The Fritillary, Summer 1927

FRITILLARY SUMMER NUMBER 1927

Price SIXPENCE

Editor: RENEE HAYNES

(St. Hugh's College).

Sub Editor -

MARGARET LANE

:

(St. Hugh's College).

Treasurer CHARLOTTE MCDONALD

(St. Hugh's College).

Committee

:

(St. Hilda's College).

CAVE (Lady Margaret Hall).

ANGELA SYLVIA NORTON (Somerville College).

PAMELA HALFORD (Oxford Home Students).

R. M. J. CAMPBELL (St. Hugh's College).

J.

SHEPPARD

fritillarr Magazine of the Oxford Women's Colleges JUNE, 1927 CONTENTS ..

Editorial Competition Report Portrait of a Young Man Falling Out of Love ..

I Love Me ..

Epitaphs ..

Which Shews that Nobody 's to Know ..

Witch Red Indians Ouisque Sui Generis (pictures) Those Barren Leaves ..

Page

2

5 13 13 16 17 18 22

Frankly Edwardian Suicide in Strange Circumstances To Margaret Music Notes The Super Cinema ..

Sonnet Are there Suitabilities ?

The Young Moon ..

Book Review News in Brief from the Women's Colleges .. ..

Games Notices • •

• •

• •

Page 23 24 26 27 27 29 29 31

32 33 34

Ebitoriat Ave.

Only Fools Plough in Schools.

Atque

Damn this Rule : I'm a Fool.

Vale.

Competition 'Report As there were only two entries for this competition, and it is a rule of this Magazine that there must be five at least before an award can he made, there is no result to announce.

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FRITILLARY

portrait of a Voting Man fatting Cut of JLove Rowley fumbled with his latch-key and hummed a little to himself : the landing was dark and the keyhole not easy to find at the first attempt, so he poked patiently at the door with his key and made whining noises in imitation of a violin, because he had just come away from a Bach recital at the Wigmore Hall, and his mind was still surging with the interlacing themes of the Prelude and Fugue in C minor. The key fitted and turned and he was in his own dark hall. He did not trouble to turn on the light, but walked straight into his big room, where the last vestiges of summer twilight lay along the polished length of his piano and a blotched litter of papers on the table. Rowley switched on the reading lamp and the table sprang into sudden detail in a flood of amber light : the dim whiteness of a moment ago was revealed as neat piles of foolscap covered in his own thin, precise writing, and the blotches resolved themselves into heavy volumes, Salmond's Law of Torts in a dusty blue cover, a black and tattered Justinian, and F. 0. Haynes on Conveyancing.

Rowley walked slowly to the window and leaned against the curtain, gazing out into the increasing darkness of a Bloomsbury square, almost impenetrable to his eyes now because of the yellow light behind him. His mind dwelt pleasurably on the music that he could still hear faintly in his brain. The violinist whose recital it had been was a man of considerable grace in the handling of his instrument, a virtuoso of rare sympathy and an exquisite technique. Rowley remembered how the two young men sitting in front of him had turned and smiled to each other in recognition of mutual pleasure whenever any dexterously prolonged mordent or turn had caught their Breath with its delicacy. Rowley wished he could have smiled with them at the time, and smiled now in remembering. He turned from the window and gazed round the room with possessive affection. His room, his books. Or were they Helen's ? Strange how her presence was always imminent in the room, as intimate to his comfort and pleasure as the deep armchair, the blue curtains, or the globes and spirals of palely coloured glass that stood on a small table in the window, emblems of his love of an artificial beauty and his patient collector's instinct. His gaze travelled from the Venetian glasses that she loved to the great bookshelf full of stout law books that she affected to despise ; to the small shelf full of tattered intimates, and the book-trough on the hearth, self-consciously filled with slim volumes in brightly coloured covers with plain canvas backs and paper labels. His possessions, her glamour. He sighed romantically : almost he could feel her warmth in the room.

On the table, well within the circle of light, stood a vase holding three yellow roses. Rowley stooped to caress them with his mouth, considering their loveliness in a deliberate suspension of thought, pleasurable because of the knowledge that in a moment he would as deliberately return to Helen again. This he did sooner than he had expected, because the feel of the petals made him think of the softness that her mouth must be, if only he had ever kissed it. The scent of her he knew, and seemed to find again between the three blooms. So he stood, bent over the table with his palms spread between his books, and his nose nudging abstractedly among the

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3

yellow petals, thinking of the loveliness and unattainableness of Helen.

He thought Of her as he had first met her, cool and dignified and amused, at a rather silly party. Then, later, he remembered sitting beside her in her car in a rapture of adoration, furtively watching the line of her throat and the metallic gleam of her honey-coloured hair. She had been infinitely remote that day. Then he thought, with a hot feeling almost akin to shame, of the first time he had proposed to her, standing among the heather and bilberry of a Sussex hill, having great difficulty with his breathing because his sensations were those of a man drowning. Since then he had proposed to her four times, and so had learned to do it without symptoms ; but each time she had seemed more remote, kindlier, and infinitely more desirable. She had come to his flat sometimes, after that, with the cheerful unconcern that he loved. She had drunk his tea, sat in his chair, handled his books, and left her glamour so lavishly over everything that she came near, that Rowley half believed her there in the spirit, on quiet evenings, when he was alone, and the shadows urged themselves upon him like tangible memories.

Suddenly his gaze was caught and held by something- on the table which he had not noticed before. An envelope lay on one of his sheets of foolscap, patiently waiting until he should notice it. He held his breath : from where he stood, reading the writing upside down, he could see that it was addressed in a straggling, childish hand with the single word ' Rowley,' but he walked slowly round the table and regarded it from the right angle before he picked it up.

So she had been there. (The notepaper, he noticed, was his own.) She had come, and gone, leaving his room the richer for her transient presence.

And she had—most wonderful of all—stayed to write him a letter. He picked it up with joy and fear. What should she have had to say ? That she wanted him to go and see her? That she was in trouble? That she never wished to see him again ? His hand shook slightly as he slit the envelope carefully with his paper-knife and unfolded the paper. ' Rowley darling,' said the letter (he stared at the endearment incredulously), ' Do you remember how, in our last talk, we decided that it was really no use trying to come to any decision until we were quite sure of ourselves? You said that you were quite sure, but you know that I never was. But I promised to tell you if ever my feelings changed, and if ever I felt I could love you sufficiently to consider this immense question of marriage. ' Rowley, I have changed. I don't know quite when it happened, but I am quite certain that it has, and I made the great decision this afternoon.

Of course I came right round to see you after dinner, but you were out : I waited for a little, and then wrote this note, because your man said he believed you had gone to a recital, and I couldn't bear to think of going home without having told you.

Darling, can I come and see you to-morrow morning? I am happy beyond words now that I have found the one thing that was lacking : you know I have always wanted to make you happy, and now I can. It is impossible to write down what I really feel, but I will come and see you about eleven to-morrow morning.

All my love to you, dear.

Helen.'

FRITILLARY Rowley put down the letter as if it had burnt him, and stared at the table - one of the roses, he noticed, had shed a petal. He pi it up and cked carried it between finger .and thumb to the waste-paper basket. Then he returned to the letter. His mind was completely numb and he thought of nothing at all. Suddenly he found that he was looking at Helen's writing with a critical indulgence that rapidly turned to annoyance. Untidy scrawl.

Why the Hell couldn't she write decently? He was instantly ashamed of himself. He shook himself mentally and applied himself again to the content of the letter. Well, there were the facts. Helen was in love with him and willing to marry him. For a long time he stared incredulously at the growing spectre in his mind, until finally there was thrust upon him the knowledge that he did not want her, now. Dear heaven ! not want her ?

He whipped his imagination into a frenzy of recollection—Helen's eyes, hair, smile : Helen dancing, Helen laughing, and talking with her soft voice : Helen desirable and unattainable . . . his memory stopped short and clung to the last thought. Unattainable. And she was no longer that.

His mind poked flatly into a possible futurity, where Helen should no longer be remote and complete and beautiful, but possessed and every-day, with the mysterious mechanism of her beauty become common knowledge and something of a nuisance : he pictured her in bed, with her undulating hair nearly straight and her face shining with cold-cream in the dimness : he pictured her disagreeable and suffering from colds in the winter. He thought of the lack of education which formerly he had called ingenuousness, and which, when he saw it as a perpetual circumstance of his life, he hated. A desperate sense of loss urged him to shut his eyes to such a vision, and for a moment he tried to hold Helen in his mind as he had so often done before, hold her delicately and clearly, as a contemplative mystery ; but misgivings and nascent self-knowledge had so informed his imagination that the outlines which he saw were pitifully blurred, and after a brief effort he banished that lost phantom from his thought, and turned to the sudden reality. He felt unaccountably angry with Helen for having spoiled herself, for having robbed him of a glamorous ideal that had gone with him for so long, and was now shattered through thrusting on him intimacies which, although he had demanded them, he did not really want.

It was the idea of Helen that he loved, not her. He had been in love with Love. He sighed deeply and angrily, but there was something of relief in that breath. What was he to do, ,he wondered. He was painfully tired.

Surely he could leave the whole problem until morning? It was silly of Helen to leave him that letter .at night, when she must have known he would be tired . . . he would go to bed, and then in the morning he would be able to find an excuse for not seeing her. A scene would be so painful.

Absently he reached towards his letter file, and tucked Helen's scrawled paper into that section labelled, prophetically, ' Unanswered.'

