During the singular entrance and exit of Dorian Wimpole, M.P., J.P., etc., Lady Joan was looking out of the magic casements1 of that turret2 room which was now literally3, and not only poetically4, the last limit of Ivywood House. The old broken hole and black staircase up which the lost dog Quoodle used to come and go, had long ago been sealed up and cemented with a wall of exquisite5 Eastern workmanship. All through the patterns Lord Ivywood had preserved and repeated the principle that no animal shape must appear. But, like all lucid6 dogmatists, he perceived all the liberties his dogma allowed him. And he had irradiated this remote end of Ivywood with sun and moon and solar and starry7 systems, with the Milky8 Way for a dado and a few comets for comic relief. The thing was well done of its kind (as were all the things that Phillip Ivywood got done for him); and if all the windows of the turret were closed with their peacock curtains, a poet with anything like a Hibbsian appreciation10 of the family champagne11 might almost fancy he was looking out across the sea on a night crowded with stars. And (what was yet more important) even Misysra (that exact thinker) could not call the moon a live animal without falling into idolatry.
But Joan, looking out of real windows on a real sky and sea, thought no more about the astronomical12 wall-paper than about any other wall-paper. She was asking herself in sullen13 emotionalism, and for the thousandth time, a question she had never been able to decide. It was the final choice between an ambition and a memory. And there was this heavy weight in the scale: that the ambition would probably materialise, and the memory probably wouldn’t. It has been the same weight in the same scale a million times, since Satan became the prince of this world. But the evening stars were strengthening over the old sea-shore, and they also wanted weighing like diamonds.
As once before at the same stage of brooding, she heard behind her the swish of Lady Enid’s skirts, that never came so fast save for serious cause.
“Joan! Please do come! Nobody but you, I do believe, could move him.” Joan looked at Lady Enid and realised that the lady was close on crying. She turned a trifle pale and asked quietly for the question. “Phillip says he’s going to London now, with that leg and all,” cried Enid, “and he won’t let us say a word.”
“But how did it all happen?” asked Joan.
Lady Enid Wimpole was quite incapable14 of explaining how it all happened, so the task must for the moment devolve on the author. The simple fact was that Ivywood in the course of turning over magazines on his sofa, happened to look at a paper from the Midlands.
“The Turkish news,” said Mr. Leveson, rather nervously15, “is on the other side of the page.”
But Lord Ivywood continued to look at the side of the paper that did not contain the Turkish news, with the same dignity of lowered eyelids16 and unconscious brow with which he had looked at the Captain’s message when Joan found him by the turret.
On the page covered merely with casual, provincial18 happenings was a paragraph, “Echo of Pebblewick Mystery. Reported Reappearance of the Vanishing Inn.” Underneath19 was printed, in smaller letters:
“An almost incredible report from Wyddington announces that the mysterious ‘Sign of the Old Ship’ has once more been seen in this country; though it has long been relegated20 by scientific investigators21 to the limbo22 of old rustic23 superstitions24. According to the local version, Mr. Simmons, a dairyman of Wyddington, was serving in his shop when two motorists entered, one of them asking for a glass of milk. They were in the most impenetrable motoring panoply25, with darkened goggles26 and waterproof27 collars turned up, so that nothing can be recalled of them personally, except that one was a person of unusual stature28. In a few moments, this latter individual went out of the shop again and returned with a miserable29 specimen30 out of the street, one of the tattered31 loafers that linger about our most prosperous towns, tramping the streets all night and even begging in defiance32 of the police. The filth33 and disease of the creature were so squalid that Mr. Simmons at first refused to serve him with the glass of milk which the taller motorist wished to provide for him. At length, however, Mr. Simmons consented, and was immediately astonished by an incident against which he certainly had a more assured right to protest.
“The taller motorist, saying to the loafer, ‘but, man, you’re blue in the face,’ made a species of signs to the smaller motorist, who thereupon appears to have pierced a sort of cylindrical34 trunk or chest that seemed to be his only luggage, and drawn35 from it a few drops of a yellow liquid which he deliberately36 dropped into the ragged37 creature’s milk. It was afterward38 discovered to be rum, and the protests of Mr. Simmons may be imagined. The tall motorist, however, warmly defended his action, having apparently39 some wild idea that he was doing an act of kindness. ‘Why, I found the man nearly fainting,’ he said. ‘If you’d picked him off a raft, he couldn’t be more collapsed40 with cold and sickness; and if you’d picked him off a raft you’d have given him rum—yes, by St. Patrick, if you were a bloody41 pirate and made him walk the plank42 afterward.’ Mr. Simmons replied with dignity, that he did not know how it was with rafts, and could not permit such language in his shop. He added that he would lay himself open to a police prosecution43 if he permitted the consumption of alcohol in his shop; since he did not display a sign. The motorist then made the amazing reply, ‘But you do display a sign, you jolly old man. Did you think I couldn’t find my way to the sign of The Old Ship, you sly boots?’ Mr. Simmons was now fully44 convinced of the intoxication45 of his visitors, and refusing a glass of rum rather boisterously46 offered him, went outside his shop to look round for a policeman. To his surprise he found the officer engaged in dispersing47 a considerable crowd, which was staring up at some object behind him. On looking round (he states in his deposition) he ‘saw what was undoubtedly48 one of the low tavern49 signs at one time common in England.’ He was wholly unable to explain its presence outside his premises50, and as it undoubtedly legalised the motorist’s action, the police declined to move in the matter.
