THESE tales concern the doing of things recognized as impossible to do; impossible to believe; and, as the weary reader may well cry aloud, impossible to read about. Did the narrator merely say that they happened, without saying how they happened, they could easily be classified with the cow who jumped over the moon and the more introspective individual who jumped down his own throat. In short, they are all tall stories; and though tall stories may also be true stories, there is something in the very phrase appropriate to such a topsy-turvydom; for the logician2 will presumably class a tall story with a corpulent epigram or a long-legged essay. It is only proper that such impossible incidents should begin in the most prim3 and prosaic4 of all places, at the most prim and prosaic of all times, and apparently5 with the most prim and prosaic of all human beings.
The place was a straight suburban6 road of strictly7-fenced[4] suburban houses on the outskirts8 of a modern town. The time was about twenty minutes to eleven on Sunday morning, when a procession of suburban families in their Sunday clothes were passing decorously up the road to church. And the man was a very respectable retired9 military man named Colonel Crane, who was also going to church, as he had done every Sunday at the same hour for a long stretch of years. There was no obvious difference between him and his neighbours, except that he was a little less obvious. His house was only called White Lodge10 and was, therefore, less alluring11 to the romantic passer-by than Rowanmere on the one side or Heatherbrae on the other. He turned out spick and span for church as if for parade; but he was much too well dressed to be pointed12 out as a well-dressed man. He was quite handsome in a dry, sun-baked style; but his bleached13 blond hair was a colourless sort that could look either light brown or pale grey; and though his blue eyes were clear, they looked out a little heavily under lowered lids. Colonel Crane was something of a survival. He was not really old; indeed he was barely middle-aged14; and had gained his last distinctions in the great war. But a variety of causes had kept him true to the traditional type of the old professional soldier, as it had existed before 1914; when a small parish would have only one colonel as it had only one curate. It would be quite unjust to call him a[5] dug-out; indeed, it would be much truer to call him a dug-in. For he had remained in the traditions as firmly and patiently as he had remained in the trenches15. He was simply a man who happened to have no taste for changing his habits, and had never worried about conventions enough to alter them. One of his excellent habits was to go to church at eleven o’clock, and he therefore went there; and did not know that there went with him something of an old-world air and a passage in the history of England.
As he came out of his front door, however, on that particular morning, he was twisting a scrap16 of paper in his fingers and frowning with somewhat unusual perplexity. Instead of walking straight to his garden gate he walked once or twice up and down his front garden, swinging his black walking-cane. The note had been handed in to him at breakfast, and it evidently involved some practical problem calling for immediate17 solution. He stood a few minutes with his eye riveted18 on a red daisy at the corner of the nearest flower-bed; and then a new expression began to work in the muscles of his bronzed face, giving a slightly grim hint of humour, of which few except his intimates were aware. Folding up the paper and putting it into his waistcoat pocket, he strolled round the house to the back garden, behind which was the kitchen-garden, in which an old servant, a sort of factotum19 or handyman, named Archer20, was acting21 as kitchen-gardener.
[6]Archer also was a survival. Indeed, the two had survived together; had survived a number of things that had killed a good many other people. But though they had been together through the war that was also a revolution, and had a complete confidence in each other, the man Archer had never been able to lose the oppressive manners of a manservant. He performed the duties of a gardener with the air of a butler. He really performed the duties very well and enjoyed them very much; perhaps he enjoyed them all the more because he was a clever Cockney, to whom the country crafts were a new hobby. But somehow, whenever he said, “I have put in the seeds, sir,” it always sounded like, “I have put the sherry on the table, sir”; and he could not say, “Shall I pull the carrots?” without seeming to say, “Would you be requiring the claret?”
“I hope you’re not working on Sunday,” said the Colonel, with a much more pleasant smile than most people got from him, though he was always polite to everybody. “You’re getting too fond of these rural pursuits. You’ve become a rustic22 yokel23.”
“I was venturing to examine the cabbages, sir,” replied the rustic yokel, with a painful precision of articulation24. “Their condition yesterday evening did not strike me as satisfactory.”
“Glad you didn’t sit up with them,” answered the Colonel. “But it’s lucky you’re interested in cabbages. I want to talk to you about cabbages.”
[7]“About cabbages, sir?” inquired the other respectfully.
But the Colonel did not appear to pursue the topic, for he was gazing in sudden abstraction at another object in the vegetable plots in front of him. The Colonel’s garden, like the Colonel’s house, hat, coat and demeanour, was well-appointed in an unobtrusive fashion; and in the part of it devoted25 to flowers there dwelt something indefinable that seemed older than the suburbs. The hedges, even, in being as neat as Surbiton managed to look as mellow26 as Hampton Court, as if their very artificiality belonged rather to Queen Anne than Queen Victoria; and the stone-rimmed pond with a ring of irises27 somehow looked like a classic pool and not merely an artificial puddle28. It is idle to analyse how a man’s soul and social type will somehow soak into his surroundings; anyhow, the soul of Mr. Archer had sunk into the kitchen-garden so as to give it a fine shade of difference. He was after all a practical man, and the practice of his new trade was much more of a real appetite with him than his words would suggest. Hence the kitchen-garden was not artificial, but autochthonous; it really looked like a corner of a farm in the country; and all sorts of practical devices were set up there. Strawberries were netted-in against the birds; strings29 were stretched across with feathers fluttering from them; and in the middle of the principal bed stood an ancient and authentic[8] scarecrow. Perhaps the only incongruous intruder, capable of disputing with the scarecrow his rural reign30, was the curious boundary-stone which marked the edge of his domain31; and which was, in fact, a shapeless South Sea idol32, planted there with no more appropriateness than a door-scraper. But Colonel Crane would not have been so complete a type of the old army man if he had not hidden somewhere a hobby connected with his travels. His hobby had at one time been savage33 folklore34; and he had the relic35 of it on the edge of the kitchen-garden. At the moment, however, he was not looking at the idol, but at the scarecrow.
