TELLS OF A MIDSUMMER NIGHT
Hitherto I had been the looker-on; now I was to become a person of
the drama. That telegram was the beginning of my active part in this
curious affair. They say that everybody turns up in time at the
corner of Piccadilly Circus if you wait long enough. I was to find
myself like a citizen of Bagdad in the days of the great Caliph, and
yet never stir from my routine of flat, chambers, club, and flat.
I am wrong; there was one episode out of London, and that perhaps was
the true beginning of my story.
Whitsuntide that year came very late, and I was glad of the
fortnight's rest, for Parliament and the Law Courts had given me a
busy time. I had recently acquired a car and a chauffeur called
Stagg, and I looked forward to trying it in a tour in the West
country. But before I left London I went again to Portman Square.
I found Ethel Pitt-Heron in grave distress. You must remember that
Tommy and I had always gone on the hypothesis that Charles's
departure had been in pursuance of some mad scheme of his own which
might get him into trouble. We thought that he had become mixed up
with highly undesirable friends, and was probably embarking in some
venture which might not be criminal but was certain to be foolish. I
had long rejected the idea of blackmail, and convinced myself that
Lumley and Pavia were his colleagues. The same general notion, I
fancy, had been in his wife's mind. But now she had found something
which altered the case.
She had ransacked his papers in the hope of finding a clue to the
affair which had taken him abroad, but there was nothing but business
letters, notes of investments, and such like. He seemed to have
burned most of his papers in the queer laboratory at the back of the
house. But, stuffed into the pocket of a blotter on a bureau in the
drawing-room where he scarcely ever wrote, she had found a document.
It seemed to be the rough draft of a letter, and it was addressed to
her. I give it as it was written; the blank spaces were left blank
in the manuscript.
"_You must have thought me mad, or worse, to treat you as I have
done. But there was a terrible reason, which some day I hope to tell
you all about. I want you as soon as you get this to make ready to
come out to me at ... You will travel by ... and arrive at ... I
enclose a letter which I want you to hand in deepest confidence to
Knowles, the solicitor. He will make all arrangements about your
journey and about sending me the supplies of money I want. Darling,
you must leave as secretly as I did, and tell nobody anything, not
even that I am alive--that least of all. I would not frighten you
for worlds, but I am on the edge of a horrible danger, which I hope
with God's help and yours to escape..._"
That was all--obviously the draft of a letter which he intended to
post to her from some foreign place. But can you conceive a missive
more calculated to shatter a woman's nerves? It filled me, I am
bound to say, with heavy disquiet. Pitt-Heron was no coward, and he
was not the man to make too much of a risk. Yet it was clear that he
had fled that day in May under the pressure of some mortal fear.
The affair in my eyes began to look very bad. Ethel wanted me to go
to Scotland Yard, but I dissuaded her. I have the utmost esteem for
Scotland Yard, but I shrank from publicity at this stage. There
might be something in the case too delicate for the police to handle,
and I thought it better to wait.
I reflected a great deal about the Pitt-Heron business the first day
or two of my trip, but the air and the swift motion helped me to
forget it. We had a fortnight of superb weather, and sailed all day
through a glistening green country under the hazy blue heavens of
June. Soon I fell into the blissful state of physical and mental
ease which such a life induces. Hard toil, such as deer-stalking,
keeps the nerves on the alert and the mind active, but swimming all
day in a smooth car through a heavenly landscape mesmerises brain and
body.
We ran up the Thames valley, explored the Cotswolds, and turned south
through Somerset till we reached the fringes of Exmoor. I stayed a
day or two at a little inn high up in the moor, and spent the time
tramping the endless ridges of hill or scrambling in the arbutus
thickets where the moor falls in steeps to the sea. We returned by
Dartmoor and the south coast, meeting with our first rain in Dorset,
and sweeping into sunlight again on Salisbury Plain. The time came
when only two days remained to me. The car had behaved beyond all my
hopes, and Stagg, a sombre and silent man, was lyrical in his praises.
