People say that my uncle lost his head at the crest of his fortunes, but if one may tell so much truth of a man one has in a manner loved, he never had very much head to lose. He was always imaginative, erratic, inconsistent, recklessly inexact, and his inundation of wealth merely gave him scope for these qualities.
It is true, indeed, that towards the climax he became intensely irritable at times and impatient of contradiction, but that, I think, was rather the gnawing uneasiness of sanity than any mental disturbance. But I find it hard either to judge him or convey the full development of him to the reader. I saw too much of him; my memory is choked with disarranged moods and aspects.
Now he is distended with megalomania, now he is deflated, now he is quarrelsome, now impenetrably self-satisfied, but always he is sudden, jerky, fragmentary, energetic, and--in some subtle fundamental way that I find difficult to define--absurd.
There stands out--because of the tranquil beauty of its setting perhaps--a talk we had in the veranda of the little pavilion near my worksheds behind Crest Hill in which my aeroplanes and navigable balloons were housed. It was one of many similar conversations, and I do not know why it in particular should survive its fellows. It happens so. He had come up to me after his coffee to consult me about a certain chalice which in a moment of splendour and under the importunity of a countess he had determined to give to a deserving church in the east-end.
I, in a moment of even rasher generosity, had suggested Ewart as a possible artist. Ewart had produced at once an admirable sketch for the sacred vessel surrounded by a sort of wreath of Millies with open arms and wings and had drawn fifty pounds on the strength of it. After that came a series of vexatious delays.
The chalice became less and less of a commercial man's chalice, acquired more and more the elusive quality of the Holy Grail, and at last even the drawing receded.
My uncle grew restive...."You see, George, they'll begin to want the blasted thing!"
"What blasted thing?"
"That chalice, damn it! They're beginning to ask questions. It isn't Business, George."
"It's art," I protested, "and religion."
"That's all very well. But it's not a good ad for us, George, to make a promise and not deliver the goods.... I'll have to write off your friend Ewart as a bad debt, that's what it comes to, and go to a decent firm."...
We sat outside on deck chairs in the veranda of the pavilion, smoked, drank whisky, and, the chalice disposed of, meditated.
His temporary annoyance passed. It was an altogether splendid summer night, following a blazing, indolent day. Full moonlight brought out dimly the lines of the receding hills, one wave beyond another; far beyond were the pin-point lights of Leatherhead, and in the foreground the little stage from which I used to start upon my gliders gleamed like wet steel. The season must have been high June, for down in the woods that hid the lights of the Lady Grove windows, I remember the nightingales thrilled and gurgled....
"We got here, George," said my uncle, ending a long pause.
"Didn't I say?"
"Say!--when?" I asked.
"In that hole in the To'nem Court Road, eh? It's been a Straight Square Fight, and here we are!"
I nodded.
"'Member me telling you--Tono-Bungay?.... Well.... I'd just that afternoon thought of it!"
"I've fancied at times;" I admitted.
"It's a great world, George, nowadays, with a fair chance for every one who lays hold of things. The career ouvert to the Talons--eh? Tono-Bungay. Think of it! It's a great world and a growing world, and I'm glad we're in it--and getting a pull.
We're getting big people, George. Things come to us. Eh? This Palestine thing."...
He meditated for a time and Zzzzed softly. Then he became still.
His theme was taken up by a cricket in the grass until he himself was ready to resume it. The cricket too seemed to fancy that in some scheme of its own it had got there. "Chirrrrrrup" it said;
"chirrrrrrup."
"Lord, what a place that was at Wimblehurst!" he broke out. "If ever I get a day off we'll motor there, George, and run over that dog that sleeps in the High Street. Always was a dog asleep there--always. Always... I'd like to see the old shop again. I daresay old Ruck still stands between the sheep at his door, grinning with all his teeth, and Marbel, silly beggar! comes out with his white apron on and a pencil stuck behind his ear, trying to look awake... Wonder if they know it's me? I'd like 'em somehow to know it's me."
"They'll have had the International Tea Company and all sorts of people cutting them up," I said. "And that dog's been on the pavement this six years--can't sleep even there, poor dear, because of the motor-horns and its shattered nerves."
"Movin' everywhere," said my uncle. "I expect you're right....
It's a big time we're in, George. It's a big Progressive On-coming Imperial Time. This Palestine business--the daring of it.... It's, it's a Process, George. And we got our hands on it. Here we sit--with our hands on it, George. Entrusted.
"It seems quiet to--night. But if we could see and hear." He waved his cigar towards Leatherhead and London.
"There they are, millions, George. Jes' think of what they've been up to to-day--those ten millions--each one doing his own particular job. You can't grasp it. It's like old Whitman says--what is it he says? Well, anyway it's like old Whitman.
Fine chap, Whitman! Fine old chap! Queer, you can't quote him.
... And these millions aren't anything. There's the millions over seas, hundreds of millions, Chinese, M'rocco, Africa generally, 'Merica.... Well, here we are, with power, with leisure, picked out--because we've been energetic, because we've seized opportunities, because we've made things hum when other people have waited for them to hum. See? Here we are--with our hands on it. Big people. Big growing people. In a sort of way,--Forces."
He paused. "It's wonderful, George," he said.
"Anglo-Saxon energy," I said softly to the night.
