Chapter 3

The authors are to be congratulated. They provided a good unpretentious evening's entertainment. No dull and pedantic realism for them. The dialogue was bright, occasionally to the sparkling point. The players were competent and zealous. Mr. KENNETH DOUGLAS gave the right variety to his three parts, _Goring_ as he was, _Goring_ as he was assumed to be for purpose of bluffing the enemy, and _Kit Brent_; and he played his great bathroom scene with humour and complete discretion. Miss IRIS HOEY was a charming innocent adventuress with heart of gold and eye of gladness; Mr. HIGNETT, as _Kit's_ self-possessed man _Cosens_, quite admirable, with just the right mixture of friendliness without impertinence and restraint without servility. Mr. WENMAN as a superabundant gum-chewing impresario, and Mr. EILLE NORWOOD as head villain, were quite plausible in the interesting and unlikely situation. I must say I like this kind of nonsense immensely. T.

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A Cautious Prophecy.

"... One of the reasons of the satisfaction is that the huge yield of the Loan effectively postpones any further borrowings on a similar scale until the end of the War. By that time victory should either have been attained or be in sight."--_Irish Paper._

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"A well educated young lady, the daugter of a French interned prisoner of war, desires to make the acquaintance with an English or American family to mutually improve the languages."--_Daily Paper, Lausanne._

The result will be awaited with interest in editorial circles.

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SEED POTATOES FOR PATRIOTS.

(_Garnered from the catalogue of the George Washington Seed Company._)

"_Adonis_."--Strikingly handsome oval tuber of the fashionable nigger-brown shade. Never had a day's illness. Every "Adonis" potato is inoculated for wireworm before leaving our grounds.

"_Automatic._"--Remarkable novelty; digs itself in, and jumps out of the ground when ready. Self-peeling; skin comes off in the saucepan. Immense boon to busy housewives.

"_Little Gem."_--For window-boxes. Flowers closely resemble Odontoglossum. Much in demand for Mayfair mansions. Dainty electro-plated trowel given away with every order for a hundred-weight.

The "_Beanato_."--Sensational discovery; the result of a cross between an Early Rose potato and a scarlet-runner. Will take the place of ramblers on pergolas. Blooms brilliantly all the summer; festoons of khaki fruit with green facings in the autumn. Retains the lusciousness of the bean with the full floury flavour of the tuber.

"_Argus_."--The potato with a hundred eyes. Never sprouts in less than ninety-eight places. Should be put through the mincing-machine before planting.

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War-Work.

"LADY.--Will any lady exercise a terrier (good-tempered), daily, for a small remuneration?"--_Bournmouth Daily Echo_.

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Kilties Dumbfounded.

Extract from Brigade Orders (Highland Brigade):--

"Socks must be changed and feet greased at least every 24 hours. Socks can be dried by being placed in trouser pockets."

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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

_Zella Sees Herself_ (HEINEMANN) is an unusual and very subtle analysis of a single character. The author, E.M. DELAFIELD, has made an almost uncannily penetrating study of the development of a _poseuse_. _Zella_ posed instinctively, from the days when as a child she alienated her father by attitudinising (with the best intentions) about her mother's funeral. It became a habit with her. In Rome, before the Arch of Titus, she thought more of what she might acceptably say about it than of any wonder or beauty in the thing itself. She fooled the honest man who imagined he was in love with her by making herself, for the time, just what her fatal facility for such perception told her he would most like her to be. The skill of the book is proved by the increasing anxiety, and even agitation, with which one awaits the moment that shall fulfil the title. It comes, bringing with it that almost intolerable tragedy of the soul, the black loneliness that waits upon insincerity. Then poor deluded _Zella_, seeing herself, sees also the fate that eventually befalls those who have deliberately falsified the signals by which alone one human heart can speak to and assist another. That is all the plot of the story, told with remarkable insight and a care that is both sympathetic and wholly unsparing. I am mistaken if you will not find it one of the most absorbing within recent experience. But I am not saying that it may not leave you just a little uncomfortable.

