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identical young man who five days before had marched out of the Council with
thin red hair and a pale face, the first of all the sham anarchists who had
been exposed.
"Why do you worry with me?" he cried. "You have expelled me as a spy."
"We are all spies!" whispered Syme.
"We're all spies!" shouted Dr. Bull. "Come and have a drink."
Next morning the battalion of the reunited six marched stolidly towards
the hotel in Leicester Square.
"This is more cheerful," said Dr. Bull; "we are six men going to ask
one man what he means."
"I think it is a bit queerer than that," said Syme. "I think it is six
men going to ask one man what they mean."
They turned in silence into the Square, and though the hotel was in the
opposite corner, they saw at once the little balcony and a figure that
looked too big for it. He was sitting alone with bent head, poring over a
newspaper. But all his councillors, who had come to vote him down, crossed
that Square as if they were watched out of heaven by a hundred eyes.
They had disputed much upon their policy, about whether they should
leave the unmasked Gogol without and begin diplomatically, or whether they
should bring him in and blow up the gunpowder at once. The influence of Syme
and Bull prevailed for the latter course, though the Secretary to the last
asked them why they attacked Sunday so rashly.
"My reason is quite simple," said Syme. "I attack him rashly because I
am afraid of him."
They followed Syme up the dark stair in silence, and they all came out
simultaneously into the broad sunlight of the morning and the broad sunlight
of Sunday's smile.
"Delightful!" he said. "So pleased to see you all. What an exquisite
day it is. Is the Czar dead?"
The Secretary, who happened to be foremost, drew himself together for a
dignified outburst.
"No, sir," he said sternly "there has been no massacre. I bring you
news of no such disgusting spectacles."
"Disgusting spectacles?" repeated the President, with a bright,
inquiring smile. "You mean Dr. Bull's spectacles?"
The Secretary choked for a moment, and the President went on with a
sort of smooth appeal--
"Of course, we all have our opinions and even our eyes, but really to
call them disgusting before the man himself--"
Dr. Bull tore off his spectacles and broke them on the table.
"My spectacles are blackguardly," he said, "but I'm not. Look at my
face."
"I dare say it's the sort of face that grows on one," said the
President, "in fact, it grows on you; and who am I to quarrel with the wild
fruits upon the Tree of Life? I dare say it will grow on me some day."
"We have no time for tomfoolery," said the Secretary, breaking in
savagely. "We have come to know what all this means. Who are you? What are
you? Why did you get us all here? Do you know who and what we are? Are you a
half-witted man playing the conspirator, or are you a clever man playing the
fool? Answer me, I tell you."
"Candidates," murmured Sunday, "are only required to answer eight out
of the seventeen questions on the paper. As far as I can make out, you want
me to tell you what I am, and what you are, and what this table is, and what
this Council is, and what this world is for all I know. Well, I will go so
far as to rend the veil of one mystery. If you want to know what you are,
you are a set of highly well-intentioned young jackasses."
"And you," said Syme, leaning forward, "what are you?"
"I? What am I?" roared the President, and he rose slowly to an
incredible height, like some enormous wave about to arch above them and
break. "You want to know what I am, do you? Bull, you are a man of science.
Grub in the roots of those trees and find out the truth about them. Syme,
you are a poet. Stare at those morning clouds. But I tell you this, that you
will have found out the truth of the last tree and the top-most cloud before
the truth about me. You will understand the sea, and I shall be still a
riddle; you shall know what the stars are, and not know what I am. Since the
beginning of the world all men have hunted me like a wolf-- kings and sages,
and poets and lawgivers, all the churches, and all the philosophies. But I
have never been caught yet, and the skies will fall in the time I turn to
bay. I have given them a good run for their money, and I will now."
Before one of them could move, the monstrous man had swung himself like
some huge ourang-outang over the balustrade of the balcony. Yet before he
dropped he pulled himself up again as on a horizontal bar, and thrusting his
great chin over the edge of the balcony, said solemnly--
"There's one thing I'll tell you though about who I am. I am the man in
the dark room, who made you all policemen."
With that he fell from the balcony, bouncing on the stones below like a
great ball of india-rubber, and went bounding off towards the corner of the
Alhambra, where he hailed a hansom-cab and sprang inside it. The six
detectives had been standing thunderstruck and livid in the light of his
last assertion; but when he disappeared into the cab, Syme's practical
senses returned to him, and leaping over the balcony so recklessly as almost
to break his legs, he called another cab.
He and Bull sprang into the cab together, the Professor and the
Inspector into another, while the Secretary and the late Gogol scrambled
into a third just in time to pursue the flying Syme, who was pursuing the
flying President. Sunday led them a wild chase towards the north-west, his
cabman, evidently under the influence of more than common inducements,
urging the horse at breakneck speed. But Syme was in no mood for delicacies,
and he stood up in his own cab shouting, "Stop thief!" until crowds ran
along beside his cab, and policemen began to stop and ask questions. All
this had its influence upon the President's cabman, who began to look
dubious, and to slow down to a trot. He opened the trap to talk reasonably
to his fare, and in so doing let the long whip droop over the front of the
cab. Sunday leant forward, seized it, and jerked it violently out of the
man's hand. Then standing up in front of the cab himself, he lashed the
horse and roared aloud, so that they went down the streets like a flying
storm. Through street after street and square after square went whirling
this preposterous vehicle, in which the fare was urging the horse and the
driver trying desperately to stop it. The other three cabs came after it (if
the phrase be permissible of a cab) like panting hounds. Shops and streets
shot by like rattling arrows.
At the highest ecstacy of speed, Sunday turned round on the splashboard
where he stood, and sticking his great grinning head out of the cab, with
white hair whistling in the wind, he made a horrible face at his pursuers,
like some colossal urchin. Then raising his right hand swiftly, he flung a
ball of paper in Syme's face and vanished. Syme caught the thing while
instinctively warding it off, and discovered that it consisted of two
crumpled papers. One was addressed to himself, and the other to Dr. Bull,
with a very long, and it is to be feared partly ironical, string of letters
after his name. Dr. Bull's address was, at any rate, considerably longer
than his communication, for the communication consisted entirely of the
words:--
"What about Martin Tupper now?"
"What does the old maniac mean?" asked Bull, staring at the words.
"What does yours say, Syme?"
Syme's message was, at any rate, longer, and ran as follows:--
"No one would regret anything in the nature of an interference by the
Archdeacon more than I. I trust it will not come to that. But, for the last
time, where are your goloshes? The thing is too bad, especially after what
uncle said."
The President's cabman seemed to be regaining some control over his
horse, and the pursuers gained a little as they swept round into the Edgware
Road. And here there occurred what seemed to the allies a providential
stoppage. Traffic of every kind was swerving to right or left or stopping,
for down the long road was coming the unmistakable roar announcing the
fire-engine, which in a few seconds went by like a brazen thunderbolt. But
quick as it went by, Sunday had bounded out of his cab, sprung at the
fire-engine, caught it, slung himself on to it, and was seen as he
disappeared in the noisy distance talking to the astonished fireman with
explanatory gestures.
"After him!" howled Syme. "He can't go astray now. There's no mistaking
a fire-engine."
The three cabmen, who had been stunned for a moment, whipped up their
horses and slightly decreased the distance between themselves and their
disappearing prey. The President acknowledged this proximity by coming to
the back of the car, bowing repeatedly, kissing his hand, and finally
flinging a neatly-folded note into the bosom of Inspector Ratcliffe. When
that gentleman opened it, not without impatience, he found it contained the
words:--
"Fly at once. The truth about your trouser-stretchers is known.--A
FRIEND."
The fire-engine had struck still farther to the north, into a region
that they did not recognise; and as it ran by a line of high railings
shadowed with trees, the six friends were startled, but somewhat relieved,
to see the President leap from the fire-engine, though whether through
another whim or the increasing protest of his entertainers they could not
see. Before the three cabs, however, could reach up to the spot, he had gone
up the high railings like a huge grey cat, tossed himself over, and vanished
in a darkness of leaves.
Syme with a furious gesture stopped his cab, jumped out, and sprang
also to the escalade. When he had one leg over the fence and his friends
were following, he turned a face on them which shone quite pale in the
shadow.
"What place can this be?" he asked. "Can it be the old devil's house?
I've heard he has a house in North London."
"All the better," said the Secretary grimly, planting a foot in a
foothold, "we shall find him at home."
"No, but it isn't that," said Syme, knitting his brows. "I hear the
most horrible noises, like devils laughing and sneezing and blowing their
devilish noses!"
"His dogs barking, of course," said the Secretary.
"Why not say his black-beetles barking!" said Syme furiously, "snails
barking! geraniums barking! Did you ever hear a dog bark like that?"
He held up his hand, and there came out of the thicket a long growling
roar that seemed to get under the skin and freeze the flesh-- a low
thrilling roar that made a throbbing in the air all about them.
"The dogs of Sunday would be no ordinary dogs," said Gogol, and
shuddered.
Syme had jumped down on the other side, but he still stood listening
impatiently.
"Well, listen to that," he said, "is that a dog--anybody's dog?"
There broke upon their ear a hoarse screaming as of things protesting
and clamouring in sudden pain; and then, far off like an echo, what sounded
like a long nasal trumpet.
