A TRANSLATIONHORACE, Bk. V.Ode 3There are whose study is of smells,And to attentive schools rehearseHow something mixed with something elseMakes something worse.Some cultivate in broths impureThe clients of our body--these,Increasing without Venus, cure,Or cause, disease.Others the heated wheel extol,And all its offspring, whose concernIs how to make it farthest rollAnd fastest turn.Me, much incurious if the hourPresent, or to be paid for, bringsMe to Brundusium by the powerOf wheels or wings;Me, in whose breast no flame hath burnedLife-long, save that by Pindar lit,Such lore leaves cold: I am not turnedAside to itMore than when, sunk in thought profoundOf what the unaltering Gods require,My steward (friend but slave) brings roundLogs for my fire.
A TRANSLATION
A TRANSLATION
HORACE, Bk. V.Ode 3
HORACE, Bk. V.Ode 3
There are whose study is of smells,And to attentive schools rehearseHow something mixed with something elseMakes something worse.
There are whose study is of smells,
And to attentive schools rehearse
How something mixed with something else
Makes something worse.
Some cultivate in broths impureThe clients of our body--these,Increasing without Venus, cure,Or cause, disease.
Some cultivate in broths impure
The clients of our body--these,
Increasing without Venus, cure,
Or cause, disease.
Others the heated wheel extol,And all its offspring, whose concernIs how to make it farthest rollAnd fastest turn.
Others the heated wheel extol,
And all its offspring, whose concern
Is how to make it farthest roll
And fastest turn.
Me, much incurious if the hourPresent, or to be paid for, bringsMe to Brundusium by the powerOf wheels or wings;
Me, much incurious if the hour
Present, or to be paid for, brings
Me to Brundusium by the power
Of wheels or wings;
Me, in whose breast no flame hath burnedLife-long, save that by Pindar lit,Such lore leaves cold: I am not turnedAside to it
Me, in whose breast no flame hath burned
Life-long, save that by Pindar lit,
Such lore leaves cold: I am not turned
Aside to it
More than when, sunk in thought profoundOf what the unaltering Gods require,My steward (friend but slave) brings roundLogs for my fire.
More than when, sunk in thought profound
Of what the unaltering Gods require,
My steward (friend but slave) brings round
Logs for my fire.
Ah! What avails the classic bent,And what the chosen word,Against the undoctored incidentThat actually occurred?And what is Art whereto we pressThrough paint and prose and rhyme--When Nature in her nakednessDefeats us every time?
Ah! What avails the classic bent,And what the chosen word,Against the undoctored incidentThat actually occurred?
Ah! What avails the classic bent,
And what the chosen word,
Against the undoctored incident
That actually occurred?
And what is Art whereto we pressThrough paint and prose and rhyme--When Nature in her nakednessDefeats us every time?
And what is Art whereto we press
Through paint and prose and rhyme--
When Nature in her nakedness
Defeats us every time?
'Hi! Hi! Hold your horses! Stop!... Well! Well!' A lean man in a sable-lined overcoat leaped from a private car and barred my way up Pall Mall. 'You don't know me? You're excusable. I wasn't wearing much of anything last time we met--in South Africa.'
The scales fell from my eyes, and I saw him once more in a sky-blue army shirt, behind barbed wire, among Dutch prisoners bathing at Simonstown, more than a dozen years ago[3]. 'Why, it's Zigler--Laughton O. Zigler!' I cried. 'Well, Iamglad to see you.'
[3]'The Captive':Traffics and Discoveries.
'Oh no! You don't work any of your English on me. "So glad to see you, doncher know--an' ta-ta!" Do you reside in this village?'
'No. I'm up here buying stores.'
'Then you take my automobile. Where to?... Oh, I knowthem! My Lord Marshalton is one of the Directors. Pigott, drive to the Army and Navy Cooperative Supply Association Limited, Victoria Street, Westminister.'
He settled himself on the deep dove-colour pneumatic cushions, and his smile was like the turning on of all the electrics. His teeth were whiter than the ivory fittings. He smelt of rare soap and cigarettes--such cigarettes as he handed me from a golden box with an automatic lighter. On my side of the car was a gold-mounted mirror, card and toilette case. I looked at him inquiringly.
'Yes,' he nodded, 'two years after I quit the Cape. She's not an Ohio girl, though. She's in the country now. Is that right? She's at our little place in the country. We'll go there as soon as you're through with your grocery-list. Engagements? The only engagement you've got is to grab your grip--get your bag from your hotel, I mean--and come right along and meet her. You are the captive ofmybow and spear now.'
'I surrender,' I said meekly. 'Did the Zigler automatic gun do all this?' I pointed to the car fittings.
'Psha! Think of your rememberin' that! Well, no. The Zigler is a great gun--the greatest ever--but life's too short, an' too interestin', to squander on pushing her in military society. I've leased my rights in her to a Pennsylvanian-Transylvanian citizen full of mentality and moral uplift. If those things weigh with the Chancelleries of Europe, he will make good and--I shall be surprised. Excuse me!'
He bared his head as we passed the statue of the Great Queen outside Buckingham Palace.
'A very great lady!' said he. 'I have enjoyed her hospitality. She represents one of the most wonderful institutions in the world. The next is the one we are going to. Mrs. Zigler uses 'em, and they break her up every week on returned empties.'
'Oh, you mean the Stores?' I said.
'Mrs. Zigler means it more. They are quite ambassadorial in their outlook. I guess I'll wait outside and pray while you wrestle with 'em.'
My business at the Stores finished, and my bag retrieved from the hotel, his moving palace slid us into the country.
'I owe it to you,' Zigler began as smoothly as the car, 'to tell you what I am now. I represent the business end of the American Invasion. Not the blame cars themselves--I wouldn't be found dead in one--but the tools that make 'em. I am the Zigler Higher-Speed Tool and Lathe Trust. The Trust, sir, is entirely my own--in my own inventions. I am the Renzalaer ten-cylinder aërial--the lightest aeroplane-engine on the market--one price, one power, one guarantee. I am the Orlebar Paper-welt, Pulp-panel Company for aeroplane bodies; and I am the Rush Silencer for military aeroplanes--absolutely silent--which the Continent leases under royalty. With three exceptions, the British aren't wise to it yet. That's all I represent at present. You saw me take off my hat to your late Queen? I owe every cent I have to that great an' good Lady. Yes, sir, I came out of Africa, after my eighteen months' rest-cure and open-air treatment and sea-bathing, as her prisoner of war, like a giant refreshed. There wasn't anything could hold me, when I'd got my hooks into it, after that experience. And to you as a representative British citizen, I say here and now that I regard you as the founder of the family fortune--Tommy's and mine.'
'But I only gave you some papers and tobacco.'
'What more does any citizen need? The Cullinan diamond wouldn't have helped me as much then; an'--talking about South Africa, tell me--'
We talked about South Africa till the car stopped at the Georgian lodge of a great park.
'We'll get out here. I want to show you a rather sightly view,' said Zigler.
We walked, perhaps, half a mile, across timber-dotted turf, past a lake, entered a dark rhododendron-planted wood, ticking with the noise of pheasants' feet, and came out suddenly, where five rides met, at a small classic temple between lichened stucco statues which faced a circle of turf, several acres in extent. Irish yews, of a size that I had never seen before, walled the sunless circle like cliffs of riven obsidian, except at the lower end, where it gave on to a stretch of undulating bare ground ending in a timbered slope half-a-mile away.
'That's where the old Marshalton race-course used to be,' said Zigler. 'That ice-house is called Flora's Temple. Nell Gwynne and Mrs. Siddons an' Taglioni an' all that crowd used to act plays here for King George the Third. Wasn't it? Well, George is the only king I play. Let it go at that. This circle was the stage, I guess. The kings an' the nobility sat in Flora's Temple. I forget who sculped these statues at the door. They're the Comic and Tragic Muse. But it's a sightly view, ain't it?'
