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Title: England, Their England
Author: Macdonell, Archibald Gordon (1895-1941)
Date of first publication: February 1933
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Macmillan, February 1933
   [second reprint]
Date first posted: 9 January 2011
Date last updated: 9 January 2011
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #695

This ebook was produced by
Barbara Watson, woodie4, Mark Akrigg
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net






  ENGLAND, THEIR ENGLAND



  MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
  LONDON - BOMBAY - CALCUTTA - MADRAS
  MELBOURNE

  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
  NEW YORK - BOSTON - CHICAGO
  DALLAS - ATLANTA - SAN FRANCISCO

  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
  OF CANADA, LIMITED
  TORONTO



  ENGLAND
  THEIR ENGLAND


  BY

  A. G. MACDONELL


  MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
  ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
  1933



  COPYRIGHT

  _First Edition February 1933_
  _Reprinted February 1933_ (_twice_)


  PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
  BY R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, EDINBURGH



  TO

  J. C. SQUIRE

  THE ENGLISH POET




CHAPTER I


The events which are described in this book had their real origin in a
conversation which took place between two artillery subalterns on the
Western Front in the beginning of October 1917.

But although this first short chapter has to be devoted to the
circumstances and substance of that conversation in order that the rest
may be more intelligible, and although the words of the conversation
were spoken upon the slopes of the Passchendaele Ridge, no one need be
afraid that this is a war book.

From Chapter II. to the end there will be no terrific descriptions of
the effect of a chlorine-gas cloud upon a party of nuns in a bombarded
nunnery, or pages and pages about the torturing remorse of the sensitive
young subaltern who has broken his word to his father, the grey-haired
old vicar, by spending a night with a mademoiselle from Armentires.
There will be no streams of consciousness, chapters long, in the best
style of Bloomsbury, describing minutely the sensations of a man who has
been caught in a heavy-howitzer barrage while taking a nap in the local
Mortuary. There are going to be no profound moralizings on the
inscrutability of a Divine Omnipotence which creates the gillyflower and
the saw-bayonet, and Shakespeare and Von Mackensen (or, as in the
translations, Unser Shakespeare and Ferdinand Foch), on the lines of the
Ode to Baron von Bissing which borrowed, and rightly borrowed, Blake's
famous question, "Did He who made the lamb make thee?"

And, finally, there are going to be no long passages in exquisite
cadences and rhythms, shoved in just to show that I am just as good as
Ruskin or any of them, about the quietness of life in billets in
comparison with life during a trench-mortar bombardment, and about the
blue spirals of smoke curling up from the tiny French hamlet nestling in
the woods which have echoed and re-echoed the thunderous footsteps of
the army of Charlemagne, which have waved their green leaves above Hugh
Capet and Louis the Saint and Henry of Navarre (always a sure card),
which have screened the rustic lovers and the wheeling hawks and the
marching Emperors, and so on and so on and so on.

In a word, after this first chapter there will be, to borrow the name of
an ardent society of left-wing pacifists, No More War.

The conversation between the artillery officers took place in one of
those rectangular, reinforced-concrete, frog-like boxes with which the
German military engineers sprinkled Flanders in 1915 and 1916 in order
that their effete and pampered infantry, unlike the more virile troops
of Britain, of Belgium, and of Portugal, and of one French corps, should
not have to sleep in six inches of water under a quarter-inch sheet of
corrugated iron.

It was in 1917 that the British High Command got wind of the existence
of these structures, or "pill-boxes," as our irrepressible
combatant-soldiers had christened them when they first appeared. It is
thought that the news reached G.H.Q. in its peaceful little backwater of
Montreuil from an agent in Berne, who had it from an agent in Amsterdam,
who had got it from a journalist friend in Rio de Janeiro. But some
people believe it was the special illustrated supplement in the _Chicago
Tribune_, giving pictures of twenty-seven different types of pill-box,
that first put our Intelligence Service, admittedly the finest in the
world, upon the track. But whichever it was, there is no doubt at all
that by February 1917 British G.H.Q. had decided, in principle, that a
good way of checking the alarming wastage of man-power through
influenza, frost-bite, and trench-feet, with all their accompanying
opportunities for malingering, would be to house the front-line troops
in pill-boxes. There was some opposition, of course, from the
tougher-fibred, harder-bitten school of fighter, who maintained, at
Montreuil, that nothing sapped the morale of troops so quickly as
temporary security from shell-fire. The only way one could steel the
nerves, this school argued, was to expose oneself all the time to
shell-fire, until one got so accustomed to it that one simply did not
notice it at all. This weighty argument was only silenced in the end by
the production of the influenza-statistics and, especially, the
estimated malingering-statistics.

But the High Command, having decided in principle that pill-boxes were,
on the whole, desirable, was not so foolish as to make a present of
them to the already over-mothered infantry. There is no maxim so true as
the one about gift horses and their mouths. Small boys despise free
seats at cinemas and unearned chocolates, and fighting soldiers are very
like small boys. And the High Command at that moment was still smarting
from a painful experience of the truth of this maxim. For, in a moment
of warm-hearted, impulsive generosity, it had decreed that combatant
officers might in certain circumstances be considered to be entitled to
as much as half the amount of leave which every staff-officer always
got, and the reception of this free gift had not been so full of
enthusiastic gratitude as the High Command had expected, and had been
justified in expecting.

The infantry were to have pill-boxes--good. But they were to get them
for themselves. In this way a double purpose would be achieved. The
pill-boxes would be appreciated, valued, and kept clean, and the
infantry would get further practice in the art of offensive warfare.
And, besides, Montreuil was a little uncertain how to set about making
pill-boxes. And, besides, Montreuil had only just mastered the art of
making deep dug-outs, invented by the Germans in late 1914, and was
reluctant to dabble in new mysteries.

So during the month of August, in which it rained three-quarters of the
time, and during September, in which it rained half the time, and
October, when it rained all the time, the infantry were busily employed
in getting hold of these pill-boxes, and, at the end of the three
months, at the cost of a good many lives and a good many shells, they
had acquired several hundreds of them.

It was true that they smelt most vilely of stale cigars and that the
entrances all faced the wrong way and that the mud was inclined to ooze
into them when no one was looking. But, as the Fifth Army staff-officer
said who was detailed to make a report upon their structure,
composition, thickness, seating capacity, field of fire, siting, and
shell-resistance, and who examined what he thought was one of them
through a powerful telescope from the roof of the Chteau des Trois
Tours, behind Brielen, "After all, you can't have everything." With
which eternal verity upon his lips, the staff-officer handed the
telescope to one orderly, dictated his report to another, stepped into
his motor-car and departed on leave. But he was well rewarded for his
hazardous toil, for in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair and Belgravia he was
now able to add enthralling accounts of his experiences in the Front
Line, almost, to his predictions about the trend of forthcoming
campaigns and the plans of forthcoming battles, on which he had
previously had to rely for the captivating of feminine hearts. And a few
weeks later he received a well-merited bar to his D.S.O.

       *       *       *       *       *

Upon the slopes of the Passchendaele Ridge, about two hundred yards east
of the Steenbeek river (when I say "east" I mean on the wrong, or German
side, and when I say "river" I mean a ditch about nine feet wide at its
widest) and about two hundred yards west of the front line, there stood
a pill-box so large, and with walls so thick, that it served as the
headquarters for two adjoining battalions, and as no battalion
headquarters ever dreamt of stirring a yard without the company of an
artillery subaltern, there were consequently two gunners in this
particular box.

The reason for the indispensability of these young gentlemen--for they
were seldom more than twenty or twenty-one years of age--was a curious
one. It had been discovered long before, right away back in the almost
pre-war days of the early days of the war, that by some mysterious freak
of Providence no infantry soldier, of whatever rank or with however long
a row of campaign medals, can distinguish between shells that are fired
from in front of him and shells that are fired from behind him.
Whenever, therefore, a heavy artillery barrage fell upon their trenches,
the infantry, their natural optimism damped by interminable digging and
carrying, always assumed as a matter of course that it was their own
artillery firing short. Indeed there were times at the beginning of the
war when it was difficult to convince them that the German artillery
ever fired at all, and the fact that a British six-gun field battery of
eighteen-pounder guns had a strict ration of thirty-six shells, all
shrapnel, to last them for an entire week, was held to be no proof that
it had not plastered our front line with a thousand six-inch
high-explosive shells in two hours.

The result was that a young artillery gentleman had to be attached to
each battalion headquarters in the Line, whose duty it was to point out
the fundamental difference between east-bound and west-bound
projectiles and thus soothe the fighting-troops into a feeling of
partial, at any rate, security.

The two battalions, of which the colonels, adjutants, signal officers,
runners, batmen, and general hangers-on were housed in this long,
gloomy, dank, cigar-smoky, above-ground tunnel during the second week of
October 1917, were the seventeenth battalion of the Rutland Fusiliers
and the twenty-fourth battalion of the Melton Mowbray Light Infantry.
The artillery officers were Lieutenant Evan Davies, tenth East Flint
Battery, Royal Artillery, Territorial Force, who was attached to the
Rutlands, and Lieutenant Donald Cameron, thirteenth Sutherland Battery,
R.A., T.F., attached to the Melton Mowbrays, each for a period of four
days.

The East Flint artillery belonged to a Welsh Division, the Sutherland to
a Scottish, but it was the usual practice to leave the gunners in the
Line while their infantry was out at rest, thereby doubling the
artillery strength of the Line, and sometimes, when divisions were
plentiful, trebling and quadrupling it. It is true that this practice
had its drawbacks, and a perspicacious civilian, a temporary major, who
had by an error of drafting been placed in quite a high-up position in
the Montreuil backwater, pointed out that it meant that the artillery
never got a rest at all. The perspicacious major--in happier times a
professor of Greek, a man of subtle intelligence, and great learning,
and a capacity for working seventeen hours a day--was duly transferred
to the command of a Chinese Labour battalion, and spent the rest of the
War in building a wharf at a fishing village near Finisterre, which was
to be used as a base for the British Army in the event of one of Von
Ludendorff's brisker drives capturing Le Havre. But though the major had
gone, the dilemma remained. If the artillery strength in the Line was to
be doubled, trebled, or quadrupled, the artillery personnel would get no
rest. The ultimate solution was simple, as all ultimate solutions are,
and consisted of the words, "Oh well, it can't be helped," and everyone
was delighted, except, of course, the artillery personnel.

Mr. Davies and Mr. Cameron naturally gravitated towards each other in
the corner of the pill-box furthest from the door--artillery officers
always seemed to drift into the corner of the pill-box furthest from the
door--and in a short time were deep in conversation. They discussed the
usual topics, the general bloodiness of the war, the shocking hold-up in
the leave-rotation since the Passchendaele offensive first began, the
tragic sublimity of the Staff, and the foulness of the weather. They
compared the number of consecutive days on which their respective
batteries had received marmalade in their rations instead of jam--the
East Flint battery apparently was leading by a hundred and eighteen days
against ninety-six--returned to the general bloodiness of the war, and
then settled down to discuss, in discreet whispers, their infantry hosts
and, finally, the general characteristics of the nation from which both
Rutland Fusiliers and Melton Mowbray Light Infantry were recruited.

"I've lived for five years in London," said Davies, a big, pleasant man
whose five-and-thirty years were an exception to the general
youthfulness of liaison officers, with steel-rimmed glasses and a heavy
black moustache, "and I must admit I find the English are
extraordinarily difficult to understand."

"I was never in England before the War," replied Cameron, "so I've
really only seen them as soldiers. I've been in London for a day or two
when I was on leave, of course."

Donald Cameron was a boy of about twenty, slender and fair-haired with a
small fair moustache and small hands. He was about five feet nine or
ten, and even the changes and chances of war had not battered his
natural shyness out of him. He spoke the pure, accurate English of
Inverness-shire.

"What do you think of them as soldiers?" asked Davies.

"They're such an extraordinary mixture," replied Cameron. "The last time
I was liaison to an English battalion was about a month ago. It was a
battalion from Worcestershire or Gloucestershire or somewhere. The
Colonel wore an eyeglass and sat in a deep dug-out all day reading the
_Tatler_. He talked as if he was the Tatler, all about Lady Diana
Manners and Dukes and Gladys Cooper. We were six days in the Line and he
had the wind up all the time except once, and that time he walked up to
a Bosche machine-gun emplacement with a walking-stick and fifty-eight
Bosche came out and surrendered to him. What do you make of that? Do you
suppose he was mad?"

"I don't know," replied Davies, puffing away at a huge black pipe. "We
had an English subaltern once in our battery who used to run and
extinguish fires in ammunition-dumps."

Cameron dropped his cigarette. "He used to do what?"

"Used to put out fires in shell-dumps."

"But what ever for?"

"He said that shells cost five pounds each and it was everyone's duty to
save Government money."

"Where is he buried?" asked Cameron.

"In that little cemetery at the back of Vlamertinghe."

"I know it."

Donald Cameron lit another cigarette and asked:

"Why do the English always laugh when Aberdeen is mentioned?"

"Heaven knows," replied Davies. "Why do they have a Welsh Prime Minister
and a Scotch----"

"Not Scotch. Scots. Or Scottish."

"Sorry.--A Scottish Commander-in-Chief and a Scottish First Sea Lord of
the Admiralty, and think it funny?"

"Lord knows."

"And here's another thing, Cameron. The English pride themselves on
having always beaten the French except at Hastings."

"Yes."

"Then why is it that the French Army is so much more successful in this
War than the English?"

"The French staff-work is supposed to be miles better."

"It must be, I suppose. Because the English soldier, the chap who
actually does the fighting, is amazingly good."

"Why do the English," asked Cameron, "crack up the French seventy-five
as being the most marvellous gun in the War? Our own 18-pounder is just
as good."

"If not better."

"Exactly. If not better."

"But then why does the average Englishman," said Davies, "pretend he is
a perfect devil with his fists when really he is the most peaceable soul
in the world, and then, in spite of his peaceableness, suddenly turns
into a first-class soldier?"

"Yes, but then why does the Englishman----"

"Oh, for Heaven's sake!" cried Davies laughing, and hauling a great
flask out of his pocket, "this is going to drive us mad. Have a drop of
Scotch. I beg your pardon! Have a drop of Scots or Scottish." They each
had a good swig at it, and then Davies went on: "I'm a publisher by
profession--I've got an office near Covent Garden--and the more I see of
the Englishman as a business man, or as a literary man, or as any kind
of man, the more bewildered I become. They're the kindliest souls in the
world, but if they see anything beautiful flying in the air or running
along the ground, they rush for a gun and kill it. If an earthquake
devastates North Borneo, they dash off to the Mansion House and block up
all the traffic for miles round trying to hand over money for
earthquake-relief, but do you think they'll lift a finger to abolish
their own slums? Not they. If you assault a man in England and bash his
teeth down his throat and kick him in the stomach, that's just
playfulness and you'll get fourteen days in jug. But if you lay a
finger on him and pinch his watch at the same time, that's robbery with
violence, and you'll probably get eighteen strokes with the "cat" and
about three years in Dartmoor. You can do pretty nearly anything you
like to a stag or a fox. That's sport. But you stand up and say you
approve of bull-fights, and see what happens to you! You'll be lucky if
you escape with your life. And there's another thing. They're always
getting themselves up in fancy-dress. They adore fancy-dress. Look at
their Beef-Eaters, and their Chelsea Pensioners, and their barristers'
wigs, and their Peers' Robes, and the Beadle of the Bank of England, and
the Lord Mayor's Show, and the Presenting at Court, and the Trooping of
the Colour, and all that sort of thing. Show an Englishman a
fancy-dress, and he puts it on."

"They sound rather fascinating," murmured Donald.

"They're fascinating, all right," replied Davies. "I love them. I don't
understand them, but I love them. I've got a theory about them, which I
rather want to test some time, if I can extract myself unpunctured from
this bloody Armageddon."

"What is it?"

"I've got an idea that all their queernesses and oddities and
incongruities arise from the fact that, at heart, fundamentally, they're
a nation of poets. Mind you, they'd be lurid with rage if you told them.
Imagine what Colonel Tarkington over there would say if you told him
that he was a poet."

Colonel Tarkington was the C.O. of the Melton Mowbrays. He was a cavalry
major who had transferred into the infantry for the sake of
promotion--a neat, dapper little man who ate sparingly in order to keep
his weight down for post-war polo.

"I'd rather like to write a book about them some day," said Cameron
thoughtfully.

"It's a book that wants writing," replied the Welshman. "Come and look
me up after this bloody war is over, and we'll discuss it."

"Seriously?"

"You bet your life I'm serious. I told you I was a publisher once, and I
hope to be a publisher again. That's a bargain. If ever you want a job
in London, come to me and we'll talk it over. You'll find me in the
telephone-book, Davies and Llewellyn Glendower, Henrietta Street."

Cameron made a note of it in his gun-registration book, and in his turn
produced a large flask.

Evening was drawing on. The rain was falling steadily, in grey sheets,
hour after hour. The German artillery was tuning up for its evening
performance, and an occasional thud shook the pill-box when a shell
pitched near. But it was not the shells that worried the two gunners.
They were in the corner furthest from the door, and both knew that the
reinforced concrete was twenty-eight inches in thickness, for both of
them had measured it independently as soon as they had arrived, and both
knew perfectly well that nothing short of a direct hit from an
eleven-inch or eight-inch howitzer, both fortunately rare in Flanders
mud, or repeated hits on the same spot from a 5.9, which was unlikely,
could do them any real harm. The real danger was that the infantry
might get agitated, and ask for an S.O.S. to be sent to the protecting
artillery.

The two gunners shuffled their feet uneasily, and tried not to watch the
Colonels and their staffs at the other end of the pill-box. A lot of
talking was going on at that other end, and runners kept on arriving
with messages. The air was now throbbing and thudding and hissing and
quivering, and the pill-box was filling up with orderlies and
signallers, taking cover from the thickening barrage. The atmosphere was
heavy with smoke and the smell of wet macintoshes and sweating runners
and the bitter fumes of a shell which had pitched at the entrance. The
adjutant of the Rutlands came elbowing his way towards them through the
crowd. Davies saw him coming and sighed.

"Hell! Now we're off," he murmured. "Retaliation wanted. Five pounds to
a bun that my wire is down." He stretched out for his gas-mask and
tin-hat.

"All the wires will be down," said Cameron. "Listen. It's a regular
corker of a barrage."

"Have you got any rockets?" asked Davies. "Mine were blown into a
shell-hole on the way up."

"Four. Two red and two green; we might try them first."

The adjutant reached them, with the usual request for an S.O.S. "It
might be an attack," he explained.

The two gunners struggled through the mob to the door, carrying their
clumsy rocket-apparatus. Outside was a maelstrom of noise and mud and
death.

"God Almighty!" exclaimed Davies as he peered out. "If they don't see
the rockets, Cameron, one or other of us will have to run for it. No
one in the world could mend a wire in all that."

"Let's hope the damned things work," said Cameron, feverishly propping
the rocket-stand against what was left of a parapet. A moment or two
later the first rocket soared up into the dripping twilight and burst
into a rain of green stars. The second, the red one, followed at once
and failed to burst.

"Damnation!" exclaimed both gunners simultaneously. The S.O.S. signal
was green followed by red. Green alone would not be enough. They fitted
the other red rocket, and then the matches wouldn't strike. The matchbox
was soaked. Cameron rushed inside and came out with another box. The
rocket spluttered and soared away and broke into a beautiful red shower.

The two gunners crouched down behind the broken parapet and waited.
Davies counted the seconds aloud from his wrist-watch. If the rockets
were not seen by the artillery, one of the two subalterns would have to
try to cross the open mile and a half to the nearest battery, with a
five-hundred to one chance against getting through. And if he failed,
the other Would have to try. It was of some considerable importance to
them, therefore, that the rockets should be observed. The seconds
passed. At seventy-five, Davies made a cup of his hand and shouted into
Donald's ear, "It looks like a wash-out." At ninety he held up his ten
fingers, and at a hundred, he half-turned to Cameron and yelled, "We'd
better toss. Will you call?" He spun a franc and Cameron shouted
"Heads!" and at that moment a gun fired from behind them, and then
another gun, and then five or six together in a straggling salvo, and
then like a giant thunderbolt the whole of the British artillery sprang
to life and the western sky was a blaze of yellow flame. The iron
curtain was down.

With a huge grin across his face Davies sprang back into the shelter of
the pill-box. Cameron paused to retrieve the franc from the mud and a
5.9 high-explosive shell pitched beside him, and he woke up a fortnight
later, suffering from concussion and shell-shock, in the Duchess of
Westminster's Hospital at Le Touquet.




CHAPTER II


One of the routes by which shell-shocked officers progressed from the
base hospitals back to health was via a temporary row of huts in Palace
Green, two enchanting private houses on the top of Campden Hill, and
finally one or other of the monster hydropathics in Derbyshire or
Scotland. Donald Cameron travelled this route, and ended in a monster
hydropathic in Scotland, where the chief, indeed, the only,
qualification of the Commandant for solving the three hundred separate
psychological problems entrusted to him by the War Office was an
unrivalled knowledge of the drainage system of the insalubrious port of
Leith. But even this expert was unable to do much for Donald beyond
applying his universal remedy for all shell-shock cases. This remedy was
simple. It consisted of finding out the main likes and dislikes of each
patient, and then ordering them to abstain from the former and apply
themselves diligently to the latter. For example, those of the so-called
patients--for the Commandant privately disbelieved in the existence of
shell-shock, never having experienced himself any more alarming
manifestation of the power of modern artillery than the vibrations of
target-practice by invisible battleships--who disliked noise were
allotted rooms on the main road. Those who had been, in happier times,
parsons, schoolmasters, journalists, and poets, were forbidden the use
of the library and driven off in batches to physical drill, lawn tennis,
golf, and badminton. Those who wished to be alone were paired with
horse-racing, girl-hunting subalterns. Those who were terrified of
solitude had special rooms by themselves behind green-baize doors at the
ends of remote corridors. By means of this admirable system, the three
hundred separate psychological problems were soon reduced to the uniform
level of the Leith drainage and sewerage, and by the time that a
visiting commission of busybodies, arriving unexpectedly and armed with
an absurd technical knowledge and jargon, insisted upon the immediate
sack of the Commandant and his replacement by a civilian professor of
psychology, it was estimated that the mental condition of as many as two
per cent of the patients had definitely improved for the better since
admission to the hospital.

Donald was not among the fortunate two per cent. His natural shyness had
been increased by the concussion of the high-explosive shell on the
Passchendaele Ridge, and the Commandant's system, which had made Donald
president of the Debating Society and compulsory speaker at all debates,
had had the unfortunate effect of assisting rather than countering the
efficient work of the German militarists and munition-makers. Indeed the
professor of psychology, a man who not only believed in the existence of
the subject which he professed, but also read books about it written by
foreigners, and Germans at that, allowed more than a year and a half to
elapse before he felt that it would be safe to send Donald out into the
world of civil life from which he had been so suddenly and so strangely
excluded for six years. It was not until 1920, therefore, that Donald
was furnished with a document which said that he would only be
forty-hundredths of a normal man for the next seven years; that his
physical rating for the rest of his life as a potential soldier in any
future war that might elude the influence of the Great War to end War
was C2; but that on the expiration of the seven years he would,
unaccountably, become once again a hundred per cent citizen with no
further claim upon the finances of the country. Such was the
mathematical exactitude of prophecy with which the Ministry of Pensions
was endowed in those years that immediately followed the War, and it is
believed to be the first successful poach by Aesculapius upon the
preserves of the Delphian Apollo. To this document was attached a
statement that the missing sixty-hundredths of Lieutenant Donald Cameron
were worth 85 a year--a mortifying comparison with the value put upon
his services at that desperate crisis in world affairs when General von
Kluck, the subject of so many admirable rhymes, was advancing nimbly
upon Paris, and Colonel Repington was beginning his diary.

The 85 per annum was to be paid in half-yearly instalments and was
subject to income-tax. Income-tax was to be deducted at the source.

Donald packed his valise for the last time, saluted a major for the
last time, shook hands affectionately with the professor who had so
unpatriotically called in Herr Freud to redress the balance of Frau
Krupp, and departed in a first-class carriage, for the last time for
many years, to Aberdeen, and from Aberdeen by slow train to the country
district of Aberdeenshire which is called Buchan. His father, Ewan
Cameron, was the proprietor of a farm in Buchan called the Mains of
Balspindie, and Ewan was known as the best singer, the best violinist,
the champion whisky-drinker, the story-teller _par excellence_, the
scholar who could out-talk the minister, the quickest-tempered, the
kindest-hearted, the handsomest old man, and the worst farmer, from the
Mormond Hill to the foot of the Lecht. Ewan Cameron had not always been
a farmer. He had once owned a small distillery near Edzell in Angus, but
the distillery had failed because of the owner's sentimental attachment
to his own wares. He could not bear the thought of other people drinking
the precious fluid. At another period of his life, Ewan Cameron had kept
a general store in the village of Forres, but this too had failed. For
Ewan contracted a habit of putting up the shutters earlier and earlier
every week in order to indulge his passion for fishing, an art in which
he was a complete master, as even the pundits of Deveronside and Spey
admitted. The result, of course, was that as the creel filled the till
emptied, and Ewan Cameron packed his belongings, filled his silver
snuff-mull--it had a huge cairngorm on the top--and moved on. Tomintoul,
highest village of Britain, saw him for a month or two. In
Charlestown-of-Aberlour he stayed two years, nominally as factor to a
small laird, but actually spending all his days and a long part of his
nights in making violins, which he offered for sale to those who could
not play the violin and gave as presents to those who could. In
Fochabers he taught Latin in the school for a while, but neglected his
school hours in order to argue with the parish priest about the
Infallibility of the Pope, a subject in which he was greatly interested
at the time; and in Knockando for six months he drove the straightest
furrow that had been seen in those parts for many a long day. His hair
gradually silvered, his face grew wrinkled and old, but no amount of
whisky and no length of nocturnal discussion and no fall from comfort to
poverty could dim the brightness of his eye or roughen the clearness of
his tenor voice, or shake the nimbleness of his fingers upon the
violin-strings or the chanter. Only on two subjects he would never talk,
and those were his father and his father's father. All that Donald knew
about his great-grandfather was that he had "come over the hills" in
about 1790 and that he was a very silent man; and all that he knew about
his grandfather was that he was the most skilful poacher, although an
amateur, from Donside to Fort George, and that he too was a very silent
man.

In 1921 the farm in Buchan was gradually going the same way as the
distillery and the shop and the schoolmastering and the rest of them had
gone. Ewan Cameron did not care. His wife had been dead many years; his
only son had been supported by the Government since 1914, and he had
just discovered Dante. He had no cares in the world. A weird machine
which the English call a char--banc, and the French an autobus, had
begun to ply between the district of Balspindie and Aberdeen, and twice
a week the old man went to plague the life of the librarian of King's
College in the Old Town by demanding obscure Continental books of which
the librarian had never heard, and to chase the lecturer in Italian of
Marischal College in the New Town. His conversation with lecturer and
librarian was as learned and dignified as his repartee in the
char--bancs was lewd and swift. "Auld Balspindie" or "the auld deevil"
was respected and feared and admired in that country-side of lewdness
and learning.

When Donald went home in the spring of 1921 with his 85 per annum, the
old man was surprised.

"This is no place for a young man," he said, looking sternly at his son
from under his white eyebrows and pouring out two whiskies. "I won't say
I'm not glad to see you for my sake, because I am. But not for your
sake. Balspindie is for old men."

"And what for young ones, Father?" asked Donald.

"The world," replied the old man sharply, draining his glass and
refilling it.

"But I've seen quite enough of the world for the time being," protested
Donald.

"Ay," Ewan Cameron nodded, "I thought you might be thinking that. It's
the child's instinct. You've been hurt and you run home to your mother.
Your mother's dead and Balspindie has to do in her place. Well, you're
welcome here. And you can stay till you're well again. But after that,
it's the road for you, my boy. Come back here to die, if you like. But
go out there," he flung his arms wide as if he was King of All the
Spains and Emperor of All the Indies, "go out there to live."

"I don't know that I want to," replied Donald timidly. He was feeling
that he never wanted to stir five miles from Balspindie again for the
rest of his life. By some amazing series of flukes he had escaped the
Germans, the Staff, disease, and even the sewage-expert from Leith, and
his instinct was to settle down and live a quiet life. He had no desire
whatever for further adventures and experiences, and he said so,
diffidently.

His father did not argue. He nodded repeatedly and said finally:

"You're not cured yet. When you are cured you'll leave me. Not because I
tell you to, but because you'll want to. Meanwhile, there's plenty to do
here."

       *       *       *       *       *

There was plenty to do, and Donald did it. He got up early and went to
bed early. He worked in the fields, and in time he ploughed a furrow
that was quite creditable.

"I might have ploughed that one myself," said his father admiringly on
one occasion, "If I'd been blindfolded and short of one arm and with a
team of horses that rocketed about like steeplechasers."

For several years father and son continued their queer, incongruous
partnership until the senior partner dissolved it by dying. Ewan Cameron
made as little fuss about dying as he had made about living. He went to
bed at about six o'clock one evening in late summer, windless and warm
and scented with the scent of corn-stooks, and told the dairymaid to go
out into the fields for Donald. When Donald came in, breathless from
running across stubble, he found the old man lying on his side in a
doze. He knelt down on the stone floor beside him, and Ewan Cameron
opened his great black eyes and smiled a smile that Franz Hals might
have painted.

"I'm for off, boy," he said, in the only Buchan phrase that Donald had
ever heard him use. And then: "Lochaber no more. Go to the Gordon
barracks in Aberdeen to-morrow and bring a piper who can play a Cameron
lament." He stopped and shook his great head a little and then went on.
"I was a Catholic once. Go away from Buchan. It's not our country. Don't
be afraid, I won't babble of green fields. If ever you meet Lochiel,
give him a peat. The snuff-mull was carried at Culloden." Then he sighed
and said, "I'll not see Achnacarry again," and then he shut his eyes and
died.

Donald Cameron fetched a piper from Castlehill barracks, and all Buchan
came to the funeral and listened to the Cameron lament, and there were
no dry eyes for "Auld Balspindie."

On the day after the funeral, an advocate from a firm of advocates in
Golden Square, Aberdeen, came out in a motor-car with the news that Ewan
Cameron had left just over seven thousand pounds to his son Donald, on
condition that he spent no more than one month in the year north of the
Tweed until he was fifty years of age. Where the old man got the money
no one ever discovered, but it must have been a long time before, the
advocate said, for the original sum had been about thirty-five hundred
pounds and had been lying in Aberdeen at compound interest for over
twenty years.

At first the advocate frightened Donald a good deal, for he had not
spoken to a man of the world since leaving the military hospital, until
it came out in the course of conversation that the man of feus and fees
had himself commanded a battalion of Highland infantry in the War and
that they had many battlefield friends, and had once had many more, in
common. To this small, dry man, once a leader of desperate attacks and
commander of a thousand incomparable soldiers, Donald entrusted the
fortunes of the Mains of Balspindie, and a week or two later, having
packed his military valise with his civilian clothes and procured two or
three introductions from the librarian of the University Library and the
lecturer in Italian to friends in the southern part of Britain, he set
off once again for London, for the first time in his life making the
twelve-hour journey in a third-class carriage. It was very
uncomfortable.




CHAPTER III


Donald Cameron had no qualifications for any profession except the
ability to drive a moderately crooked furrow and to direct the fire of a
six-gun battery of eighteen-pounder guns, and so he resolved to try his
fortune as a journalist. There seemed to be no other profession which
required neither ability nor training. He was fortified in this
resolution by the fact that his letters of introduction from the
lecturer and the librarian were all addressed to literary men, the
former having several times corresponded with editors about rejected
articles and the latter being a member of the Librarians' Association, a
body that occasionally came into touch with those who write books as
well as those who read them.

But the double set of introductions led to a small difficulty at 7.30 on
the morning of the day when the Aberdeen express drew up at King's Cross
station and decanted a tousled and sleepy Donald from his third-class
corner. For the lecturer in Italian had warmly recommended Chelsea as
the only possible region in which a literary man could live, whereas the
librarian had repeatedly affirmed that no one who was anyone lived
further away from the British Museum than an average athlete at the
Aboyne Games could throw a stone. Donald's own experience of London
consisted of an intimate knowledge of Reggiori's restaurant opposite
King's Cross station, the few hundred yards between the Palace Theatre
and the Piccadilly Hotel, and the leave-train platforms of Victoria
Station; and in consequence Chelsea and Bloomsbury were all one to him,
both as residential districts and as Movements in Art. To him Chelsea
was "the Quartier Latin of London," and as for Bloomsbury, he had heard
of Virginia Woolf but not of Miss Sackville-West.

It was the spin of a coin upon the arrival platform of the London and
North-Eastern Railway's terminus that directed his taxi in the direction
of Chelsea, and by tea-time of the same afternoon Donald was installed
in a bed-sitting-room on the second floor of a Carolean house in Royal
Avenue, just off the King's Road. The landlady was an elderly dame with
a roving eye, who looked as if she had had her fling in her day, forty
years before. Her daughter also had a roving eye, and looked as if she
was ready to have a fling at any moment. Her name was Gwladys and she
terrified Donald. She was tall and ladylike and full of little ways.
Every morning Donald met her at the door of the bathroom, for his
descent, at whatever hour he made it, invariably seemed to coincide with
her entrance or exit--screaming modestly in a flurry of pink
dressing-gown and lace-topped nightgown. And often when he was going
upstairs to bed he would meet Gwladys on the stairs, and she would tell
him all about her fianc, a naval commander who was killed at Jutland
and who was very fond of port wine. Donald shyly sympathized with her
loss and put forward the opinion, nervously, that port wine was
infinitely preferable to Jutland. Gwladys' view was that in any case the
present was better than the past.

       *       *       *       *       *

Donald's first letter of introduction was to the literary editor of a
well-known weekly paper which had leanings towards a mild form of
intellectual Socialism. No one would have been more alarmed and
bewildered than the literary editor if a sudden swing of the political
pendulum had brought about the nationalization of the Means of
Production, Distribution, and Exchange which his newspaper so elegantly
advocated. For the literary editor was an Irishman who, if he despised
money and made very lethargic and intermittent efforts to acquire any,
nevertheless was heartily fond of many of the things which money can
buy. He was a brilliant critic, a vile editor, and a superb luncher-out.
He went to a lunch-party every day of the week, was always the first to
arrive and the last to leave, and was always welcome. For his
conversation was not only easy, witty, learned, universal; it was
enchanting as well. The man radiated charm. Charm was his capital and
conversation his income, and both were inexhaustible. His name was
Charles Ossory.

Donald presented his letter of introduction to Mr. Ossory's secretary, a
small, dark lady of incredible sharpness and efficiency, one afternoon
at 3 P.M., and the sharp little lady examined him briefly and explained
that Mr. Ossory was out. She added that she had full authority to make
appointments for Mr. Ossory, and that if Mr. Cameron cared to come
along at 4.30 on the following afternoon, Tuesday, it was possible that
Mr. Ossory might by that time have come back from his lunch.

"From his tea," corrected Donald mildly.

"From his lunch," snapped the sharp little lady, and she turned to a
gigantic card-index in a way that suggested only too plainly that the
conversation was over. On the Tuesday afternoon Donald presented himself
nervously at the dragonlet's den and waited until, an hour later, the
butler of a Dowager Marchioness telephoned to say that Mr. Ossory was
not going to return to his Bureau that day.

On the Wednesday afternoon it was the lady secretary of a Cabinet
Minister's wife who did the telephoning, only she called it "his
department," and on the Thursday it was a Countess whose quarterings
were unimpeachable but whose income did not run to a telephonic
intermediary, and so had to do it herself. On Friday Mr. Ossory went
away for his usual week-end, returning on Tuesday just in time not to go
to the office, and it was only by chance that a hasty visit on the
Wednesday afternoon, to correct the proofs of a wise and witty article
about Molire, happened to coincide with one of Donald's vigils. Charles
Ossory came into the office in a great hurry and stayed, talking to
Donald enchantingly, for an hour and a half, his eyes twinkling away and
his lovely sentences tumbling out in his lovely soft voice. He was no
longer in a hurry. His engagements were forgotten. In vain did the
dragonlet dart in and out of the office, ordering him either to correct
his proof or to go to Whitehall Gardens to have tea with Mr. Bernard
Shaw. Mr. Ossory, with enchanting blandness, refused to do either, and
Donald thought it was the most flattering thing that had ever come his
way. But that was all from Mr. Ossory that did come his way, except the
task of compiling a list of autumn novels for a book-supplement of the
mildly Socialistic weekly, for which he received three guineas; that,
and a piece of information. For Mr. Ossory told him, in his soft lovely
voice, that the literary profession was grotesquely overcrowded, and
that it was only possible for men of exceptional talent to enter it, and
then only if they had been already in the profession for years. Unless
they had been in it for years, he pointed out, how could they show their
exceptional talent?

It says a great deal for Mr. Ossory's charm that he made this sound
quite reasonable, and it was not until Donald had returned home to Royal
Avenue and pondered deeply over the position that he decided to give up
Mr. Ossory as a potential Maecenas and to try his second letter of
introduction.

This was from the librarian of King's College Library, and was addressed
to Mr. Alexander Ogilvy, LL.D. of St. Andrews University, and editor of
the _Illustrated Planet_. Mr. Ogilvy's business habits were different,
apparently, from those of Mr. Ossory, for he made an appointment with
Donald for 8.30 A.M., and at 8.31 A.M. received his visitor. 8.31 A.M.
is a difficult time of the day for any but the hardiest of spirits, and
Donald's shyness was even more overpowering at that hour than later on.
He had breakfasted much too early, so as not to be late for the
appointment, and he had spent a cold half-hour in a dark, stone-flagged
waiting-room at the office of the _Illustrated Planet_ between 8 o'clock
and half-past, his courage sinking with his temperature, and a hungry
feeling competing with a nervous feeling for supremacy in the
neighbourhood of his lower waistcoat buttons. The sudden jarring of the
electric bell at one minute past the hour of the appointment came like
the whistles of the platoon commander at zero hour, and his eyes were
all blurred when he shambled through a glass door into the presence of
the great Mr. Ogilvy.

When the haze had cleared away, he saw that an extraordinary person was
staring at him from a distance of about three feet. Mr. Ogilvy was a
small man--a very small man--and he had an enormous head. Seated at his
office table, he looked like an eccentric giant who preferred to sit
upon the floor so that only his head appeared above the polished
surface, for there was little of Mr. Ogilvy visible except this mammoth
cranium. But when he jumped up smartly and held out his hand, his full
length of about five feet--four feet of which were body and legs, and
one of which was head, became apparent. Donald sat down opposite him and
an embarrassing silence followed. Donald glanced round the room, looked
at the floor, his finger-nails, the shiny top of the table, and finally
shot a furtive glance at Mr. Ogilvy. This glance gave him a profound
surprise, for he had imagined at first that the hugeness of the little
man's head was his most important feature. Now he saw that this was
wrong, for the giant skull, dwarfing as it did the four-foot body, was
itself dwarfed by a chin that was shaped like a Spanish spade-beard,
like the front end of a torpedo boat photographed in a dry dock, like an
instrument for bashing in the gates of mediaeval cities. It was a
regular Cyrano among chins, and the little man was evidently as
conscious of his panache as the Gascon was of his. For as he looked at
Donald during the embarrassing silence, he thrust it forward in a rather
menacing way, just like the pictures of the mythical Captain Kettle.
Donald, by now a-twitter with nervous palpitations, wondered if the
little man's first words would be a rasping command to Marshal Soult to
attack the Russian centre, or a single word which would unleash the Old
Guard up the slopes of St. Jean. As it was, Mr Ogilvy's first words were
unintelligible.

"Erracht, Mamore, or Fassifern?" he barked.

Donald started, and swept a large glass inkbottle to the floor, where it
shivered into ten thousand splinters and flung its blue-black contents
into every corner of the room. Mumbling apologies and perspiring freely,
for the cold feeling had been suddenly superseded by intense heat,
Donald fell on his knees, upsetting his chair with a clatter, and
started to mop up the flood with his handkerchief. Somewhere in the
distance, about two miles away, the electric bell rang again, and an
office-boy, miraculously covering the two miles in a second or so,
appeared with mop and brush and pan, and Donald, purple in the face and
blue-black on the hands, reseated himself on his righted chair.

Mr. Ogilvy waved away his apologies, and Donald perceived that there was
a kindly look in his eyes and a gentle tone in his voice which did not
harmonize with the terrific aspect of his chin.

"I was asking you," said Mr. Ogilvy, in a very broad Lanarkshire accent,
"to what branch of the Clan Cameron you belonged?"

"I--I don't know exactly," stammered Donald. Mr. Ogilvy's kindly
expression vanished and the Austerlitz manner reasserted itself.

"It's a poor Highlander who doesn't know his own chieftain," he observed
coldly.

The blood ran to Donald's forehead at this, and he astonished himself by
replying sharply, "We have no chieftain. Lochiel's our chief."

Mr. Ogilvy lay back in his chair and smiled a friendly smile; his huge
head nodding up and down slowly, as if it was afraid of overstraining
the neck by which it was precariously supported.

"All right, Mr. Cameron--all right, all right. I'm not so gyte as to ask
questions that need not be answered. Do you know what 'gyte' means?"

"N-no."

"Where are you from, Mr. Cameron?"

"Balspindie, in Buchan."

Mr. Ogilvy pulled out a vast scrap-album from a shelf of vast
scrap-albums and examined it attentively. Then he said:

"Was Ewan Cameron your father?"

"Yes."

"Ah! Then your mother was a Gordon from the family of William Gordon of
Kinaldie? And William Gordon married an Allardyce who was the second
cousin of the first wife of one of the Macleods of Assint? Let me see.
Your father's father married a Kennedy from the region of Drumnadrochit,
and she was half-sister to one of the Laggan Grants, the one who was
drowned, you remember, in the great storm on Loch Lochy. Dear me! that's
very interesting. And his father--your great-grandfather, Mr. Cameron,
was believed to have been born during or just after the rebellion----"

"The what!" exclaimed Donald, starting up.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Cameron. I profoundly beg your pardon. I should
have said the Forty-Five. And that's all that is known about your
family, except that your great-aunt Mary, who married a Fraser from
Strathcarron, was so proud of her beautiful voice that she used to go to
Mass late, in order that the congregation might notice the difference
between the singing before and after her arrival."

Mr. Ogilvy closed the big album with a bang, just saving his chin from
being caught by the clashing covers like the Argo escaping the
Symplegades, and carefully replaced it on its shelf. Then he turned back
to Donald and said:

"Well, Mr. Cameron, and my good friend Mr. Greig of the College Library
tells me that you want to enter upon a literary career."

Donald squirmed on his seat. The phrase "a literary career" seemed to
make him out to be a pretentious prig, especially when it was endowed by
the Lanarkshire accent with more _r_'s than appeared phonetically
possible. He had come south to try to support himself by "writing," a
much simpler and homelier ambition than the carving of literary
careers. Mr. Ogilvy went on.

"Mr. Greig says that he is sure you have all the makings of a literary
man."

Donald squirmed again. Mr. Greig was a high-falutin ass. But Mr.
Ogilvy's next words brought things to earth again.

"Well, maybe you have and maybe you haven't," he went on drily. "But
there are two ways of finding out. Either go home and write something
good--if it's good it will be published. There's a notion that
publishers neglect good writers. They don't. They know their job. Either
do that, or start in as a journalist."

"That was my idea," murmured Donald.

"Very good. Then you must try and get a job on a paper."

"I thought of free-lancing," said Donald, his voice sinking almost to a
mumble. Again there was something priggish about the word
"free-lancing," an affectation of romantic, individualist dash, like a
captain of Free Companies or a cavalry leader.

"Very good," said Mr. Ogilvy decisively. "Free-lance and starve. Get a
job and live. That's the rule in Fleet Street. Don't go and be silly.
Now, I've been asked to find a man--an apprentice--for a paper, and if
you like you can have the job. It'll be a good start for you."

Donald opened his eyes. To stumble upon a journalistic job within the
first few weeks of coming to London was an amazing bit of luck.
Free-lancing could wait. He leant forward eagerly and murmured some
words of gratitude.

"It's a small job," said Mr. Ogilvy, "but it's a beginning, and in a few
years, say three or four, you'll be qualified for a rise in the world.
It's the usual thing--apprentice-reporter. That's how we all started.
Would you like it?"

"I would love it," replied Donald fervently.

"Good. It's on the _Glossop Evening Mail_----"

"On the what?" said Donald, his jaw dropping.

"The _Glossop Evening Mail_. Glossop. Town in Derbyshire."

"But--but--I thought you meant a job in London," faltered Donald.

"Young man," replied Mr. Ogilvy, "London is half-way up the ladder. You
must start on the lowest rung. Your niche is Glossop."

Except for this mixing of metaphors, Donald remembered nothing more
until he found himself on the stairs of the Carolean house in Royal
Avenue, watching a swirl of pink ribbons and silks retreating
swiftly--yet not too swiftly--into the modest shades of Gwladys'
bedroom.




CHAPTER IV


The third and last of Donald's letters of introduction was from the
Italian lecturer to a Mr. William Hodge, editor of the _London Weekly_,
a paper which was entirely devoted to the Arts and, unlike Mr. Ossory's,
rigidly excluded politics from its pages. Before going to keep his
appointment with Mr. Hodge, the hour fixed by Mr. Hodge's secretary
being "any time between 11 o'clock and five minutes to 1," Donald bought
the current number of the _London Weekly_ in order to make some sort of
estimate of the character of the man he was going to meet. So far, he
only knew Mr. Hodge as the author of several books of poems, exquisite
in words, severe in style, lofty in thought--a fastidious genius who
published a poem seldom, a bad poem never. Donald was even more nervous
at the prospect of meeting the poetical Mr. Hodge than he had been at
the prospect of meeting the enchanting Mr. Ossory and the practical Mr.
Ogilvy. The former had only asked for an audience, an enchantee, so to
speak; the latter had only wanted a victim for the altar of Glossop. The
poet would require intelligence in anyone who was to gain his approval,
and perception and intuition and fastidiousness. Donald wished he could
quote Shakespeare aptly, or better still, Milton. Milton was more
impressive, but fearfully difficult to do aptly. Shakespeare often came
to earth, Milton so seldom. But as Donald could quote neither, the
difference between them hardly mattered. The best thing to do was to sit
quiet and let Mr. Hodge do the talking. But there again, there was a
difficulty about that. Poets had an infernal habit, so Donald had always
understood, of probing into people's characters, looking into their
souls, "laying bare their inmost thoughts," as a lady critic had once
finely said of Coventry Patmore in the _Aberdeen Press and Journal_,
and, in fact, asking a lot of difficult questions and expecting answers
to them. Mr. Hodge would be exceedingly angry and justifiably angry--if
he took the trouble to lay bare Donald's inmost thoughts and found that
Donald either resisted the process or, alternatively, had practically no
inmost thoughts worth laying bare.

"The only thing to do," said Donald unhappily to himself as he began to
turn over the pages of the _London Weekly_, "is to hope for the best."