"Well, his house ought to be hell! " said the Secretary; "and if it is
hell, I'm going in!" and he sprang over the tall railings almost with one
swing.
The others followed. They broke through a tangle of plants and shrubs,
and came out on an open path. Nothing was in sight, but Dr. Bull suddenly
struck his hands together.
"Why, you asses," he cried, "it's the Zoo!"
As they were looking round wildly for any trace of their wild quarry, a
keeper in uniform came running along the path with a man in plain clothes.
"Has it come this way?" gasped the keeper.
"Has what?" asked Syme.
"The elephant!" cried the keeper. "An elephant has gone mad and run
away!"
"He has run away with an old gentleman," said the other stranger
breathlessly, "a poor old gentleman with white hair! "
"What sort of old gentleman?" asked Syme, with great curiosity.
"A very large and fat old gentleman in light grey clothes," said the
keeper eagerly.
"Well," said Syme, "if he's that particular kind of old gentleman, if
you're quite sure that he's a large and fat old gentleman in grey clothes,
you may take my word for it that the elephant has not run away with him. He
has run away with the elephant. The elephant is not made by God that could
run away with him if he did not consent to the elopement. And, by thunder,
there he is! "
There was no doubt about it this time. Clean across the space of grass,
about two hundred yards away, with a crowd screaming and scampering vainly
at his heels, went a huge grey elephant at an awful stride, with his trunk
thrown out as rigid as a ship's bowsprit, and trumpeting like the trumpet of
doom. On the back of the bellowing and plunging animal sat President Sunday
with all the placidity of a sultan, but goading the animal to a furious
speed with some sharp object in his hand.
"Stop him!" screamed the populace. "He'll be out of the gate!"
"Stop a landslide!" said the keeper. "He is out of the gate!"
And even as he spoke, a final crash and roar of terror announced that
the great grey elephant had broken out of the gates of the Zoological
Gardens, and was careening down Albany Street like a new and swift sort of
omnibus.
"Great Lord!" cried Bull, "I never knew an elephant could go so fast.
Well, it must be hansom-cabs again if we are to keep him in sight."
As they raced along to the gate out of which the elephant had vanished,
Syme felt a glaring panorama of the strange animals in the cages which they
passed. Afterwards he thought it queer that he should have seen them so
clearly. He remembered especially seeing pelicans, with their preposterous,
pendant throats. He wondered why the pelican was the symbol of charity,
except it was that it wanted a good deal of charity to admire a pelican. He
remembered a hornbill, which was simply a huge yellow beak with a small bird
tied on behind it. The whole gave him a sensation, the vividness of which he
could not explain, that Nature was always making quite mysterious jokes.
Sunday had told them that they would understand him when they had understood
the stars. He wondered whether even the archangels understood the hornbill.
The six unhappy detectives flung themselves into cabs and followed the
elephant sharing the terror which he spread through the long stretch of the
streets. This time Sunday did not turn round, but offered them the solid
stretch of his unconscious back, which maddened them, if possible, more than
his previous mockeries. Just before they came to Baker Street, however, he
was seen to throw something far up into the air, as a boy does a ball
meaning to catch it again. But at their rate of racing it fell far behind,
just by the cab containing Gogol; and in faint hope of a clue or for some
impulse unexplainable, he stopped his cab so as to pick it up. It was
addressed to himself, and was quite a bulky parcel. On examination, however,
its bulk was found to consist of thirty-three pieces of paper of no value
wrapped one round the other. When the last covering was torn away it reduced
itself to a small slip of paper, on which was written:--
"The word, I fancy, should be 'pink'."
The man once known as Gogol said nothing, but the movements of his
hands and feet were like those of a man urging a horse to renewed efforts.
Through street after street, through district after district, went the
prodigy of the flying elephant, calling crowds to every window, and driving
the traffic left and right. And still through all this insane publicity the
three cabs toiled after it, until they came to be regarded as part of a
procession, and perhaps the advertisement of a circus. They went at such a
rate that distances were shortened beyond belief, and Syme saw the Albert
Hall in Kensington when he thought that he was still in Paddington. The
animal's pace was even more fast and free through the empty, aristocratic
streets of South Kensington, and he finally headed towards that part of the
sky-line where the enormous Wheel of Earl's Court stood up in the sky. The
wheel grew larger and larger, till it filled heaven like the wheel of stars.
The beast outstripped the cabs. They lost him round several corners,
and when they came to one of the gates of the Earl's Court Exhibition they
found themselves finally blocked. In front of them was an enormous crowd; in
the midst of it was an enormous elephant, heaving and shuddering as such
shapeless creatures do. But the President had disappeared.
"Where has he gone to?" asked Syme, slipping to the ground.
"Gentleman rushed into the Exhibition, sir!" said an official in a
dazed manner. Then he added in an injured voice: "Funny gentleman, sir.
Asked me to hold his horse, and gave me this."
He held out with distaste a piece of folded paper, addressed: "To the
Secretary of the Central Anarchist Council."
The Secretary, raging, rent it open, and found written inside it:--
"When the herring runs a mile,
Let the Secretary smile;
When the herring tries to fly,
Let the Secretary die.
Rustic Proverb."
"Why the eternal crikey," began the Secretary, "did you let the man in?
Do people commonly come to you Exhibition riding on mad elephants? Do--"
"Look! " shouted Syme suddenly. "Look over there! '
"Look at what?" asked the Secretary savagely.
"Look at the captive balloon!" said Syme, and pointed in a frenzy.
"Why the blazes should I look at a captive balloon?' demanded the
Secretary. "What is there queer about a captive balloon?"
"Nothing," said Syme, "except that it isn't captive!'
They all turned their eyes to where the balloon swung and swelled above
the Exhibition on a string, like a child's balloon. A second afterwards the
string came in two just under the car, and the balloon, broken loose,
floated away with the freedom of a soap bubble.
"Ten thousand devils!" shrieked the Secretary. "He's got into it!" and
he shook his fists at the sky.
The balloon, borne by some chance wind, came right above them, and they
could see the great white head of the President peering over the side and
looking benevolently down on them.
"God bless my soul!" said the Professor with the elderly manner that he
could never disconnect from his bleached beard and parchment face. "God
bless my soul! I seemed to fancy that something fell on the top of my hat!"
He put up a trembling hand and took from that shelf a piece of twisted
paper, which he opened absently only to find it inscribed with a true
lover's knot and, the words:--
"Your beauty has not left me indifferent.--From LITTLE SNOWDROP. "
There was a short silence, and then Syme said, biting his beard--
"I'm not beaten yet. The blasted thing must come down somewhere. Let's
follow it!"
ACROSS green fields, and breaking through blooming hedges, toiled six
draggled detectives, about five miles out of London. The optimist of the
party had at first proposed that they should follow the balloon across South
England in hansom-cabs. But he was ultimately convinced of the persistent
refusal of the balloon to follow the roads, and the still more persistent
refusal of the cabmen to follow the balloon. Consequently the tireless
though exasperated travellers broke through black thickets and ploughed
through ploughed fields till each was turned into a figure too outrageous to
be mistaken for a tramp. Those green hills of Surrey saw the final collapse
and tragedy of the admirable light grey suit in which Syme had set out from
Saffron Park. His silk hat was broken over his nose by a swinging bough, his
coat-tails were torn to the shoulder by arresting thorns, the clay of
England was splashed up to his collar; but he still carried his yellow beard
forward with a silent and furious determination, and his eyes were still
fixed on that floating ball of gas, which in the full flush of sunset seemed
coloured like a sunset cloud.
"After all," he said, "it is very beautiful!"
"It is singularly and strangely beautiful!" said the Professor. "I wish
the beastly gas-bag would burst!"
"No," said Dr. Bull, "I hope it won't. It might hurt the old boy."
"Hurt him!" said the vindictive Professor, "hurt him! Not as much as
I'd hurt him if I could get up with him. Little Snowdrop!"
"I don't want him hurt, somehow," said Dr. Bull.
"What!" cried the Secretary bitterly. "Do you believe all that tale
about his being our man in the dark room? Sunday would say he was anybody."
"I don't know whether I believe it or not," said Dr. Bull. "But it
isn't that that I mean. I can't wish old Sunday's balloon to burst
because--"
"Well," said Syme impatiently, "because?"
"Well, because he's so jolly like a balloon himself," said Dr. Bull
desperately. "I don't understand a word of all that idea of his being the
same man who gave us all our blue cards. It seems to make everything
nonsense. But I don't care who knows it, I always had a sympathy for old
Sunday himself, wicked as he was. Just as if he was a great bouncing baby.
How can I explain what my queer sympathy was? It didn't prevent my fighting
him like hell! Shall I make it clear if I say that I liked him because he
was so fat?"
"You will not," said the Secretary.
"I've got it now," cried Bull, "it was because he was so fat and so
light. Just like a balloon. We always think of fat people as heavy, but he
could have danced against a sylph. I see now what I mean. Moderate strength
is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity. It was like the
old speculations--what would happen if an elephant could leap up in the sky
like a grasshopper?"
"Our elephant," said Syme, looking upwards, "has leapt into the sky
like a grasshopper."
"And somehow," concluded Bull, "that's why I can't help liking old
Sunday. No, it's not an admiration of force, or any silly thing like that.
