GYPSY AND GINGER’S FRIENDS]
“It was you,” said Gypsy, “who contradicted the rumour that the Kilburn
Tennis-club was to re-roof itself in Horsham Slate?”
“The most beautiful of all roofings, sir. Yes, it was I.”
“It was you,” said Gypsy, “who refuted the suggestion that the
Noncomformist Chapels should return to Ancient Greece----”
“In the matter of architecture, sir. That also was I.”
“It was you,” continued Gypsy, “who denied the unfounded report
that the tops of the Whitechapel Shelters were to be converted into
Hanging-Gardens.”
“Myself, sir, and no other.”
“Who said there _were_ to be Hanging-Gardens in Whitechapel?” asked
Gypsy.
“Nobody, sir.”
“Then why do you say there are _not_ to be?”
“Well, it’s true, sir, isn’t it?”
“It’s so true,” said Gypsy, “that why waste paint on it?”
“Because,” said the ex-Professor, “no truth can resist persistent
denial for ever. That is--yes, I fear I am getting mixed. But have
you not observed how the newspapers will frequently force a statement
on you, or at least lodge a suspicion in you, by contradicting some
rumour of which you’ve never heard until they say it isn’t true? The
affirmation was negative, the denial is positive. When they’ve denied
it long enough, day after day, in every column from the Leaders to the
Book Reviews, it becomes an unshakeable fact. I am at present devoting
my life to establishing rumours by denying them. Once public opinion
swallows them, the rest is automatic. I have energetically denied the
rumour, for instance, of a Red Noah’s Ark in Bermondsey. It would cheer
Bermondsey greatly. And before long I really hope to see in Whitechapel
those Hanging Gardens, which, as I have repeatedly stated, are not for
one instant under consideration by anybody.”
“What a tophole idea!” said Gypsy.
“The credit is not all mine, sir,” said the ex-Professor. “Let us give
the newspapers their due. Contradicting the Rumour is one of the more
modern accomplishments, and smacks of modern manners; in other days we
should have preferred Dallying with the Notion, but we cannot look for
the old-world polish in the newspaper of to-day. If it has not the
culture of the Eighteenth Century, it does not lack dexterity; and in
the art of Forcing the Statement it is as deft as a conjuror with a
pack of cards. Yet--a vulgar art!” The ex-Professor sighed. “I never
taught it myself.”
“What _did_ you teach?” asked Ginger curiously.
“A hundred activities and accomplishments which are now treated in the
most perfunctory fashion, madam. Have you ever, may I ask, Risen to the
Occasion?”
“Never,” said Ginger.
“I’ve tried to,” said Gypsy. “It seldom came off.”
“And why? You had never studied it, sir. It is an acquired art which
in theory should be taught in the schoolroom, in practice in the
gymnasium. How,” he continued with fire, “without our Text-books and
Classes can we perfect ourselves in the arts which make life replete
with _finesse_? How many of us are conversant with the most graceful
way of Receiving an Impression? For the most part we Receive our
Impressions anyhow, at haphazard. We should Receive them as we would
our guests. Again which of us can really felicitously Rejoice in the
Name of--Alfred, or Ernest, or Harriet, as the case may be? The human
being does not live who cannot be said to Rejoice in some such Name.
But does he? Does he, in fact, know how? Of course he does not; he was
never taught how. It took me years of toil before I could Rejoice in
the Name of Valentine. My first attempts were gauche. But I succeeded
at last.”
“_We_ Rejoice in _our_ Names,” said Ginger, and told him them.
His eye brightened. “Who would not Rejoice in such Names? There is
a tongue in the cheek of either of them. But I take it they are not
Baptismal?”
“Does that affect the question?” asked Gypsy.
“To a certain extent (and let us not be callous--some Questions are
so easily Affected, although others, of sterner calibre, have to be
Begged),” said the ex-Professor. “No, it is chiefly in the Names
bestowed on us by M or N, that we are said to Rejoice. It can often
only be done with an effort.
“What we need,” said the ex-Professor ardently, “is expert guidance on
all those subtleties which we are asked to do by intuition: as though
one could Jazz, or Throw the Discobolus, by intuition! Repeatedly
the Social Code requires you to Contain Yourself, a thing possibly
to be achieved by a stern suppressive course of Somebody’s System,
but whose? What branch of physical training will develop in us the
muscular fitness needed in Exercising the Prerogative and Adhering
to the Principle? What Polytechnic offers us a course of instruction
in Drawing the Comparison, Creating the Precedent, Improving the
Hour, Making Good? Who will educate us in the fine shades of those
more negative accomplishments, Ignoring the Facts, Withdrawing the
Confidence, and Leaving Well Alone? And It! there’s so much to be
done with It! A three years’ course might be devoted alone to Turning
It Over, Letting It Slide, Cutting It Fine, Making the Best of It,
Overdoing It, Chancing It, Chucking It....
“I look forward to the day when these things shall be the staple
subjects of our Board Schools, Intellectually and Athletically; when,
after a concentrated hour spent in class Accounting for Tastes or
Changing the Opinion, the children shall troop jollily across the
asphalte playground Leaping at Conclusions, Dodging the Question, and
Casting the Doubt. Here a group of merry girls are Going to Extremes,
yonder a band of breathless boys are Stopping at Nothing. Further off
the School Glutton is greedily Eating his Words or Chewing the Cud
of Thought, while the School Miser is bent on Doing It for Two Pins
and Profiting by the Example. In a secluded corner, alas! the School
Bully will frequently be found Twisting a Meaning, Stifling an Oath, or
Strangling a Conviction, for boys will be boys, and Human Nature does
not change. And perhaps it never will until an accomplishment common to
half mankind has been eliminated, and we cease to be born past-masters
and mistresses in Believing the Worst.”
“Don’t be downhearted,” said Ginger optimistically; “there’s always the
other half of mankind, you know.”
“I am indebted to you, dear madam,” said the ex-Professor, “for
reminding me of it.”
“Used you really to teach all these things?” asked Gypsy.
“For a short while only. I endeavoured to interest the Board of
Education, but forty years later the War came along too soon.
Instantly all the Boards in England became exclusively composed of
Recruiting-Sergeants, to whom but one of my arts appealed--that of
Calling up the Old Reminiscence. It was my ruin.”
He sighed; then hastily bowed right and left once more, and rose up
smiling.
“We waste time,” he said. “We might have been Contradicting Rumours
this hour gone by. Believe me, the roofs of corrugated London shall yet
be beautified.”
“And why should it stop there?” cried Ginger with enthusiasm. “Once we
begin to Contradict Rumours, there’s simply no limit to what we can
deny. When the Freedom of the Flowers is fully established I shall take
this up with you. Why, in time we might reform all London!”
[Illustration: GYPSY AND GINGER REFORM LONDON]
Ginger was as good as her word. And as her word was always good enough
for Gypsy, he added his efforts to hers in Contradicting Rumours with
all his might. One by one they enlisted their friends in the scheme,
at first directing their efforts, but soon leaving them to their own
devices. Except Rags, who followed Ginger about like a little dog. The
wires from the released roses had all been given to Rags, who swore he
had a use for them; and he evidently had, for he got a brand-new pair
of second-hand boots on the strength of them. So he had no compunction
in letting him tramp the streets with her at night.
Her first idea was to do something for the Orphans. As she said
shuddering to the little man, “Those hats, Rags!”
So one morning London awoke to find placards to this effect on every
Orphan Asylum in and round the town:
WE CANNOT IMAGINE WHENCE THE FABRICATION AROSE THAT ORPHANS ARE TO
WEAR LIBERTY HATS THIS SUMMER
This idea was presented daily to London just at the moment when she had
begun to digest the possibility of a substitute for Corrugated Iron.
