VI

Man is a lump of earth, the best man's spiritless,

To such a woman.

_John Fletcher_.

London was too full of memories. He could not get away from them. He

could not empty his mind sufficiently to plan or execute new work. He

was too near to his misery. He had been in town, now, for a month; but

he had done nothing. He was engaged daily in trying to realise that

his old life had stopped. If he thought at all he thought as those

stunned by grief always will, in passages of poignant feeling. His

nights were often sleepless. When he slept he often dreamed that he

was alone in the night, looking into a lit room where Ottalie stood,

half-defined, under heavy robes. Then he would wake with a start to

realise that he would never see any trace of her again, beyond the few

relics which he possessed.

Only one little ray of light gave him hope. He wanted to rebuild his

life for her. He wanted to become all that she would have liked him to

become. In any case, whatever happened, he would have the memory of

her to guide him in all that he did. But he felt, every now and then,

when he could feel at all hopefully, that she was trying to help him to

become what she had longed for him to be. He thought that little

chance happenings in life were signals from her in the other world, or,

if not signals, attempts to move him, attempts to make him turn to her;

things full of significance if only he could interpret them. He felt

that in some way she was trying to communicate. It was as though the

telephone had broken. It was as though the speaker could not say her

message directly; but had to say it in fragments to erring, forgetful,

wayward messengers, who forgot and lost their sequence. They could

only hint, stammeringly, at the secret revealed to them. He thought

that she had sent him some message about sleeping sickness, using the

torn page, the magazine, and the naval officer, as her messengers.

There were those three little words from her, romantic, like words

heard in dream. If they were not from her, then they were none the

less holy, they were intimately bound with his last memories of her.

Often he would cry out in his misery that she might be granted to come

to him in dream to complete her message. What did she want to say

about sleeping sickness?

He could not guess. He could only say to himself that for some hidden

reason that disease had been brought to his notice at a time when he

was morbidly sensitive to impressions. He spent many hours in the

British Museum studying that disease as closely as one not trained to

medical research could hope to do. He read the Reports of the

Commission, various papers in _The Lancet_, the works of Professor

Ronald Ross and Sir Patrick Manson, the summary of Low in Allbutt, the

deeply interesting articles in the _Journal of Tropical Medicine_, and

whatever articles he could find in reviews and encyclopædias.

He called one day at the theatre office in answer to a telegram from

Falempin. Falempin had something to say to him. He had flung down the

glove to the "peegs," he said, by keeping on _The Roman Matron_ for the

usual weekly eight performances, in spite of the Press and the public

wrath. For three weeks he had played it to empty or abusive houses.

Then, at the end of the third week, a man had written in a monthly

review that _The Roman Matron_ was the only play of the year, and that

all other English plays then running in London were so many symptoms of

our national rottenness. The writer was not really moved by _The Roman

Matron_. He was a town wit, trying to irritate the public by praising

what it disliked, and by finding a moral death in all that it approved.

It may be said of such that they cast bread upon the waters; but the

genius, as a rule, does not find it until many days. In this case, as

the wit was at the moment the fashion, his article was effectual from

the day of its publication. The actors found one evening an attentive,

not quite empty house. Three nights later the piece went very well

indeed. On the fourth night they were called. By the end of the week

_The Roman Matron_ was a success, playing to a full house.

"Naldrett," said Falempin, "I 'ave lost twelve thousand pounds over

your play. What so? I go to make perhaps forty thousand. Always back

your cards. The peegs they will eat whatever they are told. Some of

the papers they are eating their words. You see? Here; here is

anozzer. By the same men, I think. Criticism? Next to the peegs, I

do lof the critic. It likes not me, these funny men. What is the

English people coming to? You 'ave critics; you 'ave very fine

critics. But they 'ave no power. Zese men in zese gutter rags--Pah.

We go to make you many motor-cars out of zis play."

Leslie brought his wife to town a week later. She wished to consult an

oculist. Roger dined with them the night after their arrival.

"Roger," said Leslie, "I want you to meet my cousin, Mrs. Heseltine.

She wants you to dine with her to-morrow night. We said that we would

bring you if you were free. I hope that you will come; she's such a

splendid person."

Roger said that he would go.

That evening he went to an At Home given in honour of a great French

poet who was staying in London. He had no wish to attend the function.

He went from a sense of duty. He went from a sense of what was due to

the guardian of intellect. The At Home was in Kensington, in a big and

hideous house. A line of carriages stood by the kerb, each with its

tortured horses tossing their heads piteously against the

bearing-reins. Flunkeys with white, sensual faces stood at the door.

There was a glitter of varnish everywhere, from boots, carriages, and

polished metal. There was not much noise, except the champ-champing of

the bits and the spattering of foam. Carriage doors slammed from time

to time. Loafers insulted those who entered. Women and children,

standing by the strip of baize upon the sidewalk, muttered in awed

hatred.

Roger went into a room jammed with jabberers. In the middle of the

room there was a kind of circle, a sort of pugilists' ring, in which

the poet stood. He was a little stocky man, powerfully built. He had

a great head, poised back on his shoulders so that his jaw protruded

aggressively. It needed only one glance to see that he was the one

vital person in the room. The big, beefy, successful English novelists

looked like bladders beside him. He talked in a voice which boomed and

rang. People crowded up. Ladies in wonderful frocks broke on him, as

it were, in successions of waves. He bowed, he was shaken by the hand,

he was pulled by the arm. Questions and compliments and platitudes

came upon him in every known variety of indifferent French. He never

ceased to talk. He could have talked the room to a standstill, and

gone on fresh to a dozen like it. He was talking wisely, too. Roger

heard half of one booming epigram as he caught his hostess' eye. She

was bringing up relays of platitudes to take the place of those already

exploded. His host, sawing the air with one hand, was expounding

something which he couldn't explain. Roger saw him compliment the poet

for taking his point without exposition. Exploded platitudes ran into

Roger and apologised. Roger ran into platitudes not yet exploded and

apologised. There was a gabble everywhere of unintelligent talk,

dominating but not silencing the great voice. Roger heard an elegant

young man speak of the poet as "a bounder, an awful bounder." Then

somebody took him by the arm. Somebody wanted to talk to him. He said

his say to the great man while being dragged to somebody. Somebody in

a strange kind of chiton below a strange old gold Greek necklace was

telling him about _The Roman Matron_. Did he write it?

"Yes," he said. "I wrote it."

The hostess interposed. The chiton was borne off to a lady in Early

Victorian dress. A little grey man, very erect and wiry, like a

colonel on the stage, bumped into Roger.

"Rather a crowd, eh?" he said, as he apologised. "Have you seen my

wife anywhere?"

"No," said Roger. "Is she here?"

"Yes," said the other. "I believe she is. Awfully well the old fellow

looks, doesn't he? I met him in Paris in 1890."

They talked animatedly for ten minutes about the prospects of French

literature as compared with our own. Presently the little man caught

sight of his wife. He nodded to Roger and passed on. Roger could not

remember that he had ever seen him before.

He looked about for some one with whom to talk. A couple of novelists

stood on the opposite side of the room talking to a girl. There was

not much chance of getting to them. He looked to his left hand, where

some of the waste of the party had been drifted by the tide. He did

not know any of the people there. He was struck by the appearance of a

young man who stood near the wall, watching the scene with an interest

which was half contemptuous. The man was, perhaps, thirty years of

age. What struck Roger about him was the strange yellowness of his

face. The face looked as though it had been varnished with a clear

amber varnish. The skin near the eyes was puckered into crows' feet.

The brow was wrinkled and seamed. The rest of the face had the

leanness and tightness of one who has lived much in unhealthy parts of

the tropics. He was a big man, though as lean as a rake. Roger judged

from his bearing that he had been a soldier; yet there was a touch of

the doctor about him, too. His eyes had the direct questioning look of

one always alert to note small symptoms, and to find the truth of facts

through evasions and deceits. His hands were large, capable, clinical

hands, with long, supple, sensitive fingers, broad at the tips. The

mouth was good-humoured, but marred by the scar of a cut at the left

corner.

Presently the man walked up to Roger with the inimitable easy grace

which is in the movements of men who live much in the open.

"Excuse me," he said; "but who is the poet in the middle there?"

"Jerome Mongeron," said Roger.

"Thanks," said the man, retiring.

Roger noticed that the man's eyes were more bloodshot than any eyes he

had ever seen. Soon after that Roger saw him lead an elderly lady,

evidently his mother, out of the room. As he felt that he had bored

himself sufficiently in homage to the man of intellect, he too slipped

away as soon as he could.