There is a kind of gaiety in the thing, as if he were bursting with some
good news. Haven't you sometimes felt it on a spring day? You know Nature
plays tricks, but somehow that day proves they are good-natured tricks. I
never read the Bible myself, but that part they laugh at is literal truth,
'Why leap ye, ye high hills?' The hills do leap ---at least, they try to....
Why do I like Sunday? . . . how can I tell you? . . . because he's such a
Bounder."
There was a long silence, and then the Secretary said in a curious,
strained voice--
"You do not know Sunday at all. Perhaps it is because you are better
than I, and do not know hell. I was a fierce fellow, and a trifle morbid
from the first. The man who sits in darkness, and who chose us all, chose me
because I had all the crazy look of a conspirator--because my smile went
crooked, and my eyes were gloomy, even when I smiled. But there must have
been something in me that answered to the nerves in all these anarchic men.
For when I first saw Sunday he expressed to me, not your airy vitality, but
something both gross and sad in the Nature of Things. I found him smoking in
a twilight room, a room with brown blind down, infinitely more depressing
than the genial darkness in which our master lives. He sat there on a bench,
a huge heap of a man, dark and out of shape. He listened to all my words
without speaking or even stirring. I poured out my most passionate appeals,
and asked my most eloquent questions. Then, after a long silence, the Thing
began to shake, and I thought it was shaken by some secret malady. It shook
like a loathsome and living jelly. It reminded me of everything I had ever
read about the base bodies that are the origin of life-- the deep sea lumps
and protoplasm. It seemed like the final form of matter, the most shapeless
and the most shameful. I could only tell myself, from its shudderings, that
it was something at least that such a monster could be miserable. And then
it broke upon me that the bestial mountain was shaking with a lonely
laughter, and the laughter was at me. Do you ask me to forgive him that? It
is no small thing to be laughed at by something at once lower and stronger
than oneself."
"Surely you fellows are exaggerating wildly," cut in the clear voice of
Inspector Ratcliffe. "President Sunday is a terrible fellow for one's
intellect, but he is not such a Barnum's freak physically as you make out.
He received me in an ordinary office, in a grey check coat, in broad
daylight. He talked to me in an ordinary way. But I'll tell you what is a
trifle creepy about Sunday. His room is neat, his clothes are neat,
everything seems in order; but he's absent-minded. Sometimes his great
bright eyes go quite blind. For hours he forgets that you are there. Now
absent-mindedness is just a bit too awful in a bad man. We think of a wicked
man as vigilant. We can't think of a wicked man who is honestly and
sincerely dreamy, because we daren't think of a wicked man alone with
himself. An absentminded man means a good-natured man. It means a man who,
if he happens to see you, will apologise. But how will you bear an
absentminded man who, if he happens to see you, will kill you? That is what
tries the nerves, abstraction combined with cruelty. Men have felt it
sometimes when they went through wild forests, and felt that the animals
there were at once innocent and pitiless. They might ignore or slay. How
would you like to pass ten mortal hours in a parlour with an absent-minded
tiger?"
"And what do you think of Sunday, Gogol?" asked Syme.
"I don't think of Sunday on principle," said Gogol simply, "any more
than I stare at the sun at noonday."
"Well, that is a point of view," said Syme thoughtfully. "What do you
say, Professor?"
The Professor was walking with bent head and trailing stick, and he did
not answer at all.
"Wake up, Professor!" said Syme genially. "Tell us what you think of
Sunday."
The Professor spoke at last very slowly.
"I think something," he said, "that I cannot say clearly. Or, rather, I
think something that I cannot even think clearly. But it is something like
this. My early life, as you know, was a bit too large and loose.
Well, when I saw Sunday's face I thought it was too large-- everybody
does, but I also thought it was too loose. The face was so big, that one
couldn't focus it or make it a face at all. The eye was so far away from the
nose, that it wasn't an eye. The mouth was so much by itself, that one had
to think of it by itself. The whole thing is too hard to explain."
He paused for a little, still trailing his stick, and then went on--
"But put it this way. Walking up a road at night, I have seen a lamp
and a lighted window and a cloud make together a most complete and
unmistakable face. If anyone in heaven has that face I shall know him again.
Yet when I walked a little farther I found that there was no face, that the
window was ten yards away, the lamp ten hundred yards, the cloud beyond the
world. Well, Sunday's face escaped me; it ran away to right and left, as
such chance pictures run away. And so his face has made me, somehow, doubt
whether there are any faces. I don't know whether your face, Bull, is a face
or a combination in perspective. Perhaps one black disc of your beastly
glasses is quite close and another fifty miles away. Oh, the doubts of a
materialist are not worth a dump. Sunday has taught me the last and the
worst doubts, the doubts of a spiritualist. I am a Buddhist, I suppose; and
Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt. My poor dear Bull, I do not believe
that you really have a face. I have not faith enough to believe in matter."
Syme's eyes were still fixed upon the errant orb, which, reddened in
the evening light, looked like some rosier and more innocent world.
"Have you noticed an odd thing," he said, "about all your descriptions?
Each man of you finds Sunday quite different, yet each man of you can only
find one thing to compare him to--the universe itself. Bull finds him like
the earth in spring, Gogol like the sun at noonday. The Secretary is
reminded of the shapeless protoplasm, and the Inspector of the carelessness
of virgin forests. The Professor says he is like a changing landscape. This
is queer, but it is queerer still that I also have had my odd notion about
the President, and I also find that I think of Sunday as I think of the
whole world."
"Get on a little faster, Syme," said Bull; "never mind the balloon."
"When I first saw Sunday," said Syme slowly, "I only saw his back; and
when I saw his back, I knew he was the worst man in the world. His neck and
shoulders were brutal, like those of some apish god. His head had a stoop
that was hardly human, like the stoop of an ox. In fact, I had at once the
revolting fancy that this was not a man at all, but a beast dressed up in
men's clothes."
"Get on," said Dr. Bull.
"And then the queer thing happened. I had seen his back from the
street, as he sat in the balcony. Then I entered the hotel, and coming round
the other side of him, saw his face in the sunlight. His face frightened me,
as it did everyone; but not because it was brutal, not because it was evil.
On the contrary, it frightened me because it was so beautiful, because it
was so good."
"Syme," exclaimed the Secretary, "are you ill?"
"It was like the face of some ancient archangel, judging justly after
heroic wars. There was laughter in the eyes, and in the mouth honour and
sorrow. There was the same white hair, the same great, grey-clad shoulders
that I had seen from behind. But when I saw him from behind I was certain he
was an animal, and when I saw him in front I knew he was a god."
"Pan," said the Professor dreamily, "was a god and an animal."
"Then, and again and always," went on Syme like a man talking to
himself, "that has been for me the mystery of Sunday, and it is also the
mystery of the world. When I see the horrible back, I am sure the noble face
is but a mask. When I see the face but for an instant, I know the back is
only a jest. Bad is so bad, that we cannot but think good an accident; good
is so good, that we feel certain that evil could be explained. But the whole
came to a kind of crest yesterday when I raced Sunday for the cab, and was
just behind him all the way."
"Had you time for thinking then?" asked Ratcliffe.
"Time," replied Syme, "for one outrageous thought. I was suddenly
possessed with the idea that the blind, blank back of his head really was
his face--an awful, eyeless face staring at me! And I fancied that the
figure running in front of me was really a figure running backwards, and
dancing as he ran."
"Horrible!" said Dr. Bull, and shuddered.
"Horrible is not the word," said Syme. "It was exactly the worst
instant of my life. And yet ten minutes afterwards, when he put his head out
of the cab and made a grimace like a gargoyle, I knew that he was only like
a father playing hide-and-seek with his children."
"It is a long game," said the Secretary, and frowned at his broken
boots.
"Listen to me," cried Syme with extraordinary emphasis. "Shall I tell
you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of
the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a
tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud.
Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could
only get round in front--"
"Look!" cried out Bull clamorously, "the balloon is coming down!"
There was no need to cry out to Syme, who had never taken his eyes off
it. He saw the great luminous globe suddenly stagger in the sky, right
itself, and then sink slowly behind the trees like a setting sun.
The man called Gogol, who had hardly spoken through all their weary
travels, suddenly threw up his hands like a lost spirit.
"He is dead!" he cried. "And now I know he was my friend-- my friend in
the dark!"
"Dead!" snorted the Secretary. "You will not find him dead easily. If
he has been tipped out of the car, we shall find him rolling as a colt rolls
in a field, kicking his legs for fun."
"Clashing his hoofs," said the Professor. "The colts do, and so did
Pan."
"Pan again!" said Dr. Bull irritably. "You seem to think Pan is
everything."
"So he is," said the Professor, "in Greek. He means everything."
"Don't forget," said the Secretary, looking down, "that he also means
Panic."
Syme had stood without hearing any of the exclamations.
"It fell over there," he said shortly. "Let us follow it!"
Then he added with an indescribable gesture--
"Oh, if he has cheated us all by getting killed! It would be like one
of his larks."
He strode off towards the distant trees with a new energy, his rags and
ribbons fluttering in the wind. The others followed him in a more footsore
and dubious manner. And almost at the same moment all six men realised that
they were not alone in the little field.
