French wine,
A bottle of whisky,
And one of champagne.
That bottle of champagne had been provided by Charlie. To get it,
he had had to swim a quarter of a mile, in order to reach a certain
ship--to swim with a sovereign in his mouth. There were still some such
things as sovereigns in the world when this affair took place. The
sovereign was put in a basket which had been lowered with a rope, the
basket pulled on deck and lowered again with half a crown change and
the bottle of champagne. On his way back Charlie did not know whether
to spit his half crown out or to swallow it, whether to let go the
bottle or not. For there was a heavy sea. But somehow he reached the
shore and landed the bottle, the half crown and himself quite safely.
Well, the dinner party in Charlie's dugout went splendidly. But just at
the moment when we were about to open the bottle of champagne, there
was a surprise attack from the Turks, a regular alarm, a call to arms,
(which I need not explain, as "alarm" is only a perverted form of _à
l'arme_!--to arms!).
"Never mind," cried Charlie, "We'll drink the champagne another time,
when I get my commission. I swear I'll keep this bottle till then."
Since that day he has fulfilled his promise. The bottle is the only
thing he took with him when we evacuated the Peninsula.
And now, when we have got the blues, he refuses to open it. And, my
word, our blues are of a true blue, a Conservative blue. Not the
light blue of Cambridge, but the dark blue of Oxford. We have even
blue blood in our veins, and call the Germans Blue-beards. If we were
to take any pills, they would be blue pills. Our flag could be the
Blue Peter. And we have such a blue funk, lest this confounded rain
should never cease, that we talk of our blues till we get blue in the
face. Not even Guncotton, who is very skilled in pyrotechnics and
has manufactured a sort of little cartridge with which he cleverly
imitates Will-o'-the-wisps, is able to enliven us. The daily display
of pyrotechnics of a somewhat more awe-inspiring sort has rendered us
positively cloyed with that pleasure.
But Pringle, since Charlie's refusal to open his bottle, has remained
dreaming. Finally he steals away. We wait five minutes, ten minutes, a
quarter of an hour. In the end he comes back holding a shell in his
arms. It is about four inches in diameter and twelve in length. He
settles down and slowly starts unscrewing the fuse.
"Look out," warns Guncotton. "These things explode sometimes...."
"That's just what I want," declares Pringle tragically. "I want to put
an end to all this misery of ours."
Then, when the shell is unscrewed, he passes it to the Sergeant.
"Have a drop?" he asks.
The shell goes round.
"Our blues turn pink," says I.
"Like litmus paper under the influence of an acid," explains Guncotton.
"Acid?" asks Pringle reproachfully. "It's brandy. The best brandy
possible."
"French brandy," says I.
"_Vive la France!_" cries Charlie.
* * * * *
We have had another fight ... a day of manifold horrors and of
deafening explosions. We have killed many Germans and many of our own
homes were put into mourning. I shall make no attempt at describing
this battle. It is over, thank God, and I turn from its monstrosities
to my peaceful occupation of remembering what happened in days gone by.
I was perfectly happy in spite of the fact that Mitzi had no
overflowing heart. You will be good enough to remember that on the day
of our first meeting in the railway carriage P.C. 3.33 she remained
clad in mystery all the way from Salzburg to Vienna, and that, while
I told her all about myself, I did not learn anything about her. This
more or less repeated itself now. I let her peep into the inmost
recesses of my heart, and there is certainly nobody who has such a
complete acquaintance with that organ of mine, which circulates my
blood, my feelings, my thoughts.
Mitzi's heart remained ever an unknown quantity to me. I think this
is a bad habit of woman. Dad always pretends that there is a corner
of the mater's heart into which Daniel Cooper & Co., Ltd., have never
penetrated. I am afraid this corner is the most important one of a
woman's heart. Nobody ever explores it, not even the woman to whom the
heart belongs. Perhaps she dares not.
So it was with Mitzi. She was sweet, and I am sure she loved me; yet
she kept her secret corner hermetically closed. There was no need of
writing on that heart: Trespassers will be prosecuted, for there was no
possibility of trespassing.
If I were not so modest I should say that what she most loved in me was
my musical talent. I had an experience of this on the morrow of that
interview which had taken place between her, Bischoff, and myself.
"Are you going to see Bischoff?" she asked as I was to leave for what
we called my lesson with Hammer.
I answered that it had not been my intention, but that I might see my
collaborator if she had any particular wish.
"I have," she said. "Your _Lady Macbeth_ scarcely leaves me a restful
minute. I have thought that it will be very difficult to show the weak,
feminine side of the part in music, without a certain external help."
"What do you mean by this?" I asked.
"I mean some lyrical detail which in my opinion must be added. Could
the words
'I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me.'
could these words not be the excuse for a sort of lullaby? And then
in the scene where she walks in her sleep; as we have cancelled all
Macduff, the Lady can no more say: '_The thane of Fife had a wife;
where is she now?_' But I think the lullaby could be repeated in her
dream. It would be, when it comes first, only a remembrance, and when
it comes for the second time only the dream-memory of that remembrance.
It would have to be very mysterious and so in keeping with the general
character of the whole drama."
Mitzi's idea may give you a notion of her artistic instinct. Perhaps
I ought not to call it artistic, but theatrical or operatic. For,
although the idea was excellent and proved so, its staginess, its
artificiality cannot be denied.
Anyhow, I was then enthusiastic about it. I went to Hammer, who advised
as accompaniment for this not yet composed lullaby a succession of
major thirds in the lowest notes of the flutes; a suggestion which I
applied, but not without the greatest difficulty, in the first version
of that little piece, while when it came back in the dream scene I
replaced the flutes by muted violins. I remember this detail, because
when _Lady Macbeth_ was performed, Hammer came greatly excited after
the first act to me protesting that his advice had been bad, and the
highest notes of the bassoons would have been better than the lowest of
the flutes, whereupon I told him in my excusable excitement that I did
not care, or, to employ the Austrian expression, and that it was all
"sausage to me."
Indulgent reader, do not be cross with me because I speak of these
professional details. Having shown you sufficiently that I am no more a
musician, I may be allowed to remember that once upon a time I was one.
I ran to Bischoff. And so pleased was he with Mitzi's suggestion that
he wrote there and then the words of that lullaby. In the afternoon
I worked with Mr. Doblana on the score of his _Aladdin_, which was
advancing rapidly and in my judgment becoming a distinctly charming
ballet.
Then only did I find time to compose the lullaby. It is a weird yet
tuneful little piece which took me but half an hour to write down.
When Mitzi heard it she was enraptured. She let herself fall in my arms
and looked at me with loving eyes.
"Oh Patrick," she said, "you will write a masterpiece for me, won't
you?"