Chapter II. The improbable success of mr. Owen hood

Heroes who have managed to read to the end the story of The Unpresentable Appearance of Colonel Crane know that his achievement was the first of a series of things, which we call impossible, like the quests of the Arthurian knights. For the purpose of this story it is enough to say that he was long known and respected, before his last escapade, as a retired military man in Surrey, with a tanned face and an interest in the mythology of Oceania. As a fact, however, he had gathered the tan and the Oceanic myths some time before he had managed to collect the respectability and the suburban myths. In his early youth he had been a restless traveler. He belonged to a club of young men, who were all eccentrics of one kind or another. Some had extreme revolutionary and some extreme reactionary opinions, and some both. Mr. Robert Owen Hood, who is the hero of this story, belonged to the last group.

Robert Owen Hood was Crane’s closest friend, but he had a very different personality. Hood was from the first as stable as Crane was adventurous. Hood was to the end informal as Crane was conventional. The double name of Robert Owen came from a revolutionary tradition in his family; but he inherited together with it a little money that allowed him to forget about the law and to cultivate a taste for liberty and for walking and dreaming in lost corners of the country. There was a small island in the Thames in which he especially loved to sit fishing – a shabby but not typical figure dressed in grey, with red hair and a long face with a large chin, rather like Napoleon. On this occasion his quick military friend was standing near him in his uniform, which created a striking contrast. Colonel Crane was going to leave on one of his odysseys in the South Seas.

“Well,” asked the impatient traveller, “have you caught anything?”

“You once asked me,” replied the fisherman calmly, “what I meant by calling you a materialist. That is what I meant by calling you a materialist.”

“If one must be a materialist or a madman,” said the soldier, “give me materialism.”

“On the contrary,” replied his friend, “your hobby is much madder than mine. And I doubt that it’s any more fruitful. The moment men like you see a man sitting by a river, they just have to ask him what he has caught. But when you go off to hunt for big animals in Africa, nobody asks you what you have caught. Nobody expects you to bring home a hippopotamus for supper. Nobody has ever seen you walking up Pall Mall, followed respectfully by a giraffe you captured. Personally, I doubt that you ever catch anything. It’s all hidden in desert sand and doubt and distance. But what I hunt for is something much more hard to catch, and as slippery as any fish. It is the soul of England.”

“I think you’ll catch a cold if not a fish,” answered Crane, “sitting with your feet in water like that. I like to move about a little more. Dreaming is not for me.”

At this point a symbolic cloud should come across the sun and some shadow of mystery and silence must cover for a moment the heroes of our story. Because it was at this moment that James Crane, blind with inspiration, pronounced his famous Prophecy, which is central to this story. As usual with men who make prophecies, he had no idea he just made one. A moment after he would probably not know that he had said it at all.

The prophecy took the form of a proverb. At the right moment the readers will see, what proverb. Actually, the conversation for a big part consisted of proverbs, which is natural for men like Hood, whose hearts are with that old English country life from which all the proverbs came. But it was Crane who said:

“It’s all very well to be fond of England, but a man who wants to help England mustn’t let the grass grow under his feet.”

“And that’s just what I want to do,” answered Hood. “That’s exactly what even your poor tired people in big cities really want to do. When a sad little clerk walks down Poverty Street, wouldn’t he really be delighted if he could look down and see the grass growing under his feet – like a magic green carpet in the middle of the pavement? It would be like a fairy-tale.”

“Well, but he wouldn’t sit like a stone as you do,” replied the other. “A man might let the grass grow under his feet without actually letting the ivy grow up his legs. That sounds like a fairy-tale, too, if you like, but there’s no proverb to recommend it.”

“Oh, there are proverbs on my side, if you come to that,” answered Hood laughing. “I might remind you about the rolling stone that gathers no moss.”

“Well, who wants to gather moss except a few strange old ladies?” asked Crane. “Yes, I’m a rolling stone, I suppose; and I go rolling round the earth as the earth goes rolling round the sun. But I’ll tell you what; there’s only one kind of stone that does really gather moss.”

“And what is that, my dear geologist?”

“A gravestone,” said Crane.

There was a silence, and Hood sat looking with his owlish face at the water in which the dark woods were mirrored. At last he said:

“Moss isn’t the only thing found on that. Sometimes there is the word ‘Resurgam’.”

“Well, I hope you will,” said Crane with a smile. “But the trumpet will have to be pretty loud to wake you up. It’s my opinion you’ll be too late for the Day of Judgement.”

“I could say,” remarked Hood, “that it would be better for you if you were. But it is not a nice way to say goodbye. Are you really leaving today?”

“Yes, tonight,” replied his friend. “Are you sure you won’t come with me to the Cannibal Islands?”

