CHESTERTON-FOUR FAULLESS - IV THE PROBLEMS OF DETECTIVE PRICE
THERE was an extraordinary amount of fuss and delay about the hearing of the case of Alan Nadoway, considering that it was merely the trial of a common pickpocket. First of all, it was repeated everywhere, apparently on good authority, that the prisoner was going to plead Guilty. Then came all sorts of commotion in his original social circle, and a series of privileged interviews between the prisoner and members of his family. But it was not until his father, old Sir Jacob Nadoway, had sent his private secretary to the prison, apparently to conduct unprecedentedly long interviews with the prisoner, that the news went round that he was pleading Not Guilty after all. Then there was the same sort of rumour and dispute about his choice of a counsel, and finally it was announced that he had insisted on conducting his own defence.
He had been committed for trial after purely formal evidence, and in his earlier stages of silence and surrender. It was before a judge and jury that the case against him was fully opened, and the prosecuting counsel opened it in tones of stern regret. The prisoner was unfortunately the son of a great and distinguished family, the blot on the escutcheon of a noble, a generous and a philanthropic house. All were acquainted with the great reforms in the conditions of employment which would always be associated with the name of his elder brother, Mr. John Nadoway. Many who could not approve the ritualistic practices, or submit their intellects to the ecclesiastical dogmas upheld by his other brother, the Rev. Norman Nadoway, had none the less respect for the solid social work and active charity of that clergyman among the poor. But, however it might be in other countries, the English law was no respecter of persons and was bound to follow crime even to its most respectable retreats. This unfortunate man, Alan Nadoway, had always been a ne'er-do-well and a burden and disgrace to his family. He had been suspected, and indeed convicted, of attempts at burglary in the houses of his family and friends.
Here the judge intervened, saying: "That is a most improper remark. I find nothing about burglary in the indictment on which the prisoner is being tried." On this the prisoner remarked in a cheerful voice: "I don't mind, my lord." But nobody took the least notice of him, in the presence of a really improper legal procedure, and the judge and the barrister continued to look at each other with lugubrious countenances, until the barrister apologized and resumed. In any case, he said, there could be little doubt upon the charge of petty larceny, in face of the witnesses whom he intended to put in the box.
Police-constable Brindle was sworn and gave his evidence in one long rippling monotone, without any apparent punctuation, as if it were not only all one sentence but all one word.
"Acting on information received I followed the prisoner from the house of the Rev. Norman Nadoway towards the Yperion Cinema Theatre at about a hundred yards distant I saw the prisoner put his hand in the overcoat pocket of a man standing under a lamp-post after warning the man to examine his pockets I followed the prisoner who had joined the crowd outside the theatre a man in the crowd turned round and accused the prisoner of picking his pockets he offered to fight the prisoner and I came up to stop the fight I said do you charge this man and he said yes the prisoner said suppose I charge him with assault while I was questioning the other man the prisoner ran on and put his hand in the tail-coat pocket of a man in the queue. I then told this man to examine his pockets and took the prisoner into custody."
"Do you wish to cross-examine this witness?" asked the judge.
"I am sure your lordship will pardon me in the circumstances," said the prisoner, "If I am not well acquainted with the forms of this court. But may I at this stage ask whether the prosecution is going to call these three persons whom I am supposed to have robbed?"
"I have no objection to stating," said the prosecuting counsel, "that we are calling Harry Hamble, bookmaker's clerk, the man who is said to have threatened to fight the prisoner, and Isidor Green, music-teacher, the last man robbed by the prisoner before his arrest."
"And what about the first man?" asked the prisoner. "Why isn't he being called?"
"As a matter of fact, my lord," said the counsel, "the police have been unable to discover his name and address."
"May I ask the witness," said Alan Nadoway, "how this curious state of things came about?"
"Well," said the constable, "the fact is that as soon as I'd turned my back on him for a minute, he was gone."