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BOYD CABLE is already one of the prose Laureates of the War, having earned his wreath by _Between the Lines_ and _Action Front_. He now proves that he is still entitled to it by _Grapes of Wrath_ (SMITH, ELDER). The two former books gave us detached articles all relating to the one great subject. The present book is a continuous story, the episodes of which are held together by the deeds and characters of a quartette of friends, _Larry Arundel_, _Billy Simson_, _Pug Sneath_, and the noble and adventurous American, _Kentucky Lee_, who had enlisted in our Army to prove that "too proud to fight" was a phrase which did not agree with the traditions of an old Kentucky family. These four and the rest of the regiment, the Stonewalls, are plunged into one of the big "pushes" of the British Army, and their achievements in one form or another are thick on every page of the book. The author has reduced the description of a modern battle to a fine art. No one can describe more vividly the noise, the squalor, the terror, the high courage, the self-sacrifice and again the nerve-shattering noise, that go to make up the fierce confusion of trench-fighting. How anyone succeeds in surviving when so many instruments are used for his destruction is a mystery. The book is very certainly one to be read and re-read.

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_Separation_ (CASSELL) is another of those intimate studies of Anglo-Indian life that ALICE PERRIN has made specially her own. The tragedy of it is sufficiently conveyed by the title. Separation, of husband from wife or parent from child, is of course the spectre that haunts the Anglo-Indian home. It was, chiefly at least, for the health of their child _Winnie_ that _Guy Bassett_ was forced to let her and his wife abide permanently in Kensington while he himself continued his Eastern career as a grass-widower. Very naturally, the result was all sorts of trouble. This first took the form of a flirtation, only half serious, with an artful young woman of the type with which Mr. KIPLING has made us familiar. Unfortunately poor _Bassett_ escapes from this emotional frying-pan only to plunge into the fire of a much more scorching attachment. But I will not spoil for you an ingenious plot. For one thing at least the book is worth reading, and that is the picture, admirably drawn, of the half-caste _Orchard_ family, whose ways and speech and general outlook you will find an abiding joy. Mrs. PERRIN has nothing better in her whole gallery, which is saying much.

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You probably know Mr. BLACKWOOD'S elusive method of mystery-mongering by now. None of his characters can ever _quite_ make out whether the latest noise is a mewing cat, the wind in the trees or the Great God Pan flirting with the Hamadryads. He meets in Egypt a Russian, consumptive with a hooked nose and a rotten bad temper, and persists in seeing him as a hawk-man dedicated to the wingéd god, Horus. "No one could say exactly what happened." (They never can.) But it was something very solemn and important, and in the end the Russian, in a fancy dress of feathers, was found dead at the foot of the cliff, whither he had flown (or was it danced?--well, no one quite knew). He all but carried with him little golden-haired _Vera_, who was all but a dove. This is a quite characteristic sample out of _Day and Night Stories_ (CASSELL). And the conclusion I came to was that Mr. BLACKWOOD must get a lot of fun out of staying in "cosmopolitan hotels." You need a special attitude for the proper enjoyment of these mystical yarns. I read them all conscientiously through, and I got far the best thrill out of "The Occupant of the Room," which, attempting less, was much more successful. "H.S.H.," His Satanic Majesty, of course, who was climbing the Devil's Saddle and turned in to the Club hut for desultory conversation about his lost kingdom with a stranded mountaineer, left me inappropriately cold. I suppose I am immune, a bad subject: but I feel as sure as I've felt about anything in the realm of light letters that a charming writer is overworking an unprofitable vein.

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_Mrs. Vernon's Daughter_ (METHUEN) is what one might call a story of situation. That is to say, it leads up to, and declines from, one big _scène à faire_. The scene, in this instance, is that in which _Demaris_, who has always previously imagined her mother to be an undervalued heroine, finds that on the contrary she is really no better (indeed a good deal worse) than she should be. And as if this disillusion were not enough the poor girl gets almost simultaneously the further shock of learning that the same adored parent, supposed by her to be a tragédienne of the first water, is in fact no more than a handsome stick, and unable (as they say) to act for nuts. Jesting apart, I am bound to admit that Lady TROUBRIDGE has risen admirably to the demands of her theme, and written a story both direct and appealing. Perhaps (dare I say?) its emotion is rather more secure than its grammar. The fact that she makes a duchess allude to "these kind of things" struck me at first as a subtlety of characterization, till I discovered that, some pages later, the author fell herself into the identical pit. But I suppose there is hardly any one of us wholly innocent of this offence; anyhow, it is only a small blemish upon a pleasant and (in its mild way) interesting story.

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"A large assortment of real fur soft felt cats (Clerical)."--_Advt. in "Glasgow Herald."_

The tame kind, we suppose, so popular at tea-parties.