Latest / Classic Science Fiction Books / 15 - The Flying Inn - GK Chesterton
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Chapter fifteen, The Songs of the Car Club more than once.
- 0:08Speaker 1: As the car flew through black and silver fairy lands
- 0:11Speaker 1: of fir wood and pine wood, Dalroy put his head
- 0:15Speaker 1: out of the side window and remonstrated with the chauffeur
- 0:19Speaker 1: without effect. He was reduced at last to asking him
- 0:23Speaker 1: where he was going. I'm goun home, said the driver
- 0:27Speaker 1: in an undecipherable voice. I'm a goin ome to my
- 0:30Speaker 1: mar And where does she live, asked Dalroy, with something
- 0:34Speaker 1: more like diffidence than he had ever shown before in
- 0:38Speaker 1: his life. Wiles, said the man. But I ain't seen
- 0:42Speaker 1: her since I was born. But she'll do. You must realize,
- 0:47Speaker 1: said Dalroy, with difficulty, that you may be arrested. It's
- 0:51Speaker 1: the man's own car, and he's left behind with nothing
- 0:54Speaker 1: to eat, so to speak. He's got his donkey, grunted
- 0:58Speaker 1: the man. Let the stinker eat a donkey with thistle sauce.
- 1:02Speaker 1: He would if he was as oll oh as I was.
- 1:07Speaker 1: Humphrey Pump opened the glass window that separated him from
- 1:10Speaker 1: the rear part of the car and turned to speak
- 1:13Speaker 1: to his friend over his square elbow and shoulder. I'm afraid,
- 1:19Speaker 1: he said, he won't stop for anything. Just yet, he's
- 1:24Speaker 1: as mad as Moody's aunt. As they say, do they
- 1:27Speaker 1: say it? Asked the captain, with a sort of anxiety.
- 1:30Speaker 1: They never said it in Ithaca. Honestly, I think you'd
- 1:34Speaker 1: better leave him alone, answered Pump with his sagacious face.
- 1:38Speaker 1: He'd just run us into a Scotch express like Dandy
- 1:41Speaker 1: Mutton did when they said he was driving carelessly. We
- 1:46Speaker 1: can send the car back to Ivywood somehow later on.
- 1:48Speaker 1: And really, I don't think it'll do the gentleman any
- 1:51Speaker 1: harm to spend a night with a donkey. The donkey
- 1:55Speaker 1: might teach him something. I tell you. It's true he
- 1:58Speaker 1: denied the principle of private property, said Dolroy reflectively. But
- 2:03Speaker 1: I fancy he was thinking of a plain house fixed
- 2:06Speaker 1: on the ground, a house on wheels such as this,
- 2:09Speaker 1: he might perhaps think a more permanent possession, But I
- 2:13Speaker 1: never understood it. And again he passed a weary palm
- 2:17Speaker 1: across his open forehead. Have you ever noticed, Hump, what
- 2:21Speaker 1: is really odd about those people? The car shot on
- 2:26Speaker 1: amid the comfortable silence of Pump, and then the Irishman
- 2:29Speaker 1: said again that poet in the pussycat clothes wasn't half bad.
- 2:34Speaker 1: Lord Ivywood isn't cruel, but he's inhuman. But that man
- 2:38Speaker 1: wasn't inhuman. He was ignorant, like most cultured fellows. But
- 2:43Speaker 1: what's odd about them is that they try to be
- 2:45Speaker 1: simple and never clear away a single thing that's complicated.
- 2:49Speaker 1: If they have to choose between beef and pickles, they
- 2:52Speaker 1: always abolished the beef. If they have to choose between
- 2:55Speaker 1: a meadow and a motor, they forbid the meadow. Shall
- 2:58Speaker 1: I tell you the secret? These men only surrender the
- 3:02Speaker 1: things that bind them to other men. Go and dine
- 3:05Speaker 1: with the temperance Millionaire, and you won't find he's abolished
- 3:08Speaker 1: the Oar di'rv, or the five courses, or even the coffee.
