High Spirits

  “This child is wise beyond his years,” said Einstein.

  “Indeed I am,” said Little Lord Fauntleroy. “But Gold-Tooth Flanagan simply didn’t know his business as a child. He was agitating for a Bill of Rights that would allow children to vote at the age of three, and get liquor and dope, and sue their parents for failure to bring them up properly, and ensure that when couples divorced all the assets were placed in the hands of their children—such crazy stuff as you never heard of, that would have robbed children of all their real power and loaded them down with a lot of hard work and financial responsibility. So it came to a showdown.”

  “Don’t tell me Gold-Tooth Flanagan won!” said I.

  “For the present it is a draw,” said Fauntleroy. “You see, the meeting became more and more unruly, and finally Gold-Tooth called Christopher Robin a Mother. At first I didn’t think anything of that, because to me a mother means Dearest, but a Greek boy out of Aesop’s Fables was sitting on the platform near me and he whispered that it was a very offensive expression, and meant somebody called Oedipus, so I asked Gold-Tooth to explain himself, and to the horror of everybody he did. Christopher Robin cried, and Alice from Wonderland hit Gold-Tooth with a croquet mallet, and when order was restored I had to speak very sharply to Gold-Tooth and he challenged me to a fight. I said I would fight him if Dougal were allowed to be the referee, but he wouldn’t have that, and it looked for a moment as if things were going to be very uneven, until Huck Finn slipped something into my right hand which he said would help, and I very cleverly hit Gold-Tooth when he wasn’t looking, and he fell down. But he jumped right up again and shouted Foul, and when I looked at my hand I saw that Huck had put a horseshoe in it. Then Gold-Tooth attacked me unfairly and without warning, and fought in a way that was utterly un-American, and even un-English, and when it was all over—my authority was gone.”

  Here the beautiful child faltered and broke into bitter sobs.

  Professor Einstein and I exchanged glances. The same thing was in both our minds. With a gentle hand the great scientist reached out towards the golden curls, and removed what was all too plainly a wig. The head beneath had been snatched bald. Little Lord Fauntleroy, at the hands of the unspeakable Gold-Tooth Flanagan, had suffered the fate of Samson.

  “Have you tried rubbing it with white of egg?” the great man asked.

  “Or perhaps a top-dressing of organic fertilizer?” said I.

  “It will take months to grow to its full length,” said Fauntleroy, “and we have no time. Unless the horrible plan for a Children’s Bill of Rights (with which Gold-Tooth Flanagan is at this very moment interpenetrating the brain cells of the Assembly at U.N.) is thwarted, society as we have known it must collapse. Children will rule! Can you imagine what that will lead to—?”

  “I am not sure that children would do worse with the world than their elders have done,” said Professor Einstein.

  “That would depend on what children,” said I. “Take the advice of a man steeped in literature and legend; this is War in Heaven, and instead of a defeat in which Gold-Tooth Flanagan is cast down into the Pit, to howl in torment with all his evil followers, he has achieved dominance.”

  “Indeed he has,” said Fauntleroy. “He’s strutting around the Children’s Paradise flashing his gold tooth and wearing my hair!”

  “I see that you are right,” said Professor Einstein. “Like many childless people, I tend to have an extravagantly high opinion of children.”

  “You must re-read King Lear,” said I.

  “I shall do so,” said he; “but meanwhile, my child, do not lose heart. I shall go to the United Nations Assembly, where I still have some spiritual influence, and do what I can.”

  The face of Little Lord Fauntleroy was suffused with a flush of rapture. He rushed to the great man and covered his face with kisses, while Dougal licked Einstein’s violin with his huge tongue, making it disagreeably wet.

  “Meanwhile, to be on the safe side, you might try this,” said I, taking a small black bottle from beneath the top of the piano.

  “You dear old souls,” said the Wondrous Child, his eyes filling with tears, “shall I really regain my hair?”

