these tales concern the doing of things recognized as impossible to do; impossible to believe; and, as the weary reader may well cry aloud, impossible to read about. did the narrator merely say that they happened, without saying how they happened, they could easily be classified with the cow who jumped over the moon and the more introspective individual who jumped down his own throat. in short, they are all tall stories; and though tall stories may also be true stories, there is something in the very phrase appropriate to such a topsy-turvydom; for the logician will presumably class a tall story with a corpulent epigram or a long-legged essay. it is only proper that such impossible incidents should begin in the most prim and prosaic of all places, at the most prim and prosaic of all times, and apparently with the most prim and prosaic of all human beings.
the place was a straight suburban road of strictly-fenced[4] suburban houses on the outskirts of a modern town. the time was about twenty minutes to eleven on sunday morning, when a procession of suburban families in their sunday clothes were passing decorously up the road to church. and the man was a very respectable retired military man named colonel crane, who was also going to church, as he had done every sunday at the same hour for a long stretch of years. there was no obvious difference between him and his neighbours, except that he was a little less obvious. his house was only called white lodge and was, therefore, less alluring to the romantic passer-by than rowanmere on the one side or heatherbrae on the other. he turned out spick and span for church as if for parade; but he was much too well dressed to be pointed out as a well-dressed man. he was quite handsome in a dry, sun-baked style; but his bleached blond hair was a colourless sort that could look either light brown or pale grey; and though his blue eyes were clear, they looked out a little heavily under lowered lids. colonel crane was something of a survival. he was not really old; indeed he was barely middle-aged; and had gained his last distinctions in the great war. but a variety of causes had kept him true to the traditional type of the old professional soldier, as it had existed before 1914; when a small parish would have only one colonel as it had only one curate. it would be quite unjust to call him a[5] dug-out; indeed, it would be much truer to call him a dug-in. for he had remained in the traditions as firmly and patiently as he had remained in the trenches. he was simply a man who happened to have no taste for changing his habits, and had never worried about conventions enough to alter them. one of his excellent habits was to go to church at eleven o’clock, and he therefore went there; and did not know that there went with him something of an old-world air and a passage in the history of england.
as he came out of his front door, however, on that particular morning, he was twisting a scrap of paper in his fingers and frowning with somewhat unusual perplexity. instead of walking straight to his garden gate he walked once or twice up and down his front garden, swinging his black walking-cane. the note had been handed in to him at breakfast, and it evidently involved some practical problem calling for immediate solution. he stood a few minutes with his eye riveted on a red daisy at the corner of the nearest flower-bed; and then a new expression began to work in the muscles of his bronzed face, giving a slightly grim hint of humour, of which few except his intimates were aware. folding up the paper and putting it into his waistcoat pocket, he strolled round the house to the back garden, behind which was the kitchen-garden, in which an old servant, a sort of factotum or handyman, named archer, was acting as kitchen-gardener.
[6]archer also was a survival. indeed, the two had survived together; had survived a number of things that had killed a good many other people. but though they had been together through the war that was also a revolution, and had a complete confidence in each other, the man archer had never been able to lose the oppressive manners of a manservant. he performed the duties of a gardener with the air of a butler. he really performed the duties very well and enjoyed them very much; perhaps he enjoyed them all the more because he was a clever cockney, to whom the country crafts were a new hobby. but somehow, whenever he said, “i have put in the seeds, sir,” it always sounded like, “i have put the sherry on the table, sir”; and he could not say, “shall i pull the carrots?” without seeming to say, “would you be requiring the claret?”
“i hope you’re not working on sunday,” said the colonel, with a much more pleasant smile than most people got from him, though he was always polite to everybody. “you’re getting too fond of these rural pursuits. you’ve become a rustic yokel.”
“i was venturing to examine the cabbages, sir,” replied the rustic yokel, with a painful precision of articulation. “their condition yesterday evening did not strike me as satisfactory.”
“glad you didn’t sit up with them,” answered the colonel. “but it’s lucky you’re interested in cabbages. i want to talk to you about cabbages.”