But his hopes, never very high, were diminished by his study of the
journal. Each contribution to its columns added to his perplexity, and,
at the end, he lay back in his chair in a daze. So far from arriving at
a clear notion of Mr. Hodge's personality, he was now completely
befogged, and the only conclusion he could come to was that either Mr.
Hodge was away holiday-making, leaving behind him a most erratic staff,
or else that the editorial chair was occupied by a syndicate to which
Mr. Hodge simply lent his name. Take the poetry, for instance. What
consistent policy was there in printing three Shakespearean sonnets by
one of the major Victorian Survivals, then a weird affair in chopped-up
lines and no capital letters, all about violet-rayed bats in a-minor
belfries, and then a ballade on the severe French model but with the
refrain, "I made a century in Zanzibar?" Or consider the prose articles.
A critical commentary upon the new edition of Dryden was admirable;
copiously footnoted, obviously authoritative. A page upon the new
Shakespearean discovery in the Record Office (made by an American
professor of course; only American professors ever go into the Record
Office) was in the best vein of scholarship, even though the discovery
itself--that Shakespeare's father had once sold a bale of hay to a man
called Browne and had not been paid for it--was not of the first
importance. But how could those two weighty contributions be followed by
a short story of extreme flippancy about football? A page describing the
developments of post-war Nordic architecture was good. But to devote a
page and half immediately afterwards to an apparently serious estimate
of Mr. Edgar Wallace's novels, in which Mr. Wallace's technique was
favourably compared to that of Dostoievsky, Mallarm, and Pascal, seemed
to the serious-minded Donald to be lunacy. To deplore the modern
tendencies of the drama was one thing; to inveigh passionately against
the proposed changes in the rules of billiards was surely another. And
finally, the _London Weekly_ was apparently doing its editorial utmost
to raise funds for two causes--firstly, to save Stonehenge from being
converted by a kind-hearted, sentimental Government into a canteen for
welfare-workers among the neighbouring barracks; and secondly, to
provide a purse which would enable a gentleman called Young Billy Binks
to face all-comers at, or under, eight stone six at the National
Sporting Club.

At the foot of the back page was this statement: "Printed by the London
Weekly Press, E.C.4, and published by Mr. T. Puce. Subscription rates,
Two pounds twelve shillings per annum. A subscription implies that this
journal will be sent to the subscriber until one of the three expires."

Donald mopped his brow, read the whole paper through again, and then
went to bed and dreamt that he was lost in a maze of trenches in a thick
fog on a cold winter's day. Next morning he dressed himself very
carefully for his interview with the poet. He put on a very old pair of
grey flannel trousers with a hole at one knee, a pair of purple woolly
socks specially bought for the occasion, a pale blue jumper, and the old
coat in which he used to farm the Mains of Balspindie, a big bow tie and
a big black felt hat; and, on surveying himself in the glass, he decided
that he looked exactly like the ladies and gentlemen who sat upon the
high stools in the Cadogan Arms, King's Road, and asked each other in
loud voices across the saloon bar whether Augustus John had been in
lately. And what was correct for painting and sculpting obviously could
not be far wrong for poetry.

A No. 11 omnibus took him from Sloane Square to Fleet Street, and at
twenty-five minutes to 12 he presented himself at the office in Bouverie
Street of the _London Weekly_.

"Go right in," said Mr. Hodge's secretary, a tall young lady with fair
hair and pleasant manners. "First door on your right."

Donald timidly opened the door, was met with a clatter of voices, and
hastily closed it again.

"I'm afraid Mr. Hodge is engaged," he ventured.

"Shouldn't be surprised," replied the secretary indifferently. "Go right
in," and she began to type with great dexterity.

"I think I'd better wait till he's disengaged," he murmured. He had no
desire to be introduced to what was probably a brilliant group of poets
and essayists as a "young man with literary aspirations"--for thus had
the infernal librarian, who had seemed at the time to be so civil and
appreciative--described him in the letter of introduction.

"Just as you like," said the secretary absently.

After a few minutes Donald plucked up sufficient courage to ask how long
it was likely to be.

"How long is what likely to be?" shouted the secretary above the clatter
of the typewriter.

"Before he is disengaged?" said Donald, raising his voice a little.

"What?" roared the secretary, typing faster than ever.

"Before he is disengaged?" bellowed Donald bravely. Unfortunately the
secretary, who was a kindly soul and perceived the young man's
diffidence, stopped her manipulations of the keyboard just as Donald let
out his gallant stentorianism and his shout echoed wildly through the
building, rattling the windows and setting the electric light bulbs
a-quiver.

"Wot's up?" said the office boy, shooting through the door like a rather
grubby cherub in a religious play.

"Get out!" said the secretary.

"Coo!" said the cherub, getting out.

A small, neat, wizened man with a bowler hat cocked rakishly over one
ear and a salmon-pink tie, poked his head round another door and
observed roguishly:

"Six to four the field, eh? I'll have a dollar each way on Jolly Boy for
the 3.30. Bung-o, young Isaacs," and with this cryptic statement the
wizened man winked twice and vanished.

Donald, blushing scarlet at his unfortunate predicament, was in far too
great an agony of mind to grasp what the man had said, and the secretary
obviously did not think it worth while grasping, for she tossed her head
disdainfully and said:

"That's only Puce. Don't you mind him. As for William, he's never
disengaged, so you might as well go in now as wait for a year."

And before Donald could resist or protest, he was shoo'd and shepherded
through the first door on the right into the presence of one of the
first poets of the land. The room in which he found himself was long and
narrow, uncarpeted and unfurnished except for a desk at the far end and
three chairs. Four men were grouped round the desk, one lounging against
the mantelpiece, one sitting on the desk itself with dangling legs, and
two kneeling on two of the chairs. The third chair, a large
leather-padded swivel, was occupied by Mr. William Hodge himself, and
the other men were obviously the circumference of a circle of which he
was the centre.

Mr. Hodge was a man of about forty. He was of medium height, squarely
built, rather stout, a little bald, and he had a pair of brown eyes
behind enormous horn-rimmed, powerfully lensed glasses. He was
clean-shaven, or rather the last time he had been shaved he had been
clean-shaven. He was wearing patent-leather shoes, striped trousers, a
morning coat, a grey waistcoat, a grey bow-tie, a huge pink carnation,
and a grey bowler hat, and, at the moment when Donald came shuffling
through the door, he was lying back in his swivel chair laughing
uproariously. Indeed, all the men were laughing uproariously, and at the
sight of the new-comer the laughter died away into a silence that made
Donald wish he was dead. But the next moment he was saved by Mr. Hodge
himself, who jumped up, threw his grey bowler into a waste-paper basket,
and came down the room to meet him.

"Mr. Cameron," he said, beaming at him through his colossal glasses.
"Come and sit down. How is my good friend of King's College Library?"

"He's sent you a letter," stammered Donald, fumbling in his pocket, but
Mr. Hodge would have none of it.

"Don't bother about that," he said. "Letters of introduction are always
silly and usually lies. 'A friend's friend' is all that ever need be
said. Let me introduce Mr. Cameron, Mr. Smith, Mr. Walter, Mr. Wilson,
Mr. Harcourt. Mr. Cameron is another of these infernal Scotsmen. And I
rather fancy he comes from the neighbourhood of Aberdeen."

"I'm afraid I do," admitted Donald, and the five men laughed heartily.

"There was once a man from Aberdeen----" said Mr. Smith and they all
laughed again. Donald joined in politely, being anxious not to appear
provincial among these metropolitan wits.

"Well," said Mr. Hodge, "the real question of the moment is not whether
you have recently been engaged in your fellow-citizens' favourite
pastime of outdoing Jews in business deals, but whether you play
cricket?"

"Cricket?" said Donald, blinking.

"A game played with dice and counters," put in Mr. Harcourt. He was a
tall, thin youth of twenty-four or five, and his poems were already
famous.

"Shut up, Rupert," said Mr. Hodge benevolently. "Do you play cricket,
Mr. Cameron?"

"I used to play years ago," began Donald, and was interrupted by loud
applause from the others.

"Splendid!" said Mr. Hodge warmly. "You're just the man we're looking
for. I'm raising a side to play a village in Sussex. Saturday week."

"But I haven't played for ages."

"That doesn't matter two straws. A motor-bus will be at the Embankment
entrance of the Underground Station at 10.15 on Saturday week. Do you
bat or bowl?"

"Well, not really either----"

"Splendid. And now, what about a drink?"

"I've been saying that every five minutes since they opened," said thin
Mr. Harcourt bitterly.

The party formed a sort of bodyguard round Mr. Hodge's grey bowler hat
and flocked downstairs. The poet paused beside his secretary's table and
said, "I'll be back in a quarter of an hour."

"No you won't, William," she replied without looking up.

"I assure you----" he began and then gave it up, and followed the
others.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Black Cat public-house was already crowded, although it was not yet
12 o'clock. Not since he had left the Army had Donald had a drink at
such an early hour. Mr. Harcourt appeared to think that much valuable
drinking-time had been lost since 11.30 A.M.

Mr. Hodge's party, appreciating the immense power of an organized
minority, formed itself into a compact phalanx and quickly pushed its
way to the counter, where it deployed to the right and left of the grey
bowler, annexed all the available stools, and got down to business.

Donald, a pint mug in his hand, edged away to the extreme left of the
line. The others were already deep in an argument about the comparative
merits of two Rugby three-quarter backs, neither of whose names was
familiar to Donald, and he was not anxious to push himself forward into
the conversation. Gazing round through the already smoky atmosphere of
the bar, his eye was caught by a figure which seemed familiar. It was
the figure of a middle-aged man with a heavy iron-grey moustache and a
heavy jowl. He was sitting by himself in a corner, drinking a
whisky-and-soda and leaning his chin upon a large stick and gazing at
the company. The more Donald looked at him the more certain he was that
he had seen him before. This certainty was confirmed by the man's small
but palpable start of surprise the first time that their eyes met.
Donald quickly looked away, but on venturing a quick glance round the
edge of his tankard a minute or two later, he saw that the man was no
longer gazing at the company but was sitting back and frowning at the
ceiling. Round of drinks succeeded round, and Donald had just disbursed
the sum of seven shillings and a penny for five double whiskies for the
five literary men and fourpence-halfpenny for a half-pint of beer for
himself when he saw that the thick-set man in the corner was no longer
frowning at the ceiling or anywhere else. He was smiling to himself in a
complacent way, as a man is apt to do if he has accomplished something
of which he is rather proud.

At 1 o'clock the bar of the Black Cat was filled almost to
bursting-point, and thin Mr. Harcourt announced that no gentleman could
drink in such a damnable place, and suggested "an adjournment"--a
curious Parliamentary phrase, thought Donald--to the Pink Mouse in
Something-or-other Alley. The others heartily concurred, and being now
in the midst of a vigorous discussion about the language that
Charlemagne spoke as his native tongue, they did not notice that Donald
unobtrusively slipped away from them in the crowd and made for another
exit. He had drunk quite as much beer as was good for him, and besides,
it was looking as if it would be his privilege at the Pink Mouse to
produce another seven shillings and a penny for his new friends and, if
so disposed, another fourpence-halfpenny for himself, so swiftly did the
turns come round. And he only had eleven-pence left in his pocket.

After the smoke and beer, the fresh air of Fleet Street, such as it was,
hit him like a cold douche on the back of his neck, and he stood for a
moment on the pavement, taking deep breaths of it. A pleasant voice at
his elbow observed, "I don't remember your name, but we shared a
pill-box at Passchendaele."

Donald spun round and faced the thick-set man.

"You're Davies," he said at once, the whole scene coming back to him.

"That's right. How clever of you! And now I'm going to be clever. Your
name's come back to me. It's Cameron."

They shook hands warmly, and Davies carried Donald off to lunch and
listened to the story of his experiences. At the end he said:

"You don't remember my suggestion in that infernal pill-box, I suppose?"

"I got concussion that same day," said Donald apologetically, "and I
can't remember things very clearly."

"I'm a publisher," replied Davies, "and I suggested you might try a book
about England for us. England as seen through the eyes of a Scotsman.
Would you like to have a shot at it? We could fix up for you to meet
people--you know the sort of thing--typical Englishmen."

"I'd love to have a shot at it," said Donald doubtfully.

"Splendid. When can you start?"

"At once."

"Good man. And look here," added the publisher, "I've got a small
dinner-party to-night--just the sort of people who might be useful. Will
you come along? Eight-fifteen?"

"I should like to very much."

"Black tie. 74B Mount Street."

And so it was arranged.

Just as they were parting outside the restaurant, Mr. Davies said:

"Oh, by the way, since I saw you last I've found out something about the
English. There are two things you must never, never rag them about. One
is the team spirit in cricket. You must never suggest in any sort of way
that there are any individuals in cricket. It's the highest embodiment
on earth of the Team."

"I must remember that on Saturday week," said Donald. "I'm going to play
for Mr. Hodge. And what's the other thing you mustn't rag them about?"

"Lord Nelson," said Mr. Davies earnestly.

       *       *       *       *       *

There were four other guests at Mr. Davies' dinner-party that evening,
and each of the four took a kindly interest in the diffident young
stranger. Sir Ethelred Ormerode, M.P., vaguely invited him to play golf
at Sunningdale; Sir Ludovic Phibbs, M.P., vaguely invited him to play
golf at Walton Heath; Miss Perugia Gaukrodger devoted an hour and three
quarters to him after dinner, describing with a wealth of minute detail
the story of her rise to world fame, each step being measured in the net
sales of her novels; and Lady Ormerode, M.P., firmly invited him to
spend the following week-end at Ormerode Towers in the county of
Surrey.




CHAPTER V


Next day Donald started to collect material for his book, and he decided
to make a beginning with a study of Mr. Hodge and his circle of friends.
It was comparatively easy to find them every day, for Donald soon
discovered that there was a definite tendency among them to rendezvous
at one or other of the many taverns of Fleet Street between the hours of
11.30 A.M. and 1.30 P.M., and he found that with a little perseverance
he could usually run them to earth. Once he had done so, he had only to
perch himself unobtrusively upon a high stool on the outskirts of the
group, and he could listen as long as he liked to the conversation of a
brilliant circle of Englishmen. But the oftener he sat upon his high
stool, drinking the small tankards of beer which were lavishly thrust
upon him, and occasionally standing a round of drinks himself, the less
he discovered about the genius of the English race.

Sometimes he tried, very timidly, to turn the conversation to subjects
which would afford an opportunity for these men to illumine themselves
and their race, but each time the result was a failure. It was not that
they consciously dried up or avoided the mild traps which Donald baited
for them. It was rather that one or other of them was absolutely
certain to say something flippant about any subject within fifteen
seconds of its being introduced, and the moment one became flippant they
all became flippant, and the conversation fell into a chaos of laughter.

There was only one occasion on which Donald met a man who was not only
prepared, but was eager, to talk seriously, and it cannot be said that
Donald learnt from him anything that helped to clear up the fog in which
he was groping.

It happened that one morning Donald entered the Dragon hostelry in Fleet
Street at about a quarter to 12 and found one of Mr. Hodge's group
leaning moodily against the counter. He was a man of about thirty-five,
a thick-set man of medium height, with a red face and red hands and an
irresistible combination of vitality and impertinence. Donald had met
him once or twice but had hardly ever spoken to him. The man recognized
him, however, in a gloomy sort of way, and said, "Have a drink. Flaming
fish! but this is a stinking country."

"A half-pint of bitter," said Donald nervously. He was nervous partly
because he thought the man looked positively ferocious, and partly
because, for the first time since he had acquired the Fleet Street
habit, Donald saw that he would have to bear a responsible part in the
conversation.

"A half-pint of bitter," said the man across the counter to no one in
particular.

"A half-pint of bitter," he repeated in a louder voice, and then, in a
sudden whirl of rage, he seized an enormously thick walking-stick, or
rather cudgel, which leant against the counter beside him, and struck
the counter a terrific blow which set the glasses jumping and rattling,
and shouted, "Stinking fish! Is there no one here to serve a gentleman?"

A man in a black coat and striped trousers came up and said severely:

"You can't do that here, sir."

"Can't I, by God!" was the spirited reply of the red-faced man, and he
struck the counter another resounding blow. The managerial-looking
person smiled a forced and sickly smile, and faded away.

"Scum!" said the red-faced man. "Filthy, lousy, herring-gutted,
spavin-bellied scum!"

Donald was surprised.

"What on earth is spavin-bellied?" he enquired.

"A disease of horses, common in all fog-ridden, disgusting,
beer-drinking countries."

"But I've never heard of it," protested Donald.

"Do you know anything about horses?" demanded the man.

"I've done a good deal of farming----" began Donald, but the other
interrupted him.

"Then in God's name let's talk about something else. Do you prefer
crocodile or suede for fog-horn containers?"

"For what?" faltered Donald.

"For fog-horn containers. I've just lost mine beside the Mitcham
Gasworks, and I've put an advertisement in the _Dog-Lover's World_ and
also in the _Battersea and East Putney Philatelist_ to say that the
Finder may keep it." He gazed at Donald with tragic intensity.

Donald's brain began to go round in circles.

"But surely that was a waste of money," he began. "I mean, was it
necessary to advertise, and why in a philatelic newspaper--I mean----"

The red-faced man looked as if he was about to burst into tears.

"You think the _Amalgamated Assistant-Laundrywomen's Gazetteer and
Boomer_ would have been a more attractive medium?" he asked
lugubriously. Then he suddenly brightened, and went on before Donald
could collect himself sufficiently to say anything: "You are going to
dispute my implied suggestion that any medium can be attractive. I think
you're perfectly right. I hate all spiritualists myself." He guffawed
loudly and shouted: "Beer! Steward, porter, miss, two gallon mugs of
your perfectly beastly beer. What! no gallon mugs? God! What a country.
All right. Two pints." He turned again to Donald. "I can't think why any
of us live in this foul land. You can't get decent beer. You can't get
decent food. You can't buy soft roes on toast after 8.15 P.M. or hard
roes on biscuits between midday and 3.15. You can buy grated carrots
after 11 but not mashed carrots, or sliced carrots or pinched
carrots----"

"What is a pinched carrot?" asked Donald faintly.

"A carrot that has been pinched, of course," was the answer, in a tone
of dignified reproof. "You can buy orange marmalade at dog-fanciers'
shops, but not lemon marmalade. You can get synthetic Burgundy out of
penny-in-the-slot machines in all tunnels under the Thames, but not
synthetic Bordeaux. In short, England is a country of madmen, and only
madmen live in England."

There was a pause in the conversation while the man lowered his tankard
of beer down his throat, and ordered two more, and waved aside Donald's
proffered money.

"This is on me," he said. "It is the anniversary of Roland's death in
the Valley of Roncesvalles. The world came to an end on that day. It has
never really existed since. We must drink to my fellow-countryman who
saved Europe in the Pyrenees a thousand years ago, just as that other
fellow-countryman of mine saved Europe in the marshes of St. Gond on the
River Marne in 1914."

"Do you mean Sir John French?" asked Donald.

The red-faced man became apoplectic. He swelled like a frog and his eyes
appeared to become bloodshot. A queer, hoarse croaking issued from his
lips. At last he managed to say, "I mean Ferdinand Foch, Marshal of
France," and he stood to attention.

"I beg your pardon most profoundly," said Donald in great distress. "I
had no idea--I mean your English is so perfect--is it really possible
that you are a Frenchman?"

"My family name is Hougins," replied the man with superb dignity. "And
there were Hougins in the Channel Islands a good long time before Duke
Robert of Normandy cast his eyes upon the tanner's daughter."

"No wonder that you are proud of your descent," twittered Donald,
anxious to make up for his unfortunate error, "and of your
fellow-countrymen too."

"Yes," replied Monsieur Hougins, "when I consider how the French Army,
the French nation, alone, single-handed, met the whole power of Germany,
resisted it, drove it back, and finally destroyed it, I think I am
entitled to be a little proud."

"Single-handed?" said Donald, puzzled.

"Practically single-handed," replied Monsieur Hougins negligently.
"There were some English troops on our left wing, I remember, and a
Portuguese division somewhere in the centre, but I can't recall any
others. Were there some Belgians?" He wrinkled his brow.

Donald began to feel angry.

"What about the British Navy?" he demanded.

"Ah yes, ships, to be sure," said M. Hougins, as if he were talking
about toys to a child. "There were ships. They fought a battle too, so
far as I can recollect the facts."

Donald's warm retort was fortunately never uttered, as Mr. Hodge and a
bevy of talented youth came pouring at that moment through the
swing-doors of the bar. Half an hour later Donald found the opportunity
to ask Mr. Hodge about the singular Frenchman. Mr. Hodge laughed.

"Frenchman?" he said. "He's no more French than I am. That's only
Tommy's lunacy."

"But he said his family name was Hougins."

"So it is, in a sense. It's Huggins. Tommy Huggins, and he comes from
Bolton. His great-grandfather was Mayor of Bolton about a hundred years
ago."

"But he sneered at the British Army," protested Donald.

Mr. Hodge laughed again.

"That's a favourite pose of his," he said. "He went to the War as an
infantry Tommy and performed prodigies of valour."

Donald went home thoughtfully. The problem which Mr. Davies had set him
to answer was deeper and darker than he had ever imagined. Indeed, if
Mr. Huggins was a representative Englishman, the problem was utterly
insoluble. After some hours of concentrated thinking, Donald came to the
conclusion that he must dismiss the pseudo-Channel Islander, and
everybody like him, from his considerations. Mr. Huggins must be a
freak. If he isn't a freak, thought Donald, if all Englishmen are like
that, I shall go mad. So, greatly relieved, he wrote down Mr. Huggins as
a freak and made up his mind to see as little as possible of him in the
future. But if Donald had finished with Mr. Huggins, Mr. Huggins had by
no means finished with him.

       *       *       *       *       *

Donald was due at Godalming station at midday on Saturday, to be motored
thence to Ormerode Towers, and at a little after 10 o'clock that morning
he was standing in his room in Royal Avenue in a state of some
perplexity. It was the packing that was the trouble, for he did not know
what he was likely to need in addition to his evening clothes. While he
was still puzzling over each individual item of his scanty wardrobe, he
heard a loud shouting in the street, and, putting his head out of the
window, saw that the great-grandson of the Mayor of Bolton, and
descendant, perhaps, of a long line of Channel Islanders, was standing
below.

"Hell's eggs!" cried Mr. Huggins as he came up the stairs, "but this is
a flamingly lucky chance. I was roaring down the King's Road just now,
pushing buses aside and stamping great holes in the pavement, when I saw
a shop which advertised Corsican wine. Look!" he shouted, pushing his
way past Donald into the bed-sitting-room and producing a bottle of wine
from each side pocket of a disreputable overcoat, "Fleur de Maquis, by
the bones of the Ramolinos. What are you hanging about for? Jump to it,
lad, jump to it."

"Jump to what?" asked Donald. He found it difficult sometimes to follow
Mr. Huggins' conversational methods.

"Corkscrew, boy; corkscrew and glasses."

"But we can't drink at 10 o'clock in the morning," Donald protested
feebly.

Mr. Huggins stared at him in amazement.

"Got a touch of the sun," he observed in a meditative way. "Very rare
thing in London in early May. Must write to the _Lancet_ about that,"
and he pulled out a huge note-book and made an entry. Then he went back
to the door and roared down the stairs, "Hi! Mother Hubbard! Gloria
Swanson! Garbo! Bring two corkscrews and a glass. Or two glasses and a
corkscrew. Whichever you like."

Gwladys, all of a flutter at the powerful masculine voice, came
pattering upstairs with a tray, while the doors of the other
bed-sitting-rooms opened an inch or two, and nervous spinsters put out
their heads to see if anyone was offering murder, arson, or rape.

Mr. Huggins poured out two tumblers of Fleur de Maquis and drank one at
a single gulp and refilled it.

"By the sun of Austerlitz!" he cried, "but that is the stuff. Hallo!
What are you doing here?" and he gazed round at the confusion of
haberdashery. Donald explained his difficulty, and Mr. Huggins
immediately drank off his second tumbler and became portentously
serious.

"It's a very, very lucky thing for you," he said, "that you've got me
here to advise you. I am probably the most expert adviser on week-end
procedure between Staines and Burton-on-Trent; or, if you look at it
from another angle--which you are fully entitled to do if you want to--"
he added in a burst of generosity, "between the Vale of White Horse and
Walton-on-the-Naze. People tell you one thing and people tell you
another. But I'll tell you right. Now take Bill Hodge. He goes to
week-end parties in his football shirt and white flannel trousers and
pumps, and sends out the footman on Sunday morning to knock up the local
chemist for a razor. Not right, Cameron, not right."

Mr. Huggins shook his head lugubriously and refilled his tumbler, and
then uncorked the second bottle of Fleur de Maquis.

"Then there's Guy Mitcham--you know Guy? Ah! well, you haven't missed
much--he takes a pale-blue dinner-jacket and diamond studs for the
evening, and Jodhpurs for the daytime though he's never been on a horse
in his life. And Bobby Southcott, the boy novelist, takes a cold ham in
case he gets hungry between meals, and a book on birth control."

Mr. Huggins' queer sense of humour was beginning to lose command of
itself under the mellowing influence of the warm South, and he went on
in a kind of sing-song chant: "Verona Mimms, lady novelist, only takes a
cold ham. She's younger than Bobby, but she's more experienced.
Wilhelmina Poddleton, lady novelist, takes a lock of Freud's hair and a
sea-green velvet gown. Ernestine Bunn, lady novelist, takes Young
Woodleys and goes home sad on Mondays. Ravenna Rust, lady novelist--I
say, Cameron, what on earth are you talking about?" he exclaimed with
some warmth and slipped suddenly to the floor, where he remained as if
nothing had happened.

"I hope you don't mind my interrupting you," he went on, "but I am in
rather a hurry as I have an important engagement. I have to sit up
to-night with a sick friend."

"But don't you think--I mean, don't let me keep you--if your friend is
unwell." Donald was distressed at the thought that he might be trading
upon Mr. Huggins' good nature.

"Oh, he's all right now," responded that gentleman airily. "He won't be
sick until he knows that I'm going to sit up with him to-night. To
return. Pass me the Fleur. Thank you." He settled himself comfortably
against a table leg. "Cameron, be guided by me. The crux of the week-end
is the servant. Do you follow me?"

"N-no. Not quite."

"I should have thought I had made my explanation fool-proof," said Mr.
Huggins severely, "but apparently I haven't. Listen carefully. Get at
the rich man's servant before he gets at you. Treat 'em rough and
they're lovely. Treat 'em humble and they're hell. Attack, attack,
attack, as my famous fellow-countryman observed at the something or
other. You can fool all the lackeys all the time. That's what Foch told
Aime Semple McPherson at the Oddfellows Ball. Good-night, old chap.
Thank me another time," and Mr. Huggins fell asleep with his head upon
one of Donald's three clean dress-shirts.

"But you haven't told me what clothes to take," cried Donald in despair,
shaking him vigorously. Mr. Huggins woke up and struggled uncertainly to
his feet.

"I will now recite," he remarked a little thickly, "that soul-stirring,
tear-provoking epic, 'The Dog that took the Serum to Alaska.' Hullo!
what's all this? My dear chap! Why didn't you ask me before? Clothes!
that's the problem. And I'll give you the solution. Take all the clothes
you've got. The more the better. Take one suitcase; the butler sneers,
the footmen giggle, the under house-parlourmaids have hysterics. Take
fifty and they'll treat you like the Duke of Westminster."

"But I've only got two small suitcases," objected Donald plaintively. "I
brought all the rest of my things from Scotland in a trunk and a valise.
Besides, some of my things are so old that I couldn't possibly take
them."

Mr. Huggins was seized with demoniac energy. He drained off Donald's
glass. He routed out the two small suitcases. He rushed out of the house
and roared at a passing taxi so that the windows shook, and rushed back
in ten minutes with twelve second-hand suitcases that he had bought at a
shop in Sloane Square, and a bundle of enormous labels and a pot of red
paint, and started to pack all Donald's belongings into them. Donald's
protests were overridden tempestuously. For instance, when he pleaded
almost tearfully, "I can't take a pair of grey flannels with a hole in
the knee," the invincible Mr. Huggins whipped out a pair of scissors and
instantly converted the trousers into shorts, exclaiming as he did so,
"There you are! Shorts for otter-hunting. Put them in the otter-hunting
suitcase."

An old football outfit was packed with the description, "Beagling kit."
A battered bowler hat, two frayed dressing-gowns, a broken umbrella, odd
shoes, books, newspapers, bits of rope, ornaments dearly beloved by
Gwladys and her mother, photographs and pictures, were all crammed into
another suitcase and labelled by Mr. Huggins "Amateur Theatricals," and
one entire suitcase was filled with old newspapers and solemnly corded
up and sealed and labelled, in huge scarlet letters, "Despatches;
Secret." It was useless for Donald to protest, for Mr. Huggins paid no
attention to him whatsoever. Nor was it possible to escape from this
appalling accumulation of luggage by depositing it in the cloakroom at
the station, for Mr. Huggins insisted upon accompanying him to the
station himself, and caused poor Donald agonies of embarrassment and
confusion by engaging two porters to carry the Secret Despatches, in
addition to two others for the remaining packages, and by addressing
Donald deferentially but loudly, all the time as "Excellency." Nor were
Donald's apprehensions allayed by the last mysterious whispered words of
his self-appointed and unwanted ally as the train steamed out, "I'll fix
that bloody butler. Trust me."




CHAPTER VI


If there is one social custom which distinguishes the Anglo-Saxon from
the Latin, from the Slavonic, from the Basque, the Turanian, and the
Greek, it is the Saturday-to-Monday hospitality in the country. In
what are now usually called the spacious days before the War--indeed,
they appear to be becoming almost as spacious as those presided over
by Queen Elizabeth, which are well known to have been the widest on
record--the hospitality lasted from Friday until Tuesday. But that is
rare nowadays because everyone works on Saturday mornings except
stockbrokers, and even they lose on the roundabouts. For their
attendance upon mysterious things like kerbs, tickers, spot-markets,
and contangos is always required so soon after dawn upon Monday
mornings that they usually have to leave the week-end party on the
evening of the Sunday. So that in the long run the Stock Exchange
gains nothing even on the Foreign Office, even though the latter hums
like a lodge of beavers from 11 A.M. to 1 P.M. on Saturdays. For the
political world may blow up in a storm of cataclysmic convulsions
between 1 P.M. on Saturdays and 11 A.M. on Mondays and the Foreign
Office will take no official notice. Eleven o'clock is their hour for
opening--like the pubs in Knightsbridge--because in the pre-railway
days, also comparatively spacious in their own way, the couriers from
Dover, however hard they spurred their horses and however often they
changed their mounts, could never arrive in Whitehall with the Paris
mail before 10.30 in the morning. So the letters, which were sorted at
twenty to 11 and distributed to the departments at five minutes to,
were ready for perusal at 11 o'clock. And the routine which defeated
the ungentlemanly General Bonaparte was good enough to defeat anyone
else.

There are three main sources from which the student of sociology may
learn about the English week-end, and Donald had, of course, examined
them thoroughly. In the gospel according to the lesser lady novelists,
he learnt that the Saturday-to-Monday period was invariably devoted by
the entire house-party to profound and brilliant and soul-searing
self-analysis. It seemed, from these works, that the English
_fin-de-semaine_, when spent in sufficiently rural surroundings, was of
an inspissated gloom, a tenebriferous melancholy, that made Strindberg's
studies of demented lighthouse-keepers seem regular rollicks. Nothing
ever happened except a fearful lot of heavy thinking and, from time to
time, symbolical down-pours of rain which gave scope for some beautiful
English prose.

Donald had also learnt much about country-house life from the second
source, the books of astonishingly brilliant young men, mostly about
one-and-twenty years of age. These books, for some reason, were always
on the same model. They began with life at Eton, or Harrow, in the
proportion of about eighty of the former to twenty of the latter, and
the first part invariably contained two descriptions. There was always a
rather sardonic description of the Harrow match, or, in twenty per cent,
the Eton match, and always a description of a small boy being whipped by
a larger boy. It is only fair to say that the whippings were usually put
in at the urgent request of the publishers; for it is a well-known fact
that a really good piece of flogging in the early chapters of a novel
sells between four and five hundred extra copies.

After these two routine preliminaries, the scene automatically moves in
these books to the week-end party, and there the hero, his contempt for
cricket having been duly flaunted and his injured posterior healed,
finds himself in surroundings that are worthy of him and his brilliance.
Arriving at the Norman manor of Faulconhurst St. Honor at midday on
Saturday, he drinks absinthe cocktails and exchanges dazzling epigrams
until luncheon with others of his own age and brilliance, all about the
Hollowness of Life, the Folly of the Old, the Comicality of the War, the
Ideas of the Young, the Brilliance of the Young, the Novels of D. H.
Lawrence, the Intelligence of the Young, the Superiority of Modern
Photography over Velazquez, and the Futility of People of Forty. After
luncheon, which consists of quails and _foie gras_ and sparkling
Burgundy, with sherbet for the teetotallers, and pomegranates and
persimmons and a glass of Avocat, there are more epigrams until
cocktails again at 4.30, and finally the exhausted epigrammatists retire
to their virtuous couches at about 3 _A.M._, to rise again at noon on
Sunday for a breakfast of aspirin and absinthe, and another day of
brilliance. And finally, Donald had studied the third school of week-end
novelists, one of whose leaders was the Mr. Southcott to whom Mr.
Huggins had so disrespectfully referred. Mr. Southcott's idea of a
country-house week-end was very different from the school of Analysis,
or of Aspirin and Absinthe. According to Mr. Southcott, life from
Saturday to Monday in great country mansions was quite another affair.
There were no deep thinkers, wondering "what it all meant." Nor were
there young men and maidens--or indeed by the Monday morning any
maidens--who sat up in billiard-rooms and mah-jong-rooms and
smoking-rooms, wasting precious time in verbal felicities. All the young
ladies were slim, all were exquisitely gowned, and all had lovely long
legs "encased in the thinnest of silken stockings." All were seductive,
and all were, in due course, seduced. Never were there such goings-on,
in the immortal words of Mr. George Robey, as in these week-ends; never
were there such soft words, such blandishments, such delicate, and
always successful, wooings; never were there such white shoulders or
bright eyes, never such satiny chemises, such crumpled gardenias, such
bouncings-about upon tiger-skin divans.

Mr. Southcott's sales were enormous, and his school of admiring
imitators did pretty well too.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lady Ormerode was a remarkable figure in Society. A Canadian of humble
parentage (or rather it was humble until old Milton Carraway, an
ex-saloon-keeper, brought off a capital merger in light beers miles
away back in the nineties, and retired with a packet), Adelaide Carraway
had taken London Society not by storm, but by sapping her way from
bastion to bastion, from trench to trench, enfilading, undermining,
breaching, and always consolidating each barbican, ravelin, redan,
counterscarp and glacis before moving on to the next, conscious of her
own magnificent blonde beauty, and pinning her faith to her undauntable
tenacity and her seven million pounds. Thus between 1902, the year when
she opened her parallels, to continue the Vaubanesque metaphor, and the
time of Donald Cameron's timid arrival in London, Addy Carraway had
achieved a lot. For one thing she had married in 1903 Sir Ethelred
Ormerode, a gay young baronet from whose unflagging pursuit the Gaiety
Chorus had only turned away a contemptuous galaxy of noses because of
the extreme shortness of his purse. For another, she had redeemed the
mortgage on Ormerode Towers, a superb mansion in which not merely
Elizabeth, but Bloody Mary herself had once passed the night, and had
startled England with the quiet luxury of her entertainments in that
majestic pile. Then she had pushed Sir Ethelred into Parliament, into
the Athenaeum, into the local Ruri-Decanal Conference as parish
delegate, on to the Royal Commission on the Sterilization of the Insane,
on to the Commission of the Peace, and, during the War, into the
Chairmanship of a Recruiting Tribunal. For all of which activities Sir
Ethelred got an M.V.O. 3rd class, a C.H., and, after the War, an M.B.E.;
and, of course, a good whack at the seven million pounds. Lady Ormerode
had financed Grand Opera; she had "backed" high-brow plays; she had her
portrait painted every year by the newest R.A. She hunted, shot, fished;
she raced at Cowes and Newmarket; she subscribed to charities; and
during the War she equipped a hospital for officers and received a
D.B.E., a French medal, a Belgian medal, six Serbian, one Greek, and one
Roumanian medal, and a Silver Garland from one of the Central American
Republics, the Minister of which took refuge in the hospital, which was
situated near the Admiralty Arch, on the occasion of one of the Zeppelin
raids upon Sheerness.

After the War, the redoubtable Addy had conquered new fields. She
herself entered politics and won a seat in the House of Commons as a
Die-hard Conservative. But she soon found that there was more scope for
originality in championing, from time to time, the working classes, and
she startled many of those who had thought that they knew "dear old
Addy" inside out, by declaring publicly that she was against the
shooting of all those who had led the Coal Strike of 1926. But dear old
Addy lost no friends by this outspoken Bolshevism. Indeed it was not
until she went too far and said, at a garden fte to raise funds for a
local Conservative Association near Farnham, that she was also against
the policy of shooting Mr. Gandhi, that her right-wing friends felt that
they could no longer meet her upon the same old terms of friendly
intimacy.

But if Addy shed her Winstons in ones and twos, she picked up her
Epsteins and her Gauguins in scores by her unceasing and open-handed and
catholic patronage of the arts.

No one could deny that she was catholic. Lady Ormerode, M.P., was not
the one to entertain narrow prejudices. She gave a thousand guineas to a
fund to buy yet another Titian for a National Gallery that has already
plenty of Titians, and, in the same week, financed a one-man exhibition
of sculpture at the Leicester Galleries by a Kaffir from the Belgian
Mandated Territory of Ruanda-Urundi, in which the now-famous group of
three interlocked triangles of varnished ferro-concrete, representing
Wordsworth's Conception of Ideal Love, was seen for the first time in
London. The masterpiece of the exhibition was a vast cylinder of
Congolese basalt which was called, and rightly called, "The Spirit of
Bernhardt," and which was dedicated to the President of the French
Republic, and which, furthermore, was formally unveiled by the French
Ambassador in the presence of eleven London correspondents of provincial
papers, a man from the Press Association, the editor of the _Quarterly
Sculptor_, and the Liberian Charg d'Affaires. And no one could say that
it was Lady Ormerode's fault that this work of art was described in the
catalogue as "The Spirit of Bernhardi," thus causing dismay and
despondency upon the Latin bank of the Rhine and jubilation upon the
Teuton, where the name of General Bernhardi occupies an honourable place
among the experts whose prophecies, theories, and preachings about the
art of war have long been completely discredited.

Nor did the French, usually so gallant, come well out of the subsequent
controversy, for the only counter which they could find to the Teuton
argument that the spirits of Bernhardi, of Hindenburg, of the Vaterland
itself, are all like solid cylinders of basalt, was that Madame
Bernhardt, in her later years, was just as solid a cylinder as any dirty
little Prussian general.

In the same spirit of catholicity, Lady Ormerode in one year paid for
the entire regilding of the roof of the Albert Hall, for the mending of
all the broken windows in the Crystal and Alexandra Palaces, and offered
to stand the whole racket of "doing up," in her own good-hearted words,
"the Stones in that Henge of theirs that they're always talking about."

Such, then, was the Lady of Ormerode Towers who was to be Donald's
hostess for the week-end.

       *       *       *       *       *

A Rolls-Royce met the train at Godalming, and Donald felt like bursting
into tears as suitcase after suitcase emerged from the station. He was
too miserable to notice the subtle increase of deference with which each
piece of luggage was greeted by the chauffeur and footman. The
station-master himself attended with his own hands to the Secret
Despatches, murmuring discreetly in Donald's ear, "I was warned by
telephone, my lord, from our Head Office." He was charmed by Donald's
unassuming manner and his half-crown.

Just before it reached the front door of Ormerode Towers, the
Rolls-Royce loosed several melodious toots upon the summery air,
obviously a prearranged signal, and half a dozen flunkeys came tumbling
down the broad steps followed, with great majesty, by the butler. As
Donald disentangled himself from the huge fur rug with which the
chauffeur had insisted upon enveloping him, and scrambled out of the
mammoth automobile, the butler sidled up to him respectfully and
whispered in his ear, "The Secretary of the French Foreign Ministry rang
up, sir, and Budapest has also been on the line. Budapest is to
telephone again, sir."

Donald was completely staggered by this information until he reflected
that this must be Mr. Huggins' amiable method of "fixing that bloody
butler." He wondered, with a sinking heart, what other steps that
eccentric individual was likely to take in order to smooth his week-end
path, and he heartily cursed the entire family of Huggins, whether from
Bolton or from Sark, and the purple-bubbled wine of Corsica. But he
could not deny that so far Mr. Huggins had been successful in securing
vicarious deference from proud menials.

It was not long after midday when Donald arrived and the house-party was
walking in the grounds, except those who were upstairs writing letters.
The butler sent the fourteen suitcases upstairs, by the hands of the
wondering footmen, and indicated to Donald that he could hardly do
better than examine the illustrated papers in the gigantic
entrance-hall, and drink a bottle of iced lager. Donald timidly agreed
and sat down in a discreet corner and gazed round. Though it was the
first time he had actually been in one of these superb lounge-halls with
their sofas and divans and pouffes and cigarette-boxes and gramophones
and wireless sets and tantaluses and tennis racquets and golf clubs,
nevertheless he had had the opportunity of studying their appurtenances
from the stalls on nineteen out of the twenty-one occasions on which he
had visited the theatre during the war, and therefore was thoroughly
familiar with them. The only feature which was lacking at Ormerode
Towers, but which had not been lacking in the nineteen scenes, was the
long French windows without which no English dramatist dares to face his
audience.

The house-party returned just before 1 o'clock, and Lady Ormerode was
delighted to see him. She introduced him to the crowd of guests, who all
looked exactly like each other to Donald's confused glances, and then
took him aside for a moment. "The Duke of Devonshire has been on the
telephone," she whispered confidentially, and with a subtle bending from
her massive hips that conveyed even more deference than the butler's
more unreserved obeisance. "You are on no account to telephone him, but
you are to go to Chatsworth in time for luncheon on Monday, and to say
nothing to anyone." She laid a beringed finger on her lips and nodded
wisely, as if to convey that she too knew what was what, and all that
sort of thing.

       *       *       *       *       *

By tea-time a good deal of Donald's shyness had worn off, and he had
been able to disentangle the identities of his fellow-guests from one
another. For his particular purpose--the first-hand study of the English
people--no set of guests could have been more suitably chosen. Lady
Ormerode's catholicity of taste extended to her week-end parties, and
her friends had practically nothing in common with each other except
their genuine affection for their hostess.

As that Saturday afternoon was extremely wet, Donald had a heaven-sent
opportunity for collecting material of the utmost value for his book.
And, for a time at least, it would be quite true to say that Mr.
Huggins' diabolical activities on the telephone were of definite
assistance to him. For instance, after lunch, an elderly man whose face
with its heavy brown moustache seemed familiar, and who was wearing a
grey morning coat that was more beautifully built than any coat Donald
had ever seen or imagined, with a superb orchid in one buttonhole and a
foreign decoration in the other, slipped an arm through his with a
bluff, jovial "You're the boy I want to see," and led him off to a
distant drawing-room down many corridors, talking heartily as he went
about greyhound-racing. But as soon as he had got Donald into the
distant drawing-room his jolly manner changed into a confidential
knowingness.

"Boy," he said, "you know me. Everyone knows me. That's my ticket. Now,
can you tell me anything?"

He looked at Donald as a kindly uncle might look who was taking a small
nephew round the Zoo--an uncle who obviously knows everything that there
is to know. Donald, who had lunched well and who did not know that Lady
Ormerode's whisky was of pre-war strength, found that he was able to
reply to this mysterious opening, "Surely there's nothing I can tell you
about anything."

"Ah!" replied the man thoughtfully, "so that's how it stands, does it?
Nothing has moved since Tuesday?"

This rather shook Donald.

"What do you mean by nothing?" he asked. The man tapped his waistcoat
with a roguish air, as of one man of the world to another.

"That's it," he said. "That's what I keep on telling 'em, the blasted
monkeys. But they won't see it. Can you beat it?"

"Er--no," Donald replied hesitatingly but truthfully. It was an
intriguing conversation, but somewhat cryptic; and although he longed to
know who the monkeys were and why they were blasted and by whom, he
longed even more to escape. But the beautifully dressed man pushed a
thick forefinger into his buttonhole, and, lowering his voice,
whispered, "Will it go?"

"Go? Go where?"

"I see," replied the other, which was a great deal more than Donald did,
and again, "I see"; and then, "Well, I never really thought it would,"
and then, to Donald's intense relief, he burst into joviality again,
clapped Donald heartily on the back with the words, "I won't deny I'm
sick about it, but there, are we down-hearted? That's my ticket," and
went out of the room quickly.

Donald, completely bewildered, made his way back to the central hall
where a lot of bridge was in progress. In one corner the mysterious man
with the orchid was talking in eager whispers to a younger man with a
beautifully silky moustache and an Old Etonian tie.

It was when Donald discovered, later on in the evening, that his
_tte--tte_ in the distant drawing-room had been with one of the most
famous of England's Labour leaders, that he realized for the first time
what a unique chance of studying England Lady Ormerode's invitation was
giving him. For the Right Honourable Robert Bloomer, M.P., was not only
a former President of the Trades Union Congress and for thirty-five
years Secretary of the Amalgamated Union of West-end Journeymen Tailors,
Hem-stitchers, and Cutters, but he was also an ex-Secretary of State.
Donald hastily got out his note-book and jotted down his
impressions of this famous man, but he was bound to admit that he still
did not know what on earth the famous man had been talking about.

He had hardly finished his notes when a young lady of remarkable beauty
and elegance came swinging into the hall and came straight across to the
sofa, on the edge of which he was perched, and coiled herself down
beside him. If Bob Bloomer's homely face was known to thousands, the
loveliness of Esmeralda d'Avenant was an inspiration to millions.
Theatre-goers adored her at Daly's, the Winter Garden, Drury Lane.
Film-fans worshipped her from Pole to Pole. She had the most dazzling
smile and the best publicity man in the English-speaking world, and her
legs, which, though excellently shaped, were not more noticeably
alluring than the legs of many a humble shop-girl or typist, were always
insured for ten per cent more than Mistinguett's. Again Donald thanked
his stars that he had been invited to Ormerode Towers, for Esmeralda
d'Avenant was as typical of a branch of English art as Bob Bloomer of a
branch of English labour. And here she was, this exquisite lady,
snuggling down between a lot of black satin cushions beside him,
actually beside him, on a sofa. Donald was thrilled. Shy and modest
though he was, he felt a warm glow steal over him at the flattering
thought that this miracle of beauty had selected him, Donald Cameron,
out of all that brilliant house-party to honour with her fragrant
presence and her radiant smile.

He even began to wonder, so subtle, so irresistible is the flattery of a
beautiful woman to every man who ever lived except that superlative
boob, St. Anthony, which was the particular quality that he possessed
that had first attracted the attention of this dragonfly. He wondered
what he had said or done. He soon found out. Nothing. It was that
infernal Mr. Huggins who had been saying and doing. For as soon as
Esmeralda had snuggled herself into a graceful attitude, had shaken her
long Spanish earrings clear of her short English hair, had drawn up her
quite-well-shaped and million-pound legs into a position that complied
with the rules of decorum and yet at the same time wrecked the peace of
mind and concentration of an Anglo-Indian Major-General across the hall
who was desperately trying to create three no-trumps where God had only
created two, she looked up at him and said murmurously, "You are Donald,
aren't you? I've got a message for you. Ivor Novello has just telephoned
from Hollywood to say that he quite agrees with you, but you're to say
nothing now."

