Gilbert K. Chesterton - Tales of the Long Bow, Chesterton Gilbert Keith
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Tales of the Long Bowby G. K. ChestertonFirst published 1925 by Cassell and Company, Ltd.Electronic Edition 1993 by Jim Henry III, Jim.Henry@pobox.com,ContentsI. The Unpresentable Appearance of Colonel CraneII. The Improbable Success of Mr. Owen HoodIII. The Unobtrusive Traffic of Captain PierceIV. The Elusive Companion of Parson WhiteV. The Exclusive Luxury of Enoch OatesVI. The Unthinkable Theory of Professor GreenVII. The Unprecedented Architecture of Commander BlairVIII. The Ultimate Ultimatum of the League of the Long BowChapter IThe Unpresentable Appearance of Colonel CraneThese tales concern the doing of things recognized asimpossible to do; impossible to believe; and, as the weary readermay well cry aloud, impossible to read about. Did the narratormerely say that they happened, without saying how they happened,they could easily be classified with the cow who jumped over the moonor the more introspective individual who jumped down his own throat.In short, they are all tall stories; and though tall stories may alsobe true stories, there is something in the very phrase appropriateto such a topsy-turvydom; for the logician will presumably classa tall story with a corpulent epigram or a long-legged essay.It is only proper that such impossible incidents should beginin the most prim and prosaic of all places, and apparently withthe most prim and prosaic of all human beings.The place was a straight suburban road of strictly-fenced suburbanhouses on the outskirts of a modern town. The time was about twentyminutes to eleven on Sunday morning, when a procession of suburbanfamilies in Sunday clothes were passing decorously up the roadto church. And the man was a very respectable retired militaryman named Colonel Crane, who was also going to church, as he haddone every Sunday at the same hour for a long stretch of years.There was no obvious difference between him and his neighbours,except that he was a little less obvious. His house was only calledWhite Lodge, and was, therefore, less alluring to the romanticpasser-by than Rowanmere on the one side or Heatherbrae on the other.He turned out spick and span for church as if for parade; but hewas much too well dressed to be pointed out as a well-dressed man.He was quite handsome in a dry, sun-baked style; but his bleachedblond hair was a colourless sort that could look either light brownor pale grey; and though his blue eyes were clear, they looked outa little heavily under lowered lids. Colonel Crane was something ofa survival. He was not really old; indeed he was barely middle-aged;and had gained his last distinctions in the great war. But a varietyof causes had kept him true to the traditional type of the oldprofessional soldier, as it had existed before 1914; when a smallparish would have only one colonel as it had only one curate.It would be quite unjust to call him a dug-out; indeed, it would bemuch truer to call him a dug-in. For he had remained in the traditionsas firmly and patiently as he had remained in the trenches.He was simply a man who had no taste for changing his habits,and had never worried about conventions enough to alter them.One of his excellent habits was to go to church at eleven o'clock,and he therefore went there; and did not know that there wentwith him something of an old-world air and a passage in the historyof England.As he came out of his front door, however, on that particular morning,he was twisting a scrap of paper in his fingers and frowning withsomewhat unusual perplexity. Instead of walking straight to hisgarden gate he walked once or twice up and down his front garden,swinging his black walking-cane. The note had been handed to himat breakfast, and it evidently called for some practical problem callingfor immediate solution. He stood a few minutes with his eye rivetedon a red daisy at the corner of the nearest flower-bed; and thena new expression began to work in the muscles of his bronzed face,giving a slightly grim hint of humour, of which few except hisintimates were aware. Folding up the paper and putting it into hiswaistcoat pocket, he strolled round the house to the back garden,behind which was the kitchen-garden, in which an old servant, a sortof factotum or handy-man, named Archer, was acting as kitchen-gardener.Archer was also a survival. Indeed, the two had survived together;had survived a number of things that had killed a good many other people.But though they had been together through the war that was alsoa revolution, and had a complete confidence in each other, the man Archerhad never been able to lose the oppressive manners of a manservant.He performed the duties of a gardener with the air of a butler.He really performed the duties very well and enjoyed them very