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                         Chapter IV

                     The Wild Weddings;
                   or, the Polygamy Charge


"A modern man," said Dr. Cyrus Pym, "must, if he be
thoughtful, approach the problem of marriage with some
caution.  Marriage is a stage -- doubtless a suitable stage
-- in the long advance of mankind towards a goal which we
cannot as yet conceive; which we are not, perhaps, as yet
fitted even to desire.  What, gentlemen, is now the ethical
position of marriage?  Have we outlived it?"
   "Outlived it?" broke out Moon; "why, nobody's ever
survived it!  Look at all the people married since Adam and
Eve -- and all as dead as mutton."
   "This is no doubt an inter-pellation joc'lar in its
character," said Dr. Pym frigidly.  "I cannot tell what may
be Mr. Moon's matured and ethical view of marriage --"
   "I can tell," said Michael savagely, out of the gloom.
"Marriage is a duel to the death, which no man of honour
should decline."
   "Michael," said Arthur Inglewood in a low voice, "you
MUST keep quiet."
   "Mr. Moon," said Pym with exquisite good temper,
"probably regards the institution in a more antiquated
manner.  Probably he would make it stringent and uniform.
He would treat divorce in some great soul of steel -- the
divorce of a Julius Caesar or of a Salt Ring Robinson --
exactly as he would treat some no-account tramp or labourer
who scoots from his wife.  Science has views broader and
more humane.  Just as murder for the scientist is a thirst
for absolute destruction, just as theft for the scientist is
a hunger for monotonous acquisition, so polygamy for the
scientist is an extreme development of the instinct for
variety.  A man thus afflicted is incapable of constancy.
Doubtless there is a physical cause for this flitting from
flower to flower -- as there is, doubtless, for the
intermittent groaning which appears to afflict Mr. Moon at
the present moment.  Our own world-scorning Winterbottom has
even dared to say, `For a certain rare and fine physical
type free polygamy is but the realization of the variety of
females, as comradeship is the realization of the variety of
males.'  In any case, the type that tends to variety is
recognized by all authoritative inquirers.  Such a type, if
the widower of a negress, does in many ascertained cases
espouse ~en seconde noces~ an albino; such a type, when
freed from the gigantic embraces of a female Patagonian,
will often evolve from its own imaginative instinct the
consoling figure of an Eskimo.  To such a type there can be
no doubt that the prisoner belongs.  If blind doom and
unbearable temptation constitute any slight excuse for a
man, there is no doubt that he has these excuses.
   "Earlier in the inquiry the defence showed real chivalric
ideality in admitting half of our story without further
dispute.  We should like to acknowledge and imitate so
eminently large-hearted a style by conceding also that the
story told by Curate Percy about the canoe, the weir, and
the young wife seems to be substantially true.  Apparently
Smith did marry a young woman he had nearly run down in a
boat; it only remains to be considered whether it would not
have been kinder of him to have murdered her instead of
marrying her.  In confirmation of this fact I can now
con-cede to the defence an unquestionable record of such a
marriage."
   So saying, he handed across to Michael a cutting from the
"Maidenhead Gazette" which distinctly recorded the marriage
of the daughter of a "coach," a tutor well known in the
place, to Mr. Innocent Smith, late of Brakespeare College,
Cambridge.
   When Dr. Pym resumed it was realized that his face had
grown at once both tragic and triumphant.
   "I pause upon this pre-liminary fact," he said seriously,
"because this fact alone would give us the victory, were we
aspiring after victory and not after truth.  As far as the
personal and domestic problem holds us, that problem is
solved.  Dr. Warner and I entered this house at an instant
of highly emotional diff'culty.  England's Warner has
entered many houses to save human kind from sickness; this
time he entered to save an innocent lady from a walking
pestilence.  Smith was just about to carry away a young girl
from this house; his cab and bag were at the very door.  He
had told her she was going to await the marriage license at
the house of his aunt.  That aunt," continued Cyrus Pym, his
face darkening grandly -- "that visionary aunt had been the
dancing will-o'-the-wisp who had led many a high-souled
maiden to her doom.  Into how many virginal ears has he
whispered that holy word?  When he said `aunt' there glowed
about her all the merriment and high morality of the
Anglo-Saxon home.  Kettles began to hum, pussy cats to purr,
in that very wild cab that was being driven to destruction."
   Inglewood looked up, to find, to his astonishment (as
many another denizen of the eastern hemisphere has found),
that the American was not only perfectly serious, but was
really eloquent and affecting -- when the difference of the
hemispheres was adjusted.
   "It is therefore atrociously evident that the man Smith
has at least represented himself to one innocent female of
this house as an eligible bachelor, being, in fact, a
married man.  I agree with my colleague, Mr. Gould, that no
other crime could approximate to this.  As to whether what
our ancestors called purity has any ultimate ethical value
indeed, science hesitates with a high, proud hesitation.
But what hesitation can there be about the baseness of a
citizen who ventures, by brutal experiments upon living
females, to anticipate the verdict of science on such a
point?
   "The woman mentioned by Curate Percy as living with Smith
in Highbury may or may not be the same as the lady he
married in Maidenhead.  If one short sweet spell of
constancy and heart repose interrupted the plunging torrent
of his profligate life, we will not deprive him of that long
past possibility.  After that conjectural date, alas, he
seems to have plunged deeper and deeper into the shaking
quagmires of infidelity and shame."
   Dr. Pym closed his eyes, but the unfortunate fact that
there was no more light left this familiar signal without
its full and proper moral effect.  After a pause, which
almost partook of the character of prayer, he continued.
   "The first instance of the accused's repeated and
irregular nuptials," he exclaimed, "comes from Lady
Bullingdon, who expresses herself with the high haughtiness
which must be excused in those who look out upon all mankind
from the turrets of a Norman and ancestral keep.  The
communication she has sent to us runs as follows: --

   "Lady Bullingdon recalls the painful incident to which
reference is made, and has no desire to deal with it in
detail.  The girl Polly Green was a perfectly adequate
dressmaker, and lived in the village for about two years.
Her unattached condition was bad for her as well as for the
general morality of the village.  Lady Bullingdon,
therefore, allowed it to be understood that she favoured the
marriage of the young woman.  The villagers, naturally
wishing to oblige Lady Bullingdon, came forward in several
cases; and all would have been well had it not been for the
deplorable eccentricity or depravity of the girl Green
herself.  Lady Bullingdon supposes that where there is a
village there must be a village idiot, and in her village,
it seems, there was one of these wretched creatures.  Lady
Bullingdon only saw him once, and she is quite aware that it
is really difficult to distinguish between actual idiots and
the ordinary heavy type of the rural lower classes.  She
noticed, however, the startling smallness of his head in
comparison to the rest of his body; and, indeed, the fact of
his having appeared upon election day wearing the rosette of
both the two opposing parties appears to Lady Bullingdon to
put the matter quite beyond doubt.  Lady Bullingdon was
astounded to learn that this afflicted being had put himself
forward as one of the suitors of the girl in question.  Lady
Bullingdon's nephew interviewed the wretch upon the point,
telling him that he was a `donkey' to dream of such a thing,
and actually received, along with an imbecile grin, the
answer that donkeys generally go after carrots.  But Lady
Bullingdon was yet further amazed to find the unhappy girl
inclined to accept this monstrous proposal, though she was
actually asked in marriage by Garth, the undertaker, a man
in a far superior position to her own.  Lady Bullingdon
could not, of course, countenance such an arrangement for a
moment, and the two unhappy persons escaped for a
clandestine marriage.  Lady Bullingdon cannot exactly recall
the man's name, but thinks it was Smith.  He was always
called in the village the Innocent.  Later, Lady Bullingdon
believes he murdered Green in a mental outbreak."

   "The next communication," proceeded Pym, "is more
conspicuous for brevity, but I am of the opinion that it
will adequately convey the upshot.  It is dated from the
offices of Messrs. Hanbury and Bootle, publishers, and is as
follows: --

   "Sir, -- Yrs. rcd. and conts. noted.  Rumour re
typewriter possibly refers to a Miss Blake or similar name,
left here nine years ago to marry an organ-grinder.  Case
was undoubtedly curious, and attracted police attention.
Girl worked excellently till about Oct. 1907, when
apparently went mad.  Record was written at the time, part
of which I enclose. -- Yrs., etc.,    W. Trip."

