Chapter 3

It sounds silly, but the writer evidently means it.

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Illustration: THE RULING PASSION.

_Voice from below._ "FOR 'EAVEN'S SAKE, MUM, GET BACK. THE FIRE-ESCAPE WILL BE 'ERE IN FIVE MINUTES."

_Endangered Female._ "Five minutes? Then throw me back my knitting."

* * * * *

THE WILLOW-PATTERN PLATE.

A Philistine? Then you will smile At this old willow-pattern plate And junks of long-forgotten date That anchor off Pagoda Isle;

At little pig-tailed simpering rakes Who kiss their hands (three miles away) To dainty beauties of Cathay Beside those un-foreshortened lakes.

With hand on heart they smile and sue. Their topsy-turvy world, you say, Is out of all perspective? Nay, 'Tis we who look at life askew.

Dreams lose their spell; hard facts we prize In our humdrum philosophy; But, could we change, who would not be A suitor for those azure eyes?

Who would not sail with fairy freight Piloting some flat-bottomed barge-- A size too small, or else too large-- On this old willow-pattern plate?

* * * * *

"The 'Figaro' publishes a telegram from Petrograd which contradicts the German announcement that Lodz is occupied by the Kermans."--_Lancashire Evening Post._

And quite right too.

* * * * *

A MARNE FOOTNOTE.

There was a battlefield, I was told, with a ruined village near it, about as far from Paris as Sevenoaks is from London, and I decided to see it. The preliminaries, they said, would be difficult, but only patience was needed--patience and one's papers all in order. It would be necessary to go to the War Bureau, opposite the Invalides.

I went to the War Bureau opposite the Invalides one afternoon. I rang the bell and a smiling French soldier opened the door. Within were long passages and other smiling French soldiers in little knots guarding the approaches, all very bureaucratic. The head of the first knot referred me to the second knot; the head of the second referred me to a third. The head of this knot, which guarded the approach to the particular military mandarin whom I needed or thought I needed, smiled more than any of them, and, having heard my story, said that that was certainly the place to obtain leave. But it was unwise and even impossible to go by any other way than road, as the railway was needed for soldiers and munitions of war, and therefore I must bring my chauffeur with me, with his papers, which must be examined and passed.

My chauffeur? I possessed no such thing. Necessary then to provide myself with a chauffeur at once. Out I went in a fusillade of courtesies and sought a chauffeur. I visited a taxi rank and stopped this man and that, but all shied at the distance. At last one said that his garage would provide me with a car. So off to the garage we went, and there I had an interview with a manager, who declined to believe that permission for the expedition would be made at all, except possibly to oblige a person of great importance. Was I a person of great importance? he asked me. Was I? I wondered. No, I thought not. Very well then, he considered it best to drop the project.

I came away and hailed another taxi, driven by a shaggy grey hearthrug. I told him my difficulties, and he at once offered to drive me anywhere and made no bones about the distance whatever. So it was arranged that he should come for me on the morrow--say Tuesday, at a quarter to eleven, and we would then get through the preliminaries and my lunch comfortably by noon and be off and away. So do hearthrugs talk with foreigners--light-heartedly and confident. But Heaven disposes. For when we reached the Bureau at a minute after eleven the next morning the smiling janitor told us we were too late. Too late at eleven? Yes, the office in question was closed between eleven and two; we must return at two.

"But the day will be over," I said; "the light will have gone. Another day lost!" Nothing on earth can crystallize and solidify so swiftly and implacably as the French official face. At these words his smile vanished. He was not angry or threatening--merely granite. Those were the rules, and how could anyone question them? At two, he repeated: and again I left the building, this time not bowing quite so effusively, but suppressing a thousand criticisms which might have been spoken were not the French our allies.

Three hours to kill in a city where everything is shut. No Louvre, no Carnavalet! However, the time went, chiefly over lunch, and at two we were there again, the hearthrug and I, and were shown into a waiting-room where far too many other persons had already assembled. To me this congestion seemed deplorable; but the hearthrug merely grinned. It was all a new experience to him, and his meter was registering the time. We waited, I suppose, forty minutes and then came our turn, and we were led to a little room where sat a typical elderly French officer at a table. He had white moustaches and was in uniform with blue and red about it. I bowed, he bowed, the hearthrug grovelled. I explained my need, and he replied instantly that I had come to the wrong place; the right place was the Conciergerie.