[7]“about cabbages, sir?” inquired the other respectfully.
but the colonel did not appear to pursue the topic, for he was gazing in sudden abstraction at another object in the vegetable plots in front of him. the colonel’s garden, like the colonel’s house, hat, coat and demeanour, was well-appointed in an unobtrusive fashion; and in the part of it devoted to flowers there dwelt something indefinable that seemed older than the suburbs. the hedges, even, in being as neat as surbiton managed to look as mellow as hampton court, as if their very artificiality belonged rather to queen anne than queen victoria; and the stone-rimmed pond with a ring of irises somehow looked like a classic pool and not merely an artificial puddle. it is idle to analyse how a man’s soul and social type will somehow soak into his surroundings; anyhow, the soul of mr. archer had sunk into the kitchen-garden so as to give it a fine shade of difference. he was after all a practical man, and the practice of his new trade was much more of a real appetite with him than his words would suggest. hence the kitchen-garden was not artificial, but autochthonous; it really looked like a corner of a farm in the country; and all sorts of practical devices were set up there. strawberries were netted-in against the birds; strings were stretched across with feathers fluttering from them; and in the middle of the principal bed stood an ancient and authentic[8] scarecrow. perhaps the only incongruous intruder, capable of disputing with the scarecrow his rural reign, was the curious boundary-stone which marked the edge of his domain; and which was, in fact, a shapeless south sea idol, planted there with no more appropriateness than a door-scraper. but colonel crane would not have been so complete a type of the old army man if he had not hidden somewhere a hobby connected with his travels. his hobby had at one time been savage folklore; and he had the relic of it on the edge of the kitchen-garden. at the moment, however, he was not looking at the idol, but at the scarecrow.
“by the way, archer,” he said, “don’t you think the scarecrow wants a new hat?”
“i should hardly think it would be necessary, sir,” said the gardener gravely.
“but look here,” said the colonel, “you must consider the philosophy of scarecrows. in theory, that is supposed to convince some rather simple-minded bird that i am walking in my garden. that thing with the unmentionable hat is me. a trifle sketchy, perhaps. sort of impressionist portrait; but hardly likely to impress. man with a hat like that would never be really firm with a sparrow. conflict of wills, and all that, and i bet the sparrow would come out on top. by the way, what’s that stick tied on to it?”
[9]“i believe, sir,” said archer, “that it is supposed to represent a gun.”
“held at a highly unconvincing angle,” observed crane. “man with a hat like that would be sure to miss.”
“would you desire me to procure another hat?” inquired the patient archer.
“no, no,” answered his master carelessly. “as the poor fellow’s got such a rotten hat, i’ll give him mine. like the scene of st. martin and the beggar.”
“give him yours,” repeated archer respectfully, but faintly.
the colonel took off his burnished top-hat and gravely placed it on the head of the south sea idol at his feet. it had a queer effect of bringing the grotesque lump of stone to life, as if a goblin in a top-hat was grinning at the garden.
“you think the hat shouldn’t be quite new?” he inquired almost anxiously. “not done among the best scarecrows, perhaps. well, let’s see what we can do to mellow it a little.”
he whirled up his walking-stick over his head and laid a smacking stroke across the silk hat, smashing it over the hollow eyes of the idol.
“softened with the touch of time now, i think,” he remarked, holding out the silken remnants to the gardener. “put it on the scarecrow, my friend; i[10] don’t want it. you can bear witness it’s no use to me.”
archer obeyed like an automaton, an automaton with rather round eyes.
“we must hurry up,” said the colonel cheerfully, “i was early for church, but i’m afraid i’m a bit late now.”
“did you propose to attend church without a hat, sir?” asked the other.
“certainly not. most irreverent,” said the colonel. “nobody should neglect to remove his hat on entering church. well, if i haven’t got a hat, i shall neglect to remove it. where is your reasoning power this morning? no, no, just dig up one of your cabbages.”
once more the well-trained servant managed to repeat the word “cabbages” with his own strict accent; but in its constriction there was a hint of strangulation.
“yes, go and pull up a cabbage, there’s a good fellow,” said the colonel. “i must really be getting along; i believe i heard it strike eleven.”
mr. archer moved heavily in the direction of the plot of cabbages, which swelled with monstrous contours and many colours; objects, perhaps, more worthy of the philosophic eye than is taken into account by the more flippant tongue. vegetables are curious-looking things and less commonplace than they sound. if we called a cabbage a cactus, or[11] some such queer name, we might see it as an equally queer thing.
these philosophical truths did the colonel reveal by anticipating the dubious archer, and dragging a great, green cabbage with its trailing root out of the earth. he then picked up a sort of pruning-knife and cut short the long tail of the root; scooped out the inside leaves so as to make a sort of hollow, and gravely reversing it, placed it on his head. napoleon and other military princes have crowned themselves; and he, like the cæsars, wore a wreath that was, after all, made of green leaves or vegetation. doubtless there are other comparisons that might occur to any philosophical historian who should look at it in the abstract.