Across the square of turf a tall man was advancing towards them,
leaning on a strange long staff like a sceptre. He was clad in a fine but
old-fashioned suit with knee-breeches; its colour was that shade between
blue, violet and grey which can be seen in certain shadows of the woodland.
His hair was whitish grey, and at the first glance, taken along with his
knee-breeches, looked as if it was powdered. His advance was very quiet; but
for the silver frost upon his head, he might have been one to the shadows of
the wood.
"Gentlemen," he said, "my master has a carriage waiting for you in the
road just by."
"Who is your master?" asked Syme, standing quite still.
"I was told you knew his name," said the man respectfully.
There was a silence, and then the Secretary said--
"Where is this carriage?"
"It has been waiting only a few moments," said the stranger. "My master
has only just come home."
Syme looked left and right upon the patch of green field in which he
found himself. The hedges were ordinary hedges, the trees seemed ordinary
trees; yet he felt like a man entrapped in fairyland.
He looked the mysterious ambassador up and down, but he could discover
nothing except that the man's coat was the exact colour of the purple
shadows, and that the man's face was the exact colour of the red and brown
and golden sky.
"Show us the place," Syme said briefly, and without a word the man in
the violet coat turned his back and walked towards a gap in the hedge, which
let in suddenly the light of a white road.
As the six wanderers broke out upon this thoroughfare, they saw the
white road blocked by what looked like a long row of carriages, such a row
of carriages as might close the approach to some house in Park Lane. Along
the side of these carriages stood a rank of splendid servants, all dressed
in the grey-blue uniform, and all having a certain quality of stateliness
and freedom which would not commonly belong to the servants of a gentleman,
but rather to the officials and ambassadors of a great king. There were no
less than six carriages waiting, one for each of the tattered and miserable
band. All the attendants (as if in court-dress) wore swords, and as each man
crawled into his carriage they drew them, and saluted with a sudden blaze of
steel.
"What can it all mean?" asked Bull of Syme as they separated. "Is this
another joke of Sunday's?"
"I don't know," said Syme as he sank wearily back in the cushions of
his carriage; "but if it is, it's one of the jokes you talk about. It's a
good-natured one."
The six adventurers had passed through many adventures, but not one had
carried them so utterly off their feet as this last adventure of comfort.
They had all become inured to things going roughly; but things suddenly
going smoothly swamped them. They could not even feebly imagine what the
carriages were; it was enough for them to know that they were carriages, and
carriages with cushions. They could not conceive who the old man was who had
led them; but it was quite enough that he had certainly led them to the
carriages.
Syme drove through a drifting darkness of trees in utter abandonment.
It was typical of him that while he had carried his bearded chin forward
fiercely so long as anything could be done, when the whole business was
taken out of his hands he fell back on the cushions in a frank collapse.
Very gradually and very vaguely he realised into what rich roads the
carriage was carrying him. He saw that they passed the stone gates of what
might have been a park, that they began gradually to climb a hill which,
while wooded on both sides, was somewhat more orderly than a forest. Then
there began to grow upon him, as upon a man slowly waking from a healthy
sleep, a pleasure in everything. He felt that the hedges were what hedges
should be, living walls; that a hedge is like a human army, disciplined, but
all the more alive. He saw high elms behind the hedges, and vaguely thought
how happy boys would be climbing there. Then his carriage took a turn of the
path, and he saw suddenly and quietly, like a long, low, sunset cloud, a
long, low house, mellow in the mild light of sunset. All the six friends
compared notes afterwards and quarrelled; but they all agreed that in some
unaccountable way the place reminded them of their boyhood. It was either
this elm-top or that crooked path, it was either this scrap of orchard or
that shape of a window; but each man of them declared that he could remember
this place before he could remember his mother.
When the carriages eventually rolled up to a large, low, cavernous
gateway, another man in the same uniform, but wearing a silver star on the
grey breast of his coat, came out to meet them. This impressive person said
to the bewildered Syme--
"Refreshments are provided for you in your room."
Syme, under the influence of the same mesmeric sleep of amazement, went
up the large oaken stairs after the respectful attendant. He entered a
splendid suite of apartments that seemed to be designed specially for him.
He walked up to a long mirror with the ordinary instinct of his class, to
pull his tie straight or to smooth his hair; and there he saw the frightful
figure that he was--blood running down his face from where the bough had
struck him, his hair standing out like yellow rags of rank grass, his
clothes torn into long, wavering tatters. At once the whole enigma sprang
up, simply as the question of how he had got there, and how he was to get
out again. Exactly at the same moment a man in blue, who had been appointed
as his valet, said very solemnly--
"I have put out your clothes, sir."
"Clothes!" said Syme sardonically. "I have no clothes except these,"
and he lifted two long strips of his frock-coat in fascinating festoons, and
made a movement as if to twirl like a ballet girl.
"My master asks me to say," said the attendant, that there is a fancy
dress ball to-night, and that he desires you to put on the costume that I
have laid out. Meanwhile, sir, there is a bottle of Burgundy and some cold
pheasant, which he hopes you will not refuse, as it is some hours before
supper."
"Cold pheasant is a good thing," said Syme reflectively, "and Burgundy
is a spanking good thing. But really I do not want either of them so much as
I want to know what the devil all this means, and what sort of costume you
have got laid out for me. Where is it?"
The servant lifted off a kind of ottoman a long peacock-blue drapery,
rather of the nature of a domino, on the front of which was emblazoned a
large golden sun, and which was splashed here and there with flaming stars
and crescents.
"You're to be dressed as Thursday, sir," said the valet somewhat
affably.
"Dressed as Thursday!" said Syme in meditation. "It doesn't sound a
warm costume."
"Oh, yes, sir," said the other eagerly, "the Thursday costume is quite
warm, sir. It fastens up to the chin."
"Well, I don't understand anything," said Syme, sighing. "I have been
used so long to uncomfortable adventures that comfortable adventures knock
me out. Still, I may be allowed to ask why I should be particularly like
Thursday in a green frock spotted all over with the sun and moon. Those
orbs, I think, shine on other days. I once saw the moon on Tuesday, I
remember."
"Beg pardon, sir," said the valet, "Bible also provided for you," and
with a respectful and rigid finger he pointed out a passage in the first
chapter of Genesis. Syme read it wondering. It was that in which the fourth
day of the week is associated with the creation of the sun and moon. Here,
however, they reckoned from a Christian Sunday.
"This is getting wilder and wilder," said Syme, as he sat down in a
chair. "Who are these people who provide cold pheasant and Burgundy, and
green clothes and Bibles? Do they provide everything?"
"Yes, sir, everything," said the attendant gravely. "Shall I help you
on with your costume?"
"Oh, hitch the bally thing on! " said Syme impatiently.
But though he affected to despise the mummery, he felt a curious
freedom and naturalness in his movements as the blue and gold garment fell
about him; and when he found that he had to wear a sword, it stirred a
boyish dream. As he passed out of the room he flung the folds across his
shoulder with a gesture, his sword stood out at an angle, and he had all the
swagger of a troubadour. For these disguises did not disguise, but reveal.
AS Syme strode along the corridor he saw the Secretary standing at the
top of a great flight of stairs. The man had never looked so noble. He was
draped in a long robe of starless black, down the centre of which fell a
band or broad stripe of pure white, like a single shaft of light. The whole
looked like some very severe ecclesiastical vestment. There was no need for
Syme to search his memory or the Bible in order to remember that the first
day of creation marked the mere creation of light out of darkness. The
vestment itself would alone have suggested the symbol; and Syme felt also
how perfectly this pattern of pure white and black expressed the soul of the
pale and austere Secretary, with his inhuman veracity and his cold frenzy,
which made him so easily make war on the anarchists, and yet so easily pass
for one of them. Syme was scarcely surprised to notice that, amid all the
ease and hospitality of their new surroundings, this man's eyes were still
stern. No smell of ale or orchards could make the Secretary cease to ask a
reasonable question.
If Syme had been able to see himself, he would have realised that he,
too, seemed to be for the first time himself and no one else. For if the
Secretary stood for that philosopher who loves the original and formless
light, Syme was a type of the poet who seeks always to make the light in
special shapes, to split it up into sun and star. The philosopher may
sometimes love the infinite; the poet always loves the finite. For him the
great moment is not the creation of light, but the creation of the sun and
moon.
As they descended the broad stairs together they overtook Ratcliffe,
who was clad in spring green like a huntsman, and the pattern upon whose
garment was a green tangle of trees. For he stood for that third day on
which the earth and green things were made, and his square, sensible face,
with its not unfriendly cynicism, seemed appropriate enough to it.
They were led out of another broad and low gateway into a very large
old English garden, full of torches and bonfires, by the broken light of
which a vast carnival of people were dancing in motley dress. Syme seemed to
see every shape in Nature imitated in some crazy costume. There was a man
dressed as a windmill with enormous sails, a man dressed as an elephant, a
man dressed as a balloon; the two last, together, seemed to keep the thread
of their farcical adventures. Syme even saw, with a queer thrill, one dancer
dressed like an enormous hornbill, with a beak twice as big as himself--the
queer bird which had fixed itself on his fancy like a living question while
he was rushing down the long road at the Zoological Gardens. There were a
thousand other such objects, however. There was a dancing lamp-post, a
dancing apple tree, a dancing ship. One would have thought that the
untamable tune of some mad musician had set all the common objects of field
thin red hair and a pale face, the first of all the sham anarchists who had
been exposed.