"Do you mean to say," asked Nadoway, "that you told a man he was the victim of theft and might recover his money, and he instantly bolted without leaving his name, as if he were a thief himself?"
"Well, I don't understand it, and that's flat," said the policeman.
"Under your lordship's indulgence," said the prisoner, "there is another point. While two names figure as witnesses, only one name, that of Mr. Hamble, appears as prosecuting. It looks as if there was something vague about the third witness, too. Did you think so, constable?"
Outside the inhuman hurdy-gurdy of his official evidence, the policeman was a human being and capable of being amused.
"Well, I must say he was vague enough," he admitted with a faint grin. "He's one of these artistic musical chaps, and his notions of counting money is something chronic. I told him to look if he'd lost any and he added it up six times. And sometimes it was 2s. 8d. and sometimes it was 3s. 4d. and sometimes it got as far as 4s. So we thought he wasn't quite enough on the spot...."
"This is most irregular," said the judge. "I understand that the witness, Isidor Green, is to give his own evidence later. The prosecution had better begin calling their witnesses as soon as possible."
Mr. Harry Hamble wore a very sporting tie and that expression of demure joviality which is seen in those who value their respectability even in the Saloon Bar. He was not incapable, however, of hearty outbursts, and he admitted that he had punched the head of the fellow who tried to pick his pocket. In answer to the prosecution, he told the story very much as the policeman had done, not without a gentle exaggeration of his own pugnacity. In answer to the prisoner, he admitted that he had immediately adjourned to the Pig and Whistle at the corner.
The prosecuting counsel, springing up with theatrical indignation, demanded the meaning of this insinuation.
"I imagine," said the judge somewhat severely, "that the prisoner implies that the witness did not know exactly what he had lost."
"Yes," said Alan Nadoway, and there was something odd and arresting in the roll of his deep voice; "I do mean to imply that he did not know exactly what he had lost."
Then, turning to the witness, he said briskly: "Did you go to the Pig and Whistle and stand drinks all round, in a regular festive style?"
"My lord," exploded the prosecuting counsel, "I must emphatically protest against the prisoner wantonly aspersing the character of the witness."
"Aspersing his character! Why, I am glorifying his character!" cried Nadoway warmly. "I am exalting and almost deifying his character! I am pointing out that he exercised on a noble scale the ancient virtue of hospitality. If I say you give very good dinners, am I aspersing your character? If you ask six other barristers to lunch, and do them well, do you conceal it like a crime? Are you ashamed of your handsome hospitality, Mr. Hamble? Are you a miser and a man-hater?"
"Oh, no, sir," said Mr. Hamble, who appeared slightly dazed.
"Are you an enemy of the human race, Mr. Hamble?"
"Well, no, sir," said Mr. Hamble, almost modestly. "No, certainly not, sir," he added more firmly.
"You always, I take it," went on the prisoner, "feel friendly to your fellow-creatures, and especially your chosen companions. You would always do them a good turn or stand them a drink, if you could."
"I hope so, sir," said the virtuous bookmaker.
"You do not always do it, of course," went on Alan smoothly, "because you are not always in a position to do so. Why did you do so on this occasion?"
"Well," admitted Mr. Hamble, a little puzzled, "I suppose I must have been rather flush that evening."
"Immediately after being robbed?" said Nadoway. "Thank you, that is all I want to ask."
Mr. Isidor Green, professional teacher of the violin, with long, stringy hair and a coat faded to bottle-green, was certainly as vague as the policeman had represented him. During the examination in chief, he got through well enough by saying that he certainly had a sort of feeling as if his pockets were being rifled; but even under Nadoway's comparatively gentle and sympathetic cross examination he became extraordinarily hazy. It seemed that he had eventually, with the assistance of two or three friends of superlative mathematical talent, reached the firm conclusion that he still possessed 4s. 7d. after he had been robbed. But the light thus thrown upon the robbery was a little dimmed by the fact that he had then realized, for the first time, that he had never had any notion of what he possessed before he was robbed.
