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