Chapter II: Part 2

"Guilty," says Absalom, and that ends it.

* * * * *

Later a large and enthusiastic crowd outside (had there been one) might have seen a man with clean and sharp-cut features carrying a bag in one hand and an umbrella in the other, stepping lightly on to a Bilbury corporation tram, station bound. This is the counsel for the prosecution (still me), his grave responsibilities honourably discharged, hurrying back to the vortex of metropolitan life.

F. O. L.

* * * * *

_Darby._ "EH, WHAT? WHAT'S 'E SAY, JOAN?"

_Joan._ "'E SAYS 'E UNDERSTANDS FROM THE DOCTOR THAT YOU'RE 'EARING BETTER WITH THAT THERE."]

* * * * *

From a stores catalogue:--

"THE ---- WRINGER.

Guaranteed for one year--Fair wear and tear excepted."

There is always a catch somewhere.

* * * * *

"A consignment of Rumanian eggs has arrived in this country.
This shipment, which is the first to arrive since the war closed
this source of supply in 1914, consists of 100 cases, each
containing 1914 eggs."--_Scots Paper._

Referring, we trust, to the number and not the vintage.

* * * * *

"CONTRACTS, TENDERS, &c.

The Great Northern Railway Company.

Allegro moderato } from String }
Notturno ....... } Quartet, No. 2, } Borodine.
} in D }

STORES CONTRACTS."

_Daily Paper._

It is generally supposed that the company entertains the idea of attempting to "soothe the savage breast" of the MINISTER OF TRANSPORT.

* * * * *

THE LETTERS I NEVER POST.

_I met a philosopher the other day--he is not a philosopher by profession, but an architect--who told me that, when annoyed by the anomalies and petty red-tape restrictions of life or irritated by incompetence and incivility, or even when he feels that he can amend somebody else's error or propose an improvement, it is his habit to write a letter expressing his indignation or embodying his suggestions._

_After remarking that he must be kept very busy I asked him what kind of replies he got._

"_Oh, I don't get any replies," he said, "because, you see, I don't send the letters; I only write them and then I tear them up._"

_This is how I knew that he was a philosopher._

_I propose to take to philosophy myself._

* * *

TO A TAXI-DRIVER.

DEAR SIR,--(You must understand, as must all the people that I address in these epistles, that by "dear" I do not necessarily imply any affection. I employ the word because I am too old to care about breaking down harmless conventions; but I might claim in the present connection that it has more than one meaning. That indeed you will see, if you read on, is the main point of this letter.)--Dear Sir, then, you may remember me. I am the fare who hailed you on your rank at the corner of Fulham Road and Drayton Gardens last Tuesday evening at a quarter to six, and told you to drive to the Marble Arch. You put down the flag and then jumped off the box to wind up the starter. It failed, and after several attempts you had to examine the machinery. I suppose that six minutes were occupied in this way, whether because you are a bad mechanic or a careless fellow or because the engine is defective, I cannot say; all I know is that I was in a hurry and that the flag was down, but we were not moving. If you had not put the flag down I should have got out and taken another cab; but I felt that that would be unfair to you. When, however, at the end of the journey I paid you without adding any tip, and you received the money with an offensive grunt, I wished that I had been less considerate.

It is because nothing that I could have said then, in your horrid hostile mood, would have convinced you that there is any injustice to a fare at all in putting down your flag before you are properly started, that I am writing this letter. My hope is that quiet perusal may demonstrate that the fare has, at any rate, a grain of logic on his side if he looks upon himself as defrauded. We don't, you know, take your cabs for the joy of sitting in them, or for the pleasure of watching you struggling with a crank, but to be conveyed quickly from place to place. It is wrong to ask us to pay for the time spent by you in persuading your engine to behave, and it is indecent to become abusive when we act on that assumption. If I had not been so busy I should have refused to pay at all and forced you to summon me; but who has time for such costly formalities? And I might have had to lose my temper, which I have not done (much) since I read an article by a doctor saying that every such loss means an abbreviation of life. Life in a world made fit for heroes may not be any great catch, but it is better, at any rate, than passing to a region where one is apparently liable to be in constant communication with mediums.

