thought, and went away to another house, where a young married couple
lived.
"Isn't it perfectly ghastly?" said the wife. "Mr. Strangeways died last
night."
"So I heard," said I. "Well, he had lived his life."
"Yes, but it was such a shockingly short illness. Why, only three weeks
ago he was walking about the street." And she looked nervously at her
husband, as though she expected him to give up the ghost at any minute.
Then I gathered, with the knowledge of the length of his sickness, that
her grief was not for the late Mr. Strangeways, and went away thinking
over men and women I had known who would have given a thousand years in
Purgatory for even a week wherein to arrange their affairs, and who
were anything but well off.
I passed on to a third house full of children, and the shadow of death
hung over their heads, for father and mother were talking of Mr.
Strangeway's "end." "Most shocking," said they. "It seems that his wife
was in the next room when he was dying, and his only son called her,
so she just had time to take him in her arms before he died. He was
unconscious at the last. Wasn't it awful?"
When I went away from that house I thought of men and women without
a week wherein to arrange their affairs, and without any money, who
were anything but unconscious at the last, and who would have given a
thousand years in Purgatory for one glimpse at their mothers, their
wives or their husbands. I reflected how these people died tended by
hirelings and strangers, and I was not in the least ashamed to say
that I laughed over Mr. Strangeways' death as I entered the house of a
brother in his craft.
"Heard of Strangeways' death?" said he. "Most hideous thing. Why, he
had only a few days before got news of his designs being accepted by
the Burgoyne Cathedral. If he had lived he would have been working out
the details now--with me." And I saw that this man's fear also was not
on account of Mr. Strangeways. And I thought of men and women who had
died in the midst of wrecked work; then I sought a company of young
men and heard them talk of the dead. "That's the second death among
people I know within the year," said one. "Yes, the second death," said
another.
I smiled a very large smile.
"And you know," said a third, who was the oldest of the party, "they've
opened the new road by the head of Tresillion Road, and the wind
blows straight across that level square from the Parks. Everything is
changing about us."
"He was an old man," I said.
"Ye-es. More than middle-aged," said they.
"And he outlived his reputation?"
"Oh, no, or how would he have taken the designs for the Burgoyne
Cathedral? Why, the very day he died...."
"Yes," said I. "He died at the end of a completed work--his design
finished, his prize awarded?"
"Yes; but he didn't live to...."
"And his illness lasted seventeen days, of twenty-four hours each?"
"Yes."
"And he was tended by his own kith and kin, dying with his head on his
wife's breast, his hand in his only son's hand, without any thought of
their possible poverty to vex him. Are these things so?"
"Ye-es," said they. "Wasn't it shocking?"
"Shocking?" I said. "Get out of this place. Go forth, run about and
see what death really means. You have described such dying as a god
might envy and a king might pay half his ransom to make certain of.
Wait till you have seen men--strong men of thirty-five, with little
children, die at two days' notice, penniless and alone, and seen it not
once, but twenty times; wait till you have seen the young girl die
within a fortnight of the wedding; or the lover within three days of
his marriage; or the mother--sixty little minutes--before her son can
come to her side; wait till you hesitate before handling your daily
newspaper for fear of reading of the death of some young man that you
have dined with, drank with, shot with, lent money to and borrowed
money from, and tested to the uttermost--till you dare not hope for the
death of an old man, but, when you are strongest, count up the tale of
your acquaintances and friends, wondering how many will be alive six
months hence. Wait till you have heard men calling in the death hour on
kin that cannot come; till you have dined with a man one night and seen
him buried on the next. Then you can begin to whimper about loneliness
and change and desolation." Here I foamed at the mouth.
"And do you mean to say," drawled a young gentleman, "that there is any
society in which that sort of holocaust goes on?"
"I do," said I. "It's not society; it's life." And they laughed.
But this is the old tale of Pharaoh's chariot-wheel and flying-fish.
If I tell them yarns, they say: "How true! How true!" If I try to
present the truth, they say: "What superb imagination!"
But you understand, don't you?
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 23: "Turnovers," No. IX.]
A REALLY GOOD TIME[24]
There are times when one wants to get into pyjamas and stretch and
loll, and explain things generally. This is one of those times. It
is impossible to stand at ease in London, and the inhabitants are so
abominably egotistical that one cannot shout "I, I, I" for two minutes
without another man joining in with "Me, too!" Which things are an
allegory.
