Редьярд Джозеф Киплинг
Actions and Reactions
“Your titles are good,” said the Governor. The Inspector confirmed with a nod.
“Then what is the meaning of these writings which came from down the river where the Judges are?” Farag’s uncle waved his copy. “By whose order are we ordered to slay you, O Excellency Our Governor?”
“It is not written that you are to slay me.”
“Not in those very words, but if we leave an earth unstopped, it is the same as though we wished to save Abu Hussein from the hounds. These writings say: ‘Abolish your rulers.’ How can we abolish except we kill? We hear rumours of one who comes from down the river soon to lead us to kill.”
“Fools!” said the Governor. “Your titles are good. This is madness!”
“It is so written,” they answered like a pack.
“Listen,” said the Inspector smoothly. “I know who caused the writings to be written and sent. He is a man of a blue-mottled jowl, in aspect like Bigglebai who ate unclean matters. He will come up the river and will give tongue about the beatings.”
“Will he impeach our land-titles? An evil day for him!”
“Go slow, Baker,” the Governor whispered. “They’ll kill him if they get scared about their land.”
“I tell a parable.” The Inspector lit a cigarette. “Declare which of you took to walk the children of Milkmaid?”
“Melik-meid First or Second?” said Farag quickly.
“The second – the one which was lamed by the thorn.”
“No – no. Melik-meid the Second strained her shoulder leaping my water-channel,” a sheikh cried. “Melik-meid the First was lamed by the thorns on the day when Our Excellency fell thrice.”
“True – true. The second Melik-meid’s mate was Malvolio, the pied hound,” said the Inspector.
“I had two of the second Melik-meid’s pups,” said Farag’s uncle. “They died of the madness in their ninth month.”
“And how did they do before they died?” said the Inspector.
“They ran about in the sun, and slavered at the mouth till they died.”
“Wherefore?”
“God knows. He sent the madness. It was no fault of mine.”
“Thy own mouth hath answered thee.” The Inspector laughed. “It is with men as it is with dogs. God afflicts some with a madness. It is no fault of ours if such men run about in the sun and froth at the mouth. The man who is coming will emit spray from his mouth in speaking, and will always edge and push in towards his hearers. When ye see and hear him ye will understand that he is afflicted of God: being mad. He is in God’s hands.”
“But our titles – are our titles to our lands good?” the crowd repeated.
“Your titles are in my hands – they are good,” said the Governor.
“And he who wrote the writings is an afflicted of God?” said Farag’s uncle.
“The Inspector hath said it,” cried the Governor. “Ye will see when the man comes. O sheikhs and men, have we ridden together and walked puppies together, and bought and sold barley for the horses that after these years we should run riot on the scent of a madman – an afflicted of God?”
“But the Hunt pays us to kill mad jackals,” said Farag’s uncle. “And he who questions my titles to my land – ”
“Aahh! ‘Ware riot!” The Governor’s hunting-crop cracked like a three-pounder. “By Allah,” he thundered, “if the afflicted of God come to any harm at your hands, I myself will shoot every hound and every puppy, and the Hunt shall ride no more. On your heads be it. Go in peace, and tell the others.”
“The Hunt shall ride no more,” said Farag’s uncle. “Then how can the land be governed? No – no, O Excellency Our Governor, we will not harm a hair on the head of the afflicted of God. He shall be to us as is Abu Hussein’s wife in the breeding season.”
When they were gone the Governor mopped his forehead.
“We must put a few soldiers in every village this Groombride visits, Baker. Tell ‘em to keep out of sight, and have an eye on the villagers. He’s trying ‘em rather high.”
“O Excellency,” said the smooth voice of Farag, laying the Field and Country Life square on the table, “is the afflicted of God who resembles Bigglebai one with the man whom the Inspector met in the great house in England, and to whom he told the tale of the Mudir’s Cranes?”
“The same man, Farag,” said the Inspector.
