‘You must have a spear in the house,’ he shouted.’ Everybody’s got a spear or two somewhere or other. Get your beaters lined up, Purefoy, drive the pig out of the jungle, and leave the rest to me. Only get me a spear first.’
‘You couldn’t do any good on foot, Flood,’ interposed General Ramboise, late of the Rajputana Lancers. ‘Now if I had that little grey mare of mine …’
‘I’ve stuck pigs on foot a hundred times,’ roared Sir Gervase. ‘In Orissa, in the eighties, with old Abdul Mohamed Chaudhry. You fellows on the other side of India don’t know anything about pig.’
‘I may say I’ve ridden, not once, but regularly, in the Kadir Cup meetings,’ said the General stiffly.
Sir Gervase interrupted him, and made for the vicarage. ‘I’m going to look for a spear,’ he shouted. ‘Where d’you keep ’em, Purefoy?’
The Vicar called him back. ‘There are no boar-spears in my house,’ he said, ‘so I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with my method of capturing the fugitives.’ He then marched his party to the dell, and disposed them on its circumference.
The second pig had taken refuge among the rhododendrons, and though it could not be seen its progress might be marked by the shaking of the bushes and the occasional destruction of syringas and the remaining azaleas. It was still yelling at intervals, and was obviously very wild. The Vicar ordered his party to advance into the dell, and this, after some hesitation, they proceeded to do.
In the meantime the first pig, after a spirited pursuit round the garden by Miss Ramboise and several other athletic young women, was busily destroying the rose-garden. In such evident fury as to daunt even Miss Ramboise, it attacked a magnificent Golden Gleam, whose yellow petals fluttered in the air and fell like dapples of sunlight on its black satanic hide. Half a dozen ruined Duchesses of Athol lay behind it, their bloom an orange carpet for the soil, and the dark red blossom of l’Étoile de Holland lay like blood in the wasted snow of Madame Butterfly. The raging pig uprooted a fine Shot Silk; pink petals were mingled with the red, the creamy white, the yellow, and the gold, and the gross black brute, its swart ears flapping, trampled the lovely wreckage underfoot. Rain fell thick and steady now, and the least percipient was sensible of something awful in this sinister spectacle of wrath beneath a hostile sky. Wet petals clung to the swine’s dark coat, and a trickle of blood, thinned by the rain, painted its shoulders. Grunting and rooting, its ire increasing, it destroyed the last of the roses, and turned to stare with tiny malignant eyes at the abashed Miss Ramboise.
But now these onlookers received reinforcements. Lady Caroline had been running to and fro, gravely alarmed lest any of the guests had been hurt, now peering into the dell, now retrieving an umbrella from the snapdragons. Cecily and Patrick had also been running about, but with no apparent purpose except to enjoy the sensations of rapid movement and loud shouting. Mr Bowles, after sitting for some time in futile contemplation, had risen and slowly walked away, with no special purpose or destination in view, and in this dazed condition the Vicar had hailed him and added him to his party. But now Cecily and Patrick and their mother came quickly to the desolated rose-garden, and Patrick had the highwayman’s pistol, reloaded, and three or four of the long cartridges in his trouser-pocket. Without consulting anybody as to the propriety of his action he advanced boldly against the pig, raised the pistol, and fired. But again the pistol kicked hard, and the bullet flew wide and high. The pig raised its head, flapped its ears, grunted, and raced from the ruined roses towards the pond. It tore a wasted furrow through the down-sloping bank of Madonna lilies – for a moment its sooty flanks increased their pallor and made their pale green glow – and plunged into the water. Within a few seconds it was joined there by its brother from the dell.
The Vicar’s party had had a strenuous but fruitless time among the rhododendrons. They had invaded the drenched bushes with reluctance; they forced their way through dripping branches with dull determination; and then, exasperated by the slapping of wet leaves and entanglements that took their ankles, they continued the hunt with witless fury. The pig, moving with surprising speed, dodged them easily, for they were constantly confused by shouts intended to direct them, and the Vicar’s ‘View halloa!’ was often contradicted by stentorian exclamations in Hindustani from Sir Gervase or General Ramboise. The hunt was finally at fault when Mr Bowles, tripping over a root, disappeared into the bushes and cried so shrilly that Sir Gervase mistook the human for the porcine note. ‘Bagh gaya!’ he shouted, and hurled himself through the intervening rhododendron and on to the prostrate Mr Bowles. Others followed suit, and a pretty scramble took place during which Mr Bowles suffered severely. Taking advantage of this lull in the pursuit, the pig slipped out of the dell and trotted into the pond.