"Why do you worry with me?" he cried. "You have expelled me as a spy."
"We are all spies!" whispered Syme.
"We're all spies!" shouted Dr. Bull. "Come and have a drink."
Next morning the battalion of the reunited six marched stolidly towards
the hotel in Leicester Square.
"This is more cheerful," said Dr. Bull; "we are six men going to ask
one man what he means."
"I think it is a bit queerer than that," said Syme. "I think it is six
men going to ask one man what they mean."
They turned in silence into the Square, and though the hotel was in the
opposite corner, they saw at once the little balcony and a figure that
looked too big for it. He was sitting alone with bent head, poring over a
newspaper. But all his councillors, who had come to vote him down, crossed
that Square as if they were watched out of heaven by a hundred eyes.
They had disputed much upon their policy, about whether they should
leave the unmasked Gogol without and begin diplomatically, or whether they
should bring him in and blow up the gunpowder at once. The influence of Syme
and Bull prevailed for the latter course, though the Secretary to the last
asked them why they attacked Sunday so rashly.
"My reason is quite simple," said Syme. "I attack him rashly because I
am afraid of him."
They followed Syme up the dark stair in silence, and they all came out
simultaneously into the broad sunlight of the morning and the broad sunlight
of Sunday's smile.
"Delightful!" he said. "So pleased to see you all. What an exquisite
day it is. Is the Czar dead?"
The Secretary, who happened to be foremost, drew himself together for a
dignified outburst.
"No, sir," he said sternly "there has been no massacre. I bring you
news of no such disgusting spectacles."
"Disgusting spectacles?" repeated the President, with a bright,
inquiring smile. "You mean Dr. Bull's spectacles?"
The Secretary choked for a moment, and the President went on with a
sort of smooth appeal--
"Of course, we all have our opinions and even our eyes, but really to
call them disgusting before the man himself--"
Dr. Bull tore off his spectacles and broke them on the table.
"My spectacles are blackguardly," he said, "but I'm not. Look at my
face."
"I dare say it's the sort of face that grows on one," said the
President, "in fact, it grows on you; and who am I to quarrel with the wild
fruits upon the Tree of Life? I dare say it will grow on me some day."
"We have no time for tomfoolery," said the Secretary, breaking in
savagely. "We have come to know what all this means. Who are you? What are
you? Why did you get us all here? Do you know who and what we are? Are you a
half-witted man playing the conspirator, or are you a clever man playing the
fool? Answer me, I tell you."
"Candidates," murmured Sunday, "are only required to answer eight out
of the seventeen questions on the paper. As far as I can make out, you want
me to tell you what I am, and what you are, and what this table is, and what
this Council is, and what this world is for all I know. Well, I will go so
far as to rend the veil of one mystery. If you want to know what you are,
you are a set of highly well-intentioned young jackasses."
"And you," said Syme, leaning forward, "what are you?"
"I? What am I?" roared the President, and he rose slowly to an
incredible height, like some enormous wave about to arch above them and
break. "You want to know what I am, do you? Bull, you are a man of science.
Grub in the roots of those trees and find out the truth about them. Syme,
you are a poet. Stare at those morning clouds. But I tell you this, that you
will have found out the truth of the last tree and the top-most cloud before
the truth about me. You will understand the sea, and I shall be still a
riddle; you shall know what the stars are, and not know what I am. Since the
beginning of the world all men have hunted me like a wolf-- kings and sages,
and poets and lawgivers, all the churches, and all the philosophies. But I
have never been caught yet, and the skies will fall in the time I turn to
bay. I have given them a good run for their money, and I will now."
Before one of them could move, the monstrous man had swung himself like
some huge ourang-outang over the balustrade of the balcony. Yet before he
dropped he pulled himself up again as on a horizontal bar, and thrusting his
great chin over the edge of the balcony, said solemnly--
"There's one thing I'll tell you though about who I am. I am the man in
the dark room, who made you all policemen."
With that he fell from the balcony, bouncing on the stones below like a
great ball of india-rubber, and went bounding off towards the corner of the
Alhambra, where he hailed a hansom-cab and sprang inside it. The six
detectives had been standing thunderstruck and livid in the light of his
last assertion; but when he disappeared into the cab, Syme's practical
senses returned to him, and leaping over the balcony so recklessly as almost
to break his legs, he called another cab.
He and Bull sprang into the cab together, the Professor and the
Inspector into another, while the Secretary and the late Gogol scrambled
into a third just in time to pursue the flying Syme, who was pursuing the
flying President. Sunday led them a wild chase towards the north-west, his
cabman, evidently under the influence of more than common inducements,
urging the horse at breakneck speed. But Syme was in no mood for delicacies,
and he stood up in his own cab shouting, "Stop thief!" until crowds ran
along beside his cab, and policemen began to stop and ask questions. All
this had its influence upon the President's cabman, who began to look
dubious, and to slow down to a trot. He opened the trap to talk reasonably
to his fare, and in so doing let the long whip droop over the front of the
cab. Sunday leant forward, seized it, and jerked it violently out of the
man's hand. Then standing up in front of the cab himself, he lashed the
horse and roared aloud, so that they went down the streets like a flying
storm. Through street after street and square after square went whirling
this preposterous vehicle, in which the fare was urging the horse and the
driver trying desperately to stop it. The other three cabs came after it (if
the phrase be permissible of a cab) like panting hounds. Shops and streets
shot by like rattling arrows.
At the highest ecstacy of speed, Sunday turned round on the splashboard
where he stood, and sticking his great grinning head out of the cab, with
white hair whistling in the wind, he made a horrible face at his pursuers,
like some colossal urchin. Then raising his right hand swiftly, he flung a
ball of paper in Syme's face and vanished. Syme caught the thing while
instinctively warding it off, and discovered that it consisted of two
crumpled papers. One was addressed to himself, and the other to Dr. Bull,
with a very long, and it is to be feared partly ironical, string of letters
after his name. Dr. Bull's address was, at any rate, considerably longer
than his communication, for the communication consisted entirely of the
words:--
"What about Martin Tupper now?"
"What does the old maniac mean?" asked Bull, staring at the words.
"What does yours say, Syme?"
Syme's message was, at any rate, longer, and ran as follows:--
"No one would regret anything in the nature of an interference by the
Archdeacon more than I. I trust it will not come to that. But, for the last
time, where are your goloshes? The thing is too bad, especially after what
uncle said."
The President's cabman seemed to be regaining some control over his
horse, and the pursuers gained a little as they swept round into the Edgware
Road. And here there occurred what seemed to the allies a providential
stoppage. Traffic of every kind was swerving to right or left or stopping,
for down the long road was coming the unmistakable roar announcing the
fire-engine, which in a few seconds went by like a brazen thunderbolt. But
quick as it went by, Sunday had bounded out of his cab, sprung at the
fire-engine, caught it, slung himself on to it, and was seen as he
disappeared in the noisy distance talking to the astonished fireman with
explanatory gestures.
"After him!" howled Syme. "He can't go astray now. There's no mistaking
a fire-engine."
The three cabmen, who had been stunned for a moment, whipped up their
horses and slightly decreased the distance between themselves and their
disappearing prey. The President acknowledged this proximity by coming to
the back of the car, bowing repeatedly, kissing his hand, and finally
flinging a neatly-folded note into the bosom of Inspector Ratcliffe. When
that gentleman opened it, not without impatience, he found it contained the
words:--
"Fly at once. The truth about your trouser-stretchers is known.--A
FRIEND."
The fire-engine had struck still farther to the north, into a region
that they did not recognise; and as it ran by a line of high railings
shadowed with trees, the six friends were startled, but somewhat relieved,
to see the President leap from the fire-engine, though whether through
another whim or the increasing protest of his entertainers they could not
see. Before the three cabs, however, could reach up to the spot, he had gone
up the high railings like a huge grey cat, tossed himself over, and vanished
in a darkness of leaves.
Syme with a furious gesture stopped his cab, jumped out, and sprang
also to the escalade. When he had one leg over the fence and his friends
were following, he turned a face on them which shone quite pale in the
shadow.
"What place can this be?" he asked. "Can it be the old devil's house?
I've heard he has a house in North London."
"All the better," said the Secretary grimly, planting a foot in a
foothold, "we shall find him at home."
"No, but it isn't that," said Syme, knitting his brows. "I hear the
most horrible noises, like devils laughing and sneezing and blowing their
devilish noses!"
"His dogs barking, of course," said the Secretary.
"Why not say his black-beetles barking!" said Syme furiously, "snails
barking! geraniums barking! Did you ever hear a dog bark like that?"
He held up his hand, and there came out of the thicket a long growling
roar that seemed to get under the skin and freeze the flesh-- a low
thrilling roar that made a throbbing in the air all about them.
"The dogs of Sunday would be no ordinary dogs," said Gogol, and
shuddered.
Syme had jumped down on the other side, but he still stood listening
impatiently.
"Well, listen to that," he said, "is that a dog--anybody's dog?"
There broke upon their ear a hoarse screaming as of things protesting
and clamouring in sudden pain; and then, far off like an echo, what sounded
like a long nasal trumpet.
