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 PASSION & POT-POURRI.
 
 SECOND IMPRESSION, 
 December, 1918.
 
 Passion & Pot-Pourri 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD KING 
 
 I 
 
 LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 84 
 105 
 
 19 
 36 
 
 PASSION. p,,, 
 
 I.— The Rose and the Rubbish-Heap 7 
 
 n.— The Altar-Gloth which was never finished .-. 24 
 
 in. — The Manuscript and the Squeaking Doll ... 43 
 
 IV.— The War of the Widows .. • 64 
 
 v.— The End of a Rose 
 
 VI,— The Friendship of the Fat 
 
 VII. — Frivolity and the Frump... - 122 
 
 VIII.— One Libertine Afternoon I'^l 
 
 POTPOURRI. 
 
 I.— Advice. —Whichever Way You Turn. — The 
 
 Ignorance of the Old.— Face to Face.— The 
 
 Terror of Life 
 
 II.— The Home and the War. — The Homeless.— 
 
 Mothers.— Four Wasted Springs.— So Few, 
 
 So Very Few? — Spring 
 
 Ill.—Cheerfulness.- The Comic Spirit.- Good Fun. 
 — Amusement. — Indifference. — A Recasting 
 of " The Thing."— The Relief of Fun.— Con- 
 trasts.— The Gift of Humour 55 
 
 IV.— A Connoisseur.— Economy. — The Charnn of 
 Housekeeping.— Getting Away From Things 
 —The Rose Garden of Books.— It Doesn t 
 
 Matter 
 
 V Towns. — The Town versus the Country. — 
 
 London.— Paris.— The War and Reading.— 
 The Human Link.— The Brontes.— Emily 
 
 Bronte. — Haworth ^^ 
 
 VI.— The Top Dogs.— The Little People.— Honours 
 for Good.— Honours.— The People who are 
 Never Heard of.— The Quiet, Simple People. 
 —A Sense of Justice in the Rank and File Hi 
 VII.— Happiness and "The Thing."— Never Any- 
 thing Twice.— Facing the Facts.— Life.— 
 The Horrors of War. - War as War is.— 
 
 An Interpretation of Sorrow 
 
 VIII.— The Drones.— Racing and Women.— A Mili- 
 tary Instance.— The New Dawn.— War. — 
 The Saddest Thing of All.— The Old Ruts.— 
 That Curious Fear— A Curious Blindness.— 
 Reconstruction.- Somewhere "Out There. 
 — Who Knows? 
 
 133 
 
 153
 
 TO 
 
 THE STAFF AND "BOYS" OF 
 
 ST. DUNSTAN'S HOSTEL FOR BLINDED SAILORS 
 
 AND SOLDIERS (COLLEGE ANNEXE) 
 
 I DEDICATE 
 
 THIS LITTLE BOOK IN FRIENDSHIP AND 
 
 GRATITUDE.
 
 i^SSl^^ 
 
 Passion and Pot=Pourri 
 
 PASSION.-I. 
 The Rose and the Rubbish-Heap. 
 
 It was very easy for the Tobacco Plant to talk so 
 lightly of love. Every flower in the old manor garden 
 knew that she had a nasty smoking-room mind, and 
 only came out in the evening. The Convolvulus, 
 growing over the garden wall, who went to bed at 
 respectable hours, felt absolutely convinced that her 
 over-scented neighbour was a most improper person. 
 
 *' To the impure," she whispered to the old Yew 
 Hedge, into whose society she had pushed herself that 
 summer, *' all things are impure." 
 
 She considered that sentence rather smart. 
 
 " Weed !" was all the old Yew Hedge deigned to 
 reply. 
 
 The Convolvulus regarded her pityingly. It was 
 positively sad to be so old ; sadder still to be so old- 
 fashioned. She, herself, might possibly be considered 
 an upstart, but, at least, she represented Progress — 
 with a capital P. Therefore she felt that she was fully 
 justified in continuing her remarks. 
 
 " Everybody knows," she went on pertly, " that 
 the Little Titian Haired Lady has never had a lover. 
 She is far too timid and gentle and retiring, and full 
 of the imperishable virtues. The knowledge of having 
 known love gives a woman a certain assurance. The 
 Little Titian Haired Lady is so fragile that I some- 
 times think she will one day be carried away by the 
 breeze like a dandelion clock. Besides," she added, 
 " look at the lonely life she leads — out here in the 
 , . . . wilderness ! No one ever visits her ; she
 
 Passion and Pot-Ponrri. 
 
 receives no one. Not that there seems to be anyone 
 really worth knowing in this part of the world 1" — she 
 gave a little affected laugh, full of condescension, with 
 just a hint of contempt; "Still, that is the disadvan- 
 tage of most country places. When one has heard 
 what the rector's wife has to say, and listened to the 
 life-story of the retired tradesman who strives to be 
 mistaken for * county,' everything for ever and ever 
 afterwards is sheer repetition." 
 
 She paused, hoping that the Old Yew Hedge 
 would wax angry and eloquent over the brilliance of 
 the days when she was young and dull Queen Anne 
 came to sleep at the manor house in the old family 
 bed. But the old Yew Hedge said nothing. It 
 rarely had anythmg to say of a period later than the 
 third King George. 
 
 So the Convolvulus continued : 
 
 " Besides, look at the monotonous life she leads 
 here, all alone by herself. When the weather is fine she 
 sits over there by the old Sun Dial and knits. Nothing 
 exciting ever happens to a woman who knits. Now, 
 
 if she played bridge ! . . . . However . True, 
 
 she can just see round the bend in the road from the 
 rustic seat — but nothing worth looking at ever passes. 
 Sometimes I think she must be waiting for somebody 
 — waiting for somebody who has forgotten the way. 
 I have seen tears in her eyes often. But a woman 
 does not weep when she has a lover. And yet," she 
 added by way of an afterthought, " perhaps she 
 does . . . ." 
 
 At the word " lover " the old Yew Hedge stirred 
 slightly. She was a sentimental old person, very 
 dense, but thoroughly dependable. Among the minor 
 pleasures of her oFd age was to put the younger genera- 
 tion in its place. 
 
 " All the same, my young person," she inter- 
 rupted gently, " for once in her disgraceful life the 
 Tobacco Plant is right." She paused, as if to add a 
 greater impressiveness to her words : " Once, many, 
 many years ago, the Little Titian Haired Lady really 
 had a lover !"
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. g 
 
 A sudden hush fell upon the garden. Even the 
 breeze stopped to listen. 
 
 But the silence was rudely broken by the Tobacco 
 Plant. 
 
 " Ha, ha !" she jeered. " You see, I don't come 
 out when it is dark for nothing, after all." 
 
 The Roses and Forget-me-nots shuddered at this 
 possible double entendre. 
 
 Only the old Yew Hedge paid no attention to the 
 remark. " He was a soldier," she went on, as if 
 nobody had ever interrupted her since she could re- 
 member, " and he wore a red coat. If I recollect 
 aright, his face was tanned by a sunshine which is 
 fiercer than ours ever is. I think he must have 
 served in India." 
 
 The oH Mulberry Tree, who was nearly as ancient 
 as the old Yew Hedge, nodded her head in assent- 
 though you and I might have thought her branches 
 merely swayed in the breeze. 
 
 " He served in India," she said, continuing the 
 story, " and when he came home, they used to meet 
 each other over there by the old Sun Dial— late at 
 mffht, when the little Titian Haired Lady's parents 
 had gone to bed." 
 
 " Quite right !" chimed in the old Yew Hed^e, 
 jealous of the Mulberry Tree's memory. " And what 
 a handsome man he was, to be sure ! So gallant and 
 so brave ! She .? .... ,Vell, she was a girl at the 
 time. I never considered her pretty myself, althou«h 
 she had a sweet, rather sad, wistful little face, and 
 the most beautiful Titian hair you ever saw. It was 
 not streaked with grey then, as it is now. It 
 was rich, dark, and literally glowing. There was 
 the most wonderful glint of pure gold in it. When 
 she let it down it reached almost to her feet. Her 
 eyes, too . . . ." 
 
 " Her eyes were just like mine !" cried the For- 
 get-me-not. 
 
 " And her lips were like mine ! " chimed in the 
 Rose.
 
 lo Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 " Her hands had all my lovely whiteness !'* added 
 the Lily, languidly. 
 
 " She was modest as I !" whispered the Violet. 
 
 " With my simplicity !" chirruped the Daisy. 
 
 " And my stateliness !" cried the Sunflower. 
 
 " And my sweetness !" smiled the Pink. 
 
 And this self-glorification might have gone on for 
 a long time, had not the Convolvulus cried out ia a 
 tone of great irritation : 
 
 " Oh, do shut up ! You make me feel positively 
 dizzy. Besides .... hoiv do you knozv !" 
 
 At which all the flowers chimed in in chorus : 
 *' He told her so one night near the old Sun Dial. The 
 old Sun Dial told us — and Sun Dials never, never tell 
 a lie !" 
 
 It was now the turn of the old Yew Hedge to con- 
 tinue the story. * 
 
 " You see, my dear child," she said gravely, " he 
 was very much in love with her at the time, and, 
 when you have lived as long as I have, you will 
 know that, so long as his love lasts, a man will tell 
 a woman over and over again that she is more beauti- 
 ful and more perfect than all the flowers in the whole 
 world . . . ." 
 
 To which the Mulberry Tree added bitterly : 
 
 " And then he is quite ready to throw her away 
 upon the rubbish heap, like a flower, the instant his 
 passion is dead." 
 
 But the Convolvulus was rather annoyed to realise 
 that no man had ever spoken of her in any terms 
 other than those which have reference to weeds. *' If 
 he really loved her, as you say," she asked with sar- 
 casm, " why did he not marry her? After all, that's 
 the truest test of a lover's love. Any man can do 
 what is expected of him under the mistletoe." 
 
 The old Yew Hedge really did look like the 
 Doyenne of the garden as she answered primly, " Her 
 parents were very ' county.' They simply would not 
 hear of the match. You see, his uncle kept a store in 
 Edinburgh. I rather fancy he had been made mayor 
 of that town. In any case, he was, I believe, a very
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 1 1 
 
 rich, very honest, and a very God-fearing man. But 
 in those days Commerce was the one unforgiveable 
 sin. For the Little Titian Haired Lady to have 
 married into trade — or, even where trade was — 
 would, I verily believe, have killed her parents. 
 They never really knew any family who had not been 
 where they then were for hundreds of years. They 
 called the young soldier an upstart and an inter- 
 loper " 
 
 " They used to stroll round the garden in the 
 evening after supper — everybody supped in those 
 days — saying the horridest things about the young 
 man's family and prospects," cried the old Mulberry 
 Tree. " Once they called him a ' bounder !' " 
 
 But the old Yew Hedge disliked to be inter- 
 rupted in her reminiscences. She seemed to lose her 
 hold of her own thoughts whenever she was inter- 
 rupted by anything more than " Dear me, you don't 
 say so !" 
 
 " The Little Titian Haired Lady used to meet him 
 all the same," she went on, hurriedly. " Of course, 
 no one in the house ever knew, and the Night never 
 tells its secrets. That is why people so often confide 
 in it things they would not dare to tell the Day." 
 
 She paused an instant to take breath. Then she 
 continued : " So things went on, until one day his 
 regiment — or whatever it is called — was ordered to 
 return . . . ." 
 
 " His leave was up," the Mulberry Tree whispered 
 to the Convolvulus in a confidential aside. 
 
 '-' I rather fancy there was some fighting going 
 on somewhere," the old Yew Hedge meandered on; 
 *' I can't exactly remember where it was — although 
 they did tell me. But I shall never, never forget how 
 the Little Titian Haired Lady wept when he told her 
 the news. The ni!;!;ht when they bade each other 
 * Good Bye ' was the saddest evening I have ever 
 been through in all my long life. You see, I heard 
 everything they said to each other, for they hid them- 
 selves in my shadow, so that no one in the hoase 
 could see them. I recollect the evening perfectly.
 
 12 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 It was a moonlight night — one of those moonlight 
 nights when, as she whispered to him while he held 
 her in his arms : 
 
 Heaven's ebon vault 
 
 Seems like a canopy which love has spread 
 
 To curtain her sleeping world. 
 
 " You will come back to me," she kept crying, 
 piteously. " Oh, swear — swear you will come back 
 to me." And he promised — he promised by all the 
 sanctity of their love, by heaven and earth and all 
 he believed in and adored — that he would return to 
 her in faith and honour, and that he would make her 
 his wife." 
 
 The old Yew Hedge paused, adding, rather as if 
 she were obliged to explain the joke of an improper 
 story : " And then their lips met in that kiss which 
 nearly all men and women receive once in their lives 
 as a benediction from Heaven." 
 
 Poor old thing ! It was so moved by this recital 
 of a romance of long ago, that it could not continue 
 for a few moments. 
 
 This was the Red Rose's opportunity. 
 
 " And that night," she said, sentimentally, 
 " one of the loveliest of my always lovely ancestors 
 was cruelly ravished. The tale belongs to part of 
 our family history, and we are none of us ever tired 
 of weeping over it. My ancestor was famous all 
 over the garden for her exquisite beauty. When 
 she came cut the gardener considered her the loveliest 
 debutante under his care. He wanted to show her. 
 Alas ! like all loveliness — her's, too, was a fatal gift. 
 When the Little Titian Haired Lady bade her soldier 
 lover * farewell,' this wonderful flower was cruelly 
 dragged from the arms of her family — dragged, would 
 you believe it ? not even cut by a pair of scissors ! 
 The awfulness of her demise made her mother culti- 
 vate grubs for the rest of the season. In fact, our 
 family tree has been grub-eaten ever since. That is 
 why we all fade so young." 
 
 " Quite right !" broke in the old Yew Hedge, sen- 
 tentiously. " I remember the incident perfectly.
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 13 
 
 He pinned her on the corsage of the Little Titian 
 Haired Lady's dress, and kissed her again and again, 
 telling her to keep it always for .... for his sake 
 
 • • . • • 
 
 " And after that," said the old Mulberry Tree, 
 taking up the story, " the Little Titian Haired Lady 
 rushed blindly in the darkness towards the house. I 
 know, because she passed me as she went. Her eyes 
 were full of tears. She was sobbing — sobbing as if 
 her heart would brealc. As she disappeared, I re- 
 member the evening breeze whispered some words of 
 comfort to the lover left behind — though, of course, he 
 thought that it was merely the evening breeze, saying 
 nothing at all." 
 
 " And tell me," cried the Forget-me-not, who 
 dearly loved romance, " was .... was he crying, 
 too ? ' 
 
 " Crying," smiled the old Yew Hedge, indul- 
 gently. " My dear, had you lived as long as I have 
 done, you would realise that the more people feel the 
 less they weep. He just stood there for a long, long 
 time in the darkness, gazing at the old Manor House, 
 from which never a light shone. Then he lit a cigar 
 and strolled in the direction of the shrubbery gate; 
 and, as he went, I heard him cry aloud — as if to the 
 night and the stars : 
 
 How sad, and bad, and mad it was — 
 But then, how it was sweet ! 
 
 She ^paused for a few brief moments, repeating the 
 lines over again to herself. Then she concluded, 
 with a touch of sadness : 
 
 " But it all happened years and years ago. He 
 never came back to the old Manor House again 
 .... never, never again !" 
 
 " And ever since that night," the Rose said 
 softly, "ever since that night, my ancestor — the beau- 
 tiful one who was pinned on my lady's dress — has lain 
 in the Little Titian Haired Lady's Bible, lonely, but 
 still exquisitely lovely. The Bumble Bee occasionally 
 brings us a message from her. She says that she 
 is keeping her colouring wonderfully — considering, but
 
 14 Passion and Pot-Ponrri. 
 
 that all her beautiful perfume is gone. Also she is 
 very bored. The Little Titian Haired Lady rarely 
 opens the book to kiss her nowadays. So she has 
 to be friendly with some people called the Adamses. 
 They are eccentrics, and wear hardly any clothes. 
 She can't know them intimately, because we have 
 always been very particular in our family, but she 
 often asks thera the time of day and how their children 
 are. Still, it is very dull. Sometimes, she feels 
 that she will become dust from the sheer monotony of 
 it all." 
 
 Then suddenly the Tobacco Plant joined in the 
 conversation. It was evening, and she was beginning 
 to feel giddy. 
 
 " The Little Titian Haired Lady will probably 
 kiss your ancestor less and less in the future," she 
 laughed ; " especially now that her soldier lover has 
 come back again !" 
 
 " Come hack again !" cried all the flowers of the 
 garden. 
 
 '* Well, I always understood he was dead !" said 
 the old Yew Hedge. 
 
 "Dead?" laughed the Tobacco Plant, gayly. 
 '* He didn't look dead last night when he was stand- 
 ing with the Little Titian Haired Lady near the old 
 Sun Dial !" 
 
 '* Last .... last night? .... Near* the sun 
 dial . . . ." echoed the Lily and the Forget-me-not. 
 
 << Were .... were they alone?" demanded the 
 Violet, anxiously. She feared that she was about to 
 be shocked. 
 
 *' No, they were not. There was another woman 
 with them." 
 
 " I don't believe you !" cried the old Yew Hedge, 
 rudely. 
 
 " Oh, tell me, do tell me," cried the Forget-me- 
 not, in great excitement. " Did he kiss her. Did he 
 take her in his arms ? Did he swear to love her for 
 ever and ever, just as he used to do ? Did he whisper 
 in her ear, * Darling, do you remember, years and 
 years ago, how we loved each other in this garden,
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 15 
 
 and how we swore to be true to each other for ever, 
 and .... and how I had to go away ? And now, 
 when, alas ! we are both quite old, we meet once 
 more, but we meet for the last time. Death will be 
 tTie only cruelty 'to part us henceforth and for ever 
 more.' Oh, tell me, did he say all that? Did he? 
 
 • • • • 
 
 But the Tobacco Plant only roared with laughter, 
 rocking herself to and fro in the evening breeze. 
 
 ** You silly little innocent thing," she cried, bend- 
 ing over the Forget-me-not. " No wonder people 
 gave you a sentimental name. He neither kissed her 
 nor told her that he loved her. On the contrary, he 
 just laughed heartily, and cried, ' Do you remember, 
 Molly, what a couple of young fools you and I were 
 in this garden years ago ....'" 
 
 " The heartless ruffian," cried the Rose. 
 
 " The callous heathen," cried the Lily, whose 
 expletives were all religious ones. 
 
 *' But that's a man all over," remarked the old 
 Yew Hedge, " and I've known them ever since Queen 
 Anne." 
 
 " What did the little Titian Haired Lady 
 answer?" asked the Convolvulus, who, being modem, 
 wanted to get at the facts. 
 
 " Answer?" asked the Tobacco Plant, looking up. 
 " Well, she didn't really answer him at all. She 
 simply said, ' Young people will be young people, 
 Jack. We were both romantic and foolish in those 
 far off days. And how long ago they seem . . . 
 so long ago that they might never, never have been. 
 But,' and her tone suddenly became humorous and 
 reproachful, ' You mustn't remind me of these things 
 .... now ! What will your wife say ? ' And she 
 looked anxiously at the other woman." 
 
 "And what did she say?" asked all the flowers, 
 m chorus. 
 
 " She said," replied the Tobacco Plant, " she 
 said, ' Don't mind me, my dear Miss Hethersage. 
 John has told me all about it. He always tells me 
 everything.' "
 
 i6 Passion and Pot-Potirri. 
 
 "Does he?"- interrupted the old Yew Hedge, 
 with a smile. « '* I wonder !" 
 
 " Soon after that they went indoors and I did 
 not see them again." 
 
 '* And was the Little Titian Haired Lady weep- 
 ing ? " asked the Forget-me-not, dew-tears gathering 
 in her little blue eyes. 
 
 " Weeping ? No, she was not weeping. I» 
 fact, I have never seen her so gay and bright in afi 
 my life. She was like a different woman." 
 
 " Perhaps she does not care," suggested the Con- 
 volvulus. " Life passes too rapidly for a woman to 
 hang her heart anywhere except upon her sleeve." 
 
 '* She may have got over it," said the Violet. 
 
 ** More likely she has found consolation in reli- 
 gion and faith," remarked the Lily. 
 
 " And that's all you know of life and love and the 
 Little Titian Haired Lady," cried the Rose, lifting her 
 crimson face to the evening sky. *^ Do you know her 
 so little that you imagine that, with her, the verb 
 
 * to love ' begins, * I will forget,' and the past is, 
 
 * I have completely forgotten !' Shame ! She cares 
 horribly, cruelly, as only such faithful women can love 
 and care. When they all went back to the house last 
 night, it was quite true that she laughed as if she had 
 not a trouble in all the world, but her laughter was 
 for the world to hear. Lots of men and women laugh 
 because of the world. It is their heart's armour of 
 self-defence. It keeps the world and the world's cal- 
 lousness from the real life which each one lives out in 
 silence and alone." 
 
 All the flowers were listening attentively, for, 
 when the Rose speaks, she speaks with authority. 
 (Someone once called her the Queen of the Garden, 
 and she has never really got over it. It has made her 
 very self-conscious. ^ She is always demanding to be 
 shown off in maiden-hair fern.) 
 
 " As the Little Titian Haired Lady bade her old 
 lover *Good Night,' he took her hands in his. They 
 were quite alone, for the other woman insisted upon 
 retiring first; she has reached that age when getting
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 17 
 
 up and going to bed are important preparations. They 
 were both standing on the threshold of the Littie 
 Titian Haired Lady's room — I know they were stand- 
 ing thus because the moonlight shining down the pas- 
 sage silhouetted them against its light. ' Molly,' he 
 said to her, more tenderly my ancestor thought than 
 was quite proper, considering all things, ' Molly, I 
 used to think that you cared for me years ago. Did 
 you?'" 
 
 *' Oh, what . . . .what did she say.'"' asked the 
 Forget-me-not, eagerly. " Tell me .... what did 
 she say.^"' 
 
 *' She said — and she said it with never a falter in 
 that grave voice of hers — ' Jack, dear, perhaps .... 
 perhaps, I did, a little .... once upon a time, years 
 and years ago. ' " 
 
 " And then," continued the Rose, sedately, *' he 
 kissed her hand and left her." 
 
 ** Left her.'' " echoed the Tobacco Plant, incre- 
 dulously. 
 
 " Yes, he left her. She stood there in the senai- 
 darkness watching his retreating figure." 
 
 ** And then ?" demanded all the flowers. 
 
 '' Then, in the silence of the sleeping house, she 
 heard the sound of a door being opened. It was 
 closed again immediately, but through the chinks and 
 down the corridor to where the Little Titian Haired 
 Lady was listening, there came the sound of laughter 
 from within. It sounded cruel and callous to her 
 bleeding heart. Then, as silence once more fell, she 
 tottered backward into her room, sobbing as if her 
 heart would break. She cried, as perhaps men and 
 women cry only once in all their lives. Her tears 
 *ame from the very depths of her being. I think 
 God must have heard them in Heaven." 
 
 " Later," went on the Rose, quietly, " when she 
 had recovered from this paroxysm of grief, from which 
 flowed all the pent-up hopes and disappointments of 
 the long, long years, she stretched out her hands in the 
 moonlight for the Bible which always lay on the little 
 table near her bed. From it she took the rose — my
 
 i8 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 beautiful ancestor — which her lover had given her so 
 long ago. Crushing it furiously in her hands, she 
 groped her way towards the open window. Then, 
 letting her arms lean limply upon the sill she gazed out 
 into the moonlit garden. Perhaps she was living 
 over once more those kisses, given and received there 
 in the long ago — kisses which only the old Yew Hedge 
 has seen and only we flowers know. Perhaps . . . 
 Oh, one can only guess what she was thinking I 
 But whatever her thoughts may have been, they 
 were too mysterious for tears. She simply stood there 
 in the open window, gazing, with eyes which seemed 
 not to see, into the far away, towards the Never Never 
 Land, far away across the river of unshed tears into 
 the heaven of Might Have Been." 
 
 She paused to let fall a dew-tear upon the groimd 
 beneath . 
 
 " Then," she concluded sadly, ". . . well, what- 
 ever her dreams were, they were not of those which 
 lull sorrow and regret to sleep. As she stood there, 
 fighting silently the dreary battle of Reality — in which 
 hope has no place — she crumpled, all unconsciously, 
 the rose she had cherished ever since her lover left her 
 years ago. Some of its poor withered petals fell upon 
 the flowers below ; others lay scattered forlorn and 
 helpless at her feet. . . ." 
 
 Then suddenly the Tobacco Plant interrupted the 
 Rose. She had expected a smoke-room story; she 
 always felt uncomfortable face-to-face with a clean 
 romance. 
 
 '* How do you know all this ?" she demanded, 
 rudely ; ** in the name of all imholiness, how do you 
 know all this ?" 
 
 Once again the Rose lifted her head towards the 
 stars. 
 
 " The Bumble Bee told me," she said, very 
 quietly. " He found the petals which once had been 
 tlie glory of my lovely ancestor, on .... the loib- 
 bish heap ... . only this morning I . . . . They 
 were covered in dust."
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. ig 
 
 POT-POURRI.— I. 
 
 Advice. 
 
 I OFTEN wonder if advice ever does anyone any good. 
 I know the person who gives it benetits exceedingly. 
 But the person to whom it is given — what about him ? 
 Is he the better for it ? I wonder ! I have often given 
 advice, and occasionally people have come to me for 
 it- Of the two, the former is the more enjoyable — 
 much. The latter invariably makes me feel a perfect 
 fool. For who am I that I should advise? Unless, of 
 course, the greatest muddler is, perhaps, the best per- 
 son to come to in order to learn exactly what not to do. 
 For, after all, failure is often our own fault more 
 than success. And if I wanted to know the person to 
 whom to come in a difficulty, I would come to him 
 who once had had the same difficulty, and taken the 
 wrong turning to get out of it. He, at least, knows 
 all about the punishment, and most of us are more 
 eager to avoid the punishment than gain the reward- 
 For if we miss the reward we are no worse off than 
 when we started ; whereas to receive the '* knock-out " 
 blow knocks you silly, and — well, there you are ! To 
 compromise is, perhaps, the best advice to give any- 
 body when in doubt. Advice — definite advice — is a 
 most treacherous thing. As like as not, if you happen 
 to follow it, you go wrong, and what would be quite 
 prudent for me would be the height of folly for you. 
 No, the person who really benefits by advice is the 
 person who gives it. He has nothing whatever to lose 
 or arain. Whereas, to air " views " often makes those 
 views clear — even to him who airs them. And as for 
 advice UDon life — there never was a more dangerous 
 subject to tackle. To save the young from the folly, 
 or the wisdom, of their youth is as thankless as running 
 after a feather in a high wind. Youth will gain its own 
 experience — and it is better that it should. Every age 
 has is own foolishness, its own danger signals, its own 
 cross roads. Sometimes I think that it would be better 
 for us, the elder people, to come to Youth for his
 
 20 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 opinions. Youth, at any rate, dashes headlong at 
 the root of the matter, whereas Age so often miiMes 
 -backwards and forwards until it is overtaken by Time 
 and cast upon the scrap heap. The scrap heap is 
 crowded with those who wavered in intention. 
 
 Whichever Way You Turn. 
 
 Whicheveh way you turn things go wrong, and, if 
 you fall in the Broad Way, you are just as likely to 
 get run over in the Narrow. You'll be ** up against it " 
 whichever way you take — somewhere, sonaehow, 
 sometime. What will lead one man to happiness wiH 
 lead another to misery. It's all in the game. Advice, 
 in particular, is a risky recreation. Advice in general 
 may often do untold good. Thus, if ever I would 
 advise Youth, I would advise him of his deportment 
 vis-a-vis the world. I would tell him that to carry his 
 heart on his sleeve is to offer a bull's-eye to every 
 passer-by, and all who pass will assuredly pick up a 
 stone and take aim. I would tell him to ignore the 
 conventions and avoid like the plague the spiritually 
 dull. For Conventionality never brought any satisfac- 
 tion by itself alone, and the dull — stick and stick, and 
 go on sticking. I would advise him to be suspicious 
 of the " Generally Accepted," for that which is 
 ** generally accepted " is generally dead. Above all, 
 I would advise him to think for himself in all questions 
 relating to religion, politics, morality, and social cus- 
 toms. There are some matters where it is happier t© 
 die with your back against the wall than hob-nob with 
 the crowd in the open. You will die in either case, 
 but in the crowd you will be stifled. And anything 
 which stifles will be wrong for you. Also, I would 
 advise him — and doesn't tJiis sound old-fashioned? — 
 to go away by himself from time to time in order to lis- 
 ten to his own conscience. There is no prophet quite so 
 inspired as one's own conscience. If you work against 
 it, you will suffer more and more as the years pass. If 
 you follow it, you may be unhappy for a time, but it 
 is better to be unhappy for a time than miserable
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 21 
 
 for ever. There is such a thing as Regret — and it is 
 the greatest waste of time. Your Conscience will 
 warn you concerning lots of things which some time, 
 sooner or later, you will lose the happiness of the fleet- 
 ing years by repenting. And Repentance is just one 
 of those things which you can't silence by argument. 
 You can silence it by drink — but then that will pre- 
 sently give you two enemies to fight against instead of 
 one. Of course, there are moments when the "still 
 small voice " is so small that you can't hear it amid the 
 hubbub of life. And after you have done things it 
 will suddenly bawl at you as though through a mega- 
 phone. But this is one of the necessary conditions of 
 life. It is only when Conscience shouts that you would 
 be wiser to listen. For when Conscience shouts the 
 voice is the voice of a prophet. If you ignore his 
 message the future is certain to be drink — or Hell. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 The Ignorance of the Old. 
 
 And to the y9ung I would advise a strong suspicion of 
 all established institutions. The world is full of estab- 
 lished institutions — most of which are sepulchres. The 
 moment an Idea is dead, someone buries it as a tradi- 
 tion. When it has been dead long enough it becomes 
 a legend — legends are traditions so long buried that 
 people have forgotten where the tomb is. Nothing 
 which is pompous has any real life left in it. Pom- 
 posity is a sure sign of lifelessness. There are heaps 
 of pompous tilings in the world, and at every one of 
 them posterity will one day turn the machine gun. 
 Although it may sound a paradox, there is some truth 
 in the statement that all " accepted " things should 
 be accepted with a grain of salt. In fact, to youth I 
 would say, " Accept nothing." Think for yourself. 
 If you think for yourself, you may occasionally be 
 wrong — experience will show you — but far more often 
 will you be right. The millennium would arrive at 
 once if the world stopped just for five minutes to think. 
 It is because people don't think that the dead possess 
 such an awful power over the living. We like to ima-
 
 22 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 gine that we govern, that our rules of conduct are the 
 product of twentieth-centuiy Thought. In reality we 
 are governed by about the seventeenth century, if not 
 earlier. Men are never so powerful as when they are 
 dead. The greatest surprise of the present war was the 
 utter inij)ossibility to discuss it in terms of ancient 
 battles. That it was like nothing which ever yet has 
 been, "winded" the elderly gentlemen, in whose hands 
 had come the destiny of the Empire, so completely 
 that most of them have not recovered their breath yet. 
 From the confines of their retirement they utter pom- 
 pous orations concerning the " spiritual idea " which 
 we are fighting for. They are safer explaining ideas. 
 Ideas are things which anybody can talk about — the 
 professor as well as the office boy. So when the Jack 
 Johnson " shishes " over the head of the soldier in 
 the trenches, he is asked to think there goes another 
 explosion in defence of an Ideal. It is strange, how- 
 ever, to realise how little we hear about this Ideal 
 when the German Taubes are dropping bombs on Lon- 
 don. Then the cry is all for going immediately and 
 bombing somebody else. It is blow for blow, and the 
 last one is the " knock out," which, when all is said 
 and done, is War. There is glory — a- divine glory — 
 in the individual courage, unselfishness, heroism which 
 War — as do all the mortal crises of life — brings forth. 
 But of this New Jerusalem for which the elderly gentle- 
 men at home insist that we are fighting, I have some- 
 what sad and grave doubts. If it comes, it will come, 
 I rather fancy, mal^re eux. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 Face to Face. 
 
 Most story-book heroes and hei*oines are what we 
 should all like to be, rarely are, and would positively 
 hate to live with. 
 
 What a lot of people there are who absolutely 
 refuse to meet life face to face — people who, not want- 
 ing to understand, yet demand a place on the 
 Seats of Judgment; people who believe in absolute 
 Right and absolute Wrong, and themselves know the
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 23 
 
 difference to a milligram ; j>eople who divide every 
 fact into " nice " or " not nice," men and women into 
 " ladies and gentlemen," emotions into decorous and 
 "wanton" ; people who shiver at a dropped "h," con- 
 demn a man for a dirty collar, look uj)on all women 
 as irretrievably wicked who " fall," and live in a kind 
 of weak-tea-party world wherein surges an endless 
 turmoil of things which do not matter. For such 
 people is the great mass of milk-and-water fiction, the 
 platitudes, the conventions, the law, parliament, the 
 Church Congress, and squirrel-skin toques. They are 
 the great human wall against which new ideas, real 
 reforms, and the '* big things " of life hurl themselves 
 unavailingly. 
 
 One does not cure a vice by refusing to discuss it. 
 
 The Terror of Life. 
 
 There are moments when life TERRIFIES me; 
 when 1 long to get away from it ... . anywhere 
 .... It is not that I am anxious to die — unless 
 death be ar^ awakening — but simply that I long to 
 flee from existence, as I have known it, into that land 
 of peace and love where one lives so happily and so 
 peacefully — in one's dreams. It is not the struggle 
 for life, which makes the heart so weary, as the 
 struggle 0/ life. It is the never-ending effort to make 
 your character fit the niche into which it has pleased 
 Destiny to hammer you; it is the everlasting *' grin " 
 which we must assume in order to guard that scar 
 which day by day becomes more apparent and more 
 difficult to hide. 
 
 And the future taunts you with the thought that, 
 when your little day is done — there will be for you 
 merely the numbness of old age— on and on, until that 
 moment when, one bright sunny mom, may be, the 
 little flame of your life flickers up for the last time 
 — and — poof ! — all your endeavours, all your longings, 
 all your hopes and dreams, end in — smoke ! But 
 who cares ? Time, utterly indifferent, still rolls on 
 and on down the silence of etemitv.
 
 24 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 PASSION.— II. 
 
 The Altar-Gloth which was never 
 finished. 
 
 The Embroidery Needle had been sticking into the 
 Altar Cloth so long that it was beginning to think 
 the church, for which it had originally been intended, 
 would be crumbling into ruins long before it reached 
 its destination. 
 
 " Very soon I shall be quite rusty," it moaned 
 disconsolately, " and to rust," it added, for the bene- 
 fit of the Altar Cloth, ** is to grow old." 
 
 But the Altar Cloth was one of these people who 
 look at life through mud-coloured glasses. It would 
 have pained her to see the point of more than two 
 jokes on the same afternoon. Any attempt at con- 
 versational '* smartness " was completely thrown 
 away upon her. When she grasped it, she became 
 suspicious. 
 
 The Embroidery Needle realised this. With 
 greater seriousness, it continued, " For me, age would 
 be a tragedy. I belong to a brilliant — a very brilliant 
 family. There were twenty-four of us at home, each 
 one as sharp and dazzling as the other. I was, per- 
 haps, the most wonderful of all. I am wonderful 
 still; but how can even the most brilliantly ground 
 Embroidery Needle shine when it is only imcovered 
 in order to impress some stupid man with the domestic 
 cunning of a plain woman's fingers.^ " 
 
 The lone sentence made her short of breath. 
 
 " The thing is impossible," she concluded; and, 
 a few minutes later, in the dim obscurity of Ethel- 
 ruda's work-box, it lay down and wept. Nor were 
 its tears without cause. Indeed, the Embroidery 
 Needle was to be greatly pitied. It had been stuck 
 
 into the Altar Cloth first of all in the year but 
 
 stop ! Why — why drag in dates ? Ethelruda always 
 hated them, and it was poor, plain Ethelruda who.
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 25 
 
 iifteen years ago — Heavens, the truth is out ! — pro- 
 mised an embroidered altar cloth to the Parish Church 
 of Wigglesworth-on-Sea during that summer when 
 Lancelot Seymour, a bachelor parson from Oxford, 
 held that extremely lucrative living, 
 
 " And since then — and likely for ever and ever, 
 Amen," snapped the Embroidery Needle viciously 
 (she was ruthlessly matter-of-fact, as are all people 
 born into the world to be useful — '* whenever there is 
 a man upon Ethelruda's horizon, I am brought out 
 to perform a few more stitches. But it is very slow, 
 and very disheartening, and Ethelruda is very absurd 
 
 « • • • 
 
 " I can't think why she has never married," 
 interrupted the Altar Cloth, sentimentally. " She 
 is a very worthy woman .... and most amiable." 
 
 " That's why." 
 
 " What do you mean ?" 
 
