Latest / Daily Classic Science Fiction Books / 10 - The Flying Inn - GK Chesterton

Transcript

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

0:00
Speaker 1: Chapter ten, the character of Quodle. There lay about in
0:06
Speaker 1: Lord Doveywood's numerous gardens, terraces, outhouses, stable yards, and similar
0:12
Speaker 1: places a dog that came to be called by the
0:17
Speaker 1: name of Quodle. Lord Iveywood did not call him Quodle.
0:22
Speaker 1: Lord Iveywood was almost physically incapable of articulating such sounds.
0:28
Speaker 1: Lord Iveywood did not care for dogs. He cared for
0:33
Speaker 1: the cause of dogs, of course, and he cared still
0:37
Speaker 1: more for his own intellectual self respect and consistency. He
0:42
Speaker 1: would never have permitted a dog in his house to
0:46
Speaker 1: be physically ill treated, nor for that matter, a rat,
0:52
Speaker 1: nor for that matter, even a man. But if Kuudle
0:57
Speaker 1: was not physically ill treated, he was at least socially neglected,
1:03
Speaker 1: and Kudle did not like it. For dog's care for
1:08
Speaker 1: companionship more than for kindness itself, Lord ivey would would
1:15
Speaker 1: probably have sold the dog. But he consulted experts, as
1:19
Speaker 1: he did on everything he didn't understand, and many things
1:22
Speaker 1: that he did, And the impression he gathered from them
1:26
Speaker 1: was that the dog technically considered would fetch very little. Mostly,
1:31
Speaker 1: it seemed because of the mixture of qualities that it possessed.
1:36
Speaker 1: It was a sort of mongrel bull terrier, but with
1:40
Speaker 1: rather too much of the bulldog, and this fact seemed
1:43
Speaker 1: to weaken its price as much as it strengthened its jaw.
1:48
Speaker 1: His lordship also gained a hazy impression that the dog
1:53
Speaker 1: might have been valuable as a watchdog if it had
1:56
Speaker 1: not been able to follow game like a pointer, and
2:00
Speaker 1: that even in the latter walk of life, it would
2:03
Speaker 1: always be discredited by an unfortunate talent for swimming as
2:07
Speaker 1: well as a retriever. But Lord Ivywood's impressions may very
2:14
Speaker 1: well have been slightly confused, as he was probably thinking
2:19
Speaker 1: about the Blackstone of Mecca or some such subject at
2:23
Speaker 1: the moment. The victim of this entanglement of virtues therefore
2:30
Speaker 1: still lay about in the sunlight of Ivywood, exhibiting no
2:34
Speaker 1: general result of that enthanglement except the most appalling ugliness. Now,
2:44
Speaker 1: Lady Joan Brett did appreciate dogs. It was the whole
2:49
Speaker 1: of her type, and a great deal of her tragedy,
2:52
Speaker 1: that all that was natural in her was still alive
2:56
Speaker 1: under all that was artificial, and she could smell thorn
3:01
Speaker 1: or the sea as far off as a dog can
3:03
Speaker 1: smell his dinner. Like most aristocrats, she could carry cynicism
3:09
Speaker 1: almost to the suburbs of the city of Satan. She
3:12
Speaker 1: was quite as irreligious as Lord Ivy would, or rather more,
3:18
Speaker 1: she could be quite equally frigid or supercilious when she
3:23
Speaker 1: felt inclined, and in the great social talent of being tired,
3:28
Speaker 1: she could beat him any day of the week. But
3:31
Speaker 1: the difference remained, in spite of her sophistries and ambitions,
3:36
Speaker 1: that her elemental communications were not cut and his were.
3:43
Speaker 1: For her, the sunrise was still the rising of the sun,
3:47
Speaker 1: and not the turning on of a light by a
3:49
Speaker 1: convenient cosmic servant. For her, the spring was really the
3:54
Speaker 1: season in the country, and not merely the season in town.
