Chapter 3

The Banner of Beacon

All next day at Beacon House there was a crazy sense that it was
everybody’s birthday. It is the fashion to talk of institutions as cold
and cramping things. The truth is that when people are in exceptionally
high spirits, really wild with freedom and invention, they always must,
and they always do, create institutions. When men are weary they fall
into anarchy; but while they are gay and vigorous they invariably make
rules. This, which is true of all the churches and republics of
history, is also true of the most trivial parlour game or the most
unsophisticated meadow romp. We are never free until some institution
frees us; and liberty cannot exist till it is declared by authority.
Even the wild authority of the harlequin Smith was still authority,
because it produced everywhere a crop of crazy regulations and
conditions. He filled every one with his own half-lunatic life; but it
was not expressed in destruction, but rather in a dizzy and toppling
construction. Each person with a hobby found it turning into an
institution. Rosamund’s songs seemed to coalesce into a kind of opera;
Michael’s jests and paragraphs into a magazine. His pipe and her
mandoline seemed between them to make a sort of smoking concert. The
bashful and bewildered Arthur Inglewood almost struggled against his
own growing importance. He felt as if, in spite of him, his photographs
were turning into a picture gallery, and his bicycle into a gymkhana.
But no one had any time to criticize these impromptu estates and
offices, for they followed each other in wild succession like the
topics of a rambling talker.

Existence with such a man was an obstacle race made out of pleasant
obstacles. Out of any homely and trivial object he could drag reels of
exaggeration, like a conjurer. Nothing could be more shy and impersonal
than poor Arthur’s photography. Yet the preposterous Smith was seen
assisting him eagerly through sunny morning hours, and an indefensible
sequence described as “Moral Photography” began to unroll about the
boarding-house. It was only a version of the old photographer’s joke
which produces the same figure twice on one plate, making a man play
chess with himself, dine with himself, and so on. But these plates were
more hysterical and ambitious—as, “Miss Hunt forgets Herself,” showing
that lady answering her own too rapturous recognition with a most
appalling stare of ignorance; or “Mr. Moon questions Himself,” in which
Mr. Moon appeared as one driven to madness under his own legal
cross-examination, which was conducted with a long forefinger and an
air of ferocious waggery. One highly successful trilogy—representing
Inglewood recognizing Inglewood, Inglewood prostrating himself before
Inglewood, and Inglewood severely beating Inglewood with an umbrella—
Innocent Smith wanted to have enlarged and put up in the hall, like a
sort of fresco, with the inscription,—

“Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control—
These three alone will make a man a prig.”
TENNYSON.

Nothing, again, could be more prosaic and impenetrable than the
domestic energies of Miss Diana Duke. But Innocent had somehow
blundered on the discovery that her thrifty dressmaking went with a
considerable feminine care for dress—the one feminine thing that had
never failed her solitary self-respect. In consequence Smith pestered
her with a theory (which he really seemed to take seriously) that
ladies might combine economy with magnificence if they would draw light
chalk patterns on a plain dress and then dust them off again. He set up
“Smith’s Lightning Dressmaking Company,” with two screens, a cardboard
placard, and box of bright soft crayons; and Miss Diana actually threw
him an abandoned black overall or working dress on which to exercise
the talents of a modiste. He promptly produced for her a garment aflame
with red and gold sunflowers; she held it up an instant to her
shoulders, and looked like an empress. And Arthur Inglewood, some hours
afterwards cleaning his bicycle (with his usual air of being
inextricably hidden in it), glanced up; and his hot face grew hotter,
for Diana stood laughing for one flash in the doorway, and her dark
robe was rich with the green and purple of great decorative peacocks,
like a secret garden in the “Arabian Nights.” A pang too swift to be
named pain or pleasure went through his heart like an old-world rapier.
He remembered how pretty he thought her years ago, when he was ready to
fall in love with anybody; but it was like remembering a worship of
some Babylonian princess in some previous existence. At his next
glimpse of her (and he caught himself awaiting it) the purple and green
chalk was dusted off, and she went by quickly in her working clothes.