 "I mean," said the Embroidery Needle, smiling 
 grimly, "that poor old Ethelruda belongs to that dull, 
 old-fashioned school who think that Wilhelm .... 
 Oh ! I mustn't say it in German, not in these days 
 .... that Lancelot, then — is attracted by an exhi- 
 bition of domestic virtue. But, of course, he isn't. 
 He's far more fascinated by a display of lingerie. To 
 show a man by a thousand pure and beautiful acts 
 how worthy you are to be loved, is all very fine, but 
 for really speedy matrimonial business it's far better 
 to show him an expanse of leg." 
 
 " I consider you're very vulgar, and very horrid, 
 and very coarse !" exclaimed the Altar Cloth in dis- 
 gust. *' I know Ethelruda far, far better than you 
 do. I represent her Better Side." 
 
 *' Then I consider it very indelicate of her to keep 
 that ' Better Side ' exclusively for bachelor men !" 
 answered the Embroidery Needle, sharply. " You 
 and I met for the first time fifteen years ago — during 
 the era of Lancelot Seymour, the curate. After three 
 months of hope, ending in disappointment, we were 
 packed away, only to be brought out again when the 
 new doctor appeared on the scene. When that wretch
 
 lb Passion and Pot-PourH, 
 
 married the parish nurse, we went back again ii\to the 
 cupboard. There vie might have remained until I 
 was rusty and you were stained, had not Ethelruda 
 let the house to a literary man for the summer. His 
 advent caused us to be taken to the little rose-eovered 
 cottage near the mill, and there, on the lap of Ethel- 
 ruda, we waited and waited, and waited for this long- 
 haired man who never came — even to call.^ I suppose 
 we must have waited too long, for the scribbler went 
 off with Ethelruda's best silver tea-pot and some-beau- 
 tiful Derby china — besides forgetting to pay the rent.*' 
 
 The Embroidery Needle paused ; then went on 
 sarcastically — 
 
 *' Well, you know what happened after that ! 
 We lay in the darkness of Ethelruda's work-box so 
 long that I feared you would end ud as a dislicloth and 
 I should have been set to darn stockings. Not that 
 I should have obiected — even to that fate. After a life 
 of drab monotony, it is something to be sworn at. 
 But such a fate was not to be. Ethelruda's mother 
 saw to that. She had reached the age at which a nice, 
 well-to-do, respectable disease was expected of her. 
 She developed a ' touch of neuritis.' This touch ol 
 neuritis drove both mother and daughter to a Buxton 
 Hydropathic. You know, there's nothing like a hydro- 
 pathic for getting off plain girls." 
 
 '* Poor woman,'' sighed the Altar Cloth, conven- 
 tionally sympathetic. " How she says she suffers !'* 
 
 " Quite so !" remarked the Embroidery Needle. 
 '•.That's why you and I come here year after year. 
 That's why we never go anywhere else. That's why 
 we have to lie for hours and hours every August upon 
 Ethelruda's ever-broadening lap while she pokes me 
 in and out as if she loved to do it. If she doesn't 
 find a husband soon we shall be finished through 
 sheer passing of time. Mamma calls Ethelruda her 
 * busy bee ' every time she crosses the lounge. But 
 that's for the benefit of the old Indian Colonel who 
 always sits in the next chair. She doesn't know the 
 old gentleman's deaf in that ear. But the purpose- 
 ful Widow does. She always sits on his other side. 
 
 o
 
 Passion and Pot-Ponrri. 27 
 
 You should have heard him chuckle when she whis- 
 pered to him the other evening, after Mother had gone 
 out with her usual remark, ' I call her a very plain 
 bee, don't you? ' I nearly fell on to the floor, I 
 laughed so much ! " 
 
 " I think you're very unkind," interrupted the 
 Altar Cloth, assuming the " hurt " expression of the 
 clergyman's wife when she hears " Damn !" " It's 
 because Ethelruda has always been too particular that 
 she has never married. She is so refined; she has 
 such beautiful thoughts, such fine and splendid ideals, 
 and such a pure and noble spirit ! Nothing less than 
 the best man will satisfy her romantic cravings. She's 
 too good for men — that's the real truth of the 
 matter." 
 
 " Oh, hosh !" jeered the Embroidery Needle. 
 " How can you be so silly ! Ethelruda would find her 
 ideal in any man who lent her a paper-backed love 
 story. For example, there was that foreign-looking 
 fellow last night, who sat with her in the oriental 
 cosy-corner and pretended to admire her rings. He's 
 only to do it again to-night — to pass her the marma- 
 lade to-morrow at breakfast — and she'll be all over him 
 at lunch time like convolvulus over a hedge if you let 
 it. She fluttered, while he held her hand, like an 
 osprey in the wind — and this afternoon, instead of 
 playing with us, she sat pretending to read Browning. 
 We were to leave Buxton next Saturday — you and I — 
 but I'm qifite certain we shall stay longer. Did you 
 hear him make an appointment with her for this 
 evening I did. * I shall look forward to another 
 delightful talk with you to-morrow evening,' he said. 
 ' You will be free, won't you ? It is so rare to find 
 people now-a-days interested in poetry and literature 
 and art .... all the things which really matter.' " 
 
 '* ' That all depends upon Mamma,' simpered 
 Ethelruda, wishing that she had put some more 
 powder upon her nose. * She is always my /irsf 
 consideration. Sometim.es she likes me to read to 
 her. We are going throufrh the works of Walter 
 Scott together now. We both love hfm. You know,
 
 28 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 I am not in the very least like the modern girls ' — 
 (" ' Girls ' is good," laughed the Embroidery Needle. 
 " ■' Girls,' indeed 1 1 must keep my eye on that boy 
 Methuselah ! ") — ' who treat their Mothers as if their 
 very existence were a bore.' She gazed soulfully at 
 her friend, and smiled. He did not notice the smile, 
 but he saw the gold-stopping in her teeth. And if 
 there were one thing he loathed .... 
 
 " ' You may laugh at me,' " she went on, * and 
 call me loving, and domesticated and affectionate. 
 Well— I AM I Father u„wd to call me his " Little 
 Treasure." He always said that no one could write 
 his business letters like I could. Poor Papa I Yes, 
 indeed, I am a little home bird. I cannot bear the 
 noisy, sporting, selfish modern girl. I find I have 
 nothing to say to them. I love housekeeping, and 
 nursing, and reading .... and, of course, embroi- 
 dery. Look ' — (" And you remember," said the 
 Embroidery Needle in disgust, " how she held you 
 up for admiration.") — ' I want to finish this before I 
 go away. I only began it the other day. But I am 
 a quick worker. Do — do you think I shall get it 
 done? ' (She hoped he would ask the question which 
 she was waiting to hear. He did.) 
 
 •' ' May I ask what it is ? ' " he demanded, with a 
 fine assumption of eagerness. 
 
 " ' This ? ' — and she smoothed you out carelessly, 
 as if you were of no greater value or interest than an 
 example of plain sewing — ' is an Altar Cloth.' 
 She said the words ' Altar Cloth ' as if she were 
 uttering them in church and the angels were listening 
 to her. * I only began it the other day.' She con- 
 tinued in a more worldly manner, * I simply love 
 fancy work. See,' and she held you up for his in- 
 spection. ' I've nearly finished this fleur-de-lys. Do 
 tell me that I've worked it beautifully.' Her manner 
 became more and m.ore arch. ' Don't you wish you 
 could embroider?' she asked playfully. * You men 
 .... you are so clumsy with your fingers. Not 
 that I should like to see a man knitting,' she hastened 
 to explain ; *"! don't believe in the sexes encroaching
 
 Passion and Pot-Poiirri. 29 
 
 upon each other's recreations. Personally, I do not 
 even smoke. I look upon it as unwomanly. I 
 don't believe men like to see women smoke either. 
 Do they.? ' . . . . 
 
 " After what she had said he could only declare 
 that they didn't. 
 
 *' 'It is so delightful to find out how many ideas 
 we hold in common,' she went on intimately. 
 ' Some people we seem to know directly. Others, 
 whom we see every day, remain strangers after an 
 intimacy of years. It is very strange.' 
 
 " ' Eo you believe in aliinities ? ' he broke in sud- 
 denly, striving to put a wealth of meaning into the 
 words. 
 
 " Ethelruda wondered if the question formed the 
 prelude to a proposal of marriage. 
 
 *' ' I — I don't — know ! ' she stammered, assum- 
 ing her air of early-Victorian primness before Man's 
 over-mastering passion. 
 
 '* As he did not continue the subject she helped 
 him. 
 
 " ' Perhaps,' she sighed, ' in seme instances 
 .... that is to say . . . .' 
 
 '* After this their conversation drifted over a hun- 
 dred conversational topics, upon all of which Ethel- 
 ruda expressed thoroughly Avomanly and ladylike 
 opinions 
 
 ** At the end, her companion rose to go, with the 
 excuse tliat he had an important letter to write, 
 and must catch the post at all costs. 
 
 " 'Thank you so much,' he cried, holding her 
 hand; 'thank you so much. I don't know when 
 I have had a more delightful talk.' 
 
 " ' Oh, not at all .... ' cried Ethelruda, 
 with the mock-modesty of having conferred an in- 
 estimable gift, but not wishful to appear to presume 
 upon her kindness, v 
 
 " ' I shall look forward to having another dis- 
 pussion after dinner,' he murmured. 
 
 " ' With pleasure,' she answered, letting her hand 
 rest in his. as long as he continued to hold it. ' That
 
 30 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 is to say, of course, if ... if mamma will let me.' '* 
 
 And now let me finish the Embroidery Needle's 
 story myself. 
 
 He took his leave ; but instead of going to the 
 writing room, he walked straight into the bar. 
 There he ordered a stiff whisky and soda. He was 
 still drinking*^ when the gong sounded for dinner. 
 And no one was more glad when he went out than 
 the barmaid. She was unutterably tired of listen- 
 ing to his dissertation on Frumps. 
 
 " If Mamma %vill let me ! " mimicked the 
 
 Embroidery Needle jeeringly. " Let her? 
 
 Mamma will simply PUSH her. If this goes on very 
 much longer — say, to the end of the week — we shall 
 be finished — you and I. I don't mean to say that 
 you'll ever see an altar," it added. " You'll more 
 probably end up as a night-dress case. I shall per- 
 haps be lost in the middle of an embrace. But I 
 do not care. Anything for a change of scene. When • 
 one has lived more than nine-tenths of one's life in 
 a cupboard, even mud has charms " 
 
 That evening Ethelruda sat in a lonely comer 
 of the Hydro lounge with the Altar Cloth — which she 
 was already wondering if she could turn into an 
 evening cloak — on her lap, and a man, whom she . 
 had definitely decided was a God among his kind, 
 by her side. She had reached that stage of beati- 
 tude which girls in the early nineties used to describe 
 as " dreamy." She wished that the band would 
 play a valse. In the meanwhile, however, she pre- 
 tended to be very, very busy. Her nimble little 
 fingers were working feverishly upon the embroid- 
 ery. " There is nothing so effective for the full dis- 
 play of white, well-manicured hands than fancy 
 work," she thought. Her hair was beautifully 
 waved, she wore the most lovely evening dress in 
 her wardrobe, and she had put on every particle of 
 her own, and much of her mother's, jewellery. 
 
 From time to time she lifted her eyes to his, 
 and as quickly dropped them again. Nevertheless, 
 the brief glance was sufficient, she felt, for him to
 
 Passion and Pot-Ponrri. 31 
 
 understand how locked their souls were in mutual 
 understanding and love. Occasionally he would — or 
 she thought he was trying to — make her look at him 
 afresh.. But she was wise enougl? to avoid the 
 temptation. Men, she felt, love to fight for love. 
 They invv^ardly despise girls who throw themselves 
 at their heads. Well, she would never do that. But 
 presently, when he would say something very beauti- 
 ful, or quote poetry, or hum the refrain of a 
 love-song, or do any of those romantic things which 
 she felt men do when they are passionately in love, 
 she would put her hand out towards him with a 
 look of unutterable soulfulness, and the rest v/ould 
 merely be a question of how soon or how long it 
 would be before she murmured " Yes .... Alfred 
 
 , . . . I ivm !" 
 
 *' I really think we are getting on — or off — at 
 last !" cried the Embroidery Needle, as it was poked 
 through the Altar Cloth. " Did you notice how 
 tenderly he held her hand while he was examining 
 the diamond ring on her little finger? When a man 
 is not in love he takes up and lets fall a woman's 
 hand as if it were simply a pump handle. But when 
 he*s in love — well, the ashes of the finest cigar are 
 not more tenderly shaken." 
 
 He 'had asked her to go for a walk, and she 
 was hesitating. 
 
 " Do you — do you think it would be quite — 
 quite proper for you and I to stroll in the garden?" 
 she asked, pretending shyness. *' Not that there 
 would be the least harm — really; only — well, you 
 know what people are !" 
 
 He begged her in accents she could scarcely 
 hear, which yet rang through her brain with clarion 
 notes, not to refuse him. 
 
 " But Mamma — what would Mam.ma say ? " 
 
 She could not hear what he answered, but it 
 sounded to her over-wrought brain like ** Damn 
 Mamina !" 
 
 *' Do come !" he pleaded once more. 
 
 Torn between the fear of influenza and ecstacy, 
 she still hesitated.
 
 32 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 " Your mother need never know," he added. 
 " No one will ever know." 
 
 This argument overpowered her resistance, as 
 it has overpowered the resistance of — oh, so many 
 women ! 
 
 " Let us take this quiet path," he whispered, 
 placing his arm around her waist. " The night — the 
 stars .... and .... and .... you ! " In the 
 darkness her hand sought his. 
 
 " Love and the -world well lost !" was all that 
 Ethelruda could think of for a proper explanation at 
 this exquisite moment. 
 
 Let come what come may, 
 
 she misquoted madly — 
 
 What matter if I go bad, 
 I shall have had one day ! 
 
 Aloud she cried, " Mr. Pappenheim .... 
 Alfred ! Fancy, if we had never met ! " 
 
 " We were destined to meet," he cried, using 
 the favourite wheeze of soulful romance. '* From the 
 very beginning of the world. Ethelruda !" He sud- 
 denly stopped in the darkest part of the dark path- 
 way. " Etheldruda !" — and his voice sounded hoarse 
 with emotion. " I . . . . / love you ! " 
 
 "Are his intentions honourable or otherwise?" 
 cried Ethelruda in her heart. " Am I to be a ruined 
 .... or merely a married woman .... this 
 .... this is heaven !" 
 
 Heavily she let herself slide into his open arms. 
 Linked in a passionate embrace he dragged her in 
 the direction of a garden arbor. 
 It was already occupied. 
 
 Staggering blindly in the darkness, they groped 
 their way towards another summerhouse. 
 That also was not vacant. 
 
 Nothing remained to them but the middle 
 of the croquet lawn. It was enough. Eagerly his 
 kisses rained upon her face and hands. Occasionally 
 her lips sought his, but more often he m-anaged to 
 elude them. Yet Ethelruda did not care. Never in 
 all her life — never in her wildest dreams — had she
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 33 
 
 iver been made love to with so much passion, so great 
 an intensity, bo masterful a purpose. How tightly 
 he gripped her hands ! How tightly his arms clasped 
 her throat as he showered kisses upon her upturned 
 lips. Verily this was love ! 
 
 Then, suddenly — with a quick impulsiveness, 
 which Ethelruda thought showed a manly protection 
 of her " good name " — he gave one last lingering 
 caress — a caress which seemed to wander all over her 
 — and let her go. 
 
 '* Until to-moiTow, my beloved," he cried; and 
 for the first time she realised that he spoke with a 
 slight German accent. *' Until to-morrow." 
 
 At that, in the words of a novelette, he flung 
 her av/ay from him and fled into the night. 
 
 Staggering, in blissful semi-consciousness,, 
 Ethelruda returned to the Hydro, trailing her em- 
 broidery behind her.. Happiness filled her heart. At 
 last she belonged to somebody besides her relations. 
 At last she v/as loved, really and truly loved- -for 
 herself alone — (since never once had she hinted of her 
 income). Heaven was very kind. 
 
 In her state of exultation, the thought of cross- 
 ing the crowded lounge became an impossibility. She 
 did not wish to have her dream interrupted by the 
 sound of clinking coffee cups and the jar of conver- 
 sational laughter. In the great moments of life it is 
 best to be alone. 
 
 Locked in the privacy of her own bedroom she 
 could live over once more those blissful moments, 
 hear those passionate words, which henceforward 
 would make her life one perpetual psen of thankful- 
 ness and praise. Those may love greatest who love 
 early, but they do not enjoy it so much as those 
 who love when they are forty. 
 
 Ethelruda lay for hours on the sofa, drav^n up 
 near the open window. From it she could gaze sen- 
 timentally upon the moon and the stars, at the same 
 time passing over in her mind the happiness of the 
 morrow, the greater happiness "of the wedding day, 
 and the bliss of the " for-ever-and-ever, Amen." She 
 saw herself arrayed in soft white satin and lace — a
 
 34 Passion and Poi-Pourri. 
 
 graceful, elegant figure, receiving in graeiousness 
 those compliments which everybody knows are never 
 nieajit. She saw herself standing before the altar in 
 the parish church at Wigglesworth-on-Sea, the central 
 figure of a drama which never fails to thrill. The 
 wedding would be a simple one — an exquisite gown 
 from London, the wedding veil which belonged to 
 her mother, a string of pearls, and of course . . . . 
 
 .... Thinking of the engagement ring made 
 her instinctively pass her right hand over the back 
 of the left one. 
 
 Its nakedness made her suddenly clench both in 
 horror. 
 
 Mechanically she put her hands to her throat, 
 around which she had hung the loveliest pearl neck- 
 lace she possessed. Convnilsively, she clutched the 
 front of her bodice where her brooches had been 
 pinned. 
 
 They were gone ! 
 
 Frantic with horror she looked at her wrists 
 aroimd which had hung the bracelets borrowed from 
 her mother's jewel-box. They, too, had disappeared ! 
 
 For a few minutes she disbelieved her own senses. 
 
 Then, suddenly, with a look of unmistakable 
 horror and disgust upon her face, she rushed over to 
 the mantelpiece and pulled the bell. But she did 
 not wait for the maid to answer her summons. In 
 another instant she was rushing blindly along the 
 passage and down the stairs. 
 
 " Where .... Where is Mr. Pappenheim?" she. 
 demanded, breathlessly, at the office. 
 
 " Mr. Pappenheim .... ?" 
 
 *' Yes .... vv'here is he ? \Vhere is he ?-' 
 . " He left about an hour ago, madam, in a taxi 
 
 Then he was gone ! 
 
 And Ethelruda was left disconsolate and alone, 
 propounding to herself the problem as to how she 
 could recover her jewellery without revealing the cir- 
 cumstances in which they were stolen to the world. 
 
 After many weary months, she decided that she 
 would conceal her disappointment« Henceforward
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 35 
 
 she would content herself by posing as a woman who 
 has never married because once — years ago — she had 
 a " disappointment." 
 
 Alas ! men always seem to avoid '* disappoint- 
 ments." 
 
 That was why the Altar Cloth never got finished. 
 
 But she and the Embroidery Needle never quarrel 
 now, for the simple reason that they never meet. 
 
 The Embroidery Needle became so loose at last 
 that the Altar Cloth had to drop her. She now lies, 
 exceedingly dull and rusty, at the bottom of a rub- 
 bish heap, and the Altar Cloth has become a sheet 
 slip on Ethelruda's bed. 
 
 And what of Ethelruda ? 
 
 It was she who wrote again and again to the 
 " Evening News " to say that every German — no 
 matter what his age or sex or nationalisation papers — 
 should be immediately interned. The enthusiasm 
 with which she hunted down spies in Wigglesworth- 
 on-Sea during the first six months of the war, greatly 
 troubled the existence there of every male Belgian 
 refugee. They couldn't get used to being arrested. 
 
 Now she is a W.A.A.C. — and happy !
 
 36 Passion and Pot-Pourri, 
 
 POT-POURRI.— II. 
 
 The Home and the War. 
 
 Not so very many years ago the Home was quite an 
 old-fashioned, not to say unfashionable place. We 
 used to sneer at it — I have done so myself. It seemed 
 to be the Great Enemy against the pursuit of LiA'ing 
 Your Own Life^^and that philosophy of revolt used to 
 be shrieked at every corner of the market-place. 
 People went into fiats, kept fewer servants, and lived 
 for tlie most part, at restaurants. It was not con- 
 sidered chic to have children — at least, if you were 
 requested to have them, well, ove — and that a kind of 
 exhibition child, for the gratification of Mamma's pride 
 at tea-parties. The genius of Home was was a very 
 demode kind of genius. The Poor had such things — 
 the Rich were far too busy getting richer in order to 
 dance the tango. Girls wanted to be bachelor girls ; 
 even mothers yearned to be bachelor mothers — while 
 father had his club, a house which possessed all the 
 comforts of a Home with none of its nagging. And 
 then the war came — and the hollowness of our preten- 
 sions was made manifest. For to us, nowadays, Home 
 is Heaven spelt in a different way. The war — and it is 
 as well to turn our mental eyes to the little good war 
 does amid all the misery, and waste, and suffering it 
 means — has purified our ideals. It has brought us 
 ail back to the essentials of life and happiness. And 
 the greatest of these essentials is our Home. The 
 Home — the good Home — has won many a man his 
 coveted honour, has gained many a victory, has eased 
 the pain and soothed the heart and mind of many a 
 soldier broken and cast aside by the stress of war. It 
 is in the Home that the Good Soldier is made. It is 
 for his Home that he really fights — for it, and to return 
 to it once more. Victory will mean little or no flag- 
 wagging to the man who returns. Drinks, and cheers, 
 and national anthems are all very well for the civilian 
 who has remained behind. The man who has fought 
 wiU care naught for these things. All he will long for
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 37 
 
 ■will be his Home — and all that a real Home means in 
 love, and understanding, and blessed forgetfulness of 
 the world's ''ri'ueity and sorrow. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 The Homeless. 
 
 I ALWAYS feel so sorry for the soldier who has no 
 Home to which to return. 1 feel even sorrier for the 
 soldier who is faced by a return to a bad one. A sol- 
 dier, especially a disabled soldier, should be granted a 
 free divorce. To fight and suffer and loin — and then 
 to come back to a Home of filth and misery and ill- 
 feeling — that must be hell indeed ! For, say what we 
 will in praise of ambition and success and triumph, 
 the happiness and balm of a man's life lies in his Home, 
 and nowhere else. V\^ithout a Home to come back to 
 — a Home which really is a Hom.e, not a " suppressed 
 hell," but a commonwealth of love and unselfishness 
 and mutual love and aid — victory must mean a very 
 empty thing, and peace a hollow mockery of what 
 peace might mean. And sometimes I think that the 
 Poor are happier in this respect than are the Rich. 
 For Home to the Poor means so very much 
 more than it does to the Rich. Among the 
 •Poor Home is that commonwealth of which I 
 iiave just said that it is made up of love and mutual 
 %»elp, and aid and sympathy and understanding. For 
 the Poor are lucky in that mothers and fathers and 
 children live together, work together, suffer together, 
 «wim or sink together. The Rich can afford so many 
 other interests which do not begin and end in the 
 Home. They may follow the beckoning of the out- 
 side world so much more easily. Before them lies the 
 whole wide world and all its joys and amusements. 
 They may taste them all at any time. Thus they so 
 often miss the essentials of happiness in a wild pursuit 
 jof the joys which, when they are reached, contain 
 40 little real joy, because they have not within them 
 Ste^ kernel of Home-Love which is the key to all last- 
 ^ -Wppiness. With the Poor it is different. Trouble 
 »««?. anxietv and work bind them closer together. 
 
 'o*
 
 38 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 They are ivorkers — and only workers are really happy 5 
 for rest and peace, the reward of all labour, are the 
 greatest happiness of all — save Love, of course, but 
 that is so fleeting and often so bitter-sweet. I have 
 written many hundreds of letters for wounded men in 
 hospitals unable to write for themselves, and nothing 
 has struck me more forcibly than the devotion which 
 exists between these men and those who belong to 
 them. Nearly always are they the love-letters of men 
 to their wives ; or the other kind of love-letters which 
 children write to their parents, their brothers and 
 sisters, and their chums. I have been particularly 
 struck by the wonderful capacity which the Poor pos- 
 sess for Love in all its manifestations. Love, it seems 
 to me, plays a so much greater part in their lives 
 thon in those of richer" people. It expresses itself in 
 quite commonplace utterance often, but then the signs 
 of Love — real Love ; I don't mean passion, which is 
 essentially frothy — are very often quite commonplace. 
 The heart's " song within the song " has often the 
 simplest tune. It is none the less divine for that, how- 
 ever — the greatest songs of all being quite simple 
 melodies. 
 
 • • • • • . # 
 
 Mothers. 
 
 The more I watch and listen, the more I am assured 
 that in this war they are the mothers who have suffered 
 most. Maybe they have shown their grief less than 
 wives and sweethearts, but the greatest griefs of all 
 are those which endure, the griefs which, from the 
 moment of their birth, lie hidden behind courage and 
 a smile. The love of husbands and wives so often 
 becomes fainter through the passing of years, but the 
 love of parents for their children, of children for their 
 parents — but more especially the former— is founded 
 in the very depths of their being, it is part of Jthem- 
 selves, the greatest, most Enduring, most unselfish 
 part. The wounds of this war are deeper in the hearts 
 of mothers than imagination can ever picture. It 
 will be the blood of mothers' hearts which will lie
 
 Passion and Pot-Poiirri. 35f 
 
 heaviest on the heads of the Kaiser and his hosts. 
 Meanwhile they stand pitifully by — proud and heart- 
 broken. Even if their boys return to them — the songs 
 of thanksgiving will have words very different from 
 those Vifhich the great crowd will sing in the market- 
 place. They will not chant of kings and empire and 
 victoiy. But in the depths of their tried hearts they 
 will utter a prayer of thanksgiving such as no words 
 can express ; or, if their boys will never, never return 
 again — the pseans of victory will fall on deaf ears. All 
 they will see will be the lonely, or maybe unknov/n, 
 grave far away, beside which their spirit mounts 
 guard, watching and waiting silently for that day 
 when their souls shall seek out at last, near the por- 
 tals of Heaven, that " boy " whose death in action 
 also killed all that was happiest and brightest in their 
 lives, numbing all zest for life, and ageing them 
 immeasurably before their time. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 Four Wasted Springs, 
 
 One of the tragedies — minor tragedies, if you will — of 
 the war, none the less tragic because the loss is purely 
 individual, is the four vv^asted seasons of spring. One 
 dare not, as it were, look at the spring ; one dare not 
 love and enjoy it ; one dare not dream amid its divine 
 beauty in these days when everything innocent and 
 beautiful and divine is of that enthralling loveliness 
 which saddens one and breaks one's heart. It is better 
 to shut one's eyes to it, dam the current of one's 
 dreams, stifle the longing to live and enjoy while yet 
 life and the power of enjoyment remain. Before me, 
 as I write, there stretches a garden full of that fresh- 
 ness, that greenness, that exquisite loveliness — all that 
 perfect promise which is spring. But the beauty of it 
 hitr/s. It is as if one were sailing far away^ from the 
 land wherein dwell all those we love and worship most 
 dearly on earth. Of ivhat good is it to watch the 
 slowly-receding coast-line until it disappears silently 
 beyond the horizon } It is breaking the heart inch by 
 inch, listening to the heart-beats as they slowly, and
 
 40 Passion at^d Pot-Pourri. 
 
 yet more slowly, throb towards silence. No, it is 
 better deliberately to shut one's eyes tight and go 
 below to harangue the steward for the poor accom- 
 modation of one's cabin. It is not his fault, but, at 
 any rate, to worry over these things is life — the life 
 which for so long, for so very, very long, we must 
 perforce accommodate our heart to lead. And so it is 
 with the spring. Its loveliness positively hurts. To 
 enjoy beauty alone is a very sad and lonely joy. And 
 how can one enjoy the beauty of spring when all 
 around us there is agony and suffering, terror, and the 
 death which is physical, and that, perhaps, grimmer 
 death which is death in life ? The dream which can 
 never, never come again turns the loveliness of spring, 
 the glory of nature, into a paradise which, as it were, 
 is also hell — like the sobbing notes of a violin, which 
 seem to awaken all the old longings, the old, old 
 visions which we vainly tried to deceive ourselves were 
 silent and dead. We cannot bear the terrible contrast 
 of it. Anything to escape the dreams which its love- 
 liness awakens — war work, books, theatres, rag-time, 
 newspapers, any mortal thing which breathes of iron 
 duty, energy, the common commonplace, a lack of soul 
 and beauty, of all romance. 
 
 So Few, So Very Few ! 
 
 You will say, perhaps, that the war will not, after 
 all, last for ever, and that the man and woman of 
 average longevity will live through three-score-and-ten 
 ■of God's wonderful springs. And that to a very minor 
 extent is true. The war will not last for ever; but the 
 memory of it, the suffering of it, the incalcu- 
 lable waste of it, will last for all that remains 
 •of our lives — which is *' for ever," after all, 
 so far as you and I are concerned. Besides, 
 the number of years a man and woman live may 
 mean to them so few, so very few, in everything which 
 really and truly means life. There are years and years 
 when, puppywise, we live with our eyes tightly closed. 
 There are also years and years when the eyes, though
 
 Passion and Pot-Ponrri. 41 
 
 open, are dimmed with age and tears. The years in 
 v/hich a man and woman know that they are alive, 
 know the wonder of it, the glory of it, the power of it, 
 are few — so very few ! They can be counted on the 
 fingers of two hands. Who knows, too, 'from day to 
 day, if these wonder-years of ours have not already 
 been counted — counted, and we have not yet been 
 able to enjoy ? The thought is tinted by despair ; the 
 uncertainty of it goads us on to desperation, seizing 
 our moments of happiness and joy where we imagine, 
 often, alas ! so fondly, they are to be found. The 
 effects of war are not only to be found in hospitals, in 
 lonely homes, in poverty and want and death. There 
 is a very definite form of " madness " which is also 
 prevalent. It is not madness in the accepted term — it 
 is just the agony of a human heart, goaded by the 
 haunting thought that life can never now ofier that 
 promise of happiness which it has, alas ! never yet 
 given, striving to force the hand of fate against its 
 will ; the song of tlie soul which sings — 
 
 Then let come what may, 
 No matter if I go mad, 
 
 I shall have had my day. 
 
 There is often pity needed in many a circumstance 
 which would ordinarily obtain nothing but contempt 
 and abuse. 
 
 Spring. 
 
 I ALWAYS envy, although I do not admire, the man or 
 woman for whom, metaphorically speaking, spring 
 means little more than spring medicine, spring rash, 
 hay fever, new potatoes, and peas. Again, metaphori- 
 cally speaking, as types they are extraordinarily flat 
 — like drinks (although drinks which " fizz ", usually 
 land one on the road to perdition). But the best of the 
 road to perdition is that, right up to the very end, 
 there are always unexpected by-paths which can lead 
 a wayfarer straight into Heaven. And one of the most 
 beautiful facts of life is that the vast majority of the
 
 42 Passion and Pot-Pourn. 
 
 people who travel — often against their better instincts 
 — find these by-paths by themselves. There are very 
 few who reach the end of the long journey — as few as 
 those who never once have set their feet upon this 
 road, which, at any rate, has the excuse of being gay 
 and jolly and bright at the beginning, anyway. I 
 know this reads rather like wickedness in the eyes of 
 the very godly — but it is quite true, nevertheless. It 
 is not what a man has done, but what he wanted and 
 wished and, alas ! often failed to do, which is the glory 
 or the ugliness of his real ** soul." The sinner who 
 weeps is, in my mind, much nearer to Heaven than 
 the saint whose eyes are dry and in which there are 
 not even the tears of pity. It matters not what may 
 be the spotlessness of his own record, it is a blank 
 page as far as human benefit — the only real test of a 
 man's virtue after all — is concerned. I sometimes 
 think that the real life record which will bring a man 
 into Heaven is not an absolutely clean record, but a 
 record on which are the signs of many " blots " hav- 
 ing been rubbed out. As a thought this may not be 
 ** The Thing," but it is the thought which comes to 
 me when I see the glory of the spring. Spring is a 
 wonderful " beginning again." There is always this 
 to be said of Nature — she never allows an eye-sore to 
 remain an eye-sore for long. If she cannot eradicate 
 it altogether, she covers it with flowers. And we are 
 but children of Nature, after all. Or ratner, we ought 
 to be — if we make any pretences to be human. Some 
 do ; some don't ; most of us can't help being. Therein 
 lie our glorious possibilities.
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 43 
 
 PASSION.— III. 
 
 The Manuscript and the Squeaking Doll. 
 
 "Lord! Lord!" groaned the Squeaking Doll— she 
 only appealed to Heaven in times of boredom or at 
 the dentist — " deliver me, oh deliver me, from the 
 society of this dull person !" 
 
 A Manuscript, the cause of this heartfelt prayer, 
 fluttered his leaves excitedly and quietly rolled away 
 into the farthest corner of the old lumber chest, into 
 which they had both been deposited some weeks pre- 
 viously, without uttering a word. 
 
 He did not feel insulted ; rather his emotion was 
 that of pity — the pleasant, self-satisfying kind of pity, 
 in which there is something subtly flattering, as of a 
 graceful acknowledgment by one's own soul that we 
 are not as other men are. After all, to be different 
 from all the world — and to know it — is the one com- 
 fort which consciousness proffers to the misunder- 
 stood. As the Manuscript was fond of saying, '* Only 
 those who have nothing to say are always wanting 
 to talk." That he, himself, lived in exclusive silence, 
 was consequently proof positive that his soul held 
 mysteries. This aloofness, he felt, was the cause of 
 the Squeaking Doll's displeasure. She was of those 
 who are always yearning to hang round somebody's 
 neck to tell them that it is going fo be a fine day. The 
 garrulous invariably feel uncomfortable face to face 
 with the Sphinx. To be reserved confers a certain 
 mark of distinction. People imagine that a man 
 must have something " in him " if he never lets any- 
 thing out. Nobody takes the trouble to look twice 
 into an empty box with its lid open. That was why 
 the Manuscript quietly rolled away into the farthest 
 corner of the old lumber chest without uttering a 
 word. Silence may sometimes be golden, but it is 
 always distingue — unless, of course, it begins to smirk. 
 
 But this, in the case of the Manuscript, requires 
 an explanation.
 
 44 Passion and Pot-Poiirri. 
 
 Some people shrink into themselves because the 
 world makes them afraid. Others cease to hold soul- 
 eommimion with their fellow men because they are 
 angry or embittered. This latter was the reason of 
 the Manuscript's reserve. He was not merely silent 
 because he possessed a '* soul " — and the worl(l has 
 no time to listen to '* souls " — but as a mute protest 
 against fate for never having given him the occasion 
 to reveal the beauty which lay within him. It is 
 all very well to know that you are a diamond, but 
 unless you find a chance to sparkle you might as 
 well be a piece of coal. It is not sufficient to feel 
 that you are a genius, unless, at the same time, you 
 have the business instinct to, as it were, travel in 
 your gift. To shine, or to show off, were the two 
 worldly talents which the Manuscript did not possess. 
 Hence his contempt for those who had them. Hence 
 also his firm belief in the eventual dawn of THAT 
 DAY — that glorious day, when his heavenly gift 
 would be acknowledged by the whole world, when he 
 would be led forth resplendent in power and might 
 and beauty. 
 
 A lot of people are waiting for that Dawn. 
 
 In imagination the Manuscript pictured the 
 moment when the secrets of his soul would be re- 
 vealed to a world, covered in beads of perspiration 
 and too many diamonds, inside some over-heated con- 
 cert hall. He rehearsed the pose of becoming modesty 
 behind which he could hide himself — in the face 
 of that adulation and flattery which everyone would 
 agree in declaring to be more than sufficient to turn 
 his head. He rehearsed the graceful acknowledg- 
 ments which he would bestow upon these worshippers 
 for their splendid tributes to his beauty. It was a 
 wonderful vision, and a supreme comfort in the 
 monotonous drabness of the rubbish-heap existence 
 which had somehow or other overtaken him. At any 
 rate — and this brought consolation to the Manuscript 
 in the midst of all his disappointments — it is better 
 never to leave the rubbish-heap than to be cast upon 
 it at the end of a long period of mis-spent days.
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 45 
 
 This was very probably the fate of the Squeak- 
 ing Doll, who now lay near him in all the faded glory 
 of her tarnished tinsel and dirty lace. Her flaxen 
 hair and painted cheeks proclaimed her to have been 
 either a publican's wife or, more probably, an im- 
 proper person. Once upon a time she might pos- 
 sibly have been "dashing"; now she was merely 
 vulgar. Moreover, life had taught her nothing. She 
 still smiled, and squeaked, and pretended to be baby- 
 ish and silly, just as she had done years ago when the 
 first married man stopped to admire her. Her soul 
 had never striven to attain heights more ethereal 
 than that of being the " life and soul " of a superior 
 boarding-house supper party. And now the boarding- 
 house had been sold and she had to carry her kittenish 
 gaiety into those obscure depths of dinginess into 
 which bedizened middle-aged women sink, who have 
 not enough money to pay poor young men to declare 
 that they are still fascinating and pretty. Her case 
 was a sad one. She was old, and all the interests of 
 her life belonged to youth. 
 
