Chapter 2

Without a doubt the Middle-Class Mother is a very deserving institution and has done extremely good work in the past, which I regret that the space at my disposal does not permit me to particularise. I must perforce content myself with announcing that on her behalf a grand Zoological Fancy Dress Ball will be held next month at Valhalla, which will be converted for the occasion into a realistic representation of a Bear Garden. I myself am appearing as Queen of the Polar Bears, and by way of augmenting the takings I propose to sell hugs at a guinea per head. The whole of the proceeds, after the expenses have been deducted, will go to the Middle-Class Mothers' Mutual Criticism Society, an animated body of which I have the privilege to be founder and hon. president.

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MAIDEN'S BOWER ROCKS, SCILLY.

It was an earl's daughter, she lived in a tower (Ding-dong, ding-a-dong-dey), And she was as fair as the loveliest flower That nods in the girdle of May. The floor of her bower was strewn with green rushes; Full many knights' banners hung waving above; And round her young minstrels stood singing like thrushes Brave ballads of lovers and love, Dove-- Wooings and cooings of love. But over their harping and over their singing, When twilight came mantled in lilac and grey, Would sound the sweet clangour of chapel-bells ringing "Ding-dong, ding-a-dong-dey," From over the hills and away.

It was an earl's daughter, she lived in a tower (Ding-dong, ding-a-dong-dey), But the salt sea arose in a terrible hour And smothered her singing in spray. It changed her to rock, and she lies in her chamber, Her faithful stone minstrels all crouched by her side; Above her, weed banners of crimson and amber Wave slow in the sweep of the tide, Glide Hither and yon on the tide. Yet down through the fathoms of twilit green water Where eerie lights glimmer and strange shadows sway, The steamer bells ring to the earl's little daughter, "Ding-dong, ding-a-dong-dey," Ring out and sail on and away.

PATLANDER.

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GETTING FIXED.

"Now mind, my boy, what you've got to do is to tell all your friends you are out looking for a job, and they'll give you introductions. Nothing like 'em; a friend at court, you know, and all that." This was from one of the friends to whom I had applied for a post. The advice was all he had to offer me.

I acted on it, and found my friends only too ready to give the required introductions. With alacrity they minuted me on from one to another till I felt as if "passed to you, please" had been scrawled all over me. But I persevered, and eventually weeded out from my list of introductions half-a-dozen that were addressed to solid men, high up in the City, who might be counted on not to miss the chance of a good thing. That is how in the early days of the Peace I was disposed to regard a demobilized young officer who had worn red tabs.

The first name on my selected list was John Pountney, of the firm of Laurence, Pountney & Co. My wife's uncle had been at school with John Pountney's brother, who unfortunately had no connection with the firm. But no matter; I filled up a form in the outer office--"Nature of Business, personal"--and sent it in with my note of introduction attached. John Pountney saw me. He did all the talking in quite an affable manner, told me of his son's experiences in the War, deplored the high price of petrol and his wife's difficulties in obtaining servants, and then: "Well, let's get to business. So you would like good employment in the City? What can you do?"

I began: "Well, Sir, when I was on the Staff----" He interrupted: "Now, don't go on to say that you can organise;" and he shook a finger at me playfully and was off once more with an anecdote about an officer in his son's regiment.

Eventually I found myself being bowed out in a rather dazed condition. Only one thing emerged at all clearly out of the whole interview; and I took from my pocket a sheet of paper, on which I had jotted down my most telling qualifications, and with a stub of blue pencil regretfully but firmly biffed out item No 1, Organising Ability.

I next approached the firm of Walbrook Bros., armed with a letter from a man who had once belonged to the same golf-club as the senior Walbrook brother.

"I can't read your friend's name," said this magnate, "but whoever he is he seems to think that you are the sort of man who might be useful in my business. What can you do?" and he leaned back patiently in his chair, finger-tips to finger-tips, but with all the appearance of one ready to pounce at my first weak statement.

"For the best part of four years," I began, "I have been living in France, and----"

He pounced. "Ah, French! I thought so. Now if you had said Spanish, or even Russian ..."

He frowned as the thought crossed his mind that I might yet say either of them. But I didn't, and he was free to expatiate on the alleged advantages of Spanish and a sound commercial education. The end was that I found myself once more in the street, this time erasing the word "Languages" from my dwindling list.

And so it went on. Mr. Hall, of the firm of Copt and Basing Hall, begged me not to speak of any capacity I might possess for controlling men. (Item No. 3: Disciplinary Power and Habit of Command.) He himself was able to do all the controlling that his staff would be likely to require. Mr. Throgmorton, managing director of the firm of Capel Sons and Threadneedle, Ltd., hoped at the outset that I would not speak of my mathematical proficiency. Many men were inclined to make a fetish of mathematics. He feared I might be one of them from the fact that I had begun to speak of (item No. 4) the tabulation and co-ordination of statistics.

