Basil Grant had comparatively few friends besides myself; yet he was the reverse of an unsociable man. He would talk to any one anywhere, and talk not only well but with perfectly¹ genuine concern and enthusiasm for that person's affairs. He went through the world, as it were, as if he were always on the top of an omnibus or waiting for a train. Most of these chance acquaintances, of course, vanished into darkness out of his life. A few here and there got hooked on to him, so to speak, and became his lifelong intimates, but there was an accidental look about all of them as if they were windfalls, samples taken at random², goods fallen from a goods train or presents fished out of a bran-pie. One would be, let us say, a veterinary surgeon with the appearance of a jockey; another, a mild prebendary with a white beard and vague views; another, a young captain in the Lancers, seemingly exactly like other captains in the Lancers; another, a small dentist from Fulham, in all reasonable certainty precisely³ like every other dentist from Fulham. Major Brown, small, dry, and dapper, was one of these; Basil had made his acquaintance over a discussion in a hotel cloak-room about the right hat, a discussion which reduced the little major almost to a kind of masculine hysterics, the compound of the selfishness of an old bachelor and the scrupulosity⁴ of an old maid. They had gone home in a cab together and then dined with each other twice a week until they died. I myself was another. I had met Grant while he was still a judge, on the balcony of the National Liberal Club, and exchanged a few words about the weather. Then we had talked for about an hour about politics and God; for men always talk about the most important things to total strangers. It is because in the total stranger we perceive man himself; the image of God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of the wisdom of a moustache.  
One of the most interesting of Basil's motley group of acquaintances was Professor Chadd. He was known to the ethnological world (which is a very interesting world, but a long way off this one) as the second greatest, if not the greatest, authority on the relations of savages⁶ to language. He was known to the neighbourhood of Hart Street, Bloomsbury, as a bearded man with a bald head, spectacles, and a patient face, the face of an unaccountable Nonconformist who had forgotten how to be angry. He went to and fro between the British Museum and a selection of blameless tea-shops, with an armful of books and a poor but honest umbrella. He was never seen without the books and the umbrella, and was supposed (by the lighter⁸ wits of the Persian MS. room) to go to bed with them in his little brick villa⁹ in the neighbourhood of Shepherd's Bush. There he lived with three sisters, ladies of solid goodness, but sinister¹⁰ demeanour. His life was happy, as are almost all the lives of methodical students, but one would not have called it exhilarating. His only hours of exhilaration occurred when his friend, Basil Grant, came into the house, late at night, a tornado¹¹ of conversation.
 
Basil, though close on sixty, had moods of boisterous¹² babyishness, and these seemed for some reason or other to descend¹³ upon him particularly in the house of his studious and almost dingy¹⁴ friend. I can remember vividly¹⁵ (for I was acquainted with both parties and often dined with them) the gaiety of Grant on that particular evening when the strange calamity¹⁶ fell upon the professor. Professor Chadd was, like most of his particular class and type (the class that is at once academic and middle-class), a Radical¹⁷ of a solemn and old-fashioned type. Grant was a Radical himself, but he was that more discriminating¹⁸ and not uncommon¹⁹ type of Radical who passes most of his time in abusing the Radical party. Chadd had just contributed to a magazine an article called “Zulu Interests and the New Makango Frontier”, in which a precise scientific report of his study of the customs of the people of T'Chaka was reinforced by a severe protest against certain interferences with these customs both by the British and the Germans. He was sitting with the magazine in front of him, the lamplight shining on his spectacles, a wrinkle in his forehead, not of anger, but of perplexity, as Basil Grant strode up and down the room, shaking it with his voice, with his high spirits and his heavy tread.
 
