Four,” said Lord Eden, referring to the paper before him. “By the
provisions of the new Bill the public control in such cases will be
vested in the Lord-Lieutenant of the County. In the particular case of
your castle--let me see--why, yes, of course, you are Lord-Lieutenant
of that county.”
Little Lord Normantowers was staring, with his stiff hair all standing
on end; but a new look was dawning in his shrewd though small-featured
face.
“The case of Warbridge Castle is different,” said the Prime Minister.
“It happens unfortunately to stand in a district desolated by all
the recent troubles about swine-fever, touching which the Health
Controller” (here he bowed to Sir Horace Hunter) “has shown such
admirable activity. It has been necessary to place the whole of this
district in the hands of the Health Controller, that he may study any
traces of swine-fever that may be found in the Castle, the Cathedral,
the Vicarage, and so on. So much for that case, which stands somewhat
apart; the others are mostly normal. Rosenbaum Castle--I should say
Rosewood Castle--being of a later date, comes under Section Five,
and the appointment of a permanent Castle Custodian is left to the
discretion of the Government. In this case the Government has decided
to appoint Mr. Rosewood Low to the post, in recognition of his local
services to social science and economics. In all these cases, of
course, due compensation will be paid to the present owners of the
estates, and ample salaries and expenses of entertainment paid to the
new officials, that the places may be kept up in a manner worthy of
their historical and national character.”
He paused, as if for cheers, and Sir Horace was vaguely irritated into
saying: “But look here, my castle----”
“Damn it all!” said the Prime Minister, with his first flash of
impatience and sincerity. “Can’t you see you’ll get twice as much as
before? First you’ll be compensated for losing your castle, and then
you’ll be paid for keeping it.”
“My lord,” said Lord Normantowers humbly, “I apologize for anything
I may have said or suggested. I ought to have known I stood in the
presence of a great English statesman.”
“Oh, it’s easy enough,” said Lord Eden frankly. “Look how easily we
remained in the saddle, in spite of democratic elections; how we
managed to dominate the Commons as well as the Lords. It’ll be the same
with what they call Socialism. We shall still be there; only we shall
be called bureaucrats instead of aristocrats.”
“I see it all now!” cried Hunter, “and by Heaven, it’ll be the end of
all this confounded demagogy of Three Acres and a Cow.”
“I think so,” said the Prime Minister with a smile; and began to fold
up the large maps.
As he was folding up the last and largest, he suddenly stopped and said:
“Hallo!”
A letter was lying in the middle of the table; a letter in a sealed
envelope, and one which he evidently did not recognize as any part of
his paper paraphernalia.
“Where did this letter come from?” he asked rather sharply. “Did you
put it here, Eustace?”
“No,” said Mr. Pym staring. “I never saw it before. It didn’t come with
your letters this morning.”
“It didn’t come by post at all,” said Lord Eden; “and none of the
servants brought it in. How the devil did it get out here in the
garden?”
He ripped it open with his finger and remained for some time staring in
mystification at its contents.
WELKIN CASTLE,
Sept. 4th, 19--.
“DEAR LORD EDEN,--As I understand you are making public provision
for the future disposal of our historic national castles, such as
Warbridge Castle, I should much appreciate any information about your
intentions touching Welkin Castle, my own estate, as it would enable
me to make my own arrangements.--Yours very truly,
“WELKYN OF WELKIN.”
“Who is Welkyn?” asked the puzzled politician; “he writes as if he knew
me; but I can’t recall him at the moment. And where is Welkin Castle?
We must look at the maps again.”
But though they looked at the maps for hours, and searched Burke,
Debrett, “Who’s Who,” the atlas and every other work of reference, they
could come upon no trace of that firm but polite country gentleman.
Lord Eden was a little worried, because he knew that curiously
important people could exist in a corner in this country, and suddenly
emerge from their corner to make trouble. He knew it was very important
that his own governing class should stand in with him in this great
public change (and private understanding), and that no rich eccentric
should be left out and offended. But although he was worried to that
extent, it is probable that his worry would soon have faded from his
mind if it had not been for something that happened some days later.
Going out into the same garden to the same table, with the more
agreeable purpose of taking tea there, he was amazed to find another
letter, though this was lying not on the table but on the turf just
beside it. It was unstamped like the other and addressed in the same
handwriting; but its tone was more stern.