- 3:13Speaker 1: What he's abolished is the port and sherry, because poor
- 3:17Speaker 1: men like that as well as rich. Go a step
- 3:20Speaker 1: farther and you won't find he's abolished the fine silver
- 3:23Speaker 1: forks and spoons. But he's abolished the meat, because poor
- 3:26Speaker 1: men like meat when they can get it. Go a
- 3:29Speaker 1: step farther and you won't find he goes without gardens
- 3:32Speaker 1: or gorgeous rooms, which poor men can't enjoy at all,
- 3:36Speaker 1: But you will find he boasts of early rising, because
- 3:39Speaker 1: sleep is a thing poor men can still enjoy, about
- 3:43Speaker 1: the only thing they can still enjoy. Nobody ever heard
- 3:47Speaker 1: of a modern philanthropist giving up petrol, or typewriting or
- 3:50Speaker 1: troops of servants. No, no, what he gives up must
- 3:55Speaker 1: be some simple and universal thing. He will give up
- 3:58Speaker 1: beef or beer or sleep, because these pleasures remind him
- 4:02Speaker 1: that he is only a man. Humphrey Pump nodded but
- 4:09Speaker 1: still answered nothing, And the voice of the sprawling Delroy
- 4:13Speaker 1: took one of its upward turns, of a sort of
- 4:16Speaker 1: soaring flippancy which commonly embodied itself in remembering some song
- 4:22Speaker 1: he had composed. Such, he said, was the case of
- 4:26Speaker 1: the late mister Mandragon, so long popular in English aristocratic
- 4:31Speaker 1: society as a bluff and simple democrat from the West,
- 4:34Speaker 1: until he was unfortunately sand bagged by six men whose
- 4:38Speaker 1: wives he had had shot by private detectives on his
- 4:42Speaker 1: incautiously landing on American soil. Mister Mandragon, the millionaire. He
- 4:48Speaker 1: wouldn't have wine or wife. He couldn't endure complexity. He
- 4:52Speaker 1: lived this simple life. He ordered his lunch by megaphone
- 4:55Speaker 1: in manly simple tones, and used all his motors for canvassing, voter,
- 5:00Speaker 1: and twenty telephones, besides a dandy little machine, cunning and
- 5:05Speaker 1: neat as ever was seen, with a hundred pulleys and
- 5:08Speaker 1: cranks between made of iron and kept quite clean, to
- 5:11Speaker 1: hoist him out of his healthful bed on every day
- 5:15Speaker 1: of his life, and wash him, and brusham and shave
- 5:18Speaker 1: him and dress him to live the simple life. Mister
- 5:22Speaker 1: Mandragon was most refined and quietly, neatly dressed. Say all
- 5:26Speaker 1: the American newspapers that no refinement best, quiet and neat
- 5:30Speaker 1: the hair and hat, and the coat, quiet and neat,
- 5:34Speaker 1: a trouser worn upon either leg, while boots adorned the feet,
- 5:38Speaker 1: and not, as any one might expect, a tiger skin
- 5:41Speaker 1: all striped and specked, and a peacock hat with the
- 5:45Speaker 1: tail erect. A scarlet tunic with sunflowers decked that might
- 5:49Speaker 1: have had a more marked effect and pleased the pride
- 5:52Speaker 1: of a weaker man that yearned for wine or wife.
- 5:56Speaker 1: But fame and the flagon for mister Mandragon obscured the
- 5:59Speaker 1: simple lifeife. Mister Mandragon, the millionaire I am happy to say,
- 6:04Speaker 1: is dead. He enjoyed a quiet funeral in a crematorium shed,
- 6:09Speaker 1: and he lies there, fluffy and soft and gray, and
- 6:12Speaker 1: certainly quite refined, when he might have rotted to flowers
- 6:16Speaker 1: and fruit with Adam and all mankind, or been eaten
- 6:20Speaker 1: by bears that fancy blood, or burnt on a big
- 6:23Speaker 1: tall tower of wood in a towering flame, as a
- 6:26Speaker 1: heathen should, or even sat with us here at food,
- 6:30Speaker 1: merely taking tupenny rum and cheese with a pocket knife.