“By the way, Archer,” he said, “don’t you think the scarecrow wants a new hat?”
“I should hardly think it would be necessary, sir,” said the gardener gravely.
“But look here,” said the Colonel, “you must consider the philosophy of scarecrows. In theory, that is supposed to convince some rather simple-minded bird that I am walking in my garden. That thing with the unmentionable hat is Me. A trifle sketchy36, perhaps. Sort of impressionist portrait; but hardly likely to impress. Man with a hat like that would never be really firm with a sparrow. Conflict of wills, and all that, and I bet the sparrow would come out on top. By the way, what’s that stick tied on to it?”
[9]“I believe, sir,” said Archer, “that it is supposed to represent a gun.”
“Held at a highly unconvincing angle,” observed Crane. “Man with a hat like that would be sure to miss.”
“No, no,” answered his master carelessly. “As the poor fellow’s got such a rotten hat, I’ll give him mine. Like the scene of St. Martin and the beggar.”
“Give him yours,” repeated Archer respectfully, but faintly.
The Colonel took off his burnished38 top-hat and gravely placed it on the head of the South Sea idol at his feet. It had a queer effect of bringing the grotesque39 lump of stone to life, as if a goblin in a top-hat was grinning at the garden.
“You think the hat shouldn’t be quite new?” he inquired almost anxiously. “Not done among the best scarecrows, perhaps. Well, let’s see what we can do to mellow it a little.”
He whirled up his walking-stick over his head and laid a smacking40 stroke across the silk hat, smashing it over the hollow eyes of the idol.
“Softened with the touch of time now, I think,” he remarked, holding out the silken remnants to the gardener. “Put it on the scarecrow, my friend; I[10] don’t want it. You can bear witness it’s no use to me.”
“We must hurry up,” said the Colonel cheerfully, “I was early for church, but I’m afraid I’m a bit late now.”
“Did you propose to attend church without a hat, sir?” asked the other.
“Certainly not. Most irreverent,” said the Colonel. “Nobody should neglect to remove his hat on entering church. Well, if I haven’t got a hat, I shall neglect to remove it. Where is your reasoning power this morning? No, no, just dig up one of your cabbages.”
Once more the well-trained servant managed to repeat the word “Cabbages” with his own strict accent; but in its constriction42 there was a hint of strangulation.
“Yes, go and pull up a cabbage, there’s a good fellow,” said the Colonel. “I must really be getting along; I believe I heard it strike eleven.”
Mr. Archer moved heavily in the direction of the plot of cabbages, which swelled43 with monstrous44 contours and many colours; objects, perhaps, more worthy45 of the philosophic46 eye than is taken into account by the more flippant tongue. Vegetables are curious-looking things and less commonplace than they sound. If we called a cabbage a cactus47, or[11] some such queer name, we might see it as an equally queer thing.
These philosophical48 truths did the Colonel reveal by anticipating the dubious49 Archer, and dragging a great, green cabbage with its trailing root out of the earth. He then picked up a sort of pruning-knife and cut short the long tail of the root; scooped50 out the inside leaves so as to make a sort of hollow, and gravely reversing it, placed it on his head. Napoleon and other military princes have crowned themselves; and he, like the Cæsars, wore a wreath that was, after all, made of green leaves or vegetation. Doubtless there are other comparisons that might occur to any philosophical historian who should look at it in the abstract.
The people going to church certainly looked at it; but they did not look at it in the abstract. To them it appeared singularly concrete; and indeed incredibly solid. The inhabitants of Rowanmere and Heatherbrae followed the Colonel as he strode almost jauntily51 up the road, with feelings that no philosophy could for the moment meet. There seemed to be nothing to be said, except that one of the most respectable and respected of their neighbours, one who might even be called in a quiet way a pattern of good form if not a leader of fashion, was walking solemnly up to church with a cabbage on the top of his head.
There was indeed no corporate52 action to meet the[12] crisis. Their world was not one in which a crowd can collect to shout, and still less to jeer53. No rotten eggs could be collected from their tidy breakfast-tables; and they were not of the sort to throw cabbage-stalks at the cabbage. Perhaps there was just that amount of truth in the pathetically picturesque54 names on their front gates, names suggestive of mountains and mighty55 lakes concealed56 somewhere on the premises57. It was true that in one sense such a house was a hermitage. Each of these men lived alone and they could not be made into a mob. For miles around there was no public house and no public opinion.
As the Colonel approached the church porch and prepared reverently58 to remove his vegetarian59 headgear, he was hailed in a tone a little more hearty60 than the humane61 civility that was the slender bond of that society. He returned the greeting without embarrassment62, and paused a moment as the man who had spoken to him plunged64 into further speech. He was a young doctor named Horace Hunter, tall, handsomely dressed, and confident in manner; and though his features were rather plain and his hair rather red, he was considered to have a certain fascination65.
“Good morning, Colonel,” said the doctor in his resounding66 tones, “what a f—— what a fine day it is.”
Stars turned from their courses like comets, so[13] to speak, and the world swerved67 into wilder possibilities, at that crucial moment when Dr. Hunter corrected himself and said, “What a fine day!” instead of “What a funny hat!”
As to why he corrected himself, a true picture of what passed through his mind might sound rather fanciful in itself. It would be less than explicit68 to say he did so because of a long grey car waiting outside the White Lodge. It might not be a complete explanation to say it was due to a lady walking on stilts69 at a garden party. Some obscurity might remain, even if we said that it had something to do with a soft shirt and a nickname; nevertheless all these things mingled71 in the medical gentleman’s mind when he made his hurried decision. Above all, it might or might not be sufficient explanation to say that Horace Hunter was a very ambitious young man, that the ring in his voice and the confidence in his manner came from a very simple resolution to rise in the world, and that the world in question was rather worldly.
