Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy 6 – Leacock · Verses Across
Literature · Humor
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy 6Chapter 4 (part 2)
18
Literature · Humor
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy 6
Chapter 4 (part 2)
LeacockEnglish
So I knew all that this young man, Parkins, was going to say, and all about his adventures before he began.
"Yes," he said, "we were caught right in the war zone. By Jove, I never want to go through again what I went through."
With that, he sank back into the chair in the pose of a man musing in silence over the recollection of days of horror.
I let him muse. In fact I determined to let him muse till he burst before I would ask him what he had been through. I knew it, anyway.
Presently he decided to go on talking.
"We were at Izzl," he said, "in the Carpathians, Loo
Jones and I. We'd just made a walking tour from Izzl to
Fryzzl and back again."
"Why did you come back?" I asked.
"Back where?"
"Back to Izzl," I explained, "after you'd once got to
Fryzzl. It seems unnecessary, but, never mind, go on."
"That was in July," he continued. "There wasn't a sign of war, not a sign. We heard that Russia was beginning to mobilize," (at this word be blew a puff from his cigarette and then repeated "beginning to mobilize") "but we thought nothing of it."
"Of course not," I said.
"Then we heard that Hungary was calling out the Honveds, but we still thought nothing of it."
"Certainly not," I said.
"And then we heard--"
"Yes, I know," I said, "you heard that Italy was calling out the Trombonari, and that Germany was calling in all the Landesgeschutzshaft."
He looked at me.
"How did you know that?" he said.
"We heard it over here," I answered.
"Well," he went on, "next thing we knew we heard that the Russians were at Fryzzl."
"Great Heavens!" I exclaimed.
"Yes, at Fryzzl, not a hundred miles away. The very place we'd been at only two weeks before."
"Think of it!" I said. "If you'd been where you were two weeks after you were there, or if the Russians had been a hundred miles away from where they were, or even if Fryzzl had been a hundred miles nearer to Izzl--"
We both shuddered.
"It was a close call," said Parkins. "However, I said to Loo Jones, 'Loo, it's time to clear out.' And then, I tell you, our trouble began. First of all we couldn't get any money. We went to the bank at Izzl and tried to get them to give us American dollars for Hungarian paper money; we had nothing else."
"And wouldn't they?"
"Absolutely refused. They said they hadn't any."
"By George," I exclaimed. "Isn't war dreadful? What on earth did you do?"
"Took a chance," said Parkins. "Went across to the railway station to buy our tickets with the Hungarian money."
"Did you get them?" I said.
"Yes," assented Parkins. "They said they'd sell us tickets. But they questioned us mighty closely; asked where we wanted to go to, what class we meant to travel by, how much luggage we had to register and so on. I tell you the fellow looked at us mighty closely."
"Were you in those clothes?" I asked.
"Yes," said Parkins, "but I guess he suspected we weren't
Hungarians. You see, we couldn't either of us speak
Hungarian. In fact we spoke nothing but English."
"That would give him a clue," I said.
"However," he went on, "he was civil enough in a way. We asked when was the next train to the sea coast, and he said there wasn't any."
"No trains?" I repeated.
"Not to the coast. The man said the reason was because there wasn't any railway to the coast. But he offered to sell us tickets to Vienna. We asked when the train would go and he said there wouldn't be one for two hours. So there we were waiting on that wretched little platform,--no place to sit down, no shade, unless one went into the waiting room itself,--for two mortal hours. And even then the train was an hour and a half late!"
"An hour and a half late!" I repeated.
"Yep!" said Parkins, "that's what things were like over there. So when we got on board the train we asked a man when it was due to get to Vienna, and he said he hadn't the faintest idea!"
"Good heavens!"
"Not the faintest idea. He told us to ask the conductor or one of the porters. No, sir, I'll never forget that journey through to Vienna,--nine mortal hours! Nothing to eat, not a bite, except just in the middle of the day when they managed to hitch on a dining-car for a while. And they warned everybody that the dining-car was only on for an hour and a half. Commandeered, I guess after that," added Parkins, puffing his cigarette.
"Well," he continued, "we got to Vienna at last. I'll never forget the scene there, station full of people, trains coming and going, men, even women, buying tickets, big piles of luggage being shoved on trucks. It gave one a great idea of the reality of things."
"It must have," I said.
"Poor old Loo Jones was getting pretty well used up with it all. However, we determined to see it through somehow."
"What did you do next?"
"Tried again to get money: couldn't--they changed our Hungarian paper into Italian gold, but they refused to give us American money."
"Hoarding it?" I hinted.
"Exactly," said Parkins, "hoarding it all for the war. Well anyhow we got on a train for Italy and there our troubles began all over again:--train stopped at the frontier,--officials (fellows in Italian uniforms) went all through it, opening hand baggage--"
"Not hand baggage!" I gasped.
"Yes, sir, even the hand baggage. Opened it all, or a lot of it anyway, and scribbled chalk marks over it. Yes, and worse than that,--I saw them take two fellows and sling them clear off the train,--they slung them right out on to the platform."
"What for?" I asked.
"Heaven knows," said Parkins,--"they said they had no tickets. In war time you know, when they're mobilizing, they won't let a soul ride on a train without a ticket."