“It's not your opinions that I object to, my esteemed²¹ Chadd,” he was saying, “it's you. You are quite right to champion the Zulus, but for all that you do not sympathize with them. No doubt you know the Zulu way of cooking tomatoes and the Zulu prayer before blowing one's nose; but for all that you don't understand them as well as I do, who don't know an assegai from an alligator²². You are more learned, Chadd, but I am more Zulu. Why is it that the jolly old barbarians²³ of this earth are always championed by people who are their antithesis²⁴? Why is it? You are sagacious, you are benevolent²⁵, you are well informed, but, Chadd, you are not savage⁵. Live no longer under that rosy²⁶ illusion. Look in the glass. Ask your sisters. Consult the librarian of the British Museum. Look at this umbrella.” And he held up that sad but still respectable article. “Look at it. For ten mortal years to my certain knowledge you have carried that object under your arm, and I have no sort of doubt that you carried it at the age of eight months, and it never occurred to you to give one wild yell and hurl²⁷ it like a javelin—thus—”
 
And he sent the umbrella whizzing past the professor's bald head, so that it knocked over a pile of books with a crash and left a vase rocking.
 
Professor Chadd appeared totally unmoved, with his face still lifted to the lamp and the wrinkle cut in his forehead.
 
“Your mental processes,” he said, “always go a little too fast. And they are stated without method. There is no kind of inconsistency”—and no words can convey the time he took to get to the end of the word—“between valuing the right of the aborigines to adhere to their stage in the evolutionary²⁸ process, so long as they find it congenial and requisite²⁹ to do so. There is, I say, no inconsistency between this concession³⁰ which I have just described to you and the view that the evolutionary stage in question is, nevertheless, so far as we can form any estimate of values in the variety of cosmic processes, definable in some degree as an inferior evolutionary stage.”
 
Nothing but his lips had moved as he spoke³¹, and his glasses still shone like two pallid³² moons.
 
Grant was shaking with laughter as he watched him.
 
“True,” he said, “there is no inconsistency, my son of the red spear. But there is a great deal of incompatibility³³ of temper. I am very far from being certain that the Zulu is on an inferior evolutionary stage, whatever the blazes that may mean. I do not think there is anything stupid or ignorant about howling at the moon or being afraid of devils in the dark. It seems to me perfectly philosophical³⁴. Why should a man be thought a sort of idiot because he feels the mystery and peril³⁵ of existence itself? Suppose, my dear Chadd, suppose it is we who are the idiots because we are not afraid of devils in the dark?”
 
Professor Chadd slit³⁶ open a page of the magazine with a bone paper-knife and the intent reverence³⁷ of the bibliophile³⁸.
 
“Beyond all question,” he said, “it is a tenable hypothesis. I allude³⁹ to the hypothesis which I understand you to entertain, that our civilization is not or may not be an advance upon, and indeed (if I apprehend⁴⁰ you), is or may be a retrogression from states identical with or analogous⁴¹ to the state of the Zulus. Moreover, I shall be inclined to concede that such a proposition is of the nature, in some degree at least, of a primary proposition, and cannot adequately be argued, in the same sense, I mean, that the primary proposition of pessimism⁴², or the primary proposition of the non-existence of matter, cannot adequately be argued. But I do not conceive you to be under the impression that you have demonstrated anything more concerning this proposition than that it is tenable, which, after all, amounts to little more than the statement that it is not a contradiction in terms.”
 
Basil threw a book at his head and took out a cigar.
 
“You don't understand,” he said, “but, on the other hand, as a compensation, you don't mind smoking. Why you don't object to that disgustingly barbaric rite⁴³ I can't think. I can only say that I began it when I began to be a Zulu, about the age of ten. What I maintained was that although you knew more about Zulus in the sense that you are a scientist, I know more about them in the sense that I am a savage. For instance, your theory of the origin of language, something about its having come from the formulated⁴⁴ secret language of some individual creature, though you knocked me silly with facts and scholarship in its favour, still does not convince me, because I have a feeling that that is not the way that things happen. If you ask me why I think so I can only answer that I am a Zulu; and if you ask me (as you most certainly will) what is my definition of a Zulu, I can answer that also. He is one who has climbed a Sussex apple-tree at seven and been afraid of a ghost in an English lane.”
 
“Your process of thought—” began the immovable Chadd, but his speech was interrupted. His sister, with that masculinity which always in such families concentrates in sisters, flung open the door with a rigid⁴⁵ arm and said:
 
“James, Mr Bingham of the British Museum wants to see you again.”
 