WELKIN CASTLE,
Oct. 6th, 19--.
“MY LORD,--As you seem to have decided to continue your sweeping
scheme of confiscation, as in the case of Warbridge Castle, without
the slightest reference to the historic and even heroic claims and
traditions of Welkin Castle, I can only inform you that I shall
defend the fortress of my fathers to the death. Moreover, I have
decided to make a protest of a more public kind; and when you next
hear from me it will be in the form of a general appeal to the
justice of the English people.--Yours truly,
“WELKYN OF WELKIN.”
The historic and even heroic traditions of Welkin Castle kept a dozen
of the Prime Minister’s private secretaries busy for a week, looking
up encyclopædias and chronicles and books of history. But the Prime
Minister himself was more worried about another problem. How did these
mysterious letters get into the house, or rather into the garden? None
of them came by post and none of the servants knew anything whatever
about them. Moreover, the Prime Minister, in an unobtrusive way, was
very carefully guarded. Prime Ministers always are, but he had been
especially protected ever since the Vegetarians a few years before had
gone about killing everybody who believed in killing animals. There
were always plain-clothes policemen at every entrance of his house
and garden. And from their testimony it would appear certain that the
letter could not have got into the garden; but for the trifling fact
that it was lying there on the garden-table. Lord Eden cogitated in a
grim fashion for some time; then he said as he rose from his chair:
“I think I will have a talk to our American friend Mr. Oates.”
Whether from a sense of humour or a sense of justice, Lord Eden
summoned Enoch Oates before the same special jury of three; or
summoned them before him, as the case may be. For it was even more
difficult than before to read the exact secret of Eden’s sympathies or
intentions; he talked about a variety of indifferent subjects leading
up to that of the letters, which he treated very lightly. Then he said
quite suddenly:
“Do you know anything about those letters, by the way?”
The American presented his poker face to the company for some time
without reply. Then he said:
“And what makes you think I know anything about them?”
“Because,” said Horace Hunter, breaking in with uncontrollable warmth,
“we know you’re hand and glove with all those lunatics in the League of
the Long Bow who are kicking up all this shindy.”
“Well,” said Oates calmly, “I’ll never deny I like some of their ways.
I like live wires myself; and, after all, they’re about the liveliest
thing in this old country. And I’ll tell you more. I like people who
take trouble; and, believe me, they do take trouble. You say they’re
all nuts; but I reckon there really is method in their madness. They
take trouble to keep those crazy vows of theirs. You spoke about the
fellows who carried off the astronomer in an aeroplane. Well, I know
Bellew Blair, the man who worked with Pierce in that stunt, and believe
me he’s not a man to be sniffed at. He’s one of the first experts in
aeronautics in the country; and if he’s gone over to them, it means
there’s something in their notion for a scientific intellect to take
hold of. It was Blair that worked that pig’s stunt for Hilary Pierce;
made a great gasbag shaped like a sow and gave all the little pigs
parachutes.”
“Well, there you are,” cried Hunter. “Of all the lunacy----”
“I remember Commander Blair in the War,” said the Prime Minister
quietly. “Bellows Blair, they called him. He did excellent expert work.
Some new scheme with dirigible balloons. But I was only going to ask
Mr. Oates whether he happens to know where Welkin Castle is.”
“Must be somewhere near here,” suggested Normantowers, “as the letters
seem to come by hand.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Enoch Oates doubtfully. “I know a man living
in Ely, who had one of those letters delivered by hand. And I know
another near Land’s End who thought the letter must have come from
somebody living near. As you say, they all seem to come by hand.”
“By what hand?” asked the Prime Minister, with a queer, grim expression.
“Mr. Oates,” said Lord Normantowers firmly, “where _is_ Welkin Castle?”
“Why, it’s everywhere, in a manner of speaking,” said Mr. Oates
reflectively. “It’s anywhere, anyhow. Gee--!” he broke off suddenly:
“Why, as a matter of fact, it’s here!”
“Ah,” said the Prime Minister quietly, “I thought we should see
something if we watched here long enough! You didn’t think I kept you
hanging about here only to ask Mr. Oates questions that I knew the
answer to.”
“What do you mean? Thought we would see what?”
“Where the unstamped letters come from,” replied Lord Eden.