3:59
Speaker 1: Her cocks and hens were natural appendages to an English house,
4:04
Speaker 1: and not, as Lord Ivywood had proved to her from
4:08
Speaker 1: an encyclopedia animals of Indian origin recently imported by Alexander
4:13
Speaker 1: the Great. And so for her a dog was a dog,
4:19
Speaker 1: and not one of the higher animals, nor one of
4:22
Speaker 1: the lower animals, nor something that had the sacredness of life,
4:28
Speaker 1: nor something that ought to be muzzled, nor something that
4:32
Speaker 1: ought not to be vivisected. She knew that in every
4:37
Speaker 1: practical sense, proper provision would be made for the dog,
4:42
Speaker 1: as indeed provision was made for the yellow dogs in
4:45
Speaker 1: Constantinople by Abdulhamid, whose life Lord Ivywood was writing for
4:51
Speaker 1: the Progressive Potentate series. Nor was she in the least
4:56
Speaker 1: sentimental about the dog, or anxious to turn him in
5:00
Speaker 1: to a pet. It simply came natural to her in
5:03
Speaker 1: passing rub all his hair the wrong way and call
5:07
Speaker 1: him something which she instantly forgot. The man who was
5:12
Speaker 1: mowing the garden lawn looked up for a moment, for
5:15
Speaker 1: he had never seen the dog behave in exactly that
5:17
Speaker 1: way before. Quodle arose, shook himself and trotted on in
5:25
Speaker 1: front of the lady, leading her up an iron side
5:28
Speaker 1: staircase of which, as it happened, she had never made
5:32
Speaker 1: use before. It was then, most probably that she first
5:37
Speaker 1: took any special notice of him, and her pleasure, like
5:42
Speaker 1: that which she took in The Sublime Profit from Turkey,
5:47
Speaker 1: was of a humorous character. For the complex quadruped had
5:54
Speaker 1: retained the bow legs of the bulldog, and seen from behind,
5:58
Speaker 1: reminded her ridiculously of a swaggering little Major waddling down
6:03
Speaker 1: to his cube. The dog and the iron stairway between
6:10
Speaker 1: them led her into a series of long rooms, one
6:15
Speaker 1: opening into the other. They formed part of what she
6:18
Speaker 1: had known in earlier days as the disused wing of
6:21
Speaker 1: the Ivywood House, which had been neglected or shut up,
6:27
Speaker 1: probably because it bore some defacements from the fancies of
6:30
Speaker 1: the mad ancestry, the memory of whom the present Lord
6:35
Speaker 1: Ivywood did not think helpful to his own political career.
6:41
Speaker 1: But it seemed to Joan that there were indications of
6:43
Speaker 1: a recent attempt to rehabilitate the place. There was a
6:47
Speaker 1: pail of whitewash in one of the empty rooms, a
6:51
Speaker 1: step ladder in another. Here and there a curtain rod,
6:55
Speaker 1: and at last, in the fourth room, a curtain. It
6:59
Speaker 1: hung all alone on the old woodwork. But it was
7:03
Speaker 1: a very gorgeous curtain, being a kind of orange gold
7:07
Speaker 1: relieved with wavy bars of crimson, which somehow seemed to
7:12
Speaker 1: suggest the very spirit and presence of serpents, though they
7:18
Speaker 1: had neither eyes nor mouths among them. In the next
7:22
Speaker 1: of the endless series of rooms, she came upon a
7:25
Speaker 1: kind of ottoman striped with green and silver. Standing alone
7:30
Speaker 1: on the bare floor. She sat down on it from
7:34
Speaker 1: a mixed motive of fatigue and of impudence, for she
7:38
Speaker 1: dimly remembered a story which she had always thought one
7:41
Speaker 1: of the funniest in the world, about a lady only
7:45
Speaker 1: partly initiated in theosophy, who had been in the habit
7:49
Speaker 1: of resting on a similar object, only to discover afterward
7:53
