Filmer
In truth the mastery of flying was the work of thousands of men--this man a suggestion and that an experiment, until at last onlyone vigorous intellectual effort was needed to finish the work.But the inexorable injustice of the popular mind has decidedthat of all these thousands, one man, and that a man who never flew,should be chosen as the discoverer, just as it has chosen tohonour Watt as the discoverer of steam and Stephenson of thesteam-engine. And surely of all honoured names none is sogrotesquely and tragically honoured as poor Filmer's, the timid,intellectual creature who solved the problem over which the worldhad hung perplexed and a little fearful for so many generations,the man who pressed the button that has changed peace and warfareand well-nigh every condition of human life and happiness. Neverhas that recurring wonder of the littleness of the scientific manin the face of the greatness of his science found such an amazingexemplification. Much concerning Filmer is, and must remain,profoundly obscure--Filmers attract no Boswells--but the essentialfacts and the concluding scene are clear enough, and there areletters, and notes, and casual allusions to piece the whole together.And this is the story one makes, putting this thing with that,of Filmer's life and death.The first authentic trace of Filmer on the page of history isa document in which he applies for admission as a paid studentin physics to the Government laboratories at South Kensington,and therein he describes himself as the son of a "military bootmaker"("cobbler" in the vulgar tongue) of Dover, and lists his variousexamination proofs of a high proficiency in chemistry andmathematics. With a certain want of dignity he seeks to enhancethese attainments by a profession of poverty and disadvantages,and he writes of the laboratory as the "gaol" of his ambitions,a slip which reinforces his claim to have devoted himself exclusivelyto the exact sciences. The document is endorsed in a manner thatshows Filmer was admitted to this coveted opportunity; but untilquite recently no traces of his success in the Government institutioncould be found.It has now, however, been shown that in spite of his professed zealfor research, Filmer, before he had held this scholarship a year,was tempted, by the possibility of a small increase in his immediateincome, to abandon it in order to become one of the nine-pence-an-hourcomputers employed by a well-known Professor in his vicariousconduct of those extensive researches of his in solar physics--researcheswhich are still a matter of perplexity to astronomers. Afterwards,for the space of seven years, save for the pass lists of theLondon University, in which he is seen to climb slowly to a doublefirst class B.Sc., in mathematics and chemistry, there is no evidenceof how Filmer passed his life. No one knows how or where he lived,though it seems highly probable that he continued to supporthimself by teaching while he prosecuted the studies necessary forthis distinction. And then, oddly enough, one finds him mentionedin the correspondence of Arthur Hicks, the poet."You remember Filmer," Hicks writes to his friend Vance; "well,he hasn't altered a bit, the same hostile mumble and the nastychin--how can a man contrive to be always three days from shaving?-- and a sort of furtive air of being engaged in sneaking in frontof one; even his coat and that frayed collar of his show no furthersigns of the passing years. He was writing in the library andI sat down beside him in the name of God's charity, whereuponhe deliberately insulted me by covering up his memoranda. It seemshe has some brilliant research on hand that he suspects me of allpeople--with a Bodley Booklet a-printing!--of stealing. He has takenremarkable honours at the University--he went through them witha sort of hasty slobber, as though he feared I might interrupt himbefore he had told me all--and he spoke of taking his D.Sc. as onemight speak of taking a cab. And he asked what I was doing--witha sort of comparative accent, and his arm was spread nervously,positively a protecting arm, over the paper that hid the preciousidea--his one hopeful idea."'Poetry,' he said, 'Poetry. And what do you profess to teachin it, Hicks?'"The thing's a Provincial professorling in the very act of budding,and I thank the Lord devoutly that but for the precious giftof indolence I also might have gone this way to D.Sc. anddestruction . . ."A curious little vignette that I am inclined to think caught Filmerin or near the very birth of his discovery. Hicks was wrong inanticipating a provincial professorship for Filmer. Our next glimpseof him is lecturing on "rubber and rubber substitutes," to theSociety of Arts--he had