A CHRISTMAS GARLAND

_woven by_

MAX BEERBOHM

LONDON MCMXXI

WILLIAM HEINEMANN

First printed, October, 1912. 

New Impressions, October, 1912; December, 1912; December, 1912; July, 1918; September, 1918; March, 1931. 

Copyright, 1912. 

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

 THE WORKS OF MAX BEERBOHM MORE YET AGAIN

 A CHRISTMAS GARLAND

 THE HAPPY HYPOCRITE ZULIEKA DOBSON SEVEN MEN AND EVEN NOW

 CARICATURES OF TWENTY-FIVE GENTLEMEN THE POETS' CORNER THE SECOND CHILDHOOD OF JOHN BULL A BOOK OF CARICATURES FIFTY CARICATURES

NOTE

_Stevenson, in one of his essays, tells us how he "played the sedulousape" to Hazlitt, Sir Thomas Browne, Montaigne, and other writers ofthe past. And the compositors of all our higher-toned newspapers keepthe foregoing sentence set up in type always, so constantly does itcome tripping off the pens of all higher-toned reviewers. Nor ever doI read it without a fresh thrill of respect for the young Stevenson. I, in my own very inferior boyhood, found it hard to revel in so muchas a single page of any writer earlier than Thackeray. This disabilityI did not shake off, alas, after I left school. There seemed to beso many live authors worth reading. I gave precedence to them, and, not being much of a reader, never had time to grapple with the oldmasters. Meanwhile, I was already writing a little on my own account. I had had some sort of aptitude for Latin prose and Latin verse. Iwondered often whether those two things, essential though they were(and are) to the making of a decent style in English prose, sufficedfor the making of a style more than decent. I felt that I must haveother models. And thus I acquired the habit of aping, now and again, quite sedulously, this or that live writer--sometimes, it must beadmitted, in the hope of learning rather what to avoid. I acquired, too, the habit of publishing these patient little efforts. Some ofthem appeared in "The Saturday Review" many years ago; others appearedthere more recently. I have selected, by kind permission of theEditor, one from the earlier lot, and seven from the later. The othernine in this book are printed for the first time. The book itself maybe taken as a sign that I think my own style is, at length, more orless formed. _

_M. B. _

_Rapallo_, 1912. 

CONTENTS

THE MOTE IN THE MIDDLE DISTANCE, H*NRY J*M*S

P. C. , X, 36, R*D**RD K*PL*NG

OUT OF HARM'S WAY, A. C. B*NS*N

PERKINS AND MANKIND, H. G. W*LLS

SOME DAMNABLE ERRORS ABOUT CHRISTMAS, G. K. CH*ST*RT*N

A SEQUELULA TO "THE DYNASTS", TH*M*S H*RDY

SHAKESPEARE AND CHRISTMAS, FR*NK H*RR*S

SCRUTS, ARN*LD B*NN*TT

ENDEAVOUR, J*HN G*LSW*RTHY

CHRISTMAS, G. S. STR**T

THE FEAST, J*S*PH C*NR*D

A RECOLLECTION, EDM*ND G*SSE

OF CHRISTMAS, H*L**RE B*LL*C

A STRAIGHT TALK, G**RG* B*RN*RD SH*W

FOND HEARTS ASKEW, M**R*CE H*WL*TT

DICKENS, G**RGE M**RE

EUPHEMIA CLASHTHOUGHT, G**RGE M*R*D*TH

THE MOTE IN THE MIDDLE DISTANCE

_By_

H*NRY J*M*S

It was with the sense of a, for him, very memorable something thathe peered now into the immediate future, and tried, not withoutcompunction, to take that period up where he had, prospectively, leftit. But just where the deuce _had_ he left it? The consciousness ofdubiety was, for our friend, not, this morning, quite yet clean-cutenough to outline the figures on what she had called his "horizon, "between which and himself the twilight was indeed of a qualitysomewhat intimidating. He had run up, in the course of time, againsta good number of "teasers;" and the function of teasing them back--of, as it were, giving them, every now and then, "what for"--was in him somuch a habit that he would have been at a loss had there been, on theface of it, nothing to lose. Oh, he always had offered rewards, ofcourse--had ever so liberally pasted the windows of his soul withstaring appeals, minute descriptions, promises that knew no bounds. But the actual recovery of the article--the business of drawing andcrossing the cheque, blotched though this were with tears of joy--hadblankly appeared to him rather in the light of a sacrilege, casting, he sometimes felt, a palpable chill on the fervour of the next quest. It was just this fervour that was threatened as, raising himself onhis elbow, he stared at the foot of his bed. That his eyes refusedto rest there for more than the fraction of an instant, may betaken--_was_, even then, taken by Keith Tantalus--as a hint of hisrecollection that after all the phenomenon wasn't to be singular. Thusthe exact repetition, at the foot of Eva's bed, of the shape pendulousat the foot of _his_ was hardly enough to account for the fixity withwhich he envisaged it, and for which he was to find, some years later, a motive in the (as it turned out) hardly generous fear that Eva hadalready made the great investigation "on her own. " Her very regularbreathing presently reassured him that, if she _had_ peeped into "her"stocking, she must have done so in sleep. Whether he should wake hernow, or wait for their nurse to wake them both in due course, wasa problem presently solved by a new development. It was plain thathis sister was now watching him between her eyelashes. He had halfexpected that. She really was--he had often told her that she reallywas--magnificent; and her magnificence was never more obvious than inthe pause that elapsed before she all of a sudden remarked "They sovery indubitably _are_, you know!"

It occurred to him as befitting Eva's remoteness, which was a partof Eva's magnificence, that her voice emerged somewhat muffled by thebedclothes. She was ever, indeed, the most telephonic of her sex. Intalking to Eva you always had, as it were, your lips to the receiver. If you didn't try to meet her fine eyes, it was that you simplycouldn't hope to: there were too many dark, too many buzzing andbewildering and all frankly not negotiable leagues in between. Snatches of other voices seemed often to intertrude themselves in theparley; and your loyal effort not to overhear these was complicated byyour fear of missing what Eva might be twittering. "Oh, you certainlyhaven't, my dear, the trick of propinquity!" was a thrust she hadonce parried by saying that, in that case, _he_ hadn't--to which hisunspoken rejoinder that she had caught her tone from the peevishyoung women at the Central seemed to him (if not perhaps in the last, certainly in the last but one, analysis) to lack finality. WithEva, he had found, it was always safest to "ring off. " It was with acertain sense of his rashness in the matter, therefore, that he now, with an air of feverishly "holding the line, " said "Oh, as to that!"

Had _she_, he presently asked himself, "rung off"? It wascharacteristic of our friend--was indeed "him all over"--that his fearof what she was going to say was as nothing to his fear of what shemight be going to leave unsaid. He had, in his converse with her, beennever so conscious as now of the intervening leagues; they had neverso insistently beaten the drum of his ear; and he caught himself inthe act of awfully computing, with a certain statistical passion, thedistance between Rome and Boston. He has never been able to decidewhich of these points he was psychically the nearer to at the momentwhen Eva, replying "Well, one does, anyhow, leave a margin for thepretext, you know!" made him, for the first time in his life, wonderwhether she were not more magnificent than even he had ever givenher credit for being. Perhaps it was to test this theory, or perhapsmerely to gain time, that he now raised himself to his knees, and, leaning with outstretched arm towards the foot of his bed, made asthough to touch the stocking which Santa Claus had, overnight, leftdangling there. His posture, as he stared obliquely at Eva, witha sort of beaming defiance, recalled to him something seen in an"illustration. " This reminiscence, however--if such it was, save inthe scarred, the poor dear old woebegone and so very beguilingly _not_refractive mirror of the moment--took a peculiar twist from Eva'sbehaviour. She had, with startling suddenness, sat bolt upright, andlooked to him as if she were overhearing some tragedy at the other endof the wire, where, in the nature of things, she was unable to arrestit. The gaze she fixed on her extravagant kinsman was of a kind tomake him wonder how he contrived to remain, as he beautifully did, rigid. His prop was possibly the reflection that flashed on him that, if _she_ abounded in attenuations, well, hang it all, so did _he_! Itwas simply a difference of plane. Readjust the "values, " as painterssay, and there you were! He was to feel that he was only too crudely"there" when, leaning further forward, he laid a chubby forefinger onthe stocking, causing that receptacle to rock ponderously to and fro. This effect was more expected than the tears which started to Eva'seyes, and the intensity with which "Don't you, " she exclaimed, "see?"

"The mote in the middle distance?" he asked. "Did you ever, my dear, know me to see anything else? I tell you it blocks out everything. It's a cathedral, it's a herd of elephants, it's the whole habitableglobe. Oh, it's, believe me, of an obsessiveness!" But his sense ofthe one thing it _didn't_ block out from his purview enabled himto launch at Eva a speculation as to just how far Santa Claus had, for the particular occasion, gone. The gauge, for both of them, of this seasonable distance seemed almost blatantly suspended inthe silhouettes of the two stockings. Over and above the basis of(presumably) sweetmeats in the toes and heels, certain extrusionsstood for a very plenary fulfilment of desire. And, since Eva had sether heart on a doll of ample proportions and practicable eyelids--hadasked that most admirable of her sex, their mother, for it with notless directness than he himself had put into his demand for a swordand helmet--her coyness now struck Keith as lying near to, at indeeda hardly measurable distance from, the border-line of his patience. Ifshe didn't want the doll, why the deuce had she made such a point ofgetting it? He was perhaps on the verge of putting this question toher, when, waving her hand to include both stockings, she said "Ofcourse, my dear, you _do_ see. There they are, and you know I knowyou know we wouldn't, either of us, dip a finger into them. " With avibrancy of tone that seemed to bring her voice quite close to him, "One doesn't, " she added, "violate the shrine--pick the pearl from theshell!"

Even had the answering question "Doesn't one just?" which for aninstant hovered on the tip of his tongue, been uttered, it could nothave obscured for Keith the change which her magnificence had wroughtin him. Something, perhaps, of the bigotry of the convert was alreadydiscernible in the way that, averting his eyes, he said "One doesn'teven peer. " As to whether, in the years that have elapsed since hesaid this either of our friends (now adult) has, in fact, "peered, " isa question which, whenever I call at the house, I am tempted to putto one or other of them. But any regret I may feel in my invariablefailure to "come up to the scratch" of yielding to this temptation isbalanced, for me, by my impression--my sometimes all but throned andanointed certainty--that the answer, if vouchsafed, would be in thenegative. 

P. C. , X, 36

_By_

R*D**RD K*PL*NG

 Then it's collar 'im tight, In the name o' the Lawd! 'Ustle 'im, shake 'im till 'e's sick! Wot, 'e _would_, would 'e? Well, Then yer've got ter give 'im 'Ell, An' it's trunch, trunch, truncheon does the trick

 POLICE STATION DITTIES. 

I had spent Christmas Eve at the Club, listening to a grand pow-wowbetween certain of the choicer sons of Adam. Then Slushby had cutin. Slushby is one who writes to newspapers and is theirs obediently"HUMANITARIAN. " When Slushby cuts in, men remember they have to be upearly next morning. 

Sharp round a corner on the way home, I collided with something firmerthan the regulation pillar-box. I righted myself after the recoiland saw some stars that were very pretty indeed. Then I perceived thenature of the obstruction. 

"Evening, Judlip, " I said sweetly, when I had collected my hat fromthe gutter. "Have I broken the law, Judlip? If so, I'll go quiet. "

"Time yer was in bed, " grunted X, 36. "Yer Ma'll be lookin' out foryer. "

This from the friend of my bosom! It hurt. Many were the night-beatsI had been privileged to walk with Judlip, imbibing curious lore thatmade glad the civilian heart of me. Seven whole 8x5 inch note-bookshad I pitmanised to the brim with Judlip. And now to be repulsed asone of the uninitiated! It hurt horrid. 

There is a thing called Dignity. Small boys sometimes stand on it. Then they have to be kicked. Then they get down, weeping. I don'tstand on Dignity. 

"What's wrong, Judlip?" I asked, more sweetly than ever. "Drawn ablank to-night?"

"Yuss. Drawn a blank blank blank. 'Avent 'ad so much as a kick at alorst dorg. Christmas Eve ain't wot it was. " I felt for my note-book. "Lawd! I remembers the time when the drunks and disorderlies down thisstreet was as thick as flies on a fly-paper. One just picked 'em orfwith one's finger and thumb. A bloomin' battew, that's wot it wos. "

"The night's yet young, Judlip, " I insinuated, with a jerk of my thumbat the flaring windows of the "Rat and Blood Hound. " At that momentthe saloon-door swung open, emitting a man and woman who walked withlinked arms and exceeding great care. 

Judlip eyed them longingly as they tacked up the street. Then hesighed. Now, when Judlip sighs the sound is like unto that whichissues from the vent of a Crosby boiler when the cog-gauges are at260° F. 

"Come, Judlip!" I said. "Possess your soul in patience. You'll soonfind someone to make an example of. Meanwhile"--I threw back my headand smacked my lips--"the usual, Judlip?"

In another minute I emerged through the swing-door, bearing a furtiveglass of that same "usual, " and nipped down the mews where my friendwas wont to await these little tokens of esteem. 

"To the Majesty of the Law, Judlip!"

When he had honoured the toast, I scooted back with the glass, leavinghim wiping the beads off his beard-bristles. He was in his philosophicmood when I rejoined him at the corner. 

"Wot am I?" he said, as we paced along. "A bloomin' cypher. Wot'sthe sarjint? 'E's got the Inspector over 'im. Over above theInspector there's the Sooprintendent. Over above 'im's the oldred-tape-masticatin' Yard. Over above that there's the 'Ome Sec. Wot's 'e? A cypher, like me. Why?" Judlip looked up at the stars. "Over above 'im's We Dunno Wot. Somethin' wot issues its hordersan' regulations an' divisional injunctions, inscrootable like, butp'remptory; an' we 'as ter see as 'ow they're carried out, not arskin'no questions, but each man goin' about 'is dooty. '

"''Is dooty, '" said I, looking up from my note-book. "Yes, I've gotthat. "

"Life ain't a bean-feast. It's a 'arsh reality. An' them as makes it abean-feast 'as got to be 'arshly dealt with accordin'. That's wot theForce is put 'ere for from Above. Not as 'ow we ain't fallible. Wemakes our mistakes. An' when we makes 'em we sticks to 'em. For thehonour o' the Force. Which same is the jool Britannia wears on 'erbosom as a charm against hanarchy. That's wot the brarsted old Beaksdon't understand. Yer remember Smithers of our Div?"

I remembered Smithers--well. As fine, upstanding, square-toed, bullet-headed, clean-living a son of a gun as ever perjured himself inthe box. There was nothing of the softy about Smithers. I took off mybillicock to Smithers' memory. 

"Sacrificed to public opinion? Yuss, " said Judlip, pausing at a frontdoor and flashing his 45 c. P. Down the slot of a two-grade Yale. "Sacrificed to a parcel of screamin' old women wot ort ter 'ave gorndown on their knees an' thanked Gawd for such a protector. 'E'll beout in another 'alf year. Wot'll 'e do then, pore devil? Go a bust on'is conduc' money an' throw in 'is lot with them same hexperts wot 'ada 'oly terror of 'im. " Then Judlip swore gently. 

"What should you do, O Great One, if ever it were your duty toapprehend him?"

"Do? Why, yer blessed innocent, yer don't think I'd shirk a fair cleancop? Same time, I don't say as 'ow I wouldn't 'andle 'im tender like, for sake o' wot 'e wos. Likewise cos 'e'd be a stiff customer totackle. Likewise 'cos--"

He had broken off, and was peering fixedly upwards at an angle of 85°across the moonlit street. "Ullo!" he said in a hoarse whisper. 

Striking an average between the direction of his eyes--for Judlip, when on the job, has a soul-stirring squint--I perceived someone inthe act of emerging from a chimney-pot. 

Judlip's voice clove the silence. "Wot are yer doin' hup there?"

The person addressed came to the edge of the parapet. I saw then thathe had a hoary white beard, a red ulster with the hood up, and whatlooked like a sack over his shoulder. He said something or other in avoice like a concertina that has been left out in the rain. 

"I dessay, " answered my friend. "Just you come down, an' we'll seeabout that. "

The old man nodded and smiled. Then--as I hope to be saved--he camefloating gently down through the moonlight, with the sack over hisshoulder and a young fir-tree clasped to his chest. He alighted in afriendly manner on the curb beside us. 

Judlip was the first to recover himself. Out went his right arm, andthe airman was slung round by the scruff of the neck, spilling hissack in the road. I made a bee-line for his shoulder-blades. Burglaror no burglar, he was the best airman out, and I was muchly desirousto know the precise nature of the apparatus under his ulster. Aback-hander from Judlip's left caused me to hop quickly aside. Theprisoner was squealing and whimpering. He didn't like the feel ofJudlip's knuckles at his cervical vertebræ. 

"Wot wos yer doin' hup there?" asked Judlip, tightening the grip. 

"I'm S-Santa Claus, Sir. P-please, Sir, let me g-go"

"Hold him, " I shouted. "He's a German. "

"It's my dooty ter caution yer that wotever yer say now may be usedin hevidence against yer, yer old sinner. Pick up that there sack, an'come along o' me. "

The captive snivelled something about peace on earth, good will towardmen. 

"Yuss, " said Judlip. "That's in the Noo Testament, ain't it? The NooTestament contains some uncommon nice readin' for old gents an' youngladies. But it ain't included in the librery o' the Force. We confineourselves to the Old Testament--O. T. , 'ot. An' 'ot you'll get it. Hupwith that sack, an' quick march!"

I have seen worse attempts at a neck-wrench, but it was just notslippery enough for Judlip. And the kick that Judlip then let fly wasa thing of beauty and a joy for ever. 

"Frog's-march him!" I shrieked, dancing. "For the love of heaven, frog's-march him!"

Trotting by Judlip's side to the Station, I reckoned it out that ifSlushby had not been at the Club I should not have been here to see. Which shows that even Slushbys are put into this world for a purpose. 

