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 longadvance 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?"
"Outlived it?" broke out Moon; "why, nobody's ever survived it!Look at all the people married since Adam and Eve--and allas dead as mutton."
"This is no doubt an inter-pellation joc'lar in its character,"said Dr. Pym frigidly. "I cannot tell what may be Mr. Moon'smatured and ethical view of marriage--"
"I can tell," said Michael savagely, out of the gloom. "Marriage is a duelto the death, which no man of honour should decline."
"Michael," said Arthur Inglewood in a low voice, "you MUST keep quiet."
"Mr. Moon," said Pym with exquisite good temper, "probably regardsthe institution in a more antiquated manner. Probably he would makeit stringent and uniform. He would treat divorce in some great soulof steel--the divorce of a Julius Caesar or of a Salt Ring Robinson--exactly as he would treat some no-account tramp or labourer whoscoots from his wife. Science has views broader and more humane.Just as murder for the scientist is a thirst for absolute destruction,just as theft for the scientist is a hunger for monotonous acquisition,so polygamy for the scientist is an extreme development of the instinctfor variety. A man thus afflicted is incapable of constancy.Doubtless there is a physical cause for this flitting from flower to flower--as there is, doubtless, for the intermittent groaning which appearsto afflict Mr. Moon at the present moment. Our own world-scorningWinterbottom has even dared to say, `For a certain rare and finephysical type polygamy is but the realization of the variety of females,as comradeship is the realization of the variety of males.'In any case, the type that tends to variety is recognized by allauthoritative inquirers. Such a type, if the widower of a negress,does in many ascertained cases espouse ~en seconde noces~ an albino;such a type, when freed from the gigantic embraces of a female Patagonian,will often evolve from its own imaginative instinct the consoling figure ofan Eskimo. To such a type there can be no doubt that the prisoner belongs.If blind doom and unbearable temptation constitute any slight excusefor a man, there is no doubt that he has these excuses.
"Earlier in the inquiry the defence showed real chivalricideality in admitting half of our story without further dispute.We should like to acknowledge and imitate so eminently large-hearteda style by conceding also that the story told by Curate Percy aboutthe canoe, the weir, and the young wife seems to be substantially true.Apparently Smith did marry a young woman he had nearly run down in a boat;it only remains to be considered whether it would not have beenkinder of him to have murdered her instead of marrying her.In confirmation of this fact I can now con-cede to the defencean unquestionable record of such a marriage."
So saying, he handed across to Michael a cutting from the"Maidenhead Gazette" which distinctly recorded the marriageof the daughter of a "coach," a tutor well known in the place,to Mr. Innocent Smith, late of Brakespeare College, Cambridge.
When Dr. Pym resumed it was realized that his face had grownat once both tragic and triumphant.
"I pause upon this pre-liminary fact," he said seriously,"because this fact alone would give us the victory,were we aspiring after victory and not after truth.As far as the personal and domestic problem holds us,that problem is solved. Dr. Warner and I entered this house atan instant of highly emotional diff'culty. England's Warner hasentered many houses to save human kind from sickness; this timehe entered to save an innocent lady from a walking pestilence.Smith was just about to carry away a young girl from this house;his cab and bag were at the very door. He had told her she wasgoing to await the marriage license at the house of his aunt.That aunt," continued Cyrus Pym, his face darkening grandly--"thatvisionary aunt had been the dancing will-o'-the-wispwho had led many a high-souled maiden to her doom.Into how many virginal ears has he whispered that holy word?When he said `aunt' there glowed about her all the merrimentand high morality of the Anglo-Saxon home. Kettles began to hum,pussy cats to purr, in that very wild cab that was beingdriven to destruction."
Inglewood looked up, to find, to his astonishment (as many anotherdenizen of the eastern hemisphere has found), that the American wasnot only perfectly serious, but was really eloquent and affecting--when the difference of the hemispheres was adjusted.
"It is therefore atrociously evident that the man Smith has atleast represented himself to one innocent female of this houseas an eligible bachelor, being, in fact, a married man. I agree withmy colleague, Mr. Gould, that no other crime could approximate to this.As to whether what our ancestors called purity has any ultimate ethicalvalue indeed, science hesitates with a high, proud hesitation.But what hesitation can there be about the baseness of a citizenwho ventures, by brutal experiments upon living females, to anticipatethe verdict of science on such a point?