Both pigs were now in the water, flank-high. They showed no sympathy, no realization of their common lot against the rout of pursuers, but after floundering a little on the muddy bottom they stood still, snuffling and blowing, their rage abated by the coolness, and apparently content. Patrick, who had reloaded the wheel-lock pistol, was just in time prevented from firing it again, and before the Vicar’s party had extricated themselves from the imbroglio in the dell, Lady Caroline took charge of the proceedings. ‘Poor beasts,’ she said, ‘we must treat them very kindly after all they’ve gone through.’ Kilting her skirt to the knee she strode into the pond. The nearer pig stood still. She bent, and plunged her arm into the water, and found the rope that was still tied to its hock. She began to lead it out. The other pig, driven before her, came quickly to the shore, where Patrick took hold of its tether. The adventure was over, and the black swine stood docile as poodles, as though no evil thought had ever entered their upsnout heads. ‘Take them back to the shed,’ said Lady Caroline, and shivered in her sodden clothes.
Suddenly she began to cry, and the congratulations of those who had surrounded her became murmurs of condolence and little pats of sympathy. The Vicar appeared, and when he saw her plight his story of the hunting in the dell, all ready and impatient to be told, was at once forgotten. His self-importance disappeared. His only emotion was anxiety, and his high-coloured handsome face lost its look of security and grew plain and pitiable with distress. He took off his coat, and wrapped it round his wife’s shoulders, and led her, still weeping uncontrollably, toward the house.
Their entrance was hindered by the barricade with which the old ladies had blocked the french windows. The Vicar bellowed like a bull and beat the window-frames. Wilfrid had also retired to the house, not long after the old ladies, and having found glasses and a decanter was now comforting them with sherry. Hurriedly forsaking this charity he pulled away sofas and chairs and let the postulants in. He was horrified by Lady Caroline’s drenched and miserable appearance, and while the Vicar took her upstairs to bed Wilfrid ran to the kitchen and bade the maids fill hot-water bottles, and he himself prepared a comforting negus with whisky and ginger wine.
When all the other guests had gone – some excited, some scandalized, some foolishly hilarious, and others merely uncomfortable – Sir Gervase Flood and General Ramboise still walked to and fro in the desolated muddy garden. They had picked up two of the score or so of discarded umbrellas that lay on the flower-beds, and ever and anon they would stop to expound their rival methods of sticking pig: Sir Gervase, grasping his umbrella like a great dagger, would illustrate the downward stab with which the charging boars of Bengal are customarily killed; and the General, disliking the crudeness of this attack, would seriously argue the superior art of riding down a jinking pig, such as he had often pursued at meetings to compete for the Kadir Cup, and leaning from an imaginary saddle he showed the proper technique with a long lance-like reaching of his gamp.
Not for a long time did it occur to them that their umbrellas might be used to better purpose, but when at last they remembered the rain, and put them up, their comfort was so largely increased that a reflective clublike air enveloped them and they turned to the discussion of more seri
ous topics. They found themselves in perfect agreement as soon as Sir Gervase began to deplore the progressive Indianization of the Services.
Chapter 4
Arthur Gander had relieved the monotony of dressing by the invention of several variations on the theme of the morning toilet, and the order in which he put on his clothes depended almost entirely upon his mood. There were, of course, limitations to this method of expressing his feelings: he could not put on his shoes before his socks, nor could he tie his tie until he had donned his shirt. But except for these obvious restrictions the sequence of his toilet was arbitrarily dictated, and its principal variations were as follows.