He liked to be seen talking so confidently to Colonel Crane on that Sunday parade. Crane was comparatively poor, but he knew People. And people who knew People knew what People were doing now; whereas people who didn’t know People could only wonder what in the world People would do next. A lady who came with the Duchess when she opened the Bazaar72 had nodded to Crane and[14] said, “Hullo, Stork,” and the doctor had deduced that it was a sort of family joke and not a momentary73 ornithological74 confusion. And it was the Duchess who had started all that racing75 on stilts, which the Vernon-Smiths had introduced at Heatherbrae. But it would have been devilish awkward not to have known what Mrs. Vernon-Smith meant when she said, “Of course you stilt70.” You never knew what they would start next. He remembered how he himself had thought the first man in a soft shirtfront was some funny fellow from nowhere; and then he had begun to see others here and there, and had found that it was not a faux pas, but a fashion. It was odd to imagine he would ever begin to see vegetable hats here and there, but you never could tell; and he wasn’t going to make the same mistake again. His first medical impulse had been to add to the Colonel’s fancy costume with a strait-waistcoat. But Crane did not look like a lunatic, and certainly did not look like a man playing a practical joke. He had not the stiff and self-conscious solemnity of the joker. He took it quite naturally. And one thing was certain: if it really was the latest thing, the doctor must take it as naturally as the Colonel did. So he said it was a fine day, and was gratified to learn that there was no disagreement on that question.
The doctor’s dilemma76, if we may apply the phrase, had been the whole neighbourhood’s dilemma. The[15] doctor’s decision was also the whole neighbourhood’s decision. It was not so much that most of the good people there shared in Hunter’s serious social ambitions, but rather that they were naturally prone78 to negative and cautious decisions. They lived in a delicate dread79 of being interfered81 with; and they were just enough to apply the principle by not interfering82 with other people. They had also a subconscious83 sense that the mild and respectable military gentleman would not be altogether an easy person to interfere80 with. The consequence was that the Colonel carried his monstrous green headgear about the streets of that suburb for nearly a week, and nobody ever mentioned the subject to him. It was about the end of that time (while the doctor had been scanning the horizon for aristocrats84 crowned with cabbage, and, not seeing any, was summoning his natural impudence85 to speak) that the final interruption came; and with the interruption the explanation.
The Colonel had every appearance of having forgotten all about the hat. He took it off and on like any other hat; he hung it on the hat-peg in his narrow front hall where there was nothing else but his sword hung on two hooks and an old brown map of the seventeenth century. He handed it to Archer when that correct character seemed to insist on his official right to hold it; he did not insist on his official right to brush it, for fear it should fall to pieces; but[16] he occasionally gave it a cautious shake, accompanied with a look of restrained distaste. But the Colonel himself never had any appearance of either liking86 or disliking it. The unconventional thing had already become one of his conventions—the conventions which he never considered enough to violate. It is probable, therefore, that what ultimately took place was as much of a surprise to him as to anybody. Anyhow, the explanation, or explosion, came in the following fashion.
Mr. Vernon-Smith, the mountaineer whose foot was on his native heath at Heatherbrae, was a small, dapper gentleman with a big-bridged nose, dark moustache, and dark eyes with a settled expression of anxiety, though nobody knew what there was to be anxious about in his very solid social existence. He was a friend of Dr. Hunter; one might almost say a humble87 friend. For he had the negative snobbishness88 that could only admire the positive and progressive snobbishness of that soaring and social figure. A man like Dr. Hunter likes to have a man like Mr. Smith, before whom he can pose as a perfect man of the world. What appears more extraordinary, a man like Mr. Smith really likes to have a man like Dr. Hunter to pose at him and swagger over him and snub him. Anyhow, Vernon-Smith had ventured to hint that the new hat of his neighbour Crane was not of a pattern familiar in every fashion-plate. And Dr. Hunter, bursting[17] with the secret of his own original diplomacy89, had snubbed the suggestion and snowed it under with frosty scorn. With shrewd, resolute90 gestures, with large allusive91 phrases, he had left on his friend’s mind the impression that the whole social world would dissolve if a word were said on so delicate a topic. Mr. Vernon-Smith formed a general idea that the Colonel would explode with a loud bang at the very vaguest allusion92 to vegetables, or the most harmless adumbration93 or verbal shadow of a hat. As usually happens in such cases, the words he was forbidden to say repeated themselves perpetually in his mind with the rhythmic94 pressure of a pulse. It was his temptation at the moment to call all houses hats and all visitors vegetables.
When Crane came out of his front gate that morning he found his neighbour Vernon-Smith standing95 outside, between the spreading laburnum and the lamp-post, talking to a young lady, a distant cousin of his family. This girl was an art student on her own—a little too much on her own for the standards of Heatherbrae, and, therefore (some would infer), yet further beyond those of White Lodge. Her brown hair was bobbed, and the Colonel did not admire bobbed hair. On the other hand, she had a rather attractive face, with honest brown eyes a little too wide apart, which diminished the impression of beauty but increased the impression of honesty. She also had a very fresh and[18] unaffected voice, and the Colonel had often heard it calling out scores at tennis on the other side of the garden wall. In some vague sort of way it made him feel old; at least, he was not sure whether he felt older than he was, or younger than he ought to be. It was not until they met under the lamp-post that he knew her name was Audrey Smith; and he was faintly thankful for the single monosyllable. Mr. Vernon-Smith presented her, and very nearly said: “May I introduce my cabbage?” instead of “my cousin.”
The Colonel, with unaffected dullness, said it was a fine day; and his neighbour, rallying from his last narrow escape, continued the talk with animation96. His manner, as when he poked97 his big nose and beady black eyes into local meetings and committees, was at once hesitating and emphatic98.
