Mistress Masham's Repose Page 16

  They sent a party to fetch provisions for the prisoners, while others went to gather the main body, which was still dispersed about the Palace. The remainder started for the bolted door. They collected two of the ladders which had been brought by the ship, together with ropes and spikes. Getting round the Palace was like mountaineering for them, and this was why they brought the gear.

  For Malplaquet was a real mountain to the People of the Island. It was a range of mountains. To imagine their difficulties, we should have to think how we would get about in a house that was as high as the downs at Selborne, and more than six miles long. The countless steps on the terrace were, for them, each one as tall as a man. If the doors were shut, they could not turn the handles. The pavements of the colonnades were airdromes. Even the smaller columns seemed to be two hundred feet in height; the greater columns, which held up the pediment, were half as much again. The basins of the fountains were great lakes. The statues were colossi. Eight of them could have dined at ease inside King George’s head.

  The flat cliff of the South Front towered above them, mat-silver in the moon and starlight, boldly slashed with its deep bars of velvet shade, but half in ruin. It was the ruination that made it possible for them to make their way about.

  Beaded and paneled doors, which would have been impassable if sound, drooped on their parting hinges, or hung ajar. Masonry, once too true and square for foothold, gave purchase now that it was crumbled. Windows, gap-toothed with broken glass, opened on the vasty halls. Spider and swallow, bat and mouse, had long inherited the coigns of vantage.

  The obstacles which we should overlook were tedious to Lilliput. Gravel paths seemed bouldered beaches, which might turn an ankle in their desert strips. The long grass was a jungle of tripping roots. They moved, climbing and jumping, clambering and toiling, where we should stroll.

  The ladders were in a dump at the foot of the steps on the South Front. Now they had to carry them round three sides of the Armory, through an archway, across the Boilerhouse Yard, and down the basement to the cellar stairs. By their measurements, it was as if they had to march three miles; and it was not across easy country.

  The first part of it was along what had once been a gravel drive, where the Fourth Duchess, an invalid, had been accustomed to be promenaded in her pony carriage, with a powdered footman at each wheel, and another behind to carry the smelling salts. Now it was a weedy trackway, whose weeds were bushes to the People and whose pebbles were smooth rocks. It was a heartbreaking trail, although it was one degree better than the scrubland of meadowsweet, scutchgrass, scabious, and sorrel which lay on its borders. This part ended at the west corner of the Armory, where an iron gate, fifty feet high, and a stone step as high as a man, led to the Menagerie Path and the Orangeries.

  They turned right, along another strip of gravel which was dilapidated like the first, and struggled on. Here there were toads, who swelled themselves up, lifted their back ends stiffly, and made strange moonlit faces at the rescuers as they stumbled past. There was also a chance of grass snakes, who used to go to Boswell’s Fountain for the frogs.

  To reach the Archway, they had to climb six steps. They had to hold the ladders firm, because the stones were slippery. Above them the great Arch, dedicated to the unfortunate Queen Caroline Matilda and ornamented with the royal arms of Denmark, blocked out a section of the sprinkled stars.

  The Boilerhouse Yard was an Arabia of stones, between which the nettles vied with the goose grass, and a nettle sting was like an adder’s for men so small.

  The bats creaked above them, sharper than kingfishers, as they wove their way between the deadly trees. Outside the yard, beyond the Temple of the Graces, a corn crake sawed across its comb. From an abandoned flower bed the smell of stock was sweet.

  The basement door was shut and locked, but its upper panes had once been glass. These were now missing.

  They had to tie the ladders together, but even then they were a human foot too short. The steeple-jack had to go up with spikes, which he drove into the wood, like the steps on a telegraph pole, until he reached the open ledge. From that he lowered a rope inside the door, and made it fast. The rest climbed up the ladders, up the spikes, and down the rope. The last man had to help the steeple-jack, while he hauled the ladders up and lowered them inside.

