Chapter 3

Rear-Admiral Sir REGINALD HALL, having added to his laurels by defeating a NELSON at Liverpool, took his seat this afternoon, and was loudly cheered for the manner in which he came into action. He and his supporters maintained their "line abreast" and discharged their salvoes of salutes to the Chair with faultless precision.

Later on the gallant Admiral earned further cheers for a capital maiden speech on the Naval Estimates. These were introduced by Mr. LONG, who told the story of the Navy's triumph with all a landsman's enthusiasm. Its future size may to a certain extent depend upon the Judgment of Paris, but he was certain that, come what may, the Nation would always insist on having a Fleet sufficient for our needs--a sentiment which received the welcome endorsement of Mr. BRACE for the Labour Party.

According to Commander NORMAN CRAIG it was anything but sufficient for our needs when war broke out. It lacked docks, destroyers, submarines, air-ships--everything, in fact, save Dreadnoughts, which, in the absence of these accessories, had to belie their name and rush from one unprotected anchorage to another in fear of the German mosquito-craft. Only the courage of the officers and men saved us, and up to the present--that was the tenor of many of the speeches--they have reaped but a scanty reward.

_Thursday, March 13th_.--Ministers left at home to "mind the shop" would rather like, I fancy, to put up a notice over the Palace of Westminster, "Closed till after the Peace Conference." Nearly every problem presented to them depends for its ultimate solution upon the decisions arrived at in Paris. Lord STUART OF WORTLEY, for example, put a series of most pressing questions regarding the present condition and future prospects of Poland; but Lord CURZON in reply could only shrug his shoulders (at considerable length) and refer him to the Conference.

The LEADER of the House of Commons labours under similar disabilities, which are beginning to try even his amiable temper. Until Paris has spoken he cannot give definite information about the Government's fiscal policy, the amount of the German indemnity and other pressing topics, and, as he told some of his persistent questioners this afternoon, it is no good putting the same question to him every week and expecting a different answer.

The best news of the day is that there will be an ample supply of currants for Whitsuntide school-treats, and _Smith minor's_ translation of "_Non cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum_" as "Not everyone is lucky enough to find a currant in his war-bun" will no longer be applicable.

Five years ago General SEELY, then Secretary of State for War, asked timidly for a single million for aircraft. To-day, as Under-Secretary for Air, he boldly demanded sixty-six millions, and explained that but for the Armistice the amount would have been two hundred millions. And the House, after hearing his glowing account of the wonderful achievements of our airmen, readily voted the money. A good deal of it is to go, quite rightly, to relieving the hardships of demobilisation, which fall with peculiar severity on men whose special training is not much use to them in civil life. The least we can do when they are forced to descend from their chosen element is to insure them against a bad landing.

* * * * *

TO A VEGETABLE-MARROW.

O monstrous, O Gargantuan, overgrown! O huge! O gross! O squat! Whose one redeeming virtue--one alone-- Is that you weigh a lot; Who will not thrive upon the common soil, So that the patient digger e'en must toil To raise a special mound Above the level ground That you may sun yourself upon the sloping earth And, like the wicked, wax to an uncommon girth.

But it is not your vast circumference That stirs this passing strain; I would not sing although, to move you hence, They fetched their biggest crane; It is that men should shovel tons of _that_ Into the maws of some capacious vat, Add sugar (half-a-pound) And stir it round and round; Then, at the last, throw in some ginger with a spade And label the result as "Lemon Marmalade."

* * * * *

From a description of the first flight of R 33:--

"Alas, the meteorological conditions, at first considered probable, turned out worse."--_Yorkshire Paper_.

Nothing so likely as the improbable.

* * * * *

* * * * *

THE BIBLE IN PAIN.

MR. H.G. WELLS' new novel, based on the Book of Job, and Mr. ARNOLD BENNETT'S new play dealing with the story of JUDITH and HOLOFERNES, by no means exhaust the Biblical and Apocryphal motives from which our popular writers are now drawing inspiration.

Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD'S next novel will be a minutely analytical study of the contrasted temperaments of ESAU and JACOB, the one standing for revolt and the other for a rather smooth and supple orthodoxy.

Mr. E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM is turning his attention to a new spy romance woven about the experiences of CALEB and JOSHUA.

Professor CHALMERS MITCHELL has long been engaged on a monograph on the Ark and its inmates, in which the famous zoologist will explain the conditions under which the animals lived, the segregation and food problems, and how the complexities following disembarcation were dealt with by NOAH and his family. Lord PIRRIE is contributing a chapter on the structure of the vessel, and there will be an appendix on the dangers of overcrowding by Sir ARTHUR NEWSHOLME.

Mr. GALSWORTHY has also been turning his attention to the Ark, and the inhumane congestion of the creatures that were packed into it. The result should be a very interesting psychological and sociological work, the leading character being HAM'S wife, whom the novelist figures as a protester to her father-in-law against his treatment of all the animals, but in particular of the two Pekinese spaniels.

Mr. ALEC WAUGH has nearly completed an indictment of private tuition based on the story of SAMUEL and ELI.

Mr. H.B. IRVING, turning aside for the moment from the study of more recent turpitude, is preparing an analytical memoir on the first murder, that of ABEL by CAIN. With all his well-known thoroughness he reconstructs the crime and shows in what particulars CAIN, although an innovator, proved himself also an adept.

Mr. GEORGE MOORE is meditating a revised version of the story of JOSEPH and his Brethren, which in his opinion is sadly in need of re-writing, suffering as it does from an unsophisticated simplicity of diction and thought.

Mr. CONRAD is busy with a new romance treating of JONAH and the whale, in which, for the sake of verisimilitude, JONAH will himself recount his strange adventure to a few personal friends. As the narrative runs to over a hundred thousand words the reader may be sure that no detail of realism is omitted from the description of the luckless voyage.

Mrs. ELINOR GLYN'S new novel will be called _The Heart of Solomon_.

The movie-producers are not idle. After the greatest difficulty in procuring an actor of prophetic mien willing to undertake the rather trying part of DANIEL, an intrepid _dompteur_ has been found in France and the story of the Lions' Den is to be filmed at once. Possibly some assistance from the drug whose power was illustrated by Mr. GEORGE MORROW in last week's _Punch_ may be called for.

Meanwhile a company is being formed for the exploitation of a new system of muscular development under the name of "Samsonism," and a powerful company of public men is being enlisted to write daily articles in its praise.

* * * * *

ANOTHER IMPENDING APOLOGY.

"London's Premier Turn Coat Specialist."--_Advt. in Daily Paper_.

* * * * *

"Writers, mostly town-bred, infatuated with the country-side, have raved of the statuesque repose of the rural maiden. A statute is no doubt a beautiful object, but you do not want to take it to a dance."--_Daily Paper_.

We shouldn't, but the LORD CHANCELLOR might.

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"THE HOUSE OF PERIL."

The maker of a plot that turns upon murder and drugging in the neighbourhood of a Continental gambling haunt must be aware that his work is not going to be brought to the test of common experience, and he is therefore less likely to be hampered by the laws of probability. But there are limits even to the British public's gift of credulity. How far Mrs. BELLOC LOWNDES may have enjoyed special privileges in the search for her material I cannot say; but for myself I confess that a modest acquaintance with the atmosphere of European casinos has left me in absolute ignorance of any such society as that of the hosts of The House of Peril. Perhaps Mrs. LOWNDES'S book (which I have not read) may throw light on this dark mystery; but in the play--and the play's the only thing that concerns us here--I could trace nothing to indicate to my poor intelligence how it was that two decently-bred ladies and their escort, a perfectly honest French officer, ever came to find themselves on terms of easy intercourse with the frowsy old German couple who lived at the Chalet des Muguets, Lacville, on the proceeds of robbery.

Any obstacle which these repellent Teutons may have had to overcome in the ultimate execution of their nefarious designs must have been the merest child's-play compared with the initial difficulty of inducing the right kind of victim to penetrate so fifth-rate an interior. One never even began to get over the inherent improbability of such an attraction.

