of" a woman. I may even say a "woman in white." "I was a pale young
curate" then, but of a dissenting type. Twenty-two years of age. Very
white in the face. Dark brown hair, enough to fill a mattress. Very high
collars, compared with which Mr. Gladstone's are mere suggestions. Huge
white neckerchief. Black cloth from top to toe. I was sent to visit an
invalid lady somewhere in City Road. A total stranger. Place: A shop.
Room: At the tip-top of the house. The last part of the staircase was
exceedingly narrow and steep, the stairs themselves little broader than
a ladder. Tableau: A lady in bed, the only occupant of the room; a young
minister, nearly all head and shirt collar, the rest of him a mere
detail; the minister very shy and, as it were, "struck all of a heap" by
the novelty of his position. The young minister, nervously shy, sat
down, and the woman in white breathed a deep sigh. If my mother could
have spoken to me then, it would have been such a comfort. I felt as if
up in the clouds and the ladder had been stolen. There was not enough of
me to break into perspiration, or I should have broken. I know I should.
On this point I will brook no contradiction. There I sat. There were but
two of us, and oh! I felt so very high up, and so very far from the
police. Even the street noises seemed to be in another world, and that
world next but one to this. The silence was painful. At length the young
mother, not so very, very young, perhaps, turned her large brown eyes
upon me in a fixed and devouring way, and I can tell you what she said.
Shall I? Can you bear it? I could not. She said, with malignant
slowness, "I feel such a strong desire to kill somebody." I was the only
"body" in the room. How that young man got out of the chamber I could
never tell. He never revisited it. He was in the City Road as if by
magic. Did he pray with the woman? Not a word. Or she might have preyed
upon him.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Burgin recalls an incident.]
I remember a couple of incidents, both of which gave me unpleasant
dreams for some time. The first was in connection with that noble animal
which is so useful to man--when it suits him. I was staying out at the
Constantinople fortifications with my friend, Colonel A----, in a
delightfully picturesque little Turkish village called Baba Nakatch. We
had no drains, no amusements, no post--nothing but an occasional death
from typhoid to vary the monotony. When we tired of playing chess, we
rode out and inspected fortifications, _i.e._, my friend the Colonel
rode into a place with earthworks round it, majestically acknowledged
the salutes of the soldiers, and then rode out again. It generally took
four or five hours to go the rounds, and I humbly remained outside each
fort, only catching distant glimpses of the frowning guns as I sat on an
Arab steed at the entrance, and tried to look military. One day, another
Colonel, whose horse was pining for that exercise which his somewhat
indolent master felt disinclined to give him, suggested that I should
ride his grey charger and "take the devil out of him." I couldn't see
any devil in the horse when he was brought round. He was apparently calm
and sleepy, and tolerated me for about ten minutes. Then, without any
warning, the brute swerved round, and bolted back at a mad gallop in the
direction of the village. His mouth was like cast-iron, so I soon gave
up pulling at it. The gallop was exhilarating. Why trouble to stop? So I
simply sat well back, and awaited events. I hadn't to wait very long. We
cut round a corner, and dashed up a muddy lane leading to the stables.
Ten yards ahead of me, I suddenly noticed a thick telegraph wire
stretched across the road, a little higher than a horse's shoulders,
which had evidently been diverted from its original uses by an ingenious
but unprejudiced Turkish soldiery for the purpose of suspending their
washed shirts. Rip! rip! Z--z--z--z! as I ducked to the saddle-bow, and
something scraped across my back with a sound as of rending garments.
When I was able to reflect, I found the horse standing almost asleep in
the yard, with my soldier-servant respectfully holding my stirrup in his
hand. "Shall I sew up the back of the Effendi's jacket?" he placidly
remarked; and the incident terminated.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Also another.]
On the second occasion, I was badly scared. I reached Montreal one hot
summer night before the English steamer started. She was timed to leave
at three in the morning, and all passengers had to be on board the night
before. It was so hot that I was nearly suffocated in the close harbour.
