t44D
 
 GELIA ONCE AGAIN
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 CELIA'S FRIENDS 
 THE ELOPEMENT
 
 GELI A ONCE AGAIN 
 
 BY 
 
 ETHEL BRUNNER 
 
 LONDON 
 ARTHUR L. HUMPHREYS 
 
 1919
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAOB 
 
 THE PIC-NIC ... * 
 
 ADELAIDE . . -53 
 
 MRS PlTKEATHLY t .67 
 
 THE CRUISE ... . . 141 
 
 THE CAMERA . . . 2 75 
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN . . . . ' 3 7 
 
 THE STATUE ...... 353 
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY . 49 
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY . . . 447 
 
 2134424
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 THESE events transpired during the so-called summer 
 of nineteen thirteen. Celia suddenly decided to get up 
 a pic-nic, and before anyone could say Jack Robinson 
 or arrange any previous engagements, we were all 
 booked for it. No one really likes pic-nics, I am sure 
 of that, and men just loathe them. For no matter 
 whether a man be campaigning or prospecting or big- 
 game hunting he likes to have his meals in some degree 
 of comfort, and this is precisely what never occurs upon 
 a pic-nic. 
 
 Once settled, wherever Celia went she invited people 
 out upon this expedition. Fortunately very many 
 fought shy of it, but in spite of lots of refusals she got 
 fourteen acceptances. 
 
 Now there are two sorts of Pic-nics : those in which 
 things go right more or less, and those in which things 
 go wrong, and this pic-nic I am going to tell you about 
 belongs to the latter variety. I am telling you all 
 about it so that you may have some idea of the diffi- 
 culties and exigencies that beset people who thought- 
 lessly set out, determined to live a life of toil-free, 
 careless pleasure. What made it a worse form of 
 pleasure than usual was that it was a sort of pro- 
 tracted pic-nic ; it was to combine a week-end and 
 while it lasted we were to cover a lot of ground or, as 
 it subsequently turned out, a lot of water. We had 
 first to arrange where we would go, and that you can 
 see among friends led to a fearful lot of talk, chipping 
 and general impoliteness, and mutual recriminations. 
 Miss Lamb, Vera, Dan and I were permitted to assist 
 Celia in making up her mind. That is to say, we 
 quarrelled among ourselves as to the respective merits 
 A 1
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 of different places. Each of us wanted Celia to select 
 the particular place we recommended or fancied, and 
 said tosh to anyone else's suggestion, and as soon as 
 Celia seemed about to fix on any one place everyone 
 suddenly thought of some horrid drawback to it, such 
 as perpetual east winds, bad hotels or defective drainage 
 or trippers or else someone remembered they had read 
 a few days before that typhus or diphtheria was raging 
 there. 
 
 In the end the weather decided for us. It suddenly 
 got so terribly hot that instinctively and with one 
 accord next day we all thought of the River, and 
 everyone rang Celia up and suggested it so that was 
 settled on. 
 
 Oxford it was decided was to be our first stopping 
 place. We were to motor there on Saturday, a gay, 
 careless party, all out to enjoy ourselves. We'd arrive 
 there in time for lunch and walk round the dear old 
 Colleges. M. de Brissac, the great Frenchman, would 
 so enjoy it and Celia's eyes sparkled as they always 
 did when she thinks she ,is going to give someone a 
 special treat. 
 
 After that, next day, we were to wander by launch 
 to a spot midway down the River, lunching on the 
 banks, and Sunday night we'd spend at a delightful 
 little Riverside Hotel, nestling in a perfect bower of 
 green, a little Eden of its own. Those of the party 
 who had appointments in Town next day could catch 
 a morning express on Monday, whilst the others could 
 come down by river all the way to Windsor by launch 
 and there get into the motors which would be awaiting 
 them. It all sounds very easy, but it was surprising 
 how much time and hard work it took to plan out this 
 seemingly simple itinerary, and that we should have 
 squabbled so over it. It is a mystery to me how friends 
 stay friendly, who see much of each other, especially if 
 they do many things or knock about on pleasure trips 
 together. I get on best with my enemies really, for 
 
 2
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 I take good care not to see too much of them. We 
 are (or were) all very fond of one another, but meta- 
 phorically speaking, we very nearly came to blows 
 before we fixed this up. 
 
 However after, as I say, much agitating thought 
 and many suggestions and counter- suggestions, hotels 
 were rung up, distances arranged and all the main 
 lines of the affair settled. 
 
 Celia, Vera and Miss Lamb held up the proceedings 
 and wasted a lot of time by debating as to whether 
 they would bring maids, and having settled that, they 
 had to settle whether they would take evening dresses, 
 high smart dresses or blouses, and having decided it 
 was to be blouses, the question was which blouses. 
 
 Women are so funny ! 
 
 It was agreed that we should travel light. Dan said 
 he was a past-master at this. He could travel short- 
 hand as far as luggage was concerned, but he said he 
 had grave doubts as to whether I could do it for when 
 he went up to Scotland once with me he said I took a 
 separate cardboard box for every collar, and that I 
 had a pet sponge the size of a man's head with a special 
 aluminium case for it as big as a little trunk to itself. 
 Celia said that was all very well but I must make an 
 effort, and I said I'd do with as little as I could, but 
 that I must have a dinner jacket and trousers and three 
 suits, three pairs of shoes and trees, and one pair of 
 boots and trees 
 
 " Nonsense, Peter, why we ladies are only going to 
 take two dresses each, day and evening, and shoes the 
 same. Luggage is the most awful nuisance on a trip like 
 this. It's quite impossible to take a lot. As the shoes 
 and trees are the heaviest you must cut them down." 
 
 I was obdurate, and said I must have a pair of evening 
 shoes (Oxford), a pair of tan shoes to motor down in on 
 Saturday, a pair of white buckskin boots for the River 
 on Sunday, and a pair of black polishing calf shoes to 
 go to the Law Courts in on Monday. 
 
 3
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 Celia said " No, nonsense." Two pairs were ample. 
 I was to travel in the black calf on Saturday and to 
 wear the tan shoes on Sunday and Monday. I told 
 her I couldn't possibly wear the same pair of shoes two 
 days running 
 
 " You won't be running ; you won't even be walk- 
 ing. You'll be sitting most of the time," said 
 Dan. 
 
 running. No matter what happened I always 
 gave my shoes a rest, wearing them alternate days. 
 No one who thought anything of their shoes would do 
 otherwise. 
 
 " It's I who will need a rest after this, not your 
 shoes, if you persist in being so unreasonable," Celia 
 said. 
 
 " You brought it on yourself. You thought of the 
 pic-nic, not I ! " 
 
 Dan said shoes were shoes and good shoes especially 
 were very difficult to deal with, but to him the buck- 
 skin boots appeared a superfluity. 
 
 I said I hated tan shoes and flannels. I said I had 
 been brought up to know that the best people always 
 wore white buckskin boots on the River, or else white 
 canvas with brown strappings on them. 
 
 Dan said " the best people be jiggered." 
 
 " I have it ! " said Celia, who had borrowed my 
 pencil and had worked it out on a piece of paper. 
 "You can wear your tan shoes on Saturday going 
 down, your polishing calf shoes on Sunday and your 
 tan again on Monday, and they'll have had a day's rest 
 like that." She was beginning to get quite interested 
 in the problem. 
 
 " Black calf shoes and white flannels together ! My 
 dear Celia ! " I said icily, as if the thing were too 
 monstrous to dilate upon. She quailed at the irony in 
 my tone. She defers to me in matters pertaining to 
 men's clothing, I must say. 
 
 " Besides how am I to appear at the Temple on 
 
 4
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 Monday in a black braided morning coat and striped 
 trousers with a tall hat and wearing tan shoes ? " 
 
 " A tall hat ! " they all cried, " are you going to 
 bring a tall hat ? " 
 
 "I am indeed." 
 
 Everyone threw up their eyes and hands. . ' 
 
 " Why on earth not wear your blue suit, a bowler hat 
 and the tan shoes on Monday and be done with it ? " 
 
 " For the simple reason that I never give my suits 
 less than a two days' rest between wearing them " 
 
 Vera jumped up and walked round the room fuming : 
 
 " Well, of all the fussy old maids, Peter, you are the 
 worst ! " 
 
 " Upon my word ! " I frowned at her, " apart entirely 
 from that aspect of the thing, may I tell you, Vera, 
 that it wouldn't do at all for a rising barrister to be 
 seen in the Temple in a blue suit and a pair of tan shoes. 
 He'd be looked upon as dilettante. It would be con- 
 sidered a sign of unsteadiness and unreliability." 
 
 Celia snorted. Yes, she really did, and said I was 
 morbid and self-conscious about my personal appear- 
 ance beyond anybody or anything she had ever met. 
 She supposed she'd have to have an extra motor to 
 carry all my paraphernalia, as there wasn't time to 
 alter this side of me before the pic-nic, but she'd see 
 what she could do afterwards. 
 
 Dan said that anyone who made such a fetish of 
 nuttiness and conventional garb, ought to be taken out 
 and shot at dawn. 
 
 That being settled, there was the question of how 
 many cars we could muster. Celia' s closed car was 
 under repair, but that didn't matter weather like 
 this and we glanced approvingly out of the window. 
 So more telephoning ensued and as soon as we had 
 arranged things and calculated numbers to a nicety 
 and how many rooms were needed and so on, and 
 launch accommodation, someone rang up and cried off 
 or said a rich uncle had turned up from Australia, or 
 
 5
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 they were very ill or something, and asked to be 
 excused. We flew to our papers and reorganised lists, 
 and having done so, three people would ring up and 
 say might they change their minds as the weather was 
 so hot. Someone (I didn't know the voice) got shirty 
 because I asked him if the hot weather always affected 
 him that way. He didn't come (I found out after) and it 
 was as well, for we'd have been an odd number if he had. 
 
 Vera and Miss Lamb undertook to look after the 
 booking of the rooms and Dan undertook to agitate 
 about the catering of the launches and the ordering of 
 them. I undertook to look up the best roads to get to 
 our various destinations by motor. I am considered 
 rather good at this. It's not difficult if you avoid all 
 the scenery and points of interest. Roads are always 
 bad where there are hills or valleys and where they 
 are lined with trees that drip on them and spoil the 
 surface. I avoid the little spideiy roads and stick 
 to the main arteries by which you can calculate to 
 arrive in nice time for meals. Celia undertook not to 
 ask any more people and upset all our arrangements 
 at the last minute. 
 
 We wrangled greatly as to who should go in which 
 car, but while we were wrangling Celia who had borrowed 
 my pencil when I wasn't looking quietly made a list 
 and refused to go back on it. I wanted to tool her 
 along in the Rolls torpedo but she said she had pro- 
 mised Captain Bulkeley to go down with him in his 
 sixty H.P. two-seater. I retrieved my pencil and bit 
 the end of it. 
 
 It was the first I had heard of Bulkeley's coming, but 
 Celia, I daresay, had purposely withheld the news till 
 all was settled, knowing that I would have had four 
 or five previous engagements to prevent my coming if 
 I had known it. She said she had promised him ages 
 and ages ago to do so, and she must abide by it. I 
 chewed my pencil again. I don't believe in those 
 promises which are made ages and ages before a thing 
 lias been even thought of. 
 
 6
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 Lord and Lady Edward could go down in their own 
 little car. 
 
 " Peter, you can take four others in the big Rolls. 
 No, you can't drive it. Hudson says that he won't 
 let it out of his hands till it's overhauled, for it's got a 
 knock. Mrs Carstairs has bagged the front seat so 
 you must take Ethel, Fatty Bellew and Mr Rosenberg 
 with you." 
 
 " Mr Rosenberg, Celia ! I'd really rather not. Can't 
 you put someone else in ? I don't want to sit vis-a-vis 
 to that horrid fellow for all that time." 
 
 " What is there you dislike about him ? " 
 
 "His nose." 
 
 " Oh, only a little thing like that ! " 
 
 "It's not a little thing. It's an enormous thing. 
 I've no objection to good dark Jewish features. I 
 really rather like them, but I do not at all like a salmon- 
 pink Jewish nose. It's not my fault. I was brought 
 up very carefully surrounded by photographs of the 
 best Greek sculptures, and a thing like that really 
 upsets me." 
 
 " I particularly wish him to go in your car. He 
 likes little Ethel so much and she wants to go with 
 you because she doesn't feel shy with you, so you 
 must put up with it. He's one of the biggest bank- 
 ing experts in Europe, so don't be rude to him, for 
 he has promised to help me a lot in my charitable 
 schemes. You needn't talk to him. You will have 
 Fatty Bellew in with you. He's just back from 
 the Klondyke and sure to be interesting. Dan will 
 take Ada Lamb, Vera and M. de Brissac and Boris 
 Hintoff 
 
 " Is that Hintoff the Russian tenor from Covent 
 Garden ? " inquired Vera. 
 
 " Yes, he's such a dear, so interesting about Russia. 
 I thought he would sing to us at night, as we drift about 
 in punts after dinner. How lovely his voice will sound 
 floating over the water." 
 
 7
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 "Yes, it will be delightful, but don't you think it 
 will be very risky ? " 
 
 " Risky ! Why should it be risky ? " 
 
 "Well, you know what tenors are such delicate 
 creatures. Always catching colds and having to break 
 their contracts. You might have to pay a huge sum 
 of money if anything happened to him through you. 
 He is booked to appear most of next week at Covent 
 Garden, I know. It's rather a responsibility." 
 
 "You don't really think," said Celia nervously, 
 " that I could be stuck for damages if he catches cold 
 at my pic-nic. Is there anything in their contracts 
 saying they must not accept invitations to them ? " 
 
 " Oh, nothing specific but it's a risk. You know 
 what the law is. It can be twisted to mean anything." 
 
 "Well, he's dying to come, and I don't want to 
 put him off. You will have to look after him for 
 me." 
 
 " Well, I dislike tenors as much as I dislike anything, 
 but I suppose I must if you wish it." 
 
 " Now, Vera and Ada, have you noted that I want 
 you to ring up the other people about their maids, and 
 tell them what time to be here with the luggage on 
 Saturday morning ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Miss Lamb short-sightedly consulting 
 some notes on the back of an envelope. 
 
 " Oh, that reminds me Vera don't forget to remind 
 me to remember to tell Adele that I will wear my 
 white accordion-pleated serge." 
 
 " Right you are." 
 
 Saturday morning dawned as best it could in the 
 face of gusts of chill rain and sodden lowering clouds. 
 My window panes rattled in their sashes and my teeth 
 in their sockets for in accordance with a special little 
 habit of my own I had got a chill owing to the great 
 heat of the past week. 
 
 No wonder we talk about the weather in this tight 
 little island of ours. It is the most original, unexpected 
 
 8
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 and absorbing subject that one could choose. After 
 all the sweltering, gasping heat of the past eight days 
 it had changed as by a miracle during the night. It 
 was a terrible day. I looked out upon it in dismay 
 as I pressed my finely formed nose to the window panes 
 down which little streams of water trickled and joined 
 up methodically and continually. I rushed to the 
 telephone and tried to get on to Celia. The line was 
 repeatedly engaged, so I judged that the others were 
 probably trying to cry off too. I got on presently, 
 but she was remorseless and said the rain was nothing, 
 and that she never changed her mind (oh, what a 
 whopper !) about her plans once they were made. She 
 must have been just as firm with all the others, for when 
 I got to her house, they were arriving steadily. 
 
 When we were all there she told Habits to pack the 
 maids and the luggage in their car, and she said to us, 
 " Come along, let's start at once. We'll quickly leave 
 this little shower behind. It's only local." She was 
 afraid someone would persuade her to have some 
 common-sense and postpone the pic-nic, I think. 
 
 People had come well -wrapped up, and every coat 
 in the house was commandeered and Captain Bulkeley 
 pointed proudly to a heap he had brought along in 
 case of need. There were several of them, but one in 
 particular arrested my attention and I lifted a flap on 
 the end of my stick to have a look at it. It was a coat, 
 but what a coat ! I had never seen anything like it. 
 It was big and old and mended, and indescribable and 
 weather-stained, lined with the shaggy fleece of some 
 unnamed and I added to myself, still untamed 
 creature. It was a coat of many colours and not only 
 that, it was a coat of many odours, for it smelt of grouse 
 moors and snipe bogs, of Ireland and Scotland, of red 
 deer and bison and bears, especially bears ; of dogs and 
 of birds, of fish and of horses, of Europe, Asia and 
 Africa, of the Bazaars of Benares, of the Banks of the 
 Ganges, of Nairobi and Nyassa I should have recog- 
 nised it anywhere as the coat of Bulkeley the millionaire 
 
 9
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 shikari, sportsman and mighty hunter. For it was a 
 rich man's coat indeed. No one but a rich man would 
 have dared to own to such a coat. No one but a rich 
 man could have afforded the upkeep of such an odour 
 about a coat. It took my breath away when I thought 
 of what it must have cost to produce it. It took my 
 breath away for other reasons too. 
 
 Bulkeley saw me looking at it : 
 
 " Old Man," he called out, " you are welcome to 
 anything there ; take one, you have a cold and should 
 wrap up well." 
 
 I shuddered as I let it drop back upon the 
 others. 
 
 " Thanks, Old Chap, but I think I am all right for 
 coats to-day," and I applied my handkerchief to my 
 nose. 
 
 According to the pencil lists (made with my gold 
 pencil which had disappeared) we bundled ourselves 
 into the open cars wrapped up to the eyes. Fatty 
 Bellew said he hadn't had so many clothes on since he 
 spent Christmas in the Yukon. 
 
 From where I was I could see Bulkeley making a 
 frightful fuss over Celia. He evidently, I now saw, 
 had been looking forward to this for many a long day, 
 and he was not going to be hurried over it to please 
 anybody. He asked her to say precisely at what angle 
 she wished the wind screen to be. He tried to persuade 
 her to wear motor goggles (he had brought about a 
 dozen pairs for her to choose from). He sent up for 
 a muff to keep her hands warm. After all these pre- 
 liminaries and preambles he began the main business 
 of the whole affair, namely, the tucking of her in. My 
 dislike of the man grew greater every moment. He 
 tucked her in much too carefully, and I should think he 
 stopped her circulation altogether. He bent over her, 
 talking and laughing in his bluff way (his voice had a 
 sort of musical rasp in it), his handsome bronzed and 
 slightly scarred face all aglow with pleasure and excite- 
 ment at his being her special cavalier. 
 
 10
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 And when one would have thought that the tucking- 
 in process must be at an end, he'd manage to find some 
 little loose flap which had escaped his attention or 
 which he had pulled out, and he'd work away at that. 
 He delayed our starting by a full twenty minutes, and 
 when really the wrapping and tucking were finished he 
 approached our car where we were immovably fixed, 
 thanks to all the impedimenta we had on board, and 
 to my horror he threw the coat of many colours and 
 many odours in on top of us. 
 
 " Do have it, you chaps," he said genially. " We've 
 plenty of 'em," and with that he went off rapidly to 
 crank up his car. 
 
 " Good heavens ! That fearsome thing. Hi ! 
 Bulkeley ! . . ." but he only turned and waved his 
 hand, thinking that it was our unselfishness that made 
 us disinclined to accept it. 
 
 Fatty, the brute, was delighted with it, and pulled 
 it about him, saying that it reminded him of the 
 Klondyke. He sniffed it rapturously while Rosenberg 
 and I looked at him spell-bound (or dare I say it ? 
 smell-bound !). 
 
 " Do you REALLY mean to say that you don't object 
 to the awful aroma of that awful coat, Fatty ? " I said 
 incredulously. 
 
 " Not at all. I quite like it." 
 
 " Well, all I can say is your nose must be deaf ! " 
 
 I had the worst cold upon me that I'd had for 
 years and yet the thing was only too apparent even 
 to me. 
 
 Rosenberg shook his head and lit a big cigar. 
 
 " Oh, thanks so much," said little Ethel. " That's 
 much better." 
 
 After that we started at half-past eleven instead of 
 eleven as originally intended, squelching and ploughing 
 through the wet, the rain blowing in on us. 
 
 Bulkeley 's attentions to Celia had aroused such a 
 blazing fire in my breas.t that it acted as a sort of foot- 
 
 11
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 warmer, applied to my upper extremities instead of my 
 lower. I felt neither cold nor wet during that motor 
 ride, so it was quite a mercy. For the first hour or so 
 I sat glumly debating inside myself whether I would 
 go and buy a large overdose of chloral or laudanum 
 or whether arsenic was more efficacious and certain. 
 All the ladies who wished to get rid of their husbands 
 used arsenic, but I couldn't remember how many grains 
 were needed to kill one. I had been reading of a case 
 lately in which though the woman went to endless 
 trouble she could not succeed in getting enough to do 
 the trick, except by buying fly papers in large quantities. 
 She had to buy so many that she was suspected and 
 put under arrest before she could polish hers off, and 
 instead of dying he developed a most wonderful pink 
 and white complexion. I thought it might affect me 
 in this way, and that I'd get a salmon-pink nose like 
 Rosenberg, and felt I'd rather not try it on myself 
 after all. 
 
 Through the gloomy mist of my thoughts I heard 
 Fatty Bellew weaving awful yarns (taradiddles most of 
 'em, I expect) as to his hardships in Klondyke. I had 
 said something in an undertone about the horrors of 
 pic-nics, and he asked me in a very superior way what 
 I would have done in Klondyke. He was as particular 
 over his toilet as most men this was quite true but 
 the only chance he had of washing himself there was 
 about once in four months or so, with a piece wrenched 
 off the end of an iceberg. He said going on a pic-nic 
 in the worst of weather at home was doing it on velvet 
 in comparison. 
 
 Rosenberg then picked up the thread of the con- 
 versation from Fatty who had gone on to describe some 
 of the gold deposits he'd found and worked out. As 
 soon as he mentioned gold Rosenberg relieved him of 
 the necessity for further racking of his brains to invent 
 tall tales. 
 
 Fatty was interested in the wringing of it from the 
 hard, reluctant, frozen earth, and in the subsequent 
 
 12
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 spending of what he had got. Rosenberg only cared 
 for it from his point of view. Not that he had the 
 manners of a bloated capitalist, though from what he 
 told us he lived and breathed and moved and walked 
 and slept by money in some form or other. On the 
 contrary he looked upon it, not exactly with contempt, 
 but from a wider point of view, as the great vital liquid, 
 the essential serum or life-fostering broth in which all 
 things on which civilisation was based, and on which 
 human material progress, and consequently indirectly 
 human spiritual progress, floated. A broth which, if 
 kept stirred and dealt with properly and understand- 
 ingly, was of inestimable and unthought-of value to 
 mankind. He seemed to combine many other enter- 
 prises with his banking. He said this was the duty of 
 a banker. I remembered hearing that he was considered 
 a very generous and go-ahead man in his dealings, 
 financing freely things which he considered sound and 
 respectable and likely to work out to the benefit of the 
 community. From ordinary finance he went off on 
 to the subject of international finance. Of this he said 
 that, banker though he was, he understood little or 
 nothing, or at any rate only what he had picked up as 
 he went along. This wasn't his fault, for he had often 
 tried to find someone who had studied the matter 
 thoroughly and who could give him any reliable and 
 proven information. But he said there were no such 
 people and one had to go by guess-work or by one's own 
 personal and individual theories, or those of the others 
 in the business. Then he held forth on the movements 
 of gold and bullion. I was not greatly interested in 
 this subject. All I knew about it was that there had 
 been no movements of gold in my direction lately, and 
 I was depressed about it. 
 
 We must have been motoring for about two and a 
 half hours, slogging along in the rain, squelching through 
 puddles and skidding on tram lines. I glanced out 
 
 13
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 between the sticks of the hood and saw that we had 
 left the main road and had branched off on to the less 
 beaten tracks. By this time we should have been 
 nearing Oxford. I had warned Celia that on no account 
 must she do this as it would entirely throw us out of 
 our time-table. I uttered an exclamation of annoy- 
 ance. It was to be supposed that the hot-headed 
 Bulkeley who led the way with her would only be too 
 prone to despise the beaten track after the wilds of 
 Nairobi or Asia Minor. A straight road with recurrent 
 and equi-distant telegraph poles would be too un- 
 eventful for him. I was not surprised when the first 
 car signalled the others to stop, and Bulkeley got out 
 and walked towards us. 
 
 " I say, you chaps," he said, his bronzed face beaming 
 as the raindrops trickled down it. "'Have you got 
 the maps ? " 
 
 " Not in here, I think. I gave them into Dan's 
 hands to take charge of a few davs ago. Ask 
 him." 
 
 " Right you are," and he clumped through the 
 puddles and mud towards him. I saw them make a 
 wild search with a great upheaval of coats, rugs, 
 cushions and so on and then I saw Dan shake his head. 
 After a few moments' conversation we started off 
 again, through the rain- sodden lanes, with damp twigs 
 brushing against the sides of the cars and the hoods. 
 I estimated that we had run about tliirty miles out of 
 our way. 
 
 After about an hour's aimless wandering, turning and 
 pulling up, and shouting to each other, we all stopped 
 again. The rain didn't stop though. It poured un- 
 mercifully. Dan backed his car towards us and said, 
 " Haven't you really got those maps ? Do have a 
 look." 
 
 I tried the side flaps, but found nothing and asked 
 Dan why he hadn't taken the trouble to look after them 
 when he'd said he would. The occupants of Dan's car 
 
 14
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 looked depressed and hungry. It was long past lunch- 
 time and there seemed very little chance of getting it 
 for quite some time. Even Fatty did not compare it 
 favourably with the Klondyke. Celia and Bulkeley 
 knew it was their fault for leaving the road I had 
 looked out for them. I believe that Bulkeley had 
 done it on purpose so as to make the drive with Celia 
 longer. 
 
 " We must be near Oxford," Dan said, " there's no 
 doubt of that, but the yokels are all hiding indoors in 
 this awful rain, and the signposts don't mention any- 
 thing but tiny little villages. Are you SURE you haven't 
 got the maps ? I believe I saw Habits or someone 
 heave them in just before you all got in yourselves ; 
 try again ; those pockets are so deep." 
 
 I dived down once more, and once more came up 
 empty-handed. 
 
 "" Absolutely nothing," I said, waving them both 
 for all to see. " I can't make it out though," I 
 continued. " Oxford ought to be hereabouts. That 
 is " - 1 consulted my watch as I spoke and 
 looked about me " unless it has moved forward 
 lately." 
 
 " That's very unlikely," Dan said in an irritated tone. 
 " Of all the towns that I know that might do that, it is 
 least likely to be Oxford. If it moved at all it would be 
 backwards." 
 
 Dan is a Cambridge man. 
 
 I am an Oxford man. 
 
 "Don't try to be funny now, Dan, it's misplaced." 
 I had got out and was standing in a puddle, trying to 
 bring off a sneeze, for my cold was getting worse every 
 minute. 
 
 " You began it, old son." 
 
 " Why not let Hudson take the lead and see if he can 
 get us out of this muddle before nightfall. You 
 fellows are not to be trusted." 
 
 Accordingly, our car took the lead and we plunged 
 
 15
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 wildly ahead. After some more bothers in the way of 
 a wheel in a slimy, crumbling ditch, and everybody 
 straining at the car to push it out again, we were lucky 
 enough to almost run over a mud-clotted figure with 
 an old potato sack over his head and having frightened 
 his numbed brain into something like action, we got a 
 series of dialect grunts and waves which actually put us 
 upon the right road. 
 
 The weather had obligingly begun to lift as we ran 
 into the outskirts. That was one of the peculiarities of 
 this pic-nic. As soon as we got anywhere near shelter 
 the weather lifted. So that when at last we drove our 
 mud-plastered cars into Oxford, there was a gleam of 
 watery sunshine to greet us. 
 
 We calculated it had taken us well over four hours 
 to get down. Celia persuaded them to serve our 
 belated lunches in double-quick time and after a 
 few bright green cocktails we sat down almost 
 cheerfully. 
 
 We dried our clothes afterwards by walking down the 
 High, and round the old Colleges and Quadrangles. 
 Dan, having gone down from Cambridge only five or 
 six years before, insisted upon acting as our guide, 
 because he said he could show us exactly where 
 Oxford was inferior to it. He said if I showed them 
 round I would be biassed, having been an Oxford man 
 myself. 
 
 However, M. de Brissac and the Tenor followed me 
 and went into raptures of admiration at what they saw. 
 But they could not understand how it was that one 
 could not learn more in such a wonderful place, con- 
 sidering the amount of space there was to house pro- 
 fessors, from all over the world, and students also 
 (who unconsciously help to teach one another as they 
 both observed). I attached myself dutifully to the 
 Russian. I had had a slight contretemps with him 
 before starting. I had noticed that he was wearing a 
 thinnish mackintosh, not heavy enough for motoring, 
 
 16
 
 THE PIC -NIC 
 
 and I had remonstrated with him (of course I'd 
 promised Celia to deliver him up in good order at the 
 end of the trip and meant to keep my word) and offered 
 him something more suitable, but he had refused it a 
 little abruptly. When I saw him at the end of the 
 motor run I knew that he had got thoroughly chilled 
 and that he repented not having taken the advice and 
 the wrap. I watched him now, and wished he would 
 not open his mouth so wide in his admiration lest too 
 much of the damp air be drawn into his high-priced 
 throat. For even as there is a dank and chill air 
 around an old University in dry weather, when it has 
 rained continuously for hours and hours the dankness 
 and chillness of that air can hardly be described. To 
 a Russian, of course, a University is the most thrilling 
 sight on earth. For here is to be found what he craves 
 more than bread itself and that is knowledge. I was 
 moved by the sight of his enthusiasm, and saw how his 
 strange closely lidded eyes sparkled almost fanatically. 
 He said, "Ah how wonderful, how wonderful to think 
 how you in England can educate yourselves, while we 
 in Russia hunger for it and yet we can hardly get it." 
 He had an extraordinary face, something outlandish 
 and strange about it. I tried to define it to myself, for 
 it was in some wise typical of his race, I felt. It was a 
 white blank face and yet there was expression in its 
 blankness. It was blunt, for there seemed to be little 
 detail in it, as if his ancestors had lived in the bare wind- 
 swept places of the earth for countless generations. His 
 pallid wide lips were set one upon the other in a passive 
 way. In comparison with the faces of the people I saw 
 around me, his face had an uninhabited look. His type 
 interested me, his enthusiasm impressed me. I forgave 
 him for being a tenor and I conversed amicably with 
 him about his country. 
 
 As we paused in one of the old cold shadows, he 
 
 shivered, and I shivered, partly on account of my own 
 
 cold, partly fearing that he was also in for one. Sure 
 
 enough he told me a few minutes afterwards that he was 
 
 B 17
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 sure he was inclining that way, and sympathised with 
 me about mine. 
 
 Nothing draws two people together so much as both 
 having bad colds at the same time. It is a better basis 
 for a friendship than finding that one has mutual friends 
 or even than finding one has mutual enemies. You can 
 win and keep a man's friendship for years by letting 
 him once think that you tried his infallible remedy for a 
 cold and that it cured you. He told me exactly how 
 his colds affected him, and how difficult he found it to 
 get rid of them. I confided in him that it was not the 
 cold I had now that I objected to but the long series to 
 which it would be the forerunner. I told him that the 
 man who looked after my rooms had this peculiarity, 
 that he invariably caught my colds and that just as I 
 was getting over the attack nicely I could rely on catch- 
 ing my own original cold back from him, and then he got 
 it back from me, and so it went on ad infinitum until we 
 had exhausted the possibilities of the original cold and 
 ourselves too. 
 
 We looked at the Colleges and Halls till it was getting 
 late and then Lord Edward had to take us to see his old 
 rooms and introduced us to his old gyp, slapping him 
 on the back. The old man most politely pretended to 
 remember him, but I could see that he had forgotten 
 him. Lord Edward was a nice unassuming little man 
 with a bony forehead, otherwise of a very ordinary 
 appearance, so I did not blame the gyp myself. 
 
 By now I could see my poor friend the tenor was 
 horribly anxious about himself. I thought what an 
 awful bore it must be to follow a profession in which 
 whenever you exposed yourself to the elements or sat 
 in a draught, you were hors-de-combat for some time. 
 Thank goodness, unless it's so bad that one loses one's 
 voice, a barrister can bully his witnesses and be just as 
 pert to the judge, with or without a cold upon him. 
 Hintoff kept dropping behind and trying husky little 
 runs or sudden attacks on high notes whenever he 
 thought I was out of earshot, and coughing tentatively 
 
 18
 
 THE PIC -NIC 
 
 to see if his tonsils were swelling. I was glad when I 
 piloted him back to the hotel in the gathering dusk and 
 the renewed showers. 
 
 Little Gibbons met us very cheerily in the hall of the 
 hotel. He had come down in a nice waterproof train, 
 and he was inclined to joke about our damp journey. 
 It was a great matter to have got him for more than a 
 hurried meal, and for his sake I could have wished for 
 better weather. Though not actually a big pot him- 
 self, he was the secretary and confidant of his cousin 
 who was a very big pot indeed. No less a person than 
 the Minister of Education for the moment. It was 
 generally understood that they were hand in glove and 
 that what Gibbon thought to-day stood a very good 
 chance of cropping up in the minister's deep mind next 
 week as something he had thought of entirely on his 
 own. Seeing him here made one wonder what Celia 
 was hatching now. I had not noticed any signs 
 latterly to lead me to think that she was sickening for 
 any special piece of interference in her country's affairs. 
 
 True to my promise once more, I got the tenor up to 
 change his wet things. I ran about and found his 
 luggage for him so that he wouldn't have to go prancing 
 about the dark corridors hunting for it. 
 
 When I came down again I found Miss Lamb, Vera, 
 Dan and Celia whispering guiltily together in a corner. 
 It turned out that there had been a mistake about the 
 rooms. The manageress had not expected so many of 
 us, so there were none for Dan and me, and the other 
 hotels were full too. 
 
 " Do you mind, Peter ? I AM so sorry, Peter, but I 
 am afraid that you and Dan will have to go out and 
 hunt for a night's lodging. After all, it's these sort of 
 unexpected things that make up the charm of these 
 expeditions," and she laughed, a little hollowly. 
 
 '' Yes, but why not someone else ? Why not that 
 great bull-necked fellow Bulkeley ? He is simply 
 bursting with health and here am I in a high fever. 
 Why must I be the victim ? " 
 
 19
 
 THE PIC -NIC 
 
 " Why, because Dan and you are my BEST friends. 
 Captain Bulkeley and the others are only acquaintances. 
 I CAN'T very well ask them. I don't know them well 
 enough " 
 
 I turned away moodily. This was getting very near 
 the edge. I sometimes think that there are great, very 
 great, drawbacks to being a person's best friend. They 
 show their appreciation of and confidence hi one by 
 asking one to do all sorts of annoying and horrible 
 things that they wouldn't dream of asking anyone else 
 to do. I believe one might just us well be an enemy at 
 once and be finished. People always treat their enemies 
 with more civility than their friends. I looked at them 
 all severely, and told them as much, but Dan tackled 
 me and said, " Look here, Peter. Your liver is out of 
 order. You are too grumpy for words. Why should 
 Celia bother to invite you at all, and hamper herself 
 with all your luggage and boot-trees as w r ell ? You are 
 not the only good-looking fellow in the world, remember 
 that." 
 
 Miss Lamb stuck up for me and said that no man was 
 quite at his best when he was in lo she meant, when he 
 had a bad cold upon him. 
 
 " Cold or no cold, he is very depressing. Look here, 
 Celia, I wouldn't ask him out for any more treats. He's 
 a thorough old wet blanket. There's no doubt about 
 it whatever, Peter, if you come out upon any more of 
 these beanfeasts and want to enjoy yourself you'd better 
 leave yourself behind, like the purse-proud man that 
 Izaak Walton speaks of." 
 
 " How on earth can I be purse-proud when I am as 
 poor as a church mouse ? " 
 
 " It applies to poor as well as rich. It's a matter of 
 temperament." 
 
 Miss Lamb and Vera were looking very upset, and I 
 felt remorseful at making such a fuss. It had been their 
 part of the arrangements to look after the booking of 
 the rooms, and if I made too much it would come back 
 upon their devoted heads. " All right, Celia. Keep 
 
 20
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 your hair on, Dan. We'll go out and hunt for those 
 rooms, but first, Celia, a word in your ear." 
 
 I drew her aside and spoke seriously to her about 
 the outrageous way in which she was behaving with 
 Bulkeley. " Allowing him to tuck you in and lean over 
 you and smile at you while your best friends are left out 
 in the cold altogether. Is that treating him like an 
 ACQUAINTANCE, might I ask ? I'm afraid you don't 
 know the real meaning of the words. I'll look them up 
 in the dictionary the Oxford Dictionary and will 
 show you that the construction you put on the two 
 words will have to be reversed." 
 
 " I know exactly what I mean by them, thank you, 
 and there is absolutely nothing between Captain 
 Bulkeley and myself." 
 
 " From your point of view, perhaps not but what 
 about him ? He'll get ideas. I can see him getting 
 them. He's got several ideas already in fact. And if 
 there is really nothing in it why work him up so by 
 encouraging him in his absurd attentions ? " 
 
 "' Work him up so indeed ! You mustn't speak to me 
 like that. And you've no right to speak of Captain 
 Bulkeley as if he were a sofa cushion I was making for 
 a bazaar work him up indeed ! ! If you talk to me like 
 this, Peter, I shall begin to think that you have not got 
 over your foolish infatuation for me yet." 
 
 I said with great dignity and some indistinctness, 
 " Infatuation, yes ! Foolish, no ! " 
 
 But she went off in a towering huff. 
 
 Dan and I collared our bags and with the assistance 
 of the boots, who was quite a new arrival in the town, 
 walked out into the finely falling rain to look for 
 rooms before dinner. We couldn't find any though we 
 tramped about the place from street to street, hampered 
 by the bags we had so foolishly brought with us. We 
 tried several addresses that the hotel people had given 
 us, but they were all a long way apart and in each case 
 there was some let or hindrance. Either the landlady 
 was ill or had given up letting rooms or else it wasn't 
 
 21
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 an apartment house at all. We also tried a lot of other 
 houses in other streets, but all to no purpose. Even 
 Dan got angry much to my satisfaction. I became 
 quite cheerful then and made little jokes about it. I 
 cynically quoted the words of Green the historian who 
 said very scathingly that the University had found 
 Oxford a busy, prosperous borough, came and planked 
 itself down upon it and reduced it to a cluster of lodging- 
 houses which it had remained ever since. Dan said it 
 was what you might expect an historian to say. They 
 were all silly juggins anyway, and if Green hadn't been 
 dead for some years already it would have given him 
 great pleasure to wring his neck, for he didn't believe 
 there were any lodging-houses in Oxford, and didn't 
 think there ever had been. He said that if Fatty 
 Bellew mentioned Klondyke he would go home by the 
 midnight train. We got back to the hotel rather late 
 and persuaded Rosenberg to let us change hurriedly in 
 his room. 
 
 Dinner itself was not so bad. There was heaps of it, 
 and we all were fairly peckish. Thanks to my remarks 
 I suppose, Bulkeley sat at the far end of the table from 
 Celia, Gibbons and de Brissac were on either side of her, 
 and I was near by. The conversation was very inter- 
 esting and hopped about a good deal. The little 
 Edwards did not contribute very much to it, nor Mrs 
 Carstairs, who seemed rather a silent little soul, but 
 they all laughed a lot and were very thoughtful about 
 handing things and passing the salt and such-like, and 
 enjoyed themselves. Fatty Bellew told us some of the 
 same stories that he had told us on the car over again, 
 but they had grown a good deal since then. He 
 described his dinners of dried sea-lion at Klondyke, and 
 how when he wanted a drink of beer he did not drain a 
 flagon of it off (suiting the action to the word) but 
 bought it in hard lumps by the pound, nibbled a piece off 
 and sucked it and had toothache for ten days. I saw a 
 red gleam in Dan's eye but it subsided and nothing 
 happened. 
 
 22
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 Bulkeley and Fatty swopped tales of narrow squeaks 
 they both had, and the Frenchman contributed some 
 too about the French Congo. He was a very entertain- 
 ing man, widely read, and travelled, a great financier 
 and philanthropist. The other occupants of the dining- 
 room eyed our party with interest. They seemed to be 
 mostly old professory-looking people with their wives 
 and looked as if they had settled down there to hiber- 
 nate through the summer. 
 
 De Brissac looked at them through his monocle, and 
 said that if they were the type of professors we went 
 nap on, it explained why our educational system was 
 giving trouble. He said they looked as old as the 
 buildings. For himself he admired old buildings, so 
 grey, so venerable, but he disliked old professors, and 
 old theories, and it seemed you could not have the one 
 without the other in the Universities. 
 
 Edward Howard stood up for the place. He said 
 there was lots of good up-to-date knowledge to be got 
 at a University and the older the professor the more up- 
 to-date very often. But he said that unfortunately in 
 his time and in the set he was in there was a pretty 
 general idea that it was waste of time to work. 
 
 Gibbons said when he first came to Oxford that he 
 made up his mind to work and wasn't going to let any- 
 one put him off, and that even if the College courses 
 were not all they might be you could easily get the latest 
 books and latest information about everything if you 
 made friends with the right professors and dons. 
 There was too much talk about the inferiority of our 
 system over here, and men were spoon-fed with informa- 
 tion instead of being made to hunt around for it a bit. 
 He said rather grandiloquently, that genius was its 
 own trustee and could safely be left to find the know- 
 ledge most suited to its own needs without much help 
 from anyone. 
 
 Rosenberg declared that the great drawback was 
 that the Universities did not give proper facilities for 
 the study of movements of gold and bullion, with the 
 
 23
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 object of facilitating international commerce. If the 
 authorities would only inquire into the subject scienti- 
 fically one would be able to go to one's club in safety 
 without some old buffer who knew nothing about it 
 dragging one into a quarrel about Free Trade versus 
 Protection, and life would be almost worth living. 
 It was a subject with fixed and immutable laws like 
 anything else, only no one would take the trouble to 
 find out what they were. He believed that this was 
 due to snobbishness on the part of the Universities 
 and that they feared that any knowledge thus gained 
 might be brought to bear on commerce and this thought 
 was anathema to them. " How is it," and he raised 
 one plump hand impressively, " that so much is known 
 about astronomy, in spite of its terrible difficulty and 
 abstruseness ? Why don't the astronomists, instead 
 of trying to find out what the people on Mars live upon 
 and think about or worrying about the geological 
 formation of the mountains of the moon, try and find 
 out something about this old orb of ours, and make 
 some discoveries which would help to make things 
 better for mankind ? That would be doing something 
 really useful ! " 
 
 " And what about languages ! " said the Frenchman, 
 gesticulating in his turn. " Look at me, I do not wish 
 to boast, but I speak six languages including my own." 
 
 " And I four," said the tenor hoarsely. 
 
 " And yet the Englishman hardly takes the trouble 
 to speak his own." 
 
 " Do you hear that, Peter," said Dan maliciously. 
 
 " Some of my nicest friends in this country do not 
 open their mouths to speak more than four or five 
 times a week. But enfin if it suffices them He 
 
 shrugged his shoulders. " If Madame will forgive my 
 saying so," he continued, " your friends seem to talk 
 so much more than most of their fellow-countrymen." 
 
 " Do you hear that, Dan ? " I said maliciously. 
 
 "Mais non ! It is a compliment ; I like it. It is 
 ver' nice and makes one feel quite at 'ome." 
 
 M
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 " Thank you, sir," said Dan to him, glancing at me 
 sideways. " It's very nice of you to put it that way. 
 But in spite of what our friend Gibbons says education 
 is under a cloud nowadays. It is considered bad form 
 to know anything that might possibly come in useful 
 later." 
 
 " There may be a LITTLE in what you say, Dan," 
 said little Gibbons cheerily, " but, I repeat, it all 
 depends upon the man himself. If he is weak-minded 
 enough to let other people influence him and put him 
 off studying, it's jolly mean of him to put all the blame 
 on the professors or the University." 
 
 " Well, in some ways I agree with you, Mr Gibbons," 
 said Celia, " there are no such things as reach-me-down 
 or ready-made opportunities, they are all home-made. 
 But for all you say to the contrary I agree in the main 
 with Dan. I do not think that men nowadays pay 
 enough attention to the developing of their minds in 
 useful directions. Something should be done to make 
 education fashionable. My idea is that we ought to 
 get up a petition to some of the Duchesses, the prettiest 
 ones, to take it up and push it along. What do you 
 say, Ada Lamb ? " 
 
 " The Duchesses," said Miss Lamb, and she probably 
 knew, for she is a great charity worker, " have backed 
 up so many good enterprises that their influence is 
 almost worn out and they themselves are almost worn 
 out too " 
 
 " If you'll listen to me a moment," Dan exclaimed, 
 "I'll tell you in a jiffy what should be done. You 
 don't want respectable people to take the movement 
 up. It's too much respectability which has swamped 
 it. If you could persuade people that it was outre 
 or rapid to know a tremendous lot it would catch on 
 like wildfire. If some of the people with influence 
 like you, Gibbons " (Gibbons shook his head deprecat- 
 ingly) " would induce some fast but fascinating section 
 of Society, some of the best worst people in fact, or 
 do I mean the worst best people, or even some members 
 
 25
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 of the Variety Stage to take it up seriously, the thing 
 would be booming before you could turn round. Any- 
 thing booms if there is a spice of naughtiness attached 
 to it." 
 
 " Booms booms. Vat is dat ? " said the Frenchman. 
 
 "I'll explain it to you afterwards," I said across 
 the table. 
 
 " I'm perfectly right in what I say. I know what 
 I am talking about. Wasn't it tried in the time of 
 Charles the Second ? Wasn't his Court at once the 
 wickedest, the most amusing and the most cultured in 
 the whole world ? No one dare show his nose there 
 unless he could prove that he was educated and pretend 
 that he was depraved. Learning was at its zenith, 
 ignorance and stupidity were tabooed. Education 
 flourished as it never has done since, and it was all 
 due to Charles the Second's keen sense of humour. He 
 knew how to popularise it, and did so. Why, there is 
 just as much wickedness as ever in the world to-day, 
 but no one makes any attempt to put it to any practical 
 purpose ! " 
 
 The Frenchman screwed his monocle more firmly 
 in his eye and looked at him. 
 
 " II est epatant," he said admiringly to us. " Con- 
 tinuez, mon cher," to him. 
 
 Dan was excited by his approval and continued to 
 air his ludicrous views on this and other subjects, to 
 de Brissac who drew him out. Little Gibbons sat 
 listening to them and chuckling as they grew wilder 
 and wilder. I said, " You know more about all this 
 than anyone else here and yet you say the least. How 
 on earth did you manage to get here ? I never thought 
 Sir Horace would let you escape. You and he must 
 be two of the busiest people there are I was idly 
 
 playing with the stem of my wine-glass as I spoke. 
 
 " Oh, I had no difficulty in making it right with the 
 old boy. I explained it to him and he quite saw it, 
 that I don't come out with Mrs Carmichael to enjoy 
 
 myself 
 
 26
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 " Mister Gibbons ! " Celia said, raising her eyebrows. 
 She had just overheard the remark. 
 
 " Oh, oh ! ! What's that I've said ! ! I beg your 
 pardon, Mrs Carmichael. You mustn't take it that 
 way. Dear me, what a stupid speech to make. It 
 sounds so rude. No ! but he and I always say we do 
 not look upon time spent in your society as wasted 
 time. On the contrary we consider we often profit 
 by it. Just look at my shirt cuff," and he shot it out 
 and I saw it had a whole lot of little pencil notes on it. 
 " Do forgive me ! " He folded his hands and held 
 them out towards her in mock despair. 
 
 " All right, Mr Gibbons. I'll forgive you on one 
 condition. That is if you will promise to speak to 
 Sir Horace about that matter I laid before you." 
 
 Gibbons ran his long fingers through his crisp hair 
 and looked rather worried. 
 
 " By all means, if you really wish it. But why ask 
 me to do it ? Why on earth don't you ask my Chief 
 yourself ? Get him to come out and give him a good 
 dinner, and ask him everything you have a mind to." 
 
 " Ah h ! I've tried that often, but nothing comes of 
 it. It's no use inviting these big pots to dine out and 
 giving them Veuve Cliquot and surrounding them with 
 cheery people. They get thoroughly optimistic and 
 jovial and when you confide in them and ask them to 
 do something and tell them the country will go to the 
 dogs if it's not done, they only pooh-pooh you, and tell 
 you you are imagining things. I know better than that. 
 The thing is to get at the people who work with them 
 people like yourself, Mr Gibbons they have access to 
 them at all times, especially when they are tired and 
 depressed, and if you want a suggestion to sink in and 
 take root, that's the tune to drop it in. If a piece of 
 adverse criticism is repeated to a tired man it rankles 
 and worries him, and human nature being human 
 nature, he will pass it on to his colleagues to worry 
 them too, and the things get inquired into. Now, you 
 can see Sir Horace at all times, and I can't." 
 
 .27
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 " I see him when he is tired and depressed only too 
 often, worse luck," said Mr Gibbons, looking at his 
 plate. " I wish you would tackle him yourself." 
 
 " But what's the good ? I did ask him to do some- 
 thing last time he came to my house, right at the end 
 of dinner too. He said, ' Yes decidedly yes ! '^-- but I 
 looked at him and saw him making up his mind not to do 
 it. If you won't ask him to do it, will you get his views 
 for me on the subject ? That would be some help." 
 
 " That means a lot of work for me. It will take me 
 at LEAST three days to get him to say what he really 
 thinks." 
 
 "Why three days ? " said Bulkeley from his end of 
 the table, catching the drift of the conversation. " Why 
 not say straight out ? " 
 
 Bulkeley, I could see, was used to blurting out what- 
 ever he thought on the instant, if one could gauge him 
 by his face and neck. 
 
 " Well," said Gibbons answering him, " my Chief 
 is a leetle curious in some ways. Understand me, I'm 
 not saying anything about him I shouldn't. Anyone 
 who comes near him realises this as well as I do." 
 
 "Yes, quite so." 
 
 " The first time I ask his opinion of a thing he 
 generously gives it to me at full length. He says 
 exactly what he thinks. The second time I ask him 
 he also tells me exactly what he thinks but it is 
 diametrically opposed to what he told me the first time. 
 The third time " 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " he tells me what he REALLY thinks, free from 
 all bias or prejudice, or one-sided viewing, poised justly 
 between the two, and perfectly wonderful. You see 
 he knows and reads everything, knows and reads every- 
 body, he's seen everything and been everywhere and 
 there's no one like him anywhere. It's a long process, 
 but well worth it." 
 
 " Goodness gracious," said Celia, " does it always 
 take you as long to find out his point of view ? " 
 
 28
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 " Oh no ! For if you live a lot with a person you 
 begin to know what they will think of one thing by 
 what you know they think of another. And you can 
 also learn to FEEL what a person thinks without asking 
 them, and this saves a lot of time. But so far we have 
 not turned our attention to this idea of yours, Mrs 
 Carmichael. It's quite a new departure." 
 
 Here the Tenor suddenly gave a series of short sharp 
 barks, like a Pomeranian which has been kept waiting 
 too long for its food. I looked at him searchingly, 
 and when at last we rose from the dinner-table I went 
 round the hotel and collected all the hot-water bottles 
 I could find, put them in his room, and had a large 
 fire lit, and then gently persuaded him to go up and 
 get to bed. 
 
 Then I came down and found the others, who were 
 settling down to bridge in the first-class waiting-room 
 I mean' drawing-room. After I'd been there a few 
 moments I heard a row upstairs. I went to investigate. 
 He was throwing the bottles all out into the corridor 
 and saying things in husky Russian to the chamber- 
 maid, and she was giving him a piece of her mind. 
 
 " What was that funny noise ? " said Celia. 
 
 Next morning (having as you may guess found a 
 place to lay my weary head) I was sitting on the side 
 of my truckle bed, with my motor coat on over my 
 pyjamas, reading some extremely illuminating articles 
 I had found in some old newspapers which had been 
 used for packing my things. Old newspapers exercise 
 an extraordinary fascination over me. They are 
 infinitely more interesting than a to-day's paper ever 
 is, or a yesterday's ; even the advertisements are 
 better. There are greatly superior articles in them ; 
 articles on bimetallism, or the electrification of soil 
 with a view to the increase of the yield of cereals per 
 statute acre in different climates, or the average 
 measurements of the craniums of the mentally deficient 
 
 29
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 as compared with the mentally efficient, or perhaps with 
 luck something about the Panama Canal and its vast 
 possibilities. There is no comparison between a 
 to-day's paper and one that is six to nine weeks old. 
 I know this failing of mine for I've missed so many 
 trains owing to it and everybody who packs for me has 
 strict orders only to use plain white paper to wrap 
 around my things. But O'Hara must have run short 
 of it, last Saturday. 
 
 I was quite absorbed in one when I heard sudden 
 quick steps up the stairs and, hardly waiting to knock 
 at the door, Dan burst into my room. 
 
 " I say, Blenerhassett, you old Chucklehead What 
 
 ARE you doing. Do you know what the time is ? 
 Left your watch in Rosenberg's room last night, and 
 no one called you. The blighters. Why, the launch 
 is waiting at Salter's steps and everyone else is ready 
 to start. Had any breakfast ? No. Then you'll 
 have to go without. I'll see if I can get you a dry crust 
 of bread. That's all I can do, if that. Here, I'll throw 
 your things in. By Jove, your cold is bad. I'd better 
 leave you out all these handkerchiefs." 
 
 " Bud, thed I wond hab eddy for to-moddow." 
 
 " I'll lend you some. Buck up or really you'll be 
 too late. It will be quite a jolly day ; it's only raining 
 slightly, a sort of thick Scotch mist." He began to 
 squelch and thrust my things into my kit-bag. With 
 my mouth full of tooth paste (I had shaved previously 
 to settling down to read) I asked him not to pack the 
 clothes I was about to put on. It was now that we 
 discovered that everything that was vital to my toilet 
 had been left in Rosenberg's room the night before 
 when I changed there. So I wore a braided morning 
 coat, ditto waistcoat, a motor cap, white flannel 
 trousers, one Leander sock on one foot, and two silk 
 evening socks, to equalise the weight, on the other. I 
 felt that the final touch could be got by borrowing 
 Bulkeley's coat of many odours. 
 
 I was tying my tic when : 
 
 30
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 " What's this ? " said Dan suddenly, groping on The 
 bed. " Is this yours ? " 
 
 He was holding up my Boswell's Life of Johnson, which 
 I had brought with me to read, not knowing that there 
 would be plenty of old newspapers in my kit-bag. 
 
 "Yes, rather." 
 
 " Do you mean to tell me that after Celia's particu- 
 larly asking us not to bring any more luggage than we 
 could possibly help, you still had the face to lug a great 
 big huge, enormous book like this along ? " 
 
 " Huge ! I don't think it's huge. It's a very nice 
 size. I don't see what you can find to say against it." 
 
 It wasn't more than ten and a half inches by seven 
 or eight ; I can't stand small print. I like big margins, 
 I must say. 
 
 " Oh ! I've nothing to say against its size. As a 
 matter of fact it's just right." 
 
 He balanced it for a moment or two in his hand with 
 a peculiar expression on his face. " It's exactly the 
 right-sized book to throw at the head of a fellow that 
 annoys you." 
 
 I crooked my elbow. 
 
 " If you'll get out of the room," I said, " I'll be able 
 to finish dressing myself." 
 
 We found them all congregated densely at Folly 
 Bridge where we embarked. It was indeed a fearful 
 business, everybody and everything first well soaked 
 and then thoroughly mixed up. There seemed to be 
 enough impedimenta to have equipped a party of 
 explorers into the Klondyke. Of course Fatty noticed 
 this too. There were cushions and luncheon things, 
 umbrellas and deck-chairs, thermos flasks and Japanese 
 sunshades, chiffon veils and gramophones, and a banjo 
 and baskets and baskets and still more baskets. A few 
 damp cloths which seemed to be lying on everything 
 one touched ; lots of coils of rope, oil-cans, records and 
 cameras, and coats everywhere, including of course THE 
 
 31
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 coat. I couldn't see it but it was unmistakably 
 there. 
 
 Everybody was cross, and pretending to be cheerful, 
 which makes it so much more noticeable. Even Miss 
 Lamb was not quite her own sweet self, and this is 
 saying a great deal. The Frenchman looked too 
 miserable for words, and the Russian must have been 
 in a high fever for a large flat hectic spot burned on each 
 flat cheek. I looked at him and decided he was really 
 in for it and probably something complicated too. 
 Bulkeley was of course hovering round Celia, stepping 
 around her in the wet with his tennis shoes. I elbowed 
 him away and drew her attention to the Tenor and said 
 I thought he was very ill indeed. I hoped it would 
 make her anxious and serve to take her thoughts off 
 Bulkeley. It did too for a bit. " Oh, how I wish I 
 had not asked him. I'm quite miserable about it. 
 For goodness sake don't let him get his feet wet. 
 Whatever you do don't let him get his feet wet." 
 
 " It's not his feet I am bothering about, Celia. It's 
 his tonsils." 
 
 " Yes, yes. But they are one and the same for all 
 practical purposes." 
 
 " Excuse me, they're not at all the same thing. He 
 doesn't sing with his feet and he does with his tonsils or 
 maybe it's his diaphragm, I mean." 
 
 " If you argue with me now, Peter, I'll begin to cry." 
 
 " All right, old lady. I'll say no more." 
 
 The launches were being loaded up when Mr Gibbons 
 created a diversion. There is a delusion common to all 
 small men in that they think they can perform prodigies 
 of strength. When no one was looking, and meaning 
 to help things on all he could, he shouldered a large 
 luncheon basket, a very large one indeed, full of 
 crockery, for it rattled. In the other hand he grasped 
 a collection of coats, folding chairs and anything else he 
 could pick up. He put one foot on to the launch as it 
 swung to and fro mostly fro to the side of the damp 
 walls. His principal weight was still on the dripping 
 
 32
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 stone steps. He was just about to transfer it to the 
 boat when he was seen to slip, drop all the coats and 
 stools, and wave his free arm frantically. We all 
 turned to look at him in agonised suspense, convinced 
 that nothing could possibly save him and the lunch 
 from plunging into the dark slimy waters below, full of 
 bobbing corks and occasional scraps of town refuse. 
 We fetched our breaths in gasps. The' edge of the 
 hamper touched the edge of the awning. He wavered, 
 he staggered and he slipped. He was gone for a ducat. 
 But no ! though he slipped, wavered and staggered, 
 at the last moment he made a supreme effort. He 
 tautened all his little sedentary muscles up, pulled him- 
 self together, and stepped boldly on to the damp boards 
 and stood there panting. True to his great name, Mr 
 Gibbons declined to fall. 
 
 Celia sat down on a coil of rope completely unnerved. 
 Miss Lamb leant against me and I groped for her waist 
 (didn't find it) the better to support her. Fatty Bellew 
 ran to his help and Bulkeley said, " By Jove, Gibbons ! 
 that was a near thing. I was just getting ready to go 
 in after you." 
 
 No other annoyance which would reasonably be 
 expected to attend upon the embarkation of a party 
 of pleasure was missing. Various indispensable things 
 were not to be found and people sprinted back to the 
 hotel for them or else shouted incoherent messages 
 down the telephone of the boathouse office. 
 
 One of the ladies, little Lady Edward, I think, grazed 
 her ankle most severely in getting on board. Just as 
 we were about to shove off a maid came tearing up to 
 know if we'd tell her the name of the hotel for which we 
 were bound and where they were to meet us with the 
 motors and luggage. She said one maid said it was one 
 place and another said it was another. The chauffeurs 
 were vague. Everyone had left it to someone else to 
 find out and the woman in the bureau said no one had 
 told her. However, we wrote it down for her and at 
 last we did get off, but very much later than we had 
 
 c 33
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 intended. When the launch actually moved, a damp 
 cheer broke from us all. I earned a certain amount of 
 gratitude by asking the Tenor to sing the first verse of 
 '" Home Sweet Home, there's no place like home." But 
 he explained that his voice now had only two notes in it 
 and he very solemnly asked Celia if she would excuse 
 him. Celia said rather snappishly, she hadn't asked 
 him to sing it, and he seemed surprised and rather 
 offended when everybody laughed. 
 
 All of us men of the party set to work to unfurl any 
 small pieces of awning which might have been over- 
 looked, breaking our finger-nails as we plucked at the 
 damp tapes. We also busied ourselves in mopping the 
 wet off the seats so that the ladies should be as comfort- 
 able as possible under the circumstances. They would 
 not go into the cabin, saying they preferred the air and 
 our society. Once away from the shelter of the boat- 
 house bend the rain drove wildly against us upon a 
 freshening breeze which felt as if it had been kept on ice 
 all night. It found its way shrewdly into any cracks 
 or crannies in our defences. Bulkeley had thought out 
 a series of strategic movements so as to get near Celia. 
 He managed quite cleverly. In fact I would hardly 
 have credited him with the mental acuteness necessary 
 to the devising of them. It was I supposed the instinct 
 of the hunter as opposed to the clear thinking of the 
 trained mind, for I failed in achieving my purpose, 
 which was the same as his. Soon he was safely en- 
 sconced beside her. Though ordinarily very polite 
 and quick to jump up with an " Allow me " and a flash 
 of white teeth, once he got by her, there he stayed. I 
 knocked Mrs Carstairs' hand-bag off her lap on to the 
 floor right in front of him, but he made no attempt to 
 get up and to hand it to her, not even a bogus attempt. 
 I did not like it at all. He was too attentive for my 
 taste and everybody was observing it, I could see, and 
 wondering when the happy day was to be, I felt sure. 
 He held a huge umbrella over her, altering the angle so 
 as to meet the blasts of rain, tucking in her rugs in the 
 
 34
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 most possessive way, drawing her attention to anything 
 that could be seen through the other dripping gamps. 
 I looked at the rest. De Brissac and Mrs Carstairs 
 seemed to have found out that they were affinities and 
 talked rapidly and interestedly. Gibbons was talking 
 to Miss Lamb ; sitting in the leeway of her fine propor- 
 tions, he was warm and dry. Dan and Vera and the 
 little Edwards huddled up together and chatted. Ethel 
 and Rosenberg, the Tenor and Fatty Bellew, who 
 wanted to show us all how to rough it gracefully, had 
 taken possession of the cabin ; and cards had been pro- 
 duced from somewhere and they were doing tricks and 
 enjoying themselves, and gusts of laughter blew out as 
 they did so. I seemed the only outcast. I coughed and 
 sneezed several times to attract Celia's sympathy, but 
 didn't get any, so I gave my mind to the weather and the 
 scenery for both fitted in with my mood only too well. 
 
 Everyone knows what the River is like going down 
 from Oxford and I do not intend to say that even upon 
 a day such as this it did not have its attractions. Just 
 now it might have served as a tragic background to the 
 wanderings of that poor mad king, old Lear, for all 
 round, whichever way the eye looked, all was desolate, 
 wild and drear. All of a sudden and before we knew 
 what was happening, a storm arose out of the distance 
 and bore down upon us and beat about us. The waters 
 were leaden and forbidding, and turgid with what their 
 swollen stirrings had fetched off banks or raised from 
 muddied bottoms. Flecks of chill white foam floated 
 in a distraught way now hither, now thither ; our little 
 craft sat deep in the swirling waste, hugging the sides 
 where the clumps of reeds and ashen willows thrashed 
 and whipped each other. The rain tore along the 
 surface of the river, ripping along it, or in backwaters, 
 battering the surface flat. The wind got up and 
 screamed behind the tattered clouds, sending them 
 scudding across the grey sky as if it were urging and 
 
 35
 
 THE PIC -NIC 
 
 chasing them against their will to some horrid place 
 upon some horrid business. The tall elms were terror- 
 stricken when it tore at their high tops and wrung them 
 and wrung them again. Creaking and bending they 
 seemed prepared to fall. 
 
 I'd never seen the like and the Frenchman called out 
 to us in admiration. 
 
 The storm lasted a full hour and we quailed in the 
 face of it. 
 
 Lock after lock had to be passed and we waited out- 
 side each one and hooted and waited some more, and 
 after delays and doubts a surly-looking keeper would 
 come out in oilskins and look at us as much as to say 
 that he was not paid to open lock gates for lunatics, 
 and if we weren't lunatics we wouldn't be out in weather 
 like this. 
 
 Then we waited inside the locks getting lower and 
 lower into their cold dank depths, but appreciating a 
 respite from the battling winds. After what seemed an 
 interminable time, punctuated by the swishing of the 
 rain, we'd start off and churn out again and panorama 
 after panorama of dripping, wind-harried park and 
 pasture unfolded itself to our gaze great trees with 
 leaves weighted with raindrops, bending down to the 
 waters or rising and receding up hill-sides. There were 
 houses with battlemented towers on hill-tops or else 
 houses set upon flat level swards. There were every 
 now and then islands too, big and little, to admire, with 
 sometimes buildings on them. White temples rising 
 out of dense dark growths, with thick alder boles at 
 the edges and whippy willow growths. 
 
 And more locks and more panoramas. I ticked the 
 locks off on a little chart I had, and as we waited our 
 turn by the rule of the River we fell in with great big 
 black timber-carrying barges and other tarry traffic 
 of the waterway. They ominously pressed our little 
 laden-down pleasure boat between their towering sides 
 
 36
 
 THE PIC -NIC 
 
 and the dripping stones of the lock-side. On we slipped 
 by them and ahead of them according to their yells and 
 hoarse directings, when they were prepared to allow us 
 precedence of egress. 
 
 The locks got on my nerves. Each one of them was 
 an obstacle between me and my food. I'd had no 
 breakfast and the chilly air had given me a famous 
 hunger. But it wasn't within an hour of the time fixed 
 for lunch, so I sternly held my thoughts to what I saw. 
 I am really less materially inclined than I pretend to be. 
 If I had been a painter, as indeed I wish I had been, 
 some aspect of that stormy river would have gone down 
 to posterity. Or had I been a poet some record would 
 have found its way into a rhyme. 
 
 I rhapsodied to myself about it all, and reminded 
 myself that this was the river of all rivers. The main 
 artery that fed the very bosom of England. The 
 pageant of her history, in parts at all events, had been 
 played upon its banks. Many and many a fight it had 
 witnessed and washed away the traces afterwards. 
 Kings and nobility had met to sign charters to free men ; 
 State barges had floated up and down it, trailing gold- 
 worked velvets and trappings in it. Little princesses 
 must have bathed in it and hidden in the reeds when 
 people came that way. I was warmly wrapped up in a 
 waking dream. I thought of all these things and felt a 
 sentimental pricking and tingling about the eyes and 
 nose. This was the signal for my cold to reassert itself 
 and suddenly I sneezed violently again and again and 
 again. 
 
 Miss Lamb, who had, I think, kept one kindly but 
 shortsighted eye on me, ever since we left London, 
 jumped up quickly and, before I could defend myself, 
 picked up a coat that was lying near by and threw it 
 clumsily but tenderly about me. I drew back as she 
 did so, for it was THE coat and the damp seemed to have 
 cheered it up and made it oh ! so much worse. It 
 flapped across my face. 
 
 37
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 " Dear Mr Blenerhassett, your cold is so bad. Now 
 don't protest, you must keep warm." 
 
 Bulkeley called out in his well-bred roar " Yes, do 
 have it. It's a splendid coat. Nothing ever gets 
 through it, I can tell you that." 
 
 I should think not. 
 
 I thanked them both freely and lit a cigarette. The 
 wind had by now subsided and I could keep a match 
 going. I pulled hard at my cigarette and as soon as 
 they looked the other way I let the horrible thing slip 
 down gradually, and kicked it savagely under my feet. 
 Bulkeley ought to be horse-whipped, firstly for keeping 
 such a thing, and secondly, for bringing it into ladies' 
 society at a pic-nic. I noticed that though he pressed 
 it upon other people he took good care not to wear it or 
 even go near it himself. The psychology of millionaires 
 always interested me. I wondered if one should not 
 pray in church to be delivered from the danger of becom- 
 ing one. They are strangely horrid people so very often. 
 
 Fortunately the weather was improving. Feeling 
 that it had done all that it could to annoy us and con- 
 tent to have spoilt our morning for us, it now took it 
 into its head to take a distinct turn for the better. In 
 a surprisingly short time we had churned our way into 
 calm waters. The sun burst through rather half- 
 heartedly at first, but getting stronger every moment, 
 so that as we turned another bend or two we found our- 
 selves positively basking in it. We began to move our 
 cramped, stiffened limbs and stretched our cramped and 
 cracking joints. Some feeble jokes made their appear- 
 ance, dry cigarettes and biscuits were passed out of the 
 cabin, and when a bottle of cherry brandy and glasses 
 were passed out too, a wave of enthusiasm passed over 
 the company. It was Rosenberg's splendid idea and 
 we drank his health and voted that he was the life and 
 soul of the party and entirely indispensable to it. 
 
 The unaccustomed liqueur unlocked Mrs Carstairs' 
 pretty, though usually silent mouth. As we passed a 
 backwater there was a momentary glimpse of a swan 
 
 38
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 and her cygnets and she told us a strange story of a 
 lonely swan she had once heard of, the last survivor of 
 a large family. He lived alone for years, she said, until 
 some kind person took pity on his condition and brought 
 him a full-fledged companion. Not long afterwards, 
 some people walking on the shores of the lake saw him 
 struggling with her, and before anyone could reach them, 
 he had held her head under water till he drowned her. 
 
 " How human," said little Ethel, in a very small voice, 
 and then everybody laughed and said they must have 
 more cherry brandy because it was such a very sad story. 
 
 Rosenberg put his salmon-pink nose out of the cabin 
 again, and asked Celia what she thought of doing about 
 food were we to lunch ashore or on board ? as if it were 
 to be the latter it would be a terribly tight fit. Celia 
 unfolded her plan. A friend of hers who owned a 
 portion of the river bank on both sides had given her 
 permission to lunch in the grounds of her house. The 
 house itself was shut up or we might have gone there, 
 but the grounds were lovely and there were some old 
 Roman and Saxon remains which would delight M. de 
 Brissac, who was something of an archaeologist. The 
 hotel where we were to put up that night was not more 
 than a few miles distant, but as it was a pic-nic she did 
 not propose to go there till later in the day. As soon as 
 lunch was over we were to explore farther down the 
 river still and to come back to the hotel in time for 
 dinner. After dinner we would float about in punts, 
 for it very obligingly lay right upon the water's edge. 
 
 She thought we must be getting near the spot, so the 
 launch tooted gaily to warn the birds and little fishes of 
 our approach, for there was nothing else about. We all 
 stamped and moved about cheerily and warmed up by 
 the cherry brandy and the biscuits we became almost 
 hilarious. 
 
 Dan thoughtfully drew attention to my costume (for 
 I had carelessly opened my coat to let it flap about a bit 
 and get quite dry). One and all, they fairly screamed. 
 I could not see it, and I told them so. It was no joke 
 
 39
 
 THE PIC -NIC 
 
 for me as I felt an awful fool. I gave them a short 
 lecture upon humour and I said there was no doubt 
 that the English as a race could only see the funny side 
 of sad things, and that they made no attempt at all to 
 see the funny side of funny things. Speaking as an 
 Irishman I said this was so, and it was a pity. 
 
 " Yes," says Dan, " the difference between the 
 English and the Irish is that the English see the funny 
 side of sad things, but the Irish don't see the funny side 
 of anything." 
 
 " You don t know anything about Ireland, Dan, so 
 don't lay down the law about it." 
 
 "That shows all you know about me, Peter. My 
 people went over there five hundred years ago." 
 
 " Aw is that so, Dan. Well 
 
 I lit another cigarette and after a short pause "Did 
 they have a good passage," I said bitingly. 
 
 That left the laugh on Dan for a bit, but not for long, 
 for he became very popular at my expense by pointing 
 to my odd socks and by pretending to be about to throw 
 my solitary white buckskin boot overboard, because he 
 said it reminded him of the lonely swan. Unfortunately 
 for me he had left it out of my bag and brought it along 
 in his coat-pocket. He then told them of all the trouble 
 I had taken over my packing and described it carefully, 
 and got all the others to declare that what had happened 
 was a judgment on me for having nutty tendencies. 
 Celia was studying the landscape attentively, and she 
 called out to me : 
 
 " Peter, you've stayed here with the Addisons. You 
 know the look of the place. Isn't that it ? " 
 
 " Yes, there's the boathouse, you can just see it. 
 Dear me, it's years since I stayed here, but I remember 
 every detail. I spent a most enjoyable summer here. 
 They had SUCH a pretty girl staying with them." 
 
 " Why, you never told me about it, Peter," said Celia 
 surprised. " How is that ? Who was she ? " 
 
 "Oh, never mind. But she was CHARMING. We 
 spent such a lot of time in that old boathouse, you see 
 
 40
 
 THE PIC -NIC 
 
 there. And the Battens had a nice house lower down 
 the River, and they had a VERY pretty girl staying 
 there too." I had one eye on her. " Yes " I wagged 
 my head in a devil-may-care manner, and smiled 
 cannily " yes I oscillated pretty freely between the 
 two places all that summer, I can tell you." 
 
 " Are you quite sure that oscillated is the right word, 
 Peter ? " said Dan maliciously. " Don't you think you 
 mean osculated, old chap ? " 
 
 There were more screams of laughter at my expense. 
 However I put up with them gracefully, and looked as if 
 I could tell more, an I would, but I wouldn't. 
 
 Celia said frigidly that she did not consider that 
 Dan's joke was at all in good taste, and giving me a 
 stony look, turned the conversation by asking us what 
 we thought of the place. 
 
 We were just getting close to the boathouse and 
 preparing to land, when she called to the man at the 
 steering gear to hold on a bit. 
 
 Some of the party were saying that the house and 
 grounds on the riverside were charming, but that the 
 place was a good deal spoilt by having no nice view on 
 the other side, only a bare stretch of fields, the towing 
 path and some iron railings. I recollected that this 
 blank piece had made an impression on me when I had 
 stayed there, and I had thought it a great blemish. 
 
 It seemed to worry Celia, and she said she did not like 
 the idea of our having that bare outlook before us while 
 we were lunching ; it would spoil everything, and she 
 called upon us all to say what we thought. We were 
 all far too hungry to bother about scenery, and said so, 
 but she wouldn't let us land until we had turned it over 
 in our minds. She said no pic-nic could possibly be a 
 success unless someone paid attention to these details. 
 
 Gibbons, who looked as if he had never been hungry 
 in his life, said she was quite right, and that they should 
 be inquired into. Celia asked everybody's advice and 
 didn't listen to it when they gave it. Was it or was it 
 not, nicer to have lunch OPPOSITE the scenery or IN the 
 
 41
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 scenery, she debated. If you were IN it you couldn't 
 see it properly. Whereas if you sat OPPOSITE to it it 
 was all spread out before you and you could feast 
 your mind and your body at the same moment. 
 
 "My dear lady," said Fatty rather irritably, in 
 whom the privations of the Klondyke had developed a 
 yearning for the fleshpots of civilisation, " you might 
 as well say you'd rather see another woman in a pretty 
 dress than be in it yourself ; it's absurd. Do let's get 
 ashore and lunch SOMEWHERE. I'm famishing and all 
 my muscles are stiff." 
 
 The Tenor, with the remnants of his voice pleaded 
 for the side with trees, so that if the weather broke 
 again one could at anyrate get shelter, but Celia had 
 already directed the man to put in to the towing path 
 side. There was no proper means of getting off this 
 way, so she was satisfied that it was entirely alfresco. 
 We could so easily have got out in the boathouse, but 
 this way we barked our shins and tore our clothes getting 
 off, and the Tenor went into the squelchy mud well 
 above the knee. Rosenberg bore this trifling with his 
 sacred lunch hour manfully and I always thought well 
 of him afterwards. Baskets were hove overboard, 
 seats, coats, cushions, all the lot were thrown out of the 
 launch. It looked as if it was in eruption. As soon as 
 I saw THE coat appear I escorted it as far as I could from 
 everything else. 
 
 Everyone flew about in all directions, calling for 
 corkscrews, begging for pen-knives, hunting for this, 
 that and the other. But the Tenor and the Frenchman 
 stood apart and exchanged unfavourable views in some 
 unknown tongue, that is, de Brissac was speaking 
 and the Russian was nodding his head violently. He 
 looked towards Celia and I saw something very like 
 aversion in his eyes. I also looked at Celia and saw 
 that she and Bulkeley had resumed their flirtation with 
 vigour and they were both plunging into the same 
 hamper, and getting their hands all mixed up, laughing 
 and fussing as to who should carry this or that dish. I 
 
 42
 
 THE PIC -NIC 
 
 thought moodily that it would be an unmitigated bore 
 for me to watch them all day going on like this, especi- 
 ally as I had a bad headache coming on. I looked at 
 the sky. A thought struck me, and I walked over to 
 the Tenor who had now withdrawn moodily to the very 
 edge of the river, and stood looking at the rapid stream 
 of it, his head sunk on his chest. The sun had gone 
 in again, more dark clouds had rolled up and the wind 
 was whistling cuttingly. He seemed to be trying to 
 hum something. I listened cautiously yes it was 
 Home, Sweet Home. My heart smote me. That settled 
 it. Poor fellow, he was naturally very upset at 
 having got this chill. His whole existence depended 
 upon his keeping clear of colds. His future lay be- 
 tween those swollen tonsils. The wet material of his 
 trousers stuck and clung to one leg, outlining it. 
 
 " Look here, Hintoff," I said, " I think it would be a 
 very good thing for you if we walked back to the hotel. 
 It's only five miles away the walk will do you good. 
 You can have a hot bath and something to eat in your 
 room, and go to bed and nurse your cold." 
 
 He leapt at the offer and almost embraced me, but 
 I warded him off. He said, what about his hostess, 
 though, would she think him very rude ? I promised 
 to square her. 
 
 I went over to Celia, who was coquetting with 
 Gibbons and Bulkeley over the carving of a ham. I led 
 her to infer (which is a delicate way of confessing that 
 I told several fibs) that I was dying to see the pic-nic 
 through to the bitter end, but that my one anxiety was 
 to save her anxiety on account of the Tenor. I told 
 her feelingly that I was quite ready to sacrifice my own 
 personal desires and natural craving for innocent enjoy- 
 ment and if she wished it I would trot the Tenor off and 
 install him safely in the warm hotel there and then, for 
 I was sure he was about to have a serious illness. 
 
 " My poor dear unselfish Peter. How splendid of 
 you. Just as we are having such a capital time. What 
 should I do without you ? But I really think it is the 
 
 43
 
 THE PIC -NIC 
 
 only thing to do. You must have some sandwiches. 
 Fancy giving up your lunch ! You are the most un- 
 selfish man I know." She dived into a tea basket and 
 brought out a pile of sandwiches and squeezed them into 
 my hand affectionately. I took them carelessly as if 
 privations were quite in my line, and said nothing what- 
 ever about the whacking lunch I meant to have when I 
 got back to the hotel. I would not labour it now, but 
 I did not mean to allow this piece of abnegation on my 
 part to be forgotten for many a long day, I can tell you. 
 It would come in very useful anon. 
 
 We slipped away quietly so as not to draw too much 
 attention to my act of heroism, and struck out rapidly 
 across the fields till we got on to the highroad. By the 
 time we reached the pretty little Riverside Inn hiding 
 coyly in its green ambuscade of big trees and dense sur- 
 rounding undergrowth, with the foot of its sloping lawn 
 almost in the lapping sheltered waters, we were both 
 glowing with the exercise and both felt the better of it. 
 Hintoff said he thought that if he could get really dry 
 and thoroughly warm he felt he might pull through and 
 sing next week, and so we stamped in at the low little 
 door and loudly called for our hosts. As soon as it was 
 realised that we were the advance guard of the large 
 and exclusive party for which all the best rooms had 
 been reserved, attendants flew about, in all directions. 
 The motors had turned up, the luggage had been un- 
 packed and warm dry things were ready. 
 
 Hintoff made no bones about going to his room and 
 did not refuse the battery of hot-water jars this time. 
 I went into the clean little red-tiled kitchen, inspected 
 the joints personally and superintended the loading of 
 a large tray to go up to him. Then I went and paid a 
 call upon the young lady in the brightly shining bar. 
 She was a fine girl, tall, with a lovely complexion and 
 heaps of ripping glossy hair tossed up on top of a very 
 good head. She looked splendid against the rows and 
 rows of little dark shelves lined with jolly bottles all 
 
 44
 
 THE PIC -NIC 
 
 gleaming and winking away in the dim old background. 
 I ordered stiff grogs for myself and the Tenor, to be 
 made of good old brandy, warranted to leave no after- 
 math of morning head or furry tongue and with little 
 oddments of clove and nutmeg floating in them. 
 
 As she stood sideways she gave me a coy but un- 
 mistakable invitation out of one bright eye. I perked 
 up damply and watched her fulfil my double behest 
 with slim and nimble ringers. I reminded myself that 
 if one had time to look for it there was always some 
 appreciation to be found, somewhere ; and then she 
 turned full towards me, and I met her eyes as I leant 
 upon the polished surface to pay my count. I drew 
 back in dismay. She had a cast hi one but which I 
 couldn't say ; for whilst one invited the other repelled. 
 One was coy and held a lark ; the other was stony and 
 held a rebuke. It looked across the top of my head 
 out of the door away into the middle distance as if there 
 were no such things as tall men with crinkly hair, that 
 crinkled more because it was a wet day. 
 
 It looked at you as much as to say that if any small 
 gallantry suitable to the occasion were attempted that 
 it would be met with a request for an explanation. 
 
 I decided it was too risky and went upstairs and 
 changed from head to foot. I put on my tan shoes. 
 
 I have hardly space to tell you of the lunch I had. 
 Now that I come to look back upon it I hardly know 
 how I found space to accommodate it all, but I was 
 ravenously hungry. As it progressed or rather dis- 
 appeared, I solved the problem of the eye. It was the 
 one I had first met that turned out to be at the head of 
 affairs. I had nothing to complain of, everything was 
 done for me, for she was one of the nicest girls I ever 
 met, and I really believe she had taken a great fancy to 
 me, and we chatted amiably between courses. After 
 lunch she settled me down in the little sitting-room 
 reserved for the use of our party. She provided me 
 with hot strong coffee and hot strong grog to follow ; 
 
 45
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 she gave me a book and some matches, found my cigar- 
 case and lent me six of her own clean handkerchiefs. 
 She was a priceless girl. I thought that if I had had 
 the same bent of mind as the late King Cophetua, I 
 might have done worse than propose to her. Still it 
 was not in my way, and after all I decided I'd prefer to 
 marry someone who had not quite so much difficulty 
 with her aspirates. 
 
 " By Jove, this is almost like summer," I said to my- 
 self as I stretched my legs out to the blaze. I glanced 
 out of the French window at the peep of water and the 
 green lawn and at the gorgeous riverside trees opposite, 
 their leaves shivering in the breeze. Little hop tendrils 
 and clematis shoots framed the picture and clustered 
 and tangled round the old green iron of the verandah. 
 I settled the cushions at my back. I snipped my cigar 
 and lit it. I sipped my coffee and glanced through the 
 Sunday papers, and then I idly opened the book ; I 
 hadn't got through two pages before I knew it was the 
 very book to give to a person who had been lured out on 
 a wretched dank summer pic-nic. I suppose they kept 
 nothing but that sort of book at that hotel, and lent 
 them one at a time to their visitors to read, so that they 
 should forget how cold it was outside. It was all about 
 Italy, beautiful laughing cloudless Italy, where the 
 skies were blue and smiled perpetually and the sun 
 blazed without a break. There was no rain in that book 
 at all, only one thunderstorm towards the end clearly 
 dragged in so as to show the writer's command of words 
 and to serve as a background for a foul deed. Every- 
 one was safely under cover and no one got wet except 
 the murderers and the corpse. Otherwise the winds 
 were balmy and caressing and the olive-eyed peasants 
 Beppo and Juliana, Umberto and Suntuzza and so on 
 and so forth, laughed and sang and worked the whiles 
 in the sunny mountains of Tuscany, and dwelt in the 
 little sun-baked, half-ruined villages straggling and 
 clinging on the steep hill-sides, while all below lay 
 the sparkling Mediterranean, tideless yet full of life 
 
 46
 
 THE PIC -NIC 
 
 notwithstanding, for light craft of every shape and size 
 flitted about and great sea-going liners cut their way 
 through its azure waters. I felt myself getting posi- 
 tively sunburnt while I read about it all. There were 
 palatial villas painted with frescoes outside, also many 
 old palazzos to which one gained entrance by climbing 
 marble stairways. Inside they were hung with price- 
 less tapestries of the Renaissance and pictures of dead 
 princes. Without, the fountains played and made the 
 cool courts cooler, by their plashings ; the people in the 
 story gasped for breath and only wore the very thinnest 
 clothes, never venturing out without large umbrellas to 
 protect them from the glare. 
 
 One of the most picturesque Rococo palazzos had 
 been bought by an American millionaire. The heroine, 
 who was his daughter, was quite a woman after my 
 own heart. She was of the same colouring as Celia, 
 dressed divinely and in many ways reminded me of her. 
 She was subject to the same caprices and pretty moods. 
 She was unreasonable too at times, like Celia, but just 
 as in Celia' s case, she was a perfectly wonderful and 
 warm-hearted person. The hero also was quite a nice 
 fellow. A good deal older than the heroine, but as I 
 said to myself, it is not disparity of years but of mind 
 that matters. 
 
 1 skimmed the pages rapidly. Carlo the heroine was 
 taking a long time to make up her mind as to whether 
 she loved the hero or not, but as the wooing took place 
 in such a wonderful climate and in such delightful 
 surroundings, there was no need to hurry. As it 
 was a book one knew it would come right. The hero, 
 strangely enough, was also very like me in his appear- 
 ance generally. He was well read and sensitive, his 
 nature was deep and such as to make him liable to be 
 misunderstood by those about him. The only way in 
 which he differed from me was that he had a moustache 
 and that I am clean-shaven. I shaved him and read on. 
 
 The author was very gifted, for the whole book 
 seemed to breathe a subtle aroma as of orange bloom 
 
 47
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 and olive plantations. By some trick of the wording 
 of his sentences when he described the ripening vine- 
 yards and the ilex and cypress groves with their em- 
 bowered depths, he succeeded in casting a glamour over 
 the senses of his reader. Sometimes a waft of fragrance 
 that made me think of wayside flowers and reminded 
 me curiously of the particular personal fragrance that 
 clung about Celia's belongings, and was quite delicious, 
 seemed to come from it. 
 
 One thing I approved of greatly. The author had 
 not had recourse to a very usual but very annoying 
 trick to work up the interest and suspense. He had 
 not given the heroine two strings to her bow. Naturally 
 so beautiful and gifted a person as she had admirers and 
 would-be lovers by the score, and every few pages or 
 so he left you to guess that Prince So-and-so or that 
 swarthy but gallant Marchesi di What's-his-name, and a 
 whole heap of lesser personages were about to propose 
 or had just done so. But as can easily be imagined to 
 one so beautiful as Carlo these things were all in the 
 order of the day and she clearly must have refused them 
 tactfully and convincingly, for these people faded out 
 of the book and were only spoken of again distantly. 
 No ! the hero had the field to himself, and there was no 
 neck-and-neck business with anyone else to make your 
 blood run cold. No English Milord came along with a 
 yacht and letters of introduction, just as things were 
 shaping nicely for the hero and spoiling matters for him 
 by walking with her at the hour of twilight upon the 
 long palazzo terraces where the little formal orange- 
 trees stood like sentinels all in a row, and the suspiring 
 valley below sent up strange little spicy perfumes, 
 borne on the wings of that immortal sprite and go- 
 between of all balmy climes, Romance. As I read, it 
 appeared to me an extraordinary book, and the room 
 seemed full of fragrance. I couldn't understand how 
 it was done. The man was a genius in the handling of 
 words, if he could so carry one with him and by merely 
 describing such things arouse in his perusers the actual 
 
 48
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 feelings of the things themselves. I wondered at it 
 and followed the tale closely, held by its charm, and 
 suddenly and overwhelmingly the fragrance was there 
 again. I turned a page or two and it was there still 
 more. I rubbed my nose in astonishment and per- 
 plexity. I sniffed once and I sniffed twice and then 
 I looked at my handkerchief suspiciously, and what do 
 you think ? Instead of my own big linen one I saw 
 that it was a little bit of lawn and lace smelling as sweet 
 as could be, which I had been holding to my nose, 
 Celia's little hanky, not mine at all. I remembered now 
 that Celia had dropped it and that I had picked it up 
 just in time to prevent Bulkeley getting hold of it, and 
 I had forgotten to give it back. I laughed immoder- 
 ately and sniffed at it again and compared its aroma 
 with that of the coat. It was indeed vastly superior. 
 
 I glanced out of the window. The rain had once more 
 begun to fall, long and straight, soaking w r eightily into 
 the little green lawn, with a steady persevering sound 
 as though it had signed a contract to pour steadily for 
 two or three days without ceasing and meant to carry it 
 out to the letter if it possibly could. I poked the fire, 
 took my hot grog off the hob and resumed my reading. 
 
 For the moment the love theme became of secondary 
 importance. It fell out that Carlo's father had been 
 taking an interest, as an American naturally would, in 
 the political questions that convulsed Italy. I could 
 see that all was not well in spite of blue skies and blazing 
 sunshine. The country was poor, the government full 
 of factions. The cost of old mistakes was as a heavy 
 burden upon the backs of the poor, who, toil and moil 
 as they might, could not shake off their poverty. 
 Secret societies flourished. The Camorra and the Black 
 Hand undermined the loyalty of a fine people. They 
 met in caves and whispered sedition and swore great 
 oaths. Now the heart of the great intelligent American 
 was sore for the misery he saw about him, and in trying 
 to do something for it he became himself suspect and the 
 
 D 49
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 very peasants who lived in the shadow of the palazzo, 
 and who had thriven on his bounty, turned upon him 
 and tried to injure him and his. 
 
 One day, walking in a lonely wood, the heroine was 
 set upon by villains and if the hero had not had the in- 
 fallible and 'mystic sense that heroes always have when 
 the loved one is in danger, her number would have gone 
 up. But he seized a fast horse, leapt upon it and rode 
 like the wind to her help and sent her assailants packing. 
 Carlo's gratitude was unspeakable and through several 
 chapters I saw it ripen into love. It was delightful. 
 As the story went along she became more and more like 
 Celia and did and said things just as she did. Oddly 
 enough the hero seemed to become more and more like 
 me. I really felt as if I had Celia all to myself for once 
 that afternoon. I paused and looked at the fire and 
 ruminated. No man could consider himself altogether 
 a luckless wight who was so skilful at weaving realities 
 out of unrealities as I. No doubt, said I, if you will 
 look into things carefully, you will see that every kind 
 of life and every kind of character has its compensations 
 and there are more things than meet the eye in this old 
 world. With this I glanced outside and thought how 
 much nicer it was to be in here than out there, and yet 
 I fell to wondering uneasily whether Bulkeley was still 
 hovering around Celia. Perhaps he was tucking her 
 rugs about her in the launch again or buttoning her 
 into her coat, lingering over each button. If so I hoped 
 the coat hadn't too many buttons. A wet pic-nic gives 
 a man such an unfair chance of showing how attentive 
 he can be. From Bulkeley s point of view the weather 
 was ideal. Perhaps at the very moment that I was 
 wooing her ideally in the pages of a book he was pro- 
 posing to her in the flesh. I plunged into the story 
 again. 
 
 Carlo's father had, with the assistance of the 
 authorities, persuaded the peasants of the integrity of 
 his intentions. He helped them to buy out their farms 
 and loaned them money for their maintenance and 
 
 50
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 cultivation, and now instead of black looks all was 
 joyous and serene again. At night after the day's work 
 was done, the village folk would assemble near the 
 palazzo, and young Giuseppi would unsling his guitar 
 and his liquid luscious notes would rise to the great dark 
 blue vault of heaven, all thickly studded and strewn 
 with stars. In Italy, according to this writer, one 
 literally lived among the stars. At bed and at board 
 they were there ; at night so close to earth, so many 
 and so thick behind the tops of the blue-brown moun- 
 tain slopes. The singing was altogether too much for 
 Celia and me the hero and heroine I mean ! 
 
 Some small crisis hi their intercourse left her at his 
 mercy. Her love could not restrain itself, but was 
 written in her face so clearly that even in the pale star- 
 light her lover could read it. Thrilling with the joy of 
 the discovery, glowing with the force of my adoration, 
 I advanced to take her in my arms and hear her sweet 
 confession. ... I was quite swept off my feet. I felt 
 as if something were going to snort-circuit inside me. 
 ... At that moment I heard a trampling of feet 
 and the sound of many voices laughing and talking. 
 Malediction on it ! They had come back. Upon the 
 instant the door of the sitting-room was flung open 
 and Fatty Bellew and Dan burst in. 
 
 I threw the book to the other side of the room. 
 " Pig-dogs ! " I said. 
 
 Next morning Miss Lamb, Gibbons, Rosenberg and 
 myself boarded the first express to Town. Miss Lamb 
 in a very sporting way got into a smoker with us, and 
 felt rather fast at doing so. Our spirits were quite 
 good for our noses were turned towards home. Rosen- 
 berg, through having such a long one, was already part 
 of the way there. Mr Gibbons sat in his corner, immersed 
 in official papers and envelopes with strange seals. I 
 could see his mind was already back at his office before 
 his body too. Rosenberg spoke out plump and plain. 
 
 51
 
 THE PIC-NIC 
 
 "What a mercy that's over. I always say that no 
 amount of work ever did anyone any harm. It's these 
 holidays that are so dangerous. I don't think I shall 
 ever take one again if I live through the attack of 
 pneumonia that I expect I shall develop soon. Miss 
 Lamb," he leant towards her, " I've got a favour to 
 ask of you." 
 
 " Yes, Mr Rosenberg," the good creature beamed all 
 over. 
 
 "I've got a hard day before me, and I had a very 
 hard bed last night. I want to have forty winks before 
 I get up to Town. Do you mind ? " 
 
 t; Not at all, dear Mr Rosenberg. Certainly not." 
 
 " Well then," he grinned amicably at her, " you must 
 promise not to scream with pleasure every time you see 
 a Norman church, and wake me to come and look at 
 it." 
 
 '' No, no, indeed, I won't." 
 
 " That's all right," I said. " We'll be as quiet as mice. 
 I say, Rosenberg." 
 
 ' Yes, my dear boy? " 
 
 " Thank goodness this train doesn't have to go 
 through any locks ! "
 
 ADELAIDE 
 
 " ARE you quite sure, Peter, that you don't mind having 
 given up your day's shooting ? " 
 
 " Quite sure, Celia. Adelaide rather interests me, 
 you know." 
 
 I helped her to get into, or I might more truly say 
 embark in, her limousine. It was a hefty car, more like 
 a man-of-war. The big whitened tyres slung at the 
 sides looked as if they were life-buoys, and should be 
 marked " s.s. Celia." 
 
 " Still, it's a shame to have to miss your day's sport. 
 I hate asking you to come in a way, and yet I hate 
 going alone to see Adelaide, for there are such awful 
 gaps in the conversation if I do. With three it's not 
 so bad, as when two of us have said the same thing and 
 agreed with each other and said yes, the other person 
 can repeat it, and the first two can agree and say ' yes ' 
 to it. and that fills up the time nicely." 
 
 " By the way, what are we going to talk about to-day ? 
 Hadn't we better decide beforehand, and then we are 
 less likely to feel paralysed ; for if our ideas do run 
 short we will have something to fall back on." 
 
 "There's always the dog fight." 
 
 "Oh, surely not, Celia. That must have happened 
 three years ago." 
 
 " Never mind, it's still quite fresh and perfectly 
 safe. You can examine the marks on Jumbo's legs, 
 slang the vicar's dog as much as you like and even say 
 a few unkind things about the vicar for keeping such 
 a dog. Remember we are in the country and it is 
 nothing to spin a dog fight out for three years' conversa- 
 tion. Besides there is always the town house." 
 
 " Yes, there is that, but on the whole, Celia. I'd prefer 
 
 53
 
 ADELAIDE 
 
 to leave that to you. You are so much cleverer at 
 feeling your way than I am. I might easily say the 
 wrong thing." 
 
 " Yes, better leave it to me." 
 
 I must explain that Adelaide (I beg her pardon, 
 Mrs Mount joy) is one of those people with whom you 
 must be very careful in conversation. She is on the 
 look-out for what is known as "digs." Why anyone 
 should want to have digs at her I can't make out. I 
 certainly don't. But she spends far too much tune in 
 looking out for them, guarding against them and pre- 
 paring to meet them with counter digs. So it's quite 
 interesting in a mild way to go and see her. Any 
 reference to her town house, when you go and see her 
 in the country, if you are not very careful, may be 
 regarded as a dig. Why I don't know. Any reference 
 to her country house may be regarded as ditto when 
 you go and see her in her town house. So it becomes 
 a sort of game of Tom Tiddler's ground to speak of 
 these houses at all. As far as I could analyse it or make 
 head or tail of it she had somehow got it into her head 
 that her friends had some fault to find with her because 
 she did not spend nine months of the year in one and 
 nine months of the year in the other, though if she had 
 stopped for one moment to make a simple calculation 
 she would have realised it was impossible, and realised 
 that her friends must realise it too. I could never 
 fathom this digging theory at the back of her mind 
 about the houses, unless it was that she felt that as she 
 was a widow she had no right to monopolise two houses. 
 But as she and I and everyone else all know many 
 people who think nothing of monopolising three, four 
 or even five houses and only live a few weeks in the year 
 in each, I can't see why this should have troubled her. 
 It was curious then that there should have been in her 
 an undercurrent of satisfaction at being the possessor 
 of two fine houses, and of being sufficiently wealthy to 
 own and run them. And that is where the subtle 
 interest of the game came in. Whenever we went 
 
 54
 
 ADELAIDE 
 
 to see her, we had to find out whether it was her day 
 for being on the look-out for digs on the subject, and 
 for feeling guilty about it, or whether it was a day when 
 the undercurrent of satisfaction was in full working 
 order, and whether we could gently and indirectly lead 
 her to infer that we were impressed by her being able to 
 afford it. Celia, who always likes to get on the right 
 side of people, is always feeling about for an opening 
 to flatter her on this point, and does a lot of scouting 
 ahead of me, and I heave in according as the land lies. 
 Apart entirely from this digging business, which is 
 only a side issue, I find Adelaide in her way quite an 
 absorbing character study. She is the most PUIVATE 
 person I know. Can you follow me ? There seems to 
 emanate from her entire person a feeling of complete 
 and entire privacy and cut-offness from the rest of the 
 people in the world. I've never met anything else like 
 it anywhere or in anyone else. I cannot convey to 
 you the impression she produces on me, and I think on 
 most people, without using the word " private." You 
 feel somehow that all the circumstances and happenings 
 of her life take place in camera. They are blameless 
 beyond belief, but that makes no matter. All that 
 there is to her and of her transpires in this way. For 
 instance, she never discourses of her doings, large or 
 small, but acts and says nothing. It's all a bit uncanny 
 and seems as though she had no wish for any sympathy 
 or understanding. She never appeals to anyone for 
 an opinion on such things as we most of us do, saying 
 to one another, " I did so-and-so, or else I said so-and- 
 so, or I am thinking of doing so-and-so ; what do you 
 think about it ? " You know the sort of thing I mean. 
 You may not care a jack-straw what people think about 
 it or even dream of taking any advice they proffer, 
 but it gives one a sort of dim satisfaction to do it and 
 seems to help one. Thinking things out for oneself is 
 a lonely business ; indeed all life is a lonely business, 
 and this kind of talk and conversation with one's 
 fellows, taking them a little into one's confidence and 
 
 55
 
 ADELAIDE 
 
 asking for a little of their sympathy, or backing, 
 though it's only in words, is vaguely comforting. I 
 don't suggest that one should go to the lengths to 
 which some people go in asking for the opinion of others 
 or their help in choosing a line of action to take up. 
 For some people are never satisfied unless they are con- 
 stantly asking their friends to form themselves into a 
 sort of impromptu jury, to empanel themselves and sit 
 in judgment on all their actions and wait feverishly for 
 their verdict, instead of deciding for themselves and 
 doing the best they can and being content to leave it at 
 that. 
 
 The only point on which she is at all vulnerable and 
 comes in touch with the outside world is upon the 
 subject of the houses, why I don't know. When I 
 shake her limp private hand and put the stereotyped 
 question " How do you do ? " I feel as if I had taken 
 an unpardonable liberty in inquiring after anything so 
 entirely and purely personal as her health. And she 
 answers me in a distant chillsome way, which rebukes 
 me and convinces me of my hardihood. '' Oh, quite 
 well, thank you. How are you ? " her gentle voice 
 trailing into silence, and pitched on a tone that indicates 
 that to a person of her intense privacy the health of a 
 mere outsider like myself doesn't matter in the very 
 least. I feel, with Alice, like a candle that has been 
 blown out. If by chance I did not do well, I would not 
 think of telling her about my earache or headache or 
 other ache, for I'd know it couldn't interest her. Not 
 that she isn't quite charming in many ways. She is 
 graceful and distinguished. You would pick her out 
 in any crowd with her grey hair and look of elegant 
 privacy and her gentle slow speech and her gentle slow 
 movements. When I am with Adelaide it always feels 
 like Sunday for there is about her and all her surround- 
 ings an air of Sabbath quietness, an atmosphere of repose 
 and something more than repose. A suggestion that 
 all the world's affairs are hung up for the present and a 
 sensation that tilings are in a state of complete poise. 
 
 56
 
 ADELAIDE 
 
 Her house lies about a mile or two from Aunt Anne's 
 in Somerset, and we were staying there. Aunt Anne 
 you remember is also Celia's adopted aunt. As we drew 
 up at the portico I fancied that Celia's driver pulled up 
 a little more silently and circumspectly than usual. I 
 expect I was right in thinking this, for this emanation 
 of quietness and privacy of Adelaide's seems to pene- 
 trate through the walls of her house and you get a whiff 
 or waft of it before you actually enter it. Celia rang 
 carefully and we waited for exactly the correct number 
 of moments that it would take a correct man-servant to 
 get from the high-class housekeeper's room to the hall 
 door. It was opened dexterously and swiftly and 
 Adelaide's butler received us. Very graciously, for he 
 knows we are thoroughly nice people with backgrounds 
 of nice relatives and even great wealth in Celia's 
 case. 
 
 "Yes, Mrs Mount joy is in." We had no need to 
 ask the question, for we were there by her invitation, 
 put my hat and stick silently and carefully on a table 
 whilst he waited decorously, and then we followed him 
 into Adelaide's own special room. He was a pearl 
 among butlers as we both knew. 
 
 Kings have shaken hands with me, and I have even 
 been told off to take minor royalties down to supper, 
 but nothing has ever given me the feeling of suppressed 
 exhilaration that I get when Adelaide's butler greets 
 me amiably, or very thoughtfully so far forgets him- 
 self as to ask how I am keeping. I feel positively un- 
 nerved when he smiles at me. Candidly, the approval 
 of one of these first-class servants is somethng worth 
 having if you can possibly get it, but it is not easy. 
 
 We waited in silence in Adelaide's room, and though 
 it is not a large room, it is very impressive. In some 
 sense, it gives one the feeling that one is in a presence 
 chamber. I trod very carefully across it because I 
 would have felt that if by accident any slight pieces of 
 fluff off the carpet (Adelaide's carpet) came on* on my 
 boots it would be taking an even more unwarrantable 
 
 57
 
 ADELAIDE 
 
 liberty than in asking after her physical well-being. 
 Not that there was any likelihood of any fluff coming 
 off though, for throughout, Adelaide's house is carpeted 
 with fine but sombre rugs ; valuable rugs from which 
 long and long ago, all the colour and substance and 
 joie de vivre had been trodden out by centuries of brown 
 naked feet or else by mincing old world shoes, if the 
 rugs had already sojourned long this side of the world. 
 The room contained a few nice pieces of old furniture, 
 on which gleamed with a quiet but intense brilliance 
 some perfectly kept bits of old well-chosen silver. I 
 examined these. Things can be polished till they dis- 
 appear and these pieces looked as if this would be their 
 ultimate end. I fancied since I last saw them that 
 they had actually decreased in size. We waited, as I 
 say, some little time. If it hadn't been Adelaide we 
 would have said she was unpunctual in putting in an 
 appearance, but this couldn't be so in Adelaide's case. 
 You have only to look at her to see that she is a punctual 
 person. It's strange, but some people can keep others 
 waiting for half-an-hour at a time or miss their appoint- 
 ments altogether and yet not be a bit unpunctual. It's 
 entirely a matter of appearance and general manner. 
 If you are unlucky enough to be born with an un- 
 punctual look about you, even if you always arrive ten 
 minutes before the time, it makes no difference. You'll 
 get no credit for it. 
 
