The Essential G. K. Chesterton

by G. K. Chesterton

  "I'll tell you what, sir," he said. "If you're interested in them things, you just get on to that wall."

  "On the wall!" cried the scandalised Major, whose conventional soul quailed within him at the thought of such fantastic trespass.

  "Finest show of yellow pansies in England in that there garden, sir," hissed the tempter. "I'll help you up, sir."

  How it happened no one will ever know but that positive enthusiasm of the Major's life triumphed over all its negative traditions, and with an easy leap and swing that showed that he was in no need of physical assistance, he stood on the wall at the end of the strange garden. The second after, the flapping of the frock-coat at his knees made him feel inexpressibly a fool. But the next instant all such trifling sentiments were swallowed up by the most appalling shock of surprise the old soldier had ever felt in all his bold and wandering existence. His eyes fell upon the garden, and there across a large bed in the centre of the lawn was a vast pattern of pansies; they were splendid flowers, but for once it was not their horticultural aspects that Major Brown beheld, for the pansies were arranged in gigantic capital letters so as to form the sentence:

  DEATH TO MAJOR BROWN

  A kindly looking old man, with white whiskers, was watering them. Brown looked sharply back at the road behind him; the man with the barrow had suddenly vanished. Then he looked again at the lawn with its incredible inscription. Another man might have thought he had gone mad, but Brown did not. When romantic ladies gushed over his V.C. and his military exploits, he sometimes felt himself to be a painfully prosaic person, but by the same token he knew he was incurably sane. Another man, again, might have thought himself a victim of a passing practical joke, but Brown could not easily believe this. He knew from his own quaint learning that the garden arrangement was an elaborate and expensive one; he thought it extravagantly improbable that any one would pour out money like water for a joke against him. Having no explanation whatever to offer, he admitted the fact to himself, like a clear-headed man, and waited as he would have done in the presence of a man with six legs.

  At this moment the stout old man with white whiskers looked up, and the watering can fell from his hand, shooting a swirl of water down the gravel path.

  "Who on earth are you?" he gasped, trembling violently.

  "I am Major Brown," said that individual, who was always cool in the hour of action.

  The old man gaped helplessly like some monstrous fish. At last he stammered wildly, "Come down--come down here!"

  "At your service," said the Major, and alighted at a bound on the grass beside him, without disarranging his silk hat.

  The old man turned his broad back and set off at a sort of waddling run towards the house, followed with swift steps by the Major. His guide led him through the back passages of a gloomy, but gorgeously appointed house, until they reached the door of the front room. Then the old man turned with a face of apoplectic terror dimly showing in the twilight.

  "For heaven's sake," he said, "don't mention jackals."

  Then he threw open the door, releasing a burst of red lamplight, and ran downstairs with a clatter.

  The Major stepped into a rich, glowing room, full of red copper, and peacock and purple hangings, hat in hand. He had the finest manners in the world, and, though mystified, was not in the least embarrassed to see that the only occupant was a lady, sitting by the window, looking out.

  "Madam," he said, bowing simply, "I am Major Brown."

  "Sit down," said the lady; but she did not turn her head.

  She was a graceful, green-clad figure, with fiery red hair and a flavour of Bedford Park. "You have come, I suppose," she said mournfully, "to tax me about the hateful title-deeds."

  "I have come, madam," he said, "to know what is the matter. To know why my name is written across your garden. Not amicably either."

  He spoke grimly, for the thing had hit him. It is impossible to describe the effect produced on the mind by that quiet and sunny garden scene, the frame for a stunning and brutal personality. The evening air was still, and the grass was golden in the place where the little flowers he studied cried to heaven for his blood.

  "You know I must not turn round," said the lady; "every afternoon till the stroke of six I must keep my face turned to the street."

  Some queer and unusual inspiration made the prosaic soldier resolute to accept these outrageous riddles without surprise.

  "It is almost six," he said; and even as he spoke the barbaric copper clock upon the wall clanged the first stroke of the hour. At the sixth the lady sprang up and turned on the Major one of the queerest and yet most attractive faces he had ever seen in his life; open, and yet tantalising, the face of an elf.

  "That makes the third year I have waited," she cried. "This is an anniversary. The waiting almost makes one wish the frightful thing would happen once and for all."

  And even as she spoke, a sudden rending cry broke the stillness. From low down on the pavement of the dim street (it was already twilight) a voice cried out with a raucous and merciless distinctness:

  "Major Brown, Major Brown, where does the jackal dwell?"

