Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

I paused a moment, as the idea was a novel one.

“No,” I answered, “to be quite candid, I have not.”

Neither of us spoke for perhaps twenty minutes after this, when my Friend said:

“Have you anything against it?”

I thought awhile and then I said:

“Yes, I have.”

My Friend remained silent for perhaps half an hour. Then he asked:

“What?”

I meditated for some time. Then I said:

“This--it seems to me that the whole thing is done for money. How utterly unnatural it is to call up the dead--one’s great-grandfather, let us say--and pay money for talking to him.”

“Precisely,” said my Friend without a moment’s pause. “I thought so. Now suppose I could bring you into contact with the spirit world through a medium, or through different _medii_, without there being any question of money, other than a merely nominal fee, the money being, as it were, left out of count, and regarded as only, so to speak, nominal, something given merely _pro forma_ and _ad interim_. Under these circumstances, will you try the experiment?”

I rose and took my Friend’s hand.

“My dear fellow,” I said, “I not only will, but I shall.”

From this conversation dated my connection with Spiritualism, which has since opened for me a new world.

It would be out of place for me to indicate the particular address or the particular methods employed by the agency to which my Friend introduced me. I am anxious to avoid anything approaching a commercial tinge in what I write. Moreover, their advertisement can be seen along with many others--all, I am sure, just as honourable and just as trustworthy--in the columns of any daily newspaper. As everybody knows, many methods are employed. The tapping of a table, the movement of a ouija board, or the voice of a trance medium, are only a few among the many devices by which the spirits now enter into communication with us. But in my own case the method used was not only simplicity itself, but was so framed as to carry with it the proof of its own genuineness. One had merely to speak into the receiver of a telephone, and the voice of the spirit was heard through the transmitter as in an ordinary telephone conversation.

It was only natural, after the scoffing remark that I had made, that I should begin with my great-grandfather. Nor can I ever forget the peculiar thrill that went through me when I was informed by the head of the agency that a tracer was being sent out for Great-grandfather to call him to the phone.

Great-grandfather--let me do him this justice--was prompt. He was there in three minutes. Whatever his line of business was in the spirit world--and I was never able to learn it--he must have left it immediately and hurried to the telephone. Whatever later dissatisfaction I may have had with Great-grandfather, let me state it fairly and honestly, he is at least a punctual man. Every time I called he came right away without delay. Let those who are inclined to cavil at the methods of the Spiritualists reflect how impossible it would be to secure such punctuality on anything but a basis of absolute honesty.

In my first conversation with Great-grandfather, I found myself so absurdly nervous at the thought of the vast gulf of space and time across which we were speaking that I perhaps framed my questions somewhat too crudely.

“How are you, great-grandfather?” I asked.

His voice came back to me as distinctly as if he were in the next room:

“I am happy, very happy. Please tell everybody that I am _happy_.”

“Great-grandfather,” I said. “I will. I’ll see that everybody knows it. Where are you, great-grandfather?”

“Here,” he answered, “beyond.”

“Beyond what?”

“Here on the other side.”

“Side of which?” I asked.

“Of the great vastness,” he answered. “The other end of the Illimitable.”

“Oh, I see,” I said, “that’s where you are.”

We were silent for some time. It is amazing how difficult it is to find things to talk about with one’s great-grandfather. For the life of me I could think of nothing better than:

“What sort of weather have you been having?”

“There is no weather here,” said Great-grandfather. “It’s all bright and beautiful all the time.”

“You mean bright sunshine?” I said.

“There is no sun here,” said Great-grandfather.

“Then how do you mean--” I began.

But at this moment the head of the agency tapped me on the shoulder to remind me that the two minutes’ conversation for which I had deposited, as a nominal fee, five dollars, had expired. The agency was courteous enough to inform me that for five dollars more Great-grandfather would talk another two minutes.

But I thought it preferable to stop for the moment.

Now I do not wish to say a word against my own great-grandfather. Yet in the conversations which followed on successive days I found him--how shall I put it?--unsatisfactory. He had been, when on this side--to use the term we Spiritualists prefer--a singularly able man, an English judge; so at least I have always been given to understand. But somehow Great-grandfather’s brain, on the other side, seemed to have got badly damaged. My own theory is that, living always in the bright sunshine, he had got sunstroke. But I may wrong him. Perhaps it was locomotor ataxy that he had. That he was very, very happy where he was is beyond all doubt. He said so at every conversation. But I have noticed that feeble-minded people are often happy. He said, too, that he was glad to be where he was; and on the whole I felt glad that he was too. Once or twice I thought that possibly Great-grandfather felt so happy because he had been drinking: his voice, even across the great gulf, seemed somehow to suggest it. But on being questioned he told me that where he was there was no drink and no thirst, because it was all so bright and beautiful. I asked him if he meant that it was “bone-dry” like Kansas, or whether the rich could still get it? But he didn’t answer.

Our intercourse ended in a quarrel. No doubt it was my fault. But it _did_ seem to me that Great-grandfather, who had been one of the greatest English lawyers of his day, might have handed out an opinion.

The matter came up thus: I had had an argument--it was in the middle of last winter--with some men at my club about the legal interpretation of the Adamson Law. The dispute grew bitter.