“I prefer my own island,” said Mr. Owen Hood.

When his friend had gone he continued to look absent-mindedly at the calm upside-down world of the green mirror of water. He did not change his position and hardly moved his head. This might be partly explained by the quiet habits of a fisherman; but to tell you the truth, it was not easy to discover whether the solitary lawyer really wanted to catch any fish. He would often carry a book by Isaac Walton in his pocket, because he had a love of the old English literature as of the old English landscape.

But the truth is that Owen Hood had not been quite candid with his friend about the spell that held him to that particular little island in the Upper Thames. If he had said (as he was quite capable of saying) that he expected to catch the whale that swallowed Jonah, or even the great sea-serpent, his expressions would have been only symbolical. But they would have been the symbol of something as unique and unattainable. For Mr. Owen Hood was really fishing for something that very few fishermen ever catch; and that was a dream of his boyhood, of something that had happened on that lonely spot long ago.

Years before, when he was a very young man, he had sat fishing on that island one evening when the twilight changed to dark. The birds were coming down to the ground and there was no noise except the quiet noises of the river. Suddenly, and without a sound, as if in a dream, a girl came out of the woods on the other side. She spoke to him across the river, asking him he hardly knew what, which he answered he hardly knew how. She was dressed in white and carried a bunch of bluebells in her hand; her golden hair was low on her forehead; she was very pale, and her eyelids moved constantly as if she were nervous. He felt stupid. But he must have managed to speak civilly, because she stayed; and he must have said something to amuse her, because she laughed. Then followed the incident he could never analyse, though he understood himself well. Making a gesture towards something, she dropped her blue flowers in the water. He didn’t know what sort of storm was in his head, but it seemed to him that legendary things were happening, as in an epic of the gods. All visible things were only small signs. Before he realized what was happening he was standing dripping on the other bank; because he had splashed in somehow and saved the bunch as if it were a drowning baby. Of all the things she said he could recall one sentence, that he repeated constantly in his mind:“You’ll catch a cold and die.”

He only caught the cold and not the death; but even the idea of death did not seem out of place somehow. The doctor, to whom he had to give some sort of explanation of his decision to dive, was very interested in the story (or the part that he heard) because he liked to write down the pedigrees of the aristocratic families and to understand the relationships of the best houses in the neighbourhood. By some complicated process of deduction he discovered that the lady must be Miss Elizabeth Seymour from Marley Court. The doctor spoke about these things with respectful admiration; he was a rising young doctor named Hunter, afterwards a neighbour of Colonel Crane.

He shared Hood’s admiration for the local landscape, and said it was so beautiful because of how the family looked after Marley Court.

“It’s land-owners like that,” he said, “who have created England. The Radicals can say whatever they want; but where would we be without the land-owners?”

“Oh, I’m all in favour of land-owners,” said Hood in a tired voice. “I like them so much I would like more of them. More and more land-owners. Hundreds and thousands of them.”

We cannot be sure that Dr. Hunter quite understood his enthusiasm, or even his meaning; but Hood had reason later to remember this little conversation; as far as he was in a mood to remember any conversations except one.

All through the years when he felt his first youth was passing, and even when he seemed to be drifting towards middle age, he haunted that valley like a ghost, waiting for something that never came again. It is by no means certain, that he even expected it to come again. Somehow it seemed too like a miracle for that. Only this place had become the temple of the miracle; and he felt that if anything ever did happen there, he must be there to see. And so it came about that he was there to see when things did happen; and rather strange things had happened before the end.

One morning he saw an extraordinary thing. That indeed would not have seemed extraordinary to most people; but it was quite apocalyptic to him. A dusty man came out of the woods carrying what looked like dusty pieces of wood, and built on the bank what turned out to be a sort of a very large wooden notice-board. The message in enormous letters said:“To Be Sold,” with remarks in smaller letters about the land and the name of the land agents. For the first time in years Owen Hood stood up in his place and left his fishing, and shouted questions across the river. The man answered with the greatest patience and good-humour; but it is probable that he went away convinced that he had been talking to a madman who escaped from a hospital.

That was the beginning of what was for Owen Hood a nightmare. The change came slowly, year after year, but it seemed to him that he was helpless and paralysed, exactly like a man is paralysed in an actual nightmare. He laughed with an almost horrible laughter to think that a man in a modern society is supposed to be master of his fate and free to follow his pleasures; when he had not power to prevent the daylight he looks on from being darkened, or the air he breathes from being turned to poison, or the silence that is his full possession from being shaken with the cacophony of hell. There was something, he thought grimly, in Dr. Hunter’s simple admiration for agricultural aristocracy. There was something in quite primitive and even barbarous aristocracy. Feudal lords fought every day of the week; they put collars round the necks of some serfs; they occasionally hanged a few of them by the neck. But they did not wage war day and night against the five senses of man.