One other thing. I have just returned from Paris, where, amid much that is unsatisfactory and besmirched by Peace, taxis remain trustworthy and plentiful. The price marked on the meter is that which the fare pays, and any number of persons may ride in the cab without extra charge. Nothing exceeds my scorn for the English taxi-driver who demands another ninepence for an additional passenger, even though only a child--nothing except my scorn for the cowardly official who conceded this monstrous imposition.

* * *

TO AN ADMINISTRATOR.

DEAR SIR,--May I implore you to authorise the instant removal of the buildings in the St. James's Park lake? During the War we who find on the suspension bridge, looking West, the most beautiful late afternoon view in London, were content to endure the invasion. But we have passed the second Armistice Day, and still the huts remain, and still there is no water, and still the enchanted prospect is denied us. After all, this lake is part of London, and London ratepayers should be entitled to their city's beauties as well as its necessities.

* * *

TO A PRETTY GIRL.

MY DEAR,--I want you to be a little more merciful. The other day, when your father, over the eggs and bacon, was reading out the news from Greece, with the defeat of VENIZELOS, you said lightly that exile didn't matter very much because VENIZELOS was a very old man. You then returned to the absorbing occupation of identifying Society people, reading from left to right. Now VENIZELOS is fifty-five years of age, and I cannot allow the term "very old" to be applied to him without protest; I am too nearly his contemporary. "Getting on," if you like, "mature," "ripe," but not "very old." You must keep that phrase for the people who--well, who _are_ very old.

* * *

TO A HABERDASHER.

DEAR SIR,--When I came to put on the collar that I bought from you yesterday (I am the tallish customer who takes sixteen and a half by two and was in a hurry to get home to dress) I found that your young man's finger-marks were on it. Why don't you make your assistants wear gloves when they handle collars?

* * *

TO A MINISTER OF RELIGION.

YOUR FAR-FROM-SERENE GLOOMINESS,--Won't you one day be a little cheerful, and wrong? Won't you send out a lifeboat to the wreck instead of watching her through your smoked field-glasses as she sinks? What you seem to forget is that most people at times are their own Gloomy Deans: some of us too often; and there can be too much of a good thing. Hopelessness butters no parsnips and it is a mood not to be encouraged or the world would be as bad as we then think it. Gloomy-deaniness, though salutary for brief intervals, should be sparingly indulged in; but you are at it all the time. There is a Chinese proverb which says, "If you can't smile don't open a shop;" and, after all, St. Paul's Cathedral is in a manner of speaking a kind of shop, isn't it?--the goods, at any rate, should be obtainable there. The phrase "there is no health in us" does not constitute the whole liturgy. Down with facile optimists by all means, but, my dear Sir----

E. V. L.

* * * * *

NEW RHYMES FOR OLD CHILDREN.

THE ERMINE.

The ermine is not quite as grand as he sounds;
As a rule he is shot if he comes in the grounds;
You have seen him about by the mulberry-tree,
Though I very much doubt if you knew it was he.

He is shot with a gun and hung up by the throat,
For the ermine, my son, is the same as the stoat;
So when Auntie has got just a little more ermine
You can tell her (or not) she is covered with vermin.

A. P. H.

* * * * *

ANOTHER IMPENDING APOLOGY.

"Col. ---- was unable to be present, and altogether the event
was highly successful."

_Local Paper._

* * * * *

_Second Pugilist._ "WELL, WHAT DO YOU PROPOSE TO DO ABOUT IT?"

_First Pugilist._ "I'LL SHOW YOU WHAT I'LL DO ABOUT IT--FOR A PURSE OF TEN THOUSAND POUNDS AND THE CINEMA RIGHTS."]

* * * * *

MORE NOTES FROM A SYNTHETIC COUNTRY DIARY.