the people going to church certainly looked at it; but they did not look at it in the abstract. to them it appeared singularly concrete; and indeed incredibly solid. the inhabitants of rowanmere and heatherbrae followed the colonel as he strode almost jauntily up the road, with feelings that no philosophy could for the moment meet. there seemed to be nothing to be said, except that one of the most respectable and respected of their neighbours, one who might even be called in a quiet way a pattern of good form if not a leader of fashion, was walking solemnly up to church with a cabbage on the top of his head.
there was indeed no corporate action to meet the[12] crisis. their world was not one in which a crowd can collect to shout, and still less to jeer. no rotten eggs could be collected from their tidy breakfast-tables; and they were not of the sort to throw cabbage-stalks at the cabbage. perhaps there was just that amount of truth in the pathetically picturesque names on their front gates, names suggestive of mountains and mighty lakes concealed somewhere on the premises. it was true that in one sense such a house was a hermitage. each of these men lived alone and they could not be made into a mob. for miles around there was no public house and no public opinion.
as the colonel approached the church porch and prepared reverently to remove his vegetarian headgear, he was hailed in a tone a little more hearty than the humane civility that was the slender bond of that society. he returned the greeting without embarrassment, and paused a moment as the man who had spoken to him plunged into further speech. he was a young doctor named horace hunter, tall, handsomely dressed, and confident in manner; and though his features were rather plain and his hair rather red, he was considered to have a certain fascination.
“good morning, colonel,” said the doctor in his resounding tones, “what a f—— what a fine day it is.”
stars turned from their courses like comets, so[13] to speak, and the world swerved into wilder possibilities, at that crucial moment when dr. hunter corrected himself and said, “what a fine day!” instead of “what a funny hat!”
as to why he corrected himself, a true picture of what passed through his mind might sound rather fanciful in itself. it would be less than explicit to say he did so because of a long grey car waiting outside the white lodge. it might not be a complete explanation to say it was due to a lady walking on stilts at a garden party. some obscurity might remain, even if we said that it had something to do with a soft shirt and a nickname; nevertheless all these things mingled in the medical gentleman’s mind when he made his hurried decision. above all, it might or might not be sufficient explanation to say that horace hunter was a very ambitious young man, that the ring in his voice and the confidence in his manner came from a very simple resolution to rise in the world, and that the world in question was rather worldly.
he liked to be seen talking so confidently to colonel crane on that sunday parade. crane was comparatively poor, but he knew people. and people who knew people knew what people were doing now; whereas people who didn’t know people could only wonder what in the world people would do next. a lady who came with the duchess when she opened the bazaar had nodded to crane and[14] said, “hullo, stork,” and the doctor had deduced that it was a sort of family joke and not a momentary ornithological confusion. and it was the duchess who had started all that racing on stilts, which the vernon-smiths had introduced at heatherbrae. but it would have been devilish awkward not to have known what mrs. vernon-smith meant when she said, “of course you stilt.” you never knew what they would start next. he remembered how he himself had thought the first man in a soft shirtfront was some funny fellow from nowhere; and then he had begun to see others here and there, and had found that it was not a faux pas, but a fashion. it was odd to imagine he would ever begin to see vegetable hats here and there, but you never could tell; and he wasn’t going to make the same mistake again. his first medical impulse had been to add to the colonel’s fancy costume with a strait-waistcoat. but crane did not look like a lunatic, and certainly did not look like a man playing a practical joke. he had not the stiff and self-conscious solemnity of the joker. he took it quite naturally. and one thing was certain: if it really was the latest thing, the doctor must take it as naturally as the colonel did. so he said it was a fine day, and was gratified to learn that there was no disagreement on that question.
the doctor’s dilemma, if we may apply the phrase, had been the whole neighbourhood’s dilemma. the[15] doctor’s decision was also the whole neighbourhood’s decision. it was not so much that most of the good people there shared in hunter’s serious social ambitions, but rather that they were naturally prone to negative and cautious decisions. they lived in a delicate dread of being interfered with; and they were just enough to apply the principle by not interfering with other people. they had also a subconscious sense that the mild and respectable military gentleman would not be altogether an easy person to interfere with. the consequence was that the colonel carried his monstrous green headgear about the streets of that suburb for nearly a week, and nobody ever mentioned the subject to him. it was about the end of that time (while the doctor had been scanning the horizon for aristocrats crowned with cabbage, and, not seeing any, was summoning his natural impudence to speak) that the final interruption came; and with the interruption the explanation.
