The Flying Inn

by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

  For all his rather formless hilarity, Dalroy still impressed the poet as being more distrait than the others, as if his mind were labouring with some bigger thing in the background. He was in a sort of creative trance; and Humphrey Pump, who knew him like his own soul, knew well that it was not mere literary creation. Rather it was a kind of creation which many modern moralists would call destruction. For Patrick Dalroy was, not a little to his misfortune, what is called a man of action; as Captain Dawson realised when he found his entire person a bright pea-green. Fond as he was of jokes and rhymes, nothing he could write or even sing ever satisfied him like something he could do.

  Thus it happened that his contribution to the metrical inquiry into the crooked roads was avowedly hasty and flippant. While Dorian who was of the opposite temper, the temper that receives impressions instead of pushing out to make them, found his artist’s love of beauty fulfilled as it had never been before in that noble nest; and was far more serious and human than usual. Patrick’s verses ran:

  “Some say that Guy of Warwick,

  The man that killed the Cow,

  And brake the mighty Boar alive,

  Beyond the Bridge at Slough,

  Went up against a Loathly Worm

  That wasted all the Downs,

  And so the roads they twist and squirm

  (If I may be allowed the term)

  From the writhing of the stricken Worm

  That died in seven towns.

  I see no scientific proof

  That this idea is sound,

  And I should say they wound about

  To find the town of Roundabout,

  The merry town of Roundabout

  That makes the world go round.

  “Some say that Robin Goodfellow,

  Whose lantern lights the meads,

  (To steal a phrase Sir Walter Scott

  In heaven no longer needs)

  Such dance around the trysting-place

  The moonstruck lover leads;

  Which superstition I should scout;

  There is more faith in honest doubt,

  (As Tennyson has pointed out)

  Than in those nasty creeds.

  But peace and righteousness (St. John)

  In Roundabout can kiss,

  And since that’s all that’s found about

  The pleasant town of Roundabout,

  The roads they simply bound about

  To find out where it is.

  “Some say that when Sir Lancelot

  Went forth to find the Grail,

  Grey Merlin wrinkled up the roads

  For hope that he should fail;

  All roads led back to Lyonesse

  And Camelot in the Vale;

  I cannot yield assent to this

  Extravagant hypothesis,

  The plain, shrewd Briton will dismiss

  Such rumours (Daily Mail).

  But in the streets of Roundabout

  Are no such factions found,

  Or theories to expound about

  Or roll upon the ground about,

  In the happy town of Roundabout

  That makes the world go round.”

  Patrick Dalroy relieved his feelings by finishing with a shout, draining a stiff glass of his sailor’s wine, turning restlessly on his elbow and looking across the landscape toward London.

  Dorian Wimpole had been drinking golden rum and strong starlight and the fragrance of forests; and, though his verses, too, were burlesque, he read them more emotionally than was his wont.

  “Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,

  The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.

  A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,

  And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire.

  A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread

  That night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.

  “I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,

  And for to fight the Frenchmen I did not much desire;

  But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed

  To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,

  Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands

  The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.

  “His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run

  Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?

  The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,

  But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.

  God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear

  The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.

  “My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,

  Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,

  But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,

  And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;

  For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen

  Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.”

  “Have you written one, Hump?” asked Dalroy. Humphrey, who had been scribbling hard under the lamp, looked up with a dismal face.

  “Yes,” he said. “But I write under a great disadvantage. You see, I know why the road curves about.” And he read very rapidly, all on one note:

  “The road turned first toward the left

  Where Pinker’s quarry made the cleft;

  The path turned next toward the right

  Because the mastiff used to bite;

  Then left, because of Slippery Height,

  And then again toward the right.

  We could not take the left because

  It would have been against the laws;

  Squire closed it in King William’s day

  Because it was a Right of Way.

  Still right; to dodge the ridge of chalk

  Where Parson’s Ghost it used to walk,

  Till someone Parson used to know

  Met him blind drunk in Callao.

  Then left, a long way round, to skirt

  The good land where old Doggy Burt

  Was owner of the Crown and Cup,

  And would not give his freehold up;

  Right, missing the old river-bed,

  They tried to make him take instead

  Right, since they say Sir Gregory

  Went mad and let the Gypsies be,

  And so they have their camp secure.

  And, though not honest, they are poor,

  And that is something; then along

  And first to right–no, I am wrong!

