Part 2

All that is needed is a small sum sufficient to manufacture a thousand or so and to pay the patent-fee. We can then see how it goes and arrange for further supplies. I expect it to be a little gold-mine both for the inventor and for the fortunate capitalist. I am giving you, dear Aunt Verena, the first chance. A sum of £500 should be sufficient to start with.

So much for the business side.

Now for the amusement. A good catchy name is needed for it, but I have not yet thought of one that wholly pleases me. The name should cover all its many functions and yet be short and snappy. I thought of “Steppo,” but that disregards the clothes-horse and screen; or “Klowscrene,” but that takes no note of the ladder. It occurred to me that you might find entertainment on your bed of sickness (which I trust you are soon to leave) in puzzling out something suitable.

You must not think of me as for one moment wanting something for nothing. I should never do that. All I propose is an alliance between my restless brains and your dormant bank balance which might be profitable to both of us.

Again wishing you a speedy recovery, I am, yours sincerely,

HORACE

_P.S._—I suppose it would hardly do to call it “The Angel in the House”? Not enough people know the phrase, and admirers of Coventry Patmore might be shocked.

XVII

ROY BARRANCE TO VERENA RABY

DEAR AUNT VERENA,—I am most awfully sorry to hear from Hazel about your accident. I hope it’s only a blighty and that you will soon be fit again. As I am a great believer in good news as a buck-me-up, I hasten to tell you before anyone else that I am engaged to be married. Every one has always said that I should be all the better for settling down, and really with such a pet as Trixie I am sure they are right. I have not known her very long—we met at a dance at Prince’s—but there are some people that you feel in a minute or so you have known all your life, and she is one of them. If you were not so ill I should bring her to see you at once.

She has fair hair, bobbed, and her father is a swell in the India Office. I have not met either him or her mother yet, but Trixie is to let me know directly a favourable opportunity occurs and then I shall butt in. I rather dread the interview, as Mr. Parkinson—that’s her father’s name—is said to be dashed peppery and to have set his heart on her marrying coin; but I daresay I shall pull myself together and play the game. Meanwhile Trixie wants to keep the engagement a secret; and except for two or three pals you are the only person I have told. I haven’t even told Hazel.

I ought to tell you that she can drive a car and knows all about them, so she ought to be really a helpmate, as all wives should be, don’t you think? She is nearly eighteen and as I am nearly twenty it is splendid. I have always believed that husbands ought to be older than their wives. It gives them authority. We are thinking of taking our honeymoon in a two-seater on which I have had my eye for some time; but it is rather costly. Everything costs such a lot nowadays. Trixie says she finds me such a relief after so many soldiers. You see, having been in the Army such a short time, I am almost, she says, a civilian; really her first civilian friend; but of course if the War hadn’t stopped I should still be a soldier too.—Your sincere nephew,

ROY

_P.S._—I’m awfully sorry about your being seedy. There’s nothing like keeping fit and I was never so full of beans myself. Get well soon. Cheerio!

XVIII

EVANGELINE BARRANCE TO RICHARD HAVEN

DEAR MR. HAVEN,—Will you please be very kind and write something for a little paper which I am editing at school for Aunt Verena to read while she is so ill. You are so clever. Something funny if you can, but, if not, something readable. The paper is to be called _The Beguiler; or, The Invalid’s Friend_.—Yours affectionately,

EVANGELINE BARRANCE

XIX

HORACE MUN-BROWN TO VERENA RABY

DEAR AUNT,—Just a line to say that I have hit on what I think is a perfect name for my invention, so do not trouble your brains any more. “The Housewife’s Ally.”—Yours sincerely,

HORACE MUN-BROWN

XX

RICHARD HAVEN TO EVANGELINE BARRANCE

DEAR EVANGELINE (what a long name!), I am so busy in trying to be a beguiler to your Aunt Verena, on my own account, that I don’t think I shall be able to contribute to your magazine; but I wish it very well and I shall try to collect something for you from a literary friend here and there. Being funny is too difficult for me anyway.—Yours sincerely,

RICHARD HAVEN

XXI

SEPTIMUS TRIBE TO VERENA RABY

DEAR SISTER,—Letitia and I were distressed by the tone of Nesta’s reply to my offer of a friendly advisory visit. It was never in my mind to supplant your lawyer, but merely to assist you in preparing for him. Friendly as family lawyers can become, one must always remember that they are a race apart, members of a secret society, largely inimical in their attitude to amateur counsellors outside their mystery. But on this subject I shall say no more.

