Dalroy found himself, with some bewilderment, round the corner of a rock and in a long bore or barrel of blackness that ended in a very dim spot of green. Hearing the hoofs of the ass and the feet of his friend behind him, he turned his head, but could see nothing but the pitch darkness of a closed coal cellar. He turned again to the dim green speck, and marching forward was glad to see it grow larger and brighter, like a big emerald, till he came out on a throng of trees, mostly thin, but growing so thickly and so close to the cavernous entrance of the tunnel that it was quite clear the place was meant to be choked up by forests and forgotten. The light that came glimmering through the trees was so broken and tremulous that it was hard to tell whether it was daybreak or moonrise.
“I know there’s water here,” said Pump. “They couldn’t keep it out of the stone-work when they made the tunnel, and old Ivywood hit the hydraulic engineer with a spirit level. With the bit of covert here and the sea behind us we ought to be able to get food of one kind or another, when the cheese has given out, and donkeys can eat anything. By the way,” he added with some embarrassment, “you don’t mind my saying it, Captain, but I think we’d better keep that rum for rare occasions. It’s the best rum in England, and may be the last, if these mad games are going on. It’ll do us good to feel it’s there, so we can have it when we want it. The cask’s still nearly full.”
Dalroy put out his hand and shook the other’s. “Hump,” he said, seriously, “you’re right. It’s a sacred trust for Humanity; and we’ll only drink it ourselves to celebrate great victories. In token of which I will take a glass now, to celebrate our glorious victory over Leveson and his tin tabernacle.”
He drained one glass and then sat down on the cask, as if to put temptation behind him. His blue ruminant bull’s eye seemed to plunge deeper and deeper into the emerald twilight of the trees in front of him, and it was long before he spoke again.
At last he observed, “I think you said, Hump, that a friend of yours–a gentleman named Bunchy Robinson, I think–was also a habitue here.”
“Yes, he knew the way,” answered Pump, leading the donkey to the most suitable patch of pasturage.
“May we, do you think, have the pleasure of a visit from Mr. Robinson?” inquired the Captain.
“Not unless they’re jolly careless up in Blackstone Gaol,” replied Pump. And he moved the cheese well into the arch of the tunnel. Dalroy still sat with his square chin on his hand, staring at the mystery of the little wood.
“You seem absent-minded, Captain,” remarked Humphrey.
“The deepest thoughts are all commonplaces,” said Dalroy. “That is why I believe in Democracy, which is more than you do, you foul blood-stained old British Tory. And the deepest commonplace of all is that Vanitas Vanitatem, which is not pessimism but is really the opposite of pessimism. It is man’s futility that makes us feel he must be a god. And I think of this tunnel, and how the poor old lunatic walked about on this grass, watching it being built, the soul in him on fire with the future. And he saw the whole world changed and the seas thronged with his new shipping; and now,” and Dalroy’s voice changed and broke, “now there is good pasture for the donkey and it is very quiet here.”
“Yes,” said Pump, in some way that conveyed his knowledge that the Captain was thinking of other things also. The Captain went on dreamily:
“And I think about another Lord Ivywood recorded in history who also had a great vision. For it is a great vision after all, and though the man is a prig, he is brave. He also wants to drive a tunnel–between East and West–to make the Indian Empire more British; to effect what he calls the orientation of England, and I call the ruin of Christendom. And I am wondering just now whether the clear intellect and courageous will of a madman will be strong enough to burst and drive that tunnel, as everything seems to show at this moment that it will. Or whether there be indeed enough life and growth in your England to leave it at last as this is left, buried in English forests and wasted by an English sea.”
The silence fell between them again, and again there was only the slight sound the animal made in eating. As Dalroy had said, it was very quiet there.
But it was not quiet in Pebblewick that night; when the Riot Act was read, and all the people who had seen the sign-board outside fought all the people who hadn’t seen the sign-board outside; or when babies and scientists next morning, seeking for shells and other common objects of the sea-shore, found that their study included fragments of the outer clothing of Leveson and scraps of corrugated iron.
CHAPTER IX
THE HIGHER CRITICISM AND MR. HIBBS
PEBBLEWICK boasted an enterprising evening paper of its own, called “The Pebblewick Globe,” and it was the great vaunt of the editor’s life that he had got out an edition announcing the mystery of the vanishing sign-board, almost simultaneously with its vanishing. In the rows that followed sandwich men found no little protection from the blows indiscriminately given them behind and before, in the large wooden boards they carried inscribed: