Rudyard Kipling's Tales of Horror and Fantasy (78 page)

‘I’m all out – first time in my life. Ah! Tell a fellow now, did I get it across?’ she whispered huskily.

‘You know you did,’ I replied as she dipped her nose deep in a beaker of barley-water. ‘They cooed over you.’

Bat nodded. ‘And poor Nellie’s dead – in Africa, ain’t it?’

‘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 notneed 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 Porces,’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 Haus-mania.’ 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 tosay. 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 ear-shot 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 the truth our tongues are telling,

Spread the light from shore to shore,

God hath given man a dwelling

Flat and flat for evermore.

When the Primal Dark retreated,

When the 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 the truth our tongues are telling,

Spread the 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 rearguard 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 chauffeurslipped 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