If I May by A. A. Milne

A >> A. A. Milne >> If I May

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

The Squire said that he--er--hadn't--er--intended--er--to say
anything. But he thought--er--if he might--er--intervene--to--er--say
something on the matter of--er--a matter which--er--well, they all
knew what it was--in short--er--money. Because until they knew how
they--er--stood, it was obvious that--it was obvious--quite
obvious--well it was a question of how they stood. Whereupon he sat
down.

The Vicar said that as had often happened before, the sound
common-sense of Sir John had saved them from undue rashness and
precipitancy. They were getting on a little too fast. Their valued
friend Miss Travers had made what he was not ashamed to call a
suggestion both rare and beautiful, but alas! in these prosaic modern
days the sordid question of pounds, shillings and pence could not be
wholly disregarded. How much money would they have?

Everybody looked at Sir John. There was an awkward silence, in which
the Squire joined....

Amid pushings and whisperings from his corner of the room, Charlie
Rudd said that he would just like to say a few words for the boys, if
all were willing. The Vicar said that certainly, certainly he might,
my dear Rudd. So Charlie said that he would just like to say that with
all respect to Miss Travers, who was a real lady, and many was the
packet of fags he'd had from her out there, and all the other boys
could say the same, and if some of them joined up sooner than others,
well perhaps they did, but they all tried to do their bit, just like
those who stayed at home, and they'd thrashed Jerry, and glad of it,
fountains or no fountains, and pleased to be back again and see them
all, just the same as ever, Mr. Bates and Mr. Embury and all of them,
which was all he wanted to say, and the other boys would say the same,
hoping no offence was meant, and that was all he wanted to say.

When the applause had died down, Mr. Clayton said that, in his
opinion, as he had said before, they were getting on too fast. Did
they want a fountain, that was the question. Who wanted it? The Vicar
replied that it would be a beautiful memento for their children of the
stirring times through which their country had passed. Embury asked if
Mr. Bates' child wanted a memento of----"This is a general question,
my dear Embury," said the Vicar.

There rose slowly to his feet the landlord of the Dog and Duck.
Celebrations, he said. We were celebrating this here peace. Now, as
man to man, what did celebrations mean? He asked any of them. What did
it mean? Celebrations meant celebrating, and celebrating meant sitting
down hearty-like, sitting down like Englishmen and--and celebrating.
First, find how much money they'd got, same as Sir John said; that was
right and proper. Then if so be as they wanted to leave the rest to
him, well he'd be proud to do his best for them. They knew him. Do
fair by him and he'd do fair by them. Soon as he knew how much money
they'd got, and how many were going to sit down, then he could get to
work. That was all _he'd_ got to say about celebrations.

The enthusiasm was tremendous. Rut the Vicar looked anxious, and
whispered to the Squire. The Squire shrugged his shoulders and
murmured something, and the Vicar rose. They would be all glad to
hear, he said, glad but not surprised, that with his customary
generosity the Squire had decided to throw open his own beautiful
gardens and pleasure-grounds to them on Peace Day and to take upon his
own shoulders the burden of entertaining them. He would suggest that
they now give Sir John three hearty cheers. This was done, and the
proceedings closed.

A Train of Thought

On the same day I saw two unsettling announcements in the papers. The
first said simply, underneath a suitable photograph, that the ski-ing
season was now in full swing in Switzerland; the second explained
elaborately why it cost more to go from London to the Riviera and back
than from the Riviera to London and back. Both announcements unsettled
me considerably. They would upset anybody for whom the umbrella season
in London was just opening, and who was wondering what was the cost of
a return ticket to Manchester.

At first I amused myself with trying to decide whether I should prefer
it to be the Riviera or Switzerland this Christmas. Switzerland won;
not because it is more invigorating, but because I had just discovered
a woollen helmet and a pair of ski-ing boots, relics of an earlier
visit. I am thus equipped for Switzerland already, whereas for the
Riviera I should want several new suits. One of the chief beauties of
Switzerland (other than the mountains) is that it is so uncritical of
the visitor's wardrobe. So long as he has a black coat for the
evenings, it demands nothing more. In the day-time he may fall about
in whatever he pleases. Indeed, it is almost an economy to go there
now and work off some of one's moth-collecting khaki on it. The socks
which are impossible with our civilian clothes could renew their youth
as the middle pair of three, inside a pair of ski-ing boots.

