rather typical of our insular methods. But do you know what an engaging,
what a reviving spectacle you presented, as you stood there flourishing
your hat? What do you imagine people thought? And what would have
happened to you if I had just chanced to be a policeman instead of a
friend?"
"Would you have clapped your handcuffs on me?" he inquired. "I suppose
my conduct did seem rather suspicious. I was in the deepest depths of
dejection. One must give some expression to one's sorrow."
"Are you going towards Kensington?" she asked, preparing to move on.
"Before I commit myself, I should like to be sure whether you are," he
replied.
"You can easily discover with a little perseverance."
He placed himself beside her, and together they walked towards
Kensington.
She was rather taller than the usual woman, and slender. She was
exceedingly well-dressed; smartly, becomingly; a jaunty little hat of
strangely twisted straw, with an aigrette springing defiantly from it; a
jacket covered with mazes and labyrinths of embroidery; at her throat a
big knot of white lace, the ends of which fell winding in a creamy
cascade to her waist (do they call the thing a _jabot_?); and then....
But what can a man trust himself to write of these esoteric matters? She
carried herself extremely well, too: with grace, with distinction, her
head held high, even thrown back a little, superciliously. She had an
immense quantity of very lovely hair. Red hair? Yellow hair? Red hair
with yellow lights burning in it? Yellow hair with red fires shimmering
through it? In a single loose, full billow it swept away from her
forehead, and then flowed into a half-a-thousand rippling, crinkling,
capricious undulations. And her skin had the sensitive colouring, the
fineness of texture, that are apt to accompany red hair when it's
yellow, yellow hair when it's red. Her face, with its pensive,
quizzical eyes, its tip-tilted nose, its rather large mouth, and the
little mocking quirks and curves the lips took, with an alert, arch,
witty face; a delicate high-bred face; and withal a somewhat sensuous,
emotional face; the face of a woman with a vast deal of humour in her
soul; a vast deal of mischief; of a woman who would love to tease you,
and mystify you, and lead you on, and put you off; and yet who, in her
own way, at her own time, would know supremely well how to be kind.
But it was mischief rather than kindness that glimmered in her eyes at
present, as she asked, "You were in the deepest depths of dejection?
Poor man! Why?"
"I can't precisely determine," said he, "whether the sympathy that seems
to vibrate in your voice is genuine or counterfeit."
"Perhaps it's half and half," she suggested. "But my curiosity is
unmixed. Tell me your troubles."
"The catalogue is long. I've sixteen hundred million. The weather, for
example. The shameless beauty of this radiant spring day. It's enough to
stir all manner of wild pangs and longings in the heart of an
octogenarian. But, anyhow, when one's life is passed in a dungeon, one
can't perpetually be singing and dancing from mere exuberance of joy,
can one?"
"Is your life passed in a dungeon?" she exclaimed.
"Indeed, indeed, it is. Isn't yours?"
"It had never occurred to me that it was."
"You're lucky. Mine is passed in the dungeons of Castle Ennui," he said.
"Oh, Castle Ennui. Ah, yes. You mean you're bored?"
"At this particular moment I'm savouring the most exquisite excitement,"
he professed. "But in general, when I am not working or sleeping, I'm
bored to extermination--incomparably bored. If only one could work and
sleep alternately, twenty-four hours a day, the year round! There's no
use trying to play in London. It's so hard to find a playmate. The
English people take their pleasures without salt."
"The dungeons of Castle Ennui," she repeated meditatively. "Yes, we are
fellow-prisoners. I'm bored to extermination too. Still," she added,
"one is allowed out on parole, now and again. And sometimes one has
really quite delightful little experiences."
"It would ill become me, in the present circumstances, to dispute that,"
he answered, bowing.
"But the castle waits to reclaim us afterwards, doesn't it?" she mused.
"That's rather a happy image, Castle Ennui."
"I'm extremely glad you approve of it. Castle Ennui is the bastile of
modern life. It is built of prunes and prisms; it has its outer court of
convention, and its inner court of propriety; it is moated round by
respectability, and the shackles its inmates wear are forged of dull
little duties and arbitrary little rules. You can only escape from it at
the risk of breaking your social neck, or remaining a fugitive from
social justice to the end of your days. Yes, it _is_ a fairly decent
little image."
"A bit out of something you're preparing for the press?" she hinted.
"Oh, how unkind of you!" he cried. "It was absolutely extemporaneous."
"One can never tell, with _vous autres gens-de-lettres_," she laughed.