- 6:34Speaker 1: But these were luxuries lost for him that lived for
- 6:37Speaker 1: the simple life. Mister Pump had made many attempts to
- 6:42Speaker 1: arrest this song, but they were as vain as all
- 6:46Speaker 1: attempts to arrest the car. The angry chauffeur seemed indeed
- 6:50Speaker 1: rather inspired to further energy by the violent vocal noises behind,
- 6:55Speaker 1: and Pump again found it best to fall back on conversation. Well, Captain,
- 7:00Speaker 1: he said, amicably, I can't quite agree with you about
- 7:03Speaker 1: those things. Of course, you can trust foreigners too much,
- 7:07Speaker 1: as poor Thompson did, but then you can go too
- 7:10Speaker 1: far the other way. Aunt Sarah lost a thousand pounds
- 7:13Speaker 1: that way. I told her again and again he wasn't
- 7:15Speaker 1: a nigger, but she wouldn't believe me. And of course
- 7:19Speaker 1: that was just the kind of thing to offend an
- 7:21Speaker 1: ambassador if he was an Austrian. It seems to me, Captain,
- 7:25Speaker 1: you aren't quite fair to these foreign chaps. Take these Americans, now,
- 7:29Speaker 1: there were many Americans went by Pebblewick, you may suppose,
- 7:33Speaker 1: But in all the lot, there was never a bad lot,
- 7:35Speaker 1: never a nasty American, nor a stupid American, nor well,
- 7:39Speaker 1: never an American that I didn't rather like, I know,
- 7:43Speaker 1: said Dolroy. You mean there was never an American who
- 7:46Speaker 1: did not appreciate the old ship. I suppose I do
- 7:50Speaker 1: mean that, answered the innkeeper. And somehow I feel the
- 7:53Speaker 1: old ship might appreciate the American too. You English are
- 7:58Speaker 1: an extraordinary lot, said the Irishmen. With the sudden and
- 8:01Speaker 1: somber quietude, I sometimes feel you may pull through after all.
- 8:06Speaker 1: After another silence, he said, You're always right, Hump, And
- 8:10Speaker 1: one oughtn't to think of Yankees like that. The rich
- 8:13Speaker 1: are the scum of the yearth in every country, and
- 8:16Speaker 1: a vast proportion of the real Americans are among the
- 8:19Speaker 1: most courteous, intelligent, self respecting people in the world. Some
- 8:23Speaker 1: attribute this to the fact that a vast proportion of
- 8:26Speaker 1: the real Americans are Irishmen. Pump was still silent, and
- 8:31Speaker 1: the Captain resumed in a moment. All the same, he said,
- 8:34Speaker 1: is very hard for a man, especially a man of
- 8:37Speaker 1: a small country like me, to understand how it must
- 8:40Speaker 1: feel to be an American, especially in the matter of nationality.
- 8:45Speaker 1: I shouldn't like to have to write the American national anthem,
- 8:48Speaker 1: but fortunately there is no great probability of the commission
- 8:51Speaker 1: being given. The shameful secret of my inability to write
- 8:55Speaker 1: an American patriotic song is one that will die with me. Well,
- 9:00Speaker 1: what about an English one, said Pump sturdily. You might
- 9:03Speaker 1: do worse, Captain English, You bloody tyrant, said Patrick, indignantly.
