Pluck and Luck Read online

  Old Breamley was speaking. To sell these ships now would mean a clear profit of thirty thousand pounds. Thirty thousand Melisses! Fifteen minutes – half an hour – what difference did it make? He would soon be with Melisse. He would take her in his arms and tell her that everything was tup. And that would be no lie. Everything was tup. Silly old guff! Would Rodney Granish mind? And if he did, would Maxton Sixby blorrow? Jolly – if young Sixby blorrowed! What a mess! And now about these ships. The Germans wanted them. And England needed them. Reconstruction. Well, perhaps. But Melisse’s neck was whiter than Reconstruction. And her eyes deeper. What a jolly old mup it all was! Everything! Or – perhaps nothing! Lister shut his eyes and marked “Three hundred pounds” on his pad. No use to have a heart. Or a liver either, for that matter.

  II

  CODA

  It was warm in bed. Heavy brocade shut out the smart breeze which blew in the long windows from the Free Trade Club across Cavendish Square. Lister Hoag ran his bare arm along the soft mountain ranges of the coverlet. Nice.

  Melisse was asleep beside him. At any rate, Melisse was beside him. The curve from her chin to her shoulder reminded Lister of the curve on the chart showing the Unemployment Situation. It was a long, gentle curve and yet to him it cried out that the Government was wrong, all wrong. What right had one man to have a job when another hadn’t? What right had they to tax wheat when Bleeker and Tony Napin and Thornlip and all those other poor devils were eating ha’penny rolls? Political principles – he mused – were tip. Absolutely tip. And yet if one had no political principles one was likely to have no principles at all. If, as a member of the community, as an Englishman – and he certainly was an Englishman – he accepted the challenge, what was left but revolution? No, by George! England was there, and since England was there, there she must stay.

  Melisse stirred softly at his side. She wanted to speak. She said:

  “What time is it, dear?”

  Automatically, Lister looked at his wrist watch. It was the watch that had been given him by the governors of the Liberal Union. A rum crowd, the Union. No spines. No convictions. Like the Board. Seven per cent preference – nine per cent ordinary. What whip! And, since it was whip, Why bother? But somehow the War had changed all that. The War had changed everything. Nobody was sure now. A chap didn’t know in the morning what the Prime would be by night, and the Prime didn’t know at night what a chap would be in the morning. England was twill. But she was England, nevertheless.

  “It’s a quarter to eight, dear.”

  But Melisse was asleep again, with a faint curl of disgust on her fifteenth century lips.

  III

  TEATIME AT BLEEMS

  Nine hours later Trevor Ramsty stood facing the tea table across which Melisse Hoag was stretching a white arm. England was still England.

  “Draw up. Cream, Trevor? Go away, Whang! You’ve had your tea. Don’t tell me, Trevor, that you are going out for the Socialists? That’s sugar you’re taking, you know, ducky, not opium.”

  “Not so much going out for Socialists as going in for talking, empress.”

  Melisse looked at him. Very nicely put! Trevor would be nice to have with one on a canal boat.

  “’Ware shoals, Melisse!” said Ramsty.

  “Budney, my dear, sheer budney!”

  Trevor bit his lip thoughtfully.

  “You stweem a bit – for you.”

  “That will do, Cherry! And please someone take Whang downstairs. He has become intolerable since the Free Trade Club gave him that new leash.”

  Whang placed his paws on Lister’s spats and said: “Put me out if you will, but remember, I can vote at the next General Election.”

  Lister was incalculable – did such odd things! To be sure, he was nice. Very nice. But incalculable.

  “I’m sorry, Melisse, if I have made a gaff.”

  “Not a bit; jolly good tib. The thing about England today is that we are too English. Whang here knows better. He eats anything.”

  Trevor smiled queerly.

  “Are you quite, quite sure?” asked Melisse.

  “Rather! And, by the way, is it full fig tonight?”

  “Just as you like. Meemie will be there.”

  “Full fig, then.”

  “I thought so.”

  “I thought you would think so.”

