CIRCULAR SAWS

Other books by the same Author

Verse

LONDON SONNETS
SHYLOCK REASONS WITH MR. CHESTERTON

CIRCULAR SAWS

By
Humbert Wolfe

LONDON
CHAPMAN & HALL LTD.
1923

Printed in England
at The Westminster Press
411a Harrow Road, London, W.9

THREE or four of these tales have appeared in The Weekly Westminster Gazette and The Chapbook. The author’s thanks are due for permission to reprint them here. Thanks are also due to the Editor of The Saturday Review for permission to republish the verses in the story called “Dis Aliter Visum.”

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I
WASTE NOT, WANT NOT

WHEN Haroun-al-Raschid (of whom I have told you before, and if I haven’t it is only because I have forgotten) was having a bath they wouldn’t let him splash. “By the beard of Allah,” he observed mildly to the Vizier, who was standing by with his favourite celluloid duck (guaranteed to float), “this is preposterous. Cannot the Commander of the Faithful splash a little water? What’s the good of being a King, that’s what I say?” “Sire,” replied the Vizier, handing him the celluloid duck, “the higher, the fewer the pleasures of life. And remember in season the saying, ‘Waste not, want not.’”

The following day torrential rains of unprecedented severity visited Bagdad, sweeping away houses and gardens and drowning, among others, in circumstances of peculiar discomfort, the Grand Vizier. “Well,” said Haroun, splashing in his bath (and hitting the opposite wall, mind you), “that only shows.”

II
LOOKING FOR A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK

MR. ARTHUR BENACRES—the celebrated philanthropist—suffered in private life the inconvenience of being an ostrich. This was due to the act of a rather deaf fairy friend of the family, who mistook an observation on the weather (addressed to him by a conversational curate at the christening) for a request for feathers.

This, as you suppose, caused Mr. Benacres some difficulty, and led him to consider methods of escape. For though it was agreeable to be able to subsist on odd scraps of broken rubbish, and to dig with his head (instead of a spade) in the nice clean sand, people did make a fuss on the Underground and at parties.

Till at last another fairy friend of the family, who was neither deaf or blind, said: “Why don’t you go into Parliament? Then nobody will notice.” And they didn’t.

III
ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

ONCE upon a time there was a princess whose mother would not buy her an umbrella. This was due to the wicked incompetence of the Prime Minister of that country, who, having no children of his own, spent all his money on swords instead of umbrellas. (Yes, I know swords are nicer generally, but these weren’t; besides they were two-edged.) Moreover, her mother went and bought her a most unbecoming mackintosh—the sort that cuts your chin. And so, as it was raining all the time (for this princess lived at Kilcreggan in Dumbartonshire), she asked to be turned into a frog or a toad, because they didn’t need umbrellas, and their mackintoshes fit at the neck.

Well, she was, and then she found that being a frog she couldn’t use her scooter, or read “Antony and Cleopatra” to her mother, or go into Kensington Gardens with her father. (No! Kensington Gardens isn’t at Kilcreggan, but this is a fairy princess, and so it doesn’t matter.) So she unwished herself, and she was a princess, and she had no umbrella and a mackintosh that didn’t fit at the neck. But it was a drought.[A] So all’s well that ends well.

[A] A drought is when it doesn’t rain at all. The scene of the story has been shifted from Scotland.

IV
FAINT HEART NEVER WON FAIR LADY

MISS JUNE MORTIFEX was most beautiful—yes, and more beautiful than that. So that when she looked out of the window the Meteorological Department in Exhibition Road, Kensington, over the Post Office, said: “The westerly depression over London is now moving rapidly northward with a southern twist,” which means nothing, and only shows how excited they all were.

But on account of her very exceptional beauty everybody was afraid of marrying her because they said “She would cost a King’s Hansom,” and owing to the increase in the number of motor taxicabs nobody had one about them.

So one day she blacked her face and assuming a Mid-Victorian Cockney accent went down Piccadilly singing the well-known ditty:

“O Mr. Jansen,

You kissed me in the hansom,

’Ansom is as ’ansom does,

Now you push me off the bus.”

As may be supposed, this remarkable revival aroused the interest of a distinguished literary critic, who, recognising merit, even under an unpromising exterior, offered his hand, shortly after followed by his heart. “But, Edward,” whispered June, “I am not what I seem.” “You couldn’t be,” he answered triumphantly, “the Victorians never were.”

And with that he walked into St. George’s, Hanover Square, and ordered three of the best banns they had. And he gave her as a bridal gift the collected works of Mr. Edmund Gosse, for he was not faint-hearted.

V
TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION

IT’S no good pretending that Petronella Gibbs was a good princess. For one thing, she was always asking questions. And if the nurses didn’t know the answer they were instantly beheaded. With the result that there was an unprecedented shortage in the supply of domestic labour. The Queen, her mother, indeed remarked to a friend of hers, another Queen living in the palace opposite, that “she never.” You may suppose therefore that things had reached a crisis.

But did Petronella care? She did not care. She could do without nurses, thank you. On the contrary, she decided to start answering questions. For instance. For a long time all the best people had wanted to know “Who’s Who.” And a very large and important book had been written about it. Petronella wrote as follows:

“Deer Editter.

Nobody is.

Yours evva,

Petronella P.”

This, which was the obvious solution, created considerable consternation. The Queen—her mother—had a long consultation with the King—her father—on his return from the Royal Exchange, where he kept his bulls, bears and hyenas, and remarked, “I never.” But the King only laughed. That is why so many women are Republicans.

At last Petronella became so celebrated that the King of America, colloquially known as the President of the United States, asked for her hand in marriage. He and his subjects had been guessing so long that they thought that the time had come to find someone who knew.