“This young lady is going in for Art,” he said; “a poor look-out, isn’t it? I expect we shall see her drawing in chalk on the paving-stones and expecting us to throw a penny into the—into a tray, or something.” Here he dodged99 another danger. “But, of course, she thinks she is going to be an R.A.”
“I hope not,” said the young woman hotly. “Pavement artists are much more honest than most of the R.A.’s.”
“I wish those friends of yours didn’t give you such revolutionary ideas,” said Mr. Vernon-Smith.[19] “My cousin knows the most dreadful cranks, vegetarians100 and—and Socialists102.” He chanced it, feeling that vegetarians were not quite the same as vegetables; and he felt sure the Colonel would share his horror of Socialists. “People who want us to be equal, and all that. What I say is—we’re not equal and we never can be. As I always say to Audrey—if all the property were divided to-morrow, it would go back into the same hands. It’s a law of nature, and if a man thinks he can get round a law of nature, why, he’s talking through his—I mean, he’s as mad as a——”
Recoiling103 from the omnipresent image, he groped madly in his mind for the alternative of a March hare. But before he could find it, the girl had cut in and completed his sentence. She smiled serenely104, and said in her clear and ringing tones:
“As mad as Colonel Crane’s hatter.”
It is not unjust to Mr. Vernon-Smith to say that he fled as from a dynamite105 explosion. It would be unjust to say that he deserted106 a lady in distress107, for she did not look in the least like a distressed108 lady, and he himself was a very distressed gentleman. He attempted to wave her indoors with some wild pretext109, and eventually vanished there himself with an equally random110 apology. But the other two took no notice of him; they continued to confront each other, and both were smiling.
“I think you must be the bravest man in England,”[20] she said. “I don’t mean anything about the war, or the D.S.O. and all that; I mean about this. Oh, yes, I do know a little about you, but there’s one thing I don’t know. Why do you do it?”
“I think it is you who are the bravest woman in England,” he answered, “or, at any rate, the bravest person in these parts. I’ve walked about this town for a week, feeling like the last fool in creation, and expecting somebody to say something. And not a soul has said a word. They seem all to be afraid of saying the wrong thing.”
“I think they’re deadly,” observed Miss Smith. “And if they don’t have cabbages for hats, it’s only because they have turnips111 for heads.”
“No,” said the Colonel gently; “I have many generous and friendly neighbours here, including your cousin. Believe me, there is a case for conventions, and the world is wiser than you know. You are too young not to be intolerant. But I can see you’ve got the fighting spirit; that is the best part of youth and intolerance. When you said that word just now, by Jove you looked like Britomart.”
“She is the Militant112 Suffragette in the Faerie Queene, isn’t she?” answered the girl. “I’m afraid I don’t know my English literature as well as you do. You see, I’m an artist, or trying to be one; and some people say that narrows a person. But I can’t help getting cross with all the varnished113 vulgarity[21] they talk about everything—look at what he said about Socialism.”
“It was a little superficial,” said Crane with a smile.
“And that,” she concluded, “is why I admire your hat, though I don’t know why you wear it.”
This trivial conversation had a curious effect on the Colonel. There went with it a sort of warmth and a sense of crisis that he had not known since the war. A sudden purpose formed itself in his mind, and he spoke63 like one stepping across a frontier.
“Miss Smith,” he said, “I wonder if I might ask you to pay me a further compliment. It may be unconventional, but I believe you do not stand on these conventions. An old friend of mine will be calling on me shortly, to wind up the rather unusual business or ceremonial of which you have chanced to see a part. If you would do me the honour to lunch with me to-morrow at half-past one, the true story of the cabbage awaits you. I promise that you shall hear the real reason. I might even say I promise you shall see the real reason.”
The Colonel took an intense interest in the appointments of the luncheon116 next day. With subconscious surprise he found himself not only interested,[22] but excited. Like many of his type, he took pleasure in doing such things well, and knew his way about in wine and cookery. But that would not alone explain his pleasure. For he knew that young women generally know very little about wine, and emancipated117 young women possibly least of all. And though he meant the cookery to be good, he knew that in one feature it would appear rather fantastic. Again, he was a good-natured gentleman who would always have liked young people to enjoy a luncheon party, as he would have liked a child to enjoy a Christmas tree. But there seemed no reason why he should be restless and expectant about it, as if he were the child himself. There was no reason why he should have a sort of happy insomnia118, like a child on Christmas Eve. There was really no excuse for his pacing up and down the garden with his cigar, smoking furiously far into the night. For as he gazed at the purple irises and the grey pool in the faint moonshine, something in his feelings passed as if from the one tint119 to the other; he had a new and unexpected reaction. For the first time he really hated the masquerade he had made himself endure. He wished he could smash the cabbage as he had smashed the top-hat. He was little more than forty years old; but he had never realized how much there was of what was dried and faded about his flippancy120, till he felt unexpectedly swelling121 within him the monstrous and solemn vanity of a young[23] man. Sometimes he looked up at the picturesque, the too picturesque, outline of the villa122 next door, dark against the moonrise, and thought he heard faint voices in it, and something like a laugh.
The visitor who called on the Colonel next morning may have been an old friend, but he was certainly an odd contrast. He was a very abstracted, rather untidy man in a rusty123 knickerbocker suit; he had a long head with straight hair of the dark red called auburn, one or two wisps of which stood on end however he brushed it, and a long face, clean-shaven and heavy about the jaw124 and chin, which he had a way of sinking and settling squarely into his cravat125. His name was Hood77, and he was apparently a lawyer, though he had not come on strictly legal business. Anyhow, he exchanged greetings with Crane with a quiet warmth and gratification, smiled at the old manservant as if he were an old joke, and showed every sign of an appetite for his luncheon.
