females, say too much at once. Your remarks must be sifted and answered
categorically. Firstly, you state that you love me. Yet you display a
lot of wet, horrible emotion, in order to hasten my end. Don’t speak;
you know you did;--and you asked the Dear Friend to come and bore me in
my last moments; and you refused to sit on his head, or show him out,
or stop him in any way. Consequently I had to stop him myself. I had to
be almost rude to him. Perhaps you’d better go after him if you’re so
fond of him. He’s only half-way across the path, and you’ll be able to
catch him up.”
“Oh, Thomas! I’m sure I never----”
“_Will_ you keep quiet? Can’t you see that I’m being categorical?
Secondly, you say that I’m cruel. I am, and it’s not my fault. If you
and other people were not so abominably heavy-minded, I should not be
cruel. You provoke me. You needn’t tell me that you can’t help being
heavy-minded. I know that, and I never said that it was your fault;
but it certainly isn’t mine. Nothing that I know of ever is anybody’s
fault. Thirdly, you said that I made fun of a good cause. You muddler!
I love most causes, and hate most of their promoters. Most causes are
noble, and most promoters are presumptuous. So far from making fun of
the good cause, I did it the greatest service by asking the Dear Friend
to seek an early death. That reminds me--you said that I was going to
die. So I am, if you don’t mind waiting ten minutes. Why this unseemly
haste?”
At this point Mary became all tears and disclaimers. “If you do that,”
said Thomas, “you really will have to go. I am about to die, and I
intend to die my own way, without any weeping females or dear friends.
It’s much the same with you that it is with man and the other lower
organisms. The good heart generally goes with a bad head; and if you
have a good head, you probably--there, I thought so. Do you see? The
Dear Friend on the further side of the path has just been trodden on
by a passing labourer. If he’d had a little more head, he would have
kept out of the way, and then he would not have died. Intellect is
practical: spirituality is not. Now that is very curious, for although
I have always been a most practical beetle, I have frequently had
strong spiritual desires. For instance, I often after supper yearn
to leave this gross and uncomely world, and bask in an impossible
hereafter.”
“Ah!” cried Mary. (She liked the ring of his last sentence.) “Those are
beautiful words. If only you would always talk like that, instead of
insulting those who only come to do you good. I know the Dear Friend
made you angry; but then it’s not so much what he said as what he
wanted to say that we must think of.”
“Ah, yes, my dear Mary, most moist and muddle-headed, and it is not so
much what I am as what I want to be that the deceased bug should have
considered. You were born with a wrong head, and so you form wrong
judgments. It’s not your fault; nothing’s anybody’s fault. The Dear
Friend was good, but it doesn’t matter. I am bad, and that doesn’t
matter either. Nothing matters, and I can’t understand anything, and I
want to die.”
Thomas threw himself on his back and kicked petulantly. Mary entreated
him not to give way to temper; however, he declared that he was
doing no such thing: that he was trying to think very fast, and that
the action of kicking made it possible to think faster. Suddenly he
stopped, and recovered his normal position. “Mary,” he said, “it is
clear to me, and I will make it clear to you, that nothing matters.
Suppose something had an optical delusion, and the optical delusion
died, and had a ghost----”
“But it couldn’t, Thomas.”
“I know that. I am only asking you to suppose it--and the ghost went to
sleep, and dreamed that he was dreaming, that he was dreaming----”
“Oh, don’t go on! you’ll only make your poor head ache!”
“Do you think the something would care very much what happened in its
optical delusion’s ghost’s dream’s dream’s dream? Yet the innermost
of the three dreams would seem to be perfectly real, and the apparent
reality would be due to part of the previous experience of the
something, which would be filtered--or, rather, reflected--through the
whole series.”
“That will do. Please don’t go on. I don’t understand a word of it, and
it’s no use. Oh, _do_ let us talk good.”
“You are going to understand it, fat-headed one. You think that you
exist; that everything is real. How do you know that it is so? When
you dream, you imagine that the dream is quite real; but you wake up
and find that you are wrong. Now suppose the something one day had
a thought, that went through a million optical delusions, a billion
ghosts, and a trillion dreams----”
“It’s not a bit of good,” interpolated Mary. “I can’t imagine numbers
like that.”