  Second to right, of course; the first

  Is what the holy sisters cursed,

  And none defy their awful oaths

  Since the policeman lost his clothes

  Because of fairies; right again,

  What used to be High Toby Lane,

  Left by the double larch and right

  Until the milestone is in sight,

  Because the road is firm and good

  From past the milestone to the wood;

  And I was told by Dr. Lowe

  Whom Mr. Wimpole’s aunt would know,

  Who lives at Oxford writing books,

  And ain’t so silly as he looks;

  The Romans did that little bit

  And we’ve done all the rest of it;

  By which we hardly seem to score;

  Left, and then forward as before

  To where they nearly hanged Miss Browne,

  Who told them not to cut her down,

  But loose the rope or let her swing,

  Because it was a waste of string;

  Left once again by Hunker’s Cleft,

  And right beyond the elm, and left,

  By Pill’s right by Nineteen Nicks

  And left–”

  “No! No!
No’! Hump! Hump! Hump!” cried Dalroy in a sort of terror. “Don’t be exhaustive! Don’t be a scientist, Hump, and lay waste fairyland! How long does it go on? Is there a lot more of it?”

  “Yes,” said Pump, in a stony manner. “There is a lot more of it.”

  “And it’s all true?” inquired Dorian Wimpole, with interest.

  “Yes,” replied Pump with a smile, “it’s all true.”

  “My complaint, exactly,” said the Captain. “What you want is legends. What you want is lies, especially at this time of night, and on rum like this, and on our first and our last holiday. What do you think about rum?” he asked Wimpole.

  “About this particular rum, in this particular tree, at this particular moment,” answered Wimpole, “I think it is the nectar of the younger gods. If you ask me in a general, synthetic sense what I think of rum–well, I think it’s rather rum.”

  “You find it a trifle sweet, I suppose,” said Dalroy, with some bitterness. “Sybarite! By the way,” he said abruptly, “what a silly word that word ‘Hedonist’ is! The really self-indulgent people generally like sour things and not sweet; bitter things like caviar and curries or what not. It’s the Saints who like the sweets. At least I’ve known at least five women who were practically saints, and they all preferred sweet champagne. Look here, Wimpole! Shall I tell you the ancient oral legend about the origin of rum? I told you what you wanted was legends. Be careful to preserve this one, and hand it on to your children; for, unfortunately, my parents carelessly neglected the duty of handing it on to me. After the words ‘A Farmer had three sons …’ all that I owe to tradition ceases. But when the three boys last met in the village market-place, they were all sucking sugar-sticks. Nevertheless, they were all discontented, and, on that day parted for ever. One remained on his father’s farm, hungering for his inheritance. One went up to London to seek his fortune, as fortunes are found today in that town forgotten of God. The third ran away to sea. And the first two flung away their sugar-sticks in shame; and he on the farm was always drinking smaller and sourer beer for the love of money; and he that was in town was always drinking richer and richer wines, that men might see that he was rich. But he who ran away to sea actually ran on board with the sugar-stick in his mouth; and St. Peter or St. Andrew, or whoever is the patron of men in boats, touched it and turned it into a fountain for the comfort of men upon the sea. That is the sailor’s theory of the origin of rum. Inquiry addressed to any busy Captain with a new crew in the act of shipping an unprecedented cargo, will elicit a sympathetic agreement.”

  “Your rum at least,” said Dorian, good-humouredly, “may well produce a fairy-tale. But, indeed, I think all this would have been a fairy-tale without it.”

  Patrick raised himself from his arboreal throne, and leaned against his branch with a curious and sincere sense of being rebuked.

  “Yours was a good poem,” he said, with seeming irrelevance, “and mine was a bad one. Mine was bad, partly because I’m not a poet as you are; but almost as much because I was trying to make up another song at the same time. And it went to another tune, you see.”

  He looked out over the rolling roads and said almost to himself:

  “In the city set upon slime and loam

  They cry in their parliament ‘Who goes home?’

  And there is no answer in arch or dome,

  For none in the city of graves goes home.

  Yet these shall perish and understand,

  For God has pity on this great land.

  Men that are men again; who goes home?

  Tocsin and trumpeter! Who goes home?

  For there’s blood on the field and blood on the foam,

  And blood on the body when man goes home.

  And a voice valedictory–Who is for Victory?

  Who is for Liberty? Who goes home?”

  Softly and idly as he had said this second rhyme, there were circumstances about his attitude that must have troubled or interested anyone who did not know him well.

  “May I ask,” asked Dorian, laughing, “why it is necessary to draw your sword at this stage of the affair?”

