Chapter 3

"'I've heard it whispered,' says the poor man, an' he wid the D.S.O. an' all, 'that where there's a good dhrop o' dhrink you're the man to find it. An',' says he, 'there's no discredit to ye in that, O'Reilly.'

"'Indeed no, Sorr,' says I; ''tis a gift.'

"'Well,' says he, 'would ye use that same gift of yours for the honour o' the Rig'mint?'"

O'Reilly felt in his pocket for a tobacco-stopper, attended carefully to his pipe and again fixed me with his candid gaze.

"'There's a bit of a place 'way back,' says I, 'where I've a fancy I might find somethin'.'

"Wid that he shtuck a bunch o' notes in me hand. 'Don't shpare the cost,' says he, 'but get it. 'Tis up to you, Sergint, to save a disp'rit situation.'"

"It was a terrible responsibility," I said.

"Ye may say that. Whin I was alone wid thim notes bulgin' in me tunic, I'd a notion I might let down the Rig'mint afther all, an' that would have bruk me heart. But off I wint to see Achille. 'Twas four miles to the village, an' I wint on my blessed feet, an' by the time I got to the place I was as nervous as a mouse in a thrap. Achille's shop wasn't a café or an estaminet or a buvette or anny o' thim places. He had a bit of a brass plate on his door wid 'Marchand de Vins' on it. I knew him by raison of a fancy that took me wan day for a dhrop o' brandy. So I wint in through Achille's door wid thim notes as hot in me pocket as Patsy Donelly's pipe.

"Achille hopped out o' the little room at the hack same's a bird out of a cage. 'Ah,' says he, 'that was good cognac, eh? You shall have more, me son.'

"'Achille,' says I, ''tis a shtrange thing, but there's niver a thought o' cognac in me mind at all. 'Tis red wine, the best, that I'm afther.'

"'Red wine!' says he. 'I haven't a litre o' red wine in the cellars.'

"'Holy Powers!' says I, 'an' you wid "Marchand de Vins" on yer door.' The shock of it took the breath out o' me entirely. So I sat up on the counter to think.

"''Tis a matther,' says I, 'that concerns the Rig'mint, a rig'mint that was niver bate yet.' An' I explained about the Gin'ral an' what the O.C. tould me. An' thin I tuk the notes from me pocket an' put thim on the counther undher his eyes.

"'Ach,' says he, ''tisn't money I want from ye, but to hilp a frind.' Then he folded his arms an' his forehead wint up into a puzzle o' wrinkles.

"'An' why wouldn't white wine do?' says he.

"'Is it offer white wine to a Gin'ral an' him wid a taste for red?' says I. 'It might rouse him terrible. Now, Achille,' says I, 'would there be no way of makin' the white red?'"

O'Reilly put a persuasiveness into the last words that revealed Achille to me as an honest merchant confronted with the most subtle of temptations.

"O'Reilly," I said, "was that fair?"

"Maybe not, but I'd the Gin'ral an' the honour o' the Rig'mint fixed in me mind. 'That's a good joke, very good,' says Achille; but thore was niver a smile on his face.

"'I 'd no intintion to make anny joke,' says I. 'Come, Achille, you're a knowin' man. Would there be no way at all?'

"Now it happened that he'd lift the door o' the little room open, an' I could see a bit o' a garden through the window. 'What's the shtuff growin' out there,' says I, 'wid the dark red leaves to it, or maybe ye'd call thim purple?'

"'That's beet,' says he with a kind of a groan.

"'Beet,' says I. 'An' isn't beet a red kind of a thing an' mighty full o' juice?'

"'It is that,' says he, wid the eyes of him almost out o' his head.

"'Then how would it be,' says I, 'to touch up the white wine wid some o' that same juice?'

"'The thought was in me mind, God help me,' says he, an' wid that he sat up on the counther forninst me, an' we shtared into the garden like two men in a play.

"'Would it make the wine cloudy?' says I.

"'I could filter it so's it'd come as clear as sunshine,' says he.

