Manalive

“Balmy is the word we use in Fleet Street,” said Mr. Moon. “Balmy–especially on the crumpet.” And he fanned himself quite unnecessarily with his straw hat. They were all full of little leaps and pulsations of objectless and airy energy. Diana stirred and stretched her long arms rigidly, as if crucified, in a sort of excruciating restfulness; Michael stood still for long intervals, with gathered muscles, then spun round like a teetotum, and stood still again; Rosamund did not trip, for women never trip, except when they fall on their noses, but she struck the ground with her foot as she moved, as if to some inaudible dance tune; and Inglewood, leaning quite quietly against a tree, had unconsciously clutched a branch and shaken it with a creative violence. Those giant gestures of Man, that made the high statues and the strokes of war, tossed and tormented all their limbs. Silently as they strolled and stood they were bursting like batteries with an animal magnetism.

“And now,” cried Moon quite suddenly, stretching out a hand on each side, “let’s dance round that bush!”

“Why, what bush do you mean?” asked Rosamund, looking round with a sort of radiant rudeness.

“The bush that isn’t there,” said Michael–“the Mulberry Bush.”

They had taken each other’s hands, half laughing and quite ritually; and before they could disconnect again Michael spun them all round, like a demon spinning the world for a top. Diana felt, as the circle of the horizon flew instantaneously around her, a far aerial sense of the ring of heights beyond London and corners where she had climbed as a child; she seemed almost to hear the rooks cawing about the old pines on Highgate, or to see the glowworms gathering and kindling in the woods of Box Hill.

The circle broke–as all such perfect circles of levity must break– and sent its author, Michael, flying, as by centrifugal force, far away against the blue rails of the gate. When reeling there he suddenly raised shout after shout of a new and quite dramatic character.

“Why, it’s Warner!” he shouted, waving his arms. “It’s jolly old Warner– with a new silk hat and the old silk moustache!”

“Is that Dr. Warner?” cried Rosamund, bounding forward in a burst of memory, amusement, and distress. “Oh, I’m so sorry! Oh, do tell him it’s all right!”

“Let’s take hands and tell him,” said Michael Moon. For indeed, while they were talking, another hansom cab had dashed up behind the one already waiting, and Dr. Herbert Warner, leaving a companion in the cab, had carefully deposited himself on the pavement.

Now, when you are an eminent physician and are wired for by an heiress to come to a case of dangerous mania, and when, as you come in through the garden to the house, the heiress and her landlady and two of the gentlemen boarders join hands and dance round you in a ring, calling out, “It’s all right! it’s all right!” you are apt to be flustered and even displeased. Dr. Warner was a placid but hardly a placable person. The two things are by no means the same; and even when Moon explained to him that he, Warner, with his high hat and tall, solid figure, was just such a classic figure as OUGHT to be danced round by a ring of laughing maidens on some old golden Greek seashore– even then he seemed to miss the point of the general rejoicing.

“Inglewood!” cried Dr. Warner, fixing his former disciple with a stare, “are you mad?”

Arthur flushed to the roots of his brown hair, but he answered, easily and quietly enough, “Not now. The truth is, Warner, I’ve just made a rather important medical discovery–quite in your line.”

“What do you mean?” asked the great doctor stiffly–“what discovery?”

“I’ve discovered that health really is catching, like disease,” answered Arthur.

“Yes; sanity has broken out, and is spreading,” said Michael, performing a pas seul with a thoughtful expression. “Twenty thousand more cases taken to the hospitals; nurses employed night and day.”

Dr. Warner studied Michael’s grave face and lightly moving legs with an unfathomed wonder. “And is THIS, may I ask,” he said, “the sanity that is spreading?”

“You must forgive me, Dr. Warner,” cried Rosamund Hunt heartily. “I know I’ve treated you badly; but indeed it was all a mistake. I was in a frightfully bad temper when I sent for you, but now it all seems like a dream–and and Mr. Smith is the sweetest, most sensible, most delightful old thing that ever existed, and he may marry any one he likes–except me.”

“I should suggest Mrs. Duke,” said Michael.

The gravity of Dr. Warner’s face increased. He took a slip of pink paper from his waistcoat pocket, with his pale blue eyes quietly fixed on Rosamund’s face all the time. He spoke with a not inexcusable frigidity.