'I hope I'll die before they stop cooing,' said 'Dal.
'"_Earth_ was flat--_Earth_ was flat!"' Now it was more like mine-pumps
in flood.
'They'll have the house down if you don't take another,' some one
called.
'Bless 'em!' said 'Dal, and went out for her eighth, when in the face of
that cataract she said yawning, 'I don't know how _you_ feel, children,
but _I_'m dead. You be quiet.'
'Hold a minute,' said Bat to me. 'I've got to hear how it went in the
provinces. Winnie Deans had it in Manchester, and Ramsden at
Glasgow--and there are all the films too. I had rather a heavy
week-end.'
The telephones presently reassured him.
'It'll do,' said he. 'And _he_ said my home address was Jerusalem.' He
left me humming the refrain of 'The Holy City.' Like Ollyett I found
myself afraid of that man.
When I got out into the street and met the disgorging picture-palaces
capering on the pavements and humming it (for he had put the gramophones
on with the films), and when I saw far to the south the red electrics
flash 'Gubby' across the Thames, I feared more than ever.
* * * * *
A few days passed which were like nothing except, perhaps, a suspense of
fever in which the sick man perceives the searchlights of the world's
assembled navies in act to converge on one minute fragment of
wreckage--one only in all the black and agony-strewn sea. Then those
beams focussed themselves. Earth as we knew it--the full circuit of our
orb--laid the weight of its impersonal and searing curiosity on this
Huckley which had voted that it was flat. It asked for news about
Huckley--where and what it might be, and how it talked--it knew how it
danced--and how it thought in its wonderful soul. And then, in all the
zealous, merciless press, Huckley was laid out for it to look at, as a
drop of pond water is exposed on the sheet of a magic-lantern show. But
Huckley's sheet was only coterminous with the use of type among mankind.
For the precise moment that was necessary, Fate ruled it that there
should be nothing of first importance in the world's idle eye. One
atrocious murder, a political crisis, an incautious or heady
continental statesman, the mere catarrh of a king, would have wiped out
the significance of our message, as a passing cloud annuls the urgent
helio. But it was halcyon weather in every respect. Ollyett and I did
not need to lift our little fingers any more than the Alpine climber
whose last sentence has unkeyed the arch of the avalanche. The thing
roared and pulverised and swept beyond eyesight all by itself--all by
itself. And once well away, the fall of kingdoms could not have
diverted it.
Ours is, after all, a kindly earth. While The Song ran and raped it with
the cataleptic kick of 'Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,' multiplied by the West
African significance of 'Everybody's doing it,' plus twice the infernal
elementality of a certain tune in _Dona et Gamma_; when for all
practical purposes, literary, dramatic, artistic, social, municipal,
political, commercial, and administrative, the Earth _was_ flat, the
Rector of Huckley wrote to us--again as a lover of accuracy--to point
out that the Huckley vote on 'the alleged flatness of this scene of our
labours here below' was _not_ unanimous; he and the doctor having voted
against it. And the great Baron Reuter himself (I am sure it could have
been none other) flashed that letter in full to the front, back, and
both wings of this scene of our labours. For Huckley was News. _The Bun_
also contributed a photograph which cost me some trouble to fake.
'We are a vital nation,' said Ollyett while we were discussing affairs
at a Bat dinner. 'Only an Englishman could have written that letter at
this present juncture.'
'It reminded me of a tourist in the Cave of the Winds under Niagara.
Just one figure in a mackintosh. But perhaps you saw our photo?' I
said proudly.
'Yes,' Bat replied. 'I've been to Niagara, too. And how's Huckley taking
it?'
'They don't quite understand, of course,' said Ollyett. 'But it's
bringing pots of money into the place. Ever since the motor-bus
excursions were started--'
'I didn't know they had been,' said Pallant.
'Oh yes. Motor char-à-bancs--uniformed guides and key-bugles included.
They're getting a bit fed up with the tune there nowadays,'
Ollyett added.
'They play it under his windows, don't they?' Bat asked. 'He can't stop
the right of way across his park.'
'He cannot,' Ollyett answered. 'By the way, Woodhouse, I've bought that
font for you from the sexton. I paid fifteen pounds for it.'
'What am I supposed to do with it?' asked Woodhouse.
