Part 10

‘But good heavens, dear Prince, you’re not thinking of leaving us?’ said the Biologist. Joyful relief soared upwards from his heart; he had barely time to clap a distressful expression over it to keep it from escaping.

‘Yes,’ said Dwala, ‘I’m going home. I have my own life to live, you know. I’ve been a slave over here, working for the good of Man. My work is done; I have delivered my message; and now I’m going back to my wild life in the forest while I’m still young and strong. I mean to ... to throw all this off’--he flapped his coat like a bird--‘and enjoy myself.’

‘I trust you will be very _very_ happy,’ said the Biologist, shaking him warmly by the hand. ‘How are you going to manage about the money?’ he asked in a lower voice.

‘They’re arranging it in there,’ said Dwala, in the same precautious tones, pointing to a door, behind which voices could be heard.

The door opened at that moment and admitted an elderly obsequious man in black, with a big parchment folded under his arm; and behind him came Baron Blumenstrauss, Lady Wyse, Mr. Cato, and a lean brown man with a tuft on his chin, whom Sir Peter had seen there once before. This man smiled at Sir Peter drily. The obsequious man said good-bye, and shook hands with the Prince.

‘It’s all right, your Royal Highness; signed, sealed, delivered, and stamped.’

‘Quite sound in law, is it?’ said the Prince.

‘Inter fifos,’ nodded the Baron; ‘sount as a pell.’

The obsequious gentleman hurried out.

‘Fonny man!’ said the Baron, patting the Prince on the shoulder, and smiling at Sir Peter; ‘he gif his broperty all away, effery penny.’

‘It’s generous, dear Prince,’ said the Biologist, ‘but is it wise? Even out there, no doubt, one has expenses.’

‘Oh! I sha’n’t want any money,’ said the Prince.

‘They have no pockets, you know,’ said Lady Wyse.

Whereupon the Baron, who was not initiated, adjusted his glasses and looked at her with great attention.

‘Remember King Lear,’ said the Biologist. ‘He divided his property in two’....

‘Seely fellow!’ said the Baron.

‘And his daughters were both ungrateful.’

‘Natürlich!’ said the Baron. ‘He trowed away de chief ting he haf; he gif de broperty widout de power. If I difide my corner in Brazilians into two corners for de boys, do you tink Max and Choel loff me very moch?’

‘You would find some Cordelia, I am sure, dear Baron.’

‘Nod widout monny,’ said the Baron.

‘There’s no Cordelia in this case,’ said Lady Wyse; ‘I’m Goneril and the other lady all in one.’

‘Really?’ The Biologist was all smiles and proffered hands. ‘I congratulate you. The Prince couldn’t have disposed of his fortune better, I’m sure.’

‘Ah! that depends how people treat us.’

‘Dere is gondition,’ said the Baron, looking at his watch.

‘May one inquire, dear Prince, what the condition is?’

‘Oh! it’s a mere nothing.’

‘Lady Wyse publish his “Memoirs,”’ said the Baron.

The Biologist turned pale.

‘That reminds me,’ said the American; ‘I mustn’t leave those papers litterin’ about. I forgot to lock them up.’

‘Goot-bye,’ said the Baron. ‘I haf beesness encagement.’ He followed the American out at the door.

‘Of course!’ said the Biologist, brightening. ‘“Memoirs of a Statesman”--anecdotes of the great people you have met. Who is the American-looking man?’

‘Oh! that’s Mr. Bone, one of my collaborators. Mr. Cato and Lady Wyse are the others; between us, you see, we cover the whole ground. I met Mr. Bone in Borneo. In fact, he was ... he was my proprietor. I’m going to leave the history of my life as a legacy and a lesson to the English Nation.’

‘You’ll have to go over to Borneo with the Prince, Sir Peter,’ said Lady Wyse: ‘you’ll be much more comfortable up one of his trees than you will be in England.’

The question had been debated many and many a time between them. Mr. Cato, as always, was for candour; he felt that Dwala was in a false position; he thought the secret should be published at once, and guaranteed the enthusiastic interest of the nation. Mr. Bone, for other reasons, agreed with him as to immediate publication; he thought there was money in it. Lady Wyse was all for caution; she lacked the business instinct of the American, and the optimism of Mr. Cato; she doubted the enthusiasm of the public; she thought it was running into unnecessary danger to publish the secret before the Prince was out of the country. It had therefore been agreed that she should publish it as soon as he was safe in the great forest again. She was ready to incur any danger herself; she was tired of life; and she did not in the least mind what happened to the Biologist.