the colonel had every appearance of having forgotten all about the hat. he took it off and on like any other hat; he hung it on the hat-peg in his narrow front hall where there was nothing else but his sword hung on two hooks and an old brown map of the seventeenth century. he handed it to archer when that correct character seemed to insist on his official right to hold it; he did not insist on his official right to brush it, for fear it should fall to pieces; but[16] he occasionally gave it a cautious shake, accompanied with a look of restrained distaste. but the colonel himself never had any appearance of either liking or disliking it. the unconventional thing had already become one of his conventions—the conventions which he never considered enough to violate. it is probable, therefore, that what ultimately took place was as much of a surprise to him as to anybody. anyhow, the explanation, or explosion, came in the following fashion.
mr. vernon-smith, the mountaineer whose foot was on his native heath at heatherbrae, was a small, dapper gentleman with a big-bridged nose, dark moustache, and dark eyes with a settled expression of anxiety, though nobody knew what there was to be anxious about in his very solid social existence. he was a friend of dr. hunter; one might almost say a humble friend. for he had the negative snobbishness that could only admire the positive and progressive snobbishness of that soaring and social figure. a man like dr. hunter likes to have a man like mr. smith, before whom he can pose as a perfect man of the world. what appears more extraordinary, a man like mr. smith really likes to have a man like dr. hunter to pose at him and swagger over him and snub him. anyhow, vernon-smith had ventured to hint that the new hat of his neighbour crane was not of a pattern familiar in every fashion-plate. and dr. hunter, bursting[17] with the secret of his own original diplomacy, had snubbed the suggestion and snowed it under with frosty scorn. with shrewd, resolute gestures, with large allusive phrases, he had left on his friend’s mind the impression that the whole social world would dissolve if a word were said on so delicate a topic. mr. vernon-smith formed a general idea that the colonel would explode with a loud bang at the very vaguest allusion to vegetables, or the most harmless adumbration or verbal shadow of a hat. as usually happens in such cases, the words he was forbidden to say repeated themselves perpetually in his mind with the rhythmic pressure of a pulse. it was his temptation at the moment to call all houses hats and all visitors vegetables.
when crane came out of his front gate that morning he found his neighbour vernon-smith standing outside, between the spreading laburnum and the lamp-post, talking to a young lady, a distant cousin of his family. this girl was an art student on her own—a little too much on her own for the standards of heatherbrae, and, therefore (some would infer), yet further beyond those of white lodge. her brown hair was bobbed, and the colonel did not admire bobbed hair. on the other hand, she had a rather attractive face, with honest brown eyes a little too wide apart, which diminished the impression of beauty but increased the impression of honesty. she also had a very fresh and[18] unaffected voice, and the colonel had often heard it calling out scores at tennis on the other side of the garden wall. in some vague sort of way it made him feel old; at least, he was not sure whether he felt older than he was, or younger than he ought to be. it was not until they met under the lamp-post that he knew her name was audrey smith; and he was faintly thankful for the single monosyllable. mr. vernon-smith presented her, and very nearly said: “may i introduce my cabbage?” instead of “my cousin.”
the colonel, with unaffected dullness, said it was a fine day; and his neighbour, rallying from his last narrow escape, continued the talk with animation. his manner, as when he poked his big nose and beady black eyes into local meetings and committees, was at once hesitating and emphatic.
“this young lady is going in for art,” he said; “a poor look-out, isn’t it? i expect we shall see her drawing in chalk on the paving-stones and expecting us to throw a penny into the—into a tray, or something.” here he dodged another danger. “but, of course, she thinks she is going to be an r.a.”
“i hope not,” said the young woman hotly. “pavement artists are much more honest than most of the r.a.’s.”
“i wish those friends of yours didn’t give you such revolutionary ideas,” said mr. vernon-smith.[19] “my cousin knows the most dreadful cranks, vegetarians and—and socialists.” he chanced it, feeling that vegetarians were not quite the same as vegetables; and he felt sure the colonel would share his horror of socialists. “people who want us to be equal, and all that. what i say is—we’re not equal and we never can be. as i always say to audrey—if all the property were divided to-morrow, it would go back into the same hands. it’s a law of nature, and if a man thinks he can get round a law of nature, why, he’s talking through his—i mean, he’s as mad as a——”
recoiling from the omnipresent image, he groped madly in his mind for the alternative of a march hare. but before he could find it, the girl had cut in and completed his sentence. she smiled serenely, and said in her clear and ringing tones:
“as mad as colonel crane’s hatter.”
it is not unjust to mr. vernon-smith to say that he fled as from a dynamite explosion. it would be unjust to say that he deserted a lady in distress, for she did not look in the least like a distressed lady, and he himself was a very distressed gentleman. he attempted to wave her indoors with some wild pretext, and eventually vanished there himself with an equally random apology. but the other two took no notice of him; they continued to confront each other, and both were smiling.