“I have often heard the Inspector tell the tale to Our Excellency at feeding-time in the kennels; but since I am in the Government service I have never told it to my people. May I loose that tale among the villages?”
The Governor nodded. “No harm,” said he.
The details of Mr. Groombride’s arrival, with his interpreter, whom he proposed should eat with him at the Governor’s table, his allocution to the Governor on the New Movement, and the sins of Imperialism, I purposely omit. At three in the afternoon Mr. Groombride said: “I will go out now and address your victims in this village.”
“Won’t you find it rather hot?” said the Governor. “They generally take ‘a nap till sunset at this time of year.”
Mr. Groombride’s large, loose lips set. “That,” he replied pointedly, “would be enough to decide me. I fear you have not quite mastered your instructions. May I ask you to send for my interpreter? I hope he has not been tampered with by your subordinates.”
He was a yellowish boy called Abdul, who had well eaten and drunk with Farag. The Inspector, by the way, was not present at the meal.
“At whatever risk, I shall go unattended,” said Mr. Groombride. “Your presence would cow them – from giving evidence. Abdul, my good friend, would you very kindly open the umbrella?”
He passed up the gang-plank to the village, and with no more prelude than a Salvation Army picket in a Portsmouth slum, cried: “Oh, my brothers!”
He did not guess how his path had been prepared. The village was widely awake. Farag, in loose, flowing garments, quite unlike a kennel huntsman’s khaki and puttees, leaned against the wall of his uncle’s house. “Come and see the afflicted of God,” he cried musically, “whose face, indeed, resembles that of Bigglebai.”
The village came, and decided that on the whole Farag was right.
“I can’t quite catch what they are saying,” said Mr. Groombride.
“They saying they very much pleased to see you, Sar,” Adbul interpreted.
“Then I do think they might have sent a deputation to the steamer; but I suppose they were frightened of the officials. Tell them not to be frightened, Abdul.”
“He says you are not to be frightened,” Abdul explained. A child here sputtered with laughter. “Refrain from mirth,” Farag cried. “The afflicted of God is the guest of The Excellency Our Governor. We are responsible for every hair of his head.”
“He has none,” a voice spoke. “He has the white and the shining mange.”
“Now tell them what I have come for, Abdul, and please keep the umbrella well up. I think I shall reserve myself for my little vernacular speech at the end.”
“Approach! Look! Listen!” Abdul chanted. “The afflicted of God will now make sport. Presently he will speak in your tongue, and will consume you with mirth. I have been his servant for three weeks. I will tell you about his undergarments and his perfumes for his head.”
He told them at length.
“And didst thou take any of his perfume bottles?” said Farag at the end.
“I am his servant. I took two,” Abdul replied.
“Ask him,” said Farag’s uncle, “what he knows about our land-titles. Ye young men are all alike.” He waved a pamphlet. Mr. Groombride smiled to see how the seed sown in London had borne fruit by Gihon. Lo! All the seniors held copies of the pamphlet.
“He knows less than a buffalo. He told me on the steamer that he was driven out of his own land by Demah-Kerazi which is a devil inhabiting crowds and assemblies,” said Abdul.
“Allah between us and evil!” a woman cackled from the darkness of a hut. “Come in, children, he may have the Evil Eye.”
“No, my aunt,” said Farag. “No afflicted of God has an evil eye. Wait till ye hear his mirth-provoking speech which he will deliver. I have heard it twice from Abdul.”
“They seem very quick to grasp the point. How far have you got, Abdul?”
“All about the beatings, sar. They are highly interested.”
“Don’t forget about the local self-government, and please hold the umbrella over me. It is hopeless to destroy unless one first builds up.”
“He may not have the Evil Eye,” Farag’s uncle grunted, “but his devil led him too certainly to question my land-title. Ask him whether he still doubts my land-title?”
“Or mine, or mine?” cried the elders.