The Biologist saw ruin impending. Savage, reckless hatred welled in his breast as he looked at this great creature, fatally sick, but rejoicing in a present intensity of life and vigour. He groped about for something sharp and venomous to pierce him with; to make him fall beside him into the valley of despair. He walked up to Dwala, hissing like a serpent in his face.

‘You have come to Man as an apostle, bringing us a new message of Civilisation.’

Dwala nodded, rather proudly.

‘Do you know what Man has given to you in return? What Man always gives to such animals? What any scientist could have told you you were bound to get in coming?... Consumption.... Phthisis pulmonalis.... Death!... Going back while you’re young and strong to your wild life in the forest! Pish! You won’t live the month out. I knew it that night. You’re a dying beast.’

Alas! why had Lady Wyse never told him? He had never thought of that. Life hummed and bubbled through his veins. He knew nothing of sickness and death. He had always been alive. The world had been faint at times; but that was the world, not he. A stiffening horror ran through him; he felt his skin moving against his clothes. Then his mind ran rapidly through all the series of events--the growth to the full knowledge of Man, the labouring hope of a joke, the change, the revelation, the submission to an overwhelming truth, the rejoicing millions.... Then suddenly this discovery of an unsuspected vengeance-for-benefit which had been stealing slowly and surely from the first in his steps, to spring at last on his back in the moment of fruition.

It was too funny; the surprise of the inevitable overcame him; it was a Joke which suddenly leaped up embracing the whole life of a created being, and the destiny of a nation--of humanity itself.

Dwala laughed. For the last time he laughed. A laugh to which his others were childish crowings; a laugh which flung horror on to the walls and into the darkened air, and spread a sudden dismay of things worse than death throughout the land. Men stopped in their work and in their talk and their lips grew pale without a cause; some goodness had gone out of Providence; some terror had been added to Fate. From the fire of that dismay the Biologist emerged a withered and broken man; Mr. Cato never flinched, his sheer goodness protected him; Lady Wyse broke into tears. She, too, was unscathed. No human canon of ethics has been invented by which she could be called good; she was a breaker of laws, an enemy of her kind. But in the place of ‘goodness’ she had a greatness which set her above the need of it.

When the paroxysm of laughter was ended, Dwala staggered and sank into a chair, and they saw him hanging from it with the blood streaming out of his mouth.

At once they were in the world of definite, manageable facts again. The Biologist became the attentive practitioner, Lady Wyse the understanding woman, Mr. Cato the bewildered layman, busily doing unnecessary things, ringing the bell, calling for brandy, hurrying out into the hall to see why they were so long. Huxtable and the American came running down the stairs, and Dwala was carried to his room and put to bed.

XXXV

While all the household radiated about Dwala’s sick-bed, and there was no attention for any other thing, the Biologist ran swiftly up the stairs, guided by a superhuman instinct of despair, straight to the American’s room. He was going to seize the ‘Memoirs’ and burn them. Dwala was dying; no new authentic copy could be produced again. In the doorway he saw that his instincts had guided him aright. American things greeted his eyes--an American hat on the chest of drawers, American corn-cob pipes on the mantelpiece. But what was this? Something alive in the room! A man crouching behind the table with a bundle of papers. It was Prosser ‘doing something big’ at last. Too much astonished to move for a moment, Sir Peter stood staring stupidly at the frightened, cowering figure behind the table.

‘Hello: what are you doin’ here?’ said a voice in the doorway. Then the American espied the broken desk, and a moment later the Biologist found himself clutched by the collar, trying helplessly to protect his head from a flailing fist, while Prosser’s shadow shot low and horizontal through the doorway.

‘The Memoirs! the Memoirs!’ yelled the Biologist. ‘The d----d thief’s stolen the Memoirs! Let me go! Let me go! It’s Prosser, not me! Oh, for God’s sake, don’t hit me again!’

At the mention of Prosser the American stayed his hand, fumbled Sir Peter’s pockets, then snatched him by the collar, and ran down the stairs, dragging him after him like a live thing in a sack. But they were too slow for Prosser. As they came out into Park Lane shouting ‘Stop thief! stop thief!’ there was the fat policeman saluting and grinning delightedly.

‘He’s got clean away this time, sir.’

‘Heavens alive! Why didn’t you stop him?’