"'An' how would it be for taste?' says I.

"Achille put a hand on me arm an' I could feel him shakin' like a man wid the ague.

"'Heaven forgive me,' says he, 'but ye might say it was the wine o' the counthry, an' that taste was the mark of it.' 'Tis my belief he was near cryin', for he was an honest man, an' 'twas for me he was lowerin' himself to deceit."

"You were a nice pair," I said.

"'Twas a beautiful schame," O'Reilly went on. "I was niver concerned in a betther."

"Did it come off?" I asked.

"To a turn," said O'Reilly. "We was docthorin' that blissed wine for the best part o' the day, an' I tuk back a dozen bottles to camp. The O.C. was hangin' round, as anxious as a dog for his master.

"'Have ye the wine, O'Reilly?' says he.

"'I have, sorr,' says I; 'but I'd be glad if ye'd ask me no questions about it.'

"'Not for the world,' says he, givin' me a queer look, an' was off like a mountain hare."

"Did the General recover?" I asked.

"That wine made a new man of him. He praised the Rig'mint up to the heighths. We was the pink o' the Army, bedad! The throuble was he wanted to know where he'd get more o' that same wine.

"'There's no more to be had,' says I to the O.C., for I was done wid the job.

"'He says it has a powerful bouquet,' says the O.C.

"'That may be,' says I, 'but he'll niver taste the like of it agin. 'Twas an ould wine o' the counthry, an' there's niver been the match of it before or since.'

"'Couldn't it be managed annyhow?' says the O.C.

"'Not for all the Gin'rals in the British army,' says I. 'Twas for the love o' the Rig'mint I got that wine, an' I 'm done wid the job.'"

"Is that the end?" I asked.

"Barrin' this," said O'Reilly. And he produced from his pocket a silver cigarette case, inside which was engraved, "To Sergeant Dennis O'Reilly, who saved the situation, October 15th, 1917."

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"No, thank you; I hate publicity.--Lord Jellicoe, in reply to a request for a farewell massage."--_Provincial Paper_.

We agree with the gallant Admiral that such operations are better conducted in private.

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"It was stated that the cow took ill, and died on 23rd June last, and the purser now claimed the value of the animal, namely, £5O, and also a further sum of £5, being the loss which he sustained through the want of milk, butter, and cheese, supplied by said cow from the date of her death to the date of the raising of the action."--_Scots Paper_.

"Faithful unto death"--and a bit over.

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THE ART OF LEAVING.

If I had a son one of the first things I should teach him would be the art of leaving. I would have him swift in all ways, but swiftest when the time came to go. And when he went he should go absolutely. For although the people who leave slowly are bad enough, they are as nothing compared with the people who make false exits and return with afterthoughts.

The other day the necessity came for me to visit a house agent. Life has these chequered moments. There is something of despatch and order wanting about most house-agents, possibly the result of their very odd and difficult business, which is for the greater part carried on with people who don't know their own minds and apparently are least likely to take an eligible residence when they most profess satisfaction with it. Be that as it may, house agents' offices in general have a want of definiteness unknown to, say, banks or pawnbrokers'. There is no exact spot for you to stand or sit; you are unaware as to which of the clerks is going to attend to you, and the odds are heavy that the one you approach will transfer you to another. There is also a certain air of familiarity or friendliness: not, of course, approaching the camaraderie of the dealer in motor cars, who leans against the wall with his hands in his pockets and talks to customers through a cigarette; but something much more human than the attitude of a female clerk in a post-office.

Being pressed for time and having only the very briefest transaction to perform, it follows that I was kept waiting for my turn with "our Mr. Plausible," in whose optimistic hands my affairs at the moment repose.

Occupying his far too tolerant ear was another client, whose need was a country house surrounded by enough grass-land for a small stud farm.

This is what happened (he had, by the way, the only chair at that desk):--

_Our Mr. Plausible (for the fortieth time)._ I understand perfectly. A nice house, out-buildings and about twenty acres of meadow.

_Client_. Twenty to thirty.

