THE YOUNG IDEA

Southland Times, Issue 20201, 11 June 1927, Page 13 (Supplement)

THE YOUNG IDEA

THE NIGHT OFF

(By S>

Susan Lee.)

“Invitations must be pouring down on Him,” said the first shade, leaning on his shovel at the mouth of Hell. "One thing about the winter, it’s an enormous saving of fuel, now that He goes up nearly every night, leaving us to our own resources. These dance parties are certainly a great idea. Better for us than all our trade unions and forty-four hour weeks. If we’d thought of them soon enough there’d have been no need for striking, and defying him openly. If the bright idea (aren’t all our ideas bright here) had only been born sooner, there would have been no need for our propaganda and producing dud fuel to bring Him to His senses. No working shifts now, and we’d all be there to meet the ferry at nights to join in ducking the green-horns in the jolly old Styx. Here we are, tied down by our union to waste our time by the fires niobody but a fool or a blessed angel would stand by with the Old Man away, and no substitute. W’here’d he go . to-night, anyway?” ' "Opening of some new show. Swell joint. ■ Gentleman came down with special license, I and they went up together like blooming ' Siamese twins.” The voice of the second shade was slightly envious. He prodded viciously at a live coal with his stub of a poker, nearly falling into the pit in his intensity. The other spat good-humouredly, and the sound of the spittle on the blazing embers might have been laughter, it was so sudden and short and detached. “What is a gentleman?” he asked, flicking a piece of brimstone from between his teeth with the tip of his tail. "Was his bearing gentlemanly, indicating a course of action not bounded by definite rules, but relying on the good taste (or appetite) of the mass of men, an innate directing and controlling force, for its perpetuation? A gentleman —Bah!—a man who will only seduce a girl when he is wearing a dress-suit. There’s your pretty gentleman.” More sizzling on the coals, and this time the laughter was clearly sardonic. I “You seem to have been a regular lady’s I man,” remarked the other mildly. In fact j there was so much mildness in his whole attitude that he was barely visible. “Might | I suggest you have been misplaced—” i “Not only was I a regular lady’s man, ■ but I tell you quite frankly that I was the last of my kind. There are many who can create a precedent, old chap. I am numbered amongst the few who have j broken one! The age of chivalry died with I me. I was the last man to name woman womanly, and with my life thread the custom broke. I saw in woman the qualities becoming to woman, and pronounced them good. That is why I am not remembered, w’hy there are no monuments erected to my memory in the public square, why there is no sacred vault encrusted with my name. When I died, the race that sprang up to replace me wore bell-bottomed trousers and ' sleeked its hair with grease. The explan- ' ation was that the bonds of conventional prudery had been broken. There was more than that amongst the debris. My body lay there, with the garments I had been buried in already rotted about me. Wpman could not preserve her fragrance in such a place, and had to move on, higher up. Lilies do not flourish in a Freedom was essential to her existence. Before its desir- ! ability had not been eo pressing. There’s the sting of my death, and although we lead a sheltered and entirely blameless existence j now. I can’t help having regrets at times, : especially when the relaxed pressure of j work allows more time for reminiscence.” ' “I perceive,” said the other, “that your oft-repeated belief in reincarnation is not without its purpose. If you have a chance of getting back, it’s obvious you’ll change your sex if you have any say in the matter.” "There’s not a doubt in a thousand about that! I’ll be a woman, or stay here. That is, of course,” he added somewhat lamely, “if I can get my way. And when you come to think of it, I should be treated with ' a certain amount of consideration, after all I’ve done to establish a system of working down here. You must admit conditions were really chaotic when I arrived, and in the little leisure I’ve had, I’ve made rather an impression. If He’s any sort of a sport ! at all, the Old Man will remember that , when He’s sending me back.” • “But wouldn’t you dislike having to plod through a second childhood, and going through all the distressing stages you’ve already had to go through once?” “Not with my goal in view! I think you’d find when you’d got there that the stages I when the washing of your ears is supervised, and the brushing of your teeth, and I the chanting of your prayers, would soon pass—and think of the goal! Shade of a man, think of the goal! When my thoughts dwell long on the sublime scope of woman’s art, I reel with intoxicated ecstasy, and it is only a consciousness of the uncomfortable degree of heat to which I would be exposed, that prevents me from falling into the pit in my dizziness.” “What do you mean by woman’s art? Do you mean to say you’d be content with rearing babies —?” “Silence,” thundered the other, and his tail twitched convulsively. “This is indeed Hell that I should be in the presence of such blatant ignorance. My humiliation is only exceeded by my exaltation when I contemplate a future existence amongst the women who are asserting themselves. Woman has not written much, I grant you. What she has done is merely a prologue introducing what she is going to do. Man has written his epilogue, but refuses to write the ‘finis’ which would close its pages, and in his egoism sees in woman’s prologue an invitation to continue a controversy which actually does not exist. I’ve worked . pretty faithfully down here, and if I get my I deserts I’ll have no regrets about time illspent. In these years I’ve become an exI cellent stoker, and something of an in--1 ventor, and I confess that it’s only under conditions such as these that my creative powers could have been developed. It’s been a novel experience, and I would carry away with me many pleasant memories. All I ask now is that I be placed in some flourishing country like New Zealand, for instance, and allowed to take part in the establishment of woman’s Main Theme.” “New Zealand? Isn’t that where Fergus Hume came from? It cannot be a land of women writers. There’s Hector Bolitho, too, and surely some unknown. Bolitho’s a dud, but didn’t Fergus Hume write some of the best mystery stories in the language?” “My dear fellow, if it wasn’t for our surroundings, I’d suspect you were in for a bad dose of the ’flu. Against Katherine Mansfield and Jean Devanny and Jane Mander you can only oppose Fergus Hume? Doesn’t it dawn on your restricted intellect that I am talking about something far removed from mystery stories? If they were all I could hope for, I’d certainly not budge from here. If you must include these dreadful people, how do you place Anna K. Greene, whose detective stories created quite an amazing furore of conjecture? She wasn’t a New Zealander, but she was a woman who beat a New Zealander like Fergus Hume on his own ground. But the New Zealand woman are doing much bigger stuff than that. You seem to have forgotten with as much ease as you always forget the Mrs Baker who was ‘Alien,’ and the many novels she had published. I neither endorse nor condemn Jean Devanny and Jane Mander—but against the women 1 you can only oppose two men, Hector

