“And don’t ye remember,” went on the exhilarated Irishman, with solemnity, “that unless ye could produce a poetic lyric of your own, written and sung by yourself, I threatened to …”
“To sing again,” said the impenetrable Pump. “Yes, I know.”
He calmly proceeded to take out of his pockets, which were, alas, more like those of a poacher than an innkeeper, a folded and faded piece of paper.
“I wrote it when you asked me,” he said simply. “I have never tried to sing it. But I’ll sing it myself, when you’ve sung your song, against anybody singing at all.”
“All right,” cried the somewhat excited Captain, “to hear a song from you–why, I’ll sing anything. This is the Song Against Songs, Hump.”
And again he let his voice out like a bellow against the evening silence.
“The song of the sorrow of Melisande is a weary song and a dreary song,
The glory of Mariana’s grange had got into great decay,
The song of the Raven Never More has never been called a cheery song,
And the brightest things in Baudelaire are anything else but gay.
But who will write us a riding song,
Or a hunting song or a drinking song,
Fit for them that arose and rode,
When day and the wine were red?
But bring me a quart of claret out,
And I will write you a clinking song,
A song of war and a song of wine,
And a song to wake the dead.
“The song of the fury of Fragolette is a florid song and a torrid song,
The song of the sorrow of Tara is sung to a harp unstrung,
The song of the cheerful Shropshire Kid I consider a perfectly horrid song,
And the song of the happy Futurist is a song that can’t be sung.
But who will write us a riding song,
Or a fighting song or a drinking song,
Fit for the fathers of you and me,
That knew how to think and thrive?
But the song of Beauty and Art and Love
Is simply an utterly stinking song,
To double you up and drag you down,
And damn your soul alive.
“Take some more rum,” concluded the Irish officer, affably, “and let’s hear your song at last.”
With the gravity inseparable from the deep conventionality of country people, Mr. Pump unfolded the paper on which he had recorded the only antagonistic emotion that was strong enough in him to screw his infinite English tolerance to the pitch of song. He read out the title very carefully and in full.
“Song Against Grocers, by Humphrey Pump, sole proprietor of ‘The Old Ship,’ Pebblewick. Good Accommodation for Man and Beast. Celebrated as the House at which both Queen Charlotte and Jonathan Wilde put up on different occasions; and where the Ice-cream man was mistaken for Bonaparte. This song is written against Grocers.”
“God made the wicked Grocer,
For a mystery and a sign,
That men might shun the awful shops,
And go to inns to dine;
Where the bacon’s on the rafter
And the wine is in the wood,
And God that made good laughter
Has seen that they are good.
“The evil-hearted Grocer
Would call his mother ‘Ma’am,’
And bow at her and bob at her,
Her aged soul to damn;
And rub his horrid hands and ask,
What article was next;
Though mortis in articulo,
Should be her proper text.
“His props are not his children
But pert lads underpaid,
Who call out ‘Cash!’ and bang about,
To work his wicked trade;
He keeps a lady in a cage,
Most cruelly all day,
And makes her count and calls her ‘Miss,’
Until she fades away.
“The righteous minds of inn-keepers
Induce them now and then
To crack a bottle with a friend,
Or treat unmoneyed men;
But who hath seen the Grocer
Treat housemaids to his teas,
Or crack a bottle of fish-sauce,
Or stand a man a cheese?
“He sells us sands of Araby
As sugar for cash down,
He sweeps his shop and sells the dust,
The purest salt in town;
He crams with cans of poisoned meat
Poor subjects of the King,
And when they die by thousands
Why, he laughs like anything.
“The Wicked Grocer groces
In spirits and in wine,
Not frankly and in fellowship,
As men in inns do dine;
But packed with soap and sardines
And carried off by grooms,
For to be snatched by Duchesses,
And drunk in dressing-rooms.