There had appeared first on the river-bank small wooden buildings, for workmen who seemed to be occupied in putting up bigger wooden buildings. To the last moment, when the factory was finished, it was not easy for the traditional eye to see what was temporary and what was permanent.

It did not look as if any of it could be permanent. Anyway the structure grew and grew until there stood on the river bank a great black block of buildings with a tall brick factory chimney, from which a stream of smoke rose into the silent sky. A heap of some sort of rubbish lay on the bank of the river; and an iron piece, red with rust, fell on the spot where the girl stood when she brought bluebells out of the wood.

He did not leave his island. He loved the country and he loved to sit still, but he was not the son of an old revolutionary for nothing. It was not for nothing that his father had called him Robert Owen or that his friends had sometimes called him Robin Hood. Sometimes, indeed, he felt so sad that he was almost thinking about suicide, but more often he marched up and down like a soldier, happy to see the tall wild-flowers waving on the banks like flags so close to what he hated, and muttering, “Hang out the banners on the outward wall.” He had already, when the land of Marley Court was divided for building, taken some steps to establish himself on the island. He had built a sort of hut there, in which it was possible to picnic for long periods.

One morning when dawn was still bright behind the dark factory something like a growing ribbon of a different colour and material crept out upon the satin water of the river. It was a thin ribbon of some liquid that did not mix with the water, but lay on top of it wavering like a worm. Owen Hood watched it as a man watches a snake. It looked like a snake, with mixed colours not without some beauty. But to him it was a very symbolic snake; like the snake that destroyed Eden. A few days afterward there were ten snakes covering the surface; little oily rivers that moved on the river but did not mix with it. Later there came darker liquids with no pretensions to beauty, black and brown flakes of grease that floated heavily.

It was highly characteristic of Hood that until the last moment he was unsure what the factory was for. So he didn’t know what kind of chemicals were flowing into the river. He saw that they were mostly of the oily sort and floated on the water in flakes and lumps. A big part of it was something like petrol, which was used perhaps not for power but as material. He had heard a rumour in the village that the factory produced some kind of hair-dye. It smelled rather like a soap factory. As far as he understood, the factory’s product was a combination of hair-dye and soap, some kind of new and very hygienic cosmetics. These things had become even more fashionable since Professor Hake had written his book proving that cosmetics were of all things the most hygienic. And Hood had seen many of the fields of his childhood now decorated with large notice-boards with a phrase “Why Grow Old?” and a portrait of a young woman grinning in a strange manner. The name on the notices was Bliss, and he understood that it all was connected with the great factory.

He decided to learn a little more than this. He began to make inquiries and complaints, and participated in a correspondence which ended in an actual interview with some of the most important people involved in this matter. The correspondence had gone on for a long time before it even came near to anything as natural as that. Indeed, the correspondence for a long time was entirely on his side. The big businesses are not businesslike at all – just like the Government departments. They are not any more effective and their manners are much worse. But in the end he had his interview, and with a sense of bitter amusement he came face to face with four people who he wanted to meet.

One was Sir Samuel Bliss. He was a small, quick man like a ferret, with grey beard and hair, and active or even nervous movements. The second was his manager, Mr. Low, a strong, dark man with a thick nose and thick rings, who stared at strangers with a curious heavy suspicion. It is believed that he expected to be attacked. The third man was a surprise, because he was no other than his old friend Dr. Horace Hunter, as healthy and cheerful as ever, but even better dressed (now he had a great official appointment as medical inspector of the sanitary conditions of the district). But the fourth man was the greatest surprise of all. Their conference was honoured by so great a figure in the scientific world as Professor Hake himself, who had revolutionized the modern mind with his new discoveries about the importance of hair-dye for a healthy lifestyle. When Hood realized who he was, a light of understanding came upon his long face.

On this occasion the Professor developed an even more interesting theory. He was a big, blond man with blinking eyes and a bull neck; and doubtless there was more in him than met the eye, which is usual with great men. He spoke last, and he spoke about his theory as if it were the final truth. The manager had already stated that it was quite impossible that a large amount of petrol had escaped, because only a small amount was used in the factory. Sir Samuel had explained, in an irritated manner, that he had built several parks for the public, and that the dormitories of his work-people were decorated in the simplest and best taste, and nobody could accuse him of vandalism or not caring for beauty and all that. Then it was that Professor Hake explained the theory of the Protective Screen. Even if it were possible, he said, for some thin film of petrol to appear on the water, because it would not mix with the water, the water would actually be kept in a clearer condition. It would become a protective screen; like a plastic package upon some preserved food.

