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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/2830-h.zip b/2830-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..62a6f6d --- /dev/null +++ b/2830-h.zip diff --git a/2830-h/2830-h.htm b/2830-h/2830-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..79fce0d --- /dev/null +++ b/2830-h/2830-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2017 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Reginald</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + TD { vertical-align: top; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + color: gray;} + + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">Reginald, by Saki</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Reginald, by Saki + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Reginald + + +Author: Saki + + + +Release Date: August 30, 2006 [eBook #2830] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REGINALD*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1911 Methuen & Co. (third) edition by +David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org. Proofing by Margaret +and David Price.</p> +<h1>REGINALD</h1> +<p style="text-align: center">BY<br /> +SAKI<br /> +(H. H. MUNRO)</p> +<p style="text-align: center">THIRD EDITION</p> +<p style="text-align: center">METHUEN & CO. LTD.<br /> +36 ESSEX STREET W.C.<br /> +LONDON</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>First Published</i> . . . +<i>September 1904</i></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>Second Edition</i> . . . <i>July +1905</i></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>Third Edition</i> . . . +<i>1911</i></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>These sketches originally +appeared in the</i> “<i>Westminster Gazette</i>,” +<i>to the courtesy of the Proprietor of which the author is +indebted for permission to republish them</i>.</p> +<p>Contents:</p> +<p>Reginald</p> +<p>Reginald on Christmas Presents</p> +<p>Reginald on the Academy</p> +<p>Reginald at the Theatre</p> +<p>Reginald’s Peace Poem</p> +<p>Reginald’s Choir Treat</p> +<p>Reginald on Worries</p> +<p>Reginald on House-Parties</p> +<p>Reginald at the Carlton</p> +<p>Reginald on Besetting Sins</p> +<p>Reginald’s Drama</p> +<p>Reginald on Tariffs</p> +<p>Reginald’s Christmas Revel</p> +<p>Reginald’s Rubaiyat</p> +<p>The Innocence of Reginald</p> +<h2>REGINALD</h2> +<p>I did it—I who should have known better. I +persuaded Reginald to go to the McKillops’ garden-party +against his will.</p> +<p>We all make mistakes occasionally.</p> +<p>“They know you’re here, and they’ll think it +so funny if you don’t go. And I want particularly to +be in with Mrs. McKillop just now.”</p> +<p>“I know, you want one of her smoke Persian kittens as a +prospective wife for Wumples—or a husband, is +it?” (Reginald has a magnificent scorn for details, +other than sartorial.) “And I am expected to undergo +social martyrdom to suit the connubial +exigencies”—</p> +<p>“Reginald! It’s nothing of the kind, only +I’m sure Mrs. McKillop Would be pleased if I brought +you. Young men of your brilliant attractions are rather at +a premium at her garden-parties.”</p> +<p>“Should be at a premium in heaven,” remarked +Reginald complacently.</p> +<p>“There will be very few of you there, if that is what +you mean. But seriously, there won’t be any great +strain upon your powers of endurance; I promise you that you +shan’t have to play croquet, or talk to the +Archdeacon’s wife, or do anything that is likely to bring +on physical prostration. You can just wear your sweetest +clothes and moderately amiable expression, and eat +chocolate-creams with the appetite of a <i>blasé</i> +parrot. Nothing more is demanded of you.”</p> +<p>Reginald shut his eyes. “There will be the +exhaustingly up-to-date young women who will ask me if I have +seen <i>San Toy</i>; a less progressive grade who will yearn to +hear about the Diamond Jubilee—the historic event, not the +horse. With a little encouragement, they will inquire if I +saw the Allies march into Paris. Why are women so fond of +raking up the past? They’re as bad as tailors, who +invariably remember what you owe them for a suit long after +you’ve ceased to wear it.”</p> +<p>“I’ll order lunch for one o’clock; that will +give you two and a half hours to dress in.”</p> +<p>Reginald puckered his brow into a tortured frown, and I knew +that my point was gained. He was debating what tie would go +with which waistcoat.</p> +<p>Even then I had my misgivings.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>During the drive to the McKillops’ Reginald was +possessed with a great peace, which was not wholly to be +accounted for by the fact that he had inveigled his feet into +shoes a size too small for them. I misgave more than ever, +and having once launched Reginald on to the McKillops’ +lawn, I established him near a seductive dish of <i>marrons +glacés</i>, and as far from the Archdeacon’s wife as +possible; as I drifted away to a diplomatic distance I heard with +painful distinctness the eldest Mawkby girl asking him if he had +seen <i>San Toy</i>.</p> +<p>It must have been ten minutes later, not more, and I had been +having <i>quite</i> an enjoyable chat with my hostess, and had +promised to lend her <i>The Eternal City</i> and my recipe for +rabbit mayonnaise, and was just about to offer a kind home for +her third Persian kitten, when I perceived, out of the corner of +my eye, that Reginald was not where I had left him, and that the +<i>marrons glacés</i> were untasted. At the same +moment I became aware that old Colonel Mendoza was essaying to +tell his classic story of how he introduced golf into India, and +that Reginald was in dangerous proximity. There are +occasions when Reginald is caviare to the Colonel.</p> +<p>“When I was at Poona in ’76”—</p> +<p>“My dear Colonel,” purred Reginald, “fancy +admitting such a thing! Such a give-away for one’s +age! I wouldn’t admit being on this planet in +’76.” (Reginald in his wildest lapses into +veracity never admits to being more than twenty-two.)</p> +<p>The Colonel went to the colour of a fig that has attained +great ripeness, and Reginald, ignoring my efforts to intercept +him, glided away to another part of the lawn. I found him a +few minutes later happily engaged in teaching the youngest +Rampage boy the approved theory of mixing absinthe, within full +earshot of his mother. Mrs. Rampage occupies a prominent +place in local Temperance movements.</p> +<p>As soon as I had broken up this unpromising +<i>tête-à-tête</i> and settled Reginald where +he could watch the croquet players losing their tempers, I +wandered off to find my hostess and renew the kitten negotiations +at the point where they had been interrupted. I did not +succeed in running her down at once, and eventually it was Mrs. +McKillop who sought me out, and her conversation was not of +kittens.</p> +<p>“Your cousin is discussing <i>Zaza</i> with the +Archdeacon’s wife; at least, he is discussing, she is +ordering her carriage.”</p> +<p>She spoke in the dry, staccato tone of one who repeats a +French exercise, and I knew that as far as Millie McKillop was +concerned, Wumples was devoted to a lifelong celibacy.</p> +<p>“If you don’t mind,” I said hurriedly, +“I think we’d like our carriage ordered too,” +and I made a forced march in the direction of the +croquet-ground.</p> +<p>I found everyone talking nervously and feverishly of the +weather and the war in South Africa, except Reginald, who was +reclining in a comfortable chair with the dreamy, far-away look +that a volcano might wear just after it had desolated entire +villages. The Archdeacon’s wife was buttoning up her +gloves with a concentrated deliberation that was fearful to +behold. I shall have to treble my subscription to her +Cheerful Sunday Evenings Fund before I dare set foot in her house +again.</p> +<p>At that particular moment the croquet players finished their +game, which had been going on without a symptom of finality +during the whole afternoon. Why, I ask, should it have +stopped precisely when a counter-attraction was so +necessary? Everyone seemed to drift towards the area of +disturbance, of which the chairs of the Archdeacon’s wife +and Reginald formed the storm-centre. Conversation flagged, +and there settled upon the company that expectant hush that +precedes the dawn—when your neighbours don’t happen +to keep poultry.</p> +<p>“What did the Caspian Sea?” asked Reginald, with +appalling suddenness.</p> +<p>There were symptoms of a stampede. The +Archdeacon’s wife looked at me. Kipling or someone +has described somewhere the look a foundered camel gives when the +caravan moves on and leaves it to its fate. The peptonised +reproach in the good lady’s eyes brought the passage +vividly to my mind.</p> +<p>I played my last card.</p> +<p>“Reginald, it’s getting late, and a sea-mist is +coming on.” I knew that the elaborate curl over his +right eyebrow was not guaranteed to survive a sea-mist.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>“Never, never again, will I take you to a +garden-party. Never . . . You behaved abominably . . . What +did the Caspian see?”</p> +<p>A shade of genuine regret for misused opportunities passed +over Reginald’s face.</p> +<p>“After all,” he said, “I believe an apricot +tie would have gone better with the lilac waistcoat.”</p> +<h2>REGINALD ON CHRISTMAS PRESENTS</h2> +<p>I wish it to be distinctly understood (said Reginald) that I +don’t want a “George, Prince of Wales” +Prayer-book as a Christmas present. The fact cannot be too +widely known.</p> +<p>There ought (he continued) to be technical education classes +on the science of present-giving. No one seems to have the +faintest notion of what anyone else wants, and the prevalent +ideas on the subject are not creditable to a civilised +community.</p> +<p>There is, for instance, the female relative in the country who +“knows a tie is always useful,” and sends you some +spotted horror that you could only wear in secret or in Tottenham +Court Road. It <i>might</i> have been useful had she kept +it to tie up currant bushes with, when it would have served the +double purpose of supporting the branches and frightening away +the birds—for it is an admitted fact that the ordinary +tomtit of commerce has a sounder æsthetic taste than the +average female relative in the country.</p> +<p>Then there are aunts. They are always a difficult class +to deal with in the matter of presents. The trouble is that +one never catches them really young enough. By the time one +has educated them to an appreciation of the fact that one does +not wear red woollen mittens in the West End, they die, or +quarrel with the family, or do something equally +inconsiderate. That is why the supply of trained aunts is +always so precarious.</p> +<p>There is my Aunt Agatha, <i>par exemple</i>, who sent me a +pair of gloves last Christmas, and even got so far as to choose a +kind that was being worn and had the correct number of +buttons. But—<i>they were nines</i>! I sent +them to a boy whom I hated intimately: he didn’t wear them, +of course, but he could have—that was where the bitterness +of death came in. It was nearly as consoling as sending +white flowers to his funeral. Of course I wrote and told my +aunt that they were the one thing that had been wanting to make +existence blossom like a rose; I am afraid she thought me +frivolous—she comes from the North, where they live in the +fear of Heaven and the Earl of Durham. (Reginald affects an +exhaustive knowledge of things political, which furnishes an +excellent excuse for not discussing them.) Aunts with a +dash of foreign extraction in them are the most satisfactory in +the way of understanding these things; but if you can’t +choose your aunt, it is wisest in the long-run to choose the +present and send her the bill.</p> +<p>Even friends of one’s own set, who might be expected to +know better, have curious delusions on the subject. I am +<i>not</i> collecting copies of the cheaper editions of Omar +Khayyam. I gave the last four that I received to the +lift-boy, and I like to think of him reading them, with +FitzGerald’s notes, to his aged mother. Lift-boys +always have aged mothers; shows such nice feeling on their part, +I think.</p> +<p>Personally, I can’t see where the difficulty in choosing +suitable presents lies. No boy who had brought himself up +properly could fail to appreciate one of those decorative bottles +of liqueurs that are so reverently staged in Morel’s +window—and it wouldn’t in the least matter if one did +get duplicates. And there would always be the supreme +moment of dreadful uncertainty whether it was <i>crême de +menthe</i> or Chartreuse—like the expectant thrill on +seeing your partner’s hand turned up at bridge. +People may say what they like about the decay of Christianity; +the religious system that produced green Chartreuse can never +really die.</p> +<p>And then, of course, there are liqueur glasses, and +crystallised fruits, and tapestry curtains, and heaps of other +necessaries of life that make really sensible presents—not +to speak of luxuries, such as having one’s bills paid, or +getting something quite sweet in the way of jewellery. +Unlike the alleged Good Woman of the Bible, I’m not above +rubies. When found, by the way, she must have been rather a +problem at Christmas-time; nothing short of a blank cheque would +have fitted the situation. Perhaps it’s as well that +she’s died out.</p> +<p>The great charm about me (concluded Reginald) is that I am so +easily pleased. But I draw the line at a “Prince of +Wales” Prayer-book.</p> +<h2>REGINALD ON THE ACADEMY</h2> +<p>“One goes to the Academy in self-defence,” said +Reginald. “It is the one topic one has in common with +the Country Cousins.”</p> +<p>“It is almost a religious observance with them,” +said the Other. “A kind of artistic Mecca, and when +the good ones die they go”—</p> +<p>“To the Chantrey Bequest. The mystery is +<i>what</i> they find to talk about in the country.”</p> +<p>“There are two subjects of conversation in the country: +Servants, and Can fowls be made to pay? The first, I +believe, is compulsory, the second optional.”</p> +<p>“As a function,” resumed Reginald, “the +Academy is a failure.”</p> +<p>“You think it would be tolerable without the +pictures?”</p> +<p>“The pictures are all right, in their way; after all, +one can always <i>look</i> at them if one is bored with +one’s surroundings, or wants to avoid an imminent +acquaintance.”</p> +<p>“Even that doesn’t always save one. There is +the inevitable female whom you met once in Devonshire, or the +Matoppo Hills, or somewhere, who charges up to you with the +remark that it’s funny how one always meets people one +knows at the Academy. Personally, I <i>don’t</i> +think it funny.”</p> +<p>“I suffered in that way just now,” said Reginald +plaintively, “from a woman whose word I had to take that +she had met me last summer in Brittany.”</p> +<p>“I hope you were not too brutal?”</p> +<p>“I merely told her with engaging simplicity that the art +of life was the avoidance of the unattainable.”</p> +<p>“Did she try and work it out on the back of her +catalogue?”</p> +<p>“Not there and then. She murmured something about +being ‘so clever.’ Fancy coming to the Academy +to be clever!”</p> +<p>“To be clever in the afternoon argues that one is dining +nowhere in the evening.”</p> +<p>“Which reminds me that I can’t remember whether I +accepted an invitation from you to dine at Kettner’s +to-night.”</p> +<p>“On the other hand, I can remember with startling +distinctness not having asked you to.”</p> +<p>“So much certainty is unbecoming in the young; so +we’ll consider that settled. What were you talking +about? Oh, pictures. Personally, I rather like them; +they are so refreshingly real and probable, they take one away +from the unrealities of life.”</p> +<p>“One likes to escape from oneself +occasionally.”</p> +<p>“That is the disadvantage of a portrait; as a rule, +one’s bitterest friends can find nothing more to ask than +the faithful unlikeness that goes down to posterity as +oneself. I hate posterity—it’s so fond of +having the last word. Of course, as regards portraits, +there are exceptions.”</p> +<p>“For instance?”</p> +<p>“To die before being painted by Sargent is to go to +heaven prematurely.”</p> +<p>“With the necessary care and impatience, you may avoid +that catastrophe.”</p> +<p>“If you’re going to be rude,” said Reginald, +“I shall dine with you to-morrow night as well. The +chief vice of the Academy,” he continued, “is its +nomenclature. Why, for instance, should an obvious +trout-stream with a palpable rabbit sitting in the foreground be +called ‘an evening dream of unbeclouded peace,’ or +something of that sort?”</p> +<p>“You think,” said the Other, “that a name +should economise description rather than stimulate +imagination?”</p> +<p>“Properly chosen, it should do both. There is my +lady kitten at home, for instance; I’ve called it +Derry.”</p> +<p>“Suggests nothing to my imagination but protracted +sieges and religious animosities. Of course, I don’t +know your kitten”—</p> +<p>“Oh, you’re silly. It’s a sweet name, +and it answers to it—when it wants to. Then, if there +are any unseemly noises in the night, they can be explained +succinctly: Derry and Toms.”</p> +<p>“You might almost charge for the advertisement. +But as applied to pictures, don’t you think your system +would be too subtle, say, for the Country Cousins?”</p> +<p>“Every reformation must have its victims. You +can’t expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the +angels over the prodigal’s return. Another darling +weakness of the Academy is that none of its luminaries must +‘arrive’ in a hurry. You can see them coming +for years, like a Balkan trouble or a street improvement, and by +the time they have painted a thousand or so square yards of +canvas, their work begins to be recognised.”</p> +<p>“Someone who Must Not be Contradicted said that a man +must be a success by the time he’s thirty, or +never.”</p> +<p>“To have reached thirty,” said Reginald, “is +to have failed in life.”</p> +<h2>REGINALD AT THE THEATRE</h2> +<p>“After all,” said the Duchess vaguely, +“there are certain things you can’t get away +from. Right and wrong, good conduct and moral rectitude, +have certain well-defined limits.”</p> +<p>“So, for the matter of that,” replied Reginald, +“has the Russian Empire. The trouble is that the +limits are not always in the same place.”</p> +<p>Reginald and the Duchess regarded each other with mutual +distrust, tempered by a scientific interest. Reginald +considered that the Duchess had much to learn; in particular, not +to hurry out of the Carlton as though afraid of losing +one’s last ’bus. A woman, he said, who is +careless of disappearances is capable of leaving town before +Goodwood, and dying at the wrong moment of an unfashionable +disease.</p> +<p>The Duchess thought that Reginald did not exceed the ethical +standard which circumstances demanded.</p> +<p>“Of course,” she resumed combatively, +“it’s the prevailing fashion to believe in perpetual +change and mutability, and all that sort of thing, and to say we +are all merely an improved form of primeval ape—of course +you subscribe to that doctrine?”</p> +<p>“I think it decidedly premature; in most people I know +the process is far from complete.”</p> +<p>“And equally of course you are quite +irreligious?”</p> +<p>“Oh, by no means. The fashion just now is a Roman +Catholic frame of mind with an Agnostic conscience: you get the +mediæval picturesqueness of the one with the modern +conveniences of the other.”</p> +<p>The Duchess suppressed a sniff. She was one of those +people who regard the Church of England with patronising +affection, as if it were something that had grown up in their +kitchen garden.</p> +<p>“But there are other things,” she continued, +“which I suppose are to a certain extent sacred even to +you. Patriotism, for instance, and Empire, and Imperial +responsibility, and blood-is-thicker-than-water, and all that +sort of thing.”</p> +<p>Reginald waited for a couple of minutes before replying, while +the Lord of Rimini temporarily monopolised the acoustic +possibilities of the theatre.</p> +<p>“That is the worst of a tragedy,” he observed, +“one can’t always hear oneself talk. Of course +I accept the Imperial idea and the responsibility. After +all, I would just as soon think in Continents as anywhere +else. And some day, when the season is over and we have the +time, you shall explain to me the exact blood-brotherhood and all +that sort of thing that exists between a French Canadian and a +mild Hindoo and a Yorkshireman, for instance.”</p> +<p>“Oh, well, ‘dominion over palm and pine,’ +you know,” quoted the Duchess hopefully; “of course +we mustn’t forget that we’re all part of the great +Anglo-Saxon Empire.”</p> +<p>“Which for its part is rapidly becoming a suburb of +Jerusalem. A very pleasant suburb, I admit, and quite a +charming Jerusalem. But still a suburb.”</p> +<p>“Really, to be told one’s living in a suburb when +one is conscious of spreading the benefits of civilisation all +over the world! Philanthropy—I suppose you will say +<i>that</i> is a comfortable delusion; and yet even you must +admit that whenever want or misery or starvation is known to +exist, however distant or difficult of access, we instantly +organise relief on the most generous scale, and distribute it, if +need be, to the uttermost ends of the earth.”</p> +<p>The Duchess paused, with a sense of ultimate triumph. +She had made the same observation at a drawing-room meeting, and +it had been extremely well received.</p> +<p>“I wonder,” said Reginald, “if you have ever +walked down the Embankment on a winter night?”</p> +<p>“Gracious, no, child! Why do you ask?”</p> +<p>“I didn’t; I only wondered. And even your +philanthropy, practised in a world where everything is based on +competition, must have a debit as well as a credit account. +The young ravens cry for food.”</p> +<p>“And are fed.”</p> +<p>“Exactly. Which presupposes that something else is +fed upon.”</p> +<p>“Oh, you’re simply exasperating. +You’ve been reading Nietzsche till you haven’t got +any sense of moral proportion left. May I ask if you are +governed by <i>any</i> laws of conduct whatever?”</p> +<p>“There are certain fixed rules that one observes for +one’s own comfort. For instance, never be flippantly +rude to any inoffensive grey-bearded stranger that you may meet +in pine forests or hotel smoking-rooms on the Continent. It +always turns out to be the King of Sweden.”</p> +<p>“The restraint must be dreadfully irksome to you. +When I was younger, boys of your age used to be nice and +innocent.”</p> +<p>“Now we are only nice. One must specialise in +these days. Which reminds me of the man I read of in some +sacred book who was given a choice of what he most desired. +And because he didn’t ask for titles and honours and +dignities, but only for immense wealth, these other things came +to him also.”</p> +<p>“I am sure you didn’t read about him in any sacred +book.”</p> +<p>“Yes; I fancy you will find him in Debrett.”</p> +<h2>REGINALD’S PEACE POEM</h2> +<p>“I’m writing a poem on Peace,” said +Reginald, emerging from a sweeping operation through a tin of +mixed biscuits, in whose depths a macaroon or two might yet be +lurking.</p> +<p>“Something of the kind seems to have been attempted +already,” said the Other.</p> +<p>“Oh, I know; but I may never have the chance +again. Besides, I’ve got a new fountain pen. I +don’t pretend to have gone on any very original lines; in +writing about Peace the thing is to say what everybody else is +saying, only to say it better. It begins with the usual +ornithological emotion—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘When the widgeon westward winging<br /> +Heard the folk Vereeniginging,<br /> +Heard the shouting and the singing’”—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“Vereeniginging is good, but why widgeon?”</p> +<p>“Why not? Anything that winged westward would +naturally begin with a <i>w</i>.”</p> +<p>“Need it wing westward?”</p> +<p>“The bird must go somewhere. You wouldn’t +have it hang around and look foolish. Then I’ve +brought in something about the heedless hartebeest galloping over +the deserted veldt.”</p> +<p>“Of course you know it’s practically extinct in +those regions?”</p> +<p>“I can’t help <i>that</i>, it gallops so +nicely. I make it have all sorts of unexpected +yearnings—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Mother, may I go and maffick,<br /> +Tear around and hinder traffic?’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Of course you’ll say there would be no traffic worth +bothering about on the bare and sun-scorched veldt, but +there’s no other word that rhymes with maffick.”</p> +<p>“Seraphic?”</p> +<p>Reginald considered. “It might do, but I’ve +got a lot about angels later on. You must have angels in a +Peace poem; I know dreadfully little about their +habits.”</p> +<p>“They can do unexpected things, like the +hartebeest.”</p> +<p>“Of course. Then I turn on London, the City of +Dreadful Nocturnes, resonant with hymns of joy and +thanksgiving—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘And the sleeper, eye unlidding,<br /> +Heard a voice for ever bidding<br /> +Much farewell to Dolly Gray;<br /> +Turning weary on his truckle-<br /> +Bed he heard the honey-suckle<br /> +Lauded in apiarian lay.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Longfellow at his best wrote nothing like that.”</p> +<p>“I agree with you.”</p> +<p>“I wish you wouldn’t. I’ve a sweet +temper, but I can’t stand being agreed with. And +I’m so worried about the aasvogel.”</p> +<p>Reginald stared dismally at the biscuit-tin, which now +presented an unattractive array of rejected cracknels.</p> +<p>“I believe,” he murmured, “if I could find a +woman with an unsatisfied craving for cracknels, I should marry +her.”</p> +<p>“What is the tragedy of the aasvogel?” asked the +Other sympathetically.</p> +<p>“Oh, simply that there’s no rhyme for it. I +thought about it all the time I was dressing—it’s +dreadfully bad for one to think whilst one’s +dressing—and all lunch-time, and I’m still hung up +over it. I feel like those unfortunate automobilists who +achieve an unenviable motoriety by coming to a hopeless stop with +their cars in the most crowded thoroughfares. I’m +afraid I shall have to drop the aasvogel, and it did give such +lovely local colour to the thing.”</p> +<p>“Still you’ve got the heedless +hartebeest.”</p> +<p>“And quite a decorative bit of moral +admonition—when you’ve worried the meaning +out—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Cease, War, thy bubbling madness that the +wine shares,<br /> +And bid thy legions turn their swords to mine shares.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Mine shares seems to fit the case better than +ploughshares. There’s lots more about the blessings +of Peace, shall I go on reading it?”</p> +<p>“If I must make a choice, I think I would rather they +went on with the war.”</p> +<h2>REGINALD’S CHOIR TREAT</h2> +<p>“Never,” wrote Reginald to his most darling +friend, “be a pioneer. It’s the Early Christian +that gets the fattest lion.”</p> +<p>Reginald, in his way, was a pioneer.</p> +<p>None of the rest of his family had anything approaching Titian +hair or a sense of humour, and they used primroses as a table +decoration.</p> +<p>It follows that they never understood Reginald, who came down +late to breakfast, and nibbled toast, and said disrespectful +things about the universe. The family ate porridge, and +believed in everything, even the weather forecast.</p> +<p>Therefore the family was relieved when the vicar’s +daughter undertook the reformation of Reginald. Her name +was Amabel; it was the vicar’s one extravagance. +Amabel was accounted a beauty and intellectually gifted; she +never played tennis, and was reputed to have read +Maeterlinck’s <i>Life of the Bee</i>. If you abstain +from tennis <i>and</i> read Maeterlinck in a small country +village, you are of necessity intellectual. Also she had +been twice to Fécamp to pick up a good French accent from +the Americans staying there; consequently she had a knowledge of +the world which might be considered useful in dealings with a +worldling.</p> +<p>Hence the congratulations in the family when Amabel undertook +the reformation of its wayward member.</p> +<p>Amabel commenced operations by asking her unsuspecting pupil +to tea in the vicarage garden; she believed in the healthy +influence of natural surroundings, never having been in Sicily, +where things are different.