Yet to whichever I went this year, Switzerland or the Riviera, I think
it would be money wasted. I am one of those obvious people who detest
an uncomfortable railway journey, and the journey this year will
certainly be uncomfortable. But I am something more than this; I am
one of those uncommon people who enjoy a comfortable railway journey.
I mean that I enjoy it as an entertainment in itself, not only as a
relief from the hair-shirts of previous journeys. I would much sooner
go by _wagonlit_ from Calais to Monte Carlo in twenty hours, than by
magic carpet in twenty seconds. I am even looking forward to my
journey to Manchester, supposing that there is no great rush for the
place on my chosen day. The scenery as one approaches Manchester may
not be beautiful, but I shall be quite happy in my corner facing the
engine.

Nowhere can I think so happily as in a train. I am not inspired;
nothing so uncomfortable as that. I am never seized with a sudden idea
for a masterpiece, nor form a sudden plan for some new enterprise. My
thoughts are just pleasantly reflective. I think of all the good deeds
I have done, and (when these give out) of all the good deeds I am
going to do. I look out of the window and say lazily to myself, "How
jolly to live there"; and a little farther on, "How jolly not to
live there." I see a cow, and I wonder what it is like to be a cow,
and I wonder whether the cow wonders what it is to be like me; and
perhaps, by this time, we have passed on to a sheep, and I wonder if
it is more fun being a sheep. My mind wanders on in a way which would
annoy Pelman a good deal, but it wanders on quite happily, and the
"clankety-clank" of the train adds a very soothing accompaniment. So
soothing, indeed, that at any moment I can close my eyes and pass into
a pleasant state of sleep.

But this entertainment which my train provides for me is doubly
entertaining if it be but the overture to greater delights. If some
magic property which the train possesses--whether it be the motion or
the clankety-clank--makes me happy even when I am only thinking about
a cow, is it any wonder that I am happy in thinking about the
delightful new life to which I am travelling? We are going to the
Riviera, but I have had no time as yet in which to meditate properly
upon that delightful fact. I have been too busy saving up for it,
doing work in advance for it, buying cloth for it. Between London and
Dover I have been worrying, perhaps, about the crossing; between Dover
and Calais my worries have come to a head; but when I step into the
train at Calais, then at last I can give myself up with a whole mind
to the contemplation of the happy future. So long as the train does
not stop, so long as nobody goes in or out of my carriage, I care not
how many hours the journey takes. I have enough happy thoughts to fill
them.

All this, as I said, is not at all Pelman's idea of success in life;
one should be counting cows instead of thinking of them; although
presumably a train journey would seem in any case a waste of time to
The Man Who Succeeds. But to those of us to whom it is no more a waste
of time than any other pleasant form of entertainment, the
train-service to which we have had to submit lately has been doubly
distressing. The bliss of travelling from London to Manchester was
torn from us and we were given purgatory instead. Things are a little
better now in England; if one chooses the right day one can still come
sometimes upon the old happiness. But not yet on the Continent. In the
happy days before the war the journey out was almost the best part of
Switzerland on the Riviera. I must wait until those days come back
again.

Melodrama

The most characteristic thing about a melodrama is that it always
begins at 7.30. The idea, no doubt, is that one is more in the mood
for this sort of entertainment after a high tea than after a late
dinner. Plain living leads to plain thinking, and a solid foundation
of eggs and potted meat leaves no room for appreciation of the finer
shades of conduct; Right is obviously Right, and Wrong is Wrong. Or it
may be also that the management wishes to allow us time for recovery
afterwards from the emotions of the evening; the play ends at 10.30,
so that we can build up the ravaged tissues again with a hearty
supper. But whatever the reason for the early start, the result is the
same. We arrive at 7.45 to find that we alone of the whole audience
have been left out of the secret as to why Lord Algernon is to be
pushed off the pier.

For melodrama, unlike the more fashionable comedy, gets to grips at
once. It is well understood by every dramatist that a late-dining
audience needs several minutes of dialogue before it recovers from its
bewilderment at finding itself in a theatre at all. Even the expedient
of printing the names of the characters on the programme in the order
in which they appear, and of letting them address each other frankly
by name as soon as they come on the stage, fails to dispel the mists.
The stalls still wear that vague, flustered look, as if they had
expected a concert or a prize-fight and have just remembered that the
concert, of course, is to-morrow. For this reason a wise dramatist
keeps back his story until the brain of the more expensive seats
begins to clear, and he is careful not to waste his jokes on the first
five pages of his dialogue.