“That thought might ultimately take the form of this world, of which I,
Thomas, the beetle, am a considerable part. There is nothing impossible
about that. It may be so, and I am inclined to think that it is so,
because something inside me seems to be struggling to get back to its
origin. But if it is so it must be perfectly clear to you that nothing
matters, because nothing is real, and nothing will be real till it gets
back again to the--the something!”
“I don’t understand it,” said Mary; “are you quite sure that it doesn’t
confuse you at all to think that way?”
“Absolutely sure,” said Thomas, which was untrue.
“And how do you get back again to the something?”
“That,” said Thomas drily, “I will show you in a few minutes if, as I
said before, you do not mind waiting.”
For a short time neither of them spoke. The sun, like the spoiled child
who promises to be so good if you will only let him stop, was growing
more beautiful than ever as the time drew near for his departure.
He had nothing but vapour and light with which to work, and yet he
produced some very pretty effects. The gravel path, near which Thomas
and Mary were lying, led into the road which skirted the edge of the
common; along this road was a line of detached villas. The sun did
the best that he could with them, but felt that he could not do much.
The last house in the line was much larger than the rest, and stood
in much larger grounds. The advertisement had described them as being
park-like, and they certainly contained quite enough trees almost to
hide the house from the views of those who passed on the road. The sun
had found out one of the windows through the foliage and was making
it blaze. He liked doing that. He could see a good deal of the house
and grounds; in point of height he had the advantage of passers-by. He
could see two tennis-courts, the players, groups who had gathered to
look on, others who strayed aimlessly about and tried to prove they
were not suburban. It was all cup and conversation, and it rather
bored the sun, who has a masculine mind. None of the people in that
garden were aware that rather less than half a mile from the house a
remarkably fine beetle was dying in his sins; if they had known it,
they might possibly not have cared.
When Thomas began to talk again, he appeared to be continuing a line
of thought of which he had not considered it worth while to give the
beginning.
“So the truth of the matter is that a beetle did once get there--right
up beyond the stars, but he never carried a man there. Aristophanes
said he did, but that was an ætiological myth. He made up the story to
account for a prevalent belief that man could rise to higher things.”
“That was what the Dear Friend always said,” murmured Mary
reflectively. “Cows, and pigs, and men, and fowls can never get up
there--only beetles. It’s all kept for them.”
“And it’s not what I say,” retorted Thomas sharply. “I’ve got better
things to do in my last moments than to waste them in agreeing with
anybody. The mistake the man made was not in supposing that he could
rise. All beasts can rise, as much as we can. His mistake was in
rejecting the supernatural, and thinking that he could be raised only
by a beetle. We may have more spirituality than men. That is quite
possible: they are a lower organism. We may perhaps find it easier to
soar than they do. But I am sure that all are going there, just as we
are, beyond the stars.”
“That may be true,” said Mary, plucking up a little spirit; “but it
certainly was not the opinion of the Dear Friend. Only beetles can
rise.”
“Do you prefer the opinions of the Dear Friend to absolute truth?”
“I do,” said Mary proudly.
“Oh, blind and fat of temperament!” [This does not read quite right,
but it is a fairly literal translation. There are no polite English
words that exactly express the silence which Thomas used on this
occasion.] “A few days ago I was down in the grass by the river. It
looks sweet and green from here. It grows long, and it makes a pleasant
shade above one; but at the roots it’s all mud and muck. That is the
way of the world; instead of grumbling at the mud we might just as
well be thankful for the grass; however, that’s not my point. The cows
came down to drink while I was there. They are nasty, lumpy animals;
you can see their slobbering mouths and great yellow teeth as they
bend over one to crop the grass. Some beetles get nervous, but I
don’t fancy there’s any danger. As one of those brutes stooped down,
I looked up and saw right into its eyes. It was like looking into
immeasurable distance. They were sad, humble, trustful eyes; but there
was something in them which signified the consciousness of a purpose in
being. That is my point. A poor devil of a cow! it couldn’t have told
any one why it existed, it could not even have put the reason clearly
in its own mind; but it _knew_. I am much like the beast. I know, but I
cannot say, not even to myself, the reason for my existence. Sometimes
I think that if all sounds were in my power, I could get the whole
thing out in music. It is a thing which defies ordinary processes and
all logical connexion. I see the fading sunlight writing something on
the under edge of a cloud; the intellectual part of me cannot read that
language, but something else in me reads it, and understands it, and
answers it almost piteously. ‘Oh that I might fly away and be at rest!’