“What odds? He is an afflicted of God,” Farag called. “Remember the tale I told you.”
“Yes, but he is an Englishman, and doubtless of influence, or Our Excellency would not entertain him. Bid the down-country jackass ask him.”
“Sar,” said Abdul, “these people, much fearing they may be turned out of their land in consequence of your remarks. Therefore they ask you to make promise no bad consequences following your visit.”
Mr. Groombride held his breath and turned purple. Then he stamped his foot.
“Tell them,” he cried, “that if a hair of any one of their heads is touched by any official on any account whatever, all England shall ring with it. Good God! What callous oppression! The dark places of the earth are full of cruelty.” He wiped his face, and throwing out his arms cried: “Tell them, oh! tell the poor, serfs not to be afraid of me. Tell them I come to redress their wrongs – not, heaven knows, to add to their burden.”
The long-drawn gurgle of the practised public speaker pleased them much.
“That is how the new water-tap runs out in the kennel,” said Farag. “The Excellency Our Governor entertains him that he may make sport. Make him say the mirth-moving speech.”
“What did he say about my land-titles?” Farag’s uncle was not to be turned.
“He says,” Farag interpreted, “that he desires, nothing better than that you should live on your lands in peace. He talks as though he believed himself to be Governor.”
“Well. We here are all witnesses to what he has said. Now go forward with the sport.” Farag’s uncle smoothed his garments. “How diversely hath Allah made His creatures! On one He bestows strength to slay Emirs; another He causes to go mad and wander in the sun, like the afflicted sons of Melik-meid.”
“Yes, and to emit spray from the mouth, as the Inspector told us. All will happen as the Inspector foretold,” said Farag. “I have never yet seen the Inspector thrown out during any run.”
“I think,” Abdul plucked at Mr. Groombride’s sleeves, “I think perhaps it is better now, Sar, if you give your fine little native speech. They not understanding English, but much pleased at your condescensions.”
“Condescensions?” Mr. Groombride spun round. “If they only knew how I felt towards them in my heart! If I could express a tithe of my feelings! I must stay here and learn the language. Hold up the umbrella, Abdull I think my little speech will show them I know something of their vie intime.”
It was a short, simple; carefully learned address, and the accent, supervised by Abdul on the steamer, allowed the hearers to guess its meaning, which was a request to see one of the Mudir’s Cranes; since the desire of the speaker’s life, the object to which he would consecrate his days, was to improve the condition of the Mudir’s Cranes. But first he must behold them with his own eyes. Would, then, his brethren, whom he loved, show him a Mudir’s Crane whom he desired to love?
Once, twice, and again in his peroration he repeated his demand, using always – that they might see he was acquainted with their local argot – using always, I say, the word which the Inspector had given him in England long ago – the short, adhesive word which, by itself, surprises even unblushing Ethiopia.
There are limits to the sublime politeness of an ancient people. A bulky, blue-chinned man in white clothes, his name red-lettered across his lower shirtfront, spluttering from under a green-lined umbrella almost tearful appeals to be introduced to the Unintroducible; naming loudly the Unnameable; dancing, as it seemed, in perverse joy at mere mention of the Unmentionable – found those limits. There was a moment’s hush, and then such mirth as Gihon through his centuries had never heard – a roar like to the roar of his own cataracts in flood. Children cast themselves on the ground, and rolled back and forth cheering and whooping; strong men, their faces hidden in their clothes, swayed in silence, till the agony became insupportable, and they threw up their heads and bayed at the sun; women, mothers and virgins, shrilled shriek upon mounting shriek, and slapped their thighs as it might have been the roll of musketry. When they tried to draw breath, some half-strangled voice would quack out the word, and the riot began afresh. Last to fall was the city-trained Abdul. He held on to the edge of apoplexy, then collapsed, throwing the umbrella from him.
Mr. Groombride should not be judged too harshly. Exercise and strong emotion under a hot sun, the shock of public ingratitude, for the moment rued his spirit. He furled the umbrella, and with t beat the prostrate Abdul, crying that he had been betrayed. In which posture the Inspector, on horseback, followed by the Governor, suddenly found him.
“That’s all very well,” said the Inspector, when he had taken Abdul’s dramatically dying depositions on the steamer, “but you can’t hammer a native merely because he laughs at you. I see nothing for it but the law to take its course.”
“You might reduce the charge to – er – tampering with an interpreter,” said the Governor. Mr. Groombride was too far gone to be comforted.
“It’s the publicity that I fear,” he wailed. “Is there no possible means of hushing up the affair? You don’t know what a question – a single question in the House means to a man of my position – the ruin of my political career, I assure you.”
“I shouldn’t have imagined it,” said the Governor thoughtfully.
“And, though perhaps I ought not to say it, I am not without honour in my own country – or influence. A word in season, as you know, Your Excellency. It might carry an official far.”
The Governor shuddered.
“Yes, that had to come too,” he said to himself. “Well, look here. If I tell this man of yours to withdraw the charge against you, you can go to Gehenna for aught I care. The only condition I make is that if you write – I suppose that’s part of your business about your travels, you don’t praise me!”
So far Mr. Groombride has loyally adhered to this understanding.
GALLIO’S SONG
All day long to the judgment-seat
The crazed Provincials drew —
All day long at their ruler’s feet
Howled for the blood of the Jew.
Insurrection with one accord
Banded itself and woke:
And Paul was about to open his mouth
When Achaia’s Deputy spoke
“Whether the God descend from above
Or the man ascend upon high,
Whether this maker of tents be Jove
Or a younger deity —
I will be no judge between your gods
And your godless bickerings,
Lictor, drive them hence with rods —
I care for none of these things!
“Were it a question of lawful due
Or a labourer’s hire denied,
Reason would I should bear with you
And order it well to be tried
But this is a question of words and names
And I know the strife it brings,
I will not pass upon any your claims.
I care for none of these things.
“One thing only I see most clear,
As I pray you also see.
Claudius Caesar hath set me here
Rome’s Deputy to be.
It is Her peace that ye go to break
Not mine, nor any king’s,
But, touching your clamour of ‘conscience sake,’
I care for none of these things!”
THE HOUSE SURGEON
On an evening after Easter Day, I sat at a table in a homeward bound steamer’s smoking-room, where half a dozen of us told ghost stories. As our party broke up a man, playing Patience in the next alcove, said to me: “I didn’t quite catch the end of that last story about the Curse on the family’s first-born.”
“It turned out to be drains,” I explained. “As soon as new ones were put into the house the Curse was lifted, I believe. I never knew the people myself.”
“Ah! I’ve had my drains up twice; I’m on gravel too.”
“You don’t mean to say you’ve a ghost in your house? Why didn’t you join our party?”
“Any more orders, gentlemen, before the bar closes?” the steward interrupted.
“Sit down again, and have one with me,” said the Patience player. “No, it isn’t a ghost. Our trouble is more depression than anything else.”
“How interesting? Then it’s nothing any one can see?”
“It’s – it’s nothing worse than a little depression. And the odd part is that there hasn’t been a death in the house since it was built – in 1863. The lawyer said so. That decided me – my good lady, rather and he made me pay an extra thousand for it.”
“How curious. Unusual, too!” I said.
“Yes; ain’t it? It was built for three sisters – Moultrie was the name – three old maids. They all lived together; the eldest owned it. I bought it from her lawyer a few years ago, and if I’ve spent a pound on the place first and last, I must have spent five thousand. Electric light, new servants’ wing, garden – all that sort of thing. A man and his family ought to be happy after so much expense, ain’t it?” He looked at me through the bottom of his glass.
“Does it affect your family much?”