"My thoughts are considerably concentrated on my artistic work," he said, with not a little dignity. "It is possible that my wife might know."
"An admirable idea, Mr. Green," said Alan Nadoway heartily. "As a matter of fact, I am calling your wife as a witness for the defence."
Everybody stared, but it was plain that Nadoway was serious, and with a gravity tinged with courtliness he proceeded to summon his own witnesses, who actually were no other than the two wives of the two witnesses for the prosecution.
The wife of the violinist was a straightforward and, save for one point, a simple bearer of testimony. She was a solid, jolly looking woman, like a superior cook; probably just the right woman to look after the unmathematical Mr. Green. She said in a comfortable voice that she knew all about Isidor's money-what there was of it; that he was a good husband with no extravagant tastes and had certainly had 2s. 8d. in his pocket that afternoon.
"In that case, Mrs. Green," said Alan, "it would seem that your husband's taste in mathematical friends is as eccentric as his taste in mathematics. He and his friends finally added it up and brought it out as 4s. 7d."
"Well, he's a genius," she said with some pride. "He could bring out anythink as anythink."
Mrs. Harry Hamble was a very different type; and, by comparison with Mr. Harry Hamble, a somewhat depressing one. She had the long, sallow features and sour mouth not unknown in the wives of those who find refuge in the Pig and Whistle. Asked by Nadoway whether the date in question counted for anything in her domestic memories, she answered grimly: "It orter 'ave if 'e'd told me. 'E must 'ave 'ad a raise in wages and not told me."
"I understand," Nadoway asked, "that he treated several of his friends to drinks that afternoon?"
"Treated!" cried the amiable lady, in a withering voice. "Treated to drinks! Cadged for drinks, more likely! 'E got all the drinks 'e could for nothink, I daresay. But 'e didn't pay for nobody else's."
"And how do you know that?" asked the prisoner.
"'Cos he brought back his usual wages and a bit more," said Mrs. Hamble, as if this alone were a sufficient grievance.
"This is all very puzzling," said the judge and leaned back in his chair.
"I think I can explain it," said Alan Nadoway, "if your lordship will allow me to go into the box for two minutes, before I wind up for the defence."
There was no official difficulty, of course, about the prisoner appearing in both capacities.
Alan Nadoway took the oath and stood gazing at the prosecuting counsel with gloomy composure.
"Do you deny," asked the barrister, "that you were caught by the policeman with your hand in the pockets of these people?"
"No," said Nadoway, mournfully shaking his head. "Oh, no."
"This is very extraordinary," said the examiner. "I understood that you were pleading Not Guilty."
"Yes," said Nadoway sadly. "Oh, yes."
"What on earth does all this mean?" said the judge in sudden irritation.
"My lord," said Alan Nadoway, "I can put it all straight in five words. Only in this court one can't put things straight; one has to do what you call prove them. Well, it's all simple enough. I did put my hands in their pockets. Only I put money in their pockets, instead of taking it out. And if you look at it, you'll see that explains everything."
"But why in the world should you do such a crazy thing?" asked the judge.
"Ah," said Nadoway; "I'm afraid that would take longer to explain, and perhaps this isn't the best place to explain it."
The explanation of the practical problem was indeed set forth in further detail, in the final speech which the prisoner made in his own defence. He pointed out the obvious solution of the first problem; the abrupt disappearance of the first victim. He, that nameless economist, was a much shrewder person than the festive Mr. Hamble or the artistic Mr. Green. One glance at his pockets had shown him that he had got somebody else's money in addition to his own. A dark familiarity with the police led him to doubt strongly whether he would ultimately be allowed to keep it. He had therefore vanished with the presence of mind of a magician or a fairy. Mr. Hamble, in a hazier state of conviviality, had been mildly surprised at finding more and more pocket-money flowing from his pockets, and, to his everlasting credit, had dedicated it largely to the entertainment of his friends. But even after that, there was a little more than his normal salary left, to raise sinister doubts in the mind of his wife. Lastly, incredible as it may seem, Mr. Green and his friends did eventually arrive at a correct calculation of the number of coins in his pocket. And if it was in excess of his wife's estimate, it was for the simple reason that more coins had been added, since she sent him out, carefully brushed and buttoned up, in the morning. Everything, in fact, supported the prisoner's strange contention-that he had filled pockets and not emptied them.