_November 20th._--I have been much struck this morning by a remarkable instance of protective mimicry on the part of a grey squirrel, which assumes attitudes and adopts gestures which at a little distance render him almost indistinguishable from a small monkey. WHITE'S _Selborne_ throws no light on this strange phenomenon, which I can only explain as a result on the animal world of the now fashionable _Tarzan_ cult, which so happily reconciles the old hostility between apes and angels.

Of the habits and customs of the hedgehog mention has already been made in these notes. It may be added that the whistle which these interesting creatures emit from time to time resembles the _timbre_ of a muted piccolo, and their employment in a mixed orchestra is well worth the consideration of our younger and more enterprising composers. Another animal which shares with the hedgehog the defensive faculty of rolling itself up in a ball is the "pill millipede," a myriopod with seventeen pairs of legs, but fortunately exempt from the necessity of wearing trousers, which at present prices would impose an exorbitant demand on its resources.

As winter draws on the evolutions of birds great and small are a never-ending source of surprise and delight. Many hooded crows are now to be seen consorting with the rooks in the field and swelling the sable multitude that flies at evensong towards the park trees. And great congregations of plovers, curiously self-sufficing in their ability to dispense with the services of any feathered parson, lend colour and subconscious uplift to marshland scenes, which would otherwise look extremely _triste_.

Small indigenous birds, such as titmice, chipmunks, pipits and squinches, are constantly seen in coveys or even bevies just now. A party of pipwinks visited my copse yesterday afternoon, and indulged in delicious _morceaux_ of melody before the red sun sank starkly below the horizon....

As long as the weather remains open I find it a good plan to plant flowers and shrubs which bloom in the spring. Proticipation is a cardinal asset in the outfit of the judicious gardener, and no time should be lost in completing the spring beds, as the cost of hair-mattresses is going up by leaps and bounds.

* * * * *

THE PLAGUE OF DOTS.

There are decimal dots which we can't do without
In spite of Lord RANDOLPH'S historical flout;
There are dots too, with dashes combined, in the mode
Familiar in Morse's beneficent code;
While some British parents good reasons advance
In favour of "_dots_" as they're managed in France.
But as for the writers disdainful of plots
Who pepper their pages with plentiful dots,
They must not complain if the critics of prose
Disapprove of a practice which savours of pose,
And, searching around for an adequate [Greek: hoti],
Proclaim it a sign of a brain that is dotty.

* * * * *

From an article on "Back to Germany":--

"The quiet, old-fashioned restaurants, where in the old days I
have seen field-marshals' batons hanging up in the cloak-room,
know them no more."--_Daily Paper._

Nowadays the German Field-Marshal takes his baton into the dining-room to stir his soup.

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"WILL YOU KISS ME?"

Even before the era of Prohibition (there were cocktails in this play) strange things must have happened in "God's own country" under the banner of the Bird of Freedom. But never so strange as the effects you get on the stage when very English people play at being Americans. You have to be rather young and unsophisticated if such phrases as "He's putting it over on us," or "I'm not going to stand for that," generously peppered about the dialogue and recited in the purest of English accents, can persuade you to believe that you are getting the real local stuff. At the same time you accept cheerfully the most farcical conditions on the vague assumption that all things may be possible over there.

So, when _John W. Brook_, of Fifth Avenue, millionaire, engaged the services of _Alexander Y. Hedge_, plenipotentiary representative of an Efficiency Company, to introduce economic reforms into his motherless household during his temporary absence, we regarded it as a most reasonable experiment. And for a time it made excellent fun. But after a while it began to wear thin for lack of fresh stimulus, and by the end of the Second Act there was a general feeling in the audience that something would have to be done about it.

The same thought seems to have occurred to Mr. CYRIL HARCOURT, the author, and he started, a little late in the day, to introduce an element of sex-romance into what so far had been an absolutely bloodless proposition. But at first it was with sinister intent that _Brook's_ elder daughter made advances to _Alexander Y. Hedge_. As soon as she could induce this monster of inhumanity to become a prey to her charm she would repulse him with scorn, and then he would have to go.