And I was the less disposed to take things for granted because of the rather irritating obscurity that veiled the opening of the Second Act, in which we are introduced to The House of Peril and are left for a long time in doubt as to the nature of the place and its relation to anything that has gone before. I think this must have been the fault of the adapter, Mr. VACHELL. He seems to have assumed in his audience a general knowledge of the original story--dangerous confidence, even in the case of so clever and popular a writer as Mrs. BELLOC LOWNDES.

It certainly was his fault that the end of the play was like nothing ever seen off the stage. Let me briefly put the scene before you. A young Englishwoman, paying a farewell call upon the criminals of The House of Peril, has been drugged by them. She wakes up prematurely to find them collecting her pearl necklace--four thousand pounds' worth of it. Murder is in the air, when suddenly, to the surprise of the villains (but not to ours, for we had had fair warning of the _dénouement_), enter to the rescue two admirers of the lady. In the excitement attendant upon her recovery from a swoon the druggists are suffered to pass out through the door into the arms of a posse of constabulary.

At this juncture, the lady having been restored to her senses, you might suppose that the rescue-party would take at least some fleeting interest in the disposal of their prisoners. There you would be in error. The final curtain is due and there are peremptory affairs of the heart to be wound up before we can get away. So, to clear the ground, one of the admirers makes a gallant statement which redeems the other's character from a false suspicion, and, rightly regarding himself as _de trop_, goes off by another exit and shows no further concern in either of the two developments--on or off the stage.

The remaining admirer, left alone in the company of the lady, ignores with a fine detachment the impotent rage that his captives are presumably venting in the passage just outside, and declares the ardour of his passion as a man might do in the breathless calm of a moonlit solitude _à deux_. And on this idyllic scene the curtain descends.

The most satisfying thing in the play was the acting of Miss ANNIE SCHLETTER as "_Madame" Wachner_ of the Chalet des Muguets, an extraordinarily clever study of the doting _Hausfrau,_ much busied about the service of her lord. Mr. NORMAN MCKINNEL as _Wachner_ easily contrived to convey the typically Teuton blend of brutishness, and domestic sentimentality, combined with the heavy playfulness which by a curious delusion, ineradicably racial, is mistaken over there for humour. "Ja, ja," he says complacently, "I have the humour-sense."

It was regrettable that the cosmopolitan _Anna Wolsky,_ acted with great animation by Miss MARGARET HALSTAN, had to withdraw from the scene at an early stage in consequence of being murdered--I don't know how, as we neither saw nor heard the details. Her friend, _Sylvia Bailey_, however, stayed on to the finish, and Miss EMILY BROOKE saw her nicely through her troubles. A very level performance.

To the rather wooden part of _William Chester_ (foil to hero) Mr. JOHN HOWELL brought a certain unliveliness of his own. A better chance was taken by Miss STELLA RHO, who gave proof of a vivid personality in her brief sketch of a professional fortune-teller who admitted to her clients (this must be very unusual) that she nearly always made a mess of her crystal-gazing.

Finally, Mr. OWEN NARES, looking pretty and not too warlike in the gay uniform of a French Officer of Cavalry, played the hero's part with a very natural and fluent charm. I join in the general hope that this, the first play under his actor-management, will go well. It ought to, for though, in point of power to thrill, it did not quite confirm the promise of its sinister name and theme it was never for a moment dull, and its faults were the kind of stage-faults about which, while they give the critic a chance of being unkind, a British audience never worries too much.

O.S.

* * * * *

A matinée of _Romeo and Juliet_ will be given at the Royal Court Theatre on Sunday, March 30th, at 2.30 P.M., in aid of the Notting Hill Day Nursery, which has done such admirable service among the poor of "The Potteries." Help is greatly needed to enable the promoters of this good work (for which Mr. Punch has before now appealed) to pay off a mortgage and to start a fund for a convalescent cottage-home. Among the cast of the matinée will be Miss MONA MAUGHAN, Mr. DENNIS NEILSON-TERRY and Mr. OTHO STUART, who produces it. Tickets may be obtained from the Hon. Sec., 22, Paulton's Square, Chelsea, S.W.