 " Oh, how dull I am ! " the Squeaking Doll 
 sighed, while she looked towards the Manuscript for 
 that glint of a " glad eye " without which she could 
 not carry on a conversation with one of the opposite 
 sex. 
 
 " To the Doll, all things are dull ! " growled the 
 Manuscript, rolling himself tighter and tighter into 
 one hard lump of exclusiveness. Thinking it over, 
 however, he considered the repartee to be rather smart. 
 Therefore he unrolled slightly when he heard the 
 Squeaking Doll exclaim : 
 
 '* How clever ! How extremely clever ! I must 
 remember that." 
 
 *' Please don't ! " replied the Manuscript ponder- 
 ously — he was not a German manuscript for nothing ! 
 " I'm not quite sure that it is original." 
 
 He was, however, somewhat mollified. The 
 Squeaking Doll might not, after all, be so improper 
 as she was painted. Perhaps, she was one of those 
 respectable ladies whose one ambition in life is to be 
 mistaken for a cocotte.
 
 46 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 A sudden feeling of intimacy seemed to have 
 sprung up between them. 
 
 " Do you know, we have been shut up in the 
 same house for nearly two months and you have never 
 told me who you are ! " began the Squeaking Doll 
 demurely. " If I were not a woman of the world 
 I might begin to feel quite uncomfortable " — and she 
 rolled her china blue eyes towards the Manuscript and 
 endeavoured to look arch — " but I was not born 
 yesterday. I have knocked about a great deal. A 
 Princess took me up first of all. I was in the Burling- 
 ton Arcade at the time — oh, I don't mean what you 
 mean 1 " — she broke off to exclaim : it was a form of 
 inuendo which had been very popular in the boarding- 
 houses she had frequented. *' I recollect the day was 
 in September. * How lovely ! ' the Princess cried, so 
 enthusiastically that I blushed. ' How lovely ! Do 
 let me take her home.' But I was very expensive. 
 You see I had been bom in France. However, after 
 a grim elderly woman — all salt-cellars and acute 
 angles, whom I afterwards discovered to be the 
 Duchess of Downhampton — had offered my owner the 
 price of my ransom, I was wrapped in the loveliest 
 tissue paper and put inside a box. Here I pretended 
 to faint. It was only pretence, however. Whenever 
 I was laid on my back I pretended to faint. It was 
 always eftective. You see, it was the only time I could 
 show my beautiful long lashes. However. . . . when 
 I came to myself again I was no longer in the Burling- 
 ton Arcade, but in Buckingham Palace ! It was a 
 great change, but very educational. In the Burlington 
 I had seen a great deal of life. I realised there how 
 frail a thing is love, and . . . how costly ! In the 
 Palace I learnt how equally frail is friendship and 
 how hollow are the protestations of the heart. For 
 three weeks' the young princess took me up enthusias- 
 tically, introducing me to her little friends, taking 
 me to Ranelagh, and many of the great social events 
 of the season. Then — I recollect the date was the 29th 
 of August — she dropped vie. From that day I 
 descended to the twentv-first footman : and thence to
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 47 
 
 the home of the sister of the fifteenth housemaid, 
 who kept a boarding-house in Maida Vale ; and so 
 onward until .... until . . . ." the Squeaking Doll 
 began to cry . . . . " until I .... I ... . am all 
 alone in the darkness with .... with . . . '.you ) " 
 She gazed plaintively towards the Manuscript, hoping 
 that her loneliness wauM find an echo of pity in his 
 heart. But the Manuscript made no effort at consola- 
 tion. So the SquetJcing Doll had to begin her flattery 
 all over again. 
 
 " i course," she said, endeavouring, with be- 
 coming modesty, to hide a shocking wound of sawdust 
 in her leg, " these variations in my life taught me 
 many things. They taught me how to appraise women 
 and how to arrive at a quick judgment of men. That 
 is why I feel that you are not as other men are .... 
 that you are, in a word .... remarkable ! . . ." She 
 stopped suddenly to see how far her flattery had pene- 
 trated the crust of proud self-satisfaction which en- 
 cased the genius of the Manuscript. Her compliments 
 were not in vain. Like most people who feel that they 
 are hiding their light under a bushel, the Manuscript 
 was yearning to have that *' light " discovered. 
 
 " Remarkable ! " he cried excitedly. " I should 
 think I am remarkable ! Were my value known I 
 should be fetching hundreds of guineas at Christies. 
 A genius — a real genius — has poured forth all the 
 secrets of his wonderful soul into me. I am the 
 message which he is destined to deliver to the world 
 from Heaven. Through me God speaks to men of love 
 and beauty and renunciation. I am music .... the 
 best music. The world is waiting for me, only the 
 world does not know it. That is its tragedy. I am 
 destined to save English music in the eyes of foreign 
 nations. The London Opera House was built for me. 
 So was the Palace Theatre. Newspapers, magazines. 
 The Times, are all asking where I am, •>And yet no 
 one has found me ! So French works and Italian works 
 and Russian works fill my rightful place But I am 
 here — waiting — waiting .... And yet no one comes 
 across me ! Oh, Madame — " he unrolled the outside
 
 48 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 leaf towards the Squeaking Doll, as if to ask in vain 
 appeal the reason of this neglect — " il you only knew 
 what heavenly melodies are within me ! If you only 
 knew. ..." 
 
 *' Oh, I can quite understand," remarked the 
 Squeaking Doll, *-7ith authority, " I used to play a 
 little myself — Valse Bleu, Offenbach's Barcarolle, and 
 all that sort of thing." 
 
 The Manuscript curled himself up again in 
 disgust. 
 
 *' I don't mean . . . tunes ! " he said disdain- 
 fully. 
 
 " Oh, I suppose you mean Wagner, Strauss and 
 those horrid German noises ! " 
 
 *' I mean all that is best in music and art." 
 
 " Well, I'm not, of course, an authority," ex- 
 plained the Squeaking Doll, in that manner which 
 looks for immediate contradiction. "But I know what 
 I like." 
 
 Suddenly the Manuscript fluttered excitedly. 
 
 " Don't use that expression here ! " he exclaimed 
 hotly. " It's the people who know what they like 
 who have ruined the progress of musical art all over 
 the world. It's the people who don't know v/hat they 
 like, but want to love what they don't like, from 
 whom all real progress springs. People who know 
 what they like — always like ballads, and Spanish 
 dances and Mendelssohn's '* Spring Song " . . . ." 
 
 " Not since the war . . . ." interrupted the 
 Squeaking Doll, with the faint suggestion of an intelli- 
 gent smile hovering around the comers of her silly 
 mouth. " No German music — thank you ! " 
 
 But the Manuscript evidently did not hear. 
 
 *' W^hen I think of all the Heavenly beauty which 
 my creator poured into me from the depths of Tiis 
 wonderful heart, I weep for the callous indifference 
 of the world to real art — indifference which allows me 
 to live forgotten and neglected upon the rubbish 
 heap : I — who am so lovely !" 
 
 '* Self praise is dreadfully bad form ! " thought 
 the Squeaking Doll, who had lived in the world long
 
 Pasaion and Pot-Pourri. 49 
 
 enough to know the value of a platitude. Aloud she 
 asked : " Who was your creator — this genius of yciurs 
 who might as well have been a nincompoop for all 
 the world heard of him ? In the days when I went 
 out in the best society — in the days when, I may say, 
 1 really lived — I met many of the more famous 
 musicians. One — he taught the princess how not to 
 play the piano— kissed me. He was a middle-aged 
 man .... and married . . . ." 
 
 *' My creator was too great a musician to waste 
 his time over the torturing of young princesses. He 
 was great — and, because he was great, he lived abso- 
 lutely alone. He was so poor, too, so dreadfully poor, 
 tliat often he did not have enough to eat. But Heaven 
 had given him the gift of music and he .... he was 
 quite absurdly young." 
 
 But the Squeaking Doll was frivolous. " 1 have 
 always been told that no man can write really deep 
 music until he is fat and forty and in love with a 
 duchess. You seem to imagine that because I — 
 no, I am not going to say, because ' I know what 
 I like ' — because I like music with a tune, that I 
 know nothing of the finer forms of art. When some 
 one was kind enough to squeeze me, I played \ery 
 brilliantly upon the cymbals. I should still be a 
 remarkable performer had not, as I have already told 
 you, the princess dropped me. Since then the lyre 
 of my soul has been broken." 
 
 But the Manuscript was now indifferent to all that 
 his companion had to say. When the habitually silent 
 begin to speak there is a great difficulty in stopping 
 them. The Manuscript had now found speech. 
 
 " He lived alone ! " he cried, using the excessive 
 gesture and facial movements of an actor who is 
 famous throughout the provinces for his impersona- 
 tion of Hamlet, and who, for the last ten years has 
 been '* resting." " Quite .... quite alone in an 
 attic, in a filthy tumble-down old house in the dirtiest 
 district of Islington. Here — under the stars — my soul 
 was bom. My body, I may explain, came from a tiny 
 music shop in Kensington. It was bought for the
 
 50 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 sum of Svepence, earned, I believe, by my creator, 
 lor playing upon Hampstead Heath during the whole 
 of one Easter Bank Holiday. For several weeks I lay 
 forgotten and alone among a crowd of other manu- 
 scripts. I began at last to imagine that I was still- 
 bom. But one night, when all Islington was asleep 
 and the stars of Heaven were peeping through the 
 skylight window, I was begotten. As my creator 
 worked, as the seething, passionate melodies of his 
 soul found birth upon paper — there seemed to hang 
 above his fair young head the halo of something that 
 was unearthly — something that was divine. His- beau- 
 tiful face was transfigured. He seemed to be a being 
 from another world. God in all His wonderful power 
 never surely created his like. His eyes shone like 
 beautiful stars. His teeth, like the pearls of the sea, 
 glistened in the light of the moon. A smile of inspira- 
 tion played around his lips . . . ." 
 
 " I should think he had been drinking ! " inter- 
 rupted the Squeaking Doll — though, fortunately, the 
 Manuscript did not hear her. 
 
 " His delicate white hands . . . ." 
 
 The Squeaking Doll was beginning to sniff. She 
 was getting very bored. She had no patience with 
 people talking so absurdly about themselves. It was 
 very inconsiderate, especially to a woman, whom any 
 man of the world knows is an expert in making the 
 first person singular last for hours and hours. 
 
 " The angelic expression of his face. ..." 
 
 This was too much for the Squeaking Doll. 
 
 " Now that is very interesting .... very interest- 
 ing indeed," she broke in, with that calm assurance 
 by which women can always successfully stem the 
 flow of a conversation in which they have no part. 
 *' I can quite understand how he looked. People used 
 to say when I was younger — younger, that is, than I 
 am now — that there was something very spiritual 
 about my beauty. Even now .... in the right 
 light . . . ." 
 
 i But the Manuscript was a boor. Once having 
 broken his habitual silence, he became infatuated with 
 the sound of his own words.
 
 Passion and Pot -Pourri. 51 
 
 *' All the next day and far ... . far into the 
 Dight he worked. Sometimes from sheer fatigue he 
 would throw himself down upon the heap of rags 
 which was his bed and pray to God with all the 
 anguish of his young soul — pray to be allowed to live, 
 pray to complete this work which he felt would be 
 his chej-d'ceuvre.^' 
 
 " As far as my experience goes," interrupted the 
 Squeaking Doll once more, " when you pray to 
 Heaven — Heaven laughs ! It takes away the rernain- 
 ing golden happiness that you possess, gives you silver 
 gilt, and hints that you ought to be humbly thankful 
 that it isn't brass." 
 
 " And sometimes when I looked at the terror of 
 his life I used to marvel that even in his sleep he still 
 could smile." 
 
 " This is beginning to be insufferable," muttered 
 the Squeaking Doll. " I should think he had a good 
 set of teeth," she added aloud. 
 
 '* But at last I was finished . . . ." 
 
 " Thank Heaven ! " cried the Squeaking Doll. 
 
 " I was christened a * Concerto ' for violin and 
 orchestra." 
 
 *' I can't bear concertos," remarked the Squeak- 
 ing Doll. " They seem to ramble on and on for ever. 
 You clap at the end, of course, but it's mostly because 
 you're thankful they're over ! " 
 
 The Manuscript heeded her not. '* The next 
 day," he continued portentously, " I was wrapped up 
 carefully and sent off to a famous publisher in Bond 
 Street. I felt that I had said ' good-bye ' to my 
 creator for ever. But I had not. Three weeks later 
 I was back again." 
 
 The Squeaking Doll began to smile. 
 
 '* But I did not remain long. Twelve hours later 
 I was again off upon my travels. This time I went to 
 a publisher in Regent Street. Now, it will indeed be 
 ' Farewell,' I cried, as I slipped through the aperture 
 of the pillar box. But it was only * Au revoir '...." 
 
 The Squeaking Doll was laughing out loud now. 
 
 " Four times I left my creator, and four times I 
 returned. At last, when he had not a penny in all
 
 52 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 the wide world, he sent me off to Richards, the great 
 conductor, without a stamped addressed envelope for 
 my return. Alas ! I never came back. In a fit of 
 angry protestation against the lateness of his dinner, 
 this man, who pretended to interpret all the works 
 of the great musical apostles, said ' Damn that eook, 
 she's late again ! ' and threw me disgustedly into the 
 waste paper basket." 
 
 ■' Killed by a cook, or . . . ." began the Squeak- 
 ing Doll. 
 
 '* But the housemaid rescued me early the follow- 
 ing morning and i was roughly thrown inside a 
 drawer. From there, by various unpleasant stages, I 
 have come to this. But the day tvill come .... the 
 day will come. ..." 
 
 " Oh, please don't begin to prophesy about the 
 future," exclaimed the Squeaking Doll, who did not 
 in the least mind being rude to any man when the 
 possibility of a flirtation lay beyond all hope. " I've 
 had quite enough of your creator and his wretched 
 concerto. If he had been the genius you imagine him 
 to be, he would have succeeded. Genius will * out,' 
 you know .... it's like murder . . . . " 
 
 " What the deuce do you know about it ? " de- 
 manded the Manuscript in anger. *' You, who are 
 nothing more than a soulless piece of painted wax. I 
 tell you I am the work of one of Heaven's chosen 
 messengers. I tell you . . . ." 
 
 " Oh, please don't tell me any more," interrupted 
 the Squeaking Doll, excitedly waving the one cymbal 
 which still remained to her, " I've heard quite enough 
 to convince me that I'd sooner be the vainest, silliest, 
 most insipid lump of self-satisfaction imaginable, and 
 young, and beautiful, and loved, than all the unlit 
 «tars of genius who drag out a lonely, miserable sun- 
 less existence among men who prefer the illumination 
 of limelight or a paraffin lamp. The same oblivion 
 awaits you, for all your inspired beauty, and for all 
 your tears. It is better to live one glorious hour of 
 life, than exist miserably for ages — only to possess wor- 
 ship and adulation years after you are dead ! Thank 
 you all the same, but — no posthumous lionising for
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 53 
 
 me ! Give me the hug and the kiss — here, right now — 
 rather than the wreath of white Asphodels later 
 on . . . ." 
 
 '* Fool ! " cried the Manuscript. 
 
 '* Ninny ! " retorted the Squeaking Doll. 
 
 '* How dare you," yelled the Manuscript, rolling 
 towards her angrily. 
 
 " Dare } " screamed the Squeaking Doll, hitting 
 at him with her cymbal. 
 
 " You seem to forget that you are speaking to a 
 lady ! " 
 
 " Lady ! " 
 
 " Cad ! " 
 
 A possible murder, however, was here interrupted. 
 
 Pate, in the shape of a human hand, gathered 
 them both from the bottom of the old lumber chest 
 and threw them in a confused heap upon the floor. 
 
 '* Oh, Charles, dear ! " explained a female voice. 
 *' Here's more of poor papa's rubbish ! " 
 
 Rubbish ! The Manuscript, half unrolled himself in 
 protestation. The Squeaking Doll, being on her back, 
 closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. In reality 
 she was terribly afraid. 
 
 " Well ! If papa hasn't kept my dear old doll ! " 
 cried once more the female voice. Then she burst 
 into tears. " Oh, Mimi ! " she exclaimed, through her 
 sobs, while she convulsively clutched the Squeaking 
 Doll to her bosom, " I shall keep you for .... for 
 . . . ." she glanced up at her husband, who was stand- 
 ing near her, coyly. I shall keep her .... for . . , . 
 for . . . ." She stopped suddenly and blushed. 
 
 The Squeaking Doll had not opened her eyes. 
 " Once fascinating, always fascinating," she mur- 
 mured dreamily, "even in old age ! " 
 
 " This looks rather interesting," exclaimed the 
 man who was' examining the Manuscript. '* I'll go 
 and try it over ! " 
 
 '* Yes, do," said his young wife, as she still 
 clutched the Squeaking Doll affectionately. *' But 
 don't wake the baby ! " 
 
 And that afternoon the Manuscript came into its 
 own.
 
 51 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 From the man's study it went directly to the 
 famous director of an orchestra who happened at that 
 time to be arranging the programmes of a series of 
 London concerts. Soon afterwards its fame became 
 known. The sensation it caused at its first production 
 at Queen's Hall is recent history. It is now played 
 all over the world. For a long time people pointed 
 it out as an example of the greatness of English music. 
 Its success was colossal. English music felt that at 
 last it could hold up its head. Its triumph was ren- 
 dered all the greater from the fact that its composer, 
 John Wilberforce Smith, could nowhere be found. 
 Advertisements failed to discover his whereabouts. 
 Inquiries were equally fruitless. Even success merely 
 brought forth a succession of impostors. The real 
 composer could not be found. Then one June evening 
 an eldei'Iy man — one of those men who seem to culti- 
 vate Higher Thoughts and are a martyr to indigestion 
 — discovered, while rummaging among old books 
 marked " tuppence per volume " in an old second- 
 hand book shop in the Charing Cross Road, a little 
 edition of Heine's poems in the original German, on 
 the fly-leaf of which were written the words " Richard 
 Wilberforce Smith," followed by an address in 
 Holbom. Thither the elderly dyspeptic went to make 
 enquiries, and there he discovered, after long inter- 
 views with former tenants and the daughter of the late 
 landlord, that a man who had called himself Smith 
 had certainly lived there, but had left nearly two 
 years ago. So enquiries were set on foot in East Ham 
 and Whitechapel and Islington. 
 
 It was in a street of hopeless dawns near the 
 Angei where the mystery of the composer of the 
 world-famous violin concerto was eventually solved. 
 The end alas ! was tragic — for Richard Wilberforce 
 Smith, as well as for British music. Poor man, he 
 had died of pneumonia, accelerated by starvation, 
 "three days after war was declared. 
 
 His real natne was Otto Wilhehn Schmidt. 
 
 You shudder? Mais ponrquoi? 
 
 The country of good music is — the World.
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 55 
 
 POT-POURRI.— III. 
 
 Cheerfulness. 
 
 I Wish the old gentleman, whom I strongly suspect 
 to have been a soap manufacturer, had said that cheer- 
 fulness is next to godliness. I'm sure it's nearer than 
 cleanliness, however necessary and estimable it may be 
 to have a regular bath. The one has only made us 
 dissatisfied with houses which contain no hot and cold 
 water laid on — and there are thousands, and they all 
 seem to advertise themselves as "apartments " — 
 whereas the other radiates all through life and lights 
 up hundreds and thousands of comers in this otherwise 
 somewhat dreary old globe. Of course, I know that it 
 is rather difiicult to be cheerful in war time, and even 
 more difficult to be cheerful on war bread, but' still, 
 if a happy, even temper were continually placed on 
 the same high pedestal as immaculate virtue before 
 the eyes of the young, the world would be better for 
 it, and people would be easier and nicer to live with. 
 For, say what you will, the greatest difficulty in life 
 is not so much to be good, as to be able to live 
 happily with your next-door neighbour. As it is, most 
 efforts at friendliness in that direction seem to come 
 from you. Your neighbours always seem to want to 
 know such an awful lot about your belongings before 
 he deigns to favour you with a smile. If I had young 
 people to look after — which, thank Heaven, I haven't I 
 — ^I would tell them that the very finest invest- 
 ment in life is a ready smile. It costs nothing, and 
 it pays one a thousand per cent. What matter if stem 
 people call your forced desire to appear friendly 
 *' hypocrisy" ? Let them say it. It isn't hypocris}^ 
 At worst it is but the compliment which one human 
 being should pay another — no matter if compliments 
 are nothing but polite lies wrapped up in silver paper. 
 If you go out with a person whom you like, you 
 generally try to, as it were, put on your most becoming 
 hat. Well, a smile is, metaphorically speaking, your
 
 56 Passion and Pot-Potirti. 
 
 face dressed up in its best clothes. If you look nice, 
 you will be surprised how pleasant people are to you — 
 even dreary ones. If you keep smiling, you'll be 
 equally astonished at the thousand-and-one different 
 ways of "Thank you for that smile " people will give 
 you, from each of whom you'll benefit in some way, 
 big or little. And it isn't hypocrisy, either. It's no 
 more hypocritical than striving to be good in order 
 to get to Heaven. You don't get anything for nothing, 
 either in this life or in Paradise. And though if you 
 are very good I don't suppose that Heaven will mate- 
 rially benefit from your presence there, if you're cheer- 
 ful and polite here on earth, your whole surrounding 
 world will feel the happier for you. 
 
 • « • • • ^ 
 
 The Comic Spirit. 
 
 Very few people have the natural wit to be the really 
 funny fool, but to keep smiling is possible to anyone, 
 of determination. And the end is attainable by all, 
 except those who are waiting for their false teeth. Of 
 course, I know that the Dreary will tell you that a 
 forced smile, a smile without the, as it were, loving 
 hand-shake behind it, is better than none at all. Don't 
 believe them. I have seen blind men wink with glass 
 eyes, and though, perhaps, the full sparkle of the act 
 is missing, the spirit of " come hither " is identically 
 the same. As I sit by my open window I can see 
 nothing but green fields and trees. It is the kind of 
 view at which the polite ones exclaim, '* Really, one 
 might be in the depths of the country." Well, so we 
 are '^ It doesn't rob the rural aspect of its green soli- 
 tudes to know that behind the belt of trees there lies 
 the Euston Road and the Marj'lebone Workhouse. 
 Rather, it adds to it that glamour of illusion which is 
 the glamour also possessed by a smile which has not 
 the heart behind it. I would far sooner see the trees 
 and know that thev hid the workhouse than see the 
 workhouse and wish for a row of trees. So I would 
 sooner see the smile that hid the indifference than see 
 the indifference and hate the oerson because he didn't
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 57 
 
 force a smile to hide it. After all, all we require of 
 the world, animate or inanimate, is an illusion of 
 beautv. The stretch of green fields brings a sense of 
 restfuiness to my soul, a feeling which would be some- 
 what lessened were I to concentrate entirely on the 
 last throes of a worm in the clutches of the thrush a 
 few yards away from my nose. 
 
 Good Fun. 
 
 And, coming back once more to the wonderful per- 
 centage, a little cheerfulness pays in this world. Look 
 at the salaries of the music-hall comedians, and then 
 look at the poor kind of stuff they " gie " us. After 
 all, the man who slips up on a banana skin by mistake 
 makes you laugh ; also he who slips upon it on pur- 
 pose makes you feel grateful, even if he doesn't make 
 you laugh outright. The majority of people are simply 
 dying to smile, if only they can find something to smile 
 at. The people — and there are many of them — who 
 dislike laughter, who are suspicious of it, who at times 
 will slander and hate it, are people for whom, I am 
 sure, in spite of their other respectable virtues, Hell 
 will have a very sultry corner. Life is dreary enough 
 without men and women trying to add to its darkness. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 Amusement. 
 
 After all. as I said before, half the most amusing 
 moments in life are obtained by turning one's back on 
 something far removed from things hilarious. The 
 solemn things are always present, if you once begin to 
 think about them. Happiness and laughter are usually 
 got through cheating memory of its pain. If you once 
 begin to think you can rarely feel happy, rarer still 
 can you laugh. But sometimes regret seems numbed, 
 or one's imagination is dulled ; then it is that you can 
 throw your bonnet over the windmill and set out 
 to have a really jolly time. What matter if the coming 
 back makes the everyday seem drearier? You will 
 have had your good time, and every moment of hap-
 
 58 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 piness is banked in the bank of happy memories, which 
 nothing in Heaven or earth can rob you of, no matter 
 if you live for a thousand years — which is extremely 
 unlikely. 
 
 Indifference. 
 
 After all, to the vast majority of people one is com- 
 pletely indifferent — indifferent to what they say about 
 you, what they think about you, what they might or 
 might not do to you if only they got the chance. But 
 I defy anybody to be completely indifferent to the 
 man or woman whose right hand is clasping their own ! 
 The thing is impossible. One might as well try to write 
 a sonnet on *' Cynthia's eyebrow " in the middle of 
 an air raid. In the one, as in the other, the immediate 
 object in hand foi'ces itself on your attention to the 
 complete forgetfulness of all other more important 
 matters. You've got, as it were, ** to get the thing 
 over " before you can return to the more vital 
 emotions of your own life. Thus it is better to be 
 sitting with someone playing a concertina in the base- 
 ment during the air raid, as it is also better to keep 
 the smile on your face until the bore has departed. 
 When one is over, and the other gone away, you may 
 begin to curse the interruption at your own pleasure. 
 And if you don't like air raids, try and resemble an 
 alien and get a season ticket to Brighton ; and if you 
 don't like bores, make a tactical retreat before they 
 can begin an offensive. That's the only thing to do. 
 Otherwise life becomes Hell, and you and everybody 
 else are on each other's nerves. After all, half the 
 energy expended in daily life is expended in evading 
 things. The happiest man is he who makes the most 
 successful escapes, and the philosopher is he who, find- 
 ing that he is unable to escape them, makes the best 
 of a bad business by pretending that it isn't a baa 
 business after all. A smile is often the surest weapon 
 of victory.* x\gainst it the thxmderbolts of fate and 
 other people's pin-pricks become ** duds." And pre- 
 sently both get tired. If you begin to wail and weep
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 59 
 
 you will generally be given ample opportunity to go 
 on weeping and wailing ad infinitum. If you keep 
 smiling, sooner or later you will obtain your reward — 
 which is something worth smiling for, something worth 
 smiling at. Every bit of happiness is a reward if you 
 only trace its sources, and sometimes you may trace 
 its sources back to a perfect river of tears which 
 nobody knew of, or even guessed — thank God ! For, 
 had they known about it, metaphorically speaking, 
 your sorrowful river would have never eventually lost 
 itself in the ocean. They would have seen to that 1 
 Metaphorically speaking again, they would have 
 " dammed " it so that it could flood all the surround- 
 ing country — to make that surrounding countiy pro- 
 ductive of usefulness, perhaps, but a hundred times 
 more bare and desolate all the same. To the nine 
 hundred and ninety-nine, hide your joys and your sor- 
 rows behind a smile. To the thousandth — well the 
 thousandth man, as Kipling sings — 
 
 The thousandth man, he 's worth them all, 
 Because you can show him your feelings. 
 
 Stand up and back it in all men's sight — 
 
 With that for your only reason ! 
 Nine hundred and ninety-nine can 't bide 
 
 The shame or mocking or laughter, 
 But the Thousandth Man will stand lay your side 
 
 To the gallows-foot — and after ! 
 
 A Recasting of "The Thing." 
 
 I OFTEN wonder secretly what will happen to ** The 
 Thiner " when the war is over and men and women 
 return once more to their own individual labours. Of 
 course, so lonsr as there are men and women and a 
 social community there will always be a more or less 
 undefined social law which is called " The Thing," but 
 if will, I am sure, be very different from the 
 idol to whom the unthinking and afraid bowed 
 before the war blew up so many stupid dug-outs and 
 cut so much red tape. Especially will '* The Thing " 
 of a woman's life be very much bigger and broader and
 
 6o Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 more human than that which it once was. The hun- 
 dreds and thousands of women who have for the first 
 time found freedom and self-reliance will never go back 
 to the old, dead way. They could not. Liberty and 
 work have given them new vistas — of '* soul " as well 
 as of points of view. They will care far less for the 
 things-which-don't-matter — the things which were the 
 only ones which seemed to matter in their old life. 
 There will be a greater and wider and bigger knowledge 
 of the essentials of happiness and the limits to which 
 self-sacrifice should go towards the attainment or re- 
 nunciation of individual peace. Of course, " The 
 Thing " will always flourish somewhere, somehow — so 
 long as there are old women in both skirts and trousers. 
 But the women and the men who have been drawn 
 into the vortex of the battle, who have realised what 
 this war has been, who, as it were, have been ** over 
 the top " in spirit and understanding, will have none 
 of it. They will, often for the first time in their lives, 
 have realised its stupidity, its oft-time cruelty, and 
 always unmitigated boredom. Peace will bring with 
 it some enormous bonfires of red tape. The tape- 
 worms, as I will call them — for they usually are worms 
 in intelligence even if wasps in spirit — will find them- 
 selves starved in this new world of men and women 
 who at last have realised some of the chief objects of 
 conduct and life. They will starve — and, as far as I 
 am concerned, I shall gladly end up the funeral ora- 
 tion with the words, *' Thank Heaven they are at last 
 dead ! " 
 
 Ihe Belief of Fun. 
 
 In periods of acute anxiety it is always curious as well 
 as interesting to observe the various forms by which 
 people give relief to their feelings. To everybody a 
 different way of revealing the nerve-tension which is 
 in them. The many night raids which have attacked 
 London provide quite a study of various tempera- 
 ments, all more or less haunted by a sense of fear. It 
 usually reveals itself long before the event. Some
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 6i 
 
 people reveal the state of their nerv^es by giving lengthy 
 and nearly always dull accounts of what they will do 
 when the great moment arrives and the " Take 
 Cover" signal is given. (They never follow them — 
 but that, of course, is an entirely different story.) 
 Others own to a cringing fear, and grip the arms of 
 their chairs whenever the name " Air Raid " is so 
 much as mentioned. A few scream at the top of their 
 voices that they don't care a rap for air raids, and 
 that nothing will ever frighten them — they have been 
 brought up to, metaphorically, spit at fear. Every- 
 body says what he liill do when the Hun 'planes come, 
 and very rarely does he do what he had planned. 
 Then, when the time arrives, and the signals are 
 given and the first guns " boom " across the silence, 
 a curious picture of the various methods by which 
 people hide their fear presents itself. There are those 
 who immediately see themselves a corpse and make an 
 instant apology to God. There are others who curse 
 and swear and would have the Huns wiped oS the 
 face of the earth— and, incidentally, start to wipe them 
 off themselves from the confines of the deepest cellar. 
 Some rush around telling quite self-possessed people 
 not to *' get the wind up." That is their form of 
 ** relief." A few rush to the window in order that they 
 may tell an admiring world the next morning of the 
 magnificent view they had of '* six German aeroplanes 
 brought down in flames " — casualties among enemy 
 aircraft which somehow or other are never mentioned 
 in either the official report or the newspapers. Nearly 
 everybody has a bomb dropped in the next street to 
 theirs, and absolutely everybody has an enemy aero- 
 plane hovering just above their house. Very few 
 people, however, exhibit fear as we generally under- 
 stand fear should be exhibited. That is not to say 
 that nobody is frightened. They are. They could 
 not help being. An air raid is a disagreeable thing — 
 and it is absurd to profess the idea that " one rather 
 likes it." Nobody believes you, and it makes you, 
 and not them, look a perfect idiot.
 
 62 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 Contrasts. 
 
 To see a collection of foreigners, with the exception of 
 Americans, who, after all, are really " one of us," and 
 a collection of Britishers during an air raid gives a 
 very interesting picture of quite a national characteris- 
 tic. Both are afraid, but they show theii fear so 
 differently. The fear of the foreigners is exhibited in 
 quite an orthodox waj^ It is cringing and hysterical, 
 and it cares no more for the effect which this hysteria 
 may have on others than I care for the feelings of the 
 Man in the Moon. The Britisher hides his fear behind 
 a laugh, or a joke, or a song — and I am bound to say 
 that it seems to me to be by far the more heroic 
 method. For a jolly evening I would choose a French- 
 man or an Italian, or a Southern German or a Russian. 
 But in the face of danger — give me a Briton every 
 time. And why ? Because I know that to pass a 
 jolly evening with a foreigner I shall have plenty of 
 laughter, and cheeriness, and good temper, I choose 
 a Britisher in the face of tension and danger for the 
 self-same qi^ialities. I know that when danger is lurk- 
 ing around the Britisher will make me laugh. It may 
 almost be said that to get a real joke out of an English- 
 man we have, metaphorically spealcing, to lead him 
 up to the cannon's mouth. At a ** beano " he will 
 usually be either dull or drunk. But when most 
 people would be in an hysteria of fear he will be the 
 liveliest, most humorous, and most uncompromisingly 
 cheery companion in the whole world. He may be 
 frightened, just as frightened as the man who scream- 
 ingly makes his peace with Heaven ; but, thank God ! 
 he does not usually show it that way. If he dies, he 
 dies with a jest — and that to me seems by far the 
 best way to die. For fright is contagious, just the 
 same as joy — and joy is never so needed as when Hell 
 is playing around. To go from a party of Britishers 
 during an air raid to a huddled heap of foreigners in 
 a tube station is a wonderful contrast — not in courage 
 versus fear, as the fear is shared by both — but between 
 its revelation by acts and speech.
 
 Passfon and Pot-t^onrri. 63 
 
 The Gift of Humour. 
 
 And after all, I am not quite sure that humour in the 
 wrong place is not better in the long run than humour 
 in accepted circumstances. At any rate, when danger 
 is around, I would far sooner be made to laugh than 
 have my knees knock together or become dismal. The 
 man who can sing and laugh in the face of danger is 
 the man who will, not only do great deeds himself, but 
 help other people to do them. It isn't callousness or 
 indifierence which makes him lively. Callousness and 
 indifference are shown by those who put their own feel- 
 ings before the influence which these feelings may have 
 on others. Fear often makes people selfish, and an 
 effort to make people laugh is the very antithesis of 
 selfishness, since to laugh is the greatest blessing which 
 one man can bestow upon another in all this sad, weary 
 old world. I know that laughter is not the accepted 
 form of heroism. The accepted forai of heroism is a 
 tense, white face and unflinching eye, with, if possible, 
 an utterance from Shakespere, preferably King Henry 
 V. But an imitation of George Robey is far nearer 
 the heroic ideal. For fear, real fear, will make anyone 
 almost white and tense and unflinching, unless he be 
 an arrant coward. But laughter and song and a joke 
 show an emotion which no fear can hurt, which 
 remains beyond and above all sense of fear — that is, 
 as fear signifies defeat. Laughter is one of the finest 
 weapons of self-defence in the world. As long as you 
 can laugh you can never be beaten, for laughter is a 
 triumph over defeat and disaster and fear. Act wher- 
 ever possible, and if to act becomes an impossibility, 
 smile — and all will be well with your *' soul." That is 
 not a bad adage to take with one through life, and 
 like so many adages it is not found to be an untruth 
 when applied to the circumstances for which it was 
 thouofht most fitting. " Keep smiling " is the finest 
 beffiTiTiing to every philosonhy of life. It is, in fact, 
 a philosophy of life in itself.
 
 64 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 PASSION.— IV. 
 
 The War of the Widows. 
 
 Little Mrs. Archie Trevelyan spent the early weeks 
 of her widowhood in re-decorating her house. She 
 thought it was an excellent opportunity. Since she 
 had been left an inconsolable widow, life had sud- 
 denly become an interminable blank. She sought to 
 fill that blank by indulging herself in all those extra- 
 vagances which " poor darling Archibald " — she never 
 called him ' Archie ' now that he was dead — had 
 striven, by all the means a husband has at his com- 
 mand, to make her realise their wastefulness. Now, 
 however, he was dead, and his death had bestowed 
 upon his widow the handsome income of eight hundred 
 pounds a year. For Wigglesworth-on-Sea that was a 
 large fortune. So Mrs. Trevelyan decorated her draw- 
 ing-room, spending the greater part of the summer 
 afternoon therein, lost in admiration at her own 
 decorative taste. She was the very first person to 
 introduce a black carpet and black wall-paper into 
 Wigglesworth-on-sea, and she was justly proud of the 
 fact. Moreover, not only had she made black her 
 principal decorative colour, but she had designed a 
 scheme of flaming orange and red, intermingled with 
 bright blue and green, to clash with it, the result of 
 which, she was pleased to call " Bakst." 
 
 Nobody at Wigglesworth-on-Sea could contradict 
 her. 
 
 As a matter of fact, nobody in Wigglesworth- 
 on-Sea knew who Bakst might be. Certainly, nobody 
 in Wigglesworth-on-Sea cared. They were far more 
 excited over their new church organ, over the visit 
 which the Doctor paid to the Draper's daughter twice 
 in one week ; of what the new curate's wife had worn 
 at her first appearance in church the previous Sunday. 
 When Mrs. Trevelyan talked ririly of her " Bakst
 
 Passion and Pot-Poiirri. 65 
 
 drawing-room " with that excessive play of hands and 
 eye-brows which she had learnt to associate with 
 inately artistic people during her frequent visits to 
 a married sister who lived in Balham, they thought 
 the word must refer to a new material. Others — the 
 brave ones — after a visit of inspection, suggested 
 that the word was really meant for an apology. They 
 said it in the way people always say such things. 
 These old-fashioned creatures, however, still existed 
 among horsehair and heavy mahogany. They were 
 among those neighbours w^hose society made Mrs. 
 Trevelyan feel that, in Wigglesworth-on-Sea, her 
 talents were utterly wasted. 
 