As for Mrs. Duke, none who knew that matron could conceive her as
actively resisting this invasion that had turned her house upside down.
But among the most exact observers it was seriously believed that she
liked it. For she was one of those women who at bottom regard all men
as equally mad, wild animals of some utterly separate species. And it
is doubtful if she really saw anything more eccentric or inexplicable
in Smith’s chimney-pot picnics or crimson sunflowers than she had in
the chemicals of Inglewood or the sardonic speeches of Moon. Courtesy,
on the other hand, is a thing that anybody can understand, and Smith’s
manners were as courteous as they were unconventional. She said he was
“a real gentleman,” by which she simply meant a kind-hearted man, which
is a very different thing. She would sit at the head of the table with
fat, folded hands and a fat, folded smile for hours and hours, while
every one else was talking at once. At least, the only other exception
was Rosamund’s companion, Mary Gray, whose silence was of a much more
eager sort. Though she never spoke she always looked as if she might
speak any minute. Perhaps this is the very definition of a companion.
Innocent Smith seemed to throw himself, as into other adventures, into
the adventure of making her talk. He never succeeded, yet he was never
snubbed; if he achieved anything, it was only to draw attention to this
quiet figure, and to turn her, by ever so little, from a modesty to a
mystery. But if she was a riddle, every one recognized that she was a
fresh and unspoilt riddle, like the riddle of the sky and the woods in
spring. Indeed, though she was rather older than the other two girls,
she had an early morning ardour, a fresh earnestness of youth, which
Rosamund seemed to have lost in the mere spending of money, and Diana
in the mere guarding of it. Smith looked at her again and again. Her
eyes and mouth were set in her face the wrong way—which was really the
right way. She had the knack of saying everything with her face: her
silence was a sort of steady applause.

But among the hilarious experiments of that holiday (which seemed more
like a week’s holiday than a day’s) one experiment towers supreme, not
because it was any sillier or more successful than the others, but
because out of this particular folly flowed all of the odd events that
were to follow. All the other practical jokes exploded of themselves,
and left vacancy; all the other fictions returned upon themselves, and
were finished like a song. But the string of solid and startling
events— which were to include a hansom cab, a detective, a pistol, and
a marriage licence—were all made primarily possible by the joke about
the High Court of Beacon.

It had originated, not with Innocent Smith, but with Michael Moon. He
was in a strange glow and pressure of spirits, and talked incessantly;
yet he had never been more sarcastic, and even inhuman. He used his old
useless knowledge as a barrister to talk entertainingly of a tribunal
that was a parody on the pompous anomalies of English law. The High
Court of Beacon, he declared, was a splendid example of our free and
sensible constitution. It had been founded by King John in defiance of
the Magna Carta, and now held absolute power over windmills, wine and
spirit licences, ladies traveling in Turkey, revision of sentences for
dog-stealing and parricide, as well as anything whatever that happened
in the town of Market Bosworth. The whole hundred and nine seneschals
of the High Court of Beacon met once in every four centuries; but in
the intervals (as Mr. Moon explained) the whole powers of the
institution were vested in Mrs. Duke. Tossed about among the rest of
the company, however, the High Court did not retain its historical and
legal seriousness, but was used somewhat unscrupulously in a riot of
domestic detail. If somebody spilt the Worcester Sauce on the
tablecloth, he was quite sure it was a rite without which the sittings
and findings of the Court would be invalid; or if somebody wanted a
window to remain shut, he would suddenly remember that none but the
third son of the lord of the manor of Penge had the right to open it.
They even went to the length of making arrests and conducting criminal
inquiries. The proposed trial of Moses Gould for patriotism was rather
above the heads of the company, especially of the criminal; but the
trial of Inglewood on a charge of photographic libel, and his
triumphant acquittal upon a plea of insanity, were admitted to be in
the best tradition of the Court.

But when Smith was in wild spirits he grew more and more serious, not
more and more flippant like Michael Moon. This proposal of a private
court of justice, which Moon had thrown off with the detachment of a
political humourist, Smith really caught hold of with the eagerness of
an abstract philosopher. It was by far the best thing they could do, he
declared, to claim sovereign powers even for the individual household.