“That is a very interesting view,” remarked Hood; “I suppose you will write another book about that?”

“I think we should feel privileged,” remarked Bliss, “because we are the first people to hear of the discovery, before our expert has published it for everybody else.”

“Yes,” said Hood, “your expert is very expert, isn’t he – in writing books?”

Sir Samuel Bliss’s face became angry. “I trust,” he said, “you do not doubt that our expert is an expert.”

“I have no doubt of your expert,” answered Hood gravely. “I do not doubt either that he is expert or that he is yours.”

“Really, gentlemen,” cried Bliss in protest, “I think no one can say such things about a man in Professor Hake’s position – ”

“Not at all, not at all,” said Hood in a friendly manner, “I’m sure it’s a very comfortable position.”

The Professor blinked at him, but a light burned in the eyes under the heavy eyelids.

“If you come here talking like that – “he began, when Hood cut off his speech by speaking across him to somebody else, with a cheerful rudeness that felt like a kick.

“And what do you say, my dear doctor?” he said to Hunter. “You used to be almost as romantic as myself about the beauty of this place. Do you remember how much you admired the landlords for keeping the place quiet; and how you said the old families preserved the beauty of old England?”

There was a silence, and then the young doctor spoke.

“Well, it doesn’t mean I can’t believe in progress. That’s your problem, Hood; you don’t believe in progress. We must move with the times, and somebody always has to suffer. Besides, the river-water is not so important nowadays. Even the Thames is not so important. When we have the new law, people will have to use the Bulton Filter in any case.”

“I see,” said Hood calmly, “You first make the water dirty for money, and then you try to look good when you force people to clean it themselves.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Hunter angrily.

“Well, I was thinking at the moment,” said Hood. “I was thinking about Mr. Bulton. The man who owns the filters. I was wondering whether he might join us. We seem such a happy family party.”

“I cannot see why we should continue this impossible conversation,” said Sir Samuel.

“Don’t call the poor Professor’s theory impossible,” protested Hood. “A little unusual, perhaps. And as for the doctor’s view, surely there’s nothing impossible in that. You don’t think the chemicals will poison all the fish I catch, do you, Doctor?”

“No, of course not,” replied Hunter quickly.

“They will adapt themselves by natural selection,” said Hood dreamily. “They will develop organs suitable to an oily environment – will learn to love petrol.”

“Oh, I have no time for this nonsense,” said Hunter, and he was turning to go, when Hood stepped in front of him and looked at him very steadily.

“You mustn’t call natural selection nonsense,” he said. “I know all about that, at any rate. I can’t tell whether liquids that are spilt on the shore will fall into the river, because I don’t understand hydraulics. I don’t know whether your machinery makes a hellish noise every morning, because I’ve never studied acoustics. I don’t know whether it stinks or not, because I haven’t read your expert’s book on ‘The Nose’. But I know all about adaptation to environment. I know that some of the lower organisms do really change with their changing conditions. I know there are creatures so low that they do survive by surrendering to every kind of mud; and when things are slow they are slow, and when things are fast they are fast, and when things are filthy they are filthy. Thank you for convincing me of that.”

He did not wait for a reply, but walked out of the room after bowing quickly to the rest; and that was the end of the great conference on the question of fisherman’s rights and perhaps the end of the Thames and of the old aristocracy, with all its good and ill.

The general public never heard very much about it; at least until one catastrophic scene which followed. There was some weak echo of the question some months later, when Dr. Horace Hunter decided to go to Parliament. One or two questions were asked about his duties in relation to river pollution; but it was soon clear that no party actually wanted to push the question against the best opinions expressed by their opponents. The greatest living authority on hygiene, Professor Hake, had actually written to The Times (in the interests of science) to say that in such a hypothetical case as this, a medical man could only do what Dr. Hunter had done. It so happened that the most important business in that part of the Thames Valley, Sir Samuel Bliss, had himself, after some serious consideration of different policies, decided to Vote for Hunter. The great organizer’s own mind was rather abstract and philosophical in the matter; but it seems that his manager, a Mr. Low, had a more practical and pushing spirit. He warmly invited his employees to vote for Hunter, pointed out to them the many practical advantages they would gain if they voted for the doctor, and the even more practical disadvantages they might suffer if they didn’t. So it followed that the blue ribbons, which were the local badges of the Hunterians, were not only attached to the iron railings and wooden posts of the factory, but to various human figures, known as “hands,” which moved in it.

