Eliza, Barry Pain [best fiction novels .txt] 📗

supposed. I have to go out now, but perhaps you'd drop into the drawing-room and explain to the tuner that there's been some slight misunderstanding with his hat. And, I say, a glass of beer and two shillings is as much as you need offer."  

MY FORTUNE

The girl had just removed the supper things. We have supper rather early, because I like a long evening. "Now, Eliza," I said, "you take your work,—your sewing, or whatever it may be,—and I will take my work. Yes, I've brought it with me, and it's to be paid as overtime. I daresay it mayn't seem much to you,—a lot of trouble, and only a few shillings to show for it, when all's said and done,—but that is the way fortunes are made, by sticking at it, by plugging into it, if I may use the term."

"The table's clear, if you want to start," said Eliza.

"Very well," I replied, and fetched my black bag from the passage to get the accounts on which I was working. I always hang the bag on the peg in the passage, just under my hat. Then it is there in the morning when and where it is wanted. Method in little things has always been rather a motto of mine.

"It has sometimes struck me, Eliza," I said, as I came back into the dining-room, with the bag in my hand, "that you do not read so much as I should like to see you read."

"Well, you asked me to take my work, and these socks are for you, and I never know what you do want."

"I did not mean that I wanted you to read at this moment. But there is one book—I cannot say exactly what the title is, and the name of the author has slipped my memory, which I should like to see in your hands occasionally, because it deals with the making of fortunes. It practically shows you how to do it."

"Did the man who wrote it make one?" asked Eliza.

"That—not knowing the name of the man—I cannot say for certain."

"Well, I should want to know that first. And aren't you going to start?"

"I can hardly start until I have unlocked my bag, and I cannot unlock my bag until I have the keys, and I cannot have the keys until I have fetched them from the bedroom. Try to be a little more reasonable."

I could not find the keys in the bedroom. Then Eliza went up, and she could not find them, either. By a sort of oversight they were in my pocket all the time. I laughingly remarked that I knew I should find them first. Eliza seemed rather pettish, the joke being against herself.

"The reason why I mentioned that book," I said, as I unlocked the bag, "is because it points out that there are two ways of making a fortune. One is, if I may say so, my own way,—by method in little things, economy of time, doing all the work that one can get to do, and——"

"You won't get much done to-night, if you don't start soon," said Eliza.

"I do not like to be interrupted in the middle of a sentence. The other way by which you may make a fortune—well, it's not making a fortune. It's that the fortune makes you, if you understand me."

"I don't," said Eliza.

"I mean that the fortune may come of itself by luck. Luck is a very curious thing. We cannot understand it. It's of no use to talk about it, because it is quite impossible to understand it."

"Then don't let's talk about it, especially when you've got something else to do."

"Temper, temper, Eliza! You must guard against that. I was not going to talk about luck. I was going to give you an instance of luck, which happened to come within my own personal experience. It is the case of a man of the name of Chumpleigh, in our office, and would probably interest and amuse you. I do not know if I have ever mentioned Chumpleigh to you."

"Yes, you've told me all about him several times."

I might have mentioned Chumpleigh to Eliza, but I am sure that I have never told her all about him. However, I was not going to sulk, and so I told her the story again. The story would not have been so long if she hadn't interrupted me so frequently.

When I had finished, she said that it was time to go to bed, and I had wasted the evening.

I owned that possibly I had been chatting rather longer than I had intended, but I would still get those accounts done, and sit up to do them.

"And that means extra gas," she said. "That's the way money gets wasted."

"There are many men in my place," I said, "who would refuse to sit down to work as late as this. I don't. Why? On principle. Because it's through the cultivation of the sort of thing that I cultivate one arrives at fortune. Think what fortune would mean to us. Big house, large garden, servants, carriages. I should come in from a day with the hounds, and perhaps say I felt rather done up, and would like a glass of champagne. No question of expense—not a word about it—money no object. You'd just get the bottle out of the sideboard, and I should have my glass, and they'd finish it in the kitchen, and——"

"Are you going to begin, or are you not?" asked Eliza.

"This minute," I replied, opening the black bag. I examined the contents carefully.

"Well," I said, "this is a very strange occurrence indeed—most unaccountable! I don't remember ever to have done anything of the kind before, but I seem to have forgotten to bring that work from the city. Dear me! I shall be forgetting my head next."

Eliza's reply that this would be no great loss did not seem to me to be either funny, or polite, or even true. "You strangely forget yourself," I replied, and turned the gas out sharply.

 

SHAKESPEARE

I led up to it, saying to Eliza, not at all in a complaining way, "Does it not seem to you a pity to let these long winter evenings run to waste?"

