suggestion.”
Marjorie had thrown down the penholder, and taken the body of Thomas in
her hand.
“Beetles might have some secrets that we know nothing about. But Miss
Dean says that all insects were sent into the world for the birds to
eat.”
Maurice was silent for a moment. He was remembering that Miss Dean had
remarked to him the day before that she considered that the birds had
been created to kill the insects. “I should like to talk the question
over with a beetle. Now I must be off and dress.”
When he had gone an old trick of Marjorie’s younger days came back to
her. She had often, in her babyhood, held conversations with voiceless
or inarticulate things, such as dolls or cats, and on one occasion,
after a stormy music lesson, she had made the piano promise to _make_
the music come out right next time. She had always to do the speaking
for them, so it was not quite convincing; but it was helpful and
consolatory in its way. And now she began to talk to the beetle aloud,
holding it on the palm of one little white hand--
“Beetle, tell me your secrets. Tell me all your secrets.”
There was silence.
“I want to know if beetles are as good as men. Are they? Are they
better than men? Are there better things than we ever think of doing,
which we might do if it was only possible to think of them? _Do_ tell
me. I won’t tell anybody, except Maurice and mamma, if she asks me, but
she won’t. You _might_ tell me--it’s quite safe.”
There was only silence; but then it has been proved already that
silence is a beetle’s method of speech. Perhaps the spirit of Thomas
was there and answered her; perhaps it was elsewhere; perhaps Thomas
never had a spirit.
Marjorie put the beetle down again on the table, with a laugh at
herself for her silliness.
In the drawing-room that night, she saw very little of Maurice. Aunt
Julia looked as perfect and sweet and gentle an old lady as ever; and
her conversation was just as poisonous as usual. Her temper must even
have been a little worse than normal. She commenced to talk about
psychology with Mr. Meyner, because she knew that he hated discussing
it with the uninitiated. She insisted that he was joking--the poor man
never joked; he was half earnestness and half apathy--and she told him
untrue stories. When he escaped, she fastened on to Miss Matthieson,
who was a sentimental and ignorant woman, with a desire to love art.
She invented an entirely fictitious picture of Turner, described it,
and gave its precise position in the National Gallery; she finally made
Miss Matthieson talk about it, become enraptured about it, and confess
what her sensations were when she first saw it. She did not enlighten
her; that would have been too crude an enjoyment for Aunt Julia. Her
smile became just a little sweeter, and she assured Miss Matthieson
that she had learned much from her. Maurice Grey had, for reasons of
his own, been playing Chopin’s Funeral March. “And is that also by
Grieg?” she asked him, looking interested.
“No, it is not,” he said shortly. He knew very well that Aunt Julia
knew very well what he had been playing; and he saw what she meant by
her question.
“Oh, please don’t be angry with me,” she said. “I’m no musician, you
know, Mr. Grey,”--her knowledge of music was, as Maurice was aware,
considerably above the average--“and I make stupid mistakes. Last night
you played a little dance which you told me was by Grieg. Now, I never
should have known it; I thought it was pretty enough, but just a little
weak and--well, almost amateurish, you know. You played it again in the
schoolroom this afternoon, and you altered the last part of it. What
_is_ that thing you played just now?”
“Chopin’s Funeral March.”
“Are you going to make any--any improvements in it, as you did in the
Grieg? And why did you play a funeral march? I suppose the sight of
an old woman like myself, among so many young people, suggested the
thought of death. Ah, yes--very natural.”
This was absolutely intolerable, but Maurice was not allowed to protest
or escape.
“It is a great mistake,” said Aunt Julia, earnestly, “to give one’s
self up to trivialities. We must all die. It is always better to think
about death, even in the drawing-room after dinner. I mean that it’s
better for the aged, like myself. To the young it might perhaps seem a
little gloomy and morbid, but I like it--I enjoy it. I shall be going
to bed directly. Won’t you play a few hymn tunes, Mr. Grey, before I
go? You might play the Dies Iræ.”