* * * * *

* * * * *

"STAGE-STRUCK NOVELISTS.

"LILLAH MCCARTHY AS EXECUTIONER."--_Sunday Paper_.

Well, they can't say they haven't had a fair warning.

* * * * *

"Scotsmen the world over possess to a remarkable degree the spirit of clamishness."--_Times of India_.

A good many of them have certainly made the world their oyster.

* * * * *

"OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE.

"BOOT RACE TO BE ROWED THIS YEAR AT HENLEY REGATTA."--_Daily Paper_.

A very suitable _venue_ for the contest, which, we presume, will be conducted in pairs.

* * * * *

"---- CATTLE MARKET.

"Messrs. ---- beg to announce that they will hold their usual Sale of Fat and Store Stock at above.

"Present Entries include:

"80 Pairs Men's, Women's and Children's New Boots, assorted sizes."--_Provincial Paper_.

These, of course, will be entered with the calves.

* * * * *

TO A MARCH BROWN, SWALLOWED ALIVE.

Rash insect with your jaunty air The troubled stream serenely riding, How guessed you not that Death was there Nor feared the hungry trout in hiding? Did instinct, friend of helpless things, Not bid you rise and use your wings?

Alas, the widening ripple showed Around the spot which lately bore you, And down you went the deadly road Where many a fly has gone before you, One victim more to swell the pride Of golden tum and spotted side.

Yet know (if any ghost of you Or delicate spirit's left to know it) That I've a fly which never flew (Your likeness) and the skill to throw it; And I that saw the fatal rise Marked where a fat half-pounder lies.

Thither will I with reel and rod And cure his taste for dainty dishes By favour of whatever god Decides the destiny of fishes; And that were vengeance passing sweet-- Your captor on your counterfeit!

* * * * *

DAISY.

He was always called Daisy. We hated the name, but the christening "just happened" with the suddenness of influenza or an earthquake. Percy was the culprit, for he knocked all our pre-arranged plans for a name on the head by his passion for what he calls "apt quotation." When he (Daisy) emerged from his basket we saw that, like NELSON, he was blind of an eye. Percy, immediately inspired, quoted from WORDSWORTH'S _Ode to the Daisy_, "A little Cyclops with one eye"--and the result was inevitable. Daisy resented the name from the first, for at the very font, so to speak, he drew blood from us both, and then, utterly indifferent to our feelings, settled himself on the top of an empty beer barrel and there performed his evening ablutions.

It was a curious coincidence that made him select a beer barrel, for thereby hung a tragic tale. He and his twin-brother had been adopted from infancy by the Sergeants' Mess and had lived in peace and plenty--in fact in too much plenty, for I regret to say that Daisy's brother died of drink from having formed the discreditable habit of emptying all the dregs of the Sergeants' beer mugs into his own inside. However, he was granted military obsequies, which were so successfully performed that an account of them found its way into one of the daily papers. This so delighted the amateur undertakers that Daisy's brother was at once exhumed and re-buried with further pomp and circumstance. Daisy meanwhile, feeling himself of less consequence than the departed hero, began to mope; so to save life and reason he was sent to us "to cheer and cherish," as the Sergeants put it.

An egotistical irascible bachelor seagull; yet his vices, and he was made up of them, became virtues in our eyes.

The morning after his arrival he went for a solemn tour of investigation, finally taking up his abode in the middle of the tennis-court, as being to his mind the most salubrious spot--and from there he ruled despotically. "That blooming bird fears neither man nor devil," Cook was heard to mutter, after he had embedded his beak in her ankle; and it was quite true. He so terrified Horatio, our portly bull-dog, by pecking at his sensitive kinky tail from behind when he was absent-mindedly lapping water from Daisy's bath, that he never again ventured alone on to the lawn. I say "alone," for he dared once more, emboldened by the presence of his unwilling young wife, who accompanied him, tied by a rope to his collar.