The amusement began with a gentleman of infinite erudition offering to
publish my autobiography. I was to write a string of legends--he would
publish them; and would I forward a cheque for five guineas "to cover
incidental expenses?" To him I explained that I wanted five guinea
cheques myself very much indeed, and that, emboldened by his letter,
which gave me a very fair insight into his character, I was even then
maturing _his_ autobiography, which I hoped to publish before long
with illustrations, and would he forward a cheque for five guineas "to
cover incidental expenses?" This brought me an eight-page compilation
of contumely. He was grieved to find that he had been mistaken in my
character, which he had believed was, at least, elevated. He begged me
to remember that the first letter had been written in the strictest
confidence, and that if I notated one tittle of the said "repository"
he would unkennel the bloodhounds of the law and hunt me down. An
autobiography on the lines that I had "so flippantly proposed" was
libel without benefit of authorship, and I had better lend him two
guineas--I.O.U. enclosed--to salve his lacerated feelings. I replied
that I had his autobiography by me in manuscript, and would post it
to his address, V.P.P., two guineas and one-half. He evidently knew
nothing about the V.P.P., and the correspondence stopped. It is really
very hard for an Anglo-Indian to get along in London. Besides, my
autobiography is not a thing I should care to make public before
extensive Bowdlerisation.
These things, however, only led up to much worse. I dare not grin over
them unless I step aside Eastward. I wrote stories, all about little
pieces of India, carefully arranged and expurgated for the English
public. Then various people began to write about them. One gentleman
pointed out that I had taken "the well-worn themes of passion, love,
despair and fate," and, thanks to the "singular fascination" of my
style had "wrought them into new and glowing fabricks instinct with the
eternal vitality of the East." For three days after this _chit_ I was
almost too proud to speak to the housemaid with the fan-teeth (there
is a story about her that I will tell another time). On the fourth day
another gentleman made clear that that beautiful style was "tortuous,
elaborated and inept," and it was only on account of the "newness of
the subjects handled so crabbedly" that I "arrested the attention of
the public for a day." Then I wept before the housemaid, and she
called me a "real gentleman" because I gave her a shilling.
Then I tried an all-round cannon--published one thing under one name
and another under another, and sat still to watch. A gentleman, who
also speaks with authority on Literature and Art, came to me and said:
"I don't deny that there is a great deal of clever and superficial
fooling in that last thing of yours in the--I've forgotten what it was
called--but do you yourself think that you have that curious, subtle
grip on and instinct of matters Oriental that that other man shows in
his study of native life?" And he mentioned the name of my Other Self.
I bowed my head, and my shoulders shook with repentance and grief.
"No," said I. "It's so true," said he. "Yes," said I. "So feeling,"
said he. "Indeed it is," said I. "Such honest work, too!" said he.
"Oh, awful!" said I. "Think it over," said he, "and try to follow his
path." "I will," said I. And when he left I danced sarabands with the
housemaid of the fan-teeth till she wanted to know whether I had bought
"spirruts."
Then another man came along and sat on my sofa and hailed me as a
brother. "And I know that we are kindred souls," said he, "because I
feel sure that you have evolved all the dreamy mystery and curious
brutality of the British soldier from the pure realm of fancy." "I
did," I said. "If you went into a barrack-room you would see at
once." "Faugh!" said he. "What have we to do with barrack-rooms? The
pure air of fancy feeds us both; keep to that. If you are trammelled
by the bitter, _bornée_ truth, you are lost. You die the death of
Zola. Invention is the only test of creation." "Of course," said I.
"Zola's a bold, bad man. Not a patch on _you_." I hadn't caught his
name, but I fancied that would prevent him flinging himself about
on my sofa, which is a cheap one. "I don't say that altogether," he
said. "He has his strong points. But he is deficient in imaginative
constructiveness. _You_, I see from what you have said, will belong
to the Neo-Gynekalistic school." I knew "Gyne" meant something about
cow-killing, and was prepared to hedge when he said good-bye, and
wrote an article about my ways and works, which brought another man to
my door spouting foam.
