To
the shallow, showy writer, I fear, she generally pays far more than
to the deep and brilliant thinker; and clever roguery seems often
more to her liking than honest worth. But her scheme is a right and
sound one; her aims and intentions are clear; her methods, on the
whole, work fairly well; and every year she grows in judgment.
One day she will arrive at perfect wisdom, and will pay each man
according to his deserts.
But do not be alarmed. This will not happen in our time.
Turning round, while still musing about Society, I ran against B.
(literally). He thought I was a clumsy ass at first, and said so;
but, on recognising me, apologised for his mistake. He had been
there for some time also, waiting for me. I told him that I had
secured two corner seats in a smoking-carriage, and he replied that
he had done so too. By a curious coincidence, we had both fixed
upon the same carriage. I had taken the corner seats near the
platform, and he had booked the two opposite corners. Four other
passengers sat huddled up in the middle. We kept the seats near the
door, and gave the other two away. One should always practise
generosity.
There was a very talkative man in our carriage. I never came across
a man with such a fund of utterly uninteresting anecdotes. He had a
friend with him - at all events, the man was his friend when they
started - and he talked to this friend incessantly, from the moment
the train left Victoria until it arrived at Dover. First of all he
told him a long story about a dog. There was no point in the story
whatever. It was simply a bald narrative of the dog's daily doings.
The dog got up in the morning and barked at the door, and when they
came down and opened the door there he was, and he stopped all day
in the garden; and when his wife (not the dog's wife, the wife of
the man who was telling the story) went out in the afternoon, he was
asleep on the grass, and they brought him into the house, and he
played with the children, and in the evening he slept in the coal-
shed, and next morning there he was again. And so on, for about
forty minutes.
A very dear chum or near relative of the dog's might doubtless have
found the account enthralling; but what possible interest a
stranger - a man who evidently didn't even know the dog - could be
expected to take in the report, it was difficult to conceive.
The friend at first tried to feel excited, and murmured:
"Wonderful!" "Very strange, indeed!" "How curious!" and helped the
tale along by such ejaculations as, "No, did he though?" "And what
did you do then?" or, "Was that on the Monday or the Tuesday, then?"
But as the story progressed, he appeared to take a positive dislike
to the dog, and only yawned each time that it was mentioned.
Indeed, towards the end, I think, though I trust I am mistaken, I
heard him mutter, "Oh, damn the dog!"
After the dog story, we thought we were going to have a little
quiet. But we were mistaken; for, with the same breath with which
he finished the dog rigmarole, our talkative companion added:
"But I can tell you a funnier thing than that - "
We all felt we could believe that assertion. If he had boasted that
he could tell a duller, more uninteresting story, we should have
doubted him; but the possibility of his being able to relate
something funnier, we could readily grasp.
But it was not a bit funnier, after all. It was only longer and
more involved. It was the history of a man who grew his own celery;
and then, later on, it turned out that his wife was the niece, by
the mother's side, of a man who had made an ottoman out of an old
packing-case.
The friend glanced round the carriage apologetically about the
middle of this story, with an expression that said:
"I'm awfully sorry, gentlemen; but it really is not my fault. You
see the position I'm in. Don't blame me. Don't make it worse for
me to bear than it is."
And we each replied with pitying, sympathetic looks that implied:
"That's all right, my dear sir; don't you fret about that. We see
how it is. We only wish we could do something to help you."
The poor fellow seemed happier and more resigned after that.
B. and I hurried on board at Dover, and were just in time to secure
the last two berths in the boat; and we were glad that we had
managed to do this because our idea was that we should, after a good
supper, turn in and go comfortably to sleep.
B. said:
"What I like to do, during a sea passage, is to go to sleep, and
then wake up and find that I am there."
We made a very creditable supper. I explained to B. the ballast
principle held by my seafaring friend, and he agreed with me that
the idea seemed reasonable; and, as there was a fixed price for
supper, and you had as much as you liked, we determined to give the
plan a fair trial.
B. left me after supper somewhat abruptly, as it appeared to me, and
I took a stroll on deck by myself. I did not feel very comfortable.
I am what I call a moderate sailor. I do not go to excess in either
direction. On ordinary occasions, I can swagger about and smoke my
pipe, and lie about my Channel experiences with the best of them.
But when there is what the captain calls "a bit of a sea on," I feel
sad, and try to get away from the smell of the engines and the
proximity of people who smoke green cigars.