She did not go to bed until she had maddened about half the people in
the room. Even Mrs. Meyner found it difficult at times to make excuses
for Aunt Julia. Maurice Grey managed to be moderately polite to her
as a rule; he generally shammed stupidity, and refused to see the
point of any of her sarcasms. He found afterwards that this style of
treatment had impressed Miss Julia Stone. When Marjorie came round to
say good-night to Maurice, she spoke to him about the beetle.
“Do you want that dead beetle?” she asked. “Shall I keep it for you?”
“Yes, keep it.”
“Are you going on collecting again then?”
“No, I don’t think so--but it is too good a specimen to throw away just
anywhere. How would you like to be thrown away?”
“It’s not quite the same thing, you know, Maurice. I’m more important.
But we’ll treat this beetle very well--you’ve just played a funeral
march for it--and then, perhaps, its ghost will come and tell us all
about beetles, and what beetles think about men, and if they know
anything that we don’t.”
“Yes, treat it kindly,” said Maurice, smiling. “Much can always be done
by kindness.”
Marjorie went out of the room laughing; but on the following morning,
when she appeared at breakfast, she was very quiet and subdued.
A note came from Miss Dean, regretting that--“owing to a slight
indisposition”--she was unable to come to teach Marjorie that morning.
Even the prospect of a day’s holiday did not seem to cheer her up.
Maurice found her alone in the garden about an hour afterwards.
“What’s up, Marjorie?” he said. “Aren’t you well?”
“Oh, yes, I’m always well--I’ve got something to tell you though. I saw
it last night.”
“Saw what?”
“The beetle.”
Maurice was a little startled. He too had had a curious dream in which
the beetle had figured. “Look here, Marjorie,” he said; “I’ve nothing
particular to do this morning, and I believe you’d be the better for a
walk. We’ll go over to Weyford, and then go up to St. Margaret’s, if
you don’t mind climbing the hill.”
“Oh, that would be lovely! That’s just the thing. We shan’t get back to
lunch, you know.”
“That’s all right. We’ll lunch in Weyford. I’ll go in and talk to Mrs.
Meyner about it, and you go and get ready.”
The morning sunlight and the cool wind made walking pleasant. That
unkempt bird, whom we have called Magnanimity, was taking out quite a
young bird for a little exercise. They saw Maurice and Marjorie walking
together.
“Those are men,” said the young bird. “Bless your heart--I’ve seen lots
of ’em.”
“Just drop that,” said Magnanimity, sternly. “There’s nothing more
sickening than to hear a mere chick like yourself setting up to be a
complete bird of the world. Fancy taking any notice of contemptible,
ugly men!”
“That young she-man,” said the mere chick, “isn’t at all ugly. I often
wish I were a man.”
“You’d soon wish you were a bird again,” retorted Magnanimity. “Are
you aware that men can’t fly, or lay eggs, or talk our language, or do
anything really worth doing? Are you aware that we old birds lead them
the very devil of a life?”
“How do you do it?” asked the mere chick, quite unable to keep the
wonder and admiration out of the tone of its voice.
“Why, we mock at ’em--sneer at ’em till they can’t bear themselves.”
Marjorie and Maurice walked on, talking of indifferent things. They
climbed the hill, resting occasionally in the shade of the plantations
that grew on its sides. They reached the summit at last, a solitary
place where the ruined chapel of St. Margaret stood in a little
deserted grave-yard. The wind was fresh and cool. They could see far
away into the distance; they could see the river winding along down the
valley, until it was a mere thread of silver; they could see the smoke
curling up from low, red-roofed cottages and farm-buildings, scattered
here and there. Maurice stretched himself at full length on the grass,
and endeavoured to light a cigarette. There was just enough wind to
blow a match out. There always is.
“Now then, Marjorie, you had a dream last night.”
“Yes!”
“And it frightened you.”
“No--no--well, it didn’t exactly frighten me--it made me think. It was
all nonsense, you know, and yet it was the realest dream I ever had in
my life.”