“The hell-instructed Grocer
Has a temple made of tin,
And the ruin of good inn-keepers
Is loudly urged therein;
But now the sands are running out
From sugar of a sort,
The Grocer trembles; for his time
Just like his weight is short.”
Captain Dalroy was getting considerably heated with his nautical liquor, and his appreciation of Pump’s song was not merely noisy but active. He leapt to his feet and waved his glass. “Ye ought to be Poet Laureate, Hump–ye’re right, ye’re right; we’ll stand all this no longer!”
He dashed wildly up the sand slope and pointed with the sign-post towards the darkening shore, where the low shed of corrugated iron stood almost isolated.
“There’s your tin temple!” he said. “Let’s burn it!”
They were some way along the coast from the large watering-place of Pebblewick and between the gathering twilight and the rolling country it could not be clearly seen. Nothing was now in sight but the corrugated iron hall by the beach and three half-built red brick villas.
Dalroy appeared to regard the hall and the empty houses with great malevolence.
“Look at it!” he said. “Babylon!”
He brandished the inn-sign in the air like a banner, and began to stride towards the place, showering curses.
“In forty days,” he cried, “shall Pebblewick be destroyed. Dogs shall lap the blood of J. Leveson, Secretary, and Unicorns–”
“Come back Pat,” cried Humphrey, “you’ve had too much rum.”
“Lions shall howl in its high places,” vociferated the Captain.
“Donkeys will howl, anyhow,” said Pump. “But I suppose the other donkey must follow.”
And loading and untethering the quadruped, he began to lead him along.
* * *
CHAPTER VII
THE SOCIETY OF SIMPLE SOULS
UNDER sunset, at once softer and more sombre, under which the leaden sea took on a Lenten purple, a tint appropriate to tragedy, Lady Joan Brett was once more drifting moodily along the sea-front. The evening had been rainy and lowering; the watering-place season was nearly over; and she was almost alone on the shore; but she had fallen into the habit of restlessly pacing the place, and it seemed to satisfy some subconscious hunger in her rather mixed psychology. Through all her brooding her animal senses always remained abnormally active: she could smell the sea when it had ebbed almost to the horizon, and in the same way she heard, through every whisper of waves or wind, the swish or flutter of another woman’s skirt behind her. There is, she felt, something unmistakable about the movements of a lady who is generally very dignified and rather slow, and who happens to be in a hurry.
She turned to look at the lady who was thus hastening to overtake her; lifted her eyebrows a little and held out her hand. The interruption was known to her as Lady Enid Wimpole, cousin of Lord Ivywood; a tall and graceful lady who unbalanced her own elegance b
y a fashionable costume that was at once funereal and fantastic; her fair hair was pale but plentiful; her face was not only handsome and fastidious in the aquiline style, but when considered seriously was sensitive, modest, and even pathetic, but her wan blue eyes seemed slightly prominent, with that expression of cold eagerness that is seen in the eyes of ladies who ask questions at public meetings.
Joan Brett was herself, as she had said, a connection of the Ivywood family; but Lady Enid was Ivywood’s first cousin, and for all practical purposes his sister. For she kept house for him and his mother, who was now so incredibly old that she only survived to satisfy conventional opinion in the character of a speechless and useless chaperon. And Ivywood was not the sort who would be likely to call out any activity in an old lady exercising that office. Nor, for that matter, was Lady Enid Wimpole; there seemed to shine on her face the same kind of inhuman, absent-minded common sense that shone on her cousin’s.
“Oh, I’m so glad I’ve caught you up,” she said to Joan. “Lady Ivywood wants you so much to come to us for the week-end or so, while Philip is still there. He always admired your sonnet on Cyprus so much, and he wants to talk to you about this policy of his in Turkey. Of course he’s awfully busy, but I shall be seeing him tonight after the meeting.”
“No living creature,” said Lady Joan, with a smile, “ever saw him except before or after a meeting.”
“Are you a Simple Soul?” asked Lady Enid, carelessly.