‘I knows my place, sir’--with a wink. ‘It’s only Mr. Prosser.’

‘Blow your whistle, man! Blow your whistle! He’s stolen State Papers.’

The policeman walked very slowly forward to the edge of the pavement and looked up and down the road, then turned about, smiling rather nervously.

‘Do you reely mean it, sir?’

‘Good Lord!’ said the American, and started off running madly without another word into Oxford Street; while the Biologist careered, wild and hatless, up Grosvenor Street, yelling desperately ‘Prosser, _dear_ Prosser!’ to the scandal of Mayfair.

XXXVI

Among the many unnecessary things which Mr. Cato did in the bewilderment of Dwala’s sudden illness, the most unnecessary was to telegraph news of it to his sister, Lady Lillico.

‘Dwala ill lung hemorrhage doctors offer little hope recovery Wyndham.’

They were in the drawing-room when the telegram came, just preparing to go and dress for dinner.

‘How too perfectly frightful!’ cried Lady Lillico. ‘The Premier dying! I must go at once.’

‘Good Lord, Louisa, what for?’ said her husband.

‘Don’t be so cynical, John. If Wyndham has telegraphed for me?’

‘Are you going to nurse the Prince?’

‘Of course I am. Pray keep your insinuations for some more fitting time. What brutes men are! I believe you feel _nothing_ even now!’ At which she began to cry.

‘What about yer dinner?’

‘As if I could dine! Tell Hopkins to make up a little basket of something to eat on the way. One mustn’t give any extra trouble. Oh dear, oh dear; and my maid’s out! I shall have to take Emily. You must send Harper on _at once_ when she comes in.’

However, no feats of heroism were demanded of Lady Lillico. She found Mr. Cato and Huxtable waiting for her with a comfortable meal--Lady Wyse stayed with Dwala--for though the servants’ hall was all agog with the events of the afternoon, and the butler darkly prognosticated ‘the worst,’ things above stairs were in their usual train. And when she presented herself an hour later, almost gay with fine emotion, in a ‘business-like costume,’ cap and pinafore complete, in the darkened sick-room, Lady Wyse, who hurried to the door to check her entry--her violet eyes grown nearly black, and looking ‘very wicked,’ as Lady Lillico said afterwards--told her baldly that she would not be wanted till the morning.

XXXVII

When the sun cast his cold inquiring eye on England in the morning, and the innocent fields awoke in their grey shifts of dew, the trains that shot North, West, and South from London over the landscape, like worldly thoughts in a house of prayer, bore the tidings of Dwala’s disgrace. Trainloads of newspapers, the white wax sweated forth by the grimy bees in the sleepless hives of the big city, rattled past answering loads of milk and meat, gifts of the country, making the daily exchange. Squires and parsons were too shocked to eat their breakfast; their wives raced against the doctor to carry the news from house to house; the schoolmasters told the children; the children carried the tidings with the handkerchief of dinner to their fathers under the trees in the field. There was no room for hesitation; verdict and judgment were pronounced already. The country had been made the victim of a hideous hoax. Dwala and all his works must perish.

And yet, when the Biologist blurted his hint of a tail, a roomful of people turned and rent him! It is the way of the world; it is part of good manners. A partial revelation, a timid hint, an indiscretion, is smothered ignominiously; when the whole blatant truth brays out, men welcome it with ferocious joy. So, in the ancient days, tactless young angels in Heaven were sent to Coventry who alluded to Lucifer’s tail, or noticed anything odd about his feet; but when his tumbling-day came at last, the Seraphim were in the very front of the crowd which stood pelting meteors and yelling _Caudate! ungulate!_ down from the clouds.

Men shut up their shops in London and gathered about taverns and corner-posts to unravel the sense of the bewildering news. Public Opinion, deserting the grass of the Parks, slouched into the streets to learn what it must do.

When Joey ran down into the street to fetch the morning milk, the news stared out at her from the boards in pink and black: ‘Dwala, the Missing Link!’

‘Golly!’ said her pals; ‘what’s your bloke been up to now?’

Joey was a heroine every day--the greatness of her acquaintance had a savour in Seven Dials which it had lacked in Park Lane; but this morning she soared altogether out of sight. What were milk-jugs and breakfast to such a thing as this? The milk penny went in a couple of newspapers, and she darted off with them across country for Dwala’s house. Who knew but she might be the first to bring him the great news?