“My good lady – she’s a Greek, by the way – and myself are middle-aged. We can bear up against depression; but it’s hard on my little girl. I say little; but she’s twenty. We send her visiting to escape it. She almost lived at hotels and hydros, last year, but that isn’t pleasant for her. She used to be a canary – a perfect canary – always singing. You ought to hear her. She doesn’t sing now. That sort of thing’s unwholesome for the young, ain’t it?”
“Can’t you get rid of the place?” I suggested.
“Not except at a sacrifice, and we are fond of it. Just suits us three. We’d love it if we were allowed.”
“What do you mean by not being allowed?”
“I mean because of the depression. It spoils everything.”
“What’s it like exactly?”
“I couldn’t very well explain. It must be seen to be appreciated, as the auctioneers say. Now, I was much impressed by the story you were telling just now.”
“It wasn’t true,” I said.
“My tale is true. If you would do me the pleasure to come down and spend a night at my little place, you’d learn more than you would if I talked till morning. Very likely ‘twouldn’t touch your good self at all. You might be – immune, ain’t it? On the other hand, if this influenza, – influence does happen to affect you, why, I think it will be an experience.”
While he talked he gave me his card, and I read his name was L. Maxwell M’Leod, Esq., of Holmescroft. A City address was tucked away in a corner.
“My business,” he added, “used to be furs. If you are interested in furs – I’ve given thirty years of my life to ‘em.”
“You’re very kind,” I murmured.
“Far from it, I assure you. I can meet you next Saturday afternoon anywhere in London you choose to name, and I’ll be only too happy to motor you down. It ought to be a delightful run at this time of year the rhododendrons will be out. I mean it. You don’t know how truly I mean it. Very probably – it won’t affect you at all. And – I think I may say I have the finest collection of narwhal tusks in the world. All the best skins and horns have to go through London, and L. Maxwell M’Leod, he knows where they come from, and where they go to. That’s his business.”
For the rest of the voyage up-channel Mr. M’Leod talked to me of the assembling, preparation, and sale of the rarer furs; and told me things about the manufacture of fur-lined coats which quite shocked me. Somehow or other, when we landed on Wednesday, I found myself pledged to spend that week-end with him at Holmescroft.
On Saturday he met me with a well-groomed motor, and ran me out, in an hour and a half, to an exclusive residential district of dustless roads and elegantly designed country villas, each standing in from three to five acres of perfectly appointed land. He told me land was selling at eight hundred pounds the acre, and the new golf links, whose Queen Anne pavilion we passed, had cost nearly twenty-four thousand pounds to create.
Holmescroft was a large, two-storied, low, creeper-covered residence. A verandah at the south side gave on to a garden and two tennis courts, separated by a tasteful iron fence from a most park-like meadow of five or six acres, where two Jersey cows grazed. Tea was ready in the shade of a promising copper beech, and I could see groups on the lawn of young men and maidens appropriately clothed, playing lawn tennis in the sunshine.
“A pretty scene, ain’t it?” said Mr. M’Leod. “My good lady’s sitting under the tree, and that’s my little girl in pink on the far court. But I’ll take you to your room, and you can see ‘em all later.”
He led me through a wide parquet-floored hall furnished in pale lemon, with huge Cloisonnee vases, an ebonized and gold grand piano, and banks of pot flowers in Benares brass bowls, up a pale oak staircase to a spacious landing, where there was a green velvet settee trimmed with silver. The blinds were down, and the light lay in parallel lines on the floors.
He showed me my room, saying cheerfully: “You may be a little tired. One often is without knowing it after a run through traffic. Don’t come down till you feel quite restored. We shall all be in the garden.”
My room was rather warm, and smelt of perfumed soap. I threw up the window at once, but it opened so close to the floor and worked so clumsily that I came within an ace of pitching out, where I should certainly have ruined a rather lop-sided laburnum below. As I set about washing off the journey’s dust, I began to feel a little tired. But, I reflected, I had not come down here in this weather and among these new surroundings to be depressed; so I began to whistle.
