Part 3

“We must not,” replied the second, “permit these wretched personalities to interfere with policies of universal benefit. Moreover, I am sure that the two forces are both too large-minded to let their personal inclinations stand in the way. And in any case, is it not possible that as a result of this great movement they may come to realise----”

“Yes,” cried the first breathlessly.

“--that they themselves are one and the same personality?”

XXII

MEN, NOT MEASURES

“What is that little man with the soul like a wet umbrella, that somebody has left in a corner, doing?” inquired the lovely, though scarcely visible, presence that had unexpectedly materialised the night before in the house of the Prime Minister of Samaria.

“Hush,” whispered his conductor, the utterly outraged Private Secretary, “hush, they will hear you.”

“Have no fear,” said the radiant creature, looking carefully at the faces of the assembled Council, “my voice is of the kind that does not reach their ears. Therefore tell me what he is doing?”

“He is keeping minutes,” said the Secretary, a little sullenly.

“Why does he do that?” inquired the angel. “Were I in his place I would shoo them on their way like a hen-yard full of hens.”

“You do not understand,” said the Secretary; “he is keeping a record of what is happening.”

“But how does he know?” inquired the angel.

“By listening to what these gentlemen say,” replied the Secretary.

“Dear me,” said the angel, “if that is his only source of information I see that I must help him,” and he walked across the Council chamber to the side of the luckless clerk, gently disregarding the frenzied gestures of the Private Secretary.

The Clerk had made the following entry in a neat flowing hand on a handsome sheet of thick white paper.

“The Prime Minister drew the Council’s attention to the difficulties presented by the Poets’ Birth (Prevention) Bill. The object, as his colleagues knew, was to secure that in future poets should be made (if possible by publicity) and not born. Everybody agreed that democracy should have self-made poets, that the pretensions of birth must cease. At the same time it could not be denied that poets insisted on being born. It would be within his colleagues’ recollection that a number of poets had been made in the recent list of honours. They were, he was happy to say, perfect in every respect except that they did not write poetry. For his part he preferred that kind of poet, but it could not be denied that the opponents of the measure were making great play with this. He asked for the views of his colleagues.

“The Minister of Higher Education asked what poetry was?

“The Minister of Commerce entirely agreed.

“The Master of the Weasels thought that there was much in what had been said.

“The Senior Almoner had had a letter from a very respectable washerwoman in his constituency. She complained that there was a poet who wore soft collars. He did not wish to press the point, but popular feeling could not be neglected.

“The Keeper of the Conscience took the view that the time was ripe for action. Several members of the Council concurred.

“The Prime Minister, summing up, said that he was glad to find his colleagues unanimous in supporting the course he had proposed. The division was likely to be a close one. He especially appealed to Lord Albatross.”

At this point the angel took possession of the Clerk’s mind, and with a queer click the faces of the men round the table were rolled up like green railway carriage blinds, and their minds became visible, working rather like electric light studs being pressed off and on. The Clerk continued to write the minutes: “Not that Lord Albatross cared, but his stud would fidget his neck, and he couldn’t be expected to listen to the Prime Minister’s neat periods with a rasping stud. The other eighteen fellers probably had got their studs right. Anyhow, judgin’ by their serious looks, they had better things than studs to think about. Queer thing how complete they all looked--if you know what I mean. Couldn’t imagine them ever having not worn morning coats or neat grey tweeds and a sort of sewn-up-and-sent-home-hoping-it’s-to-your-complete-satisfaction look. Except ‘Conky,’ the Lord High Wig. ‘Conky’ was dressed up like himself--a sort of suit consistin’ of a heavy jowled face, glass eyes, looming stomach and the rest. Joke if they found him and ‘Conky’ out and gave them the push for having sneaked into the room during a Council.” Albatross suppressed a chuckle.

