The Green Hat

a distant scream, as of a great seabird, stirred a boy to dream of vain, polite, perishable delights. Maybe a cow stared thoughtfully at the strange, swift, whirring insects with the livid eyes and the cruel screams. Here and there the lamps shone on the buttons of a policeman, stock-still in a doorway. There was no air but the wind of our passage, warm, heavy with dust and dry grasses. “Rain, rain!” breathed England in her sleep. And there was no rain, nor breath of rain, nor yet that damp, oppressive foretaste of a thunderstorm to come, only a torment of heat over the land and around the land the unclouded darkness pinned with faint stars. A myriad flies withstood the stork, were appalled, died. Wrapped in silence, armed with light, we fled beneath the suns of the night like battle-chariots rushing to the assault of the stronghold of the gods. Iris had gone mad.

I thought of Mr. Polly disturbed in his sleep, twenty years ago, on a Sussex hayrick by the roar of a racing-car. Mr. Polly could have slept undisturbed for us. One hundred and twenty horses drew us, shadows of nothing from nothing to nothing beneath the impersonal stare of the stars. Look away from the stars, lovers of the world’s delights, for they are the destroyers of the world’s delights with their dreams of grander things. To listen to great music, to adore God in vast solitudes, to kneel before the face of beauty, to pass through the quiet land like an arrow with flaming eyes, swifter than your thoughts: such and the like, according to each our nature, are the captains of the world’s delights, so keep your eyes from the stars, that destroy our delights with their dreams of grander things.

Silence marches with the thoughts in your mind. Maybe a word or two will drop, hesitate in the wind, fight with the dying hosts of midgets, perish on the road. Small flying things brush by your face, and a dry unsweet scent, as though England is sleeping with her windows closed.

The green hat was somewhere beside me, it fell and rolled about my feet, she murmured: “Leave it.” To the warm wind fell the honour of the dance, and with the tawny cornstalks the wind stepped a wide-flung dance. Why does your hair dance so, Iris March, like a halo possessed of devils? Why this, why that, Iris March?

In the glass of the windscreen we might now and then see the faint reflection of Guy’s lamps behind us. Nay, once or twice his bonnet nosed up beside Iris, just beside her elbow. But the stork cried hoarsely, flew on.

Again, silent as the rustle of a woman’s dress walking in a dark garden, Guy’s shining bonnet menaced the tail of our eye, and Guy himself, alone in front, yellow-haired, grim, fair herald of a fighting pageant in his brilliant Fair Isle sweater, and now the face of Venice, leaning forward to Guy’s shoulder, excited, exhorting. Venice, for Venice! She would pass the lady of the dancing hair, would Venice. But the stork cried hoarsely, flew on.

We wrestled. Silent as phantoms, we wrestled. One hundred and twenty horses, a winged Mercury and a stork wrestled for the dominion of nothing on the Reading road.

There was a corner, proud and saturnine from many fell triumphs. The stork screamed a taunt, flew on.

“Ho!” gasped Hugo, chattering, from behind. “Steady, girl! Shirley’s frightened.⁠ ⁠…”

“Let him pass, Iris!” cried I. A little scared, a woman driving, you never know, might lose her head, boy’s head, curly head, white and tiger-tawny, but too white, too intent, too infernally reckless.⁠ ⁠…

“Iris, Iris!”

“Can do seventy-five, if you like,” cried the lips of the dancing hair.

“Let him pass, Iris!”

“Pass? Am I mad! As soon let happiness pass! See, the stars are laughing.⁠ ⁠…”

“Iris, Iris!”

“Let him pass, Iris! Damn you, it won’t hold the road!”

“Why, the road’s fainting with joy! Can do seventy-six if you like. But not more.⁠ ⁠…”

A new road, recently laid down to soften the passage of footlight-favourites to the reaches of Taplow and Maidenhead, wide, deserted of houses. Meadows swept each side into the desert darkness. Iris, perhaps remembering Mr. Polly, perhaps thinking Mr. Polly had slept long enough, kicked open the exhaust. That lends another mile an hour to speed. Another sixty horses gave answer behind, then fell snarling back towards London. “Seventy-one, Iris!”

“Ow!” she breathed. “Accelerator burning foot. Ow! Hell!”

“Maidenhead!” screamed Shirley.

“To the right, Iris!”

And so we came into the yard of Quindle’s. Still, sleeping, shuttered, Quindle’s hostelry was a rebuke to the flaming lights which made a festival of the desert scene. Then Guy’s car swung in, poor winged Mercury. Shows one, don’t you know, how much gods are worth.⁠ ⁠…

“Sickening, Iris. You had me properly beat that time.”

“But how my foot burns, Guy!”

“Look!” said Venice. “Hist!”

A man in shirtsleeves was come out of the hotel. He stared at us, rubbed his eyes, stared at us.

“Ho!” called Major Cypress. “Ho, there! Is that Quindle’s speaking?”

The man in shirtsleeves came through the flame of the lamps. An amiable man, he looked.

“Now remember,” whispered Shirley at large, “no matter how beastly they are to us, we are going to bathe. Let everyone speak at once. That will baffle him.”

“Evening,” said the man in shirtsleeves. “Bit late, isn’t it?”

“Not one yet,” said Hugo. “I say, we want to bathe.”

“Can’t have no rooms,” said the man in shirtsleeves. “Hotel’s full.”

“But we don’t want no rooms!” Venice pleaded. “We only want to bathe.⁠ ⁠…”

“Bar’s closed,” said the man in shirtsleeves.

“Serve you right,” said Hugo. “But we’ll give you a drink if you want one. Here you are. Beer or champagne?”

“I want to bathe,” Shirley pleaded.

“Can’t bathe ’ere,” said the man in shirtsleeves.

“You don’t know about us,” said Venice severely. “We can bath anywhere.”

“Against the lor, miss.”

“That will be all right about the law.” A sudden voice, a calm voice, a cold, chill murmur. It fell from heights like a douche. The man in shirtsleeves tried not to have to