   "The fuller statement runs as follows: --

   "On October 12 a letter was sent from this office to
Messrs. Bernard and Juke, bookbinders.  Opened by Mr. Juke,
it was found to contain the following: `Sir, our Mr. Trip
will call at 3, as we wish to know whether it is really
decided 00000073bb!!!!!xy.'  To this Mr. Juke, a person of a
playful mind, returned the answer: `Sir, after consulting
all the members of the firm, I am in a position to give it
as my most decided opinion that it is not really decided
that 00000073bb!!!!!xy.   Yrs., etc.,
                                                  `J. Juke.'

   "On receiving this extraordinary reply, our Mr. Trip
asked for the original letter sent from him, and found that
the typewriter had indeed substituted these demented
hieroglyphics for the sentences really dictated to her.  Our
Mr. Trip interviewed the girl, fearing that she was in an
unbalanced state, and was not much reassured when she merely
remarked that she always went like that when she heard the
barrel organ.  Becoming yet more hysterical and extravagant,
she made a series of most improbable statements -- as, that
she was engaged to the barrel-organ man, that he was in the
habit of serenading her on that instrument, that she was in
the habit of playing back to him upon the typewriter (in the
style of King Richard and Blondel), and that the organ man's
musical ear was so exquisite and his adoration of herself so
ardent that he could detect the note of the different
letters on the machine, and was enraptured by them as by a
melody.  To all these statements of course our Mr. Trip and
the rest of us only paid that sort of assent that is paid to
persons who must as quickly as possible be put in the charge
of their relations.  But on our conducting the lady
downstairs, her story received the most startling and even
exasperating confirmation; for the organ-grinder, an
enormous man with a small head and manifestly a
fellow-lunatic, had pushed his barrel organ in at the office
doors like a battering-ram, and was boisterously demanding
his alleged fiancee.  When I myself came on the scene he was
flinging his great, ape-like arms about and reciting a poem
to her.  But we were used to lunatics coming and reciting
poems in our office, and we were not quite prepared for what
followed.  The actual verse he uttered began, I think,

        `O vivid, inviolate head,
         Ringed --'

but he never got any further.  Mr. Trip made a sharp
movement towards him, and the next moment the giant picked
up the poor lady typewriter like a doll, sat her on top of
the organ, ran it with a crash out of the office doors, and
raced away down the street like a flying wheelbarrow.  I put
the police upon the matter; but no trace of the amazing pair
could be found.  I was sorry myself; for the lady was not
only pleasant but unusually cultivated for her position.  As
I am leaving the service of Messrs. Hanbury and Bootle, I
put these things in a record and leave it with them.
                                    "(Signed) Aubrey Clarke,
                                        Publishers' reader."

   "And the last document," said Dr. Pym complacently, "is
from one of those high-souled women who have in this age
introduced your English girlhood to hockey, the higher
mathematics, and every form of ideality.

