Chapter Chapter 7 · THE TEMPLE OF SILENCE

. THE TEMPLE OF SILENCE

Harold March and the few who cultivated the friendship of Horne

Fisher, especially if they saw something of him in his own social

setting, were conscious of a certain solitude in his very

sociability. They seemed to be always meeting his relations and

never meeting his family. Perhaps it would be truer to say that they

saw much of his family and nothing of his home. His cousins and

connections ramified like a labyrinth all over the governing class

of Great Britain, and he seemed to be on good, or at least on

good-humored, terms with most of them. For Horne Fisher was

remarkable for a curious impersonal information and interest

touching all sorts of topics, so that one could sometimes fancy that

his culture, like his colorless, fair mustache and pale, drooping

features, had the neutral nature of a chameleon. Anyhow, he could

always get on with viceroys and Cabinet Ministers and all the great

men responsible for great departments, and talk to each of them on

his own subject, on the branch of study with which he was most

seriously concerned. Thus he could converse with the Minister for

War about silkworms, with the Minister of Education about detective

stories, with the Minister of Labor about Limoges enamel, and with

the Minister of Missions and Moral Progress (if that be his correct

title) about the pantomime boys of the last four decades. And as the

first was his first cousin, the second his second cousin, the third

his brother-in-law, and the fourth his uncle by marriage, this

conversational versatility certainly served in one sense to create a

happy family. But March never seemed to get a glimpse of that

domestic interior to which men of the middle classes are accustomed

in their friendships, and which is indeed the foundation of

friendship and love and everything else in any sane and stable

society. He wondered whether Horne Fisher was both an orphan and an

only child.

It was, therefore, with something like a start that he found that

Fisher had a brother, much more prosperous and powerful than

himself, though hardly, March thought, so entertaining. Sir Henry

Harland Fisher, with half the alphabet after his name, was something

at the Foreign Office far more tremendous than the Foreign

Secretary. Apparently, it ran in the family, after all; for it

seemed there was another brother, Ashton Fisher, in India, rather

more tremendous than the Viceroy. Sir Henry Fisher was a heavier,

but handsomer edition of his brother, with a brow equally bald, but

much more smooth. He was very courteous, but a shade patronizing,

not only to March, but even, as March fancied, to Horne Fisher as

well. The latter gentleman, who had many intuitions about the

half-formed thoughts of others, glanced at the topic himself as they

came away from the great house in Berkeley Square.

"Why, don't you know," he observed quietly, "that I am the fool of

the family?"

"It must be a clever family," said Harold March, with a smile.

"Very gracefully expressed," replied Fisher; "that is the best of

having a literary training. Well, perhaps it is an exaggeration to

say I am the fool of the family. It's enough to say I am the failure

of the family."

"It seems queer to me that you should fail especially," remarked the

journalist. "As they say in the examinations, what did you fail in?"

"Politics," replied his friend. "I stood for Parliament when I was

quite a young man and got in by an enormous majority, with loud

cheers and chairing round the town. Since then, of course, I've been

rather under a cloud."

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand the 'of course,'" answered

March, laughing.

"That part of it isn't worth understanding," said Fisher. "But as a

matter of fact, old chap, the other part of it was rather odd and

interesting. Quite a detective story in its way, as well as the

first lesson I had in what modern politics are made of. If you like,

I'll tell you all about it." And the following, recast in a less

allusive and conversational manner, is the story that he told.

Nobody privileged of late years to meet Sir Henry Harland Fisher

would believe that he had ever been called Harry. But, indeed, he

had been boyish enough when a boy, and that serenity which shone on

him through life, and which now took the form of gravity, had once

taken the form of gayety. His friends would have said that he was

all the more ripe in his maturity for having been young in his

youth. His enemies would have said that he was still light minded,

but no longer light hearted. But in any case, the whole of the story

Horne Fisher had to tell arose out of the accident which had made

young Harry Fisher private secretary to Lord Saltoun. Hence his

later connection with the Foreign Office, which had, indeed, come to

him as a sort of legacy from his lordship when that great man was

the power behind the throne. This is not the place to say much about

Saltoun, little as was known of him and much as there was worth

knowing. England has had at least three or four such secret

statesmen. An aristocratic polity produces every now and then an

aristocrat who is also an accident, a man of intellectual

independence and insight, a Napoleon born in the purple. His vast

work was mostly invisible, and very little could be got out of him

in private life except a crusty and rather cynical sense of humor.

But it was certainly the accident of his presence at a family dinner

of the Fishers, and the unexpected opinion he expressed, which

turned what might have been a dinner-table joke into a sort of small

sensational novel.

Save for Lord Saltoun, it was a family party of Fishers, for the

only other distinguished stranger had just departed after dinner,

leaving the rest to their coffee and cigars. This had been a figure

of some interest--a young Cambridge man named Eric Hughes who was

the rising hope of the party of Reform, to which the Fisher family,

along with their friend Saltoun, had long been at least formally

attached. The personality of Hughes was substantially summed up in

the fact that he talked eloquently and earnestly through the whole

dinner, but left immediately after to be in time for an appointment.

All his actions had something at once ambitious and conscientious;

he drank no wine, but was slightly intoxicated with words. And his

face and phrases were on the front page of all the newspapers just

then, because he was contesting the safe seat of Sir Francis Verner

in the great by-election in the west. Everybody was talking about

the powerful speech against squirarchy which he had just delivered;

even in the Fisher circle everybody talked about it except Horne

Fisher himself who sat in a corner, lowering over the fire.