“Stop a minute. You had some coffee in the drawing-room, and that kept
you awake for a long time, you turned about from side to side, and
thought about the beetle. Your bedroom seemed hot and stifling.”
“Yes, that’s all true--how did you know, Maurice?--but it has not got
anything to do with it.”
“Marjorie, if you’d never had that coffee, you’d have never had that
dream. Now, then, let’s hear it. I’ll try to keep awake, but walking
always makes me sleepy.”
“After I had said good-night to everybody, I went up into the
schoolroom and got the beetle, because I was afraid the servants might
throw it away in the morning, and you said you wanted it. I took it
into my own room, and put it down on a table. All the while I was
undressing, I kept thinking about it and wondering if beetles and other
things could really understand, or if it were only men and women who
knew about things, and if all the world were just made for us alone.
Before I got into bed I picked the beetle up, and said to it, ‘Beetle,
you’ve got to come into my dream to-night, and tell me all about it.
Don’t forget.’ Of course that was just a fancy. I didn’t really think
it could understand what I said, or that it would come. I’m not a
baby, though Aunt Julia treats me like one sometimes. Well, for a long
time I couldn’t get to sleep, but at last I did.”
“And then the beetle came and suffocated you, or threw you over a
precipice,” remarked Maurice, drowsily.
“No, that’s not a bit like it. I don’t know how long I had been asleep,
but I dreamed that I woke up suddenly, and that the moonlight was
streaming in at the window. Right in the middle of the moonlight was
the beetle, standing up on his hind legs. He had grown ever so much
bigger, and was as tall as I am. ‘Come on, now,’ he said. ‘How much
longer are you going to keep me waiting? I’m late, as it is.’
“I didn’t feel the least bit afraid of him. I just asked him where we
were going. He opened the window, and pointed upwards. ‘Well,’ I said,
‘you must wait till I’m dressed, else I shall catch cold.’ However, he
wouldn’t wait, and so I got out of bed. We climbed up on to the table
in front of the window. ‘Now then,’ he said, ‘you must keep hold of my
fore-leg, or you’ll fall.’ We didn’t fly or walk; we floated out of the
window, and then upwards, going very quickly and steadily, as if a wind
were blowing us. As we were floating up, the beetle’s head changed till
it became just like Aunt Julia’s. ‘Marjorie’s an unnatural child,’ it
said in Aunt Julia’s voice. ‘She doesn’t care for dolls--doesn’t care
for anything except music and Maurice.’”
Maurice had an unworthy and needless impression that the girl was
making some of this up. He looked at her curiously, as though he were
going to say something; but he refrained, and she continued her dream--
“I didn’t quite know what to say, but I told the beetle that he was
entirely wrong--that I liked papa and mamma very much indeed, and
rather liked almost everybody. Then I asked him how he managed to
speak, being a beetle, and how he could hear me speak. He told me that
neither of us had spoken a word: when I contradicted him, he said that
if I had gone back to my own room I should have found that my real
body was still lying asleep in bed. ‘Now,’ he pointed out, ‘you can’t
speak without your body--so that is proved.’ Then he said that beetles
never spoke, and that as a matter of fact we were not speaking, but
just understanding each other’s silence. Still, it seemed just like
speaking. We must have moved very quickly, because by this time we had
got quite beyond the moon. I could see it ever so far beneath my feet,
and the stars all scattered about the darkness; yet I didn’t remember
passing them on our way up. I didn’t feel at all cold. As the beetle
went on talking--it was just like real talking, so it doesn’t matter
whether it was real or not--he stopped being like Aunt Julia. He got
his own head back again, and his own voice--except that sometimes it
began to be rather like yours. You haven’t gone to sleep, have you?”
Maurice had not gone to sleep, and said so.
“The strangest thing was that although his body had not really
changed--except that it was so much bigger--it didn’t seem at all ugly
now. In fact, I liked to look at it, and didn’t at all mind keeping
hold of its fore-leg. I think the beetle must have known what I was
thinking about, for all of a sudden he said, as if he were sorry for
me: ‘Poor Marjorie! Poor little Marjorie! They’ve taught you all wrong,
and they taught me all wrong. But I had a glimpse of the right thing:
I always knew that human beings were not half as ugly as they seemed to
be. I said as much, but it was of no use to talk to the Dear Friend.