"The woman mentioned by Curate Percy as living with Smithin Highbury may or may not be the same as the lady he marriedin Maidenhead. If one short sweet spell of constancy and heartrepose interrupted the plunging torrent of his profligate life,we will not deprive him of that long past possibility.After that conjectural date, alas, he seems to have plunged deeperand deeper into the shaking quagmires of infidelity and shame."
Dr. Pym closed his eyes, but the unfortunate fact that there was no morelight left this familiar signal without its full and proper moral effect.After a pause, which almost partook of the character of prayer, he continued.
"The first instance of the accused's repeated and irregular nuptials,"he exclaimed, "comes from Lady Bullingdon, who expresses herselfwith the high haughtiness which must be excused in those who lookout upon all mankind from the turrets of a Norman and ancestral keep.The communication she has sent to us runs as follows:--
"Lady Bullingdon recalls the painful incident to which referenceis made, and has no desire to deal with it in detail.The girl Polly Green was a perfectly adequate dressmaker,and lived in the village for about two years. Her unattachedcondition was bad for her as well as for the general moralityof the village. Lady Bullingdon, therefore, allowed it to beunderstood that she favoured the marriage of the young woman.The villagers, naturally wishing to oblige Lady Bullingdon,came forward in several cases; and all would have been well had itnot been for the deplorable eccentricity or depravity of the girlGreen herself. Lady Bullingdon supposes that where there isa village there must be a village idiot, and in her village,it seems, there was one of these wretched creatures.Lady Bullingdon only saw him once, and she is quite awarethat it is really difficult to distinguish between actualidiots and the ordinary heavy type of the rural lower classes.She noticed, however, the startling smallness of his headin comparison to the rest of his body; and, indeed, the factof his having appeared upon election day wearing the rosetteof both the two opposing parties appears to Lady Bullingdonto put the matter quite beyond doubt. Lady Bullingdon wasastounded to learn that this afflicted being had put himselfforward as one of the suitors of the girl in question.Lady Bullingdon's nephew interviewed the wretch upon the point,telling him that he was a `donkey' to dream of such a thing,and actually received, along with an imbecile grin,the answer that donkeys generally go after carrots.But Lady Bullingdon was yet further amazed to find the unhappygirl inclined to accept this monstrous proposal, though shewas actually asked in marriage by Garth, the undertaker, a manin a far superior position to her own. Lady Bullingdon could not,of course, countenance such an arrangement for a moment,and the two unhappy persons escaped for a clandestine marriage.Lady Bullingdon cannot exactly recall the man's name,but thinks it was Smith. He was always called in the villagethe Innocent. Later, Lady Bullingdon believes he murderedGreen in a mental outbreak."
"The next
communication," proceeded Pym, "is more conspicuous for brevity,but I am of the opinion that it will adequately convey the upshot.It is dated from the offices of Messrs. Hanbury and Bootle, publishers,and is as follows:--
"Sir,--Yrs. rcd. and conts. noted. Rumour re typewriter possibly refersto a Miss Blake or similar name, left here nine years ago to marry anorgan-grinder. Case was undoubtedly curious, and attracted police attention.Girl worked excellently till about Oct. 1907, when apparently went mad.Record was written at the time, part of which I enclose.--Yrs., etc., W. Trip.
"The fuller statement runs as follows:--
"On October 12 a letter was sent from this office to Messrs.Bernard and Juke, bookbinders. Opened by Mr. Juke, it was foundto contain the following: `Sir, our Mr. Trip will call at 3,as we wish to know whether it is really decided 00000073bb!!!!!xy.'To this Mr. Juke, a person of a playful mind, returned the answer:`Sir, I am in a position to give it as my most decided opinionthat it is not really decided that 00000073bb!!!!!xy. Yrs., etc., `J. Juke.'
