Chapter V: Mr. Craighouse of New York, Satirist 287 (6)

London's costume drama was at its height; uniformed men and girls paraded in their thousands. There were loose-limbed Colonials, slouchily-smart British Tommies, amazingly serious Americans; bus-girls, land-girls, girls on motor-cycles, and girls driving ambulances; graceful French officers, swarthy Italians, impassive Japanese, and ruddy-faced British sailors seeking a day's diversion from the sentry-go of the sea.

From the great, throbbing city a babel of voices rose, like the sound from a gigantic mart; hurrying, restless vehicles worried their way through the maze of traffic; Youth with its carelessness of years elbowed Age, waiting with weakening tread the call of the Reaper to whom all men's lives are but sands that run their little course. Over the whole city brooded the Past.

Take all the comedies of the centuries; gather the tragedies of history; piece them together with the fancies of a madman's brain--and what could they offer in the play of human emotions that would compare with one hour of London's life?

They had gone a little way down Regent Street when an exclamation of delight escaped from the girl.

"_Tiens!_" She caught the airman by the arm. "Papa Joffre!"

A one-legged man with outstretched cap was seated on the pavement, and beside him were five colored drawings vaguely suggesting men of the times.

"But he is wonderful," cried the girl. "See--it is Papa Joffre himself! Monsieur, you will give him a little present?"

The airman presented the art-exhibitor with half-a-crown, receiving a gin-and-watery blessing in return, as they strolled on their way.

"She's the fust one," muttered the cripple, preparing to close business for the day, "as 'as recognoized that there dial of Juff's this last four month. It were a rotten drawink and no mistike. Blime! I'll give that cove this 'arf-crown to draw me a picter of this 'ere General Fush as what is getting hisself talked abaht."

He saw a shadow on the pavement and held out his cap. A Jewish rabbi, with sallow brow and spiritual face, passed without a glance, his flowing robes oddly reminiscent of the Levite in that Past to which the age of London is mere immaturity.

The wanderers turned into Pall Mall, and, traversing it, reached the Strand, where the meeting of human currents forms a whirlpool. Threading their way with difficulty, he felt the restraining hand on his arm, as he had done two hundred times that day. The girl had stopped opposite a hollow-eyed old woman offering violets, from her seat on a box, to the thousands who cared as little for her flowers as for her.

Once more he produced the inevitable coin, and again received a blessing, as trembling, unlovely fingers clutched it. He was about to turn away, when something almost attractive in the wrinkled face held his attention. The woman had looked searchingly at the girl, then into his eyes, and, touched by sudden sympathy, there was a faded echo of comeliness in her features that came and went, like a glow caused by a breath of air on ashes that seemed dead.

"What is it, mother?" he asked, holding the girl's arm. "Business bad?"

"Yes--yes," answered the woman in a low, weak voice; "but it's her I'm thinking of. Take care of her, laddie, won't you?"

The girl, unable to understand them, leaned over and smiled into the wrinkled face. With a little air of embarrassment Pippa picked half-a-dozen violets from her cluster, holding them out to the woman, who took them with strangely twitching features, just as an encircling current of the Strand caught them in its grip and carried them away.

Although they had rested at noon in a quiet hostelry in Oxford Street, after visiting Kensington Gardens where the delightful statue of Peter Pan pleads for belief in fairies, it was obvious that the strain of countless impressions was beginning to bring fatigue to his charge. Accordingly the airman paused in the doorway of a theater and drew her away from the traffic's turmoil.

"It is three-thirty," he said, "and there is a performance inside."

Her eyes, which still held their tenderness for the woman of the flowers, sparkled happily.

"That is delightful monsieur. Is it a play as I read in my books?"

"Alas, Pippa! there are no more plays--only revues."

"But there is music?"

"There is an orchestra."

"It will be droll, monsieur?"

"I doubt it, little one; but we shall see."

Purchasing tickets from a lordly being in a cage, they entered the theater, where a huge audience was rocking with laughter at the three hundred and sixteenth performance of _Oh Aunt!_ They took their seats just in time to hear the best of a scene between two comedians who, lest the subtlety of their wit be lost, were talking at the top of their lung-power, pulling chairs from underneath one another, colliding frequently, and every now and then, to emphasize some point, kicking each other.

Several minutes passed, and wonderingly the French girl gazed at the pair, while the melancholy of her escort's face reached an intensity that threatened tears.

"Monsieur."

He inclined his face towards hers.

"Monsieur--they are----?" She did not complete the sentence, but her shoulders conveyed her meaning.

He smiled sadly. "They are," he said.

She sighed sympathetically. "Poor gentlemen!" she murmured.

After that the comedians sang a duet, the words of which dealt with marital infidelity, that screamingly funny subject on which the stage of to-day builds its humorous efforts. Once the verse ended with an innuendo so crude that a gathering of navvies might have resented it.

There was a laugh and a gasp from the audience--then wild applause; the song could not go on for the riot of appreciation. One of the comedians (who had sung it only three hundred and fifteen times) tried to commence the next verse, but was suddenly overcome with laughter himself. The guffaws became a barrage; then, as the other singer turned abruptly about, his shoulders heaving convulsively, the din grew to drum-fire and was deafening. How richly humorous! It was really too much! People held their sides and gasped for breath.--"Have you seen _Oh Aunt_? My dear, it is _too_ killing for words."

