Chapter II: Part 2

The manager had seen to it that the party of young men, being very obviously rich, at any rate for this night, had some of the best attendance in the restaurant. Several waiters had been told off specially to look after them, the least and busiest of whom was little more than a boy--a slender pale boy, who was working very hard to give satisfaction. The cynic might think--and say, for cynics always say what they think--that this zeal was the result of his youth; but the cynic for once would be only partly right. The zeal also had sartorial springs, this eventful day being the first on which the boy had been promoted to full waiter-hood, and the first therefore on which he had ever worn a suit of evening dress; which by dint of hard saving his family had been able to obtain for him. Wearing a uniform of such dignity and conscious that he was on the threshold of his career, he was trying very hard to make good and hoping very fervently that he would get through without any drops or splashes to impair the freshness of his new and wonderful attire.

The party of young men, who had been at a very illustrious English school together and now were either at a university or in the world, were celebrating an annual event and were very merry about it. For the most part they had, between the past and the present, as many topics of conversation as were needed, but now and then came a lull, during which some of them would look around at the other tables, note the prettier of the girls or the odder of the men and comment upon them; and it chanced that in such a pause one of the diners happened for the first time to notice with any attention the assiduous young waiter. Although not old enough to have given any thought to the anomaly of youth (though lowly) attending upon youth (though gilded) at its meals in this way--not old enough indeed to have pondered at all upon the relations of Capital and Labour or of the domineering and the servile--he had reflected a good deal upon the cut and fit of clothes, and there was something about the waiting-boy's evening coat that outraged his critical sense. Nor did the fact that the other's indifferent tailoring throw the perfection of his own into such brilliant contrast--the similarity between the livery of service and the male costume _de luxe_ fostering such comparisons--make him any more lenient.

"Did you ever see," he asked his neighbour, "such a coat-collar as that waiting Johnnie's? I ask you. How can anyone, even a waiter, wear a thing like that? Don't they ever see themselves in the glass, or if they do can't they see straight? Why, it covers his collar altogether."

His companion agreed. "And the shoulders! You'd have thought that in a restaurant like this the management would be more particular. By George, that's a jolly pretty girl coming in! Look--over there, just under the clock, with the red hair." And the waiter was forgotten. Only, however, by his table critics, for at that moment a little woman who had made friends with the hall-porter for this express purpose was peering through the window of the entrance, searching the room for her son. She had never yet seen him at his work at all, and certainly not in his grand waiting clothes, and naturally she wanted to.

"Ah!" she said at last, pointing the boy out to the porter, "there he is! At that table with all the young gentlemen. Doesn't he look fine? And don't they fit him beautifully? Why, no one would know the difference if he were to sit down and one of those young gentlemen were to wait on him."

E.V.L.

* * * * *

PIGLETS.

While waiting for proof-sheets of my book on _The Dynamic Force of Modern Art_ I thought I might get a certain amount of amusement out of a little correspondence with my neighbour, Mr. Gibbs, small farmer and dairyman, between whom and myself letters had passed a short time ago on the subject of a noisy cow, since removed from the field below the study window of the house that has been lent me by my friend Hobson. With this end in view I wrote to Mr. Gibbs as follows:--

My dear Mr. Gibbs,--The field of the uproarious cow has, I notice, suddenly become tenanted again, this time by what appears to be a school, herd or murrain of swine. Their number seems to vary. Sometimes I count ten younglings, sometimes as many as thirteen, and once I made it as much as fourteen.

Did you know they were there, or are they a crop? Or is the field suffering from swine fever, of which they are the outward manifestation? Anyhow, whether they are friends of yours or have merely just happened, as it were, they are distinctly intriguing.

My wife was remarking to me only yesterday how nice some pork would be as a change from the eternal verities, beef and mutton, and I told her that if she would look out of my window she would see the pork running about, simply asking for it. There are so many of these piglets that I don't think the old sow would miss one. Swine can't count, can they?

But apart from food values they interest me as subjects for the Cubist, the Vorticist and other exploiters of dynamic force in the Art of to-day (I fancy I told you in a previous letter that I am engaged upon a tome on this subject).

Figure to yourself, _mon ami_, what delightful rhomboidal figures Wyndham Lewis and his school would make of these budding porkers with the sleek torso and the well-poised angular snout, and, having visualised their treatment of the theme, compare it with the painted effigies of such animals by George Morland, which were merely pigs, Sir, and nothing more. No symbolism, no force. You get me--what?

