by Unknown
“What old woman?”
“Go ‘long! that’s my mother. Is it true there’s a waiter in the club just for to open the door?”
“Yes, but—”
“And another just for to lick the stamps? My!”
“William leaves the club at one o’clock?” I said, interrogatively.
She nodded. “My mother,” she said, “is one to talk, and she says to Mr. Hicking as he should get away at twelve, ‘cause his missis needs him more’n the gentlemen need him. The old woman do talk.”
“And what does William answer to that?”
“He says as the gentlemen can’t be kept waiting for their cheese.”
“But William does not go straight home when he leaves the club?”
“That’s the kid.”
“Kid!” I echoed, scarcely understanding, for knowing how little the poor love their children, I had asked William no questions about the baby.
“Didn’t you know his missis had a kid?” “ Yes, but that is no excuse for William’s staying away from his sick wife,” I answered, sharply. A baby in such a home as William’s, I reflected, must be trying, but still — Besides his class can sleep through any din.
“The kid ain’t in our court,” the girl explained. “He’s in W., he is, and I’ve never been out of W. C.; leastwise, not as I knows on.”
“This is W. I suppose you mean that the child is at West Kensington? Well, no doubt it was better for William’s wife to get rid of the child—”
“Better!” interposed the girl. “‘Tain’t better for her not to have the kid. Ain’t her not having him what she’s always thinking on when she looks like a dead one.”
“How could you know that?”
“‘Cause,” answered the girl, illustrating her words with a gesture, “I watches her, and I sees her arms going this way, just like as she wanted to hug her kid.”
“Possibly you are right,” I said, frowning, “but William had put the child out to nurse because it disturbed his night’s rest. A man who has his work to do—”
“You are green!”
“Then why have the mother and child been separated?”
“Along of that there measles. Near all the young ‘uns in our court has ‘em bad.”
“Have you had them?”
“I said the young ‘uns.”
“And William sent the baby to West Kensington to escape infection?”
“Took him, he did.”
“Against his wife’s wishes?”
“Na-o!”
“You said she was dying for want of the child?”
“Wouldn’t she rather die than have the kid die?”
“Don’t speak so heartlessly, child. Why does William not go straight home from the club? Does he go to West Kensington to see it?”
“‘Tain’t a hit, it’s an ‘e. ‘Course he do.”
“Then he should not. His wife has the first claim on him.”
“Ain’t you green! It’s his missis as wants him to go. Do you think she could sleep till she knowed how the kid was?”
“But he does not go into the house at West Kensington?”
“Is he soft? Course he don’t go in, fear of taking the infection to the kid. They just holds the kid up at the window to him, so as he can have a good look. Then he comes home and tells his missis. He sits foot of the bed and tells.”
“And that takes place every night? He can’t have much to tell.”
“He has just.”
“He can only say whether the child is well or ill.”
“My! He tells what a difference there is in the kid since he see’d him last.”
“There can be no difference!”
“Go ‘long! Ain’t a kid always growing? Haven’t Mr. Hicking to tell how the hair is getting darker, and heaps of things beside?”
“Such as what?”
“Like whether he larfed, and if he has her nose, and how as he knowed him. He tells her them things more’n once.”
“And all this time he is sitting at the foot of the bed?”
“‘Cept when he holds her hand.”
“But when does he get to bed himself?”
“He don’t get much. He tells her as he has a sleep at the club.”’
“He cannot say that.”
“Hain’t I heard him? But he do go to his bed a bit, and then they both lies quiet, her pretending she is sleeping so as he can sleep, and him feared to sleep case he shouldn’t wake up to give her the bottle stuff.”
“What does the doctor say about her?”
“He’s a good one, the doctor. Sometimes he says she would get better if she could see the kid through the window.”
“Nonsense!”
“And if she was took to the country.”
“Then why does not William take her?”
“My! you are green! And if she drank port wines.”
“Doesn’t she?”
“No; but William he tells her about the gentlemen drinking them.”
