“‘You are now engaged in public worship,’ remarked Smith severely, ‘and before I have done with you, you shall thank God for the very ducks on the pond.’
“‘The celebrated pessimist half articulately expressed his perfect readiness to thank God for the ducks on the pond.
“‘Not forgetting the drakes,’ said Smith sternly. (Eames weakly conceded the drakes.) ‘Not forgetting anything, please. You shall thank heaven for churches and chapels and villas and vulgar people and puddles and pots and pans and sticks and rags and bones and spotted blinds.’
“‘All right, all right,’ repeated the victim in despair; ‘sticks and rags and bones and blinds.’
“‘Spotted blinds, I think we said,’ remarked Smith with a rogueish ruthlessness, and wagging the pistol-barrel at him like a long metallic finger.
“‘Spotted blinds,’ said Emerson Eames faintly.
“‘You can’t say fairer than that,’ admitted the younger man, ‘and now I’ll just tell you this to wind up with. If you really were what you profess to be, I don’t see that it would matter to snail or seraph if you broke your impious stiff neck and dashed out all your drivelling devil-worshipping brains. But in strict biographical fact you are a very nice fellow, addicted to talking putrid nonsense, and I love you like a brother. I shall therefore fire off all my cartridges round your head so as not to hit you (I am a good shot, you may be glad to hear), and then we will go in and have some breakfast.’
“He then let off two barrels in the air, which the Professor endured with singular firmness, and then said, ‘But don’t fire them all off.’
“‘Why not’ asked the other buoyantly.
“‘Keep them,’ asked his companion, ‘for the next man you meet who talks as we were talking.’
“It was at this moment that Smith, looking down, perceived apoplectic terror upon the face of the Sub-Warden, and heard the refined shriek with which he summoned the porter and the ladder.
“It took Dr. Eames some little time to disentangle himself from the ladder,and some little time longer to disentangle himself from the Sub-Warden. But as soon as he could do so unobtrusively, he rejoined his companion in the late extraordinary scene. He was astonished to find the gigantic Smith heavily shaken, and sitting with his shaggy head on his hands. When addressed, he lifted a very pale face.
“‘Why, what is the matter?’ asked Eames, whose own nerves had by this time twittered themselves quiet, like the morning birds.
“‘I must ask your indulgence,’ said Smith, rather brokenly. ‘I must ask you to realize that I have just had an escape from death.’
“‘YOU have had an escape from death?’ repeated the Professor in not unpardonable irritation. ‘Well, of all the cheek–’
“‘Oh, don’t you understand, don’t you understand?’ cried the pale young man impatiently. ‘I had to do it, Eames,; I had to prove you wrong or die. When a man’s young, he nearly always has some one whom he thinks the top-water mark of the mind of man–some one who knows all about it, if anybody knows.
“‘Well, you were that to me; you spoke with authority, and not as the scribes. Nobody could comfort me if YOU said there was no comfort. If you really thought there was nothing anywhere, it was because you had been there to see. Don’t you see that I HAD to prove you didn’t really mean it?– or else drown myself in the canal.’
“‘Well,’ said Eames hesitatingly, ‘I think perhaps you confuse–’
“‘Oh, don’t tell me that!’ cried Smith with the sudden clairvoyance of mental pain; ‘don’t tell me I confuse enjoyment of existence with the Will to Live! That’s German, and German is High Dutch, and High Dutch is Double Dutch. The thing I saw shining in your eyes when you dangled on that bridge was enjoyment of life “the Will to Live.” What you knew when you sat on that damned gargoyle was that the world, when all is said and done, is a wonderful and beautiful place; I know it, because I knew it at the same minute. I saw the gray clouds turn pink, and the little gilt clock in the crack between the houses. It was THOSE things you hated leaving, not Life, whatever that is. Eames, we’ve been to the brink of death together; won’t you admit I’m right?’
“‘Yes,’ said Eames very slowly, ‘I think you are right. You shall have a First!’
“‘Right!’ cried Smith, springing up reanimated. ‘I’ve passed with honours, and now let me go and see about being sent down.’