A few minutes later he was in bed and the light out. Drowsily his eyes sought in the blackness for the dim oblong that was the window. Faint echoes of the Fugue in C minor ebbed and flowed in his mind. Porn porn tiddle pom, whispered Rowley into the pillow. For an instant his mind swayed giddily back to the smiling young men in the Wigmore Hall.

He was asleep.

MARGARET LANE. .

FRITILLARY

1Love I. Nicola had been ill. It was a pity, because her parents were not well off, and she knew that she had cost them a great quantity of money already, what with straw hats in summer and velvet in winter, what with her governess and her music master, and her learning to paint in watercolours. She felt guilty now that she was so far recovered as to be tormented again with that delicate self-consciousness which is drowned, throughout disease and convalescence, by tides of lassitude. It had been a desire, inculcated through all her life, to repay Papa and Mamma for causing and keeping her. And now she had been ill, and more expensive than ever ; and they had been so kind to her. Mamma had sat and read the Bible to her in the mornings, and in the evenings Papa had come home early to talk to her. Dear Papa, with his large rough beard that felt so reliable somehow, as he kissed ; he had brought her grapes and flowers, and he had told her the most enchanting stories, old Greek and Roman fairy stories they were, he said. And one night he had brought her a doll ; it was so kind of him, and yet she had been so hurt . . . still, she loved him.

She sighed : and Mamma came in carrying a basin of soup. She was respectably and efficiently stout : her figure, duly stay-premeditated, curved purposefully about under the tight dress of mulberry coloured stuff. ' What, day-dreaming, Nicola, my dear? ' she said briskly, and with a hint of reproof. Her daughter's capacity for abstraction annoyed her brain as the child's drawl did her ears. ' Eat up your soup while it's hot. Be quick, now, and I'll tell you something—two things, that you will like to hear.'

When obedience was fulfilled, and the last liquid greasy drop had been swallowed, she took the bowl away, and got out some knitting. ' Well, Nicola, Dr. Brown says you may go for a walk this afternoon if you please. Wil l you not be glad to go out of doors once more? You must be warmly wrapped up, of course, and we will not go very far for fear you should be tired.' ' Yes, I should like it very much,' Nicola replied, slowly plaiting and unplaiting a strand of her thick gold hair. ' And then he says you must have a change of air.' ' At this time of year, Mamma? '—she looked from the window at London trees, passive and leafless in the cold calm of February. ' Yes, my dear. He wants to put some roses into your cheeks again, and country air and country feeding should do wonders, he says, to make you fat and pink ; so Papa and I have arranged that you shall go down to Sussex to stay in a farm house there with your Aunt Bee. You remember Aunt Bee? ' Nicola remembered, three years ago, a shrunken version of Mamma, wearing a brown cloth dress and a shabby bonnet, who had come, a little shyly, to tea, undergoing a subtle patronage all the time . . . one had almost suspected veal instead of jam in the sandwiches. ' Yes, I recollect her, Mamma.'

There was a short silence, full of things about to be said : and then Mamma dropped a stitch, and, in the process of picking it up, remarked :

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' Of course, you must behave like a lady, Nicola, whatever your surroundings may be.'

Nicola opened her clear eyes wide, but waited for more.

Your dear Aunt was a little foolish in her marriage—though we endeavoured to reason with her,' Mamma continued in a voice of confidential shame. And so you see, though your Uncle George is, I am sure, a truly worthy man, he is—well, not quite so refined as I could wish. Still , there is nowhere else for you to go, and they have very kindly asked you. . . . I think I can trust my little daughter to be a lady and to remember her manners, cannot I ?

Nicola, blushing with pleasure to be praised, murmured I hope so, Mamma . . . try.'

There was more sewing, and luncheon at half-past one, and a piling on of woollen garments, one after another, dry with weight and with a dull irritant smell emphasized by moth-ball. Then she and Mamma walked out together. They did not talk as they went, very slowly and carefully, down the long grey roads that led ultimately to a small millinery shop, where Mamma wanted to buy some velvet ribbon for her bonnet. There was no wind moving anywhere to stir the dust on the flat pavements : and there was an incredible dreariness in the streets under the arid grey sky, where they went dutifully on and on, with neither hope nor pleasure, walking between the rows of stale and prosperous houses built of grey bricks, each with weary lace curtains at the windows, each with a flight of redundant steps. Walking seemed to last for ever, every step a rhythmic reiteration of ennui.

Suddenly, a violin was singing. Someone in one of the houses had begun to play a Bach prelude, whose exquisite notes, piercing sharply through the grey film that covered the world, Nicola knew to be the only reality. As stars had seemed to her childhood holes in the floor of Paradise, through which to capture glimpses of heavenly delight, so now again ; there were holes in the grey roof of existence, and through them might be heard the tunes of heaven, playing exalted in the crystal heights of air. . . .

Don't dawdle, Nicola,' said Mamma, dragging at her gloved hand.

But—oh, wait one minute. . . . Listen, Mamma.' ' Someone is playing the fiddle, my dear, that is all. If we meet him, poor man, you shall give him a penny, for it is cold to be out to-day.

Come along, or you will catch a chill.'

Mamma—do listen. It's in one of the houses.'

Don't be so tiresome, Nicola ; come, don't pull back like that. Let us be quick, and get back to tea as soon as we can.'

She walked on reluctantly, listening as the loveliness grew gradually fainter, more remote : as the hole in monotony filmed over and was grey again, like everything else.

Her Aunt came deprecatingly next day and fetched her down to Sussex in the train. Nicola cried a little, for she had never been away from home alone before ; and then she settled herself and was numbed in sensation by the cold, and the rhythmic rattle, and the smell of smoke and the jolting, grey landscape out of the window.

The farmhouse stood lonely on the wetern side of a hill, looking across an entertaining prospect of rich meadow land, diversified by elms and cows, to a horizon of distant downs : behind it ran a lane : and behind that a wood of beeches stretched some hundred feet up to the top of the hill.

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Standing in the cart ruts, as Nicola, descending from the pony trap, did late that afternoon, you could just see the sky, delicately blue and white between the farthest trunks of that strong nobility, now golden in a sudden burst of evening light.

She loved the place itself, perhaps because she was, inevitably, a good deal alone. Uncle George, abdominally genial, as one who has to live up to the appearance of bonhomie given by a round and comfortable stomach, was busy ; all day with the farm, at meals with his food, and in the evening with sleep : a busyness enhanced by his consciousness of what his wife's family, thought about him, and by his fear of shocking the young lady with talk of the beasts and their breeding, against which he was continually being cautioned by Bee. She, too, was busy, in her fear of showing she had lost gentility. She had bought a quantity of pink scented soap, and some copies of ' Aunt Judy's Magazine ' in deference to her niece's ladyhood : she had mastered the genetic details of the Royal Family as an elegant subject for conversation : and she had asked the Vicar and his wife to tea. This, together with the provision of a great amount of good food, was all she could do.

She had no children of her own, and she vacillated between putting her niece in the parlour, there to do a nice bit of crochet, and sending her out to play ; for she did not like to ask her help about the house, and Nicola was too shy to offer it, and too polite to do anything but what she was bid.

Luckily, Aunt Bee kept forgetting that her niece was sixteen, and ought not, perhaps, to go wandering alone about the countryside. She was very lean and tender and thin when she first came, looking a great deal younger than her age : and, though she grew and altered during her time there, the first impression lasted, and play was ordered more often than crochet.

The lane went northward round the side of the hill, and after some half a mile the great beechwood thinned to slopes of open turf, where winds slid down in raging laughter. March was dry that year and full of sun : and the bare hills seemed to tingle with life, showing gold flecks in the green of the grass, as hidden flame pricks tiny arrows through the piled stuff of a bonfire.

Nicola liked to walk in this direction, and, flinging herself down, to lie, quite motionless, on the grass, pressed against it as close as possible, trying to regain that experience of a sharp and immanent reality with which the violin music had twitched her mind : a feeling which had never again touched her so closely, though she knew well that she was very near to it here on the ground. The great curves of the hillside, luminous golden green, gave her a sensation as of a ripe pod of beauty ever on the point of bursting to show the secret fulness within. The hills swelled ready to break with the tense ecstasy of the earth. The whole world was a grape, exquisitely round and self-contained, ripening slowly to plump out its skin with joy unknown. She wondered vaguely if it would be the Day of Judgment then, when God laid finger and thumb on the vital berry to burst it so that the lovely juice spurted out.

She despaired sometimes of knowing the secret till then ; for all the sense of something hidden, yet to be perceived with all the ease in the world if one only knew the secret word, an air, a song uttered, which would show the informing flame of life within the stretched hills, the aspiring trees, the running loveliness of water.

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' Of course, you must behave like a lady, Nicola, whatever your surroundings may be.'

Nicola opened her clear eyes wide, but waited for more.

Your dear Aunt was a little foolish in her marriage—though we endeavoured to reason with her,' Mamma continued in a voice of confidential shame. And so you see, though your Uncle George is, I am sure, a truly worthy man, he is—well, not quite so refined as I could wish. Still , there is nowhere else for you to go, and they have very kindly asked you. . . . I think I can trust my little daughter to be a lady and to remember her manners, cannot I ?

Nicola, blushing with pleasure to be praised, murmured I hope so, Mamma . . . I'll try.'

There was more sewing, and luncheon at half-past one, and a piling on of woollen garments, one after another, dry with weight and with a dull irritant smell emphasized by moth-ball. Then she and Mamma walked out together. They did not talk as they went, very slowly and carefully, down the long grey roads that led ultimately to a small millinery shop, where Mamma wanted to buy some velvet ribbon for her bonnet. There was no wind moving anywhere to stir the dust on the flat pavements : and there was an incredible dreariness in the streets under the arid grey sky, where they went dutifully on and on, with neither hope nor pleasure, walking between the rows of stale and prosperous houses built of grey bricks, each with weary lace curtains at the windows, each with a flight of redundant steps. Walking seemed to last for ever, every step a rhythmic reiteration of ennui.