I wanted to be in London by the Monday afternoon, and to insure this
I made a long day of it on the Sunday. It was the long day which
brought our pride to a fall. The car had run so well that I resolved
to push on and sleep in a friend's house near Farnham. It was about
half-past eight, and we were traversing the somewhat confused and
narrow roads in the neighbourhood of Wolmer Forest, when, as we
turned a sharp corner, we ran full into the tail of a heavy carrier's
cart. Stagg clapped on the brakes, but the collision, though it did
no harm to the cart, was sufficient to send the butt-end of something
through our glass screen, damage the tyre of the near front-wheel,
and derange the steering-gear. Neither of us suffered much hurt, but
Stagg got a long scratch on his cheek from broken glass, and I had a
bruised shoulder.
The carrier was friendly but useless, and there was nothing for it
but to arrange for horses to take the car to Farnham. This meant a
job of some hours, and I found on inquiry at a neighbouring cottage
that there was no inn where I could stay within eight miles. Stagg
borrowed a bicycle somehow and went off to collect horses, while I
morosely reviewed the alternatives before me.
I did not like the prospect of spending the June night beside my
derelict car, and the thought of my friend's house near Farnham
beckoned me seductively. I might have walked there, but I did not
know the road, and I found that my shoulder was paining me, so I
resolved to try to find some gentleman's house in the neighbourhood
where I could borrow a conveyance. The south of England is now so
densely peopled by Londoners that even in a wild district where there
are no inns and few farms there are certain to be several week-end
cottages.
I walked along the white ribbon of road in the scented June dusk. At
first it was bounded by high gorse, then came patches of open heath,
and then woods. Beyond the woods I found a park-railing, and
presently an entrance-gate with a lodge. It seemed to be the place I
was looking for, and I woke the lodge-keeper, who thus early had
retired to bed. I asked the name of the owner, but was told the name
of the place instead--it was High Ashes. I asked if the owner was at
home, and got a sleepy nod for answer.
The house, as seen in the half-light, was a long white-washed
cottage, rising to two storeys in the centre. It was plentifully
covered with creepers and roses, and the odour of flowers was mingled
with the faintest savour of wood-smoke, pleasant to a hungry
traveller in the late hours. I pulled an old-fashioned bell, and the
door was opened by a stolid young parlour-maid.
I explained my errand, and offered my card. I was, I said, a Member
of Parliament and of the Bar, who had suffered a motor accident.
Would it be possible for the master of the house to assist me to get
to my destination near Farnham? I was bidden enter, and wearily
seated myself on a settle in the hall.
In a few minutes an ancient housekeeper appeared, a grim dame whom at
other times I should have shunned. She bore, however, a hospitable
message. There was no conveyance in the place, as the car had gone
that day to London for repairs. But if I cared to avail myself of
the accommodation of the house for the night it was at my service.
Meantime my servant could be looking after the car, and a message
would go to him to pick me up in the morning.
I gratefully accepted, for my shoulder was growing troublesome, and
was conducted up a shallow oak staircase to a very pleasant bedroom
with a bathroom adjoining. I had a bath, and afterwards found a
variety of comforts put at my service, from slippers to razors.
There was also some Elliman for my wounded shoulder. Clean and
refreshed, I made my way downstairs and entered a room from which I
caught a glow of light.
It was a library, the most attractive I think I have ever seen. The
room was long, as libraries should be, and entirely lined with books,
save over the fireplace, where hung a fine picture, which I took to
be a Raeburn. The books were in glass cases, which showed the
beautiful shallow mouldings of a more artistic age. A table was laid
for dinner in a corner, for the room was immense, and the shaded
candlesticks on it, along with the late June dusk, gave such light as
there was. At first I thought the place was empty, but as I crossed
the floor a figure rose from a deep chair by the hearth.
"Good evening, Mr. Leithen," a voice said. "It is a kindly mischance
which gives a lonely old man the pleasure of your company."
He switched on an electric lamp, and I saw before me--what I had not
guessed from the voice--an old man. I was thirty-four at the time,
and counted anything over fifty old, but I judged my host to be well
on in the sixties. He was about my own size, but a good deal bent in
the shoulders as if from study. His face was clean-shaven and
extraordinarily fine, with every feature delicately chiselled. He
had a sort of Hapsburg mouth and chin, very long and pointed, but
modelled with a grace which made the full lower lip seem entirely
right. His hair was silver, brushed so low on the forehead as to
give him a slightly foreign air, and he wore tinted glasses, as if
for reading.
