THE CHEMISTRY OF MR. CROOKE
WHEN the celebrated Hibbs next visited the shop of Crooke, that mystic
and criminologist chemist, he found the premises were impressively and
even amazingly enlarged with decorations in the eastern style. Indeed,
it would not have been too much to say that Mr. Crooke’s shop occupied
the whole of one side of a showy street in the West End; the other side
being a blank façade of public buildings. It would be no exaggeration to
say that Mr. Crooke was the only shopkeeper for some distance round. Mr.
Crooke still served in his shop, however; and politely hastened to serve
his customer with the medicine that was customary. Unfortunately, for
some reason or other, history was, in connection with this shop, only
too prone to repeat itself. And after a vague but soothing conversation
with the chemist (on the subject of vitriol and its effects on human
happiness), Mr. Hibbs experienced the acute annoyance of once more
beholding his most intimate friend, Mr. Joseph Leveson, enter the same
fashionable emporium. But, indeed, Leveson’s own annoyance was much too
acute for him to notice any on the part of Hibbs.
“Well,” he said, stopping dead in the middle of the shop, “here is a
fine confounded kettle of fish!”
It is one of the tragedies of the diplomatic that they are not allowed
to admit either knowledge or ignorance; so Hibbs looked gloomily wise;
and said, pursing his lips, “you mean the _general_ situation.”
“I mean the situation about this everlasting business of the inn-signs,”
said Leveson, impatiently. “Lord Ivywood went up specially, when his leg
was really bad, to get it settled in the House in a small
non-contentious bill, providing that the sign shouldn’t be enough if the
liquor hadn’t been on the spot three days.”
“Oh, but,” said Hibbs, sinking his voice to a soft solemnity, as being
one of the initiate, “a thing like _that_ can be managed, don’t you
know.”
“Of course it can,” said the other, still with the same slightly
irritable air. “It was. But it doesn’t seem to occur to you, any more
than it did to his lordship, that there is rather a weak point after all
in this business of passing acts quietly because they’re un-popular. Has
it ever occurred to you that if a law is really kept too quiet to be
opposed, it may also be kept too quiet to be obeyed. It’s not so easy to
hush it up from a big politician without running the risk of hushing it
up even from a common policeman.”
“But surely that can’t happen, by the nature of things?”
“Can’t it, by God,” said J. Leveson, appealing to a less pantheistic
authority.
He unfolded a number of papers from his pocket, chiefly cheap local
newspapers, but some of them letters and telegrams.
“Listen to this!” he said. “A curious incident occurred in the village
of Poltwell in Surrey yesterday morning. The baker’s shop of Mr.
Whiteman was suddenly besieged by a knot of the looser types of the
locality, who appear to have demanded beer instead of bread; basing
their claim on some ornamental object erected outside the shop; which
object they asserted to be a sign-board within the meaning of the act.
There, you see, they haven’t even heard of the new act! What do you
think of this, from the _Clapton Conservator_. ‘The contempt of
Socialists for the law was well illustrated yesterday, when a crowd,
collected round some wooden ensign of Socialism set up before Mr.
Dugdale’s Drapery Stores, refused to disperse, though told that their
action was contrary to the law. Eventually the malcontents joined the
procession following the wooden emblem.’ And what do you say to this?
‘Stop-press news. A chemist in Pimlico has been invaded by a huge crowd,
demanding beer; and asserting the provision of it to be among his
duties. The chemist is, of course, well acquainted with his immunities
in the matter, especially under the new act; but the old notion of the
importance of the sign seems still to possess the populace and even, to
a certain extent, to paralyze the police.’ What do you say to that?
Isn’t it as plain as Monday morning that this Flying Inn has flown a day
in front of us, as all such lies do?” There was a diplomatic silence.
“Well,” asked the still angry Leveson of the still dubious Hibbs, “what
do you make of all that?”
One ill-acquainted with that relativity essential to all modern minds,
might possibly have fancied that Mr. Hibbs could not make much of it.
However that may be, his explanations or incapacity for explanations,
were soon tested with a fairly positive test. For Lord Ivywood actually
walked into the shop of Mr. Crooke.