"We jolly well have to thank him for putting some new life into the

old party," Ashton Fisher was saying. "This campaign against the old

squires just hits the degree of democracy there is in this county.

This act for extending county council control is practically his

bill; so you may say he's in the government even before he's in the

House."

"One's easier than the other," said Harry, carelessly. "I bet the

squire's a bigger pot than the county council in that county. Verner

is pretty well rooted; all these rural places are what you call

reactionary. Damning aristocrats won't alter it."

"He damns them rather well," observed Ashton. "We never had a

better meeting than the one in Barkington, which generally goes

Constitutional. And when he said, 'Sir Francis may boast of blue

blood; let us show we have red blood,' and went on to talk about

manhood and liberty, the room simply rose at him."

"Speaks very well," said Lord Saltoun, gruffly, making his only

contribution to the conversation so far.

Then the almost equally silent Horne Fisher suddenly spoke, without

taking his brooding eyes off the fire.

"What I can't understand," he said, "is why nobody is ever slanged

for the real reason."

"Hullo!" remarked Harry, humorously, "you beginning to take notice?"

"Well, take Verner," continued Horne Fisher. "If we want to attack

Verner, why not attack him? Why compliment him on being a romantic

reactionary aristocrat? Who is Verner? Where does he come from? His

name sounds old, but I never heard of it before, as the man said of

the Crucifixion. Why talk about his blue blood? His blood may be

gamboge yellow with green spots, for all anybody knows. All we know

is that the old squire, Hawker, somehow ran through his money (and

his second wife's, I suppose, for she was rich enough), and sold the

estate to a man named Verner. What did he make his money in? Oil?

Army contracts?"

"I don't know," said Saltoun, looking at him thoughtfully.

"First thing I ever knew you didn't know," cried the exuberant

Harry.

"And there's more, besides," went on Horne Fisher, who seemed to

have suddenly found his tongue. "If we want country people to vote

for us, why don't we get somebody with some notion about the

country? We don't talk to people in Threadneedle Street about

nothing but turnips and pigsties. Why do we talk to people in

Somerset about nothing but slums and socialism? Why don't we give

the squire's land to the squire's tenants, instead of dragging in

the county council?"

"Three acres and a cow," cried Harry, emitting what the

Parliamentary reports call an ironical cheer.

"Yes," replied his brother, stubbornly. "Don't you think

agricultural laborers would rather have three acres and a cow than

three acres of printed forms and a committee? Why doesn't somebody

start a yeoman party in politics, appealing to the old traditions of

the small landowner? And why don't they attack men like Verner for

what they are, which is something about as old and traditional as an

American oil trust?"

"You'd better lead the yeoman party yourself," laughed Harry.

"Don't you think it would be a joke, Lord Saltoun, to see my brother

and his merry men, with their bows and bills, marching down to

Somerset all in Lincoln green instead of Lincoln and Bennet hats?"

"No," answered Old Saltoun, "I don't think it would be a joke. I

think it would be an exceedingly serious and sensible idea."

"Well, I'm jiggered!" cried Harry Fisher, staring at him. "I said

just now it was the first fact you didn't know, and I should say

this is the first joke you didn't see."

"I've seen a good many things in my time," said the old man, in his

rather sour fashion. "I've told a good many lies in my time, too,

and perhaps I've got rather sick of them. But there are lies and

lies, for all that. Gentlemen used to lie just as schoolboys lie,

because they hung together and partly to help one another out. But

I'm damned if I can see why we should lie for these cosmopolitan

cads who only help themselves. They're not backing us up any more;

they're simply crowding us out. If a man like your brother likes to

go into Parliament as a yeoman or a gentleman or a Jacobite or an

Ancient Briton, I should say it would be a jolly good thing."

In the rather startled silence that followed Horne Fisher sprang to

his feet and all his dreary manner dropped off him.

"I'm ready to do it to-morrow," he cried. "I suppose none of you

fellows would back me up."

Then Harry Fisher showed the finer side of his impetuosity. He made

a sudden movement as if to shake hands.

"You're a sport," he said, "and I'll back you up, if nobody else

will. But we can all back you up, can't we? I see what Lord Saltoun

means, and, of course, he's right. He's always right."

"So I will go down to Somerset," said Horne Fisher.

"Yes, it is on the way to Westminster," said Lord Saltoun, with a

smile.

And so it happened that Horne Fisher arrived some days later at the

little station of a rather remote market town in the west,

accompanied by a light suitcase and a lively brother. It must not be

supposed, however, that the brother's cheerful tone consisted

entirely of chaff. He supported the new candidate with hope as well

as hilarity; and at the back of his boisterous partnership there was

an increasing sympathy and encouragement. Harry Fisher had always

had an affection for his more quiet and eccentric brother, and was

now coming more and more to have a respect for him. As the campaign

proceeded the respect increased to ardent admiration. For Harry was

still young, and could feel the sort of enthusiasm for his captain

in electioneering that a schoolboy can feel for his captain in

cricket.