Hood took no interest in the election; but while it was proceeding he followed the matter a little further in another form. He was a lawyer, a lazy, but in some ways a good one; because he enjoyed studying and so he had originally learned the trade he had never used. More in protest than in hope, he once carried the matter into the Courts, defending his cause on the basis of a law of Henry the Third against frightening the fish of the King’s servants in the Thames Valley. The judge complimented him on his erudition and logic, but rejected his appeal while demonstrating his own erudition and logic. His lordship argued that no test was provided to measure the degree of fear in the fish, or whether it was that serious fear which was important for the law. But the great judge pointed out the precedent of a law of Richard the Second against certain witches who had frightened children; in which case the child “must return and of his own will testify to his fear.” It did not seem that any one of the fish in question had returned and gave any such testimony to any proper authority. So the judge chose in favour of the defendants. And when the learned judge happened to meet Sir Samuel Bliss at dinner that evening, he was congratulated on his clear judgement. Indeed, the great judge had really enjoyed the logic both of his own and Hood’s arguments; but the conclusion was inevitable. For our judges are not stopped by any old code; they are progressive, like Dr. Hunter, and make friends only with the progressive forces of the age, especially those they will probably meet at a dinner party.

But it was this short law case that led to something much more important for Mr. Owen Hood. He had just left the courts, and turned down the street that led in the direction of the station, he was walking in that direction in his usual brown coat. The streets were filled with faces; it struck him for the first time that there were thousands and thousands of people in the world. There were even more faces at the railway station, and then, when he looked at four or five of them, he saw one that was to him as incredible as the face of the dead.

She was coming out of the tea-room, carrying a handbag, just like anybody else. That mystical quality of his mind had fixed his sacred dream in its original colours. No detail could be changed without the vision dissolving. It was impossible for him that she could appear in anything but white or come out of anything but a wood. And he found himself turned upside-down by the fact that blue suited her as well as white. She did not come out of the wood, but even the teashops and the railway stations didn’t spoil the view.

She stopped in front of him and her pale, flying eyelids lifted from her blue-grey eyes.

“Why,” she said, “you are the boy that jumped in the river!”

“I’m no longer a boy,” answered Hood, “but I’m ready to jump in the river again.”

“Well, don’t jump on the railway-line,” she said, when he turned quickly in that direction.

“To tell you the truth,” he said, “I was thinking of jumping into a railway-train. Do you mind if I jump into your train?”

“Well, I’m going to Birkstead,” she said with some doubt in her voice.

Mr. Owen Hood did not care one bit where she was going, because he had decided to go there, but he actually remembered a little station on that line that lay very near to where he was going, so he tumbled into the carriage. The landscapes shot by them while they sat looking in a dazed and almost foolish manner at each other. At last the girl felt how absurd it all was and smiled.

“I heard about you from a friend of yours,” she said; “he came to call on us soon after it happened. At least that was when he first came. You know Dr. Hunter, don’t you?”

“Yes,” replied Owen, a shadow coming over his shining hour. “Do you… Do you know him well?”

“I know him pretty well now,” said Miss Elizabeth Seymour.

The shadow on his spirit became darker; he suspected something quite suddenly, and the idea made him furious. Hunter, in Crane’s old phrase, was not a man who would let the grass grow under his feet. It was so like him to use the incident as an introduction to the Seymours. Things were always stepping-stones for Hunter, and the little rock in the river had been a stepping-stone to the country-house. But was the country-house a stepping-stone to something else? Suddenly Hood realized that all his anger had been very abstract anger. He had never hated a man before. At that moment the train stopped at the station of Cowford.

“I wish you’d get out here with me,” he said quickly, “only for a little – and it might be the last time. I want you to do something.”

She looked at him with a curious expression and said in a rather low voice, “What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to come and pick bluebells,” he said.

She stepped out of the train, and they went up a country road without a word.

“I remember!” she said suddenly. “When you get to the top of this hill you see the wood where the bluebells were, and your little island beyond.”

“Come on and see it,” said Owen.

They stepped on the top of the hill and stood. Below them the black factory threw its yellowish smoke into the air; and where the wood had been there were now rows of little houses like boxes, built of dirty yellow brick.

Hood spoke. “And when you see the abomination of desolation sitting in the Holy of Holies – isn’t that when the world is supposed to end? I want the world to end now – with you and me standing on a hill.”

She was staring at the place with parted lips and she was paler than usual; he knew she understood something monstrous and symbolic in the scene; yet her first remark was short and trivial. On the nearest of the yellow brick boxes she could see the cheap colours of different advertisements; and larger than the rest a blue poster proclaiming “Vote for Hunter.” With a final touch of hatred, Hood remembered that it was the last and most important day of the election. But the girl had already found her voice.

“Is that Dr. Hunter?” she asked with very usual curiosity; “is he standing for parliament?”

