Despite the natural hubbub¹ round the wound of Lord Ivywood and the difficulties of the police in finding their way to the shore, the fugitives² of the Flying Inn must almost certainly have been captured but for a curious accident, which also flowed, as it happened, from the great Ivywood debate on Vegetarianism³.  
The comparatively late hour at which Lord Ivywood had made his discovery had been largely due to a very long speech which Joan had not heard, and which was delivered immediately before the few concluding observations she had heard from Dr. Gluck. The speech was made by an eccentric, of course. Most of those who attended, and nearly all of those who talked, were eccentric in one way or another. But he was an eccentric of great wealth and good family, an M.P., a J.P., a relation of Lady Enid, a man well known in art and letters; in short, a personality who could not be prevented from being anything he chose, from a revolutionist to a bore. Dorian Wimpole had first become famous outside his own class under the fanciful title of the Poet of the Birds. A volume of verse, expanding the several notes or cries of separate song-birds into fantastic soliloquies of these feathered philosophers, had really contained a great deal of ingenuity⁴ and elegance⁵. Unfortunately, he was one of those who always tend to take their own fancies seriously, and in whose otherwise legitimate⁶ extravagance there is too little of the juice of jest. Hence, in his later works, when he explained “The Fable⁷ of the Angel,” by trying to prove that the fowls⁸ of the air were creatures higher than man or the anthropoids, his manner was felt to be too austere⁹; and when he moved an amendment¹⁰ to Lord Ivywood’s scheme for the model village called Peaceways, urging that its houses should all follow the more hygienic architecture of nests hung in trees, many regretted that he had lost his light touch. But, when he went beyond birds and filled his poems with conjectural¹¹ psychology¹² about all the Zoological Gardens, his meaning became obscure; and Lady Susan had even described it as his bad period. It was all the more uncomfortable reading because he poured forth¹³ the imaginary hymns¹⁴, love-songs and war-songs of the lower animals, without a word of previous explanation. Thus, if someone seeking for an ordinary drawing-room song came on lines that were headed “A Desert Love Song,” and which began—
 
“Her head is high against the stars,
Her hump is heaved in pride,”
the compliment to the lady would at first seem startling, until the reader realised that all the characters in the idyll were camels. Or, if he began a poem simply entitled, “The March of Democracy,” and found in the first lines—
 
“Comrades, marching evermore,
Fix your teeth in floor and door,”
he might be doubtful about such a policy for the masses; until he discovered that it was supposed to be addressed by an eloquent¹⁵ and aspiring¹⁶ rat to the social solidarity¹⁷ of his race. Lord Ivywood had nearly quarrelled with his poetic¹⁸ relative over the uproarious realism of the verses called “A Drinking Song,” until it was carefully explained to him that the drink was water, and that the festive¹⁹ company consisted of bisons. His vision of the perfect husband, as it exists in the feelings of the young female walrus²⁰, is thoughtful and suggestive; but would doubtless receive many emendations from anyone who had experienced those feelings. And in his sonnet²¹ called “Motherhood” he has made the young scorpion²² consistent and convincing, yet somehow not wholly lovable. In justice to him, however, it should be remembered that he attacked the most difficult cases on principle, declaring that there was no earthly creature that a poet should forget.
 
He was of the blond type of his cousin, with flowing fair hair and mustache, and a bright blue, absent-minded eye; he was very well dressed in the carefully careless manner, with a brown velvet²³ jacket and the image on his ring of one of those beasts men worshipped in Egypt.
 
His speech was graceful²⁴ and well worded and enormously long, and it was all about an oyster²⁵. He passionately²⁶ protested against the suggestion of some humanitarians²⁷ who were vegetarians²⁸ in other respects, but maintained that organisms so simple might fairly be counted as exceptions. Man, he said, even at his miserable²⁹ best, was always trying to excommunicate some one citizen of the cosmos³⁰, to forget some one creature that he should remember. Now, it seemed that creature was the oyster. He gave a long account of the tragedy of the oyster, a really imaginative and picturesque³¹ account; full of fantastic fishes, and coral crags crawling and climbing, and bearded creatures streaking³² the seashore and the green darkness in the cellars of the sea.
 