Amid a dazed silence, the judge could only find it possible to charge the jury to acquit, and the jury acquitted. But Mr. Alan Nadoway made a very rapid dart out of court, eluding journalists and friends and especially his family. For one thing, he had seen two pinch-faced men with spectacles, who looked as if they might be psychologists.
THE trial and acquittal of Alan Nadoway in a court of law was only an epilogue to the real drama. He would perhaps have said that it was only a harlequinade at the end of the fairy play. The real concluding scene and curtain had taken place on that green stage of "The Lawns", which Millicent, oddly enough, had always felt to be like a sort of stage scenery, stiff and yet extravagant, with the jagged outlines of the foreign plants like the jaws of sharks and the low line of bow windows like the motor-goggles of a monster. With all its grotesqueness there had always mingled in her mind something almost operatic and yet genuine; something of real sentiment or passion that there was in the Victorian nineteenth century, despite all that is said of Victorian primness and restraint. It was that essentially innocent, that faulty but not cynical thing, the Romantic Movement. The man standing before her, with his quaint and foreign half-beard, had about him something indescribable that belonged to Alfred de Musset or to Chopin. She did not know in what sort of harmony these fanciful thoughts were mingling, but she knew that the music was like an old tune.
She had just said the words: "I cannot bear the silence, because it is unjust. It is unjust to you."
And he had answered: "It is because it is unjust to me that it is just. That is the whole story; though I suppose you would call it a strange story."
"I do not mind your talking in riddles," answered Millicent Milton steadily, "but I want you to understand something more. It is unjust to me."
After a silence he said in a low voice: "Yes; that is what has got me. That is what has broken me across. I've come up against something bigger than the whole plan I made for my life. Well, I suppose I shall have to tell you my story."
"I thought," she said with a faint smile, "that you had already told me your story."
"Yes," replied Alan; "I told you my story all right. All quite true, with nothing but the important things left out."
"Well," said Millicent, "I should certainly like to hear it with the important things put in."
"The difficulty is," he said, "that the important things can't be described. The words all go wrong when you describe such things. They were bigger than shipwrecks or desert islands, but they all happened inside my head."
After a silence he resumed, more slowly, like a man trying to find new words.
"When I was drowning in the Pacific, I think I had a Vision. I rose for the third time to the top of a great wave and I saw a Vision. I think that what I saw was Religion."
Something in the involuntary mental movements of the English Lady was halted and almost chilled. She felt faintly antagonistic to some associations, she hardly knew what. She was herself reverently, if rather vaguely, attached to a High Church tradition, but she only half realized the prejudice that had stirred in her. Men who come from the colonies and the ends of the earth, and say they have got religion, almost always mean that they have "found Jesus" or been to a revivalist meeting somewhere; and the whole thing seemed socially incongruous with his culture and hers. It was not in the least like Alfred de Musset.
With the uncanny clairvoyance of the mystic he seemed to seize on her passing doubt and said cheerfully: "Oh, I don't mean that I met a Baptist missionary. There are two kinds of missionaries: the right kind and the wrong kind, and they're both wrong. At least they're both wrong as to the thing I am thinking about. The stupid missionaries say the savages grovel in the mud before mud idols, and will all go to hell for idolatry unless they turn teetotallers and wear billycock hats. The intelligent missionaries say the savages have great possibilities and often quite a high moral code, which is quite true, but isn't the point. What they don't see is that very often the savages have really got hold of religion, and that lots of people with a high moral code don't know what religion means. They would run screaming with terror, if they got so much as a glimpse of Religion. It's an awful thing.
