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to a little unreality; to saying, so to speak, 'O, for the wings
of a pig that I might flee away and be at rest.' What would you
say if I turned the world upside down and set my foot upon
the sun and moon?"
"I should say," replied Joan Hardy, still smiling, "that you wanted
somebody to look after you."
He stared at her for a moment in an almost abstracted fashion
as if he had not fully understood; then he laughed uncontrollably,
like a man who has seen something very close to him that he knows he
is a fool not to have seen before. So a man will fall over something
in a game of hiding-and-seeking, and get shaken up with laughter.
"What a bump your mother earth gives you when you fall out of an
aeroplane," he said, "especially when your flying ship is only a flying
pig. The earth of the real peasants and the real pigs--don't be offended;
I assure you the confusion is a compliment. What a thing is
horse-sense, and how much finer really than the poetry of Pegasus!
And when there is everything else as well that makes the sky clean
and the earth kind, beauty and bravery and the lifting of the head--
well, you are right enough, Joan. Will you take care of me?
Will you stop at home and clip my pig's wings?"
He had caught hold of her by the hands; but she still laughed
as she answered.
"Yes--I told you I couldn't help--but you really must let go, Hilary.
I can see your friends coming down from the quarry."
As she spoke, indeed, Colonel Crane and Owen Hood could be seen
descending the slope and passing through a screen of slender trees
towards them.
"Hullo!" said Hilary Pierce cheerfully. "I want you to
congratulate me. Joan thinks I'm an awful humbug, and right she is;
I am what has been called a happy hypocrite. At least you fellows
may think I've been guilty of a bit of fake in this last affair,
when I tell you the news. Well, I will confess."
"What news do you mean?" inquired the Colonel with curiosity.
Hilary Pierce grinned and made a gesture over his shoulder to the
litter of porcine parachutes, to indicate his last and crowning folly.
"The truth is," he said laughing, "that was only a final firework display
to celebrate victory or failure, whichever you choose to call it.
There isn't any need to do so any more, because the veto is removed.
"Removed?" exclaimed Hood. "Why on earth is that? It's rather
unnerving when lunatics suddenly go sane like that."
"It wasn't anything to do with the lunatics," answered Pierce quietly.
"The real change was much higher up, or rather lower down.
Anyhow, it was much farther at the back of things, where the Big
Businesses are settled by the big people."
"What was the change?" asked the Colonel.
"Old Oates has gone into another business," answered Pierce quietly.
"What on earth has old Oates got to do with it?" asked Hood staring.
"Do you mean that Yankee mooning about over mediaeval ruins?"
"Oh, I know," said Pierce wearily, "I thought he had nothing to do
with it; I thought it was the Jews and vegetarians, and the rest;
but they're very innocent instruments. The truth is that Enoch
Oates is the biggest pork-packer and importer in the world,
and HE didn't want any competition from our cottagers. And what he
says goes, as he would express it. Now, thank God, he's taken up
another line."
But if any indomitable reader wishes to know what was the new line
Mr. Oates pursued and why, it is to be feared that his only course
is to await and patiently read the story of the Exclusive Luxury
of Enoch Oates; and even before reaching that supreme test, he will
have to support the recital of The Elusive Companion of Parson White;
for these, as has been said, are tales of topsy-turvydom, and they
often work backwards.
Chapter IV
THE ELUSIVE COMPANION OF PARSON WHITE
In the scriptures and the chronicles of the League of the Long Bow,
or fellowship of foolish persons doing impossible things,
it is recorded that Owen Hood, the lawyer, and his friend Crane,
the retired Colonel, were partaking one afternoon of a sort
of picnic on the river-island that had been the first scene of a
certain romantic incident in the life of the former, the burden
of reading about which has fallen upon the readers in other days.
Suffice it to say that the island had been devoted by Mr. Hood to his
hobby of angling, and that the meal then in progress was a somewhat
early interruption of the same leisurely pursuit. The two old
cronies had a third companion, who, though considerably younger,
was not only a companion but a friend. He was a light-haired, lively
young man, with rather a wild eye, known by the name of Pierce,
whose wedding to the daughter of the innkeeper of the Blue Boar
the others had only recently attended.
He was an aviator and given to many other forms of skylarking.
The two older men had eccentric tastes of their own; but there is always
a difference between the eccentricity of an elderly man who defies
the world and the enthusiasm of a younger man who hopes to alter it.
The old gentleman may be willing, in a sense, to stand on his head;
but he does not hope, as the boy does, to stand the world on its head.
With a young man like Hilary Pierce it was the world itself that was
to be turned upside-down; and that was a game at which his more
grizzled companions could only look on, as at a child they loved
playing with a big coloured balloon.
Perhaps it was this sense of a division by time, altering the tone,
though not the fact, of friendship, which sent the mind of one of
the older men back to the memory of an older friend. He remembered
that he had had a letter that morning from the only contemporary
of his who could fitly have made a fourth to their party.
Owen Hood drew the letter from his pocket with a smile that wrinkled
his long, humourous, cadaverous face.
"By the way, I forgot to tell you," he said, "I had a letter from
White yesterday."
The bronzed visage of the Colonel was also seamed with the external
signs of a soundless chuckle.
"Read it yet?" he asked.
"Yes," replied the lawyer; "the hieroglyphic was attacked
with fresh vigour after breakfast this morning, and the clouds
and mysteries of yesterday's labours seemed to be rolled away.
Some portions of the cuneiform still await an expert translation; [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]