When I went down to my cabin I left the door open, put my purse and
watch at the foot of the bed, under the mattress, and tumbled off to
sleep. There was no light in the cabin, as the steamer was moored
alongside the wharf. When I awoke, I lay quite still for a moment,
vaguely conscious of impending evil. I could hear someone breathe in the
darkness--stealthy steps--then a hand groping lightly about feeling for
my throat. It rested there for a moment. There was a momentary
tightening of the fingers. Should I keep still, or make an effort? I
kept still, trying to breathe naturally. The fingers left my throat, and
fumbled under the pillow as if searching for something, then gradually
retreated, the breathing of the man became less distinct, and I was
alone. With one bound I reached the door, bolted it, and sat down on the
floor in a helpless and chaotic condition. The next day a new steward
was missing; so were several other things.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: F. W. Robinson has a predicament.]
Oh, yes, I have had my awkward predicament too--you, gentlemen, have not
had it all your own way. It happened in "the dead of the night" at a big
hotel in a Lancashire watering-place, and my first notice of the
forthcoming event was given to me by a loud hammering at the front door.
"Gentleman home late, decidedly noisy, and probably drunk," I
soliloquised, and was about to resume my slumbers when someone ran along
the corridor outside, his or her naked feet sounding oddly enough as
they pattered, at a great rate, past my door. "Somebody ill," was my
next thought. "Very ill," was thought number three, as more feet--also
in a hurry--went bounding by. "Perhaps a lunatic at large," was my
fourth reflection, as various voices sounded in the distance, several of
them in a high falsetto. I got out of bed, opened my door, and looked
down the corridor towards the big wide staircase in the distance. There
was smoke coming along the passage, a smell of burnt wood, and then a
woman's voice giving out a bloodcurdling shriek of "Fire!" That was
quite enough notice for me. Two minutes afterwards I was downstairs in
the hall of that sensational establishment.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: It necessitates unconventional attire.]
I was not alone. I was in a mixed assembly of a hundred men, women, and
children, who very quickly became two hundred, presently three hundred,
all told; visitors, waiters, chambermaids, hotel officials, huddled
together in the most incongruous and comic costumes, and thirty per
cent. of them with no costumes at all, unless night-shirts and
curl-papers count. I was decorous by comparison. I _had_ on a pair of
trousers (buttoned up the wrong way, certainly), a billycock hat, a
surtout coat, a walking-stick, and no shoes or socks. The hall, being
paved with marble, struck exceedingly cold to bare feet, and with a
total disregard for other people's property I took down an ulster from a
rack, and stood on it until a gentleman from upstairs, who was
singularly distraught, emptied a whole pail of water over the balusters
under the impression that we were flaring somewhere below there. The
conflagration was on the first floor above a shop, which had caught
light to begin with, and burned through to the hotel bedrooms. Here were
plenty of smoke, plenty of "smother," and a few flames in the corner,
but no one knew what might be the end of the business, and we were all
prepared to march on to the breezy Parade should the fire gain too much
sway over the premises.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: But is not very serious.]
The characters in this little domestic scene I found highly amusing
after my first scare, as I have no doubt I was a very amusing spectacle
to others. The most agile of the company tore up and down stairs with
utensils of all kinds, full of water, from the kitchen; sometimes they
fell up the stairs, or clashed against each other, and an awful mess was
the consequence. One lady was brought solemnly down in a large clothes
basket, fright having deprived her of the use of her limbs; two men in
night-shirts stood against the front door with small portmanteaus under
their arms, extremely anxious to be the first to get out alive; one old
gentleman, also scantily clad, harangued us from the first landing in a
feeble and bleating fashion. "Has any-any-body se-ent for the fiiire
brigade?" he asked every two or three minutes, always forgetting that he
had been answered in the affirmative. He was sure that the fire brigade
had escaped every one's memory but his own, and presently--it _had_
seemed a long while--the firemen in their brass helmets arrived, and
brought their hose into the premises and lumbered upstairs with it, and
the engines began pumping and thumping in the street. A
quarter-of-an-hour finished the proceedings so far as one's personal
safety was concerned, and by twos, threes, and fours we slunk away to
our respective rooms considerably ashamed now of our get-up, and
thankful in our hearts that the worst was over.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Gribble's predicaments have been very common-place.]