Up in the gallery one man sat with an unsmiling face. He was a wounded Tommy who had been blown from a ditch to the top of a barn, and from the barn to another ditch. He had had his fill of slapstick comedy.

When the song was over there were shrieks of forced, girlish laughter, and nearly forty young women in various stages of dishabille rushed on the stage, exhibiting to a critical audience the charms and the defects of their forty individual forms. The producer had been both daring and sparing. He was a second-rate burlesque manager in New York, but London, that great haven for American mediocrity, recognized his genius, and gave him a chance. He knew the value of a chorus, and how to get the best out of them--oh, he knew!

"Monsieur."

The officer turned slowly and looked at the girl beside him. Her face was flushed and her eyes stared at the ground.

"Yes, little one?"

"Please--take me away."

Without questioning her further, he reached for his cap, and amid the wondering glances of the people around, they left the theater. He paused in the foyer and put on his gloves.

"I am sorry, Pippa," he said gravely.

Her hand stole soothingly into his arm, and both of them, unknown to each other, experienced a feeling that he was the younger of the two. After all, every woman is a potential mother, and men are only boys grown serious; so she comforted him with the touch of her hand, and--perhaps it was the natural contraction in putting on the glove--his arm pressed hers tight to his side.

And though he was a man, he understood. It is not precept or preaching that teaches it. Modesty in a girl is instinctive; and the little lady from the mill-house had known no other teacher than instinct.

Outside the theater an attendant was changing the performance number of _Oh Aunt!_ from 316 to 317.

X

Twenty minutes later, in the large tea-rooms of a fashionable hotel just off the Strand, there was a murmur of interest as a flying-officer, quizzically dejected of countenance, entered with a young lady, who glanced shyly about, and whose fingers held his, timidly but confidingly.

He secured a table, and ordered tea from a pleasant waitress. This accomplished, he said something to his companion, who was sitting bolt-upright, keeping a steady gaze on her hands crossed on her lap. Smiling a little, she slowly raised her face and looked into his. A young Canadian subaltern, seated at a table with a woman whose overpowdered, meaningless beauty was only too eloquent, stopped in some remark he was making. Something in the French girl's face had sent his mind, smitten with loneliness, speeding across the Atlantic to a home whence a mother and a sister had sent the finest thing they had across the seas.

Near them, two girls, fresh of face, tittered and posed, challenging the eyes of every man who entered, with a brazen immodesty strangely at variance with their appearance of decent breeding. At a farther table a young woman, with a beauty that was marred by too hard a mouth, sat with her mother and listened to that woman's urging that she should marry a wealthy Jew who had asked for her hand. Was it not her duty to herself and to her mother? Besides, even if that young fellow did come back uncrippled from the trenches--which was unlikely--he would have to begin all over again. Alone, a good-looking artist, discharged from the army with wounds, sat with an insouciant, mocking eye, searching for types and adventure. Around him women of all ages, some of them with men, smoked, while their chatter mixed discordantly with the orchestra playing some negroid ragtime piece, and with the sound of rattling tea-cups.

"Your Majesty," said the miller's niece, relapsing into her former style of address, "there is so much I cannot understand."

"Such as what, youngster?"

"These ladies here. Some are so pretty and so nice. Others are pretty and----" Again she shrugged her shoulders as only a French woman can. "I am so young, it is true--but see that lady there."

"With the young Canadian--yes?"

"Somehow, monsieur, she frightens me. I did not know that women ever looked that way--like Louis when he catches a mouse."

"The simile is very apt, Pippa."

"But then"--her brows puckered with a first endeavor to harness language to her psychology--"you can see that nice girl there, so fair and pink."

"I prefer them dark," said he seriously; "but what of her?"

The expounder of philosophy breathed deeply, but stuck to her task.

"I think," she said, "that the fair girl is nice, but this one is ..." (shrug) ... "Then why, monsieur, does the nice one try to look just like the other?--_Regardez-moi ça_--see her now."

He poured out the tea, which had just arrived.

"Shall I tell you a story?" he asked.

She sighed happily. "Tell me a true story," she said with that insistence of the young on making all things believable.

He sipped his tea and frowned meditatively.

"Not long ago, my dear, there lived a stupid king."

"Your father?"

"In any one but you, Pippa, that would be pert. No, he was not my father."

"I wonder if Louis----" she began, but he checked her with a portentous frown.

"Once," he began again, "there lived a stupid king named Convention."

"What a silly name!"

"Pippa!" he admonished her with a warning finger.

She tried to look serious, but ended by laughing mischievously.

"There was a stupid king with a silly name?" she said encouragingly.

"This king," he said, "was very wise in some things, and often kind, but his courtiers were a poor lot--Hypocrisy, Snobbery, Good and Bad Form, and a lot of others. Now the king used to favor the men among his subjects."

"You mean, he liked men?"

"Yes."

"So do I," she said in an outburst of frankness. "They are so droll."

He poured some fresh tea into the cups.

"This King Convention," he said, after a thoughtful pause, "said that men could do a lot of things that women could not, which made the women very angry. Now the king had a jester named Shaw."

"What is a jester?"

"A man who makes jokes that people may laugh."

"Why do they laugh at jokes?"

"Well, in England--especially on the stage--it is from the pleasure of meeting old friends. As a race, we are rather sentimental about our jests, and don't take kindly to new ones."

She sipped some tea, holding the cup in both hands, but with considerable daintiness.

"Tell me an English joke," she said.

He stroked his faded little mustache.

"The House of Lords," he ventured, after some thought.

