SHORT STORY COMPETITION

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 97, 27 April 1933, Page 22

SHORT STORY COMPETITION

APRIL AWARD. CJ The prize in the April short story competition Lj is awarded to CHRISTINE COMBER.

"A LITTLE ATTEMPT"

(By CHRISTINE COMBER.)

There were seven lodgers at "Cosy Nook." Usually there were ten, but Miss Border had snubbed three of them so thoroughly that they: had all one after the other gone to-the landlady with some excuse or another and given notice. And the landlady was upset, because they were such, nice young ladies and Miss Border was such a cross old thing, and an American at that. But it never occurred to her to tell Miss Border to go. She would not have dared.

Miss Border had been'a school teacher and she knew everything. - Absolutely everything, from Rant to Homer and from Rembrandt to Einstein. -There was nothing you could begin talking about but she could take your : argument to pieces, tell you where you went wrong and publicly set you right, so that you had a lesson on the subject of your own ignorance and at the same time the other lodgers had one on the particular subject you were unhappy enough, to bring up. Science, religion, medicine, biology, painting, poetry, music. It was all the same. We other lodgers did not exactly suffer in silence, but our attempts at self-assertion never got us anything but a gimlet stare and a sharp "Young man, have you read Hegel in the original? I thought not!" And you were squashed.

Meal times resolved themselves into free instruction classes. If nobody provided her with: an opening, Miss Border would recite an item of news from the daily paper such, as "I see that John Galsworthy has been given the Nobel Prize." And there would _ follow- a lengthy discourse on the writings of Mr. John Galsworthy, his style, his scope, his age and appearance, his home life, his: genius and his limitations: For to Miss Border every writer r had limitations. But a more favourite topic with her was the discovery of some such thing as helium or radium, or ether or something -we knew nothing whatever about. The more complete ,our ignorance, - the greater was her enjoyment. Bob Travers used to swear that she read it all up beforehand on purpose. We all thought that, but what-good did that do? She was old enough to command a fair amount of deference', even from the terrible modern generation, t So. we put up with it and garnered here and there a little gratuitous instruction. And then a young American named Scott Limpten came .to "Cosy Nook." He: was a dark, fiery, brilliant young free lance, travelling round the world with a camera and a notebook. He had our unstinted admiration from the start, for he had been almost everywhere, and had really seen the Ganges and the Himalayas and the. Pyramids with his own eyes. He had left his home in Salt Lake City where his father was a doctor, he told us, and had been round the -world three times since then. Heianswered our questions willingly enough, and our imagination was thoroughly fired by his tales of African desert, and Paris nights, and mornings among the Swiss Alps. Yes, he had •written a novel or two, and half a dozen plays, but mostly he just got as far off the beaten track as he could.and wrote articles about it. Ultimately he might put them together and have them published in book form. He showed us some of the photographs and told us how he had got himself into hot water with the native races more than once as a result of his camera; He had only come to New Zealand to visit Kotorua. "A chap told me about it in Montevideo," he said, "so I thought while I was as near as Suva it would be a crime not to come." Yes'; he thought he would stay a few days in Auckland. There was no hurry. No hurry in the world. Bob Travers asked him if he could afford to wander about like that. There was a light in Bob's eyes that made me think he wondered if he couldn't do the same. . , .'

The young American just laughed. "No," he said: "I can't afford it. But I was born a rolling stone with a map of the world in my pocket. Sometimes I have a bit of a coup .and then I move on in state by rail, or boat, but mostly I'm pretty broke and just get along as hest. I can hitch-hiking. You see more that way, too. Railroads are all right, but they'll never land you anything that hasn't been done to death by every scribbler that'agone before you.".: '■,

Bob asked him how he knew where to g«- ; for his material.

he answered. "Erom the! top of Sugar Loaf at the entrance to Riorde Janeiro to the Ghats of the Ganges and the narrow streets of Bombay. But," he added "gaily, "I*ll never befa rich man, and I'd better jstay heart-whole, for I couldn't take a girl to some of the places I've.poked my nose into, even if I could afford to pay her fare."

We were, just at the height of our enjoyment when Miss Border came back from visiting her married sister. She always returned bristling with disapproval of Mary's ways of managing the children and vented it all on us. Mary, it appeared, was a lax disciplinarian. . . Miss Border was introduced to Se&tt Limpten and glared him over. He did not seem to pass muster at all, for instead of suggesting an hour of bridge she sat down and began to court-martial him in a quite polite if preliminary way. And had his .novels been successful? Hm! Four thousand copies were nothing really. Now f take ihe sales of G. B. Shaw, or H. G. Wells, or. Sheila Kaye-i Smith, or Arnold Bennett, or the great Galsworthy himself. Now these were sales! There were far too many writers, she told Limpten, far too many, and she included Bob Travers in her scathing glance, since he alone had dared to remark that he thought Limpt'en's idea; was jolly brainy. We all glanced at Limpten to try to let him linderstand that we were with him. But he seemed not to notice that he was being told more or less pointedly that he was one of those modern young men who think of nothing but excitement, and of everything except settling down and taking a responsible part in the life of the community. Instead, he led her gently back to where she began, and soon we were hearing for the twentieth or thirtieth time why John Galsworthy should have been awarded the Nobel Prize before Bernard Shaw.

