that delicate ruby light which is one of the rarest but one of the most exquisite of evening effects warmed the land, sky and seas as if the whole world were washed in wine; and dyed almost scarlet the strong red head of patrick dalroy as he stood on the waste of furze and bracken, where he and his friends had halted. one of his friends was re-examining a short gun, rather like a double-barrelled carbine, the other was eating thistles.
dalroy himself was idle and ruminant, with his hands in his pockets and his eye on the horizon. landwards the hills, plains and woods lay bathed in the rose-red light; but it changed somewhat to purple, to cloud and something like storm over the distant violet strip of sea. it was towards the sea that he was staring.
suddenly he woke up; and seemed almost to rub his eyes, or at any rate, to rub his red eyebrow.
“why, we’re on the road back of pebblewick,” he said. “that’s the damned little tin chapel by the beach.”
“i know,” answered his friend and guide. “we’ve done the old hare trick; doubled, you know. nine times out of ten it’s the best. parson whitelady used to do it when they were after him for dog-stealing. i’ve pretty much followed his trail; you can’t do better than stick to the best examples. they tell you in london that dick turpin rode to york. well, i know he didn’t; for my old grandfather up at cobble’s end knew the turpins intimately—threw one of them into the river on a christmas day; but i think i can guess what he did do and how the tale got about. if dick was wise, he went flying up the old north road, shouting ‘york! york!’ or what not, before people recognised him; then if he did the thing properly, he might half an hour afterwards walk down the strand with a pipe in his mouth. they say old boney said, ‘go where you aren’t expected,’ and i suppose as a soldier he was right. but for a gentleman dodging the police like yourself, it isn’t exactly the right way of putting it. i should say, ‘go where you ought to be expected’—and you’ll generally find your fellow creatures don’t do what they ought about expecting any more than about anything else.”
“well, this bit between here and the sea,” said the captain, in a brown study, “i know it so well—so well that—that i rather wish i’d never seen it again. do you know,” he asked, suddenly pointing to a patch and pit of sand that showed white in the dusky heath a hundred yards away, “do you know what makes that spot so famous in history?”
“yes,” answered mr. pump, “that’s where old mother grouch shot the methodist.”
“you are in error,” said the captain. “such an incident as you describe would in no case call for special comment or regret. no, that spot is famous because a very badly brought up girl once lost a ribbon off a plait of black hair and somebody helped her to find it.”
“has the other person been well brought up?” asked pump, with a faint smile.
“no,” said dalroy, staring at the sea. “he has been brought down.” then, rousing himself again, he made a gesture toward a further part of the heath. “do you know the remarkable history of that old wall, the one beyond the last gorge over there?”
“no,” replied the other, “unless you mean dead man’s circus, and that happened further along.”
“i do not mean dead man’s circus,” said the captain. “the remarkable history of that wall is that somebody’s shadow once fell on it; and that shadow was more desirable than the substance of all other living things. it is this,” he cried, almost violently, resuming his flippant tone, “it is this circumstance, hump, and not the trivial and everyday incident of a dead man going to a circus to which you have presumed to compare it, it is this historical event which lord ivywood is about to commemorate by rebuilding the wall with solid gold and greek marbles stolen by the turks from the grave of socrates, enclosing a column of solid gold four hundred feet high and surmounted by a colossal equestrian statue of a bankrupt irishman riding backwards on a donkey.”
he lifted one of his long legs over the animal, as if about to pose for the group; then swung back on both feet again, and again looked at the purple limit of the sea.
“do you know, hump,” he said, “i think modern people have somehow got their minds all wrong about human life. they seem to expect what nature has never promised; and then try to ruin all that nature has really given. at all those atheist chapels of ivywood’s they’re always talking of peace, perfect peace, and utter peace, and universal joy and souls that beat as one. but they don’t look any more cheerful than anyone else; and the next thing they do is to start smashing a thousand good jokes and good stories and good songs and good friendships by pulling down ‘the old ship.’” he gave a glance at the loose signpost lying on the heath beside him, almost as if to reassure himself that it was not stolen. “now it seems to me,” he went on, “that this is asking for too much and getting too little. i don’t know whether god means a man to have happiness in that all in all and utterly utter sense of happiness. but god does mean a man to have a little fun; and i mean to go on having it. if i mustn’t satisfy my heart, i can gratify my humour. the cynical fellows who think themselves so damned clever have a sort of saying, ‘be good and you will be happy; but you will not have a jolly time.’ the cynical fellows are quite wrong, as they generally are. they have got hold of the exact opposite of the truth. god knows i don’t set up to be good; but even a rascal sometimes has to fight the world in the same way as a saint. i think i have fought the world; et militavi non sine—what’s the latin for having a lark? i can’t pretend to peace and joy, and all the rest of it, particularly in this original briar-patch. i haven’t been happy, hump, but i have had a jolly time.”
the sunset stillness settled down again, save for the cropping of the donkey in the undergrowth; and pump said nothing sympathetically; and it was dalroy once more who took up his parable.
