Rudyard Kipling's Tales of Horror and Fantasy (91 page)

   T.Ingell.

P.S. – I have seen to it that the motor vigilance to which your friends took exception has been considerably relaxed in my district.

‘What did you answer?' said Ollyett, when all our opinions had been expressed.

‘I told him I couldn't do anything in the matter. And I couldn't – then. But you'll remember to put in that foot-and-mouth paragraph. I want something to work upon.'

‘It seems to me
The Bun
has done all the work up to date,' I suggested. ‘When does
The Cake
come in?'

‘
The Cake
,'said Woodhouse, and I remembered afterwards that he spoke like a Cabinet Minister on the eve of a Budget, ‘reserves to itself the fullest right to deal with situations as they arise.'

‘Ye-eh!' Bat Masquerier shook himself out of his thoughts.

‘“Situations as they arise.” I ain't idle either. But there's no use fishing till the swim's baited. You' – he turned to Ollyett – ‘manufacture very good ground-bait… I always tell My people— What the deuce is that?'

There was a burst of song from another private dining-room across the landing. ‘It ees some ladies from the Trefoil,'the waiter began.

‘Oh, I know that. What are they singing, though?'

He rose and went out, to be greeted by shouts of applause from that merry company. Then there was silence, such as one hears in the form-room after a master's entry. Then a voice that we loved began again: ‘Here we go gathering nuts in May – nuts in May – nuts in May!'

‘It's only 'Dal – and some nuts,' he explained when he returned. ‘She says she's coming in to dessert.' He sat down, humming the old tune to himself, and till Miss Vidal Benzaguen entered, he held us speechless with tales of the artistic temperament.

We obeyed Pallant to the extent of slipping into
The Bun
a wary paragraph about cows lying down and dripping at the mouth, which might be read either as an unkind libel or, in the hands of a capable lawyer, as a piece of faithful nature-study.

‘And besides,' said Ollyett, ‘we allude to “gravid polled Angus.” I am advised that no action can lie in respect of virgin Shorthorns. Pallant wants us to come to the Housetonight. He's got us places for the Strangers' Gallery. I'm beginning to like Pallant.'

‘Masquerier seems to like you,' I said.

‘Yes, but I'm afraid of him,' Ollyett answered with perfect sincerity. ‘I am. He's the Absolutely Amoral Soul. I've never met one yet.'

We went to the House together. It happened to be an Irish afternoon, and as soon as I had got the cries and the faces a little sorted out, I gathered there were grievances in the air, but how many of them was beyond me.

‘It's all right,' said Ollyett of the trained ear. ‘They've shut their ports against – oh yes – export of Irish cattle! Foot-and-mouth disease at Ballyhellion.
I
see Pallant's idea!'

The House was certainly all mouth for the moment, but, as I could feel, quite in earnest. A Minister with a piece of typewritten paper seemed to be fending off volleys of insults. He reminded me somehow of a nervous huntsman breaking up a fox in the face of rabid hounds.

‘It's question-time. They're asking questions,' said Ollyett. ‘Look! Pallant's up.'

There was no mistaking it. His voice, which his enemies said was his one parliamentary asset, silenced the hubbub as toothache silences mere singing in the ears. He said:

‘Arising out of that, may I ask if any special consideration has recently been shown in regard to any suspected outbreak of this disease on
this
side of the Channel?'

He raised his hand; it held a noon edition of
The Bun.
We had thought it best to drop the paragraph out of the later ones. He would have continued, but something in a grey frock-coat roared and bounded on a bench opposite, and waved another
Bun.
It was Sir Thomas Ingell.

‘As the owner of the herd so dastardly implicated—' His voice was drowned in shouts of ‘Order!' – the Irish leading.

‘What's wrong?' I asked Ollyett. ‘He's got his hat on his head, hasn't he?'

‘Yes, but his wrath should have been put as a question.'

‘Arising out of that, Mr Speaker, Sirrr!' Sir Thomas bellowed through a lull, ‘are you aware that – that all this is aconspiracy – part of a dastardly conspiracy to make Huckley ridiculous – to make
us
ridiculous? Part of a deep-laid plot to make
me
ridiculous, Mr Speaker, Sir!'

The man's face showed almost black against his white whiskers, and he struck out swimmingly with his arms. His vehemence puzzled and held the House for an instant, and the Speaker took advantage of it to lift his pack from Ireland to a new scent. He addressed Sir Thomas Ingell in tones of measured rebuke, meant also, I imagine, for the whole House, which lowered its hackles at the word. Then Pallant, shocked and pained: ‘I can only express my profound surprise that in response to my simple question the honourable member should have thought fit to indulge in a personal attack. If I have in any way offended—'

Again the Speaker intervened, for it appeared that he regulated these matters.