 Truth to tell, none of the inhabitants were re- 
 markable for their artistic knowledge. The majority 
 of them were simply pleasant, simple, God-fearing 
 men and women, with nice useful kinds of faces and 
 no taste in clothes. They knew absolutely nothing 
 about Bakst and the Russian Ballet, but a very great 
 deal concerning the annual sale at Harrods' Stores, 
 and how, if one left by the cheap train on Monday 
 and returned by the excursion the following Thurs- 
 day, one could do the Railway Company out of five 
 shillings and sixpence. Their knowledge of the Court 
 Circular, the Private Lives of Actors and Actresses, 
 the latest novels by Hubert Wales and Elinor Glyn — 
 all the topics in which Mrs. Treveiyan was so intensely 
 interested — was rudimentary, but there was nothing 
 concerning last year's Harvest and Mr. Lloyd George 
 with which they were not perfectly familiar. 
 
 No wonder, then, they stood rather in awe of 
 Archibald Trevelyan's fashionable relict. 
 
 Poor Mrs. Trevelyan ! It is hard for any woman 
 to be superior to the whole neighbourhood — and to 
 know it. It is perhaps harder still for the neighbour- 
 hood. The people at Wigglesworth-on-Sea watched 
 her existence from afar in a mixture of fright and 
 dislike. They realised only too well that she was not 
 — never would be — as they were themselves. She 
 was up-to-date and " modern." Had not the late Mr. 
 Trevelyan been advised by his doctor to live near
 
 66 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 the sea in some quiet little place, his wife ought by 
 rights to be gracing the drawing-rooms of Upper 
 Norwood or basking in a hired Victoria in the Bays- 
 water Road. Still, they were rather proud of her. 
 They liked to see her walking down the High Street 
 in her musical-comedy dresses. Her hats always made 
 them laugh. What she would appear in next added 
 a pleasant note of expectancy to the ordinary routine 
 of going to church. They felt that her appearance 
 ga^'e a note of modish smartness to the little seaside 
 resort which would otherwise appear but a dingy mass 
 of lodging-houses and bathing-machines. Therefore, 
 most of them forgave her her " black " drawing-room. 
 They did not admire it, and they would not have 
 copied it for worlds, but they spoke of their first visit 
 to it impressively — as one speaks of a visit to Rome 
 or Petrograd to a person who has never penetrated 
 farther into the continent than Boulogne. 
 
 Mrs. Trevelyan felt her own splendid aloofness, 
 and the feeling pleased her. In fact she thought her- 
 self such a point of interest in Wigglesworth-on-Sea 
 that she almost forgave a destiny which forced her to 
 live in such a " hole." She might even have learned 
 to love it had not Archibald Trevelyan died. That, 
 in the thoughts of his disconsolate widow, spoiled 
 everything. 
 
 But it was not on account of a widow's grief that 
 Mrs. Trevelyan shed her silent tears. It sprang from 
 the fact that she was called upon to play the part of 
 Tragedy before such a miserable audience. The con- 
 ventions of Wigglesworth-on-Sea were hopelessly out 
 of date. Instead of swarming around her with cries 
 of sympathy and incessant enquiries concerning her 
 health that day, they left her severely alone. It was 
 the custom there for a widow to " nurse " her sorrow 
 until such a time when she could — without offending 
 the good opinion of people — return a call of condo- 
 lence with an invitation to dinner. The people of 
 Wigglesworth-on-Sea stayed away because they did 
 not wish " to intrude " upon her sorrow. And Mrs. 
 Trevelyan was very angry and disappointed in con-
 
 Passion and Pot-Poiirri. 67 
 
 sequence. She xvanted intruders — multitudes oi 
 them. For what other reason had she spent one 
 hundred and fifty pounds upon her widow's '* weeds." 
 
 Yet, still they stayed away. 
 
 For some time, therefore, Mrs. Trevelyan had 
 to enjoy the dreary atmosphere of drawn blinds and 
 dying camelias alone. A Niece — somehow or other 
 nieces invariably arrive after a funeral : I have yet 
 to hear of a well-to-do widow who, after her hus- 
 band's death, has not a *' Niece staying with her " — 
 came to visit her. But nieces are not the least good 
 jas an audience. Mrs. Trevelyan hated the one which 
 her widowhood foistered upon her. She loathed the 
 girl's efforts to " cheer her up." She did not want 
 ** cheering up." She wanted to sit before a photograph 
 of her husband's grave, enlarged almost to hfe-size, 
 and tell relays of people from Wigglesworth-on-Sea 
 the enormous number of wreaths and crosses which 
 she had received — many from people of whom " she 
 had never heard." She wanted to hear their mur- 
 mured assurance of the extent to which her darling 
 Archie had been loved and respected by all classes of 
 society. It annoyed her to have nobody but the 
 servants to whom to relate the remark of the Sexton 
 when he told her that, for silver fittings, those on 
 her husband's coffin had created a record as far as 
 the new cemetery of Wigglesworth-on-Sea was 
 concerned. 
 
 As it was, her sister's eldest girl — the plain one — 
 had to hear the anecdote three times a day and appear 
 impressed every time. 
 
 " Of course, I should have much preferred to 
 have had him buried at Finchley," Mrs. Trevelyan in- 
 formed her sadly. " All the best people I knov/ are 
 buried there. It's so countryfied. So .... so ... ." 
 She was about to add " so convenient for the 'buses," 
 but she altered the remark to, *'. . . . so far away 
 from the whirl of city life, and yet so near." Then, 
 after a pause, she added : " Poor Archie had the 
 strangest ideas. He m.ade me promise that if he 
 happened to die first I would bury him within the
 
 68 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 sound of the sea. I can't bear the sea myself — it abso- 
 lutely ruins brown boots. But I shall never, never 
 leave Wiggleswoith — now. I could not ! It would not 
 be right .... would it? . ." 
 
 She hoped that her niece would strive to per- 
 suade her against such finality, but, instead of putting 
 foi-ward a dozen reasons why a visit to London or 
 Buxton, or even abroad would prove beneficial, the 
 girl answered : " Oh, no, auntie dear, o/ course 
 not ! " That was just like her. " She is an ex- 
 ceedingly plain, uninteresting, dull girl," thought 
 Mrs. Trevelyan, looking at her aggressively. " She 
 doesn't take in the least after our family. No 
 wonder poor dear Emily wrote to say I could keep 
 her near me as long as I liked ! She's exactly the type 
 of young person — worthy, drab, well-meaning — whom 
 one always recommends to people living fairly far 
 away. I should think her mother was thankful to 
 get rid of her ! " 
 
 " If only she had possessed a sense of humour," 
 she continued to muse, " I would ask her to live with 
 me. But she doesn't possess a vestige. It annoys 
 me to see her sitting so calm and well-meaning beside 
 me. I've a good mind to send her to the post-office. 
 I do want some stamps. When she is gone, life wili 
 almost be interesting once more. There's Jay's cata- 
 logue I haven't looked at yet. But I do wish the 
 fashions were more becoming for widows this year. 
 Tight skirts and a lot of leg . . . .1" 
 
 " Mabel, dear," — she began .... 
 
 But let me begin my story. 
 
 It was with Jay's catalogue that Mrs. Trevelyan 
 sat, on that afternoon when the following trivial little 
 incident in her life happened. It was not, however, 
 tlie latest ideas in widow's weeds for which she was 
 searching. Her widowhood had reached that exciting 
 moment when thoughts of violet and heliotrope fill 
 the mind. There was no reason, in fact, against her 
 arraying herself in pure white very shortly. So, at 
 least, she considered. Somewhere or other, she knew 
 not where, pure white was the sign of the deepest
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 69 
 
 mourning. Then why not at Wigglesworth-on-Sea ? 
 White, too, was her favourite colour. 
 
 A sudden glance at the late Archibald's photo- 
 graphic enlargement, hanging on the wall opposite, 
 brought on the inevitable reaction to this worldly- 
 train of thought. Tears filled her eyes. Over the top, 
 the cambric handkerchief held up closely against her 
 nose, she gazed at the picture of the Trevelyan burial 
 splendour and sighed. After all, than her husband — 
 'her dear husband — no better man had ever lived. Of 
 that she felt convinced. Had he not always allowed 
 her to do what she liked } Even supposing that fate 
 led across her path a lover, who preferred to marry a 
 widow, and they both died and went to Heaven, 
 it would not be to her second husband — however 
 worthy — but to her dearest Archie that she would 
 turn for any necessary errands. He would ever be 
 to her the embodiment of Nature's truest gentleman 
 — good, kind and unselfish; plain, but dependable. 
 
 Thinking these sad, unutterable thoughts, it sud- 
 denly occurred to Mrs. Trevelyan that that afternoon 
 — having nothing whatever to do — would be an ex- 
 cellent one for a visit to the cemetery, and incidently 
 to show off a smart Parisian widow's hat to the world 
 of Wigglesworth-on-Sea. The weather was fine and 
 she had a little bill to pay at the grocer's. Circum- 
 stances were propitious, and she could pay the 
 accpunt either going or returning from her sweet, sad 
 journey. 
 
 No sooner had the excellence of the arrangement 
 struck her than she was in her bed-room powdering 
 her nose. Three-quarters of an hour later, therefore, 
 she was walking down the High Street, arrayed in 
 her new cheapeau, peaceful in the consciousness that 
 she was far and away the best-tumed-out widow in 
 Wigglesworth. 
 
 Her first visit was to the florist. She bought a 
 vegetable marrow, a bunch of asparagus, a pine- 
 apple, three pounds of grapes, and a small penny 
 bunch of violets. She cried a littie at the florist's, 
 and she cried a little more at the grocer's; after 
 which, it being the last house between the town and
 
 70 Passion and Pot-Ponrri. 
 
 the new cemetery, she dried her eyes and put up her 
 simshade. 
 
 The cemetery, being a place where people are 
 ** never forgotten," was quite deserted. Not a soul 
 was there apparently either to admire her " weeds " 
 or grieve over her* woe. She put up her veil and 
 wandered leisurely towards her husband's grave. 
 
 The grave lay sixth from the pathway, on the 
 right hand side of the gravel walk at the other end 
 of the cemetery. The sun was in the west, and the 
 west lay directly in front of her. So, with her parasol 
 shielding her face from the rays, she had nearly 
 reached the end of the pathway before she saw a 
 sight which made her blood curdle, her heart stand 
 still, the marrow freeze in her bones, and, as she 
 described it to her niece afterwards, " gave her pins 
 and needles all over her body ! " 
 
 Never should she forget it. Never ! never I 
 never ! 
 
 For there, kneeling beside her husband^s grave, 
 was a woman she did not know ! 
 
 Scattered around her lay the blooms of what had 
 once been a bunch of expensive flowers. Her hat was 
 all awry. 
 
 The hat was the only thing in the picture which 
 gave Mrs. Trevelyan aHy consolation. The thought 
 flashed through her mind that she would not have 
 been seen in it herself for worlds. 
 
 For a moment she stood there, in all her splendid 
 widow's weeds — aghast, positively aghast ! She felt 
 as if she were about to faint. Weakness overcame her. 
 Her legs seemed to give way beneath her. Had 
 she not felt so curious, as well as angry, she would, 
 without a moment's hesitation, have swooned. As 
 it was, these very emotions kept her up. 
 
 Who was this woman — this badly dressed woman 
 . . . .this creature ? 
 
 And what was she doing weeping so hysterically 
 on the grave of her — Mrs. Emily Dorothea Evangeline 
 Trevelyan's — own husband ? The whole scene was 
 outrageous — like the ** curtain " of a poor play; like 
 a scene from a novelette.
 
 \ 
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 71 
 
 Quietly Mrs. Trevelyan prodded the " creature " 
 with the end of her parasol. 
 
 The weeping woman turned Ber head to gaze at 
 the stranger who had thus interrupted her. But grief 
 again overcome her. She put both hands before her 
 face and sobbed bitterly. 
 
 '* Leave .... whir-r— p .... Leave .... 
 whirp-whirp . , , , Leave me alone .... whirp-whirp- 
 whirp . . . ." she wept. 
 
 Mrs. Trevelyan prodded her again. 
 
 ** That's all very well, my good woman," she 
 said with a fine assumption of calmness and dignity. 
 " But .... hut tvho are you} " 
 
 The woman turned her head to look at her and 
 immediately gave way to another paroxysm of 
 weeping. 
 
 *' Leave me alone ! Leave me alone ! " she 
 almost shrieked, rocking herself to and fro as if in 
 pain. 
 
 Leave her alone, indeed ! Mrs. Trevelyan was 
 out for a full explanation, and, if need be, slaughter. 
 If this vroman were part of that hidden life which 
 occasionally stands revealed after a man's death, then 
 Mrs. Trevelyan had not only a right to find it out, 
 but an even better right to be angry. The mere 
 suspicion that she had ever been a wife deceived 
 made her feel inclined to wreck the other woman's 
 coiffure. If the creature had ever been Archibald's 
 mistress, then it only showed that the man had been 
 a beast. Indeed, she had often suspected it. 
 
 ** I shall not cease to prod you," cried Mrs. 
 Trevelyan excitedly, " until you tell me exactly why 
 you are weeping on .... on my grave ! " 
 
 At every word she banged the earth with her 
 parasol as if to accentuate their importance. 
 
 *' Oh, Madam," wailed the weeping woman, 
 '* why did I let him leave me. Why did I let him 
 go!" 
 
 " Let him go, indeed ! " Mrs. Trevelyan's fluffy 
 fair hair bristled with indignation. 
 
 ** Tell me who you are," she cried, ** and why 
 you have come here ! This grave is mine ! "
 
 72 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 The strange woman was once again seized by 
 a paroxysm oi weeping. 
 
 " Go away, go away ! " she moaned. " Leave 
 me alone in my sorrow. Leave me alone with my 
 darling. ..." 
 
 Darling ! 
 
 Mrs. Trevelyan had always declared plaintively 
 that she had no physical strength, yet now she seized 
 this strange woman by the shoulders and shook her 
 violently. 
 
 " How dare you ! How dare you ! " she cried. 
 *' and to me .... ! " 
 
 *' What do you mean ? " exclaimed the strange 
 woman, startled for the moment out of her sorrow. 
 ** He was my husband — my dear, darling husband." 
 Then she once more started weeping. 
 
 You lie, woman .... You lie ! " shouted Mrs. 
 Trevelyan. 
 
 " No ! No ! " 
 
 Mrs. Trevelyan suddenly became dignified. 
 
 " My good woman," she said coolly. ** I think 
 you're mistaken." 
 
 " No ! No : No ! " 
 
 A trifle more hotly, Mrs. Trevelyan answered. 
 " I ought to know. I lived with him for nearly ten 
 years." 
 
 " You I . . . ." At last the weeping woman 
 turned to take a good look at the intruder. " What 
 
 .... what do you mean? Lwed with him " 
 
 She made an effort to rise. "Oh ! . . . . Oh I . . . . 
 Hoiv dare ijou ! " she cried. 
 
 " Dare ? " 
 
 All the latent histrionic talent in Mrs. Trevelyan's 
 soul arose at that challenge. She was about to utter 
 a crushing retort when, suddenly, the other woman 
 broke in with, " He . . . .he was my husband. We 
 .... we .... we ... , were married in Adelaide." 
 She looked flushed and angry; perhaps she also had 
 a temper. 
 
 ** That I'm sure you never were ! " cried Mrs. 
 Trevelyan, laughing theatrically. " My husband
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 73 
 
 never visited Australia. Certainly he would never 
 have married a woman from Adelaide. He couldn't 
 bear the name ! " 
 
 The longer the other woman looked at Mrs. 
 Trevelyan, the more she appeared to dislike her. " Go 
 away !" she cried. " Go away ! I . . . . tell you 
 we were married in Adelaide twelve years ago. I 
 have three children to prove it ! " 
 
 Suddenly the word bigamy seemed to strike Mrs. 
 Trevelyan like a violent blow across the face. What 
 if her husband .... her Archibald had married this 
 woman first ! What if ? . , . . Oh, it would be too 
 awful ! 
 
 " I know for a positive fact," Mrs Trevelyan 
 began, with less assurance than before, " that .... 
 that .... my husband was never in Australia .... 
 never ! " 
 
 She tried to remember the names of the foreign 
 places which her husband had visited, but could only 
 recollect Boulogne. 
 
 The other woman had now again turned her 
 attention towards the grave. Once more she began 
 to weep. Once more she rocked herself to and fro 
 as if in pain. 
 
 " What is she saying," she sobbed. " What is 
 she saying. It isn't true, is it? Oh, Tom . . . . 
 Tom .... tell me, tell me it isn't true. Oh, why 
 did you not let me come with you? Why did you 
 come here without me I always knew that some- 
 thing would happen if you went without me. Oh .... 
 Tom^! . . .Tom! . . ." 
 
 *' How dare you call my husband * Tom,' " cried 
 Mrs. Trevelyan, more vexed than she had been since 
 the incident began. " His name was Archibald 
 Frederick de Crespigny Trevelyan .... One o| the 
 Northumberland Trevelyans. He was very well 
 known and highly respected. Never was he called 
 .... Tom ! " 
 
 It was now Mrs. Trevelyan's turn to stand with 
 her hat awry. 
 
 " Archibald 1 . . . Frederick ! . . . Crespigny t
 
 74 Passion and Pot-Pourii 
 
 ..." stammered the other woman, perplexed. " No ! 
 No ! His name was Thomas William, just as his 
 father's was before him and my little son's is now. 
 He would have despised such a name as Archibald." 
 
 " Rubbish ! " 
 
 In Mrs. Trevelyan's brain there struggled towards 
 the light a tiny suspicion of the truth. *' There's a 
 mistake somewhere . . . ." she began. 
 
 But the other woman was once more indulging 
 in her woe. " We .... were happy .... so very 
 happy," she moaned, " until he wanted to come over 
 to England. We were quite rich enough. The agent 
 was doing very well. We had nothing to complain 
 of. I was quite willing to come over with him, only 
 he wouldn't take me. He said women were in the 
 way on a business trip. But I should not have been. 
 And I could have nursed him when he was struck 
 down with pneumonia, and perhaps he would never 
 have died." 
 
 Her grief seemed quite beyond her control. She 
 wept as if she enjoyed weeping, almost as if it were 
 her duty to weep. 
 
 Mrs. Trevelyan began to feel more and more 
 annoyed. 
 
 " I'm sorry you've lost your husband," she began 
 politely, rather as if she were regretting a mistaken 
 order by the butcher. " But what I want to know is, 
 who are you .... and .... and what are you doing 
 here . . . . weeping on my husband's grave ? " 
 
 Once more she began to prod her victim with 
 the end of her parasol. 
 
 " I'm .... whirp .... Mrs whii-p .... 
 
 Mrs. Tom Wainwright .... whirp," cried the weepin« 
 woman between her sobs. " Oh, Tom . . . ." Another 
 flood of tears brought her explanation to an end. 
 
 v^ But Mrs. Tevelyan had now grasped the situa- 
 tion. The word bigamy had no longer any fears for 
 her. Never had she been frightened by a woman in 
 a forlorn hat. Now she felt so assured that her 
 troubles were all groimdless that she enjoyed the ide» 
 of being rude.
 
 Passion and Pot-PourH. 75 
 
 " Then there is some mistake," she said, coolly. 
 " You're shedding your tears over the wrong grave. 
 This is the grave of Mr. Archibald Trevelyan, of The 
 Laurels, on the sea front. I am his widow ! " 
 
 " Archibald Trevelyan . . . ." Once again the 
 other woman turned to look at her companion, and 
 this time her tears entirely ceased. " But they told 
 me Tom .... my Tom .... was buried here. I 
 have come all the way from Australia to place these 
 flowers on his grave." She got up suddenly, a startled 
 look of embarrassment upon her face. " This is Tom's 
 grave, isn't it? " she demanded excitedly. '* The man 
 at the gate told me that it was the sixth on the right- 
 hand side on the last row near the wall. Well, this 
 is the sixth on the right, isn't it. Oh, it must be ! 
 See, the grass has not yet begun to grow. There is no 
 other ....'* 
 
 Mrs. Trevelyan felt that a universe of doubt had 
 suddenly been lifted from her new widow's hat. 
 
 *' If . . . . if you had not been so agitated," she 
 said slowly, not without a tinge of severity, " you 
 would have seen that this grave — 7)iy grave — is the 
 sixth grave on the left. Mr. Wainwright is pro- 
 bably buried over there." She indicated the other 
 side of the cemetery walk with her parasol. Then, 
 rudely, she added— for she was annoyed at having 
 been made uncomfortable for nothing. '* I believe 
 .... that lots of people are !" 
 
 Nov/ the weeping woman was all profuse 
 apologies. 
 
 " Oh, Madam, will you .... will you ever forgive 
 me ? " she cried. " I have made a horrible mistake. 
 I . . . . I'm so sorry . . . ." 
 
 She began to gather up the flowers scattered at 
 her feet. So conscientiously did she perfonn this duty 
 that it seemed as if she was determined not to leave 
 the late Mr. Trevelyan so much as a single petal. 
 
 " I do hope you'll forgive me," she murmured, 
 when at last she was ready to go. " You see exactly 
 how the mistake arose." 
 
 Mrs. Trevelyan forgave her quite easily. The
 
 76 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 widow's weeds of the strange woman were infinitely 
 inferior to her own. 
 
 " Oh, certainly," she said graciously, '* mistakes 
 will happen." 
 
 They were about to bid each other a cool good- 
 bye, when it suddenly struck Mrs. Trevelyan that here 
 was an *' audience " before whom she could perform 
 her widow's role at last. 
 
 " You must feel very tired," she began, as if 
 inferring that Mrs. Wainwright had walked all the 
 way from Adelaide. " If you would care to have a 
 cup of tea ? I do not live very far away. The 
 Laurels .... on the front . . . ." 
 
 " Oh, thank you so much," answered Mrs. Wain- 
 wright gratefully. " After all I have gone through, 
 a cup of tea would pick me up. You are a widow, too, 
 so you will understand. Tom and I were everything 
 to each other .... everything. We were married 
 twelve years ago at St. Antony's Church, Adelaide 
 .... For three years we were unblessed. Then my 
 eldest son arrived . . . ." 
 
 So absorbed was she in the story of her married 
 life that, when she sauntered with her new friend in 
 the direction of the cemetery gate, she passed the real 
 grave of her husband without giving it so much as a 
 look. 
 
 Well, well, — was she not staying in England for 
 six months ? Would there not be dozens of 
 opportunities ?
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourn. 77 
 
 POT-POURRI. ~ IV. 
 
 A Gonooisseur. 
 
 A Connoisseur may often be an interesting and 
 delightful companion, but Fate and Ye Little Fishes 
 preserve us from the man or woman who has just 
 begun to collect. The atmosphere of their insufferable 
 boredom must surely ascend as far as Heaven. Their 
 conversation — oh ! their conversation ! The talk of 
 the golfing novice, who has for the first time 
 done the tenth hole in three, is thrilling by com- 
 parison. Slowly and with overwhelming detail we 
 accompany them while they tell us how they raked 
 the country-side for old oak, Baxter prints, carved 
 fifteenth-century chests ; wearily and with ever- 
 flagging interest, we follow the history of how they 
 obtained that valuable old gate-legged table, upon 
 which we have just dined, from an old widow who 
 " didn't knov/ its value." Mentally groaning, we 
 wander with them into all the antique furniture shops 
 of London ; v/e listen to them while they go ov^r once 
 again the scene when they "did" the dealer who came 
 from the darkest corner of the shop to " do " them. 
 And, when they return our visit, the same conversa- 
 tional " shop " goes on again — with this difference, 
 that on this occasion they are rude. They leave us 
 with the impression that we know nothing, that all 
 our household goods ought to be sold straightway and 
 t"hat, when we are ready to furnish again, they will 
 only be too willing to help us. Every article we have 
 pushed far away into obscurity is suddenly brought 
 out and appraised by them as " the best thing there 
 is in the room." All our most priceless possessions 
 are discovered to be '* fakes," or, at least, left under 
 a strong suspicion. They say adieu to us at last, 
 leaving us with the impression that all our most valu- 
 able belongings are in the servant's bedroom and all 
 the rubbish dims the splendour of downstairs. At
 
 78 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 last, after our whole house has been treated as if it 
 were an exhibition of imitation curios, our newly- 
 hatched connoisseur murmurs that he has passed " a 
 delightful afternoon," and will keep our interests in 
 mind when he next visits Y/ardour Street. On the 
 doorstep he promises to come again — to come again 
 very soon. 
 
 But will he ? 
 
 No ! No ! No ! — not while we nave a piece of 
 imitation Battersea enamel to hurl at his head. 
 Rather, we will become a " connoisseur " ourselves, 
 and disgust him by his own methods. 
 
 Economy. 
 
 The ideal state — from a monetary point of view — 
 always seems to me to be that state in which one, with 
 a little contrivance, can manage to have just enough. 
 If you have everything you want, you really want 
 nothing, and to want is so often nearly akin to happi- 
 ness that we can't always tell the difference. To yearn 
 for, struggle after, wait for patiently, and at last 
 obtain — there, in a kernel, is the zest for life. Half 
 the pleasures of the everyday consist in making plans. 
 To pinch in order to live — is Hell with the lid on, and 
 you inside the pot. To do without in order that you 
 may obtain something very desirable — that is one of 
 the secrets of real joy. The art of managing is one of 
 the most absorbing of all the daily arts. There is no 
 art required in receiving everything. One just lies 
 back, metaphorically speaking, buried beneath the 
 rottenness of too much attainment. Among the minor 
 joys of daily existence, is there one to compare with 
 that sacrifice of really unessential things in order that 
 we may have money enough to indulge an extra- 
 special extravagance ? You can pass quite a delight- 
 ful afternoon — at least, you could pass such an after- 
 noon before the war came along and blew up all our 
 day-dreams — in Bond Street or Piccadilly simply gaz- 
 ing into shop windows choosing among the beautiful
 
 Passion and Pot-Ponrri. 79 
 
 objects exposed for sale the few things one would buy 
 if one could afford them. And occasionally one saw 
 a little trifie which, although beyond our means at the 
 moment, could come within them if we denied our- 
 selves some little luxuries which, although very plea- 
 sant, really did not contribute very much to the 
 happiness of our lives — and we knew^ they did not in 
 our innermost hearts. So we did without them until 
 this object of our admiration at last became our own. 
 And oh, the happiness of its possession ! It is a hap- 
 piness unknown to millionaires, a happiness which a 
 lot of money could not buy, but which a little suc- 
 ceeded ic doing very comfortingly. So — to be well off, 
 but not too well off; to be healthy, but not too 
 healthy ; to be in love, but not too deeply in love ; to 
 have liberty, but not too much liberty ; to have friends, 
 but not too many, and to see thera often, but not too 
 often — briefly, to have a little of everything, but not 
 too much to become wearied of the charm — that is 
 happiness, and that we shall possess in Heaven, when 
 even a little of the sorrow we have on this earth will 
 surely make us .".ppreciate where we are far more 
 effectively than golden streets and an eternal sing- 
 
 song. 
 
 The Gharm of Flousekeeping. 
 
 And I always think that one of the real joys of house- 
 keeping consists in being forced by circumstances to do 
 a great deal of that housekeeping oneself. Servants 
 are a bore at all times ; they only exist in the ideal 
 household, because to wash up dirty plates, clean door- 
 steps, and empty the swill-tub is infinitely more boring 
 than even their presence. Could we do without them 
 we would, but, being forced to possess one or two, the 
 wise woman tries her best to limit their number. 
 There used to be an awful custom — it still exists in 
 those houses from which we flee as from an angry rela- 
 tion — where the pnrlourmaid or butler stood sentry in 
 the dining-room while the family and their friends ate.
 
 8o Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 They lulled conversation, and they were a perpetual 
 bore, while at all times they were inartistic. Nowa- 
 days, thank goodness, people have become more sen- 
 sible, and, whichever servant may be outside the. 
 door ready to enter whenever somebody wants another 
 potato, they at any rate remain outside — and con- 
 versation consequently has free play. Besides, the 
 whole business wa^ one beneath the dignity of the 
 average civilised human being. But then half the 
 things servants are made to do are beneath human 
 dignity — not because they really are so, since all labour 
 is dignified, but because employers look down upon 
 them as such, and consequently look down upon those 
 whom poverty or other handicaps have forced to un- 
 dertake them — not but what the mistress or master 
 would probably make the poorest servants themselves. 
 But that is another matter. The average household, 
 even at its best, consists of a series of experts being 
 ruled over and directed by one thoroughly incompe- 
 tent. 
 
 Getting Away from Things. 
 
 To " get away from the war " successfully you must 
 get away from people; for where two or three are 
 gathered togeher, one of them, for a certainty, has a 
 *' friend " in the War Office who knows jor a fact — 
 well, you know the taiTadiddle — everybody does ! The 
 war has taken the place of the weather in the average 
 Englishman's conversational chit-chat. The weather 
 may even yet, perhaps, supplement it — but sugar cards 
 and the margarine famine are more generally popular. 
 If only people really had ideas about the war, and 
 could givS us authentic information, all might be 
 entirely enthralling ; but the best part of war conver- 
 sations consists in one person who knows nothing 
 telling another person who knows as little a "' fact " 
 which comes from a Cabinet Minister who told it to a 
 " cousin of mine" — and it's all over Balham by tea- 
 time ! In the early days of hostilities I came across
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 8i 
 
 a very well-known psychical publication which pro- 
 phesied, from facts disclosed in the Bible and a lew 
 other sources " revealed " in the head olxice of the 
 society to its high priest, that all would be over by 
 Christmas (Christmas, 1914 — that was), and the Kaiser 
 would be — well, in that nice warm place where, if 
 prayers can help people, he v/ould have been these past 
 three years. The publication is still being published, 
 and, I presume, is prophesying as hard as ever. And 
 most people's ideas on the war are equally as feather- 
 brained. I met a man the other day who firmly 
 believed that the war will end on February 17 at five 
 p.m., and he dragged the Book of Revelations in to 
 prove his theory. He became quite angry when I 
 suggested that the " Keep your cheers until August'* 
 stunt had been screamed only to be f alsifie3^ too often 
 for serious people to pin a feather-weight of faith in 
 such prognostigations. But people will always believe 
 what they want to believe, and the charlatan who 
 reads the future and declares that " Edwin " will 
 come through unscathed to "Angelina " before Easter, 
 does a far larger business than she who reads famine 
 and another Thirty Years' War in the tea leaves. 
 People will always pay to be cheered up. 
 
 The Rose Garden of Books. 
 
 No ; as I said before, the only way to " get away " 
 from the war is to get away from people. The heart is 
 weary of the " great news " which we shall hear in a 
 few days' time — news so momentous as barely to be 
 hinted at — which never becomes a fact, and is revived 
 in a more or less disguised condition by every person 
 who stops you to say " Good morning." I am sure 
 that half the popularity of dancing with the soldiers 
 who are " home on leave " lies in the fact that, while 
 a man is dancing, he cannot be asked silly questions 
 about the war by ladies whose only " v/ar work " is to 
 sit at home collectins' tarradiddles about what is going 
 on at the front and wondering where we shall all be
 
 82 Passion and Pot-Poiirri. 
 
 *' this time next New Year's Day." So the soldiers 
 ask for dances and yet more dances, and theatres and 
 yet more theatres, or any other entertainment which 
 promises the fewest number of idle moments for silly 
 people to ask them " if there is any truth in the fact 
 that . . . ." Failing these things — and these things 
 ou.jrht not to fail, seeing that there are so many people 
 at home whose one purpose is to provide them — they 
 seek solace in books. And not war books, either ! 
 While we at home are reading Ian Hay, or Major Cor- 
 bett-Smith, or " Sapper," or Philip Gibbs, men '-'out 
 there " are devouring Jane Austen and the classic 
 poets. Jane Austen takes you right away — always pro- 
 viding you can read her — into a world of little things 
 in which Mrs. Elton's silly " tee-hee " is the noisiest 
 thing about it. They do not read her for the story 
 she has to tell — who does read Jane Austen for that? — 
 but because of the remote, yet homely, atmosphere 
 with which she surrounds her charming chronicles of 
 the teeny-weeny. ^'Atmosphere" in a story nowadays 
 is everything. " The Mystery of the Red Barn " has 
 ceased to thrill us — we are no longer interested in the 
 corpse. If we want excitement — we have more than 
 sufficient, the very moment we sit down quietly and 
 begin to think. But a tale, be it ever so simple, ever 
 so straightforward and clear, which transports us into 
 a real world of real men and women — away from the 
 war's din — that is the story which takes us away from 
 things and helps us to " forget." 
 
 It Doesn't Matter. 
 
 It doesn't matter if the story be sad or horrible or 
 merely namby-pamby, so long as it is honest and 
 true and its " atmosphere " is a real " atmosphere " 
 and not the '* atmosphere " of a cinema picture; we 
 can read it and enjoy it, and, for a few brief moments, 
 cease to remember — except far away, dimly, at the 
 back of our mind, where the tramp, tramp of irresis- 
 tible reality falls on the ears of the " soul " muffled
 
 Passion and J ot-Pourri. 83 
 
 — faintly as an echo. It is tliis " atmosphere " which 
 is most difficult to obtain — because it spells at once 
 truth, observation, and poetry — the true signs of a 
 literary classic, the absence or falsity of which spells 
 failure, dire and everlasting. And if this be true of 
 books, so also is it true of people. The real people 
 have a real atmosphere. The false people possess no 
 " atmosphere " at all — at their best they surround 
 themselves with limelight or a garish glitter. The 
 times are out of tune except with that which is honest 
 and true and lasting. The utterly conventional soul, 
 the man or woman who was only conventional for the 
 reason that a vacuum is always more or less impervious 
 to outside disturbances, was never any good to the 
 world ; they are nowadays a clog on the wheel, as the 
 v/heel of the world's fate turns at present. The war 
 has dragged us down to the rock-bottcm of facts, and 
 when we have touched the depths we want men and 
 women who are great and simple and strong. The 
 intellectual or modern charlatan is nowadays a " back 
 number." The war has taught us to see things as 
 they really are — and in seeing things as they really 
 are, we have seen people as they really are too, and we 
 have given our homage to those whose heart and soul 
 vibrate with the Mighty Discord, yet ever-soaring 
 Harmony of this new World of Greater Truth. That 
 is why reality, even if the picture be merely obscure, 
 responds to our mood more thrillingly than. the por- 
 tentous struggle to seem really great. So we turn to 
 all that is true and good — no matter how lowly may 
 be that truth and goodness. For only in what is real 
 can we find comfort and forgetfulness — and to find 
 comfort and to forget, that is all we ask of life which 
 is not action.
 
 84 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 PASSION.— V. 
 The End of a Rose. 
 
 Ever since she had been a little tiny bud the yellow 
 Marechal Niel Rose had always longed to die in a 
 woman's hair. But to die in hair of two colours — 
 golden in the sunshine and dark brown at the roots — 
 had never entered into her day dreams for an instant. 
 
 " Once upon a time," she remarked with all the 
 sentimentality of a bud, '* my dear mother told me 
 that, if I were very, very pretty and very, very 
 good, a fairy-princess might one day stoop to gather 
 me, wearing me in her beautiful hair on that wonder- 
 ful, wonderful night when the Fairy Prince would 
 stand by her side in the darkness and give her the 
 first kiss of love beneath the stars." 
 
 She paused, drooped her head for a few 
 moments, and then, raising it once more, she con- 
 tinued prosaically : — 
 
 " But no knight in shining armour will be likely 
 to embrace this dowager, even if he be blind. I don't_ 
 see how she can expect him to. Indeed, I consider 
 she will be extremely lucky if she gets hold of a 
 widower with thirteen children, twelve of whom are 
 out of hand. Oh, I wonder why she picked me ! . . . 
 I wonder why she picked me ... ! " she added in 
 distress. 
 
 Her thoughts wera suddenly interrupted. 
 
 ** Elizabeth," sighed the woman to herself, as 
 she gazed at her own reflection in the French mirror 
 over the mantel-piece, '* you know you're years and 
 years too old to pretend that roses in your hair suit 
 you." . 
 
 *' Then I hope she'll take me out ! " cried the 
 little yellow Marechal Niel Rose, peeping over the 
 edge of a false curl. " It really would be too absurd 
 for her to take me into dinner. I should fall into 
 the soup for very shame."
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 85 
 
 *' Poor Elizabeth," sighed the woman once more. 
 '•' Poor Elizabeth ! " 
 
 She paused, making a vain attempt to smile. 
 
 " You're beginning to look every second of your 
 age.. In spite of all the face creams and massage and 
 rouge and powder and lotions and skin-food— you 
 .... you look a hundred !" 
 
