Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green
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Jerome K. Jerome >> Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green
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14 This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
from the 1920 J. W. Arrowsmith edition.
SKETCHES IN LAVENDER, BLUE AND GREEN
by Jerome K. Jerome
Contents:
Reginald Blake, Financier and Cad
An item of Fashionable Intelligence
Blase Billy
The Choice of Cyril Harjohn
The Materialisation of Charles and Mivanway
Portrait of a Lady
The Man Who Would Manage
The Man Who Lived For Others
A Man of Habit
The Absent-minded Man
A Charming Woman
Whibley's Spirit
The Man Who Went Wrong
The Hobby Rider
The Man Who Did Not Believe In Luck
Dick Dunkerman's Cat
The Minor Poet's Story
The Degeneration of Thomas Henry
The City of The Sea
Driftwood
La-ven-der's blue, did-dle, did-dle!
La-ven-der's green;
When I am king, did-dle, did-dle!
You shall be queen.
Call up your men, did-dle, did-dle!
Set them to work;
Some to the plough, did-dle, did-dle!
Some to the cart.
Some to make hay, did-dle, did-dle!
Some to cut corn;
While you and I, did-dle, did-dle!
Keep ourselves warm.
REGINALD BLAKE, FINANCIER AND CAD
The advantage of literature over life is that its characters are
clearly defined, and act consistently. Nature, always inartistic,
takes pleasure in creating the impossible. Reginald Blake was as
typical a specimen of the well-bred cad as one could hope to find
between Piccadilly Circus and Hyde Park Corner. Vicious without
passion, and possessing brain without mind, existence presented to
him no difficulties, while his pleasures brought him no pains. His
morality was bounded by the doctor on the one side, and the
magistrate on the other. Careful never to outrage the decrees of
either, he was at forty-five still healthy, though stout; and had
achieved the not too easy task of amassing a fortune while avoiding
all risk of Holloway. He and his wife, Edith (nee Eppington), were
as ill-matched a couple as could be conceived by any dramatist
seeking material for a problem play. As they stood before the
altar on their wedding morn, they might have been taken as
symbolising satyr and saint. More than twenty years his junior,
beautiful with the beauty of a Raphael's Madonna, his every touch
of her seemed a sacrilege. Yet once in his life Mr. Blake played
the part of a great gentleman; Mrs. Blake, on the same occasion,
contenting herself with a singularly mean role--mean even for a
woman in love.
The affair, of course, had been a marriage of convenience. Blake,
to do him justice, had made no pretence to anything beyond
admiration and regard. Few things grow monotonous sooner than
irregularity. He would tickle his jaded palate with
respectability, and try for a change the companionship of a good
woman. The girl's face drew him, as the moonlight holds a man who,
bored by the noise, turns from a heated room to press his forehead
to the window-pane. Accustomed to bid for what he wanted, he
offered his price. The Eppington family was poor and numerous.
The girl, bred up to the false notions of duty inculcated by a
narrow conventionality, and, feminine like, half in love with
martyrdom for its own sake, let her father bargain for a higher
price, and then sold herself.
To a drama of this description, a lover is necessary, if the
complications are to be of interest to the outside world. Harry
Sennett, a pleasant-looking enough young fellow, in spite of his
receding chin, was possessed, perhaps, of more good intention than
sense. Under the influence of Edith's stronger character he was
soon persuaded to acquiesce meekly in the proposed arrangement.
Both succeeded in convincing themselves that they were acting
nobly. The tone of the farewell interview, arranged for the eve of
the wedding, would have been fit and proper to the occasion had
Edith been a modern Joan of Arc about to sacrifice her own
happiness on the altar of a great cause; as the girl was merely
selling herself into ease and luxury, for no higher motive than the
desire to enable a certain number of more or less worthy relatives
to continue living beyond their legitimate means, the sentiment was
perhaps exaggerated. Many tears were shed, and many everlasting
good-byes spoken, though, seeing that Edith's new home would be
only a few streets off, and that of necessity their social set
would continue to be the same, more experienced persons might have
counselled hope. Three months after the marriage they found
themselves side by side at the same dinner-table; and after a
little melodramatic fencing with what they were pleased to regard
as fate, they accommodated themselves to the customary positions.