"Great Landor's ghost!" he said. "What under the stars has possessed
you to join the Gynekalistic lot?" "I haven't," I said. "I believe in
municipal regulation of slaughter-houses, if there is a strong Deputy
Commissioner to control the Muhammadan butchers, especially in the
hot weather, but...." "This is madness," said he. "Your reputation is
at stake. You must make it clear to the world that you have nothing
whatever to do with the flatulent, unballasted fiction of...." "Do you
suppose the world cares a tuppeny dam?" said I.
Then he raged afresh, and left me, pointing out that the Gynewallahs
wrote about nothing but women--which seems rather an unlimited
subject--and that I would die the death of a French author whose name I
have forgotten. But it wasn't Zola this time.
I asked the housemaid what in the world the Gynekalisthenics were. "La,
sir," said she, "it's only their way of being rude. That fat gentleman
with the long hair tried to kiss me when I opened the door. I slapped
his fat chops for him."
Now the crisis is at its height. All the entire round world, composed,
as far as I can learn, of the Gynekalistic and the anti-Gynekalistic
man, and two or three loafers, are trying to find out to what school
I rightly belong. They seem to use what they are pleased to call my
reputation as a bolster through which to stab at the foe. One gentleman
is proving that I am a bit of a blackguard, probably reduced from the
ranks, rather an impostor, and a considerable amount of plagiarist. The
other man denies the reduction from the ranks, withholds judgment about
the plagiarism, but would like, in the interest of the public--who
are at present exclusively occupied with Barnum--to prove it true,
and is convinced that my style is "hermaphroditic." I have all the
money on the first man. He is on the eve of discovering that I stole a
dead Tommy's diary just before I was drummed out of the service for
desertion, and have lived on the proceeds ever since. "Do _yew_ know,"
as the Private Secretary said at Simla this year, "it's remarkably hard
for an Anglo-Indian to get along in England."
_Shakl hai lekin ukl nahin hai!_
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 24: "Turnovers," No. IX.]
ON EXHIBITION[25]
It makes me blush pink all over to think about it, but, none the less,
I have brought the tale to you, confident that you will understand. An
invitation to tea arrived at my address. The English are very peculiar
people about their tea. They don't seem to understand that it is a
function at which any one who is passing down the Mall may present
himself. They issue formal cards--just as if tea-drinking were like
dancing. My invitation said that I was to tea from 4:30 till 6 P.M.,
and there was never a word of lawn-tennis on the whole of the card. I
knew the English were heavy eaters, but this amazed me. "What in the
wide world," thought I, "will they find to do for an hour and a half?
Perhaps they'll play games, as it's near Christmas time. They can't
sit out in the verandah, and _chabutras_ are impossible."
Wherefore I went to this house prepared for anything. There was a
fine show of damp wraps in the hall, and a cheerful babble of voices
from the other side of the drawing-room door. The hostess ran at me,
vehemently shouting: "Oh, I am so glad you have come. We were all
talking about you." As the room was entirely filled with strangers,
chiefly female, I reflected that they couldn't have said anything very
bad. Then I was introduced to everybody, and some of the people were
talking in couples, and didn't want to be interrupted in the least,
and some were behind settees, and some were in difficulty with their
tea-cups, and one and all had exactly the same name. That is the worst
of a lisping hostess.
Almost before I had dropped the last limp hand, a burly ruffian, with a
beard, rumbled in my ear: "I trust you were satisfied with my estimate
of your powers in last week's _Concertina_?"
Now I don't see the _Concertina_ because it's too expensive, but I
murmured: "Immense! immense! Most gratifying. Totally undeserved." And
the ruffian said: "In a measure, yes. Not wholly. I flatter myself
that----"
"Oh, not in the least," said I. "No sugar, thanks." This to the
hostess, who was waving Sally Lunns under my nose. A female, who could
not have been less than seven feet high, came on, half speed ahead,
through the fog of the tea-steam, and docked herself on the sofa just
like an Inman liner.
"Have you ever considered," said she, "the enormous moral
responsibility that rests in the hands of one who has the gift
of literary expression? In my own case--but you surely know my
collaborator."
A much huger woman arrived, cast anchor, and docked herself on the
other side of the sofa. She was the collaborator. Together they
confided to me that they were desperately in earnest about the
amelioration of something or other. Their collective grievance against
me was that I was not in earnest.
