Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 396
And then it was all over. How quickly glory passes! All over and forgotten it seemed in a week. E.P. was back in his shabby house, talking of cables expected from the new mines of Johannesburg, his last bulwark against the creditors who had all flocked back. Evelyn was typing and Jim selling stamps again, with one hand, at the Parliament Building . . . General Middleton had spoken highly of Jim after Fish Creek, and a lot of people had noticed him and there might be a good job for him presently; in fact, there was right now a fine partnership he could have if he could put up $5,000. But things were so dreary now that E.P. didn’t even offer to cable the British Treasury.
And Evelyn said, “I wish mother were back. Oh! I wish mother were back.”
And she was much nearer to being back than Evelyn had any idea of. For in England everything had failed her. Each night, after the latest lawyer’s letter came to the vicarage, the Vicar, her brother-in-law, would sit in his little study in the vicarage adding up figures, and would say, “Dear me, dear me, how unfortunate.”
Like so many estates, the more they wound it up the smaller it got. “I’m afraid I don’t really understand business, Agnes,” said the Vicar. “We didn’t learn it at Cambridge — but I’m just afraid, that really there’s nothing there — or only just enough to pay your passage back.” So her brother-in-law advanced Agnes enough out of what the lawyers advanced him out of what the estate advanced them. And Agnes left for Canada. The Vicar drove her in a donkey cart over to the railway junction at Muddle-on-the-Edge, and he kissed her good-bye.
And from there she went third class to London, and from there third class to Liverpool and from there second class to Montreal, and from there by no class at all was on her way to Winnipeg — only a few hours away when Evelyn spoke.
. . . “Unless,” E.P. had said, “I get a cable,” and after they had gone out he had sunk into a chair, and sat there, the outspread newspaper on his lap, beaten at last — or else playing at being beaten at last.
Yet if he had known it there was a cable coming, but coming from so far away — from half round the world, that it was not there yet though it had started the morning of the day before in Gujahar, North India. If this were a moving picture we could follow the progress of the cable from Gujahar to Winnipeg in a set of variegated scenes. It was written and put on the wires in mixed English and Gujahari by a cinnamon-coloured telegraph clerk in a white suit with a black band on one arm to mean that the Maharajah of Gujahar was dead (the old Maharajah), and a sky-blue band on the other to mean that the new Maharajah was alive. The address was the hard part, for it ran Mrs. Dacres, The Vicarage, Little Bosing-on-the-Edge, Edgewater, via Exeter, England. The yellow clerk worked with the address, consulting a big Gujahari dictionary. After the address the rest was Gujahari and went like lightning.
That took the cable as far as Calcutta where a brown Baboo telegraph clerk in white with a white puggaree ran it all into what he understood was English, correcting Vicarage to Vicquorage, and with that it went on to Aden in one jump. There a telegraph clerk in a white uniform with a pith helmet, because he was also a subaltern of engineers, took the cable and when he wrote it out he said, “I say, I’ll be damned! Do look at this, Charteris.” And Charteris said, “I say . . . I will be damned.” Six officers were damned. They all knew of course that the Maharajah of Gujahar was dead because in Aden there’s nothing else to know except that sort of thing. But they all exclaimed when they saw the message, “All that money! Eh? What? But it’s only fair — the old boy simply stole it.”
Then the cable went on another jump to Suez. And there an Egyptian clerk in a white suit and scarlet tarbosh ran it off into French, English not being allowed on the Mediterranean cable in 1885, and sent it on to Marseilles in one long throw. He made no change except to write Vikkerij. At Marseilles, an envious French telegraph clerk in a suit that had been white last year took the cable off the wire and wrote it out, held it up to the other clerks and put his fingers on the figures in it and said, “Quelle veine, hein? Parlez-moi de ces Anglais!”