"On receiving this extraordinary reply, our Mr. Trip asked for the originalletter sent from him, and found that the typewriter had indeed substitutedthese demented hieroglyphics for the sentences really dictated to her.Our Mr. Trip interviewed the girl, fearing that she was in anunbalanced state, and was not much reassured when she merely remarkedthat she always went like that when she heard the barrel organ.Becoming yet more hysterical and extravagant, she made a series of mostimprobable statements--as, that she was engaged to the barrel-organ man,that he was in the habit of serenading her on that instrument,that she was in the habit of playing back to him upon the typewriter(in the style of King Richard and Blondel), and that the organ man'smusical ear was so exquisite and his adoration of herself so ardentthat he could detect the note of the different letters on the machine,and was enraptured by them as by a melody. To all these statementsof course our Mr. Trip and the rest of us only paid that sort of assentthat is paid to persons who must as quickly as possible be put in thecharge of their relations. But on our conducting the lady downstairs,her story received the most startling and even exasperating confirmation;for the organ-grinder, an enormous man with a small head and manifestlya fellow-lunatic, had pushed his barrel organ in at the office doorslike a battering-ram, and was boisterously demanding his alleged fiancee.When I myself came on the scene he was flinging his great, ape-like arms aboutand reciting a poem to her. But we were used to lunatics coming and recitingpoems in our office, and we were not quite prepared for what followed.The actual verse he uttered began, I think,
`O vivid, inviolate head, Ringed --'
but he never got any further. Mr. Trip made a sharpmovement towards him, and the next moment the giant pickedup the poor lady typewriter like a doll, sat her on topof the organ, ran it with a crash out of the office doors,and raced away down the street like a flying wheelbarrow.I put the police upon the matter; but no trace of the amazingpair could be found. I was sorry myself; for the lady wasnot only pleasant but unusually cultivated for her position.As I am leaving the service of Messrs. Hanbury and Bootle, I putthese things in a record and leave it with them. (Signed) Aubrey Clarke, Publishers' Reader.
"And the last document," said Dr. Pym complacently, "is fromone of those high-souled women who have in this age introducedyour English girlhood to hockey, the higher mathematics,and every form of ideality.
"Dear Sir (she writes),--I have no objection to telling youthe facts about the absurd incident you mention; though I wouldask you to communicate them with some caution, for such things,however entertaining in the abstract, are not always auxiliaryto the success of a girls' school. The truth is this:I wanted some one to deliver a lecture on a philologicalor historical question--a lecture which, while containingsolid educational matter, should be a little more popular andentertaining than usual, as it was the last lecture of the term.I remembered that a Mr. Smith of Cambridge had written somewhereor other an amusing essay about his own somewhat ubiquitous name--an essay which showed considerable knowledge of genealogyand topography. I wrote to him, asking if he would come andgive us a bright address upon English surnames; and he did.It was very bright, almost too bright. To put the matter otherwise,by the time that he was halfway through it became apparentto the other mistresses and myself that the man was totallyand entirely off his head. He began rationally enough by dealingwith the two departments of place names and trade names, and he said(quite rightly, I dare say) that the loss of all significancein names was an instance of the deadening of civilization.But then he went on calmly to maintain that every man who hada place name ought to go to live in that place, and that everyman who had a trade name ought instantly to adopt that trade;that people named after colours should always dress in those colours,and that people named after trees or plants (such as Beech or Rose)ought to surround and decorate themselves with these vegetables.In a slight discussion that arose afterwards among the elder girlsthe difficulties of the proposal were clearly, and even eagerly,pointed out. It was urged, for instance, by Miss Younghusbandthat it was substantially impossible for her to play the partassigned to her; Miss Mann was in a similar dilemma, from whichno modern views on the sexes could apparently extricate her;and some young ladies, whose surnames happened to be Low, Coward,and Craven, were quite enthusiastic against the idea.But all this happened afterwards. What happened at the crucialmoment was that the lecturer produced several horseshoes and alarge iron hammer from his bag, announced his immediate intentionof setting up a smithy in the neighbourhood, and called on everyone to rise in the same cause as for a heroic revolution.The other mistresses and I attempted to stop the wretched man,but I must confess that by an accident this very intercessionproduced the worst explosion of his insanity. He was wavingthe hammer, and wildly demanding the names of everybody;and it so happened that Miss Brown, one of the younger teachers,was wearing a brown dress--a reddish-brown dress that went quietlyenough with the warmer colour of her hair, as well she knew.She was a nice girl, and nice girls do know about those things.But when our maniac discovered that we really had a Miss Brownwho WAS brown, his ~idee fixe~ blew up like a powder magazine,and there, in the presence of all the mistresses and girls,he publicly proposed to the lady in the red-brown dress.You can imagine the effect of such a scene at a girls' school.At least, if you fail to imagine it, I certainly failto describe it.
"Of course, the anarchy died down in a week or two, and I canthink of it now as a joke. There was only one curious detail,which I will tell you, as you say your inquiry is vital; but I shoulddesire you to consider it a little more confidential than the rest.Miss Brown, who was an excellent girl in every way, did quitesuddenly and surreptitiously leave us only a day or two afterwards.I should never have thought that her head would be the oneto be really turned by so absurd an excitement.--Believe me,yours faithfully, Ada Gridley.
