Chapter II: Part 2

So far good, and the delightful first Act was rich in promise. Then came the complexities. There was another girl, _Rose Effick_ (a rich relation of the socialist), to whom _Callender_ should have been engaged but for a misunderstanding. It is her business to divert him back to his old love. You would naturally say that, if it is _Callender's_ object to disgust _Doris_ with the life of the people, so that she may change her mind and take him for what he actually is, it will be _Rose's_ object, since her aim is the frustration of this design, to make Bethnal Green as attractive as possible, so that _Doris_ will refuse to sacrifice her ideals when she learns the truth about _Callender_. Yet it looks as if _Rose_ is playing _Callender's_ game and not her own. At first, it is true, she tries to make the attic more supportable; imparts a pleasant flavour to the meal; dismisses the hurdy-gurdies that _Callender_ has chartered from the Universal Provider. But subsequently she goes slumming with _Doris_ to such good purpose that the latter turns sick of the whole thing. Now, you will say, _Callender's_ way is clear; he will reveal his identity and _Doris_ will be prepared to tolerate his wealth. On the contrary, Mr. Sutko is not to be defeated by his own machinations; he means to bring _Callender_ and _Rose_ together; so he just takes and throws them into one another's arms and consigns _Doris_ to an old admirer whom we have never so much as set eyes on.

_Wilfrid Callender_: Mr. Gerald du Maurier.]

I hope I am more lucid than I seem to myself to be--more lucid, anyhow, than Mr. Sutro, who has threatened to damage an excellent scheme by defiance of the first law of drama, even of farce, namely, that the audience should be permitted to know what the author is after. Nor, again--though of course he was not asking to be taken seriously--was he very particular about the probability of some of his characters. _Doris_, for instance, was required to be too many things at once. A bluestocking and a _sansculotte_ (not a very usual combination), she was also a woman of the very latest cry in frocks. Miss Nina Sevening looked pretty and wore them well, but beyond this she gave us very little help. _Rose_, too (charmingly played by Miss Marie Löhr), who disguised herself as a dweller in Bethnal Green by the simple expedient of a duster pinned over her shoulders--how could Mr. Sutro expect her dainty skirt and smart white shoes to escape the eye of this "clever" female, her rival?

All the same, he gave us much matter for mirth, though the Second Act, which promised so well, was dragged out by interminable trivialities over the preparations for tea. I wish that authors and actors would understand how depressing it often is when people on the stage will insist on keeping things bright and brisk with domestic details.

As for the wit of "the clever ones"--_Doris_ and her mother and her aunt--I don't know how the first-nighters took it, but when I was there a great deal of it (when audible) was over the heads of the audience. They understood all right the humour of things when somebody (not a clever one) said "Damn," but I wonder how many of them appreciated the symbolic force of the term _épicier_, or grasped the purport of _Quem deus vult perdere prius dementat_.

Mr. Sutro owed much to the excellence of his cast. Mr. Gerald du Maurier was, of course, inimitable; but there were also Miss Florence Haydon, Miss Mary Brough and Mr. Edmund Gwenn, all delightful in their own specialised veins of humour--the plaintive, the rich, the uproarious. But Mr. Holman Clark had not enough scope for his unique qualities.

I hear rumours of a revision, and hope that this means that I shall receive an invitation to renew a most delightful evening. For my only real criticism is that Mr. Sutro thought me more intelligent than I actually am--an error that I always encourage.

* * * * *

"Dusk."

_Account Rendered_, a comedy of some promise, but produced with an extraordinary inadequacy in the matter of what the programme called "the decors," has been very quickly withdrawn from the Little Theatre. But its curtain-raiser, _Dusk_, is to be retained for the revival of _Magic_.

That is nearly all that I have to say about Mr. Vansittart's "Oriental Fantasy." It deals with a youthful bride who has just been attached to a Persian hareem. In the garden at dusk she finds a young English traveller (who has just told us what a _penchant_ he has for "women, women, women"--he is very insistent about this), and being caught in conversation with him is placed by her lord in a sack and consigned to the deep; but not before she has explained in fluent verse that in the circumstances this abrupt end to her young career has no terrors for her. But for this courageous attitude on her part I should have experienced greater relief when the hero appeared next morning in his pyjamas and indicated that the regrettable incident was a figment of his sleeping brain.