The P.M. looked at him coldly. “Damn the fellow with his aristocratic sharpness. There he sat looking like a stuck pig, and all the time he had followed every word and seen through the whole caboodle. That’s the worst of mixing classes. They’ve got their own cold, fishy way of nosing through the water, and snap--they’re on the fly, when you thought them fast asleep. They’d never understand each other--never. Here was he not caring a row of beans (or has-beens, he added, viciously looking round) as to what the result of the division would be. What he wanted was friendship. He wanted them all to see that he wasn’t just the best thing in talking machines that had been invented. Groping to them he was--to their hearts. Well, why not? They had hearts, hadn’t they? And just when he was stretching out a hand to gather in the strings this cold fellow fetches out his knife of laughter. Not human, that’s what was wrong. Born like a little Eastern idol. He should have stuck to his own lot. There was Crayfish, the Senior Almoner. He sympathised. He stood shoulder to shoulder. Damn! getting the rhetoric into his thoughts! Still Crayfish would pull it through, if only to irritate Albatross and Lord Conkers. If he didn’t, well he’d get back to humans at last. He had a right, hadn’t he, to be a man.

“The Minister of Commerce was drawing one O after another on his pad. Who did the perfect circle? Forget my own name next. Just ask old Crayfish--only chap in the room who’s ever read anything except _The Morning News_--begging Albatross’ pardon--and _The Blue ’Un_. Silly to have got cluttered up with this gang, and yet what a wonder the P.M. was. Never felt a thing in his life. Could make a bed--mattress and all--out of two adjectives and a noun. Yes, and the right adjectives too--right in a popular sense that is. But as a literary proposition, O Lord! How odd, though, to live by words that weren’t words so much as gestures and nothing behind them. Like Hume--association of well, not ideas, but penny plain dressed up as tuppeny coloured. Like a series of ballads hawked by a man in the street hung all round him and no man in the middle. Funny how not being a man he gets real men like old Crayfish for instance. That’s the one--no rhetoric for him. Look at his tense simple eyes. He thinks only of what’s best and loyalty, and if sincerity can get the damned thing through he’ll do it. Now I wonder if he does know who did the perfect circle?...”

The blinds clicked down again. The Master of the Weasels was standing over the Clerk pouring some brandy down his throat. The Clerk blinked his eyes and recovered suddenly. “I’m sorry, sir, I must have fainted. I’m afraid that I’ve missed part of the discussion.” “It doesn’t matter,” said the Prime Minister, looking at the notes, from which the angelic interpolations had disappeared. “Nobody said a thing while you were off.” “Oh,” said the Clerk happily, “then nothing happened. Will you sign the minutes?”

XXIII

YOU CANNOT HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT

A certain business-man in Damascus, whose efficiency was only surpassed by his personal ugliness, was informed that in a distant vilayet dwelt a peasant of whom it was currently rumoured that he possessed a goose that laid eggs of pure gold.

He accordingly chartered a caravan, and with much jingling of silver bells set out across the desert to make a proposition to the peasant. In his company was a young man who was reputed (though it had not been finally brought home to him) to be a poet. Whether this were true or no, it cannot be denied that he paid much heed to the ascensions of the moon.

On the third day of the pilgrimage that pale planet was bewitching in her pensive hair the reluctant black beauty of the desert. All was still except when a grave camel kneeling shook a bell. But presently, with the clear monotony of a bird, the young man’s voice was heard singing:

“In this cold glory of midnight, day and her fever have passed away.

“Here in the quiet, here in the cool, even pain, even sorrow are beautiful.

“And the voice of the poet lifts and lingers at one in the dark with the older singers.”

“As I feared,” said the merchant, raising his head from his silken and tasselled pillow, “the fellow is a poet. I must cope with this.” Thereupon he lifted the flap of his embroidered tent, and in a sleeping suit, of which the radiant texture did not conceal the irregular contours of his frame, with one arm behind his back, strode across the sand to where, in a patch of shadow, the poet was crooning.

“Young man,” said the merchant, breaking somewhat harshly on the singer’s reverie, “was that your own poem?”

“It was, merchant,” replied the poet, “but now, since you have heard it, it is yours also.”

“Tell me,” said the merchant craftily, “how much would you be paid for such a poem in Damascus?”

“If I were lucky,” said the poet, “I might earn a kiss, or if unlucky a dinah.”

“A dinah,” said the merchant. “By the beard of the Prophet, no bad pay for a mouthful of sweet words. And is it difficult to acquire the trick?”

“All that is needed,” answered the poet, “is a rose behind the ear and the moon behind the heart.”