Suddenly, a violin was singing. Someone in one of the houses had begun to play a Bach prelude, whose exquisite notes, piercing sharply through the grey film that covered the world, Nicola knew to be the only reality. As stars had seemed to her childhood holes in the floor of Paradise, through which to capture glimpses of heavenly delight, so now again ; there were holes in the grey roof of existence, and through them might be heard the tunes of heaven, playing exalted in the crystal heights of air. . . .

Don't dawdle, Nicola,' said Mamma, dragging at her gloved hand.

But—oh, wait one minute. . . . Listen, Mamma.' ' Someone is playing the fiddle, my dear, that is all. If we meet him, poor man, you shall give him a penny, for it is cold to be out to-day.

Come along, or you will catch a chill.'

Mamma—do listen. It's in one of the houses.'

Don't be so tiresome, Nicola ; come, don't pull back like that. Let us be quick, and get back to tea as soon as we can.'

She walked on reluctantly, listening as the loveliness grew gradually fainter, more remote : as the hole in monotony filmed over and was grey again, like everything else.

Her Aunt came deprecatingly next day and fetched her down to Sussex in the train. Nicola cried a little, for she had never been away from home alone before ; and then she settled herself and was numbed in sensation by the cold, and the rhythmic rattle, and the smell of smoke and the jolting, grey landscape out of the window.

The farmhouse stood lonely on the wetern side of a hill, looking across an entertaining prospect of rich meadow land, diversified by elms and cows, to a horizon of distant downs : behind it ran a lane : and behind that a wood of beeches stretched some hundred feet up to the top of the hill.

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Nicola was duly grateful, and in a week or so the wardrobe arrived. It was of walnut, and it had a hanging cupboard and a full-length mirror, and a drawer at the bottom where she might keep her hats, her scarves and her fur tippet.

She was indeed pleased by it : and, on being sent to bed, she spent a great deal of time, the evening it came, in hanging up her clothes, and in thinking what an air it gave to her tiny room, as it stood, immobile, reflecting everything in condensed beauty ; reflecting the two candles on her dressing-table with their transparent hearts of flame that flickered a little every time she swept the brush through her heavy gold hair ; reflecting the old blue curtains over the window, closed because Mamma distrusted the night air ; reflecting her chair, and the daguerrotype of Papa, and the Raphael Madonna over her bed. It was lovely : she patted its coldness possessively : and then at last, thinking she heard Mamma coming up the stairs, she began to take off her clothes one by one, carefully folding them up, and putting them on the chair. Finally, naked, she felt under the pillow for her pink flannel nightgown, sighing to think how prickly it would be, this night after the first of those April days that are more vitally hot than summer itself. She felt : but nothing was there. And then she remembered : how stupid : it was a Monday, and Mabel had forgotten to put out a clean one for her ; and she was walking across to the chest of drawers to get one, when suddenly her eye caught a gleam of white in the mirror, and she turned to look at herself there. . . . But she was lovely !

Again she ran her hands up her delicate body, and rejoiced to see the mirrored hands do the same, over that slim image of mother-of-pearl which was herself : she looked lovingly to see the blue veins meandering in soft intricacy under white skin : to marvel in laughing delight at her blossoming small breasts : to wonder at her suppleness and her fragility—her fingers savoured the delicate succession of ribs, exquisitely ready to crunch, and yet unbreaking as her body moved and swayed and danced in the mirror there : to study the face whence gazed clear, curious eyes, and grave with wonder, yet dissolving soon to a sweetness of laughter.

Kneeling, she kissed the mirror's icy lips, and knelt for a long time still, absorbed in a kind of reverence : and then, with a great noise of trampling and talking, subsiding to the swish of shocked skirts, Mamma came in to break the lonely crystal calm with a box on the ear. ' Nicola ! ' she said, recovering herself. ' Aren't you ashamed of yourself ? Get up at once and put on your nightgown and stop this indecent exhibition. I never heard of such a thing. .

Nicola got up in silence, listening abstractedly to the ringing, to the ringing in her head, her eyes lingering in the mirror to catch a last glimpse of herself : and then, rummaging in her orderly drawer, she said, ' But, Mamma, I looked so lovely.' Her voice did not plead : it stated a fact.

Don't be so absurd, Nicola, and disgusting and disobedient,' said Mamma, settling herself in the chair, her head well back against the white antimacassar. Nicola,' she continued, looking at the child as she stood in the long pink flannel gown, with its prickly frilling at neck and wrists, ' I have not told you before because I wished to spare your feelings, and I thought it would have been obvious to any girl of sense ; I would not have told you now, but this disgraceful action compels me. You are an exceptionally ugly child : and apart from the indecency of your behaviour, if you become vain you will merely make yourself ridiculous in addition to your other misfortunes. In order to make you remember not to behave

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like this again, you will learn the first chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians by heart : and you will not have your egg for breakfast tomorrow morning.'

She stopped, rose pontifically from the chair, and kissed Nicola hard on the forehead, more in anger than in, sorrow.

Get into bed,' she said ; I should not be at all surprised if you caught a very bad chill.'

Obediently the child got in, rolled herself up and lay still, listening as the door was closed and Mamma's footsteps went off, tap-tap down the corridor, farther and farther off till she reached her own room, and that door shut also. Presently was silence.

After a long time, Nicola, greatly daring, stretched out a white foot : dangling, it found a tiny shock to touch the floor. Presently she stood on it, then, quietly and barefoot, she groped her way towards the window and drew back the curtain to let a chink of moonshine in. How quiet the garden was, outside, still leafless yet, and solemn. Again, in that slit of moonshine, she looked at herself, lovely as a pearl : lovely, though this light, pale as ivory, faded all colour from her lips, her breasts, and left only curves and lights and shadows. She wondered a good deal, for Mamma was her oracle : and then, having kissed that mystically remote image with a kiss snow-cold, she ran to bed, tucked up from the impersonal terrors of the dark, to sleep a puzzled but impenitent sleep.

She awoke next morning, still puzzled. Mabel came in, and laid a Bible beside her, saying Your Mamma said you were to learn your task before you had any breakfast,' in those rather forbidding tones she always used if one were in disgrace : and the whole thing came back to her. When the curtains had been drawn back, and the jolly copper can of hot water set in its place and Mabel gone, she slipped from bed, and regarded herself yet a third time, by daylight, thinking perhaps that candle-flame and moonshine had mocked her, tricked her, washed her body in an enchantment not its own.

But no : the sun cut out her shape in beauty just as the others had : and she knitted her brows and gazed in wonderment. In spring I feel my body like a tree,' she whispered again, gazing : and, as she looked in the mirror, it seemed true indeed. Vitality filled her straight body as strongly as ever it had run beneath the bark of beeches, standing, instinct with hidden life, on tip-toe with delight in the March sunshine.

Then it broke through to her mind. This mirror of hers, condensing to a liquid beauty all the most commonplace things of her room, was a hole through to that secret loveliness which had been stirring all around her that spring.

The image revealed was no more herself than the beauty enclosed was the reflection of the daily room : it was that of a secret informant life which shone within her body : a dryad from the beechwood, lovelier than any girl, who had chosen to leave her trees to live within those bones and flesh that Nicola could feel with warmly mortal fingers.

Mamma might well be right : her actual self was ugly, but through this mirror she could see to that lively immanent beauty she had so long sought to perceive. Lovely the dryad was, standing there, mocking elusively within the cold crystal, never to be touched nor approached nor known, a flickering flame whose point sprang sometimes to reach the glass here, to be seen, to be caught in the longing eye for a moment of adoration.

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II

She learned her task, and repeated it to Mamma, still stern and suppressively angry, in the schoolroom : she ate her denuded breakfast : she played Czerny's exercises on the piano : and all the time the remembrance of her mirror shone in her mind, and she was happy.

It made her happy for three still weeks together, to know this lovely thing lived in her, to contemplate its exquisite remote coldness, bidding it farewell in the morning, seeing it again during a host of glimpsed moonlight evenings, while the crescent waxed and waned behind the chink of the curtains.

She kissed her image often, and trembled to find only the smooth chill of the glass ; and often she wished that she knew more of the inmate, whom she could only perceive through the mirror's hole, and perhaps when laughter welled up in her from nowhere, a leaping unreasoned delight which she thought must be the life of the Dryad, filling her mortal body with bursting vitality that had once informed the tiptoe trees.

Mamma, however, was ill-satisfied with the result of her present : which seemed to have made Nicola only more capable than before of escaping her, of retiring to some fastness of the mind where actions were not regarded and words did not hurt. She distrusted this dream, not only because it made the child, though gentle, difficult to command, but from a fear of what she did not understand.

She did not, of course, know the queer, still secret worship that possessed her daughter, but she felt, nevertheless, that she was absorbed in some idea lovely and unearthly as flutes heard at dusk : and she was both envious and remotely afraid. There was the desolate song a nurse had sung to her childhood, that ran sometimes through her eminently practical mind in spite of efforts to disregard it : They stole little Biddy for seven years long, And when she came back again her friends were all gone.'

It worried her a little, that Nicola was so solitary, though so meek, retiring- away from the warm fires of parlour and schoolroom to her cold bedchamber, there to be alone. The child was growing so pretty, too : it would soon be time to put her definitely into stays and to think of a good marriage . . . her mind ran off to women she knew with sons, and for a time she found rest in contemplating Nicola as a possible Countess.