The night following he dined with Mrs. Heseltine. She was an elderly

lady, fragile-looking, but very beautiful, with that autumnal beauty

which comes with the beginning greyness of the hair. Her face had the

fineness of race in it. Looking at her, one saw that all the unwanted,

unlovely elements had been bred away, by conscious selection, in many

generations of Fawcetts. Her face had that simple refinement of

feature which one sees in the women's faces in Holbein's drawing of Sir

Thomas More's family. Only in Mrs. Heseltine the striving for

rightness and fineness had been pushed a little too far at the expense

of the bodily structure. There was a pathetic drooping of the mouth's

corners, and a wild-bird look in the eye which told of physical

weakness very bravely borne. Her husband was a brain specialist.

She wore black for her niece. There were few other guests. It was a

family party. There were the two Heseltines, their cousins the

Luscombes, the two Fawcetts, Ethel Fawcett (another cousin), a woman in

morning dress who had just been speaking at a suffrage meeting, Roger,

and one Lionel who was very late. They waited for Lionel. They were

sure that Lionel would not be long. The suffrage speaker, Miss

Lenning, asked if Lionel were better. Yes. The new treatment was

doing him good. They were hoping that he would get over it. Roger

started when Mrs. Heseltine's voice grew grave. There were notes in it

strangely like Ottalie's voice. The voice reveals character more

clearly than the face, more clearly than it reveals character, it

reveals spiritual power. Until he heard those grave notes he had not

seen much of Ottalie in her, except in the way in which she sat, the

head a little drooped, the hands composed, in a pose which no art could

quite describe, it was so like her. The words thrilled through him, as

though the dead were in the room under a disguise. There was Leslie

looking at him, with grave, kindly deliberation, putting up his glasses

to Ottalie's eyes with Ottalie's hand. Ottalie's voice spoke to him

through Mrs. Heseltine. They were away in one corner of the room now,

looking at a drawing.

"I have so often heard of you," she was saying. "Somehow I always

missed you when I was at Portobe. But I have heard of you from Leslie,

and from poor Ottalie. I wanted to see you. I have been waiting to

see you for the last month. I wanted to tell you something which

Ottalie said to me, when my boy was killed in the war. She said that

when a life ended, like that, suddenly and incomplete, it was our task

to complete it, for the world's sake, in our own lives." She paused

for an instant, and then added: "I have tried to realise what my boy

would have done. I hope that you will come to talk to me whenever you

like. Ottalie was very dear to me. She was in this room, looking at

this drawing, only seven weeks ago." She faltered for a moment.

"Yes, Mrs. Heseltine?" he said.

"Talking about you," she added gently.

"Mr. Heseltine," said the maid, opening the door. The man with the

yellow face and injected eyes entered.

"Ah, Lionel," said Mrs. Heseltine.

"I'm awfully sorry I'm so late," he said. "They've been trying a new

cure on me. It's said to be permanent; but they've only tried it on

one other fellow so far. I wish you hadn't waited for me." He glanced

at Roger with a smile.

"D'you know Mr. Heseltine, Mr. Naldrett?"

"We met each other last night," said Roger. "At the MacElherans'."

"Yes. I think we did," he answered.

Dinner was announced. Roger took Miss Lenning. Mrs. Heseltine sat at

his left. Miss Lenning was a determined young woman with no nonsense

about her. Roger asked if her speech had gone well.

"Pretty well," she said. "I was on a wagon in the Park. A lot of

loafers rushed the wagon once or twice. It's the sort of thing London

loafers delight to do."

"Yes," said Roger. "That is because the part of London near the parks

is not serious. It is a part given up to pleasure-mongers and their

parasites. The crowds there don't believe in anything, they won't help

anything, they can't understand anything. In the East of London you

would probably get attention. I suppose the police sniggered and

looked away?"

"You talk as though you had been at it yourself," said Miss Lenning.

"Been at it? Yes. Of course I have. But not very much, I'm afraid.

I used to speak fairly regularly. Then at your big meeting in the Park

I got a rotten egg in the jaw, which gave me blood poisoning. I had to

stop then, because ever since then I've been behindhand with my work.

A London crowd is a crowd of loafers loafing. But a crowd in a

northern city, in Manchester, or Leeds, or Glasgow, is a very different

thing. They are a different stock. They are working men, interested

in things. Here they are idlers delighting in a chance of rowdyism.