And it was just then that I was aware of a little grey shadow, as it might have been a snowflake seen against the light, floating at an immense distance in the background of my brain. It annoyed me, and I shook my head to get rid of it. Then my brain telegraphed that it was the forerunner of a swift-striding gloom which there was yet time to escape if I would force my thoughts away from it, as a man leaping for life forces his body forward and away from the fall of a wall. But the gloom overtook me before I could take in the meaning of the message. I moved toward the bed, every nerve already aching with the foreknowledge of the pain that was to be dealt it, and sat down, while my amazed and angry soul dropped, gulf by gulf, into that horror of great darkness which is spoken of in the Bible, and which, as auctioneers say, must be experienced to be appreciated.
Despair upon despair, misery upon misery, fear after fear, each causing their distinct and separate woe, packed in upon me for an unrecorded length of time, until at last they blurred together, and I heard a click in my brain like the click in the ear when one descends in a diving bell, and I knew that the pressures were equalised within and without, and that, for the moment, the worst was at an end. But I knew also that at any moment the darkness might come down anew; and while, I dwelt on this speculation precisely as a man torments a raging tooth with his tongue, it ebbed away into the little grey shadow on the brain of its first coming, and once more I heard my brain, which knew what would recur, telegraph to every quarter fox help, release or diversion.
The door opened, and M’Leod reappeared. I thanked him politely, saying I was charmed with my room, anxious to meet Mrs. M’Leod, much refreshed with my wash, and so on and so forth. Beyond a little stickiness at the corners of my mouth, it seemed to me that I was managing my words admirably; the while that I myself cowered at the bottom of unclimbable pits. M’Leod laid his hand on my shoulder, and said “You’ve got it now already, ain’t it?”
“Yes,” I answered. “It’s making me sick!”
“It will pass off when you come outside. I give you my word it will then pass off. Come!”
I shambled out behind him, and wiped my forehead in the hall.
“You musn’t mind,” he said. “I expect the run tired you. My good lady is sitting there under the copper beech.”
She was a fat woman in an apricot-coloured gown, with a heavily powdered face, against which her black long-lashed eyes showed like currants in dough. I was introduced to many fine ladies and gentlemen of those parts. Magnificently appointed landaus and covered motors swept in and out of the drive, and the air was gay with the merry outcries of the tennis players.
As twilight drew on they all went away, and I was left alone with Mr. and Mrs. M’Leod, while tall menservants and maidservants took away the tennis and tea things. Miss M’Leod had walked a little down the drive with a light-haired young man, who apparently knew everything about every South American railway stock. He had told me at tea that these were the days of financial specialisation.
“I think it went off beautifully, my dear,” said Mr. M’Leod to his wife; and to me: “You feel all right now, ain’t it? Of course you do.”
Mrs. M’Leod surged across the gravel. Her husband skipped nimbly before her into the south verandah, turned a switch, and all Holmescroft was flooded with light.
“You can do that from your room also,” he said as they went in. “There is something in money, ain’t it?”
Miss M’Leod came up behind me in the dusk. “We have not yet been introduced,” she said, “but I suppose you are staying the night?”
“Your father was kind enough to ask me,” I replied.
She nodded. “Yes, I know; and you know too, don’t you? I saw your face when you came to shake hands with mamma. You felt the depression very soon. It is simply frightful in that bedroom sometimes. What do you think it is – bewitchment? In Greece, where I was a little girl, it might have been; but not in England, do you think? Or do you?”
“Cheer up, Thea. It will all come right,” he insisted.
“No, papa.” She shook her dark head. “Nothing is right while it comes.”
“It is nothing that we ourselves have ever done in our lives that I will swear to you,” said Mrs. M’Leod suddenly. “And we have changed our servants several times. So we know it is not them.”
“Never mind. Let us enjoy ourselves while we can,” said Mr. M’Leod, opening the champagne.