  “That isn’t hair tonic,” said I; “that is a substance I use for cleaning my piano keys. It is drastic if taken internally; for instance, by anyone who was using it to clean a gold tooth.”

  If I am not mistaken, the child winked at me. “Oh what a lovely practical joke that would be,” he said. “Of course Gold-Tooth is beyond Death, but he is certainly not beyond humiliation.” Then, seizing Dougal by the collar Lord Fauntleroy and the great dog ran toward the door. Before they reached it, they had grown dim, and vanished.

  “Do you really think that children may take over the world?” I said to Professor Einstein.

  “I cannot believe it,” said the great physicist. “Have I not said that God does not play at dice with the fate of the Universe?”

  Once again he raised his bow, and off we went into Bach. But because of Dougal’s energetic licking his violin was sadly out of tune. The sound grew fainter, and I was aware of a decline in my own musical abilities until I found myself playing alone, and playing badly, and I knew that the seventeenth ghostly visitation to Massey College had reached its end.

  Offer of Immortality

  Many of you who are here tonight have heard several of the Massey College Ghost stories, and there are some who have heard them all. Seventeen stories up to the present, and all of them true. Yet I have never felt justified in taking the ghosts for granted; I have never dared to think—Oh, one pops up every year, and it’s sure to appear on time. Ghosts do not like to be taken for granted, just as they do not like to be given orders. You will understand why I was uneasy; this is my last year as Master of Massey College, and I should have liked to round out my time here by telling you of yet another ghost. However, “ ’Tis not in mortals to command success.” I have no ghost for you.

  However, there was something—circumstances of which I ought to inform you, though when you have heard them you will understand my reluctance in making them known. Not a ghost—no—but something not quite in the common run of affairs. Oh, that I had the resolution to stop now, to say no more! But—here it is.

  It happened at the end of November, when we held our last High Table for this year. We don’t have High Tables in December because the College Dance and this affair are our offerings of hospitality during the Christmas season. Hospitality! It is one of the guiding lights of this College. Every honour, every consideration for our guests—that is our somewhat old-fashioned principle. A guest here is sacred.

  On the Friday afternoon, when we were getting ready for High Table, Miss Whalon received a telephone call from Dr. Walter Zingg, the distinguished medical scientist and a Senior Fellow. “I hope it won’t upset the arrangement of the table too much,” said he, “but I should greatly like to bring a visitor who has arrived unexpectedly from South America—a scientist of international renown, from Bogotá, a Professor J. M. Murphy.” That was easily arranged, and when the list of guests was being prepared Miss Whalon discovered that the University from which Professor Murphy came was founded in 1572 (which makes it substantially our senior) and that it must also be one of the most exalted universities in the world, for it stands 9,000 feet above sea level. But when she finally ran the professor down in an academic directory it said only that he was a world leader in Cryonics, and that his full name was Jesus Maria Murphy.

  This did not trouble me. South America is full of the descendants of Irish immigrants who retain their Irish names, although they are now almost wholly of Spanish and Indian blood. Jesus Maria Murphy would cause no more raised eyebrows in Colombia than such a name as Mackenzie King Stacey might in Canada. I didn’t know what Cryonics was, but I didn’t need to know; Professor Zingg would take care of all that.

  I was not prepared, however, for the figure who appeared in the Senior Common Room under the wing of Dr. Zingg. I say “under t
he wing” advisedly, for Professor Murphy came no higher than the doctor’s waist. He was the tiniest human being that I have ever seen, but that was not the only thing that gave him an air of unreality; his complexion was so rich in colour, and his hair was so glossily black that he looked like a beautifully-made doll. Hair dye and an almost operatic amount of makeup; strange in an academic, but these are permissive times. When I took his hand, it was like a tiny claw, and extraordinarily cold—so cold I almost dropped it in surprise.

  When I am disconcerted I take refuge in extreme heartiness and good-fellowship, which, as most of you know, is no indication of my true nature. That is what I did when I felt that cold, cold hand.