 Presently the door pushed gently open and I jumped 
 up to greet my hostess, but it was only the dog. We 
 hadn't noticed he wasn't there before, but now we 
 remembered that we would probably have to talk about 
 him, and we felt glad he had come. I cheered up a bit, 
 and acting upon impulse, I drew a chair slightly nearer 
 the fire, for it was a cold day. But Adelaide's dog came 
 right near me, close to my ankles and told me (not in 
 so many words, of course, but quite clearly) that each 
 chair had its proper place in that house, and was not 
 to be moved by any mere outsider, thank you. I 
 hadn't time to explain to him as clearly as I should 
 
 58
 
 ADELAIDE 
 
 have liked that I considered my legs were very private 
 property indeed, because at that moment Adelaide 
 entered the room. She greeted us with cold enthusiasm, 
 shook hands and kissed Celia almost. 
 
 Celia and she though they are old schoolfellows only 
 see one another a few times during the year, and by 
 rights should have many things to talk of. But I 
 suppose Adelaide feels that if one talked much and of 
 many things that one MIGHT have to change one' s views, 
 and that would be troublesome, so the conversation 
 kept within a limited radius. It didn't by any means 
 languish though. This was one of her good days and 
 we referred to the two houses quite openly and Celia 
 by a master-stroke of daring complimented her on the 
 convenience of the situation and she was quite pleased 
 and agreed almost heartily. From that we drifted 
 to a little chaste scandal (this was a day of days) 
 curiously impersonal and disembodied. She even re- 
 ferred archly to some doubtful escapades of some well- 
 known ladies of a well-known chorus, speaking of them 
 as ballet girls. I thought how pleased they would be 
 to hear themselves so described. There was a story 
 about one which had been going around town for about 
 four years, and she told us this in quite a little twitter 
 as something very new and very daring. It hadn't 
 been very thrilling even when it was new, but we pre- 
 tended we hadn't heard it before and laughed over it 
 with her. But not in a ribald way and not for long. 
 We laughed rather in a deprecating way, pulling our- 
 selves up suddenly and looking in a gravely tolerant way 
 at the floor so as not to let it appear that we REALLY 
 condoned such goings on. We only laughed in a " such 
 is life " way, and " boys will be boys," and " peers 
 will be peers " way. Nothing more, I assure you. 
 
 Then that topic having run its course and having 
 yielded all it could without its being discussed in a 
 spirit of genuine interest or comment on our common 
 human failings, we dropped it. For with Adelaide 
 there is not any of that no man's land which with most 
 
 59
 
 ADELAIDE 
 
 of us separates our ideas of what is right from our ideas 
 of what is wrong. Her boundary lines are clearly and 
 uncompromisingly worked out and marked with nice 
 plump round stones at intervals, white- washed regularly 
 so that they will glimmer in the darkness, and so that 
 no one can mistake them or have any excuse for over- 
 stepping them or losing their way. It amuses me that 
 it is all so exactly like the drive of her own well-arranged 
 country house. She would be shocked beyond measure 
 if Celia and I were to hesitatingly confess to a rather 
 confused frontier line upon matters of this sort in 
 passing judgment upon our friends generally. She 
 would be horrified if I were to describe to her how some- 
 times I and even Celia too stagger about with these 
 great stones, lifting them and changing their positions, 
 moving them now forward and now backward, trying 
 to place them properly and justly, and mopping our 
 brows with the exertion. I envy Adelaide, I must say. 
 What a lot of thinking and puzzling this attitude of 
 hers must save. 
 
 Tea was brought in, during which time we veered to 
 the subject of the dog and the dog fight, and we examined 
 the marks, now so nicely healed, only that the hair 
 would not grow properly on them. The tea-tray was 
 very refined and high class, set out with more silver 
 things in danger of being polished away and a priceless 
 lace cloth. A nicely warmed china dish (not over- 
 heated) was handed round with a whole family of little 
 well-behaved buttered scones in it, small and prim. I 
 took one, feeling it was a pity to separate them, and ate 
 it carefully. The tea was refined and fragrantly thin 
 and clear. I sat and sipped and swallowed this tea of 
 Adelaide's as if it were some marvellous distillation, 
 the essence of some rare plant that only bears tea leaves, 
 say, once in a hundred years ; and yet in my other 
 friends' houses I sit and gaily gulp down cup after cup 
 of tea (probably just the same at four or five shillings 
 the pound) and think nothing of it. But of course, 
 this is Adelaide's private tea. 
 
 60
 
 ADELAIDE 
 
 After tea Celia and she were still speaking of the 
 dog fight and the vicar's incomprehensible behaviour 
 throughout, and meantime my eyes wandered about. 
 In doing so they observed something that they had 
 not noticed before and that was that even the view 
 you get through Adelaide's speckless thick plate-glass 
 windows is totally different in character from the view 
 you get out of anyone else's windows. It is a subdued 
 and eminently private landscape your eyes rest upon. 
 Even nature seems to have come under her calm 
 domination. The trees seem quieter and more serious 
 here than elsewhere. The winds of March, the gales 
 of the equinox all become more decorous when they 
 buffet against the respectable brickwork of Adelaide's 
 house, and forget to toss the boughs about. There are 
 creepers on the walls outside, but they are trimmed 
 and tidied so that no tendrils can tap insistently on the 
 panes in a little spring breeze. The gardener, who is a 
 thoroughly religious man of sound political views and 
 an Episcopalian, cuts them all away. He also is a 
 very private person. I never got near enough to see 
 him thoroughly, or ask his advice about planting runner 
 beans, for when he saw me coming he melted away into 
 a potting shed. He has a great many under-gardeners, 
 but they have the same dislike to being seen as he has. 
 I saw a whole heap of them one day, but they got off 
 and away in the stubble just like a covey of partridges. 
 
 From the window my glance shifted to Adelaide. 
 There is one very curious thing about her I would like 
 to mention, and which I can't make out. It is in the 
 matter of teeth. She doesn't laugh or smile very often, 
 but when she does she reveals a set of gay little girlish 
 teeth, not a bit private, quite thoughtless-looking and 
 young. Whenever I see her I look at them and feel a 
 bit baffled, and whenever I see her I speculate about 
 them, and what I believe happened is this, that when 
 Adelaide started getting bigger, they somehow got left 
 behind and never grew up with the rest of her. It's 
 the oddest effect to see her lips part in a dry conven- 
 
 61
 
 ADELAIDE 
 
 tional smile and then see those white teeth give the 
 rest of her the lie direct. They are not teeth at all, but 
 a row of little problems, Celia and I have long since 
 decided. 
 
 I was offered another cup of tea, but feared it might 
 seem vulgar and greedy to have two, so I refused though 
 I was thirsty. I was dying for a smoke, but it wasn't 
 suggested and I did not like to ask. Then there was a 
 silence, just what we had dreaded. It may not have 
 been so long as it felt, but it seemed to last ages. Then 
 Celia and Adelaide both started to say something 
 simultaneously, and both stopped, and both begged 
 each other's pardon, and each wouldn't speak before 
 the other and then both of them I fancy got nervous 
 and forgot what they were going to say and matters 
 were at a deadlock, and I suddenly remembered that 
 I had read somewhere that leeches live for seventeen 
 years. It was absolutely the only thing I could think 
 of. Like Mother Hubbard's cupboard, my mind was 
 bare. I can find heaps of things to say, as anyone can 
 tell you, when there is no need to say anything. But 
 I told them both this as if it was a most remarkable 
 thing. Adelaide drew it politely into the cold storage 
 of her mind and left it there to perish (quite rightly) 
 and Celia pretended to be very surprised and interested 
 and said it was a thing everyone ought to know, and 
 did they keep leeches at the zoo, and if so she'd go and 
 inquire into their habits more closely, for an animal 
 that lived so long must end by getting quite intelligent, 
 she thought. Though it wasn't a subject that led to 
 much she made the most of it and it got us over what 
 might have been a very awkward pause. 
 
 I saw that Celia felt she must ask Adelaide to ring 
 for the car before we all lost our tongues altogether 
 and I saw her hunting round the room with her eyes 
 for something to fill in the time while the car was 
 coming round. They fell on a new piece of old furniture 
 in one corner, and she said how nice it was, judging 
 the talk about it would just last us till we got out. I
 
 ADELAIDE 
 
 had noticed it too and thought of it as a probable topic, 
 but discarded it as likely to fizzle out too soon. For 
 though any remark about a new piece of old furniture 
 would start most people off on an endless exchange of 
 views about periods or prices or the relative honesty 
 and dishonesty of respective dealers and all that, it is 
 not so with Adelaide. She has nothing to tell you about 
 anything that belongs to her. Her pieces are good and 
 sound, but once they are admitted to her house, then* 
 past history drops from them. No, their life commences 
 from the moment they become part of her entourage. 
 You see Adelaide does not feel about these things as 
 other people do. You are not asked to enthuse wildly 
 over one of her new acquisitions, or to inquire about it, 
 how and where it was got. If she told you where she 
 got one of her things or what she paid for it, she would 
 be letting you into her private affairs and she couldn't 
 possibly allow that. She doesn't go on wild expedi- 
 tions to unknown neighbourhoods or slums, after having 
 been weak enough to look through a dealer's catalogue 
 of expensive bargains. She does not get carried aw r ay 
 at the sight of a high carved cradle, and buy it feverishly 
 and bring it home the same day and fill it with ferns 
 and flowers. No, if Adelaide rilled it with anything 
 she'd fill it with babies, but as far as we know, she is 
 not very fond of them, so there's an end on it. Her 
 way is quite different. She calmly decides to purchase 
 something for some more than usually blank spot in 
 one of those blank houses, and she deliberately sets 
 forth to some well-known furniture shop of undoubted 
 respectability and reputation. She then holds a calm 
 consultation with a restrained man in the shop the 
 head man when he hears she is there and he leads her 
 to some suitable things. She looks at two or perhaps 
 three and then " Yes " she says deliberately " Yes 
 I think that will do. It's quite nice quite nice. 
 That little line of beading is such good style, isn't it ? 
 Yes, please send it home to me.' ; In due course a 
 cheque, a very respectable and high-toned cheque 
 
 63
 
 ADELAIDE 
 
 indeed, written in a mild, restrained lady-like hand- 
 writing, arrives to the restrained man who has made a 
 very restrained profit on the deal, only about five or 
 six hundred per cent. Yes, that is how Adelaide does 
 things. She is quite satisfied with her method. It 
 would go against the grain to do it any other way. 
 She wants something and she is prepared to pay for it, 
 so there is no need to go on a tiresome dusty hunt for 
 bargains. Some people may like to poke around dirty 
 little shops in slums, but it would not suit Adelaide. 
 She doesn't understand that side of life. It may not 
 be her fault as I suppose she hasn't met many people 
 who couldn't afford to pay three times too much for 
 everything they buy. You feel sure that she hardly 
 knows that there are people who have to consider each 
 penny they spend, and get all possible value out of it. 
 She may know it, but it doesn't get really near her. 
 Even if she does know it, it will probably only be from 
 having read books in which some of the characters are 
 poor. And you feel quite sure that she does not realise 
 all the grades and grades there are below these, and 
 lower still, to utter destitution. She has never listened 
 for the thin chink of mean coins hardly earned, worn 
 poor and flat by fingers clutching tightly at them for 
 fear they might be parted too soon from them. 
 
 As we drove away I told Celia that she could not 
 consider her life work accomplished unless she reformed 
 Adelaide. Celia' s face blanched at the thought and she 
 said that in her wildest moments she had not dared to 
 think of this. I said that the treatment needed was 
 the same as the Selfish Man got in the Message from 
 Mars. He was taken out in a blinding snowstorm and 
 subjected to every form of misery and privation until 
 his eyes were opened, and until his own misery linked 
 him up with all the sorrow and wretchedness in the 
 world and drove him to work at something to try 
 and stem it. 
 
 64
 
 ADELAIDE 
 
 I said I would willingly take her out and lose her in 
 one if Celia would give me the word. 
 
 Celia said it might do us both good and she'd think 
 it over and let me know. 
 
 We had been back in town about two months when 
 Celia rang me up in some excitement. She said we had 
 made some sort of a she used a word I couldn't make 
 out mistake . 
 
 " What's that ? What sort of a mistake ? oh un- 
 paralleled. Yes, it's not a good word for the telephone, 
 is it ? But who or what have we made a mistake 
 about ? " 
 
 " About Adelaide, of course. I met Mrs Baxter who 
 has such a lot to do with that children's hospital in the 
 East End and she tells me that Adelaide gives them 
 hundreds and hundreds a year, but likes it to be anony- 
 mous. And Mrs Baxter says she's pretty sure she 
 gives the same amounts to several of the other children's 
 hospitals, too." 
 
 " Well, I am surprised. You could knock me down 
 with a locomotive. What's that you say ? can't 
 hear ? I said locomotive lo-co-mo-tive. No it's 
 not a good word for the telephone. No." 
 
 " I suppose it's because she has none of her own." 
 
 " Yes, I suppose so. But what a good thing there 
 was no snowstorm. I quite intended to do something 
 on my own. Still if she will be so private about her 
 charities she can hardly blame us for thinking her 
 selfish. Yes you are right. Her privacy works out 
 very well there. It is the very essence of charity to 
 give and say nothing. What's that you say ?- -it must 
 be the teeth ? Yes, quite so. Yes, I always thought 
 there was something very promising about those teeth, 
 myself " 
 
 65
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 " SNOW everywhere, as far as eye could reach." 
 
 So wrote Bret Harte in describing a winter scene, and 
 with those few words sets it before us. 
 
 January had come round and found us with others 
 of our kind installed in the big new hotel at Lauter- 
 simmen. It was and it wasn't new ; that is, it had been 
 added to and bits partly pulled down ; and refaced 
 or relined or reconstructed by the addition of large 
 pieces and wings in place of smaller bits subtracted. 
 It had faced one way to begin with and they had, by 
 blocking up the old windows, and breaking out new 
 ones, slewed its face round and put it to gaze at 
 the Munsterhorn on the south-west instead of the Essen- 
 berg on the north-east, so that by no longer looking at 
 the sunrise rosy on the peaks it had the benefit of the 
 valley weltering in the glowing sunsets. 
 
 We had been coming out for years and every year 
 noticed some fresh feature in this surprising hotel. A 
 new restaurant in addition to the old table d'hote, in 
 which ladies now appeared in Aix-les-Bains hats at 
 forty guineas, with aigrettes and fifty-thousand-pound 
 pearl necklaces, and Rue de la Paix gowns, in place of 
 the simple frocks of yore. Finally this season of which 
 I write there had been such an outbreak of palm courts 
 and dancing halls and new bathrooms and suites for 
 Russian princes that we did not know whether we were 
 entitled to give ourselves airs and ask for special terms 
 as its first patrons or the oldest inhabitants. One of 
 our fellow-guests whom I shall describe to you more 
 fully in time, got sweeping reductions on both counts. 
 
 The slewing round of the facade was a good deed and 
 
 67
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 the hotel, situated on a plateau at some tremendous 
 altitude, and yet sheltered as in a bowl on three sides 
 from cold mountain blasts by towering white giants, 
 stared valiantly adown the valley. To give an idea 
 of the impressions of the outlook from it we might as 
 it were lift the lid of the brain of a newly arrived visitor 
 fresh to these snowy glories, having never yet witnessed 
 the spectacle of the whiter enthroned on these high 
 places of the Earth, with her diadem of icicles, and King 
 Frost in attendance upon her, as her gentleman-in- 
 waiting, sitting at her feet. Reaching there perhaps 
 at night, tired and sleepy from his sleigh drive through 
 the cold air, he tumbles into his bed and sleeps. Waking 
 hi the morning he tumbles out of his bed, slips into a 
 dressing-gown, throws his balcony window open and 
 steps out to look around. He sees a world that seems 
 to him white as a dream of far-off Polar snows. In a 
 gasp of admiration and surprise he draws in his breath, 
 deep, and the crisp freshness of the air takes him almost 
 aback, for it is cold, wondrous cold. 
 
 Across the ravine he flings his glance, and gasping 
 again, his eyes cling giddily to the pinnacles beyond, 
 that tear upward to the sky. His head swims for a 
 moment, and then steadies. He takes a long, long look, 
 and then comes in again and rings for coffee to pull 
 himself together. 
 
 The hotel is a world of its own, holding intercourse 
 of sorts with certain other similar worlds scattered 
 about in other adjacent Alpine hollows or rifts in the 
 system of mountain peaks. And each one hummed 
 and buzzed with a varied multitude and varied^excite- 
 ments. This year I had noticed with satisfaction a 
 thicker sprinkling of pretty girls than usual, sitting about 
 the exceedingly new and exceedingly decorative palm 
 court after lunch. No one who has not spent a season 
 in such a resort can imagine how delectable and alto- 
 gether irresistible they can look in their skating kits 
 and club sweaters and caps, or other cunning and 
 
 68
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 knowing little headgear they adopt, velvet berets or 
 bonnets of wool with their club insignia worked in con- 
 trasting colours, black on cherry-red, or tango-orange on 
 something equally brilliant ; daringly short skirts, and 
 high boots or leggings clasping trim slim ankles, com- 
 pleting a costume in which they looked both fettish 
 and featly. I can only say that a susceptible bachelor 
 had better look out for himself as it is a dangerous 
 place for anyone who has an unoccupied spot in his 
 heart. He must be on his guard there against the 
 possessors of healthily dazzling eyes and rosy cheeks 
 and lithe figures become utterly graceful with the 
 continuous exercise, for the fine air combined with 
 wholesome bodily exertion makes a plain woman good- 
 looking and turns a good-looking woman into a 
 perfect Diana. 
 
 One saw here too, picked men splendid men, with 
 muscles hardened and yet made supple, skins tanned, 
 brains cleared by the strenuous games they play all 
 day. Their conversation all turns on the speed of the 
 last bob race or the result of a curling match or So-and- 
 so's form in the figure skating competition and all the 
 other clean futility to which, thank goodness, English 
 men devote so much of their tune. 
 
 The general mass was sprinkled with the usual number 
 of ruthless pot-hunters, determined at all costs to grasp 
 at any little oversight or slip on the part of an adversary 
 in a game or lodge an objection on a hair's-breadth of an 
 infringement of a rule, the decision of which might be 
 an open question, and by a fraction turn the contest 
 in their favour at the end. The sort of people to avoid, 
 in short. 
 
 And speaking of people to avoid, there were those 
 one had avoided quite painstakingly, such as the family 
 of the Smythes, who had come out for many seasons 
 past, just as we did and with whom we had never 
 mixed. Our lot and their lot having felt a sort of mutual 
 antagonism, stared at one another disapprovingly on 
 the stairs, making captious remarks of one another as 
 
 69
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 to dress and demeanour, meeting and never getting to 
 know one another. 
 
 This year, through a series of small incidents, we dis- 
 covered that one of their number was charming and 
 through her that all the others were charming too, and 
 they must have observed something of the sort about 
 us, for as if by magic we mingled as utterly and com- 
 pletely as before we had remained apart. We made 
 friends and laughed together, ate together and danced 
 and practised combined figure skating together all the 
 season, and regretted the good days we had wasted by 
 not getting friendly sooner. They told us that we were 
 so smart and good-looking that they felt sure we must 
 be stand-offish and so didn't dare to make any overtures 
 to us and we said we had felt the very same about them. 
 
 And so now we sat together and watched the fresh 
 arrivals as they came, each making a little eddy of 
 excitement and interest in the hotel. And together 
 we would sit and survey them languidly and quiz them 
 among ourselves and decide which we would like to 
 know and which not. Some we pronounced possible, 
 others impossible, and we hob-nobbed there a gravely 
 pronounced judgment, jumping to wrong conclusions 
 about them just as we'd jumped to them about each 
 other before, forgetting that it is difficult to pass accur- 
 ate judgments on new arrivals to a great pleasure 
 resort ; for as often as not they are not themselves but 
 transitorily someone else, and that not anyone they 
 have ever been before, nor anyone that they will remain 
 long. John Browne comes out alone, but he is not the 
 John Browne who kissed Mrs B. at the station and the 
 little B.'s, bidding them be good and not spend too 
 much money in his absence. The real John Browne 
 never gets any farther than Charing Cross, and is by 
 nature rather a grouchy sort of chap of whom 
 his family are rather afraid, with a peck of business 
 cares on his shoulders and his pocket full of income- 
 tax papers and applications for rent, rates and taxes. 
 
 70
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 The John Browne who arrives at Lautersimmen is 
 on pleasure bent. He tore the bills up and let them 
 flutter out of the carriage window on his way there. 
 Things that would have caused him to grouse before 
 bring a smile to his face. He's polite away when he'd 
 be uncivil in his own country. He's a human being 
 away. He's often quite horrid at home. So he is not 
 himself in any sense of the word. And the little girl 
 that he helps out of the station bus and for whom he 
 bought chocolates so generously is not herself either. 
 She is a very suppressed person at home and she has 
 escaped from there with some money earned somehow 
 and she is free to laugh and talk and speak her mind, 
 and her real sat-upon self is probably at Charing 
 Cross cloak-room also waiting to be called for on the 
 way back. 
 
 If the arrivals were entirely new and unacquainted 
 with the life and ways of the place, they certainly did 
 bring the wrong clothes and the wrong ideas and said 
 and did the wrong thing till half-way through their time 
 there. And at first they would value things differently 
 to the values put on them by those who knew the ropes. 
 For instance they might think that gorgeous clothes and 
 gorgeous jewels and retinues of servants counted there. 
 But they would find that the grocer's son who was out 
 there for his health and had carried off most of the prizes 
 and cups in the different competitions was a person 
 before whom titled people quailed, difficult of approach 
 and around whom hung an aura of awful majesty, only 
 to be dispelled if he so wished it. A nod from him was 
 a gift to be cherished with gratitude. A smile given 
 casually warmed one up like a hot- water bottle. 
 
 The poor newly come greenhorns, as defenceless as 
 shorn lambs, though they Avotted not of it, would plunge 
 bodily into a vortex of complicated cross-currents and 
 tides of intercourse and crash through unwritten laws 
 and smash eggs which ought not to have been trodden 
 on. Sailing on to the rink, all wobbly at the knees and 
 ankles through not knowing how to skate properly and 
 
 71
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 boldly annexing that portion of it which by all the afore- 
 said unwritten laws of that community was the jealously 
 guarded pitch of the world champion, they'd keep 
 him out of it for hours whilst the habitues looked on 
 aghast and tried to distract his attention from the full 
 horror of the situation with forced conversation and 
 jokes and offers (refused) of cigars or cigarettes. The 
 wife of the wobbly new-comer, more wobbly still, bumps 
 with many a feeble giggle into the almost equally 
 august consort of the world champion, who likely as 
 not, for that is how she spends her days, is revolving 
 passionately round an orange as though nothing else 
 in the whole world could possibly matter. Nor could 
 it to her ! And then pitifully oblivious of the fact that 
 every moment of the day is of importance to her if she 
 is to maintain the position so nearly wrested from her 
 last year by the other lady champion, Mrs Wobbly New- 
 comer will stand and apologise at length and babble 
 about the weather and her first impressions of the place 
 or give particulars about a convalescent child at home, 
 who has just had the mumps ; never guessing that to 
 the celebrity children are anathema, as likely to inter- 
 fere with skating, and that though she is fuming to 
 begin again, she yet does not like to dismiss the speaker. 
 
 The thought of blunders such as these brings the 
 beads of cold sweat to their brows in after years. But 
 they were not so bad as the dinner-parties they gave 
 and to which they invited the hereditary arch-enemies 
 and leaders of rival factions, putting them to sit side by 
 side at the same festive board. And quite unconscious 
 of the numerous cliques and cabals which undermine 
 the society there they were surprised because things 
 had not gone well and there had been some slight un- 
 pleasantness. Afterwards, having been told what they 
 had done, they shuddered, and sometimes had not the 
 pluck to ever come out again. 
 
 We had this year in addition to the pretty girls I've 
 mentioned, the usual number of well -developed eccen- 
 
 72
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 tries. Not taking into account our old friend Johnson 
 who was suffering from hallucinations and had got it 
 into his head that the world was about to shift its moor- 
 ings owing to some hitch which he declared had occurred 
 in the sun's powers of attraction. He was very nervous 
 and in a state of restlessness. He was on my corridor 
 and his malady affected him more at night than in the 
 day-time. In the early hours he would come out of his 
 bedroom and knock us all up, because, as he said with 
 his teeth chattering, we were going shortly to plunge 
 into space and it would be a pity to miss the fun. There 
 was nothing dangerous about the poor creature. He 
 was some relation of the Doctor's and was under his 
 care there, as his bodily health necessitated high alti- 
 tudes. So we humoured him and saved his face when 
 we could. But I'd had him on my floor last year, so I 
 considered I'd had my share of him for some time. 
 Owing to my double role of oldest inhabitant and 
 earliest arrival I had access to the ear of the manage- 
 ment, so I had him moved down to Mrs Pitkeathly's 
 floor. I am, I suppose, selfish. 
 
 Apart from this affair, and the affair of Mrs Pit- 
 keathly, the most notable event to my way of thinking 
 was the stemming of the coming of the Germanic 
 tribes ; at any rate of a portion of them. Shapeless 
 creatures who committed in their garb and bearing 
 every crime against good taste possible. Evidently 
 the news had percolated to the farthest confines of their 
 country that there were gay doings in winter- time in the 
 Bernese Oberland, and in addition to swarming like 
 locusts on the Riviera later in the year and drinking 
 their countless bocks in frowsy meditation by the 
 shores of the Mediterranean they began a descent upon, 
 or rather an ascent of, the Swiss mountain resorts. It 
 was quite an innovation as far as Lautersimmen was 
 concerned, and we resented it very properly and deter- 
 mined to keep them out of our hotel whatever sort of a 
 flat-footing they might get in the others ; we also sent 
 over to these, emissaries and envoys-extraordinary, to 
 
 73
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 persuade them to pass the hard word and to put all 
 obstacles possible in the way of the onrush. Un- 
 fortunately our manager was away burying an aunt in 
 another canton and we were obliged to put up with 
 their presence for some little time, though we knew that 
 they would get short shrift on his return. Our luck was 
 out for the time being as the only table that fell vacant 
 was near ours and so we had to sit for three whole days 
 and listen to them eating. There were five in the 
 family which effected this temporary lodgment under 
 our roof, father, mother and three girls. Father was 
 monstrous fat and the texture of his tissue was not 
 tough enough, but quivered dangerously and appeared 
 about to slip. I thought he would have been better 
 and less precariously contained in a bottle or glass 
 vessel than in a suit of clothes, and prayed no one would 
 collide with him and spill him, for then he would have 
 to be mopped up. They all in turn ordered out-of-the- 
 way dishes and when they arrived found fault with 
 them loudly and vociferously, and notwithstanding 
 that they ate them. They exchanged pieces, discussed 
 them, admired them, exhibited them, handed one 
 another tit-bits and splashed gravy and smacked their 
 lips instead of eating quietly as we English do, and as if 
 we were ashamed of doing so, and should get it over as 
 noiselessly and expeditiously as possible. 
 
 They gurgled and gobbled, and it was a perfect 
 orchestration of table sounds. Dan, who was, by 
 special appointment, musician in ordinary to the party, 
 and who composed epithalamiums for our birthday 
 festivals, and wedding marches for such of Celia's 
 friends as took the matrimonial header wove it into a 
 Fantasia-Impromptu. He divided it into portions to 
 represent the progress of the dinner. Hors d'ceuvres. 
 Con anima, vivo e risoluto. Soup. Molto con fuoco, 
 sempre piu and da capo. Fish. Presto con fuoco, piu 
 agitato e stretto and da capo. Joint. Molto con fuoco, 
 accelerando appassionato,, sempre piu and da capo. 
 Sweet. Andante sostenuto, a piacere and da capo. 
 
 74
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 Dessert. Diminuendo, meno mosso, e poco a poco ritor- 
 nare al tempo primo. 
 
 It began gaily and went rapidly on and seemed about 
 to end gaily, for it gradually returned to the first tempo, 
 but changed swiftly and lapsed into a finale of diminished 
 sevenths with dirge-like chords resembling muffled 
 drums, blending exquisitely with the wailing of the 
 womenkind when the fat man died of overeating. Dan 
 turned round and sat on the piano in the movement 
 representing the fall preceding the death struggle. It 
 was a clever representation of the music of a nation 
 which is so unlike that of the French : the latter seems 
 chiefly to busy itself with light amourettes, easily be- 
 gun, carried off gracefully, and melodiously forgotten, 
 in contradistinction to music which represents the 
 heavy morbid love-longing of some fat professor who 
 eats too much and wears a tall hat and tan boots on 
 Sundays, and imitation collars and cuffs on weekdays, 
 for a fat schoolmistress with a fifty-inch waist and 
 suicidal tendencies which are destined to consumma- 
 tion, because she cannot bring herself to believe that she 
 is worthy of the fat professor's love. 
 
 Father, mother and the girls approved of us and sent 
 a callow waiter not our own, he'd have known better 
 with a message to us from them saying they thought 
 it would give them much pleasure to make our acquaint- 
 ance and would we also assist them in making them- 
 selves known to some of the other nice people in the 
 hotel. I, for our party, replied, in a carefully worded 
 missive, carefully and clearly translated by the faithful 
 Franois, our own tried and trusted waiter, that we 
 already had as many friends as we cared to have and 
 that we would esteem it a favour if they would get 
 themselves fitted with silencers as the noises they made 
 at table had filled us with dismay. 
 
 They dined sombrely one more night and next 
 evening we knew them no more. 
 
 But as I said, this affair was only a small incident. 
 The main incident was the Pitkeathly incident. Mrs 
 
 75
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 Pitkeathly is a sister of Mrs Babbington Hooper and is 
 therefore distantly connected with Celia. She is fatter 
 than her sister, who is only about sixteen stone I'll 
 tell you something about that later and is even more 
 unpopular. She comes every year to our hotel, and 
 I've often enough suggested that, consequent on this, 
 we should pitch our camp elsewhere, but Celia' s reply 
 is that we are very comfortable where we are and that 
 she would probably follow us, for there is a certain 
 social kudos to be got from Celia's brilliant friendship ; 
 in addition to which she can watch her and talk about 
 her afterwards and put false constructions on her do- 
 ings more successfully ; and impute wrong motives to 
 her, and give little intimate snacks of information about 
 her and gossip to people who don't know her but would 
 like to, better than if they were both putting up at 
 different places. Celia's real feeling in the matter, I 
 am sure, is that by staying in the same hotel with her 
 she knows she can keep an eye on her, and that she can 
 then step in and undo some of the harm and mischief 
 that Mrs Pitkeathly does before it is too late, and nip 
 some of her horrid machinations in the bud. 
 
 To a person of Mrs Pitkeathly's inclination, and I'll 
 even go so far as to say talents, one of those winter 
 resorts' hotels affords endless scope for her energies. 
 Morals in many ways are at a low ebb in them. Here, 
 where we were, it was no better than anywhere else. 
 There was a perceptible confusion as to the terms meum 
 and tmim ; a very distinct inclination to be foggy about 
 the sacred rights of property, a mixing-up as to the 
 ownership of things, whether it was a wife, a husband, 
 a fiance or fiancee, or whether it was merely a smaller 
 piece of personal property such as a sweater or a book, 
 an alpenstock or ruck-sac or a camera or a handful of 
 useful leather boot-laces. Everybody bagged every- 
 thing and everybody denied having bagged anything, 
 so prevarication was on the list of misdemeanours too. 
 In the morning there was a wild scramble and whoever 
 was down first took everything there was to take and 
 
 76
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 got off into the wild snowy wastes with their plunder 
 before the rightful owner got down. I've seen my own 
 luge with my name branded on it with a hot iron being 
 used by someone I'd never even seen in my life before 
 perhaps for that very reason and when taxed, the 
 pretty thief (it was a girl) declared shamelessly that 
 it was hers and even when I pointed to my name and 
 produced my card to verify it, she defied me and told 
 me I was big enough to go and bag one for myself, instead 
 of chiveying a poor defenceless woman so early in the 
 morning. And in two shakes of a lamb's tail she was 
 off and away, leaving me with a bit of cherry-coloured 
 wool off her sweater in my hand and I staring after her, 
 as she whizzed down the valley. 
 
 Even women with beautiful candid middle-aged faces 
 lost all sense of right and wrong when they got there. 
 Passing through the hall with an after-breakfast pipe 
 between my teeth I saw two older ladies whose position 
 and morals I knew to be impeccable at home patron- 
 esses of infirmary balls, openers of bazaars and sub- 
 scribers to Y.W.C.A.'s and leaders of high tone in the 
 Midland counties haggling like fishwives over the 
 ownership of a pair of dilapidated gouties, otherwise 
 known as snow-boots. Their language was dreadful 
 as they pulled fiercely at the unfortunate waterproof 
 articles, this way and that. I stepped in, removing my 
 pipe, and insisted upon arbitrating and, after the manner 
 of Solomon and the baby, awarded the pair to the 
 woman who seemed most anxious that they should not 
 get torn to bits. The other woman hated me ever after- 
 wards, and I'm afraid they belonged to her. But in the 
 face of such a clear legal precedent, what could I do ? 
 
 Therefore I feel sure that all this sort of thing attracted 
 Mrs Pitkeathly to Switzerland, on account of the oppor- 
 tunities it gave her to note such happenings and to be- 
 wail the lowering of the moral tone among the women of 
 to-day compared with those of her young days. She is 
 so fat that she couldn't possibly take part in the sports, 
 so that can't be her reason for patronising such a place, 
 
 77
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 unless it may be some comfort to her to know that in 
 comparison with the Alps she looked quite a reason- 
 able size, almost diminutive indeed, and some inward 
 craving towards aesthetic balance may have irresistibly 
 drawn her thither. 
 
 But as Celia says, when you've already found an 
 excellent and obvious explanation for a thing, why cast 
 about for something abstruse and beside the case as I 
 do. Undoubtedly she came there to indulge her taste 
 for scandalmongering and mischief-making. For even 
 if she were not too fat to skate and luge and so on, she 
 professes to view the easy mingling of the sexes which 
 such pursuits engender with disapproval. Her little 
 cunning elephant's eyes are always darting this way 
 and that, intent on seeing what she should not see, and 
 even when it is not there seeing it all the same. There 
 are more ways than one of enjoying oneself, and gloating 
 over the fact of other people's misdemeanours when you 
 haven't the pluck or the chance of embarking on any- 
 thing like them yourself is one way of doing so. She 
 was of those who derive a more sustained and whole- 
 souled joy from the misdeeds of others than the wretched 
 criminals themselves in the doing of them. They were 
 hampered by remorse and dread of discovery and a 
 hundred fears beset them. Mrs Pitkeathly took her 
 time, ate and slept well, and had a clear (?) conscience in 
 the matter and got far, far more fun out of it than they 
 did. She watched everything narrowly and repeated 
 everything wherever it was likely to do most damage. 
 
 The display of pretty figures and shapely limbs on 
 the rinks called down her disapproval. She would 
 boom out her diatribes " When I was a young girl it 
 would have been considered the height of bad form to 
 throw yourself about in a short skirt like that. Humph ! 
 the idea ! The late Mr Pitkeathly's mother would 
 never have selected me as a suitable wife for her dear 
 son if I had done that ! ! ! She chose me for my 
 modesty and decorum. She knew I would never have 
 behaved like that ! ! ! " 
 
 78
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 This account of her marriage with the late Mr Pit- 
 keathly did not tally with Celia's. She very unkindly 
 said that Mrs P. (then Miss Somebody-or-other) locked 
 herself up in a room with him and swallowed the key 
 so that he should not be able to get out till she had 
 frightened him into proposing. 
 
 She heaved aggressively at the sight of a pair of 
 natty ankles tripping by. " Look at that woman ! 
 Do you think I'd ever dream of exposing my limbs to 
 that extent ? ! ! " 
 
 I said, " I don't suppose you would for one moment" 
 inwardly reminding myself of a story I had heard from 
 the Doctor as quite a true one about her. 
 
 It so transpired (he narrated) that during one of her 
 earlier visits, spurred out of her customary lethargy 
 by the sight of some elderly and plump matrons cur- 
 veting on the ice, she had made a tremendous effort 
 hi very long skirts to achieve the drop three. She 
 fell and hurt herself and a dozen men or so bore her 
 tenderly to her room, and the injured limb, of which the 
 ankle turned out to be sprained, was carefully treated, 
 and as the case progressed and the pain lessened, in due 
 course, it was massaged to reduce the swelling. But the 
 injury was obstinate and the swelling was colossal and 
 refused to go down, and the Doctor was puzzled. By 
 all reasonable calculations dated from the moment of 
 the fall and the amount of lesion allowed for she ought 
 to have been decidedly on the mend. He began to 
 think his treatment had been on the wrong lines, so 
 he took other and more drastic measures, prescribing 
 stronger massage and much stronger lotions, to prevent 
 a continuation of the inflammation. And yet that 
 swelling remained to worry him. He ran his fingers 
 through his hair. He felt all his training, his experi- 
 ments with muscles under different conditions of 
 abrasion and contusion or strain must have been in- 
 complete. Gently, so as not to alarm his patient more 
 than was necessary, he told her he must have a con- 
 sultation with the best men to be got from Lausanne 
 
 79
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 and Geneva, for his own medical knowledge was at 
 fault and he now felt there was some deep-seated injury 
 which he was powerless to locate. After hearing his 
 verdict, Mrs Pitkeathly burst into tears, and setting 
 modesty aside for once, projected the other ankle from 
 its discreet envelopments. 
 
 The sound ankle was exactly the same size as the 
 swollen ankle. 
 
 So Mrs Pitkeathly did not take any skating exercise, 
 but what she lost in that way she made up for in the 
 exercise she took in digging pitfalls for the unwary. 
 The doctors loathed her. Williams garnished his little 
 story to me about her with several remarks and adjec- 
 tives I have thought fit to suppress. She caused end- 
 less fracas among the patients, poor crotchety invalids, 
 most of them already only too prone to see the black 
 side of things and ready to fall under the influence of her 
 mischievous tongue. The very presence and nature of 
 their ailment made them peevish and on the look-out for 
 slights. She would instil into the mind of one that the 
 doctor did not visit her enough to get a thorough under- 
 standing of her needs, nor stay long enough ; and drop 
 in a counter- suggestion, which she kindly left there to 
 simmer, that too much time which was hers by rights, 
 and according to payments exacted, was spent at the 
 bed-side or chair-side of another lady patient. Always 
 under the guise of the most perfect friendliness she used 
 to come and see them. One big man, who was very 
 seriously ill indeed, and quite far gone, went back so 
 much in his condition that her visits had to be stopped. 
 She had contrived in some way to make him feel that 
 he had no right to " give in." Now they both of them 
 came from the Northern Midlands where illness is not 
 looked upon as a sign of bodily weakness, but of mental 
 weakness, and where to be bed-ridden or in pain is to 
 deserve and expect no sympathy, so she knew what 
 material she had to work on, and as it was already as 
 much as the doctors and his wife could do to get him to 
 take the smallest care of himself at all, you can imagine 
 
 80
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 the havoc she wrought. There was a great explosion, 
 a combined effort of one wife and four doctors, and Mrs 
 Pitkeathly was shown the door, and within a reasonable 
 time the man recovered. 
 
 >: It is bad art, I'm told, on the part of an author to 
 describe his characters. They should reveal themselves 
 by their actions as the story progresses. But in Mrs 
 Pitkeathly's case this would not occur. Her actions if 
 recorded as they appeared superficially would show her 
 to be a blameless, praiseworthy woman. We who knew 
 her, knew her to be a horrid old hypocrite with an un- 
 curbed appetite for making mischief. True, she was 
 very seldom heard to say or repeat anything nasty 
 about anybody. Oh dear, no ! Her methods were 
 more subtle than that. They were compact of 
 innuendoes and hinted suggestions. She worked it all 
 in such a way that the casual and unsuspecting observer 
 would think she was bent upon making things pleasant 
 for everyone by repeating all the nice things said of any 
 one person by another. But we who knew her, as I 
 say, were not deceived. We knew she only admitted a 
 virtue or a charm in a person if there were someone 
 present whom it was calculated to depress or annoy or 
 by an implied comparison inflict a pang. (If a virtue or 
 a charm or a talent could not be used as a stick with 
 which to beat someone, it went unrecognised by Mrs 
 Pitkeathly.) It was " the cap does not fit YOU ; don't 
 you attempt to wear it." It was a delicate and ingeni- 
 ous, invidious and odious system of comparison. 
 
 Let us say a large circle was assembled round her 
 she had a way of summoning any aimlessly wandering 
 guests who had not as yet been drawn into any circles 
 to near-by vacant chairs with a wave of a formidable 
 tortoise-shell needle. She knitted, I need hardly say, 
 woollen discomforts for the poor of her parish. Thus 
 she was usually the centre of a group of new-comers, who 
 as yet did not know what she was really like. Having 
 once, as I say. got them about her, she'd begin by relat- 
 ing the charming things old Sir Stephen Davies had said 
 
 F 81
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 to her about his ELDER daughter. To the persons not 
 directly concerned it would appear to be nice of her to 
 be pleased at the old father's love and appreciation of 
 his child, and nice in her too to retail it for the approval 
 of the assembly. Afterwards they would remark that 
 they could NOT understand why people said Mrs Pit- 
 keathly said horrid things. For their part they never 
 heard her repeat anything that was not perfectly kind 
 and nice. But then they probably had not noticed 
 that she had first satisfied herself out of the corner of 
 her eye that his second daughter not so pretty, nor so 
 bright, and consequently not so popular was listening, 
 nor would they perceive that she had repeated the words 
 in just such a way and with just such a tone and inflec- 
 tion that to her it would appear that Sir Stephen loved 
 his elder daughter so whole-heartedly and utterly that 
 there couldn't possibly be any love left over for anyone 
 else not even for another daughter which was the 
 very last construction the dear old greybeard would 
 wish put on his chance words. The Davies girl would 
 feel the remarks doubly hearing them before others, not 
 realising in her confusion of mind that probably none 
 of the people assembled knew who she was. But Mrs 
 Pitkeathly had of course called them together so that it 
 would make it feel much worse for her, and guessed this 
 would escape her notice. And so passing over the heads 
 of most it would lodge, and rankle in poor little Miss 
 Davies' breast and raise hitherto unknown doubts as to 
 her old father's affection for her. 
 
 Probably earlier in the day if she had time, and, in- 
 dustrious woman that she was, she'd generally manage 
 to find time, she had taken Miss Davies aside and in 
 sepulchral tones asked her if she thought that her 
 father's affection for her was as great as that he felt for 
 her sister ; by her manner clearly showing that SHE 
 did not think so, in fact that it was only too obvious that 
 he didn't. That it is a great shame. That she pities 
 her from the bottom of her heart. 
 
 And so on, and so on, all along the line, she sowed 
 
 82
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 mistrust. Mistrust between fathers and daughters, 
 husbands and wives, mistrust between youths and 
 maidens, mischief and misunderstandings and muddle 
 between old-time friends. Even the best-balanced 
 people who were too healthy, too prosperous and too 
 pleasantly occupied to seriously dislike any of their 
 fellow-men would sometimes get caught in her net. I've 
 seen them struggling in it, angry and amazed and un- 
 able to understand their own feelings or discover what 
 had happened to them, while she wound them tighter 
 and tighter, dropping suspicions into perfectly clear 
 minds, leaving them to infect healthy ideas and rankle 
 and breed, so that perhaps they might never get clear of 
 them again. 
 
 Whatever anyone did and prided themselves on do- 
 ing well, or on being, or on thinking, she managed in a 
 most Machiavellian way to keep up a running fire of 
 criticism or comparison of them in relation to this point, 
 by reference to what people said of them or it or of what 
 she'd heard they'd said or heard they'd heard other 
 people had said. Or things which if not actually said 
 were known to be thought, or said to be thought, or 
 things which were thought to be thought. Anything, 
 in short, which happened to be in favour of anyone any- 
 body happened to be up against, in any way ; and in 
 a place such as Lautersimmen, with every conceivable 
 form of winter sport going on, and sporting entries in 
 progress all the time and competitions of every sort and 
 kind coming off daily there were absolutely endless 
 chances of stirring up bad blood in this way. You were 
 never allowed for one moment to forget that you and 
 some other person or persons were after the same thing. 
 You were never allowed to get it out of your mind that 
 there was this other (or these others) outdistancing 
 you doing so much better than you outpacing you, 
 making you feel small in some way, and that your want 
 of progress was being watched and commented on by a 
 lot of people. 
 
 Her methods were pressing, insistent, provocative, 
 
 83
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 aggravating and yet she never once seemed to address 
 you during the entire proceedings, but only those people 
 who were in your vicinity. If asked you could not have 
 truthfully said that she had been running you down in 
 any way. She had merely been cracking up the other 
 or others, who were up against you, to your, or her, 
 friends. 
 
 She had great success with the younger and more 
 sensitive girls. She'd extol the beauty of this one or 
 that one by the hour, but never to her face. No, that 
 would have given that person pleasure. Instead, with 
 an assumption of clumsy affability which took in a sur- 
 prising number of people, she would corner someone, 
 such as poor little Daisy George, who was as nice as she 
 was plain, and as plain as she was nice, and as self- 
 deprecating as she could be, and talk to her about the 
 great success some of the more (apparently) attractive 
 girls had, so that each remark fell like a sledge-hammer 
 on poor little Daisy's sensitive nature, showing her the 
 gap, the enormous gap which lay between her and these 
 favoured others, and proving to her beyond a doubt 
 that she must quench the little spark of hope that 
 some day someone might possibly one never knew 
 take a fancy to her and propose. 
 
 Had she noticed how fine Mary's skin was ? (Daisy 
 knew hers was thick and this made it feel thicker by 
 comparison.) Daphne's hair was so light and fluffy 
 and pretty. (Daisy's was lank and now felt lanker.) 
 Elaine was so much admired, she was so tall and 
 graceful. (Daisy was wide and short and knew it.) Bee 
 was so beautifully dressed. (Daisy had only ugly shabby 
 things.) Cynthia was a vision. (Daisy saw now that 
 she was a nightmare.) 
 
 But Celia and I rescued her just in time and managed 
 to give her back some of her self-esteem and confidence, 
 which were ebbing from her so fast that soon she would 
 have been bankrupt of the two things without which it 
 is almost impossible to go on living. 
 
 84
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 Fortunately circumstances did not always work out 
 for the tormentor. Many a victim bucked up through 
 sheer despair and made supreme efforts to prove her 
 wrong. For instance Clara Downes was so tired of con- 
 stantly hearing how wonderfully Polly Grover skated, 
 that she made positively superhuman efforts and wrested 
 the Schiedegg ladies' silver shield from her and thanked 
 Mrs Pitkeathly by falling on her bosom and saying it 
 was all due to her. 
 
 How she infuriated me at times ! The subtlety 
 of her. Nothing escaped her, no phase of character 
 but was wrung and exploited by her, through some 
 miraculous and sinister knowledge of human nature 
 which was hers. Though you had never told her a 
 certain man embodied everything you most dis- 
 approved of though you had never even mentioned 
 his name to her though you had never sufficiently 
 come in contact with him to betray it to anyone she 
 had a deadly and unerring instinct that he was the type 
 by which you would be absolutely antagonised. She 
 KNEW ! ! And from that moment she'd begin and whip 
 up and whip up and by gradual degrees and cynical 
 steps raise the ire and dislike of him which hitherto had 
 slept coldly and more or less unsuspected in your bosom. 
 She would praise him a little, and then some more, and 
 at last praise him till she nauseated you and by her 
 loud and exaggerated admiration cause you to cast your 
 mind in his direction, when perforce you noticed his 
 shortcomings on the points she extolled. Then she 
 harried you by saying sweet things he didn't deserve, 
 and attributing virtues to him the which you knew 
 he lacked, gradually leading you and then forcing 
 you yes, forcing you to deny them, and to say 
 things against him, to prove that you were right in 
 denying them, and of course before a whole roomful 
 of people. Then how she would turn on you and rend 
 you and hold you up to scorn for your meanness and 
 uncharitableness. She lashed you and goaded you with 
 her tongue for nursing such cankered rotten thoughts 
 
 85
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 in your bosom, and running down your harmless 
 worthy brother man. She held you up to scorn, 
 calling on those about you to witness the depths of 
 selfishness you had in your nature. You'd look round 
 blankly at all the faces there for of course she never 
 took the trouble to do this unless she had a big audience 
 ready and you'd read in them all an utter horror of 
 your unworthiness. 
 
 She presented you with a coffin free of charge in 
 which to lay your self-respect and contrived so diabolic- 
 ally to put you at the disadvantage that every word you 
 uttered was a nail in it. 
 
 She dazed you. She bewildered you. And if you 
 showed any signs of coming to your senses, she got up 
 and walked away ! 
 
 After this had happened a few times I was almost 
 convinced I had no right to live, but I sat down quietly 
 and analysed the matter and as in a flash I tumbled to 
 her snakish pastime. 
 
 She accused you, Old Baileyed you, and gave you no 
 chance of defending yourself. 
 
 But once I saw what her methods were I warded 
 her attacks off. After that we became good friends 
 in a manner of speaking. But it was quite some 
 time before I tumbled to it, and simple soul that I 
 am I'd fall into her snare, and flattered at being 
 asked by such a very fat and formidable woman 
 (we are often impressed by fat, if it's stern fat) 
 what I thought of things, I'd let myself be drawn 
 out, and reveal the further hideous depths in my soul. 
 She did not employ an audience for this. She used 
 confederates, of which she had two or three generally 
 in attendance and who formed the nucleus of the 
 audience when needed. They would install them- 
 selves and sit waiting and watching and every time 
 you revealed your thoughts their eyes would meet 
 meaningly. 
 
 " What do you think of Mrs Such-and-such-a-one, Mr 
 Blenerhassett ? " 
 
 86
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 I would reply. 
 
 Click (eyes meeting). 
 
 " Ah is THAT so ? That's very interesting. I've 
 often wanted to ask you. And now, DO tell me your 
 opinion about ? " 
 
 It might be anything, people, politics, literature, 
 marriage but preferably something the reply to which 
 one's answer could be misconstrued or misliked, or mis- 
 read. 
 
 I would reply fairly fully perhaps. 
 
 Click. 
 
 " Ah-h. Really. But SURELY you can't mean that 
 
 you think ? " repeating what I've just said. 
 
 I go over it again, making my meaning a little clearer. 
 
 Click. 
 
 This time I'd feel uncomfortable and I'd gather it 
 meant that my words, spoken casually and in confi- 
 dence, as among friends, had produced a very un- 
 favourable impression. More, that they had finally 
 and definitely made it clear that my ideas on things 
 were not wholesome, not what they ought to be. That 
 my interrogators feared this was the case and that 
 now they could no longer give me even the benefit of the 
 doubt. I'd feel, as I say, uncomfortable, and turn what 
 I'd said over in my mind to see what there was that 
 was so awful and that should cause my hearers' eyes 
 to click so lugubriously and oddly. It is the teeshiest, 
 weeshiest little bit of a click. You may not hear it at 
 first, especially if you have perhaps by accident left 
 any little sud of soap about your ears in shaving in a 
 hurry. 
 
 But by degrees when you have been roped in by these 
 old harpies a few times and drawn out in the same way, 
 you'll begin to see what they are at. You will know 
 
 87
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 that you will probably hear it and you'll listen for it, 
 and there sure enough it will be like the tiny clash of 
 some nasty tinkling teeny cymbal. 
 
 Click. 
 
 But after a time I enjoyed it, and I knew that what- 
 ever I said their unpleasantly constructed minds would 
 find something to reproach me with. Then of course I 
 gave them plenty to click about, talking any amount 
 of lurid talk, and they wallowed in it and clicked so 
 loudly that anyone could have heard them at any 
 distance. 
 
 I added a small rider to my grace after meals, giving 
 thanks that people of that sort did disapprove of me. 
 Approval from them would have been an insult. 
 
 The hotel was large and prey was always plentiful. I 
 followed her, on the watch, nursing my thoughts. If 
 she discovered a certain person had any special know- 
 ledge or had made up a subject to the extent of con- 
 stituting himself an authority upon it, and she found 
 out that he innocently prided himself on the fact, she 
 had a rare dodge for setting him down over it. This 
 was capital fun. 
 
 The audience was got together, biggish if possible, 
 and selected from those who knew the certain person 
 knew a good deal about a certain subject or at any rate 
 that he considered himself to be in the way of knowing 
 a great deal. Then in her non-committal way, she 
 would start the topic, venturing theories, airing sur- 
 mises, and when her chosen victim, gently pleased at 
 being able to descant upon his hobby, prepared to weigh 
 in with his specific information, probably well worth 
 hearing, she would brush it aside contemptuously as if 
 he were not there, deliberately talking right over his 
 head or across the end of his nose, calling on and en- 
 couraging someone else who, as she was aware, knew 
 practically nothing about it, and who talked at random, 
 only too glad to air his views and assume a knowledge 
 to which he hadn't the ghost of a right ; nodding her 
 
 88
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 head at him, making complimentary ejaculations and 
 asking the others to agree with her as to what a very 
 clever, interesting fellow he was, telling him that she 
 set store by his words and would lay them carefully to 
 heart ; silencing and disregarding the unfortunate expert 
 whenever he tried to speak, and driving him nearly wild. 
 For when, frenzied by the nonsense talked by the 
 ignorant fellow, he broke in agitatedly, she would fix 
 her gaze on him magisterially and with high disapproval 
 convey to him with a look the fact that she thought that 
 he was making himself quite absurd and conspicuous 
 and that a display of a little more agitation on his part 
 would prove that he was altogether undesirable as an 
 acquaintance if not actually mentally unfit ! That to 
 interrupt someone who REALLY knew something of this 
 matter of which she particularly wanted details, was 
 bad taste, and still worse, that to thrust himself forward 
 and possibly prevent her obtaining this information for 
 which her soul thirsted, was TOO MUCH ! 
 
 The cleverer and more well informed the victim the 
 more she scored. Because of course being clever he'd be 
 highly strung, and being clever would not understand 
 her. Clever people very seldom notice what stupid 
 people are at. They understand clever people, but 
 they can't make out stupid ones. Possibly because 
 some instinct tells them they are not worth noticing 
 and they don't study them because there is nothing 
 useful to be learnt from them. This very often puts 
 clever people at the mercy of stupid ones. But not for 
 long. When they finally decide to give their attention 
 to them they can generally make it hot for them. 
 
 This game of hers was an old one, and in some parts 
 of the country is called " playing people off against one 
 another," and some people think it very amusing. 
 
 Truly all good impulses were perverted in Mrs Pit- 
 keathly. If she gave a present it was not for the joy of 
 being generous to a fellow-creature but to let someone 
 else know they had been forgotten. She had a way of 
 
 89
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 distributing small and valueless gifts at Christmas time 
 or upon her departure, but she took care that the dis- 
 tribution should take place in such a way that some 
 people would feel they had been left out in the cold. 
 Of course she got great credit from those who did not 
 know her, for her good-heartedness and open-handed- 
 ness, because, as they remarked, she was " far from being 
 well off." When anyone talked in this way and 
 expatiated on her generosity it literally drove me wild. 
 I ground my teeth, for apart from the misbegotten 
 motives that I knew governed the bestowal of her gifts, 
 I knew that if ever a woman gloried and luxuriated in 
 her comparative poverty and extracted pleasure from 
 the fact of being poor, that woman was Mrs Pitkeathly. 
 If Providence would only give her sort of character to 
 such people as he condemns to exist on inadequate in- 
 comes there would be far less unhappiness in the world, 
 and poverty would become an enviable state. Why, 
 she indisputably revelled in underpaying tradespeople 
 and haggling with them ! Getting them to give her 
 things for half nothing and then leaving the bills unpaid 
 for ages. She found it an excuse to underpay and 
 underfeed her servants (I believe she mesmerised them 
 into staying with her till such time as their knees and 
 healths gave way). She would not have cared to make 
 things pleasant for others by scattering largess, and 
 her income luckily for her made this more or less im- 
 possible. She had no generous impulses and wallowed 
 in never doing a decent thing, whilst I and other friends 
 whose incomes were small suffered tortures and groaned 
 in anguish at not being able to gratify ours in those 
 directions. No. Poverty was to her a luxury which 
 no money could have bought. She preferred to wear 
 horrid clothes, and even if she could have had lovely 
 ones they would not have appealed to her ; her life was 
 one long delectable battle with all those from whom she 
 purchased or hired or with whom she marketed or ex- 
 changed, and her want of means was one long excuse for 
 the practising of meannesses of all sorts which were 
 
 90
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 really not necessary. The hotel bureau knew her 
 almost daily asking for reductions or railing against 
 overcharges. 
 
 What with one thing and what with another there 
 was no denying but that Mrs Pitkeathly was wasted as 
 a woman. I thought of all the nasty jobs there are 
 in the world which perforce have to be undertaken by 
 some man often against his inclination or better nature. 
 Such as the job of the public hangman or the man who 
 drives the Black Maria or the warder who turns the key 
 in the lock of the palsied felon's cell. 
 
 Here was someone who would have enjoyed such 
 work and by a mere accident of birth was debarred 
 from doing so. Just because she was a woman these 
 privileges could never be hers. And with reference to 
 this accident of birth I shall have more to say soon. 
 
 This particular season she had got a larger bag than 
 usual. The hotel, to mix my metaphors, was strewn 
 with wreckage. She had broken off several promising 
 love affairs between suitable parties, which had been 
 likely to develop into engagements, by a few well-timed 
 ill-chosen words. The Harriman divorce case was 
 pending and, we suspected, could very likely in fact 
 very, very likely be traced to her. And goodness 
 knows how many before this, in addition to the very 
 well-known one of last season, by which reckless, 
 exquisite little Allie Acheson became a social outcast. 
 There were many such things which we felt ought to be 
 laid at her door but of which we could get no actual 
 outward traces. 
 
 The management was well aware of her doings, and 
 we had held consultations ; and Celia had broached the 
 subject of their refusing her rooms. Poor Bischoff- 
 sheim shrugged his shoulders and said they had many 
 times thought of it but that there were two sides to the 
 question. Unfortunately for them Mrs Pitkeathly was 
 very well connected ; her relations held some of the 
 highest places, not only in England but in many of the 
 Courts of Europe. To affront her would be to affront 
 
 91
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 the great family of which she was an unworthy repre- 
 sentative, and it might have the most far-reaching 
 results ; for though personally they might not like her 
 or approve of her they might quite possibly back her 
 up in such a matter, and the management might find 
 themselves up against the whole family ; so dare not 
 do it. 
 
 It was a bore to think that these high relations of hers 
 should stand in the way of justice being meted out to 
 her, though it was hi a way thanks to them that I used 
 to manage to get a little of my own and other people's 
 back. It meant that I had to spend a certain amount 
 of time with her, but this fitted in well with a plan we 
 had in mind, Celia and I, and so it was by no means 
 wasted. I had hurt my foot, too, rather badly in a ski- 
 ing competition and I used to drop into a long chair 
 beside her, where she sat with all the grace of a traction 
 engine in repose, knitting, and lay my sticks down be- 
 tween us on the sunny verandah overlooking the bandy, 
 and the curling rinks ; listening to the wild yells and 
 Scotch hoots and ructions that arose from the latter, 
 and reached us only slightly muffled by the soft sound- 
 less snow, sloping down to us on all sides. 
 
 " Soop it up, soop it up," came the cry, to be succeeded 
 by the noise of frantic sweepings. Why curling should 
 be accompanied by a perfect pandemonium of sound 
 is beyond my comprehension. It is a custom which 
 might well be more honoured in the breach than the 
 observance, but I suppose will die hard like many a 
 worse one. 
 
 Sitting there like that I came in, of necessity, for a 
 good deal of good advice from Mrs Pitkeathly. She 
 was never one to shirk a duty if it were likely to annoy 
 anyone. And nothing, as she knew, could be more 
 likely to annoy a man than to keep on plying him with 
 good advice. It's tantamount to telling him that you 
 know he is not doing well. It is tantamount certainly 
 to letting him know that there is at any rate one person 
 on whom the fact is not lost. Not that she would have 
 
 92
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 cared for anyone to take her good advice and prosper 
 by it. I don't think that would have given her much 
 pleasure. Though I am not at all slow to spot it if a 
 piece of advice is good and to take it, if it conies my way, 
 what she had to offer was not worth considering and ran 
 like water off a duck's back, off me. I know exactly 
 what I am aiming at and am more than a little inclined 
 to be a Home Ruler when it comes to the management 
 of my own private affairs. 
 
 Mrs Pitkeathly knitted ceaselessly as she talked. I 
 pondered and remembered that the woman who be- 
 haved the most outrageously in the whole hotel used to 
 knit a lot too. There's something about knitting that 
 franks a woman to any degree of behaviour. If a 
 woman knits it sets a seal of purity on her. She can 
 break every one of the Commandments in turn or 
 simultaneously with impunity. Not that I can say 
 that Mrs Pitkeathly broke them, but I must say I think 
 she bent them a bit, and if she hadn't knitted such a lot 
 people would have noticed her mischief-making much 
 more. But their gaze hi spite of themselves fastened 
 on the knitting. They were hypnotised by it and only 
 saw her good and woolly works staring them in the face. 
 
 We could often see Celia, in a trotty little skating kit 
 of dull flame-colour with touches of black on it, practis- 
 ing on the rink, from where we sat, and she would try 
 to pick my brains about her, but got very little change 
 out of me. And she would, but very cautiously, try to 
 run her down to me. 
 
 This I would not allow. How could anyone deny 
 Celia's goodness and sweetness ? It was perfectly patent 
 to all of us who really knew her, for it took such an 
 active form. It was the infectious kind of goodness too 
 and she scattered the germs of it wherever she went. 
 Not the dormant High Church microbes, but those of 
 the real fundamental thing itself. 
 
 Come, come, Mrs Pitkeathly said, she had watched 
 Celia carefully for years and her mode of living and 
 
 93
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 choice of occupations reminded her of nothing so much 
 as of a puppy dog chasing its own tail. She never 
 achieved anything or got anywhere. She did not sit 
 on committees or go on platforms, so she didn't see how 
 on earth she could be called a good woman. 
 
 I told her gently that people who were really busy 
 doing good hadn't any time to amuse themselves by 
 doing such things. They left that to the people who 
 were anxious to advertise themselves as well-doers but 
 who, beyond wearing the appearance of well-doing and 
 looking important when they weren't, did not take any 
 real interest in the good of the community or give any 
 of their own money in charity, only begged it of other 
 people and took the credit for themselves. Celia's opera- 
 tions were on too big a scale to waste time so she could 
 only hope to get through them by keeping clear of 
 committees and organisations and she was working 
 silently and strenuously. Every now and again an 
 explosion of effort to which she had contributed largely, 
 by suggestion and money, took place at some distance 
 from where she was, and no one connected her with it. 
 This suited her best, for if people are watching you they 
 are sure to be criticising you and this hampers you. 
 She did quantities of good deeds but remembered the 
 admonition about not letting your right hand know 
 what your left hand was doing, which words, if you 
 looked into them, you would perceive to constitute a 
 text and an epigram in one. 
 
 I could count up heaps of people who had been any- 
 thing but nice and Celia had broken them in and made 
 them quite charming. There were mistakes made at 
 times, but we all of us made them. There was the case, 
 I recollected, of Mr Wotherspoon, who bore the marks 
 of a dissolute life and self-indulgence of the most com- 
 plete sort, wine, women, song, the whole list, in every 
 line of his face and figure and bearing. She worked 
 hard with him, threw her whole soul into it, spent days 
 and weeks and months of her valuable time in his 
 society, only to find, too late, that his was, and always 
 
 94
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 had been, the life of a blameless ascetic. A man who, 
 when the weather was too damp or his mother was not 
 well enough to go to church, read half the service 
 through to her in her bedroom. It was a set-back but 
 it is better to err on the side of over-zealousness than 
 the other, and her failures did not nearly balance her 
 successes. Did Mrs Pitkeathly realise that she had 
 reformed me ? And I had been a sad dog in my day. 
 
 Mrs Pitkeathly said " Really ! " and asked for details 
 of my awful past with avidity. I refused to give them, 
 saying it was not possible for me to do so, for they would 
 not have been suitable for her ears. 
 
 She got sulky and said that all she could say was that 
 if all Celia's work was as badly done as it was in my 
 case, it didn't say much for it ! 
 
 " Why, Mr Blenerhassett, all I can say is that it's 
 work only half done ! " 
 
 " Celia says I am doing nicely, Mrs Pitkeathly. I 
 began by being too much of a prig, and then she took 
 me in hand and I went to the other extreme and then 
 she took me in hand again, and as I say, thinks I'm 
 doing nicely. It's been delightful." I heaved a sigh of 
 content. 
 
 " Well, nevertheless I still say, Mr Blenerhassett " 
 and she puffed herself up ominously " that of all my 
 acquaintances 
 
 " Say friends, Mrs Pitkeathly, do." 
 
 " Of all my acquaintances, Mr Blenerhassett, I con- 
 sider there are more possibilities of moral downfall 
 about you than I see in any one of the others ! " 
 
 " Good gracious, Mrs Pitkeathly." 
 
 She waved her knitting excitedly. 
 
 " Why just take one point alone the er the 
 women's and er the girls' legs and ankles " 
 (here she bridled her head) " I've never seen a man 
 take a more extraordinary amount of er interest 
 in such things than you do, Mr Blenerhassett. It's 
 positively morbid ! " 
 
 " I fail to see anything morbid about a good leg, Mrs
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 Pitkeathly. It's an excellent and an attractive thing. 
 In a way that's what I like so much about this place. 
 One er sees so many of them about." 
 
 I pulled at my very short moustache (I was just grow- 
 ing one) meditatively, looking towards the rink. 
 
 " Mr Blenerhassett ! " 
 
 " I assure you, Mrs Pitkeathly, that even if I do like 
 them, and talk of them now and then in an off-hand 
 way I only refer to er or mentally visualise the 
 er how shall I say er oh yes the the drum- 
 stick portion. I only refer to them from the knee down- 
 wards" 
 
 " I should hope so I should hope so, Mr Blener- 
 hassett ! " bringing the full force of her mighty 
 diaphragm to bear upon this word. 
 
 I quailed before the blast of her disdain, and held on 
 to my chair. 
 
 " But it's only a passing phase. Don't condemn me 
 utterly. People are often very frivolous at first and 
 afterwards quite change. I've seen it happen over and 
 over again. I'm quite sure that before so very long I 
 will settle down into a very staid and respectable person 
 and never even give a thought to such things any more. 
 It's coming on me by degrees and I'm very pleased 
 about it and I hope when it has come on fully that 
 we shall meet again. Wait till I have become really 
 refined and a judge, for I 
 
 Mrs Pitkeathly interrupted me by lifting her hand : 
 
 " The one is possible, but the other 
 
 She shook her head slowly and mournfully two or 
 three times, and pursed her lips. 
 
 " I'm afraid you are indulging in a little sarcasm at 
 my expense. Can this be so, Mrs Pitkeathly ? " 
 
 But she only shook her head, and pursed her lips 
 again. 
 
 I referred a little while back to an accident of birth 
 which had debarred her from the enjoyment of certain 
 privileges which otherwise might have been hers. I 
 also put down a note that it was thanks to her having a 
 
 96
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 great number of powerful relations that we were able 
 to hit back at her a little. 
 
 But I ought rather to say that it was the combination 
 of these two things which enabled us to torment her a 
 bit for a change, instead of her tormenting other people. 
 
 It w r as a somewhat involved and delicate matter. I 
 don't quite know whether it was quite the right topic of 
 conversation for an attractive bachelor with long eye- 
 lashes, and a large and deeply religious woman. But I 
 asked Celia and she said go ahead. 
 
 It began this way (Mrs Pitkeathly and I were as usual 
 sunning ourselves on the verandah). 
 
 " You know of course, Mr Blenerhassett, that I am 
 entitled to bear arms." 
 
 " Bare arms, Mrs Pitkeathly ? " 
 
 I glanced at her sideways. I thought this was rather 
 an odd conversational opening on her part for I knew 
 that to her, arms, especially bare arms, would only be 
 second in impropriety to ankles and legs. 
 
 "Certainly, Mrs Pitkeathly. Why not? I think 
 you look all right I mean very well in evening dress. 
 I don't know that I 
 
 " Tut-tut. I don't mean what you mean. I am 
 referring to the armorial bearings of my family, which 
 I am entitled to bear or carry. To have engraved on 
 my silver, painted on the panels of my carriage if I 
 could afford one, or have carved on my furniture or 
 moulded over the front door as common people do 
 when they first get a title." 
 
 " Ah, I see what you mean. Of COURSE I always 
 guessed you must come of a very fine family. That's 
 easily seen." 
 
 " Ah, but I don't know whether you know that had I 
 been born a little baby boy instead of a little baby girl 
 that I should have been the holder of a great title and 
 enormous estates." 
 
 " I'm afraid I haven't heard." 
 G 97
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 " Yes, I was the only child of my father, who if HE 
 had lived would have succeeded his grandfather and 
 come into some four titles (one in abeyance) and as 
 many places, and in all, about, I think, a hundred and 
 fifty thousand acres in the best counties." 
 
 Sure enough, I looked her up, and as well as I can 
 remember she was the great-great-granddaughter of the 
 late Lord Sandon of Kingarth, 15th Baron of that name, 
 and Baron Lieven of Kintyre in Scotland. On his 
 mother's side of the Milesian princely House of Innis- 
 corrig ; and who also sat as representative peer for 
 Ireland in the House of Lords as Lord Morvaine. 
 Adjudged by the Committee of Privileges to be 4th 
 Viscount Strathaven (but decided to leave this title 
 temporarily dormant and continue to be known by 
 that of the earlier patent of nobility). Master of 
 the Glen Vale Buckhounds, Member of the Royal 
 Company of Archers, King's Bodyguard for Scotland, 
 A Knight Justice of St John of Jerusalem. Lord 
 of the manor of various places. Patron of twelve 
 livings, and hereditary something-or-other of the British 
 Museum. 
 
 Had the gods so willed it or had it been written on 
 the scroll of her life by the headless ladies of the group 
 of Elgin Marbles, to wit, the three Fates, who sit in the 
 darkest corner of the mansion of which she had so 
 nearly been a hereditary something-or-other, she would 
 have come in for all this magnificence. 
 
 She discussed the matter with me, and I saw that she 
 put it down to some mental oversight or moral weakness 
 on the part of her mother, a poor feckless body not 
 equal to an emergency of this kind. Something like 
 Mrs Dombey, who had never been known to make an 
 effort in her life, and who ought to have known that to 
 bring her into the world as a girl was to rob her of 
 everything that was hers by rights. It was almost 
 criminal carelessness. Luckily for her, Mrs Dombey 
 I mean, the late poor Mrs I-forget-her-name died not 
 
 98
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 very long after her mistake was made, and so was 
 spared the unhappiness of meeting the accusing gaze of 
 her large progeny, who no doubt would have served her 
 up a dish of reproaches with unfailing regularity. 
 
 I take it that Mrs Pitkeathly favoured her father. 
 HE was a man, if you like, she said. Looking at her, I 
 thought he might have been a forceful person and per- 
 haps, thought I, the poor weak lady who had been her 
 mother for a short time may have taken the wisest 
 course in the affair after all. Thinking of Mrs Pit- 
 keathly as I knew her, and thinking of the powers of 
 oppression and suppression and of the possibilities of 
 the misdirecting and misusing of so much wealth and 
 position, I think she had. 
 
 Everything, all the houses, manors, demesnes, parks, 
 and city properties had gone to a distant cousin, who 
 came back from the Colonies to take them up and who 
 was full of ridiculous ideas. He gave most of the money 
 away and let people in to see his houses for nothing, and 
 generally behaved idiotically and socialistically. 
 
 " Yes, if I had not been born a dear little girlie 
 they tell me I had pretty clinging ways but had in- 
 stead been a little boy, I should have filled the great 
 position to which he lends so little dignity, infinitely 
 better." 
 
 It was sufficiently hard to dematerialise a mountain 
 of flesh into a little girlie with clinging ways, but my 
 brain positively refused to first dematerialise her from 
 her vast self, sitting there in Harris tweed, and to then 
 rematerialise her to a chubby crowing baby boy in 
 cambric and corals, cutting his teeth. 
 
 I gave it up. Celia says my imagination is beyond 
 everything, but this I could not tackle. Besides it 
 would have seemed like taking a liberty with her to 
 even think of such a ponderous, awe-inspiring person 
 as a baby, either boy or girl. I really couldn't do it. 
 
 " Not, Mr Blenerhassett, that I mind for myself, but 
 it would have been so nice for Arthur." 
 
 Arthur is her son. 
 
 99
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 " No, I am not what you would call a greedy woman. 
 No one will ever say that of me." 
 
 They hadn't said that, but they had said everything 
 else. 
 
 " I do not care for pomp and circumstance. I find 
 my pleasure with simple things among simple people." 
 
 " Sure." 
 
 " And so in a measure I do not regret the ownership 
 of those vast estates and possessions. The responsi- 
 bility they entail must be very great." 
 
 A momentary tremor came into her voice and affected 
 me just a little. After all, I thought, whatever her bad 
 points were, and they were many, it had been bad luck 
 on the old bird to have so narrowly missed all these 
 great things. 
 
 So I said to console her " Quite right, Mrs Pit- 
 keathly. After all don't forget that it is not so much 
 having nice things that makes one happy, as that not 
 having them makes one miserable. If you analyse the 
 thing and think it over carefully you will find it loses 
 its sting." 
 
 I was just going on to remind her in a roundabout 
 way that had she been rich her life would have been less 
 interesting to her for she would have had no excuse for 
 all her little meannesses and hagglings. But a sudden 
 thought struck me and I hardened my heart, and de- 
 cided I did not want to console her. On the contrary I 
 saw that I had at last discovered where her vulnerable 
 spot lay. 
 
 " I don't think of myself in the matter," she con- 
 tinued. "It is not a selfish regret that comes over me 
 at times, but dear Arthur would have benefited so if 
 things had been otherwise and I should have been 
 gratified to know that he would in his turn inherit 
 them. For the fact remains that had I been bom a 
 boy, he would have done so.". 
 
 " Ah, but pardon me, the fact does not remain, Mrs 
 Pitkeathly." 
 
 " What do you mean, Mr Blenerhassett ? " 
 
 100
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 We always addressed each other with much ceremony. 
 
 t% What do you mean, Mr Blenerhassett ? " 
 
 " I mean that if you stop to think about it, and even 
 if you don't, if you had been the heir to the title and 
 estates, Arthur would not have been your son." 
 
 And now we come to the portion of the conversation 
 that I fear might not be considered quite proper. 
 
 " Arthur would not have been my son ! Whatever do 
 you mean ? Whose son would he have been I'd like 
 to know ? " 
 
 " I don't suppose he'd have been anybody's son." 
 
 " My dear Mr Blenerhassett, you're simply talking 
 nonsense. Everybody has to be somebody's son. That 
 seems obvious enough to me." 
 
 " Yes, certainly, and you put it very well and very 
 clearly. But not only is everybody somebody's son, 
 but the son of two somebodies. That is the point I am 
 trying to make." 
 
 It was a difficult point to lay before her. As 
 delicately as possible and without wounding her tender 
 susceptibilities, I wanted to remind her that Arthur 
 could not possibly have been the result of any other 
 union than of that between her and the late Mr Pit- 
 keathly. 
 
 Arthur is quite But there ! 
 
 " I suppose I am very dense." She laid down her 
 knitting. " I must own I cannot see what that has to 
 do with it." 
 
 "Well, look at it this way for a moment. If your 
 mother had fulfilled her duty to you as admirably as 
 you have fulfilled your duty to Arthur it would not 
 have left you in a position to have married the late 
 Mr Pitkeathly." 
 
 " Wait a moment. What's that you say ? Wouldn't 
 have left - No, I dare say not, but I'd have married 
 someone else, wouldn't I ? " 
 
 " Yes, you'd have married someone else and you'd 
 have had children we hope, and no doubt you'd have 
 been an excellent father." 
 
 101
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 " Father ? ! " 
 
 ; ' Yes, father. Not mother." 
 
 " Oh-h-h, I see what you mean NOW. You mean 
 that " 
 
 " Exactly." 
 
 " That's rather an interesting point. I'd never thought 
 of that before. If I hadn't married Mr Pitkeathly, Arthur 
 couldn't wouldn't But it's waste of time discuss- 
 ing these things. Besides I don't think it's quite nice. 
 You might as well bother your head by asking yourself 
 who you would, or wouldn't be if if 
 Yes, or who anybody would be if if- 
 
 "What a one you are to put strange ideas into 
 people's heads. I often wonder where you get them. 
 But it's not surprising they come to you, as you spend 
 your whole day with your nose glued to a book. Such 
 waste of time." 
 
 Mrs Pitkeathly's contempt of people who read books 
 is only equalled by her contempt of those who write 
 them. 
 
 " Arthur is entirely my son." 
 
 " Really ? " 
 
 " Mr Blenerhassett. That will do. As long as you 
 are prepared to discuss things properly and nicely I 
 haven't any objection to your sitting by me and 
 talking." 
 
 " Sorry, Mrs Pitkeathly." 
 
 " As I say. Arthur entirely favours me and I am 
 quite correct in saying that he is a son of mine. He 
 shows no traces of his father's people at all and I am 
 positive that he would have upheld the family tradi- 
 tions so much more successfully than the present man, 
 who, as I say, I cannot help in a measure regarding as 
 an interloper." 
 
 I turned the conversation. There was nothing to be 
 gained by pursuing it and making her see that Arthur 
 could never under any circumstances have succeeded 
 to her forefathers. It needed too subtle a sifting 
 of circumstances to ever come within reach of her 
 
 102
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 rather embryo intelligence which was only lit up by 
 gleams of cunning. So, as I say, having established the 
 fact that the loss of all these worldly goods and brilliant 
 possibilities rankled sorely with her both for her own 
 and Arthur's sake, I quite cruelly never lost an oppor- 
 tunity of reminding her of it. I drew her out with 
 regard to each historic mansion, its state of repair, its 
 park-lands and the number of fallow-deer as apart 
 from the celebrated fancy herd, the world-renowned 
 and unique Mongolian blue-horned mountain cattle. 
 And got a list of the Art treasures of each noble dwell- 
 ing, china, furniture, pictures, decorations. She con- 
 fided to me that in one the Elizabethan banqueting 
 hall was used as a stable, and that to her way of think- 
 ing it would have been an ideal occupation to restore 
 it to its ancient uses, putting instead the horses into 
 some properly built modern stables. Also how she 
 would have conducted vast draining operations on 
 certain marshy low-lying lands, neglected and despised 
 by the Colonial, and added another several thousands 
 of acres of good agricultural land to the estates and 
 several thousands a year to the rent roll. In another 
 property there were undoubted traces of valuable coal 
 seams, and these she would have prospected and in- 
 vestigated. The Colonial said he preferred scenery to 
 coal-pits and never took a single step in the matter. 
 
 I found out that she made pilgrimages as an ordinary 
 tourist, to first one and then another, on visitors' days 
 when the family was not in residence (not being on 
 terms with the unspeakable Colonial and his wife) to 
 worship at the shrine of the various gems of art, and 
 see whether they were being cared for or not. In- 
 dulging in long pow-wows with the old librarians, 
 distant connections and hangers on to the family 
 greatness. Quite methodically and cold-bloodedly I 
 extracted descriptions from her of the shape, size, and 
 periods of the aforesaid historic mansions and details 
 as to their situations and elevations, carefully noting 
 them till I was able to put a perfectly constructed 
 
 103
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 vision-model before her, and haunt and harass her by 
 talking of them and reminding her of them, especially 
 of those about which she fretted most and which had 
 taken most hold on her imagination. I worked so 
 assiduously that for almost the remainder of the stay I 
 left her neither time nor inclination for the brewing of 
 mischief. I am sure it was very mean of me, but there 
 are occasions when one must take a pragmatist's view 
 and consider that the end justifies the means. 
 
 There were days when the Foehn came up the valley 
 and drove before it a soaking sodden pale mist that 
 wrapped itself like a damp blanket all over the lovely 
 clear-cut mountains and piled itself heavily on the 
 hotel, so that almost without warning the entire little 
 motley world contained therein, men, women, matrons, 
 children, girls, boys, found themselves unable to get 
 out to follow their usual pursuits. Then letter-writing 
 in corners began, and newspaper and book reading, 
 bridge and patience playing, and groups sat around 
 chatting, thrashing out indoors all that had occurred 
 outdoors for some time past, or that was likely to 
 happen in the near future. Games used to be started 
 in the big ballroom or the palm court and caused a 
 lot of fun among the younger members. These were 
 the sort of days after Mrs Pitkeathly's own heart. She 
 would view the romps with disapproval and find scope 
 for censure, butting in if she could and spoiling sport. 
 She had had all the cosy corners put down, whenever 
 there were dances. None were allowed now, and 
 the seasonal crop of engagements had declined ever 
 since. 
 
 I never let her far out of my sight these days. I'd 
 limp after her by now she considered me quite her 
 property and I'd engage her and her confederates, 
 whose teeth seemed to have been quite drawn by my 
 simple strategy in conversation. After a while of 
 desultory chat on the general unutterableness of the 
 weather very likely I'd say : 
 
 "What was that you told me about the licence to 
 
 104
 
 crenellate that your ancestor got in the reign of Edward 
 the Third ? " 
 
 The confederates' eyes would bulge out of their heads 
 at the mention of a lineage authenticated to such dim 
 and far-back times. Mrs Pitkeathly would settle her- 
 self down preparatory to being thoroughly harrowed by 
 my questions. She'd go over the old story again for 
 me, though I knew it backwards by now from her long 
 and precise descriptions of Buhner. I led her on 
 further. 
 
 " I always forget whether it is the facade of Bulmer 
 which has the engaged columns with volute capitals 
 supporting two cupolas of which the tympanum of one 
 is filled with an allegorical figure of Apollo, and the 
 other, of Mars. Or is it the one of which Leybrug, 
 the great architect of Queen Anne's time, rectified the 
 sky-line, and added another storey ? " 
 
 " No, no, dear Mr Blenerhassett. No, no. You've 
 got that quite wrong. If you'll only think a moment 
 you would realise that it would be a hopeless anachron- 
 ism to combine such different architectural features as 
 engaged columns supporting cupolas with statues in 
 their tympana, with massive stone crenellations, as 
 w r ell as deep embrasures for the bowmen and archers. 
 I don't deny that there are two very small cupolas, at 
 the extreme back and which you unfortunately can see 
 from the great entrance gates. But you can only just 
 see them and though not strictly correct they were 
 handled very successfully really and have a distinct 
 mediaeval Gothic angularity about them, as they are 
 hexagonal, and not round, with small fixed vanes of 
 mediaeval ironwork. You cannot speak of storeys as 
 regards height in this case. It consists of a series 
 of strong towers with connecting corridors and 
 buttresses." 
 
 "Ah, I forgot. I know now. I get a little mixed 
 sometimes. You spoke of the great entrance gates 
 just now. Let me be quite clear about them. These 
 are the magnificent examples, with the clairvoyees to 
 
 105
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 the outer court With the mythical birds or are they 
 falcons ? figuring as supporters on top of the principal 
 piers 
 
 " Those are the gates of Scrope, dear Mr Blener- 
 hassett, but we were talking of Bulmer. That's a very 
 different matter. The Bulmer gates are thirteenth 
 century, the ones at Scrope are much, much later. 
 Don't you REMEMBER ? I described them fully to you 
 about three or four days ago and you made notes and 
 even a rough pencil sketch, I think." 
 
 " OF COURSE. At Scrope there are two large car- 
 touches, of which one has the Staveley arms, impaling 
 those of Margrave under a ducal coronet 
 
 ' Yes, that's right. The house having come into 
 the family through a marriage contracted with a great 
 heiress of a ducal family, since extinct 
 
 and on the left-hand side the Margrave arms 
 are placed as a shield of pretence on azure, a sword 
 engrailed or representing the Margrave arms with an 
 altered tincture." 
 
 " Yes, and as you will certainly recollect, for you 
 specially wrote it down, on the iron balustrading to the 
 stone staircase and on the descent from the oak stair- 
 case to the garden you again find the ducal coronet, 
 while the pedimented doorway it leads from bears the 
 Margrave estoile and the Milesian sword. But by far 
 the richest ironwork oh, how I wish you could see it, 
 as you seem to take a real interest in these things are 
 the overthrows to the two forecourt gateways owing to 
 the beautiful effect that was obtained by the free use 
 of elaborate embossed acanthus leaves, draperies and 
 spiral coils ! " 
 
 Mrs Pitkeathly almost rocked on her chair at the 
 thought of them. 
 
 " Yes, Tijon himself superintended the work in 
 person, and you know what a master craftsman he 
 was ! " 
 
 " What a wonderful, wonderful place it must be. I 
 once stayed with some people near there, and though 
 
 106
 
 MES PITKEATHLY 
 
 we often drove in that direction and I saw it fairly 
 plainly in the distance I never went in. Is it as 
 wonderful inside as it is outside ? " 
 
 Mrs Pitkeathly would draw her breath in with a hiss- 
 ing noise, and purse her lips portentously. 
 
 " I should say so indeed ! " 
 
 Settling herself once more in her chair and taking a 
 long pull at her ball of wool she would now embark on 
 a lengthy description of the beauties of Scrope. 
 
 " To begin with, as you enter and before you get into 
 the main or central portion (you know there are thirty 
 staircases there), you descend by a short flight of shallow 
 stairs into the Long Hall. It is about a hundred feet 
 long, with carvings by Wren and a series of paintings 
 on panels by Holbein, and there on stands specially 
 constructed for the purpose and set out in two long 
 double rows are all the embossed and illuminated 
 vellums setting forth the grants of lands and privileges 
 and the patents of nobility, and deeds conferring titles. 
 Then from there you pass to the picture gallery. It is 
 lit from sconces of beaten silver of the time of Charles 
 the Second and is hung with Van Dycks, Rembrandts, 
 Jansens, Franz Hals, Holbeins, Quentin Matsys oh, 
 quantities of great masters, and there is also the cele- 
 brated portrait of my ancestor, Sir Roger Godolphin de 
 Beauregard, the Standard-Bearer. Then you ascend 
 the grand staircase of which the entire walls and dome 
 sections are covered with frescoes in brownish mono- 
 chrome which I confess I think a little depressing by 
 a very celebrated Dutchman, of mythological subjects, 
 with painted mouldings to represent inner frames and 
 divisions of panelling and in some cases even statuary 
 in niches." 
 
 " By Jove, that must have taken some doing ! " I 
 interjected. 
 
 " This part is exceedingly cleverly managed as also 
 is the perspective and the shadows cast by the painted 
 statuary. There was a great law case about the pay- 
 ment for these. The artist wanted far too much money 
 
 107
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 but he didn't get it ! A most rapacious person he was. 
 But the part of the house that by the experts is thought 
 far and away the most of and a perfect example of pro- 
 portion, is the Quadruple Library, a series of four rooms 
 in all with a central dome which I am told is square 
 on the plan, though I don't know what it means, for I 
 know it is round inside and everything in it is round too. 
 There's a circular moulded wreath of flowers and fruit 
 on the ceiling and underneath it, and corresponding to 
 it in size exactly, the most unique circular Chinese 
 carpet which was taken from a temple and dates from 
 the Kien Lung period. Need I say the whole series of 
 rooms is decorated in the Chinese manner and furnished 
 with the most priceless Chinese red lacquer. The only 
 one of the series in which the Chinese note does not 
 predominate is in the last room, which was ruthlessly 
 stripped and redecorated by some vandal about the 
 middle of the seventeenth century, who mounted a 
 Monkey and Scaramouche ceiling in it. Petits Sin- 
 geries they call the designs. Some people say it's 
 wonderful, and in a way it is, and one could tolerate it 
 if one didn't know that the earlier work had been torn 
 away to make a place for it. The monkeys are skipping 
 and running about in different costumes, rowing, boat- 
 ing, fishing, shooting. It's very peculiar and has its 
 charms I suppose. The mantelpieces are of Fior di 
 Pesca marbles in panels framed with alabaster carved 
 to represent pagodas and palm-trees. But the china 
 collection is wonderful. There is a series of the most 
 unique peach blow vases, about eighty of them, separ- 
 ated into sets of five, each set specially made to be 
 placed on the points of the lacquer cabinets of which 
 there are four in each room. And oh, the china in the 
 cabinets Mr Blenerhassett if you could only see the 
 china in the cabinets - ! " 
 
 Here she began to get quite agitated and sniff and 
 hunt in her tweed pockets for her handkerchief. Prob- 
 ably by now she was really almost on the verge of tears 
 at the thought of the china in the cabinets, so I would 
 
 108
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 sit up anxiously, and try to head her off on to something 
 else as quickly as I could. I didn't want tears. 
 
 " Never mind about the china to-day, Mrs Pit- 
 keathly. Don't bother, I'm not really so sure that I 
 care about china. In fact, in comparison to a great 
 many other things I'm really not keen on it. I much 
 prefer, for instance, tapestry. Are there any good 
 tapestries at Norton Constable ? " 
 
 " Are there any good tapestries at Norton Con- 
 stable ? ! ! My dear good Mr Blenerhassett. We have 
 some of the finest tapestries in the world there, some of 
 the very finest specimens of early Flemish fifteenth- 
 century weaving in existence. To begin with, there's 
 the entire set reproducing (and made almost at the 
 same time and by the same workers) the set which 
 represents the Hunts of the Emperor Maximilian, 
 designed by Bertram D'Orly, and the originals of which 
 hang in the Louvre. Then in one of the State bed- 
 rooms at Bulmer there is a Brussels set of Diana the 
 Huntress and the Vandam set representing Perseus 
 as a Roman warrior drawing his sword against the 
 monstrous guardian of Andromeda. And in the bed- 
 room opposite there are four subjects occupying the 
 walls of which the scenes are taken from mythology. 
 In the first Zeus makes love to lo, and in the second 
 Hera, his wife, who is naturally irritated changes her 
 into a heifer. Then Zeus puts the entire flock into the 
 charge of Argus with his hundred eyes. But by Hera's 
 request, Argus is lulled to sleep by Hermes, who plays 
 to him on his flute and, as soon as he has got him asleep, 
 chops off his head. The last panel shows Hermes 
 presenting the head of Argus to Hera, who receives it 
 with delight because by his sleeping when on guard lo 
 has been able to escape, and she is once more in her 
 power. But not knowing what to do with the hundred 
 eyes, she bestows them on the tail of the Peacock." 
 
 There is no doubt about it but that in the matter of 
 tapestry Mrs Pitkeathly condones all sorts of immoral 
 goings-on, I'm afraid. 
 
 109
 
 MRS PITKEATIILY 
 
 This sort of thing went on fairly regularly as long as 
 my foot prevented me from leading an active life, in all 
 about three weeks. We'd begin by conversing about 
 all manner of things and I by degrees would bring up 
 the topic of her unfortunate accident of birth. Under 
 the guise of friendliness, as she bewailed her lack of 
 fortune in the matter, I professed sympathy hypo- 
 critically making clucking noises with my tongue on my 
 palate indicative of the pity of the whole thing. My 
 tongue got quite sore with tut-tutting and ached for 
 days, but I made her heart ache into the bargain. My 
 heart smote me at times, for the only good thing about 
 Mrs Pitkeathly was her affection and appreciation of 
 these fine old relics of the past around which the 
 memories of her forbears clung. But even after mak- 
 ing due allowance for this side of her we still recognised 
 her as a malicious old body, standing badly in need of 
 correction. 
 
 As soon as ever my foot got better I went back post- 
 haste to all the sports and games I had had to give up 
 for so long. I was wild to make up for lost time, and so 
 consequently saw very little of her or the confederates, 
 and she naturally went back to her old occupations 
 without delay. 
 
 Before very long Celia came to me and said : 
 
 " Peter ! That old woman has been up to her tricks 
 again ! " 
 
 " O lordy ! " said I. " What is it now ? " 
 
 " You know little Daisy was getting on quite nicely 
 with young Soames, the nice clean boy with the white 
 even teeth ? " 
 
 " Yes. Yes. I noticed it." 
 
 " Well, they were getting on extremely well, and I'll 
 tell you exactly how I know and you needn't say I was 
 imagining it." (We were rather fond of telling each the 
 other that things were imagined.) " He asked me quite 
 seriously whether I thought Daisy liked him. In fact 
 he drew me aside and asked me so solemnly that I knew 
 exactly what he was thinking of doing. I said yes I 
 
 110
 
 was sure she liked him. Now that's only about ten 
 days ago and yet now he spends every spare minute he 
 has in the company of that girl that wears the cherry 
 sweater. And even if she does look nice I don't think 
 she is. I think she's horrid." 
 
 " Oh yes, she's a horrid girl. I know her ! " This 
 was the one who had sneaked my luge. 
 
 " So of course he and Daisy are at loggerheads and 
 poor Daisy out of pique is running after that big hand- 
 some Morris boy like a lunatic, and he's the regular 
 lady-killer type, and will only let her down in favour of 
 another girl presently and then things will be worse 
 than ever for her. I introduced them and feel 
 responsible for the whole thing." 
 
 This was a fact. When we rescued Daisy from Mrs 
 Pitkeathly's clutches she knew no one, and we had 
 trotted her out and passed her along to all the young 
 things we could find. And Celia had raked out a lot of 
 finery and given it her, and her maid had fixed her up 
 with two fluffy ball dresses run up in a hurry, but that 
 looked very nice all the same, and with a little luck we 
 felt that Daisy was in for a better time. 
 
 I questioned Daisy and we saw at once how the 
 land lay. Mrs Pitkeathly had cornered her and taxed 
 her with having taken a fancy to Soames and said that 
 everybody was noticing the way she was running after 
 him. This of course made little shy Daisy wild with 
 hurt pride and she dried up like an oyster whenever 
 Soames came near her. Then he didn't come near her, 
 thinking he had annoyed her, and then she was hurt, 
 and said something off-hand about him before Mrs Pit- 
 keathly which she believes she must have repeated to 
 him, for shortly afterwards she cornered her again and 
 told her something derogatory which she said Soames 
 in his turn had remarked about her. That of course 
 settled it and now she and he were dead cuts. 
 
 Not only did we trace Daisy's troubles directly to 
 her, but a poor little married lady, rather frivolous of 
 aspect, but truly harmless, came to Celia in tears and 
 
 111
 
 told her a story of how she and some others went out 
 on a sheeing party and a frightful storm beset them. 
 They all got separated, except herself and a man friend, 
 who, fortunately for her, stayed with her and helped her 
 to beat her way through the blinding snow. Without 
 his assistance she likely would have perished, but 
 thanks to him they reached the hut on the mountain 
 and she was so exhausted that they stayed there till 
 next morning as it would have been madness to face the 
 blizzard again ; the others had wandered about for 
 hours and got back to the hotel almost dead with 
 fatigue. It was unfortunate that she and her escort 
 were left alone there unchaperoned, but this was a 
 thing that was liable to happen to everyone who under- 
 took these expeditions. There was nothing in it, it had 
 often happened, and would often happen again. But 
 her husband was a choleric Argentine, very much in- 
 clined to be jealous of his young wife, and the affair of 
 the hut rankled ; though probably the memory of it 
 would have died away but that Mrs Pitkeathly and 
 she was insistent about this would not let the matter 
 rest. She spoke of it and kept it fresh in his mind. 
 She was insistent, too, that in some funny subtle way, 
 though without actually saying it, she had given him 
 the idea that people gossiped about it a lot and thought 
 there was something behind it, and the result of it was to 
 make him feel that he looked a fool and that he was to 
 some people an object of pity, and to others an object 
 of derision. He was consequently making her life a 
 burden to her and told her he had lost all confidence in 
 her. She couldn't say where it would end. 
 
 It would end in a scandal, poor thing, for Mrs Pit- 
 keathly was already going her rounds with a heavy 
 " I-could-a-tale-unfold " manner, which presaged ill for 
 her. We knew the signs and portents so well that 
 without any ado Celia intervened, and before the week 
 was out both this and the other imbroglio were 
 straightened out satisfactorily. Having disposed of 
 them we turned our attention to Mrs Pitkeathly in dead 
 
 112
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 earnest. Celia said she hadn't the slightest compunc- 
 tion. She had already wreaked enough mischief to 
 retire and gloat over it by her fireside in her old age. 
 We could not wrest these memories from her, but 
 we could prevent her garnering any more. Celia said 
 her one regret was that she had not done it sooner 
 instead of selfishly enjoying herself, skating and bob- 
 sleighing. 
 
 We, that is, Soames and Daisy, now engaged, and 
 Celia and I, had a long and solemn pow-wow, and the 
 upshot of it was that we dropped a note to Madame 
 Morton asking her if she could come up to Celia's 
 sitting-room next evening after dinner. 
 
 Monsieur and Madame Morton were old friends of 
 ours and their familiar faces greeted us kindly year after 
 year at Lautersimmen. They were an awfully jolly 
 couple of prosperous business people, well known for 
 their generosity and charities. Monsieur had great 
 usines somewhere beyond Paris, connected I think with 
 iron foundries working in conjunction with coal mines 
 and shipbuilding. Madame was a tall buxom well- 
 dressed woman, in her forties, with breezy manners and 
 a lively, brown, freckled face ; Monsieur was tall and 
 thin, an exquisite skater, of an irreproachable appear- 
 ance, always dressed in dark, correct English tweeds or 
 homespuns. His face was dark and bright, and it was 
 one whole joke. It was very thin with deep lines in the 
 cheeks and round the clean-shaven mouth and each line 
 was full of jokes ; jokes for young and jokes for old, 
 jokes for all. And in each of his two bright hazel-brown 
 eyes (glancing gaily like those of a bird) were heaps and 
 heaps of other jokes, all kindly and good-natured. And 
 yet over all was a veil as of something serious. Every- 
 body loved him and wherever he went the circle opened 
 and swallowed him up and presently you heard roars 
 of laughter. He was, nevertheless, very quiet in his 
 manner, and his jokes were all quiet jokes. He did not 
 gesticulate much, only occasionally waving one fine 
 thin hand and giving a half shrug. These, with his 
 H 113
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 funny, whimsical smile, which hardly ever left his face, 
 gave point to his humour and made him a personality 
 once encountered, never to be forgotten. He and 
 Madame were hailed with joy wherever they went and 
 their presence gave zest to everything. 
 
 " I've given Madame a small hint as to what I wish 
 to see her about. She hates Mrs Pitkeathly like poison 
 and I'm sure she'll help. But the thing is will she help 
 in the way we'd like her to ? " said Celia, licking the 
 flap of the envelope of the note she had just then 
 addressed. 
 
 Madame duly presented herself at the time men- 
 tioned, and greeted us cheerily. We spoke in French 
 and in English. 
 
 " Well, now, what have you two plotters got afoot ? 
 It is to do with Mrs Pitkeathly, hein ? " 
 
 We said yes, and we indicated that we thought it was 
 time that Nemesis had an extra feed of corn, and be let 
 loose on her tracks, in the hopes of overtaking her and 
 dealing with her according to her deserts. 
 
 " Well, I am yours to command. You know, dear 
 Mrs Carmichael, how I have always disliked that 
 woman. Je ne peut pas la sentir. That's what we say 
 in French. But how shall we punish her ? I cannot 
 think of anything. I only wish I could." 
 
 " Don't bother. We've given a good deal of thought 
 to the best means of doing so, and we think that the 
 punishment should fit the crime." 
 
 " Ah, ha. Fit the crime. Yes, I know that phrase. 
 It is from the comic opera, how do they call it Meck-a- 
 doo, n'est-ce-pas ? " 
 
 " More or less. That's near enough. And to make 
 the punishment fit the crime properly, it should embody 
 in some way, something that is suggestive of or related 
 to or adumbrates the crimes she has committed." 
 
 " Oh, la-la, Monsieur Peter. You use such long 
 words. Tell me, Madame Carmichael, in simple ones, 
 what does he say 1 " 
 
 " He says, Madame, that as Mrs Pitkeathly's crimes 
 
 1H
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 have so often something to do with scandal-mongering, 
 we must punish her by putting her in a position to have 
 scandal talked about her." 
 
 " Scandal. About 'er. Ah mais non ! Zat is im- 
 posseeble. Oh la-la-la-la ! " 
 
 " Not as we are going to work it, Madame." 
 
 " Ah, I begin to see. You will pay somebody to 
 make lofe to 'er ! It will be very expenseeve ! ! " 
 
 Madame went off into shrieks of laughter. 
 
 " No, Madame, not quite that, but we will try to 
 persuade someone to do it." 
 
 ' Ah-sa ! I see. But who ? " 
 
 " Well, we thought that we must have someone of 
 high courage 
 
 " Parbleu oui ! " 
 
 " And of unblemished reputation " 
 
 " Oui, oui." 
 
 " And who has a strong sense of humour 
 
 " C'est certain." 
 
 " And who is very kind-hearted " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And we think this description fits M. Morton 
 exactly." 
 
 " Monsieur Morton ! Monsieur Morton ! Mon 
 pauvre Jules ! " exclaimed Madame, overcome by 
 astonishment. 
 
 " Yes. None other. No one could possibly do it as 
 well as he would," Celia said. 
 
 Madame now exploded into screams of laughter, and 
 we had to wait some moments till she recovered. 
 
 " Ah-ha-ha-ha. I can just see them. Jules so thin 
 and Madame Pitkeathly so fat ! So colossale ! ! " 
 
 She had another relapse of frantic mirth and swayed 
 about helplessly for a bit. 
 
 "What has he done that you should what you call 
 what the Americans call wish wish this on to my 
 poor Jules ? ! ! " 
 
 And off she went again. But presently she recovered 
 and, wiping her eyes, said : 
 
 115
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 "It is a good idea. I will persuade him. He will 
 see the funny side of it, and the necessary side too. It 
 will be a kind action. But it will be difficult. We 
 must have an esclandre a a blow-up if we are to 
 have a scandal." 
 
 We were relieved to see that she took it this way, for 
 we had feared that she might not care for her Jules to 
 be so martyrised. Also we knew that if she asked him 
 he would certainly do it. 
 
 " My suggestion is, then, that if he is willing, Madame, 
 that Monsieur should pay a lot of attention to Madame 
 Pitkeathly, and by degrees win her confidence," said 
 Celia. 
 
 "I am afraid," I added, "that he will have to 
 screw himself up to some slight protestations of ad- 
 miration " 
 
 " He shall. He shall. I'll attend to that ! " 
 
 " And then, somehow and this won't be at all easy, 
 but it's got to be done we must inveigle 
 
 " Now. mon cher Monsieur Peter, what sort of a word 
 is that ? " 
 
 " Well, lure or persuade 
 
 " Ah, that's better." 
 
 " Persuade her to place herself in a more or less 
 compromising situation with your husband 
 
 " And you will surprise them, Madame." 
 
 " Oof. How splendid. What a brilliant idea. I 
 shall make a scene. But mon Dieu ! What a scene ! " 
 
 " And threaten disclosures 
 
 " And legal proceedings 
 
 " And between us all we will drive Mrs Pitkeathly 
 from the hotel 
 
 " And next time she starts talking scandal, the horror 
 of what she is doing 
 
 " Will come over her with a rush and she will never 
 do it again ! ! " 
 
 " It is a good plan," said Madame, rising. " I will go 
 down now and begin to tell Jules. It will take me a 
 little time to get him to say yes, but he is an artist, and 
 
 116
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 a man of charity, and he will do it. II a bon coeur. He 
 will do it I know, for it needs someone trustworthy, who 
 will carry it through." 
 
 The main difficulty was to devise some means of 
 getting her into a situation that would appear to appear 
 sufficiently compromising. Madame Morton would not 
 be hard to satisfy. She would exclaim and rave and 
 rage to order, but we would have to make it quite 
 certain that Mrs Pitkeathly should consider herself 
 cornered, and not leave her any loophole for a satis- 
 factory explanation. Nor indeed leave, as it were, any 
 loose edges to our arrangements likely to betray the 
 fact that it was a put-up job, for she was a sly old thing 
 and would have guessed quickly if there were any. 
 
 This was not easy, not at all easy, and Monsieur 
 Morton had already been hard at work for quite a time 
 (after a good deal of preliminary coaching by me as to 
 clairvoyees and cupolas with statues on their tym- 
 pana and tapestries with what his own countrymen 
 would call " crimes passionels " worked patiently there- 
 on with the point of the needle, and leading to a good 
 deal of conversational give and take) before I had a 
 brain-wave suggesting a method of working it. Celia 
 also had a brain-wave on the same lines almost, or for 
 all I know, at the very same moment that I did, proving 
 clearly that we have a strong affinity with one another. 
 Scoffers and people who disbelieve in affinities would 
 say that we both got the idea from the same source, to 
 wit, the photograph of the great spiritualistic seance 
 act in the new play that was all the rage, and which 
 appeared in The Pictorial Gazette. The photograph 
 arrested my attention because it was nothing but a 
 blank, blank square, and the letterpress below it, 
 which purported to be funny, said that the likenesses 
 of the actors and actresses would have been excellent 
 if they had been visible, but as the stage was in dark- 
 ness you couldn't see them though they were all there 
 holding one another's hands. 
 
 Darkness ! Holding one another's hands ! Eureka ! 
 
 117
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 I sought out Celia and I said feverishly, "I've got 
 it 1 " 
 
 " No, you haven't," she said. " I've got it." 
 
 " Wait till you hear mine 
 
 " Wait till you hear mine 
 
 " What is yours ? " we both said in a breath, im- 
 pressed, each by the manner of the other. 
 
 " A spiritualistic seance," I said speaking first and 
 forgetting my manners. 
 