Most of my predicaments have been very common-place predicaments, and
the ways in which I have got out of them very ordinary and obvious ways.
Once, when I was a child in petticoats, I wanted to walk through a
tunnel at the same time as an express train, but my nurse ran after me
and pulled me back. Once, before I had learnt to swim, I was caught by
the tide between Broadstairs and Ramsgate; but some sailors came and
took me off in a boat. Once again, I, who cannot claim to be physically
robust, was challenged to single combat by a truculent Belgian miner of
six foot three, with whom I had refused to drink pecquet; but a steam
tram happened to pass opportunely, and I escaped in it. Lastly, there
was my Alpine brigand. He, with all his faults, was picturesque.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: With one exception.]
I believe--and I shall be glad to be contradicted if I am mistaken--that
I am the only living man who has ever been "stuck up" by a brigand in
the middle of a glacier. I had no idea that the man was a brigand until,
by behaving as such, he gave himself away; otherwise, I have no doubt I
should have risen to the occasion and taken to my heels. As it was, he
gave me, as the gods gave Demodocus, "both good and evil." That is to
say, he deprived me of my money, leaving me in exchange a new sensation,
and something interesting to write about. If I were to generalise about
brigands, I should do so thus: Brigands, I should say, are of medium
height, slightly but firmly built; they wear mutton-chop whiskers, and
are dressed in brown; they carry their luggage--their shaving tackle, I
suppose, and their pyjamas--in red and white handkerchiefs slung behind
their backs; their appearance is ferocious, and they go about with guns.
They spend most of their time sitting on the lateral moraines,
pretending to be chamois-hunters. When they see solitary strangers, they
come down on to the glacier and accost them without introduction, their
usual form of salutation being, _Donnez-moi tout l'argent que vous
avez?_ The ideal way to treat a brigand is to arrest him, drag him to
the nearest police station, and give him into custody. A more practical
plan is to humour him by relieving his necessities, and afterwards to
recoup yourself by holding him up to contumely in the press. But you
must not expect him to be caught. The Department of Justice and Police
will show great energy in sending you his _dossier_ in several
languages, so that you may be able to give chapter and verse when you
denounce him in print. The Chief of the Department may even invite you
to drink an absinthe with him in the Sion Casino. But, as for catching
your brigand, that request is much too unreasonable to be seriously
entertained.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Frank Mathew tells the truth.]
I can lay no claim to the honesty that has made the other members of
this club so eager to expose their most awkward and ludicrous
adventures. Why should I publish my least pleasant memories to
strangers? That is a task I would leave to my enemies. Besides, whenever
I have come to grief, some other fellow has been to blame. When I fell
into Hampton Lock, before the eyes of a multitude, it was because that
ungainly lout Jones let the boat swing. Jones laughed then, and many
times after when he told the story; but why should I help him to spread
it? But that is neither here nor there. If I had been always as lucky as
the other members of this club, who seem to have remained dignified in
their misfortunes, then I might be less reticent. And if I were so
unscrupulous as to speak only of things less bitter to remember, then I
might tell how on a Bavarian railway I was once waked at midnight by an
excited official who--with an air as if life and death hung on my
answers--plied me with questions in spite of my explaining to him that I
did not even know what language he was talking, and who at last rushed
away leaving me doubting whether he was a mad-man or a nightmare; or how
I lost my way among the hills by Bologna--at a time when I knew no
Italian--and wandered for hours along dusty roads, cursing the ignorance
of the natives; or how, dining at Lugano--in the open air and under a
vine-covered trellis--I ordered a cheap wine, new to me,
"Château-neuf-du-Pape," and was delighted when it was brought to me
reverently cradled and in an immemorial bottle, and when it proved to be
a wine of wonderful merit, and how my blood turned cold when the waiter
gave me the bill, for he had mistaken my order, and I had been drinking
Château-something-or-other, a priceless vintage.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Alden is not sure which.]