Sometimes he woke in a sound Conservative temper, and then he would demonstrate his belief in the English constitution and the Church of England, in law and order, in discipline and tradition, by dressing in a sober and conventional manner: after scrupulous ablutions he would clothe himself in vest and drawers, socks, shirt, trousers and shoes, collar and tie, and waistcoat – strictly in this order – then brush his hair, and put on his coat and choose a handkerchief, happy in the knowledge that his progression from nakedness to respectability had been orthodox and strictly in accordance with the best of contemporary custom. But when his morning mood was rebellious, when he woke with a romantic inclination to anarchy – because civilization was effete, and the world was vanity, and a man must rely on his own strength and offer his bare breast to the wind and the spears of destiny – then Arthur would omit to shave, and first putting on socks and shoes, would take drawers and trousers next, and having clothed himself upwards as far as the waist would pause for a few minutes to look grimly at his reflection in the glass and think: ‘This is the heroic and the desperate image of man. Sailors in a gun-turret fight like this. In time of revolution the pits would spew forth ten thousand miners clad like this. Naked to the waist and ready for anything !’ Sometimes, in such a mood, he was betrayed by the sight of his stomach – bisected by the top of his trousers, its upper quadrant was a homely sight, a plump domestic shape, like a round cheese, or a cauliflower, or a pudding in a bag – but hastily diverting his gaze to the stern line of his mouth and the resolute set of his shoulders he would build upon such aspects of determination still more exalted fantasies. These pleasant exercises in imagination were usually interrupted by a summons to breakfast, and when it had been twice repeated Arthur would put on his shirt as sullenly as if it were a symbol of defeat, a white flag.
His happiest mornings were those on which he started from the top. This was the mark of what he called his Gay Guerrilla mood. It was a whimsical temper that laughed at the silly world, that mocked alike the seriousness of the Conservative and the solemnity of the Rebel. The Gay Guerrilla had no reverence for tradition, no sympathy with impossible ideals. He made a long nose at the philosophy of quieta non movere, and shrugged his shoulders at the folly of waking sleeping dogs for a high purpose. His creed was laughter, and his plan of campaign a cheerful irresponsibility. In a mad world he alone was sane, because he was an outlaw from the world. He was Yorick, he was Robin Hood, he was elfin as to habits and his perception was sophisticated. Therefore he put on his vest and his shirt, his collar and a bright green tie, he brushed his hair, he added a coat, and for some little while walked about his dressing-room with bare legs. This truncated uniform was a very pretty mockery of conventional attire, and sometimes, when the mirror reflected him in a certain light, his legs appeared so much hairier than they truly were that he saw in them a likeness to the shaggy limbs of a satyr, and was very well pleased by that. Then, when he was called to breakfast, he would pull on his trousers with a chuckle, fasten his belt with a wink, and go downstairs with the whimsical and private knowledge that his well-creased flannels concealed the hairy shanks of a wild woodland creature.
It was in this fashion that he dressed himself on a Wednesday morning some three weeks after his uncle’s funeral. He had defied his wife and refused to get up and go out for the early morning walk that she had lately been urging him to take. He had refused to drink the whisked egg-and-milk that he had drunk, at her persuasion, every morning for the last fortnight. He had simply stayed in bed, which was what he wanted to do, and between the comfort of his pillow and the satisfaction of having defeated his wife’s purpose – which impugned his virility – he achieved the singular happiness of the Gay Guerrilla. In the first place he didn’t believe that he was to blame for their having had no children since the birth, nine years ago, of their daughter Ruth. In the second place he didn’t believe that drinking eggs-and-milk and walking to Lammiter and back before breakfast could do anything to remedy such a deficiency. And in the third place he didn’t care if it could, for he disliked walking, and hated eggs-and-milk, and in the clarifying light of these aversions he saw plainly that this new regimen of health was avaricious in origin, humiliating in effect, and altogether distasteful. Was he the sort of man to sacrifice his integrity for a beggarly seventy thousand pounds? Not a bit of it. Was he the kind of fool who thought it better to be rich than comfortable? No fear. And in any case it wasn’t his fault; it was Daisy’s. And it was just like her to put the blame on him. But it wasn’t worth arguing about, because an argument with Daisy endured for weeks, and she would bring books from the library to prove her point, and quote the experience of friends – whose real existence Arthur always doubted – to substantiate her views. It was better to ignore her, to be impercipient and bland, to preserve a secret amusement within a shell of polite indifference. Let fools worry, but the Gay Guerrilla had nothing to defend save freedom, and the man whose trousers hid a satyr’s hairiness could overleap the tedious concerns of humankind.