   "Dear Sir (she writes), -- I have no objection to telling
you the facts about the absurd incident you mention; though
I would ask you to communicate them with some caution, for
such things, however entertaining in the abstract, are not
always auxiliary to the success of a girls' school.  The
truth is this: I wanted some one to deliver a lecture on a
philological or historical question -- a lecture which,
while containing solid educational matter, should be a
little more popular and entertaining than usual, as it was
the last lecture of the term.  I remembered that a Mr. Smith
of Cambridge had written somewhere or other an amusing essay
about his own somewhat ubiquitous name -- an essay which
showed considerable real knowledge of genealogy and
topography.  I wrote to him, asking if he would come and
give us a bright address upon English surnames; and he did.
It was very bright, almost too bright.  To put the matter
otherwise, by the time that he was halfway through it became
apparent to the other mistresses and myself that the man was
totally and entirely off his head.  He began rationally
enough by dealing with the two departments of place names
and trade names, and he said (quite rightly, I dare say)
that the loss of all significance in names was an instance
of the deadening of civilization.  But then he went on
calmly to maintain that every man who had a place name ought
to go to live in that place, and that every man who had a
trade name ought instantly to adopt that trade; that people
named after colours should always dress in those colours,
and that people named after trees or plants (such as Beech
or Rose) ought to surround and decorate themselves with
these vegetables.  In a slight discussion that arose
afterwards among the elder girls the difficulties of the
proposal were clearly, and even eagerly, pointed out.  It
was urged, for instance, by Miss Younghusband that it was
substantially impossible for her to play the part assigned
to her; Miss Mann was in a similar dilemma, from which no
modern views on the sexes could apparently extricate her;
and some young ladies, whose surnames happened to be Low,
Coward, and Craven, were quite enthusiastic against the
idea.  But all this happened afterwards.  What happened at
the crucial moment was that the lecturer produced several
horseshoes and a large iron hammer from his bag, announced
his immediate intention of setting up a smithy in the
neighbourhood, and called on every one to rise in the same
cause as for a heroic revolution.  The other mistresses and
I attempted to stop the wretched man, but I must confess
that by an accident this very intercession produced the
worst explosion of his insanity.  He was waving the hammer,
and wildly demanding the names of everybody; and it so
happened that Miss Brown, one of the younger teachers, was
wearing a brown dress -- a reddish-brown dress that went
quietly enough with the warmer colour of her hair, as well
she knew.  She was a nice girl, and nice girls do know about
those things.  But when our maniac discovered that we really
had a Miss Brown who WAS brown, his ~idee fixe~ blew up like
a powder magazine, and there, in the presence of all the
mistresses and girls, he publicly proposed to the lady in
the red-brown dress.  You can imagine the effect of such a
scene at a girls' school.  At least, if you fail to imagine
it, I certainly fail to describe it.
   "Of course, the anarchy died down in a week or two, and I
can think of it now as a joke.  There was only one curious
detail, which I will tell you, as you say your inquiry is
vital; but I should desire you to consider it a little more
confidential than the rest.  Miss Brown, who was an
excellent girl in every way, did quite suddenly and
surreptitiously leave us only a day or two afterwards.  I
should never have thought that her head would be the one to
be really turned by so absurd an excitement. -- Believe me,
yours faithfully,
                                              "Ada Gridley."