  Then they were in the dark in earnest. The basement corridor, four furlongs straight and long enough to stage a modest canter even for us, was gloomy in daylight. By night, with rats about, it was the valley of the shadow. Some of the bats hunted it also, swerving through the broken panes. The dim pipes and the drains above them, and the myriad bellpulls, were no longer lit by the Professor’s torch.

  However, they were accustomed to working at night. Their eyes were as fine as they were small. After a minute they could partly see.

  The flagstones of the basement were as large as tennis courts. They clicked across them silently in skirmishing order, whispers forbidden.

  Outside, they could disperse. They could run, hide in the undergrowth, or stand motionless with a concealing background. Inside, within four walls, the case was altered. Suppose Miss Brown were to spring before them, were to step from behind a pillar or to pounce with her candle from a yawning door? How could they hide on a stone floor, or disperse with walls round them, or run away even, when they were locked in, and needed to climb out by ladders? One stride of the pursuer would cover twelve of theirs. Later, when they were down the steps, their retreat would be cut off by a series of cliffs, which Miss Brown could mount as easily as the stairs they were.

  So they advanced in silence, like red Indians on the warpath, with their scouts thrown out. They had to peer round corners, reconnoiter, listen, even sniff. Humans have a pungent smell, which is plain as daylight to the animals. The People could distinguish with their noses as clearly.

  If a scout were to wind the Vicar, he would squeak like a mouse, three times. All would then turn in silence, and would fade back into the darkness, since silence was their only hope.

  But if the Vicar leaped from behind; if he too had managed to lie concealed without being winded, and had cut off their retreat: in that case they would have to run in all directions, giving as much trouble as possible in being caught. While he was trying to kidnap one of them, grabbing to seize the nimble figure without injuring it too much for sale, why then, perhaps, during that time, another would be able to climb a stair.

  The door toward the cellars had left its hinges twenty years before. The cellar steps were worn by countless feet—the oldest steps in the Palace, contemporary with the dungeons. They had to lower the ladders, climb down two steps, assemble on the third, lower the ladders once more, and repeat the process.

  They passed the strong rooms and the wine bins, under the massive Norman arches. They left minuscule footsteps in the dust. They passed the moldy corks and cobwebs and the bricked-up vaults.

  Dimly, through the bolted door, they could hear the Professor and Maria talking. For some reason these two had begun to neigh.

  The lower bolt was reached easily from a ladder. A spike was driven in the door, six of our inches behind the back end of the bolt. A rope was tied to the arm of the bolt and passed over this spike. Then, while one of them held the arm up from the ladder, the others heaved upon the rope. It came out sweetly.

  The upper bolt was too high for the ladders, even when they were tied together. The steeple-jack had to go up with spikes, which he drove in slantwise until he was six inches behind it, as with the other. Then he had to reach the bolt arm, by three more spikes, so that he could tie a longer rope to that. He had difficulty in raising the arm from its slot, although it was only just inside it. Before he could get it to move, he had to hammer it with a spike. The rope was passed over the pulley-spike and thrown down to the haulers.

  They heaved with all their strength, climbing the rope in order to put their weight upon it.

  The bolt was immovable.

  The door had sagged on its hinges in
the course of centuries, and was leaning on the socket. It needed human strength to shift the metal.

  CHAPTER XXV

  THE Professor walked round the walls with his torch, reading the Latin inscriptions.

  “Not a sign of Tripharium,” he said sadly, “though there is an interesting use of “questeur” by this Pardoner behind the block, who dates himself 1389. I see that Dame Alice Kyteler, the Irish sorceress, was here for the week end in 1324.”

  Maria was resting on the rack, with the famous ulster for a pillow.

  “A month ago,” she said, “the People were thinking how much they would like to visit Lilliput, to see if there was anybody there. I said that when you were rich we would buy a yacht, and go to find them.”