Nor was the admiration undeserved. As the new three-cornered

contest developed it became apparent to others besides his devoted

kinsman that there was more in Horne Fisher than had ever met the

eye. It was clear that his outbreak by the family fireside had been

but the culmination of a long course of brooding and studying on the

question. The talent he retained through life for studying his

subject, and even somebody else's subject, had long been

concentrated on this idea of championing a new peasantry against a

new plutocracy. He spoke to a crowd with eloquence and replied to an

individual with humor, two political arts that seemed to come to him

naturally. He certainly knew much more about rural problems than

either Hughes, the Reform candidate, or Verner, the Constitutional

candidate. And he probed those problems with a human curiosity, and

went below the surface in a way that neither of them dreamed of

doing. He soon became the voice of popular feelings that are never

found in the popular press. New angles of criticism, arguments that

had never before been uttered by an educated voice, tests and

comparisons that had been made only in dialect by men drinking in

the little local public houses, crafts half forgotten that had come

down by sign of hand and tongue from remote ages when their fathers

were free--all this created a curious and double excitement. It

startled the well informed by being a new and fantastic idea they

had never encountered. It startled the ignorant by being an old and

familiar idea they never thought to have seen revived. Men saw

things in a new light, and knew not even whether it was the sunset

or the dawn.

Practical grievances were there to make the movement formidable. As

Fisher went to and fro among the cottages and country inns, it was

borne in on him without difficulty that Sir Francis Verner was a

very bad landlord. Nor was the story of his acquisition of the land

any more ancient and dignified than he had supposed; the story was

well known in the county and in most respects was obvious enough.

Hawker, the old squire, had been a loose, unsatisfactory sort of

person, had been on bad terms with his first wife (who died, as some

said, of neglect), and had then married a flashy South American

Jewess with a fortune. But he must have worked his way through this

fortune also with marvelous rapidity, for he had been compelled to

sell the estate to Verner and had gone to live in South America,

possibly on his wife's estates. But Fisher noticed that the laxity

of the old squire was far less hated than the efficiency of the new

squire. Verner's history seemed to be full of smart bargains and

financial flutters that left other people short of money and temper.

But though he heard a great deal about Verner, there was one thing

that continually eluded him; something that nobody knew, that even

Saltoun had not known. He could not find out how Verner had

originally made his money.

"He must have kept it specially dark," said Horne Fisher to himself.

"It must be something he's really ashamed of. Hang it all! what _is_

a man ashamed of nowadays?"

And as he pondered on the possibilities they grew darker and more

distorted in his mind; he thought vaguely of things remote and

repulsive, strange forms of slavery or sorcery, and then of ugly

things yet more unnatural but nearer home. The figure of Verner

seemed to be blackened and transfigured in his imagination, and to

stand against varied backgrounds and strange skies.

As he strode up a village street, brooding thus, his eyes

encountered a complete contrast in the face of his other rival, the

Reform candidate. Eric Hughes, with his blown blond hair and eager

undergraduate face, was just getting into his motor car and saying a

few final words to his agent, a sturdy, grizzled man named Gryce.

Eric Hughes waved his hand in a friendly fashion; but Gryce eyed him

with some hostility. Eric Hughes was a young man with genuine

political enthusiasms, but he knew that political opponents are

people with whom one may have to dine any day. But Mr. Gryce was a

grim little local Radical, a champion of the chapel, and one of

those happy people whose work is also their hobby. He turned his

back as the motor car drove away, and walked briskly up the sunlit

high street of the little town, whistling, with political papers

sticking out of his pocket.

Fisher looked pensively after the resolute figure for a moment, and

then, as if by an impulse, began to follow it. Through the busy

market place, amid the baskets and barrows of market day, under the

painted wooden sign of the Green Dragon, up a dark side entry, under

an arch, and through a tangle of crooked cobbled streets the two

threaded their way, the square, strutting figure in front and the

lean, lounging figure behind him, like his shadow in the sunshine.

At length they came to a brown brick house with a brass plate, on

which was Mr. Gryce's name, and that individual turned and beheld

his pursuer with a stare.

"Could I have a word with you, sir?" asked Horne Fisher, politely.

The agent stared still more, but assented civilly, and led the other

into an office littered with leaflets and hung all round with highly

colored posters which linked the name of Hughes with all the higher

interests of humanity.

"Mr. Horne Fisher, I believe," said Mr. Gryce. "Much honored by the

call, of course. Can't pretend to congratulate you on entering the

contest, I'm afraid; you won't expect that. Here we've been keeping

the old flag flying for freedom and reform, and you come in and

break the battle line."

For Mr. Elijah Gryce abounded in military metaphors and in

denunciations of militarism. He was a square-jawed, blunt-featured

man with a pugnacious cock of the eyebrow. He had been pickled in

the politics of that countryside from boyhood, he knew everybody's

secrets, and electioneering was the romance of his life.

"I suppose you think I'm devoured with ambition," said Horne Fisher,

in his rather listless voice, "aiming at a dictatorship and all

that. Well, I think I can clear myself of the charge of mere selfish

ambition. I only want certain things done. I don't want to do them.

I very seldom want to do anything. And I've come here to say that

I'm quite willing to retire from the contest if you can convince me

that we really want to do the same thing."

The agent of the Reform party looked at him with an odd and slightly

puzzled expression, and before he could reply, Fisher went on in the

same level tones:

"You'd hardly believe it, but I keep a conscience concealed about

me; and I am in doubt about several things. For instance, we both

want to turn Verner out of Parliament, but what weapon are we to

use? I've heard a lot of gossip against him, but is it right to act

on mere gossip? Just as I want to be fair to you, so I want to be

fair to him. If some of the things I've heard are true he ought to

be turned out of Parliament and every other club in London. But I

don't want to turn him out of Parliament if they aren't true."