The sunlight was leaving the park. I caught a glint of silver to the southward beyond the wooded ridge.
'That's the ocean--the Channel, I mean,' said Zigler. 'It's twenty-three miles as a man flies. A sightly view, ain't it?'
I looked at the severe yews, the dumb yelling mouths of the two statues, at the blue-green shadows on the unsunned grass, and at the still bright plain in front where some deer were feeding.
'It's a most dramatic contrast, but I think it would be better on a summer's day,' I said, and we went on, up one of the noiseless rides, a quarter of a mile at least, till we came to the porticoed front of an enormous Georgian pile. Four footmen revealed themselves in a hall hung with pictures.
'I hired this off of my Lord Marshalton,' Zigler explained, while they helped us out of our coats under the severe eyes of ruffed and periwigged ancestors. 'Ya-as. They always look atmetoo, as if I'd blown in from the gutter. Which, of course, I have. That's Mary, Lady Marshalton. Old man Joshua painted her. Do you see any likeness to my Lord Marshalton? Why, haven't you ever met up with him? He was Captain Mankeltow--my Royal British Artillery captain that blew up my gun in the war, an' then tried to bury me against my religious principles[4]. Ya-as. His father died and he got the lordship. That was about all he got by the time that your British death-duties were through with him. So he said I'd oblige him by hiring his ranch. It's a hell an' a half of a proposition to handle, but Tommy--Mrs. Laughton--understands it. Come right in to the parlour and be very welcome.'
[4]"The Captive":Traffics and Discoveries.
He guided me, hand on shoulder, into a babble of high-pitched talk and laughter that filled a vast drawing-room. He introduced me as the founder of the family fortunes to a little, lithe, dark-eyed woman whose speech and greeting were of the soft-lipped South. She in turn presented me to her mother, a black-browed snowy-haired old lady with a cap of priceless Venetian point, hands that must have held many hearts in their time, and a dignity as unquestioned and unquestioning as an empress. She was, indeed, a Burton of Savannah, who, on their own ground, out-rank the Lees of Virginia. The rest of the company came from Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Chicago, with here and there a softening southern strain. A party of young folk popped corn beneath a mantelpiece surmounted by a Gainsborough. Two portly men, half hidden by a cased harp, discussed, over sheaves of typewritten documents, the terms of some contract. A knot of matrons talked servants--IrishversusGerman--across the grand piano. A youth ravaged an old bookcase, while beside him a tall girl stared at the portrait of a woman of many loves, dead three hundred years, but now leaping to life and warning under the shaded frame-light. In a corner half-a-dozen girls examined the glazed tables that held the decorations--English and foreign--of the late Lord Marshalton.
'See heah! Would this be the Ordeh of the Gyartah?' one said, pointing.
'I presoom likely. No! The Garter has "Honey swore"--I know that much. This is "Tria juncta" something.'
'Oh, what's that cunning little copper cross with "For Valurr"?' a third cried.
'Say! Look at here!' said the young man at the bookcase. 'Here's a first edition ofHandley Crossand a Beewick'sBirdsright next to it--just like so many best sellers. Look, Maidie!'
The girl beneath the picture half turned her body but not her eyes.
'You don't tellme!' she said slowly. 'Their women amounted to something after all.'
'But Woman's scope, and outlook was vurry limmutted in those days,' one of the matrons put in, from the piano.
'Limmutted? Forher? If they whurr, I guess she was the limmut. Who was she? Peters, whurr's the cat'log?'
A thin butler, in charge of two footmen removing the tea-batteries, slid to a table and handed her a blue-and-qilt book. He was button-holed by one of the men behind the harp, who wished to get a telephone call through to Edinburgh.
'The local office shuts at six,' said Peters. 'But I can get through to'--he named some town--'in ten minutes, sir.'
'That suits me. You'll find me here when you've hitched up. Oh, say, Peters! We--Mister Olpherts an' me--ain't goin' by that early morning train to-morrow--but the other one--on the other line--whatever they call it.'
'The nine twenty-seven, sir. Yes, sir. Early breakfast will be at half-past eight and the car will be at the door at nine.'
'Peters!' an imperious young voice called. 'What's the matteh with Lord Marshalton's Ordeh of the Gyartah? We cyan't find it anyweah.'
'Well, miss, Ihaveheard that that Order is usually returned to His Majesty on the death of the holder. Yes, miss.' Then in a whisper to a footman, 'More butter for the pop-corn in King Charles's Corner.' He stopped behind my chair. 'Your room is Number Eleven, sir. May I trouble you for your keys?'
He left the room with a six-year-old maiden called Alice who had announced she would not go to bed ''less Peter, Peter, Punkin-eater takes me--so there!'
He very kindly looked in on me for a moment as I was dressing for dinner. 'Not at all, sir,' he replied to some compliment I paid him. 'I valeted the late Lord Marshalton for fifteen years. He was very abrupt in his movements, sir. As a rule I never received more than an hour's notice of a journey. We used to go to Syria frequently. I have been twice to Babylon. Mr. and Mrs. Zigler's requirements are, comparatively speaking, few.'
'But the guests?'
'Very little out of the ordinary as soon as one knows their ordinaries. Extremely simple, if I may say so, sir.'
I had the privilege of taking Mrs. Burton in to dinner, and was rewarded with an entirely new, and to me rather shocking view, of Abraham Lincoln, who, she said, had wasted the heritage of his land by blood and fire, and had surrendered the remnant to aliens. 'My brother, suh,' she said, 'fell at Gettysburg in order that Armenians should colonise New England to-day. If I took any interest in any dam-Yankee outside of my son-in-law Laughton yondah, I should say that my brother's death had been amply avenged.'
The man at her right took up the challenge, and the war spread. Her eyes twinkled over the flames she had lit.
'Don't these folk,' she said a little later, 'remind you of Arabs picnicking under the Pyramids?'
'I've never seen the Pyramids,' I replied.
'Hm! I didn't know you were as English as all that.' And when I laughed, 'Are you?'
'Always. It saves trouble.'
'Now that's just what I find so significant among the English'--this was Alice's mother, I think, with one elbow well forward among the salted almonds. 'Oh, I know howyoufeel, Madam Burton, but a Northerner like myself--I'm Buffalo--even though we come over every year--notices the desire for comfort in England. There's so little conflict or uplift in British society.'
'But we like being comfortable,' I said.
'I know it. It's very characteristic. But ain't it a little, just a little, lacking in adaptability an' imagination?'
'They haven't any need for adaptability,' Madam Burton struck in. 'They haven't any Ellis Island standards to live up to.'
'But we can assimilate,' the Buffalo woman charged on.
'Now youhavedone it!' I whispered to the old lady as the blessed word 'assimilation' woke up all the old arguments for and against.
There was not a dull moment in that dinner for me--nor afterwards when the boys and girls at the piano played the rag-time tunes of their own land, while their elders, inexhaustibly interested, replunged into the discussion of that land's future, till there was talk of coon-can. When all the company had been set to tables Zigler led me into his book-lined study, where I noticed he kept his golf-clubs, and spoke simply as a child, gravely as a bishop, of the years that were past since our last meeting.
'That's about all, I guess--up to date,' he said when he had unrolled the bright map of his fortunes across three continents. 'Bein' rich suits me. So does your country, sir. My own country? You heard what that Detroit man said at dinner. "A Government of the alien, by the alien, for the alien." Mother's right, too. Lincoln killed us. From the highest motives--but he killed us. Oh, say, that reminds me. 'J'ever kill a man from the highest motives?'
'Not from any motive--as far as I remember.'
'Well, I have. It don't weigh on my mind any, but it was interesting. Lifeisinteresting for a rich--for any--man in England. Ya-as! Life in England is like settin' in the front row at the theatre and never knowin' when the whole blame drama won't spill itself into your lap. I didn't always know that. I lie abed now, and I blush to think of some of the breaks I made in South Africa. About the British. Not your official method of doin' business. But the Spirit. I was 'way, 'way off on the Spirit. Are you acquainted with any other country where you'd have to kill a man or two to get at the National Spirit?'
