‘It’s all right,’ said Ollyett of the trained ear. ‘They’ve shut their ports against – oh yes – export of Irish cattle! Foot-and-mouth disease at Ballyhellion. I see Pallant’s idea!’
The House was certainly all mouth for the moment, but, as I could feel, quite in earnest. A Minister with a piece of typewritten paper seemed to be fending off volleys of insults. He reminded me somehow of a nervous huntsman breaking up a fox in the face of rabid hounds.
‘It’s question-time. They’re asking questions,’ said Ollyett. ‘Look! Pallant’s up.’
There was no mistaking it. His voice, which his enemies said was his one parliamentary asset, silenced the hubbub as toothache silences mere singing in the ears. He said:
‘Arising out of that, may I ask if any special consideration has recently been shown in regard to any suspected outbreak of this disease on this side of the Channel?’
He raised his hand; it held a noon edition of The Bun. We had thought it best to drop the paragraph out of the later ones. He would have continued, but something in a grey frock-coat roared and bounded on a bench opposite, and waved another Bun. It was Sir Thomas Ingell.
‘As the owner of the herd so dastardly implicated—’ His voice was drowned in shouts of ‘Order!’ – the Irish leading.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked Ollyett. ‘He’s got his hat on his head, hasn’t he?’
‘Yes, but his wrath should have been put as a question.’
‘Arising out of that, Mr Speaker, Sirrr!’ Sir Thomas bellowed through a lull, ‘are you aware that – that all this is aconspiracy – part of a dastardly conspiracy to make Huckley ridiculous – to make us ridiculous? Part of a deep-laid plot to make me ridiculous, Mr Speaker, Sir!’
The man’s face showed almost black against his white whiskers, and he struck out swimmingly with his arms. His vehemence puzzled and held the House for an instant, and the Speaker took advantage of it to lift his pack from Ireland to a new scent. He addressed Sir Thomas Ingell in tones of measured rebuke, meant also, I imagine, for the whole House, which lowered its hackles at the word. Then Pallant, shocked and pained: ‘I can only express my profound surprise that in response to my simple question the honourable member should have thought fit to indulge in a personal attack. If I have in any way offended—’
Again the Speaker intervened, for it appeared that he regulated these matters.
He, too, expressed surprise, and Sir Thomas sat back in a hush of reprobation that seemed to have the chill of the centuries behind it. The Empire’s work was resumed.
‘Beautiful!’ said I, and I felt hot and cold up my back.
‘And now we’ll publish his letter,’ said Ollyett. We did – on the heels of his carefully reported outburst. We made no comment.
With that rare instinct for grasping the heart of a situation which is the mark of the Anglo-Saxon, all our contemporaries and, I should say, two-thirds of our correspondents demanded how such a person could be made more ridiculous than he had already proved himself to be. But beyond spelling his name ‘Injle,’ we alone refused to hit a man when he was down.
‘There’s no need,’ said Ollyett. ‘The whole press is on the huckle from end to end.’
Even Woodhouse was a little astonished at the ease with which it had come about, and said as much.
‘Rot!’ said Ollyett. ‘We haven’t really begun. Huckley isn’t news yet.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Woodhouse, who had grown to have great respect for his young but by no means distant connection.
‘Mean? By the grace of God, Master Ridley, I mean to have it so that when Huckley turns over in its sleep, Reuters and the Press Association jump out of bed to cable.’ Then he went off at score about certain restorations in Huckley Church which, he said – and he seemed to spend his every week-end there – had been perpetrated by the Rector’s predecessor, who had abolished a ‘leper-window’ or a ‘squinch-hole’ (whatever these may be) to institute a lavatory in the vestry. It did not strike me as stuff for which Reuters or the Press Association would lose much sleep, and I left him declaiming to Woodhouse about a fourteenth-century font which, he said, he had unearthed in the sexton’s tool-shed.
My methods were more on the lines of peaceful penetration. An odd copy, in The Bun’s rag-and-bone library, of Hone’s Every-Day Book had revealed to me the existence of a village dance founded, like all village dances, on Druidical mysteries connected with the Solar Solstice (which is always unchallengeable) and Midsummer Morning, which is dewy and refreshing to the London eye. For this I take no credit – Hone being a mine any one can work – but that I rechristened that dance, after I had revised it, ‘The Gubby’ is my title to immortal fame. It was still to be witnessed, I wrote, ‘In all its poignant purity at Huckley, that last home of significant mediaeval survivals’; and I fell so in love with my creation that I kept it back for days, enamelling and burnishing.
‘You’s better put it in,’ said Ollyett at last. ‘It’s time we asserted ourselves again. The other fellows are beginning to poach. You saw that thing in the Pinnacle about Sir Thomas’s Model Village? He must have got one of their chaps down to doit.’
‘Nothing like the wounds of a friend,’ I said. ‘That account of the non-alcoholic pub alone was—’
‘I liked the bit best about the white-tiled laundry and the Fallen Virgins who wash Sir Thomas’s dress shirts. Our side couldn’t come within a mile of that, you know. We haven’t the proper flair for sexual slobber.’
That’s what I’m always saying,’ I retorted. ‘Leave ’emalone. The other fellows are doing our work for us now. Besides I want to touch up my “Gubby Dance” a little more.’
‘No. You’ll spoil it. Let’s shove it in to-day. For one thing it’s Literature. I don’t go in for compliments as you know, but, etc. etc.’
I had a healthy suspicion of young Ollyett in every aspect, but though I knew that I should have to pay for it, I fell to his flattery, and my priceless article on the ‘Gubby Dance’appeared. Next Saturday he asked me to bring out The Bun in his absence, which I naturally assumed would be connected with the little maroon side-car. I was wrong.
