“What else, for heaven’s sake?”
He waited to cross the bridge before he answered. “No, that’s not my reading of Maryvale. I look on him as a man wrestling with an idea, the idea of Parson Lolly.”
“And still I don’t get hold of your meaning.”
“It’s this way. Gilbert Maryvale has come to Aidenn Vale before. Each time, certainly, a tradition of the countryside, a popular half-belief, has been mentioned, more often discussed with some fullness. It is, to say the minimum, a fable of much piquancy, a legend above the average in interest, this tradition of the goblin-parson—is it not?”
“Granted, granted.”
“Haven’t you often wished that fairy-tales were true? Maryvale has almost convinced himself to believe in Parson Lolly. His mind hasn’t conquered the idea, seems to be more or less at the mercy of it. But sometimes he rebels. Now and then he can see the absurdity as well as you or I; he can even laugh at the Parson. But again he will fall into perplexity, confusion, shame, fear over the idea. And he is capable, under suggestion or after shock, of getting into the throes, quite possessed with the reality of the unreal, virtually a maniac if you like that word. At these times he makes the supreme surrender one is capable of making to ideas.”
“What is that?”
“Why, he acts on them. Remember his carrying that revolver up the Vale.”
“Thanks, I remember well enough.” We went on in silence a little way, and then I said quickly, “But that doesn’t explain everything. Madmen are consistent; that’s why they’re mad. But Maryvale tells me that someone of the house of Kay did this murder, and sends me over to Old Aidenn to find out about that missing arm, and—”
“Of course he is not consistent; that’s why he is not mad, as you persist in thinking. He is very much mixed, but his ideas don’t fit into a complete system. I shall be sorry when they do, and I think the sooner he leaves the Vale the better.”