In the Sweet Dry and Dry Part 6

Bleak suddenly remembered, and thrust his hand in his hip-pocket. He pulled out the hank of white beard that had floated down from the airplane a few days before. It was much crumpled, but intact.

"Good man!" cried Quimbleton. "My jolly old beard!" He clapped it onto his face and beamed hopefully. "Now, if there were some way of getting rid of this tell-tale uniform--"

They discussed this problem at some length, sitting in the sheltered bowl of sand, while Quimbleton finished his lunch. Bleak's suggestion of st.i.tching together a sort of Robinson Crusoe suit of rhododendron leaves did not meet Quimbleton's approval.

"No Robinson trousseau for me," he said. "I thought of pasting together the leaves of The Bartender's Benefactor, but I'm afraid that would be rather d.a.m.ning. No, I don't see what to do."

"I have it!" said Theodolinda, gleefully. "I've got a sewing kit in the car--we'll unrip the upholstery and I can st.i.tch you up a suit in no time. At least it will be better than the C. P. H. get-up, which would take you in front of a firing squad if it were seen."

This seemed a good idea. Bleak volunteered to escort Miss Chuff back to the car and help her rip the covers off the cushions. This was done, and they carried back to Quimbleton's hiding place many yards of pale lilac colored twill (or whatever it is) and a flask of iced tea. In spite of distant sounds of warfare, the time pa.s.sed pleasantly enough.

Miss Chuff cut out and st.i.tched a.s.siduously; Quimbleton and Bleak, under her directions, sewed on the b.u.t.tons snipped from the uniform.

Birds twittered in the greenery about them, and they all felt something of the elation of a picnic when the garments were done and Quimbleton retired to a neighboring copse to make the change. The other two were too seriously concerned for his welfare to laugh when they saw him.

"Splendid!" cried Bleak. "Now you can lie down in Miss Chuff's car and if any one looks in they'll just think you're part of the furnishings."

"And I think we'd better get back to the car without delay," said Theodolinda. "I'd like to get you out of this danger zone as soon as possible."

They hastened back to the wall, scaled it with the rope ladder--and stared in dismay. The car had gone. They could see it far down the road, guarded by a group of Pan-Antis. A cordon of the enemy had been thrown completely round the Home and escape was impossible. Worse still, the treachery of Miss Chuff must have been discovered, and they trembled to think what retaliation the Bishop might devise.

In this moment of crisis Quimbleton regained his customary hardihood.

Quilted in his lilac garments, with the white hedge of beard tossing in the breeze, he looked the dashing leader.

"There's only one thing to do," he said. "We're surrounded in this place. We must go to the Home, make common cause with the prisoners there, and lead them in a sudden sally of escape."

CHAPTER VI

DEPARTED SPIRITS

If Bishop Chuff desired to make people stop thinking about alcohol, his plan of seizing them and shutting them up in the grounds of the Federal Home at Cana was a quaint way of attaining this purpose. For all the victims, who had been suddenly arrested in the course of their daily concerns, accused (before a rum-head court martial) of harboring illicit alcoholic desires, and driven over to Cana in crowded motor-trucks, now had very little else to brood about. In the golden light and fragrance of a summer afternoon, here they were surrounded by all the apparatus to restrain alcoholic excess, and not even the slightest exhilaration of spirit to justify the depressing scene. It was annoying to see frequent notices such as: This Entrance for Brandy-Topers; or Vodka Patients in This Ward; or Inmates Must Not Bite Off the Door-k.n.o.bs. It seemed carrying a jest too far when these citizens, most of whom had not even smelt a drink in two years, found themselves billeted into padded cells and confronted by rows of strait-jackets. Moreover, the Home had lain unused for many months: it was dusty, dilapidated, and of a moldy savor. Some of the unwilling visitors, finding that the grounds included a strip of sandy beach, took their ordeal with reasonable philosophy. "Since we are to be slaves," they said, "at least let's have some serf bathing." And donning (with a shudder) the rather gruesome padded bathing suits they found in the lockers, they went off for a swim. Others, of a humorous turn, derived a certain rudimentary amus.e.m.e.nt in studying the garden marked Reserved for Patients with Insane Delusions, where they found a very excellent relief-model of the battleground of the Marne, laid out by a former inmate who had imagined himself to be General Joffre. But most of them stood about in groups, talking bitterly.

Quimbleton, therefore, found a receptive audience for his Spartacus scheme of organizing this band of downtrodden victims into a fighting force. He gathered them into the dining-hall of the Home and addressed them in spirited language.

"My friends" (he said), "unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, I feel it my duty to administer a few remarks on the subject of our present situation.

"And the first thought that comes to my mind, candidly, is this, that we must give Bishop Chuff credit for a quality we never imagined him to possess. That quality, gentlemen, is a sense of humor. I hear some dissent; and yet it seems to me to be somewhat humorous that this gathering, composed of men who were accustomed, in the good old days, to carry their liquor like gentlemen, should now, when they have been cold sober for two years, be incarcerated in this humiliating place, surrounded by the morbid relics of those weaker souls who found their grog too strong for them.

"I say therefore that we must give Bishop Chuff credit for a sense of humor. It makes him all the more deadly enemy. Yet I think we will have the laugh on him yet, in a manner I shall presently describe. For the Bishop has what may be denominated a single-tract mind. He undoubtedly imagines that we will submit tamely to this outrage. He has surrounded us with guards. He expects us to be meek. In my experience, the meek inherit the dearth. Let us not be meek!"

There was a shout of applause, and Quimbleton's salient of horse-hair beard waved triumphantly as he gathered strength. His burly figure in the lilac upholstering dominated the audience. He went on:

"And what is our crime? That we have nourished, in the privacy of our own intellects, treasonable thoughts or desires concerning alcohol!

