E Phillips Oppenheim

A Lost Leader E Phillips Oppenheim

The two men stood upon the top of a bank bordering the rough road which led to the sea. They were listening to the lark, which had risen fluttering from their feet a moment or soago, and was circling now above their heads. Mannering, with a quiet smile, pointedupwards."There, my friend!" he exclaimed. "You can listen now to arguments more eloquent thanany which I could ever frame. That little creature is singing the true, uncorrupted song oflife. He sings of the sunshine, the buoyant air; the pure and simple joy of existence isbeating in his little heart. The things which lie behind the hills will never sadden him. Hiskingdom is here, and he is content."Borrowdean's smile was a little cynical. He was essentially of that order of men who aredwellers in cities, and even the sting of the salt breeze blowing across the marshes-marshes riven everywhere with long arms of the sea-could bring no colour to his palecheeks."Your little bird-a lark, I think you called it," he remarked, "may be a very eloquentprophet for the whole kingdom of his species, but the song of life for a bird and that for aman are surely different things!""Not so very different after all," Mannering answered, still watching the bird. "The longerone lives, the more clearly one recognizes the absolute universality of life."Borrowdean shrugged his shoulders, with a little gesture of impatience. He had left Londonat a moment when he could ill be spared, and had not travelled to this out-of-the-waycorner of the kingdom to exchange purposeless platitudes with a man whose presentattitude towards life at any rate he heartily despised. He seated himself upon a half-brokenrail, and lit a cigarette."Mannering," he said, "I did not come here to simper cheap philosophies with you like acouple of schoolgirls. I have a real live errand. I want to speak to you of great things."Mannering moved a little uneasily. He had a very shrewd idea as to the nature of thaterrand.