"Well, his house ought to be hell! " said the Secretary; "and if it is
hell, I'm going in!" and he sprang over the tall railings almost with one
swing.
The others followed. They broke through a tangle of plants and shrubs,
and came out on an open path. Nothing was in sight, but Dr. Bull suddenly
struck his hands together.
"Why, you asses," he cried, "it's the Zoo!"
As they were looking round wildly for any trace of their wild quarry, a
keeper in uniform came running along the path with a man in plain clothes.
"Has it come this way?" gasped the keeper.
"Has what?" asked Syme.
"The elephant!" cried the keeper. "An elephant has gone mad and run
away!"
"He has run away with an old gentleman," said the other stranger
breathlessly, "a poor old gentleman with white hair! "
"What sort of old gentleman?" asked Syme, with great curiosity.
"A very large and fat old gentleman in light grey clothes," said the
keeper eagerly.
"Well," said Syme, "if he's that particular kind of old gentleman, if
you're quite sure that he's a large and fat old gentleman in grey clothes,
you may take my word for it that the elephant has not run away with him. He
has run away with the elephant. The elephant is not made by God that could
run away with him if he did not consent to the elopement. And, by thunder,
there he is! "
There was no doubt about it this time. Clean across the space of grass,
about two hundred yards away, with a crowd screaming and scampering vainly
at his heels, went a huge grey elephant at an awful stride, with his trunk
thrown out as rigid as a ship's bowsprit, and trumpeting like the trumpet of
doom. On the back of the bellowing and plunging animal sat President Sunday
with all the placidity of a sultan, but goading the animal to a furious
speed with some sharp object in his hand.
"Stop him!" screamed the populace. "He'll be out of the gate!"
"Stop a landslide!" said the keeper. "He is out of the gate!"
And even as he spoke, a final crash and roar of terror announced that
the great grey elephant had broken out of the gates of the Zoological
Gardens, and was careening down Albany Street like a new and swift sort of
omnibus.
"Great Lord!" cried Bull, "I never knew an elephant could go so fast.
Well, it must be hansom-cabs again if we are to keep him in sight."
As they raced along to the gate out of which the elephant had vanished,
Syme felt a glaring panorama of the strange animals in the cages which they
passed. Afterwards he thought it queer that he should have seen them so
clearly. He remembered especially seeing pelicans, with their preposterous,
pendant throats. He wondered why the pelican was the symbol of charity,
except it was that it wanted a good deal of charity to admire a pelican. He
remembered a hornbill, which was simply a huge yellow beak with a small bird
tied on behind it. The whole gave him a sensation, the vividness of which he
could not explain, that Nature was always making quite mysterious jokes.
Sunday had told them that they would understand him when they had understood
the stars. He wondered whether even the archangels understood the hornbill.
The six unhappy detectives flung themselves into cabs and followed the
elephant sharing the terror which he spread through the long stretch of the
streets. This time Sunday did not turn round, but offered them the solid
stretch of his unconscious back, which maddened them, if possible, more than
his previous mockeries. Just before they came to Baker Street, however, he
was seen to throw something far up into the air, as a boy does a ball
meaning to catch it again. But at their rate of racing it fell far behind,
just by the cab containing Gogol; and in faint hope of a clue or for some
impulse unexplainable, he stopped his cab so as to pick it up. It was
addressed to himself, and was quite a bulky parcel. On examination, however,
its bulk was found to consist of thirty-three pieces of paper of no value
wrapped one round the other. When the last covering was torn away it reduced
itself to a small slip of paper, on which was written:--
"The word, I fancy, should be 'pink'."
The man once known as Gogol said nothing, but the movements of his
hands and feet were like those of a man urging a horse to renewed efforts.
Through street after street, through district after district, went the
prodigy of the flying elephant, calling crowds to every window, and driving
the traffic left and right. And still through all this insane publicity the
three cabs toiled after it, until they came to be regarded as part of a
procession, and perhaps the advertisement of a circus. They went at such a
rate that distances were shortened beyond belief, and Syme saw the Albert
Hall in Kensington when he thought that he was still in Paddington. The
animal's pace was even more fast and free through the empty, aristocratic
streets of South Kensington, and he finally headed towards that part of the
sky-line where the enormous Wheel of Earl's Court stood up in the sky. The
wheel grew larger and larger, till it filled heaven like the wheel of stars.
The beast outstripped the cabs. They lost him round several corners,
and when they came to one of the gates of the Earl's Court Exhibition they
found themselves finally blocked. In front of them was an enormous crowd; in
the midst of it was an enormous elephant, heaving and shuddering as such
shapeless creatures do. But the President had disappeared.
"Where has he gone to?" asked Syme, slipping to the ground.
"Gentleman rushed into the Exhibition, sir!" said an official in a
dazed manner. Then he added in an injured voice: "Funny gentleman, sir.
Asked me to hold his horse, and gave me this."
He held out with distaste a piece of folded paper, addressed: "To the
Secretary of the Central Anarchist Council."
The Secretary, raging, rent it open, and found written inside it:--
"When the herring runs a mile,
Let the Secretary smile;
When the herring tries to fly,
Let the Secretary die.
Rustic Proverb."
"Why the eternal crikey," began the Secretary, "did you let the man in?
Do people commonly come to you Exhibition riding on mad elephants? Do--"
"Look! " shouted Syme suddenly. "Look over there! '
"Look at what?" asked the Secretary savagely.
"Look at the captive balloon!" said Syme, and pointed in a frenzy.
"Why the blazes should I look at a captive balloon?' demanded the
Secretary. "What is there queer about a captive balloon?"
"Nothing," said Syme, "except that it isn't captive!'
They all turned their eyes to where the balloon swung and swelled above
the Exhibition on a string, like a child's balloon. A second afterwards the
string came in two just under the car, and the balloon, broken loose,
floated away with the freedom of a soap bubble.
"Ten thousand devils!" shrieked the Secretary. "He's got into it!" and
he shook his fists at the sky.
The balloon, borne by some chance wind, came right above them, and they
could see the great white head of the President peering over the side and
looking benevolently down on them.
"God bless my soul!" said the Professor with the elderly manner that he
could never disconnect from his bleached beard and parchment face. "God
bless my soul! I seemed to fancy that something fell on the top of my hat!"
He put up a trembling hand and took from that shelf a piece of twisted
paper, which he opened absently only to find it inscribed with a true
lover's knot and, the words:--
"Your beauty has not left me indifferent.--From LITTLE SNOWDROP. "
There was a short silence, and then Syme said, biting his beard--
"I'm not beaten yet. The blasted thing must come down somewhere. Let's
follow it!"
ACROSS green fields, and breaking through blooming hedges, toiled six
draggled detectives, about five miles out of London. The optimist of the
party had at first proposed that they should follow the balloon across South
England in hansom-cabs. But he was ultimately convinced of the persistent
refusal of the balloon to follow the roads, and the still more persistent
refusal of the cabmen to follow the balloon. Consequently the tireless
though exasperated travellers broke through black thickets and ploughed
through ploughed fields till each was turned into a figure too outrageous to
be mistaken for a tramp. Those green hills of Surrey saw the final collapse
and tragedy of the admirable light grey suit in which Syme had set out from
Saffron Park. His silk hat was broken over his nose by a swinging bough, his
coat-tails were torn to the shoulder by arresting thorns, the clay of
England was splashed up to his collar; but he still carried his yellow beard
forward with a silent and furious determination, and his eyes were still
fixed on that floating ball of gas, which in the full flush of sunset seemed
coloured like a sunset cloud.
"After all," he said, "it is very beautiful!"
"It is singularly and strangely beautiful!" said the Professor. "I wish
the beastly gas-bag would burst!"
"No," said Dr. Bull, "I hope it won't. It might hurt the old boy."
"Hurt him!" said the vindictive Professor, "hurt him! Not as much as
I'd hurt him if I could get up with him. Little Snowdrop!"
"I don't want him hurt, somehow," said Dr. Bull.
"What!" cried the Secretary bitterly. "Do you believe all that tale
about his being our man in the dark room? Sunday would say he was anybody."
"I don't know whether I believe it or not," said Dr. Bull. "But it
isn't that that I mean. I can't wish old Sunday's balloon to burst
because--"
"Well," said Syme impatiently, "because?"
"Well, because he's so jolly like a balloon himself," said Dr. Bull
desperately. "I don't understand a word of all that idea of his being the
same man who gave us all our blue cards. It seems to make everything
nonsense. But I don't care who knows it, I always had a sympathy for old
Sunday himself, wicked as he was. Just as if he was a great bouncing baby.
How can I explain what my queer sympathy was? It didn't prevent my fighting
him like hell! Shall I make it clear if I say that I liked him because he
was so fat?"
"You will not," said the Secretary.
"I've got it now," cried Bull, "it was because he was so fat and so
light. Just like a balloon. We always think of fat people as heavy, but he
could have danced against a sylph. I see now what I mean. Moderate strength
is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity. It was like the
old speculations--what would happen if an elephant could leap up in the sky
like a grasshopper?"
"Our elephant," said Syme, looking upwards, "has leapt into the sky
like a grasshopper."
"And somehow," concluded Bull, "that's why I can't help liking old
Sunday. No, it's not an admiration of force, or any silly thing like that.