After a week of this sort of thing I had acquired nothing but experience, and my experience now gave me an idea. I drew up a new list of important firms to which I had received no introductions at all, and selected one which I knew was presided over by a man of almost world-wide fame. Taking my courage and nothing else in my hands, I entered the inquiry-office.

"Slip, please," I said briskly to the youth behind the counter, and he handed me the customary form. Disregarding the spaces to be filled in, I scribbled diagonally across the paper the name of the great man, and wrote underneath: "Have called in passing, and cannot stay many minutes."

This I signed and handed to a messenger, remarking in a hurried and off-hand manner, "Say that, if he's engaged, I'd rather come another day, as I don't want to miss the 12.5 to Hatfield."

I had no desire to catch it either; but Hatfield is where the great man lives. This was my ingenious method of getting through the outer defences, and it worked. The youth behind the counter supposed I must be a personal friend (did I mention that I have an "air" and a power of controlling?... Ah, yes, item No. 3), and sped the messenger on his way. Not only so, but my message must have deceived the great one himself, for I was admitted to the Presence immediately.

He stood before me, holding my slip in his hand, with a puzzled frown on his face. The frown deepened as he failed to recognise me.

"You need have no fear," I said; "I have no letter of introduction." And I smiled pleasantly at him.

His look of apprehension vanished, and I continued, unfolding my blue-pencilled list of accomplishments:--"Listen: I am no organiser; my knowledge of French may be dismissed as negligible (this from the man with whom Jeanne Vincent had deigned to converse in her own tongue!); I profess no power of controlling my fellow-men; my mathematical ability isn't worth a rap, and, as to statistics, I neither tabulate nor co-ordinate them with any degree of readiness." Thereupon I bowed, with hands extended, as who should say, "You behold me; that's the sort of man I am."

He smiled faintly. "Excuse me, but what _can_ you do?"

"That," said I, "is for you to discover. If, when I shall have worked in your office for say three months"--he started--"you are unable to find any use for me, then you are not the kind of man I take you for." And I drew myself up, striking what I hoped was a dignified attitude.

He stared at me for some seconds.

"You have references?" he asked.

"Of course," I answered, "but I know enough not to produce them till they are called for."

Then he pressed a bell. "I am going," he said, "to introduce you to my manager. You have certain qualifications which I think may be useful to us."

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THE ESSENTIALS OF GOLF.

"Do you know anything about golf?" I asked Pottlebury by way of making conversation with a comparative stranger, and immediately afterwards knew I had made a mistake. I should have inquired, "Do you golf?" or "Are you a golfer?" and no evasion would have been possible.

"I should think I do," he replied. "I suppose there's hardly a course between here and Strathpeffer that I haven't visited. English and Scottish, I know them all."

"And which is your favourite course?"

"That is a difficult question," he remarked judicially. "Only last night I was arguing about the comparative merits of Westward Ho! and St. Andrews. Both are easily accessible from the railway, but if you take your car the latter is to be preferred. You get your life bumped out of you on those North Devon roads."

"I wasn't thinking of the travelling facilities," I observed coldly.

"No, of course. It's what you find at the other end that counts. Well then, travelling aside, there is much to be said for Sandwich. The members' quarters are comfortable--very comfortable."

I must have made a disparaging gesture, for he immediately continued:--

"But, if it's only lunch you want, I advise those Lancashire clubs round Southport. They know how to lunch in those parts--Tweed salmon, Welsh mutton and Whitstable oysters."

"No doubt your judgment is correct," I replied, "but I----"

"And at one of them they keep a real French _chef_ who knows his business. I wouldn't wish for a better cuisine anywhere."

"There are other things," I remarked loftily, "besides those you mention."

"Exactly; that's why I like to see a good bridge-room attached and enough tables to accommodate all comers. They have that at Spotworth. You can often get a game of poker as well."

"But don't you see," I exclaimed, "that all these things, are mere accessories and circumstances?"

"That is true," he murmured; "they are but frames as it were of the human interest. After all there's nothing to equal a crowd of jolly good fellows in the smoking-room. I've had some excellent times down at Bambury--stayed yarning away to all hours. Some of the best fellows I ever met belonged to that club."

"You don't talk at all like a golfer," said I.

Pottlebury laughed. "I was forgetting. If it's whisky you want you can't beat Dornoch and Islay. We've nothing in England to touch them. Why, I've met some of the keenest golfers of the day at Islay--nothing less than a bottle a day apiece."