A load that lay on Hood’s mind like a rock suddenly rose like an eagle; and he felt as if the hill he stood on were higher than Everest. He understood well enough that SHE would have known well enough whether Hunter was standing, if —

if there had been anything like what he supposed. Suddenly, the weight wasn’t there anymore, and he lost his balance and said something quite indefensible.

“I thought you would know. I thought you and he were probably… well, the truth is I thought you were engaged, though I really don’t know why.”

“I can’t imagine why,” said Elizabeth Seymour. “I heard he was engaged to Sir Samuel’s daughter. They’ve got our old place now, you know.”

There was a silence and then Hood spoke suddenly in a loud and cheerful voice.

“Well, I say, ‘Vote for Hunter,’” he said cheerfully. “After all, why not vote for Hunter? Good old Hunter! I hope he’ll be a member of Parliament. I hope he’ll be Prime Minister. I hope he’ll be President of the World State. By George, he deserves to be Emperor of the Solar System.”

“But why,” she protested, “why should he deserve all that?”

“For not being engaged to you, of course,” he replied.

“Oh!” she said, and something of a secret shiver in her voice went through him like a silver bell.

Abruptly, all of a sudden, the rage of raillery seemed to have left his voice and his face, so that his Napoleonic profile looked earnest and eager and much younger, like the profile of the young Napoleon. His wide shoulders lost the slight stoop that books had given them, and his rather wild red hair fell away from his lifted head.

“There is one thing I must tell you about him,” he said, “and one thing you must hear about me. My friends tell me I am a drifter and a dreamer; that I let the grass grow under my feet; I must tell you at least how and why I once let it grow. Three days after that day near the river, I talked to Hunter; he was my doctor and he talked about it and you. Of course he knew nothing about either. But he is a practical man; a very practical man; he does not dream or drift. From the way he talked I knew he was thinking even then how this accident could be used; used for his purposes and perhaps for mine too (because he is good-natured; yes, he is quite good-natured). I think that if I had taken his hint and formed a sort of social partnership, I might have known you six years sooner, not as a memory, but – an acquaintance. And I could not do it. Judge me how you will, I could not bring myself to do it.

That is what is meant by being born with a bee in the bonnet, with an impediment in the speech, with a stumbling-block in the path. I could not bear to approach you by that door, with that gross and grinning lackey holding it open.

I could not bear that terrible snob to take so much space in my story or know so much of my secret. A revulsion I could never describe made me feel that the vision should remain my own even by remaining unfulfilled. It should not be vulgarized. That is what people mean when they say you are a failure in life. And when my best friend made a prophecy about me, and said there was something I should never do, I thought he was right.”

“Why, what do you mean?” she asked rather faintly, “what was it you would never do?”

“Never mind that now,” he said, with the shadow of a returning smile. “Rather strange things are moving in me just now, and who knows, maybe I will try something yet? But before all else, I must make clear for once what I am and for what I lived. There are men like me in the world; I am far from thinking they are the best or the most valuable; but they exist, to the irritation and surprise of all the clever people and the realists. There has been and there is only one thing for me; something that in the normal sense I never even knew. I walked about the world blind, with my eyes turned inside me, looking at you. For days after a night when I had dreamed of you, I was broken. I was like a man who had seen a ghost. I read over and over the solemn lines of the old poets, because only they were worthy of you. And when I saw you again by chance, I thought the world had already ended. It is like meeting you beyond the grave. It is too good to be true.”

“I do not think,” she answered in a low voice, “that life after death is too good to be true.”

When he looked at her a thrill went through him like a message too quick to be understood; and at the back of his mind something awoke that repeated again and again like a song the same words, “too good to be true.” There was always something distressing, even in her days of pride, about the short-sighted look of her half-closed eyes; but it was for other reasons that they were now blinking in the strong white sunlight, almost as if they were blind. They were blind and bright with tears:she gained control of her voice and it was steady.

“You talk about failures,” she said. “I suppose most people would call me a failure and all my people failures now – except those who would say we never failed, because we never had to try. Anyway, we’re all poor enough now. I don’t know whether you know that I teach music. I dare say we deserved to go. I dare say we were useless. Some of us tried to be harmless. But – but now I MUST say something, about some of us who tried rather hard to be harmless – in that way. The new rich people will tell you those ideals were aristocratic, and all that – well, it doesn’t matter what they say. They know quite as little about us as we about them. But to you, when you talk like that… what can I do, but tell you that you that if we were stiff, if we were cold, if we were careful and conservative, it was because deep down in our souls some of us DID believe that there might be loyalty and love like that, for which a woman can wait even to the end of the world. What is it to these people if we chose not to be drugged or distracted with anything less worthy? But it would be hard indeed if when I find it DOES exist after all… hard on you, harder on me, if when I have really found it at last…”

She stopped and couldn’t speak anymore. The silence caught and held her.

