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 Of course, you could have withdrawn the charge, but the way you went about it is childish – besides being illegal.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 misca
rriage 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, over-strained 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.
Stacy Aumonier
The Great Unimpressionable
Ned Picklekin was a stolid chunk of a young man, fair, blue-eyed, with his skin beaten to a uniform tint of warm red by the sun and wind. For he was the postman at the village at Ashalton. Except for two hours in the little sorting-office, he spent the whole day on his bicycle, invariably accompanied by his Irish terrier, Toffee. Toffee was as well-known on the countryside as Ned himself. He took the business of delivering letters as seriously as his master. He trotted behind the bicycle with his tongue out, and waited panting outside the gates of gardens while the important government business was transacted. He never barked, and had no time for fighting common, unofficial dogs. When the letters were delivered, his master would return to his bicycle, and say: ‘Coom ahn, boy!’ and Toffee would immediately jump up, and fall into line. They were great companions.
Ned lived with his mother, and also he walked out with a young lady. Her name was Ettie Skinner, and she was one of the three daughters of old Charlie Skinner, the corn-merchant. Charlie Skinner had a little establishment in the station-yard. He was a widower, and he and his three daughters lived in a cottage in Neap’s Lane. It was very seldom necessary to deliver letters at the Skinners’ cottage, but every morning Ned had to pass up Neap’s Lane, and so, when he arrived at the cottage, he dismounted, and rang his bicycle bell. The signal was understood by Ettie, who immediately ran out to the gate, and a conversation somewhat on this pattern usually took place:
‘Hulloa!’
‘Hulloa!’
‘All right?’
‘Ay.’
‘Busy?’
‘Ay. Mendin’ some old cla’es.’
‘Oo-ay!’
‘Looks like mebbe a shower.’
‘Mebbe.’
‘Comin’ along to-night?’
‘Ay, if it doan’t rain.’
‘Well, so long!’
‘So long, Ned.’
In the evenings the conversation followed a very similar course. They waddled along the lanes side by side, and occasionally gave each other a punch. Ned smoked his pipe all the time, and Toffee was an unembarrassed cicerone. He was a little jealous of this unnecessary female, but he behaved with a resigned acquiescence. His master could do no wrong. His master was a god, a being apart from all others.
It cannot be said that Ned was a romantic lover. He was solemn, direct, imperturbable. He was a Saxon of Saxons, matter-of-fact, incorruptible, unimaginative, strong-willed, conscientious, not very ambitious, and suspicious of the unusual and the unknown. When the war broke out, he said:
‘Ay, but this is a bad business!’
And then he thought about it for a month. At the end of that time he made up his mind to join. He rode up Neap’s Lane one morning and rang his bell. When Ettie appeared the usual conversation underwent a slight variant:
‘Hulloa!’
‘Hulloa!’
‘All right?’
‘Ay.’
‘Doin’ much?’
‘Oo – mendin’ pa’s night-gown.’
‘Oh! I be goin’ to jine up.’
‘Oo-oh! Be ’ee?’
‘Ay.’
‘When be goin’?’
‘Monday with Dick Thursby and Len Cotton. An’ I think young Walters, and Binnie Short mebbe.’
‘Oh, I say!’
‘Ay. Comin’ along to-night?’
‘Ay, if it doan’t rain.’
‘Well, see you then.’
‘So long, Ned.’
On the following Monday Ned said good-bye to his mother, and sweetheart, and to Toffee, and he and the other four boys walked over to the recruiting-office at Carchester. They were drafted into the same unit, and sent up to Yorkshire to train. (Yorkshire being one hundred and fifty miles away was presumably the most convenient and suitable spot).
They spent five mon
ths there, and then Len Cotton was transferred to the Machine Gun Corps, and the other four were placed in an infantry regiment and sent out to India. They did not get an opportunity of returning to Ashalton, but the night before they left Ned wrote to his mother:
Dear Mother, I think we are off to-morrow. They don’t tell us where we are going but they seem to think it’s India because of the Eastern kit served out and so on. Everything all right, the grub is fine. Young Walters has gone sick with a bile on his neck. Hope you are all right. See Toffee don’t get into Mr Mears yard for this is about the time he puts down that poison for the rats. Everything all O.K. love from Ned.
He wrote a very similar letter to Ettie, only leaving out the instructions about Toffee, and adding, ‘don’t get overdoing it now the warm weathers on.’
They touched at Gibraltar, Malta, Alexandria, and Aden. At all these places he merely sent the cryptic post-card. He did not write a letter again until he had been three weeks up in the hills in India. As a matter of fact it had been a terribly rough passage nearly all the way, especially in the Mediterranean, and nearly all the boys had been sea-sick most of the time. Ned had been specially bad and in the Red Sea had developed a slight fever. In India he had been sent to a rest-camp up in the hills. He wrote:
Dear mother, everything all right. The grub is fine. I went a bit sick coming out but nothing. Quite all O.K. now. This is a funny place. The people would make you laugh to look at. We beat the 2nd Royal Scots by two goals to one. I wasn’t playing but Binnie played a fine game at half-back. He stopped their centre forward an old league player. time and again. Hope you are keeping all right. Does Henry Thatcham take Toffee out regler. Everything serene. love from Ned.
In this letter the words ‘2nd Royal Scots’ were deleted by the censor.
The Penguin Book of the British Short Story, Volume 1 Page 78