OUT OF HARM'S WAY

_By_

A. C. B*NS*N

Chapter XLII. --Christmas

More and more, as the tranquil years went by, Percy found himself ableto draw a quiet satisfaction from the regularity, the even sureness, with which, in every year, one season succeeded to another. Inboyhood he had felt always a little sad at the approach of autumn. The yellowing leaves of the lime trees, the creeper that flushed toso deep a crimson against the old grey walls, the chrysanthemums thatshed so prodigally their petals on the smooth green lawn--all thesethings, beautiful and wonderful though they were, were somehow alittle melancholy also, as being signs of the year's decay. Once, whenhe was fourteen or fifteen years old, he had overheard a friend ofthe family say to his father "How the days are drawing in!"--a remarkwhich set him thinking deeply, with an almost morbid abandonment togloom, for quite a long time. He had not then grasped the truth thatin exactly the proportion in which the days draw in they will, inthe fullness of time, draw out. This was a lesson that he mastered inlater years. And, though the waning of summer never failed to touchhim with the sense of an almost personal loss, yet it seemed to him aright thing, a wise ordination, that there should be these recurringchanges. Those men and women of whom the poet tells us that they livedin "a land where it was always afternoon"--could they, Percy oftenwondered, have felt quite that thankfulness which on a fine afternoonis felt by us dwellers in ordinary climes? Ah, no! Surely it isbecause we are made acquainted with the grey sadness of twilight, thesolemn majesty of the night-time, the faint chill of the dawn, thatwe set so high a value on the more meridional hours. If there were noautumn, no winter, then spring and summer would lose, not all indeed, yet an appreciable part of their sweet savour for us. Thus, as hismind matured, Percy came to be very glad of the gradual changes of theyear. He found in them a rhythm, as he once described it in his diary;and this he liked very much indeed. He was aware that in his owncharacter, with its tendency to waywardness, to caprice, to disorder, there was an almost grievous lack of this _rhythmic_ quality. In thesure and seemly progression of the months, was there not for him adesirable exemplar, a needed corrective? He was so liable to moods inwhich he rebelled against the performance of some quite simple duty, some appointed task--moods in which he said to himself "H-ng it! Iwill not do this, " or "Oh, b-th-r! I shall not do that!" But it wasclear that Nature herself never spoke thus. Even as a passenger ina frail barque on the troublous ocean will keep his eyes directedtowards some upstanding rock on the far horizon, finding thus inwardlyfor himself, or hoping to find, a more stable equilibrium, a deepertranquillity, than is his, so did Percy daily devote a certain portionof his time to quiet communion with the almanac. 

There were times when he was sorely tempted to regret a little thatsome of the feasts of the Church were "moveable. " True, they movedonly within strictly prescribed limits, and in accordance with certainunalterable, wholly justifiable rules. Yet, in the very fact thatthey did move, there seemed--to use an expressive slang phrase of theday--"something not quite nice. " It was therefore the fixed feaststhat pleased Percy best, and on Christmas Day, especially, heexperienced a temperate glow which would have perhaps surprised thosewho knew him only slightly. 

By reason of the athletic exercises of his earlier years, Percy hadretained in middle life a certain lightness and firmness of tread;and this on Christmas morning, between his rooms and the Cathedral, was always so peculiarly elastic that he might almost have seemed tobe rather running than walking. The ancient fane, with its soaringsof grey columns to the dimness of its embowed roof, the delicatetraceries of the organ screen, the swelling notes of the organ, themellow shafts of light filtered through the stained-glass windowswhose hues were as those of emeralds and rubies and amethysts, thestainless purity of the surplices of clergy and choir, the soberrichness of Sunday bonnets in the transept, the faint yet heavyfragrance exhaled from the hot-water pipes--all these familiar things, appealing, as he sometimes felt, almost too strongly to that sensuousside of his nature which made him so susceptible to the paintings ofMr. Leader, of Sir Luke Fildes, were on Christmas morning more thanusually affecting by reason of that note of quiet joyousness, of peaceand good will, that pervaded the lessons of the day, the collect, thehymns, the sermon. 

It was this spiritual aspect of Christmas that Percy felt to behardly sufficiently regarded, or at least dwelt on, nowadays, and hesometimes wondered whether the modern Christmas had not been in somedegree inspired and informed by Charles Dickens. He had for thatwriter a very sincere admiration, though he was inclined to think thathis true excellence lay not so much in faithful portrayal of the lifeof his times, or in gift of sustained narration, or in those scenes ofpathos which have moved so many hearts in so many quiet homes, as inthe power of inventing highly fantastic figures, such as Mr. Micawberor Mr. Pickwick. This view Percy knew to be somewhat heretical, and, constitutionally averse from the danger of being suspected of "talkingfor effect, " he kept it to himself; but, had anyone challenged him togive his opinion, it was thus that he would have expressed himself. In regard to Christmas, he could not help wishing that Charles Dickenshad laid more stress on its spiritual element. It was right that thefeast should be an occasion for good cheer, for the savoury meats, thesteaming bowl, the blazing log, the traditional games. But was notthe modern world, with its almost avowed bias towards materialism, toolittle apt to think of Christmas as also a time for meditation, fortaking stock, as it were, of the things of the soul? Percy had heardthat in London nowadays there was a class of people who sate downto their Christmas dinners in public hotels. He did not condemn thispractice. He never condemned a thing, but wondered, rather, whetherit were right, and could not help feeling that somehow it was not. In the course of his rare visits to London he had more than oncebeen inside of one of the large new hotels that had sprung up--these"great caravanseries, " as he described them in a letter to anold school-fellow who had been engaged for many years in Chinesemission work. And it seemed to him that the true spirit of Christmascould hardly be acclimatised in such places, but found its properresting-place in quiet, detached homes, where were gathered togetheronly those connected with one another by ties of kinship, or of longand tested friendship. 

He sometimes blamed himself for having tended more and more, as thequiet, peaceful, tranquil years went by, to absent himself from eventhose small domestic gatherings. And yet, might it not be that hisinstinct for solitude at this season was a right instinct, at leastfor him, and that to run counter to it would be in some degreeunacceptable to the Power that fashioned us? Thus he allowed himselfto go, as it were, his own way. After morning service, he sate downto his Christmas fare alone, and then, when the simple meal was over, would sit and think in his accustomed chair, falling perhaps intoone of those quiet dozes from which, because they seemed to be sonatural a result, so seemly a consummation, of his thoughts, hedid not regularly abstain. Later, he sallied forth, with a senseof refreshment, for a brisk walk among the fens, the sedges, thehedgerows, the reed-fringed pools, the pollard willows that would indue course be putting forth their tender shoots of palest green. Andthen, once more in his rooms, with the curtains drawn and the candleslit, he would turn to his book-shelves and choose from among them someold book that he knew and loved, or maybe some quite new book by thatwriter whose works were most dear to him because in them he seemedalways to know so precisely what the author would say next, andbecause he found in their fine-spun repetitions a singular repose, a sense of security, an earnest of calm and continuity, as though hewere reading over again one of those wise copy-books that he had soloved in boyhood, or were listening to the sounds made on a piano bysome modest, very conscientious young girl with a pale red pig-tail, practising her scales, very gently, hour after hour, next door. 

PERKINS AND MANKIND

_By_

H. G. W*LLS

Chapter XX

§1. 

It was the Christmas party at Heighton that was one of theturning-points in Perkins' life. The Duchess had sent him a three-pagewire in the hyperbolical style of her class, conveying a vagueimpression that she and the Duke had arranged to commit suicidetogether if Perkins didn't "chuck" any previous engagement he hadmade. And Perkins had felt in a slipshod sort of way--for at thisperiod he was incapable of ordered thought--he might as well be atHeighton as anywhere. .. . 

The enormous house was almost full. There must have been upwards offifty people sitting down to every meal. Many of these were members ofthe family. Perkins was able to recognise them by their unconvolutedears--the well-known Grifford ear, transmitted from one generation toanother. For the rest there were the usual lot from the Front Benchesand the Embassies. Evesham was there, clutching at the lapels of hiscoat; and the Prescotts--he with his massive mask of a face, and shewith her quick, hawk-like ways, talking about two things at a time;old Tommy Strickland, with his monocle and his dropped g's, tellingyou what he had once said to Mr. Disraeli; Boubou Seaforth and hisAmerican wife; John Pirram, ardent and elegant, spouting old Frenchlyrics; and a score of others. 

Perkins had got used to them by now. He no longer wondered whatthey were "up to, " for he knew they were up to nothing whatever. Hereflected, while he was dressing for dinner on Christmas night, howodd it was he had ever thought of Using them. He might as well havehoped to Use the Dresden shepherds and shepherdesses that grinned outin the last stages of refinement at him from the glazed cabinets inthe drawing-rooms. .. . Or the Labour Members themselves. .. . 

True there was Evesham. He had shown an exquisitely open mind aboutthe whole thing. He had at once grasped the underlying principles, thrown out some amazingly luminous suggestions. Oh yes, Evesham was astatesman, right enough. But had even he ever really _believed_ in theidea of a Provisional Government of England by the Female Foundlings?

To Perkins the whole thing had seemed so simple, so imminent--a thingthat needed only a little general good-will to bring it about. Andnow. .. . Suppose his Bill _had_ passed its Second Reading, suppose ithad become Law, would this poor old England be by way of functioningdecently--after all? Foundlings were sometimes naughty. .. . 

What was the matter with the whole human race? He remembered againthose words of Scragson's that had had such a depressing effect on himat the Cambridge Union--"Look here, you know! It's all a huge nastymess, and we're trying to swab it up with a pocket handkerchief. "Well, he'd given up trying to do that. .. . 

§2. 

During dinner his eyes wandered furtively up and down the endlessornate table, and he felt he had been, in a sort of way, right inthinking these people were the handiest instrument to prise openthe national conscience with. The shining red faces of the men, theshining white necks and arms of the women, the fearless eyes, thegeneral free-and-easiness and spaciousness, the look of late hourscounteracted by fresh air and exercise and the best things to eat anddrink--what mightn't be made of these people, if they'd only Submit?

Perkins looked behind them, at the solemn young footmen passingand repassing, noiselessly, in blue and white liveries. _They_ hadSubmitted. And it was just because they had been able to that theywere no good. 

"Damn!" said Perkins, under his breath. 

§3. 

One of the big conifers from the park had been erected in the hall, and this, after dinner, was found to be all lighted up with electricbulbs and hung with packages in tissue paper. 

The Duchess stood, a bright, feral figure, distributing these packagesto the guests. Perkins' name was called out in due course and thepackage addressed to him was slipped into his hand. He retiredwith it into a corner. Inside the tissue-paper was a small moroccoleather case. Inside that was a set of diamond and sapphiresleeve-links--large ones. 

He stood looking at them, blinking a little. 

He supposed he must put them on. But something in him, some intractably tough bit of his old self, rose upprotesting--frantically. 

If he couldn't Use these people, at least they weren't going to Use_him_!

"No, damn it!" he said under his breath, and, thrusting the case intohis pocket, slipped away unobserved. 

§4. 

He flung himself into a chair in his bedroom and puffed a blast of airfrom his lungs. .. . Yes, it had been a narrow escape. He knew that ifhe had put those beastly blue and white things on he would have been alost soul. .. . 

"You've got to pull yourself together, d'you hear?" he said tohimself. "You've got to do a lot of clear, steady, mercilessthinking--now, to-night. You've got to persuade yourself somehow that, Foundlings or no Foundlings, this regeneration of mankind business maystill be set going--and by _you_. "

He paced up and down the room, fuming. How recapture the generouscertitudes that had one by one been slipping away from him? He foundhimself staring vacantly at the row of books on the little shelf byhis bed. One of them seemed suddenly to detach itself--he could almosthave sworn afterwards that he didn't reach out for it, but that ithopped down into his hand. .. . 

"Sitting Up For The Dawn"! It was one of that sociological series bywhich H. G. W*lls had first touched his soul to finer issues when hewas at the 'Varsity. 

He opened it with tremulous fingers. Could it re-exert its old swayover him now?

The page he had opened it at was headed "General Cessation Day, " andhe began to read. .. . 

"The re-casting of the calendar on a decimal basis seems a simpleenough matter at first sight. But even here there are details thatwill have to be thrashed out. .. . 

"Mr. Edgar Dibbs, in his able pamphlet 'Ten to the Rescue, '[1]advocates a twenty-hour day, and has drawn up an ingenious scheme foraccelerating the motion of this planet by four in every twenty-fourhours, so that the alternations of light and darkness shall bere-adjusted to the new reckoning. I think such re-adjustment wouldbe indispensable (though I know there is a formidable body of opinionagainst me). But I am far from being convinced of the feasibilityof Mr. Dibbs' scheme. I believe the twenty-four hour day has come tostay--anomalous though it certainly will seem in the ten-day week, the fifty-day month, and the thousand-day year. I should like to haveincorporated Mr. Dibbs' scheme in my vision of the Dawn. But, as Ihave said, the scope of this vision is purely practical. .. . 

[Footnote 1: Published by the Young Self-Helpers' Press, Ipswich. ]

"Mr. Albert Baker, in a paper[2] read before the South BrixtonHebdomadals, pleads that the first seven days of the decimalweek should retain their old names, the other three to be calledprovisionally Huxleyday, Marxday, and Tolstoiday. But, for reasonswhich I have set forth elsewhere, [3] I believe that the nomenclaturewhich I had originally suggested[4]--Aday, Bday, and so on toJday--would be really the simplest way out of the difficulty. Any fanciful way of naming the days would be bad, as too sharplydifferentiating one day from another. What we must strive for in theDawn is that every day shall be as nearly as possible like everyother day. We must help the human units--these little pink slobberingcreatures of the Future whose cradle we are rocking--to progress notin harsh jerks, but with a beautiful unconscious rhythm. .. . 

[Footnote 2: "Are We Going Too Fast?"]

[Footnote 3: "A Midwife For The Millennium. " H. G. W*lls. ]

[Footnote 4: "How To Be Happy Though Yet Unborn. " H. G. W*lls. ]

"There must be nothing corresponding to our Sunday. Sunday is a cankerthat must be cut ruthlessly out of the social organism. At presentthe whole community gets 'slack' on Saturday because of the paralysisthat is about to fall on it. And then 'Black Monday'!--that day whenthe human brain tries to readjust itself--tries to realise that theshutters are down, and the streets are swept, and the stove-pipe hatsare back in their band-boxes. .. . 

"Yet of course there must be holidays. We can no more do withoutholidays than without sleep. For every man there must be certainstated intervals of repose--of recreation in the original sense of theword. My views on the worthlessness of classical education are perhapspretty well known to you, but I don't underrate the great service thatmy friend Professor Ezra K. Higgins has rendered by his discovery[5]that the word recreation originally signified a re-creating--i. E. , [6]a time for the nerve-tissues to renew themselves in. The problembefore us is how to secure for the human units in the Dawn--thesegiants of whom we are but the foetuses--the holidays necessary fortheir full capacity for usefulness to the State, without at the sametime disorganising the whole community--and them. 

[Footnote 5: "Words About Words. " By Ezra K. Higgins, Professor of Etymology, Abraham Z. Stubbins University, Padua, Pa. , U. S. A. (2 vols. ). ]

[Footnote 6: "_Id est_"--"That is. "]

"The solution is really very simple. The community will be dividedinto ten sections--Section A, Section B, and so on to Section J. Andto every section one day of the decimal week will be assigned as a'Cessation Day. ' Thus, those people who fall under Section A will reston Aday, those who fall under Section B will rest on Bday, and so on. On every day of the year one-tenth of the population will be resting, but the other nine-tenths will be at work. The joyous hum and clang oflabour will never cease in the municipal workshops. .. . 

"You figure the smokeless blue sky above London dotted all over withairships in which the holiday-making tenth are re-creating themselvesfor the labour of next week--looking down a little wistfully, perhaps, at the workshops from which they are temporarily banished. And here Iscent a difficulty. So attractive a thing will labour be in the Dawnthat a man will be tempted not to knock off work when his CessationDay comes round, and will prefer to work for no wage rather than notat all. So that perhaps there will have to be a law making CessationDay compulsory, and the Overseers will be empowered to punishinfringement of this law by forbidding the culprit to work for tendays after the first offence, twenty after the second, and so on. ButI don't suppose there will often be need to put this law in motion. The children of the Dawn, remember, will not be the puny self-riddencreatures that we are. They will not say, 'Is this what I want todo?' but 'Shall I, by doing this, be (a) harming or (b) benefiting--nomatter in how infinitesimal a degree--the Future of the Race?'

"Sunday must go. And, as I have hinted, the progress of mankind willbe steady proportionately to its own automatism. Yet I think therewould be no harm in having one--just one--day in the year set aside asa day of universal rest--a day for the searching of hearts. Heaven--Imean the Future--forbid that I should be hide-bound by dry-as-dustlogic, in dealing with problems of flesh and blood. The sociologistsof the past thought the grey matter of their own brains all-sufficing. They forgot that flesh is pink and blood is red. That is why theycould not convert people. .. . 

"The five-hundredth and last day of each year shall be a GeneralCessation Day. It will correspond somewhat to our present ChristmasDay. But with what a difference! It will not be, as with us, a mereopportunity for relatives to make up the quarrels they have pickedwith each other during the past year, and to eat and drink things thatwill make them ill well into next year. Holly and mistletoe there willbe in the Municipal Eating Rooms, but the men and women who sit downthere to General Cessation High-Tea will be glowing not with a facileaffection for their kith and kin, but with communal anxiety for thewelfare of the great-great-grand-children of people they have nevermet and are never likely to meet. 

"The great event of the day will be the performance of the ceremony of'Making Way. '

"In the Dawn, death will not be the haphazard affair that it is underthe present anarchic conditions. Men will not be stumbling out ofthe world at odd moments and for reasons over which they have nocontrol. There will always, of course, be a percentage of deaths bymisadventure. But there will be no deaths by disease. Nor, on theother hand, will people die of old age. Every child will start lifeknowing that (barring misadventure) he has a certain fixed period oflife before him--so much and no more, but not a moment less. 

