"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 s.e.xton," 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 s.e.xton roared, "or you"ll "ave me cuttin"
my throat at c.o.c.k-crow. "Ere"s another parcel of fun-makers!"
A motor-brake had pulled up at the door and a mult.i.tude 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 ther truth our tongues are telling, Spread ther light from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, G.o.d hath given man a dwelling Flat and flat for evermore.
When ther Primal Dark retreated, When ther 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 ther truth our tongues are telling, Spread ther light from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e-- 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 s.e.xton, 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 s.e.xton 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."
"d.a.m.n it! They"d be a change," cried the s.e.xton. "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 pa.s.sing char-a-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 rear-guard 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 chauffeur slipped in his clutch and sped away. Then the crowd broke up, congratulating all concerned except the s.e.xton, 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:
"I give this person in charge for a.s.sault."
"But, good Lord!" said the sergeant, whiter than Woodhouse. "It"s Sir Thomas."
"Whoever it is, it isn"t fit to be at large," said Woodhouse. The crowd suspecting something wrong began to rea.s.semble, and all the English horror of a row in public moved us, headed by the sergeant, inside the lodge. We shut both park-gates and lodge-door.
"You saw the a.s.sault, sergeant," Woodhouse went on. "You can testify I used no more force than was necessary to protect myself. You can testify that I have not even damaged this person"s property. (Here! take your stick, you!) You heard the filthy language he used."
"I--I can"t say I did," the sergeant stammered.
"Oh, but _we_ did!" said Ollyett, and repeated it, to the ap.r.o.n-veiled horror of the lodge-keeper"s wife.
Sir Thomas on a hard kitchen chair began to talk. He said he had "stood enough of being photographed like a wild beast," and expressed loud regret that he had not killed "that man," who was "conspiring with the sergeant to laugh at him."
""Ad you ever seen "im before, Sir Thomas?" the sergeant asked.
"No! But it"s time an example was made here. I"ve never seen the sweep in my life."
I think it was Bat Masquerier"s magnetic eye that recalled the past to him, for his face changed and his jaw dropped. "But I have!" he groaned.
"I remember now."
Here a writhing man entered by the back door. He was, he said, the village solicitor. I do not a.s.sert that he licked Woodhouse"s boots, but we should have respected him more if he had and been done with it. His notion was that the matter could be accommodated, arranged and compromised for gold, and yet more gold. The sergeant thought so too.
Woodhouse undeceived them both. To the sergeant he said, "Will you or will you not enter the charge?" To the village solicitor he gave the name of his lawyers, at which the man wrung his hands and cried, "Oh, Sir T., Sir T.!" in a miserable falsetto, for it was a Bat Masquerier of a firm. They conferred together in tragic whispers.
"I don"t dive after d.i.c.kens," said Ollyett to Bat and me by the window, "but every time _I_ get into a row I notice the police-court always fills up with his characters."
"I"ve noticed that too," said Bat. "But the odd thing is you mustn"t give the public straight d.i.c.kens--not in My business. I wonder why that is."
Then Sir Thomas got his second wind and cursed the day that he, or it may have been we, were born. I feared that though he was a Radical he might apologise and, since he was an M.P., might lie his way out of the difficulty. But he was utterly and truthfully beside himself. He asked foolish questions--such as what we were doing in the village at all, and how much blackmail Woodhouse expected to make out of him. But neither Woodhouse nor the sergeant nor the writhing solicitor listened. The upshot of their talk, in the chimney-corner, was that Sir Thomas stood engaged to appear next Monday before his brother magistrates on charges of a.s.sault, disorderly conduct, and language calculated, etc. Ollyett was specially careful about the language.
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 the Earth 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 circ.u.mstances 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 ent.i.tled 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 his client"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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sure them that his client would never have dreamed of inst.i.tuting 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 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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--"