 She smoothed, with the approved movement of 
 face massage, the delicate tracery of fine lines which 
 told their long, long story around the corners of her 
 eyes. Then she gently rubbed in the carmine on her 
 lips and softly powdered her neck and shoulders with 
 the tiny powder puff she hid in the centre of her 
 handkerchief. Afterwards, she looked at the result 
 critically and laughed. In the laughter, however, 
 there was no hint of merriment — just bitterness and 
 the glisten of un«hed tears. 
 
 " In fact, Elizabeth, did you ever feel quite so 
 old, and ugly and time-worn as you do to-night .f"" 
 she asked herself. And the little yellow Marechal Niel 
 rose, nestling in the tinted mass of what was once her 
 wonderful golden hair, the tired eyes, the sleepy 
 indented lines between her nose and mouth, her 
 general air of forced animation — like the light and 
 sound of a factory working overtime — all answered 
 her " No." 
 
 ** Then why on earth don't you take that 
 absurdly youthful-looking flower out of your hair, 
 wash your face, let down your tresses, let out your 
 corsets, put on a comfortable tea-gown and leave a 
 message with the servant to the effect that, if Major 
 Attenborough will lunch with you when you return 
 from Scotland — whenever that may be — you will be 
 delighted to see him., but for the moment you are 
 indisposed and too ill to see anyone. He would not 
 believe it — but what excuse, other than death, ever did 
 carry a conviction ? It would savc you an unpleasant 
 quarter of an hour, and it would not appear rude. 
 That is all that matters in a social lie. Besides, think 
 of the advantages. You could then order a basin of 
 hot arrowroot, turn out the lights, collect the house- 
 hold keys and go straight up to bed."
 
 86 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 ** I wish to Heaven that she'd follow her own 
 advice !" groaned the little yellow Mareehal Kiel Rose 
 from her nesting place of false curls. ** It's too un- 
 dignified to be kept here, niddle-noddling my exquisite 
 head upon a mountain of hair quite a different colour 
 at the roots. Not for this fate was I considered to 
 be the loveliest flower in the garden." 
 
 *' What's that you say, Elizabeth ? . . . * It's 
 only fifteen years ago after all ! ' I'm surprised at 
 you, at your age, and with your experience ! Don't 
 you realise that, when a woman is in her early fifties, 
 one year may mean a whole lifetime ! He's ten years 
 younger than you are, and you know what a maji of 
 forty admires — plaits, giggles, and an unholy 
 curiosity." 
 
 " Ah, I kneiv there was a man at the root of 
 it all," snapped the little yellow Mareehal Niei Rose 
 suddenly. '*' There generally is ! She may be only 
 fifty, but, it doesn't very much matter what age you 
 are, if you could be a grandmother and certainly look 
 it ! But, of course, these middle-aged women, with 
 their painted faces and dyed hair, who wear thick 
 veils out of doors and pretend to feel suddenly indis- 
 posed whenever the chair on which they are sitting 
 boldly faces the light ; who only become animated 
 after dark when the lights are lighted, and who swathe 
 their thin, scraggy throats in high diamond dog- 
 collars — these kind of women never have any sense 
 of proportion in their passions. They are sirens in 
 a fearful hurry, and nothing looks so unattractive as 
 an enchantress out of breath." 
 
 She paused, continuing tearfully, — 
 
 " And I .... I ... . the belle of the whole 
 garden, who ought to have expired beautifully within 
 the leaves of some fair Juliet's bible-^ught at least 
 to have graced a flower-show — imagine me, dying 
 during a flirtatious evening between a middle-aged 
 dandy and a badly repaired work of art. Oh, its out- 
 rageous ! It's unfair ! It's inhuman ! I shall write 
 to ' John Bull ' about it." 
 
 '* He swore to love you for ever and ever, did
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 87 
 
 he ? " the thoughts of the middle-aged woman 
 sneered, pondering over this memory of long ago. 
 " Well, yoti know v/hat men are ! At least, you must 
 have learnt by this time — even if once you did not 
 know. It's no excuse — no excuse whatever. After 
 all your experience you must realise that ' I vow to 
 love you for ever,' merely means until next Monday, 
 or, at longest, the end of the following week. Really, 
 Elizabeth, is there anything quite so foolish as an 
 idiotic old age } Then why not be sensible, my dear } 
 Take off that wonderful frock which cost you more 
 than you can afford, put that lovely little Mareehal 
 Niel Rose in water, slip into a nice comfy tea-gown, 
 put your feet on the fender, read a few chapters of 
 the novel you have just taken from the circulating 
 library, and doze when you feel inclined. Don't forget 
 that you were up until three o'clock this morning and, 
 at your age, every late night counts horribly. Oh, 
 yes, I know, people said you were looking lovely. It 
 has become a habit with them. But you know that 
 it takes heavily shaded lights and more than one glass 
 of champagne to make them believe it. I think they 
 feel sorry for you as well. It's always sad to see a 
 woman of your education and upbringing landed high 
 and dry at the end of her youth on the island of 
 Forlorn Hopes." 
 
 " In the name of everything that is appropriate, 
 Elizabeth, can't you realise that you're over fifty and 
 that at fifty a palpitating heart is altogether out of 
 place ! Put love out of your life and grow old grace- 
 fully, in elegance and with a sense of humour. At 
 your age, passion should be a memory. To make 
 it a present reality, renders your heart's story a tale 
 that is told on the stage of the Palais Royal. Remem- 
 ber — always, always remember ! — that the finest thing 
 you ever did in all your life was to refuse — steadfastly 
 to refuse — to run away with him while your husband 
 was alive. He wanted you to do so : he pretended 
 that your refusal broke his heart. But you realised 
 better than he did that marriage with a divorced 
 woman would ruin bis career in the army. Besides,
 
 88 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 in spite oi himself, he showed you that his desire to 
 throw up everything, marry you after you were 
 divorced, and make a fresh start abroad, wa? due more 
 to his sense of uprightness and honour than from any 
 unquenchable passion in his heart. So you refused 
 to compromise him — not once, but many times — and 
 it was the finest thing you have ever done in your 
 life. Why spoil it, then, by seeking to fan anew the 
 flames which you must realise are long since 
 dead . . . ." 
 
 Br .... r .... r .... r ..,, r ,, , ! 
 
 " Good Lord ! " screamed the little yellow Mare- 
 chal Niel Rose excitedly. " I do believe I heard a 
 bell ! He has come then — after all ! He's here . . . ! 
 Oh, it's horrible ! Presently, in a moment or two, 
 he'll be thinking what a silly little thing I look stuck 
 up on the top of this mountain of false hair." 
 
 " Oh, take me out — do .... do take me out 1 
 Put me into water. I feel as if I were going to faint. 
 Oh, don't stand there," she continued in exaspera- 
 tion, as she watched the middle-aged woman hastily 
 powdering her nose. " Trying to make yourself look 
 like a young girl. It won't deceive him. There are 
 no eyes so keen as the eyes of a dead infatuation. 
 Your nervousness may be due to love, but he — he'll 
 probably think you've had a stroke. This timidity 
 may possibly be the sign of reviving passion, but, 
 ten to one, he'll put it down to drink. And don't 
 forget that all the time .... all the time .... he 
 may be talking of old days and looking unutterable 
 nothings over a third glass of old port, the back-of- 
 his mind will be crying out in joy and gratitude, 
 * What an escape ! Good Lord, what an escape !' " 
 
 At that moment the door opened and Major 
 Attenborough was announced. 
 
 The little yellow Marechal Niel Rose, who was, 
 of course, advancing to meet him, peeped over the 
 false curl in order to obtain a better view. And what 
 did she see ? She saw a middle-aged man with a bald 
 head, a figure inclined to stoutness, a red, healthy, 
 rubicund countenance, in which the only really
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 89 
 
 noticeable feature were two flashing black eyes, 
 beneath heavy dark eyebrows, — eyes, the only ex- 
 pression of which was, towards women, one of horrid 
 interrogation, and towards men — " Damn You ! 
 Clear out ! " 
 
 *' Just as I thought ! " she groaned, sinking back 
 among the false curls. '* lie might be a stockbroker, 
 or a bookey, or bucket-shop financier — any one of 
 those type of middle-aged nnien who like women to be 
 women, with a decided preference for those who are 
 plump and showy." 
 
 Even the middle-aged woman was somewhat 
 taken aback. The Jack Attenborough she remembered 
 was well-set-up, handsome, romantic. The Jack 
 Attenborough she now welcomed had almost degene- 
 rated into one of those men from whom all nice 
 women pray to be delivered. It was a cruel dis- 
 illusionment. Also, it robbed her of much of that 
 glamour which still hung round the finest thing she 
 had ever done in her life. 
 
 The supreme sacrifice of yesterday, which has be- 
 come a fortunate escape to-day, will afford little or no 
 gratification to-morrow. One begins to feel that 
 the great act of renunciation was not so much a piece 
 of heroism as a stroke of luck. And no one feels 
 deserving of a halo for having been the object of a 
 stroke of luck. It merely proves that even Providence 
 has occasionally some sense. 
 
 They were standing — two uncomfortable, ill-at- 
 ease middle-aged people — on the hearthrug before the 
 blazing fire, endeavouring to pass, with an assump- 
 tion of friendly animation, that most uncomfortable 
 five minutes of all social intercourse — the five minutes 
 interval before dinner is announced. 
 
 *' What years since we met ! " exclaimed the 
 Man, with masculine tactlessness where age is con- 
 cerned. " It must be fifteen at least." 
 
 " It is," she answered softly. " Fifteen years 
 exactly. It was at Charing Cross railway station. Do 
 you remember — you were going abroad" 
 
 This memory of the past brought a shade of
 
 go Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 embarrassment into his manner. He interrupted the 
 inevitable train of thought which it aroused by 
 exclaiming : 
 
 " Do you know I .... I should hardly have 
 known you ! I am changed, too, I suppose. One 
 doesn't see it oneself, but, of course, it is there all the 
 same." 
 
 *' If her vanity can survive that snub," chirped 
 the little yellow Marechal Niel Rose to herself, " :t 
 can survive anything." 
 
 It didn't. 
 
 She began hastily to talk about mutual friends 
 and acquaintances of long ago. It is the one recourse 
 of old friends, who have lost touch. 
 
 " What has become of the Vandeleurs," she asked 
 with an assumed interest. 
 
 Dully he traced their destiny from the time when 
 Captain Vandeleur went to India, returned home, 
 went back again, returned once more, only to find 
 that his wife had died of diphtheria three days before 
 he landed in London. 
 
 " How shocking," she said. " She was such a 
 pretty woman." 
 
 Then dinner was announced, and they went into 
 the dining-room together. 
 
 " It's like old times," she remarked genially as 
 they sat down. *' There is * Lobster Mayonnaise,' and 
 cavaire and .... well, you see, I have not forgotten 
 your tastes, have I.^"' She handed him the menu. 
 
 The Major studied the menu critically, gazed at 
 the table decorations, and smiled his approval. AHer 
 all, however dull he might find his hostess, he was 
 about to enjoy a very good dinner, and he bad 
 arrived at that time of life when a good cook can 
 make a man bear bravely with the society of bores. 
 Not that his friend was a bore. He felt sorry for her, 
 and one never feels sorry for a companion whose pre- 
 sence makes one pray for an earthquake to swallow 
 her up. He was always sorry for declasse women 
 when they arrived at that time of life when the only 
 raison d^etre of their existence is grandchildren or an
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. gi 
 
 unquestionable respectability. Of course, with all 
 due regard to the past, Elizabeth had been a fool. 
 He was perfectly certain about that. Many women, 
 who have borne with a bad husband by having a secret 
 lover, fail to marry that lover when they are widows, 
 and yet don't go glaringly, unrepentingly to the bad. 
 It was absurd of her to go on the stage. She had 
 never any talent in that direction. Nor could she 
 make a success of a free life. She was just not bad 
 enough to be really successfully bad, and yet not good 
 enough to be really successfully good. A good man 
 could have done anything with her; so could a bad 
 one. She was that type. She had been very 
 attractive years ago. He did not blame himself 
 in the least for his past infatuation. But, of course, 
 it had been quite absurd of her to imagine that he 
 would wait for a possible widowhpod without dili- 
 gently searching to find happiness in the meantime, 
 especially as he lived in India. But women— some 
 women— are like that. They cannot understand that, 
 although absence makes the heart grow fonder, it 
 niust not last too long. When she had written to tell 
 him that she was a widow, not urging him to fulfil 
 his promise, but merely stating a fact, he had simply 
 answered her news by the usual letter of condolence 
 between friend and friend. It had been ridiculous of 
 her to imagine that his heart was still as fond as it had 
 been three years before, or that he still felt that, for 
 him, as long as life lasted, there was no other woman 
 in all the world. Men are not like that. At least, 
 not the men he had ever known. Women may be 
 different ; he could not tell. But he was thankful, as 
 he looked at her now and remembered what she had 
 been when he loved her, that he had bidden her Fare- 
 well before giving her husband public reasons for 
 seeking a divorce. The idea had been her's, too. He 
 would never cease to feel grateful to her. Of course, 
 he had been heartbroken at the time, but now— as he 
 looked back upon it, he realised that she was perfectly 
 right. Had their love been discovered, there would 
 have been a scandal and a divorce, his career and
 
 92 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 prospects would have been ruined inevitably. Oh, 
 yes, he would always be fond of her in a brotherly 
 way for what she had done. Did he not show it by 
 coming to dine with her? 
 
 Thus he reviewed the past and found that it was 
 right. 
 
 Conversation between them became more ani- 
 mated towards the end of the dinner. Every dish had 
 been excellent, the wine first-rate. It takes a middle- 
 aged woman to really make a man feel as if he were 
 the lord of creation and that creation is, with all 
 its faults, very good indeed. ' 
 
 " Do you .... do you remember ....?" she 
 began, relating some adventure of long ago. Yes, 
 yes, he remembered it well. " And do you remem- 
 ber?" he echoed. Alas, she remembered very well 
 too. 
 
 But all these memories were trivial ones — picnics, 
 old tales, amusing acquaintances, dances, balls, sup- 
 pers, scandals. Of the things in their lives which 
 really mattered they never spoke. What would have 
 been the use, after all ? It was so long ago. Friend- 
 ship would be quite impossible between them, did they 
 not both secretly agree to forget. 
 
 Thus they sat through the long winter evening 
 pleasantly discussing the things which never, at any 
 time, had really mattered. There was nothing spon- 
 taneous about these recollections. They were all very 
 deliberate, as if each one were examined well before 
 being brought forward as a topic of discussion. At 
 the end of the evening, when he bade her Good-bye, 
 they were greater strangers, in all that makes for 
 friendliness, than if they had never met. 
 
 Beneath all his brave show of being interesting 
 and amused, he felt unutterably bored, while she — 
 she felt as if she could scream. That love — the eternal 
 love, they had promised each other years ago — should 
 have come to this — polite nothings, small-talk, yawns f 
 
 Only when she remembered, as she stood in the 
 hall bidding him Adieu, that shortly perhaps his regi- 
 men would be ordered abroad, that in a few weeks*^
 
 Passion and PotPourn. 93 
 
 time he would be fighting for England " somewhere 
 in France " and might never, never return, did a 
 gleam of tenderness make her eyes beautiful as she 
 looked at him. 
 
 " I hope .... I hope . . . . " she said simply, 
 *' That you will return safely and — and — some time I 
 shall see you again " 
 
 It was a dangerous moment. He realised it. 
 Therefore, he tried to laugh. 
 
 " Of course, you'll see me again," he cried 
 jovially. "Bad pennies always return. Good-bye." 
 
 Good-bye ! " 
 
 He relaxed his hold of her hand before she had 
 offered to release his 
 
 She stood in her evening dress without a wrap 
 watching him go. 
 
 " Giro's," she heard him call to the taxi-driver. 
 *' Giro's — as quick as you can ! " 
 
 She watched the taxi disappear round the corner 
 of the street. Then, when the sound of its departure 
 was swallowed up in the silence of long distance, she 
 went in and closed the door. 
 
 Throwing herself into an easy chair in the draw- 
 ing-room she took up a book and tried to read. But 
 " Amiel's Journal," the one book which never bored 
 her, ceased to make its usual appeal. 
 
 " In me," she read, " an intellect which would 
 fain forget itself in things, is contradicted by a heart 
 which yearns to live in human beings." 
 
 " This has been my undoing, too," she sighed. 
 
 She let the book fall to the floor. 
 
 Then suddenly she stood up, her face set hard, 
 her fists clenched. 
 
 *' And to think," she cried bitterly, " I have 
 ruined my life for — for that ! " 
 
 " My grandmother," remarked the little yellow 
 Marechal Niel Rose wisely, " and she died between 
 the leaves of a young woman's prayer-book — always 
 said that human beings are invariably wise .... too 
 late. I think she was right."
 
 94 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 POT-POURRI— V. 
 
 Towns. 
 
 Towns, I suppose, have their subtle influence upon 
 us — just as scenery has, and certain people, pictures, 
 and some books. I know they have on me — and 1 am 
 a very average person. Certain towns bore you the 
 moment you leave the railway station. The little 
 country towns of Lincolnshire and the Midlands al- 
 ways make me feel as if, suddenly, I had come inlo 
 a perfect hotbed of vice — which is strange, because, 
 judging by appearances, they look about as vicious 
 as the parish pump. The West End of London rather 
 bores me — like an elaborate luncheon-party among 
 wealthy strangers talking of " literary movements " 
 and theatres. The East End makes me feel very much 
 alive — life in the East End always seems such a vital 
 restless, struggling affair, v/ithout any conventionality 
 and the un-human pose which goes with respectability 
 and a position to keep up. Paris makes me feel 
 thrilled by the spirit of " adventure " — no, not the 
 sort of adventures you may mean, I prefer the South 
 of France or the East for that ! — but the spirit of ad- 
 venture which entices you to, metaphorically speaking, 
 follow your own nose, and not to care a tinker's 
 " cuss " where it may lead you. As for suburban 
 Ivondon, it makes me want to scream or go bad, as 
 if one possessed a nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine years' 
 lease of a flat facing the Albert Memorial. A country 
 village makes me feel as if all there is in life is love 
 and a family, hymns, and that quiet Heaven which is 
 the paradise of the world-weary. The sea makes me 
 hate a crowd — which is unfortunate, since there are 
 generally masses of people by the seaside. I have only 
 one feeling on a promenade, and that is to get off it as
 
 Passion and Pot-Poiirri. 95 
 
 quickly as possible. Berlin would, of course, be un- 
 bearable if it were not for the fact that you can get 
 good cofl'ee there,' and the statues of the Prussian 
 emperors will always make you laugh. Rome and 
 Petrograd and Madrid I do not know. They belong 
 to the promise of the future— that future which seems 
 as far off as to-morrow, when to-morrow promises an 
 hour of perfect bliss. Neither do I know New York; 
 neither do I want to know it. So there ! 
 
 The Town versus the Country. 
 
 A WISE man once told me that if a man would develop 
 his character he should live in the country; if he 
 wanted to develop his brains he should live in a town. 
 I didn't believe it long ago when I first heard it. I 
 heard it in the long ago when I didn't believe anything 
 which was not an epigram or a flat contradiction of 
 the accepted. Now I know that he was right. He did 
 not mean country in the way that pigs and cows and 
 fields and lanes are country, but solitude— -which is so 
 difficult to get in a town. And I also kjiow that he 
 did not altogether mean a town — in that 'buses and 
 theatres and crowds and four posts a day mean towns. 
 He meant that in a town one is less likely to get into 
 a groove either of habits or mind. The country does 
 develop an inclination towards reflection, which is al- 
 most impossible in a town where things are always 
 happening, and a motor tyre bursting just outside 
 your study window may upset all your philosophy 
 for the rest of the morning. At one time I thought 
 that the country was the onl^ place for me. I used to 
 look at the long lines of dingy houses in London and 
 think that to die in one of them and be carried through 
 a callous throng in a hearse, to be lost among the 
 wilderness of graves — say at Finchley — would rob 
 Heaven of its satisfaction. But then I was much 
 younger in those days — and to the young their own 
 death is an important world event, and must have its
 
 96 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 proper milieu and its correct lamentations. When we 
 are older we realise that it is not so much a question 
 where one dies as the amount of real living you can 
 get out of life. To-day I care not very much where 
 I die. I only hope that Fate will not lead me at the 
 last inside a boarding-house, because I should hate the 
 ** cats " downstairs in the drawing-room to discuss 
 my departing whispers. On the whole, I should prefer 
 a hill-top and a sudden explosion — with no funeral and 
 no trace and no remains. Of course, I know that at 
 the Judgment Day it will be a little awkward if, as we 
 told, we rise again with our own bodies (I hope I 
 don't rise with mine; it has always been a nuisance, 
 and never for a moment was ever very beautiful !) ; 
 but I shall at any rate be in good company. When I 
 think of the poor Egyptian princesses who will have to 
 look for their hair, say in Adelaide, and their gold 
 teeth in Wigan, after this war, and after the Australian 
 soldiers and the Lancashires have been in camp on the 
 edge of the desert, I can imagine that the Judgment 
 Day will be a pretty strenuous affair for some of us. 
 But all that is by the way, of course, and at any rate 
 is a digression — and all digressions are dangerous. 
 What I meant to say was that if a man departs this 
 life in the middle of an explosion, he leaves at any 
 rate no souvenirs, and nobody can send a card of 
 polite '* sympathy " to what remains of an old 
 bootlace. 
 
 London. 
 
 On the whole, I think that the best town for an 
 Enslishman to live in is — London. It is for me, at 
 any rate. Not, of course, the suburbs of London — 
 these, as I remarked before, make me want to shriek ; 
 nor the West End — the West End of London makes 
 me want to be rich and nothing more; nor Blooms- 
 bury — Bloomsbury always makes me feel that I ought 
 to live in a " dusty " life and hide my identity under
 
 'Passion and Pot-Pourri. 97 
 
 an assumed French name. No, I care for none of 
 these parts of London. If there is a part of London 
 in which I really do feel as if I could feel honestly 
 alive, it is the East End. The East End has a pecu- 
 liar fascination for me. There is no red-tape in the 
 East End — either morally or intellectually. People 
 seem there to live every moment of their being — and 
 that in itself is one of the arts of living. It seems to 
 me so very much more vital than any other part of 
 the metropoUs. Pain is there and Love is there and 
 Death is there and " adventure " is there — and these, 
 after all, are the essentials. They are, at any rate, 
 tar more essential than dinner-parties and fat lun- 
 cheons and clothes and dances and intrigues and 
 "movements" with only an intellectual or moral pose 
 by way of impetus, and " sets " and exclusiveness and 
 Lady Blanker Blankers. These things bore me to 
 extinction — not for what they are, but because of the 
 importance which people make them assume. There is 
 a " tonic " quality in the East End which comes from 
 fighting, and, above all, from naturalness, and 
 absence of hypocrisy. People are what they are down 
 there; and, if they aren't very much, the majority of 
 them, well neither, for that matter, are any of us — 
 that is, beyond what we think ourselves, often a very 
 different matter. 
 
 Paris. 
 
 And, if I could not live in London and I had my choice 
 of abode — which in life is not very often the case — I 
 would live in Paris of all the towns I know. Paris 
 seems at any rate not to care one jot what you would 
 like people to think you are, only what you really 
 happen to be. Paris is very light-hearted on the 
 surface and deadly serious underneath. London is 
 often deadly serious to all appearances and often quite 
 futile when you probe deep down below the crust. I 
 love Paris — away from the Bois. I even like the
 
 gS Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 suburbs — and that is extremely difficult to say of any 
 town. I like the suburbs, becaijse even those farthest 
 away have their roots in the centre, and do not seem 
 to possess, like the suburbs of London, metaphorically 
 speaking, roots round the parish pump. It is the 
 difference between keenness in things intellectual, 
 artistic, world-wide, and a kind of forced enthusiasm, 
 more from the appearance of culture which enthusiasm 
 brings than for the thing itself. Maybe it is because I 
 am not French and because Paris is a strange town 
 and I a stranger in it, but it seems to be that I find 
 therein that restful feeling which comes with the 
 knowledge that what I am, or am not, nobody cares ! 
 In the East End of London there is this same restful 
 influence. Further west, nobody really cares, but you 
 have all the boring examination to go through as if 
 they did — which is infinitely more horrid. It is the 
 same kind of feeling that an Englishman has when 
 he is the *' latest " arrival in an hotel frequented en- 
 tirely by the English at a continental spa. There is 
 the suppressed — and not always suppressed either — 
 inarticulate expression, " Who," " What," and 
 " Why," which is more irritating than depressing. 
 Paris seems to ask " What," but is not the least in- 
 terested in " Why " and " Who." That is its at- 
 traction for me. I may be mistaken, of course, for, 
 though I have lived in Paris for several years, I have 
 not lived there long enough to pass a definite judgment 
 thereon. I am old enough and experienced enough to 
 know that the impression which a place has upon you 
 during a short time may be completely reversed if 
 you stay there long enough to become familiar with 
 it unto boredom. I have known country villages which 
 seemed to breathe all the sweetness and restfulness 
 and peace of Heaven, country places which, on better 
 acquaintance, were one long and endless turmoil over 
 the trivial. I have felt myself " lost in London," and 
 yet been apprised of the fact that I was there by a 
 dozen people within a week. It is all rather deceptive^ 
 and, even in the middle of the desert of Sahara, it 
 seems to me that soriebody is sure to see you.
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. gg 
 
 The War and Reading. 
 
 There are moments when I long, with an almost irre- 
 sistible longing, for the day when we shall, metaphori- 
 cally speaking, be able to sit in front of an open 
 fireplace, with our feet on the mantelpiece, smoking 
 peacefully, and listening to a world comparatively still 
 — I say " comparatively " advisedly, because, al- 
 though the world is never really at peace there yet are 
 moments when we are not forced to sit in the basement 
 while a Hun in a Gotha up in the air seems anxiously 
 trying to drop a bomb " plump " on top of us. I 
 yearn for the time when, occasionally, I can face a 
 long autumn evening happy in the knowledge that 
 I can fill it up in a way my heart desireth, without any 
 persistent twinge of conscience telling me that I ought 
 to be up and doing something for other people. I love 
 the long autumn evenings, undisturbed by visitors, 
 alone with a book, before a good fire, the only change 
 in prospect being the comforts of a bed. Most of us 
 have lost our *' old selves " since the war. We are, 
 metaphorically speaking, new men and new women — 
 the only trouble being that we have not really become 
 well acquainted with our new selves as yet. And we 
 long to be so acquainted, with a longing which is 
 always insistent when we wish to live and realise a 
 new and better " self." We cannot fully realise our- 
 selves until we are quiet and alone with our 
 own thoughts. And we cannot be quiet in 
 these days, and we cannot be alone; while, as 
 for thought — most of us haven't got time to 
 think, or, if we have, our thoughts are of the 
 kind from which it were better to escape. Almost 
 — one might as well try to concentrate on Jane 
 Austen during an air raid. Even thoughts need their 
 proper environment— and that environment is peace 
 and silence or the slow drone of quiet things. You 
 can't think in a bombardment — and, even though 
 most of us live beyond the sound of the guns, we are 
 still bombarded by the sight of suffering and loss, the 
 sight of tears and misery, the sound of weeping, fury,
 
 loo Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 and despair, the dread of things to come, a shuduer 
 at things that have already been. 
 
 The Human Link. 
 
 There are two emotions which always stir the world 
 to its very depths — misery and revolt. But perhaps 
 that is merely another way of saying that Passion is 
 the greatest incentive to all vital action. For there 
 can be no Passion without Unhappiness and none with- 
 out Revolution. The terms are synonymous. So many 
 people, when they speak of Passion, think only of 
 sexual ecstasy. That is only the childhood of Passion. 
 It can never reach maturity unless accompanied by 
 despair and that spirit of revolt by which alone the 
 world marches towards a possible millenium. 
 Nothing can be accomplished without Passion. 
 Passion alone leads men and women upward. Reason 
 never accomplishes anything lasting. For Reason 
 must accompany Passion — modifying it as it were. 
 There can be no Passion without despair and a fury of 
 revolt, both, maybe, finally attaining Renunciation, 
 which is the fiercest Passion of all. Decry it as we 
 may, disapprove of it as we often feel we ought, with- 
 out some kind of Passion — whether it be for a lover, 
 or an idea, or a religion, or an illusion — men and 
 women are but dead, and rather uninteresting husks. 
 Passion is something immortal — without it we remain 
 merely animal. The Commonplace and the Accepted 
 never led anyone anywhere. How could they? They 
 signify cowardice, which is the antithesis of Passion. 
 The Revolt against Despair and the Despair of Revolt 
 — these are the two great storms that hold the imagina- 
 tion of the world. For we, all of us, in our heart of 
 hearts, feel that life ought to be happier, cleaner, 
 better. That is why Unhappiness and Revolution al- 
 ways appeal to us. We may, perhaps, disapprove of 
 the reasons for this despair and the causes of this 
 revolt, yet something within us responds to that Fight-
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. lor 
 
 Against-TIiings-as-They-Are, and, although we con- 
 sent to condemn, we show our sympathy by our intense 
 interest, our fierce distrust, our secret admiration 
 towards one who, for the Faith and Despair in his 
 heart, was ready to sacrifice all, even to die in order to 
 gain that victory of Self without which life remains 
 but a miserable, sordid tale, that is not worthy to be 
 told. 
 
 The Brontes. 
 
 Why do the Bronte familv fascinate us far bevond 
 any appreciation of their literary genius ? It is be- 
 cause in their works they breathed that spirit of 
 unhappiness and revolt, and in their lives they showed 
 that greatest passion of all — Renunciation ! That is 
 why we are never tired of reading the sad, because so 
 grey, story of their lives. As women, both Emily and 
 Charlotte Bronte had missed their way in life— or 
 rather, they had not so much missed their way as that 
 Fate had never once led them towards it. The world 
 maybe is the gainer because of their unhappiness (since 
 in miser>^ and despair we alone find the great truths 
 of life), and because Emily and Charlotte Bronte 
 suffered so greatly and endured so heroically they were 
 able to breathe to the world of men and women the 
 "message " which, as long as the world lasts, will find 
 an echo in the hearts of those for whom life has proved 
 just one long unhappy struggle for that tiny fruit of 
 happiness always just out of reach. It is correct, I 
 know, to regret that Death robbed the world too soon 
 of two women of genius whose heart and mind might 
 have added yet more glory to the achievement of the 
 human mind. But sometimes I am thankful that it 
 was thus that Fate decreed. Had Emily Bronte lived, 
 and had she received the tribute to her genius which 
 thinking men and women who came after have awarded 
 her so generously, she might have written another 
 story more artistically complete, of greater harmony, 
 of finer finish, but it is to be doubted if she would ever
 
 I02 Passion and Pot-Pourri 
 
 have given the world a story whose passionate appeal 
 would be greater than " Wuthering Heights." 
 " Wuthering Heights " was born out of a great re- 
 nunciation, a great despair. It could not have been 
 born otherwise. Truth not only lies at the bottom of 
 the well, but at the bottom of the well of despair. 
 The world of men and women has learnt more during 
 the last three years than in the three centuries of com- 
 parative prosperity that preceded them. You have to 
 Jose — to knoio ! That is one of the tragedies of life. 
 To lose — to know, and to knoiv — too late — that is very 
 often the story of most men's lives. 
 
 Emily Bronte. 
 
 It is often so nice to sit quietly and "• idly wonder *' — 
 and it does no one in the least harm. And sometimes 
 I sit and " idly wonder," if fate had decreed that 
 Emily Bronte should, by force of circumstances, 
 have inhabited well, say Manchester — what would 
 have been the result ? We should not have had 
 " Wuthering Heights " — but what should we have 
 had } For the tragedy of such lives as those of Char- 
 lotte and Emily Bronte — the wild loneliness of tiie 
 Yorkshire moors was the only background possible. 
 Fate is often an artist, even when he is most cruel. 
 And this leads one on to yet another speculation — the 
 effect of environment on mind, as well as on person- 
 ality. I know that, personally, I am almost a different 
 person caged within the confines of a town or free on 
 the mountain tops. It is curious why this should be so 
 — but everyone has the same experience. I have differ- 
 ent thoughts, different longings, my imagination and 
 desires run in different channels. After a short time — 
 say a period of a few weeks — the change quickly dis- 
 appears and is lulled, if not altogether lost. But 
 prolonged into months and years — what would the 
 result be ? I should not of course be different, but 
 that part of me which cannot live and breathe in a 
 town where one is always, as it were, on view before
 
 Passion and Pot-Potirri. 103 
 
 other men, always being swayed or entranced or irri- 
 tated by the thought and manners of other men, would 
 have free play, would grow and increase imtil, for all 
 practical purposes, as a human being forced to live in 
 the community of other human beings, I should be a 
 different man. This fact I have known instinctively 
 for years. And it has taught me one thing — that each 
 man and woman must strive to know their proper 
 place, and, realising it, fight to the death to fill it in 
 the face of all opposition, all antagonism, all persua- 
 sion to the contrary. Even if they fail, or make a 
 mistake — failure and a mistaken faith will have taught 
 them many things — great, wonderful, very deep, very 
 human things — which they would never have learnt 
 had they floimdered about on the uncongenial dead- 
 level. 
 
 Haworth. 
 
 Those who have visited Haworth in Yorkshire will 
 know what I mean when I say that there is something 
 in the place and in the surrounding country which is. 
 as it were, the tragedy and genius of Emily Bronte 
 illustrated by Nature. The grandeur, the bleakness, 
 the wide, lonely spaces, the grim yet attractive little 
 town, the moors — and all that the moors mean to 
 moor-lovers in expanse and liberty and nearness to 
 the heart of Nature — all are reflected in the genius of 
 Emily Bronte. They are Emily Bronte, and she is 
 they. The two are inseparable. If you love one you 
 must of necessity love the other. If one speaks to you 
 of Eternal Things, so consequently must the other. 
 Jane Austen is, as it were, Hampshire and Bath and 
 the pretty peaceful countiy villages of the south. 
 Emily Bronte belongs to the north — we go to her and 
 to the north in our "big" moods; we seek Jane 
 Austen and the south when we need the solace of rural 
 English beauty and the exquisite prattle of rural Eng- 
 lish life. But what would have happened had the
 
 104 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 Rev. Patrick Bronte been the rector of Chawton and 
 had Jane Austen's father been a farmer on the lonely 
 Haworth Moors ? It is a pleasant speculation — a 
 harmless, interesting "idle wonder." When I want to 
 get away from ugly facts into the charming pastures 
 of peaceful, happy places, give me the inimitable Jane. 
 But when I want to act, when I want to be brave, 
 when I want to face the unequal struggle of life, when 
 I know that the inevitable must be fought and won and 
 fought again — right on and on until the end — then 
 Jane Austen is " impossible," and the genius of 
 Emily Bronte alone satisfying, alone brings comfort 
 and courage. For Emily Bronte stands for unhappi- 
 ness and revolt — not the unhappiness of things lost, the 
 revolt of political and social customs, but the unhappi- 
 ness of things which have never been ours, the revolt 
 against renunciation which we yet know to be inevit- 
 able. To compare these two supreme women would 
 be absurd. They are as poles asunder. They appeal 
 to different moods. Jane Austen is the flower, Emily 
 Bronte the rock. When we are happy, we seek the 
 flower; when we are sinking, we cling instinctively 
 to rocks 1
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 105 
 
 PASSION.— VL 
 
 The Friendship of the Fat. 
 
 For exactly six months Mrs. Charley Wyatt and Mrs. 
 Fitzgardener were the closest friends. Their great joy 
 was to be mistaken for sisters — although, of course, 
 they each considered that the other should be spoken 
 of as " the plain one." Indeed, so devoted were they 
 that, during their heart-to-heart chats concerning the 
 delinquencies of their respective husbands, they loved 
 to make believe that the friendship had been predes- 
 tined from the beginning of time : it mattered not that 
 they had furtively disapproved of each other from 
 opposite sides of the same street every day for the 
 last seven years. When, however, they did at last 
 make each other's acquaintance, flax and fire merely 
 smouldered by comparison. 
 
 The manner of their intercourse was emotional. 
 They kissed each other on both cheeks whenever they 
 met, performing the same affectionate rite when they 
 bade each other good-bye. They went to matinees 
 together ; they borrowed each other's books ; they 
 slept together in two armchairs, placed on either side 
 of the fireplace, on Sunday afternoons when the spirit 
 of patriotism sent their respective husbands drilling. 
 When this same spirit drove the same elderly gentle- 
 men into camp for a month, they both went to Bux- 
 ton together, ostensibly because the air was so invigo- 
 rating, but, in reality, because their ever-widening 
 corsets warned them they were getting fat. ^' 
 
 Nevertheless, they kept up the story of the invigo- 
 rating air with a fine assumption of histrionic talent. 
 
 " Buxton is so bracing I " declared Mrs. Fitzgar- 
 dener with enthusiasm. " I never feel tired there." 
 
 ** Nor I," chimed in Mrs. Wyatt ; adding poetic- 
 ally : '* I long to be once more among those lonely 
 hills, far away from the sound of omnibuses and the 
 war."
 
 io6 Passion and Pot-Poiirri. 
 