'Well,' I answered, 'next to marrying one of its women, killing one of its men makes for pretty close intimacy with any country. I take it you killed a British citizen.'
'Why, no. Our syndicate confined its operations to aliens--dam-fool aliens.... 'J'ever know an English lord called Lundie[5]? Looks like a frame-food and soap advertisement. I imagine he was in your Supreme Court before he came into his lordship.'
[5]'The Puzzler':Actions and Reactions.
'He is a lawyer--what we call a Law Lord--a Judge of Appeal--not a real hereditary lord.'
'That's as much beyond me asthis!' Zigler slapped a fat Debrett on the table. 'But I presoom this unreal Law Lord Lundie is kind o' real in his decisions? I judged so. And--one more question. 'Ever meet a man called Walen?'
'D'you mean Burton-Walen, the editor of--?' I mentioned the journal.
'That's him. 'Looks like a tough, talks like a Maxim, and trains with kings.'
'He does,' I said. 'Burton-Walen knows all the crowned heads of Europe intimately. It's his hobby.'
'Well, there's the whole outfit for you--exceptin' my Lord Marshalton,néMankeltow, an' me. All active murderers--specially the Law Lord--or accessories after the fact. And what do they hand you out forthat, in this country?'
'Twenty years, I believe,' was my reply.
He reflected a moment.
'No-o-o,' he said, and followed it with a smoke-ring. 'Twenty months at the Cape is my limit. Say, murder ain't the soul-shatterin' event those nature-fakers in the magazines make out. It develops naturally like any other proposition.... Say, 'j'ever play this golf game? It's come up in the States from Maine to California, an' we're prodoocin' all the champions in sight. Not a business man's play, but interestin'. I've got a golf-links in the park here that they tell me is the finest inland course ever. I had to pay extra for that when I hired the ranche--last year. It was just before I signed the papers that our murder eventuated. My Lord Marshalton he asked me down for the week-end to fix up something or other--about Peters and the linen, I think 'twas. Mrs. Zigler took a holt of the proposition. She understood Peters from the word "go." There wasn't any house-party; only fifteen or twenty folk. A full house is thirty-two, Tommy tells me. 'Guess we must be near on that to-night. In the smoking-room here, my Lord Marshalton--Mankeltow that was--introduces me to this Walen man with the nose. He'd been in the War too, from start to finish. He knew all the columns and generals that I'd battled with in the days of my Zigler gun. We kinder fell into each other's arms an' let the harsh world go by for a while.
'Walen he introduces me to your Lord Lundie.Hewas a new proposition to me. If he hadn't been a lawyer he'd have made a lovely cattle-king. I thought I had played poker some. Another of my breaks. Ya-as! It cost me eleven hundred dollars besides what Tommy said when I retired. I have no fault to find with your hereditary aristocracy, or your judiciary, or your press.
'Sunday we all went to Church across the Park here.... Psha! Think o' your rememberin' my religion! I've become an Episcopalian since I married. Ya-as.... After lunch Walen did his crowned-heads-of-Europe stunt in the smokin'-room here. He was long on Kings. And Continental crises. I do not pretend to follow British domestic politics, but in the aeroplane business a man has to know something of international possibilities. At present, you British are settin' in kimonoes on dynamite kegs. Walen's talk put me wise on the location and size of some of the kegs. Ya-as!
'After that, we four went out to look at those golf-links I was hirin'. We each took a club. Mine'--he glanced at a great tan bag by the fire-place--'was the beginner's friend--the cleek. Well, sir, this golf proposition took a holt of me as quick as--quick as death. They had to prise me off the greens when it got too dark to see, and then we went back to the house. I was walkin' ahead with my Lord Marshalton talkin' beginners' golf. (Iwas the man who ought to have been killed by rights.) We cut 'cross lots through the woods to Flora's Temple--that place I showed you this afternoon. Lundie and Walen were, maybe, twenty or thirty rod behind us in the dark. Marshalton and I stopped at the theatre to admire at the ancestral yew-trees. He took me right under the biggest--King Somebody's Yew--and while I was spannin' it with my handkerchief, he says, "Look heah!" just as if it was a rabbit--and down comes a bi-plane into the theatre with no more noise than the dead. My Rush Silencer is the only one on the market that allows that sort of gumshoe work.... What? A bi-plane--with two men in it. Both men jump out and start fussin' with the engines. I was starting to tell Mankeltow--I can't remember to call him Marshalton any more--that it looked as if the Royal British Flying Corps had got on to my Rush Silencer at last; but he steps out from under the yew to these two Stealthy Steves and says, "What's the trouble? Can I be of any service?" He thought--so did I--'twas some of the boys from Aldershot or Salisbury. Well, sir, from there on, the situation developed like a motion-picture in Hell. The man on the nigh side of the machine whirls round, pulls his gun and fires into Mankeltow's face. I laid him out with my cleek automatically. Any one who shoots a friend of mine gets what's comin' to him if I'm within reach. He drops. Mankeltow rubs his neck with his handkerchief. The man the far side of the machine starts to run. Lundie down the ride, or it might have been Walen, shouts, "What's happened?" Mankeltow says, "Collar that chap."
'The second man runs ring-a-ring-o'-roses round the machine, one hand reachin' behind him. Mankeltow heads him off to me. He breaks blind for Walen and Lundie, who are runnin' up the ride. There's some sort of mix-up among 'em, which it's too dark to see, and a thud. Walen says, "Oh, well collared!" Lundie says, "That's the only thing I never learned at Harrow!"... Mankeltow runs up to 'em, still rubbin' his neck, and says, "Hedidn't fire at me. It was the other chap. Where is he?"
'"I've stretched him alongside his machine," I says.
'"Are they poachers?" says Lundie.
'"No. Airmen. I can't make it out," says Mankeltow.
'"Look at here," says Walen, kind of brusque. "This man ain't breathin' at all. Didn't you hear somethin' crack when he lit, Lundie?"
'"My God!" says Lundie. "Did I? I thought it was my suspenders"--no, he said "braces."
'Right there I left them and sort o' tiptoed back to my man, hopin' he'd revived and quit. But he hadn't. That darned cleek had hit him on the back of the neck just where his helmet stopped. He'd gothis. I knew it by the way the head rolled in my hands. Then the others came up the ride totin'theirload. No mistakin' that shuffle on grass. D'you remember it--in South Africa? Ya-as.
'"Hsh!" says Lundie. "Do you know I've broken this man's neck?"
'"Same here," I says.
'"What? Both?" says Mankeltow.
'"Nonsense!" says Lord Lundie. "Who'd have thought he was that out of training? A man oughtn't to fly if he ain't fit."
'"What did they want here, anyway?" said Walen; and Mankeltow says, "We can't leave them in the open. Some one'll come. Carry 'em to Flora's Temple."
We toted 'em again and laid 'em out on a stone bench. They were still dead in spite of our best attentions. We knew it, but we went through the motions till it was quite dark. 'Wonder if all murderers do that? "We want a light on this," says Walen after a spell. "There ought to be one in the machine. Why didn't they light it?"
'We came out of Flora's Temple, and shut the doors behind us. Some stars were showing then--same as when Cain did his little act, I guess. I climbed up and searched the machine. She was very well equipped, I found two electric torches in clips alongside her barometers by the rear seat.
'"What make is she?" says Mankeltow.
'"Continental Renzalaer," I says. "My engines and my Rush Silencer."
'Walen whistles. "Here--let me look," he says, and grabs the other torch. She was sure well equipped. We gathered up an armful of cameras an' maps an' note-books an' an album of mounted photographs which we took to Flora's Temple and spread on a marble-topped table (I'll show you to-morrow) which the King of Naples had presented to grandfather Marshalton. Walen starts to go through 'em. We wanted to know why our friends had been so prejudiced against our society.