Another rebuff! In England I might have told him that it was one of his own idiotic men who had told me otherwise, but of what use would that be in France? In France a thing is or is not, and there is no getting round it if it is not. French officials are portcullises, and they drop as suddenly and as effectively. Knowing this, so far from showing resentment or irritation, I bowed and made my thanks as though I had come for no other purpose than a dose of frustration; and again we left this cursed Bureau.

I re-entered the taxi, which, judging by the meter, I should very soon have completely paid for, and we hurtled away (for the hearthrug was a demon driver) to Paris's Scotland Yard. Here were more passages, more little rooms, more inflexible officials. I had bowed to half-a-dozen and explained my errand before at last the right one was reached, and him the hearthrug grovelled to again and called "Mon Colonel." He sat at a table in a little room, and beside him, all on the same side of the table, sat three civilians. On the wall behind was a map of France. What they did all day, I wondered, and how much they were paid for it; for we were the only clients, and the suggestion of the place was one of anecdotage and persiflage rather than toil. They acted with the utmost unanimity. First "Mon Colonel" scrutinised my passport, and then the others, in turn, scrutinised it. What did I want to go to ---- for? (The name is suppressed because it is two or three months since the battle was fought there.) I replied that my motive was pure curiosity. Did I know it was a very dull town? I wanted to see the battlefield. That would be _triste_ too. Yes, I knew, but I was interested. "Mon Colonel" shrugged and wrote on a piece of paper and passed the paper to the first civilian, who wrote something else and passed it on, and finally the last one got it and discovered a mistake in the second civilian's writing, and the mistake had to be initialled by all the lot, each making great play with a blotter; and at last the precious document was handed to me and I was really free to start. But it was now dark.

* * *

The road from ---- leaves the town by a hill, crosses a canal, and then mounts and winds, and mounts again, and dips and mounts, between fields of stubble, with circular straw-stacks as their only occupants. The first intimation of anything untoward, besides the want of life, was the spire of the little white village of ---- on the distant hill, which surely had been damaged. As one drew nearer it was clear that not only had the spire been damaged, but that the houses had been damaged too. The place seemed empty and under a ban.

I stopped the car outside, at the remains of a burned shed, and walked along the desolate main street. All the windows were broken; the walls were indented with little holes or perforated with big ones. The roofs were in ruins. Here was the post-office; it is now half demolished and boarded up. There was the inn; it is now empty and forlorn. Half the great clock face leant against a wall. Everyone had fled--it is a "deserted village" with a vengeance: nothing left but a few fowls. Everything was damaged; but the church had suffered most. Half of the shingled spire was destroyed, most of the roof, and the great bronze bell lay among the _débris_ on the ground. It is as though the enemy's policy was to intimidate the simple folk through the failure of their super-natural stronghold. "If the church is so pregnable, then what chance have we?"--that is the question which it was hoped would be asked; or so I imagined as I stood before this ruined sanctuary. Where, I wondered, are those villagers now, and what chances are there of the rebuilding of these old peaceful homes, so secure and placid only four months ago?

And then I walked to the battlefield a few hundred yards away, and only too distinguishable as such by the little cheap tricolors on the hastily-dug graves among the stubble and the ricks. Hitherto I had always associated these ricks with the art of Claude Monet, and seeing the one had recalled the other; but henceforward I shall think of those poor pathetic graves sprinkled among them, at all kinds of odd angles to each other--for evidently the holes were dug parallel with the bodies beside them--each with a little wooden cross hastily tacked together, and on some the remnants of the soldier's coat or cap, or even boots, and on some the blue, white and red. As far as one can distinguish, these little crosses break the view: some against the sky-line, for it is hilly about here, others against the dark soil.