He took one stride forward as into the heart of a whirlwind; and they met on the top of that windy hill as if they had come from the ends of the earth.

“This is an epic,” he said, “and an epic demands actions, not words. I have lived with words too long.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you have turned me into a man of action,” he replied. “As long as you were in the past, nothing was better than the past. As long as you were only a dream, nothing was better than dreaming. But now I am going to do something that no man has ever done before.”

He turned towards the valley and raised his hand with a gesture, almost as if the hand was holding a sword.

“I am going to break the Prophecy,” he cried in a loud voice. “I am going to make fun of my evil star. Those who called me a failure will admit I have succeeded where all humanity has failed. The real hero is not he who is bold enough to fulfil the predictions, but he who is bold enough to make them false. And you will see how it happens tonight.”

“What in the world are you going to do?” she asked.

He laughed suddenly. “The first thing to do,” he cried, turning around with a new look of resolution and even cheerfulness on his face, “the very first thing to do is to Vote for Hunter. Or, at any rate, help to get him into Parliament.”

“But why in the world,” she asked wondering, “do you want so much to get Dr. Hunter into Parliament?”

“Well, we must do something,” he said with an appearance of good sense, “to celebrate the occasion. We must do something; and after all he must go somewhere, poor devil. You will say, why not throw him into the river? It would make us feel better and make a splash. But I’m going to make something much bigger than a splash. Besides, I don’t want him in my nice river. I’d much rather pick him up and throw him all the way to Westminster. Much more sensible and suitable. Obviously there should be a brass band and a torchlight procession somewhere tonight; and why shouldn’t he have a bit of the fun?”

He stopped suddenly as if surprised at his own words. Indeed, for him his own phrase fell with the significance of a falling star.

“Of course!” he muttered. “A torchlight procession! I thought that what I wanted was trumpets and what I really want is torches. Yes, I believe it can be done! Yes, the hour has come! By stars and comets, I will give him a torchlight procession!”

He was almost dancing with excitement on the top of the hill; now he suddenly went running down the slope beyond, calling to the girl to follow, as carelessly as if they were two children playing. Strangely enough, perhaps, she did follow; more strangely still when we consider the extravagant scenes through which she allowed herself to be led. They were scenes from a completely different world than all her sensitive and even secretive dignity.

This world was loud with lies and vulgarity. For her it was like joining a travelling circus right before the end of the world. It was as if a Carnival day could also be a Day of Judgement. But the farce could no longer offend her, so the tragedy could no longer terrify. She went through it all with a pale smile, which probably nobody in the world understood. It was not in the normal sense excitement; yet it was something much more positive than patience. Perhaps in a way, more than ever before in her lonely life, she was sitting in her ivory tower; but it was all bright within, as if it were lit up with candles or decorated with gold.

Hood’s wide movements brought them to the bank of the river and the offices of the factory, all of which were covered with the coloured posters of Dr. Hunter, and one of which was obviously a busy committee-room. Hood actually met Mr. Low coming out of it, dressed in a fur coat and bursting with speechless effectiveness. But Mr. Low’s little black eyes glistened with an astonishment bordering on suspicion when Hood in the most friendly fashion offered his sympathy and co-operation. That strange subconscious fear, that underlay all the wealthy manager’s success and security in this country, always came to the surface at the sight of Owen Hood’s ironical face.

Just at that moment, however, one of the local agents ran to him with telegrams in his hand and distracted him. They didn’t have enough men, they didn’t have enough cars, they didn’t have enough speakers. The crowd at Little Puddleton had waited half an hour, Dr. Hunter could not come to them till ten past nine, and so on. The agent in his agony was ready to ask a black person to speak on behalf of a nationalist party without asking him about his own opinions. That’s how impractical all these practical people are. On that night Robert Owen Hood would have been encouraged to go anywhere and say anything; and he did. It might be interesting to imagine what the lady thought about it; but it is possible that she did not think about it. She had some memory of passing through a number of ugly rooms with gas lamps and piles of leaflets, where little irritated men ran about like rabbits. The walls were covered with large allegorical pictures printed in black and white or in a few bright colours, representing Dr. Hunter as a knight in shining armour, as killing dragons, as rescuing ladies who looked like classical goddesses, and so on. Just in case someone might think that Dr. Hunter had a habit of killing dragons as part of his everyday routine (as a form of exercise) the dragon had its name written down in large letters.