'You give it to the Victoria and Albert Museum. It is fourteenth-century
work all right. You can trust me.'
'Is it worth it--now?' said Pallant. 'Not that I'm weakening, but merely
as a matter of tactics?'
'But this is true,' said Ollyett. 'Besides, it is my hobby, I always
wanted to be an architect. I'll attend to it myself. It's too serious
for _The Bun_ and miles too good for _The Cake_.'
He broke ground in a ponderous architectural weekly, which had never
heard of Huckley. There was no passion in his statement, but mere fact
backed by a wide range of authorities. He established beyond doubt that
the old font at Huckley had been thrown out, on Sir Thomas's
instigation, twenty years ago, to make room for a new one of Bath stone
adorned with Limoges enamels; and that it had lain ever since in a
corner of the sexton's shed. He proved, with learned men to support him,
that there was only one other font in all England to compare with it. So
Woodhouse bought it and presented it to a grateful South Kensington
which said it would see the earth still flatter before it returned the
treasure to purblind Huckley. Bishops by the benchful and most of the
Royal Academy, not to mention 'Margaritas ante Porcos,' wrote fervently
to the papers. _Punch_ based a political cartoon on it; the _Times_ a
third leader, 'The Lust of Newness'; and the _Spectator_ a scholarly and
delightful middle, 'Village Hausmania.' The vast amused outside world
said in all its tongues and types: 'Of course! This is just what Huckley
would do!' And neither Sir Thomas nor the Rector nor the sexton nor any
one else wrote to deny it.
'You see,' said Ollyett, 'this is much more of a blow to Huckley than it
looks--because every word of it's true. Your Gubby dance was
inspiration, I admit, but it hadn't its roots in--'
'Two hemispheres and four continents so far,' I pointed out.
'Its roots in the hearts of Huckley was what I was going to say. Why
don't you ever come down and look at the place? You've never seen it
since we were stopped there.'
'I've only my week-ends free,' I said, 'and you seem to spend yours
there pretty regularly--with the side-car. I was afraid--'
'Oh, _that's_ all right,' he said cheerily. 'We're quite an old engaged
couple now. As a matter of fact, it happened after "the gravid polled
Angus" business. Come along this Saturday. Woodhouse says he'll run us
down after lunch. He wants to see Huckley too.'
Pallant could not accompany us, but Bat took his place.
'It's odd,' said Bat, 'that none of us except Ollyett has ever set eyes
on Huckley since that time. That's what I always tell My people. Local
colour is all right after you've got your idea. Before that, it's a mere
nuisance.' He regaled us on the way down with panoramic views of the
success--geographical and financial--of 'The Gubby' and The Song.
'By the way,' said he, 'I've assigned 'Dal all the gramophone rights of
"The Earth." She's a born artist. 'Hadn't sense enough to hit me for
triple-dubs the morning after. She'd have taken it out in coos.'
'Bless her! And what'll she make out of the gramophone rights?' I asked.
'Lord knows!' he replied. 'I've made fifty-four thousand my little end
of the business, and it's only just beginning. Hear _that_!'
A shell-pink motor-brake roared up behind us to the music on a key-bugle
of 'The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat.' In a few minutes we
overtook another, in natural wood, whose occupants were singing it
through their noses.
'I don't know that agency. It must be Cook's,' said Ollyett. 'They _do_
suffer.' We were never out of earshot of the tune the rest of the way
to Huckley.
Though I knew it would be so, I was disappointed with the actual aspect
of the spot we had--it is not too much to say--created in the face of
the nations. The alcoholic pub; the village green; the Baptist chapel;
the church; the sexton's shed; the Rectory whence the so-wonderful
letters had come; Sir Thomas's park gate-pillars still violently
declaring 'The Earth _is_ flat,' were as mean, as average, as ordinary
as the photograph of a room where a murder has been committed. Ollyett,
who, of course, knew the place specially well, made the most of it to
us. Bat, who had employed it as a back-cloth to one of his own dramas,
dismissed it as a thing used and emptied, but Woodhouse expressed my
feelings when he said: 'Is that all--after all we've done?'
'_I_ know,' said Ollyett soothingly. '"Like that strange song I heard
Apollo sing: When Ilion like a mist rose into towers." I've felt the
same sometimes, though it has been Paradise for me. But they
_do_ suffer.'
