They found the village of Ponder’s End in a condition as comically incongruous as could well be with the mystical experiences of Mr. Hilary Pierce. When we talk of such places as sleepy, we forget that they are very wide-awake about their own affairs, and especially on their own festive occasions. Piccadilly Circus looks much the same on Christmas Day or any other; but the marketplace of a country town or village looks very different on the day of a fair or bazaar. And Hilary Pierce, who had first come down there to find in a wood at midnight the riddle that he thought worthy of Merlin, came down the second time to find himself plunged suddenly into the middle of the bustling bathos of a jumble sale. It was one of those bazaars to provide bargains for the poor, at which all sorts of odds and ends are sold off. But it was treated as a sort of fête, and highly-coloured posters and handbills announced its nature on every side. The bustle seemed to be dominated by a tall dark lady of distinguished appearance, whom Owen Hood, rather to the surprise of his companions, hailed as an old acquaintance and managed to draw aside for a private talk. She had appeared to have her hands full at the bazaar; nevertheless, her talk with Hood was rather a long one. Pierce only heard the last words of it:
“Oh, he promised he was bringing something for the sale. I assure you he always keeps his word.�
All Hood said when he rejoined his companion was: “That’s the lady White was going to marry. I think I know now why things went wrong, and I hope they may go right. But there seems to be another bother. You see that clump of clod-hopping policemen over there, inspector and all. It seems they’re waiting for White. Say he’s broken the law in taking his house off the land, and that he has always eluded them. I hope there won’t be a scene when he turns up.�
If this was Mr. Hood’s hope, it was ill-founded and destined to disappointment. A scene was but a faint description of what was in store for that hopeful gentleman. Within ten minutes the greater part of the company were in a world in which the sun and moon seemed to have turned topsy-turvy and the last limit of unlikelihood had been reached. Pierce had imagined he was very near that limit of the imagination when he groped after the vanishing temple in the dark forest. But nothing he had seen in that darkness and solitude was so fantastic as what he saw next in broad daylight in a crowd.
At one extreme edge of the crowd there was a sudden movement—a wave of recoil and wordless cries. The next moment it had swept like a wind over the whole populace, and hundreds of faces were turned in one direction—in the direction of the road that descended by a gradual slope towards the woods that fringed the vicarage grounds. Out of those woods at the foot of the hill had emerged something that might from its size have been a large light grey omnibus. But it was not an omnibus. It scaled the slope so swiftly, in great strides, that it became instantly self-evident what it was. It was an elephant, whose monstrous form was moulded in grey and silver in the sunlight, and on whose back sat very erect a vigorous middle-aged gentleman in black clerical attire, with blanched hair and a rather fierce aquiline profile that glanced proudly to left and right.
The police inspector managed to make one step forward, and then stood like a statue. The vicar, on his vast steed, sailed into the middle of the marketplace as serenely as if he had been the master of a familiar circus. He pointed in triumph to one of the red and blue posters on the wall, which bore the traditional title of “White Elephant Sale.�
“You see I’ve kept my word,� he said to the lady in a loud, cheerful voice. “I’ve brought a white elephant.�
The next moment he had waved his hand hilariously in another direction, having caught sight of Hood and Crane in the crowd.
“Splendid of you to come!� he called out. “Only you were in the secret. I told you I’d got a white elephant.