"Yes, dear," she replied; "I think you ought to do something."

"And you, too. Is it not so, darling?"

"There's generally some sewing, or the accounts."

"Yes; but these things do not exercise the mind."

"Accounts do."

"Not in the way I mean." I had now reached my point. "How would it be if I were to read aloud to you? I don't think you have ever heard me read aloud. You are fond of the theatre, and we cannot often afford to go. This would make up for it. There are many men who would tell you that they would sooner have a play read aloud to them than see it acted in the finest theatre in the world."

"Would they? Well—perhaps—if I were only sewing it wouldn't interrupt me much."

I said, "That is not very graciously put, Eliza. There is a certain art in reading aloud. Some have it, and some have not. I do not know if I have ever told you, but when I was a boy of twelve I won a prize for recitation, though several older boys were competing against me."

She said that I had told her before several times.

I continued: "And I suppose that I have developed since then. A man in our office once told me that he thought I should have done well on the stage. I don't know whether I ever mentioned it."

She said that I had mentioned it once or twice.

"I should have thought that you would have been glad of a little pleasure—innocent, profitable, and entertaining. However, if you think I am not capable of——"

"What do you want to read?"

"What would you like me to read?"

"Miss Sakers lent me this." She handed me a paper-covered volume, entitled, "The Murglow Mystery; or, The Stain on the Staircase."

"Trash like this is not literature," I said. However, to please her, I glanced at the first page. Half an hour later I said that I should be very sorry to read a book of that stamp out loud.

"Then why do you go on reading it to yourself?"

"Strictly speaking, I am not reading it. I am glancing at it."

When Eliza got up to go to bed, an hour afterward, she asked me if I was still glancing. I kept my temper.

"Try not to be so infernally unreasonable," I said. "If Miss Sakers lends us a book, it is discourteous not to look at it."

On the following night Eliza said that she hoped I was not going to sit up until three in the morning, wasting the gas and ruining my health, over a book that I myself had said—

"And who pays for the gas?"

"Nobody's paid last quarter's yet. Mother can't do everything, and——"

"Well, we can talk about that some other time. To-night I am going to read aloud to you a play of Shakespeare's. I wonder if you even know who Shakespeare was?"

"Of course I do."

"Could you honestly say that you have ever read one—only one—of his tragedies?"

"No. Could you?"

"I am going to read 'Macbeth' to you, trying to indicate by changes in my voice which character is speaking." I opened the book.

Eliza said that she couldn't think who it was took her scissors.

"I can't begin till you keep quiet," I said.

"It's the second pair that's gone this week."

"Very well, then," I said, shutting up the book with a bang, "I will not read aloud to you to-night at all. You may get along as you can without it."

"You're sure you didn't take those scissors for anything?" she replied, meditatively.

"Now then," I said, on the next night, "I am ready to begin. The tragedy is entitled 'Macbeth.' This is the first scene."

"What is the first scene?"

"A blasted heath."

"Well, I think you might give a civil answer to a civil question. There was no occasion to use that word."

"I didn't."

"You did. I heard it distinctly."

"Do let me explain. It's Shakespeare uses the word. I was only quoting it. It merely means——"

"Oh, if it's Shakespeare I suppose it's all right. Nobody seems to mind what he says. You can go on."

I read for some time. Eliza, in reply to my question, owned that she had enjoyed it, but she went to bed before her usual time.

When I was preparing to read aloud on the following evening, I was unable to find our copy of Shakespeare. This was very annoying, as it had been a wedding-present. Eliza said that she had found her scissors, and very likely I should find the Shakespeare some other night.

But I never did. I have half thought of buying another copy, or I dare say Eliza's mother would like to give us it. Eliza thinks not.

 

THE UNSOLVED PROBLEM

"Eliza," I said one evening, "do you think that you are fonder of me than I am of you, or that I am fonder of you than you are of me?"

She answered, "What is thirteen from twenty-eight?" without looking up from the account-book.

"I do think," I said, "that when I speak to you you might have the civility to pay some little attention."

She replied, "One pound fifteen and two, and I hope you know where we are to get it from, for I don't. And don't bang on the table in that silly way, or you'll spill the ink."

"I did not bang. I tapped slightly from a pardonable impatience. I put a plain question to you some time ago, and I should like a plain answer to it."

"Well, what do you want to talk for when you see I am counting? Now, what is it?"

"What I asked was this. Do I think—I mean, do you think—that I am fonder of me—no, you are fonder of I—well, I'll begin again. Which of us two would you say was fonder of the other than the other was of the—dash it all, you know