The fourth brake in thirty minutes had just turned into Sir Thomas's
park to tell the Hall that 'The _Earth_ was flat'; a knot of obviously
American tourists were kodaking his lodge-gates; while the tea-shop
opposite the lych-gate was full of people buying postcards of the old
font as it had lain twenty years in the sexton's shed. We went to the
alcoholic pub and congratulated the proprietor.
'It's bringin' money to the place,' said he. 'But in a sense you can buy
money too dear. It isn't doin' us any good. People are laughin' at us.
That's what they're doin'.... Now, with regard to that Vote of ours you
may have heard talk about....'
'For Gorze sake, chuck that votin' business,' cried an elderly man at
the door. 'Money-gettin' or no money-gettin', we're fed up with it.'
'Well, I do think,' said the publican, shifting his ground, 'I do think
Sir Thomas might ha' managed better in some things.'
'He tole me,'--the elderly man shouldered his way to the bar--'he tole
me twenty years ago to take an' lay that font in my tool-shed. He _tole_
me so himself. An' now, after twenty years, me own wife makin' me out
little better than the common 'angman!'
'That's the sexton,' the publican explained. 'His good lady sells the
postcards--if you 'aven't got some. But we feel Sir Thomas might ha'
done better.'
'What's he got to do with it?' said Woodhouse.
'There's nothin' we can trace 'ome to 'im in so many words, but we think
he might 'ave saved us the font business. Now, in regard to that votin'
business--'
'Chuck it! Oh, chuck it!' the sexton roared, 'or you'll 'ave me cuttin'
my throat at cock-crow. 'Ere's another parcel of fun-makers!'
A motor-brake had pulled up at the door and a multitude of men and
women immediately descended. We went out to look. They bore rolled
banners, a reading-desk in three pieces, and, I specially noticed, a
collapsible harmonium, such as is used on ships at sea.
'Salvation Army?' I said, though I saw no uniforms.
Two of them unfurled a banner between poles which bore the legend: 'The
Earth _is_ flat.' Woodhouse and I turned to Bat. He shook his head. 'No,
no! Not me.... If I had only seen their costumes in advance!'
'Good Lord!' said Ollyett. 'It's the genuine Society!'
The company advanced on the green with the precision of people well
broke to these movements. Scene-shifters could not have been quicker
with the three-piece rostrum, nor stewards with the harmonium. Almost
before its cross-legs had been kicked into their catches, certainly
before the tourists by the lodge-gates had begun to move over, a woman
sat down to it and struck up a hymn:
Hear ther truth our tongues are telling,
Spread ther light from shore to shore,
God hath given man a dwelling
Flat and flat for evermore.
When ther Primal Dark retreated,
When ther deeps were undesigned,
He with rule and level meted
Habitation for mankind!
I saw sick envy on Bat's face. 'Curse Nature,' he muttered. 'She gets
ahead of you every time. To think _I_ forgot hymns and a harmonium!'
Then came the chorus:
Hear ther truth our tongues are telling,
Spread ther light from shore to shore--
Oh, be faithful! Oh, be truthful!
Earth is flat for evermore.
They sang several verses with the fervour of Christians awaiting their
lions. Then there were growlings in the air. The sexton, embraced by the
landlord, two-stepped out of the pub-door. Each was trying to outroar
the other. 'Apologising in advarnce for what he says,' the landlord
shouted: 'You'd better go away' (here the sexton began to speak words).
'This isn't the time nor yet the place for--for any more o' this chat.'
The crowd thickened. I saw the village police-sergeant come out of his
cottage buckling his belt.
'But surely,' said the woman at the harmonium, 'there must be some
mistake. We are not suffragettes.'
'Damn it! They'd be a change,' cried the sexton. 'You get out of this!
Don't talk! _I_ can't stand it for one! Get right out, or we'll
font you!'
The crowd which was being recruited from every house in sight echoed the
invitation. The sergeant pushed forward. A man beside the reading-desk
said: 'But surely we are among dear friends and sympathisers. Listen to
me for a moment.'
