Free The Fox in the Attic by Richard Hughes Page A

is it makes you continue to jeopardize your life being driven by Trivett?” Augustine snorted. “Trivett,” declared Jeremy, “can’t even change down with the Daimler in motion: he stops dead at the foot of every rise while he struggles into bottom! Trivett—the sound of whose horn ...” he pursued, lilting, “makes old women climb trees. He only accelerates round corners and at crossroads. I believe the sole time he has ever consistently stuck to the left side of the road was that time you took the car to France.”
    Augustine gave a delighted chuckle.
    â€œSurely in Gilbert’s bachelor days he used to be head groom? Whatever possessed you, then, to make him chauffeur?”
    The question sounded candid enough; but Mary glanced at Jeremy with a flicker of distrust, for wasn’t the reason obvious? The bride had wanted to bring her hunters to Mellton and if the old duffer refused to retire voluntarily on pension what else could one do? For with Mary’s upbringing one never entrusted a horse to the tender mercies of a Trivett. True, whenever he drove the car her heart was in her mouth and one day he’d surely kill them all; but similarly, one doesn’t give way to fear.—But neither for that matter does one discuss one’s servants with one’s friends! Momentarily her eyes took on quite an angry look.
    â€œTouchée?” Jeremy murmured a little wickedly: “Be there or be there no some method in Augustine’s madness?”
    Augustine snorted again. These relics of feudalism! Such relationships were so wholly false; equally ruinous to the servant and the served: he was well quit of such.
    Augustine had grown up from childhood with a rooted dislike of ever giving orders. Any relationship which involved one human being constraining another repelled him. But now Jeremy executed a volte-face and attacked him on this very point: the most ominous harbinger and indeed prime cause of bloody revolution is not the man who refuses to obey orders (said Jeremy), “it’s the man like you who refuses to give them.”
    â€œWhat harm do I do?” Augustine grumbled.
    â€œYou except to be allowed to let other people alone!” blazed Jeremy indignantly. “Can’t you see it’s intolerable for the ruled themselves when the ruling class abdicates? You mark my words, you tyrant too bored to tyrannize! Long ere the tumbrils roll here to Mellton your head will have fallen in the laps of Flemton’s tricoteuses.”
    Augustine snorted, and then cracked a walnut and examined its shriveled kernel with distaste. Funny you could never tell by the shells ...
17
    â€œWhat do you suppose would happen,” Jeremy continued, “if there were more people like you? Mankind would be left exposed naked to the icy glare of Liberty: betrayed into the hands of Freedom, that eternal threat before which the Spirit of Man flees in an ever-lasting flight! Post equitem sedet atra—Libertas! Has there ever been a revolution which didn’t end in less freedom? Because, has there ever been a revolution which wasn’t essentially just one more desperate wriggle by mankind to escape from freedom?”
    â€œA flight from freedom? What poppycock,” thought Augustine.
    As was his wont, Jeremy was working out even the direction of his argument while he talked, leaping grass-hopper-like from point to point. His voice was pontifical and assured (except just occasionally for an excited squeak), but his face all the time was childishly excited by the sheer pleasures of the verbal chase. Augustine, watching rather than really heeding the friend he so admired, smiled tolerantly. Poor old Jeremy! It was a pity he could only think with his mouth open, because he was an able chap ...
    â€œPoor old Augustine!” Jeremy was feeling at the same time, even while he talked: “He isn’t believing a word I say! A prophet is not without honor ... ah