"_Hé!_ Is that funny?"

"Very."

"I do not laugh. Tell me another."

He broke a corner off a piece of toast.

"One of the richest bits of humor in England," he said, "is the idea that children born into wealthy or titled families are superior clay to their fellows."

Pippa thought tremendously.

"I think, monsieur, I know why you look so sad. It is because of what you have to laugh at in your country.... But please go on and tell me what happened to--how say you it?--the jester."

"Ah yes. Well, G. B. Shaw----"

"What is this--G. B.?"

"Those are his names--Gor' Blime Shaw."

Pippa sighed. It was very difficult to become interested in people of such strange nomenclature.

"What did he, then, this Gor Shaw?" she asked, feeling that the story must end sometime.

"Well, as a matter of fact, he was rather a poor jester, because his only joke was to stand on his head. At first every one laughed; but after a while they thought that it was his natural position, and paid no attention to him. It was really pretty hard on the poor chap, because he was too old to learn any new tricks, and he used to become dizzy from being upside-down so much. Finally he grew furious at the king for not laughing, and urged all the women who did not like Convention to murder him. When the war came along they saw their chance. The men went away, and the real women of England were too busy helping them to bother about anything else. You see, Pippa, in our country we have the noisy, chattering, selfish women who do good by lime-light and find their reward in the illustrated journals. But there are also those, the unrecognized and unthanked ones, who share others' griefs, but suffer alone. It is the unseen, unheard women of Britain who are really wonderful."

The girl said nothing, but her face, so suggestive of color in its elusive change of expression, softened to a tender mood that left her eyes very dark and somber, and her lips curved slightly into a smile that was full of sympathy.

The young Canadian subaltern looked directly at her and compressed his lower lip with his teeth.

"What's the matter, dearie?" croaked the woman beside him; but he returned no answer.

The two tittering girls stopped their staccato giggling for a moment, then resumed with a steadfastness of purpose that somehow robbed the effect of spontaneity. The young woman with the over-firm mouth took in the tableau of the airman and his little charge, and turned to her mother with some sarcastic comment that was strangely belied by the look of hunger in her eyes. The artist, still with his air of graceful insouciance, sat with half-closed eyelids and visualized Pippa as a subject for canvas. "What a Psyche she would make!" he muttered. The orchestra was just going to play, when the leader, who had been idly gazing at the throng of guests, made a gesture of dissent.

"We shall not do 'Oh, that Opium Rag,'" he said. "You see that girl there, with the dark curls and the sweet little face? For her let us play Mendelssohn's 'Spring Song.'"

Quite unaware of their interested audience, the flying-man and his companion continued their excursion into the realm of fables, while untouched toast and half-emptied cups stood by in neglected array.

"That is practically all the story," he said. "When the war came on, they murdered poor old Convention."

"Oh!"

"Slaughtered him," he said gloomily; "though all his bad courtiers escaped. For a long time it was feared that the king's son, Courtesy, and his niece, Charm (who were very much in love with each other), had also been done to death, but there are rumors that they have been seen in remote parts of England. So, Pippa, that is why these young women look and act alike. They are the murderers of Convention."

"Monsieur, I am frightened."

He produced his pipe, received a horrified look from a gorgeous waiter, and hurriedly replaced it in his pocket. "The first thing the women did," he went on, "was to place Vulgarity and his Queen, Stupidity, on the throne; but there are signs that their reign will be brief. When the men come back and the quiet women speak, I think we shall see another Revolution that will put Courtesy and Charm in the place of Vulgarity and Stupidity. So, after all, my dear"--he grew quite cheerful at the thought--"poor old Shaw may have done some good in inciting the murder of Convention. Perhaps, though the thought would annoy him frightfully, he may yet go down to history as a martyr--the reformer who stood on his head!"

But she was not listening to him. She was silently enjoying, for the first time, the fragrance of Mendelssohn's Melody of Spring, which found immediate response in her nature, so attuned to the delicate things of life. It had a somewhat contrary effect on the others, whose conversation, which had begun to lag, took on fresh impetus with the sound of the orchestra.

"Tell me," she whispered, vastly puzzled, "why do they talk so loud when there is music?"

He shook his head. "I don't know," he answered. "It is said that music soothes the savage breast--it certainly loosens the civilized tongue."

The charming setting to the happiness of Spring-time, written by a composer who really never grew up, came to an end, and in sheer delight the French girl clapped her hands twice. The leader acknowledged the compliment by bowing. She did not know that it was for her alone he had chosen it.

The airman examined his watch. "Little one," he said, "I am afraid our day is nearly over. In half-an-hour we must catch a train back to 'The Plough and Crown,' where we shall have dinner and a little rest. At eight o'clock two friends of mine from the aerodrome here will bring the machine--you understand that taking young ladies from France to England has not been officially authorized by the Air Ministry. As soon as the stars are out we shall start for home."

They rose to go.

She smiled shyly at the orchestra, and once more the leader bowed. With the daintiest of gestures she raised her hand and waved to him; then, feeling for her protector's arm, she started for the door, her eyes timidly glancing about her from beneath sheltering, downcast eyelashes. Without the least embarrassment, the tanned airman with the strangely light moustache and eyebrows walked beside her, experiencing an indefinable sense of possession that proved most agreeable.

The artist toyed with an unlit cigarette. "With such a model," he muttered, "if I could only indicate that swift rhythm of expression, I should be great."