Speaker 1: that it was a mahatma, covered with his eastern garment,
7:58
Speaker 1: and prostrate and rigid and exit. She had no hopes
8:03
Speaker 1: of sitting on a mahatma herself, but the very thought
8:07
Speaker 1: of it made her laugh, because it would make Lord
8:10
Speaker 1: Ivywood look such a fool. She was not sure whether
8:13
Speaker 1: she liked or disliked Lord Ivywood, but she felt quite
8:18
Speaker 1: certain that it would gratify her to make him look
8:21
Speaker 1: a fool. The moment she had sat down on the ottoman,
8:26
Speaker 1: the dog who had been trotting beside her, sat down also,
8:30
Speaker 1: and on the edge of her skirt. After a minute
8:35
Speaker 1: or two, she rose, and the dog rose, and she
8:39
Speaker 1: looked yet further down that long perspective of large rooms,
8:44
Speaker 1: in which men like Philip Ivywood forget that they are
8:47
Speaker 1: only men. The next was more ornate, and the next
8:52
Speaker 1: yet more so. It was plain that the scheme of
8:55
Speaker 1: decoration that was in progress had been started at the
8:59
Speaker 1: other end, and she could now see that the long
9:03
Speaker 1: lane ended in rooms that from afar off looked like
9:07
Speaker 1: the end of a kaleidoscope, rooms like nests made only
9:12
Speaker 1: from hummingbirds, or palaces built of fixed fireworks. Out of
9:17
Speaker 1: this furnace of fragmentary colors, she saw Ivywood advancing toward her,
9:23
Speaker 1: with his black suit and his white face accented by
9:27
Speaker 1: the contrast. His lips were moving before he was talking
9:32
Speaker 1: to himself, as many orators do. He did not seem
9:36
Speaker 1: to see her, and she had to strangle a subconscious
9:40
Speaker 1: and utterly senseless cry, he is blind. The next moment
9:46
Speaker 1: he was welcoming her intrusion with the well bred surprise
9:50
Speaker 1: and rather worldly simplicity suitable to such a case, and
9:56
Speaker 1: Joan fancied she understood why his face had seemed a
9:59
Speaker 1: little bleaker and blinder than usual. It was by contrast,
10:04
Speaker 1: he was carrying clutch to his forefinger, as his ancestors
10:08
Speaker 1: might have carried a falcon clutched to the wrist, a small,
10:12
Speaker 1: bright colored semi tropical bird, the expression of whose head, neck,
10:18
Speaker 1: and eye was the very opposite of his own. Joan
10:23
Speaker 1: thought she had never seen a living creature with a
10:25
Speaker 1: head so lively and insulting. His provocative eye and pointed
10:30
Speaker 1: crest seemed to be offering to fight fifty gangcocks. It
10:36
Speaker 1: was no wonder, she told herself. By the side of
10:40
Speaker 1: this gaudy guttersnipe with feathers, Ivywood's faint colored hair and
10:46
Speaker 1: frigid face looked like the hair and face of a
10:52
Speaker 1: corpse walking. You'll never know what this is, said Ivywood,
10:59
Speaker 1: in his most charming manner. You've heard of him a
11:03
Speaker 1: hundred times and never had a notion of what he was.
11:07
Speaker 1: This is the bull bull I never knew, replied John.
11:12
Speaker 1: I'm afraid I never cared. I always thought it was
11:17
Speaker 1: something like a nightingale. Ah. Yes, answered Ivywood, But this
11:23
Speaker 1: is the real bullbull peculiar to the east Pechnanodus hammerhoots.
11:28
Speaker 1: You are thinking of Dahlias Golzie, I suppose I am,
11:34
Speaker 1: replied Lady Joan. Of they think, smile, it is an obsession.
11:39
Speaker 1: When shall I not be thinking of Dahlias Gallsworthy? Was
11:43
Speaker 1: it gallsworthy. Then, feeling quite touched by the soft austerity
11:49
Speaker 1: of a companion's face, she caressed the gaudy and pugnacious
11:53
Speaker 1: bird with one finger and said, it's a dear little thing.