At this point the light of battle sprang into Mr. Gryce's eyes and

he became voluble, not to say violent. He, at any rate, had no doubt

that the stories were true; he could testify, to his own knowledge,

that they were true. Verner was not only a hard landlord, but a mean

landlord, a robber as well as a rackrenter; any gentleman would be

justified in hounding him out. He had cheated old Wilkins out of his

freehold by a trick fit for a pickpocket; he had driven old Mother

Biddle to the workhouse; he had stretched the law against Long Adam,

the poacher, till all the magistrates were ashamed of him.

"So if you'll serve under the old banner," concluded Mr. Gryce, more

genially, "and turn out a swindling tyrant like that, I'm sure

you'll never regret it."

"And if that is the truth," said Horne Fisher, "are you going to

tell it?"

"What do you mean? Tell the truth?" demanded Gryce.

"I mean you are going to tell the truth as you have just told it,"

replied Fisher. "You are going to placard this town with the

wickedness done to old Wilkins. You are going to fill the newspapers

with the infamous story of Mrs. Biddle. You are going to denounce

Verner from a public platform, naming him for what he did and naming

the poacher he did it to. And you're going to find out by what trade

this man made the money with which he bought the estate; and when

you know the truth, as I said before, of course you are going to

tell it. Upon those terms I come under the old flag, as you call it,

and haul down my little pennon."

The agent was eying him with a curious expression, surly but not

entirely unsympathetic. "Well," he said, slowly, "you have to do

these things in a regular way, you know, or people don't understand.

I've had a lot of experience, and I'm afraid what you say wouldn't

do. People understand slanging squires in a general way, but those

personalities aren't considered fair play. Looks like hitting below

the belt."

"Old Wilkins hasn't got a belt, I suppose," replied Horne Fisher.

"Verner can hit him anyhow, and nobody must say a word. It's

evidently very important to have a belt. But apparently you have to

be rather high up in society to have one. Possibly," he added,

thoughtfully--"possibly the explanation of the phrase 'a belted

earl,' the meaning of which has always escaped me."

"I mean those personalities won't do," returned Gryce, frowning at

the table.

"And Mother Biddle and Long Adam, the poacher, are not

personalities," said Fisher, "and suppose we mustn't ask how Verner

made all the money that enabled him to become--a personality."

Gryce was still looking at him under lowering brows, but the

singular light in his eyes had brightened. At last he said, in

another and much quieter voice:

"Look here, sir. I like you, if you don't mind my saying so. I

think you are really on the side of the people and I'm sure you're a

brave man. A lot braver than you know, perhaps. We daren't touch

what you propose with a barge pole; and so far from wanting you in

the old party, we'd rather you ran your own risk by yourself. But

because I like you and respect your pluck, I'll do you a good turn

before we part. I don't want you to waste time barking up the wrong

tree. You talk about how the new squire got the money to buy, and

the ruin of the old squire, and all the rest of it. Well, I'll give

you a hint about that, a hint about something precious few people

know."

"I am very grateful," said Fisher, gravely. "What is it?"

"It's in two words," said the other. "The new squire was quite poor

when he bought. The old squire was quite rich when he sold."

Horne Fisher looked at him thoughtfully as he turned away abruptly

and busied himself with the papers on his desk. Then Fisher uttered

a short phrase of thanks and farewell, and went out into the street,

still very thoughtful.

His reflection seemed to end in resolution, and, falling into a more

rapid stride, he passed out of the little town along a road leading

toward the gate of the great park, the country seat of Sir Francis

Verner. A glitter of sunlight made the early winter more like a late

autumn, and the dark woods were touched here and there with red and

golden leaves, like the last rays of a lost sunset. From a higher

part of the road he had seen the long, classical facade of the great

house with its many windows, almost immediately beneath him, but

when the road ran down under the wall of the estate, topped with

towering trees behind, he realized that it was half a mile round to

the lodge gates. After walking for a few minutes along the lane,

however, he came to a place where the wall had cracked and was in

process of repair. As it was, there was a great gap in the gray

masonry that looked at first as black as a cavern and only showed at

a second glance the twilight of the twinkling trees. There was

something fascinating about that unexpected gate, like the opening

of a fairy tale.

Horne Fisher had in him something of the aristocrat, which is very

near to the anarchist. It was characteristic of him that he turned

into this dark and irregular entry as casually as into his own front

door, merely thinking that it would be a short cut to the house. He

made his way through the dim wood for some distance and with some

difficulty, until there began to shine through the trees a level

light, in lines of silver, which he did not at first understand. The

next moment he had come out into the daylight at the top of a steep

bank, at the bottom of which a path ran round the rim of a large

ornamental lake. The sheet of water which he had seen shimmering

through the trees was of considerable extent, but was walled in on

every side with woods which were not only dark, but decidedly

dismal. At one end of the path was a classical statue of some

nameless nymph, and at the other end it was flanked by two classical

urns; but the marble was weather-stained and streaked with green and

gray. A hundred other signs, smaller but more significant, told him

that he had come on some outlying corner of the grounds neglected

and seldom visited. In the middle of the lake was what appeared to

be an island, and on the island what appeared to be meant for a

classical temple, not open like a temple of the winds, but with a

blank wall between its Doric pillars. We may say it only seemed like

an island, because a second glance revealed a low causeway of flat

stones running up to it from the shore and turning it into a

peninsula. And certainly it only seemed like a temple, for nobody

knew better than Horne Fisher that no god had ever dwelt in that

shrine.