"Infernal tyranny," I murmured.
"Isn't it? However, we got to Genoa at last, only to find that not a single one of our trunks had come with us!"
"Confiscated?" I asked.
"I don't know," said Parkins, "the head baggage man (he wears a uniform, you know, in Italy just like a soldier) said it was because we'd forgotten to check them in Vienna. However there we were waiting for twenty-four hours with nothing but our valises."
"Right at the station?" I asked.
"No, at a hotel. We got the trunks later. They telegraphed to Vienna for them and managed to get them through somehow,--in a baggage car, I believe."
"And after that, I suppose, you had no more trouble."
"Trouble," said Parkins, "I should say we had. Couldn't get a steamer! They said there was none sailing out of Genoa for New York for three days! All cancelled, I guess, or else rigged up as cruisers."
"What on earth did you do?"
"Stuck it out as best we could: stayed right there in the hotel. Poor old Jones was pretty well collapsed! Couldn't do anything but sleep and eat, and sit on the piazza of the hotel."
"But you got your steamer at last?" I asked.
"Yes," he admitted, "we got it. But I never want to go through another voyage like that again, no sir!"
"What was wrong with it?" I asked, "bad weather?"
"No, calm, but a peculiar calm, glassy, with little ripples on the water,--uncanny sort of feeling."
"What was wrong with the voyage?"
"Oh, just the feeling of it,--everything under strict rule you know--no lights anywhere except just the electric lights,--smoking-room closed tight at eleven o'clock,--decks all washed down every night--officers up on the bridge all day looking out over the sea,--no, sir, I want no more of it. Poor old Loo Jones, I guess he's quite used up: he can't speak of it at all: just sits and broods, in fact I doubt..."
At this moment Parkins's conversation was interrupted by the entry of two newcomers into the room. One of them had on a little Hungarian suit like the one Parkins wore, and was talking loudly as they came in.
"Yes," he was saying, "we were caught there fair and square right in the war zone. We were at Izzl in the Carpathians, poor old Parkins and I--"
We looked round.
It was Loo Jones, describing his escape from Europe.
7.--The War Mania of Mr. Jinks and Mr. Blinks
They were sitting face to face at a lunch table at the club so near to me that I couldn't avoid hearing what they said. In any case they are both stout men with gurgling voices which carry.
"What Kitchener ought to do,"--Jinks was saying in a loud voice.
So I knew at once that he had the prevailing hallucination. He thought he was commanding armies in Europe.
After which I watched him show with three bits of bread and two olives and a dessert knife the way in which the German army could be destroyed.
Blinks looked at Jinks' diagram with a stern impassive face, modelled on the Sunday supplement photogravures of Lord Kitchener.
"Your flank would be too much exposed," he said, pointing to Jinks' bread. He spoke with the hard taciturnity of a Joffre.
"My reserves cover it," said Jinks, moving two pepper pots to the support of the bread.
"Mind you," Jinks went on, "I don't say Kitchener WILL do this: I say this is what he OUGHT to do: it's exactly the tactics of Kuropatkin outside of Mukden and it's precisely the same turning movement that Grant used before Richmond."
Blinks nodded gravely. Anybody who has seen the Grand
Duke Nicholoevitch quietly accepting the advice of General
Ruski under heavy artillery fire, will realize Blinks'
manner to a nicety.
And, oddly enough, neither of them, I am certain, has ever had any larger ideas about the history of the Civil War than what can be got from reading Uncle Tom's Cabin and seeing Gillette play Secret Service. But this is part of the mania. Jinks and Blinks had suddenly developed the hallucination that they knew the history of all wars by a sort of instinct.
They rose soon after that, dusted off their waistcoats with their napkins and waddled heavily towards the door. I could hear them as they went talking eagerly of the need of keeping the troops in hard training. They were almost brutal in their severity. As they passed out of the door,--one at a time to avoid crowding,--they were still talking about it. Jinks was saying that our whole generation is overfed and soft. If he had his way he would take every man in the United States up to forty- seven years of age (Jinks is forty-eight) and train him to a shadow. Blinks went further. He said they should be trained hard up to fifty. He is fifty-one.
After that I used to notice Jinks and Blinks always together in the club, and always carrying on the European War.
I never knew which side they were on. They seemed to be on both. One day they commanded huge armies of Russians, and there was one week when Blinks and Jinks at the head of vast levies of Cossacks threatened to overrun the whole of Western Europe. It was dreadful to watch them burning churches and monasteries and to see Jinks throw whole convents full of white robed nuns into the flames like so much waste paper.
For a time I feared they would obliterate civilization itself. Then suddenly Blinks decided that Jinks' Cossacks were no good, not properly trained. He converted himself on the spot into a Prussian Field Marshal, declared himself organised to a pitch of organisation of which Jinks could form no idea, and swept Jinks' army off the earth, without using any men at all, by sheer organisation.
In this way they moved to and fro all winter over the map of Europe, carrying death and destruction everywhere and revelling in it.
But I think I liked best the wild excitement of their naval battles.