'"Wait a minute," says Lord Lundie. "Lend me a handkerchief."
'He pulls out his own, and Walen contributes his green-and-red bandanna, and Lundie covers their faces. "Now," he says, "we'll go into the evidence."
'There wasn't any flaw in that evidence. Walen read out their last observations, and Mankeltow asked questions, and Lord Lundie sort o' summarised, and I looked at the photos in the album. 'J'ever see a bird's-eye telephoto-survey of England for military purposes? It's interestin' but indecent--like turnin' a man upside down. None of those close-range panoramas of forts could have been taken without my Rush Silencer.
'"I wishwewas as thorough as they are," says Mankeltow, when Walen stopped translatin'.
'"We've been thorough enough," says Lord Lundie. "The evidence against both accused is conclusive. Any other country would give 'em seven years in a fortress. We should probably give 'em eighteen months as first-class misdemeanants. But their case," he says, "is out of our hands. We must review our own. Mr. Zigler," he said, "will you tell us what steps you took to bring about the death of the first accused?" I told him. He wanted to know specially whether I'd stretched first accused before or after he had fired at Mankeltow. Mankeltow testified he'd been shot at, and exhibited his neck as evidence. It was scorched.
'"Now, Mr. Walen," says Lord Lundie. "Will you kindly tell us what steps you took with regard to the second accused?"
'"The man ran directly at me, me lord," says Walen. "I said, 'Oh no, you don't,' and hit him in the face."
'Lord Lundie lifts one hand and uncovers second accused's face. There was a bruise on one cheek and the chin was all greened with grass. He was a heavy-built man.
'"What happened after that?" says Lord Lundie.
'"To the best of my remembrance he turned from me towards your lordship."
'Then Lundie goes ahead. "I stooped, and caught the man round the ankles," he says. "The sudden check threw him partially over my left shoulder. I jerked him off that shoulder, still holding his ankles, and he fell heavily on, it would appear, the point of his chin, death being instantaneous."
'"Death being instantaneous," says Walen.
'Lord Lundie takes off his gown and wig--you could see him do it--and becomes our fellow-murderer. "That's our case," he says. "I know howIshould direct the jury, but it's an undignified business for a Lord of Appeal to lift his hand to, and some of my learned brothers," he says, "might be disposed to be facetious."
'I guess I can't be properly sensitised. Any one who steered me out of that trouble might have had the laugh on me for generations. But I'm only a millionaire. I said we'd better search second accused in case he'd been carryin' concealed weapons.
'"That certainly is a point," says Lord Lundie. "But the question for the jury would be whether I exercised more force than was necessary to prevent him from usin' them."Ididn't say anything. He wasn't talkin' my language. Second accused had his gun on him sure enough, but it had jammed in his hip-pocket. He was too fleshy to reach behind for business purposes, and he didn't look a gun-man anyway. Both of 'em carried wads of private letters. By the time Walen had translated, we knew how many children the fat one had at home and when the thin one reckoned to be married. Too bad! Ya-as.
'Says Walen to me while we was rebuttonin' their jackets (they was not in uniform): "Ever read a book calledThe Wreckers, Mr. Zigler?"
'"Not that I recall at the present moment," I says.
'"Well, do," he says. "You'd appreciate it. You'd appreciate it now, I assure you."
'"I'll remember," I says. "But I don't see how this song and dance helps us any. Here's our corpses, here's their machine, and daylight's bound to come."
'"Heavens! That reminds me," says Lundie. "What time's dinner?"
'"Half-past eight," says Mankeltow. "It's half-past five now. We knocked off golf at twenty to, and if they hadn't been such silly asses, firin' pistols like civilians, we'd have had them to dinner. Why, they might be sitting with us in the smoking-room this very minute," he says. Then he said that no man had a right to take his profession so seriously as these two mountebanks.
'"How interestin'!" says Lundie. "I've noticed this impatient attitude toward their victim in a good many murderers. I never understood it before. Of course, it's the disposal of the body that annoys 'em. Now, I wonder," he says, "who our case will come up before? Let's run through it again."
'Then Walen whirls in. He'd been bitin' his nails in a corner. We was all nerved up by now.... Me? The worst of the bunch. I had to think for Tommy as well.
'"Wecan'tbe tried," says Walen. "Wemustn'tbe tried! It'll make an infernal international stink. What did I tell you in the smoking-room after lunch? The tension's at breaking-point already. This 'ud snap it. Can't you see that?"
'"I was thinking of the legal aspect of the case," says Lundie. "With a good jury we'd likely be acquitted."
'"Acquitted!" says Walen. "Who'd dare acquit us in the face of what 'ud be demanded by--the other party? Did you ever hear of the War of Jenkins' ear? 'Ever hear of Mason and Slidel? 'Ever hear of an ultimatum? You know whothesetwo idiots are; you know whoweare--a Lord of Appeal, a Viscount of the English peerage, and me--meknowing all I know, which the men who know dam' well know that Idoknow! It's our necks or Armageddon. Which do you think this Government would choose? Wecan'tbe tried!" he says.
'"Then I expect I'll have to resign me club," Lundie goes on. "I don't think that's ever been done before by anex-officiomember. I must ask the secretary." I guess he was kinder bunkered for the minute, or maybe 'twas the lordship comin' out on him.
'"Rot!" says Mankeltow. "Walen's right. We can't afford to be tried. We'll have to bury them; but my head-gardener locks up all the tools at five o'clock."
'"Not on your life!" says Lundie. He was on deck again--as the high-class lawyer. "Right or wrong, if we attempt concealment of the bodies we're done for."
"'I'm glad of that," says Mankeltow, "because, after all, it ain't cricket to bury 'em."
'Somehow--but I know I ain't English--that consideration didn't worry me as it ought. An' besides, I was thinkin'--I had to--an' I'd begun to see a light 'way off--a little glimmerin' light o' salvation.
'"Then whatarewe to do?" says Walen. "Zigler, what do you advise? Your neck's in it too."
'"Gentlemen," I says, "something Lord Lundie let fall a while back gives me an idea. I move that this committee empowers Big Claus and Little Claus, who have elected to commit suicide in our midst, to leave the premisesasthey came. I'm asking you to take big chances," I says, "but they're all we've got," and then I broke for the bi-plane.
'Don't tell me the English can't think as quick as the next man when it's up to them! They lifted 'em out o' Flora's Temple--reverent, but not wastin' time--whilst I found out what had brought her down. One cylinder was misfirin'. I didn't stop to fix it. My Renzalaer will hold up on six. We've proved that. If her crew had relied on my guarantees, they'd have been half-way home by then, instead of takin' their seats with hangin' heads like they was ashamed. They ought to have been ashamed too, playin' gun-men in a British peer's park! I took big chances startin' her without controls, but 'twas a dead still night an' a clear run--you saw it--across the Theatre into the park, and I prayed she'd rise before she hit high timber. I set her all I dared for a quick lift. I told Mankeltow that if I gave her too much nose she'd be liable to up-end and flop. He didn't want another inquest on his estate. No, sir! So I had to fix her up in the dark. Ya-as!
'I took big chances, too, while those other three held on to her and I worked her up to full power. My Renzalaer's no ventilation-fan to pull against. But I climbed out just in time. I'd hitched the signallin' lamp to her tail so's we could track her. Otherwise, with my Rush Silencer, we might's well have shooed an owl out of a barn. She left just that way when we let her go. No sound except the propellers--Whoo-oo-oo! Whoo-oo-oo!There was a dip in the ground ahead. It hid her lamp for a second--but there's no such thing as time in real life. Then that lamp travelled up the far slope slow--too slow. Then it kinder lifted, we judged. Then it sure was liftin'. Then it lifted good. D'you know why? Our four naked perspirin' souls was out there underneath her, hikin' her heavens high. Yes, sir.Wedid it!... And that lamp kept liftin' and liftin'. Then she side-slipped! My God, she side-slipped twice, which was what I'd been afraid of all along! Then she straightened up, and went away climbin' to glory, for that blessed star of our hope got smaller and smaller till we couldn't track it any more. Then we breathed. We hadn't breathed any since their arrival, but we didn't know it till we breathed that time--all together. Then we dug our finger-nails out of our palms an' came alive again--in instalments.
