He Laughs Before, During, And After Every Remark
I Make, Unless It Be A Simple Request For Food Or Drink.
This is an
acquaintance of Willie Beresford, the Honourable Arthur Ponsonby,
who was the 'whip' on our coach drive to Dorking, - dear, delightful,
adorable Dorking, of hen celebrity.
Salemina insisted on my taking the box seat, in the hope that the
Honourable Arthur would amuse me. She little knew him! He sapped
me of all my ideas, and gave me none in exchange. Anything so
unspeakably heavy I never encountered. It is very difficult for a
woman who doesn't know a nigh horse from an off one, nor the
wheelers from the headers (or is it the fronters?), to find subjects
of conversation with a gentleman who spends three-fourths of his
existence on a coach. It was the more difficult for me because I
could not decide whether Willie Beresford was cross because I was
devoting myself to the whip, or because Francesca had remained at
home with a headache. This state of affairs continued for about
fifteen miles, when it suddenly dawned upon the Honourable Arthur
that, however mistaken my speech and manner, I was trying to be
agreeable. This conception acted on the honest and amiable soul
like magic. I gradually became comprehensible, and finally he gave
himself up to the theory that, though eccentric, I was harmless and
amusing, so we got on famously, - so famously that Willie Beresford
grew ridiculously gloomy, and I decided that it could not be
Francesca's headache.
The names of these English streets are a never-failing source of
delight to me. In that one morning we drove past Pie, Pudding, and
Petticoat Lanes, and later on we found ourselves in a 'Prudent
Passage,' which opened, very inappropriately, into 'Huggin Lane.'
Willie Beresford said it was the first time he had ever heard of
anything so disagreeable as prudence terminating in anything so
agreeable as huggin'. When he had been severely reprimanded by his
mother for this shocking speech, I said to the Honourable Arthur:-
"I don't understand your business signs in England, - this 'Company,
Limited,' and that 'Company, Limited.' That one, of course, is
quite plain" (pointing to the front of a building on the village
street), "'Goat's Milk Company, Limited'; I suppose they have but
one or two goats, and necessarily the milk must be Limited."
Salemina says that this was not in the least funny, that it was
absolutely flat; but it had quite the opposite effect upon the
Honourable Arthur. He had no command over himself or his horses for
some minutes; and at intervals during the afternoon the full
felicity of the idea would steal upon him, and the smile of
reminiscence would flit across his ruddy face.
The next day, at the Eton and Harrow games at Lord's cricket-ground,
he presented three flowers of British aristocracy to our party, and
asked me each time to tell the goat-story, which he had previously
told himself, and probably murdered in the telling. Not content
with this arrant flattery, he begged to be allowed to recount some
of my international episodes to a literary friend who writes for
Punch. I demurred decidedly, but Salemina said that perhaps I ought
to be willing to lower myself a trifle for the sake of elevating
Punch! This home-thrust so delighted the Honourable Arthur that it
remained his favourite joke for days, and the overworked goat was
permitted to enjoy that oblivion from which Salemina insists it
should never have emerged.
Chapter V. A Hyde Park Sunday.
The Honourable Arthur, Salemina, and I took a stroll in Hyde Park
one Sunday afternoon, not for the purpose of joining the fashionable
throng of 'pretty people' at Stanhope Gate, but to mingle with the
common herd in its special precincts, - precincts not set apart,
indeed, by any legal formula, but by a natural law of classification
which seems to be inherent in the universe. It was a curious and
motley crowd - a little dull, perhaps, but orderly, well-behaved, and
self-respecting, with here and there part of the flotsam and jetsam
of a great city, a ragged, sodden, hopeless wretch wending his way
about with the rest, thankful for any diversion.
Under the trees, each in the centre of his group, large or small
according to his magnetism and eloquence, stood the park 'shouter,'
airing his special grievance, playing his special part, preaching
his special creed, pleading his special cause, - anything, probably,
for the sake of shouting. We were plainly dressed, and did not
attract observation as we joined the outside circle of one of these
groups after another. It was as interesting to watch the listeners
as the speakers. I wished I might paint the sea of faces, eager,
anxious, stolid, attentive, happy, and unhappy: histories written
on many of them; others blank, unmarked by any thought or
aspiration. I stole a sidelong look at the Honourable Arthur. He
is an Englishman first, and a man afterwards (I prefer it the other
way), but he does not realise it; he thinks he is just like all
other good fellows, although he is mistaken. He and Willie
Beresford speak the same language, but they are as different as
Malay and Eskimo. He is an extreme type, but he is very likeable
and very well worth looking at, with his long coat, his silk hat,
and the white Malmaison in his buttonhole. He is always so
radiantly, fascinatingly clean, the Honourable Arthur, simple,
frank, direct, sensible, and he bores me almost to tears.
The first orator was edifying his hearers with an explanation of the
drama of The Corsican Brothers, and his eloquence, unlike that of
the other speakers, was largely inspired by the hope of pennies. It
was a novel idea, and his interpretation was rendered very amusing
to us by the wholly original Yorkshire accent which he gave to the
French personages and places in the play.
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