</p> +<p>And like every woman who has ever preached repentance to +unregenerate youth, she dwelt on the sin of an empty life, which +always seems so much more scandalous in the country, where people +rise early to see if a new strawberry has happened during the +night.</p> +<p>Reginald recalled the lilies of the field, “which simply +sat and looked beautiful, and defied competition.”</p> +<p>“But that is not an example for us to follow,” +gasped Amabel.</p> +<p>“Unfortunately, we can’t afford to. You +don’t know what a world of trouble I take in trying to +rival the lilies in their artistic simplicity.”</p> +<p>“You are really indecently vain of your +appearance. A good life is infinitely preferable to good +looks.”</p> +<p>“You agree with me that the two are incompatible. +I always say beauty is only sin deep.”</p> +<p>Amabel began to realise that the battle is not always to the +strong-minded. With the immemorial resource of her sex, she +abandoned the frontal attack, and laid stress on her unassisted +labours in parish work, her mental loneliness, her +discouragements—and at the right moment she produced +strawberries and cream. Reginald was obviously affected by +the latter, and when his preceptress suggested that he might +begin the strenuous life by helping her to supervise the annual +outing of the bucolic infants who composed the local choir, his +eyes shone with the dangerous enthusiasm of a convert.</p> +<p>Reginald entered on the strenuous life alone, as far as Amabel +was concerned. The most virtuous women are not proof +against damp grass, and Amabel kept her bed with a cold. +Reginald called it a dispensation; it had been the dream of his +life to stage-manage a choir outing. With strategic +insight, he led his shy, bullet-headed charges to the nearest +woodland stream and allowed them to bathe; then he seated himself +on their discarded garments and discoursed on their immediate +future, which, he decreed, was to embrace a Bacchanalian +procession through the village. Forethought had provided +the occasion with a supply of tin whistles, but the introduction +of a he-goat from a neighbouring orchard was a brilliant +afterthought. Properly, Reginald explained, there should +have been an outfit of panther skins; as it was, those who had +spotted handkerchiefs were allowed to wear them, which they did +with thankfulness. Reginald recognised the impossibility, +in the time at his disposal, of teaching his shivering neophytes +a chant in honour of Bacchus, so he started them off with a more +familiar, if less appropriate, temperance hymn. After all, +he said, it is the spirit of the thing that counts. +Following the etiquette of dramatic authors on first nights, he +remained discreetly in the background while the procession, with +extreme diffidence and the goat, wound its way lugubriously +towards the village. The singing had died down long before +the main street was reached, but the miserable wailing of pipes +brought the inhabitants to their doors. Reginald said he +had seen something like it in pictures; the villagers had seen +nothing like it in their lives, and remarked as much freely.</p> +<p>Reginald’s family never forgave him. They had no +sense of humour.</p> +<h2>REGINALD ON WORRIES</h2> +<p>I have (said Reginald) an aunt who worries. She’s +not really an aunt—a sort of amateur one, and they +aren’t really worries. She is a social success, and +has no domestic tragedies worth speaking of, so she adopts any +decorative sorrows that are going, myself included. In that +way she’s the antithesis, or whatever you call it, to those +sweet, uncomplaining women one knows who have seen trouble, and +worn blinkers ever since. Of course, one just loves them +for it, but I must confess they make me uncomfy; they remind one +so of a duck that goes flapping about with forced cheerfulness +long after its head’s been cut off. Ducks have +<i>no</i> repose. Now, my aunt has a shade of hair that +suits her, and a cook who quarrels with the other servants, which +is always a hopeful sign, and a conscience that’s absentee +for about eleven months of the year, and only turns up at Lent to +annoy her husband’s people, who are considerably Lower than +the angels, so to speak: with all these natural +advantages—she says her particular tint of bronze is a +natural advantage, and there can be no two opinions as to the +advantage—of course she has to send out for her +afflictions, like those restaurants where they haven’t got +a licence. The system has this advantage, that you can fit +your unhappinesses in with your other engagements, whereas real +worries have a way of arriving at meal-times, and when +you’re dressing, or other solemn moments. I knew a +canary once that had been trying for months and years to hatch +out a family, and everyone looked upon it as a blameless +infatuation, like the sale of Delagoa Bay, which would be an +annual loss to the Press agencies if it ever came to pass; and +one day the bird really did bring it off, in the middle of family +prayers. I say the middle, but it was also the end: you +can’t go on being thankful for daily bread when you are +wondering what on earth very new canaries expect to be fed +on.</p> +<p>At present she’s rather in a Balkan state of mind about +the treatment of the Jews in Roumania. Personally, I think +the Jews have estimable qualities; they’re so kind to their +poor—and to our rich. I daresay in Roumania the cost +of living beyond one’s income isn’t so great. +Over here the trouble is that so many people who have money to +throw about seem to have such vague ideas where to throw +it. That fund, for instance, to relieve the victims of +sudden disasters—what is a sudden disaster? +There’s Marion Mulciber, who <i>would</i> think she could +play bridge, just as she would think she could ride down a hill +on a bicycle; on that occasion she went to a hospital, now +she’s gone into a Sisterhood—lost all she had, you +know, and gave the rest to Heaven. Still, you can’t +call it a sudden calamity; <i>that</i> occurred when poor dear +Marion was born. The doctors said at the time that she +couldn’t live more than a fortnight, and she’s been +trying ever since to see if she could. Women are so +opinionated.</p> +<p>And then there’s the Education Question—not that I +can see that there’s anything to worry about in that +direction. To my mind, education is an absurdly over-rated +affair. At least, one never took it very seriously at +school, where everything was done to bring it prominently under +one’s notice. Anything that is worth knowing one +practically teaches oneself, and the rest obtrudes itself sooner +or later. The reason one’s elders know so +comparatively little is because they have to unlearn so much that +they acquired by way of education before we were born. Of +course I’m a believer in Nature-study; as I said to Lady +Beauwhistle, if you want a lesson in elaborate artificiality, +just watch the studied unconcern of a Persian cat entering a +crowded salon, and then go and practise it for a fortnight. +The Beauwhistles weren’t born in the Purple, you know, but +they’re getting there on the instalment system—so +much down, and the rest when you feel like it. They have +kind hearts, and they never forget birthdays. I forget what +he was, something in the City, where the patriotism comes from; +and she—oh, well, her frocks are built in Paris, but she +wears them with a strong English accent. So public-spirited +of her. I think she must have been very strictly brought +up, she’s so desperately anxious to do the wrong thing +correctly. Not that it really matters nowadays, as I told +her: I know some perfectly virtuous people who are received +everywhere.</p> +<h2>REGINALD ON HOUSE-PARTIES</h2> +<p>The drawback is, one never really <i>knows</i> one’s +hosts and hostesses. One gets to know their fox-terriers +and their chrysanthemums, and whether the story about the go-cart +can be turned loose in the drawing-room, or must be told +privately to each member of the party, for fear of shocking +public opinion; but one’s host and hostess are a sort of +human hinterland that one never has the time to explore.</p> +<p>There was a fellow I stayed with once in Warwickshire who +farmed his own land, but was otherwise quite steady. Should +never have suspected him of having a soul, yet not very long +afterwards he eloped with a lion-tamer’s widow and set up +as a golf-instructor somewhere on the Persian Gulf; dreadfully +immoral, of course, because he was only an indifferent player, +but still, it showed imagination. His wife was really to be +pitied, because he had been the only person in the house who +understood how to manage the cook’s temper, and now she has +to put “D.V.” on her dinner invitations. Still, +that’s better than a domestic scandal; a woman who leaves +her cook never wholly recovers her position in Society.</p> +<p>I suppose the same thing holds good with the hosts; they +seldom have more than a superficial acquaintance with their +guests, and so often just when they do get to know you a bit +better, they leave off knowing you altogether. There was +<i>rather</i> a breath of winter in the air when I left those +Dorsetshire people. You see, they had asked me down to +shoot, and I’m not particularly immense at that sort of +thing. There’s such a deadly sameness about +partridges; when you’ve missed one, you’ve missed the +lot—at least, that’s been my experience. And +they tried to rag me in the smoking-room about not being able to +hit a bird at five yards, a sort of bovine ragging that suggested +cows buzzing round a gadfly and thinking they were teasing +it. So I got up the next morning at early dawn—I know +it was dawn, because there were lark-noises in the sky, and the +grass looked as if it had been left out all night—and +hunted up the most conspicuous thing in the bird line that I +could find, and measured the distance, as nearly as it would let +me, and shot away all I knew. They said afterwards that it +was a tame bird; that’s simply <i>silly</i>, because it was +awfully wild at the first few shots. Afterwards it quieted +down a bit, and when its legs had stopped waving farewells to the +landscape I got a gardener-boy to drag it into the hall, where +everybody must see it on their way to the breakfast-room. I +breakfasted upstairs myself. I gathered afterwards that the +meal was tinged with a very unchristian spirit. I suppose +it’s unlucky to bring peacock’s feathers into a +house; anyway, there was a blue-pencilly look in my +hostess’s eye when I took my departure.</p> +<p>Some hostesses, of course, will forgive anything, even unto +pavonicide (is there such a word?), as long as one is +nice-looking and sufficiently unusual to counterbalance some of +the others; and there <i>are</i> others—the girl, for +instance, who reads Meredith, and appears at meals with unnatural +punctuality in a frock that’s made at home and repented at +leisure. She eventually finds her way to India and gets +married, and comes home to admire the Royal Academy, and to +imagine that an indifferent prawn curry is for ever an effective +substitute for all that we have been taught to believe is +luncheon. It’s then that she is really dangerous; but +at her worst she is never quite so bad as the woman who fires +<i>Exchange and Mart</i> questions at you without the least +provocation. Imagine the other day, just when I was doing +my best to understand half the things I was saying, being asked +by one of those seekers after country home truths how many fowls +she could keep in a run ten feet by six, or whatever it +was! I told her whole crowds, as long as she kept the door +shut, and the idea didn’t seem to have struck her before; +at least, she brooded over it for the rest of dinner.</p> +<p>Of course, as I say, one never really <i>knows</i> one’s +ground, and one may make mistakes occasionally. But then +one’s mistakes sometimes turn out assets in the long-run: +if we had never bungled away our American colonies we might never +have had the boy from the States to teach us how to wear our hair +and cut our clothes, and we must get our ideas from somewhere, I +suppose. Even the Hooligan was probably invented in China +centuries before we thought of him. England must wake up, +as the Duke of Devonshire said the other day; wasn’t +it? Oh, well, it was someone else. Not that I ever +indulge in despair about the Future; there always have been men +who have gone about despairing of the Future, and when the Future +arrives it says nice, superior things about their having acted +according to their lights. It is dreadful to think that +other people’s grandchildren may one day rise up and call +one amiable.</p> +<p>There are moments when one sympathises with Herod.</p> +<h2>REGINALD AT THE CARLTON</h2> +<p>“A most variable climate,” said the Duchess; +“and how unfortunate that we should have had that very cold +weather at a time when coal was so dear! So distressing for +the poor.”</p> +<p>“Someone has observed that Providence is always on the +side of the big dividends,” remarked Reginald.</p> +<p>The Duchess ate an anchovy in a shocked manner; she was +sufficiently old-fashioned to dislike irreverence towards +dividends.</p> +<p>Reginald had left the selection of a feeding-ground to her +womanly intuition, but he chose the wine himself, knowing that +womanly intuition stops short at claret. A woman will +cheerfully choose husbands for her less attractive friends, or +take sides in a political controversy without the least knowledge +of the issues involved—but no woman ever cheerfully chose a +claret.</p> +<p>“Hors d’œuvres have always a pathetic +interest for me,” said Reginald: “they remind me of +one’s childhood that one goes through, wondering what the +next course is going to be like—and during the rest of the +menu one wishes one had eaten more of the hors +d’œuvres. Don’t you love watching the +different ways people have of entering a restaurant? There +is the woman who races in as though her whole scheme of life were +held together by a one-pin despotism which might abdicate its +functions at any moment; it’s really a relief to see her +reach her chair in safety. Then there are the people who +troop in with an-unpleasant-duty-to-perform air, as if they were +angels of Death entering a plague city. You see that type +of Briton very much in hotels abroad. And nowadays there +are always the Johannesbourgeois, who bring a Cape-to-Cairo +atmosphere with them—what may be called the Rand Manner, I +suppose.”</p> +<p>“Talking about hotels abroad,” said the Duchess, +“I am preparing notes for a lecture at the Club on the +educational effects of modern travel, dealing chiefly with the +moral side of the question. I was talking to Lady +Beauwhistle’s aunt the other day—she’s just +come back from Paris, you know. Such a sweet +woman”—</p> +<p>“And so silly. In these days of the over-education +of women she’s quite refreshing. They say some people +went through the siege of Paris without knowing that France and +Germany were at war; but the Beauwhistle aunt is credited with +having passed the whole winter in Paris under the impression that +the Humberts were a kind of bicycle . . . Isn’t there a +bishop or somebody who believes we shall meet all the animals we +have known on earth in another world? How frightfully +embarrassing to meet a whole shoal of whitebait you had last +known at Prince’s! I’m sure in my nervousness I +should talk of nothing but lemons. Still, I daresay they +would be quite as offended if one hadn’t eaten them. +I know if I were served up at a cannibal feast I should be +dreadfully annoyed if anyone found fault with me for not being +tender enough, or having been kept too long.”</p> +<p>“My idea about the lecture,” resumed the Duchess +hurriedly, “is to inquire whether promiscuous Continental +travel doesn’t tend to weaken the moral fibre of the social +conscience. There are people one knows, quite nice people +when they are in England, who are so <i>different</i> when they +are anywhere the other side of the Channel.”</p> +<p>“The people with what I call Tauchnitz morals,” +observed Reginald. “On the whole, I think they get +the best of two very desirable worlds. And, after all, they +charge so much for excess luggage on some of those foreign lines +that it’s really an economy to leave one’s reputation +behind one occasionally.”</p> +<p>“A scandal, my dear Reginald, is as much to be avoided +at Monaco or any of those places as at Exeter, let us +say.”</p> +<p>“Scandal, my dear Irene—I may call you Irene, +mayn’t I?”</p> +<p>“I don’t know that you have known me long enough +for that.”</p> +<p>“I’ve known you longer than your god-parents had +when they took the liberty of calling you that name. +Scandal is merely the compassionate allowance which the gay make +to the humdrum. Think how many blameless lives are +brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people. +Tell me, who is the woman with the old lace at the table on our +left? Oh, <i>that</i> doesn’t matter; it’s +quite the thing nowadays to stare at people as if they were +yearlings at Tattersall’s.”</p> +<p>“Mrs. Spelvexit? Quite a charming woman; separated +from her husband”—</p> +<p>“Incompatibility of income?”</p> +<p>“Oh, nothing of that sort. By miles of frozen +ocean, I was going to say. He explores ice-floes and +studies the movements of herrings, and has written a most +interesting book on the home-life of the Esquimaux; but naturally +he has very little home-life of his own.”</p> +<p>“A husband who comes home with the Gulf Stream +<i>would</i> be rather a tied-up asset.”</p> +<p>“His wife is exceedingly sensible about it. She +collects postage-stamps. Such a resource. Those +people with her are the Whimples, very old acquaintances of mine; +they’re always having trouble, poor things.”</p> +<p>“Trouble is not one of those fancies you can take up and +drop at any moment; it’s like a grouse-moor or the +opium-habit—once you start it you’ve got to keep it +up.”</p> +<p>“Their eldest son was such a disappointment to them; +they wanted him to be a linguist, and spent no end of money on +having him taught to speak—oh, dozens of +languages!—and then he became a Trappist monk. And +the youngest, who was intended for the American marriage market, +has developed political tendencies, and writes pamphlets about +the housing of the poor. Of course it’s a most +important question, and I devote a good deal of time to it myself +in the mornings; but, as Laura Whimple says, it’s as well +to have an establishment of one’s own before agitating +about other people’s. She feels it very keenly, but +she always maintains a cheerful appetite, which I think is so +unselfish of her.”</p> +<p>“There are different ways of taking +disappointment. There was a girl I knew who nursed a +wealthy uncle through a long illness, borne by her with Christian +fortitude, and then he died and left his money to a swine-fever +hospital. She found she’d about cleared stock in +fortitude by that time, and now she gives drawing-room +recitations. That’s what I call being +vindictive.”</p> +<p>“Life is full of its disappointments,” observed +the Duchess, “and I suppose the art of being happy is to +disguise them as illusions. But that, my dear Reginald, +becomes more difficult as one grows older.”</p> +<p>“I think it’s more generally practised than you +imagine. The young have aspirations that never come to +pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened. +It’s only the middle-aged who are really conscious of their +limitations—that is why one should be so patient with +them. But one never is.”</p> +<p>“After all,” said the Duchess, “the +disillusions of life may depend on our way of assessing it. +In the minds of those who come after us we may be remembered for +qualities and successes which we quite left out of the +reckoning.”</p> +<p>“It’s not always safe to depend on the +commemorative tendencies of those who come after us. There +may have been disillusionments in the lives of the mediæval +saints, but they would scarcely have been better pleased if they +could have foreseen that their names would be associated nowadays +chiefly with racehorses and the cheaper clarets. And now, +if you can tear yourself away from the salted almonds, +we’ll go and have coffee under the palms that are so +necessary for our discomfort.”</p> +<h2>REGINALD ON BESETTING SINS: THE WOMAN WHO TOLD THE TRUTH</h2> +<p>There was once (said Reginald) a woman who told the +truth. Not all at once, of course, but the habit grew upon +her gradually, like lichen on an apparently healthy tree. +She had no children—otherwise it might have been +different. It began with little things, for no particular +reason except that her life was a rather empty one, and it is so +easy to slip into the habit of telling the truth in little +matters. And then it became difficult to draw the line at +more important things, until at last she took to telling the +truth about her age; she said she was forty-two and five +months—by that time, you see, she was veracious even to +months. It may have been pleasing to the angels, but her +elder sister was not gratified. On the Woman’s +birthday, instead of the opera-tickets which she had hoped for, +her sister gave her a view of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, +which is not quite the same thing. The revenge of an elder +sister may be long in coming, but, like a South-Eastern express, +it arrives in its own good time.</p> +<p>The friends of the Woman tried to dissuade her from +over-indulgence in the practice, but she said she was wedded to +the truth; whereupon it was remarked that it was scarcely logical +to be so much together in public. (No really provident +woman lunches regularly with her husband if she wishes to burst +upon him as a revelation at dinner. He must have time to +forget; an afternoon is not enough.) And after a while her +friends began to thin out in patches. Her passion for the +truth was not compatible with a large visiting-list. For +instance, she told Miriam Klopstock <i>exactly</i> how she looked +at the Ilexes’ ball. Certainly Miriam had asked for +her candid opinion, but the Woman prayed in church every Sunday +for peace in our time, and it was not consistent.</p> +<p>It was unfortunate, everyone agreed, that she had no family; +with a child or two in the house, there is an unconscious check +upon too free an indulgence in the truth. Children are +given us to discourage our better emotions. That is why the +stage, with all its efforts, can never be as artificial as life; +even in an Ibsen drama one must reveal to the audience things +that one would suppress before the children or servants.</p> +<p>Fate may have ordained the truth-telling from the commencement +and should justly bear some of the blame; but in having no +children the Woman was guilty, at least, of contributory +negligence.</p> +<p>Little by little she felt she was becoming a slave to what had +once been merely an idle propensity; and one day she knew. +Every woman tells ninety per cent. of the truth to her +dressmaker; the other ten per cent. is the irreducible minimum of +deception beyond which no self-respecting client +trespasses. Madame Draga’s establishment was a +meeting-ground for naked truths and over-dressed fictions, and it +was here, the Woman felt, that she might make a final effort to +recall the artless mendacity of past days. Madame herself +was in an inspiring mood, with the air of a sphinx who knew all +things and preferred to forget most of them. As a War +Minister she might have been celebrated, but she was content to +be merely rich.</p> +<p>“If I take it in here, and—Miss Howard, one +moment, if you please—and there, and round like +this—so—I really think you will find it quite +easy.”</p> +<p>The Woman hesitated; it seemed to require such a small effort +to simply acquiesce in Madame’s views. But habit had +become too strong. “I’m afraid,” she +faltered, “it’s just the least little bit in the +world too”—</p> +<p>And by that least little bit she measured the deeps and +eternities of her thraldom to fact. Madame was not best +pleased at being contradicted on a professional matter, and when +Madame lost her temper you usually found it afterwards in the +bill.</p> +<p>And at last the dreadful thing came, as the Woman had foreseen +all along that it must; it was one of those paltry little truths +with which she harried her waking hours. On a raw Wednesday +morning, in a few ill-chosen words, she told the cook that she +drank. She remembered the scene afterwards as vividly as +though it had been painted in her mind by Abbey. The cook +was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go she went.</p> +<p>Miriam Klopstock came to lunch the next day. Women and +elephants never forget an injury.</p> +<h2>REGINALD’S DRAMA</h2> +<p>Reginald closed his eyes with the elaborate weariness of one +who has rather nice eyelashes and thinks it useless to conceal +the fact.</p> +<p>“One of these days,” he said, “I shall write +a really great drama. No one will understand the drift of +it, but everyone will go back to their homes with a vague feeling +of dissatisfaction with their lives and surroundings. Then +they will put up new wall-papers and forget.”</p> +<p>“But how about those that have oak panelling all over +the house?” said the Other.</p> +<p>“They can always put down new stair-carpets,” +pursued Reginald, “and, anyhow, I’m not responsible +for the audience having a happy ending. The play would be +quite sufficient strain on one’s energies. I should +get a bishop to say it was immoral and beautiful—no +dramatist has thought of that before, and everyone would come to +condemn the bishop, and they would stay on out of sheer +nervousness. After all, it requires a great deal of moral +courage to leave in a marked manner in the middle of the second +act, when your carriage isn’t ordered till twelve. +And it would commence with wolves worrying something on a lonely +waste—you wouldn’t see them, of course; but you would +hear them snarling and scrunching, and I should arrange to have a +wolfy fragrance suggested across the footlights. It would +look so well on the programmes, ‘Wolves in the first act, +by Jamrach.’ And old Lady Whortleberry, who never +misses a first night, would scream. She’s always been +nervous since she lost her first husband. He died quite +abruptly while watching a county cricket match; two and a half +inches of rain had fallen for seven runs, and it was supposed +that the excitement killed him. Anyhow, it gave her quite a +shock; it was the first husband she’d lost, you know, and +now she always screams if anything thrilling happens too soon +after dinner. And after the audience had heard the +Whortleberry scream the thing would be fairly +launched.”</p> +<p>“And the plot?”</p> +<p>“The plot,” said Reginald, “would be one of +those little everyday tragedies that one sees going on all round +one. In my mind’s eye there is the case of the +Mudge-Jervises, which in an unpretentious way has quite an Enoch +Arden intensity underlying it. They’d only been +married some eighteen months or so, and circumstances had +prevented their seeing much of each other. With him there +was always a foursome or something that had to be played and +replayed in different parts of the country, and she went in for +slumming quite as seriously as if it was a sport. With her, +I suppose, it was. She belonged to the Guild of the Poor +Dear Souls, and they hold the record for having nearly reformed a +washerwoman. No one has ever really reformed a washerwoman, +and that is why the competition is so keen. You can rescue +charwomen by fifties with a little tea and personal magnetism, +but with washerwomen it’s different; wages are too +high. This particular laundress, who came from Bermondsey +or some such place, was really rather a hopeful venture, and they +thought at last that she might be safely put in the window as a +specimen of successful work. So they had her paraded at a +drawing-room “At Home” at Agatha Camelford’s; +it was sheer bad luck that some liqueur chocolates had been +turned loose by mistake among the refreshments—really +liqueur chocolates, with very little chocolate. And of +course the old soul found them out, and cornered the entire +stock. It was like finding a whelk-stall in a desert, as +she afterwards partially expressed herself. When the +liqueurs began to take effect, she started to give them +imitations of farmyard animals as they know them in +Bermondsey. She began with a dancing bear, and you know +Agatha doesn’t approve of dancing, except at Buckingham +Palace under proper supervision. And then she got up on the +piano and gave them an organ monkey; I gather she went in for +realism rather than a Maeterlinckian treatment of the +subject. Finally, she fell into the piano and said she was +a parrot in a cage, and for an impromptu performance I believe +she was very word-perfect; no one had heard anything like it, +except Baroness Boobelstein who has attended sittings of the +Austrian Reichsrath. Agatha is trying the Rest-cure at +Buxton.”