Chapter II: Part 2

"We began rehearsing during that glorious spell of sunshine in the spring, when the garden was a carpet of daffodils and it was a sheer joy to play about out-of-doors. Then the weather broke for a time and we migrated to the Parish Hall. You know our Parish Hall?"

"Quite well. A little tin place on the left from the rectory."

"That's it. It's got a platform on trestles at one end and a paraffin lamp in the middle. The Vicar placed it at our disposal when there wasn't a Women's Institute or a choir practice, and on chilly nights he had the 'Beatrice stove' lit for us. Then the Summer began in real earnest. We got in extra gardeners, worked like niggers ourselves, and when the turf was in perfect condition and the thyme was coming up on _Titania's_ bank we fixed the date and billed the county.

"After that we all got nervous and went about consulting weather forecasts. _Old Moore_ prophesied heavy rains. The _Daily Mail_ said a cyclone from New York was on the way. The weather-glasses jumped about and seemed to know their own minds even less than usual. Three days before the date thunderstorms were reported all over the country and a fowl was struck by lightning. But not a drop of rain came to our village.

"At the dress-rehearsal the night before the performance we debated the weather prospects until the moon rose. _Lysander_ said his bit of seaweed which he brought from Bognor was as dry as parched peas and he would back it against any fool barometer. Cocklewhite, our prompter, said he didn't want to depress the company, but he had a leech in a bottle of water which rose for fine weather and sank for wet, and he was bound to tell us it was like lead at the bottom at the present moment. _Hermia_ pointed to the heavens, 'Red sky at night shepherds' delight,' she quoted. There was no getting away from the swallows; they were nose-diving to a bird. 'Hang swallows,' _Oberon_ said; 'put your trust in mosquitoes. Look at my eyelid.'

"'It's no good talking,' _Theseus_ said; 'nobody can tell until the morning, and then it'll be up to _Bottom_ to decide by 11.30 whether it's to be indoors or out. He's our stage-manager and we know his arrangements in case of rain. They're the only arrangements possible in our little village, and it's going to be a nightmare instead of a dream if they have to be carried out. But we can depend upon _Bottom_ to make a wise decision. He'll notify us and the boy-scouts will notify the audience. All we've got to do is not to grouse.'

"Cocklewhite said he would phone me the position of his leech at 9 A.M., and _Lysander_ promised to report any change in the condition of the seaweed. I set our glass and _Titania_ and I got up at half-hour intervals during the night and tapped it. It refused to budge either way.

"At dawn _Titania_ looked out of the window and gave a wild cry. 'Red sky in the morning shepherds' warning,' she wailed. At breakfast Cocklewhite phoned that his leech was dead, and he had strong suspicions it had died from atmospheric pressure. Almost at the same moment _Lysander_ sent word that his seaweed had gone clammy during the night. Half-an-hour later came a clap of thunder and the drops of rain I mentioned. I needn't go on. You can guess the rest."

Melhuish paused.

"But the performance came off, didn't it?" I said.

"Yes, in the Parish Hall. It was a perfect day for a pastoral."

* * * * *

* * * * *

A CLEAN HITTER.

"J. ---- carried his bath through the innings."--_Scotch Paper._

* * * * *

"Fishing near the bridge on Monday a schoolboy caught a chub with
artificial fly weighing 2lbs. 15ozs."--_Local Paper._

It is supposed that the unfortunate fish was struck on the head and stunned.

* * * * *

"After long delays a new Polish Cabinet has been formed under Mr.
Grabski. He would annex much Russian territory outright."--_Weekly
Paper._

_Pace_ SHAKSPEARE, there would seem to be something in a name.

* * * * *

"THAT QUEER FISH THE SALMON.

Some fish are 'takers,' some are not, but most salmon can be worried
into talking."--_Daily Paper._

Whereas most fishermen chatter of their own accord.

* * * * *

* * * * *

HARDING AND COX.

(_Being an inquiry into the two Candidates for the Presidency of the United States of America._)

I wish I knew some facts regarding
The private life of Mr. HARDING;
I wish that I had simply stocks
Of anecdotes of Mr. COX.

