Fancies and Goodnights (2 page)

Alice and Irwin were as simple and as happy as any young couple
in a family-style motion picture. In fact, they were even happier,
for people were not looking at them all the time and their joys
were not restricted by the censorship code. It is therefore
impossible to describe the transports with which Alice flew to
embrace Irwin on his return from work, or the rapture with which
Irwin returned her caresses.

It was at least two hours before they even thought about dinner.
Even then, it took a long time to get the food on the table, there
was so much patting and petting, nibbling at the nape of the neck,
mumbling of ears, kissing, fondling, and foolishness to the
carrying of every single dish.

When at last the meal was ready, you may be sure they ate with
excellent appetite. Nevertheless, whatever was best on his plate,
he found time to put it on hers, and she was no slower in picking
out some dainty titbit to pop between his eager and rather rubbery
lips.

After dinner they would sit in one chair, for all the world like
two innocent love-birds in a cage, and he would entertain her with
a detailed catalogue of her charms, which gave her the highest
possible opinion of his taste and judgment. However, these delights
did not endure very long, for they found it necessary to go to bed
at an early hour, in order to rise bright and fresh in the
morning.

It was a dull and heavy night when he did not wake up once or
twice, and switch on the light to assure himself she was not merely
a delightful dream. She, blinking through the rosy radiance, was
not in the least annoyed at being thus awakened, and they would
have a very delightful little conversation and soon would fall
happily asleep again.

It is not likely that a husband whose evenings are so
contentedly spent at home will often linger in saloons and barrooms
when the day

The apartment, on a fifth floor in the
huiti

Two young men were discussing life. Said the richer of them to
the poorer,

I was ready for anything when I came to the town of
T

There are certain people who do not come to full flower until
they are well over fifty. Among these are all males named
Murchison. A Mr. Murchison is nothing without pink cheeks, white
whiskers, and vintage port. There are no females of this name,
except by accident. In fact, one wonders how the breed is
continued, since bachelorhood is a fourth essential attribute of a
true Murchison. Fortunately, they tend to be lawyers of the
old-fashioned school, and old-fashioned family lawyers know all
sorts of peculiar secrets.

By keeping at it twenty-four hours a day, and for considerably
more than fifty years, Mr. Benjamin Murchison had succeeded in
becoming a nearly perfect specimen of his race. He was fit to be
stuffed and put in a museum, although there, of course, he could
not have beamed and twinkled so benevolently.

He was very comfortably off, and could have been really wealthy,
but certain of the more remunerative fields of law were not
entirely to his taste. Indeed, he had become so fastidious that he
would have retired completely, but many of his old friends had died
and had left estates to be divided among their children, and to all
these numerous broods Mr. Murchison was guardian, trustee, adviser,
friend, and uncle.

Nothing delighted him more than to pay visits to his young
friends, and nothing delighted them more than to have him.

Although nearly perfect, Mr. Murchison had one little
eccentricity, which he kept extremely private. It was a mere
nothing, a thought, a whim; it seems almost unfair to mention it.
The fact is, he felt that nothing in the world would be nicer than
to set fire to a house and watch it blaze.

What is the harm in that? Who has not had a similar bright
vision at some time or other? There is no doubt about it; it
would
be nice, very nice indeed, absolutely delightful. But
most of us are well broken in and we dismiss the idea as
impracticable. Mr. Murchison found that it took root in his mind
and blossomed there like a sultry flower.

When thoughts of this delightful description occurred to him,
which was increasingly often, he would smile all over his face and
rub his hands together with a zest that was very pleasant to
behold. Having rubbed them, he would spread them out, as if to
enjoy the cheerful blaze of a Christmas fire. Nothing could be more
benevolent than his aspect when indulging in this little mannerism.
Young wives who had married into the circle of his wards and
prot

The minute I left the golf links, I gave a sort of sniff.

There was a young man who was invariably spurned by the girls,
not because he smelt at all bad, but because he happened to be as
ugly as a monkey. He had a good heart, but this soured it, and
though he would grudgingly admit that the female kind were very
agreeable in shape, size, and texture, he thought that in all other
respects they were the most stupid, blind, perverse, and
ill-natured bitches that had ever infested the earth.

He expressed this view very forcefully, and on all possible
occasions. One evening he was holding forth to a circle of his
cronies: it was in the Horseshoe Bar, at the bottom of the
Tottenham Court Road. He could not help noticing that his remarks
attracted the interest of a smart and saturnine individual seated
at the next table, who had the rather repulsive look of a detective
dressed up in evening clothes for the purpose of spying on a
night-club.

Our friend was in no wise abashed by this scrutiny, but
continued to say exactly what girls were, and what they did
whenever they got the chance. He, who had least evidence for it of
any man in the world, seemed to think they were unduly inclined to
lasciviousness.

Just outside London there lived an old father who dearly loved
his only son. Accordingly, when the boy was a youngster of some
eighteen years, the old man sent for him and, with a benevolent
glimmer of his horn-rimmed spectacles, said,

A young man entered the office of a prominent dentist, and
seated himself in the chair. He scornfully waved aside the little
probe and mirror with which the dentist smilingly approached him.

There was a certain Ambrose, who was proud of his superior
profile and his superior taste. His wife was supposed to be a
testimony to both. She was a honey blonde with a wide mouth and a
bewitching eye, better than a bowl of strawberries and cream, but
she was too simple to be fit for any but an adoring role, and this
was what he assigned to her. He managed, however, to teach her to
demand sherry, and sneer at cocktails, and sometimes she wondered
if she was sighing for a Manhattan.