</p> +<p>“But the tragedy?”</p> +<p>“Oh, the Mudge-Jervises. Well, they were getting +along quite happily, and their married life was one continuous +exchange of picture-postcards; and then one day they were thrown +together on some neutral ground where foursomes and washerwomen +overlapped, and discovered that they were hopelessly divided on +the Fiscal Question. They have thought it best to separate, +and she is to have the custody of the Persian kittens for nine +months in the year—they go back to him for the winter, when +she is abroad. There you have the material for a tragedy +drawn straight from life—and the piece could be called +‘The Price They Paid for Empire.’ And of course +one would have to work in studies of the struggle of hereditary +tendency against environment and all that sort of thing. +The woman’s father could have been an Envoy to some of the +smaller German Courts; that’s where she’d get her +passion for visiting the poor, in spite of the most careful +upbringing. <i>C’est le premier pa qui compte</i>, as +the cuckoo said when it swallowed its foster-parent. That, +I think, is quite clever.”</p> +<p>“And the wolves?”</p> +<p>“Oh, the wolves would be a sort of elusive undercurrent +in the background that would never be satisfactorily +explained. After all, life teems with things that have no +earthly reason. And whenever the characters could think of +nothing brilliant to say about marriage or the War Office, they +could open a window and listen to the howling of the +wolves. But that would be very seldom.”</p> +<h2>REGINALD ON TARIFFS</h2> +<p>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 <i>Degeneration</i> and +other reproving literature, and went to sleep. And now she +says there is a whole colony of mice in that room.</p> +<p>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 <i>know</i> 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 <i>tout</i> than +<i>ensemble</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>would</i> +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2>REGINALD’S CHRISTMAS REVEL</h2> +<p>They say (said Reginald) that there’s nothing sadder +than victory except defeat. If you’ve ever stayed +with dull people during what is alleged to be the festive season, +you can probably revise that saying. I shall never forget +putting in a Christmas at the Babwolds’. Mrs. Babwold +is some relation of my father’s—a sort of +to-be-left-till-called-for cousin—and that was considered +sufficient reason for my having to accept her invitation at about +the sixth time of asking; though why the sins of the father +should be visited by the children—you won’t find any +notepaper in that drawer; that’s where I keep old menus and +first-night programmes.</p> +<p>Mrs. Babwold wears a rather solemn personality, and has never +been known to smile, even when saying disagreeable things to her +friends or making out the Stores list. She takes her +pleasures sadly. A state elephant at a Durbar gives one a +very similar impression. Her husband gardens in all +weathers. When a man goes out in the pouring rain to brush +caterpillars off rose-trees, I generally imagine his life indoors +leaves something to be desired; anyway, it must be very +unsettling for the caterpillars.</p> +<p>Of course there were other people there. There was a +Major Somebody who had shot things in Lapland, or somewhere of +that sort; I forget what they were, but it wasn’t for want +of reminding. We had them cold with every meal almost, and +he was continually giving us details of what they measured from +tip to tip, as though he thought we were going to make them warm +under-things for the winter. I used to listen to him with a +rapt attention that I thought rather suited me, and then one day +I quite modestly gave the dimensions of an okapi I had shot in +the Lincolnshire fens. The Major turned a beautiful Tyrian +scarlet (I remember thinking at the time that I should like my +bathroom hung in that colour), and I think that at that moment he +almost found it in his heart to dislike me. Mrs. Babwold +put on a first-aid-to-the-injured expression, and asked him why +he didn’t publish a book of his sporting reminiscences; it +would be <i>so</i> interesting. She didn’t remember +till afterwards that he had given her two fat volumes on the +subject, with his portrait and autograph as a frontispiece and an +appendix on the habits of the Arctic mussel.</p> +<p>It was in the evening that we cast aside the cares and +distractions of the day and really lived. Cards were +thought to be too frivolous and empty a way of passing the time, +so most of them played what they called a book game. You +went out into the hall—to get an inspiration, I +suppose—then you came in again with a muffler tied round +your neck and looked silly, and the others were supposed to guess +that you were “Wee MacGreegor.” I held out +against the inanity as long as I decently could, but at last, in +a lapse of good-nature, I consented to masquerade as a book, only +I warned them that it would take some time to carry out. +They waited for the best part of forty minutes, while I went and +played wineglass skittles with the page-boy in the pantry; you +play it with a champagne cork, you know, and the one who knocks +down the most glasses without breaking them wins. I won, +with four unbroken out of seven; I think William suffered from +over-anxiousness. They were rather mad in the drawing-room +at my not having come back, and they weren’t a bit pacified +when I told them afterwards that I was “At the end of the +passage.”</p> +<p>“I never did like Kipling,” was Mrs. +Babwold’s comment, when the situation dawned upon +her. “I couldn’t see anything clever in +<i>Earthworms out of Tuscany</i>—or is that by +Darwin?”</p> +<p>Of course these games are very educational, but, personally, I +prefer bridge.</p> +<p>On Christmas evening we were supposed to be specially festive +in the Old English fashion. The hall was horribly draughty, +but it seemed to be the proper place to revel in, and it was +decorated with Japanese fans and Chinese lanterns, which gave it +a very Old English effect. A young lady with a confidential +voice favoured us with a long recitation about a little girl who +died or did something equally hackneyed, and then the Major gave +us a graphic account of a struggle he had with a wounded +bear. I privately wished that the bears would win sometimes +on these occasions; at least they wouldn’t go vapouring +about it afterwards. Before we had time to recover our +spirits, we were indulged with some thought-reading by a young +man whom one knew instinctively had a good mother and an +indifferent tailor—the sort of young man who talks +unflaggingly through the thickest soup, and smooths his hair +dubiously as though he thought it might hit back. The +thought-reading was rather a success; he announced that the +hostess was thinking about poetry, and she admitted that her mind +was dwelling on one of Austin’s odes. Which was near +enough. I fancy she had been really wondering whether a +scrag-end of mutton and some cold plum-pudding would do for the +kitchen dinner next day. As a crowning dissipation, they +all sat down to play progressive halma, with milk-chocolate for +prizes. I’ve been carefully brought up, and I +don’t like to play games of skill for milk-chocolate, so I +invented a headache and retired from the scene. I had been +preceded a few minutes earlier by Miss Langshan-Smith, a rather +formidable lady, who always got up at some uncomfortable hour in +the morning, and gave you the impression that she had been in +communication with most of the European Governments before +breakfast. There was a paper pinned on her door with a +signed request that she might be called particularly early on the +morrow. Such an opportunity does not come twice in a +lifetime. I covered up everything except the signature with +another notice, to the effect that before these words should meet +the eye she would have ended a misspent life, was sorry for the +trouble she was giving, and would like a military funeral. +A few minutes later I violently exploded an air-filled paper bag +on the landing, and gave a stage moan that could have been heard +in the cellars. Then I pursued my original intention and +went to bed. The noise those people made in forcing open +the good lady’s door was positively indecorous; she +resisted gallantly, but I believe they searched her for bullets +for about a quarter of an hour, as if she had been an historic +battlefield.</p> +<p>I hate travelling on Boxing Day, but one must occasionally do +things that one dislikes.</p> +<h2>REGINALD’S RUBAIYAT</h2> +<p>The other day (confided Reginald), when I was killing time in +the bathroom and making bad resolutions for the New Year, it +occurred to me that I would like to be a poet. The chief +qualification, I understand, is that you must be born. +Well, I hunted up my birth certificate, and found that I was all +right on that score, and then I got to work on a Hymn to the New +Year, which struck me as having possibilities. It suggested +extremely unusual things to absolutely unlikely people, which I +believe is the art of first-class catering in any +department. Quite the best verse in it went something like +this—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Have you heard the groan of a gravelled +grouse,<br /> +Or the snarl of a snaffled snail<br /> +(Husband or mother, like me, or spouse),<br /> +Have you lain a-creep in the darkened house<br /> +Where the wounded wombats wail?”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It was quite improbable that anyone had, you know, and +that’s where it stimulated the imagination and took people +out of their narrow, humdrum selves. No one has ever called +me narrow or humdrum, but even I felt worked up now and then at +the thought of that house with the stricken wombats in it. +It simply wasn’t nice. But the editors were unanimous +in leaving it alone; they said the thing had been done before and +done worse, and that the market for that sort of work was +extremely limited.</p> +<p>It was just on the top of that discouragement that the Duchess +wanted me to write something in her album—something +Persian, you know, and just a little bit decadent—and I +thought a quatrain on an unwholesome egg would meet the +requirements of the case. So I started in with—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Cackle, cackle, little hen,<br /> +How I wonder if and when<br /> +Once you laid the egg that I<br /> +Met, alas! too late. Amen.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The Duchess objected to the Amen, which I thought gave an air +of forgiveness and <i>chose jugée</i> to the whole thing; +also she said it wasn’t Persian enough, as though I were +trying to sell her a kitten whose mother had married for love +rather than pedigree. So I recast it entirely, and the new +version read—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The hen that laid thee moons ago, who +knows<br /> +In what Dead Yesterday her shades repose;<br /> +To some election turn thy waning span<br /> +And rain thy rottenness on fiscal foes.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>I thought there was enough suggestion of decay in that to +satisfy a jackal, and to me there was something infinitely +pathetic and appealing in the idea of the egg having a sort of +St. Luke’s summer of commercial usefulness. But the +Duchess begged me to leave out any political allusions; +she’s the president of a Women’s Something or other, +and she said it might be taken as an endorsement of deplorable +methods. I never can remember which Party Irene discourages +with her support, but I shan’t forget an occasion when I +was staying at her place and she gave me a pamphlet to leave at +the house of a doubtful voter, and some grapes and things for a +woman who was suffering from a chill on the top of a patent +medicine. I thought it much cleverer to give the grapes to +the former and the political literature to the sick woman, and +the Duchess was quite absurdly annoyed about it afterwards. +It seems the leaflet was addressed “To those about to +wobble”—I wasn’t responsible for the silly +title of the thing—and the woman never recovered; anyway, +the voter was completely won over by the grapes and jellies, and +I think that should have balanced matters. The Duchess +called it bribery, and said it might have compromised the +candidate she was supporting; he was expected to subscribe to +church funds and chapel funds, and football and cricket clubs and +regattas, and bazaars and beanfeasts and bellringers, and poultry +shows and ploughing matches, and reading-rooms and choir outings, +and shooting trophies and testimonials, and anything of that +sort; but bribery would not have been tolerated.</p> +<p>I fancy I have perhaps more talent for electioneering than for +poetry, and I was really getting extended over this quatrain +business. The egg began to be unmanageable, and the Duchess +suggested something with a French literary ring about it. I +hunted back in my mind for the most familiar French classic that +I could take liberties with, and after a little exercise of +memory I turned out the following:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Hast thou the pen that once the gardener +had?<br /> +I have it not; and know, these pears are bad.<br /> +Oh, larger than the horses of the Prince<br /> +Are those the general drives in Kaikobad.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Even that didn’t altogether satisfy Irene; I fancy the +geography of it puzzled her. She probably thought Kaikobad +was an unfashionable German spa, where you’d meet +matrimonial bargain-hunters and emergency Servian kings. My +temper was beginning to slip its moorings by that time. I +look rather nice when I lose my temper. (I hoped you would +say I lose it very often. I mustn’t monopolise the +conversation.)</p> +<p>“Of course, if you want something really Persian and +passionate, with red wine and bulbuls in it,” I went on to +suggest; but she grabbed the book away from me.</p> +<p>“Not for worlds. Nothing with red wine or passion +in it. Dear Agatha gave me the album, and she would be +mortified to the quick”—</p> +<p>I said I didn’t believe Agatha had a quick, and we got +quite heated in arguing the matter. Finally, the Duchess +declared I shouldn’t write anything nasty in her book, and +I said I wouldn’t write anything in her nasty book, so +there wasn’t a very wide point of difference between +us. For the rest of the afternoon I pretended to be +sulking, but I was really working back to that quatrain, like a +fox-terrier that’s buried a deferred lunch in a private +flower-bed. When I got an opportunity I hunted up +Agatha’s autograph, which had the front page all to itself, +and, copying her prim handwriting as well as I could, I inserted +above it the following Thibetan fragment:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“With Thee, oh, my Beloved, to do a +dâk<br /> +(a dâk I believe is a sort of uncomfortable +post-journey)<br /> +On the pack-saddle of a grunting yak,<br /> +With never room for chilling chaperone,<br /> +’Twere better than a Panhard in the Park.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>That Agatha would get on to a yak in company with a lover even +in the comparative seclusion of Thibet is unthinkable. I +very much doubt if she’d do it with her own husband in the +privacy of the Simplon tunnel. But poetry, as I’ve +remarked before, should always stimulate the imagination.</p> +<p>By the way, when you asked me the other day to dine with you +on the 14th, I said I was dining with the Duchess. Well, +I’m not. I’m dining with you.</p> +<h2>THE INNOCENCE OF REGINALD</h2> +<p>Reginald slid a carnation of the newest shade into the +buttonhole of his latest lounge coat, and surveyed the result +with approval. “I am just in the mood,” he +observed, “to have my portrait painted by someone with an +unmistakable future. So comforting to go down to posterity +as ‘Youth with a Pink Carnation’ in +catalogue—company with ‘Child with Bunch of +Primroses,’ and all that crowd.”</p> +<p>“Youth,” said the Other, “should suggest +innocence.”</p> +<p>“But never act on the suggestion. I don’t +believe the two ever really go together. People talk +vaguely about the innocence of a little child, but they take +mighty good care not to let it out of their sight for twenty +minutes. The watched pot never boils over. I knew a +boy once who really was innocent; his parents were in Society, +but they never gave him a moment’s anxiety from his +infancy. He believed in company prospectuses, and in the +purity of elections, and in women marrying for love, and even in +a system for winning at roulette. He never quite lost his +faith in it, but he dropped more money than his employers could +afford to lose. When last I heard of him, he was believing +in his innocence; the jury weren’t. All the same, I +really am innocent just now of something everyone accuses me of +having done, and so far as I can see, their accusations will +remain unfounded.”</p> +<p>“Rather an unexpected attitude for you.”</p> +<p>“I love people who do unexpected things. +Didn’t you always adore the man who slew a lion in a pit on +a snowy day? But about this unfortunate innocence. +Well, quite long ago, when I’d been quarrelling with more +people than usual, you among the number—it must have been +in November, I never quarrel with you too near Christmas—I +had an idea that I’d like to write a book. It was to +be a book of personal reminiscences, and was to leave out +nothing.”</p> +<p>“Reginald!”</p> +<p>“Exactly what the Duchess said when I mentioned it to +her. I was provoking and said nothing, and the next thing, +of course, was that everyone heard that I’d written the +book and got it in the press. After that, I might have been +a gold-fish in a glass bowl for all the privacy I got. +People attacked me about it in the most unexpected places, and +implored or commanded me to leave out things that I’d +forgotten had ever happened. I sat behind Miriam Klopstock +one night in the dress circle at His Majesty’s, and she +began at once about the incident of the Chow dog in the bathroom, +which she insisted must be struck out. We had to argue it +in a disjointed fashion, because some of the people wanted to +listen to the play, and Miriam takes nines in voices. They +had to stop her playing in the ‘Macaws’ Hockey Club +because you could hear what she thought when her shins got mixed +up in a scrimmage for half a mile on a still day. They are +called the Macaws because of their blue-and-yellow costumes, but +I understand there was nothing yellow about Miriam’s +language. I agreed to make one alteration, as I pretended I +had got it a Spitz instead of a Chow, but beyond that I was +firm. She megaphoned back two minutes later, ‘You +promised you would never mention it; don’t you ever keep a +promise?’ When people had stopped glaring in our +direction, I replied that I’d as soon think of keeping +white mice. I saw her tearing little bits out of her +programme for a minute or two, and then she leaned back and +snorted, ‘You’re not the boy I took you for,’ +as though she were an eagle arriving at Olympus with the wrong +Ganymede. That was her last audible remark, but she went on +tearing up her programme and scattering the pieces around her, +till one of her neighbours asked with immense dignity whether she +should send for a wastepaper basket. I didn’t stay +for the last act.”</p> +<p>“Then there is Mrs.—oh, I never can remember her +name; she lives in a street that the cabmen have never heard of, +and is at home on Wednesdays. She frightened me horribly +once at a private view by saying mysteriously, ‘I +oughtn’t to be here, you know; this is one of my +days.’ I thought she meant that she was subject to +periodical outbreaks and was expecting an attack at any +moment. So embarrassing if she had suddenly taken it into +her head that she was Cesar Borgia or St. Elizabeth of +Hungary. That sort of thing would make one unpleasantly +conspicuous even at a private view. However, she merely +meant to say that it was Wednesday, which at the moment was +incontrovertible. Well, she’s on quite a different +tack to the Klopstock. She doesn’t visit anywhere +very extensively, and, of course, she’s awfully keen for me +to drag in an incident that occurred at one of the Beauwhistle +garden-parties, when she says she accidentally hit the shins of a +Serene Somebody or other with a croquet mallet and that he swore +at her in German. As a matter of fact, he went on +discoursing on the Gordon-Bennett affair in French. (I +never can remember if it’s a new submarine or a +divorce. Of course, how stupid of me!) To be +disagreeably exact, I fancy she missed him by about two +inches—over-anxiousness, probably—but she likes to +think she hit him. I’ve felt that way with a +partridge which I always imagine keeps on flying strong, out of +false pride, till it’s the other side of the hedge. +She said she could tell me everything she was wearing on the +occasion. I said I didn’t want my book to read like a +laundry list, but she explained that she didn’t mean those +sort of things.”</p> +<p>“And there’s the Chilworth boy, who can be +charming as long as he’s content to be stupid and wear what +he’s told to; but he gets the idea now and then that +he’d like to be epigrammatic, and the result is like +watching a rook trying to build a nest in a gale. Since he +got wind of the book, he’s been persecuting me to work in +something of his about the Russians and the Yalu Peril, and is +quite sulky because I won’t do it.”</p> +<p>“Altogether, I think it would be rather a brilliant +inspiration if you were to suggest a fortnight in +Paris.”</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REGINALD***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 2830-h.htm or 2830-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/8/3/2830 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Reginald + + +Author: Saki + + + +Release Date: August 30, 2006 [eBook #2830] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REGINALD*** + + + + + +Transcribed from the 1911 Methuen & Co. (third) edition by David Price, +email ccx074@pglaf.org. Proofing by Margaret and David Price. + + + + + +REGINALD + + +BY +SAKI +(H. H. MUNRO) + +THIRD EDITION + +METHUEN & CO. LTD. +36 ESSEX STREET W.C. +LONDON + +_First Published_ . . . _September 1904_ + +_Second Edition_ . . . _July 1905_ + +_Third Edition_ . . . _1911_ + +_These sketches originally appeared in the_ "_Westminster Gazette_," _to +the courtesy of the Proprietor of which the author is indebted for +permission to republish them_. + +Contents: + +Reginald + +Reginald on Christmas Presents + +Reginald on the Academy + +Reginald at the Theatre + +Reginald's Peace Poem + +Reginald's Choir Treat + +Reginald on Worries + +Reginald on House-Parties + +Reginald at the Carlton + +Reginald on Besetting Sins + +Reginald's Drama + +Reginald on Tariffs + +Reginald's Christmas Revel + +Reginald's Rubaiyat + +The Innocence of Reginald + + + + +REGINALD + + +I did it--I who should have known better. I persuaded Reginald to go to +the McKillops' garden-party against his will. + +We all make mistakes occasionally. + +"They know you're here, and they'll think it so funny if you don't go. +And I want particularly to be in with Mrs. McKillop just now." + +"I know, you want one of her smoke Persian kittens as a prospective wife +for Wumples--or a husband, is it?" (Reginald has a magnificent scorn for +details, other than sartorial.) "And I am expected to undergo social +martyrdom to suit the connubial exigencies"-- + +"Reginald! It's nothing of the kind, only I'm sure Mrs. McKillop Would +be pleased if I brought you. Young men of your brilliant attractions are +rather at a premium at her garden-parties." + +"Should be at a premium in heaven," remarked Reginald complacently. + +"There will be very few of you there, if that is what you mean. But +seriously, there won't be any great strain upon your powers of endurance; +I promise you that you shan't have to play croquet, or talk to the +Archdeacon's wife, or do anything that is likely to bring on physical +prostration. You can just wear your sweetest clothes and moderately +amiable expression, and eat chocolate-creams with the appetite of a +_blase_ parrot. Nothing more is demanded of you." + +Reginald shut his eyes. "There will be the exhaustingly up-to-date young +women who will ask me if I have seen _San Toy_; a less progressive grade +who will yearn to hear about the Diamond Jubilee--the historic event, not +the horse. With a little encouragement, they will inquire if I saw the +Allies march into Paris. Why are women so fond of raking up the past? +They're as bad as tailors, who invariably remember what you owe them for +a suit long after you've ceased to wear it." + +"I'll order lunch for one o'clock; that will give you two and a half +hours to dress in." + +Reginald puckered his brow into a tortured frown, and I knew that my +point was gained. He was debating what tie would go with which +waistcoat. + +Even then I had my misgivings. + +* * * * * + +During the drive to the McKillops' Reginald was possessed with a great +peace, which was not wholly to be accounted for by the fact that he had +inveigled his feet into shoes a size too small for them. I misgave more +than ever, and having once launched Reginald on to the McKillops' lawn, I +established him near a seductive dish of _marrons glaces_, and as far +from the Archdeacon's wife as possible; as I drifted away to a diplomatic +distance I heard with painful distinctness the eldest Mawkby girl asking +him if he had seen _San Toy_. + +It must have been ten minutes later, not more, and I had been having +_quite_ an enjoyable chat with my hostess, and had promised to lend her +_The Eternal City_ and my recipe for rabbit mayonnaise, and was just +about to offer a kind home for her third Persian kitten, when I +perceived, out of the corner of my eye, that Reginald was not where I had +left him, and that the _marrons glaces_ were untasted. At the same +moment I became aware that old Colonel Mendoza was essaying to tell his +classic story of how he introduced golf into India, and that Reginald was +in dangerous proximity. There are occasions when Reginald is caviare to +the Colonel. + +"When I was at Poona in '76"-- + +"My dear Colonel," purred Reginald, "fancy admitting such a thing! Such +a give-away for one's age! I wouldn't admit being on this planet in +'76." (Reginald in his wildest lapses into veracity never admits to +being more than twenty-two.) + +The Colonel went to the colour of a fig that has attained great ripeness, +and Reginald, ignoring my efforts to intercept him, glided away to +another part of the lawn. I found him a few minutes later happily +engaged in teaching the youngest Rampage boy the approved theory of +mixing absinthe, within full earshot of his mother. Mrs. Rampage +occupies a prominent place in local Temperance movements. + +As soon as I had broken up this unpromising _tete-a-tete_ and settled +Reginald where he could watch the croquet players losing their tempers, I +wandered off to find my hostess and renew the kitten negotiations at the +point where they had been interrupted. I did not succeed in running her +down at once, and eventually it was Mrs. McKillop who sought me out, and +her conversation was not of kittens. + +"Your cousin is discussing _Zaza_ with the Archdeacon's wife; at least, +he is discussing, she is ordering her carriage." + +She spoke in the dry, staccato tone of one who repeats a French exercise, +and I knew that as far as Millie McKillop was concerned, Wumples was +devoted to a lifelong celibacy. + +"If you don't mind," I said hurriedly, "I think we'd like our carriage +ordered too," and I made a forced march in the direction of the croquet- +ground. + +I found everyone talking nervously and feverishly of the weather and the +war in South Africa, except Reginald, who was reclining in a comfortable +chair with the dreamy, far-away look that a volcano might wear just after +it had desolated entire villages. The Archdeacon's wife was buttoning up +her gloves with a concentrated deliberation that was fearful to behold. I +shall have to treble my subscription to her Cheerful Sunday Evenings Fund +before I dare set foot in her house again. + +At that particular moment the croquet players finished their game, which +had been going on without a symptom of finality during the whole +afternoon. Why, I ask, should it have stopped precisely when a counter- +attraction was so necessary? Everyone seemed to drift towards the area +of disturbance, of which the chairs of the Archdeacon's wife and Reginald +formed the storm-centre. Conversation flagged, and there settled upon +the company that expectant hush that precedes the dawn--when your +neighbours don't happen to keep poultry. + +"What did the Caspian Sea?" asked Reginald, with appalling suddenness. + +There were symptoms of a stampede. The Archdeacon's wife looked at me. +Kipling or someone has described somewhere the look a foundered camel +gives when the caravan moves on and leaves it to its fate. The +peptonised reproach in the good lady's eyes brought the passage vividly +to my mind. + +I played my last card. + +"Reginald, it's getting late, and a sea-mist is coming on." I knew that +the elaborate curl over his right eyebrow was not guaranteed to survive a +sea-mist. + +* * * * * + +"Never, never again, will I take you to a garden-party. Never . . . You +behaved abominably . . . What did the Caspian see?" + +A shade of genuine regret for misused opportunities passed over +Reginald's face. + +"After all," he said, "I believe an apricot tie would have gone better +with the lilac waistcoat." + + + + +REGINALD ON CHRISTMAS PRESENTS + + +I wish it to be distinctly understood (said Reginald) that I don't want a +"George, Prince of Wales" Prayer-book as a Christmas present. The fact +cannot be too widely known. + +There ought (he continued) to be technical education classes on the +science of present-giving. No one seems to have the faintest notion of +what anyone else wants, and the prevalent ideas on the subject are not +creditable to a civilised community. + +There is, for instance, the female relative in the country who "knows a +tie is always useful," and sends you some spotted horror that you could +only wear in secret or in Tottenham Court Road. It _might_ have been +useful had she kept it to tie up currant bushes with, when it would have +served the double purpose of supporting the branches and frightening away +the birds--for it is an admitted fact that the ordinary tomtit of +commerce has a sounder aesthetic taste than the average female relative +in the country. + +Then there are aunts. They are always a difficult class to deal with in +the matter of presents. The trouble is that one never catches them +really young enough. By the time one has educated them to an +appreciation of the fact that one does not wear red woollen mittens in +the West End, they die, or quarrel with the family, or do something +equally inconsiderate. That is why the supply of trained aunts is always +so precarious. + +There is my Aunt Agatha, _par exemple_, who sent me a pair of gloves last +Christmas, and even got so far as to choose a kind that was being worn +and had the correct number of buttons. But--_they were nines_! I sent +them to a boy whom I hated intimately: he didn't wear them, of course, +but he could have--that was where the bitterness of death came in. It +was nearly as consoling as sending white flowers to his funeral. Of +course I wrote and told my aunt that they were the one thing that had +been wanting to make existence blossom like a rose; I am afraid she +thought me frivolous--she comes from the North, where they live in the +fear of Heaven and the Earl of Durham. (Reginald affects an exhaustive +knowledge of things political, which furnishes an excellent excuse for +not discussing them.) Aunts with a dash of foreign extraction in them +are the most satisfactory in the way of understanding these things; but +if you can't choose your aunt, it is wisest in the long-run to choose the +present and send her the bill. + +Even friends of one's own set, who might be expected to know better, have +curious delusions on the subject. I am _not_ collecting copies of the +cheaper editions of Omar Khayyam. I gave the last four that I received +to the lift-boy, and I like to think of him reading them, with +FitzGerald's notes, to his aged mother. Lift-boys always have aged +mothers; shows such nice feeling on their part, I think. + +Personally, I can't see where the difficulty in choosing suitable +presents lies. No boy who had brought himself up properly could fail to +appreciate one of those decorative bottles of liqueurs that are so +reverently staged in Morel's window--and it wouldn't in the least matter +if one did get duplicates. And there would always be the supreme moment +of dreadful uncertainty whether it was _creme de menthe_ or +Chartreuse--like the expectant thrill on seeing your partner's hand +turned up at bridge. People may say what they like about the decay of +Christianity; the religious system that produced green Chartreuse can +never really die. + +And then, of course, there are liqueur glasses, and crystallised fruits, +and tapestry curtains, and heaps of other necessaries of life that make +really sensible presents--not to speak of luxuries, such as having one's +bills paid, or getting something quite sweet in the way of jewellery. +Unlike the alleged Good Woman of the Bible, I'm not above rubies. When +found, by the way, she must have been rather a problem at Christmas-time; +nothing short of a blank cheque would have fitted the situation. Perhaps +it's as well that she's died out. + +The great charm about me (concluded Reginald) is that I am so easily +pleased. But I draw the line at a "Prince of Wales" Prayer-book. + + + + +REGINALD ON THE ACADEMY + + +"One goes to the Academy in self-defence," said Reginald. "It is the one +topic one has in common with the Country Cousins." + +"It is almost a religious observance with them," said the Other. "A kind +of artistic Mecca, and when the good ones die they go"-- + +"To the Chantrey Bequest. The mystery is _what_ they find to talk about +in the country." + +"There are two subjects of conversation in the country: Servants, and Can +fowls be made to pay? The first, I believe, is compulsory, the second +optional." + +"As a function," resumed Reginald, "the Academy is a failure." + +"You think it would be tolerable without the pictures?" + +"The pictures are all right, in their way; after all, one can always +_look_ at them if one is bored with one's surroundings, or wants to avoid +an imminent acquaintance." + +"Even that doesn't always save one. There is the inevitable female whom +you met once in Devonshire, or the Matoppo Hills, or somewhere, who +charges up to you with the remark that it's funny how one always meets +people one knows at the Academy. Personally, I _don't_ think it funny." + +"I suffered in that way just now," said Reginald plaintively, "from a +woman whose word I had to take that she had met me last summer in +Brittany." + +"I hope you were not too brutal?" + +"I merely told her with engaging simplicity that the art of life was the +avoidance of the unattainable." + +"Did she try and work it out on the back of her catalogue?" + +"Not there and then. She murmured something about being 'so clever.' +Fancy coming to the Academy to be clever!" + +"To be clever in the afternoon argues that one is dining nowhere in the +evening." + +"Which reminds me that I can't remember whether I accepted an invitation +from you to dine at Kettner's to-night." + +"On the other hand, I can remember with startling distinctness not having +asked you to." + +"So much certainty is unbecoming in the young; so we'll consider that +settled. What were you talking about? Oh, pictures. Personally, I +rather like them; they are so refreshingly real and probable, they take +one away from the unrealities of life." + +"One likes to escape from oneself occasionally." + +"That is the disadvantage of a portrait; as a rule, one's bitterest +friends can find nothing more to ask than the faithful unlikeness that +goes down to posterity as oneself. I hate posterity--it's so fond of +having the last word. Of course, as regards portraits, there are +exceptions." + +"For instance?" + +"To die before being painted by Sargent is to go to heaven prematurely." + +"With the necessary care and impatience, you may avoid that catastrophe." + +"If you're going to be rude," said Reginald, "I shall dine with you to- +morrow night as well. The chief vice of the Academy," he continued, "is +its nomenclature. Why, for instance, should an obvious trout-stream with +a palpable rabbit sitting in the foreground be called 'an evening dream +of unbeclouded peace,' or something of that sort?" + +"You think," said the Other, "that a name should economise description +rather than stimulate imagination?" + +"Properly chosen, it should do both. There is my lady kitten at home, +for instance; I've called it Derry." + +"Suggests nothing to my imagination but protracted sieges and religious +animosities. Of course, I don't know your kitten"-- + +"Oh, you're silly. It's a sweet name, and it answers to it--when it +wants to. Then, if there are any unseemly noises in the night, they can +be explained succinctly: Derry and Toms." + +"You might almost charge for the advertisement. But as applied to +pictures, don't you think your system would be too subtle, say, for the +Country Cousins?" + +"Every reformation must have its victims. You can't expect the fatted +calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over the prodigal's return. +Another darling weakness of the Academy is that none of its luminaries +must 'arrive' in a hurry. You can see them coming for years, like a +Balkan trouble or a street improvement, and by the time they have painted +a thousand or so square yards of canvas, their work begins to be +recognised." + +"Someone who Must Not be Contradicted said that a man must be a success +by the time he's thirty, or never." + +"To have reached thirty," said Reginald, "is to have failed in life." + + + + +REGINALD AT THE THEATRE + + +"After all," said the Duchess vaguely, "there are certain things you +can't get away from. Right and wrong, good conduct and moral rectitude, +have certain well-defined limits." + +"So, for the matter of that," replied Reginald, "has the Russian Empire. +The trouble is that the limits are not always in the same place." + +Reginald and the Duchess regarded each other with mutual distrust, +tempered by a scientific interest. Reginald considered that the Duchess +had much to learn; in particular, not to hurry out of the Carlton as +though afraid of losing one's last 'bus. A woman, he said, who is +careless of disappearances is capable of leaving town before Goodwood, +and dying at the wrong moment of an unfashionable disease. + +The Duchess thought that Reginald did not exceed the ethical standard +which circumstances demanded. + +"Of course," she resumed combatively, "it's the prevailing fashion to +believe in perpetual change and mutability, and all that sort of thing, +and to say we are all merely an improved form of primeval ape--of course +you subscribe to that doctrine?" + +"I think it decidedly premature; in most people I know the process is far +from complete." + +"And equally of course you are quite irreligious?" + +"Oh, by no means. The fashion just now is a Roman Catholic frame of mind +with an Agnostic conscience: you get the mediaeval picturesqueness of the +one with the modern conveniences of the other." + +The Duchess suppressed a sniff. She was one of those people who regard +the Church of England with patronising affection, as if it were something +that had grown up in their kitchen garden. + +"But there are other things," she continued, "which I suppose are to a +certain extent sacred even to you. Patriotism, for instance, and Empire, +and Imperial responsibility, and blood-is-thicker-than-water, and all +that sort of thing." + +Reginald waited for a couple of minutes before replying, while the Lord +of Rimini temporarily monopolised the acoustic possibilities of the +theatre. + +"That is the worst of a tragedy," he observed, "one can't always hear +oneself talk. Of course I accept the Imperial idea and the +responsibility. After all, I would just as soon think in Continents as +anywhere else. And some day, when the season is over and we have the +time, you shall explain to me the exact blood-brotherhood and all that +sort of thing that exists between a French Canadian and a mild Hindoo and +a Yorkshireman, for instance." + +"Oh, well, 'dominion over palm and pine,' you know," quoted the Duchess +hopefully; "of course we mustn't forget that we're all part of the great +Anglo-Saxon Empire." + +"Which for its part is rapidly becoming a suburb of Jerusalem. A very +pleasant suburb, I admit, and quite a charming Jerusalem. But still a +suburb." + +"Really, to be told one's living in a suburb when one is conscious of +spreading the benefits of civilisation all over the world! Philanthropy--I +suppose you will say _that_ is a comfortable delusion; and yet even you +must admit that whenever want or misery or starvation is known to exist, +however distant or difficult of access, we instantly organise relief on +the most generous scale, and distribute it, if need be, to the uttermost +ends of the earth." + +The Duchess paused, with a sense of ultimate triumph. She had made the +same observation at a drawing-room meeting, and it had been extremely +well received. + +"I wonder," said Reginald, "if you have ever walked down the Embankment +on a winter night?" + +"Gracious, no, child! Why do you ask?" + +"I didn't; I only wondered. And even your philanthropy, practised in a +world where everything is based on competition, must have a debit as well +as a credit account. The young ravens cry for food." + +"And are fed." + +"Exactly. Which presupposes that something else is fed upon." + +"Oh, you're simply exasperating. You've been reading Nietzsche till you +haven't got any sense of moral proportion left. May I ask if you are +governed by _any_ laws of conduct whatever?" + +"There are certain fixed rules that one observes for one's own comfort. +For instance, never be flippantly rude to any inoffensive grey-bearded +stranger that you may meet in pine forests or hotel smoking-rooms on the +Continent. It always turns out to be the King of Sweden." + +"The restraint must be dreadfully irksome to you. When I was younger, +boys of your age used to be nice and innocent." + +"Now we are only nice. One must specialise in these days. Which reminds +me of the man I read of in some sacred book who was given a choice of +what he most desired. And because he didn't ask for titles and honours +and dignities, but only for immense wealth, these other things came to +him also." + +"I am sure you didn't read about him in any sacred book." + +"Yes; I fancy you will find him in Debrett." + + + + +REGINALD'S PEACE POEM + + +"I'm writing a poem on Peace," said Reginald, emerging from a sweeping +operation through a tin of mixed biscuits, in whose depths a macaroon or +two might yet be lurking. + +"Something of the kind seems to have been attempted already," said the +Other. + +"Oh, I know; but I may never have the chance again. Besides, I've got a +new fountain pen. I don't pretend to have gone on any very original +lines; in writing about Peace the thing is to say what everybody else is +saying, only to say it better. It begins with the usual ornithological +emotion-- + + 'When the widgeon westward winging + Heard the folk Vereeniginging, + Heard the shouting and the singing'"-- + +"Vereeniginging is good, but why widgeon?" + +"Why not? Anything that winged westward would naturally begin with a +_w_." + +"Need it wing westward?" + +"The bird must go somewhere. You wouldn't have it hang around and look +foolish. Then I've brought in something about the heedless hartebeest +galloping over the deserted veldt." + +"Of course you know it's practically extinct in those regions?" + +"I can't help _that_, it gallops so nicely. I make it have all sorts of +unexpected yearnings-- + + 'Mother, may I go and maffick, + Tear around and hinder traffic?' + +Of course you'll say there would be no traffic worth bothering about on +the bare and sun-scorched veldt, but there's no other word that rhymes +with maffick." + +"Seraphic?" + +Reginald considered. "It might do, but I've got a lot about angels later +on. You must have angels in a Peace poem; I know dreadfully little about +their habits." + +"They can do unexpected things, like the hartebeest." + +"Of course. Then I turn on London, the City of Dreadful Nocturnes, +resonant with hymns of joy and thanksgiving-- + + 'And the sleeper, eye unlidding, + Heard a voice for ever bidding + Much farewell to Dolly Gray; + Turning weary on his truckle- + Bed he heard the honey-suckle + Lauded in apiarian lay.' + +Longfellow at his best wrote nothing like that." + +"I agree with you." + +"I wish you wouldn't. I've a sweet temper, but I can't stand being +agreed with. And I'm so worried about the aasvogel." + +Reginald stared dismally at the biscuit-tin, which now presented an +unattractive array of rejected cracknels. + +"I believe," he murmured, "if I could find a woman with an unsatisfied +craving for cracknels, I should marry her." + +"What is the tragedy of the aasvogel?" asked the Other sympathetically. + +"Oh, simply that there's no rhyme for it. I thought about it all the +time I was dressing--it's dreadfully bad for one to think whilst one's +dressing--and all lunch-time, and I'm still hung up over it. I feel like +those unfortunate automobilists who achieve an unenviable motoriety by +coming to a hopeless stop with their cars in the most crowded +thoroughfares. I'm afraid I shall have to drop the aasvogel, and it did +give such lovely local colour to the thing." + +"Still you've got the heedless hartebeest." + +"And quite a decorative bit of moral admonition--when you've worried the +meaning out-- + + 'Cease, War, thy bubbling madness that the wine shares, + And bid thy legions turn their swords to mine shares.' + +Mine shares seems to fit the case better than ploughshares. There's lots +more about the blessings of Peace, shall I go on reading it?" + +"If I must make a choice, I think I would rather they went on with the +war." + + + + +REGINALD'S CHOIR TREAT + + +"Never," wrote Reginald to his most darling friend, "be a pioneer. It's +the Early Christian that gets the fattest lion." + +Reginald, in his way, was a pioneer. + +None of the rest of his family had anything approaching Titian hair or a +sense of humour, and they used primroses as a table decoration. + +It follows that they never understood Reginald, who came down late to +breakfast, and nibbled toast, and said disrespectful things about the +universe. The family ate porridge, and believed in everything, even the +weather forecast. + +Therefore the family was relieved when the vicar's daughter undertook the +reformation of Reginald. Her name was Amabel; it was the vicar's one +extravagance. Amabel was accounted a beauty and intellectually gifted; +she never played tennis, and was reputed to have read Maeterlinck's _Life +of the Bee_. If you abstain from tennis _and_ read Maeterlinck in a +small country village, you are of necessity intellectual. Also she had +been twice to Fecamp to pick up a good French accent from the Americans +staying there; consequently she had a knowledge of the world which might +be considered useful in dealings with a worldling. + +Hence the congratulations in the family when Amabel undertook the +reformation of its wayward member. + +Amabel commenced operations by asking her unsuspecting pupil to tea in +the vicarage garden; she believed in the healthy influence of natural +surroundings, never having been in Sicily, where things are different. + +And like every woman who has ever preached repentance to unregenerate +youth, she dwelt on the sin of an empty life, which always seems so much +more scandalous in the country, where people rise early to see if a new +strawberry has happened during the night. + +Reginald recalled the lilies of the field, "which simply sat and looked +beautiful, and defied competition." + +"But that is not an example for us to follow," gasped Amabel. + +"Unfortunately, we can't afford to. You don't know what a world of +trouble I take in trying to rival the lilies in their artistic +simplicity." + +"You are really indecently vain of your appearance. A good life is +infinitely preferable to good looks." + +"You agree with me that the two are incompatible. I always say beauty is +only sin deep." + +Amabel began to realise that the battle is not always to the +strong-minded. With the immemorial resource of her sex, she abandoned +the frontal attack, and laid stress on her unassisted labours in parish +work, her mental loneliness, her discouragements--and at the right moment +she produced strawberries and cream. Reginald was obviously affected by +the latter, and when his preceptress suggested that he might begin the +strenuous life by helping her to supervise the annual outing of the +bucolic infants who composed the local choir, his eyes shone with the +dangerous enthusiasm of a convert. + +Reginald entered on the strenuous life alone, as far as Amabel was +concerned. The most virtuous women are not proof against damp grass, and +Amabel kept her bed with a cold. Reginald called it a dispensation; it +had been the dream of his life to stage-manage a choir outing. With +strategic insight, he led his shy, bullet-headed charges to the nearest +woodland stream and allowed them to bathe; then he seated himself on +their discarded garments and discoursed on their immediate future, which, +he decreed, was to embrace a Bacchanalian procession through the village. +Forethought had provided the occasion with a supply of tin whistles, but +the introduction of a he-goat from a neighbouring orchard was a brilliant +afterthought. Properly, Reginald explained, there should have been an +outfit of panther skins; as it was, those who had spotted handkerchiefs +were allowed to wear them, which they did with thankfulness. Reginald +recognised the impossibility, in the time at his disposal, of teaching +his shivering neophytes a chant in honour of Bacchus, so he started them +off with a more familiar, if less appropriate, temperance hymn. After +all, he said, it is the spirit of the thing that counts. Following the +etiquette of dramatic authors on first nights, he remained discreetly in +the background while the procession, with extreme diffidence and the +goat, wound its way lugubriously towards the village. The singing had +died down long before the main street was reached, but the miserable +wailing of pipes brought the inhabitants to their doors. Reginald said +he had seen something like it in pictures; the villagers had seen nothing +like it in their lives, and remarked as much freely. + +Reginald's family never forgave him. They had no sense of humour. + + + + +REGINALD ON WORRIES + + +I have (said Reginald) an aunt who worries. She's not really an aunt--a +sort of amateur one, and they aren't really worries. She is a social +success, and has no domestic tragedies worth speaking of, so she adopts +any decorative sorrows that are going, myself included. In that way +she's the antithesis, or whatever you call it, to those sweet, +uncomplaining women one knows who have seen trouble, and worn blinkers +ever since. Of course, one just loves them for it, but I must confess +they make me uncomfy; they remind one so of a duck that goes flapping +about with forced cheerfulness long after its head's been cut off. Ducks +have _no_ repose. Now, my aunt has a shade of hair that suits her, and a +cook who quarrels with the other servants, which is always a hopeful +sign, and a conscience that's absentee for about eleven months of the +year, and only turns up at Lent to annoy her husband's people, who are +considerably Lower than the angels, so to speak: with all these natural +advantages--she says her particular tint of bronze is a natural +advantage, and there can be no two opinions as to the advantage--of +course she has to send out for her afflictions, like those restaurants +where they haven't got a licence. The system has this advantage, that +you can fit your unhappinesses in with your other engagements, whereas +real worries have a way of arriving at meal-times, and when you're +dressing, or other solemn moments. I knew a canary once that had been +trying for months and years to hatch out a family, and everyone looked +upon it as a blameless infatuation, like the sale of Delagoa Bay, which +would be an annual loss to the Press agencies if it ever came to pass; +and one day the bird really did bring it off, in the middle of family +prayers. I say the middle, but it was also the end: you can't go on +being thankful for daily bread when you are wondering what on earth very +new canaries expect to be fed on. + +At present she's rather in a Balkan state of mind about the treatment of +the Jews in Roumania. Personally, I think the Jews have estimable +qualities; they're so kind to their poor--and to our rich. I daresay in +Roumania the cost of living beyond one's income isn't so great. Over +here the trouble is that so many people who have money to throw about +seem to have such vague ideas where to throw it. That fund, for +instance, to relieve the victims of sudden disasters--what is a sudden +disaster? There's Marion Mulciber, who _would_ think she could play +bridge, just as she would think she could ride down a hill on a bicycle; +on that occasion she went to a hospital, now she's gone into a +Sisterhood--lost all she had, you know, and gave the rest to Heaven. +Still, you can't call it a sudden calamity; _that_ occurred when poor +dear Marion was born. The doctors said at the time that she couldn't +live more than a fortnight, and she's been trying ever since to see if +she could. Women are so opinionated. + +And then there's the Education Question--not that I can see that there's +anything to worry about in that direction. To my mind, education is an +absurdly over-rated affair. At least, one never took it very seriously +at school, where everything was done to bring it prominently under one's +notice. Anything that is worth knowing one practically teaches oneself, +and the rest obtrudes itself sooner or later. The reason one's elders +know so comparatively little is because they have to unlearn so much that +they acquired by way of education before we were born. Of course I'm a +believer in Nature-study; as I said to Lady Beauwhistle, if you want a +lesson in elaborate artificiality, just watch the studied unconcern of a +Persian cat entering a crowded salon, and then go and practise it for a +fortnight. The Beauwhistles weren't born in the Purple, you know, but +they're getting there on the instalment system--so much down, and the +rest when you feel like it. They have kind hearts, and they never forget +birthdays. I forget what he was, something in the City, where the +patriotism comes from; and she--oh, well, her frocks are built in Paris, +but she wears them with a strong English accent. So public-spirited of +her. I think she must have been very strictly brought up, she's so +desperately anxious to do the wrong thing correctly. Not that it really +matters nowadays, as I told her: I know some perfectly virtuous people +who are received everywhere. + + + + +REGINALD ON HOUSE-PARTIES + + +The drawback is, one never really _knows_ one's hosts and hostesses. One +gets to know their fox-terriers and their chrysanthemums, and whether the +story about the go-cart can be turned loose in the drawing-room, or must +be told privately to each member of the party, for fear of shocking +public opinion; but one's host and hostess are a sort of human hinterland +that one never has the time to explore. + +There was a fellow I stayed with once in Warwickshire who farmed his own +land, but was otherwise quite steady. Should never have suspected him of +having a soul, yet not very long afterwards he eloped with a lion-tamer's +widow and set up as a golf-instructor somewhere on the Persian Gulf; +dreadfully immoral, of course, because he was only an indifferent player, +but still, it showed imagination. His wife was really to be pitied, +because he had been the only person in the house who understood how to +manage the cook's temper, and now she has to put "D.V." on her dinner +invitations. Still, that's better than a domestic scandal; a woman who +leaves her cook never wholly recovers her position in Society. + +I suppose the same thing holds good with the hosts; they seldom have more +than a superficial acquaintance with their guests, and so often just when +they do get to know you a bit better, they leave off knowing you +altogether. There was _rather_ a breath of winter in the air when I left +those Dorsetshire people. You see, they had asked me down to shoot, and +I'm not particularly immense at that sort of thing. There's such a +deadly sameness about partridges; when you've missed one, you've missed +the lot--at least, that's been my experience. And they tried to rag me +in the smoking-room about