The Aerodrome: A Love Story by Rex Warner Read Free Book Online Page A

head surmounted by wide extended horns. He rolled his eyes and shook the ring and rope at the end of his nose. "Good boy, Slazenger! Quiet boy! Good!" said the Squire's sister. "It wouldn't be a bad idea," said the Flight-Lieutenant, "to let that fellow loose." The Squire's sister laughed nervously, and the Rector coughed. His wife, as though the remark had been an idle one, said meditatively: "Yes, I do so love seeing him when he is really at liberty." I attempted to move forward from behind the others, so as to be in a position to restrain the Flight-Lieutenant from any hasty action which he might contemplate; but I was too late for, almost before the Rector's wife had finished speaking, the expression on his face had changed. He smiled broadly and bowed to her. "I act under instructions," he said, and at once sprang on to the bull's back. Slazenger stood quite still for a moment, and then it seemed that the whole of his body was quivering. He flung his head round towards the Flight-Lieutenant's knees and bellowed. The sound seemed one of pain. Meanwhile the Flight-Lieutenant had taken a knife from his pocket and was hacking away the canvas wall of the tent. Then he leant down, in great danger, I thought, from the bull's horns, and cut the rope by which the animal was fastened. He stood up on Slazenger's back and jumped over his head through the canvas wall into the open. Here he struck an attitude which was no doubt intended to resemble the pose of a Spanish matador; then, for the bull had lowered his head and was pawing the ground, turned and began to run away. The huge animal, breathing heavily, lumbered after him through the hole in the wall and seemed to have left an unreasonable gap in front of our eyes, as though he had been done away by magic. We heard shouts and screams from outside, and hurried through the tent to a scene of the utmost confusion. Men, women, and children were falling over each other in their eagerness to be out of danger. The sheep on show in an adjoining tent suddenly lifted up their voices together in a sharp and humming mist of sound like a chorus of monstrous gnats. Two men, who had mounted their horses in readiness for the jumping competition, now found it impossible to control their mounts, who began to gallop madly down the main avenue of the show, where one of the horses slipped on the planks and threw his rider into the tent where the mechanical milking was in process. We could see nothing of either Slazenger or the Flight-Lieutenant, and so stood for some moments silent in the shouting and excited crowd.
    CHAPTER IV
    The Accident
    NOT THAT THE incident was of any great importance. Neither the Flight-Lieutenant nor Slazenger, the bull, were injured. The rider who was hurled against the mechanically milked cow, a few children, a bookmaker, and an old woman sustained cuts and bruises, none of them of a serious character. The Flight-Lieutenant's action was only one of many actions performed by him or other members of the aerodrome staff in direct contravention of the rules that governed the life of villagers. Some indignation was expressed, but it was well known that the offender would not be brought to trial in any magistrate's court, and, since the bull was soon recaptured and no great damage done, before very long people began to laugh rather than grumble at what had happened. But the incident for my story is not without significance. It shows that on this particular day the Flight-Lieutenant's habit of mind was perhaps even more than usually irresponsible, so that to the reader the far more serious event which followed may seem not natural nor inevitable, but not wholly unexpected. Also to my mind this cavalier treatment of a prize bull by a member of our powerful Air Force appears, in the light of what followed, almost as a text or symbol. Certainly the effect of the incident on our party was most unfortunate, and had we met the Flight-Lieutenant again after his escapade there is no