“i think you must be the bravest man in england,”[20] she said. “i don’t mean anything about the war, or the d.s.o. and all that; i mean about this. oh, yes, i do know a little about you, but there’s one thing i don’t know. why do you do it?”
“i think it is you who are the bravest woman in england,” he answered, “or, at any rate, the bravest person in these parts. i’ve walked about this town for a week, feeling like the last fool in creation, and expecting somebody to say something. and not a soul has said a word. they seem all to be afraid of saying the wrong thing.”
“i think they’re deadly,” observed miss smith. “and if they don’t have cabbages for hats, it’s only because they have turnips for heads.”
“no,” said the colonel gently; “i have many generous and friendly neighbours here, including your cousin. believe me, there is a case for conventions, and the world is wiser than you know. you are too young not to be intolerant. but i can see you’ve got the fighting spirit; that is the best part of youth and intolerance. when you said that word just now, by jove you looked like britomart.”
“she is the militant suffragette in the faerie queene, isn’t she?” answered the girl. “i’m afraid i don’t know my english literature as well as you do. you see, i’m an artist, or trying to be one; and some people say that narrows a person. but i can’t help getting cross with all the varnished vulgarity[21] they talk about everything—look at what he said about socialism.”
“it was a little superficial,” said crane with a smile.
“and that,” she concluded, “is why i admire your hat, though i don’t know why you wear it.”
this trivial conversation had a curious effect on the colonel. there went with it a sort of warmth and a sense of crisis that he had not known since the war. a sudden purpose formed itself in his mind, and he spoke like one stepping across a frontier.
“miss smith,” he said, “i wonder if i might ask you to pay me a further compliment. it may be unconventional, but i believe you do not stand on these conventions. an old friend of mine will be calling on me shortly, to wind up the rather unusual business or ceremonial of which you have chanced to see a part. if you would do me the honour to lunch with me to-morrow at half-past one, the true story of the cabbage awaits you. i promise that you shall hear the real reason. i might even say i promise you shall see the real reason.”
“why, of course i will,” said the unconventional one heartily. “thanks awfully.”
the colonel took an intense interest in the appointments of the luncheon next day. with subconscious surprise he found himself not only interested,[22] but excited. like many of his type, he took pleasure in doing such things well, and knew his way about in wine and cookery. but that would not alone explain his pleasure. for he knew that young women generally know very little about wine, and emancipated young women possibly least of all. and though he meant the cookery to be good, he knew that in one feature it would appear rather fantastic. again, he was a good-natured gentleman who would always have liked young people to enjoy a luncheon party, as he would have liked a child to enjoy a christmas tree. but there seemed no reason why he should be restless and expectant about it, as if he were the child himself. there was no reason why he should have a sort of happy insomnia, like a child on christmas eve. there was really no excuse for his pacing up and down the garden with his cigar, smoking furiously far into the night. for as he gazed at the purple irises and the grey pool in the faint moonshine, something in his feelings passed as if from the one tint to the other; he had a new and unexpected reaction. for the first time he really hated the masquerade he had made himself endure. he wished he could smash the cabbage as he had smashed the top-hat. he was little more than forty years old; but he had never realized how much there was of what was dried and faded about his flippancy, till he felt unexpectedly swelling within him the monstrous and solemn vanity of a young[23] man. sometimes he looked up at the picturesque, the too picturesque, outline of the villa next door, dark against the moonrise, and thought he heard faint voices in it, and something like a laugh.
the visitor who called on the colonel next morning may have been an old friend, but he was certainly an odd contrast. he was a very abstracted, rather untidy man in a rusty knickerbocker suit; he had a long head with straight hair of the dark red called auburn, one or two wisps of which stood on end however he brushed it, and a long face, clean-shaven and heavy about the jaw and chin, which he had a way of sinking and settling squarely into his cravat. his name was hood, and he was apparently a lawyer, though he had not come on strictly legal business. anyhow, he exchanged greetings with crane with a quiet warmth and gratification, smiled at the old manservant as if he were an old joke, and showed every sign of an appetite for his luncheon.
the appointed day was singularly warm and bright and everything in the garden seemed to glitter; the goblin god of the south seas seemed really to grin; and the scarecrow really to have a new hat. the irises round the pool were swinging and flapping in a light breeze; and he remembered they were called “flags” and thought of purple banners going into battle.