become manager to a great plastic-substancemanufactory--and at that time, it is now known, he was a memberof the Aeronautical Society, albeit he contributed nothing to thediscussions of that body, preferring no doubt to mature his greatconception without external assistance. And within two yearsof that paper before the Society of Arts he was hastily taking outa number of patents and proclaiming in various undignified waysthe completion of the divergent inquiries which made his flyingmachine possible. The first definite statement to that effectappeared in a halfpenny evening paper through the agency of a manwho lodged in the same house with Filmer. His final haste afterhis long laborious secret patience seems to have been due toa needless panic, Bootle, the notorious American scientific quack,having made an announcement that Filmer interpreted wrongly asan anticipation of his idea.Now what precisely was Filmer's idea? Really a very simple one.Before his time the pursuit of aeronautics had taken two divergentlines, and had developed on the one hand balloons--large apparatuslighter than air, easy in ascent, and comparatively safe in descent,but floating helplessly before any breeze that took them; and onthe other, flying machines that flew only in theory--vast flatstructures heavier than air, propelled and kept up by heavy enginesand for the most part smashing at the first descent. But, neglectingthe fact that the inevitable final collapse rendered them impossible,the weight of the flying machines gave them this theoreticaladvantage, that they could go through the air against a wind,a necessary condition if aerial navigation was to have any practicalvalue. It is Filmer's particular merit that he perceived the wayin which the contrasted and hitherto incompatible merits of balloonand heavy flying machine might be combined in one apparatus,which should be at choice either heavier or lighter than air.He took hints from the contractile bladders of fish and the pneumaticcavities of birds. He devised an arrangement of contractileand absolutely closed balloons which when expanded could liftthe actual flying apparatus with ease, and when retracted by thecomplicated "musculature" he wove about them, were withdrawnalmost completely into the frame; and he built the large frameworkwhich these balloons sustained, of hollow, rigid tubes, the airin which, by an ingenious contrivance, was automatically pumpedout as the apparatus fell, and which then remained exhaustedso long as the aeronaut desired. There were no wings or propellersto his machine, such as there had been to all previous aeroplanes,and the only engine required was the compact and powerful littleappliance needed to contract the balloons. He perceived that suchan apparatus as he had devised might rise with frame exhaustedand balloons expanded to a considerable height, might then contractits balloons and let the air into its frame, and by an adjustmentof its weights slide down the air in any desired direction. As it fellit would accumulate velocity and at the same time lose weight,and the momentum accumulated by its down-rush could be utilisedby means of a shifting of its weights to drive it up in the air againas the balloons expanded. This conception, which is still thestructural conception of all successful flying machines, needed,however, a vast amount of toil upon its details before it couldactually be realised, and such toil Filmer--as he was accustomedto tell the numerous interviewers who crowded upon him inthe heyday of his fame--"ungrudgingly and unsparingly gave."His particular difficulty was the elastic lining of the contractileballoon. He found he needed a new substance, and in the discoveryand manufacture of that new substance he had, as he never failedto impress upon the interviewers, "performed a far more arduouswork than even in the actual achievement of my seemingly greaterdiscovery."But it must not be imagined that these interviews followed hardupon Filmer's proclamation of his invention. An interval of nearlyfive years elapsed during which he timidly remained at his rubberfactory--he seems to have been entirely dependent on his smallincome from this source--making misdirected attempts to assurea quite indifferent public that he really had invented what he hadinvented. He occupied the greater part of his leisure in thecomposition of letters to the scientific and daily press, andso forth, stating precisely the net result of his contrivances,and demanding financial aid. That alone would have sufficed forthe suppression of his letters. He spent such holidays as he couldarrange in unsatisfactory interviews with the door-keepers ofleading London papers--he was singularly not adapted for