 In fact, they would doubtless have spent a 
 month's strenuous mountain climbing together had not 
 the circumference of Mrs. Wyatt's waist been thirty- 
 nine and that of Mrs. Fitzgardener's forty. 
 
 It was, however, this additional inch which formed 
 tlie real foundation of Mrs. Wyatt's love. It made 
 her feel quite slight. 
 
 *' Mabel is a dear, of course," she would say after 
 Mrs. Fitzgardener's fat form had ambled along, 
 clothed in that dress which the dressmaker declared 
 " made her look ever so much thinner " and wearing 
 it as if it were an exhibition — " it is such a pity she's 
 so fat. It quite spoils her." 
 
 On the other hand, it was this additional inch 
 which convinced Mrs. Fitzgardener that there was no 
 noticeable difference between them, except that she, 
 Mabel Fitzgardener, carried her weight with far greater 
 elegance and grace. 
 
 " Poor Kate Wyatt," she was wont to say pity- 
 ingly, " she's a darling, of course — but did you ever 
 see such a figure ! " 
 
 It was quite extraordinary how pleased they both 
 were with their own appearance. 
 
 Only very occasionally would a certain spiteful- 
 ness break through their habitual bovine state of 
 placid benevolence. This generally happened when 
 the weather was very Hot or when, after reading the 
 fashion prophecies in " The Queen," they learnt that 
 the mode for the coming season was especially becom- 
 ing to thin people. 
 
 Then Mrs. Wyatt would 'declare that "Mabel 
 ought to realise that, with her enormous bulk, a 
 sheath skirt looks ridiculous." 
 
 It was cruel, but then, Mrs. Fitzgardener did not 
 hear it. Besides, probably at that very moment she 
 was remarking to her husband — Mr. Fitzgardener was 
 one of those husbands who never listen — *' Did you 
 ever see anything more absurd than poor Kate looks 
 in that full skirt. Why even I could not wear it, and 
 I'm ever so much thinner than she is !" 
 
 All the same, they were both very kind-hearted
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 107 
 
 women, tolerant upon every subject except that con- 
 nected with feminine avoirdupois. Whenever Mrs. 
 Wyatt said something disparaging concerning Mabel 
 Fitzgardener's figure she would invariably add : 
 " Still one soon forgets poor Mabel's size when one 
 really gets to know her;" and, at the same moment, 
 herjriend was coming to the generous conclusion that 
 *' We none of us made ourselves you know, and, after 
 all, poor Kate can't help her figure, can she ? " 
 
 As I said before, the friendship between Kate 
 Wyatt and Mabel Fitzgardener— predestined, they felt 
 certain, since the beginning of time — lasted exactly six 
 months. It survived many things. It still lived 
 after Charlie Wyatt bought a Ford car and went dash- 
 ing along the High Street as if the whole world were 
 made for motorists. It did not die when Mrs. Fitz- 
 gardener blossomed out one Sunday morning in a gor- 
 geous raiment of blue and white, and Kate Wyatt 
 suddenly appeared the following Sunday in an equally 
 beautiful dress of white and blue. It was not killed 
 when Mrs. Fitzgardener's husband was elected mayor, 
 or after Charles Wyatt became a Captain in the 
 Methusalliers, while Tom Fitzgardener was never pro- 
 moted beyond Lance-Corporal. But it was a close 
 shave. Alas ! however, it did suddenly expire one 
 summer day, and it was killed — not by rivalry, nor by 
 misunderstanding, nor by friends, it was drowned in 
 the waters of bitterness. 
 
 And this is how it happened. 
 
 The day was very hot. Both Mrs. Wyatt and 
 Mrs. Fitzgardener were in that condition which 
 remains seraphic if it be not *' crossed." It was hard 
 for both of them to keep up the pretence of suffering 
 from rheumatism and neuritis, when Mrs. Wyatt knew 
 that Mrs. Fitzgardener had come to Buxton in the 
 hope that the waters would get rid of her fat, and Mrs. 
 Fitzgardener knew that Mrs, Wyatt knew why she 
 had come, and Mrs. Wyatt knew that Mrs. Fitzgar- 
 dener knew that Mrs. Wyatt knew why she had come 
 - — since she was there for the very same reasons herself. 
 
 They mei^ in the morning when the sun was very
 
 io8 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 hot. The spot, for ever accursed as the place where- 
 on this friendship, destined since all time, was ruth- 
 lessly slain, lay at the top of the first gentle incline 
 which leads from the Pimap Room to the promenade. 
 
 Mrs. Fitzgardener found poor Kate Wyatt re- 
 clining in a state of utter collapse upon a seat. It 
 certainly was hot even for the time of the year. People 
 said so; they had said so ever since they got up. 
 Mrs. Fitzgardener was also in that mood which is 
 ready to quarrel with an angel from heaven should 
 she assert that the same day last year was one degree 
 more warm. It is a dangerous mood. But she would 
 not have owned to such a state of temper for anything 
 in the world — least of all to Mrs. Wyatt. On the con- 
 trary, she pretended to enjoy it. No one would, how- 
 ever, have realised this. 
 
 Mrs. Fitzgardener certainly thought she looked 
 like an angel of Mercy bringing smelling-salts to a 
 sister fainting by the wayside, not in the least as if 
 she were one fat woman throwing herself down, panting 
 and limp, beside another. 
 
 Which shows the difference between appearances 
 and reality. 
 
 ** What a delightful morning ! " Mrs. Fitzgar- 
 dener cried, laying a hot hand upon Mrs. Wyatt's 
 already over-heated knee. " I do so enjoy this warm 
 weather. It always makes me feel so brisk. In fact, 
 I was just wondering whether I should walk to the 
 Cat and Fiddle after lunch. It's just three miles from 
 the Hydro, I am told, but I feel as if I could do it 
 easily. Besides, if I foimd it too far I could ride back 
 again. There's sure to be a 'bus or a char-a-hanc or 
 something." 
 
 But poor Mrs. Wyatt was beyond human conso- 
 lation, and far, far beyond any state likely to appre- 
 ciate such a programme. The overpowering heat . . 
 . . heart trouble .... sunstroke — these were 
 the only words which escaped from her lips between 
 her gasps and groans. 
 
 ** Yes, I am sure you must feel it very trying, **^ 
 went on Mrs. Fitzgardener gaily. '* But, personally^
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 109 
 
 I love it. It's so invigarating. It makes one feel so 
 young ! " 
 
 Presently she asked : *' Shall we walk as far as 
 the Pavilion ? " i"^ 
 
 But Mrs. Wyatt vouchsafed no answer. She had 
 almost collapsed. Between the smelling-bottle and 
 the flies she had no attention to devote to anyone. 
 
 " I don't like it at all," she panted. ** Had I 
 known that it was so hot I should never have ven- 
 tured out this morning." She paused. Then, seem- 
 ing to consider that her state required a little explana- 
 tion, added, " I have not been able to take much 
 exercise on account of my rheumatism. To tell the 
 truth, I have been putting on a little flesh lately. 
 This mountainous country finds it out." 
 
 Mrs. Fitzgardener broke in excitedly. ** My poor 
 Kate I " she cried. " How I feel for you ! It must 
 be awful ! But why don't you go to I>octor William- 
 son? I was getting a little too fat also, some time 
 ago. I consulted him and he put me on a diet of 
 toast and lean beef, with very little to drink. He 
 promised that I should lose a stone in eight days; 
 but so far I have not lost an ounce. Still, I am keep- 
 ing strictly to his regime, and I feel tons better for 
 it. I only drink one cup of tea for breakfast, and 
 I take no sugar and no starch. In fact, I deny myself 
 all the things I really like. Of course," she added 
 casually, " I am not doing this from vanity. I am 
 doing it because I think I owe it to my dressmaker 
 and to dear Thomas. No husband likes a really fat 
 wife about his house, does he ? " 
 
 Such an honest declaration of averted danger 
 could only invite another. 
 
 " The truth is, Mabel dear," owned Mrs. Wyatt, 
 fanning herself with a newspaper, *' I have been get- 
 ting a little plump myself lately — nothing to speak 
 of, of course, but still just sufficient to put me on my 
 guard. Obesity is in the family, unfortunately. My 
 poor mother — a lovely woman in every other way — 
 was enormous, positively enormous. Everybody says 
 bow alike we are. But I never want to get as fat as
 
 no Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 she was. Poor woman, her life was a misery ! She 
 rarely knew a moment's peace until she was a widow 
 
 • • • • 
 
 " A widow ? " demanded Mrs. Fitzgardener. 
 
 " A widow," replied Mrs. Wyatt quietly. *' You 
 see, poor papa was a ' junny man '...." 
 
 Now they both understood. 
 
 " Have you ever tried this and that?" asked Mrs. 
 Fitzgardener hopefully. Mrs. Wyatt had apparently 
 tried every known tablet which had ever been adver- 
 tised as a cure for obesity. " Have you done this 
 exercise or the other?" Mrs. Wyatt demanded, bom- 
 barding Mrs. Fitzgardener with the various advantages 
 of Sandow's system over Miiller's, and how both were 
 inferior to the one invented by her own doctor. Un- 
 knowingly, Mrs. Fitzgardener owned that she, too, had 
 tried everything. Their conversational topics ranged 
 from the advantage of a regime of vinegar and raw 
 beef to lying flat on the floor and kicking their legs 
 over their heads violently for ten minutes every 
 morning. One demanded of the other if she had ever 
 consulted Drs. Jones and Robinson, of Harley 
 Street, who were well-known specialists on female 
 obesity. Both agreed reluctantly that they had done 
 so, and had put on additional weight in consequence. 
 Then Mrs. Fitzgardener waxed eloquent over some- 
 body's bread, which she assured Mrs. Wyatt had '* re- 
 duced her a stone in a fortnight." But Mrs. Wyatt 
 was sceptical. She, herself, found the exercise of 
 tearing up a newspaper into small fragments, throw- 
 ing them into the air and picking them up again, 
 crawling about flat on her stomach to do it, quite the 
 best thing to reduce adipose tissue which she had ever 
 known. Whenever one of them discovered that the 
 other had not tried a certain cure, that cure became 
 immediately the only one which had ever done her 
 ** the least bit of good." 
 
 So the morning pleasantly passed away, Mrs. Fitz- 
 gardener and Mrs. Wyatt both secretly agreeing that 
 they had never found each other so interesting in all 
 the six weeks of their sisterhood.
 
 Passion and Pot-Fotirri. iii 
 
 Both separated for their usual afternoon nap with 
 a mutual promise to add yet another torment to their 
 already tormented lives. 
 
 But this, you may suggest, would only prove a 
 greater bond of sympathy between them. 
 
 Wait. 
 
 It is one thing to help a lame dog over a stile, 
 and another for it to fly gaily over the next one long 
 before you arrive there to give help. When Mrs. 
 Wyatt told Mrs. Fitzgardener about the torn pieces 
 of newspaper she inadvertently sowed the seeds which 
 ended in a crop of suspicion and misunderstanding. 
 
 Mrs. Fitzgardener tried it. For three whole weeks 
 she crawled on her stomach over her bedroom floor 
 picking up the pieces of paper which she had just 
 thrown into the air. Then, one day, she caught a 
 severe chill through performing the rite arrayed only 
 in her nightgown. It began with a cold ; it continued 
 as bronchitis, and it ended as double pneumonia. 
 For several days her life was despaired of. Then came 
 the crisis and many long weeks of slow convalescence. 
 
 Poor Mr. Fitzgardener was in despair. He went 
 to the theatre three and four times a week. He could 
 not bear to return home knowing that he would find 
 the wife of his bosom racked by acute suffering and 
 he powerless to help her. Also she never knew now 
 when he returned. 
 
 Mrs. Wyatt, in order to cheer her up, gave her 
 graphic descriptions through the telephone of how she 
 had recently been obliged to take in her waist-band 
 nearly two inches. Everybody, in fact, did their in- 
 dividual best to cheer the poor woman up, and each 
 one did so — except poor Mr. Fitzgardener. 
 
 Mr. Fitzgardener felt certain that his wife was 
 going to die. He kept telling her so, and asking her 
 what he should do if she did. He was never weary 
 of informing her how ill she looked, and how changed 
 she was from her usual beautiful self. He did it 
 several times a day. He seemed to find a secret satis- 
 faction in this belief. 
 
 But Mrs. Fitzgardener did not agree with her
 
 112 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 husband at all. Moreover, she proved her point by 
 getting better, v 
 
 And among the first to brighten up the sick-room 
 by her presence was Kate Wyatt. She came in beam- 
 ing with high spirits — fat, jolly, unfashionably rotund. 
 She had discovered a ** certain cure for obesity " and 
 she had already tried it. 
 
 " It is marvellous !" she assured Mrs. Fitzgar- 
 dener enthusiastically. *' Simply marvellous ! You 
 niu^t try it 1" 
 
 Mrs. Fitzgardener regarded the friend of her 
 bosom critically, and could perceive no change. But 
 she said nothing. She was not allowed. 
 
 Mrs. Wyatt continued to wax eloquent over the 
 wonder of £he new cure. She was eloquent so loudly 
 and so long that she wearied Mrs. Fitzgardener. She 
 wearied her so greatly that she had a relapse. For 
 three weeks her husband again felt certain she was 
 going to die. But she did not. After a further month 
 of convalescence she was so far recovered as to be well 
 enough to go away. 
 
 Li the meanwhile Mrs. Wyatt had outlived her 
 enthusiasm for the "certain cure,*' and had discovered 
 an even more *' infallible " one. She awaited her 
 friend's return impatiently. And Mrs. Fitzgardener 
 did at length return. 
 
 The tragic sequel was brief and sudden. 
 
 For not only did she return a happier, healthier 
 woman — Kate Wyatt could have forgiven her that 
 and even rejoiced thereat — but she returned in an un- 
 forgivable manner — she came hack thin ! 
 
 That was beyond Kate Wyatt's forgiveness. 
 
 And not only did she come back thin, but she 
 came back sylph-like — Charlie Wyatt said so I 
 
 That was too much for his wife, who still turned 
 the scale at sixteen stone. 
 
 All was over between them. 
 
 Once Kate Wyatt and Mabel Fitzgardener used 
 to speak of each other as " That dear,^' Now they 
 refer to one another as *' That rvoman ! " 
 
 Such is friendship.
 
 Passion and PoiPourri. 113 
 
 POT-POURRI— VI. 
 The Top-Dogs. 
 
 Most people like to be Top-Dogs. It is a very gratify- 
 ing situation on the whole. People will spend the 
 greater and best part of their lives striving to attain 
 the position ands let us hope-if only for their sakes 
 that the attainment is worth the daily and, I should 
 imagine, very deadly struggle. Even in little things 
 people love to imagine themselves 11. Ine 
 struggle begins in the kitchen and ascends as far as- 
 well, in whichever station of life you most earnestly 
 aspire to become a Big Panjandrum. It is a very 
 common human failing, after all— and it is a failmg, 
 since half the minor *' disagreeables '* of hfe come 
 from this everlasting struggle of the commonplace to 
 be accounted among the unique. And sometunes it be- 
 gins on a very altruistic basis. For example, a man 
 founds a Society for the Abolition of All Self-interest 
 for the Benefit of Humanity at large. It begins, may- 
 be, in a cellar— and people laugh at it, or despise it, 
 or hate it— as they mostly do anything in a cellar. It 
 is persecuted and becomes the more powerful for this 
 persecution. Then, one day, alas ! a duchess descends 
 into the cellar, it becomes fashionable, and then the 
 end of an Ideal is nigh. For all the really Little People 
 yearn to be Big People, and all the Big People start 
 quarrelling among themselves as to which of them is 
 the biggest. Meanwhile the Ideal of Self-Sacrifice be- 
 comes lost amid the struggling and cackling of its 
 Believers striving to reach the Highest Altar over the 
 sacrifices of other people. Even in little things, this 
 pursuit of the Top-Dog place poisons the little real 
 good there may have been there in the beginning. 
 One has only to learn the inner workings of the most 
 estimable philanthropic society to discover that the 
 Heads are far more busy keeping themselves at the
 
 114 Passion and Pot-Pourri, 
 
 top than keeping their eyes of their heart and soul 
 on the interest of those poorer brethren for the help and 
 succour of whom they are supposed by the outside 
 world to e>ast. Thus, what began as one foundation 
 stone of a new heaven and a new earth, becomes at 
 last a kind of semi-suppressed bear-fight among its 
 various " layers " from the president to the humble 
 char. A storm of nagging about a Thing of Beauty — 
 that is what so many High Ideals become at the end. 
 And all on account of the struggles of those who would 
 help others, using that loving aid as an excuse to help 
 themselves. 
 
 The Little People. 
 
 Sometimes I think that only the Little People are 
 really " big " — can really be '* big " in the sense that 
 *' bigness " stands for Unselfishness, Disinterested- 
 ness, Love — those qualities of the heart and soul which 
 are incorrectly called " Christian " in that they pre- 
 suppose the belief that they came to the world of 
 men and women solely through the coming of Christ. 
 (He embodied them ; He has become their symbol — 
 but they existed long before He came, and they are 
 foimd in the hearts and *' souls " of men who have 
 never even heard of Him. They are the rock founda- 
 tions of all religion — and thank God for it ! For they 
 signify that real religion is a Human Brotherhood, not 
 a thing of sects and creeds ; and they convince us that 
 all Faith is religion and that no faith is worthy until 
 its articles are translated into acts.) The Big People, 
 after they have become " Big " in the worldly sense, 
 have to fight a daily fight against the really *' Little 
 People 'J whose one object in life is to look immense. 
 The Little People are undisturbed by this manifesta- 
 tion of human ambition and petty jealousy in the 
 midst of their life's mission. They can go steadfastly 
 on their way — unknown, unsung, unmolested, either 
 by those who praise their work or by those who seek to 
 belittle it for the aggrandisement of themselves. After
 
 . Passion and Pot -Pourn. 115 
 
 all, who was more lowly and humble than Christ Him- 
 self ? They are only His disciples who have sought to 
 add a kind of charlatanesque glory to His humble 
 station among the poor and suffering. Christ sought 
 to work downtvards in the scale of worldly glory until 
 He reached that lowest rung of all, where He was most 
 needed — where He was the better appreciated and 
 understood. His disciples, on the other hand, have 
 striven to work themselves upivard — until they have 
 reached that rare atmosphere where little that is 
 human can possibly live, and where they sit, meta- 
 phorically speaking, as near as they imagine Heaven to 
 be — their Heaven being all that is mighty and resplen- 
 dent and all-powerful in the purely worldly picture of 
 a transformation-scene Paradise. 
 
 Honours for Good. 
 
 So many people seem to await the Second Coming as 
 they would await the coming of the Lord Mayor's 
 Show. They have got, as it were, the procession all 
 ready — the archbishops and the bishops, the arch- 
 deacons and deacons, and all the lesser fry. What 
 they wait for is the coming of the King, always a 
 King ! These good people will, I am convinced, con- 
 tinue waiting throughout the whole human history of 
 the earth. And this for a very apparent reason. Christ 
 will never come again, for the simple reason that — He 
 has never gone ! The idol — for He is an idol 
 in the minds of these waiting people — will re- 
 main an idol, as inarticulate and stony as any 
 image. But, in the minds of those for whom 
 Christ is rather a philosophy. He is as alive to-day 
 as if He bodily walked in our midst. He is in every 
 act of unselfishness, of disinterested conduct, in every 
 act of kindness and love, in every sacrifice, in every 
 triumph over evil and temptation. And in this mani- 
 festation of His reality— He is, for the most part, 
 unheard of, unseen. For the good men do is the silent
 
 ii6 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 good — and in this silent good Christ speaks to the 
 world at the top of His voice. We may not hear the 
 words, but we catch the spirit — and the *' spirit " of 
 a thing is, after all, the Thing Itself. And this 
 ** spirit " possesses no committee, no secretary, or 
 treasurer, or list of Big-Wigs hanging desperately on. 
 It is just a little band of unselfish men and women 
 doing silently to others as they would wish they would 
 do unto them. They receive no medal; they do not 
 desire to receive one. Medals and honours are but the 
 worldly palliation of the Top-Dogs struggling to be 
 Top-Dog. The Little People, who are really big, rea- 
 lise that, should they receive such an honour, it is 
 undeserved, since they know that a little lower down 
 there also are men and women of whom the outside 
 world has never heard, who to the human brotherhood 
 have given their all — and no man can possibly give 
 more. This makes them humble — and in humility 
 lies that sense of Justice and Proportion which belongs 
 to Christ. 
 
 Honours. 
 
 One of the evils which the war has brought with it is 
 what must be called a perfect epidemic of honours. 
 Talk about the 'flu — well, you can't talk about the 'flu ; 
 it's unspeakable ! Oh, the A.B.C.'s and the G.E.F.'s 
 and the G.H.I. 's flying about nowadays ! Everybody 
 seems after one of them. If you pull the string long 
 enough and demand something loud enough — you 
 generally end by getting what you want. Some 
 get it through pure merit. It usually comes as 
 such a surprise to them ! Therein lies their merit ! 
 But that is by the way. Everybody seems to be de- 
 manding some recognition for what they do. It is an 
 absurd, if harmless, weakness, but it should not be 
 encouraged — though that again is by the way. Every- 
 body gets recognition of some sort—except the soldier. 
 He gets one-and-six a day, and stands stiffly to atten- 
 tion when singing the National Anthem. The prin-
 
 Passion and Pot -Pourri. 117 
 
 ciple, however, is bad all the same. But because it 
 is bad in principle it is certain to die hard. As a 
 matter of fact, it would be more reasonable to give 
 out dishonours rather than honours. That would at 
 any rate buck the slackers up a bit. To encourage 
 workers to work is, I suppose, the raison d'etre of 
 honours after all. But the workers who work for the 
 love of work — which is only another way of calling 
 it duty — don't need honours really. To have done 
 their utmost is sufficient for them. The few who work 
 only for these rewards are not worth considering, either 
 as workers or as patriots. They spend so much time 
 wire-pulling in all directions, in fear and trembling 
 that, in the next list, their names may be left out, that 
 more than half their energies are consequently wasted 
 for the purpose they are supposed to have in view. 
 No. It would be much better to give dishonours to 
 those who are doing absolutely nothing at all; half- 
 honours to those who might do more, and to have no 
 honour bestowed at all would be the greatest honour 
 of all. As it is, this latter situation is beginning to be 
 recognised as the best. It is all very well for a few 
 people to be thus marked out — nobody quite knows 
 by whom — for this national recognition of a duty 
 done. It is another thing to share that honour with 
 a hundred thousand — the more honest half of whom 
 are amazed at their good fortune (though their amaze- 
 ment is not half so colossal as the amazement in which 
 other people regard the good fortune of the other half ,^ 
 who have worked for nothing else than recognition ever 
 since they began to work). I know at least a dozen 
 instances where these war honours have been bestowed 
 in a manner absolutely ludicrous. They would have 
 been a most delightful joke did not one know at the 
 same time that the unheard-of men and women, who 
 had in reality done all the work, got nothing at alL 
 That is the worst of it. If nobody were thus singled 
 out there would be no injustice done. And, after all, 
 if there be any honours going at all, let them be given 
 after every soldier has received one. These titled 
 ladies, these millionairesses, matrons, superintendents.
 
 ii8 Passion and Pot -Potirri. 
 
 and other what-nots, sporting their emblems of some- 
 thing done, make one rather tired when one realises 
 that, for every one of them, there are a hundred other 
 women who, if sacrifice, hard work, and a readiness 
 to give all be worthy of honour, ought to wear a dozen 
 emblems. And then one comes to the ordinary' soldier 
 — who, after all, is the be-all and end-all of the whole 
 affair. One comes to him, I say, and for the most part 
 one sees a gold stripe, for which he had to pay, and a 
 Services-Rendered badge, for which usually he has had 
 to write — once, perhaps ; maybe half-a-dozen times. 
 That is all. 
 
 The People who are Never Heard of. 
 
 Occasionally one sees the real value of a person's 
 services in queer ways. The mistress is ill (Dear, 
 dear ! We are very sorry) ; the cook has got the 'flu 
 (Good Heavens ! What on earth shall we do ?). There 
 are many of these crude realities in every walk of life. 
 They make the thoughtful think — and think deeply. 
 The more one works among war workers, the more 
 one realises that very often the most essential people 
 are never heard of at all. Their " bit " is not the 
 showy " bit." It is done far out of the limelight. It 
 does not curtsey to kiss the hand of royalty when 
 royalty has time to visit its abode. It has no time to 
 curtsey ; it has no time for royalty. It just goes on 
 steadily working on and on, often up to and often, 
 alas ! beyond breaking point. The Powers-that-Are 
 fail to recognise it — the Powers-that-Are always fail 
 to recognise anybody who does not deliberately thrust 
 himself under their very noses. It gets no honour 
 bestowed upon it; it would refuse one were it offered. 
 It knows that in the army of those who give their all 
 and do their best there are a hundred thousand such 
 as they. It neither asks for honours, nor expects them. 
 And that is the worst of all medals and clasps and 
 A.B.C.'s and X.Y.Z.'s. They focus attention upon a 
 certain man, and they focus it upon that man to the
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 119 
 
 exclusion of all the other men, many of whom are far 
 more worthy to stand in the national limelight. So in 
 the place of honour you have that anti-national spirit 
 of rivalry and tuft-hunting and bitterness. So, as I 
 say, let every man and woman be their own honour, 
 and let those who are doing nothing at all for anybody 
 — let them have a badge of dishonour. There will be 
 no unfairness then ; there will be no neglect ; there will 
 be no disappointment, or bitterness, or envy, or con- 
 tempt. There is only one badge worth wearing — the^ 
 Services-Rendered badge ; there is only one ribbon 
 worth wearing — it is the chevron. For the rest, the 
 story of a man or woman's labour and sacrifice is the 
 best honour they can possess, the one honour that can 
 be justly won and proudly worn. 
 
 The Quiet, Simple People. 
 
 I SUPPOSE, however, that honours are given in order 
 to impress the crowd — the crowd who do not know. 
 The people who know are usually not impressed at all. 
 Instinctively, they say to themselves — not " Why 
 not me " as the silly will at once suggest — 
 but " If So-and-so, why not So-and-so " and 
 thus through a dozen names. It is a question 
 of so many people — or none at all. Well, far 
 far better none at all than that one who merits 
 should be omitted. Honours, then, are manifestly 
 wrong. They are wrong because they are unfair. In 
 spirit they may be beautiful, but in practice they do 
 not work toward beauty at all. For they throw the 
 limelight upon certain acts, leaving in obscurity other 
 acts perhaps even more glorious. It is, in another way, 
 the old promise of eternal happiness promised to the 
 good for keeping good, whereas goodness should be its 
 own reward alone — if there is to be any virtue in 
 rfghteousness. Honours and titles then, are not only 
 fn mistake, they are wrong. Honours and titles for 
 national duty are consequently even worse. For 
 even/ mar) in war time has a duty to per-
 
 I20 Passion and Poi-Pourri. 
 
 form — some useful purpose to accomplish ac- 
 cording to his individual means and capabilities. 
 To fulfil that duty is his honour. i' you 
 honour them in addition, you honour them only to 
 slight the labour and usefulness of a thousand who 
 have done as much, and in some instances, consider- 
 ably more. It were far better to leave *' rewards '* 
 out of it altogether, for fear that in this era which de- 
 mands justice and encouragement, and again justice, 
 justice, justice, more than any other era in the world's 
 history, a slight may be given to nobility and sacrifice, 
 and the imitation shine with all the brightness of the 
 real. There are millions of men and women to-day 
 who deserve honours and titles — or rather, deserve 
 them only ij other people get thevi. To bestow an 
 honour, to give a title, immediately places a man's 
 work upon a grade higher and more valuable than the 
 rest. That is wrong. In the superlative, there can 
 be no comparative ; the best is the best in every walk 
 of life — and the best is all that a man or woman can 
 do ; no recipients of an honour or a title or a star can 
 do more than that, or have ever done more than that — 
 no matter if their breast is not broad enough to hold 
 what they possess. In keeping this in mind the glory 
 of the Silent People will not be overlooked. And say 
 what you will of the great ones of the earth, they are 
 the Silent People who really count in the end, after 
 all. Napoleon would not have been any good without 
 his glorious French Army, nor the glorious French 
 Army without its Napoleon. They were essential to 
 each other. The wise man keeps his love and praise 
 for the rank and file as well as for the generals. And 
 the general, if he be a wise man, knows that the rank 
 and file deserve them as well as he does. They are 
 one in honour and glory. Rank carries no honour by 
 itself alone. It merely differentiates men's labour, 
 and possesses no intrinsic honour outside the honour 
 of work well done. People look upon a *' star " as 
 " honour," and a *' title " for " glory "—but they 
 will be mistaken quite as often as they are right.
 
 Passion and Pot -Pour ri. 121 
 
 A Sense of Justice in the Rank and File. 
 
 It is strange how extraordinarily jair the poor are in 
 these matters. I say " strange "' advisedly, because 
 so many people imagine that the poor possess a greater 
 sense of " grasp " than of justice. But that is not so. 
 The poor are naturally very fair — very fair indeed. 
 They may often be unjust to each other as individuals 
 personally acquainted — we all are. It is so extremely 
 difficult to be impartial towards someone we know so 
 intimately that they don't impress us — but they are 
 extraordinarily just to men and women in the aggre- 
 gate. Soldiers especially possess this virtue far more 
 strongly than the average civilian would give them 
 credit for. If they criticise the awarding of an honour, 
 it is rarely because they feel that this honour was un- 
 deserved; far more often because the same honour 
 was deserved in a far greater number of instances. 
 Moreover, they are uncannily unimpressed by rank, as 
 rank, and so are quite generous in their enthusiasm and 
 love for a man, as a man. It is a characteristic which 
 to me, at all events, is extraordinarily lovable. One 
 meets in civilian life so much obeisance to rank, as 
 rank, so little attention given to men, as men. I have 
 heard men and women sneer contemptuously at an 
 ordinary private in any other capacity than as a self- 
 pleasing object of condescending hero-worshii) , no 
 matter how splendid his human, as well as his military, 
 record. They will, vulgarly speaking, "slop all over " 
 a second-lieutenant of no attainment whatsoever and 
 even less chin. Perhaps I am born altogether without 
 the sense of Caste or Class. But the love and friend- 
 ship I am the most proud to possess in all my life is 
 in many cases the love and friendship of men and 
 women with whom most of my class-associates would 
 feel uncomfortable if they were even asked to sit dowa 
 to tea. Maybe I am wrong, maybe they Ire wrong ; I 
 care not which it is. Only this I know, that it is the 
 man who bores me, and the man alone whom I love — 
 I care not one jot if he eats peas with his knife or a 
 fork {were he truly wise, he'd eat them with a spoon 1).
 
 122 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 PASSION.— VI. 
 
 Frivolity and the Frump. 
 
 A Fbump is bom a frump. But she never knows she 
 is one ; nor do her parents ; nor do her friends — and 
 a frump very rarely ventures far from home. Beware, 
 however, of the child who waits until she is dressed 
 in a nice new white frock to be sick all over it. That 
 is the first symptom. Henceforward her decline in 
 grace can be traced with as great facility as the foot- 
 prints of an early morning bather down a sand dune. 
 
 And Mary Ellen was a frump. Of that there was 
 no doubt. She slobbered as a baby; she never had 
 unaccountable fits of naughtiness, and she grew up a 
 fright. These were perhaps the chief reasons why she 
 was so respected throughout her life. The world is 
 full of dull people in high places, and the most enter- 
 taining folk on the lower rungs of the social ladder. 
 
 Mary Ellen was bom in a provincial town, of a 
 mother who had been an " echo " all her life, and a 
 father who, every Sunday morning, put on an old- 
 fashioned frock coat and handed round the collection 
 plate in the church of Saint Michael and All the 
 Angels. Her mother was famous foi being the last 
 person in the world to wear a plush mantle trimmed 
 with chenile fringe — the whole surmounted by a jet 
 bonnet. She was the kind of woman whom you 
 describe as ** nice " because you know absolutely 
 nothing nasty about her. She was all curves and soft 
 places, and she had been sat upon like a bolster e vet- 
 since she was a baby. No wonder she was so popular ! 
 But when you have said that you have said every- 
 t!hing possible to say about her, except to add that 
 she had a tragic complexion and a low-comedy nose. 
 
 Mary Ellen's father, as 1 mentioned before, 
 handed round the collection plate in a frock coat. 
 That had always been his ambition ever since he had
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 123 
 
 been taken to church as a fat schoolboy. He had 
 achieved it He was that kind of man. ^ 
 
 Mary Ellen was an enormous baby— big and fat, 
 and pink and white. At one year of age she turned 
 the scales at 20 pounds, and she looked like an adver- 
 tisement of somebody or other's patent food. 
 
 " She's fine enough to show at an exhibition," 
 declared Mary Ellen's mother's monthly nurse; and 
 Mary Ellen's Mother grew big with pride. Unfor- 
 tunately, all that she could achieve as a mother she 
 -achieved with Mary Ellen. There never was a 
 successor. Only on one occasion did Mary Ellen's 
 mother go into joyful and expectant retirement, and 
 then it turned out eventually to be only indigestion. 
 
 Mary Ellen, however, was one of those " only 
 children " who never give their parents a moment's 
 anxiety. She was always pink and plump and easily 
 pleased. When she grew up to be a young woman 
 she uttered platitudes to perfection ; later on she sat 
 on such things as " boards " and committees and the 
 platforms at Missionary Meetings. In her old age she 
 ** propped up " things. What the local habitation of 
 the League of Distressed Gentlewomen would have 
 done without her, only the distressed gentlewomen 
 knew. How the Society of Social Salvation, the Guild 
 of Working Mothers, the Sisterhood for Uplifting 
 Hottentots, the Boot and Shoe Club for Christian 
 Children, and the Primrose League would have pro 
 gressed without her occasional subscriptions and un- 
 ceasing prayers on their behalf, only those who were 
 blind to the moral, intellectual and social progress 
 which these societies and leagues and sisterhoods stood 
 for, could possibly guess. In fact, all through her life 
 Mary Ellen had been a pattern— a plain pattern, if 
 you will— but a pattern nevertheless. She was 
 referred to as " a treasure." (You know how casually 
 people treat treasures.) In spite of all these splendid 
 qualities, her husband ran away and left her. 
 
 But, of course, men are always unfaithful to 
 ■*' patterns," aren't they ? 
 
 But I digress.
 
 124 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 Mary Ellen's childhood was seraphic in its guile- 
 lessness. She always, did everything she was told, 
 and always waited until she was told to do it before 
 she did anything. In fact, she was the embodiment 
 of that silent nonenity which crusty middle-aged 
 bachelors immediately think of when poets sing of 
 the joy of having a child about the house. She always 
 said ** Thank you " when somebody gave her some- 
 thing, and *' Please " when she wanted to get some- 
 thing on her own account. Also, she had been known 
 to say "Granted" when somebody begged her pardon. 
 But that was not the reason why her husband left her. 
 
 At least, that was what Betsy Ann asserted in a 
 moment of exasperation at Mary Ellen's manifold 
 perfections. But, then, Betsy Ann was a very plain 
 little girl, who had no company manners, and at the 
 age of fourteen ran to leg. Her untidy mass of hair 
 had a way of making her look rakish, without making 
 her look unkempt and untidy. It suited her type of 
 face to perfection. But it gave the promise of a sinful 
 career, the neighbours thought. And they were right. 
 
 Mary Ellen's mother gravely pitied the mother 
 of Betsy Ann — as is often a mother's way — and did 
 not encourage her own darling in any attempts at 
 friendship with Mrs. Steverton's " horrid little girl." 
 
 But neither did little Betsy Ann encourage Mary 
 Ellen's childish overtures. She used to explain in the 
 vulgar *' boy language," which she leamt from her 
 cousin Jack when he came to spend his holidays with 
 her parents, that it gave her " the pip " to play with 
 Mrs. Weatherton's " big fat fool." 
 
 So, you perceive, even in childhood, Mary Ellen 
 and Betsy Ann were secret rivals. Their real rivalry, 
 however, did not develop into a series of pitched 
 battles until both of them had become young women 
 with their ^hair up, dressed in the height-of-fashion- 
 on-a-chean-scale of what was la mode in Paris 
 the year before last. They went to tennis parties and 
 tea parties and picnics unchaperoned, and their in- 
 dividual conduct at these excitations to giddiness on- 
 weak tea and buns inclined Betsy Ann to describe
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 125 
 
 Mary Ellen as " dull as ditch water " and Mary Ellen 
 to speak of Betsy Ann as " horribly fast." 
 
 Naturally, the confidant of these mutual animosi- 
 ties was a man. Women are often generous to each 
 other when they are speaking to other women or in 
 public, but only men — and among men, principally 
 bachelors — ever learn how dangerous and spiteful are 
 the other pretty women of his district. In this 
 instance, the man was Jack, then a handsome yoimg 
 fellow of twenty-six, fresh from Oxford. 
 
