. Non voleva soltanto fare ogni cosa. Voleva essere ognuno. Per il panteista Dio è ognuno: per il cristiano Egli è anche Qualcuno. Ma questa sorta di panteista non vuole restringersi con una scelta. Volere tutto è non volere nulla. Il signor Hatt qui presente mi ha detto che Phineas se ne stava seduto a fissare un foglio di carta bianco; e io gli ho detto che non era perché non avesse nulla su cui scrivere, ma perché poteva scrivere di qualsiasi cosa. Quando stava su quella scogliera e guardava in basso quella folla labirintica, così comune eppure così complessa, sentiva di poter scrivere diecimila racconti e insieme di non poterne scrivere nessuno; perché non c’era ragione di sceglierne uno più di un altro.

«Ebbene, qual è il passo che sta oltre a ciò? Che cosa viene dopo? Vi dico che dopo di ciò sono possibili solo due passi. Uno è il passo oltre la scogliera; cessare di essere. L’altro è essere qualcuno, invece di scrivere di ognuno. È incarnarsi come un vero essere umano in quella folla; ricominciare tutto daccapo come una persona reale. Se uno non rinasce…

«Lo provò e scoprì che era questo che desiderava; le cose che non conosceva dall’infanzia; le sciocche piccole cose della bassa borghesia; l’aver a che fare con leccalecca e ginger-beer; l’innamorarsi d’amore di una ragazza dietro l’angolo e il sentirsi impacciato per questo; l’essere giovane. Quello era l’unico paradiso ancora rimasto abbastanza vergine e intatto, nell’immaginazione di un uomo che ha capovolto i sette cieli. È questo che egli tentò come suo ultimo esperimento, e credo che possiamo dire che è stato un successo».

«Sì», disse il pasticciere con una soddisfazione di pietra, «è stato un grande successo».

Anche il signor Gunter, l’avvocato, si alzò con una sorta di gesto di disperazione. «Ebbene, non credo di capirlo meglio ora che ne so tutto», disse; «ma suppongo che debba essere come dice lei. Ma come diavolo l’ha saputo lei stesso?»

«Credo che siano stati quei dolci colorati nella vetrina a mettermi sulla strada», disse Gale. «Non riuscivo a staccarne gli occhi. Erano così belli. I dolci sono meglio dei gioielli: i bambini hanno ragione. Perché hanno il piacere di mangiare rubini e smeraldi. Ero certo che mi stessero parlando in qualche modo. E poi capii che cosa stavano dicendo. Quelle pastiglie di lampone viola o purpuree erano vivide e ardenti come ametiste, quando le si vedeva da dentro il negozio; ma da fuori, con la luce su di esse, apparivano piuttosto smorte e scure. Nel frattempo, c’erano molte altre cose, dorate o dipinte con colori opachi, che sarebbero apparse assai più allegre nella vetrina del negozio, al cliente che vi guardava dentro. Allora mi ricordai dell’uomo che disse di dover irrompere nella cattedrale per vedere le vetrate colorate da dentro, e lo compresi in un istante. L’uomo che aveva disposto quella vetrina non era un negoziante. Non pensava a come le cose apparissero dalla strada, ma a come apparissero al suo occhio d’artista da dentro. Da lì vedeva gioielli purpurei. E poi, pensando alla cattedrale, naturalmente mi ricordai di qualcos’altro. Mi ricordai di ciò che il poeta aveva detto sulla Doppia Vita di San Tommaso di Canterbury; e di come, quando ebbe tutta la gloria terrena, dovette avere l’esatto opposto. Anche San Phineas di Croydon vive una Doppia Vita».

«Ebbene», sbottò Gunter, sollevandosi con una sorta di pesante ansito, «con tutto il rispetto per lui, se ha fatto tutto questo, posso solo dire che deve essere impazzito».

«No», disse Gale, «molti dei miei amici sono impazziti e non sono affatto privo di simpatia per loro. Ma potete chiamarla la storia dell‘“Uomo Che Rinsavì”».

VIII

THE ASYLUM OF ADVENTURE

A VERY small funeral procession passed through a very small churchyard on the rocky coast of Cornwall; carrying a coffin to its grave under the low and windy wall. The coffin was quite formal and unobtrusive; but the knot of fishermen and labourers eyed it with the slanted eyes of superstition; almost as if it had been the misshapen coffin of legend that was said to contain a monster. For it contained the body of a near neighbour, who had long lived a stone’s throw from them, and whom they had never seen.

The figure following the coffin, the chief and only mourner, they had seen fairly often. He had a habit of disappearing into his late friend’s house and being invisible for long periods, but he came and went openly. No one knew when the dead man had first come, but he probably came in the night; and he went out in the coffin. The figure following it was a tall figure in black, bare-headed, with the sea-blast whistling through his wisps of yellow hair as through the pale sea grasses. He was still young and none could have said that his mourning suit sat ill upon him; but some who knew him would have seen it with involuntary surprise and felt that it showed him in a new phase. When he was dressed, as he generally was, in the negligent tweeds and stockings of the pedestrian landscape-painter, he looked merely amiable and absent-minded; but the black brought out something more angular and fixed about his face. With his black garb and yellow hair he might have been the traditional Hamlet; and indeed the look in his eyes was visionary and vague; but the traditional Hamlet would hardly have had so long and straight a chin as that which rested unconsciously on his black cravat. After the ceremony, he left the village church and walked towards the village post office, gradually lengthening and lightening his stride, like a man who, with all care for decency, can hardly conceal that he is rid of a duty.

“It’s a horrible thing to say,” he said to himself, “but I feel like a happy widower.”

He then went in to the post office and sent off a telegram addressed to a Lady Diana Westermaine, Westermaine Abbey: a telegram that said: “I am coming tomorrow to keep my promise and tell you the story of a strange friendship.”

Then he went out of the little shop again and walked eastwards out of the village, with undisguised briskness, till he had left the houses far behind, and his funeral hat and habit were an almost incongruous black spot upon great green uplands and the motley forests of autumn. He had walked for about half a day, lunched on bread and cheese and ale at a little public-house, and resumed his march with unabated cheerfulness, when the first event of that strange day befell him. He was threading his way by a river that ran in a hollow of the green hills; and at one point his path narrowed and ran under a high stone wall. The wall was built of very large flat stones of ragged outline, and a row of them ran along the top like the teeth of a giant. He would not normally have taken so much notice of the structure of the wall; indeed he did not take any notice of it at all until after something had happened. Until (in fact) there was a great gap in the row of craggy teeth, and one of the crags lay flat at his feet, shaking up dust like the smoke of an explosion. It had just brushed one of his long wisps of light hair as it fell.

Looking up, a shade bewildered by the shock of his hairbreadth escape, he saw for an instant in the dark gap left in the stone-work a face, peering and malignant. He called out promptly:

“I see you; I could send you to jail for that!”

“No you can’t,” retorted the stranger, and vanished into the twilight of trees as swiftly as a squirrel.

The gentleman in black, whose name was Gabriel Gale, looked up thoughtfully at the wall, which was rather too high and smooth to scale; besides the fugitive had already far too much of a start. Mr. Gale finally said aloud, in a reflective fashion: “Now I wonder why he did that!” Then he frowned with an entirely new sort of gravity, and after a moment or two of grim silence he added: “But after all its much more odd and mysterious that he should say that.”

In truth, though the three words uttered by the unknown person seemed trivial enough, they sufficed to lead Gale’s memories backwards to the beginning of the whole business that ended in the little Cornish churchyard; and as he went briskly on his way he rehearsed all the details of that old story, which he was to tell to the lady at his journey’s end.

Nearly fourteen years before, Gabriel Gale had come of age and inherited the moderate debts and the small freehold of a rather unsuccessful gentleman farmer. But though he grew up with the traditions of a sort of small squire, he was not the sort of person, especially at that age, to have no opinions except those traditions. In early youth his politics were the very reverse of squires’ politics; he was very much of a revolutionary and locally rather a firebrand. He intervened on behalf of poachers and gipsies: he wrote letters to the local papers which the editors thought too eloquent to be printed. He denounced the county magistracy in controversies that had to be impartially adjudged by the county magistrates. Finding, curiously enough, that all these authorities were against him, and seemed to be in legal control of all his methods of self-expression, he invented a method of his own which gave him great amusement and the authorities great annoyance. He fell, in fact, to employing a talent for drawing and painting which he was conscious of possessing, along with another talent for guessing people’s thoughts and getting a rapid grasp of their characters, which he was less conscious of possessing, but which he certainly possessed. It is a talent very valuable to a portrait-painter: in this case, however, he became a rather peculiar sort of portrait-painter. It was not exactly what is generally called a fashionable portrait-painter. Gale’s small estate contained several outhouses with white-washed walls or palings abutting on the high road; and whenever a magnate or magistrate did anything that Gale disapproved of, Gale was in the habit of painting his portrait in public and on a large scale. His pictures were hardly in the ordinary sense caricatures, but they were portraits of souls. There was nothing crude about the picture of the great merchant prince now honoured with a peerage; the eyes looking up from under lowered brows, the sleek hair parted low on the forehead, were hardly exaggerated; but the smiling lips were certainly saying: “And the next article?” One even knew that it was not really a very superior article. The picture of the formidable Colonel Ferrars did justice to the distinction of the face, with its frosty eyebrows and moustaches; but it also very distinctly discovered that it was the face of a fool, and of one sub-consciously frightened of being found to be a fool.

IL RIFUGIO DELL’AVVENTURA

Una piccolissima processione funebre attraversava un piccolissimo cimitero sulla costa rocciosa della Cornovaglia; portando una bara alla sua fossa sotto il basso muro battuto dal vento. La bara era del tutto formale e discreta; ma il gruppetto di pescatori e braccianti la squadrava con gli occhi obliqui della superstizione; quasi fosse stata la bara deforme della leggenda che si diceva contenesse un mostro. Perché conteneva il corpo di un vicino prossimo, che aveva a lungo vissuto a un tiro di sasso da loro, e che non avevano mai visto.

La figura che seguiva la bara, il principale e unico dolente, l’avevano vista abbastanza spesso. Aveva l’abitudine di sparire nella casa del defunto amico e di rendersi invisibile per lunghi periodi, ma andava e veniva apertamente. Nessuno sapeva quando il morto fosse arrivato la prima volta; ma probabilmente era venuto di notte; e se ne andò nella bara. La figura che la seguiva era una figura alta vestita di nero, a capo scoperto, con la raffica del mare che fischiava tra le ciocche dei suoi capelli gialli come tra le pallide erbe marine. Era ancora giovane e nessuno avrebbe potuto dire che l’abito da lutto gli stesse male; ma alcuni che lo conoscevano l’avrebbero guardato con involontaria sorpresa e sentito che lo mostrava in una fase nuova. Quando era vestito, come per lo più era, nei negligenti tweed e nelle calze del paesaggista viandante, appariva soltanto amabile e distratto; ma il nero faceva risaltare qualcosa di più angoloso e fisso nel suo volto. Con la sua veste nera e i capelli gialli avrebbe potuto essere il tradizionale Amleto; e in verità lo sguardo dei suoi occhi era visionario e vago; ma il tradizionale Amleto difficilmente avrebbe avuto un mento così lungo e diritto come quello che gli posava inconsapevole sulla cravatta nera. Dopo la cerimonia, lasciò la chiesa del villaggio e s’incamminò verso l’ufficio postale del villaggio, allungando e alleggerendo gradualmente il passo, come un uomo che, con tutta la cura per il decoro, riesce a stento a nascondere di essersi liberato di un dovere.

«È una cosa orribile da dire», disse tra sé, «ma mi sento come un vedovo felice».

Entrò poi nell’ufficio postale e spedì un telegramma indirizzato a una certa Lady Diana Westermaine, Westermaine Abbey: un telegramma che diceva: «Vengo domani a mantenere la mia promessa e a raccontarvi la storia di una strana amicizia».

Poi uscì di nuovo dalla piccola bottega e camminò verso oriente fuori dal villaggio, con non dissimulata sveltezza, finché si lasciò le case molto indietro, e il suo cappello e l’abito da funerale furono una macchia nera quasi incongrua sui grandi altipiani verdi e sulle variopinte foreste d’autunno. Aveva camminato per circa mezza giornata, aveva pranzato con pane e formaggio e birra in una piccola osteria, e aveva ripreso la marcia con immutata allegria, quando gli accadde il primo evento di quella strana giornata. Si faceva strada lungo un fiume che scorreva in un avvallamento delle verdi colline; e a un certo punto il suo sentiero si restringeva e correva sotto un alto muro di pietra. Il muro era costruito con grandissime pietre piatte dal contorno frastagliato, e una fila di esse correva lungo la cima come i denti di un gigante. Normalmente non avrebbe prestato tanta attenzione alla struttura del muro; anzi non vi prestò alcuna attenzione fino a dopo che qualcosa fu accaduto. Fino a quando (di fatto) ci fu un grande varco nella fila di denti rocciosi, e uno dei macigni giacque piatto ai suoi piedi, sollevando polvere come il fumo di un’esplosione. Aveva appena sfiorato una delle sue lunghe ciocche di capelli chiari mentre cadeva.

Alzando lo sguardo, un poco sconcertato dallo shock del suo scampo per un pelo, vide per un istante nel varco scuro lasciato nella muratura un volto, spiante e maligno. Gridò prontamente:

«Ti vedo; potrei farti mettere in prigione per questo!»

«No che non potete», ribatté lo sconosciuto, e svanì nel crepuscolo degli alberi con la rapidità di uno scoiattolo.

Il signore in nero, il cui nome era Gabriel Gale, alzò pensieroso lo sguardo verso il muro, troppo alto e liscio per essere scalato; d’altronde il fuggitivo aveva già un vantaggio fin troppo grande. Il signor Gale infine disse ad alta voce, in tono riflessivo: «Ora mi domando perché l’abbia fatto!» Poi aggrottò la fronte con una gravità del tutto nuova, e dopo un momento o due di cupo silenzio aggiunse: «Ma dopo tutto è assai più strano e misterioso che l’abbia detto».

In verità, sebbene le tre parole pronunciate dall’ignoto sembrassero abbastanza banali, bastarono a ricondurre le memorie di Gale indietro fino all’inizio dell’intera faccenda che si concluse nel piccolo cimitero della Cornovaglia; e mentre proseguiva svelto per la sua strada ripassò tutti i dettagli di quella vecchia storia, che avrebbe dovuto raccontare alla dama al termine del suo viaggio.

Quasi quattordici anni prima, Gabriel Gale era divenuto maggiorenne e aveva ereditato i modesti debiti e la piccola proprietà libera di un gentiluomo agricoltore piuttosto fallimentare. Ma sebbene fosse cresciuto con le tradizioni di una sorta di piccolo signorotto di campagna, non era il tipo di persona, specialmente a quell’età, da non avere altre opinioni se non quelle tradizioni. Nella prima giovinezza le sue idee politiche erano l’esatto contrario di quelle dei signorotti; era assai rivoluzionario e localmente piuttosto un attizzatore di rivolte. Interveniva in favore dei bracconieri e degli zingari: scriveva ai giornali locali lettere che i redattori giudicavano troppo eloquenti per essere stampate. Denunciava la magistratura della contea in controversie che dovevano essere imparzialmente giudicate dai magistrati della contea. Scoprendo, cosa abbastanza curiosa, che tutte queste autorità erano contro di lui, e sembravano avere il controllo legale di tutti i suoi metodi di espressione di sé, inventò un metodo tutto suo che gli procurò grande divertimento e alle autorità grande fastidio. Si diede, di fatto, a impiegare un talento per il disegno e la pittura di cui era consapevole di essere dotato, insieme a un altro talento per indovinare i pensieri della gente e cogliere rapidamente i loro caratteri, di cui era meno consapevole, ma che certamente possedeva. È un talento assai prezioso per un ritrattista: in questo caso, tuttavia, egli divenne un ritrattista piuttosto peculiare. Non era esattamente ciò che si chiama comunemente un ritrattista alla moda. La piccola tenuta di Gale conteneva diversi capanni con muri o steccati imbiancati a calce che confinavano con la strada maestra; e ogni volta che un magnate o un magistrato faceva qualcosa che Gale disapprovava, Gale aveva l’abitudine di dipingerne il ritratto in pubblico e su vasta scala. I suoi quadri non erano quasi, nel senso comune, caricature, ma erano ritratti di anime. Non c’era nulla di rozzo nel ritratto del grande principe mercante ora onorato con un titolo nobiliare; gli occhi che guardavano in su da sotto le sopracciglia abbassate, i capelli lisci con la scriminatura bassa sulla fronte, non erano affatto esagerati; ma le labbra sorridenti stavano di certo dicendo: «E il prossimo articolo?». Si capiva perfino che non era davvero un articolo molto pregiato. Il ritratto del formidabile colonnello Ferrars rendeva giustizia alla distinzione del volto, con le sue sopracciglia e i baffi gelidi; ma rivelava anche assai distintamente che era il volto di uno sciocco, e di uno inconsciamente spaventato di essere scoperto uno sciocco.

With these coloured proclamations did Mr. Gale beautify the countryside and make himself beloved among his equals. They could not do very much in the matter; it was not libel, for nothing was said; it was not nuisance or damage, for it was done on his own property, though in sight of the whole world. Among those who gathered every day to watch the painter at work, was a sturdy, red-faced, bushy-whiskered farmer, named Banks, seemingly one of those people who delight in any event and are more or less impenetrable by any opinion. He never could be got to bother his head about the sociological symbolism of Gale’s caricatures; but he regarded the incident with exuberant interest as one of the great stories calculated to be the glory of the country, like a calf born with five legs or some pleasant ghost story about the old gallows on the moor. Though so little of a theorist he was far from being a fool, and had a whole tangle of tales both humorous and tragic, to show how rich a humanity was packed within the four corners of his countryside. Thus it happened that he and his revolutionary neighbour had many talks over the cakes and ale, and went on many expeditions together to fascinating graves or historic public-houses. And thus it happened that on one of these expeditions Banks fell in with two of his other cronies, who made a party of four, making discoveries not altogether without interest.

The first of the farmer’s friends, introduced to Gale under the name of Starkey, was a lively little man with a short stubbly beard and sharp eyes, which he was in the habit however of screwing up with a quizzical smile during the greater part of a conversation. Both he and his friend Banks were eagerly interested in the story of Gale’s political protests, if they regarded them only too much as practical jokes. And they were both particularly anxious to introduce a friend of theirs named Wolfe, always referred to as Sim, who had a hobby, it would seem, in such matters, and might have suggestions to make. With a sort of sleepy curiosity which was typical of him, Gale found himself trailed along in an expedition for the discovery of Sim; and Sim was discovered at a little obscure hostelry called the Grapes a mile or so up the river. The three men had taken a boat, with the small Starkey for coxswain; it was a glorious autumn morning but the river was almost hidden under high banks and overhanging woods, intersected with great gaps of glowing sunlight, in one of which the lawns of the little riverside hotel sloped down to the river. And on the bank over-hanging the river a man stood waiting for them; a remarkable looking man with a fine sallow face rather like an actor’s and very curly grizzled hair. He welcomed them with a pleasant smile, and then turned towards the house with something of a habit of command or at least of direction. “I’ve ordered something for you,” he said. “If we go in now it will be ready.”

As Gabriel Gale brought up the rear of the single file of four men going up the straight paved path to the inn door, his roaming eye took in the rest of the garden, and something stirred in his spirit, which was also prone to roaming, and even in a light sense to a sort of rebellion. The steep path was lined with little trees, looking like the plan of a sampler. He did not see why he should walk straight up so very straight a path, and many things in the garden took his wandering fancy. He would much rather have had lunch at one of the little weather-stained tables standing about on the lawn. He would have been delighted to grope in the dark and tumble-down arbour in the corner, of which he could dimly see the circular table and semi-circular seat in the shadow of its curtain of creepers. He was even more attracted by the accident by which an old children’s swing, with its posts and ropes and hanging seat, stood close up to the bushes of the river bank. In fact, the last infantile temptation was irresistible; and calling out, “I’m going over here,” he ran across the garden towards the arbour, taking the swing with a sort of leap on his way. He landed in the wooden seat and swung twice back and forth, leaving it again with another flying leap. Just as he did so, however, the rope broke at its upper attachment, and he fell all askew, kicking his legs in the air. He was on his feet again immediately, and found himself confronted by his three companions who had followed in doubt or remonstrance. But the smiling Starkey was foremost, and his screwed-up eyes expressed good humour and even sympathy.

“Rotten sort of swing of yours,” he said. “These things are all falling to pieces,” and he gave the other rope a twitch, bringing that down also. Then he added: “Want to feast in the arbour, do you? Very well; you go in first and break the cobwebs. When you’ve collected all the spiders, I’ll follow you.”

Gale dived laughing into the dark corner in question and sat down in the centre of the crescent-shaped seat. The practical Mr. Banks had apparently entirely refused to carouse in this leafy cavern; but the figures of the two other men soon darkened the entrance and they sat down, one at each horn of the crescent.

“I suppose that was a sudden impulse of yours,” said the man named Wolfe, smiling. “You poets often have sudden impulses, don’t you?”

“It’s not for me to say it was a poet’s impulse,” replied Gale; “but I’m sure it would need a poet to describe it. Perhaps I’m not one; anyhow I never could describe those impulses. The only way to do it would be to write a poem about the swing and a poem about the arbour, and put them both into a longer poem about the garden. And poems aren’t produced quite so quickly as all that, though I’ve always had a notion that a real poet would never talk prose. He would talk about the weather in rolling stanzas like the storm-clouds, or ask you to pass the potatoes in an impromptu lyric as beautiful as the blue flower of the potato.”

Con questi variopinti proclami il signor Gale abbelliva la campagna e si rendeva amato tra i suoi pari. Non potevano fare granché in proposito; non era diffamazione, perché nulla era detto; non era molestia né danno, perché era fatto sulla sua propria proprietà, benché in vista del mondo intero. Tra coloro che si radunavano ogni giorno a guardare il pittore all’opera c’era un robusto contadino dalla faccia rossa e dai baffoni ispidi, di nome Banks, apparentemente uno di quelle persone che si dilettano di qualunque avvenimento e sono più o meno impenetrabili a qualunque opinione. Non lo si poteva mai indurre a rompersi la testa sul simbolismo sociologico delle caricature di Gale; ma considerava l’episodio con esuberante interesse come una di quelle grandi storie destinate a essere la gloria del contado, come un vitello nato con cinque zampe o qualche piacevole storia di fantasmi sulla vecchia forca della brughiera. Benché così poco teorico, era ben lungi dall’essere uno sciocco, e aveva tutto un groviglio di racconti umoristici e tragici, atti a mostrare quanta ricca umanità fosse racchiusa entro i quattro angoli del suo contado. Così accadde che lui e il suo vicino rivoluzionario ebbero molte conversazioni davanti a dolci e birra, e fecero insieme molte spedizioni verso tombe affascinanti o storiche osterie. E così accadde che in una di queste spedizioni Banks s’imbatté in due altri suoi compari, che formarono una comitiva di quattro, facendo scoperte non del tutto prive d’interesse.