It was the moment that a passing char-à-banc chose to strike into The
Song. The effect was instantaneous. Bat, Ollyett, and I, who by divers
roads have learned the psychology of crowds, retreated towards the
tavern door. Woodhouse, the newspaper proprietor, anxious, I presume, to
keep touch with the public, dived into the thick of it. Every one else
told the Society to go away at once. When the lady at the harmonium (I
began to understand why it is sometimes necessary to kill women) pointed
at the stencilled park pillars and called them 'the cromlechs of our
common faith,' there was a snarl and a rush. The police-sergeant checked
it, but advised the Society to keep on going. The Society withdrew into
the brake fighting, as it were, a rear-guard action of oratory up each
step. The collapsed harmonium was hauled in last, and with the perfect
unreason of crowds, they cheered it loudly, till the chauffeur slipped
in his clutch and sped away. Then the crowd broke up, congratulating all
concerned except the sexton, who was held to have disgraced his office
by having sworn at ladies. We strolled across the green towards
Woodhouse, who was talking to the police-sergeant near the park-gates.
We were not twenty yards from him when we saw Sir Thomas Ingell emerge
from the lodge and rush furiously at Woodhouse with an uplifted stick,
at the same time shrieking: 'I'll teach you to laugh, you--' but Ollyett
has the record of the language. By the time we reached them, Sir Thomas
was on the ground; Woodhouse, very white, held the walking-stick and was
saying to the sergeant:
'I give this person in charge for assault.'
'But, good Lord!' said the sergeant, whiter than Woodhouse. 'It's Sir
Thomas.'
'Whoever it is, it isn't fit to be at large,' said Woodhouse. The crowd
suspecting something wrong began to reassemble, and all the English
horror of a row in public moved us, headed by the sergeant, inside the
lodge. We shut both park-gates and lodge-door.
'You saw the assault, sergeant,' Woodhouse went on. 'You can testify I
used no more force than was necessary to protect myself. You can testify
that I have not even damaged this person's property. (Here! take your
stick, you!) You heard the filthy language he used.'
'I--I can't say I did,' the sergeant stammered.
'Oh, but _we_ did!' said Ollyett, and repeated it, to the apron-veiled
horror of the lodge-keeper's wife.
Sir Thomas on a hard kitchen chair began to talk. He said he had 'stood
enough of being photographed like a wild beast,' and expressed loud
regret that he had not killed 'that man,' who was 'conspiring with the
sergeant to laugh at him.'
''Ad you ever seen 'im before, Sir Thomas?' the sergeant asked.
'No! But it's time an example was made here. I've never seen the sweep
in my life.'
I think it was Bat Masquerier's magnetic eye that recalled the past to
him, for his face changed and his jaw dropped. 'But I have!' he groaned.
'I remember now.'
Here a writhing man entered by the back door. He was, he said, the
village solicitor. I do not assert that he licked Woodhouse's boots, but
we should have respected him more if he had and been done with it. His
notion was that the matter could be accommodated, arranged and
compromised for gold, and yet more gold. The sergeant thought so too.
Woodhouse undeceived them both. To the sergeant he said, 'Will you or
will you not enter the charge?' To the village solicitor he gave the
name of his lawyers, at which the man wrung his hands and cried, 'Oh,
Sir T., Sir T.!' in a miserable falsetto, for it was a Bat Masquerier of
a firm. They conferred together in tragic whispers.
'I don't dive after Dickens,' said Ollyett to Bat and me by the window,
'but every time _I_ get into a row I notice the police-court always
fills up with his characters.'
'I've noticed that too,' said Bat. 'But the odd thing is you mustn't
give the public straight Dickens--not in My business. I wonder why
that is.'
Then Sir Thomas got his second wind and cursed the day that he, or it
may have been we, were born. I feared that though he was a Radical he
might apologise and, since he was an M.P., might lie his way out of the
difficulty. But he was utterly and truthfully beside himself. He asked
foolish questions--such as what we were doing in the village at all, and
how much blackmail Woodhouse expected to make out of him. But neither
Woodhouse nor the sergeant nor the writhing solicitor listened. The
upshot of their talk, in the chimney-corner, was that Sir Thomas stood
engaged to appear next Monday before his brother magistrates on charges
of assault, disorderly conduct, and language calculated, etc. Ollyett
was specially careful about the language.
Then we left. The village looked very pretty in the late light--pretty
and tuneful as a nest of nightingales.