The tittering girls kept up their chatter. They had long since learned that nothing stifles thought like meaningless conversation--and they were afraid their thoughts might be unpleasant.

The young woman with the over-firm mouth drew back as the airman and his companion passed her table, but her eyes clung to the French girl's face as though its winsomeness and purity held the answer to her troubles. Swift as imagination itself, her mind leaped to France, picturing a young fellow who, if he did come back unmaimed, would have to begin all over again.

"Mother," she said, with hot resentment in her voice, "I am entitled to my own life. I have seen too many tragedies in material marriages to dread one of love."

"You are a fool," said the other; and because she was the stronger of the two, she prevailed.

The woman who looked as Louis did when he caught a mouse turned on the Canadian boy, who had followed Pippa with a far-away, dreamy stare.

"What's the matter, dearie?" she queried, with the tedious endearment of her class.

He brought himself from the reveries that had strangely blended the French girl's face with the faces of two other women across the sea; then he looked into his companion's with its leering comeliness. With a quick, decisive movement he rose to his feet, and, feeling for his pocket-book, placed a pound-note on the table.

"Pay for what we've had," he said, his jaw stiffening, but his voice shaking oddly.

"What! aren't I going to see you again?"

He was going to speak, but changed his mind, and, turning on his heel, strode from the place, his spurs jingling with each step ... and there was something in his face that made people keep silent as he passed.

XI

It lacked two hours of midnight when an aeroplane crossed the Channel.

With his feet automatically guiding the rudder and his eyes keeping incessant watch on his compass and the pulsating lights of landing points showing like lighthouses at sea, the Black Cat brought all his conscious mind to bear on the events of the day.

In the whim of the moment, when the rain was on the roof, he had suggested this adventure to the little girl of the lonely mill-house; and for one day London had been hers. He had carried out his plan. Her countless comments, some childish, some strangely mature, were evidence enough of her enjoyment. Then why, he questioned, was he experiencing a dull feeling of depression, as the shadows beneath showed that once more they were over France? To-morrow he would have the zest of battle; again he would lead his squadron in the greatest sport of the ages.... Then why this heaviness of spirit?

His mind relapsed into a musing mood that got him no further in his introspective analysis; and his eyes, which had always been a reliable pair, commenced playing odd tricks with him. Though in the daytime he was used to seeing the earth and the horizon, and thus establishing his estimate of distance, he was relying that night almost entirely on his sense of equilibrium, glancing only occasionally at the instruments which would tell him if he were not flying level.

It was the compass that first surprised him.

He was studying its sensitive needle when he noted with some astonishment that the dial had taken on the addition of two dark and most expressive eyes, which proceeded to surround themselves with the delicate features of a girl's face, possessed of a brow that was spiritually white, and dark hair that melted into the blackness of the night.

He shook his head and sought a light on the ground, which, after the manner of "Winking Willies," was showing long and short flashes like Morse. To his amazement, the light became a smile, which gradually developed into a most alluring female face. If he had been in possession of his usual sense of the humorous, he would have recalled that Lewis Carroll's cat appeared to Alice in much the same way; but his mind and body were both in the clouds, a realm where cats and humor are uninvited guests.

He next tried a star, which underwent the same evolution. Even the moon was not proof against the phenomenon. Once he half-closed his eyes, but that was worse than ever. Everywhere he looked, there was the same face--smiling, pouting, coquetting, sympathizing, commiserating.

He tried whistling, but it offered no relief.

Behind him, nearly asleep, Pippa sat with closed eyes. To her the solution was much more simple. All day she had had her Prince by her side, her arm in his, her fingers locked with his. Therefore she was happy; also she was tired.

Not having any tiresome masculine mental gyrations to perform in discovering a truth that was so easily apparent, she accepted the situation with sentimental nonchalance, and falling asleep, dreamed that the statue of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens had changed to that of the Airy Prince (who, she thought, was ever so much more handsome), and that she was sitting on the grass admiring him, while rabbits played about his feet. She was awakened from this delightful dream by a sensation similar to that of falling off a ladder in one's sleep; but such is the penalty of those who travel at night by air.

And, applying the laws of logic to the case, when a young gentleman sees dark eyes and curved lips in a compass, and a young woman dreams that the citizens of London have erected a monument to a young gentleman with a long face and glow-worm eyebrows, it is reasonable to suppose that they have fallen in love with each other.

But strange things happen in the month of April.

XII

She had just fallen asleep for the second time, when the cessation of the engines woke her, and a few moments later they had descended in a field adjoining his aerodrome.

He jumped from the pilot's seat and lifted her out. "Quick, Pippa," he said. "They'll be here in a few minutes for the machine. I had to land here because that light was my only guide. Do you see that heavy tree over there by the road? Wait by it until I return with a motor-cycle. Hurry, youngster; they're coming."

She did as he bade her, and took refuge in the shadow of a huge tree, just as men's voices told her the mechanics had come. The rolling of distant guns, like thunder echoing through cavernous depths, traveled on the wings of the wind and left her heart fluttering from a sudden contraction of pain. For one day, in the restful meadows of England and in the fascination of the unmarred City of Adventure, she had forgotten France's agony. With the thought came a sudden bitterness.

Ten minutes later she heard him coming with a motor-cycle, to which a side-car was attached. She took her seat in the car, and he fastened the rubber cover over her knees. Then, opening the throttle, they sped through the night towards her home.