Letitia is, I regret to state, in a poorer condition of health than usual, due not a little to the need for certain luxuries with which, to my constant regret, I am unable to provide her, not the least of which is some sound invigorating wine such as our medical man recommends. In default of champagne, which is light and easily digested, she has to take stout, which, poor girl, lies heavily on her stomach. But these are not matters on which to discourse to one in affliction, and I apologise. Let me repeat that if in any way I can be of service to you in your helplessness I shall be only too ready.—I remain, your affectionate brother-in-law,

SEPTIMUS TRIBE

XXII

HORACE MUN-BROWN TO VERENA RABY

DEAR AUNT,—I am afraid I was over-sanguine about the name for my invention. I showed it to a friend, a very capable man at the Bar, and to my astonishment he pronounced “Ally” not as if it were the word signifying helper (as I had intended) but as though it were a diminutive of Alexander or Alfred, bringing to mind, most unsuitably, the vulgar paper _Ally Sloper_. Such a misconception, in a man of his ability, would mean that far too many people would make a similar mistake, so we must start again.—I am, yours sincerely,

HORACE MUN-BROWN

XXIII

NESTA ROSSITER TO RICHARD HAVEN

DEAR “UNCLE” RICHARD.—The news here is good, I think, were it not that Aunt Verena has great difficulty in sleeping. She worries a good deal over her inactivity, and her burdensomeness (as she calls it) to others. She does not want to take drugs, nor do the doctors recommend them if they can be avoided. Our nurse is very good and attentive, but not much of a companion in the small hours. Have you any suggestions?—I am, yours sincerely,

NESTA ROSSITER

XXIV

RICHARD HAVEN TO VERENA RABY

MY DEAR, I’m sorry about your sleeping so badly. All I can do is to pass on to you my own remedy, which is to repeat poetry to myself. It is better than counting sheep and all that kind of thing.

“But suppose I don’t know any poetry?”

Well, of course, you do; but there is no harm in learning more, and especially so if, in order not to tire you in the wrong way, it is all very short, never more than eight lines. The epigrammatic things that are like miniatures in painting. What do you think of that? Here is a quatrain that touches immediately on your case:—

Invoking life, I feel the surging tide Of countless wants ordained to be denied; Invoking sleep, I feel the hastening stream Of minor wants merged in a want supreme.

You see, I have already begun to collect these little jewels, and, difficult as it is to find perfection (even Landor is often disappointing), I am in great hopes of getting together a really beautiful necklace of them, and then perhaps we will print them privately in a little book for the weary, and the wakeful and the elect. You might even learn Omar: say, two quatrains a day. It’s the loveliest melancholy stuff and can’t do you any harm, because you have your belief in the goodness of things all fixed and unshakeable, and you couldn’t get at the red wine if you wanted to. If you haven’t an _Omar_ I shall send you one.

Ah, Love! could’st thou and I with Fate conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, Would we not shatter it to bits—and then Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s desire!

Wouldn’t we just? But then you don’t think the scheme as sorry as I often am forced to.