“You believe in Home Rule for Ireland; I believe in Home Rule for
homes,” he cried eagerly to Michael. “It would be better if every
father COULD kill his son, as with the old Romans; it would be better,
because nobody would be killed. Let’s issue a Declaration of
Independence from Beacon House. We could grow enough greens in that
garden to support us, and when the tax-collector comes let’s tell him
we’re self-supporting, and play on him with the hose.... Well, perhaps,
as you say, we couldn’t very well have a hose, as that comes from the
main; but we could sink a well in this chalk, and a lot could be done
with water-jugs.... Let this really be Beacon House. Let’s light a
bonfire of independence on the roof, and see house after house
answering it across the valley of the Thames! Let us begin the League
of the Free Families! Away with Local Government! A fig for Local
Patriotism! Let every house be a sovereign state as this is, and judge
its own children by its own law, as we do by the Court of Beacon. Let
us cut the painter, and begin to be happy together, as if we were on a
desert island.”

“I know that desert island,” said Michael Moon; “it only exists in the
‘Swiss Family Robinson.’ A man feels a strange desire for some sort of
vegetable milk, and crash comes down some unexpected cocoa-nut from
some undiscovered monkey. A literary man feels inclined to pen a
sonnet, and at once an officious porcupine rushes out of a thicket and
shoots out one of his quills.”

“Don’t you say a word against the ‘Swiss Family Robinson,’” cried
Innocent with great warmth. “It mayn’t be exact science, but it’s dead
accurate philosophy. When you’re really shipwrecked, you do really find
what you want. When you’re really on a desert island, you never find it
a desert. If we were really besieged in this garden, we’d find a
hundred English birds and English berries that we never knew were here.
If we were snowed up in this room, we’d be the better for reading
scores of books in that bookcase that we don’t even know are there;
we’d have talks with each other, good, terrible talks, that we shall go
to the grave without guessing; we’d find materials for everything—
christening, marriage, or funeral; yes, even for a coronation— if we
didn’t decide to be a republic.”

“A coronation on ‘Swiss Family’ lines, I suppose,” said Michael,
laughing. “Oh, I know you would find everything in that atmosphere. If
we wanted such a simple thing, for instance, as a Coronation Canopy, we
should walk down beyond the geraniums and find the Canopy Tree in full
bloom. If we wanted such a trifle as a crown of gold, why, we should be
digging up dandelions, and we should find a gold mine under the lawn.
And when we wanted oil for the ceremony, why I suppose a great storm
would wash everything on shore, and we should find there was a Whale on
the premises.”

“And so there IS a whale on the premises for all you know,” asseverated
Smith, striking the table with passion. “I bet you’ve never examined
the premises! I bet you’ve never been round at the back as I was this
morning— for I found the very thing you say could only grow on a tree.
There’s an old sort of square tent up against the dustbin; it’s got
three holes in the canvas, and a pole’s broken, so it’s not much good
as a tent, but as a Canopy—” And his voice quite failed him to express
its shining adequacy; then he went on with controversial eagerness:
“You see I take every challenge as you make it. I believe every blessed
thing you say couldn’t be here has been here all the time. You say you
want a whale washed up for oil. Why, there’s oil in that cruet-stand at
your elbow; and I don’t believe anybody has touched it or thought of it
for years. And as for your gold crown, we’re none of us wealthy here,
but we could collect enough ten-shilling bits from our own pockets to
string round a man’s head for half an hour; or one of Miss Hunt’s gold
bangles is nearly big enough to—”

The good-humoured Rosamund was almost choking with laughter. “All is
not gold that glitters,” she said, “and besides—”

“What a mistake that is!” cried Innocent Smith, leaping up in great
excitement. “All is gold that glitters— especially now we are a
Sovereign State. What’s the good of a Sovereign State if you can’t
define a sovereign? We can make anything a precious metal, as men could
in the morning of the world. They didn’t choose gold because it was
rare; your scientists can tell you twenty sorts of slime much rarer.
They chose gold because it was bright—because it was a hard thing to
find, but pretty when you’ve found it. You can’t fight with golden
swords or eat golden biscuits; you can only look at it—and you can look
at it out here.”