   "I think," said Pym, with a really convincing simplicity
and seriousness, "that these letters speak for themselves."
   Mr. Moon rose for the last time in a darkness that gave
no hint of whether his native gravity was mixed with his
native irony.
   "Throughout this inquiry," he said, "but especially in
this its closing phase, the prosecution has perpetually
relied upon one argument; I mean the fact that no one knows
what has become of all the unhappy women apparently seduced
by Smith.  There is no sort of proof that they were
murdered, but that implication is perpetually made when the
question is asked as to how they died.  Now I am not
interested in how they died, or when they died, or whether
they died.  But I am interested in another analogous
question -- that of how they were born, and when they were
born, and whether they were born.  Do not misunderstand me.
I do not dispute the existence of these women, or the
veracity of those who have witnessed to them.  I merely
remark on the notable fact that only one of these victims,
the Maidenhead girl, is described as having any home or
parents.  All the rest are boarders or birds of passage -- a
guest, a solitary dressmaker, a bachelor-girl doing
typewriting.  Lady Bullingdon, looking from her turrets,
which she bought from the Whartons with the old
soap-boiler's money when she jumped at marrying an
unsuccessful gentleman from Ulster -- Lady Bullingdon,
looking out from those turrets, did really see an object
which she describes as Green.  Mr. Trip, of Hanbury and
Bootle, really did have a typewriter betrothed to Smith.
Miss Gridley, though idealistic, is absolutely honest.  She
did house, feed, and teach a young woman whom Smith
succeeded in decoying away.  We admit that all these women
really lived.  But we still ask whether they were ever
born?"
   "Oh, crikey!" said Moses Gould, stifled with amusement.
   "There could hardly," interposed Pym with a quiet smile,
"be a better instance of the neglect of true scientific
processes.  The scientist, when once convinced of the fact
of vitality and consciousness, would infer from these the
previous processes of generation."
   "If these gals," said Gould impatiently -- "if these gals
were all alive (all alive O!) I'd chance a fiver they were
all born."
   "You'd lose your fiver," said Michael, speaking gravely
out of the gloom.  "All those admirable ladies were alive.
They were more alive for having come into contact with
Smith.  They were all quite definitely alive, but only one
of them was ever born."
   "Are you asking us to believe --" began Dr. Pym.
   "I am asking you a second question," said Moon sternly.
"Can the court now sitting throw any light on a truly
singular circumstance?  Dr. Pym, in his interesting lecture
on what are called, I believe, the relations of the sexes,
said that Smith was the slave of a lust for variety which
would lead a man first to a negress and then to an albino,
first to a Patagonian giantess and then to a tiny Eskimo.
But is there any evidence of such variety here?  Is there
any trace of a gigantic Patagonian in the story?  Was the
typewriter an Eskimo?  So picturesque a circumstance would
not surely have escaped remark.  Was Lady Bullingdon's
dressmaker a negress?  A voice in my bosom answers, `No!'
Lady Bullingdon, I am sure, would think a negress so
conspicuous as to be almost Socialistic, and would feel
something a little rakish even about an albino.
   "But was there in Smith's taste any such variety as the
learned doctor describes?  So far as our slight materials
go, the very opposite seems to be the case.  We have only
one actual description of any of the prisoner's wives -- the
short but highly poetic account by the aesthetic curate.
`Her dress was the colour of spring, and her hair of autumn
leaves.'  Autumn leaves, of course, are of various colours,
some of which would be rather startling in hair (green, for
instance); but I think such an expression would be most
naturally used of the shades from red-brown to red,
especially as ladies with their coppery-coloured hair do
frequently wear light artistic greens.  Now when we come to
the next wife, we find the eccentric lover, when told he is
a donkey, answering that donkeys always go after carrots; a
remark which Lady Bullingdon evidently regarded as pointless
and part of the natural table-talk of a village idiot, but
which has an obvious meaning if we suppose that Polly's hair
was red.  Passing to the next wife, the one he took from the
girls' school, we find Miss Gridley noticing that the
schoolgirl in question wore `a reddish-brown dress, that
went quietly enough with the warmer colour of her hair.'  In
other words, the colour of the girl's hair was something
redder than red-brown.  Lastly, the romantic organ-grinder
declaimed in the office some poetry that only got as far as
the words, --

        `O vivid, inviolate head,
         Ringed --'

