Danger! and Other Stories, Arthur Conan Doyle [most life changing books .txt] 📗

minutes past six that evening I alighted gently in my own home meadow at Devizes, after such a journey as no mortal upon earth has ever yet taken and lived to tell the tale.  I have seen the beauty and I have seen the horror of the heights—and greater beauty or greater horror than that is not within the ken of man.

“And now it is my plan to go once again before I give my results to the world.  My reason for this is that I must surely have something to show by way of proof before I lay such a tale before my fellow-men.  It is true that others will soon follow and will confirm what I have said, and yet I should wish to carry conviction from the first.  Those lovely iridescent bubbles of the air should not be hard to capture.  They drift slowly upon their way, and the swift monoplane could intercept their leisurely course.  It is likely enough that they would dissolve in the heavier layers of the atmosphere, and that some small heap of amorphous jelly might be all that I should bring to earth with me.  And yet something there would surely be by which I could substantiate my story.  Yes, I will go, even if I run a risk by doing so.  These purple horrors would not seem to be numerous.  It is probable that I shall not see one.  If I do I shall dive at once.  At the worst there is always the shot-gun and my knowledge of . . .”

Here a page of the manuscript is unfortunately missing.  On the next page is written, in large, straggling writing:—

“Forty-three thousand feet.  I shall never see earth again.  They are beneath me, three of them.  God help me; it is a dreadful death to die!”

Such in its entirety is the Joyce-Armstrong Statement.  Of the man nothing has since been seen.  Pieces of his shattered monoplane have been picked up in the preserves of Mr. Budd-Lushington upon the borders of Kent and Sussex, within a few miles of the spot where the note-book was discovered.  If the unfortunate aviator’s theory is correct that this air-jungle, as he called it, existed only over the south-west of England, then it would seem that he had fled from it at the full speed of his monoplane, but had been overtaken and devoured by these horrible creatures at some spot in the outer atmosphere above the place where the grim relics were found.  The picture of that monoplane skimming down the sky, with the nameless terrors flying as swiftly beneath it and cutting it off always from the earth while they gradually closed in upon their victim, is one upon which a man who valued his sanity would prefer not to dwell.  There are many, as I am aware, who still jeer at the facts which I have here set down, but even they must admit that Joyce-Armstrong has disappeared, and I would commend to them his own words: “This note-book may explain what I am trying to do, and how I lost my life in doing it.  But no drivel about accidents or mysteries, if you please.”

VI.  BORROWED SCENES

“It cannot be done.  People really would not stand it.  I know because I have tried.”—Extract from an unpublished paper upon George Borrow and his writings.

Yes, I tried and my experience may interest other people.  You must imagine, then, that I am soaked in George Borrow, especially in his Lavengro and his Romany Rye, that I have modelled both my thoughts, my speech and my style very carefully upon those of the master, and that finally I set forth one summer day actually to lead the life of which I had read.  Behold me, then, upon the country road which leads from the railway-station to the Sussex village of Swinehurst.

As I walked, I entertained myself by recollections of the founders of Sussex, of Cerdic that mighty sea-rover, and of Ella his son, said by the bard to be taller by the length of a spear-head than the tallest of his fellows.  I mentioned the matter twice to peasants whom I met upon the road.  One, a tallish man with a freckled face, sidled past me and ran swiftly towards the station.  The other, a smaller and older man, stood entranced while I recited to him that passage of the Saxon Chronicle which begins, “Then came Leija with longships forty-four, and the fyrd went out against him.”  I was pointing out to him that the Chronicle had been written partly by the monks of Saint Albans and afterwards by those of Peterborough, but the fellow sprang suddenly over a gate and disappeared.

The village of Swinehurst is a straggling line of half-timbered houses of the early English pattern.  One of these houses stood, as I observed, somewhat taller than the rest, and seeing by its appearance and by the sign which hung before it that it was the village inn, I approached it, for indeed I had not broken my fast since I had left London.  A stoutish man, five foot eight perhaps in height, with black coat and trousers of a greyish shade, stood outside, and to him I talked in the fashion of the master.

“Why a rose and why a crown?” I asked as I pointed upwards.

He looked at me in a strange manner.  The man’s whole appearance was strange.  “Why not?” he answered, and shrank a little backwards.

“The sign of a king,” said I.

“Surely,” said he.  “What else should we understand from a crown?”

“And which king?” I asked.

“You will excuse me,” said he, and tried to pass.

“Which king?” I repeated.

“How should I know?” he asked.