"I learnt something about it from the lunatic with whom I lived on the desert island. I told you he had practically gone mad, as well as gone native. But there was something to learn from him, that can't be learnt from ethical societies and popular preachers. The poor fellow had floated to shore by hanging on to a queer, old-fashioned umbrella, that happened to have the head carved in a grotesque face, and when he came raving out of his delirium, so far as he ever came out of it, he regarded the umbrella as the god that had saved him, and stuck it up in a sort of shrine and grovelled before it and offered it sacrifices. That's the point.... Sacrifices. When he was hungry he would burn some of his food before it. When he was thirsty, he would still pour out some of the native beer that he brewed. I believe he might have sacrificed me to his idol. I'm sure he would have sacrificed himself. I don't mean"-he spoke more slowly still and very thoughtfully-"I don't exactly mean that the cannibals are right, or human sacrifice or all that. They're wrong-if you come to think of it-they're really wrong, because people don't want to be eaten. But if I want to be sacrificed who is going to stop me? Nobody, not God himself, will stop me, if I want to suffer injustice. To forbid me to suffer injustice would be the greatest injustice of all."
"You are rather disconnected," she said, "but I begin to have a glimmering of what you mean. I presume you don't mean that you saw from the top of the wave the vision of the divine umbrella."
"And do you think," he asked, "that what I saw was a picture of angels playing harps out of the Family Bible? What I saw, so far as I can be said to have merely seen anything, was my father sitting at the head of the table, in some great dinner or directors' meeting, and perhaps everybody drinking his health in champagne, while he sat gravely smiling, with his glass of water beside him, because he is a strict temperance man. Oh, my God!"
"Well," said Millicent, the smile rising slowly to the surface again; "it certainly seems rather different from heaven and the harps."
"But I," went on Alan, "was lost like loose seaweed and sinking like a stone, to be forgotten in the slime under the sea."
"It was horribly hard," she said in a trembling voice.
To her surprise he answered with a rather jarring laugh. "Do you think I mean that I envied him?" he cried. "That would be a rum way of realizing religion. It was all the other way. From the top of the wave I looked down and saw him with a clear horror of pity. From the top of the wave I prayed, for one passionate instant, that my miserable death might avail to deliver him from that hell.
"Horrible hospitality, horrible courtesy, horrible compliments and congratulations, praise and publicity and popularity of the old firm, the old sound business traditions, and the sun of success high in heaven and glittering everywhere on one great ghastly whited sepulchre of human hypocrisy. And I knew that within, it was full of dead men's bones, of men who had died of drink or starvation or despair, in prisons and workhouses and asylums, because this hateful thing had ruined a hundred businesses to build one. Horrible robbery, horrible tyranny, horrible triumph. And most horrible of all, to add to all the horrors, that I loved my father.
"He had been good to me when I was little, and when he was poorer and simpler, and as a boy I began by making hero-worship of his success. The first great coloured advertisements were to me what coloured toy-books are to other children. They were a fairy tale, but, alas, the one fairy tale one could not continue to believe. So there I was, feeling what I felt and yet knowing what I knew. You have to love as I loved and hate as I hated, before you see afar off the thing called Religion, and the other name of it is Human Sacrifice."
"But surely," said Millicent, "things are ever so much better with the business now."
"Yes," he said, "things are better and that is what makes it worse. That is the worst of all."
