“‘My pilgrimage is not yet accomplished,’ he replied sadly. ‘I have become a pilgrim to cure myself of being an exile.’
“Something in the word ‘pilgrim’ awoke down in the roots of my ruinous experience memories of what my fathers had felt about the world, and of something from whence I came. I looked again at the little pictured lantern at which I had not looked for fourteen years.
“‘My grandmother,’ I said in a low tone, ‘would have said that we were all in exile, and that no earthly house could cure the holy home-sickness that forbids us rest.’
“He was silent a long while, and watched a single eagle drift out beyond the Green Finger into the darkening void.
“Then he said, ‘I think your grandmother was right,’ and stood up leaning on his grassy pole. ‘I think that must be the reason,’ he said–‘the secret of this life of man, so ecstatic and so unappeased. But I think there is more to be said. I think God has given us the love of special places, of a hearth and of a native land, for a good reason.’
“‘I dare say,’ I said. ‘What reason?’
“‘Because otherwise,’ he said, pointing his pole out at the sky and the abyss, ‘we might worship that.’
“‘What do you mean?’ I demanded.
“‘Eternity,’ he said in his harsh voice, ‘the largest of the idols– the mightiest of the rivals of God.’
“‘You mean pantheism and infinity and all that,’ I suggested.
“‘I mean,’ he said with increasing vehemence, ‘that if there be a house for me in heaven it will either have a green lamp-post and a hedge, or something quite as positive and personal as a green lamp-post and a hedge. I mean that God bade me love one spot and serve it, and do all things however wild in praise of it, so that this one spot might be a witness against all the infinities and the sophistries, that Paradise is somewhere and not anywhere, is something and not anything. And I would not be so very much surprised if the house in heaven had a real green lamp-post after all.’
“With which he shouldered his pole and went striding down the perilous paths below, and left me alone with the eagles. But since he went a fever of homelessness will often shake me. I am troubled by rainy meadows and mud cabins that I have never seen; and I wonder whether America will endure.– Yours faithfully, Louis Hara.”
After a short silence Inglewood said: “And, finally, we desire to put in as evidence the following document:–
“This is to say that I am Ruth Davis, and have been housemaid to Mrs. I. Smith at ‘The Laurels’ in Croydon for the last six months. When I came the lady was alone, with two children; she was not a widow, but her husband was away. She was left with plenty of money and did not seem disturbed about him, though she often hoped he would be back soon. She said he was rather eccentric and a little change did him good. One evening last week I was bringing the tea-things out on to the lawn when I nearly dropped them. The end of a long rake was suddenly stuck over the hedge, and planted like a jumping-pole; and over the hedge, just like a monkey on a stick, came a huge, horrible man, all hairy and ragged like Robinson Crusoe. I screamed out, but my mistress didn’t even get out of her chair, but smiled and said he wanted shaving. Then he sat down quite calmly at the garden table and took a cup of tea, and then I realized that this must be Mr. Smith himself. He has stopped here ever since and does not really give much trouble, though I sometimes fancy he is a little weak in his head.
“P.S.–I forgot to say that he looked round at the garden and said, very loud and strong: ‘Oh, what a lovely place you’ve got;’ just as if he’d never seen it before.”
The room had been growing dark and drowsy; the afternoon sun sent one heavy shaft of powdered gold across it, which fell with an intangible solemnity upon the empty seat of Mary Gray, for the younger women had left the court before the more recent of the investigations. Mrs. Duke was still asleep, and Innocent Smith, looking like a large hunchback in the twilight, was bending closer and closer to his paper toys. But the five men really engaged in the controversy, and concerned not to convince the tribunal but to convince each other, still sat round the table like the Committee of Public Safety.
Suddenly Moses Gould banged one big scientific book on top of another, cocked his little legs up against the table, tipped his chair backwards so far as to be in direct danger of falling over, emitted a startling and prolonged whistle like a steam engine, and asserted that it was all his eye.
When asked by Moon what was all his eye, he banged down behind the books again and answered with considerable excitement, throwing his papers about. “All those fairy-tales you’ve been reading out,” he said. “Oh! don’t talk to me! I ain’t littery and that, but I know fairy-tales when I hear ’em. I got a bit stumped in some of the philosophical bits and felt inclined to go out for a B. and S. But we’re living in West ’Ampstead and not in ’Ell; and the long and the short of it is that some things ’appen and some things don’t ’appen. Those are the things that don’t ’appen.”