'Lundie spoke first. "We therefore commit their bodies to the air," he says, an' puts his cap on.
'"The deep--the deep," says Walen. "It's just twenty-three miles to the Channel."
'"Poor chaps! Poor chaps!" says Mankeltow. "We'd have had 'em to dinner if they hadn't lost their heads. I can't tell you how this distresses me, Laughton."
'"Well, look at here, Arthur," I says. "It's only God's Own Mercy you an' me ain't lyin' in Flora's Temple now, and if that fat man had known enough to fetch his gun around while he was runnin', Lord Lundie and Walen would have been alongside us."
'"I see that," he says. "But we're alive and they're dead, don't ye know."
'"I know it," I says. "That's where the dead are always so damned unfair on the survivors."
'"I see that too," he says. "But I'd have given a good deal if it hadn't happened, poor chaps!"
'"Amen!" says Lundie. Then? Oh, then we sorter walked back two an' two to Flora's Temple an' lit matches to see we hadn't left anything behind. Walen, he had confiscated the note-books before they left. There was the first man's pistol which we'd forgot to return him, lyin' on the stone bench. Mankeltow puts his hand on it--he never touched the trigger--an', bein' an automatic, of course the blame thing jarred off--spiteful as a rattler!
'"Look out! They'll have one of us yet," says Walen in the dark. But they didn't--the Lord hadn't quit being our shepherd--and we heard the bullet zip across the veldt--quite like old times. Ya-as!
'"Swine!" says Mankeltow.
'After that I didn't hear any more "Poor chap" talk.... Me? I never worried about killingmyman. I was too busy figurin' how a British jury might regard the proposition. I guess Lundie felt that way too.
'Oh, but say! We had an interestin' time at dinner. Folks was expected whose auto had hung up on the road. They hadn't wired, and Peters had laid two extra places. We noticed 'em as soon as we sat down. I'd hate to say how noticeable they were. Mankeltow with his neck bandaged (he'd caught a relaxed throat golfin') sent for Peters and told him to take those empty places away--if you please. It takes something to rattle Peters. He was rattled that time. Nobody else noticed anything. And now...'
'Where did they come down?' I asked, as he rose.
'In the Channel, I guess. There was nothing in the papers about 'em. Shall we go into the drawin'-room, and see what these boys and girls are doin?' But say, ain't life in England interestin'?"
REBIRTHIf any God should say"I will restoreThe world her yesterdayWhole as beforeMy Judgment blasted it"--who would not liftHeart, eye, and hand in passion o'er the gift?If any God should willTo wipe from mindThe memory of this illWhich is mankindIn soul and substance now--who would not blessEven to tears His loving-tenderness?If any God should giveUs leave to flyThese present deaths we live,And safely dieIn those lost lives we lived ere we were born--What man but would not laugh the excuse to scorn?For we are what we are--So broke to bloodAnd the strict works of war--So long subduedTo sacrifice, that threadbare Death commandsHardly observance at our busier hands.Yet we were what we were,And, fashioned so,It pleases us to stareAt the far showOf unbelievable years and shapes that flit,In our own likeness, on the edge of it.
REBIRTH
REBIRTH
If any God should say"I will restoreThe world her yesterdayWhole as beforeMy Judgment blasted it"--who would not liftHeart, eye, and hand in passion o'er the gift?
If any God should say
"I will restore
The world her yesterday
Whole as before
My Judgment blasted it"--who would not lift
Heart, eye, and hand in passion o'er the gift?
If any God should willTo wipe from mindThe memory of this illWhich is mankindIn soul and substance now--who would not blessEven to tears His loving-tenderness?
If any God should will
To wipe from mind
The memory of this ill
Which is mankind
In soul and substance now--who would not bless
Even to tears His loving-tenderness?
If any God should giveUs leave to flyThese present deaths we live,And safely dieIn those lost lives we lived ere we were born--What man but would not laugh the excuse to scorn?
If any God should give
Us leave to fly
These present deaths we live,
And safely die
In those lost lives we lived ere we were born--
What man but would not laugh the excuse to scorn?
For we are what we are--So broke to bloodAnd the strict works of war--So long subduedTo sacrifice, that threadbare Death commandsHardly observance at our busier hands.
For we are what we are--
So broke to blood
And the strict works of war--
So long subdued
To sacrifice, that threadbare Death commands
Hardly observance at our busier hands.
Yet we were what we were,And, fashioned so,It pleases us to stareAt the far showOf unbelievable years and shapes that flit,In our own likeness, on the edge of it.
Yet we were what we were,
And, fashioned so,
It pleases us to stare
At the far show
Of unbelievable years and shapes that flit,
In our own likeness, on the edge of it.
The Rt. Hon. R.B. Haldane, Secretary of State for War[6], was questioned in the House of Commons on April 8th about the rocking-horses which the War Office is using for the purpose of teaching recruits to ride. Lord Ronaldshay asked the War Secretary if rocking-horses were to be supplied to all the cavalry regiments for teaching recruits to ride. 'The noble Lord,' replied Mr. Haldane, 'is doubtless alluding to certain dummy horses on rockers which have been tested with very satisfactory results.'... The mechanical steed is a wooden horse with an astonishing tail. It is painted brown and mounted on swinging rails. The recruit leaps into the saddle and pulls at the reins while the riding-instructor rocks the animal to and fro with his foot. The rocking-horses are being made at Woolwich. They are quite cheap.
--Daily Paper.
[6]Now Viscount Haldane of Cloan.
My instructions to Mr. Leggatt, my engineer, had been accurately obeyed. He was to bring my car on completion of annual overhaul, from CoventryviaLondon, to Southampton Docks to await my arrival; and very pretty she looked, under the steamer's side among the railway lines, at six in the morning. Next to her new paint and varnish I was most impressed by her four brand-new tyres.
'But I didn't order new tyres,' I said as we moved away. 'These are Irresilients, too.'
'Treble-ribbed,' said Leggatt. 'Diamond-stud sheathing.'
'Then there has been a mistake.'
'Oh no, sir; they're gratis.'
The number of motor manufacturers who give away complete sets of treble-ribbed Irresilient tyres is so limited that I believe I asked Leggatt for an explanation.
'I don't know that I could very well explain, sir,' was the answer. 'It 'ud come better from Mr. Pyecroft. He's on leaf at Portsmouth--staying with his uncle. His uncle 'ad the body all night. I'd defy you to find a scratch on her even with a microscope.'
'Then we will go home by the Portsmouth road,' I said.
And we went at those speeds which are allowed before the working-day begins or the police are thawed out. We were blocked near Portsmouth by a battalion of Regulars on the move.
'Whitsuntide manoeuvres just ending,' said Leggatt. 'They've had a fortnight in the Downs.'
He said no more until we were in a narrow street somewhere behind Portsmouth Town Railway Station, where he slowed at a green-grocery shop. The door was open, and a small old man sat on three potato-baskets swinging his feet over a stooping blue back.
'You call that shinin' 'em?' he piped. 'Can you see your face in 'em yet? No! Then shine 'em, or I'll give you a beltin' you'll remember!'
'If you stop kickin' me in the mouth perhaps I'd do better,' said Pyecroft's voice meekly.
We blew the horn.
Pyecroft arose, put away the brushes, and received us not otherwise than as a king in his own country.
'Are you going to leave me up here all day?' said the old man.
Pyecroft lifted him down and he hobbled into the back room.
'It's his corns,' Pyecroft explained. 'You can't shine corny feet--and he hasn't had his breakfast.'