They are without chivalry or decent feeling. They go to boo and jeer,

knowing that the police won't stop them. I think you women are

perfectly splendid to do what you do, and have done."

"Oh, one doesn't mind going to prison," said Miss Lenning. "I've been

three times now. Besides, we shall know how to reform the prisons when

we get the vote. What makes my blood boil are the insults I get in the

streets from the sort of men whose votes are responsible for disgraces

like the war." She stopped. "What is your line?" she asked.

"I'm a writer."

"Why don't you write a play or a novel about us?"

"Because I don't believe in mixing art with propaganda. My province is

to induce emotion. I am not going to use such talent as I have upon

intellectual puzzles proper to this time. This is the work of a

reformer or a leader-writer. My work is to find out certain general

truths in nature, and to express them, in prose or verse, in as high

and living a manner as I can. That seems absurd to you?"

"Not absurd exactly," she said, "but selfish."

"You think, then, that a man who passes his life in trying to make the

world's thought nobler, and the world's character thereby finer, must

necessarily be selfish?"

"Yes; I do," she said firmly. "There are all you writers trying, as

you put it, to make the world's thought noble, and not one of you--I

beg your pardon, only three of you--lift a finger to help us get the

vote. You don't really care a rush about the world's thought. You

care only for your own thought."

"And your own thought isn't thought at all," said Major Luscombe from

over the table. "I don't mean yours, personally, of course. I like

your play very much. But taking writers generally throughout the

world, what does the literary mind contribute to the world's thought

now? Can you point to any one writer, anywhere in the world, whose

thoughts about the world are really worth reading?"

"Yes. To a good many. In a good many countries," said Roger.

"I have no quarrel with art," said Heseltine, taking up the cudgels.

"It is moral occupation. But I feel this about modern artists, that,

with a few exceptions, they throw down no roots, either into national

or private life. They care no more for the State, in its religious

sense, than they care (as, say, an Elizabethan would have cared) for

conduct. They seem to me to be a company of men without any common

principle or joint enthusiasm, working, rather blindly and narrowly, at

the bidding of personal idiosyncrasy, or of some aberration of taste.

A few of you, some of the most determined, are interested in social

reform. The rest of you are merely photographing what goes on for the

amusement of those who cannot photograph."

"Yes," said Roger. "At present you are condemning modern society.

When you were a boy, Dr. Heseltine, you lived in an ordered world,

which was governed by supernatural religion, excited by many material

discoveries, and kept from outward anxiety by prosperity and peace.

All that world has been turned topsy-turvy in one generation. We are

no longer an ordered world. I believe there is a kind of bacillus,

isn't there, which, when exposed to the open air, away from its home in

the blood, flies about wildly in all directions? That is what we are

doing. A large proportion of English people, having lost faith in

their old ruler, supernatural religion, fly about wildly in motor-cars.

And, unfortunately, material prosperity has increased enormously while

moral discipline has been declining; so that now, while we are,

perhaps, at the height of our national prosperity, there is practically

no common enthusiasm binding man to man, spirit to spirit. It is

difficult for an artist to do much more than to reflect the moral

conduct of his time, and to cleanse, as it were, what is eternal in

conduct from its temporary setting. If the world maintains, as I hold

that it does, that there is nothing eternal, and that moral conduct

consists in going a great deal, very swiftly, in many very expensive

motor-cars, with as many idle companions as possible, then I maintain

that you must respect the artist for standing alone and working, as you

put it, 'rather blindly and narrowly,' at whatever protest his personal

idiosyncrasy urges him to make."

"That's just what I was saying," said Major Luscombe. "I was dining

with Sir Herbert Chard last night, down at Aldershot. We were talking

military shop rather. About conscription. I said that I thought it

was a great pity that universal discipline of some kind had not been

substituted for the old moral discipline, which of course we all

remember, and I dare say were the last to get. You can't get on

without discipline."

"Ah, but that is preaching militarism," said Mrs. Heseltine; "and

preaching it insidiously."

"The military virtues are the bed-rock of character," said the Major.

"I cannot believe that character is taught by drill-sergeants and

subalterns," said Mrs. Heseltine. "If it is taught at all, it is

taught (perhaps unconsciously) by fine men and women; and to some

extent by the images of noble character in works of art. I see no

chance of moral regeneration in conscription, only another excuse for

vapouring, and for that kind of casting off of judgment and

responsibility which goes under the name of patriotism."