 "So is mine. I believe I must have told you 
 already," suspiciously. 
 
 " No indeed you didn't. It's entirely my idea. You 
 might just for once let me have the credit 
 
 " All right, take it. I can spare it perhaps better 
 than you can." 
 
 " Celia, if you're going to quarrel with me over a 
 little thing like this 
 
 " It's not a little thing. It's a most important 
 thing, and whoever can claim the idea, it's a good one, 
 and that's the main point. It is a really good one, 
 quite the best that's struck us so far, and I think it can 
 be worked. And luckily enough there has been a good 
 deal of spiritualistic talk in the hotel lately. It's quite 
 a craze just now, so that if we suggest it and rope her hi 
 for one it won't look odd or far-fetched." 
 
 " Not a bit. That's the beauty of it." 
 
 The trouble we took over that seance and the talk 
 that went on about it for days ! I had been appointed 
 stage manager and had been given charge of all pro- 
 perties that might be needed for the performance, and 
 the selection of a site, and several things of that sort. 
 Where was it to be held ? (To be as compromising as 
 possible.) Who was to assist ? (They must be people 
 capable of holding their tongues and not liable to lose 
 their heads at the last moment.) How could we get 
 Mrs Pitkeathly to a seance ? (She had denounced them 
 as ungodly.) How could we get everyone out of the 
 room again, so as to leave Mrs Pitkeathly and the heroic 
 Morton there alone together ? (This seemed an almost 
 
 118
 
 impossible difficulty.) How to find an excuse for not 
 turning on the lights when they left the room, so that 
 Madame Morton should come in and find them in the 
 dark still holding hands ? (Part of the question answered 
 itself, for Monsieur having once got hold of her hand 
 would take care on some pretext or another to con- 
 tinue to hold it till the right moment ; and Madame's 
 entry we would arrange to occur at a given moment, for 
 we were going to work with synchronised watches to 
 obviate mistakes.) 
 
 It was an intensely complicated thing to work out, 
 but we managed it. The seance was to take place in 
 Monsieur's apartments, and the excuse for that would 
 be that it was in a quiet corner and therefore suitable 
 for the medium and the spirits. It would not be held 
 in the sitting-room, but in the inner room which was 
 Monsieur's dressing-room, and the excuse for that in its 
 turn could be supplied by the spilling of a bottle of 
 sticky hair-oil or something similarly nauseous- smelling 
 accidentally on purpose, and so we could exclaim at it 
 (Celia was to do this) and migrate as if by an after- 
 thought to the inner room. 
 
 If we picked our assistants carefully from amongst 
 some of her victims who were thirsting for her blood, 
 they would have every interest in making things a 
 success, and in lying low about it, both before and after. 
 We would not have too many as the chairs they vacated 
 on leaving the room would be conspicuous if too big a 
 number were needed to seat them. Soames and Daisy 
 measured a little high sofa or bergere in the dressing- 
 room and found if the parties wedged themselves a 
 little it would hold three, even if one of the three were 
 Mrs Pitkeathly. And we decided that not only would 
 she make one of the three, but that Monsieur Morton 
 would make another, and that by being wedged in so 
 beside her and left till the moment of his wife's entry, 
 the compromising of Mrs Pitkeathly would be a fore- 
 gone conclusion. 
 
 At first when we began to rehearse it, it seemed im- 
 
 119
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 likely that it would succeed, but first a little thing here, 
 and then a little thing there cropped up and fitted in so 
 nicely with our movements that they might have been 
 specially put there to make everything go off just right. 
 There was a heaven-sent speaking-tube just outside 
 the sitting-room door. Dan posted here would get the 
 warning whistle which would advise him of Madame' s 
 arrival, and on receipt of it he would call loudly to the 
 spiritualists to come out and have a look at something 
 really important, his photos of the great bob-sleigh 
 race which he was supposedly developing in his room 
 next door. 
 
 There would be a general rush, for the seance we'd 
 see to that would not yet be in full swing. First one 
 and then another would rush out, including the medium, 
 Miss Smith, who was of course not a real one, but who 
 had dabbled in spiritualism enough to have a good idea 
 of how mediums behave at seances, and to be able to 
 give a fair imitation of their little ways. So there 
 would be a carefully rehearsed stampede, each person 
 taking care to push his or her chair neatly away and so 
 break up the ring. And then Mrs Pitkeathly would 
 hear cries of " I must just have one look do excuse me 
 one moment I'll be back in two or three seconds, don't 
 begin without me " and " Oh, what a fright I look. I 
 think it's a horrid photograph." " Do tear it up, dear 
 Mr De Courcy." In the scurry we would make the best 
 possible use of a still more heaven-sent device. The 
 good Bischoffscheim, who was ever on the look-out for 
 anything to help his guests to be comfortable and to 
 save them trouble and incidentally to save his company 
 money, had put a switch by the door of the sitting-room 
 which controlled the light in the dressing-room ; so 
 that if you left the inner room light on and only per- 
 ceived you had done so when you had reached the far- 
 off sitting-room door, you could put it out without 
 returning all the way back. This saved lots of electric 
 light- and the situation for us. There was also a 
 switch by the dressing-room door the very door by 
 
 120
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 which Madame would enter, the very switch by means 
 of which she would flood the room with light. For by 
 a skilful confusing of the double control we would be 
 able to ensure that Monsieur and Mrs Pitkeathly would 
 be discovered by her in darkness holding each the 
 other's hand and sitting so close as almost to appear 
 to be embracing one another, like any couple of silly 
 cosy-corner culprits of tender years. 
 
 With any luck at all the coup ought to go off with a 
 bang. Two days before Madame had framed an excuse 
 to go down to one of the big towns, to see a friend or do 
 some shopping, or both, for if the surprise was to be 
 complete, and Mrs Pitkeathly to be taken completely 
 off her guard, it would be better for her not to be in 
 the hotel till the moment had arrived. The tale would 
 then bear the closest inspection from all sides. 
 
 Madame had friends living in some of the big houses 
 scattered on the outskirts of the various towns. The 
 offer of her society for a few days was an opportunity 
 for a little mild Swiss gaiety to be got up on her account 
 and a gathering together of old acquaintances. Some 
 very large and very serious and prosperous family parties 
 were arranged at which no doubt the wild doings up at 
 the big hotels would be talked over with many head- 
 shakes. These big winter sports gatherings are looked 
 on very doubtfully by the sober residents of the country. 
 I don't think they half like to see the gigantic solitudes 
 of their great mountains disturbed by a reckless rapid 
 society to the extent that has occurred of late years. 
 
 But it was inevitable. The march of Time. 
 They shrugged their shoulders philosophically over 
 them. 
 
 Celia and I accompanied her down and not having 
 been into the valley for some time w r e found it a de- 
 lightful change and the difference in the feel of the air 
 was amazing. There had been a tremendous fall of 
 snow in the night and as we slipped down slowly and 
 
 121
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 softly in the Drahtseilbahn, a series of sparkling and 
 incredible panoramas, white to the point of awe, rose to 
 meet us, we going lower and lower, and round and 
 round the mountain. 
 
 I stood on the little platform of the car, beside the 
 collector, a worthy fellow and a personal friend of mine. 
 We passed each other any news that might be of interest 
 mutually or severally. He was a superior fellow as 
 well informed and well kept as all such people of the 
 working classes are in Switzerland, and far from being 
 numb to the beauty of what lay around him in his daily 
 trek around and down, and around and up the great 
 mountain's girth, he looked round him with honest pride 
 and drew my attention to various points in the scene. 
 
 The deep snow, the divine snow, lay everywhere. 
 And knee-deep in it the pine forests performed those 
 stationary marches and motionless evolutions which 
 never get them anywhere, but leave them with all the 
 appearance of determined and rapid transit exactly in 
 the same spot for ever. Each individual tree if you 
 looked at it stood up prim and straight like a stiff white 
 plume in a soldier's kepi. Down below the flurry 
 during the night had been continuous and over every- 
 thing that could be covered the snow had cast its 
 muffling beauty. All wayside objects were white 
 huddles and snowy bundles, cushiony topped, pent- 
 house formed ; hedges and ditches were glorified with 
 icicles. The sky, which seemed most strangely close, 
 down and about us, was of a soft dun-white, surcharged 
 with yet heaps more snow to fall and settle gently, 
 gently. The air was still and softly thickened by the 
 imminence of all there was in store yet. We skimmed 
 in our sleigh along the side of the great long lake our 
 sleigh-bells making muffled music and it was a lovely 
 pale dim grey colour, dense against the snowy white 
 thick-drifted banks that encompassed it on all its sides, 
 and we peered into the fairy-like vistas of the white 
 woodlands as we passed and saw into their intricate 
 depths of mingled delicate white webs. Forests of 
 
 122
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 Brussels lace greyly glittering, draped with flounces of 
 old greyish- white needle-point. The trees seemed to be 
 beautifully shaped, rising pyramidally, extending evenly 
 their white bough arms on all sides with white hands 
 and white twig ringers spread out all heavily sifted and 
 laden with the drifting, settling snowflakes, so that 
 their outlines were thickened and one saw at a glance 
 how symmetrical Nature is when she sets out un- 
 hampered by disabilities. Some shrubs held their 
 branches like white drooping ostrich head-dress 
 feathers, as worn by stately tall white ladies in satin at 
 high Court balls ; floating softly and curling richly in 
 their fronds. 
 
 I perceived others that seemed like filmy sea growths 
 translated into white and I also perceived that what an 
 artist and painter of snow scenes once told me was true, 
 and that in such a wintry landscape there are hundreds 
 and hundreds of different shades and values of white. 
 From the comparatively dark white of the lovely weak 
 shadows, to the highest point of white light possible, 
 where the sun touches the snow to a glistening dazzle- 
 ment. 
 
 I write this to remind you of our surroundings, and 
 that the hotel was high up in the mountain in the 
 middle of white plains, and also that it should be recog- 
 nised how self-sacrificing it was of Madame to brave the 
 late journey upon the last train and face a long drive 
 after dark amidst the flakes that fell so thickly on the 
 night we had chosen to let loose Nemesis. 
 
 When the actual day came, we were on pins and 
 needles all the day and could settle to nothing. We 
 were overwrought and anxious from the fear that 
 things might go wrong at the last moment. And even 
 up to the eleventh hour Monsieur Morton was having 
 trouble with Mrs Pitkeathly in persuading her to 
 attend the seance. He had had no trouble whatsoever 
 in persuading her to be flirtatious. He said his fears 
 lay quite in the other direction. He was extremely 
 
 123
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 cynical about this, for, as he put it, though he had always 
 known that a really good man was liable to go wrong 
 almost at any moment, he did not think that the same 
 thing applied to a really good woman. But now he 
 knew it did. Mrs Pitkeathly was head over heels in 
 love with him, in spite of the fact that she had long 
 since reached the age when a woman no longer asks to 
 be loved, but prefers instead to be feared. 
 
 She gave in to him about everything else, but she 
 was coy about the seance and would not say either 
 yes or no. Perhaps she wanted him to plead with 
 her. Women, I find, like one to plead with them. 
 But Monsieur Morton, all in a moment, fetched out of 
 a mind which was totally bare of ideas, owing to the 
 exigencies of the situation, and the feeling that time 
 was breathing hard on his heels, an inspiration. He 
 suddenly bethought him to work upon her curiosity, of 
 which, as we know, she had a great deal. Had he 
 thought of this before he would have spared us much 
 anxiety. But better late than never. She gave in at 
 once when he approached her upon this side. He 
 hinted that it would be an excellent opportunity to get 
 the medium to obtain inside information about a 
 scandal which had caused the hotel to rock to its very 
 foundations the year before, and in which four if not five 
 or six very well-known society people w r ere very nearly 
 involved, but which caused the bitterest disappoint- 
 ment by fizzling out in the most disheartening way just 
 as there seemed a reasonable chance of its resulting in 
 a big ilare-up. Many and many a time Mrs Pitkeathly 
 had laid down the law about it and given no one the 
 benefit of the doubt. But, poor soul, she'd had a 
 wretched stock of details and nothing really definite to 
 go by, and hadn't been able to bring things to a head 
 or manufacture details. With luck and some perse- 
 verance at the seance the ins and outs of the matter 
 might be got at and Mrs Pitkeathly might be gratified 
 by hearing that things were even worse than she had 
 dared hope. The medium would be got to press these 
 
 124
 
 MRS PTTKEATHLY 
 
 questions and not allow the spirits to evade them or 
 wander from the point as the creatures so often do. 
 
 This palpitating question having been finally as good 
 as settled irretrievably, there was nothing to do but to 
 fret and fume till the appointed time should strike. 
 
 The morning came and went, meals were served ; 
 the afternoon wore on, and the evening was with us. I 
 was clammy and bad-tempered. I called the con- 
 spirators together and gave them wrong directions, and 
 it was not till they had soothed me down and repeated 
 the directions I had given to them in calmer moments 
 that I perceived that everyone had their work off as pat 
 as could be. Not only that, but I got the feeling that I 
 have sometimes had when I was captaining a team that 
 was about to meet another one that we had challenged 
 or who had challenged us namely, that here under my 
 hand was a team that was out to carry the matter we 
 had on through to the end, and let nothing stand in the 
 way of a victorious consummation. 
 
 All day the snow had continued to fall and the ground 
 was piled high and the shovellers and sweepers almost 
 gave up in despair. Various fixtures were postponed 
 and in addition to the excitement in our breasts, owing 
 to the uninvitingness of things outside, and people 
 wandering unsettled in the hotel, uncertain whether to 
 go in or go out, there was an excitement abroad in it 
 which corresponded to and seemed to be part of the 
 same excitement that possessed us. 
 
 I looked out of the great glazed vitrines of the palm 
 court. The snow kept on and on accumulating. 
 Madame would have a bitter journey and a difficult. 
 There would be avalanches and mourning in the 
 villages after this. 
 
 That night it was not till I had piloted them up to 
 the corridor by Monsieur's suite that I felt the thing 
 was in hand. As Burns says, the " best-laid schemes of 
 mice and men gang aft agley " and it's amazing what 
 possibilities of derangement of even one's most care- 
 
 125
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 fully thought-out plans lurk in the sleeves of destiny. 
 True, we had gone up night after night in a chattering 
 bunch, without any persuasion or manoeuvring ; but 
 that was no guarantee that it would occur to-night, 
 when it was imperatively necessary that it should. 
 
 Mrs Pitkeathly kept stopping to talk to people and 
 people kept coming up to her and wanting to know how 
 many you knitted plain or purled, or dropped when you 
 turned the corner. A new stocking toe that didn't get 
 into a ridge inside the boot had taken the hotel by 
 storm. A stocking which, owing to some mysterious 
 system of dropping and picking up of stitches in its 
 making, clipped the wearer round the ankle and didn't 
 come creeping down. I would have been all for this in 
 the ordinary way, but not this night. I was afraid 
 Mrs Pitkeathly might mention to what dark doings she 
 was about to lend herself and that someone might dis- 
 suade her. Hotels are always crammed with people 
 who want to dissuade everyone from doing anything 
 they have made up their minds to do. And though 
 once her mind was made up or she had set out to do a 
 thing, Mrs Pitkeathly didn't often get turned aside- 
 still there was a chance of its occurring. She moved 
 with the speed of a glacier to-night. I weaned her 
 away from her interrogators and coaxed her step by 
 step to the lift. I kept close beside her, burdened with 
 her impedimenta, smelling-salts, wool, shawl and book, 
 fearing to let her out of my control. And yet to have 
 showed too much eagerness would have been an error, 
 to which her mind might have homed afterwards. 
 
 The hour was not early. For a carefully selected 
 variety of reasons we chose to make it late. It ensured, 
 as far as was humanly possible, Madame's arrival by 
 giving her ample time for her snowy drive and allowing 
 for delay in transit owing to deep snow on the railway 
 line. This was a solid reason, a material one for not 
 beginning too early. There was another reason, based 
 on the psychology of the human mind, and one into 
 which we had gone very carefully. We remembered 
 
 126
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 in connection with what we had planned that certain 
 things can be done without loss of dignity in the eyes of 
 the world or loss of caste in the eyes of Society in 
 the daylight hours. Things which if indulged in then 
 are regarded as mere bagatelles and frolicsome pecca- 
 dilloes. But which if indulged in during the later 
 hours when the hands of the clock point to the hour of 
 midnight, or just before or after, are regarded as crimes 
 which bring utter condemnation or social ostracism in 
 their train. So that if a man and a girl hold hands at 
 ten o'clock in the morning it's a good joke. If they do 
 so at eight-forty-five in the evening it is also all right 
 or even at nine-fifteen. But at twenty minutes to 
 ten P.M. it has begun to be risky and at a quarter after 
 midnight the girl would be considered to be henceforth 
 beyond the pale, and the man a bold bad fellow ! 
 
 I never have been able to gauge why this should be 
 so ; there must be some reason or at any rate the echo 
 of a reason. But like many other things which I don't 
 understand, I was going to make use of it. Mrs Pit- 
 keathly was to be found clasping Monsieur Morton's 
 hand as close upon the striking of midnight as possible, 
 and then nothing could save her. The explanation 
 we'd give her for the holding of the seance then would 
 be that according to Miss Smith the spirits were more 
 get-at-able in the smaller hours of the night. That the 
 old superstitions about the witching hour had been 
 proved by psychical research to be quite justified. 
 Strange bodies without substance were inclined to move 
 and creep about then, tentatively, and if one said 
 " Halt ! " in a tone of authority the poor weak-minded 
 things would stand still and allow themselves to be 
 interrogated. 
 
 To fill in the time between getting upstairs and the 
 commencement of the seance in the dark, and as it were 
 to lead up to it, Monsieur had planned a farewell supper 
 to be spread in his sitting-room ; for it was getting 
 towards the time of our dispersal to our several 
 bournes. Here again little things fitted in nicely. The 
 
 127
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 encumbrances of the supper-table and the service, 
 plates, glasses, knives and dishes, was an excellent excuse 
 for adjourning into the inner room (in addition to the 
 increased quietness favoured of the spirits). And if Mrs 
 Pitkeathly tremblingly pointed to the supper-table and 
 all the places set, when accused, as a proof of her not 
 having sought to be alone with Madame' s husband, 
 Madame would refer scathingly to the debris of the 
 feast as evidence of an orgy indulged in surrepti- 
 tiously when her back was turned ! ! It would be my 
 business as property man to scatter about with an eye 
 to artistic effect several empty champagne bottles 
 which I had obtained from Frangois the faithful. At 
 the moment they were hidden in a cupboard. 
 
 Supper progressed merrily and Mrs Pitkeathly did 
 not forswear the flowing bowl though she was never 
 behind-hand in condemning the absorption of cham- 
 pagne or cup on the part of any of the other ladies stay- 
 ing in the hotel. Her conversation hovered around 
 the subject of what questions, put by the medium, 
 would elicit the most information from the spirits. 
 She was determined to obtain light on the subject of 
 the scandal if she could. 
 
 A gentle knocking made itself heard in the middle of 
 a funny story which had materialised from out of one 
 of the humorous creases in Monsieur's face. He paused 
 and we looked at the door. It was not part of the pro- 
 ceedings that anyone should knock gently. Every- 
 thing that was necessaiy to our well-being had been 
 served, and Francois, handsomely tipped, had departed 
 with the pressing injunction that he was on no account 
 to return that night, but clear the table next morning. 
 I stood up and went to guard the door, for any unfore- 
 seen arrival would put the entire series of arrangements 
 out of joint. So I poked my head out cautiously, only 
 opening the door a crack, and saw that there stood the 
 man who held the strange theories about the world's 
 lack of stability in the solar system, and that it was 
 about to swerve from its orbit and meet a fiery end in a 
 
 128
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 collision with another planet. Dan, uneasily guarding 
 the speaking-tube, seemed to be expostulating, and 
 explaining that we were not to be disturbed, but with- 
 out avail. 
 
 Hang the fellow, I thought. He will spoil every- 
 thing. This is annoying ! I closed the door tight be- 
 hind me and stood with my back to it, and parleyed 
 with Dan in stage asides whilst encouraging my loony 
 friend to unburden himself of his great news. Dan 
 said he was bent on getting hold of me because he said 
 I was so sympathetic and never laughed at him when 
 he confided in me. "Drat it!" thought I, "this 
 comes of taking Celia's advice when she impressed on 
 me that no matter how boring or absurd a person may 
 be, I must treat them with courtesy. If I only had 
 followed my own feeling in the matter ! " 
 
 Johnson the loony was apologising for having raised 
 my hopes unduly by having prophesied the total 
 destruction of the world for the week before last, and 
 its not having come off. He'd made a mistake in his 
 mathematical calculations, and now he saw that to- 
 night was the night, and as his best friend, he wanted 
 me to hear all about it before anyone else ; and not to 
 mention it, for it was no trouble, I assure you. 
 
 I felt I didn't mind whether the world did swing into 
 space or not and get swallowed up by another system 
 but it must be after and not before Mrs Pitkeathly had 
 been brought to book of her crimes. Just then Soames 
 stuck his head out too, asking what it was. 
 
 " Nothing much," I replied, " except that my friend 
 Johnson here says that in about two hours' time the 
 end of the world is due. He's found it out by a series 
 of careful investigations and he wants us all to come up 
 on the roof and have a good view and not miss any of 
 the fun." 
 
 This was the first Soames had heard of this agreeable 
 
 little idea of Johnson's. He knew he was erratic but 
 
 didn't know it ran to this quite* I winked at him and 
 
 motioned him back to the room, and slipping my arm 
 
 i 129
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 affectionately through Johnson's we paced the corridor 
 a few moments in deep consultation, and then as I 
 couldn't find anyone else to turn him on to, I led him 
 down to his own landing two floors down. He button- 
 holed me in his febrile way, and poured out a farrago 
 of astronomical terms, and scattered drawings of the 
 solar system broadcast on his bed. He refused to let 
 me go till he had got from me a solemn promise that 
 I'd come to his room and bring the others and that we'd 
 witness the end of all things from the comparative 
 comfort of his balcony. I wondered how I'd keep him 
 occupied for some time till then and prevent his worry- 
 ing us upstairs and I therefore urged him to go and 
 rouse everybody along his own floor, one after another, 
 in rotation, and I left him at the first door, concluding 
 that as it was a long corridor it would occupy him fully 
 till it was too late to do us any harm by breaking in on 
 us at the wrong moment. 
 
 I leapt up the stairs four at a time. Monsieur looked 
 anxious as I came in ruffled and out of breath and sat 
 down to a last morsel of chicken bechamel. The others 
 had all finished and it was high time to get the seance 
 started. 
 
 After that everything went as we had arranged. We 
 had only just set ourselves down in our circle of chairs 
 and the little sofa and put out the light and grasped 
 each other's hands in a dark stillness only broken by 
 our own breathing and heart-beats, when we heard 
 down below, outside the window, in the night, a faint 
 chime of sleigh-bells. 
 
 "Madame," I muttered, giving Celia's hand a great 
 squeeze. I could have wished the seance had lasted 
 longer, for all that it was an eerie business sitting there, 
 pooling our magnetism in the dark. The warning 
 whistle must have come up almost at once, for Dan 
 burst in at the sitting-room door, and called on us all 
 in stentorian tones to go and see what he had to show 
 us, something far more important than any old seance, 
 he said. I called back and opened the door and, as 
 
 130
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 arranged, the ring was broken and we trooped out, 
 making our carefully rehearsed exclamations loud 
 enough to be heard by Mrs Pitkeathly. With a few 
 swift motions I knocked over a glass or two of cham- 
 pagne, placed the empties conspicuously, gave a twitch 
 to the tablecloth and bumped against the switch which 
 plunged the inner room in darkness calling to Dan 
 that I must also see and staggering out, fell into the 
 arms of Madame. 
 
 She clutched me. I clutched her. She had nearly 
 been snowed up in the train, and the drive back was 
 terrible. The sleigh driver hadn't wanted to undertake 
 it and how were things ? I said they were in there 
 together all as planned. There was no time to lose I 
 broke off our whispered colloquy. 
 
 " Now, Madame. Now ! Go in now ! ! ! " And I 
 bolted into Dan's room and left her to it. 
 
 We all huddled up together and listened and I think 
 we all felt it was a mighty mean thing we were doing. 
 But too late now to arrest the march of Fate ! The 
 walls were thin and we could hear everything. We 
 heard her put the light on in the sitting-room, and then 
 we heard her call "Jules," and then we heard her 
 advance and turn on the other light, and then she 
 uttered a long-drawn " Ah-h ! " and then another 
 " Ah-h ! " And then we heard Monsieur's voice pro- 
 testing volubly, and then we heard the voice of Mrs 
 Pitkeathly full of alarm, and then we heard all three 
 together, explaining, accusing, scolding, denying, pro- 
 testing, declaring for fifteen to twenty minutes quite. 
 And then one voice soared above the others. It was 
 Madame's great denunciatory speech. I knew it by 
 heart, for we had written it out together, and Madame 
 had committed it to memory, and Celia and I and Jules 
 each in turn had to listen while she did a repetition of it, 
 until word-perfect. 
 
 Listening there the differences in pitch were very 
 marked, and I observed what I had not noticed before, 
 that a Frenchwoman pitches her voice a full seven notes 
 
 131
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 higher than an Englishwoman does. And for declama- 
 tory purposes this is excellent. She had told me, and 
 listening to her I could well believe it, that she had spent 
 a great deal of money in learning elocution, and taken 
 many prizes for it at the convent where she was 
 educated. Her first dramatic exclamation " Ah-h ! " 
 was produced as I have heard it done on the sacred 
 boards of the Comedie franqaise. It shot out right 
 into the room in front of her and quivered and spent 
 itself as though it had just developed there in the air, 
 without any extraneous aid. That is how a voice 
 should be produced. She wept realistically and her 
 sobs through the thin wall sounded heart-rending. She 
 had paid four hundred francs extra for a course in sobs, 
 and the same sum for six lessons in hysterical, over- 
 wrought laughter. She told me afterwards some 
 instinct had told her that they would be useful to her 
 one day ; and that she had practised hard down at her 
 friend's house in the valley, and all the staff had thought 
 she was mad, or very ill. She was leaning against the 
 door of the inner room (no escape for anyone while 
 she did that) and it rattled again with the violence of 
 her grief. 
 
 Then Monsieur went on his knees, almost on time, 
 and made frenzied appeals to her, and begged her for 
 old times' sake to pardon him for having allowed his 
 affections to wander. The provocation was great and 
 it was the first time it had happened and would be the 
 last. He had had lessons in elocution too. Wonderful 
 people the French ! 
 
 And Madame's sobs as she listened to him redoubled 
 in vehemence. At first she was obdurate (for half-an- 
 hour by schedule), but after he had reiterated his wild 
 supplications three or four times she forgave him. 
 
 After another twenty minutes of elocution, more pro- 
 testations and more sobbing, still with her back to the 
 door (as per arrangement), she rang for her maid, and at 
 this signal Daisy and Celia, and the wife of the Argen- 
 tine went in to console her, and to turn horror-stricken 
 
 132
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 glances on Mrs Pitkeathly. humbled for ever more 
 and for ever more in the dust. They were to discuss 
 together what was to be "done next." 
 
 Jules, repentant and forgiven, was now allowed to 
 slip out and refresh himself with a stiff peg. The male 
 element did not enter into the subsequent proceedings. 
 Our business was to vanish utterly away. We pre- 
 ferred it so, for we did not wish to gloat upon our victim 
 in her hour of trial. We were sorry, very sorry for her 
 now that it was all over. Besides, manlike, having 
 roused the very dickens, we were only too glad to get 
 out of it and leave it to the women to settle. 
 
 " My wife," said Monsieur, after a gulp at his peg of 
 whisky, " protests that nothing will satisfy her but 
 that Madame Pitkeathly shall leave here to-morrow. 
 This she says she will do, for she is completely of opinion 
 that her reputation here is worth nothing. The coup 
 seems to have taken her completely by surprise. She 
 cannot even begin to think, and she suspects nothing of 
 that it is what you call a a 
 
 " A plant," someone said. 
 
 ' Yes, a plant. She makes no excuse but to say that 
 she forgot herself, and is sorry, completement boulver- 
 see. Ma foi ! She will make no more scandals. This 
 has been a lesson to her ! " 
 
 The voices rose and fell in the next room. 
 
 We had a vision of her there, quite distraught, be- 
 wildered ; and a vision of her, monstrous and woe- 
 begone, living to catch the earliest train after a night 
 spent in hurried packing ; in her distress scattering 
 tips which in calmer moments she'd never have given, 
 and thus losing what was perhaps the greatest pleasure 
 of all to her namely, the look of disappointment on the 
 faces of the hotel attendants. Flying after a sleepless 
 night, spent in pondering on the strange unwontedness 
 of her position, that she who had hitherto been the fore- 
 most amongst those to hound and scent out scandal, 
 should now be a fugitive, the implicated one, and 
 
 133
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 dissembler of her movements and motives, instead of 
 being the one to harry. Something monstrous and 
 inimical and unforeseen had risen upon her, grappled 
 with her and thrown her down. If she had heard of 
 someone being found in a like position at that hour, 
 would she have spared them or failed to think the 
 worst and denounce them ? No. Then why should she 
 expect mercy. She would now be the hounded, not 
 the hound ; the fugitive, not the pursuer. 
 
 Our cigars and cigarettes were puffed at half-heartedly 
 as we discussed the ethics of what we had done. Now 
 that it was done, we were not quite happy over it. I 
 think we did not in retrospect feel it was quite man's 
 work. Our consciences pricked us. 
 
 The voices still rose and fell in the next room. 
 
 What an illogical thing a conscience is, I thought, 
 wandering off again mentally. It refuses to be 
 educated. Mine I find pricks me when my brain, 
 which has responded to my educational studies, and 
 has become extensively and decidedly logical and cap- 
 able of seeing things as they are, tells me that I have 
 done right. Yet very often when my brain tells me 
 that I should feel it pricking me I feel nothing. There 
 is no proper co-ordination between the two. Very 
 often I do not know that I have done wrong until my 
 neighbour, labouring under the disadvantage of know- 
 ing nothing of my affairs, points out in a voice choking 
 with indignation how badly I have behaved. Why 
 should we, after all, burden ourselves with a conscience 
 at all when our neighbours are always so kind and will- 
 ing and eager to tell us when we go wrong ? It is as 
 unnecessary as an appendix. As a proviso of nature 
 it works out this way that each man burdens himself 
 with one, allows it to take up his time and sap his 
 energy and in return it only registers the misdeeds of 
 his friends and keeps them on the straight and narrow 
 road. He cannot rely upon it in a crisis at all for 
 himself. It is tantamount to going to the expense of 
 keeping a carriage so that others shall ride in it. 
 
 134
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 And here were we, linking up all our consciences 
 and setting them to work on Mrs Pitkeathly's behalf, to 
 put her on the straight road to the station. 
 
 Again the voices were heard, and again my conscience 
 pricked me. Pooh ! I thought, my brain stringing facts 
 together logically, it was ridiculous that we should 
 feel qualms about Mrs Pitkeathly. She richly de- 
 served all she had got and more, and yet there we were 
 all there, each of us inwardly blaming the other for not 
 having vetoed the thing in its inception. We saw her 
 again before us a stricken creature and we sat silent 
 smoking. 
 
 Far from having done her a bad turn we had gone 
 to a lot of trouble to help her. The punishment would 
 develop and sweeten her character. She would brood 
 over it a bit but in time it would do her good. Things 
 had been too much in her favour so far. her soul had 
 become stunted because of her easy niche in life. There 
 is some nourishment in sorrow for people's souls. 
 Those who meet with it increase in mental stature. 
 
 Again and again I have noticed that the most de- 
 lightful person in the world is the Englishman or 
 Englishwoman who has some slight blemish on their 
 character ; who at some time or another succumbed to 
 one of those natural impulses to which all human beings 
 are prone, to step aside from the narrow path just for 
 a moment, and was found out. Not enough of a 
 lapse to blacken, only enough just to breathe a faint 
 tarnish upon. The knowledge of this drawback moves 
 them to exert themselves to please, to make others 
 forget the lapse ; to charm, to bring out the best they 
 have in them, to display and use it. While if it hadn't 
 been for their misfortune their treasures of personality 
 would have lain behind the walls of their national 
 reserve. The people of no other country have such a 
 store of treasures under lock and key. 
 
 We might at some future time see what Mrs 
 Pitkeathly could produce.
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 At that moment came a gentle tapping at the door. 
 
 It was Johnson. Come up to see if we were coming 
 down to see the " fun." 
 
 We jumped up only too glad of anything that would 
 create a diversion and serve as an anodyne or counter- 
 irritant in the matter of our consciences. It would be a 
 kind action to stay with him and soothe him when the 
 moment came that would prove his calculations in- 
 correct and help him to forget his disappointment 
 when he found that the world was not going incon- 
 tinently to be destroyed. 
 
 He led the way downstairs delighted to have got 
 hold of so many people and to be able to afford them 
 such an exceptional form of entertainment. There 
 would be nothing hackneyed or everyday about it, 
 certainly, and he was in a flutter at the idea of playing 
 the part of host on such a very important and far- 
 reaching occasion ; for I think he had almost begun to 
 believe that he was in some way implicated in it and 
 responsible for its passing off without a hitch, just as I 
 had felt about the affair we had lately had in hand. 
 When we were in his room he produced and passed 
 around to us some quite good liqueur (I don't suppose 
 the doctor would have been best pleased if he had 
 known he had the heady stuff there). He only had two 
 glasses and we had to make up the number required 
 with bedroom tumblers and small china mugs with 
 " Souvenir of Lautersimmen " painted on them. We 
 toasted everyone else's and our own future states with 
 ceremony. Soames was more than ever at a loss. I 
 think the events of the whole evening were beginning 
 to appear in the light of a series of bad dreams or night- 
 mares to him and nothing would cause him surprise 
 now. He drank his liqueur very solemnly and toasted 
 very solemnly. 
 
 The liqueurs having found good homes, Johnson 
 corked the bottle with a bang from his palm and said, 
 as it would intensify the fun and interest of the occasion 
 if we all had some idea on broad lines of what had 
 
 136
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 occurred and led up to this catastrophe, he would take 
 us through the figures as carefully as the limited time 
 that lay before us would permit. We soon wouldn't 
 have the. use of our brains, so let us do something with 
 them while we still had them. At any moment now 
 we might be burnt to oil rags or dried up like Sahara 
 sand. He hurried us through the resumes of his 
 calculations, sheets and sheets of figures, pointing out 
 with his long bony forefinger, parts worthy of extra 
 attention as ensuring the catastrophe beyond the 
 shadow of a doubt. Monsieur Morton remarked to me 
 in a whisper that they gave evidences of mathematical 
 ability amounting almost to genius. 
 
 His theories were extraordinarily convincing. One 
 felt with a slight sinking sensation that nothing but a 
 miscalculation as regards " pi " or a few friendly decimal 
 points stood between us and our doom. If these failed 
 us we were lost. 
 
 Mrs Pitkeathly instead of driving at a very early 
 hour along the road to the station would soar away 
 elsewhere in the form of fine dust, intermixed with a 
 cloud of steam. For when the impact with the other 
 world came all rivers, and seas, and vegetation, or other 
 bodies containing juice or moisture would inevitably 
 be vaporised in the ensuant flames. 
 
 Perhaps our efforts had all been wasted : it might be 
 that soon she was to be haled before a higher and more 
 dread tribunal than any earthly one. 
 
 The moment was now drawing close. It was almost 
 upon us. Johnson tidied away his papers and locked 
 up the remains of the liqueur with a look of pathos and 
 farewell. He then put out the light ; we buttoned 
 our coats up to our necks and stepped out on to the 
 balcony. 
 
 Though my eyes have looked long and often on many 
 lovely things, they'd never seen anything to excel what 
 they now rested upon. During the earlier hours of the 
 
 137
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 night the ermine snow had flung its regal mantle over 
 all ; over the measureless pinnacles, the plains, the 
 valley, winding on its way ; the villages nestling on 
 the mountain-sides. Everything seemed to wait for 
 God knows what, in a breathless starry silence. 
 
 Not for destruction, certainly, or not yet. 
 
 With their great grand uplifted outlines and their 
 cold stone strength, the Alps would stand as proxy in 
 the mind for anything that was immortal, enduring, 
 eternal. 
 
 The stars gave a cold divine light. 
 
 The little lamps in the villages gave a warm human 
 light. 
 
 We stood and stood and nothing happened. The 
 air was stilly. It felt almost mild because of its still- 
 ness. Our coats were buttoned high and we took in 
 all the aching beauty of that wondrous winter's night. 
 
 We forgot the impending calamity. We talked of 
 nature, immortality, destiny. We talked of man and 
 of his insignificance, and asked one another to give 
 reasons for his existing at all. We looked at the 
 planets and wondered what they meant. Were there 
 living creatures on them and did they speculate on 
 our scintillations, as we did on theirs. Mrs Pitkeathly 
 dwindled into nothingness in our minds. We forgot 
 we had punished her or that she had needed 
 punishing. 
 
 Fifteen minutes passed. Nothing happened. Half- 
 an-hour passed. Nothing happened. Three-quarters 
 of an hour passed. Nothing happened, except that I 
 noticed that Johnson had slipped off and had laid 
 down on his bed in all his clothes, and was drowning 
 his disappointment in deep slumbers. To-morrow he'd 
 set to work and hound out the fragment of " pi " or 
 the vagrant decimal which had upset his calculations. 
 I gently drew an eiderdown over him and motioned 
 good-night to the others as they made themselves 
 scarce, silently. 
 
 138
 
 MRS PITKEATHLY 
 
 I went to the windows to close them, and open the 
 ventilators, and as I did so I threw one last glance 
 outside. 
 
 " Thank goodness," I said half aloud, " thank 
 goodness the Swiss can't apply their own sumptuary 
 laws to their own scenery." 
 
 139

 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 " IT is the most beautiful yacht, about the sixth 
 biggest in the world, and Mr Hitchcock has given me 
 carle blanche to ask anyone I like." Thus Celia. 
 
 " How soon do we start ? " running over in my mind 
 the details of a man's correct yachting kit. Celia 
 springs things on one and tailors hate being hurried. 
 It unnerves them. If the cruise lasted six or seven 
 weeks, judgment would be needed washing has to be 
 considered. I recollected vaguely that I'd seen yacht- 
 ing men in musical comedy, but otherwise the manners 
 and customs of yachting society were unknown to me. 
 Aunt Anne had a copy of The Voyage oj the " Sunbeam " 
 in the Chippendale cupboard the bad period one with 
 the broken arch. I'd read that. 
 
 " She's already in commission and we are to start 
 next Thursday week. Lady Pauncefote was to have 
 trotted up her party, but owing to family matters the 
 whole thing has fallen through and I am to provide 
 the people." 
 
 " Ah ! here's a great chance to work out one of your 
 human chemical combinations. Who are you going 
 to ask ? May I ask if you're asking me ! You'd not 
 have mentioned it if you hadn't meant to ask me, I 
 think ; that would be too like dear Mrs Pitkeathly 
 at the top of her form." 
 
 " I wouldn't dream of leaving you behind. There ! " 
 
 " Can't be trusted, I suppose. Well, maybe you're 
 right. Am I to be taken into your confidence over any 
 of the intrigues afoot, or afloat ? What are they to be ? 
 Merely personal or something of far-reaching world 
 
 141
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 import ? Are you brewing something that may give 
 the diplomats headaches, and will take them months to 
 unravel ? " 
 
 " It's nothing personal. It is as you say a world 
 matter quite really yes yes," said Celia pensively 
 pulling the ears of a pale peevish pekinese, with an 
 expression on its face like Bismarck after he had torn 
 up a treaty. " Yes, it's a world matter or should 
 be." 
 
 I tried hard to get Celia to tell me who or what 
 it was all about or of whom the party would consist. 
 She wouldn't. But she let me know Bulkeley was not 
 coming. 
 
 Walking to and from my tailor's in the course of 
 the ten days which intervened before we sailed (I had 
 found the man who held the appointment of tailor to 
 the Royal Yacht Squadron and felt I was in safe hands), 
 I came to some decisions about doing up my chambers, 
 giving my man and his wife a holiday, sending certain 
 things to be cleaned and so on and so forth, with the 
 result that I asked Celia if she would store a piece of 
 fur for me and this she very kindly consented to do. 
 Celia is a great one for storage of furs. She has many 
 fine sets and some sables as black as your hat and do 
 you think she would trust them to one of those storage 
 places ? Certainly not. She has her own cedarwood 
 chests and with as many and sundr^ rites as are needed 
 for the embalming of a mummy she lays her precious 
 furs to sleep all through the long summer days. 
 
 And yet I had some misgivings the night before we 
 sailed, when I strolled round to Grosvenor Square 
 with the piece of fur under my arm. 
 
 " Good heavens ! " said Celia, standing in the middle 
 of a lot of tissue paper and pretty fluffy things and 
 trunks, with her hair very rumpled and wearing a 
 rest-gown. " You never said it was a cat ! " 
 
 " No more I did, when I come to think of it. Still 
 you said you'd store a piece of fur for me, and as you 
 can see, Edward is covered with fur, all over and all 
 
 143
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 one piece. No joins in it anywhere ! " This is a great 
 point with Celia. The fewer the joins the better the 
 fur, she says. ( 
 
 " I certainly said I'd store a piece of fur for you, 
 but you never said there was anything inside it ! " 
 
 I shook my head obstinately. " You said you'd 
 store a piece of fur for me," I said doggedly, and 
 oddly enough, seeing that I was discussing the matter 
 of a cat. 
 
 " I never said a cat." 
 
 "You never made any stipulations." 
 
 " I never thought you'd play such a trick on me." 
 
 " That's exactly like a woman, a promise with them 
 never means anything. They always go back on their 
 given word." 
 
 It acts like a charm with Celia to accuse her of not 
 keeping her word or to cast animadversions on her 
 sex 011 this point. Fortunately for me she has one 
 or two little weaknesses on which I can play, or where 
 should I be ! 
 
 " You know I hate cats." 
 
 " Yes, I know. That's what I " 
 
 " That's why you said nothing about it, but as 
 I've given my word I must go through with it I 
 suppose." 
 
 I patted Edward tenderly and gave his tail a farewell 
 pull and handed him over to Celia' s maid to take down 
 to the kitchen. I really do not care much for cats, 
 but I'd lost a very cherished bull terrier and hadn't the 
 heart to put another dog in his place. Besides I used 
 to tell Edward all about him, and his tricks and his 
 doings, and he used to listen, and he filled a blank. 
 One snowy winter's night I'd picked him up, mewing 
 weakly, starving and famished with the cold. I never 
 thought he'd live, but I warmed him and fed him and 
 he didn't die, and the subsequent gratitude and affec- 
 tion he lavished on me gave me as the French would 
 say furiously to think, and led me to make com- 
 parisons between the behaviour of animals one has 
 
 143
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 been kind to and the behaviour of human beings one 
 has been kind to, and I drew conclusions greatly to the 
 detriment of the latter. I've done many good turns 
 in my time to my fellows, and have had surprisingly 
 little thanks. Celia having heard all the circumstances, 
 softened greatly towards Edward, and we decided he 
 was a cat with a nice mind. She had him fetched 
 upstairs again and had a good look at him, because, 
 as she remarked, gratitude is such a rare attribute, he 
 must indeed be a remarkable cat. 
 
 It may seem rather a poor joke to have played on 
 Celia, but if I'd asked her point-blank to take him 
 she'd have said " No," and doing it this way, I managed 
 the affair. Edward was quite an aristocrat in his own 
 four-footed way. I don't think he'd have liked it if 
 I had left him with just anyone, and his table manners, 
 which were perfect, might have suffered. 
 
 The yacht was really a tiling of beauty and some- 
 thing to dream of, as she lay by the quayside, a floating 
 edition of a Riviera palace. D % azzling-white, speckless- 
 clean, she gently rode at anchor in the harbour, the 
 Blue Ensign floating at her stern. There were even 
 big banks of flowers placed by the gangway to greet 
 us and cheer us as we arrived, and which of course 
 would be removed before we sailed. She was an 
 object of much attention and admiration as she lay 
 there. Parties were evidently made up by the towns- 
 folk to come down and take a look at her, and gaze 
 wistfully and penetratingly at her sides. Knots of 
 idlers were standing with hands in their pockets and 
 by their absorbed and, in some cases, absorbent- 
 looking faces they were making a quietly violent 
 mental effort to picture to themselves what life must 
 be like for the swells on board such a luxurious vessel. 
 Such of the crew as appeared on deck, swabbing or 
 polishing, or carrying bits of luggage about, also were 
 scrutinised closely, as the strange and interesting 
 myrmidons, who circulated hither and thither, in 
 
 144
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 obedience to the lightest wish of the diamond-studded 
 multi-millionaire ; obeying instructions to the letter, 
 conveyed to them by the flick of an eyelash or the 
 twitch of an ear ; for surely a man who could own a 
 vessel like this would not have to condescend to talk 
 and utter words, if he wanted a thing done. It would 
 be too much exertion and as likely as not his servants 
 and crew were all trained thought-readers. It was 
 equal to a whole volume of romance out of the free 
 library up in the town. Some of the idlers, to my know- 
 ledge, stood there for hours, only stirring to light a 
 fresh fag, or every now and again expectorate into the 
 waters which lay below. 
 
 Celia was in good time to act as hostess for Mr 
 Hitchcock and his daughter, and to present the guests 
 as they made their appearance. Hitchcock had indeed 
 left it entirely to Celia. He knew enough about 
 hospitality and entertaining to know that it's as 
 dangerous to mix friends haphazard as it is to mix 
 drinks that way. Americans really do understand 
 that in handling a party of people the component parts 
 must either mingle or remain apart, not combine and 
 explode. He guessed Mrs Carmichael knew what she 
 was doing and he'd leave it all to her. 
 
 H'm! 
 
 So he stood beside her, leaning over the rails near 
 the gangway, and they chatted intimately and gaily. 
 He was evidently hers entirely to command. I did 
 not resent this. He wasn't young, and I'd taken a 
 fancy to him the moment he shook hands with me and 
 welcomed me aboard his yacht in a few quiet words. 
 He was as fine a specimen as I'd ever seen from the 
 United States ; well set-up and genial, and his fresh 
 kindly face chockful of fat force and good humour. 
 His daughter was a peach just that and she and I 
 forgathered on the spot, and whilst waiting for the 
 others she showed me all over the yacht. 
 
 How good it smelt. A jolly, cheery, heave-ho my 
 lads smell all up and down everywhere. Perfectly 
 
 K H.J
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 scrumptious, I thought it. Fresh paint, polished 
 wood with a little saltiness added, and a little smell of 
 fresh plush in the cabins too. I loved it. 
 
 Miss Sadie and I laughed and talked unceasingly, 
 and I told her how nice she was and she told me how 
 nice I was. In fact, she went further, and declared 
 she had never met anyone half as nice since the last 
 time she was up at Poughkeepsie. I thanked her and 
 asked her where Poughkeepsie was, and if there were 
 exceptionally nice people there, and she laughed and 
 said most decidedly yes. They beat the band entirely 
 and it was some compliment to be compared to them 
 at all. Then she gave me a lesson in the pronunciation 
 of the word. The county people pronounced it Puff- 
 keepsie, and the common, or if you liked to put it 
 that w r ay, common-sense people pronounced it Pekeesie 
 because it was less trouble. She suggested I should 
 pronounce it with the " Puff " because I was too 
 aristocratic-looking to be really sensible. I caught on 
 to it at once, because I know a town the name of which 
 is also pronounced differently by two different sets of 
 people. The county pronounce the last syllable to 
 rhyme with the first in Pytchley, while the others 
 pronounce it correctly. Whenever we came up the 
 companion-way to see who else had turned up, or to 
 proceed with our sightseeing on another part of the 
 yacht, her appearance created intense excitement 
 among the loungers on the quay. 
 
 " See ! There she is that's 'er. There there 
 in man's clothes." 
 
 And, strictly speaking, this was true, for Miss Sadie 
 was a very boyish figure indeed, in smart riding breeches 
 and a little dark covert coat, cut like a man's dinner- 
 jacket rather. Her soft neck had the whitest and 
 neatest of stocks round it and where this disappeared 
 inside her coat, it was held in place by a long, thin 
 pin, hunting-horn shape, in very yellow unalloyed 
 gold. (Tiffany, says I.) Her little panama hung on 
 her arm by a piece of thick elastic and her hair was 
 
 146
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 very soft and dark, like spun shadows, and a stray piece 
 had to be tucked in occasionally by a firm white hand, 
 from which a plain dogskin glove had been removed 
 for the purpose. The long shapeliness of her slim 
 knees, encased in skin-tight buckskin, showing above 
 the top-boots, was very agreeable to a cultured 
 masculine eye. 
 
 " By Jove, she's not half thoroughbred either ! " 
 said I to myself, contradicting an assertion which I had 
 not made to the contrary. Besides the knees, there 
 was a soft creamy skin, and the dark grey eyes like 
 those ripping old darkly brilliant Brazilian diamonds, 
 which seem to have a dusting of darker specks within. 
 Her costume was due to the fact that she had ridden 
 all the way from town, by easy stages, because, as she 
 explained, it would be a long time before she got a 
 chance of any horseback riding, and she felt lost 
 without any exercise. 
 
 She was, as I knew, a great amazon, and the news of 
 her exploits had reached this country long before she 
 did, for she captained a ladies' polo team in California 
 which was understood to put up a pretty red-hot game 
 to all comers. 
 
 We mutually concluded that the trip was to be great 
 fun. I asked : " Can you tell me who else is coming ? " 
 She did not rightly know, but she had vague recollec- 
 tions of hearing her father and Celia discussing it, and 
 it was partly to give a very prominent Cabinet Minister 
 who had lost his voice a real holiday for once, and also, 
 she believed, it had been decided to bring some Labour 
 members along, to widen their point of view and 
 broaden their minds generally, by travel, so there 
 would probably be a sprinkling of them. Celia and 
 Poppa had said this was of paramount importance, 
 and ought to be seen to at once. Poppa said they were 
 always in such a hurry to build Utopias that it would 
 be an admirable thing she pronounced it with the 
 accent on the second syllable to let them see what an 
 old game it was and how often it had been tried already 
 
 147
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 and failed, before Labour members were ever thought 
 of. He'd interviewed the chef and told him to include 
 boiled gammon on the menu, as he had heard they 
 liked it. I said I guessed that gammon of any sort 
 or kind was the last thing they'd stand for and quite 
 right too. But where were we going. Had she any 
 idea ? Yes, she had, more or less. She hadn't paid 
 much attention to the discussions, as horses were more 
 in her line than yachts, but she thought we were to 
 wander about the Mediterranean, calling at various 
 ports as we felt inclined, and then do the same in the 
 JEgean and the Ionian seas, visiting Athens and some 
 of the islands beyond. Poppa said the Labour people 
 had never rightly grasped the great political lessons 
 which could be mastered by studying the rise and fall 
 of the different great ancient civilisations. Poppa 
 did not think they gave enough attention to them 
 at all. 
 
 " Great Scott ! " said I. " Are w r e to be densely 
 surrounded by wild and rampageous Labour members? " 
 
 "Don't ask me," said Miss Sadie. "I can't say 
 how many there are going to be. I rather like them. 
 There's no nonsense about them and they are always 
 interesting, and that's more than can be said for 
 swagger people." 
 
 At that moment I drew her attention to an odd sight. 
 We had gone dow r n to the saloon for tea, and from 
 where we stood talking we could just see the top of 
 the companion-way, so that the legs only of people 
 w r ere visible as they went by. Just now we observed 
 that two pairs of legs had paused in earnest conversa- 
 tion, preparatory to descending. We could not hear 
 what the people to whom the legs belonged were 
 saying, but even so we might almost have guessed what 
 the trend of the conversation of the owner of each of 
 them would be. One pair was aggressive and sturdy 
 and domineering-looking. They shot inwards from 
 the hips and then shot outwards from the knees again, 
 supporting their owner strongly and trestle-wise. 
 
 118
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 " Where have I seen those legs before ? " I murmured. 
 The feet planted themselves truculently and decidedly 
 on the top stair. There were bumps on the ends of 
 the boots, and the toes themselves were set wide apart. 
 You could see that nothing short of a charge of dyna- 
 mite would move that person once he had made up his 
 mind on insufficient premises about anything. " Where 
 have I seen those legs before ? " I had it. Of course. 
 John Tenniel's drawings of the British workman when 
 he was in a stubborn mood, or Sullivan's drawings of 
 the plumber who had gone away and left his job half 
 done, when there was a burst pipe in question, flooding 
 the whole house. 
 
 I pinched Miss Sadie's arm (nice arm), " Look, 
 look ! " I said. " That's one of the Labour members 
 for a ducat. Mark my words, that's one of them." 
 
 " Sakes alive, is it ? " she said. 
 
 But who did the other legs belong to ? I looked at 
 them. " Where have I seen those legs before ? " 
 They were straight, with a gentle, undecided, or at 
 any rate I'm-open-to-conviction look about them. 
 The grey trousers were faded and wavy in outline and 
 came down concertina-wise, just a shade too much 
 over the gentle wistful feet, encased in round-toed 
 boots of soft and well-used leather. The toes turned 
 slightly inwards, introspectively, pleadingly. They 
 were, take them for all in all, the most conciliatory and 
 kindly-looking legs I'd ever seen. Whoever the owner 
 was, I knew I would like him. Suddenly recollections 
 of various caricatures came into my mind. Caricatures 
 of all sorts and kinds seen in daily papers, or weekly 
 ones, or in clubs hanging on the walls of the smoking- 
 room, or in monthly periodicals lying on dentists' 
 waiting-room tables, to help to pass the moments, 
 which seem so interminably short, before one goes in. 
 
 " They seem strangely familiar where have I 
 
 Great Scott it can't be yes, it is by Jingo, it must 
 be the Prime Minister ! ! ! " 
 
 Simultaneously, and at this moment, the pairs of 
 
 149
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 legs resumed locomotory movements and began to 
 descend the companion-way stairs and we of course 
 went forward to meet them. It was the Prime Minister, 
 no less ! 
 
 " Great Scott ! " I said again, half to myself and 
 half to Miss Sadie, still holding her arm lightly to keep 
 her attention and explaining under my breath who it 
 was. I'd get even with Celia for not telling me before- 
 hand. It was too bad, when I might have had a 
 chance of reading up some political memoirs or old 
 funny stories, or some Parliamentary law books and 
 impressing him. These sort of people are so useful 
 to rising barristers or even to those who don't rise, 
 like myself. I might even have realised who was 
 coming, when Miss Sadie had told me that they were 
 expecting a prominent Cabinet Minister who had lost 
 his voice, for the papers had been ringing with it ; but 
 as she only mentioned it ten minutes or so before, it 
 didn't give one much time to sort out a few subjects 
 likely to go down well, or to change or to tone down 
 one's political views so as to fit in with his. One might 
 have done it in a week, but hardly in ten minutes, 
 with decency. It was too bad ! Miss Sadie, as an 
 American, was equal to the occasion, and shook hands 
 warmly with them both, explaining who she was, and 
 who I was, and extracting their names from them, and 
 effecting the introductions without turning a hair. 
 
 The Prime Minister looked at her with kind puzzled 
 eyes. By the way, have you noticed that most people 
 who try to serve their country get a puzzled look in 
 their eyes in time ? But this is irrelevant and not 
 organic. I'm afraid in telling this story I put most 
 things in their wrong sequence and wander away into 
 side issues, but there's rather a lot to tell and it's a 
 bit puzzling to get things in their right places and takes 
 so long to think out, I find. Anyway, he looked at 
 her, and told her in a hoarse whisper he was greatly 
 looking forward to the trip. It was an inspiration to 
 have asked him, and he felt it was an inspiration, 
 
 150
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 equally, on his part, to have accepted it. Seeing 
 Miss Hitchcock, he felt quite sure of it. 
 
 Miss Hitchcock laughed and thanked him prettily. 
 She was by now giving Mr Stalybrass, the Labour 
 member, his tea. For he was, even as I had said, one 
 of them. He seemed inclined to take it seriously and 
 settle down to it quite a good deal, so we three did the 
 talking. The Prime Minister, who would talk a lot, 
 said that, apart from the delightful company he would 
 have, what he thought would please him most about 
 the trip was that he understood there would be 
 great, if not insuperable, difficulties about obtaining 
 newspapers regularly. He hated newspapers above all. 
 They were horrid things and worried him so. They 
 were always asking him why he didn't do something, 
 and when he did do anything they all got cross and 
 slated him for having done it. It was very trying. 
 Do what you will, you could not please them. If 
 they'd only tell you what should be done that is, 
 of course, something feasible and reasonable but 
 they always teemed with absurd suggestions. His 
 doctors said this trip was the very thing. He must 
 get away from the newspapers, they said and he was 
 going to ! He put his head on one side and peered 
 round the saloon short- sightcdly and as if he thought 
 it looked very nice. 
 
 I chipped in, partly to stop him speaking, for I'm 
 sure it w r as bad for him, and partly to reassure him, 
 saying that after we had been out cruising a while 
 we'd begin to feel quite differently towards the news- 
 papers, and our hearts would ache with sympathy with 
 the Ancient Britons who thought they were lucky if 
 they got their first news of some great battle twenty 
 years after it had been fought, by word of mouth from 
 a wandering minstrel who was likely to alter the 
 details and even assign the victory to the wrong people. 
 
 " Ah, ha ! " he chuckled and wheezed ; " good, 
 very good ! By word of mouth from Thamaris of 
 Thrace. He was the last minstrel, you know ! Ah, 
 
 151
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 ha ! very good ! " He chuckled again and looked at 
 me as if he thought I was a clever fellow, and I' felt 
 as if I'd not done so badly, in spite of Celia's not telling 
 me he was coming. There's nothing like an impromptu, 
 after all. 
 
 We showed them their respective cabins after tea, 
 and Miss Sadie and I went on deck to see how things 
 were getting on. 
 
 There we ran into the arms of Dan. 
 
 " Dan, by all that's holy. Why, I thought you . . ." 
 " You don't mean to say you're here . . ." 
 
 We mutually groaned, and shook hands perfunc- 
 torily, and then I saw Dan's eyes rove appreciatively 
 over Miss Sadie. Miss Sadie looked at him with some 
 interest. I thought, and it was not surprising. He's 
 an infernally presentable fellow, somehow. I hardly 
 know what there is about him, but it's there right 
 enough. 
 
 " Introduce me, Peter, won't you ? " he said, with 
 a smirk and his very best manner. I did so. 
 
 " Snatcher," I said to myself bitterly, and went off, 
 leaving them together. 
 
 I watched some more of the party come down the 
 gangway. It would take me a few days to work out 
 who were guests and who were not, I could see. But 
 I supposed that some of the nice-looking girls who 
 tripped down the gangway, carrying parcels and rugs 
 and things, were maids, or else the female element 
 would preponderate unduly. This could not be, for 
 Celia generally allows two nice men per nice girl. 
 She says it's only just enough. 
 
 No, some of these nice girls were dear little ladies' 
 maids, and some of these stalwart fellows were gentle- 
 men's gentlemen. The cruise would not be lacking 
 in romance, either before or behind the mast, I decided. 
 I saw Vanda's car come down the quay and disgorge 
 a vast quantity of luggage and band-boxes. If she 
 
 152
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 had taken Celia' s advice to heart and given away her 
 nice things, she had evidently not forgotten to buy 
 others. Nevertheless she was much changed for the 
 better. Celia had done wonders, and Vanda only 
 flirted strictly within reason these days. 
 
 I ran up to her and assisted her to get everything 
 out. 
 
 " Have you seen him ? " she said in some excite- 
 ment. 
 
 " Rather ! " I replied, thinking she meant the P.M. 
 
 " What's he like ? " 
 
 " Oh, a dear old chap." 
 
 " Old ? He's not a day over twenty-five." 
 
 I shook my head. " You can't mean the same 
 person I mean." 
 
 " I mean Prince Athanasios Radovitchka," naming 
 a little homeless princeling. His father had been de- 
 posed, and he was now waiting peacefully and con- 
 tentedly in England till a counter-revolution should 
 put his family on the throne again. His full name 
 was Demetrius Athanasios Appolonia Ostrovitzka 
 Radovitchka. 
 
 "Well, we've lots of big pots on board anyway, 
 but I'm glad to see you and Dan ; for, barring you 
 two, I don't seem to know any of the rest." 
 
 " But Miss Macinerney is coming, and so are Diana 
 and Mr Vansittart. I left them in the town trying to 
 get some mauve ribbon. Who's that nice-looking 
 girl over there ? I've not seen her before. She's new 
 she's nice." 
 
 " Don't know " and I looked over my shoulder 
 at her. " Don't know. She's brand-new to me. But 
 let's try and make out how many we are, as far as we 
 know." With the aid of my ten fingers and borrowing 
 a few of Miss Vanda's (I pinched the tips of them, 
 " this-little-piggy-goes-to-market-wise," while she 
 giggled), we made out that we would be fourteen 
 or fifteen all told. It would be a strange mixture, 
 a regular bizarre Celia blend. A deposed prince, a 
 
 153
 
 Prime Minister minus his voice, various Labour 
 members, a sprinkling of Society women 
 
 " What we'll have to have is tact," I observed 
 pregnantly, " and then everything may be all right." 
 
 As I don't believe in wasting a sensible remark by 
 only using it once, I repeated this one to the P.M. By 
 the way, he seemed to have taken quite a liking to me. 
 It may have been my sympathy about the newspapers, 
 or what I'd said about the wandering minstrel, but he 
 seemed to seek out my companionship from the very 
 first. So during the course of the evening I repeated it 
 to him, whilst the blue wreaths of cigar smoke were 
 curling upwards and we half sat, half lay upon the 
 saloon cushions. To my surprise, for he seemed such a 
 mild man, he turned an eye that glittered with sudden 
 fever upon me, and begged me not to use the word 
 again. He'd come away to try to forget that word tact 
 and the newspapers of course too but he wished he'd 
 never heard the word tact let's see he didn't know 
 what the exact derivation was tactus tangere to 
 touch, yes, that was it, but for years all his waking 
 hours had been spent in the exercising of tact, tact, tact. 
 Tact with the extreme members of his party, tact with 
 the moderate members of his party, tact with the land- 
 owners, tact with the bishops, tact with the brewers 
 and farmers, tact here and tact there, to say nothing 
 of the tact he had to exercise in his own household. 
 He had a big family and a wife of course (I remembered 
 having heard that he was somewhat over-wifed) and 
 family life bristled with difficulties these days. He 
 became a bundle of nerves when anyone mentioned it 
 now. 
 
 " My dear boy, as a favour, let me beg of you never 
 to use that word again in rny hearing ! " 
 
 I promised and he resumed. 
 
 The members of his party were always imploring him 
 to have tact with some body of people or another. 
 Saying he must be careful not to tread upon their corns. 
 This was a favourite remark, often on the lips of 
 
 154
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 ministers and certainly it seemed to him that what- 
 ever one did or did not do, one trod on somebody's 
 corns. Every man in the street seemed to have corns 
 which must not be trodden on. Every time a decent 
 piece of legislation was proposed that he wanted to 
 support, he was told that if he did so he would be tread- 
 ing on somebody's corns, and so it had to be shelved 
 because of these aforesaid corns, and the idea obsessed 
 him finally. He couldn't sleep because of them, or when 
 he did, he had awful nightmares. And constantly, at 
 the back of his mind, this dreadful idea surged, and con- 
 stantly he saw before him this army of feet, the feet of 
 the multitude, and they were all garnished all over with 
 these unnecessary protuberances, which must on no 
 account be trodden on. 
 
 He said this sea voyage was an inspiration. Really 
 it was an inspiration. (This is an awful word to say 
 under your breath when you have lost your voice. 
 Try it.) He w r as getting away for a bit from that 
 horrid word and the newspapers and the corns. It was 
 the first decent holiday he would have had for years. 
 But as there seemed to be a slight lull in the country's 
 manifest and usual desire to go to the dogs, and as his 
 doctor said he'd have a complete and permanent break- 
 down quite soon, and lose his voice for good, unless 
 he had one, he had seized the opportunity ; and Mr 
 Hitchcock's invitation transmitted to him via Mrs 
 Carmichael had come just at the right moment. 
 
 His secretary wanted to come too, but he said " No " 
 once and for all " No " he felt he must get away 
 from everything, and the stop-gaps must deal with all 
 the corns and all the newspapers and supply all the 
 
 T needed (I knew what he meant he wouldn't 
 
 mention the word). If anything very desperate 
 occurred, they could, of course, bring him back by 
 wireless, and no doubt he'd be met by the first instal- 
 ment of corns which must not be trodden on at Dover 
 on his return. This trip would cost him nothing and 
 
 155
 
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 for a Prime Minister to get an inexpensive holiday was 
 a very great matter. His official income sounded all 
 very well and the populace were always raising an out- 
 cry about it, but it was, of course, absurdly inadequate. 
 He was supposed to wallow in luxury on his ill-gotten 
 gains, but by the time he had subscribed to all the 
 charities he was expected to subscribe to, and paid big 
 election expenses, paid for a bun, when he hadn't time 
 to lunch which was frequently and educated and 
 clothed and fed his children, paid and fed enough 
 servants to dust the rooms of his official residence and 
 to answer the door to callers upon him in his official 
 capacity, and paid for stamps and telegrams, and 
 wedding presents that had to be given in his official 
 capacity, aye and paper and string to wrap 'em up 
 in ; and given a few light luncheons and heavy dinners 
 to distinguished visitors from abroad, to try and 
 smooth things over between different countries, and 
 taxis to get to official entertainments elsewhere ; why, 
 he had barely enough to keep himself and his family in 
 semi-genteel poverty. At the moment he very badly 
 wanted some thick undervests for winter wear, but 
 unless someone gave them to him as a birthday present 
 he'd simply have to go without them. One comfort of 
 not seeing the papers was that for a short time he 
 would not see any more of those indignant letters in 
 them, in which indignant people asked to know what 
 he did with the vast sums of money he wrung from an 
 impoverished country and wanting to know if he really 
 worked sufficiently hard to warrant the drawing of 
 such a salary. 
 
 We both went into shouts of laughter here ; that is, 
 I laughed, and he gasped and wheezed. " Of course, 
 my dear boy I could never do it unless I had private 
 means of my own. Why, the stamps alone " and he 
 gave an expressive shrug to his shoulders. " No, the 
 boot is on the other leg, quite. But I can hardly 
 bring myself to explain to them that they are in my 
 debt, heavily, and not I in theirs ! " 
 
 156
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 I assented. 
 
 " Yes, my dear boy, that's the worst of the De- 
 mocracy. They deal in millions and they think in 
 farthings." 
 
 From that he wandered on in the most far-reaching 
 way, on to the joys (sic) and sorrows of the position he 
 held. He made no mysteries and talked quite natur- 
 ally and frankly. He sketched his career for me briefly 
 and told me many interesting things about his work, 
 giving me some insight into the responsibilities of such 
 a position. I felt as if I had been allowed a glimpse 
 over a precipice, and almost turned giddy. One could 
 never tell the truth .that was too dangerous and it 
 was a real deprivation to him but one so to speak 
 moulded it squeezed it a little bit here, and perhaps a 
 little bit there. If one didn't do it, why, the others did, 
 and didn't do it so well. One had to be pragmatical, of 
 course. It was a trial, though, to him to have to do it. 
 As a young man, like many public men before him, he'd 
 had a lot of fine illusions. He wanted to do great noble 
 things, things to help the world along, to lighten the 
 burden of others. Almost at times he'd felt as if he 
 heard voices calling, as Joan of Arc said she did. Of 
 course it was all nonsense, but he did hear a sort of in- 
 ward voice, his conscience, he supposed, calling on him 
 to arise, and buckle on his sword and challenge the 
 legions of evil, the Jabberwocks and Bandersnatches 
 that prevented the world from going forward. He 
 pictured himself wielding the sword, snickersnack, and 
 all that sort of thing. And then one by one the illu- 
 sions fell away and perished miserably, and he suddenly 
 saw everything as it was, so drab, so utterly drab. But 
 he found himself left with a certain amount of practical 
 cold-blooded common-sense and a determination to do 
 something to help things along. And then he did that 
 something something which he had pondered on and 
 thought much upon, and which to him seemed to be a 
 very good thing, and then found everyone against him, 
 
 157
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 even his best friends, for politics are as a canker that 
 will come upon and blight the finest friendships. And 
 worst of all and which as likely as not happened the 
 thing he'd done, instead of producing the effect he 
 expected, shot off at a tangent and produced entirely 
 different results and one felt inclined to tear one's hair 
 out. He paused for a moment, and knocked the ash 
 off his cigar. I looked sideways at his kindly old face. 
 What appalling responsibilities had gone to model it 
 into its present expression of philosophical and utterly 
 understanding resignation. It was now the face of a 
 man who expected nothing of anything but who gently 
 refused to be depressed or disquieted by the fact. The 
 thought of what he had been speaking of held him, for 
 he went on to say, shrugging his shoulders in mock 
 despair, that one repeated the "if at first you don't 
 succeed " motto to oneself and tried again, and perhaps 
 luck would go against one and things go wrong again, 
 and presently one's nerve began to fail one and one 
 wondered if one could trust to one's own opinions, even 
 in the smallest matters. Even with all his years of 
 experience at his back, doubts assailed him as to his 
 perspicacity and powers of judgment. Really know- 
 ledge unnerves a man, in a sphere so vast as that of 
 government of peoples. He often wondered if the 
 wisest thing of all would not be to withdraw and leave 
 all to the fools. Ignorance was a great force and there 
 was very little way of knowing what would be the best 
 thing to do under any given set of circumstances, or, 
 having once set a thing in motion, foresee in what 
 direction it would walk off with itself. Mind you, it 
 was amusing and fascinating too. There were all the 
 elements of a gamble about it. Perhaps the greatest 
 fun, and the thing that called for more skill in handling, 
 and acuteness of vision, was the dodge that had to be 
 resorted to, when one washed to get a particular piece 
 of legislation through that as far as you could see 
 would turn out for the benefit of the country. One 
 never pretended or let on, as they say in Ireland, or let 
 
 158
 
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 the least hint leak out as to what was being set about. 
 Oh dear, no ! One drew a great whacking red herring 
 across the path, usually a Church question of sorts, 
 and when everyone was bickering wildly about the 
 width of a chasuble's hem, and no one was watching 
 hey, presto ! the other thing was done. That was 
 certainly most amusing. He could cite me instances, 
 etc., etc., etc. 
 
 But I headed him off. I certainly would never 
 mention the word to him again. If I had known how it 
 would have started him off, I'd have avoided it as the 
 plague. Why, his vocal chords would never get right 
 again, if he allowed himself to hold forth like this ! 
 I took it on myself to warn the others not to encourage 
 him, no matter how interesting he was. 
 
 It was in the early hours of the morning that our 
 gallant white vessel weighed her anchor and set quietly 
 forth on summer-like seas. I had noticed the day 
 before a pile of new books on the smoke-room table, 
 and glancing at them, found that they were mostly 
 short and shorter histories of Greece, short and shorter 
 histories of Greek civilisations. Short and shorter 
 histories of the Peloponnesian wars, guide-books on the 
 manners and customs of the Greeks from 600 B.C. to 
 A.D. 120. Many volumes of translations of Greek poetry 
 and plays, and some in the original text, left for the 
 very learned. I picked out a copy each of the Iliad 
 and the Odyssey, and unearthed too a complete edition 
 of Byron. When we left the harbour, as I say, the 
 water was as calm as a mill pool and our first few days 
 on board were wildly enjoyable and quite novel. We 
 beat it out to sea at a good pace, for when we got upon 
 deck, the first morning, there were no signs of land 
 anywhere. Toward evening we were over against the 
 Caskets, en route for the Bay of Biscay and the Straits 
 of Gibraltar. At first all went moderately well, and 
 meals were served and attended with regularity by 
 most of us ; but when we were nearing Ushant a slight 
 " lipper " appeared on the surface of the water, and as 
 
 159
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 soon as the yacht's nose found its way into the Bay of 
 Biscay it was seen that we were in for a good blanket- 
 ing. Through some agency, not clear to the landsman, 
 some combination of air currents and water currents, I 
 believe speaking in complete ignorance and leaving 
 myself open to correction no matter how calm it may 
 be in other bays, or how mildly the winds whisper else- 
 where, there it is the exception to have a quiet time, 
 and the rule to get a regular tossing. It blew some- 
 thing like half-a-gale, and I think at times it was said 
 we shipped the water green. At all events, it drove the 
 ladies down below, all except Celia, who doesn't care 
 two straws how rough the weather may be. If the 
 vessel she was on stood on its head, it wouldn't make 
 any difference to her. She hung on to the rigging, with 
 the rain and the spray trickling down her oilskins, and 
 the wind blowing her hair down into her eyes. She 
 laughed and enjoyed it to the utmost. Dan was as 
 little affected as she, and I'm hardened to it also. Our 
 family place is by the sea and I'd spent many a long 
 day out with the fisher-folk. Hitchcock was knocked 
 out, but Stalybrass was all right. He'd been a marine 
 for some time, as I afterwards learnt. I saw at a 
 glance how useful his sort of legs would be at sea. No 
 matter how much a vessel pitched, or what a slant her 
 deck took, his trestle legs would bear him up when 
 other folks' would be useless. One or two of the other 
 men stayed up part of the time, but were not sociably 
 inclined, and I do not think that Dan endeared himself 
 to them by buttonholing them and explaining that we 
 were finite particles of infinite matter, floating in waves 
 of ether, and that if only we could fix this firmly in our 
 minds and thereby realise our relative unimportance 
 in the scheme of things entire, we would never have 
 the effrontery to be sea-sick again for it would seem 
 presumptuous. He said that was his cure and 
 that sea- sickness was only another form of vanity and 
 conceit. 
 I said meaningly : " How is it then that a great 
 
 160
 
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 many people are not sea-sick on dry land ? " and walked 
 off, before he could answer me. 
 
 Off and on, we had bad weather all the way to 
 Gibraltar and it was not till we were approaching the 
 Balearic Isles that the sea grew calm, and the winds 
 withdrew to their mountain caverns. There the sun 
 quickly pushed the clouds away and treated us to a 
 mild heat-wave, and lo and behold ! we were steaming 
 through a merry, sparkling sea, with little languid 
 breezes, which could scarcely find a way through our 
 port-holes to cool our cabins. In a very short time they 
 had wooed the ladies upstairs, and though a little piano 
 from the recent tossing, they were soon themselves 
 again, making merry up and down the deck, in their 
 pretty fluttering muslins and airy laces. 
 
 For the first time, the party assembled in its entirety, 
 and any of us new to one another took stock of each 
 other. Nancy was the name of the fair unknown I'd 
 pointed out to Vanda. She was elegant and bonny, 
 and there was a lot of laughter about her. When Celia 
 led her up to us and Diana too, I could see that the 
 mere males (unpicturesque in comparison) were deciding 
 rapidly that everything was for the best in the best of 
 all possible worlds. Diana really looked magnificent. 
 Her pale copper-coloured hair was wound round and 
 round her head, and up and up, and it looked like the 
 burnished helmet of a Minerva. 
 
 " She's a bully girl," said Miss Sadie at my elbow. 
 " And can't she do her hair, just ! " 
 
 From now on there were many pleasing little excite- 
 ments each day. Starting with the morning, the early 
 bird would be found careering up and down the deck 
 in a fur coat, thrown over a pair of palest mauve 
 pyjamas and with mauve hair ribbons, by the early 
 worm, its hair a bit ruffled by its bath and wearing, 
 maybe, a dark Parma violet bath-robe. The early 
 worm sometimes lent its splendid big sponge (man's 
 size) or loofah, or generously gave a handful of its best 
 bath crystals away. 
 
 L 161
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 " Oh, thank you, Mr Blenerhassett, or Mr Vansittart, 
 or Mr de Courcy " (it might be any of these three), 
 " won't you try this soap of Morny's ? It lathers 
 beautifully in the salt water." 
 
 Sometimes quite a lot of early birds and early worms 
 exchanged soaps, crystals or pert nonsense, whilst 
 some of the crew looked on, out of the corners of sym- 
 pathetic sea-blue eyes, or exchanged cryptic remarks 
 sotto voce with one another. Something that sounded 
 like " she's a dog-gone dangerous girl," with a lot of 
 emphasis on the words dog-gone. 
 
 When the P.M. ambled up one morning, having 
 heard that it was quite the thing to do, and in a measure 
 the equivalent of a canter in the Row before breakfast, 
 and was seen to accept the loan of someone's patent 
 water-softener, a manly voice was heard high up in the 
 rigging singing tunefully : 
 
 " He may be old, but he's got young ideas ! " 
 
 By the time we were within hail of Marseilles' rocky 
 shores, the general characteristics of all the members of 
 the party had to some extent revealed themselves. 
 Our host was beloved of all. for he was simply over- 
 flowing with hospitality and kindly geniality. The 
 little foreign prince, momentarily or permanently 
 deposed (who could tell ?), showed himself to be agree- 
 able and natural, and put on no frills, and had an amaz- 
 ing inclination to run everybody's messages, pick up 
 fallen books or wraps, or offer cigarettes or lights to 
 everyone. He was also very good at remembering 
 dates. As the trip went on, we found this most useful, 
 when we were struggling to piece together all the in- 
 formation we were getting up, and confounding periods, 
 and making people contemporaries when they were 
 hundreds of years apart. He saved us many a head- 
 ache. If I had any fault to find with him, it was that 
 his clothes fitted him a shade too well and too closely, 
 but he was very well educated as such people usually 
 are and his manners were perfect. That the ladies 
 
 162
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 were all delightful goes without saying, and the P.M.. to 
 use their own expression, was " too sweet for words ! " 
 
 Miss Sadie's verdict was, that she had no doubt what- 
 ever but that he would be received with open arms by 
 the best set in Poughkeepsie. I saw then that there 
 must be some subtle American joke attached to this 
 apparently simple phrase, and felt that I must get to 
 the bottom of it as soon as possible. 
 
 The two Labour members were very interesting. I 
 think I said before that there were two on board. The 
 owner of the legs really was a blatant fellow, though of 
 course he was very able and probably had lots of good 
 in him in many ways. Though I am anticipating in 
 saying it here, it must be said in his favour that he 
 showed himself open to improvement, and as the trip 
 went on, we persuaded him to give house-room to the 
 idea that he did not know everything that was to be 
 known about everything. At first we did not like him 
 at all. His voice leapt from his throat. He contra- 
 dicted everyone and looked about him intolerantly, 
 and always seemed to be trying conclusions with every- 
 body and everything ; the fittings of the yacht, the 
 crew, or whatever book he happened to be reading, or 
 anything anyone said. We had many discussions with 
 him, for he invited them. I used sometimes to sit 
 silent, and listen to his voice, harsh and unpleasant in 
 comparison to the others. What was the difference, I 
 asked myself, between a cultured voice and one that 
 was not cultured ? The formed flowed easily along, 
 almost melodiously, certainly pleasantly ; all the 
 harshness trained out of it ; but the latter was full of 
 provincial inflections ; full of jars and pullings up ; 
 sudden onslaughts and interruptions in the flow of 
 sound ; syncopation, it is called in music. I decided, 
 listening to him, that the fellow spoke in rag-time, 
 which is syncopated. Nearly all provincials speak in 
 rag-time, that is what it came to. 
 
 His manner to the prince was a study. He was 
 sometimes rude and sometimes cringing, but never 
 
 163
 
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 seemed to get into a middle gear. He presented the 
 same anachronism as the English railway companies 
 who run first- and third-class carriages, but no seconds. 
 He had denounced princes and noble ones so often 
 and had told himself and others that he despised them 
 and would have no truck with them as they were 
 tyrants and bloodsuckers that he was all at odds in 
 his intercourse with the little chap. And yet he was 
 pleased and gratified at hobnobbing with him and no 
 doubt wished his friends could see him offering and 
 accepting a light, " just as casual and as off-hand as 
 you please." But though he'd make excuses to get 
 near him, anyone with any powers of observation could 
 see that he was frightfully in awe of him, and that in 
 the face of the little princeling's urbane incapacity, and 
 elegant uselessness, he felt frightfully conscious of it 
 and ashamed of all the little and big sordid useful 
 things he knew and could do, and of all the little sordid 
 and useful people he came from and with whom he was 
 really more at his ease. The pathetic part of it was, 
 that he was really the better man of the two of more 
 use to the community. But though he knew it in- 
 wardly and was never tired of asserting it to himself 
 and to everyone else, still it was apparent that he 
 couldn't feel it when he found himself near him. It 
 was a minor tragedy. If he hadn't despised the prince 
 so frightfully on account of his being a prince, he 
 wouldn't have felt so badly in his presence. The 
 explanation being, that it was the inevitable reaction. 
 People should be careful how they despise things, lest 
 their despising recoil upon themselves. 
 
 Celia's manner to Stalybrass was also a study. She 
 was amiability itself to him. Why not, as he was there 
 through her invitation. But it was that eager double- 
 dose sort of amiability one uses, because it's got to 
 persuade two people of its existence. The sort of amia- 
 bility one pumps up, when one wants to like a person or 
 an inferior, and one wants them to believe one likes 
 them, and indeed one would like to like them if one 
 
 164
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 could, but really one is not so sure about it, and one is 
 frightfully afraid that it is apparent that one doesn't 
 like them much as one would like to like them and 
 good heavens yes one can see by the look in their 
 eyes that they know one's amiability is only a pretence 
 after all ! She worked hard and kept it up wonderfully, 
 but sometimes she looked pale and tired. 
 
 Stalybrass amused me, because though we passed 
 through some of the loveliest scenery in the world, he 
 seemed to make a point of sitting with his back to the 
 view, whenever he could. I fancy he thought our 
 enthusiasm was " soft " ! We soon routed him out at 
 such times, and made him get up and struggle with his 
 chair, which, as it was a deck-chair, was complicated 
 and collapsible and pinched his fingers and barked his 
 shins and was troublesome to get into the correct notch. 
 The ladies were in possession of all the substantial 
 wicker ones, luckily. When anyone called his atten- 
 tion to the view, he'd turn round abruptly and look at 
 it, as much as to say, that if he had been sitting on the 
 committee that settled these things, he'd have seen to 
 it that that sort of thing wasn't strewn about broad- 
 cast. Why, man, it wasn't practical. Those rocks 
 were all very well in their way no doubt, but what sort 
 of a crop of potatoes, or wheat for that matter, could be 
 raised on rubbish like that ! 
 
 There are some things that infuriate one so much 
 that one enjoys them. His attitude affected me in this 
 way. He roused a distinct spirit of antagonism in 
 everyone, I think. He found a good deal to say about 
 the idle rich, and our host would take him on over this. 
 There was no law against any man becoming rich or at 
 any rate moderately successful, he said. If he minded 
 his own business and kept his eyes peeled for oppor- 
 tunities, there was nothing to stop him getting on. 
 Why, in comparison to the working man. the rich man, 
 apart from his work, worked harder at his games and 
 pleasures in one year than many a workman did in ten 
 years at his regular job, and who meantime had little 
 
 165
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 or no responsibility, which, of course, was the hardest 
 work of all. If only the demagogues and tub-thumpers 
 would teach the people that instead of hating the well- 
 to-do, they could get up amongst them, if they really 
 tried, they'd be doing good instead of harm he spoke 
 as a self-made man. Why, it was a simple prapasition 
 that one man's prasperity begat the prasperity of the 
 other man, and it was a pity that people did not under- 
 stand that simple fact. He conceded that the wives of 
 workmen had to work very hard, and that in times of 
 national crisis the men themselves did wonders too. 
 
 The P.M. got at Stalybrass over the Trade Union 
 hours. You could make people's hands and feet con- 
 form to an eight hours' bill, but what about a man's 
 brain. The brain had a way of running along on its 
 own lines, once it had started upon a subject, and the 
 subconscious mind was on the alert, and would even 
 carry on the work while a man slept. He reckoned he 
 had done sixteen hours' brain-work a day, not count- 
 ing subconscious work, for thirty-five years, and ex- 
 pected to go on doing so for a long time yet. 
 
 I'm afraid we all chaffed Stalybrass a good bit, partly 
 because he rose instantaneously to almost any bait, and 
 partly because when anything excited him his face got 
 purple and his neck and jaws used to swell up, and so 
 much that even his cheeks and ears used to become 
 larger. Apoplexy would claim him for its own some 
 day. Meantime, I'm sorry to say that we kept on 
 getting rises out of him, just for the fun of seeing his 
 neck and jaws puff up and go down again, sometimes, 
 with luck, several times in rapid succession. 
 
 " Poor dear Stalybrass," the P.M. used to say gently, 
 " it's very wrong to pull his leg. I'm afraid I'm an 
 awful sinner. But he is so appallingly downright, so 
 absolutely uncompromising and dogmatic. And yet 
 they tell me that he has a much larger following in his 
 party than Rankin. What a pity ! But it's likely, 
 though. I suppose, that they'd prefer a tub-thumper who 
 
 166
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 roars nonsense at them. But what a charming fellow 
 Rankin is. He's one of the very nicest men I've ever 
 met." 
 
 That's exactly how I felt about Rankin (he was the 
 other Labour member). I also felt that he was one of 
 the very nicest men I had ever met. He'd conquered 
 everyone on board the yacht. In appearance he was 
 delightful, bore himself well, and had a good head, with 
 a fine amount of crisp iron-grey hair. The amount of 
 simple goodness in that man's face was past computing. 
 He'd seen trouble too, for it was written there, and the 
 lines of grief and the lines of fun met and crossed one 
 another in it, and produced the most attractive and 
 humorous, and yet quaintly sad expression imaginable. 
 There was always a quiet smile on his lips, and it went 
 straight to one's heart. 
 
 He was always gentle and conciliatory and innocently 
 pleased with all he saw. By Jove ! I was glad that 
 Celia had got him to come, and that we were going to 
 see such wonderful things. He'd read everything and 
 remembered most of what he read, and had his own 
 commentaries to make on it all ; balanced, shrewd, 
 kindly. It was a privilege to talk to him. I never 
 ceased congratulating myself that we had brought him 
 along with us on that trip. 
 
 We anchored one night at Marseilles and next day 
 got off the yacht in some excitement at the idea of 
 being on dry land once more. The yacht was berthed 
 at the very far end of one of the longest piers, so that it 
 was quite a walk thence to the town, but we didn't 
 quarrel with that, as it was really a relief to stretch our 
 legs. We got off, with the ladies, a merry crowd of 
 chattering, perfumed femininity, perfectly dressed by 
 Jenny and Lanvin or Jean Hallee, all of Paris, accom- 
 panied by a squad of attendant swains, who distributed 
 themselves discreetly, full of those agreeable little 
 obligingnesses, which make things so pleasant all 
 round ; carrying capes and books or parasols and 
 explaining things gladly, if questions were put to them, 
 
 167
 
 instead of answering in monosyllables or grunting. 
 One could see by the angles at which these aforesaid 
 swains, both young and elderly, or should I say elderly 
 and young, had put on their hats that they were 
 acutely conscious, in every fibre, of the superior charms 
 and incontestable elegance of the fair ones they ac- 
 companied. 
 
 There is much that is subtle in the adjustment of a 
 hat, be it a collapsible panama which can be rolled up 
 with the tooth paste and sponges, or the hard boat- 
 ing straw, or the ordinary American wideawake of 
 commerce. 
 
 Suffice it to say that the only hat which showed no 
 symptoms of emotion was Stalybrass's. He merely 
 put his hat on to keep his head warm or cool, according 
 to the weather. 
 
 The amount of expression the P.M. got out of the 
 way he clapped his sedate old felt Homburg on was 
 amazing. There was a world of innocent rakishness 
 about it. It was a good thing that he was no longer, 
 for the moment, at the head of his country's affairs, for 
 had he not been on a holiday, the scandal of that angle 
 would have flashed far and wide across all the con- 
 tinents immediately, by wire, letter or word of 
 mouth. There would have been a terrible to-do, 
 which might have resulted in a split in the party, one 
 lot refusing to follow a leader who could be capable of 
 putting on his hat so, the other lot maintaining that 
 there was no harm in it, and that it need not affect his 
 political purity. For the Great British public, what- 
 ever they do themselves, and that they do it, I'm pretty 
 sure, are quick to resent any moral backsliding on the 
 part of their representatives, and will tolerate no 
 frivolity of demeanour in them whatsoever. Anything 
 might have happened as I say, and the least, the 
 passing of a vote of censure, and a resolution of "no 
 confidence " carried nem. con. 
 
 The warming-up of the landscape observable to any 
 traveller along that southern coast of France just 
 
 168
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 about sets in at Marseilles. As yet there is no blaze 
 of colour, but over all there is a sun-warmed look, and 
 evidence on rock and stone and house, and native face, 
 of ardent rays, supported through the long tale of 
 summers. It is perhaps rather a discoloration than 
 a coloration. There's a sober warmth about the con- 
 glomeration of sharp crags and hills, all of a brackenish- 
 brown shade, and over which the brownish town 
 straggles, zigzag all the way up. 
 
 Some vegetation about, here and there, but not too 
 luxuriant. It's too busy a place to have much room 
 for it, for it's spreading and getting built over to right 
 and left, on the various heights and towards the shores. 
 I remember the harbour seemed very full and very 
 crowded as we walked all its long length on an almost 
 interminable pier of apparently new masonry. The 
 whole place gave one the idea of a perfect tangle of 
 industry that had increased rapidly and was about to 
 increase still more rapidly. It looked to me like a 
 place where the day would never be long enough for all 
 there was to do in it, and where everyone went to bed 
 every night saying with a shrug " Can't be helped. I 
 must leave this work till to-morrow ; the hour is too 
 late." 
 
 In the streets the voitures and charettes jostled one 
 another over the rough paved streets and though there 
 may not have been quite so much noise or quite so 
 much tinkling of harness bells as in an Italian town, 
 still it was not far behind. The carters and the in- 
 habitants (or cousins who were visiting from other 
 provincial towns) called loudly to one another. One 
 noticed that just as the landscape had warmed up in 
 these parts, so had the voices (and the eyes). The 
 neighbours shouted from open doorways particular 
 and minute inquiries as to the health of a friend across 
 the road, and he gave them minutely, or she, and then 
 asked for minute particulars in return about the first 
 person's health. The rumbling vehicles were urged 
 up the steep streets with vociferations and cracks of 
 
 169
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 whips : " Eh ! La has ! Qu'est'ce que tu fais la ? 
 Sacre nom d'un chien ! " And three sturdy, blue- 
 bloused ruffians would dispute the right of way, when 
 each was on his wrong side. 
 
 The view from the upper town is magnificent. 
 Down below, riding at ease in the harbour, lay the 
 yacht. We were not sorry to get down to her cool 
 awnings and saloons, as the day was furiously hot. 
 Beyond the view and the quaintness of the town itself 
 there was little to see. The Cannebiere was empty, 
 deserted by the tricky little Marseillaises, who pre- 
 ferred the shade of their houses till evening should 
 subdue its dusty glare. 
 
 Monaco saw us next. To most of us, the little 
 principality, that looked like a bouquet floating in a 
 sea of liquid, dazzling jade, was familiar. Carnival 
 was drawing to a close, as Easter fell late that year, 
 so it was not looking its best. Many of its white 
 pleasure palaces were closed, and there were noisy 
 crowds in the streets. Fortunately, at Monte Carlo 
 one never gets those terrible painted plaster giants 
 with which they make Nice hideous for so long during 
 the season. Here was nothing more unsightly than a 
 motor car on exhibition in the gardens in front of the 
 Casino, which was to be drawn for. We came in for a 
 battle of flowers, and drove backwards and forwards 
 along the road to Cap Martin, hurling bunches of 
 narcissi, carnations, or Parma violets at every smiling 
 face we saw, right and left. The heat brought out the 
 smell of the crushed flowers and on all sides was the 
 scent of the mimosa-trees. It was a perfect day. 
 
 That evening, when I came on board with a false 
 nose on and blowing a long paper thing, that shot out 
 about two yards, Dan offered me a cigarette- a most 
 unusual thing for him to do he usually borrowed mine 
 and asked if he might confide in me. I said, " Fire 
 away." He said he didn't want to spoil my pleasure, 
 but mum's the word Hitchcock and his skipper were 
 having words. 
 
 170
 
 " What about ? " I asked, feeling my pink and 
 mauve nose, and flapping the elastic. 
 
 Dan didn't know exactly, something about the trip, 
 he fancied. 
 
 " How did you hear about it ? " 
 
 The P.M.'s man had told him. He was a very decent 
 fellow, not a bit the usual smug gossip in a blue serge suit, 
 but the sort of chap that one might very well listen to ; 
 if he did say anything. He'd come in very unobtru- 
 sively and kindly, several times, and straightened up 
 some of Dan's things in his cabin, that were lying about. 
 
 " And read some of your letters, I suppose ? " 
 
 Dan hadn't had any letters since he left home, so 
 it couldn't be that. No, there must be something 
 in it, or Paxman would never have bothered to repeat 
 it. It would be an awful nuisance if anything did go 
 wrong, as we were all having an absolutely top-hole 
 time. Miss Sadie was charming. He didn't think 
 he'd ever enjoyed himself so much. 
 
 I blew the red paper thing out thoughtfully, once 
 or twice. 
 
 I agreed it would be a nuisance, a most unmitigated 
 nuisance, if anything went wrong, and I supposed if 
 Hitchcock and the skipper were at loggerheads, things 
 might very conceivably do so. However, there was no 
 use in meeting trouble half-way. Paxman and all his 
 class always exaggerated things and made mountains 
 out of mole-hills. I'd keep my eyes peeled and if I 
 saw anything I'd tell Dan, and he could let me know 
 if he heard anything. 
 
 We loafed about Monte for just over a week, motor- 
 ing, playing sometimes at the tables, hearing some of the 
 operas which were given at the little theatre of the 
 Casino, and listening to the wild music of the Tzigane 
 band. We also lunched largely at Giro's and at the 
 Hotel de Paris. Hitchcock entertained a good deal, 
 both on the yacht and on the shore, for the first three 
 or four days, and then suddenly grew pensive and 
 played a good deal. 
 
 171
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 I don't know whether he won or lost, and anyhow 
 it wouldn't matter to him which way it was. 
 
 The morning of the day we were due to leave again, 
 Dan came to me and said there was no doubt about 
 it but that relations were strained very strained 
 between Hitchcock and his skipper. He was standing 
 close to the chart-room, quite by chance, and he heard 
 the two of them having a most fearful row, swearing 
 at one another in the most sulphuric way. ding-dong, 
 hammer and tongs. 
 
 He wondered himself whether the skipper drank, 
 and if so, he wondered if it would be more dangerous 
 to be navigated by a drunken skipper on the high 
 seas than to be driven by a drunken chauffeur across 
 country in the dark. He'd had experience of the latter 
 and it was not at all a nice feeling. He didn't want to 
 eavesdrop outside the chart-room, but couldn't help 
 hearing. They never attempted to lower their voices. 
 Luckily no one else was within hearing, especially none 
 of the ladies. Just as he was making himself scarce, 
 Hitch and the first mate came out. Hitch was purple 
 in the face and the first mate looked pale and worried. 
 They'd seen him and must have guessed he'd over- 
 heard, but didn't break into confidences, so he said 
 nothing. Perhaps I had noticed that Hitchcock had 
 been distrait and moony and off his food ? (I had, now 
 that I came to think of it ; he had started off by enter- 
 taining all our friends and his friends, and had been the 
 life and soul of the party, and suddenly, for these three 
 days, become very quiet, and spent a good part of the 
 time, when the others were ashore, on the yacht all 
 alone.) I told Dan I had noticed it, and Dan said he 
 was at that very moment mooning in the cabin smok- 
 ing a cigar, and wrapped in an impenetrable and glum 
 silence, and didn't seem a bit himself. 
 
 I proffered the suggestion that his mood might 
 not be really due to the skipper. Perhaps they had 
 rows regularly. Perhaps it was the usual thing. My 
 mother used to have rows with some of her most 
 
 172
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 faithful retainers, and they went for one another like 
 anything, but it meant nothing. It might again be 
 due to biliousness on the part of Silas J., brought on 
 by too much rich food, and too little exercise, and that 
 when he felt bilious he always blew people up, and then 
 felt sorry and mooned. 
 
 Dan shook his head. He said it was a very real row, 
 or else he was very much mistaken. And he thought 
 the dear old chap was worrying about something and 
 that we'd better find out, and see if there was anything 
 we could do to help him. Even telling us about it 
 might be a relief, instead of bottling it all up, whatever 
 it was. It was a genuine row, and old Hitch would 
 understand if we asked him about it, that we were 
 not actuated by mere vulgar curiosity. If he didn't 
 cheer up soon, he thought we'd better ask him. 
 
 He didn't cheer up, but on the contrary, he got 
 glummer and glummer, so at last we broached the 
 subject tactfully, and instead of jumping down our 
 throats, he seemed very relieved, and after asking us to 
 promise not to let any of the ladies hear, or the P.M., 
 for fear of spoiling his holiday, he told us. We swore 
 honest injun we'd say nothing to anybody. 
 
 " The fact is, I'm afraid there is something very much 
 the matter with my skipper. I'm astounded at him. 
 I simply can't make it out. I've had him for years, 
 and he's a man of the highest standing at his job, but he 
 simply seems to have lost his head these last few days." 
 
 This was indeed a large cloud to rise up and loom 
 over the prospect of the pleasure cruise. Dan and I 
 felt chapf alien. 
 
 " Yes, sir ! I had the very best credentials with 
 that man ; he sailed old Hiram Boon's yacht, the 
 Semiramis, all over the place for years, and they 
 absolutely cruised in every sea under the sun that had 
 been charted, and some that hadn't. I've had him now 
 for nearly four years and the yacht's been in com- 
 mission on and off, nearly the whole time, and we've 
 never had a word, till the other day " 
 
 173
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 We said " Tut-tut, tut ! " and felt it too. \Vhat on 
 earth could the matter be ? 
 
 " Well, gentlemen ! I simply think he's suffering 
 from a bad attack of insubordination, and all the 
 worse, for being so unexpected. Everything was going 
 all right, till I told him I'd altered my original plans 
 as to the course the yacht should take, and instead 
 of going straight to Athens from Messina, go to Corfu 
 instead, first. It is a charming spot, and Vansittart 
 expects important papers there. Why, you'll hardly 
 believe me when I tell you I can hardly believe it 
 now myself he actually said I'd no business to change 
 my plans once they were made ! ! ! " 
 
 " Well, of all the - - ! ! ! " 
 
 " Yes, exactly. That's just what I said to him, and 
 more too." 
 
 Hitchcock's jolly old face grew so red that in com- 
 parison it made his white clothes so dazzlingly white 
 that we could hardly let our eyes rest on them. " Yes, 
 I told him that might do for the people up at Pough- 
 keepsie, but it wouldn't do for me. I asked him if he 
 took me for the Colonel of the 44th Regiment at a 
 Mothers' Bazaar. And, moreover, I said I'd change 
 my plans every minute of the day if I wanted to. It 
 was my business, just as, if I gave him an order, it was 
 his business to carry it out and not to stand there and 
 have the durned cheek to tell me that I had no business 
 to change my plans. By the Hully Gee ! as I told 
 him, if I'd never changed my plans after I'd made 
 them I'd be a poor man to this day, and that's a stern 
 fact, sir ! Yep ! " 
 
 We suggested, helplessly, that he'd had bad news 
 from home. Perhaps some of his children were not 
 well or something of that sort. 
 
 " .Vhy, he's got no home in a sense. That is, he's 
 not a married man. No, that certainly might have 
 been a reason, but as the circumstances are otherwise, 
 it can't possibly be that." 
 
 I said I thought it was certainly a rum go, a very 
 
 174
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 rum go. Here was a chap who had an excellent record ; 
 who had shown himself an admirable and a trust- 
 worthy servant to Hiram Boon, for a number of years, 
 sailing his yacht everywhere, without any accidents, 
 and who had for the past four years given our host 
 every satisfaction, suddenly turning round and becom- 
 ing unmanageable. There must be something to 
 account for the sudden and unprecedented lapse. 
 Otherwise it was inexplicable and absurd. Had he a 
 good digestion ? 
 
 " He's the digestion of a horse at any rate, he very 
 often boasts of it, and never by any chance needs a 
 doctor. But, of course, he may not be as strong as 
 he thinks he is few of us are and the bad digestion 
 would account for the bad dreams he has been having 
 too." 
 
 " Bad dreams. Has he been having bad dreams ? 
 Did he complain of them ? " 
 
 " Yes, ever since he left Marseilles. I forgot to 
 mention them, as I didn't think it important. I passed 
 him the usual good-morning one day and asked him in 
 the ordinary way how he was, and he told me this. 
 He didn't look well either." 
 
 " It's a sure sign he is not as well as he might be, but 
 does he usually have bad dreams ? Some people do." 
 
 Hitchcock said, " If so, I've never heard of it. 
 But they must have been pretty bad, as some of his 
 mates heard him calling out, and went and found him 
 blundering about the cabin and they had some 
 trouble in persuading him to go back into his berth." 
 
 " But, of course, Mr Hitchcock, that proves it. I'm 
 certain there's something in what I say. He's got 
 either a touch of the sun (that's quite possible) or else 
 has eaten some slightly tainted fish, and ptobably, 
 if it's the latter, it happened at Marseilles, since you 
 say he first complained after leaving there. It's sure 
 to be fish, I think." 
 
 I remembered some I'd once eaten, and how bad I 
 had been, and explained how upset I was for weeks 
 
 175
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 and weeks, and liable to outbursts of pettish temper, 
 a sure sign of gastric disturbance. 
 
 Old Hitchcock shrugged his shoulders and said, 
 maybe maybe in fact really quite likely. He also 
 recalled a friend of his who had been very ill, and had 
 become almost insane, temporarily, through eating 
 shrimps that were just not so. It must be something, 
 so why not that, after all ? 
 
 Dan and I were greatly relieved at this probable 
 elucidation and did all we could to reassure Hitchcock. 
 Dan said the best thing to do was to humour the 
 fellow, let things go on quietly and not get in his way 
 too much. 
 
 Telling us all about it and discussing it seemed to 
 relieve our host's mind quite a lot and he perked up 
 and became his jovial self once more. After the out- 
 burst in the chart-room, the skipper seemed to simmer 
 down. He may, and probably did, realise that Silas 
 J. was not the sort to stand any nonsense. 
 
 I caught a glimpse of him once or twice on the 
 navigating bridge. He was a fine-looking man, very 
 dark, almost Italian-looking, but under his swarrthy 
 skin I fancied I detected a certain yellowish pallor 
 such as I've seen in the face of a sick nigger. But he 
 was very quiet, and so eminently reasonable in his 
 manner, that I promptly dismissed the entire affair from 
 my mind and enjoyed myself to my heart's content. 
 
 The scenery after leaving Monaco is wonderful, 
 and Genoa plays "I'm king of the castle " on its tall 
 rocky crags. It is truly an imposing place and seems 
 a conglomeration of frowning fortresses, not merely 
 one, with its great piles of massy buildings, such as 
 the Northern Italians affect in their towns. Every 
 villa seemed a bastioned stronghold, and of the com- 
 mercial houses, none of them seemed smaller than the 
 Bank of England. The Alpes Maritimes in their blue 
 and silver majesty faded gradually away, and were 
 replaced by the Ligurian Apennines, not quite so 
 mighty nor yet so blue. 
 
 176
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 We sailed like a dream- ship through the blood- warm 
 waters of the Ligurian sea, and presently we were 
 under the lee of Corsica. Everyone hung over the 
 rails and scanned the sides of the island, as they 
 towered out of the sea, and every now and again 
 shot up into a peak thousands of feet high. We saw 
 little or no traces of towns or inhabitants. Of verdure 
 there seemed to be little or nothing, except the mastich 
 shrub ; only the bare brown rocks, of a praline or 
 burnt- sugar colour, or of what is much the same colour 
 too, the scarred and seamed dial of an old adventurous 
 soldier, scorched by the heat of the sun and tanned 
 by the rude breath of the winds always beating on it. 
 They quite reminded me of old fellows I've seen, with 
 faces like besieged towns, battered, pitted and knocked 
 about, but dauntless. 
 
 Upon our left lay Elba, by which we passed fairly 
 close. In doing so, it was as if some great jar were 
 given to the mind. Here, actually here, and not after 
 all so long ago as all that, the Eagle of Europe was kept 
 chained. The little wonderful man who, by the aid 
 of some peculiar power generated within himself, 
 changed the face of the world for so many years, was 
 held here from April eighteen hundred and fourteen, 
 till February eighteen hundred and fifteen, and from 
 here made his escape. This wasn't ordinary history. 
 It was true magic. Somewhere over there he had 
 strained his eyes waiting, and strained his ears listen- 
 ing. What a mystery the man's whole career had been. 
 What a mystery his beginning, what a mystery his end. 
 An infinitesimal mighty seed of pollen, carried hap- 
 hazard from the flower of some Imperial parent stem, 
 dropped by chance in the little stony Corsican town. 
 What was the link between this man and those other 
 big men one read about in the history of Asia Minor 
 and Greece or Rome, when these places were at the 
 height of their powers ? That is what I asked myself 
 as we sailed by. Above all, he had been sufficiently 
 a failure to be truly interesting, for the psychology of 
 
 M 177
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 failure is much more involved and curious than that 
 of success, which can be attributed ninety-nine times 
 out of a hundred to cheek, ordinary self-confidence 
 or ignorance, which override circumstances, whereas 
 failure may be due to goodness knows how many 
 curious combinations of temperament and chance. 
 