"Is that all he said?" exclaimed Donald, mixing up realities and Mr.
Huggins for a moment.

"You were expecting more?" purred the siren admiringly. She adored film
magnates.

"Oh well, perhaps not," he conceded, and he relapsed into a state of
complete vacuity.

Esmeralda thought she had never seen a film magnate assume so cleverly
an expression of innocence. Most of the ones she had had anything to do
with were far from innocent. They had, indeed, prided themselves upon
their cunning. "You can't get past me" had been the slogan of Mr.
Sonnenschein. "You get up early, but I'm up all night" was emblazoned in
letters of gold on the ancestral scutcheon of the Brothers Zinzembaumer,
while the senior partner in the firm of Snigglefritz, Snigglefritz,
Maclehose & Snigglefritz, specialists in high-art films about Joachim du
Bellay, Ronsard, Villon, and Pico della Mirandola, used as his favourite
expression, "Hot Ziggety Dam! I'm sure the hot dog." This assumption of
nervous _navet_ by one who received telephone calls from Ivor Novello
in Hollywood as if they were calls from ordinary people, baffled and
piqued and allured Esmeralda. She shot a dark glance from under her
lashes at Donald. He paid no attention. She raised her head a little
upon its alabaster column and opened her great eyes upon him for a
moment. He neither wilted nor blushed. Esmeralda was not accustomed to
this sort of thing. She called up her reserves, regardless of the bitter
glances of the Major-General's wife--for the Major-General had twice led
out of the wrong hand, had revoked once, and had gone down 650 points
above the line whereas he ought to have made two no-trumps without the
slightest difficulty, and the Major-General's wife, who had not lived in
Indian hill stations for nothing, knew exactly why all this had
happened--Esmeralda called up her reserves, gave an unconscious hitch to
her skirt, and exhibited another seventy-five thousand pounds' worth of
leg, and leant forward seductively, turning her full battery of dark
eyes upon the doomed youth. No one had ever made the faintest show of
resistance against her on the rare occasions on which she had brought
that particular attitude into action. She had tried it on old
Sonnenschein and he had raised her salary twenty thousand dollars a
month on the spot and asked her to be his mistress. As soon as he had
signed the contract for the former she had naturally, being a decent
English girl--the daughter of a parson, too, called Jukes, who had a
cure of souls near Daventry--refused the latter. She had also tried it
upon the old Duke of Dorchester, at his house in Grosvenor Square, and
the old Duchess of Dorchester, who had been watching through a moth-hole
in a thirteenth-century tapestry, had been carried, screaming, to a
private nursing-home behind Cavendish Street. Esmeralda once told an
intimate friend of hers--Cristal Arlington of Daly's, the Winter Garden,
and Drury Lane--that if she had only had a chance to try it on the Crown
Prince of Germany there would not have been a war. It was, in effect,
her _chef-d'oeuvre_, and it brought into action simultaneously her
dark liquid eyes, her legs, her slender hands, her graceful arms, her
Spanish earrings, and a suggestion of a white and soft bosom. "Poor
young man," she thought, as she blew the metaphorical whistle and the
metaphorical troops went over the top, for Esmeralda was a kind-hearted
soul and hated using unnecessary violence, "Poor young man."

But to her astonishment the object of her attack and her commiseration
paid no attention to her dark liquid eyes, her slender hands, and
graceful arms; he did not look at her legs (the Major-General, gallant
as ever, had upset the card-table and was making no pretence at picking
up the cards); he did not throw so much as a glance at the suggestion of
white and soft bosom. Instead, he looked straight in front of him, rose
to his feet and exclaimed, "Blast that bloody Huggins!" and walked out
of the lounge into the rain.

Esmeralda was thrilled. Never had she met such an unusual film magnate.
Never had she met such an iron man, such devastating sex appeal. "If he
had been the Crown Prince of Germany," she said to herself as she
watched Donald marching out, "there would have been a war," and she
could have paid him no higher compliment.

       *       *       *       *       *

Donald hid in his room for the rest of the afternoon, and his
self-confidence was only restored by the extraordinary respect shown him
by the footman who had been detailed to look after him. At 6.30 that
functionary knocked at his door and came in with a very large
cocktail-shaker and a glass upon a tray, and coughed once or twice
unobtrusively.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he said timidly, when Donald looked up,
equally timidly, from his book, "but I've brought you a cocktail, sir,
if it won't interfere with your training, sir."

"My what?" said Donald, his brain beginning to reel.

"Your training, sir," repeated the flunkey, looking like a priest who
has suddenly been ushered into the presence of his Deity. "They rang up,
sir," he added, and then broke off under the stress of Donald's fearful
scowl.

"Who rang up?" Donald asked in a voice that was as near a bark as he had
ever got in the course of his mild and gentle life.

"The Chelsea Football Club, sir," replied the lackey, and then, the Man
triumphing over the Livery, he went on with a rush, "Oh! Mr. Wilson,
sir, I'm proud to be looking after you, sir," and then he lowered his
voice to a reverent whisper and concluded, "The finest centre-forward in
the world!" and backed out of the room.

       *       *       *       *       *

The company sat down seventeen to dinner, one chair being vacant. There
was Lady Ormerode at one end of the table and Sir Ethelred, looking like
a rather subdued and worried Regency buck, a Corinthian who has
accidentally swallowed a bodkin, at the other. The guests were,
beginning on Sir Ethelred's left, and going round with the port:

Miss Perugia Gaukrodger, the lady novelist of Mr. Davies' dinner-party.
Miss Gaukrodger's novels were mostly about suppressed desires, and were
written in a style that made even the simplest of actions seem perfect
monstrosities of abnormality. Her sales were much larger in Paris, where
the police are notoriously lax in their moral outlook, than in London,
but her fame in both capitals was immense. Sir Ethelred hated her
because he knew she had been placed on his left in order to prevent him
getting Esmeralda.

Next was Porson W. M. Jebb, a young man whose father had cherished the
ambition of seeing his son become one of the great classical scholars of
the age. Filled with a love of the classics himself, and inspired by the
happy coincidence that had given him the same surname as one of the
immortals of scholarship, Mr. Jebb, senior, had christened his son
Porson after another of the immortals. It was some consolation, as Mr.
Jebb, senior, often used to say with a sigh, that even if Porson did
fail at the Winchester entrance examination, even if he was
superannuated from Eton after four successive failures in "Trials," even
if he was ploughed six times in Smalls, nevertheless no one could deny
that he was the finest amateur batsman in the world, and that his
hundred and sixty-one before lunch in the Sheffield Test Match against
Australia was a masterpiece of classic batsmanship. "Only I had hoped
for a different sort of classics," he used to add mournfully. As for
Porson, much of his time and energy was spent in concealing from the
world that the initials W. M. in his name stood, lamentably, for
Wilamowitz Mllendorf, so intense an admiration had the misguided Mr.
Jebb, senior, for the mighty Prussian scholar; although, had Mr. Jebb,
junior, only known it, it was only by the narrowest squeak that he did
not get Hermann and Schliemann as well. His only topic of conversation
was cricket.

Next to Mr. Porson Jebb was a niece of the host, Patience Ormerode. She
was about twenty years of age, and had ivory-coloured cheeks, orange
lips, thin, blackened eyebrows, close-cut hair, pale pink ears, and
purple finger-nails. She smoked all through dinner what are sometimes
even now called Russian cigarettes because they are rolled in brown
paper and stamped with the two-headed eagle of Tsardom. She was wearing
a black frock which terminated in a sheaf of wispy, petal-shaped
flounces, and was in no way disconcerted when, half-way through dinner,
she deduced from a gleam of pale pink above her stocking that she had
forgotten to put on any knickers. She had no topic of conversation and
only one adjective at a time. At the moment the adjective was "grisly."

Beyond her was the man with the silky moustache. His name was Captain de
Wilton-ffallow and he was Conservative member for a South of England
constituency. Just before dinner he had taken Donald aside and said,
"Bloomer told me your news." "What news?" muttered Donald, looking
wildly round for a means of escape. Captain de Wilton-ffallow had nodded
approvingly and said, "You can keep your mouth shut. Good man." The
gallant captain--his military rank was one of those which had
mysteriously survived into the days of peace; some have survived, others
have not, and no one knows the reason--obviously regarded discretion as
a cardinal virtue, for he hardly said a word all through dinner, greatly
to the disappointment of the enchanting Esmeralda, who sat on his other
side and vastly admired his silky moustache. In fact she found the
dinner rather dull, for her left-hand neighbour was the Major-General,
and he, poor veteran, was ill at ease. He was also a Conservative Member
of Parliament, and he had soldiered on veld and kopje, on Himalayan
hill-sides, on Chinese rivers, on burning plains and deserts, and had
even, once or twice, visited front-line trenches, or at any rate got as
far as battalion headquarters. He knew how to deal with Boers and
Pathans and Waziris and Afridis and Chinks and Bolshies and hecklers,
and, in fact, with every sort of nigger and dago. And, for he had not
neglected the recreational side of a warrior's life, he knew how to
flirt with a pretty girl. But he did not know how to flirt with a pretty
girl under the eyes of Mrs. Major-General who was sitting opposite. For
Mrs. Major-General knew a thing or two about her warrior's character and
she did not trust him an inch. So the Major-General fidgeted, and
Esmeralda yawned, and laid plans for vamping Donald into giving her the
lead in his new film, and longed to put Patience Ormerode across her
knee and give her a quick six with the back of a hair-brush.

On the other side of the hero of Spion Kop, the Khyber, and the
Yang-tse-Kiang was a very rich and very plain woman of about
thirty-five, whose three specialities were motor-racing, lovers, and
giggling. She screamed with shrill laughter at the extremely dubious
conversation of the Right Hon. Bob Bloomer, thus causing at least one
oasis of sound in the silent desert on that side of the table. Lady
Ormerode had the ex-Secretary of State on her right, and on her left,
on the strength of the invitation to Chatsworth, Donald.

Next to Donald was the portly wife of the warrior. She drank whisky and
soda and, with a vigilant eye upon her spouse, told Donald a good many
times that no one could really understand the Indian problem unless they
had actually lived there, and that the only solution of the difficulty,
now that the initial blunder of not hanging Mr. Montagu and Lord
Chelmsford years ago had been irrevocably committed, was to let the
natives try another Mutiny and then show them what was what. "A few
soldiers like my Horace," she said quite a number of times, "ought to be
given a free hand. That is what they want," and she looked across at her
Horace in a way that implied that if ever he tried the free-hand
business he would get such a fearful clip across the ear. "Blast them
from the guns," she said, glaring at the superb Esmeralda, and then she
went on to describe station life at Landi-Kotal, Quetta, Peshawur,
Secunderabad, Amritsar, and Amballa.

Beyond her was a very handsome Polish count who did not speak English,
and he had been placed beside a beautiful Russian princess who also did
not speak English (greatly to Esmeralda's relief, for the Russian really
was lovely) so that they could talk to each other. Unfortunately, the
Russian lady's grandfather had, shortly after the regrettable incidents
of 1863, caused the Polish count's grandfather to walk all the way to
Siberia, an exercise in pedestrianism which the latter had bitterly
resented; and furthermore, the Polish count knew, and the Russian
princess knew that he knew, that she was not a princess at all but only
a baroness, and had attained the higher rank by the quaint old custom of
self-promotion that has always been common among aristocrats in exile.
The result was that, although they could have conversed with equal
fluency in Polish, Russian, German, or French, they preferred not to
recognize each other's existence, and the Major-General told Bob Bloomer
that Slavs were always very reserved people.

Next to the princess was an empty chair and beyond that again an
American lady called Mrs. Poop, whose husband was the senior partner in
the well-known stockbroking firm of O. K. Poop and Artaxerxes
Tintinfass, Inc. Patience Ormerode's brother, Charles, sat next to her.
He was at Trinity College, Cambridge, and he had no topic of
conversation and only one adjective at a time. At present it was
"grisly."

And finally, on Sir Ethelred's right was a Miss Prudence Pott, a Labour
M.P.; a woman of painstaking industry, of sterling worth, and of extreme
dullness. Sir Ethelred hated her, for he knew that she had only been
placed on his right in order to prevent him getting Esmeralda.

These were the people who sat down to dinner at Ormerode Towers that
Saturday evening, and Donald reflected that all over England similar
parties were sitting down to similar meals in the Week-End Cottages, the
Houses, the Mansions, the Manors, Granges, Towers, Courts, Halls, and
Abbeys of England.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lady Ormerode was very worried about the empty chair. She kept on
saying plaintively, "It's just like Rupert. Now I ask you, isn't it just
like Rupert?" but as no one knew which Rupert it was out of all the
Ruperts that it might have been, no one was able to answer the question
for her.

It was not until the woodcock and the _Nuits St. Georges_ were being
simultaneously served that the missing Rupert arrived. He was not in the
least disconcerted at being late; not in the least disconcerted by the
glittering scene of cut crystal, diamonds, white waistcoats, and
feminine loveliness; not in the least disconcerted by the fact that he
was wearing old army field-boots, riding-breeches, and a corduroy
jacket. But then, as Donald reflected, that was not at all surprising,
for the missing Rupert was none other than his friend of the Fleet
Street pubs--Mr. Harcourt, the poet. Furthermore, Mr. Harcourt the poet
had been, even to the most charitable eye, drinking. His eye was
glittering and roving; his face wore a healthy flush; his manner was
assured; and there was a devilish look of mischief about his whole
jaunty demeanour. Donald, who was only just beginning to recover from
the impact of Mr. Huggins, felt a little dizzy. The Major-General glared
at the new-comer's costume and muttered something about the Willingdon
Club in Bombay.

Lady Ormerode was delighted, Sir Ethelred cold; Miss Perugia Gaukrodger
smiled effusively, for Mr. Harcourt did a good deal of influential
reviewing; Captain de Wilton-ffallow gazed disapprovingly and shut his
lips tightly, and was extremely put out when Mr. Harcourt saw him and
called out genially, "Hallo, ffallow, how's the coffee swindle?" and
Bob Bloomer, tactless as ever, shouted, "Why, de Wilt, are you in the
coffee ramp?" and Captain de Wilton-ffallow, who actually was concerned
in the prospective coffee merger but did not know that anyone knew it,
blushed furiously.

The Polish count and the Russian princess looked at the corduroy coat
and simultaneously said "Mon Dieu!" and then scowled at each other. Miss
Patience Ormerode lit a brown-paper cigarette and murmured "Grisly!" As
it turned out, it was rather an unfortunate remark, for Mr. Harcourt
with an ineffably sweet smile replied, "If I'm grisly, you're bare, so
we're well matched," and then turned to talk to his hostess. The Right
Honourable Bob Bloomer laughed till he choked, and Esmeralda thought
that Mr. Harcourt was rather sweet.

Mr. Harcourt drank a glass of burgundy and looked round the table. There
was a lull in a conversation that had never been very brisk. "What a
damned dull party," he observed blandly. "How are the lovers, Esmeralda?
Going strong?"

The Major-General coughed ferociously and muttered something about the
Byculla Club in Bombay. Again it was an unfortunate remark, for Mr.
Harcourt's quicksilver wits grasped the implication. He leant back and
addressed the Right Honourable Mr. Bloomer:

"Well, Bloomer, I hear we're going to clear out of India at last."

Mr. Bloomer was surprised. He hadn't heard about it.

"Oh yes, it's quite true," went on Mr. Harcourt, "though of course it
hasn't been officially announced yet. The Indian Civil is going to be
abolished and no Englishman is to hold higher rank in the Army than
colour-sergeant. And the word Sahib is to be forbidden," he added,
seeing that the Major-General's eyes were already bulging out of their
sockets.

"Dear me!" said Esmeralda, with a yawn. Patience Ormerode started to
give it as her considered opinion that it was all very grisly, but
remembered in time and stopped.

Sir Ethelred said that the trouble about the English was that they were
too modest. After all, they were admittedly the finest governors in the
world, so why didn't they just go on governing? The Major-General
exclaimed "Hear, hear!" very loudly at this and Mr. Bloomer added that
the English were too reserved. Captain de Wilton-ffallow stated that in
his view if a white man was going to be a white man, he meant, he had to
be reserved, and Esmeralda said she thought reserve was all right for
women, and Mrs. Major-General said that it was the sporting spirit that
made the Englishman beloved wherever he went, and cited as an instance
the worship accorded by the Waziris to Bongleton Sahib after he had
killed a hundred and eleven of the most beautiful ibexes you ever saw in
a single week's _shikari_ near Landi-Kotal.

"I don't know about shooting," said Porson Jebb, "but our Test Match
sides are Britain's best ambassadors." It was his favourite, indeed
almost his only, remark.

"The Portuguese are good governors, and so are the Egyptians too," said
Mr. Harcourt, peering pointedly into his empty glass as he spoke, and
sighing deeply.

This was more than the Major-General could stand. He banged the table
with his fist and exclaimed, "The Portuguese are damned bad governors!
And as for the Egyptians----"

"Just as you like," interrupted Mr. Harcourt pleasantly.

After the ladies had left the table, Esmeralda with ill-concealed
reluctance, the talk turned to politics. Donald listened attentively and
wished that he could openly produce his note-book. For he knew that it
was at just such week-end parties as this, and at just this precise
moment when cigars and port and old brandy are going round, that the
affairs of England are very largely settled. And here were four Members
of Parliament, three Conservative, and a Coalition Socialist, pushing
their chairs back, lighting their cigars, and sipping their brandies.

But the absence of the note-book did not matter very much, for, after
all, nothing of importance was settled. The conversation ran on simple
and unimpressive lines.

"Well, Bob," began Sir Ethelred, "and when are we going to get a really
decent tariff instead of this footling ten per cent?"

"As soon as we've drowned all those poisonous Liberals," replied Mr.
Bloomer. "It won't be so long now."

"Poisonous crew of traitors," said the Major-General, "I wish I'd had
them in my company in the old days at Abbotabad!"

"Do you think that this Free Trade stuff is lunacy or criminal?"
enquired Captain de Wilton-ffallow.

"Definitely criminal," replied his senior officer. "They're all in the
pay of Moscow."

"I wouldn't go so far as that," said Sir Ethelred, who was a kindly man.
"I don't think they actually accept money."

"Then what on earth is the explanation of it?" asked the Captain.

"Oh, I think it's just a form of insanity," explained Sir Ethelred
amiably. "You've got to be unhinged to argue that we gain anything by
getting cheap wheat from Russia. A man who sees any sort of good in
imports must be mad."

"I hope you're right," said the Major-General gloomily. "I'd sooner have
to deal with loonies than with traitors. But all the same, a man whose
judgment I rely on, a sound man, mind you, told me that he knows for a
fact that every Liberal candidate at the last election was sent a
thousand roubles in gold to help with his expenses."

"Whew!" the Captain whistled.

"The trouble with Russia is that there's no cricket there," said Mr.
Jebb.

"Grisly," said young Mr. Ormerode, yawning.

"Furthermore," said the Major-General, "I myself heard a Liberal say the
other day that he would sooner see the people of this country pay a
shilling a pound for Russian cocoa than three shillings a pound for
Sierra Leone cocoa."

"Whew!" the Captain whistled again.

"Why Sierra Leone?" enquired young Mr. Ormerode, yawning.

"Because Sierra Leone is in the Empire, sir," cried the Major-General
indignantly, "and if that isn't either downright, stark, staring
insanity or slow, cold-blooded treachery, I don't know what is!"

"I agree," said Sir Ethelred; "I agree profoundly that Liberals are
insane, but it will need more than that to persuade me that they are
treacherous as well."

"I'm a Liberal," said Mr. Harcourt, suddenly waking up out of a trance,
and there was an awkward pause, filled up by Mr. Jebb, who observed:

"They play quite a good game on the Gold Coast. Matting wickets, of
course."

"I am in favour," said Mr. Harcourt, with painful clarity of diction and
a pleasing smile, "of selling the Gold Coast to the United States as
part payment of the War Debt, and the Slave Coast and the Pepper Coast
and the Salt Coast and the Mustard Coast," his voice went off into a
sort of croon, "and the Nutmeg Coast and the Cinnamon Coast and the
Vinegar Coast and the Oil Coast, and Northern Nigeria and Southern
Nigeria and old Uncle Sierra Leone and all." His voice had fallen to a
murmur; his chin drooped upon his corduroy chest and his head nodded.
Then with a last effort he raised his head and, in a silvery-clear
voice, wound up his statement of Imperial policy with the words, "And I
would use the British Fleet to coerce Japan into accepting Australia--"
and, adding as a final afterthought, "with all the Australians," he lay
back and fell instantly asleep.

"Let us join the ladies," exclaimed Sir Ethelred hastily. The cigars
were only a quarter smoked, the brandy had only been round once, but at
all costs bloodshed had to be averted.

       *       *       *       *       *

The ladies, who had, as usual upon these occasions, resigned themselves
with the traditional submissiveness of their sex to a period of
dullness, were startled by the unexpected termination of their dreary
vigil, and at the same time alarmed by the appalling look of savagery
upon the bloodshot face of the Major-General. It was easy to understand
at that moment why the North-West Frontier had enjoyed a period of
tranquillity during the years of his command at Peshawur.

It was not a very serene evening. Patience Ormerode, having learnt from
the butler of Donald's gigantic film interests, backed him into a corner
and described in staccato sentences, often containing words of as many
as three syllables, her extraordinary acting in the part of Monna Vanna
at her school festival near Cheltenham, puffing bogus Russian smoke into
his face all the time and shooting devastating glances at him from her
kohl-fringed eyes. Esmeralda, furiously angry, and longing more than
ever for a hair-brush and the chance to catch the little swine in a
suitable posture, had to fall back upon Porson Jebb, who immediately
began to describe, stroke by stroke, his famous innings at the Adelaide
Oval against South Australia during the last M.C.C. tour. Esmeralda,
bored to the verge of insanity, gazed across at the handsome Polish
count and sighed and wished that she had paid more attention to her
French governess, or even to her German governess, in the dear old days
in the Vicarage near Daventry when she had been simple little Jane
Jukes.

Sir Ethelred, the Major-General, de Wilton-ffallow, and Mrs. O. K. Poop
played bridge under the eye of Mrs. Major-General. The Russian princess
offered, in very broken English, to give a lesson in French or German to
Mr. Bloomer--an invitation which was accepted with vast alacrity--and
the pair retired to the billiard-room. Young Ormerode looked at the
_Play Pictorial_ and yawned. Miss Pott, M.P., put on a pair of
horn-rimmed glasses and settled down with Lady Ormerode to discuss the
proposed amendments to the first two clauses of the Government's Housing
Bill, while Miss Perugia Gaukrodger described, with a wealth of painful
detail, the plot of her forthcoming novel to Mr. Harcourt. It was a
moving tale, 877 pages, all about the remorse of a young man for having
admitted to himself, while standing beside a soda-fountain in a tea-shop
in Chancery Lane, that if his maternal grandmother, who had died
twenty-eight years before, had been as beautiful as Helen of Troy and as
seductive as Cleopatra, he would probably have fallen in love with her
and married her. But--moving, painful, harrowingly true to life though
it undoubtedly was--it left Mr. Harcourt cold, for he slept peacefully
through it all, from page one to page eight hundred and seventy-seven,
including even the four chapters, afterwards so famous as the symbolical
key to the whole book, in which the hero watches a cockroach climb up
an egg-stained wall in a Bloomsbury bed-sitting-room.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Harcourt woke up with mysterious suddenness at twenty-seven minutes
past 10, and, by a curious coincidence, it was at that very instant that
the butler came in with two footmen laden with trays of whisky, brandy,
syphons, glasses, and biscuits. Mr. Harcourt stifled a yawn, mixed a
little soda into a glass of whisky, blinked heavily, and stared with an
air of extreme puzzlement round the room.

"Good God!" he observed with dismay, "I've forgotten where I am."

"You're in Ormerode Towers," snapped Miss Perugia Gaukrodger, who was
beginning to suspect that the famous reviewer had missed one or two of
her best bits of description.

"Yes, I know that, my good woman," replied Mr. Harcourt. "What I mean
is, I've forgotten what sort of a party it is. Are we up-to-date
moderns, mixing gin and beer and wallowing in T. S. Eliot? Or are we
straight-living chaps who sing the Eton Boating Song a good deal? Or are
we all just simple boys and girls together, darting in and out of each
other's bedrooms from time to time? Strike me pink if I know what to
make of it!"

"You're at an ordinary English week-end party, sir," thundered the
Major-General.

"Come, come, General," said Mr. Harcourt severely, "we want none of your
barrack-room licentiousness here. I shall have to sleep on the mat
outside Esmeralda's door if this sort of thing is to be allowed."

"What the devil do you mean?" shouted the exasperated soldier.

"I don't know what sort of chivalry they teach at Sandhurst or Coalville
Secondary School or Borstal or Woolwich," replied Mr. Harcourt, with
immense dignity, "but to an old Giggleswickian a woman is sacred."

"Whatever for?" enquired Esmeralda.

"I've forgotten now," said Mr. Harcourt, "but they used to tell us."

"I never see the point," said Captain de Wilton-ffallow, the rubber now
over, "of sneering at the public-school system. It has its drawbacks,
like everything else, but its advantages are so overwhelming that people
who attack it are merely stamping themselves as fools."

"The public school," agreed Sir Ethelred, "is the breeding-ground of
great men."

"Not necessarily the public school," amended the Major-General, who had,
like many another successful soldier before him, gone straight from the
preparatory school to the crammer and from the crammer, after one or two
shots, into Sandhurst. "Not necessarily the public school, but the
public school type."

"Hear, hear!" said Mr. Porson Jebb approvingly.

"Damned good show, the public school," said young Mr. Ormerode. "Those
privately educated oicks are a pretty grisly set of oicks. Grocers' sons
and oicks and what not."

"My father was a grocer," said Mr. Harcourt.

Young Mr. Ormerode tried to stammer an apology, while the Major-General
muttered, perfectly audibly, "I'm not surprised to hear it." Lady
Ormerode hastened to cover up this gaucherie by saying, "But, Rupert, I
thought all your family were soldiers?"

"Only the ones who weren't clever enough to be taken into the grocery
business," replied Mr. Harcourt sweetly.

"In America," said Mrs. O. K. Poop languidly, "everyone is clever enough
to get into the grocery business."

"That's why you've got no army," said the poet.

"The United States Army won the War," replied Mrs. Poop, showing faint
traces of animation for the first time that evening.

"Madam!" exclaimed the Major-General, bristling up, but Mr. Harcourt
interrupted deftly:

"Mrs. Boob means the Civil War of 1861."

"I do not, and my name is Poop," replied the American lady with sudden
vivacity.

"The United States Army----" began the Major-General with impressive
slowness.

"Is the best in the world," said Mrs. Poop, leaning back on the sofa,
"and the United States Navy is the best in the world."

"And the trees in California," said Mr. Harcourt, "are the tallest in
the world."

"That is so," said Mrs. Poop.

"And the climate is the best in the world."

"That is so," said Mrs. Poop.

"And the public lavatories are the biggest in the world."

At this point Esmeralda sighed one of the biggest sighs on record and
yawned one of the biggest yawns, and said she was going to bed.

"I wish," said Mr. Harcourt plaintively, "that someone would tell me if
this is the sort of week-end party where I offer to come with you."

"Really, Rupert!" exclaimed Lady Ormerode, scandalized, "I won't allow
you to say such things."

"No, but will Esmeralda? That's the point."

The lady in question smiled and kicked up an elegant heel and waved an
elegant hand and said, "Good night, everyone," and went out.

One by one the house-party went to bed. The lights were extinguished by
a tired-looking footman. The fires were raked out, the shutters bolted,
the windows locked. Another Saturday was finished. Another typical
week-end had been successfully launched at Ormerode Towers.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sunday was just the same as the Saturday had been, and Donald went back
to Royal Avenue on Monday morning with a note-book full of notes. Mr.
Harcourt travelled up with him in the same carriage, and, before the
train had reached London, he had made great havoc with a pint flask of
neat whisky.




CHAPTER VII


"Dont forget Saturday morning Charing Cross Underground Station," ran
the telegram which arrived at Royal Avenue during the week, "at ten
fifteen sharp whatever you do dont be late Hodge."

Saturday morning was bright and sunny, and at ten minutes past 10 Donald
arrived at the Embankment entrance of Charing Cross Underground Station,
carrying a small suitcase full of clothes suitable for outdoor sports
and pastimes. He was glad that he had arrived too early, for it would
have been a dreadful thing for a stranger and a foreigner to have kept
such a distinguished man, and his presumably distinguished colleagues,
even for an instant from their national game. Laying his bag down on the
pavement and putting one foot upon it carefully--for Donald had heard
stories of the surpassing dexterity of metropolitan thieves--he waited
eagerly for the hands of a neighbouring clock to mark the quarter-past.
At twenty minutes to 11 an effeminate-looking young man, carrying a
cricketing bag and wearing a pale-blue silk jumper up to his ears,
sauntered up, remarked casually, "You playing?" and, on receiving an
answer in the affirmative, dumped his bag at Donald's feet and said,
"Keep an eye on that like a good fellow. I'm going to get a shave," and
sauntered off round the corner.

At five minutes to 11 there was a respectable muster, six of the team
having assembled. But at five minutes past, a disintegrating element was
introduced by the arrival of Mr. Harcourt with the news, which he
announced with the air of a shipwrecked mariner who has, after
twenty-five years of vigilance, seen a sail, that in the neighbourhood
of Charing Cross the pubs opened at 11 A.M. So that when Mr. Hodge
himself turned up at twenty-five minutes past 11, resplendent in
flannels, a red-and-white football shirt with a lace-up collar, and a
blazer of purple-and-yellow stripes, each stripe being at least two
inches across, and surmounted by a purple-and-yellow cap that made him
somehow reminiscent of one of the Michelin twins, if not both, he was
justly indignant at the slackness of his team.

"They've no sense of time," he told Donald repeatedly. "We're late as it
is. The match is due to begin at half-past 11, and it's fifty miles from
here. I should have been here myself two hours ago but I had my Sunday
article to do. It really is too bad."

When the team, now numbering nine men, had been extricated from the
tavern and had been marshalled on the pavement, counted, recounted, and
the missing pair identified, it was pointed out by the casual youth who
had returned, shining and pomaded from the barber, that the char--banc
had not yet arrived.

Mr. Hodge's indignation became positively alarming and he covered the
twenty yards to the public telephone box almost as quickly as Mr.
Harcourt covered the forty yards back to the door of the pub. Donald
remained on the pavement to guard the heap of suitcases, cricket-bags,
and stray equipment--one player had arrived with a pair of flannels
rolled in a tight ball under his arm and a left-hand batting glove,
while another had contributed a cardboard box which he had bought at
Hamley's on the way down, and which contained six composite
cricket-balls, boys' size, and a pair of bails. It was just as well that
Donald did remain on guard, partly because no one else seemed to care
whether the luggage was stolen or not, partly because Mr. Hodge emerged
in a perfect frenzy a minute or two later from the telephone box to
borrow two pennies to put in the slot, and partly because by the time
the telephone call was at last in full swing and Mr. Hodge's command
over the byways of British invective was enjoying complete freedom of
action, the char--banc rolled up beside the kerb.

At 12.30 it was decided not to wait for the missing pair, and the nine
cricketers started off. At 2.30, after halts at Catford, the White Hart
at Sevenoaks, the Angel at Tunbridge Wells, and three smaller inns at
tiny villages, the char--banc drew up triumphantly beside the cricket
ground of the Kentish village of Fordenden.

Donald was enchanted at his first sight of rural England. And rural
England is the real England, unspoilt by factories and financiers and
tourists and hustle. He sprang out of the char--banc, in which he had
been tightly wedged between a very stout publisher who had laughed all
the way down and had quivered at each laugh like the needle of a
seismograph during one of Japan's larger earthquakes, and a youngish and
extremely learned professor of ballistics, and gazed eagerly round. The
sight was worth an eager gaze or two. It was a hot summer's afternoon.
There was no wind, and the smoke from the red-roofed cottages curled
slowly up into the golden haze. The clock on the flint tower of the
church struck the half-hour, and the vibrations spread slowly across the
shimmering hedgerows, spangled with white blossom of the convolvulus,
and lost themselves tremulously among the orchards. Bees lazily drifted.
White butterflies flapped their aimless way among the gardens.
Delphiniums, larkspur, tiger-lilies, evening-primrose, monk's-hood,
sweet-peas, swaggered brilliantly above the box hedges, the wooden
palings, and the rickety gates. The cricket field itself was a mass of
daisies and buttercups and dandelions, tall grasses and purple vetches
and thistle-down, and great clumps of dark-red sorrel, except, of
course, for the oblong patch in the centre--mown, rolled, watered--a
smooth, shining emerald of grass, the Pride of Fordenden, the Wicket.

The entire scene was perfect to the last detail. It was as if Mr.
Cochran had, with his spectacular genius, brought Ye Olde Englyshe
Village straight down by special train from the London Pavilion,
complete with synthetic cobwebs (from the Wigan factory), hand-made
smocks for ye gaffers (called in the cabaret scenes and the North-West
Mounted Police scenes, the Gentlemen of the Singing Ensemble), and
aluminium Eezi-Milk stools for the dairymaids (or Ladies of the Dancing
Ensemble). For there stood the Vicar, beaming absent-mindedly at
everyone. There was the forge, with the blacksmith, his hammer
discarded, tightening his snake-buckled belt for the fray and loosening
his braces to enable his terrific bowling-arm to swing freely in its
socket. There on a long bench outside the Three Horseshoes sat a row of
elderly men, facing a row of pint tankards, and wearing either long
beards or clean-shaven chins and long whiskers. Near them, holding pint
tankards in their hands, was another group of men, clustered together
and talking with intense animation. Donald thought that one or two of
them seemed familiar, but it was not until he turned back to the
char--banc to ask if he could help with the luggage that he realized
that they were Mr. Hodge and his team already sampling the proprietor's
wares. (A notice above the door of the inn stated that the proprietor's
name was A. Bason and that he was licensed to sell wines, spirits,
beers, and tobacco.)

All round the cricket field small parties of villagers were patiently
waiting for the great match to begin--a match against gentlemen from
London is an event in a village--and some of them looked as if they had
been waiting for a good long time. But they were not impatient. Village
folk are very seldom impatient. Those whose lives are occupied in
combating the eccentricities of God regard as very small beer the
eccentricities of Man.

Blue-and-green dragonflies played at hide-and-seek among the
thistle-down and a pair of swans flew overhead. An ancient man leaned
upon a scythe, his sharpening-stone sticking out of a pocket in his
velveteen waistcoat. A magpie flapped lazily across the meadows. The
parson shook hands with the squire. Doves cooed. The haze flickered. The
world stood still.

       *       *       *       *       *

At twenty minutes to 3, Mr. Hodge had completed his rather tricky
negotiations with the Fordenden captain, and had arranged that two
substitutes should be lent by Fordenden in order that the visitors
should field eleven men, and that nine men on each side should bat. But
just as the two men on the Fordenden side, who had been detailed for the
unpleasant duty of fielding for both sides and batting for neither, had
gone off home in high dudgeon, a motor-car arrived containing not only
Mr. Hodge's two defaulters but a third gentleman in flannels as well,
who swore stoutly that he had been invited by Mr. Hodge to play and
affirmed that he was jolly well going to play. Whoever stood down, it
wasn't going to be him. Negotiations therefore had to be reopened, the
pair of local Achilles had to be recalled, and at ten minutes to 3 the
match began upon a twelve-a-side basis.

Mr. Hodge, having won the toss by a system of his own founded upon the
differential calculus and the Copernican theory, sent in his opening
pair to bat. One was James Livingstone, a very sound club cricketer, and
the other one was called, simply, Boone. Boone was a huge, awe-inspiring
colossus of a man, weighing at least eighteen stone and wearing all the
majestic trappings of a Cambridge Blue. Donald felt that it was hardly
fair to loose such cracks upon a humble English village until he
fortunately remembered that he, of all people, a foreigner, admitted by
courtesy to the National Game, ought not to set himself up to be a judge
of what is, and what is not, cricket.

The Fordenden team ranged themselves at the bidding of their captain,
the Fordenden baker, in various spots of vantage amid the daisies,
buttercups, dandelions, vetches, thistle-down, and clumps of dark-red
sorrel; and the blacksmith having taken in, just for luck as it were,
yet another reef in his snake-buckle belt, prepared to open the attack.
It so happened that, at the end at which he was to bowl, the ground
behind the wicket was level for a few yards and then sloped away rather
abruptly, so that it was only during the last three or four intensive,
galvanic yards of his run that the blacksmith, who took a long run, was
visible to the batsman or indeed to anyone on the field of play except
the man stationed in the deep field behind him. This man saw nothing of
the game except the blacksmith walking back dourly and the blacksmith
running up ferociously, and occasionally a ball driven smartly over the
brow of the hill in his direction.

The sound club player having taken guard, having twiddled his bat round
several times in a nonchalant manner, and having stared arrogantly at
each fieldsman in turn, was somewhat surprised to find that, although
the field was ready, no bowler was visible. His doubts, however, were
resolved a second or two later, when the blacksmith came up, breasting
the slope superbly like a mettlesome combination of Vulcan and Venus
Anadyomene. The first ball which he delivered was a high full-pitch to
leg, of appalling velocity. It must have lighted upon a bare patch among
the long grass near long-leg, for it rocketed, first bounce, into the
hedge and four byes were reluctantly signalled by the village umpire.
The row of gaffers on the rustic bench shook their heads, agreed that it
was many years since four byes had been signalled on that ground, and
called for more pints of old-and-mild. The other members of Mr. Hodge's
team blanched visibly and called for more pints of bitter. The youngish
professor of ballistics, who was in next, muttered something about
muzzle velocities and started to do a sum on the back of an envelope.

The second ball went full-pitch into the wicket-keeper's stomach and
there was a delay while the deputy wicket-keeper was invested with the
pads and gloves of office. The third ball, making a noise like a
partridge, would have hummed past Mr. Livingstone's left ear had he not
dexterously struck it out of the ground for six, and the fourth took his
leg bail with a bullet-like full-pitch. Ten runs for one wicket, last
man six. The professor got the fifth ball on the left ear and went back
to the Three Horseshoes, while Mr. Harcourt had the singular misfortune
to hit his wicket before the sixth ball was even delivered. Ten runs for
two wickets and one man retired hurt. A slow left-hand bowler was on at
the other end, the local rate-collector, a man whose whole life was one
of infinite patience and guile. Off his first ball the massive Cambridge
Blue was easily stumped, having executed a movement that aroused the
professional admiration of the Ancient who was leaning upon his scythe.
Donald was puzzled that so famous a player should play so execrable a
stroke until it transpired, later on, that a wrong impression had been
created and that the portentous Boone had gained his Blue at Cambridge
for rowing and not for cricket. Ten runs for three wickets and one man
hurt.

The next player was a singular young man. He was small and quiet, and he
wore perfectly creased white flannels, white silk socks, a pale-pink
silk shirt, and a white cap. On the way down in the char--banc he had
taken little part in the conversation and even less in the
beer-drinking. There was a retiring modesty about him that made him
conspicuous in that cricket eleven, and there was a gentleness, an
almost finicky gentleness about his movements which hardly seemed virile
and athletic. He looked as if a fast ball would knock the bat out of his
hands. Donald asked someone what his name was, and was astonished to
learn that he was the famous novelist, Robert Southcott himself.

Just as this celebrity, holding his bat as delicately as if it was a
flute or a fan, was picking his way through the daisies and thistle-down
towards the wicket, Mr. Hodge rushed anxiously, tankard in hand, from
the Three Horseshoes and bellowed in a most unpoetical voice: "Play
carefully, Bobby. Keep your end up. Runs don't matter."

"Very well, Bill," replied Mr. Southcott sedately. Donald was
interested by this little exchange. It was the Team Spirit at work--the
captain instructing his man to play a type of game that was demanded by
the state of the team's fortunes, and the individual loyally suppressing
his instincts to play a different type of game.

Mr. Southcott took guard modestly, glanced furtively round the field as
if it was an impertinence to suggest that he would survive long enough
to make a study of the fieldsmen's positions worth while, and hit the
rate-collector's first ball over the Three Horseshoes into a hay-field.
The ball was retrieved by a mob of screaming urchins, handed back to the
rate-collector, who scratched his head and then bowled his fast yorker,
which Mr. Southcott hit into the saloon bar of the Shoes, giving Mr.
Harcourt such a fright that he required several pints before he fully
recovered his nerve. The next ball was very slow and crafty, endowed as
it was with every iota of finger-spin and brain-power which a
long-service rate-collector could muster. In addition, it was delivered
at the extreme end of the crease so as to secure a background of dark
laurels instead of a dazzling white screen, and it swung a little in the
air; a few moments later the urchins, by this time delirious with
ecstasy, were fishing it out of the squire's trout stream with a bamboo
pole and an old bucket.

The rate-collector was bewildered. He had never known such a travesty of
the game. It was not cricket. It was slogging; it was wild, unscientific
bashing; and furthermore, his reputation was in grave danger. The
instalments would be harder than ever to collect, and Heaven knew they
were hard enough to collect as it was, what with bad times and all. His
three famous deliveries had been treated with contempt--the leg-break,
the fast yorker, and the slow, swinging off-break out of the laurel
bushes. What on earth was he to try now? Another six and he would be
laughed out of the parish. Fortunately the village umpire came out of a
trance of consternation to the rescue. Thirty-eight years of umpiring
for the Fordenden Cricket Club had taught him a thing or two and he
called "Over" firmly and marched off to square-leg. The rate-collector
was glad to give way to a Free Forester, who had been specially imported
for this match. He was only a moderate bowler, but it was felt that it
was worth while giving him a trial, if only for the sake of the scarf
round his waist and his cap. At the other end the fast bowler pounded
away grimly until an unfortunate accident occurred. Mr. Southcott had
been treating with apologetic contempt those of his deliveries which
came within reach, and the blacksmith's temper had been rising for some
time. An urchin had shouted, "Take him orf!" and the other urchins, for
whom Mr. Southcott was by now a firmly established deity, had screamed
with delight. The captain had held one or two ominous consultations with
the wicket-keeper and other advisers, and the blacksmith knew that his
dismissal was at hand unless he produced a supreme effort.

It was the last ball of the over. He halted at the wicket before going
back for his run, glared at Mr. Harcourt, who had been driven out to
umpire by his colleagues--greatly to the regret of Mr. Bason, the
landlord of the Shoes--glared at Mr. Southcott, took another reef in his
belt, shook out another inch in his braces, spat on his hand, swung his
arm three or four times in a meditative sort of way, grasped the ball
tightly in his colossal palm, and then turned smartly about and marched
off like a Pomeranian grenadier and vanished over the brow of the hill.
Mr. Southcott, during these proceedings, leant elegantly upon his bat
and admired the view. At last, after a long stillness, the ground shook,
the grasses waved violently, small birds arose with shrill clamours, a
loud puffing sound alarmed the butterflies, and the blacksmith, looking
more like Venus Anadyomene than ever, came thundering over the crest.
The world held its breath. Among the spectators conversation was
suddenly hushed. Even the urchins, understanding somehow that they were
assisting at a crisis in affairs, were silent for a moment as the mighty
figure swept up to the crease. It was the charge of Von Bredow's
Dragoons at Gravelotte over again.

But alas for human ambitions! Mr. Harcourt, swaying slightly from leg to
leg, had understood the menacing glare of the bowler, had marked the
preparation for a titanic effort, and--for he was not a poet for
nothing--knew exactly what was going on. And Mr. Harcourt sober had a
very pleasant sense of humour, but Mr. Harcourt rather drunk was a
perfect demon of impishness. Sober, he occasionally resisted a
temptation to try to be funny. Rather drunk, never. As the giant
whirlwind of vulcanic energy rushed past him to the crease, Mr.
Harcourt, quivering with excitement and internal laughter, and wobbling
uncertainly upon his pins, took a deep breath and bellowed, "No ball!"

It was too late for the unfortunate bowler to stop himself. The ball
flew out of his hand like a bullet and hit third-slip, who was not
looking, full pitch on the knee-cap. With a yell of agony third-slip
began hopping about like a stork until he tripped over a tussock of
grass and fell on his face in a bed of nettles, from which he sprang up
again with another drum-splitting yell. The blacksmith himself was flung
forward by his own irresistible momentum, startled out of his wits by
Mr. Harcourt's bellow in his ear, and thrown off his balance by his
desperate effort to prevent himself from delivering the ball, and the
result was that his gigantic feet got mixed up among each other and he
fell heavily in the centre of the wicket, knocking up a cloud of dust
and dandelion-seed and twisting his ankle. Rooks by hundreds arose in
protest from the vicarage cedars. The urchins howled like intoxicated
banshees. The gaffers gaped. Mr. Southcott gazed modestly at the ground.
Mr. Harcourt gazed at the heavens. Mr. Harcourt did not think the world
had ever been, or could ever be again, quite such a capital place, even
though he had laughed internally so much that he had got hiccups.

Mr. Hodge, emerging at that moment from the Three Horseshoes, surveyed
the scene and then the scoreboard with an imperial air. Then he roared
in the same rustic voice as before:

"You needn't play safe any more, Bob. Play your own game."

"Thank you, Bill," replied Mr. Southcott as sedately as ever, and, on
the resumption of the game, he fell into a kind of cricketing trance,
defending his wicket skilfully from straight balls, ignoring crooked
ones, and scoring one more run in a quarter of an hour before he
inadvertently allowed, for the first time during his innings, a ball to
strike his person.

"Out!" shrieked the venerable umpire before anyone had time to appeal.

The score at this point was sixty-nine for six, last man fifty-two.

The only other incident in the innings was provided by an American
journalist, by name Shakespeare Pollock--an intensely active, alert,
on-the-spot young man. Mr. Pollock had been roped in at the last moment
to make up the eleven, and Mr. Hodge and Mr. Harcourt had spent quite a
lot of time on the way down trying to teach him the fundamental
principles of the game. Donald had listened attentively and had been
surprised that they made no reference to the Team Spirit. He decided in
the end that the reason must have been simply that everyone knows all
about it already, and that it is therefore taken for granted.

Mr. Pollock stepped up to the wicket in the lively manner of his native
mustang, refused to take guard, on the ground that he wouldn't know what
to do with it when he had got it, and, striking the first ball he
received towards square leg, threw down his bat, and himself set off at
a great rate in the direction of cover-point. There was a paralysed
silence. The rustics on the bench rubbed their eyes. On the field no one
moved. Mr. Pollock stopped suddenly, looked round, and broke into a
genial laugh.

"Darn me----" he began, and then he pulled himself up and went on in
refined English, "Well, well! I thought I was playing baseball." He
smiled disarmingly round.

"Baseball is a kind of rounders, isn't it, sir?" said cover-point
sympathetically.

