Mrs. Jeremy looked up from her knitting. "I want you to do something
for me," she said to her husband.
"Anything except sing," said Jeremy lazily.
"It's just to write a letter."
"My dear, of course. _The Complete Letter-writer_, by J. P. Smith.
Chapter V--'Stiff Notes to Landlords'--shows Mr. Smith at his best.
'Gossipy Budgets, and should they be crossed?'--see Chapter VI. Bless
you, I can write to _anybody._"
"This is to a man you've never met. He's a private at the Front and his
name is Mackinnon."
"'Dear Mr. Mackinnon'--that's how I should begin. Do we want to say
anything particular, or are we just trying the new notepaper?"
Mrs. Jeremy put down her work and gave herself up to explanation.
Private Mackinnon was in a school friend's husband's regiment, and he
never got any letters or parcels from anybody, and the friend's husband
had asked his wife to ask her friends----
"Wait a bit," said Jeremy. "We shall want the College of Heralds in
this directly." He took out his pencil and drew up a pedigree:--
School.
|
+-------+------+
| |
J.P.S.=Mrs. J. Friend=Officer.
|
Regiment.
|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| | | | | | | | |
Mackinnon.
"There you are. Now _you_ think it's J. P. S.'s turn to write to
Mackinnon." He drew a line from one to the other. "Very well; I shall
tell him about the old school."
"You do see, don't you?" said Mrs. Jeremy. "All the others get letters
and things from their friends, and poor Mr. Mackinnon gets nothing.
Katharine wants to get up a surprise for him, and she's asking
half-a-dozen of her friends to send him things and write him jolly
letters." She picked up the muffler she had been knitting. "This is for
him, and I said you'd do the letter. You write such jolly ones."
Jeremy threw away the end of his cigar and got up.
"Yes, but what about?" he said, running his hand through his hair.
"This is going to be very difficult."
"Oh, just one of your nice funny letters like you write to me."
"Quite like that?" said Jeremy earnestly.
"Well, not quite like that," smiled Mrs. Jeremy; "but you know what I
mean. He'd love it."
"Very well," said Jeremy, "we'll see what we can do."
He withdrew to his library and got to work.
"_My dear Mr. Mackinnon_," he wrote, "_the weather here is perfectly
beastly_."
He looked at it thoughtfully and then put it on one side. "We won't
destroy it," he said to himself, "because we may have to come back to
it, but at present we don't like it."
He began another sheet of paper.
"_My dear Mackinnon, who do you think it is? Your old friend Jeremy
Smith!_"
He murmured it to himself three or four times, crossed out "old" and
put "new," and then placed this sheet on the top of the other.
"_My dear Mackinnon, yesterday the Vicar_----"
"I knew it would be difficult," he said, and took a fourth sheet.
Absently he began to jot down a few possible openings:--
"_I am a Special Constable ..._"
"_Have you read Mrs. Humphry Ward's latest ..._"
"_I hope the War won't last long ..._"
"Yes," he said, "but we're not being really funny enough."
He collected his letters as far as they had gone and took them to his
wife.
"You see what will happen, darling," he said. "Mr. Mackinnon will read
them, and he will say to himself, 'There's a man called Jeremy P. Smith
who is a fool.' The news will travel down the line. They will tell
themselves in Alsace that J. P. Smith, the Treasurer of the Little
Blessington Cricket Club, is lacking in grey matter. The story will get
across to the Germans in some garbled form; 'Smith off crumpet,' or
something of that sort. It will reach the Grand Duke NICHOLAS;
it will traverse the neutral countries; everywhere the word will be
spread that your husband is, as they say, barmy. I ask you, dear--is it
fair to Baby?"
Mrs. Jeremy crumpled up the sheets and threw them in the fire.
"Oh, Jeremy," she said, "you could do it so easily if you wanted to. If
you only said, 'Thank you for being so brave,' it would be something."
"But you said it had to be a 'jolly' one."
"Yes, that was silly of me. I didn't mean that. Just write what you
want to write--never mind about what I said."
"Oh, but that's easy," said Jeremy with great relief; "I can do that on
my head."
And this was the letter (whether he wrote it on his head or not I
cannot say):--
"MY DEAR MR. MACKINNON,--You are not married, I believe, but
perhaps you will be some day when the War is over. You will then get
to know of a very maddening trick which wives have. You hand them a
letter over the coffee-pot beginning, 'Dear Smith, I saw a little
water-colour of yours in the Academy and admired it very much. The
what-do-you-call-it is so well done, and I like that broad effect.
Please accept an earldom,'--but, before they read any of it at all,
they turn to the signature at the end and say, 'Why, Jeremy, it's from
the KING!' And then all your beautiful surprise is gone.
"Now I don't mention this in order to put you off marriage, because
there is a lot more in it than letters over the coffee-pot, and all the
rest is delightful. But I want to tell you that, if (as I expect) you
are keeping the signature of this letter for the surprise, you will be
disappointed. I am sorry about it. I tried various signatures with a
surprise to them (you would have liked my 'Hall Caine,' I think), but I
decided that I had best stick to the one I have used for so many years,
'J. P. Smith.' It will make you ask that always depressing question,
'Who is J. P. Smith?' but this I cannot help. Besides, I want to tell
you who he is.
"An hour ago he was sitting in front of a fire of logs, smoking a
cigar. He had just finished dinner, so good a dinner that he was
congratulating his wife on it as she sat knitting on the other side of
the fire. If he had a complaint to make at all, it was perhaps that the
fire was a little too hot; perhaps when he went upstairs he would find
that a little too hot also was the bottle in his bed. One has these
hardships to face. To complete the picture, I ask you to imagine a door
closed rather noisily kitchenwards, and an exclamation of annoyance
from Mr. Smith. He passes it off by explaining that he was thinking of
the baby rather than of himself.
"Well, there you have this J. P. Smith person ... and at the same hour
what was this man Mackinnon doing? I don't know; you do. But perhaps
you will understand now why I want to say 'Thank you.' I know what you
will answer: 'Good Lord, I'm only doing my job, I don't want to be
_kissed_ for it.' My dear Mackinnon, you don't understand. I am not
very kindly writing to you; you are very kindly letting me write. This
is _my_ birthday, not yours. I give myself the pleasure of thanking
you; as a gentleman you cannot refuse it to me.
"Yours gratefully, J. P. SMITH."
"You dear," said Mrs. Jeremy. "He'll simply love it."
Jeremy grunted.
"If I were Mackinnon," he said, "I should prefer the muffler."