III.
My dear Charles,—Essential to that millennium which our restless revolutionaries are after is your head on a charger and my head on a charger; provided both heads are present it may be the same charger for all they care. When you think of the importance which we of the detested middle classes attach to our heads and the regrettable violence we might exhibit towards whoever called at our houses to collect them, then it seems to me you must confess to a sneaking admiration for the bravery of the turbulent minority in attacking so big a problem.
But when you get the inside details of their schemes you find that discretion is not only the better part but the whole of their valour. For arms you find incendiary speeches; for ammunition, viperish propaganda, and for epoch-making action you have nothing. In that "nothing" lies their main ingenuity and strong hope. If they can prevail on the masses to do nothing, at the right moment, and to go on doing nothing till there is nothing left, then, say they, they will have civilisation under; and if our heads don't fall off of their own accord then a thousand willing hands will be stretched forward to pull them off.
You ask me how I know all this. Close the doors so that we cannot be overheard, and I will tell you. I buy their continental newspaper—"organ" they prefer to call it, being rather proud of the noise—and there I read all that I want to know. It costs a halfpenny a day, runs to six pages, is well printed and brightly composed and contains no advertisements. There is generally a picture in thick black lines in the centre of the first page. Blood being the easy thing for the printer to "feature," the picture generally deals with the cutting off of heads. If it refers to the past, you and I are cutting off the worker's head, severing from a fine muscular body a noble head with a halo to it. If it refers to the future, the worker is having our heads off, severing from a fat and uncontrolled corpus a most unpleasant excrescence in a very shiny top-hat.
To run a daily newspaper of that "make-up," without advertisements and for subscribers of whom the larger number, like myself, omit to pay their half-penny, is not easy business. In fact it is not business at all. The question being raised as to where the money came from, the producers tried to allay our suspicion by making a great show of an appeal for help. The published results, which I give you in their English equivalent, were much as follows:—
| £ | s. | d. | |
| B. de M. | 6 | 0 | |
| Z. X. | 5 | 0 | |
| Idealist | 5 | 0 | |
| U. W. K. | 5 | 0 | |
| A Frenchman who is ashamed of France | 4 | 6 | |
| Young Communist | 4 | 0 | |
| Three young Communists | 3 | 6 | |
| "Great Britain" (collection) | 3 | 3 | |
| Disgusted | 2 | 6 | |
| Association of Women Fighters for Justice | 2 | 3 | |
| O. F. | 1 | 0 | |
| Down with Capital | 9 | ||
| One Who will stick at Nothing | 3 | ||
| —— | —— | —— | |
| 2 | 3 | 0 | |
| Previous lists | 14 | 6 | 8-3/4 |
| —— | —— | —— | |
| £16 | 9 | 8-3/4 |
The grand total of sixteen pounds, nine shillings and eight-pence three-farthings shows a magnificent spirit, but wouldn't keep much more than a couple of square inches of the front page alive for more than one day. Reverting, then, to the more pressing question of the removal of our heads, who is paying for the operation?
He is a heavy-built octopus sort of man of about forty-seven; a red cheery complexion, rather more fat than muscle, long grey hair tending to curl at the extremes, and followed about by a lady who acts as his secretary, calls him "Master" and adores the ground he walks on. They are married, but not, I should hasten to add, to each other; none of your dull orthodox practices for them. About his profile there is an undeniable something which makes his head a suggestive model for sculpture. It is framed in a large, white, soft silk collar, which falls gracefully over the lapels of the coat and is, I am told, of a mode much worn among the élite of the anarchist and atheist world.
I've a friend here in the law-and-order business who thought that, having reported all the movements of this Master of the Black Arts, he might find it worth while to make his acquaintance in the flesh. Indirect enquiry elicited that the desire to get into touch was reciprocated, the attentions of the police being insufficient to satisfy his sense of importance. So the meeting was arranged, and I was allowed to come along too.
We were received in great state in a special suite of the local hotel de luxe. The Lady Secretary was there, overflowing with "Masters" and "Sirs," and obsessed by the fear that her idol might not do himself justice in our presence. A very touching instance of human devotion: the fifth instance in his case, I believe.
This is the gentleman who finances the propaganda of destruction; we asked him if that was not so, and he answered, "Why, of course." Had we any fault to find with his protégé, the admirable halfpenny daily? We had noticed that its news was punctual and exact. Then of what did we complain?