But I think that a wide study of the worst modern poets will
enable us to guess that `ringed with a glory of red,' or
`ringed with its passionate red,' was the line that rhymed
to `head.'  In this case once more, therefore, there is good
reason to suppose that Smith fell in love with a girl with
some sort of auburn or darkish-red hair -- rather," he said,
looking down at the table, "rather like Miss Gray's hair."
   Cyrus Pym was leaning forward with lowered eyelids, ready
with one of his more pedantic interpellations; but Moses
Gould suddenly struck his forefinger on his nose, with an
expression of extreme astonishment and intelligence in his
brilliant eyes.
   "Mr. Moon's contention at present," interposed Pym, "is
not, even if veracious, inconsistent with the
lunatico-criminal view of I. Smith, which we have nailed to
the mast.  Science has long anticipated such a
complication.  An incurable attraction to a particular type
of physical woman is one of the commonest of criminal
per-versities, and when not considered narrowly, but in the
light of induction and evolution --"
   "At this late stage," said Michael Moon very quietly, "I
may perhaps relieve myself of a simple emotion that has been
pressing me throughout the proceedings, by saying that
induction and evolution may go and boil themselves.  The
Missing Link and all that is well enough for kids, but I'm
talking about things we know.  All we know of the Missing
Link is that he is missing -- and he won't be missed
either.  I know all about his human head and his horrid
tail; they belong to a very old game called `Heads I win,
tails you lose.'  If you do find a fellow's bones, it proves
he lived a long while ago; if you don't find his bones, it
proves how long ago he lived.  That is the game you've been
playing with this Smith affair.  Because Smith's head is
small for his shoulders you call him microcephalous; if it
had been large, you'd have called it water-on-the-brain.  As
long as poor old Smith's seraglio seemed pretty various,
variety was the sign of madness: now, because it's turning
out to be a bit monochrome -- now monotony is the sign of
madness.  I suffer from all the disadvantages of being a
grown-up person, and I'm jolly well going to get some of the
advantages too; and with all politeness I propose not to be
bullied with long words instead of short reasons, or
consider your business a triumphant progress merely because
you're always finding out that you were wrong.  Having
relieved myself of these feelings, I have merely to add that
I regard Dr. Pym as an ornament to the world far more
beautiful than the Parthenon, or the monument on Bunker's
Hill, and that I propose to resume and conclude my remarks
on the many marriages of Mr. Innocent Smith.
   "Besides this red hair, thee is another unifying thread
that runs through these scattered incidents.  There is
something very peculiar and suggestive about the names of
these women.  Mr. Trip, you will remember, said he thought
the typewriter's name was Blake, but could not remember
exactly.  I suggest that it might have been Black, and in
that case we have a curious series: Miss Green in Lady
Bullingdon's village; Miss Brown at the Hendon School; Miss
Black at the publishers.  A chord of colours, as it were,
which ends up with Miss Gray at Beacon House, West
Hampstead."
   Amid a dead silence Moon continued his exposition.  "What
is the meaning of this queer coincidence about colours?
Personally I cannot doubt for a moment that these names are
purely arbitrary names, assumed as part of some general
scheme or joke.  I think it very probably that they were
taken from a series of costumes -- that Polly Green only
meant Polly (or Mary) when in green, and that Mary Gray only
means Mary (or Polly) when in gray.  This would explain --"
   Cyrus Pym was standing up rigid and almost pallid.  "Do
you actually mean to suggest --" he cried.
   "Yes," said Michael; "I do mean to suggest that.
Innocent Smith has had many wooings, and many weddings for
all I know; but he has had only one wife.  She was sitting
on that chair an hour ago, and is now talking to Miss Duke
in the garden.
   "Yes, Innocent Smith has behaved here, as he has on
hundreds of other occasions, upon a plain and perfectly
blameless principle.  It is odd and extravagant in the
modern world, but not more than any other principle plainly
applied in the modern world would be.  His principle can be
quite simply stated: he refuses to die while he is still
alive.  He seeks to remind himself, by every electric shock
to the intellect, that he is still a man alive, walking on
two legs about the world.  For this reason he fires bullets
at his best friends; for this reason he arranges ladders and
collapsible chimneys to steal his own property; for this
reason he goes plodding round a whole planet to get back to
his own home; and for this reason he has been in the habit
of taking the woman whom he loved with a permanent loyalty,
and leaving her about (so to speak) at schools,
boarding-houses, and places of business, so that he might
recover her again and again with a raid and a romantic
elopement.  He seriously sought by a perpetual recapture of
his bride to keep alive the sense of her perpetual value,
and the perils that should be run for her sake.
   "So far his motives are clear enough; but perhaps his
convictions are not quite so clear.  I think Innocent Smith
has an idea at the bottom of all this.  I am by no means
sure that I believe it myself, but I am quite sure that it
is worth a man's uttering and defending.
   "The idea that Smith is attacking is this.  Living in an