she had come suddenly round the corner of the[24] house. her dress was of a dark but vivid blue, very plain and angular in outline, but not outrageously artistic; and in the morning light she looked less like a schoolgirl and more like a serious woman of twenty-five or thirty; a little older and a great deal more interesting. and something in this morning seriousness increased the reaction of the night before. one single wave of thanksgiving went up from crane to think that at least his grotesque green hat was gone and done with for ever. he had worn it for a week without caring a curse for anybody; but during that ten minutes’ trivial talk under the lamp-post, he felt as if he had suddenly grown donkey’s ears in the street.
he had been induced by the sunny weather to have a little table laid for three in a sort of veranda open to the garden. when the three sat down to it, he looked across at the lady and said: “i fear i must exhibit myself as a crank; one of those cranks your cousin disapproves of, miss smith. i hope it won’t spoil this little lunch for anybody else. but i am going to have a vegetarian meal.”
“are you?” she said. “i should never have said you looked like a vegetarian.”
“just lately i have only looked like a fool,” he said dispassionately; “but i think i’d sooner look a fool than a vegetarian in the ordinary way. this is rather a special occasion. perhaps my friend hood[25] had better begin; it’s really his story more than mine.”
“my name is robert owen hood,” said that gentleman, rather sardonically. “that’s how improbable reminiscences often begin; but the only point now is that my old friend here insulted me horribly by calling me robin hood.”
“i should have called it a compliment,” answered audrey smith. “but why did he call you robin hood?”
“because i drew the long bow,” said the lawyer.
“but to do you justice,” said the colonel, “it seems that you hit the bull’s-eye.”
as he spoke archer came in bearing a dish which he placed before his master. he had already served the others with the earlier courses, but he carried this one with the pomp of one bringing in the boar’s head at christmas. it consisted of a plain boiled cabbage.
“i was challenged to do something,” went on hood, “which my friend here declared to be impossible. in fact, any sane man would have declared it to be impossible. but i did it for all that. only my friend, in the heat of rejecting and ridiculing the notion, made use of a hasty expression. i might almost say he made a rash vow.”
“my exact words were,” said colonel crane solemnly: “‘if you can do that, i’ll eat my hat.’”
[26]he leaned forward thoughtfully and began to eat it. then he resumed in the same reflective way:
“you see, all rash vows are verbal or nothing. there might be a debate about the logical and literal way in which my friend hood fulfilled his rash vow. but i put it to myself in the same pedantic sort of way. it wasn’t possible to eat any hat that i wore. but it might be possible to wear a hat that i could eat. articles of dress could hardly be used for diet; but articles of diet could really be used for dress. it seemed to me that i might fairly be said to have made it my hat, if i wore it systematically as a hat and had no other, putting up with all the disadvantages. making a blasted fool of myself was the fair price to be paid for the vow or wager; for one ought always to lose something on a wager.”
and he rose from the table with a gesture of apology.
the girl stood up. “i think it’s perfectly splendid,” she said. “it’s as wild as one of those stories about looking for the holy grail.”
the lawyer also had risen, rather abruptly, and stood stroking his long chin with his thumb and looking at his old friend under bent brows in a rather reflective manner.
“well, you’ve subpœna’d me as a witness all right,” he said, “and now, with the permission of the court, i’ll leave the witness-box. i’m afraid i must[27] be going. i’ve got important business at home. good-bye, miss smith.”
the girl returned his farewell a little mechanically; and crane seemed to recover suddenly from a similar trance as he stepped after the retreating figure of his friend.
“i say, owen,” he said hastily, “i’m sorry you’re leaving so early. must you really go?”
“yes,” replied owen hood gravely. “my private affairs are quite real and practical, i assure you.” his grave mouth worked a little humorously at the corners as he added: “the truth is, i don’t think i mentioned it, but i’m thinking of getting married.”
“married!” repeated the colonel, as if thunderstruck.
“thanks for your compliments and congratulations, old fellow,” said the satiric mr. hood. “yes, it’s all been thought out. i’ve even decided whom i am going to marry. she knows about it herself. she has been warned.”
“i really beg your pardon,” said the colonel in great distress, “of course i congratulate you most heartily; and her even more heartily. of course i’m delighted to hear it. the truth is, i was surprised ... not so much in that way....”
“not so much in what way?” asked hood. “i suppose you mean some would say i am on the way to be an old bachelor. but i’ve discovered it isn’t half so much a matter of years as of ways.[28] men like me get elderly more by choice than chance; and there’s much more choice and less chance in life than your modern fatalists make out. for such people fatalism falsifies even chronology. they’re not unmarried because they’re old. they’re old because they’re unmarried.”