I am not sure what was my most awkward predicament, for the choice lies
between a prayer-meeting and Folkestone. This may seem obscure, but it
isn't, as you will presently see. My Folkestone experience was as
follows:--The baby--I decline to specify whose baby, for the law of
England does not compel any man to confess that he is a grandfather--had
been ill for a week, and the physician said that we must take her to the
seashore instantly. In half-an-hour we had caught a train for
Folkestone, which the baby's mother, remembering her sensations when
landing from the Boulogne boat after a rough passage, felt sure was "all
that there is of the most seashore," as the French idiom has it. It was
just about to rain when we reached Folkestone, and, putting the baby and
her attendant slaves in a carriage, I told them to drive at once to the
private hotel, which we had selected, and I would follow with the
luggage. It took some time to pile a mountain of boxes and bundles on
the top of the carriage, but, finally, just as the rain began to pour, a
self-sacrificing friend who had remained to help got into the cab with
me, and we told the driver to go to number 33, such-a-street. It was at
the furthest extremity of the town, and when we reached there, after two
or three attempts on the part of the top-heavy cab to upset, I was
greeted by the information that no such person as the landlady of whom I
was in search lived there. What was worse, nobody had ever heard of her,
and no cab containing a baby had called at the house that day. Where
then was the baby, and its mother, and my wife, and its other slaves?
Obviously, they were lost somewhere in the town of Folkestone, and our
two cabs might drive up and down for months without ever once meeting
one another. I looked at my companion, and he looked at me in silence.
No language could do justice to the occasion, and we both recognised the
fact. I told the cabman to go to all the hotels in the neighbourhood,
and enquire for a missing baby. He explained that there were nothing but
hotels and boarding-houses in Folkestone, and that to visit them all
would take the greater part of our lives; still, he would try. So we
went to at least a dozen different places, and, although twice a sample
of the resident babies was brought out for our inspection, we did not
find the one for which we were in search. Then the driver, seeing our
despair, said that perhaps he had better drive to the pier, and we said
that perhaps he had. I think he had a vague idea that we were lunatics,
and could possibly be lured on board the Boulogne boat, and so got rid
of. But he thought better of it before reaching the pier, and suggested
that if we went back to the station, perhaps the stationmaster might
help us. So we went back to the station, merely to be told by the
stationmaster that he knew nothing about the missing landlady or the
missing baby, and didn't want to, either. Once more the driver suggested
the pier, and we told him to drive us anywhere. It was now after dark,
and being wet and hungry, as well as devoid of wives and babies, we were
beginning to be reckless. All at once, a joyful cry sounded from a
passing cab. It was the voice of my wife, who was patrolling Folkestone
in the hope of meeting us. Our nightmare was over, and in a few more
minutes we were clasped in the arms of the baby--or, at any rate, we
would have been had she been old enough to learn the use of her arms. To
the unmarried man the experience may not seem quite so dreadful as it
did to me, but let a married man mislay a valuable baby, not to speak of
a wife and daughter, in a strange town on a stormy night, and he will
know how near he can come to having a nightmare without preliminary pork
and sleep.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: And tells of a prayer meeting.]
Once, when I was an undergraduate, a prayer-meeting was held in
somebody's room, which I attended. I do not recollect what was the
occasion of the holding of this meeting, but I do remember that it was a
particularly solemn one. There were about thirty of us in the room, and
the meeting had been in progress for about half-an-hour, when it
suddenly occurred to me that were someone to burst into a laugh, the
astonished expression of the others would be something worth seeing.