In U.S.A. (where both are resident
And each one hoping to be President)
Their favourite hymns, their size in boots,
Their views on liquor and cheroots

Are known to all; not JULIUS CÆSAR
Is quite so much renowned as these are.
In England, where they do not dwell,
No one appears to know them well.

One cannot say if COX'S liver
Keeps well upon the Swanee River,
Nor whether HARDING finds, when glum,
Any relief in chewing gum.

It may be that they both have good rows
Of dental ornaments like WOODROW'S,
The waist of TAFT, the ROOSEVELT eye
For pinking hippopotami.

It may be HARDING had some flickers
Of CLEVELAND'S spirit whilst in knickers,
And COX while yet a puling babe
Dreamed tiny dreams of LINCOLN (ABE);

And both, although they knew they'd catch it,
Cut fruit-trees with a little hatchet;
Both may have been, when glorious youths,
Too proud to fight or tell untruths.

I cannot say. I know they wrangle
On points I dare not disentangle,
That one of them's a Democrat
And t' other's not. And that is that.

EVOE.

* * * * *

GEE!

On the upper floors of a shop in the Strand, between Wellington Street and the Savoy, is a well-known maker of fowling-pieces, who gave me a terrible start the other day; and probably not me alone, but many passers-by who chanced to look upwards at his windows. For he is at the moment advertising the most undesirable article in the world, a commodity for which I can conceive of no demand whatever. Yet there--the result of the caprice of adhesive cement or the desire of one letter of the alphabet to get level with its neighbour and be dropped too--the amazing notice is, in conspicuous white enamel:--

SECOND HAND UNS.

* * * * *

THE DOMESTIC PROBLEM SOLVED.

"A Lady wishes to meet with a gentleman or lady to share her home as
sole paying guest; one with a hobby for gardening preferred; every home
comfort; terms, £300 per annum."--_Sunday Paper._

We are desirous of entertaining, on the same terms, a lady (or gentleman) with a _penchant_ for cooking and washing-up.

* * * * *

"The Hindus and Mahomedans are the two eyes of India, but have long
been engaged in a tug-of-war. On account of this cleavage both have
suffered, but now the wall of separation is broken down, and they are
coming together like sugar and milk, the bitter feelings between them
having been pulled out like a thorn. They are advised to give up biting
each other for the future."--_Indian Paper._

Or our contemporary will have exhausted its stock of metaphors.

* * * * *

A STORY ABOUT A CLOCK.

Our move-in took place in no furtive or clandestine fashion; our installation of ourselves in our semi-detached was performed well under the eye of the neighbouring public. Our furniture waited on the public thoroughfare until our new home was ready to receive it. Small children played games on our sofa; enthusiastic acquaintances played tunes on our piano. In a word, our move-in was a local festival; everyone took part. This is the sad tale of the man who took the most expensive part--the clock.

If the hard choice had been put to Diana, my wife, to say which she could least sorrowfully part with, me or the clock, the clock would have stayed. If I had been put to the same dismal alternative as to Diana or the clock, Diana would have gone. In fact, directly the clock was safely in Diana had gone out. That was all she cared about; small children might play on the sofa, enthusiastic acquaintances might play on the piano, and I might toil unremittingly with everything else, for all Diana cared. So, the clock being in, out she went upon her lawful or unlawful purposes. As she departed she said something about my seeing to the clock. I remembered that later on, but I remembered it wrong. This is how I did it.

The man sat a little on my own special chair (at that time on the pavement) before he came in. I asked him what he was sitting there for. He got up and came inside. Then I asked him what he had come in for, and he said, "The clock." I looked at the clock and it had stopped. I gave it a shake, and it still stopped. He said it was no good shaking it; that only annoyed it. He said he had come to look after it. He then took off his hat and his coat, moved the fingers about, put his ears to it to hear its heart beating, and asked me what I had been doing to it. I said I hadn't been doing anything to it; he watched me doing things to everything else, and adopted an expression as if to say he didn't believe me. He gave me the feeling that I was a very interfering person, and that he didn't want to have anything more to do with me. He said he should have to take the clock away. I asked him when he would bring it back. He said he didn't know. He appeared to take a pessimistic view of it. I asked him cheerfully if he would _ever_ bring it back. He gave me a contemptuous look and, without another word, went, taking the clock with him.