"Sir," said I severely, "it is clear that you have never struggled like grim death with an opponent who was three up at the turn until you were all square at the seventeenth, and then found yourself after a straight drive with an easy baffy shot to----"

"One moment," said Pottlebury; "what exactly _is_ a baffy?"

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Asking For It.

"----'s have dozens of other cars available; £65 to £1,700; call and insult us."

_Motoring Paper._

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ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

_Monday, June 14th._--As an Ulster Member, Mr. LINDSAY protested against the availability of return-tickets between Ireland and England having been reduced from six months to two. Sir ERIC GEDDES explained that the change had been made to stop the illicit traffic in return-halves, though he hastened to disclaim any suggestion that Members of Parliament were concerned in it. The grievance is probably not of large dimensions. It is difficult to understand why anyone leaving Ireland in these days should want to go back there.

The PRIME MINISTER did not seem to favour the suggestion, pressed upon him from many quarters, that the Government should cause an estimate to be made of the national income, and then limit public expenditure to a definite proportion of that amount. A private person may cut his coat according to his cloth, but the Government, he argued, is unfortunately obliged by circumstances to reverse the process. Even so the taxpayer may be forgiven for thinking that the State costume still bears some superfluous trimmings.

When economy is proposed, however, it is not always popular. Sir JOHN BUTCHER, in protesting against the Government's proposal to sell the _Brussels_, the late Captain FRYATT'S ship, was expressing a wide-spread feeling. But Colonel LESLIE WILSON disarmed criticism by pointing out that if all British vessels with heroic associations were to be kept as exhibition-ships a large proportion of the British mercantile marine would be laid idle.

A few years ago the General Manager of one of the English railways--the late Sir GEORGE FINDLAY, I think--declared that he could look after the whole of the Irish railways and have three days a week left for fishing. Nowadays, I suppose, the Irish lines are not laid in such pleasant places. At any rate the best part of two days has been occupied in deciding whether in the new scheme for the government of Ireland they should be administered by the Central Council or the two Parliaments, and under the compromise eventually reached they will be more or less subject to all three authorities.

The debate was chiefly remarkable for the evidence it provided that the Ulstermen are developing into the strongest of Home Rulers--almost Sinn Feiners, according to one of their critics--where their own province is concerned.

_Tuesday, June 15th._--Mr. CHURCHILL had again to withstand attacks upon his Army uniform proposals, this time on the ground that the reversion to scarlet and pipeclay would entail extra labour and expense upon the private soldier. His confidence that Mr. Atkins would not grudge the short time spent on cleaning his full dress, so closely bound up with regimental traditions, was endorsed by Mr. BILLING, who said, "The time occupied is about twenty minutes, and I speak from experience."

A statement that the issue of bagpipes to certain Irish regiments was under consideration brought protests from Scottish Members, who evidently thought that their own national warriors should have a monopoly of this form of frightfulness. But Mr. CHURCHILL pointed out that the Irish Guards were already provided with bagpipes, and Lt.-Commander KENWORTHY horrified the Scots by declaring that the pipes were not an indigenous product of their country, but had been imported from Ireland many centuries ago.

Further progress was made with the Government of Ireland Bill. A proposal to strengthen the representation of the minority in the Southern Parliament was sympathetically received by Mr. LONG, who thought, however, that the Government had a better method. As that consists in a proposal to exact the oath of allegiance from every candidate for election and to give the KING in Council power to dissolve any Parliament in which more than half the members have not taken the oath, it is sufficiently drastic. Having regard to the present disposition of the Sinn Feiners there seems to be mighty little prospect of a Parliament in Dublin before the date known in Ireland as "Tib's Eve."

_Wednesday, June 16th._--In both Houses Addresses were moved praying His Majesty to appoint two additional Judges of the King's Bench Division. The motions met with some opposition, principally on the score of economy, and it was suggested that no additions to the Bench would be required if the existing Judges resumed the old practice of sitting on Saturdays. This drew from the LORD CHANCELLOR the interesting information that the Judges devoted their Saturdays to reading "the very lengthy papers that were contained in their weekly _dossier_." It is no doubt the great length of these documents that accounts for the peculiar shape of the bag that Mr. Justice ----'s attendant was carrying when I met him at Sandwich a few Saturdays ago.

Lord BIRKENHEAD soothed the economists by pointing out that the new Judges would probably more than earn their salaries of five thousand pounds a year. In accordance with the prevailing tendency court-fees are to be raised, and at Temple Bar as in Savile Row our suits will cost us more.

