THE IDLER MAGAZINE.
AN ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY.
EDITED BY JEROME K. JEROME & ROBERT BARR.
VOL. III. FEBRUARY TO JULY, 1893.
XIII. FEB. 1893.
LONDON: CHATTO & WINDUS, 214, PICCADILLY. 1893.
* * * * *
CONTENTS.
CHEATING THE GALLOWS.
BY I. ZANGWILL.
MY FIRST NOVEL.--THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT.
BY MISS M. E. BRADDON.
NOVEL NOTES.
BY JEROME K. JEROME.
THE SKATER.
BY WILLIAM CANTON.
MY SERVANT ANDREAS.
BY ARCHIBALD FORBES.
TOLD BY THE COLONEL.--
X. A MATRIMONIAL ROMANCE.
BY W. L. ALDEN.
"LIONS IN THEIR DENS."--
II. GEORGE GROSSMITH AND THE HUMOUR OF HIM.
BY RAYMOND BLATHWAYT.
A BLIND BEGGARMAN.
BY FRANK MATHEW.
CHURCH AND STAGE.--A REVIEW OF HENRY IRVING.
BY THE REV. DR. JOSEPH PARKER.
THAT BEAST BEAUTY.
BY KIRBY HARE.
PEOPLE I HAVE NEVER MET.--MRS. HUMPHRY WARD.
BY SCOTT RANKIN.
THE IDLERS CLUB
Is Love a Practical Reality or a Pleasing Fiction?
* * * * *
CHEATING THE GALLOWS.
BY I. ZANGWILL.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEO. HUTCHINSON.
CHAPTER I.
CURIOUS COUPLE.
[Illustration: THE CORPSE WASHED UP BY THE RIVER.]
They say that a union of opposites makes the happiest marriage, and
perhaps it is on the same principle that men who chum are always so
oddly assorted. You shall find a man of letters sharing diggings with an
auctioneer, and a medical student pigging with a stockbroker's clerk.
Perhaps each thus escapes the temptation to talk "shop" in his hours of
leisure, while he supplements his own experiences of life by his
companion's.
[Illustration: TOM PETERS.]
[Illustration: EVERARD G. ROXDAL.]
There could not be an odder couple than Tom Peters and Everard G.
Roxdal--the contrast began with their names, and ran through the entire
chapter. They had a bedroom and a sitting-room in common, but it would
not be easy to find what else. To his landlady, worthy Mrs. Seacon, Tom
Peters's profession was a little vague, but everybody knew that Roxdal
was the manager of the City and Suburban Bank, and it puzzled her to
think why a bank manager should live with such a seedy-looking person,
who smoked clay pipes and sipped whiskey and water all the evening when
he was at home. For Roxdal was as spruce and erect as his fellow-lodger
was round-shouldered and shabby; he never smoked, and he confined
himself to a small glass of claret at dinner.
It is possible to live with a man and see very little of him. Where each
of the partners lives his own life in his own way, with his own circle
of friends and external amusements, days may go by without the men
having five minutes together. Perhaps this explains why these
partnerships jog along so much more peaceably than marriages, where the
chain is drawn so much tighter, and galls the partners rather than links
them. Diverse, however, as were the hours and habits of the chums, they
often breakfasted together, and they agreed in one thing--they never
stayed out at night. For the rest Peters sought his diversions in the
company of journalists, and frequented debating rooms, where he
propounded the most iconoclastic views; while Roxdal had highly
respectable houses open to him in the suburbs, and was, in fact, engaged
to be married to Clara Newell, the charming daughter of a retired corn
merchant, a widower with no other child.
[Illustration: ASKED TWENTY-FIVE PER CENT. MORE.]
Clara naturally took up a good deal of Roxdal's time, and he often
dressed to go to the play with her, while Peters stayed at home in a
faded dressing-gown and loose slippers. Mrs. Seacon liked to see
gentlemen about the house in evening dress, and made comparisons not
favourable to Peters. And this in spite of the fact that he gave her
infinitely less trouble than the younger man. It was Peters who first
took the apartments, and it was characteristic of his easy-going
temperament that he was so openly and naïvely delighted with the view of
the Thames obtainable from the bedroom window, that Mrs. Seacon was
emboldened to ask twenty-five per cent. more than she had intended. She
soon returned to her normal terms, however, when his friend Roxdal
called the next day to inspect the rooms, and overwhelmed her with a
demonstration of their numerous shortcomings. He pointed out that their
being on the ground floor was not an advantage, but a disadvantage,
since they were nearer the noises of the street--in fact, the house
being a corner one, the noises of two streets. Roxdal continued to
exhibit the same finicking temperament in the petty details of the
_ménage_. His shirt fronts were never sufficiently starched, nor his
boots sufficiently polished. Tom Peters, having no regard for rigid
linen, was always good-tempered and satisfied, and never acquired the
respect of his landlady. He wore blue check shirts and loose ties even
on Sundays. It is true he did not go to church, but slept on till Roxdal
returned from morning service, and even then it was difficult to get him
out of bed, or to make him hurry up his toilette operations. Often the
mid-day meal would be smoking on the table while Peters would smoke in
the bed, and Roxdal, with his head thrust through the folding doors that
separated the bedroom from the sitting-room, would be adjuring the
sluggard to arise and shake off his slumbers, and threatening to sit
down without him, lest the dinner be spoilt. In revenge, Tom was usually
up first on week-days, sometimes at such unearthly hours that Polly had
not yet removed the boots from outside the bedroom door, and would bawl
down to the kitchen for his shaving water. For Tom, lazy and indolent as
he was, shaved with the unfailing regularity of a man to whom shaving
has become an instinct. If he had not kept fairly regular hours, Mrs.
Seacon would have set him down as an actor, so clean shaven was he.
Roxdal did not shave. He wore a full beard, and, being a fine figure of
a man to boot, no uneasy investor could look upon him without being
reassured as to the stability of the bank he managed so successfully.
And thus the two men lived in an economical comradeship, all the firmer,
perhaps, for their mutual incongruities.
[Illustration: FOR HIS SHAVING WATER.]