The Essential G. K. Chesterton

by G. K. Chesterton

  The second sister had by this time entered the room and came somewhat drearily to the window.

  "You know, Adelaide," she said, "that Mr Bingham from the Museum is coming again at three."

  "I know," said Adelaide Chadd bitterly. "I suppose we shall have to tell him about this. I thought that no good fortune would ever come easily to us."

  Grant suddenly turned round. "What do you mean?" he said. "What will you have to tell Mr Bingham?"

  "You know what I shall have to tell him," said the professor's sister, almost fiercely. "I don't know that we need give it its wretched name. Do you think that the keeper of Asiatic manuscripts will be allowed to go on like that?" And she pointed for an instant at the figure in the garden, the shining, listening face and the unresting feet.

  Basil Grant took out his watch with an abrupt movement. "When did you say the British Museum man was coming?" he said.

  "Three o'clock," said Miss Chadd briefly.

  "Then I have an hour before me," said Grant, and without another word threw up the window and jumped out into the garden. He did not walk straight up to the doctor and lunatic, but strolling round the garden path drew near them cautiously and yet apparently carelessly. He stood a couple of feet off them, seemingly counting halfpence out of his trousers pocket, but, as I could see, looking up steadily under the broad brim of his hat.

  Suddenly he stepped up to Professor Chadd's elbow, and said, in a loud familiar voice, "Well, my boy, do you still think the Zulus our inferiors?"

  The doctor knitted his brows and looked anxious, seeming to be about to speak. The professor turned his bald and placid head towards Grant in a friendly manner, but made no answer, idly flinging his left leg about.

  "Have you converted Dr Colman to your views?" Basil continued, still in the same loud and lucid tone.

  Chadd only shuffled his feet and kicked a little with the other leg, his expression still benevolent and inquiring. The doctor cut in rather sharply. "Shall we go inside, professor?" he said. "Now you have shown me the garden. A beautiful garden. A most beautiful garden. Let us go in," and he tried to draw the kicking ethnologist by the elbow, at the same time whispering to Grant: "I must ask you not to trouble him with questions. Most risky. He must be soothed."

  Basil answered in the same tone, with great coolness:

  "Of course your directions must be followed out, doctor. I will endeavour to do so, but I hope it will not be inconsistent with them if you will leave me alone with my poor friend in this garden for an hour. I want to watch him. I assure you, Dr Colman, that I shall say very little to him, and that little shall be as soothing as--as syrup."

  The doctor wiped his eyeglass thoughtfully.

  "It is rather dangerous for him," he said, "to be long in the strong sun without his hat. With his bald head, too."

  "That is soon settled," said Basil composedly, and took off his own big hat and clapped it on the egglike skull of the professor. The latter did not turn round but danced away with his eyes on the horizon.

  The doctor put on his glasses again, looked severely at the two for some seconds, with his head on one side like a bird's, and then saying, shortly, "All right," strutted away into the house, where the three Misses Chadd were all looking out from the parlour window on to the garden. They looked out on it with hungry eyes for a full hour without moving, and they saw a sight which was more extraordinary than madness itself.

  Basil Grant addressed a few questions to the madman, without succeeding in making him do anything but continue to caper, and when he had done this slowly took a red note-book out of one pocket and a large pencil out of another.

  He began hurriedly to scribble notes. When the lunatic skipped away from him he would walk a few yards in pursuit, stop, and make notes again. Thus they followed each other round and round the foolish circle of turf, the one writing in pencil with the face of a man working out a problem, the other leaping and playing like a child.

  After about three-quarters of an hour of this imbecile scene, Grant put the pencil in his pocket, but kept the note-book open in his hand, and walking round the mad professor, planted himself directly in front of him.

  Then occurred something that even those already used to that wild morning had not anticipated or dreamed. The professor, on finding Basil in front of him, stared with a blank benignity for a few seconds, and then drew up his left leg and hung it bent in the attitude that his sister had described as being the first of all his antics. And the moment he had done it Basil Grant lifted his own leg and held it out rigid before him, confronting Chadd with the flat sole of his boot. The professor dropped his bent leg, and swinging his weight on to it kicked out the other behind, like a man swimming. Basil crossed his feet like a saltire cross, and then flung them apart again, giving a leap into the air. Then before any of the spectators could say a word or even entertain a thought about the matter, both of them were dancing a sort of jig or hornpipe opposite each other; and the sun shone down on two madmen instead of one.