There is a kind of gaiety in the thing, as if he were bursting with some
good news. Haven't you sometimes felt it on a spring day? You know Nature
plays tricks, but somehow that day proves they are good-natured tricks. I
never read the Bible myself, but that part they laugh at is literal truth,
'Why leap ye, ye high hills?' The hills do leap ---at least, they try to....
Why do I like Sunday? . . . how can I tell you? . . . because he's such a
Bounder."
There was a long silence, and then the Secretary said in a curious,
strained voice--
"You do not know Sunday at all. Perhaps it is because you are better
than I, and do not know hell. I was a fierce fellow, and a trifle morbid
from the first. The man who sits in darkness, and who chose us all, chose me
because I had all the crazy look of a conspirator--because my smile went
crooked, and my eyes were gloomy, even when I smiled. But there must have
been something in me that answered to the nerves in all these anarchic men.
For when I first saw Sunday he expressed to me, not your airy vitality, but
something both gross and sad in the Nature of Things. I found him smoking in
a twilight room, a room with brown blind down, infinitely more depressing
than the genial darkness in which our master lives. He sat there on a bench,
a huge heap of a man, dark and out of shape. He listened to all my words
without speaking or even stirring. I poured out my most passionate appeals,
and asked my most eloquent questions. Then, after a long silence, the Thing
began to shake, and I thought it was shaken by some secret malady. It shook
like a loathsome and living jelly. It reminded me of everything I had ever
read about the base bodies that are the origin of life-- the deep sea lumps
and protoplasm. It seemed like the final form of matter, the most shapeless
and the most shameful. I could only tell myself, from its shudderings, that
it was something at least that such a monster could be miserable. And then
it broke upon me that the bestial mountain was shaking with a lonely
laughter, and the laughter was at me. Do you ask me to forgive him that? It
is no small thing to be laughed at by something at once lower and stronger
than oneself."
"Surely you fellows are exaggerating wildly," cut in the clear voice of
Inspector Ratcliffe. "President Sunday is a terrible fellow for one's
intellect, but he is not such a Barnum's freak physically as you make out.
He received me in an ordinary office, in a grey check coat, in broad
daylight. He talked to me in an ordinary way. But I'll tell you what is a
trifle creepy about Sunday. His room is neat, his clothes are neat,
everything seems in order; but he's absent-minded. Sometimes his great
bright eyes go quite blind. For hours he forgets that you are there. Now
absent-mindedness is just a bit too awful in a bad man. We think of a wicked
man as vigilant. We can't think of a wicked man who is honestly and
sincerely dreamy, because we daren't think of a wicked man alone with
himself. An absentminded man means a good-natured man. It means a man who,
if he happens to see you, will apologise. But how will you bear an
absentminded man who, if he happens to see you, will kill you? That is what
tries the nerves, abstraction combined with cruelty. Men have felt it
sometimes when they went through wild forests, and felt that the animals
there were at once innocent and pitiless. They might ignore or slay. How
would you like to pass ten mortal hours in a parlour with an absent-minded
tiger?"
"And what do you think of Sunday, Gogol?" asked Syme.
"I don't think of Sunday on principle," said Gogol simply, "any more
than I stare at the sun at noonday."
"Well, that is a point of view," said Syme thoughtfully. "What do you
say, Professor?"
The Professor was walking with bent head and trailing stick, and he did
not answer at all.
"Wake up, Professor!" said Syme genially. "Tell us what you think of
Sunday."
The Professor spoke at last very slowly.
"I think something," he said, "that I cannot say clearly. Or, rather, I
think something that I cannot even think clearly. But it is something like
this. My early life, as you know, was a bit too large and loose.
Well, when I saw Sunday's face I thought it was too large-- everybody
does, but I also thought it was too loose. The face was so big, that one
couldn't focus it or make it a face at all. The eye was so far away from the
nose, that it wasn't an eye. The mouth was so much by itself, that one had
to think of it by itself. The whole thing is too hard to explain."
He paused for a little, still trailing his stick, and then went on--
"But put it this way. Walking up a road at night, I have seen a lamp
and a lighted window and a cloud make together a most complete and
unmistakable face. If anyone in heaven has that face I shall know him again.
Yet when I walked a little farther I found that there was no face, that the
window was ten yards away, the lamp ten hundred yards, the cloud beyond the
world. Well, Sunday's face escaped me; it ran away to right and left, as
such chance pictures run away. And so his face has made me, somehow, doubt
whether there are any faces. I don't know whether your face, Bull, is a face
or a combination in perspective. Perhaps one black disc of your beastly
glasses is quite close and another fifty miles away. Oh, the doubts of a
materialist are not worth a dump. Sunday has taught me the last and the
worst doubts, the doubts of a spiritualist. I am a Buddhist, I suppose; and
Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt. My poor dear Bull, I do not believe
that you really have a face. I have not faith enough to believe in matter."
Syme's eyes were still fixed upon the errant orb, which, reddened in
the evening light, looked like some rosier and more innocent world.
"Have you noticed an odd thing," he said, "about all your descriptions?
Each man of you finds Sunday quite different, yet each man of you can only
find one thing to compare him to--the universe itself. Bull finds him like
the earth in spring, Gogol like the sun at noonday. The Secretary is
reminded of the shapeless protoplasm, and the Inspector of the carelessness
of virgin forests. The Professor says he is like a changing landscape. This
is queer, but it is queerer still that I also have had my odd notion about
the President, and I also find that I think of Sunday as I think of the
whole world."
"Get on a little faster, Syme," said Bull; "never mind the balloon."
"When I first saw Sunday," said Syme slowly, "I only saw his back; and
when I saw his back, I knew he was the worst man in the world. His neck and
shoulders were brutal, like those of some apish god. His head had a stoop
that was hardly human, like the stoop of an ox. In fact, I had at once the
revolting fancy that this was not a man at all, but a beast dressed up in
men's clothes."
"Get on," said Dr. Bull.
"And then the queer thing happened. I had seen his back from the
street, as he sat in the balcony. Then I entered the hotel, and coming round
the other side of him, saw his face in the sunlight. His face frightened me,
as it did everyone; but not because it was brutal, not because it was evil.
On the contrary, it frightened me because it was so beautiful, because it
was so good."
"Syme," exclaimed the Secretary, "are you ill?"
"It was like the face of some ancient archangel, judging justly after
heroic wars. There was laughter in the eyes, and in the mouth honour and
sorrow. There was the same white hair, the same great, grey-clad shoulders
that I had seen from behind. But when I saw him from behind I was certain he
was an animal, and when I saw him in front I knew he was a god."
"Pan," said the Professor dreamily, "was a god and an animal."
"Then, and again and always," went on Syme like a man talking to
himself, "that has been for me the mystery of Sunday, and it is also the
mystery of the world. When I see the horrible back, I am sure the noble face
is but a mask. When I see the face but for an instant, I know the back is
only a jest. Bad is so bad, that we cannot but think good an accident; good
is so good, that we feel certain that evil could be explained. But the whole
came to a kind of crest yesterday when I raced Sunday for the cab, and was
just behind him all the way."
"Had you time for thinking then?" asked Ratcliffe.
"Time," replied Syme, "for one outrageous thought. I was suddenly
possessed with the idea that the blind, blank back of his head really was
his face--an awful, eyeless face staring at me! And I fancied that the
figure running in front of me was really a figure running backwards, and
dancing as he ran."
"Horrible!" said Dr. Bull, and shuddered.
"Horrible is not the word," said Syme. "It was exactly the worst
instant of my life. And yet ten minutes afterwards, when he put his head out
of the cab and made a grimace like a gargoyle, I knew that he was only like
a father playing hide-and-seek with his children."
"It is a long game," said the Secretary, and frowned at his broken
boots.
"Listen to me," cried Syme with extraordinary emphasis. "Shall I tell
you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of
the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a
tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud.
Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could
only get round in front--"
"Look!" cried out Bull clamorously, "the balloon is coming down!"
There was no need to cry out to Syme, who had never taken his eyes off
it. He saw the great luminous globe suddenly stagger in the sky, right
itself, and then sink slowly behind the trees like a setting sun.
The man called Gogol, who had hardly spoken through all their weary
travels, suddenly threw up his hands like a lost spirit.
"He is dead!" he cried. "And now I know he was my friend-- my friend in
the dark!"
"Dead!" snorted the Secretary. "You will not find him dead easily. If
he has been tipped out of the car, we shall find him rolling as a colt rolls
in a field, kicking his legs for fun."
"Clashing his hoofs," said the Professor. "The colts do, and so did
Pan."
"Pan again!" said Dr. Bull irritably. "You seem to think Pan is
everything."
"So he is," said the Professor, "in Greek. He means everything."
"Don't forget," said the Secretary, looking down, "that he also means
Panic."
Syme had stood without hearing any of the exclamations.
"It fell over there," he said shortly. "Let us follow it!"
Then he added with an indescribable gesture--
"Oh, if he has cheated us all by getting killed! It would be like one
of his larks."
He strode off towards the distant trees with a new energy, his rags and
ribbons fluttering in the wind. The others followed him in a more footsore
and dubious manner. And almost at the same moment all six men realised that
they were not alone in the little field.