“indeed you are mistaken,” said crane earnestly. “as i say, i was surprised, but my surprise was not so rude as you think. it wasn’t that i thought there was anything unfitting about ... somehow it was rather the other way ... as if things could fit better than one thought ... as if—but anyhow, little as i know about it, i really do congratulate you.”
“i’ll tell you all about it before long,” replied his friend. “it’s enough to say just now that it was all bound up with my succeeding after all in doing—what i did. she was the inspiration, you know. i have done what is called an impossible thing; but believe me, she is the really impossible part of it.”
“well, i must not keep you from such an impossible engagement,” said crane smiling. “really, i’m confoundedly glad to hear about all this. well, good-bye for the present.”
colonel crane stood watching the square shoulders and russet mane of his old friend, as they disappeared down the road, in a rather indescribable state of mind. as he turned hastily back towards his garden and his other guest, he was conscious of a[29] change; things seemed different in some lightheaded and illogical fashion. he could not himself trace the connexion; indeed, he did not know whether it was a connexion or a disconnexion. he was very far from being a fool; but his brains were of the sort that are directed outwards to things; the brains of the soldier or the scientific man; and he had no practice in analysing his own mind. he did not quite understand why the news about owen hood should give him that dazed sense of a difference in things in general. doubtless he was very fond of owen hood; but he had been fond of other people who had got married without especially disturbing the atmosphere of his own back garden. he even dimly felt that mere affection might have worked the other way; that it might have made him worry about hood, and wonder whether hood was making a fool of himself, or even feel suspicious or jealous of mrs. hood—if there had not been something else that made him feel quite the other way. he could not quite understand it; there seemed to be an increasing number of things that he could not understand. this world in which he himself wore garlands of green cabbage and in which his old friend the lawyer got married suddenly like a man going mad—this world was a new world, at once fresh and frightening, in which he could hardly understand the figures that were walking about, even his own. the flowers in the flower-pots had a new look about[30] them, at once bright and nameless; and even the line of vegetables beyond could not altogether depress him with the memories of recent levity. had he indeed been a prophet, or a visionary seeing the future, he might have seen that green line of cabbages extending infinitely like a green sea to the horizon. for he stood at the beginning of a story which was not to terminate until his incongruous cabbage had come to mean something that he had never meant by it. that green patch was to spread like a great green conflagration almost to the ends of the earth. but he was a practical person and the very reverse of a prophet; and like many other practical persons, he often did things without very clearly knowing what he was doing. he had the innocence of some patriarch or primitive hero in the morning of the world, founding more than he could himself realize of his legend and his line. indeed he felt very much like somebody in the morning of the world; but beyond that he could grasp nothing.
audrey smith was standing not so very many yards away; for it was only for a few strides that he had followed his elder guest towards the gate. yet her figure had fallen far enough back out of the foreground to take on the green framework of the garden; so that her dress might almost have been blue with a shade of distance. and when she spoke to him, even from that little way off, her voice took on inevitably a new suggestion of one calling out[31] familiarly and from afar, as one calls to an old companion. it moved him in a disproportionate fashion, though all that she said was:
“what became of your old hat?”
“i lost it,” he replied gravely, “obviously i had to lose it. i believe the scarecrow found it.”
“oh, do let’s go and look at the scarecrow,” she cried.
he led her without a word to the kitchen-garden and gravely explained each of its outstanding features; from the serious mr. archer resting on his spade to the grotesque south sea island god grinning at the corner of the plot. he spoke as with an increasing solemnity and verbosity, and all the time knew little or nothing of what he said.
at last she cut into his monologue with an abstraction that was almost rude; yet her brown eyes were bright and her sympathy undisguised.
“don’t talk about it,” she cried with illogical enthusiasm. “it looks as if we were really right in the middle of the country. it’s as unique as the garden of eden. it’s simply the most delightful place——”
it was at this moment, for some unaccountable reason, that the colonel who had lost his hat suddenly proceeded to lose his head. standing in that grotesque vegetable scenery, a black and stiff yet somehow stately figure, he proceeded in the most traditional manner to offer the lady everything he possessed, not forgetting the scarecrow or the cabbages;[32] a half-humorous memory of which returned to him with the boomerang of bathos.
“when i think of the encumbrances on the estate—” he concluded gloomily. “well, there they are; a scarecrow and a cannibal fetish and a stupid man who has stuck in a rut of respectability and conventional ways.”
“very conventional,” she said, “especially in his taste in hats.”
