Lady Joan found the Prophet’s English accent somewhat improved by good society, but he still elongated the letter “u” in the same bleating manner, and his remarks had exactly the same rabidly wrong-headed ingenuity as his lecture upon English inns. It appeared that he was speaking on the higher Polygamy; but he began with a sort of general defence of the Moslem civilisation, especially against the charge of sterility and worldly ineffectiveness.

  “It iss joost in the practical tings,” he was saying, “it iss joost in the practical tings, if you could come to consider them in a manner quite equal, that our methods are better than your methods. My ancestors invented the curved swords, because one cuts better with a curved sword. Your ancestors possessed the straight swords out of some romantic fancy of being what you call straight; or, I will take a more plain example, of which I have myself experience. When I first had the honour of meeting Lord Ivywood, I was unused to your various ceremonies and had a little difficulty, joost a little difficulty, in entering Mr. Claridge’s hotel, where his lordship had invited me. A servant of the hotel was standing joost beside me on the doorstep. I stoo-ooped down to take off my boo-oots, and he asked me what I was dooing. I said to him: ‘My friend, I am taking off my boo-oots.’”

  A smothered sound came from Lady Joan Brett, but the lecturer did not notice it and went on with a beautiful simplicity.

  “I told him that in my country, when showing respect for any spot, we do not take off our hats; we take off our boo-oots. And because I would keep on my hat and take off my boo-oots, he suggested to me that I had been afflicted by Allah, in the head. Now was not that foony?”

  “Very,” said Lady Joan, inside her handkerchief, for she was choking with laughter. Something like a faint smile passed over the earnest faces of the two or three most intelligent of the Simple Souls, but for the most part the Souls seemed very simple indeed, helpless looking people with limp hair and gowns like green curtains, and their dry faces were as dry as ever.

  “But I explained to him. I explained to him for a long time, for a carefully occupied time, that it was more practical, more business-like, more altogether for utility, to take off the boo-oots than to remove the hat. ‘Let us,’ I said to him, ‘consider what many complaints are made against the footwear, what few complaints against the headwear. You complain if in your drawing-rooms is the marching about of muddy boo-oots. Are any of your drawing-rooms marked thus with the marching about of muddy hats? How very many of your husbands kick you with the boo-oot! Yet how few of your husbands on any occasion butt you with the hat?’”

  He looked round with a radiant seriousness, which made Lady Joan almost as speechless for sympathy as she was for amusement. With all that was most sound in his too complicated soul she realised the presence of a man really convinced.

  “The man on the doorstep, he would not listen to me,” went on Misysra Ammon, pathetically. “He said there would be a crowd if I stood on the doorstep, holding in my hand my boo-oots. Well, I do not know why, in your country you always send the young males to be the first of your crowds. They certainly were making a number of noises, the young males.”

  Lady Joan Brett stood up suddenly and displayed enormous interest in the rest of the audience in the back parts of the hall. She felt that if she looked for one moment more at the serious face with the Jewish nose and the Persian beard, she would publicly disgrace herself; or, what was quite as bad (for she was the generous sort of aristocrat) publicly insult the lecturer. She had a feeling that the sight of all the Simple Souls in bulk might have a soothing effect. It had. It had what might have been mistaken for a depressing effect. Lady Joan resumed her seat with a controlled countenance.

  “Now, why,” asked the Eastern philosopher, “do I tell so simple a little story of your London streets — a thing happening any day? The little mistake had no preju-udicial effect. Lord Ivywood came out, at the end. He made no attempt to explain the true view of so important matters to Mr. Claridge’s servant, though Mr. Claridge’s servant remained on the doorstep. But he commanded Mr. Claridge’s servant to restore to me one of my boo-oots, which had fallen down the front steps, while I was explaining this harmlessness of the hat in the home. So all was, for me, very well. But why do I tell such little tales?”

  He spread out his hands again, in his fanlike eastern style. Then he clapped them together, so suddenly that Joan jumped, and looked instinctively for the entrance of five hundred negro slaves, laden with jewels. But it was only his emphatic gesture of eloquence. He went on with an excited thickening of the accent.

  “Because, my friends, this is the best example I could give of the wrong and slanderous character of the charge that we fail in our domesticities. That we fail especially in our treatment of the womankind. I appeal to any lady, to any Christian lady. Is not the boo-oot more devastating, more dreaded in the home than the hat? The boot jumps, he bound, he run about, he break things, he leave on the carpet the earths of the garden. The hat, he remain quiet on his hat-peg. Look at him on his hat-peg; how quiet and good he remain! Why not let him remain quiet also on his head?”

  Lady Joan applauded warmly, as did several other ladies, and the sage went on, encouraged.

  “Can you not therefore trust, dear ladies, this great religion to understand you concerning other things, as it understands you regarding boo-oots? What is the common objection our worthy enemies make against our polygamy? That it is disdainful of the womanhood. But how can this be so, my friends, when it allows the womanhood to be present in so large numbers? When in your House of Commons you put a hundred English members and joost one little Welsh member, you do not say ‘The Welshman is on top; he is our Sultan; may he live for ever!’ If your jury contained eleven great large ladies and one leetle man you would not say ‘this is unfair to the great large ladies.’ Why should you shrink, then, ladies, from this great polygamical experiment which Lord Ivywood himself—”

  Joan’s dark eyes were still fixed on the wrinkled, patient face of the lecturer, but every word of the rest of the lecture was lost to her. Under her glowing Spanish tint she had turned pale with extraordinary emotions, but she did not stir a hair.