Indeed, some rather beautiful timbered roofs were already under way in
Hackney, and Turnham Green was discussing the relative merits of thatch
_versus_ tiles. Whitechapel too had cottoned to the notion of Hanging
Gardens. The Cabmen’s Shelters were becoming positive bowers, as the
ex-Professor reported with great satisfaction at the Weatherhouse,
where everybody assembled regularly at daybreak to discuss the next
night’s plan of action.
Ginger was overjoyed. “What a delightful sight it must be,” she said,
“to see the Cabmen hanging in the Gardens, as they drink their
gingerbeer.”
“And dream of Babylon,” added Gypsy.
“_Quite_ so,” said the Taxi-Man.
The scheme succeeded from the first. Ginger and Rags had not much
trouble with the Orphans. They had not even to wait for Public Opinion;
the Orphan Asylums themselves soon saw no reason why the above
Fabrication should remain one.
On the day the Orphans began to troop through London in graceful hats
with coloured scarves and happy faces, the Public was confronted
everywhere with this announcement (Gypsy’s):
NO! IT IS _NOT_ TRUE THAT THE MEMBERS OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE ARE
GIVING A BEANFEAST TO ALL THE POOR CHILDREN IN BETHNAL GREEN
This took more doing. But nine days of incessant repudiation got on the
Members’ nerves. They began to find it difficult to look strangers in
the eye. They began to observe how studiously their friends refrained
from references to Bethnal Green in their presence. They began to feel
that they were shabby fellows. And hang it all! _why_ wasn’t it true
that they were giving a Beanfeast to the Children of Bethnal Green? why
_shouldn’t_ they give a Beanfeast if they wanted to?
In the end Bethnal Green got such a Beanfeast as it had never dreamed
of in all its young life.
After this the surprises came fast and thick. Under the obstinate
influence of contradiction, the owners of almond and pink may trees in
red-brick houses transferred these voluntarily to the front gardens of
dwellers in white or grey stone houses. The aesthetic advantage would
not be visible till next spring, but London was beginning to be endowed
with a sense of vision.
There were also immediate reforms in the front gardens, whose
beds defied at last the rigid and time-dishonoured conscription of
marguerite, geranium, and lobelia. It was the dawn of a floral era
wilder, more exquisite, and much more experimental.
And Society ceased to wear Humming-birds in its Hats--this was perhaps
Ginger’s greatest triumph. It was a stiff battle. After heavy nights
of repudiation she would come back to the Weatherhouse such a rag,
that even her devoted little follower couldn’t have sold her at a
penny a pound. But she won at last. She had two strong posters on the
subject; one denying strenuously that feathers were old-fashioned,
the other ridiculing the suggestion that a strip of gaily-embroidered
house flannel, frayed and fringed, was Millinery’s _Dernier Cri_. It
attracted the attention of LOUISE, who immediately exhibited a model
on these lines in her windows. The Duchesses fell to it, and the
Humming-Birds were saved.
As I said, Gypsy and Ginger allowed their friends to follow their own
fancies.
WHAT MISINFORMED PERSON HAS BEEN
SPREADING THE REPORT THAT SHRIMPS AND
LOBSTERS ARE TO CHANGE PRICES
EVERY OTHER DAY
ran Rags’ best effort (Ginger helped him with the spelling).
A FALSE WHISPER HAS GOT ABROAD THAT THE
BENCHES AS WELL AS THE WICKET-KEEPERS IN
LORD’S CRICKET GROUND ARE TO BE
PADDED THIS SEASON
(This was the Taxi-Man’s.)
WE HAVE IT ON THE VERY BEST AUTHORITY
THAT OLIVE AND MYRTLE TREES WILL
NOT BE PLANTED FROM END TO END
OF THE CITY ROAD
(Tonio.)