And suddenly the conviction is strong in me that I know why I am here,
and what I shall be hereafter. In the awful silence of the night that
conviction comes dropping down my dark mind like a falling star. In
moments of acute dyspepsia I always feel it.”
He grinned pleasantly. He had spoiled his own poetry, and that pleased
him. In his former life he had always been trying to make pretty
things, and had always broken them up again. The grin passed from him,
and he continued:
“Cows, therefore, have souls. You needn’t contradict me, and thrust
that omniscient Dear Friend down my throat, because I won’t stand it.
I tell you that I saw into their eyes, and I know. If you want to
get at the bottom of things, you must leave all ordinary processes,
all logical processes. You can’t crawl down that way: you must jump.
The people who dare not jump see that you have got to the bottom of
things, and comfort themselves with saying that you must have hurt your
poor head terribly. Have I hurt my head, Mary? For my intellect is all
gone, and the light is fading very quickly. You hate men, I think.
Never despise them any more; for they have souls. They cut down the
grass, and it dies. They pull the flowers, and they die. They tread on
the beetles, and they die. They kill the animals, cut down the trees,
and poison the rivers. Where a man comes, death always follows. They
are murderers; they are hideously ugly; they make unpleasant noises,
and do not understand silences; they are the very lowest of all
creatures, but they are on their way to a hereafter. Nothing’s wasted:
the very strictest economy is practised.”
“I can’t understand you, Thomas; and I am afraid that you are getting
worse. It tries you to talk. Why did you say the light was fading? The
sun is still shining all over us. Oh, Thomas, you’ll be gone soon--may
I cry now? I must.”
Thomas did not seem to have heard her. “I have been wicked, and yet not
I,” he said. “It was something bad in me that will pass. And the world
did provoke me terribly; it would be so emotional and stupid.”
Mary was crying unreservedly, but Thomas did not notice it.
“Something,” he said, “has come into my head which wants thinking out,
but I will not bother myself. I have the easier way. Good-bye--for the
sake of old times--Mary, darling. I am going to know everything.”
Then he curled up his legs quietly, and died.
Mary stopped crying, and examined the body. Yes, he was quite dead.
Then she started away on a journey.
Thomas had been a wicked beetle, and he had talked wrongly in his last
moments, and she was afraid to be near his body. Besides, she had heard
of a vacancy.
The sun had quite finished with the window of that villa now, and
the park-like grounds were nearly empty. On one of the courts a few
enthusiasts were still playing, and would continue to play until they
went in to dress. Out through the gate a young man sauntered into
the road. The look of an escaped animal was on his face. He had been
talking to a number of people whom he neither knew nor wanted to know.
He had seen nothing of Marjorie, his host’s daughter, a child who
always pleased and generally amused him. He felt that he had done much
for his hostess; he had suffered privations. And now he was glad that
the bulk of the visitors--all who were not staying in the house--had
gone. He took the path across the common, pausing to light a pipe with
a wax match and an air of relief. He walked in the direction of the
spot where the dead body of Thomas was lying.
One of the two unkempt birds came slowly flying back again. It was he
to whom the surname of Magnanimity has been given. He had got rid of
his companion by some pretext of an appointment, and he had come back
again to look for that beetle. He swooped down close beside the dead
body of the insect, and turned it over with his beak.
“That’s just my luck,” he murmured softly. “I never could stand cold
meat.” But that was affectation.
At this moment a small stone struck the ground within a foot of where
the unkempt bird was standing. He hopped away in an aggrieved fashion.
“I won’t fly away yet,” he said sulkily, “it would only make the man
conceited. They’re always chucking stones, these fools of men, and they
hardly ever hit anything. They like to think that we’re afraid of them,
and I’m not the least bit afraid.”
Another stone missed by a sixteenth of an inch the bird’s
tail-feathers, and Magnanimity with one scream of bad language flew
upwards. When he got there, he found that his nervous and unkempt
companion had come back again, and had been watching him all the time.
Then the magnanimous fowl swore worse than ever. There was no doubt
that the nervous one would have a pretty story to tell about that
pretended appointment.