"We have studied your works--all," said the five-thousand-ton
four-master, "and we cannot believe that you are in earnest." "Oh, no,"
I said hastily, "I never was." Then I saw that that was the wrong thing
to say, for the eight-thousand-ton palace Cunarder signalled to the
sister ship, saying: "You see, my estimate was correct."
"Now, my complaint against him is that he is too savagely _farouche_,"
said a weedy young gentleman with tow hair, who ate Sally Lunns like a
workhouse orphan. "_Faroucherie_ in his age is a fatal mistake."
I reflected a moment on the possibility of getting that young gentleman
out into a large and dusty maidan and gently _chukkering_ him before
_chota hazri_. He looked too sleek to me as he then stood. But I said
nothing, because a tiny-tiny woman with beady-black eyes shrilled: "I
disagree with you entirely. He is too much bound by the tradition of
the commonplace. I have seen in his later work signs that he is afraid
of his public. You must _never_ be afraid of your public."
Then they began to discuss me as though I were dead and buried under
the hearth-rug, and they talked of "tones" and "notes" and "lights" and
"shades" and tendencies.
"And which of us do you think is correct in her estimate of your
character?" said the tiny-tiny woman when they had made me out (a) a
giddy Lothario; (b) a savage; (c) a pre-Rafaelite angel; (d) co-equal
and co-eternal with half a dozen gentlemen whose names I had never
heard; (e) flippant; (f) penetrated with pathos; (g) an open atheist;
(h) a young man of the Roman Catholic faith with a mission in life.
I smiled idiotically, and said I really didn't know.
Then a man entered whom I knew, and I fled to him for comfort. "Have I
missed the fun?" he asked with a twinkle in his eye.
I explained, snorting, what had befallen.
"Ay," said he quietly, "you didn't go the right way to work. You should
have stood on the hearth-rug and fired off epigrams. That's what I did
after I had written _Down in the Doldrums_, and was fed with crumpets
in consequence."
A woman plumped down by my side and twisted her hands into knots, and
hung her eyes over her cheek-bones. I thought it was too many muffins,
till she said: "Tell me, oh, tell me, was such-and-such in such a one
of your books--was he _real_? Was he _quite_ real? Oh, how lovely! How
sweet! How precious!" She alluded to that drunken ruffian Mulvaney, who
would have driven her into fits had he ever set foot on her doorstep in
the flesh. I caught the half of a wink in my friend's eye as he removed
himself and left me alone to tell fibs about the evolution of Private
Mulvaney. I said anything that came uppermost, and my answers grew so
wild that the woman departed.
Then I heard the hostess whispering to a girl, a nice, round, healthy
English maiden. "Go and talk to him," she said. "Talk to him about his
books."
I gritted my teeth, and waited till the maiden was close at hand and
about to begin. There was a lovely young man at the end of the room
sucking a stick, and I felt sure that the maiden would much have
preferred talking to him. She smiled prefatorily.
"It's hot here," I said; "let's go over to the window"; and I plumped
down on a three-seated settee, with my back to the young man, leaving
only one place for the maiden. I was right. I signalled up the man who
had written _Down in the Doldrums_, and talked to him as fast as I knew
how. When he had to go, and the young man with him, the maiden became
enthusiastic, not to say gushing. But I knew that those compliments
were for value received. Then she explained that she was going out to
India to stay with her married aunt, wherefore she became as a sister
unto me on the spot. Her mamma did not seem to know much about Indian
outfits, and I waxed eloquent on the subject.
"It's all nonsense," I said, "to fill your boxes with things that can
be made just as well in the country. What you want are walking-dresses
and dinner-dresses as good as ever you can get, and gloves tinned
up, and odds and ends of things generally. All the rest, unless
you're extravagant, the _dharzee_ can make in the verandah. Take
underclothing, for instance." I was conscious that my loud and cheerful
voice was ploughing through one of those ghostly silences that
sometimes fall upon a company. The English only wear their outsides in
company. They have nothing to do with underclothing. I could feel that
without being told. So the silence cut short the one matter in which I
could really have been of use.
On the pavement my friend who wrote _Down in the Doldrums_ was waiting
to walk home with me. "What in the world does it all mean?" I said.
"Nothing," said he. "You've been asked there as a small deputy lion to
roar in place of a much bigger man. You growled, though."
