"I will have a cup of tea," I said to the waitress, "China if
possible; and please don't forget the sugar."
"Yes, and what will you eat with I it?" she asked.
"What you please," I replied; "it is all horrible."
I do not take kindly to war-time teas. My idea of a tea is several
cups of the best China, with three large lumps of sugar in each, and
half-a-dozen fancy-cakes with icing sugar all over them and cream in
the middle, and just a few cucumber sandwiches for the finish. (This
does sound humorous, no doubt, but I seek no credit for it. Humour
used to depend upon a sense of proportion. It now depends upon memory.
The funniest man in England at the present moment is the man who has
the most accurate memory for the things he was doing in the early
summer of 1914).
The loss of the cakes I could bear stoically enough if they would
leave my tea alone, or rather if they would allow me a reasonable
amount of sugar for it. However, we are an adaptable people and there
are ways in which even the sugar paper-dish menace can be met. My own
plan, here offered freely to all my fellow-sufferers, provides an
admirable epitome of War and Peace. The sugar allowance being about
half what it ought to be, I take half of the cup unsweetened, thus
tasting the bitterness of war, and then I put in the sugar and bask
in the sunshine of peace.
On this particular occasion peace was on the point of being declared
when I found my attention irresistibly compelled by the man sitting
opposite to me, the only other occupant of my table. At first I
thought of asking him not to stare at me so rudely, and then I found
that he was not looking at me but over my shoulder at some object at
the end of the room. I can resist the appeal of three hundred people
gazing into the sky at the same moment, but the intense concentration
of this man was too much for me. I turned round. Seeing nothing
unusual I turned back again, but it was too late. My sugar had
gone! No trace of it anywhere, except in the bubbles that winked
suspiciously on the surface of the miscreant's tea.
His face did not belong to any of the known criminal types. It was a
pale, dreamy, garden-suburb sort of face--a face you couldn't possibly
give in charge, except, perhaps, under the Military Service Acts.
"Do you know," I said to him, "that you have just committed one of the
most terrible offences open to civilised mankind--a crime even worse
(Heaven help me if I exaggerate) than trampling on an allotment?"
"Oh, I'm sorry!" he replied, waking from his dream. "Did you want that
sugar? You know, you seemed to be getting on very well without it."
As I could not believe him to be beyond the reach of pity, I explained
my method to him, describing as harrowingly as I could the joy of
those first few moments after the declaration of peace. I suggested to
him that he might sometimes find it useful himself, if ever he should
be compelled to sit at an unoccupied table. ("_Touché_," he murmured,
raising his hat). "And now," I concluded, "as I have told you my
system, perhaps you will tell me yours--not for imitation, but for
avoidance."
"There is very little to tell," he replied sorrowfully, "but it is
tragic enough. All my life I have been fond of sugar. Before the war
I took always nine lumps to a cup of tea. (It was my turn to raise
my hat.) By a severe course of self-repression I have reduced it to
seven, but I cannot get below that. I have given up the attempt. There
are a hundred cures for the drink habit; there is not one for the
sugar habit. As I cannot repress the desire, I have had to put all my
energy into getting hold of sugar. I noticed some time ago that at
these restaurants they give the sugar allowance to all customers who
ask for tea or coffee, although perhaps twenty per cent. of them do
not take sugar at all. It is these people who supply me with the extra
sugar I need. In your case it was an honest mistake. I always wait to
see if people are proposing to use their sugar before I appropriate
it."
"But if you only take from the willing," I inquired, "why do you not
ask their permission?"
"I suppose I have given you the right to ask me that question," he
replied with much dignity, "but it is painful to me to have to answer
it. I have not yet sunk so low that I have to beg people for their
cast-off sugar. I may come to it in the end, perhaps. At present the
'earnest gaze' trick is generally sufficient, or, where it fails, a
kick on the shin. But I hate cruelty."
"Physical cruelty," I suggested.
"No, any kind of cruelty. I have said that in your case I made a
mistake. If I could repair it I would."
"Well," I said, "here's something you can do towards it, although it's
little enough." And I handed him the ticket the waitress had written
out for me. "And now I'll go and get a cup of tea somewhere."
"One moment," he said, as I rose to go. "We may meet again."
"Never!" I said firmly.
"Ah, but we may, I have a number of disguises. Let me suggest
something that will make another mistake of this kind impossible."
"I am not going to give up my plan," I said.
"No, don't," he answered; "but _why not drink the sugared half
first?_"
* * * * *