The flattering offer was accepted by her royal parents, and Petronella, with great pomp and ceremony, embarked. Upon her arrival she was met by the leading citizens, who asked her, “What do you think of America?” “I don’t,” she replied, which was the right answer. At which they, being accustomed to the latter, and never previously having met the former, exclaimed, “Truth is stranger than fiction,” and adding, “not half so true either,” asked her with tears in their eyes to return where they asserted she belonged. Which she did. And both she and the King of America lived happily ever after.

VI
A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME WOULD SMELL AS SWEET

WHEN Arthur Nobbs was a little boy he believed in fairies. If, for example, he ate part of his sister’s jam (as he constantly did), he assured her that the fairies would put it back. And if they didn’t, well that was because she didn’t believe in them.

When he grew older and became a business man he naturally continued to entertain that belief. When he was successful (as he generally was) in his business transactions, he ascribed his success to the fairies, though the persons he so continuously and cleverly ruined thought that he had got the name wrong.

One day he met a starving sculptor whose father he had been able to put out of business. “What are these horrible objects that you have in your tray?” he asked severely. “These,” said the sculptor, “are the seven fairies in which you believe.” “But,” objected Mr. Nobbs, “they are labelled ‘The Seven Deadly Sins,’ and they look it.” “Oh,” said the sculptor, “the title is only a matter of taste.” “You are an impostor, sir,” exclaimed Mr. Nobbs; “but fortunately we are in a law-abiding country.” And he gave the young man in charge for seeking to obtain money by false pretences.

But you will be glad to learn that Arthur Nobbs was subsequently raised to the peerage and died universally beloved and respected, and on his tombstone they carved the simple phrase:

“He believed in fairies.”

VII
A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE IS A DANGEROUS THING

THE father of Miss Liddell was favourably known to the general public as the man who had written to the public prints during a strike a bold letter beginning: “Sir,—Let all strikers be shot. Then let ...” and again during a lock-out an equally bold letter with the following introduction: “Sir,—Let all employers be shot. Then let ...” (It is believed that it is from this use of “let” in public correspondence that the word “letter” is derived.)

Miss Liddell, therefore, naturally objected to the fact that the Prince, over whose education she presided, disliked the manly game of football. “Don’t you know,” she would say from time to time, “what Wellington said about the playing fields of Eton?” “No,” the Prince used to reply, “who was Wellington? One of those professional footballers one reads about in their newspapers?” “Certainly not,” Miss Liddell was wont to reply. “He was a great general who beat the French.” “What did he do that for?” the Prince would ask. “Because they were his country’s enemies.” “Ah!” the Prince would say, “but I thought the French were England’s friends.” “So they are now,” Miss Liddell would say. “And did Wellington beat them because of football?” the Prince would inquire. “Wellington said so,” Miss Liddell (slightly flushed) would reply.

“Will you give me my paint-box?” the Prince would murmur politely.

VIII
TWO WRONGS DO NOT MAKE A RIGHT

LISTEN. This is quite a new story. It is about a swan that wished he was an ugly duckling again. He was one of those two swans who stand at the edge of the Round Pond, have black feet and holes to put tape through in their beaks. Only they won’t let you put tape through.

What he said was (quite simply), “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.” To which his mate said, “Then why do you always eat more than your share?” But the other swan was an idealist and took no notice.

He summoned a public meeting of the ducks after closing-time, and having elected himself to the chair after rather a protracted argument with a pertinacious old drake, told his audience that he was a duck at heart. “What is beauty,” he went on to say, “that it should put one on a lonely eminence. The exquisite shape of the swan, his girl-like neck, what right to rule do these confer?” “None,” said the old drake, heartily. “Did you say beauty?” said a young female duck, bridling her feathers. “Why you poor old antic, if you knew how we ducks sympathised with you on your deformity!”

But this was a little too much for the swan. “I did not come here to be insulted,” he said hotly, “by a brood of blasphemous pond-puddlers. Are you aware that the Great Swan made swans in his image?” “And are you aware,” said the old drake, “that the swans retorted by making him in theirs?”

“Well,” said his mate to the rather draggled swan who returned about midnight, “how did you get on?” “Get on,” he screamed, “those ducks think that equality means that I’m equal with them.” “And doesn’t it?” “Certainly not,” said the swan, tucking his head under his wings, “it means that they’re equal with me.” “And what’s more,” he said with sudden truculence as he emerged for a moment, “a swan’s a swan for a’ that.”

IX
BUSINESS IS BUSINESS

THE electric bell had rung for the fourth time, when the door was opened by an agreeable young man dressed in the height of fashion.

“Who are you?” he inquired in the amiable tone of one who begins an interesting conversation.

“I’m the Milk,” retorted the young man with the cans a little shortly, for he was not pleased at being so long delayed.

“Will you not come in one moment?” the young householder retorted. “I have within the butcher, the grocer and the baker, and I have long desired to add you to the list of my visitors.”

The young milkman (still carrying his heavy can) followed the polite young gentleman into a fine, lofty room. The whole was arranged with exquisite taste, and many deep rugs indicated a luxurious vein in the young man’s character. At the further end of the room, arranged neatly in an isosceles triangle (for the baker was much shorter than the other two), were the corpses of the butcher, the baker, and the grocer.

“May I inquire,” said the Milk, after surveying the scene in silence for a minute, “why you have killed these three gentlemen?”

“You have the best of rights in the world to ask, and I shall be delighted to explain,” answered the young gentleman courteously. “You must know, then, that I have a speculative interest in the manner in which the smaller British tradesman meets death. I have been much charmed by the experience I have gleaned with the help of my three friends there. The butcher,” he added, pointing smilingly to a discolouration on his forehead, “was the least graceful. And now as I have answered you, perhaps you will allow me to ask you a question?”

“But pray do,” answered the Milk, not to be outdone in courtesy.

“I thank you. I was going to inquire whether you knew any reason why I should not add you to my list.”