"I think," said Pym, with a really convincing simplicity and seriousness,"that these letters speak for themselves."
Mr. Moon rose for the last time in a darkness that gave no hintof whether his native gravity was mixed with his native irony.
"Throughout this inquiry," he said, "but especially in this itsclosing phase, the prosecution has perpetually relied upon one argument;I mean the fact that no one knows what has become of all the unhappywomen apparently seduced by Smith. There is no sort of proofthat they were murdered, but that implication is perpetually madewhen the question is asked as to how they died. Now I am notinterested in how they died, or when they died, or whether they died.But I am interested in another analogous question--that of how theywere born, and when they were born, and whether they were born.Do not misunderstand me. I do not dispute the existence ofthese women, or the veracity of those who have witnessed to them.I merely remark on the notable fact that only one of these victims,the Maidenhead girl, is described as having any home or parents.All t
he rest are boarders or birds of passage--a guest, a solitarydressmaker, a bachelor-girl doing typewriting. Lady Bullingdon,looking from her turrets, which she bought from the Whartons withthe old soap-boiler's money when she jumped at marrying an unsuccessfulgentleman from Ulster--Lady Bullingdon, looking out from those turrets,did really see an object which she describes as Green. Mr. Trip,of Hanbury and Bootle, really did have a typewriter betrothedto Smith. Miss Gridley, though idealistic, is absolutely honest.She did house, feed, and teach a young woman whom Smith succeededin decoying away. We admit that all these women really lived.But we still ask whether they were ever born?"
"Oh, crikey!" said Moses Gould, stifled with amusement.
"There could hardly," interposed Pym with a quiet smile,"be a better instance of the neglect of true scientific process.The scientist, when once convinced of the fact of vitalityand consciousness, would infer from these the previousprocess of generation."
"If these gals," said Gould impatiently--"if these gals were all alive(all alive O!) I'd chance a fiver they were all born."
"You'd lose your fiver," said Michael, speaking gravely out of the gloom."All those admirable ladies were alive. They were more alive for havingcome into contact with Smith. They were all quite definitely alive,but only one of them was ever born."
"Are you asking us to believe--" began Dr. Pym.
"I am asking you a second question," said Moon sternly. "Can the courtnow sitting throw any light on a truly singular circumstance?Dr. Pym, in his interesting lecture on what are called, I believe,the relations of the sexes, said that Smith was the slaveof a lust for variety which would lead a man first to a negressand then to an albino, first to a Patagonian giantess and thento a tiny Eskimo. But is there any evidence of such variety here?Is there any trace of a gigantic Patagonian in the story?Was the typewriter an Eskimo? So picturesque a circumstance would notsurely have escaped remark. Was Lady Bullingdon's dressmaker a negress?A voice in my bosom answers, `No!' Lady Bullingdon, I am sure,would think a negress so conspicuous as to be almost Socialistic,and would feel something a little rakish even about an albino.
"But was there in Smith's taste any such variety as the learneddoctor describes? So far as our slight materials go,the very opposite seems to be the case. We have onlyone actual description of any of the prisoner's wives--the short but highly poetic account by the aesthetic curate.`Her dress was the colour of spring, and her hair of autumn leaves.'Autumn leaves, of course, are of various colours, some ofwhich would be rather startling in hair (green, for instance);but I think such an expression would be most naturally used ofthe shades from red-brown to red, especially as ladies with theircoppery-coloured hair do frequently wear light artistic greens.Now when we come to the next wife, we find the eccentric lover,when told he is a donkey, answering that donkeys always goafter carrots; a remark which Lady Bullingdon evidentlyregarded as pointless and part of the natural table-talk of avillage idiot, but which has an obvious meaning if we supposethat Polly's hair was red. Passing to the next wife, the onehe took from the girls' school, we find Miss Gridley noticingthat the schoolgirl in question wore `a reddish-brown dress,that went quietly enough with the warmer colour of her hair.'In other words, the colour of the girl's hair was something redderthan red-brown. Lastly, the romantic organ-grinder declaimedin the office some poetry that only got as far as the words,--
`O vivid, inviolate head, Ringed --'
But I think that a wide study of the worst modern poetswill enable us to guess that `ringed with a glory of red,'or `ringed with its passionate red,' was the line that rhymedto `head.' In this case once more, therefore, there is goodreason to suppose that Smith fell in love with a girl withsome sort of auburn or darkish-red hair--rather," he said,looking down at the table, "rather like Miss Gray's hair."
