beyond all recognition, was making a marvellous inward movement, as
though doubling back upon himself. He turned funnel-wise like water
in a whirling vortex, and then appeared to break up somewhat as a
reflection breaks up and divides in a distorting convex mirror. He
went neither forward nor backwards, neither to the right nor the left,
neither up nor down. But he went. He went utterly. He simply flashed
away out of sight like a vanishing projectile.
All but one leg! Dr. Silence just had the time and the presence of mind
to seize upon the left ankle and boot as it disappeared, and to this he
held on for several seconds like grim death. Yet all the time he knew
it was a foolish and useless thing to do.
The foot was in his grasp one moment, and the next it seemed--this was
the only way he could describe it--inside his own skin and bones, and
at the same time outside his hand and all round it. It seemed mixed up
in some amazing way with his own flesh and blood. Then it was gone, and
he was tightly grasping a draught of heated air.
"Gone! gone! gone!" cried a thick, whispering voice, somewhere deep
within his own consciousness. "Lost! lost! lost!" it repeated, growing
fainter and fainter till at length it vanished into nothing and the
last signs of Mr. Racine Mudge vanished with it.
John Silence locked his red book and replaced it in the cabinet, which
he fastened with a click, and when Barker answered the bell he inquired
if Mr. Mudge had left a card upon the table. It appeared that he had,
and when the servant returned with it, Dr. Silence read the address and
made a note of it. It was in North London.
"Mr. Mudge has gone," he said quietly to Barker, noticing his
expression of alarm.
"He's not taken his 'at with him, sir."
"Mr. Mudge requires no hat where he is now," continued the doctor,
stooping to poke the fire. "But he may return for it----"
"And the humbrella, sir."
"And the umbrella."
"He didn't go out _my_ way, sir, if you please," stuttered the amazed
servant, his curiosity overcoming his nervousness.
"Mr. Mudge has his own way of coming and going, and prefers it. If he
returns by the door at any time remember to bring him instantly to me,
and be kind and gentle with him and ask no questions. Also, remember,
Barker, to think pleasantly, sympathetically, affectionately of him
while he is away. Mr. Mudge is a very suffering gentleman."
Barker bowed and went out of the room backwards, gasping and feeling
round the inside of his collar with three very hot fingers of one hand.
It was two days later when he brought in a telegram to the study. Dr.
Silence opened it, and read as follows:
"Bombay. Just slipped out again. All safe. Have blocked
entrances. Thousand thanks. Address Cooks, London.--MUDGE."
Dr. Silence looked up and saw Barker staring at him bewilderingly. It
occurred to him that somehow he knew the contents of the telegram.
"Make a parcel of Mr. Mudge's things," he said briefly, "and address
them Thomas Cook & Sons, Ludgate Circus. And send them there exactly a
month from to-day and marked 'To be called for.'"
"Yes, sir," said Barker, leaving the room with a deep sigh and a
hurried glance at the waste-paper basket where his master had dropped
the pink paper.
XIV
TRANSITION
John Mudbury was on his way home from the shops, his arms full of
Christmas presents. It was after six o'clock and the streets were
very crowded. He was an ordinary man, lived in an ordinary suburban
flat, with an ordinary wife and four ordinary children. _He_ did not
think them ordinary, but everybody else did. He had ordinary presents
for each one, a cheap blotter for his wife, a cheap air-gun for the
eldest boy, and so forth. He was over fifty, bald, in an office,
decent in mind and habits, of uncertain opinions, uncertain politics,
and uncertain religion. Yet he considered himself a decided, positive
gentleman, quite unaware that the morning newspaper determined his
opinions for the day. He just lived--from day to day. Physically, he
was fit enough, except for a weak heart (which never troubled him);
and his summer holiday was bad golf, while the children bathed and his
wife read "Garvice" on the sands. Like the majority of men, he dreamed
idly of the past, muddled away the present, and guessed vaguely--after
imaginative reading on occasions--at the future.
"I'd like to survive all right," he said, "provided it's better than
this," surveying his wife and children, and thinking of his daily toil.
"Otherwise----!" and he shrugged his shoulders as a brave man should.