“that was the exception, i’m afraid,” he said earnestly. “you’d find those things very rare and most things very dull. i can’t help having fallen in love with you; but for all that we are in different worlds; and you belong to a younger world, which says what it thinks, and cannot see what most of our silences and our scruples meant.”
“i suppose we are very rude,” she said thoughtfully, “and you must certainly excuse me if i do say what i think.”
“i deserve no better,” he replied mournfully.
“well, i think i must be in love with you too,” she replied calmly. “i don’t see what time has to do with being fond of people. you are the most original person i ever knew.”
“my dear, my dear,” he protested almost brokenly, “i fear you are making a mistake. whatever else i am, i never set up to be original.”
“you must remember,” she replied, “that i have known a good many people who did set up to be[33] original. an art school swarms with them; and there are any number among those socialist and vegetarian friends of mine you were talking about. they would think nothing of wearing cabbages on their heads, of course. any one of them would be capable of getting inside a pumpkin if he could. any one of them might appear in public dressed entirely in watercress. but that’s just it. they might well wear watercress for they are water-creatures; they go with the stream. they do those things because those things are done; because they are done in their own bohemian set. unconventionality is their convention. i don’t mind it myself; i think it’s great fun; but that doesn’t mean that i don’t know real strength or independence when i see it. all that is just molten and formless; but the really strong man is one who can make a mould and then break it. when a man like you can suddenly do a thing like that, after twenty years of habit, for the sake of his word, then somehow one really does feel that man is man and master of his fate.”
“i doubt if i am master of my fate,” replied crane, “and i do not know whether i ceased to be yesterday or two minutes ago.”
he stood there for a moment like a man in heavy armour. indeed, the antiquated image is not inappropriate in more ways than one. the new world within him was so alien from the whole habit in which he lived, from the very gait and gestures of his[34] daily life, conducted through countless days, that his spirit had striven before it broke its shell. but it was also true that even if he could have done what every man wishes to do at such a moment, something supreme and satisfying, it would have been something in a sense formal or it would not have satisfied him. he was one of those to whom it is natural to be ceremonial. even the music in his mind, too deep and distant for him to catch or echo, was the music of old and ritual dances and not of revelry; and it was not for nothing that he had built gradually about him that garden of the grey stone fountain and the great hedge of yew. he bent suddenly and kissed her hand.
“i like that,” she said. “you ought to have powdered hair and a sword.”
“i apologize,” he said gravely, “no modern man is worthy of you. but indeed i fear, in every sense i am not a very modern man.”
“you must never wear that hat again,” she said, indicating the battered original topper.
“to tell the truth,” he observed mildly, “i had not any attention of resuming that one.”
“silly,” she said briefly, “i don’t mean that hat; i mean that sort of hat. as a matter of fact, there couldn’t be a finer hat than the cabbage.”
“my dear—” he protested; but she was looking at him quite seriously.
“i told you i was an artist, and didn’t know much[35] about literature,” she said. “well, do you know, it really does make a difference. literary people let words get between them and things. we do at least look at the things and not the names of the things. you think a cabbage is comic because the name sounds comic and even vulgar; something between ‘cab’ and ‘garbage,’ i suppose. but a cabbage isn’t really comic or vulgar. you wouldn’t think so if you simply had to paint it. haven’t you seen dutch and flemish galleries, and don’t you know what great men painted cabbages? what they saw was certain lines and colours; very wonderful lines and colours.”
“it may be all very well in a picture,” he began doubtfully.
she suddenly laughed aloud.
“you idiot,” she cried; “don’t you know you looked perfectly splendid? the curves were like a great turban of leaves and the root rose like the spike of a helmet; it was rather like the turbaned helmets on some of rembrandt’s figures, with the face like bronze in the shadows of green and purple. that’s the sort of thing artists can see, who keep their eyes and heads clear of words! and then you want to apologize for not wearing that stupid stovepipe covered with blacking, when you went about wearing a coloured crown like a king. and you were like a king in this country; for they were all afraid of you.”
as he continued a faint protest, her laughter took[36] on a more mischievous shade. “if you’d stuck to it a little longer, i swear they’d all have been wearing vegetables for hats. i swear i saw my cousin the other day standing with a sort of trowel, and looking irresolutely at a cabbage.”
then, after a pause, she said with a beautiful irrelevancy:
“what was it mr. hood did that you said he couldn’t do?”
but these are tales of topsy-turvydom even in the sense that they have to be told tail-foremost. and he who would know the answer to that question must deliver himself up to the intolerable tedium of reading the story of the improbable success of mr. owen hood, and an interval must be allowed him before such torments are renewed.
