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THE CHÍNA MAİL, DECEMBER 30, 1939
THE HOPKINS MANUSCRIPT
(Continue from Page 5) He shrugged and smiled calmly. "You needn't fear, Mr. Hopkins. The people of Beadle are honest and brave, and they trust in God,”
Only as I left the room did my pity return. At the study door his wife met me, took my hand and bade me good- night. In her calm eyes I could read that she too knew the secret now. I glanced at the old desk beneath the gaunt, poorly curtained window; at the twisted fragments of paper upon the threadbare carpet. Twisted paper: proof of the poor old man's pathetic inability to master his awful task in words. I saw, too, a fragment of blot- ung-paper thrown hastily over his reeble notes as I had entered the room.
I't
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The day upon which the news was broken to the world turned out to be one of the most disappointing in my life. It sounds absurd, but it is true.
As far as the village of Beadle was concerned, the whole thing completely misfired.
The vicar was respected and popu- lar in a limited way, but despite his twenty-five years in Beadle he had never shaken off the disadvantages of following the flery old "Vicar Hutch- ings" who had become almost legend- ary in the village and its neighbour- hood by reason of his terrifying de- nunciation of every form of evil and most forms of good.
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Crusade: they fled out very slowly as old ladies blocked' the way in their search for umbrellas and goloshes in the porch.
Old Barlow, the postman, was stand- ing at the gate arguing with his wife in a heated voice. He stopped me by laying a hand upon my arm.
"Mr. Hopkins,” he said. "What was it the vicar sald was going to happen on the 3rd of May?"
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silver tray hitting the roof with a clang | pocket .and flourished it in my face. and bouncing down the hillside.
When Mrs. Buller brought my morning tea I could scarcely wait un- til she had left the room before I snatched up the papers to see what they had to say about it all.
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Upon first sight I was somewhat dis- appointed. I had expected terrific, flaming headlines of the most sensa- tional description.
"D'you s'pose any man with half a brain believes the blub in these papers? They talk about a 'graze'!" -(his voice was rising: he was almost inarticulate, and as he shouted at me he crushed the paper into a ball and | flung it. over the hedge). "A graze!~ you ever heard such rot? D'you sup- pose a mighty great thing like the moon can give us a 'graze' without Each published an Official State-smashing millions of us to pulp and ment of the salient fact, phrased with a
Jerking the rest of us to kingdom calm dignity that somehow stirred come? They've got the nerve to tell us one's pride. Each followed this with the moon's the size of a cherry!" To my astonishment the old man
Interviews and articles by famous
"They don't say that," turned to his wife with an idiotic leer scientists who enlarged upon every of triumph.
particle of hope with the greatest skill.
"He said," I replied in a quiet voice, "that on the 3rd of May the moon will strike the carth and the world will end."
"There you are!" he cried. "I told you it wasn't no bazaar! Nobody ever has bazaars in May!"
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The "grazing" theory was the one unanimously adopted. It was explain- "We had a bazaar in May six yearsed that the tails of comets had fre- ago," shouted the old woman. "It was quently grazed the earth without do- for the new club-room-and it was
ing the slightest damage, and although May because the stalls were got up the moon was a solid body, its size in with lilac blossom!"
relation to the earth was only that of a cherry compared with a large orange.
I was about to explain in detail, out the two old people went doddering down the lane, abusing one another.
A girl was shouting at her deaf grandmother, almost at my elbow.
"He says the world's going to end. Grandma!"
"Eh?" sald the old lady. "He says," bawled the girl, world's going to end!"
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"they
I began:
"They do say that," he shouted. With that he turned away and walk- ed off down the road.
Just down the road I met Pawson, the retired police sergeant, who was a member of the Dugout Committee.
"Waste of time," he growled. "Just the kind of thing that would happen."
"What do you mean?" asked, "Well-use
your common sense! Here we spend weeks of our time
If a cherry were to graze the sur-building a whacking great dugout to face of an orange it was scarcely likely get into if there's a war-and who to smash the orange to pieces.
d'you suppose is going to waste time having a war with all this moon busi- ness coming on?-waste of time!"
After breakfast I walked down to the village, and outside the Fox und Hounds I saw Murgatroyd himself ap- "theproaching me.
Normally his big shapeless face was The old lady's eyes lit up in a gleam the very embodiment of smug self- of memory.
indulgence. Now, with a shock of sur- prise, I saw a face that had aged by twenty years in a single night.
"That's what old Vicar Hutchings said," she cackled. "Vicar Hutchings used to say that every Sunday."
as
I heard the girl still shouting The service followed its placid, age- they turned the bend in the lane. encrusted course; the old man read "He says it's going to end on May onc or two routine announcements, | 3!" then cleared his throat and removed "That's what old Vicar Hutchings his spectacles. I saw the notes before | always said," murmured the old lady. | him and I knew that the time had "But Vicar Hutchings never gave no
date."
come.