11:58
Speaker 1: The quadruped, intimately called Poodle, did not approve of all
12:03
Speaker 1: this at all. Like most dogs, he liked to be
12:06
Speaker 1: with human beings when they were silence, and he extended
12:10
Speaker 1: a magnificent toleration to them as long as they were
12:13
Speaker 1: talking to each other. But conversational attention paid to any
12:18
Speaker 1: other animal at all, remote from a mongrable terrier wounded
12:23
Speaker 1: mister Poodle in his most sensitive and gentlemanly feelings. He
12:28
Speaker 1: emitted a faint growl Joan with all the instincts that
12:35
Speaker 1: were in her, bent down and pulled his hair about
12:38
Speaker 1: once more, and felt the instant necessity of diverting the
12:42
Speaker 1: general admiration from pinknanas hammerhouse. She turned it to the
12:49
Speaker 1: decoration at the end of the refurnished wing, for they
12:52
Speaker 1: had already come to the last of the long suite
12:55
Speaker 1: of rooms, which ended in some unfinished but eggs was
12:59
Speaker 1: a panel in white and colored woods inlaid in the
13:04
Speaker 1: oriental manner. At one corner. The whole corridor ended by
13:09
Speaker 1: curving into a round turret chamber overlooking the landscape, and
13:14
Speaker 1: which Joan, who had known the house in childhood, was
13:18
Speaker 1: sure was on innovation. On the other hand, a black
13:24
Speaker 1: gap still left in the lower left hand corner of
13:27
Speaker 1: the oriental woodwork suddenly reminded her of something she had forgotten. Surely,
13:35
Speaker 1: she said, after much mere esthetic ecstasy, there used to
13:41
Speaker 1: be a staircase there leading to the old kitchen garden,
13:46
Speaker 1: or the old chapel or something. Have you? Wood nodded gravely, Yes,
13:52
Speaker 1: he said. It did lead to the ruins of a
13:55
Speaker 1: medieval chapel. As you say, the truth is, it led
13:59
Speaker 1: to several things that I cannot altogether consider a credit
14:02
Speaker 1: to the family in these days. All that scandal in
14:07
Speaker 1: joking about the unsuccessful tunnel your mother may have told
14:11
Speaker 1: you of its Well, it did us no good in
14:14
Speaker 1: the county, I'm afraid. So as it's a mere scrap
14:18
Speaker 1: of land bordering on the sea, I've fenced it off
14:22
Speaker 1: and let it grow wild. But I'm boarding up the
14:25
Speaker 1: end of the room here for quite another reason. I
14:29
Speaker 1: want you to come and see it. He led her
14:33
Speaker 1: into the round corner turrets in which the new architecture ended,
14:38
Speaker 1: and Joan, with her thirst for the beautiful, could not
14:42
Speaker 1: stifle a certain thrill of the attitude at the prospects.
14:47
Speaker 1: Five open windows of a light and exquisite Saracenic outline
14:52
Speaker 1: looked out over the bronze and copper and purple of
14:56
Speaker 1: the autumn parks and forests to the peacock colors of
14:59
Speaker 1: the the sea. There was neither a house nor living
15:03
Speaker 1: thing in sight. And familiar as she had been with
15:07
Speaker 1: that post, she knew she was looking out from a
15:11
Speaker 1: new angle of vision on a new landscape of Ivywood.
15:17
Speaker 1: You can write sonnets, said Ivywood, with something more like
15:21
Speaker 1: emotion in his voice than she had ever heard in it.
15:26
Speaker 1: What comes first into your mind that these open windows?
15:32
Speaker 1: I know what you mean, said Joan, after a silence,
15:36
Speaker 1: the same half oft. Yes, he said, that is how
15:41
Speaker 1: I felt of perilous seas and the fairy lands foreborn.
15:47
Speaker 1: There was another silence, and the dog sniffed round and
15:49
Speaker 1: round the circular turret chamber. I want it to be
15:55
Speaker 1: like that, said ivy Wood, in a low and singularly
15:59
Speaker 1: moved and nation. I want this to be the end
16:03
Speaker 1: of the house. I want this to be the end
16:06
Speaker 1: of the world. Don't you feel that this is the
16:10
Speaker 1: real beauty of all this Eastern art. It is colored
16:15
Speaker 1: like the edges of things, like the little clouds of
16:18
Speaker 1: morning in the islands of the blessed? Do you know?
16:23
Speaker 1: And he lowered his voice yet more. It has the
16:27
Speaker 1: power over me of making me feel as if I
16:31
Speaker 1: were myself absent and distant, some oriental traveler who was
16:38
Speaker 1: lost and for whom men were looking. When I see
16:42
Speaker 1: that greenish lemon yellow enamel there let into the white,
16:47
Speaker 1: I feel that I am standing thousands of leagues from
16:51
Speaker 1: where I stand. You are right, said Joan, looking at
16:56
Speaker 1: him with some wonder. I have felt like that myself.
