Chapter 2

The argument proceeds on these lines: One day there will be another war--perhaps to-morrow. We of the Navy, coalless and probably by that time rumless as well, will rush blindly from our harbours, our masts decked with Jolly Rogers and our sailors convulsed with hornpipe, to seek the enemy. But, alas, before the ocean spray has wetted our ruby nostrils we shall find ourselves descended upon from above and bombed promiscuously in the middle watch.

It will be all over inside a nautical second. The sky will be black with hostile aircraft, and there will be lead in the stew and bleeding bodies in the bilge. Hollow laughter will sound from the bridge, where the Captain will find the wheel come away in his hand, and the gramophone will revolve eternally on a jazz rune because no one will be alive to stop it. When all these things occur we of the Navy will know that our day is past and done.

Why our Mr. Spooner is such a remarkable fellow is because he can sit deep in an easy-chair and recite these things without turning a single hair on his top lip. Of course he realises that the work of the Navy must go on--until the crash descends. But it is rather unsettling for us. It seems to give us all a sort of impermanent feeling. Quite naturally we all ask what is the use of keeping up the log and painting the ship? Why isn't all the spare energy in the ship bent to polishing up our boat-drill? or why aren't the people who can afford it encouraged to buy unsinkable waistcoats? The Admiralty must know all about it if they are still on speaking terms with the Air Ministry. It's a beastly feeling.

Yesterday a formation of powerful aeroplanes, which Spooner called the "Clutching Hand," came out from the land and flew round us, and simply prodded us with their propellers as we lay defenceless on the water.

The bogey is undoubtedly spreading. The Admiral came aboard this afternoon to inspect our new guns. He yawned the whole time in his beard and did not ask a single question. We suppose he realises that the whole business is merely a makeshift arrangement for the time being and not worth bothering about as long as the brass is polished and the guns move up and down easily.

Well, as far as we are concerned it only remains for Number One, who has a brother in the Air Force, to cancel his winter order with Breezes, the naval tailors, and we shall all go below and pack our trunks and get ready to hand the ship over to Spooner. If the Navy of the future must be under water there is no particular reason why we should be there too.

* * * * *

* * * * *

* * * * *

THE CONSPIRATORS.

1.

My Dear Charles,--You continue to ask me what I am doing, and why, and when I am going to sign the Peace, like everyone else, and return to honest work. The answer is in the negative. Though I am very fond of peace, I don't like work. And, as for being honest, I tend rather to politics. Have I never told you that I take a leading part on the Continent in the great Class War now raging? And, by the way, has anyone let you know that it is only a matter of time before the present order of society is closed down, the rule of the proletariat established and people like Charles set on to clean the streets or ruthlessly eliminated?

LENIN began to worry about you as long ago as 1915, and you know what happens to people when LENIN really starts to worry about them. He wasn't satisfied that enough violent interest was being taken in you; the mere Socialists he regarded as far too moderate and genteel. As for their First and their Second International--he wanted something thoroughgoing, something with a bit of ginger to it. So at the Zimmerwald Congress on the 5th September of that year all the out-and-outs unanimously declared war to the knife agin the Government, whatever and wherever the Government might be. How many long and weary years have you waited, Charles, to be told what Zimmerwaldianism might be--a religious tendency, a political aspiration, a valvular disease of the appendix or something to do with motor-cars? Ah, but that is as nothing to the secrets I am going to let you into, to force you into, before I have done with you.

It was not until well into 1918 that I myself began to worry about LENIN. He had left Switzerland by that time, having got tired of the jodelling Swiss and their infernally placid mountains. When the revolution broke out in Russia he felt it was just the thing for him, and his German backers felt he was just the man for it. So LENIN, whose real name isn't LENIN, went into partnership with TROTSKY, whose real name isn't TROTSKY, and set up in business in Moscow. But the thing was too good to be confined to Russia; an export department was clearly called for. It was when they began in the "off-licence" trade, in the "jug-and-bottle" business, that they ran up against your Henry.

With the view of upheaving Switzerland, LENIN and Co. sent a Legation to its capital, the principle being, no doubt, that before you cut another people's throat you must first establish friendly relations. This Legation arrived in May, 1918, when we were all so occupied with the War, making returns and indents and things, that it hoped to pass unnoticed. But there was something about that Legation which caught the eye; it had not the Foreign Office look about it--smart Homburg hats, washleather gloves, attaché-cases with majestic locks, spats ... there was something missing. It looked as if it might be so many Anarchists plotting a bomb affair.

