The Journal of a Disappointed Man Part 43

"The Island of Celebes is of enormous size and curious shape situated in the Malay Archipelago."

The Caledonian made no sign. Instead of grinning at his error and confessing to a "floater," he endeavoured to carry on by remarking, "That of course would be N. of Papua," just for all the world as if his error was a minor one of lat.i.tude and longitude.

Ignoring his comment, I continued:

"From the Zoogeographical point of view, Celebes is unequalled in importance, having the strangest fauna almost of any island on the face of the globe. Then there's 'Wallace's Line,'" I said, being purposely obscure.

The Caledonian said nought but "looked hurt." It was so obvious that he didn't know, and it was so obvious that I knew that he didn't know, that after my farcical truculence I expected the tension to dissolve in laughter. Yet it is hard for a Caledonian to say "G.o.d be merciful to me, ignorant devil that I am." So I pursued him with more information about "Wallace's Line," with an insouciant air, as much as to say, "Wallace's Line of course you heard discussed before you were breached."

"Some do say, you know, that the Line is 'all my eye and Betty Martin,'

_e.g._, R----."

This gave him his first opportunity of finding his feet in this perilously deep water. So he said promptly, eager to seem knowledgeable with an intelligent rejoinder:

"As! yes, R---- is an authority on Fishes."

I a.s.sented. "At the last meeting of the British a.s.s. he tore the idea to shreds."

The drowning Caledonian seized at any straw:

"Fishes, however, are not of paramount importance in cases of geographical distribution, are they?"

I knew he was thinking of _marine_ fishes, but I did not illumine him, and merely said:

"Oh! yes, of very great importance," at which he looked still more "hurt," decamped in silence and left me conqueror of the field but without the spoils of victory: it was impossible to bring him to say "I do not know"--four mono-syllables was all I wanted from the man who for months past has been lecturing me on all things from Music and the Drama to Philosophy, Painting and--Insects.

_July_ 20.

The cradle came a few days ago but I had not seen it until this morning when I unlocked the cupboard door, looked in and shuddered.

"That's the skeleton in our cupboard," I said on coming down to breakfast. She laughed, but I really meant it.

E---- keeps a blue bowl replenished with flaming Poppies in our room.

The cottage is plagued with Ear-wigs which fly in at night and get among the clothes and bedlinen. This morning, dressing, she held up her chemise to the light saying: "I always do this--you can see their little heathen bodies then against the light...." Isn't she charming?

_July_ 30.

The other day R---- and I were sitting on a stile on the uplands in perfect summer weather and talking of happy days before the War--he was in khaki and I was resting my "gammy" leg.... As we talked, we let our eyes roam, resting luxuriously wherever we pleased and occasionally interrupting the conversation with "Look at that cow scratching herself against the Oak," or "Do you see the oats waving?" In the distance we saw a man and a boy walking up towards us along the path thro' the corn, but the eye having momentarily scrutinised them wandered away and the conversation never paused. When next I looked, they were much nearer--crossing the furrows in the potato field in fact, and we both stopped talking to watch--idly. The boy seemed to be about 10 years old, and it amused us to see his great difficulty in stepping across the furrows.

"Poor little chap," R---- said, and we laughed.

Then the boy stumbled badly and all at once the man lifted his walking-stick and beat him, saying ill-naturedly, "Step between the furrows," and again, "Step between the furrows." Our enchanting little picture was transfigured in an instant. The "charming little boy" was a natural idiot--a gross, hefty creature perhaps 30 years of age, very short and very thick, dressed in a little sailor suit. I said, "Heavens," and R---- looked positively scared. We stood aside for them to get over the stile, the "boy" still suffering from his over exertion, breathing stertorously like a horse pulling uphill and still evidently fearful of the big stick behind. He scrambled over the stile as best he could, rolling a wild eye at us as he did so--a large, bulgy eye with the lower lid swollen and sore, like the eye of a terrified ox on the way to the slaughter house. So much then for our little picture of charming childhood! The man followed close at his heels and looked at me with stern defiant eyes. "Yes, that is my son," his eyes declaimed, "and I'll thank you to avert your gaze or by the Lord I'll beat you too."

_A Yellow Cat_

Last week, I saw a yellow cat perched up quite high on a window ledge at the S---- Underground Station in celestial detachment from the crowd of serious, black-coated gentlemen hustling along to and from the trains.

He had his back turned to us, but as I swept past in the stream, I was forced to look back a moment, and caught the outline of his whiskers--it made me smile intensely to myself and secretly I gave the palm to the cat for wisdom.

_July_ 31.

This War is so great and terrible that hyperbole is impossible. And yet my gorge rises at those fatuous journalists continually prating about this "Greatest War of all time," this "Great Drama," this "world catastrophe unparalleled in human history," because it is easy to see that they are really more thrilled than shocked by the immensity of the War. They indulge in a vulgar Yankee admiration for the Big Thing. Why call this shameful Filth by high sounding phrases--as if it were a tragedy from Euripides? We ought to hush it up, not brag about it, to mention it with a blush instead of spurting it out brazen-faced.