entangled civilization, we have come to think certain things
wrong which are not wrong at all.  We have come to think
outbreak and exuberance, banging and barging, rotting and
wrecking, wrong.  In themselves they are not merely
pardonable; they are unimpeachable.  There is nothing wicked
about firing off a pistol even at a friend, so long as you
do not mean to hit him and know you won't.  It is no more
wrong than throwing a pebble at the sea -- less, for you do
occasionally hit the sea.  There is nothing wrong in bashing
down a chimney-pot and breaking through a roof, so long as
you are not injuring the life or property of other men.  It
is no more wrong to choose to enter a house from the top
than to choose to open a packing-case from the bottom.
There is nothing wicked about walking round the world and
coming back to your own house; it is no more wicked than
walking round the garden and coming back to your own house.
And there is nothing wicked about picking up your wife here,
there, and everywhere, if, forsaking all others, you keep
only to her so long as you both shall live.  It is as
innocent as playing a game of hide-and-seek in the garden.
You associate such acts with blackguardism by a mere
snobbish association, as you think there is something
vaguely vile about going (or being seen going) into a
pawnbroker's or a public-house.  You think there is
something squalid and commonplace about such a connection.
You are mistaken.
   "This man's spiritual power has been precisely this, that
he has distinguished between custom and creed.  He has
broken the conventions, but he has kept the commandments.
It is as if a man were found gambling wildly in a gambling
hell, and you found that he only played for trouser
buttons.  It is as if you found a man making a clandestine
appointment with a lady at a Covent Garden ball, and then
you found it was his grandmother.  Everything is ugly and
discreditable, except the facts; everything is wrong about
him, except that he has done no wrong.
   "It will then be asked, `Why does Innocent Smith
continued far into his middle age a farcical existence, that
exposes him to so many false charges?'  To this I merely
answer that he does it because he really is happy, because
he really is hilarious, because he really is a man and
alive.  He is so young that climbing garden trees and
playing silly practical jokes are still to him what they
once were to us all.  And if you ask me yet again why he
alone among men should be fed with such inexhaustible
follies, I have a very simple answer to that, though it is
one that will not be approved.
   "There is but one answer, and I am sorry if you don't
like it.  If Innocent is happy, it is because he IS
innocent.  If he can defy the conventions, it is just
because he can keep the commandments.  It is just because he
does not want to kill but to excite to life that a pistol is
still as exciting to him as it is to a schoolboy.  It is
just because he does not want to steal, because he does not
covet his neighbour's goods, that he has captured the trick
(oh, how we all long for it!), the trick of coveting his own
goods.  It is just because he does not want to commit
adultery that he achieves the romance of sex; it is just
because he loves one wife that he has a hundred honeymoons.
If he had really murdered a man, if he had really deserted a
woman, he would not be able to feel that a pistol or a
love-letter was like a song -- at least, not a comic song."
   "Do not imagine, please, that any such attitude is easy
to me or appeals in any particular way to my sympathies.  I
am an Irishman, and a certain sorrow is in my bones, bred
either of the persecutions of my creed, or of my creed
itself.  Speaking singly, I feel as if a man was tied to
tragedy, and there was no way out of the trap of old age and
doubt.  But if there is a way out, then, by Christ and St.
Patrick, this is the way out.  If one could keep as happy as
a child or a dog, it would be by being as innocent as a
child, or as sinless as a dog.  Barely and brutally to be
good -- that may be the road, and he may have found it.
Well, well, well, I see a look of skepticism on the face of
my old friend Moses.  Mr. Gould does not believe that being
perfectly good in all respects would make a man merry."
   "No," said Gould, with an unusual and convincing gravity;
"I do not believe that being perfectly good in all respects
would make a man merry."
   "Well," said Michael quietly, "will you tell me one
thing?  Which of us has ever tried it?"
   A silence ensued, rather like the silence of some long
geological epoch which awaits the emergence of some
unexpected type; for there rose at last in the stillness a
massive figure that the other men had almost completely
forgotten.
   "Well, gentlemen," said Dr. Warner cheerfully, "I've been
pretty well entertained with all this pointless and
incompetent tomfoolery for a couple of days; but it seems to
be wearing rather thin, and I'm engaged for a city dinner.
Among the hundred flowers of futility on both sides I was
unable to detect any sort of reason why a lunatic should be
allowed to shoot me in the back garden."
   He had settled his silk hat on his head and gone out
sailing placidly to the garden gate, while the almost
wailing voice of Pym still followed him: "But really the
bullet missed you by several feet."  And another voice
added: "The bullet missed him by several years."
   There was a long and mainly unmeaning silence, and then
Moon said suddenly, "We have been sitting with a ghost.  Dr.
Herbert Warner died years ago."