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06 - The Flying Inn - GK Chesterton · Daily Classic Science Fiction Books

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Speaker 1: Chapter six, The whole in heaven. That delicate ruby light,
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Speaker 1: which is one of the rarest but one of the
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Speaker 1: most exquisite of evening effects, warmed the land, sky and seas,
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Speaker 1: as if the whole world were washed in wine and
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Speaker 1: dyed almost scarlet. The strong red head of Patrick Dalroy
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Speaker 1: as he stood on a waste of firs and bracken
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Speaker 1: where he and his friends had halted. One of his
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Speaker 1: friends was re examining a short gun rather like a
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Speaker 1: double barreled carbine. The other was eating thistles. Dolroy himself
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Speaker 1: was idle and ruminant, with his hands in his pockets
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Speaker 1: and his eye on the horizon. Landwards. The hills, plains
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Speaker 1: and woods lay bathed in the rose red light, but
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Speaker 1: it changed somewhat to purple, to cloud, and something like
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Speaker 1: storm over the distant violet strip of sea. It was
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Speaker 1: towards the sea that he was staring. Suddenly he woke
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Speaker 1: up and seemed almost to rub his eyes, or at
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Speaker 1: any rate to rub his red eyebrow. Why we're on
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Speaker 1: the road of Pebblewick, he said, that's the damned little
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Speaker 1: tin chapel by the beach. I know, answered his friend
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Speaker 1: and guide. We've done the old hair trick doubled, you know,
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Speaker 1: nine times out of ten, it's the best. Parson White
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Speaker 1: Lady used to do it when they were after him
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Speaker 1: for dog stealing. I've pretty much followed his trail. You
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Speaker 1: can't do better than stick to the best examples. They
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Speaker 1: tell you in London that Dick Turpin rode to York.
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Speaker 1: Well I know he didn't. For my old grandfather up
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Speaker 1: at Cobble's End knew the Turpins. Intimately threw one of
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Speaker 1: them into the river on a Christmas Day. But I
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Speaker 1: think I can guess what he did do and how
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Speaker 1: the tail got about. If Dick was wise, he went
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Speaker 1: flying up the Old North Road shouting York Yorke or
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Speaker 1: what not before people recognized him. Then if he did
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Speaker 1: the thing properly, he might half an hour afterwards walk
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Speaker 1: down the strand with a pipe in his mouth. They say,
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Speaker 1: old Boney said go where you aren't expected, and I
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Speaker 1: suppose as a soldier he was right. But for a
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Speaker 1: gentleman dodging the police like yourself, it isn't exactly the
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Speaker 1: right way of putting it. I should say, go where
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Speaker 1: you ought to be expected, and you'll generally find your
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Speaker 1: fellow creatures don't do what they ought about expecting any
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Speaker 1: more than about anything else. Well, this bit between here
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Speaker 1: and the sea, said the captain in a brown study.
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Speaker 1: I know it so well, so well that that I
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Speaker 1: rather wish i'd never seen it again. Do you know,
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Speaker 1: he asked, suddenly, pointing to a pack and pit of
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Speaker 1: sand that showed white in the dusky heath a hundred
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Speaker 1: yards away. Do you know what makes that spot so
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Speaker 1: famous in history? Yes, answered mister Pump. That's where old
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Speaker 1: mother Grout shot the Methodist. You are in error, said
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Speaker 1: the captain. Such an incident as you describe would in
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Speaker 1: no case call for special comment or regret. No, that
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Speaker 1: spot is famous because a very badly brought up girl
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Speaker 1: once lost a ribbon off a plate of black hair,
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Speaker 1: and somebody helped her find it. Has the other person
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Speaker 1: been well brought up? Asked Pump, with a faint smile. No,
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Speaker 1: said Dalroy, staring at the sea. He has been brought down. Then,
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Speaker 1: rousing himself again, he made a gesture toward a further
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Speaker 1: part of the heath. Do you know the remarkable history
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Speaker 1: of that old wall, the one beyond the last gorge
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Speaker 1: over there? No, replied the other unless you mean dead
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Speaker 1: man's circus, that and further along, I do not mean
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Speaker 1: dead man's circus, said the captain. The remarkable history of
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Speaker 1: that wall is that somebody's shadow once fell on it,
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Speaker 1: and that shadow was more desirable than the substance of
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Speaker 1: all other living things. It is this, he cried, almost violently,
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Speaker 1: resuming his flippant tone. It is this circumstance, Hump, and
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Speaker 1: not the trivial and every day incident of a dead
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Speaker 1: man going to a circus to which you have presumed
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Speaker 1: to compare it. It is this historical event which Lord
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Speaker 1: Ivywood is about to commemorate by rebuilding the wall with
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Speaker 1: solid gold and Greek marbles stolen by the Turks from
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Speaker 1: the grave of Socrates, enclosing a column of solid gold
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Speaker 1: four hundred feet high and surmounted by a colossal equestrian
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Speaker 1: statue of a bankrupt irishman riding backwards on a donkey.
