P. G. Wodehouse (4 page)

When they had left, the remaining four Powers would continue the
invasion jointly.

Prince Otto of Saxe-Pfennig went to bed that night, comfortably
conscious of a good work well done. He saw his way now clear before
him.

But he had made one miscalculation. He had not reckoned with Clarence
Chugwater.

Night!

Night in Aldwych!

In the centre of that vast tract of unreclaimed prairie known to
Londoners as the Aldwych Site there shone feebly, seeming almost to
emphasise the darkness and desolation of the scene, a single light.

It was the camp-fire of the Boy Scouts.

The night was raw and windy. A fine rain had been falling for some
hours. The date of September the First. For just a month England had
been in the grip of the invaders. The coloured section of the hostile
force had either reached its home by now, or was well on its way. The
public had seen it go with a certain regret. Not since the visit of the
Shah had such an attractive topic of conversation been afforded them.
Several comic journalists had built up a reputation and a large price
per thousand words on the King of Bollygolla alone. Theatres had
benefited by the index of a large, new, unsophisticated public. A piece
at the Waldorf Theatre had run for a whole fortnight, and "The Merry
Widow" had taken on a new lease of life. Selfridge's, abandoning its
policy of caution, had advertised to the extent of a quarter of a
column in two weekly papers.

Now the Young Turks were back at school in Constantinople, shuffling
their feet and throwing ink pellets at one another; Raisuli, home again
in the old mountains, was working up the kidnapping business, which had
fallen off sadly in his absence under the charge of an incompetent
locum tenens
; and the Chinese, the Bollygollans, and the troops
of the Mad Mullah were enduring the miseries of sea-sickness out in
mid-ocean.

The Swiss army had also gone home, in order to be in time for the
winter hotel season. There only remained the Germans, the Russians, and
the troops of Monaco.

In the camp of the Boy Scouts a vast activity prevailed.

Few of London's millions realise how tremendous and far-reaching an
association the Boy Scouts are. It will be news to the Man in the
Street to learn that, with the possible exception of the Black Hand,
the Scouts are perhaps the most carefully-organised secret society in
the world.

Their ramifications extend through the length and breadth of England.
The boys you see parading the streets with hockey-sticks are but a
small section, the aristocrats of the Society. Every boy in England,
and many a man, is in the pay of the association. Their funds are
practically unlimited. By the oath of initiation which he takes on
joining, every boy is compelled to pay into the common coffers a
percentage of his pocket-money or his salary. When you drop his weekly
three and sixpence into the hand of your office-boy on Saturday,
possibly you fancy he takes it home to mother. He doesn't. He spend
two-and-six on Woodbines. The other shilling goes into the treasury of
the Boy Scouts. When you visit your nephew at Eton, and tip him five
pounds or whatever it is, does he spend it at the sock-shop?
Apparently, yes. In reality, a quarter reaches the common fund.

Take another case, to show the Boy Scouts' power. You are a City
merchant, and, arriving at the office one morning in a bad temper, you
proceed to cure yourself by taking it out of the office-boy. He says
nothing, apparently does nothing. But that evening, as you are going
home in the Tube, a burly working-man treads heavily on your gouty
foot. In Ladbroke Grove a passing hansom splashes you with mud.
Reaching home, you find that the cat has been at the cold chicken and
the butler has given notice. You do not connect these things, but they
are all alike the results of your unjust behaviour to your office-boy
in the morning. Or, meeting a ragged little matchseller, you pat his
head and give him six-pence. Next day an anonymous present of champagne
arrives at your address.

Terrible in their wrath, the Boy Scouts never forget kindness.

The whistle of a Striped Iguanodon sounded softly in the darkness. The
sentry, who was pacing to and fro before the camp-fire, halted, and
peered into the night. As he peered, he uttered the plaintive note of a
zebra calling to its mate.

A voice from the darkness said, "Een gonyama-gonyama."

"Invooboo," replied the sentry argumentatively "Yah bo! Yah bo!
Invooboo."

An indistinct figure moved forward.

"Who goes there?"

"A friend."

"Advance, friend, and give the countersign."