“‘You needn’t be sent down,’ said Eames with the quiet confidence of twelve years of intrigue. ‘Everything with us comes from the man on top to the people just round him: I am the man on top, and I shall tell the people round me the truth.’
“The massive Mr. Smith rose and went firmly to the window, but he spoke with equal firmness. ‘I must be sent down,’ he said, ‘and the people must not be told the truth.’
“‘And why not’ asked the other.
“‘Because I mean to follow your advice,’ answered the massive youth, ‘I mean to keep the remaining shots for people in the shameful state you and I were in last night–I wish we could even plead drunkenness. I mean to keep those bullets for pessimists–pills for pale people. And in this way I want to walk the world like a wonderful surprise– to float as idly as the thistledown, and come as silently as the sunrise; not to be expected any more than the thunderbolt, not to be recalled any more than the dying breeze. I don’t want people to anticipate me as a well-known practical joke. I want both my gifts to come virgin and violent, the death and the life after death. I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him–only to bring him to life. I begin to see a new meaning in being the skeleton at the feast.’
“‘You could scarcely be called a skeleton,’ said Dr. Eames, smiling.
“‘That comes of being so much at the feast,’ answered the massive youth. ‘No skeleton can keep his figure if he is always dining out. But that is not quite what I meant: what I mean is that I caught a kind of glimpse of the meaning of death and all that–the skull and cross-bones, the memento mori. It isn’t only meant to remind us of a future life, but to remind us of a present life too. With our weak spirits we should grow old in eternity if we were not kept young by death. Providence has to cut immortality into lengths for us, as nurses cut the bread and butter into fingers.’
“Then he added suddenly in a voice of unnatural actuality, ‘But I know something now, Eames. I knew it when I saw the clouds turn pink.’
“‘What do you mean?’ asked Eames. ‘What did you know?’
“‘I knew for the first time that murder is really wrong.’
“He gripped Dr. Eames’s hand and groped his way somewhat unsteadily to the door. Before he had vanished through it he had added, ‘It’s very dangerous, though, when a man thinks for a split second that he understands death.’
“Dr. Eames remained in repose and rumination some hours after his late assailant had left. Then he rose, took his hat and umbrella, and went for a brisk if rotatory walk. Several times, however, he stood outside the villa with the spotted blinds, studying them intently with his head slightly on one side. Some took him for a lunatic and some for an intending purchaser. He is not yet sure that the two characters would be widely different.
“The above narrative has been constructed on a principle which is, in the opinion of the undersigned persons, new in the art of letters. Each of the two actors is described as he appeared to the other. But the undersigned persons absolutely guarantee the exactitude of the story; and if their version of the thing be questioned, they, the undersigned persons, would deucedly well like to know who does know about it if they don’t.
“The undersigned persons will now adjourn to ‘The Spotted Dog’ for beer. Farewell.
Chapter II
The Two Curates; or, the Burglary Charge
Arthur Inglewood handed the document he had just read to the leaders of the prosecution, who examined it with their heads together. Both the Jew and the American were of sensitive and excitable stocks, and they revealed by the jumpings and bumpings of the black head and the yellow that nothing could be done in the way of denial of the document. The letter from the Warden was as authentic as the letter from the Sub-Warden, however regrettably different in dignity and social tone.
“Very few words,” said Inglewood, “are required to conclude our case in this matter. Surely it is now plain that our client carried his pistol about with the eccentric but innocent purpose of giving a wholesome scare to those whom he regarded as blasphemers. In each case the scare was so wholesome that the victim himself has dated from it as from a new birth. Smith, so far from being a madman, is rather a mad doctor– he walks the world curing frenzies and not distributing them. That is the answer to the two unanswerable questions which I put to the prosecutors. That is why they dared not produce a line by any one who had actually confronted the pistol. All who had actually confronted the pistol confessed that they had profited by it. That was why Smith, though a good shot, never hit anybody. He never hit anybody because he was a good shot. His mind was as clear of murder as his hands are of blood. This, I say, is the only possible explanation of these facts and of all the other facts. No one can possibly explain the Warden’s conduct except by believing the Warden’s story. Even Dr. Pym, who is a very factory of ingenious theories, could find no other theory to cover the case.”