But melodrama plays to cheap seats, and the purchaser of the cheap
seat has come there to have his money's worth. Directly the curtain
goes up he is ready to collaborate. It is perfectly safe for the
Villain to come on at once and reveal his dastardly plans; the
audience is alert for his confidences.

"Curse that young cub, Dick Vereker, what ill-fortune has sent him
across my path? Already he has established himself in the affections
of Lady Alicia, and if she consents to wed him my plans are foiled.
Fortunately she does not know as yet that, by the will of her late
Uncle Gregory, the ironmaster, two million pounds are settled upon the
man who wins her hand. With two million pounds I could pay back my
betting losses and prevent myself from being turned out of the
Constitutional Club. And now to put the marked ace of spades in young
Vereker's coat-tail pocket. Ha!"

No doubt the audience is the more ready to assimilate this because it
knew it was coming. As soon as the Villain steps on to the stage he is
obviously the Villain; one does not need to peer at one's programme
and murmur, "Who is this, dear?" It is known beforehand that the
Hero will be falsely accused, and that not until the last act will he
and his true love come together again. All that we are waiting to be
told is whether it is to be a marked card, a forged cheque, or a
bloodstain this time; and (if, as is probable, the Heroine is forced
into a marriage with the Villain) whether the Villain's first wife,
whom he had deserted, will turn up during the ceremony or immediately
afterwards. For the whole charm of a melodrama is that it is in
essentials just like every other melodrama that has gone before. The
author may indulge his own fancies to the extent of calling the
Villain Jasper or Eustace, of letting the Hero be ruined on the
battle-field or the Stock Exchange, but we are keeping an eye on him
to see that he plays no tricks with our national drama. It is our play
as well as his, and we have laid down the rules for it. Let the author
stick to them.

It is strange how unconvincing the Hero is to his fellows on the
stage, and how very convincing to us. That ringing voice, those
gleaming eyes--how is it that none of his companions seems able to
recognize Innocence when it is shining forth so obviously? "I feel
that I never want to see your face again," says the Heroine, when the
diamond necklace is found in his hat-box, and we feel that she has
never really seen it at all yet. "Good Heavens, madam," we long to
cry, "have you never been to a melodrama that you can be so deceived?
Look again! Is it not the face of the Falsely Accused?" But probably
she has not been to a melodrama. She moves in the best society, and
the thought of a high tea at 6.30 would appal her.

But let me confess that we in the audience are carried away sometimes
by that ringing voice, those gleaming eyes. He has us, this Hero, in
the hollow of his hand (to borrow a phrase from the Villain). When the
limelight is playing round his brow, and he stands in the centre of
the stage with clenched fists, oh! then he has us. "What! Betray my
aged mother for filthy gold!" he cries, looking at us scornfully as
if it was our suggestion. "Never, while yet breath remains in my
body!" What a cheer we give him then; a cheer which seems to imply
that, having often betrayed our own mothers for half a crown or so, we
are able to realize the heroic nature of his abstention on this
occasion. For in the presence of the Hero we lose our sense of values.
If he were to scorn an offer to sell his father for vivisectional
purposes, we should applaud enthusiastically his altruism.

But it is only the Hero who wins our cheers, only the Villain who wins
our hisses. The minor characters are necessary, but we are not greatly
interested in them. The Villain must have a confederate to whom he can
reveal his wicked thoughts when he is tired of soliloquizing; the Hero
must have friends who can tell each other all those things which a
modest man cannot say for himself; there must be characters of lower
birth, competent to relieve the tension by sitting down on their hats
or pulling chairs from beneath their acquaintances. We could not do
without them, but we do not give them our hearts. Even the Heroine
leaves us calm. However beautiful she be, she is not more than the
Hero deserves. It is the Hero whom we have come out to see, and it is
painful to reflect that in a little while he will he struggling to get
on the 'bus for Walham Green, and be pushed off again just like the
rest of us.