 From the look of any land one could see in these 
 regions, we were floating in an ocean whose bed was 
 but the thinnest of thin crusts above earth's smoulder- 
 ing fires. It must be very thin as evidenced by 
 Stromboli, by which we should have to pass, towards 
 eleven o'clock. About here it is known that new 
 islands appear and old ones disappear, in the course 
 of volcanic disturbances so life can't be too dull for 
 those who live on them. 
 
 It was somewhere about here that Paxman began 
 to make dismal confidences again to Dan about the 
 captain having the most awful dreams that the yacht 
 was going to be shipwrecked and all hands lost. I was 
 struck by hearing that the bad dreams were about 
 a mishap to the party. Hitchcock hadn't mentioned 
 this ; I suppose, so as not to make us feel uncomfortable. 
 The crew were very upset about it and grumbling under 
 their breaths. Some of them had planned that if he 
 had any more bad dreams, they'd go ashore at the next 
 stop and hook it quietly. Even though they were 
 personally devoted to the owner, and pronounced their 
 boss the best afloat, it was more than flesh and blood 
 could stand. Sailors are notoriously superstitious, ol 
 course, so that was only to be expected. Andy, the 
 coloured steward, was almost beside himself and lay 
 down nearly all day, dosed with bromide. But Silas J. 
 said nothing, and everything went so merrily up above 
 that we couldn't really let the thing worry us. Some- 
 one else waited at table in Andy's place and the matter 
 seemed to blow over. I had little doubt but that the 
 second mate was an excellent man and there were 
 several of the crew with jaws like steel traps. We had 
 only to glance from them to our host to see that one 
 
 178
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 was on board an efficiently manned American yacht, 
 and that a second and possibly a third string could be 
 brought into action if the first failed. 
 
 The farther we got into the volcanic regions, the 
 more a decided inclination to philander evinced itself 
 on the part of the members of our party, and its various 
 members sorted themselves amiably into twos. Diana 
 and Vansittart but their affair was an understood 
 thing. Stalybrass and Lady Shaw. Her plump good 
 humour acted admirably upon him ; as she agreed 
 with what he said before he'd said it, and this is, of all 
 ways, the best way to deal with a man of his type. 
 Miss Sadie very obligingly took on both the prince and 
 Dan, and so, thank the Lord, I was able to see some- 
 thing of Celia. The others swopped about a bit, but 
 Vanda, true to her promise to Celia not to plough 
 people's feelings up more than she could help, con- 
 tented herself with mothering the P.M., finding his 
 glasses for him, or fetching cigarettes, or else some- 
 body's short or shorter history of something or other, 
 probably the Greek civilisations of the Peloponnesus. 
 Not but what the P.M. would not have been ready 
 for a mild flirtation. I overheard him say in an 
 abstracted way that we owed it to ourselves to fall 
 in love as often as we could, as it was only when one 
 was in that exalted- though he feared also, slightly 
 ridiculous state that the great wonders of the earth 
 could be fully appreciated, or that Nature revealed 
 her inmost secrets to the children of men. Esthetic- 
 ally speaking, he said, one was guilty of a greater 
 crime against morality by not falling in love, as often 
 as possible, than if one acted to the contrary. 
 
 Celia looked anxiously at Vanda, but that person 
 laughed immoderately. I think she had contracted 
 the pernicious habit from Celia of feeling that she was 
 there to police people who were inclined to moral 
 lapses, and was getting a lot of smug goody-goody 
 satisfaction from it, just as carnal in its way as 
 any other pleasure. It's a dangerous feeling to have 
 
 179
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 grow on one, and tends to make wrong-doing lose 
 its zest. One should be jolly careful of this sort 
 of thing, let me tell you, as you never know where 
 it may stop. There was no need for Celia to fear 
 that the P.M. could undermine her teachings. Vanda 
 was bitten. 
 
 And all the time the yacht passed through the clear 
 blue waters as if it were some sentient thing, some great 
 white bird. I wondered whose idea it was to paint 
 pleasure yachts white. I supposed that it seemed 
 right, because, with their clear-cut speed lines, they 
 suggest the lines of the white birds that hover about so 
 gracefully whenever one gets near the land, and fold 
 their tiny legs so neatly out of sight, like little card- 
 tables in repose. 
 
 The faint lap of the little waves and the ripple of our 
 own laughter were all the sounds that broke upon a 
 silence rare in quality. 
 
 Stromboli was duly sighted. Nightfall had already 
 set in and he flung his lurid glare far and wide but by 
 the time we reached Messina's straits even his last glow 
 was gone, and what a sight met our gaze. Upon the 
 velvet blackness of the night rose high the hills, with 
 diadem on diadem of flashing light, ablaze from foot to 
 peak on either side. 
 
 And in a wide and wonderful embrace, the land put 
 out its jewelled arms and clasped the languid darkling 
 sea, and each jewel had its trembling water twin. At 
 Messina, every night of the year is a gala night, a 
 festival of water, earth and flame. We hung spell- 
 bound on the deck and watched breathlessly till the 
 last jewel gleamed no more. 
 
 The imagination is always ready to draw compari- 
 sons between human creatures and the things they have 
 created. I thought the town, seen so, that night, 
 seemed like a dark and wicked beauty, queen of some 
 lawless section of society, who had plundered men for 
 diamonds and wore them unscrupulously to draw still 
 more and satisfy her greed of gems. 
 
 180
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 " I can't believe it's real," someone whispered in my 
 ear, and I whispered back, " I don't want to believe 
 it's real." For myself I had felt the illusion grow from 
 day to day that we were sailing through fairy seas 
 into the stillness and beauty of a new world. 
 
 We seemed to float in a breathless tinted perfection, 
 getting farther and farther by miles and miles from all 
 that had been our old selves, and all that we had once 
 thought or known ; and nearer and nearer to what ? 
 Something stimulating and delightful, surely. The old 
 yesterdays were gone and nothing now remained but 
 an endless vista of to-morrows, all blue and rose. 
 
 It was here I think that I first realised how beautiful 
 the world is, and how supreme the folly of man, that 
 he should try to improve it or not try to grasp its 
 significance. 
 
 The distant coasts as we passed them looked so 
 lovely, they might, as far as we knew, have been in- 
 habited by happy souls, already slipped away ; freed 
 from earthly things, to live in perfect peace and tend 
 their gardens on the sunny slopes. The shores ex- 
 panded into mountain ridges of soft bloomy purple 
 hues, like the rounded sides of fully ripened grapes. 
 Nature was full of inspiration. Every succeeding 
 moment she set a different scene, and each as it came 
 and changed, dissolving, took on every aspect of beauty 
 and grandeur that could be possible ; and every tint 
 that an exquisite caprice could display to us came and 
 went before our eyes. The blue enamel floors of the 
 polished sea lay right up into the stilly bays, reflecting 
 light, and with the varied colours of the land made a 
 parquetry of as many dazzling shades as a painter's 
 palette, freshly set. The glinting sunlight poured 
 down on hill and valley, and turned vinegar to sweet 
 in the little wayside orchards and vineyards. 
 
 Or perhaps it rained at sunset and the sky gave back 
 to the sea what it had taken from it before, and in the 
 act of restitution wept teeming tears of opal and 
 dropped showers of gold upon the mountains of the 
 
 181
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 shore. Stern rocks and crags became impalpable as 
 melting visions, a-shiver and a-shimmer in a rainbow 
 mist ; abandoning themselves in a swoon of beauty, 
 they dreamt themselves away before our very eyes. 
 
 I wonder how I can describe the sunsets and sun- 
 risings that I saw in those seas ? Perhaps if I might 
 be allowed to sit quietly in a room for a day, with my 
 eyes closed, I could put words together that would 
 show you something of what I saw there. I think the 
 most beautiful of all, and far more beautiful than the 
 coming of morning, was the dawn of night, as we saw it 
 in those enchanted regions. When all the trooping 
 colours of the day had gone and when the sun's last few 
 rose beams faintly stained the sky, the world subdued, 
 became a world of grey pearl and the firmament's 
 dome, so faintly irised and dim of sheen as to seem like 
 a great grey hollow half-a-pearl into which we looked up 
 wondering. There was a hush, a pause, and something 
 seemed to ascend toheaven from below, and our thoughts 
 went with it, aspiring. Then the Night drew her cool 
 black veils about her, and behold ! the day was done. 
 
 And still we sailed on and on, and leaving Italy 
 behind, we had almost reached the land of Greece. I 
 did not go ashore at Corfu when we touched there. I 
 preferred to hug the idea that these favoured isles were 
 shrouded in mystery and enchantment. Floating in 
 the sea, crowned with plumy groves as they material- 
 ised dimly and exquisitely, out of the magic mists, I 
 told myself that they could never really be the habita- 
 tions of ordinary human creatures like ourselves 
 subject to human ills and wants and bothers, toiling in 
 the sun, earning and changing money. So all that day 
 I stayed aboard the white vessel, contenting myself 
 with rising with the sun's first rays and feasting my 
 eyes and drinking greedily of all the loveliness I saw 
 around me. The tamarisks and palms that fringed 
 the edge swayed softly, whilst the island cast its 
 perfect image in the waters down below. No one 
 stirred. As I leant over the rails looking away, I felt 
 
 182
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 myself poised and enveloped in a delicious salty silence, 
 deeply conscious of a tingling well-being, a gentle 
 thrilling through all my members at the thought that 
 I should be and have a part in all this circumambient 
 radiant moment. Such a day it was as gathered one 
 to itself and did not leave one a mere onlooker. Cords 
 broke and let old burdens slip and roll away, and one 
 felt strangely free. 
 
 Silent it was, for the whispering song of the waves, 
 with their toneless chanson chuchoU, only served to 
 mark the stillness more. Now and again, I'll admit, 
 the sea uttered a soft sudden sound, as some wave, 
 larger than the others, threw itself lazily on the beach. 
 But it was distant and almost less than a sound. Slim 
 boats, like swallows, skimmed close to shore. Little 
 airs of the morning, shy and virginal, but promising 
 later warmth, came over the waters (that were of a 
 happy blue, like babies' eyes) to greet me, and certain it 
 is that Nature makes much out of little from the least 
 tangible of things weaves the most wonderful. She 
 takes the little moist breath that comes faintly off the 
 sea and spins it into veils and scarves, and trails them 
 over rock and tree, drifting them fairily, gauzily, airily, 
 shading them with pretty tints. Shadows long and 
 blue lay along the dreaming margins, and slipped away 
 and came again. They were there and they were not 
 there. 
 
 And so, thanks to the scotching of a transitory pang 
 or two of idle curiosity, it would always remain for me, 
 Phascia. The Isle of Phaecia, where Ulysses had been 
 thrown on a spuming wave-crest, and where King 
 Alcinous made his fragrant gardens with ordered rows 
 of pear-trees and pomegranates, luscious figs, olives in 
 bloom and vine-trusses swelling in the sun. Gardens 
 which knew no interregnum of frost, and in whose 
 precincts the fruit trees were in constant bloom or 
 bearing, and where, by the threshold of the house, 
 were two monster dogs, made of silver and gold, 
 guarding it. 
 
 183
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 The yacht lay within easy hail of some of the most 
 pathetically modern-human scenes of the Odyssey. 
 Blind though he was, old Homer has indicated the 
 actual scenes where the incidents of his tales take 
 place, almost to within a few feet. I could look across 
 from where I was at a point of land sloping seawards 
 to the right, where Ulysses, having broken away from 
 his thraldom to Calypso, and leaving her island, was 
 thrown up by the storm. He battled with the winds 
 and the waves for days and nights, fought his way, so 
 the story tells, by main force, out of the breakers, into 
 a sheltered inlet, where a river flowed into the sea. 
 There is the inlet, there is the river. Shivering with 
 cold, broken with fatigue, he crept painfully and 
 numbly into the land, and there found some olive-trees 
 whose branches were so plaited and interwoven that 
 they formed a shelter against driving rain and cutting 
 wind. And there he, with his frozen hands, scraped 
 out a deep bed for himself in the dry decaying leaves 
 and piled them high and warm atop of his poor cold 
 body. 
 
 To that same spot next morning came the Princess 
 Nausicaa, daughter of Alcinous, with her maidens, to 
 wash her bridal linen. You can almost place the spot 
 by guess-work where the royal girl spread out her fine 
 white linen on the bright grass, and where her maidens, 
 playing together, flung the ball and losing it, set up 
 such an outcry that they waked Ulysses and brought 
 him out to beg for food. 
 
 We were almost following on Ulysses' track, for our 
 next stopping-place was Ithaca, whither he repaired, 
 wind and weather permitting (which was not for fully 
 twenty years), to greet his wife Penelope, after his 
 wanderings. It was strange afterwards, when things 
 that were predestined to form part of our voyage had 
 already occurred, to think back to the time spent here 
 and to retaste its events and frame of mind, with, as 
 it were, the additional flavour of what had happened 
 subsequently. The long arm of coincidence is thrust 
 
 184
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 out in real life far oftener than anyone would be pre- 
 pared to admit. Though I, for one, would never deny 
 its strange and often toward appearance and interfer- 
 ence, for my own life has been nothing but one long 
 string of interwoven and, one might say, previously 
 decided events, synchronised with the most meticulous 
 care, so as to present themselves at the moment and 
 place arranged for. 
 
 But I must not anticipate here, and what I refer to in 
 these obscure phrases will crop up in due course. 
 
 According to the Odyssey, Ulysses slept most of the 
 way here, and by so doing missed a lot, for there are 
 things as wonderful to be seen here as any can be. To 
 him the beauty of the Ionian nights may have meant 
 nothing, blunted as he would be to them, by use. But 
 to us, coming out of the West, they were more wonderful 
 than the days and more awake. When nightfall came 
 so quickly on the heels of the short Grecian twilight, the 
 great velvet canopy above us was full, full of stars, like 
 countless brilliant eyes. I begged a hammock from 
 our host, and more often than not spent the first and 
 middle watches on deck. The yacht clove silently 
 through the spangled dark, displacing the reflection of 
 these far-off planets, one of which had perhaps sent a 
 little beam on a ten thousand years' voyage, to glitter 
 in the waters of our sphere ; a message from another 
 world, an age-old twinkle. Meteors, without the least 
 sign of hurry, took an occasional unctuous golden 
 course and plunged slowly into parts of space beyond 
 the little ken of man. The night air came off the shore, 
 sweet with the breath of wild thyme and oleander, 
 stirring the hair on my forehead coolly. The sea, deep, 
 dark blue, returned the gaze of the stars eye for eye. I 
 lay on my back and looked up. I saw Alcor and Mizar, 
 the first hiding behind the last : and Dubhe and Merak, 
 large and throbbing in that foreign night. I saw the 
 Pole star and its guards, and right above me was the 
 Great Bear which turns on one spot and rarely dips 
 its light in the water. It guided Ulysses, when by 
 
 185
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 Calypso's directing he kept it on the left hand for 
 seventeen nights, till he was wrecked. 
 
 It is on these detached occasions that one becomes 
 creepingly aware of a feeling that one is face to face 
 with Time. Not the time that one has known hitherto, 
 the time of business, or relaxation, of the street, the 
 theatre or the home ; one's servant whose duty it is to 
 help one to crowd more into the day, to avoid mistakes 
 or confusion or overlapping of duties or pleasures. 
 Nor is it any longer a small slave, kept on the end of a 
 chain in an inner pocket or bound to one by a strap and 
 told off to check the seconds as they pass hourly and 
 daily. No, here it is great, dominant, all-pervading, all- 
 powerful. The precise moment in which one lives, one 
 knows to be of the direct line, a lineal descendant of the 
 first moment of the creation of all things. Even more, 
 of the original far-back instant ancestor of that moment 
 too. Nothing separates you, now, from it. then ; it 
 was the same then as it is now, and ever will be, world 
 without end, amen, heaven help us all. It is on nights 
 like these that the thought of eternity dilates a man's 
 mind quite frightfully and appallingly, and daunts him 
 with all its immensity. Time which we are told may 
 be space. Space which we are told may be time. 
 Both limitless. Time in these parts curdles a man's 
 blood in his veins and wrings from him an astonished 
 confession of his utter helplessness and impotency in 
 the face of the great things that are. My brain reeled 
 sometimes at it all, and I felt, for the sake of my mental 
 balance, I'd be better off, even if not. so cool, in my 
 bright little cabin, smelling ever so faintly of fresh paint. 
 However, I usually stayed up, and one night, just 
 as I was getting out of my hammock to go below, about 
 - bells, I saw a shadowy figure leaning far over the 
 stern and gesticulating violently in the direction from 
 which we had come. Peering closer I saw it was the 
 captain. He appeared, as far as I could judge in that 
 very early morning light, to be shaking his fist at thin 
 air. I retired noiselessly, and was just rounding the 
 
 186
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 funnel when I ran full into Andy, the coloured steward, 
 who, crouching in its shelter, was gazing in terror at the 
 captain. His lips were grey and drawn back from a 
 great quantity of very white teeth, and his white eye- 
 balls bulged far beyond his eyelids. I motioned him to 
 silence, and taking him firmly by the arm, I led him to 
 the cabin, and there got him a drop of brandy from my 
 flask, then roused someone and put him in his charge. 
 Andy said not a word, obeying me quite meekly. 
 
 I was greatly discomfited and very annoyed at what 
 I had seen and at having been roused from my pleasant 
 dreamings and philosophisings of the last few idyllic 
 days, and the recollections of this fellow's bad dreams 
 and bad omens came over me with a rush. Towards 
 morning one's vitality is at a low ebb. I suppose, and 
 what had seemed absurd beyond words at Monte Carlo, 
 with its gay meretricious society and ultra-modern way 
 of life, here in these regions seemed quite another 
 matter and almost within the bounds of possibility. 
 Here, nothing would seem out of the way or unusual. 
 These bays and islands were full of strangeness. If I 
 had, in broad daylight, looked over the ship's side and 
 seen a cluster of glistening-bodied mermaids and sea- 
 nymphs, with long coils of water- weighted hair, beckon- 
 ing me with their lovely humid arms, I'd really not 
 have been surprised. I remembered the descriptions 
 of the man's ominous prognostications of the evil and 
 danger that he said were lying in wait for the pleasure 
 party. Was there something abroad in the air here 
 unlike anything we knew of in home waters and 
 countries ? Some mysterious affinity between the 
 great old deities of Greece and little men, that gave 
 them an inclination for meddling with the puny affairs 
 of mankind. Perhaps they had nothing else to do, and 
 the time hung heavy on their god-like hands. Was 
 there some condition of the ether facilitating the trans- 
 mission of unnatural messages to account for all this 
 business ? I had learnt indirectly that the captain 
 was a Greek, or if not entirely Greek, certainly of Greek 
 
 187
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 origin. This appeared to me curious and most note- 
 worthy and would strengthen the case for the working 
 affinity between him and the supernatural forces which 
 apparently prevailed here. Put it this way, that as he 
 was a Greek, and unseen beings once all-powerful in 
 these domains were desirous of welcoming one of their 
 blood back from the distant parts of the globe, where 
 he had long sojourned, and were, as a mark of apprecia- 
 tion and esteem, trying to give him warning of some 
 disaster which might attend upon the ship under his 
 care during the cruise. But if this were so, why be so 
 vague about it ? At my instigation, one of the crew 
 had cross-examined our man, plying him with certain 
 leading questions I'd set him to ask, and the entire 
 thing was as nebulous as could be. Not a bit of 
 definite information beyond the fact that the yacht 
 was in danger of some sort. He wasn't ever told in his 
 dreams how the danger could be averted or what we 
 could do to prevent it, so where lay the use in worrying 
 the man, to say nothing of such of us others as knew 
 about it now, and old Hitchcock ? Presumably the 
 deities were well-meaning, but like so many well- 
 meaning people, they liked to make a song and dance 
 about the things they undertook ; and that, even as 
 the aforesaid people do, they interfered in things when 
 they knew they couldn't do anything. 
 
 Else why couldn't they have saved us when the 
 necessity arose, and said nothing beforehand, to spoil 
 our pleasure. 
 
 I felt I'd better let Hitchcock know what I had seen, 
 and did so, and in return heard that the captain had 
 really been very odd indeed for the last three days. 
 Not a bit inclined to sass, but sort of huddled up and 
 very white and weak. Not eating anything at all. 
 He gave no trouble, beyond the fact that he would not 
 keep the log-book nor let the first mate do so either. 
 But the matter wasn't pressed, as they didn't think it 
 worth while to cross him, seeing that he was docile 
 otherwise. When he, Hitchcock, went down to see 
 
 188
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 him about one thing or another, he could be heard 
 muttering away and didn't seem to realise that the 
 owner of the yacht was addressing him at all. How- 
 ever, the main thing was that he was no longer violent 
 and on the whole was doing his work correctly. Bates, 
 the first mate, was watching him ; an excellent fellow, 
 quite ready to take a ship out on his own any day now, 
 and he didn't at all mind the responsibility. If skipper 
 got bad, they'd simply shut him up quietly and say no 
 more, or send him home by land. Of course, if he 
 could prove that he was all right in his mind and 
 methods, he could claim a heavy sum for damages, but 
 there were plenty of witnesses to testify to his odd 
 behaviour. 
 
 Hitchcock's theory was that we were approaching 
 a country which literally oozed superstition at every 
 pore. In a way of speaking, it gave off puffs of it, and 
 from inquiries made, skipper was certainly a full true 
 Greek. One of the seamen had signed on at the same 
 time as he had and he knew of it. and knew that he 
 did so under an assumed name. Therefore, being the 
 descendant of a people steeped in superstition for so 
 many centuries, who had practically invented super- 
 stition, if it came to that, it was not so surprising that 
 he gave way to this sort of thing, as it would have been 
 if he had been a real white man. 
 
 Hitchcock's tone indicated a large degree of con- 
 tempt for anything which did not come up to standard 
 on that point. Unfortunately, he had got hold of some 
 of these spooky books we'd brought along on the trip, 
 and acting on a brain already prepared and, so to speak, 
 weakened by his nationality, all the hereditary in- 
 stincts of a foolish and credulous people now came out 
 in his conduct. It wasn't insubordination. No man 
 who'd lived as long as he had, in a land of liberty like 
 America, would dream of being insubordinate to a man 
 who owned as much money as he, Hitchcock, did. He 
 didn't hold with all the superstition, but there was no 
 denying that the atmosphere here was thick with it, for 
 
 189
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 he'd been reading some of these heathen mythology 
 books, and it was quite the sort of thing to get on the 
 nerves. The stories were most bloodthirsty and the 
 gods of Greece seemed to him to have as slender a 
 stock of morality as the smartest set in Noo York, and 
 would not allow anything to trammel their natural 
 inclinations to wickedness and debauchery generally. 
 
 Most of the party, and certainly some of the crew, had 
 the matter on the brain. Far better to play bridge or 
 poker, or some good round game, and try to forget it. 
 Dan, present at our confabulations, prophesied that 
 skipper would be worse before better, in the words of 
 his old nurse ; for by nightfall we were due to slip past 
 the Paxian Isles, and it was here, he said, according to 
 Plutarch, Aemilianus the Rhetorician, voyaging by 
 night, heard a voice, louder than human, announcing 
 the death of Pan. Another spot, absolutely teeming 
 with morbid associations and which now did not lie so 
 very far away, was the headland of Leucadia, jutting 
 out from the island of that name. It was the actual 
 precipice of classic renown, the lovers' leap where so 
 many hundreds of poor fools had met their deaths. 
 Sappho herself, did we remember, knowing that love 
 was too good a thing to last, chose drowning in the 
 waters of the Ionian Sea rather than to go on living and 
 see it die by degrees. So she sang her last song, broke 
 her lyre and jumped off. Worse still buttonholing us 
 as we were turning to go there would be the other 
 headland of Tanaerium, if ever we got there here he 
 shuddered lugubriously that according to the ancients 
 was the entry to the Regions of the Dead. 
 
 Undoubtedly that night some of us turned in feeling 
 very creepy and fantastic, and watching our shadows 
 mistrustfully over half-turned shoulders. Some time 
 after I had been asleep I woke up with a start and 
 listened for the voice, but heard nothing except the 
 usual small noises of the yacht as it sailed on through 
 the night. The slight smell of fresh paint in my dear 
 little cabin was so entirely reassuring, and hygienic, 
 
 190
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 and I felt sure microbe- and spook-proof, that I 
 rolled over, and immediately went to sleep, as fast 
 as could be. 
 
 Next day we succeeded in disentangling Ithaca from 
 the clustering isles that lay about our prow, and with- 
 out difficulty placed the narrow haven between the 
 craggy points that guard the entrance 
 
 "... within which the water is so still that ships 
 lie there without moorings, safe and motionless. At 
 the head of the haven is a long-leaved olive-tree, over- 
 shadowing a cool and pleasant cave, sacred to the 
 nymphs, called naiads of the running brooks. Inside 
 the cave are bowls and pitchers of stone, and great stone 
 looms, at which the naiads weave their fine fabrics of 
 sea-purple dye. It is the favourite haunt of the honey- 
 bee, whose murmurs, mingled with the splashing of 
 perennial springs, make drowsy music in the place. 
 There are two gates to the cavern, one towards the 
 north, where mortal feet may pass, and the other on 
 the south side, which none may enter save the gods 
 alone. ..." 
 
 Thus read Celia, from a translation of the Odyssey, 
 with appropriate gestures. 
 
 Later on in the day, Celia fetched everyone to watch 
 anxiously for the spot where the River Alpheus rushes 
 out in pell-mell pursuit of the nymph Arethusa, who, 
 flying from him across the Adriatic, swims straight to 
 Sicily, with the river god close on her white heels all 
 the way. Miss Sadie declared she saw something and 
 that a peculiar and indescribable sensation went 
 through her when the keel of the vessel passed over the 
 supposed line of' his ardent pursuit and her evading of 
 him. A loud cry aft sent a thrill down everyone's spine 
 and brought them tearing to look over the stern. The 
 excitement was at fever pitch when we perceived that 
 we were under escort of a school of jolly dolphins. 
 
 191
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 They accompanied us for quite a space, for the pleasure 
 of our society, leaping up to attract our attention, 
 riding on and rolling in the little side wash we made by 
 our advance. Why, I don't know, but they seem to 
 me the buffoons of the sea, with their curious antics 
 and astonishing agility. It is said of them, that they 
 enjoy the companionship of men and are most atten- 
 tive to such ships that happen to come anywhere by 
 their special haunts. By their connection with the 
 legend of the poet Arion, who tells how they saved him 
 from drowning, they gave a further fillip to the craze 
 for romantic poetry and legend which had swept over 
 us all. Celia lectured everyone on it, guests, maids, 
 valets, and crew, all had to hear her, and I'm sure they 
 enjoyed it. Her management of certain delicate 
 situations, in the legends, due to the gods and goddesses 
 having tendencies to depart sometimes from the strict 
 path of virtue, according to our modern notions, was 
 masterly. She handled them with a dexterity that 
 was both amazing and elliptical. It was a triumph of 
 " leger-de-langue." Hey, presto ! all the naughtiness 
 was gone and nothing but the poetry remained. Staly- 
 brass's neck, when he was roped in for these lectures, 
 betrayed a certain restlessness, for though Celia's 
 treatment was telling on him more and more every day, 
 and had so far toned his natural downrightness as to 
 make him sometimes NOT say what he thought about a 
 thing, which previous to having met her he would have 
 blurted out at once, still as yet, there it ended. Such 
 parts of his external behaviour as he could control 
 might be beginning to conform to social usage, but his 
 inward and mental processes were still too honest and 
 uncompromising to do so and you saw what he felt at 
 once by his neck, which was in too close and constant a 
 communication with his brain to be quickly or easily 
 managed, swell up and go down as before. 
 
 I backed Celia in the long run, for she produced 
 almost the same effects on people as an anaesthetic 
 does, so that they became literally numb and acquies- 
 
 192
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 cent when under her influence. Then, when numb, she 
 extracted from them anything she thought unsatis- 
 factory and replaced it with what she thought more 
 suitable, whilst her patients hadn't the least idea of 
 what was happening to them. 
 
 But as yet poetry was like a red rag to a bull to 
 Stalybrass. Poetry ! ! ! It was facts, solid, hard, 
 horrible facts that he hunted for, and dealt in. And 
 oddly enough, he hunted for them in history. The last 
 place I'd think of looking for them. He'd gobbled up 
 all the large and larger histories, and now he had begun 
 on Jthe small and smaller ones. I used to sit and watch 
 him from under my eyelashes (long ones, for a man, 
 Celia says, and very nice too) and I used to study his 
 face and wonder what further fallacies he was adding 
 to his mental equipment. 
 
 No thirst for knowledge tormented the P.M. and he 
 sat with his unread book open on his knee. He was 
 out to forget unnecessary things and I could see him 
 forgetting them. The puzzled look was fading from 
 his eyes and his voice was returning to him. He was 
 getting noticeably fatter ; really quite fat ; I'd hardly 
 have known him for the same man. I found myself 
 wondering if it continued whether his party would 
 recognise him on his return or accuse us of having mis- 
 laid him and think that we were trying to foist an 
 inferior article on them holding, possibly, danger- 
 ous and subversive views, directly opposed to those 
 he had held when they had chosen him as their 
 leader. 
 
 Rankin. I found, had a good working knowledge of 
 all that we were about to see. How he had found time 
 to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, keep up his 
 old father and mother's home, fight a hard fight and 
 read all the good books he had read, was a mystery 
 to me. I bowed my head before that man's scheme of 
 life. It was so simple, so full and so unselfish. We'd 
 many a long talk pacing the deck and exchanging all 
 sorts of ideas, and there was a sweetness and a humble- 
 N 193
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 ness in his face that, truth to tell, I have only seen 
 equalled in the smiling sadness of the faces of some kind 
 old Jews I have known. 
 
 I tumbled to the fact that there was a certain rivalry 
 between him and Stalybrass. Nothing acrimonious, 
 for he'd never lend himself to that, but I could see, from 
 what he said, that Stalybrass's following in the party 
 was greater than his and growing fast. That his own 
 kindly, disarming manner put him at a loss with the 
 people whose interests he represented. As they them- 
 selves would have put it, what they wanted was a man 
 with plenty of fight and go in him. And though I t am 
 positive that Rankin could have carried their propa- 
 ganda into places closed to the other and won over 
 people that the other would have lost as partisans, yet 
 they preferred Stalybrass, with his big mouth full of 
 nonsense. If I wasn't mistaken, Rankin was for a 
 fairer distribution of the good and necessary things of 
 life and devoted his life to trying to lessen the burdens 
 where they bore too heavily on the poor. Stalybrass, 
 though he didn't know it, I think was out to pluck 
 things away from one class and give them to another 
 and by so doing defeat his own ends. 
 
 Rankin told me sadly, that just because he was will- 
 ing to meet the other side and tried to see their point of 
 view, he was accused of pandering to the golden call'. 
 I was very interested, for I felt that these two men in 
 more ways than one were typical of a split which would 
 sooner or later rend the party to which they belonged, 
 asunder. So whenever Celia was busy administering 
 her anaesthetic treatment to Stalybrass, Rankin and I 
 would resume our peregrinations and communings, 
 jogging one another's memories about the associations 
 of what we saw, bridging gaps, each hi the tale the 
 other called to mind. 
 
 Beyond dispute, we could mark the place in Pylos' 
 sandy cove, where the young, and, I always have 
 thought, remarkably verdant, and also sometimes 
 boring, Telemachus landed to seek tidings of his long- 
 
 194
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 lost father. Homer made a mistake in bestowing not 
 one redeeming vice on that young fellow ! 
 
 To pass lightly from the dun and legendary past to 
 something nearer our own time, we noted that the high 
 ascending slopes ahead of us, covered with quickly 
 ripening corn, must have been the hill-sides so coveted 
 of the Spartans to fill their granaries with yellow 
 grain. 
 
 By degrees and for the course of some hours the 
 yacht nosed her way through countless scattered islets, 
 rocky, and entirely without vegetation, which added to 
 the curious aspect of the scene. It gave us a queer and 
 unexpectedly unusual sensation of pleasure to see that 
 strange Peloponnesian coast coming near. Utterly 
 inhospitable-looking, one might say, abandoned to the 
 eagle, it yet had a charm all its own ; or maybe I should 
 say because of those very things. Nothing we had 
 ever seen matched it in strangeness of outline, so that 
 we stood and marvelled at it. Precipices and lonely 
 tracts with stray goats a-grazing on crags that could 
 only be reached by tiny cloven feet, but not any- 
 where a sign of man. Of traffic of the sea, there was 
 none hereabouts, only a solitary sail, visible in an all- 
 surrounding desolateness. And this was a coast which 
 had once teemed with a virile and determined race. 
 There was hardly any sign of it left now. Fading from 
 our sight, dun and distant, could be seen the western 
 hills of Elis, not so high nor so rich in recollections as 
 those which lay closer to us. The plane-leaf formation 
 of the promontories could not yet be made out, although 
 we tried to trace it. Here there arose a chain of ser- 
 rated ridges with ragged, jagged lengths of peaks 
 cutting white into the sky. Below, the sea everywhere 
 cutting deep into the edges of the land made long arms 
 of it and so formed bay after bay, each one landlocked. 
 The mountains, with their snow-drifted caps, uprose 
 largely and were of a rich harmonious purple-blue like 
 the deepest, darkest blue-bells, or the deeper, darker 
 violets of an English spring, growing far back in the 
 
 195
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 shades of an English forest. Afar, in mists, were the 
 mountains of Arcadia. 
 
 The nearer we got, the more abandoned the whole 
 scene became. Rankin reminded me that these regions 
 had been inhabited by Mainote pirates who hi times 
 gone past made the lives of sea-going merchants a terror 
 to them and hardly worth the living. They lay in wait 
 for them as they crossed the Gulf of Koron and held 
 up their vessels, riding low in the water, heavy with 
 wealth collected from all parts ; packed to their fullest 
 width with rich rolls of outlandish-figured brocades, 
 carpets, jewels, pearls, bar-gold or treasures of fine 
 workmanship, which were carried back and forth be- 
 tween the luxury-loving wide-apart towns of those days. 
 The pirates are all dead and gone now, and even their 
 creeks, where they left their plunder till they could 
 fetch it, or those dead of the affrays, to rot, are deserted. 
 But the whole rocky cape bears the stamp of the wild 
 people who once infested it ; for places, like counten- 
 ances, will surely retain marks and signs of callings 
 and occupations. Byron in his poetry wrote of them 
 as picturesque and ardent lovers, good husbands and 
 doting fathers ; but for all that they were ruthless 
 brigands, no more, no less, and to this day the thought 
 of something savage and untamed springs to the mind 
 at the sight of their old haunts. There are no villages 
 dotted about, for each house is a square white tower, 
 standing alone and fortified. The women and children 
 alone used to dare to go out to till the fields, and the 
 men stalked about shadowed by, and shadowing their 
 enemies, from generation to generation after the 
 manner of the Corsican vendetta. And yet Rankin 
 said he'd heard that it was perfectly safe for foreigners 
 to travel there and that such few people as still lived 
 there were well-behaved to them. Physically they 
 were said to be beautiful and were known to be of the 
 pure old Greek blood. 
 
 The Gulf of Sparta gradually opened to view as we 
 rounded the second serration of the Peloponnesian 
 
 196
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 plane-leaf. Try as we might, we could not get a glimpse 
 of the city itself, and perhaps as it is a full fifteen mile 
 inland it is not surprising. " Hollow Lacedaemon " 
 the old poets called it, because it curves inland so very 
 far. Here the harbour-ways are deserted too and half 
 destroyed the ships that frequented them set sail one 
 day and have not yet returned. 
 
 High above, and a landmark to all who come this 
 way, is Mount Tagyetus, its passes still dusted with 
 snows, and covered on all its precipitous sides by the 
 dark forests through which ages and ages ago the 
 Spartan youths hunted then" famous Laconian hounds. 
 On making Cape Malea, we swept it carefully with our 
 glasses, for on the very extremity lived an old Greek 
 monk who had made his dwelling on a little platform 
 jutting right out over the sea depths below. It appears 
 his practice was to come out of his cell and stand there 
 and bless all ships in passing. Though he must have 
 died ages ago, for I'd read about him in a book written 
 eighty years before, still we stared, fascinated, at the 
 little platform, half expecting to see him come out and 
 look round and lift his skinny kindly arms in benedic- 
 tion to us. His arms can't have been very fat, for all 
 the food he had, he got from a tiny patch of com grown 
 by himself. The merest suspicion of a path led to his 
 lonely, eerie cell. Nothing but the sisters and brothers 
 of the little goats we'd seen agraze earlier in the day 
 could have negotiated it, so he must have been as much 
 alone as a man could wish to be. Some instinct had 
 driven him there ; probably he was a poet without 
 knowing it and heard that strange seductive voice that 
 calls the artist to the waste and windswept places of 
 the earth, to face nature alone. Was he after all to be 
 pitied ? All the airs blew in on him utterly uncontamin- 
 ated, and each day he saw the panorama of the coming 
 and going of the sun, never two succeeding days the 
 same. 
 
 Far away to the south-east lay Crete and Mount Ida, 
 her base invisible in invisible mists. She is queen of 
 
 197
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 those very distant island Alps, though cut off from her 
 undoubted relations of the adjacent continent by the 
 waters of the ^Egean Sea. But for all her isolation 
 her past importance has been great. Fires lit on her 
 southern sides could flash a signal-blaze in times of 
 war to half the Archipelago and rouse the inhabitants 
 of the other islands to arms. 
 
 Crete was the stronghold of the Phoenicians, for they 
 colonised her. And further back than that the island 
 is associated with the stories of the old poets, of Minos 
 and the human sacrifices to the Minotaur, or the more 
 genial themes of Ariadne and Bacchus with his splendid 
 gift of thirst. 
 
 By the beams of a fitful moon (for a light breeze 
 dragged stray wisps of cloud across her half-formed face 
 and would not let her shine on us undisturbed) we drove 
 through the Hermione Sinus. It was no loss not to see 
 it, for even by that poor light I could tell that a more 
 barren land could never rise upon the eye ; the ancients 
 considered this part of Greece so near to hell (so says 
 the guide-book) that they omitted to put the usual 
 obolon into the hands of those who died there, to pay 
 their passage across the Styx. It certainly seemed a 
 blasted shore and gave one the shudders to look at it. 
 
 By midnight of the same evening of passing through 
 these straits we reached the island of -<Egina and 
 anchored off it, within about a mile of its tiny capital. 
 On the morrow we'd enter the Piraeus. 
 
 We lifted our anchor very early and steered towards 
 Athens at a speed rather less than five knots to the 
 hour. Thus by advancing gradually from some 
 distance off, we'd see everything in its entirety. And 
 by our slow approach to her across the sea, we would 
 at once realise something of her majesty and the match- 
 less splendour of her position, and thus the psychological 
 value of the first impression made on us by what was 
 really one of the Seven Wonders of the World would 
 not be lost or in any way diminished. 
 
 198
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 Quite wisely our host considered that for him to 
 bring us there in the ordinary way would be a mistake, 
 for working slowly round the adjacent coast and com- 
 ing abruptly into her harbours from behind a corner we 
 would receive an entirely unworthy idea of her great- 
 ness. So for the moment behind us lay Mgina,, which 
 later we'd explore, but for the present disregard. 
 Looking back, upon a craggy bluff, seen sky-high from 
 below, were the last remaining upright pillars of what 
 had once been a gigantic edifice enclosing altars sacred 
 to the worship of Jupiter Panhellenios. The rest 
 lay scattered broadcast ; big drums aslant, flowered 
 capitals and gigantic bases. We watched it recede 
 with curious feelings, for to this very spot we knew 
 were banished Aristides, and the great, wise Demos- 
 thenes. After years upon years of intelligent and fore- 
 sighted service given to the State, their liberties were 
 removed from them and they were confined within this 
 little land a punishment out of all proportion to any 
 mistakes they had ever made. It was unthinkable. 
 To this island Plato was shipped and on it sold as a 
 slave ; a deed the thought of which, estimated by the 
 value set on the man nowadays, sent a modern shiver 
 down a modern spine, and made one blush a modern 
 blush for the perpetrators of a mistake which for 
 sublimated senselessness has never had an equal. 
 
 Just as we looked now so they probably stood and 
 strained their eyes across this intervening space of 
 water, trying vainly to make out the distant outlines of 
 the city they had loved so well. In spite of the sun one 
 felt a little cold sadness come over one at realising that 
 what greeted our eyes coming here now, as strangers 
 isles, coasts, mountains and promontories had so 
 often greeted the eyes as familiars of those who had 
 been the makers of the place's history, when they 
 returned, worn out, but glad, from distant embassies, 
 or expeditions made in necessary defence of far-off 
 possessions or perhaps of the country itself. 
 
 Alcibiades, the attractive and handsome adventurer, 
 
 199
 
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 dandified and fashionably profligate, but for all that a 
 consummate general, came back to these very ways 
 from his campaigns and conquests in Asia Minor ; and 
 his victorious galleys, manned every one of them by 
 the toughest and most sea-learned sailors, swarmed 
 and darkened all these sounds and straits. His 
 soldiers, rough with joy, shouted hoarse greetings to 
 masses of people waiting for their disembarkation, 
 eager to hear their tales and to help to carry home the 
 booty they'd won, thanks to his strategy. Miltiades, 
 a century before him, likewise saw all these, and 
 Themistocles his contemporary, the very subtlest and 
 most knowing of soldiers and ministers too, having 
 rendered incalculable services to his country, in con- 
 quering and scattering the mighty hosts of Xerxes. 
 He must have seen it inversely to our seeing it, as he 
 fled to Persia, chased by a mob howling for his faithful 
 blood and quite forgetful of what he had done for his 
 country. The study of Greek history is not one to 
 encourage patriotism, for it is nothing but a long list 
 of banishments and ingratitudes. Even Pericles the 
 lofty and no wiser or more disinterested adminis- 
 trator ever lived died overwhelmed by a flood of 
 vituperation, reviled by the citizens by whom he was 
 owed so much. But for the help he gave to Aspasia 
 and to the group of clever men she gathered round her, 
 the Acropolis would never have been built, nor would 
 other public works which have come down as examples 
 of surpassing beauty to mankind ever have been 
 achieved. 
 
 But we were drawing close and there before us was 
 Athens. 
 
 Athens ! Radiant and glittering in the morning sun, 
 throned high above all other things about her, her 
 ruined temples were still a glory and a challenge to the 
 world. In pride and splendour their columns raised 
 themselves, saffron and burnt-gold, against a canopy of 
 deep lapis-lazuli blue, the intense, imperial blue of the 
 
 200
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 attic heavens. Athens, the classic city, mother of all 
 the learning, wit, grace, beauty and art of the Old 
 World, where an almost inexhaustible scroll of history 
 unrolled itself; from whom gushed the fountain of 
 thought to which all of us must come to drink at some 
 time or another of our lives ! The lion-hued rocks out 
 of which she gradually rose and on top of which she 
 took her final stand, piled themselves up about her in a 
 foreign ruggedness and strange grace. At her feet to 
 right and left the lesser cities of the shore and valley 
 lay in ruins, their palaces and pillars, colonnades and 
 pediments strewing all the ground. 
 
 A motley host of shipping, Eastern and Western, of 
 different kinds and colours, with orange-tawny sails 
 of curious forms, clustered at her quays and lifted a 
 tangle of masts like a company of ragged spears. If 
 you had melted a sapphire and cupped it in a goblet 
 blown from the crystal airs of the morning, and gently 
 moved it to a sparkle, there was the sea, brimming, 
 beautiful. 
 
 Somewhere beyond amongst the peaks that backed 
 her would be the slopes of Mount Hymettus, where the 
 bees sucked the honey eaten and sung about at least 
 three thousand years ago. The songs have come down 
 to us and the honey they say is still found and drawn 
 by swarms of little drowsy humming fellows. I 
 almost thought I heard them, but I suppose it was my 
 fancy. 
 
 Her Alpine hills descend gradually in a gently broken 
 line, part veiled, as is their habit, it is said, in mazy 
 morning mists, to where out of the horizon rears up 
 the promontory of ancient Sunium. Thirteen dazzling 
 columns crown it, washed to such a whiteness by the 
 flying spray that for miles and miles they can be seen 
 and their whiteness serve as a guide to sailors far across 
 the main. 
 
 The P.M. was talking softly to me and looking before 
 him. He said he doubted if she he always spoke of 
 Athens as she could be less dignified in her destruction 
 
 201
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 than in the days of her prosperity. I had my Byron in my 
 hand and it was open at " Child e Harold's Pilgrimage." 
 We found these lines : 
 
 " A thousand years scarce serve to form a state ; 
 An hour may lay it in the dust : and when 
 Can man its shatter 'd splendour renovate, 
 
 Recall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate ? 
 
 And yet how lovely in thine age of woe, 
 Land of lost gods and godlike men, art thou ! 
 Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow, 
 Proclaim thee Nature's varied favourite now : 
 Thy fanes, thy temples to thy surface bow, 
 Commingling slowly with heroic earth, 
 Broke by the share of every rustic plough : 
 So perish monuments of mortal birth, 
 So perish all in turn, save well-recorded Worth." 
 
 It's five miles from the Piraeus to the town and 
 each succeeding mile overflows with history, monu- 
 ments and remains of all sorts. We got to know every 
 step of the way. for we did not put up on land, preferring 
 to return each night to the cool luxury of the yacht in 
 the Piraeus. We either walked or rode the five miles 
 daily or else drove in every sort of conveyance imagin- 
 able, from native carts to fine private cars. Miss Sadie 
 and I got hold of a few horses when we had been there 
 a few days, through a rich merchant who had had 
 business relations with her father. They were, I think, 
 Turkish, with a touch of Persian. As a type they were 
 not familiar to me, but they were extraordinarily fast 
 and surefooted. 
 
 We explored every nook and corner, and the en- 
 thusiasm of the party at finding themselves where they 
 were was beyond description. Even the crew went 
 off in solid batches, armed with guide books and bin- 
 oculars and parcels of food. Some of the men were 
 quite intellectual-looking, with bony prominences on 
 their tanned foreheads, and, like good citizens of the 
 
 202
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 United States, they were out to learn all they could. 
 Many a time I saw them returning full of knowledge, 
 with their white duck pockets bulging with souvenirs 
 bought or purloined. I met the skipper once or twice 
 prowling about ; he greeted me civilly and seemed 
 healthily interested in all he saw. I had heard it said 
 that he was himself again, or very nearly, as he was 
 taking his meals and swearing with the regularity of 
 a clock. 
 
 When we first climbed to the top of the Acropolis, 
 and reaching the Parthenon stood looking around us at 
 Greece, we all felt that to have seen it was something 
 to have lived for. We saw now that we were in a new 
 and strange land and that the city below us in no way 
 resembled any other we had ever seen. We stood 
 grouped under the great portico, and there to right 
 and left spread out before us lay the scenes where some 
 of the greatest human dramas enacted since the be- 
 ginning of the world had taken place. In front of us 
 stretched chain after chain of lofty mountains, and in 
 one it seemed as if a broad portion had been swept 
 aside, and there in the gap lay " shining Corinth " and 
 even at that distance we could distinguish the Acro- 
 Corinthus, the strategically placed rock which com- 
 mands the whole Peloponnesus, Argolis, Corinth, 
 Messenia, Laconia from end to end. Diogenes lived at 
 Corinth and thither went the glossy perfumed Alex- 
 ander, clanking in his cuirass and military accoutre- 
 ments, to speak to the surly and, as may well have been 
 the case, not over-clean philosopher. Close at hand, 
 so near that we could have hailed a man there from 
 where we stood, was Mars Hill, the Areopagus, with its 
 crowding, teeming, jostling associations. How often 
 of a summer's day I had pored over dusty school- 
 books, dog's-earing them, and yawning. How bored 
 I had been, and how languid was the attention I gave 
 to them, and now how suddenly their contents all 
 seemed to live before me. I groped in my memory 
 and tried to recall something of all the doings there, of 
 
 203
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 which I'd read. The very heart of ancient Athens 
 might be said to have beaten there at that place. The 
 beginnings and rudiments of all government had first 
 transpired and been hammered out there. When 
 there was an autocracy, the king or head-man went 
 there and assembled his nobles and through them told 
 the people of his decisions ; later king and nobles met 
 and discussed measures and gave out the result of their 
 combined decisions to the people, and this was a step 
 further. Later still came Cleisthenes. who was the first 
 democrat and who, in the words of Herodotus, was the 
 first to give the people a share in their own government 
 by consulting them there. Several hundred years after 
 came Pericles, who canvassed his supporters, actively 
 and personally, and managed them so well that he 
 became sovereign-paramount in power. His orations 
 were delivered in the intervals of his campaigning 
 there. From one of the dog's-eared books, much 
 against my will, I had been obliged to translate portions 
 of a speech he once made on the internal condition of 
 the State. He said : 
 
 " There is no exclusiveness in our public life, and 
 in our private intercourse we are not suspicious of 
 one another, nor angry with our neighbour if he does 
 what he likes : we do not put on sour looks at him 
 which, though harmless, are not pleasant. While we 
 are thus unconstrained in our private intercourse, a 
 spirit of reverence pervades our public acts, we are pre- 
 vented from doing wrong by respect for authority and 
 for the laws, having an especial regard to those which 
 are ordained for the protection of the injured as well as 
 to those unwritten laws which bring upon the trans- 
 gressor of them the reprobation of the general senti- 
 ment. And we have not forgotten to provide for our 
 weary spirits many relaxations from toil ; we have 
 regular games and sacrifices throughout the year ; at 
 home the style of our life is refined ; and the delight 
 that we daily feel in all these things helps to banish 
 
 204
 
 melancholy. . . . Our city is equally admirable in 
 peace and in war. For we are lovers of the beautiful, 
 yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind 
 without loss of manliness. Wealth we employ, not for 
 talk and ostentation, but when there is real use for it. 
 To avow poverty with us is no disgrace ; the true dis- 
 grace is in doing nothing to avoid it. An Athenian 
 citizen does not .neglect the state because he takes care 
 of his own household, and even those of us who are 
 engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. . . . 
 To sum up : I say that Athens is the school of Hellas, 
 and that the individual Athenian hi his own person 
 seems to have the power of adapting himself to the 
 most varied forms of action, with the utmost versatility 
 and grace. In the hour of trial Athens alone, of all her 
 contemporaries, is superior to the report that is spread 
 of her. No enemy who comes against her is indignant 
 at the reverses which he sustains at the hands of such 
 a city ; no subject complains that his masters are un- 
 worthy of him. And we shall assuredly not be without 
 witnesses ; there are mighty monuments of our power 
 which will make us the wonder of this and of succeed- 
 ing ages. . . . For we have compelled every land and 
 every sea to open a path for our valour, and have 
 everywhere planted eternal memorials of our friendship 
 and our enmity." 
 
 The man who uttered these entirely modern and 
 English sentiments transacted for the Government its 
 business with his followers in the political Agora, and 
 there the place stood before our eyes. All around here 
 and about where we were glancing he had moved, lived, 
 loved, and taken Aspasia the Haetera to wife, and 
 somewhere here he may have been seen to weep like 
 a child when he put a wreath on his dead son's funeral 
 bier. 
 
 This hill or mound must have swarmed with the 
 people of the town once, a keen, critical and sarcastic 
 crowd I take it, quite sharp Cockneys in their ways. 
 
 205
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 Euripides, Aristophanes, Xenophon and Peraclitus 
 frequented it ; and old Socrates came there and talked 
 willingly with anybody who wished to speak with him, 
 until such time as the representatives of the people 
 thought him so wise as to be dangerous and gave him a 
 cup of poison to drink. 
 
 And in place of all this inspired hubbub, now reigns 
 . . . silence. 
 
 We could see the little wandering River Ilyssus in the 
 plains below and near it we could make out the ruins 
 of another mighty temple raised to Jupiter. Not 
 very far from that again were distinguishable the last 
 foundations of the Lyceum, still shadowed as of yore 
 by sacred olives, undoubted and self-sown descendants 
 of the trees under which Aristotle, scholar and bene- 
 factor of all mankind, must have rambled as he dis- 
 coursed with his pupils, teaching them what he knew 
 or had discovered of the science of pure reason, or as 
 we now call it, logic. Also paving the way by his 
 studies for abstruse mathematical discoveries, and so 
 on, until he was foolishly suspected of some treason or 
 other and driven with fury into the wilderness. It is 
 to be supposed that the puny people who hounded him 
 out would not understand that a man, with a great 
 mind full of abstract thought and questions about 
 things which would be of great benefit to mankind, 
 has not got time for petty treasons or other useless 
 matters. 
 
 A great gulf separates his day from ours and yet, I 
 reflected, for all the lapse of time, it is almost as danger- 
 ous to think new thoughts to-day as it was then, and 
 his modern followers evade ostracism by carefully 
 hiding the fact that they think them. They have 
 profited by the study of his life and its ends in this 
 respect, that they have learnt enough to hold their 
 tongues. 
 
 By climbing over the fallen marble columns or 
 portions of broken statues, commemorating some poor 
 
 206
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 long-dead chap's triumph, or parts of some altar 
 dedicated to a goddess, controlling certain destinies or 
 matters Grecian, we reached the western corner of the 
 Acropolis. Looking away down the gulf, we could just 
 discern rEgina half visible, half invisible, veiling her- 
 self in warm dim mists, and that little morsel of a 
 rocky island, " Sea-born Salamis " who in her day had 
 been a little discontented Ireland, hatching sedition 
 and rebellion within the very gates almost of Athens, 
 till Solon set upon her and conquered her. Standing so, 
 it is easy enough to see the lie of Grecian history and 
 to grasp the meaning of its wars. For Attica you can 
 perceive to be a great plain surrounded by mountains 
 forming valleys, the entrances to which could be easily 
 held, thus making the inhabitants of the Attic lands 
 disinclined to submit to the inhabitants of the Eleusis, 
 Marathon or other valleys, coming in and settling. In 
 other words, nature having supplied them with natural 
 fortifications, they proceeded to consider anyone be- 
 yond them as their natural enemies. Had these 
 mountan ridges not existed, they might have thought 
 it worth while to cultivate each other's friendships and 
 lived at peace. Intercourse, however, between the 
 inhabitants of Bceotia and Attica would be right out of 
 the question, for range after range of peaks separate 
 them ; glens and defiles and mountain passes, any of 
 which could be held by a handful of men opposed to 
 vast legions attacking them. From which it may 
 appear that beautiful scenery may very well lead to 
 international complications. To the left one saw the 
 chain of Parnes stretching all along to the north-west 
 side until finally it merges into the sea, terminating 
 boldly in the point called Corydallis, opposite the little 
 Isles of Salamis. The curator of the temples pointed 
 out the only three possible places of egress. That of 
 Tala leading to Tanagra. The pass of Phylae where 
 brave Thrasybulus and his followers recovered its 
 liberty for Athensr and the last and lowest the pass 
 of Daphne along which the sacred procession of Eleusis 
 
 207
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 passed at the time of the mysteries, and along the 
 route of which, he said, could now be seen the votive 
 tablets, set in niches, to the honour of the goddess 
 Aphrodite. 
 
 In a party containing such active and varied in- 
 tellects as ours, you need not doubt but that the 
 deepest interest was aroused by our surroundings. 
 We were full of curiosity about everything. Ordinary 
 guide-books we gave up as hopeless and inaccurate and 
 there was a frenzied delving into the books our host 
 had originally provided for the use of the expedition. 
 Not that these sufficed ; they soon ran out and we ran- 
 sacked the town and stole or borrowed everything in 
 the way of a book that could be procured within a ten- 
 mile radius, and having got them we read them greedily. 
 When we got home late to the yacht we were almost 
 too absorbed to change our clothes or wash our hands 
 or brush our hair. W T e'd be comparing coins we'd 
 picked up or odd things purchased from the bandits 
 who offer them for sale in the shops, or streets. We 
 were a grubby lot just then but very healthy. Dis- 
 cussions over names, dates or racial characteristics 
 raged at every meal. Books were brought to table and 
 got mixed up with salad or Sauce Tartare. Some of 
 them were rather dry and Nancy (who was not quite so 
 bitten as the others and confessed frankly that such 
 things bored her) suggested a little tea or nice juicy 
 marmalade would not do them any harm. Dan said 
 he had a great idea to bring out a book which would be 
 the right shape to prop against a teapot while you ate 
 fried eggs and bacon, or soup. It was to be a sort of 
 hybrid, something between a book and a tea-cosy. This 
 sally of his was received with applause. Somehow 
 Dan always got his jokes to go well, but he had an 
 annoying way of blowing his nose like a trumpet as 
 soon as I began to tell a funny story so as to spoil 
 my effect entirely. But then Dan has got no fine 
 feelings. 
 
 208
 
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 The P.M. really knew a terrific lot. He was worth 
 all the books put together. For instance, he knew 
 that in the Peloponnesian wars the allies of the 
 Athenians were the Megarians, the Boeotians, the 
 Phocians, Leucadians and the Ambraciotes. He knew 
 that Pericles had a sound foreign policy and wanted a 
 united Greece under Athens. And he could have led 
 us blindfold to all the spots where the most exciting 
 things had happened. Thanks to him we became quite 
 familiar with all the old heroes and philosophers and 
 felt as if they were intimate and personal friends. 
 Partly, too, I suppose because they'd been dead for so 
 long, we had forgotten they were no longer alive. The 
 prince kept us wonderfully right about dates, for as 
 they work backwards from the Christian era, they were 
 a source of utter puzzlement to the ladies of the party. 
 But as Lady Shaw pointed out, no wonder he knew 
 them, for in a way the whole history of Greece was his 
 own family history. He was to all intents and pur- 
 poses the direct descendant of Agamemnon and his 
 modesty about it was beautiful. Diana said she felt 
 sometimes that she was prying into his private affairs 
 when she inquired into the principal happenings of 
 Ancient Greece, and when it came to scandal, as in the 
 case of the naughty handsome Alcibiades and his poor 
 long-suffering wife, she felt quite embarrassed if she dis- 
 covered he was within hearing when it was mentioned. 
 It appears he had been a sort of cousin of his, though 
 naturally it was some time back. But far and away 
 beyond other things the interest in the political dis- 
 sensions waxed feverish. We had not been long in 
 Athens before our little happy family split itself into 
 two well-defined parties ; one in favour of the lonians, 
 the other in favour of the Dorians. The arguments 
 raged so fiercely that for the time being three or four 
 promising flirtations were suspended, as the people 
 engaged in them (or about to become engaged) took 
 opposite sides. I'm sure it is much easier for stupid 
 people to remain fast friends and love one another as
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 they should, than it is for clever people. Stupid 
 people, knowing and thinking and talking less, have 
 less to disagree about. Celia was practically the leader 
 of the Ionian party and seemed to regard me as leader 
 of the Dorian or opposition (otherwise Spartan or 
 Lacedaemonian party). The former people she said 
 were always forward in trying new things, anxious to 
 learn, open-minded and tolerant, and gave a welcome 
 to strangers entering their gates, whereas the Spartans 
 were always cold and haughty, barely ate enough to 
 live on, and ate it in a common mess-room, and hated 
 strangers and everything new. Celia spouted Pericles' 
 speech to them of which Thucydides had kept a record. 
 It went this way: " You " she addressed me " you 
 never advance. They never hang back. They love to 
 serve abroad. You seem chained at home. They are 
 bold beyond their means, venturesome beyond their 
 judgment. You do even less than you are able to per- 
 form ! " and a lot more in the same strain. " They " 
 meant the lonians that is, Celia and her little lot. 
 " You " represented Miss Sadie, Vansittart and I. We 
 replied that this was all very well, but the Athenians, 
 otherwise lonians, did nothing but talk all day, and 
 what was worse, listened to each other talking, whilst 
 the Dorians were tough chaps who spent their time 
 in good wholesome outdoor occupations, fighting and 
 plundering weaker neighbours and so on, and what they 
 did not know of sport was not worth knowing. Besides 
 they had what, according to the experts, the lonians 
 lacked, a sense of humour. 
 
 She called me from now on "the Lacedaemonian." 
 The P.M. used to be frankly distressed by these argu- 
 ments, which he said were so typical of all the foolish 
 prejudices which had kept the world from going for- 
 ward for so many years, and that it was quite ridiculous 
 for anyone to contend that any one nation or set of 
 people had all the virtues as opposed to any other 
 nation ; that most human beings (barring accidents due 
 to bad leadership by decadent monarchs or dishonest 
 
 210
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 statesmen) will have good and bad in them in much the 
 same proportions. And that anyway, for a man to 
 boast about the good that was in him was to give it the 
 lie and make an ass of himself. In years to come when 
 people were more enlightened it would be made penal 
 for a man to swank about his nationality or say any- 
 thing to stir up bad blood or bitterness between himself 
 and a man of some other race. Stalybrass, true 
 agitator that he was, delighted in these tussles and 
 poured oil on the troubled flames and kept things going. 
 And frankly there is something about the air of Athens 
 that makes one itch to talk, and we turned the Par- 
 thenon into a debating chamber, and aired our views 
 ad infinitum. 
 
 I call to mind a particular afternoon of one sunny 
 Grecian day that found us assembled there, grouped 
 variously on fragments of sculptured pediments or 
 great overthrown frustra that lay scattered here or 
 there. The ladies (I can see them now) so picturesque, 
 so dainty, in cool embroideries or thinnest of white 
 silken things, their clear pale faces shaded by wide soft 
 brims, and gauzy veils, half turned aside. The bright 
 sun with glowing force struck sudden beams and quick 
 reflections off the dazzling sides of the polished marbles 
 they half leant, half sat on, catching at their eyes and 
 refracting softly from them again in little shimmering 
 lights. We rested our frames full-length on the warm 
 broken floors in whose crannies and crevices the wild 
 flowers grew in tufts. We were all, I think, conscious 
 of a not altogether unpleasant limpness due to questing 
 up and down the steep hill-sides in search of antiquities, 
 of which, the more we found, the more there seemed to 
 be. 
 
 At first no one spoke but remained quiet, just idly 
 glancing at the surrounding prospect, drawing in all 
 its fairness. But by degrees, as our slight bodily ex- 
 haustion passed away, our natural, and I am afraid 
 never-long-to-be-kept-in-abeyance, tendency to argu- 
 ment asserted itself, starting from comments made on 
 
 211
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 what we saw about us. As usual, this gave Stalybrass, 
 prone to much talk, his opportunity. You can imagine 
 from my description of him, how Athens overflowed 
 with approval and proof positive of the soundness of 
 his ideas. He didn't in the least figure to himself that 
 Athens had been there long before he had been even 
 thought of, and that he was looking through the wrong 
 end of the glass. He thought Athens confirmed his 
 theories whereas he merely strove to confirm hers at 
 second-hand ; blissfully regardless that he got them 
 originally from her and that he was nothing but an 
 echo, and a bit late at that, of ideas that had been 
 bandied from lip to lip there five centuries before the 
 Year of Grace, One. 
 
 It was a great moment for him when he first set foot 
 on the soil of Greece, the sacred place where Democracy 
 first had its rights recognised and held its beacon aloft 
 as a guide to all the world. 
 
 " Greece was the land of liberty. ..." 
 ' Yes, and look at her now," interjected Vansittart. 
 
 " Yes," said the P.M., taking the words out of his 
 mouth, " look at her now. It's odd that man who is 
 supposed to be more intelligent than the animals should 
 crave for such absurd things, and things which are so 
 bad for him. The wolf pack has its laws and observes 
 them the jungle has its laws and observes them. The 
 birds of the air, too, have their laws, and no bird must 
 break them. It is only man who demands liberty and 
 insists on his right to go to the devil in his own way, 
 oblivious of the fact that he imperils the whole com- 
 munity by doing so, as the actions of each one of us 
 affect our neighbour, and we none of us stand alone. 
 It is because the gods cursed him with the gift of 
 speech. In that, animals are our superiors ; they can- 
 not make foolish requests or prove that what is bad is 
 good, as man can, for luckily for them they cannot talk." 
 
 Stalybrass did not listen to this. He was thinking 
 of what next he would say himself. 
 
 " Demacracy " how he mouthed the word " De- 
 
 212
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 macracy " as he pronounced it, opening his mouth wide 
 like a fish, and getting purple in the face. We had 
 timed him during his stay in the land of Liberty. He 
 used the word at least once in every fifteen minutes 
 during the period he was there. We ragged him a good 
 deal that day, I'm afraid, for when he raised his hand 
 impressively and asked us to remember, to please re- 
 member, that it was through the mouths of the Greek 
 statesmen that the world had learnt the great truth 
 that all men were equal, Dan broke in and said, "What 
 nonsense ! How on earth can you say that all men are 
 equal when you know some men have more cheek than 
 others ? " 
 
 Dan stood up as he put this question and spoke very 
 loudly, for if you wanted to make Stalybrass listen to 
 anything that might disprove one of his theories you 
 had to shout, and it's easier to shout standing. I liked 
 to see Dan go for him and enjoyed the contrast between 
 them that day. It was so acute as to have a strong 
 artistic and dramatic value. Dan was a decorative 
 fellow, a completely good-looking young rascal, per- 
 fectly suitable as a set-off or adjunct to any noble- 
 looking ruined temple. He had a hardy high-bred face 
 and a head-well-up, dominating sort of grace about 
 him that made poor old Stalybrass, with his bunchy 
 shoulders and aggressive trestle legs, look pretty hope- 
 less in comparison. 
 
 Stalybrass' ideas may have been more in harmony 
 with his Greek surroundings than Dan's, but his body 
 wasn't, and Dan's was. However, Hitchcock backed 
 up Stalybrass. Not really because he agreed with him, 
 but because he saw by his purple face and bulging eyes 
 that if someone didn't agree with him and that quickly, 
 he might die of apoplexy and we would not be able to 
 set out upon the expedition to Olympus next day. He 
 waved his green cigar at us and said that there was more 
 in what he said than met the eye, and that we should 
 keep an open mind about things like that, and that they 
 held those very views in Poughkeepsie, for they'd told 
 
 213
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 him so, and would we all remember it was too hot to 
 argue. Of course it will have been discovered before 
 this that if one wished to be unusually emphatic or 
 screamingly funny or clinch a remark completely, one 
 made some reference to Poughkeepsie, varying the 
 pronunciation by sometimes pronouncing it in the 
 common way and sometimes in the swank way. 
 
 So we left him alone for a bit and he continued 
 unmolested for the time being. He said Mr Hitchcock 
 was right in advising us to keep an open mind and when 
 he said an open mind he did not mean a leaky mind, 
 and he glowered at us. He had dug up the informa- 
 tion that Cleisthenes was the father of Demacracy if 
 you excepted Solon, who had been a rare fine chap in his 
 day and extolled him to us with a plentiful accom- 
 paniment of neck and jaw swelling and subsiding. He 
 told us where we could find a paragraph proving that 
 there had been active efforts towards communism in 
 the year, I forget what, B.C., and that they had been 
 brought to considerable fruition by one Phaleas of 
 Chalcedon. But on the other hand he mourned the 
 fact that there were no records in any of the books 
 he had read of any organised efforts towards Trade 
 Unionism. What opportunities for a really good com- 
 bination of go-ahead unions there must have been in 
 a country where they had a religion that necessitated 
 the constant erecting of temples to numerous gods at 
 all costs. Here he waved his arms, indicating the 
 remains of the great building in which we sat. 
 
 At this Rankin twinkled dryly and thanked all the 
 gods he knew of, and he'd made the acquaintance of a 
 good many new ones lately, that such things had not 
 existed in the old days, for if so there would have been 
 nothing of the Parthenon and all the wonderful edifices 
 of the Acropolis. " Why, this thing I'm sitting on " 
 it was a colossal fluted portion of a column weighing 
 perhaps some five or six tons " judging by this, and 
 according to trade union calculations, based on the 
 efforts required with regard to the lifting of weights 
 
 2U
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 and the standardised expenditure of exertion author- 
 ised by trade union rules, taken in conjunction with 
 the number of working hours they sanction at tenpence 
 per hour for so many days in the year, excluding Bank 
 Holidays and Boxing Day and several months in the 
 year to rest and think things over and to prevent them- 
 selves from becoming too expert at their job it would 
 have taken ten thousand years to build up Athens at 
 her best, and all the money in the world would not have 
 been able to pay for it." 
 
 This is not really what he said, for it was too technical 
 for me to follow very thoroughly, but roughly that is 
 what it sounded like. I think he was quite a mathe- 
 matician. 
 
 This remark, though it's rather long and weighty to 
 be called a remark, was brushed aside by Stalybrass. 
 He went in a great deal for brushing aside what Rankin 
 said. He changed the subject back to Demacracy. 
 Time was up anyhow. Greece had risen to greatness 
 through its Demacracy and it was all as plain as a pike- 
 staff to him that all the muddles and weak spots in our 
 present-day civilisation would vanish if only we would 
 return to the election of a five hundred by drawing lots. 
 And if even that failed there were so many other great 
 things to be done, through, by and with Demacracy, 
 that everything could be put right if only the right men 
 were allowed to take the matter in hand. He led us to 
 infer pretty clearly that had things so happened that 
 he himself, for instance, had been born under circum- 
 stances suited to it or in a place where there were 
 opportunities for a man to rise swiftly to high places, 
 he could have governed a country with one hand tied 
 behind his back. 
 
 Someone, perhaps Miss Sadie, softly sighed and 
 wished the people in Poughkeepsie could have heard 
 him talk as they would have enjoyed it so. The dear 
 old P.M. heaved a sigh and asked if he might tell us a 
 story. There was a chorus of " Yes ! " Well, it was his 
 privilege to count among his friends a multi-millionaire. 
 
 215
 
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 Not an American this time, but an Englishman, 
 who had all his life been an ardent collector of the 
 finest specimens of china, so that at the moment of 
 speaking he had a unique collection of the rarest pieces, 
 some of them of incalculable artistic importance and 
 representing enormous sums of money. Famille Rose, 
 Famille Verte, Sang-de-Bceuf, priceless old Ming. 
 Their monetary value might be gauged if he were to 
 tell us that some of the individual pieces, if sold at 
 current market prices, might fetch anything between 
 five and eight thousand pounds each and he wouldn't 
 say but that if a man really wanted one of them very 
 badly he might have paid ten thousand pounds down 
 for it. When the experts came to see the collection 
 and to make notes of the items and to feast their eyes 
 on the colouring or glaze of certain noteworthy pieces, 
 their knees trembled and their hearts fluttered, and 
 they declared they felt faint with apprehension because 
 they knew the value of what they handled, and the 
 fragility. But his housemaids, he said, dusted them 
 quite casually, moved them this way or that, knocked 
 them about as if they were only worth tuppence-half- 
 penny, and never grew pale at spring cleaning times ; just 
 dumped them down off-hand. 
 
 No one said anything when he finished for a few 
 moments and then suddenly the prince clapped his 
 hands enthusiastically and called out " Bravo ! 
 Bravissimo ! " Nancy shook her head and couldn't 
 see it and Dan explained in tones sufficiently loud to 
 reach Stalybrass that it was the P.M.'s kindly and 
 courteous way of saying that fools step in where angels 
 fear to tread. 
 
 Stalybrass snorted. That quotation was responsible 
 for a lot of mistakes, and had put lots of people off 
 doing things that needed doing and might just as well 
 have been done by them as by anyone else. Lady 
 Shaw opened her parasol with a click, and said it was 
 a pity we all argued so constantly, and that we took 
 things to heart too much and read and thought far too 
 
 216
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 much about the history of the place and what was the 
 cause of this and what was the cause of that, as if our 
 knowing was going to help matters. Personally she 
 was just going to enjoy things and take things as she 
 found them and not worry ; the sunsets and the lovely 
 air and the drives and all that. 
 
 Celia made a little clucking noise with her tongue, 
 conjecturing in an undertone to me that her fatal com- 
 placency was ruining her figure, and that a little worry 
 would improve it. 
 
 Miss Macinerney was entirely with Lady Shaw about 
 not reading Greek history. She said the study of it 
 made her feel so low in herself. It was too awful to 
 think that all these splendid fellows whose marble 
 busts one sees in the museums and in all well-regulated 
 country mansions had been treated so badly. There 
 they were. They'd done everything they could for 
 their country and never spared themselves and left 
 words of wisdom behind, which children wrote out hi 
 copy-books, and yet they had all been murdered or 
 banished. She ticked them off. There were Plato 
 and Socrates and Aristides and Demosthenes and 
 Aristotle and Themistocles and a heap of others 
 oh yes Pheidias the Sculptor, who had done the 
 most exquisite work and who had been accused of 
 stealing the gold that decorated the statues that once 
 stood where we now stand, and the poor creature a 
 most charming man, she had heard said died in prison 
 the day before his trial ! 
 
 The P.M. shook his head sadly. The list, even in- 
 complete, furnished an indictment against the whole 
 human race. For many years he had felt that anyone 
 who had any real conception of the folly and ingratitude 
 of men would never make the slightest attempt to take 
 any part in their government. He'd even go further 
 bother his head to try to do any good work in the world 
 at all, as he would only be reviled for it. This so- 
 called progress of man towards a better state of things 
 was a sluggish affair. So much so, indeed, that one 
 
 217
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 was bound to lose interest in it all after watching it for 
 a while. 
 
 Stalybrass got very excited and called upon us all to 
 say that we thought this was a shocking statement to 
 make, but even Hitchcock would not back him up in 
 this. He didn't mind telling us that owing to his great 
 wealth he had had many opportunities of doing things 
 for people and the people and he was thoroughly 
 disheartened and disgusted and had decided to do 
 nothing hi future. He hadn't been a rich man long 
 before he made a horrible discovery, which was that if 
 one set out ready to share what one had with others, 
 they took what you gave them as a matter of course 
 and never said thank you ; and not only that, but 
 tried to drag every mortal thing you had from you 
 and leave you with nothing at all. Now he didn't care 
 how his money accumulated. He'd leave his heirs to 
 struggle with it, and become disillusioned in their turn. 
 Looking at it from one point of view he supposed it was 
 a good thing that before he became hardened he had 
 already given away vast sums of money. It was para- 
 doxical that it should do so, but the thought of this did 
 give him satisfaction, somehow. 
 
 Dear Old Hitch. His talk about not giving any more 
 money away did not tally with the fact that I had seen 
 him and Celia and Miss Mac. poring over the plans for a 
 big children's hospital somewhere. But then children 
 are not really human beings and therefore I don't 
 suppose they came within the scope of his disillusion- 
 ment. 
 
 Stalybrass quite exploded with wrath. He would 
 not sit by and hear such things said about the PEOPLE ! 
 and there was not proper justification for saying that 
 all the finest and most public-spirited Greeks had been 
 foully done to death or banished. What about Solon ? 
 And hadn't Pericles died in his bed or whatever the 
 Greek equivalent was for a bed in those days ? 
 
 " Pericles' death saved his life, so to speak. If he 
 had lived a few weeks longer the people would have had 
 
 218
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 his blood for a ducat, for he was a very great man. 
 And Solon was so old a man that he wasn't worth the 
 killing ! " The P.M. was really bent on getting at 
 Stalybrass that day. 
 
 To hark back, he said, the only great men who had 
 not perished miserably or in exile were Cleisthenes and 
 Solon and both of these men were quite as cute as foxes. 
 They both bribed the Delphic oracle to help them and 
 to crack up their leadership and enterprises. He 
 didn't blame them. He thought they were fully 
 justified in trading on the foolishness of the people. 
 On mature consideration he gave it as his fully weighed 
 opinion that a state founded on the vanities and super- 
 stitions of mankind stood a better chance of flourishing 
 than one based on their higher feelings. Men's higher 
 feelings were inclined to flicker and waver and even go 
 out in a breath of ridicule, whereas their bad instincts 
 persisted curiously and were strongly and deeply 
 rooted. 
 
 Stalybrass was almost speechless, but he managed to 
 pant out " Do you mean to tell me that you would 
 advocate the stooping to such means nowadays as to 
 play on the people's weaknesses ? ! ! " 
 
 " Yes," answered the P.M. blandly, looking round as 
 if for confirmation, but in reality to wink at us all. 
 " I really believe one can only succeed by pandering to 
 people's follies. I think, for instance, if we could install 
 a good reliable counterpart of the Delphic oracle in a 
 little temple built for the purpose in Parliament Square 
 or better still in the Office of Works building, which 
 would be loftier and more commodious we would find 
 it most useful. People are just as stupid and just as 
 superstitious as ever they were in the days of the 
 Delphic High Priestess ! " 
 
 Here the prince with his customary courtesy and 
 tact, the result of many years of Court life, gently led 
 Stalybrass away, whose neck by now must have 
 measured at least thirty inches. He was seriously up- 
 set by the P.M.'s words, and never in the world would 
 
 219
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 have guessed he was only joking and pulling one of his 
 trestle legs ! 
 
 As they walked off together we could hear him de- 
 nouncing such doctrines furiously, stuttering and de- 
 claiming. The prince nodded his head urbanely, but 
 I know he didn't understand a word of what was being 
 said to him, for though he knew a lot of English, I'm 
 sure he didn't know enough to understand it when it 
 was spoken in rag-time at double speed with a splutter 
 of indignation in addition. 
 
 We had a good laugh when Stalybrass' back was 
 turned. It was really great to hear him laying down 
 the law off-hand to a man of such intelligence, and 
 education, and wisdom, ripened by so much experi- 
 ence, as the P.M., a man who for years had held a great 
 party together in many times of crisis. 
 
 " Poor Stalybrass, I really like him you know. He's 
 as honest as daylight but so terribly downright. The 
 dear fellow doesn't understand that one should follow 
 the nap of life as it were not be going constantly 
 against it. It does no good. A great mistake." 
 
 " I'm glad you ragged him a bit to-day. It will do 
 him good. I wonder you let him have his own way 
 about things so much and talk you down. You know 
 that if it came to a debate you could knock him into a 
 cocked hat ! " 
 
 The P.M.. who as you may observe had almost re- 
 covered his voice completely, shrugged his shoulders 
 whimsically. " No ! why should I bother to argue 
 with him or point out his mistakes ? It would be waste 
 of time, for you may be quite sure that when a man 
 holds opinions as violently as he does, sooner or later 
 he is bound to change them." 
 
 We slowly got up and shook our legs and descended 
 to the hill-side amphitheatre dedicated to Dionysius, the 
 benefactor of mankind, giver, not merely of wine, but of 
 the fruitfulness of trees of all kinds and of the joyousness 
 of spring growth and autumn vintages ; whose special 
 duty it is to ripen the figs and cause the grapes to swell 
 
 220
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 and sweeten. His job can be no sinecure in view of the 
 manner in which they flourish in Greece. Selecting at 
 random a few out of the twenty-five thousand seats at 
 our disposal, we sat down in them and tried to picture 
 it as it must have been when it was packed for a first 
 night, or as would have been the case, a first morning, 
 seeing that the dramatic representations of the tragedies 
 took place upon the three festivals of the god Diony- 
 sius, and lasted the whole day, culminating in the 
 awarding of the prize to the poet whose plays were 
 judged to be the best, amidst the cheers and acclama- 
 tions of the Athenian public, who must have been some- 
 thing worn-out and sun-baked after witnessing two or 
 perhaps three trilogies, each one containing four separ- 
 ate playlets packed with tragic incidents and harrowing 
 situations. We remembered that Euripides gained a 
 prize at one of those festivals and that the award was 
 fully approved by at least one of his fellow dramatists, 
 Sophocles, who let fall the remark, preserved and 
 handed down by Aristotle, that he depicted men, not 
 as they ought to be, but as they were. And talking of 
 Socrates we discussed the affairs of his arraignment 
 before the Phratores on the evidence of his relations 
 who had accused him of not being able to manage his 
 own or his children's affairs and how he took up one 
 of the plays he had but lately written, the CEdipus in 
 Colonus, and read from it passages which so impressed 
 them that they dismissed the accusation at once. 
 Family life, says Rankin, must have been pretty much 
 then as it is now. 
 
 The marble arm-chairs curved to put a tired back 
 at ease were exquisitely comfortable ; the afternoon 
 advanced and still we talked, our conversation drifting 
 around the writers of the plays witnessed there in those 
 far-off days, and around the plays themselves, many of 
 which had served the double purpose of amusement and 
 instruction, in that they were commentaries, and very 
 biting too, on certain abuses in the civic administration 
 of Athens ; besides other abuses of sorts. Still later 
 
 221
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 and when it became cooler, we walked to the Areopagus 
 and, climbing the steps cut in its sides, looked around ; 
 and from that on to the Pnyx, repeopling it with all 
 its thronging citizens. We passed the political Agora, 
 where Pericles used to convene his supporters, a 
 momentous assembly, to decide world matters and 
 deliver his glowing orations, which so biased their 
 minds to him ; where the demagogues sowed the seeds 
 of sedition and glory, according to circumstances. The 
 noble portico of the Agora still stands, with mute and 
 unconscious irony inviting one to enter by it into a 
 piece of bare unenclosed space. 
 
 We stood under the Bema, a platform looking out 
 to sea, to which Demosthenes had so often ascended to 
 speak to the crowd. 
 
 Now all is deserted and abandoned. The lizards sun 
 themselves on the rocks and catch little unwary Greek 
 flies and the tettix chirps with a shrill dry note where 
 once that great voice made itself heard, beseeching the 
 Athenians to protect their country from the assaults of 
 Philip the Macedonian. 
 
 It appalled me to see its desertion and solitude, for 
 it was empty with an emptiness that was worse than if 
 it had never been occupied. It was heartrending to 
 remember the weight and multitude of matters once 
 done there ; the sum and pitch of thoughts that were 
 thought and declared and analysed there thirty-six or 
 more centuries before the day on which we saw it. 
 Thoughts, which if they had not been recorded, or the 
 records had not reached us, would have left us, of our 
 century, hundreds of years behind our present stand ; 
 thoughts by which we had been given light and on 
 which we had been able to found ourselves and from 
 which by the grace of Heaven we might be able to go 
 forward one day. Such a web of enterprises, literary, 
 artistic, philosophical and commercial as was spun here. 
 A piece of cloth from which a garment might have been 
 cut and sewn to keep the whole world warm, if things 
 had only been different. 
 
 222
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 And then, musing and wondering, up again to the 
 mighty Parthenon to watch the setting sun fill all 
 the sky with greatness. His declining rays threw the 
 shadows of the mighty columns inwards along the level 
 paving. The city lay below bathed in a golden evening 
 mystery. Many things which by the common light of 
 day might have appeared mean or drab, took on the 
 lines and shades of perfect beauty. 
 
 From the heights of the Acropolis we had marked a 
 broad belt of luscious green starting from Mount Pente- 
 licius and sweeping right away to the distant Piraeus. 
 It was the plain of the Kephissus and the olive groves 
 we saw were the olive groves of Academe, the same 
 which had sheltered the Academy of Plato. We looked 
 at them and wondered if the Altar of Love still stood at 
 the door and the little Temple of Prometheus and all 
 the statues to the Graces. The trees were too thick to 
 reveal their only too probable absence and dispel the 
 illusion, so we toyed with it awhile. As is the case with 
 the Lyceum, these are the descendants of the very olive- 
 trees in whose studious shades Aristotle, Leontius and 
 Epicurus spent whole days listening to Plato's ideas 
 and submitting their own to him, not marking the pass- 
 ing of the hours, nor counting any of their moments 
 lost. Here came Socrates of the crooked mouth, whose 
 old brow was perpetually wrinkled by his inquiring 
 thoughts and self-questionings ; and Aspasia too, to 
 converse, who was a clever woman according to the 
 standard prevailing there. We have a few records of 
 her, but it is known that she was dissatisfied with the 
 position held by her follow-women then, and talked 
 over the matter with the wise greyheads who for- 
 gathered here. I could almost have imagined I saw 
 her returning at nightfall, in her gorgeous litter, along 
 the winding highroad, accompanied by her attendants 
 dressed more splendidly than she herself. 
 
 On exploring these groves later, though we would 
 
 223
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 soon be deep in summer-time, we found the Kephissus 
 (so often dry by June) gently swollen to the lip of all its 
 various banks. The edges of its wandering arms were 
 lined with sedgy marsh plants and giant reeds and in 
 quiet side pools bright fish swam lazily. The ouzel 
 and the kingfisher were everywhere, evading us with 
 quick movements as we passed. We often loitered in 
 the solitude and coolness to escape from the glare and 
 the too abundant classic dust that blows from all the 
 dry ways of the town. The woods are so wide and so 
 long that in the darkly shadowed alleys of their depths 
 one seemed to recall the greenness and quietness of 
 some unbroken dream of childhood. In the farther- 
 most parts the growth is so close, the boughs so dense 
 above the head that from the beginning to the end of 
 the year no light worth calling by the name penetrates 
 there and during their season the nightingales sing con- 
 tinuously in a prolonged dim-green twilight without 
 ever knowing when night changes to morning or the 
 other way about. 
 
 There had been a universal and therefore openly 
 expressed wish on the part of most of us to go to some 
 of the wilder and more remote parts of Elis and Achaia 
 and so forth, so an excursion was quickly planned. 
 The Dorian party, as they called themselves, were 
 particularly anxious to visit the scene of the Olympian 
 games, to get a mental picture of an interesting aspect 
 of the ancient civilisation and life ; also to see some- 
 thing of the recent excavations around the colossal 
 structure that had been once raised there in honour of 
 Zeus, and where we could get a sight, almost in situ, of 
 that pearl of all pearls, the Hermes of Praxiteles. We 
 therefore took train to Patras, and from Patras on to 
 Elis. The journey was hot and tiring, lasted many 
 weary hours, and was not one of the pleasantest 
 experiences of our trip. To begin with the stations are 
 so ill managed, that to book one's ticket and to obtain 
 advice as to which train goes where, one has to take a 
 part in what is really something more like a football 
 
 224
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 scrimmage than anything else. After all we found our- 
 selves in a couple of imperfectly constructed, badly 
 ventilated, insufficiently cushioned and cleansed 
 carriages proceeding along an improperly laid railway 
 line. With flies, airlessness and heat, leg-cramp and 
 general tedium, the usual discussions became acute 
 and acrimonious, and everyone wondered why on 
 earth anyone had ever left England. The only two 
 people who did not get ruffled were the P.M. and 
 Rankin, and their training in the House and in their 
 constituencies had been so hard that it was, I fancy, 
 a physical impossibility for either of them to lose his 
 temper. 
 
 It was not so bad when we got to Elis ; indeed it was 
 not bad at all, for the drive along the coast along the 
 side of the limpid waters of the bay was really delight- 
 ful and as we approached Pyrgos the airs that drifted 
 to us were indescribably sweet and heavy with the per- 
 fume of orange blossom, blown over from the wayside 
 orchards, fenced with aloes. 
 
 The road thence to Olympia was practically finished 
 and lay through the loveliest wild country imaginable. 
 It was the route proper, almost actually the same as 
 that followed by the crowds of sightseers or those who 
 came from the West to witness, or participate in, the 
 classic contests. At first it wandered among the 
 meadows bright with the tall young corn, with outlying 
 slopes beyond, thick clustered with various growths ; 
 mastich and arbutus, or great clumps of purple judas- 
 tree, and late white pear. 
 
 At every pace we took, from the wayside banks came 
 countless grateful odours of pungent flowering shrubs. 
 The farther along we went the wilder and the stonier 
 the prospect became. Amphitheatre after amphi- 
 theatre opened before us as we passed through the 
 narrow mountain glens and defiles ; and each one as 
 we saw it we thought must be at last the sacred pre- 
 cincts, the Artis itself, by the confluence of the Kladeos, 
 p 225
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 in whose valley the great gathering used to be held, only 
 to find that it was farther on. Those of us on horses 
 were sometimes tempted to leave the carriage track, 
 ascending above it on to little straggling paths on the 
 sides of the wooded ravines and there met many moun- 
 tain rivulets at the bottom, flowing rapidly in deep 
 cuttings ; rushing to join the main river, flooding it so 
 full that we had difficulty in fording it on our horses. 
 
 The anticipation was better than the realisation, as 
 it turned out, for on arriving at Olympia we found it 
 utterly disillusioning. We all said " Ah-h " in various 
 tones of regret and dismay. It could not of course be 
 helped nor should we have expected otherwise, but that 
 these explorations which were being watched closely by 
 all the savants of the world reading about them 
 studying photographs of them or coming in person to 
 view them would cause a lot of apparent damage ; 
 and could not possibly be conducted without a great 
 mass and accumulation of tools, litter and unsightly 
 paraphernalia of all sorts. So that as we saw it then, 
 it looked far more like a large garden city in the making 
 than anything else, and gave us a coup d'ceil such as one 
 might have got in any large suburb in spring outside a 
 growing town, but very much worse as the operations 
 were on a larger scale. There were hundreds of work- 
 men employed and all the drab accompaniments of their 
 jobs littered about, bits of board and tarpaulin, water- 
 pumping apparatus, wheelbarrows, old sacks and the 
 like. The vegetation was trampled down and the 
 ground was nothing but a great expanse of bare, 
 trodden ugly earth with here and there a mound left 
 which had been cast up by the digging and a few 
 occasional holes filling slowly with yellow turgid water. 
 
 It was certainly a shock to us, but after a while we 
 got used to it. We were most kindly looked after by 
 some of the archaeologists there, to whom Hitchcock 
 had obtained introductions, and so got invitations from 
 them for us all to put up with them. We were very 
 comfortable that way, and not only that, but we were 
 
 226
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 soon informed as to what the latest digging had brought 
 forth in the way of new discoveries or old ones re- 
 discovered and plunged into the matter with a fresh 
 outburst of the interest we had felt at first on finding our- 
 selves among the wonderful things at Athens. Thanks, 
 too, to Hitchcock's far-sightedness we had been careful 
 not to get letters to any of the " smart set " resident 
 in Greece, for, as he reminded us, smart people don't 
 think it's the right thing to show an interest in any 
 remarkable things or remains of antiquity, and if we 
 had got mixed up in the Society of the place we'd have 
 been willy-nilly obliged to play bridge and gossip all 
 day. and if we wanted to see anything, sneak out after 
 nightfall and go round them with a candle or a dark 
 lantern. He had made the mistake of getting into the 
 " right set " in Egypt, he said, and after entertaining 
 and being entertained by them, he and Miss Sadie were 
 ostracised because in the face of their opposition they 
 had outraged their feelings by behaving like common 
 tourists and going to see the Sphinx. It was worse still 
 at Luxor, for they were seen entering the Tombs of the 
 Kings in broad daylight, to see Amenhotep the Second, 
 who had reigned three thousand, three hundred and 
 sixty-five years ago, and who now lay in his glass 
 coffin deep in the heart of the mountain, and his little 
 favourite slave with the curly hair near by. By so 
 doing they lost caste entirely, and caused a convulsion 
 of horror to run through the colony. 
 
 If we had all been very high in the Peerage, it 
 wouldn't have mattered, and our desire to instruct 
 ourselves would have been put down to a quaint and 
 becoming eccentricity. But he was only an American 
 millionaire and couldn't afford to do it, except incog. 
 
 It meant very close attention if one were to make 
 head or tail of what one saw at Olympia, or keep step 
 with what the experts told us. One had, after conning 
 them very carefully, to keep so much of the plans in 
 one's head, if one wanted to get any conception of what 
 
 227
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 these great temples had once looked like, for the earth- 
 quakes had brought nearly everything toppling down 
 and scattered the big pillars to such a distance, that 
 some of them lay twenty-five yards from where they 
 were originally erected. But we threw ourselves into 
 it with vigour, catching enthusiasm from the jolly old 
 boys who were directing operations and who were only 
 too eager to post us. The conversation of the party 
 ceased to be partisan and the discussion shifted from 
 political to architectural subjects instead. We pains- 
 takingly measured out the marks upon the ground and 
 argued gravely as to whether they were the foundations 
 of buildings to be classed as Tetrastyle, Hexastyle. 
 Octastyle or Decastyle, and whether, above all, they 
 were Hypo-Theatral. We searched, and I think, 
 found, from time to time, the portion known as the 
 Opisthodomos or back building ; or again, the Posti- 
 cum. and haggled horribly as to whether a certain piece 
 of ground about as big as a London back garden, were 
 the Proiiaos where the famous Chryselephantine statue 
 of Zeus by Pheidias once stood, raised upon a pedestal. 
 
 The ladies, whose tongues were more developed than 
 those of the men, talked away among themselves. 
 One heard them debating whether things were Peri- 
 petereal or Diptereal, or else Pseudo-Diptereal, and 
 whether one should refer to the top step of a Peri- 
 petereal temple as Stylobate, or whether this name was 
 only accorded to all three of them together. A slight 
 undercurrent of partisanship again cropped up because 
 someone declared the Dorian capitals with their circular 
 moulded caps under a square abacus to be in far 
 better taste than the Ionic capitals which have a spiral 
 volute at each angle under a moulded abacus. Dan 
 said coldly the latter were " too ornate " and therefore 
 " bad Art " and would never be tolerated at Pough- 
 keepsie. But on the whole the arguments flagged and 
 withered away, as one can't, in hot blood, lay one's 
 hands upon architectural terms easily. 
 
 Lady Shaw sat on a heap of sun-baked stones and 
 
 228
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 sucked beef-tea lozenges, enjoying the air and saying 
 " Now, now," to us at intervals, if she thought we 
 were getting heated. 
 
 The P.M. and Rankin spent their days on their knees 
 crouching down deciphering inscriptions on votive 
 tablets stacked in dark little outhouses, and smudged 
 themselves and their faces over, and got slight attacks 
 of housemaid's knee. Stalybrass talked with some of 
 the workmen and was delighted to find, through one of 
 them who spoke broken English, that they were under- 
 paid and seething with discontent. 
 
 One's imagination as well as one's tongue went on 
 crutches after a bit. The enthusiasm of the experts in 
 charge was immense, also I think their self-confidence 
 was immense too. They were so expert that from one 
 glance at a handful of rubble they would reconstruct a 
 whole temple to Zeus, or Jupiter, or Aphrodite, beyond 
 the shadow of a doubt. Far be it from me to question 
 any of their pronouncements, but some of them were 
 sweeping. For instance, Herr Something-or-other, I 
 forget his name, showed me a photograph of a model 
 group, heroic size, which had been restored from infer- 
 ences and conclusions drawn by him from fragments 
 he had found. The group represented the wife of 
 King Pirithous being carried off against her will by 
 two centaurs, whilst her husband with an expression of 
 agony on his face tried to prevent them. I was much 
 impressed by it especially by the expression on the 
 face of the queen, and asked to see the fragments. 
 There were only about three pieces, the largest of which 
 was about the side of a middling Dutch cheese (which 
 had been eaten into at that), and which came, he said, 
 from the lady's torso, somewhere about where her float- 
 ing rib had been, or even possibly the small of her back. 
 I thought it subtle work on his part to have recon- 
 structed these four figures from the material at his dis- 
 posal and, above all, to have divined from the Dutch 
 cheese fragment the reluctance on her face and the 
 agony on that of her husband. However he concluded 
 
 229
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 that there were any centaurs there, was beyond me, for 
 what they had to go by seemed to be like nothing so 
 much as the ordinary rubbish of a builder's yard. He 
 said the group came from the eastern pediment of the 
 principal temple there. 
 
 The more energetic amongst us and this included 
 Celia and Miss Sadie thought that part of our return 
 journey should be made on mules across the mountain 
 passes of Eurymanthus, and to that end we had made 
 inquiries and hired the services of some of these beasts, 
 with their brilliant, striped saddle blankets and their 
 still more brilliant attendants, who were attired in full 
 Palicar costume, fustinella of purest white, embroidered 
 jacket with white sleeves, scarlet skull-cap and bright 
 blue pendent tassel, complete with a manner that was 
 princely and sparklingly loquacious. 
 
 On the day of our departure, having shouted our 
 good-byes to the sleepy-heads, we started off full of 
 high morning enthusiasm in an air as clear as a well-cut 
 jewel. The birds were singing madly on all sides about 
 us, so that not a part of our surroundings was free of 
 this universal melody. The nightingale still outsang 
 the others just because he was unable to hold back the 
 music that choked his little bosom. At first we rode 
 along the plain amongst green fields and a few stray 
 cultivated homesteads, along a road which would bring 
 us to the sloping bases of the chain for which we made. 
 The softly ascending tracts were loosely chequered 
 with woodland and vegetation, and Summer before so 
 very long would have established herself in the valley, 
 for already all the trees in the wayside thickets, great 
 planes, myrtles and laurels had shot out their tufts of 
 leaves, still pale green and delicate of texture from their 
 long winter confinement. Ahead of us the wide out- 
 lying fertile meadow reaches were starred and starred 
 again with daffodils, narcissi and forget-me-nots, and 
 tall violets and anemones of every colour, pale blue, 
 deep pink, deep crimson and showy scarlet ; for these 
 gaudy innocents of the spring that massed themselves, 
 
 230
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 now here now there in lovely formless drifts, in their 
 simple pride carried off colours more truly suited to 
 a courtesan's guilty wear. The dew lay over all the 
 herbage like inexpressibly fine- woven muslins spread 
 by fairies on the grasses. Here and there, along the 
 road, or in the hollows, clung a few maidenly delicate 
 mists ready to blush themselves away as the sun grew 
 warmer. By terraced traverses and upland slants, and 
 a sudden descent again, we reached the stony terraced 
 bed of the Alpheus and to Miss Sadie, riding beside me, 
 I repeated : 
 
 " Arethusa arose 
 
 From her couch of snows 
 In the Acrocerannian mountains 
 
 From cloud and from crag, 
 
 With many a jag, 
 Shepherding her bright fountains. 
 
 She leapt down the rocks, 
 
 With her rainbow locks 
 Streaming among the streams : 
 
 Her steps paved with green 
 
 The downward ravine 
 Which slopes to the western gleams ; 
 
 And gliding and springing 
 
 She went, ever singing, 
 In murmurs as soft as sleep ; 
 
 The earth seemed to love her, 
 
 And heaven smiled above her, 
 As she lingered towards the deep. 
 
 Then Alpheus bold, 
 
 On his glacier cold, 
 With his trident the mountains strook 
 
 And opened a chasm 
 
 In the rocks ; with the spasm 
 All Erymanthus shook. 
 
 And the black south wind 
 
 It concealed behind 
 The urns of the silent snow. 
 
 And earthquake and thunder 
 
 Did rend in sunder 
 The bars of the spring below. 
 
 The beard and the hair 
 
 Of the river god were 
 
 231
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 Seen through the torrent's sweep.. 
 
 As he followed the light 
 
 Of the fleet nymph's flight 
 To the brink of the Dorian deep." 
 
 This river was a favourite of hers and we followed its 
 winding for a space as it tore and tumbled sometimes 
 near it and sometimes high above it, putting our mules 
 up the rocky projections which, by throwing themselves 
 across his way, had forced him to change his course and 
 delay his pursuit by taking a great sweep aside ; or 
 urging them across the pell-mell tributary rivulets 
 which had made deep torrent beds for themselves, as 
 they hurried their cold drops from the distant rocky 
 spurs where they had first gathered as snowfiakes. 
 
 The way grew suddenly steeper and more and more 
 remote, and after many hours of climbing we came upon 
 an old Turkish fort. During all our faring to it and in 
 all the miles we had covered, we had met only one 
 human creature, a shepherd of the lower slopes guard- 
 ing his pale buff flocks in the soft diffused morning 
 light, with a staff in his hand and a far-away look in his 
 quiet young face. The utter desertion of the vales of 
 Greece, and of the ruined places near which our tracks 
 had wound, and which we had seen on different occa- 
 sions during our sojourn there, was beyond describing 
 and could not have been more complete during the days 
 that preceded the creation of Man. What we saw was 
 beautiful as it was desolate, desolate as it was beautiful. 
 
 The fort was on a point which overlooked a vast 
 ganglia of mountain systems and confused ridges, with 
 jagged rollers piled high one on another, and barren 
 heights dissolving into gloomy dells and reuniting 
 again into uprushing beetling crags and prominences, 
 constituting the divisions of the different countries be- 
 tween which in the far-off past some of the great classic 
 battles had taken place, and whose rocky shelves had 
 witnessed hand-to-hand fights and bitter struggles. 
 
 We unslung our panniers, for the sun was high, and 
 breakfasted. 
 
 232
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 And then from there the way grew still more steep, 
 and if possible still more solitary of aspect and more 
 straggling and unexpectedly interrupted with many 
 turnings to right and left ; and suddenly and without 
 almost any warning, we left the hot calm sky behind, 
 as we plunged into the obscurity of an age-old forest of 
 oaks, finding ourselves in strange weary vistas of ashen- 
 grey boles, and in the semi-darkness that they cast. 
 We came upon it in such an unforeseen way and in its 
 weirdness it was so unike anything we had yet seen in 
 Greece that we uttered exclamations of surprise and 
 dismay. And yet wasn't it what one should expect to 
 find in so old a country, whose great past is so far back 
 and completely finished that it doesn't link up in the 
 least with its present or future, or even possible or 
 problematical future, in the smallest matter. Where 
 effort has staled and where the sap of the national 
 spirit no longer rises as it should. 
 
 In answer to our questioning surprise the guides told 
 us how these exhausted trees had been left there undis- 
 turbed for centuries, because of the dark superstitions 
 that had woven themselves about them, and because of 
 the poisonous snakes that slept deep down in the thick 
 layers of dead leaves about their stems. No one ever 
 visited them or made use of their strange distorted 
 branches. There the oaks stood, with their contorted 
 ashy limbs, in an ancient and hoary repose, as if a curse 
 had been laid on them causing them to be struck 
 motionless in the act of their ghoul-like writhings ; as 
 still as if a spell of enchantment had been laid on the 
 entire forest, the Lord only knows how long ago, and 
 never again would be lifted, and thus their awful decay 
 perpetuated. We seemed to ride for hours and yet 
 never be able to get away from their grey- encircling 
 gloom, and though the snakes would not awaken yet, 
 it gave us a horror to think of them lying coiled below 
 us there, as the mules plunged their hooves in the 
 crackling, snapping dryness. Yet even here, in these 
 grey and gruesome alleys, we found a few pale flesh-pink 
 
 233
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 anemones and deepest crimson, comparing oddly with 
 the aged appearance of the withered boughs, where a 
 dull silver-green lichen was creeping and covering their 
 shrivelled skins. 
 
 It was fitting that when we at last escaped from 
 these creepy glades, the sun should have hidden itself 
 and the weather changed from splendid warmth and 
 brightness to dullness ; and that the beginnings of a 
 cold air should come to meet us round the windings of 
 the glens. We rode on, now up, now down, meeting 
 great tortoises, occasionally vultures too, and at every 
 fresh step of the way a melancholy seemed to settle 
 down on us all, as if the forest had cast something over 
 us that was not easy to shake off or get away from. As 
 the afternoon began to draw to its end, the desolation 
 that we felt lay all around us was appalling. Earlier in 
 the day, the mountains had been a warm rich purple- 
 blue ; now they looked a dismal disheartening black. 
 Their immense projecting sides and dizzy pinnacles 
 seemed to have been torn apart by giants in their 
 anger. I shivered when I thought of what a cold tale 
 the winter's wind could tell, as it came whistling round 
 and down through these bleak gorges, changing to a 
 cavernous roaring when it blew louder. These moun- 
 tains seemed like sullen exiles, far removed from the 
 warm and friendly company of men, and seemed to 
 view us sternly, closing in about us and towering darkly 
 and malevolently above as as we plodded down below, 
 on the loose-stoned paths at the foot of their chasms. 
 We were more than glad to reach the insect-infested 
 khan which gave us shelter that night. 
 
 After some hours of broken fitful sleep, due to the 
 said insects, the extent of whose voracious welcome I 
 leave you to guess, we hurried off early, not wishing 
 to have the spectral twilight come down on us again in 
 those lone mountain halls, but rather to try to make 
 our next night's shelter in better time. A great forlorn 
 city in a valley was sighted by midday. We reined 
 
 234
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 up, and looking down on it saw that the people who 
 had tenanted it must have got up and left it many a 
 hundred years agone, and saddened at what we saw, 
 we moved on slowly. 
 
 We were of two minds as to whether we would 
 turn up and explore another tortuous glen, which 
 the guides said led to an eyrie nest of refuge used by 
 Greeks flying from the persecution of the Turks in 
 their last war ; but we thought of the time required 
 and didn't go. 
 
 After going forward some distance beyond it, our 
 surprise was considerable to find that we had come to 
 an end of our journey. At any rate, so it seemed. We 
 were in a place which was an impassable cul-de-sac, 
 unless we turned back and went out as we had come in. 
 We sat there blankly, Indian file, looking at the perpen- 
 dicular walls of rock which surrounded us on all sides. 
 We uneasily wondered whether our muleteers were 
 bandits in disguise ; whether to have engaged them on 
 their gay good looks and obliging merry manners, with- 
 out obtaining careful references as to their honesty, 
 had been the crowning mistake of lives which were 
 about to come to a summary conclusion in that long 
 quiet pass. But no ! We had not misplaced our trust, 
 for of a sudden, giving the word to the others to follow, 
 the leader dismounted and turning sharply disappeared 
 into a narrow strip of pine-trees. We followed and led 
 our beasts, with infinite pains and precautions, up a 
 zig-zag path, of a steepness the which I had never seen 
 the like before. 
 