"Of a certain exaggeration in the leading articles," said I, rubbing the back of my neck and wondering how long it would be there to rub and I to rub it.
"But what newspaper leaders are not exaggerated?" he asked.
"Your editors should not be paid to twist everything into an irritant," I protested.
"Of which of your great English dailies is the editor not paid to twist, as you put it?" he asked.
I knew that I had right on my side and he had not. But still somehow I seemed to be in the wrong all the way.
So my friend took the matter in hand. He didn't argue. He just drew his chair up to the Master's and asked him to tell us all about himself, how he came by his great ideals, what was the future of the world as he foresaw it and how he meant to arrange the universe when at length he took over?
The Master, gently smiling his appreciation of this recognition of his Ego, gave voice.
To the lady it was all, of course, above criticism: sublime, adorable. To me the frankness of it and the impudence of it was, I confess, amusing.
The world is out of joint; how good 'twill be
When Heaven is sacked and leaves the job to me!
An agreeable, if wrong-headed, crank, was my summary.
And this or something like it was my friend's:—"b. U.S.A. of Eng. parents, 9.5.78; tinned meat business, Chicago; 6 months' h.l. for frauds in connection with packing; went to Mexico, but left to avoid prosecution for similar frauds on larger scale; prison in Belgium, France and England in connection with illegal dealings in rifles (? for Germany); apparently liable to more prison in U.S.A. for crime unknown, if returns there; won't say where he gets his money from, but doesn't seriously pretend it is his own."
And when I came to go back over the Master's two hours' chat about himself, those are about the facts it all boiled down to.
Yours ever, Henry.
(To be continued.)
"£40.—Handsome Black Silk Golf Goat (large size)."—Irish Paper.
The very thing for the butting-green.
NIL DESPERANDUM.
The Amateur Championship.
Mr. Pott-Hunter, who failed to survive the first round.
The East of France Championship.
Mr. Pott-Hunter in fatal difficulties in the second round.
The Championship of Central Switzerland.
Mr. Pott-Hunter, defeated in the third round.
The Sicilian Championship.
Mr. Pott-Hunter, who reached the fourth round.
The Championship of Mozambique.
Mr. Pott-Hunter, a fifth round victim.
The Spitzbergen Championship.
Mr. Pott-Hunter, one of the semi-finalists.
The Championship of Upper Senegal.
Mr. Pott-Hunter, beaten in the final by Mr. Hunt-Pott.
The Tierra del Fuego Championship.
The winner, Mr. Pott-Hunter.
"Never you mind if 'e did say you'd got a neck like a camel. 'Tain't nearly as long as all that."
THE KORBAN BATH.
[Korban—"It is a gift"—Hebrew (or some such language).]
With some reluctance I return to the subject of baths. I went into the matter of bathrooms pretty carefully a few months ago, but since I have been in this hotel I see that there are one or two aspects of hotel bathing which still require attention.
To begin with, there is the question of the Korban or free bath. It is, of course, a scandal that a bath should be an extra, and an eighteen-penny one at that. After all, what is the bathroom for? We are not charged extra for smoking in the smoking-room or drawing in the drawing-room; why should we be bled for bathing in the bathroom? At the same time this practice does provide the visitor with the wholesome sport of Korban bathing. The object of the game is, of course, to have as many baths as possible which are not put down in your bill; and many are the stratagems which are employed.
The true sportsman attempts the feat just before dinner, because at that time there are sentries posted in every corridor. Ostensibly they are maids waiting to assist any lady who has a crisis while dressing, but no real pretence is made that they are there for any other purpose than to charge you for as many baths as possible. On my corridor there is a post of no fewer than three sentries, and it is extremely difficult to evade them. The only thing to do is to get to know three nice ladies on the same floor and arrange for them to have a dressing crisis simultaneously and go on having it for about a quarter-of-an-hour.
This needs a good deal of organisation. However smoothly the operation begins, one of the dressing crises nearly always collapses too soon, and the sentry catches you on your return journey.