'I haven't had mine either,' I said.
'Breakfast for two more, uncle,' Pyecroft sang out.
'Go out an' buy it then,' was the answer, 'or else it's half-rations.'
Pyecroft turned to Leggatt, gave him his marketing orders, and despatched him with the coppers.
'I have got four new tyres on my car,' I began impressively.
'Yes,' said Mr. Pyecroft. 'You have, and Iwillsay'--he patted my car's bonnet--'you earned 'em.'
'I want to know why--,' I went on.
'Quite justifiable. You haven't noticed anything in the papers, have you?'
'I've only just landed. I haven't seen a paper for weeks.'
'Then you can lend me a virgin ear. There's been a scandal in the Junior Service--the Army, I believe they call 'em.'
A bag of coffee-beans pitched on the counter. 'Roast that,' said the uncle from within.
Pyecroft rigged a small coffee-roaster, while I took down the shutters, and sold a young lady in curl-papers two bunches of mixed greens and one soft orange.
'Sickly stuff to handle on an empty stomach, ain't it?' said Pyecroft.
'What about my new tyres?' I insisted.
'Oh, any amount. But the question is'--he looked at me steadily--'is this what you might call a court-martial or a post-mortem inquiry?'
'Strictly a post-mortem,' said I.
'That being so,' said Pyecroft, 'we can rapidly arrive at facts. Last Thursday--the shutters go behind those baskets--last Thursday at five bells in the forenoon watch, otherwise ten-thirty A.M., your Mr. Leggatt was discovered on Westminster Bridge laying his course for the Old Kent Road.'
'But that doesn't lead to Southampton,' I interrupted.
'Then perhaps he was swinging the car for compasses. Be that as it may, we found him in that latitude, simultaneous as Jules and me wasong routefor Waterloo to rejoin our respective ships--or Navies I should say. Jules was apermissionaire, which meant being on leaf, same as me, from a French cassowary-cruiser at Portsmouth. A party of her trusty and well-beloved petty officers 'ad been seeing London, chaperoned by the R.C. Chaplain. Jules 'ad detached himself from the squadron and was cruisin' on his own when I joined him, in company of copious lady-friends.But, mark you, your Mr. Leggatt drew the line at the girls. Loud and long he drew it.'
'I'm glad of that,' I said.
'You may be. He adopted the puristical formation from the first. "Yes," he said, when we was annealing him at--but you wouldn't know the pub--"Iamgoing to Southampton," he says, "and I'll stretch a point to goviaPortsmouth;but," says he, "seeing what sort of one hell of a time invariably trarnspires when we cruise together, Mr. Pyecroft, I donotfeel myself justified towards my generous and long-suffering employer in takin' on that kind of ballast as well." I assure you he considered your interests.'
'And the girls?' I asked.
'Oh, I left that to Jules. I'm a monogomite by nature. So we embarked strictlyong garçong. But I should tell you, in case he didn't, that your Mr. Leggatt's care for your interests 'ad extended to sheathing the car in matting and gunny-bags to preserve her paint-work. She was all swathed up like an I-talian baby.'
'Heiscareful about his paint-work,' I said.
'For a man with no Service experience I should say he was fair homicidal on the subject. If we'd been Marines he couldn't have been more pointed in his allusions to our hob-nailed socks. However, we reduced him to a malleable condition, and embarked for Portsmouth. I'd seldom rejoined myvaisseau ong automobile, aveca fur coat and goggles. Nor 'ad Jules.'
'Did Jules say much?' I asked, helplessly turning the handle of the coffee-roaster.
'That's where I pitied the pore beggar. He 'adn't the language, so to speak. He was confined to heavings and shruggin's and copiousMong Jews! The French are very badly fitted with relief-valves. And then our Mr. Leggatt drove. He drove.'
'Was he in a very malleable condition?'
'Not him! We recognised the value of his cargo from the outset. He hadn't a chance to get more than moist at the edges. After which we went to sleep; and now we'll go to breakfast.'
We entered the back room where everything was in order, and a screeching canary made us welcome. The uncle had added sausages and piles of buttered toast to the kippers. The coffee, cleared with a piece of fish-skin, was a revelation.
Leggatt, who seemed to know the premises, had run the car into the tiny backyard where her mirror-like back almost blocked up the windows. He minded shop while we ate. Pyecroft passed him his rations through a flap in the door. The uncle ordered him in, after breakfast, to wash up, and he jumped in his gaiters at the old man's commands as he has never jumped to mine.
'To resoom the post-mortem,' said Pyecroft, lighting his pipe. 'My slumbers were broken by the propeller ceasing to revolve, and by vile language from your Mr. Leggatt.'
'I--I--' Leggatt began, a blue-checked duster in one hand and a cup in the other.
'When you're wanted aft you'll be sent for, Mr. Leggatt,' said Pyecroft amiably. 'It's clean mess decks for you now. Resooming once more, we was on a lonely and desolate ocean near Portsdown, surrounded by gorse bushes, and a Boy Scout was stirring my stomach with his little copper-stick.'
'"You count ten," he says.
'"Very good, Boy Jones," I says, "count 'em," and I hauled him in over the gunnel, and ten I gave him with my large flat hand. The remarks he passed, lying face down tryin' to bite my leg, would have reflected credit on any Service. Having finished I dropped him overboard again, which was my gross political error. I ought to 'ave killed him; because he began signalling--rapid and accurate--in a sou'westerly direction. Few equatorial calms are to be apprehended when B.P.'s little pets take to signallin'. Make a note o' that! Three minutes later we were stopped and boarded by Scouts--up our backs, down our necks, and in our boots! The last I heard from your Mr. Leggatt as he went under, brushin' 'em off his cap, was thanking Heaven he'd covered up the new paint-work with mats. An 'eroic soul!'
'Not a scratch on her body,' said Leggatt, pouring out the coffee-grounds.
'And Jules?' said I.
'Oh, Jules thought the much advertised Social Revolution had begun, but his mackintosh hampered him.
'You told me to bring the mackintosh,' Leggatt whispered to me.
'And when I 'ad 'em half convinced he was a French vicomte coming down to visit the Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth, he tried to take it off. Seeing his uniform underneath, some sucking Sherlock Holmes of the Pink Eye Patrol (they called him Eddy) deduced that I wasn't speaking the truth. Eddy said I was tryin' to sneak into Portsmouth unobserved--unobserved mark you!--and join hands with the enemy. It trarnspired that the Scouts was conducting a field-day against opposin' forces, ably assisted by all branches of the Service, and they was so afraid the car wouldn't count ten points to them in the fray, that they'd have scalped us, but for the intervention of an umpire--also in short under-drawers. A fleshy sight!'
Here Mr. Pyecroft shut his eyes and nodded. 'That umpire,' he said suddenly, 'was our Mr. Morshed--a gentleman whose acquaintance you have already madeandprofited by, if I mistake not[7].'
[7]'Their Lawful Occasions,'Traffics and Discoveries.
'Oh, was the Navy in it too?' I said; for I had read of wild doings occasionally among the Boy Scouts on the Portsmouth Road, in which Navy, Army, and the world at large seemed to have taken part.
'The Navywasin it. I was the only one out of it--for several seconds. Our Mr. Morshed failed to recognise me in my fur boa, and my appealin' winks at 'im behind your goggles didn't arrive. But when Eddy darling had told his story, I saluted, which is difficult in furs, and I stated I was bringin' him dispatches from the North. My Mr. Morshed cohered on the instant. I've never known his ethergram installations out of order yet. "Go and guard your blessed road," he says to the Fratton Orphan Asylum standing at attention all round him, and, when they was removed--"Pyecroft," he says, stillsotte voce, "what in Hong-Kong are you doing with this dun-colouredsampan?"