III. ' Oh, you are pretty,' Nicola breathed softly to her reflection, and a mist formed on the glass so that she could not see. She rubbed it off with a moistening hand, tenderly, and whispered, I can't even talk to you, loveliness, but you're blurred, you go away. . . . Hush, Mamma's coming ! ' She threw a tiny kiss to the looking-glass and then put on her chemise hurriedly, just as Mamma came in and told her she must be good, alone all day ; for she, Mamma, had to go off to see a little sick cousin of theirs, with no one to give her flowers or toys.

Little Adela, dear,, you remember?' She has broken her leg and her Mamma is still in France, and cannot get home. So you see it would be unkind of me not to go, wouldn't it? Mrs. Knowles next door says you may take tea with her at four o'clock, but till then I'm afraid you must just learn your tasks and be quiet and good. . . . Good-bye, child ! ' Good-bye, Mamma. Tell Adela how sorry I am ! ' Nicola cried ; and then, as the door shut, she danced for joy with her reflection.

12

VIZITILLARY

She spent all the morning in her room in an ecstasy of adoring contemplation : and then she grew angry that she could approach no nearer to this leaping life, and hit the mirror with beating, pleading hands, to burst into a passion of tears because she was inevitably so distant from the flame of beauty. . . .

Then Mabel came and fetched her to a dinner of boiled mutton and sago pudding : it was even more depressing than ever. Afterwards—she took up the long white seam that Mamma had given her to finish before the day was out, and sewed, listlessly dainty for an hour or so, till, as the ing in the clock struck three, she looked up and saw Mrs. Knowles walk next door garden with her nephew, a boy who came on visits from time to time during the vacations of his eJniversity studies. He was tall, and he wore whiskers : so much she could see by peeping : and then she took up her sewing again and finished the seam before, going upstairs, she brushed out her hair and changed into her ruffled, flowered frock, cut more in the prevailing curves of fashion than anything she had yet possessed. She kissed her hand gaily to the elusive dryad whom she left behind : the face smiled to mock her, knowing she would never understand its ethereal delight. So there was still a little bitterness in her mouth as she tripped down their front steps and up Mrs. Knowles's to ring the great brass bell. However, Mrs. Knowles was very dear and kind to her, and there was crabapple jelly for tea ; and Philip Young was amiable, and overcame her shyness quickly and promised to teach her to play croquet.

Mrs. Knowles, after watching them stroll gracefully hitting the great striped balls from place to place on the green lawn, went in : the new parlourmaid needed a great deal of attention when she washed up that Crown Derby tea-service : and Nicola was, after all, not really seventeen yet, and did not need a chaperone. Philip asked her her age as they stood in the shadow of the big walnut tree, he showing her how to swing her mallet, and she copying him in a delicious ineffectuality of frills. ' Only seventeen next July,' she said, perhaps that is why I am so stupid at this game.'

Stupid ? ' said Philip. Nonsense, Miss Hyslope. ' He saw her blush with self-consciousness, and realised that she was shy because no one had called her anything but Nicola before. Adroitly, he covered up his mistake —she was too beautiful a child to be allowed to be embarrassed. See, Nicola, I'll hold your hand on the mallet and show you how it's done.'

His fingers closed over her small, cool grip, and they swung the mallet together . . . there, like that ! ' I see,' Nicola replied, still a little shy and confused. She had never before met a man younger than her father, though she had seen Philip Young over the garden wall once or twice previously : and it embarrassed her a little to be with one.

Philip grew more and more tempted to kiss her. She was so young that it could surely do no harm, and he wasn't coming back for years now, so that she would soon forget him, and if there was a row he would be far enough away in India with the tea plantations.

So, presently, taking her under the laurels, he took her face between his hands to kiss her lips. ' Nicola, you are lovely,' he said, you beautiful child.'

She burst away from him in a storm of tears, and ran off to the house, trailing her hat by its broad blue ribbon. Lord ! ' he said, whistling, that's done it.'

FRITILLARY But it hadn't. No one said anything to him about it : and he went off next day to India in the best of spirits.

Nicola, however, had gone home, to look at her mirror once more, blinded by his words.

No more was she able to see through to beauty : there was only herself in the mirror, for she was lovely and beautiful : Philip had said so : the Dryad had never been, and she would never be able to know the secret of the bursting hills, the tiptoe trees, any more. She had never known it at all.

As she bathed her eyes, Mamma came in, cheerily competent after the clay's interference, bearing a parcel. ' You are quite old enough now,' she said, ' to begin wearing stays and taking a pride in your appearance. I have bought you some ; put them on and we will lace you up and see what a pretty waist we can give you . . . ' Nicola put them on.

Six months later she married a drysalter in the City, and in due time produced six fine children.

R. 0. HAYNES.

In Epitaph What was thy joy ?

None I may name thee.

What was thy sorrow?

Look, friend, about thee.

What was thy life?

Nothing but vanity.

What was thy dream?

It was eternity.

ANOTHER. No joy I wasted, All joy tasted, All sin confessed, I rest.

MORNA STUART.

Which %hews that 1llobob‘2 's to 'know Public Opinion was at odds to decide what had done it, but that it had done it good and proper was a point which unanimous conviction proceeded to emphasise.

The object of Public Opinion's interested attention was a miniature fountain which had sprung to birth joyfully, and for no apparent reason, from between the tarred bricks of the road, like Venus Anadyomene from the ocean.

That there were no limits to its opportunities and no indications of its possible consequences was announced, but there was no objection, as far as it—Public Opinion—could see, to the accident becoming a second flourishing Niagererforls, and to London being reduced to transacting its business from boats like them Italians, with whom you could never tell.

Evidently appreciating the amount of enthusiasm it aroused, the fountain was doing its best to fulfil the most sanguinary hopes of its admirers, and was already nearly as high as the Young Nipper who stood and gazed at it with ardent admiration.

1

t4

FRITILLARV

Even't I always said, Hatticks of you must but Bicements not to be considered?' Mrs. Bert Hashton of the Foringa.nd said triumphantly to Mrs. Beale, who had stopped to have a bit of chat and a arfglarse to assist in the carrying home of her morning's purchases.

Mrs. Beale assented a trifle absent-mindedly, for her eyes were fixed on the small crowd, among which excitement was suddenly registered. This because an individual armed with a carpet bag and an air of assurance, whom Public Opinion explained in a hushed whisper to be The Man, had elbowed his way through to the Fountain, and hurled down his gauntlet before it.

A policeman with large white gloves, who had hitherto been contributing humorous repartee, became flushed with duty, and swept back the spectators with a lordly arm, missing, however, the Young Nipper, who was too small to be actively influenced by the Arm, and who therefore became increasingly obvious as the rest of the crowd was induced to retreat. Nah then, stand back will you? ' The Owner of the Arm shouted aggressively at the Young Nipper, who was oblivious of the world in general. A long thin wail of frightened surprise, culminating in a howl of desolation, caused one to realise for the first time that the Young Nipper was not alo ne, but that a Very Young Nipper Indeed accompanied him, or rather was attached to him, by a convulsive grasp on the end of his essentially brief trousers. The Young Nipper was thus brought rudely to a realisation that there was a world about him, and when he saw it he wept.

The last of this sequence of events was what, as Mrs. Hashton remarked later, put the lid on it. For a small ragged bundle clutched to her by the Very Young Nipper Indeed, and which was in reality a dog with eyes like shiny boot-buttons, contributed generously with melodramatic and attenuated howls. ' Ain't them your kids?' said Mrs. Beale, with badly simulated indifference ; but, with the colour rising in her face, Mrs. Hashton was already almost upon the scene of emotion.

It had always been said of Mrs. Bert Hashton that she had a way with her. Arold Hashton ! ' she said, so that even the policeman blanched.

Hannyvoylit ! You come home this very minute : you'll cop it when I can get at you . . . OW you dare I DON'T KNOW.' The last in capitals of incredulity. Arold Hashton was shaken into silence. Hannyvoylit continued to cry in a frightened undertone. Sukey, the dog, became panicstricken as Mrs. Hashton swept upon them, and he barked and snapped hysterically.

The interest of the World in General was diverted from the fountain, which, anyway, was becoming depressed under the continued attacks of The Man. Two errand boys, who appeared to have time on their hands, offered to back Sukey at long odds, and urged Mrs. Hashton, rather irrelevantly, not to discard her hair ; and their remarks did not lessen the tenseness of the atmosphere.

Mrs. Hashton's eloquence was quenched in anger, and she grasped an arm of each of the frightened children and strode off, opening and shutting her mouth without a sound, as if, one of the errand-boys remarked to nobody in particular, she were a-catching floys.

The fountain had subsided with a melancholy sigh, and Mrs. Hashton had disappeared through the door of the Four-in-Hand, dragging the two delinquents and their squealing dog after her, so the World in General

PRITILLARV picked up its parcels and said disappointedly that it supposed it might as well be getting along.

The Man was packing an immense number of strange implements into his carpet bag, maturing to a departure, and so for the World in General the incident was closed.

Inside the Four in Hand, however, the errand boy's last remark as he rode off on his bicycle, to the effect that them kids '11 get it I shouldn't wonder, was being justified.

When Mr. Bert Hashton came in to supper an ominous silence was brooding. He allowed it to do so until half-way through supper, when he said with an attempt at nonchalance : What's got you, Emmie?'

Arold wriggled uncomfortably in his chair, and squinted along his knife.

