第55章

"Why won't it?" said I."You know I had to give the flowers, to stop questions?

"Yes, it ca'n't be helped," said Sylvie: "but they will be sorry when they find them gone!""But how will they go?"

"Well, I don't know how.But they will go.The nosegay was only a Phlizz, you know.Bruno made it up."These last words were in a whisper, as she evidently did not wish Arthur to hear.But of this there seemed to be little risk: he hardly seemed to notice the children, but paced on, silent and abstracted; and when, at the entrance to the wood, they bid us a hasty farewell and ran off, he seemed to wake out of a day-dream.

The bouquet vanished, as Sylvie had predicted; and when, a day or two afterwards, Arthur and I once more visited the Hall, we found the Earl and his daughter, with the old housekeeper, out in the garden, examining the fastenings of the drawing-room window.

"We are holding an Inquest," Lady Muriel said, advancing to meet us:

"and we admit you, as Accessories before the Fact, to tell us all you know about those flowers.""The Accessories before the Fact decline to answer any questions,"I gravely replied."And they reserve their defence.""Well then, turn Queen's Evidence, please! The flowers have disappeared in the night," she went on, turning to Arthur, "and we are quite sure no one in the house has meddled with them.Somebody must have entered by the window--""But the fastenings have not been tampered with," said the Earl.

"It must have been while you were dining, my Lady," said the housekeeper.

"That was it, said the Earl."The thief must have seen you bring the flowers," turning to me, "and have noticed that you did not take them away.And he must have known their great value--they are simply priceless!" he exclaimed, in sudden excitement.

"And you never told us how you got them!" said Lady Muriel.

"Some day," I stammered, "I may be free to tell you.Just now, would you excuse me?"The Earl looked disappointed, but kindly said "Very well, we will ask no questions."[Image...Five o'clock tea]

"But we consider you a very bad Queen's Evidence," Lady Muriel added playfully, as we entered the arbour."We pronounce you to be an accomplice: and we sentence you to solitary confinement, and to be fed on bread and butter.Do you take sugar?""It is disquieting, certainly," she resumed, when all 'creature-comforts'

had been duly supplied, "to find that the house has been entered by a thief in this out-of-the-way place.If only the flowers had been eatables, one might have suspected a thief of quite another shape--""You mean that universal explanation for all mysterious disappearances, 'the cat did it'?" said Arthur.

"Yes," she replied."What a convenient thing it would be if all thieves had the same shape! It's so confusing to have some of them quadrupeds and others bipeds!""It has occurred to me," said Arthur, "as a curious problem in Teleology--the Science of Final Causes," he added, in answer to an enquiring look from Lady Muriel.

"And a Final Cause is--?"

"Well, suppose we say--the last of a series of connected events--each of the series being the cause of the next--for whose sake the first event takes place.""But the last event is practically an effect of the first, isn't it?

And yet you call it a cause of it!"

Arthur pondered a moment."The words are rather confusing, I grant you," he said."Will this do? The last event is an effect of the first: but the necessity for that event is a cause of the necessity for the first.""That seems clear enough," said Lady Muriel."Now let us have the problem.""It's merely this.What object can we imagine in the arrangement by which each different size (roughly speaking) of living creatures has its special shape? For instance, the human race has one kind of shape--bipeds.Another set, ranging from the lion to the mouse, are quadrupeds.Go down a step or two further, and you come to insects with six legs--hexapods--a beautiful name, is it not? But beauty, in our sense of the word, seems to diminish as we go down: the creature becomes more--I won't say 'ugly' of any of God's creatures--more uncouth.