  They were so stricken with the deafness and blindness of monomania that they did not see the eldest Miss Chadd come out feverishly into the garden with gestures of entreaty, a gentleman following her. Professor Chadd was in the wildest posture of a pas-de-quatre, Basil Grant seemed about to turn a cart-wheel, when they were frozen in their follies by the steely voice of Adelaide Chadd saying, "Mr Bingham of the British Museum."

  Mr Bingham was a slim, well-clad gentleman with a pointed and slightly effeminate grey beard, unimpeachable gloves, and formal but agreeable manners. He was the type of the over-civilized, as Professor Chadd was of the uncivilized pedant. His formality and agreeableness did him some credit under the circumstances. He had a vast experience of books and a considerable experience of the more dilettante fashionable salons. But neither branch of knowledge had accustomed him to the spectacle of two grey-haired middle-class gentlemen in modern costume throwing themselves about like acrobats as a substitute for an after-dinner nap.

  The professor continued his antics with perfect placidity, but Grant stopped abruptly. The doctor had reappeared on the scene, and his shiny black eyes, under his shiny black hat, moved restlessly from one of them to the other.

  "Dr Colman," said Basil, turning to him, "will you entertain Professor Chadd again for a little while? I am sure that he needs you. Mr Bingham, might I have the pleasure of a few moments' private conversation? My name is Grant."

  Mr Bingham, of the British Museum, bowed in a manner that was respectful but a trifle bewildered.

  "Miss Chadd will excuse me," continued Basil easily, "if I know my way about the house." And he led the dazed librarian rapidly through the back door into the parlour.

  "Mr Bingham," said Basil, setting a chair for him, "I imagine that Miss Chadd has told you of this distressing occurrence."

  "She has, Mr Grant," said Bingham, looking at the table with a sort of compassionate nervousness. "I am more pained than I can say by this dreadful calamity. It seems quite heart-rending that the thing should have happened just as we have decided to give your eminent friend a position which falls far short of his merits. As it is, of course--really, I don't know what to say. Professor Chadd may, of course, retain--I sincerely trust he will--his extraordinarily valuable intellect. But I am afraid--I am really afraid--that it would not do to have the curator of the Asiatic manuscripts--er--dancing about."

  "I have a suggestion to make," said Basil, and sat down abruptly in his chair, drawing it up to the table.

  "I am delighted, of course," said the gentleman from the British Museum, coughing and drawing up his chair also.

  The clock on the mantelpiece ticked for just the moments required for Basil to clear his throat and collect his words, and then he said:

  "My proposal is this. I do not know that in the strict use of words you could altogether call it a compromise, still it has something of that character. My proposal is that the Government (acting, as I presume, through your Museum) should pay Professor Chadd L800 a yea
r until he stops dancing."

  "Eight hundred a year!" said Mr Bingham, and for the first time lifted his mild blue eyes to those of his interlocutor--and he raised them with a mild blue stare. "I think I have not quite understood you. Did I understand you to say that Professor Chadd ought to be employed, in his present state, in the Asiatic manuscript department at eight hundred a year?"

  Grant shook his head resolutely.

  "No," he said firmly. "No. Chadd is a friend of mine, and I would say anything for him I could. But I do not say, I cannot say, that he ought to take on the Asiatic manuscripts. I do not go so far as that. I merely say that until he stops dancing you ought to pay him L800 Surely you have some general fund for the endowment of research."

  Mr Bingham looked bewildered.

  "I really don't know," he said, blinking his eyes, "what you are talking about. Do you ask us to give this obvious lunatic nearly a thousand a year for life?"

  "Not at all," cried Basil, keenly and triumphantly. "I never said for life. Not at all."

  "What for, then?" asked the meek Bingham, suppressing an instinct meekly to tear his hair. "How long is this endowment to run? Not till his death? Till the Judgement day?"

  "No," said Basil, beaming, "but just what I said. Till he has stopped dancing." And he lay back with satisfaction and his hands in his pockets.

  Bingham had by this time fastened his eyes keenly on Basil Grant and kept them there.

  "Come, Mr Grant," he said. "Do I seriously understand you to suggest that the Government pay Professor Chadd an extraordinarily high salary simply on the ground that he has (pardon the phrase) gone mad? That he should be paid more than four good clerks solely on the ground that he is flinging his boots about in the back yard?"

  "Precisely," said Grant composedly.

  "That this absurd payment is not only to run on with the absurd dancing, but actually to stop with the absurd dancing?"

  "One must stop somewhere," said Grant. "Of course."

  Bingham rose and took up his perfect stick and gloves.