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Speaker 1: He lifted one of his long legs over the animal,
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Speaker 1: as if about to pose for the group, then swung
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Speaker 1: back on both feet again and again looked at the
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Speaker 1: purple limit of the sea. Do you know, Hump, he said,
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Speaker 1: I think modern people have somehow got their minds all
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Speaker 1: wrong about human life. They seem to expect what nature
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Speaker 1: has never promised, and then try to ruin all that
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Speaker 1: nature has really given. At all, those atheist chapels of
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Speaker 1: ivy woods, they're always talking of peace, perfect peace, and
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Speaker 1: utter peace and universal joy and souls that beat us one.
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Speaker 1: But they don't look any more cheerful than anyone else.
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Speaker 1: And the next thing they do is to start smashing
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Speaker 1: a thousand good jokes and good stories and good songs
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Speaker 1: and good friendships. By pulling down the old ship. He
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Speaker 1: gave a glance at the loose sign post lying on
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Speaker 1: the heath beside him, almost as if to reassure himself
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Speaker 1: that it was not stolen. Now it seems to me,
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Speaker 1: he went on, that this is asking for too much
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Speaker 1: and getting too little. I don't know whether God means
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Speaker 1: man to have happiness in that all in all and
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Speaker 1: utterly utter sense of happiness. But God does mean a
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Speaker 1: man to have a little fun, and I mean to
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Speaker 1: go on having it. If I mustn't satisfy my heart,
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Speaker 1: I can gratify my humor. The cynical fellows who think
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Speaker 1: themselves so damned clever, have a sort of saying, be good,
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Speaker 1: and you will be happy, but you will not have
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Speaker 1: a jolly time. The cynical fellows are quite wrong, as
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Speaker 1: they generally are, they have got hold of the exact
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Speaker 1: opposite of the truth. God knows. I don't set up
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Speaker 1: to be good, but even a rascal sometimes has to
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Speaker 1: fight the world in the same way as a saint.
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Speaker 1: I think I have fought the world et militavi non sine.
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Speaker 1: What's the Latin for having a lark? I can't pretend
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Speaker 1: to peace and joy and all the rest of it,
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Speaker 1: particularly in this original briar patch. I haven't been happy, Hump,
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Speaker 1: but I have had a jolly time. The sunset, stillness
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Speaker 1: settled down again, save for the cropping of the donkey
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Speaker 1: in the undergrowth, and Pump said nothing sympathetically, and it
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Speaker 1: was Dolroy once more who took up his parable. So
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Speaker 1: I think there's too much of this playing on our emotions, Hump,
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Speaker 1: as this place is certainly playing the cat and banjo
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Speaker 1: with mine. Damn it all. There are other things to
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Speaker 1: do with the rest of one's time. I don't like
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Speaker 1: all this fuss about feeling things. It only makes people miserable.
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Speaker 1: In my present frame of mind, I'm in favor of
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Speaker 1: doing things, all of which, hump he said, with a
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Speaker 1: sudden lift of the voice that always went in him,
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Speaker 1: with a rushing, irrational return of merely animal spirits, all
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Speaker 1: of which I have put into a song against songs
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Speaker 1: that I will now sing you. I shouldn't sing it here,
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Speaker 1: said Humphrey Pump, picking up his gun and putting it
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Speaker 1: under his arm. You look large in this open place,
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Speaker 1: and you sound large, arge. But I'll take you to
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Speaker 1: the hole in heaven you've been talking about so much,
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Speaker 1: and hide you as I used to hide you from
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Speaker 1: that tutor I couldn't catch his name, man who could
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Speaker 1: only get drunk on Greek wine at square Wimpole's hump,
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Speaker 1: cried the captain, I abdicate the throne of Ithaca. You
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Speaker 1: are far wiser than Ulysses. Here I have had my
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Speaker 1: heart torn with temptations to ten thousand things, between suicide
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Speaker 1: and abduction, and all by the mere sight of that
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Speaker 1: hole in the heath where we used to have picnics,
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Speaker 1: and all that time I'd forgotten. We used to call
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Speaker 1: it the hole in heaven, and by God, what a
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Speaker 1: good name in both senses. I thought you'd have remembered it.