I thought I detected some good lines among the Englishman's remarks (though I did not like his voice), but I prefer to study poetical drama at leisure before attempting to pass any comment on it. I may add that I don't suppose that that engaging actor, Mr. Fred Lewis, has ever previously played the part of a Persian slave with a taste for philosophic recitation; and I hope he never will again, for, frankly, it is not his _métier_.

O. S.

* * * * *

The cashier at our Goldstead branch has the misfortune to drop his scoop accidentally when cashing a cheque for his worthy mayor of our select suburb.]

* * * * *

A SPORTING CHANCE.

It is generally in the spring that I begin to notice how big my accounts are growing. I don't know why this should be, unless it is because I haven't paid any during the previous year. At any rate you must take my word for it. I have the accounts here.

Then, again, it is a most remarkable fact that whenever one has bills to pay one finds there are other things to be bought.

A few days ago I discovered that my tailor wanted thirty pounds. I also discovered that I wanted a lighter overcoat and a raincoat. It was a nice problem.

On occasions of great difficulty like this I always consult Edith. Edith might have married me if it hadn't been for Henry. Had she accepted me I should probably have gone in for something. As it is I just go on existing.

The really sad part of the whole affair is that she seems to be very fond of me. Poor girl! We all make mistakes. Anyhow, apart from her momentary mad infatuation for her husband, she is very sensible and I always like to consult her. Married women are so different from single girls; I don't know why, unless it is that they have husbands.

Edith being married, therefore, I rang her up.

"I want," I said, "to consult you financially."

"Certainly," she replied. "What is it?"

"Private. I will come round to tea."

I rang off. I made a little parcel of my accounts and then telephoned for a taxi. In due course I found Edith in the drawing-room.

"Hello," she said. "Is it very bad trouble?"

"We are," I replied, "in deep water. Life is very shallow." Edith laughed; she appreciates wit.

"Well, let me see if I can help."

I sat down. "I want two new coats," I explained. "My tailor is clamouring for thirty pounds, balance of account owing, and," I added significantly, "there are others. It is going to be a big smash."

"Poor boy!"

I sighed heavily as I opened the accounts.

"Here we are," I said. "Tailor, thirty pounds."

I paused and again sighed.

"Hatter, three pounds."

"Three pounds?" Edith looked amazed.

"That's your fault. I bought a new hat for your wedding. Not only was I best, but best-dressed man. I wore beautiful clothes to hide a breaking heart."

Edith smiled. "A beautiful hat was perhaps superfluous," she suggested. "They are worn so little in church. Are there any more?"

"Plenty. Hatter, three pounds; Glover, one pound----"

"What for?"

"Gloves. Need I go through the sad list?"

Edith shook her head. "What's the total?"

"Fifty-four pounds, thirteen and fourpence. I'm hoping to avoid the fourpence in discounts. Total spare cash, twenty pounds, and nearly three months to go before I touch any more."

"Poor boy, have you really only twenty pounds?"

"To throw about in bills, certainly. I shall want all my other money for rent and food and cash payments."

"And are they all clamouring for their money?"

"Yes, the sharks."

Edith lay back in her chair and thought. Suddenly she sat up.

"It can't be helped," she said. "Some of them will have to wait. We'll put their names in a hat and the first three we draw out get paid."

"Yes," I objected, "but what about my overcoats?"

"You must wait."

"No," I said, "I have a better idea." I paused impressively. "I think that we can fairly assume that my creditors are sportsmen. At any rate, they must have the benefit of the doubt. That being so, I put my own name in the hat and draw against them. If I'm in the first three I get my new coats."

"But----"

"Not a word." I slipped noiselessly out of the room and came back with Henry's Homburg. In less than five minutes everything was prepared.

"Now," said Edith, and she put her hand in the hat. There was a tense silence. "(1) Glover, (2) Tobacconist, (3) Tailor. Bad luck!"

I suppressed a groan. Had I not been sitting down, I should probably have reeled. Then, with an effort, I pulled myself together and smiled.

"Well, that's all right," I said.

"All right?"

"Certainly," I said; "I can pay off the first two."