He went to church regularly. But nothing in church _convinced_ him
that he did survive, just as nothing in church enticed him into hoping
that he would. On the other hand, nothing in life persuaded him that he
didn't, wouldn't, couldn't. "I'm an Evolutionist," he loved to say to
thoughtful cronies (over a glass), having never heard that Darwinism
had been questioned....
And so he came home gaily, happily, with his bunch of Christmas
presents "for the wife and little ones," stroking himself upon their
keen enjoyment and excitement. The night before he had taken "the wife"
to see _Magic_ at a select London theatre where the Intellectuals
went--and had been extraordinarily stirred. He had gone questioningly,
yet expecting something out of the common. "It's _not_ musical," he
warned her, "nor farce, nor comedy, so to speak"; and in answer to her
question as to what the Critics had said, he had wriggled, sighed, and
put his gaudy necktie straight four times in quick succession. For no
"Man in the Street," with any claim to self-respect, could be expected
to understand what the Critics had said, even if he understood the
Play. And John had answered truthfully: "Oh, they just said things. But
the theatre's always full--and that's the only test."
And just now, as he crossed the crowded Circus to catch his 'bus, it
chanced that his mind (having glimpsed an advertisement) was full of
this particular Play, or, rather, of the effect it had produced upon
him at the time. For it had _thrilled_ him--inexplicably: with its
marvellous speculative hint, its big audacity, its alert and spiritual
beauty.... Thought plunged to find something--plunged after this
bizarre suggestion of a bigger universe, after this quasi-jocular
suggestion that man is not the only--then dashed full-tilt against
a sentence that memory thrust beneath his nose: "Science does _not_
exhaust the Universe"--and at the same time dashed full-tilt against
destruction of another kind as well...!
How it happened, he never exactly knew. He saw a Monster glaring
at him with eyes of blazing fire. It was horrible! It rushed upon
him. He dodged.... Another Monster met him round the corner. Both
came at him simultaneously.... He dodged again--a leap that might
have cleared a hurdle easily, but was too late. Between the pair of
them--his heart literally in his gullet--he was mercilessly caught....
Bones crunched.... There was a soft sensation, icy cold and hot as
fire. Horns and voices roared. Battering-rams he saw, and a carapace
of iron.... Then dazzling light.... "Always _face_ the traffic!" he
remembered with a frantic yell--and, by some extraordinary luck,
escaped miraculously on to the opposite pavement....
There was no doubt about it. By the skin of his teeth he had dodged
a rather ugly death. First ... he felt for his presents--all were
safe. And then, instead of congratulating himself and taking breath,
he hurried homewards--_on foot_, which proved that his mind had lost
control a bit!--thinking only how disappointed the wife and children
would have been if--if anything had happened.... Another thing he
realised, oddly enough, was that he no longer really _loved_ his wife,
but had only great affection for her. What made him think of that,
Heaven only knows, but he _did_ think of it. He was an honest man
without pretence. This came as a discovery somehow. He turned a moment,
and saw the crowd gathered about the entangled taxicabs, policemen's
helmets gleaming in the lights of the shop windows ... then hurried on
again, his thoughts full of the joy his presents would give ... of the
scampering children ... and of his wife--bless her silly heart!--eyeing
the mysterious parcels....
And, though he never could explain _how_, he presently stood at the
door of the jail-like building that contained his flat, having walked
the whole three miles! His thoughts had been so busy and absorbed that
he had hardly noticed the length of weary trudge.... "Besides," he
reflected, thinking of the narrow escape, "I've had a nasty shock.
It was a d----d near thing, now I come to think of it...." He did
feel a bit shaky and bewildered.... Yet, at the same time, he felt
extraordinarily jolly and light-hearted....
He counted his Christmas parcels ... hugged himself in anticipatory
joy ... and let himself in swiftly with his latchkey. "I'm late," he
realised, "but when she sees the brown-paper parcels, she'll forget
to say a word. God bless the old faithful soul." And he softly used
the key a second time and entered his flat on tiptoe.... In his mind
was the master impulse of that afternoon--the pleasure these Christmas
presents would give his wife and children....