  “Welcome, Professor Murphy!” I roared; “What good fortune for us that you are able to dine here to-night! Ho, ho, ho!”

  He responded with what I suppose he meant for a reciprocal exuberance. In a thin, high voice, very much like Punch in the puppet-shows I used to see in London, he replied: “Dat what you tink, eh? Locky for you? Yes, lockier dan you know! He, he, he!”

  I introduced Professor Murphy to some of the others who had assembled for dinner. Quite without self-consciousness he skipped up on top of the table, and stood there, so as to be able to address them face to face.

  When an opportunity came, I looked enquiringly at Professor Zingg; he was blushing. “Never saw him before,” he said, “but I have to take care of him over the weekend—keeping off big dogs and mean children and that sort of thing.”

  “The Professor looks to me as if he knew how to look after himself,” said I.

  Certainly he had no trouble at dinner. With that exquisite courtesy for which Massey College is famous, our Librarian had seen that three volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary were on his chair, so that he would be at no disadvantage, and there he sat, perched on N-Poy, chattering away happily to Dr. Swinton, a man with an insatiable appetite for scientific curiosities; on Murphy’s other side sat Professor Hume, the Master-Designate, and I knew that those two experienced hands at college hospitality would take good care of our strange guest. But I noticed that although he chased our good dinner round his plate with his knife and fork, he ate nothing, and drank no wine.

  Our steward, Mr. Stojanovich, appeared beside my chair.

  “That little gentleman, that Professor Murphy, asks if he might have some of his favourite drink.”

  “Certainly, if we have it,” I said.

  “We have it,” said Mircha; “it is vinegar.”

  “Give him the best we have,” said I.

  An odd request, I thought. Vinegar is, of course, a solution of acetic acid made, as the dictionary explains, from inferior wines; Canada, which yields place to no country in the world in the production of inferior wines, has first-rate vinegar. Mircha returned, bearing a demijohn which he showed me in the distinguished manner that adds so much to College functions. I took a little in a glass, and rolled it thoughtfully over my palate; it was a rich, full Loblaw 1980. I nodded approvingly, our guest was served, and I was interested to observe that he smacked his lips and, after two quick glasses, showed an increase of his former lively spirits.

  Nor was that the end of it. When we went downstairs for more conversation and wine, Professor Murphy insisted that the vinegar jug go with him, and he nipped away all evening, consuming more in liquid volume than any four of the rest of us.

  This was eccentric, certainly, but nothing more. However, when we were parting for night, the strange guest seized me by the hand, and hissed: “I must talk to you.”

  “If you wish,” I said; “I’ll ask Professor Zingg to bring you into my Lodgings.”

  “No, no,” said little Murphy; “get rid of Zingg. Tell Zingg to go hang.”

  As Professor Zingg was standing right beside him, this was rude. But Professor Zingg is not a man to lose his dignity; he smiled courteously at Jesus Maria Murphy, bowed very slightly, and left the room. But I thought there was an air of relief in his manner.

  In no time at all I found myself sitting in my study, facing Professor Murphy, who was curled up in my big chair, with his third demijohn of vinegar, freshly opened, sitting on the floor beside him.

  A hospitable thought struck me. “Would you like to use the plumbing?” I asked. After all, the law of gravity dictates that so much liquid intake must, at some point, impose this necessity.

  “Use what?” he hissed. “Oh, the excusado. No, no; never go. Foolish, foolish. You shall find out why.”

  I can’t say I liked the sound of that. But the Professor was hurrying on.

  “You, Davies, you old man now, eh? You getting out of here? Dey kick you out, no?”

  “Decidedly no,” I said, with some austerity, for I did not like his tone; “I am retiring, and the College has shown me every courtesy, as is its custom.”

  “Yah, yah, but you sorry to go. You want to know what’s going to happen, eh?”

