登陆注册
15489700000073

第73章 CHAPTER THE SECOND OUR PROGRESS FROM CAMDEN TOWN T

He seemed to think himself, at last, released from any such limitations. He moved a quite considerable hill, and nearly sixty mature trees were moved with it to open his prospect eastward, moved it about two hundred feet to the south. At another time he caught a suggestion from some city restaurant and made a billiard-room roofed with plate glass beneath the waters of his ornamental lake. He furnished one wing while its roof still awaited completion. He had a swimming bath thirty feet square next to his bedroom upstairs, and to crown it all he commenced a great wall to hold all his dominions together, free from the invasion of common men. It was a ten-foot wall, glass surmounted, and had it been completed as he intended it, it would have had a total length of nearly eleven miles. Some of it towards the last was so dishonestly built that it collapsed within a year upon its foundations, but some miles of it still stand. I never think of it now but what I think of the hundreds of eager little investors who followed his "star," whose hopes and lives, whose wives' security and children's prospects are all mixed up beyond redemption with that flaking mortar....

It is curious how many of these modern financiers of chance and bluff have ended their careers by building. It was not merely my uncle. Sooner or later they all seem to bring their luck to the test of realisation, try to make their fluid opulence coagulate out as bricks and mortar, bring moonshine into relations with a weekly wages-sheet. Then the whole fabric of confidence and imagination totters--and down they come....

When I think of that despoiled hillside, that colossal litter of bricks and mortar, and crude roads and paths, the scaffolding and sheds, the general quality of unforeseeing outrage upon the peace of nature, I am reminded of a chat I had with the vicar one bleak day after he had witnessed a glide. He talked to me of aeronautics as I stood in jersey and shorts beside my machine, fresh from alighting, and his cadaverous face failed to conceal a peculiar desolation that possessed him.

"Almost you convince me," he said, coming up to me, "against my will.... A marvellous invention! But it will take you a long time, sir, before you can emulate that perfect mechanism--the wing of a bird."

He looked at my sheds.

"You've changed the look of this valley, too," he said.

"Temporary defilements," I remarked, guessing what was in his mind.

"Of course. Things come and go. Things come and go. But--H'm.

I've just been up over the hill to look at Mr. Edward Ponderevo's new house. That--that is something more permanent.

A magnificent place!--in many ways. Imposing. I've never somehow brought myself to go that way before. Things are greatly advanced.... We find--the great number of strangers introduced into the villages about here by these operations, working-men chiefly, a little embarrassing. It put us out. They bring a new spirit into the place; betting--ideas--all sorts of queer notions. Our publicans like it, of course. And they come and sleep in one's outhouses--and make the place a little unsafe at nights. The other morning I couldn't sleep--a slight dyspepsia--and I looked out of the window. I was amazed to see people going by on bicycles. A silent procession. I counted ninety-seven--in the dawn. All going up to the new road for Crest Hill. Remarkable I thought it. And so I've been up to see what they were doing."

"They would have been more than remarkable thirty years ago," I said.

"Yes, indeed. Things change. We think nothing of it now at all--comparatively. And that big house--"

He raised his eyebrows. "Really stupendous! Stupendous.

"All the hillside--the old turf--cut to ribbons!"

His eye searched my face. "We've grown so accustomed to look up to Lady Grove," he said, and smiled in search of sympathy. "It shifts our centre of gravity."

"Things will readjust themselves," I lied.

He snatched at the phrase. "Of course," he said.

"They'll readjust themselves--settle down again. Must. In the old way. It's bound to come right again--a comforting thought.

Yes. After all, Lady Grove itself had to be built once upon a time--was--to begin with--artificial."

His eye returned to my aeroplane. He sought to dismiss his graver preoccupations. "I should think twice," he remarked, "before I trusted myself to that concern.... But I suppose one grows accustomed to the motion."

He bade me good morning and went his way, bowed and thoughtful....

He had kept the truth from his mind a long time, but that morning it had forced its way to him with an aspect that brooked no denial that this time it was not just changes that were coming in his world, but that all his world lay open and defenceless, conquered and surrendered, doomed so far as he could see, root and branch, scale and form alike, to change.

同类推荐
热门推荐
  • TFBOYS王俊凯说好的幸福呢

    TFBOYS王俊凯说好的幸福呢

    小时候,她和他许下诺言,她却被父母带去了美国,与他分别,谁知,一场车祸,让她忘记了他,几年后,他与她再次相见,却是那么地陌生……
  • 师兄离我远一点

    师兄离我远一点

    辛辛苦苦,好不容易到了经理位置也有了一个爱我的男盆友,周末愉快的和闺蜜男盆友旅游,可是居然在去的路上被一口包子咽住,然后被闺蜜一巴掌拍死了...我擦我这是被打死的还有咽死的,死的也太TM冤了吧(╯‵□′)╯︵┴─┴对老天竖中指,突然一阵金色的雷霹了过来,就这样穿越了...第一次写文请小心入坑
  • 萌宠百分百:高冷男神住隔壁

    萌宠百分百:高冷男神住隔壁

    『宠文』想看萌宠如何逆袭成功吗?先经历重重关卡,掳获男神芳心吧!“你是不是傻?”“不素啊,宝宝纯属为了俘虏男神你的心”你们的好友花痴年已上线。“你愿意嫁给你面前这个也许日后一无所有的人吗?那时候,你只有我了。”经历了生离死别,未来可能不存在的他们,终于结成连理!你们的好友花痴年已上线。
  • 时间的页子

    时间的页子

    在人生的长河中我们远远地流逝,见过多少繁华美景与黑白人生。
  • 步步逼婚:法医娇妻别想逃

    步步逼婚:法医娇妻别想逃

    女法医破案归来,发现亲妹妹和有名无实的丈夫在滚沙发。脚踹渣男渣妹,她决心以牙还牙。可这剧本不对啊!明明离婚一身轻松,却不知何时惹上了鼎鼎大名的裴氏总裁。总裁狐狸尾巴一摇,把假结婚变成了真戏真做,“城市套路深,我要回农村!”“乖,回我怀里。”
  • 兵王归来

    兵王归来

    特种兵精英雷东退役归来,却发现普通人的生活远比和凶残的犯罪分子作斗争艰难。流光溢彩的大城市居然比毒蛇猛兽出没的亚马逊原始森林还要危险,温文尔雅的语言居然比眼镜蛇的毒液还要致命,甚至那些千娇百媚的女人也大多是吃人的蛇蝎变化而来。
  • 许帝纪

    许帝纪

    生日之时,女友的一番惊喜,一本黑书,却将二人带入另一个世界,当他醒来,女友消失,面对地是陌生的异域。“许帝金瞳无双,去伪存真,破妄道虚,金身盖世,阴阳化极,横击四方海,镇踏圣灵山。“
  • 灵界:红莲

    灵界:红莲

    天城之北,一府邸临于繁市之中,名曰帝莲府。她为他而生,他为她而死。红莲天火,烈焰焚情,穿越重生的她能否凭一人之力,逆转苍穹?
  • 一世嚣狂

    一世嚣狂

    他,一个不平凡的平凡人,他只想低调,可他的位置和地位,却让他不得不面对各种危险,美女。。。。
  • 超智能女友

    超智能女友

    人与机器人之间的柏拉图之恋:我们存在方式将会抛开皮囊,相爱的方式不再拘泥于血肉之躯。