17:01
Speaker 1: This art went on ivywood as in a dream, does
17:06
Speaker 1: indeed take the wings of the morning and abide in
17:10
Speaker 1: the uttermost parts of the sea. They say it contains
17:14
Speaker 1: no form of life, but surely we can read its
17:18
Speaker 1: alphabet as easily as the red hieroglyphics of sunrise and sunsets,
17:24
Speaker 1: which are on the fringes of the Robe of God.
17:31
Speaker 1: I never heard you talk like that before, said the lady,
17:35
Speaker 1: and again stroked the vivid violet feathers of the small
17:38
Speaker 1: Eastern bird. Mister Koodle could stand it no longer. He
17:43
Speaker 1: had evidently formed a very low opinion of the torque
17:45
Speaker 1: chamber and of Oriental art generally. But seeing Joan's attention
17:50
Speaker 1: once more transferred to his rival, he trotted out into
17:53
Speaker 1: the longer room, and, finding the gap in the woodwork
17:56
Speaker 1: which was soon to be boarded up, but which still
17:59
Speaker 1: opened on an old, dark staircase, he went galumphing down
18:04
Speaker 1: the stairs. Lord Iveywood gently placed the bird on the
18:07
Speaker 1: girl's own finger, and went to one of the open windows,
18:11
Speaker 1: leaning out A little look here, he said, doesn't this
18:16
Speaker 1: express what we both feel? Isn't this the sort of
18:20
Speaker 1: fairy tale house that ought to hang on the last
18:24
Speaker 1: wall of the world? And he motions her to the
18:27
Speaker 1: window sill just outside, which hung the birds empty cage,
18:32
Speaker 1: beautifully wrought in brass or some of the yellow metals.
18:38
Speaker 1: Why that is the best of all, cried lady Joan.
18:41
Speaker 1: It makes one veel as if it really were the
18:44
Speaker 1: Arabian nights, as if this were a tower of the
18:48
Speaker 1: gigantic Genie with turrets up to the moon, and this
18:52
Speaker 1: were an enchanted prince cage in a golden palace, suspended
18:57
Speaker 1: by the evening star. Something stirred in her dim but
19:03
Speaker 1: teeming subconscious, something like a chill, or change like that
19:08
Speaker 1: by which we half know that weather has altered, or
19:12
Speaker 1: distant and unnoticed music suddenly ceased. Where is the dog?
19:18
Speaker 1: She asked, suddenly, how you had turned with a mild
19:22
Speaker 1: gray eye. Was there a dog here? He asked, Yes,
19:27
Speaker 1: said Lady Joan Brett, and gave him back the bird,
19:31
Speaker 1: which he restored carefully to its cage. The dog after
19:36
Speaker 1: whom she inquired, had, in truth trundled down a dark,
19:39
Speaker 1: winding staircase and turned into the daylight, into a part
19:45
Speaker 1: of the garden he had never seen before, nor indeed
19:49
Speaker 1: had anybody else for some time past. It was altogether
19:53
Speaker 1: tangled and overgrown with weeds, and the only trace of
19:56
Speaker 1: human handiwork. The wreck of an old Gothic chapel, stood
20:01
Speaker 1: waist high in numberless nettles and soiled with crawling fungoids.
20:07
Speaker 1: Most of these merely discolored the gray, crumbling stone with
20:11
Speaker 1: shades of bronze or brown, but some of them, particularly
20:15
Speaker 1: on the side farthest from the house, were of orange
20:19
Speaker 1: or purple tints, almost bright enough for Lord Ivywood's oriental decoration.
20:26
Speaker 1: Some fanciful eyes that fell on the place afterward found
20:30
Speaker 1: something like an allegory in those graven and broken saints
20:34
Speaker 1: or archangels feeding such fiery and ephemeral parasites as those
20:39
Speaker 1: tubstools like blood or gold. But mister Koodle had never
20:45
Speaker 1: set himself up as an allegorist's, and he merely trotted
20:50
Speaker 1: deeper and deeper into the gray green English jungle. He
20:54
Speaker 1: grumbled very much at the thistles and nettles, almost as
20:58
Speaker 1: a city man will grumble at the jostling of a crowd.