On the following Monday I glanced at The Cake at breakfast-time to make sure, as usual, of her inferiority to my beloved but unremunerative Bun. I opened on a heading: ‘The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat.’ I read … I read that the Geoplanarian Society – a society devoted to the proposition that the earth is flat – had held its Annual Banquet and Exercises at Huckley on Saturday, when after convincing addresses, amid scenes of the greatest enthusiasm, Huckley village had decided by an unanimous vote of 438 that the earth was flat. I do not remember that I breathed again till I had finished the two columns of description that followed. Only one man could have written them. They were flawless – crisp, nervous, austere yet human, poignant, vital, arresting – most distinctly arresting – dynamic enough to shift a city – and quotable by whole sticks at a time. And there was a leader, a grave and poised leader, which tore me in two with mirth, until I remembered that I had been left out – infamously and unjustifiably dropped. I went to Ollyett’s rooms. He was breakfasting, and, to do him justice, looked conscience-stricken.
It wasn’t my fault,’ he began. ‘It was Bat Masquerier. I swear I would have asked you to come if—’
‘Never mind that,’ I said. ‘It’s the best bit of work you’ve ever done or will do. Did any of it happen?’
‘Happen? Heavens! D’you think even I could have invented it?’
‘Is it exclusive to The Cake?’I cried.
‘It cost Bat Masquerier two thousand,’ Ollyett replied. ‘D’you think he’d let any one else in on that? But I give youmy sacred word I knew nothing about it till he asked me tocome down and cover it. He had Huckley posted in threecolours, “The Geoplanarians’ Annual Banquet and Exercises.”Yes, he invented “Geoplanarians”. He wanted Huckley tothink it meant aeroplanes. Yes, I know that there is a realSociety that thinks the world’s flat –
they ought to be gratefulfor the lift – but Bat made his own. He did! He created thewhole show, I tell you. He swept out half his Halls for the job.Think of that – on a Saturday! They – we went down in motorchar-à-bancs – three of ’em – one pink, one primrose, and oneforget-me-not-blue – twenty people in each one and “TheEarth is Flat” on each side and across the back. I went withTeddy Rickets and Lafone from the Trefoil, and both theSilhouette Sisters, and – wait a minute! – the Crossleigh Trio.You know the Every-Day Dramas Trio at the Jocunda – AdaCrossleigh, “Bunt” Crossleigh, and little Victorine? Them.And there was Hoke Ramsden, the lightning-change chap inMorgiana and Drexel – and there was Billy Turpeen. Yes, youknow him! The North London Star. “I’m the Referee that gothimself disliked at Blackheath.” That chap! And there wasMackaye – that one-eyed Scotch fellow that all Glasgow iscrazy about. Talk of subordinating yourself for Art’s sake!Mackaye was the earnest inquirer who got converted at theend of the meeting. And there was quite a lot of girls I didn’tknow, and – oh, yes – there was ’Dal! Dal Benzaguen herself!We sat together, going and coming. She’s all the darling thereever was. She sent you her love, and she told me to tell youthat she won’t forget about Nellie Farren. She says you’vegiven her an ideal to work for. She? Oh, she was the LadySecretary to the Geoplanarians, of course. I forget who were inthe other brakes – provincial stars mostly – but they played upgorgeously. The art of the music-hall’s changed since yourday. They didn’t overdo it a bit. You see, people who believethe earth is flat don’t dress quite like other people. You mayhave noticed that I hinted at that in my account. It’s a ratherflat-fronted Ionic style – neo-Victorian, except for the bustles,’Dal told me – but ’Dal looked heavenly in it! So did little Victorine. And there was a girl in the blue brake – she’s a provincial – but she’s coming to town this winter and she’ll knock ’em – Winnie Deans. Remember that! She told Huckley how she had suffered for the Cause as a governess in a rich family where they believed that the world is round, and how she threw up her job sooner than teach immoral geography. That was at the overflow meeting outside the Baptist chapel. She knocked ’em to sawdust! We must look out for Winnie … But Lafone! Lafone was beyond everything. Impact, personality – conviction – the whole bag o’ tricks! He sweated conviction. Gad, he convinced me while he was speaking! (Him? He was President of the Geoplanarians, of course. Haven’t you read my account?) It is an infernally plausible theory. After all, no one has actually proved the earth is round, have they?’
‘Never mind the earth. What about Huckley?’
‘Oh, Huckley got tight. That’s the worst of these model villages if you let ’em smell fire-water. There’s one alcoholic pub in the place that Sir Thomas can’t get rid of. Bat made it his base, He sent down the banquet in two motor lorries – dinner for five hundred and drinks for ten thousand. Huckley voted all right. Don’t you make any mistake about that. No vote, no dinner. A unanimous vote – exactly as I’ve said. At least, the Rector and the Doctor were the only dissentients. We didn’t count them. Oh yes, Sir Thomas was there. He came and grinned at us through his park gates. He’ll grin worse to-day. There’s an aniline dye that you rub through a stencil-plate that eats about a foot into any stone and wears good to the last. Bat had both the lodge-gates stencilled “The Earth is flat!” and all the barns and walls they could get at… Oh Lord, but Huckley was drunk! We had to fill ’em up to make ’em forgive us for not being aeroplanes. Unthankful yokels! D’you realise that Emperors couldn’t have commanded the talent Bat decanted on ’em? Why, ’Dal alone was … And by eight o’clock not even a bit of paper left! The whole show packed up and gone, and Huckley hoo-raying for the earth being flat.’
‘Verygood,’ 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’sposter 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 FleetStreet.Ollyett’saccountinTheBunof 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 pealfull-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 tornadoesof 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 andpulse must havebeenat theincandescent 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.