But looking at these piglets from a more intimate point of view, don't you think (if they should happen to be yours, and you have any influence with their parents) that something should be done about their faces? They have such a pushed-in appearance. Can this be normal? If so, it must seriously interfere with their truffling. But perhaps this is not good truffle-hunting country. I'm sorry if this is so, as I could do with a nice brace of truffles now and again.

Remember me kindly to our mooing friend, and believe me, dear Mr. Gibbs,

Yours sincerely,
Arthur K. Wilkinson.

How this early touch of Spring has got into the blood, to be sure.

To this letter Mr. Gibbs replied thus:--

Dear Sir,--i cant make much of your letter except a riglemerole about pigs and dinamite and pictures but what they have to do with one another i dont know if you want some pork why dont you say so strait out like mr Hobson does i shall be killing one this week shall i send you a nice leg and remain

Yours obedient
Henry Gibbs.

My reply, given in the affirmative, resulted in the arrival of a succulent-looking joint with a bill for leg of pork special 5½ lbs. at 2_s._ per lb. 11_s._

As the price too was rather special I returned the bill with the following:--

My dear Mr. Gibbs,--What a rapturous piece of pork! Lovely in life, and oh, how beautiful in death. I count the hours till 7.30 to-morrow.

I am truly sorry you couldn't read my letter with comfort. I have derived great pleasure from yours. You appear to have a strong leaning towards phonetic orthography which is very refreshing and seems to bear the same relation to the generally accepted rules of the art that the modern dynamic art (a favourite topic of mine, as you know) does to the academics of the late nineteenth century.

When the proof-sheets of my book arrive I should be glad of your assistance in going through them. My tendency, I think, is to over-punctuate, and your proclivity would, I believe, counteract this.

_Mais revenons à nos moutons_ (_mutatis mutandis_, of course). The specialist who superintends my diet allows me to eat pork at 1_s._ 9_d._ per lb., but does not approve of my indulgence in it at a higher figure. If you will meet his views (and I am sure you will) I shall absorb my full share of the dainty you have provided. Otherwise I must return it with many exquisite regrets.

Anticipating your favourable recognition of my specialist's absurd prejudice, I enclose a cheque for 9_s._ 8_d._

Accept my word for it that I am
Yours ever most truly,
Arthur K. Wilkinson.

To this Mr. Gibbs offered the following reply:--

Deer Sir,--i thought being a friend of mr Hobson you was a gentleman as wouldn't mind paying a bit extra for something special like this pork which these pigs was by Barnsley Champion III i cant charge less. i dont know who your specialist is but he dont know much about pork the bests the safest. please send ballance and remain

Yours obedient,
Henry Gibbs.

We were still in March and pork had not yet been decontrolled, so I returned the bill again with this brief but incisive note:--

My dear Mr. Gibbs,--I have never met your friend from Barnsley, but am surprised that you haven't come across my specialist, whose address is the Local Food Control Office at Harbury. Would you like to meet him? He is very interested in pigs, also in milk and other things in which you specialise expensively, so you would have lots to talk about, no doubt.

Yours sincerely,
Arthur K. Wilkinson.

The receipt in full, which reached me in reply, was very satisfactory. The pork was delicious.

* * * * *

* * * * *

FLOWERS' NAMES.

Lady's Bedstraw.

Under two secret arching hedges
Masses of Bedstraw grow,
Silvery-white among the sedges,
Like drifts of fairy-snow;
Deep's the middle, fringed the edges;
Who sleeps there? Do you know?
Do you? Or you?
Hark! for the breezes know.

"Oh, there my Lady Summer lies
Adream beneath cool April skies;
About her blossoms fall
On her long limbs and secret eyes.
Still she sleeps, virginal;
Then--hark! June's clarion call!
She lifts her wistful wilful eyes,
Springs light afoot and away she flies.
But her Bedstraw dies."

* * * * *

"We have received from ---- Manufacturing Company, New York,
makers of Distructive Stationery for Social Correspondence,
copies of their artistic Wall Calendars." _West Indian Paper._

The calendars don't interest us, but a few samples of the "distructive stationery" would come in useful for answering bores.

* * * * *

NOCTURNE.

Of course I suppose I ought to be grateful for the opportunity of having a front seat at one of Nature's romances, but I imagine she reaps more applause at matinées than at soirées. I know that I--But judge for yourself.

The _dramatis personæ_ were corncrakes, neighbours of mine. The heroine--a neat line in spring birdings--I labelled "Thisbe," and she had evidently inspired affection of no mean degree in the hearts of two enthusiastic swains, Strong-i'-th'-lung and Eugène. I know all this because Thisbe's home is a small tuft of grass not distant from my bedroom, and her admirers wooed her at long range from opposite corners of my field.

