Frivolities, Especially Addressed to Those Who Are Tired of Being Serious

IV

The procession left Mulberry House in the following order: the first fly contained all that was left of Mr. Bindon. The seats were occupied by four ladies-excited ladies. Mr. Bindon-all, we repeat, that was left of him-stood up between the four. He had not much standing room.

Around the first fly circled a crowd of boys. The crowd consisted of twelve-twelve sons! They hurrahed and shouted, they jumped and ran. Their proceedings gave to the procession an air of triumph. Eight young ladies walked beside the fly, the driver of which had received instructions not to proceed above a walking pace. These young ladies wept.

The second fly contained seven ladies, five inside and two upon the box. The language of these ladies was both fluent and fervid. They beguiled the tedium of the way by making personal remarks which must have been distinctly audible to at least one person in the fly in front. This person was kept in a perpendicular position by the points of four umbrellas.

"I hope," observed Mrs. Harland, when the procession had started, "that they won't murder him."

"I don't think you need be afraid of that, my love. They will merely escort him back, in the bosom of his family, to the City of the Saints."

Mr. Harland examined a cheque, which was written in a trembling hand, and the ink on which was scarcely dry. And the procession passed from sight.

A Burglar Alarm

I must confess that the idea appealed to Leila more strongly than it did to me. I do not deny that it struck me as original. But it does not follow that because an idea is original it is of much practical value. Leila thought that it was just the thing which was wanted to calm her condition of nervous disquietude. So, of course, I said nothing.

At that time we were living at The Larches, and had only just discovered what a striking difference there is in a house, which is nine miles away from anywhere, in the summer and in the winter. In the summer the place was a perfect paradise. The house was embowered in trees. Within a stone's-throw was a little stream, which murmured as it meandered, singing, as it were, songs of Arcady. But as the nights grew longer, and the mornings further off, it was even painful to observe what a different aspect The Larches began to wear. The winds howled through the leafless corpses of the trees like souls in agony. The stream rose till it flooded all the neighbourhood. During the long evenings the feeling of solitude was really most depressing. As Leila justly remarked, if anything happened in the dead of the night, and we were in need of assistance, where should we be? The nearest doctor was thirteen miles off. A policeman seven. The only servants we could induce to stay with us were an old woman, who was so old that she had to choose between us and the workhouse, and a young girl who had come to us out of the workhouse, and who was undoubtedly meditating returning whence she came. She said that it was livelier at the workhouse than at The Larches. Of that, personally, I have not the slightest doubt.

One day in November I was reading a paper. We did get a paper, now and then, though I trust that not many people have realised what it means to drive, in English November weather, in an open basket-carriage, perhaps eighteen miles to get one. In this paper a paragraph caught my eye, which was headed, "A Burglar Alarm." I read it. The idea of the thing was this. You were to cover the hall, and the stairs, and the banisters, and any other place where anybody was likely to tread, with open newspapers. Then, if a burglar came into the house in the middle of the night, he would step on the newspapers, and you would hear them rustle, and would know that he was there. The idea rather struck me. I mentioned it to Leila. Indeed, I read the paragraph to her there and then. She was quite ecstatic.

"We'll try it to-night," she said.

I did not see the exact sequitur. Nor why we should lay traps for burglars because paragraphs appeared in papers. I told her so.

"If a burglar did break in, where should we be?" she asked.

That was her favourite form of inquiry. I really could not tell her, though I strongly suspected that I, for one, should be in bed. Nor did I see how, in that respect, the situation would be altered, although the house was covered with newspapers, both within and without.

"My dear Frederic, how dense you are! Don't you understand that we should at least know that the man was there, and that would be some relief at any rate."

I was not so sure of this myself, although I did not care to interrupt her flow of eloquence to tell her so.

"I'll hunt up all the newspapers I can find, and, to-night, we'll cover the stairs."

We did. Leila is of a sanguine temperament. When she has made up her mind on a subject I generally acquiesce. I acquiesced then.

Shortly before nine, which hour, as a rule, was our bedtime at The Larches, except on those occasions when we retired earlier, we commenced our operations.