It was just twenty minutes to twelve when they reached the mill. Hurrying across the foot-bridge which spanned the chute, she entered the cottage and lit the lamp.

"Louis!" she cried. "Louis!"

That patient feline awoke from slumber and stretched in the most blasé manner; but his little mistress, gathering him in her arms, pressed her cheek against his head, asking a dozen questions at once, to which he deigned no reply other than blinking into space and licking his chops, as though the ways of women were beyond him, but 'twere best to let them have their own way.

The airman followed her in.... The prevaricating clock continued its dilatory march of time. Marshal Joffre was, if anything, more paternal than before, and the geranium-colored table cover lent its unsubtle glow to the scene.

"Good-by, Pippa," he said.

The girl stood motionless, and there was a quick stab in her heart. She had known that this moment would come, but had kept her thoughts from it ... and now ... he was going....

Once more she would have only her little world of make-believe. She released the cat from her arms and turned her eyes away.

"You have been very kind, monsieur," she said.

He fingered his helmet absent-mindedly. "Did you enjoy it?" he asked aimlessly.

"It was wonderful," she said quietly, still looking into distance; "I have seen so much. This morning I was just a little girl, but now----"

His fingers ceased turning the helmet, and he frowned at it intently. "We do not grow old with years but by moments," he said. "For a long time one is a child; then there comes an instant of suffering, or of love ... and one is no longer a child. That is all."

She slowly sank into a chair by the table, and, folding her hands, appeared engrossed in the table cover. "Your Majesty," she said, "do you remember the poor lady with the violets?"

"Yes, Pippa."

"What did she say to you?"

He smiled awkwardly. "It--it is rather hard to explain, little one. She told me to--to take care of you."

"Why did she say that?" she asked without removing her eyes for a moment from the table.

"Well--perhaps you do not know this--but men are sometimes very unkind to women."

"I know, monsieur. Simon Barit, he often beats his wife."

He sat down on a chair opposite her. "There are many more ways of being cruel than that," he said. "Sometimes a kiss, or the gift of a flower, is worse than a blow. Often, Pippa, men play with women's hearts as--well, as Louis does with a spool."

A shadow fell on her face. "I think I understand, monsieur. That poor lady was afraid I should fall in love with you, but that you would not love me."

"That is partly what she meant."

Pippa rose and walked to the window. "To-night I think," she said, after a minute's silence, "that women have the most sorrow in life."

"They do, little one."

"But also the most joy, monsieur."

He rested his chin on his hand, but said nothing.

"All to-day," resumed the girl, "when men seemed happiest it was because they were with women. Also when they looked most cruel--you perhaps know what I mean--there were women there too with the faces that frightened me. And all those lovely children playing in the park--always they seemed so merry because their mothers were near them. But also, you remember the poor soldier in the chair?--no legs and but one arm. His face was so sad until once the lady with him--a nurse, you said--spoke to him and he looked at her and smiled. It was lovely, monsieur. I think I wept a little."

He made no comment, but his left hand ran slow arpeggios on the table. From the window she could see the water of the chute, all silvery in the moonlight.

"So to-night, monsieur," she went on, "I am not the same as this morning. Then I thought that we who are women are the happiest; but now I think, in the real world, it is we who give pleasure or unhappiness. Perhaps, monsieur"--she turned around and faced him--"perhaps a woman finds joy only when she gives it to others."

He looked at her, and his eyebrows were raised in wonder. When he had said we grow old by moments, was it more than just a well-turned phrase?

She returned to her chair by the table.

"When Louis and I are alone," she murmured, "I shall not dream the same as before. Then we had only young people, brave and handsome, but now I shall pretend that there are many old and sad ones, who perhaps will be glad if I am with them. And----"

"Pippa, my dear"--he looked into her eyes that met his without timidity, and there was a pleading note in his voice--"you may be lonely here, but you saw to-day how many discouraged, unhappy people there are--how much sickness and unkindness there is. Keep to your little world here with its Fairy Princes and the music of the wind. It is better, Pippa.... Perhaps it is even more real than the other."

She smiled, patiently, and, for the second time that day, felt a motherly pity for his youthfulness.

"Your Majesty," she said, "in my book, _The Fairy Prince_, the girl sings a song about love, and she asks her mother, '_Est-ce plaisir, est-ce tourment?_' I know now that it is both. Ah! I think it is too wonderful to be a woman; for some day, perhaps yes, perhaps no, I shall have my own children and a husband and friends. And sometimes, when my husband, he is much discouraged if the mill makes no money, though he works so hard, or if my children are perhaps sick and cry--then it is I who smile and say: '_Mes enfants_'--for he, too, will be only a big child--'_Mes enfants_, can you see the sunshine? Do you hear the birds? Can you smell these flowers?--So!' _Et alors_--perhaps they smile too. So I sing a pretty song and say to my husband '_Courage, mon ami!_ Have you not your little wife?' And after that we are all happy.... And now, that is why I think it is so wonderful to be a woman."

The clock hiccoughed, and struck eight.

The airman looked at his watch. "By Jove, it is midnight!" he said. "Pippa, our day is over----"

Tears sprang to her eyes, and her hands groped for his. "But no, monsieur," she cried, "you must not go. It will be so lonely."

He leaned over and covered her little hands with his large, tanned ones. "It will be lonely for me as well," he said.

"But you will come back, Your Majesty? Perhaps--next Easter?"

He gently stroked her hand. "On my honor," he said, "I will come on the Tuesday at dawn. You will be there?"

