Here Wilding White, who was then in a monastic phase, intervened eagerly. He explained that in some monasteries a monk of particular holiness was allowed to become a hermit in an inner cell, and proposed a similar arrangement at the club. Hood, with his more mellow rationalism, intervened with a milder amendment. He suggested that a large padded chair should represent the padded cell, and be reserved like a throne for the loftiest of the lunatics.

  “Do not,” he said gently and earnestly, “do not let us be divided by jealousies and petty ambitions. Do not let us dispute among ourselves which shall be the dottiest in the domain of the dotty. Perhaps one will appear worthier than us all, more manifestly and magnificently weak in the head; for him let the padded throne stand empty.”

  Jimmy Crane had said no more after his brief suggestion, but was pacing the room like a polar bear, as he generally did when there came upon him a periodical impulse to go off after things like polar bears. He was the wildest of all those wild figures so far as the scale of his adventures was concerned, constantly vanishing to the ends of the earth nobody knew why, and turning up again nobody knew how. He had a hobby, even in his youth, that made his outlook seem even stranger than the bewildering successive philosophies of his friend White. He had an enthusiasm for the myths of savages, and while White was balancing the relative claims of Buddhism and Brahminism, Crane would boldly declare his preference for the belief that a big fish ate the sun every night, or that the whole cosmos was created by cutting up a giant. Moreover, there was with all this something indefinable but in some way more serious about Crane even in those days. There was much that was merely boyish about the blind impetuosity of Wilding White, with his wild hair and eager aquiline face. He was evidently one who might (as he said) learn the secret of Isis, but would be quite incapable of keeping it to himself. The long, legal face of Owen Hood had already learned to laugh at most things, if not to laugh loudly. But in Crane there was something more hard and militant like steel, and as he proved afterwards in the affair of the hat, he could keep a secret even when it was a joke. So that when he finally went off on a long tour round the world, with the avowed intention of studying all the savages he could find, nobody tried to stop him. He went off in a startlingly shabby suit, with a faded sash instead of a waistcoat, and with no luggage in particular, except a large revolver slung round him in a case like a field-glass, and a big, green umbrella that he flourished resolutely as he walked.

  “Well, he’ll come back a queerer figure than he went, I suppose,” said Wilding White.

  “He couldn’t,” answered Hood, the lawyer, shaking his head. “I don’t believe all the devil-worship in Africa could make him any madder than he is.”

  “But he’s going to America first, isn’t he?” said the other.

  “Yes,” said Hood. “He’s going to America, but not to see the Americans. He would think the Americans very dull compared with the American Indians. Possibly he will come back in feathers and war-paint.”

  “He’ll come back scalped, I suppose,” said White hopefully. “I suppose being scalped is all the rage in the best Red Indian society?”

  “Then he’s working round by the South Sea Islands,” said Hood. “They don’t scalp people there; they only stew them in pots.”

  “He couldn’t very well come back stewed,” said White, musing. “Does it strike you, Owen, that we should hardly be talking nonsense like this if we hadn’t a curious faith that a fellow like Crane will know how to look after himself?”

  “Yes,” said Hood gravely. “I’ve got a very fixed fundamental conviction that Crane will turn up again all right. But it’s true that he may look jolly queer after going ~fantee~ for all that time.”

  It became a sort of pastime at the club of the Lunatics to compete in speculations about the guise in which the maddest of their madmen would return, after being so long lost to civilization. And grand preparations were made as for a sort of Walpurgis Night of nonsense when it was known at last that he was really returning. Hood had received letters from him occasionally, full of queer mythologies, and then a rapid succession of telegrams from places nearer and nearer home, culminating in the announcement that he would appear in the club that night. It was about five minutes before dinner-time that a sharp knock on the door announced his arrival.

  “Bang all the gongs and the tom-toms,” cried Wilding White. “The Lord High Mumbo-Jumbo arrives riding on the nightmare.”

  “We had better bring out the throne of the King of the Maniacs,” said Hood, laughing. “We may want it at last,” and he turned towards the big padded chair that still stood at the top of the table.