Jinks generally fancied himself a submarine and Blinks acted the part of a first-class battleship. Jinks would pop his periscope out of the water, take a look at Blinks merely for the fraction of a second, and then, like a flash, would dive under water again and start firing his torpedoes. He explained that he carried six.
But he was never quick enough for Blinks. One glimpse of his periscope miles and miles away was enough. Blinks landed him a contact shell in the side, sunk him with all hands, and then lined his yards with men and cheered. I have known Blinks sink Jinks at two miles, six miles--and once--in the club billiard room just after the battle of the Falkland Islands,--he got him fair and square at ten nautical miles.
Jinks of course claimed that he was not sunk. He had dived. He was two hundred feet under water quietly smiling at Blinks through his periscope. In fact the number of things that Jinks has learned to do through his periscope passes imagination.
Whenever I see him looking across at Blinks with his eyes half closed and with a baffling, quizzical expression in them, I know that he is looking at him through his periscope. Now is the time for Blinks to watch out. If he relaxes his vigilance for a moment he'll be torpedoed as he sits, and sent flying, whiskey and soda and all, through the roof of the club, while Jinks dives into the basement.
Indeed it has come about of late, I don't know just how, that Jinks has more or less got command of the sea. A sort of tacit understanding has been reached that Blinks, whichever army he happens at the moment to command, is invincible on land. But Jinks, whether as a submarine or a battleship, controls the sea. No doubt this grew up in the natural evolution of their conversation. It makes things easier for both. Jinks even asks Blinks how many men there are in an army division, and what a sotnia of Cossacks is and what the Army Service Corps means. And Jinks in return has become a recognized expert in torpedoes and has taken to wearing a blue serge suit and referring to Lord Beresford as Charley.
But what I noticed chiefly about the war mania of Jinks and Blinks was their splendid indifference to slaughter. They had gone into the war with a grim resolution to fight it out to a finish. If Blinks thought to terrify Jinks by threatening to burn London, he little knew his man. "All right," said Jinks, taking a fresh light for his cigar, "burn it! By doing so, you destroy, let us say, two million of my women and children? Very good. Am I injured by that? No. You merely stimulate me to recruiting."
There was something awful in the grimness of the struggle as carried on by Blinks and Jinks.
The rights of neutrals and non-combatants, Red Cross nurses, and regimental clergymen they laughed to scorn. As for moving-picture men and newspaper correspondents, Jinks and Blinks hanged them on every tree in Belgium and Poland.
With combatants in this frame of mind the war I suppose might have lasted forever.
But it came to an end accidentally,--fortuitously, as all great wars are apt to. And by accident also, I happened to see the end of it.
It was late one evening. Jinks and Blinks were coming down the steps of the club, and as they came they were speaking with some vehemence on their favourite topic.
"I tell you," Jinks was saying, "war is a great thing. We needed it, Blinks. We were all getting too soft, too scared of suffering and pain. We wilt at a bayonet charge, we shudder at the thought of wounds. Bah!" he continued, "what does it matter if a few hundred thousands of human beings are cut to pieces. We need to get back again to the old Viking standard, the old pagan ideas of suffering--"
And as he spoke he got it.
The steps of the club were slippery with the evening's rain,--not so slippery as the frozen lakes of East Prussia or the hills where Jinks and Blinks had been campaigning all winter, but slippery enough for a stout man whose nation has neglected his training. As Jinks waved his stick in the air to illustrate the glory of a bayonet charge, he slipped and fell sideways on the stone steps. His shin bone smacked against the edge of the stone in a way that was pretty well up to the old Viking standard of such things. Blinks with the shock of the collision fell also,--backwards on the top step, his head striking first. He lay, to all appearance, as dead as the most insignificant casualty in Servia.
I watched the waiters carrying them into the club, with that new field ambulance attitude towards pain which is getting so popular. They had evidently acquired precisely the old pagan attitude that Blinks and Jinks desired.
And the evening after that I saw Blinks and Jinks, both more or less bandaged, sitting in a corner of the club beneath a rubber tree, making peace.
Jinks was moving out of Montenegro and Blinks was foregoing all claims to Polish Prussia; Jinks was offering Alsace-Lorraine to Blinks, and Blinks in a fit of chivalrous enthusiasm was refusing to take it. They were disbanding troops, blowing up fortresses, sinking their warships and offering indemnities which they both refused to take. Then as they talked, Jinks leaned forward and said something to Blinks in a low voice,--a final proposal of terms evidently.
Blinks nodded, and Jinks turned and beckoned to a waiter, with the words,--
"One Scotch whiskey and soda, and one stein of Wurtemburger Bier--"
And when I heard this, I knew that the war was over.
8.--The Ground Floor
I hadn't seen Ellesworth since our college days, twenty years before, at the time when he used to borrow two dollars and a half from the professor of Public Finance to tide him over the week end.
Then quite suddenly he turned up at the club one day and had afternoon tea with me.
His big clean shaven face had lost nothing of its impressiveness, and his spectacles had the same glittering magnetism as in the days when he used to get the college bursar to accept his note of hand for his fees.
And he was still talking European politics just as he used to in the days of our earlier acquaintance.