Il primo degli amici del contadino, presentato a Gale sotto il nome di Starkey, era un ometto vivace con una corta barba ispida e occhi acuti, che però aveva l’abitudine di strizzare con un sorriso beffardo per la maggior parte di una conversazione. Sia lui sia il suo amico Banks erano vivamente interessati alla storia delle proteste politiche di Gale, sebbene le considerassero fin troppo come scherzi. Ed erano entrambi particolarmente ansiosi di presentare un loro amico di nome Wolfe, sempre chiamato Sim, che aveva un debole, a quanto pareva, per tali faccende, e poteva avere suggerimenti da dare. Con una sorta di sonnolenta curiosità che gli era tipica, Gale si trovò trascinato in una spedizione per la scoperta di Sim; e Sim fu scoperto in una piccola oscura locanda chiamata l’Uva, un miglio o giù di lì risalendo il fiume. I tre uomini avevano preso una barca, con il piccolo Starkey come timoniere; era una gloriosa mattina d’autunno, ma il fiume era quasi nascosto sotto alte rive e boschi sporgenti, intersecato da grandi squarci di luce solare ardente, in uno dei quali i prati del piccolo albergo sul fiume digradavano verso il fiume. E sulla riva a strapiombo sul fiume un uomo stava aspettandoli; un uomo dall’aspetto notevole, con un bel viso olivastro piuttosto simile a quello di un attore e capelli grigi molto ricci. Li accolse con un sorriso cordiale, e poi si voltò verso la casa con qualcosa dell’abitudine al comando o almeno alla direzione. «Ho ordinato qualcosa per voi», disse. «Se entriamo adesso sarà pronto».

Mentre Gabriel Gale chiudeva la fila indiana dei quattro uomini che salivano il diritto sentiero lastricato verso la porta della locanda, il suo occhio vagabondo colse il resto del giardino, e qualcosa si mosse nel suo spirito, anch’esso incline a vagare, e perfino, in senso leggero, a una sorta di ribellione. Il ripido sentiero era fiancheggiato da alberelli, simili al disegno di un ricamo. Non capiva perché dovesse camminare diritto su un sentiero così diritto, e molte cose nel giardino attiravano la sua fantasia errante. Avrebbe preferito di gran lunga pranzare a uno dei tavolini corrosi dalle intemperie sparsi sul prato. Sarebbe stato lieto di brancolare nel buio e cadente pergolato nell’angolo, di cui poteva scorgere vagamente il tavolo circolare e il sedile semicircolare nell’ombra della sua cortina di rampicanti. Era ancor più attratto dal caso per cui una vecchia altalena da bambini, con i suoi pali e le sue corde e il suo sedile pendente, si trovava proprio accanto ai cespugli della riva del fiume. Di fatto, l’ultima infantile tentazione era irresistibile; e gridando: «Vado di qua», corse attraverso il giardino verso il pergolato, prendendo l’altalena con una sorta di balzo lungo il cammino. Atterrò sul sedile di legno e dondolò avanti e indietro due volte, lasciandolo di nuovo con un altro balzo volante. Proprio mentre lo faceva, però, la corda si spezzò all’attacco superiore, ed egli cadde tutto di traverso, sgambettando in aria. Fu subito di nuovo in piedi, e si trovò di fronte ai suoi tre compagni che l’avevano seguito in dubbio o rimostranza. Ma il sorridente Starkey era in prima fila, e i suoi occhi strizzati esprimevano buon umore e perfino simpatia.

«Bella schifezza d’altalena, la vostra», disse. «Queste cose stanno tutte andando in pezzi», e diede uno strappo all’altra corda, facendo cadere anche quella. Poi aggiunse: «Volete banchettare nel pergolato, eh? Benissimo; entrate voi per primo e rompete le ragnatele. Quando avrete raccolto tutti i ragni, vi seguirò».

Gale si tuffò ridendo nell’angolo buio in questione e si sedette al centro del sedile a mezzaluna. Il pratico signor Banks aveva a quanto pareva rifiutato del tutto di gozzovigliare in quella caverna frondosa; ma le figure degli altri due uomini presto oscurarono l’ingresso ed essi si sedettero, uno a ciascun corno della mezzaluna.

«Suppongo sia stato un vostro improvviso impulso», disse l’uomo di nome Wolfe, sorridendo. «Voi poeti avete spesso improvvisi impulsi, non è vero?»

«Non tocca a me dire che fosse l’impulso di un poeta», replicò Gale; «ma sono certo che occorrerebbe un poeta per descriverlo. Forse non lo sono; in ogni caso non saprei mai descrivere quegli impulsi. L’unico modo per farlo sarebbe scrivere una poesia sull’altalena e una poesia sul pergolato, e metterle entrambe in una poesia più lunga sul giardino. E le poesie non si producono tanto in fretta, benché io abbia sempre avuto l’idea che un vero poeta non parlerebbe mai in prosa. Parlerebbe del tempo in rotolanti stanze come le nubi di tempesta, o vi chiederebbe di passargli le patate in un’improvvisata lirica bella come il fiore azzurro della patata».

“Make it a prose poem, then,” said the man whose name was Simeon Wolfe, “and tell us how you felt about the garden and the garden-swing.”

Gabriel Gale was both sociable and talkative; he talked a great deal about himself because he was not an egoist. He talked a great deal about himself on the present occasion. He was pleased to find these two intelligent men interested and attentive; and he tried to put into words the impalpable impulses to which he was always provoked by particular shapes or colours or corners of the straggling road of life. He tried to analyse the attraction of a swing, with its rudiments of aviation; and how it made a man feel more like a boy, because it made a boy feel more like a bird. He explained that the arbour was fascinating precisely because it was a den. He told them at some length of the psychological truth; that dismal and decayed objects raise a man’s spirits higher, if they really are already high. His two companions talked in turn; and as luncheon progressed and passed they turned over between them many strange strata of personal experience, and Gale began to understand their personalities and their point of view. Wolfe had travelled a great deal, especially in the East; Starkey’s experiences had been more local but equally curious, and they both had known many psychological cases and problems about which to compare notes. They both agreed that Gale’s mental processes in the matter, though unusual, were not unique.

“In fact,” observed Wolfe, “I think your mind belongs to a particular class, and one of which I have had some experience. Don’t you think so, Starkey?”

“I quite agree,” said the other man, nodding.

It was at that moment that Gale looked out dreamily at the light upon the lawn, and in the stillness of his inmost mind a light broke on him like lightning; one of the terrible intuitions of his life.

Against the silver light on the river the dark frame of the forsaken swing stood up like a gallows. There was no trace of the seat or the ropes, not merely in their proper place, but even on the ground where they had fallen. Sweeping his eye slowly and searchingly round the scene, he saw them at last, huddled and hidden in a heap behind the bench where Starkey was sitting. In an instant he understood everything. He knew the profession of the two men on each side of him. He knew why they were asking him to describe the processes of his mind. Soon they would be taking out a document and signing it. He would not leave that arbour a free man.

“So you are both doctors,” he observed cheerfully, “and you both think I am mad.”

“The word is really very unscientific,” said Simeon Wolfe in a soothing fashion. “You are of a certain type which friends and admirers will be wise to treat in a certain way, but it need in no sense be an unfriendly or uncomfortable way. You are an artist with that form of the artistic temperament which is necessarily a mode of modified megalomania, and which expresses itself in the form of exaggeration. You cannot see a large blank wall without having an uncontrollable appetite for covering it with large pictures. You cannot see a swing hung in the air without thinking of flying ships careering through the air. I will venture to guess that you never see a cat without thinking of a tiger or a lizard without thinking of a dragon.”

“That is perfectly correct,” said Gale gravely; “I never do.”

Then his mouth twisted a little, as if a whimsical idea had come into his mind. “Psychology is certainly very valuable,” he said. “It seems to teach us how to see into each other’s minds. You, for instance, have a mind which is very interesting: you have reached a condition which I think I recognize. You are in that particular attitude in which the subject, when he thinks of anything, never thinks of the centre of anything. You see only edges eaten away. Your malady is the opposite to mine, to what you call making a tiger out of a cat, or what some call making a mountain out of a molehill. You do not go on and make a cat more of a cat; you are always trying to work back and prove that it is less than a cat; that it is a defective cat or a mentally deficient cat. But a cat is a cat; that is the supreme sanity which is so thickly clouded in your mind. After all, a molehill is a hill and a mountain is a hill. But you have got into the state of the mad queen, who said she knew hills compared with which this was a valley. You can’t grasp the thing called a thing. Nothing for you has a central stalk of sanity. There is no core to your cosmos. Your trouble began with being an atheist.”

“I have not confessed to being an atheist,” said Wolfe staring.

“I have not confessed to being an artist,” replied Gale, “or to have uncontrolled artistic appetites or any of that stuff. But I will tell you one thing: I can only exaggerate things the way they are going. But I’m not often wrong about the way they are going. You may be as sleek as a cat but I knew you were evolving into a tiger. And I guessed this little lizard could be turned by black magic into a dragon.”

As he spoke he was looking grimly at Starkey and out under the dark arch of the arbour, as out of a closing prison, with these two ghouls sitting on each side of the gate. Beyond was the gaunt shape like a gallows and beyond that the green and silver of the garden and the stream shone like a lost paradise of liberty. But it was characteristic of him that even when he was practically hopeless, he liked being logically triumphant; he liked turning the tables on his critics even when, so to speak, they were as abstract as multiplication tables.

“Why, my learned friends,” he went on contemptuously, “do you really suppose you are any fitter to write a report on my mind than I am on yours? You can’t see any further into me than I can into you. Not half so far. Didn’t you know a portrait-painter has to value people at sight as much as a doctor? And I do it better than you; I have a knack that way. That’s why I can paint those pictures on the wall; and I could paint your pictures as big as a house. I know what is at the back of your mind, Doctor Simeon Wolfe; and it’s a chaos of exceptions with no rule. You could find anything abnormal, because you have no normal. You could find anybody mad; and as for why you specially want to find me mad… why that is another disadvantage of being an atheist. You do not think anything will smite you for the vile treachery you have sold yourself to do today.”

«Fatene allora un poema in prosa», disse l’uomo il cui nome era Simeon Wolfe, «e raccontateci come vi siete sentito riguardo al giardino e all’altalena del giardino».

Gabriel Gale era insieme socievole e loquace; parlava molto di sé perché non era un egoista. Parlò molto di sé nell’occasione presente. Fu lieto di trovare quei due uomini intelligenti interessati e attenti; e cercò di mettere in parole gli impalpabili impulsi a cui era sempre provocato da particolari forme o colori o angoli della tortuosa strada della vita. Cercò di analizzare l’attrattiva di un’altalena, con i suoi rudimenti di aviazione; e come essa facesse sentire un uomo più simile a un ragazzo, perché faceva sentire un ragazzo più simile a un uccello. Spiegò che il pergolato era affascinante proprio perché era una tana. Raccontò loro con una certa ampiezza la verità psicologica; che gli oggetti tetri e decaduti sollevano più in alto lo spirito di un uomo, se esso è davvero già alto. I suoi due compagni parlarono a loro volta; e mentre il pranzo procedeva e passava, essi rivoltarono tra loro molti strani strati di esperienza personale, e Gale cominciò a comprendere le loro personalità e il loro punto di vista. Wolfe aveva viaggiato molto, specialmente in Oriente; le esperienze di Starkey erano state più locali ma ugualmente curiose, ed entrambi avevano conosciuto molti casi e problemi psicologici su cui confrontare le loro note. Entrambi convennero che i processi mentali di Gale in quella faccenda, benché insoliti, non erano unici.