'You'll turn up on Monday, I hope,' said Woodhouse, when we reached
town. That was his only allusion to the affair.
So we turned up--through a world still singing that the Earth was
flat--at the little clay-coloured market-town with the large Corn
Exchange and the small Jubilee memorial. We had some difficulty in
getting seats in the court. Woodhouse's imported London lawyer was a man
of commanding personality, with a voice trained to convey blasting
imputations by tone. When the case was called, he rose and stated his
client's intention not to proceed with the charge. His client, he went
on to say, had not entertained, and, of course, in the circumstances
could not have entertained, any suggestion of accepting on behalf of
public charities any moneys that might have been offered to him on the
part of Sir Thomas's estate. At the same time, no one acknowledged more
sincerely than his client the spirit in which those offers had been made
by those entitled to make them. But, as a matter of fact--here he became
the man of the world colloguing with his equals--certain--er--details
had come to his client's knowledge _since_ the lamentable outburst,
which ... He shrugged his shoulders. Nothing was served by going into
them, but he ventured to say that, had those painful circumstances only
been known earlier, his client would--again 'of course'--never have
dreamed--A gesture concluded the sentence, and the ensnared Bench looked
at Sir Thomas with new and withdrawing eyes. Frankly, as they could see,
it would be nothing less than cruelty to proceed further with
this--er-unfortunate affair. He asked leave, therefore, to withdraw the
charge _in toto_, and at the same time to express his client's deepest
sympathy with all who had been in any way distressed, as his client had
been, by the fact and the publicity of proceedings which he could, of
course, again assure them that his client would never have dreamed of
instituting if, as he hoped he had made plain, certain facts had been
before his client at the time when.... But he had said enough. For his
fee it seemed to me that he had.
Heaven inspired Sir Thomas's lawyer--all of a sweat lest his client's
language should come out--to rise up and thank him. Then, Sir
Thomas--not yet aware what leprosy had been laid upon him, but grateful
to escape on any terms--followed suit. He was heard in interested
silence, and people drew back a pace as Gehazi passed forth.
'You hit hard,' said Bat to Woodhouse afterwards. 'His own people think
he's mad.'
'You don't say so? I'll show you some of his letters to-night at
dinner,' he replied.
He brought them to the Red Amber Room of the Chop Suey. We forgot to be
amazed, as till then we had been amazed, over the Song or 'The Gubby,'
or the full tide of Fate that seemed to run only for our sakes. It did
not even interest Ollyett that the verb 'to huckle' had passed into the
English leader-writers' language. We were studying the interior of a
soul, flash-lighted to its grimiest corners by the dread of 'losing its
position.'
'And then it thanked you, didn't it, for dropping the case?' said
Pallant.
'Yes, and it sent me a telegram to confirm.' Woodhouse turned to Bat.
'Now d'you think I hit too hard?' he asked.
'No-o!' said Bat. 'After all--I'm talking of every one's business
now--one can't ever do anything in Art that comes up to Nature in any
game in life. Just think how this thing has--'
'Just let me run through that little case of yours again,' said Pallant,
and picked up _The Bun_ which had it set out in full.
'Any chance of 'Dal looking in on us to-night?' Ollyett began.
'She's occupied with her Art too,' Bat answered bitterly. 'What's the
use of Art? Tell me, some one!' A barrel-organ outside promptly pointed
out that the _Earth_ was flat. 'The gramophone's killing street organs,
but I let loose a hundred-and-seventy-four of those hurdygurdys twelve
hours after The Song,' said Bat. 'Not counting the Provinces.' His face
brightened a little.
'Look here!' said Pallant over the paper. 'I don't suppose you or those
asinine J.P.'s knew it--but your lawyer ought to have known that you've
all put your foot in it most confoundedly over this assault case.'
'What's the matter?' said Woodhouse.
'It's ludicrous. It's insane. There isn't two penn'orth of legality in
the whole thing. Of course, you could have withdrawn the charge, but the
way you went about it is childish--besides being illegal. What on earth
was the Chief Constable thinking of?'
'Oh, he was a friend of Sir Thomas's. They all were for that matter,' I
replied.
'He ought to be hanged. So ought the Chairman of the Bench. I'm talking
as a lawyer now.'
'Why, what have we been guilty of? Misprision of treason or compounding
a felony--or what?' said Ollyett.
