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!”