He, too, expressed surprise, and Sir Thomas sat back in a hush of reprobation that seemed to have the chill of the centuries behind it. The Empire's work was resumed.

‘Beautiful!' said I, and I felt hot and cold up my back.

‘And now we'll publish his letter,' said Ollyett. We did – on the heels of his carefully reported outburst. We made no comment.

With that rare instinct for grasping the heart of a situation which is the mark of the Anglo-Saxon, all our contemporaries and, I should say, two-thirds of our correspondents demanded how such a person could be made more ridiculous than he had already proved himself to be. But beyond spelling his name ‘Injle,' we alone refused to hit a man when he was down.

‘There's no need,' said Ollyett. ‘The whole press is on the huckle from end to end.'

Even Woodhouse was a little astonished at the ease with which it had come about, and said as much.

‘Rot!' said Ollyett. ‘We haven't really begun. Huckley isn't news yet.'

‘What do you mean?' said Woodhouse, who had grown to have great respect for his young but by no means distant connection.

‘Mean? By the grace of God, Master Ridley, I mean to have it so that when Huckley turns over in its sleep, Reuters and the Press Association jump out of bed to cable.' Then he went off at score about certain restorations in Huckley Church which, he said – and he seemed to spend his every week-end there – had been perpetrated by the Rector's predecessor, who had abolished a ‘leper-window' or a ‘squinch-hole' (whatever these may be) to institute a lavatory in the vestry. It did not strike me as stuff for which Reuters or the Press Association would lose much sleep, and I left him declaiming to Woodhouse about a fourteenth-century font which, he said, he had unearthed in the sexton's tool-shed.

My methods were more on the lines of peaceful penetration. An odd copy, in
The Bun
's rag-and-bone library, of Hone's
Every-Day Book
had revealed to me the existence of a village dance founded, like all village dances, on Druidical mysteries connected with the Solar Solstice (which is always unchallengeable) and Midsummer Morning, which is dewy and refreshing to the London eye. For this I take no credit – Hone being a mine any one can work – but that I rechristened that dance, after I had revised it, ‘The Gubby' is my title to immortal fame. It was still to be witnessed, I wrote, ‘In all its poignant purity at Huckley, that last home of significant mediaeval survivals'; and I fell so in love with my creation that I kept it back for days, enamelling and burnishing.

‘You's better put it in,' said Ollyett at last. ‘It's time we asserted ourselves again. The other fellows are beginning to poach. You saw that thing in the
Pinnacle
about Sir Thomas's Model Village? He must have got one of their chaps down to doit.'

‘Nothing like the wounds of a friend,' I said. ‘That account of the non-alcoholic pub alone was—'

‘I liked the bit best about the white-tiled laundry and the Fallen Virgins who wash Sir Thomas's dress shirts. Our side couldn't come within a mile of that, you know. We haven't the proper flair for sexual slobber.'

That's what I'm always saying,' I retorted. ‘Leave 'emalone. The other fellows are doing our work for us now. Besides I want to touch up my “Gubby Dance” a little more.'

‘No. You'll spoil it. Let's shove it in to-day. For one thing it's Literature. I don't go in for compliments as you know, but, etc. etc.'

I had a healthy suspicion of young Ollyett in every aspect, but though I knew that I should have to pay for it, I fell to his flattery, and my priceless article on the ‘Gubby Dance'appeared. Next Saturday he asked me to bring out
The Bun
in his absence, which I naturally assumed would be connected with the little maroon side-car. I was wrong.

On the following Monday I glanced at
The Cake
at breakfast-time to make sure, as usual, of her inferiority to my beloved but unremunerative
Bun.
I opened on a heading: ‘The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat.' I read … I read that the Geoplanarian Society – a society devoted to the proposition that the earth is flat – had held its Annual Banquet and Exercises at Huckley on Saturday, when after convincing addresses, amid scenes of the greatest enthusiasm, Huckley village had decided by an unanimous vote of 438 that the earth was flat. I do not remember that I breathed again till I had finished the two columns of description that followed. Only one man could have written them. They were flawless – crisp, nervous, austere yet human, poignant, vital, arresting – most distinctly arresting – dynamic enough to shift a city – and quotable by whole sticks at a time. And there was a leader, a grave and poised leader, which tore me in two with mirth, until I remembered that I had been left out – infamously and unjustifiably dropped. I went to Ollyett's rooms. He was breakfasting, and, to do him justice, looked conscience-stricken.