"Mark my words," he said across the little tea-table, with one of the most piercing glances I have ever seen, "the whole Balkan situation was only a beginning. We are on the eve of a great pan-Slavonic upheaval." And then he added, in a very quiet, casual tone: "By the way, could you let me have twenty-five dollars till to-morrow?"
"A pan-Slavonic movement!" I ejaculated. "Do you really think it possible? No, I couldn't."
"You must remember," Ellesworth went on, "Russia means to reach out and take all she can get;" and he added, "how about fifteen till Friday?"
"She may reach for it," I said, "but I doubt if she'll get anything. I'm sorry. I haven't got it."
"You're forgetting the Bulgarian element," he continued, his animation just as eager as before. "The Slavs never forget what they owe to one another."
Here Ellesworth drank a sip of tea and then said quietly,
"Could you make it ten till Saturday at twelve?"
I looked at him more closely. I noticed now his frayed cuffs and the dinginess of his over-brushed clothes. Not even the magnetism of his spectacles could conceal it. Perhaps I had been forgetting something, whether the Bulgarian element or not.
I compromised at ten dollars till Saturday.
"The Slav," said Ellesworth, as he pocketed the money,
"is peculiar. He never forgets."
"What are you doing now?" I asked him. "Are you still in insurance?" I had a vague recollection of him as employed in that business.
"No," he answered. "I gave it up. I didn't like the outlook. It was too narrow. The atmosphere cramped me. I want," he said, "a bigger horizon."
"Quite so," I answered quietly. I had known men before who had lost their jobs. It is generally the cramping of the atmosphere that does it. Some of them can use up a tremendous lot of horizon.
"At present," Ellesworth went on, "I am in finance. I'm promoting companies."
"Oh, yes," I said. I had seen companies promoted before.
"Just now," continued Ellesworth, "I'm working on a thing that I think will be rather a big thing. I shouldn't want it talked about outside, but it's a matter of taking hold of the cod fisheries of the Grand Banks,--practically amalgamating them--and perhaps combining with them the entire herring output, and the whole of the sardine catch of the Mediterranean. If it goes through," he added, "I shall be in a position to let you in on the ground floor."
I knew the ground floor of old. I have already many friends sitting on it; and others who have fallen through it into the basement.
I said, "thank you," and he left me.
"That was Ellesworth, wasn't it?" said a friend of mine who was near me. "Poor devil. I knew him slightly,--always full of some new and wild idea of making money. He was talking to me the other day of the possibility of cornering all the huckleberry crop and making refined sugar. Isn't it amazing what fool ideas fellows like him are always putting up to business men?"
We both laughed.
After that I didn't see Ellesworth for some weeks.
Then I met him in the club again. How he paid his fees there I do not know.
This time he was seated among a litter of foreign newspapers with a cup of tea and a ten-cent package of cigarettes beside him.
"Have one of these cigarettes," he said. "I get them specially. They are milder than what we have in the club here."
They certainly were.
"Note what I say," Ellesworth went on. "The French Republic is going to gain from now on a stability that it never had." He seemed greatly excited about it. But his voice changed to a quiet tone as he added, "Could you, without inconvenience, let me have five dollars?"
So I knew that the cod-fish and the sardines were still unamalgamated.
"What about the fisheries thing?" I asked. "Did it go through?"
"The fisheries? No, I gave it up. I refused to go forward with it. The New York people concerned were too shy, too timid to tackle it. I finally had to put it to them very straight that they must either stop shilly-shallying and declare themselves, or the whole business was off."
"Did they declare themselves?" I questioned.
"They did," said Ellesworth, "but I don't regret it. I'm working now on a much bigger thing,--something with greater possibilities in it. When the right moment comes I'll let you in on the ground floor."
I thanked him and we parted.
The next time I saw Ellesworth he told me at once that he regarded Albania as unable to stand by itself. So I gave him five dollars on the spot and left him.
A few days after that he called me up on the telephone to tell me that the whole of Asia Minor would have to be redistributed. The redistribution cost me five dollars more.
Then I met him on the street, and he said that Persia was disintegrating, and took from me a dollar and a half.
When I passed him next in the street he was very busy amalgamating Chinese tramways. It appeared that there was a ground floor in China, but I kept off it.
Each time I saw Ellesworth he looked a little shabbier than the last. Then one day he called me up on the telephone, and made an appointment.
His manner when I joined him was full of importance.
"I want you at once," he said in a commanding tone, "to write me your cheque for a hundred dollars."
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"I am now able," said Ellesworth, "to put you in on the ground floor of one of the biggest things in years."
"Thanks," I said, "the ground floor is no place for me."
"Don't misunderstand me," said Ellesworth. "This is a big thing. It's an idea I've been working on for some time,--making refined sugar from the huckleberry crop. It's a certainty. I can get you shares now at five dollars. They'll go to five hundred when we put them on the market,--and I can run you in for a block of stock for promotion services as well. All you have to do is to give me right now a hundred dollars,--cash or your cheque,--and I can arrange the whole thing for you."
I smiled.
"My dear Ellesworth," I said, "I hope you won't mind if I give you a little bit of good advice. Why not drop all this idea of quick money? There's nothing in it. The business world has grown too shrewd for it. Take an ordinary decent job and stick to it. Let me use my influence," I added, "to try and get you into something with a steady salary, and with your brains you're bound to get on in time."