inspiringhall-porters with confidence--and he positively attempted to inducethe War Office to take up his work with him. There remains aconfidential letter from Major-General Volleyfire to the Earl of Frogs."The man's a crank and a bounder to boot," says the Major-Generalin his bluff, sensible, army way, and so left it open for the Japaneseto secure, as they subsequently did, the priority in this sideof warfare--a priority they still to our great discomfort retain.And then by a stroke of luck the membrane Filmer had invented for hiscontractile balloon was discovered to be useful for the valvesof a new oil-engine, and he obtained the means for making a trialmodel of his invention. He threw up his rubber factory appointment,desisted from all further writing, and, with a certain secrecythat seems to have been an inseparable characteristic of all hisproceedings, set to work upon the apparatus. He seems to havedirected the making of its parts and collected most of it in a roomin Shoreditch, but its final putting together was done at Dymchurch,in Kent. He did not make the affair large enough to carry a man,but he made an extremely ingenious use of what were then calledthe Marconi rays to control its flight. The first flight of thisfirst practicable flying machine took place over some fieldsnear Burford Bridge, near Hythe, in Kent, and Filmer followedand controlled its flight upon a specially constructed motor tricycle.The flight was, considering all things, an amazing success.The apparatus was brought in a cart from Dymchurch to Burford Bridge,ascended there to a height of nearly three hundred feet, swoopedthence very nearly back to Dymchurch, came about in its sweep,rose again, circled, and finally sank uninjured in a field behindthe Burford Bridge Inn. At its descent a curious thing happened.Filmer got off his tricycle, scrambled over the intervening dyke,advanced perhaps twenty yards towards his triumph, threw outhis arms in a strange gesticulation, and fell down in a dead faint.Every one could then recall the ghastliness of his features andall the evidences of extreme excitement they had observed throughoutthe trial, things they might otherwise have forgotten. Afterwardsin the inn he had an unaccountable gust of hysterical weeping.Altogether there were not twenty witnesses of this affair, andthose for the most part uneducated men. The New Romney doctorsaw the ascent but not the descent, his horse being frightenedby the electrical apparatus on Filmer's tricycle and giving hima nasty spill. Two members of the Kent constabulary watchedthe affair from a cart in an unofficial spirit, and a grocer callinground the Marsh for orders and two lady cyclists seem almostto complete the list of educated people. There were two reporterspresent, one representing a Folkestone paper and the other beinga fourth-class interviewer and "symposium" journalist, whoseexpenses down, Filmer, anxious as ever for adequate advertisement--and now quite realising the way in which adequate advertisementmay be obtained--had paid. The latter was one of those writerswho can throw a convincing air of unreality over the most credibleevents, and his half-facetious account of the affair appearedin the magazine page of a popular journal. But, happily for Filmer,this person's colloquial methods were more convincing. He wentto offer some further screed upon the subject to Banghurst,the proprietor of the New Paper, and one of the ablest and mostunscrupulous men in London journalism, and Banghurst instantlyseized upon the situation. The interviewer vanishes from the narrative,no doubt very doubtfully remunerated, and Banghurst, Banghurst himself,double chin, grey twill suit, abdomen, voice, gestures and all,appears at Dymchurch, following his large, unrivalled journalistic nose.He had seen the whole thing at a glance, just what it was andwhat it might be.At his touch, as it were, Filmer's long-pent investigations explodedinto fame. He instantly and most magnificently was a Boom. One turnsover the files of the journals of the year 1907 with a quite incredulousrecognition of how swift and flaming the boom of those days could be.The July papers know nothing of flying, see nothing in flying,state by a most effective silence that men never would, could orshould fly. In August flying and Filmer and flying and parachutesand aerial tactics and the Japanese Government and Filmer and againflying, shouldered the war in Yunnan and the gold mines ofUpper Greenland off the leading page. And Banghurst had giventen thousand pounds, and, further, Banghurst was giving five thousandpounds, and Banghurst had devoted his well-known, magnificent(but hitherto sterile) private laboratories and several acres of landnear his