It was a day of lucid November sunshine. The sky was blue and the air mild. A heavy dew lay on the earth. Not a sound could be heard; not a leaf fluttered. No sign of life. We were alone, save for the stubble and the ricks and the wooden crosses and the little flags. How near the dead seemed: nearer than in any cemetery.

Suddenly a distant booming sounded; then another and another. It was the guns at either Soissons or Rheims--the first thunder of man's hatred of man I had ever heard.

So I, too, non-combatant, as _Anno-Domini_ forces me to be, know something of war--a very little, it is true, but enough to make a difference when I read the letters from the trenches or meet a Belgian village refugee.

* * * * *

Illustration: _Pompous Lady._ "I SHALL DESCEND AT KNIGHTSBRIDGE."

_Tommy_ (_aside_). "TAKES 'ERSELF FOR A BLOOMIN' ZEPPELIN!"

* * * * *

"General Joffre then engaged in a short conversation with several journalists, and when they referred to the military medal which M. Poincaré pinned on his chest, he said: '3/8 All this counts for nothing.'"

_Manchester Guardian._

But on the other 5/8 we offer our respectful congratulations.

* * * * *

THE PROPHETS.

I have a friend, a gloomy soul, Who daily wails about the war, Taking the line that, on the whole, Our luck is rotten at the core, And into each success Reads some disaster, rather more than less.

Another friend I have, whose heart Beats with "abashless" confidence, Who sees the KAISER in the cart And hung in chains "a fortnight hence"; He saw this months ago, And some day hopes to say, "I told you so."

When Heraclitus brings a cloud, Democritus provides the sun; Or should the Hopeful crow too loud, I listen to the Mournful One; And thus, between the two, I find a fairly rational point of view.

* * * * *

Faces We have no Use For.

"Once or twice he sighed a little, although he had an uninterrupted view of a profile as regular as a canoe."--_New Magazine._

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"THE MAN WHO STAYED AT HOME."

No, he was not a shirker, as you thought. Nor was he engaged in making munitions of war, or khaki, or woollens, or military boots, or in exporting cocoa to the enemy _viâ_ neutral Holland--that roaring monopoly of the Pacificist. His business was to spy at spies--a task that called for as much coolness and courage as any job at the Front. And so when the officious flapper presented him with a white feather he had no use for it except as a pipe-cleaner.

For his purpose _Christopher Brent_ had taken up his residence at a "select boarding establishment" on the East Coast, which contained the following members of the German Secret Service: _Mrs. Sanderson_, proprietress; _Carl_, her son, clerk in the British Admiralty; _Fräulein Schroeder_, boarder, and _Fritz_, waiter. Their design, if I rightly penetrated its darkness, was to give information of the whereabouts of a certain section of the Expeditionary Force which was "coming through from the North"; to supply Berlin with plans of the coast defences; and finally to give a signal to a German submarine by the firing of the house, which would incidentally mean the roasting alive of its innocent contents. All this (for the sake of ARISTOTLE and the Unities) was to take place in a single day, though I for one could not believe that either the pigeon post or the ordinary mail would be equal to the strain.

Their utensils included a Marconi instrument concealed in the chimney; a bomb; a revolver; maps of the minefield and harbour; a carrier-pigeon, and a knife for disposing of the cliff-sentry.

To frustrate their schemes something more was needed than the wit of _Brent_ and his ally, the widow _Leigh_; something more, even, than his skill in shooting pigeons in flight with an air-rifle. The vacuum was supplied by the crass stupidity of the EMPEROR'S minions. Even when full credit is given to _Brent_ for letting his bath overflow so as to flood the public salon and render it untenable, it was surely unwise of _Mrs. Sanderson_ to offer her private parlour for the use of the boarders on the very day set apart for the execution of her plans which were centred in this room. It was also gross carelessness on the part of her son, when he had _Brent_, with hands up, at his mercy, to place his own revolver on the table and to use, in exchange, the unloaded weapon which he had taken from his opponent's pocket. It was puerile, too, to accept without proof the verbal assurances of the widow _Leigh_ that she was one of themselves, a loyal German spy. And _Fritz_ committed an unpardonable error in giving away the site of the Marconi apparatus by his undisguised suspicion of anybody who took any interest in the fireplace.

