by Unknown
“You and Mr. Thomson do that for each other?”
“Often.”
“Very well; give it me. This way?”
“It smokes beautifully. You are a dear, good girl.”
She let the poker fall.
“Oh, I’m not,” she wailed. “I am not really kind-hearted; it is all selfishness.”
This came out with a rush, but I am used to her, and kept my pipe in.
“Even my charities are only a hideous kind of selfishness,” she continued, with clasped hands. “There is that poor man who sells matchboxes at the corner of this street, for instance. I sometimes give him twopence.” (She carries an enormous purse, but there is never more than twopence in it.)
“That is surely not selfish,” I said.
“It is,” said she, seizing the poker as if intending to do for herself that instant. “I never give him anything simply because I see he needs it, but only occasionally when I feel happier than usual. I am only thinking of my own happiness when I give it him. That is the personification of selfishness.”
“Mary!”
“Well, if that isn’t, this is. I only give him something when I am passing him, at any rate. I never dream of crossing the street on purpose to do it. Oh, I should need to be terrifically happy before I would bother crossing to give him anything. There! what do you think of me now?”
“You gave him something on Monday when I was with you?”
“Yes.” — .
“Then you were happy at that time?”
“What has that got to do with it?”
“A great deal.”
I rose.
“Mary, dear—”
“No! Go and sit over there.”
STAGGERERS.
The subjects we have discussed over the poker! For instance:
The rapidity with which we grow old.
What on earth Mr. Meredith means by saying that woman will be the last thing civilized by man?
Thomson.
What will it all matter a hundred years hence?
How strangely unlike other people we two are!
The nicest name for a woman. (Mary.)
The mystery of Being and not Being.
Why does Mary exist?
Does Mary exist?
She had come in, looking very doleful, and the reason was, that the more she thought it over, the less could she see why she existed. This came of reading a work entitled “Why Do We Exist?” — a kind of book that ought not to be published, for it only makes people unhappy. Mary stared at the problem with wide, fixed eyes until I compelled her to wink by putting another in front of it, namely, “Do You Exist?” In her ignorance she thought there was no doubt of this, but I lent her a “Bishop Berkeley,” and since then she has taken to pinching herself on the sly, just to make sure that she is still there.
HER SCARF.
So far I had not (as will have been noticed) by a word or look or sign broken the agreement which rendered our platonic friendship possible. I had not even called her darling, and this because, having reflected a good deal on the subject, I could not persuade myself that this was one of my ways of addressing Thomson. And I would have continued the same treatment had it not been for her scarf, which has proved beyond all bearing. That scarf is entirely responsible for what happened to-day.
It is a stripe of faded terra-cotta, and she ties it round her mouth before going out into the fog. Her face is then sufficiently irritating, but I could endure it by looking another way, did she not recklessly make farewell remarks through the scarf, which is very thin. Then her mouth — in short, I can’t put up with this.
I had warned her repeatedly. But she was like a mad girl, or, perhaps, she did not understand my meaning.
“Don’t come near me with that thing round your mouth,” I have told her a dozen times. I have refused firmly to tie it for her. I have put the table between me and it, and she asked why (through the scarf). She was quite mad.
And to-day, when I was feeling rather strange at any rate! It all occurred in a moment.
“Don’t attempt to speak with that scarf round you,” I had said, and said it with my back to her.
“You think I can’t, because it is too tight?” she asked.
“Go away,” I said She turned me round.
“Why,” she said, wonderingly, “it is quite loose. I believe I could whistle through it.”
She did whistle through it. That finished our platonic friendship.
—
FIVE MINUTES AFTERWARD.
I spoke wildly, fiercely, exultingly; and she, all the time, was trying to put on her jacket, and could not find the sleeve. —
“It was your own fault; but I am glad. I warned you. Cry away. I like to see you crying.”
“I hate you!”
“No, you don’t.”
“A friend—”
“Friend! Pooh! Bah! Pshaw!”
“Mr. Thomson—”
“Thomson! Tehut! Thomson! His Christian name isn’t Harry. I don’t know what it is. I don’t care!”
“You said—”
“It was a lie. Don’t screw your mouth in that way.”
“I will, if Hike.”
“I warn you!”
“I don’t care. Oh! Oh!”
“I warned you.”
“Now I know you in your true colors.”
“You do, and I glory in it. Platonic friendship — fudge! I quarrelled with you that time to be able to hold your hands when we made it up. When you thought I was reading your character I —
Don’t — screw — your — mouth!”
“Give me my scarf.”
“I lent you Berkeley so that I could take hold of you by the shoulders on the pretence that I was finding out whether you existed.”
“Good-by forever!”
“All the time we were discussing the mystery of Being I was thinking how much I should like to put my hands beneath your chin and flick it.”
“If you ever dare to speak to me again—”
“Don’t — screw — your — mouth. And I would rather put my fingers through your hair than write the greatest poem in—”
She was gone, leaving the scarf behind her.
My heart sank. I flung open my window (six hansoms came immediately), and I could have jumped after her. But I did not. What I saw had a remarkable effect on my spirits. I saw her cross the street on purpose to give twopence to the old man who sells the matches.