Everybody was in the streets, as happens when public events are astir; and every street sent forth a thin stream that trickled in the same direction, till it formed a full river in Park Lane. A posse of policemen guarded the spiked gates.

‘Move on! Move on!’ said the official voice.

‘None of your nonsense, constable; I’m a friend of the Missin’ Link.’

‘What! Miss Joey!’ beamed a familiar face from under a helmet. ‘Let her in, Bill; _she_ won’t ’urt ’im.’

The steps were littered with telegrams that lay like autumn leaves unswept; and an anxious footman, muttering to himself, was strapping a bag in the entry.

‘Is the Missin’ Link at home, young man?’

‘The brutes! To leave me behind, all alone!’

It was the last of the servants, deserted like an unwilling Casa Bianca in the general flight, while packing his things in his cubicle. A moment later he had gone too, without even looking at her, and she stood alone in the empty, echoing hall. She could hear Hartopp cursing and thumping with his wooden leg on the floor above. Then a pistol-shot rang out somewhere in the house, and she was frightened. While she stood hesitating which way to run a door swung to, and Lady Wyse walked across the hall, with a basin steaming in her hands. She went in at another door, and Joey followed her, clutching her newspapers.

Dwala sat up in bed, propped against pillows, with ghastly, hollow eyes; and on the chair beside him was Mr. Cato, pale and dishevelled, fast asleep. A cold wave of disappointment surged over Joey. Was this what Missing Links looked like? But he smiled at her, and the old feeling of fellowship came back.

‘Have you heard the news?’ said Joey.

Dwala nodded. ‘What do they say?’

Joey read him column on column of frantic outcry, at all of which he smiled gently.

‘This is our joke,’ he said, at last, to Lady Wyse.

‘It’s not our best.’

Then there came a tap at the door, and a gentle voice saying:

‘May I come in?’

Lady Lillico had been awoken by a dream with the sound of a shot in it. Nine o’clock! Why, where was Harper? She rang, and rang in vain. Then she looked out of window, and smiled and nodded at the crowd. How sweet of them to be so anxious about the poor dear Prince! And still no Harper. Never mind! One must expect to rough it in a house of sickness. She knotted her hair and slipped on her dressing-gown; a first visit in _déshabillé_ lends a motherly grace to a nurse’s part.

She tripped lightly down the silent stairs to Dwala’s room.

‘May I come in?’

She tip-toed up to the bed with a ceremonious face. Mr. Cato frowned; Lady Wyse looked at her with cold curiosity.

‘Have you heard the news?’ said Joey, rustling a newspaper.

‘Evidently not,’ said Lady Wyse.

‘It’s all come out,’ said Mr. Cato, sepulchrally.

‘What’s come out?’ said his sister, scared. ‘I’ve heard nothing.’

Joey thrust the paper at her with an indicating finger.

She stared for a long time at the words without understanding; then fell into a chair and laughed hysterically.

‘What do you think of it now they’ve caught it?’ whispered Dwala, turning white eyes towards her.

‘Well, really, you ridiculous creature!’ she exclaimed, flapping at him with a little lace handkerchief, half coquettishly, half as if keeping something off. ‘It’s so out of the common.... The Prime Minister!... One doesn’t know _what_ to say!’

‘He’s dying,’ said Mr. Cato.

‘Wyndham! How can you!’

‘Lady Wyse must go and get some sleep now; you will take her place.’

‘Don’t be idiotic! I should be no use. Oh dear, oh dear! Where _can_ Harper be?’

‘Sit down, Louisa!’ said Mr. Cato sternly, barring her way. ‘Lady Wyse has been up all night.’

‘Don’t be so cruel.... Let me go! let me go!’ she screamed in an access of sudden fear, wrenched herself free from him, and ran towards the door.

Then abruptly her horror leaped up and overwhelmed her; the instinct of flying from the incomprehensible--the instinct of the horse which shies at a piece of moving paper--was swallowed up in the nightmare of realising that the impossible had happened, was in this very room with her. This man she had come to nurse, this man with whom she had talked and shaken hands, was suddenly not a man, but something unknown and monstrous, of another world. Her faculties failed, as at sight of a ghost, not in fear of injury, but in the mere awfulness of the alien power. She staggered out at the door crying ‘Save me! save me!’ threw her hands forward in her first natural gesture since childhood, and fell swooning in the hall. When she came back to consciousness, after long journeying in nightmare worlds, she heard angry voices speaking near her.

