To the mystical mind, when it is a mind at all (which is by no means always the case), there are no two things more impressive and symbolical than a poet and a donkey. And the donkey was a very genuine donkey, and the poet was a very genuine poet; however lawfully he might be mistaken for the other animal at times. The interest of the donkey in the poet will never be known. The interest of the poet in the donkey was perfectly genuine; and survived even that appalling private interview in the owlish secrecy of the woods.
But I think even the poet would have been enlightened if he had seen the white, set, frantic face of the man on the driver’s seat of his vanishing motor. If he had seen it he might have remembered the name, or, perhaps, even begun to understand the nature of a certain animal which is neither the donkey nor the oyster; but the creature whom man has always found it easiest to forget, since the hour he forgot God in a Garden.
CHAPTER XV
THE SONGS OF THE CAR CLUB
More than once as the car flew through black and silver fairylands of fir wood and pine wood, Dalroy put his head out of the side window and remonstrated with the chauffeur without effect. He was reduced at last to asking him where he was going.
“I’m goin’ ’ome,” said the driver in an undecipherable voice. “I’m a goin’ ’ome to my mar.”
“And where does she live?” asked Dalroy, with something more like diffidence than he had ever shown before in his life.
“Wiles,” said the man, “but I ain’t seen ’er since I was born. But she’ll do.”
“You must realise,” said Dalroy, with difficulty, “that you may be arrested—it’s the man’s own car; and he’s left behind with nothing to eat, so to speak.”
“’E’s got ’is dornkey,” grunted the man. “Let the stinker eat ’is dornkey, with thistle sauce. ’E would if ’e was as ’ollow as I was.”