It seemed its name was “National Extravagance”. For those who were not sure about the alternative to extravagance which Dr. Hunter had discovered the sword was decorated with the word “Economy.” Elizabeth Seymour, who was watching these pictures, could not avoid thinking that she herself had lately practised economy a lot and had resisted many temptations to extravagance; but she would have never thought about the action as about killing a big green monster with a sword.

In the central committee-room they actually came face to face for a moment with the candidate, who came in very hot and breathless with a silk hat on the back of his head. He probably had forgotten about it, because he did not take it off. She was a little ashamed of thinking about such little things, but she came to the conclusion that she would not like to have a husband going to Parliament.

“We’ve talked to all those people on Cold Road,” said Dr. Hunter. “We will not get any votes in The Hole and those dirty streets, so we shouldn’t waste time on them.”

“Well, we’ve had a very good meeting in the Masonic Hall,” said the agent cheerfully. “Sir Samuel Bliss spoke, and really he managed all right. He told some stories, you know, and they listened to him.”

“And now,” said Owen Hood, slapping his hands together in a cheerful manner, “what about this torchlight procession?”

“This what procession?” asked the agent.

“Do you mean to tell me,” said Hood sternly, “that preparations are not complete for the torchlight procession of Dr. Hunter? That you are going to let this night of triumph pass without making a hundred fires to light the road of the conqueror? Do you realize that the hearts of a whole people have spontaneously moved and chosen him? That the suffering poor whispered at night ‘Vote for Hunter’ long before his party made him a candidate? Do you not want the poor people make torches from their last cheap bits of furniture to do him honour? Why, from this chair alone – ” He took the chair on which Hunter had sat before that and began to break it enthusiastically. They stopped him in this; but he actually persuaded the company to follow his idea at the last possible moment.

In the evening he had actually organized his torchlight procession, escorting the triumphant Hunter, covered with blue ribbons, to the river. It looked as if the doctor was going to be baptized like a new Christian or killed like a witch.

Hood was holding his bright torch close to the Hunter’s astonished face. Then he climbed on some pile of rubbish on the bank of the river and spoke to the crowd for the last time.

“Dear citizens, we meet upon the shore of the Thames, the Thames which is to Englishmen as important as the Tiber ever was to Romans. We meet in a valley which English poets love as much as English birds. We don’t have any other kind of art that is as native to our island as our old national tradition of landscape-painting in water-colour. And the most elegant and delicate water-colour paintings are dedicated to these holy waters. One of the best of old English poets repeated in his poetic meditations the single line, ‘Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song.’

“There have been rumours that someone wants to bring trouble to these waters; but now we can be calm, because we have heard promises. People who are now as famous as our national poets and painters have promised that the stream is still as clear and pure and beautiful as in the old days. We all know the wonderful work that Mr. Bulton has done on filters. Dr. Hunter supports Mr. Bulton. I mean, Mr. Bulton supports Dr. Hunter. I may also mention no less a man than Mr. Low. Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song.

“But then, we all support Dr. Hunter. I myself have always found him quite supportable; sorry, I should say quite satisfactory. He is truly a progressive, and nothing gives me greater pleasure than to watch him move forward. All of his patients in this locality will be very happy when he goes to the higher world of Westminster. I hope you understand what I mean. Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song.

“My only purpose tonight is to express that solidarity. Maybe there have been times when I had a different position then Dr. Hunter; but I am glad to say that all that has ended, and I have now nothing except for the most friendly feelings towards him. I will not say why, but I have a lot to say. As a symbol of this reconciliation I now solemnly throw away this torch. As this fire dies in the cool crystal waters of that sacred river, so will all such conflicts disappear in the pool of universal peace.”

Before anybody knew what he was doing, he raised his torch above his head and sent it flying like a meteor out into the dark water of the river.

The next moment a short, loud cry was heard, and every face in that crowd was staring at the river. You could see that all the faces were staring, because they were all lit up by a wide pale unnatural flame that rose up from the surface of the stream; a flame that the crowd watched as it would have watched a comet in the sky.

“There,” cried Owen Hood, turning suddenly to the girl and catching her arm, as if demanding congratulations. “Old Crane’s prophecy did not come true!”

“Who on Earth is Old Crane?” she asked, “and what prophesy did he say?”

“Only an old friend,” said Hood, “only an old friend of mine. It’s what he said that’s so important. He didn’t like my quiet way of sitting with books and fishing, and he said, while standing on that same island, ‘You may know a lot; but I don’t think you’ll ever set the Thames on fire. I’ll eat my hat if you do.’”

But the readers already know the story of how Old Crane ate his hat. And if they want to know any more about Mr. Crane or Mr. Hood, they must prepare themselves for reading the story of The Unobtrusive Traffic of Captain Pierce.