Mr. Garvin, for example, positively gloats over the War each week in the _Observer_: "Last week was one of those pivotal occasions on which destiny seems to swing"--and so on every week, you can hear him, historical glutton smacking his lips with an offensive relish.

For my part, I never seem to be in the same mind about the War twice following. Sometimes I am wonderstruck and make out a list of all the amazing events I have lived to see since August, 1914, and sometimes and more often I am swollen with contempt for its colossal imbecility. And sometimes I am swept away with admiration for all the heroism of the War, or by some particularly n.o.ble self-sacrifice, and think it is really all worth while. Then--and more frequently--I remember that this War has let loose on the world not only barbarities, butcheries and crimes, but lies, lies, lies--hypocrisies, deceits, ign.o.ble desires for self-aggrandizement, self-preservation such as no one before ever dreamed existed in embryo in the heart of human beings.

The War rings the changes on all the emotions. It tw.a.n.gs all my strings in turn and occasionally all at once, so that I scarcely know how to react or what to think. You see, here am I, a compulsory spectator, and all I can do is to reflect. A Zeppelin brought down in flames that lit up all London--now that makes me want to write like Mr. Garvin. But a Foreign Correspondent's eager discussion of "Italy's aspirations in the Trentino," how Russia insists on a large slice of Turkey, and so forth, makes me splutter. How insufferably childish to be slicing up the earth's surface! How immeasureably "above the battle" I am at times.

What a prig you will say I am when I sneer at such contemptible little devilries as the Bodies' trick of sending over a little note, "Warsaw is fallen," into our trenches, or as ours in reply: "Gorizia!"

"There is no difference in principle between the case of a man who loses a limb in the service of his country and that of the man who loses his reason, both have an obvious claim to the grateful recognition of the State."--A morning paper.

A jejune comment like this makes me grin like a gargoyle! Hark to the fellow--this leader-writer over his cup of tea. But it is a lesson to show how easily and quickly we have all adapted ourselves to the War.

The War is everything; it is n.o.ble, filthy, great, petty, degrading, inspiring, ridiculous, glorious, mad, bad, hopeless yet full of hope. I don't know what to think about it.

_August_ 13.

I hate elderly women who mention their legs. It makes me shudder.

I had two amusing conversations this morning, one with a jealous old man of 70 summers who, in spite of his age, is jealous--I can find no other term--of me in spite of mine, and the other with a social climber. I always tell the first of any of my little successes and regularly hand him all my memoirs as they appear, to which he as regularly protests that he reads very little now.

"Oh! never mind," I always answer gaily, "you take it and read it going down in the train--it will amuse you." He submits but is always silent next time I see him--a little, admonitory silence. Or, I mention I am giving an address at ----, and he says "Oom," and at once begins his reminiscences, which I have heard many times before, and am sometimes tempted to correct him when, his memory failing, he leaves out an essential portion of his story. Thus do crabbed age and boastful youth tantalise one another.

To the social climber I said slyly:

"You seem to move in a very distinguished entourage during your week ends."

He smiled a little self-consciously, hesitated a moment and then said:

"Oh! I have a few nice friends, you know."

Now I am sorry, but though I scrutinised this lick-spittle and arch belly-truck rider very closely, I am quite unable to say whether that smile and unwonted diffidence meant simple pleasure at the now certain knowledge that I was duly impressed, or whether it was genuine confusion at the thought that he had perhaps been overdoing it.

Curiously enough, all bores of whatever kind make a dead set at me. I am always a ready listener and my thrusts are always gentle. Hence the pyramids! I constantly act as phlebotomist to the vanity of the young and to the anecdotage of the senile and senescent.

_August_ 13.

... I stood by his chair and looked down at him, and surveyed carefully the top of his head, neck, and collar, and with admirable restraint and calm, considered my most reasonable contempt of him. In perfect silence, we remained thus, while I looked down at a sore spot in the centre of his calvarium which he scratches occasionally, and toyed with the fine flower of my scorn.... But it is a dangerous license to take. One never knows....

_Equilibrium Restored_

To clear away the cobwebs and to purge my soul of evil thoughts and bitter feelings, went for a walk this evening over the uplands. Among the stubble, I sat down for a while with my back against the corn pook and listened to the Partridges calling. Then wandered around the edge of this upland field with the wind in my face and a shower of delicious, fresh rain pattering down on the leaves and dry earth. Then into a wood among tall forest Beeches and a few giant Larches where I rested again and heard a Woodp.e.c.k.e.r tapping out its message aloft.

This ramble in beautiful B----shire country restored my mental and spiritual poise. I came home serene and perfectly balanced--my equilibrium was something like the just perceptible oscillation of tall Larch-tree tops on the heights of a cliff and the sea below with a just perceptible swell on a calm and perfect June day. I felt exquisite --superb. I could have walked all the way home on a tight rope.

_September_ 2.

Just recently, I have been going fairly strong. I get frequent colds and sometimes show unpleasant nerve symptoms, but I take a course of a.r.s.enic and strychnine every month or so in tabloid form, and this helps me over bad patches.