  “It was good of you to get me Rennie Cleenist, though. I do hope he’ll behave and. not be full of Debt Refunding. I’m putting him between Lillie Omster and Neyla Brann. Seven. You know them all. Oh, and you mustn’t mind if Old Wadney talks Merchant Marine. He loves it so. Did you read Willie’s story about him? Oh, too frightfully amusing – clearly meant for H. K. V. Whang, put that hat down! Whose hat is it?”

  “Mine,” said Lister, as he entered the room, “but never mind. We sold those ships.”

  IV

  NAPIN REFULGENT

  The Board Room was no brighter than it had ever been. In fact, as Lister sat and poked holes in the map of Solvent Europe, the room seemed full of four per cents. Napin had been caught. Why quibble about that? Caught red handed, stealing the rudders off the ships which the company had sold to the Germans. But as Lister looked at the pale face of the young man, he saw on beyond Tony Napin and into the system which engulfed him. Capital. Labour. Tripe! It was man against man. Bug against bug. Oxford against Cambridge. And Napin had stolen rudders.

  “See here, Napin! Come home with me and have a drink. You’ll jolly well need one.”

  Tony said nothing but put on someone’s hat and coat which were hanging on the wall and waited for Lister to lead the way.

  “Napin, old bean,” said Lister, “you’re about done in. How can a man funk it when the world is as it is today? Look at the Liberals. Fed up on Liability Insurance. Look at the Labour Party. Eating Enfranchisement pap. Look at the Hangnail Prevention League. Nothing but—”

  “I beg pardon, Mr. Hoag,” said Napin. “You were saying something about a drink. I haven’t all night, you know, sir. I’m due at jail at seven sharp.”

  V

  MELISSE

  Tony Napin had been in the room with Melisse just fifteen minutes when he asked her to run away with him. The afternoon sun was slanting in through the stained glass windows on which old Manton Hoag, sixteenth baronet, had had lettered in old English the complete text of the Reform Act. To speak perfectly frankly, Melisse was quite impressed with the twelfth century directness of Napin’s proposition. Her brown eye rested on the silver tea service, her blue eye following suit.

  Of course, there was Lister. Poor, dear Lister. He would be cut up no end. But really, Lister was frightfully civic. For seven years Lister had made love to her by explaining the principles of Public Ownership of Metropolitan Utilities. Their baby had been conceived in Single Tax and had run away from home at the age of four rather than hear more about Redistribution of Unearned Capital. It was harsh to think, but dear Lister was suffering from hardening of the Trade Arteries.

  Then there was Trevor. Trevor was a sweet lover. Melisse could not deny that. But he did talk Socialism when he should have been talking ways and means. Funny! That Trevor had – and here Melisse upset the sugar bowl – oh, well! Trevor had, that was all. Thinking was tosh. Tosh – and rather dreadful.

  And now Napin. He had walked into the room, said how-do-you-do, and had asked her to run away with him. Nothing about Germany’s debt. Nothing about the Merchant Marine. Nothing about taxation. Simply, “Pack your things!” It was stupendous. And terribly exciting. Why not? Or perhaps rather – why?

  The telephone was over there. Melisse took her hand out of the hot tea and went to it. “Can I speak to Mr. Hoag, please? . . . In the Board Room . . . Mrs. Hoag speaking . . . Lister, dear . . . How is the Bill of Rights coming on? . . . Bully! . . . And the Swedish Disenfranchisement? . . . Sweet! . . . And do you still feel the same way about taxing indeterminate inheritances? . . . Ducky! . . . Well, then, Lister dear, please do something for me. . . . Take them all, t
he Bill of Rights, the Swedish Disenfranchisement, and the Inheritance Tax and roll them up in one big bundle. . . . Have you done that? . . . Righto . . . What are you to do with them now? . . . You know very well, my dear. . . . I’m off for Innsbruck with young Napin. . . . Yes. N-a-p-i-n. Care of General Delivery, Innsbruck . . . Cheerio . . .”

  Whang climbed up on the tea table and pushed his nose into the sugar bowl. At last he was alone.

