The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow

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Thinking these thoughts, I sought a second friend--a man whose
breezy common-sense has often helped me, and him likewise I
questioned on this subject of honeymoons.

"My dear boy," he replied; "take my advice, if ever you get married,
arrange it so that the honeymoon shall only last a week, and let it
be a bustling week into the bargain. Take a Cook's circular tour.
Get married on the Saturday morning, cut the breakfast and all that
foolishness, and catch the eleven-ten from Charing Cross to Paris.
Take her up the Eiffel Tower on Sunday. Lunch at Fontainebleau.
Dine at the Maison Doree, and show her the Moulin Rouge in the
evening. Take the night train for Lucerne. Devote Monday and
Tuesday to doing Switzerland, and get into Rome by Thursday morning,
taking the Italian lakes en route. On Friday cross to Marseilles,
and from there push along to Monte Carlo. Let her have a flutter at
the tables. Start early Saturday morning for Spain, cross the
Pyrenees on mules, and rest at Bordeaux on Sunday. Get back to
Paris on Monday (Monday is always a good day for the opera), and on
Tuesday evening you will be at home, and glad to get there. Don't
give her time to criticize you until she has got used to you. No
man will bear unprotected exposure to a young girl's eyes. The
honeymoon is the matrimonial microscope. Wobble it. Confuse it
with many objects. Cloud it with other interests. Don't sit still
to be examined. Besides, remember that a man always appears at his
best when active, and a woman at her worst. Bustle her, my dear
boy, bustle her: I don't care who she may be. Give her plenty of
luggage to look after; make her catch trains. Let her see the
average husband sprawling comfortably over the railway cushions,
while his wife has to sit bolt upright in the corner left to her.
Let her hear how other men swear. Let her smell other men's
tobacco. Hurry up, and get her accustomed quickly to the sight of
mankind. Then she will be less surprised and shocked as she grows
to know you. One of the best fellows I ever knew spoilt his married
life beyond repair by a long quiet honeymoon. They went off for a
month to a lonely cottage in some heaven-forsaken spot, where never
a soul came near them, and never a thing happened but morning,
afternoon, and night. There for thirty days she overhauled him.
When he yawned--and he yawned pretty often, I guess, during that
month--she thought of the size of his mouth, and when he put his
heels upon the fender she sat and brooded upon the shape of his
feet. At meal-time, not feeling hungry herself, having nothing to
do to make her hungry, she would occupy herself with watching him
eat; and at night, not feeling sleepy for the same reason, she would
lie awake and listen to his snoring. After the first day or two he
grew tired of talking nonsense, and she of listening to it (it
sounded nonsense now they could speak it aloud; they had fancied it
poetry when they had had to whisper it); and having no other
subject, as yet, of common interest, they would sit and stare in
front of them in silence. One day some trifle irritated him and he
swore. On a busy railway platform, or in a crowded hotel, she would
have said, 'Oh!' and they would both have laughed. From that
echoing desert the silly words rose up in widening circles towards
the sky, and that night she cried herself to sleep. Bustle them, my
dear boy, bustle them. We all like each other better the less we
think about one another, and the honeymoon is an exceptionally
critical time. Bustle her, my dear boy, bustle her."

My very worst honeymoon experience took place in the South of
England in eighteen hundred and--well, never mind the exact date,
let us say a few years ago. I was a shy young man at that time.
Many complain of my reserve to this day, but then some girls expect
too much from a man. We all have our shortcomings. Even then,
however, I was not so shy as she. We had to travel from Lyndhurst
in the New Forest to Ventnor, an awkward bit of cross-country work
in those days.

"It's so fortunate you are going too," said her aunt to me on the
Tuesday; "Minnie is always nervous travelling alone. You will be
able to look after her, and I shan't be anxious.

I said it would be a pleasure, and at the time I honestly thought
it. On the Wednesday I went down to the coach office, and booked
two places for Lymington, from where we took the steamer. I had not
a suspicion of trouble.

The booking-clerk was an elderly man. He said--

"I've got the box seat, and the end place on the back bench."

I said--

"Oh, can't I have two together?"

He was a kindly-looking old fellow. He winked at me. I wondered
all the way home why he had winked at me. He said--

"I'll manage it somehow."

I said--

"It's very kind of you, I'm sure.

He laid his hand on my shoulder. He struck me as familiar, but
well-intentioned. He said--

"We have all of us been there."

I thought he was alluding to the Isle of Wight. I said--

"And this is the best time of the year for it, so I'm told." It was
early summer time.

He said--"It's all right in summer, and it's good enough in winter-
-WHILE IT LASTS. You make the most of it, young 'un;" and he
slapped me on the back and laughed.

He would have irritated me in another minute. I paid for the seats
and left him.

At half-past eight the next morning Minnie and I started for the
coach-office. I call her Minnie, not with any wish to be
impertinent, but because I have forgotten her surname. It must be
ten years since I last saw her. She was a pretty girl, too, with
those brown eyes that always cloud before they laugh. Her aunt did
not drive down with us as she had intended, in consequence of a
headache. She was good enough to say she felt every confidence in
me.