The French clerk corrected the Turkish spelling Vikkerij to “Viqueurage.” That took it to London and there it only took two minutes to make it “Vicarage,” and send it from London to Edgewater, and within two minutes more a postman was carrying it from Edgewater to the village shop that was the post office in Little Bosing-on-the-Edge. But as it was sealed he didn’t know what was in it and just whistled away as he walked. But he looked at the cable three or four times a minute. When he took it in, the postmistress looked at it — from above and from below and sideways. They both did . . . and she said, “Why, it’s a cable, dear me! From Googe — from Googe . . . Suppose I’ve got to open it.” “That’s regulations, Mrs. Treloar,” said the postman. “You deliver a telegram, as you might say, intact; a cable, so the regulation is, you open, for you can’t tell . . .”
But by this time Mrs. Treloar had read it with one long snort of astonishment.
Mrs. Dacres, The Vicarage, Little Bosing-on-the-Edge, Edgewater, via Exeter, England. British Government arbitration tea plantation claims against late Maharajah Gujahar awards you fifty thousand pounds sterling.
And with that the postman and postmistress started a race across the common to the Vicarage, knocking over sheep as they ran . . . through the gate they burst and through the door. The Vicar was just reading a morning prayer to his wife in the drawing-room, the day’s lesson out of St. John, “And they said, lo! where may we look for help?” When they broke in both shouting, “Gujahar!” The Vicar read the cable, and his wife fell on the neck of the postman and sobbed.
The Vicar was prompt. He had the donkey cart out within an hour. Within two he was at the cable office in Exeter, and it was still that same morning in Winnipeg when the knock of the telegraph boy come to E.P.’s door.
“I’ve got a cable here,” he said. “It’s for your wife — is that all right?”
“A cable?” said E.P. in surprise, then he remembered and said, “Yes, that’s all right. Another cable, eh?” Then he read it: British Government arbitration tea plantations claims against late Maharajah Gujahar awards you fifty thousand pounds sterling.
“Good Lord!” said E.P. “fifty thousand pounds!” Then, “Here boy!” and he began plunging his hands into his pockets . . . “Here, boy.” But there was nothing. Then he said, “Come,” slapped on his hat, grabbed the boy by the wrist and with the cable in the other hand dashed into the street.
He bumped into a clergyman. “Good-morning,” the clergyman began sweetly. “Give this boy a dollar,” said E.P. In sheer surprise the clergyman gave it. They bumped into a grocer watering window boxes in front of his store. “Give him a dollar,” E.P. gasped. The boy got four dollars before E.P. let him loose at the door of the bank.
“I must see the manager,” he said at the counter, “see him at once.” The manager stepped from his office. “I’m sorry,” he said with a frozen face, “we can’t possibly advance another cent. Our head office . . .”
But E.P. had recovered all his old power. “I want to scratch off a cheque for a thousand dollars. They want me at once in Gujahar. The Maharajah has just cabled.”
The manager collapsed into a wet rag. The money was paid across. Within half an hour all the saloons in Winnipeg had heard of the Maharajah of Gujahar. E.P. was lined up with a row of pals — Count Fosdari, Captain the Honorable Desmond Despard and all comers.
“The Maharajah’s cable, of course, means we are leaving for Gujahar at once.”
In the next saloon he said the Maharajah wanted him to raise a troop of cavalry, and in the next, “I expect I shall be asked to command the entire army of Gujahar.”
In the middle of the afternoon a second cable, this time from the Bank of England and addressed again to his wife, said, Placing fifty thousand sterling to your credit, Winnipeg. After that E.P. said, “It’s very likely, of course, that they’ll want me to take over three or four of the Native States.”
At which E.P., now in possession of boundless money, moved with his old energy. The first thing was to set his house in order.
So when Jim and Evelyn got to the house that evening the place was transformed. They could see it half way down the street as a blaze of light. There had been so many cleaning women working in the house that it smelt of gin. Delivery men were dumping in cut flowers and plants . . . Crockery and glasses were coming in crates. Half a liquor store had arrived. New carpets were going down. A “handy-man,” half tight, was pounding them in with tacks.
