followed the matter a little further in another form. He was a lawyer,
a lazy, but in some ways a learned one; for, his tastes being studious,
he had originally learned the trade he had never used. More in defiance
than in hope, he once carried the matter into the Courts, pleading his
own cause on the basis of a law of Henry the Third against frightening
the fish of the King’s liege subjects in the Thames Valley. The judge,
in giving judgment, complimented him on the ability and plausibility of
his contention, but ultimately rejected it on grounds equally historic
and remote. His lordship argued that no test seemed to be provided for
ascertaining the degree of fear in the fish, or whether it amounted
to that bodily fear of which the law took cognizance. But the learned
judge pointed out the precedent of a law of Richard the Second against
certain witches who had frightened children; which had been interpreted
by so great an authority as Coke in the sense that the child “must
return and of his own will testify to his fear.” It did not seem to
be alleged that any one of the fish in question had returned and laid
any such testimony before any proper authority; and he therefore gave
judgment for the defendants. And when the learned judge happened to
meet Lord Normantowers (as he was by this time) out at dinner that
evening, he was gaily rallied and congratulated by that new nobleman on
the lucidity and finality of his judgment. Indeed, the learned judge
had really relished the logic both of his own and Hood’s contention;
but the conclusion was what he would have come to in any case. For our
judges are not hampered by any hide-bound code; they are progressive,
like Dr. Hunter, and ally themselves on principle with the progressive
forces of the age, especially those they are likely to meet out at
dinner.
But it was this abortive law case that led up to something that
altogether obliterated it in a blaze of glory, so far as Mr. Owen
Hood was concerned. He had just left the courts, and turning down the
streets that led in the direction of the station, he made his way
thither in something of a brown study, as was his wont. The streets
were filled with faces; it struck him for the first time that there
were thousands and thousands of people in the world. There were more
faces at the railway station, and then, when he had glanced idly at
four or five of them, he saw one that was to him as incredible as the
face of the dead.
She was coming casually out of the tea-room, carrying a handbag, just
like anybody else. That mystical perversity of his mind, which had
insisted on sealing up the sacred memory like something hardly to be
sought in mere curiosity, had fixed it in its original colours and
setting, like something of which no detail could be changed without
the vision dissolving. He would have conceived it almost impossible
that she could appear in anything but white or out of anything but a
wood. And he found himself turned topsy-turvy by an old and common
incredulity of men in his condition; being startled by the coincidence
that blue suited her as well as white; and that in what he remembered
of that woodland there was something else; something to be said even
for teashops and railway stations.
She stopped in front of him and her pale, fluttering eyelids lifted
from her blue-grey eyes.
“Why,” she said, “you are the boy that jumped in the river!”
“I’m no longer a boy,” answered Hood, “but I’m ready to jump in the
river again.”
“Well, don’t jump on the railway-line,” she said, as he turned with a
swiftness suggestive of something of the kind.
“To tell you the truth,” he said, “I was thinking of jumping into your
railway-train. Do you mind if I jump into your railway-train?”
“Well, I’m going to Birkstead,” she said rather doubtfully.
Mr. Owen Hood did not in the least care where she was going, as he
had resolved to go there; but as a matter of fact, he remembered a
wayside station on that line that lay very near to what he had in view;
so he tumbled into the carriage if possible with more alacrity; and
landscapes shot by them as they sat looking in a dazed and almost
foolish fashion at each other. At last the girl smiled with a sense of
the absurdity of the thing.
“I heard about you from a friend of yours,” she said; “he came to call
on us soon after it happened; at least that was when he first came. You
know Dr. Hunter, don’t you?”
“Yes,” replied Owen, a shadow coming over his shining hour. “Do you--do
you know him well?”
“I know him pretty well now,” said Miss Elizabeth Seymour.
The shadow on his spirit blackened swiftly; he suspected something
quite suddenly and savagely. Hunter, in Crane’s old phrase, was not
a man who let the grass grow under his feet. It was so like him to
have somehow used the incident as an introduction to the Seymours.
Things were always stepping-stones for Hunter, and the little rock
in the river had been a stepping-stone to the country house. But was
the country house a stepping-stone to something else? Suddenly Hood
realized that all his angers had been very abstract angers. He had
never hated a man before.
At that moment the train stopped at the station of Cowford.
“I wish you’d get out here with me,” he said abruptly, “only for a
little--and it might be the last time. I want you to do something.”