Until Colonel LESLIE WILSON moved the Second Reading of the Nauru Island Agreement Bill I don't suppose a dozen Members of the House of Commons had ever heard of this tiny excrescence in the Western Pacific with its wonderful phosphate deposits. Captured from the Germans during the War, it is now the charge of the British Empire, and the object of the Bill was to confirm an arrangement by which the deposits should be primarily reserved for the agriculturists of Australasia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. It produced a debate of extraordinary ferocity. Young Tories like Mr. ORMSBY-GORE vied with old Liberals like Mr. ASQUITH (on whom the phosphates, plus the Louth election, had a wonderfully tonic effect) in denouncing the iniquity of an arrangement by which (as they said) the principles of the League of Nations were being thrown over, and this country was revealed as a greedy monopolist. Thus assailed both by friend and foe Mr. BONAR LAW required all his cool suavity to bring the House back to a sense of proportion, and to convince it that in securing a supply of manure for British farmers the Government were not committing a crime against the comity of nations.

Answering questions for the Irish Government in these days is rather a melancholy business, but the ATTORNEY-GENERAL for IRELAND resembles Dr. JOHNSON'S friend, in that "cheerfulness will keep breaking in." Thus he excused the Government's non-interference with the Sinn Fein "courts," whose writ now runs over half Ireland, on the ground that for all he knew they might be voluntary courts of arbitration; and when Major O'NEILL expressed the hope that he would at least take steps to protect the British public from the criminals "transported" by sentence of these mysterious tribunals he blithely disclaimed responsibility, and said he was quite content that they should be out of Ireland.

Considering the counter-attraction of the Ascot Gold Cup, Mr. BALFOUR had a surprisingly numerous audience for his discourse on the League of Nations. His enumeration and analysis of the League's various enemies were in his happiest vein of philosophical humour. His conclusion was that the League had much less to fear from its avowed foes than from its fanatical friends, who were already attempting to put upon it tasks for which it was unfitted, and even to supply it with an International Police Force. Its proper weapons were not armies and aircraft, but Delay and Publicity.

This formula, so reminiscent of Wait and See, did not prevent Mr. ASQUITH from hinting in the politest manner that the League was not likely to prevent the wars of the future unless it made some effort to stop those now in progress.

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RAW SOUL STUFF.

I don't think I have ever read a short story about a film, so I have made one up myself.

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Viviana Smith was born in Battersea. At twelve years old she ran about the streets with holes in her stockings and played a complicated game with chalk squares and a stone. She had the accent of London streets, which is the only accent that can pierce through the noise of London traffic. But she had hair the colour of marsh-marigolds, a Vorticist mouth and patent enlargeable eyes. In the street she made eyes at errand-boys, and at school she made eyes so large that there was no room to dot them.

At the age of seventeen she went in for the Purple Pomegranate film competition, and was selected from five hundred thousand candidates to be a motion-picture star. She starred some. At the beginning she played in romantic comedy films with woodland scenery and rustic bridges and pools where she tickled for trout. She tickled so well that one could almost hear the trout laugh. Later she played in "crook" melodrama, where somebody was always peeping through the door when the secret patent was being taken out of the office safe, and where men always kept arriving in motor-cars and going up flights of steps with their faces turned to the audience and going down flights of steps with their faces turned to the audience and getting into motor-cars again. They never missed a step. There is something about this feat which holds a cinema audience spellbound.

Later she rode on untamed mustangs and fell over cliffs gagged and bound, and sometimes she was even promoted to slide or twirl into a bakehouse and tumble with a talented cast of actors and actresses into a large trough of dough. When they had wiped the dough off they all came back into the bakehouse one after another and tumbled into the dough-trough again. Repetition is the soul of wit.

One day Viviana met Ignatius Vavasour, the poet. For two years he had worshipped her afar on the screen. He had seen her in so many reels that she made him giddy. He had seen her in _Youth's Yodelling May-tide Hour_, length five reels, and in _Hate's Hideous Hand of Crime_, length six reels, and in _Gertie Flips the Flap-jack over_, length seven reels and a half. He had never heard her speak, but he had seen her beautiful lips ripple into a thousand artless expressions of grief and joy. He did not know whether he loved her most when she was tripping through a silvan glade, with meadow-sweet in her hand, or when she was gliding gracefully over Niagara Falls in a tar-barrel; when she was cracking the door of a strong room with a jemmy or when she was getting the dough out of her hair with a rake. But as soon as he had seen her out of the pictures he knew that he loved her best as she was. He knew that he could not live without her. He told her so.

"But, Mr. Vavasour," she protested.

"Call me Iggie," he cried.