  Brown was decisive and silent in action. He strode to the front door and looked out. There was no sign of life in the blue gloaming of the street, where one or two lamps were beginning to light their lemon sparks. On returning, he found the lady in green trembling.

  "It is the end," she cried, with shaking lips; "it may be death for both of us. Whenever--"

  But even as she spoke her speech was cloven by another hoarse proclamation from the dark street, again horribly articulate.

  "Major Brown, Major Brown, how did the jackal die?"

  Brown dashed out of the door and down the steps, but again he was frustrated; there was no figure in sight, and the street was far too long and empty for the shouter to have run away. Even the rational Major was a little shaken as he returned in a certain time to the drawing-room. Scarcely had he done so than the terrific voice came:

  "Major Brown, Major Brown, where did--"

  Brown was in the street almost at a bound, and he was in time--in time to see something which at first glance froze the blood. The cries appeared to come from a decapitated head resting on the pavement.

  The next moment the pale Major understood. It was the head of a man thrust through the coal-hole in the street. The next moment, again, it had vanished, and Major Brown turned to the lady. "Where's your coal-cellar?" he said, and stepped out into the passage.

  She looked at him with wild grey eyes. "You will not go down," she cried, "alone, into the dark hole, with that beast?"

  "Is this the way?" replied Brown, and descended the kitchen stairs three at a time. He flung open the door of a black cavity and stepped in, feeling in his pocket for matches. As his right hand was thus occupied, a pair of great slimy hands came out of the darkness, hands clearly belonging to a man of gigantic stature, and seized him by the back of the head. They forced him down, down in the suffocating darkness, a brutal image of destiny. But the Major's head, though upside down, was perfectly clear and intellectual. He gave quietly under the pressure until he had slid down almost to his hands and knees. Then finding the knees of the invisible monster within a foot of him, he simply put out one of his long, bony, and skilful hands, and gripping the leg by a muscle pulled it off the ground and laid the huge living man, with a crash, along the floor. He strove to rise, but Brown was on top like a cat. They rolled over and over. Big as the man was, he had evidently now no desire but to escape; he made sprawls hither and thither to get past the Major to the door, but that tenacious person had him hard by the coat collar and hung with the other hand to a beam. At length there came a strain in holding back this human bull, a strain under which Brown expected his hand to rend and part from the arm. But something else rent and parted; and the dim fat figure of the giant vanished out of the cellar, leaving the torn coat in the Major's hand; the only fruit of his adventure and the only clue to the mystery. For when he went up and
out at the front door, the lady, the rich hangings, and the whole equipment of the house had disappeared. It had only bare boards and whitewashed walls.

  "The lady was in the conspiracy, of course," said Rupert, nodding. Major Brown turned brick red. "I beg your pardon," he said, "I think not."

  Rupert raised his eyebrows and looked at him for a moment, but said nothing. When next he spoke he asked:

  "Was there anything in the pockets of the coat?"

  "There was sevenpence halfpenny in coppers and a threepenny-bit," said the Major carefully; "there was a cigarette-holder, a piece of string, and this letter," and he laid it on the table. It ran as follows:

  Dear Mr Plover,

  I am annoyed to hear that some delay has occurred in the arrangements re Major Brown. Please see that he is attacked as per arrangement tomorrow The coal-cellar, of course.

  Yours faithfully, P. G. Northover.

  Rupert Grant was leaning forward listening with hawk-like eyes. He cut in:

  "Is it dated from anywhere?"

  "No--oh, yes!" replied Brown, glancing upon the paper; "14 Tanner's Court, North--"

  Rupert sprang up and struck his hands together.

  "Then why are we hanging here? Let's get along. Basil, lend me your revolver."

  Basil was staring into the embers like a man in a trance; and it was some time before he answered:

  "I don't think you'll need it."

  "Perhaps not," said Rupert, getting into his fur coat. "One never knows. But going down a dark court to see criminals--"

  "Do you think they are criminals?" asked his brother.

  Rupert laughed stoutly. "Giving orders to a subordinate to strangle a harmless stranger in a coal-cellar may strike you as a very blameless experiment, but--"

  "Do you think they wanted to strangle the Major?" asked Basil, in the same distant and monotonous voice.

  "My dear fellow, you've been asleep. Look at the letter."

