Twelve Stories and a Dream | Page 6

he had an unaccountable gust of hysterical weeping. Altogether there
were not twenty witnesses of this affair, and those for the most part
uneducated men. The New Romney doctor saw the ascent but not the
descent, his horse being frightened by the electrical apparatus on
Filmer's tricycle and giving him a nasty spill. Two members of the
Kent constabulary watched the affair from a cart in an unofficial spirit,
and a grocer calling round the Marsh for orders and two lady cyclists
seem almost to complete the list of educated people. There were two
reporters present, one representing a Folkestone paper and the other
being a fourth-class interviewer and "symposium" journalist, whose
expenses down, Filmer, anxious as ever for adequate advertisement
--and now quite realising the way in which adequate advertisement may
be obtained--had paid. The latter was one of those writers who can
throw a convincing air of unreality over the most credible events, and
his half-facetious account of the affair appeared in the magazine page
of a popular journal. But, happily for Filmer, this person's colloquial
methods were more convincing. He went to offer some further screed
upon the subject to Banghurst, the proprietor of the New Paper, and one
of the ablest and most unscrupulous men in London journalism, and
Banghurst instantly seized 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 and what it might be. At his touch, as it were, Filmer's
long-pent investigations exploded into fame. He instantly and most
magnificently was a Boom. One turns over the files of the journals of
the year 1907 with a quite incredulous recognition 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 or should fly. In August flying and Filmer
and flying and parachutes and aerial tactics and the Japanese
Government and Filmer and again flying, shouldered the war in
Yunnan and the gold mines of Upper Greenland off the leading page.
And Banghurst had given ten thousand pounds, and, further, Banghurst

was giving five thousand pounds, and Banghurst had devoted his
well-known, magnificent (but hitherto sterile) private laboratories and
several acres of land near his private residence on the Surrey hills to the
strenuous and violent completion--Banghurst fashion--of the life-size
practicable flying machine. Meanwhile, in the sight of privileged
multitudes in the walled-garden of the Banghurst town residence in
Fulham, Filmer was exhibited at weekly garden parties putting the
working model through its paces. At enormous initial cost, but with a
final profit, the New Paper presented its readers with a beautiful
photographic souvenir of the first of these occasions. Here again the
correspondence of Arthur Hicks and his friend Vance comes to our aid.
"I saw Filmer in his glory," he writes, with just the touch of envy
natural to his position as a poet passe. "The man is brushed and shaved,
dressed in the fashion of a Royal-Institution-Afternoon Lecturer, the
very newest shape in frock-coats and long patent shoes, and altogether
in a state of extraordinary streakiness between an owlish great man and
a scared abashed self-conscious bounder cruelly 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 his watch furtively round him for his
fame. His clothes fit perfectly and 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 groups by instinct if Banghurst drops the line for a minute, and
when he walks across Banghurst's lawn one perceives him a little out of
breath and going jerky, and that his weak white hands are clenched. His
is a state of tension--horrible tension. And he is the Greatest Discoverer
of This or Any Age--the Greatest Discoverer of This or Any Age! What
strikes one so forcibly about him is that he didn't somehow quite expect
it ever, at any rate, not at all like this. Banghurst is about everywhere,
the energetic M.C. of his great little catch, and I swear he will have
every one down on his lawn there before he has finished with the
engine; he had bagged the prime minister yesterday, and he, bless his
heart! didn't look particularly 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