The Club of Queer Trades, G. K. Chesterton [book series for 12 year olds .TXT] 📗

the shoulder would make him aware of one’s presence, so I came round the table towards him. I really do not know how to describe the sensation which I then had. It seems simply silly, but at the moment it seemed something enormous, upsetting one’s brain. The fact is, James was standing on one leg.”

Grant smiled slowly and rubbed his hands with a kind of care.

“Standing on one leg?” I repeated.

“Yes,” replied the dead voice of the woman without an inflection to suggest that she felt the fantasticality of her statement. “He was standing on the left leg and the right drawn up at a sharp angle, the toe pointing downwards. I asked him if his leg hurt him. His only answer was to shoot the leg straight at right angles to the other, as if pointing to the other with his toe to the wall. He was still looking quite gravely at the fireplace.

“ ‘James, what is the matter?’ I cried, for I was thoroughly frightened. James gave three kicks in the air with the right leg, flung up the other, gave three kicks in the air with it also and spun round like a teetotum the other way. ‘Are you mad?’ I cried. ‘Why don’t you answer me?’ He had come to a standstill facing me, and was looking at me as he always does, with his lifted eyebrows and great spectacled eyes. When I had spoken he remained a second or two motionless, and then his only reply was to lift his left foot slowly from the floor and describe circles with it in the air. I rushed to the door and shouted for Christina. I will not dwell on the dreadful hours that followed. All three of us talked to him, implored him to speak to us with appeals that might have brought back the dead, but he has done nothing but hop and dance and kick with a solemn silent face. It looks as if his legs belonged to someone else or were possessed by devils. He has never spoken to us from that time to this.”

“Where is he now?” I said, getting up in some agitation. “We ought not to leave him alone.”

“Doctor Colman is with him,” said Miss Chadd calmly. “They are in the garden. Doctor Colman thought the air would do him good. And he can scarcely go into the street.”

Basil and I walked rapidly to the window which looked out on the garden. It was a small and somewhat smug suburban garden; the flower beds a little too neat and like the pattern of a coloured carpet; but on this shining and opulent summer day even they had the exuberance of something natural, I had almost said tropical. In the middle of a bright and verdant but painfully circular lawn stood two figures. One of them was a small, sharp-looking man with black whiskers and a very polished hat (I presume Dr. Colman), who was talking very quietly and clearly, yet with a nervous twitch, as it were, in his face. The other was our old friend, listening with his old forbearing expression and owlish eyes, the strong sunlight gleaming on his glasses as the lamplight had gleamed the night before, when the boisterous Basil had rallied him on his studious decorum. But for one thing the figure of this morning might have been the identical figure of last night. That one thing was that while the face listened reposefully the legs were industriously dancing like the legs of a marionette. The neat flowers and the sunny glitter of the garden lent an indescribable sharpness and incredibility to the prodigy⁠—the prodigy of the head of a hermit and the legs of a harlequin. For miracles should always happen in broad daylight. The night makes them credible and therefore commonplace.

The second sister had by this time entered the room and came somewhat drearily to the window.

“You know, Adelaide,” she said, “that Mr. Bingham from the Museum is coming again at three.”

“I know,” said Adelaide Chadd bitterly. “I suppose we shall have to tell him about this. I thought that no good fortune would ever come easily to us.”

Grant suddenly turned round. “What do you mean?” he said. “What will you have to tell Mr. Bingham?”

“You know what I shall have to tell him,” said the professor’s sister, almost fiercely. “I don’t know that we need give it its wretched name. Do you think that the keeper of Asiatic manuscripts will be allowed to go on like that?” And she pointed for an instant at the figure in the garden, the shining, listening face and the unresting feet.

Basil Grant took out his watch with an abrupt movement. “When did you say the British Museum man was coming?” he said.

“Three o’clock,” said Miss Chadd briefly.

“Then I have an hour before me,” said Grant, and without another word threw up the window and jumped out into the garden. He did not walk straight up to the doctor and lunatic, but strolling round the garden path drew near them cautiously and yet apparently carelessly. He stood a couple of feet off them, seemingly counting halfpence out of his trousers pocket, but, as I could see, looking up steadily under the broad brim of his hat.

Suddenly he stepped up to Professor Chadd’s elbow, and said, in a loud familiar voice, “Well, my boy, do you still think the Zulus our inferiors?”

The doctor knitted his brows and looked anxious, seeming to be about to speak. The professor turned his bald and placid head towards Grant in a friendly manner, but made no answer, idly flinging his left leg about.

“Have you converted Dr. Colman to your views?” Basil continued, still in the same loud and lucid tone.

Chadd only shuffled his feet and kicked a little with the other leg, his expression still benevolent and inquiring. The doctor cut in rather sharply. “Shall we go inside, professor?” he said. “Now you have shown me the garden. A beautiful garden. A most beautiful garden. Let us