We endeavoured to enlist the servants' sympathy and assistance; but Mrs. Perkins evidently regarded the whole affair as savouring of lunacy, and Eliza did nothing else but giggle. So Leila and I had, practically, to do it all. I think that we made a very fair job of it, on the whole. We laid between a dozen and twenty newspapers down in the hall. We covered the stairs.

By the way, it was only after we had covered the stairs that we discovered that it would be difficult, not to say impossible, for anyone to ascend them without disarranging all that we had done; so as we ourselves, and Mrs. Perkins and Eliza were all below, the stairs had to be done over again. The servants went up first. We followed. And, as we followed, we covered the treads with the papers as we went. We even hung newspapers over the banisters, so that if a burglar, alarmed at the noise which he found he made by stepping on the stairs, caught hold of the banisters, he would not find that there was safety there.

I rather fancy that the preparations which we had made for an enemy who might or might not come acted on our own nervous systems.

Anyhow, hardly had we got into our bedroom and locked the door, than there came a noise as if all the newspapers we had just laid down were being stepped upon at once. And not only stepped but jumped on. Leila was immediately in an almost painful state of agitation. I, of course, was not so much affected. Still, I own that, even to me, the thing seemed curious.

"Did you lock the door?" she gasped.

"Certainly. Didn't you see me lock it?"

"Don't let him come in!"

"Don't let who come in, my dear?"

Leila did not say. She stood listening, trembling like a leaf. All was still.

"Frederic, who can it be?"

"I think, my dear, that perhaps I had better go and inquire."

Scarcely had I spoken than there came the noise again. This time it was louder than before, and more prolonged. Leila threw her arms about my neck. She was almost in hysterics.

"Frederic, it's a burglar!"

I did not see very well how it could be. If it was, then the fellow must have been secreted in the house. He must have watched us to our bedrooms, and then have instantaneously taken advantage of the fact of our backs being turned to indulge in acrobatic performances which were scarcely in accordance with received burglarious traditions.

"Nonsense, my dear, it is nothing of the kind."

As a matter of fact, it was not. It was the cat. Or rather, to be quite accurate, the kitten. Our cat, whose name, although the animal was of the feminine persuasion, was Simon, had recently had an addition to her family. In fact, five additions. Four of them, within a very short time of their birth, had passed from life-and into a pail of water. One of them remained alive. I really cannot say why. I imagine that a white eye had something to do with the matter. The small creature was like a lump of soot, except about the region of one eye. There it was as white as the driven, or the undriven-I don't know which it is, but I know it is one or the other-snow. Leila had announced that the creature was to be named Macgregor. I can only repeat that, again, I cannot say why. Leila has a somewhat peculiar habit of naming, or, perhaps, it would be more correct to write, misnaming, the animals which come into her possession. She called the pony we had at The Larches the Duke of Liverpool. She said she did so because there was not a Duke of Liverpool. That seemed to me an insufficient reason why the title should have been conferred upon a spavined, ill-groomed little brute, with a nasty temper, and only three sound legs to move, or, as was more frequently the case, to stand upon.

It seems that Macgregor had mistaken us. He seems to have supposed that Leila and I had occupied the better part of an hour, and taken the stiffening out of our backs, in order to provide him with a novel form of amusement, by means of which he might while away, to his own satisfaction, the witching hours of the stilly night. It appears, too, that Simon, his masculinely-named female parent, had shared in his delusion. At any rate, when Leila was beginning to think that all the burglars in England were dancing breakdowns on those newspapers, and I went out to see what really was the matter, with a revolver which was not loaded, and which never had been loaded, in one hand, and a hairbrush in the other, I found Macgregor dashing up and down the stairs in a perfect ecstasy of enjoyment, while his wretched parent, forgetting the respect which she owed to herself, and the example which she owed to him, was rushing and raging after him. I threw the revolver at Simon and the hairbrush at Macgregor.

Of course Macgregor had to be captured. Also Simon, his mother. It was absurd to suppose that we had covered the house from the top to the bottom with newspapers in order that these two animals might render life not worth the living. But Macgregor was not easy to catch. Leila and I had to hunt him single-handed; though, perhaps, double-handed would have been the better expression. We endeavoured to summon the servants to our assistance. But Mrs. Perkins, who was more than a little deaf when wide awake, was stone deaf when fast asleep. We never entertained any hopes of being able to make her hear. Our idea was to rouse Eliza, then to induce Eliza to prod Mrs. Perkins with her elbow in the side, and so to establish a chain of communication.