The philosopher rose with a dazed look, which always indicates in such men the fact that they regard philosophy as a familiar thing, but practical life as a weird⁴⁶ and unnerving vision, and walked dubiously⁴⁷ out of the room.
 
“I hope you do not mind my being aware of it, Miss Chadd,” said Basil Grant, “but I hear that the British Museum has recognized one of the men who have deserved well of their commonwealth⁴⁸. It is true, is it not, that Professor Chadd is likely to be made keeper of Asiatic manuscripts?”
 
The grim face of the spinster betrayed a great deal of pleasure and a great deal of pathos⁴⁹ also. “I believe it's true,” she said. “If it is, it will not only be great glory which women, I assure you, feel a great deal, but great relief, which they feel more; relief from worry from a lot of things. James' health has never been good, and while we are as poor as we are he had to do journalism⁵⁰ and coaching, in addition to his own dreadful grinding notions and discoveries, which he loves more than man, woman, or child. I have often been afraid that unless something of this kind occurred we should really have to be careful of his brain. But I believe it is practically settled.”
 
“I am delighted,” began Basil, but with a worried face, “but these red-tape negotiations⁵¹ are so terribly chancy that I really can't advise you to build on hope, only to be hurled⁵² down into bitterness. I've known men, and good men like your brother, come nearer than this and be disappointed. Of course, if it is true—”
 
“If it is true,” said the woman fiercely, “it means that people who have never lived may make an attempt at living.”
 
Even as she spoke the professor came into the room still with the dazed look in his eyes.
 
“Is it true?” asked Basil, with burning eyes.
 
“Not a bit true,” answered Chadd after a moment's bewilderment. “Your argument was in three points fallacious.”
 
“What do you mean?” demanded Grant.
 
“Well,” said the professor slowly, “in saying that you could possess a knowledge of the essence of Zulu life distinct from—”
 
“Oh! confound Zulu life,” cried Grant, with a burst of laughter. “I mean, have you got the post?”
 
“You mean the post of keeper of the Asiatic manuscripts,” he said, opening his eye with childlike wonder. “Oh, yes, I got that. But the real objection to your argument, which has only, I admit, occurred to me since I have been out of the room, is that it does not merely presuppose a Zulu truth apart from the facts, but infers that the discovery of it is absolutely impeded⁵⁴ by the facts.”
 
“I am crushed,” said Basil, and sat down to laugh, while the professor's sister retired⁵⁵ to her room, possibly to laugh, possibly not.
 
It was extremely late when we left the Chadds, and it is an extremely long and tiresome⁵⁶ journey from Shepherd's Bush to Lambeth. This may be our excuse for the fact that we (for I was stopping the night with Grant) got down to breakfast next day at a time inexpressibly criminal, a time, in point of fact, close upon noon. Even to that belated meal we came in a very lounging and leisurely⁵⁷ fashion. Grant, in particular, seemed so dreamy at table that he scarcely saw the pile of letters by his plate, and I doubt if he would have opened any of them if there had not lain on the top that one thing which has succeeded amid modern carelessness in being really urgent and coercive—a telegram. This he opened with the same heavy distraction⁵⁸ with which he broke his egg and drank his tea. When he read it he did not stir a hair or say a word, but something, I know not what, made me feel that the motionless figure had been pulled together suddenly as strings⁵⁹ are tightened⁶⁰ on a slack guitar. Though he said nothing and did not move, I knew that he had been for an instant cleared and sharpened with a shock of cold water. It was scarcely any surprise to me when a man who had drifted sullenly⁶¹ to his seat and fallen into it, kicked it away like a cur from under him and came round to me in two strides.
 
“What do you make of that?” he said, and flattened⁶² out the wire in front of me.
 
It ran: “Please come at once. James' mental state dangerous. Chadd.”
 
“What does the woman mean?” I said after a pause, irritably⁶³. “Those women have been saying that the poor old professor was mad ever since he was born.”
 
“You are mistaken,” said Grant composedly. “It is true that all sensible women think all studious men mad. It is true, for the matter of that, all women of any kind think all men of any kind mad. But they don't put it in telegrams, any more than they wire to you that grass is green or God all-merciful. These things are truisms, and often private ones at that. If Miss Chadd has written down under the eye of a strange woman in a post-office that her brother is off his head you may be perfectly certain that she did it because it was a matter of life and death, and she can think of no other way of forcing us to come promptly⁶⁴.”
 