“Am I a simple soul?” asked Joan, drawing her black brows together. “Merciful Heavens, no! What can you mean?”
“Their meeting’s on tonight at the small Universal Hall, and Philip’s taking the chair,” explained the other lady. “He’s very annoyed that he has to leave early to get up to the House, but Mr. Leveson can take the chair for the last bit. They’ve got Misysra Ammon.”
“Got Mrs. Who?” asked Joan, in honest doubt.
“You make game of everything,” said Lady Enid, in cheerless amiability. “It’s the man everyone’s talking about–you know as well as I do. It’s really his influence that has made the Simple Souls.”
“Oh!” said Lady Joan Brett.
Then after a long silence, she added: “Who are the Simple Souls? I should be interested in them, if I could meet any.” And she turned her dark, brooding face on the darkening purple sea.
“Do you mean to say, my dear,” asked Lady Enid Wimpole, “that you haven’t met any of them yet?”
“No,” said Joan, looking at the last dark line of sea. “I never met but one simple soul in my life.”
“But you must come to the meeting!” cried Lady Enid, with frosty and sparkling gaiety. “You must come at once! Philip is certain to be eloquent on a subject like this, and of course Misysra Ammon is always so wonderful.”
Without any very distinct idea of where she was going or why she was going there, Joan allowed herself to be piloted to a low lead or tin shed, beyond the last straggling hotels, out of the echoing shell of which she could prematurely hear a voice that she thought she recognised. When she came in Lord Ivywood was on his feet, in exquisite evening dress, but with a light overcoat thrown over the seat behind him. Beside him, in less tasteful but more obvious evening dress, was the little old man she had heard on the beach.
No one else was on the platform, but just under it, rather to Joan’s surprise, sat Miss Browning, her old typewriting friend in her old black dress, industriously taking down Lord Ivywood’s words in shorthand. A yard or two off, even more to her surprise, sat Miss Browning’s more domestic sister, also taking down the same words in shorthand.
“That is Misysra Ammon,” whispered Lady Enid, earnestly, pointing a delicate finger at the little old man beside the chairman.
“I know him,” said Joan. “Where’s the umbrella?”
“… at least evident,” Lord Ivywood was saying, “that one of those ancestral impossibilities is no longer impossible. The East and the West are one. The East is no longer East nor the West West; for a small isthmus has been broken, and the Atlantic and Pacific are a single sea. No man assuredly has done more of this mighty work of unity than the brilliant and distinguished philosopher to whom you will have the pleasure of listening tonight; and I profoundly wish that affairs more practical, for I will not call them more important, did not prevent my remaining to enjoy his eloquence, as I have so often enjoyed it before. Mr. Leveson has kindly consented to take my place, and I can do no more than express my deep sympathy with the aims and ideals which will be developed before you tonight. I have long been increasingly convinced that underneath a certain mask of stiffness which the Mahommedan religion has worn through certain centuries, as a somewhat similar mask has been worn by the religion of the Jews, Islam has in it the potentialities of being the most progressive of all religions; so that a century or two to come we may see the cause of peace, of science and of reform everywhere supported by Islam as it is everywhere supported by Israel. Not in vain, I think, is the symbol of that faith the Crescent, the growing thing. While other creeds carry emblems implying more or less of finality, for this great creed of hope its very imperfection is its pride, and men shall walk fearlessly in new and wonderful paths, following the increasing curve which contains and holds up before them the eternal promises of the orb.”
It was characteristic of Lord Ivywood that, though he was really in a hurry, he sat down slowly and gravely amid the outburst of applause. The quiet resumption of the speaker’s seat, like the applause itself, was an artistic part of the peroration. When the last clap or stamp had subsided, he sprang up alertly, his light great-coat over his arm, shook hands with the lecturer, bowed to the audience and slid quickly out of the hall. Mr. Leveson, the swarthy young man with the drooping double-eyeglass rather bashfully to the front, took the empty seat on the platform, and in a few words presented the eminent Turkish mystic Misysra Ammon, sometimes called the Prophet of the Moon.