Gentlemen, it is the first principle of common law that a man cannot be indicted for thinking a crime. There must be some overt act, some evidence of illegal intention. Can a man be deprived of freedom for carrying concealed thoughts? If so, we might as well abolish the human mind itself. Which Bishop Chuff and his flunkeys would gladly do, I doubt not, for they themselves would lose nothing thereby."

Vigorous clapping greeted this sally.

"Now, gentlemen," cried Quimbleton, "though we follow a lost cause, and even though the gooseberry and the raisin and the apple be doomed, let us see it through with gallantry! The enemy has mobilized dreadful engines of war against us. Let us retort in kind. He has tanks in the field--let us retort with tankards. They tell me there is a warship in the offing, to sh.e.l.l us into submission. Very well: if he has gobs, let us retort with goblets. If he has deacons, let us parry him with decanters. Chuff has put us here under the pretext of being drunk. Very well: then let us BE drunk. Let us go down in our cups, not in our saucers. Where there's a swill, there's a way! Let us be sot in our ways," he added, sotto voce.

Terrific uproar followed this fine outburst. Quimbleton had to calm the frenzy by gesturing for silence.

"I hear some natural queries," he said. "Some one asks 'How?' To this I shall presently explain 'Here's how.' Bear with me a moment.

"My friends, it would be idle for us to attempt the great task before us relying merely on ourselves. In such great crises it is necessary to call upon a Higher Power for strength and succor. This is no mere brawl, no haphazard scuffle: it is the battle-ground--if I were jocosely minded I might say it is the bottle-ground--of a great principle. If, gentlemen, I wished to harrow your souls, I would ask you to hark back in memory to the fine old days when brave men and lovely women sat down at the same table with a gla.s.s of wine, or a mug of ale, and no one thought any the worse. I would ask you to remember the color of the wine in the goblet, how it caught the light, how merrily it twinkled with beaded bubbles winking at the brim, as some poet has observed. If I wanted to harrow you, gentlemen, I would recall to you little tables, little round tables, set out under the trees on the lawn of some country inn, where the enchanting music of harp and fiddle tw.a.n.gled on the summer air, where great bowls of punch chimed gently as the lumps of ice knocked on the thin crystal. The little tables were spread tinder the trees, and then, later on, perhaps, the customers were spread under the tables.--I would ask you to recall the manly seidel of dark beer as you knew it, the bitter chill of it as it went down, the simple felicity it induced in the care-burdened mind. I could quote to you poet after poet who has nourished his song upon honest malt liquor. I need only think of Mr. Masefield, who has put these manly words in the mouth of his pirate mate:

Oh some are fond of Spanish wine, and some are fond of French, And some'll swallow tea and stuff fit only for a wench, But I'm for right Jamaica till I roll beneath the bench!

Oh some are fond of fiddles and a song well sung, And some are all for music for to lilt upon the tongue; But mouths were made for tankards, and for sucking at the bung!"

This apparently artless oratory was beginning to have its effect. Loud huzzas filled the hall. These touching words had evoked wistful memories hidden deep in every heart. Old wounds were reopened and bled afresh.

Again Quimbleton had to call for silence.

"I will recite to you," he said, "a ditty that I have composed myself.

It is called A Chanty of Departed Spirits."

In a voice tremulous with emotion he began:

The earth is grown puny and pallid, The earth is grown gouty and gray, For whiskey no longer is valid And wine has been voted away-- As for beer, we no longer will swill it In riotous rollicking spree; The little hot dogs in the skillet Will have to be sluiced down with tea.

O ales that were creamy like lather!

O beers that were foamy like suds!

O fizz that I loved like a father!

O fie on the drinks that are duds!

I sat by the doors that were slatted And the stuff had a surf like the sea-- No vintage was anywhere vatted Too strong for ventripotent me!

I wallowed in waves that were tidal, But yet I was never unmoored; And after the twentieth seidel My syllables still were a.s.sured.

I never was forced to cut cable And drift upon perilous sh.o.r.es, To get home I was perfectly able, Erect, or at least on all fours.

Although I was often some swiller, I never was fuddled or blowsed; My hand was still firm on the tiller, No matter how deep I caroused; But now they have put an embargo On jazz-juice that tingles the spine,

We can't even cozen a cargo Of harmless old gooseberry wine!

But no legislation can daunt us: The drinks that we knew never die: Their spirits will come back to haunt us And whimper and hover near by.

The spookists insist that communion Exists with the souls that we lose-- And so we may count on reunion With all that's immortal of Booze.

Those spirits we loved have departed To some psychical twentieth plane; But still we will not be downhearted, We'll soon greet our loved ones again-- To lighten our drouth and our tedium Whenever our moments would sag, We'll call in a spiritist medium And go on a psychical jag!

As the frenzy of cheering died away, Quimbleton's face took on the glow of simple benignance that Bleak had first observed at the time of the julep incident in the Balloon office. The flush of a warm, impulsive idealism over-spread his genial features. It was the face of one who deeply loved his fellow-men.

"My friends," he said, "now I am able to say, in all sincerity, Here's How. I have great honor in presenting to you my betrothed fiancee, Miss Theodolinda Chuff. Do not be startled by the name, gentlemen. Miss Chuff, the daughter of our arch-enemy, is wholly in sympathy with us.

She is the possessor (happily for us) of extraordinary psychic powers.

I have persuaded her to demonstrate them for our benefit. If you will follow my instructions implicitly, you will have the good fortune of witnessing an alcoholic seance."

Miss Chuff, very pale, but obviously glad to put her spiritual gift at the disposal of her lover, was escorted to the platform by Bleak. The editor had been coached beforehand by Quimbleton as to the routine of the seance.