“In Damascus,” cried the merchant, “I have a hanging garden stained with roses, and at night the moon rises in the garden. My ears are longer than yours, and my heart, if one may judge by a comparison of our persons, is incomparably larger. I will accordingly give up the quest of the goose, and will return to Damascus and in my rose garden lay my own golden eggs. But in the meantime,” he added reflectively, stabbing the poet to the heart with the pearl-handled scimitar which he had hitherto concealed, “I may as well dispose of a dangerous rival.”

“O fool,” whispered the dying poet, “it was only the goose who thought the eggs gold, because of the golden goslings hidden in their cool blue shell, as the peasant discovered when he killed her.”

“Why did she think so?” said the merchant, daintily wiping the curved blade.

“Because she was a poet,” whispered the dying man. “And why did she tell the peasant?” asked the merchant, preparing to return to his interrupted rest. “Because,” said the poet, turning over on his side with a little sigh, “because she was a goose.”

XXIV

IN VINO VERITAS

“The next story,” said the author, “will be an example of grim realism. It will have no characters and no incidents and no meaning. It will continue for some three or four hundred pages, and will begin in the middle and not end at all. There will also be a tendency for verbs and punctuation to disappear simultaneously, and a slightly stagnant atmosphere of muddled gloom will reproduce the sensation of a London fog.”

“I did not know,” said the publisher, “that you had read Tchekov. For my part I have not, and let me add I do not intend that my public should.”

“I do not even know,” replied the author, “what Tchekov is, though by the sound it might be a Slavonic parlour game. But if, as always, you are going to thwart me just when I am about to strike a modern note, I will tell you quite simply and (I hope) beautifully an old-fashioned Christmas story. About the year 1840,” said the author, “in the City of London, and to be particular in the immediate neighbourhood of a cosy, rosy, prosy old coaching inn in the Borough, lived, or rather existed (for he was a wicked old screw was Jonathan), a merchant in the tea trade (at least he let it be understood that it was the tea trade, but the gossips, who stood about at the street corners with very blue noses waiting for the muffin-boy, had their suspicions that----)”

“I do not,” interjected the publisher, “wish to be unduly curious. But may I ask whether there are any other sentences in this story?”

“Of course,” retorted the author, with justifiable heat, “but if I am to tell this story at all perhaps you will permit me to tell it in an old-fashioned way. Let me tell you that in 1840 people had time to finish sentences like that, yes and to understand them. A man who could stand the factory system of the time could stand anything.

“Well,” continued the author, “there existed in that neighbourhood Jonathan Gogglesnape, and as is general with persons who had acquired names of that sort, he was the hardest, grindingest miser that you would find in a smart day’s walk, east, west, south or north of the pump on the left hand corner of the square of St. Runnymede-in-the-East. Jonathan was at all times of the year a cold, pinched figure of a man in a tight, rusty surtout, and not an inch of linen showing either at the mean, scraggy throat or the large red wrists, but at five o’clock on Christmas Eve he was a circumstance, like the whistling wind, to make comfortable folks draw closer to the fire and to thank their Maker and the Spirit of Christmas that they were not as other men.

“A sharp fall of snow, as yet untrodden into filth and mud, had smoothed out the vices of the pavement and given that touch of happy contrast between the radiant revellers within and the homeless wanderers without so typical of Christmas feeling.”

“I do not think that I can stand much more of this,” said the publisher faintly.

“In that case,” said the author, “I shall, without delay, recite a poem which I have called ‘In vino veritas.’”

IN VINO VERITAS.

“Singing ’e was. I tell yer, singing as sweet as kiss me ’and-- a drunken sort o’chune, but swinging the feet like if yer understand.

“I stood and watched ’is dancin’ shadder, Lord wot a dancer! ’eel an’ toe. ‘Oo’s for the ladder--Jacob’s ladder-- one good ’eave and up yer go!’

“Drunk as God ’e was--the liquor, like a flare of naphthaline, burning as it run, but quicker-- brightest thing I ever seen!

“’Appy? well I arsk yer! Drinking, laughing, singing, dance ’e went, Tell yer straight I kep’ on thinking-- ’appy! that’s wot ’appy meant.

“‘I’ve a ladder--Jacob’s ladder-- one good ’eave and up yer go. Men are mad, but God is madder--’ Meaning? ‘Ow am I ter know?’