“Good day, gentlemen,” he said, looking at them with an expression which
they both thought baffling and even a little disconcerting. “Good
morning, Mr. Crooke. I have a celebrated visitor for you.” And he
introduced the smiling Misysra. The Prophet had fallen back on a
comparatively quiet costume this morning, a mere matter of purple and
orange or what not; but his aged face was now perennially festive.
“The Cause progresses,” he said. “Everywhere the Cause progresses. You
heard his lordship’s beau-uti-ful speech?”
“I have heard many,” said Hibbs, gracefully, “that can be so described.”
“The Prophet means what I was saying about the Ballot Paper Amendment
Act,” said Ivywood, casually. “It seems to be the alphabet of
statesmanship to recognise now that the great oriental British Empire
has become one corporate whole with the occidental one. Look at our
universities, with their Mohammedan students; soon they may be a
majority. Now are we,” he went on, still more quietly, “are we to rule
this country under the forms of representative government? I do not
pretend to believe in democracy, as you know, but I think it would be
extremely unsettling and incalculable to destroy representative
government. If we are to give Moslem Britain representative government,
we must not make the mistake we made about the Hindoos and military
organization—which led to the Mutiny. We must not ask them to make a
cross on their ballot papers; for though it seems a small thing, it may
offend them. So I brought in a little bill to make it optional between
the old-fashioned cross and an upward curved mark that might stand for a
crescent—and as it’s rather easier to make, I believe it will be
generally adopted.”
“And so,” said the radiant old Turk, “the little, light, easily made,
curly mark is substituted for the hard, difficult, double-made, cutting
both ways mark. It is the more good for hygi-e-ene. For you must know,
and indeed our good and wise Chemist will tell you, that the Saracenic
and the Arabian and the Turkish physicians were the first of all
physicians; and taught all medicals to the barbarians of the Frankish
territories. And many of the moost modern, the moost fashionable
remedies, are thus of the oriental origin.”
“Yes, that is quite true,” said Crooke, in his rather cryptic and
unsympathetic way, “the powder called Arenine, lately popularised by Mr.
Boze, now Lord Helvellyn, who tried it first on birds, is made of plain
desert sand. And what you see in prescriptions as _Cannabis Indiensis_
is what our lively neighbours of Asia describe more energetically as
bhang.”
“And so-o—in the sa-ame way,” said Misysra, making soothing passes with
his brown hand like a mesmerist, “in the sa-ame way the making of the
crescent is hy-gienic; the making of the cross is non-hygienic. The
crescent was a little wave, as a leaf, as a little curling feather,” and
he waved his hand with real artistic enthusiasm toward the capering
curves of the new Turkish decoration which Ivywood had made fashionable
in many of the fashionable shops. “But when you make the cross you must
make the one line _so-o_,” and he swept the horizon with the brown hand,
“and then you must go back and make the other line so-o,” and he made an
upward gesture suggestive of one constrained to lift a pine-tree. “And
then you become very ill.”
“As a matter of fact, Mr. Crooke,” said Ivywood, in his polite manner,
“I brought the Prophet here to consult you as the best authority on the
very point you have just mentioned—the use of hashish or the hemp-plant.
I have it on my conscience to decide whether these oriental stimulants
or sedatives shall come under the general veto we are attempting to
impose on the vulgar intoxicants. Of course one has heard of the
horrible and voluptuous visions, and a kind of insanity attributed to
the Assassins and the Old Man of the Mountain. But, on the one hand, we
must clearly discount much for the illimitable pro-Christian bias with
which the history of these eastern tribes is told in this country. Would
you say the effect of hashish was extremely bad?” And he turned first to
the Prophet.
“You will see mosques,” said that seer with candour, “many mosques—more
mosques—taller and taller mosques till they reach the moon and you hear
a dreadful voice in the very high mosque calling the muezzin; and you
will think it is Allah. Then you will see wives—many, many wives—more
wives than you yet have. Then you will be rolled over and over in a
great pink and purple sea—which is still wives. Then you will go to
sleep. I have only done it once,” he concluded mildly.