Mrs. Hashton was at that moment feeling infinitesimally ashamed of herself, though she would never have admitted it under torture ; unhappily it was also at that moment that Hannyvoylit, who was invisible under the table with Sukey on her lap, chose to say, in a conciliating, if rather inarticulate, manner : ' Never mind, Thukey deear ; Hannyvoylit sall lover, essy sail.'

Whereupon Mrs. H.ashton's anger, which had, illogically enough, been maturing steadily against Sukey, fructified. And it is curious that it was the more bitter for the slight feeling of shame at the back of her mind.

Either that dog goes or I go ! ' she burst out, her face glowing.

Mr. Bert Hashton had no presence of mind, so he said, meekly : The dog, Emmie.'

And the next morning he issued from the door of the Four in Hand with the dejected and uncomprehending Sukey at the end of a piece of string. Arold and Hannyvoylit had been commissioned to go to the paper shop for a thruppence aypenny worth of baccy, with the added injunction to look sharp during the transaction. It was therefore not until dinner-time that the discovery of Sukey's disappearance took place.

Hannyvoylit said : ' Where's Thukey, Ma? Where's Thukey, Ma? Where's Thukey, Ma?' several hundred times in quick succession, with the toneless repetition employed by all small children who are unaccustomed to having their questions answered.

Arold said : Oy soy, Ma ! Sukey's not ere ! ' ' I know e's not,' Mrs. Hashton retorted with unwarranted irritation.

Oy soy, Ma ! Where's e gorn ? ' pursued Arold, who was inclined to favour an exclamatory form of conversation.

E's gorn : that's enough,' succinctly.

Oy soy, Ma ! ' in a dismayed tone. And then : Oy soy, Hanny ! Ma says Sukey's gorn,' dismally.

Hannyvoylit possessed a wonderful facility for bursting into tears spontaneously, and did so. Arold followed suit.

Supper was again a silent meal except for the whimpering of Hannyvoylit, which explains why the scratching noise on the window was heard.

Mrs. Hashton looked defiant ; Arold full of sudden hope ; Mr. Hashton addressed an inarticulate remark confidentially to space ; Hannyvoylit ran to the window with tactless joy.

Mrs. Hashton gave them to understand that she would acquaint them with the fact if Sukey were allowed to place one foot over the threshold.

This seemed a surprising remark to make in the circumstances, but it appeared to impress the Hashton family, who remained depressed and stationary.

FRITILLARY It is characteristic of Mrs. Hashton that the more she became secretly ashamed, the more anger she experienced when she considered Sukey.

A long gusty snuffle announced that Sukey had given up the idea of effecting an entrance by the window and, having slipped unostentatiously through the bar, was contemplating the parlour door as an alternative.

Mr. Hashton said : I say, you know, Emmie . . .' protestingly.

Mrs. Hashton's face was a dull red, and her eyes were as bright and shiny as Sukey's. She rose with dignity and went out of the room. The Hashton family, aghast, listened mutely to a slight scuffle and an astonished yelp.

At the end of a minute Mrs. Hashton came in and shut the door.

She sat down and continued her supper, saying, almost jovially : He'll find someone, you bet your life.'

Which was the last remark she was heard to make in connection with Sukey.

Which all goes to show, as Bert Hashton said to several sympathetic auditors in the bar the next evening, that nobody's to know who's going to get it from what.

itC b Some brilliant fiend has left her child In a warm valley orcharded, And now performs her lovely jests On water-wind and meadow-trees And sets the birches all a-quiver With her music-haunted fingers.

Not an eye on seven roads Sees her hollow face go by, No man with that laugh infected Follows after, loose and maddened.

Only she, remembering always Her dark boy's mortality, Fills the seven roads and meadows 'With her wild Satanities.

R.M.J.C.

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FRITILLARY

iq

1Reb 5nbians As a result of a council of war the night before, they all said affectionately Good morning, Mim dear ! ' when she came in to officiate over their dressing, and they quarrelled rather ostentatiously in their eagerness to clean their teeth.

Mim had sufficient experience of their ingratiating methods when they were about to ask for something out of the ordinary, but she was in too good a temper not to let them believe they were successfully deceiving her : for it was her afternoon out, and also it was very cheerful and sunny and cold outside : so she preserved a non-committal silence and mildly wondered. During breakfast, which was in the nursery, they were studiously polite : Jennifer offered her the toast twice, and Roger said, patronisingly, ' It's a very nice day, Mim ' ; Christopher added, expansively, I expect you're very glad you're going out, aren't you, Mim ? ' Mim said Yes,' and started to peel her egg with concentration.

Jennifer wriggled uneasily, and Mim, glancing up covertly, saw telegraphic looks of encouragement from Roger and Christopher.

Mini,' Jennifer said at last, slowly and in tones of extraordinary sweetness. ' Do you think it would be possible you could give us something like a dust-sheet—we thought of playing Red Indians . .

Mim, determined not to help, said : I don't know that I know of anything like a dust sheet.'

Well—perhaps—do you think—a dust sheet?' amended Jennifer in a small voice.

Mim controlled a smile, and said I'll think about it,' which deceived them no more than they had deceived her.

The dust sheet had been the only real difficulty, for there were sticks in plenty in the gardening hut, and they had always been able to manage the cook.

They put their heads in at the back door and pleaded for just one or two currants ' ; cook expressed horror of the consequences, but nevertheless emptied a generous heap of stickiness into their expectant hands.

Serious and quiet with excitement and purpose, they spent the morning marching backwards and forwards from the house to the back of the gardening but at the end of the garden, depositing supplies.

The garden was fairly big, with a shrubbery at one end : in the middle of the lawn was a big sheltering walnut tree, now standing bare and tall and smudgily black in the faint frosty mist. There was also an apple tree which grew crookedly by the side of a small brick and glass building known as the greenhouse, though nothing ever came out of it except chipped garden pots, stuck one inside the other, and bundles of sticks ; it was fairly easy to get on to the roof by way of the apple tree.

By lunch-time the dust sheet and some dahlia supports had become a wigwam behind the gardening but : and they practised crawling in and out of its restricted space with inexplicable ecstasy.

During lunch they were quiet and very mysterious, and made secret signs until stopped by Mim, who was being otherwise extraordinarily tolerant : for she affected not to notice that they stuffed their pieces of bread and their after-lunch fruit into their pockets, and she became Miss . Although they had Matthews on Her Afternoon Out with a quiet mind avoided discussion on the subject, it was tacitly understood that Jennifer

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20

FRITILLARY

would be the Pale Face : for, although she was the eldest, she was also in the rather delicate position of being a girl, which always gave Christopher and Roger the prerogative of threatening to play without her if she ever jibbed at the painful roles she had often to play. In fact the only allusion was made when they were choosing their names. ' I shall be Black Eagle Eye, I think,' said Roger, firmly, for he had thought it out over lunch. You can be Mr. Scott if you like, Jennifer.'

This was a concession, considering the popularity at that time of ''The Voyages of Capt. Scott.'

Jennifer's last remaining hope gave a little dying sigh. Thank you ; but I think I'd rather be Martin Nicholson,' she said, which was an invention of her own.

Christopher took a deep breath : Well, then, I shall be Great-BigLittle-Bear-F leet-Foot. ' Roger and Jennifer were silent ; Christopher looked defiantly at the sky and said What's wrong with that?' and the other two said awkwardly Oh, well.'

Martin Nicholson was given one of the two rifles and half the darts, which had rubber ends and stuck when they hit anything if you licked them first. As she rolled up her sleeves and fastened on her ammunition belt, Roger said : You can start from the drawing room window and work your way round to the shrubbery.'

And then we will succeed in capturing you and take you prisoner to our wigwam,' added Christopher.

This being arranged satisfactorily, Jennifer made off towards the house, and Christopher and Roger crawled back into the wigwam with the provisions, a rifle, and a bow and arrows. Once out of their sight, Jennifer ran hard and sought cover by the kitchen door.

The light, frosty mist had disappeared and it was brilliantly sunny and very cold, and every now and again the wind came rushing round the corner of the house in sudden pursuit of a few scattered leaves, which fled in rustling panic. The sky was very clear and blue, and white high-flying clouds threw shadows over the garden in passing, like sudden misgivings.

The trees made very bright, strange shadows which seemed to Jennifer sometimes like people just springing upon her. Her heart beat fast as she crouched by the fence and then began to crawl along, under cover of the bushes, towards the shrubbery.

Every breaking twig made her start in panic, and she felt almost sick when a sharp black shadow darted across the path in front of her. She was hot with a queer, excited happiness, and then, just as she had almost reached the edge of the shrubbery, she caught sight of Roger and Christopher stealing across the lawn. Sheer panic seized her then, and her heart seemed to come into her mouth and stay there : she crept into the narrow space between the greenhouse and the fence, and crouched down as low as possible. She heard them talking in whispers by the apple tree. Christopher said : I'll climb on to the roof and you stay here to give the alarm ' ; and then, by the snapping of twigs and creaking of branches and one or two leaves floating down on her, she knew he was climbing on to the roof.

With the desperate fear of being hunted, she crawled under some boards, and in a very ecstasy of terror tried to hold her breath. She was shivering with excitement, so that the boards almost rattled, and her heart sounded to her like the roll of a kettle-drum and as loud as Big Ben. She heard scrapings up above her, and little bits of stones rolled off the roof, rattled

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FRITILLARY

21

on to the pile of boards and bounced off. Great-Big-Little-Bear-Fleet-Foot was lying down flat on the roof of the greenhouse and peering over the edge.

Every noise in the world stopped for a minute, except for the thudding of her heart ; and then Great-Big-Little-Bear-Fleet-Foot wriggled himself awkwardly backwards into safety and climbed down the tree. Mr. Nicholson heard him say hoarsely to his companion, Don't see him anywhere,' and experienced a thrill of gratification at being referred to as ' him.' Then they crept off stealthily to the other side of the shrubbery.