- 9:09Speaker 1: I could no more fancy a song by an Englishman
- 9:11Speaker 1: than you could won by that dog. Mister Humphrey Pump
- 9:15Speaker 1: gravely took the paper from his pocket on which he
- 9:18Speaker 1: had previously inscribed the Sin and Desolation of Grocers, and
- 9:22Speaker 1: felt in need of another of his innumerable pockets for
- 9:26Speaker 1: a pencil. Hello, cried Dolroy, are you going to have
- 9:29Speaker 1: a shy at the ballad of Coodle? Cudle lifted his
- 9:33Speaker 1: ears at his name. Mister Pump smiled a slight and
- 9:37Speaker 1: embarrassed smile. He was secretly proud of Delroy's admiration for
- 9:41Speaker 1: his previous literary attempts, and he had some natural knack
- 9:45Speaker 1: for verse as a game, as he had for all games,
- 9:49Speaker 1: and his reading, though desultry, had not been merely rustic
- 9:52Speaker 1: or low on condition. He said deprecatingly, that you write
- 9:56Speaker 1: a song for the English. Oh, very well, said Patrick,
- 10:00Speaker 1: with a huge sigh that really indicated the very opposite
- 10:03Speaker 1: of reluctance. We must do something till the thing stops,
- 10:07Speaker 1: I suppose, and this seems a blameless parlor game. Songs
- 10:10Speaker 1: of the car Club sounds quite aristocratic. And he began
- 10:15Speaker 1: to make marks with a pencil on the fly leaf
- 10:17Speaker 1: of a little book he had in his pocket, Wilson's
- 10:20Speaker 1: Knocked Ambrosian. Every now and then, however, he looked up
- 10:24Speaker 1: and delayed his own composition by watching Pump and the Dog,
- 10:28Speaker 1: whose proceedings amused him very much, For the owner of
- 10:31Speaker 1: the old ship sat sucking his pencil and looking at
- 10:34Speaker 1: mister Koodle with eyes of fathomless attention. Every now and
- 10:38Speaker 1: then he slightly scratched his brown hair with the pencil
- 10:42Speaker 1: and wrote down a word, and the dog Koodle, with
- 10:45Speaker 1: that curious canine power of either understanding or most brazenly
- 10:49Speaker 1: pretending to understand what is going on, sat erect with
- 10:53Speaker 1: his head at an angle, as if he were sitting
- 10:56Speaker 1: for his portrait. Hence it happened that though Pump's poem
- 11:00Speaker 1: was a little long, as are often the poems of
- 11:03Speaker 1: inexperienced poets, and though Delroy's poem was very short, being
- 11:07Speaker 1: much hurried toward the end, the long poem was finished
- 11:10Speaker 1: some time before the short one. Therefore it was that
- 11:14Speaker 1: there was first produced for the world the song more
- 11:16Speaker 1: familiarly known as No Noses, or more correctly called the
- 11:21Speaker 1: Song of Koodle. Part of it ran eventually. Thus, they
- 11:25Speaker 1: haven't got no noses, the fallen sons of Eve. Even
- 11:28Speaker 1: the smell of roses is not what they supposes. But
- 11:32Speaker 1: more than mind discloses, and more than men believe, they
- 11:36Speaker 1: haven't got no noses. They cannot even tell when door
- 11:39Speaker 1: and darkness closes, the park a jew encloses, where even
- 11:44Speaker 1: the law of Moses will let you steal a smell.
- 11:48Speaker 1: The brilliant smell of water, the brave smell of a stone,
- 11:53Speaker 1: the smell of dew and thunder, and old bones buried
- 11:56Speaker 1: under are things in which they blunder and air if
- 12:00Speaker 1: left alone, the wind from winter forests, the scent of
- 12:04Speaker 1: scentless flowers, the breath of bride's adorning, the smell of
- 12:08Speaker 1: snare and warning, the smell of Sunday morning God gave
- 12:12Speaker 1: to us for hours and Quoodle here discloses all things
- 12:17Speaker 1: that kuodle can They haven't got no noses. They haven't
- 12:21Speaker 1: got no noses, and goodness only noses the noselessness of man.
- 12:28Speaker 1: This poem also shows traces of haste in its termination,
- 12:32Speaker 1: and the present editor, who has no aim save truth,
- 12:35Speaker 1: is bound to confess that parts of it were supplied
- 12:38Speaker 1: in the criticisms of the captain, and even enriched in
- 12:41Speaker 1: later and livelier circumstances by the poet of the birds himself.
