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down and took precautions."
"But what the devil can he want with a gun?" muttered Pierce,
peering at the dark outline.
"And who the devil is HE, if it comes to that?" said the Colonel.
"Why, that window," explained Pierce, "that's the window of the room
they've let to a paying guest, I know. Man of the name of Green,
I understand; rather a recluse, and I suppose some sort of crank."
"Not an anti-armament crank, anyhow," said the Colonel.
"By George!" said Pierce, whistling softly. "I wonder whether
things really have moved faster than we could fancy! I wonder
whether it's a revolution or a civil war beginning after all.
I suppose we are an army ourselves; I represent the Air Force and you
represent the infantry."
"You represent the infants," answered the Colonel. "You're too
young for this world; you and your revolutions! As a matter
of fact, it isn't a gun, though it does look rather like one.
I see now what it is."
"And what in the world is it?" asked his friend.
"It's a telescope," said Crane. "One of those very big telescopes
they usually have in observatories."
"Couldn't be partly a gun and partly a telescope?" pleaded Pierce,
reluctant to abandon his first fancy. "I've often seen the phrase
'shooting stars,' but perhaps I've got the grammar and sense of
it wrong. The young man lodging with the farmer may be following
one of the local sports--the local substitute for duck-shooting!"
"What in the world are you talking about?" growled the other.
"Their lodger may be shooting the stars," explained Pierce.
"Hope their lodger isn't shooting the moon," said the flippant Crane.
As they spoke there came towards them, through the green
and twinkling twilight of the orchard, a young woman with
copper-coloured hair and a square and rather striking face,
whom Pierce saluted respectfully as the daughter of the house.
He was very punctilious upon the point that these new peasant
farmers must be treated like small squires and not like tenants or serfs.
"I see your friend Mr. Green has got his telescope out," he said.
"Yes, sir," said the girl. "They say Mr. Green is a great astronomer."
"I doubt if you ought to call me 'sir,'" said Pierce reflectively.
"It suggests rather the forgotten feudalism than the new equality.
Perhaps you might oblige me by saying 'Yes, citizen,' then we could
continue our talk about Citizen Green on an equal footing. By the way,
pardon me, let me present Citizen Crane."
Citizen Crane bowed politely to the young woman without any apparent
enthusiasm for his new title; but Pierce went on.
"Rather rum to call ourselves citizens when we're all so glad to be out
of the city. We really want some term suitable to rural equality.
The Socialists have spoilt 'Comrade'; you can't be a comrade without
a Liberty tie and a pointed beard. Morris had a good notion of one
man calling another Neighbour. That sounds a little more rustic.
I suppose," he added wistfully to the girl, "I suppose I could not
induce you to call me Gaffer?"
"Unless I'm mistaken," observed Crane, "that's your astronomer
wandering about in the garden. Thinks he's a botanist, perhaps.
Appropriate to the name of Green."
"Oh, he often wanders in the garden and down to the meadow and
the cowsheds," said the young woman. "He talks to himself a good deal,
explaining a great theory he's got. He explains it to everybody
he meets, too. Sometimes he explains it to me when I'm milking the cow."
"Perhaps you can explain it to us?" said Pierce.
"Not so bad as that," she said, laughing. "It's something like
that Fourth Dimension they talk about. But I've no doubt he'll
explain it to you if you meet him."
"Not for me," said Pierce. "I'm a simple peasant proprietor and ask
nothing but Three Dimensions and a Cow."
"Cow's the Fourth Dimension, I suppose," said Crane.
"I must go and attend to the Fourth Dimension," she said with a smile.
"Peasants all live by patchwork, running two or three side-shows,"
observed Pierce. "Curious sort of livestock on the farm.
Think of people living on a cow and chickens and an astronomer."
As he spoke the astronomer approached along the path by which the girl
had just passed. His eyes were covered with huge horn spectacles
of a dim blue colour; for he was warned to save his eyesight
for his starry vigils. This gave a misleading look of morbidity
to a face that was naturally frank and healthy; and the figure,
though stooping, was stalwart. He was very absent-minded. Every now
and then he looked at the ground and frowned as if he did not like it.
Oliver Green was a very young professor, but a very old young man.
He had passed from science as the hobby of a schoolboy to science
as the ambition of a middle-aged man, without any intermediate
holiday of youth. Moreover, his monomania had been fixed and frozen
by success; at least by a considerable success for a man of his years.
He was already a fellow of the chief learned societies connected
with his subject, when there grew up in his mind the grand, universal,
all-sufficing Theory which had come to fill the whole of his life
as the daylight fills the day. If we attempted the exposition
of that theory here, it is doubtful whether the result would
resemble daylight. Professor Green was always ready to prove it;
but if we were to set out the proof in this place, the next four or
five pages would be covered with closely printed columns of figures,
brightened here and there by geometrical designs, such as seldom
form part of the text of a romantic story. Suffice it to say that
the theory had something to do with Relativity and the reversal
of the relations between the stationary and the moving object.
Pierce, the aviator, who had passed much of his time on moving
objects not without the occasional anticipation of bumping into
stationary objects, talked to Green a little on the subject.
Being interested in scientific aviation, he was nearer to the
abstract sciences than were his friends, Crane with his hobby
of folk-lore or Hood with his love of classic literature or Wilding
White with his reading of the mystics. But the young aviator
frankly admitted that Professor Green soared high into the heavens
of the Higher Mathematics, far beyond the flight of his little aeroplane.
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