In the Sweet Dry and Dry Part 8

"It's quite true," he said.

In the excitement Miss Chuff had turned very pale.

"Virgil," she said faintly, "I believe I feel a trance coming on."

"Great grief!" cried the hara.s.sed leader. "Not now, my darling! I think I see some troops in the distance. Quick, try to concentrate your mind on lemonade, on b.u.t.termilk, on beef tea!"

Happily this crisis pa.s.sed. Theodolinda had presence of mind enough to pull out a little photograph of her father from some secret hiding place, and by putting her mind on it shook off the dominion of the other world.

Quimbleton spoke with anguished remorse.

"Mrs. Bleak is right. I've been trying to hide it from myself, but I can do so no longer. This monkey business--what we might call this gorilla warfare--must stop. We will only land in front of a firing squad. I have only one idea, which I have been saving in case all else failed."

The Bleaks were too discouraged to comment, but Theodolinda smiled bravely.

"Virgil dear," she said, "your ideas are always so original. What is it?"

Quimbleton stood up, unconsciously putting one foot on the portable bra.s.s rail which rested on its six-inch legs by the roadside. His tired eyes shone anew with characteristic enthusiasm. It was plain that he imagined himself before a large and sympathetic audience.

"My friends," he said, "the secret of eloquence is to know your facts--or, as the all-powerful Chuff would amend it, to know your tracts. One fact, I think I may say, is plain. The jig is up, or (more literally), the jag is up. I can see now that alcohol will never be more than a memory. Princ.i.p.alities and powers are in league against us.

If the malt has lost its favor, wherewith shall it be malted?"

He paused a moment, as though expecting a little applause, and Theodolinda murmured an encouraging "Here, here."

With rekindled eye he resumed.

"Alcohol, I say, will never be more than a memory. Yet even a memory must be kept alive. The great tradition must not die. For the very sake of antiquarian accuracy, for the instruction of posterity, some exact record must be kept of the influence of alcohol upon the human soul.

How can this be preserved? Not in books, not in the dead mummies of a museum. No, not in dead mummies, indeed, but in living rummies. That brings me to my great idea, which I have long cherished.

"I propose, my dear friends, that in some appropriate shrine, surrounded by all the authentic trappings and utensils, some chosen individual be maintained at the public charge, to exhibit for the contemplation of a drouthing world the immortal flame of intoxication.

He will be known, without soft concealments, as the Perpetual Souse. In his little bar, served by austere attendants, he will be kept in a state of gentle exhilaration. Nothing gross, nothing unseemly, I insist! In that state of sweetly glowing mind and heart, in that ineffable blossoming of all the n.o.bler qualities of human dignity, this priest of alcohol will represent and perpetuate the virtues of the grape. Booze, in the general sense, will have gone West, but ah how fair and ruddy a sunset will it have in the person of this its vicar!

There he will live, visited, studied, revered, a living memorial. There he will live, perpetually in a mellow fume of bliss, trailing clouds of glory, as if--as some poet says,

As if his whole vocation Were endless intoxication.

And now, my friends--not to weary you with the minor details of this far-reaching proposal--let me come to the point. For so gravely responsible a post, for an office so representative of the ideals and ambitions of millions, the choice cannot be cast haphazard. The choice must fall upon one qualified, confirmed, consecrated to this end. This deeply significant office must be conferred by the people themselves.

It must be conferred by popular election. Candidates must be nominated, must stump the country explaining their qualifications. And let me say that, upon looking over the whole field, I see one man, who by the jury of his peers--or shall I say by the jury of his beers?--is supremely fitted for this post. It is my intention to nominate Mr. Dunraven Bleak for the office of Perpetual Souse."

There was a moment of complete silence while his hearers considered the vast scope of this remarkable suggestion. It is only fair to say that Mr. Bleak's face had at first lighted up, but then he glanced at his wife and his countenance grew pinched. He spoke hastily:

"A very generous thought, my dear fellow; but I feel that you would be far more competent for this form of public service than I could hope to be."

"Your modesty does you credit," replied Quimbleton, "but you forget that owing to my relation with Miss Chuff I shall happily be precluded from the necessity of entering public life for this purpose."

"And what, pray," said Mrs. Bleak with distinct asperity, "is to become of me and the children if Mr. Bleak is elected to this preposterous office?"

"I was coming to that," said Quimbleton eagerly. "It would be arranged, of course, that the Perpetual Souse would be granted a liberal salary for his family expenses; you and your delightful children would be maintained at the public expense in a suitable bungalow nearby, with a private family entrance into the official cellars. Your rank, of course, would be that of Perpetual Spouse."

"My good Quimbleton," said Bleak, somewhat bitterly, "this is a fascinating vision indeed, but how can it be accomplished? How would you ever get such a scheme accepted by Bishop Chuff, who will never forgive you for kidnaping his daughter? You are building bar-rooms in Spain, my dear chap; you are blowing mere soap-bubbles."