Limpten, it soon turned out, was a Galswortkian admirer, too. But he got little chance to say much about his own •views. Miss Border held the floor and, refuser" 1 to let anybody else come near

it. "The Forsyte Saga" was, of course, his masterpiece. But "Caravan" contained some wonderful material. And his plays! And he had even produced a book of poems. There was versatility for you! And where among the younger moderns would you find that?

Limpten then did what none of us had yet dared to do. He said he thought there was a good deal to be said for the modern movement and that anyway he was tired and thought he'd turn in. And he . smiled and nodded and took himself off. Miss Border looked as if she could not believe that any young man had really not wanted to listen to her—had, : in fact, gone to bed right in the middle of her dissertation on Aldous Huxley. And from the expression on her. face we guessed that there would be no quarter for Scott Limpten.

I think we all showed signs of mutiny in the six days that followed. Scott Limpten had stirred us to a realisation that we were pretty weak specimens. At least that's the way we felt. His nomadic wanderings had completely put our study and clerking in the shade. Even the commercial traveller looked depressed. Mies Border alone was unimpressed even by his latest play that had already, made him three hundred pounds.

There were two voices now at the dinner table. Limptcn would not let Miss Border's wholesale condemnation of everything the younger writers were doing pass unchallenged. He argued. He contradicted. He even thumped the taWe and told her that she was not in a position to judge unless she had read their works! At that we trembled. Miss Border grew angrier and angrier, and added an indictment of the manners of the young people of to-day. Shocking! Disgraceful, in fact!

That afternoon after a set of tennis Scott Limpten said suddenly, "Do you know, I don't helieve that old maid really does enjoy Shaw and Wells and Galsworthy and the rest on their merits at all, but only because they're successful proved 'i and ticketed. I don't believe she knows a single thing about the modern trend. She doesn't want to know. She's a high-brow of the worst type. Narrow and bigoted and unprogressive and jealous of anything that anybody not born umpteen years befbreher might do. Gosh! but folks like that fair get my goat. I've come up against them all over the world, but I didn't think I'd have to find a New Yorker going on like that away over here." .

That seemed to annoy Limpten as much as anything, that she was an American and that she was unprogrcssive. And certainly it would be hard to find a greater contrast than those two. '~''«« On Limpten's last night at Cosy Nook" we. threw a party. It was funny how we had got to like the chap in such a short time. And he seemed to like us. Miss Border alone refused to see anything but restlessness and instability in him. She kept asking him to read us parts Of his notes on Borneo and Sumatra. At last he said that he would read us a little attempt he had written some time back. No, it.wasn't an article. It wa sa etory. He didn't think it was as good as some other' things he had done, but still, we could decide for ourselves. And he looked meaningly- at Miss Border. She. said certainly, we would all give a quite impartial opinion, and it would be a pleasure to hear his story. - ■ i ■ - He brought it down in manuscript, about a dozen sheets, loosely written. Crossing straight" over to the table, he sat down and read the story without any of the usual preliminary explanations and -throat-clearing .of. the writer about to read his own efforts. It was called "A Long Ago Affair." Clearly he read it, slowly, with correct emphasis as, if he were declaiming a . Shakespearean, soliloquy." At last he finished with the words, "Heh! dear —a little long-ago affair!" ; We sat in . silence. We had liked the story. Miss Border broke the silencet. "Quite, a. praiseworthy effort, young man," she said. "I admit you know how to write. Or you will when you are older. Your chief fault is immaturity. But you can't be mature till you're a mature age. So I'll say no more of that. But you don't really know your character. Quite a good creation, I'll admit, but then you young people who presume to write about the Victorian era amuse me. .You don't know the Victorians. You can't know them. So why try to write about them? And your style is far too exclamatory. What I suggest for you is a good stiff ] course of Galswor+hy."

'Scott Limpten laid the maruscript Cn the table. He" thanked Miosßor'er politely for so maoh en-orjajement.

"Well, folks, I think I'll be going to bed," he said. "I've got to make an early start in the morning. And thanks for the party. I must say, if you're any way typical of Aucklanders, I think you're a jolly sporting lot."

We shook hands all round, and Limpten went off upstairs. We heard him pulling a suitcase about over our heads. And then Bob Travers noticed the manuscript lying on the table.

"He's left this," he said, picking it up. And then he gasped and passed it to me and went out of the room quickly. I passed it on and went out too. And lastly it was passed to Miss Border by Ted Haye, and he came up to bed too. And on the manuscript was written, "A Long Ago Affair." By John Galsworthy. Copied from his book "Captures."