Barrie, J M - Tillyloss Scandal

by Tillyloss Scandal

  Don't be rude. You would like to shake it as a terrier shakes a rat ; but forbear. You may remember that when you witnessed the illegal contest between Jem Smith and Kil- rain they shook hands before trying to kill each other. In the same way you should look as if you had no ill-will toward the map, even when it is getting the better of you.

  Don't fold it the wrong way. When you can't discover the right way, don't clench your teeth and fold it by brute force. In this way you can no doubt appear to gain a momentary advantage over it, but your triumph is short- lived. The instant you take your hand off it,

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  the map springs up, and now, instead of find- ing it convenient for the pocket, you would have some difficulty in packing it away in a sack.

  Don't put your fist through it. When you find that it will neither go this way nor that, don't pummel it. Spread it out, and begin again.

  Don't tear it. It is a waste of energy on your part to do this, for it is sure to tear itself. It can be relied upon for this alone.

  Don't kick it round the room. Though this is a pleasure for the moment, it is not lasting. When you come to yourself you see that the proceeding has been undignified, and, besides, the map is no nearer being folded than ever. You cannot remember too persistently that a map is not to be folded by bullying. On the other hand, you can try kindness if you like.

  Don't deceive yourself into thinking you have done it. Your wife has been wringing her hands in anguish all the time you have been at it, and is wildly anxious to get you off to bed. It is now midnight. Accordingly, should you double the map up, as if you were making a snowball of it, she will pretend to

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  think that you have folded it. Don't be deceived by her. However great the tempta- tion to accept her verdict, remember that you are a man, and have consequently a mind of your own. Have the courage to admit defeat.

  Don't blame your wife. It is unmanly to remark pointedly that you did it quite easily when she was not by. To imply that she is in league with the map against you is unworthy of a reasoning animal.

  Don't lie. In other words, if she leaves the room for a moment, don't say you did it while she was out.

  Don't strike your boy. The boy may snatch it from your hands, and fold it in a moment. There is great provocation in this, but don't yield to it.

  Don't take gloomy views of life. Your ignominious failure casts a gloom over the household. Fling it off. Don't speak of your expenditure being beyond your income, or of having to sell the piano. Be cheerful ; remem- ber that there is nobler work for you to do than that on which you have squandered an evening, and that nobody can fold maps.

  AN INVALID IN LODGINGS.

  A TRUE STORY.

  UNTIL my system collapsed, and my atten- uated form and white face made me an object for looking at, my landlady only spoke of me as her parlor. At intervals I had communi- cated with her through the medium of Sarah Ann, the servant, when she presented her com- pliments (on a dirty piece of paper), and, as her rent was due on Wednesday, could I pay my bill now? Except for these monetary trans- actions, my landlady and I were total strangers, and, though I sometimes fell over her children in the lobby, that led to no intimacy. Even Sarah Ann never opened her mouth to me. She brought in my tea, and left me to discover that it was there. My first day in lodgings I said " Good-morning " to Sarah Ann, and she replied, "Eh?" " Good-morning," I repeated,

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  to which she answered contemptuously, " Oh, ay." For six months I was simply the parlor, but then I fell ill, and at once became an in- teresting person.

  Sarah Ann found me shivering on the sofa one hot day a week or more ago, beneath my rug, two coats, and some other articles. Then I ate no dinner, then I drank no tea, and then Sarah Ann mentioned the matter to her mis- tress. My landlady sent up some beef-tea, in which she has a faith that is pathetic, and then to complete the cure she appeared in person. She has proved a nice, motherly old lady, but not cheerful company.

  " Where do you feel it worst, sir ? " she asked.

  I said it was bad all over, but worst in my head.

  " On your brow ? "

  "No, on the back of my head."

  " It feels like a lump of lead ? "

  " No, like a furnace."

  " That's just what I feared," she said. " It began so with him."

  "With whom?"

  " My husband. He came in one day, five

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  years ago, complaining of his head, and in three days he was a corpse."

  "What?"

  " Don't b e afraid, sir. Maybe it isn't the same thing."

  " Of course it isn't. Your husband, accord- ing to the story you told me when I took these rooms, died of fever."

  " Yes, but the fever began just in this way. It carried him off in no time. You had better see a doctor, sir. Doctor was no use in my husband's case, but it is a satisfaction to have him."

  Here Sarah Ann, who had been listening with mouth and eyes wide open, suddenly burst into tears, and was led out of the room, exclaim- ing, " Him sech a quiet gentleman, and he never flung nothing at me." Now, for the first time, did I discover that I had touched Sarah Ann's heart.

  Though I knew that I had only caught a nasty cold, a conviction in which the doctor con- firmed me, my landlady stood out for its being just such another case as her husband's, and regaled me for hours with reminiscences of his rapid decline. If I was a little better one day,

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  alas ! he had been a little better the day before he died, and if I answered her peevishly she told Sarah Ann that my voice was going. She brought the beef-tea up with her own hand, her countenance saying that I might as well have it, though it could not save me. Some- times I pushed it away untasted (how I loathe beef-tea now !), when she whispered something to Sarah Ann that sent that tender-hearted maid howling once more from the room.