“so i think there’s too much of this playing on our emotions, hump; as this place is certainly playing the cat and banjo with mine. damn it all, there are other things to do with the rest of one’s life! i don’t like all this fuss about feeling things—it only makes people miserable. in my present frame of mind i’m in favour of doing things. all of which, hump,” he said with a sudden lift of the voice that always went in him with a rushing, irrational return of merely animal spirits—“all of which i have put into a song against songs, that i will now sing you.”
“i shouldn’t sing it here,” said humphrey pump, picking up his gun and putting it under his arm. “you look large in this open place; and you sound large. but i’ll take you to the hole in heaven you’ve been talking about so much, and hide you as i used to hide you from that tutor—i couldn’t catch his name—man who could only get drunk on greek wine at squire wimpole’s.”
“hump!” cried the captain, “i abdicate the throne of ithaca. you are far wiser than ulysses. here i have had my heart torn with temptations to ten thousand things between suicide and abduction, and all by the mere sight of that hole in the heath, where we used to have picnics. and all that time i’d forgotten we used to call it the hole in heaven. and, by god, what a good name—in both senses.”
“i thought you’d have remembered it, captain,” said the innkeeper, “from the joke young mr. matthews made.”
“in the heat of some savage hand to hand struggle in albania,” said mr. dalroy, sadly, passing his palm across his brow, “i must have forgotten for one fatal instant the joke young mr. matthews made.”
“it wasn’t very good,” said mr. pump, simply. “ah, his aunt was the one for things like that. she went too far with old gudgeon, though.”
with these words he jumped and seemed to be swallowed up by the earth. but they had merely strolled the few yards needed to bring them to the edge of the sand-pit on the heath of which they had been speaking. and it is one of the truths concealed by heaven from lord ivywood, and revealed by heaven to mr. pump, that a hiding-place can be covered when you are close to it; and yet be open and visible from some spot of vantage far off. from the side by which they approached it, the sudden hollow of sand, a kind of collapsed chamber in the heath, seemed covered with a natural curve of fern and furze, and flashed out of sight like a fairy.
“it’s all right,” he called out from under a floor or roof of leaves. “you’ll remember it all when you get here. this is the place to sing your song, captain. lord bless me, captain, don’t i remember your singing that irish song you made up at college—bellowing it like a bull of bashan—all about hearts and sleeves or some such things—and her ladyship and the tutor never heard a breath, because that bank of sand breaks everything. it’s worth knowing all this, you know. it’s a pity it’s not part of a young gentleman’s education. now you shall sing me the song in favour of having no feelings, or whatever you call it.”
dalroy was staring about him at the cavern of his old picnics, so forgotten and so startlingly familiar. he seemed to have lost all thought of singing anything, and simply to be groping in the dark house of his own boyhood. there was a slight trickle from a natural spring in sandstone just under the ferns, and he remembered they used to try to boil the water in a kettle. he remembered a quarrel about who had upset the kettle which, in the morbidity of first love, had given him for days the tortures of the damned. when the energetic pump broke once more through the rather thorny roof, on an impulse to accumulate their other eccentric possessions, patrick remembered about a thorn in a finger, that made his heart stop with something that was pain and perfect music. when pump returned with the rum-keg and the cheese and rolled them with a kick down the shelving sandy side of the hole, he remembered, with almost wrathful laughter, that in the old days he had rolled down that slope himself, and thought it a rather fine thing to do. he felt then as if he were rolling down a smooth side of the matterhorn. he observed now that the height was rather less than that of the second storey of one of the stunted cottages he had noted on his return. he suddenly understood he had grown bigger; bigger in a bodily sense. he had doubts about any other.
“the hole in heaven!” he said. “what a good name! what a good poet i was in those days! the hole in heaven. but does it let one in, or let one out?”
in the last level shafts of the fallen sun the fantastic shadow of the long-eared quadruped, whom pump had now tethered to a new and nearer pasture, fell across the last sunlit scrap of sand. dalroy looked at the long exaggerated shadow of the ass; and laughed that short explosive laugh he had uttered when the doors of the harems had been closed after the turkish war. he was normally a man much too loquacious; but he never explained those laughs.
humphrey pump plunged down again into the sunken nest, and began to broach the cask of rum in his own secret style, saying—
“we can get something else somehow tomorrow. for tonight we can eat cheese and drink rum, especially as there’s water on tap, so to speak. and now, captain, sing us the song against songs.”
patrick dalroy drank a little rum out of a small medicine glass which the generally unaccountable mr. pump unaccountably produced from his waistcoat pocket; but patrick’s colour had risen, his brow was almost as red as his hair; and he was evidently reluctant.
“i don’t see why i should sing all the songs,” he said. “why the divil don’t you sing a song yourself? and now i come to think of it,” he cried, with an accumulating brogue, not, perhaps, wholly unaffected by the rum, which he had not, in fact, drunk for years, “and now i come to think of it, what about that song of yours? all me youth’s coming back in this blest and cursed place; and i remember that song of yours, that never existed nor ever will. don’t ye remember now, humphrey pump, that night when i sang ye no less than seventeen songs of me own composition?”
“i remember it very well,” answered the englishman, with restraint.