 When we emerged from the pines, we perceived with 
 delight that we were surrounded by Alpine crests and 
 the air was so cool that as we drew it in it felt like a 
 draught of cold clear water. There were belts of green 
 on them lower down, but even up to their dazzling 
 patches of drifted snow the vernal spring had come, 
 and we saw, all ablow and ablaze in them, the crocus 
 and the cyclamen, and deep blue scilla ; Nature in her 
 mysterious way had decreed that from cold should come 
 
 235
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 warmth, and that instead of chilling and killing them 
 the bitter fleeciness of that white covering should give 
 protection to the little flowers and help to nurse and 
 save them through the winter. 
 
 For the rest of the way, the scenery was much as the 
 day before, not so big, not so varied, and I made no 
 notes. The evening found us at Patras. 
 
 Our journeying through those wild passes had lasted 
 in all close on three days. The latter part of the third 
 one brought us to our destination, a most lovely place, 
 commanding a noble view across the narrow ford of 
 Missolonghi, where Byron lies buried. 
 
 During our passage across these Alps, we had a 
 glimpse of Arcadia and found to our surprise that its 
 lands were bare and barren, quite unlike the pied meads 
 and dales of our imaginings. 
 
 After we got back to Athens, I had a great piece 
 of luck, which I attributed to my having carelessly 
 gathered a few handfuls of wild flowers and as carelessly 
 laid them on the broken altar of some little unknown 
 goddess come upon on some hill-side in our wanderings. 
 In answer to my importunities, Celia consented to the 
 spending of a whole day with me away from the others, 
 leaving them to pursue any plans they thought fit. 
 
 To make the day as long as possible and as we had 
 got used to the shortening of our sleeping-time, we got 
 up, borrowed the yacht's dinghy, stowed our provender 
 on board in a basket, and were off on the waters not 
 much more than an hour after dawn. I had decided 
 how this picnic for two was to be spent, for Celia had 
 said, upon my asking her, that she thought it would be 
 nice to be taken right off, she didn't care when, as long 
 as she didn't know where, until she found herself there ; 
 that it would be altogether delightful, after so many 
 plannings for other people on her part, to let someone 
 else take charge of her for a change. 
 
 I think the world and everything in it goes to sleep 
 
 236
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 just as we do ourselves, at night, so that those early 
 hours have some touching quality about them ; as if, 
 during their passing, a feeling of confidence might be 
 established between the earth and us. It is quiescent 
 and not yet quite awake nor on the watch as it will be 
 during the later hours. Just now we felt this strongly, 
 having it quite to ourselves. 
 
 The spot to which I now rowed Celia surged with a 
 mass of suggestive memories all as closely relevant to 
 the story of Athens' greatness as anything could be, 
 and literally (and I knew this would interest her), the 
 scenes of the occurrences could be placed to within a few 
 feet and made to pass before her eyes, so definite is the 
 information handed down by the writers, so completely 
 do the testimonies written by so many different scholars 
 agree and point to certain places and things. 
 
 We had not been out on the waters above three 
 quarters of an hour, the dinghy bobbing like a cork on 
 the sea ripples, and here after a few moments' more 
 pulling we would be in the very place where the Persian 
 hosts had suffered utter defeat, hounded out of Greece, 
 and sent packing to their native country by the 
 Athenians, acting under the instructions of Themis- 
 tocles. A few more strokes of the oar and we would pass 
 under the rocky brow of the mainland, gazing down on 
 the island of Salamis, rising and forming straits so 
 narrow that a stone could almost be thrown across 
 them ; the very straits where the triremes that fought 
 in the battle of Salamis had struggled and crashed and 
 jammed together. Somewhere on that very rock, it 
 was positively known that Xerexs the son of Darius 
 sat, and you can almost swear to a place which would 
 have accommodated his throne, placed there so that he 
 could watch the proceedings, and that the secretaries 
 brought by him should " write down particulars of the 
 action." This phrase is according to Phanodemus and 
 quoted by Plutarch. It also would have allowed 
 reasonable room space for the great people he had about 
 him ; the kings of Sidon and of Tyre and their respec- 
 
 237
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 tive bodyguards, cuirassed and helmeted. Some say 
 his throne was of gold, others say of silver. He must 
 have looked down confidently to where his own swarm- 
 ing ships manoeuvred near Phalernum one thousand, 
 two hundred galleys of war and two thousand trans- 
 ports and then at the little Athenian fleet in the small 
 bay of Salamis, which, small as it was, was more than 
 big enough to hold them, in view of their pitifully small 
 number. The shores must have been alive with people 
 and the litter of a great camp. With " seven hundred 
 thousand foot and four hundred thousand horse," his 
 courtiers and their retinues of women and servants 
 not including the Egyptians and persons posted on out- 
 lying stands, to cut off his enemies' retreat, or counting 
 those on the promontory' Xerxes must have numbered 
 five and a half million followers in his train. It was so 
 easy to wish them all back there and see them with 
 their flying cloaks and regal draperies, in all the 
 splendour of the great Asiatic princes who would stand 
 behind the chair of such a great king. And yet in spite 
 of their splendour he can't have had very good advice 
 from those who were at his elbow and helped him with 
 their words, for by nightfull of that same day his armies 
 were scattered, routed and confounded, and his whole 
 fleet rammed and burnt, and he himself fled in a panic. 
 
 I drew on my imagination to recast for Celia some 
 of the things that had happened there that day. The 
 precipitate movements, the organised advances, the 
 running about, the crowds that gathered suddenly to 
 watch the fortunes of the affray, and dispersed as 
 suddenly, to take part themselves. The messengers 
 who brought bad news, those who brought good. The 
 leaders, the priests, the soldiers, the people all in con- 
 fused masses ; opening up to make way, closing up in 
 a pack ; tents, horses, camels, slaves, blacks, oxen, 
 women, dogs, mules and all the lot. 
 
 Now the place is empty with a strange emptiness, 
 and a desolation only equalled by that of the lone 
 mountains of Erymanthus. It is silent with the silence 
 
 238
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 that pervades those places which have once been busy 
 and noisy with men. The sort of silence that one keeps 
 in mind afterwards, because it almost had a substance 
 to it. There is nothing there but the eagle now. As 
 we drifted by, we came on one. For a brief moment he 
 rested the golden cruelty of his wide gaze on us and 
 then got up with powerful strokes of his loose, great 
 wings. Wild heir and undisputed tenant of all the 
 rocks of Greece and the miles upon miles of blue space 
 above them, he vanished over the hills. I stopped pull- 
 ing, letting the boat go with the current, and wondered, 
 Would if be possible, if I listened very carefully, very 
 attentively, to hear some faint echo of the trumpet calls 
 that were issued to the brave Athenians on that morn- 
 ing so long, so very long ago, when the light was still 
 horizontal in the skies and the coolness of the dawn 
 chilled the men's blood and gave them pause in the 
 moments before going into action ? 
 
 I leant upon my oars and listened. Hark ! 
 
 Ta-ran-ta-ra. Ta-ran-ta-ra. 
 
 Surely there it was, faint and far away, but there all the 
 same. I listened again : 
 
 Ta-ran-ta-ra. Ta-ran-ta-ra. 
 
 Yes, and again : 
 
 Ta-ran-ta-ra-ra-ra. Ta-ran-ta-ra-ra-ra. 
 
 How it must have stirred them ! I seemed to hear it, 
 awaking again, with its brazen, tongueless clarity, from 
 the high cold rocks about me. And mingling with it 
 a sound as of the distant drub of drums, to rouse them 
 to their campaigning. But no ! I was mistaken. It 
 was only the silence singing in my ears, and the pulses 
 beating in my own head. 
 
 I rowed on and listened no more, for if the echo of the 
 trumpets could reach us, so too might an echo of the 
 shouts, curses and cries of the wounded soldiers. 
 
 239
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 After some fast pulling we got into the broad bay of 
 Eleusis and ahead of us there lay the little village of 
 that name, picturesque with its scattered ruins of the 
 Temple of Demeter and the Propylae. Beyond were 
 the broad lands, supposedly the home of Ceres, goddess 
 of plenty, and where Triptolemus first taught agri- 
 culture. The ruins of another great city lay about us 
 and we picked our way along a white marble pavement, 
 catching our feet in the old wheel ruts, walking between 
 great pieces of overthrown columns of magnificent 
 Pentelic marble. There was one big alto-relievo, carved 
 to represent soldiers in full armour, that a hundred men 
 could scarcely have moved between them. Behind us 
 was the Via Sacra and the Pass of Daphne, through 
 which it wound, and through which the great possession 
 of the Mysteries used to come. Priests and white 
 virgins and children garlanded and scattering flowers 
 were guarded all the way by the bold Spearmen of 
 Alcibiades in glinting armour and all the citizens of 
 Athens came following after. 
 
 Some of the villagers, most likely blood relations of 
 some of those who had taken a part in these celebra- 
 tions of the past, on spying us out, came to us, civil 
 and agreeable, but very curious at seeing Celia. And 
 when she lifted her chiffon veil, there was a general ex- 
 clamation of approval at the fairness of her complexion. 
 
 We laughed heartily at them. 
 
 I can hardly record the pleasure it gave me to have 
 Celia to myself like this, and to roam with her in such 
 new and wonderful places. Thanks to that little super- 
 sensitive installation we all have in our brains, and 
 through which the most delightful finesses of intercourse 
 can be sustained, I knew that it also gave her pleasure. 
 How much, of course, I could not judge, but no matter 
 how small the amount, it was valuable to me. I held 
 her hat while she drank of the fountain of Proserpine, 
 a pure gush of water, whence according to the legend of 
 mythology, the ravished daughter of Ceres emerges from 
 the infernal regions to visit her mother sometimes. 
 
 240
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 On our return, we paid a tribute to the memory 
 of good old Themistocles, whose common-sense, and a 
 certain piece of inspired dishonesty, saved the day for 
 the Grecians at the battle of Salamis. 
 
 They had this much gratitude, that after banishing 
 him in his declining years, they brought back his old 
 bones from abroad and erected a monument to him in 
 honour of his victories. They hollowed him out a grave 
 in a rocky promontory within sound of the waters that 
 had floated his conquering galleys. He wouldn't have 
 asked for a better place. But though he has slept 
 there in peace this many a day, now, the waves with 
 their ceaseless thrusting and withdrawing and gobble- 
 gobbling, at the point of the rock, have eaten it away 
 and pour into the tomb and gulp greedily around his 
 stone sarcophagus, and in time will get the poor old 
 hero himself, no doubt. The salt lies in thick crusts 
 everywhere and we scraped some off like sea- snow. We 
 said good-bye to him, turning the dinghy towards the 
 harbour, for before it became too late, there was one 
 other good-bye we wished to make to a mutual friend 
 we had made in Athens. One day, when the sun had 
 poured down with almost unbearable strength on the 
 Acropolis, Celia and I had taken refuge in one of 
 the museums for a rest and a spell of coolness. Stroll- 
 ing along its dusty, shady corridors, amongst all the 
 statues of strained discobolus throwers and archaic 
 figures, we came upon a solitary fragment, a sad, sweet 
 lady, modelled in perfect truth, I'll swear, for the 
 work was beyond reproach. Only the lovely head 
 remained, half turned upon the shattered neck. There 
 was some wistful setting of the eyes as she gazed at us, 
 some look in her face as of listening to an inner voice, 
 that held us both before her in wondering silence. The 
 sculptor must have seen the look, for he never would 
 have thought to put it there otherwise, nor could he 
 have possibly chiselled it without the guidance of her 
 face. Her full fine lips seemed to appeal mutely from 
 the marble, as if she asked or tried to tell us something, 
 Q 241
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 and there was a whole eternity of singing and dreaming 
 in her expression. 
 
 " Oh 1 " said Celia, "how lovely." 
 
 It was. I have never seen anything so perfectly 
 touching or noble as that woman's face. There was a 
 kind of sweet beseechingness, a sad radiance, a com- 
 passion about it, impossible to describe. It had every 
 emotion in it that could beautify a face. The name 
 was cut deeply on a small portion of the base that lay 
 beside her. The portrait must surely have been 
 sculptured for the island garden of some good friend 
 and by rights should have been set to look along a vista 
 of feathered green tamarisks, framing a glimpse of blue 
 sea depths. I could imagine it so, with a sheltering 
 citron grove behind, and a cypress spire or two, to give 
 it point. 
 
 Poor Poetess ! Poor violet-crowned, spotless, sweetly- 
 smiling lady, as Alcaeus her fellow-poet addressed 
 her. So maligned by the historians that not all the 
 many proofs that crop up from time to time to show 
 that their censures were undeserved can clear her ; so 
 smirched, that all the waters of the yEgean Sea cannot 
 wash her white again. 
 
 As I say, we paid her a farewell visit in her dusty 
 prison that evening. 
 
 The time had slipped by during our stay, in the most 
 amazing way, for sunny days run past so quickly that 
 positively one cannot mark their going. The date of 
 our departure had been postponed not once, but many 
 times. Each time the skipper got sulkier about it and 
 lodged a complaint. I admired Hitchcock because of 
 the way he refused to let him have his own way. If 
 the yacht had been mine, I'm positive I'd have obeyed 
 the skipper, and in that I feel I differ from the 
 Americans. If they own a thing, they own it. If a 
 man is boss, he is boss. So many of my own rich 
 friends are so bullied and browbeaten by their depend- 
 
 242
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 ents and employees, that I've decided a travelling 
 tinker knows less of slavery and more of liberty than 
 they do ; cooks, gardeners, chauffeurs, grooms, valets, 
 secretaries, cluster round them and impose on them, till 
 they almost lose sight of their own identities and rights 
 in trying to decide justly between the claims of these 
 importunists. But not so Hitchcock. Talking to me 
 about the matter of the skipper wanting his own way, 
 he. gave me his views on such things and how a man 
 should manage so that his underlings won't swamp him 
 and steal his life from him altogether. " I pay them 
 well. I treat them well, but their work is there, and let 
 them do it properly. If they don't do it properly, I'll 
 get someone else to do it, and if I can't get someone else 
 to do it, I'll do it myself. If I can't do it myself, I'll 
 do without it. Millionaire though I am, I can do with 
 less than they can. I am used to hardship, for I've 
 trained myself to it and never let myself get out of 
 training. No one will master me. That's the secret 
 of my life. Whether it is my house or my play or my 
 work. As for my works, I keep an eye on them and 
 the moment a man becomes indispensable, his position 
 becomes precarious, for it means he is trying to climb 
 over his pals. I want good team work and none of that 
 nonsense. I'll take no wooden money from anyone. 
 As I say, I like to be friends with people, do any mortal 
 thing that, lies in my power to make them happy and 
 regard them as friends, but they must do as much for 
 me. Do you see that ruined temple up there ? " 
 We were standing on the deck of the yacht as he spoke 
 and he waved his green cigar towards the Parthenon. 
 I assented. " W T ell, that puts me in mind of Samson, 
 and Samson puts me in mind of myself. Somebody 
 annoyed him, and he put his big arms around the mighty 
 pillars and brought the whole darned temple crashing 
 down about his ears. He was killed of course. But 
 he was quite happy. Like me, he didn't mind being 
 crushed to death himself, as long as he knew his enemies 
 would be crushed too." 
 
 243
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 Naturally we sailed upon the date of his choosing. 
 
 Hereabouts I think it would be necessary for me to 
 make a few remarks about the telling of my little story. 
 To the reader, it must seem ill-constructed and wander- 
 ing and pointless. The reason is this, that up to the 
 moment ol leaving Athens, I had kept these few odd 
 notes and diary scribblings from day to day, perhaps 
 recording things a few hours after I'd heard them or 
 seen them, or again not till a few days after ; and I am 
 too lazy, nor do I think it worth while, to rewrite them. 
 I've added since one note in one place which is wrong, 
 as it presupposes a knowledge of something I hadn't at 
 the time of making the notes. No doubt my critics 
 will find it, so I won't bother to say where it is. 
 
 And I must confess that, by way of adding a touch of 
 artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and uncon- 
 vincing narrative, as Pooh-Bah remarked, I altered a 
 few things here and there. For instance, I had painted 
 poor old Stalybrass a good deal blacker, or rather a 
 deeper purple than was strictly true to life. He wasn't 
 really such a bad sort, nor, perhaps, quite so un- 
 pleasant as I made him out to be. After knocking 
 about with him throughout all these weeks, I found 
 several things to admire sincerely in him. But with 
 the object of giving the thing a little plot, and not so 
 that it should be a mere record of meals, scenery and 
 conversations, I drew him in darker colours, so that he 
 should figure in some wise as a villain in it. Once you 
 have a villain, it's easy to work up a sound construc- 
 tion, for you have the two alternative endings, either 
 of which will make of your story an organic whole. 
 Either the villain is reformed by some good woman, or 
 else he is punished by death, for his villainy. I didn't 
 want to kill poor old Stalybrass, so I was about to 
 choose the former alternative ; and it had the merit of 
 being the true one, for he was rapidly altering under 
 Celia's hands and would soon be vastly improved. 
 
 But I needn't have bothered to tamper with the 
 truth, for without any help from me, the plot thickened 
 
 244
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 entirely of its own accord, and circumstances pro- 
 vided me with a villain ready made, and if you will 
 hurry with me to the Golden Horn and onwards, you 
 will hear about it. 
 
 I would like to give you details of our visit there, 
 and how we approached the Sultan's City, and saw it 
 beautiful as a painted picture, as it lay between two 
 seas, with its minarets like silver spears, pricking ever 
 and ever upwards into the pale primrose ecstasy of the 
 evening skies ; or of the wonders of the Rumeli Hissar, 
 or the surpassing beauties of the sweet waters of 
 Europe, or the countless profusion of mosques and the 
 multicoloured palaces of the languid Bosphorus. Or 
 else of the Royal Turbeh where lies Sulieman the 
 Second, and but a stone' s-throw from him, Rozelana, 
 dancing girl and Sultana too, the walls of whose tomb 
 are covered with exquisite blue tiles, branched in 
 almond and tulips. 
 
 " Where rarely sunbeam of the morn, 
 
 Or ev'ning moonbeam ever stray 'd, 
 Above the ground she trod in scorn, 
 Here, draped in samite and brocade, 
 Behold the great Sultana laid -' 
 
 Or of the bazaars and all their curious wares and 
 stuffs, and many curious noises in the minor keys, and, 
 to be less poetical, of all their curious, interesting 
 smells. 
 
 But I am afraid I mustn't do so. It would not be 
 relevant to the events I must now chronicle. But what 
 I must tell you is that a few days after our arrival in 
 Constantinople, the P.M. got a sudden, though he said by 
 no means unexpected telegram, saying that he must get 
 back home as soon as possible, as the stop-gaps had got 
 themselves and everything else into an awful muddle, 
 
 he supposed here he sighed through want of 
 
 tact. Yes, he said it. And never winced. It shows 
 how much better he was. We all sympathised with 
 him from the bottom of our hearts, but nevertheless 
 
 245
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 wished that the stop-gaps had all been safely out of the 
 way at Poughkeepsie, and that they'd left sensible 
 people to deal with things in their absence, as then our 
 trip might not have been interrupted in this way. For, 
 of course, the yacht was going to steer straight across 
 the seas at double the speed she came out at and de- 
 posit the P.M. at the point from which he could get 
 most quickly to London ; and that, according to the 
 time-tables and other calculations, would be reached 
 by going up the Adriatic to Venice and from there on 
 by train. 
 
 And another thing I must tell you is, that the news 
 we were going into the Adriatic again had the most 
 frightful effect upon the skipper. He screamed as if 
 he were in pain and roared like a bull. I never saw 
 man so undone. When he came to, after his seizure, he 
 looked like a shrunken old man. I was quite smitten 
 with compunction as I looked at him, for really he had 
 wasted away in a few hours and I noticed that even his 
 very eyeballs seemed to have got thin. Some of the 
 ladies heard the noise and were alarmed, but we spun 
 them a yarn of how one of the crew was having his 
 usual attack of tertiary fever and that it would soon 
 pass away, and that they were merely putting him into 
 a cold bath to bring his temperature down, which 
 mounts very high in these tropical illnesses, but soon 
 becomes normal again. 
 
 The second mate Murphy was rather crestfallen 
 when he heard the news that we were going back by the 
 Adriatic and told us a curious thing. One day, it was 
 the Friday he thought, when the skipper and two or 
 three of the lads were in the bazaar, not far from where 
 you turn out to go to Seraskiers tower, a fakir, for no 
 reason in the world, stopped in front of the skipper 
 and, singling him with wild looks and warning gestures, 
 pointed to his tongue, which he stuck out. Then he 
 emptied some sand out of a little bag on to the ground 
 and made different tracings in it with his finger, 
 muttering and gibbering ; and if he, Murphy, wasn't a 
 
 246
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 Dutchman and mistaken altogether, the tracings were 
 nothing more or less than a rough drawing of the 
 Adriatic, for there was the boot of Italy and the Greek 
 shore and some of the islands, all complete. The 
 skipper had turned deathly pale and they had to take 
 him to a dram shop and pour spirits into him to revive 
 him and practically carry him back to the quays. The 
 odd thing about it is that the Hindu hadn't asked for a 
 single coin, but after showing him, swept the sand into 
 the bag and went off like a flash ; which proves to you 
 that people may sell good news dearly, but will give 
 away bad news for nothing, all the world over. And 
 bad news he was quite sure it was and we were all in it. 
 He wished the trip was over. It had begun badly, and 
 would end badly. It had taken us to all sorts of 
 uncanny places and this was the worst of all. You 
 couldn't go anywhere or buy anything that they didn't 
 insist on your putting the end of a beastly nargeelay or 
 hubble-bubble in your mouth, and your sucking at the 
 nasty thing with yards and yards of coils of tubes like 
 snakes. They weren't wholesome too jolly like the 
 heathen things those yellow-faced, long-nailed, almond- 
 eyed chaps smoked in the Chinese quarter at Frisco ! 
 
 Andy, the negro steward, was in a state of collapse 
 from blue funk. But Bates the first mate was quite 
 calm and took charge of the ship altogether from now 
 and we were entirely set up and eased in our minds at 
 sight of him. He was the calm, collected Yankee to 
 the life, with a square capable face. So why worry ? 
 We laid ourselves out to enjoy what remained of the 
 trip in peace. 
 
 We metaphorically chalked a line across the ^gean, 
 only swerving from it enough not to bump into any 
 of the various islands that lay athwart our course. 
 Imbros, Tenedos, and Lemnos were all passed after 
 dark. 
 
 The flirtations which had been on the tapis all 
 through our trip, redoubled in force now that there was, 
 
 247
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 no sightseeing to be done. I was so occupied in follow- 
 ing Celia about with my eyes and my thoughts that I 
 hardly noticed the scenery, except as a background to 
 her pretty figure. I think our intimacy had gone for- 
 ward several steps since the day we spent together 
 at Eleusis. She was wearing some very crisp little 
 garments she had had specially made for the trip, semi- 
 nautical in character, and she looked like Grace Darling, 
 up to date. But she was too busy to give me much 
 time. Stalybrass was getting his daily treatments 
 more regularly than on shore and was gradually 
 succumbing to them. He was undoubtedly beginning 
 to notice things, for I saw him glancing surreptitiously 
 at the clothes she wore and admiring them. Before he 
 met her, all women were alike to him. and all women's 
 clothes too. Clothes were clothes and there the matter 
 ended. A hat from the Rue de la Paix worn by a 
 viscountess was the same to him as the old tweed cap 
 the charwoman drew on over her tousled hair to go out 
 and bargain at the fried fish stall round the corner. 
 But his bulging eyes were undoubtedly developing the 
 faculty of noticing things not merely seeing them 
 and all thanks to Celia. I am sure that by now he 
 could see that what she wore was superior to the things 
 worn by a large percentage of the women about, and 
 note what a very potent thing the ordinary sailor cap 
 could be on the head of a pretty woman when she 
 pushed all her hair inside it, cocked it over her forehead 
 in correct able-bodied seaman style, with the dodgy 
 little ribbons twirling and whipping over one ear. And 
 how very nice the softest and finest of white silk junipers 
 could be, with little anchors embroidered on collar and 
 cuffs, and a pleated skirt that sprayed out as a person 
 walks swiftly by. It was characteristic of Celia to have 
 gone to all the bother of designing these delightful and 
 alluring items of feminine attire, and of going to the 
 trouble and expense of getting them carried out, with a 
 view to impressing and influencing Stalybrass for his 
 good. As a rule when you see a woman wearing a 
 
 248
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 particularly nice dress, you know she is up to no good, 
 but not so Celia. If you saw her wearing a ravishingly 
 beautiful and becoming dress, you knew she was bent 
 on an errand of mercy. And so, as she had planned, 
 Stalybrass was completely subjugated by them, and 
 by her, and followed her about like a lamb, and his 
 metamorphosis went on apace. Already he was less 
 didactic and at times threw out remarks that distinctly 
 savoured of toleration, and in which there was a hint 
 that the thought had occurred to him that there were 
 others besides himself who might know a thing or two. 
 In fact, to put it in a nutshell, he was sinking fast 
 preparatory to his moral rebirth. 
 
 I watched him very carefully, for I felt I wanted to 
 be by him when the moment came, and I must witness 
 it, if possible. It might suddenly occur at any time. 
 One never knew. He might be the old Stalybrass 
 to-day at eleven-thirty A.M., and by twelve-thirty P.M. of 
 the same day he might be the new man who had stepped 
 into his shoes, collar, vest, Albert watch chain, and so 
 forth, and who would continue to wear them and would 
 call himself by the name of Stalybrass henceforth. 
 
 Have you ever heard of worn-out scientists waiting 
 in breathless suspense for the culmination of some series 
 of experiments which had been going on for years? 
 Have you ever heard of horticultural enthusiasts and 
 experts sitting up night after night for weeks and even 
 months on end, to watch some rare plant which only 
 blooms, say, once every fifty years, suddenly throw out 
 its flower ? 
 
 Well, their interest was as nothing to the interest I 
 used to feel at seeing the results of Celia's experiments 
 or in watching these human blossomings under her 
 expert guidance. I was glad in a way, for the sake of 
 those she experimented on, but also I felt a little sorry 
 for them often enough, for they seemed to feel awfully 
 weak and dizzy and uncertain in their new characters 
 and ideas, at times. 
 
 And was it surprising ? 
 
 249
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 Think of what it must be to a man who had 
 always made a point of contradicting everything that 
 everybody else says, to feel an uncanny and hitherto 
 unknown sensation surging inside him, on hearing 
 someone speak, prompting him to hold his tongue, and 
 telling him that the other fellow may be right in what 
 he is saying. 
 
 Think of the strain on a man, who has been full of 
 bumptiousness all his life, ready to judge others with- 
 out knowing anything about them, and to voice his 
 judgment loudly, to be suddenly pulled up by a beastly 
 foreboding that after all it may not be his mission in life 
 to judge others but to be judged by them instead. 
 
 Think of how it must cause a man to give at the knees, 
 who hitherto has always thought himself perfect in 
 every detail, to find that suddenly the most awful waves 
 of self-doubt are breaking over him, and threatening to 
 overwhelm him entirely. 
 
 At such moments, people need help, and whenever I 
 saw them coming, I tried to be at hand with a kindly 
 word or two and even to offer the succour of a small 
 drop of brandy neat. 
 
 But as well as I can recall the Stalybrass affair now, 
 he went to bed one night as his old self, and came in to 
 breakfast next day as the new man : awfully hungry, 
 after the strange occurrences of the small hours, and 
 rather pale, and with many humble questions in his face, 
 instead of many smug answers and predictions and 
 brusque assertions ; he wore an expression as of having 
 awakened later but more completely than he had ever 
 done before, to find the day had gone forward without 
 him, and that many things had occurred while he slept 
 into which he must inquire and be grateful for the 
 information if accorded. 
 
 After this he would look at things a lot, listen to 
 people a lot, think things out a lot, and not talk such 
 a lot. 
 
 And now, just as we were all engaged in innocent 
 and in some cases useful enjoyment as I've shown you, 
 
 250
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 the plot began to thicken. The thickening process 
 began with a few harmless drops of rain. We'd hardly 
 seen any during the whole time of the trip and greeted 
 it as rather an agreeable novelty. But by degrees, the 
 nice warm breezes began to get chillier and chillier and 
 more fitful. We made the discovery that a yacht can 
 be a very uncomfortable place, if the weather turns out 
 cold. There are so many unexpected little draughts 
 that find out the vulnerable places in one's body or 
 clothing. There's a little place above one's collar, 
 where a draught gets down with long, slim cold fingers ; 
 or else it puffs up one's trouser legs or else into one's 
 eyes or ears. No matter how luxurious the fittings on 
 a yacht, the air seems to consider it has the right of free 
 egress and ingress everywhere. This is nice, if it is 
 sultry, but horrid if it's not. And draughts are most 
 disturbing to flirtations. 
 
 The first few drops of rain increased in number, till 
 we were surrounded by them, as by a damp cheerless 
 mist, and then changed to hard hailstones. The sailors 
 ran about a good bit overhead and looked out across the 
 rails, shading their eyes. I heard one say to another 
 that, this was the coast for dirty weather, and he jolly 
 well thought we were in for it this time, or else his 
 experience counted for nothing, and began to hunt up 
 oilskins from odd corners. However, next morning 
 things seemed better, though there was a cold bluish 
 crepitation all over the sea's surface, which up to now 
 had seemed like some warm languid liquid. The rain 
 had passed off for the moment but by the intense 
 lowering clearness of the atmosphere, we knew there 
 was a big gathering of it yet in store for us. Passing 
 upward by the sides of Elis and Achaia, the distant 
 mountains, instead of seeming like flat vague forms 
 half materialising out of sheeny mists, loomed large 
 upon us, and seemed quite close, in all the completest 
 substantiality and to the smallest detail. You could 
 see their little chilly green pastures and the scoriations 
 on their rocks. They seemed so near that you could 
 
 251
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 plumb their gorges, so clear that you could span their 
 crevasses, and calculate distances from foreground to 
 background and middle distance in between. They 
 were cut this way and that by streaks of shade. You 
 knew that the creeping shadows were thrown by clouds, 
 and the stationary broomy patches cuddling into 
 hollows or sprawling over headlands were low forests 
 of stunted trees and undergrowth : you almost saw the 
 leaves on the twigs. There was a distraught, wild look 
 over everything. The sea looked morose and vast, and 
 one registered to oneself a feeling that it was a much 
 more important and not-to-be-ignored thing than one 
 gave it credit for in viewing it from the land. Out 
 there in its waste, one felt it had an appreciable magni- 
 tude indeed. And at the back of one's consciousness 
 the question arose, why should it one day be the sweet- 
 est sunniest blue and another day a wicked sparkling 
 green, all gashed and slashed across with sinister bars 
 of dark bodeful purple and with wild white splashes of 
 spitting scud being driven before a whistling wind, that 
 gathered in volume every moment. 
 
 There are times when one dismisses nature as boring 
 or trite, or as a negligible quantity. One admits that 
 the air and elements generally can combine and pro- 
 duce remarkably beautiful effects which poets and 
 sentimental people like to dwell upon. Again, there 
 are times when one dismisses what one sees about one, 
 as sights which are too frequently visible to be worth 
 bothering about. What are the mountains after all, 
 you ask yourself, but big rubbish heaps, piled up, 
 scored, fused matter, which are solidified evidences of 
 volcanic eruptions ; their fissures and crannies 
 otherwise called scenery only due to the cracking 
 processes of an earth, cooling automatically, after 
 having come into being a great heat. The hills are the 
 same on a smaller scale, mere piles of earth, and what 
 is earth but mud, dry and in large quantities. As for the 
 sea, anyone who has been educated at an ordinary Board 
 school will tell you it's nothing but a large volume of 
 
 252
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 water, with a certain amount of salt in solution, vary- 
 ing in amount in different seas. 
 
 But then again, there are moments when this mood 
 does not prevail : when you find yourself face to face 
 with Nature. You look at the mountains and you 
 realise that if you were to attempt to climb their jagged 
 heights on foot, to get to a given place across them, it 
 would need months and you'd arrive bleeding and ex- 
 hausted. If you were to land, and attempt to traverse 
 those regions which look so small in comparison with 
 what they really are, how long, you ask yourself, would 
 it take you, a wandering hungry speck, to overcome the 
 weary miles ? 
 
 Then for the sea, think how utterly defeated you 
 would be by it, if you were set to swim across it. Tales 
 of its force as a driving agent, tales of the vast pieces of 
 masonry blocks of stone many yards square picked 
 up like nothing and tossed for a quarter of a mile 
 come into your mind ; you know quite well that the 
 weight of its accumulated drops can crush the mightiest 
 vessel into a wild tangle steel hulls, stanchions, brass 
 rails, machinery, everything long before the sea-bed 
 could be reached. Looking down at it, the imagination 
 flashes a picture of the most unutterable, limitless, 
 watery-green lonelinesses. You think of its depths ; 
 it occurs to you that the solitary and insignificant- 
 looking rocks come upon at odd times out on these wide 
 wastes, must in reality be the topmost peaks of vast 
 systems of sea alps, whose ghostly seaweedy valleys 
 lie fathoms and fathoms below in the plains of the 
 sea, haunted for ever by ghoulish fish and slimy sea- 
 reptiles. 
 
 Bates was on the navigating bridge, and it was 
 pleasant to see him up there, dominant and, one felt 
 sure, resourceful. 
 
 There was a thrust of clouds above the shore hill, 
 that gave him some cause for thought, it was under- 
 stood, and sure enough, before very long they had come 
 
 253
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 up and come up endlessly, piling up. inkily and 
 monstrously, till the sky was of a brooding blackness, 
 the colour of which, as I kept aimlessly repeating to 
 myself, reminded me of nothing so much as of the hope- 
 less blackish-bluish shade of squashed blackberries. 
 Soon we were almost enveloped in a complete darkness, 
 except where occasional sporadic patches of sickly 
 light appeared on the hills, like patches of inflamma- 
 tion on some unhealthy body. 
 
 Along by the edge of the land ran a long gash of 
 lurid, evil-looking green light. Where these uncanny 
 and unwholesome-looking reflections came from, I 
 can't think, for by now the sky was almost entirely 
 overcast. Presently they too disappeared. 
 
 Some of us were on deck, in a little group, watching 
 it, fascinated ; for by now we felt that for sure some- 
 thing was coming to us, and later on we knew we'd be 
 ordered down below. 
 
 There had been a fairly fresh breeze blowing all day 
 and it now died down, and the sea became immediately 
 like oil, sticky and heavy and leaden-hued. In a far 
 corner we saw a red smouldering glare come by degrees, 
 as if a fire had been lit at the edge of the earth, and a 
 great hand had lifted up a corner of a pall to show it us. 
 Then a perfectly extraordinary breathless silence fell 
 on everything a sort of boding sinister hush. 
 
 It seemed as if it were a sort of stage wait, in one of 
 Nature's dramas. It lasted for about fifteen minutes 
 and then the storm broke. 
 
 May I never see such elemental rage and frenzied 
 malevolence possess the world again ! 
 
 The wind rose up in the space of seconds, with the 
 scream of an ascending rocket, and literally fell upon us 
 and beat at us. The sea fetched up in monster waves 
 and battered at us. And then, before we knew where 
 we were, began an Inferno, a perfect Walpurgis night 
 of yells, calls, hoots, bawls and bellowings, with an 
 undercurrent of awful whisperings, as the waters we 
 shipped green, ran up our rigging and licked our decks 
 
 254
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 sibilantly and fell off again to be met by worse waves 
 still. 
 
 It seemed as if stentorian voices were calling to us 
 from the hollow shores, directing us, telling us to go for- 
 ward, and then others rose and told us to go backwards ; 
 then they howled and contradicted each other, and 
 then joined all together to shriek something at us and 
 then mocked us diabolically and roared with laughter 
 at our plight. Through all this leading clamour and 
 din, all the little things on the yacht chanted separate 
 dirges of their own. Every little bit of loose cordage 
 sang its own ghastly song. Every keyhole cried and 
 moaned like a lost soul that day, and anything that 
 could batter about, battered about. The thunder 
 cannoned and blared, the lightning crackled and 
 snapped like whips. We were in whirlpool ; we were 
 in whirlwind ; we were uprooted and tossed down and 
 swallowed down and vomited up. 
 
 The world was in a frenzy of rage and our poor little 
 cockleshell of a boat was, apparently, its object. 
 
 I clung to something, I forget what. I thought 
 every moment my hands would be wrenched away and 
 that I'd go overboard. Afterwards it came to me that 
 it was nothing short of a marvel, that we lost none of 
 the crew that way. 
 
 I believe we then made for the open sea, fearing 
 the coasts. Dimly (for my brain was too numb with 
 cold and something like horror, to act), I felt it was 
 not fair to the little yacht to subject her to such a 
 strain. 
 
 Great Jove ! how that sea behaved ! Not satisfied 
 with wreaking the fury of the immediately surrounding 
 waters on us, it seemed to call up legions and battalions 
 from other seas and then launch them at us. And 
 these having failed, it called up more and set them on 
 us too. We were exhausted. We were spent. We 
 rolled helplessly, and of headway we made none. But 
 where should we head to ? Our one and only chance 
 lay in at all costs keeping as far from any coast as 
 
 255
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 possible, and to let ourselves be churned and spurned 
 far out in that perishing waste of waters. 
 
 The boats on their davits were now full of water, and 
 despite the efforts of the crew, the weight broke the 
 ropes of one and down it went, to be seen no more. 
 
 I don't know what the time can have been perhaps 
 seven bells or so that the worst happened. We had 
 every man Jack of us been ordered below by this. The 
 women were a clustering, clinging, white-faced crowd 
 in the saloon ; the men stood about with their cheeks 
 burning and red after the lash of the wind and water on 
 them. It seemed so odd to be in there, amidst elegant 
 furnishings, and luxurious appointments, with the 
 electric light shedding a soft radiance over all, and to 
 know that only three-fifths or so of an inch separated 
 us from the baying hell hounds that howled and tore 
 outside. We clung to the chairs and sofas as best we 
 could. No one was sea-sick. It was curious to note 
 that mental anxiety had mastered every other sensation, 
 bodily and otherwise. 
 
 We had been wallowing in the trough of one wave 
 and we had just been picked up on the crest of another, 
 so that our nose must have been buried deep, and the 
 stern have risen high in the air. Those of us not on our 
 guard, slid in a huddle to the forward end of the saloon, 
 and were bruised all over. Without any warning, we 
 came down by the stern again with one almighty whack 
 on something ! There was a crash and a shuddering 
 tremor, and then silence. 
 
 We had plunged down on something ! Hit 
 something ! But what ? That was the question. 
 Had we struck a reef ? Had it made a hole ? And 
 would it now be a question of minutes before we filled 
 and sank ? 
 
 We all pulled ourselves up hurriedly and held 
 together. The maids set up a weeping and exclaiming. 
 (They had been brought in for company and lest they 
 would be over-anxious and we all had our life-belts on.) 
 But nothing happened. A few moments passed, and a 
 
 256
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 few more still, and still nothing happened. Nor was 
 there anything more to be heard ; nor did the yacht 
 tilt or behave any differently. I stood listening. 
 Feeling. Ah, yes ! I did miss something. I didn't 
 notice any more that little squirm of recovery that a 
 ship makes as soon as the propeller ceases racing and 
 engages in the water again. 
 
 Just then I was called to the door and asked to pass 
 a message in of all's well. It was Hitch himself, 
 streaming with water. I did so, but I slipped out, 
 drawing the door across, and caught hold of his oilskin 
 and asked what had happened. " There's something 
 wrong, I know," I said. 
 
 " Yes, man, there is. We've damaged our steering. 
 She came down whack on a piece of floating wreckage 
 some other poor chaps have been done for and 
 smashed both propellers ; and now we are going to 
 drift about at the mercy of the waves. God help us ! 
 We can't help ourselves ! And the wireless has gone 
 to bits." 
 
 " But can nothing be done ? Can't we rig up a sail 
 or something ? " 
 
 " You couldn't possibly get a sail up in this gale. 
 There's only one chance. Bates says we have passed 
 through the north-west quadrant of a circular storm, 
 the centre of the disturbance being somewhere south- 
 east, and he thinks mind you, he only thinks that 
 with luck we may pass out of it before very long. It's 
 a bare chance, that's all ! " 
 
 Well, the great thing was, of course, to conceal our 
 anxiety from the women. They need not know till the 
 end actually came, and they might be spared hours of 
 useless suspense and misery. I got in again, with a 
 look on my face as if the news was the best possible 
 and proposed they should lie on the floor and rest, as 
 far as the awful tossing would permit. They seemed 
 quite quiet and satisfied when they heard we had not 
 gone on a rock. To " strike a rock " seemed to be the 
 
 & 257
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 thing they most of all feared. They seemed oblivious 
 of all the other awful things that might happen to us at 
 every instant. I went off and filled two brandy flasks 
 and pocketed a few ship's biscuits and sundries. One 
 never knew. 
 
 From the moment of hitting the wreckage, it seemed 
 as if the storm lessened. Gradually at first, but then 
 quite perceptibly, and though still very violent, in about 
 two and a half hours' time it was nothing like what 
 it had been at its worst. 
 
 I put on my oilskins and went up. The lightning 
 had ceased, and though the wind still blew tempestu- 
 ously, the awful scream had gone from it. It seemed 
 inclined to be wet and the wet not to be caused by the 
 sea spray, but by rain. And if it were rain, it was a 
 sure sign it would decline soon. If only - But what 
 was the use of repining ? We had struck the wreckage, 
 and it was utterly impossible to predict what might 
 happen to us next, and there was an end of the matter 
 as far as we were concerned. We would go drifting 
 and turning, drifting and turning, whichever way the 
 winds and currents listed. Every now and again the 
 siren lifted its voice and hooted peevishly, asking for 
 assistance and bewailing our troubles, but no answering 
 call came out of the murk and gloom. The night wore 
 on and the storm still continued to abate. The anchor 
 had been let down in the hopes of getting it to hold but 
 the bottom was bad and we went along dragging it at 
 the end of I don't know how many fathoms of chain. 
 
 Later we men went on deck, for it was now possible to 
 keep one's feet, and we mingled with the crew, straining 
 our eyes and ears, in case we could see or hear anything. 
 We couldn't be so very far off land, some were saying ; 
 Bates was explaining to Hitchcock they had been able 
 to get the lead working for the last quarter of an hour, 
 and that by soundings we should undoubtedly be close 
 to some of the islands about here, though he couldn't 
 be quite sure which. His great fear and he lowered his 
 voice- was of striking one of the outlying reefs, for as 
 
 258
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 yet the sea was too high for the boats to live in it ; 
 though he thought that at the rate it was going down, 
 say in an hour's time, if not overloaded, the thing 
 could be done. But it meant getting into them in the 
 pitch dark, and once in them, it would be a matter of 
 rowing round aimlessly in the cold wind and wet all 
 night, and they would inevitably get separated and 
 probably be lost, as the currents were very strong in 
 these parts, and would just suck them along, goodness 
 knows where. But if only we could drift along harm- 
 lessly till daylight came and the sea subsided, and we 
 could anchor, then we stood an excellent chance of 
 getting everyone into them and landing them on some 
 bit of mainland or islet ; and thus all hands could be 
 saved. 
 
 The words were hardly out of his mouth before the 
 look-out man started to sing out something. And well 
 he might ; for a miracle had happened. We didn't 
 quite know how much of a miracle till later, as we 
 couldn't see our hands in front of our faces, but still 
 we realised even then it was one. With a sudden mild 
 grating, soughing noise, almost devoid of abruptness, 
 we ran straight into something (and even in the dark, 
 we knew it was something large and soft) and stayed 
 stock-still and made never another budge. 
 
 " By G d, we're saved ! " said Bates, his voice 
 rising, with a catch in it. " We're on a sand-bank. I 
 know by the feel of it. We're on a lee-shore, it's the 
 turning of the storm, and nothing on earth will move 
 her now ! " 
 
 He told me afterwards that he knew exactly by the 
 sort of soft shudder that ran completely through the 
 yacht that this was the case. He'd been in a boat 
 some years before that had gone on one in just the 
 same way. The unexpected repetition of the same 
 precise feeling and sounds had made him feel awfully 
 queer. At first he thought he was dreaming and that 
 his brain was not working properly, owing to anxiety 
 and over-fatigue. 
 
 259
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 It wasn't until we had burnt a few lights that we saw 
 what was around us, and grasped the full miraculous- 
 ness of the miracle that had befallen us. For by the 
 sizzling, dripping flame we saw that we had as neatly 
 and precisely as if it had been done in daylight, with 
 perfect steering and knowledge of our whereabouts 
 run straight into a sheltered narrow sandy cove. We 
 saw ourselves in a place where, if twenty storms had 
 burst over our heads, nothing could possibly harm us. 
 The anchor had suddenly held, slewed us round and 
 done the trick for us as neat as a pin. Guests, attend- 
 ants and crew mingled tears of joy. After Hitchcock 
 had made Andy (who had once again turned a healthy 
 black colour) bring up a couple of dozen bottles or more 
 of the boy, and we had despatched them, we sang Auld 
 Lang Syne. 
 
 As far as we could make out, the time was about 
 three bells when we grounded, but this we couldn't 
 exactly vouch for, as we were all too much excited to 
 bother about the time. We made out it was an island, 
 though which, we were not sure. 
 
 We all turned in worn out by what we had been 
 through. I slept like a log, and I dare say the others 
 did too, as soon as it was realised that the greedy waves 
 were not going to have us, at any rate for this trip. 
 The storm and everything connected with it was for- 
 gotten, and though the wind still blew it was with a 
 soft southerly sound and nothing threatening in it. 
 
 I woke with a start to find the sun positively pouring 
 in through the bull's-eye glass of my port-hole. Where 
 the ? What the - ? Then I remembered. 
 
 I jumped up like a flash, drew on my nether gar- 
 ments and a dressing-gown and tore up on deck and 
 looked about me, at the cove and the beach and the 
 island straight ahead. It was incredible nay it was 
 almost a scandal. The day had dawned as exquisitely 
 and as radiantly as ever day had dawned since the first 
 creation of the world. The east blushed a little still, 
 faintly and peachily. The air was balmy, the sky an 
 
 260
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 innocent blue, where a few little newly washed clouds 
 hung as if they had been put there to dry. The violent 
 hail and pouring rain which had drenched the foliage 
 on the hill-sides had all been turned by the sun's bright 
 rays into a soft perfumed moisture, and every time 
 a twig stirred there came to one's nostrils a waft of 
 intoxicating perfume. 
 
 The whole landscape and the sea, especially the sea, 
 had an air of heavenly surprise and a look about it 
 which seemed to say : " Surely you can't think I'd be 
 capable of doing such a thing as that ? " meaning 
 the yacht cast ashore. It was a look I remembered 
 seeing on the face of a dear little child immediately 
 after it had been caught doing something it shouldn't, 
 something very, very naughty. 
 
 I looked down the yacht's sloping side to where the 
 keel had driven deep in the bank, and then lifted my 
 gaze again. Could it be possible that this was the same 
 sea that last night's awful lightning had revealed to me, 
 a sea that raged and raved like a hundred thousand 
 vociferating furies come screaming from Hades to 
 destroy us ? 
 
 It was now in infantine mood and the baby waves 
 had baby ways and talked baby talk along the goldy- 
 silver sands, and lisped in the pebbly creek. From 
 where I was on deck, I could see the outlying humpy 
 rocks that lay supine in the ocean, half in, half out of 
 the limpid gurgling waters. Now and again tiny wave- 
 lets played about them, gently patting them and stir- 
 ring their floating weeds, so that they looked for all the 
 world as if they had been so many lazy old sea gods or 
 mermen, and that the waves were little naiads sporting 
 with them. As for the island, it was there, straight 
 ahead of us, close on us, a land of green enchantment, 
 smiling idly and almost foolishly at us, welcoming us to 
 its nodding groves and palmy bowers. 
 
 I looked, but I could discern no sign of human 
 habitation. 
 
 Mr Hitchcock came up behind me in his bedroom 
 
 261
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 slippers and clapped me on the shoulder. I turned 
 and we gripped without speaking. His green cigar was 
 in full blast once more but the hand that held it shook 
 a trifle. 
 
 Presently we fell to congratulating one another and 
 expatiating on the marvellous series of chances and 
 combinations of circumstances by which we found our- 
 selves there. By gum, wait till they heard of this in 
 Poughkeepsie ! (We could afford to crack a joke now.) 
 Looking back on the storm, what a nightmare it had all 
 been and yet, what a long way off it all seemed now. 
 The yacht could be repaired where she was, he thought, 
 but supposed it would be best to pay salvage and get 
 her towed home. We'd all have to make the journey 
 by steamer and there was no doubt we'd get one any 
 day, as we were only about fifteen miles from the main- 
 land, and the wireless would soon be working again. 
 They had a repair shop on board for that. Hitchcock 
 said with emotion that Bates had been a perfect Trojan. 
 He'd kept a cool head through everything and deserved 
 every praise. He'd not forget it him. And by the way, 
 talking about Bates, the skipper had gone off again 
 into one of his tantrums. They wanted him to have a 
 little air, and early that morning, before I was up or 
 anyone about, they let him up. When he saw the 
 island, instead of being overjoyed, the ungrateful 
 beggar howled like a dervish, shook his fist at it, and 
 running to the far end, tried to jump overboard ; 
 though whether to end his life or swim to another part 
 of the globe, they couldn't say. They mastered him, 
 however, and he was now safely locked away down- 
 stairs. It beat all, to see a man carry on so at his age. 
 He'd sack him and hand him over to the authorities 
 as soon as he could do so, and keep Bates on as skipper. 
 
 Just then we saw a little group come out through the 
 trees and walk down to the beach. 
 
 " Hello ! They're up early," I said, for I made out 
 Celia and Dan, spick and span in white things, and 
 looking as if it was the most ordinary everyday thing in 
 
 262
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 the world to be wrecked on an island, and showing no 
 signs of excitement whatever. They were accompanied 
 by three women, evidently inhabitants, dark-skinned 
 and wearing bizarre gaudy dresses, kilted up queerly 
 in odd folds, and quaint jewellery. They stood watch- 
 ing the yacht and Dan signalled to us to come to them. 
 
 Hitch said : " Ah, they've found someone. We 
 sent some parties out to see if they could find out 
 exactly where we are, and what chances we have of 
 being picked up soon, and Dan of course is the first to 
 do any business. He's some dandy fellow." 
 
 With a word to one of the seamen to send below for 
 the Greek sailor we had aboard, we had the gangway 
 lowered and the three of us, including the Greek, got 
 into a dinghy and oared ourselves through the shallow 
 water of the creek to the beach. There was a foot or 
 two of water by the keel. I was careless of the fact 
 that I was in my dressing-gown and only partly robed 
 underneath. What is the good of being shipwrecked 
 and immediately getting oneself up as if for Bond 
 Street ? My dressing-gown and Hitchcock's bedroom 
 slippers lent a correct flavour to the proceedings. 
 
 " Look here, sir, I've got hold of some women," says 
 Dan, " but I don't really know if there was much sense 
 in bringing them along. They won't speak not a 
 word. Not that I could understand them if they did, 
 but I mean I don't even know if our Greek friend can 
 make anything of them, but maybe he can try. Of 
 course there are sure to be others, if these are deaf or 
 dumb or half-witted, but the only village I can see is 
 miles up the side of a high mountain. I met these 
 wandering down our way and brought them along." 
 
 Hadjios, the Greek, addressed them, but they only 
 shook their heads and gesticulated. It was obvious 
 that they were very excited at the sight of the yacht. 
 They waved their arms like windmills, pinching, 
 nudging and jogging each other, and their eyes almost 
 leapt from their sockets. Hadjios tried again, but they 
 took no notice. It was funny, but one felt somehow 
 
 263
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 that they understood perfectly what he was saying to 
 them, but for some odd reason refused to take any 
 notice. Indeed, they deliberately avoided looking at 
 him and only gave the most abrupt and negative shakes 
 of their heads when he spoke, half turning away from 
 him. 
 
 "It's awfully queer," he said in English. "I can't 
 make them out. They know what I'm saying quite 
 well." 
 
 " They're not half-witted," said Hitchcock, removing 
 his cigar and looking at them carefully. " They're full 
 of intelligence. In fact, they are more alive and in- 
 telligent than most other European peasants would be, 
 but they don't mean to talk while we are by." 
 
 Certainly their faces were very alive and eager and 
 different expressions flitted over them, chasing each 
 other across them in rapid sequence. They'd look at 
 each other, move their eyes and lips, noses even, and 
 grimace rapidly, and apparently each understood at 
 once what the other meant. 
 
 One took the lead (she was the oldest), and lifting one 
 arm dramatically, pointed to the wreck, and proceeded 
 to give in dumb show, to the two others, her idea of 
 what had occurred in connection with its lying there. 
 The others watched her, nodding vigorously and 
 evidently acquiescing, now and again interrupting her 
 by laying a hand on her arm and giving her some idea 
 of their own. It was extraordinary, but the woman 
 really did, by her pantomime, give a perfectly correct 
 account of the gathering of the storm, of its bursting, 
 of our anxiety, of the captain's anxiety, and of the 
 fright of the women, and the stern self-control of the 
 men facing death without flinching. She showed us 
 the wild waves and cowered before the lightning and 
 shuddered at the thought of drowning, and sighted land 
 and swooned with joy at the final great deliverance. 
 
 She never uttered a single word and yet contrived to 
 bring the whole scene before our eyes again. She left 
 Sarah Bernhardt nowhere. 
 
 264
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 We stood by with our mouths open. Truth is 
 stranger, far. than fiction and we had lived through a 
 great deal, which, looking back on it now that it was 
 all over, seemed like a thing we had read of. but had 
 never dreamt of as likely to befall us. Everything was 
 queer. The wreck, the creek, the island, my dressing- 
 gown, Hitch's bedroom slippers, the sand, trie sea, the 
 shells crackling under our feet. 
 
 And these women were the queerest of all. 
 
 Several times as we stood in that group there, I felt 
 everything go round in my head. I wondered if I was 
 I, and if I wasn't I, who was I, and what it is to be an I, 
 and if it is strictly necessary to be an I. The voices 
 seemed to come to me from a long distance off, and the 
 things I looked at seemed to be so small as to be almost 
 vanishing away, like they do when you look at them 
 through the wrong end of a telescope. 
 
 But Americans don't get carried away by unusual 
 things much. 
 
 "I have two opinions about these ladies," said 
 Hitch, knocking the ash off his green cigar, " and either 
 may be right. The first is that they are having a bit of 
 fun with us. at our expense. I give you that suggestion 
 for what it is worth. As a rule islanders unless they 
 are cannibals are hospitable and don't poke fun at 
 people who have the misfortune to be thrown on their 
 mercy, so to speak. Also they know it doesn't pay, so 
 I think we may dismiss it. My second is, that we have 
 been washed up on the shore of a land which may claim 
 to be the original home of all the movie actors and 
 actresses in the world. This is the finest kinema show 
 I have ever seen. There can be no manner of doubt 
 but that it is right here that the idea of the movie 
 pictures first had its origin and conception. It is vury 
 inter-esting. Vury inter-esting." 
 
 The women had ceased chattering together for a 
 moment, watching him as he spoke. Having done 
 with the wreck, they began to take stock of us all now, 
 and to discuss in their own wordless way our characters 
 
 265
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 and appearance and relationships. Hitchcock was our 
 father. One of the women gave us a striking portrait 
 of him dandling his two children, Celia and Dan, on his 
 knees ; to my great delight, and Celia's annoyance, 
 they decided that she and I were husband and wife 
 (with appropriate gestures, which caused us to blush 
 rather sheepishly, for the worst of it was, that anything 
 they set out to say, they said it in the clearest way 
 possible). 
 
 But still, if Hadjios addressed them, they'd not utter 
 a word. Only discuss it among themselves with 
 gestures and grimaces. 
 
 " I can't make them out, sir, unless " 
 
 " Unless what, Hadjios ? " 
 
 " Oh, nothing much, sir. A little idea of my own. 
 I'll go up to the village. I'm sure I'll get all the in- 
 formation I want there. I sha'n't be long, sir ! " 
 
 As soon as Hadjios had departed, they showed us by 
 unmistakable signs that they wished to come on board 
 and have a look round. So Hitch said, "Why, 
 certainly," and we got them into the boat and got over 
 to the gangway steps. 
 
 As we reached the deck we found several pallid 
 pretty faces appearing up the companion-way, whose 
 owners were frightfully interested at seeing these 
 natives of the place. And still more interested when 
 they heard our description of them, and saw for them- 
 selves how it was with them. I forgot to say that the 
 older one, the one with the histrionic powers which left 
 those of Sarah Bernhardt out in the cold, was wizened 
 and very plain, in spite of the intelligence in her face. 
 
 They were entranced with what they saw, and went 
 everywhere most conscientiously, even into the ladies' 
 cabins, looking at their toilet things and the powders, 
 lip-salves, lotions and flowered and lacy garments hang- 
 ing behind doors, or trinkets lying about. They were 
 quite polite, though they made no bones about letting 
 everyone know what they thought of everything. The 
 
 266
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 drawback of this facial language certainly was that it 
 seemed more difficult to conceal one's thoughts in it, 
 than is the case in ordinary speech. 
 
 Having finished the inspection of the ladies' cabins, 
 in one of which Lady Shaw was still sleeping peacefully, 
 with some biscuits within easy reach, they went 
 through the saloons, boudoirs and smoking-rooms, and 
 having exhausted these, down to see the kitchens and 
 quarters occupied by the crew. 
 
 These latter were commodious and beautifully kept, 
 and bright and gay with knick-knacks and photos of 
 sweethearts, wives and children, or other relations. 
 These were duly inspected and criticised. 
 
 As they lifted the curtain and entered the last cabin, 
 suddenly the oldest woman put her hand to her heart 
 and uttered a rusty raucous cry, and seized a photo- 
 graph of the skipper which was pinned by Bates' 
 shaving-glass. 
 
 It was an awful struggling cry and left her skinny 
 throat as if it tore its way out. She uttered yet 
 another and then, as if the pent-up speech of years 
 were choking her, she began to pour out a torrent of 
 words, hoarse and voluble, hardly letting one get out 
 before the other was on its heels pell-mell. She 
 appeared to apostrophise and then again to anathema- 
 tise the portrait ; then she kissed it and screamed and 
 clasped it to her withered bosom and then wound up 
 the scene by fainting. We were dumbfounded, for the 
 entire thing was so unexpected. 
 
 Hearing the row, I'd come in half shaved. Hadjios 
 came in too, just arrived from his expedition, and stand- 
 ing at my elbow, said : " It is as I thought, sir, she is 
 his wife." 
 
 The excitement of the other two women was painful. 
 They seemed beside themselves, and though neither 
 actually spoke even now a few rusty inarticulate 
 sounds escaped them, as it were involuntarily, and 
 under stress of great emotion. 
 
 I forget if I mentioned they were both something 
 
 267
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 under twenty-five years old or so, I don't think any 
 more. 
 
 We laid Sarah Bernhardt out on the bunk and in 
 spite of the flutter of excitement and sympathy that 
 swept over the ladies, they managed to administer very 
 excellent first aid for all sorts of trouble, drowning, 
 poisoning, asphyxiation, presence of a foreign body in 
 the throat, apoplexy, everything that you could find in 
 the St John's Ambulance Hand-book, without getting 
 in each other's way or doing the patient any good. 
 
 I beckoned to Hadjios. 
 
 " What's that you said just now ? I didn't quite 
 catch it. Something about the skipper being related 
 to her." 
 
 " I said he was her husband, sir." 
 
 " Her husband \ Surely not." 
 
 " Yes, sir. It's like this, sir. This island we have 
 been wrecked on is the old island of Calypso, and, as 
 you can imagine, there would be a lot of queer old 
 habits and ways clinging to it. I am a Greek from one 
 of the Cyclades, and you would hardly believe me if I 
 were to tell you of some of the goings-on on some of 
 them. I've just found out (though I already had 
 some idea of it) that here it is the custom of the country 
 for the men when they marry to go away to make their 
 fortunes, leaving their wives behind to await their 
 coming back. But during all the time they are away 
 the wives are pledged to silence. They may not speak 
 at all, in sickness or in health, whatever befalls them, 
 or under whatever circumstances they find themselves, 
 until the husband comes back. It's an awful law, and 
 how they ever came to allow it, I can't think, sir, and 
 the worst of it is, they observe it most rigorously, for 
 the older women are very severe and harsh with the 
 younger women over it and see that they carry it out at 
 all costs." 
 
 I whistled. 
 
 " Here's a kettle of fish. What a rum go ! " 
 
 " Yes, I found it out in the village. I understand 
 
 268
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 their dialect quite well, except a few words here and 
 there. The skipper married her twenty years ago and 
 never came back." 
 
 " And never meant to either, I'll bet ! " 
 " No ! I don't suppose so. But Fate was too much 
 for him." 
 
 " Hadjios, it looks to me as if these old gods had a 
 strong sense of humour. What do you think ? " 
 
 " Maybe, sir, but I think it's their way of punishing 
 him. Some of her relations are on the way down." 
 
 " Oh, they are, are they ? I think that means, then, 
 that we will have to stand by and see that there's no 
 harm done. What a rum go ! Now one can see so 
 plainly what all the dreams and portents were, and the 
 seizures. Of course, they were all done on purpose, to 
 put us off coming this way at all. He was afraid some- 
 thing might happen." 
 
 " But it was very odd about the Hindu fakir, sir." 
 " By Jove ! it was. I'd forgotten all about him." 
 What would they say to this if ever they got to hear 
 of it at Poughkeepsie ! 
 
 As I said before, I do not wish my simple tale to 
 figure in the light of a tragedy, so I will not therefore go 
 into the details of the skipper's first meeting with his 
 poor deserted wife and erstwhile inamorata. But that 
 he was a villain black enough to thicken any plot 
 cannot, I think, be denied ; nevertheless, like many 
 criminals far advanced in the technique of crime, he 
 must be absolved to the extent of admitting that he had 
 not started out on his career in life with any sinister 
 intentions. This they tell me bulks largely in the eye 
 of the recording angel, who is then inclined to lay the 
 blame, up to a point, on circumstances. Far from 
 planning harm, he told us, he had sailed away from his 
 native place and island bride with a heart swollen to 
 bursting-point, of which half the inflation could be 
 justly allowed to be due to sorrow at parting from her, 
 and the other half attributable to the crowding and 
 
 269
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 surging pressure of good resolutions and earnest in- 
 tentions for his future conduct. 
 
 At first, when he got to America, he thought of her 
 constantly, and wrote her of the home he meant to 
 build for her, and sang at his work. But though he 
 worked hard, it was a long time before he earned any 
 more than he himself could manage to barely subsist 
 on. Money did not flow in as rapidly as it might have 
 done, and then there was a long weary illness and a 
 long convalescence, and only that some friends kindly 
 nursed him and fed him, he would have died. And so 
 the time went on, and he tried first one town and then 
 another, and at last the recollection of his home and 
 early days, and his marriage and his young wife, all 
 seemed to become part of a far-off dream. When at 
 last he was getting good money, he sent big sums of it 
 to her anonymously ; but he had lost all desire to go 
 back to her or his people again. They seemed too vague 
 and too shadowy to have any definite claim on him. 
 
 Life in America, he confided to Hitchcock, was so 
 very different from life on the island. It seemed 
 almost impossible to believe that two places so differ- 
 ent could co-exist. America was so go-ahead, so real. 
 This island was so remote, so steeped in its old change- 
 less superstitions. He thought it must be rather like 
 Ireland, from what he had read about it. 
 
 " You see, when I married, sir, I hadn't seen America 
 or the American girls." 
 
 This way of putting it went straight to poor old 
 Hitchcock's heart, who had begun by meaning to be 
 quite adamantine over his disgraceful behaviour, and 
 impervious to any attempts at justification of his con- 
 duct. But he himself was feeling very home-sick just 
 then, after the racking experience he had been through 
 the United States loomed up before him as the most 
 desirable place on earth. So when the skipper laid 
 this remark or excuse, or whatever you prefer to 
 designate it as, quite humbly and simply before him, 
 
 270
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 the moisture sprang to his eyes, and he was greatly 
 perturbed. 
 
 To Hitch there was a world of pathos in the 
 explanation ! 
 
 It was fixed up that he should do the right thing by 
 his wife and acknowledge her as such. She was to be 
 taken on board the yacht and if she found, on arriving 
 at the other side, that she did not feel happy there, she 
 was to be allowed to return and live upon a fixed in- 
 come, while the skipper continued where he was, in a 
 life of single blessedness. Her relations he squared by 
 the gift of money several years' savings. 
 
 And so, as a villain, he got off far more lightly than 
 he deserved ; for unlike Ulysses, who made repeated 
 attempts to get back to his wife, sad Penelope, and 
 who as each succeeding obstacle arose whether it was 
 the giant Cyclops who tried to eat him, or the blandish- 
 ments of the love-sick Calypso, detaining him by force 
 was only goaded by it to further efforts to reach 
 Ithaca, after a short time he didn't make the slightest 
 effort to get the poor thing out of pawn ! 
 
 In fact, the gods, instead of punishing him, suddenly 
 seemed to take another line ; shortly after her arrival 
 on the yacht, it was discovered that she had a unique 
 talent for concocting the most exquisite and savoury 
 stews, which even the yacht's chef declared could not 
 be surpassed. Thus, from being at first an object of 
 mingled contempt and pity, he became a person to be 
 envied by the rest of his shipmates. In a class where 
 a cook and a wife are one and the same thing, he was 
 considered to have carried off a prize such as seldom 
 came out of the marriage lottery. 
 
 Hitchcock himself, pausing at the top of the alley- 
 way leading to the kitchens, to sniff appreciatively, said : 
 " She'll be kidnapped when she gets out to America 
 if they ever find out how wonderfully she cooks. For 
 cooks who can cook are vury, vury scarce out there." 
 
 I repeat that as the self-appointed and honorary 
 
 271
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 historian of this cruise and all there was there to record, 
 I have not done well. On reading this account over I 
 am depressed. And yet I tried to make it artistic and 
 attractive, and even borrowed a hint from a great 
 master who in relating of his travels with his donkey 
 in the Cevennes wrote so that he should read at the 
 same pace as the donkey ambled along. I've written 
 it to go at the same speed as the yacht, a good fifteen 
 knots an hour, but by so doing I have made a mistake, 
 for to hurry so, one must write badly, and it is 
 couched in the language of the ordinary washing list, 
 with a few verbs and prepositions thrown in. And I 
 find that I haven't put in a tithe of the really amusing 
 incidents that happened, and such as I have put in are 
 hung awkwardly together on an endless string of trite 
 sentences, composed of hackneyed alliances of words. 
 
 I haven't told how we laughed till we were tired at 
 each other's feeble jokes (and especially the very subtle 
 one about Poughkeepsie pronounced either Puffkeepsie 
 or Pekeepsie, according to hojv one felt). And I've not 
 mentioned the moonlight as it found us in those Ionian 
 waters and poured down on us and turned our hearts 
 upside down in our chests with its strange unholy 
 beauty ; nor how the trails of phosphorus followed our 
 ship like silvery flames as we went along at night. 
 
 It is not from want of good material my account is 
 dull ; but I got confused, and found it difficult to know 
 what to choose. Indeed in keeping the matter of the 
 skipper and his doings, in all this latter portion of my 
 account of the trip, I've shown a great deal of restraint, 
 for at the end there was a perfect glut of climaxes and 
 anti-climaxes. 
 
 Firstly, Hitchcock proposed to Miss Macinerney and 
 was accepted. It was the hospital plans that did it. 
 They intended to marry and to go on, spending their 
 declining years in building hospitals for children. The 
 yacht was to be turned into a floating creche, I believe. 
 
 Then Miss Sadie got engaged to the prince. I 
 should have put this first, because her father's getting 
 
 272
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 engaged was the result of her doing so, I dare say, as 
 he naturally would not wish to be left alone. The 
 prince was going back to London by the same train as 
 the P.M., to call together a meeting of his country's 
 representatives, and to sign away all his rights to the 
 throne. They were shadowy, but it was a big thing 
 to do all the same. He was a little man who would do 
 big things quietly, I now saw. 
 
 Stalybrass you simply would not have known for the 
 same person, and I vowed I would never again chip 
 Celia on her methods, or question anything she under- 
 took ; for he was now in perfect condition and quite 
 suitable as an ornament for any lady's boudoir. And 
 not only that, mark you, but prepared to give his un- 
 conquerable and irresistible energy and indomitable 
 force of mind (as revealed to any student of character 
 by one glimpse of his trestle legs) to the relentless pro- 
 claiming and advocacy of, in season and out of season, 
 all species of toleration and mutual good will between 
 men whatever their points of view might be on any 
 subject whatsoever. She had calmly pushed his in- 
 tolerance into reverse and now he would go careering 
 through life backwards, getting much further than if 
 he had gone frontwards, and with fewer collisions. 
 
 The miracle of the sandbank was as nothing to this. 
 It paled its fires completely before it. 
 
 The P.M. as he regained his health ceased to be as 
 actively disillusioned as when he came on board. He 
 returned to his work full of faith in himself, and fight 
 and tact, and like a certain stalk of the cabbage family 
 from which three crops of green stuff can be got two 
 sets of green buttons and one wavy green tuft from the 
 top having already yielded one crop of illusion-sprouts 
 for the universal soup cauldron, he now came out 
 rapidly in a second crop and a tuft, picked up in Greece, 
 and tore home to offer them to his country for more soup. 
 
 Deep inside me therefore I feel that the true climax 
 should be looked for in the columns of the daily papers 
 which appeared some time after he got back. 
 s 273
 
 THE CRUISE 
 
 To digress a moment, let me say that I thought fre- 
 quently of the change fresh air and fresh scenes had 
 wrought in him and wondered if a prominent politician 
 in rude health is more dangerous than one in bad health. 
 
 Illusions flourish so in the healthy. A mind situated 
 in a body which is intensely healthy finds difficulty in 
 taking in the idea of ill health in other bodies either 
 corporeal, municipal or political. And refusing to 
 admit ill health, they may legislate unwisely by not 
 taking it into account and allowing for it. 
 
 But a mind dwelling in a devitalised body, on the 
 other hand, has strange gifts of prescience, reads deeply 
 into the times, and has a sharp invalid's eye for dangers 
 ahead, or loopholes or ways round. 
 
 Should then a government hold its sittings on the 
 side of a hill, among oak-trees, where its members can 
 fill their lungs repeatedly with pure cold air ? Or 
 should all fresh air and sunlight be excluded from the 
 chambers where " things are done " and the legislators 
 fed on a lowering diet and be kept shut up till they all 
 become mushroomy and cranky and their intellects 
 attain a size out of all proportion to their physical 
 frames ? 
 
 Optimism is an attribute of health and there is 
 nothing so dangerous. 
 
 However, all this in no way prepares the reader for 
 the news that Edward was all a mistake and should 
 have been named by his godfathers and godmothers 
 at the baptismal font, Betty or Peggy or Evangeline. 
 For she had had five kittens during our absence, and 
 true to her hereditary instincts, deserted them all. 
 She was a society mother and her fluffy little kitties 
 had to be distributed amongst the tradespeople and 
 homes found for them in that way. 
 
 274
 
 THE CAMERA 
 
 " WRiTE-at-once-for-a-copy-of-the-great-new-book- 
 entitled - The-Road-to-Su ccess - by - the - development - of - 
 our - inner - forces. This - book -expounds - clearly - many- 
 as- tounding - facts - con - cer - ning - the - powers - of - the 
 human-mind-if-pro-per-ly-organ-ised-and-directed." 
 
 " Don't mumble, Patrick." 
 
 " All right, Uncle Peter." 
 
 Again after a few moments : 
 
 ' ' It-des-cribes-a- simple- me-thod - of- control-ling-the- 
 thoughts-and-acts-of-others. How-to-gain-their-friend- 
 ship. How-to 
 
 " Patrick. What have you got there ? " 
 
 " Nothing. Only a little paper book." 
 
 " It's a very bad habit to read aloud. You're dis- 
 turbing me very much. I must finish this writing." 
 
 " Uncle Peter, do you think this is true, what this 
 paper says ? " 
 
 " Probably not. Never believe anything you read 
 and very little of what you hear. And only a little of 
 what you see." 
 
 I am forming Patrick's mind. 
 
 " But it would be so very inter- esting if it was 
 true." 
 
 ; ' What does it say ? " 
 
 " It- describes-a- perfectly- easy-sys-tem-of -con- trol- 
 ling-the- thoughts - and - acts - of- others. How-to - gain- 
 their-friend-ship. How-to-es-tim-ate-their-char-ac-ter. 
 Even-the-com-pli-cated-sub-ject-of -thought -trans-mis- 
 sion-or-tel-e-pat-hy - What's that, Uncle Peter ? " 
 
 " That's another way of saying that a given person 
 can project his thoughts into the mind of - But it's 
 not a thing for a little boy to bother his head about. 
 
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 Why don't you go outside and play ? Aren't you 
 going to fish ? " 
 
 " My line is all entangled again." 
 
 I groaned. I'd spent most of that long vacation 
 already disentangling that line. There were hundreds 
 of yards of it to begin with, and I believe it stretched 
 every day. This meant that I would have to start 
 again with the help of the chair-legs and table-legs and 
 unwind it. Was it Penelope who spent all her nights 
 in unwinding and unravelling things ? I'd have to do 
 it. He trusted me. What a force is the trust in the 
 eyes of a child. Dogs, children and lunatics trust me. 
 This will have to be my excuse for many things undone. 
 
 " Show me what you have there. It doesn't seem 
 the right sort of reading matter for a boy of your tender 
 years." 
 
 Patrick is eight and a half. He handed it to me. 
 
 " Where in the name of goodness did you get this ? " 
 
 " Nursie bought it at the railway station." 
 
 I turned it over. It was a pamphlet on " Fortune- 
 telling and Dream-divination," a limp, clammy green- 
 covered thing and on the back of the last page but one 
 a toothy young lady, with her hair down, smiled at you 
 and called herself the " Mesmeric Wonder " and she 
 made her declaration thus : 
 
 How I COMPEL OTHERS TO OBEY MY WISHES 
 
 Ever since reading Professor Kahn's marvellous book 
 on the extraordinary powers which can be cultivated 
 and brought to perfection by a study of the personal 
 magnetism, and the psychic influences which dwell un- 
 known and unused in most of us, I have never looked 
 back in my career, and I have become brilliant and 
 successful. Whenever I apply for a post, no matter 
 how many applicants there are, I am invariably chosen. 
 I have advanced steadily from badly paid situations to 
 good, well-paid ones. 1 am never short of money. I 
 
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 am popular and admired wherever I go. My health is 
 excellent. I can control people to such an extent that I 
 can obtain any privilege from them that I wish for, 
 without asking them for it, but merely by willing them 
 to fulfil my unspoken wish. 
 
 "What is a privilege?" 
 
 " A privilege ? It may be anything. It's not 
 exactly easy to describe in simple words ; it's a gift in 
 a way. A granting of something that someone asks 
 for." 
 
 " Would a camera be a privilege ? " 
 
 " Yes in a way. Yes, you can look at it in that way 
 if you like." 
 
 " Go on reading, Uncle Peter." 
 
 " I don't know, Patrick, that this sort of stuff is suit- 
 able for you. Auntie Celia might not like you to read 
 rubbish like this." 
 
 " Is it rubbish ? " 
 
 " Yes and no. Not altogether." 
 
 "Well then, if it's not rubbish altogether, Auntie 
 Celia wouldn't mind a bit. She told me to read every- 
 thing I could find and think it over. She says it will 
 educate me." 
 
 " You know quite enough as it is, I think. Look at 
 all you told me about the mollusc and the barnacles 
 and the Pacific Ocean being due to the fact that a 
 wedge-shaped portion of the earth fell out when it was 
 cooling and then by whirling round and round became 
 the moon. And all those stories about the earth- 
 worms. I think it would be better if you went out 
 fishing. Bring me that line and I'll begin on it at once." 
 
 " But that is just it, Uncle Peter. It's when I fish 
 that I have so much time to think. You see I've been 
 fishing now for let me see 
 
 He waved his hand out sideways to hold me silent 
 while he thought. : ' Yes five weeks now, and I've 
 only caught one sea-bream. So you see, while I sit 
 waiting, one bit of my brain keeps hoping that a fish 
 
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 will bite, but there seems to be quite a big bit left over 
 with nothing to do and it keeps on remembering all the 
 things I've read or heard about. Won't you read what 
 else it says there, Uncle Peter ? It is so very inter- 
 esting." 
 " It says : 
 
 " ' Millions of people, all over the world, owe their 
 happiness and prosperity to having read Professor 
 Kahn's book. He studied for years in all the schools 
 of Eastern philosophy, under the wise men versed in 
 the esoteric researches of India, China, Japan, and 
 from them has acquired a knowledge of the incredible 
 magnitude of the unseen and mysterious forces which 
 surround us and are in us, as well as of the best methods 
 for utilising them to our advantage. If developed 
 according to his instructions they would be of inestim- 
 able value to mankind. So great is Professor Kahn's 
 desire that everyone should avail themselves of the 
 knowledge he has collected, so convinced is he that its 
 dissemination will be a boon to all, that on receipt of 
 six penny stamps he will forward a copy post free. 
 Money returned if satisfaction not given.' ' 
 
 " It would be very funny if one could make people 
 do things like that. But I don't suppose it's true. It 
 can't be true, Uncle Peter." 
 
 As a matter of principle I never refuse to discuss a 
 thing with a child. That perhaps is why I am so 
 popular with children. If I were to say that what the 
 pamphlet said was entirely untrue, I should have been 
 misleading him, for there is a great deal in this theory 
 of the domination of one mind over another and thought 
 transference. Not as this charlatan could expound it, 
 but as understood and practised and followed up by 
 the experts, students of psychological phenomena, and 
 mind processes in correct sequence. 
 
 " I said just now it was rubbish, but I didn't mean 
 you to take me too literally." 
 
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 THE CAMERA 
 
 Patrick looked at me. He's a dear little fellow with 
 a rather big head and a very fair, biggish, longish, 
 plumpish face and two grey eyes as soft and wide as 
 mist on Irish mountains, with the loveliest clear, black, 
 transfixing pupils right in their centres. His skin is as 
 fine as a petal and breathing as a petal. His expression 
 is as portentous and grave as only a child's can be. 
 
 I felt I mustn't mislead him. He's not a bit like 
 other boys, who will only forget the truth after they 
 have been told it. His brain worked away the whole 
 time and it would be a pity. He would when he grew 
 up be a man to dominate and compel respect. He had 
 a quiet keep-your-hair-on manner with him which as a 
 rule a boy does not obtain till he goes to a Public School. 
 For the obtaining of which parents pay such big 
 quarterly bills and which no matter how curiously 
 small their knowledge of mathematics or languages, or 
 other useful things, is a magnificent equipment for a 
 man and brings him successfully through so much. 
 Foreigners waste time and energy in gesticulating and 
 talking. English Public School men bottle it up, and 
 bottle it up. It's a reserve fund of force to be drawn 
 on when needed.* Calm determination and confidence 
 are good health, and good health is one form of stored- 
 up energy. 
 
 Patrick never enthused. He never would go further 
 than to say a thing was all right. He never said more. 
 He rarely said less. If some fairy godmother had 
 brought him an aeroplane, boys' size, in full going order, 
 as a present for Christmas he would have said it was 
 " all right." And if his present had been forgotten a 
 slight shade of disappointment would have come over 
 his sweet, longish, plumpish, fair face, but he'd have 
 made no audible remark about it. Patrick has a 
 natural gift for this sort of sang-jroid. 
 
 He was ear-marked (as they say in ministerial circles) 
 for a notable career. A future. To a boy of his type 
 sooner or later an apprehension of what mental domina- 
 
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 tion was and could do would come. I should not care 
 to think that he could look back and say that I had 
 misinformed him. I knew by the shape of his com- 
 modious fair head that he would never forget anything 
 anyone ever told him. Everything would be stored 
 there, facts, dates, faces, names, places, tales, remark- 
 able occurrences, or ordinary ones, addresses, things 
 about nature or machines, telephone numbers, streets, 
 short-cuts. I could imagine him on a wet day walking 
 around inside his own head, sorting and docketing 
 things, and putting them where he could get at them 
 expeditiously when required. Expulsing something 
 unnecessary, brought in by mistake or else sticking to 
 something else. It was a privilege but I didn't point 
 out the use of the word in this connection to him to 
 be his uncle ; and a responsibility too. I was only his 
 honorary uncle ; he had appointed me to the post, 
 there being a vacancy. Celia was really his second 
 cousin, not his aunt. 
 
 I had therefore as his appointed relative a duty to 
 fulfil by him. The duty of helping him to form his 
 outlook and theories. The sooner I inculcated some 
 shadowy comprehension of the great power latent in us 
 all the better. It grew by use. Let Tiim then begin to 
 use it early. There is no golf-swing like that which is 
 induced by playing the game as a child. 
 
 " Personal Magnetism is a great driving agent, 
 Patrick, and far be it from me to deny its existence, for 
 though I don't think I have much of it myself, I've 
 experienced manifestations of it often. But though I 
 know of its existence, I can't quite explain what it is. 
 It's probably electricity and electricity can't be de- 
 scribed. I read a book in which the author said of a 
 man that he was a great scientist, for he almost knew 
 what electricity was. That is about as near as one can 
 get to it, for the most advanced experts confess them- 
 selves baffled and say they can't define it." 
 
 Patrick nodded sagely. He is a good child and does not 
 interrupt and he understands nearly all the long words. 
 
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 " But whether it's understood or not by man, he 
 harnesses it and makes use of it in various ways 
 
 I wondered whether I had better try and give him a 
 full description of a magneto on a car, but thought of 
 my letter and skipped it. " He uses it to drive trams 
 and even railways, or as electric light, and in many 
 other ways. But as this little rag of a paper says, it 
 can also be used to drive human beings. Certain 
 people can by mesmerising others put them to sleep 
 and make them do certain things, by impressing their 
 stronger will on the other person's weaker ; or if you 
 like to put it this way, the trained will upon the un- 
 trained. This is called Hypnotism, and Personal 
 Magnetism is a form of Hypnotism. It does not put 
 the controlled person to sleep and tell them to do 
 certain things. It controls them awake, and wills 
 them to do things. Understand ? " 
 
 Patrick nodded. He must have done so for he waited 
 a moment and said : 
 
 " If I was to will dad to give me a motor bicycle 
 would he do it ?" 
 
 He certainly had got the hang of the thing. I replied 
 cautiously that that was rather a tall order. No dad 
 who prized his son of eight and a half would give him a 
 motor bicycle. He might feel the impulse from without 
 strongly to do so, but his inner reason would tell him it 
 was not the right thing to do. 
 
 " Well, then, an ordinary bicycle ? " 
 
 I thought this over. He had gone very directly to 
 the root of the matter ; it was interesting to find he had 
 done so and a proof of his big clear child's brain. And 
 moreover he wanted to put his newly acquired know- 
 ledge to the test and get it into force if possible. But 
 it was also a pity he had taken it so literally. He would 
 try and fail and decide there was nothing in it. It really 
 was a pity, for these sort of things ought to be encour- 
 aged and inquired into. It would be rather curious, I 
 thought, and in a way a permissible ruse to tell dad all 
 
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 THE CAMERA 
 
 about it and get him to allow himself to be willed into 
 trotting up with some small object fixed upon, a musical- 
 box or a new fishing-rod, with shorter line and a reel, or 
 an air-gun, A bicycle would be too expensive for a 
 soldier with a growing family and therefore not rich. 
 But why not something else in reason ? 
 
 " If I were you," I said, " I'd begin with something 
 smaller, because you see, if you didn't get it and 
 there's always a risk of that it would be a smaller- 
 sized disappointment to bear. If you willed him to 
 give you something very splendid that you were simply 
 longing to have, think what an awful big disappoint- 
 ment it would be. What about a camera ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, a camera 1 I'd love a camera. When I 
 go to school next summer term, it would be so useful 
 and so inter-esting to have a camera an autographic 
 camera." 
 
 " Well, we'll decide on a camera." 
 
 I made a note on the edge of the blotting-pad. 
 
 " Yes, but what must I do ? " with a rising inflection. 
 
 " Oh, you just get the idea very firmly fixed in your 
 mind. Shut your eyes and make yourself see the 
 camera quite clearly. Think about it, and then at 
 night, after you've said your prayers and gone to bed, 
 say to yourself, ' Dad, I want a camera, I simply must 
 have a camera, and I want it to be an autographic 
 camera,' over and over again and think it into his mind. 
 And when you are with him, keep on saying it to your- 
 self constantly." 
 
 " I see," nodding. 
 
 " And then by degrees, and when he is not thinking 
 of anything in particular, the word ' camera ' will come 
 into his mind and he will find himself repeating it, as 
 he thinks, for no particular reason. And by further 
 degrees he will begin to see a blackish, darkish thing, a 
 kind of long box- shape. He'll wonder what it is and 
 presently it will dawn on him what it is and he will 
 know it is a camera. And realising it is a camera, he 
 will think what a nice thing a camera is, and how useful, 
 
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 THE CAMERA 
 
 and inter-esting, and he will think to himself that you 
 would like one, and that it would be the very thing to 
 give you as a present." 
 
 " Yes ; but when will he give it to me ? " 
 
 I could see he had doubts, and qualms as to whether 
 he would not have to go on for years and years, wasting 
 valuable spare time, willing and wishing about it. So 
 often when one has been promised something as a child, 
 its arrival is hopelessly and utterly delayed long be- 
 yond the appetite for it. I remember, looking back. I 
 was always waiting feverishly for something, and get- 
 ting it when my desire for it had wasted away to a 
 miserable shadow of what it had once been. Indeed, 
 it's noticeable that this runs all through life. 
 
 I made answer : 
 
 " That depends on the strength of your willing. The 
 harder you will, the sooner, I suppose, it will make him 
 give it you." 
 
 " Can I will him to give it to me for my birthday ? " 
 
 " When is your birthday ? " 
 
 I thought it would be best to find out. We might 
 not have time to communicate with father, for him to 
 go and purchase it and get it sent along by the day. I 
 knew the festival was looming large on the horizon. 
 
 "It's two weeks to-morrow, Nursie says." 
 
 That did not give one overmuch margin, did it ? 
 Better not bear too heavily on the precise date. 
 
 " Supposing I was you," I said ungrammatically, 
 " I would only think about the camera. It's a little 
 early to make experiments. The trying of it at all is 
 of course an experiment, but, if you take me, the 
 thought of the camera is a concrete thought. You are 
 thinking of something substantial. Do you know the 
 meaning of the word concrete ? " 
 
 " Oh, quite well. It's the stuff they mix up all wet 
 and when it dries it gets hard. They build bridges of 
 it, with bits of iron in it." 
 
 The hand was put out, and a half turn given to it. 
 
 " Precisely. So being, as we shall call it, a definite 
 
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 concrete thought, it will be to my way of thinking easier 
 to get it into your father's mind. Whereas and I 
 think you will see what I mean here the other thought 
 about the date of receiving it is a sort of amorphous, 
 flabby, invertebrate thought and not so easy to handle. 
 Do you understand ? " 
 
 " Quite, thank you, Uncle Peter. You mean it is 
 more like a jelly-fish. They are very hard to hold or 
 pick up, and if you want to move one to put it in 
 another place you have to get it up on your spade and 
 carry it there in a bucket, and sometimes you spill bits 
 of it on the way if you are not careful." 
 
 " Once more, you've said it precisely. It's a pleasure 
 to explain things to you, Patrick. So we'll not bother 
 to will him to do it on a certain date ; though it's quite 
 likely that dad having once formulated the idea of the 
 camera in conjunction with the giving of it to you will 
 select your birthday as a suitable day on which to send 
 it you." I always use long words in speaking to 
 children. It flatters them. I would write a letter to 
 Herbert and urge him to send it at once. If he wouldn't 
 undertake to do it, I'd get it and send it anonymously 
 and prevaricate shamelessly by explaining that the 
 thought of the gift had precipitated itself out of the 
 ether, irrespective of the thought of a certain giver 
 (which was to be attached to it) through some subtle 
 agency. If one once started these psychic messages 
 one could hardly tell but that they might be delivered 
 to the wrong person. The main thing was to obtain 
 the Camera. After all, had we not read of how the 
 Mahatmas can produce goodness alone knows what out 
 of thin air, by apostrophising it and snatching at it at 
 the right instant. And why not ? The air must be 
 full of strange things, like the Caledonian Market, when 
 you think of all the things of all descriptions which 
 have been mouldering away, year after year, day after 
 day, ever since there was anything to decay or disin- 
 tegrate. We none of us have the remotest idea of 
 what we are breathing. What did Shakespeare say 
 
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 about Caesar's dust serving to stop a chink to keep a 
 draught out ? I don't remember quite, but I think the 
 same idea must have occurred to him as to the varied 
 assortment of things the air must contain. 
 
 However, I wasn't going to rely on snatching at the 
 air. I wrote a letter to Herbert broaching the idea, 
 and then hunted around for a magazine or journal 
 which advertised cameras and other forms of photo- 
 graphic apparatus. The big seaside bungalow was 
 thoroughly comfortable, and staying with Celia, one is 
 never haunted by that awful process known as tidying 
 up which makes one's life a misery in other houses and 
 prevents all sensible men from staying in them. Houses 
 I have in mind where one can only smoke in certain 
 rooms or at stated times, and where one mayn't drop 
 ash, or can't find ash-trays, or where the hostess has a 
 fit if one lays one's cigarette on a mantelpiece, or sets 
 one's whisky and soda down for a moment on a 
 polished table, while listening to an enthralling account 
 of some big-game episode, when the rhinoceros were 
 charging up wind to where they had sniffed the man 
 with the gun in a tree. One smokes anywhere, any 
 time. She even lets me smoke a pipe at most uncon- 
 stitutional moments because she says I do it with such 
 distinguished nonchalant ease. Miss Lamb says she 
 says it is a liberal education to see me fill and smoke a 
 pipe and that my taste in pipes and tobacco is quite 
 perfect. In her houses there are always matches, 
 fresh, untouched, crisp boxes new-laid boxes, in fact. 
 Matches on the mantelpiece, matches on the piano, 
 matches behind the palms and flowers where you can 
 easily find them if you know where to look. Matches 
 in the bedrooms and matches on the chests of drawers. 
 You need only put out your hand and there they are. 
 Her house might almost have been the scene of the 
 celebrated ghost story, where a man, feeling ill in the 
 middle of the night and groping around in search of 
 some, had a box handed to him out of the pitchy dark- 
 ness by some sinister presence. 
 
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 THE CAMERA 
 
 The process of tidying does not engulf them and wash 
 them up on the pantry table where no one can get at 
 them. If anything, on the contrary, there are more 
 after it than before. The same with magazines and 
 newspapers and journals. They don't arrange them 
 on a table twenty times a day as in some houses where 
 I don't visit now, where menials dog one's footsteps 
 and if for an instant one lays one aside to ruminate on 
 the contents of one article before beginning on another, 
 or to light a fresh cigarette, it is picked up, folded 
 neatly and put away ; or else plucked from one's hand 
 whilst one is actually still immersed in it to be restored 
 post-haste to the mosaic on the lounge or hall table. 
 A way of getting on about things which makes one 
 wonder whether it isn't a very old and a very out-of-date 
 superstition that papers and journals are printed to be 
 read, for I've stayed in houses where they kept three 
 or four liveried rascals to do nothing but dance around 
 and make it impossible for a harassed visitor to read 
 the news and keep abreast of the times. 
 
 Here one often comes across last week's Prattler or 
 Field, or last month's Blue Review, and it's quite nice 
 if one hasn't read them yet. It was owing to this, as 
 some people would consider, deplorable neglect of one 
 of the great features of English country house life that 
 Celia picked up a journal and the little green rag fell 
 out. It was the following week after Patrick and I 
 had gone into the matter. 
 
 She said just what I said when I first saw it. 
 
 "Where in the name of goodness did this come 
 from ? " 
 
 I looked up at her remark. I was comfortably read- 
 ing a paper, undisturbed to an extent which could not 
 have occurred under any other roof. Thinking it 
 might amuse her to hear the story about how Nursie 
 bought it at the railway station and how inter-ested 
 Master Patrick had been in it, and the advertisement 
 of the Magnetic Girl, I told her. I also told her about 
 the little plan Herbert and I were going to work off on 
 
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 THE CAMERA 
 
 him. For once Herbert had entered into the joke of 
 the thing ; though he is addicted to a great porten- 
 tousness, which I sometimes fear will develop in Patrick 
 when he gets older. 
 
 She didn't approve it at all, for she has very strict 
 ideas of truth, where other people are concerned. Also, 
 I know that she likes to think that if later Patrick rises 
 to be a great and successful man, it will be due to 
 her patent- painless - j uvenile-.int elligence - development 
 system, according to which she administers instruction 
 to him daily. 
 
 I think it is an excellent system. I've got nothing 
 whatever against it and I had every reason to think my 
 little dodge was quite on the lines of her teachings and 
 theories. She said, "Not so." I did not get heated. 
 I'm resigned to people and their peculiarities now. I 
 reminded myself that item eleven in my list of human 
 inconsistencies and absurdities states tljat people with 
 systems must never be expected to see things reason- 
 ably. They infallibly cast out anything anyone else 
 has to offer. First, they fight you rings round if you 
 find any flaw in their system, and if you adopt their 
 methods and carry them a few inches further they 
 accuse you of working against them. They say you 
 are going directly against them. By everything she 
 had ever expounded or advocated in our discussions on 
 the scientific expansion of the child mind I was right. 
 She had said she would balk at nothing to bring a child 
 on mentally. She would not flinch at dishonesty. The 
 end justified the means. No one could say what 
 powers the human mind could not aspire to, if the early 
 and knowledge-acquiring years were properly used. It 
 was vitally important that children should not learn 
 things mechanically or dryly, but made to think, think, 
 think, in the intervals of being made to play, play, play, 
 and eat, eat, eat. The present way the thing was 
 approached made everything so monotonous and un- 
 appetising and was so exhausting with its long hours 
 spent indoors during which the children were crammed 
 
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 THE CAMERA 
 
 with indigestible information, that they left school, 
 subconsciously revolted and with mental indigestion 
 permanently ensured. They left, convinced that to 
 think about things was bad form. They were overfed 
 with unsuitable things unsuitably administered instead 
 of being taught to search for the information they liked 
 best with appetite. A modern school child's brain 
 was, regretfully be it said, in the same condition as the 
 liver of the Strasburg goose, that goes, distended and 
 dilated, to make pate de foie gras. 
 
 She pulled me up and disapproved of my ruse not, 
 therefore, for its want of honesty, but because she 
 roundly declared there was nothing in personal magnet- 
 ism. There was, for all that people claimed contrari- 
 wise, nothing established either by psychologists or 
 physiologists that could not be flouted. The pheno- 
 mena claimed as evidences of its working were all only 
 in existence in the minds of journalists, craving for 
 copy, or novelists. Neither of which if she were an 
 autocrat would be allowed to deal out long articles about 
 it or mawkish novels asserting it was a decided thing. 
 These people she'd sweep away with other unnecessary 
 trash. They started the wind-bag theories and then 
 they floated all over the world on green rags. 
 
 Now I am a considerable believer in it and think 
 there are many kinds in quite palpable evidence about 
 us. I am not psychic, nor magnetic, nor have I read 
 or troubled much about such things, but I believe the 
 two conditions exist. And if I believe in a thing I'll 
 talk about it, and if I talk about it, I'll warm up to it. 
 
 " I'm surprised at your narrow-mindedness, Celia." 
 
 "Then you're easily surprised, for you're surprised 
 at nothing at all. I'm not narrow-minded. If you 
 said you were surprised at my broad-mindedness it 
 would be nearer the mark, but perhaps you don't know 
 it when you meet it. That's very likely. Why, good 
 gracious, you seem to have forgotten, my dear boy, that 
 / cured you of narrow-mindedness which of all the seven 
 deadly sins is indeed the worst." 
 
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 THE CAMERA 
 
 " Amen," I said fervently. 
 
 " No, but I am surprised at you not taking this 
 miserable effusion from the child and burning it." 
 She rolled it up into a ball and threw it cleverly into 
 the waste-paper basket over by the wall. 
 
 " Why do you deny the existence of this power so 
 energetically, Celia ? " 
 
 " For various reasons. Why do you declare its 
 existence so energetically ? " 
 
 " For various reasons too. How do you account for 
 the manner in which some men rise from nothing and 
 carry all before them, if it's not through possessing it ? 
 They never make a mistake, or, that is, they don't 
 appear to, for their mistakes are either accepted and 
 swallowed by those around them or else turn out well 
 for them. Mistakes which would cause other men to 
 founder and go down will float them and wash them up 
 on to some high place from which they can look around 
 and plan some more mistakes which will place them 
 still higher. Their success is not due to intelligence. 
 You must look for the reason elsewhere. You can't 
 account for it except by assuming that they hypnotise 
 or magnetise their colleagues into thinking well of 
 them. Consequently they do well. That's what it 
 must be." 
 
 " It's because they work hard and don't waste time 
 in writing that they succeed." 
 
 One for me. 
 
 " Nothing of the kind. I can't agree with that." 
 I passed it over. " If you haven't the indefinable 
 quality of which I speak (we'll leave what it is an open 
 question if you like), which is going to make you succeed, 
 the harder you work and the more you slog at it the 
 lower it will bring you. Everything you do, the more 
 it will carry you down, because whatever you do will 
 turn against you. It may be the right thing for a man 
 in certain circumstances and with certain liabilities or 
 abilities to do, and it may be the right moment to do it, 
 T 289
 
 but because he does it it's the wrong thing. By Jove ! 
 it's most interesting, I must say. I could think and 
 wonder, wonder and think about it all day and half the 
 night. There's no end to it. Everywhere around you 
 you see people, and if you watch them you can see 
 the thing going on. People starting with everything, 
 money, position, influence, backing, throwing it all 
 away bit by bit, while others who have every dis- 
 advantage to strive against, get up and up and up." 
 
 " You spend too much of your time thinking and 
 wondering. If you moon about thinking and wonder- 
 ing you'll finish by thinking you're thinking when 
 you're not, and wondering at things that don't exist. 
 You're over-civilised, my dear boy, that's what's the 
 matter with you. You want to get back to nature 
 more." 
 
 " No one is in closer touch with nature than I am, 
 and I maintain that Personal Magnetism and thought- 
 transference do exist in everyday life. And talking 
 of surprises, it surprises me that as a woman you are 
 not fully alive to it. I could understand a man not 
 perceiving it, but not a woman." 
 
 " Are women then supposed to be more magnetic 
 than men ? It's the first I've heard of it." 
 
 " So it seems, and it strikes me as odd." 
 
 " Why odd ? Why odd ? Why should women be 
 more magnetic, more skilful, or any better at casting 
 their influence, or throwing it around and about, or 
 whatever way it is done, to people ? " 
 
 "Yes, they are, and the reason is obvious. They 
 have had, whether or no, to develop it. A man if he 
 wants a thing goes out into the world and takes it, 
 whatever it is : position, money, sport, influence, 
 experience, or we'll even say love." 
 
 " Oh, love " said Celia, as if she didn't like the 
 turn the conversation was taking and looking at her 
 watch. 
 
 " Yes, love. You don't realise that very few people 
 
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 THE CAMERA 
 
 seem to give it as small a space in their lives and minds 
 as you do." 
 
 " Yes. It's extraordinary. Very few people seem 
 to see what a useless, hindering thing it is. Go on." 
 
 " The man can go out and take it, but women have to 
 sit at home, within, and let it come to them. They 
 have to draw it to them, but it must all be done sub 
 rosa. You know yourself that a woman who lets a 
 man see she likes him is considered to have made 
 a hopeless exhibition of herself. A man looks a bit of a 
 fool if he goes after a woman who won't have him 
 
 I paused gloomily. Celia looked at her watch again. 
 I went on. 
 
 " So the girl or. woman has to sit still and silently 
 and secretly exert all her mental strength, and all her 
 force of will, under the cloak of a perfectly impassive 
 demeanour, to draw the man to her, willy-nilly. She 
 may not let him SEE she wants him, but she must make 
 him FEEL she does. That just says it. She must show 
 nothing on the surface. She even seems quieter than 
 usual very likely, but she keeps on calling him silently 
 and telling him to hurry up and not lose any time. She 
 keeps on telling him how delightful she is (silently). 
 She keeps on pointing out how beautiful she is (silently), 
 and how splendid it will be for them both if only he will 
 ask her to kiss him (silently)." 
 
 " Of all the preposterous ideas, Peter ! You cer- 
 tainly get hold of odd, and even scandalous theories. 
 I've never in my whole life done such things as you 
 describe. Never ! " 
 
 Celia looked exceedingly annoyed, and genuinely 
 irritated at the thought of the things I imputed to her 
 sex. 
 
 " Not you. You've not had to. You're so beautiful 
 that you've always had scores of admirers. You've 
 always mixed in a society where men are as numerous 
 as the pebbles on the sea-shore or stalks of wheat in a 
 wheat-field. You've had every advantage that a liberal 
 education and travel and great wealth can bestow. 
 
 291
 
 THE CAMERA 
 
 You've always been independent, and free to go where 
 you wished to, to do as you would. I'm speaking of 
 the woman who has been chained at home in a place 
 where the women preponderate, one of several sisters 
 and a batch of female cousins, to say nothing of other 
 friends, all on the look-out. A woman, in short, who 
 has had to battle (silently) for the stray man who 
 happens to wander alone and unprotected into such a 
 place, and therefore falls across her path ; she has to 
 try to wrest him from a dozen or more magnetic girls 
 who are also drawing him silently and forcefully to 
 them." 
 
 " I don't believe such things happen." 
 
 " They do." 
 
 " They do, do they ? But how do you know ? " 
 
 " I know quite well." 
 
 " Hoo ! It's easy to say you know," said Celia dis- 
 dainfully, her lip curling, " but it's nothing but morbid 
 nonsense." 
 
 "It's NOT all morbid nonsense. I know quite well, 
 and I'll tell you how I know if you like." 
 
 "How?"' 
 
 " I know, because I've been battled over myself ! " 
 
 Celia sat up in her chair. She had been lounging 
 carelessly before. 
 
 " YOITYE been battled over ? YOU'VE been battled 
 over like this ? " 
 
 She looked at me incredulously. I nodded and 
 shrugged my shoulders and there was a few minutes' 
 silence. Presently : 
 
 " It's easy to say you know because you've been 
 battled over, but how do you know it's so. It can't be 
 proved." 
 
 " Can't be proved. I like that. It was proved to 
 ME all right, over and over again. I can tell you that, 
 and that's that." 
 
 "When, might I ask, did this this battling for 
 you take place and where ? " 
 
 Her tone is one of calm amusement as if she were 
 
 292
 
 humouring a child, but couldn't spare too much time 
 for it, as presently she must be off to see to something 
 important, such as writing urgent letters and such-like, 
 instead of frittering away her time in desultory con- 
 versation. 
 
 " Ah ! Now you are asking." 
 
 " Oh, ages and ages ago, I suppose when you were 
 a big gawky overgrown sentimental greenhorn, fright- 
 fully self-conscious and always imagining that people 
 were thinking about you all the time when they weren't 
 troubling themselves in the very least about you. As 
 if they hadn't better things to think of ! " 
 
 " Not ages and ages ago at all. Quite recently if you 
 want to know." 
 
 " Quite RECENTLY- really how very amusing ! " 
 
 " Yes, quite recently and qruite continuously." 
 
 " Quite CONTINUOUSLY. How do you mean quite 
 continuously ? " looking at me with interest and a 
 colour dawning in her face and eyes. 
 
 " Oh, hang it, Celia. You do ask a fellow to dot his 
 ' i's ' and cross his ' t's.' When I say quite continuously 
 I mean quite continuously." 
 
 I got up and went over to the fireplace and stood with 
 my back to it, plunging my eyes into the end of the 
 room. 
 
 " You mean it goes on all the time wherever you are. 
 Do you mean that ? " 
 
 " Yes, if it goes on all the time more or less, I must be 
 somewhere, so it's wherever I am, naturally." 
 
 "Naturally. That was a silly question to ask." 
 She was sitting up and seemed to be thinking. 
 
 I lit a cigarette and flung the match into the logs, 
 putting it out with a jerk of my wrist. 
 
 " You spend a good deal of tune at my house, Peter. 
 Might I ask if any of the battling goes on there ? " 
 
 " RATHER. It mostly happens there. It happens 
 of course at other houses, but principally at yours. Oh 
 yes." 
 
 " Principally at mine. That's funny. I've never 
 
 293
 
 THE CAMERA 
 
 noticed it, nor can I see why it should happen princi- 
 pally at my house." 
 