There was stark, ugly death in the face of the proprietor of the Fox and Hounds, and I recoiled from it in hor-
"Use your own common sense!" i cried. "The dugout's to save the vil- lage from the moon! That war story was just a blind!"
He was completely unconvinced, but soon afterwards he apologised most handsomely, for Dr. Hax, as chair- man of the Dugout Committee, had now received full official instructions. We were to press ahead with the dug- out at full speed and have the exca- "Sorry about yesterday," he said. vation complete by Wednesday week, "It ain't my way to be rude. Shall we when a sapper of the Royal Engineers call it quits?"
would arrive in Beadle to instruct us "That's all right," I sald with upon the final details. smile. "We were all a bit overwrought yesterday, but it's better now."
ror.
"What d'you mean-'better now"?" he said abruptly. "You needn't treat me like a kid. You ain't such a fool
ON TUESDAY
Mankind goes to the
dugouts.
TRIP! TO SOUTH AFRICA
In some respects he delivered his I walked quickly to the Fox and inessage well. The old man possessed | Hounds, burning to find some one who dignity and a clear, pleasant voice, could understand-to whom I could But the message itself was, as ex-explain my long-pent-up secret. pected, quite hopeless from the start. But apparently I had been fore-as not to know it's the end." He drag- In his endeavour to avoid alarm the stalled. Murgatroyd, the proprietor, ged a crumpled newspaper from his meaning of it all became misty and was hurrying out as I arrived. He was obscure, and his attempt to blend it dragging his coat on, his hat was with the old-fashioned forms of con- askew and he was surrounded by a ventional sermon made it sound al-group of chattering villagers. He star- most exactly like what he had saided at me and shouted out:--- every Sunday for twenty-five years.
He spoke for nearly twenty minutes. When he finished there was a slight rustling of satin Sunday dresses and the hollow pop of a farmer's starched front as he relaxed his position. I do not believe that half a dozen people in the whole of that gathering had the slightest idea of what the vicar had been talking about.
The congregation knelt in prayer as they had done in Beadle since Rich- ard Cœur de Lion built their church to gain God's favour in his first
THE BEST DIET
DURING CONVALESCENCE
After operations, or wasting and other diseases, you feel so weak and exhausted that you wonder whether you'll ever feel really well again. Everyone urges you to cat. Yet food nauseates you. But you simply must eat. Doctors all over the world have found that Horlicks can be re- tained by the weakest stomach and the patients find it agreeable and palatable. Horlicks im- mediately starts to pour new strength into
your exhausted body'. At the same time it sti- mulates your faded appetite.
Your convalescene is shortened and in an amazingly short time you feel ready for anything again, Full of energy and vi- tality. Keep Horlicks always ready at hand.
(11)
W FRENOH REMEDY.
APION!
RAPIONI RAPION
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"Have you heard all this clap-trap about the moon!”
"It is true," I replied. "I knew it all three months ago."
"Then why didn't you tell us, you fool!" he shouted, and then, ignoring "Come ont-let's go and see this dod- dering parson!"
His rudeness Infulated me, and for the first time in my long residence in Beadle I lost my temper in public. I ran after him along the road and shouted:-
"You were kept in ignorance' be- cause a fool like you would have gone off his head with fright!-that's why you were not told!"
I was about to say a great deal more when an old man walking beside the landlord-an old fellow who farmed a small holding near Tewcastle, laid a hand upon my arm and said: "Keep your head, sonny. It's up to all of us to keep our heads!"
The humiliation of this nearly suffo- cated me: I strove to reply, but words failed me. I was being told to "keep my head!"-I-I who had known the truth for twelve weeks-who had held this dreadful secret in such iron con- trol that none had suspected it.
Without another word I turned upon my heel and strode away to my hill- top home, thanking heaven that I lived in a little world of my own.
Mrs. Buller, my housekeeper, came with my tea-tray. She had been to the morning service and I began by asking her what she thought about it all.
She told me that she hadn't heard it all properly. But she had thought Mr. Edwards had been "quite. good”. and quite like old Vicar Hutchings, whom she remembered as a girl.
I explained the whole thing to Mrs. Buller in a few simple, selected words, but I could see that her poor old cottage-bred brain was utterly unable to grasp the overwhelming significance of it. She had never, apparently, visualised the moon as a solid, spheri- cal body revolving majestically in space to her if was a flat, shining disc sewn to a dark fabric of black sky,
The idea of the moon's return to the earth did not disturb her very much: she was visualising, I could see, a large
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