Luminous and enormous, there heaved up above the garden trees something
that looked at first like a coloured cloud; it was flushed with light
such as lies on clouds opposite the sunset, a light at once warm
and wan; and it shone like an opaque flame. But as it came closer
it grew more and more incredible. It took on solid proportions and
perspective, as if a cloud could brush and crush the dark tree-tops. It
was something never seen before in the sky; it was a cubist cloud. Men
gazing at such a sunset cloudland often imagine they see castles and
cities of an almost uncanny completeness. But there would be a possible
point of completeness at which they would cry aloud, or perhaps shriek
aloud, as at a sign in heaven; and that completeness had come. The
big luminous object that sailed above the garden was outlined in
battlements and turrets like a fairy castle; but with an architectural
exactitude impossible in any cloudland. With the very look of it a
phrase and a proverb leapt into the mind.
“There, my lord!” cried Oates, suddenly lifting his nasal and drawling
voice and pointing, “there’s that dream you told me about. There’s your
castle in the air.”
As the shadow of the flying thing travelled over the sun-lit lawn,
they looked up and saw for the first time that the lower part of the
edifice hung downwards like the car of a great balloon. They remembered
the aeronautical tricks of Commander Blair and Captain Pierce and the
model of the monstrous pig. As it passed over the table a white speck
detached itself and dropped from the car. It was a letter.
The next moment the white speck was followed by a shower that was like
a snowstorm. Countless letters, leaflets, and scraps of paper were
littered all over the lawn. The guests seemed to stand staring wildly
in a wilderness of waste-paper; but the keen and experienced eyes of
Lord Eden recognized the material which, in political elections, is
somewhat satirically called “literature.”
It took the twelve private secretaries some time to pick them all up
and make the lawn neat and tidy again. On examination they proved to
be mainly of two kinds: one a sort of electioneering pamphlet of the
League of the Long Bow, and the other a somewhat airy fantasy about
private property in air. The most important of the documents, which
Lord Eden studied more attentively, though with a grim smile, began
with the sentence in large letters:
“An Englishman’s House Is No Longer His Castle On The Soil Of
England. If It Is To Be His Castle, It Must Be A Castle In The Air.
“If There Seem To Be Something Unfamiliar And Even Fanciful In The
Idea, We Reply That It Is Not Half So Fantastic To Own Your Own
Houses In The Clouds As Not To Own Your Own Houses On The Earth.”
Then followed a passage of somewhat less solid political value, in
which the acute reader might trace the influence of the poetical Mr.
Pierce rather than the scientific Mr. Blair. It began “They Have Stolen
the Earth; We Will Divide the Sky.” But the writer followed this with a
somewhat unconvincing claim to have trained rooks and swallows to hover
in rows in the air to represent the hedges of “The blue meadows of the
new realm,” and he was so obliging as to accompany the explanation
with diagrams of space showing these exact ornithological boundaries
in dotted lines. There were other equally scientific documents dealing
with the treatment of clouds, the driving of birds to graze on insects,
and so on. The whole of this section concluded with the great social
and economic slogan: “Three Acres and a Crow.”
But when Lord Eden read on, his attention appeared graver than this
particular sort of social reconstruction would seem to warrant. The
writer of the pamphlet resumed:
“Do not be surprised if there seems to be something topsy-turvy in
the above programme. That topsy-turvydom marks the whole of our
politics. It may seem strange that the air which has always been
public should become private, when the land which has always been
private has become public. We answer that this is exactly how things
really stand to-day in the matter of all publicity and privacy.
Private things are indeed being made public. But public things are
being kept private.
“Thus we all had the pleasure of seeing in the papers a picture of
Sir Horace Hunter, O.B.E., smiling in an ingratiating manner at his
favourite cockatoo. We know this detail of his existence, which might
seem a merely domestic one. But the fact that he is shortly to be
paid thirty thousand pounds of public money, for continuing to live
in his own house, is concealed with the utmost delicacy.
“Similarly we have seen whole pages of an illustrated paper filled
with glimpses of Lord Normantowers enjoying his honeymoon, which the
papers in question are careful to describe as his Romance. Whatever
it may be, an antiquated and fastidious taste might possibly be
disposed to regard it as his own affair. But the fact that the
taxpayer’s money, which is the taxpayer’s affair, is to be given him
in enormous quantities, first for going out of his castle, and then
for coming back into it--this little domestic detail is thought too
trivial for the taxpayer to be told of it.
