_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 House to-night. 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 a conspiracy--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 Mid-summer 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 mediæval 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 do it.'
''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 'em alone. 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 you my sacred word I knew
nothing about it till he asked me to come down and cover it. He had
Huckley posted in three colours, "The Geoplanarians' Annual Banquet and
Exercises." Yes, he invented "Geoplanarians." He wanted Huckley to think
it meant aeroplanes. Yes, I know that there is a real Society that
thinks the world's flat--they ought to be grateful for the lift--but Bat
made his own. He did! He created the whole show, I tell you. He swept
out half his Halls for the job. Think of that--on a Saturday! They--we
went down in motor char-à-bancs--three of 'em--one pink, one primrose,
and one forget-me-not blue--twenty people in each one and "The Earth
_is_ Flat" on each side and across the back. I went with Teddy Rickets
and Lafone from the Trefoil, and both the Silhouette Sisters, and--wait
a minute!--the Crossleigh Trio. You know the Every-Day Dramas Trio at
the Jocunda--Ada Crossleigh, "Bunt" Crossleigh, and little Victorine?
Them. And there was Hoke Ramsden, the lightning-change chap in _Morgiana
and Drexel_--and there was Billy Turpeen. Yes, you know him! The North
London Star. "I'm the Referee that got himself disliked at Blackheath."
_That_ chap! And there was Mackaye--that one-eyed Scotch fellow that all
Glasgow is crazy about. Talk of subordinating yourself for Art's sake!
Mackaye was the earnest inquirer who got converted at the end of the
meeting. And there was quite a lot of girls I didn't know, and--oh,
yes--there was 'Dal! 'Dal Benzaguen herself! We sat together, going and
coming. She's all the darling there ever was. She sent you her love, and
she told me to tell you that she won't forget about Nellie Farren. She
says you've given her an ideal to work for. She? Oh, she was the Lady
Secretary to the Geoplanarians, of course. I forget who were in the
other brakes--provincial stars mostly--but they played up gorgeously.
The art of the music-hall's changed since your day. They didn't overdo
it a bit. You see, people who believe the earth is flat don't dress
quite like other people. You may have noticed that I hinted at that in
my account. It's a rather flat-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.'
'Very good,' I began. 'I am, as you know, a one-third proprietor of
_The Bun_.'
'I didn't forget that,' Ollyett interrupted. 'That was uppermost in my
mind all the time. I've got a special account for _The Bun_ to-day--it's
an idyll--and just to show how I thought of you, I told 'Dal, coming
home, about your Gubby Dance, and she told Winnie. Winnie came back in
our char-à-banc. After a bit we had to get out and dance it in a field.
It's quite a dance the way we did it--and Lafone invented a sort of
gorilla lockstep procession at the end. Bat had sent down a film-chap on
the chance of getting something. He was the son of a clergyman--a most
dynamic personality. He said there isn't anything for the cinema in
meetings _qua_ meetings--they lack action. Films are a branch of art by
themselves. But he went wild over the Gubby. He said it was like Peter's
vision at Joppa. He took about a million feet of it. Then I photoed it
exclusive for _The Bun_. I've sent 'em in already, only remember we must
eliminate Winnie's left leg in the first figure. It's too arresting....
And there you are! But I tell you I'm afraid of Bat. That man's the
Personal Devil. He did it all. He didn't even come down himself. He said
he'd distract his people.'
'Why didn't he ask me to come?' I persisted.
'Because he said you'd distract me. He said he wanted my brains on ice.
He got 'em. I believe it's the best thing I've ever done.' He reached
for _The Cake_ and re-read it luxuriously. 'Yes, out and away the
best--supremely quotable,' he concluded, and--after another survey--'By
God, what a genius I was yesterday!'
I would have been angry, but I had not the time. That morning, Press
agencies grovelled to me in _The Bun_ office for leave to use certain
photos, which, they understood, I controlled, of a certain village
dance. When I had sent the fifth man away on the edge of tears, my
self-respect came back a little. Then there was _The Bun's_ poster to
get out. Art being elimination, I fined it down to two words (one too
many, as it proved)--'The Gubby!' in red, at which our manager
protested; but by five o'clock he told me that I was _the_ Napoleon of
Fleet Street. Ollyett's account in _The Bun_ of the Geoplanarians'
Exercises and Love Feast lacked the supreme shock of his version in _The
Cake_, but it bruised more; while the photos of 'The Gubby' (which, with
Winnie's left leg, was why I had set the doubtful press to work so
early) were beyond praise and, next day, beyond price. But even then I
did not understand.
A week later, I think it was, Bat Masquerier telephoned to me to come to
the Trefoil.
'It's your turn now,' he said. 'I'm not asking Ollyett. Come to the
stage-box.'
I went, and, as Bat's guest, was received as Royalty is not. We sat well
back and looked out on the packed thousands. It was _Morgiana and
Drexel_, that fluid and electric review which Bat--though he gave Lafone
the credit--really created.