«Di fatto», osservò Wolfe, «penso che la vostra mente appartenga a una classe particolare, e a una di cui ho avuto una certa esperienza. Non credi anche tu, Starkey?»

«Sono pienamente d’accordo», disse l’altro uomo, annuendo.

Fu in quel momento che Gale guardò sognante la luce sul prato, e nella quiete del suo intimo pensiero una luce lo colpì come un fulmine; una delle terribili intuizioni della sua vita.

Contro la luce d’argento sul fiume la scura intelaiatura dell’altalena abbandonata si ergeva come una forca. Non c’era traccia del sedile né delle corde, non solo al loro giusto posto, ma neppure sul terreno dove erano cadute. Facendo scorrere l’occhio lentamente e indagatore attorno alla scena, li vide infine, ammucchiati e nascosti in un mucchio dietro la panca dove sedeva Starkey. In un istante comprese ogni cosa. Conobbe la professione dei due uomini ai suoi lati. Seppe perché gli chiedevano di descrivere i processi della sua mente. Presto avrebbero tirato fuori un documento e l’avrebbero firmato. Non avrebbe lasciato quel pergolato da uomo libero.

«Così siete entrambi medici», osservò allegramente, «ed entrambi pensate che io sia pazzo».

«La parola è davvero molto poco scientifica», disse Simeon Wolfe in tono rassicurante. «Voi siete di un certo tipo che amici e ammiratori faranno bene a trattare in un certo modo, ma non c’è affatto bisogno che sia un modo ostile o sgradevole. Voi siete un artista con quella forma di temperamento artistico che è necessariamente una modalità di megalomania mitigata, e che si esprime nella forma dell’esagerazione. Non potete vedere un grande muro spoglio senza avere un incontenibile appetito di coprirlo con grandi quadri. Non potete vedere un’altalena sospesa in aria senza pensare a navi volanti che sfrecciano per l’aria. Oserei indovinare che non vedete mai un gatto senza pensare a una tigre, né una lucertola senza pensare a un drago».

«È perfettamente esatto», disse Gale gravemente; «non lo faccio mai».

Poi la sua bocca si storse un poco, come se un’idea bizzarra gli fosse venuta in mente. «La psicologia è certamente molto preziosa», disse. «Sembra insegnarci a vedere dentro le menti altrui. Voi, per esempio, avete una mente che è molto interessante: avete raggiunto una condizione che credo di riconoscere. Vi trovate in quel particolare atteggiamento in cui il soggetto, quando pensa a qualcosa, non pensa mai al centro di alcunché. Vedete solo bordi corrosi. La vostra malattia è l’opposto della mia, di ciò che voi chiamate fare una tigre di un gatto, o ciò che alcuni chiamano fare di una talpa una montagna. Voi non proseguite a fare di un gatto più un gatto; cercate sempre di risalire e di provare che è meno di un gatto; che è un gatto difettoso o un gatto mentalmente deficiente. Ma un gatto è un gatto; questa è la suprema sanità mentale che è così fittamente offuscata nella vostra mente. Dopo tutto, una collinetta è una collina e una montagna è una collina. Ma voi siete finito nello stato della folle regina, che diceva di conoscere colline al cui confronto questa era una valle. Non riuscite ad afferrare la cosa chiamata cosa. Nulla per voi ha un centrale stelo di sanità mentale. Non c’è nucleo nel vostro cosmo. I vostri guai cominciarono con l’essere ateo».

«Non ho confessato di essere ateo», disse Wolfe fissandolo.

«Non ho confessato di essere un artista», replicò Gale, «né di avere incontrollati appetiti artistici o simili sciocchezze. Ma vi dirò una cosa: io posso solo esagerare le cose nel verso in cui vanno. E non mi sbaglio spesso sul verso in cui vanno. Potete essere liscio come un gatto, ma sapevo che vi stavate evolvendo in una tigre. E ho indovinato che questa piccola lucertola poteva essere trasformata con nera magia in un drago».

Mentre parlava guardava torvo Starkey e fuori sotto l’arco scuro del pergolato, come fuori da una prigione che si chiudeva, con quei due lémuri seduti a ciascun lato del cancello. Oltre c’era la sagoma scarna simile a una forca e oltre ancora il verde e l’argento del giardino e il ruscello splendeva come un paradiso perduto di libertà. Ma era caratteristico di lui che, anche quando era praticamente senza speranza, gli piacesse essere logicamente trionfante; gli piaceva rovesciare le carte in tavola ai suoi critici anche quando, per così dire, erano astratti come tavole pitagoriche.

«Ebbene, miei dotti amici», proseguì con disprezzo, «credete davvero di essere più adatti voi a scrivere un referto sulla mia mente di quanto lo sia io sulla vostra? Non potete vedere più in profondità in me di quanto io possa in voi. Nemmeno la metà. Non sapevate che un ritrattista deve valutare la gente a prima vista tanto quanto un medico? E io lo faccio meglio di voi; ho un talento in questo. È per questo che posso dipingere quei quadri sul muro; e potrei dipingere i vostri ritratti grandi come una casa. So che cosa c’è in fondo alla vostra mente, dottor Simeon Wolfe; ed è un caos di eccezioni senza regola. Potreste trovare anomalo qualsiasi cosa, perché non avete alcun normale. Potreste trovare pazzo chiunque; e quanto al perché vogliate specialmente trovare pazzo me… ebbene, quello è un altro svantaggio dell’essere ateo. Non pensate che nulla vi colpirà per la vile perfidia che vi siete venduto a compiere oggi».

“There is no doubt about your condition now,” said Dr. Wolfe with a sneer.

“You look like an actor, but you are not a very good actor,” answered Gale calmly. “I can see that my guess was correct. These rack-renters and usurers who oppress the poor, in my own native valley, could not find any pettifogging law to prevent me from painting the colours of their souls in hell. So they have bribed you and another cheap doctor to certify me for a madhouse. I know the sort of man you are. I know this is not the first dirty trick you have done to help the rich out of a hole. You would do anything for your paymasters. Possibly the murder of the unborn.”

Wolfe’s face was still wrinkled with its Semitic sneer, but his olive tint had turned to a sort of loathsome yellow. Starkey called out with sudden shrillness, as abrupt as the bark of a dog.

“Speak more respectfully!”

“There is Dr. Starkey, too,” continued the poet lazily. “Let us turn our medical attention to the mental state of Dr. Starkey.”

As he rolled his eyes with ostentatious languor in the new direction, he was arrested by a change in the scene without. A strange man was standing under the frame of the swing, looking up at it with his head on one side like a bird’s. He was a small, sturdy figure, quite conventionally clad; and Gale could only suppose he was a stray guest of the hotel. His presence did not help very much; for the law was probably on the side of the doctors; and Gale continued his address to them.

“The mental deficiency of Dr. Starkey,” he said, “consists in having forgotten the truth. You, Starkey, have no sceptical philosophy like your friend. You are a practical man, my dear Starkey; but you have told lies so incessantly and from so early an age that you never see anything as it is, but only as it could be made to look. Beside each thing stands the unreal thing that is its shadow; and you see the shadow first. You are very quick in seeing it; you go direct to the deceptive potentialities of anything; you see at once if anything could be used as anything else. You are the original man who went straight down the crooked lane. I could see how quickly you saw that the swing would provide ropes to tie me up if I were violent; and that going first into this arbour, I should be cornered, with you on each side of me. Yet the swing and the arbour were my own idea; and that again is typical of you. You’re not a scientific thinker like the other scoundrel; you have always picked up other men’s ideas, but you pick as swiftly as a pickpocket. In fact, when you see an idea sticking out of a pocket you can hardly help picking it. That’s where you’re mad; you can’t resist being clever, or rather borrowing cleverness. Which means you have sometimes been too clever to be lucky. You are a shabbier sort of scamp; and I rather fancy you have been in prison.”

Starkey sprang to his feet, snatching up the ropes and throwing them on the table.

“Tie him up and gag him,” he cried; “he is raving.”

“There again,” observed Gale, “I enter with sympathy into your thoughts. You mean that I must be gagged at once; for if I were free for half a day, or perhaps half an hour, I could find out the facts about you and tear your reputation to rags.”

As he spoke he again followed with an interested eye the movements of the strange man outside. The man had recrossed the garden, calmly picking up a chair from one of the little tables, and returned carrying it lightly in the direction of the arbour. To the surprise of all, he set it down at the round table in the very entrance of that retreat, and sat down on it with his hands in his pockets, staring at Gabriel Gale. With his face in shadow, his square head, short hair and bulk of shoulders took on a new touch of mystery.

“Hope I don’t interrupt,” he said. “Perhaps it would be more honest to say I hope I do interrupt. Because I want to interrupt. Honestly, I think you medical gentlemen would be very unwise to gag your friend here, or try to carry him off.”

“And why?” asked Starkey sharply.

“Only because I should kill you if you did,” replied the stranger.

They all stared at him; and Wolfe sneered again as he said: “You might find it awkward to kill us both at once.”

The stranger took his hands out of his pockets; and with the very gesture there was a double flash of metal. For the hands held two revolvers which pointed at them, fixed them like two large fingers of steel.

“I shall only kill you if you run or call out,” said the strange gentleman pleasantly.

“If you do you’ll be hanged,” cried Wolfe violently.

“Oh, no, I shan’t,” said the stranger; “not unless two dead men can get up and hang me on that nursery gallows in the garden. I’m allowed to kill people. There’s a special Act of Parliament permitting me to go about killing anybody I like. I’m never punished, whatever I do. In fact, to tell you the truth, I’m the King of England, and the Constitution says I can do no wrong.”

“What are you talking about?” demanded the doctor. “You must be mad.”

The stranger uttered a sudden shout of laughter that shook the shed and the nerves of all three hearers.

“You’ve hit it first shot,” he cried. “He said you were quick, didn’t he? Yes, I’m mad all right; I’ve just escaped from the same sanatorium next door, where you want to take your friend to. I escaped in a way of my own; through the chief doctor’s private apartments; and he’s kind enough to keep two pistols in his drawer. I may be recaptured; but I shan’t be hanged. I may be recaptured; but I particularly don’t want your young friend to be captured at all. He’s got his life before him; I don’t choose he should suffer as I’ve suffered. I like the look of him; I like the way he turned all your medical tomfoolery upside down. So you’ll understand I am at present wielding the power of a perfectly irresponsible sultan. I shall merely be rounding off a very pleasant holiday by blowing both your brains out, unless you will sit quite still and allow your young friend to tie you up with the ropes. That will give us a good start for our escape.”

«Non c’è alcun dubbio sulla vostra condizione ormai», disse il dottor Wolfe con un ghigno.

«Voi sembrate un attore, ma non siete un attore molto bravo», rispose Gale con calma. «Vedo che la mia congettura era esatta. Questi strozzini ed esattori d’affitti che opprimono i poveri, nella mia valle natia, non hanno potuto trovare alcuna cavillosa legge che m’impedisse di dipingere i colori delle loro anime all’inferno. Così hanno corrotto voi e un altro medico da quattro soldi perché mi certificaste per un manicomio. So che razza d’uomo siete. So che questo non è il primo sporco trucco che avete fatto per tirar fuori i ricchi da un guaio. Fareste qualsiasi cosa per i vostri padroni. Forse anche l’assassinio del nascituro».

Il volto di Wolfe era ancora corrugato nel suo ghigno semitico, ma la sua tinta olivastra si era mutata in una sorta di ripugnante giallo. Starkey esclamò con improvvisa stridulità, brusca come l’abbaiare di un cane.

«Parlate con più rispetto!»

«C’è anche il dottor Starkey», continuò il poeta pigramente. «Rivolgiamo la nostra attenzione medica allo stato mentale del dottor Starkey».