  * * *

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  Teaching

  the Old Idea to Skate

  * * *

  They told me that once you had skated, you never forgot how. It was like swimming, they said. I knew, of course, that that wasn’t so. Skating is nothing like swimming. But as I thought back on the days, ten years ago, when I used to glide easily over the lumpy surface of the Charles, it did seem plausible that some of the old facility had remained, even after all these years.

  I never was what you would call a fancy skater, even in my hey-day. None of my attempts at cutting numerals or weaving backward ever quite came off. I had the idea all right, and would start off rather finely, perhaps too finely, but at the turn something usually went wrong and I became discouraged, and while I seldom actually fell, it might have been more impressive if I had. A good, resounding fall is no disgrace. It is the fantastic writhing to avoid a fall which destroys any illusion of being a gentleman. How like life that is, after all!

  On a good straight-away, however, I had always been able to make a respectable progress, nothing flashy but good, solid plodding, with a liberal swinging of the arms to add propulsion power which sometimes carried me along at what I flattered myself was a tremendous rate of speed. As I looked back on this accomplishment, it did not seem over-confidence on my part to agree to join my little boy in a frolic on the ice.

  The pond was thronged with intensely young people. This in itself was disheartening. The girls, arrayed in knickerbockers, looked as if they would enjoy hugely anything that I might do in the way of acrobatics, and the boys were offensively proficient. They seemed to be oblivious of the fact that I was a good competent skater when they were having trouble digesting their first carrots. And they were all so good-looking and well dressed. I was on the point of turning back then and there. I felt that my old blue track-sweater looked very seedy. And the funny thing is that it did.

  However, I had my pride and my little boy’s pride in his father which I somehow felt demanded that I go through with the thing. Just how I reasoned it out that making a display of myself on the ice was going to bolster up the family pride, I don’t know. Somehow it seemed the thing to do at the time, as the drunk said when asked why he deliberately put his fist through the plate-glass window.

  Getting the skates on was not so simple a matter as I remembered it as being, especially as my hands got much colder than they used to in the old days. I worked for some time trying to slip a strap-end under the buckle before I discovered that it was not a strap-end at all but my forefinger. By the time I was firmly shod, I was chilled through and felt a little grippy. Then I stood up.

  The sensation was similar to that of mounting a horse for the first time. I was incredibly high up in the air. I looked to the right, expecting to see Long Island Sound over the tree-tops, but the day was not clear enough. There was a sickening lack of stability about everything below my knees and I suddenly realized that my ankles were resting on the ice. There ahead of me stretched a glassy expanse, with my little boy shivering and urging me on. The young people seemed to have stopped their grace of romping and stood watching me. A tinkling girlish laugh rang out on the frosty air, followed by a “sh-h-h-h!” Very well, I would show them.

  So, gathering myself like a panther for a spring, I straightened up my ankles, clenched my fists, gave a powerful swing with my arms, and, with head bent low, pushed off with my right foot into a slow, gliding stroke which carried me easily out to the middle of the pond.

  “Come along, son,” I called back, “follow Daddy!”

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  Looking Shakespeare Over

  * * *

  At the end of the current theatrical season, the trustees of the Shakespeare estate will probably get together at the Stratford House and get pie-eyed. It has been a banner year for “the Immortal Bard,”’ as his wife used to call him. Whatever the royalties are that revert to the estate, there will be enough to buy a couple of rounds anyway, and maybe enough left over to hire an entertainer.

  There was a time during the winter in New York when you couldn’t walk a block without stepping on some actor or actress playing Shakespeare. They didn’t all make money, but it got the author’s name into the papers, and publicity never hurt anyone, let alone a writer who has been dead three hundred years and whose stuff isn’t adaptable for the movies.

  The only trouble with acting Shakespeare is the actors. It brings out the worst that is in them. A desire to read aloud the soliloquy (you know the one I mean) is one of the first symptoms a man has that he is going to be an actor. If ever I catch any of my little boys going out behind the barn to recite this speech, I will take them right away to a throat specialist and have their palates removed. One failure is enough in a family.