“And what do you think about hashish, Mr. Crooke?” asked Ivywood,
thoughtfully.
“I think it’s hemp at both ends,” said the Chemist.
“I fear,” said Lord Ivywood, “I don’t quite understand you.”
“A hempen drink, a murder, and a hempen rope. That’s my experience in
India,” said Mr. Crooke.
“It is true,” said Ivywood, yet more reflectively, “that the thing is
not Moslem in any sense in its origin. There is that against the
Assassins always. And, of course,” he added, with a simplicity that had
something noble about it, “their connection with St. Louis discredits
them rather.”
After a space of silence, he said suddenly, looking at Crooke, “So it
isn’t the sort of thing you chiefly sell?”
“No, my lord, it isn’t what I chiefly sell,” said the Chemist. He also
looked steadily, and the wrinkles of his young-old face were like
hieroglyphics.
“The Cause progress! Everywhere it progress!” cried Misysra, spreading
his arms and relieving a momentary tension of which he was totally
unaware. “The hygienic curve of the crescent will soon superimpose
himself for your plus sign. You already use him for the short syllables
in your dactyl; which is doubtless of oriental origin. You see the new
game?”
He said this so suddenly that everyone turned round, to see him produce
from his purple clothing a brightly coloured and highly polished
apparatus from one of the grand toy-shops; which, on examination, seemed
to consist of a kind of blue slate in a red and yellow frame; a number
of divisions being already marked on the slate, about seventeen slate
pencils with covers of different colours, and a vast number of printed
instructions, stating that it was but recently introduced from the
remote East, and was called Naughts and Crescents.
Strangely enough, Lord Ivywood, with all his enthusiasm, seemed almost
annoyed at the emergence of this Asiatic discovery; more especially as
he really wanted to look at Mr. Crooke, as hard as Mr. Crooke was
looking at him.
Hibbs coughed considerately and said, “Of course all our things came
from the East, and”—and he paused, being suddenly unable to remember
anything but curry; to which he was very rightly attached. He then
remembered Christianity, and mentioned that too. “Everything from the
East is good, of course,” he ended, with an air of light omniscience.
Those who in later ages and other fashions failed to understand how
Misysra had ever got a mental hold on men like Lord Ivywood, left out
two elements in the man, which are very attractive, especially to other
men. One was that there was _no_ subject on which the little Turk could
not instantly produce a theory. The other was that though the theories
were crowded, they were consistent. He was never known to accept an
illogical compliment.
“You are in error,” he said, solemnly, to Hibbs, “because you say all
things from the East are good. There is the east wind. I do not like
him. He is not good. And I think very much that all the warmth and all
the wealthiness and the colours and the poems and the religiousness that
the East was meant to give you have been much poisoned by this accident,
this east wind. When you see the green flag of the Prophet, you do not
think of a green field in Summer, you think of a green wave in your seas
of Winter; for you think it blown by the east wind. When you read of the
moon-faced houris you think not of our moons like oranges but of your
moons like snowballs—”
Here a new voice contributed to the conversation. Its contribution,
though imperfectly understood, appeared to be “Nar! Why sh’d I wite for
a little Jew in ’is dressin’ gown? Little Jews in their dressin’ gowns
’as their drinks, and we ’as our drinks. Bitter, miss.”
The speaker, who appeared to be a powerful person of the plastering
occupation, looked round for the unmarried female he had ceremonially
addressed; and seemed honestly abashed that she was not present.
Ivywood looked at the man with that expression of one turned to stone,
which his physique made so effective in him. But J. Leveson, Secretary,
could summon no such powers of self-petrification. Upon his soul the
slaughter red of that unhallowed eve arose when first the Ship and he
were foes; when he discovered that the poor are human beings, and
therefore are polite and brutal within a comparatively short space of
time. He saw that two other men were standing behind the plastering
person, one of them apparently urging him to counsels of moderation;
which was an ominous sign. And then he lifted his eyes and saw something
worse than any omen.