And so their schemes all went agley; the whole pack was arrested; and when the curtain fell on a happy group of boarders in midnight _déshabillé_ there was every promise that the misdemeanants would receive a month's imprisonment or at least a caution to be of good behaviour for the future.

Illustration:

"HANDS UP!"

"HANDS UP YOURSELF!"

_Carl Sanderson._ .. Mr. MALCOLM CHERRY. _Christopher Brent._ .. Mr. DENNIS EADIE.

I understand, on good authority, that the tendency of the public at this juncture of the War is to demand light refreshment. Well, they have it here. For, though the subject deals with a serious problem of the hour, it can be treated, and is treated, with a very permissible humour that just stops short of farce. Some of the stage-devices, as I am assured by my betters, may have a touch of antiquity, but their application is as modern as can well be, and I should indeed be ungrateful if after an entertainment so smoothly and dexterously administered I were to be captious about origins or other matters of pedantry.

Mr. DENNIS EADIE, as _Brent_, both in his real character of detective and in the assumed futility of his disguise as a genial idiot, was equally excellent, and again proved his gift for quick-change artistry. Miss MARY JERROLD'S _Fräulein Schroeder_ was extraordinarily Teutonic in all but her quiet humour, which she seemed to have caught from the country of her adoption. The _Fritz_ of Mr. HENRY EDWARDS was another delightful sketch, though his actual German birth and his allegation of Dutch nationality were both belied by the red Italian corpuscles with which the authors had inoculated him. Miss JEAN CADELL, as usual, played a pale and fatuous spinster, but this time, in the part of _Miss Myrtle_, she had her chance, and seized it bravely. When that typical British boarder, Mr. _John Preston, M. P._ (interpreted with great relish and vigour by Mr. HUBERT HARBEN), remarked, "I call a spade a spade," she replied, "And I suppose you would call a dinner-napkin a _serviette_"--one of the pleasantest remarks in a play where the good things said were many and unforced.

I have not mentioned the admirable performance--its merits might easily be missed--of Mr. STANLEY LOGAN as a Territorial Tommy; or the very natural manners of Mrs. ROBERT BROUGH as _Mrs. Sanderson_; or the quiet art of Miss RUTH MACKAY in a part (_Miriam Leigh_) that offered a too-limited scope to her exceptional talents. Miss ISOBEL ELSOM contributed her share of the rather perfunctory love-interest with a very pretty sincerity; and Mr. MALCOLM CHERRY, in the ungrateful part of the spy _Carl_, did his work soundly, with a lofty sacrifice of his own obvious good-nature. Indeed, it was a very excellent cast.

I should like to congratulate the authors, Messrs. LECHMERE WORRALL, and HAROLD TERRY, on having given the public what they want, without lapsing into banality. The attraction of the first two Acts was not, perhaps, fully sustained in the third, but they gave us quite a cheerful evening; and at the fall of the curtain the audience was so importunate in their applause that Mr. DENNIS EADIE had to break it to them that, though the loss of their company would give him pain, he thought the time had come for them to go away.

I did not notice Mr. REGINALD MCKENNA in the stalls, but it was a great night for him and the Home Office.

O. S.

* * * * *

Raison de Plus.

Says the sleek humanitarian: "Any sacrifice I'd make For the voluntary system--up to going to the stake," Which inspires the obvious comment that contingencies like this Turn the coming of conscription to unmitigated bliss.

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"The remaining characters were taken by Mr. HERBERT LOMAS as Ever, a splendid actor...."--_Manchester City News._

You should see Sir HERBERT TREE as Always.

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Illustration: LANGUAGE-KULTUR.

_Voice from the darkness._ "DOAND SHOOD! DOAND SHOOD! VE VOS DE VILTSHIRES."