He released her hands as she slowly rose and crossed once more to the window.

"At daybreak," she said very quietly, gazing at the steely brilliance of the running water, "I will watch from the hill. And if you do not come, though I shall weep a little, I shall say, 'He is fighting, and could not leave for little Pippa. Next year he will come.'"

"And supposing, little one, he does not come the next year either?"

She leaned her arm against the window-pane and rested her cheek on it. "I shall watch again at dawn, monsieur"--the words were spoken very slowly--"and I shall say, 'He is not coming.... He has gone to be with his brothers who went, out into the sunlight, smiling so bravely----'"

Her words ended in a half-sob, and she pressed her face with both hands.

"But every Easter," she said, her voice very soft and trembling, "on the Tuesday I will watch the dawn from the hill, and perhaps, monsieur, you will see me."

He stood motionless for a moment, slowly reached for her leather coat and helmet, and placed them over his arm. "Good-by, Pippa," he said, and he held out his hands.

Timidly, and with cheeks that went all white, then crimson, she came towards him and raised her face for him to kiss. For a moment he held her in his arms, which quivered oddly.... Then, stooping, he gently kissed her--not on the upturned, trembling lips, but on the cheek, just beside her mouth.

Without a word he gently released her from his arms, flung the door open and went out into the night.

Motionless, with the burning memory of his hot lips upon her cheek, she stood until the sound of his footsteps was lost in the song of the chute. Slowly her hands dropped to her side and she sank into the chair by the table. The cat looked up from the task of licking his paws, and sprang upon her lap.

"Louis!" she cried, smothering him in an embrace that threatened to snuff out his nine lives prematurely, while tears from her eyes fell glistening on his fur. "Louis!"

MR. CRAIGHOUSE OF NEW YORK, SATIRIST

I

A raw wind from the sea swept against the mammoth building of the _New York Monthly Journal_. The editor of that classic publication stretched his arms lazily, then crossed to the rattling window and looked at Broadway, far beneath. A few belated flakes of snow mingled with the dust that eddied about in little whirlpools of wind. Like gnomes, the people hurried on in an endless diverging torrent of humanity, slouch-hats of soldiers adding a strangely Western effect to the usual bizarre scene.

The telephone rang, and the editor, Mr. E. H. Townsend, left the window to answer it.

"Yes?" he said. "Mr. Craighouse? Send him right in."

He took from a drawer a box of notoriously expensive cigars, and laid it on his desk. The reasonings of Dr. Watson himself could hardly have failed to deduce that the visitor was of some importance.

A moment later a young man, in the uniform of a United States officer, knocked, and, in response to the invitation, entered the inner temple. Mr. Townsend offered him the arm-chair, and reached for the cigars.

"You look well in uniform," he said, after appropriate comments on the April weather had been made by both.

"Thanks. I received your note this morning asking me to call."

"Ah yes. By-the-by, you are sailing soon, I believe?"

"Any time, now; naturally, we don't know to a day."

"What branch of the Service are you with?"

"The Engineers."

The editor thrust his hands into his pockets. "That is odd," he said. "Did you know anything about engineering?"

"A little." The young man's voice was abrupt, but not unmusical. His brain had always been alert, and army training was making his voice so. "I was a science grad. at Harvard."

The editor gazed out of the window again. "You are a remarkable combination, Mr. Craighouse," he said. "There is nothing more stifling to the artistic nature than a purely scientific training; in fact, the influence of this journal has always been used against absolutely technical schools. Almost the first requisite of any artist is a keen appreciation of the intangible; science deals only with things that can be proved. I often nurse along a young writer if he is incoherent because, as frequently happens, his temperament is greater than his technique. Scientists always marshal their facts well, but they never soar to the heights."

The editor tapped the window gently, the young officer gazing quizzically at him the while. They were a strangely contrasted pair, the editor in the autumn of life, with the calm voice and bearing of one who has fastened routine to art, and become jaded in the process; the young man keenly alert, with eyes that never lost their restlessness, and thin, satirical lips that mocked the high forehead of a philosopher.

"I am greatly interested in your writing," said the editor, after rather a lengthy pause.

The officer smiled. "Is that why you rejected my last two manuscripts?"

"Yes. Neither of them did you credit. Both of them betrayed rather a nasty cynicism in your style."

"I meant them for satire."

"Ah! there is a great difference. Cynicism recoils on the cynic; satire is always delightful, and is never offensive. However, I may say, in spite of their faults, if you survive the war you should become one of America's finest writers."

The young man flushed with pleasure. "Thanks very much, Mr. Townsend."

"You have temperament and you have language," went on the editor, "and, though your emotions are artificial and your judgments too impetuous, that is a natural condition of youth--nature has to keep something to recompense us for growing old. But you have big moments, plus some most promising incoherency, as I said before, and when that chaos becomes cosmos, the world will acknowledge you. You have never been to England before, have you?"

The officer shook his head, a little puzzled at the abrupt descent from the abstract.

