In the Wrong Paradise, and Other Stories

The conduct of Why-Why was certainly calculated to outrage all conservative feeling. When on the war-path or in the excitement of the chase he had even been known to address a tribesman by his name, as “Old Cow,” or “Flying Cloud,” or what not, instead of adopting the orthodox nomenclature of the classificatory system, and saying, “Third cousin by the mother’s side, thrice removed, will you lend me an arrow?” or whatever it might be. On “tabu-days,” once a week, when the rest of the people in the cave were all silent, sedentary, and miserable (from some superstitious feeling which we can no longer understand), Why-Why would walk about whistling, or would chip his flints or set his nets. He ought to have been punished with death, but no one cared to interfere with him.

Instead of dancing at the great “corroborees,” or religious ballets of his people, he would “sit out” with a girl whose sad, romantic history became fatally interwoven with his own. In vain the medicine-men assured him that Pund-jel, the great spirit, was angry. Why-Why was indifferent to the thunder which was believed to be the voice of Pund-jel. His behaviour at the funeral of a celebrated brave actually caused what we would call a reformation in burial ceremonies.

It was usual to lay the corpses of the famous dead in a cave, where certain of the tribesmen were sent to watch for forty days and nights the decaying body. This ghastly task was made more severe by the difficulty of obtaining food. Everything that the watchers were allowed to eat was cooked outside the cave with complicated ceremonies. If any part of the ritual was omitted, if a drop or a morsel were spilled, the whole rite had to be done over again from the beginning. This was not all. The chief medicine-man took a small portion of the meat in a long spoon, and entered the sepulchral cavern. In the dim light he approached one of the watchers of the dead, danced before him, uttered a mysterious formula of words, and made a shot at the hungry man’s mouth with a long spoon. If the shot was straight, if the spoon did not touch the lips or nose or mouth, the watcher made ready to receive a fresh spoonful. But if the attempt failed, if the spoon did not go straight to the mark, the mourners were obliged to wait till all the cooking ceremonies were performed afresh, when the feeding began again.

Now, Why-why was a mourner whom the chief medicine-man was anxious to “spite,” as children say, and at the end of three days’ watching our hero had not received a morsel of food. The spoon had invariably chanced to miss him. On the fourth night Why-Why entertained his fellow-watchers with a harangue on the imbecility of the whole proceeding. He walked out of the cave, kicked the chief medicine-man into a ravine, seized the pot full of meat, brought it back with him, and made a hearty meal. The other mourners, half dead with fear, expected to see the corpse they were “waking” arise, “girn,” and take some horrible revenge. Nothing of the sort occurred, and the burials of the cave dwellers gradually came to be managed in a less irksome way.

THE LOVES OF VERVA AND WHY-WHY

No man, however intrepid, can offend with impunity the most sacred laws of society. Why-Why proved no exception to this rule. His decline and fall date, we may almost say, from the hour when he bought a fair-haired, blue-eyed female child from a member of a tribe that had wandered out of the far north. The tribe were about to cook poor little Verva because her mother was dead, and she seemed a bouche inutile. For the price of a pair of shell fish-hooks, a bone dagger, and a bundle of grass-string Why-Why (who had a tender heart) ransomed the child. In the cave she lived an unhappy life, as the other children maltreated and tortured her in the manner peculiar to pitiless infancy.

Such protection as a man can give to a child the unlucky little girl received from Why-Why. The cave people, like most savages, made it a rule never to punish their children. Why-Why got into many quarrels because he would occasionally box the ears of the mischievous imps who tormented poor Verva, the fair-haired and blue-eyed captive from the north. There grew up a kind of friendship between Why-Why and the child. She would follow him with dog-like fidelity and with a stealthy tread when he hunted the red deer in the forests of the Alpine Maritimes. She wove for him a belt of shells, strung on stout fibres of grass. In this belt Why-Why would attend the tribal corroborees, where, as has been said, he was inclined to “sit out” with Verva and watch, rather than join in the grotesque dance performed as worship to the Bear.