The children's allowances having been cut off on the ground that they did nothing to earn them, she offered her services as his paid secretary. "Propinquity" did its work and she was soon in a position to offer him the privilege of an experimental kiss, thus incidentally justifying the dreadful title of the play.

The first, delivered on the cheek, was a wash-out; but the second, pressed home on the lips, had the desired effect. Then she turned and rent him, telling him exactly what she thought of his treatment of the family. He replied with an eloquent philippic directed at the vices of a bloated aristocracy (this was the ante-bellum age, before things had been made so much safer for democracy). Almost before the applause of the gallery had died down, the father burst upon the scene, furious at the report that this hired commercial had been making love to his daughter.

Explanations follow which appease his wrath, and he is further mollified by the statement that the Master of Efficiency had cut down the expenses of his _ménage_ by some nineteen thousand dollars. But why, when his feats of economy had all the time been the matter of his offence in the children's eyes, the announcement of the total should have favourably affected the girl's heart I cannot say, and I don't think anybody else can. Yet the fact remains that the next moment she undertakes to marry the object of her previous loathing.

To have arrived naturally at such an end would have meant a couple more Acts, in which the man _Hedge_ might have had time to live down the evil effects of his efficiency. But with so much economy in the air the author appears to have caught the infection of it and economised in his processes to save our time. That is the kindest excuse I can find for him.

As for the moral, it would seem to be that, if (as is more than probable) you have no copy of the works of ARISTOTLE in your Fifth Avenue library, and imagine, never having heard of the happy mean, that virtue lies in one of two excesses--an excess of idle luxury or an excess of efficiency--the former is the one to choose.

Mr. DONALD CALTHROP as _Hedge_ bore the burden of the play with a high hand that had a very sure touch. It was extraordinary with what alertness and confidence he commanded every situation--except, of course, the absurd climax which nobody could hope to handle. Mr. C. V. FRANCE, as the English butler (ex-clergyman) who had taken a long time to learn how to disfigure his aspirates (out of deference to the American legend), gave a very fresh and attractive performance. Some of the best things in the dialogue--not always very humorous--were given to little _Alice Brook_ (aged 14), one of those precocities for which America has always held the world's record. I don't know, and should not think of asking, Miss ANN TREVOR'S age, but she looked to me a little old for the part of this child, however precocious. Miss MARJORIE GORDON played with intelligence as the elder sister, but never for a moment suggested a New York atmosphere. Indeed she adopted just the mincing kind of speech which out there is held to bewray the "Britisher." The only performance that made any real pretence of being American was that of Mr. TURNBULL as the manager of the Efficiency Company.

_Horace, the Butler_ (MR. C. V. FRANCE) lengthens his stride in obedience to

_Alexander Y. Hedge_ (MR. DONALD CALTHROP).]

Still, after all, local colour is no great matter so long as you get some recognisable aspect, though farcically presented, of human nature; but the trouble with this play is that while our sense of the probabilities is never too much outraged so long as the chief character is just a piece of inhuman machinery, the author lapses into the incredible the moment he tries to introduce a little humanity into his scheme. However, I have perhaps taken things too seriously, instead of being properly grateful for some very good entertainment.

O. S.

* * * * *

FASHIONS FOR MEN.

"Miss ---- takes Orders for Knitted Skirts, Jerseys, and Hats to
match. Also, Gent.'s Cardigan Coats and Hand-Painted Blouses."

_Scots Paper._

* * * * *

"The Rev. W. E. ---- based the subject of his discourse on 'The
Foolish Virgins.' A large number were present."

_South African Paper._

We trust they were edified.

* * * * *

"The discovery of Saturn's rings was made by Galileo in 1610
through his little refractory telescope."--_Welsh Paper._

The difficulty with this kind of instrument is to make it shut up.