  As he did so James Crane walked into the room. He was clad in very neat and well-cut evening clothes, not too fashionable, and a little formal. His hair was parted on one side, and his moustache clipped rather close; he took a seat with a pleasant smile, and began talking about the weather.

  He was not allowed, however, to confine his conversation to the weather. He had certainly succeeded in giving his old friends the only sort of surprise that they really had not expected; but they were too old friends for their friend to be able to conceal from them the meaning of such a change. And it was on that festive evening that Crane explained his position; a position which he maintained in most things ever afterwards, and one which is the original foundation of the affair that follows.

  “I have lived with the men we call savages all over the world,” he said simply, “and I have found out one truth about them. And I tell you, my friends, you may talk about independence and individual self-expression till you burst. But I’ve always found, wherever I went, that the man who could really be trusted to keep his word, and to fight, and to work for his family, was the man who did a war-dance before the moon where the moon was worshipped, and wore a nose-ring in his nose where nose-rings were worn. I have had plenty of fun, and I won’t interfere with anyone else having it. But I believe I have seen what is the real making of mankind, and I have come back to my tribe.”

  This was the first act of the drama which ended in the remarkable appearance and disappearance of Mr. Enoch Oates, and it has been necessary to narrate it briefly before passing on to the second act. Ever since that time Crane had preserved at once his eccentric friends and his own more formal customs. And there were many among the newer members of the club who had never known him except as the Colonel, the grizzled, military gentleman whose severe scheme of black and white attire and strict politeness in small things formed the one foil of sharp contrast to that many-coloured Bohemia. One of these was Hilary Pierce, the young aviator; and much as he liked the Colonel, he never quite understood him. He had never known the old soldier in his volcanic youth, as had Hood and White, and therefore never knew how much of the fire remained under the rock or the snows. The singular affair of the hat, which has been narrated to the too patient reader elsewhere, surprised him more than it did the older men, who knew very well that the Colonel was not so old as he looked. And the impression increased with all the incidents which a fanatical love of truth has forced the chronicler to relate in the same connexion; the incident of the river and of the pigs and of the somewhat larger pet of Mr. Wilding White. There was talk of renaming the Lunatic Asylum as the League of the Long Bow, and of commemorating its performances in a permanent ritual. The Colonel was induced to wear a crown of cabbage on state occasions, and Pierce was gravely invited to bring his pigs with him to dine at the club.

  “You could easily bring a little pig in your large pocket,” said Hood. “I often wonder people do not have pigs as pets.”

  “A pig in a poke, in fact,” said Pierce. “Well, so long as you have the tact to avoid the indelicacy of having pork for dinner that evening, I suppose I could bring my pig in my pocket.”

  “White’d find it rather a nuisance to bring his elephant in his pocket,” observed the Colonel.

  Pierce glanced at him, and had again the feeling of incongruity at seeing the ceremonial cabbage adorning his comparatively venerable head. For the Colonel had just been married, and was rejuvenated in an almost jaunty degree. Somehow the philosophical young man seemed to miss something, and sighed. It was then that he made the remark which is the pivot of this precise though laborious anecdote.

  “Since the Colonel ate his hat,” he said, “the Lunatic Asylum has lacked a background.”

  “Damn your impudence,” said the Colonel cheerfully. “Do you mean to call me a background to my face?”

  “A dark background,” said Pierce soothingly. “Do not resent my saying a dark background. I mean a grand, mysterious background like that of night; a sublime and even starry background.”

  “Starry yourself,” said Crane indignantly.

  “It was against that background of ancient night,” went on the young man dreamily, “that the fantastic shapes and fiery colours of our carnival could really be seen. So long as he came here with his black coat and beautiful society manners there was a foil to our follies. We were eccentric, but he was our centre. You cannot be eccentric without a centre.”