"It would be friendlier to say _nous autres gens d'esprit_," he
submitted.
"Aren't we proving to what degree _nous autres gens d'esprit sont
bêtes_," she remarked, "by continuing to walk along this narrow
pavement, when we can get into Kensington Gardens by merely crossing the
street. Would it take you out of your way?"
"I have no way. I was sauntering for pleasure, if you can believe me. I
wish I could hope that you have no way either. Then we could stop here,
and crack little jokes together the livelong afternoon," he said, as
they entered the Gardens.
"Alas, my way leads straight back to the Castle. I've promised to call
on an old woman in Campden Hill," said she.
"Disappoint her. It's good for old women to be disappointed. It whips up
their circulation."
"I shouldn't much regret disappointing the old woman," she admitted,
"and I should rather like an hour or two of stolen freedom. I don't mind
owning that I've generally found you, as men go, a moderately
interesting man to talk with. But the deuce of it is--You permit the
expression?"
"I'm devoted to the expression."
"The deuce of it is, I'm supposed to be driving," she explained.
"Oh, that doesn't matter. So many suppositions in this world are
baseless," he reminded her.
"But there's the prison van," she said. "It's one of the tiresome rules
in the female wing of Castle Ennui that you're always supposed, more or
less, to be driving. And though you may cheat the authorities by
slipping out of the prison van directly it's turned the corner, and
sending it on ahead, there it remains, a factor that can't be
eliminated. The prison van will relentlessly await my arrival in the old
woman's street."
"That only adds to the sport. Let it wait. When a factor can't be
eliminated, it should be haughtily ignored. Besides, there are higher
considerations. If you leave me, what shall I do with the rest of this
weary day?"
"You can go to your club."
He threw up his hand. "Merciful lady! What sin have I committed? I never
go to my club, except when I've been wicked, as a penance. If you will
permit me to employ a metaphor--oh, but a tried and trusty
metaphor--when one ship on the sea meets another in distress, it stops
and comforts it, and forgets all about its previous engagements and the
prison van and everything. Shall we cross to the north, and see whether
the Serpentine is in its place? Or would you prefer to inspect the
eastern front of the Palace? Or may I offer you a penny chair?"
"I think a penny chair would be the maddest of the three dissipations,"
she decided.
And they sat down in penny chairs.
"It's rather jolly here, isn't it?" said he. "The trees, with their
black trunks, and their leaves, and things. Have you ever seen such
sumptuous foliage? And the greensward, and the shadows, and the
sunlight, and the atmosphere, and the mistiness--isn't it like
pearl-dust and gold-dust floating in the air? It's all got up to imitate
the background of a Watteau. We must do our best to be frivolous and
ribald, and supply a proper foreground. How big and fleecy and white the
clouds are. Do you think they're made of cotton-wood? And what do you
suppose they paint the sky with? There never was such a brilliant,
breath-taking blue. It's much too nice to be natural. And they've
sprinkled the whole place with scent, haven't they? You notice how fresh
and sweet it smells. If only one could get rid of the sparrows--the
cynical little beasts! hear how they're chortling--and the people, and
the nursemaids and children. I have never been able to understand why
they admit the public to the parks."
"Go on," she encouraged him. "You're succeeding admirably in your effort
to be ribald."
"But that last remark wasn't ribald in the least--it was desperately
sincere. I do think it's inconsiderate of them to admit the public to
the parks. They ought to exclude all the lower classes, the people, at
one fell swoop, and then to discriminate tremendously amongst the
others."
"Mercy, what undemocratic sentiments!" she cried. "The People, the poor
dear People--what have they done?"
"Everything. What haven't they done? One could forgive their being dirty
and stupid and noisy and rude; one could forgive their ugliness, the
ineffable banality of their faces, their goggle-eyes, their protruding
teeth, their ungainly motions; but the trait one can't forgive is their
venality. They're so mercenary. They're always thinking how much they
can get out of you--everlastingly touching their hats and expecting you
to put your hand in your pocket. Oh, no, believe me, there's no health
in the People. Ground down under the iron heel of despotism, reduced to
a condition of hopeless serfdom, I don't say that they might not develop
redeeming virtues. But free, but sovereign, as they are in these days,
they're everything that is squalid and sordid and offensive. Besides,
they read such abominably bad literature."
"In that particular they're curiously like the aristocracy, aren't
they?" said she. "By-the-bye, when are you going to publish another book
of poems?"
"Apropos of bad literature?"
"Not altogether bad. I rather like your poems."