Bolitho and Fergus Hume. Really, your memory is so bad. Let me add for you Captain Platts of the Union Steamship Company, who wrote pretty punk sea yarns, and Professor Macmillan Brown who wrote two ‘economic’ stories of the ‘ideal’ state—both very dull and very weak—they are forgotten now, thank the goodness that paired us two together.”

“I am very grateful for that honour. Life here would be so very monotonous without you. I don’t know what I’ll do when you go up again. But really, old fellow, isn’t your choice of Jean Devanny and Jane Mander—well, aren’t they—er—rather—frankly, they’re pretty hot—sexy!” “Sexy! My dear fellow, you make me suspicious. I used to notice often up there that the men who were loudest in condemning what pleased them to call ‘pruriency,’ talked and thought about it a great deal. And why this diffidence? Why shouldn’t women discuss sex, who know most about it? Where’d you be without it, I’d like to know? By the three-forked tail of his Highness, why should it be hidden under reams of esoteric splurge, when it is one of the great forces in existence? Hello! Who in the name of all that’s unholy brushed past so rudely? Since the Old Man’s been leaving us so much alone, manners and common courtesy have completely gone to the pack. Who were those two fellows, and where were they going?”

“What! Do you mean to say you didn’t recognise Rabelais and Boccaccio? And you’ve been here so long! They’ve got the night off, and are rushing up to be present at the revelations of a master. They’ve been working overtime ever since some chappie called Fea announced he was going to be self-revelatory. Now I come to think of it, it was in that New Zealand of yours, if I’m not mistaken.”