A Lost Masterpiece

The short essay on "The Improbability of the Infinite" which I was
planning for you yesterday will now never be written. Last night my
brain was crammed with lofty thoughts on the subject--and for that
matter, on every other subject. My mind was never so fertile. Ten
thousand words on any theme from Tin-tacks to Tomatoes would have been
easy to me. That was last night. This morning I have only one word in
my brain, and I cannot get rid of it. The word is "Teralbay."

Teralbay is not a word which one uses much in ordinary life. Rearrange
the letters, however, and it becomes such a word. A friend--no, I can
call him a friend no longer--a person gave me this collection of
letters as I was going to bed and challenged me to make a proper word
of it. He added that Lord Melbourne--this, he alleged, is a well-known
historical fact--Lord Melbourne had given this word to Queen Victoria
once, and it had kept her awake the whole night. After this, one could
not be so disloyal as to solve it at once. For two hours or so,
therefore, I merely toyed with it. Whenever I seemed to be getting
warm I hurriedly thought of something else. This quixotic loyalty has
been the undoing of me; my chances of a solution have slipped by, and
I am beginning to fear that they will never return. While this is the
case, the only word I can write about is Teralbay.

Teralbay--what does it make? There are two ways of solving a problem
of this sort. The first is to waggle your eyes and see what you get.
If you do this, words like "alterably" and "laboratory" emerge,
which a little thought shows you to be wrong. You may then waggle your
eyes again, look at it upside down or sideways, or stalk it carefully
from the southwest and plunge upon it suddenly when it is not ready
for you. In this way it may be surprised into giving up its secret.
But if you find that it cannot be captured by strategy or assault,
then there is only one way of taking it. It must be starved into
surrender. This will take a long time, but victory is certain.

There are eight letters in Teralbay and two of them are the same, so
that there must be 181,440 ways of writing the letters out. This may
not be obvious to you at once; you may have thought that it was only
181,439; but you may take my word for it that I am right. (Wait a
moment while I work it out again.... Yes, that's it.) Well, now
suppose that you put down a new order of letters--such as
"raytable"--every six seconds, which is very easy going, and suppose
that you can spare an hour a day for it; then by the 303rd day--a year
hence, if you rest on Sundays--you are bound to have reached a
solution.

But perhaps this is not playing the game. This, I am sure, is not what
Queen Victoria did. And now I think of it, history does not tell us
what she did do, beyond that she passed a sleepless night. (And that
she still liked Melbourne afterwards--which is surprising.) Did she
ever guess it? Or did Lord Melbourne have to tell her in the morning,
and did she say, "Why, of _course_!" I expect so. Or did Lord
Melbourne say, "I'm awfully sorry, madam, but I find I put a `y' in
too many?" But no--history could not have remained silent over
such a tragedy as that. Besides, she went on liking him.

When I die "Teralbay" will be written on my heart. While I live it
shall be my telegraphic address. I shall patent a breakfast food
called "Teralbay"; I shall say "Teralbay!" when I miss a 2-ft.
putt; the Teralbay carnation will catch your eye at the Temple show. I
shall write anonymous letters over the name. "Fly at once; all is
discovered--Teralbay." Yes, that would look rather well.

I wish I knew more about Lord Melbourne. What sort of words did he
think of? The thing couldn't he "aeroplane" or "telephone" or
"googly," because these weren't invented in his time. That gives us
three words less. Nor, probably, would it be anything to eat; a Prime
Minister would hardly discuss such subjects with his Sovereign. I have
no doubt that after hours of immense labour you will triumphantly
suggest "rateably." I suggested that myself, but it is wrong. There
is no such word in the dictionary. The same objection applies to
"bat-early"--it ought to mean something, but it doesn't.

So I hand the word over to you. Please do not send the solution to me,
for by the time you read this I shall either have found it out or else
I shall be in a nursing home. In either case it will be of no use to
me. Send it to the Postmaster-General or one of the Geddeses or Mary
Pickford. You will want to get it off your mind.

As for myself I shall write to my fr----, to the person who first said
"Teralbay" to me, and ask him to make something of "sabet" and
"donureb." When he has worked out the corrections--which, in case he
gets the wrong ones, I may tell him here are "beast" and
"bounder"--I shall search the dictionary for some long word like
"intellectual." I shall alter the order of the letters and throw in
a couple of "g's" and a "k". And then I shall tell them to keep a
spare bed for him in my nursing home.