He heard a noise. He hung up hat and coat in the pokey vestibule (they
never called it "hall") and moved softly towards the parlour door,
holding the packages behind him. Only of them he thought, not of
himself--of his family, that is, not of the packages. Pushing the door
cunningly ajar, he peeped in slyly. To his amazement, the room was full
of people! He withdrew quickly, wondering what it meant. A party? And
without his knowing about it! Extraordinary!... Keen disappointment
came over him. But, as he stepped back, the vestibule, he saw, was full
of people too.
He was uncommonly surprised, yet somehow not surprised at all. People
were congratulating him. There was a perfect mob of them. Moreover, he
knew them all--vaguely remembered them, at least. And they all knew him.
"Isn't it a game?" laughed some one, patting him on the back. "_They_
haven't the least idea...!"
And the speaker--it was old John Palmer, the bookkeeper at the
office--emphasised the "they."
"Not the least idea," he answered with a smile, saying something he
didn't understand, yet knew was right.
His face, apparently, showed the utter bewilderment he felt. The shock
of the collision had been greater than he realised evidently. His mind
was wandering.... Possibly! Only the odd thing was--he had never felt
so clear-headed in his life. Ten thousand things grew simple suddenly.
But, how thickly these people pressed about him, and how--familiarly!
"My parcels," he said, joyously pushing his way across the throng.
"These are Christmas presents I've bought for them." He nodded toward
the room. "I've saved for weeks--stopped cigars and billiards and--and
several other good things--to buy them."
"Good man!" said Palmer with a happy laugh. "It's the heart that
counts."
Mudbury looked at him. Palmer had said an amazing truth, only--people
would hardly understand and believe him.... Would they?
"Eh?" he asked, feeling stuffed and stupid, muddled somewhere between
two meanings, one of which was gorgeous and the other stupid beyond
belief.
"If you _please_, Mr. Mudbury, step inside. They are expecting you,"
said a kindly, pompous voice. And, turning sharply, he met the gentle,
foolish eyes of Sir James Epiphany, a director of the Bank where he
worked.
The effect of the voice was instantaneous from long habit.
"They are?" he smiled from his heart, and advanced as from the custom
of many years. Oh, how happy and gay he felt! His affection for his
wife was real. Romance, indeed, had gone, but he needed her--and she
needed him. And the children--Milly, Bill, and Jean--he deeply loved
them. Life _was_ worth living indeed!
In the room was a crowd, but--an astounding silence. John Mudbury
looked round him. He advanced towards his wife, who sat in the corner
arm-chair with Milly on her knee. A lot of people talked and moved
about. Momentarily the crowd increased. He stood in front of them--in
front of Milly and his wife. And he spoke--holding out his packages.
"It's Christmas Eve," he whispered shyly, "and I've--brought you
something--something for everybody. Look!" He held the packages before
their eyes.
"Of course, of course," said a voice behind him, "but you may hold them
out like that for a century. They'll _never_ see them!"
"Of course they won't. But I love to do the old, sweet thing," replied
John Mudbury--then wondered with a gasp of stark amazement why he said
it.
"_I_ think----" whispered Milly, staring round her.
"Well, _what_ do you think?" her mother asked sharply. "You're always
thinking something queer."
"I think," the child continued dreamily, "that Daddy's already here."
She paused, then added with a child's impossible conviction, "I'm sure
he is. I _feel_ him."
There was an extraordinary laugh. Sir James Epiphany laughed. The
others--the whole crowd of them--also turned their heads and smiled.
But the mother, thrusting the child away from her, rose up suddenly
with a violent start. Her face had turned to chalk. She stretched her
arms out--into the air before her. She gasped and shivered. There was
an awful anguish in her eyes.
"Look!" repeated John, "these are the presents that I brought."
But his voice apparently was soundless. And, with a spasm of icy pain,
he remembered that Palmer and Sir James--some years ago--had died.
"It's magic," he cried, "but--I love you, Jinny--I love you--and--and I
have always been true to you--as true as steel. We need each other--oh,
can't you see--we go on together--you and I--for ever and ever----"
"_Think_," interrupted an exquisitely tender voice, "don't shout!
_They_ can't hear you--now." And, turning, John Mudbury met the eyes of
Everard Minturn, their President of the year before. Minturn had gone
down with the _Titanic_.
He dropped his parcels then. His heart gave an enormous leap of joy.