  “Naturally I do. I am the first Master of this College; I hope the first of a long and splendid line. Not to be curious about the future would be impossible, though I know how ridiculous any such desire must be.”

  “Why ridiculous?”

  “Well—because of the brevity of human life.”

  “Not brief at all. You not a scientist, eh?”

  “No,” said I; “insofar as it is possible to sum up what I am, I am a student of literature with a psychological bias.”

  “Oh, Holy Mother of God!” said Professor Murphy. “How you people spend your time! Still, I was just such an idiot when I was your age, a few hundred years ago. I was even a priest. Our university was started by priests, way back in the days of the Spanish Conquest; I was one of the founders and Sub-Rector for many years. But it is not easy to be a Spanish priest in the South American mountains, not if you have any real intelligence, not if you see what is right under your nose.”

  I thought it better to humour this madman. Was he really claiming to be something like four hundred and fifty years old? “So you became an unbeliever?” I said.

  “Never! Unbelievers are fools, worse than unilluminated believers. I became an illuminated believer. I expanded my realm of belief. I became an alchemist.”

  “An alchemist?” said I. “Making gold, and that sort of thing?”

  “Pah!” he said, and a good deal of saliva sprayed across the room at me. “I spit on gold! In South America is gold everywhere, kicking along the ground. No, no, I studied life, and as time went on, and science began to lift its head above the rubbish of faith, the Illumination came, and by the middle of the nineteenth century I was one of the earliest biologists.”

  “Is it widely known that you have had such a long and interesting life?” I said.

  “No; better not,” said he. “I change my name from time to time. Give up being priest, though I am still a good Catholic. But that is why I am now Murphy; lots of Murphys in Colombia. I can speak Irish. Begorrah, may your shadow never grow less, devil take you, damn your eyes, Mother Machree. Yes, now I am Professor Murphy, and head of a very big scientific section in our University.”

  “And what brings you to Canada?” I said.

  “I am scouting for candidates,” said he, looking at me with extreme cunning.

  “For your faculty?” said I.

  “No, no—for my Instituto Cryonico da Colombia. But we have strayed. We talked about your curiosity regarding the future of this College. There are lots of ways of finding out, you know.”

  “Such as—?” said I.

  “Well, Gematria, for one,” said he.

  Gematria—the cabbala of numbers! How often had I not heard of it, that elaborate, ancient, but surely mad science of divination practised so long by the Jews, and part of the structure of their mediaeval scholasticism! I looked at Murphy with new eyes.

  “But surely Gematria is known only among the Jews?” said I.

  “If you live long enough and survive strongly enough the Jews begin to think you must be one of themselves, and they tell you secrets,” s
aid Murphy. “You want to know how Gematria works?”

  Of course I did.

  “Then you must understand that numbers are the most important things under heaven. All is number, and God is the God of Numbers. I suppose you know Hebrew?”

  “I’ve allowed it to grow a little rusty,” I said; “but I used to be able to read and write it pretty well.”

  “Ah, then you know that in Hebrew there are no special signs for numbers, but each letter of the alphabet has a numerical equivalent, and that means that every word has a numerical equivalent also.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “In the art of Gematria you divine secret things by reducing the appropriate words to their number equivalents, adding up those, then adding the integers of the sum again and again until you reach a number between one and eleven. That number is the Golden Number, and must be interpreted by knowledge of a very secret doctrine that embodies the rational pattern that lies beneath the seeming disorder of the universe.”

  “Yes,” said I, “but how are you going to make that work with English words? Hebrew suppresses all the vowels but A, and lacks several of our letters.”

  “That is part of the tradition. You fill in the gaps with Greek letters that also have numerical equivalents. Greek alchemists, Jewish alchemists, they worked hand in glove. It really does work, you know. Want to try?”

  “I think you want to demonstrate your skill,” said I. Of course I wanted to try. But obviously I was not deceiving him; he went off into a fit of laughter, almost silent, producing a small noise like someone crushing tissue paper.