to its stimulus, she moved forward.
"Be careful going down the ladder," said Gombauld once more.
She was careful. The door closed behind her and she was alone in
the little green close. She walked slowly back through the farmyard; she
was pensive.
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CHAPTER XIII.
Henry Wimbush brought down with him to dinner a budget of printed
sheets loosely bound together in a cardboard portfolio.
"To-day," he said, exhibiting it with a certain solemnity, "to- day I
have finished the printing of my 'History of Crome'. I helped to set up
the type of the last page this evening."
"The famous History?" cried Anne. The writing and the printing of
this Magnum Opus had been going on as long as she could remember.
All her childhood long Uncle Henry's History had been a vague and
fabulous thing, often heard of and never seen.
"It has taken me nearly thirty years," said Mr. Wimbush. "Twenty-five
years of writing and nearly four of printing. And now it's finished--the
whole chronicle, from Sir Ferdinando Lapith's birth to the death of my
father William Wimbush--more than three centuries and a half: a history
of Crome, written at Crome, and printed at Crome by my own press."
"Shall we be allowed to read it now it's finished?" asked Denis.
Mr. Wimbush nodded. "Certainly," he said. "And I hope you will
not find it uninteresting," he added modestly. "Our muniment room is
particularly rich in ancient records, and I have some genuinely new light
to throw on the introduction of the three- pronged fork."
"And the people?" asked Gombauld. "Sir Ferdinando and the rest of
them--were they amusing? Were there any crimes or tragedies in the
family?"
"Let me see," Henry Wimbush rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I can
only think of two suicides, one violent death, four or perhaps five broken
hearts, and half a dozen little blots on the scutcheon in the way of
misalliances, seductions, natural children, and the like. No, on the whole,
it's a placid and uneventful record."
"The Wimbushes and the Lapiths were always an unadventurous,
respectable crew," said Priscilla, with a note of scorn in her voice. "If I
were to write my family history now! Why, it would be one long
continuous blot from beginning to end." She laughed jovially, and
helped herself to another glass of wine.
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"If I were to write mine," Mr. Scogan remarked, "it wouldn't exist.
After the second generation we Scogans are lost in the mists of antiquity."
"After dinner," said Henry Wimbush, a little piqued by his wife's
disparaging comment on the masters of Crome, "I'll read you an episode
from my History that will make you admit that even the Lapiths, in their
own respectable way, had their tragedies and strange adventures."
"I'm glad to hear it," said Priscilla.
"Glad to hear what?" asked Jenny, emerging suddenly from her private
interior world like a cuckoo from a clock. She received an explanation,
smiled, nodded, cuckooed at last "I see," and popped back, clapping shut
the door behind her.
Dinner was eaten; the party had adjourned to the drawing-room.
"Now," said Henry Wimbush, pulling up a chair to the lamp. He put
on his round pince-nez, rimmed with tortoise-shell, and began cautiously
to turn over the pages of his loose and still fragmentary book. He found
his place at last. "Shall I begin?" he asked, looking up.
"Do," said Priscilla, yawning.
In the midst of an attentive silence Mr. Wimbush gave a little
preliminary cough and started to read.
"The infant who was destined to become the fourth baronet of the
name of Lapith was born in the year 1740. He was a very small baby,
weighing not more than three pounds at birth, but from the first he was
sturdy and healthy. In honour of his maternal grandfather, Sir Hercules
Occam of Bishop's Occam, he was christened Hercules. His mother, like
many other mothers, kept a notebook, in which his progress from month to
month was recorded. He walked at ten months, and before his second year
was out he had learnt to speak a number of words. At three years he
weighed but twenty-four pounds, and at six, though he could read and
write perfectly and showed a remarkable aptitude for music, he was no
larger and heavier than a well-grown child of two. Meanwhile, his mother
had borne two other children, a boy and a girl, one of whom died of croup
during infancy, while the other was carried off by smallpox before it
reached the age of five. Hercules remained the only surviving child.