  And then, too, the stuff that Will wrote, while all right to sit at home and read, does not lend itself to really snappy entertainment on the modern stage. It takes just about the best actor in the world to make it sound like anything more than a declamation by the young lady representing the Blue and the Gray on Memorial Day. I know that I run counter to many cultured minds in this matter, but I think that, if the truth were known, there are a whole lot more of us who twitch through two-thirds of a Shakespearean performance than the 1920 census would lead one to believe. With a company consisting of one or two stars and the rest hams (which is a good liberal estimate) what can you expect? Even Shakespeare himself couldn’t sit through it without reading the ads on the program a little.

  But you can’t blame the actor entirely. According to present standards of what constitutes dramatic action, most of Will’s little dramas have about as much punch as a reading of a treasurer’s report. To be expected to thrill over the dramatic situations incident to a large lady’s dressing up as a boy and fooling her own husband, or to follow breathlessly a succession of scenes strung together like magic-lantern slides and each ending with a perfectly corking rhymed couplet, is more than ought to be asked of anyone who has, in the same season, seen “Loyalties” or any one of the real plays now running on Broadway.

  It is hard to ask an actor to make an exit on a line like:

  “I am glad on’t: I desire no more delight

  Than to be under sail and gone tonight”

  without sounding like one of the characters in Palmer Cox’s Brownies saying:

  “And thus it was the Brownie Band,

  Came tumbling into Slumberland.”

  That is why they always have to exit laughingly in a Shakespearean production. The author has provided them with such rotten exits. If they don’t do something – laugh, cry, turn a handspring, or something – they are left flat in the middle of the stage with nothing to do but say: “Well, I must be going.” In “The Merchant of Venice,” as produced by Mr. Belasco, the characters were forced to keep up a running fire of false-sounding laughter to cover up the artificial nature of what they had just said:

  “At the park gate, and therefore haste away For we must measure twenty miles today. A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” (Off l. c.)

  To hear Lorenzo and Gratiano walking off together you would have thought that Lorenzo had the finest line of funny stories in all Venice, so loud and constantly did they laugh, whereas, if the truth were known, it was simply done to save their own and Shakespeare’s face. Now my contention is that any author who can’t get his stuff over on the stage without making the actors do contortions, is not so good a playwright technically as Eugene Walters is. And now for the matter of comedy.

  An actor, in order t
o get Shakespeare’s comedy across, has got to roll his eyes, rub his stomach, kick his father in the seat, make his voice crack, and place his finger against the side of his nose. There is a great deal of talk about the vulgarity and slapstick humor of the movies. If the movies ever tried to put anything over as horsy and crass as the scene in which young Gobbo kids his blind father, or Falstaff hides in the laundry hamper, there would be sermons preached on it in pulpits all over the country. It is impossible for a good actor, as we know good actors today, to handle a Shakespearean low comedy part, for it demands mugging and tricks which no good actor would permit himself to do. If Shakespeare were alive today and writing comedy for the movies, he would be the head-liner in the Mack Sennett studios. What he couldn’t do with a cross-eyed man!

  Another thing which has made the enjoyment of Shakespeare on the stage a precarious venture for this section of the theater-going public at least, is the thoroughness with which the schools have desiccated his works. In “The Merchant of Venice,” for example, there was hardly a line spoken which had not been so diagnosed by English teachers from the third grade up that it had lost every vestige of freshness and grace which it may once have had. Every time I changed schools, I ran into a class which was just taking up “The Merchant of Venice.” Consequently, I learned to hate every word of the play. When Bassanio said:

  “Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchis’ strand,

  And many Jasons come in quest of her”

  in my mind there followed a chorus of memories of questions asked by Miss Mergatroid, Miss O’Shea, Miss Twitchell, Mr. Henby, and Professor Greenally, such as: “Now what did Shakespeare mean by ‘Colchis strand’?” “Can anyone in the room tell me why Portia’s lovers were referred to as ‘Jasons’? Robert Benchley, I wonder if you can leave off whispering to Harold Bemis long enough to tell me what other Portia in history is mentioned in this passage?”