“I thought,” said Moon gravely, “that we quite clearly explained–”
“Oh yes, old chap, you quite clearly explained,” assented Mr. Gould with extraordinary volubility. “You’d explain an elephant off the doorstep, you would. I ain’t a clever chap like you; but I ain’t a born natural, Michael Moon, and when there’s an elephant on my doorstep I don’t listen to no explanations. ‘It’s got a trunk,’ I says.–‘My trunk,’ you says: ‘I’m fond of travellin’, and a change does me good.’–‘But the blasted thing’s got tusks,’ I says.–‘Don’t look a gift ’orse in the mouth,’ you says, ‘but thank the goodness and the graice that on your birth ’as smiled.’–‘But it’s nearly as big as the ’ouse,’ I says.–‘That’s the bloomin’ perspective,’ you says, ‘and the sacred magic of distance.’–‘Why, the elephant’s trumpetin’ like the Day of Judgement,’ I says.–‘That’s your own conscience a-talking to you, Moses Gould,’ you says in a grive and tender voice. Well, I ’ave got a conscience as much as you. I don’t believe most of the things they tell you in church on Sundays; and I don’t believe these ’ere things any more because you goes on about ’em as if you was in church. I believe an elephant’s a great big ugly dingerous beast– and I believe Smith’s another.”
“Do you mean to say,” asked Inglewood, “that you still doubt the evidence of exculpation we have brought forward?”
“Yes, I do still doubt it,” said Gould warmly. “It’s all a bit too far-fetched, and some of it a bit too far off. ’Ow can we test all those tales? ’Ow can we drop in and buy the ‘Pink’Un’ at the railway station at Kosky Wosky or whatever it was? ’Ow can we go and do a gargle at the saloon-bar on top of the Sierra Mountains? But anybody can go and see Bunting’s boarding-house at Worthing.”
Moon regarded him with an expression of real or assumed surprise.
“Any one,” continued Gould, “can call on Mr. Trip.”
“It is a comforting thought,” replied Michael with restraint; “but why should any one call on Mr. Trip?”
“For just exactly the sime reason,” cried the excited Moses, hammering on the table with both hands, “for just exactly the sime reason that he should communicate with Messrs. ’Anbury and Bootle of Paternoster Row and with Miss Gridley’s ’igh class Academy at ’Endon, and with old Lady Bullingdon who lives at Penge.”
“Again, to go at once to the moral roots of life,” said Michael, “why is it among the duties of man to communicate with old Lady Bullingdon who lives at Penge?”
“It ain’t one of the duties of man,” said Gould, “nor one of his pleasures, either, I can tell you. She takes the crumpet, does Lady Bullingdon at Penge. But it’s one of the duties of a prosecutor pursuin’ the innocent, blameless butterfly career of your friend Smith, and it’s the sime with all the others I mentioned.”
“But why do you bring in these people here?” asked Inglewood.
“Why! Because we’ve got proof enough to sink a steamboat,” roared Moses; “because I’ve got the papers in my very ’and; because your precious Innocent is a blackguard and ’ome smasher, and these are the ’omes he’s smashed. I don’t set up for a ’oly man; but I wouldn’t ’ave all those poor girls on my conscience for something. And I think a chap that’s capable of deserting and perhaps killing ’em all is about capable of cracking a crib or shootin’ an old schoolmaster–so I don’t care much about the other yarns one way or another.”
“I think,” said Dr. Cyrus Pym with a refined cough, “that we are approaching this matter rather irregularly. This is really the fourth charge on the charge sheet, and perhaps I had better put it before you in an ordered and scientific manner.”
Nothing but a faint groan from Michael broke the silence of the darkening room.
Chapter IV
The Wild Weddings; or, the Polygamy Charge
“A modern man,” said Dr. Cyrus Pym, “must, if he be thoughtful, approach the problem of marriage with some caution. Marriage is a stage–doubtless a suitable stage–in the long advance of mankind towards a goal which we cannot as yet conceive; which we are not, perhaps, as yet fitted even to desire. What, gentlemen, is the ethical position of marriage? Have we outlived it?”