"I would rather establish a compulsory study of Equity," said Roger.

"Then nations might judge a _casus belli_ justly, on its merits,

instead of accepting the words of newspapers inspired by unscrupulous

usurers, as at present. A few unprincipled men, mostly of the lowest

kind of commercial Jew, are able to run this country into war whenever

they like. And the Briton believes himself to be a level-headed

business man."

"If that is the case," said the Major triumphantly, "it proves my

point. If we are likely to go to war, we ought to be prepared for war.

And we can only be prepared if we establish conscription. And if we

are not prepared, we shall cease as a nation. It is your duty, as an

English writer, to awaken the national conscience by a play or novel,

so that when the time comes we may be prepared."

"My duty is nothing of the kind," said Roger. "I believe war to be a

wasteful curse; and the preparation for war to be an even greater

curse, and infinitely more wasteful. I am not a patriot, remember. My

State is mind. The human mind. I owe allegiance to that first. I am

not going to set Time's clock back by preaching war. War belongs to

savages and to obsolete anachronisms like generals. You think that

that is decadence. That I am a weak, spiritless, little-Englander, who

will be swept away by the first 'still, strong man' who comes along

with 'a mailed fist.' Very well. I have no doubt that brute force can

and will sweep away most things not brutal like itself. It may sweep

me away. But I will not disgrace my century by preaching the methods

of Palæolithic man. If you want war, go out and fight waste. I

suppose that two hundred and fifty million pounds are flung away each

year on drink and armaments in this country alone. I suppose that in

the same time about five hundred pounds are spent on researches into

the causes of disease. About the same amount is given away to reward

intellectual labours. I mean labours not connected with the

improvement of beer or dynamite. Such labours as noble imaginings

about the world and life." He looked at Miss Lenning, whose eye was

kindling. No one who has dabbled in politics can resist rhetoric of

any kind.

"You send women to prison for wanting to control such folly," he went

on. "Doesn't he, Miss Lenning? If I am to become a propagandist, I

will do so in the cause of liberty or knowledge. I would write for

Miss Lenning, or for Dr. Heseltine there, but for a military man, who

merely wants food for powder, for no grand, creative principle, I would

not write even if the Nicaraguans were battering St. Paul's."

"Some day," said Mrs. Heseltine, "we may become great enough to give up

all this idea of Empire, and set out, like the French, to lead the

world in thought and manners. We might achieve something then. France

was defeated. She is now the most prosperous and the most civilised

country in the world."

"And the least vital," said the Major's wife.

"But what do you mean by vital?" said Roger, guessing that she was

repeating a class catch-word. "Vitality is shewn by a capacity for

thought."

Maggie Fawcett interposed. "It's a very curious state of things," said

she. "The intellect of the world is either trading, fighting for

trade, or preparing to fight for trade. It is, in any case, pursuing a

definite object. But the imagination of the world is engaged in

finding a stable faith to replace the old one. It is wavering between

science and superstition, neither of which will allow a compromise.

You, Mr. Naldrett, if you will excuse my saying so, belong to the

superstition camp. You believe that a man is in a state of grace if he

goes to a tragedy, and can tell a Francesca from a Signorelli. I

belong to the science camp, and I believe that that camp is going to

win. It's attracting the better kind of person; and it has an

enthusiasm which yours has not. You are looking for an indefinite,

rare, emotional state, in which you can apprehend the moral relations

of things. We are looking for the material relations of things so that

the rare emotional state can be apprehended, not by rare, peculiar

people, such as men of genius, but by everybody."

"What you had better do," said Dr. Heseltine, "is, give up all this

'obsolete anachronism' of art. Science is the art of the twentieth

century. You cannot paint or write in the grand manner any longer.

That has all been done. Men like you ought to be stamping out

preventable disease. Instead of that, you are writing of what Tom said

to James while Dick fell in the water. With a fortieth part of what is

wasted annually on the army alone, I would undertake to stamp out

phthisis in these islands. With another fortieth part there is very

little doubt that cancer could be stamped out too. With another

fortieth part, wisely and scientifically administered without morbid

sentiment, we could stamp out crime and other mental diseases."

"The motor-car and golf, for instance?" said Ethel Fawcett.

"Yes. And betting, 'sport,' war, idleness, drink, vice, tobacco, tea,

all the abominations of life. All the reversions to incompleted types.