“Laughing, singing, dancing, mumming-- looking soft and sly behind ’im, ‘Are yer coming? Aren’t yer coming?’ Damn ’is eyes--I’m off to find ’im.”

“There is a good deal,” remarked the publisher, “to be said for Prohibition.”

XXV

TANTAE RELIGIO

And another thing. In the gardens of Haroun-al-Raschid, just past the corner where one pale rose watches her tranquil shadow in the ice-blue water of a marbled pond, grew a black tree that could not wait for the Arabian spring. But on the contrary, instead of leaves she threw over her graceful shoulders a cloak sprigged with red blossom. And that in a single night.

“Oh miracle,” said the first gardener next morning when he observed this bright irregularity, “red snow has fallen in the night.” “Oh marvel,” said the second, “a swarm of red butterflies.” “Oh wonder,” cried the third, “a little lanthorn in each lighted twig.” “You must be blind,” said the first; “or a numbskull,” said the second; “or mad,” cried the third. And thereupon, as was only to be expected, the three fell to fighting furiously one with another.

“What are those men doing?” whispered the terrified blossoms to the mother tree; “we are afraid.”

“Hush! blossoms,” murmured the tree, “they think that we are a divine manifestation.”

“What is that?” asked the blossoms.

“The appearance of the God they worship upon earth,” replied the tree.

“And how do you know,” cried the blossoms, “that they think so?”

“Because,” said the tree as the last gardener fell heavily to the ground, “they are killing one another.”

XXVI

ON ENTERTAINING ANGELS UNAWARES

The pale-faced man with the slightly Jewish cast of countenance was observed for the first time on the night of the 27th June passing through the churchyard by the Vicar, who, taking him, not unnaturally, for a loafer, ordered him out pretty sharply. He obeyed with remarkable meekness and disappeared rapidly in the direction of the house of Mrs. Bolpus. He was next seen on the following evening--a cold, clear night of moon--by the village ninny, or so it was supposed. For he came back shouting some nonsense about a lighted man, and laughed happily and quietly all night.

It was, however, her ladyship who met him in broad daylight two days later, and engaged him in conversation. For she had heard of his appearance and feared that he might be a new scandal. She had intended to begin by speaking to him roundly, but something soft and flickering in his eyes stopped her. Instead of reproving him, therefore, she said, speaking almost as to an equal:

“We are thinking of forming a branch of the Society of Poor Lost Things in the village, and we wondered whether you would care to join?” “Strange,” he replied in a low but beautifully clear voice, “I was also thinking of forming a society. But perhaps our objects are the same! What is yours?” “Oh,” said the lady, “we aim at sweetening bitter lives.”

“In that case,” said the stranger earnestly, “I would like to give all I have. It is, I fear,” he added with a smile, “only a guinea.”

“You are joking, I see,” murmured the lady, signing a receipt with a gold pencil. “And now, sir, will you forgive me if I make a personal observation?”

“But of course,” he replied.

“You are lodging with Mrs. Bolpus. As a stranger you cannot know her reputation. If I might without impertinence suggest it, perhaps it would be wise to find a less questionable landlady.”

“And yet,” mused the stranger, “she seemed poor and unhappy.”

“And so she should,” cut in the lady.

“Indeed I should have described her as a Poor Lost Thing.”

“I can see,” said the benefactress icily, taking the guinea out of her purse, “that you have misunderstood the objects of the Society. We assist only the deserving.” “In my Society,” said the man, sadly pocketing his coins, “we assist first the undeserving.”

“So I should imagine,” sneered her ladyship, “and what do you call it?”

“Oh,” said the stranger gently, turning away, “we call it the Society of the Rich Lost Things, for whom the way to the kingdom of heaven is through the eye of a needle.”

* * * * *

“I hope,” said her ladyship to the Earl, her husband, at dinner, “that you will arrange for Mrs. Bolpus to be evicted at once.”

“Evicted!” said the Earl; “but haven’t you heard the news? She died this morning.”

“Died!” gasped the lady; “then what was the Jew with the beard doing in her house?”

“The Jew with the beard?” asked her husband. “I was there to-day and didn’t hear of anyone.”

“Are you sure?” cried the Countess.