Lady Joan found the Prophet’s English accent somewhat improved by good society, but he still elongated the letter “u” in the same bleating manner, and his remarks had exactly the same rabidly wrong-headed ingenuity as his lecture upon English inns. It appeared that he was speaking on the higher Polygamy; but he began with a sort of general defence of the Moslem civilisation, especially against the charge of sterility and worldly ineffectiveness.
“It iss joost in the practical tings,” he was saying, “it iss joost in the practical tings, if you could come to consider them in a manner quite equal, that our methods are better than your methods. My ancestors invented the curved swords, because one cuts better with a curved sword. Your ancestors possessed the straight swords out of some romantic fancy of being what you call straight; or, I will take a more plain example, of which I have myself experience. When I first had the honour of meeting Lord Ivywood, I was unused to your various ceremonies and had a little difficulty, joost a little difficulty, in entering Mr. Claridge’s hotel, where his lordship had invited me. A servant of the hotel was standing joost beside me on the doorstep. I stoo-ooped down to take off my boo-oots, and he asked me what I was dooing. I said to him: ‘My friend, I am taking off my boo-oots.’”
A smothered sound came from Lady Joan Brett, but the lecturer did not notice it and went on with a beautiful simplicity.
“I told him that in my country, when showing respect for any spot, we do not take off our hats; we take off our boo-oots. And because I would keep on my hat and take off my boo-oots, he suggested to me that I had been afflicted by Allah, in the head. Now was not that foony?”
“Very,” said Lady Joan, inside her handkerchief, for she was choking with laughter. Something like a faint smile passed over the earnest faces of the two or three most intelligent of the Simple Souls, but for the most part the Souls seemed very simple indeed, helpless looking people with limp hair and gowns like green curtains, and their dry faces were as dry as ever.
“But I explained to him. I explained to him for a long time, for a carefully occupied time, that it
was more practical, more business-like, more altogether for utility, to take off the boo-oots than to remove the hat. ‘Let us,’ I said to him, ‘consider what many complaints are made against the footwear, what few complaints against the headwear. You complain if in your drawing-rooms is the marching about of muddy boo-oots. Are any of your drawing-rooms marked thus with the marching about of muddy hats? How very many of your husbands kick you with the boo-oot! Yet how few of your husbands on any occasion butt you with the hat?’”
He looked round with a radiant seriousness, which made Lady Joan almost as speechless for sympathy as she was for amusement. With all that was most sound in his too complicated soul she realised the presence of a man really convinced.
“The man on the doorstep, he would not listen to me,” went on Misysra Ammon, pathetically. “He said there would be a crowd if I stood on the doorstep, holding in my hand my boo-oots. Well, I do not know why, in your country you always send the young males to be the first of your crowds. They certainly were making a number of noises, the young males.”
Lady Joan Brett stood up suddenly and displayed enormous interest in the rest of the audience in the back parts of the hall. She felt that if she looked for one moment more at the serious face with the Jewish nose and the Persian beard, she would publicly disgrace herself; or, what was quite as bad (for she was the generous sort of aristocrat) publicly insult the lecturer. She had a feeling that the sight of all the Simple Souls in bulk might have a soothing effect. It had. It had what might have been mistaken for a depressing effect. Lady Joan resumed her seat with a controlled countenance.
“Now, why,” asked the Eastern philosopher, “do I tell so simple a little story of your London streets–a thing happening any day? The little mistake had no preju-udicial effect. Lord Ivywood came out, at the end. He made no attempt to explain the true view of so important matters to Mr. Claridge’s servant, though Mr. Claridge’s servant remained on the doorstep. But he commanded Mr. Claridge’s servant to restore to me one of my boo-oots, which had fallen down the front steps, while I was explaining this harmlessness of the hat in the home. So all was, for me, very well. But why do I tell such little tales?”
The Flying Inn Page 6