Ellesworth looked pained. A "steady job" sounded to him like a "ground floor" to me.
After that I saw nothing of him for weeks. But I didn't forget him. I looked about and secured for him a job as a canvassing agent for a book firm at a salary of five dollars a week, and a commission of one-tenth of one per cent.
I was waiting to tell him of his good luck, when I chanced to see him at the club again.
But he looked transformed.
He had on a long frock coat that reached nearly to his knees. He was leading a little procession of very heavy men in morning coats, upstairs towards the private luncheon rooms. They moved like a funeral, puffing as they went. I had seen company directors before and I knew what they were at sight.
"It's a small club and rather inconvenient," Ellesworth was saying, "and the horizon of some of its members rather narrow," here he nodded to me as he passed,--"but I can give you a fairly decent lunch."
I watched them as they disappeared upstairs.
"That's Ellesworth, isn't it?" said a man near me. It was the same man who had asked about him before.
"Yes," I answered.
"Giving a lunch to his directors, I suppose," said my friend; "lucky dog."
"His directors?" I asked.
"Yes, hadn't you heard? He's just cleaned up half a million or more,--some new scheme for making refined sugar out of huckleberries. Isn't it amazing what shrewd ideas these big business men get hold of? They say they're unloading the stock at five hundred dollars. It only cost them about five to organize. If only one could get on to one of these things early enough, eh?"
I assented sadly.
And the next time I am offered a chance on the ground floor I am going to take it, even if it's only the barley floor of a brewery.
It appears that there is such a place after all.
9.--The Hallucination of Mr. Butt
It is the hallucination of Mr. Butt's life that he lives to do good. At whatever cost of time or trouble to himself, he does it. Whether people appear to desire it or not, he insists on helping them along.
His time, his company and his advice are at the service not only of those who seek them but of those who, in the mere appearances of things, are not asking for them.
You may see the beaming face of Mr. Butt appear at the door of all those of his friends who are stricken with the minor troubles of life. Whenever Mr. Butt learns that any of his friends are moving house, buying furniture, selling furniture, looking for a maid, dismissing a maid, seeking a chauffeur, suing a plumber or buying a piano,--he is at their side in a moment.
So when I met him one night in the cloak room of the club putting on his raincoat and his galoshes with a peculiar beaming look on his face, I knew that he was up to some sort of benevolence.
"Come upstairs," I said, "and play billiards." I saw from his general appearance that it was a perfectly safe offer.
"My dear fellow," said Mr. Butt, "I only wish I could. I wish I had the time. I am sure it would cheer you up immensely if I could. But I'm just going out."
"Where are you off to?" I asked, for I knew he wanted me to say it.
"I'm going out to see the Everleigh-Joneses,--you know them? no?--just come to the city, you know, moving into their new house, out on Seldom Avenue."
"But," I said, "that's away out in the suburbs, is it not, a mile or so beyond the car tracks?"
"Something like that," answered Mr. Butt.
"And it's going on for ten o'clock and it's starting to rain--"
"Pooh, pooh," said Mr. Butt, cheerfully, adjusting his galoshes. "I never mind the rain,--does one good. As to their house. I've not been there yet but I can easily find it. I've a very simple system for finding a house at night by merely knocking at the doors in the neighborhood till I get it."
"Isn't it rather late to go there?" I protested.
"My dear fellow," said Mr. Butt warmly, "I don't mind that a bit. The way I look at it is, here are these two young people, only married a few weeks, just moving into their new house, everything probably upside down, no one there but themselves, no one to cheer them up,"--he was wriggling into his raincoat as he spoke and working himself into a frenzy of benevolence,--"good gracious, I only learned at dinner time that they had come to town, or I'd have been out there days ago,--days ago--"
And with that Mr. Butt went bursting forth into the rain, his face shining with good will under the street lamps.
The next day I saw him again at the club at lunch time.
"Well," I asked, "did you find the Joneses?"
"I did," said Mr. Butt, "and by George I was glad that I'd gone--quite a lot of trouble to find the house (though I didn't mind that; I expected it)--had to knock at twenty houses at least to get it,--very dark and wet out there, --no street lights yet,--however I simply pounded at the doors until some one showed a light--at every house I called out the same things, 'Do you know where the Everleigh Joneses live?' They didn't. 'All right,' I said, 'go back to bed. Don't bother to come down.'
"But I got to the right spot at last. I found the house all dark. Jones put his head out of an upper window. 'Hullo,' I called out; 'it's Butt.' 'I'm awfully sorry,' he said, 'we've gone to bed.' 'My dear boy,' I called back, 'don't apologize at all. Throw me down the key and I'll wait while you dress. I don't mind a bit.'
"Just think of it," continued Mr. Butt, "those two poor souls going to bed at half past ten, through sheer dullness! By George, I was glad I'd come. 'Now then,' I said to myself, 'let's cheer them up a little, let's make things a little brighter here.'