 Being Betsy Ann's cousin, Betsy Ann considered 
 that she had a proprietory right to his attentions. 
 But then, so did Mary Ellen — for other reasons. She 
 did not possess the rights of relationship, but she 
 possessed that far more important claim — the claim 
 of being much more kissable and ever so much 
 prettier. Still, it was a hard struggle, since, if Maiy 
 Ellen were lovelier, Betsy Ann was a far more enter- 
 taining companion. She laid herself out to be one. 
 You see, plain women have to do something. They 
 cannot entirely rely on clothes. Therefore the battle 
 between Mary Ellen and Betsy Ann for the heart of 
 Cousin Jack became the eternal battle between beauty 
 and brains. Of course, beauty won. It always does 
 — at the beginning. 
 
 The first offensive took place one sultry August 
 afternoon — years before the war. The scene was a 
 tennis lawn, and what is called an American Tourna- 
 ment was in progress. God was on the side of Mary 
 Ellen. She was chosen to be Cousin Jack's partner. 
 Alas ! she was not a great player. Betsy Ann vulgarly 
 declared that she could not play tennis ** for toffy," 
 but then Betsy Ann was a prejudiced observer. 
 Besides, Mary Ellen possessed qualities far more valu- 
 able to a girl* on a tennis-lawn than mere eflficiency. 
 White suited her to perfection, and she had exquisitely 
 pretty ankles. Betsy Ann alas ! had that kind of skin 
 which close proximity to white turns a dull shade of 
 yellow; also, her ankles were — just ordinary ankles 
 and nothing at all to rave over. 
 
 So what did Cousin Jack care if Betsy Ann
 
 126 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 played an infinitely better game than Mary Ellen ? He 
 would not have cared if his partner's performance had 
 meant ever more than " thirty — love " to their 
 opponents in every game. He loved to hear her 
 pretty laughter when she hit a ball into the net or 
 served a double-fault three times running. He would 
 have been ready to forgive her anything just for the 
 sake of seeing the sunlight in her hair. 
 
 You see, he was only twenty-six. 
 
 Her giggle sounded to him like the sound of little 
 silver bells wafted from Heaven upon the breeze. 
 Her doll-like prettiness, he felt, must surely resemble 
 the beauty of angels. He believed instinctively that 
 she possessed all the virtues, all the loftiness of spirit, 
 all the splendour of soul, which would make him, no 
 matter to what heights he attained, utterly and 
 eternally unworthy even to untie her boot-laces. 
 
 Therefore he proposed to make her his wife. 
 
 *' Oh, Betsy Ann, how .... how can you !'* 
 Mary Ellen cried reproachfully over the teacups that 
 same afternoon. She was not only shocked, she was 
 serious. '* Poor old Mrs. Bellimere ! She is such a 
 dear, good, kind woman ! Everybody loves her. I 
 am sure that she makes the world a better place. I 
 wish I did," she added after a pause. 
 
 She rolled her eyes heavenward, and Jack, gazing 
 into their limpid blue depths, noticing how prettily 
 her fair hair waved over the temples, cried out with 
 all the earnestness of his passionate being, ** Yoti 
 do !" 
 
 Of course, Mary Ellen had intended him to say 
 that. 
 
 But Betsy Ann replied with all the irritation of a 
 girl deeply in love who is playing a losing game and 
 Icnows it, " I wasn't referring to Mrs. Belliraere's 
 morals," she cried tart'", ** I was simply referring 
 to her hat. You can't put an erection of yellow 
 feathers on a false front without making the result 
 look silly, can you? " 
 
 She leaned back in her chair to laugh. And Jack, 
 gating at what he considered to be her heartless mirth.
 
 Passion and Pot-Potirri. 127 
 
 came to the conclusion that he could never under- 
 stand the man who really admired intelligent girls, 
 with broad foreheads and flashing eyes. For himself, 
 he could see no vestige of beauty in any woman who 
 was not fair, with blue eyes, a pink and white com- 
 plexion, and nothing to say. 
 
 He turned to look at Mary Ellen, and, at that 
 very moment, Mary Ellen turned to look at him. The 
 result was that, after supper, Cousin Jack asked her 
 to become his wife, and Mary Ellen accepted him. 
 
 Six weeks later they were married. And two 
 weeks after that Betsy Ann discovered that she had 
 literary gifts which could only reach their full fruition 
 by living in London. Nobody missed her, however. 
 She was the only person who really looked a * fright ' 
 at Mary Ellen's wedding. 
 
 Cousin Jack and his wife began their married life 
 in a semi-detached house which Mary Ellen insisted 
 upon calling " Loch Lomond " because she had once 
 spent a very happy holiday there. Everybody called 
 upon them, and she gave dull dinner-parties. 
 Socially they were a great success. 
 
 Now Frumpishness is usually an ineradicable 
 disease. It is bom with one, and, like most mortal 
 diseases, it develops slowly. A philosopher of the 
 world would immediately have pointed out to Jack, 
 had Jack asked him to, which is unthinkable, that 
 beneath Mary Ellen's smiling exterior there lay an 
 utter desolate waste of mental barrenness which could 
 stultify in a very short time a whole district of 
 geniuses. But Jack would not have believed him. Why 
 should he ? When he married his wife he married her 
 because she was " far too good for him." How was he 
 to know, then, that less than a year later, his wife 
 would herself realise that indeed she was, always 
 had been, and for ever and ever would be. 
 
 It was not to be expected. 
 
 Yet, it happened, alas ! And this is how it came 
 about. 
 
 Wkea Mary Ellen realised at last that she really 
 was married and that Jack was infinitely inferior to
 
 128 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 lier, she, if I may express it colloquially, *' let herself 
 go." What mind she ever had rarely looked beyond 
 lier housekeeping book. She was the perfect 
 manageress. Only by a miracle did she escape elastic 
 sided boots. Never would she dream of paying more 
 than five and elevenpence for a pair of corsets. She 
 dressed her pretty fair hair ** anyhow." Her clothes 
 developed that depressing appearance of having re- 
 cently been raked out from the bottom of an old trunk 
 in which they had once been badly packed. She 
 bought forlorn-looking hats and wore them long after 
 they had lost their original shape, and months after 
 they had gone completely out of fashion. 
 
 And while she became more and more careless 
 concerning la mode, she became more and more de- 
 voted to the study of other people's morals. Marriage 
 came to her when she was almost completely innocent. 
 Under its revelation she became a policewoman. She 
 used her tongue as a lash and her umbrella as a 
 truncheon. Her first prisoner was her husband. Jack. 
 Having caught her man, she sought to keep him by 
 means of the law and her own methods of " f rightful- 
 ness." Allowing herself to become as unattractive 
 and as little companionable as possible, she yet in- 
 sisted upon her husband giving her all those little 
 complimentary attentions by which he had at one time 
 shown his love and homage. They visited public 
 restaurants together, but rarely opened their lips 
 except to ask each other how they liked the soup. 
 She objected, on principle, to every single one of her 
 husband's amusements and interests, and had none 
 to offer him of her own. When the first baby arrived, 
 to the tyrannical self-satisfaction of wifehood was 
 added the far more aggressive one of being a mother. 
 To hear her talk one might have thought that no 
 other woman on earth had ever h..d a baby. Eve 
 herself could not have been more proud. She had 
 the poets, the statesmen, every other woman and 
 most other men, upon her side. Everything was given 
 up for the comfort and amusement of the child. She 
 inferred, with quiet insistence, that there was abso-
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 129 
 
 lutdy no other subject, either in Heaven or upon 
 earth, about which she cared to talk. When the child 
 made gurghng noises in its throat, the sound was 
 interpreted to mean anything from " Dadda " to h 
 quotation from Shakespere. When it began to walk, 
 It walked m every room, at every hour of the day 
 whoever happened to be there. When it became tired 
 of walking, It yelled hard for the benefit of anv visitor 
 who happened to be present. Mary Ellen encouraged 
 It to scream : she held it was good for a child's lungs. 
 1 he friends were supposed to describe its performance 
 m glowmg apostrophies, to which Mary Ellen sat and 
 listened in fat satisfaction, invariably considering that 
 the most eloquent praises were not adulatory enough. 
 So things went on for two years. At the end'^of 
 that period Mary Ellen had entered that large multi- 
 tude of married women whom their husband's friends 
 openly wonder " what on earth he ever saw in her " 
 bhe seemed to consider the art of fascination to be 
 the sign of spiritual decline. She looked at a desire 
 to make the best of oneself as only one more subtle 
 temptation to worldliness instituted by the Devil 
 Any topic of conversation which had not intimately 
 to do with the affairs of her household or the mis- 
 domgs of the neighbourhood, she avoided. Physical 
 elegance made her suspicious : mental brightness left 
 her cold The world was very wicked, and everyone, 
 except her own precious infant, was bom a siiiner. 
 She liked dull people, and dull people found her very 
 nice Her aim in life might be said to comprise 
 
 batter pudding.*' She certainly achieved it 
 rri,A ^f "".« ^^."t on like this for a further two years. 
 Th^n the me^ntable happened, as it always does in 
 real lite. Carelessness is punished by fate with far 
 more relentlessness than crime. If one desires to be 
 loved, one must first deserve love, and to keen love 
 means one perpetual struggle, one long self-sacrifice 
 one tireless planning and watching. No law will 
 prevent an empty heart from seeking an occupant, 
 and the only way to keep it warm and secnre is to 
 mhabjt yourself. Then the alien enemy ha*: no chance
 
 13c Passion and Pot-Pourri, 
 
 Alas ! Mary Ellen was a frump in mind as weLt 
 as in body, and a frump is always blind to tb*' ^^evas- 
 iation of its own frumpishness. 
 
 That was Betsy Ann's opportunity, and she 
 took it. 
 
 So we ought to speak of her as " a wicked 
 woman." 
 
 She returned to Balham, four years after Mary 
 Ellen and Cousin Jack had discovered how difficult it 
 was to live up to the protestations of first-love, a 
 woman of charm and experience. Also, she returned 
 in a smart hat. (Figuratively speaking, of course.) 
 Her clothes were the wonder of the neighbourhood. 
 She was a woman "on her own" now, having become 
 a novelist with a good money-making reputation. To 
 be seen twice in her company made the good people of 
 the district infer that one possessed intellectual attain- 
 ments unshared by the throng. Men even were so 
 daring as to call her beautiful. Women, on the other 
 hand, openly hinted that all her attraction lay in her 
 clothes. If their own dress-allowance were doubled, so 
 they asserted, they also could appear just as dazzling. 
 Only Mary Ellen failed to envy Betsy Ann her literary 
 success and her taste in hats. For one thing, she 
 never read anything except the works of Rosa 
 Nouchette Carey and the Bible, and was quickly 
 arriving at the state which proudly asserts 
 that, " I never have time to read anything now 
 that I am married." As for clothes, she 
 abhorred them. Her greatest boast was that she 
 made a dress last her years and years. She could not 
 understand her husband's admiration of this cousin 
 whom he had spurned four years ago. She was not 
 at all " his type," she told herself. He liked sweet, 
 womanly women, — women who made a sanctuary of 
 home and are content to stay there. Mary Ellen was 
 quite satisfied that she supplied everything in the way 
 of feminine companionship which any reasonable man 
 ouffht to want. 
 
 Alas ! Cousin Jack did not think so. 
 
 Betsy Ann had not been living in the same street
 
 Passion and Pot -Pourri. 131 
 
 for many months before he made the discover that 
 bnmettes were very attractive and broad foreheads 
 singularly beautiful. He could not understand any 
 man who professed only to admire blondes. There 
 was something insipid about a fair woman. They did 
 not attract him. He could not understand how he 
 had ever liked them. The kind of woman he really 
 admired was dark, with masses of fluffy black hair, 
 two sparkling brown eyes, a broad forehead,— a 
 woman who was intellectual and wrote stories and 
 wore smart clothes. Of course, he could give no name 
 to such an ideal woman. He just felt that she was 
 the woman of his dreams. (Men are like that.) 
 
 But Betsy Ann knew, and alas ! she did not care. 
 
 She and Cousin Jack had been friends all their 
 lives; they were faster friends than ever now. He 
 was a much simpler character than she was, and she 
 loved him for it. (It made him far easier to manage.) 
 Yet she was a real " pal " to him in the very best 
 sense of the word. She gave him sympathy and under- 
 standing, and knowledge of the world had given her 
 a knowledge of the masculine heart as well. She saw 
 the pitfalls of love and she avoided them. She saw 
 in what circumstances love is sometimes murdered, 
 and she fought against them with all her might. Un- 
 like Cousin Jack, she saw where their friendship was 
 fast leading them, but, like him, she did not care. 
 She realised that Mary Ellen only belonged to the 
 sentimental illusions of his youth. She was the "angel 
 type " whom men believe they marry, — and usually 
 don't. Her own attraction was the attraction of a 
 grown woman to the adult man. Their hearts, as well 
 as their minds, were in aflinity. Mary Ellen had 
 caught him, but she had never tried to deserve him. 
 On the contrary she believed that no man alive was 
 deserving of her. Betsy Ann was more modest. Her 
 victory — for they eloped one summer evening just 
 before war broke out — was the victory of merit as 
 wen as hard work. She knew what an illusive a thincr 
 is love, and she fought with all her might to keep it. 
 She won in the end, as she deserA-ed to do. But the
 
 132 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 things which the people of Balham said about her 
 would not bear repeating. She is, and will forever 
 remain, the outlaw. Mary Ellen is the outraged saint 
 — '* a good woman, my dear, but oh, so dreary I ** 
 
 Betsy Ann and Cousin Jack lived on the continent 
 in a picturesque Italian village near Rome. They were 
 looked upon as an " ideal couple." But to become 
 an ideal couple means really hard work. It means 
 perpetual unselfishness, perpetual sympathy, per- 
 petual self-sacrifice, perpetual love. It is not a state 
 which comes to every couple who never quarrel if they 
 live imder the same roof long enough. It means deve- 
 lopment in perfect unison and perfect understanding. 
 
 But you can never get a Frump to see this. 
 
 She is all for the Sanctity of Marriage, the Law 
 and the Moral Lash. That is why, in Mary Ellen's 
 mental atmosphere, her righteous indignation becomes 
 fiercer and fiercer with the passing years. She con- 
 siders herself the victim of man's wickedness and 
 woman's treachery. And all the time it was her own 
 fault. Fate, metaphorically speaking, gave her a nice 
 new frock which she cared for so little as to be sick 
 all over it. Now she sits screaming to other people 
 to come and witness her undeserved fate. 
 
 There are lots and lots of women just like Mary 
 Ellen. 
 
 There are only a few like Betsy Ann. 
 
 And how they hate each other! 
 
 *'She can't have loved him," Mary Ellen declares 
 while she sips her cup of morning chocolate with the 
 newspaper propped up in front of her, '* or she would 
 not have let him go to the war." 
 
 And almost at the same moment, Betsy Ann is 
 telling herself that he would have learned to despise 
 both himself and her, had she told him to stay at 
 home. 
 
 Life is a ladder up which we cannot climb alone. 
 
 Love helps us to climb. 
 
 ** Marriage is an end," declares Mary Ellen. 
 
 ** Marriage is only the very, very beginning,** 
 answers Betsy Ann.
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 135 
 
 POT-POURRI.-VII. 
 
 Happiness and "The Thing." 
 
 Most people abuse '* The Thing." You have to pon- 
 der for quite a long time to recognise that even this 
 absurdity has its own very valuable uses. It has 
 added, for instance, quite 50 per cent, to happiness. 
 To know that the little moment of pure bliss which 
 you snatch in desperation from Destiny — Destiny, 
 which seems determined that you should live-long-but- 
 enjoy little — offending as it does against its accepted 
 tenets, makes you enjoy yourself much more, and adds 
 the zest of an adventure to quite a dull and ordinary 
 afternoon. " Thou shalt not " — is popularly supposed 
 to put an end to all restlessness in conventionality ; as 
 a matter of fact, it is very often the only ingredient of 
 happiness in whatever you, in your desire to add some 
 vivid colouring in life, may risk to do. Most happi- 
 ness, even quite innocent happiness, is surrounded on 
 all sides by the barbed wire of *' The Thing." It Is 
 part of himaan nature to desire to venture over land 
 trespassers on which will be prosecuted. Once throw 
 open the gates thereof wide and all those trying to seek 
 entrance will immediately turn their faces in the oppo- 
 site direction. Thus '* The Thing " has given a 
 glamour to even the dullest sin. There is no holiday 
 quite so satisfying as a truant holiday. There is no 
 kiss quite so sweet as the stolen kiss. There is no 
 day-oSF quite so health-bringing as the day-off which 
 we ought not to take. What matter if we suffer for 
 what we have done later on? Suffering is the inevit- 
 able aftermath of joy it seems to me. It intensifies 
 it — like the knowledge of Death intensifies Passion. 
 Of course, I am not speaking of the Scarlet Sins. I 
 am speaking solely of the little innocent, ordinary 
 ** flings '* — flings which would leave no impression
 
 134 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 upon our hearts at all were they not accomplished in 
 the face of conventional disapproval. Conventional dis- 
 approval makes them something to remember. ** We 
 rarely remember the dull events of life, and the laws 
 of "The Thing " make inevitably for dulness. Of 
 course, if you flout them altogether, you don't enjoy 
 yourself at all. The wise man accepts the law six 
 days of the week and, metaphorically speaking, snaps 
 his fingers at it on Sunday. Very few people can 
 accept the law for the whole seven days. Even if they 
 do, it usually stamps them with the dreary trade- 
 mark of inanity. The frump is he who not only never 
 breaks the law, but who never once wants to do so. 
 There is always imagination in rebellion, however 
 futile. And the whole history of human progress is 
 the history of rebellion after all. That is so — isn't it ? 
 
 Never Anything Twice. 
 
 And here is one more little word of advice to the 
 unimaginative — Never break the same law tnnce. That 
 is folly. After all, at the back of the law, as well as 
 at the back of " The Thing," there are justice and 
 right, as well as safety. To live in a perpetual state of 
 ** having a fling " is just as dull as to live in a per- 
 petual state of never jumping at all, not for any 
 special reason, but for very joy of defiance. Habits are 
 always dull, and the habit of kicking over the traces is 
 quite as silly and boring as the habit of never strain- 
 ing at the chain. Novelty is the secret of happiness. 
 Never anything twice is a truism. To repeat a joy is 
 fatal. It is fatal, because you never enjoy yourself so 
 much the second time. The wise man or woman 
 thanks his gods for the joy, mostly unexpected, which 
 they have vouchsafed unto him. Nothing seems to 
 annoy the deity who bestows upon us the all-too-fleet- 
 ins; moments of our happiness as to, as it were, force 
 his hand. A planned happiness is nearly always a 
 second-rate joy. Something is always wrong some- 
 where — the second time. Browning sang, *' Never the
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 135 
 
 time, or the place, and the loved-one altogether." I 
 should like to add — once the time and the place and 
 the loved-one altogether — but never again ! Tragedy 
 usually lies in never knowing imtil afterwards that it 
 was the loved-one and it was the place and there Wu.s 
 the time ! The foolish man tries to bring all three 
 back tosether. He never succeeds. Therein lies his 
 folly. He should wait until the next time. For there 
 will be a next time — even if he doesn't recognise it 
 imtil it too has passed into the silent limbo of dreams 
 which only discovered themselves as possible " reali- 
 ties " — too late .... always .... always .... 
 too late ! 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 Facing the Facts. 
 
 Most people hate facts — simply loathe them. Even 
 on paper they have a direful look. Face to face — they 
 are invariably disturbing — like an outspoken person at 
 a polite tea-party. A delusion is a much more com- 
 fortable thing to live with. Some people are bom, 
 metaphorically speaking, with a pair of rose-coloured 
 glasses stuck on the end of their noses. Other people 
 insist upon purchasing a pair at any cost and feel in- 
 sufficiently clad to meet Life if they have not got them 
 on. And just a few refuse to wear any for any con- 
 sideration whatsoever, but go about looking at men 
 and women and things with the naked eye, being cor- 
 dially disliked accordingly. Facts make people 
 imcomfortable — and anything which helps to add to 
 the general discomfort of things in general is sure of 
 a very lukewarm reception. Even to-day there are 
 people who prefer not to view the war in any other 
 light than that of a kind of glorified sporting picnic. 
 If the worst happens — they talk hurriedly about their 
 " King and Country," thereby satisfying their own 
 consciences that all is for the best, and such things 
 have to be. They hint they are all part of the glory 
 of war and the foundations of a New Earth — about 
 which their own ideas are delicately nebulous, and, 
 concerning which, they are more than content to let
 
 136 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 some unknown body of men do all the planning, ready,, 
 however, to help them generously — providmg this 
 New Earth does not also mean any drastic changes to 
 the old one. I hope that one day the official war films 
 which were considered too horrible to be shown pub- 
 licly will not only be shown, but their exhibition will 
 form part of the weekly curriculum of the national 
 education of the young. Otherwise, the glory and the 
 ** fun " of War is likely to eclipse the unimaginable 
 horror of it all — to the belittlement of the present im- 
 portance of those who have fought in it and the 
 possibilitity of a renewal of its ghastly horror for 
 those who one day will be old enough to fight. After 
 the War is over we want the world to be so sickened 
 by the waste, the suffering, and the rank horror of it 
 all that it will never, never happen again. Men will 
 shudder at the mere possibility. There is only one 
 way lo do this, and that is to keep the real fact of 
 what War is ever before the eyes of the world. Like 
 every terror — Time is a great healer, and what filled us 
 with disgust and shame a little time ago can be viewed 
 quite calmly some little time later. Until the men and 
 women of the people make those who govern and lead 
 them realise that never under any consideration shall 
 there ever be a repetition of the horrors of War, there 
 is no chance of nations settling their differences in any 
 peaceful way. It is useless to talk about a World- 
 Army to be formed for the suppression of War. That 
 is the common-sense way out of it all — and whichever 
 way the Government of Nations take to bring about 
 Peace and Happiness and Justice, they will never by 
 any chance take the common-sense one. The longest 
 and most dangerous way round is always the most to 
 be commended to those who stand to gain the most 
 from War. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 Life. 
 
 Most people put on their rose-coloured pince-nez when 
 they view Facts, and look over the top of them with 
 the naked eye when they regard men and women.
 
 Fassion and Pot-Fourri. t%^j 
 
 This is the wrong, because the ungenerous, way of 
 doing it. You will see a greater Truth when you view 
 men and women through the rose-coloured hue of pink 
 glass ; Facts should be faced courageously as they are 
 —since until we fully realise them for what they are. 
 It is hopeless to begin to make plans to change them, 
 or to dream what they may eventually become. Per- 
 sonally, I have little or no patience with the type of 
 mind which eternally insists upon turning its back 
 upon the disagreeable. Things are no less disagreeable 
 because you ignore them. On the contrary, the longer 
 you ignore them the more they flourish by your neg- 
 lect. The Truth about things never did anyone any 
 harm. Moral squeamishness drugs; never for one 
 instant does it cure. After all, no fact in life, however 
 u^ly, IS quite so horrible as the mind which refuses to 
 acknowledge it, and the heart which fails to throb 
 with the spirit of self-sacrifice in its regard. Selfish- 
 ness and greed are uglier than the greatest of moral 
 sms, and they excite no pity. Besides, nothing on 
 earth is so bad but that truthfulness and honesty 
 make it less so. So many people are wilfully, or im- 
 consciously, blind that it often needs a great shock 
 before they can be made to see. It is as well to ad- 
 mimster that shock. The soul will be all the greater, 
 the heart will be all the bigger, for that moment of 
 full realisation. For until we have fully realised an 
 evil, how can we hope to cure it ? And if we do not 
 hope to cure it— of what particle of good are we in 
 the world ? And to realise a thing is not to see its 
 ugliness, but to perceive the beauty which lies hidden 
 underneath, or the pity of it— which is akin to under- 
 standing. 
 
 The Horrors of War. 
 
 There would be no example of profiteering; there 
 would be no rumours of strikes; there would be no 
 •piousness towards the wounded or unwounded sol- 
 dier; there would be no hysterical jubilation for
 
 i^^ Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 VicLci-y; there would be a nobler sadness in defeat;; 
 there would be a finer detennination to make the 
 coming days of Peace more worthy of the price paid 
 to attain them ; there would be a more steadfast out- 
 cry against the thought of any future War — if the 
 people who profiteer, who strike, who are unthinkiiig^ 
 and selfish or blindly disregardful of suffering and 
 death, once — for one single instant — fully realised in, 
 their own person and '* soul " what War in all its 
 horror and nakedness really means. W^e are all too 
 apt to imagine that to wave a flag or present a badge 
 makes up to a soldier for what he has been through 
 or suffered or seen. The words, ^'* For King and 
 Country," are only too easily taken literally ; whereas 
 it is not for his King, as king, that the man has suf- 
 fered and dared, nor for his country — as he has known, 
 it — but for that greater King, that happier country 
 which is our lesson — we who remain behind — to learn ; 
 not his, not the soldiers', who have made this educa- 
 tion possible. The soldier fights to gain that Peace 
 which alone it ought to be our endeavour to make 
 worthy his sacrifice. Towards that Happier Peace we 
 all have equal responsibility, an equal share. The 
 soldier has done his " bit." Are we to fail in ours? 
 The question is as yet unanswered. But until we rea- 
 lise what he has done we shall never realise what we 
 have still to do. 
 
 War as War is. 
 
 Honestly, it always makes me feel rather impatient 
 with people — and there are heaps of them — whose 
 only realisation of the awfulness of War is that it is 
 indescribably horrible, but thank Heaven they arenH 
 in it — people who, the moment a vivid picture of the 
 Truth meets their gaze, turn away and try to shake 
 it from Iheir minds as if it were mud sticking tp their 
 clothes. An unnecessary horror— like the horror of 
 some accident — one may be excused from regarding,, 
 unless, one is either a doctor or a nurse. But the
 
 Passion amd Pot-Pourri. 139 
 
 horrors of War are not unnecessary horrors — or, if tbey 
 are unnecessary, why have we permitted the War at 
 all? And in the " accident " of War we are all doc- 
 toi-s and nurses, metaphorically speaking. To shun 
 them, to ignore the greater Goodness which can come 
 from all this cruelty and beastliness, if so we will, isi 
 the act of a coward, or worse still, a shirker in what, 
 should be a mutual sacrifice — even though the fight be- 
 waged on different battlefields. 
 
 An Interpretation of Sorrow. 
 
 I WISH that humanity became finer, better, nearer to 
 the ideal of Christ, in prosperity. It would make life 
 so much easier. But, alas ! it doesn't. Metaphori- 
 cally speaking, we all deteriorate amid cushions. 
 Danger, misery, suffering, drive us together, forge us 
 in one human brotherhood, wherein all that is 
 best in us triumphs and all that is base in 
 us shows itself in ugly contrast — for its own 
 condemnation. There is more real, unselfish love 
 to be found among the poor than in any other 
 class of society. Their poverty, their sufferings, their 
 sacrifice, are a bond between them. All their struggles 
 are the struggles for life — not the struggle to become 
 a Top-Dog. The struggle for life is a very primitive 
 thing. It is a struggle for essentials. The struggle for 
 the better place is the struggle after an honour which 
 is both unessential and, for the most part, thankless 
 even when attained. If anything, it brings out the 
 worst in us. ». It does not call forth the spirit of selE- 
 saerifice, of unselfishness, of love — which are the finest 
 elements in the human heart, but, rather, its philo- 
 sophy is summed up in the adage, " Push or be 
 pushed " — and every successful ** push " is a victory, 
 and every victory means that someone weaker has 
 been defeased. • But mutual suffering, mutual danger, 
 mutual tribulation can only triumph over its ills if 
 each one fights the battle of all, and supreme victor^' 
 means that each man has fought, not for himself, but
 
 140 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 for all men. Were it not for the waste in human life 
 and in human achievement, for the bodily suffering 
 and cruel wrongs, war might possibly be a human 
 blessing. The mental agony of the world is all for the 
 world's good. For the agony of the mind is an agony 
 from which all come through chastened, humbled, with 
 a clearer insight into the essentials of happiness and 
 our duty towards their brother men. Were we posi- 
 tively certain of a life eternal, even war as it is would 
 possess a glory whose benefits might make suffering 
 worth while. But without this certainty the mind is 
 staggered by the horror and hideousness and unutter- 
 able waste and misery of it all. It falls back aghast — 
 groping blindly after the glory which it so rarely finds. 
 Therein lies the sting — the ever-present sting of pain.
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 1 4 1 
 
 PASSION.-VIIl. 
 
 One Libertine Afternoon. 
 
 The millionairess sat in the breakfast-room of the 
 huge millionaire mansion, situated in the very heart 
 of Mayf air— bored, unutterably bored. 
 
 Outside, an April sun was shining in a sky of 
 heavenly blue. It seemed to beckon her far, far away 
 towards the land of Might-Have-Been—had-the- 
 dreams-of-a-day-come-true. Inside, everything was 
 very expensive, very rare, very wonderful, and about 
 as exhilarating as a tomb. 
 
 In the millionaire's garden, worth — so some 
 unthanked statistician had calculated— fifteen hundred 
 pounds the square foot, lovely yellow tulips, and pale 
 pmk and blue hyacinths, stood out stiffly from the 
 soot-begrimed flowerbeds like faded eleven-pence- 
 three-farthing-sale-price-artificial-flowers pinned per- 
 pendicularly around a dirty hat. On the massive 
 breakfast-table were hot dishes and cold, many more 
 than the millionairess, who had no appetite for break- 
 fast, could possibly eat— cut glass, sparkling silver, 
 exquisite flowers, fruits out of season and fruits in— 
 every luxury, in fact, which the millionairess had 
 longed for when, as pretty Mary Bull—" one of the 
 Bulls, the Buckinghamshire Bulls," as her poor 
 mother used to assert in plaintive pride — she had 
 married the rich Jew financier, Ankerstein, and satis- 
 fied, not only her own ideas concerning life's absolute 
 necessities, but also the worldly ambitions of the 
 whole Bull family. 
 
 How everybody envied her ! 
 
 There was scarcely a thing that she desired which 
 she was not able to obtain easily. Upon her allow- 
 ance for dresses and hats many men brought up a 
 stalwart family and left a will which was a credit to 
 their widows. She had innumerable servants to serve
 
 142 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 her every need : a yacht, a whole team of motor cars, 
 horses, dogs, a mansion in London, a castle in Scot- 
 land, a *' cottage " in Devonshire, a flat in Paris, 
 and a villa on the Riviera. 
 
 And yet she was not happy ! 
 
 She sat in the midst of all this once much-coveted 
 splendour, a pretty, painted, fashionable little figure, 
 bored — unutterably bored. 
 
 It seemed to her, as she sat gazing pensively 
 through the open French windows into the fifteen- 
 hundred-pounds-a-square-foot-garden, that life had 
 nothing amusing, nothing interesting, nothing thrilling 
 left to give her. She had done and seen everything 
 which a millionaire's wife could reasonably be 
 expected to see and do. And yet the past had been 
 monotonous, the present was dull, the future looked 
 drab. She knew everybody in London, New York, 
 and Paris, who was socially considered worth know- 
 ing; they struck her as being one and all more unin- 
 teresting than the average. She had seen all the 
 seven wonders of the world, and vaguely wondered 
 why people raved so greatly over them. She had sat 
 at the feet of great artists, great musicians, great 
 poets, and had secretly wondered why they had faith- 
 ful and loving wives at home ; she herself could neither 
 be faithful to, nor love them. She had been charitabk, 
 and it had bored her; she had played at intellectuality, 
 and intellectuality had left her cold. Dresses, hats, 
 the coming fashions no longer kept her awake at night 
 planning purchases for the morrow. Even love had 
 ceased to interest her. She had flirted, and the flirta- 
 tion had usually been labour. Occasionally, the waves 
 of passion had broken over her, but, when the tide 
 had receded, leaving the shingle of commonplace which 
 is everyday life, it had merely left one more infatua- 
 tion dead upon the stony shore. Even the whirl of 
 society had quickly developed into a social treadmill. 
 Politicians irritated her : they made her dinner-Darties 
 noisy ; people out to reform mankind invariably look 
 unattractive and never know when to go. Religion ? 
 She was not eager to be religious. Like the .little
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 143 
 
 ^hild, she was not afraid of death, because she was so 
 young and felt so well. Her life, in fact, seemed to, 
 gtretch out before and behind her, as uninteresting as 
 the Cromwell Road — and just as endless ; a Cromwell 
 Road, too, which led at last to widowhood and an 
 expensive family vault. Her days seemed like a 
 never-ending chain of exactly the same links. '•^ What 
 she did yesterday, she had done to-day, and would, 
 in all probability, do to-morrow. 
 
 And yet .... and yet .... did she really 
 know what she was going to do to-day ? 
 
 *• I should so hate to be a millionairess !" said 
 the letter which was lying open in front of her. " It 
 must be such a frightful bore to be surrounded by 
 everything you want, in a world that has learnt, for 
 the most part, the fact that — " all which the heart 
 most earnestly desire, the same shall never be taken 
 away — simply because they will never get it I'* 
 
 *' I should so hate to be a millionairess . . . ." 
 She read the phrase over for the third time in per- 
 plexity. Then she suddenly got up and walked over 
 to the French window. " What cheek I What m- 
 sufferable cheek!" she cried furiously, clenching her 
 small fists. ** How dare he !" She paused. Then 
 she once more reiterated the phrase : *' I should so 
 hate to be a millionairess !" Pooh ! She went back 
 to her chair at the breakfast-table and sat with the 
 palms of her hands supporting her chin in an attitude 
 of thought. 
 
 " This is my punishment," she mused with a 
 frown. " My punishment — for having mildly flirted 
 with Bohemia during a few days of holiday boredom. 
 Weil, I deserve it, I suppose. These scribblers, with 
 their smug, conceited, little ways, their hygienic 
 underclothing, and their endless chatter— chatter 
 about literary style .... Mamma was perfectly 
 right when she said, ' If you must flirt out of your 
 own " set," flirt with a singer. They go off on long 
 tours, and can amuse one's guests.' " 
 
 As if to obliterate the train of her own thoughts, 
 the millionairess buried her face in her hands. Then
 
 144 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 she once more got up suddenly and walked towards 
 the French window. 
 
 And was it by accident, or some secret desigij 
 belonging to the Back-of-her-Mind, that the lettei 
 accompanied her into the April sunshine ? 
 
 Outside everything seemed restless and happy with 
 the coming of Spring. Even the stiff-looking narcissus 
 tried to dance a little in the breeze, and the lovely 
 yellow tulips opened their faces to the heavenly blue 
 sky, and thought how admirably their colours went 
 together. Only the wife of the millionaire seemed to 
 brmg into that world of laughing youthfulness the 
 dreary atmosphere of conventionality. 
 
 Somehow she seemed to feel her own inappro- 
 priateness. It depressed her. But, then, it ... ^ 
 it ... . was so hateful to be a millionairess ! 
 
 ** Oh, why had he written to her ? .... Why 
 had he written to her? She wanted to forget him. 
 Instinctively she felt that he wanted to forget her. 
 They why .... ? Oh, if only she could have 
 despised him ! He was poor and unknown — the two 
 crimes of that world in which she moved — but he 
 wasn't in the least like other literary men whom she 
 had met — men whose conversation took her so com- 
 pletely out of her depth that she had to think hard 
 of all that stack of money behind her in order to safe- 
 guard the consciousness of her own dignity and 
 superiority. And he hadn't smug little ways, and he 
 didn't wear hygienic underclothing. His collars and 
 cuffs were invariably more immaculate than those of 
 her own husband. Also he looked so wholesome and 
 so healthy, mentally and physically, and his sense of 
 humour was equal to her own. He certainly had been 
 a delightful companion during those three long days 
 in Switzerland when she had to lay all day long on 
 the verandah of the hotel on accoxmt of a strained 
 muscle in her foot. She had been glad of his society 
 then. Abroad one is never very particular so long 
 as the stranger is amusing and interesting. But she 
 did not want their flirtation to go any farther. It 
 would not do. His friends and relations were probably 
 frankly impossible.
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri, 145 
 
 The millionairess wandered out into the sunshine 
 among the flowers. The April breeze stirred the golden 
 cob-web of her hair. Oh, it was good to be alive I 
 
 On the ** rustic " bench at the end of the garden 
 she sat down and once more lost consciousness of the 
 present in thought. 
 
 Davos hadn't seemed half so amusing without 
 him. When he went away there remained a feeling 
 of utter blankness which her own heart told her was 
 the beginning of infatuation. He certainly was the 
 nicest man she had ever met .... 
 
 Suddenly she clenched her little fists. 
 
 Why should she not let respectability play truant 
 for one happy April afternoon? Why should she 
 always pretend to look like a platitude when her heart 
 yearned to say " Damn " in the face of the angels, and 
 her soul longed to throw its spiritual bonnet over the 
 windmills, letting her body take a flying leap over 
 it as well ? She was a woman. There was no one to 
 consider except her family — who would never know — 
 and her husband — who wouldn't care if he did. Then 
 what was she frightened of ? Simply of a conventional 
 code. But codes were made for slaves and dullards. 
 She was young and beautiful, and almost free. 
 Besides, there would be no harm in it. She would 
 be back in time for dinner. No one would ever know. 
 If she left Paddington by the 11.20 train she would 
 be there by half-past twelve. How glorious the coun- 
 try must look on such a day as this I The air would 
 do her good. She had been feeling very run down 
 lately. Already her head ached. Were she to spend 
 the day in London she would probably be ill. She 
 must go for the sake of her health, then. There" 
 could be no harm in her going for the sake of her 
 health. Lots of women she knew would not hesitate 
 an instant. Then why should she ? She was young 
 and eager, and beautiful, and . . . • and .... it 
 was Spring. 
 