For the lady visitor the problem is comparatively simple. I should mention that it is a perfectly legitimate manœuvre to get your bath put down to somebody else if you can do it; and the crack lady-player usually wraps herself in an unobtrusive bath-wrap, shrouds her head, modestly conceals her face, slips into a friend's room to borrow some Crème-Limon and, after an interval, rushes noisily out of the friend's room to her bath, which, with any luck, is charged to her friend's account.
The beginner at the game contents himself with less complicated ruses. Sometimes he has his bath late at night, when the sentries have been taken off; but, as the lights go out en masse at eleven, even this operation has to be carefully timed. There is nothing much gloomier than a bath by candle-light, except perhaps a bath in the dark. Hundreds, however, of both sorts are endured in this hotel.
The more brazen or the more timid simply walk into the bathroom fully dressed during the day, carrying a number of dirty golf-balls in their hands, and towels in their pockets and sponges up their sleeves, and issue later fully dressed with clean white golf-balls in their hands. It is generally thought, however, that this device is just a little—I mean it's not exactly—you know what I mean.
The Korban Bath Rules will probably remain unwritten for many a day, but I earnestly hope that before next summer the traditions and etiquette of bath-warfare as between individual hotel-visitors will be codified and issued in an intelligible form. At the moment the most extraordinary confusion prevails, and no one can tell whether any particular stratagem will be hailed with applause as a bold and legitimate operation of war or universally condemned as a barefaced piece of bath-hoggery. Recently, for example, an extremely courteous, not to say gallant, old gentleman was severely lectured by a lady for digging himself in on the mat and maintaining his position there till she emerged. She stated with, I think, considerable force that she had passed the age when a lady likes to be seen coming out of a bathroom with disordered locks; she also said that he was ruining her chance of a Korban bath by drawing attention to the fact that there was somebody inside.
He replied with equal force that, whenever he considerately withdrew from the mat in order to let a lady escape unseen, some less scrupulous combatant (usually one of his own daughters) immediately rushed the position, and he was not going to be had in that way again, though as a matter of fact, while they were arguing the matter out, somebody actually did this, so he was.
Now what is the way out of this dilemma? The only solution I see is the Sponge System, by which every competitor puts down a sponge, as one puts down a ball at the first tee. In this way definite claims can be staked out in rotation without congestion of the avenues of approach. I hope this system will be generally adopted next summer and, if it is used in conjunction with my Progress Indicator (which shows by a moving needle what stage the person bathing has reached), it ought to work very smoothly. But there must be no hanky-panky, no sharp practice with caddies; every sponge must be put down by one of the players in person. And there must be none of that regrettable collusion between husband and wife which has brought such discredit on the present system.
There was a very bad case of this the other day. A certain wife used to entrench herself in the bathroom early and remain in it till her husband—a heavy and persistent sleeper—arrived. When you rattled angrily at the door-knob she said very sharply, "Who is that?"—in itself a sufficiently disturbing thing. Even in the present days of shamelessness and crime there are few men who care to confess openly that they have angrily rattled at the bathroom door. If you said sheepishly, "It is Smith" or "Thompson" or "Lord Bumble," a heavy silence fell, broken only by those gentle watery sounds which it is so maddening to hear from without. When her husband arrived and answered the challenge with "It is I, Arthur," sounds of feverish activity were heard within, and a new bath was immediately turned on.
Casting all scruples to the winds, seven desperate men rehearsed the password, "It is I, Arthur;" seven desperate men presented themselves in a single morning and murmured lovingly, "It is I, Arthur." None of them had a bath. Seven times the good lady opened the door and beheld Smith or Thompson or Lord Rumble or nobody. And seven times she bolted back into the burrow again. She remained undefeated. Her husband got his bath.
I wonder what devilry she would be up to under the Sponge System.
A. P. H.
A Novelty from the Past.
"Antique, over a hundred years old, oak sideboard, brand new ... Apply after 6.30."
Evening News.
Surely after this candour there is no help to be got out of the twilight hour.
"Mr. Robert ——, who is now manager, entered his late employer's service three or four months after he commenced, and remained with him until he gave up."
Local Paper.
"They have their exits and their entrances"—the former in this case being the more satisfactory.
Intending Purchaser (to Artist, who is selling his house.)"Did you put those figures on the walls?"
Artist (modestly, though regarding them as a strong asset.) "Oh, yes—I—"
Intending Purchaser. "Well, they don't really matter. A coat of whitewash would soon put that right."