21:02
Speaker 1: But he continued to press forward, with his nose near
21:06
Speaker 1: the ground, as if he had already smelt something that
21:09
Speaker 1: interested him. And indeed he had smelt something in which
21:13
Speaker 1: a dog, except on special occasions, is much more interested
21:18
Speaker 1: than he is in dogs. Breaking through a last barrier
21:23
Speaker 1: of high and hoary purple thistles, he came out on
21:27
Speaker 1: a semicircle of somewhat clearer ground, dotted with slender trees,
21:33
Speaker 1: and having by way of back, seen the brown brick
21:37
Speaker 1: arch of an old tunnel. The tunnel was boarded up
21:42
Speaker 1: with a very irregular fence or mask made of motley
21:46
Speaker 1: wooden laths, and looked somehow rather like a petamime cottage.
21:52
Speaker 1: In front of this, a sturdy man in very shabby
21:56
Speaker 1: shooting clothes was standing attending to a battered old frying pan,
22:01
Speaker 1: which he held over a rather irregular flame, which, small
22:05
Speaker 1: as it was, smelt strongly of burnt rum. In the
22:11
Speaker 1: frying pan and also on the top of a cask
22:14
Speaker 1: or barrel to serve for a table hard by were
22:18
Speaker 1: a number of the gray, brown and even orange fungi
22:23
Speaker 1: which were plastered over these stone angels and dragons of
22:26
Speaker 1: the fallen chapel. Hello, old man, said the person in
22:32
Speaker 1: the shooting jacket, with tranquility, and without looking up from
22:36
Speaker 1: his cooking, Come to pay us a visit. Come along. Then,
22:40
Speaker 1: he flashed one glance at the dog and returned to
22:43
Speaker 1: the frying pan. If your tail were two inches shorter,
22:47
Speaker 1: you'd be worth a hundred pounds had any breakfasts. The
22:52
Speaker 1: dog trotted across to him and began nosing and sniffing
22:56
Speaker 1: around his dilapidated leather gaiters. He did not interrupt his cookery,
23:02
Speaker 1: on which his eyes were fixed and both his hands
23:05
Speaker 1: were busy, but he crooked his knee and foot so
23:08
Speaker 1: as to caress the quadruped in a nerve under the
23:12
Speaker 1: tangle of the jaw, the stimulation of which, as some
23:15
Speaker 1: in a science have helped, is for a dog what
23:19
Speaker 1: a good cigar is for a man. At the same moment,
23:23
Speaker 1: a huge voice like an Ogre's came from within the
23:27
Speaker 1: mass tunnel, calling out, and who are you talking to?
23:33
Speaker 1: A very crooked kind of window in the upper part
23:36
Speaker 1: of the pantomime cottage burst open, and an enormous head
23:40
Speaker 1: with erect, startling and almost scarlet hair and blue eyes
23:45
Speaker 1: as big as a bullfrog's, was thrust out above the scene.
23:51
Speaker 1: Humph cried, the Ogre memorial councils have been thrown away
23:57
Speaker 1: in the last week. I've sung you fourteen and a
23:59
Speaker 1: half songs of me own composition, instead of which you
24:02
Speaker 1: go about stealing dogs. You're following in the path of
24:06
Speaker 1: Parson what's his name? In every way, I'm afraid no,
24:12
Speaker 1: said the man with the frying pan. Impartially Parson Whiteladies
24:16
Speaker 1: struck a very good path for doubling on Pebbleck that
24:20
Speaker 1: I was glad to follow. But I think he was
24:23
Speaker 1: quite silly to steal dogs. He was young and brought
24:27
Speaker 1: up pious. I know too much about dogs to steal one, well,
24:34
Speaker 1: asked the large red haired man. And how do you
24:37
Speaker 1: get a dog like that? I let him steal me,
24:41
Speaker 1: said the person, stirring the pan. And indeed the dog
24:46
Speaker 1: was sitting erect and even arrogant at his feet, as
24:49
Speaker 1: if he was a watchdog at a high salary, and
24:53
Speaker 1: had been there before the building of the tunnel Indo
25:00
Speaker 1: Chapter ten