He paused a moment and went on in a lower key: "Jack and Norman are good fellows, as good as they can be," he said; "they have done their best, but for what? Their best to make the best of it. To cover it up. To put a new coat of whitewash on the whited sepulchre. Things are to be forgotten, things are to be dropped out of conversation, things are to be thought better of-more charitably-after all it's an old story now. But that's nothing to do with what things are, in the world where things are, and always are; in the world of heaven and hell. Nobody has apologized. Nobody has confessed. Nobody has done penance. And in that moment, from the top of the wave, I cried to God that I might do penance, if it were only by dying in the sea. . . . Oh, don't you understand? Don't you understand how shallow all these moderns are, when they tell you there is no such thing as Atonement or Expiation, when that is the one thing for which the whole heart is sick before the sins of the world? The whole universe was wrong, while the lie of my father flourished like the green bay-tree. It was not respectability that could redeem it. It was religion, expiation, sacrifice, suffering. Somebody must be terribly good, to balance what was so bad. Somebody must be needlessly good, to weigh down the scales of that judgement. He was cruel and got credit for it. Somebody else must be kind and get no credit for it. Don't you understand?"
"Yes, I begin to understand," she said. "I think you are rather incredible."
"I swore in that moment," said Alan, "that I would be called everything that he ought to be called. I would have the name of a thief, because he deserved it. I would be despised and rejected and perhaps go to jail, because I chose after that fashion to be my father. Yes, I would inherit. I would be his heir."
He spoke the last words upon a note that shook her out of her statuesque stillness, and she came towards him with an unconscious movement, crying: "You are the most wonderful and amazing man in the world-to have done such a stupendously stupid thing."
He caught her as she came forward, with an abrupt and crushing compression of the hands, and then answered: "You are the most wonderful and amazing woman in the world, to have stopped me doing it."
"And that seems terrible, too," she said. "I don't want to feel that I smashed such a magnificent mad thing; perhaps I was wrong after all. But don't you think yourself it was getting impossible-in other ways."
He nodded gravely, continuing to gaze into her eyes, which no one now would have thought languid and proud. "You know the story from the inside by this time. I began as a burglar of the Santa Claus sort, breaking into houses and leaving presents in safes and cupboards. I was sorry for old Crayle, whose confounded prig of a wife would not let him smoke, so I chucked him some cigars. But I'm not sure even there I may not have done more harm than good. Then I thought I was only sorry for you. I should be sorry for anybody who was secretary in our family."
She laughed on a low and tremulous note. "And so you chucked me a silver clasp and chain to cheer me up."
"But in that case," he said, "the clasp caught and held."
"It also scratched my aunt a bit," she said. "And altogether, it did make complications, didn't it? And all that business of the poor people's pockets-well, somehow I couldn't help feeling it might get them as well as you into trouble."
"The poor people are always in trouble," he said gloomily. "They're all what you call known to the police. It was perfectly genuine, when I told you how it riles me that they aren't even allowed to beg, and that's why I started giving them alms before they started begging. But it's quite true that it couldn't have been kept up for long. And that has taught me another lesson as well, and I understand something in human life and history I never understood before. Why the people who do have those wild visions and vows, who want to expiate and to pray for this wicked world, can't really do it anyhow and all over the place. They have to live by rule. They have to go into monasteries and places; it's only fair on the rest of the world. But henceforward, when I see these great prisons of prayer and solitude, or have a glimpse of their cold corridors and bare cells, I shall understand. I shall know that in the heart of that rule and routine there is the wildest freedom of the will of man; a whirlwind of liberty."
"Alan, you frighten me again," she said, "as if you yourself were something strange and solitary, as if you also. ..."
He shook his head, with a complete understanding. "No," he said; "I've found out all about myself as well. A good many people make that mistake about themselves when they're young. But a man is either of that sort or the other sort, and I'm the other sort. Do you remember when we first met and talked about Chaucer and the chain with Amor Vincit Omnia..?"
And without moving his eyes or hands from where they rested, he repeated the opening words of Theseus in the Knight's Tale about the sacrament of marriage, and as he spoke those noble words as if they were a living language, I will so write them here, to the distress of literary commentators: "... The first Mover of the Cause above When he first made the fair chain of love Great was the effect and high was his intent: Well wist he why, and what thereof he meant."
