Alone | Page 6

The Cause--moments when,
instead of asking myself, "What have I done for my country?" I asked,
"What has my country done for me?"--moments when I envied the
hotel night-porters, taxi-drivers, and red-nosed old women selling
flowers in Piccadilly Circus who had something more sensible to do
than to bother their heads about trying to be patriotic, and getting
snubbed for their pains. Yet, with characteristic infatuation for hopeless
ventures, I persevered. Another "whack" at the F.O. leading to another
holograph, two more whacks at the Censorship, interpreter jobs,
hospital jobs, God knows what--I persevered, and might for the next
three years have been kicking my heels, like any other patriot, in the
corridor of some dingy Government office at the mercy of a pack of
tuppenny counter-jumpers, but for a God-sent little accident, the result
of sheer boredom, which counselled a trip to the sunny Mediterranean.
Fortune was nearer to me, at that supreme moment, than she had ever
yet been. For on the day prior to my departure I received a
communication from the Board of Trade Labour, etc., etc., whose
methods of work, it was now apparent, were as expeditious as its own
name was brief. That hopeful Mr. R----, that bubbling young optimist
who had so conscientiously written down a number of my
qualifications, such as they were--he was keeping his promise after
months, and months, and months. Never say die. The dear little fellow!
What job had he captured for me?

An offer to work in a factory at Gretna Green, wages to commence at
17s. 6d. per week.
H'm.
The remuneration was not on a princely scale, but I like to think that it
included the free use of the lavatory, if there happened to be one on the
premises.
So luck pursued me to the end, though it never quite caught me up. For
bags were packed, and tickets taken. And therefore:
"What did you do in the Great War, grandpapa?"
"I loafed, my boy."
"That was naughty, grandpapa."
"Naughty, but nice...."

ALONE
Mentone
Italiam petimus....
Discovered, in a local library--a genuine old maid's library: full of the
trashiest novels--those two volumes of sketches by J. A. Symonds, and
forthwith set to comparing the Mentone of his day with that of ours.
What a transformation! The efforts of Dr. James Henry Bennet and
friends, aided and abetted by the railway, have converted the idyllic
fishing village into--something different. So vanishes another fair spot
from earth. And I knew it. Yet some demon has deposited me on these
shores, where life is spent in a round of trivialities.
One fact suffices. Symonds, driving over from Nice, at last found
himself at the door of "the inn." The inn.... Are there any inns left at
Mentone?
À propos of inns, here is a suggestive state of affairs. At the present
moment, twenty-two of the principal hotels and pensions of Mentone
are closed, because owned or controlled or managed by Germans. Does
not this speak rather loudly in favour of Teuton enterprise? Where, in a
German town of 18,000 inhabitants, will you find twenty-two such
establishments in the hands of Frenchmen?
The statistical mood is upon me. I wander either among the tombs of
that cemetery overhead, studying sepulchral inscriptions and drawing
deductions, from what is therein stated regarding the age, nationality
and other circumstances of the deceased, as to the relative number of

consumptives here interred. Sixty per cent, shall we say? Or else, in the
streets of the town, I catch myself endeavouring--hitherto without
success--to count up the number of grocers' shops. They are far in
excess of what is needful. Now, why? Well, your tailor or hatter or
hosier--he makes a certain fixed profit on each article he sells, and he
does not sell them at every moment of the day. The other, quite apart
from small advantages to be gained owing to the ever-shifting prices of
his wares, is ceaselessly engaged in dispensing trifles, on each of which
he makes a small gain. The grocery business commends itself warmly
to the French genius for garnering halfpennies. Nowhere on earth, I
fancy, will you see butter more meticulously weighed than here. Buy a
ton of it, and they will replace on their counter a fragment of the weight
and size of a postage stamp, rather than let the balance descend on your
side.
And so the days, the weeks, have passed. Will one ever again escape
from Mentone? It may well be colder in Italy, but anything is preferable
to this inane Riviera existence....
I am not prone to recommend restaurants, or to discommend them, for
the simple reason that, if they have proved bad, I smile to think of other
men being poisoned and robbed as well as myself; as to the good
ones--why,