Across the square of turf a tall man was advancing towards them,
leaning on a strange long staff like a sceptre. He was clad in a fine but
old-fashioned suit with knee-breeches; its colour was that shade between
blue, violet and grey which can be seen in certain shadows of the woodland.
His hair was whitish grey, and at the first glance, taken along with his
knee-breeches, looked as if it was powdered. His advance was very quiet; but
for the silver frost upon his head, he might have been one to the shadows of
the wood.
"Gentlemen," he said, "my master has a carriage waiting for you in the
road just by."
"Who is your master?" asked Syme, standing quite still.
"I was told you knew his name," said the man respectfully.
There was a silence, and then the Secretary said--
"Where is this carriage?"
"It has been waiting only a few moments," said the stranger. "My master
has only just come home."
Syme looked left and right upon the patch of green field in which he
found himself. The hedges were ordinary hedges, the trees seemed ordinary
trees; yet he felt like a man entrapped in fairyland.
He looked the mysterious ambassador up and down, but he could discover
nothing except that the man's coat was the exact colour of the purple
shadows, and that the man's face was the exact colour of the red and brown
and golden sky.
"Show us the place," Syme said briefly, and without a word the man in
the violet coat turned his back and walked towards a gap in the hedge, which
let in suddenly the light of a white road.
As the six wanderers broke out upon this thoroughfare, they saw the
white road blocked by what looked like a long row of carriages, such a row
of carriages as might close the approach to some house in Park Lane. Along
the side of these carriages stood a rank of splendid servants, all dressed
in the grey-blue uniform, and all having a certain quality of stateliness
and freedom which would not commonly belong to the servants of a gentleman,
but rather to the officials and ambassadors of a great king. There were no
less than six carriages waiting, one for each of the tattered and miserable
band. All the attendants (as if in court-dress) wore swords, and as each man
crawled into his carriage they drew them, and saluted with a sudden blaze of
steel.
"What can it all mean?" asked Bull of Syme as they separated. "Is this
another joke of Sunday's?"
"I don't know," said Syme as he sank wearily back in the cushions of
his carriage; "but if it is, it's one of the jokes you talk about. It's a
good-natured one."
The six adventurers had passed through many adventures, but not one had
carried them so utterly off their feet as this last adventure of comfort.
They had all become inured to things going roughly; but things suddenly
going smoothly swamped them. They could not even feebly imagine what the
carriages were; it was enough for them to know that they were carriages, and
carriages with cushions. They could not conceive who the old man was who had
led them; but it was quite enough that he had certainly led them to the
carriages.
Syme drove through a drifting darkness of trees in utter abandonment.
It was typical of him that while he had carried his bearded chin forward
fiercely so long as anything could be done, when the whole business was
taken out of his hands he fell back on the cushions in a frank collapse.
Very gradually and very vaguely he realised into what rich roads the
carriage was carrying him. He saw that they passed the stone gates of what
might have been a park, that they began gradually to climb a hill which,
while wooded on both sides, was somewhat more orderly than a forest. Then
there began to grow upon him, as upon a man slowly waking from a healthy
sleep, a pleasure in everything. He felt that the hedges were what hedges
should be, living walls; that a hedge is like a human army, disciplined, but
all the more alive. He saw high elms behind the hedges, and vaguely thought
how happy boys would be climbing there. Then his carriage took a turn of the
path, and he saw suddenly and quietly, like a long, low, sunset cloud, a
long, low house, mellow in the mild light of sunset. All the six friends
compared notes afterwards and quarrelled; but they all agreed that in some
unaccountable way the place reminded them of their boyhood. It was either
this elm-top or that crooked path, it was either this scrap of orchard or
that shape of a window; but each man of them declared that he could remember
this place before he could remember his mother.
When the carriages eventually rolled up to a large, low, cavernous
gateway, another man in the same uniform, but wearing a silver star on the
grey breast of his coat, came out to meet them. This impressive person said
to the bewildered Syme--
"Refreshments are provided for you in your room."
Syme, under the influence of the same mesmeric sleep of amazement, went
up the large oaken stairs after the respectful attendant. He entered a
splendid suite of apartments that seemed to be designed specially for him.
He walked up to a long mirror with the ordinary instinct of his class, to
pull his tie straight or to smooth his hair; and there he saw the frightful
figure that he was--blood running down his face from where the bough had
struck him, his hair standing out like yellow rags of rank grass, his
clothes torn into long, wavering tatters. At once the whole enigma sprang
up, simply as the question of how he had got there, and how he was to get
out again. Exactly at the same moment a man in blue, who had been appointed
as his valet, said very solemnly--
"I have put out your clothes, sir."
"Clothes!" said Syme sardonically. "I have no clothes except these,"
and he lifted two long strips of his frock-coat in fascinating festoons, and
made a movement as if to twirl like a ballet girl.
"My master asks me to say," said the attendant, that there is a fancy
dress ball to-night, and that he desires you to put on the costume that I
have laid out. Meanwhile, sir, there is a bottle of Burgundy and some cold
pheasant, which he hopes you will not refuse, as it is some hours before
supper."
"Cold pheasant is a good thing," said Syme reflectively, "and Burgundy
is a spanking good thing. But really I do not want either of them so much as
I want to know what the devil all this means, and what sort of costume you
have got laid out for me. Where is it?"
The servant lifted off a kind of ottoman a long peacock-blue drapery,
rather of the nature of a domino, on the front of which was emblazoned a
large golden sun, and which was splashed here and there with flaming stars
and crescents.
"You're to be dressed as Thursday, sir," said the valet somewhat
affably.
"Dressed as Thursday!" said Syme in meditation. "It doesn't sound a
warm costume."
"Oh, yes, sir," said the other eagerly, "the Thursday costume is quite
warm, sir. It fastens up to the chin."
"Well, I don't understand anything," said Syme, sighing. "I have been
used so long to uncomfortable adventures that comfortable adventures knock
me out. Still, I may be allowed to ask why I should be particularly like
Thursday in a green frock spotted all over with the sun and moon. Those
orbs, I think, shine on other days. I once saw the moon on Tuesday, I
remember."
"Beg pardon, sir," said the valet, "Bible also provided for you," and
with a respectful and rigid finger he pointed out a passage in the first
chapter of Genesis. Syme read it wondering. It was that in which the fourth
day of the week is associated with the creation of the sun and moon. Here,
however, they reckoned from a Christian Sunday.
"This is getting wilder and wilder," said Syme, as he sat down in a
chair. "Who are these people who provide cold pheasant and Burgundy, and
green clothes and Bibles? Do they provide everything?"
"Yes, sir, everything," said the attendant gravely. "Shall I help you
on with your costume?"
"Oh, hitch the bally thing on! " said Syme impatiently.
But though he affected to despise the mummery, he felt a curious
freedom and naturalness in his movements as the blue and gold garment fell
about him; and when he found that he had to wear a sword, it stirred a
boyish dream. As he passed out of the room he flung the folds across his
shoulder with a gesture, his sword stood out at an angle, and he had all the
swagger of a troubadour. For these disguises did not disguise, but reveal.
AS Syme strode along the corridor he saw the Secretary standing at the
top of a great flight of stairs. The man had never looked so noble. He was
draped in a long robe of starless black, down the centre of which fell a
band or broad stripe of pure white, like a single shaft of light. The whole
looked like some very severe ecclesiastical vestment. There was no need for
Syme to search his memory or the Bible in order to remember that the first
day of creation marked the mere creation of light out of darkness. The
vestment itself would alone have suggested the symbol; and Syme felt also
how perfectly this pattern of pure white and black expressed the soul of the
pale and austere Secretary, with his inhuman veracity and his cold frenzy,
which made him so easily make war on the anarchists, and yet so easily pass
for one of them. Syme was scarcely surprised to notice that, amid all the
ease and hospitality of their new surroundings, this man's eyes were still
stern. No smell of ale or orchards could make the Secretary cease to ask a
reasonable question.
If Syme had been able to see himself, he would have realised that he,
too, seemed to be for the first time himself and no one else. For if the
Secretary stood for that philosopher who loves the original and formless
light, Syme was a type of the poet who seeks always to make the light in
special shapes, to split it up into sun and star. The philosopher may
sometimes love the infinite; the poet always loves the finite. For him the
great moment is not the creation of light, but the creation of the sun and
moon.
As they descended the broad stairs together they overtook Ratcliffe,
who was clad in spring green like a huntsman, and the pattern upon whose
garment was a green tangle of trees. For he stood for that third day on
which the earth and green things were made, and his square, sensible face,
with its not unfriendly cynicism, seemed appropriate enough to it.
They were led out of another broad and low gateway into a very large
old English garden, full of torches and bonfires, by the broken light of
which a vast carnival of people were dancing in motley dress. Syme seemed to
see every shape in Nature imitated in some crazy costume. There was a man
dressed as a windmill with enormous sails, a man dressed as an elephant, a
man dressed as a balloon; the two last, together, seemed to keep the thread
of their farcical adventures. Syme even saw, with a queer thrill, one dancer
dressed like an enormous hornbill, with a beak twice as big as himself--the
queer bird which had fixed itself on his fancy like a living question while
he was rushing down the long road at the Zoological Gardens. There were a
thousand other such objects, however. There was a dancing lamp-post, a
dancing apple tree, a dancing ship. One would have thought that the
untamable tune of some mad musician had set all the common objects of field