And that's what it was. I suppose you will say I am inventing it when I tell you that it used to sit round a table, in the basement of an Italian restaurant, devising schemes for getting rid of people (especially people like Charles) _en bloc_; that it didn't provide the Italian restaurant- keeper with as much money as he thought he could do with; that the Italian restaurant-keeper came round to see us after dark; wouldn't give his name; came into the room hurriedly; locked the door behind him; whispered "H'st!" and told us all about it. It requires an Italian to do that sort of thing properly; but this fellow was better than the best. I couldn't go to a cinema for months afterwards because it lacked the thrill of real life.

We were so impressed with his performance that we asked him his trade. He dropped the sinister, assumed the bashful and told us that he was an illusionist and juggler before he took to restaurant-keeping and sleuthing. He juggled four empty ink-pots for our entertainment and made one of them disappear. Not quite the way to treat a world-revolution; but there! This was all in the autumn of 1918, when we were naturally a bit above ourselves.

Switzerland has four frontiers--German, Austrian, Italian and French. Lenin's Legation had opened up modestly and without ostentation as becomes a world's reformer, a distributing office on each one of the four. Somehow I could never work myself up to be really alarmed at jolly ANNA BALABANOFF, but I fancy she has done as much harm since as most people achieve here on earth. Her job was to work into Italy; but in those days, when war conditions still prevailed, she couldn't do much more than stand on the shores of the Lake of Lugano and scowl at the opposite side, which is Italian. Do you remember the lady's photograph in our daily Press? If so you will agree with me that even that measure was enough to start unrest in Italy....

Charles, my lad, let us break off there and leave you for a week all of a tremble. In the course of these Sensational Revelations we are going to see something of the arrangements made for the break-up of the old world, which, with all its faults, we know we still love. The process of reconstruction is not yet defined, and will probably not be attempted in our time. In any case, when things arrive at that stage, there will be no Charles and, I am still more sorry to say, no Henry.

Now, whatever you may think about it, I for one am not prepared to be scrapped and to become part of a dump of oddments waiting instructions for removal from a Bolshevist Disposals Board. You know what these Disposal Boards are; one's body might lie out in the rain for years while the minutes were being passed round the Moscow Departments. I have worried myself to death about it, and now I am going to worry you. I am going to make your flesh creep and your blood run cold. No use your telling me you don't care what is coming along in the future, provided you can be left in peace for the present. _I shall tap you on the shoulder and shall whisper into your ear the resolutions passed with regard to you as recently as the end of July last at Moscow._. I'll make you so nervous that you daren't get into bed, and, once in bed, daren't get out again. I expect to have you mad in about three weeks, and even then I shall pass more copies of this paper, with more revelations in them, through the bars of your asylum window.

All that for sixpence a week is not expensive, is it, dear Charles?

Yours ever,

HENRY.

(_To be continued._)

* * * * *

* * * * *

COMMERCIAL CANDOUR.

"Do not delay. The above coats will last only few hours."--_New Zealand Star._

* * * * *

"Mr. ---- highly recommends his Butler; left through death."--_Morning Paper._

Should suit SIR OLIVER LODGE.

* * * * *

"Black Waler Mare, 15-1, six years off, up to 14 stones, easy paces, regularly ridden by a lady touched in wind."--_Weekly Paper._

This doesn't matter if the mare is all right.

* * * * *

* * * * *

TO JAMES IN THE BATH.

Without the bolted door at muse I stand, My restive sponge and towel in my hand. Thus to await you, Jimmy, is not strange, But as I wait I mark a woeful change. Time was when wrathfully I should have heard Loud jubilation mock my hope deferred; For who, first in the bathroom, fit and young, Would, as he washed, refrain from giving tongue, Nor chant his challenge from the soapy deep, Inspired by triumph and renewed by sleep? Then how is this? Here have I waited long, Yet heard no crash of surf, no snatch of song. James, I am sad, forgetting to be cold; Does this decorum mean that we grow old? I knew you, James, as clamorous in your bath As porpoises that thresh the ocean-path; Oh! as you bathed when we were happy boys, You drowned the taps with inharmonious noise; Above the turmoil of the lathered wave How you would bellow ditties of the brave! How, wilder that the sea-mew, through the foam Whistle shrill strains that agonised your home. In the brimmed bath you revelled; all the floor Was swamped with spindrift; underneath the door The maddened water gushed, while strong and high Your piercing top-note staggered passers-by. But now I hear the running taps alone, A faint and melancholy monotone; Or just a gentle swirl when sober hope Searches the bath's profound to salve the soap. Sadly I kick the unresponsive door; Youth, with its blithe ablutions, is no more.

W.K.H.

* * * * *

IN A GOOD CAUSE.