With one of his incalculable motions he sprang back and burst open the
doors into the garden. At the same time also, with one of his gestures
that never seemed at the instant so unconventional as they were, he
stretched out his hand to Mary Gray, and led her out on to the lawn as
if for a dance.

The French windows, thus flung open, let in an evening even lovelier
than that of the day before. The west was swimming with sanguine
colours, and a sort of sleepy flame lay along the lawn. The twisted
shadows of the one or two garden trees showed upon this sheen, not gray
or black, as in common daylight, but like arabesques written in vivid
violet ink on some page of Eastern gold. The sunset was one of those
festive and yet mysterious conflagrations in which common things by
their colours remind us of costly or curious things. The slates upon
the sloping roof burned like the plumes of a vast peacock, in every
mysterious blend of blue and green. The red-brown bricks of the wall
glowed with all the October tints of strong ruby and tawny wines. The
sun seemed to set each object alight with a different coloured flame,
like a man lighting fireworks; and even Innocent’s hair, which was of a
rather colourless fairness, seemed to have a flame of pagan gold on it
as he strode across the lawn towards the one tall ridge of rockery.

“What would be the good of gold,” he was saying, “if it did not
glitter? Why should we care for a black sovereign any more than for a
black sun at noon? A black button would do just as well. Don’t you see
that everything in this garden looks like a jewel? And will you kindly
tell me what the deuce is the good of a jewel except that it looks like
a jewel? Leave off buying and selling, and start looking! Open your
eyes, and you’ll wake up in the New Jerusalem.

“All is gold that glitters—
Tree and tower of brass;
Rolls the golden evening air
Down the golden grass.
Kick the cry to Jericho,
How yellow mud is sold;
All is gold that glitters,
For the glitter is the gold.”

“And who wrote that?” asked Rosamund, amused.

“No one will ever write it,” answered Smith, and cleared the rockery
with a flying leap.

“Really,” said Rosamund to Michael Moon, “he ought to be sent to an
asylum. Don’t you think so?”

“I beg your pardon,” inquired Michael, rather sombrely; his long,
swarthy head was dark against the sunset, and, either by accident or
mood, he had the look of something isolated and even hostile amid the
social extravagance of the garden.

“I only said Mr. Smith ought to go to an asylum,” repeated the lady.

The lean face seemed to grow longer and longer, for Moon was
unmistakably sneering. “No,” he said; “I don’t think it’s at all
necessary.”

“What do you mean?” asked Rosamund quickly. “Why not?”

“Because he is in one now,” answered Michael Moon, in a quiet but ugly
voice. “Why, didn’t you know?”

“What?” cried the girl, and there was a break in her voice; for the
Irishman’s face and voice were really almost creepy. With his dark
figure and dark sayings in all that sunshine he looked like the devil
in paradise.

“I’m sorry,” he continued, with a sort of harsh humility. “Of course we
don’t talk about it much... but I thought we all really knew.”

“Knew what?”

“Well,” answered Moon, “that Beacon House is a certain rather singular
sort of house—a house with the tiles loose, shall we say? Innocent
Smith is only the doctor that visits us; hadn’t you come when he called
before? As most of our maladies are melancholic, of course he has to be
extra cheery. Sanity, of course, seems a very bumptious eccentric thing
to us. Jumping over a wall, climbing a tree—that’s his bedside manner.”

“You daren’t say such a thing!” cried Rosamund in a rage. “You daren’t
suggest that I—”

“Not more than I am,” said Michael soothingly; “not more than the rest
of us. Haven’t you ever noticed that Miss Duke never sits still—a
notorious sign? Haven’t you ever observed that Inglewood is always
washing his hands— a known mark of mental disease? I, of course, am a
dipsomaniac.”

“I don’t believe you,” broke out his companion, not without agitation.
“I’ve heard you had some bad habits—”

“All habits are bad habits,” said Michael, with deadly calm. “Madness
does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in
some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed. YOU
went mad about money, because you’re an heiress.”

“It’s a lie,” cried Rosamund furiously. “I never was mean about money.”

“You were worse,” said Michael, in a low voice and yet violently. “You
thought that other people were. You thought every man who came near you
must be a fortune-hunter; you would not let yourself go and be sane;
and now you’re mad and I’m mad, and serve us right.”

“You brute!” said Rosamund, quite white. “And is this true?”

With the intellectual cruelty of which the Celt is capable when his
abysses are in revolt, Michael was silent for some seconds, and then
stepped back with an ironical bow. “Not literally true, of course,” he
said; “only really true. An allegory, shall we say? a social satire.”

“And I hate and despise your satires,” cried Rosamund Hunt, letting
loose her whole forcible female personality like a cyclone, and
speaking every word to wound. “I despise it as I despise your rank
tobacco, and your nasty, loungy ways, and your snarling, and your
Radicalism, and your old clothes, and your potty little newspaper, and
your rotten failure at everything. I don’t care whether you call it
snobbishness or not, I like life and success, and jolly things to look
at, and action. You won’t frighten me with Diogenes; I prefer
Alexander.”

“Victrix causa deæ—” said Michael gloomily; and this angered her more,
as, not knowing what it meant, she imagined it to be witty.

“Oh, I dare say you know Greek,” she said, with cheerful inaccuracy;
“you haven’t done much with that either.” And she crossed the garden,
pursuing the vanished Innocent and Mary.

In doing so she passed Inglewood, who was returning to the house
slowly, and with a thought-clouded brow. He was one of those men who
are quite clever, but quite the reverse of quick. As he came back out
of the sunset garden into the twilight parlour, Diana Duke slipped
swiftly to her feet and began putting away the tea things. But it was
not before Inglewood had seen an instantaneous picture so unique that
he might well have snapshotted it with his everlasting camera. For
Diana had been sitting in front of her unfinished work with her chin on
her hand, looking straight out of the window in pure thoughtless
thought.

“You are busy,” said Arthur, oddly embarrassed with what he had seen,
and wishing to ignore it.

“There’s no time for dreaming in this world,” answered the young lady
with her back to him.

“I have been thinking lately,” said Inglewood in a low voice, “that
there’s no time for waking up.”

She did not reply, and he walked to the window and looked out on the
garden.

“I don’t smoke or drink, you know,” he said irrelevantly, “because I
think they’re drugs. And yet I fancy all hobbies, like my camera and
bicycle, are drugs too. Getting under a black hood, getting into a dark
room—getting into a hole anyhow. Drugging myself with speed, and
sunshine, and fatigue, and fresh air. Pedalling the machine so fast
that I turn into a machine myself. That’s the matter with all of us.
We’re too busy to wake up.”

“Well,” said the girl solidly, “what is there to wake up to?”

“There must be!” cried Inglewood, turning round in a singular
excitement—“there must be something to wake up to! All we do is
preparations—your cleanliness, and my healthiness, and Warner’s
scientific appliances. We’re always preparing for something—something
that never comes off. I ventilate the house, and you sweep the house;
but what is going to HAPPEN in the house?”

She was looking at him quietly, but with very bright eyes, and seemed
to be searching for some form of words which she could not find.

Before she could speak the door burst open, and the boisterous Rosamund
Hunt, in her flamboyant white hat, boa, and parasol, stood framed in
the doorway. She was in a breathing heat, and on her open face was an
expression of the most infantile astonishment.

“Well, here’s a fine game!” she said, panting. “What am I to do now, I
wonder? I’ve wired for Dr. Warner; that’s all I can think of doing.”

“What is the matter?” asked Diana, rather sharply, but moving forward
like one used to be called upon for assistance.

“It’s Mary,” said the heiress, “my companion Mary Gray: that cracked
friend of yours called Smith has proposed to her in the garden, after
ten hours’ acquaintance, and he wants to go off with her now for a
special licence.”

Arthur Inglewood walked to the open French windows and looked out on
the garden, still golden with evening light. Nothing moved there but a
bird or two hopping and twittering; but beyond the hedge and railings,
in the road outside the garden gate, a hansom cab was waiting, with the
yellow Gladstone bag on top of it.