* * * * *

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

Inevitably one's first thought on sighting _A Naval History of the War_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is that he must be a brave skipper indeed who would take out a lone ship, however excellently found, to cruise such controversial waters. But Sir HENRY NEWBOLT is an experienced hand, and, though (so to speak) one finds him at times conscious of Sir JULIAN CORBETT on the sky-line, he brings off his self-appointed task triumphantly. To drop metaphor, here is a temperate and clearly-written history, midway between the technical and the popular, of a kind precisely suited to the plain man who wishes a comprehensive _résumé_ of the course of the War at sea. For this purpose its arrangement is admirable, the story being presented first in a general survey under dates, then in special chapters devoted to episodes or aspects, e.g., Coronel and the Falklands (that unmatchable drama of disaster and revenge), the submarines and their countering, and finally Jutland. Throughout, as I have said, Sir HENRY, having one of the best stories in the world to tell, is at pains to avoid anything that even remotely approaches fine writing. Only once have I even detected the literary man, when, in describing the strange finish of the _Königsberg_, he permits himself the pleasure of calling it "the sea fight in the forest." For the rest, the "strength and splendour" of England's greatest naval war are left to make their own impression. I shall be astonished if such a book, having figured brilliantly as a present this Christmas, is not treasured for generations as a work of family reference in hundreds of British homes.

* * *

The name of Mrs. BELLOC LOWNDES on the outside would alone have made me open _From the Vasty Deep_ (HUTCHINSON) with a pleasant anticipation of creepiness, even without the generous measure of bogies depicted on the coloured wrapper. Having now read the story, I am bound to add (and I can only hope that Mrs. LOWNDES will take my admission for the compliment that it really is) that the net result has been one of slight disappointment. Briefly, I continue to prefer the writer as a criminal, rather than a psychic, "Fat Boy." After all, once grant your ghost and anyone can conjure it, with appropriate circumstance, at the proper moments. Wyndfell Hall was full enough of ghosts, all ready to appear at the voluntary or involuntary instance of a young lady named _Bubbles_, who was one of the Christmas house-party and the owner of a rather uncomfortable gift of spook-raising. But beyond making themselves an occasional nuisance to the guests I couldn't find that the phantoms did anything practical to help along such plot as there was. Even the quite palpable fact that the host was at least a double murderer came to proof by the ordinary process of law rather than by any supernatural revelation. Before this I have gratefully owed to Mrs. LOWNDES the raising of my remaining hairs like quills upon the fretful porcupine, but the ca'-canny bogies of her present story are too perfunctory to excuse even a shiver in any but the most unsophisticated reader.

* * *

It may, I suppose, be accounted for righteousness to Major-General Sir ARCHIBALD ANSON that in _About Others and Myself_ (MURRAY) he is so little of an egotist as to convey scarcely any impression of what manner of man he is or what he thinks of this or that. Much more clear from her quoted letters is the character of his grandmother, who vainly tried to keep the over-gallant First Gentleman of Europe out of mischief. Our autobiographer gives us a plain, blunt, not to say bald record of what must have been an interesting life. He was at Eton under KEATE; a cadet at Woolwich, where he saw a gunner receive two hundred lashes; a gunnery subaltern in the Crimea, where he saw many queer and unedifying things; a successful administrator in Madagascar, Mauritius and Penang, and finally Governor of the Straits Settlements, with a K.C.M.G. and honourable retirement to follow. But he is a man of action rather than words, and his faculty of observation is but too often exercised upon such slender matters as that "Poor Captain Powlett met with a misfortune on the way to Kedah. His servant laid the dinner things on the deck of the gunboat, then went below for something and, coming up again, accidentally walked into the middle of the crockery and glass, causing considerable destruction." Also, I think he quotes his testimonials--those never very candid and always very dull documents--much too freely. The best of the book is concerned with his administration work in Penang and district, where on the evidence he seems to have kept his end up with skill and no small zeal for good government.

