In a hamlet round about Windermere, let us say, or somewhere in Wordsworth’s country, there could be found a cottage, in which could be found a cottager. So far all is as it should be; and the visitor would first be conscious of a hearty1 and even noisy elderly man, with an apple face and a short white beard. This person would then loudly proffer2 to the visitor the opportunity of seeing his father, a somewhat more elderly man, with a somewhat longer white beard, but still “up and about.” And these two together would then initiate3 the neophyte4 into the joys of the society of a grandfather, who was more than a hundred years old, and still very proud of the fact.
This miracle, it seemed, had been worked entirely5 on milk. The subject of this diet the oldest of the three men continued to discuss in enormous detail. For the rest, it might be said that his pleasures were purely6 arithmetical. Some men count their years with dismay, and he counted his with a juvenile7 vanity. Some men collect stamps or coins, and he collected days. Newspaper men interviewed him about the historic times through which he had lived, without eliciting8 anything whatever; except that he had apparently9 taken to an exclusive milk diet at about the age when most of us leave it off. Asked if he was alive in 1815, he said that was the very year he found it wasn’t any milk, but must be Mountain Milk, like Dr. Meadows says. Nor would his calculating creed10 of life have allowed him to understand you if you had said that in a meadowland oversea that lies before the city of Brussels, boys of his old school in that year gained the love of the gods and died young.
It was the philanthropic Dr. Meadows, of course, who discovered this deathless tribe, and erected11 on it the whole of his great dietetic philosophy, to say nothing of the houses and dairies of Peaceways. He attracted many pupils and backers among the wealthy and influential12; young men who were, so to speak, training for extreme old age, infant old men, embryo13 nonagenarians. It would be an exaggeration to say that they watched joyfully14 for the first white hair as Fascination16 Fledgeby watched for his first whisker; but it is quite true to say that they seemed to have scorned the beauty of woman and the feasting of friends and, above all, the old idea of death with glory; in comparison with this vision of the sports of second childhood.
Peaceways was in its essential plan much like what we call a Garden City; a ring of buildings where the work people did their work, with a pretty ornamental19 town in the centre, where they lived in the open country outside. This was no doubt much healthier than the factory system in the great towns and may have partly accounted for the serene20 expression of Dr. Meadows and his friends, if any part of the credit can be spared from the splendours of Mountain Milk. The place lay far from the common highways of England, and its inhabitants were enabled to enjoy their quiet skies and level woods almost undisturbed, and fully15 absorb whatever may be valuable in the Meadows method and view; until one day a small and very dirty motor drove into the middle of their town. It stopped beside one of those triangular21 islets of grass that are common at forked roads, and two men in goggles23, one tall and the other short, got out and stood on the central space of grass, as if they were buffoons24 about to do tricks. As, indeed, they were.
Before entering the town they had stopped by a splendid mountain stream quickening and thickening rapidly into a river; unhelmed and otherwise eased themselves, eaten a little bread bought at Wyddington and drank the water of the widening current which opened on the valley of Peaceways.
“I’m beginning quite to like water,” said the taller of the two knights25. “I used to think it a most dangerous drink. In theory, of course, it ought only to be given to people who are fainting. It’s really good for them, much better than brandy. Besides, think of wasting good brandy on people who are fainting! But I don’t go so far as I did; I shouldn’t insist on a doctor’s prescription26 before I allow people water. That was the too severe morality of youth; that was my innocence27 and goodness. I thought that if I fell once, water-drinking might become a habit. But I do see the good side of water now. How good it is when you’re really thirsty, how it glitters and gurgles! How alive it is! After all, it’s the best of drinks, after the other. As it says in the song:
“Feast on wine or fast on water,
And your honour shall stand sure;
God Almighty’s son and daughter,
He the valiant28, she the pure.
If an angel out of heaven
Brings you other things to drink,
Thank him for his kind intentions,
Go and pour them down the sink.
“Tea is like the East he grows in,
A great yellow Mandarin29,
With urbanity of manner,
And unconsciousness of sin;
All the women, like a harem,
At his pig-tail troop along,
And, like all the East he grows in,
He is Poison when he’s strong.
“Tea, although an Oriental,
Is a gentleman at least;
Cocoa is a cad and coward,
Cocoa is a vulgar beast;
Cocoa is a dull, disloyal,
Lying, crawling cad and clown,
And may very well be grateful
To the fool that takes him down.
“As for all the windy waters,
They were rained like trumpets30 down,
When good drink had been dishonoured31
By the tipplers of the town.
When red wine had brought red ruin,
And the death-dance of our times,
Heaven sent us Soda32 Water
As a torment33 for our crimes.”
“Upon my soul, this water tastes quite nice. I wonder what vintage now?” and he smacked34 his lips with solemnity. “It tastes just like the year 1881 tasted.”
“You can fancy anything in the tasting way,” returned his shorter companion. “Mr. Jack35, who was always up to his tricks, did serve plain water in those little glasses they drink liqueurs out of, and everyone swore it was a delicious liqueur, and wanted to know where they could get it—all except old Admiral Guffin, who said it tasted too strong of olives. But water’s much the best for our game, certainly.”
