She is a very thoughtful child, is my eldest niece. Her thirst for knowledge is a most praiseworthy trait in her character, but has rather an exhausting effect upon the rest of the family. We limit her now to seven hundred questions a day. After she has asked seven hundred questions, and we have answered them – or, rather, as many as we are able – we boycott her, and she retires to bed, indignant, asking:
“Why only seven hundred? Why not eight?”
Nor is her range of enquiry what you would call narrow or circumscribed at all. It embraces most subjects that are known as yet to civilization, from abstract theology to cats; from the failure of marriage to chocolate, and why you must not take it out and look at it when you have once put it inside your mouth.
She has her own opinion, too, about most of these matters, and expresses it with a freedom which is apt to shock respectably brought-up folk. I am not over-orthodox myself, but she staggers even me at times. Her theories are too advanced for me at present.
She has not given much attention to the matter of babies hitherto. It is only this week that she has gone in for that subject. The explanation is – I hardly like mentioning it. Perhaps it – I don’t know, I don’t see that there can be any harm in it, though. Yet – well, the fact of the matter is, there is an “event” expected in our family, or rather, in my brother-in-law’s; and there! – you know how these things get discussed among relations, and May – that is my niece’s name – is one of those children that you are always forgetting is about, and never know how much it has heard and how much it has not.
The child said nothing, however, and all seemed right until last Sunday afternoon. It was a wet day, and I was reading in the breakfast parlour, and Emily was sitting on the sofa, looking at an album of Swiss views with Dick Chetwyn. Dick and Emily are engaged. Dick is a steady young fellow, and Emily loves him dearly, I am sure; but they both suffer, in my opinion, from an over-sense of modesty. As for Emily, it does not so much matter: girls are like that before they are married. But in Dick it seems out of place. They both of them flare up quite scarlet at the simplest joke even. They always make me think of Gilbert’s bashful young couple.
Well, there we were, sitting round, the child on the floor, playing with her bricks. She had been very quiet for about five minutes, and I was just wondering what could be the matter with her, when all of a sudden, and without a word of warning, she observed, in the most casual tone of voice, while continuing her building operations:
“Is Auntie Cissy goin’ to have a little boy baby or a little girl baby, Uncle?”
“Oh, don’t ask silly questions: she hasn’t made up her mind yet.”
“Oh, oh! I think I should ’vise her to have a little girl, ’cause little girls ain’t so much trouble as boys is they? Which would you ’vise her to have, Uncle?”
“Will you go on with your bricks, and not talk about things you don’t understand? We’re not supposed to talk about those sort of things at all. It isn’t proper.”
“Wha isn’t p’oper? Ain’t babies p’oper?”
“No, very improper, especially some of them.”
“’Umph! Then what’s people have ’em for, if they isn’t p’oper?”
“Will you go on with your bricks, or will you not? How much oftener am I to speak to you, I wonder? People can’t help having them. They are sent to chasten us; to teach us what a worrying, drive-you-mad sort of world this is, and we have to put up with them. But there’s no need to talk about them.”
There was silence for a few minutes, and then came:
“Does Uncle Henry know? He’ll be her puppa, won’t he?”
“Eh! What? Know what? What are you talking about now?”
“Does Uncle Henry know ’bout this baby that Auntie Cissy’s going to have?”
“Yes, of course, you little idiot! Does Uncle Henry know!”
“Yes – I s’pose they’d tell him, ’cause, you see, he’ll have to pay for it, won’t he?”
“Well, nobody else will if he doesn’t.”
“It costs heaps and heaps and heaps of money, a baby, don’t it?”
“Yes, heaps.”
“Two shillin’s?”
“Oh, more than that!”
“Yes, I s’pose they’re very ’spensive. Could I have a baby, uncle?”
“Oh, yes; two.”
“No, really! On my birthday?”
“Oh, don’t be so silly! Babies are not dolls. Babies are alive! You don’t buy them. You are given them when you are grown up.”
“Shall I have a baby when I’m growed up?”
“Oh, it all depends! And don’t say ‘growed up’. You’ve been told that before. It’s ‘grown up’, not ‘growed up’. I don’t know where you get your English from.”
“When I’m growned up, then. Shall I have a baby when I’m growned up?”
“Oh, bother the child! Yes, if you’re good and don’t worry, and get married.”
“What’s ‘married’? What Mumma and Puppa is?”
“Yes.”
“And what Auntie Emily and Mr Chetwyn is goin’ to be?”
“Yes – don’t talk so much.”
“Oh! Can’t you have a baby ’less you’re married?”
“No, certainly not.”
“Oh! Will Auntie Emily have a—”
“Go on with your bricks! I’ll take those bricks away from you, if you don’t play quietly with them. You never hear me or your father ask silly questions like that. You haven’t learnt your lessons for tomorrow yet, you know.”
Confound the child! I can’t make out where children get their notions from, confounded little nuisances!
Let me see, what was I writing about? Oh! I know, “tea kettles”. Yes, it ought to be rather an interesting subject, “tea kettles”. I should think a man might write a very good article on “tea kettles”. I must have a try at it one of these days!
A Pathetic Story
Oh! I want you to write the pathetic story for the Christmas number, if you will, old man,” said the editor of the —— Weekly Journal to me, as I poked my head into his den one sunny July morning, some years ago. “Thomas is anxious to have the comic sketch. He says he overheard a joke last week, that he thinks he can work up. I expect I shall have to do the cheerful love story, about the man that everybody thinks is dead and that turns up on Christmas Eve and marries the girl, myself. I was hoping to get out of it this time, but I’m afraid I can’t. Then I shall get Miggs to do the charitable-appeal business. I think he’s the most experienced man we have now for that; and Skittles can run off the cynical column, about the Christmas bills and the indigestion: he’s always very good in a cynical article, Skittles is; he’s got just the correct don’t-know-what-he-means-himself sort of touch for it, if you understand.”
“Skittles”, I may mention, was the nickname we had given to a singularly emotional and seriously inclined member of the staff, whose correct cognomen was Beherhend.
Skittles himself always waxed particularly sentimental over Christmas. During the week preceding that sacred festival, he used to go about literally swelling with geniality and affection for all man- and womankind. He would greet comparative strangers with a burst of delight that other men would have found difficult to work up in the case of a rich relation, and would shower upon them the good wishes, always so plentiful and cheap at that season, with such an evident conviction that practical benefit to the wishee would ensue therefrom as to send them away labouring under a vague sense of obligation.
The sight of an old friend at that period was almost dangerous to him. His feelings would quite overcome him. He could not speak. You feared that he would burst.
He was generally quite laid up on Christmas Day itself, owing to having drunk so many sentimental toasts on Christmas Eve. I never saw such a man as Skittles for proposing and drinking sentimental toa
sts. He would drink to “dear old Christmas time”, and to “dear old England”; and then he would drink to his mother, and all his other relations, and to “lovely woman”, and “old chums”, or he would propose “Friendship”, in the abstract, “may it never grow cool in the heart of a true-born Briton”, and “Love – may it ever look out at us from the eyes of our sweethearts and wives”, or even “the Sun – that is ever shining behind the clouds, dear boys – where we can’t see it, and where it is not of much use to us”. He was so full of sentiment, was Skittles!
But his favourite toast, and the one over which he would become more eloquently lugubrious than over any other, was always “absent friends”. He appeared to be singularly rich in “absent friends”. And it must be said for him that he never forgot them. Whenever and wherever liquor was to his hand, Skittles’s “absent friends” were sure of a drink, and his present friends, unless they displayed great tact and firmness, of a speech calculated to give them all the blues for a week.
Folks did say at one time that Skittles’s eyes usually turned in the direction of the county jail when he pledged this toast; but on its being ascertained that Skittles’s kindly remembrance was not intended to be exclusive, but embraced everybody else’s absent friends as well as his own, the uncharitable suggestion was withdrawn.
Still, we had too much of these “absent friends”, however comprehensive a body they may have been. Skittles overdid the business. We all think highly of our friends when they are absent – more highly, as a rule, than we do of them when they are not absent. But we do not want to be always worrying about them. At a Christmas party, or a complimentary dinner to somebody, or at a shareholders’ meeting, where you naturally feel good and sad, they are in place, but Skittles dragged them in at the most inappropriate seasons. Never shall I forget his proposing their health once at a wedding. It had been a jolly wedding. Everything had gone off splendidly, and everybody was in the best of spirits. The breakfast was over, and quite all the necessary toasts had been drunk. It was getting near the time for the bride and bridegroom to depart, and we were just thinking about collecting the rice and boots with which to finally bless them, when Skittles rose in his place, with a funereal expression on his countenance and a glass of wine in his hand.
I guessed what was coming in a moment. I tried to kick him under the table. I do not mean, of course, that I tried to kick him there altogether; though I am not at all sure whether, under the circumstances, I should not have been justified in going even to that length. What I mean is that the attempt to kick him took place under the table.
It failed, however. True, I did kick somebody, but it evidently could not have been Skittles, for he remained unmoved. In all probability it was the bride, who was sitting next to him. I did not try again, and he started, uninterfered with, on his favourite theme.
“Friends,” he commenced, his voice trembling with emotion, while a tear glistened in his eye, “before we part – some of us, perhaps, never to meet again on earth – before this guileless young couple, who have this day taken upon themselves the manifold trials and troubles of married life, quit the peaceful fold, as it were, to face the bitter griefs and disappointments of this weary life, there is one toast, hitherto undrunk, that I would wish to propose.”
Here he wiped away the before-mentioned tear, and the people looked solemn, and endeavoured to crack nuts without making a noise.
“Friends,” he went on, growing more and more impressive and dejected in his tones, “there are few of us here who have not at some time or other known what it is to lose, through death or travel, a dear beloved one – maybe two or three.”
At this point, he stifled a sob, and the bridegroom’s aunt, at the bottom of the table, whose eldest son had lately left the country at the expense of his relations, upon the clear understanding that he would never again return, began to cry quietly into the ice pudding.