Altogether it was a very dignified and agreeable figure who greeted
me in a voice so full and soft that it belied his obvious age.
Dinner was a light meal, but perfect in its way. There were soles, I
remember, an exceedingly well-cooked chicken, fresh strawberries and
a savoury. We drank a '95 Perrier-Jouet and some excellent Madeira.
The stolid parlour-maid waited on us, and, as we talked of the
weather and the Hampshire roads, I kept trying to guess my host's
profession. He was not a lawyer, for he had not the inevitable lines
on the cheek. I thought that he might be a retired Oxford don, or
one of the higher civil servants, or perhaps some official of the
British Museum. His library proclaimed him a scholar, and his voice
a gentleman.
Afterwards we settled ourselves in armchairs and he gave me a good
cigar. We talked about many things--books, the right furnishing of a
library, a little politics in deference to my M.P.-ship. My host was
apathetic about party questions, but curious about defence matters
and in his way an amateur strategist. I could fancy him inditing
letters to _The Times_ on national service.
Then we wandered into foreign affairs, where I found his interest
acute, and his knowledge immense. Indeed he was so well informed
that I began to suspect that my guesses had been wrong, and that he
was a retired diplomat. At that time there was some difficulty
between France and Italy over customs duties, and he sketched for me
with remarkable clearness the weak points in the French tariff
administration. I had been recently engaged in a big South American
railway case, and I asked him a question about the property of my
clients. He gave me a much better account than I had ever got from
the solicitors who briefed me.
The fire had been lit before we finished dinner, and presently it
began to burn up and light the figure of my host, who sat in a deep
arm-chair. He had taken off his tinted glasses, and as I rose to get
a match I saw his eyes looking abstractedly before him.
Somehow they reminded me of Pitt-Heron. Charles had always a sort of
dancing light in his, a restless intelligence which was at once
attractive and disquieting. My host had this and more. His eyes
were paler than I had ever seen in a human head--pale, bright, and
curiously wild. But, whereas Pitt-Heron's had only given the
impression of reckless youth, this man's spoke of wisdom and power as
well as of endless vitality.
All my theories vanished, for I could not believe that my host had
ever followed any profession. If he had, he would have been at the
head of it, and the world would have been familiar with his features.
I began to wonder if my recollection was not playing me false, and I
was in the presence of some great man whom I ought to recognise.
As I dived into the recesses of my memory I heard his voice asking if
I were not a lawyer.
I told him, Yes. A barrister with a fair common-law practice and
some work in Privy Council appeals.
He asked me why I chose the profession.
"It came handiest," I said. "I am a dry creature, who loves facts
and logic. I am not a flier, I have no new ideas, I don't want to
lead men and I like work. I am the ordinary educated Englishman, and
my sort gravitates to the Bar. We like feeling that, if we are not
the builders, at any rate we are the cement of civilisation."
He repeated the words "cement of civilisation" in his soft voice.
"In a sense you are right. But civilisation needs more than the law
to hold it together. You see all mankind are not equally willing to
accept as divine justice what is called human law."
"Of course there are further sanctions," I said. "Police and armies
and the good-will of civilisation."
He caught me up quickly. "The last is your true cement. Did you
ever reflect, Mr. Leithen, how precarious is the tenure of the
civilisation we boast about?"
"I should have thought it fairly substantial," I said, "and the
foundations grow daily firmer."
He laughed. "That is the lawyer's view, but believe me you are
wrong. Reflect, and you will find that the foundations are sand.
You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation
from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of
glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of
Saturn."
It was the kind of paradoxical, undergraduate speculation which grown
men indulge in sometimes after dinner. I looked at my host to
discover his mood, and at the moment a log flared up again.
His face was perfectly serious. His light wild eyes were intently
watching me.
"Take one little instance," he said. "We are a commercial world, and
have built up a great system of credit. Without our cheques and
bills of exchange and currency the whole of our life would stop. But
credit only exists because behind it we have a standard of value. My
Bank of England notes are worthless paper unless I can get sovereigns
for them if I choose. Forgive this elementary disquisition, but the
point is important. We have fixed a gold standard, because gold is
sufficiently rare, and because it allows itself to be coined into a
portable form. I am aware that there are economists who say that the
world could be run on a pure credit basis, with no metal currency at
the back of it; but, however sound their argument may be in the
abstract, the thing is practically impossible. You would have to
convert the whole of the world's stupidity to their economic faith
before it would work.