It wasn't my fault,' he began. ‘It was Bat Masquerier. I swear
I
would have asked you to come if—'

‘Never mind that,' I said. ‘It's the best bit of work you've ever done or will do. Did any of it happen?'

‘Happen? Heavens! D'you think even I could have invented it?'

‘Is it exclusive to
The Cake
?'I cried.

‘It cost Bat Masquerier two thousand,' Ollyett replied. ‘D'you think he'd let any one else in on that? But I give youmy sacred word I knew nothing about it till he asked me tocome down and cover it. He had Huckley posted in threecolours, “The Geoplanarians' Annual Banquet and Exercises.”Yes, he invented “Geoplanarians”. He wanted Huckley tothink it meant aeroplanes. Yes, I know that there is a realSociety that thinks the world's flat – they ought to be gratefulfor the lift – but Bat made his own. He did! He created thewhole show, I tell you. He swept out half his Halls for the job.Think of that – on a Saturday! They – we went down in motorchar-à-bancs – three of 'em – one pink, one primrose, and oneforget-me-not-blue – twenty people in each one and “TheEarth
is
Flat” on each side and across the back. I went withTeddy Rickets and Lafone from the Trefoil, and both theSilhouette Sisters, and – wait a minute! – the Crossleigh Trio.You know the Every-Day Dramas Trio at the Jocunda – AdaCrossleigh, “Bunt” Crossleigh, and little Victorine? Them.And there was Hoke Ramsden, the lightning-change chap inMorgiana and Drexel – and there was Billy Turpeen. Yes, youknow him! The North London Star. “I'm the Referee that gothimself disliked at Blackheath.” That chap! And there wasMackaye – that one-eyed Scotch fellow that all Glasgow iscrazy about. Talk of subordinating yourself for Art's sake!Mackaye was the earnest inquirer who got converted at theend of the meeting. And there was quite a lot of girls I didn'tknow, and – oh, yes – there was 'Dal! Dal Benzaguen herself!We sat together, going and coming. She's all the darling thereever was. She sent you her love, and she told me to tell youthat she won't forget about Nellie Farren. She says you'vegiven her an ideal to work for. She? Oh, she was the LadySecretary to the Geoplanarians, of course. I forget who were inthe other brakes – provincial stars mostly – but they played upgorgeously. The art of the music-hall's changed since yourday. They didn't overdo it a bit. You see, people who believethe earth is flat don't dress quite like other people. You mayhave noticed that I hinted at that in my account. It's a ratherflat-fronted Ionic style – neo-Victorian, except for the bustles,'Dal told me – but 'Dal looked heavenly in it! So did little Victorine. And there was a girl in the blue brake – she's a provincial – but she's coming to town this winter and she'll knock 'em – Winnie Deans. Remember that! She told Huckley how she had suffered for the Cause as a governess in a rich family where they believed that the world is round, and how she threw up her job sooner than teach immoral geography. That was at the overflow meeting outside the Baptist chapel. She knocked 'em to sawdust! We must look out for Winnie … But Lafone! Lafone was beyond everything. Impact, personality – conviction – the whole bag o' tricks! He sweated conviction. Gad, he convinced
me
while he was speaking! (Him? He was President of the Geoplanarians, of course. Haven't you read my account?) It
is
an infernally plausible theory. After all, no one has actually proved the earth is round, have they?'

‘Never mind the earth. What about Huckley?'

‘Oh, Huckley got tight. That's the worst of these model villages if you let 'em smell fire-water. There's one alcoholic pub in the place that Sir Thomas can't get rid of. Bat made it his base, He sent down the banquet in two motor lorries – dinner for five hundred and drinks for ten thousand. Huckley voted all right. Don't you make any mistake about that. No vote, no dinner. A unanimous vote – exactly as I've said. At least, the Rector and the Doctor were the only dissentients. We didn't count them. Oh yes, Sir Thomas was there. He came and grinned at us through his park gates. He'll grin worse to-day. There's an aniline dye that you rub through a stencil-plate that eats about a foot into any stone and wears good to the last. Bat had both the lodge-gates stencilled “The Earth is flat!” and all the barns and walls they could get at… Oh Lord, but Huckley was drunk! We had to fill 'em up to make 'em forgive us for not being aeroplanes. Unthankful yokels! D'you realise that Emperors couldn't have commanded the talent Bat decanted on 'em? Why, 'Dal alone was … And by eight o'clock not even a bit of paper left! The whole show packed up and gone, and Huckley hoo-raying for the earth being flat.'