not being able to hit a bird at five yards, a +sort of bovine ragging that suggested cows buzzing round a gadfly and +thinking they were teasing it. So I got up the next morning at early +dawn--I know it was dawn, because there were lark-noises in the sky, and +the grass looked as if it had been left out all night--and hunted up the +most conspicuous thing in the bird line that I could find, and measured +the distance, as nearly as it would let me, and shot away all I knew. +They said afterwards that it was a tame bird; that's simply _silly_, +because it was awfully wild at the first few shots. Afterwards it +quieted down a bit, and when its legs had stopped waving farewells to the +landscape I got a gardener-boy to drag it into the hall, where everybody +must see it on their way to the breakfast-room. I breakfasted upstairs +myself. I gathered afterwards that the meal was tinged with a very +unchristian spirit. I suppose it's unlucky to bring peacock's feathers +into a house; anyway, there was a blue-pencilly look in my hostess's eye +when I took my departure. + +Some hostesses, of course, will forgive anything, even unto pavonicide +(is there such a word?), as long as one is nice-looking and sufficiently +unusual to counterbalance some of the others; and there _are_ others--the +girl, for instance, who reads Meredith, and appears at meals with +unnatural punctuality in a frock that's made at home and repented at +leisure. She eventually finds her way to India and gets married, and +comes home to admire the Royal Academy, and to imagine that an +indifferent prawn curry is for ever an effective substitute for all that +we have been taught to believe is luncheon. It's then that she is really +dangerous; but at her worst she is never quite so bad as the woman who +fires _Exchange and Mart_ questions at you without the least provocation. +Imagine the other day, just when I was doing my best to understand half +the things I was saying, being asked by one of those seekers after +country home truths how many fowls she could keep in a run ten feet by +six, or whatever it was! I told her whole crowds, as long as she kept +the door shut, and the idea didn't seem to have struck her before; at +least, she brooded over it for the rest of dinner. + +Of course, as I say, one never really _knows_ one's ground, and one may +make mistakes occasionally. But then one's mistakes sometimes turn out +assets in the long-run: if we had never bungled away our American +colonies we might never have had the boy from the States to teach us how +to wear our hair and cut our clothes, and we must get our ideas from +somewhere, I suppose. Even the Hooligan was probably invented in China +centuries before we thought of him. England must wake up, as the Duke of +Devonshire said the other day; wasn't it? Oh, well, it was someone else. +Not that I ever indulge in despair about the Future; there always have +been men who have gone about despairing of the Future, and when the +Future arrives it says nice, superior things about their having acted +according to their lights. It is dreadful to think that other people's +grandchildren may one day rise up and call one amiable. + +There are moments when one sympathises with Herod. + + + + +REGINALD AT THE CARLTON + + +"A most variable climate," said the Duchess; "and how unfortunate that we +should have had that very cold weather at a time when coal was so dear! +So distressing for the poor." + +"Someone has observed that Providence is always on the side of the big +dividends," remarked Reginald. + +The Duchess ate an anchovy in a shocked manner; she was sufficiently old- +fashioned to dislike irreverence towards dividends. + +Reginald had left the selection of a feeding-ground to her womanly +intuition, but he chose the wine himself, knowing that womanly intuition +stops short at claret. A woman will cheerfully choose husbands for her +less attractive friends, or take sides in a political controversy without +the least knowledge of the issues involved--but no woman ever cheerfully +chose a claret. + +"Hors d'oeuvres have always a pathetic interest for me," said Reginald: +"they remind me of one's childhood that one goes through, wondering what +the next course is going to be like--and during the rest of the menu one +wishes one had eaten more of the hors d'oeuvres. Don't you love watching +the different ways people have of entering a restaurant? There is the +woman who races in as though her whole scheme of life were held together +by a one-pin despotism which might abdicate its functions at any moment; +it's really a relief to see her reach her chair in safety. Then there +are the people who troop in with an-unpleasant-duty-to-perform air, as if +they were angels of Death entering a plague city. You see that type of +Briton very much in hotels abroad. And nowadays there are always the +Johannesbourgeois, who bring a Cape-to-Cairo atmosphere with them--what +may be called the Rand Manner, I suppose." + +"Talking about hotels abroad," said the Duchess, "I am preparing notes +for a lecture at the Club on the educational effects of modern travel, +dealing chiefly with the moral side of the question. I was talking to +Lady Beauwhistle's aunt the other day--she's just come back from Paris, +you know. Such a sweet woman"-- + +"And so silly. In these days of the over-education of women she's quite +refreshing. They say some people went through the siege of Paris without +knowing that France and Germany were at war; but the Beauwhistle aunt is +credited with having passed the whole winter in Paris under the +impression that the Humberts were a kind of bicycle . . . Isn't there a +bishop or somebody who believes we shall meet all the animals we have +known on earth in another world? How frightfully embarrassing to meet a +whole shoal of whitebait you had last known at Prince's! I'm sure in my +nervousness I should talk of nothing but lemons. Still, I daresay they +would be quite as offended if one hadn't eaten them. I know if I were +served up at a cannibal feast I should be dreadfully annoyed if anyone +found fault with me for not being tender enough, or having been kept too +long." + +"My idea about the lecture," resumed the Duchess hurriedly, "is to +inquire whether promiscuous Continental travel doesn't tend to weaken the +moral fibre of the social conscience. There are people one knows, quite +nice people when they are in England, who are so _different_ when they +are anywhere the other side of the Channel." + +"The people with what I call Tauchnitz morals," observed Reginald. "On +the whole, I think they get the best of two very desirable worlds. And, +after all, they charge so much for excess luggage on some of those +foreign lines that it's really an economy to leave one's reputation +behind one occasionally." + +"A scandal, my dear Reginald, is as much to be avoided at Monaco or any +of those places as at Exeter, let us say." + +"Scandal, my dear Irene--I may call you Irene, mayn't I?" + +"I don't know that you have known me long enough for that." + +"I've known you longer than your god-parents had when they took the +liberty of calling you that name. Scandal is merely the compassionate +allowance which the gay make to the humdrum. Think how many blameless +lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people. Tell +me, who is the woman with the old lace at the table on our left? Oh, +_that_ doesn't matter; it's quite the thing nowadays to stare at people +as if they were yearlings at Tattersall's." + +"Mrs. Spelvexit? Quite a charming woman; separated from her husband"-- + +"Incompatibility of income?" + +"Oh, nothing of that sort. By miles of frozen ocean, I was going to say. +He explores ice-floes and studies the movements of herrings, and has +written a most interesting book on the home-life of the Esquimaux; but +naturally he has very little home-life of his own." + +"A husband who comes home with the Gulf Stream _would_ be rather a tied- +up asset." + +"His wife is exceedingly sensible about it. She collects postage-stamps. +Such a resource. Those people with her are the Whimples, very old +acquaintances of mine; they're always having trouble, poor things." + +"Trouble is not one of those fancies you can take up and drop at any +moment; it's like a grouse-moor or the opium-habit--once you start it +you've got to keep it up." + +"Their eldest son was such a disappointment to them; they wanted him to +be a linguist, and spent no end of money on having him taught to +speak--oh, dozens of languages!--and then he became a Trappist monk. And +the youngest, who was intended for the American marriage market, has +developed political tendencies, and writes pamphlets about the housing of +the poor. Of course it's a most important question, and I devote a good +deal of time to it myself in the mornings; but, as Laura Whimple says, +it's as well to have an establishment of one's own before agitating about +other people's. She feels it very keenly, but she always maintains a +cheerful appetite, which I think is so unselfish of her." + +"There are different ways of taking disappointment. There was a girl I +knew who nursed a wealthy uncle through a long illness, borne by her with +Christian fortitude, and then he died and left his money to a swine-fever +hospital. She found she'd about cleared stock in fortitude by that time, +and now she gives drawing-room recitations. That's what I call being +vindictive." + +"Life is full of its disappointments," observed the Duchess, "and I +suppose the art of being happy is to disguise them as illusions. But +that, my dear Reginald, becomes more difficult as one grows older." + +"I think it's more generally practised than you imagine. The young have +aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what +never happened. It's only the middle-aged who are really conscious of +their limitations--that is why one should be so patient with them. But +one never is." + +"After all," said the Duchess, "the disillusions of life may depend on +our way of assessing it. In the minds of those who come after us we may +be remembered for qualities and successes which we quite left out of the +reckoning." + +"It's not always safe to depend on the commemorative tendencies of those +who come after us. There may have been disillusionments in the lives of +the mediaeval saints, but they would scarcely have been better pleased if +they could have foreseen that their names would be associated nowadays +chiefly with racehorses and the cheaper clarets. And now, if you can +tear yourself away from the salted almonds, we'll go and have coffee +under the palms that are so necessary for our discomfort." + + + + +REGINALD ON BESETTING SINS: THE WOMAN WHO TOLD THE TRUTH + + +There was once (said Reginald) a woman who told the truth. Not all at +once, of course, but the habit grew upon her gradually, like lichen on an +apparently healthy tree. She had no children--otherwise it might have +been different. It began with little things, for no particular reason +except that her life was a rather empty one, and it is so easy to slip +into the habit of telling the truth in little matters. And then it +became difficult to draw the line at more important things, until at last +she took to telling the truth about her age; she said she was forty-two +and five months--by that time, you see, she was veracious even to months. +It may have been pleasing to the angels, but her elder sister was not +gratified. On the Woman's birthday, instead of the opera-tickets which +she had hoped for, her sister gave her a view of Jerusalem from the Mount +of Olives, which is not quite the same thing. The revenge of an elder +sister may be long in coming, but, like a South-Eastern express, it +arrives in its own good time. + +The friends of the Woman tried to dissuade her from over-indulgence in +the practice, but she said she was wedded to the truth; whereupon it was +remarked that it was scarcely logical to be so much together in public. +(No really provident woman lunches regularly with her husband if she +wishes to burst upon him as a revelation at dinner. He must have time to +forget; an afternoon is not enough.) And after a while her friends began +to thin out in patches. Her passion for the truth was not compatible +with a large visiting-list. For instance, she told Miriam Klopstock +_exactly_ how she looked at the Ilexes' ball. Certainly Miriam had asked +for her candid opinion, but the Woman prayed in church every Sunday for +peace in our time, and it was not consistent. + +It was unfortunate, everyone agreed, that she had no family; with a child +or two in the house, there is an unconscious check upon too free an +indulgence in the truth. Children are given us to discourage our better +emotions. That is why the stage, with all its efforts, can never be as +artificial as life; even in an Ibsen drama one must reveal to the +audience things that one would suppress before the children or servants. + +Fate may have ordained the truth-telling from the commencement and should +justly bear some of the blame; but in having no children the Woman was +guilty, at least, of contributory negligence. + +Little by little she felt she was becoming a slave to what had once been +merely an idle propensity; and one day she knew. Every woman tells +ninety per cent. of the truth to her dressmaker; the other ten per cent. +is the irreducible minimum of deception beyond which no self-respecting +client trespasses. Madame Draga's establishment was a meeting-ground for +naked truths and over-dressed fictions, and it was here, the Woman felt, +that she might make a final effort to recall the artless mendacity of +past days. Madame herself was in an inspiring mood, with the air of a +sphinx who knew all things and preferred to forget most of them. As a +War Minister she might have been celebrated, but she was content to be +merely rich. + +"If I take it in here, and--Miss Howard, one moment, if you please--and +there, and round like this--so--I really think you will find it quite +easy." + +The Woman hesitated; it seemed to require such a small effort to simply +acquiesce in Madame's views. But habit had become too strong. "I'm +afraid," she faltered, "it's just the least little bit in the world too"-- + +And by that least little bit she measured the deeps and eternities of her +thraldom to fact. Madame was not best pleased at being contradicted on a +professional matter, and when Madame lost her temper you usually found it +afterwards in the bill. + +And at last the dreadful thing came, as the Woman had foreseen all along +that it must; it was one of those paltry little truths with which she +harried her waking hours. On a raw Wednesday morning, in a few +ill-chosen words, she told the cook that she drank. She remembered the +scene afterwards as vividly as though it had been painted in her mind by +Abbey. The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go she went. + +Miriam Klopstock came to lunch the next day. Women and elephants never +forget an injury. + + + + +REGINALD'S DRAMA + + +Reginald closed his eyes with the elaborate weariness of one who has +rather nice eyelashes and thinks it useless to conceal the fact. + +"One of these days," he said, "I shall write a really great drama. No +one will understand the drift of it, but everyone will go back to their +homes with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction with their lives and +surroundings. Then they will put up new wall-papers and forget." + +"But how about those that have oak panelling all over the house?" said +the Other. + +"They can always put down new stair-carpets," pursued Reginald, "and, +anyhow, I'm not responsible for the audience having a happy ending. The +play would be quite sufficient strain on one's energies. I should get a +bishop to say it was immoral and beautiful--no dramatist has thought of +that before, and everyone would come to condemn the bishop, and they +would stay on out of sheer nervousness. After all, it requires a great +deal of moral courage to leave in a marked manner in the middle of the +second act, when your carriage isn't ordered till twelve. And it would +commence with wolves worrying something on a lonely waste--you wouldn't +see them, of course; but you would hear them snarling and scrunching, and +I should arrange to have a wolfy fragrance suggested across the +footlights. It would look so well on the programmes, 'Wolves in the +first act, by Jamrach.' And old Lady Whortleberry, who never misses a +first night, would scream. She's always been nervous since she lost her +first husband. He died quite abruptly while watching a county cricket +match; two and a half inches of rain had fallen for seven runs, and it +was supposed that the excitement killed him. Anyhow, it gave her quite a +shock; it was the first husband she'd lost, you know, and now she always +screams if anything thrilling happens too soon after dinner. And after +the audience had heard the Whortleberry scream the thing would be fairly +launched." + +"And the plot?" + +"The plot," said Reginald, "would be one of those little everyday +tragedies that one sees going on all round one. In my mind's eye there +is the case of the Mudge-Jervises, which in an unpretentious way has +quite an Enoch Arden intensity underlying it. They'd only been married +some eighteen months or so, and circumstances had prevented their seeing +much of each other. With him there was always a foursome or something +that had to be played and replayed in different parts of the country, and +she went in for slumming quite as seriously as if it was a sport. With +her, I suppose, it was. She belonged to the Guild of the Poor Dear +Souls, and they hold the record for having nearly reformed a washerwoman. +No one has ever really reformed a washerwoman, and that is why the +competition is so keen. You can rescue charwomen by fifties with a +little tea and personal magnetism, but with washerwomen it's different; +wages are too high. This particular laundress, who came from Bermondsey +or some such place, was really rather a hopeful venture, and they thought +at last that she might be safely put in the window as a specimen of +successful work. So they had her paraded at a drawing-room "At Home" at +Agatha Camelford's; it was sheer bad luck that some liqueur chocolates +had been turned loose by mistake among the refreshments--really liqueur +chocolates, with very little chocolate. And of course the old soul found +them out, and cornered the entire stock. It was like finding a whelk- +stall in a desert, as she afterwards partially expressed herself. When +the liqueurs began to take effect, she started to give them imitations of +farmyard animals as they know them in Bermondsey. She began with a +dancing bear, and you know Agatha doesn't approve of dancing, except at +Buckingham Palace under proper supervision. And then she got up on the +piano and gave them an organ monkey; I gather she went in for realism +rather than a Maeterlinckian treatment of the subject. Finally, she fell +into the piano and said she was a parrot in a cage, and for an impromptu +performance I believe she was very word-perfect; no one had heard +anything like it, except Baroness Boobelstein who has attended sittings +of the Austrian Reichsrath. Agatha is trying the Rest-cure at Buxton." + +"But the tragedy?" + +"Oh, the Mudge-Jervises. Well, they were getting along quite happily, +and their married life was one continuous exchange of picture-postcards; +and then one day they were thrown together on some neutral ground where +foursomes and washerwomen overlapped, and discovered that they were +hopelessly divided on the Fiscal Question. They have thought it best to +separate, and she is to have the custody of the Persian kittens for nine +months in the year--they go back to him for the winter, when she is +abroad. There you have the material for a tragedy drawn straight from +life--and the piece could be called 'The Price They Paid for Empire.' And +of course one would have to work in studies of the struggle of hereditary +tendency against environment and all that sort of thing. The woman's +father could have been an Envoy to some of the smaller German Courts; +that's where she'd get her passion for visiting the poor, in spite of the +most careful upbringing. _C'est le premier pa qui compte_, as the cuckoo +said when it swallowed its foster-parent. That, I think, is quite +clever." + +"And the wolves?" + +"Oh, the wolves would be a sort of elusive undercurrent in the background +that would never be satisfactorily explained. After all, life teems with +things that have no earthly reason. And whenever the characters could +think of nothing brilliant to say about marriage or the War Office, they +could open a window and listen to the howling of the wolves. But that +would be very seldom." + + + + +REGINALD ON TARIFFS + + +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. + + + + +REGINALD'S CHRISTMAS REVEL + + +They say (said Reginald) that there's nothing sadder than victory except +defeat. If you've ever stayed with dull people during what is alleged to +be the festive season, you can probably revise that saying. I shall +never forget putting in a Christmas at the Babwolds'. Mrs. Babwold is +some relation of my father's--a sort of to-be-left-till-called-for +cousin--and that was considered sufficient reason for my having to accept +her invitation at about the sixth time of asking; though why the sins of +the father should be visited by the children--you won't find any +notepaper in that drawer; that's where I keep old menus and first-night +programmes. + +Mrs. Babwold wears a rather solemn personality, and has never been known +to smile, even when saying disagreeable things to her friends or making +out the Stores list. She takes her pleasures sadly. A state elephant at +a Durbar gives one a very similar impression. Her husband gardens in all +weathers. When a man goes out in the pouring rain to brush caterpillars +off rose-trees, I generally imagine his life indoors leaves something to +be desired; anyway, it must be very unsettling for the caterpillars. + +Of course there were other people there. There was a Major Somebody who +had shot things in Lapland, or somewhere of that sort; I forget what they +were, but it wasn't for want of reminding. We had them cold with every +meal almost, and he was continually giving us details of what they +measured from tip to tip, as though he thought we were going to make them +warm under-things for the winter. I used to listen to him with a rapt +attention that I thought rather suited me, and then one day I quite +modestly gave the dimensions of an okapi I had shot in the Lincolnshire +fens. The Major turned a beautiful Tyrian scarlet (I remember thinking +at the time that I should like my bathroom hung in that colour), and I +think that at that moment he almost found it in his heart to dislike me. +Mrs. Babwold put on a first-aid-to-the-injured expression, and asked him +why he didn't publish a book of his sporting reminiscences; it would be +_so_ interesting. She didn't remember till afterwards that he had given +her two fat volumes on the subject, with his portrait and autograph as a +frontispiece and an appendix on the habits of the Arctic mussel. + +It was in the evening that we cast aside the cares and distractions of +the day and really lived. Cards were thought to be too frivolous and +empty a way of passing the time, so most of them played what they called +a book game. You went out into the hall--to get an inspiration, I +suppose--then you came in again with a muffler tied round your neck and +looked silly, and the others were supposed to guess that you were "Wee +MacGreegor." I held out against the inanity as long as I decently could, +but at last, in a lapse of good-nature, I consented to masquerade as a +book, only I warned them that it would take some time to carry out. They +waited for the best part of forty minutes, while I went and played +wineglass skittles with the page-boy in the pantry; you play it with a +champagne cork, you know, and the one who knocks down the most glasses +without breaking them wins. I won, with four unbroken out of seven; I +think William suffered from over-anxiousness. They were rather mad in +the drawing-room at my not having come back, and they weren't a bit +pacified when I told them afterwards that I was "At the end of the +passage." + +"I never did like Kipling," was Mrs. Babwold's comment, when the +situation dawned upon her. "I couldn't see anything clever in +_Earthworms out of Tuscany_--or is that by Darwin?" + +Of course these games are very educational, but, personally, I prefer +bridge. + +On Christmas evening we were supposed to be specially festive in the Old +English fashion. The hall was horribly draughty, but it seemed to be the +proper place to revel in, and it was decorated with Japanese fans and +Chinese lanterns, which gave it a very Old English effect. A young lady +with a confidential voice favoured us with a long recitation about a +little girl who died or did something equally hackneyed, and then the +Major gave us a graphic account of a struggle he had with a wounded bear. +I privately wished that the bears would win sometimes on these occasions; +at least they wouldn't go vapouring about it afterwards. Before we had +time to recover our spirits, we were indulged with some thought-reading +by a young man whom one knew instinctively had a good mother and an +indifferent tailor--the sort of young man who talks unflaggingly through +the thickest soup, and smooths his hair dubiously as though he thought it +might hit back. The thought-reading was rather a success; he announced +that the hostess was thinking about poetry, and she admitted that her +mind was dwelling on one of Austin's odes. Which was near enough. I +fancy she had been really wondering whether a scrag-end of mutton and +some cold plum-pudding would do for the kitchen dinner next day. As a +crowning dissipation, they all sat down to play progressive halma, with +milk-chocolate for prizes. I've been carefully brought up, and I don't +like to play games of skill for milk-chocolate, so I invented a headache +and retired from the scene. I had been preceded a few minutes earlier by +Miss Langshan-Smith, a rather formidable lady, who always got up at some +uncomfortable hour in the morning, and gave you the impression that she +had been in communication with most of the European Governments before +breakfast. There was a paper pinned on her door with a signed request +that she might be called particularly early on the morrow. Such an +opportunity does not come twice in a lifetime. I covered up everything +except the signature with another notice, to the effect that before these +words should meet the eye she would have ended a misspent life, was sorry +for the trouble she was giving, and would like a military funeral. A few +minutes later I violently exploded an air-filled paper bag on the +landing, and gave a stage moan that could have been heard in the cellars. +Then I pursued my original intention and went to bed. The noise those +people made in forcing open the good lady's door was positively +indecorous; she resisted gallantly, but I believe they searched her for +bullets for about a quarter of an hour, as if she had been an historic +battlefield. + +I hate travelling on Boxing Day, but one must occasionally do things that +one dislikes. + + + + +REGINALD'S RUBAIYAT + + +The other day (confided Reginald), when I was killing time in the +bathroom and making bad resolutions for the New Year, it occurred to me +that I would like to be a poet. The chief qualification, I understand, +is that you must be born. Well, I hunted up my birth certificate, and +found that I was all right on that score, and then I got to work on a +Hymn to the New Year, which struck me as having possibilities. It +suggested extremely unusual things to absolutely unlikely people, which I +believe is the art of first-class catering in any department. Quite the +best verse in it went something like this-- + + "Have you heard the groan of a gravelled grouse, + Or the snarl of a snaffled snail + (Husband or mother, like me, or spouse), + Have you lain a-creep in the darkened house + Where the wounded wombats wail?" + +It was quite improbable that anyone had, you know, and that's where it +stimulated the imagination and took people out of their narrow, humdrum +selves. No one has ever called me narrow or humdrum, but even I felt +worked up now and then at the thought of that house with the stricken +wombats in it. It simply wasn't nice. But the editors were unanimous in +leaving it alone; they said the thing had been done before and done +worse, and that the market for that sort of work was extremely limited. + +It was just on the top of that discouragement that the Duchess wanted me +to write something in her album--something Persian, you know, and just a +little bit decadent--and I thought a quatrain on an unwholesome egg would +meet the requirements of the case. So I started in with-- + + "Cackle, cackle, little hen, + How I wonder if and when + Once you laid the egg that I + Met, alas! too late. Amen." + +The Duchess objected to the Amen, which I thought gave an air of +forgiveness and _chose jugee_ to the whole thing; also she said it wasn't +Persian enough, as though I were trying to sell her a kitten whose mother +had married for love rather than pedigree. So I recast it entirely, and +the new version read-- + + "The hen that laid thee moons ago, who knows + In what Dead Yesterday her shades repose; + To some election turn thy waning span + And rain thy rottenness on fiscal foes." + +I thought there was enough suggestion of decay in that to satisfy a +jackal, and to me there was something infinitely pathetic and appealing +in the idea of the egg having a sort of St. Luke's summer of commercial +usefulness. But the Duchess begged me to leave out any political +allusions; she's the president of a Women's Something or other, and she +said it might be taken as an endorsement of deplorable methods. I never +can remember which Party Irene discourages with her support, but I shan't +forget an occasion when I was staying at her place and she gave me a +pamphlet to leave at the house of a doubtful voter, and some grapes and +things for a woman who was suffering from a chill on the top of a patent +medicine. I thought it much cleverer to give the grapes to the former +and the political literature to the sick woman, and the Duchess was quite +absurdly annoyed about it afterwards. It seems the leaflet was addressed +"To those about to wobble"--I wasn't responsible for the silly title of +the thing--and the woman never recovered; anyway, the voter was +completely won over by the grapes and jellies, and I think that should +have balanced matters. The Duchess called it bribery, and said it might +have compromised the candidate she was supporting; he was expected to +subscribe to church funds and chapel funds, and football and cricket +clubs and regattas, and bazaars and beanfeasts and bellringers, and +poultry shows and ploughing matches, and reading-rooms and choir outings, +and shooting trophies and testimonials, and anything of that sort; but +bribery would not have been tolerated. + +I fancy I have perhaps more talent for electioneering than for poetry, +and I was really getting extended over this quatrain business. The egg +began to be unmanageable, and the Duchess suggested something with a +French literary ring about it. I hunted back in my mind for the most +familiar French classic that I could take liberties with, and after a +little exercise of memory I turned out the following:-- + + "Hast thou the pen that once the gardener had? + I have it not; and know, these pears are bad. + Oh, larger than the horses of the Prince + Are those the general drives in Kaikobad." + +Even that didn't altogether satisfy Irene; I fancy the geography of it +puzzled her. She probably thought Kaikobad was an unfashionable German +spa, where you'd meet matrimonial bargain-hunters and emergency Servian +kings. My temper was beginning to slip its moorings by that time. I +look rather nice when I lose my temper. (I hoped you would say I lose it +very often. I mustn't monopolise the conversation.) + +"Of course, if you want something really Persian and passionate, with red +wine and bulbuls in it," I went on to suggest; but she grabbed the book +away from me. + +"Not for worlds. Nothing with red wine or passion in it. Dear Agatha +gave me the album, and she would be mortified to the quick"-- + +I said I didn't believe Agatha had a quick, and we got quite heated in +arguing the matter. Finally, the Duchess declared I shouldn't write +anything nasty in her book, and I said I wouldn't write anything in her +nasty book, so there wasn't a very wide point of difference between us. +For the rest of the afternoon I pretended to be sulking, but I was really +working back to that quatrain, like a fox-terrier that's buried a +deferred lunch in a private flower-bed. When I got an opportunity I +hunted up Agatha's autograph, which had the front page all to itself, +and, copying her prim handwriting as well as I could, I inserted above it +the following Thibetan fragment:-- + + "With Thee, oh, my Beloved, to do a dak + (a dak I believe is a sort of uncomfortable post-journey) + On the pack-saddle of a grunting yak, + With never room for chilling chaperone, + 'Twere better than a Panhard in the Park." + +That Agatha would get on to a yak in company with a lover even in the +comparative seclusion of Thibet is unthinkable. I very much doubt if +she'd do it with her own husband in the privacy of the Simplon tunnel. +But poetry, as I've remarked before, should always stimulate the +imagination. + +By the way, when you asked me the other day to dine with you on the 14th, +I said I was dining with the Duchess. Well, I'm not. I'm dining with +you. + + + + +THE INNOCENCE OF REGINALD + + +Reginald slid a carnation of the newest shade into the buttonhole of his +latest lounge coat, and surveyed the result with approval. "I am just in +the mood," he observed, "to have my portrait painted by someone with an +unmistakable future. So comforting to go down to posterity as 'Youth +with a Pink Carnation' in catalogue--company with 'Child with Bunch of +Primroses,' and all that crowd." + +"Youth," said the Other, "should suggest innocence." + +"But never act on the suggestion. I don't believe the two ever really go +together. People talk vaguely about the innocence of a little child, but +they take mighty good care not to let it out of their sight for twenty +minutes. The watched pot never boils over. I knew a boy once who really +was innocent; his parents were in Society, but they never gave him a +moment's anxiety from his infancy. He believed in company prospectuses, +and in the purity of elections, and in women marrying for love, and even +in a system for winning at roulette. He never quite lost his faith in +it, but he dropped more money than his employers could afford to lose. +When last I heard of him, he was believing in his innocence; the jury +weren't. All the same, I really am innocent just now of something +everyone accuses me of having done, and so far as I can see, their +accusations will remain unfounded." + +"Rather an unexpected attitude for you." + +"I love people who do unexpected things. Didn't you always adore the man +who slew a lion in a pit on a snowy day? But about this unfortunate +innocence. Well, quite long ago, when I'd been quarrelling with more +people than usual, you among the number--it must have been in November, I +never quarrel with you too near Christmas--I had an idea that I'd like to +write a book. It was to be a book of personal reminiscences, and was to +leave out nothing." + +"Reginald!" + +"Exactly what the Duchess said when I mentioned it to her. I was +provoking and said nothing, and the next thing, of course, was that +everyone heard that I'd written the book and got it in the press. After +that, I might have been a gold-fish in a glass bowl for all the privacy I +got. People attacked me about it in the most unexpected places, and +implored or commanded me to leave out things that I'd forgotten had ever +happened. I sat behind Miriam Klopstock one night in the dress circle at +His Majesty's, and she began at once about the incident of the Chow dog +in the bathroom, which she insisted must be struck out. We had to argue +it in a disjointed fashion, because some of the people wanted to listen +to the play, and Miriam takes nines in voices. They had to stop her +playing in the 'Macaws' Hockey Club because you could hear what she +thought when her shins got mixed up in a scrimmage for half a mile on a +still day. They are called the Macaws because of their blue-and-yellow +costumes, but I understand there was nothing yellow about Miriam's +language. I agreed to make one alteration, as I pretended I had got it a +Spitz instead of a Chow, but beyond that I was firm. She megaphoned back +two minutes later, 'You promised you would never mention it; don't you +ever keep a promise?' When people had stopped glaring in our direction, +I replied that I'd as soon think of keeping white mice. I saw her +tearing little bits out of her programme for a minute or two, and then +she leaned back and snorted, 'You're not the boy I took you for,' as +though she were an eagle arriving at Olympus with the wrong Ganymede. +That was her last audible remark, but she went on tearing up her +programme and scattering the pieces around her, till one of her +neighbours asked with immense dignity whether she should send for a +wastepaper basket. I didn't stay for the last act." + +"Then there is Mrs.--oh, I never can remember her name; she lives in a +street that the cabmen have never heard of, and is at home on Wednesdays. +She frightened me horribly once at a private view by saying mysteriously, +'I oughtn't to be here, you know; this is one of my days.' I thought she +meant that she was subject to periodical outbreaks and was expecting an +attack at any moment. So embarrassing if she had suddenly taken it into +her head that she was Cesar Borgia or St. Elizabeth of Hungary. That +sort of thing would make one unpleasantly conspicuous even at a private +view. However, she merely meant to say that it was Wednesday, which at +the moment was incontrovertible. Well, she's on quite a different tack +to the Klopstock. She doesn't visit anywhere very extensively, and, of +course, she's awfully keen for me to drag in an incident that occurred at +one of the Beauwhistle garden-parties, when she says she accidentally hit +the shins of a Serene Somebody or other with a croquet mallet and that he +swore at her in German. As a matter of fact, he went on discoursing on +the Gordon-Bennett affair in French. (I never can remember if it's a new +submarine or a divorce. Of course, how stupid of me!) To be +disagreeably exact, I fancy she missed him by about two +inches--over-anxiousness, probably--but she likes to think she hit him. +I've felt that way with a partridge which I always imagine keeps on +flying strong, out of false pride, till it's the other side of the hedge. +She said she could tell me everything she was wearing on the occasion. I +said I didn't want my book to read like a laundry list, but she explained +that she didn't mean those sort of things." + +"And there's the Chilworth boy, who can be charming as long as he's +content to be stupid and wear what he's told to; but he gets the idea now +and then that he'd like to be epigrammatic, and the result is like +watching a rook trying to build a nest in a gale. Since he got wind of +the book, he's been persecuting me to work in something of his about the +Russians and the Yalu Peril, and is quite sulky because I won't do it." + +"Altogether, I think it would be rather a brilliant inspiration if you +were to suggest a fortnight in Paris." + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REGINALD*** + + +******* This file should be named 2830.txt or 2830.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/8/3/2830 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Proofing was by Margaret Price. + + + + + +REGINALD + +by Saki (H. H. Munro) + + + + +Contents: + +Reginald +Reginald on Christmas Presents +Reginald on the Academy +Reginald at the Theatre +Reginald's Peace Poem +Reginald's Choir Treat +Reginald on Worries +Reginald on House-Parties +Reginald at the Carlton +Reginald on Besetting Sins +Reginald's Drama +Reginald on Tariffs +Reginald's Christmas Revel +Reginald's Rubaiyat +The Innocence of Reginald + + + + +REGINALD + + + +I did it--I who should have known better. I persuaded +Reginald to go to the McKillops' garden-party against his +will. + +We all make mistakes occasionally. + +"They know you're here, and they'll think it so funny if you +don't go. And I want particularly to be in with Mrs. +McKillop just now." + +"I know, you want one of her smoke Persian kittens as a +prospective wife for Wumples--or a husband, is it?" +(Reginald has a magnificent scorn for details, other than +sartorial.) "And I am expected to undergo social martyrdom +to suit the connubial exigencies" - + +"Reginald! It's nothing of the kind, only I'm sure Mrs. +McKillop Would be pleased if I brought you. Young men of +your brilliant attractions are rather at a premium at her +garden-parties." + +"Should be at a premium in heaven," remarked Reginald +complacently. + +"There will be very few of you there, if that is what you +mean. But seriously, there won't be any great strain upon +your powers of endurance; I promise you that you shan't have +to play croquet, or talk to the Archdeacon's wife, or do +anything that is likely to bring on physical prostration. +You can just wear your sweetest clothes and moderately +amiable expression, and eat chocolate-creams with the +appetite of a blase parrot. Nothing more is demanded of +you." + +Reginald shut his eyes. "There will be the exhaustingly up- +to-date young women who will ask me if I have seen San Toy: +a less progressive grade who will yearn to hear about the +Diamond Jubilee--the historic event, not the horse. With a +little encouragement, they will inquire if I saw the Allies +march into Paris. Why are women so fond of raking up the +past? They're as bad as tailors, who invariably remember +what you owe them for a suit long after you've ceased to wear +it." + +"I'll order lunch for one o'clock; that will give you two and +a half hours to dress in." + +Reginald puckered his brow into a tortured frown, and I knew +that my point was gained. He was debating what tie would go +with which waistcoat. + +Even then I had my misgivings. + +* * * + +During the drive to the McKillops' Reginald was possessed +with a great peace, which was not wholly to be accounted for +by the fact that he had inveigled his feet into shoes a size +too small for them. I misgave more than ever, and having +once launched Reginald on to the McKillops' lawn, I +established him near a seductive dish of marrons glaces, and +as far from the Archdeacon's wife as possible; as I drifted +away to a diplomatic distance I heard with painful +distinctness the eldest Mawkby girl asking him if he had seen +San Toy. + +It must have been ten minutes later, not more, and I had been +having QUITE an enjoyable chat with my hostess, and had +promised to lend her The Eternal City and my recipe for +rabbit mayonnaise, and was just about to offer a kind home +for her third Persian kitten, when I perceived, out of the +corner of my eye, that Reginald was not where I had left him, +and that the marrons glaces were untasted. At the same +moment I became aware that old Colonel Mendoza was essaying +to tell his classic story of how he introduced golf into +India, and that Reginald was in dangerous proximity. There +are occasions when Reginald is caviare to the Colonel. + +"When I was at Poona in '76" - + +"My dear Colonel," purred Reginald, "fancy admitting such a +thing! Such a give-away for one's age! I wouldn't admit +being on this planet in '76." (Reginald in his wildest +lapses into veracity never admits to being more than twenty- +two.) + +The Colonel went to the colour of a fig that has attained +great ripeness, and Reginald, ignoring my efforts to +intercept him, glided away to another part of the lawn. I +found him a few minutes later happily engaged in teaching the +youngest Rampage boy the approved theory of mixing absinthe, +within full earshot of his mother. Mrs. Rampage occupies a +prominent place in local Temperance movements. + +As soon as I had broken up this unpromising tete-a-tete and +settled Reginald where he could watch the croquet players +losing their tempers, I wandered off to find my hostess and +renew the kitten negotiations at the point where they had +been interrupted. I did not succeed in running her down at +once, and eventually it was Mrs. McKillop who sought me out, +and her conversation was not of kittens. + +"Your cousin is discussing Zaza with the Archdeacon's wife; +at least, he is discussing, she is ordering her carriage." + +She spoke in the dry, staccato tone of one who repeats a +French exercise, and I knew that as far as Millie McKillop +was concerned, Wumples was devoted to a lifelong celibacy. + +"If you don't mind," I said hurriedly, "I think we'd like our +carriage ordered too," and I made a forced march in the +direction of the croquet-ground. + +I found everyone talking nervously and feverishly of the +weather and the war in South Africa, except Reginald, who was +reclining in a comfortable chair with the dreamy, far-away +look that a volcano might wear just after it had desolated +entire villages. The Archdeacon's wife was buttoning up her +gloves with a concentrated deliberation that was fearful to +behold. I shall have to treble my subscription to her +Cheerful Sunday Evenings Fund before I dare set foot in her +house again. + +At that particular moment the croquet players finished their +game, which had been going on without a symptom of finality +during the whole afternoon. Why, I ask, should it have +stopped precisely when a counter-attraction was so necessary? +Everyone seemed to drift towards the area of disturbance, of +which the chairs of the Archdeacon's wife and Reginald formed +the storm-centre. Conversation flagged, and there settled +upon the company that expectant hush that precedes the dawn-- +when your neighbours don't happen to keep poultry. + +"What did the Caspian Sea?" asked Reginald, with appalling +suddenness. + +There were symptoms of a stampede. The Archdeacon's wife +looked at me. Kipling or someone has described somewhere the +look a foundered camel gives when the caravan moves on and +leaves it to its fate. The peptonised reproach in the good +lady's eyes brought the passage vividly to my mind. + +I played my last card. + +"Reginald, it's getting late, and a sea-mist is coming on." +I knew that the elaborate curl over his right eyebrow was not +guaranteed to survive a sea-mist. + +"Never, never again, will I take you to a garden-party. +Never . . . You behaved abominably . . . What did the Caspian +see?" + +A shade of genuine regret for misused opportunities passed +over Reginald's face. + +"After all," he said, "I believe an apricot tie would have +gone better with the lilac waistcoat." + + + +REGINALD ON CHRISTMAS PRESENTS + + + +I wish it to be distinctly understood (said Reginald) that I +don't want a "George, Prince of Wales" Prayer-book as a +Christmas present. The fact cannot be too widely known. + +There ought (he continued) to be technical education classes +on the science of present-giving. No one seems to have the +faintest notion of what anyone else wants, and the prevalent +ideas on the subject are not creditable to a civilised +community. + +There is, for instance, the female relative in the country +who "knows a tie is always useful," and sends you some +spotted horror that you could only wear in secret or in +Tottenham Court Road. It MIGHT have been useful had she kept +it to tie up currant bushes with, when it would have served +the double purpose of supporting the branches and frightening +away the birds--for it is an admitted fact that the ordinary +tomtit of commerce has a sounder aesthetic taste than the +average female relative in the country. + +Then there are aunts. They are always a difficult class to +deal with in the matter of presents. The trouble is that one +never catches them really young enough. By the time one has +educated them to an appreciation of the fact that one does +not wear red woollen mittens in the West End, they die, or +quarrel with the family, or do something equally +inconsiderate. That is why the supply of trained aunts is +always so precarious. + +There is my Aunt Agatha, par exemple, who sent me a pair of +gloves last Christmas, and even got so far as to choose a +kind that was being worn and had the correct number of +buttons. But--THEY WERE NINES! I sent them to a boy whom I +hated intimately: he didn't wear them, of course, but he +could have--that was where the bitterness of death came in. +It was nearly as consoling as sending white flowers to his +funeral. Of course I wrote and told my aunt that they were +the one thing that had been wanting to make existence blossom +like a rose; I am afraid she thought me frivolous--she comes +from the North, where they live in the fear of Heaven and the +Earl of Durham. (Reginald affects an exhaustive knowledge of +things political, which furnishes an excellent excuse for not +discussing them.) Aunts with a dash of foreign extraction in +them are the most satisfactory in the way of understanding +these things; but if you can't choose your aunt, it is wisest +in the long-run to choose the present and send her the bill. + +Even friends of one's own set, who might be expected to know +better, have curious delusions on the subject. I am NOT +collecting copies of the cheaper editions of Omar Khayyam. I +gave the last four that I received to the lift-boy, and I +like to think of him reading them, with FitzGerald's notes, +to his aged mother. Lift-boys always have aged mothers; +shows such nice feeling on their part, I think. + +Personally, I can't see where the difficulty in choosing +suitable presents lies. No boy who had brought himself up +properly could fail to appreciate one of those decorative +bottles of liqueurs that are so reverently staged in Morel's +window--and it wouldn't in the least matter if one did get +duplicates. And there would always be the supreme moment of +dreadful uncertainty whether it was creme de menthe or +Chartreuse--like the expectant thrill on seeing your +partner's hand turned up at bridge. People may say what they +like about the decay of Christianity; the religious system +that produced green Chartreuse can never really die. + +And then, of course, there are liqueur glasses, and +crystallised fruits, and tapestry curtains, and heaps of +other necessaries of life that make really sensible presents- +-not to speak of luxuries, such as having one's bills paid, +or getting something quite sweet in the way of jewellery. +Unlike the alleged Good Woman of the Bible, I'm not above +rubies. When found, by the way, she must have been rather a +problem at Christmas-time; nothing short of a blank cheque +would have fitted the situation. Perhaps it's as well that +she's died out. + +The great charm about me (concluded Reginald) is that I am so +easily pleased. + +But I draw the line at a "Prince of Wales" Prayer-book. + + + +REGINALD ON THE ACADEMY + + + +"One goes to the Academy in self-defence," said Reginald. +"It is the one topic one has in common with the Country +Cousins." + +"It is almost a religious observance with them," said the +Other. "A kind of artistic Mecca, and when the good ones die +they go" - + +"To the Chantrey Bequest. The mystery is what they find to +talk about in the country." + +"There are two subjects of conversation in the country: +Servants, and Can fowls be made to pay? The first, I +believe, is compulsory, the second optional." + +"As a function," resumed Reginald, "the Academy is a +failure." + +"You think it would be tolerable without the pictures?" + +"The pictures are all right, in their way; after all, one can +always LOOK at them if one is bored with one's surroundings, +or wants to avoid an imminent acquaintance." + +"Even that doesn't always save one. There is the inevitable +female whom you met once in Devonshire, or the Matoppo Hills, +or somewhere, who charges up to you with the remark that it's +funny how one always meets people one knows at the Academy. +Personally, I DON'T think it funny." + +"I suffered in that way just now," said Reginald plaintively, +"from a woman whose word I had to take that she had met me +last summer in Brittany." + +"I hope you were not too brutal?" + +"I merely told her with engaging simplicity that the art of +life was the avoidance of the unattainable." + +"Did she try and work it out on the back of her catalogue?" + +"Not there and then. She murmured something about being 'so +clever.' Fancy coming to the Academy to be clever!" + +"To be clever in the afternoon argues that one is dining +nowhere in the evening." + +"Which reminds me that I can't remember whether I accepted an +invitation from you to dine at Kettner's to-night." + +"On the other hand, I can remember with startling +distinctness not having asked you to." + +"So much certainty is unbecoming in the young; so we'll +consider that settled. What were you talking about? Oh, +pictures. Personally, I rather like them; they are so +refreshingly real and probable, they take one away from the +unrealities of life." + +"One likes to escape from oneself occasionally." + +"That is the disadvantage of a portrait; as a rule, one's +bitterest friends can find nothing more to ask than the +faithful unlikeness that goes down to posterity as oneself. +I hate posterity--it's so fond of having the last word. Of +course, as regards portraits, there are exceptions." + +"For instance?" + +"To die before being painted by Sargent is to go to heaven +prematurely." + +"With the necessary care and impatience, you may avoid that +catastrophe." + +"If you're going to be rude," said Reginald, "I shall dine +with you to-morrow night as well. The chief vice of the +Academy," he continued, "is its nomenclature. Why, for +instance, should an obvious trout-stream with a palpable +rabbit sitting in the foreground be called 'an evening dream +of unbeclouded peace,' or something of that sort?" + +"You think," said the Other, "that a name should economise +description rather than stimulate imagination?" + +"Properly chosen, it should do both. There is my lady kitten +at home, for instance; I've called it Derry." + +"Suggests nothing to my imagination but protracted sieges and +religious animosities. Of course, I don't know your kitten" +- + +"Oh, you're silly. It's a sweet name, and it answers to it-- +when it wants to. Then, if there are any unseemly noises in +the night, they can be explained succinctly: Derry and +Toms." + +"You might almost charge for the advertisement. But as +applied to pictures, don't you think your system would be too +subtle, say, for the Country Cousins?" + +"Every reformation must have its victims. You can't expect +the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over +the prodigal's return. Another darling weakness of the +Academy is that none of its luminaries must 'arrive' in a +hurry. You can see them coming for years, like a Balkan +trouble or a street improvement, and by the time they have +painted a thousand or so square yards of canvas, their work +begins to be recognised." + +"Someone who Must Not be Contradicted said that a man must be +a success by the time he's thirty, or never." + +"To have reached thirty," said Reginald, "is to have failed +in life." + + + +REGINALD AT THE THEATRE + + + +"After all," said the Duchess vaguely, "there are certain +things you can't get away from. Right and wrong, good +conduct and moral rectitude, have certain well-defined +limits." + +"So, for the matter of that," replied Reginald, "has the +Russian Empire. The trouble is that the limits are not +always in the same place." + +Reginald and the Duchess regarded each other with mutual +distrust, tempered by a scientific interest. Reginald +considered that the Duchess had much to learn; in particular, +not to hurry out of the Carlton as though afraid of losing +one's last 'bus. A woman, he said, who is careless of +disappearances is capable of leaving town before Good-wood, +and dying at the wrong moment of an unfashionable disease. + +The Duchess thought that Reginald did not exceed the ethical +standard which circumstances demanded. + + "Of course," she resumed combatively, "it's the prevailing +fashion to believe in perpetual change and mutability, and +all that sort of thing, and to say we are all merely an +improved form of primeval ape--of course you subscribe to +that doctrine?" + +"I think it decidedly premature; in most people I know the +process is far from complete." + +"And equally of course you are quite irreligious?" + +"Oh, by no means. The fashion just now is a Roman Catholic +frame of mind with an Agnostic conscience: you get the +mediaeval picturesqueness of the one with the modern +conveniences of the other." + +The Duchess suppressed a sniff. She was one of those people +who regard the Church of England with patronising affection, +as if it were something that had grown up in their kitchen +garden. + +"But there are other things," she continued, "which I suppose +are to a certain extent sacred even to you. Patriotism, for +instance, and Empire, and