He saw her face--the face of his wife--look through him.
But the child gazed straight into his eyes. She _saw_ him.
The next thing he knew was that he heard something tinkling ... far,
far away. It sounded miles below him--inside him--he was sounding
himself--all utterly bewildering--like a bell. It _was_ a bell.
Milly stooped down and picked the parcels up. Her face shone with
happiness and laughter....
But a man came in soon after, a man with a ridiculous, solemn face, a
pencil, and a notebook. He wore a dark blue helmet. Behind him came a
string of other men. They carried something ... something ... he could
not see exactly what it was. But when he pressed forward through the
laughing throng to gaze upon it, he dimly made out two eyes, a nose, a
chin, a deep red smear, and a pair of folded hands upon an overcoat. A
woman's form fell down upon them then, and ... he heard ... soft sounds
of children weeping strangely ... and other sounds ... sounds as of
familiar voices ... laughing ... laughing gaily.
"They'll join us presently. It goes like a flash...."
And, turning with great happiness in his heart, he saw that Sir James
had said it, holding Palmer by the arm as with some natural yet
unexpected love of sympathetic friendship.
"Come on," said Palmer, smiling like a man who accepts a gift in
universal fellowship, "let's help 'em. They'll never understand....
Still, we can always try."
The entire throng moved up with laughter and amusement. It was a
moment of hearty, genuine life at last. Delight and Joy and Peace were
everywhere.
Then John Mudbury realised the truth--that he was _dead_.
XV
THE TRADITION
The noises outside the little flat at first were very disconcerting
after living in the country. They made sleep difficult. At the
cottage in Sussex where the family had lived, night brought deep,
comfortable silence, unless the wind was high, when the pine trees
round the duck-pond made a sound like surf, or if the gale was from the
south-west, the orchard roared a bit unpleasantly.
But in London it was very different; sleep was easier in the daytime
than at night. For after nightfall the rumble of the traffic became
spasmodic instead of continuous; the motor-horns startled like warnings
of alarm; after comparative silence the furious rushing of a taxi-cab
touched the nerves. From dinner till eleven o'clock the streets
subsided gradually; then came the army from theatres, parties, and late
dinners, hurrying home to bed. The motor-horns during this hour were
lively and incessant, like bugles of a regiment moving into battle.
The parents rarely retired until this attack was over. If quick about
it, sleep was possible then before the flying of the night-birds--an
uncertain squadron--screamed half the street awake again. But,
these finally disposed of, a delightful hush settled down upon the
neighbourhood, profounder far than any peace of the countryside. The
deep rumble of the produce wagons, coming in to the big London markets
from the farms--generally about three A.M.--held no disturbing quality.
But sometimes in the stillness of very early morning, when streets
were empty and pavements all deserted, there was a sound of another
kind that was startling and unwelcome. For it was ominous. It came with
a clattering violence that made nerves quiver and forced the heart to
pause and listen. A strange resonance was in it, a volume of sound,
moreover, that was hardly justified by its cause. For it was hoofs. A
horse swept hurrying up the deserted street, and was close upon the
building in a moment. It was audible suddenly, no gradual approach from
a distance, but as though it turned a corner from soft ground that
muffled the hoofs, on to the echoing, hard paving that emphasised the
dreadful clatter. Nor did it die away again when once the house was
reached. It ceased as abruptly as it came. The hoofs did not go away.
It was the mother who heard them first, and drew her husband's
attention to their disagreeable quality.
"It is the mail-vans, dear," he answered. "They go at four A. M. to
catch the early trains into the country."
She looked up sharply, as though something in his tone surprised her.
"But there's no sound of wheels," she said. And then, as he did not
reply, she added gravely, "You have heard it too, John. I can tell."
"I have," he said. "I have heard it--twice."
And they looked at one another searchingly, each trying to read the
other's mind. She did not question him; he did not propose writing to
complain in a newspaper; both understood something that neither of them
understood.
"I heard it first," she then said softly, "the night before Jack got
the fever. And as I listened, I heard him crying. But when I went in to
see he was asleep. The noise stopped just outside the building." There
was a shadow in her eyes as she said this, and a hush crept in between
her words. "I did not hear it _go_." She said this almost beneath her
breath.