Cyrus Pym was leaning forward with lowered eyelids,ready with one of his more pedantic interpellations;but Moses Gould suddenly struck his forefinger on his nose,with an expression of extreme astonishment and intelligencein his brilliant eyes.
"Mr. Moon's contention at present," interposed Pym, "is not,even if veracious, inconsistent with the lunatico-criminal viewof I. Smith, which we have nailed to the mast. Science haslong anticipated such a complication. An incurable attractionto a particular type of physical woman is one of the commonestof criminal per-versities, and when not considered narrowly,but in the light of induction and evolution--"
"At this late stage," said Michael Moon very quietly, "I may perhapsrelieve myself of a simple emotion that has been pressing methroughout the proceedings, by saying that induction and evolutionmay go and boil themselves. The Missing Link and all that iswell enough for kids, but I'm talking about things we know here.All we know of the Missing Link is that he is missing--and he won'tbe missed either. I know all about his human head and his horrid tail;they belong to a very old game called `Heads I win, tails you lose.'If you do find a fellow's bones, it proves he lived a long while ago;if you don't find his bones, it proves how long ago he lived.That is the game you've been playing with this Smith affair.Because Smith's head is small for his shoulders you callhim microcephalous; if it had been large, you'd have called itwater-on-the-brain. As long as poor old Smith's seraglio seemedpretty various, variety was the sign of madness: now, because it'sturning out to be a bit monochrome--now monotony is the sign of madness.I suffer from all the disadvantages of being a grown-up person,and I'm jolly well going to get some of the advantages too;and with all politeness I propose not to be bullied with long wordsinstead of short reasons, or consider your business a triumphantprogress merely because you're always finding out that you were wrong.Having relieved myself of these feelings, I have merely to addthat I regard Dr. Pym as an ornament to the world far more beautifulthan the Parthenon, or the monument on Bunker's Hill, and that Ipropose to resume and conclude my remarks on the many marriagesof Mr. Innocent Smith.
"Besides this red hair, there is another unifying thread thatruns through these scattered incidents. There is somethingvery peculiar and suggestive about the names of these women.Mr. Trip, you will remember, said he thought the typewriter'sname was Blake, but could not remember exactly.I suggest that it might have been Black, and in that case wehave a curious series: Miss Green in Lady Bullingdon's village;Miss Brown at the Hendon School; Miss Black at the publishers.A chord of colours, as it were, which ends up with Miss Grayat Beacon House, West Hampstead."
Amid a dead silence Moon continued his exposition."What is the meaning of this queer coincidence about colours?Personally I cannot doubt for a moment that these names are purelyarbitrary names, assumed as part of some general scheme or joke.I think it very probable that they were taken from a series of costumes--that Polly Green only meant Polly (or Mary) when in green,and that Mary Gray only means Mary (or Polly) when in gray.This would explain--"
Cyrus Pym was standing up rigid and almost pallid."Do you actually mean to suggest--" he cried.
"Yes," said Michael; "I do mean to suggest that. Innocent Smith has hadmany wooings, and many weddings for all I know; but he has had only one wife.She was sitting on that chair an hour ago, and is now talking to Miss Dukein the garden.
"Yes, Innocent Smith has behaved here, as he has on hundreds ofother occasions, upon a plain and perfectly blameless principle.It is odd and extravagant in the modern world, but not more than any otherprinciple plainly applied in the modern world would be. His principlecan be quite simply stated: he refuses to die while he is still alive.He seeks to remind himself, by every electric shock to the intellect,that he is still a man alive, walking on two legs about the world.For this reason he fires bullets at his best friends; for this reasonhe arranges ladders and collapsible chimneys to steal his own property;for this reason he goes plodding around a whole planet to get back to hisown home; and for this reason he has been in the habit of taking the womanwhom he loved with a permanent loyalty, and leaving her about (so to speak)at schools, boarding-houses, and places of business, so that he might
recover her again and again with a raid and a romantic elopement.He seriously sought by a perpetual recapture of his bride to keep alivethe sense of her perpetual value, and the perils that should be runfor her sake.
"So far his motives are clear enough; but perhaps his convictions arenot quite so clear. I think Innocent Smith has an idea at the bottomof all this. I am by no means sure that I believe it myself, but I amquite sure that it is worth a man's uttering and defending.