She looked at him with a curious expression and said in a rather low
voice, “What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to come and pick bluebells,” he said harshly.
She stepped out of the train, and they went up a winding country road
without a word.
“I remember!” she said suddenly. “When you get to the top of this hill
you see the wood where the bluebells were, and your little island
beyond.”
“Come on and see it,” said Owen.
They stepped on the crest of the hill and stood. Below them the black
factory belched its livid smoke into the air; and where the wood had
been were rows of little houses like boxes, built of dirty yellow brick.
Hood spoke. “And when you shall see the abomination of desolation
sitting in the Holy of Holies--isn’t that when the world is supposed
to end? I wish the world would end now; with you and me standing on a
hill.”
She was staring at the place with parted lips and more than her
ordinary pallor; he knew she understood something monstrous and
symbolic in the scene; yet her first remark was jerky and trivial. On
the nearest of the yellow brick boxes were visible the cheap colours
of various advertisements; and larger than the rest a blue poster
proclaiming “Vote for Hunter.” With a final touch of tragic pathos,
Hood remembered that it was the last and most sensational day of the
election. But the girl had already found her voice.
“Is that Dr. Hunter?” she asked with commonplace curiosity; “is he
standing for Parliament?”
A load that lay on Hood’s mind like a rock suddenly rose like an eagle;
and he felt as if the hill he stood on were higher than Everest. By the
insight of his own insanity, he knew well enough that _she_ would have
known well enough whether Hunter was standing, if--if there had been
anything like what he supposed. The removal of the steadying weight
staggered him, and he had something quite indefensible.
“I thought you would know. I thought you and he were probably--well,
the truth is I thought you were engaged, though I really don’t know
why.”
“I can’t imagine why,” said Elizabeth Seymour. “I heard he was engaged
to Lord Normantowers’s daughter. They’ve got our old place now, you
know.”
There was a silence and then Hood spoke suddenly in a loud and cheerful
voice.
“Well, what I say is ‘Vote for Hunter,’” he said heartily. “After all,
why not vote for Hunter? Good old Hunter! I hope he’ll be a Member of
Parliament. I hope he’ll be Prime Minister. I hope he’ll be President
of the World State that Wells talks about. By George, he deserves to
be Emperor of the Solar System.”
“But why,” she protested, “why should he deserve all that?”
“For not being engaged to you, of course,” he replied.
“Oh!” she said, and something of a secret shiver in her voice went
through him like a silver bell.
Abruptly, all of a sudden, the rage of raillery seemed to leave his
voice and his face, so that his Napoleonic profile looked earnest and
eager and much younger, like the profile of the young Napoleon. His
wide shoulders lost the slight stoop that books had given them, and his
rather wild red hair fell away from his lifted head.
“There is one thing I must tell you about him,” he said, “and one
thing you must hear about me. My friends tell me I am a drifter and a
dreamer; that I let the grass grow under my feet; I must tell you at
least how and why I once let it grow. Three days after that day by the
river, I talked to Hunter; he was attending me and he talked about it
and you. Of course he knew nothing about either. But he is a practical
man; a very practical man; he does not dream or drift. From the way
he talked I knew he was considering even then how the accident could
be turned to account; to his account and perhaps to mine too; for he
is good-natured; yes, he is quite good-natured. I think that if I had
taken his hint and formed a sort of social partnership, I might have
known you six years sooner, not as a memory, but--an acquaintance. And
I could not do it. Judge me how you will, I could not bring myself to
do it. That is what is meant by being born with a bee in the bonnet,
with an impediment in the speech, with a stumbling-block in the path,
with a sulky scruple in the soul. I could not bear to approach you by
that door, with that gross and grinning flunkey holding it open. I
could not bear that suffocatingly substantial snob to bulk so big in
my story or know so much of my secret. A revulsion I could never utter
made me feel that the vision should remain my own even by remaining
unfulfilled; but it should not be vulgarized. That is what is meant by
being a failure in life. And when my best friend made a prophecy about
me, and said there was something I should never do, I thought he was
right.”
“Why, what do you mean?” she asked rather faintly, “what was it you
would never do?”
“Never mind that now,” he said, with the shadow of a returning smile.