Donald thought he had never seen an expression change so suddenly as Mr.
Pollock's did at this harmless, and true, statement. A look of
concentrated, ferocious venom obliterated the disarming smile.
Cover-point, simple soul, noticed nothing, however, and Mr. Pollock
walked back to the wicket in silence and was out next ball.

The next two batsmen, Major Hawker, the team's fast bowler, and Mr.
Hodge himself, did not score, and the innings closed at sixty-nine,
Donald not-out nought. Opinion on the gaffers' bench, which corresponded
in years and connoisseurship very closely with the Pavilion at Lord's,
was sharply divided on the question whether sixty-nine was, or was not,
a winning score.

After a suitable interval for refreshment, Mr. Hodge led his men, except
Mr. Harcourt who was missing, out into the field and placed them at
suitable positions in the hay.

The batsmen came in. The redoubtable Major Hawker, the fast bowler,
thrust out his chin and prepared to bowl. In a quarter of an hour he had
terrified seven batsmen, clean bowled six of them, and broken a stump.
Eleven runs, six wickets, last man two.

After the fall of the sixth wicket there was a slight delay. The new
batsman, the local rate-collector, had arrived at the crease and was
ready. But nothing happened. Suddenly the large publisher, who was
acting as wicket-keeper, called out, "Hi! Where's Hawker?"

The words galvanized Mr. Hodge into portentous activity.

"Quick!" he shouted. "Hurry, run, for God's sake! Bob, George, Percy, to
the Shoes!" and he set off at a sort of gallop towards the inn, followed
at intervals by the rest of the side except the pretty youth in the blue
jumper, who lay down; the wicket-keeper, who did not move; and Mr.
Shakespeare Pollock, who had shot off the mark and was well ahead of the
field.

But they were all too late, even Mr. Pollock. The gallant Major,
admitted by Mr. Bason through the back door, had already lowered a quart
and a half of mild-and-bitter, and his subsequent bowling was perfectly
innocuous, consisting, as it did, mainly of slow, gentle full-pitches to
leg which the village baker and even, occasionally, the rate-collector
hit hard and high into the long grass. The score mounted steadily.

Disaster followed disaster. Mr. Pollock, presented with an easy chance
of a run-out, instead of lobbing the ball back to the wicket-keeper, had
another reversion to his college days and flung it with appalling
velocity at the unfortunate rate-collector and hit him in the small of
the back, shouting triumphantly as he did so, "Rah, rah, rah!" Mr.
Livingstone, good club player, missed two easy catches off successive
balls. Mr. Hodge allowed another easy catch to fall at his feet without
attempting to catch it, and explained afterwards that he had been all
the time admiring a particularly fine specimen of oak in the squire's
garden. He seemed to think that this was a complete justification of his
failure to attempt, let alone bring off, the catch. A black spot
happened to cross the eye of the ancient umpire just as the baker put
all his feet and legs and pads in front of a perfectly straight ball,
and, as he plaintively remarked over and over again, he had to give the
batsman the benefit of the doubt, hadn't he? It wasn't as if it was his
fault that a black spot had crossed his eye just at that moment. And the
stout publisher seemed to be suffering from the delusion that the way to
make a catch at the wicket was to raise both hands high in the air,
utter a piercing yell, and trust to an immense pair of pads to secure
the ball. Repeated experiments proved that he was wrong.

The baker lashed away vigorously and the rate-collector dabbed the ball
hither and thither until the score--having once been eleven runs for six
wickets--was marked up on the board at fifty runs for six wickets.
Things were desperate. Twenty to win and five wickets--assuming that the
blacksmith's ankle and third-slip's knee-cap would stand the strain--to
fall. If the lines on Mr. Hodge's face were deep, the lines on the faces
of his team when he put himself on to bowl were like plasticine models
of the Colorado Canyon. Mr. Southcott, without any orders from his
captain, discarded his silk sweater from the Rue de la Paix, and went
away into the deep field, about a hundred and twenty yards from the
wicket. His beautifully brushed head was hardly visible above the
daisies. The professor of ballistics sighed deeply. Major Hawker grinned
a colossal grin, right across his jolly red face, and edged off in the
direction of the Shoes. Livingstone, loyal to his captain, crouched
alertly. Mr. Shakespeare Pollock rushed about enthusiastically. The
remainder of the team drooped.

But the remainder of the team was wrong. For a wicket, a crucial wicket,
was secured off Mr. Hodge's very first ball. It happened like this. Mr.
Hodge was a poet, and therefore a theorist, and an idealist. If he was
to win a victory at anything, he preferred to win by brains and not by
muscle. He would far sooner have his best leg-spinner miss the wicket by
an eighth of an inch than dismiss a batsman with a fast, clumsy
full-toss. Every ball that he bowled had brain behind it, if not
exactness of pitch. And it so happened that he had recently watched a
county cricket match between Lancashire, a county that he detested in
theory, and Worcestershire, a county that he adored in fact. On the one
side were factories and the late Mr. Jimmy White; on the other, English
apples and Mr. Stanley Baldwin. And at this particular match, a
Worcestershire bowler, by name Root, a deliciously agricultural name,
had outed the tough nuts of the County Palatine by placing all his
fieldsmen on the leg-side and bowling what are technically known as
"in-swingers."

Mr. Hodge, at heart an agrarian, for all his book-learning and his
cadences, was determined to do the same. The first part of the
performance was easy. He placed all his men upon the leg-side. The
second part--the bowling of the "in-swingers"--was more complicated,
and Mr. Hodge's first ball was a slow long-hop on the off-side. The
rate-collector, metaphorically rubbing his eyes, felt that this was too
good to be true, and he struck the ball sharply into the untenanted
off-side and ambled down the wicket with as near an approach to gaiety
as a man can achieve who is cut off by the very nature of his profession
from the companionship and goodwill of his fellows. He had hardly gone a
yard or two when he was paralysed by a hideous yell from the long grass
into which the ball had vanished, and still more by the sight of Mr.
Harcourt, who, aroused from a deep slumber amid a comfortable couch of
grasses and daisies, sprang to his feet and, pulling himself together
with miraculous rapidity after a lightning if somewhat bleary glance
round the field, seized the ball and unerringly threw down the wicket.
Fifty for seven, last man twenty-two. Twenty to win: four wickets to
fall.

Mr. Hodge's next ball was his top-spinner, and it would have, or might
have, come very quickly off the ground had it ever hit the ground; as it
was, one of the short-legs caught it dexterously and threw it back while
the umpire signalled a wide. Mr. Hodge then tried some more of Mr.
Root's stuff and was promptly hit for two sixes and a single. This
brought the redoubtable baker to the batting end. Six runs to win and
four wickets to fall.

Mr. Hodge's fifth ball was not a good one, due mainly to the fact that
it slipped out of his hand before he was ready, and it went up and came
down in a slow, lazy parabola, about seven feet wide of the wicket on
the leg-side. The baker had plenty of time to make up his mind. He could
either leave it alone and let it count one run as a wide; or he could
spring upon it like a panther and, with a terrific six, finish the match
sensationally. He could play the part either of a Quintus Fabius Maximus
Cunctator, or of a sort of Tarzan. The baker concealed beneath a modest
and floury exterior a mounting ambition. Here was his chance to show the
village. He chose the sort of Tarzan, sprang like a panther, whirled his
bat cyclonically, and missed the ball by about a foot and a half. The
wicket-keeping publisher had also had time in which to think and to
move, and he also had covered the seven feet. True, his movements were
less like the spring of a panther than the sideways waddle of an
aldermanic penguin. But nevertheless he got there, and when the ball had
passed the flashing blade of the baker, he launched a mighty kick at
it--stooping to grab it was out of the question--and by an amazing fluke
kicked it on to the wicket. Even the ancient umpire had to give the
baker out, for the baker was still lying flat on his face outside the
crease.

"I was bowling for that," observed Mr. Hodge modestly, strolling up the
pitch.

"I had plenty of time to use my hands," remarked the wicket-keeper to
the world at large, "but I preferred to kick it."

Donald was impressed by the extraordinary subtlety of the game.

Six to win and three wickets to fall.

The next batsman was a schoolboy of about sixteen, an ingenuous youth
with pink cheeks and a nervous smile, who quickly fell a victim to Mr.
Harcourt, now wideawake and beaming upon everyone. For Mr. Harcourt,
poet that he was, understood exactly what the poor, pink child was
feeling, and he knew that if he played the ancient dodge and pretended
to lose the ball in the long grass, it was a hundred to one that the lad
would lose his head. The batsman at the other end played the fourth ball
of Mr. Livingstone's next over hard in the direction of Mr. Harcourt.
Mr. Harcourt rushed towards the spot where it had vanished in the
jungle. He groped wildly for it, shouting as he did so, "Come and help.
It's lost." The pink child scuttered nimbly down the pitch. Six runs to
win and two wickets to fall. Mr. Harcourt smiled demoniacally.

The crisis was now desperate. The fieldsmen drew nearer and nearer to
the batsmen, excepting the youth in the blue jumper. Livingstone
balanced himself on his toes. Mr. Shakespeare Pollock hopped about
almost on top of the batsmen, and breathed excitedly and audibly. Even
the imperturbable Mr. Southcott discarded the piece of grass which he
had been chewing so steadily. Mr. Hodge took himself off and put on the
Major, who had by now somewhat lived down the quart and a half.

The batsmen crouched down upon their bats and defended stubbornly. A
snick through the slips brought a single. A ball which eluded the
publisher's gigantic pads brought a bye. A desperate sweep at a straight
half-volley sent the ball off the edge of the bat over third-man's head
and in normal circumstances would have certainly scored one, and
possibly two. But Mr. Harcourt was on guard at third-man, and the
batsmen, by nature cautious men, one being old and the sexton, the other
the postman and therefore a Government official, were taking no risks.
Then came another single off a mis-hit, and then an interminable period
in which no wicket fell and no run was scored. It was broken at last
disastrously, for the postman struck the ball sharply at Mr. Pollock,
and Mr. Pollock picked it up and, in an ecstasy of zeal, flung it madly
at the wicket. Two overthrows resulted.

The scores were level and there were two wickets to fall. Silence fell.
The gaffers, victims simultaneously of excitement and senility, could
hardly raise their pint pots--for it was past 6 o'clock, and the front
door of the Three Horseshoes was now as wide open officially as the back
door had been unofficially all afternoon.

The Major, his red face redder than ever and his chin sticking out
almost as far as the Napoleonic Mr. Ogilvy's, bowled a fast half-volley
on the leg-stump. The sexton, a man of iron muscle from much digging,
hit it fair and square in the middle of the bat, and it flashed like a
thunderbolt, waist-high, straight at the youth in the blue jumper. With
a shrill scream the youth sprang backwards out of its way and fell over
on his back. Immediately behind him, so close were the fieldsmen
clustered, stood the mighty Boone. There was no chance of escape for
him. Even if he had possessed the figure and the agility to perform
back-somersaults, he would have lacked the time. He had been unsighted
by the youth in the jumper. The thunderbolt struck him in the midriff
like a red-hot cannon-ball upon a Spanish galleon, and with the sound
of a drumstick upon an insufficiently stretched drum. With a fearful
oath, Boone clapped his hands to his outraged stomach and found that the
ball was in the way. He looked at it for a moment in astonishment and
then threw it down angrily and started to massage the injured spot while
the field rang with applause at the brilliance of the catch.

Donald walked up and shyly added his congratulations. Boone scowled at
him.

"I didn't want to catch the bloody thing," he said sourly, massaging
away like mad.

"But it may save the side," ventured Donald.

"Blast the bloody side," said Boone.

Donald went back to his place.

The scores were level and there was one wicket to fall. The last man in
was the blacksmith, leaning heavily upon the shoulder of the baker, who
was going to run for him, and limping as if in great pain. He took guard
and looked round savagely. He was clearly still in a great rage.

The first ball he received he lashed at wildly and hit straight up in
the air to an enormous height. It went up and up and up, until it became
difficult to focus it properly against the deep, cloudless blue of the
sky, and it carried with it the hopes and fears of an English village.
Up and up it went and then at the top it seemed to hang motionless in
the air, poised like a hawk, fighting, as it were, a heroic but forlorn
battle against the chief invention of Sir Isaac Newton, and then it
began its slow descent.

In the meanwhile things were happening below, on the terrestrial
sphere. Indeed, the situation was rapidly becoming what the French call
_mouvement_. In the first place, the blacksmith forgot his sprained
ankle and set out at a capital rate for the other end, roaring in a
great voice as he went, "Come on, Joe!" The baker, who was running on
behalf of the invalid, also set out, and he also roared "Come on, Joe!"
and side by side, like a pair of high-stepping hackneys, the pair
cantered along. From the other end Joe set out on his mission, and he
roared "Come on, Bill!" So all three came on. And everything would have
been all right, so far as the running was concerned, had it not been for
the fact that Joe, very naturally, ran with his head thrown back and his
eyes goggling at the hawk-like cricket-ball. And this in itself would
not have mattered if it had not been for the fact that the blacksmith
and the baker, also very naturally, ran with their heads turned not only
upwards but also backwards as well, so that they too gazed at the ball,
with an alarming sort of squint and a truly terrific kink in their
necks. Half-way down the pitch the three met with a magnificent clang,
reminiscent of early, happy days in the tournament-ring at
Ashby-de-la-Zouche, and the hopes of the village fell with the
resounding fall of their three champions.

But what of the fielding side? Things were not so well with them. If
there was doubt and confusion among the warriors of Fordenden, there was
also uncertainty and disorganization among the ranks of the invaders.
Their main trouble was the excessive concentration of their forces in
the neighbourhood of the wicket. Napoleon laid it down that it was
impossible to have too many men upon a battlefield, and he used to do
everything in his power to call up every available man for a battle. Mr.
Hodge, after a swift glance at the ascending ball and a swift glance at
the disposition of his troops, disagreed profoundly with the Emperor's
dictum. He had too many men, far too many. And all except the youth in
the blue silk jumper, and the mighty Boone, were moving towards
strategical positions underneath the ball, and not one of them appeared
to be aware that any of the others existed. Boone had not moved because
he was more or less in the right place, but then Boone was not likely to
bring off the catch, especially after the episode of the last ball.
Major Hawker, shouting "Mine, mine!" in a magnificently self-confident
voice, was coming up from the bowler's end like a battle-cruiser. Mr.
Harcourt had obviously lost sight of the ball altogether, if indeed he
had ever seen it, for he was running round and round Boone and giggling
foolishly. Livingstone and Southcott, the two cracks, were approaching
competently. Either of them would catch it easily. Mr. Hodge had only to
choose between them and, coming to a swift decision, he yelled above the
din; "Yours, Livingstone!" Southcott, disciplined cricketer, stopped
dead. Then Mr. Hodge made a fatal mistake. He remembered Livingstone's
two missed sitters, and he reversed his decision and roared "Yours,
Bobby!" Mr. Southcott obediently started again, while Livingstone, who
had not heard the second order, went straight on. Captain Hodge had
restored the _status quo_.

In the meantime the professor of ballistics had made a lightning
calculation of angles, velocities, density of the air, barometer-readings
and temperatures, and had arrived at the conclusion that the critical
point, the spot which ought to be marked in the photographs with an X,
was one yard to the north-east of Boone, and he proceeded to take up
station there, colliding on the way with Donald and knocking him over.
A moment later Bobby Southcott came racing up and tripped over the
recumbent Donald and was shot head first into the Abraham-like bosom
of Boone. Boone stepped back a yard under the impact and came down
with his spiked boot, surmounted by a good eighteen stone of flesh and
blood, upon the professor's toe. Almost simultaneously the portly
wicket-keeper, whose movements were a positive triumph of the spirit
over the body, bumped the professor from behind. The learned man was
thus neatly sandwiched between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and the
sandwich was instantly converted into a ragout by Livingstone, who
made up for his lack of extra weight--for he was always in perfect
training--by his extra momentum. And all the time Mr. Shakespeare
Pollock hovered alertly upon the outskirts like a Rugby scrum-half,
screaming American University cries in a piercingly high tenor voice.

At last the ball came down. To Mr. Hodge it seemed a long time before
the invention of Sir Isaac Newton finally triumphed. And it was a
striking testimony to the mathematical and ballistical skill of the
professor that the ball landed with a sharp report upon the top of his
head. Thence it leapt up into the air a foot or so, cannoned on to
Boone's head, and then trickled slowly down the colossal expanse of the
wicket-keeper's back, bouncing slightly as it reached the massive lower
portions. It was only a foot from the ground when Mr. Shakespeare
Pollock sprang into the vortex with a last ear-splitting howl of victory
and grabbed it off the seat of the wicket-keeper's trousers. The match
was a tie. And hardly anyone on the field knew it except Mr. Hodge, the
youth in the blue jumper, and Mr. Pollock himself. For the two batsmen
and the runner, undaunted to the last, had picked themselves up and were
bent on completing the single that was to give Fordenden the crown of
victory. Unfortunately, dazed with their falls, with excitement, and
with the noise, they all three ran for the same wicket, simultaneously
realized their error, and all three turned and ran for the other--the
blacksmith, ankle and all, in the centre and leading by a yard, so that
they looked like pictures of the Russian _troika_. But their effort was
in vain, for Mr. Pollock had grabbed the ball and the match was a tie.

And both teams spent the evening at the Three Horseshoes, and Mr.
Harcourt made a speech in Italian about the glories of England and
afterwards fell asleep in a corner, and Donald got home to Royal Avenue
at 1 o'clock in the morning, feeling that he had not learnt very much
about the English from his experience of their national game.




CHAPTER VIII


A few days after this curious experience on the cricket field, Donald's
attention was drawn away from the problem of the Englishman's attitude
towards his national game by a chance paragraph in a leading newspaper
on the subject of Golf. And golf was a matter of grave temptation to
Donald at this period of his life.

Both Sir Ethelred Ormerode, M.P., and Sir Ludovic Phibbs, M.P., had
invited him to a day's golf at one or other of the large clubs near
London to which they belonged; but Donald had made excuses to avoid
acceptance, for the following reason. He had played no golf since he had
been a lad of eighteen at Aberdeen, and as he had not enough money to
join a club in the south and play regularly, he was unwilling to
resurrect an ancient passion which he had no means of gratifying. Up to
the age of eighteen golf had been a religion to him far more inspiring
and appealing than the dry dogmatics of the various sections of the
Presbyterian Church which wrangled in those days so enthusiastically in
the North-East of Scotland. Since that time, of course, there has been a
notable reunion of the sections and public wrangling has perforce come
to an end, an end regretted so passionately that the phrase "a
peace-maker" in that part of the world is rapidly acquiring the sense of
a busy-body or a spoil-sport. As one ancient soldier of the Faith, whose
enthusiasm for the Word was greater than his knowledge of it, was
recently heard to observe bitterly into the depths of his patriarchal
beard, "Isn't it enough for them to have been promised the Kingdom of
Heaven, without they must poke their disjaskit nebs into Buchan and the
Mearns?"

But whatever the rights and wrongs of the once indignant and now cooing
Churches, it is a fact that Donald before the War was more interested in
golf than in religion, and a handicap of plus one when he was seventeen
had marked him out as a coming man. But first the War and then the work
of farming the Mains of Balspindie had put an end to all that, and
Donald was reluctant to awaken the dragon.

But one day he happened to read in one of the most famous newspapers in
the world the following paragraph in a column written by "Our Golf
Correspondent":

     "Our recent defeat at the hands of the stern and wild Caledonians
     was, no doubt, demnition horrid, as our old friend would have said,
     and had it not been for the amazing series of flukes by which the
     veteran Bernardo, now well advanced in decrepitude, not only
     managed to hang on to the metaphorical coat-tails of his slashing
     young adversary, but even to push his nose in front on the last
     green, the score of the Sassenachs would have been as blank as
     their faces. For their majestic leader was snodded on the
     fourteenth green, and even the Dumkins and the Podder of the team,
     usually safe cards, met their Bannockburn. And that was that. The
     only consolation for this unexpected 'rewersal' lies in the fact
     that the Northerners consisted almost entirely of what are called
     Anglo-Scots, domiciled in England and products of English golf. For
     there is no doubt that the balance of golfing power has shifted to
     the south, and England is now the real custodian of the ancient
     traditions of the game. Which, as a consolation prize, is all wery
     capital."

Donald read this through carefully several times, for it seemed to be a
matter of importance to him and his work. He had seen, at very close
quarters, the English engaged upon their own ancient, indigenous
national pastime, and he had been unable to make head or tail of it.

But it was worth while going out of his way to see how they treated
another nation's national game which, according to the golf
correspondent, they had mastered perfectly and had, as it were, adopted
and nationalized.

The matter was easily arranged, and, on the following Sunday, he was
picked up at the corner of Royal Avenue and King's Road by Sir Ludovic
Phibbs in a Rolls-Royce limousine car. Sir Ludovic was wearing a superb
fur coat and was wrapped in a superb fur rug. On the way down to Cedar
Park, the venue of the day's golf, Sir Ludovic talked a good deal about
the scandal of the dole. It appeared to be his view that everyone who
took the dole ought to be shot in order to teach them not to slack. The
solution of the whole trouble was the abolition of Trades Unionism and
harder work all round, including Saturday afternoons and a half-day on
Sundays. This theme lasted most of the journey, and Donald was not
called upon to contribute more than an occasional monosyllable.

       *       *       *       *       *

Cedar Park is one of the newest of the great golf clubs which are ringed
round the north, west, and south of London in such profusion, and what
is now the club-house had been in earlier centuries the mansion of a
venerable line of marquesses. High taxation had completed the havoc in
the venerable finances which had been begun in the Georgian and
Victorian generations by high gambling, and the entire estate was sold
shortly after the War by the eleventh marquess to a man who had, during
it, made an enormous fortune by a most ingenious dodge. For, alone with
the late Lord Kitchener, he had realized in August and September of 1914
that the War was going to be a very long business, thus providing ample
opportunities for very big business, and that before it was over it
would require a British Army of millions and millions of soldiers.
Having first of all taken the precaution of getting himself registered
as a man who was indispensable to the civil life of the nation during
the great Armageddon, for at the outbreak of hostilities he was only
thirty-one years of age, and, in order to be on the safe side, having
had himself certified by a medical man as suffering from short sight,
varicose veins, a weak heart, and incipient lung trouble, he set
himself upon his great task of cornering the world's supply of rum. By
the middle of 1917 he had succeeded, and in 1920 he paid ninety-three
thousand pounds for Cedar Park, and purchased in addition a house in
Upper Brook Street, a hunting-box near Melton, a two-thousand-ton
motor-yacht, Lochtarig Castle, Inverness-shire, and the long leases of
three luxurious flats in Mayfair in which to entertain, without his wife
knowing, by day or night, his numerous lady friends. He was, of course,
knighted for his public services during the War. It was not until 1925
that the rum-knight shot himself to avoid an absolutely certain fourteen
years for fraudulent conversion, and Cedar Park was acquired by a
syndicate of Armenian sportsmen for the purpose of converting it into a
country club.

An enormous man in a pale-blue uniform tricked out with thick silver
cords and studded with cart-wheel silver buttons, opened the door of the
car and bowed Sir Ludovic, and a little less impressively, Donald
Cameron into the club-house. Donald was painfully conscious that his
grey flannel trousers bagged at the knee and that his old blue 1914
golfing-coat had a shine at one elbow and a hole at the other.

The moment he entered the club-house a superb spectacle met his dazzled
gaze. It was not the parquet floor, on which his nail-studded shoes
squeaked loudly, or the marble columns, or the voluptuous paintings on
the ceiling, or the gilt-framed mirrors on the walls, or the chandeliers
of a thousand crystals, or even the palms in their gilt pots and
synthetic earth, that knocked him all of a heap. It was the group of
golfers that was standing in front of the huge fire-place. There were
purple jumpers and green jumpers and yellow jumpers and tartan jumpers;
there were the biggest, the baggiest, the brightest plus-fours that ever
dulled the lustre of a peacock's tail; there were the rosiest of lips,
the gayest of cheeks, the flimsiest of silk stockings, and the orangest
of finger-nails and probably, if the truth were known, of toe-nails too;
there were waves of an unbelievable permanence and lustre; there were
jewels, on the men as well as on the women, and foot-long jade and amber
cigarette-holders and foot-long cigars with glistening cummerbunds; and
there was laughter and gaiety and much bending, courtier-like, from the
waist, and much raising of girlish, kohl-fringed eyes, and a great
chattering. Donald felt like a navvy, and when, in his agitation, he
dropped his clubs with a resounding clash upon the floor and everyone
stopped talking and looked at him, he wished he was dead. Another
pale-blue-and-silver giant picked up the clubs, held them out at arm's
length and examined them in disdainful astonishment--for after years of
disuse they were very rusty--and said coldly, "Clubs go into the
locker-room, sir," and Donald squeaked his way across the parquet after
him amid a profound silence.

The locker-room was full of young gentlemen who were discarding their
jumpers--which certainly competed with Mr. Shelley's idea of Life
Staining the White Radiance of Eternity--in favour of brown leather
jerkins fastened up the front with that singular arrangement which is
called a zipper. Donald edged in furtively, hazily watched the flunkey
lay the clubs down upon a bench, and then fled in panic through the
nearest open door and found himself suddenly in a wire-netted enclosure
which was packed with a dense throng of caddies. The caddies were just
as surprised by his appearance in their midst as the elegant ladies and
gentlemen in the lounge had been by the fall of the clubs, and a deathly
stillness once again paralysed Donald.

He backed awkwardly out of the enclosure, bouncing off caddy after caddy
like a cork coming over a rock-studded sluice, and was brought up short
at last by what seemed to be a caddy rooted immovably in the ground. Two
desperate backward lunges failed to dislodge the obstacle and Donald
turned and found it was the wall of the professional's shop. The
caddies, and worse still, an exquisitely beautiful young lady with a
cupid's-bow mouth and practically no skirt on at all, who had just
emerged from the shop, watched him with profound interest. Scarlet in
the face, he rushed past the radiant beauty, and hid himself in the
darkest corner of the shop and pretended to be utterly absorbed in a
driver which he picked out at random from the rack. Rather to his
surprise, and greatly to his relief, no one molested him with
up-to-date, go-getting salesmanship, and in a few minutes he had pulled
himself together and was able to look round and face the world.

Suddenly he gave a start. Something queer was going on inside him. He
sniffed the air once, and then again, and then the half-forgotten past
came rushing to him across the wasted years. The shining rows of clubs,
the boxes of balls, the scent of leather and rubber and gripwax and
pitch, the club-makers filing away over the vices and polishing and
varnishing and splicing and binding, the casual members waggling a club
here and there, the professional listening courteously to tales of
apocryphal feats, all the old familiar scenes of his youth came back to
him. It was eleven years since he had played a game of golf, thirteen
years since he had bought a club. Thirteen wasted years. Dash it,
thought Donald, damn it, blast it, I can't afford a new club--I don't
want a new club, but I'm going to buy a new club. He spoke diffidently
to one of the assistants who was passing behind him, and enquired the
price of the drivers.

"It's a new lot just finished, sir," said the assistant, "and I'm not
sure of the price. I'll ask Mr. Glennie."

Mr. Glennie was the professional himself. The great man, who was talking
to a member, or rather was listening to a member's grievances against
his luck, a ritual which occupies a large part of a professional's
working day, happened to overhear the assistant, and he said over his
shoulder in the broadest of broad Scottish accents, "They're fufty-twa
shullin' and cheap at that."

Donald started back. Two pounds twelve for a driver! Things had changed
indeed since the days when the great Archie Simpson had sold him a
brassy, brand-new, bright yellow, refulgent, with a lovely whippy shaft,
for five shillings and nine-pence.

His movement of Aberdonian horror brought him out of the dark corner
into the sunlight which was streaming through the window, and it was the
professional's turn to jump.

"It's Master Donald!" he exclaimed. "Ye mind me, Master Donald--Jim
Glennie, assistant that was at Glenavie to Tommy Anderson that went to
the States?"

"Glennie!" cried Donald, a subtle warm feeling suddenly invading his
body, and he grasped the professional's huge red hand.

"Man!" cried the latter, "but I'm glad to see ye. How lang is't sin' we
used to ding awa at each other roon' Glenavie? Man, it must be years and
years. And fit's aye deein' wi' yer game? Are ye plus sax or seeven?"

"Glennie," said Donald sadly, "I haven't touched a club since those old
days. This is the first time I've set foot in a professional's shop
since you took me that time to see Alec Marling at Balgownie the day
before the War broke out."

"Eh man, but you're a champion lost," and the professional shook his
head mournfully.

"But, Glennie," went on Donald, "where did you learn that fine Buchan
accent? You never used to talk like that. Is it since you came south
that you've picked it up?"

The big professional looked a little shamefaced and drew Donald back
into the dark corner.

"It's good for trade," he whispered in the pure English of Inverness.
"They like a Scot to be real Scottish. They think it makes a man what
they call 'a character.' God knows why, but there it is. So I just
humour them by talking like a Guild Street carter who's having a bit of
back-chat with an Aberdeen fish-wife. It makes the profits something
extraordinary."

"Hi! Glennie, you old swindler," shouted a stoutish, red-faced man who
was smoking a big cigar and wearing a spectroscopic suit of tweeds. "How
much do you want to sting me for this putter?"

"Thirty-twa shullin' and saxpence, Sir Walter," replied Glennie over his
shoulder, "but ye'll be wastin' yer siller for neither that club nor any
ither wull bring ye doon below eighteen."

A delighted laugh from a group of men behind Sir Walter greeted this
sally.

"You see," whispered Glennie, "he'll buy it and he'll tell his friends
that I tried to dissuade him, and they'll all agree that I'm a rare old
character, and they'll all come and buy too."

"But fifty-two shillings for a driver!" said Donald. "Do you mean to say
they'll pay that?"

"Yes, of course they will. They'll pay anything so long as it's more
than any other professional at any other club charges them. That's the
whole secret. Those drivers there aren't a new set at all. They're the
same set as I was asking forty-eight shillings for last week-end, but I
heard during the week from a friend who keeps an eye open for me, that
young Jock Robbie over at Addingdale Manor had put his drivers and
brassies up from forty-six shillings to fifty, the dirty young dog. Not
that I blame him. It's a new form of commercial competition, Master
Donald, a sort of inverted price-cutting. Na, na, Muster Hennessey," he
broke into his trade voice again, "ye dinna want ony new clubs. Ye're
playin' brawly with yer auld yins. Still, if ye want to try yon spoon,
tak it oot and play a couple of roons wi' it, and if ye dinna like it
put it back."

He turned to Donald again.

"That's a sure card down here. They always fall for it. They take the
club and tell their friends that I've given it to them on trial because
I'm not absolutely certain that it will suit their game, and they never
bring it back. Not once. Did you say you wanted a driver, Master
Donald?"

"Not at fifty-two shillings," said Donald with a smile.

Glennie indignantly waved away the suggestion.

"You shall have your pick of the shop at cost price," he said, and then,
looking furtively round and lowering his voice until it was almost
inaudible, he breathed in Donald's ear, "Fifteen and six."

Donald chose a beautiful driver, treading on air all the while and
feeling eighteen years of age, and then Sir Ludovic Phibbs came into the
shop.

"Ah! There you are, Cameron," he said genially; "there are only two
couples in front of us now. Are you ready? Good morning, Glennie, you
old shark. There's no use trying to swing the lead over Mr. Cameron.
He's an Aberdonian himself."

As Donald went out, Glennie thrust a box of balls under his arm and
whispered, "For old times' sake!"

On the first tee Sir Ludovic introduced him to the other two players who
were going to make up the match. One was a Mr. Wollaston, a
clean-shaven, intelligent, large, prosperous-looking man of about
forty, and the other was a Mr. Gyles, a very dark man, with a toothbrush
moustache and a most impressive silence. Both were stockbrokers.

"Now," said Sir Ludovic heartily, "I suggest that we play a four-ball
foursome, Wollaston and I against you two, on handicap, taking our
strokes from the course, five bob corners, half a crown for each birdie,
a dollar an eagle, a bob best ball and a bob aggregate and a bob a putt.
What about that?"

"Good!" said Mr. Wollaston. Mr. Gyles nodded, while Donald, who had not
understood a single word except the phrase "four-ball foursome"--and
that was incorrect--mumbled a feeble affirmative. The stakes sounded
enormous, and the reference to birds of the air sounded mysterious, but
he obviously could not raise any objections.

When it was his turn to drive at the first tee, he selected a spot for
his tee and tapped it with the toe of his driver. Nothing happened. He
looked at his elderly caddy and tapped the ground again. Again nothing
happened.

"Want a peg, Cameron?" called out Sir Ludovic.

"Oh no, it's much too early," protested Donald, under the impression
that he was being offered a drink. Everyone laughed ecstatically at this
typically Scottish flash of wit, and the elderly caddy lurched forward
with a loathsome little contrivance of blue and white celluloid which he
offered to his employer. Donald shuddered. They'd be giving him a rubber
tee with a tassel in a minute, or lending him a golf-bag with tripod
legs. He teed his ball on a pinch of sand with a dexterous twist of his
fingers and thumb amid an incredulous silence.

Donald played the round in a sort of daze. After a few holes of
uncertainty, much of his old skill came back, and he reeled off fairly
good figures. He had a little difficulty with his elderly caddy at the
beginning of the round, for, on asking that functionary to hand him "the
iron," he received the reply, "Which number, sir?" and the following
dialogue ensued:

"Which number what?" faltered Donald.

"Which number iron?"

"Er--just the iron."

"But it must have a number, sir."

"Why must it?"

"All irons have numbers."

"But I've only one."

"Only a number one?"

"No. Only one."

"Only one what, sir?"

"One iron!" exclaimed Donald, feeling that this music-hall turn might go
on for a long time and must be already holding up the entire course.

The elderly caddy at last appreciated the deplorable state of affairs.
He looked grievously shocked and said in a reverent tone:

"Mr. Fumbledon has eleven."

"Eleven what?" enquired the startled Donald.

"Eleven irons."

After this revelation of Mr. Fumbledon's greatness, Donald took "the
iron" and topped the ball hard along the ground. The caddy sighed
deeply.

Throughout the game Donald never knew what the state of the match was,
for the other three, who kept complicated tables upon the backs of
envelopes, reckoned solely in cash. Thus, when Donald once timidly asked
his partner how they stood, the taciturn Mr. Gyles consulted his
envelope and replied shortly, after a brief calculation, "You're up
three dollars and a tanner."

Donald did not venture to ask again, and he knew nothing more about the
match until they were ranged in front of the bar in the club-room, when
Sir Ludovic and Mr. Wollaston put down the empty glasses which had, a
moment ago, contained double pink gins, ordered a refill of the four
glasses, and then handed over to the bewildered Donald the sum of one
pound sixteen and six.

Lunch was an impressive affair. It was served in a large room, panelled
in white and gold with a good deal of artificial marble scattered about
the walls, by a staff of bewitching young ladies in black frocks, white
aprons and caps, and black silk stockings. Bland wine-stewards drifted
hither and thither, answering to Christian names and accepting orders
and passing them on to subordinates. Corks popped, the scent of the
famous club fish-pie mingled itself with all the perfumes of Arabia and
Mr. Coty, smoke arose from rose-tipped cigarettes, and the rattle of
knives and forks played an orchestral accompaniment to the sound of many
voices, mostly silvery, like April rain, and full of girlish gaiety.

Sir Ludovic insisted on being host, and ordered Donald's half-pint of
beer and double whiskies for himself and Mr. Gyles. Mr. Wollaston,
pleading a diet and the strict orders of Carlsbad medicos, produced a
bottle of Berncastler out of a small brown handbag, and polished it off
in capital style.

The meal itself consisted of soup, the famous fish-pie, a fricassee of
chicken, saddle of mutton or sirloin of roast beef, sweet, savoury, and
cheese, topped off with four of the biggest glasses of hunting port that
Donald had ever seen. Conversation at lunch was almost entirely about
the dole. The party then went back to the main club-room where Mr.
Wollaston firmly but humorously pushed Sir Ludovic into a very deep
chair, and insisted upon taking up the running with four coffees and
four double kmmels. Then after a couple of rubbers of bridge, at which
Donald managed to win a few shillings, they sallied out to play a second
round. The golf was only indifferent in the afternoon. Sir Ludovic
complained that, owing to the recrudescence of what he mysteriously
called "the old trouble," he was finding it very difficult to focus the
ball clearly, and Mr. Wollaston kept on over-swinging so violently that
he fell over once and only just saved himself on several other
occasions, and Mr. Gyles developed a fit of socketing that soon became a
menace to the course, causing, as it did, acute nervous shocks to a
retired major-general whose sunlit nose only escaped by a miracle, and a
bevy of beauty that was admiring, for some reason, the play of a
well-known actor-manager.

So after eight holes the afternoon round was abandoned by common
consent, and they walked back to the club-house for more bridge and
much-needed refreshment. Donald was handed seventeen shillings as his
inexplicable winnings over the eight holes. Later on, Sir Ludovic drove,
or rather Sir Ludovic's chauffeur drove, Donald back to the corner of
King's Road and Royal Avenue. On the way back, Sir Ludovic talked mainly
about the dole.

       *       *       *       *       *

Seated in front of the empty grate in his bed-sitting-room, Donald
counted his winnings and reflected that golf had changed a great deal
since he had last played it.




CHAPTER IX


In the middle of August, Davies telephoned to Donald and asked him to
come round to the office in Henrietta Street and report progress.

Donald was frankly depressed, and he said so. "I'm out of my depth," he
said. "My feet aren't on the ground."

Davies laughed. He found his young friend's perplexities amusing.

"I didn't imagine you'd find it very easy," he said. "But don't forget
what I told you in that infernal pill-box, years ago. I've got a sort of
instinctive notion that the English character----"

"There's no such thing," interrupted Donald. "They're all different."

"That the English character," went on Davies firmly, "is based
fundamentally upon kindliness and poetry. Just keep that notion in mind,
whether you agree with it or not. And now listen to me, I've got a job
for you."

"What sort of a job?" enquired Donald suspiciously.

"A private-secretaryship."

Donald's face fell. "But I want to write things. I don't think I
want----"

"Of course you want to write things, you young donkey. And I'm trying
to help you. What I'm offering to you is the private-secretaryship to an
English politician--English, mind you--and it's only temporary. The man
in question is a very old friend of mine, and his permanent fellow has
gone down with scarlet fever."

"But Parliament isn't sitting," began Donald.

"There's a little Mr. Know-all," replied Davies pleasantly. "It hadn't
escaped my notice that Parliament isn't sitting. But my friend has just
been appointed to the British delegation that is going to the Assembly
of the League of Nations at Geneva in a fortnight, and he wants someone
to go with him, and hold his hat and coat. Would you care to take it on?
All expenses and a fiver a week."

"For how long?"

"For a month. He might give you a very good notion of the Englishman as
an internationalist."

Donald sprang to his feet.

"Of course!" he exclaimed. "What a fool I am! And how kind you are! You
really are most awfully kind," he added navely.

Mr. Davies was pleased.

"That's capital," he said. "My friend's name is Sir Henry Wootton, and
he's the Conservative member for East Something-or-Other. You'll find
him in Vacher's. I'll give you a card to him and I'll ring him up and
tell him you're coming to see him. He's a very decent fellow. Apart from
that, I won't say another word about him so as not to prejudice you one
way or the other. Good-bye and good luck. Come and see me when you get
back."

Sir Henry Wootton was a nice, cheerful, elderly buck of about seventy,
and he lived in a large house in Queen's Gate. He had a rosy face, a
large white moustache, and blue eyes, and his manners were old-fashioned
in their perfection. He received Donald in a rather impressive library,
lined with books on all sides. But the impressiveness wore off after a
bit, for the books were not the books of a reader, but more like the
reference section of a public library or a dusty corridor in a West End
Club. _The Dictionary of National Biography_ stretched out its
interminable array; above it was an old edition of the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_. The _Annual Register_ occupied shelf after shelf. Bailey's
_Guide to the Turf_, Hansard's _Parliamentary Debates_, the _Gentleman's
Magazine_, huge bound volumes of the _Illustrated London News_, the
_Field_, _Country Life_, _Horse and Hound_, and other periodicals of
bygone ages stood massively, leathery, shoulder to shoulder, rather like
the massive, prosperous years of Victorianism which they recorded in
their pages. They belonged to a period of the life of England in which
there was time not only to read the five-hour speeches of long-dead
Chancellors, but to re-read them in after-years out of leather-bound
collections, a period in which a gentleman had leisure for the pursuit
of the gentlemanly pastimes.

Sir Henry belonged to that period. He had driven his coach-and-six to
the Derby. He had been taken, as a boy, to see Lord Frederick Beauclerk
play a single-wicket match at Lord's; he had seen Jem Mace box; he had
damned Oscar Wilde's eyes on the steps of the Athenaeum; he had borrowed
money from Sam Lewis to back Ormonde with; he had worshipped the Jersey
Lily from afar, and the lesser ladies of _Florodora_ and _The Geisha_
from a little nearer, and a lot of ladies in Paris and Venice from much
closer still. And, on inheriting the baronetcy, he had given up all
these things and gone into politics. It was the traditional finish to
the life of a traditional English gentleman, and Sir Henry was in the
tradition.

The beginning of his political life was a welter of right-minded hatred
of Mr. Lloyd George and his anarchistic theories about land and money.
The middle period was a glow of right-minded adoration of Mr. Lloyd
George and his magnificence as an organizer of victory; while the
closing phase of Sir Henry's career at St. Stephen's was untinged with
hatreds or adorations. He had outlived the passions and had glided into
a serene tranquillity. He did not understand in the least what had
happened to the world or was likely to happen, but he was perfectly
happy and perfectly willing to play any part that might be allotted to
him. He was an admirable Chairman of Commissions to enquire into things
of which he had not known the existence; he did not approve in theory of
such things as the Irish Treaty, or votes for young ladies of
twenty-one, or supertax, but as they had come and were obviously going
to stay, he was quite willing to support them in practice. He liked the
older members of the Conservative Party because at least ninety per cent
of them were lifelong friends; he liked the "young chaps" because they
were the type that would have ridden straight, if hunting hadn't become
so damned prohibitive, and would have chased the girls of _Florodora_
and _The Geisha_ if they weren't buckling down so damned well to the
business of running the country; he liked the handful of Radicals in the
House, because they were mostly brainy chaps and he admired brains; he
liked the Socialists because they got so angry, and that made him laugh.
In fact, he liked everyone except "those damned turncoats" who jumped
about from Party to Party like cats in search of jobs. Sir Henry could
not stand them at any price, and said so repeatedly and, for his voice
was naturally a rather loud one, loudly.

This, then, was the gentleman who welcomed Donald with old-fashioned
politeness into his musty, dusty, leathery library.

"I'll tell you what it is, Cameron," he said, after the usual courtesies
had been exchanged, and a butler had brought in a couple of glasses of
sherry and a biscuit-jar (in Sir Henry's life ceremonial "Misters"
played as small a part as Christian names); "I don't really want a
secretary in the proper sense of the word. I'm not going to make
speeches with figures and facts and all that sort of rubbish in them.
I'm just going to stick to generalities. The truth of the matter is that
I don't know much about this League, and I don't know why the P.M. wants
me to go. But he's asked me, and so, of course, I'm going. I'm all in
favour of peace myself, as every sane man is, but I've got a sort of
notion that the best way to keep the peace is the good old British way
of building a thumping great fleet and letting the dagoes do what they
damned well like, eh? After all, it worked in the past, so why not now?
However, I'm told that's all wrong in these modern times, and so I
expect it is. They tell me that this League is the dodge now, and if
that's so, I'm all in favour of it. Do you see what I mean?"

"Yes, sir," replied Donald. So far he had found little difficulty in
following the thread of Sir Henry's discourse.

"I don't run down the League just because it's new," went on Sir Henry.
"If we've got to love the black man like a brother, I'm quite prepared
to do it. At present I draw the line at loving him like a
brother-in-law, but I expect that'll come later. Now your job at Geneva,
if you agree to take it on, will be more like a cross between a valet
and a friend. I mean you'll have to find my hat for me, and you'll have
to keep me posted up with the sporting news from home, and you'll have
to see that there's a taxi for me when I want one, and that I don't run
out of whisky in the evenings, and all that sort of thing. Do you feel
like taking it on for a month?"

"I should be delighted," replied Donald.

"Splendid. We leave on Friday morning. You'd better run round to the
Foreign Office and fix up about passports and so on. And you'd better
see if you can find out what this League does, and how it works, and all
that sort of thing."

       *       *       *       *       *

Donald found it very difficult at Geneva to keep his mind concentrated
upon his task. There was so much that was new to be seen, heard, tasted,
drunk, and done. With delegates of more than fifty nations concentrated
into one town, or worse, into one small quarter of one town, it was
almost impossible to remember that he was engaged upon a specific
job--the study, at close quarters and at first hand, of the
Representatives of England, at work upon international politics. They
were, after all, well worth studying. For the English, whatever may be
said against their home politics, or their climate, or their cooking, or
their love-making, or their art, or their sport, have proved themselves
over and over again throughout the centuries the masters of
international diplomacy and foreign affairs. A glance at the history of
the world shows how the enemies of England have always collapsed
unexpectedly and mysteriously, whether owing to the sudden uprising of a
southerly gale to drive invading galleons from Gravelines to the
Pentland Firth, or owing to a trivial miscalculation which isolated the
wing of an army in the obscure Danubian village of Blindheim, or owing
to a Spanish ulcer, or to the sinking of a _Lusitania_, and it cannot be
supposed that these incidents were all fortuitous. In the same way a
glance at the geography of the world shows that in the days of
sailing-ships every convenient port somehow or other fell into the hands
of the English, except Walfish Bay and Pondicherry; that in the days of
coal, every coaling-station was English; that in the days of oil, the
only oil-wells that did not already belong to people who wanted
selfishly to keep them for themselves, became English; that in 1920 even
Walfish Bay, useless as it had become, went the same way as all the rest
for the sake of the principle, leaving only Pondicherry as a sort of
joke; and that the last scramble, the scramble for aerodromes, fell flat
because every reasonably smooth island was already in English hands,
except one a good deal north of Siberia, called Wrangel Island, and
another in the South Seas called Johnson Island. These two alone were
left out by English diplomacy: the first because it is so cold that
petrol, oil, and water immediately freeze on arriving there, thus
rendering it comparatively unfit for aeronautical manoeuvres; and the
other, Johnson Island, because, after a volley of notes and threats to
the Norwegian Government--which also laid claim to it--the English
Intelligence Service somehow ferreted out the fact that the disputed
island had not been sighted since its first discovery, sixty-eight years
earlier, by a dipsomaniacal Australian skipper, who had noted it down in
his log as appearing on the horizon between two pale-pink lizards in
yellow breeches and deer-stalkers; and that no one knew in the least
where it was. The English Foreign Office immediately despatched a most
cordial Note to the Norwegian Government relinquishing all claims on
Johnson Island, not as a matter of international right and wrong, but as
a graceful compliment to the King of Norway, whose birthday was due in a
few weeks' time. Meanwhile the English Admiralty marked Johnson Island
on its charts as "disappeared in unrecorded land-subsidence," and two
years later, the Air Force, hearing the news, provisionally deleted it
from its official list of aerodromes.

