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

be not only a pleasant amusement, but also a valuable intellectual exercise to Eliza and myself during the winter evenings. Then we could use them for social purposes during the Christmas party season. I do not know how it may be with others, but I have often found, when introduced to a lady, that I have said "Good evening," and then had absolutely nothing else to say. With the help of the conundrum book I would fill in any awkward pause by asking her who was the most amiable king in history. That would break the ice. Besides, if we kept the book reasonably clean, it might afterward make a very serviceable and acceptable present to Eliza's mother. I generally know pretty well what I am doing, I think. I looked at two or three of the conundrums on the way home. There was one which I do not remember precisely, but remarkably clever—something about training the shoot and shooting the train. I often wonder who it is who thinks of these things.

I was, perhaps, rather unfortunate in the evening when I brought the book home. Something may have occurred to put Eliza out; she was inclined to be quite sharp with me. I asked her, gaily, in the passage when I came in, "Can you tell me, dearest, the difference between a camel and a corkscrew? If not, here is a little volume which will inform you."

"Oh, yes! One's used for drawing corks, and the other isn't. You needn't have wasted sixpence on a rubbishy book to tell me that."

"But your answer is not the correct one," I replied. "The correct answer contains a joke. Think again."

"Well, I can't, then. I've got the wash to count."

I said that the wash could wait, but she would not appear to hear me, and went off up-stairs.

At supper I took occasion to say:

"You answered me very tartly when I asked you this afternoon for the difference between a camel and a corkscrew. Perhaps you would not have done so had you known that I bought that book with the intention of sending it as a present to your mother."

"Do you think ma would care about it?"

"I think it would cheer her lonely hours. There are upwards of a thousand conundrums in the book. I have only read twelve, but I found them all exceedingly amusing, and, at the same time, perfectly refined."

"Well, I don't see the good of them."

"They are an intellectual exercise, if you try to guess the right answer."

"I don't believe anybody ever did or ever will guess the right answer."

"If I had time," I said, "I believe I could generally think out a witty answer myself. I do not want to boast, but I believe so."

"Very well, then," said Eliza, snatching up the book and opening it at random, "here's one for you. 'If a lady slipped down the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral, what would she say?' Give me the answer to that."

"I will try to," I replied.

Now, just at the moment when Eliza put the question I felt that I had really got the answer, and then it seemed to pass away from me. Later in the evening I was certainly on the right track, when Eliza dropped her scissors, and the noise again put me off. I spent a very poor night; the answer kept sort of coming and going. Just as I was dropping off to sleep, I seemed to have thought of the answer, and then I would wake up to be sure of it, and find it had slipped me again.

As I was leaving the office, in the evening, after thinking till my head ached without arriving at any result, I put the question to one of our clerks. I thought he might possibly know.

"No," he said, "I don't know what a lady would say if she slipped down those steps. I could make a fair guess at what a man would say, if that's any good to you." Of course it was not.

So, on my return home, I told Eliza that I had not had enough time to spare to think of the answer, and I should be glad to know where she had put the book.

"Oh, I sent that to mother!" she said. "I thought you wanted it sent."

"You might have waited until you knew whether I had finished with it. But, however, what was the answer to that silly riddle?"

"The one about St. Paul's Cathedral? That wasn't in the book at all. I made up the question out of my own head for fun."

"Then," I replied, "all I can say is, that your idea of fun is not mine. It seems to me to be acting a lie. It was not a conundrum at all."

"It would have been if you could have thought of an answer."

"Say no more," I replied, coldly. "I prefer to drop the subject."

 

THE INK

The ink-pot contained a shallow sediment, with short hairs, grit, and a little moisture in it. It came out on the pen in chunks. When I had spoiled the second postcard, Eliza said I was not to talk like that.

"Very well, then," I said, "why don't you have the ink-pot refilled? I'm not made of postcards, and I hate waste."

She replied that anybody would think I was made of something to hear me talk. I thought I had never heard a poorer retort, and told her so. I did not stay to argue it further, as I had to be off to the city. On my return I found the ink-pot full. "This," I thought to myself, "is very nice of Eliza." I had a letter I wanted to write, and sat down to it.

I wrote one word, and it came out a delicate pale gray. I called Eliza at once. I was never quieter in my manner, and it was absurd of her to say that I needn't howl the house down.

"We will not discuss that," I replied. "Just now I sat down to write a letter——"

"What do you want to write letters for now? You might just as well have done them at the office."