“I’m right,” I said, “and I’ll prove it if you give me time to consult the authorities.”

“Consult your great-grandfather!” sneered one of the men.

“All right,” I said, “I will.”

I walked straight across the room to the telephone and called up the agency.

“Give me my great-grandfather,” I said. “I want him right away.”

He was there. Good, punctual old soul, I’ll say that for him. He was there.

“Great-grandfather,” I said, “I’m in a discussion here about the constitutionality of the Adamson Law, involving the power of Congress under the Constitution. Now, you remember the Constitution when they made it. Is the law all right?”

There was silence.

“How does it stand, great-grandfather?” I said. “Will it hold water?”

Then he spoke.

“Over here,” he said, “there are no laws, no members of Congress and no Adamsons; it’s all bright and beautiful and--”

“Great-grandfather,” I said, as I hung up the receiver in disgust, “you are a Mutt!”

I never spoke to him again. Yet I feel sorry for him, feeble old soul, flitting about in the Illimitable, and always so punctual to hurry to the telephone, so happy, so feeble-witted and courteous; a better man, perhaps, take it all in all, than he was in life; lonely, too, it may be, out there in the Vastness. Yet I never called him up again. He is happy. Let him stay.

Indeed, my acquaintance with the spirit world might have ended at that point but for the good offices, once more, of my Friend.

“You find your great-grandfather a little slow, a little dull?” he said. “Well, then, if you want brains, power, energy, why not call up some of the spirits of the great men, some of the leading men, for instance, of your great-grandfather’s time?”

“You’ve said it!” I exclaimed. “I’ll call up Napoleon Bonaparte.”

I hurried to the agency.

“Is it possible,” I asked, “for me to call up the Emperor Napoleon and talk to him?”

Possible? Certainly. It appeared that nothing was easier. In the case of Napoleon Bonaparte the nominal fee had to be ten dollars in place of five; but it seemed to me that, if Great-grandfather cost five, Napoleon Bonaparte at ten was cheapness itself.

“Will it take long to get him?” I asked anxiously.

“We’ll send out a tracer for him right away,” they said.

Like Great-grandfather, Napoleon was punctual. That I will say for him. If in any way I think less of Napoleon Bonaparte now than I did, let me at least admit that a more punctual, obliging, willing man I never talked with.

He came in two minutes.

“He’s on the line now,” they said.

I took up the receiver, trembling.

“Hello!” I called. “Est-ce que c’est l’Empereur Napoleon a qui j’ai l’honneur de parler?”

“How’s that?” said Napoleon.

“Je demande si je suis en communication avec l’Empereur Napoleon--”

“Oh,” said Napoleon, “that’s all right; speak English.”

“What!” I said in surprise. “You know English? I always thought you couldn’t speak a word of it.”

He was silent for a minute. Then he said:

“I picked it up over here. It’s all right. Go right ahead.”

“Well,” I continued, “I’ve always admired you so much, your wonderful brain and genius, that I felt I wanted to speak to you and ask you how you are.”

“Happy,” said Napoleon, “very happy.”

“That’s good,” I said. “That’s fine! And how is it out there? All bright and beautiful, eh?”

“Very beautiful,” said the Emperor.

“And just where are you?” I continued. “Somewhere out in the Unspeakable, I suppose, eh?”

“Yes,” he answered, “out here beyond.”

“That’s good,” I said. “Pretty happy, eh?”

“Very happy,” said Napoleon. “Tell everybody how happy I am.”

“I know,” I answered. “I’ll tell them all. But just now I’ve a particular thing to ask. We’ve got a big war on, pretty well the whole world in it, and I thought perhaps a few pointers from a man like you--”

But at this point the attendant touched me on the shoulder. “Your time is up,” he said.

I was about to offer to pay at once for two minutes more when a better idea struck me. Talk with Napoleon? I’d do better than that. I’d call a whole War Council of great spirits, lay the war crisis before them and get the biggest brains that the world ever produced to work on how to win the war.

Who should I have? Let me see! Napoleon himself, of course. I’d bring him back. And for the sea business, the submarine problem, I’d have Nelson. George Washington, naturally, for the American end; for politics, say, good old Ben Franklin, the wisest old head that ever walked on American legs, and witty too; yes, Franklin certainly, if only for his wit to keep the council from getting gloomy; Lincoln--honest old Abe--him certainly I must have. Those and perhaps a few others.

I reckoned that a consultation at ten dollars apiece with spirits of that class was cheap to the verge of the ludicrous. Their advice ought to be worth millions--yes, billions--to the cause.

The agency got them for me without trouble. There is no doubt they are a punctual crowd, over there beyond in the Unthinkable.

I gathered them all in and talked to them, all and severally, the payment, a merely nominal matter, being made, _pro forma_, in advance.

I have in front of me in my rough notes the result of their advice. When properly drafted it will be, I feel sure, one of the most important state documents produced in the war.

In the personal sense--I have to admit it--I found them just a trifle disappointing. Franklin, poor fellow, has apparently lost his wit. The spirit of Lincoln seemed to me to have none of that homely wisdom that he used to have. And it appears that we were quite mistaken in thinking Disraeli a brilliant man; it is clear to me now that he was dull--just about as dull as Great-grandfather, I should say. Washington, too, is not at all the kind of man we thought him.