As Verva grew older and ceased to be persecuted by the children, she became beautiful in the unadorned manner of that early time. Her friendship with Why-Why began to embarrass the girl, and our hero himself felt a quite unusual shyness when he encountered the captive girl among the pines on the hillside. Both these untutored hearts were strangely stirred, and neither Why-Why nor Verva could imagine wherefore they turned pale or blushed when they met, or even when either heard the other’s voice. If Why-Why had not distrusted and indeed detested the chief medicine-man, he would have sought that worthy’s professional advice. But he kept his symptoms to himself, and Verva also pined in secret.

These artless persons were in love without knowing it.

It is not surprising that they did not understand the nature of their complaint, for probably before Why-Why no one had ever been in love. Courtship had consisted in knocking a casual girl on the head in the dark, and the only marriage ceremony had been that of capture. Affection on the side of the bride was out of the question, for, as we have remarked, she was never allowed so much as to see her husband’s face. Probably the institution of falling in love has been evolved in, and has spread from, various early centres of human existence. Among the primitive Ligurian races, however, Why-Why and Verva must be held the inventors, and, alas! the protomartyrs of the passion. Love, like murder, “will out,” and events revealed to Why-Why and Verva the true nature of their sentiments.

It was a considerable exploit of Why-Why’s that brought him and the northern captive to understand each other. The brother of Why-Why had died after partaking too freely of a member of a hostile tribe. The cave people, of course, expected Why-Why to avenge his kinsman. The brother, they said, must have been destroyed by a boilya or vampire, and, as somebody must have sent that vampire against the lad, somebody must be speared for it. Such are primitive ideas of medicine and justice. An ordinary brave would have skulked about the dwellings of some neighbouring human groups till he got a chance of knocking over a child or an old woman, after which justice and honour would have been satisfied. But Why-Why declared that, if he must spear somebody, he would spear a man of importance. The forms of a challenge were therefore notched on a piece of stick, which was solemnly carried by heralds to the most renowned brave of a community settled in the neighbourhood of the modern San Remo. This hero might have very reasonably asked, “Why should I spear Why-Why because his brother over-ate himself?” The laws of honour, however (which even at this period had long been established), forbade a gentleman when challenged to discuss the reasonableness of the proceeding.

The champions met on a sandy plain beside a little river near the modern Ventimiglia. An amphitheatre of rock surrounded them, and, far beyond, the valley was crowned by the ancient snow of an Alpine peak. The tribes of either party gathered in the rocky amphitheatre, and breathlessly watched the issue of the battle. Each warrior was equipped with a shield, a sheaf of spears, and a heavy, pointed club. At thirty paces distance they began throwing, and the spectators enjoyed a beautiful exposition of warlike skill. Both men threw with extreme force and deadly aim; while each defended himself cleverly with his shield. The spears were exhausted, and but one had pierced the thigh of Why-Why, while his opponent had two sticking in his neck and left arm.

Then, like two meeting thunder-clouds, the champions dashed at each other with their clubs. The sand was whirled up around them as they spun in the wild dance of battle, and the clubs rattled incessantly on the heads and shields. Twice Why-Why was down, but he rose with wonderful agility, and never dropped his shield. A third time he stooped beneath a tremendous whack, but when all seemed over, grasped a handful of sand, and flung it right in his enemy’s eyes. The warrior reeled, blinded and confused, when Why-Why gave point with the club in his antagonist’s throat; the blood leaped out, and both fell senseless on the plain.

* * * * *

When the slow mist cleared from before the eyes of Why-Why he found himself (he was doubtless the first hero of the many heroes who have occupied this romantic position) stretched on a grassy bed, and watched by the blue eyes of Verva. Where were the sand, the stream, the hostile warrior, the crowds of friends and foes? It was Verva’s part to explain. The champion of the other tribe had never breathed after he received the club-thrust, and the chief medicine-man had declared that Why-Why was also dead. He had suggested that both champions should be burned in the desolate spot where they lay, that their boilyas, or ghosts, might not harm the tribes. The lookers-on had gone to their several and distant caves to fetch fire for the ceremony (they possessed no means of striking a light), and Verva, unnoticed, had lingered beside Why-Why, and laid his bleeding head in her lap. Why-Why had uttered a groan, and the brave girl dragged him from the field into a safe retreat among the woods not far from the stream. Why-Why had been principally beaten about the head, and his injuries, therefore, were slight.