private residence on the Surrey hills to the strenuousand violent completion--Banghurst fashion--of the life-sizepracticable flying machine. Meanwhile, in the sight of privilegedmultitudes in the walled-garden of the Banghurst town residencein Fulham, Filmer was exhibited at weekly garden parties puttingthe working model through its paces. At enormous initial cost,but with a final profit, the New Paper presented its readerswith a beautiful photographic souvenir of the first of these occasions.Here again the correspondence of Arthur Hicks and his friend Vancecomes to our aid."I saw Filmer in his glory," he writes, with just the touch of envynatural to his position as a poet passe. "The man is brushedand shaved, dressed in the fashion of a Royal-Institution-AfternoonLecturer, the very newest shape in frock-coats and long patent shoes,and altogether in a state of extraordinary streakiness betweenan owlish great man and a scared abashed self-conscious boundercruelly exposed. He hasn't a touch of colour in the skin of his face,his head juts forward, and those queer little dark amber eyes of hiswatch furtively round him for his fame. His clothes fit perfectlyand yet sit upon him as though he had bought them ready-made.He speaks in a mumble still, but he says, you perceive indistinctly,enormous self-assertive things, he backs into the rear of groupsby instinct if Banghurst drops the line for a minute, and whenhe walks across Banghurst's lawn one perceives him a little outof breath and going jerky, and that his weak white hands are clenched.His is a state of tension--horrible tension. And he is the GreatestDiscoverer of This or Any Age--the Greatest Discoverer of Thisor Any Age! What strikes one so forcibly about him is that he didn'tsomehow quite expect it ever, at any rate, not at all like this.Banghurst is about everywhere, the energetic M.C. of his greatlittle catch, and I swear he will have every one down on his lawnthere before he has finished with the engine; he had baggedthe prime minister yesterday, and he, bless his heart! didn't lookparticularly outsize, on the very first occasion. Conceive it! Filmer!Our obscure unwashed Filmer, the Glory of British science!Duchesses crowd upon him, beautiful, bold peeresses say in theirbeautiful, clear loud voices--have you noticed how penetratingthe great lady is becoming nowadays?--'Oh, Mr. Filmer, how didyou do it?'"Common men on the edge of things are too remote for the answer.One imagines something in the way of that interview, 'toil ungrudginglyand unsparingly given, Madam, and, perhaps--I don't know--but perhapsa little special aptitude.'"So far Hicks, and the photographic supplement to the New Paper is insufficient harmony with the description. In one picture the machineswings down towards the river, and the tower of Fulham churchappears below it through a gap in the elms, and in another, Filmersits at his guiding batteries, and the great and beautiful of the earthstand around him, with Banghurst massed modestly but resolutelyin the rear. The grouping is oddly apposite. Occluding much ofBanghurst, and looking with a pensive, speculative expressionat Filmer, stands the Lady Mary Elkinghorn, still beautiful,in spite of the breath of scandal and her eight-and-thirty years,the only person whose face does not admit a perception of the camerathat was in the act of snapping them all.So much for the exterior facts of the story, but, after all,they are very exterior facts. About the real interest of the businessone is necessarily very much in the dark. How was Filmer feelingat the time? How much was a certain unpleasant anticipation presentinside that very new and fashionable frock-coat? He was in thehalfpenny, penny, six-penny, and more expensive papers alike,and acknowledged by the whole world as "the Greatest Discovererof This or Any Age." He had invented a practicable flying machine,and every day down among the Surrey hills the life-sized modelwas getting ready. And when it was ready, it followed as a clearinevitable consequence of his having invented and made it--everybodyin the world, indeed, seemed to take it for granted; there wasn'ta gap anywhere in that serried front of anticipation--that he wouldproudly and cheerfully get aboard it, ascend with it, and fly.But we know now pretty clearly that simple pride and cheerfulnessin such an act were singularly out of harmony with Filmer's privateconstitution. It occurred to no one at the time, but there the fact is.We can guess with some confidence now that it must have beendrifting about in his mind a great deal during the day, and, froma little note to his physician complaining of persistent insomnia,we have the soundest reason for supposing it dominated his