"So do I," said he. "It's useless to pretend that we haven't tastes in
common."
They were both silent for a bit. She looked at him oddly, an inscrutable
little light flickering in her eyes. All at once she broke out with a
merry trill of laughter.
"What are you laughing at?" he demanded.
"I'm hugely amused," she answered.
"I wasn't I aware that I'd said anything especially good."
"You're building better than you know. But if I am amused, _you_ look
ripe for tears. What is the matter?"
"Every heart knows its own bitterness," he answered. "Don't pay the
least attention to me. You mustn't let moodiness of mine cast a blight
upon your high spirits."
"No fear," she assured him. "There are pleasures that nothing can rob of
their sweetness. Life is not all dust and ashes. There are bright
spots."
"Yes, I've no doubt there are," he said.
"And thrilling little adventures--no?" she questioned.
"For the bold, I dare say."
"None but the bold deserve them. Sometimes it's one thing, and sometimes
it's another."
"That's very certain," he agreed.
"Sometimes, for instance," she went on, "one meets a man one knows, and
speaks to him. And he answers with a glibness! And then, almost
directly, what do you suppose one discovers?"
"What?" he asked.
"One discovers that the wretch hasn't a ghost of a notion who one
is--that he's totally and absolutely forgotten one!"
"Oh, I say! Really?" he exclaimed.
"Yes, really. You can't deny that _that's_ an exhilarating little
adventure."
"I should think it might be. One could enjoy the man's embarrassment,"
he reflected.
"Or his lack of embarrassment. Some men are of an assurance, of a _sang
froid_! They'll place themselves beside you, and walk with you, and talk
with you, and even propose that you should pass the livelong afternoon
cracking jokes with them in a garden, and never breathe a hint of their
perplexity. They'll brazen it out."
"That's distinctly heroic, Spartan, of them, don't you think?" he said.
"Intentionally, poor dears, they're very likely suffering agonies of
discomfiture."
"We'll hope they are. Could they decently do less?" said she.
"And fancy the mental struggles that must be going on in their brains,"
he urged. "If I were a man in such a situation I'd throw myself upon the
woman's mercy. I'd say, 'Beautiful, sweet lady! I know I know you. Your
name, your entirely charming and appropriate name, is trembling on the
tip of my tongue. But, for some unaccountable reason, my brute of a
memory chooses to play the fool. If you've a spark of Christian kindness
in your soul, you'll come to my rescue with a little clue."
"If the woman had a Christian sense of the ridiculous in her soul, I
fear you'd throw yourself on her mercy in vain," she warned.
"What _is_ the good of tantalizing people?"
"Besides," she continued, "the woman might reasonably feel slightly
humiliated to find herself forgotten in that bare-faced manner."
"The humiliation would be surely all the man's. Have you heard from the
Wohenhoffens lately?"
"The--what? The--who?" She raised her eyebrows.
"The Wohenhoffens," he repeated.
"What are the Wohenhoffens? Are they persons? Are they things?"
"Oh, nothing. My inquiry was merely dictated by a thirst for knowledge.
It occurred to me that you might have won a black domino at the masked
ball they gave, the Wohenhoffens. Are you sure you didn't?"
"I've a great mind to punish your forgetfulness by pretending that I
did," she teased.
"She was rather tall, like you, and she had gray eyes, and a nice voice,
and a laugh that was sweeter than the singing of nightingales. She was
monstrously clever, too, with a flow of language that would have made
her a leader in any sphere. She was also a perfect fiend. I have always
been anxious to meet her again, in order that I might ask her to marry
me. I'm strongly disposed to believe that she was you. Was she?" he
pleaded.
"If I say yes, will you at once proceed to ask me to marry you?" she
asked.
"Try it and see."
"_Ce n'est pas la peine._ It occasionally happens that a woman's already
got a husband."
"She said she was an old maid."
"Do you dare to insinuate that I look like an old maid?" she cried.
"Yes."
"Upon my word!"
"Would you wish me to insinuate that you look like anything so insipid
as a young girl? _Were_ you the woman of the black domino?" he
persisted.
"I should need further information, before being able to make up my
mind. Are the--what's their name?--Wohenheimer?--are the Wohenheimers
people one can safely confess to knowing? Oh, you're a man, and don't
count. But a woman? It sounds a trifle Jewish, Wohenheimer. But of
course there are Jews and Jews."
"You're playing with me like the cat in the adage," he sighed. "It's
too cruel. No one is responsible for his memory."