  " He's supped it all," Sarah Ann said, one day, brightening.

  "That's a worse sign," said her mistress, " than if he hadn't took none."

  I lay on a sofa, pulled close to the fire, and when the doctor came my landlady was always at his heels, Sarah Ann's dismal face showing at the door. The doctor is a personal friend of my own, and each day he said I was improv- ing a little.

  " Ah, doctor ! " my landlady said, reprov- ingly.

  " He does it for the best," she explained to me, " but I don't hold with doctors as deceive their patients. Why don't he speak out the truth like a man? My husband were told

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  the worst, and so he had time to reconcile him- self.'

  On one of these occasions I summoned up sufficient energy to send her out of the room ; but that only made matters worse.

  " Poor gentleman ! " I heard her say to Sarah Ann ; " he is very violent to-day. I saw he were worse the moment I clapped eyes on him. Sarah Ann, I shouldn't wonder though we had to hold him down yet."

  About an hour afterwards, she came in to ask me if I " had come more round to myself," and when I merely turned round on the sofa for reply, she said, in a loud whisper to Sarah Ann, that I " were as quiet as a lamb now." Then she stroked me and went away.

  So attentive was my landlady that she was a ministering angel. Yet I lay on that sofa plot- ting how to get her out of the room. The plan that seemed the simplest was to pretend sleep, but it was not easily carried out. Not getting any answer from me, she would ap- proach on tiptoe and lean over the sofa, listen- ing to hear me breathe. Convinced that I was still living, she and Sarah Ann began a conversa- tion in whispers, of which I or the deceased hus-

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  band was the subject. The husband had slept a good deal, too, and it wasn't a healthy sign.

  " It isn't a good sign," whispered my land- lady, " though them as know no better might think it is. It shows he's getting weaker. When they takes to sleeping in the daytime it's only
because they don't have the strength to keep awake."

  " Oh, missus ! " Sarah Ann would say.

  " Better face facts, Sarah Ann," replies my landlady

  In the end I had generally to sit up and confess that I heard what they were saying. My landlady evidently thought this another bad sign.

  I discovered that my landlady held recep- tions in another room, where visitors came who referred to me as her "trial." When she thought me distinctly worse, she put on her bonnet and went out to disseminate the sad news. It was on one of these occasions that Sarah Ann, who had been left in charge of the children, came to me with a serious request.

  " Them children," she said, " want awful to see you, and I sort of promised to bring 'em in, if so you didn't mind."

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  " But, Sarah Ann, they have seen me often, and, though I'm a good deal better, I don't feel equal to speaking to them."

  Sarah Ann smiled pityingly when I said I felt better, but she assured me the children only wanted to look at me. I refused her petition, but, on my ultimatum being announced to them, they set up such a roar that, to quiet them, I called them in.

  They came one at a time. Sophia, the eldest, came first. - She looked at me very solemnly, and then said bravely that if I liked she would kiss me. As she had a piece of flannel tied round her face, and was swollen in the left cheek, I declined this honor, and she went off much relieved. Next came Tommy, who sent up a shriek as his eyes fell on me, and had to be carried off by Sarah Ann. Johnny was bolder and franker, but addressed all his re- marks to Sarah Ann. First, he wanted to know if he could touch me, and, being told he could, he felt my face all over. Then, he wanted to see the " spouter." The " spouter " was a spray through which Sarah Ann blew coolness on my head, and Johnny had heard of it with inter- est. He refused to leave the room until he

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  had been permitted to saturate me and my cushion.

  I am so much better now that even my land- lady knows I am not dying. I suppose she is glad that it is so, but at the same time she re- sents it. She has given up coming to my room, which shows that I have wounded her feelings, and I notice that the beef-tea is no longer so weU made. The last time I spoke to her it was I who introduced the subject of her husband, and she spoke of him with a diminution of in- terest. His was a real illness, she said, with emphasis on the adjective that made me feel I had been drinking beef-tea on false pretenses.

  The children are more openly annoyed. In the innocence of youth they had looked upon me as a sure thing, and had been so " good " for nearly a week that they feel they will never be able to make the lost time up. I under- stand that their mother had to break my re- covery to them gently.

  But Sarah Ann's is the severest blow. For years, Sarah Ann has been a servant in lodging- houses, with nobody and nothing to take any interest in. She has seen many lodgers come and go without knowing who or what they

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  were, and she has never had a mistress who thought her of any importance. In these cir- cumstances the neglected one takes, in story- books, to tending a flower in a broken pot, for which she conceives a romantic attachment. The devotion Sarah Ann might have given to a tulip she bestowed on me. For a week I be- lieved she loved me, but only on the under- standing that I was leaving this world behind me. Her interest in me was morbid, but sin- cere. I was the only thing she had ever been given to look after. If I had gone the way of my landlady's husband, I am confident that Sarah Ann would have remembered me for the whole summer. But it was not to be, and she has not enough spirit to complain. When she comes in to remove the breakfast things and finds that I have eaten two eggs and four slices of toast she says nothing, but I hear her sigh. In the over-mantel I see her looking at me so reproachfully that I have not the heart to be angry with her. If Sarah Ann's feelings could be analyzed it would be found, I believe, that she looks upon herself as a hopelessly unlucky person doomed to eternal disappointments. In another week's time I expect to be able to go

  15

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  to my office as usual, when Sarah Ann and I will again be strangers. Already the children have given up opening my door and peeping in. There is an impression in the house that I am a fraud. They call me by my name as yet, but soon again I will be the parlor.