The appointed day was singularly warm and bright and everything in the garden seemed to glitter; the goblin god of the South Seas seemed really to grin; and the scarecrow really to have a new hat. The irises round the pool were swinging and flapping in a light breeze; and he remembered they were called “flags” and thought of purple banners going into battle.
She had come suddenly round the corner of the[24] house. Her dress was of a dark but vivid blue, very plain and angular in outline, but not outrageously126 artistic127; and in the morning light she looked less like a schoolgirl and more like a serious woman of twenty-five or thirty; a little older and a great deal more interesting. And something in this morning seriousness increased the reaction of the night before. One single wave of thanksgiving went up from Crane to think that at least his grotesque green hat was gone and done with for ever. He had worn it for a week without caring a curse for anybody; but during that ten minutes’ trivial talk under the lamp-post, he felt as if he had suddenly grown donkey’s ears in the street.
He had been induced by the sunny weather to have a little table laid for three in a sort of veranda128 open to the garden. When the three sat down to it, he looked across at the lady and said: “I fear I must exhibit myself as a crank; one of those cranks your cousin disapproves129 of, Miss Smith. I hope it won’t spoil this little lunch for anybody else. But I am going to have a vegetarian meal.”
“Are you?” she said. “I should never have said you looked like a vegetarian.”
“Just lately I have only looked like a fool,” he said dispassionately; “but I think I’d sooner look a fool than a vegetarian in the ordinary way. This is rather a special occasion. Perhaps my friend Hood[25] had better begin; it’s really his story more than mine.”
“My name is Robert Owen Hood,” said that gentleman, rather sardonically130. “That’s how improbable reminiscences often begin; but the only point now is that my old friend here insulted me horribly by calling me Robin131 Hood.”
“I should have called it a compliment,” answered Audrey Smith. “But why did he call you Robin Hood?”
“Because I drew the long bow,” said the lawyer.
“But to do you justice,” said the Colonel, “it seems that you hit the bull’s-eye.”
As he spoke Archer came in bearing a dish which he placed before his master. He had already served the others with the earlier courses, but he carried this one with the pomp of one bringing in the boar’s head at Christmas. It consisted of a plain boiled cabbage.
“I was challenged to do something,” went on Hood, “which my friend here declared to be impossible. In fact, any sane132 man would have declared it to be impossible. But I did it for all that. Only my friend, in the heat of rejecting and ridiculing133 the notion, made use of a hasty expression. I might almost say he made a rash vow134.”
“My exact words were,” said Colonel Crane solemnly: “‘If you can do that, I’ll eat my hat.’”
[26]He leaned forward thoughtfully and began to eat it. Then he resumed in the same reflective way:
“You see, all rash vows135 are verbal or nothing. There might be a debate about the logical and literal way in which my friend Hood fulfilled his rash vow. But I put it to myself in the same pedantic136 sort of way. It wasn’t possible to eat any hat that I wore. But it might be possible to wear a hat that I could eat. Articles of dress could hardly be used for diet; but articles of diet could really be used for dress. It seemed to me that I might fairly be said to have made it my hat, if I wore it systematically137 as a hat and had no other, putting up with all the disadvantages. Making a blasted fool of myself was the fair price to be paid for the vow or wager138; for one ought always to lose something on a wager.”
And he rose from the table with a gesture of apology.
The girl stood up. “I think it’s perfectly139 splendid,” she said. “It’s as wild as one of those stories about looking for the Holy Grail.”
The lawyer also had risen, rather abruptly140, and stood stroking his long chin with his thumb and looking at his old friend under bent141 brows in a rather reflective manner.
“Well, you’ve subpœna’d me as a witness all right,” he said, “and now, with the permission of the court, I’ll leave the witness-box. I’m afraid I must[27] be going. I’ve got important business at home. Good-bye, Miss Smith.”
The girl returned his farewell a little mechanically; and Crane seemed to recover suddenly from a similar trance as he stepped after the retreating figure of his friend.
“I say, Owen,” he said hastily, “I’m sorry you’re leaving so early. Must you really go?”
“Yes,” replied Owen Hood gravely. “My private affairs are quite real and practical, I assure you.” His grave mouth worked a little humorously at the corners as he added: “The truth is, I don’t think I mentioned it, but I’m thinking of getting married.”
“Married!” repeated the Colonel, as if thunderstruck.
“Thanks for your compliments and congratulations, old fellow,” said the satiric142 Mr. Hood. “Yes, it’s all been thought out. I’ve even decided143 whom I am going to marry. She knows about it herself. She has been warned.”
“I really beg your pardon,” said the Colonel in great distress, “of course I congratulate you most heartily; and her even more heartily. Of course I’m delighted to hear it. The truth is, I was surprised ... not so much in that way....”
“Not so much in what way?” asked Hood. “I suppose you mean some would say I am on the way to be an old bachelor. But I’ve discovered it isn’t half so much a matter of years as of ways.[28] Men like me get elderly more by choice than chance; and there’s much more choice and less chance in life than your modern fatalists make out. For such people fatalism falsifies even chronology. They’re not unmarried because they’re old. They’re old because they’re unmarried.”
“Indeed you are mistaken,” said Crane earnestly. “As I say, I was surprised, but my surprise was not so rude as you think. It wasn’t that I thought there was anything unfitting about ... somehow it was rather the other way ... as if things could fit better than one thought ... as if—but anyhow, little as I know about it, I really do congratulate you.”
“I’ll tell you all about it before long,” replied his friend. “It’s enough to say just now that it was all bound up with my succeeding after all in doing—what I did. She was the inspiration, you know. I have done what is called an impossible thing; but believe me, she is the really impossible part of it.”
“Well, I must not keep you from such an impossible engagement,” said Crane smiling. “Really, I’m confoundedly glad to hear about all this. Well, good-bye for the present.”