“Rather strange things are stirring in me just now, and who knows but
I may attempt something yet? But before all else, I must make clear
for once what I am and for what I lived. There are men like me in the
world; I am far from thinking they are the best or the most valuable;
but they exist, to confound all the clever people and the realists and
the new novelists. There has been and there is only one thing for me;
something that in the normal sense I never even knew. I walked about
the world blind, with my eyes turned inwards, looking at you. For days
after a night when I had dreamed of you, I was broken; like a man who
had seen a ghost. I read over and over the great and grave lines of the
old poets, because they alone were worthy of you. And when I saw you
again by chance, I thought the world had already ended; and it was that
return and tryst beyond the grave that is too good to be true.”
“I do not think,” she answered in a low voice, “that the belief is too
good to be true.”
As he looked at her a thrill went through him like a message too swift
to be understood; and at the back of his mind something awoke that
repeated again and again like a song the same words: “too good to be
true.” There was always something pathetic, even in her days of pride,
about the short-sighted look of her half-closed eyes; but it was for
other reasons that they were now blinking in the strong white sunlight,
almost as if they were blind. They were blind and bright with tears:
she mastered her voice and it was steady.
“You talk about failures,” she said. “I suppose most people would call
me a failure and all my people failures now; except those who would say
we never failed, because we never had to try. Anyhow, we’re all poor
enough now; I don’t know whether you know that I’m teaching music.
I dare say we deserved to go. I dare say we were useless. Some of us
tried to be harmless. But--but now I _must_ say something, about some
of us who tried rather hard to be harmless--in that way. The new people
will tell you those ideals were Victorian and Tennysonian, and all the
rest of it--well, it doesn’t matter what they say. They know quite as
little about us as we about them. But to you, when you talk like that
... what can I do, but tell you that if we were stiff, if we were cold,
if we were careful and conservative, it was because deep down in our
souls some of us _did_ believe that there might be loyalty and love
like that, for which a woman might well wait even to the end of the
world. What is it to these people if we choose not to be drugged or
distracted with anything less worthy? But it would be hard indeed if
when I find it _does_ exist after all ... hard on you, harder on me,
if when I had really found it at last....” The catch in her voice came
again and silence caught and held her.
He took one stride forward as into the heart of a whirlwind; and they
met on the top of that windy hill as if they had come from the ends of
the earth.
“This is an epic,” he said, “which is rather an action than a word. I
have lived with words too long.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you have turned me into a man of action,” he replied. “So long
as you were in the past, nothing was better than the past. So long as
you were only a dream, nothing was better than dreaming. But now I am
going to do something that no man has ever done before.”
He turned towards the valley and flung out his hand with a gesture,
almost as if the hand had held a sword.
“I am going to break the Prophecy,” he cried in a loud voice. “I am
going to defy the omens of my doom and make fun of my evil star. Those
who called me a failure shall own I have succeeded where all humanity
has failed. The real hero is not he who is bold enough to fulfil the
predictions, but he who is bold enough to falsify them. And you shall
see one falsified to-night.”
“What in the world are you going to do?” she asked.
He laughed suddenly. “The first thing to do,” he cried, swinging round
with a new air of resolution and even cheerfulness, “the very first
thing to do is to Vote For Hunter. Or, at any rate, help to get him
into Parliament.”
“But why in the world,” she asked wondering, “should you want so much
to get Dr. Hunter into Parliament?”
“Well, one must do something,” he said with an appearance of easy good
sense, “to celebrate the occasion. We must do something; and after all
he must go somewhere, poor devil. You will say, why not throw him into
the river? It would relieve the feelings and make a splash. But I’m
going to make something much bigger than a splash. Besides, I don’t
want him in my nice river. I’d much rather pick him up and throw him
all the way to Westminster. Much more sensible and suitable. Obviously
there ought to be a brass band and a torchlight procession somewhere
to-night; and why shouldn’t he have a bit of the fun?”
He stopped suddenly as if surprised at his own words: for indeed his
own phrase had fallen, for him, with the significance of a falling star.
“Of course!” he muttered. “A torchlight procession! I’ve been feeling
that what I wanted was trumpets and what I really want is torches. Yes,
I believe it could be done! Yes, the hour is come! By stars and blazes,
I will give him a torchlight procession!”