- 12:46Speaker 1: At the actual moment, the chief features of this realistic
- 12:50Speaker 1: song about dogs was a crashing chorus of Bow Wow Wow,
- 12:53Speaker 1: begun by mister Patrick Delroy, but immediately imitated much more
- 12:58Speaker 1: successfully by mister Koodle. In the face of all this,
- 13:01Speaker 1: Dolroy suffered some real difficulty in fulfilling the bargain by
- 13:05Speaker 1: reading out his much shorter poem about what he imagined
- 13:09Speaker 1: an Englishman might feel. Indeed, there was something very rough
- 13:13Speaker 1: and vague in his very voice as he read it
- 13:15Speaker 1: out as of one who had not found the key
- 13:18Speaker 1: to his problem. The present compiler, who has no aim
- 13:22Speaker 1: save truth, must confess that the verses ran as follows.
- 13:28Speaker 1: Saint George, he was for England, and before he killed
- 13:31Speaker 1: the dragon, he drank a pint of English ale out
- 13:34Speaker 1: of an English flagon. For though he fast right readily
- 13:38Speaker 1: in hair, shirt or in mail, it isn't safe to
- 13:41Speaker 1: give him cakes unless you give him ale. Saint George,
- 13:45Speaker 1: he was for England, and right gallantly set free the
- 13:48Speaker 1: lady left for dragon's meat and tied up to a tree.
- 13:52Speaker 1: But since he stood for England and knew what England means,
- 13:56Speaker 1: unless you give him bacon, you mustn't give him beans.
- 14:00Speaker 1: Saint George, he was for England, and shall wear the
- 14:02Speaker 1: shield he wore when we go out in armor with
- 14:05Speaker 1: the battle cross before. But though he is jolly company
- 14:09Speaker 1: and very pleased to dine, it isn't safe to give
- 14:12Speaker 1: him nuts unless you give him wine. Very philosophical song,
- 14:18Speaker 1: that said Dowry, shaking his head solemnly full of deep thought.
- 14:23Speaker 1: I really think that is about the truth of the matter.
- 14:26Speaker 1: In the case of the Englishman. Your enemies say you're stupid,
- 14:29Speaker 1: and you boast of being illogical, which is about the
- 14:32Speaker 1: only thing you do that really is stupid, as if
- 14:36Speaker 1: anybody ever made an empire or anything else by saying
- 14:39Speaker 1: that two and two make five, or as if any
- 14:42Speaker 1: one was ever the stronger for not understanding anything if
- 14:46Speaker 1: it were only tip cat or chemistry. But this is
- 14:49Speaker 1: true about you, Hump. You English are supremely an artistic people,
- 14:54Speaker 1: and therefore you go by associations. As I said in
- 14:57Speaker 1: my song, you won't have one thing with the the
- 15:00Speaker 1: other thing that goes with it. And as you can't
- 15:02Speaker 1: imagine a village without a squire in parson, or a
- 15:05Speaker 1: college without port and old Oak. You get the reputation
- 15:09Speaker 1: of a conservative people. But it's because you're sensitive, Hump,
- 15:13Speaker 1: not because you're stupid that you won't part with things.
- 15:16Speaker 1: It's lies, lies and flattery, they tell you, Hump, when
- 15:20Speaker 1: they tell you you're fond of compromise, I tell ye, Hump,
- 15:23Speaker 1: every real revolution is a compromise. Gee think Wolf Tone
- 15:27Speaker 1: or Charles Stuart Parnell never compromised. But it's just because
- 15:31Speaker 1: you're afraid of a compromise that you won't have a revolution.
- 15:35Speaker 1: If you really overhauled the old ship or Oxford, you'd
- 15:39Speaker 1: have to make up your mind what to take and
- 15:41Speaker 1: what to leave, and it would break your heart. Humphrey Pump,
- 15:45Speaker 1: he stared in front of him with a red and
- 15:47Speaker 1: ruminant face, and at length added, somewhat more gloomily. This
- 15:52Speaker 1: esthetic way we have Pump has only two little disadvantages,
- 15:56Speaker 1: which I will now explain to you. The first is
- 15:59Speaker 1: exactly what has sent us flying in this contraption. When
- 16:03Speaker 1: the beautiful, smooth, harmonious thing you've made is worked by
- 16:06Speaker 1: a new type and a new spirit, then I tell
- 16:09Speaker 1: you it would be better for you a thousand times
- 16:12Speaker 1: to be living under the thousand paper constitutions of Condorcet
- 16:16Speaker 1: and Siez. When the English oligarchy is run by an
- 16:20Speaker 1: Englishman who hasn't got an English mind, then you have
- 16:23Speaker 1: Lord Ivywood and all this nightmare of which God could
- 16:27Speaker 1: only guess the end. The car had beaten some roods
- 16:32Speaker 1: of dust behind it, and he ended still more darkly.