"And why not?" cried his friend. "Bishop Chuff has called me a soap-box orator. At any rate, a man who stands upon a soap-box is nearer heaven by several inches than the man who stands upon the ground."

Theodolinda's face sparkled with the impact of an idea.

"Come," she said, "it's not impossible after all. I have a thought.

We'll offer Father an armistice and talk things over with him. He doesn't know what straits we're in, and maybe we can bring him to terms. He was very badly scared by those gooseberry bombs, and maybe we can bluff him into a concession."

"If we had had any luck," said Quimbleton, "we would have blown him into a concussion. But anyway, that's a bonny scheme. We'll grant him a truce. Bleak, you're a newspaper man, just get hold of the United Press and let them know the armistice is signed."

Bleak smiled wanly at the thrust.

"All right," he said. "Let's go. But what's your idea, Miss Chuff? We must have something to base negotiations on."

"Wait and see," she cried gayly. "We'll talk it over as we go along."

Mrs. Bleak aroused her children, who had fallen asleep, and climbed back into the wheelbarrow.

"I don't know that I approve of that scheme of making Dunraven the Perpetual Souse," she remarked. "I can imagine what my poor mother would say about it if she were living. She came of fine old Kentucky stock, and it would humiliate her deeply to know to what a level we had been reduced."

"My dear Mrs. Bleak," said Quimbleton, as he hoisted his betrothed into the saddle and the pilgrims began to move, "I know of a great deal of good old Kentucky stock that has had a far worse fate than that in these tragic years."

CHAPTER VIII

WITH BENEFIT OF CLERGY

Through the sullen streets of the terrorized city Miss Chuff, Quimbleton and Bleak proceeded toward the great building where the Pan-Antis had their headquarters. They had left Mrs. Bleak, the children and the horse at a quiet soda-fountain in the suburbs. After repeated application over the wireless telephone, the terrible Bishop--the Prohibishop, as Quimbleton called him--had agreed to grant them an audience, and had accorded them safe-conduct through the chuff troops. Even so, their progress was difficult. Every few hundred yards they were halted and subjected to curt inquiry. Men and women who had heard of their gallant struggle against fearful odds pressed forward in an attempt to seize their hands, to embrace and applaud them, but these evidences of enthusiasm were sternly repressed by the chuffs.

Bleak was frankly nervous as they approached the Chuff Building.

"What line of talk are we going to adopt?" he asked.

"Like any self-respecting line," replied Quimbleton, "Ours will be the shortest distance between two points. The first point is that we want to obtain something from Chuff. The second is that we have some information to give him which will be of immense value to him. This we shall hold over him as a club, to force him to concede what we want."

"And what is this club?" asked Bleak, somewhat suspicious of his friend's sanguine disposition.

"The admirable plan," said Quimbleton, "is Theodolinda's idea. She knows her father better than we do. She says that his pa.s.sion is for prohibiting things. He thinks he has now prohibited everything possible. We are in a position to tell him something that still remains unprohibited. His eagerness to know what that may be will make him yield to our request."

Bleak pondered gloomily. As far as he could recall, the Prohibition Government had overlooked nothing. The quaint part of it was that some of its prohibitions, carried to their logical extreme, had curiously overleaped their mark. For instance, finding it impossible to enforce the laws against playing games on Sundays, the Government had concluded that the only way to make the Sabbath utterly immaculate was to abolish it altogether, which was done. Other laws, probably based upon genuine zeal for human welfare, had resulted in odd evasions or legal fictions.

For instance, people were forbidden to miss trains. The penalty for missing a train was ten days' hard labor splitting infinitives in the government tract-factory. Rather than impose this harsh punishment on any one, good-hearted engineers would permit their trains to loiter about the stations until they felt certain no other pa.s.sengers would turn up. Consequently no trains were ever on time, and the Government was forced to do away with time entirely. Another thing that was abolished was hot weather. It had been found too tedious to tilt the axis of the earth, therefore all the thermometers were re-scaled. When the temperature was really 96 degrees, the mercury registered only 70 degrees, and every one was saying how jolly cool it was for the time of year. This, of course, was careless, for there was no such thing as time or year, but still people kept on saying it. Bleak was thinking over these matters when he suddenly recalled that it was forbidden to remember things as they had been under the old regime. He pulled himself up with a start. In order to make his mind a blank he tried to imagine himself about to write a leading editorial for the Balloon.

This was so successful that he did not come to earth again until they stood in the ante-room--or as Quimbleton called it, the anti-room--of the Bishop.

"Who is to be spokesman?" he said apprehensively, gazing with distaste at the angular females who were pecking at typewriters. "It would be unseemly for me to present my own claims in this project. Quimbleton, you are the one--you have the gift of the tongue."

"I would rather have the gift of the bung," whispered Quimbleton resolutely as they were ushered into the inner sanctum.