“Or again, we are frequently informed that the hobby of Mr. Rosenbaum
Low is improving the breed of Pekinese, and God knows they need it.
But it would seem the sort of hobby that anybody might have without
telling everybody else about it. On the other hand, the fact that
Mr. Rosenbaum Low is being paid twice over for the same house, and
keeping the house as well, is concealed from the public; along with
the equally interesting fact that he is allowed to do these things
chiefly because he lends money to the Prime Minister.”
The Prime Minister smiled still more grimly and glanced in a light yet
lingering fashion at some of the accompanying leaflets. They seemed
to be in the form of electioneering leaflets, though not apparently
connected with any particular election.
“Vote for Crane. He Said He would Eat His Hat and Did It. Lord
Normantowers said he would explain how people came to swallow his
coronet; but he hasn’t done it yet.
“Vote for Pierce. He Said Pigs Would Fly And They Did. Rosenbaum Low
said a service of international aërial express trains would fly; and
they didn’t. It was your money he made to fly.
“Vote for the League of the Long Bow. They Are The Only Men Who Don’t
Tell Lies.”
The Prime Minister stood gazing after the vanishing cloud-castle, as it
faded into the clouds, with a curious expression in his eyes. Whether
it were better or worse for his soul, there was something in him that
understood much that the muddled materialists around him could never
understand.
“Quite poetical, isn’t it?” he said drily. “Wasn’t it Victor Hugo
or some French poet who said something about politics and the
clouds?... The people say, ‘Bah, the poet is in the clouds. So is the
thunderbolt.’”
“Thunderbolts!” said Normantowers contemptuously. “What can those fools
do but go about flinging fireworks?”
“Quite so,” replied Eden; “but I’m afraid by this time they are
flinging fireworks into a powder magazine.”
He continued to gaze into the sky with screwed-up eyes, though the
object had become invisible.
If his eye could really have followed the thing after which he gazed,
he would have been surprised; if his unfathomable scepticism was still
capable of surprise. It passed over woods and meadows like a sunset
cloud towards the sunset, or a little to the north-west of it, like
the fairy castle that was west of the moon. It left behind the green
orchards and the red towers of Hereford and passed into bare places
whose towers are mightier than any made by man, where they buttress the
mighty wall of Wales. Far away in this wilderness of columned cliffs
and clefts it found a cleft or hollow, along the floor of which ran a
dark line that might have been a black river running through a rocky
valley. But it was in fact a crack opening below into another abyss.
The strange flying ship followed the course of the winding fissure till
it came to a place where the crack opened into a chasm, round like
a cauldron and accidental as the knot in some colossal tree-trunk;
through which it sank, entering the twilight of the tremendous cavern
beneath. The abyss below was lit here and there with artificial lights,
like fallen stars of the underworld, and bridged with wooden platforms
and galleries, on which were wooden huts and huge packing-cases and
many things somewhat suggestive of a munition dump. On the rocky
walls were spread out various balloon coverings, some of them of even
more grotesque outline than the castle. Some were in the shapes of
animals; and on that primeval background looked like the last fossils,
or possibly the first outlines of vast prehistoric creatures. Perhaps
there was something suggestive in the fancy that in that underworld
a new world was being created. The man who alighted from the flying
castle recognized, almost as one recognizes a domestic pet, the outline
of a highly primitive pig stretching like a large archaic drawing
across the wall. For the young man was called Hilary Pierce, and had
had previous dealings with the flying pig, though for that day he had
been put in charge of the flying castle.
On the platform on which he alighted stood a table covered with
papers, with almost more papers than Lord Eden’s table. But these
papers were covered almost entirely with figures and numbers and
mathematical symbols. Two men were bending over the table, discussing
and occasionally disputing. In the taller of the two the scientific
world might have recognized Professor Green, whom it was seeking
everywhere like the Missing Link, to incarcerate him in the interests
of science. In the shorter and sturdier figure a very few people might
have recognized Bellew Blair, the organizing brain of the English
Revolution.
“I haven’t come to stay,” explained Pierce hastily. “I’m going on in a
minute.”