Mentre roteava gli occhi con ostentata languidezza nella nuova direzione, fu arrestato da un mutamento nella scena all’esterno. Uno strano uomo stava sotto l’intelaiatura dell’altalena, guardandola in su con la testa piegata da un lato come quella di un uccello. Era una figura piccola e robusta, vestita in modo del tutto convenzionale; e Gale poté solo supporre che fosse un ospite di passaggio dell’albergo. La sua presenza non fu di grande aiuto; perché la legge era probabilmente dalla parte dei medici; e Gale continuò il suo discorso rivolto a loro.

«La deficienza mentale del dottor Starkey», disse, «consiste nell’aver dimenticato la verità. Voi, Starkey, non avete una filosofia scettica come il vostro amico. Siete un uomo pratico, mio caro Starkey; ma avete detto bugie così incessantemente e da un’età così precoce che non vedete mai nulla per com’è, ma solo per come lo si potrebbe far apparire. Accanto a ogni cosa sta la cosa irreale che ne è l’ombra; e voi vedete prima l’ombra. Siete molto rapido nel vederla; andate dritto alle ingannevoli potenzialità di qualsiasi cosa; vedete subito se una cosa potrebbe essere usata come un’altra. Siete l’uomo originario che scese dritto per il sentiero storto. Ho potuto vedere quanto rapidamente avete visto che l’altalena avrebbe fornito corde per legarmi se fossi stato violento; e che entrando per primo in questo pergolato, sarei stato messo all’angolo, con voi ai miei lati. Eppure l’altalena e il pergolato erano una mia idea; e anche questo è tipico di voi. Non siete un pensatore scientifico come l’altro furfante; avete sempre raccolto le idee altrui, ma le raccogliete con la rapidità di un borsaiolo. Di fatto, quando vedete un’idea che sporge da una tasca, non riuscite quasi a trattenervi dal raccoglierla. È lì che siete pazzo; non sapete resistere all’essere astuto, o piuttosto al prendere in prestito l’astuzia. Il che significa che a volte siete stato troppo astuto per essere fortunato. Siete un mascalzone di più bassa risma; e ho la netta impressione che siate stato in prigione».

Starkey balzò in piedi, afferrando le corde e gettandole sul tavolo.

«Legatelo e imbavagliatelo», gridò; «sta delirando».

«Anche in questo», osservò Gale, «entro con simpatia nei vostri pensieri. Volete dire che devo essere imbavagliato all’istante; perché se fossi libero per mezza giornata, o forse mezz’ora, potrei scoprire i fatti che vi riguardano e ridurre la vostra reputazione a brandelli».

Mentre parlava seguiva di nuovo con occhio interessato i movimenti dello strano uomo là fuori. L’uomo aveva riattraversato il giardino, raccogliendo con calma una sedia da uno dei tavolini, ed era tornato portandola leggermente in direzione del pergolato. Con sorpresa di tutti, la posò al tavolo rotondo proprio all’ingresso di quel rifugio, e vi si sedette con le mani in tasca, fissando Gabriel Gale. Con il volto in ombra, la sua testa quadrata, i capelli corti e la mole delle spalle assumevano un nuovo tocco di mistero.

«Spero di non interrompere», disse. «Forse sarebbe più onesto dire che spero di interrompere. Perché voglio interrompere. Sinceramente, penso che voi signori medici sareste molto imprudenti a imbavagliare il vostro amico qui, o a cercare di portarlo via».

«E perché?» chiese Starkey bruscamente.

«Solo perché vi ucciderei se lo faceste», replicò lo sconosciuto.

Lo fissarono tutti; e Wolfe ghignò di nuovo mentre diceva: «Potreste trovare imbarazzante ucciderci entrambi in una volta sola».

Lo sconosciuto tirò fuori le mani dalle tasche; e con quel gesto stesso ci fu un doppio lampo di metallo. Perché le mani stringevano due revolver che li puntavano, li inchiodavano come due grosse dita d’acciaio.

«Vi ucciderò soltanto se scappate o gridate», disse lo strano signore amabilmente.

«Se lo fate sarete impiccato», gridò Wolfe con violenza.

«Oh, no che non lo sarò», disse lo sconosciuto; «non a meno che due morti non possano rialzarsi e impiccarmi a quella forca da nursery nel giardino. Mi è permesso uccidere la gente. C’è uno speciale Atto del Parlamento che mi permette di andare in giro a uccidere chiunque mi piaccia. Non vengo mai punito, qualunque cosa faccia. Anzi, a dirvi la verità, sono il Re d’Inghilterra, e la Costituzione dice che non posso fare alcun torto».

«Di che cosa state parlando?» domandò il medico. «Dovete essere pazzo».

Lo sconosciuto emise un improvviso scoppio di risa che scosse la baracca e i nervi di tutti e tre gli ascoltatori.

«L’avete azzeccata al primo colpo», gridò. «Ha detto che eravate svelto, no? Sì, sono pazzo davvero; sono appena scappato dallo stesso sanatorio qui accanto, dove volete portare il vostro amico. Sono scappato a modo mio; attraverso gli appartamenti privati del medico capo; ed egli è tanto gentile da tenere due pistole nel cassetto. Posso essere ricatturato; ma non sarò impiccato. Posso essere ricatturato; ma non voglio affatto che il vostro giovane amico sia catturato. Ha la vita davanti a sé; non voglio che soffra come ho sofferto io. Mi piace il suo aspetto; mi piace il modo in cui ha capovolto tutte le vostre buffonate mediche. Perciò capirete che al momento sto esercitando il potere di un sultano perfettamente irresponsabile. Mi limiterò ad arrotondare una vacanza assai piacevole facendovi saltare le cervella a entrambi, a meno che non ve ne stiate del tutto immobili e non lasciate che il vostro giovane amico vi leghi con le corde. Questo ci darà un buon vantaggio per la nostra fuga».

How he passed through the topsy-turvy transformation scene that followed Gale could afterwards barely remember; it seemed like a sort of dream pantomime, but its results were solid enough. Ten minutes later he and his strange deliverer were walking free in the woods beyond the last hedge of the garden, leaving the two medical gentlemen behind them in the arbour, tied up like two sacks of potatoes.

For Gabriel Gale the wood in which he walked was a new world of wonders. Every tree was a Christmas tree bearing gifts; and every gap in the woods was like a glimpse through the curtain for a child with a toy theatre. For a few moments before all these things had nearly disappeared in the darkness of something worse than death; till heaven had sent him a guardian angel in the shape of an escaped lunatic.

Gale was very young and his youth had not then found its vent and vocation by falling in love. There was in him something of those young Crusaders who made wild vows not to cut their hair till they found the Holy City. His liberty was looking and longing for something to bind itself; and at this moment he could think of but one thing in the world.

Two hundred yards along the path by the river he halted and spoke to his companion:

“It is you who have given me all this,” he said. “Under God, and so far as my life goes, it is you who have created heaven and earth. You set up along my triumphal way these trees like seven-branched candlesticks with their grey branches silver in the sun. You spread before my feet these red leaves that are better than roses. You shaped clouds. You invented birds. Do you think I could enjoy all these things when I knew you were back again in the hell that you hate? I should feel I had tricked you out of everything you have given me. I should feel like a thief who had stolen the stars. You shan’t go back there if I can help it; you saved me and I am going to save you. I owe you my life and I give it you; I vow I will share anything you suffer; God do so to me and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.”

Thus were spoken in that wild place the wild words that determined the life of Gabriel Gale for so many years afterwards; and the walk that began in that wood turned into a wandering over the whole country by those two fantastic outlaws. As a matter of fact a sort of armed truce fell between them and their enemies, for each had something to fear from the other. Gale did not use all he discovered against the two doctors lest they should press the pursuit of his friend; and they did not press it lest he should retaliate with his own revelations. Thus the two came to roam practically unmolested until the day of that adventure, already described in the beginning of all these things, when he fell in love, and his crazy companion fell into a paroxysm which went very near to murder.

In every sense that dreadful day had changed all. That murderous outbreak had at last convinced a sadder and wiser Gabriel that he had other responsibilities besides those of his chivalric vow to his companion-in-arms; and he concluded that their companionship could only be rightly continued in some safe and more secluded form. Then it was that he put his friend into the comfortable and secret house in Cornwall, and spent most of his own time there, leaving a trustworthy servant on guard during his brief absences. His companion, whose name was James Hurrel, had been a business man of great ability and even audacity, until his schemes grew a little too big for his brain; and he lived happily enough in Cornwall, covering the tables with prospectuses and the walls with posters relative to various financial enterprises of the most promising kind. There he died, to all appearance equally happily; and Gale walked back from his funeral a free man.

---

Next morning, after a few hours’ walking a rise and change in the rolling and wooded country told him that he was on the borders of his enchanted ground. He remembered something in the grouping of the trees, and how they seemed to huddle and stand on tiptoe with their backs to him, looking into the happy valley. He came to where the road curved over the hill, as he had come with his friend in former times; and saw below him the meadows falling steeply as thatched roofs and flattening out till they reached the wide and shallow river, and the ford and the dark inn called the Rising Sun.

The gloomy inn-keeper of old days was gone, having found it less gloomy to take service in some stables in the neighbourhood; and a brisker individual with the look of a groom was the recipient of Gale’s expansive praises of the beauty of the scene. Gale was good enough to inform the inn-keeper of the beauty of the skies in the neighbourhood of his own inn, telling how he, Gale, had once seen a sunset in that valley quite peculiar to it and unequalled anywhere in the world; and how even the storm that had followed the sunset had been something very sublime in that style. His generalizations however were somewhat checked and diverted by a note which the inn-keeper put into his hand, a note from the great house across the river. It was without any formal opening, as if the writer had hesitated about a form of address; and it ran:

“I want to hear the story and hope you will come over tomorrow (Thursday). I fear I shall be out today, as I have to go to see a Dr. Wilson in Wimbledon about some work I have a chance of doing. I suppose you know we are pretty hard up in these days. D.W.”

The whole landscape seemed to him to darken for an instant as he read the letter, but he did not lose his brisk demeanour and breezy mode of speech.

“I find I made a mistake,” he said, putting the note in his pocket, “and I must leave here almost at once. I have to visit another spot, if possible more picturesque and poetical than this one. It is Wimbledon that has skies of a strange and unique character at the present time. The sunsets of Wimbledon are famous throughout the world. A storm in Wimbledon would be an apocalypse. But I hope I shall come back here again sooner or later. Good-bye.”

Come attraversò la scena di trasformazione a soqquadro che seguì, Gale poté in seguito a stento ricordarlo; sembrò una sorta di pantomima onirica, ma i suoi risultati furono abbastanza solidi. Dieci minuti dopo lui e il suo strano liberatore camminavano liberi nei boschi oltre l’ultima siepe del giardino, lasciandosi dietro nel pergolato i due signori medici, legati come due sacchi di patate.

Per Gabriel Gale il bosco in cui camminava era un nuovo mondo di meraviglie. Ogni albero era un albero di Natale carico di doni; e ogni varco nei boschi era come uno sguardo attraverso il sipario per un bambino con un teatrino di giocattoli. Pochi istanti prima tutte queste cose erano quasi scomparse nell’oscurità di qualcosa di peggiore della morte; finché il cielo non gli aveva mandato un angelo custode nella forma di un pazzo evaso.

Gale era molto giovane e la sua giovinezza non aveva ancora trovato il suo sfogo e la sua vocazione nell’innamorarsi d’amore. C’era in lui qualcosa di quei giovani crociati che facevano voti selvaggi di non tagliarsi i capelli finché non avessero trovato la Santa Città. La sua libertà cercava e anelava a qualcosa a cui legarsi; e in quel momento non riusciva a pensare che a una sola cosa al mondo.