On the tenth day after my conversation with this unattractive child I was in my brougham, with the windows up, and I sat back, a paper before my face lest anyone should look in. Naturally, I was afraid of being seen in company of William’s wife and Jenny, for men about town are uncharitable, and, despite the explanation I had ready, might have charged me with pitying William. As a matter of fact, William was sending his wife into Surrey to stay with an old nurse of mine, and I was driving her down because my horses-needed an outing. Besides, I was going that way, at any rate.
I had arranged that the girl Jenny, who was wearing an outrageous bonnet, should accompany us, because, knowing the greed of her class, I feared she might blackmail me at the club.
William joined us in the suburbs, bringing the baby with him, as I had foreseen they would all be occupied with it, and to save me the trouble of conversing with them. Mrs. Hicking I found too pale and fragile for a workingman’s wife, and I formed a mean opinion of her intelligence from her pride in the baby, which was a very ordinary one. She created quite a vulgar scene when it was brought to her, though she had given me her word not to do so; what irritated me, even more than her tears, being her ill-bred apology that she “had been ‘feard baby wouldn’t know her again.” I would have told her they didn’t know anyone for years had I not been afraid of the girl Jenny, who dandled the infant on her knees and talked to it as if it understood. She kept me on tenterhooks by asking it offensive questions: such as, “Oo know who give me that bonnet?” and answering them herself, “It was the pretty gentleman there,” and several times I had to affect sleep because she announced, “Kiddy wants to kiss the pretty gentleman.”
Irksome as all this necessarily was to a man of taste, I suffered even more when we reached our destination. As we drove through the village the girl Jenny uttered shrieks of delight at the sight of flowers growing up the cottage walls, and declared they were “just like a music-’all without the drink license.” As my horses required a rest, I was forced to abandon my intention of dropping these persons at their lodgings and returning to town at once, and I could not go to the inn lest I should meet inquisitive acquaintances. Disagreeable circumstances, therefore, compelled me to take tea with a waiter’s family — close to a window, too, through which I could see the girl Jenny talking excitedly to villagers, and telling them, I felt certain, that I had been good to William. I had a desire to go out and put myself right with those people.
William’s long connection with the club should have given him some manners, but apparently his class cannot take them on, for, though he knew I regarded his thanks as an insult, he looked them when he was not speaking them, and hardly had he sat down, by my orders, than he remembered that I was a member of the club, and jumped up. Nothing is in worse form than whispering, yet again and again, when he thought I was not listening, he whispered to Mrs. Hicking, “You don’t feel faint?” or “How are you now?” He was also in extravagant glee because she ate two cakes (it takes so little to put these
people in good spirits), and when she said she felt like another being already, the fellow’s face charged me with the change. I could not but conclude, from the way Mrs. Hicking let the baby pound her, that she was stronger than she had pretended.
I remained longer than was necessary, because I had something to say to William which I knew he would misunderstand, and so I put off saying it. But when he announced that it was time for him to return to London, at which his wife suddenly paled, so that he had to sign to her not to break down, I delivered the message.
“William,” I said, “the head waiter asked me to say that you could take a fortnight’s holiday just now. Your wages will be paid as usual.”
Confound them! William had me by the hand, and his wife was in tears before I could reach the door.
“Is it your doing again, sir?” William cried.
“William!” I said, fiercely.
“We owe everything to you,” he insisted. “The port wine” —
“Because I had no room for it in my cellar.”
“The money for the nurse in London” —
“Because I objected to being waited on by a man who got no sleep.”
“These lodgings” —
“Because I wanted to do something for my old nurse.”
“And now, sir, a fortnight’s holiday!”
“Good-by, “William!” I said, in a fury.
But before I could get away, Mrs. Hicking signed to William to leave the room, and then she kissed my hand. She said something to me. It was about my wife. Somehow I — What business had William to tell her about my wife?
They are all back in Drury Lane now, and William tells me that his wife sings at her work just as she did eight years ago. I have no interest in this, and try to check his talk of it; but such people have no sense of propriety, and he even speaks of the girl Jenny, who sent me lately a gaudy pair of worsted gloves worked by her own hand. The meanest advantage they took of my weakness, however, was in calling their baby after me. I have an uncomfortable suspicion, too, that William has given the other waiters his version of the affair, but I feel safe so long as it does not reach the committee.
THE PLAYWRIGHT AND THE FOWL.
THIS odd story was told me in the smoking-room of the Garrick Theatre on the first night of “Lady Bountiful,” the narrator being a dramatist only less popular than Mr. Pinero himself. We had been talking of the nervousness of some authors during the first performance of their plays.
“The dramatists of the past were less afraid of their public’s verdict,” said one of the company. “Was it not Charles Lamb who blandly joined in the hissing of his own piece?”
“That is told of him,” the dramatist answered, “though I have often wondered whether he hissed very loudly. Besides, in those days the author got little for his play, while nowadays it is worth a fortune or nothing.”
“Are you nervous on a first night?” someone asked him.
“Yes, my first nights are a trial to me nowadays,” the playwright answered, very gloomily. “Yet there was a time when I took them calmly.”
“How curious,” remarked someone, “that nervousness should have come with experience.”
“It is not so much nervousness,” replied the playwright, “as a detestable selfconsciousness. I have lost faith in my work, or rather in my own judgment of it. Formerly I knew if a speech or a situation would be effective, but now I can never feel certain that my best things will not be received with derision.”
“How do you account for the change?”
“It all came about through my going into the country to write a play. I have never been the same man since. I left the farmhouse, where I had gone for quietness, without writing the play; but the proud brute had already worked his mischief on me. I see him at this moment, I dream about him, I am always hearing him.”
“What proud brute.”
“It was a fowl, a little bantam cock, that I encountered fifty times a day. Until that fowl came into my life (and marred it) I never knew what pride was. Until it took to eying me sideways I never realized what is meant by the scorn of scorns. Until it stood determinedly in my way I never felt fear. Until it strutted by me I never really knew that I was a thing of no consequence. Until it crowed at me I never felt that I was found out and despised. I assure you, that exasperating fowl had an effect on my health as well as on my work.”
“Never mind your health. How did it affect your work?”
“Disastrously. You know that scene in the domestic drama where” —
“But what domestic drama?
“Oh, in all domestic dramas, where the smooth villain, after being spurned by the heroine, shows himself in his true colors, and is repulsed by her with the haughty words, ‘Ah, now I know you! Stand back, and let me pass!’ “Well, that was a situation I used to come out strong in — I always knew it would go. But the hateful fowl has altered all that. On a first night I sit in my box in anguish, feeling that the situation will be laughed at. You see it all depends on the actress’s capacity for drawing herself up and looking very haughty. But haughtiness at once brings that bantam before my eyes. No woman, however great a genius she may be, can draw herself up quite so proudly as that fowl did, and while she is drawing herself up I see not her but it. I tremble lest the audience remembers the fowl also.”
“In the next scene,” continued the unfortunate playwright, “the heroine is usually shown in poor lodgings. The machinations of the villain has sent the hero, her husband, to jail, or to the wars, and the villain reappears to press his suit. She has her little child with her; and the child, refusing to favor his friendly advances, runs to her mother. I used to have absolute faith in that scene, but a cold sweat breaks out on me now when the curtain rises on it.”
“The bantam again?”