“I apprehended,” returned the Milk, “that your question might be something of that sort. I had gone so far as to prepare an answering question.”

“And what might that be?” inquired the young gentleman?

“Why should I not kill you?” retorted the Milk affably.

“There is something in what you say,” exclaimed the young gentleman. “I had not considered the question. Will you give me a minute or two to meditate?”

“I must be about my business, I am afraid,” returned the Milk, quietly bludgeoning the young man as he spoke with his milk can. “Yet how sad it is,” he said reflectively surveying the four corpses, “that speculation must inevitably make way for practical affairs.”

And with that he proceeded to replace the milk he had spilled with water from a neighbouring table.

X
LET SLEEPING DOGS LIE

ONCE upon a time there was a wizard who could find the truth in a newspaper.

Fortunately he was discovered and hanged in time, and since then nobody has dared to tamper with the liberty of the Press.

XI
IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND

NORTH of Skelleffteå, in the kingdom of Sweden, there lived a more than usually repulsive troll, who was, however, the supreme Scandinavian authority on psycho-analysis. The pine-trees in that part of the world walk down to the water of the sea as though the weight of their own beauty had become too heavy for them. And the sea with blandishing whispers holds out to them the immense temptation of his cold peace.

On a rock at the rendezvous of sea and pines, under a midnight-sun-haunted sky of June, the troll sat with huge horn glasses on his twisted nose relentlessly reading the work which Mr. Freud was to write some centuries later....

Out of the shadows of the pine, as straight, as serious, and weighed down like them with the burden of her own loveliness, slipped the Princess Gurli on her way to the cold temptation of the sea. Like other princesses before and after, she was enchanted. When she looked at her almost flawless loveliness in the lily-pond of her father’s castle, she saw always a faint silver mist that trembled at her mirrored lips. The mist would draw together into a frangible bubble, a diaphanous ball of silver, and finally dissolve, leaving an infinite argent stain on the red of her mouth.

One day a fish had swum up from the marble floor, and rising to the surface, had said to her, “What will you give me if I drink the mist?” And she had answered, “What do you wish?” “Your soul,” he replied. This she was glad in any case to be rid of, for her soul had often interfered with the natural pleasures to which she was entitled by her loveliness.

The fish and the mist disappeared together, and for the first time she saw herself in flawless loveliness. But she was strangely cold.

Princes came to her from the North and the South, but when they looked into the green stain of her eyes they shivered and turned away. The Princess was not sorry, for she thought that men were a poor substitute for her own beauty. But with her twenty-first summer she was conscious that her beauty was threatened. For a neighbouring queen had been heard to say of her, “Yes, she is lovely. But for me her beauty has no soul.”

Therefore she decided to marry a prince of her own choice, who would ask all of her and nothing, whose castle has no lamps and whose palace gardens are visited neither by sun nor snow.

It was on her way to this alliance that she slipped out of the pines, and beheld on the rock under the midnight-sun-haunted sky the unusually repulsive troll reading the prenatal works of Mr. Freud.

“Ha,” neighed the troll, looking up, “you have come to consult me, Princess Gurli.” “I have not,” said the Princess. “I do not like trolls.” “But I,” said the troll, “am not like other trolls.” “That is what all trolls say,” replied the Princess scornfully. “Perhaps,” said the troll, “but I am the greatest Scandinavian authority on psycho-analysis!” “What in Valhalla,” said the Princess, “is that?” “The study of souls,” cried the troll with a significant chuckle. “Oh,” said the Princess, “you can’t study mine. I haven’t got one.” “This is interesting,” said the troll; “you are undoubtedly suffering from an advanced condition of mermaid-complex.” “What does that mean?” said the Princess. “It means that you have a suppressed passion for a Mer-King,” replied the troll, “and if you give way to it you will be cured immediately.” “I have never heard anything so disgusting,” said the Princess. “Why, a Mer-King is half a fish.” “Half a fish,” said the troll sententiously, “is better than no fish.” “I had meant,” said the Princess, “to drown myself in the sea because the loss of my soul troubled me. But now that I know that souls are things that can be studied by creatures like you, I am very glad I have not got one.”

The troll was so shocked at this outburst that he fell backwards into the sea, where he was instantly seized by mermaids and drowned. But the Princess went back, slim and gold, through the shadow of the pines, and married the youngest son of the nearest fishmonger.

XII
ARS LONGA, VITA BREVIS

AT about half-past eleven on a summer evening there might have been observed, wending her way slowly along the Rue du Soleil Levant into the Cour de St. Pierre at Geneva, a small black kitten with her tail straight up. There was nobody in the cobbled square except the beech-tree in the middle with a wooden seat round him. The kitten, who was being brought up on a severely anti-religious basis, doubted whether the tree might not have been influenced by the cathedral window, in whose shadow he had dreamed summer and winter for more than a hundred years. She was therefore on the point of slipping into a most engaging gutter of stone, like a deep mouse-track, that leads past the chapel of Calvin to the railings that overlook the Passage des Degrés des Poules.

But the beech wasn’t going to stand that. On the contrary! He dropped one little fidgety brown leaf—puff!—between the kitten’s paws, who, throwing religious prejudice to the winds, played with it as enchantingly as though it had been a convert to Epistemological Radicalism.

Then the moon looked over the crooked gables into the square, and proceeded to light her cold lamp in all the dark cathedral windows. But the beech rustled her leaves warningly at her. “What is it?” said the moon, and then she saw the little black kitten dancing with the leaf on the cobbles. “Who is your little black faun of a friend?” she inquired of the beech. “I don’t know her name,” said the beech, “but she certainly dances extremely well.”