“Later. The two motorists have apparently left the town, unmolested, in a small second-hand51 two-seater. There is no clue to their destination, except it be indicated by a single incident. It appears that when they were waiting for the second glass of milk, one of them drew attention to a milk-can of a shape seemingly unfamiliar52 to him, which was, of course, the Mountain Milk now so much recommended by doctors. The taller motorist (who seemed in every way strangely ignorant of modern science and social life) asked his companion where it came from, receiving, of course, the reply that it is manufactured in the model village of Peaceways, under the personal superintendence of its distinguished53 and philanthropic inventor, Dr. Meadows. Upon this the taller person, who appeared highly irresponsible, actually bought the whole can; observing, as he tucked it under his arm, that it would help him to remember the address.
“Later. Our readers will be glad to hear that the legend of ‘The Old Ship’ sign has once more yielded to the wholesome55 scepticism of science. Our representative reached Wyddington after the practical jokers, or whatever they were, had left; but he searched the whole frontage of Mr. Simmons’s shop, and we are in a position to assure the public that there is no trace of the alleged56 sign.”
Lord Ivywood laid down the newspaper and looked at the rich and serpentine57 embroideries58 on the wall with the expression that a great general might have if he saw a chance of really ruining his enemy, if he would also ruin all his previous plan of campaign. His pallid59 and classic profile was as immovable as a cameo; but anyone who had known him at all would have known that his brain was going like a motor car that has broken the speed limit long ago.
Then he turned his head and said, “Please tell Hicks to bring round the long blue car in half an hour; it can be fitted up for a sofa. And ask the gardener to cut a pole of about four feet nine inches, and put a cross-piece for a crutch60. I’m going up to London tonight.”
Mr. Leveson’s lower jaw61 literally fell with astonishment62.
“The Doctor said three weeks,” he said. “If I may ask it, where are you going?”
“St. Stephens, Westminster,” answered Ivywood.
“Surely,” said Mr. Leveson, “I could take a message.”
“You could take a message,” assented63 Ivywood, “I’m afraid they would not allow you to make a speech.”
It was a moment or two afterward that Enid Wimpole had come into the room, and striven in vain to shake his decision. Then it was that Joan had been brought out of the turret and saw Phillip standing64, sustained upon a crutch of garden timber; and admired him as she had never admired him before. While he was being helped downstairs, while he was being propped65 in the car with such limited comfort as was possible, she did really feel in him something worthy66 of his ancient roots, worthy of such hills and of such a sea. For she felt God’s wind from nowhere which is called the Will; and is man’s only excuse upon this earth. In the small toot of the starting motor she could hear a hundred trumpets67, such as might have called her ancestors and his to the glories of the Third Crusade.
Such imaginary military honours were not, at least in the strategic sense, undeserved. Lord Ivywood really had seen the whole map of the situation in front of him, and swiftly formed a plan to meet it, in a manner not unworthy of Napoleon. The realities of the situation unrolled themselves before him, and his mind was marking them one by one as with a pencil.
First, he knew that Dalroy would probably go to the Model Village. It was just the sort of place he would go to. He knew Dalroy was almost constitutionally incapable of not kicking up some kind of row in a place of that kind.
Second, he knew that if he missed Dalroy at this address, it was very likely to be his last address; he and Mr. Pump were quite clever enough to leave no more hints behind.
Third, he guessed, by careful consideration of map and clock, that they could not get to so remote a region in so cheap a car under something like two days, nor do anything very conclusive68 in less than three. Thus, he had just time to turn round in.
Fourth, he realised that ever since that day when Dalroy swung round the sign-board and smote69 the policeman into the ditch, Dalroy had swung round the Ivywood Act on Lord Ivywood. He (Lord Ivywood) had thought, and might well have thought rightly, that by restricting the old sign-posts to a few places so select that they can afford to be eccentric, and forbidding such artistic70 symbols to all other places, he could sweep fermented71 liquor for all practical purposes out of the land. The arrangement was exactly that at which all such legislation is consciously or unconsciously aiming. A sign-board could be a favour granted by the governing class to itself. If a gentleman wished to claim the liberties of a Bohemian, the path would be open. If a Bohemian wished to claim the liberties of a gentleman, the path would be shut. So, gradually, Lord Ivywood had thought, the old signs which can alone sell alcohol, will dwindle72 down to mere17 curiosities, like Audit73 Ale or the Mead54 that may still be found in the New Forest. The calculation was by no means unstatesmanlike. But, like many other statesmanlike calculations, it did not take into account the idea of dead wood walking about. So long as his flying foes74 might set up their sign anywhere, it mattered little whether the result was enjoyment75 or disappointment for the populace. In either case it must mean constant scandal or riot. If there was one thing worse than the appearance of “The Old Ship” it was its disappearance76.
He realised that his own law was letting them loose every time; for the local authorities hesitated to act on the spot, in defiance of a symbol now so exclusive and therefore impressive. He realised that the law must be altered. Must be altered at once. Must be altered, if possible, before the fugitives77 broke away from the Model Village of Peaceways.
He realised that it was Thursday. This was the day on which any private member of Parliament could introduce any private bill of the kind called “non-contentious,” and pass it without a division, so long as no particular member made any particular fuss. He realised that it was improbable that any particular member would make any particular fuss about Lord Ivywood’s own improvement on Lord Ivywood’s own Act.
Finally, he realised that the whole case could be met by so slight an improvement as this. Change the words of the Act (which he knew by heart, as happier men might k............