Among the minor charitable organisations of London not the least admirable and useful is the Santa Claus Home at Highgate, which the two Misses CHARLES have been administering with such devotion and success since 1891. Its modest aim is to keep open twenty beds for small children suffering from hip and spinal disease, and to give them such treatment as will prevent them becoming hopeless cripples; and this purpose hitherto has been fulfilled no one can say exactly how, but with help not only from known friends but mysteriously from the ravens. To-day, however, the high cost of living has set up a very serious obstacle, and debt and failure seem inevitable unless five hundred pounds can be collected quickly. Any reader of _Punch_ moved to bestow alms on as sincere and deserving a a work of altruism as could be found is urged to send a donation to Miss CHARLES, Santa Claus Home, Cholmeley Park, Highgate, N.6.

* * * * *

"Although its run in the evening bill must necessarily be limited to two weeks, steps will be taken to remove it to other quarters should it prove to the taste of the public. _That failing, it will continue to be given at the ---- Theatre for a series of matinées._"--_Daily Paper._

The italics are ours, though it is not really our funeral, as we never go to matinées.

* * * * *

* * * * *

* * * * *

THE SHRIMP TEST.

At last we have an explanation of a good deal of the social and industrial unrest of recent months. Since April there has been a serious shrimp shortage.

How far this is responsible for dissatisfaction among the miners and other workers it is impossible to say; but in other circles of society this shrimp shortage has been responsible for much. From golf-courses this summer has come a stream of complaint that the game is not what it was. Sportsmen, again, have gone listlessly to their task and have petulantly wondered why the bags have been so poor. House-parties have been failures. In many a Grand Stand nerves have gone to pieces. Undoubtedly this grave news from the North Sea is the explanation. What can one expect when there are no shrimps for tea?

For the eating of shrimps is more than a mere assimilation of nourishment, more even than the consumption of an article of diet which is beneficial to brain tissues and nerve centres. After all, the oyster or the haddock serves equally well for those purposes.

But before one eats a shrimp a certain deftness and delicacy of manipulation are needed to effect the neat extraction of the creature from its unpalatable cuticle. Not so with the haddock.

Shrimp-eating is something more than table deportment; it is a test of _sangfroid_ and _savoir faire_, qualities so necessary to the welfare of the nation. The man who can efficiently prepare shrimps for seemly consumption, chatting brightly the while with his fair neighbour and showing neither mental nor physical distress, can be relied upon to comport himself with efficiency whether in commerce or statecraft.

Watch a man swallow an oyster, and how much more do you know of him after the operation than you knew before? But put him in a Marchioness's drawing-room and set a shrimp before him, and the manner in which he tackles the task will reveal the sort of stuff he is made of.

The shrimp test is one before which physically strong men have broken down, while the seemingly weak have displayed amazing fortitude.

In these days, when it behoves every man among us to be at his best, we view this famine in shrimps with grave concern, and we trust that the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries is alive to the significance of this crisis.

* * * * *

PUBLISHER'S COLUMN.

"Colonel Repington's Diary.

NEW BOOKS. The Revelation of St. John.

NEW FICTION. The Autobiography of Judas Iscariot."--_Scotch Paper._

And MARGOT next week.

* * * * *

RAINY MORNING.

As I was walking in the rain I met a fairy down a lane. We walked along the road together; I soon forgot about the weather. He told me lots of lovely things: The story that the robin sings, And where the rabbits go to school, And how to know a fairy pool, And what to say and what to do If bogles ever bother you.

The flowers peeped from hedgy places And shook the raindrops from their faces, And furry creatures all the way Came popping out and said "Good-day." But when we reached the little bend Just where the village houses end He seemed to slip into the ground, And when I looked about I found The rain was suddenly all over And the sun shining on the clover.

R.F.

* * * * *

PAROCHIAL HUMOUR.

"CHURCH OUTING.--All arrangements for the outing were made by the Hon. Sec., and we are grateful to him for a very happy day. A walk to ---- Church, cricket, tea and a game of bounders formed the programme."-- _Parish Magazine._

* * * * *

"PRONUNCIATIONS IN THIS PAPER.

Bona fides ... Boner-fy-dees. Grasse ... Grar."--_The Children's Newspaper._

The idear!

* * * * *

* * * * *

MIRIAM'S TWO BABIES.

That last morning at Easthaven, Miriam, alone of us three, preserved her equanimity. I had arisen with the lark, having my own things to pack, to say nothing--though nothing was not the only thing I said--of Billie's pram and Billie's cot and Billie's bath. I wished afterwards I had let the lark rise by himself; if I do heavy work before breakfast I always feel a little depressed ("snappy" is Miriam's crude synonym) for the remainder of the day.

As to Billie, his first farewells went off admirably. He blew a kiss to the lighthouse, that tall friend who had winked at him so jovially night after night. And it was good to see him hoisted aloft--pale-blue jersey, goldilocks and small wild-rose face--to hug his favourite fisherman, Mr. Moy, of the grizzled beard and the twinkling eyes.