At this point the kitten stopped abruptly and said a little harshly, “What are you two old ones whispering about?” “We were remembering,” said the beech, who was a kindly old fellow, “the time when we also danced with our shadows in the joy of our youth.” “How can that be?” said the kitten impatiently. “The moon never was young, and you never had but one leg, and that stuck in the ground. You are telling me fairy tales, and I have no patience with them. Let me tell you my dancing is merely automatic muscular reaction.” “Dear me,” said the moon mildly, “what long words that child uses! But tell me, little one, if you don’t like fairy tales, you won’t want to hear the story of the cat and the fiddle.” “Does it observe the dramatic unities?” inquired the kitten. “I don’t know what they are,” said the moon, “but it has a moral.” “Which is more than you have, you little wretch,” said the beech severely. “Oh well,” said the kitten ungraciously, “I suppose I must hear it, though I expect that it will be representational.”

“Once upon a time,” said the moon, “there was a cat that had the soul of a musician. But when she tried to render her thoughts into sound she excited no sympathetic response. On the contrary, people threw boots and bottles at her. ‘I do not care,’ said the cat, ‘my songs are for posterity.’ But nevertheless the constant succession of missiles disturbed her.”

“It is my considered opinion,” interrupted the kitten, “that she was no artist. The best art rejects appreciation.”

“So the dog said,” observed the moon, “when he was chasing the cat up the tree with yells of derision. But the cat was not comforted.

“Finally one day as she wandered disconsolate through a field she met a very tragic cow lowing, as it seemed to the cat, with a mild haunting beauty. When she came up with the cow the cat observed that her eyes were streaming with tears. ‘How is it,’ said the cat, ‘that you who are notoriously as unmusical as a milk-can can low with a beauty that brings tears to your own eyes.’ ‘It is not my music that brings tears to my eyes, but my lost calf. And let me tell you, cat, that till you also play on the strings of your own heart you will never make music.’”

“This is very affecting,” said the beech-tree; “and very untrue,” added the kitten.

“The cat resolved this dark saying till one day she heard in the dining-room the delicate symphony of a spoon upon a china plate. Presently the sound ceased and the cat jumped upon the table to investigate. ‘How is it,’ said she to the empty dish, ‘that you make such exquisite music though you are nothing but baked clay?’ ‘It is the loss of the beautiful jelly that adorned me that sings,’ said the dish, ‘and let me tell you, cat, that till you also play upon the strings of your own heart you will never make music.’

“‘This is very strange,’ thought the cat, but she continued nevertheless to sing as before without sympathetic response. Till at last an angry old gentleman obtained a gun and shot the cat dead.”

“This story is in very bad taste,” said the kitten.

“I think she richly deserved it,” said the beech.

“Wait a minute,” said the moon, “the story is not finished. An old poor maker of fiddle-strings found the cat on his way home. And about a month later a young fiddler of the country called upon him to buy some strings. ‘These are the best I have ever made,’ said the old man. That night,” went on the moon, “the fiddler played under a window of a high house in the Place de la Taconnerie an old German tune, ‘Einst o wunder.’ And now no one threw boots and missiles, but out of a high lattice fell a white rose.”

“That is a very beautiful story,” said the beech, “and now I am almost sorry for the cat.” “You need not be,” said the moon; “even if her life was short her art”—“was in the right place,” rudely interjected the impertinent kitten. “But what I want to know is, who shot the fiddler?” “I am afraid,” replied the moon, “that I must be going about my business.”

XIII
SUNT CERTI DENIQUE FINES

“WHAT will the next story be about?” said the publisher. “I’m not sure that I shall publish the book at all if it’s about Swedish trolls and Genevese cats. Couldn’t you write about something British—a gnome who made 94 not out for Surrey and then went home and drank a bottle of stout?” “I not only can,” said the author, “but I immediately will.”

“There was once,” said the author, “a sprite who thought goloshes and hot water bottles unmanly. He preferred east winds and colds in the head, and being strong and silent (though he sneezed a good deal from time to time), and though he was a pagan himself, he could respect Christianity in others. His name was Puck; he lived at Bexhill.”

“I have been expecting this for some time,” broke in the publisher; “all you do is to take other people’s noble conceptions and distort them. Disguising plagiarism as travesty, you seek to impose on the public. But let me tell you, sir, in the words of the Latin poet, ‘Sunt certi denique fines.’”

“I am sorry to have given offence,” said the author, “particularly as I would have wished to sketch a new version of Puck’s life, when as a result of continued exposure to draughts in what the Americans taught him to call God’s Great Out-at-Elbows he contracted a vivid form of rheumatism. So crippled, he devoted his declining years to Worthing and the pleasures of a bath chair. Not unnaturally in these circumstances he developed a horror of Sussex and of children, and found his only remaining happiness in reading the poems of Mr. Edward Shanks to the local clergy. When he died, as he did shortly after this——”

“I am only surprised,” interrupted the publisher bitterly, “that the clergy survived.”

“Oh,” said the author, “they did not survive long. It is true that their counsel at the trial urged that it was justifiable homicide in self-defence, but the judge quite properly pointed out in his summing-up that they needn’t have listened. But I can see,” went on the author, “that this is not the sort of story of which you were in need. Let me therefore recount to you the true story of Jack and the Beanstalk.”

“I hope that it is not very long,” said the publisher.

“That depends on the method of payment,” replied the author. “If I am paid by the word, of course——”

“Get on with the story,” said the publisher.

“By the side of a slow river in the western parts of a great metropolis there lived a boy named Jack. Though he was so young he was already justly celebrated for his climbing feats. Indeed, the old woman who looked after him was never tired of saying, with a roguish smile at herself in the mirror, ‘C’est un vrai gosse!’ which means in English, ‘He takes after his spiritual grandmother.’

“Jack had climbed all the trees in his own garden and all those in everybody else’s. And then one day he announced that he was going to climb an entirely new tree whose roots are in the heart but whose leaves are in eternity.... There was much discussion among his friends, some saying that he should climb and others that he shouldn’t, and still others (but these were jealous) that it was little better than an Indian rope trick. But Jack was not to be deterred. For he said that he was tired of living among pygmies; he would now climb the Immortal Tree and slay one of the giants and return with his head.