"The idea that Smith is attacking is this. Living in an entangledcivilization, we have come to think certain things wrong which arenot wrong at all. We have come to think outbreak and exuberance,banging and barging, rotting and wrecking, wrong. In themselves theyare not merely pardonable; they are unimpeachable. There is nothingwicked about firing a pistol off even at a friend, so long as you do notmean to hit him and know you won't. It is no more wrong than throwinga pebble at the sea--less, for you do occasionally hit the sea.There is nothing wrong in bashing down a chimney-pot and breakingthrough a roof, so long as you are not injuring the life or propertyof other men. It is no more wrong to choose to enter a house fromthe top than to choose to open a packing-case from the bottom.There is nothing wicked about walking round the world and coming backto your own house; it is no more wicked than walking round the gardenand coming back to your own house. And there is nothing wickedabout picking up your wife here, there, and everywhere, if, forsakingall others, you keep only to her so long as you both shall live.It is as innocent as playing a game of hide-and-seek in the garden.You associate such acts with blackguardism by a mere snobbish association,as you think there is something vaguely vile about going (or beingseen going) into a pawnbroker's or a public-house. You think thereis something squalid and commonplace about such a connection.You are mistaken.
"This man's spiritual power has been precisely this,that he has distinguished between custom and creed.He has broken the conventions, but he has kept the commandments.It is as if a man were found gambling wildly in a gambling hell,and you found that he only played for trouser buttons.It is as if you found a man making a clandestine appointmentwith a lady at a Covent Garden ball, and then you found itwas his grandmother. Everything is ugly and discreditable,except the facts; everything is wrong about him, except thathe has done no wrong.
"It will then be asked, `Why does Innocent Smith continue far intohis middle age a farcical existence, that exposes him to so manyfalse charges?' To this I merely answer that he does it because he reallyis happy, because he really is hilarious, because he really is a manand alive. He is so young that climbing garden trees and playingsilly practical jokes are still to him what they once were to us all.And if you ask me yet again why he alone among men should be fedwith such inexhaustible follies, I have a very simple answer to that,though it is one that will not be approved.
"There is but one answer, and I am sorry if you don't like it.If Innocent is happy, it is because he IS innocent. If he can defythe conventions, it is just because he can keep the commandments.It is just because he does not want to kill but to excite to lifethat a pistol is still as exciting to him as it is to a schoolboy.It is just because he does not want to steal, because he does not covethis neighbour's goods, that he has captured the trick (oh, how we alllong for it!), the trick of coveting his own goods. It is just becausehe does not want to commit adultery that he achieves the romance of sex;it is just because he loves one wife that he has a hundred honeymoons.If he had really murdered a man, if he had really deserted a woman,he would not be able to feel that a pistol or a love-letter was like a song--at least, not a comic song."
"Do not imagine, please, that any such attitude is easyto me or appeals in any particular way to my sympathies.I am an Irishman, and a certain sorrow is in my bones, bred eitherof the persecutions of my creed, or of my creed itself.Speaking singly, I feel as if man was tied to tragedy,and there was no way out of the trap of old age and doubt.But if there is a way out, then, by Christ and St. Patrick,this is the way out. If one could keep as happy as a child or a dog,it would be by being as innocent as a child, or as sinless as a dog.Barely and brutally to be good--that may be the road, and he may havefound it. Well, well, well, I see a look of skepticism on the faceof my old friend Moses. Mr. Gould does not believe that beingperfectly good in all respects would make a man merry."
"No," said Gould, with an unusual and convincing gravity;"I do not believe that being perfectly good in all respectswould make a man merry."
"Well," said Michael quietly, "will you tell me one thing?Which of us has ever tried it?"
A silence ensued, rather like the silence of some long geologicalepoch which awaits the emergence of some unexpected type;for there rose at last in the stillness a massive figurethat the other men had almost completely forgotten.
"Well, gentlemen," said Dr. Warner cheerfully, "I've been prettywell entertained with all this pointless and incompetent tomfooleryfor a couple of days; but it seems to be wearing rather thin,and I'm engaged for a city dinner. Among the hundred flowersof futility on both sides I was unable to detect any sort of reasonwhy a lunatic should be allowed to shoot me in the back garden."
He had settled his silk hat on his head and gone out sailing placidly tothe garden gate, while the almost wailing voice of Pym still followed him:"But really the bullet missed you by several feet." And another voice added:"The bullet missed him by several years."
There was a long and mainly unmeaning silence, and thenMoon said suddenly, "We have been sitting with a ghost.Dr. Herbert Warner died years ago."