Manalive Part 17

"'Smith,' said the philosopher with a sudden change to a sort of ghastly lucidity, 'I shall go mad.'

"'And so look at things from the right angle,' observed Smith, sighing gently. 'Ah, but madness is only a palliative at best, a drug. The only cure is an operation--an operation that is always successful: death.'

"As he spoke the sun rose. It seemed to put colour into everything, with the rapidity of a lightning artist. A fleet of little clouds sailing across the sky changed from pigeon-gray to pink.

All over the little academic town the tops of different buildings took on different tints: here the sun would pick out the green enameled on a pinnacle, there the scarlet tiles of a villa; here the copper ornament on some artistic shop, and there the sea-blue slates of some old and steep church roof.

All these coloured crests seemed to have something oddly individual and significant about them, like crests of famous knights pointed out in a pageant or a battlefield: they each arrested the eye, especially the rolling eye of Emerson Eames as he looked round on the morning and accepted it as his last.

Through a narrow c.h.i.n.k between a black timber tavern and a big gray college he could see a clock with gilt hands which the suns.h.i.+ne set on fire. He stared at it as though hypnotized; and suddenly the clock began to strike, as if in personal reply.

As if at a signal, clock after clock took up the cry: all the churches awoke like chickens at c.o.c.kcrow.

The birds were already noisy in the trees behind the college.

The sun rose, gathering glory that seemed too full for the deep skies to hold, and the shallow waters beneath them seemed golden and br.i.m.m.i.n.g and deep enough for the thirst of the G.o.ds.

Just round the corner of the College, and visible from his crazy perch, were the brightest specks on that bright landscape, the villa with the spotted blinds which he had made his text that night.

He wondered for the first time what people lived in them.

"Suddenly he called out with mere querulous authority, as he might have called to a student to shut a door.

"'Let me come off this place,' he cried; 'I can't bear it.'

"'I rather doubt if it will bear you,' said Smith critically; 'but before you break your neck, or I blow out your brains, or let you back into this room (on which complex points I am undecided) I want the metaphysical point cleared up.

Do I understand that you want to get back to life?'

"'I'd give anything to get back,' replied the unhappy professor.

"'Give anything!' cried Smith; 'then, blast your impudence, give us a song!'

"'What song do you mean?' demanded the exasperated Eames; 'what song?'

"'A hymn, I think, would be most appropriate,' answered the other gravely.

'I'll let you off if you'll repeat after me the words--

"'I thank the goodness and the grace That on my birth have smiled.

And perched me on this curious place, A happy English child.'

"Dr. Emerson Eames having briefly complied, his persecutor abruptly told him to hold his hands up in the air. Vaguely connecting this proceeding with the usual conduct of brigands and bushrangers, Mr. Eames held them up, very stiffly, but without marked surprise.

A bird alighting on his stone seat took no more notice of him than of a comic statue.

"'You are now engaged in public wors.h.i.+p,' remarked Smith severely, 'and before I have done with you, you shall thank G.o.d for the very ducks on the pond.'

"The celebrated pessimist half articulately expressed his perfect readiness to thank G.o.d 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-wors.h.i.+pping 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 un.o.btrusively, he rejoined his companion in the late extraordinary scene.

He was astonished to find the gigantic Smith heavily shaken, and sitting with his s.h.a.ggy 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. n.o.body 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 ca.n.a.l.'

"'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 s.h.i.+ning in your eyes when you dangled on that bridge was enjoyment of life and not "the Will to Live." What you knew when you sat on that d.a.m.ned 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 pa.s.sed 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 ma.s.sive 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 ma.s.sive 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 antic.i.p.ate 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.'