However, directly we began to rap at the bedroom door, Eliza seemed to be developing strong symptoms of hysterics, apparently under the impression that we were burglars. So, since the girl was always more or less of an idiot, and we thought it would, perhaps, not be worth our while to send her into fits, we resolved, as has been said, to hunt Macgregor single-handed.

A kitten is a lively animal. One has an object-lesson on this interesting fact in natural history, when, with the aid of a single candle, two persons endeavour to catch a kitten in a large, rambling, old-fashioned house in the darkness of the night. We almost had Macgregor several times. Never quite. We followed him all over the house with untiring and, one might almost write, increasing zeal. Up the stairs and down the stairs. Then up again, then down again. I doubt if, in his short life, Macgregor had ever enjoyed himself so much before. For my part I vowed that never again should a lusus naturæ, in the shape of a white eye, keep a kitten out of a pail.

Finally, in the back kitchen, while making a frenzied dash at him, I missed Macgregor, and knocked the candle over. In endeavouring to save it I cannoned into Leila. I had not previously been aware that she was in my near neighbourhood. With such force did I strike her that I sent her flying backwards, until, reaching the floor, she found a resting-place amidst the pots and the pans. She fell with such a clatter, and with such a din, that, in the darkness, my blood ran cold. And, having fallen, she began to scream in a manner which deprived me of the little self-possession I had left.

"Is that you, Leila?" I inquired.

I felt morally persuaded that it was. I did not see who else it could be. Still, I imagined that I might as well make sure. She did not tell me in so many words. But the voice which screamed was the voice of Leila.

"Are you hurt?" I asked.

Again she did not answer. She only screamed. I was in darkness. I had not saved the candle. I could not see her. I could not feel, because every time I moved I seemed to hit her with another saucepan. I had no matches. I knew of none nearer than the bedroom. I had to leave Leila screaming there. I had to find my way out of that back kitchen, stumbling, as it seemed to me, over all the contents of an ironmonger's shop, and almost knocking out my brains against the partly-opened door. I had to grope my way along the newspaper-covered passages, across the newspaper-covered hall, up the newspaper-covered stairs. I had to hang on to the newspaper-covered banisters.

If ever there was a burglar alarm I sounded it. I heard Macgregor and Simon, his mother, indulging in their little playful pranks, above and below me, and everywhere at once. But the servants did not seem to hear anything. No, nothing. I had no means of knowing if Eliza had frightened herself into a fit, and if Mrs. Perkins was dead. As I entered the bedroom I swept a jug and basin off the wash-hand-stand. It sounded as if I had broken the contents of a china shop. But no one seemed to notice it-not even Simon and Macgregor. Such was my state of agitation, and such the confusion of my mind, that I floundered into the middle cupboard of the wardrobe, which, in some mysterious manner, must have opened of its own accord. I had dragged all Leila's dresses off the hooks and half smothered myself beneath them before I discovered where I was. But I found the matches. Oh, yes, I found them after all.

I also found Leila. She was sitting up on the kitchen floor, in the midst of the pots and pans, in a frame of mind which, by me, was unexpected. She seemed to be under the impression that my conduct had been base, not to say heartless. She appeared to be under the, to me, extraordinary delusion that I had scrambled in the darkness up the newspaper-covered stairs, and fallen over everything which I could fall over, because I hated her. She wept. It was all I myself could do to refrain from tears.

However, we managed to secure Macgregor and his mother in the drawing-room, in which apartment we felt morally persuaded that they would break everything that was worth the breaking. Then Leila insisted upon me rearranging the ingenious little trap which we had laid to catch a burglar.

"What," she remarked, as she wiped away a final tear, "was the use of doing a thing at all if we didn't do it properly?"

There was wisdom in her unanswerable inquiry, though I could not but feel thankful as I reflected that there were no more cats in the house who could mistake our intentions, and, under an entire misapprehension, turn them topsy-turvy once again.

Leila seemed to think that it was all owing to me that the newspapers had become disarranged. I do not know what could have put such an idea into her head. But it was obviously because she thought so that she insisted upon my doing all the work, while she stood three stairs above me and issued her instructions.