"On his twelfth birthday Hercules was still only three feet and two
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inches in height. His head, which was very handsome and nobly shaped,
was too big for his body, but otherwise he was exquisitely proportioned,
and, for his size, of great strength and agility. His parents, in the hope of
making him grow, consulted all the most eminent physicians of the time.
Their various prescriptions were followed to the letter, but in vain. One
ordered a very plentiful meat diet; another exercise; a third constructed a
little rack, modelled on those employed by the Holy Inquisition, on which
young Hercules was stretched, with excruciating torments, for half an hour
every morning and evening. In the course of the next three years
Hercules gained perhaps two inches. After that his growth stopped
completely, and he remained for the rest of his life a pigmy of three feet
and four inches. His father, who had built the most extravagant hopes
upon his son, planning for him in his imagination a military career equal to
that of Marlborough, found himself a disappointed man. 'I have brought
an abortion into the world,' he would say, and he took so violent a dislike
to his son that the boy dared scarcely come into his presence. His temper,
which had been serene, was turned by disappointment to moroseness and
savagery. He avoided all company (being, as he said, ashamed to show
himself, the father of a lusus naturae, among normal, healthy human
beings), and took to solitary drinking, which carried him very rapidly to
his grave; for the year before Hercules came of age his father was taken
off by an apoplexy. His mother, whose love for him had increased with the
growth of his father's unkindness, did not long survive, but little more than
a year after her husband's death succumbed, after eating two dozen of
oysters, to an attack of typhoid fever.
"Hercules thus found himself at the age of twenty-one alone in the
world, and master of a considerable fortune, including the estate and
mansion of Crome. The beauty and intelligence of his childhood had
survived into his manly age, and, but for his dwarfish stature, he would
have taken his place among the handsomest and most accomplished young
men of his time. He was well read in the Greek and Latin authors, as
well as in all the moderns of any merit who had written in English, French,
or Italian. He had a good ear for music, and was no indifferent performer
on the violin, which he used to play like a bass viol, seated on a chair with
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the instrument between his legs. To the music of the harpsichord and
clavichord he was extremely partial, but the smallness of his hands made it
impossible for him ever to perform upon these instruments. He had a
small ivory flute made for him, on which, whenever he was melancholy,
he used to play a simple country air or jig, affirming that this rustic music
had more power to clear and raise the spirits than the most artificial
productions of the masters. From an early age he practised the
composition of poetry, but, though conscious of his great powers in this art,
he would never publish any specimen of his writing. 'My stature,' he
would say, 'is reflected in my verses; if the public were to read them it
would not be because I am a poet, but because I am a dwarf.' Several
MS. books of Sir Hercules's poems survive. A single specimen will
suffice to illustrate his qualities as a poet.
"'In ancient days, while yet the world was young, Ere Abram fed his
flocks or Homer sung; When blacksmith Tubal tamed creative fire, And
Jabal dwelt in tents and Jubal struck the lyre; Flesh grown corrupt brought
forth a monstrous birth And obscene giants trod the shrinking earth, Till
God, impatient of their sinful brood, Gave rein to wrath and drown'd them
in the Flood. Teeming again, repeopled Tellus bore The lubber Hero and
the Man of War; Huge towers of Brawn, topp'd with an empty Skull,
Witlessly bold, heroically dull. Long ages pass'd and Man grown more
refin'd, Slighter in muscle but of vaster Mind, Smiled at his grandsire's
broadsword, bow and bill, And learn'd to wield the Pencil and the Quill.