Blake was quite aware that Sennett had been Edith's lover. So had
half a dozen other men, some younger, some older than himself. He
felt no more embarrassment at meeting them than, standing on the
pavement outside the Stock Exchange, he would have experienced
greeting his brother jobbers after a settling day that had
transferred a fortune from their hands into his. Sennett, in
particular, he liked and encouraged. Our whole social system,
always a mystery to the philosopher, owes its existence to the fact
that few men and women possess sufficient intelligence to be
interesting to themselves. Blake liked company, but not much
company liked Blake. Young Sennett, however, could always be
relied upon to break the tediousness of the domestic dialogue. A
common love of sport drew the two men together. Most of us improve
upon closer knowledge, and so they came to find good in one
another.
"That is the man you ought to have married," said Blake one night
to his wife, half laughingly, half seriously, as they sat alone,
listening to Sennett's departing footsteps echoing upon the
deserted pavement. "He's a good fellow--not a mere money-grubbing
machine like me."
And a week later Sennett, sitting alone with Edith, suddenly broke
out with:
"He's a better man than I am, with all my high-falutin' talk, and,
upon my soul, he loves you. Shall I go abroad?"
"If you like," was the answer.
"What would you do?"
"Kill myself," replied the other, with a laugh, "or run away with
the first man that asked me."
So Sennett stayed on.
Blake himself had made the path easy to them. There was little
need for either fear or caution. Indeed, their safest course lay
in recklessness, and they took it. To Sennett the house was always
open. It was Blake himself who, when unable to accompany his wife,
would suggest Sennett as a substitute. Club friends shrugged their
shoulders. Was the man completely under his wife's thumb; or,
tired of her, was he playing some devil's game of his own? To most
of his acquaintances the latter explanation seemed the more
plausible.
The gossip, in due course, reached the parental home. Mrs.
Eppington shook the vials of her wrath over the head of her son-in-
law. The father, always a cautious man, felt inclined to blame his
child for her want of prudence.
"She'll ruin everything," he said. "Why the devil can't she be
careful?"
"I believe the man is deliberately plotting to get rid of her,"
said Mrs. Eppington. "I shall tell him plainly what I think."
"You're a fool, Hannah," replied her husband, allowing himself the
licence of the domestic hearth. "If you are right, you will only
precipitate matters; if you are wrong, you will tell him what there
is no need for him to know. Leave the matter to me. I can sound
him without giving anything away, and meanwhile you talk to Edith."
So matters were arranged, but the interview between mother and
daughter hardly improved the position. Mrs. Eppington was
conventionally moral; Edith had been thinking for herself, and
thinking in a bad atmosphere. Mrs. Eppington, grew angry at the
girl's callousness.
"Have you no sense of shame?" she cried.
"I had once," was Edith's reply, "before I came to live here. Do
you know what this house is for me, with its gilded mirrors, its
couches, its soft carpets? Do you know what I am, and have been
for two years?"
The elder woman rose, with a frightened pleading look upon her
face, and the other stopped and turned away towards the window.
"We all thought it for the best," continued Mrs. Eppington meekly.
The girl spoke wearily without looking round.
"Oh! every silly thing that was ever done, was done for the best.
_I_ thought it would be for the best, myself. Everything would be
so simple if only we were not alive. Don't let's talk any more.
All you can say is quite right."
The silence continued for a while, the Dresden-china clock on the
mantelpiece ticking louder and louder as if to say, "I, Time, am
here. Do not make your plans forgetting me, little mortals; I
change your thoughts and wills. You are but my puppets."
"Then what do you intend to do?" demanded Mrs. Eppington at length.
"Intend! Oh, the right thing of course. We all intend that. I
shall send Harry away with a few well-chosen words of farewell,
learn to love my husband and settle down to a life of quiet
domestic bliss. Oh, it's easy enough to intend!"
The girl's face wrinkled with a laugh that aged her. In that
moment it was a hard, evil face, and with a pang the elder woman
thought of that other face, so like, yet so unlike--the sweet pure
face of a girl that had given to a sordid home its one touch of
nobility. As under the lightning's flash we see the whole arc of
the horizon, so Mrs. Eppington looked and saw her child's life.
The gilded, over-furnished room vanished. She and a big-eyed,
fair-haired child, the only one of her children she had ever
understood, were playing wonderful games in the twilight among the
shadows of a tiny attic. Now she was the wolf, devouring Edith,
who was Red Riding Hood, with kisses. Now Cinderella's prince, now
both her wicked sisters. But in the favourite game of all, Mrs.