 " hy, the thing explains itself. You have such a 
 tremendous lot of friends. Your house is a regular 
 meeting ground for all the nicest people. Dozens of 
 pretty girls come and go and there are more oppor- 
 tunities for that sort of thing to occur. And not only 
 have you a lot of charming friends already, but you are 
 always making more. Look at Nancy now. There's 
 an addition if you like. She's perfectly adorable. 
 There's no chance of getting bored with you, dear lady ; 
 your circle keeps on getting bigger and bigger and nicer 
 and nicer thanks to your hospitable bent of mind." 
 
 I puffed away at my cigarette as if this were some- 
 thing to cheer and hearten one up. 
 
 " Well one lives and learns, I must say," said Celia 
 slowly, looking at the wood fire. 
 
 " That's quite certain. And this battling teaches 
 one things, I can tell you." I went over to my chair 
 and drew it nearer and sat down again and looked at 
 the fire ruminatively. "It's perfectly extraordinary. 
 Sometimes," I said confidentially " sometimes I've 
 had the feeling that if we were properly developed on 
 the lines that were laid down originally, and if this affair 
 of the thought-transference were gone into properly, 
 that speech would be totally unnecessary. For I can 
 assure you that sometimes, when they are battling 
 I can almost hear them asking me to go over " 
 
 " Yes " 
 
 " And kiss them." 
 
 " You DON'T MEAN TO SAY so. But how awful ! ' 
 
 " No, no, it's not awful when it's spoken silently as 
 they speak it." 
 
 ' They- who ? " 
 
 " Oh, whoever it is. It may be this one. it may be 
 that one. There's no knowing." 
 
 " I think it's perfectly scandalous ! " 
 
 " Come, come. Celia. That's rather severe, isn't it ? 
 After all, it's only nature, you know." 
 
 294
 
 THE CAMERA 
 
 " I repeat. I think it's perfectly scandalous. Might 
 I ask you if there are a great many of them ? " 
 
 " That's not easy to say. It varies, but I don't really 
 think it is ever much below twenty-five or thirty or so. 
 I meet such a lot of people, one way or another." 
 
 Celia looked at me in a new odd sort of way. She'd 
 an expression on her face new to me, anyhow. I think 
 she was slowly formulating an idea to herself that if 
 twenty-five or thirty people all wanted me at the same 
 time I must be a desirable fellow. There must be a 
 something about me. 
 
 " Are you quite sure that this feeling about the the 
 kissing emanates from them entirely ? Don't you 
 think it may, that it's very likely it's only your own 
 morbid mental outlook which is responsible ? " 
 
 " Dear me, no. I feel it sometimes come over to me 
 when my mind is a perfect blank, and full of other 
 totally different things. In fact I may be standing 
 with my back to the girl or whoever it is, quite at the 
 other side of the room, not bothering at all, talking to 
 Professor White or someone on bimetallism or science, 
 or something of the sort." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well. And suddenly without any warning I get 
 an odd unaccountable feeling that if I am not very 
 careful I will be compelled to go right over and kiss 
 whoever is sending the message to me right on her jolly 
 little mouth." 
 
 " It's AMAZING ! ! I never thought such a thing 
 possible. But are you quite sure that the idea doesn't 
 come from yourself, or partly ? I don't think any girl 
 would think these things unless she knew she'd be 
 encouraged. Do you mean to say that of your own 
 accord you'd never have thought of it at all ? " 
 
 " Sure as sure. Though sometimes " 
 
 " Yes what 
 
 " I don't say, mind you, that it leaves me altogether 
 cold that I don't react in some sort to the summons. 
 It gives me a sort of warm pleasant glow in my 
 
 295
 
 THE CAMERA 
 
 chest. It is rather nice to feel one is appreciated after 
 all." 
 
 Celia, three-quarter face, is looking at me, and swivels 
 a beautiful darkling eye in my direction. 
 
 It seems then that slaves may escape sometimes, 
 after all, especially if they get help from outside. She 
 was silent for a full minute or so. I smoked. There is 
 a great deal in thought -transmission. I could hear her 
 doing quite a lot of thinking. However, when she 
 spoke she affected unconcern of the most marked 
 description. 
 
 "You talk very decidedly and glibly about these 
 messages and I suppose I must accept what you say, 
 but the whole thing is nothing but guess-work, working 
 back from logical premises. You know that a great 
 many silly women, far too many indeed, spend their 
 days in pursuing any moderately decent-looking man 
 who happens to be about, and so when you find yourself 
 in a room with one of this type you just jump to the 
 conclusion that she is after you." 
 
 " I assure you there is no guess-work about the trans- 
 mission of the messages whatever. I've received them 
 over and over and over again. Talking is child's play 
 to it ; languages are the clumsy and inexpressive 
 expedients we use because we have not perfected a 
 system which is within our grasp and which is infinitely 
 superior to speech. Words are unscrupulous and in- 
 efficient middlemen in the commerce of life. They 
 either express too much or too little. This other way, 
 the absolute utter thing itself flashes clear and straight, 
 without any unnecessary trimming, to its destination. 
 To see what useless and unsatisfactory things words 
 are you've only to pick up a daily paper and read a 
 Cabinet Minister's letter, explaining that he really 
 meant one thing when he said quite the opposite a few 
 days before. Or step in to try and patch up a quarrel 
 and hear what each side has to say, and find that, 
 according to the persons quarrelling, the whole thing 
 has arisen out of the looseness and want of clarity of 
 
 296
 
 THE CAMERA 
 
 words, which may be taken first one way and then 
 another. Wars arise through words being misunder- 
 standable. In thought-transference there's none of 
 this." 
 
 " There's something in what you say," said Celia 
 vaguely, looking at the logs, " I must admit." 
 
 " Why " I said, sitting down again, and warming to 
 my subject more and more. " By this system which I 
 advocate you don't receive a partial and unsatisfactory 
 fragment of an idea- you get the whole thing flashed 
 before you in a complete picture ! " 
 
 "What sort of a picture do you get, then, when 
 people are battling over you ? " 
 
 " It depends. I will say this, it varies a good deal. 
 Some girls seem to have the gift of putting things more 
 clearly before you than others. With some you get 
 the entire picture of wedded bliss and intimacy/' 
 
 " Oh, they want you to MARKY them." 
 
 " Yes. That's the idea. I don't suppose they'd go 
 to all the trouble of projecting their thoughts to one for 
 less, though However, as I say, in some cases 
 you get the entire picture the fireside, and the snug- 
 ness and the er intimacy and- oh, all the usual 
 trimmings of connubial bliss." 
 
 " By the fireside " said Celia, looking at the logs ; 
 " and very intimate 
 
 " Oh, very. And so cosy." I looked at the logs 
 too. " All the wedding presents, dotted about the 
 room, and photos of pals with signatures and so on, and 
 little odd things bought during the honeymoon or the 
 engagement. Some girls seem to be able to work in 
 more details than others "' I tailed off casually. 
 
 " More details. What sort of details ? " 
 
 " Oh, various. One girl always succeeded just as I 
 expect she tried to in making me see her with her hair 
 down." 
 
 " Her hair down ! " echoed Celia horrified. " I don't 
 call that at all nice." 
 
 "Oh, wasn't it just ! She'd very pretty hair, 
 
 297
 
 THE CAMERA 
 
 fluffy and wavily soft. I don't say I ever really saw it 
 down or anywhere near it. but she MADE me see it quite 
 plainly. She used to wear a pretty, becoming tea-gown 
 sort of thing too in the picture. Mere words could 
 never have brought it before me as she did by her 
 thought-transference. It was vivid." 
 
 I shook my head reminiscently, looking at the little 
 crackling jetting wood flames. 
 
 " It seems incredible ! " said Celia, shrugging into 
 her chair and getting nearer the big logs as if to warm 
 herself. " However did she do it ? " 
 
 " Well, now that I come to think of it, in her case it 
 was done by a trick of the voice this is a very usual 
 way, I may say." 
 
 " But I thought you said it had nothing whatever to 
 do with talking. You see you say first one thing and 
 then another 
 
 " Nor had it either. She didn't talk about it or 
 mention it or anything. This girl hardly ever talked 
 to me at all. I don't think she ever did so. No casual 
 observer would have noticed anything. No. but when 
 she was talking to other people and I was in the room 
 a portion of her voice seemed to detach itself and come 
 floating over to me to tell me all sorts of things, such as 
 this about the hair and the tea-gown, quite quietly on 
 its own, while the rest of her voice was talking and 
 laughing to the others, about anything, tennis, or 
 dances, or just the usual everyday things one talks 
 about. And even if I got up and went into the next 
 room that bit of her voice seemed to come after me. and 
 follow me and keep on telling me things such as I've 
 just told you about. When it gets to that pitch, hear- 
 ing a girl's voice when she is not there, it's beginning to 
 get dangerous." 
 
 " Dangerous. You mean ? " 
 
 " It means that the thought has effected a lodgment. 
 It will stay with you and rankle even when she is no- 
 where near, and keeps on and on telling you all sorts 
 of things until 
 
 298
 
 THE CAMERA 
 
 " Until ? " 
 
 " Until you propose, and she accepts you as she meant 
 to all the time. And your doom is sealed. You're 
 done brown." 
 
 " Everything's settled then." 
 
 " Everything's settled then. Yes." 
 
 " I must own," with a self-conscious laugh, " that 
 you've stirred my curiosity. You simply MUST tell me 
 who some of the girls are." 
 
 " It wouldn't be fair, Celia. You know yourself you 
 wouldn't think any the more of me if I did mention 
 names." 
 
 " I won't tell. And besides, we're such old friends, 
 and I never gossip." 
 
 " Can't be done, Celia. I could not love thee, dear, 
 so much and all that. You know the quotation. Be- 
 sides I hardly ever think of them as individuals. With 
 my analytical nature, I divide them into types." 
 
 " Ah. You only think of them as TYPES," faintly 
 relieved, I fancy. 
 
 "I won't say that altogether. Hardly that. But 
 though they impress themselves individually on me, I 
 cannot help, with my mania for classification, dividing 
 them up into sections. There's what I call the always- 
 waiting-for-you-round-the-corner girl ; I've very little 
 use for that sort. I choke her off as soon as possible. 
 And there's the always-evading-you-round-the-corner 
 sort. She's much more attractive. One wants to go 
 in pursuit and while she is with one she manages to 
 work twice the damage the other one does. And I've 
 noticed that she very often transfers messages to a 
 person who is in one house when she is in another." 
 
 " Oh, by telephone, I suppose." 
 
 " TELEPHONE ! Nothing so crude, I can assure 
 you. No, by thought-projection entirely. Many and 
 many an invitation I've had to tea and dinner that 
 way." 
 
 " I can just imagine the sort of girl," scathingly, as 
 though to ask a nice man to tea were the last thing 
 
 299
 
 THE CAMERA 
 
 any decently brought-up girl should stoop to, even if 
 she does it inaudibly. 
 
 " Then there's a very dangerous type I'd like to 
 warn all my pals against. Two or three oh, several 
 come to Grosvenor Square quite regularly, I'll go so 
 far as to tell you that." 
 
 " I'll look out for them," said Celia tonelessly. 
 
 " How shall I describe the way they set about it ? 
 They like to be thought quiet and shy and deliberately 
 look countrified and affect the startled-fawn air. The 
 wild woodland nymph, unversed in the ways of men 
 and cities. They are dangerous and no mistake. 
 They are of course quite slim and medium- sized and 
 part their soft brown hair in the middle (there's a clue 
 for you) and do it up anyhow as if to make out that they 
 know nothing of the arts of fascination, or if they did 
 that they wouldn't stoop to them for a minute. And 
 some of the soft brown hair brushes down carelessly 
 over their foreheads and eyes, and they look up at you 
 from under the shadow, timidly, flicking their long eye- 
 lashes. Vanda, at the top of her style in the old days, 
 was never a patch on this sort. She was open and 
 above-board. These are surreptitious. They have 
 little creep-mouse, creep-mouse ways. If ever you 
 wanted to do any reforming " 
 
 I waved my cigarette suggestively. 
 
 " I should think they needed it badly." 
 
 Her lips were in a straight line. 
 
 "Well, I'd really like to describe these girls to you 
 very carefully, for then you would set to work on them 
 at once, or else avoid asking them to the house. They 
 do lots of damage, believe me, just because no one 
 would suspect what they were up to, except a man who 
 was the object of their magnetic machinations. I won't 
 give you any names. That would hardly be fair. But 
 once you know the type you cannot mistake them. 
 They have a little quiet casual way with them as if they 
 forgot where they were sometimes and came to with 
 a start. Day-dreaming. Awfully fetching when it's 
 
 300
 
 THE CAMERA 
 
 real. I've often thought I'd like to marry a girl who 
 day-dreams. But they are very scarce and snapped 
 up at once. But this creep-mouse girl gives a very 
 good imitation of it. She never seems to be quite 
 listening to what you say or quite sure of what she is 
 going to say. She never seems to quite notice you are 
 there, no matter how close she is to you (she gets very 
 close to you quite by accident). She never quite looks 
 at you, just snatches her eyes away off you, and Igoks 
 beyond you out of the window or somewhere away*off . 
 She half looks at you and half smiles at you and half 
 laughs if you say something funny. She begins to say 
 something, stops and goes on but never gets more 
 than half-way through she never finishes anything 
 off except her victim. She has an appealing look 
 about her and she has little-lonely-orphan ways with 
 her. And the picture she projects into your brain is 
 quite different from the fireside one, but really more 
 dangerous." 
 
 " What is it ? " 
 
 " She mrkes you see yourself in deep woods with her, 
 carrying Ler over a swift-flowing stream. You have 
 picked up her little slender, airy-fairy form in your 
 tweed-clad manly arms 
 
 " Wait a moment. That recalls something to me. 
 What was it ? Oh yes. Years and years ago I found 
 an old yellow-back novel 
 
 ;' Yes, that's right." 
 
 " And there was an incident like that you've just 
 mentioned 
 
 "Quite right. I read it too. It was published about 
 twenty years ago, and the idea of the stream and the 
 tweed-clad arms swept from one end of the country to 
 the other as soon as it came out. Picnics were given 
 on purpose near swiftly running streams. Quite 
 amusing." I heaved a retrospective and cynical sigh. 
 " All the matrons banted so as to become airy-fairy 
 little ladies so as to be carried over streams and the 
 men always wore tweed. Well well 
 
 301
 
 Celia inhaled slowly and exhaled slowly the subject 
 was exhausted, but she wouldn't let it drop. Then : 
 
 " Are there any other types besides the ones you've 
 mentioned ? " 
 
 " Oh, they win in all forms as the saying goes. Talk- 
 ing of being surprised and that sort of thing, you would 
 be surprised if you knew all the ins and outs of it. The 
 most unlikely people. Why, we were talking of matrons 
 just now " 
 
 'Wou're not going to tell me that some of the elder 
 women It's bad enough in the young ones, but 
 really, Peter ! ! ! " 
 
 Celia looked really awfully horrified. 
 
 I thought better of any further admissions I was 
 about to make. It would be base to confide to Celia 
 that I had not once but often enough had wireless 
 messages from some of her most respectable and house- 
 wifely friends in whose plump matronly bosoms one 
 would only expect to find a few innocuous and necessary 
 housewifely secrets, just as in a comfortable and 
 capacious old family sideboard are kept a few house- 
 hold oddments and condiments, the biscuits, the 
 decanters, the raisins, or the cruet ; a dish of nuts 
 and one of rosy-cheeked apples. As the simile floated 
 before my mind, with a rush I seemed to remember how 
 I used to unlock one of the compartments of the one 
 that stood in our old house to get a biscuit and a glass 
 of port or old marsala ; and I remembered the wonderful 
 aroma that these imprisoned delicacies together with 
 the old mahogany combined to produce therein. The 
 recollection called up far-off days, and for half a fleeting 
 instant I drifted away, far from the subject we were 
 discussing. 
 
 " Surely, Peter, you are exaggerating ! You must 
 be exaggerating ! " 
 
 It would never do to rob her entirely of faith in her 
 own sex and far be it from me to suggest that the afore- 
 mentioned rosy-cheeked apples should bear even the 
 
 302
 
 THE CAMERA 
 
 remotest resemblance to forbidden fruit. So I said 
 hurriedly : 
 
 " I don't mean the married ladies. When I said 
 matrons it was only a figure of speech. I meant just 
 odd oldish matronly looking spinsters and so on." 
 
 It would never do to let her think that the matrons 
 who came to attend solemn drawing-room meetings or 
 social welfare work ever let their attention wander in 
 this reprehensible way. 
 
 ' Yes, just odd spinsters," I continued. 
 
 ' Spinsters." 
 
 ' Yes." 
 
 ' What sort of spinsters ? Fat spinsters ? " 
 
 ' No, no. Not Miss Lamb. I know what you are 
 thinking of, but she is far too busy and nice to bother 
 her head about such nonsense." 
 
 " I'm glad you put it that way. It is sheer, un- 
 diluted, ridiculous and unnecessary nonsense. It may 
 possibly serve its purpose with the very young, and be 
 nature's way of bringing man and maid together. 
 But on the whole I think it's complete nonsense, utter 
 nonsense, and now that I come to think of it I believe I 
 can prove it to you. You are always declaring your 
 undying affection for me, aren't you ? " 
 
 " Yes, indeed, yes ! And if only you'd 
 
 " Let me speak. And if there is as much in this 
 magnetism as you claim for it, how is it that you have 
 not magnetically persuaded or compelled me to give in 
 to you before this, and marry you ? " 
 
 "That is a leading question, but I can answer it 
 completely. I am so occupied in warding off the danger 
 that assails me on all sides that it literally absorbs all 
 my magnetic force. If I were to let go for one instant 
 or relax in the slightest degree 
 
 - Yesyes- ' 
 
 " I'd be lost. Someone would snatch me and run off 
 with me ! Don't please think I'm vain, or that I am 
 grossly exaggerating, but you can't think what narrow 
 squeaks I've had. Phew ! I sometimes feel I am in 
 
 303
 
 THE CAMERA 
 
 daily, almost hourly danger, especially at the height of 
 the season when I am going about a lot. I sometimes 
 wake up in a cold perspiration. Some girls have such 
 strong wills. And when, as is sometimes the case, they 
 are reinforced by the mother well a wretched weak 
 man doesn't stand a dog's chance. I feel I never know 
 what mayn't happen. Heaven send, if I am caught, 
 that it won't be a creep-mouse, creep-mouse girl, for 
 I'm really frightened of that sort ! " 
 
 I ran my hands through my hair distractedly at the 
 thought. 
 
 " I hope for your sake it mayn't be. If there's ever 
 any real danger of it let me know and I'll I'll marry 
 you myself, just to save you. I can quite see what an 
 awful thing it would be to happen to any man." 
 
 " Thanks, you dear thing. I always said your heart 
 was in the right place." 
 
 " I think it would be a good thing if I were to revise 
 my visiting list." 
 
 " My dear Celia, that would be useless. I'm not a 
 vain man, really, but the next lot of girls would try for 
 me just the same. The mere fact that I am supposed 
 to be your property, body and soul 
 
 " Supposed to be 
 
 " Yes, supposed to be." I shrugged my shoulders 
 in a " what boots it " way. " It makes them twice 
 as keen to get one, you see. Think what a feather it 
 would be in the cap of one of your women friends to 
 succeed in luring me away from anyone so wonderful 
 and altogether delightful as you are ! " 
 
 " One of my friends ! I shouldn't care to call that 
 sort of person a friend of mine." 
 
 " If you allowed a little thing like the ownership of a 
 tall man with crisp slightly wavy hair to come between 
 you and your women friends it would be a mistake. 
 I'd never allow a little thing of that sort to interfere 
 between me and one of my men pals." 
 
 Celia didn't make any specific answer to this, but got 
 up saying something about the very important letters 
 
 304
 
 THE CAMERA 
 
 she had to write. I don't suppose she did very much 
 writing. I think instead she sat down again as soon 
 as ever she got up into her own room and thought the 
 thing out in all directions. Certainly she must have 
 concluded that if what I had described really " went 
 on," that the sooner Patrick developed his psychic 
 forces the better, so as to be able to guard against those 
 designing women. She said no more disparaging things 
 against our little trick ; seemed indeed to enter into it. 
 
 So the camera duly arrived in time for Patrick's 
 birthday, and when he got the parcel, opened it and 
 saw the contents, he remarked phlegmatically : " It's 
 all right." 
 
 305
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 THIS is a very cynical story, and no one who has not 
 lived in a small country place would understand it, 
 and therefore shouldn't bother to read it. Also it 
 has no denouement. That is. none has occurred as 
 far as I know, but if one should, I'll write another 
 instalment. 
 
 It was the third Friday in the second month of the 
 season and this is always reserved by Celia for what she 
 calls her snob party. She invites all the most perfectly 
 formed snobs she knows, jumbles them all together 
 with a small leaven of ordinary people and then she 
 and I and a few others who appreciate them go in 
 among them, move about and gloat over them, con- 
 verse with them and introduce them to each other, 
 and take them down in batches to minister to their 
 wants among the urns and the bon-bons. 
 
 The people who get cards for this annual party don't 
 know that they are specially picked on account of their 
 snobbish tendencies, nor of course do the people asked 
 to leaven the mass know what they have been asked to 
 meet. The card does not say : 
 
 " Mrs Carmichael invites you to a snob party." 
 It simply says : 
 
 MRS CARMICHAEL 
 
 AT HOME 
 
 (date here). 
 4> to 7. Music. 
 
 307
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 I bar at homes, even Celia's. I won't turn up on her 
 second Thursdays nor her second and fourth Wednes- 
 days, but I come on the third Fridays of the second 
 month of the season, for there is genuine healthy amuse- 
 ment to be got out of them, and from the student of 
 character's point, genuine profit, as the types collected 
 are worthy of the minutest study. 
 
 I don't know what will be thought of me when I con- 
 fess that third Fridays were originally got up specially 
 for my benefit ; not to amuse me or interest me, but to 
 instruct and reform me and to bring to my notice what 
 an awful thing a perfectly formed snob is. Celia will 
 have it (and I've given up arguing the point with her) 
 that I once was one myself. Let that pass now. I'll 
 have more to say upon that another time. But grant- 
 ing for the moment that I had been one, an afternoon 
 spent at one of these parties would certainly have gone 
 far to cure me. 
 
 The two big rooms were almost full, for there was 
 a tremendous lot of these afflicted creatures gathered 
 together, in one or two cases several from one family 
 like a truss of grapes. 
 
 A truss of snobs is a pulverising thing to encounter 
 and the amount of horror with which they can invest 
 the ordinary simple matters of life, walking, breathing, 
 eating and drinking, talking or being at all, is amazing. 
 The complications with which they can surround them- 
 selves and their functions and pursuits and doings is 
 beyond description. Everything they do is a solemn 
 surcharged matter to be got over in a certain way. 
 There is an appalling number of things you must not 
 do and they must be not done in a certain way. Their 
 omission must be conducted in a certain way. There 
 is also an appalling number of things which you must 
 do, and of which the doing leaves you hardly time to be 
 born or grow up or to be buried in any comfort. And 
 almost everything you do must be accompanied by 
 certain cryptic utterances. 
 
 These vary up and down throughout the country, 
 
 308
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 sometimes much, sometimes little, but nearly always 
 a good bit. 
 
 Though occasionally the same utterance or omis- 
 sion or commission or by-law will obtain and run 
 through several counties even though some distance 
 apart, and crop up sporadically. 
 
 This promised to be an unusually interesting party, 
 for I was to renew my intercourse with an old acquaint- 
 ance from the country, who was entitled to every 
 consideration that could be accorded to her in that 
 gathering, for beyond the ghost of a doubt she would 
 be supreme in it. 
 
 I mean she was far and away the greatest of that 
 kind of person we had assembled there. Her markings 
 would be the most perfect there ; she prided herself 
 on her manifold perfections and didn't know how 
 glorious and complete they were and how far removed 
 from what she thought they were. 
 
 It was five or six years since she had received me in 
 her house. I was younger then, but still greatly on the 
 look-out for human beings with peculiarities of char- 
 acter or ruling passions in strong possession ; or ones 
 unconsciously obsessed by or persuaded to some un- 
 reasonable idea of themselves without justification ; 
 or ones of a curiously workaday sanity combined 
 with the harbouring of strange delusions that one so 
 often sees in human beings and leaves them totally in- 
 capable of measuring their own worth against the worth 
 of those about them or the value of anything that is 
 anybody else's. 
 
 I had been greatly struck with the atmosphere I 
 encountered at the lady's house. It was almost as 
 chill as marble, and breasted you with almost as cold a 
 solidity. It was almost as private an atmosphere as it 
 was in the house of Mrs Mount joy, but it was also 
 fraught with something more blighting and sinister. 
 The Mountjoy one was not sinister. It was merely 
 private. It was not an atmosphere which would suspend 
 one's animation or affect one more than temporarily, 
 
 309
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 but by going to Mrs Hex's house one ran the risk 
 of being permanently and unfortunately affected. It 
 was an atmosphere inimical, nay deadly, to real thought 
 or genuine aspirations after any of the realest things of 
 life. Suppose you were the sort of person who had 
 inclinations to blossom into little buds with possi- 
 bilities of future growth, of ideals or leanings towards 
 the very big things that really matter, to go in there 
 and sit for a little time was to run the gravest risks ; it 
 was almost certain that after an hour and a half in 
 there, if you were to examine the buds you would find 
 that they had all become dry and withered owing to the 
 peculiar blighting qualities in the air of that drawing- 
 room. And it might very well be that your natural 
 and seasonal buds of decent endeavour would be 
 nipped and quite spoilt for a full year and their blossom 
 and fruiting postponed by that much time ; if not a 
 great deal more. 
 
 What I mean is, that if anyone let fall a remark 
 betraying an honest interest and enthusiasm in man 
 or his works, or made a remark dealing with a world 
 problem, or voiced a hope that sooner or later a better 
 way would be found for solving some of the problems 
 of human misery that surrounded one so constantly, it 
 would call forth a series of chill sneers about one's absurd 
 views which left one wondering which of the two, she or 
 you, was mentally wanting. By all accepted standards 
 one of you must be right and one of you wrong. Which 
 was it ? 
 
 I didn't stop to ask myself after once or twice of it. 
 One good glance at her little intolerant eyes and her 
 loose old hard mouth was enough ; she could not know 
 much of anything with that face. Indeed if her little 
 eyes saw anything at all she would have hesitated Jong 
 before she mounted the look of insolence she habitually 
 wore on a face that was already as homely as a face 
 very well could be. To its owner four-fifths of the 
 world would be absurd, though the Higher Powers she 
 worshipped of a Sunday had decreed that they should be. 
 
 310
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 There was the usual smell of a country drawing-room, 
 added to a faint whiff of carpet that comes from one 
 when it's laid on a floor on ground-level without cellars 
 underneath, so that some slight smell of dampness comes 
 through from the earth underneath. Thus you get a 
 permeating suggestion of the texture of the carpet, jute 
 and wool combined, or whatever goes to its making 
 (this carpet's pattern was conventionally drab and 
 small ; nothing to trip over, dislike or admire in it ; 
 very well swept, very well laid. It had come from 
 an emporium and looked it). A smell came in too 
 from the tidy and uninteresting garden, and a bit 
 of commonplace turf that lay outside the windows, 
 surrounded by a few clumps of dry-looking trees. It 
 was an arid-looking garden and yet there was a house 
 only just across the road where the turf grew around it 
 as green as emeralds and the trees bent down as if to 
 admire it. 
 
 I drew in the air and breathed out again slowly. I 
 detected in it a feeling of desiccated, attenuated 
 authority ; quite overpowering no doubt to those who 
 might have to live under its aegis by force of circum- 
 stances ; but poorly petty in quality to anyone coming 
 in from without, sufficiently free and world- wise to 
 estimate it properly. 
 
 One felt immediately in it a daily observance of 
 small boring rites and deadly intelligence-sapping 
 duties performed to the stroke of a lonely-looking 
 clock in the bare hall, not old enough to be noteworthy 
 as a true antique or young enough to be cheerful and 
 reliable, but by whose statements as it rapped them 
 out the occupants of the house lived drearily. 
 
 Not far off was the village church, substantial and 
 uninteresting. I wondered if what I found in the 
 atmosphere could be due to stray bits of clerical 
 narrowness which had come waddling across the road 
 to mingle themselves with the suggestion of carpet 
 and earth and turf and satin bazaar cushions, and 
 reminders of much-used, well-cleaned chintz. 
 
 311
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 Or was what I observed in it due to the inevitable 
 blight and mouldiness that falls upon everything in a 
 small district where the inhabitants are so tied that 
 they cannot spare much time to get away and travel, 
 or possibly can't afford to go about and get amongst 
 much-travelled people, and clear up their minds 
 thoroughly I tortured mine, I remember, trying to 
 make out what was the difference in the atmosphere 
 from so many other atmospheres. Was it what was 
 in it or what wasn't in it that made it so peculiarly 
 awful ? As a connoisseur and person interested in the 
 differences and distinguishing qualities of divers 
 atmospheres, and as one who had genuinely studied 
 them and would go miles to inhale one, if he heard it 
 was of a new and interesting kind, I had not put my 
 nose ten minutes across that threshold before I knew 
 that here was a very distinctive one and one I would 
 study with avidity and think over and which would 
 richly repay me. I have a trunk full of notes about it 
 (I am barely touching on what I observed here) and 
 pages of psychological analysis and rooting and search- 
 ing for first causes and antecedents and deciding factors 
 and inherent tendencies and operating effects to ex- 
 plain that atmosphere and what ailed it (for it was 
 sick). I finally got it down to a small piece of paper, 
 though the searching and comparison and conclusions 
 and marshalling of facts and addings up and sub- 
 tractings and allowings for, and prognosticatings from, 
 and working back from and jumping over a place where 
 a bit of evidence was missing and the explaining why it 
 was missing and what led me to fill it up in the way 
 I did would have filled two trunks. They must see 
 the light one day for they are worth reading ; quite 
 a human document. It's absurd to attempt to confine 
 it to a few pages. 
 
 The final conclusion that I sighted and grasped at 
 and succeeded in safely escorting through all those 
 notes and questionings was this that it was an awful 
 atmosphere, not so much for what was in it, but for 
 
 312
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 want of what wasn't in it. It was awful because of 
 what it lacked, for it lacked everything. All the 
 elements that ought to go to the compounding of an 
 atmosphere in a house were lacking. I saw that. 
 And later I saw that they had all been deliberately set 
 aside. Hope, faith, charity poor devils had gone 
 first (I proved this by a very minute linking up of 
 information I had garnered), then humanity, interest, 
 naturalness, kindliness, tolerance. 
 
 There was nothing in the place but one poor attenu- 
 ated idea, for as yet it had not waxed fat and sturdy 
 that at all costs the inhabitants of that house must be 
 smart. If anyone had come to the hall door and on 
 asking for admittance had been seen by the parlour- 
 maid (they didn't run to a man in those days) to have 
 about his person anything real or pertaining to real life, 
 she would have shut the door in his face. Those were 
 her instructions. 
 
 I was very careful when I called (as I did frequently, 
 for the proper classification of that atmosphere had 
 developed into an itch with me) to dissemble any latent 
 realities I had about me. Fortunately my manners 
 and appearance are such that I think they help me to 
 cloak such undesirable things. When talking to my 
 hostess no one would have suspected me of having any 
 more depth than a pancake. She would have shrunk 
 aghast from any perception of a depth, so I was very 
 careful, exposing nothing but an as-it-were pancake 
 surface to her, all width and circumference and no depth. 
 I never let her even know I had depths, for a glimpse 
 of such a thing had an uncanny effect on her. It 
 frightened her into a series of violent sneers. I say 
 frightened, but I really don't know if this should be 
 the word used, but it lets her down gently. She dis- 
 approved of depths as they were likely to get in the way 
 of a worthy middle-class woman struggling bravely on 
 and on towards smartness. A very hard road indeed 
 for a woman who is unbeautiful and no longer young 
 and not clever and is hampered by small means, and 
 
 313
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 the fact that her husband is obliged to work for his 
 living. 
 
 To admit the existence of depths would certainly 
 hamper her. But I didn't run away too positively 
 with the idea that they frightened her. I made two 
 notes to the effect that I thought that for her there 
 were no such things as depths. That they only existed 
 for her as the tag puts it about ghosts : " Ghosts 
 are things nobody believes in and everybody is afraid 
 of." I don't think she was really aware of them. She 
 was only aware of heights, social heights to be climbed. 
 With the illogical mind of the snob, she thought heights 
 could exist without depths, and to her these spiky 
 heights were the only real tangible things in the 
 world. 
 
 True, there were poor, for they were at her door, but 
 to a person minded as she was they would appear all 
 part of the scheme of things that was to give her her 
 position ; that it was only fitting that the Almighty 
 would always keep a reasonable supply of poor people 
 dotted about at a convenient distance so that ladies of 
 her patronising turn of mind should drive about in high 
 dog-carts and pull up at cottage doors, summoning 
 those from within to step out, whether soapy or not, 
 and have words of admonition issued to them from a 
 long sallow face inclining down to them. 
 
 At first I was not very graciously received. She 
 knew I was a barrister and this I think she considered 
 not quite good form, basing her comparisons on petti- 
 fogging country solicitors who came menially and hat 
 in hand to draw up a will and so on. Her own husband, 
 I say, worked for his living, but his doings were cloaked 
 in obscurity. He put up no plate. He worked in mist, 
 no one quite knew at what. I did. but that is neither 
 here nor there. But one fine day I heard a whispered 
 talk between her and Celia and I caught the words 
 " Blenerhassett of Castle Maynard." Celia was in- 
 structing her as to who I was, and from that moment a 
 change came over her and a sort of rancid affability 
 
 314
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 came my way. Until now she had thrown her remarks 
 at me, and I know chid her husband for encouraging me. 
 She had never looked me in the eye my feet, knees, 
 waist, chest and nose had come in for her glance, 
 but never my eyes. But after this she reached for 
 them with her eyes (the lids of which never came up 
 properly, and cut her look in two, and always showed 
 a good deal of white like a nappy horse. I couldn't see 
 her ears, but they must have been set back if they 
 matched the eyes ; they were tucked away under her 
 spare red hair battened down S.O.S. fashion). 
 
 After that I could come when I pleased and drink in 
 the atmosphere and get nearer and nearer to a solution 
 of its strangeness. In the end I sympathised with her ; 
 a woman who was nobody struggling to be somebody 
 is a sad sight really and she was very plucky about it 
 and stuck to it splendidly. 
 
 I then had the run of the house, as I say, and in 
 according me this she felt, I knew, that she accorded 
 me a weighty privilege. To me, outside the chances 
 it gave me of analysing the atmosphere, the privilege 
 meant little or nothing, coming as I did from great 
 places and having the run of many in comparison to 
 which hers could only be compared to a neglected 
 pavilion in a corner of their grounds, built to a caprice 
 or a fantasy, or to overlook a special glade. I say, 
 without arriere-pensee, that to me it was just an 
 ordinary detached country villa in need of paint or 
 mortaring with a garden of fair suburban dimensions 
 and a field or two beyond. 
 
 But that was how it first struck me, before I began 
 to see it through her eyes. What she had lived in 
 originally or sprung from I don't know, but it must 
 have been very small, for by degrees as I saw her house 
 through her eyes I began to see it as a vast and impos- 
 ing mansion ; for I have this uncanny faculty, that if I 
 stare at people a good deal and remain with them some 
 while, I begin to see things through their eyes. It is a 
 very odd accomplishment, and it is beyond me to say 
 
 315
 
 what it is or how I got it, but I get curious sensations 
 through indulging it. So I found that though it was 
 an ordinary house of. say. seven bedrooms and two or 
 three sitting-rooms and the usual kitchen premises 
 and offices, she considered herself to be living in a vast 
 palace of a place. Figured herself as a princess or a 
 person of some very high degree installed in echoing, 
 capacious state. The rooms were of a reasonable size 
 and reasonably high I'll admit, and the house had a 
 certain pretentious something about it and succeeded, 
 like its owners, in looking bigger than it was. It had a 
 good deal of entrance to it and an approaching path 
 which aimed (or seemed to) at making one suppose 
 that the house would develop and swell outwards at the 
 back more than it did ; but it didn't. I found when I 
 had the run of it that it didn't. I'll say this for it, it 
 was a degree larger and more commodious than the 
 houses just about, but they were poor and quite lacking 
 in any modern conveniences and amenities. 
 
 She received me in her commonplace house as 
 though it were Chatsworth and Blenheim and several 
 other historic mansions rolled into one. Her vanity 
 was so considerable that it oozed from her and coated 
 all her belongings, disguising them completely. If she 
 had received me in a tumbledown garret she would 
 have expected me to be smitten with envy and amaze 
 at what I saw. After I had been going to her house for 
 a bit I almost felt myself seeing it as she saw it, though 
 she never really imposed her view of herself and her 
 things on me. If I saw them as she did it was entirely 
 due to my gift of seeing things through other people's 
 eyes. But what a shock it would have been to her if 
 she had had my faculty of seeing through others' eyes ! 
 She might then have seen it, insignificant as I did, 
 simply little better than a gloomy semi-detached villa, 
 abiding in an almost desolate corner of the world. 
 
 It must be understood that the mantle of glamour 
 she threw over her dingy dwelling was not of the same 
 kind that Charles Lamb's old friend the sea captain 
 
 316
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 cast over his home and effects and by which the poor 
 room in which he received his friends was unutterably 
 dignified and the almost meatless bone he set before 
 them on a bare table became a rich juicy joint, laid 
 out amongst bright cutlery and crystal on fine white 
 napery. That glamour was laid over all simply because 
 the giver wished so much that he could offer his friends 
 of the best, that everything he set before them became 
 glorified by it. 
 
 Her point of view was different. On the contrary, 
 she rarely felt the guests were equal to receiving the 
 meagre hospitality she had to offer and she offered it 
 grudgingly in consequence. 
 
 More and more I saw as I went from time to time 
 to her house how this vanity of hers encompassed all 
 her doings and her belongings. Adelaide Mountjoy re- 
 garded her things as sacred because private, but she did 
 not claim any superiority for them over other people's 
 things, for she was quite a humble woman. But to my 
 friend here every object in her house or that she wore 
 was vastly superior to what anyone else wore or had in 
 their houses. Her hat was better, her coat, her piano, 
 her card-table, her maid, her watch, her pigs, her tulips, 
 her form at bridge, her rhododendrons, her trap. Any- 
 thing at all. Any little bit of rubbish she handled or 
 used seemed to be bursting with importance after it 
 had been laid out of her hand. Her dorothy-bag used 
 to shut with a self-satisfied " snap ! " when I've seen 
 her take out a small silver pencil she carried and make 
 one of her dull methodical notes on a bit of paper and 
 put it back. Her scrawling notes are alive with it. 
 I've one by me now and I'd only have to hold it in my 
 hand and shut my eyes to feel what its owner is. 
 
 I've sat waiting for her to come down, and as I 
 inhaled the atmosphere looked around and noted the 
 signs of it in the furniture. It's ridiculous to say in- 
 animate things are inanimate. As long as a dominant 
 personality to which a thing belongs has force to live 
 and breathe, whatever they own will be imbued with 
 
 317
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 their spirit. I've seen inanimate things die after their 
 owner has gone, so I know what I say is true, and no 
 one would contradict me if they had once sat in that 
 lady's drawing-room waiting for her, and held com- 
 munion with the chairs and footstools and other things 
 there. 
 
 The footstools sat themselves down complacently on 
 the floor with their lugs more in evidence than is usual 
 elsewhere. There is always a certain complacency 
 about a fat footstool even in the best-regulated houses, 
 but these squatted insolently right in the way of every- 
 one's progress, blown out to their seams with self- 
 importance so that their lugs stood right away from 
 their sides. I never understood the phrase " putting 
 on lugs " till I saw the footstools at that lady's, and I 
 saw at once then how much it may mean. The sofas 
 looked smugger than I've seen them elsewhere, and the 
 uncomfortable chairs of no fixed period stood around 
 at attention, prepared to receive people of good birth 
 and position with frigid politeness, and people of neither 
 with as much forbearance as they could muster, and 
 only strictly provided they came in to kow-tow, or discuss 
 matters in an official capacity, such as the doings of the 
 Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Bumble Bees, 
 or the local blanket society. Had anyone of humble 
 position ensconced themselves on one of these chairs 
 otherwise than upon such an understanding, I think 
 their pseudo - Sheraton - cum - Tottenham - Court - Road 
 legs would have given way with indignation. It was 
 unlikely it should occur as the greatness of the lady had 
 got abroad. The furniture was not alone in its admira- 
 tion and appreciation. My hostess had not, maybe, 
 my gift of seeing with other people's eyes, but she had a 
 gift as good in its way, that of making others see with 
 hers. She considered herself important, therefore the 
 people about her considered her important. Conse- 
 quently she was important, in that small place, among 
 those small people. 
 
 It is the most astonishing endowment this of being 
 
 318
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 able to cast a glamour over one's possessions, no matter 
 how ordinary, just because they belong to oneself. In 
 some cases this overpricing may arise from not having 
 access to fine things, so as to form judgment. I fancy 
 it was a little bit this in her case, for it was rampant in 
 the vicinity. Indeed the atmosphere of the house was 
 not altogether without a certain relationship to the 
 atmosphere you met in the roads there and in and out 
 of the other houses, but it was very, very much more 
 marked, for it also sprang from something that was 
 innate in the lady herself. I've seen it in plenty of 
 people who had all the opportunities possible for being 
 broad-minded and for measuring their things and 
 themselves who still made this mistake about them. 
 
 It must not be confused with a gentle contentment, 
 the contentment of a mind which is either naturally 
 simple and pleased with simple things or else has been 
 led to simplicity through a surfeit of all the magnifi- 
 cence of the world and an appreciation of how little it 
 means really as compared with that way of life which 
 leaves one time to be, and to think. 
 
 These two I can understand, but I simply cannot 
 grasp the workings of the minds of people w r ho are 
 puffed up with conceit at their worldly possessions, 
 and their position, when they own nothing are 
 nothing. 
 
 I grovel in admiration before this attitude. 
 
 It is as perfect, as sublime, as the Taj Mahal. 
 
 I wring my hands to think that I shall never achieve 
 it. It makes beauty a drug on the market, intelligence 
 a thing to scoff at as useless, education an encumbrance, 
 and humility a laughing-stock. 
 
 The possession of an income is a complete superfluity, 
 and what arrested me in my friend's case was that here 
 I saw a purse-proud woman who had no purse. It was 
 delicious. She had every symptom of inflammation 
 of the organs of pride touching this point, but, as I 
 say, she had no purse. She rattled her bangles and 
 flaunted her skirts and ordered us all about and laid 
 
 319
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 down the law as though she had ten million behind her 
 when all the time she had ten million nothings at all, 
 and her purse was as thin as a newly milked udder. 
 
 By the way, she was generous, I found, and this is the 
 place to record it, so it goes down here. Had she been 
 able to give away any of this fictitious wealth, the 
 ownership of which puffed her up so much, she'd have 
 done it willingly enough, but as it existed only in her 
 imagination she was unable to detach any of it to give 
 it away, so it remained to accumulate indefinitely and 
 swell her pride still more. But she did what she could, 
 I'll own. 
 
 Her delusions about her house and her great wealth 
 were only on a par with her delusions as to her appear- 
 ance. She thought herself a very fine, personable 
 person indeed. 
 
 I had not been going there long before I discovered 
 that I was expected to be impressed by her figure. It 
 had never at first sight seemed to me that she had a 
 figure or should have pretended to one. Her formation 
 seemed to me ordinary, inclining to heavy, though of a 
 fair height. But before long I heard whispers. There 
 were whispers about her " figure " in the neighbour- 
 hood. I heard them again and again, and though at 
 first I disregarded them, I ended by attending to them, 
 and before I left her " figure " seemed as much part of 
 the neighbourhood to me as the substantial uninterest- 
 ing church. The other women who were allowed to 
 form her circle allowed it to crop up in their conversa- 
 tion from time to time. At bun-worries they stated 
 things about it as if a lot depended on it, some admit- 
 ting it, and some denying it. They seemed of two 
 minds about it, sometimes saying it was good, other 
 times saying it was bad, but always solemn and careful 
 in what they said about it, picking their words, even if 
 they contradicted themselves over what they said last. 
 
 Whether admitting it was good or bad, they all used 
 a phrase that struck me as ungrammatical and not 
 meaning anything. They said it was a " made figure." 
 
 320
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 I took this, after thinking it over, to mean that Art 
 stepped in where Nature failed, though whether to sub- 
 tract or add to I didn't see. To substract, I think. 
 
 After I'd been there some time I found myself 
 referring to the figure in conversation though really 
 it didn't interest me. It was a poor figure, made or un- 
 made. I don't mind telling you as a man with an eye for 
 such things. It was stiff, and braced unpleasantly, but 
 since conversation was at a low ebb in the days I used 
 to visit there, and new topics were not hailed with 
 enthusiasm, I insensibly found myself referring know- 
 ingly to Mrs Hex's " figure " in conversation and then 
 letting whoever I was speaking to carry on without me, 
 while I listened and admired the amount of discussion 
 that could be got by the denizens of the district out of 
 a thing that existed in their imagination only. One 
 was so completely of the inner circle there if one spoke 
 of Mrs Hex's figure, and I remember being present on 
 an occasion when a new-comer who had taken a house 
 in the neighbourhood was first introduced to the idea 
 of her having a " figure." He denied it entirely and 
 refused to admit it. And yet when I came back on a 
 short visit two years later I found him talking quite 
 learnedly about her " figure " as if it were some national 
 institution, or at any rate an institution indissolubly 
 connected with that part of the country, and a sort of 
 landmark, like the blasted oak at the four cross-roads. 
 
 I hadn't very much luck when I discussed her 
 "figure " because, thinking that if I agreed with a person 
 over it it would please them, I'd always speak of it 
 according to what I remembered hearing them say 
 when the subject was last on the carpet. But I always 
 chose the wrong line, and said it was bad when my 
 vis-a-vis had decided to think it was good and good 
 when she had elected to think it was bad. I never 
 once got it right. I always went by what I had last 
 heard them say, but evidently in a little place where 
 they have only got a few things to think or talk about 
 they hold different views about a thing each time they 
 x 321
 
 mention it or else they'd go mad with the monotony 
 of it. 
 
 It wasn't very easy to converse down there and in- 
 gratiate oneself, certainly for a man of the world who 
 was not used to being picked up at every few words. 
 In the big world of course it is an understood thing that 
 one always knows a shade less than the person one speaks 
 to, and vice versa, and one is delighted to meet someone 
 who will make good this deficiency. That is the form 
 of politeness that is held to in large societies and makes 
 them so agreeable, and that is what one misses so greatly 
 in the small societies or country places sparsely in- 
 habited. Down there they didn't allow much to people 
 coming in, and they truly thought they knew more 
 than they did. It was only possible, I found, to get 
 along by admitting no matter how untruthfully- 
 that you knew nothing. You must never say a thing 
 was neither must you say it wasn't. It was best to 
 begin by asking them was it, or wasn't it. And then go 
 on carefully, and if, even by following their admittings, 
 you got to a place where the subject opened out and 
 where you might have to admit or disallow, it was 
 better to attempt nothing on your own but instantly to 
 call in their help. I became almost popular that way. 
 As popular as anything could become there that wasn't 
 of it and up to it. 
 
 All this was part of the drawing-room atmosphere, by 
 the way, too. 
 
 I decided to fathom the superstition of the lady's 
 figure and left no stone unturned to try and do so, and 
 find how it had arisen. It was quite by chance, and 
 nothing to do with my own endeavours, that I found 
 out. One day I was bidden to a garden party at the 
 lady's and there I met several peculiarly large and 
 shapeless relations both male and female. When 
 perambulating dutifully around the herbaceous border 
 with first one and then two of the more massive of 
 them I fell to it at once how it had arisen that Mrs Hex 
 had a "figure." In comparison to theirs her figure 
 
 322
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 was almost normal (only almost), and occurring in a 
 family whose figures were so abnormally bad, she at 
 once took prominence as a prodigy of shapeliness. 
 Their talk as they examined the peonies, and after- 
 wards the pigs, was all of Mrs Hex's figure and its 
 excellence. I was asked they stopped in the gravel 
 path and faced me out to say what I felt about it, and 
 I was quite at a loss to reply, and led them to the straw- 
 berry bed. I was very interested to find that here was 
 the source of the idea. I was getting a little bit anxious 
 about myself and wondering if I couldn't trust my eyes 
 aright, for it was odd, I had been thinking, that so 
 many people should be witness to its excellence and I 
 not be able to see it. I am often rather nervous when 
 I find myself up against a good many people in the hold- 
 ing of a contrary opinion, and though I knew these were 
 people who didn't knock about much or get about to 
 learn things, I still felt worried about it. 
 
 So I saw her once more as she really was and as I had 
 first seen her to be before the accepted idea began to 
 lay hold on me too. 
 
 I had been waiting for her to come down and watched 
 her enter the room. Undoubtedly her " figure " was 
 bad ; and undoubtedly as regards her members the 
 proper order of precedence in so doing was not held by 
 or observed as Nature had originally ordained. How 
 to couch it delicately ? In a properly constructed 
 figure, built according to Greek ideals of anatomical 
 perfection, the nose should enter the room first, but in 
 her case the member which, according to /Esop, re- 
 belled against its fellows took upon itself the right to 
 come forward before the nose, thus setting all rules 
 aside in the matter. It only won by a short neck, 
 but win it did, entering first and the nose following 
 after. 
 
 Apparently the forces that were called in to assist to 
 make it a " made " figure were powerless to teach this 
 rebellious member better manners and what was due 
 to the lady's nose. The result, too, of this error of 
 
 323
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 bearing was heightened and added to by certain other 
 peculiarities natural to her though as part of her 
 character and as such not peculiarities perhaps. From 
 her great desire to mix only with people above her, she 
 had to be very careful to shake off her old friends, and 
 in gathering new ones only to encourage the advances 
 of those who were placed above her. so in any en- 
 counters with acquaintances or new friends or people 
 on approval there was in her greeting and subsequent 
 non-committal intercourse and parleying the presenta- 
 tion of a three-quarter face or just more than side with 
 the whites of the eyes much in evidence, and nothing of 
 a smile. She extended her hand in a way that told you 
 that the lending to a person of two of her fingers for a 
 moment did not constitute a pact of friendship. The 
 remaining three would only be yours if you could prove 
 satisfactorily that you were her social superior and that 
 she could profit in something by your friendship. As 
 people carry no illuminating labels as to parentage, 
 income and advantages of present position, she was 
 chary from top to toe ; at a breath ready to face you 
 fully if something by chance showed that you were 
 what she was after ; or, if some chance showed you 
 were unsuitable, ready to reverse instantly and to show 
 you her back. So there was always an askewness 
 about her owing to this. I had seen it for long enough 
 to get the apprehension of it thoroughly. By chance 
 it was some time before she was made certain of me. I 
 could easily have declared myself, but I prolonged the 
 doubt deliberately so that I could get every shade of 
 this about her observed, and felt that she was so ready 
 to turn to or turn about, according as something cropped 
 up to show whether I stood above or below her, that I 
 hardly knew whether she faced me or turned her back ; 
 in our intercourse there seemed such a backwardness 
 about her front, and such a frontwardness about her 
 back, owing to this, that looking at her one felt dizzy. 
 This indecision of hers as to which way to move left as 
 it were a permanent shamble in her gait which, added 
 
 324
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 to the insubordination of her parts I've already men- 
 tioned, gave her a poor carriage. 
 
 Besides this doubt of whether she was going to face 
 you or show you her back, I remember (before she knew 
 I was a Blenerhassett of Castle Maynard) that I felt 
 there was this about her. At any moment she might 
 develop a great lopsidedness by suddenly and un- 
 accountably growing a large cold shoulder of excep- 
 tional and disproportionate size arid present this side- 
 ways to me. This helped to make her awkwardness 
 more marked and gave her a something of the same 
 capricious and ungaugeable bias you get in wooden 
 bowls as you trundle them across the green. Neither 
 back nor front were quite in abeyance. Both were to 
 hand. 
 
 So much for her figure. 
 
 All the askewness vanished for me when it was dis- 
 covered that I was a Blenerhassett of Castle Maynard 
 and that my people had been lieutenants of their 
 county a full three hundred years before our meeting, 
 apart from anything they had been before. Also I was 
 a mine of information on sport of all sorts and she had 
 every use for me on that account. It seemed that now 
 her husband's unobtrusive money-making left him 
 enough leisure for her to contemplate the thought of 
 making him a stepping-stone in more ways than one 
 towards smartness. Nothing is more removed from 
 sordid money-making and trading occupations than 
 the sporting smart set, so she had decided that though 
 it was late in life to do so, and he had no real aptitude 
 for it, she would make her worthy husband into a 
 perfectly formed sportsman. 
 
 I gave her her head and we had many a long talk 
 about the various forms of sport (sport is a thing which 
 I prefer above all else the world has to offer). I put her 
 on to good agents for cheap moors and rough shoots, 
 and I remember we actually laughed together once 
 (she would unbend and crack a joke with a superior) 
 as we discussed the advisability of taking a deer forest 
 
 325
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 with a limit of four stag, for the worthy man, we felt 
 sure, would get all the healthy exercise he needed in 
 stalking one of them ; for he'd never get near any of 
 them, and it would be all the same no matter how many 
 there were. A deer forest was a deer forest, whether 
 it carried four or half a hundred ; and the kudos lay in 
 the idea of the deer forest. 
 
 I explained how the season for the salmon varies in 
 different rivers and told her something about the flies 
 required, and told her the life story of that noble fish, 
 and explained how incomprehensible its habits are, 
 and how difficult it is to read the mind or the appetites 
 of the finny world. I spun her long yarns on the sus- 
 ceptibilities of gillies and their management and their 
 entirely unconcealed contempt of novices. 
 
 I gave her a small insight into the enormous number 
 of unwritten and almost unspoken laws that hedge 
 about almost any form of sport and must be understood 
 and observed if one would not look an utter fool and 
 render it almost imperative that if one embarks upon 
 sport as an amusement one must practically give up 
 everything else or remain in the ruck for ever. For 
 where is the use in doing things by halves nowadays, 
 when the standard is so high in everything ? It's choose 
 this and give up the others or nothing. 
 
 So " va pour le Sport.," 
 
 She was an apt pupil and never forgot anything one 
 told her and I could see that to her soon no river would 
 exist or be worth mentioning in geography unless it 
 harboured salmon or trout. The busy rivers that 
 accommodate wharves and docks for the teeming 
 industry of big dark towns or turn the mill wheels that 
 grind the corn into white flour, and then run on through 
 fields and bulrushes, faded away as though they had 
 never been. The names or heights of mountains that 
 had no heather stretches on their slopes to nourish 
 grouse and so didn't echo to their harsh kecking as they 
 got up and whirred off were not worth recording. We 
 eliminated all these and mapped out the whole country 
 
 326
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 into a perfectly formed sporting-snobs' paradise. I 
 half thought of bringing out a volume entitled " The 
 Sporting Geography " after we had gone into the matter 
 and finished with it. If everything useful was omitted, 
 it might have sold well. 
 
 Her conversation began to take on a new tinge. 
 Odds and ends of culture and a little half-hearted know- 
 ledge of one or more foreign languages were set aside. 
 I told her they would be quite useless in the world she 
 was about to take by assault and she would already 
 have so much to remember that it would be useless to 
 cumber herself. That sort of thing too would be looked 
 at askance (especially the languages). It was only the 
 highest of the high, or the innermost of the inner, who 
 could permit themselves lapses into culture, and then 
 only in the odd intervals left over by sport. This 
 would not leave time to perfect oneself even in a small 
 degree, so why waste time, tissue or mind-space or any- 
 thing on it. She was a little nervous about the extent 
 of her culture and feared it might betray her, but I was 
 able to reassure her completely. A man on a galloping 
 horse wouldn't have noticed it, I told her. So she spoke 
 from now on only of huntin', shootin', fishin' ; of horses, 
 dogs, spaniels, and red-setters, gillies, guns, snipe, 
 woodcock, wild-duck and rocketing pheasants. 
 
 Everything else was scrapped. She submitted a list 
 to me, and I drew my pencil through the whole of it. 
 Some of the accounts of the scenery that had struck 
 them in their annual holiday abroad and which had 
 figured with stereotyped enthusiasm in our talks were 
 cast into limbo too. The Italian lakes and Swiss 
 scenery and the Tyrol were certainly part of the outfit 
 of the ultra- smart set in the early twenties, but by that 
 time they had already filtered down into use among the 
 well-to-do bourgeois and had already been scrapped 
 as any part of their equipment long before that by 
 the people who counted. Enthusiasm over lake-sides, 
 crags and fells and wild scenery had died for ever with 
 Byron. He and his lot were the last of a set who 
 
 327
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 followed a fashion already on the wane and which was 
 only the remains of the grand tour idea ; the itinerary 
 undertaken by young rips of good birth when travelling 
 was difficult and expensive, and when part of a noble 
 young rip's fit-out was excessive and painstaking im- 
 morality combined with lapses into dishevelled despair 
 at his own blackness succeeded by fits of excessive 
 sensibility and quoting of poetry. 
 
 That was of the past, not a second later than eighteen 
 hundred and twenty-five at least, and if she were to 
 embark on a career of smartness she would have to be 
 more up to date than that. 
 
 I primed her in any such lore of what to, and what 
 not to, as I had at my disposal. It was a disgraceful 
 act on my part, but I am incurably mischievous. I 
 wish to goodness I had had it well whacked out of me 
 at school but I always seemed to fall into the hands of 
 people who aided and abetted me in mischief; wherever 
 I found myself. 
 
 After coaching, some days I'd try her. We'd have a 
 test conversation and I'd try to interest her in other 
 things. But she only seemed to be able to get her 
 tongue round the words " woodcock," " salmon," 
 " gillie " and the rest, but she would talk quite 
 freely on an article on the best method of gaffing 
 a salmon that she had found in The Field, the 
 Country Gentleman's Newspaper. I'd tell her a moving 
 incident I'd read of in the life of the sea-bream and 
 be snubbed for mentioning such a common fish or an 
 explanation of the migratory habits of the eel family, 
 but nothing doing ! She relapsed into sulky silence. 
 
 Together we chose two or three sets of sporting prints, 
 some old and some modern, and she swept aside a few 
 Madonnas and sea-scapes and a water-colour of the 
 Castle of Chillon at sunset, all of which I very much 
 suspect were purchased en bloc at the same emporium 
 as the carpet, at the time of the lady's marriage. 
 
 I delight in holding intercourse with snobs. In an 
 age of materialism they are so immaterial. That is, 
 
 328
 
 they float so beautifully in air, or else they swim in pre- 
 tence, like last year's gooseberry in sugar and water. 
 They deny so much (everything that's real) and affirm 
 so little (except a few odd things about woodcock and 
 trout and who's who). It is simplicity itself to be a 
 snob in thought, and though there may be many tedious 
 things about it in practice, such as remembering not 
 to smile at the wrong people, or to extend your hand 
 to them, yet the mental blankness and peace of mind 
 makes up for any bodily exertion. All vulgar problems 
 about workj*disappear ; with them also, as if by the wave 
 of a wand, people connected with work disappear. The 
 world is thinly populated to the snobs, for they only 
 see superiors. Their inferiors disappear and obligingly 
 mingle with the other parts of thin air ; they may 
 breathe them but they don't see them. 
 
 People toil for them and spin for them, make furniture 
 for them and steer cargoes of grain to be consumed by 
 them across the sea, but they don't acknowledge their 
 existence. They deny all the graduations that place 
 them where they are and anatomically-anachronistic- 
 ally they draw sustenance from nothing, like cherubim 
 and seraphim, who only fly about and continually do 
 cry, without having any muscles to agitate their wings 
 or organs to pump the air to the vocal chords or circula- 
 tion enough to feed their brains to induce the vocal 
 impulse. 
 
 Circumstances kept me there for some time, and took 
 me back and forth at intervals. Not very long a 
 couple of years, I think after the plunge had been 
 taken in favour of the bold attempt to become members 
 of the smart set, I heard undercurrents of talk. I felt 
 there was something in the atmosphere a little different 
 from what had been in it last time I was down. A sort 
 of fullness. I noticed it but didn't quite take in what 
 it was. There were one or two new topics (fresh 
 for there) since I'd left eighteen months before and I 
 thought these constituted the difference and caused 
 the feeling of fullness, but I found out I was wrong. I 
 
 329
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 saw they were only subsidiary undercurrents, and by 
 seeing that I got on to the main undercurrent. 
 
 The word " jewels " came into it. Naturally. I 
 might have known. These would be necessary as part 
 of the expeditionary force, and now I recognised that the 
 word had taken its place in the accepted vocabulary as 
 though it had always been there, alongside of woodcock 
 and wild-duck and salmon, and salmon trout, gun, gillie, 
 rod, and chestnut thoroughbred, and so on and so on. 
 
 It also had entered into the little vocabulary of the 
 little sequestered place (on the main line), and at tennis 
 and croquet parties and at half-past-seven dinners or at 
 the Vicarage sale of work the word went round. 
 
 "Jewels." 
 
 I met it, too, at one or two minor and therefore more 
 cheerful and natural dwellings, at which our lady did 
 not visit, but where she was eagerly discussed, though 
 to her these chatelaines were only part of the material 
 she drew into and expelled again from her lungs as 
 being inferiors and therefore part of the air. I visited 
 them, for though I look exclusive I'm not, really. I 
 never refuse to visit at people's houses because I think 
 they are my inferiors. I only refuse to visit them if 
 they bore me. 
 
 All sorts of things were said about them, but not too 
 openly. No one was out to give it away that they were 
 interested in the " jewels " to the extent of discussing 
 them or impressed by the fact that the lady's worthy 
 husband was going to give her " jewels." 
 
 They all guessed the reason of the gift first go-off. 
 It was not so much a gift to her as to himself. In a 
 household like that a disinterested and casual giving of 
 presents could not have been afforded, as making no 
 show. Here was just a man giving himself a present of 
 " jewels," the noise of which would get bruited about 
 (and magnified too, in the telling of) and would procure 
 him consideration when they broke out of their shell 
 as they were fully determined to do. No one knew 
 better than the worthy man how much these things 
 
 330
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 count for in a progress through life, and how useful it is 
 in getting forward to have a wife to deck in this manner. 
 Our English sumptuary laws are rigorously enforced as 
 far as men's attire is concerned. A man cannot on his 
 own person make a display of his solvency but he can 
 by means of his wife's. He knew to a tittle what an 
 important matter clothing is. In the office of the 
 tannery in which he worked as a partner, if it were a 
 question of a rise in salary between two clerks running 
 neck and neck, he always gave it to the better suit of 
 clothes. He remembered he had been chosen himself 
 for a position of responsibility by the firm for which he 
 worked so obscurely because he had always known 
 enough to buy the right sort of collars and had a decent 
 quiet taste in tweed. 
 
 The women all guessed this (what is there a woman 
 won't guess ?) but didn't say anything about it. 
 
 For a time the " made figure " was dropped as a topic 
 and no one got heated or pronounced magisterially or 
 deliberately (choosing her words carefully) anything 
 about it one way or the other. For a time no one went 
 away from a tea-party and asked herself had she been 
 too heated in her pronouncements on it, as to whether 
 it were " good " or " made " or " wonderful " or " too 
 heavy " but still " very remarkable considering " ; 
 they came away more inclined to wonder if they had 
 shown too much interest in the matter of the " jewels." 
 If the men talked of the " figure "- there were about 
 five and three-quarter men in the neighbourhood, or if 
 you counted in the Vicar and the doctor and his assist- 
 ant, about seven and a half they talked of it among 
 themselves. The women were too occupied in discuss- 
 ing the " jewels." Afterwards the seven and a half 
 men were to catch the infection and to begin to talk 
 about the " jewels " too, but not in the precise, price- 
 list way the women did. 
 
 Their advent was not immediate. I came and went 
 twice before they came. 
 
 It was mooted, for it was not by any means a settled 
 
 331
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 point yet, or by any means nearly settled, whether the 
 *' jewels " would be purchased from the Army and 
 Navy Stores (after careful consulting of catalogues and 
 a trip to London) or whether they would be purchased 
 from one of the big silversmiths', goldsmiths', and 
 cutlers' establishments that line Regent Street on both 
 sides, and who also deal largely in " stones " and other 
 things of like nature. " Stones " were very much in- 
 clined to crop up in the conversation ; a light-hearted 
 and knowing way of referring to the subject, made use 
 of by the more up-to-snuff ones, who were convinced of 
 the advisability of making the purchase in this form 
 instead of taking them over entire. These places, they 
 said, should be made to show what they had and from 
 a large quantity certain " stones " worthy to link up 
 their destiny with that of the lady might be found. 
 And worthy too to enter into the social life of the district, 
 which consisted of at least four or five dinner-parties in 
 the season and at least two or three times that number 
 of tea-parties. It was a gay place. They said so and 
 I dare say they knew. 
 
 I didn't offer any suggestion. I had found that for 
 any outsider to make suggestions was a fatal proceed- 
 ing. You were only received down there, as I ve said, 
 on your humble acknowledgment of complete ignor- 
 ance ; that you had arrived at the well-head for 
 all information on all subjects and were ready and 
 thankful to fill your empty gourd and depart. 
 
 Especially to depart. 
 
 But when finally the " jewels " did make their 
 appearance (after months of talk had preceded them 
 like outriders or emissaries) I felt sorry I hadn't spoken. 
 The sum the worthy man had paid was totally dispro- 
 portionate to their scintillations. He had been grossly 
 overcharged. He had, just as I expected he would, 
 chosen badly and overpaid on top of a bad choice. 
 There wasn't, for all the preliminary talk on the sub- 
 ject, what you could truly call a " stone " among them. 
 He'd paid two hundred per cent, too much for a lot of 
 
 332
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 heavy silver mounts while I had knowledge of a nice 
 little sealed package of really good stuff, clear shapely 
 diamonds and a few good pearls of lustre, going for a 
 song : a portion of a big estate to be realised at any 
 sacrifice, as the legatee^ were abroad and too rich to 
 be bothered about the legacy and wanted to close the 
 legalities surrounding it. 
 
 I had my first view of these additions to the social 
 glitter of the place one night I dined there. They had 
 just arrived, I'd heard, sent down in some very square 
 and some very oblong and very accurately tied, nailed 
 and sealed packages, registered to their full value. 
 1 was an early arrival (a bad habit of mine) and as I 
 waited I looked around at the spindly supercilious 
 furniture and it seemed to me that the chairs, the sofas 
 and footstools seemed to have more smugness about 
 them than usual. I'm sure they had. 
 
 I sat in the drawing-room in the summer's evening 
 light and it was just thinning a bit but not yet per- 
 ceptibly failing. I kept an eye on that furniture. It 
 seemed very full of itself that night. It seemed to be 
 saying : " Diamonds. You'll see diamonds to-night. 
 Mind your eye. They're very bright. After this we 
 will be smart. Just you wait and see. You'll get a 
 surprise. You don't have a chance of seeing this sort 
 of thing every day, I can tell you ! ! " 
 
 For some reason that night that furniture annoyed 
 me. It got on my nerves. I could have kicked it round 
 the room with pleasure. Though, goodness knows, 
 I ought to have been used to it and made every allow- 
 ance for it. But that night it was worse than usual. 
 It talked to me as if I'd never been anywhere, never 
 seen anything, never heard anything, and didn't know 
 anything. It was galling ! It patronised me, and 
 condescended to me, and I felt absolutely at a loss 
 there in the face of it. You can't argue with furniture. 
 I felt entirely powerless to point out to it that there was 
 very little I didn't know (and that at any rate I was 
 ready and willing to admit I didn't know if I didn't). 
 
 333
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 That there were not many places I hadn't been to, or 
 houses I hadn't the run of, or many societies that didn't 
 know me, or in which I wasn't received gladly and 
 made welcome, very welcome, or in which I was not the 
 life and soul of the party, in fact. I was at home all 
 up and down the country London, Scotland, Wales, 
 Ireland, the Continent ! How dare they put on these 
 airs with me in the way they did ! What did they take 
 me for ? How dare they think a handful of off-colour 
 ill-cut sparks on a commonplace self-important woman 
 would impress me ! I who was familiar with bejewelled 
 peeresses and close friends with American millionairesses 
 who could sheathe themselves in pearls and diamonds 
 from head to toe if they would but wouldn't. I who 
 had hob-nobbed and still did, occasionally, low be it 
 spoken with some of the brightest queens of Bohemia, 
 blazing with wonders, and had noted on them simple 
 strings of pearls the price of which could have bought 
 out the owner of this house I dined in and turned all 
 these self-sufficient chattels out in the road. 
 
 I went for one of the sofas : " You great big smug 
 fat thing. You may think you're everybody, but 
 you're not. So there ! " 
 
 I turned to one of the chairs and apostrophised it : 
 
 " Why, you squinny, badly chosen machine-turned 
 copy of a bad transition-period chair, what do you 
 take me for ? I'll put you in your place. Don't you 
 know that I am perfectly at home, the honoured guest, 
 in houses where you wouldn't be thought good enough 
 for the butler's pantry or the housekeeper's room ? 
 You've not moved about enough. That's your trouble. 
 You think you're everybody because you happen to 
 swell it around in a little potty neighbourhood where 
 tuppence-halfpenny looks down on tuppence, and 
 neither of them can realise the existence of half-a-crown 
 or five shillings and would die of heart failure if any 
 one mentioned the sum of a hundred pounds in their 
 presence. 
 
 " You don't know enough to come in out of the rain. 
 
 334
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 And that reminds me. A good shower of rain would 
 do you a lot of good, and wash some of the dust out 
 of your eyes. I just wish I could take you to some of 
 my friends' houses. It would soon take the stuffing 
 out of you. Why, you go on as if you belonged to the 
 most priceless and unbroken satinwood set known to 
 connoisseurs, with medallions painted by Angelica 
 Kauffmann herself and your seats upholstered with the 
 identical original covering of the period made of hand- 
 woven Genoese velvet or seventeenth-century brocatelle. 
 As for that writing-table over there, it couldn't give 
 itself more airs if it were the actual and only one 
 specially made to the order of King Louis the 
 Fourteenth by the greatest artist of the time, with 
 ormolu mounts such as were never seen before and 
 which took years to design and make. Believe me, 
 the most unique pieces at Hertford House don't blow 
 themselves out with nonsensical pride and tit-uppy 
 tomfoolery like you, you miserable bits of spurious 
 Chippendale and pseudo-pish-tush Sheraton ! " 
 
 Pah! 
 
 I was quite unnerved by that furniture. 
 
 But it didn't pay the slightest attention to me. It 
 didn't listen to a word I said. It wouldn't believe me 
 when I said it was ordinary and common. It thought 
 I was mad. 
 
 It had seen and heard so little ; so limited was its 
 experience that it couldn't grasp what one told it. It 
 had literally no material to go by in forming its judg- 
 ments. It thought it was lovely. 
 
 Whatever it did or didn't think of me, it made me 
 no back answers. It just looked past me at the door 
 expectantly, waiting to see the jewels. 
 
 " Diamonds ! " 
 
 They entered. 
 
 I almost heard the sofas, chairs and cushions say 
 " Ah-h ! " all together in a sort of hoarse horse-hair 
 chorus. 
 
 She and I advanced to each other. She earned 
 
 335
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 them on her front and in her ears. There was a slight 
 conscious awkwardness in the moment for us both. 
 
 I was the first to see them installed. 
 
 She knew I knew she had them on. I knew she knew 
 I knew she had them on. I knew she expected me to 
 be impressed by them. She didn't know that I knew 
 a thing or two and thought nothing of them at all. 
 
 I knew she didn't know enough to know anything 
 about such things and that she didn't know enough to 
 know how little she knew either. 
 
 I knew that though I knew they weren't any good 
 she'd never guess I knew it, because, as I say, she didn't 
 know enough herself to know they were no good and 
 therefore couldn't know I knew it. 
 
 Her loose old mouth was drawn together in a simulated 
 unconsciousness and, as it were, in a fine dismissal of 
 the matter as trifling. It was weighty, yes. She 
 admitted this she had to but it was trifling to one 
 so accustomed to deal in largeness as she. It was 
 inclining a bit to a twitch. The mouth, I mean. She 
 was repressing it with difficulty. I fumed inwardly. 
 I don't know why, but that night I felt like telling 
 her things, true things. Other nights her delusions 
 interested me. How unreasonable I was ! If she 
 hadn't delusions, should I ever have troubled to go 
 near her ? No, But to-night, unmistakably, I wanted 
 to tell her things, as to how potty all her things 
 were. It was too bad, and it annoyed me to see her 
 there in such a stew about so little, and striving for 
 calmness. Still if they were really a step toward 
 smartness, she and they would find their level anon 
 when the steps drew nearer to within reach of the goal. 
 How alarmed she would be when she found the 
 standard she was up against unless she were blind. 
 How inadequate she would find her income, and even 
 her imaginary millions. But I think she was blind 
 luckily for her. 
 
 The "jewels" had only been in the house these 
 forty-eight hours, but if you'll believe me, they'd already 
 
 336
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 come under her spell. They had taken to her as a 
 duck takes to water. They were full of themselves. 
 No sooner were they under her roof and under her 
 hand than they had caught the dodge that pervaded 
 the whole house and everything in it, and simulated 
 something far vaster than they had a right to. They 
 were already making themselves out to be larger and 
 more costly than they really were. Regardless of their 
 inferior cutting and water and clumsy setting, they 
 blazed and sparkled impertinently and arrogantly on 
 her. 
 
 They and I hated each other at first sight. 
 
 The other guests put in an appearance all in a state 
 bordering on excitement. They were agog to see the 
 " jewels." Up to now there had been no jewels worthy 
 of the name in the neighbourhood, a few cameos, a 
 rolled-gold bangle and an engagement ring or two, but 
 not " jewels," using the word in its fullest sense. I 
 believe, now that the thing had actually happened, they 
 considered it was a good thing. The nieghbourhood 
 might justly be considered to have gone forward by the 
 coming of these " jewels " among them. It had lacked 
 something before, perhaps (heaven and I only knew 
 how much it lacked), now it might be considered com- 
 plete. They were all about to shine, free of cost, in 
 the reflected light of these " jewels." 
 
 Nothing of course was said. The lady knew of the 
 excitement. She knew what she had done for the place 
 and its inhabitants and that she alone could have done 
 it, but she was of a kind that did not dodder under 
 greatness. These people must be made to see, if it 
 had escaped their notice before, what her mettle was, 
 and that greatness did not ruffle her, or cause her to 
 turn a hair. So nothing was said, but everything was 
 thought, and glances plucked at the pieces, crossed, and 
 bumped each other and were guiltily pulled away. 
 
 The diamonds presided at the table, giving tone to 
 all that went on. They behaved well ; the stars (of 
 course they'd chosen a cluster of stars) not dropping off 
 
 Y 337
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 into the soup, and gleaming there as one sometimes 
 sees a star gleaming humbly yet exquisitely in a road- 
 side puddle, towards evening. They shone athwart 
 the courses and allowed nothing to dim them. They 
 were fully satisfied with their niche in life. Now they 
 would have the satisfaction of looking down on their 
 diamond-betters. Had they gone to a simpler woman 
 she might have infected them with her humility and 
 a consciousness of their want of worth and their 
 flaws. 
 
 The whole place tickled me to death, and everything 
 in it excepting the furniture, and real bad blood 
 existed between me and it. It was as though one saw 
 the ambitions and follies of the great world repeated 
 there, and one looked at them through a diminishing 
 glass, so that it was a case of reductio ad absurdum. 
 One saw how futile things were, take them for all in 
 all. I could have cracked my sides laughing. The 
 excessive solemnity got me in the raw. Every move- 
 ment that transpired in the large cities or centres, 
 whether at home or abroad, found its way little by 
 little to this sequestered spot. By the time it had got 
 there it had got pulled about, and arrived garbled, 
 and left more garbled still. Post-impressionism, art 
 nouveau, spiritualism, rinking, the tango, the craze for 
 antiques, rock gardens, auction and pirate bridge, any 
 odd thing. 
 
 The worthy man sat at the foot of the table. He 
 wasn't really a proud man but he couldn't help, as 
 he looked up occasionally and the diamonds caught his 
 eye, being impressed by what he had done, and the 
 importance of the occasion. 
 
 There was quite a certain amount of talk that night. 
 As a rule in a place like that there isn't much ; one 
 must be conventional in the country. One dare not 
 not be conventional, and conversation is a deadly thing. 
 One's tongue runs ahead of one and then goodness 
 knows what dangerous topic might not be started, for 
 like a little disobedient fox terrier it goes off, gets out 
 
 338
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 of hand, plunges into coverts of thought that are 
 taboo, and puts up heaven only knows what sort of 
 conversational game that must on no account be 
 hunted or discussed. 
 
 In discussions too the danger was that one might 
 say something that the other people thought to be 
 wrong, and as no one quite knew what the other people 
 thought about anything (nor indeed they themselves, 
 as they hardly ever searched in themselves to see what 
 they did think or believe) it was risky, for one might 
 wander about and say something broad-minded and lie 
 under a cloud for it for years after. 
 
 But to-night, at any rate, everyone knew what 
 everyone else was thinking about. They knew they 
 were each and all thinking about the jewels. They ate 
 and talked of other things and kept trying to get an 
 idea of what they were like, out of the corners of their 
 eyes. No one would have dreamt of looking at them 
 frankly and admitting they admired them or of saying 
 quite naturally: "Hello, Mrs Hex, you're very smart 
 to-night ! What's that you've got on there. Some 
 new baubles, eh ? " 
 
 Never. They would never have dared that. Perhaps 
 as time went on, in six, seven, eight, nine or ten months, 
 or eighteen months, or two or three years, they might 
 venture to notice them, and hear little anecdotes anent 
 their choice, and the wavering as to what to select 
 (Mrs Hex seldom wavered, but I think she would admit 
 to having done so for this once) or something in regard 
 to their valuing for insurance. But it was too close to 
 the great occasion get. They and the lady herself 
 would all have to be allowed to get used to them by 
 degrees, to accommodate themselves slowly to the big 
 change they foreshadowed for the neighbourhood its 
 awakening to social prestige and importance all due 
 to these jewels. One or two of the women were, I 
 fancy, wondering whether, when " jewels " like that 
 were asked to dine, it would not be better to say 
 eight o'clock instead of seven-thirty for seven-forty-five 
 
 339
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 as now was the custom. Certainly those " jewels " 
 demanded an eight-o'clock dinner, if not eight-fifteen 
 if the servants would stand it. There were three 
 outside couples and one extra man and they would 
 share two cabs going home ; had probably shared 
 them coming. They would discuss all this in returning 
 in the seclusion of those very stuffy country vehicles. 
 
 It mustn't be thought that the lady was not a very 
 remarkable woman. She was ; for alone and almost 
 unaided she had kept the district from making any 
 real progress. She imposed her obsolete ideas upon it, 
 making fun of anything new or useful. Shooing away 
 anyone who came there with ideas which might if 
 carried out make the place go forward. As it was, 
 she found it just comfortable in the matter of openings 
 for patronage leading to certain small social recogni- 
 tions, for ladies of little manors such as she. There 
 was. as I said, a nice serviceable selection of poor people 
 scattered about. Just enough and far apart enough 
 so that their rounds could be made in a high dog-cart 
 comfortably in an afternoon. 
 
 There were various little ineffectual and innocuous 
 organisations too which gave one a chance of dispensing 
 patronage. True, there was rather a large manufactur- 
 ing town near by, sadly in need of really intelligent 
 and far-sighted supervision as regarded its dense and 
 ill-housed working population and the big problems it 
 presented, but that was really serious work and meant 
 serious thought, which meant the envisaging of depths, 
 and led to no social recognition. Like the brave 
 Leonidas who held the pass at Thermopylae she guarded 
 the place almost single-handed against the entry of 
 aliens with new ideas and methods. By degrees she 
 trained a devoted band and with their aid drummed 
 out all possibilities of progressive endeavour. 
 
 In vindication, she only did her duty according to 
 her lights in doing this. She honestly did not believe 
 in new ideas. She honestly thought they were 
 dangerous and devastating. She held the place back 
 
 340
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 for years by her efforts, whilst yet working very hard, 
 as she thought, in the right direction. She was just in 
 some respects the average mixture of stupidity and 
 energy which does so much harm in small as well as 
 big fields. But she certainly worked hard. It was 
 surprising how much she and her kind found to do. 
 I believe they made it for themselves to do. That is, 
 if they had gone to roots of matters and cleared up 
 things there, and looked into things, they could have 
 prevented many of the troubles that kept them 
 so busy afterwards. They were like gardeners who 
 neglect plants in their early stages, and let them get 
 blighted and mildewed and bug-infected, and then 
 when too late spend years in trying to undo the first 
 mistakes with spraying and fertilising and pruning 
 and watering. A plant's career depends on its start 
 and the attention it receives in the beginning. 
 
 It is the same with human beings. But ladies of the 
 manor and the funny men they enlist to help them 
 won't see this ; they prefer to paddle along for ever and 
 upon balance achieve nothing. 
 
 I remember, as I looked into the workings of that 
 place, thinking that a man or woman, living in the 
 country, if not very careful, could get tied up and caught 
 in so many little time-wasting, ineffectual and un- 
 productive things that they wouldn't have time or 
 energy left over to get at the big things. They'd get 
 up to their neck in things which were not by rights 
 their business but the business of the State or else of the 
 actual individual they patronised and directed. Accord- 
 ing to Madame Waddington, the Ambassador's wife, 
 there is in France no need of these doles and house-to- 
 house visitations, for her prouder, finer poor have by 
 their own intelligence and family co-operation and 
 mutual help and thrift, aided by a paternal Government, 
 rendered this pauperisation unnecessary. 
 
 They know there is a great panacea for human ills 
 and one that sends poverty flying from the door for 
 ever. 
 
 341
 
 Self-help. 
 
 Should there ever be any upheaval of the social 
 system, it is to be hoped that these methods will be 
 superseded by something much more efficacious. One 
 good reason being that the classes below have got far 
 too out of hand to permit themselves to profit by such 
 ministrations. A governmental iron hand in a velvet 
 glove will only just be strong enough. 
 
 They say across the water " a vat must stand upon 
 its own bottom " and it's certainly true. I made up 
 my mind that if ever again I lived in the country I'd 
 keep my time my own, and my hands free, whatever 
 people said, and at all costs. 
 
 The district was satisfied to be dominated by her, 
 especially since the advent of the jewels. As I say, she 
 had the gift of imposing her own valuation of herself 
 and her services on those about her, always supposing 
 they were not in touch with the outer world and had 
 no means of gauging her by proper standards. But 
 there were one or two little chatelaines newly come, 
 and who had not yet lost touch or sense of things 
 nor as yet had been narcotised by the sleep-inducing 
 atmosphere of the place. They were perhaps of those 
 who had not admittance to her house, or who if they 
 penetrated there entered through the open windows 
 and chinks as thin air, owing to the dissolving process, 
 to which she subjected all those she felt were her 
 inferiors. 
 
 They complained bitterly. They told me it was no 
 use trying to do anything down there unless one had 
 a great long sallow face surrounded by red hair. If 
 anyone came down there who had a normal face and 
 looked as they did in the outside world no one paid 
 any attention to them. They had got so entirely used 
 to the idea that all authority and all proclamations 
 should be issued from a face of that sort. All local 
 enterprises should be connected with a long mulish 
 face and red hair. 
 
 After this lapse of time they could not bring them- 
 
 342
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 selves to think anyone without red hair could have 
 authority or give any suggestions worth following. 
 
 So amongst the trees and the lanes of the quiet 
 country-side in that little place (on the main line) 
 there was a note of tragedy. 
 
 I hadn't been near the place for five or six years 
 when, a few days before the third Friday in the second 
 month of the season, I ran into the lady in the Park. 
 She greeted me with an approach to jocularity, but I 
 was in a tearing hurry and hadn't time to pause and 
 throw my eye over her and see how things were with 
 her and to what stage of mental and social develop- 
 ment she had got. But I got her address from 
 her and prevailed on Celia to send her a card for 
 Friday. 
 
 " My dear, she's perfectly priceless," I said, with 
 enthusiasm. " I can't think how I never got you to 
 ask her before. What on earth I was thinking of I 
 don't know." 
 
 We were more than ever keen and passionate 
 collectors of types and interesting people or people 
 with strongly asserted characteristics or bents. If 
 any of us found anything marked and new we hurried 
 up and brought it to Grosvenor Square, had a good 
 look at it, and went into it carefully. I had got to 
 this pitch that we were keeping ledgers of tabulated 
 notes and information and theorisings that we had 
 obtained about people's characters and how their 
 idiosyncrasies worked out against each other, neutral- 
 ising or accentuating each other in themselves and 
 again in contact with different people. He got this 
 idea from having heard that certain countries, where 
 they have State-supported hospitals, keep extra- 
 ordinarily accurate records of every case of sickness 
 and injury that enters and leaves their doors, with all 
 symptoms written up afterwards, keeping these in some 
 accessible form for the use of its medical profession to 
 refer to. These are the sort of things a state should do, 
 
 343
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 said Celia, or else why pay taxes ? Now though it was 
 very important that records regarding physical data 
 should be kept, it was also equally important that the 
 inward workings of the human mind should be observed 
 and recorded. The development and manifestations 
 of the emotions, for instance. Ways of thinking and 
 trains of thought and psychological sequences which in 
 turn lead up to trains of thought which again lead up 
 to lines of conduct, catastrophic or advantageous to the 
 fabric of society. Research was being carried on by 
 bands of devoted medicine men, but they were work- 
 ing under disadvantages through lack of means and 
 lack of subjects. They only had the opportunity to 
 study small circles or inhabitants of asylums, people 
 who were not worth studying or whose callings or con- 
 ditions did not bring them out into the big arena of life. 
 She considered that placed as she was right in the very 
 thick of things she was better fitted to do the work. 
 She was the centre of a palpitating society clustering 
 and swarming round the very core of things ; the hub 
 of an ever- widening circle always leading to more com- 
 binations showing and revealing the operations and 
 movements of the human mind (or soul) when brought 
 into touch with engrossing complications. Emotional 
 complications (very valuable data), international com- 
 plications, religious complications, political - cum- 
 religious - cum - social complications. Religious - cum- 
 social - cum - political complications. Emotional - cum- 
 social - cum - political - cum - emotional - cum - personal 
 complications. Personal - cum - social - cum - political- 
 cum - religious - cum - international - cum - educational 
 complications. Phew ! 
 
 Sex antagonism (which I've heard of but never come 
 across) and the personal equation were the things that 
 bothered Celia, and which she found difficult to 
 fathom. 
 
 Could the world ever be governed, said Celia, unless 
 something were known of MAN ? 
 
 No. 
 
 344
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 Was any properly organised attempt being made to 
 study Man and his needs and to learn something of him 
 and them ? 
 
 No. 
 
 All these vitally necessary things had to be started 
 by private enterprise. Then if they were successful, 
 and any good results were obtained which were talked 
 about, the State looked into the matter, saw that here 
 was something it ought to have done long ago, had the 
 face to feel ashamed of itself voted supplies, and took 
 the thing over. And so the golden deeds go on, thanks 
 to Celia's sort. She had engaged two secretaries (one 
 rather a nice girl and quite good-looking we often 
 sorted the papers together) and collected types and 
 information furiously about our fellow-creatures, their 
 antecedents, admixture of blood, surroundings, educa- 
 tion, what illnesses they had had and accidents. At 
 considerable expense and an enormous expenditure of 
 time we got a mass of statistics together. We divided 
 our subjects up and said their words and actions were 
 the result of heredity and environment or occupation 
 or health, and whenever we could have a good look at 
 their friends we noted them ; and having got all the 
 knowledge we could together, we mixed them up, half 
 of this and half of that, and prognosticated results. 
 We crossed them and recrossed them like poultry and 
 prognosticated results again. 
 
 We had the whole of a person's soul and mentality, or 
 whatever you like to call it, laid out like a specimen in a 
 museum. We had piles of ledgers, and taking it that 
 one specimen might stand for several, if due allowances 
 were made for variations, we thought we might fairly 
 consider that we had several thousands. Celia had 
 made her will, leaving them to the nation, as her idea 
 was that the savants would add her investigations to 
 what they had already found out, and great results be 
 obtained. 
 
 We made careful investigations of the Irish and 
 found many noteworthy things. 
 
 345
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 So that on that third Friday I was very pleased at 
 the idea of meeting the lady again and determined 
 to draw her into a corner and have a good long 
 talk with her. I would draw her out for Celia too. 
 And I certainly would persuade her to come to 
 Grosvenor Square several times before she returned 
 homewards. 
 
 I saw at once when we had been in conversation for 
 a few minutes that she had " come on," as people put 
 it, since I had seen her. I had feared that with advanc- 
 ing time, as she felt herself getting nearer to those 
 mysterious uncountable years that lie before us, with 
 the birthdays totalling up in perpetuity, after our 
 earthly ones have been numbered, she would soften 
 and change favourably and give a thought to those 
 depths which she had hitherto ignored successfully. 
 But I saw nothing of that sort. The change was 
 entirely towards smartness. 
 
 She was very smart certainly to her own way of 
 thinking. Her things were not becoming but they 
 were carefully and tautly put on and nothing was out 
 of place on her " made figure." They were stiff and 
 crackling with silk and newness and sounded very 
 smart. They were still crackling in the neighbourhood 
 she came from. Elsewhere the fashions had moved on 
 and the correctly dressed woman swished, just as a 
 short time later the swish was to disappear and women 
 were to move noiselessly in their clothes. But the lady 
 still crackled self-consciously, and crackling did not 
 know she dated herself behind the times. Her clothes 
 made up for this short-coming by professing to be far 
 finer than they were, just as everything else of hers did. 
 They pretended to come from Paris. Celia said they 
 came from Bayswater. 
 
 Her long mulish face was surmounted by a very fine 
 thing in hats, perilously perched till it rose above the 
 hats of the other people in the room. There were 
 clusters of little peeping roses on it that looked 
 affrighted and seemed wondering how they had ever 
 
 346
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 had the temerity to climb up on her head. They 
 seemed to agitate in trepidation. 
 
 She began exactly where we had left off just before I 
 left her neighbourhood. I think we had been discuss- 
 ing an article on the best way of landing a. large lively 
 salmon. I may be exaggerating, but it seemed to me 
 that we took up the conversation just as if we had 
 dropped it only a short time before. 
 
 There were all my old friends again. I didn't have 
 to wait long for them to appear. Woodcock, wild- 
 duck, salmon, gillies, guns, Deeside, Speyside, in spate, 
 chestnut thoroughbred, and tit-bits of scandal from 
 the smart world. I was to gather that she and the 
 worthy man had plunged deep into the joys of huntin' ; 
 and I remembered that once when I had poked my 
 nose into the stabling for four (one loose-box only) I 
 had foreseen this but saw that the path was strewn 
 with difficulties for them. For in the stabling for four 
 I counted five splints, one roarer, four swollen hocks 
 and one case of ringbone and thought it didn't Jook 
 hopeful. But they must have got over that difficulty, 
 for she talked very brightly of it all. The daughter 
 too it seemed had waxed into a perfectly formed seraph, 
 and married a perfectly formed cherub and together 
 they lived in affluence on the mother's imaginary 
 millions, which they shared and all together con- 
 tinuallv did cry : " Tally ho ! Tally ho ! Mark over ! 
 Hi, lost! Hi, lost! Seek dead ! Seek dead !" 
 
 She was determined that it should be seen by all and 
 sundry that she was a sportswoman of the deepest dye. 
 She clasped a parasol to her made figure with a 
 pheasant's head carved upon it, until at tea-time I 
 relieved her of it and placed it out of harm's way. 
 
 " Please be careful of that, Mr Blenerhassett. I 
 couldn't get on at all without that ! " she called coyly 
 at me. 
 
 Though if she had lost it she still had other sporting 
 reproductions and reminders on her. There was a 
 small diamond fox tearing across her chest among the 
 
 347
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 laces and the crackling silks as if it were the best bit 
 of grass-land going. I saw a diamond and ruby- eyed 
 woodcock or game bird of sorts dangling from the 
 bangle at her wrist. She hadn't a salmon anywhere 
 on her person, but I think I saw a salmon-fly decorating 
 the end of a hat-pin among the roses. She was deter- 
 mined that her sporting proclivities should not pass 
 unnoticed. I totted the evidences of them up and felt 
 sure that if I could have run down to her house I would 
 have found it crammed full of every sporting trophy 
 known to exist, besides all those little agreeable devices 
 by which people who are not really sporting fob them- 
 selves off into thinking they are. I'd go bail if I got 
 there I'd find it full of them. Foxes embroidered on 
 the cushions, foxes on the blotters, hounds in full cry 
 on the doyleys, photo-frames with gun and rod em- 
 bossed on them, salmon and game on the menu-holders, 
 sporting calendars and sporting prints galore. " Sir 
 Bevy's winner of the Derby Stakes at Epsom, 1879. 
 Value 7050. The property of Mr Acton. Got by 
 Favonius out of Lady Langden. Bred by Lord 
 Norreys. Ridden by Fordham" ; or "Coomassie, winner 
 of the Waterloo Cup, 1877. Value 1600, by Celebrated 
 out of Queen. The property of R. F. Wilkinson. Per- 
 formances at Beckhampton, divided the Oaks with 
 Mr Oat ley's Filey. At Newmarket Champion Meeting 
 divided with Paul Jones and won the 10 guineas stakes 
 at Newmarket, beating twenty-two others." 
 
 Ne'er a Madonna left, even in a dark corner now ! 
 
 I was delighted with her. She was perfect, and per- 
 fection always delights me. I couldn't get one real 
 word out of her. I rang her over and over again to see 
 if there were a flaw in her casing, but not one. 
 
 We got among the urns and buns and I asked her how 
 certain people of those parts did that I used to meet at 
 her house. But I found that they were " impossible " 
 people and not to be mentioned and assumed that they 
 had now melted into and enriched the air in the old 
 spot. I was immensely amused to find that her house 
 
 348
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 had unaccountably, surprisingly shrunk to its true 
 proportions in her estimation, for I received a gracious 
 invitation to come and put up at her huntin' box for 
 a few days next season and she'd mount me. 
 
 So. How amusing. I wondered what the pish- 
 tush-satinwood furniture had to say to this. Rather 
 disconcerting to be transferred in this off-hand way 
 from the echoing chambers of a vast palace to the 
 small rooms of a modest sporting property, without 
 even the excitement of a jaunt in a furniture remover's 
 van to soften the shock ! I very nearly asked her to 
 kick the self-sufficient footstools round the room for me 
 and to give the pish-tush-satinwood chairs my salaams, 
 but I guessed she'd think I was crazy and refrained. 
 
 Some time I'd have to make an excuse and go and 
 interview them and see how they felt. From her con- 
 versation I gathered that several persons of distinction 
 had pressed their horse-hair seats. How they must 
 have revelled in this. 
 
 Having attended to her creature comforts, I watched 
 her while she swallowed a cup of tea, an ice and two 
 wafers and thus raised them in the social scale. 
 
 She was a miracle. From what inward founts of 
 self-satisfaction did she draw this stream of vainglory 
 upon which she seemed to float ? I watched her there, 
 pivoting and turning, beside herself with pride. It sat 
 so strangely on her. I'll concede that I've seen pride 
 carried off well. I'll concede that there's something of 
 grace in the high mettle and half-concealed disdain of 
 some pretty, proud woman of high, warm birth. But this. 
 How incongruously it sat upon her with her " made 
 figure," her sparse reddish hair, her long mulish face. 
 
 I trotted her up to Celia and left them alone together. 
 
 I did not come to claim her till the moment of her 
 departure. 
 
 She was festive and twitted me about something I'd 
 have rather forgotten. She had a touch no heavier 
 than an elephant's footfall as it brushes the earth 
 lightly in passing. 
 
 349
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 I saw her down. Her car was at hand, drawn up by 
 the kerb a little way down, and was summoned. It 
 drew up fussily after a good deal of winding up. It 
 was a poor thing, the body in want of paint and new 
 upholstery and the engine rattling in every bolt. But 
 as I had expected, its mistress's self-importance had 
 found its way into its manner. The rattling and 
 vibrating of its parts, the back-firing all helped it to- 
 wards creating the impression that it wanted to make ; 
 that it was really a larger and finer car than it was. As 
 it spluttered and trembled with excitement it seemed 
 to accost me : 
 
 " I am Mrs Hex's car. Don't mistake me for anyone 
 else's. I shall be beside myself with rage if you think 
 I could belong to any ordinary person. I only move 
 in the best society and wait in the ranks with the very 
 best cars. Hoity-toity, tut-tut and tut again ! " 
 
 As she swam down the broad steps to it, she glorified 
 it. I handed her in, and as she entered, she gave the 
 word " Home " at her chauffeur as though " home " 
 and Buckingham Palace were synonymous terms and 
 lay back upon the flabby cushions grandly. 
 
 The chauffeur touched his cap rigidly and opened 
 and shut his mouth quickly. " Very good, Madame." 
 
 He let in his gears with a racket. The hauteur of his 
 manner was on a par with that of hers. He had caught 
 the trick too of the house, and the furniture, all in it 
 and its occupants. He made himself appear larger, 
 more imposing than he was. I almost rubbed my eyes. 
 By some hocus-pocus known only to himself he made 
 himself appear to be two men at once, himself the 
 driver, and a footman beside him on the box. 
 
 Marvellous. 
 
 " Well," I said to Celia, " what do you think of her ? 
 Would she be of any use ? " 
 
 I only asked the question as a matter of form. I 
 was sure Celia would say she was every use. And I 
 was prepared to give her all information in my posses- 
 sion. I saw Mrs Hex figuring as the star specimen in 
 
 350
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 our collection which was to be left to the nation at 
 Celia's death. 
 
 " Not the slightest, Peter, but thanks all the same for 
 bringing her. I wouldn't have missed seeing her for 
 anything." 
 
 " Why what do you mean by saying she's no use ? 
 You don't know what you're talking about. There's 
 oceans of material in her. You ought to study her 
 most carefully." 
 
 " It would be waste of time." 
 
 " It certainly would not be waste of time. You 
 should study her, and for very, very strong reasons. 
 She's the very type of woman who pushes her way in 
 local affairs, in towns or suburbs and even into bigger 
 things if she can get there. She's the sort who holds 
 things up so frightfully by throwing cold water on any- 
 thing new that anyone wants tried." 
 
 "Yes, Peter. I know all that. Do you give me 
 credit for seeing nothing ! But she is so fearfully and 
 tremendously typical that, if you can see what I mean, 
 she isn't typical." 
 
 " No, I don't see what you mean." 
 
 I was bitterly disappointed. I had procured this 
 remarkable specimen unaided and was awfully cross at 
 its being pronounced no use. 
 
 " Yes, you do, you old stupid, if you'll only think 
 a moment. She has all her points so tremendously 
 marked that it makes her unique and therefore not in 
 the least valuable to analyse or work back or forth 
 from. But if you are so very keen on it, I'll include 
 your observations and information and enter it up fully, 
 but take care to mark it ' not to be used for reference.' ' 
 
 This was not a bit what I had expected. Besides it. 
 was a long time since we had netted anything good 
 and we were getting slack. I was not to be put off. 
 I would be wily. 
 
 " If she's no use as a study, couldn't you reform her ? 
 It would be a great thing, and a real feather in your 
 cap." 
 
 351
 
 THE PROUD WOMAN 
 
 Celia shook her head. " No." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " I'd rather not undertake it." 
 
 I was surprised. This was indeed unusual in Celia, 
 who sets to work on the most unpromising specimens 
 in the certainty of finding some good ; because she says 
 people are like tubes of tooth paste ; no matter how 
 empty they seem, if you squeeze hard enough there will 
 always be found to be something left. 
 
 I reiterated, " Why not ? Give me some reason." 
 
 " For the simplest of all reasons. Habeas Corpus" 
 
 "Habeas Corpus? Give it up." 
 
 " If I were to clear the weeds out of that character 
 there'd be nothing left. See ? " 
 
 I didn't at all agree with her, but I left it at that. 
 Once a woman has made up her alleged mind there's 
 nothing more to be said. 
 
 352
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 I AM not sure but that a little tiny tale such as this I am 
 about to tell should nestle in a mass of more or less 
 extraneous matter like a turquoise in the matrix stone, 
 a pip in an apple or a chestnut in its burse. Or even, 
 to take another simile from the vegetable world, 
 wouldn't it be better to let grow on the extraneous 
 matter like a little bush of mistletoe sprouting out of 
 an apple-tree ? These two have no real relationship, 
 but neither is as nice without the other. 
 
 There are so many ways of telling stories now. The 
 good old days of once-upon-a-time are no more, and 
 no longer does one huddle down comfortably and with 
 anticipation to listen to what follows after that phrase 
 has set the stage, cleared up certain doubts as to one of 
 the unities and then drawn aside the curtain. 
 
 The teachings of the Church are that we are not to 
 expect too much of life or anything ; that we must 
 be satisfied with little. It says : " Don't expect to be 
 happy, but prepare to be interested." It takes away 
 the illusion about the happiness but gives us the other 
 thing in return, which is very good. (The foregoing is 
 not relevant to my point but let it stand.) 
 
 The teachings of Art are that we must never be satis- 
 fied with anything, no matter how good, and to expect 
 and try for the most enormous, inflated and impossible, 
 out-of-reach things ; never to be satisfied with moder- 
 ate results or to say that enough is as good as a feast, 
 or blessed are the poor in spirit. If an artist can only 
 do his best he may shut up shop. For success goes to 
 the genius, and the genius is a person who can do better 
 than his best oftener than other people can. lie is like 
 the animal who rose superior to his nature and under 
 z 353
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 stress of circumstances climbed a tree though he was 
 not of a tree-climbing species. The impertinence and 
 presumption of the artist should be something un- 
 dreamt of, in his work. When he has done something 
 perfectly wonderful and far beyond his powers, he 
 should be bitterly ashamed of himself and gnash his 
 teeth and cry with rage because it isn't ever so much 
 better and not nearly as good as he meant it to be. So 
 it will always be very hard work to be an artist ; and it 
 will always be surprising how many people are foolish 
 enough to want to be artists. The explanation is that 
 there is something distressingly fascinating about the 
 pursuit of Art. When the artist is working he is often 
 idling. When he is idling he is often working at 
 highest pressure. He is feeling about in the dark ; 
 he doesn't know what he is doing half the time, or if he 
 does, he pretends he doesn't. Everything in Art is so 
 private and wonderful and mysterious and every other 
 word that means different shades of these things and 
 upon which I cannot lay my hands to write down, that 
 he daren't even mention it to himself. There are no 
 rules, unless you call beliefs rules. There's a pretence 
 that there are but it is not true. The tenets of Art vary 
 as much as the tenets of a religion do, as time goes by ; 
 fashion settles their variations. And fashion is a more 
 serious word than you might think, for it means in a 
 large degree what people are thinking and doing at a 
 given period of the world's development. 
 
 Speaking then of fashion, it has borne itself into my 
 inner consciousness that for a book to record a series of 
 events upon which, in telling them, the author gives his 
 opinion as to whether they are good or bad or silly or 
 wise or unavoidable or the reverse, is for it to be a very 
 dull and badly written book, and one to be considered, 
 according to modern artistic standards, very poor 
 work. In these days far more is required of a writer, 
 and far different. He must hypnotise you, intoxicate 
 you, and above all make world-music to you. He 
 must at all costs appeal to the ear of the eye as 
 
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 you read him line by line. They tell me we have 
 an embryo and dormant eye shut up in the brain, so 
 to have an ear in the eye may not be as foolish as it 
 appears. 
 
 If you read a word you sound it mentally and it's not 
 the sound that it makes if spoken. So our writer must 
 set himself to compose this visible but inaudible music, 
 and should the ideas get in the way of the music they 
 must be lopped and cut about so that they won't ; or 
 even thrust aside altogether or draped in obscurity of 
 the profoundest so as not to take your straining atten- 
 tion off the melody of the words. In the past litera- 
 ture grew up to record things, to speak of them and 
 discuss them, to preach, to point a moral. The words 
 were the servants of the thoughts. Nowadays the 
 thoughts are the servants of the words. The masters 
 are servants, the servants are masters, and so the 
 fashion, the spirit of these democratic times, is 
 reflected perfectly though not chronicled for to 
 chronicle a little lucidity is essential in the writings 
 of the period. 
 
 Nowadays the moral, if there should be one, in all 
 likelihood has been squeezed so utterly out of shape by 
 all the goings-on of the words that if anyone were to go 
 off on a wrong line of conduct through having taken it 
 to heart, he couldn't in all fairness be blamed. The 
 angel with the big book will be sorely perplexed when 
 the time for settling the antecedents and primary 
 causes that led up to modern crimes has come ; I'm 
 told this is done very carefully in heaven. 
 
 As I am going to try in an amateurish way to write 
 this story on modern lines wherever I can do so with- 
 out interfering with the action or the ideas I am 
 going to get my moral out of harm's way before it is too 
 late. 
 
 Here it is. It is waste of time to be too subtle. 
 
