The Man Who Was Thursday

“God bless my soul!” said the Professor with the elderly manner that he could never disconnect from his bleached beard and parchment face. “God bless my soul! I seemed to fancy that something fell on the top of my hat!”

He put up a trembling hand and took from that shelf a piece of twisted paper, which he opened absently only to find it inscribed with a true lover’s knot and, the words:

“Your beauty has not left me indifferent. From LITTLE SNOWDROP. ”

There was a short silence, and then Syme said, biting his beard

“I’m not beaten yet. The blasted thing must come down somewhere. Let’s follow it!”

CHAPTER XIV THE SIX PHILOSOPHERS

ACROSS green fields, and breaking through blooming hedges, toiled six draggled detectives, about five miles out of London. The optimist of the party had at first proposed that they should follow the balloon across South England in hansom-cabs. But he was ultimately convinced of the persistent refusal of the balloon to follow the roads, and the still more persistent refusal of the cabmen to follow the balloon. Consequently the tireless though exasperated travellers broke through black thickets and ploughed through ploughed fields till each was turned into a figure too outrageous to be mistaken for a tramp. Those green hills of Surrey saw the final collapse and tragedy of the admirable light grey suit in which Syme had set out from Saffron Park. His silk hat was broken over his nose by a swinging bough, his coat-tails were torn to the shoulder by arresting thorns, the clay of England was splashed up to his collar; but he still carried his yellow beard forward with a silent and furious determination, and his eyes were still fixed on that floating ball of gas, which in the full flush of sunset seemed coloured like a sunset cloud.

“After all,” he said, “it is very beautiful!”

“It is singularly and strangely beautiful!” said the Professor. “I wish the beastly gas-bag would burst!”

“No,” said Dr. Bull, “I hope it won’t. It might hurt the old boy.”

“Hurt him!” said the vindictive Professor, “hurt him! Not as much as I’d hurt him if I could get up with him. Little Snowdrop!”

“I don’t want him hurt, somehow,” said Dr. Bull.

“What!” cried the Secretary bitterly. “Do you believe all that tale about his being our man in the dark room? Sunday would say he was anybody.”

“I don’t know whether I believe it or not,” said Dr. Bull. “But it isn’t that that I mean. I can’t wish old Sunday’s balloon to burst because ”

“Well,” said Syme impatiently, “because?”

“Well, because he’s so jolly like a balloon himself,” said Dr. Bull desperately. “I don’t understand a word of all that idea of his being the same man who gave us all our blue cards. It seems to make everything nonsense. But I don’t care who knows it, I always had a sympathy for old Sunday himself, wicked as he was. Just as if he was a great bouncing baby. How can I explain what my queer sympathy was? It didn’t prevent my fighting him like hell! Shall I make it clear if I say that I liked him because he was so fat?”

“You will not,” said the Secretary.

“I’ve got it now,” cried Bull, “it was because he was so fat and so light. Just like a balloon. We always think of fat people as heavy, but he could have danced against a sylph. I see now what I mean. Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity. It was like the old speculations what would happen if an elephant could leap up in the sky like a grasshopper?”

“Our elephant,” said Syme, looking upwards, “has leapt into the sky like a grasshopper.”

“And somehow,” concluded Bull, “that’s why I can’t help liking old Sunday. No, it’s not an admiration of force, or any silly thing like that. There is a kind of gaiety in the thing, as if he were bursting with some good news. Haven’t you sometimes felt it on a spring day? You know Nature plays tricks, but somehow that day proves they are good-natured tricks. I never read the Bible myself, but that part they laugh at is literal truth, ‘Why leap ye, ye high hills?’ The hills do leap -at least, they try to.... Why do I like Sunday? . . . how can I tell you? . . . because he’s such a Bounder.”

There was a long silence, and then the Secretary said in a curious, strained voice