- 16:35Speaker 1: And the other disadvantage, my amiable Asteete, is this, if ever,
- 16:40Speaker 1: in blundering about the planet, you come on an island
- 16:43Speaker 1: in the Atlantic Atlantis, let us say, which won't accept
- 16:47Speaker 1: all your pretty picture, to which you can't give everything,
- 16:51Speaker 1: Why you will probably decide to give nothing. You will
- 16:54Speaker 1: say in your hearts. Perhaps they will starve soon, and
- 16:58Speaker 1: you will become for that island, and the deafest and
- 17:00Speaker 1: the most evil of all the princes of the earth.
- 17:05Speaker 1: It was already daybreak, and Pump, who knew the English boundaries,
- 17:08Speaker 1: almost by intuition, could tell even through the twilight that
- 17:11Speaker 1: the tale of the little town they were leaving behind
- 17:14Speaker 1: was of a new sort, the sort to be seen
- 17:16Speaker 1: in the western border. The chauffeur's phrase about his mother
- 17:20Speaker 1: might merely have been a music called joke, but certainly
- 17:23Speaker 1: he had driven darkly in that direction. White morning lay
- 17:28Speaker 1: about the gray, stony streets like spilt milk. A few
- 17:31Speaker 1: proletarian early risers, wearier at morning than most men at night,
- 17:36Speaker 1: seemed merely of opinion that it was no use crying
- 17:39Speaker 1: over it. The two or three last houses, which looked
- 17:43Speaker 1: almost too tired to stand upright, seemed to have moved
- 17:46Speaker 1: the captain into another sleepy explosion. There are two kinds
- 17:50Speaker 1: of idealists, as everybody knows or must have thought of.
- 17:54Speaker 1: There are those who idealize the real, and those who
- 17:56Speaker 1: precious seldom realize the ideal. Artists and poetical people, like
- 18:01Speaker 1: the English, generally idealized the real. This I have expressed
- 18:05Speaker 1: in a song which no really protested. The innkeeper really
- 18:10Speaker 1: now captain. This I have expressed in a song repeated Delroy,
- 18:14Speaker 1: in a very adamantine manner, which I will now sing
- 18:17Speaker 1: with every circumstance of leisure, loudness, or any other. He
- 18:22Speaker 1: stopped because the flying universe seemed to stop. Charging head
- 18:26Speaker 1: rows came to a halt, as if challenged by the bugle.
- 18:29Speaker 1: The racing forests stood rigid, The last few tottering houses
- 18:34Speaker 1: stood suddenly at attention. For a noise like a pistol
- 18:37Speaker 1: shot from the car itself had stopped all that race,
- 18:40Speaker 1: as a pistol shot might start any other. The driver
- 18:44Speaker 1: clambered out very slowly, and stood about in various tragic
- 18:47Speaker 1: attitudes around the car. He opened an unsuspected number of
- 18:51Speaker 1: doors and windows in the car, and touched things, and
- 18:54Speaker 1: twisted things and felt things. I must back as best
- 18:57Speaker 1: I can to that their garage, sir, he said, in
- 19:00Speaker 1: a heavy and husky tone. They had not heard from
- 19:02Speaker 1: him before. Then He looked round on the long woods
- 19:06Speaker 1: and the last houses, and seemed to gnaw his lip
- 19:10Speaker 1: like a great general who has made a great mistake.