Duecento iarde lungo il sentiero presso il fiume si fermò e parlò al suo compagno:

«Siete voi che mi avete dato tutto questo», disse. «Sotto Dio, e per quanto riguarda la mia vita, siete voi che avete creato il cielo e la terra. Avete eretto lungo la mia via trionfale questi alberi come candelabri a sette braccia con i loro rami grigi d’argento al sole. Avete steso davanti ai miei piedi queste rosse foglie che sono meglio delle rose. Avete plasmato le nubi. Avete inventato gli uccelli. Credete che potrei godere di tutte queste cose sapendo che voi siete di nuovo laggiù nell’inferno che odiate? Sentirei di avervi frodato di tutto ciò che mi avete dato. Mi sentirei come un ladro che ha rubato le stelle. Non tornerete là se posso impedirlo; voi mi avete salvato e io salverò voi. Vi devo la mia vita e ve la dono; giuro che condividerò qualunque cosa soffriate; Dio faccia a me questo e anche di più, se altro che la morte separerà te e me».

Così furono pronunciate in quel luogo selvaggio le parole selvagge che determinarono la vita di Gabriel Gale per tanti anni a venire; e la passeggiata che cominciò in quel bosco si trasformò in un vagabondare per tutto il paese da parte di quei due fantastici fuorilegge. In effetti una sorta di tregua armata cadde tra loro e i loro nemici, perché ciascuno aveva qualcosa da temere dall’altro. Gale non usò tutto ciò che aveva scoperto contro i due medici, per timore che spingessero l’inseguimento del suo amico; ed essi non lo spinsero per timore che egli si vendicasse con le proprie rivelazioni. Così i due giunsero a vagare praticamente indisturbati fino al giorno di quell’avventura, già descritta all’inizio di tutte queste cose, quando egli s’innamorò d’amore, e il suo folle compagno cadde in un parossismo che andò assai vicino all’omicidio.

In ogni senso quel giorno terribile aveva mutato tutto. Quello scoppio omicida aveva finalmente convinto un Gabriel più triste e più saggio che egli aveva altre responsabilità oltre a quelle del suo voto cavalleresco al compagno d’armi; e concluse che la loro compagnia poteva essere giustamente continuata solo in qualche forma sicura e più appartata. Fu allora che mise il suo amico nella comoda e segreta casa in Cornovaglia, e vi trascorse la maggior parte del proprio tempo, lasciando un servitore fidato di guardia durante le sue brevi assenze. Il suo compagno, il cui nome era James Hurrel, era stato un uomo d’affari di grande abilità e perfino audacia, finché i suoi progetti non si fecero un po’ troppo grandi per il suo cervello; e visse abbastanza felicemente in Cornovaglia, coprendo i tavoli di prospetti e le pareti di manifesti relativi a varie imprese finanziarie del genere più promettente. Là morì, in apparenza altrettanto felicemente; e Gale tornò a piedi dal suo funerale da uomo libero.

---

Il mattino dopo, dopo poche ore di cammino, un rialzo e un mutamento nella campagna ondulata e boscosa gli dissero che era ai confini del suo terreno incantato. Ricordava qualcosa nel raggruppamento degli alberi, e come sembrassero rannicchiarsi e stare in punta di piedi con le spalle a lui, guardando dentro la valle felice. Giunse dove la strada si curvava sopra la collina, come vi era giunto con il suo amico in tempi passati; e vide sotto di sé i prati che scendevano ripidi come tetti di paglia e si appiattivano finché non raggiungevano l’ampio e basso fiume, e il guado e la scura locanda chiamata il Sole Nascente.

Il tetro locandiere dei vecchi tempi se n’era andato, avendo trovato meno tetro prendere servizio in certe scuderie del vicinato; e un individuo più sveglio con l’aria di uno stalliere fu il destinatario delle espansive lodi di Gale sulla bellezza della scena. Gale ebbe la bontà d’informare il locandiere della bellezza dei cieli nei dintorni della sua stessa locanda, raccontando come lui, Gale, avesse una volta visto un tramonto in quella valle del tutto peculiare a essa e ineguagliato in ogni parte del mondo; e come perfino la tempesta che aveva seguito il tramonto fosse stata qualcosa di assai sublime in quello stile. Le sue generalizzazioni furono però in certo modo frenate e sviate da un biglietto che il locandiere gli mise in mano, un biglietto proveniente dalla grande casa al di là del fiume. Era privo di qualsiasi apertura formale, come se lo scrivente avesse esitato su una formula d’indirizzo; e diceva:

«Desidero udire la storia e spero che verrete domani (giovedì). Temo che oggi sarò fuori, dovendo andare a trovare un certo dottor Wilson a Wimbledon per un lavoro che ho la possibilità di fare. Suppongo sappiate che siamo piuttosto a corto di denaro di questi tempi. D.W.»

L’intero paesaggio gli parve oscurarsi per un istante mentre leggeva la lettera, ma non perse il suo brioso contegno né il suo arioso modo di parlare.

«Trovo di aver fatto un errore», disse, mettendosi il biglietto in tasca, «e devo andarmene di qui quasi subito. Devo visitare un altro luogo, se possibile più pittoresco e poetico di questo. È Wimbledon che ha cieli di carattere strano e unico in questo momento. I tramonti di Wimbledon sono famosi in tutto il mondo. Una tempesta a Wimbledon sarebbe un’apocalisse. Ma spero che tornerò qui prima o poi. Addio».

The proceedings of Mr. Gale after this were rather more calculated and peculiar. First he sat on a stile and frowned heavily as if thinking hard. Then he sent off a telegram to a certain Dr. Garth, who was a friend of his, and one or two other telegrams to persons in rather responsible positions. When he got to London he went into the offices of the vulgarest and most sensational newspaper he knew, and looked up the back files for the details of forgotten crimes. When he got to Wimbledon he had a long interview with a local house agent and ended up towards evening, outside a high garden wall with a green door, in a wide but empty and silent suburban road. He went quietly up to the door and barely touched it with his finger, as if seeing if the paint were wet. But the door, which was barred across with bands of decorative metal work and had every appearance of being shut, immediately fell ajar, showing the patchy colours of garden beds within. “I thought so,” said Gale to himself and slipped into the garden, leaving the door ajar behind him.

The suburban family which he was presumably visiting, and with which the impoverished Diana Westermaine was presumably to take some post as governess or secretary, was evidently the sort who combined a new neatness with a certain early Victorian comfort and indifference to cost. The conservatories were of antiquated pattern, but full of rich and exotic things; there were things still more old-fashioned, such as a grey and rather featureless classical statue in the centre. Within a few yards of it were things so Victorian as croquet hoops and croquet mallets, as if a game had been in progress, and beyond it under the tree was a table set out with tea things, for people for whom tea was not a trifle. All these human things, unused at the moment by human beings, seemed to emphasize the emptiness of the garden. Or rather, so far as he was concerned, they emphasized the fact that it was almost empty, save for the one thing that could so strangely fill it with life. For far away down one of the paths pointing towards the kitchen garden he saw a figure moving as yet unconsciously towards him. It came out under an arch crowned with creepers and there, after so many years, they met. There seemed something symbolical of seriousness and crisis in the accident that they were both in black.

He had always been able to call up the memory of her dark vivid eyebrows and the high-tinted distinction of her face in connexion with corners of the blue dress she had worn; but when he saw her again he wondered that the face had not always annihilated all its lesser associations. She looked at him for a moment with bright motionless eyes and then said:

“Well, really. You seem to be a rather impatient person.”

“Possibly,” he replied; “and yet I have waited four years.”

“They are coming out to tea in a moment,” she said somewhat awkwardly. “I suppose I must introduce you to them. I only accepted the post this morning; but they asked me to stay. I was going to wire to you.”

“Thank God I followed you,” he answered. “I doubt if the wire would have reached me… from this house.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, “and how did you follow?”

“I did not like your Wimbledon address,” he said: and with that, strange figures began to fill the garden, and she walked across to the tea-table. Her face was somewhat paler and more severe than it used to be, but in her grey eyes there was a light not altogether extinguished, curiosity still shot with defiance. By the time they reached the table two or three people had collected round it; and the somewhat irregular visitor had saluted them in a regular and even punctilious fashion.

The host or hostess had apparently not yet become visible; there were only three gentlemen, presumably guests and perhaps members of a house-party. One was introduced as Mr. Wolmer, a young man with a fair moustache and a tall fine figure that made his head look small; with a fine bridged nose that ought to have been like a hawk’s if the prominence of the eyes and some deficiency of the chin had not somehow made it more like a parrot’s. The second was a Major Bruce, a very short man with a very long head streaked with iron grey hair, and an expression which suggested, truly enough, that he very seldom opened his mouth. The third was an elderly person with a black skull-cap on his bald head and a fringe or fan of red beard or whiskers; he was evidently a person of some importance and known as Professor Patterson.

Gale partook of tea and indulged in polite conversation in quite an animated fashion, wondering all the time who it was who ought to have been at the head of the table, where Diana Westermaine was pouring out the tea. The demeanour of the man named Wolmer was rather restless; and in a little while he stood up and began, as if from the necessity of doing something, to knock the croquet balls about on the lawn. Gale, who was watching him with some interest, followed suit by picking up a mallet and trying some particular trick of putting two balls through a hoop. It was a trick which needed a test of some minuteness, for he went down on his hands and knees to examine the position more closely.

“Going to put your head through the hoop?” asked Wolmer rudely; for he had been growing more and more impatient, almost as if he had taken a mysterious dislike to the newcomer.

“Not quite,” answered Gale good-humouredly as he rolled the balls away. “Uncomfortable position, I should think. Like being guillotined.”

Wolmer was glaring balefully at the hoop and said something in a thick voice that sounded like “Serve you right.” Then he suddenly whirled his mallet above his head like a battle-axe and brought it down with a crash on the hoop, driving it deep into the turf. There was something indescribably shocking about the pantomime, following instantly on the image that had just been suggested of a human head in the hoop. They felt as if an act of decapitation had been done before their very eyes.

Le mosse del signor Gale dopo ciò furono piuttosto più calcolate e peculiari. Dapprima sedette su una scaletta di legno e aggrottò pesantemente la fronte come se pensasse intensamente. Poi spedì un telegramma a un certo dottor Garth, che era un suo amico, e uno o due altri telegrammi a persone in posizioni piuttosto responsabili. Quando giunse a Londra entrò negli uffici del giornale più volgare e sensazionalistico che conoscesse, e consultò i vecchi archivi per i dettagli di delitti dimenticati. Quando giunse a Wimbledon ebbe un lungo colloquio con un agente immobiliare locale e finì, verso sera, davanti a un alto muro di giardino con una porta verde, in un’ampia ma vuota e silenziosa strada suburbana. Si avvicinò quietamente alla porta e la sfiorò appena col dito, come per vedere se la vernice fosse fresca. Ma la porta, sbarrata da fasce di lavorazione metallica ornamentale e con ogni apparenza di essere chiusa, si socchiuse immediatamente, mostrando i colori variegati delle aiuole del giardino all’interno. «Lo pensavo», disse Gale tra sé e scivolò nel giardino, lasciando la porta socchiusa dietro di sé.

