The Mystery of a Pageant - Page 2

elegant Renaissance gentlemen talking Cockney.
Suffice it to say, or rather it is needless to say, that I got lost.
I wandered away into some dim corner of that dim shrubbery,
where there was nothing to do except tumbling over tent ropes,
and I began almost to feel like my prototype, and to share his
horror of solitude and hatred of a country life.

In this detachment and dilemma I saw another man in a white wig
advancing across this forsaken stretch of lawn; a tall, lean man,
who stooped in his long black robes like a stooping eagle.
When I thought he would pass me, he stopped before my face,
and said, "Dr. Johnson, I think. I am Paley."

"Sir," I said, "you used to guide men to the beginnings of Christianity.
If you can guide me now to wherever this infernal thing begins you
will perform a yet higher and harder function."

His costume and style were so perfect that for the instant I really
thought he was a ghost. He took no notice of my flippancy, but,
turning his black-robed back on me, led me through verdurous glooms
and winding mossy ways, until we came out into the glare of gaslight
and laughing men in masquerade, and I could easily laugh at myself.

And there, you will say, was an end of the matter. I am
(you will say) naturally obtuse, cowardly, and mentally deficient.
I was, moreover, unused to pageants; I felt frightened in the dark
and took a man for a spectre whom, in the light, I could recognise
as a modern gentleman in a masquerade dress. No; far from it.
That spectral person was my first introduction to a special incident
which has never been explained and which still lays its finger
on my nerve.

I mixed with the men of the eighteenth century; and we fooled
as one does at a fancy-dress ball. There was Burke as large as life
and a great deal better looking. There was Cowper much larger
than life; he ought to have been a little man in a night-cap,
with a cat under one arm and a spaniel under the other.
As it was, he was a magnificent person, and looked more
like the Master of Ballantrae than Cowper. I persuaded him
at last to the night-cap, but never, alas, to the cat and dog.
When I came the next night Burke was still the same beautiful
improvement upon himself; Cowper was still weeping for his dog
and cat and would not be comforted; Bishop Berkeley was still waiting
to be kicked in the interests of philosophy. In short, I met all
my old friends but one. Where was Paley? I had been mystically
moved by the man's presence; I was moved more by his absence.
At last I saw advancing towards us across the twilight garden
a little man with a large book and a bright attractive face.
When he came near enough he said, in a small, clear