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.And here is one of them.Is the normal human need, the normal human condition, higher or lower than those special spates of the soul which call out a doubtful and dangerous glory? those special powers of knowledge or sacrifice which are made possible only by the existence of evil? Which should come first to our affections, the enduring sanities of peace or the half-maniacal virtues of battle? Which should come first, the man great in the daily round or the man great in emergency? Which should come first, to return to the enigma before me, the grocer or the chemist? Which is more certainly the stay of the city, the swift chivalrous chemist or the benignant all-providing, grocer? In such ultimate spiritual doubts it is only possible to choose a side by the higher instincts and to abide the issue.In any case, I have made my choice.May I be pardoned if I choose wrongly, but I choose the grocer.”“Good morning, sir,” said the grocer, who was a middle-aged man, partially bald, with harsh red whiskers and beard, and forehead lined with all the cares of the small tradesman.“What can I do for you, sir?”Wayne removed his hat on entering the shop, with a ceremonious gesture, which, slight as it was, made the tradesman eye him with the beginnings of wonder.“I come, sir,” he said soberly, “to appeal to your patriotism.”“Why, sir,” said the grocer, “that sounds like the times when I was a boy and we used to have elections.”“You will have them again,” said Wayne, firmly, “and far greater things.Listen, Mr.Mead.I know the temptations which a grocer has to a too cosmopolitan philosophy.I can imagine what it must be to sit all day as you do surrounded with wares from all the ends of the earth, from strange seas that we have never sailed and strange forests that we could not even picture.No Eastern king ever had such argosies or such cargoes coming from the sunrise and the sunset, and Solomon in all his glory was not enriched like one of you.India is at your elbow,” he cried, lifting his voice and pointing his stick at a drawer of rice, the grocer making a movement of some alarm, “China is before you, Demerara is behind you, America is above your head, and at this very moment, like some old Spanish admiral, you hold Tunis in your hands.”Mr.Mead dropped the box of dates which he was just lifting, and then picked it up again vaguely.Wayne went on with a heightened colour, but in a lowered voice:“I know, I say, the temptations of so international, so universal a vision of wealth.I know that it must be your danger not to fall like many tradesmen into too dusty and mechanical a narrowness, but rather to be too broad, to be too general, too liberal.If a narrow nationalism be the danger of the pastrycook who makes his own wares under his own heavens, no less is cosmopolitanism the danger of the grocer.But I come to you in the name of that patriotism which no wanderings or enlightenments should ever wholly extinguish, and I ask you to remember Notting Hill.For, after all, in this cosmopolitan magnificence, she has played no small part.Your dates may come from the tall palms of Barbary, your sugar from the strange islands of the tropics, your tea from the secret villages of the Empire of the Dragon.That this room might be furnished, forests may have been spoiled under the Southern Cross, and leviathans speared under the Polar Star.But you yourself.surely no inconsiderable treasure.you yourself, the brain that wields these vast interests.you yourself, at least, have grown to strength and wisdom between these grey houses and under this rainy sky.This city which made you, and thus made your fortunes, is threatened with war.Come forth and tell to the ends of the earth this lesson.Oil is from the North and fruits from the South; rices are from India and spices from Ceylon; sheep are from New Zealand and men from Notting Hill.”The grocer sat for some little while, with dim eyes and his mouth open, looking rather like a fish.Then he scratched the back of his head, and said nothing.Then he said:“Anything out of the shop, sir?”Wayne looked round in a dazed way.Seeing a pile of tins of pine-apple chunks, he waved his stick generally towards them.“Yes,” he said, “I’ll take those.”“All those, sir?” said the grocer, with greatly increased interest.“Yes, yes; all those,” replied Wayne, still a little bewildered, like a man splashed with cold water.“Very good, sir; thank you, sir,” said the grocer with animation.“You may count upon my patriotism, sir.”“I count upon it already,” said Wayne, and passed out into the gathering night.The grocer put the box of dates back in its place.“What a nice fellow he is,” he said.“It’s odd how often they are nice.Much nicer than those as are all right.”Meanwhile Adam Wayne stood outside the glowing chemist’s shop, unmistakably wavering.“What a weakness it is,” he muttered.“I have never got rid of it from childhood.The fear of this magic shop.The grocer is rich, he is romantic, he is poetical in the truest sense, but he is not.no, he is not supernatural.But the chemist! All the other shops stand in Notting Hill, but this stands in Elf-land.Look at those great burning bowls of colour.It must be from them that God paints the sunsets.It is superhuman, and the superhuman is all the more uncanny when it is beneficent.That is the root of the fear of God.I am afraid.But I must be a man and enter.”He was a man, and entered.A short, dark young man was behind the counter with spectacles, and greeted him with a bright but entirely business-like smile.“A fine evening, sir,” he said.“Fine, indeed, strange Father,” said Adam, stretching his hands somewhat forward.“It is on such clear and mellow nights that your shop is most itself.Then they appear most perfect, those moons of green and gold and crimson, which from afar, oft guide the pilgrim of pain and sickness to this house of merciful witchcraft.”“Can I get you anything?” asked the chemist.“Let me see,” said Wayne, in a friendly but vague manner.“Let me have some sal-volatile.”“Eightpence, tenpence, or one and sixpence a bottle?” said the young man genially.“One and six.one and six,” replied Wayne, with a wild submissiveness.“I come to ask you, Mr.Bowles, a terrible question.”He paused and collected himself.“It is necessary,” he muttered “it is necessary to be tactful, and to suit the appeal to each profession in turn.”“I come,” he resumed aloud, “to ask you a question which goes to the roots of your miraculous toils.Mr.Bowles, shall all this witchery cease?” And he waved his stick around the shop.Meeting with no answer, he continued with animation:“In Notting Hill we have felt to its core the elfish mystery of your profession.And now Notting Hill itself is threatened.”“Anything more, sir?” asked the chemist.“Oh,” said Wayne, somewhat disturbed, “oh, what is it chemists sell? Quinine, I think.Thank you.Shall it be destroyed? I have met these men of Bayswater and North Kensington.Mr.Bowles, they are materialists.They see no witchery in your work, even when it is brought within their own borders.They think the chemist is commonplace.They think him human [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]