'Ye-es,' said Bat dreamily, after Morgiana had given 'the nasty jar' to
the Forty Thieves in their forty oil 'combinations.' 'As you say, I've
got 'em and I can hold 'em. What a man does doesn't matter much; and how
he does it don't matter either. It's the _when_--the psychological
moment. 'Press can't make up for it; money can't; brains can't. A lot's
luck, but all the rest is genius. I'm not speaking about My people now.
I'm talking of Myself.'
Then 'Dal--she was the only one who dared--knocked at the door and stood
behind us all alive and panting as Morgiana. Lafone was carrying the
police-court scene, and the house was ripped up crossways with laughter.
'Ah! Tell a fellow now,' she asked me for the twentieth time, 'did you
love Nellie Farren when you were young?'
'Did we love her?' I answered. '"If the earth and the sky and the
sea"--There were three million of us, 'Dal, and we worshipped her.'
'How did she get it across?' Dal went on.
'She was Nellie. The houses used to coo over her when she came on.'
'I've had a good deal, but I've never been cooed over yet,' said 'Dal
wistfully.
'It isn't the how, it's the when,' Bat repeated. 'Ah!'
He leaned forward as the house began to rock and peal full-throatedly.
'Dal fled. A sinuous and silent procession was filing into the
police-court to a scarcely audible accompaniment. It was dressed--but
the world and all its picture-palaces know how it was dressed. It
danced and it danced, and it danced the dance which bit all humanity in
the leg for half a year, and it wound up with the lockstep finale that
mowed the house down in swathes, sobbing and aching. Somebody in the
gallery moaned, 'Oh Gord, the Gubby!' and we heard the word run like a
shudder, for they had not a full breath left among them. Then 'Dal came
on, an electric star in her dark hair, the diamonds flashing in her
three-inch heels--a vision that made no sign for thirty counted seconds
while the police-court scene dissolved behind her into Morgiana's
Manicure Palace, and they recovered themselves. The star on her forehead
went out, and a soft light bathed her as she took--slowly, slowly to the
croon of adoring strings--the eighteen paces forward. We saw her first
as a queen alone; next as a queen for the first time conscious of her
subjects, and at the end, when her hands fluttered, as a woman
delighted, awed not a little, but transfigured and illuminated with
sheer, compelling affection and goodwill. I caught the broken mutter of
welcome--the coo which is more than tornadoes of applause. It died and
rose and died again lovingly.
'She's got it across,' Bat whispered. 'I've never seen her like this. I
told her to light up the star, but I was wrong, and she knew it. She's
an artist.'
''Dal, you darling!' some one spoke, not loudly but it carried through
the house.
'Thank _you_!' 'Dal answered, and in that broken tone one heard the last
fetter riveted. 'Good evening, boys! I've just come from--now--where the
dooce was it I have come from?' She turned to the impassive files of
the Gubby dancers, and went on: 'Ah, so good of you to remind me, you
dear, bun-faced things. I've just come from the village--The Village
that Voted the Earth was Flat.'
She swept into that song with the full orchestra. It devastated the
habitable earth for the next six months. Imagine, then, what its rage
and pulse must have been at the incandescent hour of its birth! She only
gave the chorus once. At the end of the second verse, 'Are you _with_
me, boys?' she cried, and the house tore it clean away from
her--'_Earth_ was flat--_Earth_ was flat. Flat as my hat--Flatter than
that'--drowning all but the bassoons and double-basses that marked
the word.
'Wonderful,' I said to Bat. 'And it's only "Nuts in May," with
variations.'
'Yes--but _I_ did the variations,' he replied.
At the last verse she gestured to Carlini the conductor, who threw her
up his baton. She caught it with a boy's ease. 'Are you _with_ me?' she
cried once more, and--the maddened house behind her--abolished all the
instruments except the guttural belch of the double-basses on
'_Earth_'--'The Village that voted the _Earth_ was flat--_Earth_ was
flat!' It was delirium. Then she picked up the Gubby dancers and led
them in a clattering improvised lockstep thrice round the stage till her
last kick sent her diamond-hiked shoe catherine-wheeling to the
electrolier.
I saw the forest of hands raised to catch it, heard the roaring and
stamping pass through hurricanes to full typhoon; heard the song, pinned
down by the faithful double-basses as the bull-dog pins down the
bellowing bull, overbear even those; till at last the curtain fell and
Bat took me round to her dressing-room, where she lay spent after her
seventh call. Still the song, through all those white-washed walls,
shook the reinforced concrete of the Trefoil as steam pile-drivers shake
the flanks of a dock.
'I'm all out--first time in my life. Ah! Tell a fellow now, did I get it
across?' she whispered huskily.
'You know you did,' I replied as she dipped her nose deep in a beaker of
barley-water. 'They cooed over you.'