'It was your Mr. Leggatt's paint-protective matting which caught his eye. Shedidresemble asampan, especially about the stern-works. At these remarks I naturally threw myself on 'is bosom, so far as Service conditions permitted, and revealed him all, mentioning that the car was yours. You know his way of working his lips like a rabbit? Yes, he was quite pleased. "Hiscar!" he kept murmuring, working his lips like a rabbit. "I owe 'im more than a trifle for things he wrote about me. I'll keep the car."
'Your Mr. Leggatt now injected some semi-mutinous remarks to the effect that he was your chauffeur in charge of your car, and, as such, capable of so acting. Mr. Morshed threw him a glarnce. It sufficed. Didn't it suffice, Mr. Leggatt?'
'I knew if something didn't happen, something worse would,' said Leggatt. 'It never fails when you're aboard.'
'And Jules?' I demanded.
'Jules was, so to speak, panicking in a water-tight flat through his unfortunate lack of language. I had to introduce him as part of theentente cordiale, and he was put under arrest, too. Then we sat on the grass and smoked, while Eddy and Co. violently annoyed the traffic on the Portsmouth Road, till the umpires, all in short panties, conferred on the valuable lessons of the field-day and added up points, same as at target-practice. I didn't hear their conclusions, but our Mr. Morshed delivered a farewell address to Eddy and Co., tellin' 'em they ought to have deduced from a hundred signs about me, that I was a friendly bringin' in dispatches from the North. We left 'em tryin' to find those signs in the Scout book, and we reached Mr. Morshed's hotel at Portsmouth at 6.27 P.M.ong automobile. Here endeth the first chapter.'
'Begin the second,' I said.
The uncle and Leggatt had finished washing up and were seated, smoking, while the damp duster dried at the fire.
'About what time was it,' said Pyecroft to Leggatt, 'when our Mr. Morshed began to talk about uncles?'
'When he came back to the bar, after he'd changed into those rat-catcher clothes,' said Leggatt.
'That's right. "Pye," said he, "have you an uncle?" "I have," I says. "Here's santy to him," and I finished my sherry and bitters toyou, uncle.'
'That's right,' said Pyecroft's uncle sternly. 'If you hadn't I'd have belted you worth rememberin', Emmanuel. I had the body all night.'
Pyecroft smiled affectionately. 'So you 'ad, uncle, an' beautifully you looked after her. But as I was saying, "I have an uncle, too," says Mr. Morshed, dark and lowering. "Yet somehow I can't love him. I want to mortify the beggar. Volunteers to mortify my uncle, one pace to the front."
'I took Jules with me the regulation distance. Jules was getting interested. Your Mr. Leggatt preserved a strictly nootral attitude.
'"You're a pressed man," says our Mr. Morshed. "I owe your late employer much, so to say. The car will manoeuvre all night, as requisite."
'Mr. Leggatt come out noble as your employee, and, by 'Eaven's divine grace, instead of arguing, he pleaded his new paint and varnish which was Mr. Morshed's one vital spot (he's lootenant on one of the new catch-'em-alive-o's now). "True," says he, "paint's an 'oly thing. I'll give you one hour to arrange amodus vivendi. Full bunkers and steam ready by 9 P.M. to-night,ifyou please."
'Even so, Mr. Leggatt was far from content.I'ad to arrange the details. We run her into the yard here.' Pyecroft nodded through the window at my car's glossy back-panels. 'We took off the body with its mats and put it in the stable, substitooting (and that yard's a tight fit for extensive repairs) the body of uncle's blue delivery cart. It overhung a trifle, but after I'd lashed it I knew it wouldn't fetch loose. Thus, in our composite cruiser, we repaired once more to the hotel, and was immediately dispatched to the toy-shop in the High Street where we took aboard one rocking-horse which was waiting for us.'
'Took aboardwhat?' I cried.
'One fourteen-hand dapple-grey rocking-horse, with pure green rockers and detachable tail, pair gashly glass eyes, complete set 'orrible grinnin' teeth, and two bloody-red nostrils which, protruding from the brown papers, produced thetout ensembleof a Ju-ju sacrifice in the Benin campaign. Do I make myself comprehensible?'
'Perfectly. Did you say anything?' I asked.
'Only to Jules. To him, I says, wishing to try him. "Allez à votre bateau. Je say mon Lootenong. Eel voo donneray porkwor." To me, says he, "Vous ong ate hurroo! Jamay de la vee!" and I saw by his eye he'd taken on for the full term of the war. Jules was a blue-eyed, brindle-haired beggar of a useful make and inquirin' habits. Your Mr. Leggatt he only groaned.'
Leggatt nodded. 'It was like nightmares,' he said. 'It was like nightmares.'
'Once more, then,' Pyecroft swept on, 'we returned to the hotel and partook of a sumptuous repast, under the able and genial chairmanship of our Mr. Morshed, who laid his projecks unreservedly before us. "In the first place," he says, opening out bicycle-maps, "my uncle, who, I regret to say, is a brigadier-general, has sold his alleged soul to Dicky Bridoon for a feathery hat and a pair o' gilt spurs. Jules,conspuez l'oncle!" So Jules, you'll be glad to hear--'
'One minute, Pye,' I said. 'Who is Dicky Bridoon?'
'I don't usually mingle myself up with the bickerings of the Junior Service, but it trarnspired that he was Secretary o' State for Civil War, an' he'd been issuing mechanical leather-belly gee-gees which doctors recommend for tumour--to the British cavalry in loo of real meat horses, to learn to ride on. Don't you remember there was quite a stir in the papers owing to the cavalry not appreciatin' 'em? But that's a minor item. The main point was that our uncle, in his capacity of brigadier-general, mark you, had wrote to the papers highly approvin' o' Dicky Bridoon's mechanical substitutes an 'ad thus obtained promotion--all same as a agnosticle stoker psalm-singin' 'imself up the Service under a pious captain. At that point of the narrative we caught a phosphorescent glimmer why the rocking-horse might have been issued; but none the less the navigation was intricate. Omitting the fact it was dark and cloudy, our brigadier-uncle lay somewhere in the South Downs with his brigade, which was manoeuvrin' at Whitsum manoeuvres on a large scale--Red ArmyversusBlue, et cetera; an' all we 'ad to go by was those flapping bicycle-maps and your Mr. Leggatt's groans.'
'I was thinking what the Downs mean after dark,' said Leggatt angrily.
'They was worth thinkin' of,' said Pyecroft. 'When we had studied the map till it fair spun, we decided to sally forth and creep for uncle by hand in the dark, dark night, an' present 'im with the rocking-horse. So we embarked at 8.57 P.M.'
'One minute again, please. How much did Jules understand by that time?' I asked.
'Sufficient unto the day--or night, perhaps I should say. He told our Mr. Morshed he'd follow himmore sang frays, which is French for dead, drunk, or damned. Barrin' 'is paucity o' language, there wasn't a blemish on Jules. But what I wished to imply was, when we climbed into the back parts of the car, our Lootenant Morshed says to me, "I doubt if I'd flick my cigar-ends about too lavish, Mr. Pyecroft. We ought to be sitting on five pounds' worth of selected fireworks, and I think the rockets are your end." Not being able to smoke with my 'ead over the side I threw it away; and then your Mr. Leggatt, 'aving been as nearly mutinous as it pays to be with my Mr. Morshed, arched his back and drove.'
'Where did he drive to, please?' said I.
'Primerrily, in search of any or either or both armies; seconderrily, of course, in search of our brigadier-uncle. Not finding him on the road, we ran about the grass looking for him. This took us to a great many places in a short time. Ow 'eavenly that lilac did smell on top of that first Down--stinkin' its blossomin' little heart out!'
'I 'adn't leesure to notice,' said Mr. Leggatt. 'The Downs were full o' chalk-pits, and we'd no lights.'
'We 'ad the bicycle-lamp to look at the map by. Didn't you notice the old lady at the window where we saw the man in the night-gown? I thought night-gowns as sleepin' rig was extinck, so to speak.'
'I tell you I 'adn't leesure to notice,' Leggatt repeated.
