الفصل الفصل 3 · The Hill of Humour_

. The Hill of Humour_

"In a little square garden of yellow roses, beside the sea," said

Auberon Quin, "there was a Nonconformist minister who had never been

to Wimbledon. His family did not understand his sorrow or the strange

look in his eyes. But one day they repented their neglect, for they

heard that a body had been found on the shore, battered, but wearing

patent leather boots. As it happened, it turned out not to be the

minister at all. But in the dead man's pocket there was a return

ticket to Maidstone."

There was a short pause as Quin and his friends Barker and Lambert

went swinging on through the slushy grass of Kensington Gardens. Then

Auberon resumed.

"That story," he said reverently, "is the test of humour."

They walked on further and faster, wading through higher grass as they

began to climb a slope.

"I perceive," continued Auberon, "that you have passed the test, and

consider the anecdote excruciatingly funny; since you say nothing.

Only coarse humour is received with pot-house applause. The great

anecdote is received in silence, like a benediction. You felt pretty

benedicted, didn't you, Barker?"

"I saw the point," said Barker, somewhat loftily.

"Do you know," said Quin, with a sort of idiot gaiety, "I have lots of

stories as good as that. Listen to this one."

And he slightly cleared his throat.

"Dr. Polycarp was, as you all know, an unusually sallow bimetallist.

'There,' people of wide experience would say, 'There goes the

sallowest bimetallist in Cheshire.' Once this was said so that he

overheard it: it was said by an actuary, under a sunset of mauve and

grey. Polycarp turned upon him. 'Sallow!' he cried fiercely, 'sallow!

_Quis tulerit Gracchos de seditione querentes._' It was said that no

actuary ever made game of Dr. Polycarp again."

Barker nodded with a simple sagacity. Lambert only grunted.

"Here is another," continued the insatiable Quin. "In a hollow of the

grey-green hills of rainy Ireland, lived an old, old woman, whose

uncle was always Cambridge at the Boat Race. But in her grey-green

hollows, she knew nothing of this: she didn't know that there was a

Boat Race. Also she did not know that she had an uncle. She had heard

of nobody at all, except of George the First, of whom she had heard (I

know not why), and in whose historical memory she put her simple

trust. And by and by in God's good time, it was discovered that this

uncle of hers was not really her uncle, and they came and told her so.

She smiled through her tears, and said only, 'Virtue is its own

reward.'"

Again there was a silence, and then Lambert said--

"It seems a bit mysterious."

"Mysterious!" cried the other. "The true humour is mysterious. Do you

not realise the chief incident of the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries?"

"And what's that?" asked Lambert, shortly.

"It is very simple," replied the other. "Hitherto it was the ruin of a

joke that people did not see it. Now it is the sublime victory of a

joke that people do not see it. Humour, my friends, is the one

sanctity remaining to mankind. It is the one thing you are thoroughly

afraid of. Look at that tree."

His interlocutors looked vaguely towards a beech that leant out

towards them from the ridge of the hill.

"If," said Mr. Quin, "I were to say that you did not see the great

truths of science exhibited by that tree, though they stared any man

of intellect in the face, what would you think or say? You would

merely regard me as a pedant with some unimportant theory about

vegetable cells. If I were to say that you did not see in that tree

the vile mismanagement of local politics, you would dismiss me as a

Socialist crank with some particular fad about public parks. If I were

to say that you were guilty of the supreme blasphemy of looking at

that tree and not seeing in it a new religion, a special revelation of

God, you would simply say I was a mystic, and think no more about me.

But if"--and he lifted a pontifical hand--"if I say that you cannot

see the humour of that tree, and that I see the humour of it--my God!

you will roll about at my feet."

He paused a moment, and then resumed.

"Yes; a sense of humour, a weird and delicate sense of humour, is the

new religion of mankind! It is towards that men will strain themselves

with the asceticism of saints. Exercises, spiritual exercises, will be

set in it. It will be asked, 'Can you see the humour of this iron

railing?' or 'Can you see the humour of this field of corn? Can you

see the humour of the stars? Can you see the humour of the sunsets?'