Still, these are only personal impressions. They detract nothing from the extraordinary value of the advice given, which seems to me to settle once and for ever any lingering doubt about the value of communications with the Other Side.

My draft of their advice runs in part as follows:

The Spirit of Nelson, on being questioned on the submarine problem, holds that if all the men on the submarines were where he is everything would be bright and happy. This seems to me an invaluable hint. There is nothing needed now except to put them there.

The advice of the Spirit of Napoleon about the campaign on land seemed to me, if possible, of lower value than that of Nelson on the campaign at sea. It is hardly conceivable that Napoleon has forgotten where the Marne is. But it may have changed since his day. At any rate, he says that, if ever the Russians cross the Marne, all is over. Coming from such a master-strategist, this ought to be attended to.

Franklin, on being asked whether the United States had done right in going into the war, said “Yes”; asked whether the country could with honour have stayed out, he said “No.” There is guidance here for thinking men of all ranks.

Lincoln is very happy where he is. So, too, I was amazed to find, is Disraeli. In fact, it was most gratifying to learn that all of the great spirits consulted are very happy, and want everybody to know how happy they are. Where they are, I may say, it is all bright and beautiful.

Fear of trespassing on their time prevented me from questioning each of them up to the full limit of the period contracted for.

I understand that I have still to my credit at the agency five minutes’ talk with Napoleon, available at any time, and similarly five minutes each with Franklin and Washington, to say nothing of ten minutes’ unexpired time with Great-grandfather.

All of these opportunities I am willing to dispose of at a reduced rate to anyone still sceptical of the reality of the spirit world.

V. The Sorrows of a Summer Guest

Let me admit, as I start to write, that the whole thing is my own fault. I should never have come. I knew better. I have known better for years. I have known that it is sheer madness to go and pay visits in other people’s houses.

Yet in a moment of insanity I have let myself in for it and here I am. There is no hope, no outlet now till the first of September when my visit is to terminate. Either that or death. I do not greatly care which.

I write this, where no human eye can see me, down by the pond--they call it the lake--at the foot of Beverly-Jones’s estate. It is six o’clock in the morning. No one is up. For a brief hour or so there is peace. But presently Miss Larkspur--the jolly English girl who arrived last week--will throw open her casement window and call across the lawn, “Hullo everybody! What a ripping morning!” And young Poppleson will call back in a Swiss yodel from somewhere in the shrubbery, and Beverly-Jones will appear on the piazza with big towels round his neck and shout, “Who’s coming for an early dip?” And so the day’s fun and jollity--heaven help me--will begin again.

Presently they will all come trooping in to breakfast, in coloured blazers and fancy blouses, laughing and grabbing at the food with mimic rudeness and bursts of hilarity. And to think that I might have been breakfasting at my club with the morning paper propped against the coffee-pot, in a silent room in the quiet of the city.

I repeat that it is my own fault that I am here.

For many years it had been a principle of my life to visit nobody. I had long since learned that visiting only brings misery. If I got a card or telegram that said, “Won’t you run up to the Adirondacks and spend the week-end with us?” I sent back word: “No, not unless the Adirondacks can run faster than I can,” or words to that effect. If the owner of a country house wrote to me: “Our man will meet you with a trap any afternoon that you care to name,” I answered, in spirit at least: “No, he won’t, not unless he has a bear-trap or one of those traps in which they catch wild antelope.” If any fashionable lady friend wrote to me in the peculiar jargon that they use: “Can you give us from July the twelfth at half-after-three till the fourteenth at four?” I replied: “Madam, take the whole month, take a year, but leave me in peace.”

Such at least was the spirit of my answers to invitations. In practice I used to find it sufficient to send a telegram that read: “Crushed with work impossible to get away,” and then stroll back into the reading-room of the club and fall asleep again.

But my coming here was my own fault. It resulted from one of those unhappy moments of expansiveness such as occur, I imagine, to everybody--moments when one appears to be something quite different from what one really is, when one feels oneself a thorough good fellow, sociable, merry, appreciative, and finds the people around one the same. Such moods are known to all of us. Some people say that it is the super-self asserting itself. Others say it is from drinking. But let it pass. That at any rate was the kind of mood that I was in when I met Beverly-Jones and when he asked me here.

It was in the afternoon, at the club. As I recall it, we were drinking cocktails and I was thinking what a bright, genial fellow Beverly-Jones was, and how completely I had mistaken him. For myself--I admit it--I am a brighter, better man after drinking two cocktails than at any other time--quicker, kindlier, more genial. And higher, morally. I had been telling stories in that inimitable way that one has after two cocktails. In reality, I only know four stories, and a fifth that I don’t quite remember, but in moments of expansiveness they feel like a fund or flow.

It was under such circumstances that I sat with Beverly-Jones. And it was in shaking hands at leaving that he said: “I _do_ wish, old chap, that you could run up to our summer place and give us the whole of August!” and I answered, as I shook him warmly by the hand: “My _dear_ fellow, I’d simply _love_ to!” “By gad, then it’s a go!” he said. “You must come up for August, and wake us all up!”