La famiglia suburbana che egli presumibilmente visitava, e presso la quale l’impoverita Diana Westermaine doveva presumibilmente assumere qualche impiego come istitutrice o segretaria, era evidentemente del tipo che univa una nuova ordinatezza a un certo agio primo-vittoriano e a un’indifferenza al costo. Le serre erano di foggia antiquata, ma piene di cose ricche ed esotiche; c’erano cose ancora più fuori moda, come una statua classica grigia e piuttosto priva di lineamenti al centro. A pochi metri da essa c’erano cose così vittoriane come archetti e mazze da croquet, come se una partita fosse stata in corso, e al di là, sotto l’albero, c’era un tavolo apparecchiato con il servizio da tè, per gente per cui il tè non era una cosa da poco. Tutte queste cose umane, inutilizzate in quel momento dagli esseri umani, sembravano sottolineare il vuoto del giardino. O piuttosto, per quanto lo riguardava, sottolineavano il fatto che era quasi vuoto, salvo per l’unica cosa che poteva così stranamente riempirlo di vita. Perché lontano, giù per uno dei sentieri che puntavano verso il giardino della cucina, vide una figura che si muoveva ancora inconsapevolmente verso di lui. Uscì sotto un arco coronato di rampicanti e là, dopo tanti anni, si incontrarono. Sembrava esserci qualcosa di simbolico di serietà e di crisi nel caso che fossero entrambi in nero.

Era sempre stato capace di rievocare il ricordo delle sue scure vivide sopracciglia e della distinzione dai colori accesi del suo volto in connessione con angoli dell’abito azzurro che ella aveva indossato; ma quando la rivide si stupì che quel volto non avesse sempre annientato tutte le sue associazioni minori. Ella lo guardò per un momento con occhi lucenti e immoti e poi disse:

«Be’, davvero. Sembrate una persona piuttosto impaziente».

«Forse», replicò; «eppure ho aspettato quattro anni».

«Stanno per uscire a prendere il tè fra un momento», disse in modo alquanto imbarazzato. «Suppongo di dovervi presentare a loro. Ho accettato l’impiego solo stamattina; ma mi hanno chiesto di fermarmi. Stavo per telegrafarvi».

«Grazie a Dio vi ho seguita», rispose. «Dubito che il telegramma mi sarebbe giunto… da questa casa».

«Che cosa intendete?» chiese lei, «e come avete fatto a seguirmi?»

«Non mi piaceva il vostro indirizzo di Wimbledon», disse: e con ciò, strane figure cominciarono a riempire il giardino, ed ella attraversò fino al tavolo da tè. Il suo volto era alquanto più pallido e più severo di un tempo, ma nei suoi occhi grigi c’era una luce non del tutto spenta, una curiosità ancora venata di sfida. Nel momento in cui raggiunsero il tavolo due o tre persone si erano radunate attorno a esso; e il visitatore alquanto irregolare le aveva salutate in modo regolare e perfino cerimonioso.

L’ospite o la padrona di casa a quanto pareva non era ancora divenuto visibile; c’erano solo tre gentiluomini, presumibilmente invitati e forse membri di una comitiva della casa. Uno fu presentato come il signor Wolmer, un giovane dai baffi biondi e da un’alta e bella figura che faceva sembrare piccola la sua testa; con un bel naso arcuato che avrebbe dovuto essere come quello di un falco se la prominenza degli occhi e una certa deficienza del mento non l’avessero in qualche modo reso più simile a quello di un pappagallo. Il secondo era un certo maggiore Bruce, un uomo molto basso con una testa molto lunga striata di capelli grigio ferro, e un’espressione che suggeriva, abbastanza veritieramente, che assai di rado apriva bocca. Il terzo era una persona anziana con una nera papalina sul capo calvo e una frangia o ventaglio di barba o basette rosse; era evidentemente una persona di una certa importanza e conosciuta come il professor Patterson.

Gale prese il tè e s’indulse in cortese conversazione in modo assai animato, chiedendosi per tutto il tempo chi fosse colui che avrebbe dovuto essere a capo del tavolo, dove Diana Westermaine versava il tè. Il contegno dell’uomo di nome Wolmer era piuttosto inquieto; e dopo poco si alzò e cominciò, come per la necessità di fare qualcosa, a colpire qua e là le palle da croquet sul prato. Gale, che lo osservava con un certo interesse, ne seguì l’esempio raccogliendo una mazza e tentando un certo particolare gioco di far passare due palle attraverso un archetto. Era un gioco che richiedeva una prova di una certa minuziosità, poiché egli si mise carponi per esaminare più da vicino la posizione.

«Volete infilare la testa nell’archetto?» chiese Wolmer sgarbatamente; perché stava diventando sempre più impaziente, quasi avesse preso una misteriosa avversione per il nuovo venuto.

«Non proprio», rispose Gale bonariamente mentre allontanava le palle rotolandole via. «Posizione scomoda, direi. Come essere ghigliottinati».

Wolmer fissava con occhio maligno l’archetto e disse qualcosa con voce spessa che suonò come «Ben vi sta». Poi all’improvviso roteò la mazza sopra la testa come un’ascia da battaglia e la calò con uno schianto sull’archetto, conficcandolo in profondità nella zolla. C’era qualcosa d’indescrivibilmente scioccante in quella pantomima, che seguiva istantaneamente l’immagine appena evocata di una testa umana nell’archetto. Ebbero la sensazione che un atto di decapitazione fosse stato compiuto davanti ai loro stessi occhi.

“Better put down that mallet now,” said the professor in a soothing voice, putting a rather shaky hand on the other’s arm.

“Oh, I’ll put it down then,” said Wolmer, and slung it away over his shoulder like a man putting the hammer at the Highland Sports. It flew through the air like a thunderbolt, striking the forlorn plaster statue in the centre and breaking it off short at the top. Mr. Wolmer laughed in a rather uncontrolled fashion; and then strode away into the house.

The girl had been watching these things with her dark brows bent and her pallor growing somewhat more marked. There was an unpleasant silence, and then Major Bruce spoke for the first time.

“It’s the atmosphere of this place,” he said. “It is not very wholesome.”

The atmosphere of the suburban garden as a matter of fact was very clear, sunny and pleasant, and Diana looked round with a growing and even creeping mystification at the gay flower-pots and the lawns golden in the evening light.

“Perhaps it is my own misfortune,” resumed the Major reflectively. “The truth is there is something serious the matter with me. I have a malady which makes this particular place rather awful.”

“What do you mean?” she asked quickly.

There was a short silence and then he answered stolidly.

“I am sane.”

Then she looked once more at the warm sunshiny garden and began to shudder as if with cold. A thousand things came back to her out of the last few hours. She knew why she had dimly distrusted her new home. She knew now that there is only one place in the world where men say that they are sane.

As the little man with the long head walked away as stiffly as a wooden automaton, she looked round for Gale and found he had vanished. An appalling emptiness, a vast vacuum of terror, opened around her on every side. In that moment she had admitted many things to herself that had been but half conscious: and no one on earth mattered but the man who had vanished into a void. For the moment she balanced the possibility that she was really mad against the possibility that nobody else was sane; when she caught sight, through the gap of a hedge, of figures moving at the other end of the garden. The old professor in the skull-cap was moving rapidly but with trepidation, as if running on tiptoe, his long lean hands flapping like fins and his red chin-beard wagging in the wind. And behind him following, equally softly and swiftly, at the distance of a few yards, was the long grey figure of Gabriel Gale. She could fit together no fancy about what it all meant; she could only continue to stare across the flower-beds at the glass-houses full of monstrous flowers and be vaguely conscious of a sort of symbol in the headless statue in the centre; the god of that garden of unreason.

The next moment she saw Gale reappear at the other extremity of the long hedge and come towards her smiling in the sunshine. He stopped when he saw her white face.

“Do you know what this place is?” she whispered. “It is a madhouse.”

“It’s a very easy one to escape from,” said Gale in a serene manner. “I’ve just seen the professor escape from it. He escapes regularly; probably on Wednesdays and Saturdays.”

“This is no time for your jokes,” she cried. “I tell you we’ve been trapped inside a madhouse.”

“And I tell you we shall soon be outside the madhouse,” he replied firmly. “And under those circumstances, I don’t mind telling you that I regret to say it is not a madhouse.”

“What do you mean?”

“It is something worse,” replied Gale.

“Tell me what you mean,” she repeated. “Tell me what you know about this horrible place.”

“For me it will always be a holy place,” he said. “Was it not under that arch there that you appeared out of the abyss of memory? And after all, it’s a beautiful garden and I’m almost sorry to leave it. The house, too, makes a romantic background; and really we might be very comfortable here… if only it were a madhouse.” And he sighed with regret.

Then after a pause he added, “I might say all I want to say to you in a nice, friendly, comfortable lunatic asylum… but not in a place like this. There are practical things to be done now; and here come the people who will do them!”

She was never able to fit together again the fragments of that bad dream and its wilder way of breaking up. To her astonishment she beheld a new group advancing up the garden path; in front was a red-haired man in a top hat, whose shrewd and good-humoured features were faintly familiar to her; behind were two stalwart figures, obviously in “plain clothes”, and between them the unexpected apparition of Professor Patterson in handcuffs.

“Caught him setting fire to a house,” said the red-haired man briefly. “Valuable documents.”

Later in that bewildering stretch of hours, the friends seated themselves on a garden seat for explanations. “You remember Dr. Garth, I think,” said Gale to the lady. “He has been helping me to clear up this queer business. The truth is, the police have suspected the nature of this Wimbledon retreat for some time. No; it is not a lunatic asylum; it is a den of very accomplished professional criminals. They have hit on the ingenious idea of being certified as irresponsible by a medical confederate; so that the worst that can happen is that he may be censured for laxity in letting them escape. Look up the records, and you will find them responsible, or irresponsible, for quite a long catalogue of crimes. I happened to follow the notion up, because I happened to guess where the notion came from. By the way, I suppose this is the gentleman who engaged you as a typist.”

As he spoke a small alert figure strode out of the house and across the lawns; his short beard thrust forward with something of the gesture of a terrier.

«Meglio che posiate quel maglio, adesso», disse il professore con voce suadente, posando una mano piuttosto tremante sul braccio dell’altro.

«Oh, allora lo poso», disse Wolmer, e se lo scagliò dietro la spalla come chi lancia il martello ai Giochi delle Highland. Volò nell’aria come una folgore, colpendo la desolata statua di gesso al centro e spezzandola di netto in cima. Il signor Wolmer rise in modo piuttosto sfrenato; e poi si allontanò a grandi passi verso la casa.

La ragazza aveva osservato queste cose con le sopracciglia scure aggrottate e il suo pallore che si faceva un po’ più marcato. Vi fu uno sgradevole silenzio, e poi il maggiore Bruce parlò per la prima volta.

«È l’atmosfera di questo luogo», disse. «Non è molto salubre.»

L’atmosfera del giardino suburbano era in realtà molto limpida, soleggiata e piacevole, e Diana si guardò attorno con una crescente e persino strisciante perplessità di fronte ai vasi di fiori allegri e ai prati dorati nella luce della sera.

«Forse è una mia sventura», riprese il maggiore in tono riflessivo. «La verità è che c’è qualcosa di grave che non va in me. Ho un male che rende questo luogo particolare piuttosto tremendo.»

«Che intendete dire?» chiese lei in fretta.

Vi fu un breve silenzio e poi egli rispose impassibile.

«Sono sano di mente.»

Allora ella guardò ancora una volta il caldo giardino assolato e cominciò a rabbrividire come per il freddo. Mille cose le tornarono in mente dalle ultime ore. Capì perché aveva confusamente diffidato della sua nuova casa. Capì ora che c’è un solo luogo al mondo dove gli uomini dicono di essere sani di mente.