As for Mary--that fat-headed female had believed so many other things
that she had no capacity left for believing any more. I, however, had
got plenty of room left--oh, yes, plenty of room.’ When he said that
he chuckled in the most horrible way you ever heard. ‘Now I come to
think of it,’ he went on, ‘I believe I did _say_ that the human breed
were ugly. It was such a tame thing to believe anything that one said;
it was a thing that Mary always did, and so I didn’t. Marjorie, if the
good people hadn’t been good, I should have liked goodness.’”
“But who were Mary and the Dear Friend?” asked Maurice.
“I don’t know any more than you do. I don’t think he liked the Dear
Friend very much; sometimes he seemed to hate Mary, and sometimes he
seemed to love her and pity her. Now do you know what he told me? He
said positively that all beetles believed that they had souls which
never died, and that the sun, and stars, and everything were made for
them alone. They believed that men, and other animals, had no souls at
all. I told him how very absurd that was, and tried to explain to him
what was really the case; but he only chuckled horribly again. But as
we went up higher and higher he got more grave, and he didn’t laugh
any more; and once or twice he said to me quite sadly, ‘Poor little
Marjorie, you are very young to bother yourself about these things. You
only know part--only part--and I cannot tell you the rest--I may not!’
I began to get quite sorry for him, because it seemed to trouble him;
I think he really wanted to tell me some more things. Just then I saw
up above us a River of Light. It was flowing very swiftly and smoothly,
and looked like melted gold. I don’t know why, but I wanted to plunge
into the River. It seemed to be the only thing worth doing, or that
ever had been worth doing. I never wanted anything so much before in
my life, but the beetle would not let me go. Last of all I began to
cry; I really did, and you know, Maurice, that I hardly ever cry. But
it was of no use; he still kept tight hold of my hand. The darkness
was all grey darkness, except one black piece which stuck up like a
mountain. We stopped on the top of it, and looked down at the River. I
kept on crying--I do not know why, but I think it was because it all
seemed strange and awful. I may have been frightened a little, but it
was not quite like being frightened. There was a long pause, and then
the beetle said, ‘Ah, if you only knew now, Marjorie! And if I had only
known then!’
“Just then out of the grey darkness came a thread of light, like a
little snake, moving very quickly and curling about as if it were glad;
it hurried towards the great River of Light, and melted into it and
was gone. I was eager about it, and asked the beetle what it was. ‘I
may tell you that,’ he replied. ‘It was a soul going home!’ I stopped
crying then; I felt something the way I feel at an evening service in
a church in summer time, when they are singing one of the hymns I like
best. It was a sort of quiet happiness; I can’t explain it properly,
but I never felt so happy as I did then. ‘Beetle,’ I said, ‘you must
tell me the rest now.’
“‘I will tell you one thing,’” he said.
“What was it?” asked Maurice quickly.
For a few seconds Marjorie did not answer. There was a queer dreamy
look in her eyes. At last she said,--
“Maurice, I’m afraid you’ll think now that I have been making all this
up, but I haven’t. I can’t tell you what the beetle said, because I
_don’t know_. It was about you, and it was very important. I don’t
even know whether it was good or bad. It has gone straight out of my
memory, and I _can’t_ get it back again. I’d give anything to be able
to remember it. I’ve been thinking about it all the morning.”
“I believe you entirely,” said Maurice thoughtfully. “I have had much
the same kind of thing happen to me in a dream.”
He did not add that much the same thing had happened to him on the same
night. “How did the dream end?” he went on.
“I awoke directly after the beetle told me that thing that I have
forgotten. It was broad daylight. But when I got up, the beetle was not
on the table where I had put it. I could not find it anywhere.”
“You probably moved it in your sleep. Did you ever walk in your sleep?”
“Once, when I was quite little--almost a baby. I had got out into the
garden, and my nurse found me there.”