"That's what makes all this classical landscape gardening so

desolate," he said to himself. "More desolate than Stonehenge or the

Pyramids. We don't believe in Egyptian mythology, but the Egyptians

did; and I suppose even the Druids believed in Druidism. But the

eighteenth-century gentleman who built these temples didn't believe

in Venus or Mercury any more than we do; that's why the reflection

of those pale pillars in the lake is truly only the shadow of a

shade. They were men of the age of Reason; they, who filled their

gardens with these stone nymphs, had less hope than any men in all

history of really meeting a nymph in the forest."

His monologue stopped abruptly with a sharp noise like a thundercrack

that rolled in dreary echoes round the dismal mere. He knew at once

what it was--somebody had fired off a gun. But as to the meaning of

it he was momentarily staggered, and strange thoughts thronged into

his mind. The next moment he laughed; for he saw lying a little way

along the path below him the dead bird that the shot had brought

down.

At the same moment, however, he saw something else, which interested

him more. A ring of dense trees ran round the back of the island

temple, framing the facade of it in dark foliage, and he could have

sworn he saw a stir as of something moving among the leaves. The

next moment his suspicion was confirmed, for a rather ragged figure

came from under the shadow of the temple and began to move along the

causeway that led to the bank. Even at that distance the figure was

conspicuous by its great height and Fisher could see that the man

carried a gun under his arm. There came back into his memory at once

the name Long Adam, the poacher.

With a rapid sense of strategy he sometimes showed, Fisher sprang

from the bank and raced round the lake to the head of the little

pier of stones. If once a man reached the mainland he could easily

vanish into the woods. But when Fisher began to advance along the

stones toward the island, the man was cornered in a blind alley and

could only back toward the temple. Putting his broad shoulders

against it, he stood as if at bay; he was a comparatively young man,

with fine lines in his lean face and figure and a mop of ragged red

hair. The look in his eyes might well have been disquieting to

anyone left alone with him on an island in the middle of a lake.

"Good morning," said Horne Fisher, pleasantly. "I thought at first

you were a murderer. But it seems unlikely, somehow, that the

partridge rushed between us and died for love of me, like the

heroines in the romances; so I suppose you are a poacher."

"I suppose you would call me a poacher," answered the man; and his

voice was something of a surprise coming from such a scarecrow; it

had that hard fastidiousness to be found in those who have made a

fight for their own refinement among rough surroundings. "I consider

I have a perfect right to shoot game in this place. But I am well

aware that people of your sort take me for a thief, and I suppose

you will try to land me in jail."

"There are preliminary difficulties," replied Fisher. "To begin

with, the mistake is flattering, but I am not a gamekeeper. Still

less am I three gamekeepers, who would be, I imagine, about your

fighting weight. But I confess I have another reason for not wanting

to jail you."

"And what is that?" asked the other.

"Only that I quite agree with you," answered Fisher. "I don't

exactly say you have a right to poach, but I never could see that it

was as wrong as being a thief. It seems to me against the whole

normal notion of property that a man should own something because it

flies across his garden. He might as well own the wind, or think he

could write his name on a morning cloud. Besides, if we want poor

people to respect property we must give them some property to

respect. You ought to have land of your own; and I'm going to give

you some if I can."

"Going to give me some land!" repeated Long Adam.

"I apologize for addressing you as if you were a public meeting,"

said Fisher, "but I am an entirely new kind of public man who says

the same thing in public and in private. I've said this to a hundred

huge meetings throughout the country, and I say it to you on this

queer little island in this dismal pond. I would cut up a big estate

like this into small estates for everybody, even for poachers. I

would do in England as they did in Ireland--buy the big men out, if

possible; get them out, anyhow. A man like you ought to have a

little place of his own. I don't say you could keep pheasants, but

you might keep chickens."

The man stiffened suddenly and he seemed at once to blanch and flame

at the promise as if it were a threat.

"Chickens!" he repeated, with a passion of contempt.

"Why do you object?" asked the placid candidate. "Because keeping

hens is rather a mild amusement for a poacher? What about poaching

eggs?"

"Because I am not a poacher," cried Adam, in a rending voice that

rang round the hollow shrines and urns like the echoes of his gun.

"Because the partridge lying dead over there is my partridge.

Because the land you are standing on is my land. Because my own land

was only taken from me by a crime, and a worse crime than poaching.

This has been a single estate for hundreds and hundreds of years,

and if you or any meddlesome mountebank comes here and talks of

cutting it up like a cake, if I ever hear a word more of you and

your leveling lies--"

"You seem to be a rather turbulent public," observed Horne Fisher,

"but do go on. What will happen if I try to divide this estate

decently among decent people?"

The poacher had recovered a grim composure as he replied. "There

will be no partridge to rush in between."

With that he turned his back, evidently resolved to say no more, and

walked past the temple to the extreme end of the islet, where he

stood staring into the water. Fisher followed him, but, when his

repeated questions evoked no answer, turned back toward the shore.

