“His theory,� said Pierce in a meditative manner, “has got something to do with moving objects being really stationary, and stationary objects being really moving. Well, you always talk of me as if I were a moving object.�
“Heartbreaking object sometimes,� assented the Colonel with cordial encouragement.
“I mean,� continued Pierce calmly, “that you talk of me as if I were always motoring too fast or flying too far. And what you say of me is pretty much what most people say of you. Most sane people think we all go a jolly lot too far. They think we’re a lot of lunatics out-running the constable or looping the loop, and always up to some new nonsense. But when you come to think of it, it’s we who always stay where we are, and the rest of the world that’s always moving and shifting and changing.�
“Yes,� said Owen Hood; “I begin to have some dim idea of what you are talking about.�
“In all our little adventures,� went on the other, “we have all of us taken up some definite position and stuck to it, however difficult it might be; that was the whole fun of it. But our critics did not stick to their own position—not even to their own conventional or conservative position. In each one of the stories it was they who were fickle, and we who were fixed. When the Colonel said he would eat his hat, he did it; when he found it meant wearing a preposterous hat, he wore it. But his neighbours didn’t even stick to their own conviction that the hat was preposterous. Fashion is too fluctuating and sensitive a thing; and before the end, half of them were wondering whether they oughtn’t to have hats of the same sort. In that affair of the Thames factory, Hood admired the old landscape and Hunter admired the old landlords. But Hunter didn’t go on admiring the old landlords; he deserted to the new landlords as soon as they got the land. His conservatism was too snobbish to conserve anything. I wanted to import pigs, and I went on importing pigs, though my methods of smuggling might land me to a mad-house. But Enoch Oates, the millionaire, didn’t go on importing pork; he went off at once on some new stunt, first on the booming of his purses, and afterwards on the admirable stunt of starting English farms. The business mind isn’t steadfast; even when it can be turned the right way, it’s too easy to turn. And everything has been like that, down to the little botheration about the elephant. The police began to prosecute Mr. White, but they soon dropped it when Hood showed them that he had some backing. Don’t you see that’s the moral of the whole thing? The modern world is materialistic, but it isn’t solid. It isn’t hard or stern or ruthless in pursuit of its purpose, or all the things that the newspapers and novels say it is; and sometimes actually praise it for being. Materialism isn’t like stone; it’s like mud, and liquid mud at that.�
“There’s something in what you say,� said Owen Hood, “and I should be inclined to add something to it. On a rough reckoning of the chances in modern England, I should say the situation is something like this. In that dubious and wavering atmosphere it is very unlikely there would ever be a revolution, or any very vital reform. But if there were, I believe on my soul that it might be successful. I believe everything else would be too weak and wobbly to stand up against it.�
“I suppose that means,� said the Colonel, “that you’re going to do something silly.�
“Silliest thing I can think of,� replied Pierce cheerfully. “I’m going to an astronomical lecture.�
The degree of silliness involved in the experiment can be most compactly and clearly stated in the newspaper report, at which the friends of the experimentalists found themselves gazing with more than their usual bewilderment on the following morning. The Colonel, sitting at his club with his favourite daily paper spread out before him, was regarding with a grave wonder a paragraph that began with the following head-lines:
“AMAZING SCENE AT SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS