Little God Ben Read online

  ‘That is probably a correct interpretation of his wish,’ murmured Cooling.

  ‘—and that he and his wives are to remain in their own half of the bee-hive.’

  ‘Bee-hive?’ queried Smith.

  ‘Buckingham Palace—the Chief’s hut—is shaped like a bee-hive,’ explained Oakley kindly.

  ‘Thank you,’ muttered Smith. ‘If you spoke plainly, p’r’aps we understand you!’

  Oakley smiled dryly. There was a lugubrious quality in his rare smiles that acted on spirits like blotting-paper. The same quality impregnated his tone and his grim and mirthless humour.

  ‘There will be plenty of plain speaking before long, Mr Smith,’ he answered. ‘Meanwhile, be grateful for all you do not understand.’ He turned back to the others. ‘Oomoo will remain where he is until he is conveyed to the Golden Temple. I am doing my best to ease his agonies.’

  ‘It seems to me we all owe you a great deal, Oakley,’ said Haines.

  ‘Hear, hear!’ added Ruth. ‘How is the poor little man standing his agonies?’

  Oakley paused before replying. Ruth’s loveliness disturbed him. When he looked at her he felt like a man who had decided to die in a ditch and whose decision was weakened by a cool and refreshing breeze. She made him feel again—slightly. And he had done with feeling. He was an observer, recording his own vanishing history with detached complacency; a fatalist, watching and waiting for the inevitable; dead already, in so far as individual physical effort was concerned, and alive only in his queer mental attitude. He mustn’t feel. Quite definitely, it would be dangerous and fruitless to feel. So he rested his eyes deliberately on the beautiful face to prove to himself that his sluggish blood was not quickening.

  ‘What are you staring at me like that for?’ Ruth challenged him, suddenly reddening. ‘I don’t think I like it!’

  ‘Then girls have changed since my time on earth,’ responded Oakley. ‘I was testing my heart-beats. Quite steady, thank God! You asked me something. Oh, yes. You asked me how Ben was standing it? To be quite honest, I’m not sure. At one moment I think he’s going to shriek the show away, at the next he comes out with some piece of quaint philosophy. Enigma, that chap. Baffles me. Scared stiff, of course. Frozen. But he hangs on, and still manages to function. And—those bits of philosophy—’

  ‘Damn it, man!’ exclaimed Medworth, interrupting abruptly. ‘Do you think we want to waste time on his philosophy? What’s his philosophy got to do with it?’

  ‘His philosophy is going to have the hell of a lot to do with it, if I’m any judge,’ replied Oakley calmly. ‘It may even upset your gold cart. But don’t you want to know what I did when I left Ben?’

  ‘Oh, carry on, carry on!’

  ‘Thank you. You’ll be interested. I received an order from the H.P. to go and report at the Temple of Gold. You gather, I take it, that when I say H.P., I do not mean Hot Potato. I went there. Amazing place. That is, you’ll think so. Doesn’t affect me. Make a good set for a film. And George Arliss would make a good High Priest. Good actor, that! Is he still at it? I found the High Priest in a very nasty mood. Yes, a very nasty mood. Anybody can have my job of Low Priest who wants it. He didn’t say anything. He’s dumb—though I sometimes wonder whether H.P. doesn’t also stand for Hokus-Pokus. We have a sort of deaf-and-dumb language, and it can be quite expressive. This morning he expressed a lot of things. One was—’ he paused for a moment ‘—a state of doubt.’

  ‘What sort of a doubt?’ asked Haines.

  ‘A doubt about Oomoo,’ answered Oakley slowly. ‘He doesn’t seem too sure of Oomoo’s authenticity.’

  ‘That may be awkward,’ remarked Lord Cooling.

  ‘It’s going to be damn awkward,’ nodded Oakley. ‘If he finds out there’s been any hanky-panky work, it’ll put the kybosh on things for the lot of you.’

  Medworth stirred uneasily. It was rather painfully easy to pick out the heroes and the cowards of the company.

  ‘You’ve got a—a sort of insolence I don’t like, Oakley,’ he muttered. ‘Damn it—when you say things like that, don’t you mind?’

  Oakley answered, looking at Ruth, ‘No.’

  Haines frowned, but Ruth suddenly laughed.

  ‘That’s a courageous lie, Mr Oakley,’ she said. ‘I’m not offended.’

  ‘Do you think I care a penny tram-ticket whether you are or not?’ inquired Oakley.

  ‘I’ll spare you the answer,’ smiled Ruth, ‘but you can remember that I’m trying to be courageous myself.’

  ‘You’re not doing so bad,’ conceded Oakley. ‘Yes, it’s a pity you’re here, though maybe Fate’s had a spot of an idea in bringing you along. Anyhow, remember what I said. Nothing really signifies. Think of yourself. Big, eh? Important? Then think of this island, full of things that imagine they’re just as big and as important. Even ants, I expect. We have ants. Dear little things with teeth. Then think of the ocean round the island. Then think of the world. Then think of the sky round the world. Think of the stars. Think of the whole blamed firmament. Think of—Infinity. And then swing back to yourself, and see whether you can hold on to that notion that you’re important. It’s what I do every time I eat Wooma.’

  ‘Ah! Wooma!’ exclaimed Lord Cooling. ‘Your philosophy comes a little late. What is Wooma? Or—don’t we talk about it?’

  ‘Wooma is just a sickening vegetable. Nevertheless, we don’t talk about it. We’re talking about the High Priest, and his doubts about the non-vegetable Oomoo. The H.P. isn’t merely doubtful. He’s jealous. He prefers the gods in their places. If they start moving about, they won’t be so manageable. So—as I implied a few minutes ago—he is going to do a very, very rare thing. He is going to leave the Golden Temple at midday—’

  ‘At noona,’ murmured Lord Cooling.

  ‘That’s right,’ replied Oakley, with the nearest approach to a real smile he had yet vouchsafed. ‘I rather like you, Cooling. Fact.’

  Smith, all for etiquette, broke in.

  ‘I suppose it wouldn’t occur to you, would it, to use his title?’ he snapped.

  ‘Sorry, it wouldn’t,’ agreed Oakley. ‘We shed titles here. A couple of Christmas turkeys hanging up in a shop don’t call each other Lady Cluck and Lord Gobbler any more. They just wait quietly for the happy day.’

  Lord Cooling cleared his throat.

  ‘I wonder, Mr Oakley,’ he said, ‘whether I like you as much as you like me?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter a hoot either way,’ replied Oakley. ‘I shall go on rather liking you. It’s the H.P. you must try and make up to, though. As I said, he’s going to make a tour at noona. You can thank your stars it isn’t soona. When he comes—his visits are very rare—we all go into a sort of mourning. I arrive first, sounding a gong. That’s the signal for retirement. Everyone else goes into his hut and lies flat on his face. Or her face. We have both kinds here, as you may have noticed. Even the Chief does it. And flat on our faces—and you, also, flat on your faces—will be the condition until I sound the gong again. I should say it will be a good hour … What’s the excitement?’

  For Ernest Medworth had given a sudden exclamation.

  ‘I was just thinking,’ he answered, ‘that we might make it a very good hour—a very good hour indeed! But go on, go on!’

  ‘Thanks for the permission. While you are on your faces the H.P. will examine you. Then he will go and examine Oomoo—who, of course, will not be on his face—and he will make some tests. If you feel sorry for yourselves, forget it. Oomoo is the one who is going to have the merry time. If he survives the tests—if it were anybody else I should say there wasn’t a dog’s chance, but this Ben fellow—well, I don’t know, he seems to have something unsinkable about him. If he survives, then it’s full steam ahead for the trial tomorrow, and we may be able to work it. If he doesn’t, the H.P. will develop High Pressure and become a Heated Proposition. I’m rather good at initials. Used to go in for competitions in the dear old days. Do they still have ’em? You know, th
ey give you a list of Examples, and you have to—’

  ‘Yes, yes, we know!’ burst out Medworth. ‘Shut up for a moment.’ He swung round to the others. ‘Look here, this visit of the High Priest isn’t as bad as it sounds. Don’t you see, it gives us our chance! When the fellow’s finished with us we’ll hop off to his Temple while he’s with Oomoo, and have a squint round. We might even make a start, if there’s anything movable!’