Mr. Nicholson was listening so acutely that she heard the scraping ,of one of the apple tree leaves against the greenhouse window, the sudden rustle of a blackbird who flew out of the ivy on the fence, the drip of the water off the roof into the rain-tub, as clearly as sounds in a cave ; with a feeling of stupendous relief she crept cautiously into the shrubbery also.

Once Roger charged past her when she was hidden from him only by a bush. Roger always talked to himself when he was hunting, and as he went past she heard him mutter : And hastily leaping on his piebald horse, he galloped off in hot pursuit across the desert : his left arm hung loose in its socket . .

Once an ear-splitting war whoop from Black Eagle Eye gave her an icy cold feeling in the middle of her back. Then suddenly she was filled with the madness of fear for a moment, as if the world had come to an end without warning, as they jumped on her from behind. A quarrel was almost imminent then, for Mr. Nicholson, in his terror, struggled and kicked and tried to bite, and the Redskins objected with justifiable anger : Here, shut up, Jennifer ! You're caught now.' But the sound of her own name made her panic subside and, very hot and sticky and breathless, she allowed herself to be led prisoner to the wigwam. ' We could have tea now,' suggested Christopher : so they crept carefully into the hot, dark, small inside of the wigwam to eat what remained of the currants and bread—for the Redskins had found hunting hungry work—with the thrill you get only when you are excitedly hot and thirsty.

From the other side of the but came the sound of voices, and a shrill sound that betokened female visitors ; their father, in a tone of affected unconcern, said : I suppose they're up to something : they're very quiet.'

They sat holding their breath in dismay, and praying that they would pass without noticing ; but the dust sheet, still partly white, betrayed them, and they were confronted in a minute by their mother and father and two visitors.

Infinitely embarrassed, they came out of the wigwam and stood up.

Their father said What's the meaning of this ? ' with ill-concealed pride, and turned explanatorily to the visitors : Good Lord ! They've made a dust sheet into a tent ; not bad that.'

Their mother said Gracious, children ! You'll get dreadful chills playing when you're so hot ; you'd better fetch coats at once.'

Their father poked his head inside the wigwam and snorted with delight : Good Lord ! ' he said. They've made three sticks to prop it up with. Where did they get that idea?'

The visitors waited, peering about and giggling, until they came back, shamefacedly, buttoning themselves into reefer coats.

They're always up to something,' boasted their father, as they trooped off down the garden-path, back to the drawing room.

S'pose we might as well clear up,' said Christopher.

And they began desolately to do so.

t'RITILLARY

those Barren %eaves (` Quite,' says Mr. Chelifer, savouring voluptuously the pleasure of dropping steeply from the edge of the convivial board into interstellar space.)

That isolation I did once attain, and shall no more again, (through breaking of a harsh discrepant light upon the oblivious sight, through rending of the veil which disallowed the circumambient crowd) , tipped me abruptly from my prandial place to interstellar space, a dark-encircled face, a glowing whole above the lighted bowl, a form that paced the galleries along, nor felt the attentive throng : a solitary mummer that was I, beneath a crystal sky : and went because the light was sharp and loud and sharp as well the crowd, because the vacuous crystal sphere was thin the watery talk dripped in . . .

Out, any exaltation I may find, and singleness of mind !

Back, to the table and the neighbouring bore, and focus him once more.

MARGARET LANE.

PRITILLARV

jfranW Ebwarbtan She had been a child in the days of crewel-work sunflowers spreading across a background of green serge. She was painted for the Academy with the velvet andleathered hat, the coatee and jabot, the delicate waist of the late '9o's—a rather emancipated girl, who rode a bicycle and read Swinburne's poems. I don't remember her like that, of course. I first saw her when it was still a slight audacity to take a taximeter cab. It was at a garden party, and she wore the faintly Empire style and the undulating hat of the first year of George V. I said, She is lovely. When I'm grown up 1 shall have a hat like that. And I'll know her all for myself.' And Nellie, who was eighteen, said, Silly, they'll be out of fashion. And she'll be old.

You won't want to.'

Oddly enough, by the time I knew her well I had grown up, and she was fifty-eight.

Fifty-eight,' said Lalage, calmly, ' is not a romantic age. And why you should be so adorably silly to me when I am it, I can't imagine. The forties, yes ; the still-young athletic woman is as graceful as her daughter, you know. Or the sixties, or even the seventies : silvered hair and a peaceful smile, like an advertisement for somebody's tea' (rapid pantomime here in the special Lalage manner). But even you can't think the fifties romantic. Not old enough for woolly shawls : endless massage—though of course it's worth it, my dear—and a secret craving for clothes too young for you ; and your bones creak when it's damp and you're disinclined for long walks, and yet you still get absurdly thrilled . . . No ; the fifties aren't romantic. I suppose if you had time to think about them, they're pathetic, but I've always such lots to do . . . ' The voice that people still stood in queues to hear ran on placidly. We were lingering over tea, spread about, dressing-zoom tea, with the tray dumped down before the mirror.

Lalage swung her foot ; she had pretty feet, and she wore green slippers.

Everywhere was a friendly muddle. I refuse to believe that tidy dressingrooms exist outside the pages of fashion-paper interviews : not in the provinces, anyway. Lalage's last-act costume, green and white brocade, copied from a Lely painting, hung against the wall. Her stockings stretched from chair to floor. On the window-sill was a great bowl of lilac, and over everything that unforgettable theatre smell, dust and grease-paint, and flowers and powder.

I smiled across at Lalage, eating watercress and leaning back in her chair, with her head cocked a little on one side. Even in a dressing-gown she suggested that century of curling lovelocks and ho-ho-ing villains, where reality is questioned by the wise. Perhaps it was the ringlets bunched over her ears. For the first time I wondered what exactly it was about her that so captivated me. It wasn't merely that she was still charming— beautiful almost, with that wideflung, generous air of hers, her bright, wise eyes and vivid smile. Nor was it because, behind her suggestion of humorous helplessness, she hid a shrewd judgment and a certain wide tolerance, and it wasn't because she was on the stage. I had met actresses of my own age and found them entertaining, but not glamorous. I paused.

That was the word I was hunting for. It was glamour that Lalage had-

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she glamoured everyone she came near. That was why she was different.

That was why I found fifty-eight so much more entrancing than youth.

Janet.' Lalage was talking to me. ' You haven't answered me. You know—I expected this time, after two aesthetic years, you'd find me " quite devastatingly Edwardian ! " ' Her left eyelid had the suspicion of a droop.

I put down the kettle, and plumped on to the floor beside her. Lalageyou wretch—but that's why you're enthralling—because you are an Edwardian. I've just realised it. You bring back all the things that aren't real any more—hansom cabs and leisurely croquet parties and floating tulle, and the ping-pong craze, and funny high motor-cars with curved backs, and Queen Alexandra in parma voilet, and horse buses and Merry Widow hats.' I stopped for breath.

A survival, in fact? ' Lalage was faintly quizzical. ' No, not a survival.' I felt a little pink. The real thing. It isn't just that you've stayed young. It's more than that. It's star dust. We haven't got it. We've got sub-consciousness instead.' Lalage found the subconscious tiresome, if not wicked. She waived it away with a characteristic gesture, and I went on.

I'd forgotten it, you see, until two years of burrowing in this intellectual ant-heap convinced me that I'm Edwardian too.'

E. M. C.

`%ufcibe in 5trange Circumstances' (Extract from Daily Reporter, 1115126.)

It was Sunday. Galeas was desperately tired. All the dull, aching wretchedness of life had crept into his soul and was hammering there with heavy persitency—dragging him slowly down into a despair that deadened all action. Commonplaces crowded round him and stript him even of the relief of tears. Sentiment has healing power ; but it is banal and therefore, of course, impossible.

It was Sunday — church-bells — apple tart — cold supper and clean clothes. Sunday-4t was like a dirge. It was not even raining. Rain is rhythmic and human and provides an outlet for personal grievance. It was not hot. Heat can transmute the most active discords. Its very intensity deadens the senses. No—the sun continued to filter in a half-hearted way, and gusts of air chased each other despondently round the lawn.

If only everyone had gone out, it might have been different. It is strangely exciting to be alone in a house. You put on a gramophone record, stop it half-way, and look out of the window. You are expectant, restless. Anything might happen. But Galeas was not alone. The cook was sending obnoxious smells of cooking through the house. Marjorie was dusting the drawing-room piano aggressively. His mother was arguing,' over the telephone with the Steam Laundry. Why didn't they all go to church? But, of course, the cook couldn't get out till after lunch.

In another hour it would be lunch-time. Then three more hours till tea.

Mrs. Slater would be there. She had a face like a dog and loved Mahjongg. And probably Mr. Hatton. Of course he did hand round the scones quite nicely. Four more hours—it would be cold. The water was never heated on Sunday night.

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Perhaps he could read. The latest addition to the village library had been The Children of the Stars.' He had a copy—half-finished. No, it was out of the question. The most interesting character had died in the fifth chapter, and the hero was like an epitaph.

After tea—four more hours—then supper. It wasn't the coldness of it, really, but its degeneracy, from a purely aesthetic point of view—green salad, pink ham, orange jelly, and a mauve stain on the tablecloth. And then there was the clearing away. Some things are too distasteful to be contemplated sanely.

After supper, the drawing-room. Marjorie would write letters violently.

She was always like that. Her most insignificant action always shouted ' this is what you ought to be doing.' Mother would listen to the wireless and join in the chorus, with inane appreciation, at regular intervals.