"It is impossible to foretell to what average age the children of theDawn will retain the use of all their faculties--be fully vigorousmentally and physically. We only know they will be 'going strong' atages when we have long ceased to be any use to the State. Let us, forsake of argument, say that on the average their facilities will havebegun to decay at the age of ninety--a trifle over thirty-two, by thenew reckoning. That, then, will be the period of life fixed for allcitizens. Every man on fulfilling that period will avail himself ofthe Municipal Lethal Chamber. He will 'make way'. .. . 

"I thought at one time that it would be best for every man to 'makeway' on the actual day when he reaches the age-limit. But I see nowthat this would savour of private enterprise. Moreover, it would ruleout that element of sentiment which, in relation to such a thing asdeath, we must do nothing to mar. The children and friends of a man onthe brink of death would instinctively wish to gather round him. Howcould they accompany him to the lethal chamber, if it were an ordinaryworking-day, with every moment of the time mapped out for them?

"On General Cessation Day, therefore, the gates of the lethal chamberswill stand open for all those who shall in the course of the past yearhave reached the age-limit. You figure the wide streets filled all daylong with little solemn processions--solemn and yet not in the leastunhappy. .. . You figure the old man walking with a firm step in themidst of his progeny, looking around him with a clear eye at this dearworld which is about to lose him. He will not be thinking of himself. He will not be wishing the way to the lethal chamber was longer. Hewill be filled with joy at the thought that he is about to die forthe good of the race--to 'make way' for the beautiful young breedof men and women who, in simple, artistic, antiseptic garments, aredisporting themselves so gladly on this day of days. They pauseto salute him as he passes. And presently he sees, radiant in thesunlight, the pleasant white-tiled dome of the lethal chamber. Youfigure him at the gate, shaking hands all round, and speaking perhapsa few well-chosen words about the Future. .. . "

§5. 

It was enough. The old broom hadn't lost its snap. It had swept cleanthe chambers of Perkins' soul--swished away the whole accumulation ofnasty little cobwebs and malignant germs. Gone were the mean doubtsthat had formed in him, the lethargy, the cheap cynicism. Perkins washimself again. 

He saw now how very stupid it was of him to have despaired justbecause his own particular panacea wasn't given a chance. ThatProvisional Government plan of his had been good, but it was onlyone of an infinite number of possible paths to the Dawn. He wouldtry others--scores of others. .. . 

He must get right away out of here--to-night. He must have his carbrought round from the garage--now--to a side door. .. . 

But first he sat down to the writing-table, and wrote quickly:

 _Dear Duchess, _

 _I regret I am called away on urgent political business. .. . _

 _Yours faithfully_ _J. Perkins. .. . _

He took the morocco leather case out of his pocket and enclosed it, with the note, in a large envelope. 

Then he pressed the electric button by his bedside, almost feelingthat this was a signal for the Dawn to rise without more ado. .. . 

SOME DAMNABLE ERRORS ABOUT CHRISTMAS

_By_

G. K. CH*ST*RT*N

That it is human to err is admitted by even the most positive of ourthinkers. Here we have the great difference between latter-day thoughtand the thought of the past. If Euclid were alive to-day (and I daresay he is) he would not say, "The angles at the base of an isoscelestriangle are equal to one another. " He would say, "To me (a veryfrail and fallible being, remember) it does somehow seem that thesetwo angles have a mysterious and awful equality to one another. " Thedislike of schoolboys for Euclid is unreasonable in many ways; butfundamentally it is entirely reasonable. Fundamentally it is therevolt from a man who was either fallible and therefore (in pretendingto infallibility) an impostor, or infallible and therefore not human. 

Now, since it is human to err, it is always in reference to thosethings which arouse in us the most human of all our emotions--I meanthe emotion of love--that we conceive the deepest of our errors. Suppose we met Euclid on Westminster Bridge, and he took us aside andconfessed to us that whilst he regarded parallelograms and rhomboidswith an indifference bordering on contempt, for isosceles triangles hecherished a wild romantic devotion. Suppose he asked us to accompanyhim to the nearest music-shop, and there purchased a guitar in orderthat he might worthily sing to us the radiant beauty and the radiantgoodness of isosceles triangles. As men we should, I hope, respect hisenthusiasm, and encourage his enthusiasm, and catch his enthusiasm. But as seekers after truth we should be compelled to regard with adark suspicion, and to check with the most anxious care, every factthat he told us about isosceles triangles. For adoration involves aglorious obliquity of vision. It involves more than that. We do notsay of Love that he is short-sighted. We do not say of Love that heis myopic. We do not say of Love that he is astigmatic. We say quitesimply, Love is blind. We might go further and say, Love is deaf. Thatwould be a profound and obvious truth. We might go further still andsay, Love is dumb. But that would be a profound and obvious lie. Forlove is always an extraordinarily fluent talker. Love is a wind-bag, filled with a gusty wind from Heaven. 

It is always about the thing that we love most that we talk most. About this thing, therefore, our errors are something more than ourdeepest errors: they are our most frequent errors. That is why fornearly two thousand years mankind has been more glaringly wrong on thesubject of Christmas than on any other subject. If mankind had hatedChristmas, he would have understood it from the first. What wouldhave happened then, it is impossible to say. For that which is hated, and therefore is persecuted, and therefore grows brave, lives onfor ever, whilst that which is understood dies in the moment of ourunderstanding of it--dies, as it were, in our awful grasp. Betweenthe horns of this eternal dilemma shivers all the mystery of the jollyvisible world, and of that still jollier world which is invisible. And it is because Mr. Shaw and the writers of his school cannot, withall their splendid sincerity and, acumen, perceive that he and theyand all of us are impaled on those horns as certainly as the sausagesI ate for breakfast this morning had been impaled on the cook'stoasting-fork--it is for this reason, I say, that Mr. Shaw and hisfriends seem to me to miss the basic principle that lies at the rootof all things human and divine. By the way, not all things that aredivine are human. But all things that are human are divine. But toreturn to Christmas. 

I select at random two of the more obvious fallacies that obtain. Oneis that Christmas should be observed as a time of jubilation. This is(I admit) quite a recent idea. It never entered into the tousled headsof the shepherds by night, when the light of the angel of the Lordshone about them and they arose and went to do homage to the Child. Itnever entered into the heads of the Three Wise Men. They did not bringtheir gifts as a joke, but as an awful oblation. It never entered intothe heads of the saints and scholars, the poets and painters, of theMiddle Ages. Looking back across the years, they saw in that dark andungarnished manger only a shrinking woman, a brooding man, and a childborn to sorrow. The philomaths of the eighteenth century, lookingback, saw nothing at all. It is not the least of the glories of theVictorian Era that it rediscovered Christmas. It is not the least ofthe mistakes of the Victorian Era that it supposed Christmas to be afeast. 

The splendour of the saying, "I have piped unto you, and you have notdanced; I have wept with you, and you have not mourned" lies in thefact that it might have been uttered with equal truth by any man whohad ever piped or wept. There is in the human race some dark spirit ofrecalcitrance, always pulling us in the direction contrary to that inwhich we are reasonably expected to go. At a funeral, the slightestthing, not in the least ridiculous at any other time, will convulseus with internal laughter. At a wedding, we hover mysteriously on thebrink of tears. So it is with the modern Christmas. I find myself inagreement with the cynics in so far that I admit that Christmas, asnow observed, tends to create melancholy. But the reason for thislies solely in our own misconception. Christmas is essentially a _diesiræ_. If the cynics will only make up their minds to treat it as such, even the saddest and most atrabilious of them will acknowledge that hehas had a rollicking day. 

This brings me to the second fallacy. I refer to the belief that"Christmas comes but once a year. " Perhaps it does, according to thecalendar--a quaint and interesting compilation, but of little or nopractical value to anybody. It is not the calendar, but the Spirit ofMan that regulates the recurrence of feasts and fasts. Spiritually, Christmas Day recurs exactly seven times a week. When we have franklyacknowledged this, and acted on this, we shall begin to realise theDay's mystical and terrific beauty. For it is only every-day thingsthat reveal themselves to us in all their wonder and their splendour. A man who happens one day to be knocked down by a motor-bus merelyutters a curse and instructs his solicitor, but a man who has beenknocked down by a motor-bus every day of the year will have begun tofeel that he is taking part in an august and soul-cleansing ritual. He will await the diurnal stroke of fate with the same lowly and piousjoy as animated the Hindoos awaiting Juggernaut. His bruises will bedecorations, worn with the modest pride of the veteran. He will cryaloud, in the words of the late W. E. Henley, "My head is bloody butunbowed. " He will add, "My ribs are broken but unbent. "

I look for the time when we shall wish one another a Merry Christmasevery morning; when roast turkey and plum-pudding shall be the stapleof our daily dinner, and the holly shall never be taken down from thewalls, and everyone will always be kissing everyone else under themistletoe. And what is right as regards Christmas is right as regardsall other so-called anniversaries. The time will come when we shalldance round the Maypole every morning before breakfast--a meal atwhich hot-cross buns will be a standing dish--and shall make Aprilfools of one another every day before noon. The profound significanceof All Fool's Day--the glorious lesson that we are all fools--istoo apt at present to be lost. Nor is justice done to the sublimesymbolism of Shrove Tuesday--the day on which all sins are shriven. Every day pancakes shall be eaten, either before or after theplum-pudding. They shall be eaten slowly and sacramentally. They shallbe fried over fires tended and kept for ever bright by Vestals. Theyshall be tossed to the stars. 

I shall return to the subject of Christmas next week. 

A SEQUELULA TO "THE DYNASTS"[7]

_By_

TH*M*S H*RDY

[Footnote 7: _This has been composed from a scenario thrust on me by some one else. My philosophy of life saves me from sense of responsibility for any of my writings; but I venture to hold myself specially irresponsible for this one. _--TH*M*S H*RDY. ]

 The Void is disclosed. Our own Solar System is visible, distant by some two million miles. 

 Enter the Ancient Spirit and Chorus of the Years, the Spirit and Chorus of the Pities, the Spirit Ironic, the Spirit Sinister, Rumours, Spirit-Messengers, and the Recording Angel. 

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES. 

 _Yonder, that swarm of things insectual_ _Wheeling Nowhither in Particular--_ _What is it?_

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS. 

 _That? Oh that is merely one_ _Of those innumerous congeries_ _Of parasites by which, since time began, _ _Space has been interfested. _

SPIRIT SINISTER. 

 _What a pity_ _We have no means of stamping out these pests!_

SPIRIT IRONIC. 

 _Nay, but I like to watch them buzzing round, _ _Poor little trumpery ephaeonals!_

CHORUS OF THE PIETIES (aerial music). 

 _Yes, yes!_ _What matter a few more or less?_ _Here and Nowhere plus_ _Whence and Why makes Thus. _ _Let these things be. _ _There's room in the world for them and us. _

 _Nothing is, _ _Out in the vast immensities_ _Where these things flit, _ _Irrequisite_ _In a minor key_ _To the tune of the sempiternal It. _

SPIRIT IRONIC. 

 _The curious thing about them is that some_ _Have lesser parasites adherent to them--_ _Bipedular and quadrupedular_ _Infinitesimals. On close survey_ _You see these movesome. Do you not recall, _ _We once went in a party and beheld_ _All manner of absurd things happening_ _On one of those same--planets, don't you call them?_

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS (screwing up his eyes at the Solar System). 

 _One of that very swarm it was, if I mistake not. _ _It had a parasite that called itself_ _Napoléon. And lately, I believe, _ _Another parasite has had the impudence_ _To publish an elaborate account_ _Of our (for so we deemed it) private visit. _

SPIRIT SINISTER. 

 _His name?_

RECORDING ANGEL. 

 _One moment. _

(Turns over leaves. )

 _Hardy, Mr. Thomas, _ _Novelist. Author of "The Woodlanders, "_ _"Far from the Madding Crowd, " "The Trumpet Major, "_ _"Tess of the D'Urbervilles, " etcetera, _ _Etcetera. In 1895_ _"Jude the Obscure" was published, and a few_ _Hasty reviewers, having to supply_ _A column for the day of publication, _ _Filled out their space by saying that there were_ _Several passages that might have been_ _Omitted with advantage. Mr. Hardy_ _Saw that if that was so, well then, of course, _ _Obviously the only thing to do_ _Was to write no more novels, and forthwith_ _Applied himself to drama, and to Us. _

SPIRIT IRONIC. 

 _Let us hear what he said about Us. _

THE OTHER SPIRITS. 

 _Let's. _

RECORDING ANGEL (raising receiver of aerial telephone). 

 _3 oh 4 oh oh 3 5, Space. .. . Hulloa. _ _Is that the Superstellar Library?_ _I'm the Recording Angel. Kindly send me_ _By Spirit-Messenger a copy of_ _"The Dynasts" by T. Hardy. Thank you. _

 A pause. Enter Spirit-Messenger, with copy of "The Dynasts. "

 _Thanks. _

 Exit Spirit-Messenger. The Recording Angel reads "The Dynasts" aloud. 

 Just as the reading draws to a close, enter the Spirit of Mr. Clement Shorter and Chorus of Subtershorters. They are visible as small grey transparencies swiftly interpenetrating the brains of the spatial Spirits. 

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES. 

 _It is a book which, once you take it up, _ _You cannot readily lay down. _

SPIRIT SINISTER. 

 _There is_ _Not a dull page in it. _

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS. 

 _A bold conception_ _Outcarried with that artistry for which_ _The author's name is guarantee. We have_ _No hesitation in commending to our readers_ _A volume which--_

 The Spirit of Mr. Clement Shorter and Chorus of Subtershorters are detected and expelled. 

 _--we hasten to denounce_ _As giving an entirely false account_ _Of our impressions. _

SPIRIT IRONIC. 

 Hear, _hear_!

SPIRIT SINISTER. 

 Hear, _hear_!

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES. 

 _Hear_!

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS. 

 _Intensive vision has this Mr. Hardy, _ _With a dark skill in weaving word-patterns_ _Of subtle ideographies that mark him_ _A man of genius. So am not I, _ _But a plain Spirit, simple and forthright, _ _With no damned philosophical fal-lals_ _About me. When I visited that planet_ _And watched the animalculae thereon, _ _I never said they were "automata"_ _And "jackaclocks, " nor dared describe their deeds_ _As "Life's impulsion by Incognizance. "_ _It may be that those mites have no free will, _ _But how should I know? Nay, how Mr. Hardy?_ _We cannot glimpse the origin of things, _ _Cannot conceive a Causeless Cause, albeit_ _Such a Cause must have been, and must be greater_ _Than we whose little wits cannot conceive it. _ _"Incognizance"! Why deem incognizant_ _An infinitely higher than ourselves?_ _How dare define its way with us? How know_ _Whether it leaves us free or holds us bond?_

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES. 

 _Allow me to associate myself_ _With every word that's fallen from your lips. _ _The author of "The Dynasts" has indeed_ _Misused his undeniably great gifts_ _In striving to belittle things that are_ _Little enough already. I don't say_ _That the phrenetical behaviour_ _Of those aforesaid animalculae_ _Did, while we watched them, seem to indicate_ _Possession of free-will. But, bear in mind, _ _We saw them in peculiar circumstances--_ _At war, blinded with blood and lust and fear. _ _Is it not likely that at other times_ _They are quite decent midgets, capable_ _Of thinking for themselves, and also acting_ _Discreetly on their own initiative, _ _Not drilled and herded, yet gregarious--_ _A wise yet frolicsome community?_

SPIRIT IRONIC. 

 _What are these "other times" though? I had thought_ _Those midgets whiled away the vacuous hours_ _After one war in training for the next. _ _And let me add that my contempt for them_ _Is not done justice to by Mr. Hardy. _

SPIRIT SINISTER. 

 _Nor mine. And I have reason to believe_ _Those midgets shone above their average_ _When we inspected them. _

A RUMOUR (tactfully intervening). 

 _Yet have I heard_ _(Though not on very good authority)_ _That once a year they hold a festival_ _And thereat all with one accord unite_ _In brotherly affection and good will. _

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS (to Recording Angel). 

 _Can you authenticate this Rumour?_

RECORDING ANGEL. 

 _Such festival they have, and call it "Christmas. "_

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES. 

 _Then let us go and reconsider them_ _Next "Christmas. "_

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS (to Recording Angel). 

 _When is that?_

RECORDING ANGEL (consults terrene calendar). 

 _This day three weeks. _

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS. 

 _On that day we will re-traject ourselves. _ _Meanwhile, 'twere well we should be posted up_ _In details of this feast. _

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES (to Recording Angel). 

 _Aye, tell us more. _

RECORDING ANGEL. 

 _I fancy you could best find what you need_ _In the Complete Works of the late Charles Dickens. _ _I have them here. _

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS. 

 _Read them aloud to us. _

 The Recording Angel reads aloud the Complete Works of Charles Dickens. 

RECORDING ANGEL (closing "Edwin Drood"). 

 _'Tis Christmas Morning. _

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS. 

 _Then must we away. _

SEMICHORUS I. OF YEARS (aerial music). 

 _'Tis time we press on to revisit_ _That dear little planet, _ _To-day of all days to be seen at_ _Its brightest and best. _

 _Now holly and mistletoe girdle_ _Its halls and its homesteads, _ _And every biped is beaming_ _With peace and good will. _

SEMICHORUS II. 

 _With good will and why not with free will?_ _If clearly the former_ _May nest in those bosoms, then why not_ _The latter as well?_ _Let's lay down no laws to trip up on, _ _Our way is in darkness, _ _And not but by groping unhampered_ _We win to the light. _

 The Spirit and Chorus of the Years traject themselves, closely followed by the Spirit and Chorus of the Pities, the Spirits and Choruses Sinister and Ironic, Rumours, Spirit Messengers, and the Recording Angel. 

 There is the sound of a rushing wind. The Solar System is seen for a few instants growing larger and larger--a whorl of dark, vastening orbs careering round the sun. All but one of these is lost to sight. The convex seas and continents of our planet spring into prominence. 

 The Spirit of Mr. Hardy is visible as a grey transparency swiftly interpenetrating the brain of the Spirit of the Years, and urging him in a particular direction, to a particular point. 

 The Aerial Visitants now hover in mid-air on the outskirts of Casterbridge, Wessex, immediately above the County Gaol. 

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS. 