  The door of the hall stood open, and occasional sounds came even from that deserted end of the town. Two men seemed to be passing along the distant parade; one of them was singing. It was common enough for workmen to sing going home at night, and the voice, though a loud one, would have been too far off for Joan to hear the words. Only Joan happened to know the words. She could almost see them before her, written in a round swaggering hand on the pink page of an old school-girl album at home. She knew the words and the voice.

  “I come from Castlepatrick and my heart is on my sleeve,

  And any sword or pistol boy can hit ut with me leave,

  It shines there for an epaulette, as golden as a flame,

  As naked as me ancestors, as noble as me name.

  For I come from Castlepatrick and my heart is on my

  sleeve,

  But a lady stole it from me on St. Gallowglass’s Eve.”

  Startlingly and with strong pain there sprang up before Joan’s eyes a patch of broken heath with a very deep hollow of white sand, blinding in the sun. No words, no name, only the place.

  “The folks that live in Liverpool, their heart is in their boots;

  They go to Hell like lambs, they do, because the hooter hoots.

  Where men may not be dancin’, though the wheels may

  dance all day;

  And men may not be smokin’, but only chimneys may.

  But I come from Castlepatrick and my heart is on my

  sleeve,

  But a lady stole it from me on St. Poleyander’s Eve.

  “The folks that live in black Belfast, their heart is in their

  mouth;

  They see us making murders in the meadows of the South;

  They think a plough’s a rack they do, and cattle-calls are

  creeds,

  And they think we’re burnin’ witches when we’re only

  burnin’ weeds.

  But I come from Castlepatrick, and me heart is on me

  sleeve;

  But a lady stole it from me on St. Barnabas’s Eve.”

  The voice had stopped suddenly, but the last lines were so much more distinct that it was certain the singer had come nearer, and was not marching away.

  It was only after all this, and through a sort of cloud, that Lady Joan heard the indomitable Oriental bringing his whole eloquent address to a conclusion.

  “. . . And if you do not refu-use the sun that returns and rises in the East with every morning, you will not refu-use either this great social experiment, this great polygamical method which also arose out of the East, and always returns. For this is that Higher Polygamy which always comes, like the sun itself, out of the orient, but is only at its noontide splendour when the sun is high in heaven.”

  She was but vaguely conscious of Mr. Leveson, the man with the dark face and the eyeglasses, acknowledging the entrancing lecture in suitable terms, and calling on any of the Simple Souls who might have questions to ask, to ask them. It was only when the Simple Souls had displayed their simplicity with the usual parade of well-bred reluctance and fussy self-effacement, that anyone addressed the chair. And it was only after somebody had been addressing the chair for some time that Joan gradually awoke to the fact that the address was somewhat unusual.

  Chapter VIII: Vox Populi Vox Dei

  “I AM sure,” Mr. Leveson, the Secretary, had said, with a somewhat constrained smile, “that after the eloquent and epoch-making speech to which we have listened there will be some questions asked, and we hope to have a debate afterwards. I am sure somebody will ask a question.” Then he looked interrogatively at one weary looking gentleman in the fourth row and said, “Mr. Hinch?”

  Mr. Hinch shook his head with a pallid passion of refusal, wonderful to watch, and said, “I couldn’t! I really couldn’t!”

  “We should be very pleased,” said Mr. Leveson, “if any lady would ask a question.”

  In the silence that followed it was somehow psychologically borne in on the whole audience that one particular great large lady (as the lecturer would say) sitting at the end of the second row was expected to ask a question. Her own wax-work immobility was witness both to the expectation and its disappointment. “Are there any other questions?” asked Mr. Leveson — as if there had been any yet. He seemed to speak with a slight air of relief.

  There was a sort of stir at the back of the hall and half way down one side of it. Choked whispers could be heard of “Now then, Garge!”— “Go it Garge! Is there any questions! Gor!”

  Mr. Leveson looked up with an alertness somewhat akin to alarm. He realised for the first time that a few quite common men in coarse, unclean clothes, had somehow strolled in through the open door. They were not true rustics, but the semi-rustic labourers that linger about the limits of the large watering-places. There was no “Mr.” among them. There was a general tendency to call everybody George.

  Mr. Leveson saw the situation and yielded to it. He modelled himself on Lord Ivywood and did much what he would have done in all cases, but with a timidity Lord Ivywood would not have shown. And the same social training that made him ashamed to be with such men, made him ashamed to own his shame. The same modern spirit that taught him to loathe such rags, also taught him to lie about his loathing.

  “I am sure we should be very glad,” he said, nervously, “if any friends from outside care to join in our inquiry. Of course, we’re all Democrats,” and he looked round at the grand ladies with a ghastly smile, “and believe in the Voice of the People and so on. If our friend at the back of the hall will put his question briefly, we need not insist, I think, on his putting it in writing?”