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Speaker 1: Captain said the innkeeper, from the joke, young mister Matthew's Maid,
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Speaker 1: in the heat of some savage hand to hand struggle
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Speaker 1: in Albania, said mister Dolroy, sadly, pressing his palm across
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Speaker 1: his brow. I must have forgotten for one fatal instant
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Speaker 1: the joke, young mister Matthew's Maid. It wasn't very good,
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Speaker 1: said mister Pump, simply, Ah, his aunt was the one
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Speaker 1: for things like that. She went too far with old gudgeon.
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Speaker 1: Though with these words he jumped and seemed to be
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Speaker 1: swallowed up by the earth. But they had merely strolled
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Speaker 1: the few yards needed to bring them to the edge
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Speaker 1: of the sand pit on the heath of which they
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Speaker 1: had been speaking. And it is one of the truths
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Speaker 1: concealed by Heaven from Lord Ivywood, and revealed by Heaven
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Speaker 1: to mister Pump, that a hiding place can be covered
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Speaker 1: when you are close to it, and yet be open
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Speaker 1: and visible from some spot of vantage far off from
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Speaker 1: the side by which they approached it. The sudden hollow
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Speaker 1: of sand, a kind of collapsed chamber in the heath,
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Speaker 1: seemed covered with a natural curve of fern and furs,
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Speaker 1: and flashed out of sight like a fairy. It's all right,
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Speaker 1: he called out from under a floor or roof of leaves.
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Speaker 1: You'll remember it all when you get there. This is
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Speaker 1: the place to sing your song, Captain, Lord bless me, Captain.
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Speaker 1: I don't remember your singing that Irish song you made
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Speaker 1: up at college, bellowing it like a bowl of bashon
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Speaker 1: all about hearts and sleeves or some such thing. And
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Speaker 1: her ladyship and the tutor never heard a breath, because
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Speaker 1: that bank of sand breaks everything. It's worth knowing all this,
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Speaker 1: you know. It's a pity. It's not part of a
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Speaker 1: young gentleman's education. Now you shall sing me the song
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Speaker 1: in favor of having no feelings, or whatever you call it.
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Speaker 1: Dolroy was staring about him at the cavern of his
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Speaker 1: old picnics, so forgotten and so startlingly familiar, he seemed
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Speaker 1: to have lost all thought of singing anything, and simply
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Speaker 1: to be groping in the dark house of his own boyhood.
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Speaker 1: There was a slight trickle from a natural spring in
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Speaker 1: the sandstone, just under the ferns, and he remembered they
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Speaker 1: used to try to boil the water in a kettle.
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Speaker 1: He remembered to quarrel about who had upset the kettle, which,
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Speaker 1: in the morbidity of first love, had given him for
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Speaker 1: days the tortures of the damned. When the energetic Pump
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Speaker 1: broke once more through the rather thorny roof, on an
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Speaker 1: impulse to accumulate their other eccentric possessions, Patrick remembered about
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Speaker 1: a thorn and a finger that made his heart stop
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Speaker 1: with something that was pain and perfect music. When Pump
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Speaker 1: returned with the rum keg and the cheese and rolled
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Speaker 1: them with a kick down the shelving sandy side of
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Speaker 1: the hole, he remembered, with almost wrathful laughter, that in
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Speaker 1: the old days he had rolled down that slope himself
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Speaker 1: and thought it rather a fine thing to do. He
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Speaker 1: felt then, as if he were rolling down a smooth
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Speaker 1: side of the matter horn. He observed now that the
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Speaker 1: height was rather less than that of the second story
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Speaker 1: of one of the stunted cottages he had noted on
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Speaker 1: his return. He suddenly understood he had had grown bigger,
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Speaker 1: bigger in a bodily sense. He had doubts about any
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Speaker 1: other the hole in heaven. He said, what a good name,
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Speaker 1: what a good poet, I was? In those days the
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Speaker 1: hole in heaven, But does it let one in or
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Speaker 1: let one out? In the last level shafts of the
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Speaker 1: fallen sun, the fantastic shadow of the long eared quadruped
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Speaker 1: whom Pump had now tethered to a new and nearer pasture,
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Speaker 1: fell across the last sunlit scrap of sand. Doalroy looked
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Speaker 1: at the long, exaggerated shadow of the ass and laughed
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Speaker 1: that short, explosive laugh he had uttered when the doors
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Speaker 1: of the Harems had been closed after the Turkish War.