 So, of course, the 11.20 train from Paddington car- 
 ried a fair-haired lady, somewhat muffled up for the 
 time of the year.
 
 346 Passion and Poi-Pourri. 
 
 The millionairess sat in a corner of a first-class 
 carriage reading *' The Maxims of Marcus Aurelius *' 
 upside down. She was very happy. 
 
 A man sitting in the opposite comer wondered 
 where he had seen her face before. She was very 
 attractive, he felt, but he did not analyse her attrac 
 tiveness. In fact, he quickly dismissed her off the 
 face of his sentimental universe, not considering her 
 so lovely, or charming, or unique as his own wife. 
 You see, he had only been married a week. 
 
 At a little wayside station, situated seventy 
 ■minutes from London by a slow train, the millionairess 
 got out. 
 
 The only station porter regarded her with 
 curiosity, and came to the conclusion that she must 
 be the vicar's new servant. But he did not think 
 her half such a fine gal as Sairey Ann. You see, be 
 was walking out. 
 
 Lilting the latch of a little white gate, the Mil- 
 lionairess walked down a narrow path, bordered by 
 Spring flowers, and knocked at the tiny front door of 
 the Loveliest Little House in the Whole World. 
 
 And, strange to say, she felt shy. 
 
 Often before had she marched up wide, uninviting- 
 looking drives towards stately, chilly-looking mansions, 
 without a tremor, feeling that the golden money-bags 
 behind her shed a radiance everywhere she went. But 
 here they seemed to avail her nothing. Indeed, they 
 made her feel vulgar. She seemed to belong irretriev- 
 ably to the tribe whose features invariably run to nose. 
 
 Knocking a second time, the door was opened by 
 a smiling " party " who seemed to expand in the 
 doorway like a balloon. 
 
 '* Yes, the master's at home," the " party " 
 replied, in answer to the unknown woman's inquiry — 
 *' but he's busy." 
 
 The millionairess felt distinctly nonpiussed. This 
 had never happened to her before. Everywhere she 
 went she always received, if not a genuine welcome, 
 at any rate that counterfeit of friendliness which is 
 shown to people who may possibly be useful. 
 
 " He'll see me !"
 
 Passion and Pot-Paurri. 147 
 
 *' I dcm't think £o." 
 *' But ... ." 
 
 What's yer name ?" 
 
 Here was a difficulty which the miilionairess had 
 never foreseen. To give her real name would have 
 provided the village with gossip for weeks. The story 
 might even reach London. 
 
 " Tell . . him .... tell your master .... 
 that a lady wishes to speak to him." 
 
 " But he's working, and when he's working I have 
 c-rders to admit noboby." 
 
 " But . . . ." 
 
 " If yer could come round again after dinner, 
 maybe . . . ." 
 
 '•' But / must see him !" 
 
 The millionairess was getting desperate. She was 
 tired and she was hungry, and all the element of 
 romance of her little heart-holiday was fast fading 
 away before the strict matter-of-factness of this 
 embodiment of the commonplace. 
 
 " I must see him,^' she repeated anxiously. 
 *' I . . . . I. . . . have an appointment ,...'* 
 
 At that moment the door on the left of the littie 
 passage was suddenly opened and on the threshold 
 stood the Nicest Man in the Whole World looking very 
 angry. 
 
 " You !" — that was all he said. But it was 
 enough. 
 
 In another instant his hands clasped those of the 
 millionaire's wife, and they were laughing into each 
 other's faces as if they had known each other all their 
 lives. 
 
 It was a very al fresco luncheon they had together 
 under the old apple tree at the end of the garden. He 
 told her everything he had done since they parted 
 nearly two months ago in Switzerland. He told her 
 about the routine of his daily life — how he worked 
 from nine to one, then went for a walk, returned, did 
 more work, and so to supper and to bed. The mil- 
 honairess listened as if he were relating to hejr some 
 blood-stirring adventures of a pirate's life. But then 
 again — perhaps she was not listening after all. It was
 
 148 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 that which his words were not telling her which thrilled 
 her so greatly. It is not what a man remembers, but 
 what he tries to forget, which really counts, she said 
 to herself. They were both trying to forget so mraiy 
 things. 
 
 She told him of her daily life — how she was at 
 Buckingham Palace the night before last; how she 
 opened a bazaar for working girls in the East End ; 
 how she must return by the train which left at eight 
 o'clock in order to attend the ball she was going to 
 that night. 
 
 She sat with her wonderful golden hair uncovered 
 and her face so gentle, yet so radiant, that the stiff- 
 looking narcissus and the hyacinths and yellow tulips in 
 the fifteen-hundred-pound-a-foot-square-garden would 
 not have recognised her. 
 
 The Nicest-Man-in-the-Whole-World listened to 
 the account of her life's trivialities entranced. He 
 thought her the most lovely woman he had ever met. 
 He fotmd her conversation delightful. But then again,- 
 perhaps, he too failed to catch the meaning of any- 
 thing she said. It was what she told him with her 
 eyes, her, attitude of absolute trust and friendliness, 
 which made even platitudes sound witty. 
 
 After lunch, the millionairess helped the "partv" 
 to wash up the dishes. She had not done such a thing 
 since she was fifteen and poor Mary Bull. It made 
 her feel a child again. She was so happy. Then the 
 Nicest-Man-in-the-Whole-World showed her round 
 his tiny estate. He introduced her to the cows and 
 the pigs, his own horse which he rode every morning 
 before breakfast, and the old grey sheep dog. She 
 found everything he showed her more beautiful than 
 anything she had seen in all the world. The seven 
 wonders, which she and her husband had set out to 
 see, were as nothing in comparison. Windsor Castle 
 paled in beauty and interest beside this little white- 
 washed homestead in its pretty old-fashioned garden 
 and paddock. 
 
 Perhaps, Love can make a Paradise out of East 
 Ham. Who knows?
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri, 149 
 
 Afte^ tea, they sat over the fire like two old 
 friends and discussed all the thousand and one things 
 which matter-of-fact people believe do not matter, 
 but for which men have laid down their lives ever 
 since the beginning of the world. Their conversation 
 was of Love and Religion and Courage and Self- 
 Sacrifice, and Duty and God. 
 
 And so the April afternoon wore to its close. 
 
 At seven o'clock the '* party " brought in a 
 lighted lamp. It was a signal to the millionairess that 
 her little day of truancy was nearly done. Soon she 
 must be going : soon the incidents of that day would 
 be a memory stored away in her heart until such a 
 time when she would sit alone in the middle of her 
 expensive grandeur, feared, envied, loveless and old, 
 to live it all over again. 
 
 The *' party " drew the casement curtains to- 
 gether, shutting out the world outside. 
 
 The seclusion, the cosiness, and the thought that 
 in a very few minutes they would have to wake from 
 their little dream of Might-Have-Been, seemed to draw 
 them even closer together. 
 
 Their eyes met. Instinctively the Nicest-Man-in- 
 the-Whole-World held out his hand towards her, and 
 for a brief instant she let hers rest for a moment in 
 his — just long enough for that silent pressure which 
 speaks more of love than all the protestations in the 
 world. 
 
 Suddenly, however, a memory of the life which 
 was awaiting her in Park Lane made the millionairess 
 withdraw her hands quickly. As if to pass off gayly 
 a moment of intimacy which might lead them botii 
 farther than they were prepared to go, she pretended 
 to be astonished at the number of books to be seen 
 everywhere in the room. 
 
 **And * Omar.' " she cried delightedly, picking up 
 a tiny kid-bound volume from the table beside her. 
 
 Alas* that Spring should vanish with the rose? 
 That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close I 
 
 she read to him.
 
 i^o, Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 He continued : 
 
 Ah Love ! could you and I with fate conspire 
 To grasp this Sorry Scheme of Things entire. 
 Would we not shatter it to bits — and then 
 Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire. 
 
 Borne through the sUenee as they looked into each, 
 other's eyes came the far-away sound of the church 
 ciock striking — one . . two . . three . . four . . 
 live . . six . . . seven .... 
 
 ** Do you remember it.?" the millionairess 
 whJspered, ** Do you.? It's .... it's Tennyson.'" 
 
 • • • • 
 
 Let the sweet heavens endure 
 Nor darken and close above me. 
 
 Before I am quite, quite sure 
 That there is one to love me. 
 
 Then let come what come may, 
 To a life that has been so sad, 
 I shall have had my day. 
 
 But it seemed to her, as she stood there gazing at 
 the man she loved, that beyond him, beyond his love, 
 beyond this little hour which neither of them would 
 ever forget, lay the very expensive, very massive, very 
 antique furniture, and the mansion in the very heart 
 of Mayfair, and the Castle in Scotland, the house in 
 Ireland, the Cottage in Devonshire, the horses, and 
 motors, and yachts, and the octogenarian millionaire 
 who was her husband, and To-day and Yesterday and 
 To-morrow and the For Ever and Ever. The sight of 
 it all withered the little passion flower which wa» 
 blooming in her heart. 
 
 " Good-bye !" she said simply. 
 
 ** Good-bye ! " he whispered. 
 
 But she never held up her lips to be kissed; he 
 never held her in his arms. 
 
 Their little hour was over. 
 
 After all — was it not better so ? , , 
 
 It' wa!s dark when the millionairess stood oix the 
 platforin of the little wayside station situated seventy 
 minutes from Paddington by a slow train. She ^ais
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. i^^ 
 
 standing there with the Nicest-Man-in-the-Whok- 
 World, and they were silent. 
 
 Presently the train steamed into the station and 
 the millionairess got in. 
 
 The only station porter seemed desirous to get 
 the tram off as soon as possible, for he banged the 
 door to as if he bore it a grudge. It was Sairey Ann's 
 night out, so he had excuses. 
 
 " You will come to see me again— sometime ? " 
 asked the Nicest-Man-in-the-Whole- World. 
 
 The millionairess let her two hands rest on his 
 shoulder as she answered — 
 
 " No, mon ami ! Never .... never again.'' 
 
 " Why," he asked her anxiously, " you have not 
 been happy. . . . ? '* 
 
 " Roger, dear !"— it was the first time she bad 
 ever called him by his Christian name—** I have been 
 too happy. That is why I shall never come to see yoi^ 
 again," 
 
 ** But surely ....♦* 
 
 She leaned towards him until her face was very- 
 near his. 
 
 ** We are neither of us very .... very 
 young," she smiled. ** Oh . . . .oh 1 Don't you 
 understand ? " 
 
 She saw that he did not comprehend her meanmg. 
 
 *' When we are young and in love, we believe 
 that we shall never, never love again. We are ready 
 to sacrifice all. But when we have reached our age. 
 ... I am twenty-nine, you know .... we realise 
 that not only shall we love again .... but .... 
 .again and again " 
 
 She laughed a little sadly. There was a suspicion 
 of a sob in her voice. 
 
 ** Love passes away so soon . . . ." she said. 
 
 There came the grinding noise of a train's depar- 
 ture. A whistle — a sudden movement .... and 
 very soon the carriage, from the window of which the 
 millionairess leaned out waving her hand in farewell, 
 was swallowed up in the darkness. 
 
 The Nicest-Man-in-the-Whole- World stood wateh-
 
 152 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 ing the tail lights grow fainter .... fainter, untii 
 they too disappeared. Presently, there came through 
 the still night air the sound of a whistle — shrill; 
 then another and yet another — peevish .... like 
 a '^ry of a child in the night. 
 
 Then silence. 
 
 And the Nicest-Man-in-the-\Vhole-\Vorld drew his 
 overcoat around him. Then he, too, turned his face 
 hom'»-.*ard. 
 
 It had all come to an end. They had been very 
 happy while it had lasted, but she had her world and 
 he had his work tG Jo. And, as she had said, " Love 
 passes away so soon ! " 
 
 It was cynical. But .... 
 
 Well, what is life .... if not alas I . . . . 
 and alas 1
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 153 
 
 POT-POURRI.— VIII. 
 
 The Drones. 
 
 I SUPPOSE that it is all a species of war nerves, but 
 the things which in the old days used to fill you with 
 either contemptuous indifference or, maybe, contempt 
 without indifference, nowadays fill you with anger bor- 
 dering on uncontrollable fury. The other day I had 
 to come up from Brighton in the early morning — if you 
 have ever come up from Brighton within the last year 
 or two at an hour when the " Old Scottish Families," 
 are returning to their work from their funk-holes, you 
 will realise that it must have been for my sins. I had 
 with me a boy who not only had " gone through it " 
 but had come out in such a state that many people 
 would have deliberately chosen death, I among their 
 number. The train was packed with a closeness which 
 v/ould make sardines in a tin look isolated. It was a 
 sultry morning. In the carriage to which we made 
 our way there was only one seat vacant; that is, there 
 were but five people in the carriage. But, if the re- 
 stricted accommodation on trains has taught us any- 
 thing, it has taught us to squeeze in wherever we see 
 an open space. A young business man in the very 
 early thirties tried to protest against our intrusion on 
 his first-class solitude, especially as, by coming in, we 
 were forced to interfere with the cushion on which he 
 and the three other cronies of the same age were pre- 
 paring to play cards. But if I have one thing in my 
 otherwise somewhat defenceless armour presented to 
 me by nature, it is a " tongue " which can, as it were, 
 send the feathers flying. - We got in, the boy and I> 
 and we settled down together on the seat-space usually
 
 154 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 reserved for one. He, poor kid, being bored at not 
 being able to read or look out of the window, or 
 indulge in any of those pass-the-time games by which 
 we, who can see, try to forget the laggard hours of a 
 journey, fell asleep. I — closed my eyes and listened to 
 the conversation of the five youngish men who were 
 playing cards and otherwise gambling away the pass- 
 ing hour." They were of a purely commercial type — 
 commercialism at its most commonplace and unro- 
 mantic. They had a look as if the war had made them 
 suddenly wealthy. Diamonds predominated — dia- 
 monds, and fat, bulging cheeks over immaculate white 
 collars. Th?y looked as if they had grasped for them- 
 selves all their lives and would continue to grasp for 
 themselves so long as life lasted, or until a real man 
 or real woman shot them dead from disgust. Some- 
 how I felt that I should like to shake that man or 
 woman by the hand. There was this boy at my side, 
 so young, so desolate, so absolutely innocent of any 
 share in the quarrel between nations which had 
 robbed him of his health and sight, and there these 
 four youngish men sat, as indifferent to him as if he 
 were not there in their midst to bring to any imagina- 
 tion above that of a pig the fact that there was a war 
 on and that the life-misery of millions cried aloud 
 to Heaven for love and iustice and, above all, 
 reverence. 
 
 Racing and Women. 
 
 In the ordinary times of peace this type of man would 
 only have filled me with a kind of contemptuous indif- 
 ference. Now they filled me with a kind of blind fury. 
 I listened to their conversation. They spoke no word 
 of war or anything worth while. They discussed rac- 
 ing and women, women and racing, and the price of 
 whisky. Two of them had four hundred pounds on a 
 horse running the next day at Newmarket (I hope it 
 lost). One had come across a girl who was " the
 
 Passion ana fot-Pourri. 155 
 
 goods " on the pier the previous afternoon. The fourth 
 boasted that he had enough whisky at home to last 
 into the new year if he were careful. On and on went 
 their conversation, turning for ever around the three 
 great interests. It was nauseating to listen to them. 
 All the suffering of the world, all the sacrifices which 
 men were making so that they could still race and run 
 after women down at Brighton, left them cold. 
 They were making money — lots of money ; 
 that was all that enthralled them. And the 
 making of this money meant to them only the 
 spending of it on racing and women and whisky. I 
 prayed that the boy by my side were asleep. But 
 alas ! he wasn't. He is but a child in years, but the 
 thoughts he uttered aloud when we left the train were 
 the thoughts which will ring throughout the world, I 
 hope, when the men come home to sweep the world 
 clean of the type which battens upon misfortune and 
 helplessness, the type which cares not one jot what 
 men and women have been through in misery and 
 torture and death so long as they, behind the danger 
 zone, may continue in peace their three great hunts — 
 winners, women, and whisky. But behind all the 
 boy's anger there rang that even sadder refrain — 
 ** Was it for people such as these that I gave all 
 that meant life for me — my happiness and health ?" It 
 is the saddest song in all the world. 
 
 A Military Instance. 
 
 Strange it is that often the same tragedies happen to 
 the same people again and again, and generally at such 
 moments when they are least prepared to meet them. 
 Not three days later I was helping this same boy off 
 a 'bus when accidentally — as any decent man would 
 have realised — in taking the last big step he landed on 
 the foot of a captain of the Black Watch who was pre- 
 paring to slip into the 'bus as soon as the boy had 
 stepped off. In a sudden access of fury at what this
 
 156 Passion and Pot-Ponrri. 
 
 officer (he was no gentleman) supposed to be careless- 
 ness on the part of the boy, he pushed him fiercely so 
 that he Avould have fallen into the gutter had I not 
 been there to cat<;h him in my arms ere he fell. If 
 you only half realised how sensitive these blinded boys 
 are to their own helplessness you would grasp a little 
 of the misery that boy went through at this act of 
 the grossest inhumanity and unkindness. Granting 
 that this " creature in uniform " did not realise that 
 the boy was blind, and he did not apparently, because,' 
 after I had from the bottom of my heart and aloud 
 hoped that he would come back from France in the 
 same pitiful state, he had the graciousness to shout, 
 " I'm sorry," as the 'bus moved away. But even if 
 the boy had not been blind, I ask you — is brute force 
 the kind method to employ to anyone who accidentally 
 steps upon your foot ? But it is not the act so much 
 as the snirit behind the act which is the tragedy of 
 it all. Therein lies the rub. It is bad enough for the 
 men to return home shattered for life ; it is doubly 
 tragic that they should return home to find men still 
 searching out " winners " and women and wine, and 
 men so bereft of any decent self-command that they 
 will inflict insult on anyone who accidentally causes 
 them discomfort. Men can bear their wounds, what- 
 ever they may be, so long as they know and realise 
 that the other men and women, which is the nation 
 at large, respect them for those tragic injuries, and 
 love them for them, and are grateful. But the big, 
 haunting doubt behind the minds of all the men who 
 have returned home broken in mind and snirit is that, 
 one day — sooner or later — the nation will forget them ; 
 that they will be pushed aside as of no further use in 
 the great work of financial and commercial recon- 
 struction after the war. a reconstruction in which they 
 can, alas ! play no part. That is their besetting fear. 
 And they are such incidents as these which I have 
 related which seem to make that fear more than well- 
 founded. If these things happen now, they seem to 
 say, what will happen to them in five, ten, twenty 
 years' time ? And sometimes — oh, alas and alas ! — 1
 
 Passion ana Pot-Pourri. 157 
 
 'iconder too. It is a hateful thought — and, if any- 
 thing could turn me into a blood-red revolutionary /it 
 would be to realise that what these poor men dread the 
 most has happened, and the great world goes on its 
 own unimaginative, unsympathetic, money-grub- 
 bing, indifferent way unheeding. Of course, I know 
 that the hogs of selfishness are in the minority, but 
 I also know that the type is apt to be very powerful. 
 I also know that in the ffieat armies of the world 
 there are millions of men whose one fight after the war 
 is ended will be to bring a greater justice, a greater 
 liberty, and a greater charity to the world. Sacrifice 
 and suffering and a danger shared have taught them 
 so many of the essentials of life, and these essentials 
 they will fight for afterwards with every fibre of 
 their beings. But alas ! these men are for the most 
 part in the firing line, and so much of this glorious 
 revelation of a new " soul " will never, must neces- 
 sarily never, return. And from the firing line you 
 arrive at the base, and from the base you go farther 
 and farther out of danger until you arrive at, meta- 
 phorically speaking, the Brighton business train and all 
 those thousands to whom the war has meant little 
 else than more money and less comfort. These will 
 form the greater part of the army of " reconstructors " 
 in the future. Is it to be wondered at that the shat- 
 tered soldier sometimes looks towards the future in 
 apprehension and dread? You eet these Brighton 
 " bounders " and these angry '* pushers " of blinded 
 boys at home. I wonder if they are also to be found 
 " out there " ? Somehow I fancy that they could not 
 live in that atmosphere of danger. Their " souls '* 
 must of necessity suffer, as it were, " some great sea- 
 change." Men of this type would, if they still 
 clung tenaciously to their natural type, get shot in 
 the back by one of their own comrades. Nobody 
 shoots them in the back at home. They are often 
 given the O.B.E.
 
 158 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 The New Dawn. 
 
 I KNOW that it has assumed almost the honourable 
 position of ^he " proper thing to do " to talk about the 
 New Dawn. I am only afraid that so many of us will 
 stay up so late at night talking about it that we shall 
 be asleep from weariness when it does at last send its 
 first gleams of light across the sky. It fills me with 
 bitterness to read that returned soldiers cannot get 
 one acre of English land because some mysterious per- 
 son stepped in before them to snap it up at a fancy 
 price. A government of party politicians is always 
 the very ones who would most severely suffer from any 
 drastic change. Vested interests have always the 
 prior claim before the people's interest in Govern- 
 ment programmes. Vested interests are always behind 
 all governments. I always wonder why it seems so 
 impossible for the people themselves to construct their 
 own programme of reform. Why must they always 
 have a programnae — usually quite an alien one — thrust 
 upon them ? Voting consists for the most part in 
 giving one's sympathy to the less of two evils. Any- 
 thing like a national programme — that is, a pro- 
 gramme which clearly, by its own common sense and 
 justice, would prove of unique advantage to all the 
 people — seems impossible. It would perhaps involve 
 a plebiscite — and that, of course, is against all the 
 laws of political tradition. So the Houses of Parlia- 
 ment are filled with the angry bawling of politicians 
 over " reforms " which, even at their best, could 
 easily wait awhile, and the real crying needs of 
 humanity are ignored, or, at best, met by, meta- 
 phorically speaking, a slight repair of an obvious crack 
 or a monetary dole. Parliament consists in a heap 
 of salaried gentlemen struggling to patch-up. They 
 never seem to possess either the backbone or the 
 imagination to strike right down at the root of the 
 evil.
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 159 
 
 i AM not so much appalled at the massacre and death 
 of men; I am appalled at the thousands of innocent 
 lives which have been sacrificed to purify a world in 
 the making of which they were too young to play a 
 part. I am doubly appalled that there are still so 
 many people who can take that sacrifice for granted. 
 They do not seem to feel the disgrace of it all ; they 
 only see the glory of the young and innocent who 
 voluntarily went forth to purify the present, 
 and make happier, perchance, a new and greater 
 civilisation. They perceive their glory, but 
 they seem blind to God's own accusing finger. 
 But these " young spirits " have seen it — 
 every one of them. When they return . . . .oh, 
 when they return ! . . . . well, no war anthology 
 will be necessary for them to act " as a much-needed 
 tonic for depression and war weariness." Meta- 
 phorically speaking, they have seen the Coming Dawn 
 with their own eyes, as they also have seen the evil 
 of the Nieht which has flown. War has no star- 
 spangled banners for them. At best they are realising 
 bitterly that the war must end in victory before they 
 can, themselves, hasten on the sun of the new morning. 
 If they need an anthology at all, it will not be an 
 anthology of what people have been thinking about the 
 war, but an anthology of what people are thinking 
 and planning about peace — the peace which must place 
 the returned soldier, whether totally or partially ii ca- 
 pacitated or able-bodied, first in any assembly, in any 
 plan of reconstruction, in every path of the Empire 
 whose preservation has been made possible only 
 through the death and mental and physical agony of 
 him and his comrades who are now no more, i All 
 these eloquent and often beautiful pieces of balm to 
 the spirit of the religious doubter and the rationed- 
 weary are very well, but to the soldier the cry comes, 
 " We have heard enough of what war means; let us 
 hear more of what peace means too.**
 
 i6o Passion and Pot-Ponrri. 
 
 The Saddest Thing of All. 
 
 What is the saddest thing of all at the present time ? 
 Not the maimed and wounded men, the broken homes 
 and hearts, the shattered hopes and lives — though 
 these things are pitiful enough^ God knows !--but, to 
 my mind, one of the saddest things of the present 
 day is to meet men and women for whom the war is 
 meaningless, who have neither the sympathy, the 
 understanding, nor the imagination to realise what the 
 men who have suffered for them have been through, 
 who retain, and have even a silly pride in retaining, 
 the point of view which belonged to the world before 
 the war. They are so sad, because their very imper- 
 viousness seems like an insult to all the men and boys 
 who have been through hell. They are so tragic, be- 
 cause not unless the war comes directly to their own 
 doors will they ever realise either the debt they owe 
 to the soldiers or believe that there exists any debt 
 at all which a medal, a tiny pension, and a metaphori- 
 cal pat-on-the-head will not repay a hundredfold. 
 They are so tragic because one realises that when the 
 war is over, when peace has come at last, when the 
 world — the broken world — having learnt its sad les- 
 sons is eager to profit by them for the good of those 
 who have fought and come through alive, and for the 
 betterment of the world as yet unborn, these people 
 will remain behind to thwart all human endeavour, 
 to clog the wheel of progress, dam the flood of better 
 things which would otherwise flow from the great 
 upheaval. They, consciously or unconsciously, will 
 try to rob the great mass of women and men of the 
 harvest of better, kinder, purer, juster institutions and 
 ideas which alone will make victory worth while. You 
 may recognise these unaffected people anywhere — and 
 many of them wear uniform ! Were they civilians 
 only, one might be able to deal with them, But not 
 all of them are civilians at all. They wear a unifoi-m 
 and honours, and they will, metaphorically speaking, 
 sail on the tide of the soldiers' victory to rob the 
 soldier of the fruits which that victory should bring
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri, i6i 
 
 him. They will for ever thwart him, since only by 
 thwarting him of this promise of a better and a juster 
 world will they be able to return to their own comfort- 
 able dug-outs — those comfortable dug-outs, secure to 
 themselves, which is all they understand of Victory, of 
 country, or a New Heaven and a New Earth. 
 
 The Old Ruts. 
 
 After all, they seem to say, why worry about a 
 ** better rut" ? The old rut, in which I was most com- 
 fortable, is good enough for me. You know where 
 you are in an old '* rut " — and the older it is the more 
 you know its width and depth and vantage point-of- 
 view. It is the defensive cry of the egotist — those 
 egotists who have been the bane of the world since 
 the world began to think and suffer. And even after 
 four years of this, the most ghastly, cruel and horrible 
 war which the world has ever known, you see this 
 egotism fighting for its life — as if to keep secure the 
 comfort and prosperity, which have always surrounded 
 itself, were all that men were fighting for, were all that 
 women suffered for, were all for which both of them 
 — men and women — were giving up their lives. These 
 people have never been " over the top " in spirit, and 
 they will never " go over the top " unless the loaded 
 pistol of the Inevitable terrifies them into making an 
 attempt. Every day I am staggered by examples — 
 a look, merely a word, perhaps — which show how far, 
 how very far the majority of men and women are from 
 realising in the slightest degree the greater claims of 
 a Human Brotherhood. An artificial and age- 
 bolstered-up " superiority " still looks down on an 
 equally unreal and traditional " inferiority." If the 
 world is a Human Brotherhood, they seem to say, 
 then the vast majority of it consists in a multitude 
 of " poor relations " whom, we may patronise but are 
 not at all proud of. The present scandalous difficulty 
 of providing discharged soldiers with work and land is 
 one example of this " egotism " in its most unselfsacri-
 
 1 62 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 ficing guise. One-and-six a day and the word " duty "" 
 seem to satisfy so many people. A roll of honour and 
 a medal would appear to them to be such a magnificent 
 compensation. Somebody else pays for the roll of 
 honour, a mysterious Government exchequer provides 
 the medal. Providing " daddy " can satisfactorily 
 explain to some metaphorical children of the future — 
 who will probably be only very slightly interested and 
 not nearly so thrilled by his description as they will be 
 by the annomicement of a forthcoming cricket match 
 — what "he did in the Great War," all, they imagine, 
 will be well. But I should like to paste up on every 
 wall in the kingdom the question, " What did You do 
 for daddy after the Great War? " — and I sometimes 
 fear that that question will not be answered so easily 
 or so satisfactorily as '* daddy " answered his. 
 
 That Curious Fear. 
 
 There is such a curious fear abroad — a fear which is 
 only subtly expressed, but nevertheless quite apparent 
 to those who watch, listen, and feel pity — that 
 " daddy's " recompense should be cheese-paringly 
 just without being in the slightest degree generous. 
 Let me give a metaphorical explanation of what I 
 mean. In a very large — I will call it a Community of 
 Fellowship — that I know, the rumour went round that 
 more food was being used than was patriotically neces- 
 sary. The need of an " official " immediately jumped 
 to everybody's mind as the finest way out of the diffi- 
 culty. So an ofiicial arrived, full of that economic 
 enthusiasm which will rescue bread-crusts from pigs, 
 as it were. Well, she arrived — and she saved in the 
 bill for food exactly the salary which she demanded for 
 doing so. When someone suggested that it would have 
 been better for the Fellowship had it, as it were, eaten 
 the salary and set about to produce more food, it was 
 heard in horror — as if one had cried Damn ! in the face 
 of an angel. But it was very like life after all. The
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 163 
 
 number of paid officials who are going round the 
 country seeing that pensioned soldiers don't get too 
 much is colossal. The pandering to aliens— I know of 
 an English hairdresser of forty-five, with sons in the 
 Army, who has been called up, leaving a " Polish 
 Jew " from Austria, a few doors away, to " pinch " 
 his business— is one of the crying scandals of the times, 
 It would seem, indeed, that justice is for the Stranger 
 at the Gate ; the man inside who has a right to be 
 there, will only receive a visit from the " officials," 
 accompanied bv the usual more or less rude official 
 Why\ 
 
 A Curious Blindness. 
 
 Another strange fact that one is bound to realise, if 
 one moves among the average men and women at 
 home, is their curious blindness to the real tragedy of 
 the war— the disgrace that it should have ever been, 
 the overwhelming pity that so many lives should be 
 maimed, broken, and lost for a state of disgraceful 
 civilisation in which they had no shaping hand. I 
 wish one heard clear descriptions of what freedom is 
 goinff to mean as well as the assertion that we are 
 fighting for it. Germany is, or believes herself to be, 
 fighting for freedom, too ; so are Austria, Italy, France, 
 and America. It really seems as if everybody was 
 fighting for freedom, which seems a poor thing to fight 
 for if each side be agreed that it wants it. But I wish 
 that each individual soldier of every army could be 
 asked to state what his idea of freedom is. I rather 
 think that the various documents would be more or 
 less exactly the same. What, then, comes between 
 each nation hiding from the other the fact that all 
 demand the self-same thing? Ah,, there you have 
 me ! Each man, and especially each soldier and all 
 those' who have been " over the top " in spirit, 
 knows what and who interprets, or misinterprets, each 
 nation to the others in peace time as well as in war. 
 The indescribable brute point-of-view in Germany
 
 164 Passion and Fot-Pourri. 
 
 which demanded the bombing of hospitals, the equally 
 indescribable English brute who the other day robbed 
 a soldier friend of mine, sightless and without hands, 
 of all his valuables and belongings — this scum belongs 
 to all nations. They are a type, a point-of-view, a 
 class to themselves. My English brute, could he be 
 discovered, would be imprisoned — he ought to be shot. 
 The German brute will probably hide himself behind 
 a ** Higher Command." Well, there will be no free- 
 dom for the German nation, and none for the entire 
 world, should peace find such a type still in his 
 supreme authority. The great enemies of all human 
 freedom are not special individuals, but their friends, 
 the satellites who applaud and preserve them in their 
 brutishness. There will never be any real freedom 
 and justice in this world until humanity, and not a 
 commanding clique, out of touch with the simple 
 needs and ideals of common human justice, join 
 together to fight Wrong and Injustice wherever it may 
 be found — in whatever class, in whatever state, in 
 whatever countrv. 
 
 Reconstruction, 
 
 Of course, the mind which conceived the production of 
 Salo7ne in neutral countries as a means of propaganda 
 purposes must have lacked so greatly the sense which 
 is known as "humorous" as to be quite comic in itself. 
 In the same way, the faked-up cinematograph pictures 
 of Ambassador Gerard's *' Seven Years in Germany" 
 should do about as much good for the continued 
 prosecution of the war as re-reading the booklet, " Is 
 the Kaiser a Devil?" A " hatred " bolstered up by 
 moving pictures is not likely to bring the war spirit 
 into the hearts of anyone physically capable of helping 
 to win it. If we don't loathe and detest Kaiserism 
 and all that it means in every country of the world 
 to-day we might as well strike another " note." Surely 
 if the cruelty to prisoners, the bombing of hospitals, 
 the mining of hospital ships, and all the hundred-and-
 
 Passion and Pot-Ponrri. 165 
 
 one diabolical cruelties which have made the German 
 command stink in the nostrils of the world is not 
 sufficient to make us hate it— then our minds and 
 hearts are too phlegmatic to be stirred by anything 
 except having the innocent family next door bombed 
 to show us. Let us take '* hate " for granted. We 
 have had more than enough instances to arouse an 
 undying loathing in the mind and heart of a demon. 
 What would make a far finer propaganda for the 
 increased prosecution of the war would be to see some 
 really national, far-reaching, and sympathetically com- 
 prehensive plan for the happiness and welfare of the 
 men and women who have suffered for us and are 
 suffering and for the sake of those, who for 
 this better England, have fought and died. I 
 should like to hear less of this " fight for 
 -freedom " and far more comprehensive details of what 
 this freedom is going to mean. The greatest defeat 
 which can ever happen to both England and the world 
 is to let things slide so far that victory, at best, means 
 but a sad return to the old, old ruts. After all, free- 
 dom is not a word — it is a i(:ork and a philosophy . 
 It is a great reconstructive measure — the greatest 
 which the world can ever attain. It is founded on 
 equality and justice for all men and women, and it is 
 guarded by a perpetual fight — not against other na- 
 tions, but against the enemy of selfishness and greed 
 and indifference, who will still live on — and flourish 
 unless the world be very careful. There could be no 
 finer incentive towards the prosecution of the war than 
 for the soldiers and their dependents to know, and see, 
 some great national reconstructive measure which will 
 enable all those who have kept the Empire secure to 
 live freely, independently, cleanly, and securely. 
 
 Somewhere "Out There." 
 
 But, of course, it goes almost without saying 
 — although, like most things which ought to go 
 without saying, it cannot be said too often or
 
 i66 Passion and Pot-Pourri. 
 
 too loud — until people realise, especially what 
 I will call the' cushy- jobbed-red- tabbed people 
 of this world, what this war has meant to 
 the masses of men and women in suffering, in sacri- 
 fice, and loss, they will never recognise the deep debt 
 which the world owes these masses, debts of honour 
 and of gratitude which no number of medals and 
 pasons of praise and banners of welcome will ever be 
 able to repay. And alas ! there are a vast number of 
 people who do not realise it even yet, people who will 
 never realise it — the full and awful tragedy of it; this 
 tragedy, however, so immense with possibilities of 
 future justice and happiness — until they are brought 
 up against it face to face — not as a multitude, but as 
 an individual. They have neither the heart, nor the 
 imagination, nor the understanding to grasp it. It is 
 not understood merely by donning a uniform or 
 nurse's garb; not even by merely doing " war work" 
 — however little or however much those words may 
 mean. It must be realised in the " spirit "—if it is to 
 be realised at all. If the war hasn't battened down 
 the prejudice and narrowness and lack of human sym- 
 pathy and understanding of the past, there is no hope 
 that these benumbed souls will ever be able to recon- 
 struct the future — and the future, the immediate 
 future, is the one big thing which counts, and will 
 for ever count, if all that men have suffered and 
 endured and sacrificed is to be worth while. 
 
 Who Know ? 
 
 Dreams are the only things for which men will 
 gladly lay down their lives. They will not risk a hair 
 of their heads for Logic. 
 
 Patriotism, Religion, Love— these things defy all 
 the laws of Pure Reason, but for them— and for them 
 ^nly — men and women will give up the only Reality — 
 which is life— gladly, without a murmur, singing the 
 song of the Happy Warrior.
 
 Passion and Pot-Pourri. ' 167 
 
 What does it mean ? Where seek the true 
 explanation ? 
 
 Is it that only in Love and War and Worship can 
 the human soul reveal that Divine Light which 
 radiates within it ? Who knows ? Perhaps — only 
 Reason and Logic and Justice are illusory and 
 Dreams alone are real — the dreams for which we lay 
 down our lives. Again — who knows ? 
 
 For those who have died for us far away ; for 
 those who must face the long, long future crippled, 
 disfigured and blind — for our sake — let us henceforth 
 devote the love and devotion and sacrifice of all our 
 lives. 
 
 Thus we, too, may realise something of this Vision 
 Splendid. 
 
 . • • • • • 
 
 Adieu 1
 
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