"Well, down they came and we sat there on furniture cases and things and had a chat. Mrs. Jones wanted to make me some coffee. 'My dear girl,' I said (I knew them both when they were children) 'I absolutely refuse. Let ME make it.' They protested. I insisted. I went at it,--kitchen all upset--had to open at least twenty tins to get the coffee. However, I made it at last. 'Now,' I said, 'drink it.' They said they had some an hour or so ago. 'Nonsense,' I said, 'drink it.' Well, we sat and chatted away till midnight. They were dull at first and I had to do all the talking. But I set myself to it. I can talk, you know, when I try. Presently about midnight they seemed to brighten up a little. Jones looked at his watch. 'By Jove,' he said, in an animated way, 'it's after midnight.' I think he was pleased at the way the evening was going; after that we chatted away more comfortably. Every little while Jones would say, 'By Jove, it's half past twelve,' or 'it's one o'clock,' and so on.
"I took care, of course, not to stay too late. But when I left them I promised that I'd come back to-day to help straighten things up. They protested, but I insisted."
That same day Mr. Butt went out to the suburbs and put the Joneses' furniture to rights.
"I worked all afternoon," he told me afterwards,--"hard at it with my coat off--got the pictures up first--they'd been trying to put them up by themselves in the morning. I had to take down every one of them--not a single one right,--'Down they come,' I said, and went at it with a will."
A few days later Mr. Butt gave me a further report. "Yes," he said, "the furniture is all unpacked and straightened out but I don't like it. There's a lot of it I don't quite like. I half feel like advising Jones to sell it and get some more. But I don't want to do that till I'm quite certain about it."
After that Mr. Butt seemed much occupied and I didn't see him at the club for some time.
"How about the Everleigh-Joneses?" I asked. "Are they comfortable in their new house?"
Mr. Butt shook his head. "It won't do," he said. "I was afraid of it from the first. I'm moving Jones in nearer to town. I've been out all morning looking for an apartment; when I get the right one I shall move him. I like an apartment far better than a house."
So the Joneses in due course of time were moved. After that Mr. Butt was very busy selecting a piano, and advising them on wall paper and woodwork.
They were hardly settled in their new home when fresh trouble came to them.
"Have you heard about Everleigh-Jones?" said Mr. Butt one day with an anxious face.
"No," I answered.
"He's ill--some sort of fever--poor chap--been ill three days, and they never told me or sent for me--just like their grit--meant to fight it out alone. I'm going out there at once."
From day to day I had reports from Mr. Butt of the progress of Jones's illness.
"I sit with him every day," he said. "Poor chap,--he was very bad yesterday for a while,--mind wandered--quite delirious--I could hear him from the next room--seemed to think some one was hunting him--'Is that damn old fool gone,' I heard him say.
"I went in and soothed him. 'There is no one here, my dear boy,' I said, 'no one, only Butt.' He turned over and groaned. Mrs. Jones begged me to leave him. 'You look quite used up,' she said. 'Go out into the open air.' 'My dear Mrs. Jones,' I said, 'what DOES it matter about me?'"
Eventually, thanks no doubt to Mr. Butt's assiduous care,
Everleigh-Jones got well.
"Yes," said Mr. Butt to me a few weeks later, "Jones is all right again now, but his illness has been a long hard pull. I haven't had an evening to myself since it began. But I'm paid, sir, now, more than paid for anything I've done,--the gratitude of those two people--it's unbelievable --you ought to see it. Why do you know that dear little woman is so worried for fear that my strength has been overtaxed that she wants me to take a complete rest and go on a long trip somewhere--suggested first that I should go south. 'My dear Mrs. Jones,' I said laughing, 'that's the ONE place I will not go. Heat is the one thing I CAN'T stand.' She wasn't nonplussed for a moment. 'Then go north,' she said. 'Go up to Canada, or better still go to Labrador,'--and in a minute that kind little woman was hunting up railway maps to see how far north I could get by rail. 'After that,' she said, 'you can go on snowshoes.' She's found that there's a steamer to Ungava every spring and she wants me to run up there on one steamer and come back on the next."
"It must be very gratifying," I said.
"Oh, it is, it is," said Mr. Butt warmly. "It's well worth anything I do. It more than repays me. I'm alone in the world and my friends are all I have. I can't tell you how it goes to my heart when I think of all my friends, here in the club and in the town, always glad to see me, always protesting against my little kindnesses and yet never quite satisfied about anything unless they can get my advice and hear what I have to say.
"Take Jones for instance," he continued--"do you know, really now as a fact,--the hall porter assures me of it,--every time Everleigh-Jones enters the club here the first thing he does is to sing out, 'Is Mr. Butt in the club?' It warms me to think of it." Mr. Butt paused, one would have said there were tears in his eyes. But if so the kindly beam of his spectacles shone through them like the sun through April rain. He left me and passed into the cloak room.
He had just left the hall when a stranger entered, a narrow, meek man with a hunted face. He came in with a furtive step and looked about him apprehensively.
"Is Mr. Butt in the club?" he whispered to the hall porter.
"Yes, sir, he's just gone into the cloak room, sir, shall
I--"
But the man had turned and made a dive for the front door and had vanished.
"Who is that?" I asked.
"That's a new member, sir, Mr. Everleigh-Jones," said the hall porter.