After watching the return of the tribesmen, and hearing the chief medicine-man explain that Why-Why’s body had been carried away by “the bad black-fellow with a tail who lives under the earth,” Why-Why enjoyed the pleasure of seeing his kinsmen and his foes leave the place to its natural silence. Then he found words, and poured forth his heart to Verva. They must never be sundered – they must be man and wife! The girl leaned her golden head on Why-Why’s dark shoulder, and sniffed at him, for kissing was an institution not yet evolved. She wept. She had a dreadful thing to tell him, – that she could never be his. “Look at this mark,” she said, exposing the inner side of her arm. Why-Why looked, shuddered, and turned pale. On Verva’s arm he recognized, almost defaced, the same tattooed badge that wound its sinuous spirals across his own broad chest and round his manly legs. It was the mark of the Serpent!

Both were Serpents; both, unknown to Why-Why, though not to Verva, bore the same name, the same badge, and, if Why-Why had been a religious man, both would have worshipped the same reptile. Marriage between them then was a thing accursed; man punished it by death. Why-Why bent his head and thought. He remembered all his youth – the murder of his sister for no crime; the killing of the serpent, and how no evil came of it; the eating of the oysters, and how the earth had not opened and swallowed him. His mind was made up. It was absolutely certain that his tribe and Verva’s kin had never been within a thousand miles of each other. In a few impassioned words he explained to Verva his faith, his simple creed that a thing was not necessarily wrong because the medicine-men said so, and the tribe believed them. The girl’s own character was all trustfulness, and Why-Why was the person she trusted. “Oh, Why-Why, dear,” she said blushing (for she had never before ventured to break the tribal rule which forbade calling any one by his name), “Oh, Why-Why, you are always right!”

And o’er the hills, and far awayBeyond their utmost purple rim,Beyond the night, across the day,Through all the world she followed him.

LA MORT WHY-WHY

Two years had passed like a dream in the pleasant valley which, in far later ages, the Romans called Vallis Aurea, and which we call Vallauris. Here, at a distance of some thirty miles from the cave and the tribe, dwelt in fancied concealment Why-Why and Verva. The clear stream was warbling at their feet, in the bright blue weather of spring; the scent of the may blossoms was poured abroad, and, lying in the hollow of Why-Why’s shield, a pretty little baby with Why-Why’s dark eyes and Verva’s golden locks was crowing to his mother. Why-Why sat beside her, and was busily making the first European pipkin with the clay which he had found near Vallauris. All was peace.

* * * * *

There was a low whizzing sound, something seemed to rush past Why-Why, and with a scream Verva fell on her face. A spear had pierced her breast. With a yell like that of a wounded lion, Why-Why threw himself on the bleeding body of his bride. For many moments he heard no sound but her long, loud and unconscious breathing. He did not mark the yells of his tribesmen, nor feel the spears that rained down on himself, nor see the hideous face of the chief medicine-man peering at his own. Verva ceased to breathe. There was a convulsion, and her limbs were still. Then Why-Why rose. In his right hand was his famous club, “the watcher of the fords;” in his left his shield. These had never lain far from his hand since he fled with Verva.

He knew that the end had come, as he had so often dreamt of it; he knew that he was trapped and taken by his offended tribesmen. His first blow shattered the head of the chief medicine-man. Then he flung himself, all bleeding from the spears, among the press of savages who started from every lentisk bush and tuft of tall flowering heath. They gave back when four of their chief braves had fallen, and Why-Why lacked strength and will to pursue them. He turned and drew Verva’s body beneath the rocky wall, and then he faced his enemies. He threw down shield and club and raised his hands. A light seemed to shine about his face, and his first word had a strange tone that caught the ear and chilled the heart of all who heard him. “Listen,” he said, “for these are the last words of Why-Why. He came like the water, and like the wind he goes, he knew not whence, and he knows not whither. He does not curse you, for you are that which you are. But the day will come” (and here Why-Why’s voice grew louder and his eyes burned), “the day will come when you will no longer be the slave of things like that dead dog,” and here he pointed to the shapeless face of the slain medicine-man. “The day will come, when a man shall speak unto his sister in loving kindness, and none shall do him wrong. The day will come when a woman shall unpunished see the face and name the name of her husband. As the summers go by you will not bow down to the hyænas, and the bears, and worship the adder and the viper. You will not cut and bruise the bodies of your young men, or cruelly strike and seize away women in the darkness. Yes, and the time will be when a man may love a woman of the same family name as himself” – but here the outraged religion of the tribesmen could endure no longer to listen to these wild and blasphemous words. A shower of spears flew out, and Why-Why fell across the body of Verva. His own was “like a marsh full of reeds,” said the poet of the tribe, in a song which described these events, “so thick the spears stood in it.”

