And then the whole dismal chorus. It was a hymn of hate, and Willard met it with such hate as I have rarely seen.

“As for me, I was only a child, and my experience of hatred was slight, but so far as I could, and with what intensity of spirit I could muster, I hated them both. Hate and bitterness were becoming the elements in which I lived.”

Eisengrim had a fine feeling for a good exit-line, and at this point he rose to go to bed. We rose, as well, and he went solemnly around the circle, shaking hands with us all in the European manner. Lind and Kinghovn even bowed as they did so, and when Magnus turned at the door to give us a final nod, they bowed again.

“Now why do you suppose we accord these royal courtesies to a man who has declared that he was Nobody for so many years,” said Ingestree, when we had sat down again. “Because it is so very plain that he is not Nobody now. He is almost oppressively Somebody. Are we rising, and grinning, and even bowing out of pity? Are we trying to make it up to a man who suffered a dreadful denial of personality by assuring him that now we are quite certain he is a real person, just like us? Decidedly not. We defer to him, and hop around like courtiers because we can’t help it. Why? Ramsay, do you know why?”

“No,” said I; “I don’t, and it doesn’t trouble me much. I rather enjoy Magnus’s lordly airs. He can come off his perch when he thinks proper. Perhaps we do it because we know he doesn’t take it seriously; it’s part of a game. If he insisted, we’d rebel.”

“And when you rebelled, you would see a very different side of his nature,” said Liesl.

“You play the game with him, I observe,” said Ingestree. “You stand up when His Supreme Self-Assurance leaves the company. Yet you are mistress here, and we are your guests. Now why is that?”

“Because I am not quite sure who he is,” said Liesl.

“You don’t believe this story he’s telling us?”

“Yes. I think that he has come to the time of his life when he feels the urge to tell. Many people feel it. It is the impulse behind a hundred bad autobiographies every year. I think he is being as honest as he can. I hope that when he finishes his story—if he does finish it—I shall know rather more. But I may not have my answer then.”

“I don’t follow; you hope to hear his story out, but you don’t think it certain that you will know who he is even then, although you think he is being honest. What is this mystery?”

“Who is anybody? For me, he is whatever he is to me. Biographical facts may be of help, but they don’t explain that. Are you married, Mr. Ingestree?”

“Well, no, actually, I’m not.”

“The way you phrase your reply speaks volumes. But suppose you were married; do you think that your wife would be to you precisely what she was to her women friends, her men friends, her doctor, lawyer, and hairdresser? Of course not. To you she would be something special, and to you that would be the reality of her. I have not yet found out what Magnus is to me, although we have been business associates and friendly intimates for a long time. If I had been the sort of person who is somebody’s mistress, I would have been his mistress, but I’ve never cared for the mistress role. I am too rich for it. Mistresses have incomes, and valuable possessions, but not fortunes. Nor can I say we have been lovers, because that is a messy expression people use when they are having sexual intercourse on fairly regular terms, without getting married. But I have had many a jolly night with Magnus, and many an exciting day with him. I still have to decide what he is to me. If humouring his foible for royal treatment helps me to come to a conclusion, I have no objection.”

“Well, what about you, Ramsay? He keeps referring to you as his first teacher of magic. You knew him from childhood, then? You could surely say who he was?”

“I was almost present at his birth. But does that mean anything? An infant is a seed. Is it an oak seed or a cabbage seed? Who knows? All mothers think their children are oaks, but the world never lacks for cabbages. I would be the last man to pretend that knowing somebody as a child gave any real clue to who he is as a man. I can tell you this: he jokes about the lessons I gave him when he was a child, but he didn’t think them funny then; he had a great gift for something I couldn’t do at all, or could do with absurd effort. He was deadly serious during our lessons, and for a good reason. I could read the books and he couldn’t. I think that may throw some light on what we have been hearing about the World of Wonders, which he presents as a kind of joke. I am perfectly certain it wasn’t a joke at the time.”

“I am sure he wasn’t joking when he spoke of hatred,” said Lind. “He was funny, or ironic, or whatever you want to call it, about the World of Wonders. We all know why people talk in that way; if we are amusing about our trials in the past, it is as if we say, ‘See what I overcame—now I treat it as a joke—see how strong I have been and ask yourself if you could have overcome what I overcame?’ But when he spoke of hatred, there was no joking.”

“I don’t agree,” said Ingestree. “I think joking about the past is a way of suggesting that it wasn’t really important. A way of veiling its horror, perhaps. We shudder when we hear of yesterday’s plane accident, in which seventy people were killed; but we become increasingly philosophical about horrors that are further away. What is the Charge of the Light Brigade now? We remember it as a military blunder and we use it as a stick to beat military commanders, who are all popularly supposed to be blunderers. It has become a poem by Tennyson that embarrasses us by its exaltation of unthinking obedience. We joke about the historical fact and the poetic artifact. But how many people ever think of the young men who charged? Who takes five minutes to summon up in his mind what they felt as they rushed to death? It is the fate of the past to be fuel for humour.”

“Have you put your finger on it?” said Lind. “Perhaps you have. Jokes dissemble horrors and make them seem unimportant. And why? Is it in order that more horrors may come? In order that we may never learn anything from experience? I have never been very fond of jokes. I begin to wonder if they are not evil.”

“Oh rubbish, Jurgen,” said Ingestree. “I was only talking about one aspect of humour. It’s absolutely vital to life. It’s one of the marks of civilization. Mankind wouldn’t be mankind without it.”

“I know that the English set a special value on humour,” said Lind. “They have a very fine sense of humour and sometimes they think theirs the best in the world, like their marmalade. Which reminds me that during the First World War some of the English troops used to go over the top shouting, ‘Marmalade!’ in humorously chivalrous voices, as if it were a heroic battle-cry. The Germans could never get used to it. They puzzled tirelessly to solve the mystery. Because a German cannot conceive that a man in battle would want to be funny, you see. But I think the English were dissembling the horror of their situation so that they would not notice how close they were to Death. Again, humour was essentially evil. If they had thought of the truth of their situation, they might not have gone over the top. And that might have been a good thing.”

“Let’s not theorize about humour, Jurgen,” said Ingestree; “it’s utterly fruitless and makes the very dullest kind of conversation.”

“Now its my turn to disagree,” I said. “This notion that nobody can explain humour, or even talk sensibly about it, is one of humour’s greatest cover-ups. I’ve been thinking a great deal about the Devil lately, and I have been wondering if humour isn’t one of the most brilliant inventions of the Devil. What have you just been saying about it? It diminishes the horrors of the past, and it veils the horrors of the present, and therefore it prevents us from seeing straight, and perhaps from learning things we ought to know. Who profits from that? Not mankind, certainly. Only the Devil could devise such a subtle agency and persuade mankind to value it.”