“Why shouldn’t you stay?” asked Blair, in the act of lighting a pipe.
“I don’t want your little talk interrupted. Still less, far, far
less, do I want it uninterrupted. I mean while I’m here. A little of
your scientific conversation goes a long way with me; I know what
you’re like when you’re really chatty. Professor Green will say in his
satirical way ‘9920.05,’ to which you will reply with quiet humour
‘75.007.’ This will be too good an opening for a witty fellow like the
Professor, who will instantly retort ‘982.09.’ Not in the best taste
perhaps, but a great temptation in the heat of debate.”
“Commander Blair,” said the Professor, “is very kind to let me share
his calculations.”
“Lucky for me,” said Blair. “I’d have done ten times more with a
mathematician like you.”
“Well,” said Pierce casually, “as you are so much immersed in
mathematics, I’ll leave you. As a matter of fact, I had a message for
Professor Green, about Miss Dale at the house where he was lodging; but
we mustn’t interrupt scientific studies for a little thing like that.”
Green’s head came up from the papers with great abruptness.
“Message!” he cried eagerly. “What message? Is it really for me?”
“8282.003,” replied Pierce coldly.
“Don’t be offended,” said Blair. “Give the Professor his message and
then go if you like.”
“It’s only that she came over to see my wife to find out where you had
gone to,” said Pierce. “I told her, so far as it’s possible to tell
anybody. That’s all,” he added, but rather with the air of one saying
“it ought to be enough.”
Apparently it was, for Green, who was once more looking down upon
the precious papers, crumpled one of them in his clenched hand
unconsciously, like a man suddenly controlling his feelings.
“Well, I’m off,” said Pierce cheerfully; “got to visit the other dumps.”
“Stop a minute,” said Blair, as the other turned away. “Haven’t you any
sort of public news as well as private news? How are things going in
the political world?”
“Expressed in mathematical formula,” replied Pierce over his shoulder,
“the political news is MP squared plus LSD over U equals L. L let
loose. L upon earth, my boy.”
And he climbed again into his castle of the air.
Oliver Green stood staring at the crumpled paper and suddenly began to
straighten it out.
“Mr. Blair,” he said, “I’m terribly ashamed of myself. When I see
you living here like a hermit in the mountains and scrawling your
calculations, so to speak, on the rocks of the wilderness, devoted to
your great abstract idea, vowed to a great cause, it makes me feel
very small to have entangled you and your friends in my small affairs.
Of course, the affair isn’t at all small to me; but it must seem very
small to you.”
“I don’t know very precisely,” answered Blair, “what was the nature
of the affair. But that is emphatically your affair. For the rest,
I assure you we’re delighted to have you, apart from your valuable
services as a calculating machine.”
Bellew Blair, the last and, in the worldly sense, by far the ablest of
the recruits of the Long Bow, was a man in early middle age, square
built, but neat in figure and light on his feet, clad in a suit of
leather. He mostly moved about so quickly that his figure made more
impression than his face; but when he sat down smoking, in one of his
rare moments of leisure, as now, it could be remarked that his face was
rather calm than vivacious; a short square face with a short resolute
nose, but reflective eyes much lighter than his close black hair.
“It’s quite Homeric,” he added, “the two armies fighting for the body
of an astronomer. You would be a sort of a symbol anyhow, since they
started that insanity of calling you insane. Nobody has any business to
bother you about the personal side of the matter.”
Green seemed to be ruminating, and the last phrase awoke him to a
decision. He began to talk. Quite straightforwardly, though with a
certain schoolboy awkwardness, he proceeded to tell his friend the
whole of his uncouth love story--the overturning of his spiritual world
to the tune the old cow died of, or rather danced to.
“And I’ve let you in for hiding me like a murderer,” he concluded.
“For the sake of something that must seem to you, not even like a
cow jumping over the moon, but more like a calf falling over the
milking-stool. Perhaps people vowed to a great work like this ought to
leave all that sort of thing behind them.”
“Well, I don’t see anything to be ashamed of,” said Blair, “and in this
case I don’t agree with what you say about leaving those things behind.
Of some sorts of work it’s true; but not this. Shall I tell you a
secret?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“The cow never does jump over the moon,” said Blair gravely. “It’s one
of the sports of the bulls of the herd.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” said the Professor.