* * * * *

When he was dead, the tribe knew what they had lost in Why-Why. They bore his body, with that of Verva, to the cave; there they laid the lovers – Why-Why crowned with a crown of sea-shells, and with a piece of a rare magical substance (iron) at his side. 13 Then the tribesmen withdrew from that now holy ground, and built them houses, and forswore the follies of the medicine-men, as Why-Why had prophesied. Many thousands of years later the cave was opened when the railway to Genoa was constructed, and the bones of Why-Why, with the crown, and the fragment of iron, were found where they had been laid by his repentant kinsmen. He had bravely asserted the rights of the individual conscience against the dictates of Society; he had lived, and loved, and died, not in vain. Last April I plucked a rose beside his cave, and laid it with another that had blossomed at the door of the last house which covered the homeless head of SHELLEY.

The prophecies of Why-Why have been partially fulfilled. Brothers, if they happen to be on speaking terms, may certainly speak to their sisters, though we are still, alas, forbidden to marry the sisters of our deceased wives. Wives may see their husbands, though in Society, they rarely avail themselves of the privilege. Young ladies are still forbidden to call young men at large by their Christian names; but this tribal law, and survival of the classificatory system, is rapidly losing its force. Burials in the savage manner to which Why-Why objected, will soon, doubtless, be permitted to conscientious Nonconformists in the graveyards of the Church of England. The teeth of boys are still knocked out at public and private schools, but the ceremony is neither formal nor universal. Our advance in liberty is due to an army of forgotten Radical martyrs of whom we know less than we do of Mr. Bradlaugh.

A DUCHESS’S SECRET

When I was poor, and honest, and a novelist, I little thought that I should ever be rich, and something not very unlike a Duke; and, as to honesty, but an indifferent character. I have had greatness thrust on me. I am, like Simpcox in the dramatis personæ of “Henry IV.,” “an impostor;” and yet I scarcely know how I could have escaped this deplorable (though lucrative) position. “Love is a great master,” says the “Mort d’Arthur,” and I perhaps may claim sympathy and pity as a victim of love. The following unaffected lines (in which only names and dates are disguised) contain all the apology I can offer to a censorious world.

Two or three years ago I was dependent on literature for my daily bread. I was a regular man-of-all-work. Having the advantage of knowing a clerk in the Foreign Office who went into society (he had been my pupil at the university), I picked up a good deal of scandalous gossip, which I published in the Pimlico Postboy, a journal of fashion. I was also engaged as sporting prophet to the Tipster, and was not less successful than my contemporaries as a vaticinator of future events. At the same time I was contributing a novel (anonymously) to the Fleet Street Magazine, a very respectable publication, though perhaps a little dull. The editor had expressly requested me to make things rather more lively, and I therefore gave my imagination free play in the construction of my plot. I introduced a beautiful girl, daughter of a preacher in the Shaker community. Her hand was sought in marriage by a sporting baronet, who had seen her as he pursued the chase through the pathless glens of the New Forest. This baronet she married after suffering things intolerable from the opposition of the Shakers. Here I had a good deal of padding about Shakers and their ways; and, near the end of the sixth chapter my heroine became the wife of Sir William Buckley. But the baronet proved a perfect William Rufus for variegated and versatile blackguardism. Lady Buckley’s life was made impossible by his abominable conduct. At this juncture my heroine chanced to be obliged to lunch at a railway refreshment-room. My last chapter had described the poor lady lunching lonely in the bleak and gritty waiting room of Swilby Junction, lonely except for the company of her little boy. I showed how she fell into a strange and morbid vein of reflection suggested by the qualities of the local sherry. If she was to live, her lord and master, Sir W. Buckley, must die! And I described how a fiendish temptation was whispered to her by the glass of local sherry. “William’s constitution, strong as it is,” she murmured inwardly, “could never stand a dozen of that sherry. Suppose he chanced to partake of it – accidentally – rather late in the evening.” Amidst these reflections I allowed the December instalment of “The Baronet’s Wife” to come to a conclusion in the Fleet Street Magazine. Obviously crime was in the wind.