He had been almost dancing with excitement on the top of the ridge; now
he suddenly went bounding down the slope beyond, calling to the girl to
follow, as carelessly as if they had been two children playing at hide
and seek. Strangely enough, perhaps, she did follow; more strangely
still when we consider the extravagant scenes through which she allowed
herself to be led. They were scenes more insanely incongruous with all
her sensitive and even secretive dignity than if she had been changing
hats with a costermonger on a Bank Holiday. For there the world would
only be loud with vulgarity, and here it was also loud with lies. She
could never have described that Saturnalia of a political election; but
she did dimly feel the double impression of a harlequinade at the end
of a pantomime and of Hood’s phrase about the end of the world. It was
as if a Bank Holiday could also be a Day of Judgment. But as the farce
could no longer offend her, so the tragedy could no longer terrify.
She went through it all with a wan smile, which perhaps nobody in the
world would have known her well enough to interpret. It was not in the
normal sense excitement; yet it was something much more positive than
patience. In a sense perhaps, more than ever before in her lonely life,
she was walled up in her ivory tower; but it was all alight within, as
if it were lit with candles or lined with gold.
Hood’s impetuous movements brought them to the bank of the river and
the outer offices of the factory, all of which were covered with the
coloured posters of the candidature, and one of which was obviously
fitted up as a busy and bustling committee-room. Hood actually met
Mr. Low coming out of it, buttoned up in a fur coat and bursting
with speechless efficiency. But Mr. Low’s beady black eyes glistened
with an astonishment bordering on suspicion when Hood in the most
hearty fashion offered his sympathy and co-operation. That strange
subconscious fear, that underlay all the wealthy manager’s success and
security in this country, always came to the surface at the sight of
Owen Hood’s long ironical face. Just at that moment, however, one of
the local agents rushed at him in a distracted fashion, with telegrams
in his hand. They were short of canvassers; they were short of cars;
they were short of speakers; the crowd at Little Puddleton had been
waiting half an hour; Dr. Hunter could not get round to them till ten
past nine, and so on. The agent in his agony would probably have hailed
a Margate nigger and entrusted him with the cause of the great National
Party, without any really philosophical inquiry into the nigger’s
theory of citizenship. For all such over-practical push and bustle in
our time is always utterly unpractical at the last minute and in the
long run. On that night Robert Owen Hood would have been encouraged to
go anywhere and say anything; and he did. It might be interesting to
imagine what the lady thought about it; but it is possible that she did
not think about it. She had a radiantly abstracted sense of passing
through a number of ugly rooms and sheds with flaring gas and stacks of
leaflets behind which little irritable men ran about like rabbits. The
walls were covered with large allegorical pictures printed in line or
in a few bright colours, representing Dr. Hunter as clad in armour, as
slaying dragons, as rescuing ladies rather like classical goddesses,
and so on. Lest it should be too literally understood that Dr. Hunter
was in the habit of killing dragons in his daily round, as a form of
field-sport, the dragon was inscribed with its name in large letters.
Apparently its name was “National Extravagance.” Lest there should be
any doubt about the alternative which Dr. Hunter had discovered as a
corrective to extravagance, the sword which he was thrusting through
the dragon’s body was inscribed with the word “Economy.” Elizabeth
Seymour, through whose happy but bewildered mind these pictures
passed, could not but reflect vaguely that she herself had lately but
to practise a good deal of economy and resist a good many temptations
to extravagance; but it would never have occurred to her unaided
imagination to conceive the action as that of plunging a sword into
a scaly monster of immense size. In the central committee-room they
actually came face to face for a moment with the candidate, who came
in very hot and breathless with a silk hat on the back of his head;
where he had possibly forgotten it, for he certainly did not remove it.
She was a little ashamed of being sensitive about such trifles; but
she came to the conclusion that she would not like to have a husband
standing for Parliament.
“We’ve rounded up all those people down Bleak Row,” said Dr. Hunter.
“No good going down The Hole and those filthy places. No votes there.
Streets ought to be abolished and the people too.”
“Well, we’ve had a very good meeting in the Masonic Hall,” said the
agent cheerfully. “Lord Normantowers spoke, and really he got through
all right. Told some stories, you know; and they stood it capitally.”
“And now,” said Owen Hood, slapping his hands together in an almost
convivial manner, “what about this torchlight procession?”
“This what procession?” asked the agent.
“Do you mean to tell me,” said Hood sternly, “that arrangements are
not complete for the torchlight procession of Dr. Hunter? That you are
going to let this night of triumph pass without kindling a hundred
flames to light the path of the conqueror? Do you realize that the
hearts of a whole people have spontaneously stirred and chosen him?