“Yes, the bantam! At the farm I soon despaired of getting round the brute itself, but I tried to make friends of some chickens by flinging them crumbs. Instead of accepting the crumbs they fluttered their wings and ran to the bantam, which stood in the middle of them, looking at me precisely as the young mother in the domestic drama looks at the villain. The stage direction for the lady is ‘Regards him with the air of a queen,’ and the air of a queen is very much the air of a king, which, again, is a mere copy from the air of a bantam cock. In the play the foiled villain retires grinding his teeth, just as I used to retire from the presence of that fowl. When the villain reaches the door he turns round to say something blood-curdling, and the lady answers him with a look of contempt. It was with such threats that I left the bantam, with such contempt that he received them. Then take the last scene in the play. If it is a room, there is a door — centre, as we say technically; and if it is an open-air scene there is a rustic gate, centre. Well, the villain is having everything his own way. The lady believes her husband to be dead, and meditates marrying the villain (who has persuaded her that he is virtuous) for the sake of her child. The villain walks triumphantly to the gate, centre, when suddenly the hero enters, centre. The crushed villain falls back down stage, where a policeman enters L. 1E. in time to slip the handcuffs on him. There is no safer ending to a domestic drama than that, and if what preceded had given satisfaction I used to feel that all was well. But it is an agonizing scene to me now. There was a gate in the farmyard, where I constantly met the bantam. For the moment I had forgotten the brute. I was off to fish, full of hope and merry, when suddenly there was that fowl eying me, just as the hero eyes the villain. I can assure you that no villain on the stage falls back from virtue more precipitately than I retreated from the bantam. How can I sit composedly through the first night of my plays when it seems to me that at the end of every dramatic speech and in the middle of every situation I hear cock-a-doodle-doo?”
THE “FOX-TERRIER” FRISKY.
ABOUT a month ago I saw in the street an open carriage containing a fox-terrier. In its efforts to express its contempt for a passing car, the dog barked itself over the side of the carriage on to the curb
stone. Next moment I saw the carriage draw up, and the coachman alight as if to look for something. What this something was I never discovered, for I had picked up the poor little dog and gone home with it. There was a collar round its neck with some writing on it, which I did not think myself justified in reading. To this collar I subsequently took a dislike, and I destroyed it. I have since thought that the dog may have belonged to the owners of the carriage.
Thus strangely did I become owner of a fox-terrier, which, as one may say, came unsolicited to my door. The romantic manner in which the little waif claimed me for its master touched my heart, and as I wanted a fox-terrier, at any rate, I had not the cruelty to turn it away. In justice to myself I should say that I wanted the dog for another.
Having explained to my landlady how the little animal had followed me home, I proceeded to train it. The first difficulty was to get hold of it, for if I followed it to one side of the room it retired to the other side. An onlooker might have thought that we were playing at a parlor game. I sat down by the fire to smoke until the dog behaved better, and then the man in the next house took to interfering. There was only a wall between him and me, and we were not friendly because once, when he coughed for more than a week, I sent him a request to stop it. I suppose he heard me and the dog exchanging greetings, for he knocked through the wall, as if a disturbance in my room was any affair of his. The dog barked every time he thumped, and so they went at it until the training of my faithful follower recommenced.
The dog would not let me go to it, but it came to me when I offered it food, and if I could have continued feeding it night and day, it would never have left my side. Thus early in its career it showed a sagacity that promised intellectual attainments of a high order. These promises were never fulfilled.
Dogs being, it is said, reasoning animals, I thought I would give this one a chance of fixing on its own name. I wrote a number of names on slips of paper and put them into the coalscuttle, which is always empty, though my landlady says she is always filling it. I invited the dog to select whichever name he preferred. Only a few days before I had read of a dog which, being requested to christen itself out of a coalscuttle, picked out a slip without a moment’s hesitation; but my dog was either fastidious or had no longer any interest in the matter when it discovered that the pieces of paper were not biscuits, for it merely put its nose into the coalscuttle and then withdrew. I have come to the conclusion that it looked upon a name as something not worth burdening itself with, for so long as I had it, it answered to no name if I had not a biscuit in my hand, and to any name if I was so provided. One day my landlady, who also experimented with the dog, came up and told me she thought it liked to be called “Frisky.” I remembered that the word “Frisky” had been on the collar, and I thought to myself, perhaps this dog has had a previous owner who called it “Frisky.” This, of course, was merely a guess, but it was worth experimenting upon, so I said “Frisky” to the dog, and immediately it came to me. Then the landlady called “Frisky,” and it ran to her. We were in high glee, but unfortunately I have ever been of a suspicious nature, and I was not absolutely convinced. So I experimented further. I called “Frisket” to the dog, and it not only ran to me, but wagged its tail. Thus were my unhappy suspicions confirmed. The dog only answered to the name “Frisky” because it sounded like “Biscuit.”