Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/134

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:—

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, "hut 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 but 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 coffeepot 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 be 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."