nights,--the idea that it would be after all, in spite of his theoreticalsecurity, an abominably sickening, uncomfortable, and dangerousthing for him to flap about in nothingness a thousand feet or soin the air. It must have dawned upon him quite early in the periodof being the Greatest Discoverer of This or Any Age, the visionof doing this and that with an extensive void below. Perhapssomewhen in his youth he had looked down a great height or fallendown in some excessively uncomfortable way; perhaps some habit ofsleeping on the wrong side had resulted in that disagreeable fallingnightmare one knows, and given him his horror; of the strengthof that horror there remains now not a particle of doubt.Apparently he had never weighed this duty of flying in his earlierdays of research; the machine had been his end, but now thingswere opening out beyond his end, and particularly this giddy whirlup above there. He was a Discoverer and he had Discovered.But he was not a Flying Man, and it was only now that he was beginningto perceive clearly that he was expected to fly. Yet, however muchthe thing was present in his mind he gave no expression to it untilthe very end, and meanwhile he went to and fro from Banghurst'smagnificent laboratories, and was interviewed and lionised, andwore good clothes, and ate good food, and lived in an elegant flat,enjoying a very abundant feast of such good, coarse, wholesomeFame and Success as a man, starved for all his years as he had beenstarved, might be reasonably expected to enjoy.After a time, the weekly gatherings in Fulham ceased. The modelhad failed one day just for a moment to respond to Filmer's guidance,or he had been distracted by the compliments of an archbishop.At any rate, it suddenly dug its nose into the air just a littletoo steeply as the archbishop was sailing through a Latin quotationfor all the world like an archbishop in a book, and it came downin the Fulham Road within three yards of a 'bus horse. It stoodfor a second perhaps, astonishing and in its attitude astonished,then it crumpled, shivered into pieces, and the 'bus horse wasincidentally killed.Filmer lost the end of the archiepiscopal compliment. He stood upand stared as his invention swooped out of sight and reach of him.His long, white hands still gripped his useless apparatus.The archbishop followed his skyward stare with an apprehensionunbecoming in an archbishop.Then came the crash and the shouts and uproar from the roadto relieve Filmer's tension. "My God!" he whispered, and sat down.Every one else almost was staring to see where the machine hadvanished, or rushing into the house.The making of the big machine progressed all the more rapidlyfor this. Over its making presided Filmer, always a little slowand very careful in his manner, always with a growing preoccupationin his mind. His care over the strength and soundness of the apparatuswas prodigious. The slightest doubt, and he delayed everythinguntil the doubtful part could be replaced. Wilkinson, his seniorassistant, fumed at some of these delays, which, he insisted, werefor the most part unnecessary. Banghurst magnified the patientcertitude of Filmer in the New Paper, and reviled it bitterlyto his wife, and MacAndrew, the second assistant, approved Filmer'swisdom. "We're not wanting a fiasco, man," said MacAndrew. "He'sperfectly well advised."And whenever an opportunity arose Filmer would expound to Wilkinsonand MacAndrew just exactly how every part of the flying machinewas to be controlled and worked, so that in effect they would bejust as capable, and even more capable, when at last the time came,of guiding it through the skies.Now I should imagine that if Filmer had seen fit at this stageto define just what he was feeling, and to take a definite linein the matter of his ascent, he might have escaped that painfulordeal quite easily. If he had had it clearly in his mind he couldhave done endless things. He would surely have found no difficultywith a specialist to demonstrate a weak heart, or something gastricor pulmonary, to stand in his way--that is the line I am astonishedhe did not take,--or he might, had he been man enough, havedeclared simply and finally that he did not intend to do the thing.But the fact is, though the dread was hugely present in his mind,the thing was by no means sharp and clear. I fancy that all throughthis period he kept telling himself that when the occasion camehe would find himself equal to it. He was like a man just grippedby a great illness, who says he feels a little out of sorts, and expectsto be better presently. Meanwhile he delayed the completion ofthe machine, and let the assumption that he was going to fly ittake root and flourish exceedingly about him. He