_Our Mr. P_. Yes, or thirty.

_C_. You see, what I want is to breed stock--cattle and horses too.

_Our Mr. P_. Exactly. Well, the three places I have given you are all well-adapted.

_C_. When a man gets to my age and has put a little money by he may just as well take it quietly as not. I don't want a real farm; I want just a smallish place where I can play at raising pedigree animals.

_Our Mr. P_. That's just the kind of place I've given you. The one near Newbury is probably the most suitable. I should see that first, and then the one near Alton.

_C_. You understand, I don't want a big farm. Anybody else can have the arable. Just a comfortable house and some meadows; about twenty acres or even thirty.

_Our Mr. P_. The biggest one I've given you is thirty. The place near Newbury is twenty-three.

_C_. Well, I'11 go and see them as soon as I can. _[Gets up_.

_Our Mr. P_. The sooner the better, I should advise. There's a great demand for country-houses just now.

_C.(sitting solidly down again)._ Ah, yes, but this is different. What I want is not so much a country-house in the ordinary meaning of the term as a farm-house, but without possessing a farm. Just enough buildings and meadow-land to breed a few shorthorns and a yearling or two. The house must be comfortable, you know, roomy, but not anything pretentious. _[Gets up again_.

_Our Mr.P._ I quite understand. That's just what I've given you.

_C. (again seating himself)._ The whole scheme may be foolishness. My wife says it is. But _(here I believe I groaned audibly; at any rate all the other clerks looked up)_ there it is. When a man has enough to retire on and pay the piper he's entitled to call the tune; isn't he?

_[At this point I resist the temptation to take him by the shoulders and push him out_.

_Our Mr. P_. Quite, quite. Well, Sir, if you take my advice you'11 go to Newbury as quickly as you can. It's a first-rate place--most highly recommended.

_[Here the client very deliberately puts the three "orders to view" in his inside pocket and slowly buttons his coat. I flutter on tiptoe, eager for his chair._

_C_. If these won't do you'11 find me some more?

_Our Mr. P_. With pleasure.

_C_. Very well; good morning.

_[Moves away. I have just begun to speak when he returns._

_C_. Don't forget what I want it for. And not too far from London or my wife will dislike it.

_Our Mr. P_. Yes, you told me that. I've got a note of it here.

_C_. And you won't forget about the acreage?

_Our Mr. P_. No."

_C.(addressing me)._ I'm afraid I've kept you waiting.

_I (like the craven liar I am)._ It's all right.

_[Client ultimately withdraws, but still with reluctance, and after two or three hesitations and half-turns back_.

And the tragic part of it is that his name is Legion.

That is why if I had a boy I should teach him the art of leaving. Almost nothing else matters.

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OFFICIAL EUPHEMISM.

DR. ADDISON has stated that for some time past it has been the practice riot to use the word "pauper" in official documents when it was possible to use another expression; and no well-conditioned person will cavil at the spirit which has prompted the use of a less invidious substitute. But surely the process might be carried a good deal further. The practice of giving a dog a bad name is not only condemned by the proverbial philosophy of the ancients but by the most emancipated of the orthopsychical educationists of to-day.

If you keep on calling a man a "criminal," you will end by making him one. How much wiser it would be to refer to the impulses which occasionally bring him into conflict with the custodians of law and order as emanating from a dynamic individualism! In that way you may very possibly convert him into a static individualist and sterilize his potential malignance by a subliminal _serum._.

The amount of harm done by disparaging nomenclature is incalculable. Take the word "thief," for example. Its meaning can be expressed with infinitely greater precision and delicacy in the phrase, "one who is unable to discriminate between _meum_ and _tuum_." Here you have in place of one mean little word a well-cadenced phrase of ten. Euphony as well as humanity prompts the variation.

Classical writers may have objected to the use of sesquipedalian words, but we know better, and Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL'S famous synonym for "lie" is permanently enshrined in the annals of circumlocution. One of the most offensive words in the language is "idiot"; yet it can be shorn of nearly all its sting when replaced by the definition, "a person of infra-normal mentality."