  “A pleasant holiday. Yes. We might pay a visit to all four countries, kidnap a Brobdingnagian, call on the Balni-barbians and take a distant look at all the Horses.”

  “The Balnibarbians?”

  “The people with the flying island overhead, the airy island of Laputa.”

  “What fun! We could capture it from a Flying Fortress, if we wanted!”

  “Why?”

  “It might come in useful for something. We could put it over London in the next war, for an air-raid shelter.”

  “Unfortunately it will only work over Balnibarbi. It says so in the book.”

  “Well, we could use it for a health resort. Or for investigating the stratosphere, like Professor Picard.”

  “Its ceiling was not more than four miles. Airplanes go higher.”

  “We could ...”

  “I don’t see why you want to capture it in the first place,” exclaimed the Professor petulantly. “Why couldn’t you leave it to the people who had it? They were perfectly happy.”

  “But they were silly people. All those old philosophers with their heads on one side, and one eye turned inward, and the servants to flap them when they got absent-minded.”

  “What was wrong with that?”

  “Well, look at the ridiculous things they invented. Look at the projector who wanted to get sunbeams out of cucumbers!”

  “Why not? He was only a little before his time. What about cod-liver oil and vitamins and all that? People will be getting sunbeams out of cucumbers before we know where we are.”

  Maria looked surprised.

  He stopped wandering and sat on the block.

  “Do you know,” he said, “I think that Dr. Swift was silly to laugh about Laputa. I believe it is a mistake to make a mock of people, just because they think. There are ninety thousand people in this world who do not think, for every one who does, and these people hate the thinkers like poison. Even if some thinkers are fanciful, it is wrong to make fun of them for it. Better to think about cucumbers even, than not to think at all.”

  “But ...”

  “You see, Maria, this world is run by ‘practical’ people: that is to say, by people who do not know how to think, have never had any education in thinking, and who do not wish to have it. They get on far better with lies, tub thumping, swindling, vote catching, murdering, and the rest of practical politics. So, when a person who can think does come along, to tell them what they are doing wrong, or how to put it right, they have to invent some way of slinging mud at him, for fear of losing their power and being forced to do the right thing. So they always screech out with one accord that the advice of this thinker is ‘visionary,’ ‘unpractical,’ or ‘all right in theory.’ Then, when they have discredited his piece of truth by the trick of words, they can settle down to blacken his character in other ways, at leisure, and they are safe to carry on with the wars and miseries which are the results of practical politics. I do not believe that a thinking man like Dr. Swift ought to have helped the practical politicians, by poking fun at thinkers, even if he only meant to poke fun at the silly ones. Time is revenging itself upon the Dean. It is bringing in, as real inventions, the very ones which he made up for ridicule.”

  “What would you do,” asked Maria suspiciously, “if we called at Laputa?”

  “Hire a flapper there, and settle down.”

  “I thought so.”

  “In any case, I do not fully believe in Laputa. I suspect that Gulliver was drawing the longbow a little. So many of these travelers are inclined to be like Sir John Mandeville....”

  “Why don’t you believe?”

  “Do you remember how it was supposed to be kept in the air?”

  “It had an enormous magnet inside, and one end attracted the earth and the other end repelled it. If they wanted to go up, they put the repelling end downward.”

  “Just so. I do not think it would work. Sir Thomas Browne discusses this very question in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica, in relation to Mahomet’s Tomb and other articles, like the iron horse of Bellerophon, which were said to be suspended in the air by magnets. He says that it cannot be done.”

  “Why?”

  “If a magnet is pulling hard enough to pull you up, it will also be pulling hard enough to pull you upper. The moment you are up, you are nearer, and consequently you get pulled harder. That was one reason. Another one was that, if you hung a thing between two equal magnets, the balance would be so infinitely delicate that the least breath of wind would disturb it, and so the object would fly to one or to the other. By the way, do you remember the size of the flying island?”

  “It was on a plate of adamant two hundred yards thick, covering ten thousand acres.”