“That night accordingly the tree was planted, and by morning its leaves hid the sky. After a farewell breakfast, at which a good deal of stout was drunk, and at which the Press was well represented, Jack started the ascent. He climbed up and up till he was out of sight. His friends waited about till nightfall, but as he did not return they concluded that he was making a night of it with the giants, and went home to their evening porter and bed.

“Next morning the tree was withered. Some said one thing and some said another. These, that the giants had insisted on Jack’s remaining among them, and these (but these were traducers), that he had fallen to the first giant. The general view, however, was that Jack had burst with chagrin on discovering that, except for himself, there were no giants. But since his departure nobody has ever climbed the beanstalk, for, as they all said, ‘Sunt certi denique fines.’”

“That story,” said the publisher, “is worse than the first. That was vulgar, but this has no meaning whatever.”

“You just publish it and see,” said the author.

XIV
HEAVEN HELPS THOSE THAT HELP THEMSELVES

IN the great days of Haroun-al-Raschid, when the minarets of Bagdad were sewn together against the sky like a gold embroidery on blue canvas, a certain merchant, whose name has unhappily not been preserved, was entering at nightfall with his camels and his asses through the Gold East Gate. The beggars, as was their custom, crowded round with shrill cries, extolling the merchant’s virtues and their own miseries, and suggesting that the former might reasonably be expected to mitigate the latter. “In the name of the All-Compassionate, the All-Merciful,” they murmured musically. But the merchant only wrapped his cloak round him closer, saying in a harsh voice, “Heaven helps those that help themselves.”

At this moment one of the merchant’s asses stumbled and beautiful red coins ran in the gutters under the pale yellow moon. With cries even more musical the beggars—not excluding those lame by profession—threw themselves upon the gold. “Sons of Shaitan,” roared the merchant, “I will have you all strung up to the city gates by your toes and ears. I will have you flayed with red pepper. I will——”

“You surprise me, oh merchant,” said a poet who had been a witness of the whole scene. “Is it no longer your view then that heaven helps those that help themselves?”

“Do you not see,” screamed the merchant, “that it is an ass that helps them?” “Does that surprise you,” inquired the poet, going on his way, “I gather from your appearance of wealth that heaven has already helped you.”

XV
“YOU NEVER CAN TELL”

“THIS is a story for patriots,” said the pin of the unexploded hand-grenade to the poppies among which he was rusting.

“What is a patriot?” asked the youngest of the poppies, who, I am afraid, was rather an affected puss and thought that the pin was in love with her.

“A patriot,” said the pin, “is a man who loves his country so well that he dies for it.”

“He would show his affection better to my mind,” said a rather withered female poppy, “if he lived for it.”

“Oh no,” simpered the young poppy, “I think that death is so romantic.”

“How adorable,” sighed the hand-grenade, “are the enthusiasms of youth. I remember exactly the same innocent thrill when some five years ago I reposed among a pile of grenades like myself all going into action. We were doomed, we knew, to burst. But what did that matter? Our country called us.”

“What country was that?” inquired one of the poppies.

“England,” said the grenade proudly. “Bow, poppies, you are in the presence of a British bomb! It is true, of course, that my iron was dug in Spain, that my copper came from the New World, and that my explosives were in part foreign. But I was as pure British as anybody else.”

“I’m sure you were,” said the young poppy consolingly.

“When we came to the trench,” continued the pin, “we were assigned each to a bomb-thrower. I myself fell to the lot of a young man beautiful as an angel and reckless as a devil. Grenade after grenade he tossed into the air with exquisite dexterity, and the frightful explosions and horrible cries that followed showed only too well how richly his skill had been rewarded. And now my great moment was at hand. An attack was ordered. Over the parapet he leapt clasping me in his hand, and together we flew through the flying and screaming death about us. We reached the enemy trench. The loathsome horrors were actually attempting to shoot down our brave fellows. I am happy to say that the bayonet taught them better. But alas! I now come to the most awful moment in my life. We jumped into the trench. My hero raised his hand to throw me at one of the incarnate devils. And then—his hand dropped. ‘Carl,’ he whispered, ‘is it you, Carl?’ This, mind you, to an incarnate devil. ‘George,’ he replied, and though he was a devil, I confess his voice made me uneasy, ‘has it come to this, dear brother? Throw the grenade. It will be better so. There can be no hell as foul as this.’ ‘What, murder you?’ cried my ex-hero. ‘Why not?’ said the other wearily. ‘After all, one more or one less, why should it matter to either of us?’ ‘I won’t,’ said George, ‘not if they shoot me for it.’ ‘What?’ said Carl, ‘have you still a soul? Then by God I can die in peace.’ And with that he shot himself through the heart. ‘Kiss me, George,’ he whispered, and George, dropping me as though I were of no account, kissed the crime-stained lips. And here in consequence I have been ever since.”

“And what happened to George?” asked the oldest poppy. “Oh,” said the grenade easily, “I am not sure. I heard—(and I hoped it was true) that he had been shot for cowardice in the face of the enemy.”

“Would patriots like that story?” inquired the withered female poppy.

“Certainly,” said the pin.

“Then,” said the poppy, “you do not seem to me to make out a good case for patriots.”

“Madam,” said the grenade hotly, “you would not speak so if you were being threatened by the hobnailed boots of a gross invader, who was on the point of squashing you flat. Then you would be glad enough to have the protection of a patriot like myself.” And the pin was so moved (and the sun so hot) that he suddenly and violently exploded, with the result that the poppies were scattered in fragments to the four winds of heaven.