Maurice rose, and the two went down the hill together. “I wouldn’t
trouble about all that if I were you,” said Maurice. “These things can
generally be explained in the simplest way when one goes through them
carefully. Coffee, the action of the heart, the position of the body in
bed, the sounds that one hears while asleep, all help to explain a good
deal, you know.”
He did not tell her his own dream. He thought, perhaps rightly, that a
young girl, unacquainted with the study of mathematics, might be unduly
impressed by coincidences which were unusual but did not require a
supernatural explanation. He did not want to frighten her, or let her
grow superstitious. Yet during the day he thought a good deal about the
two dreams.
He had dreamed that he was seated on the one side of the fireplace in
his rooms at Cambridge, and that the beetle, with the same exaggerated
dimensions with which Marjorie had seen him, was seated in a lounge
chair on the other side. They were discussing Maurice’s psychological
studies, and Maurice was describing to him some of the curious
experiments which he had made in conjunction with Mr. Meyner. Every
difficulty that Maurice propounded the beetle made clear at once. He
even suggested fresh problems which had not occurred to Maurice before,
and was equally ready with their solution. His last words before
Maurice awoke were: “There are many things besides which you ought to
know, and of which you have not realised your own ignorance. You will
know them all one day.”
This was all that Maurice could remember of his dream. The difficulties
propounded and the explanations given had passed completely out of his
recollection. He was only conscious that during his dream he had felt
an exhilarating sensation of having known for certain things which he
had thought it impossible that any one, at least in this life, could
know at all.
Shortly afterwards he returned to Cambridge. By this time Marjorie
seemed to have recovered her normal spirits. She made no further
allusion to her dream. She was unaffectedly sorry at the departure of
Maurice.
Maurice had not been long at Cambridge before he received news of the
sudden death of Mr. Meyner. Apart from the friendship he had always
felt for Mr. Meyner, the death seemed to him peculiarly distressing and
pathetic. The man had worked hard at a study which fascinated him, not
from any desire for gain, or fame to be derived from it, but with the
most genuine devotion to the study itself; and he had died before his
work was done, before he had arrived at any large and definite result.
Yet Maurice felt assured that Meyner’s patience, and judgment, and
freedom from prejudice, would, if he had but lived longer, have brought
him some reward, some light. He had always distrusted and undervalued
himself; his humility was genuine, but almost irritating. He had been
at school, and subsequently at college, with Maurice’s guardian, and
had first met Maurice when he was a boy of fifteen; the friendship
between the boy and the middle-aged man had formed slowly, but surely,
since then; yet, although he gave every sign of his liking for Maurice,
he never seemed to expect Maurice to like him in return; he certainly
never realised the admiration which Maurice had for his knowledge and
attainments. So too he loved his wife and only child dearly, and he
knew that they loved him; but he had never realised how much they loved
him, and would very possibly have thought such love almost irrational.
To some extent, perhaps, his studies had spoiled him; he had been
groping in the darkness after great things, and the one result that he
seemed to have found there was a sense of his own insignificance. Yet,
illogically enough, he had never thought others insignificant; he had
never reached the cynical conclusion that nobody matters very much.
If his friends and his sympathies were so few, it was not because the
outside world did not matter to him, but because he could not believe
that he mattered to the outside world. He had died without ever having
learned his own value.
A parcel which was forwarded to Maurice from Mrs. Meyner shortly
afterwards contained the many note-books which her husband had filled
with the evidence he had collected, and the work he had done, until
death interrupted him. With them was a simple and pathetic letter that
he had written to Maurice on the day before he died. “Look through
them,” the letter said, in reference to the note-books. “You will see
and understand what I was aiming at. If you think it worth while, carry
on the investigation which I began; I own that it is some pleasure to
me to think that it is possible that you may do so; that one who was
intimate with my views, and who shared some of my opinions, which are
not generally held, may be able to give those views and opinions their
justification. But I do not want you to pledge yourself in any way, nor
do I ask you to give up your tripos or your career at college for the
purpose.”