"But what about the tailor?"

"I have thought of that," said I. "I shall make a distinction in his favour. I shall give him an order for two coats. Surely that means more to him than a mere settlement."

"Yes," said Edith doubtfully. "But of course you'll pay him the money?"

I laughed amazedly. "My dear girl! Either I pay his account just like the other two, or I distinguish him by ordering the new coats. He can't have it both ways. And I couldn't very well pay for the new coats, if that's what you mean, before the old account is settled. You see that?"

"Yes, but still it doesn't seem----"

"Ah, perhaps not," I said, "perhaps not, at first sight. I hardly saw it myself at first. It was really a clever idea of yours."

Edith brightened visibly. "Yes, wasn't it?" she said.

* * * * *

AN EPIC FROM THE PROVINCES.

My dear Charles,--I know that from your superior standpoint as a Londoner you are disposed to regard us as dwellers in a quiet backwater, unswayed by the currents of political strife, but you must not imagine that the stirring events of the past few weeks have failed to leave their mark on the life of our little town. A study of the Press--that faithful mirror of our time--would quickly convince you to the contrary.

The Press, as you know, is here represented by _The Signal_, a fine old weekly journal of inflexible Unionist views. Well, last week, rising on a wave of enthusiasm, _The Signal_ burst into poetry.

_The Gun Runners_, it is called, by "Cecilia Merrifield."

The air is still, the night is dark;
Along the harbour side
There stands a silent, waiting park
Of motors, full inside.

That is the opening stanza. You may possibly take exception to the French rhyme, but you cannot fail, Charles, to appreciate the fine spirit of it.

What are they full of? Not of man,
But rifles, neatly packed,
Taken from out the good ship _Fan_,
Now in the harbour backed.

Strictly speaking, I believe it was not the _Fan_ at all, but that is a small matter.

Brave men have toiled across the sea
To bring those rifles in,
With helm held stoutly hard-a-lee
Amid the breakers' din.

I am not at all certain of the accuracy of the term "hard-a-lee" in this connection, but what a fine sense of stedfast heroism that run of aspirates awakened. "With helm held stoutly hard-a-lee."

Amid the breakers' strident cry
They kept their courage cool,
For thus, they said, Home Rule must die,
We will not have Home Rule!

They 'scaped the vessels of the Fleet
By lavish use of paint;
The warships had to own defeat
With loud and long complaint.

But I cannot give you more than a selection from these noble verses. They continue in the same lofty strain until the good ship is warped safely in port. Then comes another dramatic change of tense. We are again on the quayside.

The night grows darker. All at once
An order sharp we hear--
The order waited for for months;
The motors come in gear.

Yes, I admit that this stanza is open to criticism on more than one count, but I would not have it changed. It bears the impress of red-hot inspiration.

Criticism must always be silent when confronted with that.

The joy of having to obey
Lights up each driver's face,
And so the motors move away
Each to its destined place.

You must not suppose, however, that there was no show of opposition. As you have observed, our poetess believes, on the whole, in sticking closely to historical truth.

The minions of the Government,
A weak and craven breed,
Stand by, quite helpless to prevent
This great heroic deed.

I cannot say I altogether like the tone of the second line, but the fury of enthusiasm, shackled by the exigencies of rhyme, must be forgiven much. Let us continue.

Across the night the motors throb
Without the slightest hitch,
For this is quite a business job,
Though in romance so rich.

Indeed, the whole stupendous plot
Is cleverly arranged;
Even the motor-cars have got
Their number plates all changed.

And so they speed by tortuous ways
With Freedom in the van,
And patriotism sets ablaze
The face of every man.

And so on. Then we come from the general to the particular, and follow the fortunes of a single consignment of arms until it reaches its destination.

And into cellar, pantry, shed,
In kitchen, bedroom, loft,
The rifles go. Home Rule is dead!
The words are uttered oft.

The ammunition, too, is hid
In many a secret hole,
Each bearer doing as he's bid,
Intent upon the goal.

The goal being, I take it, the final death of Home Rule. And now comes the wonderful peroration, in which the whole great adventure is brought to its dignified and eloquent climax. It runs into twenty-three stanzas, of which I will give you the last two without comment--

Freedom is what we labour for,
Freedom, it is our right;
We have no wish for bloody war,
But, if we must, we'll fight.