Wake them up! Ye gods! Me wake them up!

One hour later I was repenting of my folly, and wishing, when I thought of the two cocktails, that the prohibition wave could be hurried up so as to leave us all high and dry--bone-dry, silent and unsociable.

Then I clung to the hope that Beverly-Jones would forget. But no. In due time his wife wrote to me. They were looking forward so much, she said, to my visit; they felt--she repeated her husband’s ominous phrase--that I should wake them all up!

What sort of alarm-clock did they take me for, anyway!

Ah, well! They know better now. It was only yesterday afternoon that Beverly-Jones found me standing here in the gloom of some cedar-trees beside the edge of the pond and took me back so quietly to the house that I realized he thought I meant to drown myself. So I did.

I could have stood it better--my coming here, I mean--if they hadn’t come down to the station in a body to meet me in one of those long vehicles with seats down the sides: silly-looking men in coloured blazers and girls with no hats, all making a hullabaloo of welcome. “We are quite a small party,” Mrs. Beverly-Jones had written. Small! Great heavens, what would they call a large one? And even those at the station turned out to be only half of them. There were just as many more all lined up on the piazza of the house as we drove up, all waving a fool welcome with tennis rackets and golf clubs.

Small party, indeed! Why, after six days there are still some of the idiots whose names I haven’t got straight! That fool with the fluffy moustache, which is he? And that jackass that made the salad at the picnic yesterday, is he the brother of the woman with the guitar, or who?

But what I mean is, there is something in that sort of noisy welcome that puts me to the bad at the start. It always does. A group of strangers all laughing together, and with a set of catchwords and jokes all their own, always throws me into a fit of sadness, deeper than words. I had thought, when Mrs. Beverly-Jones said a _small_ party, she really meant small. I had had a mental picture of a few sad people, greeting me very quietly and gently, and of myself, quiet, too, but cheerful--somehow lifting them up, with no great effort, by my mere presence.

Somehow from the very first I could feel that Beverly-Jones was disappointed in me. He said nothing. But I knew it. On that first afternoon, between my arrival and dinner, he took me about his place, to show it to me. I wish that at some proper time I had learned just what it is that you say when a man shows you about his place. I never knew before how deficient I am in it. I am all right to be shown an iron-and-steel plant, or a soda-water factory, or anything really wonderful, but being shown a house and grounds and trees, things that I have seen all my life, leaves me absolutely silent.

“These big gates,” said Beverly-Jones, “we only put up this year.”

“Oh,” I said. That was all. Why shouldn’t they put them up this year? I didn’t care if they’d put them up this year or a thousand years ago.

“We had quite a struggle,” he continued, “before we finally decided on sandstone.

“You did, eh?” I said. There seemed nothing more to say; I didn’t know what sort of struggle he meant, or who fought who; and personally sandstone or soapstone or any other stone is all the same to me.

“This lawn,” said Beverly-Jones, “we laid down the first year we were here.” I answered nothing. He looked me right in the face as he said it and I looked straight back at him, but I saw no reason to challenge his statement. “The geraniums along the border,” he went on, “are rather an experiment. They’re Dutch.”

I looked fixedly at the geraniums but never said a word. They were Dutch; all right, why not? They were an experiment. Very good; let them be so. I know nothing in particular to say about a Dutch experiment.

I could feel that Beverly-Jones grew depressed as he showed me round. I was sorry for him, but unable to help. I realized that there were certain sections of my education that had been neglected. How to be shown things and make appropriate comments seems to be an art in itself. I don’t possess it. It is not likely now, as I look at this pond, that I ever shall.

Yet how simple a thing it seems when done by others. I saw the difference at once the very next day, the second day of my visit, when Beverly-Jones took round young Poppleton, the man that I mentioned above who will presently give a Swiss yodel from a clump of laurel bushes to indicate that the day’s fun has begun.

Poppleton I had known before slightly. I used to see him at the club. In club surroundings he always struck me as an ineffable young ass, loud and talkative and perpetually breaking the silence rules. Yet I have to admit that in his summer flannels and with a straw hat on he can do things that I can’t.

“These big gates,” began Beverly-Jones as he showed Poppleton round the place with me trailing beside them, “we only put up this year.”

Poppleton, who has a summer place of his own, looked at the gates very critically.

“Now, do you know what _I’d_ have done with those gates, if they were mine?” he said.

“No,” said Beverly-Jones.

“I’d have set them two feet wider apart; they’re too narrow, old chap, too narrow.” Poppleton shook his head sadly at the gates.

“We had quite a struggle,” said Beverly-Jones, “before we finally decided on sandstone.”

I realized that he had one and the same line of talk that he always used. I resented it. No wonder it was easy for him. “Great mistake,” said Poppleton. “Too soft. Look at this”--here he picked up a big stone and began pounding at the gate-post--“see how easily it chips! Smashes right off. Look at that, the whole corner knocks right off, see!”

Beverly-Jones entered no protest. I began to see that there is a sort of understanding, a kind of freemasonry, among men who have summer places. One shows his things; the other runs them down, and smashes them. This makes the whole thing easy at once. Beverly-Jones showed his lawn.