At about nine the blinds would be drawn. The electric light was glaring, but only effective in one corner of the room. This had a grotesque effect, flinging a gigantic halo round the portrait of a deceased ancestor and making the tapestry over the door resemble the ghost of Henry VIII. Not that this transformation was peculiar to Sunday—but it seemed to epitomise the unreality of it all. It started with sausages (there is nothing more exotic than a sausage) and ended with Henry VIII. But was that the end ? There was still the final ludicrosy of the family dismissal—Marjorie's careful, last tidying up—mother's complacent ' Well, good-night, son,'—the dismal appearance of the hall through the opened door—the irritating problem of whether to go up in the dark or turn on the lights in relays. (He often wondered how Henry VIII would have dealt with the situation and whether Marjorie would have amused him.)

Here, again, Sunday was not unique. Only, being the seventh day, it seemed to sum up the wearisome sameness of all the other days and to underline it in drab colours. It had been the same ever since he could remember—Alderborough had not changed much in sixteen years—the future would probably be much the same.

In another hour it would be lunch-time. Galeas flung back his head defiantly, smoothing back the hair from his damp forehead. His brain throbbed with the monotonous exactness of it all—his memory was strained to discover some humorous deduction from its uneventfulness. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked solidly, as it always had done. The air was stifling—significant of his own oppression.

Church-bells—of course, it was Sunday. How stupid to have forgotten —bells ringing—just as if he had been flung into a horrible abyss and some searchers up above were clamouring- for his release—bells—bellsanother quarter of an hour—apple tart—Mrs. Slater—tea—supper. . . .

And they commented on Galeas' youth, when the suicide was detailed in the press. Such a pity—so young—so secure in his home life—temporary insanity—such a pity. . . .

ESME SCOTT HARSTON.

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margaret Now that you have been married A year or two, Do you wonder where Margaret Has wandered to?

I have not seen her Since that June day When she came into church In bride's array.

No, she is not with you.

There is Meg's mother, And there is Paul's wife, But no other.

The white veil made such a mist Round about her, She could have been stolen, and none know We were without her.

Perhaps she has fallen asleep Among orange-flowers ; Perhaps she is looking from a star Through wondering hours At her she dimly knew In this life . . .

At Meg's mother, Or at Paul's wife.

Do you miss Margaret?

Strange it must seem Perhaps she will come back one night In a young dream.

A.C.

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Music 'notes Ladies' Musical Society.

There was a good attendance at the second concert of the 0.L.M.S. on Friday, May 27th. The Blofield String Quartet (Loris Blofield, John Fry, Anne Wolfe, and John Moore) played the first movement of the Faure posthumous Quartet and, with two extra strings, the famous Brahms Sextets, Op. i8 in B flat and Op. 36 in E. The artists gave a spirited reading of the first Sextet, which is a very fine work, classical in feeling. Their tone was crisp and full, but they tended sometimes to sacrifice finish to vigour. They were particularly good in the delightful Scherzo and the beautiful slow movement.

The Faure was interesting and well played, but it lost considerably by being sandwiched in between the two Sextets. It takes a lot to get rid of a Brahms atmosphere.

The second Sextet in G is not so good as the first ; it does not seem to be so complete, nor is its aim so sure. But it contains a wealth of melody, which is handled with consummate skill, and much contrapuntal elaboration. It is said that the first performance was far above the heads of the audience ; they had never heard anything like it before. The critics, though giving the work the praise it merited, complained that the polyphony was so elaborate that the melodic line was only clear to trained ears. The poor audience They knew that melody was there, but they could not find it.

Brahms went home and wrote a charming set of four waltzes for piano duet, with the melody entirely in the treble, and the bass working away heroically at the accompaniment : so everybody was satisfied.

This was not so well played at the first Sextet and the Faure. The tone was often rough and the ensemble uncertain, the last movement being especially ragged in parts. Perhaps the artists were tired. The audience certainly was.

There can be such a thing as too much music, and that, I felt, was the situation on Friday. Of all compositions, Chamber Music requires most concentration in listening. It is the subt lest, the most intellectual, the most perfect form of music. When the composer is Brahms, who is one of the most intellectually and spiritually satisfying of musicians, it is difficult to appreciate and to listen intelligently with only one hearing in an evening, and when more than one work is performed. No matter how well you know a work, it will always bear repetition. What is needed is some pioneer band of players who will have the courage to give a recital at which they will play one work only, but will play it twice, with perhaps a Haydn or Mozart Quartet to supplement it.

The first viola had one of the best tones I have ever heard.

M. V.

the %uper Cinema Only the cinema audience still hisses its villain with enthusiasm and claps its hero feverishly as he arrives in the nick of time to avert disaster : perhaps this is why the old-fashioned types continue to flourish--the radiantly handsome hero and the suave villain with waxed moustachois, the fair and fluffy heroine and the dark, seductive vamp. Looking back over the last three weeks at The Super, it is these figures that remain most

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clearly in our mind, whether it be a Fairbanks, a Rod la Rocque or an Ivor Novello. However, it is our duty to descend to detail.

The most obvious criticism to make of ' The Black Pirate ' is that it makes one realise, sometimes painfully, that the coloured film is not yet a success, and has still to escape an appearance of artificiality : we could not believe in tangerine bodies silhouetted against an olive green sea : but some of the lighting effects in scenes which took place, paradoxically, in murky darkness were very good. A distinct partiality for pirates and treasure islands caused us to pass over leniently the many improbabilities of the plot, and we recall with pleasure the sight of Jong ripping down the length of a sail on a knife : his indefatigability, and his preference for leaping down, or even up, stairs, gave an air of breathlessness and excitement to the rather slow-moving plot. The final coup of producing legions of rescuers swimming strongly under water reminded one irresistibly of ' Nature Study' lantern slides, of one's early days, showing Tadpoles in Action.

There is little to say of ' The Triumph of the Rat' except that one felt it ought, but failed, to be the triumph of Ivor Novello : however, the many close-ups of his passionate embraces with bowed head, or of a sensitive full-face with quivering eyebrows, must have provided an orgy for his admirers. One thing, besides him, remains clear in the memory : a surging mass of balloons which broke and scattered to discover the brilliant confusion of a ballroom thronged with the picturesque figures of a great costume ball.

We arrived in the midst of ' Gigolo,' during a close-up of Rod la Rocque with a twitching muscle in the cheek due to shell shock : as time went on—time filled with Rod la Rocque registering Anger, Grief, Fear, and Mixed Feelings—we became increasingly thankful that we had not sacrificed our dinner in order to see the beginning of the film.

But this translated novelette was soon forgotten in the delight of ' Tramp, Tramp, Tramp,' which followed. Harry Langdon is a comedian with something of the brilliance and pathos of Grock, and, although less famous, is a greater artist perhaps than either Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd : his ' slim feasting smile,' his grotesque and sudden gestures, and his air of child-like ingenuousness are exquisite and original. The plot— a walking race from ' coast to coast ' of America to advertise a boot manufacturer—is slow to start and scarcely subtle in construction, but some of its incidents—the ravages of the cyclone in particular—were really funny.

The Ideal Comedies have been unworthy of the name : but we cherish the memory—in one of a series, called 2Esop's Fables, of pen-drawn fabulous animals—of a small defunct flea which was placed tenderly on a stretcher by his brethren and carried off in an ambulance : we preferred this to the lascivious old gentlemen who frivol when their wife is away, and the endless ' discoveries ' under the bed.

J.H.S.

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Sonnet If all the beauty we have ever loved Of sight and sound were stripped at last av ay, And we, from all earth's gallant laughter, moved To some dead wilderness of primal clay, Still we could send a fearless valediction After romance great-hearted and dim of eye, Nor bind our sight with veils of lovely fiction, But stand erect in our sheer you and I : We two alone, unhelped and undefended, Could reach the substance, whence like shadows fall Music and moon-kissed trees and flowers splendid, And merge our being, and be Beauty all, And from God's heart be shed again to earth To make new dawns, new flowers, new lovers' mirth.

E. M. CHALLANS.

are there $uitabitities ?

(With apologies to Gertrude Stein., in `Oxford.')

Are there suitabilities? In parts are there suitabilities?: There are in parts. There are suitabilities in parts.

Are there suitabilities?

In parts.

As there are suitabilities. In parts.

As a part.

This looks Miranda Admired.

This looks Miranda admired. Admired as it looks.

First one to be noticed.

Another one noticed.

First one to have been noticed.

Are there suitabilities, Miranda, a part?

Are there suitabilities Miranda apart?

Can't say, can't see, so can't see, can't say.

Not ably.

Suitabilities.

Bowing and when finished.

Are there suitabilities in part?

Can't say.

About eight.

Can did eight can did candidate for what for not and of what affright.

Eight can did candidate eight can did can did what, eight can did and a fright, an eight can did and affright and not eight did, eight can did candidate and affright.

Polite.

F

TILLAR

Don't you think she would go into suitability nicely?

If you intend if you intend, if you two attend, if you if two attend if two attend if you intend, or you nearly equal, to be read and more in mind, to be read and two in mind, to be read as two and two and to be read and have two, and have it or in gardens or in space of.

I am not sure I like that one there will be suitabilities one day.

If it is as if it is as, as if it might might as if it might might it as it was, as it ought captivated, if it ought in this and that way very fairly acted, acted. To act it.

Slowly in eliminating as slowly by eliminating. If there are more Now speak here.

Clear ! Clear ! Clear ! To be clear, it is clear it is made very clear, clearly. And suitability and more so, and more or so. Pipes and manager.