 I am a firm believer in gratitude, both for benefits 
 
 355
 
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 received or wrongs done. Revenge, as must clearly be 
 seen, being the proper sort of gratitude to apply to the 
 latter. And a great debt of gratitude is owing to those 
 who have helped to tidy up a language or make its 
 meaning clear, to establish good useful words, or to 
 ascribe to them certain uses and meanings by quoting 
 sane and commendable users and giving their text 
 and by stalling them comfortably and with propriety 
 in the dictionary. We already have one great inter- 
 national inarticulate music and when a writer by a 
 succession of sweet soothing sounds lulls us musically 
 over his page into a sort of hypnotic drowse, he is not 
 quite on the right track. The province of the writer is 
 to wake up those that slumber. The lyre in its day was 
 made of bone, not of paper. 
 
 And here may I be heard if I say this, that there are 
 some books that put you to sleep because words and 
 thoughts alike are boring, and others send you to sleep 
 because they are so wonderful that they are like the 
 music of the waves on the shore, delicious surging 
 sounds, coming in, going out, and soothing, soothing, 
 soothing you as they do so. 
 
 But if I were going to write like this I should study 
 counterpoint. 
 
 Literature I take to be an attempt at fixation of 
 thoughts on life and Man, and on what happens in life to 
 Man, and what effect it has on his soul, and whether he 
 has one or not. That, I think, is its raison d'tere. We 
 sleep in our beds, we wear our hats on our heads and 
 our boots on our feet. We don't drive down Piccadilly 
 in a four-poster or put our feet through our hats or tie 
 our boots round our foreheads. 
 
 The word fixation, even though it may not be in the 
 dictionary, is an excellent one. It is borrowed, I be- 
 lieve from chemistry, for I've heard chemists talking 
 of the fixation of nitrogen. Nitrogen, besides being a 
 vital thing, is said to be a most useful and necessary 
 thing. It is everywhere around us in stupendous 
 quantities, but as it is wild and shy it is almost 
 
 356
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 impossible to lay hands on it, or, as they call it, fix it. 
 This can only be done by providing it with a sort of soul 
 mate to which it instantly rushes, and having joined 
 with it, it becomes quite tame and can be used. The 
 soul mate varies, for different people can cajole it to 
 combine in different ways. I'm not quite sure, but I 
 believe I've heard this said. This phrase fixation 
 pleased me, and it seemed that it could be applied to 
 many things to clear them up. A good word or a 
 good phrase is the handmaid of philosophy. I turned 
 it over in my mind and I thought grammar is an 
 attempt at the fixation of the language (not much 
 use if it comes to that). Time in music is an attempt 
 at the fixation of rhythm (no use at all unless 
 handled very freely). Marriage is an attempt at 
 fixation of love (which is absurd), and surely litera- 
 ture should be an attempt at the fixation of thoughts 
 and conclusions on a very important point. Namely, 
 man and his doings and theorisings, with a view to 
 laying up a store of knowledge for future use. And if 
 literature is to fix things, surely its language should 
 be clear. 
 
 Music can talk nonsense as much and as often as it 
 pleases, for laws are not drawn up in music. Nations 
 don't discuss international affairs or draw up treaties 
 in music. You cannot make a binding promise in 
 music. It is not the mission or work of music to ex- 
 plain to us what we are, and what is to become of us. 
 That great prerogative belongs to language and is a 
 sacred trust. 
 
 Music may ruminate, meditate and speculate delight- 
 fully, but it can arrive at no definite conclusion. At 
 most it may prompt a train of thought which if properly 
 translated into words may produce a definite thought 
 leading to a definite conclusion. 
 
 So you see the gravity of the position as regards the 
 use of words and the method of writing them down. I 
 would think less of the organic form of the whole my- 
 self than the clearness of the transmission of a thought. 
 
 357
 
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 I wouldn't think that because I began on a lovely 
 foolish sentence and ended up on one and that all those 
 in between were pitched on a like tone that I had done 
 something valuable. But if pen in hand I wandered 
 along and out of the chance sequence of ideas that 
 flowed from it one big thought gathered itself together 
 and stood out, I'd think I had done well for myself 
 and for mankind. And then I wouldn't toss aside the 
 written matter that led up to the idea, for that would be 
 too like cutting a friend who had passed a more valu- 
 able friend on to you, going off and leaving him in the 
 lurch. 
 
 One reason for obscurity I can admit to a certain 
 extent. Any book that anyone writes is bound to run 
 the risk of falling into the hands of people who dislike 
 the writer and would pick many flaws and tee-hee, 
 tee-hee over the contents. Inevitably, a book once 
 published, comes within reach of inimical hands on their 
 payment of the catalogued price. But though the 
 book itself cannot be kept out of the reach of a profane 
 grasp, the contents can be pitched so far above the 
 grasp of the inimical minds, by a cleverly woven veil 
 of wordy obscurity, that though they have bought and 
 paid for it, they are sold, for the contents are sealed 
 to them ; quite beyond them. I have a mental picture 
 of a prankish author to whom this idea occurred. . . . 
 Knowing that the best way to deal with people of 
 whom he does not approve and who do not approve of 
 him is to avoid them having built himself an intel- 
 lectual eyrie, climbing up into it, and calmly drawing 
 up the ladder and making it fast. Just pausing before 
 he enters and shuts the door to make a derisive face at 
 the others below, who would like to come up and bait 
 him, but can't. 
 
 But to avoid people one dislikes is really to go to too 
 much trouble altogether and it is better to be clear and 
 free and appeal openly to all the delightful people there 
 are. 
 
 However, not this time. I've begun on a mysterious 
 
 358
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 baffling note, and I'm going on as long as I can ; that 
 is until I come to something I want to say. But till 
 then I'll go back to what I call the Russian literary 
 atmosphere. 
 
 No Russian or his compatriots would dream of calling 
 a spade a spade, so their writings are rich and juicy 
 and mournful. They'd not find any place or niche for 
 one unless it were a gravedigger's spade an ordinary 
 agricultural spade is much too cheerful and normal a 
 thing to get into a Russian book. For choice it should 
 be a spade which has dug the grave of a suicide ; the 
 grave of one who was so happy that nothing but death 
 could put the final touch to it and make it perfectly 
 complete. A perusal of these books convinced me 
 that a Russian character in a book takes no steps 
 to end his life if he is miserable, for he could not 
 then get the full flavour of his misery, or savour it 
 slowly throughout the long slow-going Russian years, 
 admiring its perfection, and loath to do anything to 
 take from it. 
 
 He has bosom friends with shaggy beards, doctors, 
 or else prosperous but morbid commercial men. The 
 morbidity seems of every assistance there in com- 
 mercial circles and appears to constitute a sort of free- 
 masonry so that morbid people buy and sell to each 
 other and traffic together in dark offices in narrow 
 morbid streets in Moscow (or elsewhere) whose names 
 end in off or sky. They are waited upon lovingly by 
 old family servants whose ancestors have winced 
 under the knout. The Russian who has not com- 
 mitted suicide because it would be waste of so much 
 good misery unburdens himself to all these morbid 
 bear-like people, well nourished and yet introspec- 
 tive. They and the old family servants commune 
 lavishly and there is an undernote of salt tears and 
 samovars. 
 
 To describe what I want to describe after their 
 manner I would write of what isn't rather than of what 
 
 359
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 is. If one knows of all the isn'ts one begins to perceive 
 what is. If you are told who is in a room or a place you 
 very often know who isn't. If you know what you 
 don't want it helps you a lot to decide what you do 
 want. If it isn't an isn't, it's an is, is quite simple to 
 apprehend, I think. If you see a bottle without a cork 
 you quickly think of a cork even if it's not there. For 
 even should the contents loom largely in your mind 
 preparatory to looming largely in your glass you are 
 wondering if they have been spoilt by the cork's 
 absence, so the isn't in this case comes before the is. 
 Thus, hold a stocking up before a Russian poet or 
 philosopher or painter and the thing that will absorb 
 their notice is the hole which they see in the heel. That 
 is not what is, but what isn't. The poet instead of 
 rhapsodising about the foot over which the stocking 
 was once drawn, apostrophises the hole. 
 
 The philosopher will propound the old question, 
 What becomes of the material that once was in the 
 place of the hole ? and give out a dissertation on the 
 indestructibility of matter. 
 
 The painter will paint the hole and immortalise it as 
 Bairnsfather has immortalised the " better 'ole." It 
 may be a semicircular hole or a jagged hole or a squar- 
 ish hole, or an indeterminate hole neither to be classed 
 as a square 'ole or a round 'ole. But there ! It is a 
 space, and the artist seizes hungrily upon it. True to 
 Art School tradition, which long since discovered the 
 value of the isn't compared to the cheapness and 
 hackneyedness of the is, and by which it was discovered 
 that the weakest and most niggling of draughtsmen 
 could get an imitation of vigour and dash into their 
 work by drawing not a given object but the space 
 about it, he directs his attention to the hole that the 
 object he desires to draw makes in the Empyrean or 
 against the background of a dirty paint-splashed studio. 
 It's a dodge and a good dodge for the artist who does 
 not see form. The seeing of form, or, as the artists put 
 
 360
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 it, the feeling for form, is a priceless gift, and some carry 
 it perfectly and need not resort to this crutch to correct 
 their appreciation of the viewed line curving about to 
 the formation of a given thing. While others don't. 
 Those who can do without it should never ask its 
 artificial aid for their grasp of form, as it ends by 
 debauching it. It encourages to see the things that are 
 not, instead of the things that are. It is inviting the 
 mind to dwell on what isn't instead of what is. 
 Reynolds would. I doubt, have done it in painting, or 
 Oliver Goldsmith in writing. 
 
 But here we are. When someone does something 
 wrong, acting on the Art School tip, I fix my eyes on 
 space, and say not, Show me the criminal, but. Show 
 me the instigator of what he has done. The instigators 
 are the possessors of jaded over-educated palates (is 
 there anything more awful than over-education ?) who 
 ask for and must be given some brut draught dug out 
 of some ultra-sophisticated cellar. The clear rill that 
 gushesout of a mountain- side would not slake their thirst. 
 
 But for all that the idea of the space fits in capitally 
 with my story. I can deliver the goods by following 
 up this arabesque of nonsense. 
 
 This space on which the slender thread of my story 
 hangs was a long, long, circuitous, straight, sometimes 
 perpendicularly larger, and at other times perpen- 
 dicularly smaller space and at other times horizontally 
 smaller or larger. By fastening your mind on this space 
 you may get an idea of something convex. It will be 
 just right if you will fix the idea of something convex 
 in your mind and then, having got this, proceed to build 
 up around the convexity. That will be working the 
 Art School tip inversely. There you are first shown the 
 object and then asked to observe the space. I give you 
 the space first and then tell you to carry on, and so, 
 naturally, if you build up around a long narrow space 
 you will get something concave. 
 
 If I had been telling this story in the good old way, 
 I'd have begun by saying at once that what I was 
 
 361
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 talking about was concave, but that is out of date, so 
 I approached it inversely, and in the Russian way. 
 My little story is about But just wait a bit. 
 
 It was supremely difficult to get Dan to say yes. If 
 I'd told him point-blank he would have said no. If I'd 
 said he oughtn't to, he'd have gone like a shot. That's 
 partly how I managed him finally. I believe that I am 
 a good diplomatist, or have been becoming one lately. 
 Trying to lead a judge with gout in both feet, if not in 
 the brain, to do things and see things the way one wants 
 is all the training any diplomatist should need. I'd 
 had a few more briefs at the end of this term and felt 
 my power growing within me. I take an extraordinary 
 delight in making people do what I wish and they don't. 
 It causes me unbounded satisfaction. I proposed to 
 go for a walk. The lawn was soggy-damp, for there 
 had been a downpour of long-delayed rain, which had 
 been prayed for all over the country. It caught the 
 curate when he came to call. And we had jocularly 
 reminded him that it was his own doing as we helped 
 him into both macintosh and galoshes when he was 
 leaving. 
 
 The billiard-table, as it was a hired house, was no use. 
 Playing on it was like Alice's dream of playing croquet 
 with a flamingo, which turned round and looked at her 
 when she was about to take her shot. We had bathed 
 twice already that morning, and read all the papers 
 and books in the place. Celia was writing letters with 
 Ada Lamb's assistance and had begged us to make 
 ourselves scarce. 
 
 I said : " Let's go for a walk." Dan said : " Don't 
 let's go for a walk." " Why not ? " I said. It was the 
 only thing to do and I particularly wished he would. 
 
 " It's so far." 
 
 " You don't know how far it is, and it can't be more 
 than three miles," inadvertently I replied. 
 
 " You're not after taking me to see something ? " 
 Dan's voice was suspicious and he used a colloquialism. 
 
 362
 
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 He hates seeing things and always fears that I may 
 take him to look at a Norman church or Druidical 
 remains or something that shows traces of a Roman 
 occupation. 
 
 " No," I said nonchalantly. " No. Only a walk to 
 stretch our limbs. Mine are getting all crumpled up 
 from getting no exercise and a walk does give one 
 an appetite, doesn't it ? And just now Mrs Moggs is 
 really in good form. Those lobsters a la Newburgh 
 were good, weren't they ? " 
 
 " Yes, they were," he agreed, and after a short 
 silence also said he'd come for a walk. Later. 
 
 Anyone who has been unfortunate enough to lead an 
 idle life at any time for long enough to get bored with 
 it must have noticed how impossible it is to find time 
 to do anything during the day. There is hardly time 
 to get up and shave and dress and breakfast, lunch, tea, 
 and dine and wash hands and smoke and read papers 
 and change into flannels and out again. Something 
 seems to go wrong with the clock and the hands con- 
 stantly point to a time when it is too soon before 
 another time to try and fit anything in. They register 
 all sorts of uninspiring hours. Eleven forty-five. Well, 
 who ever started to do anything at eleven forty-five ? 
 One has just finished smoking. It's too late to think, 
 too soon to read, too late to go out, too soon to stay in. 
 Or else ten minutes to one, and that is not any sort 
 of time at all. It means nothing. It leaves an odd 
 wedge-shaped piece of time that can't be put to any 
 practical use. You couldn't start a life-work at ten 
 minutes to one. Six o'clock in the morning is the 
 correct time for that. Half-past two is much too 
 early and twenty past three is a limp, nerveless time 
 o' day, no use to man or beast ! 
 
 After that you're getting towards tea-time, and 
 what man in his senses would let anything interfere 
 with tea ? 
 
 One can't settle to anything if one has the whole day 
 in which to do it. Between cigarettes, bridge and 
 
 363
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 billiards and paper-reading or tennis, or wondering 
 what one will do next, the day flies, and if by any chance 
 a spare quarter of an hour does come along it's no use. 
 It only gives you fifteen minutes to remember yourself 
 and that you are bored or that you have a touch of 
 rheumatism in that knee you hurt climbing. Idleness 
 reminds one that one is there in short, and that is 
 always annoying. 
 
 I believe I must be afflicted with imagination, but 
 every hour of the day as it crops up bears a different 
 aspect to me. Half-past two is a sober, respectable 
 hour, draped in black, I can't think why. Three o'clock 
 is a bright little bit of the day. It may or may not. 
 Maybe yes. maybe no. Four o'clock is either too early 
 or too late, according to whom one is with or what 
 one is doing. Ten o'clock in the morning is a neutral 
 woolly sort of time. It has never associated itself in 
 my mind with anything. I've never done anything 
 special at that time. I've never heard of anything 
 special about then. It has, as far as I'm concerned, 
 no history. That is an awful thing to be able to say 
 about anything or anybody. Twelve o'clock midday 
 is a full-bodied, burgomaster-like cheerful hour. 
 There is yet hope. One may achieve something with 
 one's day, and by this means, with one's life even, at 
 twelve midday. 
 
 Seven o'clock in the evening is too late and too early 
 both at the same time. One is not yet hungry and one 
 is very frightened that one is not going to be. One 
 sits down and remembers might-have-beens and, worse 
 still, might-not-have-beens. 
 
 I haven't any vivid images of the other hours. I 
 had, I remember, a great fancy for the smaller hours as 
 a young man. They were, looking back upon them, 
 slightly tinted pink. 
 
 Dan feels this way about the different hours and I 
 had to pretend it was half-past four to get him out. 
 He rather fancies this time of the afternoon. An old 
 rich uncle had visited him when he was a small boy at 
 
 364
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 school and given him a five-pound note round about 
 that hour, I heard him say and it has pleasant 
 associations for him. 
 
 His watch was out of order through his having worn 
 it while bathing, so he had to take my word for it. 
 
 The road there is delightful. It is winding and 
 attractive, with glimpses and vistas that suggest pos- 
 sibilities. Certain roads have this about them. They 
 appeal to you and you turn the corners with eagerness, 
 perfectly certain and half sure that you will see some- 
 thing you like around them. We all know these roads, 
 so I won't talk too much about their charm. You come 
 across them here and there when you stay in fresh 
 places, and you know a friendly road the moment you 
 see it. Your feet have trodden it often. Its long 
 low hedges and wayside odours are familiar, strangely 
 familiar. So are the side glimpses it gives you anon 
 and again into copse and plantation, where the fat 
 family mansions half hide so cosily, in which jolly 
 people live and see to their home farms and do all 
 sorts of jolly things. The road knows you and you 
 know it. It seems pleased to see you and even appears 
 to have been waiting specially for you and appears a 
 hint sad, just a bit, that you hadn't seen fit to come 
 along sooner. 
 
 It would be a delightful thing to be a collector of 
 roads, and though so bulky, I wish I could get a few 
 of the nicest together and keep them all handy and go 
 a- walking on them under their shady trees, that drop 
 soft pungent leaves or, in spring, petals or lime-tassels, 
 or else little green bobbins according to their kind, 
 and spread a carpet varying with the seasons for my 
 feet when I wished to or was in the mood, without 
 having to go a long tiresome railway journey to get to 
 where they are. This road was lovely and brought its 
 dense and glorious woods right up to the dim sea's 
 edge, to the margin of a wide sheltered bay. The air 
 blew in so mildly that it hardly carried half last year's 
 
 365
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 leaves down, and the little new-comers in spring had 
 to push the remainder off so as to make a way for 
 themselves. 
 
 A few steps brought us out to the dull gold sands 
 to walk on whose velvet softness sent a thrill up one's 
 spine ; they were so pat-smooth and elastically firm 
 and rounded to one's feet. They were gold and glossy, 
 embossed and piled well to the land, for we were there 
 in a sort of cove, curved sharp to the left under the 
 protecting lea of very high, lumpish red cliffs and 
 rocks. We paused as we left the shadow of the woods 
 and looked at these. Each time one visited the cove's 
 cool dark embrasure they greeted one differently. 
 Sometimes they were children's great enormous red 
 fee-fo-fum giants, sitting there looking at the ships 
 as they went by, and the matted grass slipping down 
 their edges and bossy formations was their hair, and 
 longer grasses waving in tufts in the wind, their whiskers. 
 Oftener they were towering monsters of fantastic 
 shapes, Assyrian bulls and rams, or mysterious and 
 forbidding colossi ranged alongside of great temple 
 pillars that looked Babylonian, with uncouth carvings 
 and sculptures winding up them. 
 
 It would not have seemed impossible or out of the 
 general run of things to have seen the Emperor Assur- 
 banipal issuing from them with a clang of brazen doors, 
 accompanied by the retinues of his High Priests. Cruel- 
 looking, dark people, hardly to be thought of as 
 men, with enclosed beards and priestly caste marks 
 on their faces, walking behind him as they bore 
 aloft the peculiar furbished insignia of their mysterious 
 offices. 
 
 To-day they did not seem like children's ogres or 
 buildings, but jutted out in big soft formations 
 into the bay, like massive groups of great couchant 
 half-attentive beasts with their fore-paws in the 
 water. 
 
 I asked Dan if he saw anything suggestive of these 
 things about them and he said certainly not. They 
 
 360
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 were rocks, big ones, and that ended the matter. Red 
 sandstone, too, not any use for anything but scenery. 
 
 It was very little use asking Dan to admire scenery 
 or to look at it ; he only sees things that are in it, and 
 will point them out to you ; such as a mountain edge 
 where they quarry out a certain sort of stone or slate ; 
 cliffs where you could get the eggs of some birds and 
 not of others ; or call your attention to a steamer or 
 ship, a wind-jammer or brigantine, state its tonnage 
 and where bound for, and where from, and under what 
 flag she steams or sails, and what cargo she carries. 
 
 The view here extends in a great gracious curve for 
 miles and he could see everything in it and what it was 
 for though not its beauty. His sight is magnificent 
 and would have been an asset to an artist. He saw 
 the coastguard's cottage, perfect and tiny on a very 
 distant point, and when he showed me I saw it too. It 
 was an attractive landscape, very delightful. The soft 
 hills, not high enough to be stern, came gradually down, 
 Nature's amphitheatre sloping to a sea-stage. They 
 were pastorally green, cut haphazard with hedge and 
 tillage to different shapes and tones. Little buildings 
 nestled like white and coloured toys among them. 
 Indeed, from where we stood it was toyland itself. 
 There was a puff of cloud behind a toy steeple ; both 
 white, but the cloud whitest. A toy railway track 
 went curving in and out, in and out, and disappeared 
 into a toy tunnel, by the side of which, on the em- 
 bankment, stood a little tall toy signal-post. A wreath 
 of toy smoke came up suddenly, and we heard a little 
 toy scream, as a toy train disappeared in the little 
 hole. 
 
 " That's the five-thirty-nine for town," said Dan 
 equably, but I didn't believe him, for toy trains like 
 that don't really get anywhere. It would go round 
 and round in a circle in and out of the Christmas bazaar 
 tunnels till the clockwork ran down. 
 
 The waves curled slowly, cornucopia-wise, slanting 
 
 367
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 to the bay's wide indentation and saying hush, hush, 
 hush, all along the shores, as we walked by them, giving 
 off a little breeze of fresh salty air, like a cool whisper 
 up into our faces, as they broke and softly spread 
 almost under our feet. We had to jump several times 
 to evade them and this brought about something that 
 nearly sent Dan home in a rage. It is a beach densely 
 strewn with shells, especially great big cockle shells, 
 like miniature white wash-basins. They lie there 
 after every tide, each full of clear sea- water and a few 
 grains of sand at the bottom, as if little housemaids 
 had not emptied them, and to walk inadvertently is to 
 get a spout of cold water up your ankles. You tread 
 on them, they crackle, tip up, and up goes the water. 
 Dan never thinks of looking where he is going and so 
 got wringing wet. I did not want him to go back. 
 Anything but that. Not so many more yards and we 
 would be round the bend and the incoming tide (the 
 little waves out beyond were running up eagerly to 
 the headlands) would soon have made retreat im- 
 possible. I began, striking deep quickly, to speak to 
 him of himself. Any conversational opening will 
 serve to lead to this topic soon with him, he is so given 
 to speculating about himself. He is interested in him- 
 self, and wonders why he said this or what induced 
 him to do that. He is his own audience, never restive ; 
 watches himself and then holds debates on himself ; 
 how he appears to others ;' what he is really like, and 
 what his type is, and if he is really consistently true 
 to type. To hear him is like fluttering the pages of 
 a University Extension lecture hand-book, with foot- 
 notes, on Hamlet the Melancholy Dane, edited by 
 himself. Was he or was he not all there ? What was 
 his motive for this action ? Why did he speak so to 
 Polonius and say " very like a whale ! " and why 
 didn't he propose to Ophelia ? 
 
 That reminds me But later. 
 
 I started him and didn't listen, but said All ! and 
 Yes ! with seventeen different inflections, using them 
 
 368
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 in rotation. What useful things inflections are. I 
 keep a lot at hand. Using a few skilfully, there was no 
 need to listen to him, and instead my thoughts wandered 
 to the sea. I love the sea. It amuses me because it is 
 so human. No sooner has it finished one useless thing 
 than it turns round and begins to do another. A few 
 hours back it was bent on going out as far as it's possible 
 for a neap tide to go, and now here it was equally bent 
 on coming in as far as a neap tide could, and cut us off, 
 and I chuckled, for this suited me well. It was just 
 doing what I wanted. 
 
 " What do you say ? " said Dan suddenly. 
 
 " I say yes, deliberately yes," using my most decided 
 inflection. 
 
 This satisfied him quite well, for he w r ent on again. 
 
 " That's just what I feel about it ! " etc., etc. 
 
 I thought of the sea again. How is it that it never 
 gets tired of doing the same thing over and over again ? 
 It sets about its business, as I said before, with surpris- 
 ing gusto, never bored by repetition, as a woman is 
 by housework or society, or a man by office work or 
 routine. And how methodical. It puts all the big 
 shells and pebbles of a certain weight, right high and 
 forward, scattered in a long line, and nearer to itself 
 places another long wavy line of smaller shells and 
 little pebbles, and nearer again all the little 'uns and 
 tinies and bits and powdery-sized pebbles. 
 
 " I mustn't let him go on too long about himself," I 
 thought, " for I may want to turn this tap on again to 
 keep him occupied while we 
 
 "Is that a dog I see before me ? " I said jocosely. 
 
 A large, animated piece of brightish, pinkish 
 agitated fluff that might or might not have been an 
 Irish terrier stood before us wagging tail and lolling 
 tongue. White dogs here look like heraldic griffins 
 or things you buy at bazaars against your will, for the 
 earth is red, and the sand is red, and it's against dog 
 nature not to have a good roll in both occasionally, so 
 
 2 A 3G9
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 they run about joyfully and add to the gaiety of nations 
 by turning Rose du Barri pink, and the first one you 
 see makes you rub your eyes and wonder what ails you. 
 They are not, I think, rich people's dogs. They seem 
 too happy and free and healthy to be that. Whom 
 they belong to I don't know, but there are always dogs, 
 pink and otherwise, on the beaches about here, per- 
 petually waiting for someone to sling a stone to be 
 fetched by a good dog. This one romped heraldically 
 and sported and hoped we would throw something. 
 
 " It strikes me " I said. 
 
 "Things are always striking you," said Dan, "and 
 when they do you stand stock-still. Well never get 
 this fearsome walk over if you don't come on. And 
 this habit of yours of standing and stopping to talk to 
 dogs you haven't been introduced to and to hold long 
 conversations with them on politics as you so often do, 
 or Celtic poetry or monogamy or Buddhism, is a great 
 mistake. You will be arrested as a lunatic for talking 
 to dumb animals about things they can't understand 
 and shouldn't." 
 
 Dan was annoyed at being interrupted when on his 
 favourite theme. 
 
 " Nothing is beyond a dog's comprehension. You've 
 only to look in their eyes to see that." 
 
 "You'll be arrested as loony, I tell you." 
 
 I'd got him as far as the railway arch. Once through 
 that and having taken the first to the left I'd breathe 
 or argue again. 
 
 " Do you really believe that one is capable of forming 
 one's own character, Dan, or is one obliged to go about 
 with the leavings of one's ancestors ? Take yourself 
 for instance 
 
 He is great upon this. It's his subject. I led the 
 way over a rather complicated and slippery stile, 
 hurrying along ahead of him and up the hill by the 
 railway line, visible in a cutting between the usual 
 wooden and wire posts. 
 
 He had to hurry to catch up with me to give me his 
 
 370
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 answer. His character was a thing of beauty and 
 intricacy according to his report of it. He never let it 
 out of his sight. It was a Christmas tree loaded with 
 good things, which were never stripped off as in the 
 case of a tree, but remained to accumulate year after 
 year, fresh beauties and gifts being added to it all the 
 time. Spartan fortitude was the thing of the moment, 
 and should be useful when 
 
 He is proud of his ancestors because they chose to 
 do the right thing in choosing to be his ancestors. But 
 he is not going to let their heads be turned in their 
 graves by giving them the credit for his talents and 
 mental adornments. These are entirely the result of 
 his own efforts. All the way up after the lines had 
 disappeared into the tunnel he drew the subject out. 
 It was like a wet cloth. Pull it out very long in one 
 direction and it got narrow one way. Having narrowed 
 it, you began on the narrowness and drew it out wide 
 till the bit that was narrow was wide and the other 
 way about. I could use clearer words to describe this, 
 but hackneyed phrases cause me a nostalgia and who- 
 ever reads this can perhaps see what I mean. 
 
 I didn't listen. I used my inflections and I thought 
 of the scenery again. Nature is so wonderful ; her 
 charm lies in this, that you can admire her constantly 
 and it never turns her head, for it's not a human head. 
 I'd taken daily walks along that coast and nothing 
 appeared the same twice, nor did it stay the same for 
 long enough to tire you, as people's faces do. I was 
 feeling a bit tired of Dan's, but then soon I wouldn't 
 be able to see it. 
 
 He continued continuously. 
 
 I inflected. 
 
 I'd stepped it out along the little red path, part 
 clay, part sand, part embedded pebbles and flints that 
 gritted under one's heels as one climbed and climbed, 
 more than once. Time and again I'd looked out 
 to the sea over that tangled little wind-toughened 
 
 371
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 quick- set hedge, straggling along over and under and 
 this side and that of the little, now straight, now slant- 
 ing weathered oak paling clinging to the edge of the 
 cliff. Replaced newly where it had rotted or blown 
 down, off the crumbling earth, if the cliff had given on 
 its brink. The swirly rooted ivy was in clumps against 
 and through it, effectively glossy and of the sort that 
 had flat, bluish-dark clusters of dryish berries on it. 
 Bramble growths went twining and binding it together. 
 The agitated twigs of the quick-set failed here and there 
 though in others one peered through their criss-cross 
 prickles where they rose up, having been turned an 
 ashen-grey by the salty air. This side of the oak slats, 
 and hardly visible against the growths, was a little 
 straight, thin, close-spiked old-fashioned railing. Here 
 and there a circular bite seemed gone from the side 
 of the cliff and you could look down through apple- 
 green leaves to the lovely bottle-green sea-water, 
 awash and clear over the big flat boulders. 
 
 To the right the ground was cultivated to the edge 
 of the mountain path and scores of fat close-crinkled 
 cabbages, creaking juicily, were growing in lines. And 
 fat dew or raindrops or moisture of some sort balanced 
 skilfully in the cool crinkles. Behind, waiting to be 
 planted, was the fresh-ploughed land, looking like a 
 lot of brown immovable waves. And oh ! the beauty 
 of the sea as I saw it looking back over the tops of 
 those little thin close-spiked railings. Each day I 
 came there I saw something different. On Monday it 
 was windy and cloudy and gave rather mixed effects. 
 I came twice that day. In the morning the light had 
 a fancy for all the softly rounded bits and lay 
 appreciatively on sloping meads of mist-green. One 
 only saw the round bits of the hills. It took no notice 
 of the flat bits or prominences. In the afternoon it 
 had a fancy to pick out all jagged spurs, whether of 
 rock or harsh lands. Back of us it left everything in 
 an almost complete darkness, on the other promontory, 
 
 372
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 but selected out of myriads of houses invisible there 
 four of a terrace and made them look a ghastly radiant 
 white ; there were only the four of them staring across 
 at us out of the mist as if they were faces blanched 
 with terror. Tuesday a stiffish breeze blew and the 
 sea-birds called pessimistically. The trees and hedges 
 and grasses seemed to shrink with the cold. The 
 headlands jutted out sternly and looked unpropitious. 
 All the crannies of the cliffs were stuffed with cold, 
 dark, blackish-red shadows. They were pitted deeply 
 with them. Wednesday was a grey day. It had 
 rained and would rain again and the light had taken 
 on a greyish-white brilliance. Everything was swathed. 
 Hills and horizons alike, to right and left before us 
 were muffled in ghost-grey shroudings. While I was 
 looking, wraith clouds opened above and let grey glories 
 come slanting down, pouring and spilling them in a 
 silver treasure, till they glittered like Lohengrin's shin- 
 ing armour, alone and oval, in the soft grey wide waste 
 of the sea. Thursday the lands projected reposedly 
 as if in the hour of a well-earned rest, green and 
 brown, into a softly moving, calmly incoming sea. 
 Far from me, a host of misty fishing ships with cobweb 
 sails sheltered in a misty harbour in the hollow of a 
 quiet hill. 
 
 Friday it was all different. It looked crisp and clear 
 and brisk, and as nice as if it had all been washed and 
 done up and spring-cleaned ; bright fresh greens, 
 bright fresh browns. The light visited everything 
 impartially and left nothing unseen. Everything was 
 as speckless as in a room where the housemaids have 
 all been at work thoroughly with mops and brooms 
 and soft soap, and have retired, leaving things trim 
 and clean and all but dry. 
 
 Here was Saturday and the promise of yesterday's 
 brightness was fulfilled. I heard the high swettering 
 song of the lark as he rose gaily. His manners are 
 good and he sings his thanks to his Creator for letting 
 
 373
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 him live through the long summer days. I asked my- 
 self if heaven could be as" heavenly as earth. We had 
 climbed up and up and up but had taken no turnings. 
 The steepness of the incline had cut Dan's breath short 
 but not his conversation, and he still told me about 
 himself in gasps, and I still inflected in gasps. We 
 paused, for we were all but there, though Dan didn't 
 know it. The railway line (no connection whatever 
 with the toy railway line, as I preferred to think) now 
 soared above our heads on an embankment and a few 
 quick appreciative steps under a small dark arch led 
 us out to what must surely have been the edge of the 
 world ! 
 
 W^e stood out to sea between the two curves of the 
 widening bays on the point of connection between 
 linked headlands jutting out on either side, only half 
 gloriously visible. The little meadow we stood in 
 overhung roundly, cliff-high and gently pent-wise, 
 now up, now down, a curvature of greening grassy 
 carpet pile, springing close under our feet. 
 
 From under the little dark railway arch we had 
 stepped instantly into a delicious blue wan airy nothing- 
 ness, so serene, so mild, we could for a space only 
 marvel and stand agaze. The little fisher ships, out 
 of the harbour now, hung delicately in a curtain of 
 faint air. There seemed no sea, no horizon, nothing 
 but air, exquisite, misty, warm, pale air. 
 
 Looking down in surprise and delight to where the 
 cove murmured below us, we saw slipping quiet past 
 us the gleam of dim blue dimpling waters. The sea 
 was there after all, and the lower part of the infinitely 
 pale motionless curtain, seemingly of a lovely flimsy 
 fineness, was not air, but the sea's softly moving dream- 
 depths. They were mirror-smooth for the most, but 
 just faintly tarnished here and there by a little breath 
 of a breeze, puffing vicariously off the land. It came 
 and played on the back of our necks carelessly and 
 then passed on to the sea, ribboning it in long blue- 
 tinged ells, narrow and horizontal. 
 
 374
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 A lot of little green, close, pampered hills behind us 
 shut off the rest of the country. It was a sequestered 
 place. 
 
 And now that we were there, I thought : "It is a 
 pity- 
 
 We gazed around. There were moles about, any 
 amount of them, for they had thrown up little piles 
 of red loose earth. Personally I could have stayed 
 there for hours on end, staring at those soft sea wonders 
 in front of us, but I steeled myself and, as if there were 
 nothing to see, I started to slide down a little path 
 which, though at my very feet, dissembled its existence 
 in the tufts of growth at the cliff's edge. 
 
 " If you don't think you can manage it, don't come. 
 It's rough on clothes " mine were getting caked and 
 rubbed most deplorably. 
 
 " Can't manage it ! I like that, you sedentary old 
 quill-driver. Do you mean to say that you think that 
 there is something you can do that I can't." He was 
 down after me in a trice. I said nothing. He was 
 coming and that was all that mattered. I had tried 
 it once or twice again lately, much to the chagrin of the 
 man who brushed my clothes, and I believe he was 
 wondering " what game " I had been up to to get them 
 so clotted and crashed. But they were old clothes 
 and it had to be done, and I was getting down most 
 nimbly. I didn't gasp nearly as much as Dan when 
 we stood at the bottom at last. It didn't occur to 
 him to ask me why I had brought him down that im- 
 possible path and let him get his clothes into such a 
 disarray. It was enough for Dan that it was difficult 
 to get down and would be difficult to get up. That is 
 all Dan expected of anything, that it should be difficult. 
 Difficult ! He battened on difficulties ; he tried for 
 them, and tried them and compared them against 
 others. He lived for difficulties and he hunted for 
 them, and required them, so to speak, to be served with 
 every meal ; not little annoying difficulties these 
 only made him peevish but big ones, where he risked. 
 
 375
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 neck and limb or the tearing of a muscle off a bone 
 with a swish. He was enchanted with this path. I 
 felt now I ought to have told him of it in the first 
 instance and then I need not have gone to so many 
 subterfuges to get him there. But he wasn't going 
 to be allowed to stay by the foot of the path and try 
 to climb it. I saw he was just preparing to, so I 
 squilched off quickly through the sand which wasn't 
 sand, but millions of infinitesimal gritted-up bits of 
 shells too tiny to tell of ; the waves whirl them up 
 here and grind them on a handful of slippery rocks 
 below. They act apparently like the pebbles in the 
 gizzard of a bird. Everything washed into this cove, 
 no matter how hard, is broken up, assimilated and 
 digested by the sea, almost in the form of powder. 
 
 I squilched and crackled off noisily and of course 
 he came after me. He wasn't going to climb the path 
 unnecessarily unless I stood and looked at him do it, 
 to see how much better his performance was than mine. 
 He must have an audience (I should say a looker-on) 
 as well as a difficulty, you know. But again I hurried 
 on, talking with my tongue and crackling with my feet, 
 so that I couldn't hear him when he asked me where 
 I was going or what for. To answer him might, just 
 as I was on the very pip of bringing the coup off, send 
 him straight home again. On I went, falling over one 
 last hexagonal, polygonal, pentagonal, heptagon of a 
 rock, of which all the onals and agonals caught me in 
 tenderest places, and presently stood before the long 
 winding, curving, convex thing I introduced you to 
 earlier, and around which through a building-up process 
 you got an idea of the concavity. Though also you 
 may not. 
 
 This is rather too Russian. I shall never get on if I 
 refer to it in these terms. It was the space I mentioned 
 to you earlier and it went forward ever so far. Looking 
 at it in the way which is really the only way it can be 
 of any use to my story, it was concave. 
 
 376
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 Naturally it had to be this, for it was a cave. 
 
 It was a cave and a very special cave indeed, winding 
 far back into the hills, miles long, and dark. ^Eons and 
 aeons ago a mighty river changed its course for some 
 reason or maybe for no reason at all. In the good old 
 prehistoric times Nature was more capricious, more 
 woman-like, younger and given to change. A river 
 often changed its course ; grew tired of the hills about 
 her, wanted to see life, and decided to go and stay some- 
 where else. The one that once flowed here did so, and 
 it may have been her undoing, for there is no trace of 
 her now, only the underground channels that with un- 
 believable patience she made for herself, creeping in 
 and out of natural fissures, joining them up, increasing 
 and opening them and finding her way ; flowing now 
 wide, now small, curving round obstacles, pillars of 
 sandstone and quartz crystals mixed together. 
 
 This cave presented not merely one difficulty but a 
 whole menagerie of them, and as I say this I recollect 
 that inside its widish mouth, to which one ascended a 
 little as it sloped gradually down to one, a lot of odd- 
 shaped, reddy and variegated-coloured squarish and 
 roundish intelligent-looking boulders grouped them- 
 selves like animals, looking out at us. Red tigers, and 
 sheep, and red bison and buffalo, and red lions too, 
 though, thank goodness, not the sort that one finds as 
 one motors through country villages. 
 
 Perhaps it will appear that I have been contradicting 
 myself in asserting that it would not be easy to lure 
 Dan into the cave, having just stated that it bristled 
 with difficulties and how very anxious he always was 
 to grapple with them. The apparent contradiction lies 
 in that, as I explained, Dan can't bear to be taken to 
 " see " anything. And very naturally a great inter- 
 esting cave stretching and winding for miles inland 
 would be the sort of thing that people would go to 
 " see," and this put it entirely out of Dan's list of 
 things to be done. 
 
 377
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 Going to see interesting things is " not done." or very 
 rarely, by a fellow of Dan's social standing who hunts 
 with three packs. Or only if he must, and there is no 
 way out of it. 
 
 I got up the slope, still gritting and slipping and talk- 
 ing quickly about nothing at all ; inflecting and saying 
 off-handedly that I must have a look inside as it was 
 many a long day since I'd had a peep. Now if he had 
 been the sort who occasionally stops to look at a bit 
 of scenery, perhaps what follows might never have 
 happened to him, for the cove there is an exquisite 
 little nook. Exquisite. But he isn't. Such things 
 mean nothing to him. He cannot admire the scenery 
 more cleverly or more brilliantly than anyone else. I 
 maintain that he has not those resources within himself 
 that teach one the wonders of nature, and make one, 
 so to speak, self-supporting as far as inspiration goes. 
 Alone without a cricket bat, a tennis racket or a gun 
 or a rod, he is very little use that is. he is very little 
 use considering that he is such a brilliant fellow. For 
 he is that ; but brilliant people, you'll observe, are like 
 matches. They need a box to strike on. 
 
 That reminded me. Had I matches ? Yes. 
 
 I went on ahead, calling to him to follow, and he did. 
 He followed me to see what I was doing, and I still 
 called him on, a little ahead, and he followed, for I was 
 still too far ahead to hear him and he wasn't going to 
 turn round and go back without asking me what in 
 thunder I thought I was doing, and telling me that I 
 was a silly ass to do it. 
 
 I always carry a flash-lamp with me knocking about 
 the country. Dan laughs at me and says it is old- 
 maidish but that is just exactly where he is wrong. 
 
 I don't say that I need one, but they are very jolly 
 Jittle things, just what a boy would have revelled in. 
 They were not invented when I was a youngster, so for 
 old time's sake and to please the boy I once was I carry 
 one about. My revolver belongs to that boy really 
 and a particularly expensive set of tools I never use. 
 
 378
 
 It is an odd gratification to me to buy luxuries that 
 were not within his reach, and many a box of fat Carls- 
 bad plums and liqueur cherries embedded in chocolate 
 I've purchased and slowly eaten, by way of giving him 
 a treat and to show the poor little chap that I've not 
 entirely forgotten him. 
 
 Selfish. Oh. I don't think so. 
 
 We climbed in. The flash-light gave me the advant- 
 age. I could get ahead stoopingly by its light fairly 
 quickly. Dan had to stumble along by the sound of 
 my movements and voice. I couldn't go too far. That 
 would have been to arouse his suspicion, so I let him get 
 within hearing and played my lamp around the first 
 biggish opening we got to, which was an extraordinarily 
 interesting sight, as the quartz crystals are so beautiful 
 and so clear, except where they are stained flush-red 
 from the nearness of the adjacent sandstone. It was 
 a natural Aladdin's cave hung with many-sided jewel- 
 like pendent stalactites as well as stalagmites that had 
 the appearance of big piles of uncut or partly cut 
 diamonds and rubies lying in careless profusion which- 
 ever way we looked. 
 
 Dan whistled as I switched my light knowingly from 
 side to side, getting them to glitter and radiate. 
 
 " By Jingo ! What a gorgeous cave ! I'd no idea 
 there was a place like this round here." 
 
 He'd heard of it regularly, repeatedly. I flashed my 
 light, intentionally getting dazzling gleams. 
 
 " It's like a pirates' cave full of loot. 'Pon my word, 
 it's like a tale of buried treasure. Show me the light 
 here. These fellows look as if you could pick 'em up, 
 but of course they are all solid." He kicked with his 
 shoe at a mass and finding that useless, picked up a 
 loose lump and struck at a pile of rectangular crystal 
 cubes of all sorts and got himself a large clear bit off. 
 "This will do for a paper-weight if it's polished," 
 pocketing it. "I'd like to look round a bit. I've 
 never seen anything like this." 
 
 Now that he was there, as I had guessed, he would 
 
 379
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 look round thoroughly. He didn't mind doing so, 
 finding himself there. There was nothing against a 
 chap who happened to be in an interesting spot, taking 
 a look at anything noteworthy there. The crime lay 
 in going specially to see it ! The breach of social 
 etiquette, the sin against his class, would be in that. 
 
 I made a mental calculation that anything over 
 twenty minutes now would bring the water into the 
 lowest crevice; forty-five would bring it up to the 
 second, which was still ahead of us, but the getting to 
 which was now a foregone conclusion thanks to his 
 appetite for difficulties. We had to climb a bit to get 
 to the aperture but, after entering, the slant was down 
 and would slant still farther, as he would find as soon 
 as he took it into his head to explore farther. 
 
 "You seem quite at home here, Peter." 
 
 " I've been here several times." 
 
 "What an extraordinary fellow you are. You 
 never said anything about this wonderful place. What 
 makes you so secretive ? " 
 
 " I don't know really." 
 
 I'd mentioned the place over and over again before 
 him, and Professor Meakin and I had had a long and 
 learned disputation in his presence about it not above 
 three weeks before. 
 
 " Does it go far ? " 
 
 " Miles and miles and miles." 
 
 " Miles and miles and miles. Why, at that rate one 
 could easily lose oneself in it." 
 
 " People have done so, often." 
 
 " Do they ? " This was more than interesting. 
 "Then it has never been properly explored." 
 
 " I shouldn't think so. I've heard of one man who 
 got almost five miles into it but finally gave it up as 
 it showed no signs of coming to an end. He was con- 
 stantly getting lost in the ramifications and side alleys, 
 of which I hear there are dozens, and most confusing." 
 
 "How careless of the authorities not to investigate 
 thoroughly. No one knows what might not be found : 
 
 380
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 perhaps prehistoric remains of animals or even of their 
 hunters." 
 
 This wasn't how he looked at it really. He didn't 
 care what could be found. The thing was, that it was 
 full of difficulty, and that a man might get lost in it 
 and wander round and round and never be heard of 
 again. 
 
 I crawled ahead, sure now that he would follow me. 
 We went down cautiously and got past the damp 
 pebbly bottom of the second chamber or pocket which 
 in time would be filled direct from the sea's own in- 
 exhaustible reservoir. Already the damp was apparent 
 under my feet. It wouldn't be so long now, and the 
 chamber would be filled thoroughly. There would be 
 no egress possible once that happened till at least mid- 
 night. I wondered if the seaweed on the roof would be 
 very noticeable, but Dan had nothing to say about it, 
 only prompting me to get on ahead with that light 
 or else would I let him get on ahead with it, as I was 
 such an old slow-coach. He was enormously intrigued 
 by the cave. 
 
 I wasn't going to let my lamp out of my hand. I 
 knew what I had come there for and it was necessary 
 that I should keep that lamp right. He might have 
 let it drop on the rock and shattered the little bull's-eye 
 glass, and I did not relish the idea of all those hours 
 spent in the darkness waiting 
 
 I pressed on a bit, he after me. Going slowly along, 
 the little beam caught what my eye looked for, but 
 what he. unaware of anything of the sort, would not 
 see a small splash of fresh white paint at intervals. If 
 my lamp went out or I couldn't see those, it would be 
 none too pleasant. Already I had had the choice of 
 taking left or right three times, I think, and to have 
 taken right when it should have been left, or the other 
 way round, would have meant confusion to me and to 
 what I intended. We'd have both been lost most 
 certainly then. 
 
 I shot out my watch and glanced at its luminous 
 
 381
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 figures. The time was now half-past six. There were 
 still markings if I went straight along to last another 
 hour, I judged ; beyond them I did not want to go, for 
 apart from the fact that it was not necessary, the 
 advance in a crouching posture was very tiring and to 
 lift one's head unwarily was to receive a bang on the 
 cranium or brow which caused one to see dancing stars 
 for certainly several moments. I'd had to explain 
 the presence of a livid weal got in this way last 
 week and strained my prevaricating powers to their 
 limit. 
 
 I made as if to advance no farther, not wishing to 
 show my eagerness, but Dan continued to urge me on. 
 This was the best difficulty he'd come across for a 
 long time. As long as the paint was there I didn't 
 mind going on, but wild horses would not get me 
 farther after that. It wouldn't be necessary, for the 
 figure-of-eight trap to which we were gradually getting, 
 and which I had carefully marked out, would leave 
 him in my hands completely. Without knowing L, 
 he would be obliged to obey me unquestioned. We'd 
 be getting there soon, and turning round the first 
 irregular divisional pillar (which produced what looked 
 like a long passage, but which was truly an elongated- 
 triangular-based, curving column) and keeping it on 
 the left, I could lead him right round and in and out 
 of the other one, which was if anything larger, and so 
 fog him utterly. 
 
 The coast-watcher, well tipped, had explained the 
 possibilities of these curving columns to me. Would- 
 be explorers spent hours wandering back and forth 
 around them. Unless you knew enough to turn sharp 
 to the right you were bound to keep on in and out, 
 in and out of these, losing your sense of direction and 
 thinking you were going forward constantly. Their 
 openings handed you on, one to another ; you seemed 
 indeed to have no choice. 
 
 By the way, in case it should be thought I had brought 
 Dan there to do him any bodily harm. I may say here 
 
 382
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 that nothing was further from, my mind. Indeed so 
 far from it were my intentions that I had risked detec- 
 tion by bringing a pocketful of biscuits and a large 
 slab of chocolate to stay the pangs of his hunger. 
 Dan was ever a good trencher-man, and as time would 
 go by in the cave he'd get hungry. For though when 
 he set out in quest of adventure he seemed to forget 
 all about his inner man, this affair of the cave was not 
 an adventure. It was merely a ruse, a try-on. 
 
 The figure of eight served its purpose admirably 
 and ad infinitum. We went back and forth repeatedly 
 and Dan never noticed it was over the same ground. 
 I flashed the light now here, now there, so that no part 
 could be recognised as he saw it, a second time. I led 
 him along and through, and he followed me placidly, 
 convinced that we were penetrating farther and 
 farther into the heart of the land. I don't know how 
 long we were engaged this way. It seemed an un- 
 conscionable time in that stuffy and earth- and stone- 
 smelling spot, but I knew its passing had made a 
 certainty of the entering of enough water to the caverns. 
 By now they must certainly both be almost full. 
 This dodge had made assurance doubly sure. There 
 was no excitement in the cave for me beyond the 
 satisfaction of getting Dan as far in as I wanted him 
 to go, and the thought that perhaps, having got him to 
 go so far, he might utterly insist upon going farther, 
 which would not suit me at all. I left a certain margin 
 beyond the pillars, but as soon as my lamp failed to 
 discover another paint mark I knew that I had had 
 enough exploring, and that if it sufficed me it must 
 also suffice Dan. We had been in the place for quite 
 a long time already and I was getting very bored with 
 the stooping and the crawling along and the stuffiness. 
 I'm not sedentary, even if it pleases certain people 
 to say I am, but I'd rather walk upright if I can, so 
 having reached what I considered then the final and 
 suitable spot, I very carefully gave my head a painless 
 shocking bad bump, and collapsed on to a stalagmite 
 
 383
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 a most dreadfully sharp affair. I groaned, and 
 almost let the lamp out of my hand through over- 
 acting about the bump. I sat on the stalagmite while 
 my companion gave me a lecture about carelessness. 
 People who explored subterranean caverns and pursued 
 entrancing difficulties had to be careful. The very 
 essence of the thing was not to bump oneself. No 
 real explorer ever allowed himself to get bumped. 
 I listened, long enough for him to think I was taking 
 what he said to heart, but I felt the time had come to 
 endeavour to regain the outer regions once more. I 
 was very sorry, I said, but I must have air. I gasped 
 realistically and asked for air. If he was so enamoured 
 of the cave, let him come on his own with his own lamp 
 and tackle and explore it. The cave had been there 
 for years, and was not about to move away. I'd had 
 enough. I turned about carefully and set out ostensibly 
 to find the entrance. It was getting late, and Celia 
 would be getting anxious and wondering where we 
 were. Our absence if we got lost would cause her 
 anxiety, would he bear that in mind. But Dan would 
 bear nothing in mind if there was a difficulty to be 
 surmounted. Over an hour of shuffling and crawling 
 and with occasionally a certain number of paces walked 
 cautiously upright brought us to pocket number two. 
 It was nicely full when we got there and Dan whistled 
 with interest to find it so. He was pleased to see that 
 it was not, after all, so tame an affair as it might have 
 been. He listened carefully as I explained that my 
 longing for the outer air would now have to be deferred 
 for some time, and I gave him a rough estimate of the 
 outgoing of the tide. I didn't say how long it would 
 be before we could get out. I only said we would 
 have to possess our souls in patience for more than one 
 hour I did not dare say three. He hated the thought 
 of sitting still surrounded by unfathomed difficulties. 
 He was entirely for turning back and starting from 
 where we had left off. But I definitely stated that 
 further explorations were not in my line that evening 
 
 384
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 owing to the blow I had received on my head, and the 
 best or only thing to do was to sit down in the nearest 
 widened portion and just wait till we could get out. 
 I heaped coals of fire on his head by not reproaching 
 him or reminding him that if he hadn't delayed by 
 urging me to go so far, and consequently wasting so 
 much time, we should have got out before the tide came 
 in. Compunction softened his manner to me, so I 
 forgave him with tired grace as he helped me to get 
 comfortably established on a piece of rock which 
 couldn't have had more than one hundred separate 
 quartz spikes on it. 
 
 We sat ourselves down to wait, and my head really 
 did ache a bit, not from the bump I hadn't had, but 
 from the stuffiness and stooping and the intense black- 
 ness. It would be very uncomfortable and very tedious. 
 I would have to fix my thoughts on the great ultimate 
 value to be gained to pass away the time and keep 
 myself from getting irritable. I'm not awfully keen 
 on being uncomfortable. Fortunately Dan will endure 
 any discomfort as long as it is hitched on to a difficulty, 
 but if he did say anything I would remind him that he 
 had added Spartan resignation to his Christmas tree 
 and this was a chance to try his new toy. He mightn't 
 get such another chance for a long time. I put the 
 idea where I could lay my hand on it. The flash-lamp 
 suddenly seemed to get fatigued and didn't give light 
 properly. It would work for a few moments and then 
 go off. One had to keep pressing on it and letting the 
 spring up and pressing it again to get any gleam from 
 it. It was going to be gloomy work sitting there like that. 
 
 I bethought me and plunged my hands into the 
 pockets of my old Norfolk jacket and uttered an 
 excellently simulated exclamation of astonishment. 
 
 " What is it ? " 
 
 "Why, I've found something. What luck. I've 
 got three four five biscuits a bit stale, but all right 
 bar that and a slab of chocolate." 
 2B 385
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 "I say, what luck. What luck. But what a co- 
 incidence." 
 
 " Yes," hurriedly. "I'd no idea they were there. 
 I must have popped them in the day of the picnic to 
 the island and forgotten all about them." 
 
 (I'd put them there that morning, but the biscuits 
 were stale. I'd kept them purposely.) 
 
 " Not a doubt of it. What coat is that ? The old 
 Norfolk ? Did you wear it that day ? " 
 
 "Yes, rather." And I had, specially, with an eye 
 to this occasion. I had prepared well ahead, and 
 guessing I might be asked to account for the presence 
 of biscuits and chocolates, now I was able to say 
 "rather" with a ring of sincerity which would quite 
 put Dan off the track of suspecting me of anything. 
 There's nothing like the truth. It gets into the, voice so. 
 
 " Yes, I remember now. I remember wondering 
 why on earth you wore it that day, because it was 
 funny and unlike you to wear such a coat. You are 
 usually so frightfully particular." 
 
 " Why shouldn't I wear it ? " touchily. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know. Everyone to his taste. Person- 
 ally I can't stand a Norfolk coat. They're so utterly 
 beyond everything." 
 
 " Utterly beyond everything ? " 
 
 "Yes, of course ; they're so like Norfolk, and there 
 you are." 
 
 "Like Norfolk? What do you mean ? I'm afraid 
 I can't see." 
 
 Dan has always some fault to find with my things. 
 
 "Why, of course you must see what I mean. They're 
 so low like Norfolk." 
 
 " Ugh ! I'm not surprised I didn't see that. I'm 
 not good at seeing jokes in the dark, especially bad 
 ones." 
 
 " All serene. Pax. I forgot you had a head. I 
 say, you know, these biscuits are good, munched with 
 a slab of chocolate like this." 
 
 386
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 Association of ideas, as we munched and swallowed, 
 led us to talk of the island picnic of the previous week, 
 and of the local celebrities who had been wakened up 
 by Celia out of a sleep into which they had fallen some 
 years before to come to it. 
 
 We argued as to whether there were four Miss Brace- 
 girdles present, or only three. We counted. There 
 was the one who looked like a fish and one who looked 
 like a parrot and one who looked like a mixture of the 
 two and the one who looked like neither and would 
 have been quite pretty if someone had kissed her and 
 cheered her up a bit. We agreed to four. 
 
 It was a good thing I had brought the biscuits. We'd 
 have fainted with exhaustion, I think, without. I 
 hadn't brought cigarettes, and this was, I think, a master- 
 stroke. No one, least of all Dan, would ever think I 
 had deliberately come out, meaning to be out for several 
 hours, without bringing a plentiful supply of cigarettes. 
 The presence of the biscuits was more than expunged 
 by the absence of the cigarettes. I was suffering 
 greatly from the want of one now, and I would either 
 have to go without or else smbke one of Dan's awful 
 things, which were strangely compounded with some 
 Eastern perfume, some aromatic stuff which made 
 them smell like hair oil and taste of Turkish delight. 
 
 But I was driven to ask for one and lit it and thought 
 how much better it was than nothing at all. 
 
 And there we were waiting there, our two cigarettes' 
 ends glowing in the darkness of the cave like two little 
 red stars. 
 
 Their soothing effect produced silence for a space and 
 we sat inhaling gratefully. 
 
 " Do you hear something moving ? " I said idly " a 
 sort of little scuttle ? " 
 
 "Yes, I think I do. A mouse, perhaps. Switch on 
 the light. That is, if you can." 
 
 It went on, revealing an enormous spider not so far as 
 all that from my elbow. A colossal spider, a monster, 
 a whacker, a Goliath. The noise we had heard was 
 
 387
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 made by it in its approach. We'd heard its footsteps, 
 and it must be granted that a spider whose footsteps 
 can be heard in the dark can't be anything but a large 
 spider. 
 
 It stood motionless, regarding us with a hang-dog 
 expression. I shuddered. It was a creepy, whiskery 
 brute. Not a thing I'd make a pet of under any 
 circumstances. 
 
 The light stayed on. 
 
 " It doesn't seem a bit afraid of us, does it, standing 
 there, not making any attempt to run away ? " 
 
 " Afraid of us ? Not it. It knows quite well we're 
 afraid of it. It reminds me of something or somebody 
 we ran away from. Let me think. Why, of course, 
 the curate. Don't you remember the day he called, 
 the very wet day, and we all bolted so meanly and left 
 him to Celia ? It's got galoshes on just like he had." 
 
 There was a sort of thickening at the base of each leg. 
 The spider seemed to have several pairs of galoshes on, 
 outdoing the curate altogether, who only had one pair 
 and removed them in the hall. It had something the 
 same expression that I had seen on the face of the curate. 
 I think finding us all up at the bungalow making merry 
 had stirred some recollection of his unclerical days, and 
 I think he felt he'd like to be back in the world once 
 more. He had looked peevish and depressed at first, 
 but when we trooped back shamefacedly later in answer 
 to a summons from the gong at half-past four, he was 
 radiant and talking vivaciously. I saw that Celia the 
 kind-hearted had persuaded him that it was only a 
 matter of a few years before he became a bishop with 
 ten thousand a year and a palace and a helpmeet. 
 Every curate who strays across Celia's path knows it is 
 only a matter of sticking to it to become a bishop in the 
 end. She exhilarates and comforts them and gently 
 instils this feeling into them and forbears entirely to 
 point out that the last stage must be far, far worse than 
 the first. 
 
 I threw a small lump of biscuit at the grey spider 
 
 388
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 and had the satisfaction of seeing him scuttle off to his 
 bishopric. The light went off arbitrarily again. 
 
 Unless I kept Dan's mind working in some other 
 direction he might begin to put two and two together 
 and this wouldn't do. 
 
 I cast about. 
 
 " An awjul thing happened to me the other day " 
 
 " Really ! What ? " The lamp went on suddenly 
 and a gleam lit up his handsome virile face. Too 
 handsome and virile to please me. The light caught 
 and flickered on his dark reddish-black lashes and the 
 small moustache clipped to within an inch of its life 
 literally. It blazed against his grand hard red-brown 
 eyes. I wondered why his eyes did not gleam in the 
 dark like a leopard's or a jaguar's, and why he could 
 not see in the dark with them, for he was like a com- 
 bination of these two animals, and herein I think lay 
 his fascination for women, even those older than he was 
 himself. He seemed to me a primeval creature. 
 
 He didn't appear disturbed at my saying that some- 
 thing awful had happened to me. I think he considers 
 that I misuse the word inasmuch as I use it quite differ- 
 ently from what he does, applying it to mental catas- 
 trophes. If I offended anyone I'd say it was an awful 
 thing, provided I hadn't done it on purpose of malice 
 prepense, as they say. If I discussed a well-known 
 tennis player's unsporting methods at a garden-party 
 and found that her husband was sitting listening, I'd 
 say it was an awful thing, even if I heard afterwards he 
 subscribed heartily to all I said. Or if I discussed the 
 relative merits of various brands of pickles with a man 
 who was a wholesale maker of them, and was quite un- 
 necessarily trying to forget the fact, I'd think I'd done 
 an awful thing. Dan would say it was an awful thing 
 if he had meant to back the winner of the National and 
 had allowed himself to be put off it by some idiot just 
 as he was going to wire his bet away ; or if he had failed 
 to land a salmon after a long struggle with it ; or missed 
 a woodcock which had passed over him, and which was 
 
 389
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 then brought down by the man on his right, who'd left 
 it to him when it was something of an open question as 
 to whose bird it was. But he wouldn't apply the term 
 to any lesser catastrophe. 
 
 " Really ! What was it ? " he said calmly, pushing 
 his cigarette-case over to me in the dark. I took it. 
 
 " I read a book by Henry James." 
 
 "Well, there's nothing very awful about that, is 
 there ? " 
 
 " Isn't there, though ? You don't understand these 
 things." 
 
 " I've always understood that Henry James was a 
 very fine writer." 
 
 " So he is. There never was a finer. Nor ever will 
 be. That's the tragedy of it. Having read one of his 
 books, now I shall never be able to get any pleasure out 
 of reading anyone else ever again. It's quite one of 
 the worst things that has ever happened to me." 
 
 "You carry things to extremes if ever I met a man 
 who did. Extraordinary how little effect Celia 
 
 "Yes. Goon." 
 
 " Oh, nothing. Or I suppose as I've begun it I'll 
 have to finish it, for you'll not be satisfied unless I tell 
 you what I was going to say. You're Celia's one 
 failure." 
 
 "Thanks awfully," with dignity. 
 
 " Don't get ratty. It's a compliment. If a man 
 persists in being weak-minded when all his friends unite 
 yes honestly unite in trying to knock some sense 
 into him " 
 
 " Yes ? " 
 
 " Well, it seems to show I'm not at all sure but that 
 it shows his strong-mindedness. Go back to what you 
 were saying about Henry James. He's written a whole 
 heap of books. You can read those if you're too grand 
 or too silly to read anyone else." 
 
 " No, I can't read them because I've read them all. 
 The day I finished the first book I wired to the pub- 
 lisher and I got the whole lot by return and read them 
 
 390
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 straight off. My reading days are over. I couldn't 
 look at another page. I assure you, Dan, it is a tragedy 
 for a man to be cursed with a craving for the very best, 
 and having got it, such an intense appreciation of it. 
 It has been my bane all my life, for it narrows it down 
 so terribly. You know, of course, there is only one artist 
 I can stand " 
 
 " Oh don't begin about that, Peter," wearily. 
 
 " and one playwright " 
 
 " Spare me that now. This bit of rock I am sitting 
 on is so hard." 
 
 " And one poem ' : 
 
 " The Rubaiydt of Omar, of course ? " 
 
 "Yes. And only one person I could care for." 
 
 I thought this might lead up to the one subject I 
 really cared about and which, nearest my heart, was 
 responsible for our being there discussing it. But it 
 did not draw Dan out to give me any information. He 
 only burst into guffaws of laughter that is, the nearest 
 to a guffaw that a really first-class, well-bred, well- 
 schooled sporting man like Dan would indulge in, whose 
 mirth except on certain indicated occasions never gets 
 beyond his shoulders. I couldn't see them moving, but 
 I guessed they were going. 
 
 " Oh, cut it short. Peter ! I might stand this sort of 
 thing in broad daylight, but here in the dark it is too 
 much." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " What do I mean ? I mean you're the biggest old 
 flirt I've ever struck. I've never seen such a fellow. 
 The least little bit of a frill coming round the corner 
 and you are all eyes and ears. You're rich, that's what 
 you are." 
 
 I made no reply. I was partly incensed and partly 
 amazed. It's really extraordinary how I have the 
 faculty of striking people in a totally opposite way to 
 the way I ought to strike them. 
 
 No one sees me as I really am. What a curious 
 thing that is. Is it a gift or what ? If it is a gift it is 
 
 391
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 wasted on me. I should have been a burglar or an 
 embezzler and I'd have passed for an honest man and 
 then it would have been profitable to me. As things 
 were, it was merely annoying. But as Dan wasn't the 
 only person who misunderstood me, why be angry with 
 him over this at any rate ? The fault, if fault there 
 were, lay in myself or my ancestors, or else in my up- 
 bringing. I thought I'd note the matter for careful 
 analysis later with a view to incorporating it in some 
 literary matter I had begun. On the other hand 
 dark thought was this attitude of Dan's (not new 
 to me, nor disguised to others) deliberately adopted to 
 prejudice a certain person against me ? 
 
 In either case I'd note it for analysis. I switched on, 
 and pulling out my old papers and letters, sought a 
 spare piece, but in vain, as they were all closely covered, 
 criss-cross, with other notes. I therefore asked Dan if 
 he could oblige me with a piece. I'd asked him several 
 times lately, designedly. I asked him now again. It 
 was an opportunity. 
 
 He drew out his pocketful of papers. 
 
 There it was again. 
 
 Or was it they, plural ? I pushed the light closer 
 viciously. 
 
 Was it the same or another ? Was it more than one, 
 or was it only one ? And if one, was it a different one 
 to the one I had seen last on Friday, or the one I had 
 seen on Monday ? And which would be the worse and 
 point to the worst for me ? 
 
 I couldn't mistake the handwriting, bold and free, 
 and one or two words underlined with double wavy 
 lines that were so like the representation of the waves 
 as pictured by the queenly needlewoman Matilda of 
 Flanders in the Bayeux Tapestry. As a child I used 
 to be taken to the Museum on wet days and expected to 
 admire this piece of embroidered history. There were 
 three wavy lines under the keel of the Conqueror's ships 
 to indicate the sea. Celia only puts two under a word, 
 
 392
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 usually, unless it's something very urgent, and then, like 
 Matilda, she puts three. 
 
 There was something very urgent in the letter to Dan, 
 this letter which he carried about with him so sedulously, 
 for one sentence had three wavy lines under it, I now 
 saw. Unless it was the same letter turned another way 
 round, it was another letter. That's not a very clear 
 way of putting it ; what I mean is that last time I asked 
 (on purpose) for a bit of paper from him the words 
 underlined had only two lines under them. If it's 
 another letter, I thought, it looks bad. If a person is 
 not satisfied with talking to a person who is staying 
 under the same roof, but also feels it imperative to write 
 as well, it's very peculiar and indicative of an extra- 
 ordinarily highly developed interest in the person to 
 whom the letters are sent. Also if it's the same letter 
 refolded it's bad, as it means the recipient is reading it 
 over and over again, and there must be something very 
 gratifying and delightful in the letter. 
 
 This would be the sixth time I had seen him produce 
 Celia's letter (or letters) out of his breast-pocket, and 
 each time the breast-pocket belonged to a different 
 coat. That is very peculiar too. If a man carries 
 letters about at all it's bad enough, but if he goes to the 
 length of changing them into the pocket of every differ- 
 ent coat he gets into during the course of the day it 
 looks very marked. The first time I had accidentally 
 asked for the loan of a scrap of paper to make a note 
 on he was wearing a blazer ; I noticed it then, but did 
 not think any more of it. The next time I asked him 
 accidentally he was wearing a dinner-jacket. The next 
 time (when I asked him purposely) he was wearing an 
 ordinary blue lounge suit ; the next time a dinner- 
 jacket (I asked him purposely, to see if it were accidental 
 and if he hadn't changed the papers even if he had 
 changed his coat). Again in the blazer and now again 
 here (more or less accidentally, as I had partly for- 
 gotten about it). Why should Dan get letters from 
 Celia like this ? I've never had a letter or letters 
 
 393
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 from Celia while I was staying under the same roof 
 with her. 
 
 " If I were afflicted with this mania of yours for con- 
 stantly making notes I'd have the common decency to 
 carry a few odd scraps of paper about myself. These 
 are all very important letters I've got here. I can't 
 possibly nibble any more off them without injuring 
 their contents." 
 
 He replaced the bundle. I gnashed my even teeth ; 
 the sight of that letter made me fume with impatience. 
 
 I could hardly wait for the time of the lowering of 
 the water in the two chambers and of our exit from 
 the cave, staggering blindly out into the moonlight into 
 the midst of the little eager, anxious crowd which would 
 gather there in the forlorn hope that, as no trace of us 
 could be found anywhere else along the coast or in the 
 village, we might as a last ninety-ninth chance out of a 
 hundred be found there. As dinner-time approached 
 our absence would be marked, and dinner postponed, 
 but even that later-than-ordinary festive board would 
 not be graced by our presence, and our absence acutely 
 felt and commented upon. Vera would run down and 
 look for the boat and the canoe and see them drawn up, 
 tarpaulined. No calamity in that quarter to be looked 
 for. Then a half-fed band in macintoshes or coats 
 thrown on over evening dresses would run out of the 
 big bungalow's ever-open door, and make up and down 
 shore for signs of discarded raiment, in some cove or 
 other, to show where we two had, in that mellow after- 
 noon, gone in for what was to be our last plunge in that 
 blue sea which abounds so invitingly on every hand. 
 But there would be no discarded raiment blowing 
 about looking for an owner who lay cold and en- 
 wreathed with seaweed in some greener, deeper, colder 
 part, by rocks, whilst a companion equally chilled and 
 indifferent as to what became of his blazer and best 
 tan shoes drifted out to sea on the current. 
 
 The anxiety (I was sorry when I thought of it, but 
 
 394
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 there was no help for it) would mount up apace. All 
 the little annoying things we had ever done would 
 be all forgotten, including the last small crime, our 
 extreme lateness for dinner. How lavishly they would 
 feed us, and not reproach us, if only we would turn up. 
 The entire household would remain afoot, to lovingly 
 minister to all our wants, if only we would come back. 
 If it meant staying up all night, they would do this for 
 us, if only we would come back. 
 
 I glanced at the time. Nine-thirty. As we dined at 
 eight -thirty, they would not have reached this stage of 
 frenzied anxiety and self-reproach yet. As yet they 
 would still be fretfully accusing us or half laughingly 
 pretending that there was nothing so odd or unusual in 
 two exceptionally nice men (if you had hunted Europe 
 you couldn't have found two nicer men, each in his own 
 way) going out for a walk, when they were staying on- 
 a visit in a district more or less unknown to them, and 
 not getting back till later than the usual dinner hour. 
 
 " Let everything be kept hot. please, and nice ! " 
 
 There were still two and a half solid hours to be got 
 through before the final denouement could transpire. 
 How on earth to keep Dan's mind off the two-and-two 
 makes-four track ? A nod's as good as a wink to that 
 bright lad at any time. There were so many things 
 might strike him. My slipping so quickly ahead and 
 leading the way in so pointedly ; my persuading him 
 to come at all ; my knowledge of the chambers filling 
 with the rising of the tide and my familiarity with those 
 black passages we'd just left. 
 
 I felt a wave of anxious doubt come over me. I ran 
 on mentally and saw his fury if he found I'd got him 
 there on purpose. Against his will, he'd call it, though, 
 as he didn't know he was going there, he couldn't have 
 made up his mind not to go there very well. But it 
 would be in the nature of a hoax, and hoaxes were 
 things he and his friends played off upon others, not 
 they on them. 
 
 395
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 I reined myself in. It was all too subtle, too deeply 
 embedded in involved circumstances for a brain such as 
 his to grasp ; a brain which was so acute in matters 
 of action would fail here. The roundabout method of 
 arriving at a conclusion or piece of knowledge which 
 had been evolved by the brain of a Phiyne would be 
 a method unknown to a man of his direct dealings, no 
 matter how it would appeal to a man like me. 
 
 Out of mercy to him, I must try and pass the time 
 away, and later we could doze. What was that awful 
 story of that great Scotch feud ? Let me see. Could I 
 recall any of it ? It was years since I'd heard of it. 
 Two hundred MacSomeones were being pursued by a 
 greatly superior force of MacSomebodyelses, but suc- 
 ceeded in giving them the slip and got to a deep cave 
 which afforded a perfect hiding-place. Most un- 
 fortunately for them, their footsteps were tracked in 
 the snow to their lair by one of the kilted savages of 
 the clan that pursued them and thirsted for their blood. 
 At the news the whole crew of MacSomebodyelses came 
 whooping and howling outside the opening, and furiously 
 gathered together wood and straw to make a pyre and 
 burn them out. Before the flames took hold they got 
 information that one of their own clan was a prisoner 
 with the others, so they stamped the fire out and called 
 for him, offering to spare the lives of four others as well 
 if he were allowed out. But he was a gentleman and 
 refused the offer, preferring to die with the rest. So the 
 flames were set going again and they all perished miser- 
 ably, while the MacSomebodyelses hooted and hecked 
 outside. It's a true story and it happened not so long 
 ago, and the straw the poor MacSomeones slept on is 
 still undisturbed and their clean white bones are 
 clustered by the cave's entrance. 
 
 I hadn't the place right, or the names or the dates, 
 but that wouldn't matter. The bits about the pursuit 
 and the tracks in the snow and the cruel lighting of the 
 fire, by which one lot of human beings condemned 
 another lot of human beings to suffocate to death, were 
 
 396
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 the bits that would interest Dan, so I cleared my throat 
 preparatory to telling him the story. But he saved me 
 the trouble. 
 
 " You know, Blenerhassett, as a would-be writer, you 
 ought to find me rather an interesting study." 
 
 Good old damp cloth ! I would be plane sailing now 
 for a bit. 
 
 "I do find you an interesting study, and you are 
 quite the sort of perplexing compound that writers do 
 like to study and use. I could ring the changes on your 
 various points over and over again. I could work up 
 materials for four or five different characters main 
 characters from you alone. Why " a thought surged 
 up in my brain like a wave, and broke, leaving an 
 idea behind " each time I've asked you for a piece 
 of paper to make a note on, it's been to make a note 
 about you ! " 
 
 "You don't say." 
 
 : ' Yes. Isn't it Gilbertian ? " 
 
 " Quite, in a way." I think he wished he had spared 
 me a piece when I asked him. 
 
 After this he'd carry reams about for me. But what 
 about that letter ? What about that letter ? 
 
 He resumed : " I know that is I've always had a 
 sort of a kind of a feeling that I am rather unusual." 
 
 It's a funny thing. It infuriates me to be thought 
 unusual. He glories in it. 
 
 '" In what sort of a way would you say I was un- 
 usual ? " 
 
 "Well. I don't know. It's so hard to say, such a 
 shade will make such a big difference. I've made the 
 notes, but, as you see, I've not analysed them, and 
 rough notes without analysis are worse than useless to 
 the eye of anyone but the author." 
 
 I could not very well have told him the purport of 
 the notes I had made. It wasn't actually true that 
 each time I'd borrowed bits of paper from him 
 I was noting phases of his character, but for all that 
 
 397
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 I often did make notes on the manifestations of con- 
 tradictory and conflicting qualities he gave, just as I 
 did so about everyone who came my way. As the 
 incident of the letter probably turned on his possessing 
 an unusual character, I ought to be wildly interested 
 in him. I ought to be wildly interested in him because 
 someone I was wildly interested in was wildly interested 
 in him (judging by the letter or letters). Some of the 
 notes I had made were far from complimentary, as they 
 set forth his extraordinary conventionality over some 
 things, such as the fact of his never letting me take him 
 to see anything that would add to his store of know- 
 ledge and refusing coldly the educational books I often 
 offered to lend him. I couldn't tell him very well that 
 I had made a note thai; if he'd pry about a bit more 
 into all the interesting things in nature and such 
 natural phenomena as had no direct bearing on salmon 
 fishing or snipe and woodcock shooting; that he might 
 find he would obtain information that would throw side- 
 lights upon his own actions. So I thought a bit and 
 said untruthfully : " Well, you are so unselfconscious, 
 for one thing, and that's so unusual." 
 
 If you want to impress upon a person that you are 
 the possessor of unlimited prescience and clearness of 
 vision, set before them a picture of their character 
 which is the direct opposite to what you positively 
 know it ought to be. It doesn't suit me personally to 
 be misjudged, for I consider I've got a really nice 
 character, but in nine cases out of ten 3^011 can't do a 
 greater kindness to a person than to misjudge them. 
 
 They'll thank you for it as a rule. 
 
 But Dan didn't seem overjoyed. " Yes, I am, 1 
 suppose," he said in a set-back voice. He was so sure 
 of this that it fell flat. It was unusual, of course, but 
 unexcitingly unusual. He felt he was unusual in some 
 much larger, grander way than this. " But haven't 
 you noticed it in several other ways ? " 
 
 " Oh, rather ! Rather ! " 
 
 I sat silent, thinking what else I could hand him out, 
 
 398
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 but I couldn't lay hold of anything just then. I wanted 
 something that would start him off and leave me com- 
 fortably more or less listening and agreeing as before. 
 
 But he went on again without my help. " Perhaps 
 you've got those notes on you you made about me," he 
 laughed a bit awkwardly, with pretended offhanded- 
 ness. " I'd like to see what you noted. Writing must 
 be interesting work." 
 
 I put my hand into my chest and pulled out my 
 collection. He'd seen me earlier searching among them, 
 and had seen there were a lot of odds and ends there, so 
 I couldn't very well deny there was a chance of them 
 being among them. I turned them over. The light 
 stayed on just because I would just as soon it hadn't. 
 
 " There. I see a bit there that came off one of my 
 letters ; I can show you the rest of it. And there's 
 another. I tore the flap off this envelope here." 
 
 He had his bundle out. I took a look at the three 
 wavy lines. Something very urgent, evidently. He 
 replaced his letters. 
 
 " Now what does the first scrap say ? " 
 
 I turned it about in the light. There were a lot of 
 half-erased and rubbed words and phrases in pencil, all 
 indistinct. The only one I could decipher was some- 
 thing about "a lot of drab pebbles in a room, one 
 coloured." 
 
 What on earth could that mean ? What possible 
 sense could be got out of that ? Something must have 
 struck me in connection with an idea of this sort, but 
 what sense could one get out of that string of meaning- 
 less words. Whoever heard of pebbles in a room, and 
 why should they be drab and one coloured ? I hadn't 
 the foggiest notion. 
 
 I knit my brows. I must fit a meaning to them. I 
 should set myself up to be scoffed at for ever as a 
 maundering idiot who worried people for bits of paper 
 to make notes on, carried them about for days and 
 weeks and then forgot what they were about. I would 
 never hear the end of this. 
 
 399
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 I had it. T unknit my brows and smoothed the paper 
 out simultaneously, and explained that when one 
 wrote delicate personal observations about people who 
 were fellow-guests under the same roof, one couched 
 them in obscure language, so that if the housemaid 
 dusted them and read them accidentally she would 
 still be in the dark as to what it was all about. It 
 would show great want of delicacy on the part of a 
 writer to leave detailed notes lying about with the name 
 of the person analysed attached. But this was not so 
 obscure really. The meaning was clear to anyone with 
 vision. It was my way of putting it that Dan would 
 stand out conspicuously in any room, in any society. 
 Beside him in his unusualness others were as drab 
 pebbles. He was the coloured pebble among them. 
 
 He was delighted with the simile, repeated it and 
 chuckled over it ; he was quite touched in his pride over 
 it. He felt it was really a good way of putting it. 
 Didn't, want to brag or anything of that sort, but 
 people were drab, take them for all in all weren't 
 they?" 
 
 I said yes, I must have thought so, or I'd have hardly 
 gone to the trouble of worrying someone to lend me a 
 scrap of paper to write it down. 
 
 Dan pressed his cigarettes on me, for he was awfully 
 pleased. I felt I had got out of that wood all right, but 
 in the act of lighting up he suddenly paused, seemed to 
 turn the thing over in his mind, held the match up to 
 my face, looked searchingly at me and asked if I wasn't 
 making some stupid allusion to the fact that he had red 
 hair, because if so it was a bit thick. He was so 
 absolutely fed up here the match flickered and went 
 out at the way people went on about his red hair. As 
 if it wasn't as good a colour as any other. 
 
 I thrust the suggestion from me strongly. Was it 
 likely that I would go to the trouble to make a note on 
 an obvious thing like that, or refer to it ? I who 
 prided myself on being the possessor of a form of 
 subtlety only to be equalled in the Orient ? Good 
 
 400
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 writers never dreamt of mentioning the colour of the 
 hair of their characters. You were left to guess what 
 the colour was and to decide for yourself whether the 
 person's hair you were reading about were blue, green, 
 grey, or yellow, or whether they had any at all. It was 
 very low-class writing to mention the colour of any- 
 thing. Colour in literature was out of place. Perish 
 the thought. No, his hair was wonderful and one of 
 his most attractive physical attributes, but if I brought 
 him into a book I'd say nothing whatever about it. 
 The colour of a man's hair couldn't decide his future or 
 have any bearing on his actions. 
 
 Dan said he thought red hair might. 
 
 I thought a moment. Yes, I said, red hair might. 
 On second thoughts, if a person's hair did get entangled 
 with the action of a story, the chances were it would be 
 red. 
 
 " I'd rather not, I admit, make an enemy of a red- 
 haired man." I was pensively inhaling one of Dan's 
 cigarettes and trying to pretend to myself I didn't dis- 
 like the taste of it. " Though, as a matter of fact, and 
 sad to relate, enemies of all sorts are necessary to me, 
 whether red or not, and perhaps all the better for that. 
 I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to get on at all without a 
 lot." 
 
 " There you go again. Whoever but you would say 
 a thing like that ? That is a topsy-turvy remark. A 
 few enemies to buck one up and keep one from getting 
 utterly stagnant are no doubt no disadvantage, but it's 
 not by enmities but by friendships a fellow's going to 
 boost himself along." 
 
 " You've touched on a very peculiar thing in saying 
 that. Talking about any old thing, just as we are do- 
 ing here now, has the charm that you never know when 
 it won't lead up to something really interesting. I am 
 trying to become a writer, am I not V " 
 
 " Yes, and doing very well at it, I consider." 
 
 Dan was inclined to behave handsomely to me about 
 it, after my admission that he had formed the subject 
 2c 401
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 of several of my notes, and sooner or later might expect 
 to figure in my writings. 
 
 " And the peculiar and sad part of it is that I can 
 only write about people I either love very much or 
 dislike very much either case establishes a sort of 
 intense, watchful and understanding communication 
 between them and me. I know exactly what they are 
 thinking about and feeling and going to do, and all 
 about them. It's most annoying and quite against 
 my nature. Here am I, a naturally peaceful, kindly 
 man, and by this unfortunate kink in me I shall be 
 obliged to go on making enemies, doing things to annoy 
 people and bait and goad them on. As soon as I've 
 got someone to dislike me and I dislike them in return 
 I'll concentrate on them with a furious intensity and 
 succeed in giving a portrait which will move and talk 
 as if possessed of complete life. No detail will escape 
 me, which if recorded will make them live more utterly. 
 I shall make notes by the hundreds and thousands 
 then. But I'll either have to go on making enemies or 
 else give up writing, for, as I told you before, there is 
 only one person I could possibly love." 
 
 Dan went off into more suppressed guffaws. Till ten 
 past eleven he proved to me conclusively that he'd 
 never met a man more absurdly and ludicrously prone 
 to come under the influence of anything stray and win- 
 some that came within range of my eyeglass than I. 
 There never was a man so catholic in his tastes there. 
 He'd often, just to amuse himself, tried to pin me to a 
 type, but he couldn't. As soon as he thought he'd dis- 
 covered it, I went off at a tangent after something that 
 upset all his theories. Variations of colour, height or 
 disposition didn't seem to matter in the very least. 
 Any old thing did the trick, he almost believed. I 
 listened. 
 
 It was certainly his game, say what one would, I 
 decided, to affect to believe this and to make me appear 
 in a certain quarter in the light of a philanderer. But 
 
 402
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 having wind of it now, I would circumvent it by every 
 means possible. I'd ignore ever person of the opposite 
 sex who came my way, religiously. 
 
 Soon too I should have some material proof with 
 which to go on my way, and so be better able to guide 
 my footsteps. Till then I would keep calm and re- 
 serve myself for either keen joy or keen disappointment. 
 
 I had read an article in a magazine on longevity 
 which proved beyond dispute that every time one lost 
 one's temper one shortened one's life, so I let him pro- 
 ceed without further ado. It was not till ten past 
 eleven that I shunted him off my defects and got him 
 on to his perfections. He found the darkness helped 
 him to concentrate. Once I had got him to start I 
 gave up listening and just inflected, and stirred him 
 up with a word now and again. By now at the 
 bungalow they would be in a great stew. They would 
 have taken toll of all our virtues and added a great 
 many to them we had never possessed. All our 
 frowardness and anything untoward about us would 
 be forgotten. They would have returned from one 
 search and be starting upon another, after having 
 taken counsel in the house, and having rung up the 
 neighbours for assistance. Celia, drawing on a mack- 
 intosh or a coat over her evening dress, would be 
 remembering my long lashes, my even teeth, the dis- 
 tinction of my bearing, the welcome that was always 
 in my eyes for her. My dog-like devotion. 
 
 That is unless she were too occupied in remembering 
 the lithe, muscular beauty of Dan's figure, the crisp 
 reddish shade of his hair, the fineness of his hands his 
 great talent for music. I gritted my even teeth once 
 more. 
 
 But I would know soon whose virtues, of us two, she 
 would choose to dwell on. The mystery of that letter 
 (or those letters) would soon be cleared up for ever. 
 To clear it up, I had borrowed an idea from antiquity, 
 from a lady who was, I must say, not altogether as 
 
 403
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 blameless as she was beautiful, Phryne. But her 
 beauty was so great, it is said, that as a standard of con- 
 duct it might have been impossible to keep pace with. 
 She was very subtle, and to be very subtle and very 
 beautiful is a double event of some magnitude. To be 
 very subtle, very beautiful and very good is a treble 
 event that rarely gets past the post, and all allowances 
 should be made. She was after a piece of information 
 which was not exactly to the interest of the person she 
 questioned to impart to her. Praxiteles, in a fit of 
 generosity begotten of dipping his purely Greek nose 
 in the chased wine-cup, had given her out of all his 
 works her choice of any one as a gift. She wanted to 
 choose the best, and she meant to get the best, and not 
 trusting to her powers of selection, she determined that 
 he should unconsciously effect the choice for her. So 
 she had recourse to a stratagem. She caused a false 
 alarm of fire to be given at his house and transmitted 
 to him at hers, whereupon he rushed out, exclaiming 
 that all was lost if his statue of Eros were touched by 
 a spark. Next morning the artful lady sent a pack of 
 strong slaves to bring the Eros round to her house. 
 
 As evidenced by this, a threat of danger brings out 
 preferences very clearly, and as the matter of the letter- 
 carrying and whatever state of affairs it indicated as 
 existing between Dan and Celia was beginning to get 
 on my nerves, the idea of some such test presented itself 
 to my mind. I couldn't bribe anyone to say he and I 
 were in danger and to note her behaviour at receiving 
 the news. For this I'd need oiie or maybe two accom- 
 plices, and accomplices are dangerous things. They 
 break down, or give your plans away, or if the plans 
 succeed, take all the credit. I warn everyone against 
 accomplices. If you are going to fool the world or 
 anyone in it, do so alone. 
 
 I translated the idea and recast it in a way of my own. 
 By now all houses in the environment would have been 
 rung up ; all suggestions as to possible whereabouts 
 thrashed out in words or investigated in person. Re- 
 
 404
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 membering how superior we were to all other friends, 
 and realising what a blank our absence, if unhappily 
 permanent, would cause, the most thorough and 
 minute inspection of any parts sufficiently adjacent to 
 have seen us in the afternoon and evening hours would 
 have been made. The searchers would, as a last re- 
 source, line up outside the opening to the cave, strain- 
 ing and hoping that when the waters fell low enough it 
 would disgorge us. I was prepared to wade through a 
 foot or two of water, linking my arm through that of my 
 companion in tedium and discomfort, issuing out in the 
 moonlight, blinking like an owl and hanging on to him. 
 Celia, confronted by us both, and confronted by her 
 joy at finding us still warm and breathing personalities, 
 instead of two sea-sodden somethings, minus anima- 
 tion, should betray her true choice definitely by some 
 quick movement or exclamation towards one or other 
 of us. 
 
 We were shut up till midnight, for the water went 
 down very gradually. It came about as I foretold. 
 The coast- watcher, well primed by the importance of 
 the occasion to talk on the horrors past, present and 
 future of that portion of the outer margin of England 
 in his charge, where her meadows slip into the sea, had 
 grouped them there. The house-party, come back 
 from their scattered chase without news, and despond- 
 ent and wondering on that account, were now asking 
 him what he thought and hanging on his incoherent, 
 Dogberry-like replies. Presently his voice would hail 
 us, booming a bit hollowly, disinclined to shout too 
 soon for fear that no reply would be forthcoming, thus 
 showing that we were not even there. 
 
 It was dramatic that we should stagger out to them, 
 not they come to us, so I went through the water up to 
 my knees, and Dan's. 
 
 There was no moon, though she was due to be there 
 at her fullest. Rainy clouds closed her in as we slipped 
 and struggled out, cramped from sitting on hard rocks 
 
 405
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 for hours. It was immense relief to straighten out and 
 to breathe the fuller air and know the thing was over. 
 The voices of a great many people greeted us in tones of 
 high relief. I was surprised at the number, and in the 
 noise that they made that I couldn't detect Celia's 
 voice. I halted a moment before going forward, well 
 in the round pool of lantern light, that swung a bit. If 
 I were to be Celia's choice, she would easily see me 
 standing there. Dan slipped from beside me, but I 
 still paused there, and in those few seconds a great soft 
 mass hurled itself upon me, wide and damp, as if a 
 portion of the crumbling cliff had come away and 
 rolled itself upon me as I stood. I put my hands out, 
 to ward it off. There was no grass upon it so it could 
 not be the cliff. A smell of damp macintosh came 
 strongly from it to me. It was Miss Lamb, and emotion 
 robbed her of speech. She clasped me tightly, and I 
 supported her as well as I could, for I was rather 
 tottering myself. The people around forbore to con- 
 gratulate me till this affecting reunion should begin to 
 cool down. 
 
 But where was Celia ? I was still in the light of the 
 lantern, and there were still portions of me visible here 
 and there, bits of me projecting beyond Miss Lamb. 
 Enough certainly to identify me to anyone who really 
 looked for me with eyes sharpened by affection. 
 
 But she wasn't there. 
 
 Finding her voice at last, the good soul cried : " Oh, 
 Mr Blenerhassett Peter dear you are saved. Oh, 
 how thankful I am ! How thankful I am ! " 
 
 She wept on me and on her macintosh, which be- 
 came more rubberish and wafted more strongly than 
 before in consequence. She never said a word about 
 Dan. I thought grimly, as I patted one plump heav- 
 ing shoulder soothingly, that I had spent hours and 
 hours in a dark disgustuous cave for the pleasure of 
 finding out that Miss Lamb was more upset at the 
 thought of losing me than of losing Dan. That her joy 
 
 406
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 at my being restored to her was so great that she quite 
 forgot all about Dan. I had gone to endless trouble to 
 find out what Celia's true feelings were about myself 
 and Dan, and I had only succeeded in finding out what 
 Miss Lamb's were. 
 
 Celia was not present. She didn't care about either 
 of us ! She evidently didn't take enough interest in 
 either Dan or myself to come out and see whether we 
 were alive or dead. She was at home playing patience 
 by the billiard- room fire. Or writing. . . . 
 
 Vera paid no attention to me whatsoever. Her 
 anxiety was all for Dan. In the softly falling rain she 
 had possessed herself of one of his arms and was holding 
 on silently. He seemed to receive this inarticulate 
 homage with an equally intense inarticulate satisfac- 
 tion. As I threaded the group with my eyes in search 
 of Celia, I had remarked a certain something romantic- 
 ally tell-tale in the lines of his figure, bending to her, in 
 the dim uncertain light. I diagnosed their mutual 
 condition in a flash and wondered how I could have 
 been so blind. After all, I had found out something 
 quite valuable. In the words of the watcher, the coast 
 was clear in that direction anyhow. If I'd only used 
 my eyes outwardly more, and turned them inwardly 
 less, what a lot of trouble I could have saved myself ! 
 
 I was naturally plied with questions, and answered 
 them evasively. How had we got there ? Why had 
 we gone there ? Why hadn't we come out again in 
 good time ? Didn't we know about the tide coming 
 up so far and cutting us off in there ? Did we realise 
 what a fright we had given them, and that every scrap 
 of the places about had been scoured ; for they thought 
 we had been drowned ? 
 
 Now that we were safely saved, and it was found we 
 had not undergone any very grave danger, they began 
 to pity themselves for having had to endure so much 
 anxiety. Our haloes melted away. 
 
 I got in my question as soon as I had staved off theirs. 
 
 Where was Celia ? 
 
 407
 
 THE STATUE 
 
 Miss Lamb stood still and brought all the others 
 to a stop too. 
 
 " How stupid of me not to tell you. I was so excited 
 I quite forgot. Quite soon after you left the house (it 
 can't have been very long after) she got a telegram and 
 had to catch the five-thirty-nine up to town, and very 
 glad I am. too. that she had to go now." 
 
 Then Celia had been in the toy express as we saw it 
 plunge into the toy tunnel, when we first set out. Of 
 what use are human eyes that they can't see through 
 the side of a railway carriage ? 
 
 " Yes. Dan. Can you hear me, Dan ? " Miss 
 Lamb raised her voice over to him as he walked at the 
 far side of the straggling group, with Vera. 'You 
 never posted that letter Celia gave you last week. You 
 promised you would look up the address in the directory 
 and put it in an envelope and post it. It was veiy 
 urgent." 
 
 All ! that accounted for the three wavy lines after the 
 manner of Matilda. 
 
 I could hear Dan calling himself names quite audibly 
 in the dark damp mist. 
 
 " I carried it about with me for over a week and 
 every day I meant to attend to it. I couldn't get hold 
 of a directory in this benighted place." 
 
 "Well, Leacock & Simpkins, not hearing, were very 
 anxious, and wired asking her specially to go up for 
 a personal interview on account of the delay. She'll 
 only be one night, as she expects to get back to-morrow 
 afternoon. But I don't blame you. Now that this 
 has happened I don't really feel I can blame you. I 
 can only regard it as providential. She has been 
 spared this great anxiety." 
 
 As I said before, the moral of this tale is, don't be 
 too subtle. 
 
 408
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 WHAT is the curious, the inexplicable pleasure to be got 
 through the gazing at people who are of interest to one 
 when they are in a total unconsciousness and unknow- 
 ingness that amongst the presences about them there 
 is one set apart from the others by an intense becalmed 
 sort of consciousness of them. Noting every little 
 movement that hints at small shadows of behaviour 
 (pointing to characteristics new to the conscious one or 
 which have been slipped over unnoticed) to be added to 
 the image already formed and carried in the mind. 
 
 Little things peep out and pop in again. Everyone 
 wears a little mask except when they are unconscious 
 of observation, and not only one but a whole series 
 of little masks, for the same mask won't meet the 
 exigencies of one's intercourse with everyone. Some 
 of us unfortunately have no definite stand in life 
 through diffidence. We stand where we are placed by 
 our companion of the moment, high or low or midway. 
 Sometimes very low, sometimes quite high. And a 
 mask must be worn to suit the height or lowness of our 
 position as we gauge it in our companion's eyes. This 
 is not nonsense. If thought out it will be found to have 
 germs of meaning in it. I'll call the masks veils, for 
 mask suggests an embossed and bulky affair, and with 
 the number needed to go about (for different places 
 need different masks or veils) it would mean a cumber- 
 ing up of oneself and one's boxes. I know that I my- 
 self have a different mask or veil to be worn with each 
 one of my friends and relations, no matter how intim- 
 ate, and the more intimate we are, the thicker. One is 
 less at ease with those one has known best and longest ; 
 they have preconceived notions of the right and correct 
 
 409
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 forms that inwardly and outwardly one should take. 
 To bloom in independence won't do. Whether you 
 will be great, good, solemn or funny or rheumatic, short- 
 sighted or sympathetic, are all things they make it their 
 business to decide for you. If you don't conform they 
 chill you, and you shiver as if you had halted before the 
 open door of a cold store. Long ago, in the big family 
 or coterie of friends or at school, corners were knocked 
 off or tried at ; they may have come off or they may 
 merely have disappeared temporarily, so that one 
 appears to have that smooth uneventful formation 
 which, beloved of society and cohorts of men, is wel- 
 comed by them. A display of mental independence of 
 any sort is a corner. A special gift or bent, a too fervid 
 belief in something, a too fervent disbelief, and an 
 irrepressible talent, all are corners, bred by a multiple 
 heredity converging to a point. But unless friends are 
 chosen because they are cornered as you are ; or have a 
 respect for your corners, you must in intercourse with 
 them draw a veil over your corners, which are in reality 
 characteristics, but which society is determined to 
 mallet or chisel off you. 
 
 You will probably need veils with friends, but you 
 must wear them with relations from earliest nursery 
 moments. The least revelation of fervid or original 
 thought or anything marked calls down on one the 
 satire of the others. 
 
 " Look at him showing off ! " 
 
 " How affected she is. I can't stand her ! " 
 
 I'll remove my veil in a twinkling to an utter stranger 
 but never to a relation ; no, nor not to a relation-in-law. 
 The intolerant judgments of the latter are not diluted 
 by the blood-love that tempers the intolerant judgments 
 of one's own kith ; both accept strangers as they find 
 them, and will only accept their own in the form they 
 choose they should appear in. 
 
 The East, less spiritual, more material, ties up its 
 women's faces in muslin or crepe. We of the West, all 
 wear yashmaks, men and women alike, made of some- 
 
 410
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 thing more intangible, leaving our eyes, proving advance 
 guards, alone visible. When I am chagrined, I wish 
 my yashmak thicker. My face is mobile, and my 
 friends tell me that, knowing it, it betrays me. Of 
 course I am sensitive, morbidly so, and therefore easily 
 set up or reduced by those about me, and the number ot 
 veils and yashmaks with which I have to cope, owing 
 to the fact of not having the strength of mind to use the 
 same one continuously whether people like it or not, is 
 tremendous. Mixing as I do with different sorts and 
 varied masses, the component individuals of which all 
 expect different things of me, I must have a great many. 
 Depending on whom I am with. I may as I turn my 
 face to one, then to another, find them puzzled. To 
 one I'm one thing, to the other another, for one expects 
 me to be one thing, the other another. For this I need 
 combination veils. What a curse is the adaptability 
 which is the result of a kindly shyness. You feel you 
 must adapt yourself or displease, and you adapt. Be- 
 cause of it you are ready to go to all the trouble it 
 entails upon you, to oblige anyone, by becoming at a 
 moment's notice anyone or anything you feel they'd 
 expect you to be. Whereas if you decide to appear 
 the same person to everyone you need only confess to, 
 or be reprimanded for, one set of failings. If, as I am, 
 you are many people in one. and never any one of them 
 for long, you are standing there to be reviled for as 
 many different sets of shortcomings as are thrown in 
 with the number of characters you can assume. For 
 don't forget that what is a virtue and an adornment in 
 one would be counted a lack or a vice in the other, by a 
 system of comparison which is a delicate and absurd 
 matter. In none of your characters will you receive 
 praise for its good points. People don't praise. 
 
 Thus, as I say, mixing with people, if one is sensitive, 
 or has eyes that penetrate outer things, one cannot help 
 observing that they have notions of one, and what one 
 ought to be. (Some day may I have the privilege of 
 staying in a house where everybody has thought better 
 
 411
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 of it and themselves and decided to be what others have 
 decided they should be. Celia must be there, for no 
 doubt she will be responsible for some of the freaks. 
 That reminds me, I must write the story of the little 
 lady who took everybody's advice and still lived.) 
 Celia says that as I gain confidence in myself under her 
 treatment of me this feeling that I have about my- 
 self, which necessitates a lot of veiling of myself, and is 
 due to having lived too much alone before she found me 
 and rescued me, will disappear in time under her 
 treatment. That I will cast my veils and yashmaks 
 aside and step out boldly with a perfectly nude face 
 and when I catch people looking at me as much as to 
 say that they have a notion that I am not looking or 
 talking as they have a notion I ought to, that I will say 
 to myself meaning them to hear it, though inaudible : 
 " What cheek to look at me like that ! The idea of 
 staring at me, as if I haven't a perfect right to have a 
 notion of what sort of person I am myself and gratify 
 my notion to say, do, whatever I've a notion to, or act 
 whatever I've a notion to be and if you don't like me 
 as I am well, you can jolly well lump it, and I am not 
 going to alter one jot or tittle of myself or my notions 
 to meet your stupid notions, and that's flat." And my 
 eyes and face will harden to a hardness which is patently 
 to be apprehended, and then the poor silly soul who had 
 the impertinence to have notions as to how I ought to 
 look, speak or act, because they've a notion I'm that 
 sort of person, will get frightened and stay frightened, 
 and next time we meet register to themselves no com- 
 ments on my aspect, physical, moral, mental or other- 
 wise, and nervously wonder whether they hadn't better 
 thicken up their yashmak so that I shall not sift and 
 settle them, or whether, better still, they hadn't better 
 choose it to please me, if possible, instead. 
 
 This is the secret of life, thought I. To make, to 
 Jorce other people to wish to please you, instead of 
 putting yourself to the trouble of trying to please 
 them. 
 
 412
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 There is no need to record these introspective turn- 
 ings and twistings. I was watching Celia and she was 
 selling flags. I had arrived fourteen minutes too 
 soon, and as I leant against one of the pillars of the 
 colonnade of a certain classic-looking hotel in Picca- 
 dilly I had to think of something, and these are the 
 things I thought about. I began by thinking about 
 her and slipped off to thinking about myself. I admit 
 the thoughts are not relevant to the matter of which I 
 am about to write, but if I hadn't been leaning up 
 against a pillar there waiting for. her they wouldn't 
 have passed through my mind, and therefore they are 
 in a sense honorary members of the whole. I regret 
 they are erratic and confused, if not entirely incom- 
 prehensible, but I had lately been reading a great many 
 of the works of a very great and very incomprehensible 
 author, and I had got into the habit of thinking and 
 theorising in a very involved and incomprehensible 
 way. In addition to this, the noise and bustle of 
 Piccadilly on an afternoon in early summer render it 
 a somewhat unsuitable place for the disentangling of 
 subtle problems relating to human intercourse. 
 
 I believe I know nearly all the expressions that come 
 and go in Celia's face, though there are dozens and 
 dozens of them, and necessarily this must be so if a 
 person thinks about as many different things as she 
 does. But (how I dislike that word) whatever expres- 
 sion she has got on there is always a young expression 
 there too, so that when she is serious she looks young 
 and serious, when she is cross she looks young and 
 cross, when she is pleased she looks young and pleased, 
 when she is mysterious she looks young and mysterious, 
 and when she is tired she looks young and tired. The 
 youth is always there and will always be there, though 
 her teens are quite a way behind her now, she tells me. 
 
 Some day when she is old she will look young and 
 old both together. But that is a long way off yet. 
 
 Watching her. I did not so much keep an eye on her 
 face as on her movements. Why is it people don't 
 
 413
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 study grace of movement more and originality of 
 movement and subtlety of movement ? These are the 
 things that pick people out of the common ruck, that 
 set them apart from their fellows. Many people have 
 beauty of colour or form or. as in the case of men, the 
 beauty of physical strength, and are still of the herd. 
 While some, otherwise insignificant. having the aforesaid, 
 will dominate their fellows and stand out. 
 
 When, as in Celia's case, they are added to the other 
 attributes, you can barely guess at the effect they 
 produce. She's grace itself. If you saw her shadow 
 follow her across the flags you'd know she was a pretty 
 person. 
 