Then I thought how painful would be the feelings of the man who laughed,
and how he would be covered with shame and remorse. All at once an
irresistible desire to laugh came upon me. There was nothing whatever to
laugh at, and the mere idea of laughing in such a place filled me with
horror, but still the desire--a purely nervous one, of course--to break
out in a peal of laughter grew stronger and stronger. I bit my lips, and
tried to think of the most solemn and depressing subjects, but that
laugh could not be conjured in any such way; presently I knew that I was
smiling--a broad, complacent, luxurious smile. Just then, a man sitting
opposite to me saw my smile, and a look of cold horror spread over his
face. At this I laughed aloud, in a choking, timorous way, but loudly
enough to attract the attention of every one in the room. The mischief
was now done, and, in the estimation of my comrades, I was disgraced for
ever, as the man ought to be who insults pious people at their prayers.
Being ruined, I thought that there was no longer any necessity for
prolonging that terrible effort to suppress a laugh, and so I leaned
back in my chair and laughed loud, long, and, in fact, uproariously. The
meeting came to a sudden pause. The first expression on every face was
that of amazed horror, but my laugh was contagious, and presently
someone else joined in, and before order was restored the room rang with
the laughter of a dozen men. All this time I was in an agony of
self-reproach in spite of my laughter. I virtually broke up the meeting,
and it was not until the clergyman, who presided, had dismissed us, that
I could command myself sufficiently to try to explain to him the purely
involuntary nature of my laughter. He was kind enough and intelligent
enough to understand the matter, but the greater part of those who heard
me believe to this day that I was a bold blasphemer of a peculiarly
brutal character. I could never begin to tell what mental suffering the
affair caused me, but I can safely say that I was never more miserable
than I was at the very moment when I was laughing the most thorough and
ecstatic laugh that ever came to me.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Zangwill refuseth to be drawn, and runneth amuck.]
I never was in an awkward predicament. I have seen it stated that I once
wrote "To be concluded in our next" without having the slightest idea
how to extricate my characters from the mess I had got them into, but
that is another story. There is not a word of truth in it. An awkward
predicament is as unfamiliar to me as a crinoline; I have never been in
one. It is absurd, therefore, to ask me what is the _most_ awkward
predicament I have ever been in; besides, it is always so invidious to
select. I really must refuse to pander to editorial flippancy, and to
add myself to the April fools who will scribble seriously upon the
subject. I think, if this sort of thing is to take the place of our
sensible symposia, it is time the Idlers' Club was abolished. The
intrusion of ladies has spoilt everything. Once we sat with our feet on
the mantelpiece smoking. (My own cigar was always given me by the
artist.) Now we never smoke--Angelina won't permit it. Tea replaces the
whiskey of yore, and the horizon is bounded by thin bread and butter. We
are expected to stick to one predetermined subject--doubtless for fear
we might wander off into the improper--and we are almost encouraged to
bring our sewing. No more we enjoy those delightful excursions to
everywhere--interrupting one another _apropos des bottes_, and capping
an appreciation of Wagner with an anecdote about a mad turtle. Yet this
is the only natural style of conversation. Who ever keeps to the point
in real life? It is bad enough in examinations for the examiners to ask
you about Henry II. when you are anxious to tell them about Elizabeth;
or to demand your ideas on the manufacture of hydrochloric acid when the
subject nearest your heart is the composition of ammonia. But
conversation will not bear such inquisitorial pinning down to a
particular point. It becomes a dead specimen butterfly instead of a
living, fluttering creature. I think someone ought to tell the editors
that they are simply ruining the club. I shudder to think what will
become of it in five years' time, when nobody will belong to it but
ladies and parsons. I would resign at once if it were not for sheer
generosity. The generosity of the editors is, indeed, beyond all cavil.
But even their generosity has its limits. It is as certain as
quarter-day that if I do not fill my allotted space I shall not get
paid. And yet, in the absence of any experience of the requisite nature,
it is quite impossible for me to say one word on the subject I have been
asked to talk about. I don't wish to tell a lie or to throw away money,
but it looks as if I must do one or the other. Really, it's the most
awkward predicament I was ever in.