CHAPTER V THE FLY ON THE WALL
I only knew one poet in my life:
And this, or something like it, was his way.
How it strikes a Contemporary.
Three days after the inquest Denis came up to town to interview a timber merchant as to a contract about which there had been a difference of opinion. He looked down on the man through his eyeglass, carried all his points, and departed, leaving exasperation in his wake. After this, finding he had some hours to spare before he need catch his train to Bredon, he went to pay a call on his cousin Lettice.
Denis was, like his friend Gardiner, the son of a clergyman; but not of a poor country parson. Denis's father was honorary canon of Rochester and rural dean; he held a family living, and had besides a comfortable income of his own. There was some excuse for the double name. The Merions were a penniless Irish family with a pedigree derived from the ancient kings (all Irish pedigrees derive from the ancient kings). The Smith and the money had come to them together, a couple of generations back, from an eccentric old bachelor who had loved and lost one of the daughters of the house. Marrying late, Canon Merion-Smith was over fifty when his only son was born and his wife died. Denis had only a nurse to mother him, but he did not suffer; he was a very happy small boy, who from his babyhood never thought of anything but engines. He was not at all like his father, an easy-going Irishman with a strong sense of humor, but they were inseparable friends, who explored the path of knowledge hand in hand. There was no question of parental authority. Denis did what was required either because he considered it reasonable, or else to please his father, to whom the staid small boy was a perpetual fund of amusement.
Canon Merion-Smith taught his son at home till he was fourteen, and then, rather doubtfully, sent him to Rochester, whither his friend Harry Gardiner had preceded him. Doubtfully, because he was beginning to distrust his own training. He did not think Denis would be happy at school; but he had no desire to be the parent of a prig. Denis was not happy. He hated arbitrary rules; he could never get into his head that it was not his to reason why. Only Gardiner made his schooldays endurable. He stayed at Rochester till he was nearly seventeen, and then passed unexpectedly without extra coaching straight into Woolwich. He was very clever, and strikingly handsome in a thin, aristocratic way, but he thought no more of his abilities than of his good looks. Denis was proud, but he had not a trace of vanity. He was an example of the not uncommon blend of class arrogance and personal modesty.
He passed out of Woolwich first in his batch, went to Chatham, to Rangoon, saw active service in a frontier campaign—the most unhappy years of his life. He had gone into the army to please his father, but he hated discipline, and his heart was set on aeronautics. When Canon Merion-Smith died, Denis resigned his commission and devoted himself to the problems of flight. The way of inventors is hard. He lost all his own money and some of Gardiner's, who came back into his life in time to do the beloved aeroplane a service which Denis, conservative in gratitude, never forgot. He brought himself to the verge of bankruptcy. At his last sixpence he fell in with Sydney Wandesforde, a well-known motor-racing amateur, who had transferred his interest to the new sport, and was as keen on the practical side of flying as Denis on the theoretical. He had what Denis had not—a bottomless purse and family influence to back it. They joined forces, and from that time Denis's future was assured.