Well, I have got "Teralbay" a little off my mind. I feel better able
now to think of other things. Indeed, I might almost begin my famous
essay on "The Improbability of the Infinite." It would be a pity for
the country to lose such a masterpiece--she has had quite enough
trouble already what with one thing and another. For my view of the
Infinite is this: that although beyond the Finite, or, as one might
say, the Commensurate, there may or may not be a----

Just a moment. I think I have it now. T--R--A----No....

A Hint for Next Christmas

There has been some talk lately of the standardization of golf balls,
but a more urgent reform is the standardization of Christmas presents.
It is no good putting this matter off; let us take it in hand now, so
that we shall be in time for next Christmas.

My crusade is on behalf of those who spend their Christmas away from
home. Last year I returned (with great difficulty) from such an
adventure and I am more convinced than ever that Christmas presents
should conform to a certain standard of size. My own little offerings
were thoughtfully chosen. A match-box, a lace handkerchief or two, a
cigarette-holder, a pencil and note-book, _Gems from Wilcox_, and so
on; such gifts not only bring pleasure (let us hope) to the recipient,
but take up a negligible amount of room in one's bag, and add hardly
anything to the weight of it. Of course, if your fellow-visitor says
to you, "How sweet of you to give me such a darling little
handkerchief--it's just what I wanted--how ever did you think of it?"
you do not reply, "Well, it was a choice between that and a
hundredweight of coal, and I'll give you two guesses why I chose the
handkerchief." No; you smile modestly and say, "As soon as I saw it,
I felt somehow that it was yours"; after which you are almost in a
position to ask your host casually where he keeps the mistletoe.

But it is almost a certainty that the presents you receive will not
have been chosen with such care. Probably the young son of the house
has been going in for carpentry lately, and in return for your tie-pin
he gives you a wardrobe of his own manufacture. You thank him
heartily, you praise its figure, but all the time you are wishing that
it had chosen some other occasion. Your host gives you a statuette or
a large engraving; somebody else turns up with a large brass
candle-stick. It is all very gratifying, but you have got to get back
to London somehow, and, thankful though you are not to have received
the boar-hound or parrot-in-cage which seemed at one time to be
threatening, you cannot help wishing that the limits of size for a
Christmas present had been decreed by some authority who was familiar
with the look of your dressing-case.

Obviously, too, there should be a standard value for a certain type of
Christmas present. One may give what one will to one's own family or
particular friends; that is all right. But in a Christmas house-party
there is a pleasant interchange of parcels, of which the string and
the brown paper and the kindly thought are the really important
ingredients, and the gift inside is nothing more than an excuse for
these things. It is embarrassing for you if Jones has apologized for
his brown paper with a hundred cigars, and you have only excused
yourself with twenty-five cigarettes; perhaps still more embarrassing
if it is you who have lost so heavily on the exchange. An
understanding that the contents were to be worth five shillings
exactly would avoid this embarassment.

And now I am reminded of the ingenuity of a friend of mine, William by
name, who arrived at a large country house for Christmas without any
present in his bag. He had expected neither to give nor to receive
anything, but to his horror he discovered on the 24th that everybody
was preparing a Christmas present for him, and that it was taken for
granted that he would require a little privacy and brown paper on
Christmas Eve for the purpose of addressing his own offerings to
others. He had wild thoughts of telegraphing to London for something
to be sent down, and spoke to other members of the house-party in
order to discover what sort of presents would be suitable.

"What are you giving our host P" he asked one of them.

"Mary and I are giving him a book," said John, referring to his
wife.

William then approached the youngest son of the house, and discovered
that he and his next brother Dick were sharing in this, that, and the
other. When he had heard this, William retired to his room and thought
profoundly. He was the first down to breakfast on Christmas morning.
All the places at the table were piled high with presents. He looked
at John's place. The top parcel said, "To John and Mary from
Charles." William took out his fountain-pen and added a couple of
words to the inscription. It then read, "To John and Mary from
Charles and William," and in William's opinion looked just as
effective as before. He moved on to the next place. "To Angela from
Father," said the top parcel. "And William," wrote William. At his
hostess' place he hesitated for a moment. The first present there was
for "Darling Mother, from her loving children." It did not seem that
an "and William" was quite suitable. But his hostess was not to be
deprived of William's kindly thought; twenty seconds later the
handkerchiefs "from John and Mary and William" expressed all the
nice things which he was feeling for her. He passed on to the next
place....

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10