How often I have laughed myself to sleep over a violet sunset."

"Quite so," said Mr. Barker, with an intelligent embarrassment.

"Let me tell you another story. How often it happens that the M.P.'s

for Essex are less punctual than one would suppose. The least punctual

Essex M.P., perhaps, was James Wilson, who said, in the very act of

plucking a poppy--"

Lambert suddenly faced round and struck his stick into the ground in a

defiant attitude.

"Auberon," he said, "chuck it. I won't stand it. It's all bosh."

Both men stared at him, for there was something very explosive about

the words, as if they had been corked up painfully for a long time.

"You have," began Quin, "no--"

"I don't care a curse," said Lambert, violently, "whether I have 'a

delicate sense of humour' or not. I won't stand it. It's all a

confounded fraud. There's no joke in those infernal tales at all. You

know there isn't as well as I do."

"Well," replied Quin, slowly, "it is true that I, with my rather

gradual mental processes, did not see any joke in them. But the finer

sense of Barker perceived it."

Barker turned a fierce red, but continued to stare at the horizon.

"You ass," said Lambert; "why can't you be like other people? Why

can't you say something really funny, or hold your tongue? The man who

sits on his hat in a pantomime is a long sight funnier than you are."

Quin regarded him steadily. They had reached the top of the ridge and

the wind struck their faces.

"Lambert," said Auberon, "you are a great and good man, though I'm

hanged if you look it. You are more. You are a great revolutionist or

deliverer of the world, and I look forward to seeing you carved in

marble between Luther and Danton, if possible in your present

attitude, the hat slightly on one side. I said as I came up the hill

that the new humour was the last of the religions. You have made it

the last of the superstitions. But let me give you a very serious

warning. Be careful how you ask me to do anything _outre_, to imitate

the man in the pantomime, and to sit on my hat. Because I am a man

whose soul has been emptied of all pleasures but folly. And for

twopence I'd do it."

"Do it, then," said Lambert, swinging his stick impatiently. "It would

be funnier than the bosh you and Barker talk."

Quin, standing on the top of the hill, stretched his hand out towards

the main avenue of Kensington Gardens.

"Two hundred yards away," he said, "are all your fashionable

acquaintances with nothing on earth to do but to stare at each other

and at us. We are standing upon an elevation under the open sky, a

peak as it were of fantasy, a Sinai of humour. We are in a great

pulpit or platform, lit up with sunlight, and half London can see us.

Be careful how you suggest things to me. For there is in me a madness

which goes beyond martyrdom, the madness of an utterly idle man."

"I don't know what you are talking about," said Lambert,

contemptuously. "I only know I'd rather you stood on your silly head,

than talked so much."

"Auberon! for goodness' sake ..." cried Barker, springing forward; but

he was too late. Faces from all the benches and avenues were turned in

their direction. Groups stopped and small crowds collected; and the

sharp sunlight picked out the whole scene in blue, green and black,

like a picture in a child's toy-book. And on the top of the small

hill Mr. Auberon Quin stood with considerable athletic neatness upon

his head, and waved his patent-leather boots in the air.

"For God's sake, Quin, get up, and don't be an idiot," cried Barker,

wringing his hands; "we shall have the whole town here."

"Yes, get up, get up, man," said Lambert, amused and annoyed. "I was

only fooling; get up."

Auberon did so with a bound, and flinging his hat higher than the

trees, proceeded to hop about on one leg with a serious expression.

Barker stamped wildly.

"Oh, let's get home, Barker, and leave him," said Lambert; "some of

your proper and correct police will look after him. Here they come!"

Two grave-looking men in quiet uniforms came up the hill towards them.

One held a paper in his hand.

"There he is, officer," said Lambert, cheerfully; "we ain't

responsible for him."

