Manalive Part 24

"'They SAID it was England,' said my imbecile, conspiratorially.

'They said it was Kent. But Kentish men are such liars one can't believe anything they say.'

"'Monsieur,' I said, 'you must pardon me. I am elderly, and the ~fumisteries~ of the young men are beyond me.

I go by common sense, or, at the largest, by that extension of applied common sense called science.'

"'Science!' cried the stranger. 'There is only one good thing science ever discovered--a good thing, good tidings of great joy-- that the world is round.'

"I told him with civility that his words conveyed no impression to my intelligence. 'I mean,' he said, 'that going right round the world is the shortest way to where you are already.'

"'Is it not even shorter,' I asked, 'to stop where you are?'

"'No, no, no!' he cried emphatically. 'That way is long and very weary.

At the end of the world, at the back of the dawn, I shall find the wife I really married and the house that is really mine.

And that house will have a greener lamp-post and a redder pillar-box.

Do you,' he asked with a sudden intensity, 'do you never want to rush out of your house in order to find it?'

"'No, I think not,' I replied; 'reason tells a man from the first to adapt his desires to the probable supply of life.

I remain here, content to fulfil the life of man.

All my interests are here, and most of my friends, and--'

"'And yet,' he cried, starting to his almost terrific height, 'you made the French Revolution!'

"'Pardon me,' I said, 'I am not quite so elderly.

A relative perhaps.'

"'I mean your sort did!' exclaimed this personage.

'Yes, your d.a.m.ned smug, settled, sensible sort made the French Revolution. Oh! I know some say it was no good, and you're just back where you were before. Why, blast it all, that's just where we all want to be--back where we were before!

That is revolution--going right round! Every revolution, like a repentance, is a return.'

"He was so excited that I waited till he had taken his seat again, and then said something indifferent and soothing; but he struck the tiny table with his colossal fist and went on.

"'I am going to have a revolution, not a French Revolution, but an English Revolution. G.o.d has given to each tribe its own type of mutiny.

The Frenchmen march against the citadel of the city together; the Englishman marches to the outskirts of the city, and alone. But I am going to turn the world upside down, too. I'm going to turn myself upside down.

I'm going to walk upside down in the cursed upsidedownland of the Antipodes, where trees and men hang head downward in the sky. But my revolution, like yours, like the earth's, will end up in the holy, happy place-- the celestial, incredible place--the place where we were before.'

"With these remarks, which can scarcely be reconciled with reason, he leapt from the seat and strode away into the twilight, swinging his pole and leaving behind him an excessive payment, which also pointed to some loss of mental balance.

This is all I know of the episode of the man landed from the fishing-boat, and I hope it may serve the interests of justice.-- Accept, Sir, the a.s.surances of the very high consideration, with which I have the honour to be your obedient servant, "Jules Durobin."

"The next doc.u.ment in our dossier," continued Inglewood, "comes from the town of Crazok, in the central plains of Russia, and runs as follows:--

"Sir,--My name is Paul Nickolaiovitch: I am the stationmaster at the station near Crazok. The great trains go by across the plains taking people to China, but very few people get down at the platform where I have to watch. This makes my life rather lonely, and I am thrown back much upon the books I have.

But I cannot discuss these very much with my neighbours, for enlightened ideas have not spread in this part of Russia so much as in other parts. Many of the peasants round here have never heard of Bernard Shaw.

"I am a Liberal, and do my best to spread Liberal ideas; but since the failure of the revolution this has been even more difficult.

The revolutionists committed many acts contrary to the pure principles of humanitarianism, with which indeed, owing to the scarcity of books, they were ill acquainted. I did not approve of these cruel acts, though provoked by the tyranny of the government; but now there is a tendency to reproach all Intelligents with the memory of them.

This is very unfortunate for Intelligents.

"It was when the railway strike was almost over, and a few trains came through at long intervals, that I stood one day watching a train that had come in. Only one person got out of the train, far away up at the other end of it, for it was a very long train.