"Remember Mafeking, and death to Injuns."

"Pass friend! All's well."

The figure walked on into the firelight. The sentry started; then
saluted and stood to attention. On his face was a worshipping look of
admiration and awe, such as some young soldier of the Grande Armee
might have worn on seeing Napoleon; for the newcomer was Clarence
Chugwater.

"Your name?" said Clarence, eyeing the sturdy young warrior.

"Private William Buggins, sir."

"You watch well, Private Buggins. England has need of such as you."

He pinched the young Scout's ear tolerantly. The sentry flushed with
pleasure.

"My orders have been carried out?" said Clarence.

"Yes, sir. The patrols are all here."

"Enumerate them."

"The Chinchilla Kittens, the Bongos, the Zebras, the Iguanodons, the
Welsh Rabbits, the Snapping Turtles, and a half-patrol of the 33rd
London Gazekas, sir."

Clarence nodded.

"'Tis well," he said. "What are they doing?"

"Some of them are acting a Scout's play, sir; some are doing Cone
Exercises; one or two are practising deep breathing; and the rest are
dancing an Old English Morris Dance."

Clarence nodded.

"They could not be better employed. Inform them that I have arrived and
would address them."

The sentry saluted.

Standing in an attitude of deep thought, with his feet apart, his hands
clasped behind him, and his chin sunk upon his breast, Clarence made a
singularly impressive picture. He had left his Essex home three weeks
before, on the expiration of his ten days' holiday, to return to his
post of junior sub-reporter on the staff of a leading London evening
paper. It was really only at night now that he got any time to himself.
During the day his time was his paper's, and he was compelled to spend
the weary hours reading off results of races and other sporting items
on the tape-machine. It was only at 6 p.m. that he could begin to
devote himself to the service of his country.

The Scouts had assembled now, and were standing, keen and alert, ready
to do Clarence's bidding.

Clarence returned their salute moodily.

"Scout-master Wagstaff," he said.

The Scout-master, the leader of the troop formed by the various
patrols, stepped forward.

"Let the war-dance commence."

Clarence watched the evolutions absently. His heart was ill-attuned to
dances. But the thing had to be done, so it was as well to get it over.
When the last movement had been completed, he raised his hand.

"Men," he said, in his clear, penetrating alto, "although you have not
the same facilities as myself for hearing the latest news, you are all,
by this time, doubtless aware that this England of ours lies 'neath the
proud foot of a conqueror. It is for us to save her. (Cheers, and a
voice "Invooboo!") I would call on you here and now to seize your
hockey-sticks and rush upon the invader, were it not, alas! that such
an action would merely result in your destruction. At present the
invader is too strong. We must wait; and something tells me that we
shall not have to wait long. (Applause.) Jealousy is beginning to
spring up between the Russians and the Germans. It will be our task to
aggravate this feeling. With our perfect organisation this should be
easy. Sooner or later this smouldering jealousy is going to burst into
flame. Any day now," he proceeded, warming as he spoke, "there may be
the dickens of a dust-up between these Johnnies, and then we've got 'em
where the hair's short. See what I mean, you chaps? It's like this. Any
moment they may start scrapping and chaw each other up, and then we'll
simply sail in and knock what's left endways."

A shout of applause went up from the assembled scouts.

"What I am anxious to impress upon you men," concluded Clarence, in
more measured tones, "is that our hour approaches. England looks to us,
and it is for us to see that she does not look in vain. Sedulously
feeding the growing flame of animosity between the component parts of
the invading horde, we may contrive to bring about that actual
disruption. Till that day, see to it that you prepare yourselves for
war. Men, I have finished."

"What the Chief Scout means," said Scout-master Wagstaff, "is no
rotting about and all that sort of rot. Jolly well keep yourselves fit,
and then, when the time comes, we'll give these Russian and German
blighters about the biggest hiding they've ever heard of. Follow the
idea? Very well, then. Mind you don't go mucking the show up."

"Een gonyama-gonyama!" shouted the new thoroughly roused troops.
"Invooboo! Yah bo! Yah bo! Invooboo!"

The voice of Young England—of Young England alert and at its post!