The officer looked at the capering Mr. Quin with a quiet eye.

"We have not come, gentlemen," he said, "about what I think you are

alluding to. We have come from head-quarters to announce the

selection of His Majesty the King. It is the rule, inherited from the

old _regime_, that the news should be brought to the new Sovereign

immediately, wherever he is; so we have followed you across Kensington

Gardens."

Barker's eyes were blazing in his pale face. He was consumed with

ambition throughout his life. With a certain dull magnanimity of the

intellect he had really believed in the chance method of selecting

despots. But this sudden suggestion, that the selection might have

fallen upon him, unnerved him with pleasure.

"Which of us," he began, and the respectful official interrupted him.

"Not you, sir, I am sorry to say. If I may be permitted to say so, we

know your services to the Government, and should be very thankful if

it were. The choice has fallen...."

"God bless my soul!" said Lambert, jumping back two paces. "Not me.

Don't say I'm autocrat of all the Russias."

"No, sir," said the officer, with a slight cough and a glance towards

Auberon, who was at that moment putting his head between his legs and

making a noise like a cow; "the gentleman whom we have to congratulate

seems at the moment--er--er--occupied."

"Not Quin!" shrieked Barker, rushing up to him; "it can't be. Auberon,

for God's sake pull yourself together. You've been made King!"

With his head still upside down between his legs, Mr. Quin answered

modestly--

"I am not worthy. I cannot reasonably claim to equal the great men who

have previously swayed the sceptre of Britain. Perhaps the only

peculiarity that I can claim is that I am probably the first monarch

that ever spoke out his soul to the people of England with his head

and body in this position. This may in some sense give me, to quote a

poem that I wrote in my youth--

A nobler office on the earth

Than valour, power of brain, or birth

Could give the warrior kings of old.

The intellect clarified by this posture--"

Lambert and Barker made a kind of rush at him.

"Don't you understand?" cried Lambert. "It's not a joke. They've

really made you King. By gosh! they must have rum taste."

"The great Bishops of the Middle Ages," said Quin, kicking his legs in

the air, as he was dragged up more or less upside down, "were in the

habit of refusing the honour of election three times and then

accepting it. A mere matter of detail separates me from those great

men. I will accept the post three times and refuse it afterwards. Oh!

I will toil for you, my faithful people! You shall have a banquet of

humour."

By this time he had been landed the right way up, and the two men were

still trying in vain to impress him with the gravity of the situation.

"Did you not tell me, Wilfrid Lambert," he said, "that I should be of

more public value if I adopted a more popular form of humour? And when

should a popular form of humour be more firmly riveted upon me than

now, when I have become the darling of a whole people? Officer," he

continued, addressing the startled messenger, "are there no ceremonies

to celebrate my entry into the city?"

"Ceremonies," began the official, with embarrassment, "have been more

or less neglected for some little time, and--"

Auberon Quin began gradually to take off his coat.

"All ceremony," he said, "consists in the reversal of the obvious.

Thus men, when they wish to be priests or judges, dress up like women.

Kindly help me on with this coat." And he held it out.

"But, your Majesty," said the officer, after a moment's bewilderment

and manipulation, "you're putting it on with the tails in front."

"The reversal of the obvious," said the King, calmly, "is as near as

we can come to ritual with our imperfect apparatus. Lead on."

The rest of that afternoon and evening was to Barker and Lambert a

nightmare, which they could not properly realise or recall. The King,

with his coat on the wrong way, went towards the streets that were

awaiting him, and the old Kensington Palace which was the Royal

residence. As he passed small groups of men, the groups turned into

crowds, and gave forth sounds which seemed strange in welcoming an

autocrat. Barker walked behind, his brain reeling, and, as the crowds

grew thicker and thicker, the sounds became more and more unusual. And

when he had reached the great market-place opposite the church,

Barker knew that he had reached it, though he was roods behind,

because a cry went up such as had never before greeted any of the

kings of the earth.

BOOK II