And then he bent swiftly towards her; and she understood why that garden had always seemed to hold a secret and to be waiting for a surprise.
IT will be best, both for the reader and the writer, not to bother about what particular country was the scene of this extraordinary incident. It may well be left vague, so long as it is firmly stipulated that it was not in the Balkans, where so many romancers have rushed to stake out claims ever since Mr. Anthony Hope effected his coup d'etat in Ruritania. The Balkan kingdom is convenient because kings are killed and despotic governments overthrown with pleasing swiftness and frequency, and the crown may fall to any adventurer, good or bad. But meanwhile, in the same Balkan State, the farms remain in the same families, the plot of land, the orchard or the vineyard, descends from father to son; the rude equality of peasant proprietorship has never been greatly disturbed by large financial operations. In short, in the Balkan kingdom-there is some safety and continuity for the Family, so long as it is not the Royal Family.
But with the kingdom in question here, how different! Whatever name we may give it, it was at least a highly-civilized and well-ordered society, in which the Royal Family continued serene and safe under police protection and constitutional limitations; in which all the public services were conducted with a regularity verging on tedium, and in which nobody was ever ruined or overthrown except the butcher, the baker, the candle-stick-maker and the various types of tradesmen and common citizens who might happen to cross the path of large commercial operations. The country might well be one of the smaller German States that have been industrialized by dependence on mines and factories, or one of the former dependencies of the Austrian Empire. It does not matter; it is enough to secure the reader's respect and interest to know that it was a thoroughly modern and enlightened community, which had advanced in every science and perfected every social convenience until it was within reasonable distance of revolution; not a potty little palace revolution, in which a few princes are murdered, but a real, international, universal social revolution; probably beginning with a General Strike and probably ending with bankruptcy and famine.
It was all the more possible, because breezy events of this sort had already broken out in a neighbouring industrial state, and after some months of very bewildering civil war, had ended in the victory of one out of the six revolutionary generals fighting each other in the field; the victor being a certain General Case, an able soldier who had originally come with the Colonial troops garrisoned in the neighbourhood, and who was credited in local gossip with being partly a negro, a fact which considerably consoled those who had been defeated by him. For our own territory, which we will call Pavonia, he was only of importance-as an unluckily lucky example.
The public crisis became acute in Pavonia with the appearance of the rather mysterious agitation about "The Word". To this day there are disputes about the nature of the movement. Some of the government agents and inquirers swore the ignorant populace did really believe that, with the discovery of a new Word, everything in the world would be explained. A wild pamphlet did actually appear, in which the writer argued with insane ingenuity that, as all modern publicity and popularization consist of concentrating a book into a paragraph, or a chapter into a sentence, so at last the whole truth about the present problem would be concentrated into a word. Crowds of impatient malcontents were adjured to Wait for the Word; and apocalyptic visions were provided, of the scenes of world-change that would follow, when once The Word was spoken. The Word would contain in itself, it was gravely asserted, a complete plan of operations and an explanation of the whole organized strategy of the revolt. Some said the whole fancy had originated with one Bohemian poet, who signed his poems, "Sebastian", and had certainly composed a lyric invocation full of allusions to The Word. Many repeated the lines which ran:
As Aaron's serpent swallowed snakes and rods,
As God alone is greater than the gods,
As all stars shrivel in the single sun,
The words are many, but The Word is one.
But nobody in office ever saw the revolutionary poet who tossed these little trifles at the Government and the public; until he was identified one day in the street by the very last person who was likely to meet him.
