If Winter Don't.

by Barry Pain.

PREFATORY NOTE

I

"IF WINTER COMES" placed its author not only as a Best Seller, but as one of the Great Novelists of to-day. Not always are those royalties crowned by those laurels. Tarzan (of, if I remember rightly, the Apes) never won the double event. And I am told by superior people that, intellectually, Miss Ethel M. Dell takes the hindmost. Personally, I found "If Winter Comes" a most sympathetic and interesting book. I think there are only two points on which I should be disposed to quarrel with it. Firstly, though Nona is a real creation, Effie is an incredible piece of novelist's machinery. Secondly, I detest the utilization of the Great War at the present day for the purposes of fiction. It is altogether too easy. It buys the emotional situation ready-made. It asks the reader's memory to supplement the writer's imagination. And this is not my sole objection to its use.

II

I wonder if I might, without being thought blasphemous, say a word or two about the Great Novelists of to-day. They have certain points of resemblance. I do not think that over-states it.

They have the same little ways. They divide their chapters into sections, and number the sections in plain figures. This is quite pontifical, and lends your story the majesty of an Act of Parliament.

The first man who did it was a genius. And the other seven hundred and eighteen showed judgment. I propose to use it myself when I remember it.

Then there is the three-dot trick. At one time those dots indicated an omission. To-day, some of our best use them as an equivalent of the cinema fade-out. Those dots prolong the effect of a word or sentence; they lend it an afterglow. You see what I mean? Afterglow ...

One must mention, too, the staccato style--the style that makes the printer send the boy out for another hundred gross of full-stops. All the Great Novelists of to-day use it, more or less.

III

Let us see what can be done with it. Here, for instance, is a sentence which was taught me in the nursery, for its alleged tongue-twisting quality: "She stood at the door of Burgess's fish-sauce shop, Strand, welcoming him in." In that form it is not impressive, but now note what one of these staccato merchants might make of it.

"Across the roaring Strand red and green lights spelling on the gloom.

'BURGESS'S FISH-SAU.' A moment's darkness and again 'BURGESS'S FISH-SAU.' Like that. Truncated. The final --CE not functioning. He had to look though it hurt him. Hurt horrible. d.a.m.nably. And his eyes traveled downward.

"Suddenly and beyond hope she! Isobel-at-the-last. Standing in the doorway. White on black. Slim. Willowy. Incomparable. Incommensurable.

She saw him and her lips rounded to a call. He sensed it through the traffic. Come in. Calling and calling. Come in.

"Come in....

"Out of the rain."

It is like a plaintive hymn sung to a banjo accompaniment.

Incidentally it ill.u.s.trates another favorite trick of these gentlemen--the introduction of a commonplace or even jarring detail into a romantic scene in order to increase its appearance of reality.

It is quite a good trick.

IV

And sometimes, not every day but sometimes, one gets a little weary even of the best tricks. Need the author depend quite so much on the printer for his effects? Scenes and pa.s.sages in a book seem to be standing very near the edge, and the wanton thought occurs to one that a little shove would send them over. In fact, one gets irritable. And then anything bad may happen. This parody for instance.

IF WINTER DON'T

CHAPTER I

Luke Sharper. Age, thirty-four. Married, but not much. Private residence, Jawbones, Halfpenny Hole, Surrey. Favorite recreation, suffering. Favorite flower----

Oh, drop it! Let us rather listen to Mr. Alfred Jingle, solicitor, talking to his artist friend.

"Met Sharper yesterday. Remember him at the old school? Flap Sharper we called him. Not that they really did flap. His ears, I mean. They just crept up and bent over when he was thinking hard. People came to see it. Came from miles around.

"Rum chap. Rum ways. Never agreed with anybody present, including himself. Always inventing circ.u.mstantial evidence to convict himself of crimes he had never committed. Remember the window? Half-brick came flying through it. Old Borkins looked out. Below stood Flap Sharper with the other half-brick in his hand. Arm drawn back. No other boy in sight. The two halves fitted exactly. It certainly looked like it.

Poor old Flap found that it felt like it, too. But he had never chucked that half-brick. Ogilvie did it. Remember him? The one we called Pink-eye. Have a drink?

"I offered Sharper my sympathy. Wouldn't have it. Said 'Why?'

Maintained that we had all got to suffer in this life, and it was better to begin early. Excellent practice. Then his ears crept up and bent over. Got it again later in the day for drawing a caricature of old Borkins. Never did it, of course. Couldn't draw. Can't remember who did it. Oh, you did, did you? Like you. Have another?

"Yes, we have a certain amount of business in Dilborough. I'm generally down there once or twice a year. I walk over to Halfpenny Hole and lunch with Sharper. It's a seven mile walk. But lunch at the hotel is seven-and-six. Doing uncommonly well, is Sharper. He's in Pentlove, Postlethwaite and Sharper. You know. The only jams that really matter. Pickles, too. Chutney. Very hot stuff. Oh, yes, Sharper's all right.

"You ought to run down and see Halfpenny Hole. What is it the agents say? Old-world. It's very old-world. Only three houses in it, and all different. Whether the garden settlement will spoil it or not is another matter. You go and paint it before it gets spoilt.

"Strictly between ourselves, I am not quite sure that Sharper and his wife hit it off. Oh, nothing much. It's just that when he speaks to her she never answers, and when she speaks to him he never answers. In fact, if she speaks at all he groans and moves his ears. Charming woman, very. Quite pretty. There may be nothing in it. I saw no actual violence. Sharper may merely have been suffering. He wouldn't be happy if he wasn't. Have a drink. No?"

CHAPTER II

Halfpenny Hole lay in the bottom of a slope seven miles from Dilborough. Dilborough was almost the same distance from Halfpenny Hole. Jawbones was, I think we must say, an old-world house, and had the date 1623 carved over the doorway. Luke Sharper had carved it himself. A little further down the road there was--there's no other word for it--an old-world bridge with--I'm afraid we must have it once more--an old-world stream running underneath it. It gave one the impression that it had always been like that. Always the stream under the bridge. Never the bridge under the stream. But now that the Garden Settlement had come things might be very different. Houses were going up; Mr. Doom Dagshaw's Mammoth Circus was going up; even the rates were going up.

At the end of his honeymoon Luke Sharper went to see a man about a dog, and left his wife to prepare Jawbones for his accommodation. She was a good housekeeper, and Luke acknowledged it. Whenever he thought about her at all, he always added "but she _is_ a good housekeeper."

He was desperately fair.

"This," said Mabel, opening a door, as Luke began his visit of inspection, "this is your den."

Luke's ears moved. He kissed her twice. "But, you know, I cannot bear it. There are some words which I am unable to endure, such as salt-cellar, tuberculosis, tennis-net and den."

"Very well," said Mabel, a little coldly, "we'll call it your cage.

And just look. There is a pair of my father's old slippers that I have brought for you. Size thirteen. You've got none quite like that, have you?"

He put one arm round her waist.

"Where did you say the dustbin was?" he asked.

"But," she said amazed, "you don't mean to say----Surely you wear slippers?"