'That's odd. Then what might 'ave made you tell the sentry at the first camp we found that you was theDaily Expressdelivery-waggon?'
'You can't touch pitch without being defiled,' Leggatt answered. ''Oo told the officer in the bath we were umpires?'
'Well, he asked us. That was when we found the Territorial battalion undressin' in slow time. It lay on the left flank o' the Blue Army, and it cackled as it lay, too. But it gave us our position as regards the respective armies. We wandered a little more, and at 11.7 P.M., not having had a road under us for twenty minutes, we scaled the heights of something or other--which are about six hundred feet high. Here we 'alted to tighten the lashings of the superstructure, and we smelt leather and horses three counties deep all round. We was, as you might say, in the thick of it.'
'"Ah!" says my Mr. Morshed. "My 'orizon has indeed broadened. What a little thing is an uncle, Mr. Pyecroft, in the presence o' these glitterin' constellations! Simply ludicrous!" he says, "to waste a rocking-horse on an individual. We must socialise it. But we must get their 'eads up first. Touch off one rocket, if you please."
'I touched off a green three-pounder which rose several thousand metres, and burst into gorgeous stars. "Reproduce the manoeuvre," he says, "at the other end o' this ridge--if it don't end in another cliff." So we steamed down the ridge a mile and a half east, and then I let Jules touch off a pink rocket, or he'd ha' kissed me. That was his only way to express his emotions, so to speak. Their heads come up then all around us to the extent o' thousands. We hears bugles like cocks crowing below, and on the top of it a most impressive sound which I'd never enjoyed before because 'itherto I'd always been an inteegral part of it, so to say--the noise of 'ole armies gettin' under arms. They must 'ave anticipated a night attack, I imagine. Most impressive. Then we 'eard a threshin'-machine. "Tutt! Tutt! This is childish!" says Lootenant Morshed. "We can't wait till they've finished cutting chaff for their horses. We must make 'em understand we're not to be trifled with. Expedite 'em with another rocket, Mr. Pyecroft."
'"It's barely possible, sir," I remarks, "that that's a searchlight churnin' up," and by the time we backed into a providential chalk cutting (which was where our first tyre went pungo) she broke out to the northward, and began searching the ridge. A smart bit o' work.'
''Twasn't a puncture. The inner tube had nipped because we skidded so,' Leggatt interrupted.
'While your Mr. Leggatt was effectin' repairs, another searchlight broke out to the southward, and the two of 'em swept our ridge on both sides. Right at the west end of it they showed us the ground rising into a hill, so to speak, crowned with what looked like a little fort. Morshed saw it before the beams shut off. "That's the key of the position!" he says. "Occupy it at all hazards."
'"I haven't half got occupation for the next twenty minutes," says your Mr. Leggatt, rootin' and blasphemin' in the dark. Mark, now, 'ow Morshed changed his tactics to suit 'is environment. "Right!" says he. "I'll stand by the ship. Mr. Pyecroft and Jules, oblige me by doubling along the ridge to the east with all the maroons and crackers you can carry without spilling. Read the directions careful for the maroons, Mr. Pyecroft, and touch them off at half-minute intervals. Jules represents musketry an' maxim fire under your command. Remember, it's death or Salisbury Gaol! Prob'ly both!"
'By these means and some moderately 'ard runnin', we distracted 'em to the eastward. Maroons, you may not be aware, are same as bombs, with the anarchism left out. In confined spots like chalk-pits, they knock a four-point-seven silly. But you should read the directions before'and. In the intervals of the slow but well-directed fire of my cow-guns, Jules, who had found a sheep-pond in the dark a little lower down, gave what you might call a cinematograph reproduction o' sporadic musketry. They was large size crackers, and he concluded with the dull, sickenin' thud o' blind shells burstin' on soft ground.'
'How did he manage that?' I said.
'You throw a lighted squib into water and you'll see,' said Pyecroft. 'Thus, then, we improvised till supplies was exhausted and the surrounding landscapes fair 'owled and 'ummed at us. The Jun or Service might 'ave 'ad their doubts about the rockets but they couldn't overlook our gunfire. Both sides tumbled out full of initiative. I told Jules no two flat-feet 'ad any right to be as happy as us, and we went back along the ridge to the derelict, and there was our Mr. Morshed apostrophin' his 'andiwork over fifty square mile o' country with "Attend, all ye who list to hear!" out of the Fifth Reader. He'd got as far as "And roused the shepherds o' Stonehenge, the rangers o' Beaulieu" when we come up, and he drew our attention to its truth as well as its beauty. That's rare in poetry, I'm told. He went right on to--"The red glare on Skiddaw roused those beggars at Carlisle"--which he pointed out was poetic license for Leith Hill. This allowed your Mr. Leggatt time to finish pumpin' up his tyres. I 'eard the sweat 'op off his nose.'
'You know what it is, sir,' said poor Leggatt to me.
'It warfted across my mind, as I listened to what was trarnspirin', that it might be easier to make the mess than to wipe it up, but such considerations weighed not with our valiant leader.
'"Mr. Pyecroft," he says, "it can't have escaped your notice that we 'ave one angry and 'ighly intelligent army in front of us, an' another 'ighly angry and equally intelligent army in our rear. What 'ud you recommend?"
'Most men would have besought 'im to do a lateral glide while there was yet time, but all I said was: "The rocking-horse isn't expended yet, sir."
'He laid his hand on my shoulder. "Pye," says he, "there's worse men than you in loftier places. They shall 'ave it. None the less," he remarks, "the ice is undeniably packing."
'I may 'ave omitted to point out that at this juncture two large armies, both deprived of their night's sleep, was awake, as you might say, and hurryin' into each other's arms. Here endeth the second chapter.'
He filled his pipe slowly. The uncle had fallen asleep. Leggatt lit another cigarette.
'We then proceededong automobilealong the ridge in a westerly direction towards the miniature fort which had been so kindly revealed by the searchlight, but which on inspection (your Mr. Leggatt bumped into an outlyin' reef of it) proved to be a wurzel-clump;c'est-à-dire, a parallelogrammatic pile of about three million mangold-wurzels, brought up there for the sheep, I suppose. On all sides, excep' the one we'd come by, the ground fell away moderately quick, and down at the bottom there was a large camp lit up an' full of harsh words of command.
'"I said it was the key to the position," Lootenant Morshed remarks. "Trot out Persimmon!" which we rightly took to read, "Un-wrap the rocking-horse."
'"Houp la!" says Jules in a insubordinate tone, an' slaps Persimmon on the flank.
'"Silence!" says the Lootenant. "This is the Royal Navy, not Newmarket"; and we carried Persimmon to the top of the mangel-wurzel clump as directed.
'Owing to the inequalities of the terrain (Idothink your Mr. Leggatt might have had a spirit-level in his kit) he wouldn't rock free on the bed-plate, and while adjustin' him, his detachable tail fetched adrift. Our Lootenant was quick to seize the advantage.
'"Remove that transformation," he says. "Substitute one Roman candle. Gas-power is superior to manual propulsion."
'So we substituted. He arranged thepièce de resistarncein the shape of large drums--not saucers, mark you--drums of coloured fire, with printed instructions, at proper distances round Persimmon. There was a brief interregnum while we dug ourselves in among the wurzels by hand. Then he touched off the fires,notomitting the Roman candle, and, you may take it from me, all was visible. Persimmon shone out in his naked splendour, red to port, green to starboard, and one white light at his bows, as per Board o' Trade regulations. Only he didn't so much rock, you might say, as shrug himself, in a manner of speaking, every time the candle went off. One can't have everything. But the rest surpassed our highest expectations. I think Persimmon was noblest on the starboard or green side--more like when a man thinks he's seeing mackerel in hell, don't you know? And yet I'd be the last to deprecate the effect of the port light on his teeth, or that blood-shot look in his left eye. He knew there was something going on he didn't approve of. He looked worried.'