The young man, who had thrown the stones, sauntered slowly up and
surveyed the dead beetle, taking it in his hand to examine it more
closely. He knew something about beetles--he had collected them in his
school-days--and he saw that this was a large one of its kind, a fine
specimen. He slipped it into one of his coat pockets, and strolled
slowly back again to the house. He had originally meant to go further,
but he had changed his intention. He was comparing in his own mind
his favourite Marjorie, a child not quite fifteen, with the finished
and ordinary girl as turned out in large numbers for the purposes of
suburban tennis. He was also wondering casually why there were any
beetles in the world, and why he had once been so interested in them.
When he got back to the house he paused in the hall for a second, and
then went slowly upstairs to a room at the top of the house, used as a
schoolroom by Marjorie and her governess, Miss Dean.
Marjorie was seated at the table writing. She had a large French
dictionary by her side. She was dressed in dark blue serge. Her long
hair had become a little untidy in her struggle to be idiomatic. She
had a pale, intelligent face. She looked up as the young man entered.
“I’m awfully glad you’ve come,” she said, smiling. “It was getting
rather dull, being all alone. Did you have some good setts?”
“No, not particularly--didn’t play much. I talked, and made myself
useful, and ate ices, and drank things most of the time. You can’t see
like that.” He struck a match, and lit the gas, and then he seated
himself at the piano. “Where’s Miss Dean?”
“Oh, she went away as usual at half-past five, and left me this stuff
to do for to-morrow. I’m doing it now, because I am going to be down in
the drawing-room to-night. Only three more days to the holidays!”
“Have you got any tea?”
Marjorie nodded her head towards a table at the side of the room. “They
brought it up about an hour ago,” she said. “It’s quite cold--will you
ring for some more?”
“No, thanks,” he answered, as he got up and helped himself. “This will
do very well. I am not really thirsty, because, as I said, I have been
drinking during the whole of the afternoon--more or less. But I never
feel absolutely sociable unless I am either smoking or drinking. Have
you got much more to do for the estimable one?”
“Oh, no, only a few words. It was a shorter bit than usual, and I
expected to have got it finished ever so long ago. But when it came to
doing it, there were a lot of words that I’d never seen before. I know
the French for a plate, or a glass, or a horse, or a hat, or anything
like that. But I always have to look up words like buttercup or
gridiron. Now here’s a word of that kind. What’s the French for beetle?”
“Escarbot, I believe, but I wouldn’t swear to it.”
“Look here, Maurice,” Marjorie said very earnestly, leaning her pretty
little chin on one hand, “I’ll tell you what I’ve noticed. When a
thing’s different in one way, it’s always different in another. If a
piece for translation is extra short, there are always more words to
look up. If I have an awfully bad morning, and Miss Dean is savage,
and Aunt Julia patronises me, and Miss Matthieson makes me kiss
her--bah!--I’m always glad at the end of it, because I know I am going
to have a specially good afternoon or evening.”
“Marjorie, I believe you’re right. You’ll have a bad morning to-morrow
if that wretched piece about the gridirons and beetles isn’t done for
the inestimable Dean.”
“Well, I’ll finish in less than two minutes. Play something while I’m
doing it.”
He opened the piano and took down the first piece that came. It was a
drawing-room piece, and had the entire absence of soul which always
appealed to the corresponding vacuum in the chilly Miss Dean. It was
moderately difficult, and sounded _very_ difficult. Miss Dean well
knew that when a girl like Marjorie, not yet fifteen, played that
piece properly, it would be acknowledged to reflect great credit on
her teacher. Maurice Grey opened the piece, looked at it suspiciously,
skipped the introduction, played a few bars from the first page,
glanced at the fifth page, then shut it up, and put it back again on
the top of the piano with a sigh.
“I hate that too,” said Marjorie. “Play the thing you played to them
last night in the drawing-room.”
“You weren’t in the drawing-room last night.”
“No, but my bedroom’s just above, and I could hear it. It went like
this.” She hummed a few bars.