This is our message sent to him,
The dark Dictator's tool--
Whatever happens, sink or swim,
We Will Not Have Home Rule!

There, Charles! I challenge you to produce anything approaching that from all your boasted London dailies.

Yours,

Robert.

* * * * *

"A villager will always tell the difference between a good coin
and a bad one, but he cannot tell the difference between a bad
coin and a good one."--_Pioneer._

He must try to enlarge his mind.

* * * * *

_Friend_. "Thought you liked it."

_Perspiring Sportsman_. "Yes, if it weren't for the wasting you've got to do to ride the weight?"]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)

Doubtless you will think, as I did at first, that the title of _The Priceless Thing_ (Stanley Paul) has reference to love or something intense like that. Far from it. Not in fifty guesses would you be likely to discover that its real meaning is an autograph of the late William Shakspeare. One knew already that Mrs. Maud Stepney Rawson could write a vigorous and bustling tale. If I have a complaint to make against _The Priceless Thing_ it is indeed that it suffers from some superfluity of plot, and what approaches a plethora of villains, real or supposed. For this reason it is a story more than usually hard to condense fairly into a paragraph. Briefly, however, the P. T., which was the peculiar treasure of the noble line of _Annerslie_, lived in a case in the library of their ancestral home. The heroine, _Anstice_, a relation of the Family, was employed by My Lord as librarian. When I tell you, moreover, that _Anstice_ had run away from her own father on finding that he was an expert manufacturer of literary forgeries, and that her circle of friends included an American blackmailer, a curiosity dealer and a mad Italian who was even better at the forgery business than her own father, you will perceive that the poor girl was likely to find her situation "some job." I could not begin to tell you what really happened. Towards the end there had been so much mystery, and the story had become such a palimpsest of forged signatures, that I myself knew no more than _Lord Annerslie_ in which to believe. But I think we both had the upholding conviction that an affair of this kind was bound to come out all right in the end. Which indeed it did; leaving all the virtuous characters abundantly satisfied, a feeling that will, I am sure, be shared by Mrs. Rawson's maze-loving public.

* * * * *

Robert Tressall was a house-painter, a Socialist, and very evidently a sincere if somewhat raw thinker. He left to his heirs and assigns a manuscript of many thousand words. It was a novel, oddly entitled _The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists_ (Grant Richards), and fell into the hands of Miss Jessie Pope, who recognised the genius in it (none too strong a word), made some excisions, and now stands sponsor for it to the world. It is a grim story of the unpicturesque and horribly anxious lives of working-folk, specifically of the house-painter and his mates working on a job, elated and satisfied at the beginning, depressed and despondent as the work nears completion with the uncertainty as to how long it will be before another job comes along. Nobody who hadn't lived exclusively in this hard environment could have written with such candour and intensity. Mr. Tressall has avoided altogether the pretentiousness and literary affectation that betrayed, for example, Mr. H. G. Wells' bathchairman, Meeks. The earlier part of the book is better than the later, where the propagandist ousts the chronicler. The exposition of Socialist doctrine is made with a considerable if a crude skill. It is disfigured with certain familiar limitations; the author can recognise no work except that done with the hands; and, whether by unhappy accident of actual circumstance or through defect of temperament, he sees his employers with a disproportionate bitterness that somewhat discounts his indictment, while he views his fellow-workmen from rather a disdainful height. But _The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists_ is a book to be read by any who want an insight into the conditions of working-class life at its average, with its virtues, its vices, its courage, its intolerable piteous anxieties.

* * * * *

Mr. Grant-Watson is one of the most resolute and intrepid novelists I have met, and his directness of speech may give offence, I fear, to the more reticent of his readers. His story of two white men and _Alice Desmond_, freed from the social conventions and let loose among the natives on a remote island in the Pacific, proceeds apace and with little regard for the susceptibilities of civilisation and refinement. Familiar but rarely printed language is used when occasion demands; primitive passions stalk naked and unashamed; and when murder is to be done it is done brutally, forthwith and notwithstanding the respective merits, from an heroic point of view, of active and passive agents. Being myself so situated in life that I am never likely to take part in any affair more passionate and drastic than a football match or a law-suit, I found the savage reality, the candour and the unbridled wrath of _Where Bonds are Loosed_ (Duckworth) most welcome by contrast. It gave me pleasure to see a man's annoyance being worked off by the use of fists, knives and bullets, a woman's impatience spending itself in immediate violence, and love and hatred being expressed in sharp and decisive action rather than in deliberate subtleties of conversation. In short, Mr. Watson left me wondering, somewhat fondly, to what lengths I myself might go in my more heated moments if I too were isolated on Kanna Island and beyond the supervision of police-constables and next-door neighbours.