  ‘I say, you have got a brain!’ murmured Oakley.

  ‘Well, I’m not quite the fool you take me for?’ retorted Medworth. ‘You can help to make the visit a long one, can’t you? Keep him busy with those tests, as you call ’em. Everybody will be inside, you say, so we can easily slip off, and—oh, what about our guards? Do they go down on their faces, too?’

  ‘Undoubtedly.’

  ‘Excellent! Then it’s child’s play! We stay at the Temple till the second gong goes—’

  ‘And then everybody gets up and comes out,’ interrupted Ruth, ‘and we walk right into them!’

  ‘Well, confound it, it’s a chance!’ cried Medworth, appealing to Cooling. ‘Are we going to sit here and wait for it?’

  ‘I agree it’s a chance,’ said Cooling after a moment’s reflection. ‘I also agree that we have every right to exact payment for our uncomfortable treatment. In a British Court of Law we could claim heavy damages.’

  ‘There you are!’ exclaimed Smith. ‘Trust his Lordship to give us the logic. We’ve got to be our own British Court of Law, eh?’

  ‘And, of course,’ put in Miss Noyes, anxious to side with the majority—it was so much easier—but finding it necessary to justify herself morally as well, ‘if some of us felt that perhaps we oughtn’t to take the gold, we could put it to a good use when we got back. A charity, for instance. Or a Missionary Society.’

  ‘Good Lord, can’t we forget the wretched stuff?’ cried Haines. ‘Let it rip! Our first job is to get away. We’ll be insane to take unnecessary risks!’

  ‘Just lunatics,’ agreed Ruth.

  ‘I’m afraid the voting is four to two against you, Miss Sheringham,’ responded Lord Cooling. ‘And I am convinced that our absentee, when he turns up again, will make it five to two. No, the question before the committee is not whether we shall enrich ourselves, but how we may best do it. What is your opinion, Mr Oakley? Do you advocate a trip to the Temple?’

  Oakley shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘All the same to me,’ he answered. ‘It’ll be your funeral.’

  ‘That is just my point. Will it be a funeral?’

  ‘The betting’s in favour.’

  ‘But—from what we gather—the betting’s in favour of the funeral, either way.’

  ‘Sure. Your only real chance of saving yourselves is through Oomoo.’

  ‘I am remembering that theory. I am also remembering that Oomoo may constitute the British Court of Law, and spare us a lot of trouble by awarding us our compensation.’

  ‘If Medworth were Oomoo, he would,’ said Oakley. ‘But here’s something else to remember. Ben’s Oomoo. A funny little chap with, so it seems, that far, far funnier thing, a conscience. Medworth thought I was wasting my time talking about his philosophy. I commend it now to your attention. Ben’s going to be the fly in your ointment, and whatever the voting is here, he has the casting vote among the whites.’

  There was a short pause. Then Lord Cooling said, with gentle significance:

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Oakley—but don’t you interpret Ben?’

  ‘Sure I do,’ answered Oakley.

  ‘Then,’ asked Lord Cooling, the gentle significance increasing, ‘doesn’t that give you the casting vote?’

  ‘I’m alive to your meaning,’ replied Oakley.

  He regarded the ground for a moment moodily. Then he rose abruptly, took a sheet of paper from his pocket, and handed it to Cooling.

  ‘Here’s that glossary I spoke of,’ he said. ‘You’d better study it, all of you. May be helpful.’

  He began to walk away.

  ‘Hey, wait a bit!’ cried Medworth. ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘To give a spot of advice to Oomoo,’ responded Oakley, without turning his head. ‘If he doesn’t pass those tests, the one with the casting vote will be the High Priest.’

  The next instant he had vanished.

  11

  A Language Lesson

  We will shortly follow Oakley, to learn in what condition he found Ben; we will also shortly search for Ardentino, who was enduring a personal experience no less nerve-racking—an experience destined to affect both the captives and the natives on the island. But first we will wait to hear Lord Cooling read the glossary which Oakley had thoughtfully prepared. He read it aloud, then studied it for a few moments, then passed it round. It ran as follows:

  Hya, Hyaya

  Yes.