You ought to write a play or a novel on these things. I'm not speaking

wildly. I'm speaking of a proved scientific possibility of relative

human perfection. When life has been made glorious, as I can see that

it could be made, then you artists could set to work to decorate it as

much as you like."

"So, then," said Roger, "there are three ways to perfection, by

admitting women to the suffrage, by driving men into the army, and by

substituting the College of Surgeons for the Government. Now an artist

is concerned above all things with moral ideas. He is not limited, or

should not be, to particular truths. His world is the entire world,

reduced, by strict and passionate thinking, to its imaginative essence.

You and your schemes, and their relative importance, are my study, and,

when I have reduced them to the ideas of progress which they embody, my

material. I think that you have all made the search for perfection too

much a question of profession. It is not a question of profession. It

is a question of personal character." After a short pause he went on.

"At the same time, there is nothing the man of thought desires so much

as to be a man of action. English writers (I suppose from their way of

bringing up) have been much tempted to action. Byron went liberating

Greece. Chaucer was an ambassador, Spenser a sort of Irish R.M.,

Shakespeare an actor-manager and money-lender, or, as some think, the

Chancellor of the Exchequer. Writing alone is not enough for a man."

Leslie, who had been chatting to Ethel Fawcett, looked at Roger without

speaking. Dinner came slowly to an end. The ladies left the room.

The men settled into their chairs. Dr. Heseltine moved the port to

Lionel, with, "I suppose you're not allowed this?"

Lionel refused the port, smiling. He put a white tabloid into a little

soda-water and settled into the chair next to Roger. He pulled out his

cigarette case. "Will you smoke?" he asked. "These are rather a queer

kind."

"No, thanks," said Roger. "I've given it up."

"I don't think I could do that," said Lionel, selecting a

strange-looking cigarette done up in yellow paper, with twisted ends.

"I smoke a good deal. When one's alone one wants tobacco; one gets

into the way of it."

He lit a cigarette with a brown hand which trembled. Roger, noticing

the tremor, and the redness of the man's eyes, wondered if he were a

secret drinker. "Are you much alone?" he asked.

"A good deal," Lionel answered. "I've just been reading a book by you;

it's called _The Handful_. I think you wrote it, didn't you? So

you've been in the tropics, too?"

"I went to stay with an uncle at Belize, five years ago," said Roger.

"I only stayed for about a month."

"Belize," said Lionel. "My chief was in Belize. Was there any yellow

fever there, when you were there?"

"There was one case," said Roger.

"Did you see it?"

"No," said Roger; "I didn't."

"I should like to see yellow fever," said Lionel simply. "I suppose

there was a good deal of fuss directly this case occurred?"

"Yes," said Roger. "A gang came round at once. I think they put

paraffin in the cisterns. They sealed the infected house with brown

paper and fumigated it."

"And that stopped it?"

"Yes. There were no other cases."

"It's all due to a kind of mosquito," said Lionel. "The white-ribbed

mosquito. He carries the organism. You put paraffin on all standing

puddles and pools to prevent the mosquito's larvæ from hatching out.

My old chief did a lot of work in Havana, and the West Indies, stampin'

out yellow fever. It has made the Panama Canal possible."

"Are you a doctor, then, may I ask?" said Roger.

"No," said Lionel. "I do medical research work; but I don't know much

about it. I never properly qualified. I'm interested in all that kind

of thing."

"What medical research do you do? Would it bore you to tell me?"

"I have been out in Uganda, doing sleeping sickness."

"Have you?" said Roger. "That's very interesting. I've been reading a

lot of books about sleeping sickness."

"Are you interested in that kind of thing?" Lionel asked.

"Yes."

"If you care to come round to my rooms some time I would shew you some

relics. I live in Pump Court. I'm generally in all the morning, and

between four and six in the evening. I could shew you some

trypanosomes. They're the organisms."

"What are they like?" Roger asked.

"They're like little wriggly flattened membranes. Some of them have

tails. They multiply by longitudinal division. They're unlike

anything else. They've got a pretty bad name."

"And they cause the disease?"

"Yes. You know, of course, that they are spread by the tsetse fly?

The tsetse fly sucks them out of an infected fish or mammal, and

develops them, inside his body probably for some time, during which the

organism probably changes a good deal. When the tsetse bites a man,

the developed trypanosome gets down the proboscis into the blood.