Now, as a cursory study of ornithology will tell you, the corncrake's method of attracting his bride is by song, and the criterion of excellence in C.C. circles is that the song shall be protracted, consistent and perfectly monotonous. To those who are unacquainted with his note I would describe it as rather similar to the intermittent buzzing noise which an inexperienced telephone operator lets loose when she can't think of a wrong number to give you. It has also points of resemblance to the periodic thud of the valve of a motor-tube when one is running on a deflated tyre. But there is no real standard of comparison. As a musical feat it is unique, and I for one am glad it is.

It was night. Eugène was in possession of the stage when I began to take an interest in the romance. I cannot say for how long he had serenaded his divinity before I became conscious of his lay, but I do know that thereafter he put in one and a half hours of good solid craking before he desisted. I then felt grateful for the silence, rolled over and prepared to get on with my postponed slumber.

But Strong-i'-th'-lung decreed otherwise. With a contemptuous snort at his rival's performance he opened his epic. He was splendid. For one and three-ninths hours he descanted on the glories of field life, on the freshness of the night, on the brilliance of the June foliage; for the next two hours he ardently proclaimed the surpassing beauty of Thisbe's eye, the glossiness of her plumage, the neatness of her claw, and he wound up with a mad twenty minutes of piercing monotony as he depicted the depth of his devotion for her.

When he ceased, in a silence which was almost deafening, I could visualise Thisbe dimpling with satisfaction and undoubtedly filled with tenderness toward a lover capable of expressing himself so eloquently. I turned over with a sigh of relief and closed my eyes in pleasurable anticipation of rest.

But Eugène felt it necessary to reply. I think his intention was to crake disbelief of his rival's sincerity, to throw cold water on his burning professions, perhaps even to question the excellence of his intentions. But his nerve was obviously shaken by his competitor's undoubtedly fine performance, and he craked indecisively. At 4.30 a.m. I distinctly heard him utter a flat note. At 4.47 he missed the second part of a bar entirely. Thisbe's beak, I must believe, curled derisively; Strong-i'-th'-lung laughed contemptuously, and at 5.10 a.m. Eugène faltered, stammered and fled from the field defeated.

The sequel I have had to build up on rather fragmentary data, but it appears that Eugène fled as far as Pudberry Parva, and endeavoured to cool his discomfiture in a dewy hayfield.

To him there came an old crone, the "father and mother" of all corncrakes, who comforted him, cossetted him, and from a fund of deep experience offered him hints on voice production. She also gave him of a nostrum of toadwort and garlic, which mollified his lacerated chords, and she prescribed massage of the throat by rubbing against a young beech stem.

Within two days Eugène was back in my field. In tones that feigned to falter he craked a few bars to open the performance. Strong-i'-th'-lung at once rose full of pitying confidence and craked for two and a half hours the song of the practically accepted suitor. It was a good song, and Thisbe seemed pleased, though I fancy she rather resented the note of assurance which he imparted to his ballad.

Then Eugène came on. Bearing well in mind all the instruction of his recent benefactress, he commenced at 11.45 p.m. such a masterpiece as has never before been heard in the bird world. His consistency of period was masterly, his iteration superb and his even monotony incomparable. Crake succeeded crake with dull regular inevitability. So far as I know he carried his bat. He was still playing strongly when I fell on a troubled sleep about 5.30....

The next day, walking through the field, I put up two birds which flew away together. One was Thisbe. And the other? Well, not Strong-i'-th'-lung. I stumbled across him a little later, dead without a wound.

* * * * *

"Wanted Music Master for 2 girls; also Mincing
Machine."--_Local Paper._

One way or another they seem determined that the poor girls shall be "put through it."

* * * * *

SHOULD MILLIONAIRES READ HOMER?

The recent discovery of a London millionaire, who not only lives in a small suburban villa, where his wife dispenses with servants, goes to bed at 7.30 p.m. and rises at 3 a.m., but reads Homer in the Greek, has caused a sensation.

His endeavours to prove to a doubting world the truth of a favourite British adage is admirable; and his modest establishment only bears out what the millionaires keep on telling us, that, owing to high taxation and the abnormal cost of luxuries, they must really be reckoned as poor men. But his study of Homer provokes a difference of opinion.

Our representative, in interviewing a venerable sociologist on the subject, was told that the study of Greek for millionaires is, within proper limits, comparatively harmless, but that Homer contains the elements of danger.