THE ANNOUNCEMENT THAT SKY-ROCKETS ARE TO BE
LET OFF EVERY SATURDAY NIGHT ON STREATHAM
COMMON CAN OBVIOUSLY ONLY BE REGARDED
AS A PRACTICAL JOKE
(The Balloon Woman.)
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?
(asked the Pavement Artist--)
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FABULOUS ASSERTION
THAT THE LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA WILL
PERFORM DURING THE LUNCHEON HOUR AT
SAM ISAAC’S FISH-SHOPS?
One after another these seeds bore fruit--and as many other seeds, all
bearing on the comfort or the gaiety of the Metropolis.
It was the Punch-and-Judy Man who, affected by the weariness of the
City Clerks waiting an hour in queue to book their tickets in the
Tubes, induced Madame Clara Butt, Sir Harry Lauder, and Mdlle. Adeline
Genée, to attend the principal stations at going-home time, and relieve
the tedium with song and dance. It only wanted suggesting to these
kind-hearted artists that nobody expected such a thing of them. They
responded at once.
It was a still greater surprise when Sir Joseph Lyons, after Jeremy’s
emphatic assertion to the contrary, opened a Free-Penny-Bun-Shop on
the Embankment for children under twelve with an income of less than
Twopence a Week.
London was becoming a really beautiful place to live in.
[Illustration: GYPSY AND GINGER’S FRIENDS
10: THE POLICEMAN]
But while the General Public grew daily more responsive to the
nocturnal suggestions of Gypsy, Ginger, and their friends, the
Authorities began to take alarm. Reforms were occurring at a pace which
made them giddy. And London was acquiring a taste for Initiative which
bothered them. Initiative was their feudal prerogative. They had given
it a good run for its money in 1066, and now, like an old blind petted
house-dog, kept it tenderly on the Westminster hearthrug, and gave it
soft sops for its aged gums. Yet somehow this summer it had escaped and
run amok: they heard it barking like a young pup, and saw it wag its
tail in every street. And wherever it went London voluntarily arrayed
herself in Couleur de Rose. The Authorities had always preferred her in
the stronger tone of Red Tape. They had been saying to her for so many
years, “Red is your Colour, dear,” that she nearly believed it, and
they did quite.
So they sent to Scotland Yard for a Policeman, and gave him a Roving
Commission. Policemen are generally born to their Beat; it is extremely
difficult to disattach any of these men from his walk in life, and,
in the older Constabulary families, where the Beat is entailed, it
is impossible. But now and again a Younger Son is born for whom it
is awkward to provide. One of these was hanging around the Yard that
summer, and it was he who was told off to perambulate London at his
own free will, and discover the conspiracy that was turning sacred
institutions topsy-turvy. At head-quarters the conspirators were
registered as The Moonshiners.
Lionel was enchanted with his job.
It was Gypsy who was the first to scent a public danger at large in
lamplit London. The Regular Policeman is not the public danger you
might suppose. He goes like a metronome, and you have only to time his
beat. Between his two appearances practically anything can be done. But
the Roving Constable is another question altogether. At any moment he
may take you by surprise, like a rainbow in April.
He took Gypsy by surprise outside a baker’s shop in Kentish Town,
opposite a Bus-stop. That night Gypsy was making a round of the
Bus-stops, denying a rumour that Moving Staircases were being
contemplated by the Omnibus Companies to Save the Conductresses’ Feet.
Gypsy had just let the Regular Policeman go by, and was about to paint
his sign in peacock blues and greens on the baker’s window, when Lionel
tapped him on the shoulder.
“Wot are you doing here?” said Lionel. It is the first question given
under the heading “Burglars” in the _Policeman’s Guide to Conversation_.
Gypsy was used to taking situations in at glances. He instantly saw
that the whole fabric of the Moonshiners was threatened, and he
answered with great presence of mind,
“I am trying to steal a plum cake.”
“Wot for?” said Lionel.
“Because I could do with it,” said Gypsy engagingly. And it was true.