Patrick nodded, and then said:
“I doubt if I could do it, if it weren’t for the comfort of looking at that,” and he kicked the rum-keg, “and feeling we shall have a good swig at it some day. It feels like a fairy-tale, carrying that about—as if rum were a pirate’s treasure, as if it were molten gold. Besides, we can have such fun with it with other people—what was that joke I thought of this morning? Oh, I remember! Where’s that milk-can of mine?”
For the next twenty minutes he was industriously36 occupied with his milk-can and the cask; Pump watching him with an interest amounting to anxiety. Lifting his head, however, at the end of that time, he knotted his red brows and said, “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” asked the other traveller.
“That!” said Captain Patrick Dalroy, and pointed37 to a figure approaching on the road parallel to the river, “I mean, what’s it for?”
The figure had a longish beard and very long hair falling far below its shoulders. It had a serious and steadfast38 expression. It was dressed in what the inexperienced Mr. Pump at first took to be its night-gown; but afterward39 learned to be its complete goats’ hair tunic40, unmixed even with a thread of the destructive and deadly wool of the sheep. It had no boots on its feet. It walked very swiftly to a particular turn of the stream and then turned very sharply (since it had accomplished41 its constitutional), and walked back toward the perfect town of Peaceways.
“I suppose it’s somebody from that milk place,” said Humphrey Pump, indulgently. “They seem to be pretty mad.”
“I don’t mind that so much,” said Dalroy, “I’m mad myself sometimes. But a madman has only one merit and last link with God. A madman is always logical. Now what is the logical connection between living on milk and wearing your hair long? Most of us lived on milk when we had no hair at all. How do they connect it up? Are there any heads even for a synopsis42? Is it, say, ‘milk—water—shaving-water—shaving—hair?’ Is it ‘milk—kindness—unkindness—convicts—hair?’ What is the logical connection between having too much hair and having far too few boots? What can it be? Is it ‘hair—hair-trunk—leather-trunk—leather-boots?’ Is it ‘hair—beard—oysters—seaside—paddling—no boots?’ Man is liable to err—especially when every mistake he makes is called a movement—but why should all the lunacies live together?”
“Because all the lunatics should live together,” said Humphrey, “and if you’d seen what happened up at Crampton, with the farming-out idea, you’d know. It’s all very well, Captain; but if people can prevent a guest of great importance being buried up to the neck in farm manure43, they will. They will, really.” He coughed almost apologetically. He was about to attempt a resumption of the conversation, when he saw his companion slap the milk-can and keg back into the car, and get into it himself. “You drive,” he said, “drive me where those things live; you know, Hump.”
They did not, however, arrive in the civic44 centre of such things without yet another delay. They left the river and followed the man with the long hair and the goatskin frock; and he stopped as it happened at a house on the outskirts45 of the village. The adventurers stopped also, out of curiosity, and were at first relieved to see the man almost instantly reappear, having transacted46 his business with a quickness that seemed incredible. A second glance showed them it was not the man, but another man dressed exactly like him. A few minutes more of inquisitive47 delay, showed them many of the kilty and goatish sect48 going in and out of this particular place, each clad in his innocent uniform.
“This must be the temple and chapel,” muttered Patrick, “it must be here they sacrifice a glass of milk to a cow, or whatever it is they do. Well, the joke is pretty obvious, but we must wait for a lull49 in the crowding of the congregation.”
When the last long-haired phantom50 had faded up the road, Dalroy sprang from the car and drove the sign-board deep into the earth with savage51 violence, and then very quietly knocked at the door.
The apparent owner of the place, of whom the two last of the long-haired and bare-footed idealists were taking a rather hurried farewell, was a man curiously52 ill-fitted for the part he seemed cast for in the only possible plot.
Both Pump and Dalroy thought they had never seen a man look so sullen53. His face was of the rubicund54 sort that does not suggest jollity, but merely a stagnant55 indigestion in the head. His mustache hung heavy and dark, his brows yet heavier and darker. Dalroy had seen something of the sort on the faces of defeated people disgracefully forced into submission56, but he could not make head or tail of it in connection with the priggish perfections of Peaceways. It was all the odder because he was manifestly prosperous; his clothes were smartly cut in something of the sporting manner, and the inside of his house was at least four times grander than the outside.
But what mystified them most was this, that he did not so much exhibit the natural curiosity of a gentleman whose private house is entered by strangers, but rather an embarrassed and restless expectation. During Dalroy’s eager apologies and courteous57 inquiries58 about the direction and accommodations of Peaceways, his eye (which was of the boiled gooseberry order) perpetually wandered from them to the cupboard and then again to the window, and at last he got up and went to look out into the road.
“Oh, yes, sir; very healthy place, Peaceways,” he said, peering through the lattice. “Very ... dash it, what do they mean?... Very healthy place. Of course they have their little ways.”
“Only drink............