even acceptedanticipatory compliments on his courage. And, barring this secretsqueamishness, there can be no doubt he found all the praise anddistinction and fuss he got a delightful and even intoxicating draught.The Lady Mary Elkinghorn made things a little more complicatedfor him.How that began was a subject of inexhaustible speculation to Hicks.Probably in the beginning she was just a little "nice" to himwith that impartial partiality of hers, and it may be that to her eyes,standing out conspicuously as he did ruling his monster in the upper air,he had a distinction that Hicks was not disposed to find. And somehowthey must have had a moment of sufficient isolation, and the greatDiscoverer a moment of sufficient courage for something justa little personal to be mumbled or blurted. However it began,there is no doubt that it did begin, and presently became quiteperceptible to a world accustomed to find in the proceedingsof the Lady Mary Elkinghorn a matter of entertainment. It complicatedthings, because the state of love in such a virgin mind as Filmer'swould brace his resolution, if not sufficiently, at any rateconsiderably towards facing a danger he feared, and hampered himin such attempts at evasion as would otherwise be natural and congenial.It remains a matter for speculation just how the Lady Mary feltfor Filmer and just what she thought of him. At thirty-eight onemay have gathered much wisdom and still be not altogether wise,and the imagination still functions actively enough in creatingglamours and effecting the impossible. He came before her eyesas a very central man, and that always counts, and he had powers,unique powers as it seemed, at any rate in the air. The performancewith the model had just a touch of the quality of a potent incantation,and women have ever displayed an unreasonable disposition to imaginethat when a man has powers he must necessarily have Power. Givenso much, and what was not good in Filmer's manner and appearancebecame an added merit. He was modest, he hated display, but givenan occasion where true qualities are needed, then--then one would see!The late Mrs. Bampton thought it wise to convey to Lady Mary her opinionthat Filmer, all things considered, was rather a "grub." "He's certainlynot a sort of man I have ever met before," said the Lady Mary,with a quite unruffled serenity. And Mrs. Bampton, after a swift,imperceptible glance at that serenity, decided that so far as sayinganything to Lady Mary went, she had done as much as could be expectedof her. But she said a great deal to other people.And at last, without any undue haste or unseemliness, the daydawned, the great day, when Banghurst had promised his public--the world in fact--that flying should be finally attained and overcome.Filmer saw it dawn, watched even in the darkness before it dawned,watched its stars fade and the grey and pearly pinks give placeat last to the clear blue sky of a sunny, cloudless day. He watched itfrom the window of his bedroom in the new-built wing of Banghurst'sTudor house. And as the stars were overwhelmed and the shapes andsubstances of things grew into being out of the amorphous dark,he must have seen more and more distinctly the festive preparationsbeyond the beech clumps near the green pavilion in the outer park,the three stands for the privileged spectators, the raw, new fencingof the enclosure, the sheds and workshops, the Venetian mastsand fluttering flags that Banghurst had considered essential,black and limp in the breezeless dawn, and amidst all these thingsa great shape covered with tarpauling. A strange and terribleportent for humanity was that shape, a beginning that must surelyspread and widen and change and dominate all the affairs of men,but to Filmer it is very doubtful whether it appeared in anythingbut a narrow and personal light. Several people heard him pacingin the small hours--for the vast place was packed with guestsby a proprietor editor who, before all understood compression.And about five o'clock, if not before, Filmer left his room andwandered out of the sleeping house into the park, alive by that timewith sunlight and birds and squirrels and the fallow deer. MacAndrew,who was also an early riser, met him near the machine, and they wentand had a look at it together.It is doubtful if Filmer took any breakfast, in spite of the urgencyof Banghurst. So soon as the guests began to be about in some numberhe seems to have retreated to his room. Thence about ten he wentinto the shrubbery, very probably because he had seen the Lady MaryElkinghorn there. She was walking up and down, engaged in conversationwith her old school friend, Mrs. Brewis-Craven, and although Filmerhad never met the latter lady before, he