Maurice began to play once more. It was a mischievous, tender,
eccentric little dance that went laughing about the piano as if it were
mad. Marjorie had finished her work, and rose from the table and stood
beside him, watching him with dark, attentive eyes as he played. She
was thinking that she liked Maurice. He knew the right way to treat
her. Aunt Julia treated her like a baby, and other visitors often
appeared to be under the impression that children like inanity. Her
father was rather an apathetic man, yet he had the sincerest affection
for his wife, his only daughter, and young Maurice Grey. He had many
acquaintances, but no other friends. He had been “Meyner and Sons,” who
did great things in iron, but he disposed of his business to a company
soon after his marriage. He was absorbed in the study of psychology,
and made many curious experiments upon himself. In one or two of these
young Maurice had been of some service to him. But in his family
affections, his studies, or his experiments, he showed very little
enthusiasm. He never expected to get great results. “The evidence is so
bad,” he said to Maurice once, speaking of his favourite pursuit. “On
my subject men lie often intentionally; and often deceive themselves
and lie unintentionally, and rarely speak the truth. Also I find out
more and more that I cannot even trust my own senses. The human brain
is a shockingly defective instrument.” He was a little sensitive, and
to visitors in his house--with the exception of Maurice--he would
talk of anything but psychology. Psychology, he found, was a thing
they never understood at all, and at which they generally laughed.
Marjorie’s mother, Mrs. Meyner, was not so apathetic or so pessimistic,
but then her horizon was not extended. The circle of her friends and
relations gave her enough to think about and to make life worth living.
She was a very gentle, unselfish woman, and had a provoking knack of
sincerely liking nearly everybody. Her half-sister, Julia, had the
opposite knack of hating nearly everybody. Julia was old and unmarried,
and had a wonderful tongue; she dressed perfectly, had snowy hair,
a kind face, a sweet smile, gentle ways, and a perfectly venomous
disposition. Marjorie did not like her Aunt Julia. She did not like
Miss Matthieson much better--a sentimental woman. Miss Dean was too
chilly a person to like exactly; Marjorie respected her sometimes. But
she did like Maurice, and she liked the music that he was playing now.
“That is awfully nice,” she said, when the piece was finished. “What is
it?”
Marjorie’s aunt Julia had asked the same question of him the night
before in the drawing-room, and he had told her that the piece was by
Grieg, which was untrue, and which he knew to be untrue. He was not
aware that that cheerful, spiteful, and horribly intellectual old lady
also knew that he was lying. He had felt it better to blaspheme the
name of Grieg than to give her a chance by owning that he had composed
the thing himself. He was a young man of dangerously diverse talents.
He was just at the end of his first year at Cambridge, and was reading
for the Classical Tripos. Now the Classical Tripos is a jealous
mistress, and admits of no rivals. Nevertheless, he had become a very
fair oar, was socially popular, and had devoted much time to psychology
and more to music. The end of such a course is generally failure. He
did not mind telling Marjorie about the little dance he had just been
playing.
“Well,” he said, “I have a general impression that it is mine; but
there’s a touch of Grieg about it. In fact, I risked telling your aunt
Julia last night that it was Grieg’s. I daren’t tell her it was mine.”
“Yes,” said Marjorie sadly, “she is awful. She pats me gently on the
head, and tells me I’m a good little child, and that I may run away to
the nursery and play. It’s perfectly maddening. She knows as well as
I do that I’m nearly fifteen, and that it’s absolute nonsense to talk
like that. She does it on purpose to make me angry, and I hate being
angry.”
Maurice took a long sip at his cold tea.
“Yes,” he said, “the people in this world want sorting. Have you
finished your piece about the beetle and the gridirons?”
“Oh, yes! There’s nothing in it really about gridirons, but a beetle
comes into it--a dead beetle----”
“By Jove!” said Maurice suddenly, thrusting his hand into his pocket,
“that reminds me!” He pulled out the dead body of Thomas, and laid it
carefully on the table.
“There,” he said, “what do you think of that?”
“It’s perfectly horrible,” said Marjorie. “Where did you get it? What
did you do it for?”
“I strolled on to the common after tennis for a smoke, and I happened
to find it. I used to collect these things when I was at school. I
suppose I picked it up from force of habit, but I’m sure I don’t
know. You ought not to call it horrible, you know. It’s really a fine
specimen of its kind.”
Marjorie looked at it more closely, turning it over with the end of a
penholder.
“Do you remember saying just now,” said Maurice, “that things which
were different in one way were generally different in another? Beetles
are different from us; they can’t do the same things; we despise them;
they haven’t as good a time. Perhaps they can do things we don’t know
anything about; perhaps they despise us; perhaps they are going to have
a better time in some other world. What are all the stars for?”
Marjorie wrinkled her brows, and kicked one tiny slipper half off.
“I almost think I see what you mean----”