THE PATRIOT PIG.
Last Spring I was discussing food with our local doctor. Last Spring it was quite a favourite topic.
"Now," I said, "we can manage to scratch along somehow. But next year . . ."
The Doctor, a hearty man, gave me a smashing blow on the shoulder. "I have it!" he trumpeted. "We'll start a Patriot Pig Club."
Before he left I found myself an important pillar of the scheme. Pillars, you know, are the parts of an edifice that bear the weight. Their function is to be sat upon by the arches. In this case the arches were Jones the doctor and Perkins the butcher.
The Committee began sitting. I put five pounds into the preliminary pool and promised them all my pig-swill. I know I did, because the Doctor came straight from the meeting to my house to tell me I had, and to collect the cheque.
The pigs arrived. I myself and a number of other enthusiasts turned out to welcome them. The Doctor, I remember, made a happy little speech, and we all laughed a lot. The Committee were very pleased with themselves. They were dear little chaps—the pigs, I mean—very small, of course, but that gave me the opening for what was undoubtedly the most successful sally of the afternoon. Someone said they weighed five pounds apiece. "One pound per pound," I remarked.
A week later the Doctor called for my second instalment. "Pig going strong," he chattered gaily while I wrote out the cheque; "best of a good litter—bust its pink ribbon yesterday; twice the weight it was when it came."
It was on the tip of my tongue to repeat my witticism, which was still true, but I refrained.
I paid the first dozen five-pound instalments without comment. Up till then I had been fully occupied in studying how FOCH was getting on with the other sort of pig over there. But now I began to think.
I was thinking heavily when I put on my hat, but when I reached the premises of the Patriot Pigs I was thinking things that I prefer not to talk about. To begin with, they were housing the poor little beasts in a place you wouldn't dream of inflicting on the poorest labourer. And the overcrowding! And the dirt! And the pigs themselves! They were positively uncanny. There was something almost human about them. They were all heads and no bodies. It was just as though the other half of the wits of the half-witted boy who looked after them had distributed itself among the whole herd. I could have wept when I thought how my purse and my swill-tub had been emptied to keep such puny monstrosities in the land of the living.
I had my pig taken out and weighed. He turned the scale at forty-eight pounds.
A week later I went and weighed him again; he had shrunk to forty.
I am a man of action. In a flash my mind was made up. I put him on a string and led him home.
My wife seemed rather surprised when we entered the drawing-room, but I hastened to explain.
"I paid five pounds," I said, "for a five-pound pig. Since then I 've paid fifty-five pounds more, and I have been led to expect, that at the very least the pig was keeping pace. But it isn't. The sterling is increasing by leaps and bounds; the avoirdupois is not even stationary. That's not counting several tons of swill that ought to be inside him but aren't. It can't go on." I paused and added darkly, "That pig shall not return."
"But surely you're not going to have him live with us, Henry?"
I controlled myself.
"No, Maria," I said, "I am not. At a late hour to-night we will take him out into the country and lose him."
"Oh, Henry," she began, "supposing—"
I interrupted gently but firmly.
"My mind," said I, "like BERT COOTE'S, is made up. He is my pig and I may do what I like with him. There is no law against one losing one's pig. Besides, he is ruining me."
At 10 P.M. we set out en famille. It was July. I remember the date rather particularly because it was just then that they ceased to ration bacon altogether. At 10.30 the pig was safely lost. At 11 the front-door closed upon us. At 11.1 little Willy Perkins, the butcher's son, arrived with the pig and claimed something for restoring lost property.
A man with a position to keep up simply can't afford to be caught in the act of feloniously making away with pigs in war-time; besides DORA was still alive and she might have something to say; so I had to pretend how pleased I was, and I gave the scamp half-a-crown.
Now I know Perkins and Son well enough to realise that if the animal had been worth more than half-a-crown they would have allowed me to lose my pig free of charge. So I made another resolution. It was pretty drastic, but in a crisis like this severe measures are often the best. In short, it was murder I contemplated—nothing less.
I went to work carefully. I let four months slip by to allay any possible suspicion. I paid my weekly cheque without being asked; without a murmur I parted daily with my swill; in fact I comported myself as though the unholy plot maturing in my breast was nonexistent.
At length the night arrived. I took down my long magazine Lee Enfield and my cartridge (I am not a Volunteer for nothing) and crept to the Patriot Pig H.Q.
The once-crowded sty lay dark and still. I entered and switched on my torch: it shone on the loathsome features that I knew so well. He was all alone, so there could be no mistake. His head was as large as ever, but his body seemed scarcely visible. I weighed him; he registered fourteen pounds.:
I will not harrow you, my reader, with details. Suffice it to say my nerve was sure, my eye true and my hand steady. I killed that pig with a single shot and went home to bed.
The Doctor arrived next morning while I was shaving. He was white with rage. He said:
"What the deuce do you mean by killing my pig?"
"Your pig ?" I smiled. "No, my Pig!"
"Stuff and nonsense!" he spluttered. "Your pig died four months ago—caught cold last July through being out so late at night and died next day."
That roused me. "Do you mean to tell me," I asked coldly, "that I've been paying five pounds a week for the last four months for a dead pig?"
"Very kind of you, I'm sure," replied the Doctor, "but no one asked you to, you know."
Adding together all my expenses—the weekly subscription for my pig; a similar sum paid to the Doctor for his; the value of my swill; the fine imposed (by DORA) for improper use of firearms; ditto (by the Magistrate) for shooting game without a licence; alleged damage to the P.P. premises and the remaining wits of their custodian; and finally, the bill from Mr. Perkins for a pound of pork purchased in July, and the account from Dr. Jones for professional attendance subsequent to consumption of same—adding all these together I find that from first to last I disbursed £385 5s. 5-1/2d. on the patriot.
With pork at two shillings a pound my outlay should have produced a pig that weighed 1 ton 14-1/2 cwt. Truly that would have been a very Hindenburg of a pig. It was almost worth trying.