R. H.

XXV

HAZEL BARRANCE TO VERENA RABY

DEAREST AUNT VERENA,—I do hope you are getting stronger. We are all excited about the vertical Solitaire table and I long to see it. One odd and unexpected effect of your illness is to keep Evangeline quiet and busy. She comes home from school now full of importance and spends hours with her pen. The result, as I think she has told you, is to be a surprise for you. I wish I could do something to help you, but can suggest nothing. Knitting was my only accomplishment and I’m sure you are not short of woollies. Having ordered the day’s food, I have now nothing to do but periodically to eat it, and to go out of my way to be more than amiable to the maids for fear of offending and losing them. You have no notion—you with your divine permanent staff—of the volcanoes we live on here and our constant terror of receiving notice. And this family in particular, because father makes no effort to control his language (but then no one does any more, and if “damn” were a word that infants could lisp they would lisp it—but servants don’t like it), and mother _will_ give us the results of séances, which again servants don’t like or quite understand. Their idea of the dead is something to be put tidily away in a cemetery and visited on Sunday afternoons; not talkative spirits full of messages.

The more I go on in this aimless way the more I want to break loose and live alone without meals and really do something. I was useful during the War and now I’m a machine. My only excitement—and a very doubtful on—is the refusal of dear cousin Horace, who proposes to me every other week.—Your loving

HAZEL

_P.S._—Poor Fritz has had to be gently brought to his end. We have buried him next to Tiger and father has had the stone engraved with the words:—

HERE LIES FRITZ THE DACHSHUND WHO (ALTHOUGH A GERMAN) WAS THE TRUEST FRIEND AN ENGLISH FAMILY EVER HAD 1919

XXVI

LOUISA PARRISH TO VERENA RABY

MY DEAR VERENA,—I have only just heard of your accident and cannot understand why you did not let me know sooner. But perhaps, poor thing, you can’t write. I heard it through the Hothams, who had been told by Pauline Bankes. Still even if you can’t write yourself you must have some one there who can. Dictating is not an easy thing, I know, but even a postcard would have been better than nothing, and then I would have written at once to cheer you up. But if you do send a postcard, you will be careful, won’t you, not to put anything very private on it, as they are all read here. It was how the village heard of poor Colonel Onslow’s daughter’s elopement. No doubt you were too ill to think of all your friends, and yet in the night, when one thinks of so much, I wonder my name didn’t occur to you.

Writing letters is no hardship to me, as it is to so many people. My brother John, for instance, can’t bring himself to put pen to paper at all, and his study is always littered up with unanswered things. It is very odd, I always think, that the son of so methodical a man as father was should be so careless, but I expect it is a throwback or comes from mother’s side. I am much more like father in so many ways, as well as having the Parrish nose and the ears set so far forward, while John and the others favour the Pegrams.

You must let me know if there is anything I can do for you besides writing now and then. Of course, if you were able to knit it would be better, although there is no one to knit for now. All the girls that I see knitting are working only for themselves—those jumpers they wear without corsets, so very indelicate, I think, especially when the bust is at all full. It is all so different from the War, when people were really unselfish. As long as I can remember, I, personally, have knitted for others; not that I want to take credit for it, but it is nice to be able to be of service. When I was a child it was mittens for the gardener and the coachman or else those poor Deep Sea Fishermen.

I suppose you have all the books you want. You have always been so well provided for, but there’s a little comforting bedside volume by Frances Ridley Havergal which I am sending in case you should want anything of that sort. It has always helped me, and the other day, after so many years, I read _Queechy_ again and found it quite exciting, so I am putting that in too. Many of the modern books are so _outré_.

My rheumatism has been rather worse lately, but I mustn’t tell you things like that when you are so ill yourself. I should like to know what your doctor says about you. There was a poor lady here who slipped and fell and hurt her back, very much in the same way, I should imagine, and she lived only a few hours. And dear old Sir Benjamin Pike, my father’s friend and fellow magistrate, came to his end in the same way, through a banana skin. I am sure the regulations about throwing banana and orange skins away in the streets should be more strict. In my childhood we never saw bananas at all, and now they are everywhere. How odd it is that fashions in fruit should change as well as fashions in bodies and in dress, although I for one am against so much change in dress and think the advertisements in the weekly papers are dreadful in their incitement to women to spend money, especially now when the Prime Minister tells us we should all save, and I am sure he is right. And the money people gave for pearls too, at the Red Cross sale! Perfectly marvellous where it all comes from, and how different we all are! Those millionaires buying pearls for their wives, and me here quite happy with the mosaic brooch my father brought me from Venice and the agate clasp which belonged to dear mother.