"It is in Homer's apotheosis of heroism in human combat that the peril lies," he said. "Having regard to the part played in the past by financiers in the wars between civilised nations, the security of the League of Nations will be threatened if the millionaires of to-day come under the spell of that great poet, who, with all his excellent qualities, directed his genius so persistently to the praise of warfare."

One of the millionaire class was next approached, and was asked what he thought of millionaires reading Homer.

"Why not?" he asked. "Some millionaires are great readers. I am one myself. There are not half-a-dozen of Oppenheim's I haven't read; and I like Hall Caine--and Ethel Dell's not bad. Who is this Homer? If he's any good I may as well order him."

"Well, Homer was a poet, you know, a--"

"I've no use for poetry," said the millionaire.

"A Greek poet, who lived--"

"Greek. A _Greek_, did you say?" A shrewd look came into his eyes. "Some of the cutest devils I know are Greeks." He pulled down a shirt-cuff and took a diamond-studded pencil from his waistcoat pocket. "How do you spell it? With an H?"

* * * * *

"POULTRY AND EGGS.

Belfast or Neighbourhood.--Locum Tenency or Sunday duty wanted
by well-known Rector during holiday."--_Irish Paper._

It looks as if he had been mistaken for a Lay-reader.

* * * * *

"Nothing is left of the knave of the church, but the choir still
remains."--_Scotch Paper._

We are glad they discarded the knave.

* * * * *

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

_Double Life_ (Grant Richards) is a story that unblushingly bases its appeal on the love of almost everyone for a fairy-tale of good fortune. The matter of it is to show how a lady amateur, wife of a novelist, herself hardly knowing one end of a horse from the other, might make forty thousand pounds in a year on the Turf, without even her own husband so much as suspecting her activities. The thing isn't likely, is indeed a fantasy of the wildest improbability; but, told with the zest imparted to it here by Mr. Grant Richards, it provides first-rate fun. Some danger of monotony there was bound to be in what is really a variation upon a single theme. Though the author cunningly avoids this, I think it might justly be observed that he has made _Olivia's_ plunges almost too uniformly successful. But perhaps not; after all, while you are handling fairy-gold, why be niggardly of it? The heroine's introduction to horse-racing comes about through the unconscious agency of her husband, who takes her with him on a visit to Newmarket in search of local colour for a "sporting" novel. The resulting situation reaches its climax in what is the best scene of the book, when _Geoffrey_, returning from a race that he has visited alone, but upon which _Olivia_, unknown to him, has risked thousands, recounts its progress in the best manner of realistic fiction, wholly ignorant of the true cause of what seems such flattering agitation in the listener. Altogether a happy if not very subtle story which I am glad that Mr. Grant Richards could persuade himself to publish.

To write, as Mr. R.W. Chambers has written, fifty-two novels, many of them excellent and all readable, while still on the right side of sixty, is an achievement of intelligent industry that entitles any novelist, at the latter end, to take matters a little easily. _The Moonlit Way_ (Appleton) has neither the imaginative qualities of _The King in Yellow_, the humour of _In Search of the Unknown_, nor the adventurous tang of _Ashes of Empire_, but it is a good live story that will carry the reader's interest to the last page. Mr. Chambers is at his best when dealing with spies and secret service agents and scheming chancellors and the other subterranean apparatus of war and diplomacy; at his least interesting when depicting affluent young America on its native heath of New York bricks and mortar. _The Moonlit Way_ deals with all these things and more. We are whisked from the Bosphorus to the Welland Canal on the heels of Germany's "War in the United States," and French Secret Service officers, German saloon keepers and Sinn Fein revolutionaries jostle one another for a place in our interest. The novel-reading public knows that it is quite safe in buying any story by Mr. Chambers, and, if it does not expect too much of _The Moonlit Way_, it will not be disappointed.

* * * * *

Lately, volumes of individual memorial to dead youth seem to have become less frequent. Perhaps there was a suggestion that the making of them, or rather their publication for the eyes of strangers, was in danger of being overdone. However this may be, I think that, quite apart from the appeal of circumstance, there would always have been a welcome for such a bright-natured book as one that Father Ronald Knox has put together, mostly from diaries and letters, about _Patrick Shaw-Stewart_ (Collins). Eton and Balliol will agree that there could be no biographer better fitted to record the life, as happy seemingly as it was fated to be short, of one who combined success with popularity at both these places, was caught by the War on the threshold of a wider career, served his country with very notable distinction and was killed in the winter of 1917. Though he met death in France, the most of Shaw-Stewart's war-service was on the Eastern front; in particular he saw more than most soldiers of the whole Gallipoli adventure, to which he went as a member of that amazing company--surely the very flower of this country's war contribution--the _Hood_ Battalion of the R.N.V.R. Here he was the comrade of many of those whom England has especially delighted to honour: Rupert Brooke, Denis-Browne, Charles Lister and others, all of whom figure in these vivid and most attractive letters; from which also one gathers an engaging picture of Shaw-Stewart himself, a generously admiring, humorous and entirely independent young Tory in a band of brilliant revolutionaries. In fine a book (despite its theme of promise sacrificed) full of laughter and a singularly charming character-study of one who, in his biographer's phrase, was assuredly "not one of the passengers of his generation."