But we did not enjoy ourselves. The talk failed. There were long silences.
“I beg your pardon,” I said, for I thought some one at my elbow was about to speak.
“Ah! That is the other thing!” said Miss M’Leod. Her mother groaned.
We were silent again, and, in a few seconds it must have been, a live grief beyond words – not ghostly dread or horror, but aching, helpless grief – overwhelmed us, each, I felt, according to his or her nature, and held steady like the beam of a burning glass. Behind that pain I was conscious there was a desire on somebody’s part to explain something on which some tremendously important issue hung.
Meantime I rolled bread pills and remembered my sins; M’Leod considered his own reflection in a spoon; his wife seemed to be praying, and the girl fidgetted desperately with hands and feet, till the darkness passed on – as though the malignant rays of a burning-glass had been shifted from us.
“There,” said Miss M’Leod, half rising. “Now you see what makes a happy home. Oh, sell it – sell it, father mine, and let us go away!”
“But I’ve spent thousands on it. You shall go to Harrogate next week, Thea dear.”
“I’m only just back from hotels. I am so tired of packing.”
“Cheer up, Thea. It is over. You know it does not often come here twice in the same night. I think we shall dare now to be comfortable.”
He lifted a dish-cover, and helped his wife and daughter. His face was lined and fallen like an old man’s after debauch, but his hand did not shake, and his voice was clear. As he worked to restore us by speech and action, he reminded me of a grey-muzzled collie herding demoralised sheep.
After dinner we sat round the dining-room fire the drawing-room might have been under the Shadow for aught we knew talking with the intimacy of gipsies by the wayside, or of wounded comparing notes after a skirmish. By eleven o’clock the three between them had given me every name and detail they could recall that in any way bore on the house, and what they knew of its history.
We went to bed in a fortifying blaze of electric light. My one fear was that the blasting gust of depression would return – the surest way, of course, to bring it. I lay awake till dawn, breathing quickly and sweating lightly, beneath what De Quincey inadequately describes as “the oppression of inexpiable guilt.” Now as soon as the lovely day was broken, I fell into the most terrible of all dreams – that joyous one in which all past evil has not only been wiped out of our lives, but has never been committed; and in the very bliss of our assured innocence, before our loves shriek and change countenance, we wake to the day we have earned.
It was a coolish morning, but we preferred to breakfast in the south verandah. The forenoon we spent in the garden, pretending to play games that come out of boxes, such as croquet and clock golf. But most of the time we drew together and talked. The young man who knew all about South American railways took Miss M’Leod for a walk in the afternoon, and at five M’Leod thoughtfully whirled us all up to dine in town.
“Now, don’t say you will tell the Psychological Society, and that you will come again,” said Miss M’Leod, as we parted. “Because I know you will not.”
“You should not say that,” said her mother. “You should say, ‘Goodbye, Mr. Perseus. Come again.’”
“Not him!” the girl cried. “He has seen the Medusa’s head!”
Looking at myself in the restaurant’s mirrors, it seemed to me that I had not much benefited by my week-end. Next morning I wrote out all my Holmescroft notes at fullest length, in the hope that by so doing I could put it all behind me. But the experience worked on my mind, as they say certain imperfectly understood rays work on the body.
I am less calculated to make a Sherlock Holmes than any man I know, for I lack both method and patience, yet the idea of following up the trouble to its source fascinated me. I had no theory to go on, except a vague idea that I had come between two poles of a discharge, and had taken a shock meant for some one else. This was followed by a feeling of intense irritation. I waited cautiously on myself, expecting to be overtaken by horror of the supernatural, but my self persisted in being humanly indignant, exactly as though it had been the victim of a practical joke. It was in great pains and upheavals – that I felt in every fibre but its dominant idea, to put it coarsely, was to get back a bit of its own. By this I knew that I might go forward if I could find the way.