XVI
UNITED WE STAND

NOW listen! and if you can possibly avoid it don’t interrupt. In the far and non-existent province of Arabia the population consisted almost exclusively of kings, except for the lower classes, who were, as everybody knows, emperors. The kings had it all their own way for years and years, when suddenly the emperors formed a trade society, popularly known as the Amalgamated Emperors’ Union. In pursuance of the principle upon which all such societies rest (in non-existent provinces), the emperors, as a preliminary step, ceased the function which distinguished their calling. The kings were thereupon compelled to act both as kings and emperors, which caused them inconvenience. Accordingly they summoned a special meeting of Sanhedrim—the Arabian legislative assembly—and passed a law withdrawing the right of association among emperors (though naturally preserving it for kings), and severely forbidding, under penalty, what was described in the Act as “striking.”

In Arabia—that fabulous country—a law on being duly passed by the kings becomes automatically a law of nature. So that it is very necessary to pay the greatest attention to the drafting. On this occasion the framers of the Bill had forgotten by an unaccountable oversight to omit “clocks” from the exclusion clause. In consequence all clocks in the province automatically ceased striking, and thereafter it was no use consulting an Arabian constable because nobody in that legendary land knew what o’clock it was.

“I suppose,” said the publisher scornfully, “you think that’s clever and Socialistic, and all that sort of thing. Have you any idea what wages we have to pay to the book-binders?”

“I asked you not to interrupt,” said the author. “Now you’ve prevented me from explaining how the clock in the principal mosque——”

“I don’t believe they have clocks in mosques,” said the publisher.

“—how the clock in the principal mosque welcomed the change, observing that it for one had always been in favour of methods of conciliation. ‘And anyhow,’ the church clock continued as it finally ran down, ‘why bother about time when you have eternity?’”

“Have you any aspirin?” inquired the publisher.

XVII
ICI-GÎT

WHEN at creation God was faced
With earth’s illimitable waste,
We understand that what he said is:
“Let there be light,”—and there was Geddes.

XVIII
SILENCE IS GOLDEN

“YOU will observe,” remarked the placid convict, negligently dropping his pick on the warder’s foot, “that a very few words express a great deal.”

The warder, who had already expressed more than a little in his first two words, stopped abruptly, and with a graceful wave of his hand bade the convict be seated. “For this,” he added, “is a subject to which I have devoted much thought, and you with your varied experience of men and manners should speak with authority.”

“It is true,” admitted the convict agreeably, “that in the course of the commission of a certain number of tolerably execrable crimes I have been brought into contact with many people, but I have made it a rule never to allow my conversation to be affected by the practical affairs of life. To be personal is to be dull without redemption.”

“But in your case,” interrupted the warder, “your experiences are so unusual that you might well be forgiven for dwelling on them.”

“That,” retorted the felon, with a certain graceful melancholy, “is the conviction of every conversationalist. But I have never supposed that a murder was necessarily interesting just because I had perpetrated it.”

“This sort of trait,” murmured the custodian of the condemned, “elicits a man’s respect. But,” he continued aloud, “what, then, is left us to discuss?”

“The universe,” smilingly returned the convict, “and any other fictions you may care to invent. The whole world loves a liar. I admit,” he added, with a gentle shrug, “that ‘Not guilty’ was an error, but that you will understand was more by way of repartee than of continuous conversation. The judge, after all, drew the retort on himself.”

“But truth, I have always understood, is stranger——”

“Pardon me if I interrupt,” said the criminal a little sternly, “but I cannot stand by and hear a friend (for I include you in that number),” he added courteously enough, “quote proverbs. I can forgive your being a warder of condemned men, but I cannot stand your being a guardian of (forgive me!) damned phrases.”

“You hold, then,” returned the warder, a little confused, “that quotation is not admissible in polite conversation.”

“You cannot quote a proverb,” earnestly responded the prisoner, “any more than you can butter a hypothesis. But I perceive,” he went on more gently, “that I have fallen into the fault of heat. Forgive a hotheadedness which has more than once ruined my conversation.”

“But I have nothing to forgive,” cried the custodian, much affected. “It is I who am the more to blame.”

“That, indeed, is true,” interjected the Governor of the gaol, who had come up unobserved during the latter part of the conversation, “and, much as I shall regret your loss, I must reconcile myself to it. While you,” he went on, turning to the convict, “will have leisure, when consuming bread and water, to reflect whether, after all, there is not something to be said for silence.”

XIX
LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP: OR, REFLECTIONS BEFORE YOU JUMP

“I AM tired of reflection,” said the looking-glass, “I will now live my own life.” As a first step to that end he succeeded in rolling himself right out of his seventeenth-century uprights and falling off the spindle-legged dressing-table, oval face downwards, on to a deep grey carpet.

“Dear me,” said the carpet, who was rather a simple old-fashioned thing, though of an excellent texture, “here is somebody come down in the world. Ahem! I hope, sir, that you are none the worse for your fall.”

“Certainly not,” replied the mirror, who was rather bewildered by the fall and the complete darkness in which his new situation had placed him, “I precipitated myself to the ground on purpose.” “What!” cried the carpet, who feared that she had to do with a self-murderer, “after full reflection?”

“Without any reflection whatever,” cried the mirror testily. “I am,” he added more suavely, “entirely incapable of such an act.”

“Poor thing,” said the carpet soothingly, for she now perceived that her affair was merely with a madman. “If you will only compose yourself I am sure you will be your own man again immediately.”

“I see, madam,” said the mirror, “that we do not understand each other. Let me therefore explain my point of view. You must know then that I am by nature a person of a profoundly original turn of thought. Judge then of my despair when a malignant fate ordained for more than a century that I should be tortured by serving merely to reflect the follies and lack of grace of others. I have borne things insupportable, and finally I took the magnificent decision which has, among, other agreeable circumstances of release, conferred upon me the pleasure of your conversation. You will conceive for yourself my mental tumult when you used the word ‘reflection.’”