* * * * *

_Eminent Botanist on scientific expedition_. "Dear me! Why didn't I take up Zoology instead of Botany? This seems such an interesting specimen."]

* * * * *

Miss Ella Sykes, after going with her brother and a camera on his special mission to Kashgar during the earlier days of the War, has detailed in charming fashion, under the title _Through Deserts and Oases of Central Asia_ (Macmillan), their travels in lands still almost unknown. Sir Percy Sykes himself has added some chapters on the history and customs of the district in order to allow himself the pleasure of referring affectionately to his hunting of the giant sheep--the _Ovis poli_--of the Pamirs. Between them they have given me a good deal of information, with a lot of really capital photographs, about a country--Chinese Turkestan--that one may have just heard of before, though it is impossible to be sure. Resisting a burning desire to pass on newly-acquired learning to the first listener, I will be content to say that a more readable volume of its kind has not come my way for a long time, and incidentally the country itself seems surprisingly desirable. For one thing it is free from the mosquitoes that spoil so many books of travel, while the people are peaceful, reasonably contented and not liable to jar on the reader's nerves, in the time-honoured fashion, with spears and poisoned arrows. Even the yaks, that one had supposed to be fearsome beasts, are mild benevolent pacifists. The authors do not suggest that it is all Paradise, of course, though for the Moslem there may be something of that sort in it. "Praise be to Allah! I have four obedient wives, who spend all their days in trying to please me," said a Kirghiz farmer to Sir Percy. But even Paradise may be a matter of taste.

* * * * *

If _War in the Garden of Eden_ (Murray) cannot be numbered among the books which must be read by a serious war-student it is in its unassuming way very attractive. Captain Kermit Roosevelt made many friends while serving as a Captain with the Motor Machine-Gun Corps in Mesopotamia, and here he reveals himself as a keen soldier and a pleasant companion. In style he is perhaps a shade too jerky; his frequent failure to make his connections gives one a sense of being in the hands of a rather rambling guide. But the important points are that he is an engaging rambler, and that he can describe his experiences both of war and peace with so clear a simplicity that they can be easily visualized. When the American Army arrived in France Captain Roosevelt naturally wished to join it, and his last chapter is called "With the First Division in France and Germany." But for us the main interest of his book lies in the work he did with the British in Mesopotamia, and to thank him for this would seem to be an impertinence.

* * * * *

Mr. Arnold Bennett's _From the Log of the Velsa_ (Chatto) deals with some vague period before the War (dates are most carefully concealed), when the versatile author undertook certain cruises up and down Dutch canals, the Baltic, French, Flemish and Danish coasts and East Anglian estuaries with companions about whom he preserves an equally mysterious silence. (Was it secret service, I wonder?) A delightful book, produced with something like pre-war attention to æsthetic appearance--a pleasant quarto with roomy pages faithfully printed in a fair type. You ought to enjoy the owner's evident enjoyment (he was never bored and therefore never boring), his charmingly ingenuous pride of possession, his shrewd, humorous and excessively didactic utterances about painters, pictures, architecture and female beauty, his zeal for water-colour sketching and his apparently profound contempt of other exponents of the craft. Nothing could be less like (I thank Heaven) the ordinary yachtsman's recollections of his travels, and I get an impression that Mr. Bennett was not ill-pleased to leave most of the work and the technical knowledge to his skipper.

* * * * *

"Crêpe de Chine in oyster white will show the top of the dress
embroidered to the knees in some unconventional design of black
and a deeper shade of white."--_Daily Paper_.

"The bridesmaid's dress was of heavy white crêpe-de-chine, of
pale apricot shade."--_Provincial Paper_.

Canning must have had a premonition of the modern fashions when he wrote in _The New Morality_, "Black's not so black, nor white so _very_ white."

* * * * *

From a bookseller's advertisement:--

"Mr. ---- has the way of when you finish one of his most
interesting books that you really cannot help yourself by
reading all." _Newfoundland Paper._

Not being quite sure whether this is a compliment or not we have suppressed the distinguished author's name.