“Your turf is all wrong, old boy,” said Poppleton. “Look! it has no body to it. See, I can kick holes in it with my heel. Look at that, and that! If I had on stronger boots I could kick this lawn all to pieces.”

“These geraniums along the border,” said Beverly-Jones, “are rather an experiment. They’re Dutch.”

“But my dear fellow,” said Poppleton, “you’ve got them set in wrongly. They ought to slope _from_ the sun you know, never _to_ it. Wait a bit”--here he picked up a spade that was lying where a gardener had been working--“I’ll throw a few out. Notice how easily they come up. Ah, that fellow broke! They’re apt to. There, I won’t bother to reset them, but tell your man to slope them over from the sun. That’s the idea.”

Beverly-Jones showed his new boat-house next and Poppleton knocked a hole in the side with a hammer to show that the lumber was too thin.

“If that were _my_ boat-house,” he said, “I’d rip the outside clean off it and use shingle and stucco.”

It was, I noticed, Poppleton’s plan first to imagine Beverly-Jones’s things his own, and then to smash them, and then give them back smashed to Beverly-Jones. This seemed to please them both. Apparently it is a well-understood method of entertaining a guest and being entertained. Beverly-Jones and Poppleton, after an hour or so of it, were delighted with one another.

Yet somehow, when I tried it myself, it failed to work.

“Do you know what I would do with that cedar summer-house if it was mine?” I asked my host the next day.

“No,” he said.

“I’d knock the thing down and burn it,” I answered.

But I think I must have said it too fiercely. Beverly-Jones looked hurt and said nothing.

Not that these people are not doing all they can for me. I know that. I admit it. If I _should_ meet my end here and if--to put the thing straight out--_my_ lifeless body is found floating on the surface of this pond, I should like there to be documentary evidence of _that_ much. They are trying their best. “This is Liberty Hall,” Mrs. Beverly-Jones said to me on the first day of my visit. “We want you to feel that you are to do absolutely as you like!”

Absolutely as I like! How little they know me. I should like to have answered: “Madam, I have now reached a time of life when human society at breakfast is impossible to me; when any conversation prior to eleven a.m. must be considered out of the question; when I prefer to eat my meals in quiet, or with such mild hilarity as can be got from a comic paper; when I can no longer wear nankeen pants and a coloured blazer without a sense of personal indignity; when I can no longer leap and play in the water like a young fish; when I do not yodel, cannot sing and, to my regret; dance even worse than I did when young; and when the mood of mirth and hilarity comes to me only as a rare visitant--shall we say at a burlesque performance--and never as a daily part of my existence. Madam, I am unfit to be a summer guest. If this is Liberty Hall indeed, let me, oh, let me go!”

Such is the speech that I would make if it were possible. As it is, I can only rehearse it to myself.

Indeed, the more I analyse it the more impossible it seems, for a man of my temperament at any rate, to be a summer guest. These people, and, I imagine, all other summer people, seem to be trying to live in a perpetual joke. Everything, all day, has to be taken in a mood of uproarious fun.

However, I can speak of it all now in quiet retrospect and without bitterness. It will soon be over now. Indeed, the reason why I have come down at this early hour to this quiet water is that things have reached a crisis. The situation has become extreme and I must end it.

It happened last night. Beverly-Jones took me aside while the others were dancing the fox-trot to the victrola on the piazza.

“We’re planning to have some rather good fun to-morrow night,” he said, “something that will be a good deal more in your line than a lot of it, I’m afraid, has been up here. In fact, my wife says that this will be the very thing for you.”

“Oh,” I said.

“We’re going to get all the people from the other houses over and the girls”--this term Beverly-Jones uses to mean his wife and her friends--“are going to get up a sort of entertainment with charades and things, all impromptu, more or less, of course--”

“Oh,” I said. I saw already what was coming.

“And they want you to act as a sort of master-of-ceremonies, to make up the gags and introduce the different stunts and all that. I was telling the girls about that afternoon at the club, when you were simply killing us all with those funny stories of yours, and they’re all wild over it.”

“Wild?” I repeated.

“Yes, quite wild over it. They say it will be the hit of the summer.”

Beverly-Jones shook hands with great warmth as we parted for the night. I knew that he was thinking that my character was about to be triumphantly vindicated, and that he was glad for my sake.

Last night I did not sleep. I remained awake all night thinking of the “entertainment.” In my whole life I have done nothing in public except once when I presented a walking-stick to the vice-president of our club on the occasion of his taking a trip to Europe. Even for that I used to rehearse to myself far into the night sentences that began: “This walking-stick, gentleman, means far more than a mere walking-stick.”

And now they expect me to come out as a merry master-of-ceremonies before an assembled crowd of summer guests.

But never mind. It is nearly over now. I have come down to this quiet water in the early morning to throw myself in. They will find me floating here among the lilies. Some few will understand. I can see it written, as it will be, in the newspapers.

“What makes the sad fatality doubly poignant is that the unhappy victim had just entered upon a holiday visit that was to have been prolonged throughout the whole month. Needless to say, he was regarded as the life and soul of the pleasant party of holiday makers that had gathered at the delightful country home of Mr. and Mrs. Beverly-Jones. Indeed, on the very day of the tragedy, he was to have taken a leading part in staging a merry performance of charades and parlour entertainments--a thing for which his genial talents and overflowing high spirits rendered him specially fit.”

When they read that, those who know me best will understand how and why I died. “He had still over three weeks to stay there,” they will say. “He was to act as the stage manager of charades.” They will shake their heads. They will understand.

But what is this? I raise my eyes from the paper and I see Beverly-Jones hurriedly approaching from the house. He is hastily dressed, with flannel trousers and a dressing-gown. His face looks grave. Something has happened. Thank God, something has happened. Some accident! Some tragedy! Something to prevent the charades!

I write these few lines on a fast train that is carrying me back to New York, a cool, comfortable train, with a deserted club-car where I can sit in a leather arm-chair, with my feet up on another, smoking, silent, and at peace.

Villages, farms and summer places are flying by. Let them fly. I, too, am flying--back to the rest and quiet of the city.

“Old man,” Beverly-Jones said, as he laid his hand on mine very kindly--he is a decent fellow, after all, is Jones--“they’re calling you by long-distance from New York.”

“What is it?” I asked, or tried to gasp.

“It’s bad news, old chap; fire in your office last evening. I’m afraid a lot of your private papers were burned. Robinson--that’s your senior clerk, isn’t it?--seems to have been on the spot trying to save things. He’s badly singed about the face and hands. I’m afraid you must go at once.”

“Yes, yes,” I said, “at once.”

“I know. I’ve told the man to get the trap ready right away. You’ve just time to catch the seven-ten. Come along.”

“Right,” I said. I kept my face as well as I could, trying to hide my exultation. The office burnt! Fine! Robinson’s singed! Glorious! I hurriedly packed my things and whispered to Beverly-Jones farewell messages for the sleeping household. I never felt so jolly and facetious in my life. I could feel that Beverly-Jones was admiring the spirit and pluck with which I took my misfortune. Later on he would tell them all about it.

The trap ready! Hurrah! Good-bye, old man! Hurrah! All right. I’ll telegraph. Right you are, good-bye. Hip, hip, hurrah! Here we are! Train right on time. Just these two bags, porter, and there’s a dollar for you. What merry, merry fellows these darky porters are, anyway!

And so here I am in the train, safe bound for home and the summer quiet of my club.

Well done for Robinson! I was afraid that it had missed fire, or that my message to him had gone wrong. It was on the second day of my visit that I sent word to him to invent an accident--something, anything--to call me back. I thought the message had failed. I had lost hope. But it is all right now, though he certainly pitched the note pretty high.

Of course I can’t let the Beverly-Joneses know that it was a put-up job. I must set fire to the office as soon as I get back. But it’s worth it. And I’ll have to singe Robinson about the face and hands. But it’s worth that too!

VI. To Nature and Back Again

It was probably owing to the fact that my place of lodgment in New York overlooked the waving trees of Central Park that I was consumed, all the summer through, with a great longing for the woods. To me, as a lover of Nature, the waving of a tree conveys thoughts which are never conveyed to me except by seeing a tree wave.

This longing grew upon me. I became restless with it. In the daytime I dreamed over my work. At night my sleep was broken and restless. At times I would even wander forth, at night into the park, and there, deep in the night shadow of the trees, imagine myself alone in the recesses of the dark woods remote from the toil and fret of our distracted civilization.

This increasing feeling culminated in the resolve which becomes the subject of this narrative. The thought came to me suddenly one night. I woke from my sleep with a plan fully matured in my mind. It was this: I would, for one month, cast off all the travail and cares of civilized life and become again the wild man of the woods that Nature made me. M woods, somewhere in New England, divest myself of my clothes--except only my union suit--crawl into the woods, stay there a month and then crawl out again. To a trained woodsman and crawler like myself the thing was simplicity itself. For food I knew that I could rely on berries, roots, shoots, mosses, mushrooms, fungi, bungi--in fact the whole of Nature’s ample storehouse; for my drink, the running brook and the quiet pool; and for my companions the twittering chipmunk, the chickadee, the chocktaw, the choo-choo, the chow-chow, and the hundred and one inhabitants of the forgotten glade and the tangled thicket.

Fortunately for me, my resolve came to me upon the last day in August. The month of September was my vacation. My time was my own. I was free to go.

On my rising in the morning my preparations were soon made; or, rather, there were practically no preparations to make. I had but to supply myself with a camera, my one necessity in the woods, and to say good-bye to my friends. Even this last ordeal I wished to make as brief as possible. I had no wish to arouse their anxiety over the dangerous, perhaps foolhardy, project that I had in mind. I wished, as far as possible, to say good-bye in such a way as to allay the very natural fears which my undertaking would excite in the minds of my friends.

From myself, although trained in the craft of the woods, I could not conceal the danger that I incurred. Yet the danger was almost forgotten in the extraordinary and novel interest that attached to the experiment. Would it prove possible for a man, unaided by our civilized arts and industries, to maintain himself naked--except for his union suit--in the heart of the woods? Could he do it, or could he not? And if he couldn’t what then?

But this last thought I put from me. Time alone could answer the question.

As in duty bound, I went first to the place of business where I am employed, to shake hands and say good-bye to my employer.

“I am going,” I said, “to spend a month naked alone in the woods.”