When Diana came back she asked where the clock was. I said it had gone. "Gone where?" asked Diana. I said I didn't know; the man had taken it. "What man?" asked Diana. I was trying to move the sofa at the moment and I was inclined to be short-spoken. I said that the man who had taken it was, no doubt, the man whom Diana had gone forth to find and bid take away our clock. Diana said that, if the man had said that she had said that he might take our clock away, the man was a liar. _Had_ the man said that she had said he might take the clock away? The answer was in the negative.

Then the truth emerged. The man had stolen our clock. I had assisted the man to steal our clock, helping him to lift it off its perch and handing him his bowler hat as he left.

It all sounds incredible, doesn't it? But you will admit, I am sure, that it is a thing which could quite easily happen to anyone. Isn't it?

To be quite frank, I have improved the story a bit. The clock wasn't really stolen.

Was the man really taking it away to repair it? No; to tell you the truth he didn't actually take it away at all. In fact, I might as well own that no man ever came into the house while I was shifting the furniture in from the street. And, if you want to know, I never had a clock ... nor a wife ... nor a house.

The mere fact of my pretending that there _are_ such things as semi- detacheds for people to move into these days ought to have put you wise from the start that the whole tale was a fabrication.

* * * * *

CURES WORTH MAKING.

(_By our Medical Expert._)

_The Times_, in its daily summary of "News in Advertisements" recently called attention to the appeal of an invalided officer who "will be glad to give a hundred pounds to any doctor, nerve specialist or hospital that can cure him of occupation neurosis and writer's cramp." A careful study of other newspapers shows that offers of handsome remuneration for cures are not confined to those who have suffered from the War, but are made by civilians and officials of the highest position in public life. We append a few outstanding examples of the splendid opportunities now provided to psycho-pathological specialists:--

A Cabinet Minister of massive physique, perfect self-confidence and immovable determination, who has had varied experience in different business callings and (up to a certain point) unvarying success, offers five thousand pounds to any professor of deportment or member of the Old Nobility in reduced circumstances who will impart to him suavity of manner, tact and diplomatic courtesy, the lack of which constitutes the sole obstacle to his achieving immortality. If the instructor can succeed in making him (the Cabinet Minister) really beloved the honorarium will be doubled.

An Editor of thirty years' experience as a journalist, first-rate linguist, deeply versed in geography, Central European politics, etc., will give five hundred pounds to any mental specialist, registered or unregistered, who will cure him of an irresistible temptation on all occasions, with or without provocation, to utilise every incident, occurrence, calamity or disaster as a means of assailing and undermining the position of the Coalition Government in general and the PRIME MINISTER in particular.

A Member of Parliament, formerly attached to one of His Majesty's services, is prepared to offer fifty pounds to any phrenologist who without inflicting undue pain will reduce or remove the Bump of Curiosity which at present impels him without rhyme or reason to bombard Ministers with irrelevant questions contrary to the public interest and calculated to produce the maximum amount of irritation even amongst Members who sit on the same side of the House.

A Peer of great wealth, striking physiognomy, affectionate disposition and wonderful general knowledge will pay the sum of twenty thousand pounds to any psychiatric practitioner who succeeds in eliminating from his system the microbe of filmolatry, the ravages of which have latterly threatened to infect his monumental mind with histrionic monomania highly deleterious to the best interests of the community.

A neo-Georgian poet, disciple of FREUD, pacificist and vegetarian, will gladly pay five pounds to any psychopathic suggestionist who will extirpate from his subconsciousness the lingering relics of an antipathy to syncopated rhythms which retard his progress towards a complete mastery of the technique of amorphous bombination.

* * * * *

ANOTHER "SUBSTITUTE."

"For the first time on record snow has fallen at Albany, Western
Australia.

The Food Ministry announces that this surplus will therefore be
available for home jam-making."--_Provincial Paper._

* * * * *

"The Roman poets, all of them inveterate Cockneys, talk of the joys of
the country, of purling streams and lowing kine and frisking lamps."--
_Weekly Paper._

And their verses occasionally smell of them.