* * *

The title of Lady (LAURA) TROUBRIDGE'S new novel, _O Perfect Love_ (METHUEN), applies to her V. C. hero only; with his wife it is a case of O Very Imperfect Love. _Jean Chartres_ is a common product of the age, the sort of girl that insists on "having a good time" and "living her life" and "being herself" (how well one knows the jargon!). Less common, let us hope, is the woman who would desert her husband, as _Jean_ did, because the injuries he had received in the War prevented him from giving her the kind of life for which she craved. Foolish rather than vicious, she drifts into a relationship which could have had only one conclusion, if her lover, tiring of platonics, had not prematurely pressed his demands. Thoroughly scared by his violence she runs away and finds sanctuary with the "perfect love" of the title. In this happy solution she had better fortune than she deserved. It is not every woman who has the good luck, when rushing blindly out of the House of Peril into the wintry night (in a ball-dress), to find--what had apparently escaped _Jean's_ memory for the moment--that her faithful husband's estate is in the immediate neighbourhood. Though Lady TROUBRIDGE'S sense of style is not impeccable she can tell a good tale; her dialogue rings true and her characters are well observed. The trouble with most authors of Society novels is that either they know their subject but can't write, or that they can write but know nothing of their subject. Lady TROUBRIDGE is one of the very few writers in this kind who both know their world and how to portray it.

* * *

Mr. B. BENNION follows the vogue for confidentially descriptive covers in announcing, as a title to his volume of angling reminiscences, that _The Trout are Rising in England and South Africa_ (LANE) and suggesting that here is "a book for slippered ease." One is certainly warned not to expect anything very strenuous in its course, and indeed so placidly flow its waters that few, perhaps, but devotees of the craft will follow it to the end. Not but what there are metaphorical trout in it, too--enticing descriptions of bits of rivers, for instance--but on the whole they are easy-going fish that come to bank without showing very much sporting spirit. Here is no manual of precise information, though even old fishermen may gather a hint or two; nor yet a guide-book to the trout-streams of two continents; not even a collection of good stories, though anyone may come across some old friends in it. The author's yarns indeed are numerous and, on the whole, as an angler's yarns should be, picturesque. If he does seem to enjoy the rather feeble joke or incident as much as the other sort, that may be natural in a book of ease, whether slippered or not. Indeed one half suspects it is as a book for his own ease that the writer is mainly considering it, yet, taken in the right spirit and especially if you are an enticer of trout, it may be for your ease too. Of course, if you are not an angler and if your spirit is not right, the slipper may not fit.

* * *

In the course of a long study of detective fiction I have never met any sleuths with a gift of loquacity like that of _Messrs. Corson_ and _Gibbs_, who during the first part of _In the Onyx Lobby_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) make futile efforts to trace the murderer of _Sir Herbert Binney_, proprietor of Binney's Buns. _Sir Herbert_ had gone to New York to persuade his nephew to become the manager of an American branch of a Binney Bun factory, and, on returning late at night to his apartment-house, was stabbed to death. Fortunately Miss CAROLYN WELLS seems to have grown as tired of them as I did, and they give way to one _Pennington Wise_ (whose name did not prepossess me in his favour) and his assistant, _Zizi_. This couple have the authentic sleuth-touch, and their detection of those implicated in the murder is a very ingenious piece of work. There is so much padding in this book that if _Sir Herbert_ had worn a tithe of it no stabber could even have scratched him; but with judicious skipping it will wile away two or three idle hours. And, as I said, the solution is a really skilful piece of work.

* * * * *

"YES, SHE 'AS. BUT ONE GOOD THING ABOUT 'ER IS, 'ER WEALTH AIN'T SPOILT 'ER."]

* * * * *

Extract from an account of the unveiling of the portrait of Mr. ----, M.P.:--

"It was a happy idea to unveil the portrait in a darkened room."

_Local Paper._

But after the LEVERHULME-JOHN episode we ought to have been told whose was the happy idea, the artist's or the sitter's?