joined them and walkedbeside them for some time. There were several silences in spiteof the Lady Mary's brilliance. The situation was a difficult one,and Mrs. Brewis-Craven did not master its difficulty. "He struck me,"she said afterwards with a luminous self-contradiction, "as a veryunhappy person who had something to say, and wanted before all thingsto be helped to say it. But how was one to help him when one didn'tknow what it was?"At half-past eleven the enclosures for the public in the outer parkwere crammed, there was an intermittent stream of equipages alongthe belt which circles the outer park, and the house party was dottedover the lawn and shrubbery and the corner of the inner park,in a series of brilliantly attired knots, all making for theflying machine. Filmer walked in a group of three with Banghurst,who was supremely and conspicuously happy, and Sir Theodore Hickle,the president of the Aeronautical Society. Mrs. Banghurst was closebehind with the Lady Mary Elkinghorn, Georgina Hickle, and the Deanof Stays. Banghurst was large and copious in speech, and suchinterstices as he left were filled in by Hickle with complimentaryremarks to Filmer. And Filmer walked between them saying not a wordexcept by way of unavoidable reply. Behind, Mrs. Banghurst listenedto the admirably suitable and shapely conversation of the Deanwith that fluttered attention to the ampler clergy ten yearsof social ascent and ascendency had not cured in her; and the Lady Marywatched, no doubt with an entire confidence in the world'sdisillusionment, the drooping shoulders of the sort of man she hadnever met before.There was some cheering as the central party came into view ofthe enclosures, but it was not very unanimous nor invigorating cheering.They were within fifty yards of the apparatus when Filmer tooka hasty glance over his shoulder to measure the distance of the ladiesbehind them, and decided to make the first remark he had initiatedsince the house had been left. His voice was just a little hoarse,and he cut in on Banghurst in mid-sentence on Progress."I say, Banghurst," he said, and stopped."Yes," said Banghurst."I wish--" He moistened his lips. "I'm not feeling well."Banghurst stopped dead. "Eh?" he shouted."A queer feeling." Filmer made to move on, but Banghurst was immovable."I don't know. I may be better in a minute. If not--perhaps . . .MacAndrew--""You're not feeling well?" said Banghurst, and stared at his white face."My dear!" he said, as Mrs. Banghurst came up with them, "Filmersays he isn't feeling well.""A little queer," exclaimed Filmer, avoiding the Lady Mary's eyes."It may pass off--"There was a pause.It came to Filmer that he was the most isolated person in the world."In any case," said Banghurst, "the ascent must be made. Perhapsif you were to sit down somewhere for a moment--""It's the crowd, I think," said Filmer.There was a second pause. Banghurst's eye rested in scrutinyon Filmer, and then swept the sample of public in the enclosure."It's unfortunate," said Sir Theodore Hickle; but still--I suppose--Your assistants--Of course, if you feel out of condition and disinclined--""I don't think Mr. Filmer would permit that for a moment," said Lady Mary."But if Mr. Filmer's nerve is run--It might even be dangerous for himto attempt--" Hickle coughed."It's just because it's dangerous," began the Lady Mary, and feltshe had made her point of view and Filmer's plain enough.Conflicting motives struggled for Filmer."I feel I ought to go up," he said, regarding the ground. He lookedup and met the Lady Mary's eyes. "I want to go up," he said, andsmiled whitely at her. He turned towards Banghurst. "If I couldjust sit down somewhere for a moment out of the crowd and sun--"Banghurst, at least, was beginning to understand the case. "Comeinto my little room in the green pavilion," he said. "It's quitecool there." He took Filmer by the arm.Filmer turned his face to the Lady Mary Elkinghorn again. "I shallbe all right in five minutes," he said. "I'm tremendously sorry--"The Lady Mary Elkinghorn smiled at him. "I couldn't think--" hesaid to Hickle, and obeyed the compulsion of Banghurst's pull.The rest remained watching the two recede."He is so fragile," said the Lady Mary."He's certainly a highly nervous type," said the Dean, whose weaknessit was to regard the whole world, except married clergymen withenormous families, as "neurotic.""Of course," said Hickle, "it isn't absolutely necessary for himto go up because he has invented--""How could he avoid it?" asked the Lady Mary, with the faintestshadow of scorn."It's certainly most unfortunate if he's going to be ill now," saidMrs. Banghurst a little severely."He's not going to be ill," said the Lady Mary, and