And the gentleman with the good clothes spat on the carpet.
“I am a Radical myself,” said the Irishman, rather coldly, “for all information on the Conservative party I must refer you to my friend, Mr. Pump, who is, of course, in the inmost secrets of his leaders. But it seems to me a very rum sort of Radicalism to eat and drink at the orders of a master who is a madman, merely because he’s also a millionaire. O Liberty, what very complicated and even unsatisfactory social developments are committed in thy name! Why don’t they kick the old ass round the town a bit? No boots? Is that why they’re allowed no boots? Oh, roll him down hill in a milk can: he can’t object to that.”
“I don’t know,” said Pump, in his ruminant way, “Master Christian’s aunt did, but ladies are more particular, of course.”
“Look here!” cried Dalroy, in some excitement, “if I stick up that sign outside, and stay here to help, will you defy them? You’d be strictly within the law, and any private coercion I can promise you they shall repent. Plant the sign and sell the stuff openly like a man, and you may stand in English history like a deliverer.”
Mr. Hugby, of Hugby’s Ales, only looked gloomily at the table. His was not the sort of drinking nor the sort of drink-selling on which the revolutionary sentiment flourishes.
“Well,” said the Captain, “will you come with me and say ‘Hear, hear!’ and ‘How true!’—‘What matchless eloquence!’ if I make a speech in the marketplace? Come along! There’s room in our car.”
“Well, I’ll come with you, if you like,” replied Mr. Hugby, heavily. “It’s true if yours is allowed we might get our trade back, too.” And putting on a silk hat he followed the Captain and the innkeeper out to their little car. The model village was not an appropriate background for Mr. Hugby’s silk hat. Indeed, the hat somehow seemed to bring out by contrast all that was fantastic in the place.
It was a superb morning, some hours after sunrise. The edges of the sky touching the ring of dim woods and distant hills were still jewelled with the tiny transparent clouds of daybreak, delicate red and green or yellow. But above the vault of Heaven rose through turquoise into a torrid and solid blue in which the other clouds, the colossal cumuli, tumbled about like a celestial pillow-fight. The bulk of the houses were as white as the clouds, so that it looked (to use another simile) as if some of the whitewashed cottages were flying and falling about the sky. But most of the white houses were picked out here and there with bright colours, here an ornament in orange or there a stripe of lemon yellow, as if by the brush of a baby giant. The houses had no thatching (thatching is not hygienic) but were mostly covered with a sort of peacock green tiles bought cheap at a Preraphaelite Bazaar; or, less frequently, by some still more esoteric sort of terra cotta bricks. The houses were not English, nor homelike, nor suited to the landscape; for the houses had not been built by free men for themselves, but at the fancy of a whimsical lord. But considered as a sort of elfin city in a pantomime it was a really picturesque background for pantomimic proceedings.
I fear Mr. Dalroy’s proceedings from the first rather deserved that name. To begin with, he left the sign, the cask, and the keg all wrapped and concealed in the car, but removed all the wraps of his own disguise, and stood on the central patch of grass in that green uniform that looked all the more insolent for being as ragged as the grass. Even that was less ragged than his red hair, which no red jungle of the East could imitate. Then he took out, almost tenderly, the large milk-can, and deposited it, almost reverently, on the island of turf. Then he stood beside it, like Napoleon beside a gun, with an expression of tremendous seriousness and even severity. Then he drew his sword, and with that flashing weapon, as with a flail, lashed and thrashed the echoing metal can till the din was deafening, and Mr. Hugby hastily got out of the car and withdrew to a slight distance, stopping his ears. Mr. Pump sat solidly at the steering wheel, well knowing it might be necessary to start in some haste.
“Gather, gather, gather, Peaceways,” shouted Patrick, still banging on the can and lamenting the difficulties of adapting “Macgregor’s Gathering” to the name and occasion, “We’re landless, landless, landless, Peaceways!”