'I'll tell you later.' Pallant went back to the paper with knitted
brows, smiling unpleasantly from time to time. At last he laughed.
'Thank you!' he said to Woodhouse. 'It ought to be pretty useful--for
us.'
'What d'you mean?' said Ollyett.
'For our side. They are all Rads who are mixed up in this--from the
Chief Constable down. There must be a Question. There must be a
Question.'
'Yes, but I wanted the charge withdrawn in my own way,' Woodhouse
insisted.
'That's nothing to do with the case. It's the legality of your silly
methods. You wouldn't understand if I talked till morning,' He began to
pace the room, his hands behind him. 'I wonder if I can get it through
our Whip's thick head that it's a chance.... That comes of stuffing the
Bench with radical tinkers,' he muttered.
'Oh, sit down!' said Woodhouse.
'Where's your lawyer to be found now?' he jerked out.
'At the Trefoil,' said Bat promptly. 'I gave him the stage-box for
to-night. He's an artist too.'
'Then I'm going to see him,' said Pallant. 'Properly handled this ought
to be a godsend for our side.' He withdrew without apology.
'Certainly, this thing keeps on opening up, and up,' I remarked inanely.
'It's beyond me!' said Bat. 'I don't think if I'd known I'd have
ever ... Yes, I would, though. He said my home address was--'
'It was his tone--his tone!' Ollyett almost shouted. Woodhouse said
nothing, but his face whitened as he brooded.
'Well, any way,' Bat went on, 'I'm glad I always believed in God and
Providence and all those things. Else I should lose my nerve. We've put
it over the whole world--the full extent of the geographical globe. We
couldn't stop it if we wanted to now. It's got to burn itself out. I'm
not in charge any more. What d'you expect'll happen next. Angels?'
I expected nothing. Nothing that I expected approached what I got.
Politics are not my concern, but, for the moment, since it seemed that
they were going to 'huckle' with the rest, I took an interest in them.
They impressed me as a dog's life without a dog's decencies, and I was
confirmed in this when an unshaven and unwashen Pallant called on me at
ten o'clock one morning, begging for a bath and a couch.
'Bail too?' I asked. He was in evening dress and his eyes were sunk feet
in his head.
'No,' he said hoarsely. 'All night sitting. Fifteen divisions. 'Nother
to-night. Your place was nearer than mine, so--' He began to undress
in the hall.
When he awoke at one o'clock he gave me lurid accounts of what he said
was history, but which was obviously collective hysteria. There had been
a political crisis. He and his fellow M.P.'s had 'done things'--I never
quite got at the things--for eighteen hours on end, and the pitiless
Whips were even then at the telephones to herd 'em up to another
dog-fight. So he snorted and grew hot all over again while he might have
been resting.
'I'm going to pitch in my question about that miscarriage of justice at
Huckley this afternoon, if you care to listen to it,' he said. 'It'll be
absolutely thrown away--in our present state. I told 'em so; but it's my
only chance for weeks. P'raps Woodhouse would like to come.'
'I'm sure he would. Anything to do with Huckley interests us,' I said.
'It'll miss fire, I'm afraid. Both sides are absolutely cooked. The
present situation has been working up for some time. You see the row was
bound to come, etc. etc.,' and he flew off the handle once more.
I telephoned to Woodhouse, and we went to the House together. It was a
dull, sticky afternoon with thunder in the air. For some reason or
other, each side was determined to prove its virtue and endurance to the
utmost. I heard men snarling about it all round me. 'If they won't spare
us, we'll show 'em no mercy,' 'Break the brutes up from the start. They
can't stand late hours.' 'Come on! No shirking! I know _you've_ had a
Turkish bath,' were some of the sentences I caught on our way. The House
was packed already, and one could feel the negative electricity of a
jaded crowd wrenching at one's own nerves, and depressing the
afternoon soul.
'This is bad!' Woodhouse whispered. 'There'll be a row before they've
finished. Look at the Front Benches!' And he pointed out little personal
signs by which I was to know that each man was on edge. He might have
spared himself. The House was ready to snap before a bone had been
thrown. A sullen minister rose to reply to a staccato question. His
supporters cheered defiantly. 'None o' that! None o' that!' came from
the Back Benches. I saw the Speaker's face stiffen like the face of a
helmsman as he humours a hard-mouthed yacht after a sudden following
sea. The trouble was barely met in time. There came a fresh, apparently
causeless gust a few minutes later--savage, threatening, but futile. It
died out--one could hear the sigh--in sudden wrathful realisation of
the dreary hours ahead, and the ship of state drifted on.