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Speaker 1: He was normally a man much too loquacious, but he
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Speaker 1: never explained those laughs. Humphrey Pump plunged down again into
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Speaker 1: the sunken nest and began to broach the cask of
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Speaker 1: rum in his own secret style, saying, we can get
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Speaker 1: something else somehow tomorrow. For to night we can eat
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Speaker 1: cheese and drink rum, especially as there's a water on tap,
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Speaker 1: so to speak. And now Captain sing us the song
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Speaker 1: against songs. Patrick Dolroy drank a little rum out of
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Speaker 1: a small medicine glass, which the generally unaccountable mister Pump
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Speaker 1: unaccountably procured from his waistcoat pocket. But Patrick's color had risen,
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Speaker 1: his brow was almost as red as his hair, and
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Speaker 1: he was evidently reluctant. I don't see why I should
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Speaker 1: sing all the songs, he said, Why the devil don't
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Speaker 1: you sing a song yourself? And now, come to think
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Speaker 1: of it, he cried, with an accumulating brogue, not perhaps
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Speaker 1: wholly unaffected by the rum, which he had not, in
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Speaker 1: fact drunk for years. And now I come to think
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Speaker 1: of it, what about that song of yours? All me
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Speaker 1: use coming back in this blessed and cursed place? And
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Speaker 1: I remember that song of yours that never resisted, nor
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Speaker 1: ever will. Don't you remember, Humphrey Pump, that night when
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Speaker 1: I sang ye no less than seventeen songs of me
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Speaker 1: own composition. I remember it very well, answered the Englishman
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Speaker 1: with restraint. And don't ye remember? Went on the exhilarated
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Speaker 1: Irishman with solemnity, that unless YE could produce a poetic
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Speaker 1: lyric of your own, written and sung by yourself, I
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Speaker 1: threatened to sing again, said the impenetrable Pump. Yes, I know.
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Speaker 1: He calmly proceeded to take out of his pockets, which
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Speaker 1: were alas more like those of a poacher than an innkeeper,
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Speaker 1: a folded and faded piece of paper. I wrote it.
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Speaker 1: When you asked me, he said, simply, I have never
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Speaker 1: tried to sing it, but I'll sing it myself when
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Speaker 1: you've sung your song against anybody singing at all. All right,
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Speaker 1: cried the somewhat excited captain to hear a song from you.
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Speaker 1: Why I'll sing anything. This is the song against song hump,
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Speaker 1: and again he let his voice out like a bellow
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Speaker 1: against the evening silence. The song of the sorrow of
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Speaker 1: Meli's song is a weary song and a dreary song.
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Speaker 1: The glory of Marianna's grange had got into great decay.
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Speaker 1: The song of the Raven never more has never been
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Speaker 1: called a cheery song. And the brightest things in Baudelaire
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Speaker 1: are anything else but gay. But who will write us
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Speaker 1: a writing song, or a hunting song, or a drinking
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Speaker 1: song fit for them that arose and rode when day
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Speaker 1: and the wine were red. But bring me a quart
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Speaker 1: of claret out, and I will write you a clinking song,
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Speaker 1: a song of war, and a song of wine, and
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Speaker 1: a song to wake the dead. The song of the
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Speaker 1: Fury of Frogolette is a florid song and a torrid song.
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Speaker 1: The song of the sorrow of Tara is sung to
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Speaker 1: a harp unstrung. The song of the cheerful Shropshire kid
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Speaker 1: I consider a perfectly horrid song, And the song of
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Speaker 1: the happy Futurist is a song that can't be sung.
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Speaker 1: But who will write us a writing song or a
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Speaker 1: fighting song, or a drinking song fit for the fathers
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Speaker 1: of you and me that knew how to think and thrive.