Eppington was a beautiful princess, bewitched by a wicked dragon,
so that she seemed to be an old, worn woman. But curly-headed
Edith fought the dragon, represented by the three-legged rocking-
horse, and slew him with much shouting and the toasting-fork. Then
Mrs. Eppington became again a beautiful princess, and went away
with Edith back to her own people.
In this twilight hour the misbehaviour of the "General," the
importunity of the family butcher, and the airs assumed by cousin
Jane, who kept two servants, were forgotten.
The games ended. The little curly head would be laid against her
breast "for five minutes' love," while the restless little brain
framed the endless question that children are for ever asking in
all its thousand forms, "What is life, mother? I am very little,
and I think, and think, until I grow frightened. Oh, mother, tell
me, what is life?"
Had she dealt with these questions wisely? Might it not have been
better to have treated them more seriously? Could life after all
be ruled by maxims learned from copy-books? She had answered as
she had been answered in her own far-back days of questioning.
Might it not have been better had she thought for herself?
Suddenly Edith was kneeling on the floor beside her.
"I will try to be good, mother."
It was the old baby cry, the cry of us all, children that we are,
till mother Nature kisses us and bids us go to sleep.
Their arms were round each other now, and so they sat, mother and
child once more. And the twilight of the old attic, creeping
westward from the east, found them again.
The masculine duet had more result, but was not conducted with the
finesse that Mr. Eppington, who prided himself on his diplomacy,
had intended. Indeed, so evidently ill at ease was that gentleman,
when the moment came for talk, and so palpably were his pointless
remarks mere efforts to delay an unpleasant subject, that Blake,
always direct bluntly though not ill-naturedly asked him, "How
much?"
Mr. Eppington was disconcerted.
"It's not that--at least that's not what I have come about," he
answered confusedly.
"What have you come about?"
Inwardly Mr. Eppington cursed himself for a fool, for the which he
was perhaps not altogether without excuse. He had meant to act the
part of a clever counsel, acquiring information while giving none;
by a blunder, he found himself in the witness-box.
"Oh, nothing, nothing," was the feeble response, "merely looked in
to see how Edith was."
"Much the same as at dinner last night, when you were here,"
answered Blake. "Come, out with it."
It seemed the best course now, and Mr. Eppington took the plunge.
"Don't you think," he said, unconsciously glancing round the room
to be sure they were alone, "that young Sennett is a little too
much about the house?"
Blake stared at him.
"Of course, we know it is all right--as nice a young fellow as ever
lived--and Edith--and all that. Of course, it's absurd, but--"
"But what?"
"Well, people will talk."
"What do they say?"
The other shrugged his shoulders.
Blake rose. He had an ugly look when angry, and his language was
apt to be coarse.
"Tell them to mind their own business, and leave me and my wife
alone." That was the sense of what he said; he expressed himself
at greater length, and in stronger language.
"But, my dear Blake," urged Mr. Eppington, "for your own sake, is
it wise? There was a sort of boy and girl attachment between them-
-nothing of any moment, but all that gives colour to gossip.
Forgive me, but I am her father; I do not like to hear my child
talked about."
"Then don't open your ears to the chatter of a pack of fools,"
replied his son-in-law roughly. But the next instant a softer
expression passed over his face, and he laid his hand on the older
man's arm.
"Perhaps there are many more, but there's one good woman in the
world," he said, "and that's your daughter. Come and tell me that
the Bank of England is getting shaky on its legs, and I'll listen
to you."
But the stronger the faith, the deeper strike the roots of
suspicion. Blake said no further word on the subject, and Sennett
was as welcome as before. But Edith, looking up suddenly, would
sometimes find her husband's eyes fixed on her with a troubled look
as of some dumb creature trying to understand; and often he would
slip out of the house of an evening by himself, returning home
hours afterwards, tired and mud-stained.
He made attempts to show his affection. This was the most fatal
thing he could have done. Ill-temper, ill-treatment even, she
might have borne. His clumsy caresses, his foolish, halting words
of tenderness became a horror to her. She wondered whether to
laugh or to strike at his upturned face. His tactless devotion
filled her life as with some sickly perfume, stifling her. If only
she could be by herself for a little while to think! But he was
with her night and day. There were times when, as he would cross
the room towards her, he grew monstrous until he towered above her,
a formless thing such as children dream of. And she would sit with
her lips tight pressed, clutching the chair lest she should start
up screaming.
