HE. So glad I am. We shall make a capital match (_attempts to kiss
her_).
SHE (_slipping away_). Yes, and you'll find I'm a match that can strike
(_fetches him a violent blow over the side if the head_).
HE (_holding his jaw--in a literal sense, we mean_). I can't help
feeling smitten by her.
SHE. Yes, I'm a bit of a spanker, ain't I?
HE. Spanker. I call you a regular stunner. You've nearly made me silly.
SHE (_laughing playfully_). No, nature did that for you, Joe, long ago.
HE. Ah, well, you've made me smart enough now, you boss-eyed old cow,
you!
SHE. Cow! am I? Ah, I suppose that's what makes me so fond of a calf,
you German sausage on legs! You--
HE. Go along. Your mother brought you up on sour milk.
SHE. Yah! They weaned you on thistles, didn't they?
And so on, with such like badinage do they hang about in the middle of
that road, showering derision and contumely upon each other for full ten
minutes, when, with one culminating burst of mutual abuse, they go off
together fighting and the street is left once more deserted.
It is very curious, by the bye, how deserted all public places become
whenever a stage character is about. It would seem as though ordinary
citizens sought to avoid them. We have known a couple of stage villains
to have Waterloo Bridge, Lancaster Place, and a bit of the Strand
entirely to themselves for nearly a quarter of an hour on a summer's
afternoon while they plotted a most diabolical outrage.
As for Trafalgar Square, the hero always chooses that spot when he wants
to get away from the busy crowd and commune in solitude with his own
bitter thoughts; and the good old lawyer leaves his office and goes
there to discuss any very delicate business over which he particularly
does not wish to be disturbed.
And they all make speeches there to an extent sufficient to have turned
the hair of the late lamented Sir Charles Warren White with horror. But
it is all right, because there is nobody near to hear them. As far as
the eye can reach, not a living thing is to be seen. Northumberland
Avenue, the Strand, and St. Martin's Lane are simply a wilderness.
The only sign of life about is a 'bus at the top of Whitehall, and it
appears to be blocked.
How it has managed to get blocked we cannot say. It has the whole road
to itself, and is, in fact, itself the only traffic for miles round. Yet
there it sticks for hours. The police make no attempt to move it on and
the passengers seem quite contented.
The Thames Embankment is an even still more lonesome and desolate part.
Wounded (stage) spirits fly from the haunts of men and, leaving the
hard, cold world far, far behind them, go and die in peace on the Thames
Embankment. And other wanderers, finding their skeletons afterward, bury
them there and put up rude crosses over the graves to mark the spot.
The comic lovers are often very young, and when people on the stage are
young they _are_ young. He is supposed to be about sixteen and she is
fifteen. But they both talk as if they were not more than seven.
In real life "boys" of sixteen know a thing or two, we have generally
found. The average "boy" of sixteen nowadays usually smokes cavendish
and does a little on the Stock Exchange or makes a book; and as for
love! he has quite got over it by that age. On the stage, however, the
new-born babe is not in it for innocence with the boy lover of sixteen.
So, too, with the maiden. Most girls of fifteen off the stage, so our
experience goes, know as much as there is any actual necessity for them
to know, Mr. Gilbert notwithstanding; but when we see a young lady of
fifteen on the stage we wonder where her cradle is.
The comic lovers do not have the facilities for love-making that the
hero and heroine do. The hero and heroine have big rooms to make love
in, with a fire and plenty of easy-chairs, so that they can sit about
in picturesque attitudes and do it comfortably. Or if they want to do
it out of doors they have a ruined abbey, with a big stone seat in the
center, and moonlight.
The comic lovers, on the other hand, have to do it standing up all the
time, in busy streets, or in cheerless-looking and curiously narrow
rooms in which there is no furniture whatever and no fire.
And there is always a tremendous row going on in the house when the
comic lovers are making love. Somebody always seems to be putting up
pictures in the next room, and putting them up boisterously, too, so
that the comic lovers have to shout at each other.