“and don’t ye remember,” went on the exhilarated irishman, with solemnity, “that unless ye could produce a poetic lyric of your own, written and sung by yourself, i threatened to....”
“to sing again,” said the impenetrable pump. “yes, i know.”
he calmly proceeded to take out of his pockets, which were, alas, more like those of a poacher than an innkeeper, a folded and faded piece of paper.
“i wrote it when you asked me,” he said simply. “i have never tried to sing it. but i’ll sing it myself, when you’ve sung your song, against anybody singing at all.”
“all right,” cried the somewhat excited captain, “to hear a song from you—why, i’ll sing anything. this is the song against songs, hump.”
and again he let his voice out like a bellow against the evening silence.
“the song of the sorrow of melisande is a weary song and a dreary song,
the glory of mariana’s grange had got into great decay,
the song of the raven never more has never been called a cheery song,
and the brightest things in baudelaire are anything else but gay.
but who will write us a riding song,
or a hunting song or a drinking song,
fit for them that arose and rode,
when day and the wine were red?
but bring me a quart of claret out,
and i will write you a clinking song,
a song of war and a song of wine,
and a song to wake the dead.
“the song of the fury of fragolette is a florid song and a torrid song,
the song of the sorrow of tara is sung to a harp unstrung,
the song of the cheerful shropshire kid i consider a perfectly horrid song,
and the song of the happy futurist is a song that can’t be sung.
but who will write us a riding song,
or a fighting song or a drinking song,
fit for the fathers of you and me,
that knew how to think and thrive?
but the song of beauty and art and love
is simply an utterly stinking song,
to double you up and drag you down.
and damn your soul alive.”
“take some more rum,” concluded the irish officer, affably, “and let’s hear your song at last.”
with the gravity inseparable from the deep conventionality of country people, mr. pump unfolded the paper on which he had recorded the only antagonistic emotion that was strong enough in him to screw his infinite english tolerance to the pitch of song. he read out the title very carefully and in full.
“song against grocers, by humphrey pump, sole proprietor of ‘the old ship,’ pebblewick. good accommodation for man and beast. celebrated as the house at which both queen charlotte and jonathan wilde put up on different occasions; and where the ice-cream man was mistaken for bonaparte. this song is written against grocers.”
“god made the wicked grocer,
for a mystery and a sign,
that men might shun the awful shops,
and go to inns to dine;
where the bacon’s on the rafter
and the wine is in the wood,
and god that made good laughter
has seen that they are good.
“the evil-hearted grocer
would call his mother ‘ma’am,’
and bow at her and bob at her,
her aged soul to damn;
and rub his horrid hands and ask,
what article was next;
though mortis in articulo,
should be her proper text.
“his props are not his children
but pert lads underpaid,
who call out ‘cash!’ and bang about,
to work his wicked trade;
he keeps a lady in a cage,
most cruelly all day,
and makes her count and calls her ‘miss,’
until she fades away.
“the righteous minds of inn-keepers
induce them now and then
to crack a bottle with a friend,
or treat unmoneyed men;
but who hath seen the grocer
treat housemaids to his teas,
or crack a bottle of fish-sauce,
or stand a man a cheese?
“he sells us sands of araby
as sugar for cash down,
he sweeps his shop and sells the dust,
the purest salt in town;
he crams with cans of poisoned meat
poor subjects of the king,
and when they die by thousands
why, he laughs like anything.
“the wicked grocer groces
in spirits and in wine,
not frankly and in fellowship,
as men in inns do dine;
but packed with soap and sardines
and carried off by grooms,
for to be snatched by duchesses,
and drunk in dressing-rooms.
“the hell-instructed grocer
has a temple made of tin,
and the ruin of good inn-keepers
is loudly urged therein;
but now the sands are running out
from sugar of a sort,
the grocer trembles; for his time
just like his weight is short.”
captain dalroy was getting considerably heated with his nautical liquor, and his appreciation of pump’s song was not merely noisy but active. he leapt to his feet and waved his glass. “ye ought to be poet laureate, hump—ye’re right, ye’re right; we’ll stand all this no longer!”
he dashed wildly up the sand slope and pointed with the sign-post towards the darkening shore, where the low shed of corrugated iron stood almost isolated.
“there’s your tin temple!” he said. “let’s burn it!”
they were some way along the coast from the large watering-place of pebblewick and between the gathering twilight and the rolling country it could not be clearly seen. nothing was now in sight but the corrugated iron hall by the beach and three half-built red brick villas.
dalroy appeared to regard the hall and the empty houses with great malevolence.
“look at it!” he said. “babylon!”
he brandished the inn-sign in the air like a banner, and began to stride towards the place, showering curses.
“in forty days,” he cried, “shall pebblewick be destroyed. dogs shall lap the blood of j. leveson, secretary, and unicorns—”
“come back pat,” cried humphrey, “you’ve had too much rum.”
“lions shall howl in its high places,” vociferated the captain.
“donkeys will howl, anyhow,” said pump. “but i suppose the other donkey must follow.”
and loading and untethering the quadruped, he began to lead him along.