Mr. Townsend smoked reflectively for a full minute. "England," he said slowly, "is the paradox of the ages. In America we have the present and the future; England has the present and the past--principally the past. Inefficiency is often no bar to success there--as a matter of fact, an Englishman dislikes appearing efficient--but remember that the British Navy is the most thorough organization in the world. I have often thought that England's success in colonization was largely due to her utter inability to understand the temperament of the people she governed. Look at Canada. There was never an Englishman who really appreciated the restless independence of the Canadian; yet, when the Old Land goes to war, Canada sends and maintains a mighty fine army corps to help her. Listen, my boy. I want you to go to England with your pores open; receive impressions and make a note of them. I want a series of articles explaining England to America--not as it is being done by those polished gentlemen who visit us from London, but by an American for Americans. Don't send me a description of the Strand, or Westminster Abbey, or your thoughts on first seeing the Thames. Go deep. I want a series of articles that rise above journalism. I want the psychology of England written up in a light satirical vein by a clever man with red blood in his veins. You will be there for some time, I suppose?"

"Very likely, as we are the first of the vanguard."

A half-hour later the young officer rose to go, with a contract that promised him generous remuneration, in return for which he had agreed to write ten articles on England. He stood, facing the older man, and smiled slightly. He had removed his cap, and his black hair, struggling into an unruly curl, combined with his dark, brilliant eyes in an appearance of arresting virility.

"You are very encouraging, Mr. Townsend," he said. "I had no idea that an editor could be so--so nearly human."

"My son," said the older man, "we are literature's midwives, toiling year in and year out in the hope that some day we shall assist at the birth of a masterpiece."

"But how is it that you don't write yourself?"

The editor shrugged his shoulders. "Why does a hangman never commit a murder?" he said.

II

Three weeks later a great ocean liner, known since the war as H.M. Transport, No. --, dropped gracefully down the river towards the open sea. Craighouse, from the hurricane-deck, watched the amazing silhouette of New York, as her mighty buildings stood outlined against the darkening skyline. From the wharf came the strains of "The Star-Spangled Banner," and hundreds of handkerchiefs fluttered in farewell.

A British cruiser was lying at anchor, and a thousand bluejackets roared three mighty British cheers for the new crusaders. A bedlam of shouting from the transport acknowledged the compliment, and one American soldier, whose constant attendance at baseball matches had produced stentorian qualities within him, boomed out the words, "Good old Roast Beef!"

Every one laughed. Why not? Men always laugh readily when their emotions are playing leapfrog with each other.

The strains of "The Star-Spangled Banner" sounded fainter; the handkerchiefs were blurred into a fluttering white cloud. A French battleship lay a quarter of a mile from them. As they passed it a bugle sounded on board, followed by a salvo of cheers from the crew. Craighouse noticed that the French cheers were a full third higher in pitch than the British.

Another roar came from the transport, and all eyes were turned towards the stentorian private. He took a deep breath.

"Good old Froggy!" he bellowed, and two or three soldiers laughed. To America, France is the martyr of the ages, and there is a strange sense of the feminine in the affection which the Old World republic inspires in the New. Truly, the ways of an extempore humorist are unhappy.

They passed the Battery, and, nearing the open sea, received the blessing of the Statue of Liberty extending her welcome to all that are weary and discouraged.

Craighouse experienced a thrill of patriotism, and, feeling that he must express it in language, turned to his nearest neighbor, who happened to be a British officer. "That's an inspiring sight," he said.

"Which?" said the Englishman briefly.

"The Statue of Liberty," answered Craighouse with the tone of a 4th of July orator. "That is the spirit of America--equality for all, freedom of thought and action, liberty for every one."

"Oh yes--splendid," commented the Englishman politely.

There was silence for a moment, and then, in a burst of inexcusable chauvinism, Craighouse said, "You haven't anything like that in England, have you?"

"No," said the English officer casually; "but we had an army in France two weeks after war was declared. I say, do come and have a drink."

III

Three months later the editor of the _New York Monthly Journal_ received a letter from Craighouse. Adjusting his glasses, he settled comfortably into his chair and read it.

"MY DEAR PATRON,--I hope you have not been disappointed at my lack
of articles, but, to be candid, I have not struck the proper mental
balance yet.

"England is delightful; England is absurd. I was on a bus
yesterday, and the conductress gave the signal to go ahead by
hammering the side with the fare-box. It fascinated me.
Incidentally, the girls have wonderful complexions over here, but
they do not dress as cleverly as ours. I know you will say it is
war-time, but nothing is powerful enough to interfere with anything
so fundamental as a woman's clothes." ("A bit labored, but quite
good," muttered the editor.)

"The country, as you know, is like a garden, with all a garden's
charm and limitations. I don't feel yet that I can take a deep
breath. There are woods; but the trees seem to huddle together for
want of space, and one always feels that just the other side of the
woods there is a town or a village. England is lovely, but I feel
the lack of immensity. To me, the whole effect is that the country
is complete; there is nothing more to do. Everything that can be
built has been built." ("And well built, too," muttered Mr.
Townsend.) "In fact, I don't see what there is over here to employ
to the full the brains, the nerves, and the imagination of a
full-blooded _homo_. Again I return to the garden simile. Is
the task of maintenance big enough for the splendid specimens of
manhood that England rears?

"I feel that there is something wrong with the public-school
system. Not that it is inefficient, but rather that it is too
thorough in its results. Judging superficially, of course, it seems
that the public school ignores the fact that every one is born an
individual, and proceeds to produce a type. To use a vulgarism, it
is a high-class scholastic sausage-machine. It takes in variegated
ingredients, and turns out uniformity of product. It instructs the
youth of the land in the manly virtues of past ages, but appears to
ignore the creative instinct. Public-school men are the Greek
chorus of England's national drama; they seldom provide either the
dramatist or the principal actors.