much;perhaps he enjoyed them all the more because he was a clever Cockney,to whom the country crafts were a new hobby. But somehow,whenever he said, "I have put in the seeds, sir," it alwayssounded like, "I have put the sherry on the table, sir"; and hecould not say "Shall I pull the carrots?" without seeming to say,"Would you be requiring the claret?""I hope you're not working on Sunday," said the Colonel,with a much more pleasant smile than most people got from him,though he was always polite to everybody. "You're gettingtoo fond of these rural pursuits. You've become a rustic yokel.""I was venturing to examine the cabbages, sir," replied the rusticyokel, with a painful precision of articulation. "Their conditionyesterday evening did not strike me as satisfactory.""Glad you didn't sit up with them," answered the Colonel."But it's lucky you're interested in cabbages. I want to talkto you about cabbages.""About cabbages, sir?" inquired the other respectfully.But the Colonel did not appear to pursue the topic, for he was gazingin sudden abstraction at another object in the vegetable plots in frontof him. The Colonel's garden, like the Colonel's house, hat, coat,and demeanour, was well-appointed in an unobtrusive fashion; and inthe part of it devoted to flowers there dwelt something indefinablethat seemed older that the suburbs. The hedges, even, in beingas neat as Surbiton managed to look as mellow as Hampton Court,as if their very artificiality belonged rather to Queen Anne thanQueen Victoria; and the stone-rimmed pond with a ring of irises somehowlooked like a classic pool and not merely an artificial puddle.It is idle to analyse how a man's soul and social type will somehowsoak into his surroundings; anyhow, the soul of Mr. Archer had sunkinto the kitchen-garden so as to give it a fine shade of difference.He was after all a practical man, and the practice of his new tradewas much more of a real appetite with him than words would suggest.Hence the kitchen-garden was not artificial, but autochthonous;it really looked like the corner of a farm in the country; and allsorts of practical devices were set up there. Strawberries werenetted-in against the birds; strings were stretched across withfeathers fluttering from them; and in the middle of the principalbed stood an ancient and authentic scarecrow. Perhaps the onlyincongruous intruder, capable of disputing with the scarecrow in hisrural reign, was the curious boundary-stone which marked the edgeof his domain; and which was, in fact, a shapeless South Sea idol,planted there with no more appropriateness than a door-scraper. ButColonel Crane would not have been so complete a type of the oldarmy man if he had not hidden somewhere a hobby connected withhis travels. His hobby had at one time been savage folklore;and he had the relic of it on the edge of the kitchen-garden. Atthe moment, however, he was not looking at the idol, but at the scarecrow."By the way, Archer," he said, "don't you think the scarecrow wantsa new hat?""I should hardly think it would be necessary, sir," said thegardener gravely."But look here," said the Colonel, "you must consider the philosophyof scarecrows. In theory, that is supposed to convince some rathersimple-minded bird that I am walking in my garden. That thingwith the unmentionable hat is Me. A trifle sketchy, perhaps.Sort of impressionist portrait; but hardly likely to impress.Man with a hat like that would never be really firm with a sparrow.Conflict of wills, and all that, and I bet the sparrow would comeout on top. By the way, what's that stick tied on to it?""I believe, sir," said Archer, "that it is supposed to representa gun.""Held at a highly unconvincing angle," observed Crane. "Man witha hat like that would be sure to miss.""Would you desire me to procure another hat?" inquired the patient Archer."No, no," answered his master carelessly. "As the poor fellow's gotsuch a rotten hat, I'll give him mine. Like the scene of St. Martinand the beggar.""Give him yours," repeated Archer respectfully, but faintly.The Colonel took off his burnished top-hat and gravely placedit on the head of the South Sea idol at his feet. It had aqueer effect of bringing the grotesque lump of stone to life,as if a goblin in a top-hat was grinning at the garden."You think the hat shouldn't be quite new?" he inquired almost anxiously."Not done among the best scarecrows, perhaps. Well, let's seewhat we can do to mellow it a little."He whirled up his walking-stick over his head and laid a smackingstroke across the silk hat, smashing it over the hollow eyesof the idol."Softened with the touch of time now, I think," he remarked, holding outthe silken remnants to the gardener. "Put it on the scarecrow,my friend; I don't want it. You can bear witness it's no use to me."Archer obeyed...
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