PAGE 11
The Hole In The Wall
by
The moonlight had broadened and brightened, the wind had driven off the clouds and itself died fitfully away, when he came round again to the artificial lake in front of the house. For some reason it looked a very artificial lake; indeed, the whole scene was like a classical landscape with a touch of Watteau; the Palladian facade of the house pale in the moon, and the same silver touching the very pagan and naked marble nymph in the middle of the pond. Rather to his surprise, he found another figure there beside the statue, sitting almost equally motionless; and the same silver pencil traced the wrinkled brow and patient face of Horne Fisher, still dressed as a hermit and apparently practicing something of the solitude of a hermit. Nevertheless, he looked up at Leonard Crane and smiled, almost as if he had expected him.
“Look here,” said Crane, planting himself in front of him, “can you tell me anything about this business?”
“I shall soon have to tell everybody everything about it,” replied Fisher, “but I’ve no objection to telling you something first. But, to begin with, will you tell me something? What really happened when you met Bulmer this morning? You did throw away your sword, but you didn’t kill him.”
“I didn’t kill him because I threw away my sword,” said the other. “I did it on purpose–or I’m not sure what might have happened.”
After a pause he went on, quietly: “The late Lord Bulmer was a very breezy gentleman, extremely breezy. He was very genial with his inferiors, and would have his lawyer and his architect staying in his house for all sorts of holidays and amusements. But there was another side to him, which they found out when they tried to be his equals. When I told him that his sister and I were engaged, something happened which I simply can’t and won’t describe. It seemed to me like some monstrous upheaval of madness. But I suppose the truth is painfully simple. There is such a thing as the coarseness of a gentleman. And it is the most horrible thing in humanity.”
“I know,” said Fisher. “The Renaissance nobles of the Tudor time were like that.”
“It is odd that you should say that,” Crane went on. “For while we were talking there came on me a curious feeling that we were repeating some scene of the past, and that I was really some outlaw, found in the woods like Robin Hood, and that he had really stepped in all his plumes and purple out of the picture frame of the ancestral portrait. Anyhow, he was the man in possession, and he neither feared God nor regarded man. I defied him, of course, and walked away. I might really have killed him if I had not walked away.”
“Yes,” said Fisher, nodding, “his ancestor was in possession and he was in possession, and this is the end of the story. It all fits in.”
“Fits in with what?” cried his companion, with sudden impatience. “I can’t make head or tail of it. You tell me to look for the secret in the hole in the wall, but I can’t find any hole in the wall.”
“There isn’t any,” said Fisher. “That’s the secret.” After reflecting a moment, he added: “Unless you call it a hole in the wall of the world. Look here; I’ll tell you if you like, but I’m afraid it involves an introduction. You’ve got to understand one of the tricks of the modern mind, a tendency that most people obey without noticing it. In the village or suburb outside there’s an inn with the sign of St. George and the Dragon. Now suppose I went about telling everybody that this was only a corruption of King George and the Dragoon. Scores of people would believe it, without any inquiry, from a vague feeling that it’s probable because it’s prosaic. It turns something romantic and legendary into something recent and ordinary. And that somehow makes it sound rational, though it is unsupported by reason. Of course some people would have the sense to remember having seen St. George in old Italian pictures and French romances, but a good many wouldn’t think about it at all. They would just swallow the skepticism because it was skepticism. Modern intelligence won’t accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority. That’s exactly what has happened here.