It was evening, with a cold, greenish sky. A little snow had fallen, but not enough to whiten the plain, which stretched away a sort of sad purple in all directions, save where the flat tops of some distant tablelands caught the evening light like lakes.

As the solitary man came stamping along on the thin snow by the train he grew larger and larger; I thought I had never seen so large a man.

But he looked even taller than he was, I think, because his shoulders were very big and his head comparatively little.

From the big shoulders hung a tattered old jacket, striped dull red and dirty white, very thin for the winter, and one hand rested on a huge pole such as peasants rake in weeds with to burn them.

"Before he had traversed the full length of the train he was entangled in one of those knots of rowdies that were the embers of the extinct revolution, though they mostly disgraced themselves upon the government side.

I was just moving to his a.s.sistance, when he whirled up his rake and laid out right and left with such energy that he came through them without scathe and strode right up to me, leaving them staggered and really astonished.

"Yet when he reached me, after so abrupt an a.s.sertion of his aim, he could only say rather dubiously in French that he wanted a house.

"'There are not many houses to be had round here,' I answered in the same language, 'the district has been very disturbed.

A revolution, as you know, has recently been suppressed.

Any further building--'

"'Oh! I don't mean that,' he cried; 'I mean a real house--a live house.

It really is a live house, for it runs away from me.'

"'I am ashamed to say that something in his phrase or gesture moved me profoundly. We Russians are brought up in an atmosphere of folk-lore, and its unfortunate effects can still be seen in the bright colours of the children's dolls and of the ikons.

For an instant the idea of a house running away from a man gave me pleasure, for the enlightenment of man moves slowly.

"'Have you no other house of your own?' I asked.

"'I have left it,' he said very sadly. 'It was not the house that grew dull, but I that grew dull in it. My wife was better than all women, and yet I could not feel it.'

"'And so,' I said with sympathy, 'you walked straight out of the front door, like a masculine Nora.'

"'Nora?' he inquired politely, apparently supposing it to be a Russian word.

"'I mean Nora in "The Doll's House,"' I replied.

"At this he looked very much astonished, and I knew he was an Englishman; for Englishmen always think that Russians study nothing but 'ukases.'

"'"The Doll's House"?' he cried vehemently; 'why, that is just where Ibsen was so wrong! Why, the whole aim of a house is to be a doll's house.

Don't you remember, when you were a child, how those little windows WERE windows, while the big windows weren't. A child has a doll's house, and shrieks when a front door opens inwards. A banker has a real house, yet how numerous are the bankers who fail to emit the faintest shriek when their real front doors open inwards.'

"Something from the folk-lore of my infancy still kept me foolishly silent; and before I could speak, the Englishman had leaned over and was saying in a sort of loud whisper, 'I have found out how to make a big thing small.

I have found out how to turn a house into a doll's house. Get a long way off it: G.o.d lets us turn all things into toys by his great gift of distance. Once let me see my old brick house standing up quite little against the horizon, and I shall want to go back to it again.

I shall see the funny little toy lamp-post painted green against the gate, and all the dear little people like dolls looking out of the window.

For the windows really open in my doll's house.'

"'But why?' I asked, 'should you wish to return to that particular doll's house? Having taken, like Nora, the bold step against convention, having made yourself in the conventional sense disreputable, having dared to be free, why should you not take advantage of your freedom?

As the greatest modern writers have pointed out, what you called your marriage was only your mood. You have a right to leave it all behind, like the clippings of your hair or the parings of your nails.

Having once escaped, you have the world before you. Though the words may seem strange to you, you are free in Russia.'

"He sat with his dreamy eyes on the dark circles of the plains, where the only moving thing was the long and labouring trail of smoke out of the railway engine, violet in tint, volcanic in outline, the one hot and heavy cloud of that cold clear evening of pale green.

"'Yes,' he said with a huge sigh, 'I am free in Russia. You are right.

I could really walk into that town over there and have love all over again, and perhaps marry some beautiful woman and begin again, and n.o.body could ever find me. Yes, you have certainly convinced me of something.'