August 1 , 1918 
Land & Water 
15 
The Magneto: A Story by Enid Bagnold 
A 
DA PHILPOT,' 
up outside tlie 
she wrote on the sheet hung 
office, and, passing into tlie 
lecture-room, took a seat by the door; 
"That must be a board-school girl," whispered 
my neighbour. 
"Yes?" 
"Yes; I know the type." 
Miss Philpot had sma^l feet, blunt toes, and thick ankles 
which crept towards the outside hem of her skirt instead 
of running up the middle of her like a stalk. She wore a 
mackintosh with a belt, dark-brown kid gloves whose leather 
crinkled across her blunt fingers like the back of an old toad. 
and round her neck — a neck in keeping with her toes and 
fingers — was a man's striped scarf. 
A little discoloured mackintosh hat was pulled as far on 
to her head in front as it was up in the air at the back. 
"She wants to be a van-driver," the voice whispered to 
me again. "She said she wanted to drive 'down into the 
country with the parcels.' " 
The course of lessons cost nine pounds ; she hardly looked 
as if she could have afforded it. All through the first lesson 
she sat heavily, without so much as crossing her knees or 
even taking off her gloves. Indeed, she never once took 
them off during any of the classes. She sat heavily, but 
there must have been a sort of inward light. 
"What," said the lecturer, "sends the Wheels forward?" 
We murmured uneasily, and the murmur seemed to 
indicate that it was "the machinery," 
"Come!" said the lecturer. 
"The road," replied Miss Philpot in a choked voice. 
We would like to have laughed. 
.\t the second class it appeared that she had been studying 
her text-books, and even reading up a chapter in advance, 
for at each piece of knowledge that -was handed fo her she 
nodded her head absorbedly. 
"That is how they learn in the board-schools," said my 
neighbour. "Like a parrot." 
So class after class went on — brakes, engine, lubrication. 
Even the differential, though puzzling, had no real mystery. 
The body is intimate and friendly. It is the soul which 
alarms. One afternoon when we came together, a little, 
dome-shaped object stood upon the lecturer's table. 
"This," he said, and he touched it, not with his stick, 
but gently with his finger, "is the magneto." 
Miss Philpot listened to him. She had not had the sun 
and the moon e.xplained to her. When lightning had leapt 
across the tractless sky she had been told to close the shutters 
of man's little house-box, and when thunder pealed she had 
put her fingers in her ears. 
Alas, Miss Philpot, poor child. When the lecturer held 
a paper over the magnet, and the steel shavings bristled 
into position and showed the stream of the magnetic field, 
he should have explained to her in the simplest terms she 
knew: "God did that!" As it was, she may have had 
a suspicion that he himself had done it cleverly by 
blowing. 
She followed him up to a certain point. It was reason- 
able and within her comprehension that an electric current, 
accustomed to a normal channel, should, when squeezed 
between narrovycr banks, rush faster, press harder, and 
become something that he called a "high tension." 
But what this current was, that it should have no colour 
and no form, no birth or death, was inconceivable, and 
hurt her to think of. It Jiad no shape ! She shuddered 
when she realised such dark pits arid holes in learning. 
She was bidden to look at the (Jisc that held the platinum 
points. . The path of the current was pointed out to her 
at the end of a pencil — that lightning obstacle race, in which 
the current, refusing blind alleys without groping or delay, 
slips through the open doorways of carbon and metal, and 
arrives at last at the brink of that teasing, tantalising chasm, 
the platinum points of the make-and-break, where the poor 
current, convulsed with uncertainty, is alternately refused 
and allowed passage. 
The lecturer took an end of wire and made the spark 
stutter for her to see. There was wonder and servility in 
her face. "Marvellous are thy works, oh, I'pper Classes! 
Great is the brain of a gentleman ! " 
She took the uninsulated end of a wire in her fingers. 
"It's in here ? " she asked, and gave it a sinister significance. 
The lecturer made a contact for her, and she dropped the 
wire hurriedly, but without laughter. "Yes," she said, 
and appeared to brood. 
It was the first time in her life that she had met Mystery. 
"It is a natural force," said the lecturer, and it seemed 
to him commonplace. 
"A force ..." she repeated after him. And suddenly, 
raising her head: "But where from? Who hits it ?" 
She had an idea of a force, hke a blow, propelled by some 
original fist. When she said "Who hits it ?" her eyes were 
dark. "Who, after all, hits everything?"^ — was what I 
saw in them. "Behold the round world, visited by wind 
and water, as simply as milk is poured into the cat's saucer. 
Who holds the jug ? Who starts the river ? What propels 
the wind ? " 
"God," they would have- told her in the board-school, 
sheltering under that thundery blanket. Here, among the 
mysteries of this class, God had not once been offered as a 
solution. Her mind lay all the wider spread for wonder. 
She could not breathe long in that air, but sank from 
wonder to bewilderment ; the beam of science was too 
bhght, too like a sword. For nine pounds they were asking 
her to learn magic ; she had not known she could have 
bought so much with her savings. 
From that time on she wore the look of a dog when a 
match has been struck too near its nose. She was uneasy, 
unhappy, alarmed, and hid from us under the brim of her 
mackintosh hat. 
The last classes drew upon us, the last precious gifts of 
knowledge before the final test ; and that, too, came and* 
passed, leaving some of us high and dry, and making others 
happy. On the day after the test, when we had still one more 
class to finish the course. Miss Philpot arrived tear-stained, 
and, taking a chair just inside the door, as she had done 
on the first day, sat unheeding and heavy, her shoulders 
humped, her gloved hands apart upon her knees. Then, 
as the class was ending, some Special sense of her unhappi- 
ness seemed to defeat her, and she rose to her feet and 
slipped through the door, which, swinging open again after 
her hurried pull, showed her going from us with shaking 
shoulders. 
"What's up with her?" said one. 
"I suppose she has failed in her exam." 
"Well, so have lots of us. . . . " 
We gathered our books together, and said good-bye to 
each other before we went, full-blown mechanics, into the 
outer world. 
"Did she fail hopelessly?" 
"Oh, yes. And cried dreadfully. I suppose the money 
was a difficulty. She can't get nine pounds again, and it's 
rather thrown away now she has failed. 
"But she can take the test again another month." 
"She can't afford to wait ; and, besides, she hasn't under- 
stood anything. She told me she was going back to service." 
"Service ! . . ." 
"She was a kitchen-maid, you know." 
A kitchen-maid ! . . . Pity bloomed in our hearts. We 
felt ourselves in touch with her ambitions, her difficulties, 
her careful saving. We looked into her life with penetrating 
eyes, and saw that she was a touching figure. 
"Let's collect some money !" we cried; "She might take 
the course again— or, at least, take her tfist next month.' 
She ought to be li^lped ! " 
"Yes!" e.xclaimed the class, "yes . . ."—and began 
slipping through the doorway. We hunted for umbrellas, 
pulled on mackintoshes, hungry for lunch, glad the last 
lesson was ' over. 
In the scrimmage and good-byes nobody gave anythmg. 
The Gospel of Chimneys 
By Capt. Sherard Vines 
How far the stour and reek of them 
Who lift thereup all day 
Beyond the woods, beyond the hills. 
This signal, "Come and pray." 
"Come and do worship at this church 
.Ml tliHt have brain or thew, 
Wide our unlovely precincts are 
To hold the like of you. 
In running belt and biting cog 
Shall your salvation lie, 
Of furnace strength and skill at lathe 
Spring vour doxology. 
The desk "is mightier than the field. 
The jjen most strong to save. 
Since who will dare to bondage there 
He will not fear the grave." 