He looked a moment at the ground; then, coming towards her, he took
her in his arms and kissed her. And she clung very tightly to him.
"Sometimes," he said in a quiet voice, "a mounted policeman passes down
the street, I think."
"It is a horse," she answered. But whether it was a question or mere
corroboration he did not ask, for at that moment the doctor arrived,
and the question of little Jack's health became the paramount matter of
immediate interest. The great man's verdict was uncommonly disquieting.
All that night they sat up in the sick room. It was strangely still, as
though by one accord the traffic avoided the house where a little boy
hung between life and death. The motor-horns even had a muffled sound,
and heavy drays and wagons used the wide streets; there were fewer
taxicabs about, or else they flew by noiselessly. Yet no straw was
down; the expense prohibited that. And towards morning, very early, the
mother decided to watch alone. She had been a trained nurse before her
marriage, accustomed when she was younger to long vigils. "You go down,
dear, and get a little sleep," she urged in a whisper. "He's quiet now.
At five o'clock I'll come for you to take my place."
"You'll fetch me at once," he whispered, "if----" then hesitated as
though breath failed him. A moment he stood there staring from her
face to the bed. "If you hear anything," he finished. She nodded, and
he went downstairs to his study, not to his bedroom. He left the door
ajar. He sat in darkness, listening. Mother, he knew, was listening,
too, beside the bed. His heart was very full, for he did not believe
the boy could live till morning. The picture of the room was all the
time before his eyes--the shaded lamp, the table with the medicines,
the little wasted figure beneath the blankets, and mother close beside
it, listening. He sat alert, ready to fly upstairs at the smallest cry.
But no sound broke the stillness; the entire neighbourhood was silent;
all London slept. He heard the clock strike three in the dining-room at
the end of the corridor. It was still enough for that. There was not
even the heavy rumble of a single produce wagon, though usually they
passed about this time on their way to Smithfield and Covent Garden
markets. He waited, far too anxious to close his eyes.... At four
o'clock he would go up and relieve her vigil. Four, he knew, was the
time when life sinks to its lowest ebb.... Then, in the middle of his
reflections, thought stopped dead, and it seemed his heart stopped too.
Far away, but coming nearer with extraordinary rapidity, a sharp,
clear sound broke out of the surrounding stillness--a horse's hoofs.
At first it was so distant that it might have been almost on the high
roads of the country, but the amazing speed with which it came closer,
and the sudden increase of the beating sound, was such, that by the
time he turned his head it seemed to have entered the street outside.
It was within a hundred yards of the building. The next second it was
before the very door. And something in him blenched. He knew a moment's
complete paralysis. The abrupt cessation of the heavy clatter was
strangest of all. It came like lightning, it struck, it paused. It did
not go away again. Yet the sound of it was still beating in his ears
as he dashed upstairs three steps at a time. It seemed in the house as
well, on the stairs behind him, in the little passage-way, _inside the
very bedroom_. It was an appalling sound. Yet he entered a room that
was quiet, orderly, and calm. It was silent. Beside the bed his wife
sat, holding Jack's hand and stroking it. She was soothing him; her
face was very peaceful. No sound but her gentle whisper was audible.
He controlled himself by a tremendous effort, but his face betrayed
his consternation and distress. "Hush," she said beneath her breath;
"he's sleeping much more calmly now. The crisis, bless God, is over, I
do believe. I dared not leave him."
He saw in a moment that she was right, and an untenable relief passed
over him. He sat down beside her, very cold, yet perspiring with heat.
"You heard----?" he asked after a pause.
"Nothing," she replied quickly, "except his pitiful, wild words when
the delirium was on him. It's passed. It lasted but a moment, or I'd
have called you."
He stared closely into her tired eyes. "And his words?" he asked in a
whisper. Whereupon she told him quietly that the little chap had sat up
with wide-opened eyes and talked excitedly about a "great, great horse"
he heard, but that was not "coming for him." "He laughed and said he
would not go with it because he 'was not ready yet.' Some scrap of talk
he had overheard from us," she added, "when we discussed the traffic
once...."
"But you heard nothing?" he repeated almost impatiently.
No, she had heard nothing. After all, then, he _had_ dozed a moment in
his chair....