Mentre l’ometto dalla testa lunga si allontanava rigido come un automa di legno, ella si guardò attorno cercando Gale e scoprì che era svanito. Un vuoto spaventoso, un vasto vuoto di terrore, si aprì attorno a lei da ogni parte. In quel momento ella aveva ammesso a sé stessa molte cose che erano state solo semiconsce: e nessuno al mondo contava se non l’uomo che era svanito nel nulla. Per un istante ella soppesò la possibilità di essere davvero pazza contro la possibilità che nessun altro fosse sano; quando scorse, attraverso il varco di una siepe, delle figure che si muovevano all’altra estremità del giardino. Il vecchio professore con lo zucchetto si muoveva rapidamente ma con trepidazione, come correndo in punta di piedi, le lunghe mani scarne che sbattevano come pinne e la sua barbetta rossa al mento che ondeggiava nel vento. E dietro di lui, seguendolo, con pari leggerezza e rapidità, alla distanza di pochi metri, c’era la lunga figura grigia di Gabriel Gale. Ella non riusciva a comporre alcuna congettura su ciò che tutto questo significasse; poteva solo continuare a fissare oltre le aiuole le serre piene di fiori mostruosi e a essere vagamente consapevole di una sorta di simbolo nella statua decapitata al centro; il dio di quel giardino della dissennatezza.

L’istante successivo vide Gale riapparire all’altra estremità della lunga siepe e venire verso di lei sorridendo nel sole. Si fermò quando vide il suo volto bianco.

«Sapete cos’è questo posto?» sussurrò lei. «È un manicomio.»

«È un manicomio molto facile da cui fuggire», disse Gale con aria serena. «Ho appena visto il professore fuggirne. Fugge regolarmente; probabilmente il mercoledì e il sabato.»

«Non è il momento per i vostri scherzi», gridò lei. «Vi dico che siamo stati intrappolati dentro un manicomio.»

«E io vi dico che presto saremo fuori dal manicomio», rispose lui con fermezza. «E in tali circostanze, non mi dispiace dirvi che, con mio rammarico, non è un manicomio.»

«Che cosa intendete?»

«È qualcosa di peggio», rispose Gale.

«Ditemi cosa intendete», ripeté lei. «Ditemi cosa sapete di questo orribile luogo.»

«Per me sarà sempre un luogo santo», disse. «Non fu forse sotto quell’arco laggiù che voi appariste dall’abisso della memoria? E dopo tutto, è un bel giardino e mi dispiace quasi lasciarlo. Anche la casa fa da sfondo romantico; e davvero potremmo stare molto comodi qui… se solo fosse un manicomio.» E sospirò con rammarico.

Poi, dopo una pausa, aggiunse: «Potrei dirvi tutto ciò che voglio dirvi in un bel manicomio amichevole e confortevole… ma non in un posto come questo. Ci sono cose pratiche da fare adesso; ed ecco che arrivano le persone che le faranno!»

Ella non fu mai in grado di ricomporre i frammenti di quel brutto sogno e del suo modo ancora più folle di dissolversi. Con suo stupore vide un nuovo gruppo avanzare su per il sentiero del giardino; in testa c’era un uomo dai capelli rossi con un cilindro, i cui lineamenti accorti e bonari le erano vagamente familiari; dietro c’erano due robuste figure, evidentemente in «abiti civili», e in mezzo a loro l’inattesa apparizione del professor Patterson in manette.

«Colto mentre appiccava il fuoco a una casa», disse brevemente l’uomo dai capelli rossi. «Documenti di valore.»

Più tardi, in quel tratto sconcertante di ore, gli amici si sedettero su una panchina del giardino per le spiegazioni. «Vi ricordate del dottor Garth, credo», disse Gale alla signora. «Mi ha aiutato a chiarire questa strana faccenda. La verità è che la polizia sospettava la natura di questo rifugio di Wimbledon da qualche tempo. No; non è un manicomio; è un covo di criminali di professione assai abili. Hanno avuto l’ingegnosa idea di farsi certificare come irresponsabili da un complice medico; così che il peggio che possa accadere è che egli venga censurato per negligenza nel lasciarli fuggire. Consultate gli archivi, e li troverete responsabili, o irresponsabili, di un catalogo di crimini piuttosto lungo. Mi è capitato di seguire la pista, perché mi è capitato di indovinare da dove venisse l’idea. A proposito, suppongo che questo sia il signore che vi ingaggiò come dattilografa.»

Mentre parlava, una piccola figura sveglia uscì a grandi passi dalla casa e attraversò i prati; la sua corta barba protesa in avanti con qualcosa del gesto di un terrier.

“Yes, that is Dr. Wilson; I made arrangements with him only this morning,” answered Diana, still staring.

The doctor came to a halt in front of them, turning his head right and left in the terrier fashion, and looking at them with wrinkled brows and lids.

“So this is Dr. Wilson,” said Gale politely. “Good day, Dr. Starkey.”

Then as the plain-clothes men shifted and closed round the doctor, Gale added reflectively:

“I knew you would never fail to take a hint.”

A street or two away from the strange madhouse there was a sort of toy park, not much bigger than a back garden, but laid out in ornamental paths and planted with flowering shrubs, as an oasis for nomadic nurses trailing about the babies of that suburb. It was also ornamented with long seats with curly backs, and one of these seats in its turn was ornamented by a couple clad in black and endeavouring, with some bewilderment, to appear respectable. Wild as were the events of that afternoon, they had moved very rapidly and it was barely evening. The sunset was settling down about the corners of the sky and of the quaint little public garden, and there was little noise except the shrill but faint calling of some children lingering over some long-drawn-out-game.

It was here that he told her the whole story of the rash vow and all that happened between the rescue in the riverside garden and the funeral in the Cornish churchyard.

“The only thing I don’t understand,” she said at last, “is why you thought they had got me to that place; or why you thought there was any such place.”

“Why, because,” he said looking at the gravel path with a slight embarrassment, “because I really was not bragging when I told Starkey at the beginning that I understood the sort of mind he had, and could exaggerate it in the way it was going. Starkey never missed a chance of applying or misapplying an idea, especially anybody else’s idea. When poor Jimmy Hurrel boasted of being free from punishment because he was an escaped lunatic, I was sure that a seed had been sown in Starkey’s mind that would sprout. I was sure he would follow it up and use it, as he used my fancy for the swing or the arbour. While Jim was alive he knew I had a motive for silence; but the moment Jim died he struck. He was very quick; his mind is like a flash of lightning; quick but crooked. He sent one of his chartered maniacs to brain me with a stone on my way to you. He intercepted my telegram, and lured you away before you could be told the whole story. But what I want to know is what you think of the whole story.”

“The vow was certainly rash enough,” she said. “All that time you might have been painting pictures and doing all sorts of good. It doesn’t seem right that a genius should be tied to a lunatic by a few words.”

He sat up very suddenly. “For God’s sake don’t say that!” he cried. “Don’t say one oughtn’t to tie oneself to a lunatic by a few words! Don’t say that’s wrong, I implore you, whatever else you say! A shocking thought! A perfectly foul idea!”

“What do you mean?” she asked. “Why not?”

“Because,” he said, “I want you to make a rash vow. I want you to tie yourself with a few words to a lunatic.”

There was a silence, at the end of which she smiled suddenly and put her hand on his arm.

“No,” she said, “only a silly… I always liked you, even when I thought you really were a lunatic; that day when you stood on your head. But now I don’t think my vow will be so very rash… What on earth are you doing now?… Oh, I say… for heaven’s sake…”

“What else should I do,” he answered calmly, “after what you have just said? I’m going to stand on my head again.”

The children in the corner of the little garden gazed with interest at a gentleman in funeral full-dress behaving in a somewhat unusual manner.

THE END

“Sì, quello è il dottor Wilson; ho preso accordi con lui proprio stamattina,” rispose Diana, sempre fissando.

Il dottore si fermò di colpo davanti a loro, girando la testa a destra e a sinistra alla maniera dei terrier, e guardandoli con la fronte e le palpebre corrugate.

“Così questo è il dottor Wilson,” disse Gale cortesemente. “Buongiorno, dottor Starkey.”

Poi, mentre gli agenti in borghese si spostavano e si serravano attorno al dottore, Gale aggiunse pensoso:

“Sapevo che non avresti mai mancato di cogliere un’allusione.”

A una strada o due dallo strano manicomio c’era una sorta di parco giocattolo, non molto più grande di un giardino sul retro, ma disposto in vialetti ornamentali e piantato di arbusti fioriti, come un’oasi per le nutrici nomadi che trascinavano in giro i bambini di quel sobborgo. Era ornato anche di lunghe panchine dalle spalliere ricciute, e una di queste panchine, a sua volta, era ornata da una coppia vestita di nero che si sforzava, con un certo smarrimento, di apparire rispettabile. Per selvaggi che fossero stati gli eventi di quel pomeriggio, si erano mossi assai rapidamente ed era appena sera. Il tramonto andava calando attorno agli angoli del cielo e del bizzarro piccolo giardino pubblico, e c’era poco rumore se non il richiamo stridulo ma fioco di certi bambini indugianti su un gioco tirato per le lunghe.

Fu qui che egli le raccontò tutta la storia del voto avventato e di tutto ciò che era accaduto tra il salvataggio nel giardino in riva al fiume e il funerale nel cimitero della Cornovaglia.

“L’unica cosa che non capisco,” disse infine lei, “è perché tu pensassi che mi avessero portata in quel luogo; o perché pensassi che esistesse un luogo simile.”

“Ebbene, perché,” disse lui guardando il vialetto di ghiaia con un leggero imbarazzo, “perché davvero non stavo vantandomi quando dissi a Starkey all’inizio che capivo il tipo di mente che aveva, e potevo esagerarla nella direzione in cui andava. Starkey non mancava mai un’occasione di applicare o malapplicare un’idea, specialmente l’idea di qualcun altro. Quando il povero Jimmy Hurrel si vantò di essere immune dalla punizione perché era un pazzo evaso, fui certo che un seme era stato gettato nella mente di Starkey e sarebbe germogliato. Fui certo che l’avrebbe seguito e usato, come usò la mia fantasia dell’altalena o del pergolato. Finché Jim era vivo, egli sapeva che io avevo un motivo per il silenzio; ma nell’istante in cui Jim morì, colpì. Fu velocissimo; la sua mente è come un lampo di folgore; rapida ma storta. Mandò uno dei suoi maniaci prezzolati a spaccarmi il cranio con una pietra mentre venivo da te. Intercettò il mio telegramma, e ti attirò via prima che ti potessero raccontare l’intera storia. Ma quel che voglio sapere è che cosa pensi tu dell’intera storia.”

“Il voto era certo abbastanza avventato,” disse lei. “Per tutto quel tempo tu avresti potuto dipingere quadri e fare ogni sorta di bene. Non pare giusto che un genio debba restare legato a un pazzo da poche parole.”

Egli si tirò su di colpo. “Per amor di Dio, non dire questo!” gridò. “Non dire che non ci si dovrebbe legare a un pazzo con poche parole! Non dire che è sbagliato, ti imploro, qualunque altra cosa tu dica! Un pensiero raccapricciante! Un’idea perfettamente turpe!”

“Che vuoi dire?” chiese lei. “Perché no?”

“Perché,” disse lui, “voglio che tu faccia un voto avventato. Voglio che tu ti leghi con poche parole a un pazzo.”

Vi fu un silenzio, al termine del quale ella sorrise d’improvviso e posò la mano sul braccio di lui.

“No,” disse, “solo uno sciocco… Mi sei sempre piaciuto, anche quando ti credevo davvero un pazzo; quel giorno che ti mettesti a testa in giù. Ma ora non credo che il mio voto sarà poi così avventato… Che diamine stai facendo adesso?… Oh, dico… per l’amor del cielo…”

“Che altro dovrei fare,” rispose lui con calma, “dopo ciò che hai appena detto? Mi metto di nuovo a testa in giù.”

I bambini nell’angolo del piccolo giardino fissarono con interesse un signore in stretto abito da lutto che si comportava in modo alquanto insolito.

FINE