“Cows, therefore, have souls. You needn’t contradict me, and thrust that omniscient Dear Friend down my throat, because I won’t stand it. I tell you that I saw into their eyes, and I know. If you want to get at the bottom of things, you must leave all ordinary processes, all logical processes. You can’t crawl down that way: you must jump. The people who dare not jump see that you have got to the bottom of things, and comfort themselves with saying that you must have hurt your poor head terribly. Have I hurt my head, Mary? For my intellect is all gone, and the light is fading very quickly. You hate men, I think. Never despise them any more; for they have souls. They cut down the grass, and it dies. They pull the flowers, and they die. They tread on the beetles, and they die. They kill the animals, cut down the trees, and poison the rivers. Where a man comes, death always follows. They are murderers; they are hideously ugly; they make unpleasant noises, and do not understand silences; they are the very lowest of all creatures, but they are on their way to a hereafter. Nothing’s wasted: the very strictest economy is practised.”
“I can’t understand you, Thomas; and I am afraid that you are getting worse. It tries you to talk. Why did you say the light was fading? The sun is still shining all over us. Oh, Thomas, you’ll be gone soon—may I cry now? I must.”
Thomas did not seem to have heard her. “I have been wicked, and yet not I,” he said. “It was something bad in me that will pass. And the world did provoke me terribly; it would be so emotional and stupid.”
Mary was crying unreservedly, but Thomas did not notice it.
“Something,” he said, “has come into my head which wants thinking out, but I will not bother myself. I have the easier way. Good-bye—for the sake of old times—Mary, darling. I am going to know everything.”
Then he curled up his legs quietly, and died.
Mary stopped crying, and examined the body. Yes, he was quite dead. Then she started away on a journey.
Thomas had been a wicked beetle, and he had talked wrongly in his last moments, and she was afraid to be near his body. Besides, she had heard of a vacancy.
The sun had quite finished with the window of that villa now, and the park-like grounds were nearly empty. On one of the courts a few enthusiasts were still playing, and would continue to play until they went in to dress. Out through the gate a young man sauntered into the road. The look of an escaped animal was on his face. He had been talking to a number of people whom he neither knew nor wanted to know. He had seen nothing of Marjorie, his host’s daughter, a child who always pleased and generally amused him. He felt that he had done much for his hostess; he had suffered privations. And now he was glad that the bulk of the visitors—all who were not staying in the house—had gone. He took the path across the common, pausing to light a pipe with a wax match and an air of relief. He walked in the direction of the spot where the dead body of Thomas was lying.
One of the two unkempt birds came slowly flying back again. It was he to whom the surname of Magnanimity has been given. He had got rid of his companion by some pretext of an appointment, and he had come back again to look for that beetle. He swooped down close beside the dead body of the insect, and turned it over with his beak.