I'm not going to discuss the Fiscal Question (said Reginald); I wish to
be original. At the same time, I think one suffers more than one
realises from the system of free imports. I should like, for instance, a
really prohibitive duty put upon the partner who declares on a weak red
suit and hopes for the best. Even a free outlet for compressed verbiage
doesn't balance matters. And I think there should be a sort of bounty-
fed export (is that the right expression?) of the people who impress on
you that you ought to take life seriously. There are only two classes
that really can't help taking life seriously--schoolgirls of thirteen and
Hohenzollerns; they might be exempt. Albanians come under another
heading; they take life whenever they get the opportunity. The one
Albanian that I was ever on speaking terms with was rather a decadent
example. He was a Christian and a grocer, and I don't fancy he had ever
killed anybody. I didn't like to question him on the subject--that
showed my delicacy. Mrs. Nicorax says I have no delicacy; she hasn't
forgiven me about the mice. You see, when I was staying down there, a
mouse used to cake-walk about my room half the night, and none of their
silly patent traps seemed to take its fancy as a bijou residence, so I
determined to appeal to the better side of it--which with mice is the
inside. So I called it Percy, and put little delicacies down near its
hole every night, and that kept it quiet while I read Max Nordau's
_Degeneration_ and other reproving literature, and went to sleep. And
now she says there is a whole colony of mice in that room.
That isn't where the indelicacy comes in. She went out riding with me,
which was entirely her own suggestion, and as we were coming home through
some meadows she made a quite unnecessary attempt to see if her pony
would jump a rather messy sort of brook that was there. It wouldn't. It
went with her as far as the water's edge, and from that point Mrs.
Nicorax went on alone. Of course I had to fish her out from the bank,
and my riding-breeches are not cut with a view to salmon-fishing--it's
rather an art even to ride in them. Her habit-skirt was one of those
open questions that need not be adhered to in emergencies, and on this
occasion it remained behind in some water-weeds. She wanted me to fish
about for that too, but I felt I had done enough Pharaoh's daughter
business for an October afternoon, and I was beginning to want my tea. So
I bundled her up on to her pony, and gave her a lead towards home as fast
as I cared to go. What with the wet and the unusual responsibility, her
abridged costume did not stand the pace particularly well, and she got
quite querulous when I shouted back that I had no pins with me--and no
string. Some women expect so much from a fellow. When we got into the
drive she wanted to go up the back way to the stables, but the ponies
_know_ they always get sugar at the front door, and I never attempt to
hold a pulling pony; as for Mrs. Nicorax, it took her all she knew to
keep a firm hand on her seceding garments, which, as her maid remarked
afterwards, were more _tout_ than _ensemble_. Of course nearly the whole
house-party were out on the lawn watching the sunset--the only day this
month that it's occurred to the sun to show itself, as Mrs. Nic.
viciously observed--and I shall never forget the expression on her
husband's face as we pulled up. "My darling, this is too much!" was his
first spoken comment; taking into consideration the state of her toilet,
it was the most brilliant thing I had ever heard him say, and I went into
the library to be alone and scream. Mrs. Nicorax says I have no
delicacy.
Talking about tariffs, the lift-boy, who reads extensively between the
landings, says it won't do to tax raw commodities. What, exactly, is a
raw commodity? Mrs. Van Challaby says men are raw commodities till you
marry them; after they've struck Mrs. Van C., I can fancy they pretty
soon become a finished article. Certainly she's had a good deal of
experience to support her opinion. She lost one husband in a railway
accident, and mislaid another in the Divorce Court, and the current one
has just got himself squeezed in a Beef Trust. "What was he doing in a
Beef Trust, anyway?" she asked tearfully, and I suggested that perhaps he
had an unhappy home. I only said it for the sake of making conversation;
which it did. Mrs. Van Challaby said things about me which in her calmer
moments she would have hesitated to spell. It's a pity people can't
discuss fiscal matters without getting wild. However, she wrote next day
to ask if I could get her a Yorkshire terrier of the size and shade
that's being worn now, and that's as near as a woman can be expected to
get to owning herself in the wrong. And she will tie a salmon-pink bow
to its collar, and call it "Reggie," and take it with her everywhere--like
poor Miriam Klopstock, who _would_ take her Chow with her to the
bathroom, and while she was bathing it was playing at she-bears with her
garments. Miriam is always late for breakfast, and she wasn't really
missed till the middle of lunch.
However, I'm not going any further into the Fiscal Question. Only I
should like to be protected from the partner with a weak red tendency.