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

If _The Prussian Officer_, a study of morbidly vicious cruelty practised by a captain of Cavalry on his helpless orderly (and the first of a sheaf of collected stories, short or shortish, by Mr. D. H. LAWRENCE, issued by Messrs. DUCKWORTH), had been written since the declaration of war it would certainly be discounted as a product of the prevailing _odium bellicosum_. But it appeared well in the piping times of peace, and I remember it (as I remember others of the collection) with a freshness which only attaches to work that lifts itself out of the common ruck. An almost too poignant intensity of realism, expressed in a distinguished and fastidious idiom, characterises Mr. LAWRENCE'S method. It is a realism not of minutely recorded outward happenings, trivial or exciting, but of fiercely contested agonies of the spirit. None of those stories is a story in the accepted mode. They are studies in (dare one use the overworked word?) psychological portraiture. I don't know any other writer who realises passion and suffering with such objective _force_. The word "suffering" drops from his pen in curiously unexpected contexts. The fact of it seems to obsess him. Yet it is no morbid obsession. He seems to be dominated by sympathy in its literal meaning, and it gives his work a surprising richness of texture.... I dare press this book upon all such as need something more than mere yarns, who have an eye for admirably sincere workmanship and are interested in their fellows--fellows of all sorts, soldiers, keepers, travellers, clergymen, colliers, with womenfolk to match.

* * *

On a map of the North you may be able to find an island named after one _Margaret_. It should lie, though I have sought it in vain, just about where the florid details of the Norwegian coast-line run up to those blank spaces that are dotted over, it would seem, only by the occasional footprints of polar bears. Anyhow it was so christened by two bold mariners who lived in the _Spacious Days_ (MURRAY) of QUEEN ELIZABETH. That they both loved the lady (ELIZABETH, of course, too--but I mean _Margaret_) may be assumed; but that they should eventually, with one accord, desire to resign their claims upon her affection must be read to be understood. I for one did not quarrel with them on this score. For had not their mistress in the meantime found companionship more suitable than theirs? Besides, if even the author is so little courteous to his heroine as to invite her to appear only in two chapters between the third and the twenty-seventh, why should two rough sea-dogs--or you and I--be more attentive? And indeed it is a correct picture of his period that Mr. RALPH DURAND is concerned to present rather than a love story. In the writing of the love scenes considered necessary to the mechanism of the plot he seems very little at his ease; and so marked at times is his discomfort that I must confess to having felt some irritation when my willingness to be convinced was not met halfway. In the handling of his sheets and oars I like the author better, though even here I miss what might have brought me into a companionship with his people as close as I could wish on a most adventurous journey of nearly four hundred pages. But perhaps that is my fault; and, at the least, here is a straightforward sea story--as honest as the sea and as clean.

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_Llanyglo_ was a child with fair hair and blue eyes, and how she grew and what she learnt, and all the changes of her dresses and her soul, are set forth by Mr. OLIVER ONIONS in _Mushroom Town_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON). She differed from the children of other novelists who grow up to be men and women, because she was made of bricks and mortar and iron girders and romantic scenery and ozone (especially ozone), and the people who lived with her or took trips to see her are treated as a mere emblematical garnish of her character and growth. _Llanyglo_ is a daughter of Wales, but she is not any town that you may happen to have seen, although possibly Blackpool and Douglas and Llandudno have met her, and turned up their noses at her, as she turned up her nose at them. Lancashire built and conquered her, to be conquered and annually recuperated in turn. _Cymria capta ferum_ ... might have been the motto of her municipal arms. Exactly how Mr. ONIONS exhibits the romantic spectacle of her development, with the strange knowledge she picked up, as from virgin wildness she became first select and then popular, I cannot hope to explain. Suffice it to say that the process is epitomised in sketches of the various people who helped in the moulding of her--the drunken _Kerr_ brothers, who built a house in a single night; _Howell Gruffydd_, the wily grocer; _Dafydd Dafis_, the harper; and _John Willie Garden_, son of the shrewd cotton-spinner who first saw the possibilities of the place, and won the heart of the untamed gipsy girl, _Ynys_. This is surely Mr. ONIONS' best novel since _Good Boy Seldom_; and as _Llanyglo_ is safely ensconced on the West coast you should go there at once for the winter season.

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