I shrugged my shoulders in a Continental manner. "You are probably not aware that I was writing to your own mother. She has so few pleasures. If you do not feel rebuked now——"

"I don't think mamma will lend you any more if you do write."

"We will not enter into that. Why did you fill the ink-pot with water?"

"I didn't."

"Then who did?"

"Nobody did. I didn't think of it until tea-time, and then—well, the tea was there."

I once read a story where a man laughed a low, mirthless laugh. The laugh came to me quite naturally on this occasion. "Say no more," I said. "This is contemptible. Now I forbid you to get the ink—I will get it myself."

On the following night she asked me if I had bought that ink. I replied, "No, Eliza; it has been an exceptionally busy day, and I have not had the time."

"I thought you had forgotten it, perhaps."

"I supposed you would say that," I said. "In you it does not surprise me."

A week later Eliza said that she wanted to do her accounts. "I am glad of that," I said. "Now you will know the misery of living without ink in the house."

"No, I sha'n't," she said, "because I always do my accounts in pencil."

"About three months ago I asked you to fill that ink-pot with ink. Why is it not done?"

"Because you also definitely forbade me to get any ink to fill it with. And you said you'd get it yourself. And it wasn't three months ago."

"I always knew you could not argue, Eliza," I replied. "But I am sorry to see that your memory is failing you as well."

On the next day I bought a penny bottle of ink and left it behind me in an omnibus. There was another bottle (this must have been a week later) which I bought, but dropped on the pavement, where it broke. I did not mention these things to Eliza, but I asked her how much longer she was going to cast a shade over our married life by neglecting to fill the ink-pot.

"Why," she said, "that has been done days and days ago! How can you be so unjust?"

It was as she had said. I made up my mind at once to write to Eliza's mother—who, rightly or wrongly, considers that I have a talent for letter-writing. I felt happier now than I had done for some time, and made up my mind to tell Eliza that I had forgiven her. I wrote a long, cheerful letter to her mother, and thought I would show it to Eliza before I posted it. I called up-stairs to her, "Come down, darling, and see what I've done."

Then I sat down again, and knocked the ink-pot over. The ink covered the letter, the table, my clothes, and the carpet; a black stream of it wandered away looking for something else to spoil.

Then Eliza came down and saw what I had done. To this day she cannot see that it was partly her own fault. The bottle, of course, was too full.

 

THE PUBLIC SCANDAL

I am not a landlord. It suits my purpose better, and is in every way more convenient, to rent a small house on a yearly agreement. But if I were a landlord, I would not allow any tenant of mine to do anything that tended to undermine and honeycomb the gentility of the district. I should take a very short method with such a tenant. I should say to him or her: "Now, then, either this stops, or you go out this instant." That would settle it. However, I am not a landlord.

Even as a tenant I take a very natural interest in the district in which I live. I chose the district carefully, because it was residential, and not commercial. The houses are not very large, and they might be more solidly built, but they are not shops. They have electric bells, and small strips of garden, and a generally genteel appearance. Two of the houses in Arthur Street are occupied by piano-tuners, and bear brass plates. I do not object to that. Piano-tuning is a profession, and I suppose that, in a way, I should be considered a professional man myself. Nor do I object to the letting of apartments, as long as it is done modestly, and without large, vulgar notice-boards. But the general tone of the district is good, and I do most strongly object to anything which would tend to lower it.

It was, as far as I remember, on the Tuesday evening that Eliza rather lost her temper about the hairpins, and said that if I kept on taking them and taking them she did not see how she was to do her hair at all.

This seemed to me rather unjust. I had not taken the hairpins for my own pleasure. The fact is that the waste-pipe from the kitchen sink frequently gets blocked, and a hairpin will often do it when nothing else will. I replied coldly, but without temper, that in future I would have hairpins of my own.

She said: "What nonsense!"

At this I rose, and went up-stairs to bed.

I think that most people who know me know that I am a man of my word. On the following morning, before breakfast, I went into the High Street to buy a pennyworth of hairpins. The short cut from our road into the High Street is down Bloodstone Terrace.

It was in Bloodstone Terrace that I witnessed a sight which pained and surprised me very much. It disgusted me. It was a disgrace to the district, and amounted to a public scandal. St. Augustine's—which is the third house in the terrace—had taken in washing, and not only had taken in washing, but were using their front garden