The glowing canvas and the written page Immortaliz'd his name from age
to age, His name emblazon'd on Fame's temple wall; For Art grew great as
Humankind grew small. Thus man's long progress step by step we trace;
The Giant dies, the hero takes his place; The Giant vile, the dull heroic
Block: At one we shudder and at one we mock. Man last appears. In him
the Soul's pure flame Burns brightlier in a not inord'nate frame. Of old
when Heroes fought and Giants swarmed, Men were huge mounds of
matter scarce inform'd; Wearied by leavening so vast a mass, The spirit
slept and all the mind was crass. The smaller carcase of these later days Is
soon inform'd; the Soul unwearied plays And like a Pharos darts abroad
her mental rays. But can we think that Providence will stay Man's
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footsteps here upon the upward way? Mankind in understanding and in
grace Advanc'd so far beyond the Giants' race? Hence impious thought!
Still led by GOD'S own Hand, Mankind proceeds towards the Promised
Land. A time will come (prophetic, I descry Remoter dawns along the
gloomy sky), When happy mortals of a Golden Age Will backward turn
the dark historic page, And in our vaunted race of Men behold A form as
gross, a Mind as dead and cold, As we in Giants see, in warriors of old. A
time will come, wherein the soul shall be From all superfluous matter
wholly free; When the light body, agile as a fawn's, Shall sport with grace
along the velvet lawns. Nature's most delicate and final birth, Mankind
perfected shall possess the earth. But ah, not yet! For still the Giants'
race, Huge, though diminish'd, tramps the Earth's fair face; Gross and
repulsive, yet perversely proud, Men of their imperfections boast aloud.
Vain of their bulk, of all they still retain Of giant ugliness absurdly vain;
At all that's small they point their stupid scorn And, monsters, think
themselves divinely born. Sad is the Fate of those, ah, sad indeed, The rare
precursors of the nobler breed! Who come man's golden glory to foretell,
But pointing Heav'nwards live themselves in Hell.'
"As soon as he came into the estate, Sir Hercules set about
remodelling his household. For though by no means ashamed of his
deformity--indeed, if we may judge from the poem quoted above, he
regarded himself as being in many ways superior to the ordinary race of
man--he found the presence of full-grown men and women embarrassing.
Realising, too, that he must abandon all ambitions in the great world, he
determined to retire absolutely from it and to create, as it were, at Crome a
private world of his own, in which all should be proportionable to himself.
Accordingly, he discharged all the old servants of the house and replaced
them gradually, as he was able to find suitable successors, by others of
dwarfish stature. In the course of a few years he had assembled about
himself a numerous household, no member of which was above four feet
high and the smallest among them scarcely two feet and six inches. His
father's dogs, such as setters, mastiffs, greyhounds, and a pack of beagles,
he sold or gave away as too large and too boisterous for his house,
replacing them by pugs and King Charles spaniels and whatever other
66
breeds of dog were the smallest. His father's stable was also sold. For
his own use, whether riding or driving, he had six black Shetland ponies,
with four very choice piebald animals of New Forest breed.
"Having thus settled his household entirely to his own satisfaction, it
only remained for him to find some suitable companion with whom to
share his paradise. Sir Hercules had a susceptible heart, and had more
than once, between the ages of sixteen and twenty, felt what it was to love.
But here his deformity had been a source of the most bitter humiliation,
for, having once dared to declare himself to a young lady of his choice, he
had been received with laughter. On his persisting, she had picked him
up and shaken him like an importunate child, telling him to run away and
plague her no more. The story soon got about--indeed, the young lady
herself used to tell it as a particularly pleasant anecdote--and the taunts
and mockery it occasioned were a source of the most acute distress to
Hercules. From the poems written at this period we gather that he
meditated taking his own life. In course of time, however, he lived down
this humiliation; but never again, though he often fell in love, and that
very passionately, did he dare to make any advances to those in whom he
was interested. After coming to the estate and finding that he was in a
position to create his own world as he desired it, he saw that, if he was to
have a wife--which he very much desired, being of an affectionate and,
indeed, amorous temper--he must choose her as he had chosen his
servants--from among the race of dwarfs. But to find a suitable wife was,
he found, a matter of some difficulty; for he would marry none who was