“It will force us of course,” I said, smiling.
 
“Oh, yes,” he replied; “there is a cab-rank near.”
 
Basil scarcely said a word as we drove across Westminster Bridge, through Trafalgar Square, along Piccadilly, and up the Uxbridge Road. Only as he was opening the gate he spoke.
 
“I think you will take my word for it, my friend,” he said; “this is one of the most queer and complicated and astounding⁶⁵ incidents that ever happened in London or, for that matter, in any high civilization.”
 
“I confess with the greatest sympathy and reverence that I don't quite see it,” I said. “Is it so very extraordinary or complicated that a dreamy somnambulant old invalid⁶⁶ who has always walked on the borders of the inconceivable should go mad under the shock of great joy? Is it so very extraordinary that a man with a head like a turnip⁶⁷ and a soul like a spider's web should not find his strength equal to a confounding change of fortunes? Is it, in short, so very extraordinary that James Chadd should lose his wits from excitement?”
 
“It would not be extraordinary in the least,” answered Basil, with placidity⁶⁹. “It would not be extraordinary in the least,” he repeated, “if the professor had gone mad. That was not the extraordinary circumstance to which I referred.”
 
“What,” I asked, stamping my foot, “was the extraordinary thing?”
 
“The extraordinary thing,” said Basil, ringing the bell, “is that he has not gone mad from excitement.”
 
The tall and angular figure of the eldest⁷⁰ Miss Chadd blocked the doorway⁷¹ as the door opened. Two other Miss Chadds seemed in the same way to be blocking the narrow passage and the little parlour. There was a general sense of their keeping something from view. They seemed like three black-clad ladies in some strange play of Maeterlinck, veiling the catastrophe⁷² from the audience in the manner of the Greek chorus.
 
“Sit down, won't you?” said one of them, in a voice that was somewhat rigid with pain. “I think you had better be told first what has happened.”
 
Then, with her bleak⁷³ face looking unmeaningly out of the window, she continued, in an even and mechanical voice:
 
“I had better state everything that occurred just as it occurred. This morning I was clearing away the breakfast things, my sisters were both somewhat unwell, and had not come down. My brother had just gone out of the room, I believe, to fetch a book. He came back again, however, without it, and stood for some time staring at the empty grate. I said, 'Were you looking for anything I could get?' He did not answer, but this constantly happens, as he is often very abstracted. I repeated my question, and still he did not answer. Sometimes he is so wrapped up in his studies that nothing but a touch on the shoulder would make him aware of one's presence, so I came round the table towards him. I really do not know how to describe the sensation which I then had. It seems simply silly, but at the moment it seemed something enormous, upsetting one's brain. The fact is, James was standing⁷⁴ on one leg.”
 
Grant smiled slowly and rubbed his hands with a kind of care.
 
“Standing on one leg?” I repeated.
 
“Yes,” replied the dead voice of the woman without an inflection to suggest that she felt the fantasticality of her statement. “He was standing on the left leg and the right drawn⁷⁵ up at a sharp angle, the toe pointing downwards⁷⁶. I asked him if his leg hurt him. His only answer was to shoot the leg straight at right angles to the other, as if pointing to the other with his toe to the wall. He was still looking quite gravely at the fireplace.
 
“'James, what is the matter?' I cried, for I was thoroughly⁷⁷ frightened. James gave three kicks in the air with the right leg, flung up the other, gave three kicks in the air with it also and spun⁷⁸ round like a teetotum the other way. 'Are you mad?' I cried. 'Why don't you answer me?' He had come to a standstill facing me, and was looking at me as he always does, with his lifted eyebrows⁷⁹ and great spectacled eyes. When I had spoken he remained a second or two motionless, and then his only reply was to lift his left foot slowly from the floor and describe circles with it in the air. I rushed to the door and shouted for Christina. I will not dwell on the dreadful hours that followed. All three of us talked to him, implored

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