All the glass frontage of the shop was a cloud of crowding faces. They
could not be clearly seen, since night was closing in on the street; and
the dazzling fires of ruby and amethyst which the lighted shop gave to
its great globes of liquid, rather veiled than revealed them. But the
foremost actually flattened and whitened their noses on the glass, and
the most distant were nearer than Mr. Leveson wanted them. Also he saw a
shape erect outside the shop; the shape of an upright staff and a square
board. He could not see what was on the board. He did not need to see.
Those who saw Lord Ivywood at such moments understood why he stood out
so strongly in the history of his time, in spite of his frozen face and
his fanciful dogmas. He had all the negative nobility that is possible
to man. Unlike Nelson and most of the great heroes, he knew not fear.
Thus he was never conquered by a surprise, but was cold and collected
when other men had lost their heads even if they had not lost their
nerve.
“I will not conceal from you, gentlemen,” said Lord Ivywood, “that I
have been expecting this. I will not even conceal from you that I have
been occupying Mr. Crooke’s time until it occurred. So far from
excluding the crowd, I suggest it would be an excellent thing if Mr.
Crooke could accommodate them all in this shop. I want to tell, as soon
as possible, as large a crowd as possible that the law is altered and
this folly about the Flying Inn has ceased. Come in, all of you! Come in
and listen!”
“Thank yer,” said a man connected in some way with motor buses, who
lurched in behind the plasterer.
“Thanky, sir,” said a bright little clock-mender from Croydon, who
immediately followed him.
“Thanks,” said a rather bewildered clerk from Camberwell, who came next
in the rather bewildered procession.
“Thank you,” said Mr. Dorian Wimpole, who entered, carrying a large
round cheese.
“Thank you,” said Captain Dalroy, who entered carrying a large cask of
rum.
“Thank you very much,” said Mr. Humphrey Pump, who entered the shop
carrying the sign of “The Old Ship.”
I fear it must be recorded that the crowd which followed them dispensed
with all expressions of gratitude. But though the crowd filled the shop
so that there was no standing room to spare, Leveson still lifted his
gloomy eyes and beheld his gloomy omen. For, though there were very many
more people standing in the shop, there seemed to be no less people
looking in at the window.
“Gentlemen,” said Ivywood, “all jokes come to an end. This one has gone
so far as to be serious; and it might have become impossible to correct
public opinion, and expound to law-abiding citizens the true state of
the law, had I not been able to meet so representative an assembly in so
central a place. It is not pertinent to my purpose to indicate what I
think of the jest which Captain Dalroy and his friends have been playing
upon you for the last few weeks. But I think Captain Dalroy will himself
concede that I am not jesting.”
“With all my heart,” said Dalroy, in a manner that was unusually serious
and even sad. Then he added with a sigh, “And as you truly say, my jest
has come to an end.”
“That wooden sign,” said Ivywood, pointing at the queer blue ship, “can
be cut up for firewood. It shall lead decent citizens a devil’s dance no
more. Understand it once and for all, before you learn it from policemen
or prison warders. You are under a new law. That sign is the sign of
nothing. You can no more buy and sell alcohol by having that outside
your house, than if it were a lamp-post.”
“D’you meanter say, guv’ner,” said the plasterer, with a dawn of
intelligence on his large face which was almost awful to watch, “that I
ain’t to ’ave a glass o’ bitter?”
“Try a glass of rum,” said Patrick.
“Captain Dalroy,” said Lord Ivywood, “if you give one drop from that
cask to that man, you are breaking the law and you shall sleep in jail.”
“Are you quite sure?” asked Dalroy, with a strange sort of anxiety. “I
might escape.”
“I am quite sure,” said Ivywood. “I have posted the police with full
powers for the purpose, as you will find. I mean that this business
shall end here tonight.”
“If I find that pleeceman what told me I could ’ave a drink just now,
I’ll knock ’is ’elmet into a fancy necktie, I will,” said the plasterer.
“Why ain’t people allowed to know the law?”
“They ain’t got no right to alter the law in the dark like that,” said
the clock-mender. “Damn the new law.”
“What is the new law?” asked the clerk.