  Nya, nyaya

  No.

  Sweeze

  Look!

  Vooloo

  What do you want, what is your will?

  Choo

  Buzz off!

  Koo

  Come here!

  Kawa

  Silence!

  Kawaka

  Shut up unless you want your ears sliced!

  Choom

  Hurry your stumps.

  Hooja

  What the blazes?

  Kwee

  More kindly exclamation of interrogation.

  Koocha

  Do as I say.

  Koochacha

  Same, with knobs on.

  Mayo

  Child.

  Poopoo

  The verb ‘to speak,’ complete.

  Fzzz-fzzz

  The verb ‘to eat.’ The more the repetition, the greater the appetite.

  Quass

  The verb ‘to drink.’ (Cf. “Quaff.”)

  Wooma

  An unpleasant vegetable. Staple diet in lean times.

  Quomogee

  Just water.

  Lungoo

  Fried knuckles.

  Sula

  Trial.

  Domo

  Tomorrow.

  Toree

  Temple of Gold.

  Holalulala

  Condition of having one’s eyes taken out.

  Moose

  Condition of having one’s head taken off.

  Kim

  Friend.

  Zoozo

  Enemy.

  Owlah

  Raise spears! Salute!

  Ong

  Go flat!

  Waa-lala, waa-lala

  Oli O li, Waa-lala

  Cannibal Common Prayer.

  Beebul

  Chief; King.

  Kooala

  High Priest.

  The effect of the glossary was vaguely dampening. Medworth grunted as Lord Cooling passed it on to him, and remarked that if he had ever needed proof that Oakley was a madman, this silly tosh supplied it.

  ‘How do we know he isn’t spoofing us?’ demanded Smith.

  ‘Why should he spoof us?’ replied Cooling. ‘The list seems to me most convincing. Well, Medworth? Vooloo?’

  Medworth studied the sheet, and then let out savagely:

  ‘Moose kooala!’

  ‘My sentiments exactly,’ smiled Cooling. Ruth Sheringham did not smile. She was looking at the word ‘Child.’

  12

  Preparations for a Test

  Mr Robert Oakley, late of Eton and Oxford, and in his mood late of the very world his feet still trod, walked through the village of skulls in a disturbed frame of mind, and it was perhaps a coincidence that, while Ruth Sheringham—partly responsible for the disturbance—was vaguely wondering why he had included the word mayo in his glossary, he was pausing to regard one of the prettiest children on the island. It was the child Ben himself had noticed on his journey to the Chief’s dwelling.

  The child was about thirteen years of age. She had been ten when Oakley’s half-drowned and battered body had been washed up on the island, and sh
e was the first pleasant thing he had noticed. Later, he had noticed a few other pleasant things. Some of the dusky island dancing girls were undoubtedly beautiful, and he had to admit they would not have disgraced a London revue. Then the Chief, at odd moments, had a quite engaging smile. Beneath the atrocious habits of the natives—their laziness, their licentiousness, their lack of party manners, and their idolatry—lurked a simple, almost pathetic sincerity. It lay behind their frenzied patriotism and religious fervours, and their unswerving adherence to the gods and the High Priest. In the High Priest alone had Oakley failed to discern any human spark.

  But as time had progressed, the intolerable strain and discomfort and terror of the island had nearly completed the head-damage he had received during the wreck, and he had realised that he was on the point of insanity. He had to go mad or go numb, and just in time he chose the latter alternative. He ceased to react to his surroundings. He died, deliberately, before his death, retaining as his one possession the dry fragments of an ironic, detached sense of humour. He ceased to notice that the dancing girls were beautiful. He was no longer touched by the Chief’s occasional smile. He watched the pretty child grow without interest. He smashed his fear, and in doing so everything else went with it.

  It is possible that the crack on his head, delivered by a falling mast some days before he floated to the island, may have begun the ultimate damage. There was no Harley Street doctor on the island, however, to diagnose his case. The only doctor available visited his patients with coloured straws through his nose …