In doing so he took a second and closer look at the artificial

temple, and noted some curious things about it. Most of these

theatrical things were as thin as theatrical scenery, and he

expected the classic shrine to be a shallow thing, a mere shell or

mask. But there was some substantial bulk of it behind, buried in

the trees, which had a gray, labyrinthian look, like serpents of

stone, and lifted a load of leafy towers to the sky. But what

arrested Fisher's eye was that in this bulk of gray-white stone

behind there was a single door with great, rusty bolts outside; the

bolts, however, were not shot across so as to secure it. Then he

walked round the small building, and found no other opening except

one small grating like a ventilator, high up in the wall. He

retraced his steps thoughtfully along the causeway to the banks of

the lake, and sat down on the stone steps between the two sculptured

funeral urns. Then he lit a cigarette and smoked it in ruminant

manner; eventually he took out a notebook and wrote down various

phrases, numbering and renumbering them till they stood in the

following order: "(1) Squire Hawker disliked his first wife. (2) He

married his second wife for her money. (3) Long Adam says the estate

is really his. (4) Long Adam hangs round the island temple, which

looks like a prison. (5) Squire Hawker was not poor when he gave up

the estate. (6) Verner was poor when he got the estate."

He gazed at these notes with a gravity which gradually turned to a

hard smile, threw away his cigarette, and resumed his search for a

short cut to the great house. He soon picked up the path which,

winding among clipped hedges and flower beds, brought him in front

of its long Palladian facade. It had the usual appearance of being,

not a private house, but a sort of public building sent into exile

in the provinces.

He first found himself in the presence of the butler, who really

looked much older than the building, for the architecture was dated

as Georgian; but the man's face, under a highly unnatural brown wig,

was wrinkled with what might have been centuries. Only his prominent

eyes were alive and alert, as if with protest. Fisher glanced at

him, and then stopped and said:

"Excuse me. Weren't you with the late squire, Mr. Hawker?"

"Yes, sir," said the man, gravely. "Usher is my name. What can I do

for you?"

"Only take me into Sir Francis Verner," replied the visitor.

Sir Francis Verner was sitting in an easy chair beside a small table

in a large room hung with tapestries. On the table were a small

flask and glass, with the green glimmer of a liqueur and a cup of

black coffee. He was clad in a quiet gray suit with a moderately

harmonious purple tie; but Fisher saw something about the turn of

his fair mustache and the lie of his flat hair--it suddenly revealed

that his name was Franz Werner.

"You are Mr. Horne Fisher," he said. "Won't you sit down?"

"No, thank you," replied Fisher. "I fear this is not a friendly

occasion, and I shall remain standing. Possibly you know that I am

already standing--standing for Parliament, in fact--"

"I am aware we are political opponents," replied Verner, raising his

eyebrows. "But I think it would be better if we fought in a sporting

spirit; in a spirit of English fair play."

"Much better," assented Fisher. "It would be much better if you

were English and very much better if you had ever played fair. But

what I've come to say can be said very shortly. I don't quite know

how we stand with the law about that old Hawker story, but my chief

object is to prevent England being entirely ruled by people like

you. So whatever the law would say, I will say no more if you will

retire from the election at once."

"You are evidently a lunatic," said Verner.

"My psychology may be a little abnormal," replied Horne Fisher, in a

rather hazy manner. "I am subject to dreams, especially day-dreams.

Sometimes what is happening to me grows vivid in a curious double

way, as if it had happened before. Have you ever had that mystical

feeling that things have happened before?"

"I hope you are a harmless lunatic," said Verner.

But Fisher was still staring in an absent fashion at the golden

gigantic figures and traceries of brown and red in the tapestries on

the walls; then he looked again at Verner and resumed: "I have a

feeling that this interview has happened before, here in this

tapestried room, and we are two ghosts revisiting a haunted chamber.

But it was Squire Hawker who sat where you sit and it was you who

stood where I stand." He paused a moment and then added, with

simplicity, "I suppose I am a blackmailer, too."

"If you are," said Sir Francis, "I promise you you shall go to

jail." But his face had a shade on it that looked like the

reflection of the green wine gleaming on the table. Horne Fisher

regarded him steadily and answered, quietly enough:

"Blackmailers do not always go to jail. Sometimes they go to

Parliament. But, though Parliament is rotten enough already, you

shall not go there if I can help it. I am not so criminal as you

were in bargaining with crime. You made a squire give up his country

seat. I only ask you to give up your Parliamentary seat."

Sir Francis Verner sprang to his feet and looked about for one of

the bell ropes of the old-fashioned, curtained room.

"Where is Usher?" he cried, with a livid face.

"And who is Usher?" said Fisher, softly. "I wonder how much Usher

knows of the truth."

Verner's hand fell from the bell rope and, after standing for a

moment with rolling eyes, he strode abruptly from the room. Fisher

went but by the other door, by which he had entered, and, seeing no

sign of Usher, let himself out and betook himself again toward the

town.

That night he put an electric torch in his pocket and set out alone

in the darkness to add the last links to his argument. There was

much that he did not know yet; but he thought he knew where he could

find the knowledge. The night closed dark and stormy and the black

gap in the wall looked blacker than ever; the wood seemed to have

grown thicker and darker in a day. If the deserted lake with its

black woods and gray urns and images looked desolate even by

daylight, under the night and the growing storm it seemed still more

like the pool of Acheron in the land of lost souls. As he stepped

carefully along the jetty stones he seemed to be traveling farther

and farther into the abyss of night, and to have left behind him the

last points from which it would be possible to signal to the land of

the living. The lake seemed to have grown larger than a sea, but a

sea of black and slimy waters that slept with abominable serenity,

as if they had washed out the world. There was so much of this

nightmare sense of extension and expansion that he was strangely

surprised to come to his desert island so soon. But he knew it for a

place of inhuman silence and solitude; and he felt as if he had been

walking for years.

