第5章

"It's all right," said I."Only--only it IS such a pity!""You're ill, young fellah, that's what's amiss with you," said Lord John."I thought you were queer from the first.""Your habits, sir, have not mended in these three years," said Summerlee, shaking his head."I also did not fail to observe your strange manner the moment we met.You need not waste your sympathy, Lord John.These tears are purely alcoholic.The man has been drinking.By the way, Lord John, I called you a coxcomb just now, which was perhaps unduly severe.But the word reminds me of a small accomplishment, trivial but amusing, which I used to possess.You know me as the austere man of science.Can you believe that I once had a well-deserved reputation in several nurseries as a farmyard imitator? Perhaps I can help you to pass the time in a pleasant way.Would it amuse you to hear me crow like a cock?""No, sir," said Lord John, who was still greatly offended, "it would NOT amuse me.""My imitation of the clucking hen who had just laid an egg was also considered rather above the average.Might I venture?""No, sir, no--certainly not."

But in spite of this earnest prohibition, Professor Summerlee laid down his pipe and for the rest of our journey he entertained--or failed to entertain--us by a succession of bird and animal cries which seemed so absurd that my tears were suddenly changed into boisterous laughter, which must have become quite hysterical as I sat opposite this grave Professor and saw him--or rather heard him--in the character of the uproarious rooster or the puppy whose tail had been trodden upon.Once Lord John passed across his newspaper, upon the margin of which he had written in pencil, "Poor devil! Mad as a hatter." No doubt it was very eccentric, and yet the performance struck me as extraordinarily clever and amusing.

Whilst this was going on, Lord John leaned forward and told me some interminable story about a buffalo and an Indian rajah which seemed to me to have neither beginning nor end.Professor Summerlee had just begun to chirrup like a canary, and Lord John to get to the climax of his story, when the train drew up at Jarvis Brook, which had been given us as the station for Rotherfield.

And there was Challenger to meet us.His appearance was glorious.Not all the turkey-cocks in creation could match the slow, high-stepping dignity with which he paraded his own railway station and the benignant smile of condescending encouragement with which he regarded everybody around him.If he had changed in anything since the days of old, it was that his points had become accentuated.The huge head and broad sweep of forehead, with its plastered lock of black hair, seemed even greater than before.His black beard poured forward in a more impressive cascade, and his clear grey eyes, with their insolent and sardonic eyelids, were even more masterful than of yore.

He gave me the amused hand-shake and encouraging smile which the head master bestows upon the small boy, and, having greeted the others and helped to collect their bags and their cylinders of oxygen, he stowed us and them away in a large motor-car which was driven by the same impassive Austin, the man of few words, whom I had seen in the character of butler upon the occasion of my first eventful visit to the Professor.Our journey led us up a winding hill through beautiful country.I sat in front with the chauffeur, but behind me my three comrades seemed to me to be all talking together.Lord John was still struggling with his buffalo story, so far as I could make out, while once again Iheard, as of old, the deep rumble of Challenger and the insistent accents of Summerlee as their brains locked in high and fierce scientific debate.Suddenly Austin slanted his mahogany face toward me without taking his eyes from his steering-wheel.

"I'm under notice," said he.

"Dear me!" said I.

Everything seemed strange to-day.Everyone said queer, unexpected things.It was like a dream.