Donald ought, therefore, to have found no difficulty in concentrating
upon the most fascinating of human spectacles, Experts at Work. The
English had proved themselves for hundreds of years the Heads of the
Profession, and here they were again, at the very centre of the
international world, using all their unrivalled skill for the still
further betterment of their Empire.

But there were many distractions. The streets were crowded with strange
sights. Abyssinians in great blue robes and wearing great black beards
swung proudly along the boulevards; Chinese and Japanese and Siamese and
Cochinese and Cingalese and Tonkinese and Annamese moved inscrutably
hither and thither. Frenchmen chattered. Australians in big hats strode.
Sinn Fein ex-gunmen, now Ministers of State, sat in cafs and told witty
stories. Albanians, ill at ease without their habitual arsenal of
firearms, scowled at Yugo-Slavs. South Americans abounded, dark men with
roving eyes and a passion for kissing typists in lifts. Maharajahs who
were descended from ten thousand gods walked as if they were conscious
of their ancestry. Newsboys, usually well over eighty years of age, sold
papers written in every conceivable language but mainly in the language
of the Middle-Western States of the United States; and everywhere
pattered private secretaries, racing hither and thither, always in a
hurry, always laden with papers, and always just managing to snatch a
moment to exchange the latest gossip with each other as they sped by.

In strange contrast to these active young men was the vast, amorphous
mass of American tourists who never had anything to do. They eddied
about the streets in aimless shoals, like lost mackerel, pointing out
celebrities to each other and always getting them wrong; taking endless
photographs of obscure Genevese citizens in mistake for German
Chancellors or Soviet Observers, and pretending that they had important
luncheon-dates. Geneva during September had become as much a pilgrimage
for Wyoming, Nebraska, and Boston, to name only three of the main
pilgrim-exporting centres, as the Colosseum, the Venus de Milo, the
outside of Mr. Beerbohm's villa at Rapallo, or the fields at St. Mihiel
where the German Imperial Army met its first, its only, and its final
defeat.

Nor was life in the streets the only distraction. There was the
International Club, for instance, where a gentleman in a white coat,
called Victor, performed prodigies of activity in the mixing of Bronxes,
Gin-Slings, John Collinses, and Brandy St. Johns, leaping to and fro,
like a demented preacher, for bottles, sugar, lemons, cherries, and
straws. His clients were mostly journalists, and very swagger
journalists at that. They were not the type which runs round feverishly
trying to pick up news. They did not carry note-books in their hip
pockets. They did not pester statesmen for interviews. What they did was
to play billiards all day in the Club, calling upon the services of Mr.
Victor from time to time, until a message arrived giving the hour at
which the French Foreign Minister, or the German Foreign Minister, was
ready to receive them and answer questions. Occasionally the British
Foreign Minister received them, but his receptions were not nearly so
popular as those of his two colleagues, for the Frenchman could usually
be relied upon for several calculated indiscretions, while the German
could always be relied upon for free Munich beer. The Englishman, on the
other hand, was both discreet and temperate.

There was also the great building of the Secretariat itself, in which
the permanent officials were always ready to welcome visitors at any
hour during the day. There was the lake, blue, clear, like a polished
aquamarine, translucent, exquisite, studded with far-off brick-red sails
of barges and white butterfly yachts, and defended by the everlasting
snows of Mont Blanc and the Dent du Midi. Boats could be hired for
sailing on the lake, the bathing was warm and luxurious, and on the far
side were restaurants, where a man might dine with a lovely lady and see
what could be done in the way of wooing by the light of Orion upon dark
waters and the sound of little murmurous waves. And anyone who failed to
advance his suit in those little lake-side restaurants might just as
well reconcile himself at once to a long life of dreary celibacy.

In addition to all these attractions there were the dancing-halls and
the cabarets and the cafs in the Old Town, especially the one that
wasn't actually the one that Lenin and Trotsky used to frequent in the
old days and is now demolished, but wasn't far off, and the Kursaal, and
the lounges of the big hotels and the cinemas.

Yes, Geneva was full of distractions for even the keenest of students of
international affairs and English policy, and, after the first week of
preliminaries, Donald had to make a stern resolution to attend to
business and eschew frivolities.

Sir Henry Wootton was thoroughly enjoying himself, and had already
devoted several evenings to the discussion of a lot of urgent
international business at one of the lake-side restaurants with the
permanent deputy-chief of the Exchange-of-Municipal-Experience Section
of the Secretariat. The permanent deputy-chief looked very fetching in
black velvet and a picture hat, and Sir Henry was as sorry as his
secretary when the time came for the application of noses to
grindstones.

The normal procedure of the Assembly was as follows. The first week was
devoted to speech-making on any subject under the sun by any delegate
who wanted to get his name into print in the newspapers of his native
country. Nobody listened to them, not even the reporters of the native
newspapers, for they had received typewritten copies of the speech which
affected them, six or seven hours before it was delivered.

After this week of oratory had been completed, the Assembly split itself
up into six Committees, three of which were presided over by an English,
French, and German president, two by South Americans, and one by an
Asiatic. On this occasion the two South Americans were Panama and
Paraguay; the Asiatic was Caspia. But the procedure had to be somewhat
modified, as at first no South American delegates were available, for
the following rather singular and quite exceptional reason. The second
week of the Assembly happened to coincide with the fourth session of
the Permanent Committee for the Suppression of Obscene Photographs, Post
Cards, Magazines, Advertisements, and Publications in General, and by a
curious coincidence all the South Americans, including Cuba, San
Domingo, and Haiti--indeed, headed by San Domingo and Haiti, with Cuba
well in the running for a place--decided to attend the meetings of the
Committee. Fortunately for the work of the Assembly, the sessions of the
Permanent Committee for the Suppression of Obscene Photographs, Post
Cards, Magazines, Advertisements, and Publications in General came to an
abrupt halt on the second day, the entire collection of specimens of the
literature in question, so laboriously collected over a long period by
the Secretariat, having been pinched by the delegates.

Sir Henry was assigned by the Earl of Osbaldestone, Britain's senior
delegate, to the Committee for the Abolition of Social Abuses, and he
despatched Donald first to the Secretariat for documents, which would
tell him what exactly the Abuses were, and then to the Staff of Foreign
Office experts for information about the British Official Policy which
Sir Henry was to expound and advocate.

Donald had no difficulty about the documents. There were sheaves of
them, printed and typed, records of past Conferences, verbatim minutes
of Committees, draft resolutions, amendments to draft resolutions,
alterations to amendments of draft resolutions, cancellations of
alterations, copies of speeches, and Press reports from publications as
far divided, geographically and politically, as the _Singapore Hardware
and Allied Trades Independent_, the _Santiago de Chile Indigo Exporters'
Quarterly_, _The Times_, _Der Wienerwurst und Schnitzeller
Tages-Zeitung_ of Rothenburg-am-Tauber, a matrimonial journal called
_The Link_, the _Manchester Guardian_, _Who's Who in Cochin-China_, and
the _Irish Free State Union of Sewage-Inspectors' Annual Report_.

Donald hired two taxis and filled one up to the roof with the necessary
documents and directed the man to drive to Sir Henry's hotel, while he
himself went in the other.

After a couple of hours spent in sorting, sifting, and arranging, Donald
discovered the crucial sheet of paper on which was printed the agenda of
the Commission. It appeared that the two main Abuses at which Sir Henry
was due to launch himself were the Illicit Traffic in Synthetic Beer,
and the existence in certain countries of Houses of Ill-Repute,
discreetly called Licensed Establishments, and Donald set off on his
second mission--to obtain the Official Policy on these two matters.

The Foreign Office experts occupied the whole of the second floor of the
hotel, and Donald doubtfully entered a sitting-room from which issued a
rattle of typewriters, and on the door of which was pinned a label which
said, rather surprisingly, "Chancery." He was instantly abashed at
finding himself in the midst of a perfect vision of beauty and elegance.
On all sides radiant young ladies, obviously straight from the
establishments of Poirot, Paquin, or Molyneux, were whacking away with
dainty fingers at typewriting machines. The air was full of incense.
Blood rushed to Donald's head. His eyes went dim. The room darkened. A
golden-haired Aphrodite slid up to him but he could not see her. He
wanted to fly but his legs would not move. He perspired vehemently, and
longed for the quiet midden at the Mains of Balspindie.

After what seemed five or six hours, a vision of blue eyes and golden
hair swam out of the mist before him and he stammered a vague and
halting statement of his requirements, dropping his hat twice during the
recital and, on the second occasion, clutching wildly at the Aphrodite's
silken ankle as he groped for it. The goddess was quite unperturbed by
the sudden grasp. Lady Secretaries at international conferences which
are attended by South Americans quickly get accustomed to almost
anything. Nervous Englishmen, or Scotsmen, are child's-play to those who
can, with deftness and dignity, handle a Venezuelan.

As soon as Donald had released his grip upon her ankle, had retrieved
his hat, and had embarked upon a flood of apologies, she cut him short
with kindly firmness, and led him through the roomful of beauty to an
inner sanctum into which she pushed him with the words, "You want Mr.
Carteret-Pendragon."

The inner sanctum was a strange contrast to the outer room. It was very
large, being one of the largest sitting-rooms in the hotel and seldom
occupied during the other months of the year except by Nebraskans and
Maharajahs, and was furnished tastefully in green, gold, and marble.
There were probably more than one thousand gold tassels on the curtains
alone, a source of legitimate pride to the management.

Three young men were sitting in complete silence at three tables,
marble-topped and gilt-legged. None of them looked up as Donald came in,
and after the golden Venus had closed the door with a snap, a deep,
religious soundlessness fell upon the place, as in a cathedral upon a
summer's afternoon.

Donald choked down a nervous cough and waited. At last one of the young
men laid down his pen, leant back in his chair and said, "Well?"

"Mr. Carteret-Pendragon?"

"That is my name, sir."

"I am Sir Henry Wootton's private secretary," began Donald. "My name is
Cameron----"

"How-do-you-do. My name is Carteret-Pendragon. Let me introduce Mr.
Carshalton-Stanbury, and this is Mr. Woldingham-Uffington."

The two young men got up and bowed gravely and sat down again and went
on with their work. Donald noticed that all three were wearing Old
Etonian ties.

"It's about Sir Henry and the Social Abuses Commission," said Donald.

"Sit down," said Mr. Carteret-Pendragon. He was a young man of about
thirty with beautiful fair hair, parted at the side and flat and very
shiny, a razor-like crease down his grey trousers, pale-yellow
horn-rimmed spectacles, and a dark-red carnation in his buttonhole. Mr.
Carshalton-Stanbury's hair was black, his horn-rims dappled, and his
carnation vermilion. Mr. Woldingham-Uffington's hair, horn-rims, and
carnation were all yellow.

"Sir Henry wants to know what line he is to take about the traffic in
Synthetic Beer," said Donald.

Mr. Carteret-Pendragon wrinkled his snow-white brow.

"I don't think I quite follow," he said in some perplexity.

"Sir Henry thinks that he will probably have to make a speech about it,
you see," explained Donald.

"In a sense, yes," replied Mr. Carteret-Pendragon, "and in another
sense, no. It will," he added, as if clarifying the position, "of
course, be expected of him."

"And he wants to know what to say."

"Oh! The usual things," said Mr. Carteret-Pendragon easily. He went on,
checking off the points on his fingers: "Devotion of British
Commonwealth of Free Nations to ideals of League, nation of
peace-lovers, all must co-operate, wonderful work of League, praise of
the Secretariat, economy in League expenditure, a word about Woodrow
Wilson, and a tribute to the French."

He picked up a document, and began to study it as if the interview had
been brought to a conclusion that was satisfactory to everyone.

"But why a tribute to the French?" asked Donald in surprise.

"It's the usual way to finish off a speech here. It does no harm and the
French like it."

"But what about the Synthetic Beer?"

"What about it?" said Mr. Carteret-Pendragon in a rather tired voice.

"I mean, what is our policy?"

At the word "policy" the other two diplomatists started as if they had
suddenly been confronted with a rattlesnake, and all three stared at
Donald.

"Policy?" repeated Mr. Carteret-Pendragon in bewilderment, and Mr.
Carshalton-Stanbury and Mr. Woldingham-Uffington echoed the word and
gazed vaguely round the room, like people who have lost something which
might turn up unexpectedly at any moment--a dog, for example, or a small
child.

"Policy?" repeated Mr. Carteret-Pendragon in a firmer voice. He had
quicker wits than the other two, and had grasped what this queer youth
in the lounge-suit and no buttonhole was talking about.

"My dear sir," he went on indulgently, "we don't have policies about
things. We leave all that to the dagoes. It keeps them out of mischief."

"But don't we--don't you--doesn't Great Britain take an independent line
about anything?"

"Whatever for?" enquired Mr. Carteret-Pendragon, and the other two
murmured the words "independent line," like men in a maze.

"We are here to preserve balances," went on the diplomat. "Our task is
to maintain equilibriums--equilibria, I ought to say," he corrected
himself with a small cough. "After all, there are the proportions, when
all is said and done. One must have a sense of equipoise."

"Naturally," murmured the other two, hitching up their beautiful
trousers about a centimetre and a half in complete unison.

"But how does anything get settled?" enquired Donald, feeling
remarkably foolish in the presence of these sophisticated men of the
great world.

"Oh, they get settled all right--if not now, at some other time, and if
not at Geneva, then in London. It's all a matter of tact. When in doubt
agree with the Frenchman. Or if you prefer it, disagree with the
Italian. It's all one."

"And what about brothels? What do we say about them?"

"At the last six Assemblies we've simply said that we don't know what
they are. All you have to do is to say it again."

Mr. Carteret-Pendragon pondered a moment and then added, "Broadly
speaking, you are fairly safe to take as a generalization, that so far
as Organized Vice is concerned, we might, as an Empire, be reasonably
described as being more or less against it."

The interview was now definitely at an end, and Donald went out, feeling
that he had gained some sort of insight, at first hand, into the subtle
diplomacy which had spread the Union Jack upon all the potential
aerodromes of the world. He could see that the genius was there, though
he could not have explained for the life of him how it worked. But, of
course, that was the genius of it.

The outer room was a dull and drab place as he passed through it. For it
was by now past 12 o'clock and Beauty had gone off to lunch, leaving
only a memory and a fragrance.

       *       *       *       *       *

The President of the Committee for the Suppression of Social Abuses was
the senior Caspian delegate, and he was enabled to carry through the
sections on the agenda which dealt with the traffic in dangerous drugs
with great expedition, being himself a lifelong addict to heroin, which
he injected subcutaneously into his arm, just as Sherlock did, with a
silver hypodermic syringe, encrusted with carved turquoises. His expert
knowledge enabled him to correct several of the delegates when their
rhetoric about the dismal after-effects of drugging carried them out of
the sphere of reality into the sphere of imagination. It was the
President also who threw a great deal of cold water upon the fervour of
the Swiss representative, when that gentleman was affirming with a vast
amount of eloquence that Switzerland had entirely extirpated the
villainous crew of drug-traffickers from her free and snowy soil. For,
having only that very morning run out of his indispensable heroin, the
President had approached a gendarme, courteously touched his red fez and
enquired whether there was a drug-seller in the vicinity. The gendarme,
according to the President, had courteously saluted and replied, "Does
your Excellency perceive that house along the street with pink shutters
and an advertisement for the Sun Insurance Company above its door? Your
Excellency does? Good. That is the only house in this vicinity that I
know of, at which drugs are not procurable."

But when the drug sections of the agenda had been satisfactorily dealt
with and the consideration of a number of important resolutions
postponed until the following year, the President's efficiency fell off
considerably. This was partly owing to his lack of interest in the
subjects, and partly that, between injections, he was inclined to drop
off for forty winks. This habit led to one very unfortunate incident.

The item on the agenda which was being discussed was the advisability of
compiling a register of deaths from bubonic plague in the ports of
Macao, Bangkok, Wei-hai-Wei, and one or two fishing harbours at the
southern end of the island of Formosa, and the Yugo-Slav delegate,
having caught the President's eye just before the latter fell into a
quiet snooze, delivered a slashing harangue. He stated, with all the
emphasis at his command, that while approving in principle of the
register of deaths from bubonic plague, for his Government yielded to
none in its loyal adherence to all measures for the pacific betterment
of humanity, at the same time he felt that he ought to draw the
attention of the Committee to the barbarous conduct of the Hungarian
Army in Yugo-Slavia during the Great War. The Hungarian delegate
protested warmly, but the President, who was dreaming of the Mahometan
Paradise, only smiled sweetly, and the Yugo-Slav continued.

"Libraries, often containing as many as sixty or seventy books," he
cried, "were burnt. Castles were razed to the ground. Pictures were
stolen, including a whole set of reproductions of the works of Rubens in
the house of a baron; statues were broken; photogravures slashed; trees
cut down, gardens destroyed; women raped----"

"What did you say?" exclaimed the Costa Rican delegate, waking up
sharply.

"Women raped," repeated the Yugo-Slav firmly.

"Mr. President," cried the senior Guatemalan, leaping up in great
excitement, "I beg to move the following resolution: that this
Commission reaffirms its unshakable loyalty to the League of Nations,
expresses its sincere sympathies for the sufferings of the kingdom of
the Serb-Croat-Slovenes, and warmly invites the delegate of that kingdom
to submit photographs of the atrocities to which he has alluded."

"Mr. President," cried the delegate of San Salvador, "I beg to second
that resolution."

"Agreed, agreed!" shouted an enthusiastic chorus of Latin-American
voices.

The President, who had just reached the Seventh Heaven, nodded and
smiled. The Yugo-Slav burst into tears of emotion. The New Zealander
called across to the South African, "For God's sake, let's go and have
one. These swobs make me sick," and the two stalwart Colonials marched
out, followed hastily by the Australian.

It was some moments before the Yugo-Slav, mastering his manly sobs, was
able to thank the honourable delegates of Guatemala and San Salvador. He
held up a huge book.

"This book contains photographs," he said, "of the ruined castles of my
unhappy country."

"Only the castles?" asked the Venezuelan hopefully.

"Good God!" cried the Yugo-Slav. "Isn't that enough for you?"

"No!" replied the Latin-Americans in chorus.

The representative of the kingdom of the Serb-Croat-Slovenes was so
disgusted by this infidelity that he addressed himself sulkily to the
question on the agenda, the bubonic plague in the Far East.
Unfortunately the President, awaking at that moment, injected a dose of
heroin into his arm and briskly ruled the speaker out of order, and the
Commission broke up in confusion.

       *       *       *       *       *

But the important Commission was the one devoted to Disarmament. All the
senior delegates were represented upon it, and Donald stood in a crowd
upon the steps of the Secretariat one morning and watched them arrive.
The Frenchmen drove up in four magnificent Delage cars with the Tricolor
on the radiators; the Spaniards were in Hispano-Suizas, for to the
ignorant world the Hispano is even more Spanish than its name; the
Italians in Isotta-Fraschinis, with their secretaries in Fiats; the
Belgians in Minervas; while the Germans outdid everyone in vast silver
Mercds cars, driven by world-famous racing-drivers. The United States
official Observers were mostly in Packards, Chryslers, Graham-Paiges,
Willys-Knights, Buicks, Oldsmobiles, and Stutzes, and the Earl of
Osbaldestone and his two chief colleagues came in a four-wheel cab, and
his secretaries, Mr. Carteret-Pendragon, Mr. Carshalton-Stanbury, and
Mr. Woldingham-Uffington, walked.

Fortunately the prestige of British motor manufacturers was well
maintained by the eleven Rolls-Royces, with real tortoiseshell bodies
and gold bonnets, specially brought over from England by the Right
Honourable Lieutenant-General the Maharajah of Hyderadore.

Donald attended several of the debates of the Disarmament Commission and
listened to a masterly speech, lasting nearly an hour and
three-quarters, in which the Earl of Osbaldestone explained that Great
Britain had no special views on the burning question of the reduction
and limitation of the output of nails for the horseshoes of cavalry
horses, and to the superb oration by the French Foreign Minister which
proved, to the complete satisfaction of Poland, Roumania,
Czecho-Slovakia, and Yugo-Slavia, that a reduction of cavalry
horseshoe-nails would be to France the equivalent of the withdrawal from
the Vosges, the surrender of Metz, and the abandonment of conscription.
His peroration, ending with the immortal words, "The France of
Charlemagne, of Gambetta, of Boulanger, the France of the 22nd of
October, the France of the 18th of November, and the France of the 4th
of March, is built upon the nails of her immortal horses," drew thunders
of applause.

He was followed by a Roumanian lady who descanted a good deal upon the
beauties of dawn coming over distant mountain-tops, and whose hand was
admiringly kissed at the end of her speech by numbers of swarthy
delegates, and she was followed by a small Lithuanian who pointed out in
a squeaky voice that the whole question of horseshoes, and nails for
horseshoes, was inextricably bound up with the act of dastardly
brigandage by which Poland had stolen the ancient Lithuanian capital of
Vilna. At this point an unseemly commotion was caused by a loud burst of
laughter from a group consisting of the South African representative,
the second Indian delegate, and a United States Observer, to whom the
Foreign Minister of the Irish Free State had just whispered a vulgar
story. The Vice-Chairman, a courtly Chinese, saved the situation by
springing to his feet and saying, in slow but perfect French,
"Honourable gentlemen and ladies of the Commission, of which I have the
honour unworthily to act as Vice-Chairman, I would crave the permission
of you all to put the following consideration before you. The hour is
now a quarter to 2, and we have laboured long and earnestly this morning
in the cause that we all have at heart, and I would put it to you, in
all deference and submission, that the time is at hand when we must
decide whether to adjourn now for midday refreshment and resume our
task, our so important task, with redoubled vigour later in the day, or
whether to continue without rest or interval until we have settled this
problem while it is fresh in our minds. I submit, most honourable ladies
and gentlemen of the Commission, that we should now come to a decision
upon this matter. I will ask the most honourable interpreter to render
into English the poor observations which I have had the honour to
address to you."

He bowed with old-world grace to right and to left and sat down. The
interpreter, a rosy youth whose knowledge of languages was only equalled
by the profundity of his thirst, sprang to his feet eagerly and said in
a loud voice, "The Vice-Chairman says that if we don't stop now we'll be
late for lunch," and, snapping an elastic band round his note-book, he
thrust it under his arm and walked out of the room. There was a helpless
pause for a moment or two, and then the delegates, in ones and twos,
headed by the British Dominions, streamed out into the corridor.

The third week of the Assembly was a dull week for Donald and also for
Sir Henry Wootton. Sir Henry had made his two speeches and had found no
difficulty in keeping to the lines laid down for him by Mr.
Carteret-Pendragon. Indeed, his two speeches were so very like each
other, and were so carefully phrased in order to avoid giving the
impression that Great Britain took any very strong interest in anything,
that by a secretarial error the speech against the traffic in Synthetic
Beer was printed in the section of the official report relating to
Houses of Ill-Repute, and vice versa, and no one noticed that anything
was wrong.

But after the two speeches had been delivered there was nothing more to
be done.

Donald found that the other private secretaries attached to the
delegation were in the same position. Their chiefs had each made their
two speeches and their work was finished.

The fourth and last week was a little better, as there was a general
inclination to return to lunch-parties, bathing, yachting, and discreet
little dinners by starlight. Peace-makers, no less than warriors, need
relaxation.

During this last week, part of Donald's duties was to entertain Sir
Henry Wootton's sister and brother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Fielding, who
were visiting Geneva to watch the League at work. Mr. Fielding, a man of
about sixty, who looked like a farmer and talked almost as charmingly
and learnedly as the great Mr. Charles Ossory himself, took a great
fancy to Donald, and, by some mysterious process of unobtrusive
questioning, succeeded in extracting from him the secret of his book
about England.

Mr. Fielding was both sympathetic and enthusiastic, and insisted that
Donald should visit them in their Buckinghamshire home later in the
year.

"No foreigner can understand England, Cameron," he said, "until he's
seen Buckinghamshire."

The final sessions of the Assembly were held. The last item on the
agenda, the election of the Council, was taken, and a six-hour ballot
resulted in the reelection of the entire Council with the exception that
San Domingo took the place of Haiti. The last speeches were made. The
last tributes to the peaceful ideals of France were paid by the Foreign
Ministers of Poland, Roumania, Czecho-Slovakia, and Yugo-Slavia, and the
delegates slipped away. The tumult and the oratory died.

Donald, sitting in his sleeper in the Paris express as it pulled out of
Bellegarde, the Swiss-French frontier station, ran over in his mind the
result of the four weeks' entertainment at which he had assisted, and
checked off on a sheet of paper the results that had been achieved. He
was flabbergasted to discover that there was hardly a man, woman, or
child on the surface of the globe whose lives would not be affected for
the better by the plans laid, schemes evolved or furthered, and measures
taken during those four weeks. But how these results had been achieved,
and when, and by whom, he was utterly unable to say. He was also utterly
unable to detect how the English had gone about their inscrutable and
mysterious paths their wonders to perform. In his complete bafflement he
could only fall back upon the old truism, _ars est celare artem_, and
conclude, as the world for centuries has concluded, that in the realms
of international affairs the English are the supreme artists.




CHAPTER X


For a week or two, life in Royal Avenue was rather flat after Geneva.
There was a constraint about it, a sort of grey dullness. London was
formal, solid, relentlessly matter-of-fact. No one sat on wicker chairs
on the pavements at 9.30 A.M. drinking sticky drinks, green and orange
and purple; there were no public places to dance in all night and no one
danced even until 3 o'clock in the morning, except people who could
afford to patronize the large hotels, or rather who were told over and
over again by their publicity agents that they couldn't afford not to
patronize the large hotels; no one published paper-covered novels at a
shilling; no one sold magazines full of pictures of lovely ladies in
chemises and shoes, or alternatively silk stockings and earrings; no one
seemed to enjoy themselves, and the sun never shone.

The cricket season was over, and the great English sporting public had
settled down to the contemplation of professional football. Vast crowds
poured down the King's Road and the Fulham Road every Saturday afternoon
to see the matches at the Craven Bridge ground. Donald went once, partly
to watch the mighty, cloth-capped heart of England, sixty thousand
strong, thronging the terraces of the arena, cheering on their heroes
and hurling good-natured abuse at the referee, and partly because a
famous fellow-countryman was due to visit the Walham Green Wanderers on
behalf of the West Riding United Football Club in the North of England.
This was no less a personage than the great Mr. Jock Thompson, captain
and centre-forward of Scotland, possessor of sixteen international caps.
Mr. Thompson had for several years captained the West Riding United, and
when that team came to Craven Bridge, Donald felt that he owed it to a
compatriot to spring a bob and attend the match.

He was well rewarded, for Mr. Thompson displayed all the wizardry which
had raised him to the top of the football tree, and by much swerving,
dodging, feinting, and dribbling he scored three inimitable goals and
brought victory to his team. No captain can do more. It is true that on
that very morning protracted negotiations between the managements of
West Riding United and Walham Green Wanderers had been brought to a
satisfactory conclusion, and Mr. Jock Thompson had left the former and
joined the latter, on consideration of a trifle of fourteen thousand
pounds paid by the latter to the former; and it is also true that at 1
o'clock on that very day, a special meeting of directors of the Walham
Green Wanderers Football Club had unanimously elected Mr. Thompson to be
captain of the Walham Green eleven. The fact remains that Mr. Thompson
gave a superb display and won the match for his side, an exhibition of
team-spirit and loyalty, felt Donald, that could not have been surpassed
even by cricketers.

An incident that enlivened the tedium of those October weeks was the
barefaced burglary of the Royal Avenue house. A man had come to the door
and had represented himself to be an official of the Gas, Light, and
Coke Company. Being young, with curly brown hair and a plausible manner,
he had been cordially welcomed by Gwladys, and had requited her feminine
trustfulness by marching off with a suitcase full of clothes, boots,
hairbrushes, antimacassars, and a number of other valueless
knick-knacks, his plausibility being vastly in excess of his artistic
taste or his sense of values. The police were very sympathetic and
charming. It was Donald's first personal contact with the London
policeman, and he was greatly impressed. For civility and intelligence
they came up to everything which he had heard about them, and if they
did not actually succeed in apprehending the thief, their thoroughness
and business-like methods would undoubtedly have caused him grave alarm
had he chanced to remain in the vicinity. Indeed there is little doubt
that they would have actually caught him red-handed, if it had not been
for the extraordinary and unforeseen coincidence by which all the four
policemen who were in Royal Avenue at the moment of the burglary
happened to be occupied with other matters of importance to the
maintenance of order. For one was at the end of the Avenue, where it
joins the King's Road, directing the flow of traffic and maintaining His
Majesty's highway for His Majesty's lieges. A second, in the Avenue
itself, was attempting to discover, by means of a little reference book,
the whereabouts of the particular one of London's twenty-three
Gloucester Roads that a venerable and partly-paralysed Frenchman was
trying to get to in a mechanical bath-chair. A third, almost opposite
the scene of the audacious crime, was tying up with a bit of string,
which he had unearthed from among his draperies, an ancient perambulator
which had come to pieces under the strain of a load of howling triplets;
while the fourth was entering up in a tiny note-book with a stub of
blunt pencil, the particulars of the life, parentage, birthplace, age,
profession, residence, place of business, religious denomination, number
of children, driving-licence number, and other relevant particulars, of
a miscreant whose motor-car carried number-plates that were at least
three-quarters of an inch larger than the regulation size.

The guardians of the law were thus fully occupied at the moment of the
dastardly outrage, and Gwladys was never called upon to testify, coyly,
in a witness-box to the identity of the curly-haired young man who had
smiled upon her so fetchingly.

       *       *       *       *       *

Donald's main distraction during this period of stagnation was
theatre-going on behalf of Mr. Ogilvy. For Mr. Ogilvy, the
Napoleon-jawed editor, was temporarily lacking the services of his
dramatic critic, Mr. Rupert Harcourt, who for some quite inscrutable
reason had had a fit of artistic tantrums and had thrown a raw tomato at
Mr. Ogilvy and, being a poet, had fortunately missed him (although the
range was only seven feet and a few inches), and had departed in a
temper to Capri.

Mr. Ogilvy bore no malice. Poets would be poets. There wasn't half
enough picturesqueness in life nowadays anyway, thought Mr. Ogilvy, and
even the smallest originality was a godsend in an era of beastly
standardization.

So Mr. Harcourt retired to Capri and bought five hundred litres of white
wine and a two-piece bathing-suit, and Donald visited the theatres of
London in his stead. It was a curious experience, and, at first, he
found it almost impossible to get any sort of notion about the state of
what is usually called the English Drama. For one thing Donald was very
unsophisticated about many phases of life, and the stage was one of
them. Any sort of theatre gave him a thrill before ever the curtain went
up, so that dramatists started with a big advantage so far as he was
concerned. His experience of theatre-going was limited to pre-War
Christmas visits to Aberdeen of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, led by
Henry Lytton and the divine Miss Clara Dow; and, during the War, an
occasional comedy or revue. So that, at the period when Mr. Ogilvy was
dodging tomatoes at a range of seven feet and a few inches, a play would
have had to be a very bad play indeed to have displeased Donald.

Another thing which made it difficult for him to get his perspective
right was the universally acknowledged fact that the English Drama, as
acted in London, is the lowest form of theatrical art in the world,
because the Public will only go to visit trash and would religiously
boycott any of the really first-class plays which are growing dustier
and dustier in the cupboards of disillusioned playwrights, even if any
manager was so insane as to produce them on the commercial stage. It is
left, Donald soon discovered, to Societies, Clubs, Groups of Intelligent
Theatre-Lovers, and Private Associations of Patrons of the Drama to
produce these first-class plays on Sunday evenings for one performance
only. Hardly a Sunday in the year goes by without the appearance of a
masterpiece by Pirandello, Kaiser, Toller, Tchehov, Savoir, Lenormand,
Martinez Sierra, or Jean Jacques Bernard, dazzling the eyes for a single
day and then dying like the may-fly. Sundays have been on which no fewer
than three separate Clubs or Societies have been performing Kaiser's
_From Morn to Midnight_, while on five Sundays out of eight in February
and March of one year it was possible to see Toller's _Hoppla_. Donald,
who was conscientious and painstaking, spent a lot of time in the
Chelsea Free Library going through the files of _The Times_ and the
_Manchester Guardian_ in order to learn the technique of dramatic
criticism from the two heads of the craft, Mr. Morgan and Mr. Brown, and
he was surprised to discover that in the first seven years of the Peace,
twenty-eight of these Sunday Producing Societies had been formed, and
that of these twenty-eight, no fewer than twenty-three had started their
career with Pirandello's _Six Characters in Search of an Author_.

It was to these Sunday performances of dramatic masterpieces that Donald
was looking forward with especial eagerness. He was quite ready to put
up with any number of adulteries and murders and high-kicks during the
week for the sake of the works of genius, and it was with a real thrill
that he presented himself one Sunday evening, thirty-three minutes
before the scheduled hour, at the theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue where he
was to see, for the first time, a dramatic masterpiece.

There was no orchestra, and the audience came filtering into the stalls
in a queer silence, broken only by the gay greetings of celebrities. For
each member of the Club seemed determined to recognize, and be
recognized by, as many fellow-members as possible. It was almost like a
competition, so fiercely did the necks twist, the eyes wander, and the
lorgnettes focus. Sixteen people, all total strangers, bowed to Donald,
and one man, an elderly, baldish bird with an eyeglass, went so far as
to rise in his seat in order to bow more impressively. Donald blinked
nervously and tried to nod in such a way that, if he really had met the
other party somewhere, the movement would pass for a greeting and, if
not, for a twinge of rheumatism in the neck. But the strain became too
great, and after a bit Donald concentrated passionately upon his
programme.

The piece to be given was the translation of a German masterpiece by
Herr Rumpel-Stilzchen, the great exponent of the new Illusionist
Symbolism, and it appeared from the programme that the scene was laid
throughout in a gallery of a salt-mine in Upper Silesia. It was called,
simply, _The Perpetuation of Eternity_. The producer was Herr von
Pmpernikkel, described on the back of the programme as "the Rheinhardt
of Mecklenburg-Schwerin," and the incidental choreography was by Dripp.
Donald was just wondering what part choreography played in life in
Upper Silesian salt-mines when a gong was struck somewhere in the
theatre and the lights went out. A pause of seven or eight minutes
followed, and then the curtain rose, revealing the eagerly awaited
gallery and the exquisite lighting effects of von Pmpernikkel, although
actually the latter were not easily detectable at first, as the play
opened in complete darkness, and for twenty minutes continued in
complete darkness. This period of twenty minutes was occupied by a
soliloquy by the Spirit of Polish Maternity which, in Rumpel-Stilzchen's
original, was written in Polish. The translators, in order to preserve
the sense of strangeness, of exoticism, had, rather cleverly, translated
this part into Italian, and the delivery of the soliloquy was punctuated
by frequent bursts of applause from those of the audience, apparently
about one hundred per cent, who understood Italian. This applause grew
more and more marked in emphasis and volume as von Pmpernikkel's
lighting gradually illumined the stage and it became possible to
distinguish, even as far as the back rows of the stalls, between those
who did, and those who did not, pick up the finer points of the Italian
language. It appeared that Donald alone did not, until a big, burly man
with a sardonic look on his face, who was sitting by himself a few seats
away, observed loudly, "Beastly peasant dialect," whereupon everyone
within ear-shot of him stopped applauding and sneered vigorously. At the
end of the soliloquy the lights, now flooding the stage with alternate
purple and green, lit up the backs of a row of salt-workers who dug and
chanted dismally as they worked. The foreman of the gallery then came
forward and shot two of the workers, whether for bad chanting or for bad
digging was not made clear, and immediately all the lights went out
except for an illuminated screen of salt background upon which was
thrown a cinematograph-picture of New York skyscrapers as observed from
a Zeppelin. Then the Chrysler Building and the Woolworth Building and
the rest of them vanished suddenly and were followed by a ten-minute
reel from the Oberammergau Passion play, during which a negro with a
megaphone, stationed in the wings, sang with great gusto a song that was
popular during the War and was called, "When that Midnight Choo-choo
leaves for Alabam." The curtain came down on the end of the second verse
and the middle of The Last Supper. Subdued but sincere clapping greeted
the end of the act, and the more senior of the critics went moodily out
for drinks.

The second, third, fourth, and fifth and last acts were packed as full
as the first with Illusionist Symbolism of the same brilliance and
irony. It need only be said that among the "effects" was the murder by
the salt-workers of a preference-shareholder of Cerebos Salt, Ltd., by
throwing him into a quartz-crushing machine; the tragedy of his final
screams, as his top-hat and mother-of-pearl-knobbed cane were sucked
into the instrument like the last petals of a rose down a drain, was
intensified by a most dramatic "throw-back" to the shareholder's early
boyhood with his dear old father, a town councillor of Hesse-Darmstadt,
and his dear old mother, the town councillor's wife, who both drank a
good deal of light lager and crooned some folk-songs. There was also a
long scene of great poignancy between the Spirit of Irony and the Soul
of Upper Silesia, during which the League of Nations came in for some
nasty knocks, and there was a powerful bit of the most modern sort of
Symbolism in which a salt-digger's mistress was confronted with a lot of
the Thoughts which she would have thought if she had been, instead, a
champion tricyclist. And Dripp's choreography turned out to be the Dance
of Mourners at the Funeral of a Demented House-Agent, said to be
symbolical of the housing shortage during 1925 and 1926 in the Silesian
towns of Kattowitz and Breslau.

In short, _The Perpetuation of Eternity_ was, as one of the penny
dailies said next morning, the most arresting piece of thought-provoking
symbolism that had been produced since Ernst Toller's _Hoppla_ had been
staged on the previous Sunday, or since Pirandello's _Six Characters in
Search of an Author_ on the last Sunday but two. _The Times_ gave it
three-quarters of a column, but Mr. Brown, to Donald's amazement, called
it "a turgid Dripp from the village Pmpernikkel," and enquired "If this
is Upper Silesia, what can Lower be like?"

Donald gave it a guarded notice in Mr. Ogilvy's paper.

On the Monday evening of the same week he went to the first night of a
play which dealt with adultery against a background of Spiritualism, and
a pair of youthful lovers who filled up the gaps with some ingenuous
love-making. On the Tuesday, the subject of the play was adultery in
the Straits Settlements and the successful love-making of two young
jolly things, and on the Wednesday it was adultery in Mayfair with a lot
of epigrams, and the two young jolly things. On Thursday there was a
clash of two first-nights, and Donald had the choice of adultery among
vegetarians and adultery among exponents of Simplified Spelling, and
chose the latter by tossing for it. There was nothing on the Friday and
Saturday, a translation from Lenormand on the Sunday, all about Freud
and Jung and Oedipus, and on Monday an Edgar Wallace, full of blue
lights and blackmailers and fun.

The petulant poet remained in Capri for five weeks and came back as
brown as a berry, in the best of tempers. He had completely forgotten
the episode of the tomato, and Mr. Ogilvy said nothing about it and
welcomed him back to his post. Donald during the five weeks had visited
the theatre thirty-one times and come to a rather curious conclusion
about what is called "the English Theatre-Going Public." It was this:
that the T.-G.P. will often flock to see a bad play provided it makes
them laugh or makes them frightened--a real comedian or an ambush in
Chinatown is always a winner. It will sometimes flock to see a bad play
provided it is a mass of sentimentality. The old melodramas of the bad,
bold Bart., and the last-minute redemption of the mortgage or discovery
of the marriage-lines, had their roots very deep in the simple Teutonic
Soul of London, and often survive triumphantly to this day if they are
decked out in an up-to-date setting. It--that is, the T.-G.P.--will
almost always go to see a good play, by which Donald meant a play that
is good as a play and not as a poem, or as a piece of symbolism, or as a
cinematograph, or as an essential transference of the plastic arts to
histrionics, or as an interpretation of a mood, or as political
propaganda, or as divorce propaganda, or as birth-control, pacifist,
prohibitionist, nationalist, internationalist, bimetallist,
spiritualist, economist, Bolshevist, or Fascist or any other sort of
propaganda. But if a play is good as a play, then the T.-G.P. will go to
see it.

And finally, Donald concluded that it would have nothing to do with
pretentiousness. A low-brow sitting upon a pork pie or falling into a
bran-tub would send it into an ecstasy of merriment; a high-brow doing
his best would arouse respectful admiration; but a donkey aping the wise
man, or a dull man aping the genius, was always detected by some curious
working of mass instinct and utterly and crushingly ignored. And that
was why, Donald reflected, Kaiser and Toller and the rest of them could
only be acted in front of Societies and Clubs consisting of people who
wanted to write like Kaiser and Toller and the rest of them. But the men
and women who wrote real plays had no fear of presenting them to the
Theatre-Going Public.

"What an inscrutable people are these English," thought Donald, "for
they do not like Lenormand."




CHAPTER XI


Life in London on four hundred pounds a year was in many ways pleasanter
than life on a wind-swept Buchan farm in winter. There was no early
rising as in the farming days at Balspindie, when a farm lassie brought
the morning cup of tea and bowl of porridge punctually at 5 o'clock.
There was no worrying about the absence or the excessiveness of rain, no
anxious study of fluctuating prices of corn and turnips and potatoes, no
depressing certainty each year that, whatever the weather or the prices,
financial ruin was inevitable. Donald still subscribed to the _Aberdeen
Press and Journal_, a new amalgamation of the famous old pair, the
_Aberdeen Free Press_ and the _Aberdeen Daily Journal_, and he read
every week the mournful prognostications of the farming industry, which
was clearly on its last legs. The tenant of Balspindie, wrote the D.S.O.
advocate from Golden Square, had a melancholy tale of woe to tell when
he came in on the first of every month to pay the rent. The advocate,
however, guardedly advised Donald not to worry too much about it, for he
added that the tenant had just bought a new Morris saloon car and had
been overheard, in an incautious moment in the bar of the Imperial
Hotel, to remark to a crony that, taking everything all round, by and
large, it was just conceivably possible that a man of exceptionally
powerful brain might be able to imagine a state of things just a
fraction worse than they were at present. Anyway, the tenant was safe
for the rent, and that was the main thing.

Donald, therefore, had no cares and anxieties. A net income of four
hundred pounds, if properly handled, means complete independence for a
young man in London. For London can be either the most expensive or the
cheapest city in Europe, and four hundred pounds can be made to go a
long way. There was also a little money to be made by occasional
reviewing for Mr. Ogilvy and even for the great Mr. William Hodge
himself. On one occasion a parcel arrived at Royal Avenue from Mr.
Hodge, containing a six-volume interpretation of the Buddhist religion
by a Burmese professor at the University of Minneapolis, with a pencil
scrawl from Mr. Hodge asking for a thousand words about it before the
following Friday. Donald, who was a conscientious soul, rushed off in a
panic to Mr. Hodge's office and protested that he was totally unfit to
undertake such a task.

"Why?" demanded Mr. Hodge.

"Because--I--I--know nothing about the Buddhist religion," faltered
Donald.

"You will by the time you've read those six volumes," replied Mr. Hodge
grimly, putting on a grey top-hat and going out.

But Mr. Hodge must have liked Donald's conscientiousness, for he sent
him fairly frequent parcels after that, on such subjects as the
Civilization of the Andes, Rambles in old Perugia, Ten Days in Soviet
Russia, Is the Soul Immortal? the Fundamental Principles of Rugby
Football, and Some Notes upon Surrey Rock-Gardens.

All of these Donald read carefully and reviewed carefully, resisting
with stern determination the immoral advice of Mr. Harcourt on the
subject of reviewing.

"Read the publisher's jacket first," said Mr. Harcourt, preaching his
scandalous gospel. "That will usually give you the author's name and
some sort of idea of what the book is about. If the jacket says that the
book is an illuminating, unique, sensational, thought-provoking expos
from within of the political situation in Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia, then
the odds are about three to one that the book is about Sub-Carpathian
Ruthenia. About once in four times they put the wrong cover on and you
find that it's a book of short stories called _Tikkity-Tonk, Old Fish!_
or a reprint of the Epistle to the Romans, but more often than not they
get it right. Very well, then. You've got the subject. You then look at
the index of chapters. That gives you the scope of the book, shows you
whether it covers the religious question, or gives a list of the hotels,
or has a bit about peasant costumes, or goes in for trade statistics, or
touches upon the proportion of illegitimate to legitimate kids, or
sketches the history of the place since Attila, and so on. By this time
you've got the whole substance of the book and then all you've got to do
is to read the last two paragraphs of the last chapter, to see whether
the author thinks the Sub-Carpathian Ruthenians are good eggs or bad
eggs, and there you are."

But Donald refused to subscribe to this pernicious doctrine, and
steadily ploughed his way from cover to cover of each book that was sent
to him, and his reviews, if not flashy or full of epigrams, at least
arrived punctually; which is much more important from the editorial
point of view than all the epigrams that ever were stolen by the
twentieth-century reviewers from Wilde, and by Wilde from Whistler, and
by Whistler from Octave Mirbeau.

Mr. Ogilvy usually sent novels for review, and Donald slogged through
some pretty fearful stuff during these months. But the titles fascinated
him, and he wrote a short article, and got it accepted by a literary
weekly, on the trend of fashion in novel-titles. He himself had entered
the literary profession just as one fashion was giving way to another.
The dying mode had dealt in vigorous, slashing, totally irrelevant names
such as _The Charioteers caught Soul, Rat-riddled, bilge-bestank_ (an
exquisite long-short story of a modern Aucassin and Nicolette), and
_Shame, shame, Belshazzar!_ The new fashion was more shadowy and elusive
and emasculate, like faded ladies or very modern poets, and Donald had
to review a lot of books with names like _And she said so too, So they
all went on, It was rather a Pity, hein?_ and _He shrugged; he had to_.

On Sundays Donald usually went for long walks in the deserted City of
London, that queer centre of the financial world with its week-day
population of half a million desperate workers and its week-end
population of ten thousand caretakers and ten thousand sleepy cats. It
was at about this period that the Church of England, alive at last to
the ever-increasing spread of the insidious tentacles of the Church of
Rome, was forging the thunderous counter-stroke that was to revivify
Anglicanism and startle the world. The Monk of Wittenberg himself could
have devised no more tremendous _coup de main_, or in the circumstances,
perhaps, the words _plzlicher Anfall_ are more suitable, than the
proposal to pull down the churches with which Sir Christopher Wren
clogged and cluttered the financial heart of the world, to deconsecrate
the sites, and to sell them to the Real Estate Corporations which
offered the highest bids, and to devote the proceeds to the organization
of another crusade against the Scarlet Woman of the Seven Hills.

Donald spent many happy Saturday afternoons--for they are usually closed
on Sundays--in visiting these churches before it should be too late. And
even after the officious interference of amateur busybodies,
Architectural Clubs, painters, poets, architects, Societies for
Preserving Ancient Buildings, Members of Parliament, Real Estate
Corporations which were temporarily embarrassed for ready money, and
scores of other individuals and associations, all, obviously, in close
touch with the Vatican, had for the time being succeeded in obstructing
the demolitions, he did not feel that he had wasted his time.

For nowhere else but in England's capital are there spires like those
tapering silver arrows of English stone, shell-incrusted, sea-worn,
glittering in the sunlight with ten thousand sparkles of tiny diamonds.
English churches, built of English stone, by an Englishman, a kindly,
poetical man, full of laughter, they were raised for the English people
to follow their faith, not torn, like the great cathedrals, by violence
and theft from Rome.