  “I believe Hilary is quite right,” said Owen Hood earnestly. “I believe we have made a great mistake. We ought not to have all gone mad at once. We ought to have taken it in turns to go mad. Then I could have been shocked at his behaviour on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and he could have been shocked at my behaviour on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. But there is no moral value in going mad when nobody is shocked. If Crane leaves off being shocked, what are we to do?”

  “I know what we want,” began Pierce excitedly.

  “So do I,” interrupted Hood. “We want a sane man.”

  “Not so easy to find nowadays,” said the old soldier. “Going to advertise?”

  “I mean a stupid man,” explained Owen Hood. “I mean a man who’s conventional all through, not a humbug like Crane. I mean, I want a solid, serious, business man, a hard-headed, practical man of affairs, a man to whom vast commercial interests are committed. In a word, I want a fool; some beautiful, rounded, homogenous fool, in whose blameless face, as in a round mirror, all our fancies may really be reflected and renewed. I want a very successful man, a very wealthy man, a man—”

  “I know! I know!” cried young Pierce, almost waving his arms. “Enoch Oates!”

  “Who’s Enoch Oates?” inquired White.

  “Are the lords of the world so little known?” asked Hood. “Enoch Oates is Pork, and nearly everything else; Enoch Oates is turning civilization into one vast sausage-machine. Didn’t I ever tell you how Hilary ran into him over that pig affair?”

  “He’s the very man you want,” cried Hilary Pierce enthusiastically. “I know him, and I believe I can get him. Being a millionaire, he’s entirely ignorant. Being an American, he’s entirely in earnest. He’s got just that sort of negative Nonconformist conscience of New England that balances the positive money-getting of New York. If we want to surprise anybody we’ll surprise him. Let’s ask Enoch Oates to dinner.”

  “I won’t have any practical jokes played on guests,” said the Colonel.

  “Of course not,” replied Hood. “He’ll be only too pleased to take it seriously. Did you ever know an American who didn’t like seeing the Sights? And if you don’t know you’re a Sight with that cabbage on your head, it’s time an American tourist taught you.”

  “Besides, there’s a difference,” said Pierce. “I wouldn’t ask a fellow like that doctor, Horace Hunter—”

  “Sir Horace Hunter,” murmured Hood reverently.

  “I wouldn’t ask him, because I really think him a sneak and a snob, and my invitation could only be meant as an insult. But Oates is not a man I hate, nor is he hateful. That’s the curious part of it. He’s a simple, sincere sort of fellow, according to his lights, which are pretty dim. He’s a thief and a robber of course, but he doesn’t know it. I’m asking him because he’s different; but I don’t imagine he’s at all sorry to be different. There’s no harm in giving a man a good dinner and letting him be a background without knowing it.”

  When Mr. Enoch Oates in due course accepted the invitation and presented himself at the club, many were reminded of that former occasion when a stiff and conventional figure in evening dress had first appeared like a rebuke to the revels. But in spite of the stiff sameness of both those black and white costumes, there was a great deal of difference between the old background and the new background. Crane’s good manners were of that casual kind that are rather peculiarly English, and mark an aristocracy at its ease in the saddle. Curiously enough, if the American had one point in common with a Continental noble of ancient lineage (whom his daughter might have married any day), it was that they would both be a little more on the defensive, living in the midst of democracy. Mr. Oates was perfectly polite, but there was something a little rigid about him. He walked to his chair rather stiffly and sat down rather heavily. He was a powerful, ponderous man with a large sallow face, a little suggestive of a corpulent Red Indian. He had a ruminant eye, and an equally ruminant manner of chewing an unlighted cigar. These were signs that might well have gone with a habit of silence. But they did not.