"And to think that this man took me down to dinner not two months ago!"
she murmured in her veil.
"You're as hard as nails. In whose house? Or--stay. Prompt me a little.
Tell me the first syllable of your name. Then the rest will come with a
rush."
"My name is Matilda Muggins."
"I've a great mind to punish your untruthfulness by pretending to
believe you," said he. "Have you really got a husband?"
"Why do you doubt it?" said she.
"I don't doubt it. Have you?"
"I don't know what to answer."
"Don't you know whether you've got a husband?" he protested.
"I don't know what I'd better let you believe. Yes, on the whole, I
think you may as well assume that I've got a husband," she concluded.
"And a lover, too?" he asked.
"Really! I like your impertinence!" she bridled.
"I only asked to show a polite interest. I knew the answer would be an
indignant negative. You're an Englishwoman, and you're _nice_. Oh, one
can see with half an eye that you're _nice_. But that a nice
Englishwoman should have a lover is as inconceivable as that she should
have side-whiskers. It's only the reg'lar bad-uns in England who have
lovers. There's nothing between the family pew and the divorce court.
One nice Englishwoman is a match for the whole Eleven Thousand Virgins
of Cologne."
"To hear you talk, one might fancy you were not English yourself. For a
man of the name of Field, you're uncommonly foreign. You _look_ rather
foreign, too, you know, by-the-bye. You haven't at all an English cast
of countenance," she considered.
"I've enjoyed the advantages of a foreign education. I was brought up
abroad," he explained.
"Where your features unconsciously assimilated themselves to a foreign
type? Where you learned a hundred thousand strange little foreign
things, no doubt? And imbibed a hundred thousand unprincipled little
foreign notions? And all the ingenuous little foreign prejudices and
misconceptions concerning England?" she questioned.
"Most of them," he assented.
"_Perfide Albion?_ English hypocrisy?" she pursued.
"Oh, yes, the English are consummate hypocrites. But there's only one
objection to their hypocrisy--it so rarely covers any wickedness. It's
such a disappointment to see a creature stalking toward you, laboriously
draped in sheep's clothing, and then to discover that it's only a sheep.
You, for instance, as I took the liberty of intimating a moment ago, in
spite of your perfectly respectable appearance, are a perfectly
respectable woman. If you weren't, wouldn't I be making furious love to
you, though!"
"As I am, I can see no reason why you shouldn't make furious love to me,
if it would amuse you. There's no harm in firing your pistol at a person
who's bullet-proof," she laughed.
"No; it's merely a wanton waste of powder and shot," said he. "However,
I shouldn't stick at that. The deuce of it is--You permit the
expression?"
"I'm devoted to the expression."
"The deuce of it is, you profess to be married."
"Do you mean to say that you, with your unprincipled foreign notions,
would be restrained by any such consideration as that?" she wondered.
"I shouldn't be for an instant--if I weren't in love with you."
"_Comment donc? Déjà?_" she cried with a laugh.
"Oh, _déjà_! Why not? Consider the weather--consider the scene. Is the
air soft, is it fragrant? Look at the sky--good heavens!--and the
clouds, and the shadows on the grass, and the sunshine between the
trees. The world is made of light to-day, of light and color, and
perfume and music. _Tutt 'intorno canta amor, amor, amor!_ What would
you have? One recognises one's affinity. One doesn't need a lifetime.
You began the business at the Wohenhoffens' ball. To-day you've merely
put on the finishing touches."
"Oh, then I _am_ the woman you met at the masked ball?" she cried.
"Look me in the eye, and tell me you're not," he defied her.
"I haven't the faintest interest in telling you I'm not. On the
contrary, it rather pleases me to let you imagine that I am."
"She owed me a grudge, you know. I hoodwinked her like everything," he
confided.
"Oh, did you? Then, as a sister woman, I should be glad to serve as her
instrument of vengeance. Do you happen to have such a thing as a watch
about you?" she inquired.
"Yes," he said.
"Will you be good enough to tell me what o'clock it is?"
"What are your motives for asking?"
"I'm expected at home at five."
"Where do you live?"
"What are the motives for asking?"
"I want to call upon you."
"You might wait till you're invited."
"Well, invite me--quick!"
"Never."
"Never?"
"Never, never, never," she asseverated. "A man who's forgotten me as you
have!"
"But if I've only met you once at a masked ball--"
"Can't you be brought to realise that every time you mistake me for that
woman of the masked ball you turn the dagger in the wound?" she
demanded.