Another kindly man, a poet, full of laughter, an Englishman, has written
somewhere:

    Sir Christopher came to the field of the fire,
    And graced it with spire
    And nave and choir
    Careful column and carven tire,
      That the ships coming up from the sea
    Should hail where the Wards from Ludgate fall
    A coronal cluster of steeples tall,
    All Hallows, Barking, and by the Wall,
    St. Bride, St. Swithin,
    St. Catherine Coleman,
    St. Margaret Pattens,
    St. Mary-le-Bow,
    St. Nicholas Cole Abbey,
    St. Alban, Wood Street,
    St. Magnus the Martyr,
    St. Edmund the King,
    Whose names like a chime so sweetly call,
    AND HIGH OVER ALL
    THE CROSS AND THE BALL
    ON THE RIDING REDOUBTABLE DOME OF PAUL.

Only one trivial incident marred the pleasant passing of that first
winter in London. One morning at about 9 o'clock, when he was setting
out on one of these solitary excursions, Donald got a most painful
fright--the most painful, in fact, since the occasion some years before
when an eight-inch shell, having failed either to enter the earth or to
explode, skipped and slithered along the surface of the ground and came
to rest, like a huge, silvery, glistening white-hot salmon, a yard in
front of him. To this day Donald swears that it winked at him. On this
second occasion, in London, he felt the same clutch at his heart, the
same dryness of the roof of his mouth, the same cold feeling all over
his body. For in the King's Road stood three newspaper boys, with long
gloomy faces and not even the heart to cry their wares. The first bore a
white placard on which was planted in red letters and black letters:

_EVENING NEWS_

ENGLAND
OVERWHELMED
WITH DISASTER

_Late Special_

The second bore a yellow placard on which was printed in black letters:

_STAR_

IS

ENGLAND

DOOMED?

_Late Special_

The third bore a white placard on which was printed in black and red
letters:

_EVENING STANDARD_

COLLAPSE

OF

ENGLAND

_Late Special_

Queues of men were standing in front of the boys, digging into their
pockets for coins, snatching at the papers, and then stumbling away with
ashen faces and quivering lips. Donald, almost numb with the cold of
sheer panic, took his place in the queue. The man in front of him held
out a shilling and would not even wait for the change. He grabbed the
_Star_, glanced at it, exclaimed "Oh, God!" and reeled drunkenly away,
cannoning into passers-by and bumping into a shop-window, his eyes
devouring the stop-press news as he went. Donald only just succeeded in
retaining his native prudence sufficiently to present a penny rather
than a shilling, and drew aside with his paper from the jostling crowd.

There was no difficulty about discovering what the _Star_ was trying to
convey. There was the giant headline--IS ENGLAND DOOMED?--splashed right
across the page, and under it the smaller amplifying headlines, and even
they were half an inch high:

MAILEY FINDS A SPOT

DEVASTATING ATTACK AT MELBOURNE

HOBBS OUT FIRST BALL: HEARNE 9, WOOLLEY 0

ENGLAND'S APPALLING DEBACLE

CAN HENDREN SAVE US?

In the Underground at Sloane Square Station an elderly man in a top-hat
and black, velvet-collared overcoat, with an elegant long white
moustache, and carrying a rolled-up silk umbrella, said fiercely to
Donald, "It all comes of treating it as a game. We don't take things
seriously enough in this country, sir, damnation take it all," and he
stepped heavily upon the toes of a humble, clerkly-looking person behind
him.

Donald slipped away to another part of the train and read the sad story
of England's shame in the Second Test Match against Australia at
Melbourne.

       *       *       *       *       *

Another interesting experience of this period was a visit to the Rugby
Football Ground at Twickenham to see the Oxford and Cambridge Rugby
Football Match. At about midday on a warm, misty, winter's day Donald
went to Waterloo Station and secured a place with eleven other
passengers in a third-class railway carriage, having bumped and
struggled his way through mobs of young men all looking exactly like
each other except that no two of them wore the same coloured scarves or
ties.

After about three-quarters of an hour, he reached Twickenham and lunched
at an inn upon beer and bread and cheese, and at 1.45 P.M. found his
place in an enormous grand stand and stared down at the bright green
turf so far below. The sun was making a last sickly attempt to pierce
the gathering mists, and shed a kind of pallid benevolence upon the
rapidly filling stands. But the game did not begin for another hour, and
by the time that sixty-five thousand spectators, of whom about thirty
thousand appeared to be young men, thirty thousand young women, and five
thousand parsons, had packed themselves into their places, the sun had
long ago given up the unequal struggle, the mists were massing darkly in
the north and east, and a slight drizzle was coming down.

The players ran out to the accompaniment of frenzied cheers and
counter-cheers, kicked a ball about smartly for a minute or two, sat
down for the photographers, stood up for the Prince of Wales, and then
set to work.

By half-time the rain was pouring steadily down, the lovely green of the
ground was a dark quagmire, the players were indistinguishable from one
another, and before the end of the game the gloom of winter twilight had
so enveloped the ground that it was impossible for the spectators to see
more than twenty or thirty yards.

After the match was over, the sixty-five thousand spectators formed
themselves into a single mighty queue, and set off at a slow shuffle
through the mud and rain in the direction of the station. Motor-cars,
with headlights flaring, crept along with the pedestrians. At the
entrance to the station a long delay took place while train after train
drew up at the platform, and railway officials with megaphones informed
the crowd, correctly, that the next train was a non-stop to Waterloo
and, incorrectly, that there was more room in front. Donald at last got
into a carriage with twenty-three others and had to stand for an hour
and five minutes, including a halt of twenty minutes outside Waterloo.
There were two schools of opinion in the carriage. One faction,
consisting of eleven young men with bedraggled light-blue favours and
one rather passionate urban dean, maintained warmly that Cambridge had
won by two goals, two tries, and a penalty goal against two tries, or
nineteen points to six. The rival group of partisans were handicapped by
internal dissensions, for seven of them were positive that Cambridge had
not scored at all, whereas they had definitely seen Oxford score three
tries, convert one of them, and also score a dropped goal, thus winning
by fifteen points to nil; while four of them knew for an
incontrovertible fact that Oxford had scored, in addition, three penalty
goals from penalties awarded, and rightly awarded, against Cambridge for
dirty play in the scrums.

It was only because they were tightly wedged into the carriage and none
of them could move hand or foot that prevented, so it seemed to Donald,
actual violence--certainly the urban dean's language was enough to
justify manslaughter--and he was astonished when the controversy
dissolved into hearty laughter and they all started chaffing the dean.
The dean's powers of repartee were quite devastating.

But all doubts were settled when the train at last pulled in to Waterloo
at 6.25, for the evening papers were being sold on the platforms with
the authoritative statement that the match had been drawn--each side
having scored one try, or three points each.

Two days later Donald went to the Chelsea ground at Stamford Bridge to
see Oxford play Cambridge at Association Football. The game began in
bright sunshine at 2 P.M. and was played throughout in bright sunshine.
A brilliantly open and fast match, resulting in a draw of three goals
each, was watched by four thousand silent spectators.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was during the winter also that Donald had a splendid opportunity of
studying the way in which the Englishman sets about his home politics.
He had watched at Geneva the methods of international diplomacy which
have planted the Union Jack upon all really desirable spots on the
surface of the globe and upon almost all the really valuable commodities
except quinine in Java, nitrates in Chile, and oil in Oklahoma--and the
failure to secure the third of these is considerably offset by the
corresponding absence from the Empire of the Oklahomans.

He was now able to examine the psychology of the Englishman when engaged
upon the task of operating the political machine which is at once the
envy and the model of most of the civilized world. For the Government of
the day, having been defeated by seven votes on a proposal to include
raisins in the sub-section of the Retail Prices (Control) Bill which
referred to currants, figs, dates, prunes, and dried apricots, decided
very naturally to treat the defeat as a vote of want of confidence in
their policy of Imperial Defence and Development, and, dissolving
Parliament, appealed to the suffrages of all right-thinking men and
women in the country. The Opposition, with a monstrous whoop of official
joy and secretly furious because they had never meant to defeat the
Government and were not ready for an election, also rushed into the fray
with a passionate appeal for the support of all right-thinking men and
women.

Donald was just wondering whether he should offer his services to one or
other of the headquarters in London as a canvasser or envelope-addresser
when he was delighted to receive a letter from his old Geneva chief, Sir
Henry Wootton, asking him to come down to East Anglia and help him in a
particularly tough fight against a young Socialist, an Independent
Labour Party man, who was a brilliant speaker and was already making
alarming headway by means of unscrupulous pledges which it would be
utterly impossible to redeem on this side of the millennium. Donald
packed a bag, called at the headquarters of the Conservative Party for a
bundle of leaflets, pamphlets, handbooks, and notes for speakers, and
took the next train for Lincolnshire.

Sir Henry's constituency consisted of Eldonborough, a town of about
fifty thousand inhabitants, and a tract of village-dotted country round
it. There were many votes in the villages, but they were harder to work
than the compact town, and both candidates were concentrating upon
Eldonborough.

Donald found Sir Henry in the Crown Hotel, opposite his official
headquarters which were in the Conservative Club, and after a warm
welcome, was handed over to the Conservative agent, Commander Blinker,
late R.N., for instructions. Commander Blinker was every inch a sailor.
He had a clear eye, a healthy skin, a loud voice, and a breezy manner.

"Joined for duty, eh?" he shouted, as if it was blowing a tidy gale in
the lounge of the Crown, at the same time hitting Donald a fearful clap
between the shoulders. "That's fine. We want everyone we can get if
we're going to down these damned Reds. What about a spot of talky-talky,
eh? Platform stuff. You know--thumping the old soap-box."

"I'll do anything you like," said Donald nervously. He was rather
alarmed by this nautical gustiness of manner.

"That's great!" roared the mariner. "First-class bundobust. We'll put
you up to-morrow at the iron-works at tiffin-time. Have you got the hang
of our dope?"

Donald pulled out his sheaf of literature from his various pockets, but
the gallant Commander waved it all aside.

"You needn't worry about that," he cried. "You don't need facts or any
tommy-rot of that sort. You stick to our three planks. One--the Empire
first, foremost, and all the time. Two--down with the Reds. Three--Work
for the Unemployed."

"Have we--I mean--are there--is there any stuff about how we're going to
find work for the Unemployed?" ventured Donald.

Commander Blinker looked at him in astonishment.

"By backing up the Empire, of course," he bawled, and added, "That and
the abolition of the dole. And now I must vamoose, old chap. Are you
going to berth down here? Good. Then I'll give you your sailing-orders
to-morrow. So long," and the jolly tar dashed off to continue elsewhere
his organization of victory.

That evening, his duties having not yet begun, Donald attended a
Conservative meeting in the Eldonborough Corn Exchange. There were about
a thousand people present and there was no fewer than forty-two Union
Jacks tastefully draped, some the right way up, some upside down, and
some sideways, on the platform and the walls. An immense mezzotint of
Mr. Gladstone hung on the wall behind the chairman, for there was no
Liberal candidate and it was of paramount importance to catch the votes
of all right-thinking Liberals.

The chairman, a stout, genial man, started the proceedings by stating
humorously that the first duty of a chairman was to stand up, shut up,
and sit down, but there were just one or two things he wanted to say.
After explaining that he was only going to say those one or two things
very briefly, and explaining why he was going to be brief, and coining
the delightful epigram that, after all, brevity was the soul of wit, and
adding that if he wasn't brief a lot of the candidate's valuable time
would be wasted and they all knew what a busy man a candidate was, and
especially such a good candidate as they had got in their old and
trusted Member who was, if the ladies would pardon the expression,
damned well going to be their Member again, the chairman then got down
to the main body of his brief introductory remarks, and told a story
about an Irishman whom he happened to know personally; a story which, he
thought, was a very good illustration of the sterling merits of the
Conservative Party, which after all had always been the true friend of
Ireland, and of the affection which it inspired in all sections of the
British public. The chairman sat down about twenty minutes later, and
then, amid loud applause and the singing of "For he's a jolly good
fellow," led by the stentorian Commander Blinker, Sir Henry got up
beaming with benevolence all over his kindly face, and told them a story
about an Aberdonian and a Jew, and after that said that he stood for the
Empire and the dear old flag, and that he, at any rate, wasn't going to
kowtow to any dirty crew of Bolshies in Moscow who never washed their
necks, and said that what he meant to say, and he said it with all the
emphasis at his command, frankly and definitely, was that he was in
favour of the most stringent economy consistent with the immediate
launching of twenty new cruisers to protect the trade routes of our
far-flung Empire, that he was in favour of the abolition of the dole
which was sapping their British manhood, that he was in favour of work
for all, and against the policy of scuttle in India. He then launched
upon a denunciation of Free Trade, which he wittily described in rather
daring biblical language as an "outworn shibboleth," but was abruptly
pulled up by the vigilant Blinker, who whispered, in a whisper like a
steam-riveter at work, that the Liberal and Free-Trade vote was of
paramount importance.

Sir Henry stopped at once and sat down amid prolonged cheering, but
Donald was in an agony of nervous apprehension. He was sincerely fond of
Sir Henry. He liked him and respected him as a kindly gentleman. But
never in his life had he listened to such an appallingly bad speech, or
one that more pathetically asked to be torn to shreds of ridicule by
hecklers. Donald hid his perspiring face in his hands. He simply could
not bear to watch the public humiliation of a friend. He cursed himself
for having come to the meeting, for having come to Eldonborough at all.
Now it was beginning--the chairman was asking for questions--the
humiliation was about to start--yes, there was the first one--a snorter
too.

"Mr. Chairman, when the candidate says he is in favour of work for all,
how does he propose to provide it?"

Donald groaned. The very first man had put his finger on one of the
vital weaknesses. Sir Henry rose.

"I am very glad indeed that the question has been asked," he said, "and
I should like to take this opportunity of thanking the gentleman who
asked it, and of congratulating him. Our policy, roughly speaking, is to
see that jobs, and adequately paid jobs, are provided at once for
everyone." He sat down again amid applause.

Donald gasped. "Good God!" he thought, "they'll start throwing things."

The man who had asked the question rose again.

"Thank you very much," he said, and sat down. Again Donald gasped.

There was only one other question. A fierce-looking young man, wearing a
red-and-white handkerchief round his neck, asked aggressively:

"Mr. Chairman, I should like to know what the candidate's policy is
about housing."

Sir Henry rose, thanked the gentleman who had asked the question, and
congratulated him, and stated that his policy was to get the maximum
number of houses built at the minimum cost in the shortest possible
time.

The fierce-looking young man thanked the candidate, and the meeting
diffused itself into votes of thanks, resolutions of confidence, and the
National Anthem.

Donald walked out into the street in a dream.

For a few minutes he stood, irresolute, bewildered, and at last began
to drift aimlessly along the unknown streets of Eldonborough,
reflecting, as he went, that he was indeed a stranger in a strange land.
After a little, absorbed though he was in his own thoughts, he could not
help becoming gradually aware that crowds of people were hastening past
him in the same direction as himself, and, increasing his speed, he came
round a corner upon a large hall at the doors of which were enormous
posters, stating in letters of scarlet fire:

ERNEST DODDS HERE TO-NIGHT

ERNIE FOR ELDONBOROUGH

A young man on the steps of the hall, almost concealed behind a colossal
scarlet rosette, informed him that the great Champion of the People, the
Crusader of the Proletariat, was going to address a mass meeting in a
few minutes, and that there was still room for a few in the gallery.

Donald went in and secured a good seat in the front row of a sort of
organist's loft, for the hall belonged to a Nonconformist church. There
were about a thousand people in the building, and the chairman, a very
thin, severe-looking man, was just rising to address the meeting. He
began by saying that the audience had not come to listen to him, and
that, therefore, he was going to say nothing at all. There was just a
story he wanted to tell them, because he thought it illustrated very
well the criminal proclivities of the Conservative Party and the depths
of execration with which it was regarded throughout the country, a story
about a personal friend of his, an Irishman. He then proceeded to
recount the anecdote which Donald had already heard that evening and
which had, moreover, already appeared in that week's _Punch_. After that
he delivered a passionate harangue against Capitalism, and then, later,
luckily remembered the presence of Mr. Dodds and called upon him to say
a few words.

Mr. Dodds soon proved himself to be an orator of the fieriest brand. He
struck the table resounding blows. He swept the glass of water into the
front row of the stalls. He leapt about from side to side as if the
platform was red-hot. He shouted and he stormed. He thundered and
banged. He compared the Tory Party to Judas Iscariot, and Mr. Baldwin,
curiously enough, to the Crown Prince of Germany. He compared Mr. Arthur
Henderson to Mr. Standfast and Lord Parmoor to St. Francis of Assisi. He
compared the Socialist Party to the Angels of the Lord, and frequently
alluded to the Liberals as right-thinking men and women, and he pointed
several times with a torrent of eulogy to an old plaster cast of
Bismarck which had been produced from somewhere and, as a counterblast
to the mezzotint of Gladstone, ostentatiously labelled "Cobden."

Ernie was obviously a wizard when it came to figures. He proved in a
whirlwind of arithmetic that if there were no rich there would be no
poor, that if all the money was taken away from everyone, then everyone
would have 317 a year, that if dividends were forbidden industry would
be saved, and that the only way to avoid the imminent bankruptcy of the
Bank of England was by the abolition of the Stock Exchange and the
suppression of Press Syndicates. In conclusion, he pledged himself to
advocate the limitation of incomes to 400 a year, the raising of
unemployment benefit to 4 a week, and the abolition of the beer-tax.
Again Donald was aghast. It seemed impossible that this candidate also
should escape being torn to bits by the hecklers. Again he was wrong.

Only two questions were asked.

The first was: "Where will you put the money above 400 a year that you
take from the rich?"

And the answer was: "Into the pockets of the poor."

The second was: "Where will you get the money to pay for the raising of
the dole?"

And the answer was: "Out of the pockets of the rich."

The meeting then dissolved in votes of thanks and much singing of "The
Red Flag," with its stirring descriptions of open Proletarian activities
in Chicago's halls in free America, and of secret Proletarian intrigues
in the Tsarist vaults of Moscow.

       *       *       *       *       *

After these two meetings, Donald realized that there was some force in
Commander Blinker's sublime contempt for "facts and tommy-rot of that
sort," and he tore up his sheaf of literature and confined himself on
the soap-box and at the street-corner to simple eloquence about the
Flag, the Throne, and the Commonwealth.

       *       *       *       *       *

After fourteen days of oratory, the free citizens of Eldonborough and
District went to the ballot-boxes, and at noon on the day after
polling-day, the returning-officer announced, to a crowd of some ten
thousand people, that after three recounts the result of the election
was: Mr. Ernest Dodds, twenty-one thousand and forty-three votes; Sir
Henry Wootton, twenty-one thousand and forty-three votes--and the result
was therefore a tie. Both candidates then thanked the returning-officer,
both claimed the result as a smashing victory for their respective
principles, both emphasized the cleanliness and true British
sportsmanship of the contest, and then they shook hands amid deafening
cheers.




CHAPTER XII


It is always rather a problem how to spend Christmas. Forced festivities
can often be as tedious as forced isolation, and over-eating has
definite drawbacks. Donald, a stranger in a strange land, found it very
difficult to know what to do. He had no relations to visit, and he did
not like to thrust himself upon any of the friends who had been so kind
to him during the months that he had spent in England. For Christmas is
essentially the feast of the Family, and it is the only season of the
year in which the Englishman instinctively prefers to be surrounded with
his relations rather than with his friends. And Donald had to be very
careful about admitting his prospective isolation, for he knew that his
English acquaintances would violate even the Yuletide sanctity of the
home rather than allow him to be lonely at Christmas. When the
Englishman does let himself go, he hates to think that others may not be
so fortunately situated.

Donald, therefore, decided that the best thing to do would be to avoid
embarrassing these worthy folk either by his presence at their feast or
by his absence from any feast, and he saw the solution of the problem in
the window of a Haymarket travel-bureau. For the modest sum of ten
pounds he could travel in a small steamship from Hull to Danzig, spend
one day in Danzig, and return from Danzig back to Hull, all in seven
days. Impulsively he went in and bought a ticket, and at 5 o'clock on a
drizzly, foggy, winter's afternoon he found himself, with spirits
rapidly sinking, in the gloomy city of Kingston-upon-Hull. As he stood
in the centre of that dismal spread of squalor and shivered in the cold
and listened to the screaming trams, he began to regret bitterly his
impulse. The only shred of consolation that he could find for the fact
that he was standing--cold, wet, and lonely--in the town of Hull, was
that he might be standing cold, wet, and lonely in the town of Goole,
which, as seen from the train, looked even bloodier than Hull.

The boat was not due to sail until 8 o'clock; the pubs did not open
until 6 o'clock. An hour had to be spent in this desperate wilderness of
slate and stone and rain before even a drink could be got. Donald's
spirits went lower and lower. He cursed that infernal impulse in the
Haymarket. He cursed Hull and the North Sea and Danzig and himself and
Christmas, and the insane rules for the opening and shutting of
public-houses, and the English and England and the weather. At 6 o'clock
he entered the smallest, the squalidest, the smelliest public-house he
had ever been in and drank a half-pint of abominable beer and fled,
almost in tears, to the ship. The ship itself put the finishing touch to
his despair. It was very small and very dirty. It looked, to Donald's
feverish and distorted vision, as if it was about three times the size
of an ordinary rowing-boat. Actually it was about 1800 tons, and very
old. The crew was Polish, the officers Russian, except the wireless
operator, who was German, and there was to be only one other passenger.
Donald stood on the quay and looked at the rusty hen-coop in which he
was going to spend three days and three nights upon a wintry North Sea.
And, what somehow made it worse, he was going to spend them in the
hen-coop voluntarily. He was under no sort of compulsion. He had taken
his passage of his own free will. Seventy-two hours there, in the
company of a parcel of foreigners and a strange Englishman, and
seventy-two hours back in the company of God knew who.

In the depths of despondency, he leant against a warehouse and watched a
party of dock labourers, helped, or rather hindered, by the Polish
sailors, struggling to hoist a queer-shaped engine on to the ship. The
operation was superintended by a foreman who was encrusted from head to
foot in grit and coal-dust and general grime, and Donald was appalled to
learn from the company's agent that this foreman was to be his
fellow-passenger in the hen-coop.

At 8 o'clock the tiny ship began to plunge its way laboriously down the
Humber, and Donald sat down to a solitary dinner--for the foreman had
disappeared with his machine into the hold. Dinner was excellent, and
whisky out of bond at five shillings a bottle restored a little of the
forlorn traveller's spirits.

By some meteorological caprice the North Sea next day was a sheet of
misty steel and, after a large breakfast, Donald leant on the taffrail
and watched the distant fishing-fleets and the timber ships from Russia
and Finland, and began to enjoy himself.

Just before lunch the foreman appeared, wearing a smart grey suit and a
stiff collar and blue tie secured with a ring, spruced up to the nines.
The removal of the grit and coal-dust revealed a thin, clean-shaven
face, close-cut grey hair, and a general appearance of about sixty years
of age. He talked in a broad Yorkshire accent that was sometimes a
little difficult to understand.

"I'm real glad to meet you, Mister," he exclaimed, grasping Donald's
hand in a huge, thin, bony grip. "My name is Rhodes, but I'm mostly
called William, or Will, or Bill, but mostly William. Shall we go in to
dinner? The bell's gone."

Mr. Rhodes proved to be a great conversationalist. In fact he hardly
ever stopped talking. Donald, who spoke French and a certain amount of
halting German, wondered if he would have to interpret for Mr. Rhodes on
the ship. He also wondered how Mr. Rhodes was going to manage when he
reached Poland. He also wondered why on earth the engineering firm,
which had made the queer-looking machine, had not sent a more educated
caretaker with it. For whatever William's technical efficiency might be,
it jumped to the eyes that he had not been educated at Eton.

"I'm taking a machine to Warsaw," said William, tucking away at the
garlic sausages and cold tunny-fish and onions; "a machine for pumping
out sewers. Oh! it's lovely. It'll pump out a five-thousand-gallon sewer
in eighty-five seconds, all by steam vacuum. I'm going to teach the
fellows how to use it. Our folk built it in the shops, and I had the
assembling of it. I drove it down from Leeds yesterday--first time it's
ever been on the road. But do you know what, Mister?" He leant across
the table earnestly. "Have you ever seen the crest of the Corporation of
Warsaw? You haven't? Well, you mightn't believe me, but it's the upper
half of a woman without any clothes on. Can you beat it? And there it
is, painted on both sides of that sewer-pump, and me, William Rhodes,
that's known throughout the length and breadth of the East Riding,
sitting atop of that machine and driving her to Hull yesterday. I tell
you I fair blushed with shame as I came through some of those villages
where I'm known. It's indecent, Mister, that's what it is. Downright
indecent."

Mr. Rhodes made hay of an omelette and ordered a small bottle of beer
and went on.

"Have you ever been in Hungary, Mister?"

"No," replied Donald, "but I've got a friend out there who says----"

"I would like right well to hear about him," said William sincerely. "I
spent two years in Hungary once with a machine for weeding between the
rows of fruit-trees. It's a lovely country--Hungary, with miles of
peaches and apples and cherries, but they were terrible troubled with
weeds. Fine chaps, those Hungarians; I liked them. It was a lovely
machine. I took it out to show those fellows how to use it, and I stayed
two years. Queer, wasn't it?"

Donald agreed that it was extremely queer, and started to tell Mr.
Rhodes about his friend who had a castle in Transylvania.

"Just one moment, Mister," interposed Mr. Rhodes. "I want very much to
hear about your friend, but before we get on to him, Transylvania's in
Roumania, isn't it?"

"Yes," replied Donald, "by the Treaty of Trianon----"

"I was in Roumania before the War," said Mr. Rhodes reminiscently, "with
machines for oil-boring. I was teaching those fellows how to use them.
Queer folk, the Roumanians. I was there nearly three years. Do you know
I got to like those folk quite a lot after a bit. Yes, I liked them
quite a lot. Queer, isn't it?"

"Very queer," said Donald with just a touch of coldness in his voice.

"Russia, now," pursued Mr. Rhodes, "that is a queer place. I was there
before the War, with dredgers. We were to dredge a canal near Petersburg
and I went out to show those fellows how to manage the scoops and
grapplers. It was mostly grapplers--the canal was full of rocks you
see--and some nob or other had got a contract for supplying barges for
the machines, a Grand Duke or Heir Apparent as like as not, and the
barges were rotten. Yes, Mister, they were rotten. And every time we
grappled a rock and hauled, instead of the rock coming up, the barge
went over, and the grappler with it. In another month we'd have had to
dredge the canal for dredging-machines. We couldn't use our own barges,
because this nob, whoever he was, had bribed everyone right and left. It
would have been a scream if we hadn't been working on a time-limit--job
not done by a certain date, no money. And then this nob would get the
contract himself, fish up our grapplers, and make a packet. My word, but
it was a business."

"What happened in the end?" enquired Donald politely.

Mr. Rhodes blushed.

"To tell you the truth, Mister, I had to do a thing I didn't like doing.
But I had my firm to consider, and I've been with them now for
one-and-forty years. I couldn't let them down, now, could I? So what
could I do but what I did?"

"And what was that?"

"Well, I bribed the chief engineer to certify that the canal was
dredged. It was the only way round that nob. He had bribed everyone
except the chief. That's a cardinal rule in life, Mister, and I pass it
on to you with pleasure, because I like you. Never bribe if you can
possibly help it, but when you do, only bribe the heads. Stick to that
and you can't go wrong."

Donald promised to stick to that, and escaped as soon as possible to the
top-deck with a book, and saw no more of William until the evening. By
the time the steward was ringing the bell and announcing that dinner was
ready, Donald was so bored by his own company, by the unvarying oiliness
of the sea, and by the absence of anything to look at except the wintry
sun and, once or twice an hour, a timber-ship, that he found himself
almost longing for a storm and almost looking forward to William's
company at table.

William began to talk even before he had sat down.

"Have you ever travelled in Spain?" he started at once. "It's a very
queer country. I don't know that I've ever been in a queerer; not that
Java isn't queer too, but then you expect that from black men. But in
Spain they're white and that makes it all the funnier. Bone-lazy, that's
the trouble. And when I say bone-lazy, I mean bone-lazy. If a Spaniard
doesn't want to work, he won't. Not if you offered him a million pounds.
I spent eight months in Spain some years ago, digging irrigation canals.
At least I had to do the digging in the end, though it wasn't what I
went out for originally. My firm built some canal ploughs, beauties,
steam-machines you understand, and fitted with four-foot plough-sheaves,
and I went out with them to teach those fellows how to use them. Well,
I'd spend a week teaching a fellow, and then, just as I'd got him in
good shape, he'd remember that his cousin's aunt had got scarlet fever
or something, and off he'd go and I'd have to start again with a new
fellow. I stuck it for six weeks and then I ploughed the canals myself
and went back to Leeds."

"How did you manage to make yourself understood to all these people?"
asked Donald. "Do they all talk English?"

"None of them," said Mr. Rhodes, "until you get up Scandinavia way. But
most of them understand a bit of German, and I just talk German to them
until I've picked up enough of their lingo to rub along in."

This unexpected linguistic talent in a working engineer startled Donald.

"Where did you learn your German?" he asked.

"I'm bi-lingual in English and German," answered the engineer. "You see,
my father was forty years in the same firm and he was their
representative in Hamburg when I was born. But I can get along in most
languages except French. I never had a job of work to do in France in
all my life. But as I was saying, Mister, Demerara is a queer place.
Rum's cheaper than water in Demerara. Have you ever drunk rum?"

"During the War----" began Donald.

"I can tell you a curious thing about Demerara rum," proceeded William.

"Most of ours came from Jamaica during the War."

"I was in Demerara ploughing drainage-ways for getting water out of
canals," said William. "It was a queer job, because I had to make a
machine that would go through the water as well as do the ploughing. It
took me a time to do it, I can tell you, but I hit on a lovely notion. I
made a special carburettor that would take rum instead of petrol. What
do you think of that? Rum, ninety overproof, at a penny a gallon and
petrol at one and eleven. But do you know what I hadn't reckoned on?"

"I've no idea," murmured Donald, overwhelmed by this flow of technical
wizardry.

"Why!" exclaimed William triumphantly, "I hadn't reckoned that rum at
ninety overproof would eat into ordinary steel just as I'd eat into that
cheese," and he helped himself to a cut at the Camembert that made the
steward jump.

"But I beat that rum," went on William, sinking his voice to an
impressive whisper. "I beat it, and do you know how? I got some old
tank-engines that had been sold for scrap, lovely engines, all specially
hardened aluminium, and I coppered those engines and I fitted them into
my drainage-ploughs, and by gum, Mister, I ploughed drainage-ways eight
and a half per cent faster than they'd ever been ploughed before in
those parts. By gum, those fellows were surprised. I was teaching them,
do you see? And I taught them another thing, too. Do you know that they
were sending out their folks on foot to work--two hours there and two
hours back? Did you ever hear such silliness? I made them see it though,
and before I left Demerara I built them a light railway, plumb through a
greenwood savannah, too. I don't know if you've ever built a light
railway through a greenwood savannah, Mister?"

Donald was forced to admit that so far this experience had eluded him.
He would have liked very much to have indicated that hardly a week
passed in which he did not drive railways through greenwood savannahs.
It sounded a romantic sort of undertaking. But his native honesty
prevented him, although it did occur to him that William would never
find out that he was lying because William would not listen to him in
any case.

"I had to make them a machine, first of all, for uprooting the trees,"
proceeded the inexorable wizard, "and then I went to them and said,
'Look here, Misters,' I said, 'there's all that fine greenwood timber
lying there and going to waste. It all belongs to you, and there's money
in it. All you want is a couple of sixty-foot steel barges to bring the
trunks down the canal to the sea, and a steam saw-mill to cut it up.'
And then after we'd got the wood cut up, they gave me a hundred pounds
to go back to Leeds. They said if I stayed any longer I'd sell them a
machine for hoisting them into bed at night and tucking them up; but of
course that was just their joke, because I never heard of any such
machine or of anybody asking for tenders for one."

William spent that evening in the wireless operator's cabin--the
operator, or "Sparks" as William invariably called him, was a
German-speaking Pole from Poznan who had served in the German Imperial
Navy and been sunk at Jutland--discussing the latest developments in
wireless and showing the operator one or two small contrivances of his
own invention.

Next morning the good ship _Wilno_ chugged doggedly up the Elbe, through
the lock-gates at Braunebttel, and into the Kiel Canal, that mighty
witness to an overwhelming Imperial ambition. For sixty miles, at ten
miles an hour, the _Wilno_ steamed between the concrete walls, with flat
pasture-land and woods and windmills on each side, passing from time to
time reminders of vanished Power, great iron railway bridges raised on
vast embankments to allow for the passage of tripod-masts of
_Derfflingers_ and _Von der Tanns_ and _Hindenburgs_; deserted
repair-shops on whose crumbling walls was still visible the Black Eagle
of Hohenzollern; and ruined quays for the tying-up of small ships to
make way for the Hoch See Flotte, now lying derelict, encrusted with
seaweed, at the bottom of a far-off Shetland bay.

For mile after mile the _Wilno_ met no ship in the Imperial Canal, not
even a barge or dredger or skiff, except a single oil-tanker, carrying
the Hammer and Sickle upon its great Red Flag, and a string of
timber-ships. Ten miles from Kiel the _Wilno_ slowed up, and there was a
great running to and fro among the officers and much frenzied talk.
William hung about the door of the engine-room, listening to the sound
of the engines and excitedly maintaining to Donald that something was up
with some fearfully technical apparatus that he seemed to know all
about. After a little, his expert diagnosis was confirmed by "Sparks,"
who had torn himself away from an account on his loud-speaker of a
boxing match in Berlin, to find out what was up, and William darted off
to his cabin for his overalls. He spent the next four hours on his back
in the engine-room, welding or riveting or performing some such
mysterious feat, to the vast admiration of the Polish engineers, and the
_Wilno_ resumed its normal speed. That night at dinner the captain sent
William a bottle of champagne, which distressed William a good deal, for
he greatly preferred his small bottle of beer, but did not want to hurt
the captain's feelings. He insisted upon Donald helping him out with it,
and he related during the meal a queer experience he had once had when,
after taking a dozen steam-tractors from Vladivostok to Samarcand, he
had been asked to survey the camel-route from Samarcand to the Afghan
frontiers to see if it could be made practical for motor-buses with
caterpillar wheels.

After dinner that night there was an informal concert and William danced
a clog-dance and told several mildly improper stories in German and sang
"Ilkley Moor." By this time Wilhelm, or Weely, was the life and soul of
the ship.

On the third afternoon the great towers of the Marienkirche rose above
the waters of the Bay of Danzig. William pointed them out to Donald.

"Another journey over," he said, and then he added unexpectedly, "I'm
getting too old for journeys. Thirty-five years I've been travelling the
world, and there's only one place I want to see, and that's Leeds. When
I was younger it was different. Take my advice, Mister, and travel when
you're young. If you get a chance to go to Honolulu when you're
twenty-five, take it, like I did. Because you won't be half so keen to
go back at fifty-five, like I did."

Donald asked him if he ever thought of asking the firm to let him stay
at home. William shook his head.

"It's the foreign pay," he explained. "That, and the travelling
allowances. I've got two sons, and until the second one is fair started,
I can't afford to give it up."

"Are they going into the firm too?" Donald asked. "You said your father
was in it before you."

"Yes, but my sons won't be," said William. "I'm only a working engineer,
and when I get back to Leeds after the trip abroad, back I go to the
bench in the assembling-shop. I've never known anything except machines.
But I've saved enough in forty-and-one years to give them a better
chance. They've both been to Leeds University, and that's not bad for
the sons of a shop-foreman."

Donald asked him what they were going to be.

"The eldest is a schoolmaster with a fine job near Birmingham, and the
youngest is just finishing to be a parson. A parson! That's queer, isn't
it? And him mad on cricket, too. They wanted him to play for Yorkshire,
but he wouldn't. ''Tis a great game,' he said, 'but 'tisn't a life.' And
I reckon he's right. But I've seen him bat all afternoon for the Chapel,
or the Scouts. He doesn't get very many runs, mind you, but there's
mighty few in Leeds or Bradford can get him out. And the funny thing is
we've called him Parson ever since he was a nipper. Never smoked, never
touched a drop. No films or skirts. But put him with Scouts, or Boys'
Brigade, or Y.M.C.A., and he's as happy as happy. Ay! when he's settled
in a parish, I reckon I'll be able to chuck the travelling and stick to
Leeds."

"And chuck the engineering too?"

"Nay, lad," said William, breaking into his broadest Yorkshire, "I'll
never chuck the shop till the shop chucks me, and that won't be for many
a year yet." He held out his two great thin hands and went on, with
perfect simplicity: "I can make any machine in the world with these two.
I'm a craftsman, lad, as good as any in the North Country. And it isn't
only that." He laid one of his hands upon Donald's sleeve and said with
earnestness: "There's poetry in machines. You'll maybe not understand.
But that's how I see it. Some folks like books and music and poems, but
I get all that out of machines. I take a lot of steel and I put it into
different shapes, and it works. It works. D'you see? It works as true as
a hair to the thousandth part of an inch just as I made it and meant it.
I'll go on making machines till my dying day, even if it's only toy
engines for grandchildren. There now," he broke off, as a bell clanged
vehemently in the depths of the ship, and someone shouted in a loud
voice, "I thought we weren't going to round that buoy. The skipper's
drunk, you see, and he told me just now on the bridge that he couldn't
see the buoy, but that the ship had done the trip often enough and ought
to be able to round the buoy on her own."

There was more shouting and bell-clanging, the first officer ran up to
the bridge, the engines slowed, then reversed, and the good ship _Wilno_
managed to slip round the right side of the buoy. The pilot-boat came
alongside and the pilot stepped aboard. The ancient city of Danzig came
steadily towards them. The voyage was at an end.

Donald felt that he was parting from a lifelong friend when he shook
hands on the quay with William, once again in his overalls, ready to
land his machine.

He had learnt a good deal about England upon that rusty Polish
hen-coop.




CHAPTER XIII


The s.s. _Wilno_ bucketed laboriously into Hull on the morning of the
last day of the year, and Donald reached London that evening. He found a
few letters waiting for him, among them one from Sir Henry Wootton's
brother-in-law, Mr. Fielding, whom he had met at Geneva, inviting him to
spend a few days with him at his country cottage in Buckinghamshire. "It
won't be a party," wrote Mr. Fielding, "but just ourselves. I hope you
won't find it too dull." There was also a book about the Lepidoptera of
the Shan States to be reviewed for Mr. Hodge. Donald immediately wrote
an acceptance to Mr. Fielding, and then settled down to the insects. At
10.30 he had mastered the chapters about the flying scorpions
(discovered in 1925 by a young Harvard lepidopterist, who had fled to
the wilds of Upper Burma in order to try to forget the passionate love
which he bore for Miss Norma Talmadge, and officially named by him in a
moment of bitter and unchivalrous irony, so rare in Harvard men, Scorpio
Normatalmadgensis) and he laid the book down, put on his hat and coat,
and set out for St. Paul's Cathedral. Almost all his life he had known
that on New Year's Eve, St. Paul's Cathedral is, as the evening papers
and the penny dailies so wittily describe it, year after year, the
Scotchman's Mecca, and he was determined, now that he had the
opportunity, to perform this pilgrimage. At 11.15 he had got as far as
the Church of St. Martin Ludgate, half-way up from Ludgate Circus to St.
Paul's, and there he stuck, wedged in on all sides by solid masses of
Englishmen. On all sides rose hearty English laughter, and the accents
of those who "were born within sound of Bowe Bells and eat buttered
tostes," as the old chronicle says, and of those who had come up from
Somerset, and of those whose homes had once been in Wiltshire and
Yorkshire and Devonshire and Lancashire--especially Lancashire. Donald
even thought he could detect once or twice a Middlesex accent amid all
the chatter. All around him echoed the words "haggis" and "Lauder" and
"whusky" and "hoots" and "baw-bee," the traditional patter of the
English music-hall, with its strange words and its mysterious
pronunciations, and, above it all, there was a steady drone like the hum
of a great dynamo, or the fabled recitation of Browning in Boston
drawing-rooms, or the murmur of distant waterfalls, the steady drone of
many voices saying, "Do you know the one about the Aberdonian and the
Jew?"

Donald went home.

       *       *       *       *       *

Two days later he was at Marylebone Station, quietest and most dignified
of stations, where the porters go on tiptoe, where the barrows are
rubber-tyred and the trains sidle mysteriously in and out with only the
faintest of toots upon their whistles so as not to disturb the
signalmen, and there he bought a ticket to Aylesbury from a man who
whispered that the cost was nine-and-six, and that a train would
probably start from Number 5 platform as soon as the engine-driver had
come back from the pictures, and the guard had been to see his old
mother in Baker Street.

Sure enough a train marked Aylesbury was standing at Number 5 platform.
According to the timetable it was due to start in ten minutes, but the
platform was deserted and there were no passengers in the carriages. The
station was silent. The newspaper boy was asleep. A horse, waiting all
harnessed beside a loaded van, lay down and yawned. The dust filtered
slowly down through the winter sunbeams, gradually obliterating a label
upon a wooden crate which said "Urgent. Perishable."

Donald took a seat in a third-class smoker and waited. An engine-driver
came stealthily up the platform. A stoker, walking like a cat, followed
him. After a few minutes a guard appeared at the door of the carriage
and seemed rather surprised at seeing Donald.

"Do you wish to travel, sir?" he asked gently, and when Donald had said
that he was desirous of going as far as Aylesbury, the guard touched his
hat and said in a most respectful manner, "If you wish it, sir." He
reminded Donald of the immortal butler, Jeeves. Donald fancied, but he
was not quite sure, that he heard the guard whisper to the
engine-driver, "I think we might make a start now, Gerald," and he
rather thinks the engine-driver replied in the same undertone, "Just as
you wish, Horace."

Anyway, a moment or two later the train slipped out of the station and
gathered speed in the direction of Aylesbury.

The railway which begins, or ends, according to the way in which you
look at it, from or at Marylebone, used to be called the Great Central
Railway, but is now merged with lots of other railways into one large
concern called the London, Midland and South Coast or some such name.
The reason for the merger was that dividends might be raised, or
lowered, or something. Anyway, the line used to be called the Great
Central and it is like no other of the north-bound lines. For it runs
through lovely, magical rural England. It goes to places that you have
never heard of before, but when you have heard of them you want to live
in them--Great Missenden and Wendover and High Wycombe and Princes
Risborough and Quainton Road, and Akeman Street and Blackthorn. It goes
to places that do not need a railway, that never use a railway, that
probably do not yet know that they have got a railway. It goes to
way-side halts where the only passengers are milk-churns. It visits
lonely platforms where the only tickets are bought by geese and ducks.
It stops in the middle of buttercup meadows to pick up eggs and flowers.
It glides past the great pile of willow branches that are maturing to
make England's cricket-bats. It is a dreamer among railways, a poet,
kindly and absurd and lovely.

You can sit at your carriage window in a Great Central train and gallop
your horse from Amersham to Aylesbury without a check for a factory or a
detour for a field of corn or a break for a slum. Pasture and hedge,
and pasture and hedge, and pasture and hedge, mile after mile after
mile, grey-green and brown and russet, and silver where the little
rivers tangle themselves among reeds and trodden watering-pools.

There are no mountains or ravines or noisy tunnels or dizzy viaducts.
The Great Central is like that old stream of Asia Minor. It meanders and
meanders until at last it reaches, loveliest of English names, the Vale
of Aylesbury.

Mr. Fielding was waiting on the platform. He was a man of about
sixty--broad-shouldered, pink-cheeked, white-moustached, who looked as
if he spent a good deal of time in the open air and not very much time
in the study.

He had an ancient Ford car outside, loaded up with baskets and parcels
and paper-bags. "Been marketing," he explained. "It's a fixed rule of
the house that anyone who takes a car into Aylesbury has to do the
shopping for everyone, though who the deuce fixed the rule I'm blest if
I know. It's all very nice for the women, but a fine fool I look
matching ribbons." It was probably thirty years since anyone had asked
Mr. Fielding to match a ribbon, but it was his stock phrase to cover any
feminine commission.

A three-mile clatter in the veteran car--"I never can get the new car,"
explained Mr. Fielding. "I never have been able to get our new cars.
That's why I have to hang on to one that my daughters say they wouldn't
be seen dead in"--brought them to "The Golden Hind," which was the name
of Mr. Fielding's house. It was a long, low building of pale-red brick
and unstained timber-beams and ivy and queer-shaped windows with
badly-fitting frames, and an ancient iron-studded door of oak that was
almost white, and dark-red tiles and lichen and moss and stone-crop. A
flagged path led up to the door, and on each side of the path were acres
of lawns in their rough, worm-casty, twiggy, shaggy winter coats.
Through the deepening twilight Donald could see a pale-red brick wall
beyond the lawns and the tops of greenhouses peering over it, and beyond
that again a cluster of ancient barns and the twisted curl-papers of a
monster haystack. A jumble of terrier dogs hurled themselves out of an
open window at the sound of the Ford, and lights sprang up in the
windows and over the front door. The clock on a square, flinty, Saxon
church-tower struck six. From a little further down the road came the
clinkety-clink of hammer upon anvil and the jingling sound of harness as
the horse that was being shod, by the light of a torch, shifted its feet
restlessly. In the distance a dog barked and an owl cried out suddenly
from a wood of willow-trees. Sappho's evening star, which brings home
everything that the bright dawn has scattered--the sheep, the goat, and
the little child to its mother--shone in a frosty sky and the moving
moon was softly going up.

"Mind your head in the house," said Mr. Fielding, smacking the dogs
affectionately. "It's a perfect death-trap. One of these days I'm going
to pull it down and build a labour-saving affair, all made of concrete
and ebony."

Donald stooped as he went in, but not far enough, and hit his head a
shattering blow almost at once upon an oak beam. It was very painful,
but at least it broke the ice as well as the skin, and by the time that
Mrs. Fielding had finished fussing round with iodine and bandages and
lint, and Mary Willock, the married daughter, and Winifred, the
unmarried daughter, had fetched neat little leather satchels which
contained everything that was necessary for the emergency treatment of
dogs, cows, goats, and horses, and George Willock, the son-in-law, had
uncorked with dazzling rapidity a bottle of Napoleon brandy, and Mr.
Fielding himself had weighed in with a decanter of Harvey's Bristol
Cream Sherry, and the jumble of terriers had licked his face and hands
and fought a brisk skirmish across his chest, Donald felt that he had
been an intimate friend of the family for years.

As soon as the wound had been dressed and everyone had celebrated the
recovery of the patient in Mr. Harvey's amazing sherry, Mrs. Fielding
shoo-ed them all off to get ready for dinner. Dinner was at 7.15, and no
one was to dress. Donald crept up to his room amid a jungle of grey oak
beams and crept down again at 7.10. His host was already down. Donald
asked him if there was any story attached to the naming of the house
after Drake's ship.

