“No! No! No’! Hump! Hump! Hump!” cried Dalroy in a sort of terror. “Don’t be exhaustive! Don’t be a scientist, Hump, and lay waste fairyland! How long does it go on? Is there a lot more of it?”
“Yes,” said Pump, in a stony manner. “There is a lot more of it.”
“And it’s all true?” inquired Dorian Wimpole, with interest.
“Yes,” replied Pump with a smile, “it’s all true.”
“My complaint, exactly,” said the Captain. “What you want is legends. What you want is lies, especially at this time of night, and on rum like this, and on our first and our last holiday. What do you think about rum?” he asked Wimpole.
“About this particular rum, in this particular tree, at this particular moment,” answered Wimpole, “I think it is the nectar of the younger gods. If you ask me in a general, synthetic sense what I think of rum–well, I think it’s rather rum.”
“You find it a trifle sweet, I suppose,” said Dalroy, with some bitterness. “Sybarite! By the way,” he said abruptly, “what a silly word that word ‘Hedonist’ is! The really self-indulgent people generally like sour things and not sweet; bitter things like caviar and curries or what not. It’s the Saints who like the sweets. At least I’ve known at least five women who were practically saints, and they all preferred sweet champagne. Look here, Wimpole! Shall I tell you the ancient oral legend about the origin of rum? I told you what you wanted was legends. Be careful to preserve this one, and hand it on to your children; for, unfortunately, my parents carelessly neglected the duty of handing it on to me. After the words ‘A Farmer had three sons …’ all that I owe to tradition ceases. But when the three boys last met in the village market-place, they were all sucking sugar-sticks. Nevertheless, they were all discontented, and, on that day parted for ever. One remained on his father’s farm, hungering for his inheritance. One went up to London to seek his fortune, as fortunes are found today in that town forgotten of God. The third ran away to sea. And the first two flung away their sugar-sticks in shame; and he on the farm was always drinking smaller and sourer beer for the love of money; and he that was in town was always drinking richer and richer wines, that men might see that he was rich. But he who ran away to sea actually ran on board with the sugar-stick in his mouth; and St. Peter or St. Andrew, or whoever is the patron of men in boats, touched it and turned it into a fountain for the comfort of men upon the sea. That is the sailor’s theory of the origin of rum. Inquiry addressed to any busy Captain with a new crew in the act of shipping an unprecedented cargo, will elicit a sympathetic agreement.”
“Your rum at least,” said Dorian, good-humouredly, “may well produce a fairy-tale. But, indeed, I think all this would have been a fairy-tale without it.”
Patrick raised himself from his arboreal throne, and leaned against his branch with a curious and sincere sense of being rebuked.
“Yours was a good poem,” he said, with seeming irrelevance, “and mine was a bad one. Mine was bad, partly because I’m not a poet as you are; but almost as much because I was trying to make up another song at the same time. And it went to another tune, you see.”
He looked out over the rolling roads and said almost to himself:
Softly and idly as he had said this second rhyme, there were circumstances about his attitude that must have troubled or interested anyone who did not know him well.
“May I ask,” asked Dorian, laughing, “why it is necessary to draw your sword at this stage of the affair?”
“Because we have left the place called Roundabout,” answered Patrick, “and we have come to a place called Rightabout.”
And he lifted his sword toward London, and the grey glint upon it came from a low, grey light in the east.
CHAPTER XXII
THE CHEMISTRY OF MR. CROOKE
WHEN the celebrated Hibbs next visited the shop of Crooke, that mystic and criminologist chemist, he found the premises were impressively and even amazingly enlarged with decorations in the eastern style. Indeed, it would not have been too much to say that Mr. Crooke’s shop occupied the whole of one side of a showy street in the West End; the other side being a blank facade of public buildings. It would be no exaggeration to say that Mr. Crooke was the only shopkeeper for some distance round. Mr. Crooke still served in his shop, however; and politely hastened to serve his customer with the medicine that was customary. Unfortunately, for some reason or other, history was, in connection with this shop, only too prone to repeat itself. And after a vague but soothing conversation with the chemist (on the subject of vitriol and its effects on human happiness), Mr. Hibbs experienced the acute annoyance of once more beholding his most intimate friend, Mr. Joseph Leveson, enter the same fashionable emporium. But, indeed, Leveson’s own annoyance was much too acute for him to notice any on the part of Hibbs.
“Well,” he said, stopping dead in the middle of the shop, “here is a fine confounded kettle of fish!”
It is one of the tragedies of the diplomatic that they are not allowed to admit either knowledge or ignorance; so Hibbs looked gloomily wise; and said, pursing his lips, “you mean the general situation.”
“I mean the situation about this everlasting business of the inn-signs,” said Leveson, impatiently. “Lord Ivywood went up specially, when his leg was really bad, to get it settled in the House in a small non-contentious bill, providing that the sign shouldn’t be enough if the liquor hadn’t been on the spot three days.”
“Oh, but,” said Hibbs, sinking his voice to a soft solemnity, as being one of the initiate, “a thing like that can be managed, don’t you know.”
“Of course it can,” said the other, still with the same slightly irritable air. “It was. But it doesn’t seem to occur to you, any more than it did to his lordship, that there is rather a weak point after all in this business of passing acts quietly because they’re unpopular. Has it ever occurred to you that if a law is really kept too quiet to be opposed, it may also be kept too quiet to be obeyed. It’s not so easy to hush it up from a big politician without running the risk of hushing it up even from a common policeman.”