‘You have come to Man as an apostle, bringing us a new message of Civilisation.’
Dwala nodded, rather proudly.
‘Do you know what Man has given to you in return? What Man always gives to such animals? What any scientist could have told you you were bound to get in coming?... Consumption.... Phthisis pulmonalis.... Death!... Going back while you’re young and strong to your wild life in the forest! Pish! You won’t live the month out. I knew it that night. You’re a dying beast.’
Alas! why had Lady Wyse never told him? He had never thought of that. Life hummed and bubbled through his veins. He knew nothing of sickness and death. He had always been alive. The world had been faint at times; but that was the world, not he. A stiffening horror ran through him; he felt his skin moving against his clothes. Then his mind ran rapidly through all the series of events—the growth to the full knowledge of Man, the labouring hope of a joke, the change, the revelation, the submission to an overwhelming truth, the rejoicing millions.... Then suddenly this discovery of an unsuspected vengeance-for-benefit which had been stealing slowly and surely from the first in his steps, to spring at last on his back in the moment of fruition.
It was too funny; the surprise of the inevitable overcame him; it was a Joke which suddenly leaped up embracing the whole life of a created being, and the destiny of a nation—of humanity itself.
Dwala laughed. For the last time he laughed. A laugh to which his others were childish crowings; a laugh which flung horror on to the walls and into the darkened air, and spread a sudden dismay of things worse than death throughout the land. Men stopped in their work and in their talk and their lips grew pale without a cause; some goodness had gone out of Providence; some terror had been added to Fate. From the fire of that dismay the Biologist emerged a withered and broken man; Mr. Cato never flinched, his sheer goodness protected him; Lady Wyse broke into tears. She, too, was unscathed. No human canon of ethics has been invented by which she could be called good; she was a breaker of laws, an enemy of her kind. But in the place of ‘goodness’ she had a greatness which set her above the need of it.
When the paroxysm of laughter was ended, Dwala staggered and sank into a chair, and they saw him hanging from it with the blood streaming out of his mouth.
At once they were in the world of definite, manageable facts again. The Biologist became the attentive practitioner, Lady Wyse the understanding woman, Mr. Cato the bewildered layman, busily doing unnecessary things, ringing the bell, calling for brandy, hurrying out into the hall to see why they were so long. Huxtable and the American came running down the stairs, and Dwala was carried to his room and put to bed.
XXXV
While all the household radiated about Dwala’s sick-bed, and there was no attention for any other thing, the Biologist ran swiftly up the stairs, guided by a superhuman instinct of despair, straight to the American’s room. He was going to seize the ‘Memoirs’ and burn them. Dwala was dying; no new authentic copy could be produced again. In the doorway he saw that his instincts had guided him aright. American things greeted his eyes—an American hat on the chest of drawers, American corn-cob pipes on the mantelpiece. But what was this? Something alive in the room! A man crouching behind the table with a bundle of papers. It was Prosser ‘doing something big’ at last. Too much astonished to move for a moment, Sir Peter stood staring stupidly at the frightened, cowering figure behind the table.