Imperial responsibility, and blood- +is-thicker-than-water, and all that sort of thing." + +Reginald waited for a couple of minutes before replying, +while the Lord of Rimini temporarily monopolised the acoustic +possibilities of the theatre. + +"That is the worst of a tragedy," he observed, "one can't +always hear oneself talk. Of course I accept the Imperial +idea and the responsibility. After all, I would just as soon +think in Continents as anywhere else. And some day, when the +season is over and we have the time, you shall explain to me +the exact blood-brotherhood and all that sort of thing that +exists between a French Canadian and a mild Hindoo and a +Yorkshireman, for instance." + +"Oh, well, 'dominion over palm and pine,' you know," quoted +the Duchess hopefully; "of course we mustn't forget that +we're all part of the great Anglo-Saxon Empire." + +"Which for its part is rapidly becoming a suburb of +Jerusalem. A very pleasant suburb, I admit, and quite a +charming Jerusalem. But still a suburb." + +"Really, to be told one's living in a suburb when one is +conscious of spreading the benefits of civilisation all over +the world! Philanthropy--I suppose you will say THAT is a +comfortable delusion; and yet even you must admit that +whenever want or misery or starvation is known to exist, +however distant or difficult of access, we instantly organise +relief on the most generous scale, and distribute it, if need +be, to the uttermost ends of the earth." + +The Duchess paused, with a sense of ultimate triumph. She +had made the same observation at a drawing-room meeting, and +it had been extremely well received. + +"I wonder," said Reginald, "if you have ever walked down the +Embankment on a winter night?" + +"Gracious, no, child! Why do you ask?" + +"I didn't; I only wondered. And even your philanthropy, +practised in a world where everything is based on +competition, must have a debit as well as a credit account. +The young ravens cry for food." + +"And are fed." + +"Exactly. Which presupposes that something else is fed +upon." + +"Oh, you're simply exasperating. You've been reading +Nietzsche till you haven't got any sense of moral proportion +left. May I ask if you are governed by ANY laws of conduct +whatever?" + +"There are certain fixed rules that one observes for one's +own comfort. For instance, never be flippantly rude to any +inoffensive grey-bearded stranger that you may meet in pine +forests or hotel smoking-rooms on the Continent. It always +turns out to be the King of Sweden." + +"The restraint must be dreadfully irksome to you. When I was +younger, boys of your age used to be nice and innocent." + +"Now we are only nice. One must specialise in these days. +Which reminds me of the man I read of in some sacred book who +was given a choice of what he most desired. And because he +didn't ask for titles and honours and dignities, but only for +immense wealth, these other things came to him also." + +"I am sure you didn't read about him in any sacred book." + +"Yes; I fancy you will find him in Debrett." + + + +REGINALD'S PEACE POEM + + + +"I'm writing a poem on Peace," said Reginald, emerging from a +sweeping operation through a tin of mixed biscuits, in whose +depths a macaroon or two might yet be lurking. + +"Something of the kind seems to have been attempted already," +said the Other. + +"Oh, I know; but I may never have the chance again. Besides, +I've got a new fountain pen. I don't pretend to have gone on +any very original lines; in writing about Peace the thing is +to say what everybody else is saying, only to say it better. +It begins with the usual ornithological emotion - + + +'When the widgeon westward winging +Heard the folk Vereeniginging, +Heard the shouting and the singing'" - + + +"Vereeniginging is good, but why widgeon?" + +"Why not? Anything that winged westward would naturally +begin with a W." + +"Need it wing westward?" + +"The bird must go somewhere. You wouldn't have it hang +around and look foolish. Then I've brought in something +about the heedless hartebeest galloping over the deserted +veldt." + +"Of course you know it's practically extinct in those +regions?" + +"I can't help THAT, it gallops so nicely. I make it have all +sorts of unexpected yearnings - + + +'Mother, may I go and maffick, +Tear around and hinder traffic?' + + +Of course you'll say there would be no traffic worth +bothering about on the bare and sun-scorched veldt, but +there's no other word that rhymes with maffick." + +"Seraphic?" + +Reginald considered. "It might do, but I've got a lot about +angels later on. You must have angels in a Peace poem; I +know dreadfully little about their habits." + +"They can do unexpected things, like the hartebeest." + +"Of course. Then I turn on London, the City of Dreadful +Nocturnes, resonant with hymns of joy and thanksgiving - + + +'And the sleeper, eye unlidding, +Heard a voice for ever bidding +Much farewell to Dolly Gray; +Turning weary on his truckle- +Bed he heard the honey-suckle +Lauded in apiarian lay.' + + +Longfellow at his best wrote nothing like that." + +"I agree with you." + +"I wish you wouldn't. I've a sweet temper, but I can't stand +being agreed with. And I'm so worried about the aasvogel." + +Reginald stared dismally at the biscuit-tin, which now +presented an unattractive array of rejected cracknels. + +"I believe," he murmured, "if I could find a woman with an +unsatisfied craving for cracknels, I should marry her." + +"What is the tragedy of the aasvogel?" asked the Other +sympathetically. + +"Oh, simply that there's no rhyme for it. I thought about it +all the time I was dressing--it's dreadfully bad for one to +think whilst one's dressing--and all lunch-time, and I'm +still hung up over it. I feel like those unfortunate +automobilists who achieve an unenviable motoriety by coming +to a hopeless stop with their cars in the most crowded +thoroughfares. I'm afraid I shall have to drop the aasvogel, +and it did give such lovely local colour to the thing." + +"Still you've got the heedless hartebeest." + +"And quite a decorative bit of moral admonition--when you've +worried the meaning out - + + +'Cease, War, thy bubbling madness that the wine shares, +And bid thy legions turn their swords to mine shares.' + + +Mine shares seems to fit the case better than ploughshares. +There's lots more about the blessings of Peace, shall I go on +reading it?" + +"If I must make a choice, I think I would rather they went on +with the war." + + + +REGINALD'S CHOIR TREAT + + + +"Never," wrote Reginald to his most darling friend, "be a +pioneer. It's the Early Christian that gets the fattest +lion." + +Reginald, in his way, was a pioneer. + +None of the rest of his family had anything approaching +Titian hair or a sense of humour, and they used primroses as +a table decoration. + +It follows that they never understood Reginald, who came down +late to breakfast, and nibbled toast, and said disrespectful +things about the universe. The family ate porridge, and +believed in everything, even the weather forecast. + +Therefore the family was relieved when the vicar's daughter +undertook the reformation of Reginald. Her name was Amabel; +it was the vicar's one extravagance. Amabel was accounted a +beauty and intellectually gifted; she never played tennis, +and was reputed to have read Maeterlinck's Life of the Bee. +If you abstain from tennis AND read Maeterlinck in a small +country village, you are of necessity intellectual. Also she +had been twice to Fecamp to pick up a good French accent from +the Americans staying there; consequently she had a knowledge +of the world which might be considered useful in dealings +with a worldling. + +Hence the congratulations in the family when Amabel undertook +the reformation of its wayward member. + +Amabel commenced operations by asking her unsuspecting pupil +to tea in the vicarage garden; she believed in the healthy +influence of natural surroundings, never having been in +Sicily, where things are different. + +And like every woman who has ever preached repentance to +unregenerate youth, she dwelt on the sin of an empty life, +which always seems so much more scandalous in the country, +where people rise early to see if a new strawberry has +happened during the night. + +Reginald recalled the lilies of the field, "which simply sat +and looked beautiful, and defied competition." + +"But that is not an example for us to follow," gasped Amabel. + +"Unfortunately, we can't afford to. You don't know what a +world of trouble I take in trying to rival the lilies in +their artistic simplicity." + +"You are really indecently vain of your appearance. A good +life is infinitely preferable to good looks." + +"You agree with me that the two are incompatible. I always +say beauty is only sin deep." + +Amabel began to realise that the battle is not always to the +strong-minded. With the immemorial resource of her sex, she +abandoned the frontal attack, and laid stress on her +unassisted labours in parish work, her mental loneliness, her +discouragements--and at the right moment she produced +strawberries and cream. Reginald was obviously affected by +the latter, and when his preceptress suggested that he might +begin the strenuous life by helping her to supervise the +annual outing of the bucolic infants who composed the local +choir, his eyes shone with the dangerous enthusiasm of a +convert. + +Reginald entered on the strenuous life alone, as far as +Amabel was concerned. The most virtuous women are not proof +against damp grass, and Amabel kept her bed with a cold. +Reginald called it a dispensation; it had been the dream of +his life to stage-manage a choir outing. With strategic +insight, he led his shy, bullet-headed charges to the nearest +woodland stream and allowed them to bathe; then he seated +himself on their discarded garments and discoursed on their +immediate future, which, he decreed, was to embrace a +Bacchanalian procession through the village. Forethought had +provided the occasion with a supply of tin whistles, but the +introduction of a he-goat from a neighbouring orchard was a +brilliant afterthought. Properly, Reginald explained, there +should have been an outfit of panther skins; as it was, those +who had spotted handkerchiefs were allowed to wear them, +which they did with thankfulness. Reginald recognised the +impossibility, in the time at his disposal, of teaching his +shivering neophytes a chant in honour of Bacchus, so he +started them off with a more familiar, if less appropriate, +temperance hymn. After all, he said, it is the spirit of the +thing that counts. Following the etiquette of dramatic +authors on first nights, he remained discreetly in the +background while the procession, with extreme diffidence and +the goat, wound its way lugubriously towards the village. +The singing had died down long before the main street was +reached, but the miserable wailing of pipes brought the +inhabitants to their doors. Reginald said he had seen +something like it in pictures; the villagers had seen nothing +like it in their lives, and remarked as much freely. + +Reginald's family never forgave him. They had no sense of +humour. + + + +REGINALD ON WORRIES + + + +I have (said Reginald) an aunt who worries. She's not really +an aunt--a sort of amateur one, and they aren't really +worries. She is a social success, and has no domestic +tragedies worth speaking of, so she adopts any decorative +sorrows that are going, myself included. In that way she's +the antithesis, or whatever you call it, to those sweet, +uncomplaining women one knows who have seen trouble, and worn +blinkers ever since. Of course, one just loves them for it, +but I must confess they make me uncomfy; they remind one so +of a duck that goes flapping about with forced cheerfulness +long after its head's been cut off. Ducks have NO repose. +Now, my aunt has a shade of hair that suits her, and a cook +who quarrels with the other servants, which is always a +hopeful sign, and a conscience that's absentee for about +eleven months of the year, and only turns up at Lent to annoy +her husband's people, who are considerably Lower than the +angels, so to speak: with all these natural advantages--she +says her particular tint of bronze is a natural advantage, +and there can be no two opinions as to the advantage--of +course she has to send out for her afflictions, like those +restaurants where they haven't got a licence. The system has +this advantage, that you can fit your unhappinesses in with +your other engagements, whereas real worries have a way of +arriving at meal-times, and when you're dressing, or other +solemn moments. I knew a canary once that had been trying +for months and years to hatch out a family, and everyone +looked upon it as a blameless infatuation, like the sale of +Delagoa Bay, which would be an annual loss to the Press +agencies if it ever came to pass; and one day the bird really +did bring it off, in the middle of family prayers. I say the +middle, but it was also the end: you can't go on being +thankful for daily bread when you are wondering what on earth +very new canaries expect to be fed on. + +At present she's rather in a Balkan state of mind about the +treatment of the Jews in Roumania. Personally, I think the +Jews have estimable qualities; they're so kind to their poor- +-and to our rich. I daresay in Roumania the cost of living +beyond one's income isn't so great. Over here the trouble is +that so many people who have money to throw about seem to +have such vague ideas where to throw it. That fund, for +instance, to relieve the victims of sudden disasters--what is +a sudden disaster? There's Marion Mulciber, who WOULD think +she could play bridge, just as she would think she could ride +down a hill on a bicycle; on that occasion she went to a +hospital, now she's gone into a Sisterhood--lost all she had, +you know, and gave the rest to Heaven. Still, you can't call +it a sudden calamity; THAT occurred when poor dear Marion was +born. The doctors said at the time that she couldn't live +more than a fortnight, and she's been trying ever since to +see if she could. Women are so opinionated. + +And then there's the Education Question--not that I can see +that there's anything to worry about in that direction. To +my mind, education is an absurdly over-rated affair. At +least, one never took it very seriously at school, where +everything was done to bring it prominently under one's +notice. Anything that is worth knowing one practically +teaches oneself, and the rest obtrudes itself sooner or +later. The reason one's elders know so comparatively little +is because they have to unlearn so much that they acquired by +way of education before we were born. Of course I'm a +believer in Nature-study; as I said to Lady Beauwhistle, if +you want a lesson in elaborate artificiality, just watch the +studied unconcern of a Persian cat entering a crowded salon, +and then go and practise it for a fortnight. The +Beauwhistles weren't born in the Purple, you know, but +they're getting there on the instalment system--so much down, +and the rest when you feel like it. They have kind hearts, +and they never forget birthdays. I forget what he was, +something in the City, where the patriotism comes from; and +she--oh, well, her frocks are built in Paris, but she wears +them with a strong English accent. So public-spirited of +her. I think she must have been very strictly brought up, +she's so desperately anxious to do the wrong thing correctly. +Not that it really matters nowadays, as I told her: I know +some perfectly virtuous people who are received everywhere. + + + +REGINALD ON HOUSE-PARTIES + + + +The drawback is, one never really KNOWS one's hosts and +hostesses. One gets to know their fox-terriers and their +chrysanthemums, and whether the story about the go-cart can +be turned loose in the drawing-room, or must be told +privately to each member of the party, for fear of shocking +public opinion; but one's host and hostess are a sort of +human hinterland that one never has the time to explore. + +There was a fellow I stayed with once in Warwickshire who +farmed his own land, but was otherwise quite steady. Should +never have suspected him of having a soul, yet not very long +afterwards he eloped with a lion-tamer's widow and set up as +a golf-instructor somewhere on the Persian Gulf; dreadfully +immoral, of course, because he was only an indifferent +player, but still, it showed imagination. His wife was +really to be pitied, because he had been the only person in +the house who understood how to manage the cook's temper, and +now she has to put "D.V." on her dinner invitations. Still, +that's better than a domestic scandal; a woman who leaves her +cook never wholly recovers her position in Society. + +I suppose the same thing holds good with the hosts; they +seldom have more than a superficial acquaintance with their +guests, and so often just when they do get to know you a bit +better, they leave off knowing you altogether. There was +RATHER a breath of winter in the air when I left those +Dorset-shire people. You see, they had asked me down to +shoot, and I'm not particularly immense at that sort of +thing. There's such a deadly sameness about partridges; when +you've missed one, you've missed the lot--at least, that's +been my experience. And they tried to rag me in the smoking- +room about not being able to hit a bird at five yards, a sort +of bovine ragging that suggested cows buzzing round a gadfly +and thinking they were teasing it. So I got up the next +morning at early dawn--I know it was dawn, because there were +lark-noises in the sky, and the grass looked as if it had +been left out all night--and hunted up the most conspicuous +thing in the bird line that I could find, and measured the +distance, as nearly as it would let me, and shot away all I +knew. They said afterwards that it was a tame bird; that's +simply SILLY, because it was awfully wild at the first few +shots. Afterwards it quieted down a bit, and when its legs +had stopped waving farewells to the landscape I got a +gardener-boy to drag it into the hall, where everybody must +see it on their way to the breakfast-room. I breakfasted +upstairs myself. I gathered afterwards that the meal was +tinged with a very unchristian spirit. I suppose it's +unlucky to bring peacock's feathers into a house; anyway, +there was a blue-pencilly look in my hostess's eye when I +took my departure. + +Some hostesses, of course, will forgive anything, even unto +pavonicide (is there such a word?), as long as one is nice- +looking and sufficiently unusual to counterbalance some of +the others; and there ARE others--the girl, for instance, who +reads Meredith, and appears at meals with unnatural +punctuality in a frock that's made at home and repented at +leisure. She eventually finds her way to India and gets +married, and comes home to admire the Royal Academy, and to +imagine that an indifferent prawn curry is for ever an +effective substitute for all that we have been taught to +believe is luncheon. It's then that she is really dangerous; +but at her worst she is never quite so bad as the woman who +fires Exchange and Mart questions at you without the least +provocation. Imagine the other day, just when I was doing my +best to understand half the things I was saying, being asked +by one of those seekers after country home truths how many +fowls she could keep in a run ten feet by six, or whatever it +was! I told her whole crowds, as long as she kept the door +shut, and the idea didn't seem to have struck her before; at +least, she brooded over it for the rest of dinner. + +Of course, as I say, one never really KNOWS one's ground, and +one may make mistakes occasionally. But then one's mistakes +sometimes turn out assets in the long-run: if we had never +bungled away our American colonies we might never have had +the boy from the States to teach us how to wear our hair and +cut our clothes, and we must get our ideas from somewhere, I +suppose. Even the Hooligan was probably invented in China +centuries before we thought of him. England must wake up, as +the Duke of Devonshire said the other day; wasn't it? Oh, +well, it was someone else. Not that I ever indulge in +despair about the Future; there always have been men who have +gone about despairing of the Future, and when the Future +arrives it says nice, superior things about their having +acted according to their lights. It is dreadful to think +that other people's grandchildren may one day rise up and +call one amiable. + +There are moments when one sympathises with Herod. + + + +REGINALD AT THE CARLTON + + + +"A most variable climate," said the Duchess; "and how +unfortunate that we should have had that very cold weather at +a time when coal was so dear! So distressing for the poor." + +"Someone has observed that Providence is always on the side +of the big dividends," remarked Reginald. + +The Duchess ate an anchovy in a shocked manner; she was +sufficiently old-fashioned to dislike irreverence towards +dividends. + +Reginald had left the selection of a feeding-ground to her +womanly intuition, but he chose the wine himself, knowing +that womanly intuition stops short at claret. A woman will +cheerfully choose husbands for her less attractive friends, +or take sides in a political controversy without the least +knowledge of the issues involved--but no woman ever +cheerfully chose a claret. + +"Hors d'oeuvres have always a pathetic interest for me," said +Reginald: "they remind me of one's childhood that one goes +through, wondering what the next course is going to be like-- +and during the rest of the menu one wishes one had eaten more +of the hors d'oeuvres. Don't you love watching the different +ways people have of entering a restaurant? There is the +woman who races in as though her whole scheme of life were +held together by a one-pin despotism which might abdicate its +functions at any moment; it's really a relief to see her +reach her chair in safety. Then there are the people who +troop in with an-unpleasant-duty-to-perform air, as if they +were angels of Death entering a plague city. You see that +type of Briton very much in hotels abroad. And nowadays +there are always the Johannesbourgeois, who bring a Cape-to- +Cairo atmosphere with them--what may be called the Rand +Manner, I suppose." + +"Talking about hotels abroad," said the Duchess, "I am +preparing notes for a lecture at the Club on the educational +effects of modern travel, dealing chiefly with the moral side +of the question. I was talking to Lady Beauwhistle's aunt +the other day--she's just come back from Paris, you know. +Such a sweet woman" - + +"And so silly. In these days of the over-education of women +she's quite refreshing. They say some people went through +the siege of Paris without knowing that France and Germany +were at war; but the Beauwhistle aunt is credited with having +passed the whole winter in Paris under the impression that +the Humberts were a kind of bicycle . . . Isn't there a +bishop or somebody who believes we shall meet all the animals +we have known on earth in another world? How frightfully +embarrassing to meet a whole shoal of whitebait you had last +known at Prince's! I'm sure in my nervousness I should talk +of nothing but lemons. Still, I daresay they would be quite +as offended if one hadn't eaten them. I know if I were +served up at a cannibal feast I should be dreadfully annoyed +if anyone found fault with me for not being tender enough, or +having been kept too long." + +"My idea about the lecture," resumed the Duchess hurriedly, +"is to inquire whether promiscuous Continental travel doesn't +tend to weaken the moral fibre of the social conscience. +There are people one knows, quite nice people when they are +in England, who are so DIFFERENT when they are anywhere the +other side of the Channel." + +"The people with what I call Tauchnitz morals," observed +Reginald. "On the whole, I think they get the best of two +very desirable worlds. And, after all, they charge so much +for excess luggage on some of those foreign lines that it's +really an economy to leave one's reputation behind one +occasionally." + +"A scandal, my dear Reginald, is as much to be avoided at +Monaco or any of those places as at Exeter, let us say." + +"Scandal, my dear Irene--I may call you Irene, mayn't I?" + +"I don't know that you have known me long enough for that." + +"I've known you longer than your god-parents had when they +took the liberty of calling you that name. Scandal is merely +the compassionate allowance which the gay make to the +humdrum. Think how many blameless lives are brightened by +the blazing indiscretions of other people. Tell me, who is +the woman with the old lace at the table on our left? Oh, +THAT doesn't matter; it's quite the thing nowadays to stare +at people as if they were yearlings at Tattersall's." + +"Mrs. Spelvexit? Quite a charming woman; separated from her +husband" - + +"Incompatibility of income?" + +"Oh, nothing of that sort. By miles of frozen ocean, I was +going to say. He explores ice-floes and studies the +movements of herrings, and has written a most interesting +book on the home-life of the Esquimaux; but naturally he has +very little home-life of his own." + +"A husband who comes home with the Gulf Stream WOULD be +rather a tied-up asset." + +"His wife is exceedingly sensible about it. She collects +postage-stamps. Such a resource. Those people with her are +the Whimples, very old acquaintances of mine; they're always +having trouble, poor things." + +"Trouble is not one of those fancies you can take up and drop +at any moment; it's like a grouse-moor or the opium-habit-- +once you start it you've got to keep it up." + +"Their eldest son was such a disappointment to them; they +wanted him to be a linguist, and spent no end of money on +having him taught to speak--oh, dozens of languages!