Jim and Evelyn stood, open-eyed. “Why! Uncle Edward!” Jim began. “Why, father,” said Evelyn. “I shall explain it all presently,” said E.P. “It means that I shall probably leave for India as soon as I can arrange things with the Viscount. He may want to go by way of Japan. In any case, I shall only wait till I get your mother back. I’m sending Harris with a cable. She’ll come at once, I’m sure.”
Come? But she was there already — getting out of a cab in the dusk, and wondering at the lights — and so happy to be there; so sad to bring nothing, but so glad to be back.
And in a moment she was in his arms . . .
“Agnes!” “Edward!”
There was dinner, real dinner, in the house that evening, with all the pomp that E.P. could throw into it, at such short notice . . . himself in evening dress, and Agnes in the things they wear in English vicarages. Jim was still in his Field Battery uniform. “You must excuse him not dressing, dear,” E.P. said, “he’s not supposed yet, of course, to be in mufti.”
“Meadows,” he said, “you can retire to your pantry when you have served the port. If I want Harris I shall ring.”
But it turned out instead that in a few minutes Harris wanted him. Harris brought a cable, a real one, all paid for; and at last it was from London, from the office of Her Majesty’s Secretary of War. It said:
Her Majesty desires me to express her appreciation of your gallantry for which you are to receive in due course the D.S.O. about to be instituted and the Honorary Rank of Colonel in the Imperial Forces.
Hartington.
Before dinner was over it had all been explained now about the Gujahar money. “It will make a very good start,” said E.P., as he drank his port. “I shall cable at once to see about developing the Peace River and opening the Arctic Railway . . .”
His wife came round the table and put her arm around his neck . . . “Ned,” she said, “suppose we don’t cable any more, not to anybody. Let this be for us not a start but a finish — peace and happiness . . . Let it be a start for them.”
“For them, of course, for them first, but for everybody, too.” E.P. rose to an attitude. “This shall make a new beginning for the West . . . all my dreams . . . all my visions shall come true . . . I see it coming . . . four million . . . this city half a million . . . the star of the Empire shall glitter in the West and shall never set.”
So pronounced in 1880.
MARIPOSA MOVES ON
INTRODUCTION
People who still entertain a kindly remembrance of Mariposa, the scene of my Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town of many years ago, will pardon me if I append these further sketches of Mariposa in the shadow of war. They were written, as is obvious from the text, in connection with the Victory Loan of 1943.
But as Mariposa is not one town, but is at least several hundred in Canada and in the adjacent States, and as more Victory Loans may yet be needed for complete victory, it seems not inappropriate to find a place in this book for these Mariposa Sketches.
THE HAPPY WARRIOR
HE CAME OUT to my house beside the lake — the most pleasant, cheery man I ever saw. I knew him just a little bit, but couldn’t recall his name.
“Canvassing for the Loan,” he said as he shook hands. “Pretty strenuous going!”
“Sit down,” I said and showed him an easy chair on the verandah.
“A great spot you have here,” he remarked. “That’s a pretty little bay.”
“Yes,” I said, “they call it The Old Brewery Bay.”
“Well, well, The Old Brewery Bay!” he repeated. “That’s a beautiful name! Poetic, isn’t it?”
That’s what I judge my visitors by.
If they like the name, The Old Brewery Bay, they’re all right. They can have anything on the place. Once a woman — I won’t say a lady — exclaimed, “Can’t you change it?” . . . She got hers.
As a matter of fact I have known that name, The Old Brewery Bay, to make people feel thirsty by correspondence as far away as Nevada.
“Pretty strenuous business,” repeated my friend the canvasser, as he sat comfortably down. But he didn’t look strenuous either.
“Will you have a cigar?” I said.
“I certainly will,” he answered, and then as he lit it.
“Any fish in the bay?”
Well, of course, that started us. We got talking of bass being right in the bay and out on the shoals in July, but always moving on in August. I told him there were lots of young pickerel in June, close in along shore, but you could never make them bite; and he asked me if I’d ever tried a very small gilt and silver spinner for pickerel, and I asked him if he ever took Scotch whiskey.