"But if you won't invite me to call upon you, how and when am I to see
you again?"
"I haven't an idea," she answered, cheerfully. "I must go now. Good-by."
She rose.
"One moment," he interposed. "Before you go will you allow me to look at
the palm of your left hand?"
"What for?"
"I can tell fortunes. I'm extremely good at it," he boasted. "I'll tell
you yours."
"Oh, very well," she assented, sitting down again: and guilelessly she
pulled off her glove.
He took her hand, a beautifully slender, nervous hand, warm and soft,
with rosy, tapering fingers.
"Oho! you _are_ an old maid after all," he cried. "There's no wedding
ring."
"You villain!" she gasped, snatching the hand away.
"I promised to tell your fortune. Haven't I told it correctly?"
"You needn't rub it in, though. Eccentric old maids don't like to be
reminded of their condition."
"Will you marry _me_?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Partly for curiosity. Partly because it's the only way I can think of,
to make sure of seeing you again. And then, I like your hair. Will you?"
"I can't," she said.
"Why not?"
"The stars forbid. And I'm ambitious. In my horoscope it is written that
I shall either never marry at all, or--marry royalty."
"Oh, bother ambition! Cheat your horoscope. Marry me. Will you?"
"If you care to follow me," she said, rising again, "you can come and
help me to commit a little theft."
He followed her to an obscure and sheltered corner of a flowery path,
where she stopped before a bush of white lilac.
"There are no keepers in sight, are there? she questioned.
"I don't see any," he said.
"Then allow me to make you a receiver of stolen goods," said she,
breaking off a spray, and handing it to him.
"Thank you. But I'd rather have an answer to my question."
"Isn't that an answer?"
"Is it?"
"White lilac--to the Invisible Prince?"
"The Invisible Prince--Then you _are the black_ domino!" he exclaimed.
"Oh, I suppose so," she consented.
"And you _will_ marry me?"
"I'll tell the aunt I live with to ask you to dinner."
"But will you marry me?"
"I thought you wished me to cheat my horoscope?"
"How could you find a better means of doing so?"
"What! if I should marry Louis Leczinski--?"
"Oh, to be sure. You will have it that I was Louis Leczinski. But, on
that subject, I must warn you seriously--"
"One instant," she interrupted. "People must look other people straight
in the face when they're giving serious warnings. Look straight into my
eyes, and continue your serious warning."
"I must really warn you seriously," said he, biting his lip, "that if
you persist in that preposterous delusion about my being Louis
Leczinski, you'll be most awfully sold. I have nothing on earth to do
with Louis Leczinski. Your ingenious little theories, as I tried to
convince you at the time, were absolute romance."
Her eyebrows raised a little, she kept her eyes fixed steadily on
his--oh, in the drollest fashion, with a gaze that seemed to say "How
admirably you do it! I wonder whether you imagine I believe you. Oh, you
fibber! Aren't you ashamed to tell me such abominable fibs--?"
They stood still, eyeing each other thus, for something like twenty
seconds, and then they both laughed and walked on.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] From _Comedies and Errors_. Reprinted by permission of the John Lane
Company.
WHY WAIT FOR DEATH AND TIME?
BY BERT LESTON TAYLOR
I hold it truth with him who weekly sings
Brave songs of hope,--the music of "The Sphere,"--
That deathless tomes the living present brings:
Great literature is with us year on year.
Books of the mighty dead, whom men revere,
Remind me I can make _my_ books sublime.
But, prithee, bay my brow while I am here:
Why do we ever wait for Death and Time?
Shakespeare, great spirit, beat his mighty wings,
As I beat mine, for the occasion near.
He knew, as I, the worth of present things:
Great literature is with us year on year.
Methinks I meet across the gulf his clear
And tranquil eye; his calm reflections chime
With mine: "Why do we at the present fleer?
Why do we ever wait for Death and Time?"
The reading world with acclamation rings
For my last book. It led the list at Weir,
Altoona, Rahway, Painted Post, Hot Springs:
Great literature is with us year on year.
"The Bookman" gives me a vociferous cheer.
Howells approves. I can no higher climb.
Bring, then, the laurel: crown my bright career--
Why do we ever wait for Death and Time?
Critics, who pastward, ever pastward peer,
Great literature is with us year on year.
Trumpet my fame while I am in my prime:
Why do we ever wait for Death and Time?
WINTER JOYS
BY EUGENE FIELD
A man stood on the bathroom floor,
While raged the storm without,
One hand was on the water valve,
The other on the spout.