He looked up from his desk with genial kindliness.

“That’s right,” he said, “get a good rest.”

“My plan is,” I added, “to live on berries and funguses.”

“Fine,” he answered. “Well, have a good time, old man--good-bye.”

Then I dropped in casually upon one of my friends.

“Well,” I said, “I’m off to New England to spend a month naked.”

“Nantucket,” he said, “or Newport?”

“No,” I answered, speaking as lightly as I could. “I’m going into the woods and stay there naked for a month.”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I see. Well, good-bye, old chap--see you when you get back.”

After that I called upon two or three other men to say a brief word of farewell. I could not help feeling slightly nettled, I must confess, at the very casual way in which they seemed to take my announcement. “Oh, yes,” they said, “naked in the woods, eh? Well, ta-ta till you get back.”

Here was a man about to risk his life--for there was no denying the fact--in a great sociological experiment, yet they received the announcement with absolute unconcern. It offered one more assurance, had I needed it, of the degenerate state of the civilization upon which I was turning my back.

On my way to the train I happened to run into a newspaper reporter with whom I have some acquaintance.

“I’m just off,” I said, “to New England to spend a month naked--at least naked all but my union suit--in the woods; no doubt you’ll like a few details about it for your paper.”

“Thanks, old man,” he said, “we’ve pretty well given up running that nature stuff. We couldn’t do anything with it--unless, of course, anything happens to you. Then we’d be glad to give you some space.”

Several of my friends had at least the decency to see me off on the train. One, and one alone accompanied me on the long night-ride to New England in order that he might bring back my clothes, my watch, and other possessions from the point where I should enter the woods, together with such few messages of farewell as I might scribble at the last moment.

It was early morning when we arrived at the wayside station where we were to alight. From here we walked to the edge of the woods. Arrived at this point we halted. I took off my clothes, with the exception of my union suit. Then, taking a pot of brown stain from my valise, I proceeded to dye my face and hands and my union suit itself a deep butternut brown.

“What’s that for?” asked my friend.

“For protection,” I answered. “Don’t you know that all animals are protected by their peculiar markings that render them invisible? The caterpillar looks like the leaf it eats from; the scales of the fish counterfeit the glistening water of the brook; the bear and the ‘possum are coloured like the tree-trunks on which they climb. There!” I added, as I concluded my task. “I am now invisible.”

“Gee!” said my friend.

I handed him back the valise and the empty paint-pot, dropped to my hands and knees--my camera slung about my neck--and proceeded to crawl into the bush. My friend stood watching me.

“Why don’t you stand up and walk?” I heard him call.

I turned half round and growled at him. Then I plunged deeper into the bush, growling as I went.

After ten minutes’ active crawling I found myself in the heart of the forest. It reached all about me on every side for hundreds of miles. All around me was the unbroken stillness of the woods. Not a sound reached my ear save the twittering of a squirrel, or squirl, in the branches high above my head or the far-distant call of a loon hovering over some woodland lake.

I judged that I had reached a spot suitable for my habitation.

My first care was to make a fire. Difficult though it might appear to the degenerate dweller of the city to do this, to the trained woodsman, such as I had now become, it is nothing. I selected a dry stick, rubbed it vigorously against my hind leg, and in a few moments it broke into a generous blaze. Half an hour later I was sitting beside a glowing fire of twigs discussing with great gusto an appetizing mess of boiled grass and fungi cooked in a hollow stone.

I ate my fill, not pausing till I was full, careless, as the natural man ever is, of the morrow. Then, stretched out upon the pine-needles at the foot of a great tree, I lay in drowsy contentment listening to the song of the birds, the hum of the myriad insects and the strident note of the squirrel high above me. At times I would give utterance to the soft answering call, known to every woodsman, that is part of the freemasonry of animal speech. As I lay thus, I would not have exchanged places with the pale dweller in the city for all the wealth in the world. Here I lay remote from the world, happy, full of grass, listening to the crooning of the birds.

But the mood of inaction and reflection cannot last, even with the lover of Nature. It was time to be up and doing. Much lay before me to be done before the setting of the sun should bring with it, as I fully expected it would, darkness. Before night fell I must build a house, make myself a suit of clothes, lay in a store of nuts, and in short prepare myself for the oncoming of winter, which, in the bush, may come on at any time in the summer.

I rose briskly from the ground to my hands and knees and set myself to the building of my house. The method that I intended to follow here was merely that which Nature has long since taught to the beaver and which, moreover, is known and practised by the gauchos of the pampas, by the googoos of Rhodesia and by many other tribes. I had but to select a suitable growth of trees and gnaw them down with my teeth, taking care so to gnaw them that each should fall into the place appointed for it in the building. The sides, once erected in this fashion, another row of trees, properly situated, is gnawed down to fall crosswise as the roof.

I set myself briskly to work and in half an hour had already the satisfaction of seeing my habitation rising into shape. I was still gnawing with unabated energy when I was interrupted by a low growling in the underbrush. With animal caution I shrank behind a tree, growling in return. I could see something moving in the bushes, evidently an animal of large size. From its snarl I judged it to be a bear. I could hear it moving nearer to me. It was about to attack me. A savage joy thrilled through me at the thought, while my union suit bristled with rage from head to foot as I emitted growl after growl of defiance. I bared my teeth to the gums, snarling, and lashed my flank with my hind foot. Eagerly I watched for the onrush of the bear. In savage combat who strikes first wins. It was my idea, as soon as the bear should appear, to bite off its front legs one after the other. This initial advantage once gained, I had no doubt of ultimate victory.