They had a little house on Long Island, and another in the South
of France. On one occasion he was opening his letters:

Mr. Spiers came in extremely late. He shut the door very
quietly, switched on the electric light, and stood for quite a long
time on the door-mat. Mr. Spiers was a prosperous accountant with a
long, lean face, naturally pale; a cold eye, and a close mouth.
Just behind his jaw bones a tiny movement was perceptible, like the
movement of gills in a fish.

He now took off his bowler hat, looked at it inside and out, and
hung it upon the usual peg. He pulled off his muffler, which was a
dark one, dotted with polka dots of a seemly size, and he
scrutinized this muffler very carefully and hung it on another peg.
His overcoat, examined even more scrupulously, was next hung up,
and Mr. Spiers went quickly upstairs.

In the bathroom he spent a very long time at the mirror. He
turned his face this way and that, tilted it sideways to expose his
jaw and neck. He noted the set of his collar, saw that his tiepin
was straight, looked at his cuff links, his buttons, and finally
proceeded to undress. Again he examined each garment very closely;
it was as well Mrs. Spiers did not see him at this moment, or she
might have thought he was looking for a long hair, or traces of
powder. However, Mrs. Spiers had been asleep for a couple of hours.
After her husband had examined every stitch of his clothing, he
crept to his dressing room for a clothes-brush, which he used even
upon his shoes. Finally he looked at his hands and his nails, and
scrubbed them both very thoroughly.

He then sat down on the edge of the bath, put his elbows on his
knees and his chin on his hands, and gave himself up to a very
profound train of thought. Now and then he marked the checking-off
of some point or other by lifting a finger and bringing it back
again onto his cheek, or even onto the spot behind his jawbone
where there was that little movement, so like the movement of the
gills of a fish.

At last Mr. Spiers seemed satisfied, and he turned out the light
and repaired to the conjugal bedroom, which was decorated in cream,
rose, and old gold.

In the morning, Mr. Spiers arose at his usual hour and
descended, with his usual expression, to the breakfast room.

His wife, who was his opposite in all respects, as some say a
wife should be, was already busy behind the coffee service. She was
as plump, as blonde, as good-humored, and as scatterbrained as any
woman should be at a breakfast table, perhaps even more so. The two
younger children were there; the two older ones were late.

The first thing one noticed about Henri Maurras was inevitably
his gaunt and quixotic Spanish nose, flanked by a pair of enormous
eyes, extremely dark and melancholy, but capable of fire. This
romantic equipment was unfortunately betrayed by the childish,
petulant mouth of a Parisian, and a ridiculous little mustache.

For the rest, he was a mere thread of a young man, a veritable
nailparing, and wore a paper-thin grey suit, under which his little
buttocks presented all the appearance of a hair-pin. He worked as
assistant book-keeper in a big general store in Marseilles, and he
desired ardently to be married.

Frequently he would lose count of a column of figures, and turn
up his dark eyes, as he visualized the bride of his dreams,
youthful, devoted, passionate, deliciously rounded, and yet of
immaculate reputation. Our passionate
petit bourgeois
was
especially set upon the immaculate reputation.

His little mustache would twitch as he imagined the promenades
they would take on Sundays, envied by all who beheld them. She
would hang fondly on his arm, driving all the men to despair; he
would wear a smart suit from Marquet

It was with his eyes wide open, and with a reluctance amounting
to dread, that Albert Baker slowly surrendered to the passion that
was to change his whole life.

Henry Fraser, well assured that almost everything is done by
mirrors, was given a job in India. No sooner had he set foot on
shore than he burst into a horse-laugh. Those who were meeting him
asked in some alarm the cause of this merriment. He replied he was
laughing at the mere idea of the Indian Rope Trick.

He emitted similar startling sounds, and gave the same
explanation, at a tiffin where he was officially made welcome;
likewise on the Maidan, over
chota peg
, in rickshaws, in
bazaars, in the Club, and on the polo ground. Soon he was known
from Bombay to Calcutta as the man who laughed at the Indian Rope
Trick, and he gloried in the well-deserved publicity.

There came a day, however, when he was sitting in his bungalow,
bored to death. His boy entered, and, with suitable salaams,
announced that a mountebank was outside, who craved the honour of
entertaining the
sahib
with a performance of the Indian Rope
Trick. Laughing heartily, Henry consented, and moved out to his
chair upon the veranda.

Below, in the dusty compound, stood a native who was emaciated
to a degree, and who had with him a spry youngster, a huge mat
basket, and a monstrous great sword. Out of the basket he dragged
some thirty feet of stout rope, made a pass or two, and slung it up
into the air. It stayed there. Henry chuckled.

The boy then, with a caper, sprang at the rope, clutched it, and
went up hand over hand, like a monkey. When he reached the top he
vanished into thin air. Henry guffawed.

Soon the man, looking upwards with an anxious expression, began
to hoot and holler after the boy. He called him down, he ordered
him down, he begged him down, he began to swear and curse horribly.
The boy, it seemed, took no notice at all. Henry roared.

Now the black, clapping his abominable great scimitar between
his teeth, took hold of the rope himself, and went up it like a
sailor. He, also, disappeared at the top. Henry

A young man who was walking fast came out of a deep lane onto a
wide hilltop space, where there was a hamlet clustered about a
green. The setting encompassed a pond, ducks, the Waggoner Inn,
with white paint and swinging sign; in fact, all the fresh, clean,
quiet, ordinary appurtenances of an upland Somerset hamlet.

The road went on, and so did the young man, over to the very
brink of the upland, where a white gate gave upon a long garden
well furnished with fruit trees, and at the end of it a snug little
house sheltered by a coppice and enjoying a view over the vast vale
below. An old man of astonishingly benevolent appearance was
pottering about in the garden. He looked up as the walker, Eric
Gaskell, approached his gate.