I am of a plethoric habit, and by the time I had done all the stooping which Leila thought was indispensable if the burglar alarm was to be all that a burglar alarm ought to be, I was, I am convinced, within a measurable distance of apoplexy. Indeed, I hinted to Leila that burglars might take up their permanent residence at The Larches before I should ever again be persuaded to make such arrangements for their reception. As for that paragraph in the paper, the stuff which some of the papers do contain is really monstrous. If I ever do encounter the editor of that particular journal in private life, I care not where nor when, I shall have to be bound over by the magistrates in at least two sureties, I know I shall.

When Leila, on entering the bedroom, stepped on the handle of the broken jug and perceived the rest of the remains, and that there was about half an inch of water on the floor, I must say that I found her behaviour not a little trying. I had not informed her of the accident which, when I was searching for the matches, I had had, because, such was my state of agitation, it had slipped my mind-though, I know, she doubts it to this hour.

I was aware that she was bound to discover what had happened, therefore why should I have attempted to conceal it? Under the circumstances it is a mere absurdity to imagine that I could have proposed to myself to do anything of the kind; nor was it necessary for her to inform me, especially in the way in which she did inform me, that that toilet set had been one of her wedding presents. If a wedding present is to be regarded as a fetish in a family, and made a sort of little god of, then all I can say is that I wish she had had fewer wedding presents even than she did have.

I regret to have to write that Leila did not hesitate to suggest that I had broken that toilet set on purpose. According to her it was all part of my heartlessness and the hatred which I bore her. That I had almost killed myself while hunting for the matches was nothing to her. Nor did she pause to consider how I could have done it on purpose, when, such was the Egyptian nature of the darkness, I did not even know that the toilet set was there. We mopped the water up with the towels. Then Leila knelt down and pieced the fragments of the toilet set together as best she could, and continued to address me as if I had been guilty, at the very least, of treason felony. When she discovered that during my unfortunate search for those mislaid and miserable matches I had also accidentally and quite unintentionally visited the wardrobe, I thought that she would have thrown something at me, even though she would have had to use as missiles pieces of the broken ware.

It appeared that in dragging Leila's dresses off the hooks I had had what one is bound to confess was the singular ill-fortune to tear holes in most, if not in all of them. Insignificant holes they were for the most part. Really hardly worth the mentioning, though you would not have thought they were hardly worth the mentioning if you had heard Leila. True, I had made rather a lengthy incision in the back of her best silk, and ripped the waistband off her tailor-made; but the rest of the garments were scarcely, that is to say, from my point of view, not appreciably damaged. And when you consider that in my agitation I had struggled as for my life in that death-trap of a wardrobe, surely an allowance might have been made. Leila, however, made absolutely none.

That was not upon the whole a restful night. Neither Leila nor I wooed sweet sleep in that equable, at-peace-with-all-the-world frame of mind in which she should be wooed. It was some time before I ventured into bed at all. When at last I insinuated myself between the sheets Leila's observations followed me. Indeed, if I may be allowed to say so, they more than followed me. I had to coax her with all the power of coaxing that was in me before she could be induced to even think of slumber. Seating herself upon a chair, she announced her unalterable determination to spend the night there rather than consent to share her couch with the being who had torn her dresses. I perceived quite plainly that that burglar alarm was not going to prove an economical contrivance. The little mishaps which I had had were likely to prove a more serious matter than any injury which mere burglars might have caused. But no matter. Leila protests that upon that fateful night I promised, as some slight solatium to her injured feelings, not to speak of her damaged vestments, to present her with six new dresses. This sounds to me almost incredible. I scarcely think that under any circumstances I can have gone so far as that. And when she adds, as she does add, that I gave her my solemn assurance that she should be allowed to select and to purchase at my expense any toilet set which she might see, and which might take her fancy when she next went up with me to town, I can only declare that if I did give such an undertaking it was only because I had firmly and finally resolved, in my own mind, that while such a prospect stared me in the face she never should go up with me to town again. But, as I have said already, no matter. I daresay that I did promise something. Now, I do not care what I promised. Whatever it was, the promise was extracted from me under pressure. I never meant to keep it. That I earnestly affirm.