I must stop now or I shall miss the post.—Always your loving friend,

LOUISA

XXVII

RICHARD HAVEN TO VERENA RABY

MY DEAR, how odd it is that even the sweetest-natured men, when asked for a fairy tale for the young, tend to satire. Pure fancy—comic invention with no _arrière pensée_—seems to be the most evasive medium. That mathematical genius, W. K. Clifford, could do the genuine thing without one drop of the gall of sophistication, and so, of course, could Lewis Carroll, and Burne-Jones in his letters. But when I asked my old friend, George Demain, for something amusing and suitable for a children’s amateur magazine, look at what he sent! I enclose the original, which please return. As it is no part of my scheme of life to teach cynicism, I am withholding it from the fledgling editors. I don’t mind meeting cynics (although it is always best that there should be but one in any company) but I don’t intend consciously to make any.

One of the extraordinary things of the moment is how little some men who went through the War were changed by it all. In fact, it comes to this, that the War could deal only with what a man had: it could not create brains or feelings. The people who talk about it as a purge, an educator, as discipline and so forth, are saying what they thought it ought to have been, rather than what it was. There are clerks in my office who enlisted and fought and even killed men, and have now returned to be clerks again, with perfect resignation, and with no outward sign of development, except that they do their work with less care.

I asked one of them what he thought of France and the French. He had been right through the War and had come, for the first time in his life, into relations with the French under every kind of emotional stress. He ought to have had numbers of stories to tell and national distinctions to draw. All he said was—“Funny how far up from the railway platform their trains are!”

I hope all goes as well with you as it can.

R. H.

MOTIVES

[_Enclosure_]

Once upon a time there was a King who had never done anything except make laws and draw his salary, and when he was getting well on in years he began to wonder if his people really loved him. He might never have discovered the answer had not a neighbouring country declared war against him and threatened to invade his territory; for “Now,” said the old King, “we will probe at last into this question of devotion.”

He immediately issued a proclamation that the country was in danger and that all who wished to fight could do so but there would be no compulsion.

So the war began and all the men of the country flocked to the colours and there was great excitement.

At the end of a year the army of the old King had conquered and peace was proclaimed.

The day that the troops returned was a great holiday. The streets were gay with flags and banners, and every one came out to welcome the victors. That night the old King, dressed as a plain citizen, slipped through his palace gates and mingled with the crowd. He saw the illuminations and heard with emotion the joyous songs and cries of exultation.

Overcome by the noise and rejoicing he turned down a quiet street and presently he came on a woman weeping in a doorway. He asked the cause of her grief and she told him that her husband had been slain in battle.

“Ah,” said the old King, “I am truly sorry to hear that, but, after all, there is a consolation in knowing that he died fighting for his King.”

“I am not so sure,” replied the sorrowing widow. “We had a quarrel and he went and joined the army to spite me.”

Farther on the King met a poor old man bowed with grief and sighing deeply as he leaned on his staff.

“How is this, old man?” cried the King. “Why do you sorrow when so many are gay?”

“Alas,” groaned the other, “I have just heard that my son was killed in this horrible war.”

“You have cause for sorrow, my friend,” said the old King sympathetically, “but remember he fell in a good cause. He died for his King.”

“Perhaps he did,” replied the poor old man. “But he didn’t say anything about that when he marched off. He didn’t want to go, as a matter of fact. Not a bit. But every one else was going and he was afraid of being thought a coward.”

At the next corner the old King saw a soldier, one of the victors. He was lame and haggard and worn and was leaning against a wall to rest.

“Ah!” cried the old King. “You have been wounded, my young hero?”

The soldier nodded and looked bored.

“Never mind, my lad,” said the old King, patting him on the shoulder. “We are all proud of you—and remember, you risked your life in honour of your King!”