IV-Ram Spudd The New World Singer. Is He Divinely Inspired? Or Is He Not? At Any Rate We Discovered Him.
The discovery of a new poet is always a joy to the cultivated world. It is therefore with the greatest pleasure that we are able to announce that we ourselves, acting quite independently and without aid from any of the English reviews of the day, have discovered one. In the person of Mr. Ram Spudd, of whose work we give specimens below, we feel that we reveal to our readers a genius of the first order. Unlike one of the most recently discovered English poets who is a Bengalee, and another who is a full-blooded Yak, Mr. Spudd is, we believe, a Navajo Indian. We believe this from the character of his verse. Mr. Spudd himself we have not seen. But when he forwarded his poems to our office and offered with characteristic modesty to sell us his entire works for seventy-five cents, we felt in closing with his offer that we were dealing not only with a poet, but with one of nature's gentlemen.
Mr. Spudd, we understand, has had no education. Other newly discovered poets have had, apparently, some. Mr. Spudd has had, evidently, none. We lay stress on this point. Without it we claim it is impossible to understand his work.
What we particularly like about Ram Spudd, and we do not say this because we discovered him but because we believe it and must say it, is that he belongs not to one school but to all of them. As a nature poet we doubt very much if he has his equal; as a psychologist, we are sure he has not. As a clear lucid thinker he is undoubtedly in the first rank; while as a mystic he is a long way in front of it. The specimens of Mr. Spudd's verse which we append herewith were selected, we are happy to assure our readers, purely at random from his work. We first blindfolded ourselves and then, standing with our feet in warm water and having one hand tied behind our back, we groped among the papers on our desk before us and selected for our purpose whatever specimens first came to hand.
As we have said, or did we say it, it is perhaps as a nature poet that Ram Spudd excels. Others of our modern school have carried the observation of natural objects to a high degree of very nice precision, but with Mr. Spudd the observation of nature becomes an almost scientific process. Nothing escapes him. The green of the grass he detects as in an instant. The sky is no sooner blue than he remarks it with unerring certainty. Every bird note, every bee call, is familiar to his trained ear. Perhaps we cannot do better than quote the opening lines of a singularly beautiful sample of Ram Spudd's genius which seems to us the last word in nature poetry. It is called, with characteristic daintiness--
SPRING THAW IN THE
AHUNTSIC WOODS, NEAR PASPEBIAC,
PASSAMOQUODDY COUNTY
(We would like to say that, to our ears at least, there is a music in this title like the sound of falling water, or of chopped ice. But we must not interrupt ourselves. We now begin. Listen.)
The thermometer is standing this morning at thirty- three decimal one. As a consequence it is freezing in the shade, but it is thawing in the sun. There is a certain amount of snow on the ground, but of course not too much. The air is what you would call humid, but not disagreeable to the touch. Where I am standing I find myself practically surrounded by trees, It is simply astonishing the number of the different varieties one sees. I've grown so wise I can tell each different tree by seeing it glisten, But if that test fails I simply put my ear to the tree and listen, And, well, I suppose it is only a silly fancy of mine perhaps, But do you know I'm getting to tell different trees by the sound of their saps. After I have noticed all the trees, and named those I know in words, I stand quite still and look all round to see if there are any birds, And yesterday, close where I was standing, sitting in some brush on the snow, I saw what I was practically absolutely certain was an early crow. I sneaked up ever so close and was nearly beside it, when say! It turned and took one look at me, and flew away.
But we should not wish our readers to think that Ram Spudd is always and only the contemplative poet of the softer aspects of nature. Oh, by no means. There are times when waves of passion sweep over him in such prodigious volume as to roll him to and fro like a pebble in the surf. Gusts of emotion blow over him with such violence as to hurl him pro and con with inconceivable fury. In such moods, if it were not for the relief offered by writing verse we really do not know what would happen to him. His verse written under the impulse of such emotions marks him as one of the greatest masters of passion, wild and yet restrained, objectionable and yet printable, that have appeared on this side of the Atlantic. We append herewith a portion, or half portion, of his little gem entitled
YOU
You!
With your warm, full, rich, red, ripe lips,
And your beautifully manicured finger-tips!
You!
With your heaving, panting, rapidly expanding and
contracting chest,
Lying against my perfectly ordinary shirt-front and
dinner-jacket vest.
It is too much
Your touch
As such.
It and
Your hand,
Can you not understand?
Last night an ostrich feather from your fragrant hair
Unnoticed fell.
I guard it
Well.
Yestere'en
From your tiara I have slid,
Unseen,
A single diamond,
And I keep it
Hid.
Last night you left inside the vestibule upon the sill
A quarter dollar,
And I have it
Still.
But even those who know Ram Spudd as the poet of nature or of passion still only know a part of his genius. Some of his highest flights rise from an entirely different inspiration, and deal with the public affairs of the nation. They are in every sense comparable to the best work of the poets laureate of England dealing with similar themes. As soon as we had seen Ram Spudd's work of this kind, we cried, that is we said to our stenographer, "What a pity that in this republic we have no laureateship. Here is a man who might truly fill it." Of the poem of this kind we should wish to quote, if our limits of space did not prevent it, Mr. Spudd's exquisite
ODE ON THE REDUCTION OF THE
UNITED STATES TARIFF
It is a matter of the very gravest concern to at least nine-tenths of the business interests in the United States, Whether an all-round reduction of the present tariff either on an ad valorem or a specific basis Could be effected without a serious disturbance of the general industrial situation of the country.