Her only thought was to escape from him. One day she hastily
packed a few necessaries in a small hand-bag and crept unperceived
from the house. She drove to Charing Cross, but the Continental
Express did not leave for an hour, and she had time to think.
Of what use was it? Her slender stock of money would soon be gone;
how could she live? He would find her and follow her. It was all
so hopeless!
Suddenly a fierce desire of life seized hold of her, the angry
answer of her young blood to despair. Why should she die, never
having known what it was to live? Why should she prostrate herself
before this juggernaut of other people's respectability? Joy
called to her; only her own cowardice stayed her from stretching
forth her hand and gathering it. She returned home a different
woman, for hope had come to her.
A week later the butler entered the dining room, and handed Blake a
letter addressed to him in his wife's handwriting. He took it
without a word, as though he had been expecting it. It simply told
him that she had left him for ever.
The world is small, and money commands many services. Sennett had
gone out for a stroll; Edith was left in the tiny salon of their
appartement at Fecamp. It was the third day of their arrival in
the town. The door was opened and closed, and Blake stood before
her.
She rose frightened, but by a motion he reassured her. There was a
quiet dignity about the man that was strange to her.
"Why have you followed me?" she asked.
"I want you to return home."
"Home!" she cried. "You must be mad. Do you not know--"
He interrupted her vehemently. "I know nothing. I wish to know
nothing. Go back to London at once. I have made everything right;
no one suspects. I shall not be there; you will never see me
again, and you will have an opportunity of undoing your mistake--
our mistake."
She listened. Hers was not a great nature, and the desire to
obtain happiness without paying the price was strong upon her. As
for his good name, what could that matter? he urged. People would
only say that he had gone back to the evil from which he had
emerged, and few would be surprised. His life would go on much as
it had done, and she would only be pitied.
She quite understood his plan; it seemed mean of her to accept his
proposal, and she argued feebly against it. But he overcame all
her objections. For his own sake, he told her, he would prefer the
scandal to be connected with his name rather than with that of his
wife. As he unfolded his scheme, she began to feel that in
acquiescing she was conferring a favour. It was not the first
deception he had arranged for the public, and he appeared to be
half in love with his own cleverness. She even found herself
laughing at his mimicry of what this acquaintance and that would
say. Her spirits rose; the play that might have been a painful
drama seemed turning out an amusing farce.
The thing settled, he rose to go, and held out his hand. As she
looked up into his face, something about the line of his lips smote
upon her.
"You will be well rid of me," she said. "I have brought you
nothing but trouble."
"Oh, trouble," he answered. "If that were all! A man can bear
trouble."
"What else?" she asked.
His eyes travelled aimlessly about the room. "They taught me a lot
of things when I was a boy," he said, "my mother and others--they
meant well--which as I grew older I discovered to be lies; and so I
came to think that nothing good was true, and that everything and
everybody was evil. And then--"
His wandering eyes came round to her and he broke off abruptly.
"Good-bye," he said, and the next moment he was gone.
She sat wondering for a while what he had meant. Then Sennett
returned, and the words went out of her head.
A good deal of sympathy was felt for Mrs. Blake. The man had a
charming wife; he might have kept straight; but as his friends
added, "Blake always was a cad."
AN ITEM OF FASHIONABLE INTELLIGENCE
Speaking personally, I do not like the Countess of --. She is not
the type of woman I could love. I hesitate the less giving
expression to this sentiment by reason of the conviction that the
Countess of -- would not be unduly depressed even were the fact to
reach her ears. I cannot conceive the Countess of --'s being
troubled by the opinion concerning her of any being, human or
divine, other than the Countess of --.