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"London, Dec. 16.--At a meeting of the County Cricket Advisory Committee it was decided to run the County Championship during 1919, the matches to be limited to two days. There will be no change in the number of balls in the over.--Reuter's.

The Soviets are preparing the sharpest counter-measure.--Reuter's."--_Canton Times_.

But we are confident that whatever the Soviets' little game is it will not be cricket.

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STATE LOTTERIES.

[An Equality Theatre is being-run in Munich, where the public pays a fixed price and is allotted by chance a seat in the stalls or the gallery.]

The Equality plan we will run if we can So that never a man or a woman need grumble-- If theatres, should the idea not include Books, clothing and food for the great and the humble? You will pay a fixed sum and accept what may come, Be it loser or plum; and, to shun all that vexes, We'll even eliminate what modern women hate, And will not discriminate as to the sexes.

The question of dress may at first, I confess, Make a sort of a mess of our smart Small-and-Earlies, Where the First Footman John wears the garb of a don, And Lord CURZON comes on from the House in his pearlies; But when our char kneels on the steps and reveals The last word in "Lucilles," will she not put her heart more And more in her duties while great social beauties Slink by in "pampooties" and arrows from Dartmoor?

Our tastes and our breeding no more will be leading The paths of our reading; we'll read what we've got to (And it _will_ be a sell for Mamma if her Nell Gets the last ETHEL DELL, when Mamma told her _not_ to); It may be a worry to poor GILBERT MURRAY To read Hints on Curry and Blouses and Batter In _Home Chat_, it's true; but still more of a stew _The Occult Review_ may appear to his hatter.

In the matter of meals, since the rations one feels Hedonistic ideals have so soundly been shaken That even the swankiest Duke might say, "Thankee!" For Hodge's red hanky of bread and cold bacon; But if in the sequel all chances are equal You'll have to see me quell a volume of curses When our "jobs" they allot, and I _still_ have to swot, If I like it or not, writing topical verses.

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A HARDY ANNUAL.

The butler, John Binns, who is an old and faithful retainer to this household, is now suffering from his annual cough. It is a terrific cough, capable of disputing supremacy with all other coughs of which the world has heard. The special points about this cough are (1) its loudness; (2) its combination of the noises made by all other coughs; (3) its depth; (4) its shriek of despair as it trembles and reverberates through the house; (5) its capacity to repel and annihilate sympathy. It is true that I have interviewed Binns with regard to his cough--it is an annual interview and is expected of me. I have urged him as he values our friendship not to neglect his cough, and he has assured me in return that the doctor has prepared for him a draught which possesses the supreme quality of being absolutely unable to effect the purpose for which it was devised.

"I shall drink 'is stuff," says Binns, "but I 'aven't any 'opes of its doing me any good. It doesn't seem to get me _be'ind_ the eough. If once I could really get be'ind it I should soon finish it. But yon can't expect to do anything with a cough unless you're be'ind it."

"Have you tried chloraline?" I venture to suggest, mentioning not by that name, but by another, a much-advertised specific.

"I've been living on chloraline--that is when I wasn't taking camphor lozenges. But my symptoms are too strong for that kind o' stuff. Besides, I find that it's no use to fill yerself up with remedies, because they only weigh down the cough unnaturally, and then when it does bust out it's fit to tear yer throat in pieces. But none of them get be'ind it--no, not once."

It will be observed that Binns has almost a superstition in regard to "getting be'ind." If he got rid of his cough with everything still in front, he would take no satisfaction whatever in his malady; but as it is he feels a legitimate pride in it. He has been a member of this household for forty years, and punctually on the Kalends of March in every year his cough turns up. It never reduces his efficiency, but, while it alienates affection, it makes him more valuable to himself as being one who has symptoms capable of being related at full length to Mrs. Hankinson, the cook, or to any of the maids who have not yet experienced it and must be made aware that they belong to an establishment which has the high merit of accommodating John Binns's annual cough.

