“But it isn’t only their word, Michael,” reasoned Rosamund; “they’ve got evidence too.”
“Have you looked at it?” asked Moon.
“No,” said Rosamund, with a sort of faint surprise; “these gentlemen are in charge of it.”
“And of everything else, it seems to me,” said Michael. “Why, you haven’t even had the decency to consult Mrs. Duke.”
“Oh, that’s no use,” said Diana in an undertone to Rosamund; “Auntie can’t say ‘Bo!’ to a goose.”
“I am glad to hear it,” answered Michael, “for with such a flock of geese to say it to, the horrid expletive might be constantly on her lips. For my part, I simply refuse to let things be done in this light and airy style. I appeal to Mrs. Duke–it’s her house.”
“Mrs. Duke?” repeated Inglewood doubtfully.
“Yes, Mrs. Duke,” said Michael firmly, “commonly called the Iron Duke.”
“If you ask Auntie,” said Diana quietly, “she’ll only be for doing nothing at all. Her only idea is to hush things up or to let things slide. That just suits her.”
“Yes,” replied Michael Moon; “and, as it happens, it just suits all of us. You are impatient with your elders, Miss Duke; but when you are as old yourself you will know what Napoleon knew– that half one’s letters answer themselves if you can only refrain from the fleshly appetite of answering them.”
He was still lounging in the same absurd attitude, with his elbow on the grate, but his voice had altered abruptly for the third time; just as it had changed from the mock heroic to the humanly indignant, it now changed to the airy incisiveness of a lawyer giving good legal advice.
“It isn’t only your aunt who wants to keep this quiet if she can,” he said; “we all want to keep it quiet if we can. Look at the large facts–the big bones of the case. I believe those scientific gentlemen have made a highly scientific mistake. I believe Smith is as blameless as a buttercup. I admit buttercups don’t often let off loaded pistols in private houses; I admit there is something demanding explanation. But I am morally certain there’s some blunder, or some joke, or some allegory, or some accident behind all this. Well, suppose I’m wrong. We’ve disarmed him; we’re five men to hold him; he may as well go to a lock-up later on as now. But suppose there’s even a chance of my being right. Is it anybody’s interest here to wash this linen in public?
“Come, I’ll take each of you in order. Once take Smith outside that gate, and you take him into the front page of the evening papers. I know; I’ve written the front page myself. Miss Duke, do you or your aunt want a sort of notice stuck up over your boarding-house–‘Doctors shot here.’ No, no–doctors are rubbish, as I said; but you don’t want the rubbish shot here. Arthur, suppose I am right, or suppose I am wrong. Smith has appeared as an old schoolfellow of yours. Mark my words, if he’s proved guilty, the Organs of Public Opinion will say you introduced him. If he’s proved innocent, they will say you helped to collar him. Rosamund, my dear, suppose I am right or wrong. If he’s proved guilty, they’ll say you engaged your companion to him. If he’s proved innocent, they’ll print that telegram. I know the Organs, damn them.”
He stopped an instant; for this rapid rationalism left him more breathless than had either his theatrical or his real denunciation. But he was plainly in earnest, as well as positive and lucid; as was proved by his proceeding quickly the moment he had found his breath.
“It is just the same,” he cried, “with our medical friends. You will say that Dr. Warner has a grievance. I agree. But does he want specially to be snapshotted by all the journalists prostratus in horto? It was no fault of his, but the scene was not very dignified even for him. He must have justice; but does he want to ask for justice, not only on his knees, but on his hands and knees? Does he want to enter the court of justice on all fours? Doctors are not allowed to advertise; and I’m sure no doctor wants to advertise himself as looking like that. And even for our American guest the interest is the same. Let us suppose that he has conclusive documents. Let us assume that he has revelations really worth reading. Well, in a legal inquiry (or a medical inquiry, for that matter) ten to one he won’t be allowed to read them. He’ll be tripped up every two or three minutes with some tangle of old rules. A man can’t tell the truth in public nowadays. But he can still tell it in private; he can tell it inside that house.”