"Not much of a story," said Mr. Fielding. "The records show that in 1550
the house was an inn, but no one knows what it was called in those days.
All that is known is that it changed its name to celebrate Drake's
voyage round the world. When I bought it--thirty years ago--it was a
tumble-down farmhouse with water running in through the roof, and it was
called Holt's. I got the story out of the parish records, and changed
its name back to 'The Golden Hind.' There's a curious thing about that
changing, too. About six months after I'd told everyone--the Post Office
and the inn-keeper and the local gossips and so on--about the change, an
old man came to see me. He was very, very old. The local people said he
was well over a hundred, but there were no records about him. He said he
was glad I'd gone back to the old name. I asked him how he knew anything
about the old name and he said he didn't, but that his grandfather had
told him that the Admiral was a great man. I asked him what Admiral he
meant, and he said he couldn't remember, and he wasn't even sure that
his grandfather had ever told him, and he wouldn't take his oath that
his grandfather had ever known, but anyway the Admiral was a great man.
You see, Cameron, it's an old country. Incredibly old. And there aren't
many changes. Families go on and on and on. Sometimes a boy goes off to
be a soldier, and sometimes a girl goes off to be a parlour-maid, but
ninety per cent of them stick to the soil. And have stuck to the soil
for centuries. There's a village near here--Eynesbury St. Clement--a
matter of five or six hundred souls all told. Well, a fellow from London
came down last year and ferreted around in the parish records and so on,
and he found a list of the bowmen that went from Eynesbury St. Clement
to Agincourt. There were the names of twenty-four bowmen, and eighteen
of their names are on the Eynesbury St. Clement war memorial for the
Great War."

Dinner was served punctually at 7.15, and there was no delay between the
soup and the roast chicken or between the roast chicken and the baked
apples, for Mr. Fielding had to take the chair at a Committee of the
local Boy Scouts at 8 o'clock, and Winifred was meeting the vicar at
8.15 to discuss a prospective jumble sale, and at 9 o'clock both Mr. and
Mrs. Fielding were due at the Annual General Meeting of the Lawn Tennis
Club. And as Mrs. Fielding, who was President of the Lawn Tennis Club,
had to retire to prepare her presidential address, and as the married
daughter and her husband seized the first opportunity after dinner to
rush out to the stables to a horse that had colic, Donald was left with
an hour or two upon his hands. He spent it in the best possible way. He
strolled across in the starlight to the Crooked Billet, sometimes called
the Mary Wells, for no known reason, and sometimes the Donkey, for no
known reason, asked for a pint of bitter, which was handed to him in an
early-Victorian pewter mug, and sat down in a corner of the bar-parlour.
It was a small bar-parlour and the low ceiling was a tangled mass of oak
beams. The fire-place stretched almost across one side of the room and
the flickering oil-lamp threw queer shadows into its cavernous depths. A
jumble of ancient iron cooking appliances--spits, pots, chains,
saw-toothed racks, cauldrons--lay in one corner. A bench with a high
back, polished by the corduroys of centuries into a shiny pale yellow,
jutted out from the wall in a semicircle so that the man at one end
would have his back against the wall, and the man at the other would be
exactly opposite the centre of the fire-place. On the high,
smoke-blackened mantel-shelf were wooden gun-rests and a row of
Rochester ware jars, decorated with green and purple flowers and gilt
bands, and labelled "Shrub," "Whisky," "Gin," "Oporto," "Cinnamon,"
"Peach," and "Lemon." There was a pock-marked dart-board in one corner,
and on an old oak table a shove-ha'penny board and piece of chalk.

The room was full of the smoke of cheap tobacco.

The conversation only faltered for a moment when the strange gentleman
came in, for the courtesy of the country-side is universal and there is
no inquisitiveness. The gentry, of course, are different, for they have
little to do except to be inquisitive and to play lawn tennis, and,
nowadays, to grapple unsuccessfully with the intricacies of contract
bridge. But they are a separate race. As a rule they are only a single
remove from one or other of the four great breeding-grounds of the
English rural gentry--London's suburbs, Clyde's banks, Boston, and the
torrid plains of Hindostan. And each little family group, living each in
its eight-bedroomed or ten-bedroomed house, detached from other houses,
detached indeed from everything in the world, has its own separate
interests. They have no common bond except gossip and lawn tennis and
bridge. The soil means nothing to them, nor the seasons and their
fruits, nor the nesting of birds, nor the first green budding of
elm-trees, nor the sound of the flight of swans. Their desires are
thwarted. They have no escape from gentility, no desperate romances, no
love-making under the leaf-falling moon, nothing, nothing but bridge and
lawn tennis, and lawn tennis and bridge, until Death parts them even
from their cards and their racquets.

But it is different with those who live on the earth and for the earth.
They have no interest in each other's petty lives. They do not discuss
the village. They are concerned with vaster things than fashionable hats
and informatory doubles. The tiller of the soil lives his life very
close to Nature, and of all men he is the most natural.

So when Donald entered the bar-room of the Crooked Billet, he aroused
only the slightest of attention for a moment or two, and in a minute he
was almost forgotten, and was able to look round at his ease. There were
ten men in the room and all were old. Seven of the ten had beards, and
the others had clean-shaven chins and long side-whiskers. Most of them
wore corduroys, but one was resplendent in a dark tweed suit and a very
dirty dickey, unadorned by a tie. The cheeks of all of them were pink
and the eyes of all of them were clear. They were talking about
politics.

"Well," said one, who must have been well over eighty, and whose back
was bowed with a life-time of digging and an old age of rheumatism,
"when Lord Salisbury was in office I voted for Lord Salisbury, and when
Mr. Gladstone was in office I voted for Mr. Gladstone, because there
never was a ha'porth of difference between them that ever I could see."

"Ah! now, Lord Salisbury," said another, "there was a man for you. I
heard him speak once and I couldn't understand one word he said. Not one
word. A fine gentleman, he was."

"I never rightly understood," said a third man who had a straw bag of
carpentering tools between his feet and a violin tied on his back with a
piece of black tape, "why Mr. Gladstone gave the licence to the grocers.
Did a lot of harm to the houses, and didn't do any good to the Liberal
Party."

"It didn't do any good to the Liberal Party," said a wizened little man
with a cheerful face, "when the Earl Rosebery won the Derby when he was
Prime Minister, but it did a deal of good to my pocket," and he winked
several times and nodded his head knowingly.

A man who had been dozing in a corner suddenly woke up and lifted an
ancient, wrinkled, pink-and-brown countenance to the company. His white
beard shone bravely in the beam of the oil-lamp and he thrust it forward
as he propped his chin upon a newly cut holly cudgel. "I remember," he
said in a deep whisper which came as rather a shock to Donald, who from
his experience of stage old men had expected a falsetto piping, "I
remember the year when Mr. Harry Chaplin won the Derby and there isn't
another of you young chaps that can say as much. I was working in his
gardens and he gave me a shilling--gave us all a shilling, all of us
working in his gardens and stables--and I knocked a hole in it and wore
it on my watch-chain for five-and-thirty years, but I lost it
afterwards. Mr. Harry Chaplin, that was."

The old man's head drooped and in a few moments he was asleep again.

"Ah! Mr. Chaplin," struck in another ancient, "there was a gentleman for
you."

"Yes, he was a gentleman all right," said the man with the violin.
"There aren't too many of them about nowadays."

"That's right," nodded the man who voted impartially for Lord Salisbury
and Mr. Gladstone. "Why, I can remember the time when old Squire
Rushbrooke was up at the Manor, and the Parson at that time, Stoke his
name was--you remember Parson Stoke, Mr. Davis?"

"I remember Parson Stoke, Mr. Stillaway. Remember him clear."

"Well, Parson Stoke said to me once that in the writings about the
parish there had been Rushbrookes at the Manor for hundreds and hundreds
of years."

"I reckon it was the War put a stop to all that."

"Ay, the War put a stop to a great many things."

"I reckon," said the man with the violin, "that we could do with a bit
more of Mr. Dickens in this country. A few more Sam Wellers. That's what
we want."

"I saw Mr. Dickens once," said another rheumatism-backed gaffer who had
not spoken up to now. "A fine-looking gentleman with a fine big beard,
same as Mr. Stillaway's, only bigger. He was a gentleman who liked a
good laugh, he was."

"Ah!" said the man with the violin, "that's what the trouble is. People
don't seem to laugh now like they used to. I don't know why it is."

The man in the dickey drained off his glass pint-mug and called for
another pint of mild-and-bitter.

"Well, has anyone got their antirrhinums in yet?" he enquired, and he
looked round with a gleam in his eye which said as clearly as possible
that he had got his antirrhinums in that morning and that it was high
time that the others did the same. It was equally clear from the
shuffling feet and evasive replies that no one else had got their
antirrhinums in yet.

There was a pause in the conversation, and Donald plucked up sufficient
courage to ask his neighbour when the Hunt was likely to be meeting in
the district.

"They meet at Tainton Green to-morrow, sir," replied the man politely.
"That's a matter of two miles from here."

"More like two miles and a furlong, Mr. Young," said Mr. Stillaway.

"That's right, Mr. Stillaway," agreed Mr. Davis. "It's every bit of a
furlong above the two miles."

"You're working in Tainton, Mr. Stovold," Mr. Young appealed to the
violinist. "Would you say it's as much as a furlong above the two
miles?"

"Well, I'm not sure that I wouldn't, Mr. Young," replied Mr. Stovold. "I
reckon it is maybe a furlong all but a chain or two."

"That might be it," conceded Mr. Young; "a furlong all but a chain or
two."

The ancient with the holly-stick woke up again. He seemed to have an
uncanny power of hearing in his sleep, for he observed, "They'll find
near Stacey's to-morrow over to Tainton. There's an outlier there. I
saw him to-day, the old rascal." He laughed a sudden high laugh, and
added, "I remember finding at Stacey's when I was second horseman to Mr.
Selby. Two hours and forty minutes, she gave us, and I never saw a
faster run. We killed her at Grendon Church."

"What year would that be, Mr. Darley?" enquired the man in the dickey.

Mr. Darley cogitated, and finally said:

"I can't rightly remember, but it was the year that Mr. Selby sent us
all up to London to see the Great Exhibition. It was a long time ago."

"Would that be Mr. Selby from over Ludgershall way?" asked Mr.
Stillaway. But Mr. Darley was asleep again.

"How old is he?" Donald asked, and several voices answered
simultaneously, "He's ninety-eight come Martinmas, sir."

Donald asked them if there was likely to be a large muster at the meet,
and Mr. Stovold, the violinist, shook his head sadly.

"You can't tell, sir. Not nowadays. You see, fox-hunting has changed
since I was a young man."

"Ay, that it has," the others nodded agreement.

"When I was a young man in these parts," went on Mr. Stovold, "all the
gentry knew each other and we knew all the gentry--their faces, I mean.
And you could tell who was going to foxhunt each day as easy as
anything. It was all homely-like, a sort of family as you might say. But
now it's all ladies and gentlemen from London. They come down in their
motor-cars, and they go back in their motor-cars, and they bring their
horses in motor-cars, and it's all changed. They're strangers. When I
was a nipper, working over at Mr. Binstead's----"

"I remember Mr. Binstead," interrupted old Mr. Davis. "He's dead these
five-and-forty years."

"That's right, Mr. Davis. He died in the year of the great frost when
young Sam Byles skated from Bovington's water-meadow at Aylesbury to the
Bull at Launton for a wager. As I was saying, when I was a nipper over
at Mr. Binstead's, if I opened a gate or found a gap, as like as not the
gentleman would know me by name and say, 'Much obliged to you, Bill,' or
'Thank you, Stovold. Hope your mother's rheumatism is better.' But
nowadays you're more likely to get a 'Hurry up, blast you' for your
pains."

"That's it. That's what you're more likely to get now," said Mr. Young,
and the others nodded and puffed away at their pipes.

Mr. Stovold went on.

"And there's another thing. They don't use the inns as they used to.
Time was when this very house would serve beer, or maybe cherry-brandy,
or sloe-gin to twenty or thirty fox-hunters in a single afternoon. But
now it all comes down from London in great silver bottles that they
carry in the back pocket of their breeches. And they get their breeches
in London, instead of in Bicester as they used to do. And ladies and
gentlemen come down in motor-cars to watch, and they keep on heading the
fox and blocking up the lanes and frightening the horses. Mr. Davis,
what would old Mr. Holford have said to a gentleman who headed the fox
in a motor-car?"

They all, except the ninety-eight-year-old, still asleep, laughed at
this, and Mr. Davis slapped his corduroy leg and said, "God Almighty, I
don't know what Mr. Holford wouldn't have said. He'd have fair killed
him."

"Who was Mr. Holford?" asked Donald.

"When did Mr. Holford die, Mr. Stovold?" Mr. Davis passed on the
question.

"Mr. Holford? It was the year before the war--not the war against the
Germans. The war in Africa."

"That's right. The year after the old Queen had her processions and
all."

Donald looked round the semicircle of wrinkled, wind-worn, ancient,
glowing faces, and rather diffidently ventured on another question.

"Why is it," he said, "that some of the young men of the village don't
come in here for a drink? Is there another inn in the village?"

"No sir," said Mr. Davis, smoothing his head with a hard thin hand.
"They don't drink here nor anywhere else, the young chaps. They hardly
drink at all."

"Why is that?" asked Donald.

Mr. Stovold, the violinist, seemed to be the readiest with his tongue,
for it was he who answered.

"There's several reasons for it, sir. For one thing, there isn't the
money about that there used to be; and then beer costs twice as much;
and then there's picture-houses and sharrabangs and motor-bicycles with
girls sitting on behind. And then in this village the Boy Scouts are
very strong, and lots of the young chaps are Rovers and don't drink so
as to be an example to the Scouts and the Cubs. And then, you see,
there's no one between them and old chaps like us."

"All the rest were killed, you mean?"

"Most of them, sir. Forty-two were killed from this village and they'd
be men of thirty-five and forty by now."

"Ah! That War didn't do any of us any good," said Mr. Stillaway.
"Nothing's been the same since."

"Yes, and what did we gain by it?" asked Mr. Young.

"Nothing," said Mr. Davis.

Donald made a halting remark about Belgium and national honour and
treaties, which the semicircle listened to attentively. Then Mr.
Stillaway, the impartial voter, replied:

"But can you tell me, sir, what national honour does for me? I've worked
on the land all my life, and the least I've ever earned is four-and-six
a week and the most is twenty-nine shillings. It isn't a fortune, either
of them. In 1914 a man comes down to the green here, and he makes a
speech about just that very national honour that you've been talking
about. Mind you, sir, in 1914 the nation and all its honour was giving
me twenty-two shillings a week and I was working seventy-four hours a
week for it. But I had to give three sons and eight grandsons to fight
for the national honour. Eleven of them. And three were killed and two
lost legs. And what good did that do to them or to me or Mr. Davis here,
or Mr. Darley? Cost of living is higher. Beer is more expensive and so
is tobacco. And my grandsons, the ones that weren't killed, can't get
work. And all that for what you call national honour."

"That's right." "Mr. Stillaway's hit it." "That's as true as I'm sitting
here," came as muttered applause.

Ancient Darley raised his venerable head once more.

"We fought on the wrong side," he whispered strongly. "Those Frenchies
were never any use to us. My father saw the beacons on the downs of
Sussex when Boney was on the other side. The Germans never did us any
harm. It's all they Frenchies."

"Ah! That's right," echoed every antique voice in the parlour.

"My father saw the sails of Lord Nelson's ships many a time," whispered
the ancient, "and old Boney sitting over there with his army like a
squirrel with a nest of nuts. And my father said to me, and I say to you
young chaps, 'What's the good of it all? What's the good of all these
wars?'"

He broke off into an ancient laugh.

"I'm not a scholar, never was, and don't suppose now I ever will be. But
one thing my father used to say, and he taught me to say it, was this:
'I am a true labourer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man
hate, envy no man's happiness, glad of other men's good, content with my
own harm; and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my
lambs suck.' I don't know where he got it from. Maybe his father taught
it to him. Or maybe it was Parson. War! What good is war to us?"

A voice, gently authoritative, came through the eddying smoke-clouds.
"Time, gentlemen, please. If you please, gentlemen. Time. Ten o'clock.
Act of Parliament, gentlemen, please."

Donald walked slowly and thoughtfully home under a clear cold sky. The
Great Bear was pointing at the Pole Star and the Pleiades were a golden
blur and Cassiopeia was twinkling and Orion was flaunting his
old-fashioned military equipment. The black, gaunt hedges were like
wrought-iron work against the starlight. Dogs barked in the distance and
footfalls clinked in the village street. Another English day was over.

       *       *       *       *       *

At The Golden Hind, Mr. and Mrs. Fielding were seated side by side at a
desk, poring over a small, dog-eared note-book. The others had gone to
bed. Mr. Fielding looked up and said, "Help yourself to whisky, Cameron.
We'll be finished in a moment."

Donald poured himself out a drink and sat down by the blazing log-fire.
His host and hostess went on with their work.

"If Mrs. Burchett can't pay her rent," said Mr. Fielding decisively,
"we'll just have to go without it, that's all."

"She can't possibly pay, John. She's had rheumatism so badly all the
winter that she's had to give up washing, and that means dropping
fifteen shillings a week at least, and both her boys are out of work."

"All right. Strike off Mrs. Burchett. The next is Henry Davis. Henry's
been out of work now twelve weeks----"

"And his wife's had twins."

"All right. Strike off Henry Davis. We can't worry him for rent just
now. And the last is old Mrs. Mitchell, and she says will we take two
shillings a week next month instead of four and six. What's the trouble
there, Florence?"

"Young Mitchell's been in trouble again."

"Damn that young Mitchell!" exclaimed Mr. Fielding. "Whereabouts is it
this time?"

"Down at Bristol, I hear," replied Mrs. Fielding. "A maid-servant, as
usual. She got an order against him and he didn't pay, so now he's in
Bristol prison."

"All right," said Mr. Fielding, "we'll put down Mrs. Mitchell for two
shillings instead of four-and-six. I'd like to get that young blackguard
up before me at Quarter Sessions; I'd make him jump. Is that all?"

"Mrs. Taylor's roof is leaking."

"I'll send up that carpenter fellow, Stovold, to-morrow."

"And a gate wants renewing at the lower paddock. I saw it this afternoon
when I was out for a walk. And, John, do you think we could find a job
for young Butter? His father was killed, you remember, and his mother
has a pretty hard time of it."

"We're employing far more hands already than we ought to," grumbled Mr.
Fielding.

"Yes, I know, dear. But Mrs. Butter does have such a hard time, and he's
such a nice boy. I thought we might put him on to do a little trenching
beyond the orchard for a new onion bed."

"All right, all right," said Mr. Fielding. Donald thought that his tone
of grudging concession was very clumsily assumed and that secretly he
was delighted at finding a reasonable excuse for employing young
Butter.

"Well now, my dear, is that all?" he went on. "Mr. Cameron will think us
very rude."

Mrs. Fielding smiled maternally at Donald and said:

"I am sure that Mr. Cameron will think nothing of the kind. There's only
one thing more. The thatcher is coming up at 9 o'clock to-morrow morning
about the end barn. It must be done soon or there'll be no roof left.
Will you see him?"

"Oh yes, I'll see him," said Mr. Fielding enthusiastically. "He's
promised to lend me a ferret for clearing out the rats at the stables. I
expect he'll bring it along with him."

They both got up and came over to the fire.

"Well, Cameron," said Mr. Fielding. "We've been neglecting you
scandalously."

"I've been enjoying myself enormously," replied Donald. "You see, I was
a farmer myself once. But it was a different sort of farming to all
this."

"You don't look like a farmer, Mr. Cameron," said Mrs. Fielding. Mrs.
Fielding was a gentle, comely woman, with a voice like the purr of a
cat, and large, soft, grey eyes.

"I've tried very hard to get rid of the traces."

"Why, didn't you like farming?" she asked in surprise. "We all adore
living on the land."

"But what a different sort of land!" cried Donald. "Where I farmed, the
soil was poor and the stones were plentiful. I grew oats and turnips and
potatoes. Six months in the year the wind blew from the Arctic Circle
straight into my front door. Everything was grey--a granite farmhouse,
slate roofs, stone dykes, and grey skies, and in winter it was dark at 3
o'clock in the afternoon. But here--"--he threw his arms out--"here,
what a difference! You've got colour here. Your houses are red, and you
have hedges with flowers in them instead of stone dykes. You've got
fruit blossom, and it's warm down here--and--and I somehow can't
explain--you've been here such a long time. You're settled and cosy.
I've been over in the Crooked Billet just now, listening to your old men
talking. One of them had seen Dickens and one of them quoted
Shakespeare--though he didn't know it was Shakespeare--and I felt--I
don't quite know what I did feel--but I wouldn't have been a bit
surprised if they'd told me all about their experiences at Crcy or
Poitiers. I'd have believed them.... We haven't anything like that in
Scotland."

"You've got other things to be proud of," said Mrs. Fielding gently.

"Of course we have!" replied Donald patriotically. "Lots of them. But
somehow all this down here makes Scotland seem rather disjointed."

"You were such blood-thirsty ruffians," said Mr. Fielding genially.
"That was your trouble. Always scrapping. Look at our wars. We had that
local affair at Sedgmoor, and the Cromwell stuff, and the Wars of the
Roses, but that's about all in the last six hundred years, except when
your Douglases came marauding over the Border. No wonder things have got
settled down a bit."

"Yes, I suppose that's it, partly. But I think it's also that you're
such a friendly race. It seems to me that you like things and people so
much."

"Well, there isn't much point in quarrelling all the time, is there?"

"Of course there isn't much point," answered Donald; "there isn't any
point. But people do it all the same. Especially on the west coast of
Scotland. But down here it's different. I think the English have done
lots of beastly things in the past--like Cromwell's sack of Drogheda, or
the destruction of the Summer Palace in Pekin and the Old Fort at Delhi,
or letting Marshal Ney be shot. But I think that every time it was just
a fit of bad temper, and as soon as it was over they became as kind and
as friendly as ever. I think the longest fit they've ever had was the
way they treated Napoleon. But with the Scots, and the French, and lots
of other races, there's far too much permanent bad temper."

"We're too busy money-making," said Mr. Fielding with a laugh. "Nation
of shopkeepers, eh?"

"Oh no, no," exclaimed Donald earnestly, "that's a libel. You're the
most unpractical race in the world."

"Oh, come, come, Mr. Cameron!" said Mrs. Fielding reproachfully. "You
can't possibly defend that statement."

"Yes, Cameron," chimed in her husband, "that's going a bit too far. If
there's one thing we are good at, it's money-making and business. I
sometimes think we go a bit too far the other way and drive too hard
bargains."

"I couldn't help overhearing," said Donald drily, "that you were
preparing to drive some pretty hard bargains with your tenants just
now."

Mr. Fielding became indignant.

"That's a different story altogether. It so happened that one or two of
them have had a bit of hard luck lately, and one can't Shylock the poor
devils. But when it comes to a business deal, I flatter myself I'm as
good a man as my neighbours."

"Perhaps that's because they're all English," said Donald.

Mr. Fielding laughed delightedly.

"You mean that if you settled down here as a sort of Farfrae you'd soon
turn me into a Mayor of Casterbridge."

"Talking about that," said Mrs. Fielding, knitting away with a fury that
contrasted oddly with her gentle placidity of voice and manner, "what is
that copy of _Tess_ that is lying on the hall table? I don't think I've
seen it before."

Mr. Fielding looked down and coughed, and then thumped his chest to call
attention to the fact that the cough was physical, not nervous.

"It's a first edition, my dear," he said.

"I saw that it was a first edition," she replied. "Where did you find
it? Upstairs somewhere?"

"No--er--as a matter of fact, I picked it up to-day. It's quite
valuable."

"In Aylesbury?"

"Er--no. Not exactly. Er--here."

"John, the vicar has been at you again. How much did you give him?" Mrs.
Fielding stopped knitting.

"Well, my dear, he's got seven children and a first edition is no use
to him. He can get just as much fun out of a Tauchnitz."

"How much did you give him?" said Mrs. Fielding patiently.

"It's in perfect preservation," replied her lord and master.

"Three hundred pounds?"

Mr. Fielding sighed.

"As a matter of fact----" he began, but she gently interrupted him.

"If you want to conceal that sort of thing from me, John, you shouldn't
use my cheque-book."

Mr. Fielding laughed, and then turned to Donald.

"I'm afraid I drove a pretty hard bargain with the poor old vicar, but
after all, business is business."

"Considering that the market value of a _Tess_ first edition probably
isn't more than fifty pounds----"

"Oh, nonsense!" cried Mr. Fielding, jumping up. "It's a first-class
investment. What does it matter anyway? One more drink and then
bedtime--eh, chickabiddy. But as for saying that the English are bad
business men, it's all rubbish! Say when, Cameron."




CHAPTER XIV


Breakfast at "The Golden Hind" was at 8.30, and at 9 o'clock sharp a
maid came into the breakfast-room and announced in an almost
unintelligible Buckinghamshire accent:

"Thatcher come, sir."

Mr. Fielding threw down his _Times_ and bustled out, and Donald strolled
after him unobtrusively. The thatcher was a tall, thin man of an
indeterminate age--perhaps forty, perhaps seventy. His cheeks, of
course, were a healthy red, like all Buckinghamshire cheeks, and a long
brown moustache drooped down past each corner of his mouth almost to the
edges of his chin. His eyes were pale blue. He wore corduroys and an old
army leather jerkin without sleeves, and a tie without a collar, and he
held his old tweed cap in both hands in front of him.

Mr. Fielding plunged at once into a complicated conversation, full of
technical terms of carpentering and thatching, full of joists and
trusses and ties and overhang and twists and pins. Each appeared to
understand the other perfectly. Donald could make head or tail of
neither.

"There's a fine old trade dying out," said Mr. Fielding, after the man
had gone. "Old Mells is the only thatcher for many miles round and
there's not a better craftsman in the land. And yet he can't get enough
work to keep him busy all the week. He has to do hedging and ditching
and odd-job gardening, and he's the village sexton too. Sad, isn't it?
When he's dead there won't be a thatcher at all."

"Hasn't he got any sons?" enquired Donald. "A lot of these trades are
hereditary, aren't they?"

"They were hereditary," replied Mr. Fielding, "but this is the last
generation of it. There has been a thatcher called Mells in this village
for centuries, I expect, but the old man you saw just now--he's got two
sons and both of them are motor mechanics in Aylesbury. That's the rule
nowadays. The stupid sons become farm labourers and the clever ones
become mechanics. In the old days both clever sons and stupid sons
followed their father's trade, except the occasional enterprising one
who joined the army. But garages have spoilt all that."

Mrs. Fielding, a bundle of tradesmen's books under each arm, letters and
bills and receipts and circulars and bulb catalogues and newspapers in
her hands, and a cheque-book in her mouth, came out of the dining-room.
Her husband relieved her of the impediment to speech, and she asked
Donald what he would like to do.

Donald said that he had thought of walking over to Tainton Green to see
the Meet, and he fancied that a fleeting glimmer of relief was visible
on the faces of both host and hostess. A guest in the country who cannot
amuse himself is a nuisance to busy people.

"Would you like the car? Or a bicycle?" asked Mr. Fielding promptly.

"I think I'd sooner walk," replied Donald, and again he thought they
looked relieved.

"It's about two miles," said Mrs. Fielding. "If you start a little after
10 you'll be in plenty of time. The Meet's at 11 o'clock."

It was a warm January morning, sunny and spring-like, and Donald felt
that there should have been buttercups in the meadows with larks above
them, and swallows fooling about, and cowslips, and great drifts of the
flower which the English call bluebells but the Scots wild hyacinths.
The air was very still, and far away a bell was tolling. Cows and sheep
grazed in the fields, and no ploughland chequered the greenness of the
pasture with dark, kindly smears of earth. Somewhere near an axe was
pecking at a tree, and on the edge of a copse of young oaks a band of
small children were happily collecting firewood and putting it into a
cart, home-made from a soap-box and a pair of ancient bicycle wheels.

Donald dived into a network of narrow lanes, unsignposted, untouched by
the influence of Mr. Macadam, and flanked on each side by strips of
grass which were a good deal wider than the lanes themselves. No
buildings were visible. There was no sign of human life. Donald was in
the heart of rural England.

He was recalled from his day-dreaming about village Hampdens, and
plodding ploughmen, and the short and simple annals of the poor, by a
terrific blast upon an electric motor-horn about two yards behind him.
He sprang into the air in alarm and spun round to find himself facing
the silver bonnet of a colossal pale-blue-and-silver Rolls-Royce, out of
the driver's seat of which was leaning a young man with a red face. It
was not the pink of the gaffers' faces in the Crooked Billet, but a
mottled red.

"Hey! You!" shouted the young man. "When you've finished sleeping in the
middle of the road, where the devil's Tainton Green?"

"I imagine it's straight on," replied Donald politely, "but I'm
afraid----"

"Oh God!" interrupted the young man, "another bloody stranger!" and he
released the clutch and the great car slid away.

Tainton Green looked as if a celestial town-planner had scattered Tudor
cottages out of a pepper-pot and then, as an afterthought, had flung
down a handful of rather larger Queen Anne houses. The newest house in
the village must have been about two hundred years old. There was in
Tainton Green what house-agents call "a wealth of old timber," and the
cottages which it adorned stood at every conceivable angle to each other
in an irregular ring round the Green.

But Donald had no desire at the moment to examine architecture. His
whole attention was concentrated upon the most famous of all English
sporting spectacles, the Meet of a pack of English foxhounds. As he had
expected, there was no detail missing from the scene that has been so
often described in books and pictures. Everything was there--dogs, shiny
horses, admiring villagers, huntsmen in velvet caps, a horseman with a
long whip and a brass horn, sharp-looking grooms in neat leggings and
black-and-white check breeches, rows of motor-cars of immense brilliance
and beauty (even the pale-blue-and-silver Rolls-Royce which had passed
Donald in the lane was not particularly conspicuous), motor horse-boxes,
liveried chauffeurs, liveried footmen, each carrying a fur rug over his
left arm and looking bored and contemptuous, and here and there an
occasional pony-trap. The pony-traps--there were not more than half a
dozen of them--roused the chauffeurs a little from their massive
stolidity into lofty smiles.

And, of course, there were the ladies and gentlemen who were going to
risk their bones, perhaps even their necks, for the sake of sport. The
first thing that struck Donald was the drabness of the feminine
hunting-kit and the gorgeousness of the masculine. The women mostly wore
queer-shaped bowler hats and black habits, with here and there a touch
of white. But the men wore shiny toppers and scarlet coats and white or
pale-yellow breeches and huge orange-topped boots and high stocks, and
they strode about the Green like captains of Spanish galleons, or
colonels of Napoleon's light cavalry, seeing no one except each other,
but allowing themselves to be seen by everyone, chins out, heads high,
superbly disdainful, like the camels of Bactria who alone know the
hundredth name of God.

One of them stepped heavily into a puddle beside Donald and splashed him
with mud and went on, his eyes fixed on eternal space, as if neither
Donald nor the puddle had ever existed. Another, seated upon his
charger like Bellerophon upon Pegasus, halted a yard or two away, and
addressed a beautiful girl who was curveting round and round upon a
mettlesome steed. "These bloody yokels who clutter up the place ought to
be shot," he said. "Don't you agree, Pud?"

The beautiful girl persuaded her horse to stand still for a moment and
looked at Donald as if he was some kind of slug. "Bloody bastards," she
agreed, and then was curveted away again.

A colonel of Napoleonic light cavalry came past, perhaps a Hussar of
Conflans--Donald could almost hear the clatter of his sabre upon the
streets of Vienna or Warsaw or Berlin, and see the swing of the
pale-blue, silver-buttoned dolman and the nodding of the horse-hair
plume--stopped, put an eyeglass in his eye, and addressed the horseman.

"Hullo, Ted!" said Lasalle.

"Hullo, Squibs," replied Bellerophon, looking more than ever like a
Bactrian camel, "I say, these bloody yokels who clutter up the place
ought to be shot."

The _beau sabreur_ looked quickly round and, seeing that at the moment
no one was within ear-shot--for Donald, being only a yokel, was like a
stone or a stump or a cow, and could not actually be said to be there at
all--he lowered his voice and said urgently, "Look here, Ted, don't
touch Moggeridge Ordinaries till they hit half a dollar. We're doing a
wangle, see? Weinstein's coming in with us, and so's old Potts and old
Finkelberg. Get me?"

He winked, and Donald thought that somehow he looked less like a
swaggering hussar than before. For some ridiculous reason, Donald found
himself thinking of week-ends at Brighton and peroxide.

All this time more cars and more horses and more intrepid sportswomen
and sportsmen had been arriving, and punctually at 11 o'clock the whole
apparatus of fox-killing, dogs, horses, women, and men moved off
sedately towards a wood outside the village. Donald counted a hundred
and seven riders and approximately sixty dogs. It was a formidable
cavalcade. From a little rising ground he watched them enter a field and
gradually spread out into a scattered semicircle as they approached the
wood which was presumed to be the lair of one of the doomed vermin. They
rode slowly, in little groups, and halted while the advance guard of
scarlet and velvet and horn vanished among the trees. There was a pause
of ten minutes, and then came the sound of distant shouting, and the
horses sprang into activity. The hunt was up. The riders streamed away
along the edges of the wood and vanished over a slope and reappeared on
a far-off hill-side, a spectacle of unbelievable picturesqueness and
romance. Donald stood and strained his eyes until the last scarlet
pin-head had vanished behind the horizon of dark woods, leaving an empty
landscape of dull greys and browns and greens. The splendour had gone,
and Donald walked slowly homewards.

Half-way home he found that at his rate of walking he would be back at
"The Golden Hind" before 12 o'clock, which would never do. Mr. and Mrs.
Fielding would be busy, and they would abandon their busyness to try
and entertain him and everyone would feel embarrassed. It was a warm
morning; a tree-stump on the edge of a coppice was dry, and Donald had a
book. He sat down in the sunshine and plunged into _The Trail of the
Poisoned Carpet_, a work of fiction of which the nature and the
absorbing interest can be readily judged when it is stated that Donald
had just reached the point when the heroine, slim Miranda Tremayne,
drugged, and bound hand and foot, was being lowered in an empty caviar
barrel into a disused mine-shaft by La Sapphirita, a Bolshevik spy, and
Boris Fernandowski, agent of the Ogpu.

Donald was soon completely absorbed. He read the chapter which described
the brilliant rescue of slim Miranda by huge, ugly Dick Trelawney, who
happened to alight providentially at the mouth of the mine-shaft in a
racing balloon. He read the great scenes of Dick's fight with Ah Boo Wu
and his gang in the Limehouse main drain, the reappearance of the secret
submarine off Valparaiso, the forgery of Sir Dalhousie Canning's
signature to the Bungiskhan Treaty, and the theft of the Poisoned Carpet
itself from the nunnery in Hull, and he had just reached the point at
which La Sapphirita has put cyanide upon the claws of a Siamese cat and,
disguised in black satin trousers as a Government window-cleaner, has
inserted the animal into the Far Eastern Department of the Foreign
Office where huge, ugly Dick Trelawney is at work with an atlas and a
manual of geography trying to discover exactly where Bungiskhan is, with
which he has negotiated the Treaty. Donald had just reached this point
when he became slowly aware that the stillness of the country-side was
being broken by distant voices. A faint hallooing came across the
fields, and then suddenly, out of the hedge on the other side of the
road--tired, muddy, panting, limping, desperate--came the fox. He passed
within a yard of Donald without appearing to see him and lolloped slowly
into the coppice.

Donald watched him go and wished him good luck, adding aloud, "And a fat
chance you've got! All alone against sixty dogs and a hundred and seven
riders and a hundred and seven horses--two hundred and seventy-four
against one."

He moved down the road to get out of the way of the pursuing angels, who
were so nobly bent upon saving the country-side from vermin. The
shouting and hallooing came nearer, but the human sounds were
overwhelmed in the wild, excited, parrot-like, monkey-like yapping and
screaming of the hounds, as they came pouring through the hedge in brave
pursuit, all sixty of the intrepid heroes. Then came the first of the
riders, the men in velvet caps and the men with the horns, taking the
hedges with the lovely slow curve of a horse that knows it can jump and
knows that its rider can be trusted. Behind them came the mob, galloping
like Prince Rupert across the fields, the leaders unerringly finding the
gaps and the gates, and the followers forming up into blasphemous queues
behind them. Donald was astonished that so few of them made any attempt
to jump the hedges. One or two deliberately set their horses at them,
and five or six were obviously less keen about it than their mounts,
and did their unsuccessful best to dissuade them from the perilous leap,
but at least eighty per cent disdained such showy tactics and preferred
the gates and gaps, where a reputation for hard riding could be more
easily obtained by a lot of hard swearing.

There was a halt at the edge of the coppice, for the fox had gone to
ground. He had outrun the whole two hundred and seventy-four of them,
and in doing so he had provided an hour and a half of the best sport
which the Hunt had seen that season. But though he had outrun them all,
and though he had provided such sport, they had the laugh on him in the
end. For they got a lot of spades and a couple of terrier dogs and dug
him out of his hole and killed him; because, after all, the country-side
must be saved from vermin even if ladies and gentlemen have to chase
them on horseback for an hour and a half, and furthermore it would be an
act of callous cruelty to dumb animals, which no Englishman could be
guilty of, to deprive the sixty dogs of the midday meal which they had
so bravely earned.

Donald resumed his homeward journey and in ten minutes came upon an
animated scene. Just where his winding lane joined the main road, a
caravan of gypsies had halted their motley crew of painted wagons. They
could only have arrived within the last two hours, because Donald had
not seen them on his way to Tainton Green.

The T-head where the lane actually joined the road was almost blocked
with horses, and six or eight of the fox-hunters were standing
dismounted among the riders, all with their backs to Donald and facing
the main road. Beyond this faade of mud-bespattered black and scarlet
and horse-flesh, furious voices were being raised, and language that
would have startled Nell Gwynne, or brought a blush to the cheeks of
Burke and Hare, was being freely used. Donald edged his way between the
ditch and one of the horses into the front row of the stalls, and by the
time he had reached his place, the flow of words had given way to a fast
bout of fisticuffs. One of the antagonists was a six-foot,
scarlet-coated, scarlet-faced young man; the other was a lean, dirty,
dark gypsy. The muddied Adonis fought with a classical straight left;
the smoky _chal_ relied upon short-arm punches, low when possible. The
bout only lasted a few seconds, for the fighters were dragged apart by
other gentlemen in red coats, and the gypsy retired sullenly under the
overwhelming force with which he was now faced.

The comments of the ring were so clear, and expressed so forcibly and so
repeatedly, that Donald had no difficulty in discovering what it was all
about.

"The bloody swine was kicking his horse!" said a girl of about nineteen,
with lips like the petals of a rose.

"Bloody swine!" said another girl, the perfection of whose fragile face
was a little marred by a diagonal stain of mud about six inches long and
three inches broad.

A short, tubby man, who looked very rich, shouted out:

"Bravo, Ralph! Well done, boy!"

Two men on foot discussed the matter in grave undertones.

"Thank God it was a gypsy and not an Englishman," the first said.

"An Englishman wouldn't do a thing like that," said the second, rather
shocked.

"If there's one thing that gets me mad," said the first, "it's cruelty
to animals. I don't care whether it's a mouse or an elephant, it simply
makes me see red."

"Absolutely," said the second. "One can stand a good deal, but one can't
stand that."

"I never go abroad nowadays," said the first, "except to Le Touquet and
Monte Carlo and Switzerland and so on, because I simply cannot stand the
way those chaps treat animals."

"Just like this dago," assented the other. "Do you know the first thing
I'm going to do when I get back to town to-night? I'm going to invite
Ralph out to the best dinner at the Ritz that money can buy."

"By Jove!" cried the second enthusiastically. "Let me in on that, old
chap. We'll share exes."

They drifted away.

A horseman, pale with passion, and covered with clay from silk hat to
orange-topped boots, was staring wildly in front of him and repeating
over and over again to the world in general, "I'll report him to the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, I'll report him to the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals!"

An old lady of about seventy, perched like a sparrow upon an enormous
black horse, kept on saying plaintively: "Why doesn't someone flog him?
I can't understand why no one flogs him."

Donald heard no more, for at that moment the shoulder of a horse took
him neatly in the small of the back and knocked him into the hedge. The
woman who was riding never even glanced in his direction. She was about
fifty years of age and her mouth and jaw were resolute and her eye
unwavering, and Donald recognized her at once as one of the nurses in a
hospital near Hazebrouck in Flanders in which he had had measles. One
pouring wet night when the hospital, which by an unfortunate mischance
had been placed immediately beside a large ammunition dump, was being
bombed by German aircraft, this hard-faced Diana carried out seven
wounded officers from a burning ward into which the stretcher-bearers
refused to go, and rigged up a shelter for them from the rain, and
boiled tea for them by the light of the blazing huts, to the
accompaniment of a full orchestra of machine-guns, anti-aircraft
artillery, bombs, pattering splinters, and screams and groans. And on
another occasion she held the icy hand of a dying subaltern for
twenty-seven hours. And on another she told the Matron what she thought
of her.

       *       *       *       *       *

Donald picked himself out of the hedge and went slowly back to "The
Golden Hind." Another fox had been found and the hunt had vanished with
extraordinary swiftness, leaving nothing behind them save innumerable
hoof-marks in the mud, a few gaps in fences for the farmers to repair,
and the memory of a gallant panorama.

Donald had just time before lunch to reach the chapter in which Miranda,
slimmer than ever, is lured by a false message into the bargain
basement of an antique shop in Fez.

On Monday morning he read in _The Times_ that the second fox had
completely let down the North Bucks Hunt. The wretched creature had
nipped off at a great rate and in five minutes had dived into a hole
from which not even the valiant terriers could extract him. He was, in
fact, as _The Times_ said, "a bad fox."

The rest of the week-end passed pleasantly in visits to the ducks,
turkeys, hens, geese, goats, guinea-fowl, cows, horses, and other live
stock which lived in or around the rambling, lichened, mossy old barns
at the back of "The Golden Hind"; in wandering round the village with
Mr. and Mrs. Fielding, which was a slow business because both of them
stopped to talk to every man, woman, child, and three-quarters of the
horses and dogs, that they met; in exploring with Mr. Fielding the Saxon
church and listening to him talking learnedly upon architecture; in
discussing French novels, and the English Restoration Drama, and the
decay of craftsmanship, and the taxation of land values, and the music
of Arnold Bax, and Reparations, and fifty other subjects about which Mr.
and Mrs. Fielding obviously knew far more than Donald; in helping the
married daughter and her husband with the colic-stricken horse; in
holding wool for the unmarried daughter, who was going to knit a jumper
for herself in the intervals between dancing and badminton and trips to
London and riding and Girl Guides and Women's Institutes and Women's
British Legion and Glee-Club rehearsals and amateur theatricals; and in
much good eating and drinking and pleasant sleeping.

       *       *       *       *       *

On Monday morning another meandering train crept stealthily towards
Marylebone Station with Donald among its passengers. On the journey, he
read in _The Times_ that the Bill for the Prevention of the Exportation
of Worn-Out English Horses to Belgium and other countries, which had in
the last Parliament passed without a division its first reading, its
second reading, and all its Committee stages, and was simply waiting for
the formality of the third reading, had been reintroduced into the new
Parliament and had every prospect of securing a first reading within the
next two years.




CHAPTER XV


During the early spring months of that year Donald was very busy. He had
collected enough notes about England and the English to fill fourteen
large exercise-books, and he decided that it was high time to start
putting them together in some sort of shape before making any more
expeditions to collect new material. He would continue, naturally, in
his daily round to keep his eyes open for happenings or sayings or
sights which would throw further light upon the extraordinary problem in
front of him, and to miss no opportunities during his spare time of
adding to his notes. But he laid down a schedule of working hours and
rigidly adhered to it, giving up the visits to Fleet Street, the
week-end parties which cut into Fridays and Mondays and completely
annexed Saturday mornings, and the afternoon visits to Museums and
Galleries and other sights of London. Only the evenings were kept
completely free from work. At 5 o'clock Donald shut his note-books for
the day. Sometimes he spent the whole evening strolling about the
streets, looking at the people and the shops and the buildings, and
trying to assess the quality or qualities in each district that
distinguished it from the rest, and seeking for the descriptive
adjective or phrase for each. Sometimes he spent evenings in trying to
find the exact line which divided one district from another, to delimit,
for instance, the frontier between the Preference-Shareholder District
of South Kensington and the Faded Refinement of the dwellers in Earls
Court; or the boundary that divides the Zionism of West Hampstead from
the Pen Club of Well Walk and Keats Grove; or the exact spot where the
influence of Nude Picture Post Cards in Praed Street wanes before the
empurpled major-generals of Petersburg Square.

Once Donald went to see greyhound racing, one of the latest of English
sports, and one of the kindliest. For there is no tearing to pieces of a
tired fox by sixty dogs, nor do the followers of the chase pursue their
quarry out to sea in boats as the intrepid stag-hunters of Kent and the
West of England are wont to do, thus bringing themselves within the
scope of the musical petition for those in peril on the sea. Nor do
greyhound racers, when horse and hound and even motor-boats have failed,
polish off their animal with a machine-gun, a weapon that stag-hunters
handle with all the dexterity of a Chicago gangster and with a good deal
less risk of reprisals. But these followers of the nimble greyhound have
one little trick in common with the more virile, danger-loving sportsmen
of Kent and the western moors. For when the quarry has been captured
intact, it is taken back and used again. The only real difference
between the mechanical hare of the tracks and the carted deer of the
moors is that there is no way of proving for certain that the mechanical
hare really enjoys being hunted--which, as everyone knows, is the fact
with the carted deer.

Another small piece of evidence of the kindliness of greyhound racing
that Donald noticed was a specially equipped amusement park for the
children, whose mothers were fully occupied in backing their fancies at
the ring-side. A sand-pit, a couple of swings, a see-saw, and some
rocking-horses provided occupation for the older children of three or
four years of age, while the younger ones were kept happy and amused in
their prams by the lovely lights of the so-called stadium, filtering
most intriguingly through the smoke of fags and cheap cigars, and by the
good-humoured shouting of the bookmakers, with whom their mammas were
doing business, and by the clear, loud voice of the announcer, until
well past 11 o'clock at night.

On another evening Donald paid a shilling to watch a professional
billiards match near Leicester Square, but he found it rather dull. For
one of the players never had to play a difficult stroke--each stroke in
a break of 1161 was so easy that Donald, whose highest break was 27,
made in the hospital in Edinburgh, was quite confident that he could
have made it--and the other player had such amazing good luck that after
two or three ordinary strokes the balls happened to run together in a
heap beside one of the cushions, and he then proceeded to tap them about
with such pussy-like velvetiness that he scored 1641 in no time. All the
while the audience sat and smoked and stared in impenetrable silence,
the professional who was out of action lay back on an uncomfortable
chair and gazed at the ceiling, while the only sound was the monotonous
Cockney drone of the marker: "Five hundred and two, five hundred and
four, five hundred and six, five hundred and eight, five hundred and
ten," until Donald began to wonder if the words "five" and "hundred"
existed, and if so, whether they meant anything. The break came to an
end unexpectedly with a failure to pot a ball that was lying on the very
edge of a pocket, a stroke that Donald could have made blindfolded and
using the long rest.