“The words inserted by the recent Act,” said Lord Ivywood, with the cold
courtesy of the Conqueror, “are to the effect that alcohol cannot be
sold, even under a lawful sign, unless alcoholic liquors have been kept
for three days on the premises. Captain Dalroy, that cask of yours has
not, I think, been three days on these premises. I command you to seal
it up and take it away.”
“Surely,” said Patrick, with an innocent air, “the best remedy would be
to wait till it _has been three days_ on the premises. We might all get
to know each other better.” And he looked round at the ever-increasing
multitude with hazy benevolence.
“You shall do nothing of the kind,” said his lordship, with sudden
fierceness.
“Well,” answered Patrick, wearily, “now I come to think of it, perhaps I
won’t. I’ll have one drink here and go home to bed like a good little
boy.”
“And the constables shall arrest you,” thundered Ivywood.
“Why, nothing seems to suit you,” said the surprised Dalroy. “Thank you,
however, for explaining the new law so clearly—‘unless alcoholic liquors
have been three days on the premises’ I shall remember it now. You
always explain such things so clearly. You only made one legal slip. The
constables will not arrest me.”
“And why not?” demanded the nobleman, white with passion.
“Because,” cried Patrick Dalroy; and his voice lifted itself like a
lonely trumpet before the charge, “because I shall not have broken the
law. Because alcoholic liquors _have_ been three days on these premises.
Three months more likely. Because this is a common grog-shop, Phillip
Ivywood. Because that man behind the counter lives by selling spirits to
all the cowards and hypocrites who are rich enough to bribe a bad
doctor.”
And he pointed suddenly at the small medicine glass on the counter by
Hibbs and Leveson.
“What is that man drinking?” he demanded.
Hibbs put out his hand hastily for his glass, but the indignant
clock-mender had snatched it first and drained it at a gulp.
“Scortch,” he said, and dashed the glass to atoms on the floor. “Right
you are too,” roared the plasterer, seizing a big medicine bottle in
each hand. “We’re goin’ to ’ave a little of the fun now, we are. What’s
in that big red bowl up there—I reckon it’s port. Fetch it down, Bill.”
Ivywood turned to Crooke and said, scarcely moving his lips of marble,
“This is a lie.”
“It is the truth,” answered Crooke, looking back at him with equal
steadiness. “Do you think you made the world, that you should make it
over again so easily?”
“The world was made badly,” said Phillip, with a terrible note in his
voice, “and _I will make it over again_.”
Almost as he spoke the glass front of the shop fell inward, shattered,
and there was wreckage among the moonlike, coloured bowls; almost as if
spheres of celestial crystal cracked at his blasphemy. Through the
broken windows came the roar of that confused tongue that is more
terrible than the elements; the cry that the deaf kings have heard at
last; the terrible voice of mankind. All the way down the long,
fashionable street, lined with the Crooke plate-glass, that glass was
crashing amid the cries of a crowd. Rivers of gold and purple wines
sprawled about the pavement.
“Out in the open!” shouted Dalroy, rushing out of the shop, sign-board
in hand, the dog Quoodle barking furiously at his heels, while Dorian
with the cheese and Humphrey with the keg followed as rapidly as they
could. “Goodnight, my lord.
“Perhaps our meeting next may fall,
At Tomworth in your castle hall.
Come along, friends, and form up. Don’t waste time destroying property.
We’re all to start now.”
“Where are we all going to?” asked the plasterer.
“We’re all going into Parliament,” answered the Captain, as he went to
the head of the crowd.
The marching crowd turned two or three corners, and at the end of the
next long street, Dorian Wimpole, who was toward the tail of the
procession, saw again the grey Cyclops tower of St. Stephens, with its
one great golden eye, as he had seen it against that pale green sunset
that was at once quiet and volcanic on the night he was betrayed by
sleep and by a friend. Almost as far off, at the head of the procession,
he could see the sign with the ship and the cross going before them like
an ensign, and hear a great voice singing—
“Men that are men again, Who goes home?
Tocsin and trumpeter! Who goes home?
The voice valedictory—who is for Victory?
Who is for Liberty? Who goes home?”
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