--and +then he became a Trappist monk. And the youngest, who was +intended for the American marriage market, has developed +political tendencies, and writes pamphlets about the housing +of the poor. Of course it's a most important question, and I +devote a good deal of time to it myself in the mornings; but, +as Laura Whimple says, it's as well to have an establishment +of one's own before agitating about other people's. She +feels it very keenly, but she always maintains a cheerful +appetite, which I think is so unselfish of her." + +"There are different ways of taking disappointment. There +was a girl I knew who nursed a wealthy uncle through a long +illness, borne by her with Christian fortitude, and then he +died and left his money to a swine-fever hospital. She found +she'd about cleared stock in fortitude by that time, and now +she gives drawing-room recitations. That's what I call being +vindictive." + +"Life is full of its disappointments," observed the Duchess, +"and I suppose the art of being happy is to disguise them as +illusions. But that, my dear Reginald, becomes more +difficult as one grows older." + +"I think it's more generally practised than you imagine. The +young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have +reminiscences of what never happened. It's only the middle- +aged who are really conscious of their limitations--that is +why one should be so patient with them. But one never is." + +"After all," said the Duchess, "the disillusions of life may +depend on our way of assessing it. In the minds of those who +come after us we may be remembered for qualities and +successes which we quite left out of the reckoning." + +"It's not always safe to depend on the commemorative +tendencies of those who come after us. There may have been +disillusionments in the lives of the mediaeval saints, but +they would scarcely have been better pleased if they could +have foreseen that their names would be associated nowadays +chiefly with racehorses and the cheaper clarets. And now, if +you can tear yourself away from the salted almonds, we'll go +and have coffee under the palms that are so necessary for our +discomfort." + + + +REGINALD ON BESETTING SINS +THE WOMAN WHO TOLD THE TRUTH + + + +There was once (said Reginald) a woman who told the truth. +Not all at once, of course, but the habit grew upon her +gradually, like lichen on an apparently healthy tree. She +had no children--otherwise it might have been different. It +began with little things, for no particular reason except +that her life was a rather empty one, and it is so easy to +slip into the habit of telling the truth in little matters. +And then it became difficult to draw the line at more +important things, until at last she took to telling the truth +about her age; she said she was forty-two and five months--by +that time, you see, she was veracious even to months. It may +have been pleasing to the angels, but her elder sister was +not gratified. On the Woman's birthday, instead of the +opera-tickets which she had hoped for, her sister gave her a +view of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, which is not +quite the same thing. The revenge of an elder sister may be +long in coming, but, like a South-Eastern express, it arrives +in its own good time. + +The friends of the Woman tried to dissuade her from over- +indulgence in the practice, but she said she was wedded to +the truth; whereupon it was remarked that it was scarcely +logical to be so much together in public. (No really +provident woman lunches regularly with her husband if she +wishes to burst upon him as a revelation at dinner. He must +have time to forget; an afternoon is not enough.) And after +a while her friends began to thin out in patches. Her +passion for the truth was not compatible with a large +visiting-list. For instance, she told Miriam Klopstock +EXACTLY how she looked at the Ilexes' ball. Certainly Miriam +had asked for her candid opinion, but the Woman prayed in +church every Sunday for peace in our time, and it was not +consistent. + +It was unfortunate, everyone agreed, that she had no family; +with a child or two in the house, there is an unconscious +check upon too free an indulgence in the truth. Children are +given us to discourage our better emotions. That is why the +stage, with all its efforts, can never be as artificial as +life; even in an Ibsen drama one must reveal to the audience +things that one would suppress before the children or +servants. + +Fate may have ordained the truth-telling from the +commencement and should justly bear some of the blame; but in +having no children the Woman was guilty, at least, of +contributory negligence. + +Little by little she felt she was becoming a slave to what +had once been merely an idle propensity; and one day she +knew. Every woman tells ninety per cent, of the truth to her +dressmaker; the other ten per cent, is the irreducible +minimum of deception beyond which no self-respecting client +trespasses. Madame Draga's establishment was a meeting- +ground for naked truths and overdressed fictions, and it was +here, the Woman felt, that she might make a final effort to +recall the artless mendacity of past days. Madame herself +was in an inspiring mood, with the air of a sphinx who knew +all things and preferred to forget most of them. As a War +Minister she might have been celebrated, but she was content +to be merely rich. + +"If I take it in here, and--Miss Howard, one moment, if you +please--and there, and round like this--so--I really think +you will find it quite easy." + +The Woman hesitated; it seemed to require such a small effort +to simply acquiesce in Madame's views. But habit had become +too strong. "I'm afraid," she faltered, "it's just the least +little bit in the world too" - + +And by that least little bit she measured the deeps and +eternities of her thraldom to fact. Madame was not best +pleased at being contradicted on a professional matter, and +when Madame lost her temper you usually found it afterwards +in the bill. + +And at last the dreadful thing came, as the Woman had +foreseen all along that it must; it was one of those paltry +little truths with which she harried her waking hours. On a +raw Wednesday morning, in a few ill-chosen words, she told +the cook that she drank. She remembered the scene afterwards +as vividly as though it had been painted in her mind by +Abbey. The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks +go she went. + +Miriam Klopstock came to lunch the next day. Women and +elephants never forget an injury. + + + +REGINALD'S DRAMA + + + +Reginald closed his eyes with the elaborate weariness of one +who has rather nice eyelashes and thinks it useless to +conceal the fact. + +"One of these days," he said, "I shall write a really great +drama. No one will understand the drift of it, but everyone +will go back to their homes with a vague feeling of +dissatisfaction with their lives and surroundings. Then they +will put up new wall-papers and forget." + +"But how about those that have oak panelling all over the +house?" said the Other. + +"They can always put down new stair-carpets," pursued +Reginald, "and, anyhow, I'm not responsible for the audience +having a happy ending. The play would be quite sufficient +strain on one's energies. I should get a bishop to say it +was immoral and beautiful--no dramatist has thought of that +before, and everyone would come to condemn the bishop, and +they would stay on out of sheer nervousness. After all, it +requires a great deal of moral courage to leave in a marked +manner in the middle of the second act, when your carriage +isn't ordered till twelve. And it would commence with wolves +worrying something on a lonely waste--you wouldn't see them, +of course; but you would hear them snarling and scrunching, +and I should arrange to have a wolfy fragrance suggested +across the footlights. It would look so well on the +programmes, 'Wolves in the first act, by Jamrach.' And old +Lady Whortleberry, who never misses a first night, would +scream. She's always been nervous since she lost her first +husband. He died quite abruptly while watching a county +cricket match; two and a half inches of rain had fallen for +seven runs, and it was supposed that the excitement killed +him. Anyhow, it gave her quite a shock; it was the first +husband she'd lost, you know, and now she always screams if +anything thrilling happens too soon after dinner. And after +the audience had heard the Whortleberry scream the thing +would be fairly launched." + +"And the plot?" + +"The plot," said Reginald, "would be one of those little +everyday tragedies that one sees going on all round one. In +my mind's eye there is the case of the Mudge-Jervises, which +in an unpretentious way has quite an Enoch Arden intensity +underlying it. They'd only been married some eighteen months +or so, and circumstances had prevented their seeing much of +each other. With him there was always a foursome or +something that had to be played and replayed in different +parts of the country, and she went in for slumming quite as +seriously as if it was a sport. With her, I suppose, it was. +She belonged to the Guild of the Poor Dear Souls, and they +hold the record for having nearly reformed a washerwoman. No +one has ever really reformed a washerwoman, and that is why +the competition is so keen. You can rescue charwomen by +fifties with a little tea and personal magnetism, but with +washerwomen it's different; wages are too high. This +particular laundress, who came from Bermondsey or some such +place, was really rather a hopeful venture, and they thought +at last that she might be safely put in the window as a +specimen of successful work. So they had her paraded at a +drawing-room "At Home" at Agatha Camelford's; it was sheer +bad luck that some liqueur chocolates had been turned loose +by mistake among the refreshments--really liqueur chocolates, +with very little chocolate. And of course the old soul found +them out, and cornered the entire stock. It was like finding +a whelk-stall in a desert, as she afterwards partially +expressed herself. When the liqueurs began to take effect, +she started to give them imitations of farmyard animals as +they know them in Bermondsey. She began with a dancing bear, +and you know Agatha doesn't approve of dancing, except at +Buckingham Palace under proper supervision. And then she got +up on the piano and gave them an organ monkey; I gather she +went in for realism rather than a Maeterlinckian treatment of +the subject Finally, she fell into the piano and said she was +a parrot in a cage, and for an impromptu performance I +believe she was very word--perfect; no one had heard anything +like it, except Baroness Boobelstein who has attended +sittings of the Austrian Reichsrath. Agatha is trying the +Rest-cure at Buxton." + +"But the tragedy?" + +"Oh, the Mudge-Jervises. Well, they were getting along quite +happily, and their married life was one continuous exchange +of picture-postcards; and then one day they were thrown +together on some neutral ground where foursomes and +washerwomen overlapped, and discovered that they were +hopelessly divided on the Fiscal Question. They have thought +it best to separate, and she is to have the custody of the +Persian kittens for nine months in the year--they go back to +him for the winter, when she is abroad. There you have the +material for a tragedy drawn straight from life--and the +piece could be called 'The Price They Paid for Empire.' And +of course one would have to work in studies of the struggle +of hereditary tendency against environment and all that sort +of thing. The woman's father could have been an Envoy to +some of the smaller German Courts; that's where she'd get her +passion for visiting the poor, in spite of the most careful +upbringing. C'est le premier pa qui compte, as the cuckoo +said when it swallowed its foster-parent. That, I think, is +quite clever." + +"And the wolves?" + +"Oh, the wolves would be a sort of elusive undercurrent in +the background that would never be satisfactorily explained. +After all, life teems with things that have no earthly +reason. And whenever the characters could think of nothing +brilliant to say about marriage or the War Office, they could +open a window and listen to the howling of the wolves. But +that would be very seldom." + + + +REGINALD ON TARIFFS + + + +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. + + + +REGINALD'S CHRISTMAS REVEL + + + +They say (said Reginald) that there's nothing sadder than +victory except defeat. If you've ever stayed with dull +people during what is alleged to be the festive season, you +can probably revise that saying. I shall never forget +putting in a Christmas at the Babwolds'. Mrs. Babwold is +some relation of my father's--a sort of to-be-left-till- +called-for cousin--and that was considered sufficient reason +for my having to accept her invitation at about the sixth +time of asking; though why the sins of the father should be +visited by the children--you won't find any notepaper in that +drawer; that's where I keep old menus and first-night +programmes. + +Mrs. Babwold wears a rather solemn personality, and has never +been known to smile, even when saying disagreeable things to +her friends or making out the Stores list. She takes her +pleasures sadly. A state elephant at a Durbar gives one a +very similar impression. Her husband gardens in all +weathers. When a man goes out in the pouring rain to brush +caterpillars off rose-trees, I generally imagine his life +indoors leaves something to be desired; anyway, it must be +very unsettling for the caterpillars. + +Of course there were other people there. There was a Major +Somebody who had shot things in Lapland, or somewhere of that +sort; I forget what they were, but it wasn't for want of +reminding. We had them cold with every meal almost, and he +was continually giving us details of what they measured from +tip to tip, as though he thought we were going to make them +warm under-things for the winter. I used to listen to him +with a rapt attention that I thought rather suited me, and +then one day I quite modestly gave the dimensions of an okapi +I had shot in the Lincolnshire fens. The Major turned a +beautiful Tyrian scarlet (I remember thinking at the time +that I should like my bathroom hung in that colour), and I +think that at that moment he almost found it in his heart to +dislike me. Mrs. Babwold put on a first-aid-to-the-injured +expression, and asked him why he didn't publish a book of his +sporting reminiscences; it would be SO interesting. She +didn't remember till afterwards that he had given her two fat +volumes on the subject, with his portrait and autograph as a +frontispiece and an appendix on the habits of the Arctic +mussel. + +It was in the evening that we cast aside the cares and +distractions of the day and really lived. Cards were thought +to be too frivolous and empty a way of passing the time, so +most of them played what they called a book game. You went +out into the hall--to get an inspiration, I suppose--then you +came in again with a muffler tied round your neck and looked +silly, and the others were supposed to guess that you were +"Wee MacGreegor." I held out against the inanity as long as +I decently could, but at last, in a lapse of good-nature, I +consented to masquerade as a book, only I warned them that it +would take some time to carry out. They waited for the best +part of forty minutes, while I went and played wineglass +skittles with the page-boy in the pantry; you play it with a +champagne cork, you know, and the one who knocks down the +most glasses without breaking them wins. I won, with four +unbroken out of seven; I think William suffered from over- +anxiousness. They were rather mad in the drawing-room at my +not having come back, and they weren't a bit pacified when I +told them afterwards that I was "At the end of the passage." + +"I never did like Kipling," was Mrs. Babwold's comment, when +the situation dawned upon her. "I couldn't see anything +clever in Earthworms out of Tuscany--or is that by Darwin?" + +Of course these games are very educational, but, personally, +I prefer bridge. + +On Christmas evening we were supposed to be specially festive +in the Old English fashion. The hall was horribly draughty, +but it seemed to be the proper place to revel in, and it was +decorated with Japanese fans and Chinese lanterns, which gave +it a very Old English effect. A young lady with a +confidential voice favoured us with a long recitation about a +little girl who died or did something equally hackneyed, and +then the Major gave us a graphic account of a struggle he had +with a wounded bear. I privately wished that the bears would +win sometimes on these occasions; at least they wouldn't go +vapouring about it afterwards. Before we had time to recover +our spirits, we were indulged with some thought-reading by a +young man whom one knew instinctively had a good mother and +an indifferent tailor--the sort of young man who talks +unflaggingly through the thickest soup, and smooths his hair +dubiously as though he thought it might hit back. The +thought-reading was rather a success; he announced that the +hostess was thinking about poetry, and she admitted that her +mind was dwelling on one of Austin's odes. Which was near +enough. I fancy she had been really wondering whether a +scrag-end of mutton and some cold plum-pudding would do for +the kitchen dinner next day. As a crowning dissipation, they +all sat down to play progressive halma, with milk-chocolate +for prizes. I've been carefully brought up, and I don't like +to play games of skill for milk-chocolate, so I invented a +headache and retired from the scene. I had been preceded a +few minutes earlier by Miss Langshan-Smith, a rather +formidable lady, who always got up at some uncomfortable hour +in the morning, and gave you the impression that she had been +in communication with most of the European Governments before +breakfast. There was a paper pinned on her door with a +signed request that she might be called particularly early on +the morrow. Such an opportunity does not come twice in a +lifetime. I covered up everything except the signature with +another notice, to the effect that before these words should +meet the eye she would have ended a misspent life, was sorry +for the trouble she was giving, and would like a military +funeral. A few minutes later I violently exploded an air- +filled paper bag on the landing, and gave a stage moan that +could have been heard in the cellars. Then I pursued my +original intention and went to bed. The noise those people +made in forcing open the good lady's door was positively +indecorous; she resisted gallantly, but I believe they +searched her for bullets for about a quarter of an hour, as +if she had been an historic battlefield. + +I hate travelling on Boxing Day, but one must occasionally do +things that one dislikes. + + + +REGINALD'S RUBAIYAT + + + +The other day (confided Reginald), when I was killing time in +the bathroom and making bad resolutions for the New Year, it +occurred to me that I would like to be a poet. The chief +qualification, I understand, is that you must be born. Well, +I hunted up my birth certificate, and found that I was all +right on that score, and then I got to work on a Hymn to the +New Year, which struck me as having possibilities. It +suggested extremely unusual things to absolutely unlikely +people, which I believe is the art of first-class catering in +any department. Quite the best verse in it went something +like this - + + +"Have you heard the groan of a gravelled grouse, +Or the snarl of a snaffled snail +(Husband or mother, like me, or spouse), +Have you lain a-creep in the darkened house +Where the wounded wombats wail?" + + +It was quite improbable that anyone had, you know, and that's +where it stimulated the imagination and took people out of +their narrow, humdrum selves. No one has ever called me +narrow or humdrum, but even I felt worked up now and then at +the thought of that house with the stricken wombats in it. +It simply wasn't nice. But the editors were unanimous in +leaving it alone; they said the thing had been done before +and done worse, and that the market for that sort of work was +extremely limited. + +It was just on the top of that discouragement that the +Duchess wanted me to write something in her album--something +Persian, you know, and just a little bit decadent--and I +thought a quatrain on an unwholesome egg would meet the +requirements of the case. So I started in with - + + +"Cackle, cackle, little hen, +How I wonder if and when +Once you laid the egg that I +Met, alas! too late. Amen." + + +The Duchess objected to the Amen, which I thought gave an air +of forgiveness and chose jugee to the whole thing; also she +said it wasn't Persian enough, as though I were trying to +sell her a kitten whose mother had married for love rather +than pedigree. So I recast it entirely, and the new version +read - + + +"The hen that laid thee moons ago, who knows +In what Dead Yesterday her shades repose; +To some election turn thy waning span +And rain thy rottenness on fiscal foes." + + +I thought there was enough suggestion of decay in that to +satisfy a jackal, and to me there was something infinitely +pathetic and appealing in the idea of the egg having a sort +of St. Luke's summer of commercial usefulness. But the +Duchess begged me to leave out any political allusions; she's +the president of a Women's Something or other, and she said +it might be taken as an endorsement of deplorable, methods. +I never can remember which Party Irene discourages with her +support, but I shan't forget an occasion when I was staying +at her place and she gave me a pamphlet to leave at the house +of a doubtful voter, and some grapes and things for a woman +who was suffering from a chill on the top of a patent +medicine. I thought it much cleverer to give the grapes to +the former and the political literature to the sick woman, +and the Duchess was quite absurdly annoyed about it +afterwards. It seems the leaflet was addressed "To those +about to wobble"--I wasn't responsible for the silly title of +the thing--and the woman never recovered; anyway, the voter +was completely won over by the grapes and jellies, and I +think that should have balanced matters. The Duchess called +it bribery, and said it might have compromised the candidate +she was supporting; he was expected to subscribe to church +funds and chapel funds, and football and cricket clubs and +regattas, and bazaars and beanfeasts and bellringers, and +poultry shows and ploughing matches, and reading-rooms and +choir outings, and shooting trophies and testimonials, and +anything of that sort; but bribery would not have been +tolerated. + +I fancy I have perhaps more talent for electioneering than +for poetry, and I was really getting extended over this +quatrain business. The egg began to be unmanageable, and the +Duchess suggested something with a French literary ring about +it. I hunted back in my mind for the most familiar French +classic that I could take liberties with, and after a little +exercise of memory I turned out the following:- + + +"Hast thou the pen that once the gardener had? +I have it not; and know, these pears are had. +Oh, larger than the horses of the Prince +Are those the general drives in Kaikobad." + + +Even that didn't altogether satisfy Irene; I fancy the +geography of it puzzled her. She probably thought Kaikobad +was an unfashionable German spa, where you'd meet matrimonial +bargain-hunters and emergency Servian kings. My temper was +beginning to slip its moorings by that time I look rather +nice when I lose my temper. (I hoped you would say I lose it +very often. I mustn't monopolise the conversation.) + +"Of course, if you want something really Persian and +passionate, with red wine and bulbuls in it," I went on to +suggest; but she grabbed the book away from me. + +"Not for worlds. Nothing with red wine or passion in it. +Dear Agatha gave me the album, and she would be mortified to +the quick" - + +I said I didn't believe Agatha had a quick, and we got quite +heated in arguing the matter. Finally, the Duchess declared +I shouldn't write anything nasty in her book, and I said I +wouldn't write anything in her nasty book, so there wasn't a +very wide point of difference between us. For the rest of +the afternoon I pretended to be sulking, but I was really +working back to that quatrain, like a fox-terrier that's +buried a deferred lunch in a private flower-bed. When I got +an opportunity I hunted up Agatha's autograph, which had the +front page all to itself, and, copying her prim handwriting +as well as I could, I inserted above it the following +Thibetan fragment:- + + +"With Thee, oh, my Beloved, to do a dak +(a dak I believe is a sort of uncomfortable post-journey) +On the pack-saddle of a grunting yak, +With never room for chilling chaperone, +'Twere better than a Panhard in the Park." + + +That Agatha would get on to a yak in company with a lover +even in the comparative seclusion of Thibet is unthinkable. +I very much doubt if she'd do it with her own husband in the +privacy of the Simplon tunnel. But poetry, as I've remarked +before, should always stimulate the imagination. + +By the way, when you asked me the other day to dine with you +on the 14th, I said I was dining with the Duchess. Well, I'm +not. I'm dining with you. + + + +THE INNOCENCE OF REGINALD + + + +Reginald slid a carnation of the newest shade into the +buttonhole of his latest lounge coat, and surveyed the result +with approval. "I am just in the mood," he observed, "to +have my portrait painted by someone with an unmistakable +future. So comforting to go down to posterity as 'Youth with +a Pink Carnation' in catalogue--company with 'Child with +Bunch of Primroses,' and all that crowd." + +"Youth," said the Other, "should suggest innocence." + +"But never act on the suggestion. I don't believe the two +ever really go together. People talk vaguely about the +innocence of a little child, but they take mighty good care +not to let it out of their sight for twenty minutes. The +watched pot never boils over. I knew a boy once who really +was innocent; his parents were in Society, but they never +gave him a moment's anxiety from his infancy. He believed in +company prospectuses, and in the purity of elections, and in +women marrying for love, and even in a system for winning at +roulette. He never quite lost his faith in it, but he +dropped more money than his employers could afford to lose. +When last I heard of him, he was believing in his innocence; +the jury weren't. All the same, I really am innocent just +now of something everyone accuses me of having done, and so +far as I can see, their accusations will remain unfounded." + +"Rather an unexpected attitude for you." + +"I love people who do unexpected things. Didn't you always +adore the man who slew a lion in a pit on a snowy day? But +about this unfortunate innocence. Well, quite long ago, when +I'd been quarrelling with more people than usual, you among +the number--it must have been in November, I never quarrel +with you too near Christmas--I had an idea that I'd like to +write a book. It was to be a book of personal reminiscences, +and was to leave out nothing." + +"Reginald!" + +"Exactly what the Duchess said when I mentioned it to her. I +was provoking and said nothing, and the next thing, of +course, was that everyone heard that I'd written the book and +got it in the press. After that, I might have been a gold- +fish in a glass bowl for all the privacy I got. People +attacked me about it in the most unexpected places, and +implored or commanded me to leave out things that I'd +forgotten had ever happened. I sat behind Miriam Klopstock +one night in the dress circle at His Majesty's, and she began +at once about the incident of the Chow dog in the bathroom, +which she insisted must be struck out. We had to argue it in +a disjointed fashion, because some of the people wanted to +listen to the play, and Miriam takes nines in voices. They +had to stop her playing in the 'Macaws' Hockey Club because +you could hear what she thought when her shins got mixed up +in a scrimmage for half a mile on a still day. They are +called the Macaws because of their blue-and-yellow costumes, +but I understand there was nothing yellow about Miriam's +language. I agreed to make one alteration, as I pretended I +had got it a Spitz instead of a Chow, but beyond that I was +firm. She megaphoned back two minutes later, 'You promised +you would never mention it; don't you ever keep a promise?' +When people had stopped glaring in our direction, I replied +that I'd as soon think of keeping white mice. I saw her +tearing little bits out of her programme for a minute or two, +and then she leaned back and snorted, 'You're not the boy I +took you for,' as though she were an eagle arriving at +Olympus with the wrong Ganymede. That was her last audible +remark, but she went on tearing up her programme and +scattering the pieces around her, till one of her neighbours +asked with immense dignity whether she should send for a +wastepaper basket. I didn't stay for the last act." + +"Then there is Mrs.--oh, I never can remember her name; she +lives in a street that the cabmen have never heard of, and is +at home on Wednesdays. She frightened me horribly once at a +private view by saying mysteriously, 'I oughtn't to be here, +you know; this is one of my days.' I thought she meant that +she was subject to periodical outbreaks and was expecting an +attack at any moment. So embarrassing if she had suddenly +taken it into her head that she was Cesar Borgia or St. +Elizabeth of Hungary. That sort of thing would make one +unpleasantly conspicuous even at a private view. However, +she merely meant to say that it was Wednesday, which at the +moment was incontrovertible. Well, she's on quite a +different tack to the Klopstock. She doesn't visit anywhere +very extensively, and, of course, she's awfully keen for me +to drag in an incident that occurred at one of the +Beauwhistle garden-parties, when she says she accidentally +hit the shins of a Serene Somebody or other with a croquet +mallet and that he swore at her in German. As a matter of +fact, he went on discoursing on the Gordon-Bennett affair in +French. (I never can remember if it's a new submarine or a +divorce. Of course, how stupid of me!) To be disagreeably +exact, I fancy she missed him by about two inches--over- +anxiousness, probably--but she likes to think she hit him. +I've felt that way with a partridge which I always imagine +keeps on flying strong, out of false pride, till it's the +other side of the hedge. She said she could tell me +everything she was wearing on the occasion. I said I didn't +want my book to read like a laundry list, but she explained +that she didn't mean those sort of things." + +"And there's the Chilworth boy, who can be charming as long +as he's content to be stupid and wear what he's told to; but +he gets the idea now and then that he'd like to be +epigrammatic, and the result is like watching a rook trying +to build a nest in a gale. Since he got wind of the book, +he's been persecuting me to work in something of his about +the Russians and the Yalu Peril, and is quite sulky because I +won't do it." + +"Altogether, I think it would be rather a brilliant +inspiration if you were to suggest a fortnight in Paris." + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Reginald, by Saki (H. H. Munro) + diff --git a/old/rgnld10.zip b/old/rgnld10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..0e30f72 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/rgnld10.zip |