  There were renewed hoarse encouragements to George (that rightly christened champion) and he wavered forward on legs tied in the middle with string. He did not appear to have had any seat since his arrival, and made his remarks standing half way down what we may call the central aisle.

  “Well, I want to ask the proprietor,” he began.

  “Questions,” said Mr. Leveson, swiftly seizing a chance for that construction of debate which is the main business of a modern chairman, “must be asked of the chair, if they are points of order. If they concern the address, they should be asked of the lecturer.”

  “Well, I ask the lecturer,” said the patient Garge, “whether it ain’t right that when you ‘ave the thing outside you should ‘ave the thing inside.” (Hoarse applause at the back.)

  Mr. Leveson was evidently puzzled and already suspicious that something was quite wrong. But the enthusiasm of the Prophet of the Moon sprang up instantly at any sort of question and swept the Chairman along with it.

  “But it iss the essence of our who-ole message,” he cried, spreading out his arms to embrace the world, “that the outer manifestation should be one with the inner manifestation. My friendss, it iss this very tru-uth our friend has stated, that iss responsible for our apparent lack of symbolism in Islam! We appear to neglect the symbol because we insist on the satisfactory symbol. My friend in the middle will walk round all our mosques and say loudly, ‘Where is the statue of Allah?’ But can my friend in the middle really execute a complete and generally approved statue of Allah?”

  Misysra Ammon sat down greatly satisfied with his answer, but it was doubted by many whether, he had conveyed the satisfaction to his friend in the middle. That seeker after truth wiped his mouth with the back of his hand with an unsatisfied air and said:

  “No offence, sir. But ain’t it the Law, sir, that if you ‘ave that outside we’re all right? I came in ‘ere as natural as could be. But Gorlumme, I never see a place like this afore.” (Hoarse laughter behind.)

  “No apology is needed, my friend,” cried the Eastern sage, eagerly, “I can conceive you are not perhaps du-uly conversant with such schools of truth. But the Law is All. The Law is Allah. The inmost u-unity of—”

  “Well, ain’t it the Law?” repeated the dogged George, and every time he mentioned the Law the poor men who are its chief victims applauded loudly. “I’m not one to make a fuss. I never was one to make a fuss. I’m a law-abidin’ man, I am. (More applause.) Ain’t it the Law that if so be such is your sign and such is your profession, you ought to serve us?”

  “I fear I not quite follow,” cried the eager Turk. “I ought?”

  “To serve us,” shouted a throng of thick voices from the back of the hall, which was already much more crowded than before.

  “Serve you!” cried Misysra, leaping up like a spring released, “The Holy Prophet came from Heaven to serve you! The virtue and valour of a thousand years, my friends, has had no hunger but to serve you! We are of all faiths, the most the faith of service. Our highest prophet is no more than the servant of God, as I am, as you all are. Even for our symbol we choose a satellite, and honour the Moon because it only serves the Earth, and does not pretend to be the Sun.”

  “I’m sure,” cried Mr. Leveson, jumping up with a tactful grin, “that the lecturer has answered this last point in a most eloquent and effective way, and the motor cars are waiting for some of the ladies who have come from some distance, and I really think the proceedings—”

  All the artistic ladies were already getting on their wraps, with faces varying from bewilderment to blank terror. Only Lady Joan lingered, trembling with unexplained excitement. The hitherto speechless Hinch had slid up to the Chairman’s seat and whispered to him:

  “You must get all the ladies away. I can’t imagine what’s up, but something’s up.”

  “Well?” repeated the patient George. “So be it’s the Law, where is it?”

  “Ladies and Gentlemen,” said Mr. Leveson, in his most ingratiating manner, “I think we have had a most delightful evening, and—”

  “No, we ain’t,” cried a new and nastier voice from a corner of the room. “Where is it?”

  “That’s what we got a right to know,” said the law-abiding George. “Where is it?”

  “Where is what?” cried the nearly demented secretary in the chair. “What do you want?”

  The law-abiding Mr. George made a half turn and a gesture towards the man in the corner and said:

  “What’s yours, Jim?”

  “I’ll ‘ave a drop of Scotch,” said the man in the corner.

  Lady Enid Wimpole, who had lingered a little in loyalty to Joan, the only other lady still left, caught both her wrists and cried in a thrilling whisper,

  “Oh, we must go to the car, dear! They’re using the most awful language!”

  Away on the wettest edge of the sands by the sea the prints of two wheels and four hoofs were being slowly washed away by a slowly rising tide; which was, indeed, the only motive of the man Humphrey Pump, leading the donkey cart, in leading it almost ankle deep in water.

  “I hope you’re sober again now,” he said with some seriousness to his companion, a huge man walking heavily and even humbly with a straight sword swinging to and fro at his hip— “for honestly it was a mug’s game to go and stick up the old sign before that tin place. I haven’t often spoken to you like this, Captain, but I don’t believe any other man in the county could get you out of the hole as I can. But to go down there and frighten the ladies — why there’s been nothing so silly here since Bishop’s Folly. You could hear the ladies screaming before we left.”