 _First let us watch the revelries within_ _This well-kept castle whose great walls connote_ _A home of the pre-eminently blest. _

 The roof of the gaol becomes transparent, and the whole interior is revealed, like that of a beehive under glass. Warders are marching mechanically round the corridors of white stone, unlocking and clanging open the iron doors of the cells. Out from every door steps a convict, who stands at attention, his face to the wall. 

 At a word of command the convicts fall into gangs of twelve, and march down the stone stairs, out into the yard, where they line up against the walls. 

 Another word of command, and they file mechanically, but not more mechanically than their warders, into the Chapel. 

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES. 

 _Enough!_

SPIRITS SINISTER AND IRONIC. 

 _'Tis more than even we can bear. _

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES. 

 _Would we had never come!_

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS. 

 _Brother, 'tis well_ _To have faced a truth however hideous, _ _However humbling. Gladly I discipline_ _My pride by taking back those pettish doubts_ _Cast on the soundness of the central thought_ _In Mr. Hardy's drama. He was right. _ _Automata these animalculae_ _Are--puppets, pitiable jackaclocks. _ _Be't as it may elsewhere, upon this planet_ _There's no free will, only obedience_ _To some blind, deaf, unthinking despotry_ _That justifies the horridest pessimism. _ _Frankly acknowledging all this, I beat_ _A quick but not disorderly retreat. _

 He re-trajects himself into Space, followed closely by his Chorus, and by the Spirit and Chorus of the Pities, the Spirits Sinister and Ironic with their Choruses, Rumours, Spirit Messengers, and the Recording Angel. 

SHAKESPEARE AND CHRISTMAS

_By_

FR*NK H*RR*S

That Shakespeare hated Christmas--hated it with a venom utterlyalien to the gentle heart in him--I take to be a proposition thatestablishes itself automatically. If there is one thing lucid-obviousin the Plays and Sonnets, it is Shakespeare's unconquerable loathingof Christmas. The Professors deny it, however, or deny that it isproven. With these gentlemen I will deal faithfully. I will meet themon their own parched ground, making them fertilise it by sheddingthere the last drop of the water that flows through their veins. 

If you find, in the works of a poet whose instinct is to write abouteverything under the sun, one obvious theme untouched, or touchedhardly at all, then it is at least presumable that there was some goodreason for that abstinence. Such a poet was Shakespeare. It was one ofthe divine frailties of his genius that he must be ever flying off ata tangent from his main theme to unpack his heart in words about somefrivolous-small irrelevance that had come into his head. If it couldbe shown that he never mentioned Christmas, we should have proofpresumptive that he consciously avoided doing so. But if the factis that he did mention it now and again, but in grudging fashion, without one spark of illumination--he, the arch-illuminator of allthings--then we have proof positive that he detested it. 

I see Dryasdust thumbing his Concordance. Let my memory save him thetrouble. I will reel him off the one passage in which Shakespearespoke of Christmas in words that rise to the level of mediocrity. 

 Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long: And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallowed and so gracious is the time. 

So says Marcellus at Elsinore. This is the best our Shakespeare canvamp up for the birthday of the Man with whom he of all men had themost in common. And Dryasdust, eternally unable to distinguish chalkfrom cheese, throws up his hands in admiration of the marvellouspoetry. If Dryasdust had written it, it would more than passmuster. But as coming from Shakespeare, how feeble-cold--aye, and sulky-sinister! The greatest praiser the world will everknow!--and all he can find in his heart to sing of Christmas is astringing-together of old women's superstitions! Again and again hehas painted Winter for us as it never has been painted since--neverby Goethe even, though Goethe in more than one of the _Winter-Lieder_touched the hem of his garment. There was every external reason whyhe should sing, as only he could have sung, of Christmas. The Queenset great store by it. She and her courtiers celebrated it year byyear with lusty-pious unction. And thus the ineradicable snob inShakespeare had the most potent of all inducements to honour the feastwith the full power that was in him. But he did not, because he wouldnot. What is the key to the enigma?

For many years I hunted it vainly. The second time that I met CarlyleI tried to enlist his sympathy and aid. He sat pensive for a while andthen said that it seemed to him "a goose-quest. " I replied, "You havealways a phrase for everything, Tom, but always the wrong one. " Hecovered his face, and presently, peering at me through his gnarledfingers, said "Mon, ye're recht. " I discussed the problem with Renan, with Emerson, with Disraeli, also with Cetewayo--poor Cetewayo, bestand bravest of men, but intellectually a Professor, like the rest ofthem. It was borne in on me that if I were to win to the heart of themystery I must win alone. 

The solution, when suddenly it dawned on me, was so simple-stark thatI was ashamed of the ingenious-clever ways I had been following. (Ilearned then--and perhaps it is the one lesson worth the learning ofany man--that truth may be approached only through the logic of theheart. For the heart is eye and ear, and all excellent understandingabides there. ) On Christmas Day, assuredly, Anne Hathaway was born. 

In what year she was born I do not know nor care. I take it shewas not less than thirty-eight when she married Shakespeare. This, however, is sheer conjecture, and in no way important-apt to ourinquiry. It is not the year, but the day of the year, that matters. All we need bear in mind is that on Christmas Day that woman was borninto the world. 

If there be any doubting Thomas among my readers, let him notbe afraid to utter himself. I am (with the possible exception ofShakespeare) the gentlest man that ever breathed, and I do but bid himstudy the Plays in the light I have given him. The first thing thatwill strike him is that Shakespeare's thoughts turned constantly tothe birthdays of all his Fitton-heroines, as a lover's thoughts alwaysdo turn to the moment at which the loved one first saw the light. "There was a star danced, and under that" was born Beatrice. Julietwas born "on Lammas Eve. " Marina tells us she derived her name fromthe chance of her having been "born at sea. " And so on, throughout thewhole gamut of women in whom Mary Fitton was bodied forth to us. Butmark how carefully Shakespeare says never a word about the birthdaysof the various shrews and sluts in whom, again and again, he gaveus his wife. When and were was born Queen Constance, the scold? AndBianca? And Doll Tearsheet, and "Greasy Jane" in the song, and allthe rest of them? It is of the last importance that we should know. Yet never a hint is vouchsafed us in the text. It is clear thatShakespeare cannot bring himself to write about Anne Hathaway'sbirthday--will not stain his imagination by thinking of it. That isentirely human-natural. But why should he loathe Christmas Day itselfwith precisely the same loathing? There is but one answer--and thatinevitable-final. The two days were one. 

Some soul-secrets are so terrible that the most hardened realist of usmay well shrink from laying them bare. Such a soul-secret was this ofShakespeare's. Think of it! The gentlest spirit that ever breathed, raging and fuming endlessly in impotent-bitter spleen against theprettiest of festivals! Here is a spectacle so tragic-piteous that, try as we will, we shall not put it from us. And it is well that weshould not, for in our plenary compassion we shall but learn to lovethe man the more. 

 [Mr. Fr*nk H*rr*s is very much a man of genius, and I should be sorry if this adumbration of his manner made any one suppose that I do not rate his writings about Shakespeare higher than those of all "the Professors" together. --M. B. ]

SCRUTS

_By_

ARN*LD B*NN*TT

I. 

Emily Wrackgarth stirred the Christmas pudding till her right armbegan to ache. But she did not cease for that. She stirred on till herright arm grew so numb that it might have been the right arm of somegirl at the other end of Bursley. And yet something deep down in herwhispered "It is _your_ right arm! And you can do what you like withit!"

She did what she liked with it. Relentlessly she kept it moving tillit reasserted itself as the arm of Emily Wrackgarth, prickling andtingling as with red-hot needles in every tendon from wrist to elbow. And still Emily Wrackgarth hardened her heart. 

Presently she saw the spoon no longer revolving, but waveringaimlessly in the midst of the basin. Ridiculous! This must be seento! In the down of dark hairs that connected her eyebrows there was amarked deepening of that vertical cleft which, visible at all times, warned you that here was a young woman not to be trifled with. Herbrain despatched to her hand a peremptory message--which miscarried. The spoon wabbled as though held by a baby. Emily knew that sheherself as a baby had been carried into this very kitchen to stirthe Christmas pudding. Year after year, as she grew up, she had beenallowed to stir it "for luck. " And those, she reflected, were the onlycookery lessons she ever got. How like Mother!

Mrs. Wrackgarth had died in the past year, of a complication ofailments. [8] Emily still wore on her left shoulder that small tag ofcrape which is as far as the Five Towns go in the way of mourning. Herfather had died in the year previous to that, of a still more curiousand enthralling complication of ailments. [9] Jos, his son, carriedon the Wrackgarth Works, and Emily kept house for Jos. She with herown hand had made this pudding. But for her this pudding would nothave been. Fantastic! Utterly incredible! And yet so it was. She wasgrown-up. She was mistress of the house. She could make or unmakepuddings at will. And yet she was Emily Wrackgarth. Which was absurd. 

[Footnote 8: See "The History of Sarah Wrackgarth, " pp. 345-482. ]

[Footnote 9: See "The History of Sarah Wrackgarth, " pp. 231-344. ]

She would not try to explain, to reconcile. She abandoned herself tothe exquisite mysteries of existence. And yet in her abandonment shekept a sharp look-out on herself, trying fiercely to make head ortail of her nature. She thought herself a fool. But the fact thatshe thought so was for her a proof of adult sapience. Odd! She gaveherself up. And yet it was just by giving herself up that she seemedto glimpse sometimes her own inwardness. And these bleak revelationssaddened her. But she savoured her sadness. It was the wine of lifeto her. And for her sadness she scorned herself, and in her consciousscorn she recovered her self-respect. 

It is doubtful whether the people of southern England have even yetrealised how much introspection there is going on all the time in theFive Towns. 

Visible from the window of the Wrackgarths' parlour was that colossalstatue of Commerce which rears itself aloft at the point where OodgeLane is intersected by Blackstead Street. Commerce, executed in glossyDoultonware by some sculptor or sculptors unknown, stands pointing herthumb over her shoulder towards the chimneys of far Hanbridge. When Itell you that the circumference of that thumb is six inches, and therest to scale, you will understand that the statue is one of the primeglories of Bursley. There were times when Emily Wrackgarth seemed toherself as vast and as lustrously impressive as it. There were othertimes when she seemed to herself as trivial and slavish as one ofthose performing fleas she had seen at the Annual Ladies' Evening Fêteorganised by the Bursley Mutual Burial Club. Extremist!

She was now stirring the pudding with her left hand. The ingredientshad already been mingled indistinguishably in that rich, undulatingmass of tawniness which proclaims perfection. But Emily was determinedto give her left hand, not less than her right, what she called "adoing. " Emily was like that. 

At mid-day, when her brother came home from the Works, she was stillat it. 

"Brought those scruts with you?" she asked, without looking up. 

"That's a fact, " he said, dipping his hand into the sagging pocket ofhis coat. 

It is perhaps necessary to explain what scruts are. In the dailyoutput of every potbank there are a certain proportion of flawedvessels. These are cast aside by the foreman, with a lordly gesture, and in due course are hammered into fragments. These fragments, whichare put to various uses, are called scruts; and one of the uses theyare put to is a sentimental one. The dainty and luxurious Southernerlooks to find in his Christmas pudding a wedding-ring, a gold thimble, a threepenny-bit, or the like. To such fal-lals the Five Towns wouldsay fie. A Christmas pudding in the Five Towns contains nothing butsuet, flour, lemon-peel, cinnamon, brandy, almonds, raisins--andtwo or three scruts. There is a world of poetry, beauty, romance, inscruts--though you have to have been brought up on them to appreciateit. Scruts have passed into the proverbial philosophy of the district. "Him's a pudden with more scruts than raisins to 'm" is a criticismnot infrequently heard. It implies respect, even admiration. Of EmilyWrackgarth herself people often said, in reference to her likeness toher father, "Her's a scrut o' th' owd basin. "

Jos had emptied out from his pocket on to the table a good three dozenof scruts. Emily laid aside her spoon, rubbed the palms of her handson the bib of her apron, and proceeded to finger these scruts with theair of a connoisseur, rejecting one after another. The pudding wasa small one, designed merely for herself and Jos, with remainder to"the girl"; so that it could hardly accommodate more than two or threescruts. Emily knew well that one scrut is as good as another. Yet shedid not want her brother to feel that anything selected by him wouldnecessarily pass muster with her. For his benefit she ostentatiouslywrinkled her nose. 

"By the by, " said Jos, "you remember Albert Grapp? I've asked him tostep over from Hanbridge and help eat our snack on Christmas Day. "

Emily gave Jos one of her looks. "You've asked that Mr. Grapp?"

"No objection, I hope? He's not a bad sort. And he's considered a bitof a ladies' man, you know. "

She gathered up all the scruts and let them fall in a rattling showeron the exiguous pudding. Two or three fell wide of the basin. Theseshe added. 

"Steady on!" cried Jos. "What's that for?"

"That's for your guest, " replied his sister. "And if you think you'regoing to palm me off on to him, or on to any other young fellow, you're a fool, Jos Wrackgarth. "

The young man protested weakly, but she cut him short. 

"Don't think, " she said, "I don't know what you've been after, just oflate. Cracking up one young sawny and then another on the chance of memarrying him! I never heard of such goings on. But here I am, and hereI'll stay, as sure as my name's Emily Wrackgarth, Jos Wrackgarth!"

She was the incarnation of the adorably feminine. She was exquisitelyvital. She exuded at every pore the pathos of her young undirectedforce. It is difficult to write calmly about her. For her, in anotherage, ships would have been launched and cities besieged. But brothersare a race apart, and blind. It is a fact that Jos would have beenglad to see his sister "settled"--preferably in one of the other fourTowns. 

She took up the spoon and stirred vigorously. The scruts grated andsqueaked together around the basin, while the pudding feebly wormedits way up among them. 

II. 

Albert Grapp, ladies' man though he was, was humble of heart. Nobodyknew this but himself. Not one of his fellow clerks in Clither'sBank knew it. The general theory in Hanbridge was "Him's got a stiffopinion o' hisself. " But this arose from what was really a sign ofhumility in him. He made the most of himself. He had, for instance, away of his own in the matter of dressing. He always wore a voluminousfrock-coat, with a pair of neatly-striped vicuna trousers, which heplaced every night under his mattress, thus preserving in perfectionthe crease down the centre of each. His collar was of the highest, secured in front with an aluminium stud, to which was attached by apatent loop a natty bow of dove-coloured sateen. He had two caps, one of blue serge, the other of shepherd's plaid. These he wore onalternate days. He wore them in a way of his own--well back from hisforehead, so as not to hide his hair, and with the peak behind. Thepeak made a sort of half-moon over the back of his collar. Through afault of his tailor, there was a yawning gap between the back of hiscollar and the collar of his coat. Whenever he shook his head, thepeak of his cap had the look of a live thing trying to investigatethis abyss. Dimly aware of the effect, Albert Grapp shook his head asseldom as possible. 

On wet days he wore a mackintosh. This, as he did not yet possess agreat-coat, he wore also, but with less glory, on cold days. He hadhoped there might be rain on Christmas morning. But there was no rain. "Like my luck, " he said as he came out of his lodgings and turnedhis steps to that corner of Jubilee Avenue from which theHanbridge-Bursley trams start every half-hour. 

Since Jos Wrackgarth had introduced him to his sister at the HanbridgeOddfellows' Biennial Hop, when he danced two quadrilles with her, hehad seen her but once. He had nodded to her, Five Towns fashion, andshe had nodded back at him, but with a look that seemed to say "Youneedn't nod next time you see me. I can get along well enough withoutyour nods. " A frightening girl! And yet her brother had since told himshe seemed "a bit gone, like" on him. Impossible! He, Albert Grapp, make an impression on the brilliant Miss Wrackgarth! Yet she had senthim a verbal invite to spend Christmas in her own home. And the timehad come. He was on his way. Incredible that he should arrive! Thetram must surely overturn, or be struck by lightning. And yet no! Hearrived safely. 

The small servant who opened the door gave him another verbal messagefrom Miss Wrackgarth. It was that he must wipe his feet "well" on themat. In obeying this order he experienced a thrill of satisfactionhe could not account for. He must have stood shuffling his bootsvigorously for a full minute. This, he told himself, was life. He, Albert Grapp, was alive. And the world was full of other men, allalive; and yet, because they were not doing Miss Wrackgarth's bidding, none of them really lived. He was filled with a vague melancholy. Buthis melancholy pleased him. 

In the parlour he found Jos awaiting him. The table was laid forthree. 

"So you're here, are you?" said the host, using the Five Townsformula. "Emily's in the kitchen, " he added. "Happen she'll be heredirectly. "

"I hope she's tol-lol-ish?" asked Albert. 

"She is, " said Jos. "But don't you go saying that to her. She doesn'tcare about society airs and graces. You'll make no headway if youaren't blunt. "

"Oh, right you are, " said Albert, with the air of a man who knew hisway about. 

A moment later Emily joined them, still wearing her kitchen apron. "Soyou're here, are you?" she said, but did not shake hands. The servanthad followed her in with the tray, and the next few seconds wereoccupied in the disposal of the beef and trimmings. 

The meal began, Emily carving. The main thought of a man lessinfatuated than Albert Grapp would have been "This girl can't cook. And she'll never learn to. " The beef, instead of being red and brown, was pink and white. Uneatable beef! And yet he relished it more thananything he had ever tasted. This beef was her own handiwork. Thusit was because she had made it so. .. . He warily refrained fromcomplimenting her, but the idea of a second helping obsessed him. 

"Happen I could do with a bit more, like, " he said. 

Emily hacked off the bit more and jerked it on to the plate he hadheld out to her. 

"Thanks, " he said; and then, as Emily's lip curled, and Jos gave hima warning kick under the table, he tried to look as if he had saidnothing. 

Only when the second course came on did he suspect that the meal was acalculated protest against his presence. This a Christmas pudding? Thelitter of fractured earthenware was hardly held together by the suetand raisins. All his pride of manhood--and there was plenty of pridemixed up with Albert Grapp's humility--dictated a refusal to touchthat pudding. Yet he soon found himself touching it, though gingerly, with his spoon and fork. 

In the matter of dealing with scruts there are two schools--the oldand the new. The old school pushes its head well over its plate anddrops the scrut straight from its mouth. The new school emits thescrut into the fingers of its left hand and therewith deposits it onthe rim of the plate. Albert noticed that Emily was of the new school. But might she not despise as affectation in him what came natural toherself? On the other hand, if he showed himself as a prop of the oldschool, might she not set her face the more stringently against him?The chances were that whichever course he took would be the wrong one. 

It was then that he had an inspiration--an idea of the sort that comesto a man once in his life and finds him, likely as not, unable to putit into practice. Albert was not sure he could consummate this idea ofhis. He had indisputably fine teeth--"a proper mouthful of grinders"in local phrase. But would they stand the strain he was going toimpose on them? He could but try them. Without a sign of nervousnesshe raised his spoon, with one scrut in it, to his mouth. This scrut heput between two of his left-side molars, bit hard on it, and--eternityof that moment!--felt it and heard it snap in two. Emily also heardit. He was conscious that at sound of the percussion she startedforward and stared at him. But he did not look at her. Calmly, systematically, with gradually diminishing crackles, he reduced thatscrut to powder, and washed the powder down with a sip of beer. Whilehe dealt with the second scrut he talked to Jos about the BoroughCouncil's proposal to erect an electric power-station on the site ofthe old gas-works down Hillport way. He was aware of a slight abrasioninside his left cheek. No matter. He must be more careful. There weresix scruts still to be negotiated. He knew that what he was doing wasa thing grandiose, unique, epical; a history-making thing; a thingthat would outlive marble and the gilded monuments of princes. Yet hekept his head. He did not hurry, nor did he dawdle. Scrut by scrut, he ground slowly but he ground exceeding small. And while he did sohe talked wisely and well. He passed from the power-station to afirst edition of Leconte de Lisle's "Parnasse Contemporain" that hehad picked up for sixpence in Liverpool, and thence to the Midland'sproposal to drive a tunnel under the Knype Canal so as to link up themain-line with the Critchworth and Suddleford loop-line. Jos was tooamazed to put in a word. Jos sat merely gaping--a gape that merged byimperceptible degrees into a grin. Presently he ceased to watch hisguest. He sat watching his sister. 

Not once did Albert himself glance in her direction. She was justa dim silhouette on the outskirts of his vision. But there she was, unmoving, and he could feel the fixture of her unseen eyes. The timewas at hand when he would have to meet those eyes. Would he flinch?Was he master of himself?

The last scrut was powder. No temporising! He jerked his glass to hismouth. A moment later, holding out his plate to her, he looked Emilyfull in the eyes. They were Emily's eyes, but not hers alone. Theywere collective eyes--that was it! They were the eyes of stark, staring womanhood. Her face had been dead white, but now suddenlyup from her throat, over her cheeks, through the down between hereyebrows, went a rush of colour, up over her temples, through the veryparting of her hair. 

"Happen, " he said without a quaver in his voice, "I'll have a bitmore, like. "

She flung her arms forward on the table and buried her face in them. It was a gesture wild and meek. It was the gesture foreseen and yetincredible. It was recondite, inexplicable, and yet obvious. It wasthe only thing to be done--and yet, by gum, she had done it. 

Her brother had risen from his seat and was now at the door. "ThinkI'll step round to the Works, " he said, "and see if they banked upthat furnace aright. "

 NOTE. --_The author has in preparation a series of volumes dealing with the life of Albert and Emily Grapp. _

ENDEAVOUR

_By_

J*HN G*LSW*RTHY

The dawn of Christmas Day found London laid out in a shroud of snow. Like a body wasted by diseases that had triumphed over it at last, London lay stark and still now, beneath a sky that was as the closedleaden shell of a coffin. It was what is called an old-fashionedChristmas. 

Nothing seemed to be moving except the Thames, whose embanked watersflowed on sullenly in their eternal act of escape to the sea. Allalong the wan stretch of Cheyne Walk the thin trees stood exanimate, with not a breath of wind to stir the snow that pied theirsoot-blackened branches. Here and there on the muffled ground lay asparrow that had been frozen in the night, its little claws stickingup heavenward. But here and there also those tinier adventurers of theLondon air, smuts, floated vaguely and came to rest on the snow--signsthat in the seeming death of civilisation some housemaids at leastsurvived, and some fires had been lit. 

One of these fires, crackling in the grate of one of thosedining-rooms which look fondly out on the river and tolerantly acrossto Battersea, was being watched by the critical eye of an agedcanary. The cage in which this bird sat was hung in the middle ofthe bow-window. It contained three perches, and also a pendent hoop. The tray that was its floor had just been cleaned and sanded. Inthe embrasure to the right was a fresh supply of hemp-seed; in theembrasure to the left the bath-tub had just been refilled with clearwater. Stuck between the bars was a large sprig of groundsel. Yet, though all was thus in order, the bird did not eat nor drink, nor didhe bathe. With his back to Battersea, and his head sunk deep betweenhis little sloping shoulders, he watched the fire. The windows had fora while been opened, as usual, to air the room for him; and the firehad not yet mitigated the chill. It was not his custom to bathe at soinclement an hour; and his appetite for food and drink, less keen thanit had once been, required to be whetted by example--he never brokehis fast before his master and mistress broke theirs. Time had beenwhen, for sheer joy in life, he fluttered from perch to perch, thoughthere were none to watch him, and even sang roulades, though therewere none to hear. He would not do these things nowadays save atthe fond instigation of Mr. And Mrs. Adrian Berridge. The housemaidwho ministered to his cage, the parlourmaid who laid the Berridges'breakfast table, sometimes tried to incite him to perform for theirown pleasure. But the sense of caste, strong in his protuberant littlebosom, steeled him against these advances. 

While the breakfast-table was being laid, he heard a faint tap againstthe window-pane. Turning round, he perceived on the sill a creaturelike to himself, but very different--a creature who, despite thepretensions of a red waistcoat in the worst possible taste, belongedevidently to the ranks of the outcast and the disinherited. Inprevious winters the sill had been strewn every morning withbread-crumbs. This winter, no bread-crumbs had been vouchsafed; andthe canary, though he did not exactly understand why this was so, was glad that so it was. He had felt that his poor relations tookadvantage of the Berridges' kindness. Two or three of them, aspensioners, might not have been amiss. But they came in swarms, and they gobbled their food in a disgusting fashion, not triflingcoquettishly with it as birds should. The reason for this, the canaryknew, was that they were hungry; and of that he was sorry. He hatedto think how much destitution there was in the world; and he couldnot help thinking about it when samples of it were thrust underhis notice. That was the principal reason why he was glad that thewindow-sill was strewn no more and seldom visited. 

He would much rather not have seen this solitary applicant. The twoeyes fixed on his made him feel very uncomfortable. And yet, for fearof seeming to be outfaced, he did not like to look away. 

The subdued clangour of the gong, sounded for breakfast, gave him anexcuse for turning suddenly round and watching the door of the room. 

A few moments later there came to him a faint odour of Harris tweed, followed immediately by the short, somewhat stout figure of hismaster--a man whose mild, fresh, pink, round face seemed to findsalvation, as it were, at the last moment, in a neatly-pointed auburnbeard. 

Adrian Berridge paused on the threshold, as was his wont, with closedeyes and dilated nostrils, enjoying the aroma of complex freshnesswhich the dining-room had at this hour. Pathetically a creature ofhabit, he liked to savour the various scents, sweet or acrid, thatwent to symbolise for him the time and the place. Here were theimmediate scents of dry toast, of China tea of napery fresh fromthe wash, together with that vague, super-subtle scent which boiledeggs give out through their unbroken shells. And as a permanent baseto these there was the scent of much-polished Chippendale, and ofbees'-waxed parquet, and of Persian rugs. To-day, moreover, crowningthe composition, there was the delicate pungency of the holly thattopped the Queen Anne mirror and the Mantegna prints. 

Coming forward into the room, Mr. Berridge greeted the canary. "Well, Amber, old fellow, " he said, "a happy Christmas to you!"Affectionately he pushed the tip of a plump white finger between thebars. "Tweet!" he added. 

"Tweet!" answered the bird, hopping to and fro along his perch. 

"Quite an old-fashioned Christmas, Amber!" said Mr. Berridge, turningto scan the weather. At sight of the robin, a little spasm of paincontracted his face. A shine of tears came to his prominent pale eyes, and he turned quickly away. Just at that moment, heralded by a slightfragrance of old lace and of that peculiar, almost unseizable odourthat uncut turquoises have, Mrs. Berridge appeared. 

"What is the matter, Adrian?" she asked quickly. She glanced sidewaysinto the Queen Anne mirror, her hand fluttering, like a pale moth, toher hair, which she always wore braided in a fashion she had derivedfrom Pollaiuolo's St. Ursula. 

"Nothing, Jacynth--nothing, " he answered with a lightness that carriedno conviction; and he made behind his back a gesture to frighten awaythe robin. 

"Amber isn't unwell, is he?" She came quickly to the cage. Amberexecuted for her a roulade of great sweetness. His voice had notperhaps the fullness for which it had been noted in earlier years;but the art with which he managed it was as exquisite as ever. It wasclear to his audience that the veteran artist was hale and hearty. 

But Jacynth, relieved on one point, had a misgiving on another. "Thisgroundsel doesn't look very fresh, does it?" she murmured, withdrawingthe sprig from the bars. She rang the bell, and when the servant camein answer to it said, "Oh Jenny, will you please bring up anotherpiece of groundsel for Master Amber? I don't think this one is quitefresh. "

This formal way of naming the canary to the servants always jarred onher principles and on those of her husband. They tried to regard theirservants as essentially equals of themselves, and lately had givenJenny strict orders to leave off calling them "Sir" and "Ma'am, " andto call them simply "Adrian" and "Jacynth. " But Jenny, after one ortwo efforts that ended in faint giggles, had reverted to the crudeold nomenclature--as much to the relief as to the mortification of theBerridges. They did, it is true, discuss the possibility of redressingthe balance by calling the parlourmaid "Miss. " But, when it came tothe point, their lips refused this office. And conversely their lipspersisted in the social prefix to the bird's name. 

Somehow that anomaly seemed to them symbolic of their lives. Both ofthem yearned so wistfully to live always in accordance to the natureof things. And this, they felt, ought surely to be the line of leastresistance. In the immense difficulties it presented, and in theirconstant failures to surmount these difficulties, they often wonderedwhether the nature of things might not be, after all, something otherthan what they thought it. Again and again it seemed to be in asdirect conflict with duty as with inclination; so that they weredriven to wonder also whether what they conceived to be duty werenot also a mirage--a marsh-light leading them on to disaster. 

The fresh groundsel was brought in while Jacynth was pouring out thetea. She rose and took it to the cage; and it was then that she toosaw the robin, still fluttering on the sill. With a quick instinct sheknew that Adrian had seen it--knew what had brought that look to hisface. She went and, bending over him, laid a hand on his shoulder. The disturbance of her touch caused the tweed to give out a tremendousvolume of scent, making her feel a little dizzy. 

"Adrian, " she faltered, "mightn't we for once--it is ChristmasDay--mightn't we, just to-day, sprinkle some bread-crumbs?"

He rose from the table, and leaned against the mantelpiece, lookingdown at the fire. She watched him tensely. At length, "Oh Jacynth, " hegroaned, "don't--don't tempt me. "

"But surely, dear, surely--"

"Jacynth, don't you remember that long talk we had last winter, afterthe annual meeting of the Feathered Friends' League, and how we agreedthat those sporadic doles could do no real good--must even degrade thebirds who received them--and that we had no right to meddle in whatought to be done by collective action of the State?"

"Yes, and--oh my dear, I do still agree, with all my heart. But if theState will do nothing--nothing--"

"It won't, it daren't, go on doing nothing, unless we encourage it todo so. Don't you see, Jacynth, it is just because so many people takeit on themselves to feed a few birds here and there that the Statefeels it can afford to shirk the responsibility?"

"All that is fearfully true. But just now--Adrian, the look in thatrobin's eyes--"

Berridge covered his own eyes, as though to blot out from his mind thememory of that look. But Jacynth was not silenced. She felt herselfdragged on by her sense of duty to savour, and to make her husbandsavour, the full bitterness that the situation could yield forthem both. "Adrian, " she said, "a fearful thought came to me. Suppose--suppose it had been Amber!"

Even before he shuddered at the thought, he raised his finger to hislips, glancing round at the cage. It was clear that Amber had notoverheard Jacynth's remark, for he threw back his head and uttered oneof his blithest trills. Adrian, thus relieved, was free to shudder atthe thought just suggested. 

"Sometimes, " murmured Jacynth, "I wonder if we, holding the views wehold, are justified in keeping Amber. "

"Ah, dear, we took him in our individualistic days. We cannotrepudiate him now. It wouldn't be fair. Besides, you see, he isn'there on a basis of mere charity. He's not a parasite, but an artist. He gives us of his art. "

"Yes, dear, I know. But you remember our doubts about the position ofartists in the community--whether the State ought to sanction them atall. "

"True. But we cannot visit those doubts on our old friend yonder, canwe, dear? At the same time, I admit that when--when--Jacynth, ifever anything happens to Amber, we shall perhaps not be justified inkeeping another bird. "

"Don't, please don't talk of such things. " She moved to the window. Snow, a delicate white powder, was falling on the coverlet of snow. 

Outside, on the sill, the importunate robin lay supine, his littleheart beating no more behind the shabby finery of his breast, buthis glazing eyes half-open as though even in death he were stillquestioning. Above him and all around him brooded the genius ofinfinity, dispassionate, inscrutable, grey. 

Jacynth turned and mutely beckoned her husband to the window. 

They stood there, these two, gazing silently down. 

Presently Jacynth said: "Adrian, are you sure that we, you and I, forall our theories, and all our efforts, aren't futile?"

"No, dear. Sometimes I am not sure. But--there's a certain comfort innot being sure. To die for what one knows to be true, as many saintshave done--that is well. But to live, as many of us do nowadays, inservice of what may, for aught we know, be only a half-truth or nottrue at all--this seems to me nobler still. "

"Because it takes more out of us?"

"Because it takes more out of us. "

Standing between the live bird and the dead, they gazed acrossthe river, over the snow-covered wharves, over the dim, slenderchimneys from which no smoke came, into the grey-black veil of thedistance. And it seemed to them that the genius of infinity did notknow--perhaps did not even care--whether they were futile or not, nor how much and to what purpose, if to any purpose, they must goon striving. 

CHRISTMAS

_By_

G. S. STR**T

One likes it or not. This said, there is plaguey little else to say ofChristmas, and I (though I doubt my sentiments touch you not at all)would rather leave that little unsaid. Did I confess a distaste forChristmas, I should incur your enmity. But if I find it, as I protestI do, rather agreeable than otherwise, why should I spoil my pleasureby stringing vain words about it? Swift and the broomstick--yes. Butthat essay was done at the behest of a clever woman, and to annoy theadmirers of Robert Boyle. Besides, it was hardly--or do you think itwas?--worth the trouble of doing it. There was no trouble involved?Possibly. But I am not the Dean. And anyhow the fact that he never didanything of the kind again may be taken to imply that he would not bebothered. So would not I, if I had a deanery. 

That is an hypothesis I am tempted to pursue. I should like to fillmy allotted space before reaching the tiresome theme I have setmyself . .. A deanery, the cawing of rooks, their effect on the nervoussystem, Trollope's delineations of deans, the advantages of theMid-Victorian novel . .. But your discursive essayist is a nuisance. Best come to the point. The bore is in finding a point to come to. Besides, the chances are that any such point will have long ago beenworn blunt by a score of more active seekers. Alas!

Since I wrote the foregoing words, I have been out for a long walk, in search of inspiration, through the streets of what is called theWest End. Snobbishly so called. Why draw these crude distinctions? Weall know that Mayfair happens to lie a few miles further west thanWhitechapel. It argues a lack of breeding to go on calling attentionto the fact. If the people of Whitechapel were less beautiful or lesswell-mannered or more ignorant than we, there might be some excuse. But they are not so. True, themselves talk about the East End, butthis only makes the matter worse. To a sensitive ear their phrasehas a ring of ironic humility that jars not less than our own coarseboastfulness. Heaven knows they have a right to be ironic, and whoshall blame them for exercising it? All the same, this sort of thingworries me horribly. 

I said that I found Christmas rather agreeable than otherwise. But Iwas speaking as one accustomed to live mostly in the past. The walk Ihave just taken, refreshing in itself, has painfully reminded me thatI cannot hit it off with the present. My life is in the later days ofthe eighteenth and the earlier days of the nineteenth century. Thistwentieth affair is as a vision, dimly foreseen at odd moments, andput from me with a slight shudder. My actual Christmases are spent(say) in Holland House, which has but recently been built. LittleCharles Fox is allowed by his father to join us for the earlier stagesof dessert. I am conscious of patting him on the head and predictingfor him a distinguished future. A very bright little fellow, withhis father's eyes! Or again, I am down at Newstead. Byron is in hiswildest spirits, a shade too uproarious. I am glad to escape intothe park and stroll a quiet hour on the arm of Mr. Hughes Ball. Yearspass. The approach of Christmas finds one loth to leave one's usualhaunts. One is on one's way to one's club to dine with Postumus anddear old "Wigsby" Pendennis, quietly at one's consecrated table nearthe fireplace. As one is crossing St. James's Street an ear-piercinggrunt causes one to reel back just in time to be not run over bya motor-car. Inside is a woman who scowls down at one through thewindow--"Serve you right if we'd gone over you. " Yes, I often havethese awakenings to fact--or rather these provisions of what lifemight be if I survived into the twentieth century. Alas!

I have mentioned that woman in the motor-car because she is germaneto my theme. She typifies the vices of the modern Christmas. For her, by the absurd accident of her wealth, there is no distinction betweenpeople who have not motor-cars and people who might as well be runover. But I wrong her. If we others were all run over, there would beno one before whom she could flaunt her loathsome air of superiority. And what would she do then, poor thing? I doubt she would die ofboredom--painfully, one hopes. In the same way, if the shop-keepersin Bond Street knew there was no one who could not afford to buy thethings in their windows, there would be an end to the display thatmakes those windows intolerable (to you and me) during the month ofDecember. I had often suspected that the things there were not meantto be bought by people who could buy them, but merely to irritate therest. This afternoon I was sure of it. Not in one window anythinga sane person would give to any one not an idiot, but everywhere ageneral glossy grin out at people who are not plutocrats. This sortof thing lashes me to ungovernable fury. The lion is roused, and Irecognise in myself a born leader of men. Be so good as to smash thosewindows for me. 

One does not like to think that Christmas has been snapped up, dockedof its old-world kindliness, and pressed into the service of an odiousostentation. But so it has. Alas! The thought of Father Christmastrudging through the snow to the homes of gentle and simple alike(forgive that stupid, snobbish phrase) was agreeable. But FatherChristmas in red plush breeches, lounging on the doorstep of SirGorgius Midas--one averts one's eyes. 

I have--now I come to think of it--another objection to the modernChristmas. It would be affectation to pretend not to know thatthere are many Jews living in England, and in London especially. Ihave always had a deep respect for that race, their distinction inintellect and in character. Being not one of them, I may in theirbehalf put a point which themselves would be the last to suggest. Ihope they will acquit me of impertinence in doing this. You, in yourturn, must acquit me of sentimentalism. The Jews are a minority, andas such must take their chances. But may not a majority refrain frompressing its rights to the utmost? It is well that we should celebrateChristmas heartily, and all that. But we could do so without anemphasis that seems to me, in the circumstances, 'tother side goodtaste. "Good taste" is a hateful phrase. But it escaped me in the heatof the moment. Alas!

THE FEAST

_By_

J*S*PH C*NR*D

The hut in which slept the white man was on a clearing between theforest and the river. Silence, the silence murmurous and unquiet of atropical night, brooded over the hut that, baked through by the sun, sweated a vapour beneath the cynical light of the stars. Mahamo layrigid and watchful at the hut's mouth. In his upturned eyes, and alongthe polished surface of his lean body black and immobile, the starswere reflected, creating an illusion of themselves who are illusions. 

The roofs of the congested trees, writhing in some kind of agonyprivate and eternal, made tenebrous and shifty silhouettes against thesky, like shapes cut out of black paper by a maniac who pushes themwith his thumb this way and that, irritably, on a concave surface ofblue steel. Resin oozed unseen from the upper branches to the trunksswathed in creepers that clutched and interlocked with tendrilsvenomous, frantic and faint. Down below, by force of habit, thelush herbage went through the farce of growth--that farce old andscreaming, whose trite end is decomposition. 

Within the hut the form of the white man, corpulent and pale, wascovered with a mosquito-net that was itself illusory like everythingelse, only more so. Flying squadrons of mosquitoes inside its meshesflickered and darted over him, working hard, but keeping silence soas not to excite him from sleep. Cohorts of yellow ants disputed himagainst cohorts of purple ants, the two kinds slaying one anotherin thousands. The battle was undecided when suddenly, with no suchwarning as it gives in some parts of the world, the sun blazed up overthe horizon, turning night into day, and the insects vanished backinto their camps. 

The white man ground his knuckles into the corners of his eyes, emitting that snore final and querulous of a middle-aged man awakenedrudely. With a gesture brusque but flaccid he plucked aside the netand peered around. The bales of cotton cloth, the beads, the brasswire, the bottles of rum, had not been spirited away in the night. Sofar so good. The faithful servant of his employers was now at libertyto care for his own interests. He regarded himself, passing his handsover his skin. 

"Hi! Mahamo!" he shouted. "I've been eaten up. "

The islander, with one sinuous motion, sprang from the ground, throughthe mouth of the hut. Then, after a glance, he threw high his hands inthanks to such good and evil spirits as had charge of his concerns. Ina tone half of reproach, half of apology, he murmured--

"You white men sometimes say strange things that deceive the heart. "

"Reach me that ammonia bottle, d'you hear?" answered the white man. "This is a pretty place you've brought me to!" He took a draught. "Christmas Day, too! Of all the ---- But I suppose it seems all rightto you, you funny blackamoor, to be here on Christmas Day?"

"We are here on the day appointed, Mr. Williams. It is a feast-day ofyour people?"

Mr. Williams had lain back, with closed eyes, on his mat. Nostalgiawas doing duty to him for imagination. He was wafted to a bedroom inMarylebone, where in honour of the Day he lay late dozing, with greatcontentment; outside, a slush of snow in the street, the sound ofchurch-bells; from below a savour of especial cookery. "Yes, " he said, "it's a feast-day of my people. "

"Of mine also, " said the islander humbly. 

"Is it though? But they'll do business first?"

"They must first do that. "

"And they'll bring their ivory with them?"

"Every man will bring ivory, " answered the islander, with a smilegleaming and wide. 

"How soon'll they be here?"

"Has not the sun risen? They are on their way. "

"Well, I hope they'll hurry. The sooner we're off this cursed islandof yours the better. Take all those things out, " Mr. Williams added, pointing to the merchandise, "and arrange them--neatly, mind you!"

In certain circumstances it is right that a man be humoured intrifles. Mahamo, having borne out the merchandise, arranged it veryneatly. 

While Mr. Williams made his toilet, the sun and the forest, carelessof the doings of white and black men alike, waged their warfareimplacable and daily. The forest from its inmost depths sent forthperpetually its legions of shadows that fell dead in the instantof exposure to the enemy whose rays heroic and absurd its outpostsannihilated. There came from those inilluminable depths the equablerumour of myriads of winged things and crawling things newly roused tothe task of killing and being killed. Thence detached itself, littleby little, an insidious sound of a drum beaten. This sound drew morenear. 

Mr. Williams, issuing from the hut, heard it, and stood gaping towardsit. 

"Is that them?" he asked. 

"That is they, " the islander murmured, moving away towards the edge ofthe forest. 

Sounds of chanting were a now audible accompaniment to the drum. 

"What's that they're singing?" asked Mr. Williams. 

"They sing of their business, " said Mahamo. 

"Oh!" Mr. Williams was slightly shocked. "I'd have thought they'd besinging of their feast. "

"It is of their feast they sing. "

It has been stated that Mr. Williams was not imaginative. But a fewyears of life in climates alien and intemperate had disordered hisnerves. There was that in the rhythms of the hymn which made bristlehis flesh. 

Suddenly, when they were very near, the voices ceased, leaving alegacy of silence more sinister than themselves. And now the blackspaces between the trees were relieved by bits of white that were theeyeballs and teeth of Mahamo's brethren. 

"It was of their feast, it was of you, they sang, " said Mahamo. 

"Look here, " cried Mr. Williams in his voice of a man not to betrifled with. "Look here, if you've--"

He was silenced by sight of what seemed to be a young sapling sprungup from the ground within a yard of him--a young sapling tremulous, with a root of steel. Then a thread-like shadow skimmed the air, andanother spear came impinging the ground within an inch of his feet. 

As he turned in his flight he saw the goods so neatly arranged athis orders, and there flashed through him, even in the thick of thespears, the thought that he would be a grave loss to his employers. This--for Mr. Williams was, not less than the goods, of a kind easilyreplaced--was an illusion. It was the last of Mr. Williams illusions. 

A RECOLLECTION

_By_

EDM*ND G*SSE

 "And let us strew Twain wreaths of holly and of yew. "

 WALLER. 

One out of many Christmas Days abides with peculiar vividness in mymemory. In setting down, however clumsily, some slight record ofit, I feel that I shall be discharging a duty not only to the twodisparately illustrious men who made it so very memorable, but also toall young students of English and Scandinavian literature. My use ofthe first person singular, delightful though that pronoun is in theworks of the truly gifted, jars unspeakably on me; but reasons ofspace baulk my sober desire to call myself merely the present writer, or the infatuated go-between, or the cowed and imponderable youngperson who was in attendance. 

In the third week of December, 1878, taking the opportunity of a briefand undeserved vacation, I went to Venice. On the morning after myarrival, in answer to a most kind and cordial summons, I presentedmyself at the Palazzo Rezzonico. Intense as was the impression healways made even in London, I think that those of us who met RobertBrowning only in the stress and roar of that metropolis can hardlyhave gauged the fullness of his potentialities for impressing. Venice, "so weak, so quiet, " as Mr. Ruskin had called her, was indeed theideal setting for one to whom neither of those epithets could by anypossibility have been deemed applicable. The steamboats that now wakethe echoes of the canals had not yet been imported; but the vitalityof the imported poet was in some measure a preparation for them. Itdid not, however, find me quite prepared for itself, and I am afraidthat some minutes must have elapsed before I could, as it were, findmy feet in the torrent of his geniality and high spirits, and give himnews of his friends in London. 

He was at that time engaged in revising the proof-sheets of "DramaticIdylls, " and after luncheon, to which he very kindly bade me remain, he read aloud certain selected passages. The yellow haze of a wintryVenetian sunshine poured in through the vast windows of his _salone_, making an aureole around his silvered head. I would give much tolive that hour over again. But it was vouchsafed in days before theBrowning Society came and made everything so simple for us all. I amafraid that after a few minutes I sat enraptured by the sound ratherthan by the sense of the lines. I find, in the notes I made of theoccasion, that I figured myself as plunging through some enchantedthicket on the back of an inspired bull. 

That evening, as I was strolling in Piazza San Marco, my thoughtsof Browning were all of a sudden scattered by the vision of a small, thick-set man seated at one of the tables in the Café Florian. Thiswas--and my heart leapt like a young trout when I saw that it could benone other than--Henrik Ibsen. Whether joy or fear was the predominantemotion in me, I should be hard put to it to say. It had been myprivilege to correspond extensively with the great Scandinavian, andto be frequently received by him, some years earlier than the date ofwhich I write, in Rome. In that city haunted by the shades of so manyEmperors and Popes I had felt comparatively at ease even in Ibsen'spresence. But seated here in the homelier decay of Venice, closelybuttoned in his black surcoat and crowned with his uncompromisingtop-hat, with the lights of the Piazza flashing back wanly from hisgold-rimmed spectacles, and his lips tight-shut like some steel trapinto which our poor humanity had just fallen, he seemed to constitutea menace under which the boldest might well quail. Nevertheless, I took my courage in both hands, and laid it as a kind of votiveoffering on the little table before him. 

My reward was in the surprising amiability that he then and afterwardsdisplayed. My travelling had indeed been doubly blessed, for, whilstmy subsequent afternoons were spent in Browning's presence, myevenings fell with regularity into the charge of Ibsen. One of theseevenings is for me "prouder, more laurel'd than the rest" as havingbeen the occasion when he read to me the MS. Of a play which he hadjust completed. He was staying at the Hôtel Danieli, an edifice famousfor having been, rather more than forty years previously, the socketin which the flame of an historic _grande passion_ had finally sunkand guttered out with no inconsiderable accompaniment of smoke andodour. It was there, in an upper room, that I now made acquaintancewith a couple very different from George Sand and Alfred de Musset, though destined to become hardly less famous than they. I refer toTorvald and Nora Helmer. My host read to me with the utmost vivacity, standing in the middle of the apartment; and I remember that inthe scene where Nora Helmer dances the tarantella her creatorinstinctively executed a few illustrative steps. 

During those days I felt very much as might a minnow swimming to andfro between Leviathan on the one hand and Behemoth on the other--aminnow tremulously pleased, but ever wistful for some means ofbringing his two enormous acquaintances together. On the afternoon ofDecember 24th I confided to Browning my aspiration. He had never heardof this brother poet and dramatist, whose fame indeed was at that timestill mainly Boreal; but he cried out with the greatest heartiness, "Capital! Bring him round with you at one o'clock to-morrow for turkeyand plum-pudding!"

I betook myself straight to the Hôtel Danieli, hoping against hopethat Ibsen's sole answer would not be a comminatory grunt and aninstant rupture of all future relations with myself. At first he wasindeed resolute not to go. He had never heard of this Herr Browning. (It was one of the strengths of his strange, crustacean genius thathe never had heard of anybody. ) I took it on myself to say thatHerr Browning would send his private gondola, propelled by his twogondoliers, to conduct Herr Ibsen to the scene of the festivity. Ithink it was this prospect that made him gradually unbend, for he hadalready acquired that taste for pomp and circumstance which was sonotable a characteristic of his later years. I hastened back to thePalazzo Rezzonico before he could change his mind. I need hardly saythat Browning instantly consented to send the gondola. So largeand lovable was his nature that, had he owned a thousand of thoseconveyances, he would not have hesitated to send out the whole fleetin honour of any friend of any friend of his. 

Next day, as I followed Ibsen down the Danielian water-steps into theexpectant gondola, my emotion was such that I was tempted to snatchfrom him his neatly-furled umbrella and spread it out over his head, like the umbrella beneath which the Doges of days gone by had madetheir appearances in public. It was perhaps a pity that I repressedthis impulse. Ibsen seemed to be already regretting that he hadunbent. I could not help thinking, as we floated along the RivaSchiavoni, that he looked like some particularly ruthless member ofthe Council of Ten. I did, however, try faintly to attune him insome sort to the spirit of our host and of the day of the year. Iadumbrated Browning's outlook on life, translating into Norwegian, Iwell remember, the words "God's in His heaven, all's right with theworld. " In fact I cannot charge myself with not having done what Icould. I can only lament that it was not enough. 

When we marched into the _salone_, Browning was seated at the piano, playing (I think) a Toccata of Galuppi's. On seeing us, he broughthis hands down with a great crash on the keyboard, seemed to reachus in one astonishing bound across the marble floor, and clappedIbsen loudly on either shoulder, wishing him "the Merriest of MerryChristmases. "

Ibsen, under this sudden impact, stood firm as a rock, and it flittedthrough my brain that here at last was solved the old problem of whatwould happen if an irresistible force met an immoveable mass. But itwas obvious that the rock was not rejoicing in the moment of victory. I was tartly asked whether I had not explained to Herr Browning thathis guest did not understand English. I hastily rectified my omission, and thenceforth our host spoke in Italian. Ibsen, though he understoodthat language fairly well, was averse to speaking it. Such remarks ashe made in the course of the meal to which we presently sat down weremade in Norwegian and translated by myself. 

Browning, while he was carving the turkey, asked Ibsen whether he hadvisited any of the Venetian theatres. Ibsen's reply was that he nevervisited theatres. Browning laughed his great laugh, and cried "That'sright! We poets who write plays must give the theatres as wide a berthas possible. We aren't wanted there!" "How so?" asked Ibsen. Browninglooked a little puzzled, and I had to explain that in northern EuropeHerr Ibsen's plays were frequently performed. At this I seemed to seeon Browning's face a slight shadow--so swift and transient a shadow asmight be cast by a swallow flying across a sunlit garden. An instant, and it was gone. I was glad, however, to be able to soften mystatement by adding that Herr Ibsen had in his recent plays abandonedthe use of verse. 

The trouble was that in Browning's company he seemed practically tohave abandoned the use of prose too. When, moreover, he did speak, itwas always in a sense contrary to that of our host. The Risorgimentowas a theme always very near to the great heart of Browning, and onthis occasion he hymned it with more than his usual animation andresource (if indeed that were possible). He descanted especially onthe vast increase that had accrued to the sum of human happinessin Italy since the success of that remarkable movement. When Ibsenrapped out the conviction that what Italy needed was to be invadedand conquered once and for all by Austria, I feared that an explosionwas inevitable. But hardly had my translation of the inauspicioussentiment been uttered when the plum-pudding was borne into the room, flaming on its dish. I clapped my hands wildly at sight of it, in theEnglish fashion, and was intensely relieved when the yet more resonantapplause of Robert Browning followed mine. Disaster had been avertedby a crowning mercy. But I am afraid that Ibsen thought us both quitemad. 

The next topic that was started, harmless though it seemed at first, was fraught with yet graver peril. The world of scholarship was atthat time agitated by the recent discovery of what might or might notprove to be a fragment of Sappho. Browning proclaimed his unshakeablebelief in the authenticity of these verses. To my surprise, Ibsen, whom I had been unprepared to regard as a classical scholar, saidpositively that they had not been written by Sappho. Browningchallenged him to give a reason. A literal translation of the replywould have been "Because no woman ever was capable of writing afragment of good poetry. " Imagination reels at the effect this wouldhave had on the recipient of "Sonnets from the Portuguese. " Theagonised interpreter, throwing honour to the winds, babbled somewholly fallacious version of the words. Again the situation hadbeen saved; but it was of the kind that does not even in furthestretrospect lose its power to freeze the heart and constrict thediaphragm. 

I was fain to thank heaven when, immediately after the terminationof the meal, Ibsen rose, bowed to his host, and bade me expresshis thanks for the entertainment. Out on the Grand Canal, in thegondola which had again been placed at our disposal, his passionfor "documents" that might bear on his work was quickly manifested. He asked me whether Herr Browning had ever married. Receiving anemphatically affirmative reply, he inquired whether Fru Browning hadbeen happy. Loth though I was to cast a blight on his interest in thematter, I conveyed to him with all possible directness the impressionthat Elizabeth Barrett had assuredly been one of those wives who donot dance tarantellas nor slam front-doors. He did not, to the bestof my recollection, make further mention of Browning, either then orafterwards. Browning himself, however, thanked me warmly, nextday, for having introduced my friend to him. "A capital fellow!" heexclaimed, and then, for a moment, seemed as though he were aboutto qualify this estimate, but ended by merely repeating "A capitalfellow!"

Ibsen remained in Venice some weeks after my return to London. He was, it may be conjectured, bent on a specially close study of the Bride ofthe Adriatic because her marriage had been not altogether a happy one. But there appears to be no evidence whatsoever that he went again, either of his own accord or by invitation, to the Palazzo Rezzonico. 

OF CHRISTMAS

_By_

H*L**RE B*LL*C

There was a man came to an Inn by night, and after he had called threetimes they should open him the door--though why three times, and notthree times three, nor thirty times thirty, which is the number ofthe little stone devils that make mows at St. Aloesius of Ledera overagainst the marshes Gué-la-Nuce to this day, nor three hundred timesthree hundred (which is a bestial number), nor three thousand timesthree-and-thirty, upon my soul I know not, and nor do you--when, then, this jolly fellow had three times cried out, shouted, yelled, holloa'd, loudly besought, caterwauled, brayed, sung out, and roared, he did by the same token set himself to beat, hammer, bang, pummel, and knock at the door. Now the door was Oak. It had been grown in theforest of Boulevoise, hewn in Barre-le-Neuf, seasoned in South Hoxton, hinged nowhere in particular, and panelled--and that most abominablywell--in Arque, where the peasants sell their souls for skill in suchhandicraft. But our man knew nothing of all this, which, had he knownit, would have mattered little enough to him, for a reason which Ipropose to tell in the next sentence. The door was opened. As to thereasons why it was not opened sooner, these are most tediously setforth in Professor Sir T. K. Slibby's "Half-Hours With Historic Doors, "as also in a fragment at one time attributed to Oleaginus Silo but nowproven a forgery by Miss Evans. Enough for our purpose, merry readerof mine, that the door was opened. 

The man, as men will, went in. And there, for God's sake and bythe grace of Mary Mother, let us leave him; for the truth of it isthat his strength was all in his lungs, and himself a poor, weak, clout-faced, wizen-bellied, pin-shanked bloke anyway, who at TrinityHall had spent the most of his time in reading Hume (that wasSatan's lackey) and after taking his degree did a little in the wayof Imperial Finance. Of him it was that Lord Abraham Hart, thatfar-seeing statesman, said, "This young man has the root of the matterin him. " I quote the epigram rather for its perfect form than for itstruth. For once, Lord Abraham was deceived. But it must be rememberedthat he was at this time being plagued almost out of his wits bythe vile (though cleverly engineered) agitation for the compulsorywinding-up of the Rondoosdop Development Company. Afterwards, inWormwood Scrubbs, his Lordship admitted that his estimate of his youngfriend had perhaps been pitched too high. In Dartmoor he has sincerevoked it altogether, with that manliness for which the Empire soloved him when he was at large. 

Now the young man's name was Dimby--"Trot" Dimby--and his mother hadbeen a Clupton, so that--but had I not already dismissed him? Indeed Ionly mentioned him because it seemed that his going to that Inn mightput me on track of that One Great Ultimate and Final True Thing I ampurposed to say about Christmas. Don't ask me yet what that Thing is. Truth dwells in no man, but is a shy beast you must hunt as you may inthe forests that are round about the Walls of Heaven. And I do herebycurse, gibbet, and denounce in _execrationem perpetuam atque aeternam_the man who hunts in a crafty or calculating way--as, lying low, nosing for scents, squinting for trails, crawling noiselessly tillhe shall come near to his quarry and then taking careful aim. Here'sto him who hunts Truth in the honest fashion of men, which is, goingblindly at it, following his first scent (if such there be) or (ifnone) none, scrambling over boulders, fording torrents, winding hishorn, plunging into thickets, skipping, firing off his gun in the aircontinually, and then ramming in some more ammunition anyhow, witha laugh and a curse if the charge explode in his own jolly face. Thechances are he will bring home in his bag nothing but a field-mousehe trod on by accident. Not the less his is the true sport and theessential stuff of holiness. 

As touching Christmas--but there is nothing like verse to clear themind, heat the blood, and make very humble the heart. Rouse thee, Muse!

 One Christmas Night in Pontgibaud (_Pom-pom, rub-a-dub-dub_) A man with a drum went to and fro (_Two merry eyes, two cheeks chub_) Nor not a citril within, without, But heard the racket and heard the rout And marvelled what it was all about (_And who shall shrive Beelzebub?_)

 He whacked so hard the drum was split (_Pom-pom, rub-a-dub-dum_) Out lept Saint Gabriel from it (_Praeclarissimus Omnium_) Who spread his wings and up he went Nor ever paused in his ascent Till he had reached the firmament (_Benedicamus Dominum_). 

That's what I shall sing (please God) at dawn to-morrow, standing onthe high, green barrow at Storrington, where the bones of Athelstan'smen are. Yea, At dawn to-morrow On Storrington Barrow I'll beg or borrow A bow and arrow And shoot sleek sorrow Through the marrow. The floods are out and the ford is narrow, The stars hang dead and my limbs are lead, But ale is gold And there's good foot-hold On the Cuckfield side of Storrington Barrow. 

This too I shall sing, and other songs that are yet to write. InPagham I shall sing them again, and again in Little Dewstead. InHornside I shall rewrite them, and at the Scythe and Turtle in Liphook(if I have patience) annotate them. At Selsey they will be verydamnably in the way, and I don't at all know what I shall do with themat Selsey. 

Such then, as I see it, is the whole pith, mystery, outer form, commonacceptation, purpose, usage usual, meaning and inner meaning, beautyintrinsic and extrinsic, and right character of Christmas Feast. _Habent urbs atque orbis revelationem. _ Pray for my soul. 

A STRAIGHT TALK

_By_

G**RGE B*RN*RD SH*W

(_Preface to "Snt George. A Christmas Play"_)

When a public man lays his hand on his heart and declares that hisconduct needs no apology, the audience hastens to put up its umbrellasagainst the particularly severe downpour of apologies in store forit. I wont give the customary warning. My conduct shrieks aloud forapology, and you are in for a thorough drenching. 

Flatly, I stole this play. The one valid excuse for the theft wouldbe mental starvation. That excuse I shant plead. I could have madea dozen better plays than this out of my own head. You don't supposeShakespeare was so vacant in the upper storey that there was nothingfor it but to rummage through cinquecento romances, Townley Mysteries, and suchlike insanitary rubbishheaps, in order that he might fish outenough scraps for his artistic fangs to fasten on. Depend on it, therewere plenty of decent original notions seething behind yon marblebrow. Why didn't our William use them? He was too lazy. And so am I. It is easier to give a new twist to somebody else's story that youtake readymade than to perform that highly-specialised form of skilledlabor which consists in giving artistic coherence to a story that youhave conceived roughly for yourself. A literary gentleman once hoisteda theory that there are only thirty-six possible stories in the world. This--I say it with no deference at all--is bosh. There are as manypossible stories in the world as there are microbes in the well-linedshelves of a literary gentleman's "den. " On the other hand, it isperfectly true that only a baker's dozen of these have got themselvestold. The reason lies in that bland, unalterable resolve to shirkhonest work, by which you recognise the artist as surely as yourecognise the leopard by his spots. In so far as I am an artist, Iam a loafer. And if you expect me, in that line, to do anything butloaf, you will get the shock your romantic folly deserves. The onlydifference between me and my rivals past and present is that I havethe decency to be ashamed of myself. So that if you are not toobemused and bedevilled by my "brilliancy" to kick me downstairs, youmay rely on me to cheerfully lend a foot in the operation. But, whileI have my share of judicial vindictiveness against crime, Im not goingto talk the common judicial cant about brutality making a Better Manof the criminal. I havent the slightest doubt that I would thieveagain at the earliest opportunity. Meanwhile be so good as to listento the evidence on the present charge. 

In the December after I was first cast ashore at Holyhead, I had to godown to Dorsetshire. In those days the more enterprising farm-laborersused still to annually dress themselves up in order to tickle thegentry into disbursing the money needed to supplement a local-minimumwage. They called themselves the Christmas Mummers, and performeda play entitled Snt George. As my education had been of the typicalIrish kind, and the ideas on which I had been nourished were preciselythe ideas that once in Tara's Hall were regarded as dangerousnovelties, Snt George staggered me with the sense of being suddenlybumped up against a thing which lay centuries ahead of the time Ihad been born into. (Being, in point of fact, only a matter of fivehundred years old, it would have the same effect to-day on the averageLondon playgoer if it was produced in a west end theatre. ) The plotwas simple. It is set forth in Thomas Hardy's "Return of the Native";but, as the people who read my books have no energy left over to copewith other authors, I must supply an outline of it myself. 

Entered, first of all, the English Knight, announcing hisdetermination to fight and vanquish the Turkish Knight, a vastlysuperior swordsman, who promptly made mincemeat of him. After theSaracen had celebrated his victory in verse, and proclaimed himselfthe world's champion, entered Snt George, who, after some preliminarypatriotic flourishes, promptly made mincemeat of the Saracen--to theblank amazement of an audience which included several retired armyofficers. Snt George, however, saved his face by the usual expedientof the victorious British general, attributing to Providence a resultwhich by no polite stretch of casuistry could have been traced to theoperations of his own brain. But here the dramatist was confrontedby another difficulty: there being no curtain to ring down, how werethe two corpses to be got gracefully rid of? Entered therefore thePhysician, and brought them both to life. (Any one objecting to thisscene on the score of romantic improbability is hereby referred tothe Royal College of Physicians, or to the directors of any accreditedmedical journal, who will hail with delight this opportunity ofproving once and for all that re-vitalisation is the child's-play ofthe Faculty. )

Such then is the play that I have stolen. For all the many pleasingesthetic qualities you will find in it--dramatic inventiveness, humorand pathos, eloquence, elfin glamor and the like--you must blessthe original author: of these things I have only the usufruct. Tome the play owes nothing but the stiffening of civistic consciencethat has been crammed in. Modest? Not a bit of it. It is my civisticconscience that makes a man of me and (incidentally) makes this playa masterpiece. 

Nothing could have been easier for me (if I were someone else) than to perform my task in thatGod-rest-you-merry-gentlemen-may-nothing-you-dismay spirit whichso grossly flatters the sensibilities of the average citizen by itsassumption that he is sharp enough to be dismayed by what stareshim in the face. Charles Dickens had lucid intervals in which he wasvaguely conscious of the abuses around him; but his spasmodic effortsto expose these brought him into contact with realities so agonisingto his highstrung literary nerves that he invariably sank back intodebauches of unsocial optimism. Even the Swan of Avon had his glimpsesof the havoc of displacement wrought by Elizabethan romanticism in thesocial machine which had been working with tolerable smoothness underthe prosaic guidance of Henry 8. The time was out of joint; and theSwan, recognising that he was the last person to ever set it right, consoled himself by offering the world a soothing doctrine of despair. Not for me, thank you, that Swansdown pillow. I refuse as flatlyto fuddle myself in the shop of "W. Shakespeare, Druggist, " asto stimulate myself with the juicy joints of "C. Dickens, FamilyButcher. " Of these and suchlike pernicious establishments my patronageconsists in weaving round the shop-door a barbed-wire entanglement ofdialectic and then training my moral machine-guns on the customers. 

In this devilish function I have, as you know, acquired by practicea tremendous technical skill; and but for the more or less innocentpride I take in showing off my accomplishment to all and sundry, Idoubt whether even my iron nerves would be proof against the horrorsthat have impelled me to thus perfect myself. In my nonage I believedhumanity could be reformed if only it were intelligently preachedat for a sufficiently long period. This first fine careless raptureI could no more recapture, at my age, than I could recapturehoopingcough or nettlerash. One by one, I have flung all politicalnostra overboard, till there remain only dynamite and scientificbreeding. My touching faith in these saves me from pessimism: Ibelieve in the future; but this only makes the present--which Iforesee as going strong for a couple of million of years or so--allthe more excruciating by contrast. 

For casting into dramatic form a compendium of my indictments of thepresent from a purely political standpoint, the old play of Snt Georgeoccurred to me as having exactly the framework I needed. In the personof the Turkish Knight I could embody that howling chaos which doesduty among us for a body-politic. The English Knight would accordinglybe the Liberal Party, whose efforts (whenever it is in favor with theelectorate) to reduce chaos to order by emulating in foreign politicsthe blackguardism of a Metternich or Bismarck, and in home politicsthe spirited attitudinisings of a Garibaldi or Cavor, are foredoomedto the failure which its inherent oldmaidishness must always win forthe Liberal Party in all undertakings whatsoever. Snt George is, ofcourse, myself. But here my very aptitude in controversy tripped me upas playwright. Owing to my nack of going straight to the root of thematter in hand and substituting, before you can say Jack Robinson, atruth for every fallacy and a natural law for every convention, thescene of Snt George (Bernard Shaw)'s victory over the Turkish Knightcame out too short for theatrical purposes. I calculated that the playas it stood would not occupy more than five hours in performance. Itherefore departed from the original scheme so far as to provide theTurkish Knight with three attendant monsters, severally named theGood, the Beyootiful, and the Ter-rew, and representing in themselvesthe current forms of Religion, Art, and Science. These three SntGeorge successively challenges, tackles, and flattens out--the firstas lunacy, the second as harlotry, the third as witchcraft. But evenso the play would not be long enough had I not padded a good deal ofbuffoonery into the scene where the five corpses are brought back tolife. 

The restorative Physician symbolises that irresistible force of humanstupidity by which the rottenest and basest institutions are enabledto thrive in the teeth of the logic that has demolished them. Thus, for the author, the close of the play is essentially tragic. But whatis death to him is fun to you, and my buffooneries wont offend any ofyou. Bah!

FOND HEARTS ASKEW

_By_

M**R*CE H*WL*TT

TO WILLIAM ROBERTSON NICOLL SAGE AND REVEREND AND A TRUE KNIGHT THISROMAUNT OF DAYS EDVARDIAN

PROLOGUE. 

_Too strong a wine, belike, for some stomachs, for there's honey init, and a dibbet of gore, with other condiments. Yet Mistress Clio(with whom, some say, Mistress Thalia, that sweet hoyden) brewed it:she, not I, who do but hand the cup round by her warrant and goodfavour. Her guests, not mine, you shall take it or leave it--spill ituntasted or quaff a bellyful. Of a hospitable temper, she whose pageI am; but a great lady, over self-sure to be dudgeoned by wry faces inthe refectory. As for the little sister (if she did have finger in theconcoction)--no fear of offence there! I dare vow, who know somewhatthe fashion of her, she will but trill a pretty titter or so at yourqualms. _

BENEDICTUS BENEDICAT. 

I cry you mercy for a lacuna at the outset. I know not what hadknitted and blackened the brows of certain two speeding eastwardthrough London, enhansomed, on the night of the feast of St. Box:_alter_, Geoffrey Dizzard, called "The Honourable, " _lieu-tenant_ inthe Guards of Edward the Peace Getter; _altera_, the Lady AngelicaPlantagenet, to him affianced. Devil take the cause of the bicker:enough that they were at sulks. Here's for a sight of the girl!

Johannes Sargent, that swift giant from the New World, had alreadyflung her on canvas, with a brace of sisters. She outstands there, avirgin poplar-tall; hair like ravelled flax and coiffed in the fashionof the period; neck like a giraffe's; lips shaped for kissing ratherthan smiling; eyes like a giraffe's again; breasts like a boy's, andsomething of a dressed-up boy in the total aspect of her. She hasarms a trifle long even for such height as hers; fingers very long, too, with red-pink nails trimmed to a point. She looks out slantwise, conscious of her beauty, and perhaps of certain other things. Fireunder that ice, I conjecture--red corpuscles rampant behind that meekwhite mask of hers. "_Forsitan in hoc anno pulcherrima debutantium_"is the verdict of a contemporary journal. For "_forsitan_" read"_certe_. " No slur, that, on the rest of the bevy. 

Very much as Johannes had seen her did she appear now to the cits, as the cabriolet swung past them. Paramount there, she was still moreparamount here. Yet this Geoffrey was not ill-looking. In the secretjournal of Mary Jane, serving-wench in the palace of Geoffrey's father(who gat his barony by beer) note is made of his "lovely blue eyes;complexion like a blush rose; hands like a girl's; lips like a girl'sagain; yellow curls close cropped; and for moustachio (so young is heyet) such a shadow as amber might cast on water. "

Here, had I my will, I would limn you Mary Jane herself, that parchednymph. Time urges, though. The cabrioleteer thrashes his horse (mewith it) to a canter, and plunges into Soho. Some wagon athwart thepath gives pause. Angelica, looking about her, bites lip. For thisis the street of Wardour, wherein (say all the chronicles mostabsolutely) she and Geoffrey had first met and plit their troth. 

"Methinks, " cries she, loud and clear to the wagoner, and pointingfinger at Geoffrey, "the Devil must be between your shafts, to make amock of me in this conjunction, the which is truly of his own doing. "

"Sweet madam, " says Geoffrey (who was also called "The Ready"), "shallI help harness you at his side? Though, for my part, I doubt 'tweresupererogant, in that he buckled you to his service or ever the priestdipped you. "

A bitter jest, this; and the thought of it still tingled on thegirl's cheek and clawed her heart when Geoffrey handed her down at theportico of Drury Lane Theatre. A new pantomime was afoot. Geoffrey'sfather (that bluff red baron) had chartered a box, was already therewith his lady and others. 

Lily among peonies, Angelica sat brooding, her eyes fastened on thestage, Geoffrey behind her chair, brooding by the same token. Presto, he saw a flood of pink rush up her shoulders to her ears. The"principal boy" had just skipped on to the stage. No boy at all (Godbe witness), but one Mistress Tina Vandeleur, very apt in masquerado, and seeming true boy enough to the guileless. Stout of leg, light-footed, with a tricksy plume to his cap, and the swagger of onewho would beard the Saints for a wager, this Aladdin was just such agalliard as Angelica had often fondled in her dreams. He lept straightinto the closet of her heart, and "Deus!" she cried, "maugre mymaidenhood, I will follow those pretty heels round the earth!"

Cried Geoffrey "Yea! and will not I presently string his ham to saveyour panting?"

"_Tacete!_" cried the groundlings. 

A moment after, Geoffrey forgot his spleen. Cupid had noosedhim--bound him tight to the Widow Twankey. This was a woman mostunlike to Angelica: poplar-tall, I grant you; but elm-wide into thebargain; deep-voiced, robustious, and puffed bravely out with hotvital essences. Seemed so to Geoffrey, at least, who had no smatteringof theatres and knew not his cynosure to be none other than MasterWillie Joffers, prime buffo of the day. Like Angelica, he had had fondvisions; and lo here, the very lady of them!

Says he to Angelica, "I am heartset on this widow. "

"By so much the better!" she laughs. "I to my peacock, you to yourpeahen, with a Godspeed from each to other. "

How to snare the birds? A pretty problem: the fowling was like to bedelicate. So hale a strutter as Aladdin could not lack for bonamies. "Will he deign me?" wondered meek Angelica. "This widow, " thoughtGeoffrey, "is belike no widow at all, but a modest wife with a yea forno man but her lord. " Head to head they took counsel, cudgelled theirwits for some proper vantage. Of a sudden, Geoffrey clapped hand tothigh. Student of Boccaccio, Heveletius, and other sages, he had theclue in his palm. A whisper from him, a nod from Angelica, and thetwain withdrew from the box into the corridor without. 

