Until our particular unsoundness
overtook us we went about in the most magnificent of motor-cars upon
tangible high roads, made ourselves conspicuous and stately in splendid
houses, ate sumptuously and had a perpetual stream of notes and money
trickling into our pockets; hundreds of thousands of men and women
respected us, saluted us and gave us toil and honour; I asked, and my
worksheets rose, my aeroplanes swooped out of nothingness to scare the
downland pe-wits; my uncle waved his hand and Lady Grove and all its
associations of chivalry and ancient peace were his; waved again, and
architects were busy planning the great palace he never finished at
Crest Hill and an army of folkmen gathered to do his bidding, blue
marble came from Canada, and timber from New Zealand; and beneath it
all, you know, there was nothing but fictitious values as evanescent as
rainbow gold.
IV
I pass the Hardingham ever and again and glance aside through the great
archway at the fountain and the ferns, and think of those receding days
when I was so near the centre of our eddy of greed and enterprise.
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