Colonel Crane stood watching the square shoulders and russet mane of his old friend, as they disappeared down the road, in a rather indescribable state of mind. As he turned hastily back towards his garden and his other guest, he was conscious of a[29] change; things seemed different in some lightheaded and illogical fashion. He could not himself trace the connexion; indeed, he did not know whether it was a connexion or a disconnexion. He was very far from being a fool; but his brains were of the sort that are directed outwards144 to things; the brains of the soldier or the scientific man; and he had no practice in analysing his own mind. He did not quite understand why the news about Owen Hood should give him that dazed sense of a difference in things in general. Doubtless he was very fond of Owen Hood; but he had been fond of other people who had got married without especially disturbing the atmosphere of his own back garden. He even dimly felt that mere1 affection might have worked the other way; that it might have made him worry about Hood, and wonder whether Hood was making a fool of himself, or even feel suspicious or jealous of Mrs. Hood—if there had not been something else that made him feel quite the other way. He could not quite understand it; there seemed to be an increasing number of things that he could not understand. This world in which he himself wore garlands of green cabbage and in which his old friend the lawyer got married suddenly like a man going mad—this world was a new world, at once fresh and frightening, in which he could hardly understand the figures that were walking about, even his own. The flowers in the flower-pots had a new look about[30] them, at once bright and nameless; and even the line of vegetables beyond could not altogether depress him with the memories of recent levity145. Had he indeed been a prophet, or a visionary seeing the future, he might have seen that green line of cabbages extending infinitely146 like a green sea to the horizon. For he stood at the beginning of a story which was not to terminate until his incongruous cabbage had come to mean something that he had never meant by it. That green patch was to spread like a great green conflagration147 almost to the ends of the earth. But he was a practical person and the very reverse of a prophet; and like many other practical persons, he often did things without very clearly knowing what he was doing. He had the innocence148 of some patriarch or primitive149 hero in the morning of the world, founding more than he could himself realize of his legend and his line. Indeed he felt very much like somebody in the morning of the world; but beyond that he could grasp nothing.
Audrey Smith was standing not so very many yards away; for it was only for a few strides that he had followed his elder guest towards the gate. Yet her figure had fallen far enough back out of the foreground to take on the green framework of the garden; so that her dress might almost have been blue with a shade of distance. And when she spoke to him, even from that little way off, her voice took on inevitably150 a new suggestion of one calling out[31] familiarly and from afar, as one calls to an old companion. It moved him in a disproportionate fashion, though all that she said was:
“What became of your old hat?”
“I lost it,” he replied gravely, “obviously I had to lose it. I believe the scarecrow found it.”
“Oh, do let’s go and look at the scarecrow,” she cried.
He led her without a word to the kitchen-garden and gravely explained each of its outstanding features; from the serious Mr. Archer resting on his spade to the grotesque South Sea Island god grinning at the corner of the plot. He spoke as with an increasing solemnity and verbosity151, and all the time knew little or nothing of what he said.
At last she cut into his monologue152 with an abstraction that was almost rude; yet her brown eyes were bright and her sympathy undisguised.
“Don’t talk about it,” she cried with illogical enthusiasm. “It looks as if we were really right in the middle of the country. It’s as unique as the Garden of Eden. It’s simply the most delightful153 place——”
It was at this moment, for some unaccountable reason, that the Colonel who had lost his hat suddenly proceeded to lose his head. Standing in that grotesque vegetable scenery, a black and stiff yet somehow stately figure, he proceeded in the most traditional manner to offer the lady everything he possessed154, not forgetting the scarecrow or the cabbages;[32] a half-humorous memory of which returned to him with the boomerang of bathos.
“When I think of the encumbrances155 on the estate—” he concluded gloomily. “Well, there they are; a scarecrow and a cannibal fetish and a stupid man who has stuck in a rut of respectability and conventional ways.”
“Very conventional,” she said, “especially in his taste in hats.”
“That was the exception, I’m afraid,” he said earnestly. “You’d find those things very rare and most things very dull. I can’t help having fallen in love with you; but for all that we are in different worlds; and you belong to a younger world, which says what it thinks, and cannot see what most of our silences and our scruples156 meant.”
“I suppose we are very rude,” she said thoughtfully, “and you must certainly excuse me if I do say what I think.”
“I deserve no better,” he replied mournfully.
“Well, I think I must be in love with you too,” she replied calmly. “I don’t see what time has to do with being fond of people. You are the most original person I ever knew.”
“My dear, my dear,” he protested almost brokenly, “I fear you are making a mistake. Whatever else I am, I never set up to be original.”
“You must remember,” she replied, “that I have known a good many people who did set up to be[33] original. An Art School swarms157 with them; and there are any number among those socialist101 and vegetarian friends of mine you were talking about. They would think nothing of wearing cabbages on their heads, of course. Any one of them would be capable of getting inside a pumpkin158 if he could. Any one of them might appear in public dressed entirely159 in watercress. But that’s just it. They might well wear watercress for they are water-creatures; they go with the stream. They do those things because those things are done; because they are done in their own Bohemian set. Unconventionality is their convention. I don’t mind it myself; I think it’s great fun; but that doesn’t mean that I don’t know real strength or independence when I see it. All that is just molten and formless; but the really strong man is one who can make a mould and then break it. When a man like you can suddenly do a thing like that, after twenty years of habit, for the sake of his word, then somehow one really does feel that man is man and master of his fate.”
“I doubt if I am master of my fate,” replied Crane, “and I do not know whether I ceased to be yesterday or two minutes ago.”