All’s well with the world. As soon as I can lay down the scarf I am going west to the house where Mary, dear, lives.
OUR NEW SERVANT.
“AT last,” my wife said to me, “I am to have a good servant.”
She had said this frequently before, and afterward changed her mind. Though we were but lately married, we had already had considerable experience of servants, and the newcomer was to take the place of one who smashed things, but had too much delicacy to mention it. As the china was also delicate, we had to choose between her and it.
“You need not look so sceptical,” said my wife, “for this is really an extremely superior servant. She has the most glowing characters from four former mistresses. She has only been a servant for a year, yet they all speak of her as a gem.”
“But they don’t seem to have kept her long,” I pointed out.
“No; I noticed that, and asked them why it was. Two of them said that she was really too good for them, and the others only repeated that she was a marvel.”
The new servant arrived in the evening. I am not a man who takes much part in the domestic management of the house, and she began her work without an interview with me. I noticed her first at family worship, when her ladylike manners made me think that she might be a princess in disguise. She was removing the supper things, when my wife said to me, in French:
“Is she not quite distinguished-looking?”
Having thought out the grammatical form of reply, as suggested by the “Students’ Manual,” I answered, in th
e same language:
“Yes, her elegant manner of carrying away the tray fascinates me.”
Then the servant said, in a sweet, musical voice, “Pardon me, but perhaps I ought to say that I speak French.”
My wife looked at me, and I looked at my wife. I whistled softly, and that was a language the new servant seemed to understand too. As soon as she had retired, “Well, she is a superior girl,” I said, and my wife nodded, but without enthusiasm.
For my own part I must say I was rather glad to see the French language put a stop to in our family.
There could be no doubt that our new servant was all that her former mistresses had called her. She could pile on coals without putting out the fire, her cooking was as good as her French. Indeed, one would have said that she had learned both in the same country. As soon as the door-bell rang she was at the door to open it, and she never entertained her male cousins in the kitchen.
My wife reads a good many novels, which it was my custom to get for her from a library. She has a leaning toward learning and an inclination to the frivolous, which struggle for the mastery over her, and, accordingly, she tells me to get a queer assortment of books for her. Herbert Spencer and Miss Florence Marry at are her two favorite authors.
“What novels will I get for you to-day?” I asked her, soon after the new servant came. She sighed for reply.
“I don’t think I’ll read any more novels,” she added, in a dejected voice.
“Waste of time?” I asked.
She sighed again.
“It is the servant,” she said.
“Why, what has she been doing? I thought she was such a good servant that you would have more time for reading now than ever?”
“Oh, she is a model servant; but I don’t like her to see me reading novels.”
“You didn’t use to be so particular. Are you afraid to set her a bad example?”
“I wish I could! No, I don’t mean that, but I am ashamed to read light books in her presence. I see her raising her eyebrows in surprise every time she finds me with three volumes in my lap.”
“She can’t know anything about what is inside the books.”
“Oh, does she not! When I went into the kitchen yesterday evening, I found her reading Huxley. The day before I noticed a copy of Walter Savage Landor on the dresser, and thought it was yours. I began to say to her that she must not take away your books from the library without my permission, and what do you think her answer was?”
“No doubt she said the cat had brought it.”
“Ah, she is not like other servants. She said it was her own copy, and that she would not have thought of taking yours in any case, because it is an incomplete edition.”
“What on earth could have induced the girl to buy a copy of Landor.”
“She told me she liked to read him because lie wrote such a superb style. ‘As stylists,’ she said, ‘Landor and DeQuincey are my two favorite authors.’”
“What a superior servant!”
“Yes, but she did not surprise me. Books are her chief subject of conversation. She told me the other night that, in her opinion, Froude did not understand Carlyle.”
“I expect she puts on airs?”
“No, quite the contrary; she is always very polite and obliging. I have never the least trouble with her. What makes me uncomfortable is the feeling that in her heart she must despise me.”
From the day we had this conversation, I was asked to bring a few novels to the house. Those that did come were at once locked away in drawers, only to be taken out and perused when my wife was not under our superior servant’s eyes. It was melancholy to see my wife slipping a novel beneath her chair when the new servant came in.
In time I felt the presence of that girl hardly less than my wife did. I remember shaking one evening when she detected me reading my incomplete volume of Landor. I had begun to take in an edition of “Selected “Works” of the poets, but I gave them up. How could I read selected works, when she had the complete works in the kitchen?
My wife and I have naturally simple tastes, and we used to play bagatelle in the evening. When the new servant saw us at it she could not help smiling, and then we were ashamed. We continued to play, because neither of us liked to let on to the other, but often my wife blushed, and so did I.
“The fire is low,” I said, one night while we were playing. “You had better ring for coals.”
“But what would Isabella think,” said my wife, “if she saw us playing at bagatelle again?”.
“I don’t care what Isabella thinks,” I cried in a passion. “Is she master in this house, or am I?”
“Shut the bagatelle board,” she replied, “and I’ll ring.”
