THE WARLOCK OF GLORORUM
THE WARLOCK OF GLORORUM
'But are you sure your father wouldn't object?' I asked of my companion—a most bright and amusing Eton boy—to whom I was playing bear leader. 'Not a bit,' replied he; 'my father is a naturalist and Darwinian; not a sceptic, but Agnosticus suavis or Verecundus, ordo compositae, you know. "Hunt the ghost by all means," said he, when I suggested a ghost "worry," and then as he does sometimes over coffee and a cigarette after dinner he talked with a real keen interest on the whole subject. He talked so long that old Mac (the butler) got quite shirty, and finally—after putting his head round the door two or three times—came in like the Lord Mayor and bore off the whisky decanter to the smoking-room. Now, the pater said that the love of the marvellous was native to mankind, and Tertullian had acquired a false credit for his motto, Credo quia impossible, since that was the natural failing of the untrained intellect, and, scientifically speaking, he ought to have been shot sitting.
'Then he went on to tell a jolly story which some great educationalist had told him of the little girl playing in the garden, who saw Fifine, the poodle, unexpectedly appear, and at once rushed in crying to her mother, "Mummy, mummy, there's a bear in the garden!" Her mother, being a wholly unimaginative creature, promptly put Maggie into the corner, and told her to beg God's pardon for having told a lie. Presently Maggie comes out of her corner radiant, "It's all right, mummy," she cried, "God tells me He has often mistaken Fifine for a bear Himself." No doubt, as he said, Maggie had had a momentary fright, and for half a second had thought of a bear, but she knew, too, that if she stayed to investigate she would find out it was Fifine, so preferring the luxury of the marvellous, she fled crying in to her mother. Sometimes, of course, he added, the ghost is the resultant of some horrible cruelty or murder, mankind, from various motives, refusing to let the memory of the crime die out, but more usually the ghost is born of the early mythopœic imagination of man that cherishes the marvellous. One never hears of a new ghost nowadays. Science, no doubt, is an iconoclast in the matter.'