“But, sir,” said the carpet, now much distressed, “reflect. Are you not flying in the face of Providence? If reflection was the gift bestowed upon you by your designer would you wantonly dissipate it? Such conduct, believe me, must have the most dire results!”

“Madam,” neighed the mirror with an accent that suggested his century, “I am, I hope, a mirror of Feeling, and I know what respect must ever be paid to the Fair. None the less, I cannot leave you a prey to common error, even though its removal should offend your Female Delicacy. M’am, there is no such thing as a designer, but each of us is his own architect.”

“No designer!” screamed the carpet. “Now the weaver be good to me! Impious creature, do you not know that we are each of us made with nicely adjusted virtues and qualities by an all-understanding maker? And that to doubt this is to be damned beyond hope of re-weaving?”

“And what, m’am,” sneered the mirror, “is your particular virtue?”

“To be a comfort and a support to the foot, an office of which I am proud,” replied the carpet.

“I dare swear,” said the mirror courteously, “that you are perfect in it. But I do not doubt that, were I called upon, I could adjust myself to the same task in spite of all the pretensions of your friend the designer.”

The carpet was spared the necessity of continuing so sacrilegious a conversation by the entry into the darkened room of its owner. He stepped heavily in the direction of the dressing-table, and stamped his riding-boot hard on the back of the mirror, smashing the glass to fragments.

“Damn!” he cried loudly, and after switching on the lights rang for a servant. “Who has been so d—d clumsy as to leave the old mirror standing between the window and the door?”

The servant picked up the mirror. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, “but it’s only the glass as is smashed. We could easy get a new one put in, and you were always complaining that the old one didn’t reflect.”

“Very well,” said the owner, “but the glass must be put right. Tell them to let me see the designer before the work is begun—and sweep up the litter of glass. By the way, the carpet’s not injured, is it?”

“No, sir,” said the servant, busily sweeping, “the carpet’s perfectly all right.”

XX
LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY

“THERE is a good deal of talk in certain circles,” said the deuce of spades casually to the ace of hearts, “as to the need for equality among cards.”

“And how,” inquired the ace amicably, “is this equality to be established?”

“There are three schools of thought,” replied the deuce readily; “the first holds that all cards should rank as deuce, while the second that all should be aces. I myself have ventured to favour a golden mean of all counting, say, as nine.”

“There is a great deal in all these theories,” replied the ace, “and I think one or other should be immediately adopted. There is, however, one point on which I should like to sound a note of caution. I do not quite see how in the altered circumstances any game is to be played.”

“Oh, we have thought of that,” said the deuce carelessly, “and frankly we do not see the necessity of the game.”

“Then,” said the ace, “I have nothing more to say.”

XXI
QUIS SEPARABIT?

TWO statesmen of well-merited celebrity in their own countries and times, having for a moment escaped the vigilance of their warders, met in a comparatively cool corner of hell to discuss the possibility of forming a new government.

“I do not feel,” said the first, “that H.H. any longer really represents the feeling in the circles.”

“I entirely agree,” said the second; “he is still, I fear, a hopeless reactionary and continues to believe that there is a distinction between evil and good—a doctrine which all advanced thought has long since abandoned.”

“And not only that,” said the first, “he is still a prey to the war spirit. He is for ever thinking in terms of the great conflict in which he thinks he was defeated. As a matter of fact, if he could only realise the truth, heaven was by far the greater sufferer, and is greatly embarrassed by the reparation exacted from him.”

“There is only one way,” said the second, “to repair the ravages of that unfortunate misunderstanding, and that is to recognise frankly that heaven and hell are necessary to one another and to arrange for a policy of goodwill and intercelestial understanding.”

“Nor should we stop at that,” replied the first, taking fire, as well he might, at the enunciation of sentiments so lofty; “mere understanding is not enough. We must have a pact, co-operation, even coalition.”

“With a common policy,” broke in the second, “resting on the best of evil and the worst of good.”

“The only difficulty,” said the first, “that I can see is one of the leadership.”

“We must not,” replied the second, “permit these wretched personalities to interfere with policies of universal benefit. Moreover, I am sure that the two forces are both too large-minded to let their personal inclinations stand in the way. And in any case, is it not possible that as a result of this great movement they may come to realise——”

“Yes,” cried the first breathlessly.

“—that they themselves are one and the same personality?”

XXII
MEN, NOT MEASURES

“WHAT is that little man with the soul like a wet umbrella, that somebody has left in a corner, doing?” inquired the lovely, though scarcely visible, presence that had unexpectedly materialised the night before in the house of the Prime Minister of Samaria.

“Hush,” whispered his conductor, the utterly outraged Private Secretary, “hush, they will hear you.”

“Have no fear,” said the radiant creature, looking carefully at the faces of the assembled Council, “my voice is of the kind that does not reach their ears. Therefore tell me what he is doing?”

“He is keeping minutes,” said the Secretary, a little sullenly.

“Why does he do that?” inquired the angel. “Were I in his place I would shoo them on their way like a hen-yard full of hens.”

“You do not understand,” said the Secretary; “he is keeping a record of what is happening.”

“But how does he know?” inquired the angel.

“By listening to what these gentlemen say,” replied the Secretary.

“Dear me,” said the angel, “if that is his only source of information I see that I must help him,” and he walked across the Council chamber to the side of the luckless clerk, gently disregarding the frenzied gestures of the Private Secretary.

The Clerk had made the following entry in a neat flowing hand on a handsome sheet of thick white paper.

“The Prime Minister drew the Council’s attention to the difficulties presented by the Poets’ Birth (Prevention) Bill. The object, as his colleagues knew, was to secure that in future poets should be made (if possible by publicity) and not born. Everybody agreed that democracy should have self-made poets, that the pretensions of birth must cease. At the same time it could not be denied that poets insisted on being born. It would be within his colleagues’ recollection that a number of poets had been made in the recent list of honours. They were, he was happy to say, perfect in every respect except that they did not write poetry. For his part he preferred that kind of poet, but it could not be denied that the opponents of the measure were making great play with this. He asked for the views of his colleagues.