"My biggest disappointment has been the English stage. I know our
'playsmiths' are futile enough, but we would never endure in New
York what is put on at many first-class London theaters. At a time
when her grandsons from the four corners of the world are paying,
in most cases, their first visit to the Old Country, England offers
them the spectacle of a once classic stage given over to inanity
and vulgarity. Of course, there are two or three producers who
still maintain a commendable standard of art, but in the majority
of first-class London theaters one finds a coarseness of innuendo,
an utter lack of refinement, and an almost total elimination of
humor. In their musical shows the producers still go in for the
type of comedian known on Broadway as 'hard-boiled'--the kind that
carries his own jests in a valise, and whose _pièce de résistance_
is the word 'damn,' which seldom fails to convulse the audience. If
I may coin a phrase, I would say the aim of some London producers
is 'to be vulgar without being funny.'" ("I wonder if that is
original," observed the editor.)

"I like the restraint of the better English newspapers, and there
are still five or six monthly journals that demand a high standard
of writing from their contributors. Some of the popular English
magazines, however, publish stories that would hardly pass muster
as a blushing schoolgirl's first attempt at authorship. I remember
my mother used to say to me, 'Out of nothing, nothing comes.' She
had obviously never seen one of these fiction magazines.

"Judging by the advertisements in these publications and in the
society illustrated papers, I would say that manufacturing women's
underwear, or 'undies,' as they are coyly called, is the greatest
commercial industry here. The advertisements state that an officer
can send a lady a complete set of these garments with his
regimental crest on them. I am still trying to gauge the mental
attitude of an officer who would do so.

"The political situation puzzles me. Lloyd George looks like a
mighty big man, but he has to spend most of his time dodging
snipers from behind. Nero fiddled while Rome was burning, but a
certain section of the House of Commons goes in for absolute
symphonies while Britain is locked in the death-grip with Germany.
But she's a dear old country, and her people are as brave and
cheery as in the days when she was Merrie England, and not England
of Many Sorrows.

"To hear her people talk, you would think that the Canadians and
the Australians had done all the fighting, and that the United
States was the savior of the world; but I know there's hardly a
home in England or Scotland that hasn't lost a son--and often the
last son too. And when the old families send their boys, it's right
into the trenches, not back on the lines of communication.

"There--you can see why I have not written before. Incoherency
alone is hardly sufficient. I haven't seriously sorted my
impressions as yet. As you would say, the chaos has not yet become
cosmos.

"By-the-by, the British Navy mothered us from the coast of Ireland
like an eagle with her young.

"Every one is most cordial, and invitations are showered on us from
every quarter. I'm going to-morrow to visit the Earl of
Lummersdale, who seems to want to entertain a real, live American.
As I have six days' leave, I'm going to let him. They tell me he
comes of a very old family, so look out for an article on the
aristocracy.

"This letter is rambling most aimlessly. I suppose you are bored to
tears. Just a minute, till I read over what I have written....
Yes--I might add in my comments on the English theater that a chap
named Beecham is doing opera in English, and it's pretty nearly the
finest opera I have ever heard. Then, of course, Barrie produces a
play every now and then, just to show that he hasn't lost his
genius of tenderness and whimsical charm.

"Perhaps my visit to the Earl of Lummersdale will crystallize some
of my vagrant impressions. Good-by, dear patron.--Faithfully yours,

"LAWRENCE CRAIGHOUSE (Lt.),

"c/o American Officers' Club, London.

"P.S.--We're working like beavers getting things ready for the
American Army which is coming. It looks slow, but when Uncle Sam's
men are ready, Fritz is going to enjoy a real avalanche. This, I
promise you.

"L. C."

IV

One morning a south coast train contained a first-class compartment which was shared by Lieutenant Craighouse, U.S.A., and a timorously proper gentleman who read the _Times_ for twenty minutes, and then stared at nothing very intently--an art highly developed amongst those who worship at the shrine of good form.

Craighouse was silent also for over an hour, which was a feat of the first magnitude for him. He was thinking of some official figures shown to him, in confidence, a week past--figures which gave the totals of England's manufacture of munitions and guns, her construction of aeroplanes and tanks, her production of all the minutiæ of war essentials, in quantities which his brain could hardly grasp.

Judged by any standard, the achievement was amazing. For a nation at peace it would have been stupendous; but, in addition, this country that amused Americans, this nation of obsolete methods and lack of organization, had held the seas open and frustrated Germany's plans on land. He wondered if he had been a fool--if, after all, the English were not the most efficient race on earth. Just then an advertisement, conspicuously placed beside the mirror in the compartment, smote his eye, and he gasped.

"How many people ride in a carriage like this in one day?" he asked abruptly.

The well-bred one cleared his throat and shook his head. They had not been introduced; and, besides, he didn't know.

"Ten, twenty, forty--say thirty?" said Craighouse.

"Very probably--oh, yes--rather--quite." The words were decorously languid.

"Thirty people a day," went on Craighouse rapidly; "say a thousand a month. In a year that would mean, roughly--oh, put it at ten thousand. Am I right?"

The Englishman shifted uneasily. "Very probably--oh yes--rather--quite."

"The war has been going on for three years." The American was warming to his subject. "Three years mean that approximately thirty thousand passengers have traveled in this compartment since the beginning of the war, eh?"

His companion reached for his cigarettes. "Very probably," he said. "Oh yes--rath----"

"How many of these carriages are in use?" interrupted Craighouse. "Two hundred, four hundred--say three hundred?"

"Very probably--oh yes----"