Thinking to escape the match-woman, I altered my course, but with the
intuition of her sex she contrived to put herself directly in my path.
"It's a cauld nicht," she moaned in a rickety, quavering Scottish
voice--"a cauld, wintry nicht. Ye'll be haein' a wee box o' matches,
aw'm thinkin'!"
I gave her twopence for them, and she shivered with cold as her skinny
fingers clutched the coins. I can think of no excuse for my parsimony
except the fact that I didn't need the wretched box--matches were not
yet a luxury of the very exclusive.
Yes--in all Sloane Square, on that damp and foggy Christmas Eve in the
year 1913, I doubt if a more morose, self-satisfied, cynical human
being plunged into the mists than I. I was unhappy, and reveled in my
very unhappiness. If it had been in my power, I would have sent a cloud
of gloom into every home and over every hearth in London. There was
something splendid, something classical, in my melancholy; it was like
Hamlet's, but greater than Hamlet's, for he knew the reason of his
mood, while mine was born of an intangible superiority to my day!
It is not easy, even now, to write of those days. The figure that
crosses the screen of memory reminds me of Chevy Slyme--a debt-paying,
respectable Chevy Slyme, forsooth!--but just as sulkily swaggering,
just as superior, and not quite so human; for Chevy, at least, inspired
the friendship of Mr. Tigg.