Gypsy never paused to consider his interior without discovering that he
could do with plum cake.
“’Ow were you thinking of stealing it?” asked Lionel.
“I was going to try to smash the window,” said Gypsy.
“I’m serprised at you,” said Lionel sternly. “Think of the row you’d
’ave made, and everybody tired out wanting their night’s rest.”
“I should have tried to smash it quietly,” said Gypsy.
“I’m serprised at you,” said Lionel still more sternly. “You might ’ave
cut your pore ’and.”
He put his own hand in his pocket and gave Gypsy sixpence. “Now don’t
you go making no more disturbances,” he said. “There’s a coffee stall
up the street, second on the left. Move on.”
“Robert,” said Gypsy warmly, “where do you live?”
“Winchester Mews, N.W. 3,” said Lionel, “and my name’s Lionel. Move on.”
“It’s no name for the Beaten Track,” said Gypsy thoughtfully.
“I don’t follow no Beaten Track,” said Lionel. “All London’s my Beat,
and the Moonshiners is my mark. And as sure as my name’s wot it is, one
of these fine nights I’ll run ’em to earth.”
“Wouldn’t it be better,” said Gypsy, looking at the moon, “to run them
to heaven?”
“Wot do you take me for?” asked Lionel with dignity. “A member of the
Air-Force? Move on.”
Gypsy moved on, drank his coffee and ate his slab of cake in Lionel’s
name, and hurried back to do his sign. But instead of saying “The
Conductresses’ Feet” it now said,
THE CONDUCTRESSES’ POOR FEET
This human note (due entirely to Lionel) touched the General Omnibus
Co.’s heart, and it convened a Board-Meeting on the spot. But long
before that Gypsy had hastened home and conveyed the tidings to his
fellow-conspirators. He was always a little excitable in telling a
tale, and he swore that as Lionel left him he threw behind him on
the pavement the shadow, not of a man, but of Scotland Yard, which
by some trick of the moon with a cloud changed to the shadow of a
Handley-Page, and finally spread itself to the semblance of a flying
angel.
Mrs. Green said, “You and your fancies, nonsense!”
But the Night Watchman said, “Of course. A human being can throw any
shadow he pleases, or doesn’t please. If you want to know a man, look
at his shadow by moonlight.”
Everybody began at once to look at everybody else’s shadow, and to hide
his own; and for a little while the shadows flickered over Trafalgar
Square like flowers in the wind, and birds on the wing, and swimming
fish. Just as you thought you had a man he would slip his shadow into
that of Nelson, or a Lion, or a Church, or a Hotel, or the National
Gallery, and you lost him. Shadow Hide-and-Seek became rather a
favourite pastime round the Weatherhouse after this.
But to-night the Taxi-Man soon called them to order.
“Enough of shadows,” he commanded. “We’re up against a danger, and it’s
got to be tackled. If our work’s to go on, Lionel must be diddled.”
“But who’s to diddle him?” asked Ginger.
“The Picadilly Flower-Girls,” said the Taxi-Man.
[Illustration: GYPSY AND GINGER’S FRIENDS
11. The Piccadilly Flower Girls]
The Piccadilly Flower-Girls were fascinating people with fragrant
names like Lily, Rose and Violet. It was these damsels, or their
grand-mothers, whom the Taxi-Man declared he had delivered from dragons
during the Discovery of London. They would, he said, do anything for
him.
“Out of sheer gratitude?” asked Ginger.
“Not a bit of it,” said the Taxi-Man. “Out of sheer joy. And if Lionel
can resist ’em, he’s not the Roving Policeman I take him to be.”
“Lionel mustn’t be hurt,” said Gypsy. “I love Lionel, and if the
pillar-box runs to it I’m going to leave a Buszard Cake on his
Winchester Mews doorstep to-morrow. It will be a plum cake with almond
icing, and I shall have it frosted an inch thick, with pink sugar
doves, and LIONEL done on it in silver balls, like bits of quicksilver
on the carpet when you break the puzzle by accident.”