That led to the question of trout fishing. If you don’t see the connection it doesn’t matter. But I agreed with him that nowadays if you go trout fishing on the streams you’ve got to carry soda. You can’t any longer drink the water in the creeks.
That led to the discussion of the way the fish are disappearing in the older settled parts of Ontario and that you have to go north now. So we went north — taking another cigar and another Scotch with us — all the way up to Central Algoma.
Anyway, we spent a most pleasant hour or so. As my friend rose to go I suddenly remembered the Loan.
“You’re canvassing for the Loan?” I said.
“Yes,” he answered, “from a special list. You’re on it.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “I took up my subscription yesterday at the bank.”
“So they told me,” he said.
NATIONAL DEBT, NATIONAL BLESSING
I WAS A witness to a queer matter of psychology this morning. Psychology? No, I’m not trying to use a long word for a short. It’s simple enough. It just means the way you use your mind. For instance, at poker, when you want the others to think you hold at least a straight, that’s psychology. At golf, when you say to the caddy, “How many was that last hole?” and want him to say seven instead of eleven, that’s psychology.
The case I mean occurred in the Mariposa barber shop that I’ve spoken of before — Jeff’s place — a sort of centre of town talk and public information. I was sitting there in the barber shop waiting my turn — or — well, I won’t say “waiting my turn” but waiting till I had, in fairness, to accept my turn. You see, here in Mariposa it’s not like in the City. The barber shop — I always go to Jeff’s — is a comfortable place to sit in with as good conversation and as much information as you get in any first class club. So each one likes to sit as long as he can till Jeff nominates him to a chair. When he says, “You’re next,” you have to take your place. You’ve read about the guillotine.
It was in the quiet hour of the morning with only Jeff himself shaving. But I got nominated to the chair almost right away because the morning papers had just come off the bus and most of the fellers preferred to sit and read for a while.
Well, Bill Landy was talking to George Summers and evidently talking Victory Loan.
Bill Landy has a mind as quick and bright as the flight of a humming-bird. He has to. He’s in the mining stock business and in that you mustn’t give the other man time to think. Of course Bill is closed just now, so he’s in war work — a dollar a year man — the most he ever made, net. He’s the chief canvasser for the Loan in Mariposa — not the Chairman of the Committee, though — Mariposa is too religious a place to make a mining broker a Chairman.
Anyway, Bill was talking to George Summers. George is different. He has a cement business, and you know the way it is with cement. It has to settle. George’s mind is like that. You can’t make any marks on it — he won’t let you — till it gets set and firm. George laid the town sidewalks and he doesn’t forget the place where the duck walked across the cement in front of the Public Library. No, sir.
I didn’t hear how the talk, or argument, started because Jeff had put a hot towel over my face and stopped to listen and forgot me. But when he let me out of the chair Bill Landy was saying,
“At any rate, you remember the old phrase, a national debt is a national blessing.”
“Why do you call it a phrase?” says George.
“Because it is.”
“Is what?”
“Is a phrase,” says Bill.
“Never mind the phrase business,” interrupts one of the boys who was listening. “Where does the blessing come in? Isn’t a debt a debt?”
“Why, this way,” says Bill. “You take a national debt like ours, widely distributed—”
“What do you call distributed?” asks George.
“He means everybody holds some,” says one of the fellers.
“Oh!”
“Well,” Bill went on, “now let’s say that individual A holds a hundred dollars—”
“Who’s he?” asks George.
“Well, just A, or if you like, I’ll call him B.”
“No, no, call him A if you like. You mean some feller whose name begins with A, like Alec Anderson or Andy Ames.”
“Yes, exactly, but I don’t mean them.”
“Oh, you don’t!”
“He just means anybody,” interrupts the Chorus.
“Yes,” says Bill, “I just mean a whole string of individuals: A, and B, and C, all the way to Z.”
“I doubt,” says George Summers slowly, “If you’d find any feller here in Mariposa whose name begins with Z.”