Historians, when they come to deal with the opening years of the
twentieth century, will probably call this the Music-Hall Age. At the
time of the great invasion the music-halls dominated England. Every
town and every suburb had its Hall, most of them more than one. The
public appetite for sight-seeing had to be satisfied somehow, and the
music-hall provided the easiest way of doing it. The Halls formed a
common place on which the celebrity and the ordinary man could meet. If
an impulsive gentleman slew his grandmother with a coal-hammer, only a
small portion of the public could gaze upon his pleasing features at
the Old Bailey. To enable the rest to enjoy the intellectual treat, it
was necessary to engage him, at enormous expense, to appear at a
music-hall. There, if he happened to be acquitted, he would come on the
stage, preceded by an asthmatic introducer, and beam affably at the
public for ten minutes, speaking at intervals in a totally inaudible
voice, and then retire; to be followed by some enterprising lady who
had endeavoured, unsuccessfully, to solve the problem of living at the
rate of ten thousand a year on an income of nothing, or who had
performed some other similarly brainy feat.

It was not till the middle of September that anyone conceived what one
would have thought the obvious idea of offering music-hall engagements
to the invading generals.

The first man to think of it was Solly Quhayne, the rising young agent.
Solly was the son of Abraham Cohen, an eminent agent of the Victorian
era. His brothers, Abe Kern, Benjamin Colquhoun, Jack Coyne, and Barney
Cowan had gravitated to the City; but Solly had carried on the old
business, and was making a big name for himself. It was Solly who had
met Blinky Bill Mullins, the prominent sand-bagger, as he emerged from
his twenty years' retirement at Dartmoor, and booked him solid for a
thirty-six months' lecturing tour on the McGinnis circuit. It was to
him, too, that Joe Brown, who could eat eight pounds of raw meat in
seven and a quarter minutes, owed his first chance of displaying his
gifts to the wider public of the vaudeville stage.

The idea of securing the services of the invading generals came to him
in a flash.

"S'elp me!" he cried. "I believe they'd go big; put 'em on where you
like."

Solly was a man of action. Within a minute he was talking to the
managing director of the Mammoth Syndicate Halls on the telephone. In
five minutes the managing director had agreed to pay Prince Otto of
Saxe-Pfennig five hundred pounds a week, if he could be prevailed upon
to appear. In ten minutes the Grand Duke Vodkakoff had been engaged,
subject to his approval, at a weekly four hundred and fifty by the
Stone-Rafferty circuit. And in a quarter of an hour Solly Quhayne,
having pushed his way through a mixed crowd of Tricky Serios and
Versatile Comedians and Patterers who had been waiting to see him for
the last hour and a half, was bowling off in a taximeter-cab to the
Russian lines at Hampstead.

General Vodkakoff received his visitor civilly, but at first without
enthusiasm. There were, it seemed, objections to his becoming an
artiste. Would he have to wear a properly bald head and sing songs
about wanting people to see his girl? He didn't think he could. He had
only sung once in his life, and that was twenty years ago at a
bump-supper at Moscow University. And even then, he confided to Mr.
Quhayne, it had taken a decanter and a-half of neat vodka to bring him
up to the scratch.

The agent ridiculed the idea.

"Why, your Grand Grace," he cried, "there won't be anything of that
sort. You ain't going to be starred as a
comic
. You're a Refined
Lecturer and Society Monologue Artist. 'How I Invaded England,' with
lights down and the cinematograph going. We can easily fake the
pictures."

The Grand Duke made another objection.

"I understand," he said, "it is etiquette for music-hall artists in
their spare time to eat—er—fried fish with their fingers. Must I do
that? I doubt if I could manage it."

Mr Quhayne once more became the human semaphore.

"S'elp me! Of course you needn't! All the leading pros, eat it with a
spoon. Bless you, you can be the refined gentleman on the Halls same as
anywhere else. Come now, your Grand Grace, is it a deal? Four hundred
and fifty chinking o'Goblins a week for one hall a night, and
press-agented at eight hundred and seventy-five. S'elp me! Lauder
doesn't get it, not in England."