“It is quite true,” said Dr. Cyrus Pym, who had listened throughout the speech with a seriousness which only an American could have retained through such a scene. “It is true that I have been per-ceptibly less hampered in private inquiries.”
“Dr. Pym!” cried Warner in a sort of sudden anger. “Dr. Pym! you aren’t really going to admit–”
“Smith may be mad,” went on the melancholy Moon in a monologue that seemed as heavy as a hatchet, “but there was something after all in what he said about Home Rule for every home. Yes, there is something, when all’s said and done, in the High Court of Beacon. It is really true that human beings might often get some sort of domestic justice where just now they can only get legal injustice–oh, I am a lawyer too, and I know that as well. It is true that there’s too much official and indirect power. Often and often the thing a whole nation can’t settle is just the thing a family could settle. Scores of young criminals have been fined and sent to jail when they ought to have been thrashed and sent to bed. Scores of men, I am sure, have had a lifetime at Hanwell when they only wanted a week at Brighton. There IS something in Smith’s notion of domestic self-government; and I propose that we put it into practice. You have the prisoner; you have the documents. Come, we are a company of free, white, Christian people, such as might be besieged in a town or cast up on a desert island. Let us do this thing ourselves. Let us go into that house there and sit down and find out with our own eyes and ears whether this thing is true or not; whether this Smith is a man or a monster. If we can’t do a little thing like that, what right have we to put crosses on ballot papers?”
Inglewood and Pym exchanged a glance; and Warner, who was no fool, saw in that glance that Moon was gaining ground. The motives that led Arthur to think of surrender were indeed very different from those which affected Dr. Cyrus Pym. All Arthur’s instincts were on the side of privacy and polite settlement; he was very English and would often endure wrongs rather than right them by scenes and serious rhetoric. To play at once the buffoon and the knight-errant, like his Irish friend, would have been absolute torture to him; but even the semi-official part he had played that afternoon was very painful. He was not likely to be reluctant if any one could convince him that his duty was to let sleeping dogs lie.
On the other hand, Cyrus Pym belonged to a country in which things are possible that seem crazy to the English. Regulations and authorities exactly like one of Innocent’s pranks or one of Michael’s satires really exist, propped by placid policemen and imposed on bustling business men. Pym knew whole States which are vast and yet secret and fanciful; each is as big as a nation yet as private as a lost village, and as unexpected as an apple-pie bed. States where no man may have a cigarette, States where any man may have ten wives, very strict prohibition States, very lax divorce States–all these large local vagaries had prepared Cyrus Pym’s mind for small local vagaries in a smaller country. Infinitely more remote from England than any Russian or Italian, utterly incapable of even conceiving what English conventions are, he could not see the social impossibility of the Court of Beacon. It is firmly believed by those who shared the experiment, that to the very end Pym believed in that phantasmal court and supposed it to be some Britannic institution.
Towards the synod thus somewhat at a standstill there approached through the growing haze and gloaming a short dark figure with a walk apparently founded on the imperfect repression of a negro breakdown. Something at once in the familiarity and the incongruity of this being moved Michael to even heartier outbursts of a healthy and humane flippancy.
“Why, here’s little Nosey Gould,” he exclaimed. “Isn’t the mere sight of him enough to banish all your morbid reflections?”
“Really,” replied Dr. Warner,“ I really fail to see how Mr. Gould affects the question; and I once more demand–”
“Hello! what’s the funeral, gents?” inquired the newcomer with the air of an uproarious umpire. “Doctor demandin’ something? Always the way at a boarding-house, you know. Always lots of demand. No supply.”
As delicately and impartially as he could, Michael restated his position, and indicated generally that Smith had been guilty of certain dangerous and dubious acts, and that there had even arisen an allegation that he was insane.
“Well, of course he is,” said Moses Gould equably; “it don’t need old ’Olmes to see that. The ’awk-like face of ’Olmes,” he added with abstract relish, “showed a shide of disappointment, the sleuth-like Gould ’avin’ got there before ’im.”