“I used to break it on purpose,” said Ginger. “Mother always said I
mustn’t eat them.”
“Good gracious, I should think not!” said Gypsy.
“I mean the silver balls,” said Ginger. “I don’t know why, but I was
never allowed to eat the silver balls till I was ten years old.”
“She was afraid of you choking,” said Mrs. Green.
“I knows a perfickly wunnerful cure for hiccups,” mentioned Rags.
“Don’t tell me,” said Gypsy quickly. “I and my brothers never
discouraged hiccups. I held the Hiccup Gold-Belt with a record of
127. An interval of three minutes brought the break to a close. The
last thirty seconds used to be a fearful struggle. It is my brother
Albert who holds the Silver Sneezing Cup. If you held it through three
successive Epidemics, you kept it. He was passionately devoted to
sneezing. When he was nine he made out a list of twenty things he liked
best in the world. The First was Sneezing and the Second was Mother. He
had no equal, too, in blowing out candles with his nose.”
“You never told me about your brother Albert before,” said Ginger.
“Would it have made any difference?” asked Gypsy, so anxiously that she
hastened to reassure him. And whenever Ginger began to reassure Gypsy
about anything, or Gypsy Ginger, it was time for their friends to go.
The next night the Piccadilly Flower-Girls came into action. The plan
was very simple. Four Girls were told off to every Moonshiner, and
two watched at each end of the street in which their protégé was at
work. As soon as Lionel appeared in the distance, one would fly to
warn--Ginger, or Jeremy, as the case might be, while the other stayed
behind to diddle Lionel for exactly one minute. Any policeman can be
diddled for that length of time. Then he reverts to type. But Rose in
her radiant shawls, shedding damask petals like confetti round Lionel’s
bewildered feet: or Lily floating her silver scarf before Lionel’s
dazzled eyes, leaving one ivory bloom upon his helmet as she vanished:
or Violet in her dusky veil, rising from the purple shadows to murmur
music in Lionel’s intoxicated ear: was enough to dissolve the force of
habit in any official--for sixty seconds.
Then Rose danced by, or Lily melted into thin air, or Violet sank
shyly back into her shades; and Lionel turned the corner and
discovered--Ginger, or Jeremy, as the case might be. And either would
be seated in the middle of the road on a campstool inside a square of
rope.
This was the Night Watchman’s idea. Any man, he said, sitting publicly
inside a square of rope, will be taken for granted. Not even a
policeman will question his position; the man inside the rope is as
Cæsar’s Wife. For one thing, he must have been put there, and when one
has already been handled by a higher power, one need not be re-handled
by a lesser. It is only when one is obviously handling oneself that
Authority smells danger. And nobody, said the Night Watchman ever
really thinks that a man could be such a fool as deliberately to put
himself inside a rope.
So every Moonshiner now went forth with rope and campstool, and each in
turn discovered the wisdom of the Night Watchman. One by one they made
Lionel’s acquaintance, and one by one they loved him.
He had to be loved, he was so trustful. For instance, he trusted
Ginger. A woman inside the ropes would have aroused any other
policeman’s sense of the unusual. Even he, struck by her sex, said when
they encountered, “Wot are you doing here?” She answered, “Oh, Women on
the Land, you know,” and he believed her at once.
Then there was the case of Jeremy.
The first time he found Jeremy sitting inside his rope, he said, “Wot
are you doing here, you’re no night watchman. You’re a street hawker, I
seen you last Friday selling paper windmills in Farringdon Street.”
“That wasn’t I,” said Jeremy, “that was my unfortunate brother Albert.”
“Oh, sorry,” said Lionel. “Wot was his misfortune?”
“Besides his name, he got mislaid last Saturday, and hasn’t been seen
since,” said Jeremy, and hid his face in his hands.