About a week after the bite, when the bite itself is cured, the man

gets the ordinary trypanosome fever, which makes you pretty wretched,

by the way."

"Have you had it?"

"Yes; rather. I have it now. It recurs at intervals."

"And how about sleeping sickness?"

"You get sleeping sickness when the trypanosome enters the

cerebro-spinal fluid. You may not get it for six or seven years after

the bite. On the other hand, you may get it almost at once."

"Then you may get it?" said Roger, startled, looking at the man with a

respect which was half pity.

"I've got it," said Lionel.

"Got it? You?" said Roger. He stumbled in his speech. "But, forgive

my speaking like this," he said; "is there a cure, then?"

"It's not certain that it's a permanent cure," said Lionel. "I've just

started it. It's called atoxyl. Before I tried atoxyl I had another

thing called trypanroth, made out of aniline dye. It has made my eyes

red, you see? Dyed them. You can have 'em dyed blue, if you prefer.

But red was good enough, I thought. Now I'm afraid I'm talking rather

about myself."

"No, indeed; I'm intensely interested," said Roger. "Tell me more.

Tell me about the sickness in Uganda. Is it really bad?"

"Pretty bad," said Lionel. "I suppose that a couple of hundred

thousand men and women have died of it during the last seven years. I

don't know how many animals besides. The tsetse will bite pretty

nearly every living thing, and everything it bites gets disease of some

sort. You see, trypanosomiasis is probably a new thing in Uganda. New

diseases are often very deadly, I believe."

"Is the tsetse migrating, then, or can the thing be conveyed by

contagion?"

"No. I don't think it's a contagious thing. I should say it almost

certainly isn't. It needs direct inoculation. And as far as we know

the tsetse keeps pretty near to one place all through its life."

"I know a writer who claims that we are spreading it. Is that so?"

"Indirectly. You see, East Africa is not like America or any other

horse country. You haven't got much means of transport, except

bearers, unless you go by river, and even then you may have to make

portages. Going with natives from one district to another is sure to

spread the infection. When infected people come to a healthy district,

their germs are sure to be inoculated into the healthy by some tick or

bug, even if there are no tsetses to do it. I believe there are

trypanosomes in the hut-bugs. I don't know, though, that hut-bugs are

guiltier than any other kind. It's impossible to say. From the hour

you land until the hour you sail, you are always being bitten or stung

by something. Bugs, ticks, fleas, lice, mosquitoes, tsetses, ants,

jiggers, gads, hippos, sandflies, wasps. You put on oil of lavender,

if you have any. But even with that you are always being bitten."

"And what is the tsetse bite like?"

"You've been to Portobe, haven't you? I remember Ottalie Fawcett

speaking of you, years ago, before I went out. You had that cottage at

the very end of the loaning, just above the sea? Well. Did you ever

go on along the cliff from there to a place where you have to climb

over a very difficult barbed-wire fence just under an ash-tree? I mean

just before you come to a nunnery ruin, where there is a little

waterfall?"

"Yes," said Roger. "I know the exact spot. There used to be a hawk's

nest in the cliff just below the barbed wire."

"Well, just there, there are a lot of those reddy-grey flies called

clegs. You get them going up to Essna-Lara. That's another place.

They bite the horses. You must have been bitten by them. Well, a

tsetse is not much like a cleg to look at. It's duller and smaller.

It's likest to a house-fly, except for the wings, which are unlike any

other kind of insect wings. It comes at you not unlike a cleg. You

know how savage a cleg is? He dashes at you without any pretence. He

only feints when he is just going to land. And he follows you until

you kill him. A tsetse is like that. He'll follow you for half a

mile, giving you no peace. Like a cleg, he settles down on you very

gently, so that you don't notice him. You'll remember the mosquitoes

at Belize. Mosquitoes are like that. Then, when he has sucked his

fill and unscrewed his gimlet, you feel a smarting itch, and see your

hand swollen. If you are not very well at the time a tsetse bite can

be pretty bad. If you'll come to my rooms some time I'll show you some

tsetse. They're nothing to look at. They're very like common

house-flies."

"And you have been studying all this on the spot? Will you tell me

what made you take to it?"