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Speaker 1: But the song of beauty and art and love is
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Speaker 1: simply an utterly stinking song to double you up and
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Speaker 1: drag you down, and damn your soul alive. Take some more, rum,
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Speaker 1: concluded the Irish officer affably, and let's hear your song
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Speaker 1: at last, with the gravity inseparable from the deep conveniality
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Speaker 1: of country people, mister Pump unfolded the paper on which
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Speaker 1: he had recorded the only antagonistic emotion that was strong
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Speaker 1: enough in him to screw his infinite English tolerance to
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Speaker 1: the pitch of song. He read out the title very
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Speaker 1: carefully and in full, Song against Grocers by Humphrey Pump,
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Speaker 1: Sole proprietor of the old ship Pebblewick, Good accommodation for
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Speaker 1: man and beast, celebrated as the House at which both
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Speaker 1: Queen Charlotte and Jonathan Wilde put up on different occasions,
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Speaker 1: and where the ice cream man is mistaken for Bonaparte.
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Speaker 1: This song is written against grocers. God made the wicked
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Speaker 1: grocer for a mystery and a sign that men might
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Speaker 1: shun the awful shops and go to inns and dine.
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Speaker 1: Were the bacons on the rafter and the wine is
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Speaker 1: in the wood, and God has made good laughter has
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Speaker 1: seen that they are good. The evil hearted grocer would
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Speaker 1: call his mother ma'am and bow at her and bob
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Speaker 1: at her her aged soul to dam and rub his
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Speaker 1: horrid hands and ask what article it was next, though
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Speaker 1: mortise inarticulo should be her proper text. His props are
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Speaker 1: not his children, but pert lads, under paid, who call
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Speaker 1: out cash and bang about to work his wicked trade.
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Speaker 1: He keeps a lady in a cage most cruelly all day,
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Speaker 1: and makes her count and calls her miss until she
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Speaker 1: fades away. The righteous minds of innkeepers induce them now
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Speaker 1: and then to crack a bottle with a friend, or
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Speaker 1: treat unmoneyed men. But who hath seen the grocer treat
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Speaker 1: housemaids to his teas or crack a bottle of fish sauce,
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Speaker 1: or stand a man to cheese. He sells us sands
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Speaker 1: of Araby as sugar for cash down. He sweeps his
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Speaker 1: shop and sells the dust, the purest salt in town.
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Speaker 1: He crams the cans of poisoned meat, poor subjects of
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Speaker 1: the king, And when they die by thousands, why he
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Speaker 1: laughs like anything. The grocer gross in spirits and in wine,
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Speaker 1: not frankly and in fellowship as men in inns do dine,
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Speaker 1: but packed with soap and sardines, and carried off by
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Speaker 1: grooms for to be snatched by duchesses and drunk in
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Speaker 1: dressing rooms. The hell instructed grocer has a temple made
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Speaker 1: of tin, and the ruin of good innkeepers is loudly
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Speaker 1: urged therein. But now the sands are running short from
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Speaker 1: sugar of a sort. The grocer trembles for his time,
19:32
Speaker 1: just like his weight is short. Captain Dolroy was getting
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Speaker 1: considerably heated with his nautical liquor, and his appreciation of
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Speaker 1: Pump's song was not merely noisy but active. He leaped
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Speaker 1: to his feet and waved his glass. Ye ought to
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Speaker 1: be poet, laiate hump ye're right, you're right. We'll stand
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Speaker 1: all this no longer. He dashed wildly up the sand
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Speaker 1: slope and pointed with the sign post towards the dark shore,
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Speaker 1: where the low shed of corrugated iron stood almost isolated.
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Speaker 1: There's your tin temple, he said, Let's burn it. They
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Speaker 1: were some way along the coast from the large watering
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Speaker 1: place of Pebblewick, and between the gathering twilight and the
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Speaker 1: rolling country, it could not be clearly seen. Nothing was
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Speaker 1: now in sight but the corrugated iron hall by the beach,
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Speaker 1: and three half built red brick villas. Dalroy appeared to
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Speaker 1: regard the hall and the empty houses with great malevolence.
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Speaker 1: Look at it, said he Babylon. He brandished the Inn
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Speaker 1: sign in the air like a banner, and began to
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Speaker 1: stride towards the place, showering curses. In forty days, he called,
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Speaker 1: shall Pebblewick be destroyed? Dogs shall lap the blood of
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Speaker 1: j Levison Secretary, and unicorns come back. Pat cried, Humphrey,
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Speaker 1: you've had too much rum. Lions shall howl in its
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Speaker 1: high places, fusciferated the captain. Donkeys will howl anyhow, said Pump.
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Speaker 1: But I suppose the other donkey must follow and loading
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Speaker 1: and untethering the quadruped. He began to lead him along
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Speaker 1: end of chapter six