"Now, suppose something happened to make our standard of value
useless. Suppose the dream of the alchemists came true, and all
metals were readily transmutable. We have got very near it in recent
years, as you will know if you interest yourself in chemical science.
Once gold and silver lost their intrinsic value, the whole edifice of
our commerce would collapse. Credit would become meaningless,
because it would be untranslatable. We should be back at a bound in
the age of barter, for it is hard to see what other standard of value
could take the place of the precious metals. All our civilisation,
with its industries and commerce, would come toppling down. Once
more, like primitive man, I would plant cabbages for a living and
exchange them for services in kind from the cobbler and the butcher.
We should have the simple life with a vengeance--not the
self-conscious simplicity of the civilised man, but the compulsory
simplicity of the savage."
I was not greatly impressed by the illustration. "Of course, there
are many key-points in civilisation," I said, "and the loss of them
would bring ruin. But these keys are strongly held."
"Not so strongly as you think. Consider how delicate the machine is
growing. As life grows more complex, the machinery grows more
intricate and therefore more vulnerable. Your so-called sanctions
become so infinitely numerous that each in itself is frail. In the
Dark Ages you had one great power--the terror of God and His Church.
Now you have a multiplicity of small things, all delicate and
fragile, and strong only by our tacit agreement not to question them."
"You forget one thing," I said--"the fact that men really are agreed
to keep the machine going. That is what I called the 'good-will of
civilisation.'"
He got up from his chair and walked up and down the floor, a curious
dusky figure lit by the rare spurts of flame from the hearth.
"You have put your finger on the one thing that matters.
Civilisation is a conspiracy. What value would your police be if
every criminal could find a sanctuary across the Channel, or your law
courts if no other tribunal recognised their decisions? Modern life
is the silent compact of comfortable folk to keep up pretences. And
it will succeed till the day comes when there is another compact to
strip them bare."
I do not think that I have ever listened to a stranger conversation.
It was not so much what he said--you will hear the same thing from
any group of half-baked young men--as the air with which he said it.
The room was almost dark, but the man's personality seemed to take
shape and bulk in the gloom. Though I could scarcely see him, I knew
that those pale strange eyes were looking at me. I wanted more
light, but did not know where to look for a switch. It was all so
eery and odd that I began to wonder if my host were not a little mad.
In any case, I was tired of his speculations.
"We won't dispute on the indisputable," I said. "But I should have
thought that it was the interest of all the best brains of the world
to keep up what you call the conspiracy."
He dropped into his chair again.
"I wonder," he said slowly. "Do we really get the best brains
working on the side of the compact? Take the business of Government.
When all is said, we are ruled by the amateurs and the second-rate.
The methods of our departments would bring any private firm to
bankruptcy. The methods of Parliament--pardon me--would disgrace any
board of directors. Our rulers pretend to buy expert knowledge, but
they never pay the price for it that a business man would pay, and if
they get it they have not the courage to use it. Where is the
inducement for a man of genius to sell his brains to our insipid
governors?
"And yet knowledge is the only power--now as ever. A little
mechanical device will wreck your navies. A new chemical combination
will upset every rule of war. It is the same with our commerce. One
or two minute changes might sink Britain to the level of Ecuador or
give China the key of the world's wealth. And yet we never dream
that these things are possible. We think our castles of sand are the
ramparts of the universe."
I have never had the gift of the gab, but I admire it in others.
There is a morbid charm in such talk, a kind of exhilaration of which
one is half ashamed. I found myself interested and more than a
little impressed.
"But surely," I said, "the first thing a discoverer does is to make
his discovery public. He wants the honour and glory, and he wants
money for it. It becomes part of the world's knowledge, and
everything is readjusted to meet it. That was what happened with
electricity. You call our civilisation a machine, but it is
something far more flexible. It has the power of adaptation of a
living organism."