  Mr. Oates’s conversation might not be brilliant, but it was continuous. Pierce and his friends had begun with some notion of dangling their own escapades before him, like dancing dolls before a child; they had told him something of the affair of the Colonel and his cabbage, of the captain and his pigs, of the parson and his elephant; but they soon found that their hearer had not come there merely as a listener. What he thought of their romantic buffooneries it would be hard to say; probably he did not understand them, possibly he did not even hear them. Anyhow, his own monologue went on. He was a leisurely speaker. They found themselves revising much that they had heard about the snap and smartness and hurry of American talk. He spoke without haste or embarrassment, his eye boring into space, and he more than fulfilled Mr. Pierce’s hopes of somebody who would talk about business matters. His talk was a mild torrent of facts and figures, especially figures. In fact the background was doing all it could to contribute the required undertone of common commercial life. The background was justifying all their hopes that it would be practical and prosaic. Only the background had rather the air of having become the foreground.

  “When they put that up to me I saw it was the proposition,” Mr. Oates was saying. “I saw I’d got on to something better than my old regulation turnover of eighty-five thousand dollars on each branch. I reckoned I should save a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in the long run by scrapping the old plant, even if I had to drop another thirty thousand dollars on new works, where I’d get the raw material for a red cent. I saw right away that was the point to freeze on to; that I just got a chance to sell something I didn’t need to buy; something that could be sort of given away like old match-ends. I figured out it would be better by a long chalk to let the other guys rear the stock and sell me their refuse for next to nix, so I could get ahead with turning it into the goods. So I started in right away and got there at the first go off with an increase of seven hundred and fifty-one thousand dollars.”

  “Seven hundred and fifty-one thousand dollars,” murmured Owen Hood. “How soothing it all seems.”

  “I reckon those mutts didn’t get on to what they were selling me,” continued Mr. Oates, “or didn’t have the pep to use it that way themselves; for though it was the sure-enough hot tip, it isn’t everybody who would have thought of it. When I was in pork, of course, I wanted the other guys out; but just now I wasn’t putting anything on pork, but only on just that part of a pig I wanted and they didn’t want. By notifying all your pig farmers I was able to import nine hundred and twenty-five thousand pigs’ ears this fall, and I guess I can get consignments all winter.”

  Hood had some little legal experience with long-winded commercial witnesses, and he was listening by this time with a cocked eyebrow and an attention much sharper than the dreamy ecstasy with which the poetic Pierce was listening to the millionaire’s monologue, as if to the wordless music of some ever-murmuring brook.

  “Excuse me,” said Hood earnestly, “but did I understand you to say pigs’ ears?”

  “That is so, Mr. Hood,” said the American with great patience and politeness. “I don’t know whether I gave you a sufficiently detailed description for you to catch on to the proposition, but—”

  “Well,” murmured Pierce wistfully, “it sounded to me like a detailed description.”

  “Pardon me,” said Hood, checking him with a frown. “I really want to understand this proposition of Mr. Oates. Do I understand that you bought pigs’ ears cheap, when the pigs were cut up for other purposes, and that you thought you could use them for some purpose of your own?”

  “Sure!” said Mr. Enoch Oates, nodding. “And my purpose was about the biggest thing in fancy goods ever done in the States. In the publicity line there’s nothing like saying you can do what folks say can’t be done. Flying in the face of proverbs instead of providence, I reckon. It catches on at once. We got to work, and got out the first advertisement in no time; just a blank space with `We Can Do It’ in the middle. Got folks wondering for a week what it was.”

  “I hope, sir,” said Pierce in a low voice, “that you will not carry sound commercial principles so far as to keep us wondering for a week what it was.”

  “Well,” said Oates, “we found we could subject the pigskin and bristles to a new gelat’nous process for making artificial silk, and we figured that publicity would do the rest. We came out with the second set of posters: `She Wants it Now’... `The Most Wonderful Woman on Earth is waiting by the Old Fireside, hoping you’ll bring her home a Pig’s Whisper Purse.’”

  “A purse!” gasped Hilary.

  “I see you’re on the notion,” proceeded the unmoved American. “We called ’em Pig’s Whisper Purses after the smartest and most popular poster we ever had: `There was a Lady Loved a Swine.’ You know the nursery rhyme, I guess; featured a slap-up princess whispering in a pig’s ear. I tell you there isn’t a smart woman in the States now that can do without one of our pig-silk purses, and all because it upsets the proverb. Why, see here—”