He stood there for a moment like a man in heavy armour160. Indeed, the antiquated161 image is not inappropriate in more ways than one. The new world within him was so alien from the whole habit in which he lived, from the very gait and gestures of his[34] daily life, conducted through countless162 days, that his spirit had striven before it broke its shell. But it was also true that even if he could have done what every man wishes to do at such a moment, something supreme163 and satisfying, it would have been something in a sense formal or it would not have satisfied him. He was one of those to whom it is natural to be ceremonial. Even the music in his mind, too deep and distant for him to catch or echo, was the music of old and ritual dances and not of revelry; and it was not for nothing that he had built gradually about him that garden of the grey stone fountain and the great hedge of yew164. He bent suddenly and kissed her hand.
“I like that,” she said. “You ought to have powdered hair and a sword.”
“I apologize,” he said gravely, “no modern man is worthy of you. But indeed I fear, in every sense I am not a very modern man.”
“To tell the truth,” he observed mildly, “I had not any attention of resuming that one.”
“Silly,” she said briefly166, “I don’t mean that hat; I mean that sort of hat. As a matter of fact, there couldn’t be a finer hat than the cabbage.”
“My dear—” he protested; but she was looking at him quite seriously.
“I told you I was an artist, and didn’t know much[35] about literature,” she said. “Well, do you know, it really does make a difference. Literary people let words get between them and things. We do at least look at the things and not the names of the things. You think a cabbage is comic because the name sounds comic and even vulgar; something between ‘cab’ and ‘garbage,’ I suppose. But a cabbage isn’t really comic or vulgar. You wouldn’t think so if you simply had to paint it. Haven’t you seen Dutch and Flemish galleries, and don’t you know what great men painted cabbages? What they saw was certain lines and colours; very wonderful lines and colours.”
“It may be all very well in a picture,” he began doubtfully.
She suddenly laughed aloud.
“You idiot,” she cried; “don’t you know you looked perfectly splendid? The curves were like a great turban of leaves and the root rose like the spike167 of a helmet; it was rather like the turbaned helmets on some of Rembrandt’s figures, with the face like bronze in the shadows of green and purple. That’s the sort of thing artists can see, who keep their eyes and heads clear of words! And then you want to apologize for not wearing that stupid stovepipe covered with blacking, when you went about wearing a coloured crown like a king. And you were like a king in this country; for they were all afraid of you.”
As he continued a faint protest, her laughter took[36] on a more mischievous168 shade. “If you’d stuck to it a little longer, I swear they’d all have been wearing vegetables for hats. I swear I saw my cousin the other day standing with a sort of trowel, and looking irresolutely169 at a cabbage.”
Then, after a pause, she said with a beautiful irrelevancy170:
“What was it Mr. Hood did that you said he couldn’t do?”
But these are tales of topsy-turvydom even in the sense that they have to be told tail-foremost. And he who would know the answer to that question must deliver himself up to the intolerable tedium171 of reading the story of The Improbable Success of Mr. Owen Hood, and an interval172 must be allowed him before such torments173 are renewed.
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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logician
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| n.逻辑学家 | |
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prim
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| adj.拘泥形式的，一本正经的；n.循规蹈矩，整洁；adv.循规蹈矩地，整洁地 | |
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prosaic
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| adj.单调的，无趣的 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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suburban
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| adj.城郊的，在郊区的 | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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outskirts
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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alluring
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| adj.吸引人的，迷人的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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bleached
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| 漂白的，晒白的，颜色变浅的 | |
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middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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trenches
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| 深沟，地沟( trench的名词复数 )； 战壕 | |
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scrap
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| n.碎片；废料；v.废弃，报废 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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riveted
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| 铆接( rivet的过去式和过去分词 )； 把…固定住； 吸引； 引起某人的注意 | |
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factotum
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| n.杂役；听差 | |
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archer
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| n.射手，弓箭手 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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rustic
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| adj.乡村的，有乡村特色的；n.乡下人，乡巴佬 | |
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yokel
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| n.乡下人；农夫 | |
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articulation
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| n.（清楚的）发音；清晰度，咬合 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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mellow
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| adj.柔和的；熟透的；v.变柔和；(使)成熟 | |
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irises
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| n.虹( iris的名词复数 )；虹膜；虹彩；鸢尾（花） | |
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puddle
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| n.(雨)水坑，泥潭 | |
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strings
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| n.弦 | |
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reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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domain
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| n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围 | |
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idol
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| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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folklore
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| n.民间信仰，民间传说，民俗 | |
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relic
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| n.神圣的遗物，遗迹，纪念物 | |
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sketchy
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| adj.写生的，写生风格的，概略的 | |
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procure
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| vt.获得，取得，促成；vi.拉皮条 | |
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burnished
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| adj.抛光的，光亮的v.擦亮（金属等），磨光( burnish的过去式和过去分词 )；被擦亮，磨光 | |
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grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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smacking
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| 活泼的，发出响声的，精力充沛的 | |
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automaton
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| n.自动机器，机器人 | |
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constriction
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| 压缩； 紧压的感觉； 束紧； 压缩物 | |
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swelled
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| 增强( swell的过去式和过去分词 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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philosophic
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| adj.哲学的，贤明的 | |
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cactus
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| n.仙人掌 | |
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philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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dubious
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| adj.怀疑的，无把握的；有问题的，靠不住的 | |
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scooped
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| v.抢先报道( scoop的过去式和过去分词 )；（敏捷地）抱起；抢先获得；用铲[勺]等挖（洞等） | |
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jauntily
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| adv.心满意足地；洋洋得意地；高兴地；活泼地 | |
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corporate
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| adj.共同的，全体的；公司的，企业的 | |
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jeer
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| vi.嘲弄，揶揄；vt.奚落；n.嘲笑，讥评 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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reverently
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| adv.虔诚地 | |
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vegetarian
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| n.素食者；adj.素食的 | |
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hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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humane
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| adj.人道的，富有同情心的 | |
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embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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64
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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66
resounding
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| adj. 响亮的 | |
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67
swerved
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| v.（使）改变方向，改变目的( swerve的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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explicit
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| adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的 | |
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69
stilts
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| n.（支撑建筑物高出地面或水面的）桩子，支柱( stilt的名词复数 )；高跷 | |
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stilt
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| n.高跷，支柱 | |
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71
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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bazaar
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| n.集市，商店集中区 | |
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73
momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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ornithological
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| adj.鸟类学的 | |
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racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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dilemma
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| n.困境，进退两难的局面 | |
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hood
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| n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖 | |
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prone
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| adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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81
interfered
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| v.干预( interfere的过去式和过去分词 )；调停；妨碍；干涉 | |
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82
interfering
