A Diversity of Creatures. Rudyard Kipling
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man! You've given me an idea. Vincent! Oh, Vincent!' He threw the General Communicator open so that we could all hear, and in a few minutes the chart-room filled with the rich, fruity voice of Leopold Vincent, who has purveyed all London her choicest amusements for the last thirty years. We answered with expectant grins, as though we were actually in the stalls of, say, the Combination on a first night.
'We've picked up something in your line,' De Forest began.
'That's good, dear man. If it's old enough. There's nothing to beat the old things for business purposes. Have you seen London, Chatham, and Dover at Earl's Court? No? I thought I missed you there. Immense! I've had the real steam locomotive engines built from the old designs and the iron rails cast specially by hand. Cloth cushions in the carriages, too! Immense! And paper railway tickets. And Polly Milton.'
'Polly Milton back again!' said Arnott rapturously. 'Book me two stalls for to-morrow night. What's she singing now, bless her?'
'The old songs. Nothing comes up to the old touch. Listen to this, dear men.' Vincent carolled with flourishes:
Oh, cruel lamps of London,
If tears your light could drown,
Your victims' eyes would weep them,
Oh, lights of London Town!
'Then they weep.'
'You see?' Pirolo waved his hands at us. 'The old world always weeped when it saw crowds together. It did not know why, but it weeped. We know why, but we do not weep, except when we pay to be made to by fat, wicked old Vincent.'
'Old, yourself!' Vincent laughed. 'I'm a public benefactor, I keep the world soft and united.'
'And I'm De Forest of the Board,' said De Forest acidly, 'trying to get a little business done. As I was saying, I've picked up a few people in Chicago.'
'I cut out. Chicago is-'
'Do listen! They're perfectly unique.'
'Do they build houses of baked mudblocks while you wait-eh? That's an old contact.'
'They're an untouched primitive community, with all the old ideas.'
'Sewing-machines and maypole-dances? Cooking on coal-gas stoves, lighting pipes with matches, and driving horses? Gerolstein tried that last year. An absolute blow-out!'
De Forest plugged him wrathfully, and poured out the story of our doings for the last twenty-four hours on the top-note.
'And they do it all in public,' he concluded. 'You can't stop 'em. The more public, the better they are pleased. They'll talk for hours-like you! Now you can come in again!'
'Do you really mean they know how to vote?' said Vincent. 'Can they act it?'
'Act? It's their life to 'em! And you never saw such faces! Scarred like volcanoes. Envy, hatred, and malice in plain sight. Wonderfully flexible voices. They weep, too.'
'Aloud? In public?'
'I guarantee. Not a spark of shame or reticence in the entire installation. It's the chance of your career.'
'D'you say you've brought their voting props along-those papers and ballot-box things?'
'No, confound you! I'm not a luggage-lifter. Apply direct to the Mayor of Chicago. He'll forward you everything. Well?'
'Wait a minute. Did Chicago want to kill 'em? That 'ud look well on the Communicators.'
'Yes! They were only rescued with difficulty from a howling mob-if you know what that is.'
'But I don't,' answered the Great Vincent simply.
'Well then, they'll tell you themselves. They can make speeches hours long.'
'How many are there?'
'By the time we ship 'em all over they'll be perhaps a hundred, counting children. An old world in miniature. Can't you see it?'
'M-yes; but I've got to pay for it if it's a blow-out, dear man.'
'They can sing the old war songs in the streets. They can get word-drunk, and make crowds, and invade privacy in the genuine old-fashioned way; and they'll do the voting trick as often as you ask 'em a question.'
'Too good!' said Vincent.
'You unbelieving Jew! I've got a dozen head aboard here. I'll put you through direct. Sample 'em yourself.'
He lifted the switch and we listened. Our passengers on the lower deck at once, but not less than five at a time, explained themselves to Vincent. They had been taken from the bosom of their families, stripped of their possessions, given food without finger-bowls, and cast into captivity in a noisome dungeon.
'But look here,' said Arnott aghast; 'they're saying what isn't true. My lower deck isn't noisome, and I saw to the finger-bowls myself.'
'My people talk like that sometimes in Little Russia,' said Dragomiroff. 'We reason with them. We never kill. No!'
'But it's not true,' Arnott insisted. 'What can you do with people who don't tell facts? They're mad!'
'Hsh!' said Pirolo, his hand to his ear. 'It is such a little time since all the Planet told lies.'
We heard Vincent silkily sympathetic. Would they, he asked, repeat their assertions in public-before a vast public? Only let Vincent give them a chance, and the Planet, they vowed, should ring with their wrongs. Their aim in life-two women and a man explained it together-was to reform the world. Oddly enough, this also had been Vincent's life-dream. He offered them an arena in which to explain, and by their living example to raise the Planet to loftier levels. He was eloquent on the moral uplift of a simple, old-world life presented in its entirety to a deboshed civilisation.
Could they-would they-for three months certain, devote themselves under his auspices, as missionaries, to the elevation of mankind at a place called Earl's Court, which he said, with some truth, was one of the intellectual centres of the Planet? They thanked him, and demanded (we could hear his chuckle of delight) time to discuss and to vote on the matter. The vote, solemnly managed by counting heads-one head, one vote-was favourable. His offer, therefore, was accepted, and they moved a vote of thanks to him in two speeches-one by what they called the 'proposer' and the other by the 'seconder.'
Vincent threw over to us, his voice shaking with gratitude:
'I've got 'em! Did you hear those speeches? That's Nature, dear men. Art can't teach that. And they voted as easily as lying. I've never had a troupe of natural liars before. Bless you, dear men! Remember, you're on my free lists for ever, anywhere-all of you. Oh, Gerolstein will be sick-sick!'
'Then you think they'll do?' said De Forest.
'Do? The Little Village'll go crazy! I'll knock up a series of old-world plays for 'em. Their voices will make you laugh and cry. My God, dear men, where do you suppose they picked up all their misery from, on this sweet earth? I'll have a pageant of the world's beginnings, and Mosenthal shall do the music. I'll-'
'Go and knock up a village for 'em by to-night. We'll meet you at No. 15 West Landing Tower,' said De Forest. 'Remember the rest will be coming along to-morrow.'
'Let 'em all come!' said Vincent. 'You don't know how hard it is nowadays even for me, to find something that really gets under the public's damned iridium-plated hide. But I've got it at last. Good-bye!'
'Well,' said De Forest when we had finished laughing, 'if any one understood corruption in London I might have played off Vincent against Gerolstein, and sold my captives at enormous prices. As it is, I shall have to be their legal adviser to-night when the contracts are signed. And they won't exactly press any commission on me, either.'
'Meantime,' said Takahira, 'we cannot, of course, confine members of Leopold Vincent's last-engaged company. Chairs for the ladies, please, Arnott.'
'Then I go to bed,' said De Forest. 'I can't face any more women!' And he vanished.
When our passengers were released and given another meal (finger-bowls came first this time) they told us what they thought of us and the Board; and, like Vincent, we all marvelled how they had