It is something to have a butler who has coughed his irresistible way through two-and-a-half generations. It is a perfectly harmless affliction, but it gets on nerves in the same way as it did when first it huicked and honked and strangled and choked in the seventies of last century. I can see no decrease in its vigour or its variety. It deserves the chance of immortality that I hereby offer it, thus giving it a place beside the cough that _Johnson_ coughed at _Dr. Blimber's_ famous establishment. It will be remembered that, when the _Doctor_ began an excursus on the Romans, _Johnson_, "who happened to be drinking and who caught the Doctor's eye glaring at him through the side of his tumbler, left off so hastily that he was convulsed for some moments and in the sequel ruined Dr. Blimber's point." He struggled gallantly, but had in the end to give way to an overwhelming paroxysm of coughing. It was a good cough, but an isolated one, and was perhaps, after all, not equal to Binns's.

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THE GOOD OLD TIMES.

Captain Reginald Jones _and_ Captain James Smith, _demobilised, meet accidentally in the waiting-room of a Government office. Their acquaintanceship had originated in a shell-hole near Plum-Tree Farm in 1916._

_Reggie_. Cheerio, old egg.

_Jimmy_. Same to you. Doing anything?

_Reggie_. Lord, yes! I've been pushed on to the directorate of the pater's firm.

_Jimmy_. Congrats!

_Reggie_. Stow it, old man; I'm simply worried to death. The whole cabush is on strike.

_Jimmy_. The blighters! What bunch are they?

_Reggie_. Stone-breakers.

_Jimmy_. Not the stone-breakers, surely?

_Reggie_. Yes, the stone-breakers, perish them!

_Jimmy_. And are you here about it?

_Reggie_. Sure. The junior director gets all the dirty work to do.

_Jimmy_. What a coincidence! I'm on the same stunt, old thing.

_Reggie_. Board of Trade?

_Jimmy_. Rats! Organising secretary of the Stone-breakers' Union.

_Reggie (after, gasp of surprise)._ Lucky devil.

_Jimmy_. Rot! I'd chuck it if I could afford to. Don't you wish sometimes you were back at Plum-Tree Farm?

_Reggie_. Crumbs, Jimmy; but weren't those the glorious days?

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"EX-CROWN PRINCE'S HORSE TO RUN."--_Heading in "The Times_."

Like master like horse.

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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks_.)

I SHALL begin by saying straight out that Miss CICELY HAMILTON'S new book, _William--an Englishman_ (SKEFFINGTON), is one of the finest war-stories that anyone has yet given us. You know already what qualities the author brings to her writing; you may believe me that she has done nothing more real, more nobly conceived, and by consequence more moving than this short tale. It opens, in a style of half-humorous irony, with an account of the youth, early life and courtship of _William_, who, with the girl whom he married, belonged to the vehement circles of the Labour-Suffragist group, spending a cheerfully ignorant life in a round of meetings, in hunger-striking and whole-hearted support of the pacifism that "seeks peace and ensues it by insisting firmly, and even to blood, that it is the other side's duty to give way." One small concession you must make to Miss HAMILTON'S plot. It is improbable that, when such a couple as _William_ and _Griselda_ left England in July 1914 to take their honeymoon in a remote valley of the Belgian Ardennes, their friends, knowing them to be without news and ignorant of all speech save English, should have made no effort to warn them. But, this granted, the tragedy that follows becomes inevitable. It is so finely told and so horrible (the more so for the deliberate restraint of the telling) that I will say nothing to weaken its effect. From one scene, however, I cannot withhold my tribute of admiration--that in which _William_, alone, brokenhearted, and almost crazed with the ruin of everything that made up his life, creeps home to find his old associates still glibly echoing the platitudes in which he once believed. A hint here of insincerity or conscious arrangement would have ruined all; as it is, the scene holds and haunts one with an impression of absolute truth, For the end, marked like all by an almost grim avoidance of sentimentality, I shall only refer you to the book itself. After reading it you will, I hope, not think me guilty of exaggeration when I call it, slight though it is, one for which its author has deserved well of the State.

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