It is my habit to read the “Agony Column” (as it is flippantly called), the second column in the outer sheet of the Times. Who knows but he may there see something to his advantage; and, besides, the mysterious advertisements may suggest ideas for plots. One day I took up the “Agony Column,” as usual, at my club, and, to my surprise, read the following advertisement: —

“F. S. M. – SHERRY WINE. WRECK OF THE “JINGO.” – WRETCHED BOY: Stay your unhallowed hand! Would you expose an erring MOTHER’S secret? Author will please communicate with Messrs. Mantlepiece and Co., Solicitors, Upton-on-the-Wold.”

As soon as I saw this advertisement, as soon as my eyes fell on “Sherry Wine” and “Author,” I felt that here was something for me. “F. S. M.” puzzled me at first, but I read it Fleet Street Magazine, by a flash of inspiration. “Wretched Boy” seemed familiar and unappropriate – I was twenty-nine – but what of that? Of course I communicated with Messrs. Mantlepiece, saying that I had reason for supposing that I was the “author” alluded to in the advertisement. As to the words, “Wreck of the Jingo” they entirely beat me, but I hoped that some light would be thrown on their meaning by the respectable firm of solicitors. It did occur to me that if any one had reasons for communicating with me, it would have been better and safer to address a letter to me, under cover, to the editor of the Fleet Street Magazine. But the public have curious ideas on these matters. Two days after I wrote to Messrs. Mantlepiece I received a very guarded reply, in which I was informed that their client wished to make my acquaintance, and that a carriage would await me, if I presented myself at Upton-on-the-Wold Station, by the train arriving at 5.45 on Friday. Well, I thought to myself, I may as well do a “week-ending,” as some people call it, with my anonymous friend as anywhere else. At the same time I knew that the “carriage” might be hired by enemies to convey me to the Pauper Lunatic Asylum or to West Ham, the place where people disappear mysteriously. I might be the victim of a rival’s jealousy (and many men, novelists of most horrible imaginings, envied my talents and success), or a Nihilist plot might have drawn me into its machinery. But I was young, and I thought I would see the thing out. My journey was unadventurous, if you except a row with a German, who refused to let me open the window. But this has nothing to do with my narrative, and is not a false scent to make a guileless reader keep his eye on the Teuton. Some novelists permit themselves these artifices, which I think untradesmanlike and unworthy. When I arrived at Upton, the station-master made a charge at my carriage, and asked me if I was “The gentleman for the Towers?” The whole affair was so mysterious that I thought it better to answer in the affirmative. My luggage (a Gladstone bag) was borne by four stately and liveried menials to a roomy and magnificent carriage, in which everything, from the ducal crown on the silver foot-warmers to the four splendid bays, breathed of opulence, directed and animated by culture. I dismissed all thoughts of the Pauper Lunatic Asylum and the Nihilists, and was whirled through miles of park and up an avenue lighted by electricity. We reached the baronial gateway of the Towers, a vast Gothic pile in the later manner of Inigo Jones, and a seneschal stood at the foot of a magnificent staircase to receive me. I had never seen a seneschal before, but I recognized him by the peeled white wand he carried, by his great silver chain, and his black velvet coat and knee-breeches.

“Your lordship’s room,” says the seneschal (obviously an old and confidential family servant), “is your old one – the Tapestried Chamber. Her Grace is waiting anxiously for you.”

Then two menials marched, with my Gladstone bag, to the apartment thus indicated. For me, I felt in a dream, or like a man caught up into the fairyland of the “Arabian Nights.” “Her Grace” was all very well – the aristocracy always admired my fictitious creations; but “Your Lordship!” Why your Lordship? Then the chilling idea occurred to me that I had not been “the gentleman for the Towers;” that I was in the position of the hero of “Happy Thoughts” when he went to the Duke’s by mistake for the humble home of the Plyte Frazers. But I was young. “Her Grace” could not eat me, and I determined, as I said before, to see it out.