"I should have done much worse if I'd known," I grunted. "Ah," said he,
"you haven't arrived at the real fun of the show. Wait till they've
made you jump through hoops and your turn's over, and you can sit on
a sofa and watch the new men being brought up and put through their
paces. You've nothing like that in India. How do you manage your
parties?"
And I thought of smooth-cut lawns in the gloaming, and tables spread
under mighty trees, and men and women, all intimately acquainted with
each other, strolling about in the lightest of raiment, and the old
dowagers criticising the badminton, and the young men in riding-boots
making rude remarks about the claret cup, and the host circulating
through the mob and saying: "Hah, Piggy," or Bobby or Flatnose, as the
nickname might be, "have another peg," and the hostess soothing the
bashful youngsters and talking _khitmatgars_ with the Judge's wife, and
the last new bride hanging on her husband's arm and saying: "Isn't it
almost time to go home, Dicky, dear?" and the little fat owls chuckling
in the _bougainvilleas_, and the horses stamping and squealing in
the carriage-drive, and everybody saying the most awful things about
everybody else, but prepared to do anything for anybody else just the
same; and I gulped a great gulp of sorrow and homesickness.
"You wouldn't understand," said I to my friend. "Let's go to a
pot-house, where cabbies call, and drink something."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 25: "Turnovers," No. IX.]
THE THREE YOUNG MEN[26]
LONDON IN THE FOG
"Curiouser and curiouser," as Alice in Wonderland said when she found
her neck beginning to grow. Each day under the smoke brings me new and
generally unpleasant discoveries. The latest are most on my mind. I
hasten to transfer them to yours.
At first, and several times afterwards, I very greatly desired to talk
to a thirteen-two subaltern--not because he or I would have anything
valuable to say to each other, but just because he was a subaltern. I
wanted to know all about that evergreen polo-pony that "can turn on
a sixpence," and the second-hand second charger that, by a series of
perfectly unprecedented misfortunes, just failed to win the Calcutta
Derby. Then, too, I wished to hear of many old friends across the
sea, and who had got his company, and why and where the new Generals
were going next cold weather, and how the Commander-in-Chief had been
enlivening the Simla season. So I looked east and west, and north and
south, but never a thirteen-two subaltern broke through the fog; except
once--and he had grown a fifteen-one cot down, and wore a tall hat
and frock coat, and was begging for coppers from the Horse-Guards. By
the way, if you stand long enough between the mounted sentries--the
men who look like reflectors stolen from Christmas trees--you will
presently meet every human being you ever knew in India. When I am
not happy--that is to say, once a day--I run off and play on the
pavement in front of the Horse-Guards, and watch the expressions on the
gentlemen's faces as they come out. But this is a digression.
After some days--I grew lonelier and lonelier every hour--I went away
to the other end of the town, and catching a friend, said: "Lend me a
man--a young man--to play with. I don't feel happy. I want rousing. I
have liver." And the friend said: "Ah, yes, of course. What you want
is congenial society, something that will stir you up--a fellow-mind.
Now let me introduce you to a thoroughly nice young man. He's by way of
being an ardent Neo-Alexandrine, and has written some charming papers
on the 'Ethics of the Wood Pavement.'" Concealing my almost visible
rapture, I murmured "Oh, bliss!" as they used to say at the Gaiety, and
extended the hand of friendship to a young gentleman attired after the
fashion of the Neo-Alexandrines, who appear to be a sub-caste of social
priests. His hand was a limp hand, his face was very smooth because
he had not yet had time to grow any hair, and he wore a cloak like a
policeman's cloak, but much more so. On his finger was a cameo-ring
about three inches wide, and round his neck, the weather being warm,
was a fawn, olive and dead-leaf comforter of soft silk--the sort of
thing any right-minded man would give to his mother or his sister
without being asked.
We looked at each other cautiously for some minutes. Then he said:
"What do you think of the result of the Brighton election?" "Beautiful,
beautiful," I said, watching his eye, which saddened. "One of the
worst--that is, entirely the most absurd _reductio ad absurdum_ of the
principle of the narrow and narrow-minded majority imposing a will
which is necessarily incult on a minority animated by...." I forget
exactly what he said they were animated by, but it was something very
fine.