 Earlier in the day, very early indeed. I had deposited 
 her there with her tray full of trinkets and flags, and 
 thought as I helped her to descend from her car how 
 nicely she was dressed. Pale grey cockatoo-grey, I 
 called it, for I'd seen it on a bird of that species, with 
 pale flamingo wing feathers. I hope I don't notice 
 what my women friends wear too much, but I know I 
 like to be seen with someone who turns out daintily in 
 preference to being seen about with someone who looks 
 like a temperance reformer in low water. I always take 
 a good look at Celia's things. Shakespeare said there 
 were sermons in stones, and books in running brooks, 
 and that there is something to be learnt from every- 
 thing. Her dresses are an object lesson in sticking to 
 the point. One of them would serve as a guide to a 
 man in the conduct of his life. It begins at the neck 
 (or wherever such things may begin) and goes down to 
 the ground without misdirecting its energies or slipping 
 off into side-issues. It starts as it were with a plot, 
 abides by it and develops it and finishes it off properly 
 at the hem, without changing its mind as to what it is 
 going to do somewhere about the middle, forgetting 
 what it's about, and coming to a bad and ineffectual 
 end. In short, it is unlike this story, for it is simple, 
 concise and organic. It has, like a well-told tale, a 
 main incident and a relieving note. In the grey dress 
 
 414
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 this latter was supplied by a touch of embroidery and 
 a sash with a big flat swinging tassel of what, as I am 
 only a man, I will describe as quadrangle-green or even 
 wet-pitch green. That is, it was a lawny-green, like old 
 moist turf seen through an old grey college arch, for the 
 dyers and dressmakers of the nineteenth century are 
 poets and artists both. Whistler found this out long 
 ago and used to slate our academicians, and say : " Go to 
 the dressmaker, thou sluggard, for inspiration and lessons 
 in the colours and the combinations thereof. Go to 
 Worth and others of Paris for beautiful tone pictures 
 and blending of exquisite hues." Celia, long before 
 reading Whistler, viewed it in his way and spoke of her 
 various dresses as bearing the signatures of different 
 great artists. 
 
 The grey hat was wide and round, dipped to one side, 
 and had an amazingly fine flickering fringe of cross 
 aigrettes to it. Celia lowered her head, and looked 
 through this at the passers-by and the flags went like 
 wildfire. Her satellite plunged back and forth from 
 headquarters, bringing more flags and yet more flags, 
 and more tickets for an artist's proof of an engraving 
 entitled Love's Awakening which was to be raffled for 
 the fund. Celia displayed a small specimen photo- 
 graph of this, framed in tricolour ribbon. 
 
 I lounged in the shelter of a column, restricting my 
 movements to the space of shade it cast, not venturing 
 out into the colonnade to feast my eyes on the treasures 
 of art arranged tastefully in the colourman's window I 
 could see. There is a row of shops privileged to lurk 
 there, to occasionally tempt with wares, and at all times 
 be spectators of. the expensive world, French, Ameri- 
 can, Spanish, English, which passes through the 
 hotel's temple-like portals. I had had a special com- 
 mand to arrive at four, escort Celia through that door 
 and restore her with some pale liquid they would tell 
 us was tea and charge for as though it were gold melted 
 down and served in cups, but I had arrived too early, 
 and this is a thing she will not allow. She says it is an 
 
 415
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 inadmissible form of unpunctuality, so I waited till the 
 moment itself should arrive, in hiding. She would have 
 been wroth with me to think I was a witness of her little 
 manoeuvres. I said just now that her hat was big and 
 round and that she looked up at passers-by through the 
 fringe. Yes. Well, a gallant naval officer by the 
 stripes on his cuff a commander was hurrying along 
 to keep an appointment with some girl and as he was 
 thickly covered with flags, by all rights of civilised war- 
 fare he ought to have been left to pass unmolested. 
 Celia, perceiving when he was a full fifteen paces from 
 her that it would take more than the usual pleading 
 smile and tentatively extended flag to stop him, cut 
 across straight in front of him, with her head lowered so 
 that she couldn't see under her hat, and bumped full 
 into him. They were both breathless for a moment, and 
 she pretended (I know her when she is pretending, she 
 can't deceive me) that she had no idea he was there. 
 He was completely taken in, and when he looked at her 
 became paralysed' and forgot all about that girl who 
 was waiting for him and seemed to take a fancy to the 
 bit of pavement he was standing on and didn't make 
 another attempt to move. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," said Celia. " I can't think 
 how it was I never saw you." Her voice was cleverly 
 disconcerted. 
 
 " My fault entirely," the now perfectly stationary 
 Commander replied. 
 
 " But as you're here, please do buy a flag. Buy a 
 flag, please." 
 
 It was ridiculous and barefaced. The fellow already 
 looked like the admiral's flagship on a review day at 
 Spithead. 
 
 He was quick on the uptake, like Hetty the hen. 
 He swept her with his eyes and proposed that instead 
 of buying from her he should buy something for her. 
 Had she ever heard of a periscope ? She had. If he 
 bought her one would she promise to use it whenever 
 she wore that big hat ? No matter to what extent she 
 
 416
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 submerged in it, she could see where she went if she did. 
 Celia's reply was no, and thanks. The form the hat 
 took was all its importance and specially designed so. 
 It was a "there's my husband hat," and owing to its 
 curves, if that individual arrived inopportunely, the 
 wearer submerged and was invisible till he had safely 
 gone on his way. 
 
 This was not at all the sort of reply she ought to have 
 made. The proper reply would have been a cold blank 
 stare which would have sent him about his business 
 feeling too uncomfortable to wait for the nine-and- 
 sixpence change owing. However, he appeared to think 
 his business lay right where he was. He must have 
 been well-to-do, and extravagant as well, for he bought 
 all her flags. He did this- I saw through the ruse 
 first, so that she would not be able to turn her attention 
 to anyone else, and secondly, so that he could detain her 
 in conversation as a reward for having been such a good 
 customer. Her description of her hat and her reception 
 of his rather poor joke about the periscope emboldened 
 him to ask her if she had a husband, and she said 
 " Oh no ! " as if that was the last thing on earth with 
 which she'd think of encumbering herself. He replied 
 " Splendid / " in a deep rich voice that seemed to make 
 the flag-stones vibrate. As if, having heard the coast 
 was clear, he'd hang on like a limpet and enter the 
 tournament lists for the guerdon of her smile and all 
 that, and so on. 
 
 I looked anxiously at my watch. It still wanted 
 seven and a half minutes to the time I was due to stroll 
 up with the offer of my escort and tea. I daren't do so 
 before these elapsed, and as to putting the blame on my 
 watch for my being so soon, that wouldn't do, for it is 
 a most high-priced, slim thing which Celia chose and 
 gave to me herself, and it has an admonitory motto in it 
 saying " Better late than always early." She gave it to 
 me after a great argument we once had not so very long 
 after I'd got to know her ; about eighteen months or so 
 maybe. In my anxiety to see her I'd come at a quarter 
 2D 417
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 to eight instead of a quarter past, and she said this 
 flurried her so much in her dressing that I must discon- 
 tinue it. I dare not interrupt now. Seven and a half 
 minutes. What couldn't happen in that time ? I 
 glanced at the gallant Commander. Yes. He wouldn't 
 take long over anything he set out to do. He was now 
 asking her to remind him of where they had met before, 
 and Celia was replying cryptically that it was very 
 curious that she couldn't remember where it was. 
 She could remember lots of places where they hadn't 
 met, and that narrowed it down. She never forgot 
 people she met and even remembered people she hadn't 
 met, sometimes, if they were nice. She only forgot 
 people she didn't like. 
 
 Still five minutes to run. He might easily discover 
 who she was and find that they had mutual friends and 
 get permission to call, in five minutes. Especially 
 with Celia, who is so dangerously quick in making 
 friends. I peered at him again and didn't like his looks 
 at all, for he was a deuced good-looking, well set-up 
 fellow. He had good outlines and a quiet watching 
 manner and a quiet watching half-smile. There was 
 something in the way his cap was put on, carelessly, 
 but with how much meaning. There again is one of 
 those things one never hears spoken of, and yet I could 
 sit down and write for days about the way that naval 
 man put on his cap. If he ever became a visitor (and 
 I hoped devoutly he would not), I would walk behind 
 him and study it from behind. I would get alongside 
 and study it from the side, and then I'd engage his 
 attention and take it in full face too. It might take 
 me weeks to think out and put into words what there 
 was about that white-covered, glazed-peaked, gold- 
 worked cap, taken in conjunction with that quiet face, 
 not so much long as inclined to be roundish, and that 
 quiet capable figure, standing there as if nothing 
 mattered. Already I knew he would always stand 
 quietly, as if nothing mattered, even if it mattered 
 very much. 
 
 418
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 I suppose I am a peculiar individual, but when I see 
 a thing such as the angle at which he set on that cap I 
 want to sift it thoroughly. The thing it brought before 
 one first, and which certainly was the main thing, what- 
 ever else may have lain behind it and that there was 
 a great deal I'm sure was that it was an English thing, 
 purely English. It was Trafalgar, and the Kentish 
 knock, and St Vincent, and it said that however such 
 a cap might behave when on shore leave, or wherever 
 it might get to in shore towns, that that cap knew that 
 England expected every man to do his duty, and not 
 only that, knew that he would. 
 
 That cap worn so couldn't disguise the fact that it 
 would take on four or five enemy cruisers or more even 
 if it were only in charge of a destroyer and had nothing 
 to back it up if attacked in return. That cap declared, 
 as if it were the simplest and most everyday thing in 
 the world, that death was an adventure, and a joke, 
 even if a grim one, and that the only drawback to going 
 up aloft suddenly in the course of a sea battle, having 
 done the right thing, was that one couldn't risk one's 
 life in another action the same afternoon. 
 
 Yes, the misleading, splendid, heart-breaking in- 
 souciance of the set of that cap would almost bring 
 tears to the eyes of anyone who was enough of a poet 
 to see deep into things. 
 
 I looked at my watch. The white-topped cap and 
 the big grey hat were bent over the small reproduction 
 of the picture to be raffled, entitled Love's Awakening. 
 She was now writing his name on a ticket. She knew 
 his name now. 
 
 I don't suppose I have a funny bone in my heart, 
 but when I saw those two heads bent together I 
 felt as if I had one and as if someone had jogged it 
 badly. 
 
 At last it was four o'clock. From an old neighbour- 
 ing church a mellow bell proclaimed it. Drawing on 
 my yashmak, the one with rather a forced smile on it, 
 
 419
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 I sauntered up and said : " Hello, Celia. Not kept you 
 waiting, I hope ? " 
 
 I don't think I'm vain, but an expression in the eyes 
 of Celia's men friends as they look me gradually up and 
 - down tells me that even if I don't wear a white-topped 
 cap I have a certain something about me. 
 
 " There you are, Peter. Just in time for me to in- 
 troduce you to Commander Mommeter." 
 
 I looked at him as we shook hands. Could he be the 
 cloud no bigger than a man's hand for which I was ever 
 on the look-out ? But courage ! I'd had so many 
 narrow escapes. Why meet trouble half-way ? 
 
 "Ah! How de do ? " I said stiffly through my 
 yashmak. 
 
 " Captain Mommeter is coming to tea to-day, Peter. 
 Isn't it charming ? We haven't met for so long." 
 
 Oh, Celia ! 
 
 I murmured something indistinctly and, thanks to 
 my yashmak, they didn't see what I really thought. 
 He murmured something politely conventional too. 
 
 " Yes, I was going to have it here, but now I am going 
 home specially. There, isn't that a compliment ? " she 
 smiled dazzlingly at him. " Don't get there till a 
 quarter to five o'clock. I sha'n't be back before then. 
 I've got heaps of things to do. I've promised to report 
 at headquarters and get another collecting-box, for this 
 is full. Mind you don't forget to come, and before you 
 go you must let me pin a flag on you. But I'm sorry 
 I must remove the others. When I plant a flag 
 somewhere, it must be the only one ! " She swept the 
 others off and put one of hers on. " There, that's it ! " 
 and she put her head on one side. 
 
 He looked down at the little flag with a curious 
 expression on his face. I think he was really a little 
 bit overcome, for after a moment all he could find to 
 say was " Oh, swish ! " 
 
 " That's just it," said Celia, laughing at him. " Don't 
 forget. Five o'clock. ' ' 
 
 " I shall be there. Thanks so much." He stepped 
 
 420
 
 back and saluted. And again let me say I could write 
 reams about that salute. As I said before, movements 
 may mean so much or so little. Any big naval battle 
 left out of the angle of the cap was included in the 
 salute. 
 
 Something about the man impressed me, but I wasn't 
 going to give it away to Celia. 
 
 " Who is that chap, anyway ? " 
 
 "It's rather amusing. I know quite well who he is, 
 but candidly, Peter, he doesn't a bit know who I am." 
 
 " Then you shouldn't ask him to tea, and certainly 
 you shouldn't let him, even if you do know who he is, 
 say ' swish ' to a woman of your position like that. A 
 man who'd say that to you after such a short acquaint- 
 ance can't have any fine feelings." 
 
 I wasn't going to let on what I had found out from 
 the cap. 
 
 " If he doesn't know me, how can he know what my 
 position is ? And what would be the use of having 
 fine feelings on a flag day ? They'd only get in the 
 way. Everything is promiscuous and permissible. 
 Let me tell you who he is. He's Diana's cousin, the 
 one we've heard so much about ; as soon as he gave me 
 his name I recognised him from her description and 
 from an old Chinese ring he is wearing. He got it when 
 he was in Pekin as a middy during the Boxer Rising, and 
 he had to fight five men for it. I've known the story 
 for ages." 
 
 " I like the way you said you hadn't seen him for so 
 long. What a fibber you are." 
 
 " That's strictly true. As I'd never seen him before, 
 it wasn't an untruth to say I hadn't seen him for so 
 long." 
 
 We were just about to trot off to headquarters when 
 a smart young fellow in the uniform of a Guards' regi- 
 ment swung up. Celia, who is an almighty huntress, 
 authoritatively demanded that he should buy a flag 
 (one of those she had swept off the Commander) and a 
 ticket, 
 
 421
 
 " Oh, right-o ! " he said agreeably but hurriedly, 
 fumbling in a pocket. 
 
 " Yes, a flag, certainly, and one ticket or two or 
 six. Here's ten bob. Want my name ? Lemme see, 
 what is it ? I've quite forgotten. I'm in such a hurry 
 I can't remember it. Oh yes. Alastair Campbell, 
 Guards' Club. D'you mind if I just take my bits and 
 run along quick ? Thanks thanks." 
 
 He grabbed the tickets and rushed into the hotel, in 
 his hurry scattering some on the pavement. 
 
 " How awful to have to put up with these off-hand 
 boys. But I suppose as it's for charity it can't be 
 helped." I picked up the tickets, as they looked so 
 untidy blowing about. " Here, what am I to do with 
 these ? Shall I give them to the hall porter and tell him 
 to hand them over as he comes out again ? " 
 
 " Not at all. He doesn't want them. Why, you 
 can tell by that boy's appearance that he hates pictures. 
 He's quite a nice boy. I'll sell them again, so give 
 them to me." 
 
 I was shocked at her want of commercial morality. 
 " You can be put in prison for this sort of thing. I 
 don't know what women are coming to. I always 
 knew they were rather dishonest, but I never knew 
 they were as bad as that, selling tickets twice over." 
 
 " I had instructions to make every penny I could 
 for the charity, and I'm going to. I may sell these 
 several times yet as long as they hold together. He's 
 forfeited his rights by letting them blow away. People 
 who lose their tickets are a great nuisance, because if 
 the thing is won by them and they don't claim it, no 
 one knows what to do with it, and it has to be stored 
 for months." 
 
 Just then two more subaltern Guardees hove in sight, 
 armed with longish cigars, the remains of a late lunch, I 
 should think. " Come on ! " I pulled at her sleeve, fore- 
 seeing that she would tackle them too, but she shook 
 me off. 
 
 " I must just get something out of these two," she said. 
 
 422
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 " Nonsense. You've got quite enough." 
 
 " But can't you see how awfully rich they look ! 
 Wait a sec. Flag ! Won't you buy a flag ? Or a ticket 
 for this picture ? " 
 
 They looked down at Celia's upturned face. Creamy- 
 white, like the shadow you see in the calyx of a lily 
 with a touch of azalea-pink in her cheeks and lips. 
 They were instantly rooted to the spot. The long 
 cigars were politely removed. 
 
 " Good gracious me. Souls awakening. I'd rather 
 not. I prefer to keep mine quiet. What's that ? 
 Love's awakening. Oh, that's another matter. I'll 
 have five shillingsworth of that. Most decidedly. And 
 
 this old sport here too. Ten shillings for him I 
 
 don't think that's enough. He's very rich, quite rich. 
 He's my eldest brother and has all the money. Stick 
 him for a whole gold bit. Do. It will do him good. 
 Yes, no nonsense. Out with it, you old Scotchman. 
 It's like drawing blood from a stone " 
 
 The elder brother was handing two or three notes to 
 Celia quite amiably, so we could see how the description 
 suited him. " Yes. He's a sort of miracle, you see. 
 He's in a Scotch regiment and yet he's really Scotch. 
 Some mistake, what ? He ought to be in the Welsh 
 Guards, of course. His name address naturally to 
 send the picture to when he wins it Alastair Campbell 
 that's his name 
 
 ' l Alastair Campbell ? I seem to know the name." 
 Celia tapped her teeth with her pencil. 
 
 " Oh, rather. Best name in Scotland. Address 
 Guard's Club Pall Mall. Arid if he wins it, I'll see 
 that he has it framed and keeps it as a mascot. They 
 Avill like it at the club, won't they ? But no. I think 
 it would be better to send it up home to the old family 
 place. Kincudbright Castle Perth, N.B., R.S.O. 
 Don't put D.S.O. by mistake or B.E.F. or M.Y.O.B. or 
 D.C.O.C., will you ? Do be careful of that, won't you ? 
 There will be great excitement in the family mansion 
 if he wins the picture. They've only got about five or 
 
 423
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 six hundred there already, and this Love's Awakening 
 will come in awfully handy. It's a charming place. 
 No, don't give him any change. It's bad for him. Put 
 it in the box. That's it. Yes, it's a charming place. 
 Ever heard of it ? No. How absurd. Why, it's very well 
 known, I assure you. What a lot of writing you have to 
 do on these tickets. Yes, up at the old place they have 
 two ghosts ; yes, five hundred pictures and only two 
 ghosts. Isn't it absurd ? What a discrepancy. Yes, 
 the poor things killed each other in a quarrel, and so 
 they are not on speaking terms. They were brothers, 
 but they quarrelled. My brother and I never quarrel. 
 Never. And so these two poor things don't speak ; 
 they only bow coldly as they pass. That is, one bows 
 but the other can't, as it carries its head under its 
 arm 
 
 " Did you say you were Scotch ? " said Celia, still 
 writing tickets hard. 
 
 ; ' Rather." 
 
 " I'm afraid I don't believe you you've got a sense 
 of humour and you spend money like water." 
 
 "W T hat! You think because we haven't got cold 
 feet we can't, be Scotch. That's an obsolete 'supersti- 
 tion. A Scotchman may suffer from cold knees, but 
 he ' 
 
 " I'll tell you what it is," said the elder brother, who 
 hadn't spoken yet. " He'll spend my money like water 
 but he won't spend his own. He's not spent a penny 
 up to date. It's all mine, as you may have seen. He 
 just goes on talking so as you won't notice it. Of 
 course he's Scotch." 
 
 Campbell Number One had come out again, and was 
 hailed as " There you are, you mouldy old perish er," and 
 invited to have a ticket. He said he'd had some, but 
 there were some fellows inside who hadn't, but who 
 would have to. So he pushed his way in at the twirling 
 glass door and brought out three more as like as peas to 
 the others. They all had a pronounced look of each 
 other, except the first one. who was taller, and they were 
 
 424
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 all in the same regiment. He elbowed the talkative 
 one away and, drawing the others forward, said the only 
 thing that would help them through the dreary wastes 
 of life would be the hope of winning that picture of 
 Love's Awakening. 
 
 Each of them gave his name in turn as Campbell ; 
 Graham and Charles and Edward. All Campbells ; 
 and they all came from Perth, they said. 
 
 " I heard you were coming, of course," said Celia, 
 "but I didn't expect you to-day." She was rapidly 
 becoming intimate with them. I was positive that in 
 a few moments more they would be invited to tea, 
 like the gallant Commander. She is absolutely in- 
 corrigible in her unconventionality ; when I remon- 
 strate with her she says that it doesn't matter, as 
 London is simply a mass of densely clotted family life. 
 If you don't actually know a person, you know the 
 brother, the cousin, the aunt, or the mother, or you've 
 been to their christening or they've been to yours. 
 The talkative one, with whom a very little encourage- 
 ment went a long way, was asking her if she didn't think 
 flag days were very one-sided affairs. Though it was 
 a matter of complete indifference to her, she knew their 
 names and their Christian names and where they were 
 to be found in town and their home address in North 
 Britain, and yet, though they were longing to know her 
 Christian name and what part of town she hallowed 
 by her presence, there wasn't the slightest chance of 
 getting to know it. Life was a blank. 
 
 She was dealing out the tickets, and they were all 
 scrambling for them and contradicting each other as 
 to which belonged to which, for no one of them seemed 
 clear as to whether he were John, Alastair, Graham, 
 Charles, Edward, or Malcolm, or who had paid or who 
 hadn't. But one thing I noticed was that, Scotch 
 or not Scotch, they had all paid several times over for 
 each ticket. 
 
 A slight disturbance in the street at this moment 
 called our attention to a tall, rather dishevelled-looking 
 
 425
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 girl, with her hat fallen to one side, carrying a flag- 
 tray and walking quickly along, not on the pavement, 
 but by the edge of the street, with a herd of small boys 
 following her, and several people walking along the 
 kerb, watching her as if they were not quite sure of 
 what she was going to do next. She was talking in 
 rather a high voice, with a slight lisp, and scolding 
 the boys for following her, and yet she seemed to be 
 encouraging them, rattling her box and saying what a 
 lot of money she had collected. She was quite close 
 to the hotel when, on looking down Piccadilly, I saw 
 two policemen making straight for her at a sort of 
 jog-trot. One of the small boys saw them too and 
 shouted : " 'Ere's the coppers. They're after you. 
 Look out, missis." 
 
 The girl turned round, saw them, and made a flying 
 leap for a disengaged taxi, which was crawling along, 
 untenanted. 
 
 The driver pulled up, expostulated, and explained 
 with animation that he had made arrangements to 
 pick up a fare in ten minutes. 
 
 " No, no ! You must drive me. Be a sport ! 
 Give you anything you like ! You'll be there and 
 back in less than that if you buck up and don't 
 talk 1 " 
 
 "Where to, then? " 
 
 " Number Grosvenor Square ! " She flourished 
 
 her hand at him. The door banged and the taxi went 
 off like a shot, the gears nearly ripping out of the 
 gear-box. 
 
 Celia clutched my arm, which I had put out for her 
 support. 
 
 " Did she say number - Grosvenor Square ? " 
 
 "Yes," said the Campbells all together. "She 
 did." 
 
 "She did, most decidedly she did. It's very queer. 
 I think we'd better nip into a taxi and get along there 
 at once and see what's the meaning of it." 
 
 I hailed one, and after turning it drew up. 
 
 42G
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 "That's the number of my house," cried Celia 
 agitatedly. 
 
 "You don't mean to say so," said the Campbells, 
 repeating it to get it right. 
 
 "Yes. She's not a real flag-seller. Her tray and 
 box are not regulation at all. She's a society thief, 
 that's what she is. And she's going to give my name 
 as a blind and use my house as a means of escaping 
 from justice ! Come on ! Hurry ! " 
 
 " May we come too ? " said the Campbells eagerly. 
 " There may be a struggle. The policemen are asking 
 the people over there by the florist's what address 
 she gave ! " 
 
 " Yes, yes, come along." She plunged into the taxi 
 and I followed, and three Campbells got in helter-skelter, 
 sitting on each other's knees, and trampling all over our 
 feet. One stuck his head out of the window, calling 
 on the others to follow, and was violently jerked over 
 on to me as we started. 
 
 " Good Lord ! " I groaned. " Flag-day manners. 
 I'd no idea it was as bad as this." I glowered at the 
 Campbells. 
 
 "Oh," said Celia, "they're only boys." 
 
 " Oh yes, we're only boys," they chorused, ragging 
 and pinching each other and roaring with laughter. 
 One was at least thirty, I'm sure. 
 
 " And why shouldn't they come if they want to ? 
 Besides, there may be a struggle. That woman is not 
 sober, and to my mind she has all the look of a danger- 
 ous criminal." 
 
 "We'll be badly needed," said the Campbells, "but 
 you can rely on us." 
 
 "I'm sure I can," Celia replied, with a wait-till-T- 
 can-get-at-her expression on her face. 
 
 The taxi lurched off at a dangerous pace. As we 
 went along Celia unwound herself from her tray. She 
 had a feeling she'd like to have her hands free, she said. 
 I suspected that she was itching to box the bogus 
 flag-seller's ears. Any quantity of disgraceful things 
 
 427
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 went on, and money intended for the charities was 
 stolen and they suffered grievously, and people were 
 victimised to any extent. During a block in the traffic, 
 we had to listen to a string of dark doings, and the 
 Campbells subscribed eagerly to all she said ; stirred 
 her up more and more, and goaded her on. 
 
 Campbell Number One said he had heard of a thief 
 like that who took refuge in a most respectable house, 
 and when the police came after her she got up on to 
 the roof and there was a fearfully exciting chase. She 
 ran round and round for hours along the parapets of a 
 series of connecting buildings and escaped by sliding 
 down a gutter pipe. When taken she was found to 
 be an escaped female convict who had once been an 
 acrobat. 
 
 " If only Habits will have the good sense to refuse 
 her admittance. He is getting so good now at knowing 
 who he may or may not admit. He's really invaluable." 
 
 I opined optimistically, in spite of my squelched 
 feet hurting me, that he would not let her in. Her 
 looks were too rowdy altogether, and though he hadn't 
 a photograph, she was so very like some of those 
 already in the collection who were taboo. 
 
 I haven't mentioned it before, but Celia's house is 
 besieged by bores. Everyone's house is, but especially 
 Celia's. owing to her good nature. However, she knows 
 what her feelings and shortcomings are in this matter, 
 so she has specially trained her butler to refuse ad- 
 mittance to certain people. There is a rogue's picture 
 gallery down in a room off the pantry of the people he 
 must not admit, so unless they are strong bores and 
 push past they can rarely get in. When we can't 
 get a photograph of the bore we make drawings, and 
 then we choose the best one, and up it goes in the big 
 glazed cupboard and is stuck with drawing-pins on 
 the green baize, with a description beside it of facial 
 peculiarities or peculiarities of dress or manner. 
 
 Thus No. 10 is a Welsh doctor who never does any 
 work. Calls at one-fifteen, stays to lunch, reads the 
 
 428
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 paper and has a snack if Celia is out ; has tea. Has 
 a good try to stay for dinner, and won't dress for it or 
 even brush his hair, and makes everyone feel uncom- 
 fortable. Tells tall scientific stories, which if one looks 
 up one finds to be figments of his imagination. If 
 Celia wants to get rid of him she has to receive an 
 imaginary call to the bed-side of a sick friend. If not 
 got rid of, stays and consumes whisky and soda till 
 two A.M. Very obnoxious. Marked two stars, and W.W. 
 
 W.W. means " won't wash " ; the two stars mean an 
 unusually virulent bore. 
 
 No. 25 is a decayed literary man, with Persian blood 
 in his veins and Persian warts on his face. He was at 
 one time correspondent on foreign politics to The New 
 York Hooter. Fond of looking in on at-home days 
 and spilling slices of bread and butter on Aubusson 
 carpets and treading same well in. Spills tea and ices 
 on new charmeuse gowns, talks incessantly on foreign 
 politics, and gets his facts upside down. W.W. and 
 D.D. 
 
 D.D. means "distinctly dotty." 
 
 No. 16. Mrs Z. Here we have an old lemon. 
 Her face is a bright tomato colour and does not go 
 with the drawing-room carpet. If you must admit 
 her, show her into the billiard-room, as tomato goes 
 with the colour of the carpet there. 
 
 No. 18. Captain L. Don't admit on musical at- 
 home days as he makes curious booming noises (against 
 time) when vocal or instrumental music is going on. 
 Mrs Carmichael is nervous if left alone with him. 
 
 No. 7. Mrs M. Particularly boring busybody, only 
 comes to pry into what goes on. Nothing particular 
 in appearance, which is entirely mediocre. O.n.a.a. 
 (on no account admit). 
 
 No. 18. Young enough to know better. Insane 
 on statistics. Perpetually asking you to glance at 
 sheets of sea-green paper with lines and figures on them 
 in white, rather like temperature charts ; proving 
 that England's consumption of bicarbonate of soda, 
 
 429
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 or bananas, or nitrates was larger in 1909 than in 
 1911, and dwindled down to a quarter of the figure 
 in 1912 because the Japanese came into the market. 
 
 Habits' position is no sinecure, I can tell you. But 
 for all his years of training he had admitted the lady 
 with the tousled hair into the drawing-room and she 
 was already having her tea. She'd asked to have it 
 served at once and made herself quite at home. 
 
 " But, Habits, how could you let her in ! Didn't 
 you see what a very funny person she is ? " 
 
 " Yes, mum. But I've no photograph of the lady, 
 and some of the very best people look so queer some- 
 times. I did think, though, she was funny, and very 
 familiar with the taxi-driver. She laughed a whole 
 lot with him and slapped him on the back before he 
 drove away." 
 
 As we stood talking the second instalment of the 
 Campbells landed up with a whoop in their taxi at the 
 door, left open by Habits in his agitation. They were 
 very noisy, but all exceedingly good-looking and well 
 turned-out. They gave up their caps nicely, and 
 smoothed back their hair, which already shone like 
 polished wood, and trooped up the stairs at our heels. 
 
 We found the flag lady, tall and slim, helping herself 
 to tea quite calmly, and, standing there, she received us 
 with the teapot held up aloft, pouring skilfully into the 
 cup held low down. 
 
 " She's putting a head on it. Barmaid ! " I thought. 
 
 " Put that down ! " said Celia indignantly. 
 
 " I will in a minute if you'll give me time. Sugar ? 
 milk ? yes, thanks," addressing herself and suiting 
 the action to the words. She didn't seem to resent our 
 coming in or interrupting her in what she was doing. 
 In fact she didn't let us interrupt her at all. 
 
 " Certainly. I've no objection. The policemen are 
 after me, and I felt I stood a better chance of getting 
 off lightly if I was caught in a respectable house in a 
 respectable square." Her coolness was staggering. 
 
 ' ' Exactly as I thought. Exactly as I thought. What 
 
 430
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 did I say ! ! " said Celia, turning round and appealing 
 to the assembly. The Campbells, though by their 
 looks they were awfully well-bred, and were in a tip- 
 top regiment, seemed to be foolishly overcome by un- 
 controllable giggles. Certainly the girl was a sight, 
 and enough to make anyone laugh, but it shows what 
 an awful mistake it is to ask people to tea you don't 
 know. These young bloods, having got in without 
 proper introductions, thought they could do as they 
 liked, naturally. 
 
 " I knew you were a society thief the moment I saw 
 you. Yes, I knew it in the first instant, and I said so. 
 But I have no words in which to express my disgust. 
 Why don't you work ? " 
 
 " I simply hate work." 
 
 "But the idea of stooping to this. You make me 
 blush for my sex. Such a despicable way of obtaining 
 money." 
 
 " Oh, the money is all right ! Don't please worry 
 about that." She drew up a chair to the tea-table. 
 
 " But I am worrying about it. I sha'n't let you out 
 of this house till you give me every penny ! " 
 
 " I'll give you some of it for the charity, but I cer- 
 tainly won't give it all. I've worked frightfully hard 
 collecting it." 
 
 "We'll see about that," said Celia, her face harden- 
 ing surprisingly. 
 
 The flag lady shrugged her shoulders, stirred her tea 
 noisily and took a large piece of cake. How amazing 
 these hardened criminals are. Fancy being able to be 
 hungry when you know the police are on your track for 
 obtaining money under false pretences. What nerve. 
 She was gulping down the tea, gobbling the cake. 
 
 We stared at one another, amazed at her coolness 
 and her appetite. 
 
 Celia took off her hat with an unspellable sound, 
 fiercely jabbed the hat-pins into it and threw it on a 
 sofa ! She ran her fingers wildly through her hair 
 until it stood up excitedly. 
 
 431
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 " This is a nice thing to have happen ! What made 
 you come here ? Do you suppose I'm in the habit of 
 allowing strange people in and out of my house without 
 knowing anything about them ? " 
 
 The Campbells looked guilty. I caught her eye and 
 coughed derisively. I couldn't help it. 
 
 "No. I don't suppose you do." Another piece of 
 cake was transferred to the plate. " Why should you ? 
 No. Quite so. There's another question I'd like to 
 ask you and it's this : Instead of stooping to these 
 vile methods, why don't you work ? Even if you do 
 hate it. that's no excuse." 
 
 "Ah ! I only wish I could work. If you knew all 
 my story The girl put down her tea and shook 
 
 her head pathetically, and let her rouged cheek drop in 
 her slim, nervous-looking hand for a moment. 
 
 " I don't wish to be harsh." Celia was touched by 
 the attitude and sudden lapse from the hard defiant 
 manner of a few moments before, and no doubt felt 
 there might be extenuating circumstances. Her eyes 
 rested on her, and in a trice I saw she had endowed her 
 with a poor enfeebled old father, a confirmed invalid, 
 broken down after years and years of unremitting toil, 
 all his savings of a lifetime (which after his death were 
 to keep the wolf from his .children's door) inveigled 
 from him by an unscrupulous friend who had persuaded 
 him to invest them in a city swindle. There might 
 really have been something to make one feel sorry for 
 the girl, looking at her as she sat there, if one hadn't 
 known that she was in all likelihood up to every dodge 
 and bit of crook-craft possible. 
 
 Celia, unfortunately, with her susceptible heart, 
 would only see the possibilities of pathos, and in another 
 trice fitted her out too with an incapable, querulous, 
 good-for-nothing mother who wandered about in an 
 old dirty wrapper, her hair unkempt and perpetually 
 in curl-papers, nagging at her daughter for not having 
 found some means of paying the doctor's bills or for 
 getting the expensive drugs and invalid foods which 
 
 432
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 he must have at all costs if they were to keep the 
 feeble flicker of life going in his poor thin frame on which 
 the skin was stretched like parchment. 
 
 " I don't wish to be harsh," she repeated in a voice 
 which softened rapidly. " but you know that every penny 
 of money you obtain wrongly and keep for your own 
 purposes, whatever they may be, is money stolen yes, 
 stolen from little orphans. It's dreadful to think of." 
 
 " I'm an orphan myself." The flag girl drooped still 
 more. 
 
 Celia gave a clucking noise with her tongue and 
 shook her head as if she didn't know what to say. She 
 wiped out the mental picture she had made, swept the 
 poor old sick father unceremoniously aside, and rapidly 
 went to work upon another tableau. The girl had 
 been left unprotected at a tender age, the eldest of a 
 family of orphans, all dependent on her, all looking to 
 her for the care which ought to have been lavished on 
 them by the mother who was now dead. Perhaps in 
 the mother's lifetime this girl had been her right hand, 
 helping her with the housework, bathing and teaching 
 the younger children, pinching and scraping to make 
 the tiny sum of money the elder ones earned between 
 them go round. At last she lost her situation, owing 
 to something unforeseen, and no money came into the 
 small establishment ; driven by the cries of hunger of 
 the smallest children, in despair she took to dishonest 
 means to obtain money to buy bread ! Celia was 
 melting rapidly. In another few moments she would 
 offer the unspeakable female the shelter of her roof 
 indefinitely. That I'd never allow. I'd seen too many 
 of her sort in the police courts, so I'd settle her myself 
 if Celia didn't. She wouldn't fool me, and I'd see she 
 didn't fool her either. 
 
 As she wavered the door opened and, more than true 
 to his word, for it wasn't yet a quarter to five, in 
 stepped the gallant Commander. 
 
 Celia glanced at him as if she'd quite forgotten who 
 
 2E 433
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 he was or what he was doing there, and I think she 
 wished the invitation had slipped his memory, as his 
 coming was so inopportune. 
 
 The Campbells were grouped gracefully round the 
 room and had ceased giggling. They looked self- 
 conscious and uncomfortable, as though the girl's 
 words had touched them. 
 
 As the Commander entered the room the flag-seller 
 looked at him, gave a cry of pleasure, jumped up and 
 came swiftly forward. 
 
 " Ah ! here's someone who knows me and knows I'm 
 honest. He'll vouch for me." 
 
 In the act of taking Celia's hand the Commander 
 paused and looked at the speaker. Her appearance was 
 not such as to excite admiration or even confidence. 
 Her figure, true, was tall and slight, with a great free- 
 dom of movement about it which suggested the grace 
 of the panther. She was across the room swiftly. But 
 her hat, as I said, was awry and her clothes looked 
 wisped and crumpled. There was too much cheap 
 colour in her handsome face, put on in a sketchy way. 
 One cheek glowed more than the other. 
 
 "Ah-ha! Birds of a feather," thought I. Cap 
 or no cap, this man was not the sort of man for a 
 lady's drawing-room, if he hob-nobbed with her sort. 
 How right I was about not making promiscuous 
 friends ! 
 
 But he denied the allegation. 
 
 " I know you ? I'm exceedingly sorry," he said 
 stiffly, looking at her and from her to Celia and then at 
 the other occupants of the room, " but I do not." 
 
 " Oh yes, you do. How can you say you don't ? " 
 
 " But most certainly I do not." 
 
 " Oh yes, you do ; you know me quite well." She 
 advanced familiarly and seemed about to wind her 
 long arms about him. 
 
 He warded her off. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, I repeat, I'm sure I do not know 
 you." He looked at her hair and her cheeks and her 
 
 434
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 hat. His face, which was a reddish-tan, became a 
 deeper tan. The quiet look became a shade quieter. 
 
 " You offered me a drink last night, so there ! " 
 (The other orphans, all the lot of them, vanished into 
 thin air at the mention of her having promiscuous liquid 
 refreshment offered to her by naval officers who refused 
 to acknowledge her afterwards. All Celia's suspicions^ 
 returned with a rush.) 
 
 "Really, madam, you must be crazy. I'd never 
 seen you till this morning for a few minutes ; and not 
 only that, but may I say that I don't particularly wish 
 to see you again, for I don't like your looks at all ! " 
 
 "Well, at any rate you're frank ! " 
 
 " I'm not Frank. I'm Arthur." 
 
 "Arthur who?" 
 
 "Arthur Mommeter. But why should I be cate- 
 chised by you like this ? " 
 
 The gallant Commander was losing his temper. It 
 was hard lines to come along hoping to make an im- 
 pression and to be greeted as an old friend by a be- 
 draggled, tousled girl who looked as if she had been 
 engaged in a free fight somewhere. 
 
 " Mrs Carmichael. excuse my asking you, but how 
 did this -this person get here ? She seems quite out 
 of place." He looked round him at the beautiful 
 rooms, white and grey and pale cherry colour. 
 
 " Oh, Captain Mommeter, don't you really know 
 anything about her ? " 
 
 " I've never seen her till this morning. I was in the 
 city and I happened to pass up Lombard Street and 
 saw she had a perfect mob round her and everyone 
 was guying her. It was all her own fault, for she was 
 answering them back. The police were moving her 
 along for obstructing the traffic." 
 
 We were all at the height of annoyance and con- 
 strained intercourse when Habits the imperturbable 
 appeared in full pomp, preparatory to circulating 
 among visitors cups of tea on a large salver, followed 
 by his satellites with the milk, lemon and sugar. If 
 
 435
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 the last trump sounded within a few minutes of tea- 
 time, Habits would serve it and, having done so, proceed 
 to place himself in the hands of the heavenly hosts. 
 After probably offering them tea too. 
 
 The Campbells partook of it in a silence which somehow 
 struck me as explosive. The flag lady was in Habits' 
 direct line of progression, and true to his training, who- 
 ever or whatever she was, as she was in his drawing- 
 room (he looked on it as his. I know), she should be 
 offered tea. Notwithstanding, too, that he had already 
 served her before with it. His pompous worthy pass- 
 age stopped all recriminations for the moment. The 
 sight of tea and Habits' sublime example and her 
 natural (or unnatural, and, as I considered, unduly and 
 dangerously developed) instincts of hospitality made 
 Celia feel that till tea had been partaken of further 
 explanations must be deferred. There is in this simple 
 ritual of the tea-table and other everyday incidents of 
 our home life more than one thinks. Many a tragedy 
 has been averted because it was time to sit down to a 
 meal. Many a matter of life and death has been 
 pushed aside by the ordered but irresistible march of 
 little things. Many a poor soul must have been put off 
 committing suicide because it w r as near dinner-time or 
 because the servants might think it funny ; or post- 
 poned, after the undecided, shilly-shallying way of 
 Hamlet, the murder of an aggravating step-father be- 
 cause it would cause so much extra housework to clean 
 up the debris. 
 
 So Habits served us solemnly and carefully one by 
 one, and passed relay after relay of cake to the slightly 
 flustered-looking Campbells. 
 
 When this duty had been satisfactorily discharged 
 he caused the cigarettes to be handed round, solemnly 
 and punctiliously, offering the spirit -lighter to each of 
 us in turn himself because he won't trust his satellites 
 with the delicate task of holding the flame correctly to 
 the end of the cigar or cigarette of a perfect lady or 
 gentleman and in due course he came to the flag girl. 
 
 436
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 But she quickly took the light out of his hand, lit her 
 cigarette herself, remarking casually, when he protested 
 politely : " 'Sno trouble, thanks." 
 
 " 'Sno trouble, thanks." Where had she got that 
 expression ? It was one of our own special japes, 
 feeble, but in almost constant use. Whenever anyone 
 did anything for anybody and was politely thanked for 
 doing so, they replied equally politely " 'Sno trouble, 
 thanks." 
 
 I looked at the lady again. I ran my eye up and 
 down her figure. Her feet were large though well 
 formed. She was exceptionally tall. " 'Sno trouble, 
 thanks," indeed ! It was Dan, of course. Why hadn't 
 I seen it was he before ? No one else had noticed it 
 evidently, for everyone else still looked uncomfortable 
 and awkward. What was that fellow up to now, I'd 
 like to know. Good thing for him he hadn't got his 
 commission yet. He could have been court-martialled 
 if he had, masquerading in the streets in this get-up. 
 I'll say this for it, that it would have been excellent if 
 he had got the rouge on a bit more evenly and if it 
 hadn't been such a shocking colour. His management 
 of his voice was exceptional, and besides it was all in his 
 favour, as it was never a deep voice. He sang in a high 
 baritone, almost a tenor, and his speaking voice was 
 slow and languid ; not throaty, but always pleasantly 
 misty, with almost a lisp on some words. Celia hadn't 
 spotted him in the least, which was funny. I think she 
 was rather muddled and overtired with her busy day, 
 having started out early and having, too, been very late 
 the night before. 
 
 A shrill whistle on the speaking-tube brought Habits 
 out to it. I heard him reply, -put back the plug with a 
 click and descend the stairs quite quickly. Though he 
 has all the slow, splendid pomposity of the ideal butler, 
 he moves with incredible swiftness at times. 
 
 He was soon up again, and ushered in a group of 
 genuine flag- sellers from neighbouring beats, exhausted 
 from their efforts. They fell gratefully on to chairs 
 
 437
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 and sofas. One was fully as tall as Dan, and looked 
 more muscular, though she was the real thing. Extra- 
 ordinary how brawny the modern girl can be, I thought. 
 
 They all called loudly for tea (oblivious of what they 
 had come in for, and of the tension of the atmosphere), 
 but Habits was in earnest conversation on the landing 
 with two large policemen who had posted themselves 
 one outside each door. I slipped out. 
 
 " Are you after the bogus flag-seller ? " I jerked 
 my head towards the drawing-room. 
 
 " Yes, sir ; and a nice chase we've 'ad. She's given 
 us the slip over and over again to-day. We've got a 
 warrant for her arrest. She's not an authorised flag- 
 seller at all and she's taken a lot of money We've got 
 a full description of the proper tray and collecting-box, 
 and hers is all wrong. But it's odd she should belong 
 to this 'ouse. I see me old friend 'Abits 'ere in charge, 
 and I understood he was in a situation in a most 
 respectable 'ouse. Quite a surprige to me it was when 
 she gave me this as her address this morning." 
 
 " There's nothing the matter with the house, Officer, 
 but there's everything the matter with that lady. In 
 fact, she's not a lady at all. She's a male criminal, and 
 a very notorious one too." 
 
 " My word, Sir, you don't say ! I'd better get the 
 bracelets on at that rate. We've got them with us. 
 Can you give me some definite information ? " 
 
 " I can indeed, and by a most extraordinary coinci- 
 dence. I'm a lawyer, and I defended him on a most 
 serious charge of a double murder and arson combined. 
 I got him off, but I always felt I oughtn't to have done 
 so. You can guess what my feelings were when saw 
 him here ! " 
 
 " That I can, Sir. Then there's no time to be lost. 
 Is he strong, Sir ? " 
 
 "Like a horse. You'll have a frightful struggle. 
 Have you got the things you were speaking of ready 
 for use ? " 
 
 " Under me 'and. Sir." 
 
 438
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 " There are several able-bodied men here, but I have 
 reason to believe they are his particular pals and work 
 in collusion with him. We don't know any of them at 
 all never as much as seen any of them before. They've 
 palmed themselves off on Mrs Carmichael, who is very 
 easily taken in ; forced their way in when she doesn't 
 even know their names." 
 
 " Some of the swell mob, Sir. I know. But I'm up 
 to their little dodges." 
 
 One, two, One, two. They entered the room, with 
 myself in the rear, swept its occupants with their eagle 
 eyes and went over to the flag-seller, who was still 
 expostulating and trying to make her case clear to 
 Celia and Captain Mommeter. 
 
 " Well, Inspector, we've met before," she said, eyeing 
 the larger one quite calmly as he approached her. 
 
 "Yes. I've got a note of it 'ere" he produced a 
 cheap shiny pocket-book meaningly. " But before 
 you leave here, Madam, I shall be glad if you will 
 give me your real name and address. I've got you 
 down here as Ellaline Fitzherbert, and you gave the 
 address of this 'ouse as being the address of your 
 'ome." 
 
 Celia clutched me. "Ah, what did I say! What 
 did I say ! " 
 
 " I didn't mean to say it w r as my real home. I only 
 meant it was my home in a sense." 
 
 " I asked you in my official capacity as one of the 
 Inspectors in his Majesty's Metropolitan Police Force 
 a plain question. I asked you what your 'ome address 
 was, and it was your dooty to give it to me correctly, 
 and no prevaricatings." 
 
 " And so I did. This is my home. It's my spiritual 
 home." 
 
 " The woman's mad," breathed Celia. " just mad." 
 
 "Yes, indeed it is. I've been sustained and borne 
 up here many and many a time by elevating and en- 
 nobling conversation. I've dropped in here at odd 
 moments when all my faith in mankind seemed about 
 
 439
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 to crumble to pieces, and left the house full of hope and 
 confidence." 
 
 The Campbells were squeaking like guinea-pigs. I 
 wondered why they couldn't control their mirth, and 
 wondered whether they had twigged something or 
 other of what was going on. 
 
 "Believe me or not as you like, but it was in this 
 house that I first felt yearnings towards leading a 
 better life." 
 
 " I've 'card all that before. It's very fine, but you 
 don't seem to be leading much of a life for all these yere 
 yearnings, leastways to my way of thinking, obtaining 
 money under false pretences and carrying on in these 
 ways, like you've been doing to-day." 
 
 "Ah, there's where you wrong me! I'm speaking 
 the truth. I came here years and years ago, a selfish, 
 heartless, thoughtless young fell girl ' 
 
 " I know all about that. I'm well aware also of the 
 fact that you are a female impersonator and you know 
 that's a penal offence." 
 
 With an eye to effect, and to unnerve the creature, 
 he quickly plucked off the big muslin hat, curls and 
 chignon complete. There stood Dan revealed. 
 
 A shout of laughter came from the Campbells. They 
 rolled about and shook helplessly, and laid their heads 
 on each other's shoulders and seemed almost to weep. 
 It was certainly amusing enough that Dan should dress 
 up, but their mirth seemed uncontrollable and out of 
 proportion to the incident. His apfpearance as a man 
 finally cooked his goose in the eyes of the policemen. 
 With a concerted movement they slipped alongside 
 close to him. There was a quick dive, a click and the 
 bracelets were on. 
 
 The ladies in the room shrieked. 
 
 " What on earth have you been doing ? " Celia 
 looked utterly dazed. 
 
 " I don't quite know," he said, looking down at his 
 hands in rather a bewildered way, but in an instant his 
 face cleared, as if what had happened were of no import- 
 
 440
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 ance. " Kergariou, you festive billy-goat, I've got you 
 cold over that bet. I'm sure I've got the amount. 
 There's the money-box under the sofa. Rip it open 
 and count it." 
 
 The Campbells all together made a swoop for the 
 sofa. Two legitimate flag-sellers were sitting on it, and 
 with a perfunctory " Sorry to trouble you " they thrust 
 them aside and got the collecting box out from under- 
 neath it. 
 
 " I insist on knowing the meaning of all this. I 
 won't have my house turned into a bear garden 
 
 '' Oh, excuse me, Mrs Carmichael," one of them said 
 in the most well-bred agreeable tones possible, and pay- 
 ing no more attention to the policemen than if they 
 hadn't been there. " Can I have the loan of a poker 
 or something to wrench this box open ? " He made 
 towards the fireplace. 
 
 " I'm certainly not going to have my best drawing- 
 room poker used to wrench that miserable box open. 
 You must find some other means." She swept the 
 Campbells with an angry and a haughty glance, but 
 they seemed too agitated and too deeply interested in 
 something else to notice it or allow her frostiness of 
 manner to chill them. 
 
 " Don't bother, Kergariou. I've something that will 
 do as well. No need to spoil the poker at all." 
 
 The Campbell who told ghost stories got out a 
 perfectly good and perfectly large knife, with a per- 
 fectly good and exceptionally large steel pipe-cleaner, 
 and fell to work on the box. 
 
 " You'll find it just about right ; I never thought 
 I'd do it, but I did. This flag-selling's not half a lark, 
 I can tell you. Why anyone should ever trouble to 
 do an honest day's work when money's so easy come 
 by, I can't think. Whoo-ee ! I've won three ponies, 
 Celia ! Seventy-five quid ! ! This old under the odds 
 here bet me last night that By the way, I haven't 
 introduced any of this crowd, have I ? And now that 
 I come to think of it, what are they doing here ? I'm 
 
 441
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 awfully glad to see them as it saves me the trouble of 
 going down to the Albany, but how did they get here ? " 
 
 " I don't know," said Celia feebly ; " at least, I mean 
 I know nothing at all about them "except that they say 
 they're all called Campbell." 
 
 The policemen and I exchanged meaning glances. 
 
 "All called Campbell? They're nothing of the 
 sort. There are only two Campbells. Step forth, 
 Malcolm and Alastair of that ilk, and let me introduce 
 you." 
 
 Dan waved his handcuffed arms in their direction. 
 
 The policemen were both making notes for dear 
 life in the glossy black-covered notebooks. What an 
 enormous stationery bill his Majesty's Metropolitan 
 Police must have. 
 
 The two genuine Campbells came forward a little 
 sheepishly and said "How do you do ? " and apologised 
 for their frivolous behaviour ; and then Dan introduced 
 the first one we had met, and who apparently was the 
 one with whom he had the bet, as Mr Kergariou. 
 
 " Kergariou ? I thought you said your name was 
 Campbell ? " 
 
 He was also a bit sheepish, but anxious to explain 
 things very fully. " I can't say how sorry I am, but I 
 know you'll understand what the position was and for- 
 give me if I tell you about it. I was just plunging into 
 the Ritz to ring up about this bet, and find out about 
 how much had been made up to four o'clock, when you 
 asked me to buy a ticket. You see, I bet him he wouldn't 
 dress up in these things and pretend to be a flag-seller 
 and take fifteen pounds by half -past four. I was in a 
 great hurry, because Dan said he'd be in a certain place 
 at four and not a second later. I could ring him up 
 then and he would give me an idea of how lie had done 
 up to date, and it made it so much more exciting, besides 
 which these others" he waved his hand towards the 
 rest of the Campbells "had some subsidiary bets be- 
 tween them as to the sum of the takings up to that 
 time." 
 
 442
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 " But that is no reason for not having given me your 
 proper name.'' 
 
 " Yes, it was. Most decidedly it was. I was in a 
 fearful hurry. Dan could only spare a few moments ; 
 you know I told you that, and everyone can spell 
 Campbell, though it takes them hours to get Kergariou 
 right. It's an old Breton name, and my father's people 
 came over with the Conqueror." 
 
 "No swank, Kergariou." 
 
 "Don't interrupt, De Courcy. Let me explain to 
 Mrs Carmichael. I therefore gave, as I say. the first 
 easy name that came into my head, and as I had just 
 finished lunching with Alastair Campbell and his 
 brother, who are both in my regiment, I gave his name. 
 That's all." 
 
 " I believe this is all trumped up, Officer, don't you ? " 
 I murmured aside. 
 
 " It do look uncommon fishy." 
 
 " But what about the others ? " Celia was asking. 
 
 " It was a silly joke, and in very bad taste, I'm afraid. 
 When I'd finished telephoning and strolled out and saw 
 that Campbell had given the same name as I'd given 
 naturally as it is his name I thought it would be 
 rather a rag to bring up my other pals and pass them 
 along as Campbells too. I apologise and grovel. It 
 was very bad form, but I'm afraid I'm rather a silly 
 juggins. But they are quite respectable ; in fact two 
 of them are your late husband's cousins, I've reason to 
 think.',' 
 
 The cousins stopped carving at the collecting-box 
 and shook hands very nicely, and in turn introduced 
 the third man, who was their cousin, and who therefore 
 claimed kinship to the house of Carmichael. 
 
 The box by now was open and the money poured out 
 on the table. Everyone pressed forward to see the 
 result. There were quantities of pennies, so that it took 
 rather a time to count. One or t\vo small coins rolled 
 on to the floor, but finally, after getting them back, the 
 
 443
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 sum total was found to be fourteen pounds, two shillings 
 and fivepence. 
 
 " Done brown, old chap," Kergariou said eagerly, 
 going over the piles of money for the third time ; " you 
 are seventeen and sevenpence short." 
 
 Dan's face fell. " I could have sworn I had it all 
 right. Wait a minute, though. What am I thinking 
 of ? I've got a pound note in my pocket. Blow it all ! 
 I can't get at it with these beastly bracelets on." He 
 struggled to get at a pocket in his blue serge nether 
 garments, which we now saw he was wearing, well rolled 
 up, underneath the muslins of his skirts. " Here, some- 
 one lend a hand 1 " 
 
 Someone did, and succeeded in extricating a crumpled 
 pound note. 
 
 " That leaves me two shillings and fivepence to the 
 good, and I've won my bet." 
 
 "You did very well in that last few minutes." 
 Kergariou puckered his brow thoughtfully. " When I 
 rang you up you were still two pounds short, and you 
 only had to walk up St James' and you got into a taxi 
 outside Salmonsons' the florists in Piccadilly. It was 
 sharp work to take two pounds in that time. Are 
 you sure that pound note is not your own private 
 property ? " 
 
 " Rather not. I had exactly three pounds on me 
 when I started. Malcolm and Bunty can prove that, 
 for they dressed me, and I can account for those, as I'll 
 tell you presently. I looked in at Noodles for half-a-sec. 
 and jollied the hall porter a bit and he gave me a 
 perfectly good pound without turning a hair. He's a 
 warm fellow, I can tell you ; probably a multi-million- 
 aire. But that still left me a pound short. But I got 
 it out of the taxi-driver. He was no end of a good 
 chap ; I sold him all my flags, and he gave me a pound 
 for the lot and took them home to his kids." 
 
 "Thinking he was giving it to the charity, poor fellow." 
 
 444
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 Celia's voice was trembling with indignation. " If I 
 had his number I'd send it back to him at once. These 
 people can ill afford such sums, and it would be a great 
 shock to him to know that the money he had parted 
 with so generously was only to go to make up a sum 
 that people were betting on." 
 
 " You needn't worry about the taxi-man. He did 
 well. I paid him three perfectly good pounds to bring 
 me here swiftly, and I told him what was doing, and he 
 was all for it." 
 
 " I don't think we can count that in then the sale 
 was prearranged between you, and the money was not 
 taken in the ordinary way." Kergariou danced round 
 the table in his excitement. 
 
 " It's perfectly legitimate," said the Commander, 
 his arm on Dan's shoulder as they leant over the table 
 where the money lay in stacks. He had greeted him as 
 an old friend as soon as ever he saw who he was. 
 
 " Why can't you count it in, I'd like to know ? " 
 Dan's eyes were blazing as he leant forward. "No- 
 thing was said as to how or where I got it, as long as I 
 got it. The taxi-man will tell you, on oath, that I gave 
 him my own three pounds. I've got his number one, 
 two, three, oh ! it's an easy one to remember, luckily." 
 
 Opinions were divided. There was quite a hubbub. 
 
 " Objection, objection ! No ! No ! Let it stand ! 
 There's nothing in it ! Oh, isn't there? I beg your 
 pardon ! Listen to what I say ! If you'll only shut up 
 a minute ! You're disqualified ! No, you're not it's 
 all right ! No, it's not 1 He was quite within his rights ! 
 The cone has gone up it's coming down again let 
 it go at that 
 
 The Campbells roared out these remarks and howled 
 each other down with voices which had had an edge put 
 on them by yelling in foursome and eightsome reels at 
 Highland gatherings. 
 
 " It's perfectly fair. Quite legitimate. I appeal to 
 you, Inspector, as an administrator of the law, what 
 do you say ? " Dan turned to him excitedly. 
 
 445
 
 CELIA'S FLAG DAY 
 
 " I've got nothing to say about it. All I have to say 
 is that you're my prisoner, and you must come along 
 with me now. Step lively." 
 
 " Officer ! " gasped Celia. " Your prisoner ! " 
 
 'Yes." 
 
 " But upon what charge, upon what charge ? " 
 
 " Ah, that's just what I don't quite know myself ! I 
 don't at all like the look of this 'ere dressing-up, and 
 obtaining money under false pretences, and all this 
 giving of wrong names. And, moreover, I have it from 
 this gentleman here, who is a lawyer and knows all 
 about it. that this man is a dangerous criminal, who 
 was very nearly convicted of a double murder and arson. 
 He says he got him off, but 'e's positive that he was 
 guilty 
 
 I took one look round the room and fled, without 
 waiting to put on my yashmak. 
 
 It was the only way. 
 
 446
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 EVERYTHING comes to London, even the spring, and 
 though one treads along hard pavements instead of 
 on springing grass, and smells warm wood pavement 
 topped by fresh tar instead of wet warm cowslips on 
 a green bank or a flash of lilac scent swung off a nodding 
 head of bloom, one perceives it nevertheless. 
 
 Not merely by the great twitterment that assails 
 one's ear as one goes by. issuing from a handful of bare 
 brown twigs, dotted with minute green points ; an 
 apology for a bush situate behind a row of peeling 
 railings and in which some socially too sophisticated 
 sparrows are building for their next sooty idyll. But by 
 a sort of something there is abroad or within oneself 
 that informs one of it, and rises up too, insinuatingly 
 and tantalisingly from Mother Earth, clamped down 
 as she may be in the city under slabs of stone or squares 
 of wood. One's pulses beat more fully. And even in 
 the town with the spring comes a sweetening of every 
 colour the eyes rest upon, whether in the skies or 
 people's faces or the shop windows or the clerks' ties 
 or the typewriters' blouses and stockings as they hurry 
 to their business ; it is almost visible in the minor- 
 keyed tints of the conveyances and public buildings. 
 The sun, most mysterious of operators and full of 
 high powers (I am a sun- worshipper, I assure you), 
 resting on old bricks, dull and drab, gets a glister out 
 of their dead surfaces and picks out and points with 
 light any protuberances or glossy bits on anything 
 going by or standing still. The spring sun leaves 
 nothing untouched in the town any more than it does 
 in the count ly. 
 
 The very buses seem to pair off like big ungainlv 
 
 447
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 birds and come bouncing down the middle of the road 
 side by side, while the drivers exchange greetings and 
 congratulations on the weather and the lengthening of 
 the days. Old brown houses in old brown squares 
 " go gay " and wear a look as much as to say that 
 there's no knowing what they might not do in these 
 days, if provocation came their way. Can it be that 
 the sap rises in houses ? They look as if it did. They 
 come out in window-boxes full of flowers and in fresh 
 colours get done up. as the saying is. 
 
 The painters come and dab fresh paint on hall doors 
 or other places ; bits are scraped and washed or door- 
 knobs are relacquered. Windows are opened and 
 muslin curtains flutter out waggishly and trim maid- 
 servants come and pull them in again and pause to 
 look out, with an eye to chance passers-by or to exchange 
 a sally with the painters in their white suits. As I 
 passed the door of No. 13 a dark violet baby came out 
 in a dark blue perambulator in charge of a dark blue 
 nurse. The baby gurgled and waved a day-day to me, 
 and the nurse gave her bonnet a little toss in my direc- 
 tion, for we quite often exchanged remarks and passed 
 one another the time o' day, and about once a week 
 I'd say : " How that child does grow, to be sure." 
 
 My thoughts were pleasant as I went along. This 
 is the true beginning of the year, I said, the world is 
 full of freshness and intention. Nothing has staled 
 and there's an edge to all enjoyment. It is not a cold, 
 drear January's eve we should choose as a point of 
 departure. It is now, for one is spurred on to new 
 enterprises, and even as the houses and the woods 
 renovate themselves and make special efforts, so too 
 do all people of temperament become enlivened and 
 purposeful at such moments. Claiming to be one of 
 their band, I was off, out, and bent upon an errand 
 which I had postponed so often that really it seemed 
 doubtful if it would ever be done. But the quality 
 of the atmosphere was such that day that it pulled 
 me out full of energy, so that I set my hat on 
 
 448
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 with a smack and a clap and went off about it at long 
 last ; and this piece of energy begot others (this 
 happens, you know), and I consulted a list which I 
 held in my hand of other much-delayed errands, and, 
 mastering the contents, crumpled it up and slyly 
 threw it down an area. I am in doubt about the sap 
 and the houses, but I am sure about the surge of purpose- 
 fulness in man at this time of year, and I believe that 
 a lot of the paper one sees scurrying about the streets 
 when the spring breezes start to blow are the lists of 
 things people are going to do at once which they 
 should have done years ago. 
 
 It is not on New Year's eve and riot on New Year's 
 day that one makes good resolutions. One is too cold. 
 The time is now, when the sun smacks you on the back 
 midway between the shoulders and warms the marrow 
 in your spinal column up and all the little nerves that 
 connect there begin to tingle and carry reply-paid 
 messages to your members. 
 
 As I dallied along I heard a frou-frou of garments 
 and was passed and outpaced in my leisurely stride. 
 
 I always walk slowly in fine weather. It gives me 
 time to absorb it into my innermost recesses. And 
 from behind I noted what an attractive personage 
 carried the garments along. That describes it. 
 She carried her garments along swiftly, floatingly. 
 She walked there ahead of me with a blithe staccato 
 walk, a double spring to each movement of the instep 
 and ankle, a dancing step of a walk, and vanished 
 round the corner. I followed slowly, and as I turned it, 
 found her again, in conversation with a friend with a 
 pug-dog. They were both talking at the top of their 
 voices, and her voice, as I listened, matched the blithe 
 go of her feet, for as she laughed and talked gaily I 
 heard the high sweet jangle of youth's folly bells in it 
 coming after me as I passed. 
 
 This was as it should be, I thought indulgently. I 
 often feel indulgent in the spring. It was in perfect 
 keeping that I should do so, for the sky was a hilarious 
 2 F 449
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 blue. Young clouds bloomed in it. I say bloomed 
 advisedly, for they were soft and beautiful as flowers, 
 and tinted as charmingly. 
 
 Now the thing which has forced itself more on my 
 observation in the course of a life of a certain length 
 is that in life everything happens suddenly. One 
 takes big steps in physical growth suddenly, and ditto 
 mentally. One is happy suddenly or miserable 
 suddenly. One gets well or ill suddenly. One learns 
 things suddenly, one marries suddenly, and so through 
 the gamut of all the occurrences, ills and joys to which 
 the flesh is heir. 
 
 And buried in thought about such things, I suddenly 
 ran into somebody, a great strapping fellow. 
 
 " Hello ! Why don't, you Oh, hello ! Is that 
 you, Blenerhassett ? " 
 
 "Hello!" I said. 
 
 "How are you? " 
 
 " Oh very well, thank you." 
 
 I leant my two hands on my stick and hunched my 
 shoulders up to my ears and looked at him, blinking 
 and calling back my wandering attention. 
 
 " I say, you know. You don't seem to remember me. 
 Why, I'm-- 
 
 "Wait. No yes wait a minute. It's veiy rude 
 of me, I know, but don't tell me. Why, God bless my 
 soul, you are the Judsons' baby ! " 
 
 " Yes, that's it. I am, or rather I was. Can't say 
 there's much of the baby about me now ! " and he 
 laughed, just a bit conceitedly, I thought, pulling at 
 his short moustaches. " I'm twenty-three, you know. 
 I've done a year in India had lots of polo and that 
 sort of thing. Just got home now for a bit of leave 
 and it's nice to see all the old faces and so on, though 
 things seem a bit stagnant here after being out there." 
 
 "Well, well. How very remarkable. I wonder 
 what your mother thinks of it all. Aren't you a bit 
 of a surprise to her." 
 
 " Surprise ! No. Why should I be ? My brother, 
 
 450
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 who is a year younger, is taller than I am and my 
 sister has just put her hair up." 
 
 "Well all I can say is you are a revelation to me. 
 Dear me. Dear me." 
 
 I checked myself when I caught myself saying this. 
 I've noted it in other men and can't stand it. And 
 " You don't mean to say so ? " That's a foolish 
 expression and one I greatly dislike. 
 
 " Well. I suppose I must be in a way. I remember 
 you quite well coming to our house and .giving me 
 sweets. I thought you a very decent sort of fellow 
 myself 
 
 " Thanks, thanks." 
 
 " Oh, don't mention it. Ha ! Ha ! It does seem a 
 bit odd when you come to think of it. Here I am now, 
 I'm six foot one in my socks. That makes me, I should 
 think, a bit taller than you are, doesn't it ? " 
 
 " Yes. I'm just a bare shade over six foot. About 
 half-an-ineh." 
 
 " Oh, well, that probably means that you were my 
 height when you were young. At your time of life I 
 shouldn't be surprised if the old-age shrinkage had set 
 in." 
 
 My time of life when I was young shrinkage ! 
 Did something, a thick veil of smoke or a cloud, come 
 over the sun for a moment and make things seem 
 dark ? 
 
 " Oh. Ha ! Ha ! I see what you mean. Ha ! Ha ! 
 Yes. Yes. I dare say that's so. Quite likely, I 
 expect." I drew myself up square to him. 
 
 There was nothing to speak of in the matter of 
 height between us, for all he might say to the contrary. 
 
 " And," hurriedly, to get away from a topic that I 
 felt disinclined to dwell on, " are you having a good 
 time ? Painting the old town red ! " 
 
 He jerked his head sideways with a lordly smile and 
 a half-swing of his big shoulders. "You bet. Top- 
 hole. Rather. No place like the little village. You 
 can take it from me. ' 
 
 451
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 He looked as if he'd like to, and if I'd give him half 
 a chance, unburden himself of a screed of lurid tales of 
 conquest and callow theorisings about " life " or the 
 " fair sex " or anything else that passed through his 
 mind, but evidently paused and thought better of it, as 
 time was too short, and there were other things to do. 
 " Ever been in India ? " he asked carelessly. 
 
 " Afraid not. Often wanted to go, but " - 1 
 shrugged my shoulders and spread a hand wide " cir- 
 cumstances over which You know the rest." 
 
 " Ah, yes, yes. But you should have been in the 
 service, you know, really. You'd have looked splendid 
 in your trappings, you've got such a top-hole figure. 
 I know you're a lawyer, and that's very nice and all 
 that, but it's an awfully hippy business. Couldn't 
 stick it myself. I often thought when I was up at 
 Coorg last what an awful thing it would have been if 
 my pater had made me go in for the law or something 
 equally stuffy. Pooh ! I'd hate all that indoor business. 
 Why, you'd not look nearly as old as you do if you were 
 out there, pig-sticking and going out on elephants after 
 tiger. Look at our Colonel. He's no chicken. I can 
 tell you ; he must be quite your age, somewhere 
 around forty, but he looks awfully fit considering 
 and manages to keep up wonderfully with us chaps. 
 It's the life out there, so healthy. All in the open 
 air." 
 
 " I'm sure you've made a wise choice." 
 
 "You bet I have. I haven't any doubts on that 
 score. I don't know if you know that I am with the 
 British Resident at Lysore. It's a native state and 
 there's no Rajah. The last one was sacked over fifty 
 years ago, so Mr Coutts is a sort of king out there. You 
 can imagine I manage to knock out no end of a good 
 time for myself. Look here " he put his hand on my 
 shoulder magnanimously (I won't say patronisingly, for 
 that wouldn't quite describe it. Tolerantly would be 
 more like it) " look here, next cold weather you must 
 take a holiday from your dusty old law books and run 
 
 452
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 out and pay us a visit. Mr Coutts would be delighted, 
 and our chaps would give you no end of a good time. 
 Why, they'd make you feel young again ! " 
 
 Young again ! 
 
 I really couldn't stand the fellow for all his effusive 
 offers of hospitality. He only wanted to show off. 
 I dare say I was rather bitter. Whoever would have 
 thought he would grow up into this sort of howling 
 jackass ? He used to be quite a nice little baby once. 
 T shuddered at the thought of all the horseplay I'd been 
 obliged to take a hand in. Oh, lor' ! 
 
 " Awfully good of you. Judson, old chap. I'll think 
 it over." (I'd do nothing of the kind.) 
 
 "Yes, do. That's a bet and don't forget it." He 
 was aggressively hearty about it. " By the way, is that 
 Miss Bellamy ? " He glanced down the street with 
 affected unconcern to where the lady of the floating 
 garments and thrilling voice and thrilling walk that 
 matched it stood conversing with her friend. " There's 
 a high-stepper for you. Awfully good-looking gel." 
 
 I followed his eyes, and why make any bones about it ? 
 Her eyes were turned in our direction, but the gaze 
 of that delightful young woman was not for me, but for 
 the Judsons' baby. No wonder. He was a splendid 
 specimen. Those two would make a fine couple. 
 
 My conversation dried up. I felt I wasn't wanted 
 any more. His eyes were fastened on her. His 
 thoughts had all gone over to where she stood. I 
 dismissed myself with a noisy cheerfulness I did not 
 feel and made a vague promise, to which he paid very 
 little attention, to come round and see his mother and 
 talk to him and discuss his invitation to come out for 
 next cold weather. 
 
 I took one half-glance back as I made the crossing. 
 She had shaken hands and parted with the friend and 
 the pug and greeted Judson as he came her way. They 
 spoke a few words and then turned off together. 
 
 As I turned in the opposite direction I repeated his 
 words to myself. Something or other would " make 
 
 453
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 me feel young again," and "the shrinkage of old age 
 had set in." 
 
 I felt as if out of the blue sky a thunderbolt had 
 fallen. I left my rooms a young man, and I had 
 suddenly become an old one. I saw myself as I really 
 was, reflected in the mirror that the Judsons' baby had 
 held up to me. According to that mirror, I was an old 
 fogy to be fraternised with for the sake of old times. 
 To be buttonholed and regaled with tales of youth and 
 high adventure, in which I was far too old to participate 
 except by hearsay. To be gently cheered up as I 
 slowly ambled towards my latter end by hearing them 
 recounting of their doings and adventures, keeping 
 myself going at second hand out of the residue of the 
 hot-blooded enterprise and joviality of strong young 
 manhood which surrounded me on all sides. 
 
 Aye, on all sides. It was not only the Judsons' 
 baby who had grown up, but dozens and dozens, 
 hundreds and hundreds, thousands, millions of babies. 
 And I was left to face them alone because I did not 
 just then formulate to myself that I was not the only 
 person in this boat that had been suddenly launched ; 
 a boat built up like a coral reef by the slow passage 
 of time seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, 
 decades. Later I was to remember my contemporaries 
 and examine them and their ways and speech and ideas 
 with painful curiosity. As also I was to examine various 
 repetitions of the Judson affair when I came across them. 
 
 But the whole thing was absurd. He said I was old, 
 but I wasn't old! I didn't feel old. Why, I had 
 hardly shaken of! my boyish dreams yet. My child- 
 hood was still there within reach of my hand if I only 
 stretched it out. Even now, when I heard the big 
 boughs of a tall tree creaking above my head, or the 
 rooks cawing in their throats, still I say I became once 
 more a little tiny lad playing in the great gardens at 
 home among my little playmate brothers of various 
 insignificant ages. And still when the wind roared 
 at night at the equinox, and shook the house and drove
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 the rain against the panes while I lay there in the dark, 
 I was a pirate of the Spanish main ; adrift in the raging 
 seas and about to be cast before morn on an island 
 with palm-trees and cannibalistic black men who later 
 would make me their king. 
 
 And still when I was ill or fretted (and though I may 
 be laughed at for admitting it, I'll say it) I some- 
 times felt the loss of a kind mother's hand I had once 
 known that straightened crumpled bed-clothes or pushed 
 hair lightly off a hot forehead, a someone stooping and 
 coolly perfumed who listened to my tale of what had 
 gone wrong in my world. 
 
 I couldn't be so very old after all, then. 
 
 The book that I took down more often than any 
 other was Robinson Crusoe. There was a story if you 
 like. It was our favourite game as children in the big 
 bare playroom. We'd turn a table upside down and 
 fill it with our luggage (old rubbish, seats of chairs, 
 the maid's work-boxes, my mother's band-boxes, any- 
 thing at all) and shut the shutters and sail about for 
 days, while we luffed and we tacked, with Man over- 
 board ! and we've sprung a leak, and sighted the coast 
 and called Land ahoy ! and Let the anchor go ! Tropical 
 storms burst over us, and one of the children worked the 
 shutters and banged them open and shut for lightning, 
 while another one of the numerous family spun the big 
 tea-tray and got peals of rattling thunder from it. 
 Day by day the schoolroom tea came up upon a tray 
 that got more and more battered for its booming. 
 
 I remember that I once fell off the table ship and 
 nearly fainted at the horror of my position out in the 
 black raging sea, and my favourite sister screamed so 
 loudly because she thought the sharks had got me and 
 shook so frightfully at the thought of it that the game 
 had to be put off to another afternoon. 
 
 Ballantyne's books ran Robinson Crusoe close, and 
 I saw myself in turn as a pirate and then as an excise- 
 man shooting down the smugglers of rum or spirits 
 
 455
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 in casks and anything else contraband, or the captain 
 of a brig that went out to sea, painted a different colour 
 every time, to do queer errands. His books helped me 
 greatly in the choice of a career ; for of course this 
 lawyering business was only for the time being. Soon, 
 when the right and suitable moment presented itself, 
 I'd get up, roll a few things up together, including a 
 good knife and a six-shooter, and I'd set forth on my 
 adventures and carve out that thrilling and successful 
 destiny that awaited me. Then hey for the seas and 
 the rugged mountains and the rolling plain ! 
 
 But wait ! Horrid thought. Had I forgotten ? The 
 time had passed for that. I might have had a career, 
 but it was now too late, and now there was someone 
 calling out peremptorily : " Pass along there, please, pass 
 along there. Make way, please. What's that ? Want 
 to book a ticket to the Bahamas via Puerto Rico, Haiti 
 and the lesser Antilles, and on to the Himalayas and 
 Tibet or Turkestan ? You're too late. Make way, 
 please. Can't have any crowding here. Pass along, 
 please. Pass along." W T hoever he was, he was right. 
 There, close on my heels, following on, and following on, 
 were dozens and dozens of eager boys like myself that 
 is, like myself as I once had been anxious to embark 
 and go forth to see the world ; hundreds and hundreds 
 of them, thousands, millions. 
 
 There were destinies and careers for them, but while 
 I wasn't looking, and was thinking of other things which 
 were of no vital importance really, someone must 
 evidently have come along and taken that which should 
 have been mine, the career that was really meant for 
 me if only I had taken the trouble to make up my pack 
 in good time, bowie knife and all, and set off in the 
 right direction. 
 
 I'd had too many openings, I suppose, and had sat 
 down to consider them, and sat too long. No greater 
 piece of ill luck could befall a man than for him to have 
 one, two, three, or more good openings in life to choose 
 from. Undecidedly he chooses, and having chosen, 
 
 456
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 settles in himself it was the wrong one and that any of 
 the others would have suited him better. This point 
 cleared up, he resigns himself to the thought of failure 
 and puts all the blame on his bad choice, and makes no 
 further effort. If I'd only had one opening only, I'd 
 have concentrated on it and succeeded. 
 
 Walking on, I shook my head over this, and yet I still 
 could not get rid of the feeling that I had a long and 
 adventurous career before me, ending up as a million- 
 aire cowboy or an explorer, or something connected 
 with going down to the sea in ships. Surely, surely it 
 was time I brushed the idle dreams out of my foolish 
 head. They were boys' dreams. It would have been 
 the boy's privilege to make them come true if he had 
 set to at once. Otherwise they couldn't be done, for 
 things and people move so swiftly. 
 
 Alas ! time, which up till to-day I had thought my 
 friend, I now found to be my enemy. I certainly must 
 shake off these dreams. What an absurd position for 
 poor Peter Blenerhassett to have these ideas about 
 adventures and hair's-breadth escapes buzzing in his 
 old head. What a ridiculous sight I'd be to myself or 
 to anyone who could fathom my thoughts. A boy 
 wandering about in a middle-aged body, that is what it 
 would be. They must be swept out ; thrown out and 
 replaced by other more suitable things. For supposing 
 after all I did take a ticket and go out and try to make 
 some of the dreams come true by taking up the wild, 
 free life I inwardly hankered after, living out in big 
 woods by mountain slopes, away from the silly, 
 strangling ties of a complicated civilisation, \vhat would 
 be the use of it, or where would it leave me ? Rheumat- 
 ism, lumbago or sciatica would grip me in their hot 
 tweezers after a few nights lying on the ground under 
 canvas or in the open, and I'd be a cripple and a dead 
 weight on those around me. How was it I hadn't 
 thought these things out before ? We are always 
 thinking things out, but the things that are steepest 
 and deepest are left to the last. 
 
 457
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 What was it again the Judsons' baby had said ? I 
 had reached the age when the middle-aged shrinkage 
 would have set in. 
 
 Did one shrink ? This was the first I had heard of 
 it, but it was evidently the case. I myself had seen it 
 happen to others, and now I was in for it. I felt my- 
 self getting smaller and smaller in my turn. My feet 
 chattered in my boots and my hat rattled loose on my 
 head. 
 
 Shrinkage meant, then, decay, and what a thunder- 
 bolt of a word that is. I wished that the thought of it 
 had not come so suddenly out of the blue at one fell 
 thud, but in little bits, like instalments of a serial story. 
 I knew physically I was not indestructible ; for in- 
 stance, that if I lay down on a railway line before an 
 express I would get injured ; or that if I slashed about 
 too carelessly with my razor I could snick bits out of 
 myself ; that a wet day's carpentering left me with a 
 bandaged hand. I had had enough accidents riding or 
 shooting or mountaineering to know that I was liable 
 to damage. But these were honourable scars, and 
 therefore different. But for anyone with any pride of 
 body, who has taken a pleasure in presenting a front, 
 polished to the point of (lawlessness, to the world, the 
 thought of this word was horrid. 
 
 It means that this physical frame we all had looked 
 upon as the citadel and fortress of our personality is 
 nothing but a jerry-built makeshift, only temporarily 
 weather-tight. A building that, when you are young 
 and could easily face hardship, will shelter you snug and 
 tight, but later, when your day's sun is declining, and 
 you are tired, and want all the protection you can 
 get, begins to crumble and let the cold in, and though 
 there are chinks in the wall, you can't get out. You 
 are immured in it for the remainder of your days, till 
 your course is run. From its battered, sagging terraces 
 and ramparts you must needs hail friend and foe alike, 
 and woe betide you if you have made too many of the 
 latter, for they can come and pry upon you through the 
 
 458
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 chinks and catch a glimpse of the real you, skulking, 
 ashamed, inside. 
 
 You are powerless to repair the ravages time has 
 made in your castle. No one can teach masonry and 
 plumbing of that sort. 
 
 Recollection of all the ills the flesh is heir to, and 
 which wait unobtrusively and out of sight at first, but 
 bit by bit come forward till they declare themselves 
 quite boldly and openly, came before me. They are 
 menial and subservient at first and ready to run away 
 at the look of a medicine bottle or sight of a stetho- 
 scope, but afterwards they get thoroughly settled in 
 and don't intend to allow themselves to be put out or 
 disturbed by doctors or bottles of any sort. 
 
 One can't be a pirate with lumbago. Such a thing 
 has never been heard of ; a pirate with a wooden block 
 and a hook for a hand is quite another matter. It's 
 quite in keeping. 
 
 Lumbago and I had more than a speaking acquaint- 
 ance. The shame of it. How utterly curious it was 
 that years ago as a schoolboy hearing of it, it sounded 
 fine and grand to me. It is a sonorous word, and 
 adumbrated an imposing and grandiose malady. Not 
 like measles. Measles were just ineasley, and suited 
 to badly behaved leggy youths, not keen on washing, 
 preferring to overeat and occupied in shooting out of 
 their clothes. As an overgrown, overeating schoolboy, 
 I had been greatly impressed by elders who had groaned 
 with lumbago. I felt I could have done as people 
 who won't speak English put it with an attack of 
 lumbago, as it was such an impressive and grown-up 
 disease. That at school if I'd gone to the matron and 
 instead of being obliged to confess to a bad tummy-ache, 
 brought on by eating too many unripe apples, I'd been 
 able to say, " I've got a shocking bad go of lumbago," 
 she would have thought quite a lot of me and taken me 
 quite seriously and not scolded me as she did over the 
 apples. The Head would have heard of it and also 
 have been impressed. They'd have moved me up 
 
 459
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 from the bottom of the fourth to the sixth at one go-off, 
 for having lumbago would be sure to improve one's 
 position in a school. It seemed to me that neuritis too 
 was an elegant and adult form of sickness, which went 
 with white spats and gold seals, and took the elders off 
 to fashionable watering-places. I was cowed and im- 
 pressed, I remember, by them and their ailments, 
 though if I'd known as much as I do now about elders 
 and Continental watering-places I don't know that I 
 should have been so awed at hearing of them going 
 there for their cures. But they seemed so splendidly 
 old to me in those days, as they went off to keep urgent 
 engagements, and hurried slowly with umbrellas, and 
 rattled lots of keys. Big, dark, and imposing like pen- 
 guins, which are known to be very portentous pow- 
 wowing, law making and abiding birds, which come in 
 the scale of thinking creation rather near the ant. 
 
 I had seen photographs of these birds with their 
 solemn Methodist faces, and their humped black backs 
 and white fronts, tending to low-carried corporations, as 
 they sat about impassively in gatherings on the rocks. 
 Perhaps they didn't know it, but all together in black 
 and white and solemn assemblies they looked like those 
 human ludicrous committee meetings come together to 
 waste time, and put spokes in the wheel of any human 
 penguin who had anything worth while to propose in 
 the way of municipal hygiene or social progress. 
 
 I used to look up at my solemn elders (and as I 
 thought consequently, betters) and think things, and 
 envy them. They used to look down at me and think 
 things, and envy me. I thought the things they 
 thought of me were that I was perfectly horrid, un- 
 couth and unnecessary and unpleasant. But now I 
 know that when they fixed me with their contemplative 
 stare they were full of envy at me. For I had all before 
 me and they had left all behind. They had eaten their 
 bun, and found that, oddly, though they couldn't have 
 it, they yet had indigestion. I should have been 
 amazed had I known that they envied me for my being 
 
 460
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 able to climb trees, for my great unappeasable appetite, 
 and for my big white strong boyish teeth, crowded 
 together. They had handsome even sets from the 
 dentist, that came out at night like the stars, but now 
 I know they would have preferred mine. 
 
 I like old penguins, and I get on very well with them, 
 and they like me because I am considerate and forbear- 
 ing with them, and don't pass them by as if they weren't 
 there ; but I don't want to be one. I'd hate to be an 
 old broody penguin, wearing down the springs of the 
 arm-chairs at the club, flapping about heavily, shaking 
 my head over the papers and saying the country is go- 
 ing to the dogs. Broody as a word has come to mean 
 everything that has been thwarted in its natural hopes 
 and aspirations, and the comedians when they want to 
 conjure up a picture of a person whose vitality has been 
 weakened by despair or disappointment employ this 
 adjective. The simile has been borrowed from the farm- 
 yard and not as yet returned, for the hen who leans in a 
 disheartened way against a tarred fence thwarted in her 
 instinct towards motherhood, is broody, and her looks 
 constitute the apogee of everything that is disillusioned. 
 
 And here was I well on the way to becoming a broody 
 old penguin, outside. And inside, a boy still, full of 
 thoughts and fancies about savages and gold mines, 
 soldiers of fortune and brigands who had relapses into 
 good behaviour. 
 
 I used to think old people had old ideals, old hopes 
 and old notions, but now I saw that they had nothing of 
 the sort. Sombre and reverend signiors wander about 
 full of smouldering folly, only half sated on their lust 
 of adventure and high romance. Conscious that such 
 things, though they become a young man. are sad and 
 absurd in an old one. I used to think when I saw the 
 old people, comfortably established by the fireside : 
 " Ah, there they sit, thinking old sober thoughts, 
 dreaming old sober dreams, hoping old sober things." 
 But now I know when I look at them that they are still 
 thinking of young things, of young laughter, of young 
 
 461
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 efforts of young follies (unrepentantly). They are 
 still thinking of their young friends and their young 
 gay doings all together, and at the same time they are 
 dreadfully puzzled to make out how it was the time 
 went so quickly by, so that a year seemed nothing, and 
 a whole decade only a few days. They wonder why it 
 was no one told them how short life was and what a 
 need there was of haste, haste, if anything was to be 
 done. They are still regretting, much as I did, the 
 savages, and the big animals in tropical forests and the 
 adventures they've never had in the gold mines or as 
 highwaymen or as the brigand who was hard-hearted 
 and soft-hearted, high-minded and the reverse, as the 
 mood took him, and who had relapses into good be- 
 haviour, and rescued captive fair ones, receiving the 
 gift of their vows and tresses of hair in exchange for 
 their unlooked-for and unhoped-for protection. My 
 noble preserver Ah, don't ! I am unworthy to touch 
 your hand You have earned my undying gratitude 
 You make me wish to lead a better, nobler life Hence- 
 forth you are for me the only man God bless you, I 
 shall never forget your sweet face And so on. 
 
 What would Mrs Penguin say if she could peep inside 
 and see all this ? She'd be horrified, even though she is 
 not altogether guiltless of the same foolishness herself. 
 So Papa Penguin bottles it all up, goes for long walks 
 in the suburbs or in the woods, or pretends to read his 
 paper and behind its white protection sails right off 
 on the high seas. But in spite of his day-dreams he 
 suffers inconceivable agonies from suppressed Romance. 
 Gout, the doctors call it, for want of a better name. 
 But I know better. To want very badly to be a pirate 
 and not to be able to is quite liable to fly to the feet of 
 the poor old buffer, and sufficient to inflame them and 
 the ankles too. 
 
 ^Vhile these thoughts slowly declared themselves in 
 the back of my mind, round the corner of the old square 
 came a light puff of spring wind, as if to make my dis- 
 may more complete. This adolescent air came to my 
 
 462
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 ears and played about them, gently cuffing them, as 
 much as to say : " Now then, old sore-head, don't give 
 in yet. I'm young. Take pattern by me and be 
 young too. It's all just as you like. Whoo sh ! " 
 It whispered silly misleading assertions and rosy 
 promises it would fail in fulfilling, and tugged and 
 tantalised at my heart-strings. The wind was young. 
 The clouds were young. The world was young. Every- 
 thing was young but me. 
 
 Avaunt, Spring ! 
 
 I walked along bent -headed. 
 
 " Now then, pass along there, please, pass along 
 there, please. No loitering." 
 
 There was the policeman on duty. I seemed to 
 know his face. He was stirring up, not unkindly, an 
 old lady, a poor old battered female penguin of the 
 lower classes, who was supposed to be selling bootlaces 
 and collar studs, but wasn't. Instead she was sitting 
 dozing wretchedly on a doorstep, and the spring sun 
 was powerless to warm her. Someone had come along 
 and sneaked her destiny from under her nose, or she 
 wouldn't have been reduced to these straits. 
 
 " Don't chivey her, Officer, there's a good chap. Let 
 her doze." 
 
 I gave her something, and him too. 
 
 " Oh, all right, Sir. Thank you. You're a gentleman, 
 Sir. But it does look rather bad to see them drowsing 
 like that on the steps of a gentleman's 'ouse. The 
 occupiers don't like it. I'm always getting into trouble 
 about it, as I'm a tender-hearted man like and I don't 
 'alf like this job. I don't suppose it's 'er fault." 
 
 " It's not her fault, poor old soul. It's all these 
 young ones on every side. They've done her in.'" 
 
 " What young ones, Sir, do you refer to ? " 
 
 "Oh, any young ones." I looked around vaguely. 
 There were plenty babies in perambulators about and 
 tots walking alongside too. In my preoccupation I'd 
 come round in a circle and there was the baby from 
 No. 13 coming towards us again. 
 
 463
 
 THE JUDSONS'BABY 
 
 " Officer," I said earnestly, " believe me, if you were 
 keen on your job you'd arrest these babies." I pointed 
 with my stick to a clump of mailcarts and perambu- 
 lutors advancing slowly at the other side of the street 
 on the circular path round the square. 
 
 " Arrest them, Sir. But why should I do that ? " 
 
 " Because they're robbers, Oflicer. Naughty little 
 thieves." 
 
 " Bless their little 'arts, Sir. I'm devoted to children. 
 I always makes a point of seeing them over the cross- 
 ings myself wherever the traffic is thick. Of course 
 they're naughty. That's 'uman nature." 
 
 "Human nature is the very thing you are here to 
 suppress and hold in check, on behalf of his Majesty's 
 Government." 
 
 "His Majesty's Government never said nothing to 
 me about babies, Sir." 
 
 " It should have done so ! I assure you I'm not 
 joking. They're the most unutterable little wretches. 
 I've had my eyes opened this morning. I've had a 
 shock, I can tell you ! " I was quite in earnest and 
 very agitated. 
 
 " Come, come, Sir. It's very 'ot. Don't get excited. 
 Don't you think you'd better nip into a taxi and go 
 'ome and 'ave a cool drink ? You've very likely got a 
 touch of the sun." 
 
 " I've not got a touch of the sun. I tell you they 
 are thieves, Officer." obstinately. 
 
 I tapped him on his blue chest with my eyeglass. 
 
 "What have they stolen?" humouring me and 
 looking around surreptitiously to see if there was a 
 taxi in sight anywhere. 
 
 "It's not what they have stolen, but what they are 
 going to steal." 
 
 " What are they going to steal ? " patiently. 
 
 " Everything. Everything that's yours and mine 
 by rights, everything that's worth having. Oppor- 
 tunities, laughter, success, consideration the whole 
 world ! " 
 
 464
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 * v " Opportunities, laughter, consideration, success 
 3,11 very, good in their way yes." He stamped a little 
 bit on the, pavement, and straightened his back, and 
 ,/ looked $t some more perambulators coming our way. 
 
 " I suppose you are right, Sir, in saying such things 
 constitoote the whole world. Opportunities certainly 
 are very useful things. I got mine quite by chance. 
 But, again. Sir, the law doesn't bother itself much with 
 such. 
 
 "Well then. I'll be the parish beadle redivivus and 
 write the law down a hass. I'll do it this very instant. 
 I'll make a note of it now. I'll put it in my next 
 article." 
 
 I crooked my stick on my arm and proceeded to get 
 out paper and pencil. 
 
 " Oh, I see ! you're one of these writer chaps. Excuse 
 me. Sir, but for a moment I thought you was a bit 
 
 " Not at all. Not in the least." 
 
 "Well, if it comes to that, Sir, I see your point. 
 I do, really. But the law is that you cannot arrest a 
 person who is going to commit a crime even if you 
 know he is going to do it. You must wait till he has 
 done it." 
 
 " That's so. unfortunately ; but, believe me, before 
 you know where you are these youngsters will strip you 
 of everything. Look at those little ragamuffins there, 
 playing up and down those steps. Mark my words, 
 one of those youngsters will sneak the bread out of 
 your mouth one of these days. The odds are all in 
 favour of it. You can't say I haven't warned you." 
 
 " No, no, Sir. Don't you worry. I've got my 
 pension. Besides in my walk of life our children look 
 after us when we get old. I looked after my old father, 
 and my children will look after me. That is, unless 
 they grow too big for their boots and make a lot of 
 money and join your class, Sir. The ingratitude of 
 children of your class towards their parents is a favourite 
 topic in ours. In all the servants' 'alls where I drop in 
 for a snack at odd times they are never done discussing 
 it. They see so much of it in these swagger 'ouses." 
 2a 465
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 " Ah, that's as may be. If it's so, it's a great pity; * 
 I'm not a father myself, so I don't know. But I don't 
 think you and I see the thing from quite the same point 
 of view. I refer in the main to the more, shall we say, 
 immaterial things of life." 
 
 " I 'aven't time to think of those, Sir." He shook his 
 head, and a queer smile came on his kindly London face. 
 " I'm up against real things, Sir, you see, all day. And 
 especially when I'm on a night beat." 
 
 " Ah, well. I see your point. So long, Officer, and 
 many thanks for not arresting me as ' 
 
 " Don't mention it, Sir." 
 
 I could not settle down to work that night, though 
 I had no engagements. There in my rooms the 
 Judsons' baby's words kept buzzing in my ear. The 
 spring kept climbing in at my window in a persistent, 
 aggravating way. The sounds from without, the 
 ordinary common ribald street noises, took on the 
 timbre, the very reed-pipe sounds of spring. I walked 
 my room feverishly. At last I said I would go out : 
 I decided on some restaurant or gaudy supper club, 
 whence all fresh outer air was sternly excluded, and 
 there to half dine, half sup, as the hour was too late for 
 the one meal, too early for the other. A place where 
 I could not think, where the people would distract me, 
 and the band hound the thoughts that pursued me out 
 of my head. A closely curtained, garishly lit place, 
 where there were no crannies for the slender-waisted 
 season to slip in at and continue to haunt me. Even 
 if I got away from it for a few hours it would be a 
 respite. 
 
 If I were going to be old (and the Judsons' baby said 
 it was so), I grimly decided I would go and live some- 
 where where it was perpetually autumn. I could 
 never face the English spring again. Or I'd travel 
 round the globe and follow in the hushed footsteps of 
 the fall of the year as it visited the different places, and 
 so always be surrounded by drifting leaves and the 
 
 466
 
 THE JUD SONS' BABY 
 
 rank odours of decaying vegetation, past its 
 prime, and thus be companioned always by something 
 that sorted with my mood. What was that piece of 
 , poetry that spoke of something being "thick as 
 autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallombrosa " ? 
 
 Vallombrosa would know me in its autumn with 
 its leaves. 
 
 I banged the door and stepped into the street, and 
 it was full of the spring evening. The spring of the 
 mews and of the small connecting and side streets of 
 London was on either hand as I walked on. Children 
 playing untidily but not unhappily in the gutter and 
 on the kerb in the half-light ; women on benches or 
 in doorways gossiping. Ale-house doors propped open 
 and not fully lit, with a strew of fresh sawdust on 
 the floor, and people in and out haw-hawing. Spring 
 jokes, spring cabbages, couples promenading and winkle 
 barrows and organ-grinding were on all sides of me as 
 I walked forth from my rooms not far from the Temple. 
 
 As I got near my destination a shy young moon saw 
 me into my haunt of revelry, wavering uncertainly up 
 in the sky as if she had come to keep an appointment 
 and wasn't sure whether to remain or run away round 
 the corner. She had a does-your-mother-know-you're- 
 out, does-she-know-what-you're-about look on her 
 little pale face, and she'd surely pop off soon, nimble- 
 heels, too embarrassed to stay and see the matter out. 
 
 I hadn't come there to enjoy myself, and I promptly 
 snubbed the waiter who with opaque transparency 
 professed to make believe that he thought I had, 
 rubbing his hands insinuatingly. I looked around to 
 see if there were any other penguins there, and saw one 
 who had evidently been admitted to the Stock Exchange. 
 A blase and I'm afraid slightly dissolute look tried to 
 dispose of itself unobserved amongst his penguin-like 
 features, but failed. I looked at him searchingly, to 
 see how he behaved. I was in my initial stages, I was 
 only a young penguin as yet, but I felt it wouldn't 
 take long to complete the job. 
 
 467
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 I was ordering ferociously, I think grilled stea% 
 with the bone left in it. I'd have asked for it tough 
 if I had not thought it would have scandalised the 
 waiter. Something to bite and snarl over would be 
 right for me. The band, upon which I was reckoning 
 to right about my unwelcome state of mind, had not 
 begun, and I kept turning things over in my mind. 
 Why hadn't that young donkey I was once done 
 differently ? How dare he waste his time the way he 
 did when it wasn't his time at all ! It was my time. 
 Think of all the things he could have done, all the places 
 he could have gone to, instead of ragging around in the 
 way he had elected to. Fooling my valuable time away, 
 that was what he had been doing. If I could get at 
 him. Why should I, a thoroughly nice, distinguished- 
 looking man of a certain age, have to live with 
 his silly mistakes ? He'd landed me in a good. few. 
 Making enemies of people who might have been useful, 
 cultivating those who were utterly useless, sitting down 
 under a lot of nonsense and accepting back talk without 
 protest from people who ought to have been put in 
 their places long before instead of leaving it to the 
 eleventh hour to square accounts. Letting them get 
 ahead instead of hitting out and giving them what they 
 had asked for. Next life I lived I decided, as I crumbled 
 up my bread angrily into small pellets, I'd revenge 
 myself on my enemies in good time, but not only would 
 I revenge myself in good time, but I'd revenge myself 
 on them before they attacked me, in case I was too 
 busy or died before I could attend to it. One can 
 always tell by the look of a person if they are likely to 
 try to injure one : it betrays itself in the very earliest 
 stages of the acquaintanceship and it's gross careless- 
 ness not to settle such people in good time. How many 
 briefs were there that ought to have come my way 
 but instead were swallowed up in that great greedy 
 black bag of Pettigrew's, who was now a silk. There'd 
 be no more delays of that sort next time. I'd settle 
 him instanter. 
 
 468
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 Then think of all the friends the young loon might 
 have made, all those influential 
 
 " What would you like to drink, Sir ? " 
 
 Tchaw ! What's the use of wine when you're getting 
 
 old ? My doctor had expressly said But I must 
 
 take something to-night. Bother the doctor. I ran 
 through the list, carelessly at first, then appreciatively. 
 They had an excellent cellar : I could see. Evidently 
 taken quite a lot of trouble over it. 
 
 I ordered. 
 
 If you wanted a thing to be right, you had to see to 
 it in time. Notably this cellar. There was nothing 
 haphazard about that. Time and trouble had gone 
 to the getting together of that. If that chuckle-headed 
 boy had seen to it in time, look, as I said, at the friends 
 he could have made. Friends to send him briefs, 
 friends to go shooting with, friends with salmon-fishing 
 in Norway, or friends willing to mount him when he 
 got a few days off in the season. He ought to have 
 set about it methodically. I was still scanning the 
 wine list. He should have done as the restaurant 
 people had done with their cellar, laid down a stock of 
 well-chosen and carefully varied friends to be used 
 and drawn upon in the future as required. But would 
 he think of doing a thing like that ? Not he ! He 
 thought of nothing but his own selfish pleasures. I 
 carved at my steak sulkily and absent-mindedly, 
 pulling it away from the bone and piling it upon my 
 plate. I didn't attempt to swallow it. I think it 
 would have stuck in my gullet. As I plied my knife 
 and fork I was really thinking, coming to definite 
 conclusions inwardly. I would give up this poking 
 about in musty law books and legal hair-splittings and 
 the wearing down of nibs in drawing attention to the 
 foibles of my fellow-creatures, vivisecting them on the 
 chance of earning a little money or to raise a mirthless 
 laugh against them. 
 
 I would (come lumbago, rheumatism, arthritis or any 
 other itis) shake off the enthrallin dust of London, 
 
 469
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 that multiple, magical, amazing dust that sticks so 
 heavily to one's feet, that weights and ties them down, 
 so that they cling to the pavements, and become 
 laggard to move away and take on any other dust less 
 wonderfully compounded. 
 
 I'd get me out without delay to a wide country with 
 rushing rivers, where Nature alone was in possession 
 and where I could be her pensioner, and in return for 
 the day's work of a real man have enough of her bounty 
 to live a man's life. 
 
 So that was settled. 
 
 The music struck up now, or rather rose up, like wind 
 in trees, gradually and then louder. I put down my 
 knife and fork and almost laid my head in my hands. 
 It was not the loud foolish music I had hoped for, to 
 drive away dull care. It was good and sad and seemed 
 to reproach me, and sang of every single thing I had 
 come there to forget. All the springs that had slipped 
 through my fingers were in the music. 
 
 Time was when music and I were boon companions. 
 A whole orchestra would put itself about to describe all 
 the wonderful things that were going to happen to me. 
 and beat out a chorus of praise and encouragement. 
 
 But now for the first time in my life it seemed to 
 me that it spoke no longer of possibilities but of 
 memories, and worse still of memories of possibilities 
 sad might-have-beens. It would never sound the same 
 to me again. 
 
 What is the good of music if one is old ? I wished 
 it would stop. To distract my own attention from my 
 own ears I used my eyes, searching the room with my 
 glance. The stockbroking penguin was not out with 
 Mother Penguin. He had brought out an elegant, 
 tall young creature, who sat facing him, entertaining 
 him with her conversation, but evidently considering 
 that as long as her tongue attended to him her eyes could 
 attend to anyone else who struck her wandering fancy. 
 They came over to my table repeatedly. If it hadn't 
 
 470
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 been for what the Judsons' baby had said, I should 
 have returned her big, heartening glance with some 
 interest, but I hadn't it in me just now, and turned my 
 own elsewhere. 
 
 What is the use of beauty if one is old ? 
 
 Besides, hadn't I reached the age when one is chary 
 about seeking new pleasures ? When one measures 
 them carefully and askance to gauge if there is room for 
 them in one's life almost as one measures a piece of 
 furniture to see if there is wall space for it or if it can 
 be got up the stairs without spoiling the decorations 
 of one's house ? Ah ! youth is the time when you leap 
 and don't look. One plunges in. takes all and leaves 
 payment in the lap of the gods. 
 
 So I avoided her kind beautiful glances. Let her 
 keep them for the Judsons' baby and his prototypes. 
 I would have my work cut out learning up the ways 
 and manners and customs of that tribe of dreary fowl 
 I would soon be called upon to join and mix with I'd 
 contrive to be as complete a penguin within as without. 
 I would strangle mercilessly all yearnings after the 
 lighter things of life. I made notes on my cuff of things 
 not to be done, of phrases to eschew. To rag, to rot, 
 must be taken out of my vocabulary. I must not call 
 anyone a giddy goat any more, or when smitten by 
 astonishment utter " By Gum ! " or something of that 
 sort of slang. Instead I would have to say it was a 
 monstrous thing, by gad ! and when in doubt, mark 
 time by saying, " 'Pon-my-word, 'pon-my-word ! " 
 
 The transition stage would be painful, very. Why 
 couldn't these alterations that affect man come upon 
 him as they do on the creatures of the insect world, 
 when the egg changes to the caterpillar and the cater- 
 pillar to the chrysalis, and when from the chrysalis 
 emerges the butterfly ? The best is kept (as it should 
 be) for the last. There's no flaunting about with 
 bright wings in the sunlight and then towards evening 
 crawling into a withered covering, crushing and folding 
 and spoiling the lovely wings that had carried one 
 
 471
 
 THE JUDSONS' BABY 
 
 about so bravely during the day. The butterfly 
 progresses through a series of reincarnations and has 
 his separate friends in each of them. It wouldn't 
 matter for man if he came into existence as a ready- 
 made prosy old buffer, but to change from a smart 
 man about town who is wanted everywhere into an 
 old penguin who is wanted nowhere, is a wrench, a 
 decided wrench. 
 
 The music began again. I did not think I could sit 
 and listen to it. I'd get back to my rooms, go to bed 
 and draw the blankets right over my head. I called to 
 the waiter to bring me my bill. He was already on his 
 way with a scrap of folded paper in his hand. 
 
 " Excuse me, Sir, but is your name Blenerhassett ? 
 
 " It is." 
 
 " Then this note is for you. Sir. It's sent by a lady 
 in the next room through the arch." 
 
 A note from a lady. The excitement of it ! I forgot 
 instantly I was a penguin ! 
 
 I read : 
 
 "PETER DEAR, do come and join us. I am 
 chaperoning Miss Bellamy to oblige the Judson boy. 
 We are both so bored we hardly know what to do with 
 ourselves. He is so terribly callow. Miss Bellamy 
 says she saw you this morning and thinks you are 
 about the age she prefers a man to be. If you don't 
 come we will both go home. Tear this up into tiny 
 pieces and come over at once. 
 
 " CELIA." 
 
 I got up and went over. The end was not quite yet, 
 apparently. 
 
 THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED. EDINBURGH 
 OREAT BRITAIN
 
 III I Hill II II Hill mil inn 
 
 A 000 043 728 5