Tea-table Talk [19]
being found out. It always goes well. The British public invariably welcomes the theme, provided it be dealt with in a merry fashion. It is only the serious discussion of evil that shocks us. There was the usual banging of doors and the usual screaming. Everybody was laughing around us. My young friend sat with rather a curious fixed smile upon his face. 'Fairly well constructed,' I said to him, as the second curtain fell amid yells of delight. 'Yes,' he answered, 'I suppose it's very funny.' I looked at him; he was little more than a boy. 'You are rather young,' I said, 'to be a moralist.' He gave a short laugh. 'Oh! I shall grow out of it in time,' he said. He told me his story later, when I came to know him better. He had played the farce himself over in Melbourne--he was an Australian. Only the third act had ended differently. His girl wife, of whom he was passionately fond, had taken it quite seriously and had committed suicide. A foolish thing to do."
"Man is a beast!" said the Girton Girl, who was prone to strong expression.
"I thought so myself when I was younger," said the Woman of the World.
"And don't you now, when you hear a thing like that?" suggested the Girton Girl.
"Certainly, my dear," replied the Woman of the World; "there is a deal of the animal in man; but--well, I was myself expressing that same particular view of him, the brute, to a very old lady with whom I was spending a winter in Brussels, many years ago now, when I was quite a girl. She had been a friend of my father's, and was one of the sweetest and kindest--I was almost going to say the most perfect woman I have ever met; though as a celebrated beauty, stories, dating from the early Victorian era, were told about her. But myself I never believed them. Her calm, gentle, passionless face, crowned with its soft, silver hair--I remember my first sight of the Matterhorn on a summer's evening; somehow it at once reminded me of her."
"My dear," laughed the Old Maid, "your anecdotal method is becoming as jerky as a cinematograph."
"I have noticed it myself," replied the Woman of the World; "I try to get in too much."
"The art of the raconteur," observed the Philosopher, "consists in avoiding the unessential. I have a friend who never yet to my knowledge reached the end of a story. It is intensely unimportant whether the name of the man who said the thing or did the deed be Brown or Jones or Robinson. But she will worry herself into a fever trying to recollect. 'Dear, dear me!' she will leave off to exclaim; 'I know his name so well. How stupid of me!' She will tell you why she ought to recollect his name, how she always has recollected his name till this precise moment. She will appeal to half the people in the room to help her. It is hopeless to try and induce her to proceed, the idea has taken possession of her mind. After a world of unnecessary trouble she recollects that it was Tomkins, and is delighted; only to be plunged again into despair on discovery that she has forgotten his address. This makes her so ashamed of herself she declines to continue, and full of self- reproach she retires to her own room. Later she re-enters, beaming, with the street and number pat. But by that time she has forgotten the anecdote."
"Well, tell us about your old lady, and what it was you said to her," spoke impatiently the Girton Girl, who is always eager when the subject under discussion happens to be the imbecility or criminal tendency of the opposite sex.
"I was at the age," continued the Woman of the World, "when a young girl tiring of fairy stories puts down the book and looks round her at the world, and naturally feels indignant at what she notices. I was very severe upon both the shortcomings and the overgoings of man--our natural enemy. My old friend used to laugh, and that made me think her callous and foolish. One day our bonne--like all servants, a lover of gossip--came to us delighted with a story which proved to me how just had been my estimate of the male animal. The grocer at the corner
"Man is a beast!" said the Girton Girl, who was prone to strong expression.
"I thought so myself when I was younger," said the Woman of the World.
"And don't you now, when you hear a thing like that?" suggested the Girton Girl.
"Certainly, my dear," replied the Woman of the World; "there is a deal of the animal in man; but--well, I was myself expressing that same particular view of him, the brute, to a very old lady with whom I was spending a winter in Brussels, many years ago now, when I was quite a girl. She had been a friend of my father's, and was one of the sweetest and kindest--I was almost going to say the most perfect woman I have ever met; though as a celebrated beauty, stories, dating from the early Victorian era, were told about her. But myself I never believed them. Her calm, gentle, passionless face, crowned with its soft, silver hair--I remember my first sight of the Matterhorn on a summer's evening; somehow it at once reminded me of her."
"My dear," laughed the Old Maid, "your anecdotal method is becoming as jerky as a cinematograph."
"I have noticed it myself," replied the Woman of the World; "I try to get in too much."
"The art of the raconteur," observed the Philosopher, "consists in avoiding the unessential. I have a friend who never yet to my knowledge reached the end of a story. It is intensely unimportant whether the name of the man who said the thing or did the deed be Brown or Jones or Robinson. But she will worry herself into a fever trying to recollect. 'Dear, dear me!' she will leave off to exclaim; 'I know his name so well. How stupid of me!' She will tell you why she ought to recollect his name, how she always has recollected his name till this precise moment. She will appeal to half the people in the room to help her. It is hopeless to try and induce her to proceed, the idea has taken possession of her mind. After a world of unnecessary trouble she recollects that it was Tomkins, and is delighted; only to be plunged again into despair on discovery that she has forgotten his address. This makes her so ashamed of herself she declines to continue, and full of self- reproach she retires to her own room. Later she re-enters, beaming, with the street and number pat. But by that time she has forgotten the anecdote."
"Well, tell us about your old lady, and what it was you said to her," spoke impatiently the Girton Girl, who is always eager when the subject under discussion happens to be the imbecility or criminal tendency of the opposite sex.
"I was at the age," continued the Woman of the World, "when a young girl tiring of fairy stories puts down the book and looks round her at the world, and naturally feels indignant at what she notices. I was very severe upon both the shortcomings and the overgoings of man--our natural enemy. My old friend used to laugh, and that made me think her callous and foolish. One day our bonne--like all servants, a lover of gossip--came to us delighted with a story which proved to me how just had been my estimate of the male animal. The grocer at the corner