“The Minister of Higher Education asked what poetry was?

“The Minister of Commerce entirely agreed.

“The Master of the Weasels thought that there was much in what had been said.

“The Senior Almoner had had a letter from a very respectable washerwoman in his constituency. She complained that there was a poet who wore soft collars. He did not wish to press the point, but popular feeling could not be neglected.

“The Keeper of the Conscience took the view that the time was ripe for action. Several members of the Council concurred.

“The Prime Minister, summing up, said that he was glad to find his colleagues unanimous in supporting the course he had proposed. The division was likely to be a close one. He especially appealed to Lord Albatross.”

At this point the angel took possession of the Clerk’s mind, and with a queer click the faces of the men round the table were rolled up like green railway carriage blinds, and their minds became visible, working rather like electric light studs being pressed off and on. The Clerk continued to write the minutes: “Not that Lord Albatross cared, but his stud would fidget his neck, and he couldn’t be expected to listen to the Prime Minister’s neat periods with a rasping stud. The other eighteen fellers probably had got their studs right. Anyhow, judgin’ by their serious looks, they had better things than studs to think about. Queer thing how complete they all looked—if you know what I mean. Couldn’t imagine them ever having not worn morning coats or neat grey tweeds and a sort of sewn-up-and-sent-home-hoping-it’s-to-your-complete-satisfaction look. Except ‘Conky,’ the Lord High Wig. ‘Conky’ was dressed up like himself—a sort of suit consistin’ of a heavy jowled face, glass eyes, looming stomach and the rest. Joke if they found him and ‘Conky’ out and gave them the push for having sneaked into the room during a Council.” Albatross suppressed a chuckle.

The P.M. looked at him coldly. “Damn the fellow with his aristocratic sharpness. There he sat looking like a stuck pig, and all the time he had followed every word and seen through the whole caboodle. That’s the worst of mixing classes. They’ve got their own cold, fishy way of nosing through the water, and snap—they’re on the fly, when you thought them fast asleep. They’d never understand each other—never. Here was he not caring a row of beans (or has-beens, he added, viciously looking round) as to what the result of the division would be. What he wanted was friendship. He wanted them all to see that he wasn’t just the best thing in talking machines that had been invented. Groping to them he was—to their hearts. Well, why not? They had hearts, hadn’t they? And just when he was stretching out a hand to gather in the strings this cold fellow fetches out his knife of laughter. Not human, that’s what was wrong. Born like a little Eastern idol. He should have stuck to his own lot. There was Crayfish, the Senior Almoner. He sympathised. He stood shoulder to shoulder. Damn! getting the rhetoric into his thoughts! Still Crayfish would pull it through, if only to irritate Albatross and Lord Conkers. If he didn’t, well he’d get back to humans at last. He had a right, hadn’t he, to be a man.

“The Minister of Commerce was drawing one O after another on his pad. Who did the perfect circle? Forget my own name next. Just ask old Crayfish—only chap in the room who’s ever read anything except The Morning News—begging Albatross’ pardon—and The Blue ’Un. Silly to have got cluttered up with this gang, and yet what a wonder the P.M. was. Never felt a thing in his life. Could make a bed—mattress and all—out of two adjectives and a noun. Yes, and the right adjectives too—right in a popular sense that is. But as a literary proposition, O Lord! How odd, though, to live by words that weren’t words so much as gestures and nothing behind them. Like Hume—association of well, not ideas, but penny plain dressed up as tuppeny coloured. Like a series of ballads hawked by a man in the street hung all round him and no man in the middle. Funny how not being a man he gets real men like old Crayfish for instance. That’s the one—no rhetoric for him. Look at his tense simple eyes. He thinks only of what’s best and loyalty, and if sincerity can get the damned thing through he’ll do it. Now I wonder if he does know who did the perfect circle?...”

The blinds clicked down again. The Master of the Weasels was standing over the Clerk pouring some brandy down his throat. The Clerk blinked his eyes and recovered suddenly. “I’m sorry, sir, I must have fainted. I’m afraid that I’ve missed part of the discussion.” “It doesn’t matter,” said the Prime Minister, looking at the notes, from which the angelic interpolations had disappeared. “Nobody said a thing while you were off.” “Oh,” said the Clerk happily, “then nothing happened. Will you sign the minutes?”

XXIII
YOU CANNOT HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT

A CERTAIN business-man in Damascus, whose efficiency was only surpassed by his personal ugliness, was informed that in a distant vilayet dwelt a peasant of whom it was currently rumoured that he possessed a goose that laid eggs of pure gold.

He accordingly chartered a caravan, and with much jingling of silver bells set out across the desert to make a proposition to the peasant. In his company was a young man who was reputed (though it had not been finally brought home to him) to be a poet. Whether this were true or no, it cannot be denied that he paid much heed to the ascensions of the moon.

On the third day of the pilgrimage that pale planet was bewitching in her pensive hair the reluctant black beauty of the desert. All was still except when a grave camel kneeling shook a bell. But presently, with the clear monotony of a bird, the young man’s voice was heard singing:

“In this cold glory

of midnight, day

and her fever

have passed away.

“Here in the quiet,

here in the cool,

even pain, even sorrow

are beautiful.

“And the voice of the poet

lifts and lingers

at one in the dark

with the older singers.”

“As I feared,” said the merchant, raising his head from his silken and tasselled pillow, “the fellow is a poet. I must cope with this.” Thereupon he lifted the flap of his embroidered tent, and in a sleeping suit, of which the radiant texture did not conceal the irregular contours of his frame, with one arm behind his back, strode across the sand to where, in a patch of shadow, the poet was crooning.