certainlyshe had met Filmer's eye."You'll be all right," said Banghurst, as they went towards the pavilion."All you want is a nip of brandy. It ought to be you, you know.You'll be--you'd get it rough, you know, if you let another man--""Oh, I want to go," said Filmer. "I shall be all right. As a matterof fact I'm almost inclined now--. No! I think I'll have that nipof brandy first."Banghurst took him into the little room and routed out an emptydecanter. He departed in search of a supply. He was gone perhapsfive minutes.The history of those five minutes cannot be written. At intervalsFilmer's face could be seen by the people on the easternmostof the stands erected for spectators, against the window panepeering out, and then it would recede and fade. Banghurst vanishedshouting behind the grand stand, and presently the butler appearedgoing pavilionward with a tray.The apartment in which Filmer came to his last solution was a pleasantlittle room very simply furnished with green furniture and an oldbureau--for Banghurst was simple in all his private ways. It washung with little engravings after Morland and it had a shelf of books.But as it happened, Banghurst had left a rook rifle he sometimesplayed with on the top of the desk, and on the corner of the mantelshelfwas a tin with three or four cartridges remaining in it. As Filmerwent up and down that room wrestling with his intolerable dilemmahe went first towards the neat little rifle athwart the blotting-padand then towards the neat little red label ".22 LONG."The thing must have jumped into his mind in a moment.Nobody seems to have connected the report with him, though the gun,being fired in a confined space, must have sounded loud, and therewere several people in the billiard-room, separated from him onlyby a lath-and-plaster partition. But directly Banghurst's butleropened the door and smelt the sour smell of the smoke, he knew,he says, what had happened. For the servants at least of Banghurst'shousehold had guessed something of what was going on in Filmer's mind.All through that trying afternoon Banghurst behaved as he helda man should behave in the presence of hopeless disaster, and his guestsfor the most part succeeded in not insisting upon the fact--thoughto conceal their perception of it altogether was impossible--thatBanghurst had been pretty elaborately and completely swindledby the deceased. The public in the enclosure, Hicks told me, dispersed"like a party that has been ducking a welsher," and there wasn't a soulin the train to London, it seems, who hadn't known all along that flyingwas a quite impossible thing for man. "But he might have tried it,"said many, "after carrying the thing so far."In the evening, when he was comparatively alone, Banghurst brokedown and went on like a man of clay. I have been told he wept,which must have made an imposing scene, and he certainly saidFilmer had ruined his life, and offered and sold the whole apparatusto MacAndrew for half-a-crown. "I've been thinking--" said MacAndrewat the conclusion of the bargain, and stopped.The next morning the name of Filmer was, for the first time, lessconspicuous in the New Paper than in any other daily paper in the world.The rest of the world's instructors, with varying emphasis, accordingto their dignity and the degree of competition between themselvesand the New Paper, proclaimed the "Entire Failure of the New FlyingMachine," and "Suicide of the Impostor." But in the district of NorthSurrey the reception of the news was tempered by a perception of unusualaerial phenomena.Overnight Wilkinson and MacAndrew had fallen into violent argumenton the exact motives of their principal's rash act."The man was certainly a poor, cowardly body, but so far as hisscience went he was no impostor," said MacAndrew, "and I'm preparedto give that proposition a very practical demonstration, Mr. Wilkinson,so soon as we've got the place a little more to ourselves. For I'veno faith in all this publicity for experimental trials."And to that end, while all the world was reading of the certainfailure of the new flying machine, MacAndrew was soaring and curvettingwith great amplitude and dignity over the Epsom and Wimbledon divisions;and Banghurst, restored once more to hope and energy, and regardlessof public security and the Board of Trade, was pursuing his gyrationsand trying to attract his attention, on a motor car and in his pyjamas--he had caught sight of the ascent when pulling up the blind of hisbedroom window--equipped, among other things, with a film camerathat was subsequently discovered to be jammed. And Filmerwas lying on the billiard table in the green pavilion with a sheetabout his body.
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