But the two great functions of the winter, so far as Donald was
concerned, were the dance at Lady Ormerode's house in Eaton Square, and
Esmeralda's party at the Htel Josphine. There were about five hundred
people at Lady Ormerode's and not much space for dancing, as the room
only held three hundred. But nobody minded. The house was packed. The
noise of the chatter was deafening. Crowds of people danced. Crowds of
people sat on the stairs and smoked cigarettes. Donald, who knew very
few of his fellow-guests, leant against the wall near the foot of the
main staircase and counted that at one moment the smoke of a hundred and
seventeen cigarettes was ascending simultaneously, sixty-five of which
were being smoked and fifty-two were unextinguished stubs, lying upon
the white-painted stairs and burning neat black holes in the red carpet.

In the supper-room he met Esmeralda d'Avenant, all in black except for a
pair of scarlet and paste earrings and a white gardenia upon one
shoulder, superbly beautiful as ever. She was surrounded by a group of
men. The moment she saw Donald come in, she cut ruthlessly through the
circle and came straight across to him.

"I must have the next but two and the two after that, Donald," she cried
impetuously. "I want to talk to you."

An agitated outcry of protest arose from the abandoned swains. She
turned on them in a flash and smiled brilliantly. "Can't help it,
darlings," she said. "I adore you all, but business is business." Donald
was too paralysed to do anything. He was caught in the web of the
glittering spider. The fatal kindliness of Mr. Huggins had overtaken him
once more. He felt despairingly that when Esmeralda did discover, as she
was bound very soon to discover, that he had no connection of any kind
with Hollywood or Elstree or any other film-producing centre in the
world, her annoyance would be very great. Donald felt that Esmeralda was
just the sort of person who might express very great annoyance with
extreme measures, even with physical violence. In the days of Sir
Lancelot and the Troubadours it was considered a great compliment if a
Lady condescended so far as to inflict a physical injury upon a Knight.
But in these sordid days of rationalization and universal suffrage the
outlook is different, and Donald was very anxious to avoid the danger of
receiving, in public, a quick hook to the button from that white and
exquisite, but undeniably muscular, right arm of Esmeralda.

He therefore smiled wanly and muttered something about the delight that
he would experience in dancing the next but two and the two after that
with her, and fled in anguish to the upper part of the house, where he
found a deserted balcony looking out over the square. It was an L-shaped
balcony, for it was at a corner of the house, itself a corner-house, and
Donald hid himself in the furthest obscurity of the arm of the L that
was invisible from the inside. He leant over the iron railing and mopped
his brow and watched the traffic swirling up the cross-streets from the
direction of Victoria, hooting madly as it neared the square and then
skidding all over the place as it met the traffic that came hooting and
swirling down the centre of the square. Donald grew quite absorbed in
the sight. Over and over again an accident was only averted by inches.
Cars waltzed gracefully into safety; lorries slipped sideways out of
danger; pedestrians fled screaming; and the air was filled with the
squeaking and grinding of brakes, the blaring of electric horns, and the
shouting of angry drivers. But it was too good to last, and after twenty
minutes of miracles a long, low sports car struck a stately limousine,
laden with pearls and diamonds, fair and square at right angles below
the water-line, just as the torpedo struck the bullion-carrying s.s.
_Egypt_ off the coast of Ushant in 1916.

The limousine rose on one side, hovered in the air, and then heeled over
and sank upon the pavement. A motor-bicycle which had been taking the
natural advantage of its speed and its rider's skill to pass the
limousine at fifty-five miles an hour on the wrong side at a blind
corner, swerved on to the pavement to avoid the mighty wreck, touched
the top of it and bounced clean over it full-pitch into a coffee-stall,
which was being pushed by its owner to its stance in Battersea.

The torpedoing sports car, as if aghast at its unexpected feat, backed
suddenly away from its prostrate victim into a lorry and the lorry swung
round into a glazier's van. The glazier's van, to judge from the Homeric
crashes that immediately followed, seemed to contain most of the
Alexandra Palace, and in a second the road was strewn feet deep with
splintered glass, cups and saucers, ham sandwiches, sausage rolls,
tyres, pieces of twisted metal, packets of cigarettes, coffee-urns, bits
of wood, and a great variety of odds and ends such as tweed caps,
spanners, buttons, and oil-cans, and the whole was instantly fused into
one harmonious broth by a flood of petrol, oil, water, tea, and coffee.

It was an entrancing spectacle. Donald watched the motor-bicyclist
emerge with a penny bun so firmly stuck in his eye that it required a
pair of pincers to extract it; he saw the face of the coffee-stall
keeper, who was standing in complete silence, as if his powers of
language were not adequate to do justice to the situation; he listened
with admiration to the lorry-driver's theories about the parentage of
the young man who was driving the sports car, and to the glazier's
theories about the after-life that he would allot to the lorry-driver
should the Almighty give him a free hand; and finally he watched the
brave souls who volunteered to dive into the sunken limousine in order
to rescue the bullion, and, if possible, the passengers. It was not
until the crowd, which had sprung up through the paving stones of the
deserted streets, completely obscured his view that Donald realized with
a gasp and a sort of clutch at his heart, that at least three-quarters
of an hour had passed since he had taken refuge on the balcony, and that
certainly the next dance but two and probably the next two after that
were by this time over. But worse was to follow. He was no longer alone
upon the balcony. At some time or other during his absorption in the
drama below, other people had found his retreat, and the voices of a man
and a woman were clearly audible from the other arm of the L. Nor was
that all. For the first few words that came round the corner were: "You
see, if we got married."

Donald's first idea had been to push his way past them and escape from
the unpleasant position into which he had got himself. But at those
words he shrank back again. It was surely better to eavesdrop a
passionate proposal of marriage than to interrupt it. So long as he was
undiscovered, the former could do no harm. Heaven only knew how many
lives might not be ruined by the latter. This might be the lover's only
chance to make his declaration--he might be sailing early next morning
to North Borneo. This might be the psychological moment when the strains
of the Blue Danube, together with the frosty full moon and Pommery 1919,
had just tipped the scale against a life-time of bachelorhood. Another
lover might be waiting for the next dance to try his luck with her. A
seductive adventuress might even now be hanging about downstairs to try
her luck with him. No. Interruption was impossible. Donald shrank back
and tried to hold his breath.

"You see if we got married," went on the man's voice, "we wouldn't be so
badly off. I've got three hundred of my own, and I get four hundred from
the shop; that's seven hundred, and you've got two-fifty--do you think
you could sting the old man for a bit more than two-fifty?"

"Might squeeze another hundred," said the girl's voice, cool, precise,
steady. "Not more. He doesn't part easily."

"That's rather grim," said the man.

"Yes, and what makes it so damned grim," said the girl, "is that Father
and Mother are both about a hundred and eighty, and they've got no
business to hang on to four or five thousand and dish me out a grim
little handful of pence."

"Yes. That is damned grim. Still it leaves us a thousand."

"A thousand doesn't go far," pointed out the girl. "You can't get a
service flat under five hundred."

"The grim thing is," said the man, "that one can't possibly live
anywhere else except in a service flat."

"Good God, no," replied the girl. "You can't see me grimly ordering the
meals and darning your grim socks, can you?"

"Good God, no."

"Then for God's sake, be practical. Five hundred for the flat leaves
five hundred for everything else."

"That's a rather grim prospect," said the man gloomily. "And I'm damned
fond of you, Slick."

"And I'm damned fond of you, Crabface."

"But still, five hundred for everything else----"

"No good," she said decisively. There was a pause, then she went on, "I
tell you what I'll do. I'll put it up to the centenarians that it's high
time they cut themselves down a bit. They can't enjoy themselves any
more, so they ought to pass it on to those who can. If they shove on
another three hundred, I'll take the risk and have a shot at it,
Crabface."

"Good egg," replied the gentleman.

"But anything under three hundred, nothing doing."

"That's O.K. by me, Chief."

"Right. Shall we beat it? I've got the next with Snootles."

"Right. So long, Slick. All the grimmest."

"All the grimmest, Crabface."

Donald was alone on the balcony. He went slowly down the stairs. At the
foot Esmeralda was waiting with shining eyes and a radiant smile on her
warm, red cupid's-bow.

"Oh, Donald," she said huskily, "you are the sweetest pet in the world.
Do you know that you've won me two hundred pounds!"

Donald blinked. Esmeralda continued to look at him very much as the
older soldiers of the Grande Arme must have looked at the Emperor
Napoleon. Donald felt that if he had pinched her ear at that moment she
would have fallen upon her colossally insured knees on the stone floor,
and thus caused great agitation at Lloyd's.

Instead he murmured, "How have I done that?"

"Because I bet 'Snarks' Muggleston and Tony Spratt and 'Becher's'
Boldingham that you'd cut my three dances. And they were so sure of my
S.A. that they jumped at it, and so I've won all round--a lovely
compliment from them, and two hundred pounds, and--" her famous smile
vanished and her famous look of wistfulness succeeded it, "another slap
in the eye from you." She smiled again and added, "I think you're
fascinating."

Donald was just offering up a short prayer that this might be the end of
the conversation, and of the whole episode, for already three or four
pretty men were hovering near, waiting to pounce upon the lovely
creature the moment she gave the slightest indication of having finished
with her film magnate. But who should roll up at that very instant--red,
rollicking, and beautifully dressed--but Mr. Huggins himself. Mr.
Huggins had none of the diffidence and tact of the group of pretty men,
for he committed the unheard-of atrocity of interrupting Esmeralda at a
_tte--tte_ with a cheery shout of:

"Esmeralda--what ho! Cameron--what ho! Huggins--what ho! As fine a
looking trio as there's been seen since the bishop took the two typists
to Frinton-on-Sea during Septuagesima. Keep the fun clean, girls and
boys, that's all I ask. Cameron, I didn't know you knew
Esmeralda,--divinest of ladies that ever played the soubrette in the
musical version of Hamlet."

"Lunatic!" said Esmeralda graciously. She liked Mr. Huggins because he
was not the same sort of type as "Snarks" Muggleston, and Tony Spratt
and "Becher's" Boldingham. "Of course, I know Mr. Cameron. But he's
cruel and hard-hearted and he won't give me a job."

"The low fiend of Hell!" shouted Mr. Huggins indignantly. "Won't give
you a job? I'll give you a job myself in my factory at Waterlooville,
where I have the State monopoly for the manufacture of left-foot
gum-boots for men who have lost their right legs and live in marshy
districts. Won't give you a job, indeed, the dirty sweep!"

"Thank you, Tommy," replied Esmeralda, "but I'd sooner have a job in Mr.
Cameron's film."

Mr. Huggins, of course, had entirely forgotten all about the
disinterested efforts which he had made to smooth Donald's path at
Ormerode Towers, and he stared in amazement. Donald shuffled his feet
and felt exceedingly uneasy. Esmeralda flouted was one thing--she seemed
to like being flouted; Esmeralda deceived would be a very different
affair, he felt.

Tommy Huggins shook a warning forefinger at her.

"Don't, for Heaven's sake, fall for that ancient dodge, darling," he
implored. "The bogus film magnate is the oldest and most hackneyed of
all the tricks. Cameron, I'm ashamed of you! Trying to seduce an
innocent girl like this with your old-fashioned methods. Don't stutter
at me, sir. I am shocked. If you feel you must seduce Esmeralda, if you
owe it to your little old mother, or to the flag we all revere, or to
the tradition of your dear old school, to seduce Esmeralda, at least use
up-to-date methods. There's nothing annoys me so much as slovenly
craftsmanship. Please don't stammer like that. The truth is that you've
had too many easy successes and you're getting slipshod. This handsome
youth, Esmeralda, has been for years the Lothario of Wolverhampton. His
dark name has even extended into the outer suburbs of West Bromwich.
Cave-man stuff, you know. A slap across the ear with a wet halibut,
catch you by the ankle and the seat of the pants and chuck you into a
passing tram-car. That's his style. And before you know where you are,
he's offering you cream buns in an A.B.C."

Esmeralda's eyes twinkled. "That's all you know, Tommy."

"But I tell you Cameron's not a film man. Are you, Cameron?"

"Well, I--er----"

"There you are! What did I say? Confirms every word I've spoken. And if
you want to know what his profession really is, he is Baccarat
Instructor at the Mount Carmel Tabernacle in the Harrow Road."

"Thank you," said Esmeralda, and she turned her main batteries upon
Donald.

"Are you a film magnate, Donald?" she asked.

"No," he replied firmly. It was high time to end all this. The group of
furious hoverers had increased to nine, and they were beginning to look
dangerous.

"Are you quite, quite sure?"

"Yes."

Esmeralda sighed.

Then, "Will you come to my party?" she whispered. "Next Monday at the
Josphine."

"I'm afraid I----"

"Oh, Donald, you couldn't be as cruel as all that!"

"I don't mean----"

She laid an ivory hand upon his sleeve.

"You will come?" The words were hardly audible.

"All right," said Donald sulkily.

Esmeralda smiled brilliantly and rejoined the hoverers.

"Come and have a drink," said Mr. Huggins.

"Go to hell," said Donald.




CHAPTER XVI


The Htel Josphine was a new hotel, run up in a few weeks upon the site
of Plantagenet House, which had been for so many years the ancestral
home of the Silversteins--the Vienna Silversteins, not the Buenos Ayres
lot. The building of it had been a patriotic undertaking, for it was
designed to co-ordinate with the Come-to-England movement and the Buy
British slogan. If foreigners were to be lured away from the pleasures
of Montmartre and Montparnasse, if old-fashioned English hospitality was
to be substituted for the meretricious professionalism of Cannes, Nice,
and Monte Carlo, it was obvious that comfortable English hotels would
have to be provided to house the new visitors. Hence the Htel
Josphine.

Everything about it was English, including even the staff. The real name
of Bordanaro, the manager, was Hirst; Giacomo, the head waiter in the
Restaurant, and Benedetto, the head waiter in the Grill, were a pair of
brothers from Merthyr Tydfil called Maggs. Signor Alessandro di
Bertucci, the _chef d'orchestre_, started life in Billericay as Frank
Windlesham. And so it was with all the Luigis, the Cosimos, the Pieros,
Francescos, Cesares, and Emanueles who served the _ctelettes aux
pastques_ and the _filets de soles ravigotte_ and the _royans  la
Bordelaise_ and the _souffls glacs aux pistaches_, and all the other
_chefs-d'oeuvre_ of Monsieur tienne Bomboudiac (_n_ Wilson) who
presided over the cuisine. All, without exception, were English. For the
rest, the hotel was equipped with a _salle de patinage_, a _salle
d'escrime_, half a dozen ballrooms, a thousand bedrooms, a thousand
bathrooms, and all the other amenities of modern life.

Esmeralda, in her usual lavish style, had engaged the half-dozen
ballrooms for her party. Three were reserved for supping, three for
dancing. In the latter, three orchestras of coloured gentlemen performed
prodigies of the musical art, and small printed notices, discreetly
displayed upon the walls here and there, informed the world that,
although these musicians might present a somewhat alien appearance,
nevertheless they were of true British strain and were subjects of the
great British Empire, being Canadian citizens from Edmonton, Alberta,
and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Donald arrived at about 11.30, and was just about to mingle
unobtrusively in the crowd and hide in some obscure corner
when he suddenly realized that he knew quite a number of his
fellow-guests. There was Mr. Hodge, for instance, wearing an
enormous gardenia in his coat and a large pearl in his shirt,
talking to Bob Bloomer, the ex-cabinet minister. Mr. Bloomer's
evening-coat was a triumph of the cutter's art. Captain de
Wilton-ffallow was in a corner with Mr. Carteret-Pendragon, Mr.
Woldingham-Uffingham, and Mr. Carshalton-Stanbury. They were
standing like statues, in a beautiful and poised immobility, and
from time to time their lips moved slightly as if a rose-leaf had
been stirred by a zephyr. They bowed gravely to Donald, and the
lights gleamed upon the silkiness of their moustaches. Once or
twice during the evening Donald found himself near them, and on
each occasion he heard one or other of them murmur the same
phrase, "Well, yes and no."

Patience Ormerode was there, and Donald noticed two differences about
her since they had sat down to dinner that evening at Ormerode Towers.
Her universal adjective was now "wan" instead of "grisly," and she was
wearing knickers. As an offset, however, to this unexpected dressiness,
the lower joints of her spine shone with an admirable polish. She puffed
a blast of cigarette-smoke into Donald's face, nodded to him, and
observed, "Rupert's sober. Wan, isn't it?" and the next instant she was
deep in conversation with one of the Imperialists from Edmonton (or
Saskatoon). Lady Ormerode herself was sitting in a corner with Mr.
Huggins and was laughing so much that she was apparently about to have
an apoplectic fit. The alleged Channel Islander was talking very fast
and very loudly, but fortunately even his voice was drowned by the din.

Miss Perugia Gaukrodger, in a terrific confection of puce and
lemon-yellow, with long green gloves and green shoes that did not quite
match the gloves, had backed Robert Southcott into an angle between two
tables in one of the supper-rooms and was reading aloud to him from a
small note-book. In a brief lull of saxophonous prodigies, the words,
"and I get fifteen per cent over five thousand copies and twenty per
cent on anything over ten thousand. For colonial editions----" were
wafted across the room. Mr. Southcott's eye was a little glazed, and
from time to time he mopped his brow with a silk handkerchief.

Another group that Donald ran into consisted of the youngish professor
of ballistics who had played cricket, the exquisite Vision of blue and
gold and silk who had typed so stoutly at Geneva amid the clouds of
Latin-Americans, the Polish count who spoke no English, and Mr. Charles
Ossory. They were listening in French to Mr. Ossory.

From time to time Major Hawker's laugh resounded through the rooms like
the clang of a gong. He was extremely busy entertaining Mrs. O. K. Poop,
and his palpable success was obviously very distasteful to young Porson
Jebb, who was longing to explain to Mrs. Poop the difference between
baseball and cricket. Miss Prudence Pott, M.P., upon whom young Porson
had had to fall back as an audience, was allowing her mind to wander,
and no one can appreciate the finer points of cricket if they allow
their minds to wander.

A very silent trio, Sir Ethelred Ormerode, Sir Ludovic Phibbs, and Sir
Henry Wootton, had frankly given up conversation for the quails and were
tucking away for all they were worth. Shakespeare Pollock, the American,
on the other hand, was darting about in great form, chattering of this
and that. There was a great stir when the Russian baroness-princess came
in; she was looking so lovely that Major Hawker abandoned Mrs. O. K.
Poop instantly, and raced round the rooms hunting for someone to
introduce him.

Esmeralda's heart misgave her for a moment when she saw the Slavonic
beauty come sailing in, and she half regretted that she had invited her.
But the next moment she was herself again. After all, pretty gentlemen
were grouped round her at least ten deep, and had she not received that
very morning her new draft contract from Appelbaum & Zedekiah Rose,
Inc., and was there not more than a rumour that "Snarks" Muggleston
wanted to fight "Becher's" Boldingham on the sands at Calais with
rapiers, all for the love of her? Let the little beast do her wretched
little vamp stuff, thought Esmeralda, sweeping the room with her liquid
eyes, and making a mental note to give Major Hawker a clip on the jaw
next time the opportunity offered. For the gallant Major was no waster
of time, and was already bending low over the princess's slender
fingers; his nearest rival and senior officer, the Major-General, had
been coldly headed back by Mrs. Major-General just as he was beginning
to edge towards the Divinity.

The crowd continued to pour in. Esmeralda seemed to have a great many
friends, but the six rooms were never entirely packed. For there were
other parties in London that evening, and lots of guests were "going
on."

At about 3 o'clock the crowd was thinning and Donald was thinking of
strolling home in the moonlight, when Esmeralda came across the room to
him and whispered in his ear, "Sausages and bacon on the roof at 4.
Don't tell a soul."

It was apparently a privileged invitation, for Donald watched her moving
slowly about the rooms, whispering here and there to some of the guests,
and letting others depart without a pang. The Russian princess was
allowed to go, and Major Hawker was allowed to escort her to her taxi,
or to her home for all that Esmeralda cared. "Snarks" and "Becher's"
were glowering too divinely at each other to let Esmeralda worry about
trivialities.

The sausage-and-bacon party on the roof-garden started beautifully. The
moon was at the full; the faintest dappling of tarnished silver was
silhouetting St. Paul's away to the east, and the lights of London were
dulling the stars. In the Park, a blue haze drifted among the trees. The
sausages were real home-made Buckinghamshire. The bacon was done to a
crisp. The Munich Lwenbrau beer was so cool and smooth that it might
almost have been English. And there had been a moment, a delicious
moment, when it almost looked as if "Becher's" was trying to push
"Snarks" to the edge of the roof in order to chuck him over.

The air was warm, very warm for April, and it rapidly grew warmer.

"Quite like Abbotabad," said the Major-General, fanning his face with a
napkin.

"More like Amritsar," amended his wife. The warrior hastily agreed. The
little episode of the princess was still marked up on the slate against
him, and he knew it.

"It is remarkably warm," said Sir Ethelred, signing to a waiting Lorenzo
to refill his glass.

Suddenly Bob Bloomer sniffed loudly once or twice.

"Queer smell," he observed, and the next moment the tranquillity of the
April morning was shattered by a cry of "Fire!" from the hotel beneath
them.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" said the Major-General, rising to his feet and
rapping on the table, "I am the senior officer present. You will kindly
regard me as Officer Commanding Josphine Roof Garden."

Murmurs of "Hear, hear," "Agreed," and some slight applause greeted this
announcement.

The Major-General continued:

"Captain de Wilton-ffallow, reconnoitre the main staircase and report to
me."

"Yes, sir."

"Mr. Carteret-Pendragon, reconnoitre the outside fire-escape and report
to me."

"In writing?" enquired the diplomat, and there was a general laugh.

"Mr. Cameron, Mr. Carshalton-Stanbury, and Mr. Woldingham-Uffingham,
reconnoitre for other routes of retreat, and report to me. Remainder,
sit at ease."

The noise below had swiftly become pandemoniac, but there was not, as
yet, an audible sound of crackling flames. The fire was not as close as
that. But the hotel was full of shouts, screams, the opening of windows,
the slamming of doors, and the splintering of glass.

At the supper-table no one moved. The Lorenzo, aided by a Giuliano, went
round refilling the tumblers with a new supply of Lwenbrau.

"Has anyone got a camera?" called out Esmeralda from her end of the long
table. There was no answer, and she went on, "Oh, well, we'll just have
to go straight to the nearest studio the moment we get out."

"How about a few rescue scenes?" suggested Mr. Harcourt. "Esmeralda in
my arms, and so on?"

"I should adore it," said Esmeralda, bestowing her loveliest smile on
the poet.

"You couldn't carry her," snarled "Becher's" Boldingham.

"Come, come!" said Mr. Harcourt severely, "she's not as heavy as all
that."

Poor Mr. Boldingham was covered with confusion and started to explain,
but was loudly laughed down, especially by "Snarks" Muggleston, who
thought that the infernal poet wasn't such a bad fellow after all.

"I hope there's time to get our names into the Society Jottings," said
Patience Ormerode, pushing her chair back and hitching up her frock in
order to adjust the top of a stocking. It was the longest sentence she
had uttered all the evening.

"Not a hope!" shouted Mr. Huggins jovially. "The dailies have gone to
press ages ago."

"How wan!" said Patience, relapsing into gloomy silence.

Captain de Wilton-ffallow came back, rubbing his eyes.

"It's not the top floor, sir," he reported, "but the one below that.
It's blazing."

"What about the staircase?" rapped out the O.C. Roof Garden.

"Quite impossible, sir. Mass of flames."

"Very well, sir." Captain de Wilton-ffallow sat down and went on with a
sausage.

Mr. Carteret-Pendragon was the next to return.

"Well, sir, is there a fire-escape?" demanded the Major-General.

"Yes, and no," replied Mr. Carteret-Pendragon. "To the extent that there
undoubtedly is a fire-escape, the answer is in the affirmative. But in
that the fire-escape stops short four stories below us, the answer, so
far as practical politics are concerned, is in the negative."

Donald was spokesman for the other expedition.

"There's no other way off the roof," he reported.

"Very well," said the Major-General, "there's nothing to be done except
wait for the fire-engines. How long do you give us before it reaches us,
Captain de Wilton-ffallow?"

The Captain shrugged his shoulders.

"It's hard to say. Perhaps five or ten minutes."

"That's rather wan," said Patience.

"Don't let's lose our heads and try to extinguish it with the beer,"
said Mr. Huggins firmly. "That would be the last straw."

Esmeralda sighed. "It's a bit hard to be asked to face one's Maker
without a single flashlight man," she said.

"Never mind," said Mr. Harcourt, looking over the parapet down into Park
Lane, "you are going to play to capacity in your farewell performance.
The house is filling up beautifully."

"Positively the last appearance," said Mr. Huggins.

"Miss d'Avenant literally finished in a blaze," said Mr. Harcourt.

"The whole thing went with a roar," suggested Mr. Huggins.

"All of us were aflame," said Mr. Harcourt.

"Sweet pets!" said Esmeralda. "Becher's" and "Snarks" shuffled uneasily
and scowled.

"What annoys me," exclaimed Bob Bloomer, "is that my job at the West End
Journeyman Tailors will go to Bert Stukeley and he's a dirty little
crook."

Mr. Carteret-Pendragon shook his head disapprovingly and murmured, "A
very actionable statement," and the other two diplomats gravely
concurred.

"Any signs of a fire-engine, waiter, what's your name?" barked the
Major-General.

"My name, sir, is Giuliano," replied the waiter.

"I didn't ask you your name," the O.C. roared at him, "I asked you if
there were any signs of a fire-engine."

"You did ask him his name," Donald ventured.

"Discipline, by God!" thundered the Major-General, glaring at him.
"Anyway, he's a damned dago!"

"Just like the dear old days at Peshawur," murmured Mrs. Major-General,
with an adoring look at her Horace.

"My surname is Ellis," said Giuliano unexpectedly.

"And a fire-engine has arrived," added Bob Bloomer.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was not a moment too soon, for the flames had climbed into the floor
immediately beneath the roof-garden, and smoke was already pouring up
the staircase. The crackling and roaring of the fire was getting louder
and louder, and the air was full of grit and dust and burning smells.

"Dammit," muttered de Wilton-ffallow into Donald's ear, "we're in a
tight place."

"The garrison will form column of route," shouted the Major-General
above the din, "preparatory to descending by the ladder. Ladies
leading."

"And no camera," sighed Esmeralda, as she took her place behind Lady
Ormerode.

"The ladder's coming up," reported Bloomer.

"And the floor's going down," added Mr. Harcourt, darting across to an
unfinished glass of beer and pouring it hastily down his throat.

"Blast!" exclaimed Mr. Huggins. "I thought I'd finished them all."

"Very bad form," said Mr. Carteret-Pendragon gravely.

"Deplorable," agreed Mr. Carshalton-Stanbury.

"Not done," added Mr. Woldingham-Uffingham.

"Here it is!" shouted Bloomer, and the top of a scarlet ladder shot up
over the parapet. Two firemen in full uniform and a civilian in
dungarees leapt one after another on to the roof-garden, and the work of
rescue began.

"Hullo, mister!" cried a voice in Donald's ear, and he turned to
recognize William Rhodes in the dungarees.

"What are you doing here?" shouted Donald, one eye upon the agility with
which Lady Ormerode went, so to speak, over the top, and the other upon
the tongue of flame which had pierced the roof, and was the herald of
the end.

"It's my machine," yelled William Rhodes. "I've just made it, and I'm
teaching these fellows how to use it. Had to come up and see how it
went."

The race was now desperate. The women were all clear, but the floor of
the roof-garden was cracking and sagging. The diplomats went over,
quietly and efficiently. Mr. Huggins burst into the Marseillaise when
his turn came, and sang it with a marked Lancashire accent. Part of the
floor crashed as "Becher's" Boldingham threw his leg over the parapet,
but the main part was still holding out when Donald followed Mr.
Harcourt through the clouds of smoke and sparks. Half-way down he heard
the poet mutter, "Damn it, I'm thirsty."

The last two to come down were William Rhodes, ecstatic over the success
of his machine, and the Major-General.

The immense crowd in Park Lane was delirious with joy, and applauded
each rescue with wild enthusiasm. At intervals the plaintive voice of
Esmeralda could be heard saying, "Hasn't anybody got a camera?" At last
a Press photographer arrived, and, to the fury and chagrin of "Becher's"
and "Snarks," the divine Esmeralda was photographed kissing William
Rhodes.

Above the din a Lancashire voice was singing "Madelon."




CHAPTER XVII


After the long English winter, May had come at last. The trees in Royal
Avenue were in bud. The shops were full of daffodils and pheasant-eyed
narcissus, and violets and early tulips, and blue irises from the
Scillies, and anemones. The air was clear. The Londoner's step was high
and gay. The evening papers were already beginning to talk of the Advent
of King Willow. The football season was almost three-quarters finished.

Donald was tired. He had been working steadily now for almost three
months at work that was utterly unfamiliar to him. He had not only been
writing a book. He had also been struggling to learn the art of writing
from its very beginning. He was beginning to feel a little jaded. The
scents of spring, overcoming the fumes of petrol and the miles of soot
and asphalt, peeped in at his open window and sadly interfered with his
powers of concentration.

A morning dawned even lovelier than the rest. At 7 o'clock the sky over
Lambeth was all pigeon-blue and mother-of-pearl and jade-green and
citron and topaz. Small, billowy, dappled cloudlets with pale-pink edges
were playing about together, knowing, perhaps, like children or kittens
or mice, that when the storm-clouds and the black fogs are away the
cloudlets can play. A cool little breeze was bringing fragrance all the
way from Essex across the desert of stone and slate which mankind thinks
is an advance upon a nest or a burrow. Donald lay in bed till he could
stand it no longer. An extra-insidious puff of air arrived with a cargo,
Donald swore, of the scent of roses and hay-making and honeysuckle;
which, of course, was impossible, as the clover and the rose were not
yet in bloom and no one hay-makes in May, with however torrid a fire the
sun may shine. But anyway, the result was the same, for Donald uttered a
loud cry and sprang from his bed, dived into a cold bath, hurled on his
clothes, rushed into the street, and drove in a taxi-cab to Waterloo
Station and took a train, choosing at random, to the town of Alton.

He walked a bit from Alton, and then lorry-hopped, in army fashion, as
far as the straggly, red-tiled village of Alresford, where he got off
for a drink of Hampshire beer, and then lorry-hopped again across the
high chalky downs until the water-meads of Itchen lay below him on the
right, and below him in front, the ancient City of Winchester, city of
Alfred, once capital of England, perhaps even the Camelot of Arthur.

Donald got off the lorry at the top of St. Giles' Hill and dropped
leisurely down into the High Street, at the end of which is the statue
of Alfred. It is a large statue, perhaps as much as a twenty-fifth of
the height of the memorial which the later capital of England has built
for Albert, and it faces up the steep, narrow High Street towards the
Castle at the top, on the wall of which hangs the Round Table of the
Knights.

Donald turned to the left and found himself suddenly reduced to the size
and substance of a homunculus when he came round a corner upon the
Cathedral, stretching its giant length, all grey and moss-green and pale
yellow, across the grass like a sleeping leviathan.

Feeling very small and humble, he crept across the turf of the Close and
timidly pushed open the west door and wandered in the dim coolness under
that mighty roof, among the memorials to long-dead English soldiers,
among the tattered flags of regiments, the cenotaphs of forgotten
prebendaries, the brass tablets and marble sculptures, the brief rolls
of honour of distant campaigns, the long lists of virtues of ancient
dames, the Latin inscriptions, and the tombs of cardinals and bishops,
and the effigies of unknown knights. But in all that carved and
sculptured splendour of the history of England, its wars, its wealth,
and its religion, its princes and prelates, and its imperial conquests,
there were only two memorials that touched the heart. One was the
chantry of William of Wykeham, saved from Cromwell's destroyers by the
drawn sword of a Wykehamist captain, a Cromwellian, who stood upon the
chantry steps and, against all comers, defended the tomb of the Founder.
And the other was the little old lady of College Street, who commanded
no armies and attacked no religions, who was burnt at no stake and
married no prince, whose life added no faintest ripple to the waves and
storms of England, and no fragment of a line to its recorded history;
who is, alone among mortals, loved by all and hated by none, and who is,
alone among the Great, imitated by none and parodied by none. English of
the English, heart of English heart, bone of English bone, kindliest and
gayest and gentlest, her memorial is not so wide as a church door nor so
high as Albert's, but it is in Alfred's town, in Wykeham's cathedral,
near Arthur's Table, and it will serve.

       *       *       *       *       *

Donald spent a few minutes among the scattered gravestones outside the
west front looking for the famous epitaph to the Hampshire Grenadier who
caught his death by drinking cold small beer.

    "Soldiers, be wise from his untimely fall,
    And where yere hot, drink strong or none at all."

He found it behind a memorial to other soldiers who fought in a later
time, and read the proud, magnificent sweep of its inscription, which
sounds like the roll of titles of a Spanish king or a blast from
Milton's everlasting trumpet ...

     . . . Who died in Flanders, France, Italy, Russia, Macedonia,
     Palestine, Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and Siberia, or by the
     Dardanelles, or were lost at sea in the Mediterranean.

Thence his wanderings took him past the Judges' Lodging and the Deanery
and the lovely Canonries and the dusty Elizabethan tithe-barn, through
an archway into the outer world of laymen, and through another archway
into College Street. The summer term had just begun and the street was
crowded with boys and young men, all wearing straw hats. A few were
draped in long black gowns which Donald thought were not half so
picturesque as the scarlet of Aberdeen and St. Andrews.

He visited the College Buildings, and listened to a description of them
by the College porter, and carried away four memories--the loveliness of
the cloisters round the lovely chantry, the darkness of the rooms off
the Quadrangle in which the boys sat and worked, the Important Fact,
repeated several times by the proud porter, that Winchester was nearly
fifty years older than Eton and, indeed, practically founded Eton, and,
fourthly, the extraordinary school motto.

Every other school or university motto he had ever heard of consisted of
an invocation to an unspecified Supreme Power to allow the institution
to flourish, or to prosper, or to wax strong--in general, to get on in
the world. It was the natural thing. Old Boys needed a slogan to remind
each other of their duty to their Alma Mater, of the happy days spent
there in youth, and of their natural desire not to see the numbers
diminish and the place simply go to the dogs. Besides, it made a capital
toast at the Old Boys' Dinners when the diners could jump to their feet
and raise their glasses and cry "Floreat St. Ethelburga's, Worksop," or
"Floreat St. Francis Xavier's-in-partibus, Tel-el-Kebir."

But the Winchester motto was the extraordinary one of "Manners Makyth
Man." Donald walked up and down Meads, the old school playing-field
surrounded with its red-capped wall of flint and chalk, and wondered
about this motto. It was obviously impossible to make it a toast at an
Old Boys' Dinner; it was obviously impossible to shout it at a school
football match, even if the boys were organized in American fashion by a
professional cheer-leader. Donald looked at the Chapel Tower, which was
just visible over an exquisite, red-brick, Wren building, and thought
that on the whole it was unlikely that Winchester employed a
professional cheer-leader. It almost looked, Donald decided finally, as
if Winchester cared more for what happened to her boys in after-life
than for her own nourishment. Perhaps, after five hundred years of
flourishment, that was a justifiable attitude, but it certainly was a
little unusual.

He pulled out his note-book and jotted down a brief description of the
scene before him, the architecture, colouring, landscape beyond the
red-capped wall, and a few other details. The trees, not yet in full
leaf, bothered him--in wind-swept Buchan there are few trees to bother
anybody--and he stopped a small, black-gowned boy, about twelve years of
age, and asked politely:

"Can you tell me, please, what that tree is?"

The boy took off his straw hat and replied with equal politeness:

"That is Lord's tree, sir."

"Lord's tree?" said Donald, also taking off his hat. "What is that?"

"It is called that, sir, because only men in Lord's are allowed to sit
on the seat at the foot of it," explained the child.

"I am sorry to appear stupid," Donald apologized, "but when you say
'Men in Lord's' do you refer to the Peers of the Realm?"

"By no means," replied the infant. "Men in Lord's are the men in the
cricket eleven."

"Oh, I see. The cricket eleven is called Lord's because they go to
Lord's to play cricket."

"No, sir. They don't go to Lord's."

"Then why are they called Lords?" Donald was getting confused.

"Because we used until quite recently to play at Lord's against Eton."

"Ah! Now I begin to understand. Until a few years ago; how many years,
by the way?"

"About seventy or eighty, sir."

Donald kept a firm grip upon himself, and tried to speak naturally as he
answered:

"Quite so. Just the other day. I see. And the boys in the cricket
eleven----"

"Men," interrupted the child firmly.

"I beg your pardon."

"Men," repeated the child. "We are all men here. There are no boys."

Donald, by now quite dizzy, bowed and thanked the man for his trouble.

"It was a pleasure," replied the man, bowing courteously and removing
his hat again and going on his way.

Donald, hat in hand, turned and watched him, and was immensely relieved
to see the man halt after going a few yards, and extract a huge and
sticky piece of toffee from his trouser-pocket, and cram it into his
mouth.

From College it is only a step into Meads, and from Meads only another
step through the gate in the flinty wall into Lavender Meads, and from
Lavender Meads into the green expanse of Riddings', and from Riddings'
to Dogger's Close, and from Dogger's Close, the last of Winchester's
playing-fields, it is hardly more than a step to the ancient Abbey of
St. Cross which presides with venerable dignity over the Greenjackets'
cricket-ground, and which still gives a free horn of ale to the
wayfarer. Thus a traveller who has a little time to spare, and who is
not trying desperately to cut the existing record for home-bred citizens
of North and South Dakota for the "doing" of the College of the Blessed
Virgin Mary apud Winton, crosses the threshold of the Outer Gate of
College and finds himself only beginning to awaken from his mediaeval
trance in the Abbey of St. Cross.

But Donald had not even begun to awaken from his trance when he left St.
Cross and wandered over the water-meads that the Itchen and its branches
and canals have chiselled in the green valley. He had not begun to
awaken when he climbed the first slopes of St. Catherine's Hill, or when
at last he reached the clump of trees on the top of the hill and found a
little grassy slope which fitted his back like a deck-chair at full
stretch, and lay down and tilted his hat over his forehead and joined
his hands behind his head.

At his feet were the glittering streams of the Itchen, that small, magic
river of silver and dry-flies and trout. Beyond them were the
playing-fields with their white dots of cricketers, and beyond them the
tower of the College Chapel, and beyond that the slumbering leviathan,
Wykeham's House of God. The air was filled with little sounds, the
tinkling of sheep-bells across the vales of the chalkland, the click of
cricket-ball on cricket-bat, the whispers of the fitful puffs of wind in
the trees behind him, the megaphoned shouts of the coaches as the
racing-fours went up the stream with flashing blades, and from across
the valley the bells of the Cathedral, deep and far, like the strong
clang of Thor's anvil in Valhalla.

       *       *       *       *       *

Twenty or thirty feet below the grassy deck-chair on which Donald was by
now half dozing ran the circular trench which the Britons dug as a
defence against the Legions. The line of the Roman road was clear, a
chalky arrow, as far as the blue horizon. Saxon Alfred's statue might
have been as visible through a field-glass as the pale-yellow Norman
transept of the Cathedral was to the eye. The English school, whose
motto puts kindliness above flourishment or learning, lay among its
water-meads, and all around was the creator, the inheritor, the
ancestor, and the descendant of it all, the green and kindly land of
England.

       *       *       *       *       *

Donald went on dozing until he was gradually aroused by the
consciousness that something queer was going on down below in the
valley. The landscape seemed somehow to be different. The little streams
were not so twinkly. The grass of the playing-fields had become more
like the colour of grey-white olive-trees than of new-mown green. The
Roman road and the horizon itself had disappeared, and the transept's
amber was fading fast.

Donald sat up and rubbed his eyes. A thick white mist was rolling
swiftly up the valley from the direction of the sea, and the advance
guard was already wreathing itself round the ancient town. The small
sounds were no longer audible, and even the reverberating echoes of the
bells were muffled, and their vibrations died quickly. In another minute
or two the water-meads were covered with a great pall. The College Tower
sank out of sight, and the fringes of mist lapped over the edge of the
British entrenchment. Even the fitful breeze had dropped. The bell
ceased. The silence was like the silence of eternal snows.

Donald lay back again and gazed at the white bank that eddied so softly
across the spring marguerites and buttercups and dandelions. Although it
had come with such a rush, it hardly seemed to be moving at all now. The
eddies and ripples became even softer. Here and there the antics of a
wisp which had slipped away from the rest became quieter and quieter,
until gradually the great fleece of mist slid and swayed and rocked
itself imperceptibly to a standstill.

He felt no surprise. The mediaeval spell of Winchester had not yet
completely worn off, and he was too sleepy after his long day in the
open air, and too tired after the months of concentrated work, to feel
surprised at anything. When, therefore, the fog gradually flattened
itself, and narrowed itself, and spun itself out into the shape of a
snow-white road that stretched, as far as the eye could reach, towards
the English Channel in the south and over the edge of the English downs
in the north, Donald was quite unmoved. It seemed a perfectly natural
thing for a mist to do. If a road could become suddenly a solid wall of
mist, why should not a solid wall of mist suddenly become a road?

It was a very reasonable place to have a road. It was a capital place to
have a road. It was queer that no one had ever had the sense to put a
road there before. It was an ideal place for a road. The mist was quite
right to turn itself into a road. Mists are obstructive. Roads are
beautiful. Especially a road that runs just at the foot of lovely grassy
slopes like St. Catherine's Hill, where a man may lie at his ease and
watch the world and its wayfarers. That was the way to learn about a
country or a people. Lie on the grass among spring marguerites and
buttercups and dandelions and watch the country and the people passing
along below. Ten thousand times better than rushing about wildly with a
note-book hunting for material. Let the material come to you. That was
the ticket. Let it come along its roads to you. All you have to do is to
find a road and a grassy hill above it. And was there ever such a road
as this--smooth and broad and straight and firm? Incidentally it was
clever of the mist to have made itself into so firm a surface, after
having been so soft before.

The only odd thing about the road was that there seemed to be no traffic
upon it. From end to end, the snowy ribbon was unmarred by the little
black dots which men are, when seen from a little way away, a very
little way away.

But Donald was not worried about this. It was obvious that as soon as
people knew of the existence of this road of roads, they would scramble
to use it. All he needed was a little patience. So he clasped his hands
again behind his head and waited.

He had not long to wait. A tiny black dot appeared over the downs away
to the north and other black dots followed it, and still more black
dots, until a perfect host of men came straggling over the horizon. The
whiteness of the road was steadily obliterated, as if a giant painter
were methodically running a black brush over it. The mass came nearer
and nearer.

Donald wondered how long it would be before they reached him, and he
glanced southwards to make a rough estimate of the distance, and saw
that another great mass of men were coming up the road from the sea.

As the two columns came straggling towards St. Catherine's Hill, a low
rumbling sound began to fall upon the air. It was not in the least like
the sound of marching feet, for it was deeper, and it had no rhythm, and
it came in gusts, sometimes in a long, resistless roar like the fall of
sea waves on sand upon summer nights, and sometimes with the short crash
of a thunder-clap.

Soon Donald could see that, although they walked out of step, in groups
and parties, mingling with each other and changing from moment to
moment, with here and there a man by himself, although in fact they did
not remotely resemble the disciplined advance of an army on the march,
nevertheless, every single one carried a weapon of some sort, even if it
was only a cross-bow or a bill-hook or a scythe. And yet none of them
wore anything that might be described as a uniform; mostly they wore
black suits or shabby corduroys, and they carried their weapons in a
careless, amateurish way. The rumbling noise grew louder and more
continuous. The faces of the two vanguards were now visible, and Donald
saw that all the men of those two armed bodies of civilians were shaking
and quaking and heaving with inexhaustible laughter. The vanguards met
immediately below St. Catherine's Hill, where the road had widened out,
somehow without Donald noticing it, into a great broad open space, and
in a few moments all the men were talking and laughing together. Nobody
listened very much to anybody, but they all seemed to be in raging,
towering spirits. They threw their weapons down apparently at random,
and pulled books and scrolls and parchments and pieces of paper out of
their pockets and chattered away and declaimed and recited; and suddenly
and queerly and instinctively Donald knew that they were all poets. Once
there seemed to be some sort of alarm sounded, for they all sprang to
arms with inconceivable rapidity, and ranged themselves in battle array
and handled their jumble of weapons in a manner that was the complete
reverse of carelessness and amateurishness. When it was found to have
been a false alarm, they shoved their weapons away again--one, a little
fellow, stuffed a great meat-axe casually into one coat-pocket and
hauled a quarto volume out of the other, and one arranged his Hotchkiss
machine-gun into a three-legged table and sat down on the ground and
began to write a poem upon it--and fell to talking and laughing and
scribbling and shouting and declaiming.

Donald gazed and gazed upon the enchanted scene. Time did not move. The
clouds above him were motionless. Even the sun, surely, had given up its
mad race with eternity.

Then a faint dull clang filtered laboriously through the mist, and
Donald lazily wondered why the Cathedral bell had begun again, and then
he wondered how the sound had come through the mist, and then he saw
that the edges of the mist were stirring softly among the wild flowers
and the stray wreaths were once more playing at spirals with each other.

He sprang up and rubbed his eyes. Everything was changing quickly now.
The road had vanished entirely, and the open space that was covered with
the poets and their weapons was narrowing as the mist closed in upon it.
The poets themselves were changing fantastically, for half of them were
growing fatter and redder and jollier, and half of them were growing
thinner and brighter-eyed and bearded, and, one by one and group by
group, they were vanishing, but whether they were vanishing into the
deepening, swallowing bank of fog, or whether by some curious trick they
were vanishing into each other, Donald could not make out.

At last only two were left. One was the survivor of the fat men, the
fattest and reddest and jolliest of them, with the kindliest and gayest
and most gigantic of laughs. He had lost his weapon and was swigging
away all the time at a monstrous jar of canary-sack which he carried
under his arm. The second was the survivor of the thin men, and he was
thin and had a small pointed beard, and his eyes were the brightest of
them all, and he was full of silent laughter, and he was the gayest and
the kindliest of them all. By some queer optical delusion, although
these two men were really so very different, yet for a moment their
faces seemed very like each other, and then for a moment both looked a
little like Mr. Hodge.

Just as the mist reached these last two, the Stratford man's eyes
flashed with mischief, and he turned and said something to the fat man,
who roared like a waterfall and then said--or at least it sounded as if
he said--"Shall we shog, Will?"--and then they linked arms and vanished,
and below St. Catherine's Hill there was no longer any trace of the
passing of that absurd host of kindly, laughter-loving, warrior poets,
but only what they have left behind them--the muted voices of grazing
sheep, and the merry click of bat upon ball, and the peaceful green
fields of England, and the water-meads, and the bells of the Cathedral.

       *       *       *       *       *

Donald got up and yawned and stretched himself and went off to find some
tea.




                                 THE END


_Printed in Great Britain by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.


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  | Transcriber's Note:-                                         |
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  | Some punctuation errors were corrected.                      |
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  | The following apparent printer's errors were addressed.      |
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  | Page 229 cugdel changed to cudgel (newly cut holly cudgel)   |
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  | Page 265 voluntereed changed to volunteered (brave souls who |
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[End of England, Their England, by A. G. Macdonell]