* * * * *

_Maid._ "NOT ARF! WHY, MUM, IN MY LAST PLACE THE MASTER'S PET NAME FOR ME WAS 'THE EARLY WORM.'"]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

_Rescue_ (DENT) is a story in the authentic manner of Mr. JOSEPH CONRAD at his unapproachable best. If it is true, as one has heard, that the book was begun twenty-five years ago and resumed lately, this explains but does nothing to minimize a fact upon which we can all congratulate ourselves. The setting is the shallow seas of the Malay coast, where _Lingard_, an adventurer (most typically CONRAD) whose passion in life is love for his brig, has pledged himself to aid an exiled young Rajah in the recovery of his rights. At the last moment however, when his plans are at point of action, the whole scheme is thwarted by the stranding of a private yacht containing certain persons whose rescue (complicated by his sudden subjection to the woman of the party) eventually involves _Lingard_ in the loss of fortune and credit. Perhaps you can suppose what Mr. CONRAD makes of a theme so congenial; how the tale moves under his hand in what was once well called that "smoky magnificence" of atmosphere, just permitting the reader to observe at any moment so much and no more of its direction. Of the style it would now be superfluous to speak. It has been given to Mr. CONRAD, working in what is originally a foreign medium, to use it with a dignity unsurpassed by any of our native craftsmen. Such phrases as (of the prudent mate remonstrating with _Lingard_): "What he really wanted was to have his existence left intact, for his own cherishing and pride;" or again, "The situation was too complicated to be entrusted to a cynical or shameless hope," give one the quick pleasure of words so delicately and deftly used as to seem newly coined. _Rescue_, in short, is probably the greatest novel of the year, one by which its author has again enriched our literature with work of profound and moving quality.

* * * * *

I was inclined to flatter myself that nothing in the plot of _The Silver Tea-shop_ (STANLEY PAUL) could possibly take me by surprise, but I found towards the end that Miss E. EVERETT GREEN had contrived to slip in the real villain all unsuspected while I, as she meant me to, was staring hard at the supposed one, so that there I must acknowledge myself defeated. With a stolen invention, an old gentleman found shot in his room, and a son under a vow to avenge his father, the story provides plenty of thrills, and the "Silver Tea-shop" itself has the fascination that business ventures in books often exercise. It seems to be run on such lavish lines for the prices charged that I found myself looking hungrily for its address. I wish the author had not referred to her hero as having "mobile digits" and burdened her ingenuous story with anything so important as a prologue. By making the villain's deserted offspring not one baby girl only, or even twins, but triplets, Miss EVERETT GREEN provides waitresses all of one family for the "Silver Tea-shop," and that, though a happy arrangement, is a little too uncommon to add to the likelihood of an unconvincing tale.

* * * * *

When a book is succinctly labelled _Love Stories_ (DORAN), at least no one has any right to complain that he wasn't warned beforehand of the character of its contents. As a matter of fact, human nature being what it is, I have little doubt that Mrs. MARY ROBERTS RINEHART has hit upon a distinctly profitable title. Indeed I believe that this has already been proved in the Land of Freedom, from which the work comes to us, where (I am given to understand) the vogue of sentimental fiction is even greater than with ourselves. What the name does nothing to indicate is that the stories are almost all of them laid in or about hospital wards. For some, perhaps most, of the author's admirers this may serve only to increase the charm; for others, who prefer their romance unflavoured with iodoform, not. Undeniable that she has a smiling way with her, and a gift of sympathetic enjoyment that carries off the old, old dialogues, even imparting freshness to the tale of the patient _in extremis_ who persuades his attractive nurse into a death-bed marriage, treatment that the slightest experience of fiction should have warned her to be invariably curative. Perhaps the best of the tales is "Jane," which tells very amusingly the results of a hospital strike that in actual life would, I imagine, have provided little humorous relief. By this time you may have gathered that what matters about Mrs. RINEHART is not what she says but the way that she says it; upon which hint you can act as fancy dictates.

