Then we left. The village looked very pretty in the late light – pretty and tuneful as a nest of nightingales.
‘You’ll turn up on Monday, I hope,’ said Woodhouse, when we reached town. That was his only allusion to the affair.
So we turned up – through a world still singing that theEarth was flat – at the little clay-coloured market-town with the large Corn Exchange and the small jubilee memorial. We had some difficulty in getting seats in the court. Woodhouse’s imported London lawyer was a man of commanding personality, with a voice trained to convey blasting imputations by tone. When the case was called, he rose and stated his client’s intention not to proceed with the charge. His client, he went on to say, had not entertained, and, of course, in the circumstances could not have entertained, any suggestion of accepting on behalf of public charities any moneys that might have been offered to him on the part of Sir Thomas’s estate. At the same time, no one acknowledged more sincerely than his client the spirit in which those offers had been made by those entitled to make them. But, as a matter of fact – here he became the man of the world colloguing with his equals – certain – er – details had come to hisclient’s knowledge since the lamentable outburst, which … He shrugged his shoulders. Nothing was served by going into them, but he ventured to say that, had those painful circumstances only been known earlier, his client would – again ‘of course’ – never have dreamed— A gesture concluded the sentence, and the ensnared Bench looked at Sir Thomas with new and withdrawing eyes. Frankly, as they could see, it would be nothing less than cruelty to proceed further with this – er – unfortunate affair. He asked leave, therefore, to withdraw the charge in toto,and at the same time to express his client’s deepest sympathy with all who had been in any way distressed, as his client had been, by the fact and the publicity of proceedings which he could, of course, again assure them that his client would never have dreamed of instituting if, as he hoped he had made plain, certain facts had been before his client at the time when … But he had said enough. For his fee it seemed to me that he had.
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 laidupon 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 tonight 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 ‘TheGubby,’ 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.’
Andthen 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 tonight?’ Ollyett began.
‘She’s occupied with her Art too,’ Bat answered bitterly. ‘What’s the use of Art? Tell me, someone!’ 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 JPs knew it – but your lawyer oughtto 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 tonight. 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 tonight. 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 MPs 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 absolut
ely 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, &c. &c.,’ 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 miscarriage of justice on such and such a date, at such and sucha 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 crossbench mind) a crossbencher 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 init 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. Someone 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.
A MADONNA OF THE TRENCHES
‘Whatever a man of the sons of men
Shall say to his heart of the lords above,
They have shown man, verily, once and again,
Marvellous mercy and infinite love.
‘O sweet one love, O my life’s delight,
Dear, though the days have divided us,
Lost beyond hope, taken far out of sight,
Not twice in the world shall the Gods do thus.’
Swinburne, ‘LesNoyades’
Seeing how many unstable ex-soldiers came to the Lodge of Instruction (attached to Faith and Works EC 5837) in the years after the war, the wonder is there was not more trouble from Brethren whom sudden meetings with old comrades jerked back into their still raw past. But our round, torpedo-bearded local Doctor – Brother Keede, Senior Warden – always stood ready to deal with hysteria before it got out of hand; and when I examined Brethren unknown or imperfectly vouched for on the Masonic side, I passed on to him anything that seemed doubtful. He had had his experience as medical officer of a South London Battalion, during the last two years of the war; and, naturally, often found friends and acquaintances among the visitors.
Brother C. Strangwick, a young, tallish, new-made Brother, hailed from some South London Lodge. His papers and his answers were above suspicion, but his red-rimmed eyes had a puzzled glare that might mean nerves. So I introduced him particularly to Keede, who discovered in him a Headquarters Orderly of his old Battalion, congratulated him on his return to fitness – he had been discharged from some infirmary or other – and plunged at once into Somme memories.
‘I hope I did right, Keede,’ I said when we were robing before Lodge.
‘Oh, quite. He remi
nded me that I had him under my hands at Sampoux in ’Eighteen, when he went to bits. He was a Runner.’
‘Was it shock?’ I asked.
‘Of sorts – but not what he wanted me to think it was. No, he wasn’t shamming. He had Jumps to the limit – but he played up to mislead me about the reason of ’em … Well, if we could stop patients from lying, medicine would be too easy, I suppose.’
I noticed that, after Lodge-working, Keede gave him a seat a couple of rows in front of us, that he might enjoy a lecture on the Orientation of King Solomon’s Temple, which an earnest Brother thought would be a nice interlude between labour and the high tea that we called our ‘Banquet.’ Even helped by tobacco it was a dreary performance. About halfway through, Strangwick, who had been fidgeting and twitching for some minutes, rose, drove back his chair grinding across the tesselated floor, and yelped: ‘Oh, My Aunt! I can’t stand this any longer.’ Under cover of a general laugh of assent he brushed past us and stumbled towards the door.
‘I thought so!’ Keede whispered to me. ‘Come along!’ We overtook him in the passage, crowing hysterically and wringing his hands. Keede led him into the Tyler’s Room, a small office where we stored odds and ends of regalia and furniture, and locked the door.
‘I’m – I’m all right,’ the boy began, piteously.
‘’Course you are.’ Keede opened a small cupboard which I had seen called upon before, mixed sal volatile and water in a graduated glass, and, as Strangwick drank, pushed him gently onto an old sofa. ‘There,’ he went on. ‘It’s nothing to write home about. I’ve seen you ten times worse. I expect our talk has brought things back.’
He hooked up a chair behind him with one foot, held the patient’s hands in his own, and sat down. The chair creaked.
The Mark of the Beast and Other Fantastical Tales Page 73