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| adj. 妨碍的 动词interfere的现在分词 | |
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83
subconscious
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| n./adj.潜意识(的)，下意识(的) | |
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84
aristocrats
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| n.贵族( aristocrat的名词复数 ) | |
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85
impudence
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| n.厚颜无耻；冒失；无礼 | |
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86
liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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87
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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88
snobbishness
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| 势利； 势利眼 | |
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89
diplomacy
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| n.外交；外交手腕，交际手腕 | |
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90
resolute
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| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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91
allusive
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| adj.暗示的；引用典故的 | |
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92
allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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93
adumbration
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| n.预示，预兆 | |
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94
rhythmic
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| adj.有节奏的，有韵律的 | |
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95
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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96
animation
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| n.活泼，兴奋，卡通片／动画片的制作 | |
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97
poked
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| v.伸出( poke的过去式和过去分词 )；戳出；拨弄；与（某人）性交 | |
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98
emphatic
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| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
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99
dodged
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| v.闪躲( dodge的过去式和过去分词 )；回避 | |
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100
vegetarians
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| n.吃素的人( vegetarian的名词复数 )；素食者；素食主义者；食草动物 | |
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101
socialist
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| n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的 | |
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102
socialists
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| 社会主义者( socialist的名词复数 ) | |
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103
recoiling
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| v.畏缩( recoil的现在分词 )；退缩；报应；返回 | |
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104
serenely
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| adv.安详地，宁静地，平静地 | |
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105
dynamite
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| n./vt.(用)炸药(爆破) | |
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106
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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107
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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108
distressed
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| 痛苦的 | |
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109
pretext
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| n.借口，托词 | |
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110
random
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| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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111
turnips
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| 芜青( turnip的名词复数 )； 芜菁块根； 芜菁甘蓝块根； 怀表 | |
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112
militant
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| adj.激进的，好斗的；n.激进分子，斗士 | |
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113
varnished
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| 浸渍过的，涂漆的 | |
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114
heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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115
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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116
luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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117
emancipated
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| adj.被解放的，不受约束的v.解放某人（尤指摆脱政治、法律或社会的束缚）( emancipate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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118
insomnia
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| n.失眠，失眠症 | |
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119
tint
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| n.淡色，浅色；染发剂；vt.着以淡淡的颜色 | |
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120
flippancy
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| n.轻率；浮躁；无礼的行动 | |
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121
swelling
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| n.肿胀 | |
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122
villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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123
rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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124
jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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125
cravat
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| n.领巾，领结；v.使穿有领结的服装，使结领结 | |
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126
outrageously
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| 凶残地； 肆无忌惮地； 令人不能容忍地； 不寻常地 | |
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127
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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128
veranda
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| n.走廊；阳台 | |
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129
disapproves
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| v.不赞成( disapprove的第三人称单数 ) | |
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130
sardonically
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| adv.讽刺地，冷嘲地 | |
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131
robin
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| n.知更鸟，红襟鸟 | |
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132
sane
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| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
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133
ridiculing
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| v.嘲笑，嘲弄，奚落( ridicule的现在分词 ) | |
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134
vow
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| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
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135
vows
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| 誓言( vow的名词复数 )； 郑重宣布，许愿 | |
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136
pedantic
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| adj.卖弄学问的；迂腐的 | |
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137
systematically
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| adv.有系统地 | |
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138
wager
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| n.赌注；vt.押注，打赌 | |
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139
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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140
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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141
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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142
satiric
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| adj.讽刺的，挖苦的 | |
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143
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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144
outwards
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| adj.外面的，公开的，向外的；adv.向外；n.外形 | |
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145
levity
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| n.轻率，轻浮，不稳定，多变 | |
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146
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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147
conflagration
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| n.建筑物或森林大火 | |
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148
innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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149
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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150
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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151
verbosity
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| n.冗长，赘言 | |
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152
monologue
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| n.长篇大论，（戏剧等中的）独白 | |
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153
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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154
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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155
encumbrances
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| n.负担( encumbrance的名词复数 )；累赘；妨碍；阻碍 | |
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156
scruples
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| n.良心上的不安( scruple的名词复数 )；顾虑，顾忌v.感到于心不安，有顾忌( scruple的第三人称单数 ) | |
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157
swarms
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| 蜂群，一大群( swarm的名词复数 ) | |
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158
pumpkin
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| n.南瓜 | |
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159
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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160
armour
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| （=armor）n.盔甲；装甲部队 | |
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161
antiquated
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| adj.陈旧的，过时的 | |
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162
countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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163
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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164
yew
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| n.紫杉属树木 | |
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165
battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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166
briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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167
spike
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| n.长钉，钉鞋；v.以大钉钉牢，使...失效 | |
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168
mischievous
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| adj.调皮的，恶作剧的，有害的，伤人的 | |
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169
irresolutely
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| adv.优柔寡断地 | |
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170
irrelevancy
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| n.不恰当，离题，不相干的事物 | |
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171
tedium
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| n.单调；烦闷 | |
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172
interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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173
torments
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| （肉体或精神上的）折磨，痛苦( torment的名词复数 )； 造成痛苦的事物[人] | |
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