  "I am looking at the letter," said the mad judge calmly; though, as a matter of fact, he was looking at the fire. "I don't think it's the sort of letter one criminal would write to another."

  "My dear boy, you are glorious," cried Rupert, turning round, with laughter in his blue bright eyes. "Your methods amaze me. Why, there is the letter. It is written, and it does give orders for a crime. You might as well say that the Nelson Column was not at all the sort of thing that was likely to be set up in Trafalgar Square."

  Basil Grant shook all over with a sort of silent laughter, but did not otherwise move.

  "That's rather good," he said; "but, of course, logic like that's not what is really wanted. It's a question of spiritual atmosphere. It's not a criminal letter."

  "It is. It's a matter of fact," cried the other in an agony of reasonableness.

  "Facts," murmured Basil, like one mentioning some strange, far-off animals, "how facts obscure the truth. I may be silly--in fact, I'm off my head--but I never could believe in that man--what's his name, in those capital stories?--Sherlock Holmes. Every detail points to something, certainly; but generally to the wrong thing. Facts point in all directions, it seems to me, like the thousands of twigs on a tree. It's only the life of the tree that has unity and goes up--only the green blood that springs, like a fountain, at the stars."

  "But what the deuce else can the letter be but criminal?"

  "We have eternity to stretch our legs in," replied the mystic. "It can be an infinity of things. I haven't seen any of them--I've only seen the letter. I look at that, and say it's not criminal."

  "Then what's the origin of it?"

  "I haven't the vaguest idea."

  "Then why don't you accept the ordinary explanation?"

  Basil continued for a little to glare at the coals, and seemed collecting his thoughts in a humble and even painful way. Then he said:

  "Suppose you went out into the moonlight. Suppose you passed through silent, silvery streets and squares until you came into an open and deserted space, set with a few monuments, and you beheld one dressed as a ballet girl dancing in the argent glimmer. And suppose you looked, and saw it was a man disguised. And suppose you looked again, and saw it was Lord Kitchener. What would you think?"

  He paused a moment, and went on:

  "You could not adopt the ordinary explanation. The ordinary explanation of putting on singular clothes is that you look nice in them; you would not think that Lord Kitchener dressed up like a ballet girl out of ordinary personal vanity. You would think it much more likely that he inherited a dancing madness from a great grandmother; or had been hypnotised at a seance; or threatened by a secret society with death if he refused the ordeal. With Baden-Powell, say, it might be a bet--but not with Kitchener. I should know all that, because in my public days I knew him quite well. So I know that letter quite well, and criminals quite well. It's not a criminal's letter. It's all atmospheres." And he closed his eyes and passed his hand over his forehead.

  Rupert and the Major were regarding him with a mixture of respect and pity. The former said,

  "Well, I'm going, anyhow, and shall continue to think--until your spiritual mystery turns up--that a man who sends a note recommending a crime, that is, actually a crime that is actually carried out, at least tentatively, is, in all probability, a little casual in his moral tastes. Can I have that revolver?"

  "Certainly," said Basil, getting up. "But I am coming with you." And he flung an old cape or cloak round him, and took a sword-stick from the corner.

  "You!" said Rupert, with some surprise, "you scarcely ever leave your hole to look at anything on the face of the earth."

  Basil fitted on a formidable old white hat.

  "I scarcely ever," he said, with an unconscious and colossal arrogance, "hear of anything on the face of the earth that I do not understand at once, without going to see it."

  And he led the way out into the purple night.

  We four swung along the flaring Lambeth streets, across Westminster Bridge, and along the Embankment in the direction of that part of Fleet Street which contained Tanner's Court. The erect, black figure of Major Brown, seen from behind, was a quaint contrast to the hound-like stoop and flapping mantle of young Rupert Grant, who adopted, with childlike delight, all the dramatic poses of the detective of fiction. The finest among his many fine qualities was his boyish appetite for the colour and poetry of London. Basil, who walked behind, with his face turned blindly to the stars, had the look of a somnambulist.

  Rupert paused at the corner of Tanner's Court, with a quiver of delight at danger, and gripped Basil's revolver in his great-coat pocket.

  "Shall we go in now?" he asked.

  "Not get police?" asked Major Brown, glancing sharply up and down the street.

  "I am not sure," answered Rupert, knitting his brows. "Of course, it's quite clear, the thing's all crooked. But there are three of us, and--"

  "I shouldn't get the police," said Basil in a queer voice. Rupert glanced at him and stared hard.