  THE MYSTERY OF TIME-TABLES.

  THE history of the time-table is probably this. When the first one was issued, trav- elers accepted it in the spirit in which it was produced: as an amusing puzzle with no solution. By and by they began to tire of the puzzle, and then a clever advertisement (in the form of a paragraph) appeared in the papers declaring that a gentleman (" whose name and address we are not at liberty to mention") had solved the puzzle, and discovered that time-tables really told you when your train started. This revived interest in the subject ; several persons wrote to the Times, maintaining that time-tables* were for use as well as ornament, and, to be brief, a cry arose that there was more in time- tables than met the eye. One man, who only traveled between London and Bristol, while admitting that the time-table was upside down

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  as to that line, held that if he traveled between Manchester and Newcastle he could look up the trains quite easily; a second found that his time-table told him when his train started for Manchester, only it always turned out to be a Sunday train ; and a third declared that the time-table would enable him to catch the train for Scotland were it not for alterations made in the beginning 1 of the month. Soon time-tables were as much a subject of contro- versy as Ibsen is to-day. There were the Table- ites, as they were called, just as we have the Ibsenites. The Tableites were the out-and-out believers in time-tables, the persons who found a profound meaning in every figure. At first they were few in number, while the Anti- Tableites were many; but the minority were enthusiastic over their discovery, and made a creed of it. They wrote plays and novels in which Tableites married and found the missing will, while the Anti-Tableites were left to die at Waterloo Station, looking vainly for the way out. Of course, the Anti-Tableites re- torted, going so far as to say that time-tables are immoral ; but the great general public is ever greedy of a new thing, and soon Tableism

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  was the fashion. At the present moment there is hardly a man or woman in the United Kingdom who would dare to say that he or she knows time-tables to be frauds. Yet in what is called our innermost heart we are all aware that time-tables remain a puzzle, and that we only carry them about with us and look know- ingly at them because it is the national form of swaggering. No one can really look up his train in a time-table.

  Then how (the African monarch who is to be the next season's lion might ask) do the great English-speaking people catch their trains, for they certainly do travel a good deal? You, reader, could answer that question. What is your procedure when you have decided to take a railway journey ? It is this. You say to your wife, quite solemnly, that she had better send out for a new time-table. She says, with equal solemnity, that there is a time-table some- where ; and you reply that you must have a new one, as there are sure to be alterations this month. Then you slip out of the house and proceed to St. Pancras, where you bribe or threaten a porter into telling you when your train starts. Returning home, you find the

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  new time-table lying ready for you, and, as soon as your wife enters, you open it and mutter : " Hem ! Ha ! Very awkward ! Just so ! Have I time to catch the connection at Normanton ? Let me see whether the Great Northern would not suit better," and so on. Finally you say you see that the best train starts at a certain hour.

  Do you believe you have deceived your wife ? Probably you think there is just a chance of her having been taken in. As a matter of fact, she is aware that time-tables are as much a mystery to you as to her, and she knows quite well that you were at St. Pancras an hour ago. But she keeps up the
deception. When she married you she knew what men are, and that on the subject of time-tables there must be deceit between man and wife if they are to be happy. The ideal couple keep nothing from each other, save this affair of the time-table, and a wise wife, instead of asking her husband why he occasionally looks as if he had a secret on his mind, will understand that he is only feel- ing guilty of pretending to understand, " See Willesden Junction K * 2 for Wednesday and Saturday." The perfect bride undertakes at

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  the altar to love, honor, and obey her husband, and pretend to believe that he can look up his train.

  But all wives are not perfect, and one often hears it said of Mr. and Mrs. Such-a-One that they don't get on together. The name usually given to their complaint is incompatibility of temper, but inquiry, which we have no right to make, would prove four times in five that the wife has been so ill-advised as to challenge her husband's knowledge of time-tables. Men who will endure a great deal from their wives, and go on reading their paper at breakfast quite placidly, fire up at this. It is the one charge they cannot brook ; it takes six inches from the height of a six-footer, and there will be no more happiness in that household until the wife apologizes with tears. A little ex- perience will show her that nothing is to be gained by holding up her husband's one weak- ness to the light, and much by pretending that his skill in reading time-tables is a constant marvel to her. Speak of this skill in company when he is present, and there is nothing your husband will deny you. Politicians call each other everything that is bad, and yet one hears