Percy and I watched them advance from afar and waited in suspense for the sequel. Daisy was taking a post-prandial nap inside his beer barrel. There was a breathless hush, followed by a pandemonium of sound, masculine and feminine cries of distress mingled with raucous shrieks of anger, and then we saw our valiant couple in slow but ignominious retreat. Horatio was dragging his spouse along on her back, with legs in air and bulging eyes! What had happened in the interim we never knew, but both Mr. and Mrs. Horatio bore marks of battle, and they were sadder and wiser dogs for many days to come.

Percy, always deprecatingly anxious to find favour in Daisy's eyes, tore down to the shore one morning before breakfast and returned with a large pailful of salt water, which he laid--so to speak--at Daisy's feet. Daisy glanced at it and at Percy with his cold grey eye, and then stepped lightly into his fresh-water tub, which was always at hand. Percy however, being of an unsnubbable disposition, tried again to find a way into Daisy's heart, and this time he brought Hengist and Horsa, two young seagulls that he had found derelict on the rocks, hoping that he would take a paternal interest in their loneliness; but, like his great prototype, Daisy clapped his glass to his sightless eye, and "I'm damned if I see them," he said. But he saw them all right at meal times, when he would whisk round suddenly as their portion of fish was flung to them, and swiftly gobble it up!

So Daisy prospered and grew sleek and fat, and his days were long in the land. He consented indeed to partake of our hospitality for over a year, won many hearts, but kept his own intact, until the following spring, when a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love; then be preened his white waistcoat and sallied forth.

***

Did I say he was a bachelor? The last we beard of him was from a fisherman friend who, when in search of sea-birds' eggs, saw and recognised our Daisy by the fierceness of his one eye. He was reluctantly taking his turn on the family egg while Mrs. Daisy stretched and titivated herself after her domestic labours.

Does he sometimes, we wonder, think regretfully of his celibate days and the beer barrel, where he lived _en garçon?_

* * * * *

"Widower, 35, abstainer, would like to correspond with respectable widow, or otherwise, view matrimony."--_Provincial Paper_.

He seems an easy-going fellow who would make any woman happy.

* * * * *

DEMOBILISED DAYDREAMS.

At 10 A.M. or so (in bed, With lowered blinds and curtains drawn), There wander lightly through my head Memories of ruddy dawn-- A thing I never could have said Before we warred against the Hun, For then, although I may have heard That this phenomenon occurred, I had no notion how the thing was done.

A stranger to the birth of day, How many have I watched since then! At least a thousand, I should say (It seems to me like ten); On Salisbury Plain, austere and grey, Breaking night's gloom and deepening mine, When, crawling forth, I used to see Stonehenge all shaken visibly By the rude Sergeant's bellow, "_Rise and shine!_"

Gilding the foam of distant seas-- And humbly then I bowed my neck And sank forlornly to my knees To swab the blooming deck; A wealth of flaming pageantries, When, in a dusty Indian fort, I went to early morning jerks,[A] Cursing the sun and all his works And dripping perspiration by the quart;

In Egypt, too, a pallid glow Through swirls of desolating dust-- There often have I watched it grow, Fed up enough to bust; In Palestine, uncertain, slow (While standing-to, with drowsy eyes), Herald of shells and, what was worse, Waking the ancient Eastern curse, A hundred thousand million ravenous flies.

Sombre, inspiring, radiant, chill, Mysterious, wild, inert, ablaze, A thousand times on plain and hill The dawn has held my gaze; Idly I dream of it, until A sterner mood invades my brain And I grow resolute. Here and now I register a mighty vow _Never_ to see the beastly thing again.

ONE OF THE _PUNCH_ BRIGADE.

[Footnote A: Physical training.]

* * * * *

"The Home Secretary gives notice that summer time will be brought into force this year on the morning of Sunday, March 30, and will continue until the night of Sunday-Monday; September 28129."--_Scots Paper_.