I was not to make myself as small as this, however, so I rang fiercely, and when Isabella answered it I glared like one who meditated eating her. She did not smile this time, but I, too, felt that her respect for her master was going.
“Isabella tells me,” my wife said next day, “that the ancients used to play a game not unlike bagatelle.”
“Then we have a warrant for playing it.”
“But she says they only played it when they were children.”
After that we played bagatelle no more. It was never mentioned by either of us. The board was hidden away beneath the spare bedroom bed. Soon I noticed that my wife had begun to make her own dresses. From one point of view this was not a matter for her husband to complain of, but my wife looked so woebegone that I asked why she had become her own dressmaker.
“Isabella,” she replied. —
“Well, what has Isabella been doing now?”
“She has not been doing anything. But she makes her own dresses and sews so beautifully that I am utterly ashamed of myself. I can’t look her in the face.”
I stamped my feet, for I had now begun to hate that jewel of a servant.
One Sunday I noticed that my wife carried a notebook and a pencil to church with her.
“Are you to take notes of the sermon?” I asked.
She said that was her intention. —
“What,” I asked, “put this into your head?”
“Can’t you guess?” she asked.
“Not that wretched Isabella?” I cried.
“Yes, of course it was, but don’t call her names. She is a model servant.”
“I suppose she takes notes of the sermons?”
“She does more than that, she takes the complete sermon down in shorthand.”
About a week ago a series of lectures on English literature and other subjects was begun in our town.
“Those who get so many marks in the examinations,” my wife told me, “can then go to St. Andrews and become L.L.A., I think it is.”
I had no desire that my wife should be an L.L.A., but she wanted to attend, and I did not mind.
“Is this not the first night of the lectures?” I asked her one evening.
She said it was.
“Then is it not time you were getting ready?”
“Oh, I’m not going.”
“Not going? Why?”
“Isabella—”
“This is too much! What has Isabella to say against the lectures?”
“She says nothing against them. She is going.”
“Wh-a-t!”
“I couldn’t ‘prevent her. She hardly ever asks out.”
“Well, it would have been absurd if you and she had gone together.”
“Perhaps, but that is not what made me give the idea up. I feel that Isabella will certainly take most marks in the examination, and that shames me.”
“Hum! I think that the best thing we can do with Isabella is to bid her leave.”
My wife’s eyes gleamed with delight.
“But she is such a perfect girl,” she said. “We could have no excuse for sending her away.”
“Excellent excuses,” I said, “I want to read novels again and to play bagatelle, and, in short, to feel that I am as good as my servant.”
“We will never get such a servant again.”
“I hope not. She is too good for us.”
The end of it was that I bribed Isabella to go. We now have a servant who cannot write her own name, and she is a delightful change.
REMINISCENCES OF AN UMBRELLA.
LYING here on the floor of a closet, my head loose, one of my ribs in twain, and two others mended with a bootlace, I am no longer the umbrella I have been. But though my experiences may seem dark, I am not a cynic. I have had my gay moments as well as my misfortunes. If men have grumbled at me because I would not open, sweet words of love have been whispered beneath my covering; and if many have owned me, one has paid for me. Omitting all reference to my early years, why should I not now, as other veterans have done, set down some reminiscences of the men and women I have known?
The first man with whom I had any close acquaintance was a minister. He came into the shop where I originally saw the light, and said that he wanted an umbrella. The kind he wanted was a very good one, of pure silk, and his only stipulation was that it should be as cheap as alpaca.
“John,” said my maker to his assistant, “show the gentleman a Marquis, and keep the price down.”
I am a Marquis, and after trying thirty-three of us, the minister selected me. While he was taking sixpence off the price, he had a conversation with my maker, which I did not understand at the time, though well I know its meaning now.
“You are the first minister,” said my maker, “who has bought an umbrella, to my knowledge, for the last nine months.”
“Why,” said my new owner, as he rolled me up very tight (for he was a young man), “it seems to me that all ministers carry umbrellas.”
“That’s another thing,” says my maker.
“You mean,” says the minister, “that we have them presented to us?”
“That’s a delicate way of putting it,” says my maker. “I don’t think you have been long a minister?”
“No,” says the minister.
“After you have been,” says my maker, winking to John, “I’ll lose your custom.”
Then my owner and I went off along the street. I have nothing to say against him, except that he took me out in fine weather, always keeping me tightly rolled up, and he spent hours in his lodgings trying to roll me tighter. I don’t know that any ‘ of my owners ever loved me as this first one did, and I think the reason was because he alone bought and paid for me. He called himself a minister, but as it turned out he was only a divinity student, and it was at the college that we parted. That was seventeen days after he bought me, and I can still remember the affectionate glance he gave me as he put me into the rack, where there were about a dozen other umbrellas, and two sticks with brass knobs. That day it rained. The first to leave the room was the professor, a handsome man of noble countenance, and when he saw the rain he turned back to the rack and looked at the umbrellas. I was the best, so, after looking at the others, he picked me out, put me up, and walked home beneath me, a beautiful look still lurking on his benevolent face.