The Princess Aurelia Augusta Augustina, etc. etc. (who had embedded somewhere in her stratified Christian names the name of Mary, by which she was called for convenience by her family), was the niece of the reigning monarch, and, having only just left school, did not as yet fully appreciate the difference between reigning and ruling. She was a vigorous young woman with red hair and a Roman nose, and having as yet learned more about Royalties in history than in politics, took their position with a certain simplicity and could even imagine (just as if she had really been in the Balkans) that they might be worth murdering or worth obeying. She had come back into the life of the Court and the capital, which she had left as a mere child, full of that irrepressible desire to be useful, which is so normal in women and so dangerous in great ladies, and she was at present making herself a nuisance by asking questions of everybody about everything. She naturally asked questions about the popular political riddle of The Word, and generally, as Mr. Edmund Burke would say, about the cause of the present discontents. She was all the more intrigued when nobody could tell her what The Word was and very few, in her world, what the row was all about. It was therefore with a considerable glow of superiority that she returned to her family one afternoon and announced that she had actually seen the seditious minstrel, who was apparently responsible for the somewhat obscure revolutionary rhyme and the somewhat mysterious revolutionary movement.
Her car was moving slowly down a quiet street, because she was on the look-out for a curio shop she had known in childhood and could not immediately locate. Just beyond the curio shop was a cafe, with a few tables outside it in the continental manner, and at one of these tables was seated in front of a green liqueur an odd-looking person with very long hair and a very high stock or cravat. I have said that historical and geographical identification matter little in this case; and the reader may, if he likes, clothe this queer episode in any outlandish or antiquated fashion of fantasies of costume, for indeed the most recent fashion is full of quaint revivals and modes that might be either very old or very new. The man with the stock might have been some eccentric contemporary or creation of Balzac; he might equally well have been an art student of today, with the most Futurist views but the most Early Victorian whiskers. His mane of long hair was of an incredible dark auburn that looked like dim crimson rather than ordinary red; his forked or cloven beard was of the same unnatural colour and was shown up by the high cravat which was of a vivid sort of peacock-green. The colour of the cravat varied, however, from day to day; sometimes it was of a brighter green when the spirit of spring inspired his songs; sometimes of purple when he was lamenting the rich tragedy of his loves; sometimes completely black when he had decided that the time had really come to destroy the universe. He would explain to his friends that he followed without faltering the clue of the mood and the sky of morning, but they never recommended a necktie that did not contrast effectively with his beard. For this was no other than the poet Sebastian, whose verses counted for so much in the revolutionary movement of the moment.
The Princess, of course, was quite unaware of his identity, and would have passed him with no particular comment beyond a disapproval of his necktie. But he returned to her attention and remained in it because of the curiously different conditions in which she saw him only an hour or two later, when the shops and factories had shut their doors and poured forth their populations. When she came back again through the quiet street, it was no longer quiet. It was especially the reverse of quiet in the neighbourhood of the cafe where the stranger had been drinking the green liqueur, and if the car moved slowly now, it was because of the difficulty of making its way through an ever-thickening crowd. For the longhaired person in the cravat was now standing on the cafe table and declaiming what appeared to be alternate fragments of prose and verse, with some modern intermediate types difficult to define. She came just in time, however, to hear the end of the now familiar jingle or rhymed motto: "As God alone is greater than the gods, As all stars shrivel in the single sun, The words are many, but The Word is one.
"But The Word will not pass my lips, nor those of the Four Wardens of The Word who already know it, until the first part of the work has been accomplished. When the powerless have risen against the powerful, when the poor have risen above the rich, when the weak have risen and proved stronger than the strong, when--"
At this moment he and his hearers suddenly became conscious of the sober but elegant vehicle which was pushing its prow like a boat above the popular waves, and the somewhat haughty countenance that appeared above it, just behind the wooden countenance of the chauffeur. Most people present recognized the lady and there was a sudden stir and stoppage, as of embarrassment, but the poet standing on the table struck a new attitude of sublime impudence and cried aloud: "But how hard it is for ugliness to rise against beauty. And we are an ugly lot!"
And the Princess drove on in a condition of towering rage.
CHESTERTON-FOUR FAULLESS - IV THE PROBLEMS OF DETECTIVE PRICE