‘Let me out, d---- you!’ said Hartopp--that dreadful Mr. Hartopp--‘they’re throwing stones at my windows, I tell you. They’ll smash my china! Let me get at the brutes!’

‘This door ain’t goin’ to be opened till the Prince is re-moved.’

It was the American who answered him. He stood with his hat on, leaning against the barred and bolted hall-door, his arms folded and a pistol drooping from either hand.

‘D---- the ----!’ said Hartopp. ‘Why don’t you chuck him out and have done with it? It’s all his fault.’

‘Thank God you’re back!’ said Lady Wyse’s voice right over Lady Lillico’s head. ‘Have you arranged it?’

‘The Boss is agreeable,’ said the American. ‘The “Phineas” will be at Blackwall at twelve o’clock, steam up. One of his vans is waitin’ down back in Butlin Street now, and we must shift the Prince at once, before any onpleasantness begins. There was no other way; the Prince will hev to go as an anamal.’

A stone came jingling through the window beside them, and others followed in showers.

‘B---- brutes!’ said the blind man.

‘Where’s Huxtable?’ said Lady Wyse.

‘Huxtable’s gone.’

‘Skunk!’ said Joey.

‘Not quite a skunk,’ said the American; ‘“skunk” is goin’ too fur.’

There was a roar and a rush outside, battle cries, shrieks of despairing whistles, and a moment later a heavy battering at the mahogany of the front door.

Lady Lillico, fully conscious at last, jumped up with piercing yells. She ran this way and that, bewildered.

‘We must get the Prince away quickly,’ said Lady Wyse, going towards his room.

‘Oh, let me out, let me out somewhere!’ cried Lady Lillico. Joey ran past with her tongue thrust mockingly forth, like a heraldic lion gardant.

‘Here, give me your pistols,’ said the blind man; ‘I’ll give the brutes what for!’

Slowly and heavily they carried Dwala out across the hall, wrapped in his blankets like a gigantic mummy; while Hartopp stood in an expectant joy of ferocity guarding the entrance. Down the kitchen passage they carried him, and out into the high-walled garden--with Lady Lillico flitting like a Banshee before them--through the stable-yard, and into the deserted street, where the van was waiting for them. Public Opinion, so rigorous once in its denunciation of ‘frontal attacks,’ seemed to have forgotten the ‘lessons of the Boer War.’ When the big door was battered down, and the furious crowd broke in, half a dozen of them fell mortally wounded before Hartopp was overpowered. The old Fence died, fighting like a tiger for his property.

* * * * *

What was Dwala thinking of as he lumbered slowly through the length of London in that menagerie van? Was he laughing quietly to himself at the thought that he, the saviour of England, the superhuman mind, was being hustled secretly out of England, for a trivial pride of species, as if he had committed some unspeakable crime? Was he weeping at the nearness of his separation from this handful of faithful friends? Probably not. His mind, withdrawn to the innermost darkness of the caves, was probably busy with the trivial thoughts which beset men at such times. It is only in the last moment that the soul throws off the load of little things, and, soaring like a bird, sees Life and Death spreading in their vastness beneath it. He lay still, with his eyes shut, and his temples hollow with decay. Lady Lillico was fast asleep, under a black cloak which somebody had thrown over her. The rest sat silent in the jolting twilight with their feet in the straw.

‘It’s a lesson for all of us,’ murmured Mr. Cato at last.

‘It’s that,’ said the American; ‘it p’ints a moral sharp enough to hurt.’

* * * * *

As Mr. Cato stood with Joey on the jetty, watching the last moments of departure, the American came to the bulwarks with Lady Wyse, and, leaning over, beckoned him.

‘“Skunk” was goin’ too fur for Huxtable. I’ve just bin tellin’ Lady Wyse; he shot himself whin the noos came. I found him lyin’ in his room.’

‘Was he dead?’ murmured Mr. Cato, awestruck at the fall of an enemy.

The American nodded.

‘Deader’n a smelt.’

‘I wish I were dead too!’ said Mr. Cato bitterly.

The American made a motion of diving with his joined hands. Mr. Cato shook his head.

‘I have my two sisters to look after.’

‘I wish you joy.’

Then the cables were loosed, the screw snorted in the water, the American waved, and followed Lady Wyse into the cabin; the boat slid away from the jetty, and, slowly turning in mid-stream, reared its defiant head towards the sea.

* * * * *