  “Because we have left the place called Roundabout,” answered Patrick, “and we have come to a place called Rightabout.”

  And he lifted his sword toward London, and the grey glint upon it came from a low, grey light in the east.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXII

  THE CHEMISTRY OF MR. CROOKE

  WHEN the celebrated Hibbs next visited the shop of Crooke, that mystic and criminologist chemist, he found the premises were impressively and even amazingly enlarged with decorations in the eastern style. Indeed, it would not have been too much to say that Mr. Crooke’s shop occupied the whole of one side of a showy street in the West End; the other side being a blank facade of public buildings. It would be no exaggeration to say that Mr. Crooke was the only shopkeeper for some distance round. Mr. Crooke still served in his shop, however; and politely hastened to serve his customer with the medicine that was customary. Unfortunately, for some reason or other, history was, in connection with this shop, only too prone to repeat itself. And after a vague but soothing conversation with the chemist (on the subject of vitriol and its effects on human happiness), Mr. Hibbs experienced the acute annoyance of once more beholding his most intimate friend, Mr. Joseph Leveson, enter the same fashionable emporium. But, indeed, Leveson’s own annoyance was much too acute for him to notice any on the part of Hibbs.

  “Well,” he said, stopping dead in the middle of the shop, “here is a fine confounded kettle of fish!”

  It is one of the tragedies of the diplomatic that they are not allowed to admit either knowledge or ignorance; so Hibbs looked gloomily wise; and said, pursing his lips, “you mean the general situation.”

  “I mean the situation about this everlasting business of the inn-signs,” said Leveson, impatiently. “Lord Ivywood went up specially, when his leg was really bad, to get it settled in the House in a small non-contentious bill, providing that the sign shouldn’t be enough if the liquor hadn’t been on the spot three days.”

  “Oh, but,” said Hibbs, sinking his voice to a soft solemnity, as being one of the initiate, “a thing like that can be managed, don’t you know.”

  “Of course it can,” said the other, still with the same slightly irritable air. “It was. But it doesn’t seem to occur to you, any more than it did to his lordship, that there is rather a weak point after all in this business of passing acts quietly because they’re unpopular. Has it ever occurred to you that if a law is really kept too quiet to be opposed, it may also be kept too quiet to be obeyed. It’s not so easy to hush it up from a big politician without running the risk of hushing it up even from a common policeman.”

  “But surely that can’t happen, by the nature of things?”

  “Can’t it, by God,” said J. Leveson, appealing to a less pantheistic authority.

  He unfolded a number of papers from his pocket, chiefly cheap local newspapers, but some of them letters and telegrams.

  “Listen to this!” he said. “A curious incident occurred in the village of Poltwell in Surrey yesterday morning. The baker’s shop of Mr. Whiteman was suddenly besieged by a knot of the looser types of the locality, who appear to have demanded beer instead of bread; basing their claim on some ornamental object erected outside the shop; which object they asserted to be a sign-board within the meaning of the act. There, you see, they haven’t even heard of the new act! What do you think of this, from the Clapton Conservator. ‘The contempt of Socialists for the law was well illustrated yesterday, when a crowd, collected round some wooden ensign of Socialism set up before Mr. Dugdale’s Drapery Stores, refused to disperse, though told that their action was contrary to the law. Eventually the malcontents joined the procession following the wooden emblem.’ And what do you say to this? ‘Stop-press news. A chemist in Pimlico has been invaded by a huge crowd, demanding beer; and asserting the provision of it to be among his duties. The chemist is
, of course, well acquainted with his immunities in the matter, especially under the new act; but the old notion of the importance of the sign seems still to possess the populace and even, to a certain extent, to paralyze the police.’ What do you say to that? Isn’t it as plain as Monday morning that this Flying Inn has flown a day in front of us, as all such lies do?” There was a diplomatic silence.

  “Well,” asked the still angry Leveson of the still dubious Hibbs, “what do you make of all that?”

  One ill-acquainted with that relativity essential to all modern minds, might possibly have fancied that Mr. Hibbs could not make much of it. However that may be, his explanations or incapacity for explanations, were soon tested with a fairly positive test. For Lord Ivywood actually walked into the shop of Mr. Crooke.

  “Good day, gentlemen,” he said, looking at them with an expression which they both thought baffling and even a little disconcerting. “Good morning, Mr. Crooke. I have a celebrated visitor for you.” And he introduced the smiling Misysra. The Prophet had fallen back on a comparatively quiet costume this morning, a mere matter of purple and orange or what not; but his aged face was now perennially festive.