Arthur went down to breakfast with a little secret smile on his lips, and in his eyes, so far as he could produce it, the sly glance of a faun. His wife and their daughter Ruth were already at the table, Ruth with a book before her and her mother reading a letter with the look of pride and exclusiveness that was habitual to her when she was reading even a postcard, as though her correspondents wrote to no one but her and as though their news were more interesting than anyone else’s. Arthur’s faun-like gaze went unnoticed. He sat down and looked with no pleasure at the plate of brown husks before him. ‘What’s this?’ he asked.
‘Dear Juliet’ She does write amusing letters,’ said his wife.
‘What’s this brown stuff?’ Arthur repeated.
‘It’s a new breakfast-food, called Vima-Bran,’ said Daisy, without looking up from her letter.
‘And what does that mean?’
‘Vima-Bran is not only a palatable food, but a powerful tonic,’ said Ruth. ‘It is manufactured by an entirely new process from vitamins, the best British malt, and fresh wholesome bran. Children love it, and it is confidently recommended to the over-tired business man as a certain cure for lassitude, debility, nervousness, and other modern ailments.’
‘Who told you all that nonsense?’
‘It says so on the box,’ Ruth explained. She was reputed a clever child, and according to the not uncommon assumption that brains are merely a compensation for lack of beauty, there might be some truth in this: for she had lank black hair, a sallow complexion, a youthful propensity to warts, and an astigmatism that obliged her to wear spectacles. Her brain was certainly not inactive, and she also possessed such agreeable qualities as honesty, a reasonably good temper, and the ability to find her own amusements.
Arthur remembered his insouciant character in time to repress the display of irritation to which he was tempted, and removing the Vima-Bran to the sideboard, remarked in a whimsical voice, ‘Well, Daisy, if you know any tired business men, you’d better give them what’s left of this stuff, because I’m certainly not going to eat it. As I don’t suffer from debility, and as my nerves are in excellent form, and as I rather like a feeling of lassitude occasionally, it would be wasted on me, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh, Arthur, you are tiresome,’ said Daisy, and looked at him through her thick pince-nez with a worried
smile. She was a tall thin woman with her hair pulled back to a whorl at the nape of her neck, and a prominent thyroid cartilage. ‘Isn’t daddy being tiresome?’ she asked Ruth, who was too absorbed by her book to pay any attention. ‘He knows that we want to make him big and strong, but he won’t do anything to help us.’
‘I’m as strong as a horse,’ said Arthur, and whistled Over the hills and far away, as he helped himself to bacon and eggs.
‘How do hedgehogs mate?’ asked Ruth. Her inquiry was not so irrelevant as it appears, for the book she was reading was entitled Wild Life in Woods and Fields. Daisy, though startled by the abrupt appearance of so remote and thorny a topic, amiably abandoned the matter of Vima-Bran to satisfy Ruth’s hunger for knowledge. For she felt it her duty to answer questions of this kind, and by diligent attention to duty she had given Ruth an uncommonly confused notion of many natural processes: such as pollination. Daisy herself had always been rather vague about the significance of pollen – the entanglement of flowers, bees, and hay fever was too much for her – and an unfortunate comparison she had once drawn between the moths that frequent fur coats, and the hawk-moth that pollinates the honeysuckle, had for long made Ruth believe that moth-balls were the woodbine’s odorous fruit. A pretty fancy, and no more wide of the mark than much of Daisy’s teaching. She approached the subject of hedgehogs without a tremor.
‘Hedgehogs are just like other creatures,’ she said kindly. ‘They know that Nature wishes them to become parents, and because wild things always obey Nature, they fall in love with each other, and then, at the proper time, they come together.’
‘Yes, but how?’ demanded Ruth.
‘There are some of Nature’s secrets into which we mustn’t pry too closely,’ answered Daisy.
Ruth sniffed, a sceptical sound. ‘Do you know, Daddy?’ she asked.
Ripeness is All Page 5