* * * * *

Once upon a time it was my lot to read a slender volume of Prose Poems, all about stars and rivers and moons and such other things of which prose poetry is made, and written by the most intense and soulful young woman who ever put pen to paper. Which, being perused, I handed to another and elder woman, noted for a great reader of books. And after many days, and after (I suppose) much fruitless toil on the part of my friend, the volume was returned to me with this single comment, "It seems very racily written." I tell you the story, which being true is without point, because I have been wondering what the same critic would have found to say about another slender booklet called _The Word of Teregor_ (Nisbet). My idea of it is that Mr. Guy Ridley, the author, knows and admires his Kipling and delights in his Maeterlinck to such extent that (possibly after a visit to _The Blue Bird_) he felt himself inspired to sit down and write these Forest-Jungle-Book tales of an earlier world, wherein Man and Beast and all created things were subject to the benevolent rule of _Teregor_, the Oak-tree; when everything living had a voice and used it, pleasantly enough, in rather mannered prose of the "Yea, Nay and Behold" type; and when all the old legends had yet to be started in ways of which Mr. Ridley gives his own most original explanations. So if you care about this kind of thing (and I had quite a pleasant half-hour from it myself) get it. You will at least find here a book entirely different from anything else in the library-box; printed in type that is a pleasure to the eye, and having, moreover, the classic excuse of being a very little one.

* * * * *

I have for some time watched a steady improvement in the work of Mr. Ralph Straus. It is therefore a pleasure to greet _The Orley Tradition_ (Methuen) as his best yet. The _Orley_ tradition was to do nothing whatever, and, like the House of Lords in _Iolanthe_, to do it very well. They were, as a family, noble, of ancient lineage, and fine stupidity. _John Orley_, the hero of the tale, starts out to follow worthily in the footsteps of his race, as a brainless but agreeable country magnate. Then comes an accident, which thwarts his physical ambitions and awakens his mental. Thereafter he essays the life of affairs--and fails all round; is defeated for Parliament, and equally worsted in the lists of Art. So, being now recovered of his hurt, he says a graceful farewell to the career intellectual and resumes the traditional _Orley_ existence. This, in brief, is his story; but I give it without the pleasant style of Mr. Straus's telling. There are many very happily touched scenes; more especially had I a guilty sympathy roused by one in which poor _John_ endeavours to concentrate his very slipshod brains upon an afternoon of hard reading. And almost all the characters are alive, from the entertaining old lady who keeps the village post-office to _Mrs. Adderson_, the naughty novelist in whose hands _John Orley_ completed his sentimental education. As for the setting, I fancy that those who have spent their summers round about St. Margaret's Bay will have little difficulty in identifying _Handsfield_. Altogether a happy book (more so than you would expect from its theme) and one that marks, as I said, the further advance of a ready and agreeable writer.

* * * * *

AT THE GLADIATORIAL AGENCY.

_Applicant._ "That's just it. You see, I've been rather run down for some time, and my doctor advised me to take a turn or two in the arena for the sake of my health."]

* * * * *

"By road it is vastly different: there is an 80 mile sand desert
to negotiate, and hundreds of miles of rutty roads and rocky
bush tracks to drive over; yet Mr. Murray Aunger, of Adelaide,
averaged 38 hours per mile from capital to capital."--_Advt._

If it wasn't for the chance of being photographed we should always prefer to walk this bit.

* * * * *

"'I am,' he answered in rather indifferent English."

_"Derby Advertiser" feuilleton_.

Very indifferent, we call it. How much better if he could have answered, "Your statement of the position is not wholly unwarranted by the facts," or something snappy like that.