But, no, we must not quote any more. No we really mustn't. Yet we cannot refrain from inserting a reference to the latest of these laureate poems of Ram Spudd. It appears to us to be a matchless specimen of its class, and to settle once and for all the vexed question (though we ourselves never vexed it) of whether true poetry can deal with national occasions as they arise. It is entitled:
THE BANKER'S EUTHANASIA: OR,
THE FEDERAL RESERVE CURRENCY
ACT OF 1914,
and, though we do not propose to reproduce it here, our distinct feeling is that it will take its rank beside Mr. Spudd's Elegy on the Interstate Commerce Act, and his Thoughts on the Proposal of a Uniform Pure Food Law.
But our space does not allow us to present Ram Spudd in what is after all his greatest aspect, that of a profound psychologist, a questioner of the very meaning of life itself. His poem Death and Gloom, from which we must refrain from quoting at large, contains such striking passages as the following:
Why do I breathe, or do I?
What am I for, and whither do I go?
What skills it if I live, and if I die,
What boots it?
Any one knowing Ram Spudd as we do will realize that these questions, especially the last, are practically unanswerable.
V.--Aristocratic Anecdotes or Little Stories of Great
People
I have been much struck lately by the many excellent little anecdotes of celebrated people that have appeared in recent memoirs and found their way thence into the columns of the daily press. There is something about them so deliciously pointed, their humour is so exquisite, that I think we ought to have more of them. To this end I am trying to circulate on my own account a few anecdotes which seem somehow to have been overlooked.
Here, for example, is an excellent thing which comes, if
I remember rightly, from the vivacious Memoir of Lady
Ranelagh de Chit Chat.
ANECDOTE OF THE DUKE OF STRATHYTHAN
Lady Ranelagh writes:
"The Duke of Strathythan (I am writing of course of the seventeenth Duke, not of his present Grace) was, as everybody knows, famous for his hospitality. It was not perhaps generally known that the Duke was as witty as he was hospitable. I recall a most amusing incident that happened the last time but two that I was staying at Strathythan Towers. As we sat down to lunch (we were a very small and intimate party, there being only forty-three of us) the Duke, who was at the head of the table, looked up from the roast of beef that he was carving, and running his eye about the guests was heard to murmur, 'I'm afraid there isn't enough beef to go round.'
"There was nothing to do, of course, but to roar with laughter and the incident passed off with perfect savoir faire."
Here is another story which I think has not had all the publicity that it ought to. I found it in the book "Shot, Shell and Shrapnell or Sixty Years as a War Correspondent," recently written by Mr. Maxim Catling whose exploits are familiar to all readers.
ANECDOTE OF LORD KITCHENER
"I was standing," writes Mr. Maxim, "immediately between Lord Kitchener and Lord Wolsley (with Lord Roberts a little to the rear of us), and we were laughing and chatting as we always did when the enemy were about to open fire on us. Suddenly we found ourselves the object of the most terrific hail of bullets. For a few moments the air was black with them. As they went past I could not refrain from exchanging a quiet smile with Lord Kitchener, and another with Lord Wolsley. Indeed I have never, except perhaps on twenty or thirty occasions, found myself exposed to such an awful fusillade.
"Kitchener, who habitually uses an eye-glass (among his friends), watched the bullets go singing by, and then, with that inimitable sangfroid which he reserves for his intimates, said,
"'I'm afraid if we stay here we may get hit.'
"We all moved away laughing heartily.
"To add to the joke, Lord Roberts' aide-de-camp was shot in the pit of the stomach as we went."
The next anecdote which I reproduce may be already too well known to my readers. The career of Baron Snorch filled so large a page in the history of European diplomacy that the publication of his recent memoirs was awaited with profound interest by half the chancelleries of Europe. (Even the other half were half excited over them.) The tangled skein in which the politics of Europe are enveloped was perhaps never better illustrated than in this fascinating volume. Even at the risk of repeating what is already familiar, I offer the following for what it is worth--or even less.
NEW LIGHT ON THE LIFE OF CAVOUR
"I have always regarded Count Cavour," writes the Baron, "as one of the most impenetrable diplomatists whom it has been my lot to meet. I distinctly recall an incident in connection with the famous Congress of Paris of 1856 which rises before my mind as vividly as if it were yesterday. I was seated in one of the large salons of the Elysee Palace (I often used to sit there) playing vingt-et-un together with Count Cavour, the Duc de Magenta, the Marquese di Casa Mombasa, the Conte di Piccolo Pochito and others whose names I do not recollect. The stakes had been, as usual, very high, and there was a large pile of gold on the table. No one of us, however, paid any attention to it, so absorbed were we all in the thought of the momentous crises that were impending. At intervals the Emperor Napoleon III passed in and out of the room, and paused to say a word or two, with well-feigned eloignement, to the players, who replied with such degagement as they could.