Name him Prospero to Prospero to Ferdinand, name him as Ferdinand or Prospero or name him as Prospero or Ferdinand.

How blank is a seen not sensed !

Now re-read it. Can I re-read it? I can re-read it, as I re-read it.

As I re-read it, as. I re-read it, they and they do, do and do do, do and do two, do and do do.

As to a chance, and as to a chance, and as to and as as to a chance, a chance or anyway, they and to-day very efficiently they nearly finished.

Or or or will they take us on or, or or or will they will they will they or, what person or what people or or what person or or what not? Person, people, will they or will they not?

And what do they mean? They mean to choose by this, they mean to choose her or by this means by this this means they mean to choose her.

Or or or do they mean to hear some more?

Trouble jealous and a trouble jealous. Trouble jealous a trouble jealous.

Trouble jealous. A trouble jealous. Trouble jealous. A trouble is because when the one and the trouble jealous is because not because of. The trouble jealous. A trouble jealous and a trouble jealous. Jealous.

Tell us.

Write a note write a note, no note. Write a note write a note, no vote. A right note not a right note to me.

In trying too trying, too trying for trying for trying as trying as trying is trying. Is trying. It is trying.

We can be back, we can be back. For three because of three and three auditions.

Suitability or more. More or less. They cannot forget interesting plays.

First little last little last little first little first little last little three. Last little first little first little last little last little last little as three.

Three. Three. Then act as if to be acted. I nearly carried I carried it off.

Why, oh why? Why, oh why? Not really astonished enough.

A.C. E.M.C.

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the Young Moon Is there anyone to love as lovely as the little moon ?

The young and crescent moon walking through the quiet uplands of the night.

Is there anyone to love as lovely as the little moon?

Whose graven grace is moving in the dusky tides of washing air slowly flowing over the smooth green sand of the evening sky.

Is there anyone to love as lovely as the little moon?

Who walks, remote and lonely, through the wind fantastic orchards of the evening sky.

Is there anyone to love as lovely as the little moon?

RENEE HAYNES.

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Book lReview

By E. S. P. Haynes. (The Cayme Press.)

Mr. Haynes' essay is of peculiar interest to us who are feminists almost despite ourselves. To the public, at least to the public of the cheaper press, the woman-student is the arch-type of feminist, a forbidding and unnatural phenomenon. That this prejudice should still exist is lamentable, but female education is not so old as to be taken as a matter of course.

The central fact upon which Mr. Haynes bases his discussion is that of the surplusage of women. He points out that the improvement in their condition is not due to their being better than the women of the past, or than the men of any age, but to various plain reasons which were factors in their emancipation : first, this surplusage ; and next in importance, the change in civilisation due to the Industrial Revolution. This revolution, which Mr. Haynes describes as arising from the insane pursuit of money instead of good living,' robbed women of their traditional tasks, such as spinning and food-making, and cast them from their high position in the eighteenth century, when they may have been ill-treated but when they were at any rate most important,' to the humble status in the nineteenth century of mere tea-pourers.

Mr. Haynes notes a growing misogyny in England, especially in the Universities, where the sexes are most obviously and unsatisfactorily in contact with one another, and he accounts for it by a post-war tendency among women to intrude into the spheres of men, forgetting their normal functions, which are child-bearing and home-making.

Although many will disagree with the author's condemnation of boarding schools as destructive of the home-influence and therefore undesirable, one must sympathise with his insistence upon the importance of this element in national life. Modern women tend to lead a half-and-half existence in which they can succeed neither in their domestic nor their public careers ; and in addition to this they expect privileges on account of the very qualities which they deny in their efforts to equal and rival men. Mr. Haynes deals satisfyingly with the manifest absurdity of this unfairness, pointing out how often women are unjustly favoured in matters of law. Thi s is due to a sentimentality which surrounds the abstract idea of a woman,' and is derogatory to her dignity. ' It is a pity,' he says, ' that a female barrister cannot win a county court case without her photograph as " a modern Portia " appearing in every illustrated paper.' Miss Rose Macaulay also stresses the absurdity of this view : I do not profess to understand the full aura of associations, either comic or moving, which surround the name woman.' One is grateful to Mr. Haynes and to her for exposing this manifestation of the featurity of the public, a quality which Miss Macaulay calls `clap-trap.'

The message of the essay is one recalling women to their normal status as mothers, and since all cannot be mothers, the author begs them at least to foster their maternal instincts, to become even universal aunts ' rather than neglect this essential side of their natures ; for a woman who ignores her natural purpose is much less useful to society than a common prostitute.' is a vivid little book, full of sincerity and tempered by invigorating sanity. The style is attractive and serviceable, and one cannot help adding a word of praise for the actual presentation of the essay, which is delightful.

The Cayme Press is to be congratulated on the excellence of the paper and the beauty of the printing. E. N. S. MUCH ADO ABOUT WOMEN.

n

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flews in :Grief from the urtomen's Colleges SOMERVILLE COLLEGE. The College was delighted to see, in the Birthday Honours list, that a D.B.E. had been conferred upon Miss Penrose. It is gratifying to feel that Miss Penrose's valuable work outside the University has received due appreciation.

Miss Fry, Principal of the College, spoke, at the invitation of the Oxford Union, in their debate on Thursday, June 2nd. The motion, which she supported, was ' That the Penal System is a disgrace to the country.' Miss Fry, who was at one time Secretary to the Howard League for Penal Reform, made a great impression upon the audience, and her speech was listened to with great interest and appreciation. She dealt particularly with the question of the legal defence of the poor and with the inequality of justice which is a result of the present system.

Miss Molly Blissett and Miss Dulcie Martin have been selected to play the part of Miranda in the O.U.D.S. production of ' The Tempest.' The College offers them its congratulations and best wishes for their success.

The College Dance took place on the evening of Saturday, the 4th.

The Eileen Gonner Grants have been awarded to Miss Caudwell and Miss Bourne.

The Coombs Prize for English has been awarded to Miss HandleySeymour (highly commended, Miss Caudwell and Miss Hardman), and the Coombs Prize for History to Miss Hipkin.

A Book Club has been founded this term, and is run in connection with the Times Book Club. Any kind of book can be obtained in this way, but the greatest demand has so far been for recently-published novels.

ST. HUGH'S. On Friday, May 6th, a meeting was held in the St. Hugh's J.C.R. in connection with the U.M.C.A. The Bishop of Nyasaland and Miss Nugee spoke on ' The need for trained women in Central Africa.' Dr. Locke was in the chair.

The St. Hugh's History Society held a debate on May r7th, the subject being ' That Imperialism is incompatible with the League of Nations.'

A play-reading of ' Antony and Cleopatra ' was given by the members of the St. Hugh's English Club on May loth.

There was a large attendance at the meeting of the Oxford University English Club which was held in the J.C.R. on May T8th. Miss Virginia Woolf spoke on ' Poetry and Fiction.'

An open meeting of the St. Hugh's English Club was held in the J.C.R. on June 2nd, when Professor Craigie read a paper on ' The Oxford English Dictionary and what comes after.'

A discussion-meeting of the College Branch of the League of Nations Union was held at 277 Woodstock Road on June 7th. The discussion, on ' The League and Central Europe,' was opened by Mrs. Perham.

The Principal and Council of St. Hugh's gave their garden-party on June 4th.

Miss Scott has been elected Vice-President, and Miss Owen Secretary, of the St. Hugh's J.C.R.

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SOCIETY OF OXFORD HOME STUDENTS. Dramatic Society. The Dramatic Society will give three performances of Thackeray's ' Rose and the Ring,' dramatised by Lucy Lowe, in the eighth week of term.

Elizabethans. The Elizabethan Play-reading Society has read this term ' Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay,' by Robert Greene, and ' The Arraignment of Paris,' by 'George Peele. There will be a further reading of ' Romeo and Juliet.'

Musical Society. A very successful concert was held on Thursday, 26th May, at which the performers were Miss Venables, Mrs. Sutton, Mrs. Thring, Mrs. Farnell, string quartet ; Mr. Lund-Yates (Oriel) bass ; cal at the piano, Miss N. W. Preston (0.H.S., President of the Musi Society). The programme included songs by Purcell and by Gustav Hoist, quartets by Haydn and Percy Grainger ; part of the Schumann quintet Op. 44 ; and a sonata for violin and 'cello by Corelli.

ST. HILDA'S. Mr. Ridley addressed the Poetry Club on ' The Modern Ballad ' on June and.

The College Dance was a tremendous success.

games 1Rotices SOMERVILLE COLLEGE TENNIS CLUB. Captain—N. DEBES. Secretary—E. OLDFIELD. Treasurer—K. KENYON. v. E. Sharp's VI. Drawn. v. O.H.S. Won, 6-3.

SECOND VI. v. St. Hilda's Second VI. Won, 9—o. v. L.M.H. Second VI. Lost, 5-3.

The final of the First VI will be played against L.M.H. The Club has had a fairly successful term, in spite of the fact that the standard of play among the freshers has been disappointing. Brock is a very useful player, and Badcock played very well indeed in the Second VI Cuppers. The rest of the freshers have shown much keenness, but not a great deal of skill. J. Darling and S. Norman Butler have improved considerably since last year, and are both good match-players. I should like to thank E. Oldfield and K. Kenyon for all that they have done this term.

FIRST VI : E. Oldfield and N. Debes ; K. Kenyon and T. Brock ; B. Sanderson and S. Norman Butler.

SECOND VI: G. Sheppard (capt.) and J. Darling ; J. Gibbon and S. Martin ; M. Birley and B. Badcock.

FIRST VI.

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