- 19:14Speaker 1: His brow seemed as black as ever, yet his voice,
- 19:17Speaker 1: when he spoke again, had fallen many further degrees towards
- 19:21Speaker 1: its dull and daily tone. Yer See, this is a
- 19:25Speaker 1: bit bad, he said. It'll be a beastly job, even
- 19:29Speaker 1: at the best place, as if I'm getting back at all,
- 19:33Speaker 1: getting back, repeated Delroy, opening the blue eyes of a
- 19:36Speaker 1: bowl back where well, yer See, said the chauffeur reasonably,
- 19:41Speaker 1: I was bloody keen to show em. It was me
- 19:43Speaker 1: drove the car, and not im. By a bit of
- 19:45Speaker 1: bad luck, I'd done damage to his car. Well, if
- 19:49Speaker 1: you can stick in his car, Captain Patrick. Delroy sprang
- 19:54Speaker 1: out of the car so rapidly that he almost reeled
- 19:57Speaker 1: and slipped upon the road. The dog's sprang after him,
- 20:00Speaker 1: barking furiously. Humph said Patrick quietly, I've found out everything
- 20:05Speaker 1: about you. I know what always bothered me about the Englishman. Then,
- 20:10Speaker 1: after an instant's silence, he said that Frenchman was right,
- 20:15Speaker 1: who said, I forget how he put it, that you
- 20:17Speaker 1: marched to Trafalgar square, to rid yourself of your temper,
- 20:20Speaker 1: not to rid yourself of your tyrant. Our friend was
- 20:24Speaker 1: quite ready to rebel. Rushing away to rebel. Sitting still
- 20:29Speaker 1: was too much for him. Do you read punch? I
- 20:34Speaker 1: am sure you do. Pump and Punch must be almost
- 20:38Speaker 1: the only survivors of the Victorian age. Do you remember
- 20:41Speaker 1: an old joke and an excellent picture representing two ragged
- 20:45Speaker 1: irishmen with guns waiting behind a stone wall to shoot
- 20:48Speaker 1: a landlord. One of the irishmen says, the landlord is late,
- 20:51Speaker 1: and adds, I hope no accidents happened to the poor gentleman. Well,
- 20:55Speaker 1: it's all perfectly true. I knew that irishman intimately, but
- 21:00Speaker 1: I want to tell you a secret about him. He
- 21:02Speaker 1: was an Englishman. The chauffeur had backed with breathless care
- 21:07Speaker 1: to the entrance of the garage, which was next door
- 21:09Speaker 1: to a milkman's, or merely separated from it by a
- 21:12Speaker 1: black and lean lane, looking no larger than the crack
- 21:16Speaker 1: of a door. It must, however, have been larger than
- 21:19Speaker 1: it looked, because Captain Delroy disappeared down it. He seemed
- 21:24Speaker 1: to have beckoned the driver after him. At any rate,
- 21:27Speaker 1: that functionary instantly followed. The functionary came out again in
- 21:31Speaker 1: an almost guilty haste, touching his cap and stuffing loose
- 21:35Speaker 1: papers into his pocket. Then the functionary returned yet again
- 21:39Speaker 1: from what he called the garage, carrying larger and looser
- 21:42Speaker 1: things over his arm. All this did mister Humphrey Pump observe,
- 21:47Speaker 1: not without interest, the place, remote as it was, was
- 21:51Speaker 1: evidently a rendezvous for motorists. Otherwise, a very tall motorist
- 21:56Speaker 1: trottled and masked in the most impenetrable degree would hardly
- 22:01Speaker 1: have strolled up to speak to him. Still Less, would
- 22:04Speaker 1: the tall motorist have handed him a similar horrid disguise
- 22:08Speaker 1: of wraps and goggles in a bundle over his arm.
- 22:12Speaker 1: Least of all would any motorist, however tall, have said
- 22:15Speaker 1: to him from behind the cap and goggles, put on
- 22:18Speaker 1: these things, hump, and then we'll go into the milk shop.
- 22:21Speaker 1: I'm waiting for the car which car my seeker. After truth,
- 22:25Speaker 1: why the car I'm going to buy for you to drive?
- 22:28Speaker 1: The remorseful chauffeur, after many adventures, did actually find his
- 22:32Speaker 1: way back to the little moonlit wood where he had
- 22:35Speaker 1: left his master and the donkey but his master and
- 22:38Speaker 1: the donkey had vanished. End of chapter fifteen,