  “What is adamant?”

  “What is it, then?”

  “It was one of the old words for diamond. If you must have a reason for capturing Laputa, Maria, I think that a diamond five miles long and two hundred yards thick ought to be sufficient.”

  “Gee!”

  “I wonder why Surgeon Gulliver did not steal a bit.”

  “Perhaps he could not break it off.”

  “Perhaps.”

  They thought about the huge blue fire scintillating in the air, the light from the waves reflected and refracted from its flashing bottom, as Gulliver first saw it, till their minds were awed.

  “Tell me about the Horses.”

  “What about them?”

  “Tell me,” she said guiltily, “how they ought to be pronounced.”

  The Professor threw his head back firmly and began to neigh.

  “What?”

  “Can you neigh?”

  Maria tried, to see if she could.

  “How did you do it?”

  “Let me see. I kept my mouth shut, and I don’t think my tongue moved, and I sort of kept on huffing out a wriggly squeal, through the back of my nose.”

  “How would you spell a neigh?”

  “You couldn’t spell it very well, because you do it with your mouth shut. So there can’t be any proper letters, really, not real vowels.”

  “Well, Dr. Swift used a ‘hou’ for the huffing part, and a Y for the squealy part, and the N’s and M’s are the part in the nose, Houyhnhnm. It is what a horse says.”

  “It isn’t very easy to pronounce it in the book, not when you are reading aloud.”

  “It is only a question of practice,” said the Professor grandly. “Practice and self-confidence.”

  He began neighing merrily, saying that he was quoting a passage at the end of Chapter Nine. Maria started also, each thinking his or her own imitation to be the best, and the Lilliputians wondered outside.

  “It is a pity,” said he, stopping suddenly, “that we cannot visit them.”

  “Why not?”

  “We are Yahoos.”

  “But I thought the Yahoos were horrid hairy creatures, who made messes and thieved and fought.”

  “That’s what we are.”

  “We?”

  “Dr. Swift was thinking of human beings, my dear, when he described the Yahoos. He was thinking of the politicians I was telling you about, and the ‘practical’ people, and the ‘Average Man,’ for whom our famous democracy exists. Just so. Do you realize that the Average Man probably canno
t read or write?”

  “Oh, surely ...”

  “If the Average Man means anything, Maria, it means the average human being in the world. He lives in Russia and in China and in India, as well as in England. Less than half of him can read at all.”

  “But the Yahoos had claws....”

  “We have tommy guns.”

  “We do not smell!”

  “We do not smell ourselves. They tell me that a European smells quite horrid to an Asiatic.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “No.”

  “And anyway, the Horses could not turn us out.”

  “Why not? They turned out Gulliver.”

  “Why did they?”

  “Because he was a human, like ourselves.”

  “What cheek!” exclaimed Maria. “I’d jolly soon turn out mere animals.”

  “There,” said the old man calmly, “speaks the young Yahoo. Exactly. There speaks our budding Homo sapiens.”

  CHAPTER XXVI

  THE Palace kitchen was rather too small for an aircraft hangar, but its appointments had been praised by Dartiquenave, and the Prince Regent’s chef had there conceived his famous Sauce Chinoise—which had been composed mainly of red pepper, as the Prince had by then become incapable of tasting anything else.

  In a gloomy corner of the kitchen, with a tallow candle which threw enormous silhouettes of titanic ovens, of spits for roasting bullocks whole, and of braziers for deviling small whales, on a broken rocking chair which she had inherited with Captain from her deceased husband, with her steel-rimmed spectacles slipping from the end of her nose and a copy of Mirabelle’s Last Chance slipping from her knobbed fingers, with her head nod, nod, nodding, and jerking up straight again, with a bundle of Maria’s black stockings on the workbasket beside her and Captain’s head upon her knee, old Cook sat snoozing off. It was long past midnight, but she was sitting up to make Miss Brown her nice-hot-water-bottle.