“The fair young maiden at my side,” continued Skittles, clearing his throat, and laying his hand tenderly on the bride’s shoulder, “as you are all aware, was, a few years ago, bereft of her mother. Ladies and gentlemen, what can be more sad than the death of a mother?”
This, of course, had the effect of starting the bride off sobbing. The bridegroom, meaning well, but, naturally, under the circumstances, nervous and excited, sought to console her by murmuring that he felt sure it had all happened for the best, and that no one who had ever known the old lady would for a moment wish her back again; upon which he was indignantly informed by his newly made wife that if he was so pleased at her mother’s death, it was a pity he had not told her so before, and she would never have married him – and he sank into thoughtful silence.
On my looking up, which I had hitherto carefully abstained from doing, my eyes unfortunately encountered those of a brother journalist who was sitting at the other side of the table, and we both burst out laughing, thereupon gaining a reputation for callousness that I do not suppose either of us has outlived to this day.
Skittles, the only human being at that once festive board that did not appear to be wishing he were anywhere else, droned on, with evident satisfaction:
“Friends,” he said, “shall that dear mother be forgotten at this joyous gathering? Shall the lost mother, father, brother, sister, child, friend of any of us be forgotten? No, ladies and gentlemen! Let us, amid our merriment, still think of those lost, wandering souls: let us, amid the wine cup and the blithesome jest, remember – ‘Absent Friends’.”
The toast was drunk to the accompaniment of suppressed sobs and low moans, and the wedding guests left the table to bathe their faces and calm their thoughts. The bride, rejecting the proffered assistance of the groom, was assisted into the carriage by her father, and departed, evidently full of misgivings as to her chance of future happiness in the society of such a heartless monster as her husband had just shown himself to be!
Skittles has been an “absent friend” himself at that house since then.
But I am not getting on with my pathetic story.
“Do not be late with it,” our editor had said. “Let me have it by the end of August, certain. I mean to be early with the Christmas number this time. We didn’t get it out till October last year, you know. I don’t want the Clipper to be before us again!”
“Oh, that will be all right,” I had answered airily. “I shall soon run that off. I’ve nothing much to do this week. I’ll start it at once.”
So, as I went home, I cast about in my mind for a pathetic subject to work on. But not a pathetic idea could I think of. Comic fancies crowded in upon me, until my brain began to give way under the strain of holding them; and, if I had not calmed myself down with a last week’s Punch, I should, in all probability, have gone off in a fit.
“Oh, I’m evidently not in the humour for pathos,” I said to myself. “It is no use trying to force it. I’ve got plenty of time. I will wait till I feel sad.”
But as the days went on, I merely grew more and more cheerful. By the middle of August, matters were becoming serious. If I could not, by some means or other, contrive to get myself into a state of the blues during the next week or ten days, there would be nothing in the Christmas number of the —— Weekly Journal to make the British public wretched, and its reputation as a high-class paper for the family circle would be irretrievably ruined!
I was a conscientious young man in those days. I had undertaken to write a four-and-a-half-column pathetic story by the end of August; and if – no matter at what mental or physical cost to myself – the task could be accomplished, those four columns and a half should be ready.
I have generally found indigestion a good breeder of sorrowful thoughts. Accordingly, for a couple of days I lived upon an exclusive diet of hot boiled pork, Yorkshire pudding and assorted pastry, with lobster salad for supper. It gave me comic nightmares. I dreamt of elephants trying to climb trees, and of churchwardens being caught playing pit
ch-and-toss on Sundays, and woke up shaking with laughter!
I abandoned the dyspeptic scheme, and took to reading all the pathetic literature I could collect together. But it was of no use. The little girl in Wordsworth’s ‘We Are Seven’ only irritated me; I wanted to slap her. Byron’s blighted pirates bored me.* When, in a novel, the heroine died, I was glad; and when the author told me that the hero never smiled again on earth, I did not believe it.
As a last resource, I re-perused one or two of my own concoctions. They made me feel ashamed of myself, but not exactly miserable – at least, not miserable in the way I wanted to be miserable.
Then I bought all the standard works of wit and humour that had ever been published, and waded steadily through the lot. They lowered me a good deal, but not sufficiently. My cheerfulness seemed proof against everything.
One Saturday evening I went out and hired a man to come in and sing sentimental ballads to me. He earned his money (five shillings). He sang me everything dismal there was in English, Scotch, Irish and Welsh, together with a few translations from the German; and, after the first hour and a half, I found myself unconsciously trying to dance to the different tunes. I invented some really pretty steps for ‘Auld Robin Grey’, winding up with a quaint flourish of the left leg at the end of each verse.
At the beginning of the last week, I went to my editor and laid the case before him.
“Why, what’s the matter with you?” he said. “You used to be so good at that sort of thing! Have you thought of the poor girl who loves the young man that goes away and never comes back, and she waits and waits, and never marries, and nobody knows that her heart is breaking?”
“Of course I have!” I retorted, rather irritably. “Do you think I don’t know the rudiments of my profession?”
“Well,” he remarked, “won’t it do?”
“No,” I answered. “With marriage such a failure as it seems to be all round nowadays, how can you pump up sorrow for anyone lucky enough to keep out of it?”
After-Supper Ghost Stories Page 8