Simon the Jester | Page 4

workings of the mind of
every European potentate. If I want information on any subject under
heaven I ask Renniker.
"Can you tell me," said I, "the most God-forsaken spot in England?"
Renniker, being in a flippant mood, mentioned a fashionable watering-
place on the South Coast. I pleaded the seriousness of my question.
"What I want," said I, "is a place compared to which Golgotha,
Aceldama, the Dead Sea, the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and the Bowery
would be leafy bowers of uninterrupted delight."
"Then Murglebed-on-Sea is what you're looking for," said Renniker.
"Are you going there at once?"
"At once," said I.
"It's November," said he, "and a villainous November at that; so you'll
see Murglebed-on-Sea in the fine flower of its desolation."
I thanked him, went home, and summoned my excellent man Rogers.
"Rogers," said I, "I am going to the seaside. I heard that Murglebed is a
nice quiet little spot. You will go down and inspect it for me and bring
back a report."
He went blithe and light-hearted, though he thought me insane; he
returned with the air of a serving-man who, expecting to find a well-

equipped pantry, had wandered into a charnel house.
"It's an awful place, sir. It's sixteen miles from a railway station. The
shore is a mud flat. There's no hotel, and the inhabitants are like
cannibals."
"I start for Murglebed-on-Sea to-morrow," said I.
Rogers started at me. His loose mouth quivered like that of a child
preparing to cry.
"We can't possibly stay there, sir," he remonstrated.
"/We/ are not going to try," I retorted. "I'm going by myself."
His face brightened. Almost cheerfully he assured me that I should find
nothing to eat in Murglebed.
"You can amuse yourself," said I, "by sending me down a daily hamper
of provisions."
"There isn't even a church," he continued.
"Then you can send me down a tin one from Humphreys'. I believe
they can supply one with everything from a tin rabbit-hutch to a town
hall."
He sighed and departed, and the next day I found myself here, in
Murglebed-on-Sea.
On a murky, sullen November day Murglebed exhibits unimagined
horrors of scenic depravity. It snarls at you malignantly. It is like a bit
of waste land in Gehenna. There is a lowering, soap-suddy thing a mile
away from the more or less dry land which local ignorance and
superstition call the sea. The interim is mud--oozy, brown, malevolent
mud. Sometimes it seems to heave as if with the myriad bodies of slimy
crawling eels and worms and snakes. A few foul boats lie buried in it.
Here and there, on land, a surly inhabitant spits into it. If you address

him he snorts at you unintelligibly. If you turn your back to the sea you
are met by a prospect of unimagined despair. There are no trees. The
country is flat and barren. A dismal creek runs miles inland--an estuary
fed by the River Murgle. A few battered cottages, a general shop, a
couple of low public-houses, and three perky red-brick villas all in a
row form the city, or town, or village, or what you will, of
Murglebed-on-Sea. Renniker is a wonderful man.
I have rented a couple of furnished rooms in one of the villas. It has a
decayed bit of front garden in which a gnarled, stunted stick is planted,
and it is called The Laburnums. My landlord, the owner of the villas, is
a builder. What profits he can get from building in Murglebed, Heaven
alone knows; but, as he mounts a bicycle in the morning and disappears
for the rest of the day, I presume he careers over the waste, building as
he goes. In the evenings he gets drunk at the Red Cow; so I know little
of him, save that he is a red-faced man, with a Moustache like a
tooth-brush and two great hands like hams.
His wife is taciturn almost to dumbness. She is a thick-set, black-
haired woman, and looks at me disapprovingly out of the corner of her
eye as if I were a blackbeetle which she would like to squash under foot.
She tolerates me, however, on account of the tongues and other
sustenance sent by Rogers from Benoist, of which she consumes
prodigious quantities. She wonders, as far as the power of wonder is
given to her dull brain, what on earth I am doing here. I see her
whispering to her friends as I enter the house, and I know they are
wondering what I am doing here. The whole village regards me as a
humorous zoological freak, and wonders what I am doing here among
normal human beings.
And what am I doing here--I, Simon de Gex, M.P., the spoilt darling of
fortune, as my opponent in