But to be honest, I must admit that for the Earl of -- she makes an
ideal wife. She rules him as she rules all others, relations and
retainers, from the curate to the dowager, but the rod, though
firmly held, is wielded with justice and kindly intent. Nor is it
possible to imagine the Earl of --'s living as contentedly as he
does with any partner of a less dominating turn of mind. He is one
of those weak-headed, strong-limbed, good-natured, childish men,
born to be guided in all matters, from the tying of a neck-cloth to
the choice of a political party, by their women folk. Such men are
in clover when their proprietor happens to be a good and sensible
woman, but are to be pitied when they get into the hands of the
selfish or the foolish. As very young men, they too often fall
victims to bad-tempered chorus girls or to middle-aged matrons of
the class from which Pope judged all womankind. They make capital
husbands when well managed; treated badly, they say little, but set
to work, after the manner of a dissatisfied cat, to find a kinder
mistress, generally succeeding. The Earl of -- adored his wife,
deeming himself the most fortunate of husbands, and better
testimonial than such no wife should hope for. Till the day she
snatched him away from all other competitors, and claimed him for
her own, he had obeyed his mother with a dutifulness bordering on
folly. Were the countess to die to-morrow, he would be unable to
tell you his mind on any single subject until his eldest daughter
and his still unmarried sister, ladies both of strong character,
attracted towards one another by a mutual antagonism, had settled
between themselves which was to be mistress of him and of his
house.
However, there is little fear (bar accidents) but that my friend
the countess will continue to direct the hereditary vote of the
Earl of -- towards the goal of common sense and public good, guide
his social policy with judgment and kindness, and manage his
estates with prudence and economy for many years to come. She is a
hearty, vigorous lady, of generous proportions, with the blood of
sturdy forebears in her veins, and one who takes the same excellent
good care of herself that she bestows on all others dependent upon
her guidance.
"I remember," said the doctor--we were dining with the doctor in
homely fashion, and our wives had adjourned to the drawing-room to
discuss servants and husbands and other domestic matters with
greater freedom, leaving us to the claret and the twilight--"I
remember when we had the cholera in the village--it must be twenty
years ago now--that woman gave up the London season to stay down
here and take the whole burden of the trouble upon her own
shoulders. I do not feel any call to praise her; she liked the
work, and she was in her element, but it was good work for all
that. She had no fear. She would carry the children in her arms
if time pressed and the little ambulance was not at hand. I have
known her sit all night in a room not twelve feet square, between a
dying man and his dying wife. But the thing never touched her.
Six years ago we had the small-pox, and she went all through that
in just the same way. I don't believe she has ever had a day's
illness in her life. She will be physicking this parish when my
bones are rattling in my coffin, and she will be laying down the
laws of literature long after your statue has become a familiar
ornament of Westminster Abbey. She's a wonderful woman, but a
trifle masterful."
He laughed, but I detected a touch of irritation in his voice. My
host looked a man wishful to be masterful himself. I do not think
he quite relished the calm way in which this grand dame took
possession of all things around her, himself and his work included.
"Did you ever hear the story of the marriage?" he asked.
"No," I replied, "whose marriage? The earl's?"
"I should call it the countess's," he answered. "It was the gossip
of the county when I first came here, but other curious things have
happened among us to push it gradually out of memory. Most people,
I really believe, have quite forgotten that the Countess of -- once
served behind a baker's counter."
"You don't say so," I exclaimed. The remark, I admit, sounds weak
when written down; the most natural remarks always do.
"It's a fact," said the doctor, "though she does not suggest the
shop-girl, does she? But then I have known countesses, descended
in a direct line from William the Conqueror, who did, so things
balance one another. Mary, Countess of --, was, thirty years ago,
Mary Sewell, daughter of a Taunton linen-draper. The business,
profitable enough as country businesses go, was inadequate for the
needs of the Sewell family, consisting, as I believe it did, of
seven boys and eight girls. Mary, the youngest, as soon as her
brief schooling was over, had to shift for herself. She seems to
have tried her hand at one or two things, finally taking service
with a cousin, a baker and confectioner, who was doing well in
Oxford Street. She must have been a remarkably attractive girl;
she's a handsome woman now. I can picture that soft creamy skin
when it was fresh and smooth, and the West of England girls run
naturally to dimples and eyes that glisten as though they had been
just washed in morning dew. The shop did a good trade in ladies'
lunches--it was the glass of sherry and sweet biscuit period. I
expect they dressed her in some neat-fitting grey or black dress,
with short sleeves, showing her plump arms, and that she flitted
around the marble-topped tables, smiling, and looking cool and
sweet. There the present Earl of --, then young Lord C-, fresh
from Oxford, and new to the dangers of London bachelordom, first
saw her. He had accompanied some female relatives to the
photographer's, and, hotels and restaurants being deemed impossible
in those days for ladies, had taken them to Sewell's to lunch.
Mary Sewell waited upon the party; and now as many of that party as
are above ground wait upon Mary Sewell."
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