There, back to back, they disrobed swiftly, each tossing to otherevery garment as it was doffed. Then a flurried toilet, and adifficult, for the man especially; but hotness of desire breedsdexterity. When they turned and faced each other, Angelica was sucha boy as Aladdin would not spurn as page, Geoffrey such a girl as thewidow might well covet as body-maid. 

Out they hied under the stars, and sought way to the postern wherebythe mummers would come when their work were done. Thereat theystationed themselves in shadow. A bitter night, with a lather of snowon the cobbles; but they were heedless of that: love and their dancinghearts warmed them. 

They waited long. Strings of muffled figures began to file out, butnever an one like to Aladdin or the Widow. Midnight tolled. Had thesetwo had wind of the ambuscado and crept out by another door? Nay, patience!

At last! A figure showed in the doorway--a figure cloaked womanly, buttopped with face of Aladdin. Trousered Angelica, with a cry, dartedforth from the shadow. To Mistress Vandeleur's eyes she was as trulyman as was Mistress Vandeleur to hers. Thus confronted, MistressVandeleur shrank back, blushing hot. 

"Nay!" laughs Angelica, clipping her by the wrists. "Cold boy, youshall not so easily slip me. A pretty girl you make, Aladdin; but lovepierces such disguise as a rapier might pierce lard. "

"Madman! Unhandle me!" screams the actress. 

"No madman I, as well you know, " answers Angelica, "but a maid whomspurned love may yet madden. Kiss me on the lips!"

While they struggle, another figure fills the postern, and in aninstant Angelica is torn aside by Master Willie Joffers (well versed, for all his mumming, in matters of chivalry). "Kisses for such cowardlips?" cries he. "Nay, but a swinge to silence them!" and would havestruck trousered Angelica full on the mouth. But décolleté GeoffreyDizzard, crying at him "Sweet termagant, think not to baffle me bythese airs of manhood!" had sprung in the way and on his own nosereceived the blow. 

He staggered and, spurting blood, fell. Up go the buffo's hands, and "Now may the Saints whip me, " cries he, "for a tapster ofgirl's blood!" and fled into the night, howling like a dog. MistressVandeleur had fled already. Down on her knees goes Angelica, to stanchGeoffrey's flux. 

Thus far, straight history. Apocrypha, all the rest: you shall pickyour own sequel. As for instance, some say Geoffrey bled to the death, whereby stepped Master Joffers to the scaffold, and Angelica (theVandeleur too, like as not) to a nunnery. Others have it he lived, thanks to nurse Angelica, who, thereon wed, suckled him twin Dizzardsin due season. Joffers, they say, had wife already, else would havewed the Vandeleur, for sake of symmetry. 

DICKENS

_By_

G**RGE M**RE

I had often wondered why when people talked to me of Tintoretto Ialways found myself thinking of Turgéneff. It seemed to me strangethat I should think of Turgéneff instead of thinking of Tintoretto;for at first sight nothing can be more far apart than the Slav mindand the Flemish. But one morning, some years ago, while I was musingby my fireplace in Victoria Street, Dolmetsch came to see me. He hada soiled roll of music under his left arm. I said, "How are you?" Hesaid, "I am well. And you?" I said, "I, too, am well. What is that, mydear Dolmetsch, that you carry under your left arm?" He answered, "Itis a Mass by Palestrina. " "Will you read me the score?" I asked. I wasafraid he would say no. But Dolmetsch is not one of those men who sayno, and he read me the score. He did not read very well, but I hadnever heard it before, so when he finished I begged of him he wouldread it to me again. He said, "Very well, M**re, I will read it to youagain. " I remember his exact words, because they seemed to me at thetime to be the sort of thing that only Dolmetsch could have said. Itwas a foggy morning in Victoria Street, and while Dolmetsch read againthe first few bars, I thought how Renoir would have loved to paintin such an atmosphere the tops of the plane trees that flaccidly showabove the wall of Buckingham Palace. .. . Why had I never been invitedto Buckingham Palace? I did not want to go there, but it would havebeen nice to have been asked. .. . How _brave gaillard_ was Renoir, andhow well he painted from that subfusc palette!. .. 

My roving thoughts were caught back to the divine score whichArnold Dolmetsch was reading to me. How well placed they were, thosesemibreves! Could anyone but Palestrina have placed them so nicely? Iwondered what girl Palestrina was courting when he conceived them. Shemust have been blonde, surely, and with narrow flanks. .. . There aremoments when one does not think of girls, are there not, dear reader?And I swear to you that such a moment came to me while Dolmetschmumbled the last two bars of that Mass. The notes were "do, la, sol, do, fa, do, sol, la, " and as he mumbled them I sat upright and staredinto space, for it had become suddenly plain to me why when peopletalked of Tintoretto I always found myself thinking of Turgéneff. 

I do not say that this story that I have told to you is a very goodstory, and I am afraid that I have not well told it. Some day, whenI have time, I should like to re-write it. But meantime I let itstand, because without it you could not receive what is upmost in mythoughts, and which I wish you to share with me. Without it, what Iam yearning to say might seem to you a hard saying; but now you willunderstand me. 

There never was a writer except Dickens. Perhaps you have never heardsay of him? No matter, till a few days past he was only a name to me. I remember that when I was a young man in Paris, I read a praise ofhim in some journal; but in those days I was kneeling at other altars, I was scrubbing other doorsteps. .. . So has it been ever since; alwaysa false god, always the wrong doorstep. I am sick of the smell of theincense I have swung to this and that false god--Zola, Yeats, _et tousces autres_. I am angry to have got housemaid's knee, because I gotit on doorsteps that led to nowhere. There is but one doorstep worthscrubbing. The doorstep of Charles Dickens. .. . 

Did he write many books? I know not, it does not greatly matter, hewrote the "Pickwick Papers"; that suffices. I have read as yet butone chapter, describing a Christmas party in a country house. Strangethat anyone should have essayed to write about anything but that!Christmas--I see it now--is the only moment in which men and women arereally alive, are really worth writing about. At other seasons theydo not exist for the purpose of art. I spit on all seasons exceptChristmas. .. . Is he not in all fiction the greatest figure, this Mr. Wardell, this old "squire" rosy-cheeked, who entertains this Christmasparty at his house? He is more truthful, he is more significant, thanany figure in Balzac. He is better than all Balzac's figures rolledinto one. .. . I used to kneel on that doorstep. Balzac wrote manybooks. But now it behoves me to ask myself whether he ever wrote agood book. One knows that he used to write for fifteen hours at astretch, gulping down coffee all the while. But it does not followthat the coffee was good, nor does it follow that what he wrote wasgood. The Comédie Humaine is all chicory. .. . I had wished for someyears to say this, I am glad _d'avoir débarrassé ma poitrine de ça_. 

To have described divinely a Christmas party is something, but it isnot everything. The disengaging of the erotic motive is everything, isthe only touchstone. If while that is being done we are soothed intoa trance, a nebulous delirium of the nerves, then we know the novelistto be a supreme novelist. If we retain consciousness, he is notsupreme, and to be less than supreme in art is to not exist. .. . Dickens disengages the erotic motive through two figures, Mr. Winkle, a sportman, and Miss Arabella, "a young lady with fur-topped boots. "They go skating, he helps her over a stile. Can one not well seeher? She steps over the stile and her shin defines itself through herbalbriggan stocking. She is a knock-kneed girl, and she looks at Mr. Winkle with that sensual regard that sometimes comes when the windis north-west. Yes, it is a north-west wind that is blowing over thislandscape that Hals or Winchoven might have painted--no, Winchovenwould have fumbled it with rose-madder, but Hals would have done itwell. Hals would have approved--would he not?--the pollard aspens, these pollard aspens deciduous and wistful, which the rime makesglistening. That field, how well ploughed it is, and are they not likepetticoats, those clouds low-hanging? Yes, Hals would have stated themwell, but only Manet could have stated the slope of the thighs ofthe girl--how does she call herself?--Arabella--it is a so hard nameto remember--as she steps across the stile. Manet would have foundpleasure in her cheeks also. They are a little chapped with thenorth-west wind that makes the pollard aspens to quiver. How adorablea thing it is, a girl's nose that the north-west wind renders red! Wemay tire of it sometimes, because we sometimes tire of all things, but Winkle does not know this. Is Arabella his mistress? If she isnot, she has been, or at any rate she will be. How full she is oftemperament, is she not? Her shoulder-blades seem a little carelesslymodelled, but how good they are in intention! How well placed thatsmut on her left cheek!

Strange thoughts of her surge up vaguely in me as I watchher--thoughts that I cannot express in English. .. . Elle est plusvieille que les roches entre lesquelles elle s'est assise; commele vampire elle a été fréquemment morte, et a appris les secrets dutombeau; et s'est plongée dans des mers profondes, et conserve autourd'elle leur jour ruiné; et, comme Lède, était mère d'Hélène de Troie, et, comme Sainte-Anne, mère de Maria; et tout cela n'a été pour elleque. .. . I desist, for not through French can be expressed the thoughtsthat surge in me. French is a stale language. So are all the Europeanlanguages, one can say in them nothing fresh. .. . The stalest of themall is Erse. .. . 

Deep down in my heart a sudden voice whispers me that there is onlyone land wherein art may reveal herself once more. Of what avail toawait her anywhere else than in Mexico? Only there can the apocalypsehappen. I will take a ticket for Mexico, I will buy a Mexican grammar, I will be a Mexican. .. . On a hillside, or beside some grey pool, gazing out across those plains poor and arid, I will await the firstpale showings of the new dawn. .. . 

EUPHEMIA CLASHTHOUGHT[10]

AN IMITATION OF MEREDITH

[Footnote 10: It were not, as a general rule, well to republish after a man's death the skit you made of his work while he lived. Meredith, however, was so transcendent that such skits must ever be harmless, and so lasting will his fame be that they can never lose what freshness they may have had at first. So I have put this thing in with the others, making improvements that were needed. --M. B. ]

In the heart of insular Cosmos, remote by some scores of leagues ofHodge-trod arable or pastoral, not more than a snuff-pinch for gapingtourist nostrils accustomed to inhalation of prairie winds, but enoughfor perspective, from those marginal sands, trident-scraped, we areto fancy, by a helmeted Dame Abstract familiarly profiled on discsof current bronze--price of a loaf for humbler maws disdainful ofGallic side-dishes for the titillation of choicer palates--standsClashthought Park, a house of some pretension, mentioned at Runnymede, with the spreading exception of wings given to it in later timesby Daedalean masters not to be baulked of billiards or traps forTerpsichore, and owned for unbroken generations by a healthy lineof procreant Clashthoughts, to the undoing of collateral brancheseager for the birth of a female. Passengers through cushioned space, flying top-speed or dallying with obscure stations not alighted atapparently, have had it pointed out to them as beheld dimly for aprivileged instant before they sink back behind crackling barrier ofinstructive paper with a "Thank you, Sir, " or "Madam, " as the casemay be. Guide-books praise it. I conceive they shall be studied fora cock-shy of rainbow epithets slashed in at the target of LandedGentry, premonitorily. The tintinnabulation's enough. Periodicalfootings of Clashthoughts into Mayfair or the Tyrol, signalled by theslide from its mast of a crested index of Aeolian caprice, blazon oftheir presence, give the curious a right to spin through the hallsand galleries under a cackle of housekeeper guideship--scramble for achuck of the dainties, dog fashion. There is something to be said forthe rope's twist. Wisdom skips. 

It is recorded that the goblins of this same Lady Wisdom were all agogone Christmas morning between the doors of the house and the villagechurch, which crouches on the outskirt of the park, with something ofa lodge in its look, you might say, more than of celestial twinkles, even with Christmas hoar-frost bleaching the grey of it in sunlight, as one sees imaged on seasonable missives for amity in the traysmarked "sixpence and upwards, " here and there, on the counters ofbarter. 

Be sure these goblins made obeisance to Sir Peter Clashthought, as hepassed by, starched beacon of squirearchy, wife on arm, sons to heel. After him, certain members of the household--rose-chapped males andfemales, bearing books of worship. The pack of goblins glance upthe drive with nudging elbows and whisperings of "Where is daughterEuphemia? Where Sir Rebus, her affianced?"

Off they scamper for a peep through the windows of the house. Theythrong the sill of the library, ears acock and eyelids twitteringadmiration of a prospect. Euphemia was in view of them--essence ofher. Sir Rebus was at her side. Nothing slips the goblins. 

"Nymph in the Heavy Dragoons" was Mrs. Cryptic-Sparkler's famousdefinition of her. The County took it for final--an uncut gem witha fleck in the heart of it. Euphemia condoned the imagery. She hadbreadth. Heels that spread ample curves over the ground she stood on, and hands that might floor you with a clench of them, were hers. Greyeyes looked out lucid and fearless under swelling temples that werelost in a ruffling copse of hair. Her nose was virginal, with hints ofthe Iron Duke at most angles. Square chin, cleft centrally, gaveher throat the look of a tower with a gun protrudent at top. She wasdressed for church evidently, but seemed no slave to Time. Her bonnetwas pushed well back from her head, and she was fingering the ribbons. One saw she was a woman. She inspired deference. 

"Forefinger for Shepherd's Crook" was what Mrs. Cryptic-Sparkler hadsaid of Sir Rebus. It shall stand at that. 

"You have Prayer Book?" he queried. 

She nodded. Juno catches the connubial trick. 

"Hymns?"

"Ancient and Modern. "

"I may share with you?"

"I know by heart. Parrots sing. "

"Philomel carols, " he bent to her. 

"Complaints spoil a festival. "

He waved hand to the door. "Lady, your father has started. "

"He knows the adage. Copy-books instil it. "

"Inexorable truth in it. "

"We may dodge the scythe. "

"To be choked with the sands?"

She flashed a smile. "I would not, " he said, "that my Euphemia werelate for the Absolution. "

She cast eyes to the carpet. He caught them at the rebound. 

"It snows, " she murmured, swimming to the window. 

"A flake, no more. The season claims it. "

"I have thin boots. "

"Another pair?"

"My maid buttons. She is at church. "

"My fingers?"

"Ten on each. "

"Five, " he corrected. 

"Buttons. "

"I beg your pardon. "

She saw opportunity. She swam to the bell-rope and grasped it for atinkle. The action spread feminine curves to her lover's eyes. He wasa man. 

Obsequiousness loomed in the doorway. Its mistress flashed an orderfor port--two glasses. Sir Rebus sprang a pair of eyebrows on her. Suspicion slid down the banisters of his mind, trailing a blue ribbon. Inebriates were one of his hobbies. For an instant she was sunset. 

"Medicinal, " she murmured. 

"Forgive me, Madam. A glass, certainly. 'Twill warm us forworshipping. "

The wine appeared, seemed to blink owlishly through the facets ofits decanter, like some hoary captive dragged forth into light afteryears of subterraneous darkness--something querulous in the suddenliberation of it. Or say that it gleamed benignant from its tray, steady-borne by the hands of reverence, as one has seen Infallibilitypass with uplifting of jewelled fingers through genuflexions to theBalcony. Port has this in it: that it compels obeisance, master of us;as opposed to brother and sister wines wooing us with a coy flush inthe gold of them to a cursory tope or harlequin leap shimmering up theveins with a sly wink at us through eyelets. Hussy vintages swim to acosset. We go to Port, mark you!

Sir Rebus sipped with an affectionate twirl of thumb at the glass'sstem. He said "One scents the cobwebs. "

"Catches in them, " Euphemia flung at him. 

"I take you. Bacchus laughs in the web. "

"Unspun but for Pallas. "

"A lady's jealousy. "

"Forethought, rather. "

"Brewed in the paternal pate. Grant it!"

"For a spring in accoutrements. "

Sir Rebus inclined gravely. Port precludes prolongment of the riposte. 

She replenished glasses. Deprecation yielded. "A step, " she said, "andwe are in time for the First Lesson. "

"This, " he agreed, "is a wine. "

"There are blasphemies in posture. One should sit to it. "

"Perhaps. " He sank to commodious throne of leather indicated by herfinger. 

Again she filled for him. "This time, no heel-taps, " she wasimperative. "The Litany demands basis. "

"True. " He drained, not repelling the decanter placed at his elbow. 

"It is a wine, " he presently repeated with a rolling tongue over it. 

"Laid down by my great-grandfather. Cloistral. "

"Strange, " he said, examining the stopper, "no date. Antediluvian. Sound, though. "

He drew out his note-book. "_The senses_" he wrote, "_are internecine. They shall have learned esprit de corps before they enslave us. _" Thiswas one of his happiest flings to general from particular. "_Visualdistraction cries havoc to ultimate delicacy of palate_" would buthave pinned us a butterfly best a-hover; nor even so should we havehad truth of why the aphorist, closing note-book and nestling back ofhead against that of chair, closed eyes also. 

As by some such law as lurks in meteorological toy for our guidancein climes close-knit with Irony for bewilderment, making egress of oldwoman synchronise inevitably with old man's ingress, or the other wayabout, the force that closed the aphorist's eye-lids parted his lipsin degree according. Thus had Euphemia, erect on hearth-rug, a cavernto gaze down into. Outworks of fortifying ivory cast but densershadows into the inexplorable. The solitudes here grew murmurous. Toand fro through secret passages in the recesses leading up deviouslyto lesser twin caverns of nose above, the gnomes Morphean went abouttheir business, whispering at first, but presently bold to wind hornsin unison--Roland-wise, not less. 

Euphemia had an ear for it; whim also to construe lord and masterrelaxed but reboant and soaring above the verbal to harmonic truthsof abstract or transcendental, to be hummed subsequently by privilegedfemale audience of one bent on a hook-or-crook plucking out of pithfor salvation. 

She caught tablets pendent at her girdle. "_How long_, " queried herstilus, "_has our sex had humour? Jael hammered. _"

She might have hitched speculation further. But Mother Earth, white-mantled, called to her. 

Casting eye of caution at recumbence, she paddled across the carpetand anon swam out over the snow. 

Pagan young womanhood, six foot of it, spanned eight miles beforeluncheon. 

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