"That might be true if the new knowledge really became the world's
property. But does it? I read now and then in the papers that some
eminent scientist has made a great discovery. He reads a paper
before some Academy of Science, and there are leading articles on it,
and his photograph adorns the magazines. That kind of man is not the
danger. He is a bit of the machine, a party to the compact. It is
the men who stand outside it that are to be reckoned with, the
artists in discovery who will never use their knowledge till they can
use it with full effect. Believe me, the biggest brains are without
the ring which we call civilisation."
Then his voice seemed to hesitate. "You may hear people say that
submarines have done away with the battleship, and that aircraft have
annulled the mastery of the sea. That is what our pessimists say.
But do you imagine that the clumsy submarine or the fragile aeroplane
is really the last word of science?"
"No doubt they will develop," I said, "but by that time the power of
the defence will have advanced also."
He shook his head. "It is not so. Even now the knowledge which
makes possible great engines of destruction is far beyond the
capacity of any defence. You see only the productions of second-rate
folk who are in a hurry to get wealth and fame. The true knowledge,
the deadly knowledge, is still kept secret. But, believe me, my
friend, it is there."
He paused for a second, and I saw the faint outline of the smoke from
his cigar against the background of the dark. Then he quoted me one
or two cases, slowly, as if in some doubt about the wisdom of his
words.
It was these cases which startled me. They were of different
kinds--a great calamity, a sudden breach between two nations, a
blight on a vital crop, a war, a pestilence. I will not repeat them.
I do not think I believed in them then, and now I believe less. But
they were horribly impressive, as told in that quiet voice in that
sombre room on that dark June night. If he was right, these things
had not been the work of Nature or accident, but of a devilish art.
The nameless brains that he spoke of, working silently in the
background, now and then showed their power by some cataclysmic
revelation. I did not believe him, but, as he put the case, showing
with strange clearness the steps in the game, I had no words to
protest.
At last I found my voice.
"What you describe is super-anarchy, and yet it makes no headway.
What is the motive of those diabolical brains?"
He laughed. "How should I be able to tell you? I am a humble
inquirer, and in my researches I come on curious bits of fact. But I
cannot pry into motives. I only know of the existence of great
extra-social intelligences. Let us say that they distrust the
machine. They may be idealists and desire to make a new world, or
they may simply be artists, loving for its own sake the pursuit of
truth. If I were to hazard a guess, I should say that it took both
types to bring about results, for the second find the knowledge and
the first the will to use it."
A recollection came back to me. It was of a hot upland meadow in
Tyrol, where among acres of flowers and beside a leaping stream I was
breakfasting after a morning spent in climbing the white crags. I
had picked up a German on the way, a small man of the Professor
class, who did me the honour to share my sandwiches. He conversed
fluently, but quaintly in English, and he was, I remember, a
Nietzschean, and a hot rebel against the established order. "The
pity," he cried, "is that the reformers do not know, and those who
know are too idle to reform. Some day there will come the marriage
of knowledge and will, and then the world will march."
"You draw an awful picture," I said. "But if those extra-social
brains are so potent, why after all do they effect so little? A dull
police-officer, with the machine behind him, can afford to laugh at
most experiments in anarchy."
"True," he said, "and civilisation will win until its enemies learn
from it the importance of the machine. The compact must endure until
there is a counter-compact. Consider the ways of that form of
foolishness which to-day we call nihilism or anarchy. A few
illiterate bandits in a Paris slum defy the world, and in a week they
are in jail. Half a dozen crazy Russian _intellectuels_ in Geneva
conspire to upset the Romanoffs and are hunted down by the police of
Europe. All the Governments and their not very intelligent police
forces join hands, and hey, presto! there is an end of the
conspirators. For civilisation knows how to use such powers as it
has, while the immense potentiality of the unlicensed is dissipated
in vapour. Civilisation wins because it is a world-wide league; its
enemies fail because they are parochial. But supposing----"
Again he stopped and rose from his chair. He found a switch and
flooded the room with light. I glanced up blinking to see my host
smiling down on me, a most benevolent and courteous old gentleman.
He had resumed his tinted glasses.
"Forgive me," he said, "for leaving you in darkness while I bored you
with my gloomy prognostications. A recluse is apt to forget what is
due to a guest."
He handed the cigar-box to me, and pointed to a table where whisky
and mineral waters had been set out.