  "There is really nothing more to be said, Mr Grant," he said coldly. "What you are trying to explain to me may be a joke--a slightly unfeeling joke. It may be your sincere view, in which case I ask your pardon for the former suggestion. But, in any case, it appears quite irrelevant to my duties. The mental morbidity, the mental downfall, of Professor Chadd, is a thing so painful to me that I cannot easily endure to speak of it. But it is clear there is a limit to everything. And if the Archangel Gabriel went mad it would sever his connection, I am sorry to say, with the British Museum Library."

  He was stepping towards the door, but Grant's hand, flung out in dramatic warning, arrested him.

  "Stop!" said Basil sternly. "Stop while there is yet time. Do you want to take part in a great work, Mr Bingham? Do you want to help in the glory of Europe--in the glory of science? Do you want to carry your head in the air when it is bald or white because of the part that you bore in a great discovery? Do you want--"

  Bingham cut in sharply:

  "And if I do want this, Mr Grant--"

  "Then," said Basil lightly, "your task is easy. Get Chadd L800 a year till he stops dancing."

  With a fierce flap of his swinging gloves Bingham turned impatiently to the door, but in passing out of it found it blocked. Dr Colman was coming in.

  "Forgive me, gentlemen," he said, in a nervous, confidential voice, "the fact is, Mr Grant, I--er--have made a most disturbing discovery about Mr Chadd."

  Bingham looked at him with grave eyes.

  "I was afraid so," he said. "Drink, I imagine."

  "Drink!" echoed Colman, as if that were a much milder affair. "Oh, no, it's not drink."

  Mr Bingham became somewhat agitated, and his voice grew hurried and vague. "Homicidal mania--" he began.

  "No, no," said the medical man impatiently.

  "Thinks he's made of glass," said Bingham feverishly, "or says he's God--or--"

  "No," said Dr Colman sharply; "the fact is, Mr Grant, my discovery is of a different character. The awful thing about him is--"

  "Oh, go on, sir," cried Bingham, in agony.

  "The awful thing about him is," repeated Colman, with deliberation, "that he isn't mad."

  "Not mad!"

  "There are quite well-known physical tests of lunacy," said the doctor shortly; "he hasn't got any of them."

  "But why does he dance?" cried the despairing Bingham. "Why doesn't he answer us? Why hasn't he spoken to his family?"

  "The devil knows," said Dr Colman coolly. "I'm paid to judge of lunatics, but not of fools. The man's not mad."

  "What on earth can it mean? Can't we make him listen?" said Mr Bingham. "Can none get into any kind of communication with him?"

  Grant's voice struck in sudden and clear, like a steel bell:

  "I shall be very happy," he said, "to give him any message you like to send."

  Both men stared at him.

  "Give him a message?" they cried simultaneously. "How will you give him a message?"

  Basil smiled in his slow way.

  "If you really want to know how I shall give him your message," he began, but Bingham cried:

  "Of course, of course," with a sort of frenzy.

  "Well," said Basil, "like this." And he suddenly sprang a foot into the air, coming down with crashing boots, and then stood on one leg.

  His face was stern, though this effect was slightly spoiled by the fact that one of his feet was making wild circles in the air.

  "You drive me to it," he said. "You drive me to betray my friend. And I will, for his own sake, betray him."

  The sensitive face of Bingham took on an extra expression of distress as of one anticipating some disgraceful disclosure. "Anything painful, of course--" he began.

  Basil let his loose foot fall on the carpet with a crash that struck them all rigid in their feeble attitudes.

  "Idiots!" he cried. "Have you seen the man? Have you looked at James Chadd going dismally to and fro from his dingy house to your miserable library, with his futile books and his confounded umbrella, and never seen that he has the eyes of a fanatic? Have you never noticed, stuck casually behind his spectacles and above his seedy old collar, the face of a man who might have burned heretics, or died for the philosopher's stone? It is all my fault, in a way: I lit the dynamite of his deadly faith. I argued against him on the score of his famous theory about language--the theory that language was complete in certain individuals and was picked up by others simply by watching them. I also chaffed him about not understanding things in rough and ready practice. What has this glorious bigot done? He has answered me. He has worked out a system of language of his own (it would take too long to explain); he has made up, I say, a language of his own. And he has sworn that till people understand it, till he can speak to us in this language, he will not speak in any other. And he shall not. I have understood, by taking careful notice; and, by heaven, so shall the others. This shall not be blown upon. He shall finish his experiment. He shall have L800 a year from somewhere till he has stopped dancing. To stop him now is an infamous war on a great idea. It is religious persecution."

  Mr Bingham held out his hand cordially.

  "I thank you, Mr Grant," he said. "I hope I shall be able to answer for the source of the L800 and I fancy that I shall. Will you come in my cab?"