“Quite!” said the Earl, “but wait! Is it perhaps the tramp that the Vicar saw in the churchyard and poor Geordie Brown’s ‘lighted man’? I think myself that in both cases it was just imagination.”

“Perhaps,” replied the lady after a long pause, “but all the same I shall resign my chairmanship of the branch of the Poor Lost Things.”

“Now what in the name of God----,” began the Earl.

“Hush,” almost screamed his wife.

XXVII

TEMPUS FUGIT

“No,” said the old grandfather clock to the green parrot, “I will not tell you another story. I have told so many that I am quite hoarse.” “I cannot think what you mean,” replied the parrot. “You have said nothing but tick-tock like a hen, and then you cluck loudly as though you had laid an egg, though you have in fact only mislaid an hour. That is not my idea of a story.”

“When you are my age,” said the clock, “you will realise that there is no other story.”

XXVIII

YOU CAN TAKE A HORSE TO THE WATER

Once upon a time (and you will see later that it was fortunately not twice upon this time) in the garden of the Château of Nyon, in the sweet heart of a lime tree and very near to the little padded box where they keep the silkworms, there lived a chrysalis, whose ancestors had come over with John Knox, but who nevertheless agreed with Hume.

“The Almighty,” he said, speaking with what he conceived to be a Scottish accent, “is merely a prrojection of the chrysalis mind--a varra puir exemple of the association of incomparable ideas. Now Kant, as every Scotsman knows, dragged in the soul--a silly bit fluttering thing with white wings--the great gowk. Mon, it’s a peety....”

“Qu’est que tu me chantes là,” exclaimed an elderly silk-worm, who was busily occupied in his exquisite occupation. “Execrable worm, thinkest thou that because thou art no better than a dried twig that all suffer from such misfortune? It is indeed certain that upon such as thee the good God has not wasted a soul, but as to me I know that the delicate machine which can spin so marvellous a net was not meant to fade into dust. But what can one expect of one whose forefathers were generated in a fog, lived in an east wind, and died without ever having seen the sun?” and with this the silk-worm resumed his tapestry.

“What,” exclaimed the chrysalis, “is it Scotland you’re naming in the same breath wi’ your God-forgotten, pope-ridden, frog-warren? A’m black ashamed, ah am, and metaphysic or no a’ll no ha it said that any trapesing piece of a Frenchy had a soul and me from the Clachans of the Tolbooth no. But mind,” he added as he burst, and from his husk daintily, like a lace handkerchief out of lavender, rose the butterfly, “my opeenions remain unchanged.”

“I also,” said the silk-worm, “who have all the years had faith, will take wings.” And he breathed very hard and deep, but the only result was that he spoiled his skein.

XXIX

HALF A LOAF IS BETTER THAN NO BREAD

Once upon a time there lived in a cathedral city, almost in the shadow of the minster, a middle-aged freethinker, who was exceedingly angry with God for not existing. Nor was he conciliated by those who pointed out (reasonably enough) that it was not His fault. This, in the view of the freethinker, merely increased the offence. “He should have thought of all that before,” he would say grimly.

In the same town, but actually in the minster itself, yes and in a hole in the pulpit, lived a mouse, who, for her part, did not agree with the freethinker. She was, I fear, not as independent a mind as she should have been, and permitted herself to be influenced by the singularly sweet voice of the principal officiating priest. Him she (foolishly) identified with the creator of the ample mansion of her choice, and indeed let it be understood among her acquaintance that she was peculiarly acceptable in his sight. “For,” she said, “every day he comes dressed all in white when the sun strikes through the windows, throwing a coloured shadow on his robe, and scatters precious bread for me on a stainless cloth. And in further proof,” she would say to scoffers, “there is a second and lesser angel, who salutes him, calling him by his name of ‘Our Father in Heaven.’” Several mice who doubted her story came at her invitation to scoff and remained to eat the sacred crumbs.

Now it was exactly this matter of the bread which above all other Christian uses most inflamed the freethinker. When he was not railing at the superstition of those who believed that a celestial body could be concealed in milled and baked ears of corn, he was complaining against the waste of good bread. He would calculate a statistic of the annual diversion of bread to this purpose. “Think of the poor!” he would snort, but it is not certain that he thought of them himself.