"Oh, I was always interested in that kind of thing. I've always liked

hot climates, and being in wild, lonely places. And then my old chief

was a splendid fellow. He made me interested. I got awfully keen on

it. I want to go out again. You know, I want to get at the bottom of

the trypanosome. His life-history isn't known yet, as we know the

cycle of the malaria parasite. We don't even know what it is in him

which causes the disease. And we don't know very much really about the

tsetse, nor what part the tsetse plays in the organism's life. There's

a lot which I should like to find out, or try to find out. It's the

trying which gives one the pleasure."

"But I think it's heroic of you," said Roger. "Are there many of you

out there, doing this?"

"Not very many."

"It's a heroic thing to do," said Roger. "Heroic. The loneliness

alone must make it heroic."

"You get used to the loneliness. It gives you nerves at first. But in

my opinion the heat keeps you from thinking much about the loneliness.

I like heat myself, but it takes it out of most of the griffs. The

heat can be pretty bad."

"All the same, it is a wonderful thing to do."

"Yes. It's a good thing to spot the cause of a disease like that. But

you over-rate the heroic part. It's all in the day's work. One takes

it as it comes, and one has a pretty good time, too. One never thinks

of the risk, which is really very slight. Doctors face worse things in

London every day. So do nurses. A doctor was telling me only the

other day how a succession of nurses went down to a typhus epidemic and

died one after the other. There's nothing like that in the

Protectorate with sleeping sickness."

"But being the only white man, away in the wilds, with the natives

dying all round you!"

"Yes. That is pretty bad. I was in the middle of a pretty bad

outbreak in a little place called Ikupu. It was rather an interesting

epidemic, because it happened in a place where there weren't any of the

tsetse which is supposed to do the harm. They may have been there; but

I couldn't find any. It must have been another kind which did the

damage at Ikupu. As a matter of fact, I did find trypanosomes in

another kind there, which was rather a feather in my cap. Well, I was

alone there. My assistant died of blackwater fever. And there I was

with a sleeping village. There were about twenty cases. Most of the

rest of the natives ran away, and no doubt spread the infection. Those

twenty cases were pretty nearly all the society of Ikupu. Some were

hardly ill at all. They just had a little fever, perhaps, or a skin

complaint on the chest, and tender, swollen glands. Others were just

as bad as they could be. They were in all stages of the disease. Some

were just beginning to mope outside their huts. Others were sitting

still there, not even caring to ask for food, just moping away to

death, with their mouths open. Generally, one gets used to seeing that

sort of thing; but I got nerves that time. You see, they were rather a

special tribe at Ikupu. They called themselves Obmali, or some such

name. Their lingo was rather rummy. Talking with the chief I got the

impression that they were the relics of a tribe which had been wiped

out further west. They believed that sleeping sickness was caused by a

snake-woman in a swampy part of the forest. Looking after all those

twenty people, and taking tests from them, gave me fever a good deal.

That is one thing you have to get used to--fever. You get used to

doing your work with a temperature of one hundred and two degrees.

It's queer about fever. Any start, or shock, or extra work, may bring

it on you. I had it, as I said, a good deal. Well, I got into the way

of thinking that there was a snake-woman. A woman with a puff-adder

head, all mottled. I used to barricade my hut at night against her."

Dr. Heseltine drew his chair up. "What are you two discussing?

Talking about sleeping sickness?" he asked. "How does the new

treatment suit you, Lionel? No headache, I hope? It's apt to make you

headachy. There's a subject for a play for you, Mr. Naldrett. 'Man

and the Trypanosome.' You could bring the germs on to the stage, and

kill them off with a hypodermic syringe."

"Yes," said Roger. "It has all the requirements of a modern play:

strength, silence, and masculinity. There's even a happy ending to it."

Lionel began to talk to Dr. Heseltine. Roger crossed the room to talk

to Leslie. He heard Lionel saying something about "waiting to give the

monkey a chance." He did not get another talk with Lionel that night.

After they joined the ladies, Ethel Fawcett sang. She had a good, but

not very strong voice. She sang some Schumann which had been very dear

to Ottalie. Her voice was a little like Ottalie's in the high notes.

It haunted Roger all the way home, and into his lonely room. Sitting

down before the fireplace he had a sudden vision of drenching wet

grass, and a tangle of yellowing honeysuckle, heaped over a brook which

gurgled. For an instant he had the complete illusion of the smell of

meadowsweet, and Ottalie coming singing from the house, so sharply that

he gasped.