Of All Things Part 13

"By Ereshkigal," he swore softly to himself, "I'll do it."

No sooner had he spoken than he came suddenly out of the tangle of gymnosperms through whose leaves, needle-like and dest.i.tute of oil-glands as they were, he had been making his way, and emerged to a full view of the broad sweep of the Lake of Zug, just where the Lorze enters at its northern extremity and one and a quarter miles east of where it issues again to pursue its course toward the Reuss. Zug, at this point, is 1,368 feet above sea-level, and boasted its first steamer in 1852.

"Well," he sighed, as he gazed upon the broad area of subsidence, "if I were now an exarch, whose dignity was, at one time, intermediate between the Patriarchal and the Metropolitan and from whose name has come that of the politico-religious party, the Exarchists, I should not be here day-dreaming. I should be far away in Footscray, a city of Bourke County, Victoria, Australia, pop. (1901) 18,301."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "He came suddenly out of the tangle of gymnosperms."]

And as he said this his eyes filled with tears, and under his skin, brown as fustic, there spread a faint flush, such as is often formed by citrocyde, or by pyrochloric acid when acting on uncured leather.

Far down in the valley the natives were celebrating the birthday of Gambrinus, a mythical Flemish king who is credited with the first brewing of beer. The sound of their voices set in motion longitudinal sound waves, and these, traveling through the surrounding medium, met the surface separating two media and were in part reflected, traveling back from the surface into the first medium again with the velocity with which they approached it, as depicted in Fig. 10. This caused the echo for which the Lake of Zug is justly famous.

The twilight began to deepen and from far above came the twinkling signals of, first, Bootes, then Coma Berenices, followed, awhile later, by Ursa Major and her little brother, Ursa Minor.

"The stars are clear to-night," he sighed. "I wonder if they are visible from the dacite elevation on which SHE lives."

His was an untrained mind. His only school had been the Eleatic School, the contention of which was that the true explanation of things lies in the conception of a universal unity of being, or the All-ness of One.

But he knew what he liked.

In the calm light of the stars he felt as if a uban had been lifted from his heart, 5 ubans being equal to 1 quat, 6 quats to 1 ammat and 120 ammats to 1 sos.

He was free again.

Turning, he walked swiftly down into the valley, pa.s.sing returning peasants with their baa-poots, and soon came in sight of the s.h.i.+ning lamps of the small but carefully built pooroos which lined the road.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "She turned like a frightened aardvark." (Male, greatly reduced.)]

Reaching the corner he saw the village epi peering over the tree-tops, and swarms of cicada, with the toothed famoras of their anterior legs mingling in a sleepy drone, like many cichlids. It was all very home-like to the wanderer.

Suddenly there appeared on a neighboring eminence a party of guisards, such as, during the Saturnalia, and from the Nativity till the Epiphany were accustomed to disport themselves in odd costumes; all clad in clouting, and evidently returning from taking part in the celebration.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Barnaby Bernard Weenix." (1777-1829.)]

As they drew nearer, our hero noticed a young woman in the front rank who was playing folk-songs on a cromorne with a double-reed mouth-piece enclosed in an air-reservoir.

In spite of the detritus wrought by the festival, there was something familiar about the buccinator of her face and her little mannerism of elevating her second phalanx. It struck him like the flash of a cloud highly charged by the coalescence of drops of vapor. He approached her, tenderly, reverently.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Why not to Wem?" (From a contemporaneous print.)]

"Lange, Anne Francoise Elizabeth," he said, "I know you. You are a French actress, born in Genoa on the seventeenth of September, 1772, and you made your first appearance on the stage in _L'Ecossaise_ in 1788. Your talent and your beauty gave you an enormous success in _Pamela_. It has taken me years to find you, but now we are united at last."

The girl turned like a frightened aardvark, still holding the cromorne in her hand. Then she smiled.

"Weenix, Barnaby Bernard (1777-1829)," she said very slowly, "you started business as a publisher in London about 1797."

They looked at each other for a moment in silence. He was the first to speak.

"Miss Lange, Anne," he said, "let us go together to Lar--and be happy there--happy as two ais, or three-toed South American sloths."

She lowered her eyes.

"I will go with you Mr. Weenix-Barney," she said, "to the ends of the earth. But why to Lar? Why not to Wem?"

"Because," said the young man, "Lar is the capital of Laristan, in 27 degrees, 30 minutes N., 180 miles from s.h.i.+raz, and contains an old bazaar consisting of four arcades each 180 feet long."

Their eyes met, and she placed her hands in his.

And, from the woods, came the mellow whinnying of a herd of vip, the wool of which is highly valued for weaving.

XVII

THE Pa.s.sING OF THE ORTHODOX PARADOX

Whatever irreparable harm may have been done to Society by the recent epidemic of crook, s.e.x and other dialect plays, one great alleviation has resulted. They have driven up-stage, for the time being, the characters who exist on tea and repartee in "The drawing-room of Sir Arthur Peaversham's town house, Grosvenor Square. Time: late Autumn."

A person in a crook play may have talked underworld patois which no self-respecting criminal would have allowed himself to utter, but he did not sit on a divan and evolve abnormal _bons mots_ with each and every breath. The misguided and misinformed daughter in the Self and s.e.x Play may have lisped words which only an interne should hear, but she did not offer a succession of brilliant but meaningless paradoxes as a subst.i.tute for real conversation.

Continuously snappy back-talk is now encountered chiefly in such acts as those of "c.o.o.ney & LeBlanc, the Eccentric Comedy Dancing Team."

And even _they_ manage to sc.r.a.pe along without the paradoxes.

But there was a time, beginning with the Oscar Wilde era, when no unprotected thought was safe.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Snappy back-talk is now encountered chiefly in such acts as 'c.o.o.ney & LeBlanc, the Eccentric Comedy Dancing Team.'"]

It might be seized at any moment by an English Duke or a Lady Agatha and strangled to death. Even the butlers in the late 'eighties were wits, and served epigrams with cuc.u.mber sandwiches; and a person entering one of these drawing-rooms and talking in connected sentences--easily understood by everybody--each with one subject, predicate and meaning, would have been looked upon as a high cla.s.s moron. One might as well have gone to a dinner at Lady Coventry's without one's collar, as without one's kit of trained paradoxes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The butlers served epigrams with the cuc.u.mber sandwiches."]

A late Autumn afternoon in one of these semi-Oscar Wilde plays, for instance, would run something like this:

SCENE--_The Octagon Room in Lord Raymond Eaveston's Manor House in Strops.h.i.+re._

LADY EAVESTON and SIR THOMAS WAFFLETON _are discovered, arranging red flowers in a vase_.

SIR T.: I detest red flowers; they are so yellow.

LADY E.: What a cynic you are, Sir Thomas. I really must not listen to you or I shall hear something that you say.

SIR T.: Not at all, my dear Lady Eaveston. I detest people who listen closely; they are so inattentive.

LADY E.: Pray do not be a.n.a.lytical, my dear Sir Thomas. When people are extremely a.n.a.lytical with me I am sure that they are superficial, and, to me, nothing is more abominable than superficiality, unless perhaps it is an intolerable degree of thoroughness.

(_Enter Meadows, the Butler_)