Nerving himself to a more normal mood, he paused under one of the

dark dragon trees that branched out above him, and, taking out his

torch, turned in the direction of the door at the back of the

temple. It was unbolted as before, and the thought stirred faintly

in him that it was slightly open, though only by a crack. The more

he thought of it, however, the more certain he grew that this was

but one of the common illusions of light coming from a different

angle. He studied in a more scientific spirit the details of the

door, with its rusty bolts and hinges, when he became conscious of

something very near him--indeed, nearly above his head. Something

was dangling from the tree that was not a broken branch. For some

seconds he stood as still as a stone, and as cold. What he saw above

him were the legs of a man hanging, presumably a dead man hanged.

But the next moment he knew better. The man was literally alive and

kicking; and an instant after he had dropped to the ground and

turned on the intruder. Simultaneously three or four other trees

seemed to come to life in the same fashion. Five or six other

figures had fallen on their feet from these unnatural nests. It was

as if the place were an island of monkeys. But a moment after they

had made a stampede toward him, and when they laid their hands on

him he knew that they were men.

With the electric torch in his hand he struck the foremost of them

so furiously in the face that the man stumbled and rolled over on

the slimy grass; but the torch was broken and extinguished, leaving

everything in a denser obscurity. He flung another man flat against

the temple wall, so that he slid to the ground; but a third and

fourth carried Fisher off his feet and began to bear him,

struggling, toward the doorway. Even in the bewilderment of the

battle he was conscious that the door was standing open. Somebody

was summoning the roughs from inside.

The moment they were within they hurled him upon a sort of bench or

bed with violence, but no damage; for the settee, or whatever it

was, seemed to be comfortably cushioned for his reception. Their

violence had in it a great element of haste, and before he could

rise they had all rushed for the door to escape. Whatever bandits

they were that infested this desert island, they were obviously

uneasy about their job and very anxious to be quit of it. He had the

flying fancy that regular criminals would hardly be in such a panic.

The next moment the great door crashed to and he could hear the

bolts shriek as they shot into their place, and the feet of the

retreating men scampering and stumbling along the causeway. But

rapidly as it happened, it did not happen before Fisher had done

something that he wanted to do. Unable to rise from his sprawling

attitude in that flash of time, he had shot out one of his long legs

and hooked it round the ankle of the last man disappearing through

the door. The man swayed and toppled over inside the prison chamber,

and the door closed between him and his fleeing companions. Clearly

they were in too much haste to realize that they had left one of

their company behind.

The man sprang to his feet again and hammered and kicked furiously

at the door. Fisher's sense of humor began to recover from the

struggle and he sat up on his sofa with something of his native

nonchalance. But as he listened to the captive captor beating on the

door of the prison, a new and curious reflection came to him.

The natural course for a man thus wishing to attract his friends'

attention would be to call out, to shout as well as kick. This man

was making as much noise as he could with his feet and hands, but

not a sound came from his throat. Why couldn't he speak? At first he

thought the man might be gagged, which was manifestly absurd. Then

his fancy fell back on the ugly idea that the man was dumb. He

hardly knew why it was so ugly an idea, but it affected his

imagination in a dark and disproportionate fashion. There seemed to

be something creepy about the idea of being left in a dark room with

a deaf mute. It was almost as if such a defect were a deformity. It

was almost as if it went with other and worse deformities. It was as

if the shape he could not trace in the darkness were some shape that

should not see the sun.

Then he had a flash of sanity and also of insight. The explanation

was very simple, but rather interesting. Obviously the man did not

use his voice because he did not wish his voice to be recognized. He

hoped to escape from that dark place before Fisher found out who he

was. And who was he? One thing at least was clear. He was one or

other of the four or five men with whom Fisher had already talked in

these parts, and in the development of that strange story.

"Now I wonder who you are," he said, aloud, with all his old lazy

urbanity. "I suppose it's no use trying to throttle you in order to

find out; it would be displeasing to pass the night with a corpse.

Besides I might be the corpse. I've got no matches and I've smashed

my torch, so I can only speculate. Who could you be, now? Let us

think."

The man thus genially addressed had desisted from drumming on the

door and retreated sullenly into a corner as Fisher continued to

address him in a flowing monologue.

"Probably you are the poacher who says he isn't a poacher. He says

he's a landed proprietor; but he will permit me to inform him that,

whatever he is, he's a fool. What hope can there ever be of a free

peasantry in England if the peasants themselves are such snobs as to

want to be gentlemen? How can we make a democracy with no democrats?

As it is, you want to be a landlord and so you consent to be a

criminal. And in that, you know, you are rather like somebody else.

And, now I think of it, perhaps you are somebody else."

There was a silence broken by breathing from the corner and the

murmur of the rising storm, that came in through the small grating

above the man's head. Horne Fisher continued:

"Are you only a servant, perhaps, that rather sinister old servant

who was butler to Hawker and Verner? If so, you are certainly the

only link between the two periods. But if so, why do you degrade

yourself to serve this dirty foreigner, when you at least saw the

last of a genuine national gentry? People like you are generally at

least patriotic. Doesn't England mean anything to you, Mr. Usher?

All of which eloquence is possibly wasted, as perhaps you are not

Mr. Usher.