The soldier turned his tired eyes on him and a stiff smile made his mouth crooked. “I suppose that was it,” he said wearily. “I _had_ thought that I joined up to see a bit of life and have the girls look at me, but possibly you are right. I expect it was the King’s honour I was thinking of.”

So the King returned thoughtfully to his palace, and as he entered the great hall the musicians began playing “God keep the King.” Then all the courtiers who were to receive their share of the indemnity claimed from the defeated enemy, and all the commanders who were to receive titles and honours and large estates, cried out with one voice “God keep the King!” so that the people out in the streets heard it and joined in the shout as if they meant it.

And then the old King went to bed.

XXVIII

HORACE MUN-BROWN TO VERENA RABY

MY DEAR AUNT,—I am surprised to hear from Nesta Rossiter that my invention does not strike you more favourably. I felt sure that you would like to invest a little in it and at the same time encourage me. But at the moment I am so busy with a bigger and vastly more attractive project that I am not so disappointed as I might have been. This new project is the kind of thing which I am sure will interest you too, for it involves the pleasure of a vast number of people. Briefly, I want to open a Picture Palace in the heart of the City. As you probably know, the part of London which is called the City is given up exclusively to business and eating-houses. But there are thousands—almost millions—of men and youths and girls who would rather eat their lunch in a Picture Palace than in a restaurant, and see at the same time a drama which might entertain, instruct, amuse, or quicken their emotions. This means crowded houses from say 12.15 to 2.30, the audience constantly changing as their time was up. Then there are also the employers—the stock-brokers and merchants—who might like to break the monotony of routine by seeing the pictures for an hour at any time, and then there are also errand boys who ought to be elsewhere. And we can add to these the number of strangers calling in the City who have nothing to do when their business is done. I think you will agree with me that this is a really good scheme.

Land is of course expensive, but I am writing to three or four of the most suitably situated churches suggesting the possibility of acquiring their sites and rebuilding them where they are more needed. The proposal may sound very revolutionary to you, but my experience is that the more revolutionary a thing is the more likely it is to happen. Besides, it is not so revolutionary as it appears, for these churches are practically obsolete and I have no doubt whatever that the vicars would welcome a change.

I hope you are steadily improving. As a good name for the City Man’s Cinema will be an advantage, perhaps you would like to be thinking of one.—Yours sincerely,

HORACE MUN-BROWN

XXIX

RICHARD HAVEN TO VERENA RABY

DEAR VERENA, I am finding, to my horror, that the poets when at their briefest are usually concerned with mortality: and not necessarily because the space on a tombstone is restricted and they are writing for the stone-cutter, although that may have been an influence, but from choice. Yet as it is my belief that we ought to familiarize ourselves with the idea of death (and indeed the War forced us overmuch to do so) you mustn’t mind an epitaph or two now and then, particularly when they are beautiful. Or shall we get them all over at once—and illustrate my discovery too? The most famous of all, the epitaph on the Countess Dowager of Pembroke, every one knows:—

Underneath this sable Hearse Lies the subject of all verse: Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother: Death, ere thou hast slain another Fair, and Learn’d, and Good as she, Time shall throw a dart at thee.

But I like hardly less the elegy on Elizabeth L. H. It is longer—longer indeed than the eight-line limit that we have set ourselves—but I have cut off the end, which is inferior:—

Wouldst thou hear what Man can say In a little? Reader, stay. Underneath this stone doth lie As much Beauty as could die: Which in life did harbour give To more Virtue than doth live. If at all she had a fault, Leave it buried in this vault.

Then there is Herrick’s “Upon a Child that Died”—another inspiration:—

Here she lies, a pretty bud, Lately made of flesh and blood: Who as soon fell fast asleep As her little eyes did peep. Give her strewings but not stir The earth that lightly covers her.

With these, which are Tudor or early Stuart, I would associate the Scotch epitaph on Miss Lewars:—

Say, sages, what’s the charm on earth Can turn Death’s dart aside? It is not purity and worth, Else Jessie had not died.

And Stevenson’s best known poem is an epitaph too:—