That the suffering poor murmured in their sleep ‘Vote For Hunter’
long before the Caucus came by a providential coincidence to the
same conclusion? Would not the people in The Hole set fire to their
last poor sticks of furniture to do him honour? Why, from this chair
alone----”
He caught up the chair on which Hunter had been sitting and began to
break it enthusiastically. In this he was hastily checked; but he
actually succeeded in carrying the company with him in his proposal,
thus urged at the eleventh hour.
By nightfall he had actually organized his torchlight procession,
escorting the triumphant Hunter, covered with blue ribbons, to the
riverside, rather as if the worthy doctor were to be baptized like a
convert or drowned like a witch. For that matter, Hood might possibly
intend to burn the witch; for he brandished a blazing torch he carried
so as to make a sort of halo round Hunter’s astonished countenance.
Then, springing on the scrap-heap by the brink of the river, he
addressed the crowd for the last time.
“Fellow-citizens, we meet upon the shore of the Thames, the Thames
which is to Englishmen all that the Tiber ever was to Romans. We meet
in a valley which has been almost as much the haunt of English poets as
of English birds. Never was there an art so native to our island as our
old national tradition of landscape-painting in water-colour; never was
that water-colour so luminous or so delicate as when dedicated to these
holy waters. It was in such a scene that one of the most exquisite of
our elder poets repeated as a burden to his meditations the single
line, ‘Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song.’
“Rumours have been heard of some intention to trouble these waters; but
we have been amply reassured. Names that now stand as high as those of
our national poets and painters are a warrant that the stream is still
as clear and pure and beneficent as of old. We all know the beautiful
work that Mr. Bulton has done in the matter of filters. Dr. Hunter
supports Mr. Bulton. I mean Mr. Bulton supports Dr. Hunter. I may also
mention no less a man than Mr. Low. Sweet Thames, run softly till I end
my song.
“But, then, for that matter, we all support Dr. Hunter. I myself have
always found him quite supportable; I should say quite satisfactory. He
is truly a progressive, and nothing gives me greater pleasure than to
watch him progress. As somebody said, I lie awake at night; and in the
silence of the whole universe, I seem to hear him climbing, climbing,
climbing. All the numerous patients among whom he has laboured so
successfully in this locality will join in a heartfelt expression of
joy if he passes to the higher world of Westminster. I trust I shall
not be misunderstood. Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song.
“My only purpose to-night is to express that unanimity. There may
have been times when I differed from Dr. Hunter; but I am glad to say
that all that is passed, and I have now nothing but the most friendly
feelings towards him, for reasons which I will not mention, though I
have plenty to say. In token of this reconciliation I here solemnly
cast from me this torch. As that firebrand is quenched in the cool
crystal waters of that sacred stream, so shall all such feuds perish in
the healing pool of universal peace.”
Before anybody knew what he was doing, he had whirled his flambeau in a
flaming wheel round his head and sent it flying like a meteor out into
the dim eddies of the river.
The next moment a short, sharp cry was uttered, and every face in that
crowd was staring at the river. All the faces were visibly staring, for
they were all lit up as by a ghastly firelight by a wide wan unnatural
flame that leapt up from the very surface of the stream; a flame that
the crowd watched as it might have watched a comet.
“There,” cried Owen Hood, turning suddenly on the girl and seizing
her arm, as if demanding congratulations. “So much for old Crane’s
prophecy!”
“Who in the world is Old Crane?” she asked, “and what did he prophesy?
Is he something like Old Moore?”
“Only an old friend,” said Hood hastily, “only an old friend of mine.
It’s what he said that’s so important. He didn’t like my moping about
with books and a fishing-rod, and he said, standing on that very
island, ‘You may know a lot; but I don’t think you’ll ever set the
Thames on fire. I’ll eat my hat if you do.’”
But the story of how old Crane ate his hat is one upon which some
readers at least can now look back as on labour and suffering bravely
endured. And if it be possible for any of them to desire to know any
more either about Mr. Crane or Mr. Hood, then must they gird themselves
for the ordeal of reading the story of The Unobtrusive Traffic of
Captain Pierce, and their trials are for a time deferred.
III
THE UNOBTRUSIVE TRAFFIC OF CAPTAIN PIERCE
III
THE UNOBTRUSIVE TRAFFIC OF CAPTAIN PIERCE