The brushes parted. I caught a glimpse of a long brown body and a hairy head. Then the creature reared up, breasting itself against a log, full in front of me. Great heavens! It was not a bear at all. It was a man.

He was dressed, as I was, in a union suit, and his face and hands, like mine, were stained a butternut brown. His hair was long and matted and two weeks’ stubble of beard was on his face.

For a minute we both glared at one another, still growling. Then the man rose up to a standing position with a muttered exclamation of disgust.

“Ah, cut it out,” he said. “Let’s talk English.”

He walked over towards me and sat down upon a log in an attitude that seemed to convey the same disgust as the expression of his features. Then he looked round about him.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“Building a house,” I answered.

“I know,” he said with a nod. “What are you here for?”

“Why,” I explained, “my plan is this: I want to see whether a man can come out here in the woods, naked, with no aid but that of his own hands and his own ingenuity and--”

“Yes, yes, I know,” interrupted the disconsolate man. “Earn himself a livelihood in the wilderness, live as the cave-man lived, carefree and far from the curse of civilization!”

“That’s it. That was my idea,” I said, my enthusiasm rekindling as I spoke. “That’s what I’m doing; my food is to be the rude grass and the roots that Nature furnishes for her children, and for my drink--”

“Yes, yes,” he interrupted again with impatience, “for your drink the running rill, for your bed the sweet couch of hemlock, and for your canopy the open sky lit with the soft stars in the deep-purple vault of the dewy night. I know.”

“Great heavens, man!” I exclaimed. “That’s my idea exactly. In fact, those are my very phrases. How could you have guessed it?”

He made a gesture with his hand to indicate weariness and disillusionment.

“Pshaw!” he said. “I know it because I’ve been doing it. I’ve been here a fortnight now on this open-air, life-in-the-woods game. Well, I’m sick of it! This last lets me out.”

“What last?” I asked.

“Why, meeting you. Do you realize that you are the nineteenth man that I’ve met in the last three days running about naked in the woods? They’re all doing it. The woods are full of them.”

“You don’t say so!” I gasped.

“Fact. Wherever you go in the bush you find naked men all working out this same blasted old experiment. Why, when you get a little farther in you’ll see signs up: NAKED MEN NOT ALLOWED IN THIS BUSH, and NAKED MEN KEEP OFF, and GENTLEMEN WHO ARE NAKED WILL KINDLY KEEP TO THE HIGH ROAD, and a lot of things like that. You must have come in at a wrong place or you’d have noticed the little shanties that they have now at the edge of the New England bush with signs up: UNION SUITS BOUGHT AND SOLD, CAMERAS FOR SALE OR TO RENT, HIGHEST PRICE FOR CAST-OFF CLOTHING, and all that sort of thing.”

“No,” I said. “I saw nothing.”

“Well, you look when you go back. As for me, I’m done with it. The thing’s worked out. I’m going back to the city to see whether I can’t, right there in the heart of the city, earn myself a livelihood with my unaided hands and brains. That’s the real problem; no more bumming on the animals for me. This bush business is too easy. Well, good-bye; I’m off.”

“But stop a minute,” I said. “How is it that, if what you say is true, I haven’t seen or heard anybody in the bush, and I’ve been here since the middle of the morning?”

“Nonsense,” the man answered. “They were probably all round you but you didn’t recognize them.”

“No, no, it’s not possible. I lay here dreaming beneath a tree and there wasn’t a sound, except the twittering of a squirrel and, far away, the cry of a lake-loon, nothing else.”

“Exactly, the twittering of a squirrel! That was some feller up the tree twittering to beat the band to let on that he was a squirrel, and no doubt some other feller calling out like a loon over near the lake. I suppose you gave them the answering cry?”

“I did,” I said. “I gave that low guttural note which--”

“Precisely--which is the universal greeting in the freemasonry of animal speech. I see you’ve got it all down pat. Well, good-bye again. I’m off. Oh, don’t bother to growl, please. I’m sick of that line of stuff.”

“Good-bye,” I said.

He slid through the bushes and disappeared. I sat where I was, musing, my work interrupted, a mood of bitter disillusionment heavy upon me. So I sat, it may have been for hours.

In the far distance I could hear the faint cry of a bittern in some lonely marsh.

“Now, who the deuce is making that noise?” I muttered. “Some silly fool, I suppose, trying to think he’s a waterfowl. Cut it out!”

Long I lay, my dream of the woods shattered, wondering what to do.

Then suddenly there came to my ear the loud sound of voices, human voices, strident and eager, with nothing of the animal growl in them.

“He’s in there. I seen him!” I heard some one call.

Rapidly I dived sideways into the underbrush, my animal instinct strong upon me again, growling as I went. Instinctively I knew that it was I that they were after. All the animal joy of being hunted came over me. My union suit stood up on end with mingled fear and rage.