"I want to hear the end of your prophecies," I said. "You were
saying----?"
"I said--supposing anarchy learned from civilisation and became
international. Oh, I don't mean the bands of advertising donkeys who
call themselves International Unions of Workers and such-like
rubbish. I mean if the real brain-stuff of the world were
internationalised. Suppose that the links in the cordon of
civilisation were neutralised by other links in a far more potent
chain. The earth is seething with incoherent power and unorganised
intelligence. Have you ever reflected on the case of China? There
you have millions of quick brains stifled in trumpery crafts. They
have no direction, no driving power, so the sum of their efforts is
futile, and the world laughs at China. Europe throws her a million
or two on loan now and then, and she cynically responds by begging
the prayers of Christendom. And yet, I say, supposing----"
"It's a horrible idea," I said, "and, thank God, I don't believe it
possible. Mere destruction is too barren a creed to inspire a new
Napoleon, and you can do with nothing short of one."
"It would scarcely be destruction," he replied gently. "Let us call
it iconoclasm, the swallowing of formulas, which has always had its
full retinue of idealists. And you do not want a Napoleon. All that
is needed is direction, which could be given by men of far lower
gifts than a Bonaparte. In a word, you want a Power-House, and then
the age of miracles will begin."
I got up, for the hour was late, and I had had enough of this viewy
talk. My host was smiling, and I think that smile was the thing I
really disliked about him. It was too--what shall I say?--superior
and Olympian.
As he led me into the hall he apologised for indulging his whims.
"But you, as a lawyer, should welcome the idea. If there is an atom
of truth in my fancies, your task is far bigger than you thought.
You are not defending an easy case, but fighting in a contest where
the issues are still doubtful. That should encourage your
professional pride..."
By all the rules I should have been sleepy, for it was past midnight,
and I had had a long day in the open air. But that wretched talk had
unsettled me, and I could not get my mind off it. I have reproduced
very crudely the substance of my host's conversation, but no words of
mine could do justice to his eery persuasiveness. There was a kind
of magnetism in the man, a sense of vast powers and banked-up fires,
which would have given weight to the tritest platitudes. I had a
horrible feeling that he was trying to convince me, to fascinate me,
to prepare the ground for some proposal. Again and again I told
myself it was crazy nonsense, the heated dream of a visionary, but
again and again I came back to some details which had a horrid air of
reality. If the man was a romancer he had an uncommon gift of
realism.
I flung open my bedroom window and let in the soft air of the June
night and the scents from leagues of clover and pines and sweet
grasses. It momentarily refreshed me, for I could not believe that
this homely and gracious world held such dire portents.
But always that phrase of his, the "Power-House," kept recurring.
You know how twisted your thoughts get during a wakeful night, and
long before I fell asleep towards morning I had worked myself up into
a very complete dislike of that bland and smiling gentleman, my host.
Suddenly it occurred to me that I did not know his name, and that set
me off on another train of reflection.
I did not wait to be called, but rose about seven, dressed, and went
downstairs. I heard the sound of a car on the gravel of the drive,
and to my delight saw that Stagg had arrived. I wanted to get away
from the house as soon as possible, and I had no desire to meet its
master again in this world.
The grim housekeeper, who answered my summons, received my
explanation in silence. Breakfast would be ready in twenty minutes;
eight was Mr. Lumley's hour for it.
"Mr. Andrew Lumley?" I asked with a start.
"Mr. Andrew Lumley," she said.
So that was my host's name. I sat down at a bureau in the hall and
did a wildly foolish thing.
I wrote a letter, beginning "Dear Mr. Lumley," thanking him for his
kindness and explaining the reason of my early departure. It was
imperative, I said, that I should be in London by midday. Then I
added: "I wish I had known who you were last night, for I think you
know an old friend of mine, Charles Pitt-Heron."
Breakfastless I joined Stagg in the car, and soon we were swinging
down from the uplands to the shallow vale of the Wey. My thoughts
were very little on my new toy or on the mid-summer beauties of
Surrey. The friend of Pitt-Heron, who knew about his going to
Bokhara, was the maniac who dreamed of the "Power-House." There were
going to be dark scenes in the drama before it was played out.