Then Pallant--and the raw House winced at the torture of his
voice--rose. It was a twenty-line question, studded with legal
technicalities. The gist of it was that he wished to know whether the
appropriate Minister was aware that there had been a grave miscarriage
of justice on such and such a date, at such and such a place, before
such and such justices of the peace, in regard to a case which arose--
I heard one desperate, weary 'damn!' float up from the pit of that
torment. Pallant sawed on--'out of certain events which occurred at the
village of Huckley.'
The House came to attention with a parting of the lips like a hiccough,
and it flashed through my mind.... Pallant repeated, 'Huckley. The
village--'
'That voted the _Earth_ was flat.' A single voice from a back Bench sang
it once like a lone frog in a far pool.
'_Earth_ was flat,' croaked another voice opposite.
'_Earth_ was flat.' There were several. Then several more.
It was, you understand, the collective, overstrained nerve of the House,
snapping, strand by strand to various notes, as the hawser parts from
its moorings.
'The Village that voted the _Earth_ was flat.' The tune was beginning to
shape itself. More voices were raised and feet began to beat time. Even
so it did not occur to me that the thing would--
'The Village that voted the _Earth_ was flat!' It was easier now to see
who were not singing. There were still a few. Of a sudden (and this
proves the fundamental instability of the cross-bench mind) a
cross-bencher leaped on his seat and there played an imaginary
double-bass with tremendous maestro-like wagglings of the elbow.
The last strand parted. The ship of state drifted out helpless on the
rocking tide of melody.
'The Village that voted the _Earth_ was flat!
The Village that voted the _Earth_ was flat!'
The Irish first conceived the idea of using their order-papers as
funnels wherewith to reach the correct '_vroom--vroom_' on '_Earth_.'
Labour, always conservative and respectable at a crisis, stood out
longer than any other section, but when it came in it was howling
syndicalism. Then, without distinction of Party, fear of constituents,
desire for office, or hope of emolument, the House sang at the tops and
at the bottoms of their voices, swaying their stale bodies and
epileptically beating with their swelled feet. They sang 'The Village
that voted the _Earth_ was flat': first, because they wanted to, and
secondly--which is the terror of that song--because they could not stop.
For no consideration could they stop.
Pallant was still standing up. Some one pointed at him and they laughed.
Others began to point, lunging, as it were, in time with the tune. At
this moment two persons came in practically abreast from behind the
Speaker's chair, and halted appalled. One happened to be the Prime
Minister and the other a messenger. The House, with tears running down
their cheeks, transferred their attention to the paralysed couple. They
pointed six hundred forefingers at them. They rocked, they waved, and
they rolled while they pointed, but still they sang. When they weakened
for an instant, Ireland would yell: 'Are ye _with_ me, bhoys?' and they
all renewed their strength like Antaeus. No man could say afterwards
what happened in the Press or the Strangers' Gallery. It was the House,
the hysterical and abandoned House of Commons that held all eyes, as it
deafened all ears. I saw both Front Benches bend forward, some with
their foreheads on their despatch-boxes, the rest with their faces in
their hands; and their moving shoulders jolted the House out of its last
rag of decency. Only the Speaker remained unmoved. The entire press of
Great Britain bore witness next day that he had not even bowed his head.
The Angel of the Constitution, for vain was the help of man, foretold
him the exact moment at which the House would have broken into 'The
Gubby.' He is reported to have said: 'I heard the Irish beginning to
shuffle it. So I adjourned.' Pallant's version is that he added: 'And I
was never so grateful to a private member in all my life as I was to
Mr. Pallant.'
He made no explanation. He did not refer to orders or disorders. He
simply adjourned the House till six that evening. And the House
adjourned--some of it nearly on all fours.
I was not correct when I said that the Speaker was the only man who did
not laugh. Woodhouse was beside me all the time. His face was set and
quite white--as white, they told me, as Sir Thomas Ingell's when he
went, by request, to a private interview with his Chief Whip.