* * * * *

I very distinctly feel that "KATHARINE TYNAN" could have made a first-rate novel of _Denys the Dreamer_ (COLLINS) and have had plenty over for a good second if she had taken the trouble. But her fluent pen runs away with her down paths that lead nowhere in particular, instead of developing her main characters and situations to an intelligible and satisfactory point. _Denys_ is of a gentle Irish family that has come down to very small farming. He dreams good, solid and rather Anglo-Saxon dreams of draining bogs on the sea-coast estates of _Lord Leenane_, whose agent he becomes (and whose daughter he loves from afar), and of a great port that is to rival Belfast. Unexpected, not to say incredible, assistance comes from a Jew money-lender and his wife. The portraits of _Mr._ and _Mrs. Aarons_ are the best things in the book, and I hope Mrs. HINKSON will make a novel about these two admirable people some day soon. _Denys_ makes his own and his patron's fortune and I am sure lives happily ever after with _Dawn_, who is the palest wraith of a girl, owing to the shameful neglect of her author, who is too busy putting large sums of money into the pockets of the principal puppets. Indeed, for a West Coast of Ireland story a demoralising amount of money is going about.

* * * * *

The principal scenes of _The North Door_ (CONSTABLE) are laid in the Cornwall of some hundred-and-thirty years ago, and I welcome Dr. GREVILLE MACDONALD as an expert in the Cornish language and character. Cornwall, as all readers of fiction know, has during the last few years been attacked again and again by novelists, and most of them would do well to study Dr. MACDONALD'S romance and most thoroughly to digest it. In form, however, he will have little to teach them, for his book is very indifferently constructed. It may seem ungrateful in these rather skimpy days to complain of a surfeit of matter, but there is stuff in this book for two if not three novels. One cannot blame Dr. MACDONALD for his indignation at the miseries of child-labour, but here it is perhaps out of place. His _Mr. Trevenna_, the mystical parson, friend of smugglers and of everyone who suffered from laws (unrighteous or righteous), is a great figure; and I shall not soon forget either his correspondence with _Lady Evangeline Walrond_ or his superhuman kindliness of heart. If you want to get at the true flavour of Cornwall you have only to open _The North Door_.

* * * * *

A young clerk in an insurance office, who wanted to go as a missionary to India, is the hero, if there is one, of Mrs. ALICE PERRIN'S latest novel, _The Vow of Silence_ (CASSELL). I have never read a book about India which made such an ambition seem more courageous, for it gives such a hot and thirsty picture of that country when _Harold Williams_ at last reaches it that it is positively uncomfortable to read it in Summer weather. _Harold_ and his brother and sister missionaries live in a state of stuffy discomfort which soon undermines his health and leaves him no defence against the charms of _Elaine Taverner_, who has a large cool drawing-room and dainty frocks, and a young soldier lover and an old scholar husband, and all the other things we expect of pretty young women in Anglo-Indian novels. Poor _Harold_, consumed at once by a zeal which makes him long to save _Elaine's_ soul and a passion which makes him embrace a parcel of her _lingerie_, very naturally loses the remains of his reason and paves the way for her marriage with her lover by obligingly pushing the elderly husband into the jaws of a crocodile. If it were more convincing it would be a painful story--in some hands it might have been a great one; as it is, Mrs. PERRIN seems for once to have missed her opportunity.

* * * * *

If the publisher of _About It And About_ had told me on the wrapper that Mr. D. WILLOUGHBY has an excellent fund of literary reminiscence, on which he draws for the modelling of a very pretty epigrammatical style, I should, after reading the book, have agreed with him heartily. What Mr. T. FISHER UNWIN does say about these short essays, which embrace most of the subjects on which people have violent opinions, is that the author's "point of view is that of the natural historian making an unprejudiced examination." An unprejudiced man, I take it, is a man whose sentiments are the same as mine, and I happen to disagree with Mr. WILLOUGHBY as profoundly as possible on several of the themes he has chosen. On fox-hunting, for instance, which he considers a more decadent sport than bull-fighting; and on Ulster, which he attacks bitterly by comparison with the rest of Ireland, for cherishing antiquated political animosities and talking about the Battle of the Boyne. But will Mr. WILLOUGHBY not have been hearing of "the curse of CROMWELL"? Let us rather agree to be impatient with Yorkshire for her absurd tranquillity with regard to WILLIAM THE FIRST. I repeat that Mr. WILLOUGHBY has a very clever style, but, bless his heart, he is as bigoted as I am myself.

* * * * *