"More likely you are Verner himself; and it's no good wasting

eloquence to make you ashamed of yourself. Nor is it any good to

curse you for corrupting England; nor are you the right person to

curse. It is the English who deserve to be cursed, and are cursed,

because they allowed such vermin to crawl into the high places of

their heroes and their kings. I won't dwell on the idea that you're

Verner, or the throttling might begin, after all. Is there anyone

else you could be? Surely you're not some servant of the other rival

organization. I can't believe you're Gryce, the agent; and yet Gryce

had a spark of the fanatic in his eye, too; and men will do

extraordinary things in these paltry feuds of politics. Or if not

the servant, is it the . . . No, I can't believe it . . . not the

red blood of manhood and liberty . . . not the democratic ideal . . ."

He sprang up in excitement, and at the same moment a growl of

thunder came through the grating beyond. The storm had broken, and

with it a new light broke on his mind. There was something else that

might happen in a moment.

"Do you know what that means?" he cried. "It means that God himself

may hold a candle to show me your infernal face."

Then next moment came a crash of thunder; but before the thunder a

white light had filled the whole room for a single split second.

Fisher had seen two things in front of him. One was the

black-and-white pattern of the iron grating against the sky; the

other was the face in the corner. It was the face of his brother.

Nothing came from Horne Fisher's lips except a Christian name, which

was followed by a silence more dreadful than the dark. At last the

other figure stirred and sprang up, and the voice of Harry Fisher

was heard for the first time in that horrible room.

"You've seen me, I suppose," he said, "and we may as well have a

light now. You could have turned it on at any time, if you'd found

the switch."

He pressed a button in the wall and all the details of that room

sprang into something stronger than daylight. Indeed, the details

were so unexpected that for a moment they turned the captive's

rocking mind from the last personal revelation. The room, so far

from being a dungeon cell, was more like a drawing-room, even a

lady's drawing-room, except for some boxes of cigars and bottles of

wine that were stacked with books and magazines on a side table. A

second glance showed him that the more masculine fittings were quite

recent, and that the more feminine background was quite old. His eye

caught a strip of faded tapestry, which startled him into speech, to

the momentary oblivion of bigger matters.

"This place was furnished from the great house," he said.

"Yes," replied the other, "and I think you know why."

"I think I do," said Horne Fisher, "and before I go on to more

extraordinary things I will, say what I think. Squire Hawker played

both the bigamist and the bandit. His first wife was not dead when

he married the Jewess; she was imprisoned on this island. She bore

him a child here, who now haunts his birthplace under the name of

Long Adam. A bankruptcy company promoter named Werner discovered the

secret and blackmailed the squire into surrendering the estate.

That's all quite clear and very easy. And now let me go on to

something more difficult. And that is for you to explain what the

devil you are doing kidnaping your born brother."

After a pause Henry Fisher answered:

"I suppose you didn't expect to see me," he said. "But, after all,

what could you expect?"'

"I'm afraid I don't follow," said Horne Fisher.

"I mean what else could you expect, after making such a muck of it?"

said his brother, sulkily. "We all thought you were so clever. How

could we know you were going to be--well, really, such a rotten

failure?"

"This is rather curious," said the candidate, frowning. "Without

vanity, I was not under the impression that my candidature was a

failure. All the big meetings were successful and crowds of people

have promised me votes."

"I should jolly well think they had," said Henry, grimly. "You've

made a landslide with your confounded acres and a cow, and Verner

can hardly get a vote anywhere. Oh, it's too rotten for anything!"

"What on earth do you mean?"

"Why, you lunatic," cried Henry, in tones of ringing sincerity, "you

don't suppose you were meant to _win_ the seat, did you? Oh, it's

too childish! I tell you Verner's got to get in. Of course he's got

to get in. He's to have the Exchequer next session, and there's the

Egyptian loan and Lord knows what else. We only wanted you to split

the Reform vote because accidents might happen after Hughes had made

a score at Barkington."

"I see," said Fisher, "and you, I think, are a pillar and ornament

of the Reform party. As you say, I am not clever."

The appeal to party loyalty fell on deaf ears; for the pillar of

Reform was brooding on other things. At last he said, in a more

troubled voice:

"I didn't want you to catch me; I knew it would be a shock. But I

tell you what, you never would have caught me if I hadn't come here

myself, to see they didn't ill treat you and to make sure everything

was as comfortable as it could be." There was even a sort of break

in his voice as he added, "I got those cigars because I knew you

liked them."

Emotions are queer things, and the idiocy of this concession

suddenly softened Horne Fisher like an unfathomable pathos.

"Never mind, old chap," he said; "we'll say no more about it. I'll

admit that you're really as kind-hearted and affectionate a

scoundrel and hypocrite as ever sold himself to ruin his country.

There, I can't say handsomer than that. Thank you for the cigars,

old man. I'll have one if you don't mind."

By the time that Horne Fisher had ended his telling of this story to

Harold March they had come out into one of the public parks and

taken a seat on a rise of ground overlooking wide green spaces under

a blue and empty sky; and there was something incongruous in the

words with which the narration ended.

"I have been in that room ever since," said Horne Fisher. "I am in

it now. I won the election, but I never went to the House. My life

has been a life in that little room on that lonely island. Plenty of

books and cigars and luxuries, plenty of knowledge and interest and

information, but never a voice out of that tomb to reach the world

outside. I shall probably die there." And he smiled as he looked

across the vast green park to the gray horizon.