“What a horrid³³ irony³⁴ it is,” he cried, “that this is the only one of the lower creatures whom we call a Native! We speak of him, and of him alone as if he were a native of the country. Whereas, indeed, he is an exile in the universe. What can be conceived more pitiful than the eternal frenzy³⁵ of the impotent amphibian³⁶? What is more terrible than the tear of an oyster? Nature herself has sealed it with the hard seal of eternity³⁷. The creature man forgets bears against him a testimony³⁸ that cannot be forgotten. For the tears of widows and of captives are wiped away at last like the tears of children. They vanish like the mists of morning or the small pools after a flood. But the tear of the oyster is a pearl.”
 
The Poet of the Birds was so excited with his own speech that, after the meeting, he walked out with a wild eye to the motor car, which had been long awaiting him, the chauffeur³⁹ giving some faint signs of relief.
 
“Toward home, for the present,” said the poet, and stared at the moon with an inspired face.
 
He was very fond of motoring, finding it fed him with inspirations; and he had been doing it from an early hour that morning, having enjoyed a slightly lessened⁴⁰ sleep. He had scarcely spoken to anybody until he spoke⁴¹ to the cultured crowd at Ivywood. He did not wish to speak to anyone for many hours yet. His ideas were racing⁴². He had thrown on a fur coat over his velvet jacket, but he let it fly open, having long forgotten the coldness in the splendour of the moonstruck night. He realised only two things: the swiftness of his car and the swiftness of his thoughts. He felt, as it were, a fury of omniscience⁴³; he seemed flying with every bird that sped or spun⁴⁴ above the woods, with every squirrel that had leapt and tumbled within them, with every tree that had swung under and sustained the blast.
 
Yet in a few moments he leaned forward and tapped the glass frontage of the car, and the chauffeur suddenly squaring his shoulders, jarringly stopped the wheels. Dorian Wimpole had just seen something in the clear moonlight by the roadside, which appealed both to this and to the other side of his tradition; something that appealed to Wimpole as well as to Dorian.
 
Two shabby looking men, one in tattered⁴⁵ gaiters and the other in what looked like the remains⁴⁶ of fancy dress with the addition of hair, of so wild a red that it looked like a wig⁴⁷, were halted under the hedge, apparently⁴⁸ loading a donkey cart. At least two rounded, rudely cylindrical⁴⁹ objects, looking more or less like tubs, stood out in the road beside the wheels, along with a sort of loose wooden post that lay along the road beside them. As a matter of fact, the man in the old gaiters had just been feeding and watering the donkey, and was now adjusting its harness more easily. But Dorian Wimpole naturally did not expect that sort of thing from that sort of man. There swelled⁵⁰ up in him the sense that his omnipotence⁵¹ went beyond the poetical⁵²; that he was a gentleman, a magistrate⁵³, an M.P. and J.P., and so on. This callousness⁵⁴ or ignorance about animals should not go on while he was a J.P.; especially since Ivywood’s last Act. He simply strode across to the stationary⁵⁵ cart and said:
 
“You are overloading⁵⁶ that animal, and it is forfeited⁵⁷. And you must come with me to the police station.”
 
Humphrey Pump, who was very considerate to animals, and had always tried to be considerate to gentlemen, in spite of having put a bullet into one of their legs, was simply too astounded⁵⁸ and distressed⁵⁹ to make any answer at all. He moved a step or two backward and stared with brown, blinking eyes at the poet, the donkey, the cask, the cheese, and the sign-board lying in the road.
 
But Captain Dalroy, with the quicker recovery of his national temperament⁶⁰, swept the poet and magistrate a vast fantastic bow and said with agreeable impudence⁶¹, “interested in donkeys, no doubt?”
 
“I am interested in all things men forget,” answered the poet, with a fine touch of pride, “but mostly in those like this, that are most easily forgotten.”
 
Somehow from those two first sentences Pump realised that these two eccentric aristocrats⁶² had unconsciously recognised each other. The fact that it was unconscious seemed, somehow, to exclude him all the more. He stirred a little the moonlit dust of the road with his rather dilapidated boots and eventually strolled across to speak to the chauffeur.
 
“Is the next police station far from here?&............