But when the time came for Billie to say good-bye to the beach he refused point-blank.

"Billie wants to keep it," he vociferated.

Miriam, woman-like, was all for compromise. Billie should fill his pail with pretty pebbles and take them to London in the puffer-train. I demurred. The fishermen already complained that the south-easterly gales were scouring their beach away. Moreover, as I explained to Miriam, ere long it would devolve upon me to carry the dressing-case, Billie himself and--as likely as not--the deck-chairs and the tea-basket. Why increase my burdens by a hundredweight or so of Easthaven beach?

It ended by her admitting I was perfectly right, and--by Billie filling his pail with pretty pebbles.

I still had that feeling of depression when we returned to our rooms for an early luncheon (there's nothing I so detest); after which we discovered that Miriam thought I had told the man to call for the luggage at 12.45, while I thought that Miriam had told the man to call for the luggage at 12.45.

And then we had to change twice, and the trains were crowded, and Miriam insisted on looking at _The Daily Dressmaker_, and Billie insisted on not looking at _Mother Goose_.

At Liverpool Street station I kept my temper in an iron control while pointing out to quite a number of taxi-men the ease with which Billie's pram and Billie's cot and Billie's bath could be balanced upon their vehicles. But the climax came when, Miriam having softened the heart of one of them, we were held up in a block at Oxford Circus, and Billie, _à propos_ of nothing, drooped his under lip and broke into a roar--

"Billie wants the sea-side! Billie wants Mr. Moy!"

I suppose Miriam did her best, but he was not to be quieted, and old ladies in omnibuses peered reproaches at me, the cruel, cruel parent. I frowned upon Miriam.

"Will nothing stop the child?"

"There's a smut on your nose, dear," was all she replied. I rubbed my nose; I also ground my teeth....

I was still wrestling on the pavement with the pram, the cot and the rest of it, when Billie's cries from within the house suddenly ceased. Had the poor little chap burst something? I hurried indoors and found him--all sunshine after showers--seated on the floor with rocking-horse and Noah's ark and butcher's shop grouped around him.

"He's quite good now he's got his toys," he assured me, no doubt echoing something Miriam had just said.

* * * * *

I reached my study and collapsed into a chair. What a day! But little by little, shelf upon shelf, I became aware of the books I had not seen for a whole month: LAMB, my Elizabethans, a row of STEVENSON. I did not want to read; it was enough to feast one's eyes on their backs, to take down a volume and handle it my old green-jacketed BROWNING, for instance. And the small red MEREDITHS all needed rearranging.

A little later I turned round to see Miriam standing in the doorway. Remorse seized me; I put an arm about her, with--"Tired, old thing?"

She looked down at my books and, half-smiling, she looked up again.

"He's quite good now he's got his toys," she said, and kissed me.

* * * * *

VERY PERSONAL.

Just to see what it looks like with my name in it, I have been making a diary of my doings (some real, some imaginary) in the approved language of the Society and Personal column.

I am Mr. James Milfly. This is how it looks:--

"Yesterday was the fortieth birthday of Mr. James Milfly. He passed it quietly at the office and at home. No congratulatory messages were received and no replies will be sent."

"Among the outgoing passengers on the paddle steamer _Solent Tortoise_, on Tuesday, was Mr. James Milfly. He returned to the mainland the same evening, and will be at Southsea four days longer, after which, unless he can think of an adequate excuse, he will return to town."

"Mr. James Milfly, who recently sustained a laceration of the finger while cleaning his safety razor after use, passed another good night. The injured member is healing satisfactorily, and no further bulletins will be issued."

"The performance of _The Bibulous Butler_ at the Corinthian Theatre last night was witnessed by Mr. James Milfly and party, who occupied two seats in the eighth row of the pit."

"Mr. James Milfly is a guest for the week-end at Acacia Lodge, Clumpton, the residence of his old friend, Mr. Albert Purges. Excellent sparrow- shooting was enjoyed after tea on Saturday in the famous home coverts from which the lodge derives its title."

"Among those unable to be present at the Duchess of Dibdale's reception on Friday was Mr. James Milfly, no invitation having reached him."

"Mr. James Milfly has been granted his wife's authority to wear on his watch-chain the bronze medal of the Blimpham Horticultural Society, won by his exhibit of a very large marrow at the society's recent show."

"Maria, Mrs. Murdon, is visiting her son-in-law, Mr. James Milfly. Her stay is likely to be a lengthy one."

"Mr. James Milfly will spend the greater part of to-morrow in London. No letters will be forwarded."

Try this for yourself. You have no idea what a sense of pomp and well-fed importance it gives you.

* * * * *