“You should know by the rose,” said I, “which is the symbol of that Tudor-ap-Tudor, who, coming from the mountains of Wales, yet seated his posterity upon the English throne.  Tudor,” I continued, getting between the stranger and the door of the inn, through which he appeared to be desirous of passing, “was of the same blood as Owen Glendower, the famous chieftain, who is by no means to be confused with Owen Gwynedd, the father of Madoc of the Sea, of whom the bard made the famous cnylyn, which runs in the Welsh as follows:—”

I was about to repeat the famous stanza of Dafydd-ap-Gwilyn when the man, who had looked very fixedly and strangely at me as I spoke, pushed past me and entered the inn.  “Truly,” said I aloud, “it is surely Swinehurst to which I have come, since the same means the grove of the hogs.”  So saying I followed the fellow into the bar parlour, where I perceived him seated in a corner with a large chair in front of him.  Four persons of various degrees were drinking beer at a central table, whilst a small man of active build, in a black, shiny suit, which seemed to have seen much service, stood before the empty fireplace.  Him I took to be the landlord, and I asked him what I should have for my dinner.

He smiled, and said that he could not tell.

“But surely, my friend,” said I, “you can tell me what is ready?”

“Even that I cannot do,” he answered; “but I doubt not that the landlord can inform us.”  On this he rang the bell, and a fellow answered, to whom I put the same question.

“What would you have?” he asked.

I thought of the master, and I ordered a cold leg of pork to be washed down with tea and beer.

“Did you say tea and beer?” asked the landlord.

“I did.”

“For twenty-five years have I been in business,” said the landlord, “and never before have I been asked for tea and beer.”

“The gentleman is joking,” said the man with the shining coat.

“Or else—” said the elderly man in the corner.

“Or what, sir?” I asked.

“Nothing,” said he—“nothing.”  There was something very strange in this man in the corner—him to whom I had spoken of Dafydd-ap-Gwilyn.

“Then you are joking,” said the landlord.

I asked him if he had read the works of my master, George Borrow.  He said that he had not.  I told him that in those five volumes he would not, from cover to cover, find one trace of any sort of a joke.  He would also find that my master drank tea and beer together.  Now it happens that about tea I have read nothing either in the sagas or in the bardic cnylynions, but, whilst the landlord had departed to prepare my meal, I recited to the company those Icelandic stanzas which praise the beer of Gunnar, the long-haired son of Harold the Bear.  Then, lest the language should be unknown to some of them, I recited my own translation, ending with the line—

If the beer be small, then let the mug be large.

I then asked the company whether they went to church or to chapel.  The question surprised them, and especially the strange man in the corner, upon whom I now fixed my eye.  I had read his secret, and as I looked at him he tried to shrink behind the clock-case.

“The church or the chapel?” I asked him.

“The church,” he gasped.

“Which church?” I asked.

He shrank farther behind the clock.  “I have never been so questioned,” he cried.

I showed him that I knew his secret, “Rome was not built in a day,” said I.

“He! He!” he cried.  Then, as I turned away, he put his head from behind the clock-case and tapped his forehead with his forefinger.  So also did the man with the shiny coat, who stood before the empty fireplace.

Having eaten the cold leg of pork—where is there a better dish, save only boiled mutton with capers?—and having drunk both the tea and the beer, I told the company that such a meal had been called “to box Harry” by the master, who had observed it to be in great favour with commercial gentlemen out of Liverpool.  With this information and a stanza or two from Lopez de Vega I left the Inn of the Rose and Crown behind me, having first paid my reckoning.  At the door the landlord asked me for my name and address.

“And why?” I asked.

“Lest there should be inquiry for you,” said the landlord.

“But why should they inquire for me?”

“Ah, who knows?” said the landlord, musing.  And so I left him at the door of the Inn of the Rose and Crown, whence came, I observed, a great tumult of laughter.  “Assuredly,” thought I, “Rome was not built in a day.”

Having walked down the main street of Swinehurst, which, as I have observed, consists of half-timbered buildings in the ancient style, I came out upon the country road, and proceeded to look for those wayside adventures, which are, according to the master, as thick as blackberries for those who seek them upon an English highway.  I had already received some boxing lessons before leaving London, so it seemed to me that if I should chance to meet some traveller whose size and age seemed such as to encourage the venture I would ask him to strip off his coat and settle any differences which we could find in the old English fashion.  I waited, therefore, by a stile for any one who should chance to pass, and it was while I stood there that the screaming horror came upon me, even as it came upon the master in the dingle.  I gripped the bar of the stile, which was of good British oak.  Oh, who can tell the terrors of the screaming horror!  That was what I thought as I grasped the oaken bar of