The old booking-clerk caught sight of us when we were about a
quarter of a mile away, and drew to us the attention of the
coachman, who communicated the fact of our approach to the gathered
passengers. Everybody left off talking, and waited for us. The
boots seized his horn, and blew--one could hardly call it a blast;
it would be difficult to say what he blew. He put his heart into
it, but not sufficient wind. I think his intention was to welcome
us, but it suggested rather a feeble curse. We learnt subsequently
that he was a beginner on the instrument.

In some mysterious way the whole affair appeared to be our party.
The booking-clerk bustled up and helped Minnie from the cart. I
feared, for a moment, he was going to kiss her. The coachman
grinned when I said good-morning to him. The passengers grinned,
the boots grinned. Two chamber-maids and a waiter came out from the
hotel, and they grinned. I drew Minnie aside, and whispered to her.
I said--

"There's something funny about us. All these people are grinning."

She walked round me, and I walked round her, but we could neither of
us discover anything amusing about the other. The booking-clerk
said--

"It's all right. I've got you young people two places just behind
the box-seat. We'll have to put five of you on that seat. You
won't mind sitting a bit close, will you?"

The booking-clerk winked at the coachman, the coachman winked at the
passengers, the passengers winked at one another--those of them who
could wink--and everybody laughed. The two chamber-maids became
hysterical, and had to cling to each other for support. With the
exception of Minnie and myself, it seemed to be the merriest coach
party ever assembled at Lyndhurst.

We had taken our places, and I was still busy trying to fathom the
joke, when a stout lady appeared on the scene, and demanded to know
her place.

The clerk explained to her that it was in the middle behind the
driver.

"We've had to put five of you on that seat," added the clerk.

The stout lady looked at the seat.

"Five of us can't squeeze into that," she said.

Five of her certainly could not. Four ordinary sized people with
her would find it tight.

"Very well then," said the clerk, "you can have the end place on the
back seat."

"Nothing of the sort," said the stout lady. "I booked my seat on
Monday, and you told me any of the front places were vacant.

"I'LL take the back place," I said, "I don't mind it.

"You stop where you are, young 'un," said the clerk, firmly, "and
don't be a fool. I'll fix HER."

I objected to his language, but his tone was kindness itself.

"Oh, let ME have the back seat," said Minnie, rising, "I'd so like
it."

For answer the coachman put both his hands on her shoulders. He was
a heavy man, and she sat down again.

"Now then, mum," said the clerk, addressing the stout lady, "are you
going up there in the middle, or are you coming up here at the
back?"

"But why not let one of them take the back seat?" demanded the stout
lady, pointing her reticule at Minnie and myself; "they say they'd
like it. Let them have it."

The coachman rose, and addressed his remarks generally.

"Put her up at the back, or leave her behind," he directed. "Man
and wife have never been separated on this coach since I started
running it fifteen year ago, and they ain't going to be now."

A general cheer greeted this sentiment. The stout lady, now
regarded as a would-be blighter of love's young dream, was hustled
into the back seat, the whip cracked, and away we rolled.

So here was the explanation. We were in a honeymoon district, in
June--the most popular month in the whole year for marriage. Every
two out of three couples found wandering about the New Forest in
June are honeymoon couples; the third are going to be. When they
travel anywhere it is to the Isle of Wight. We both had on new
clothes. Our bags happened to be new. By some evil chance our very
umbrellas were new. Our united ages were thirty-seven. The wonder
would have been had we NOT been mistaken for a young married couple.

A day of greater misery I have rarely passed. To Minnie, so her
aunt informed me afterwards, the journey was the most terrible
experience of her life, but then her experience, up to that time,
had been limited. She was engaged, and devotedly attached, to a
young clergyman; I was madly in love with a somewhat plump girl
named Cecilia who lived with her mother at Hampstead. I am positive
as to her living at Hampstead. I remember so distinctly my weekly
walk down the hill from Church Row to the Swiss Cottage station.
When walking down a steep hill all the weight of the body is forced
into the toe of the boot, and when the boot is two sizes too small
for you, and you have been living in it since the early afternoon,
you remember a thing like that. But all my recollections of Cecilia
are painful, and it is needless to pursue them.

Our coach-load was a homely party, and some of the jokes were
broad--harmless enough in themselves, had Minnie and I really been
the married couple we were supposed to be, but even in that case
unnecessary. I can only hope that Minnie did not understand them.
Anyhow, she looked as if she didn't.

I forget where we stopped for lunch, but I remember that lamb and
mint sauce was on the table, and that the circumstance afforded the
greatest delight to all the party, with the exception of the stout
lady, who was still indignant, Minnie and myself. About my
behaviour as a bridegroom opinion appeared to be divided. "He's a
bit standoffish with her," I overheard one lady remark to her
husband; "I like to see 'em a bit kittenish myself." A young
waitress, on the other hand, I am happy to say, showed more sense of
natural reserve. "Well, I respect him for it," she was saying to
the barmaid, as we passed through the hall; "I'd just hate to be
fuzzled over with everybody looking on." Nobody took the trouble to
drop their voices for our benefit. We might have been a pair of
prize love birds on exhibition, the way we were openly discussed.
By the majority we were clearly regarded as a sulky young couple who
would not go through their tricks.

I have often wondered since how a real married couple would have
faced the situation. Possibly, had we consented to give a short
display of marital affection, "by desire," we might have been left
in peace for the remainder of the journey.

Our reputation preceded us on to the steamboat. Minnie begged and
prayed me to let it be known we were not married. How I was to let
it be known, except by requesting the captain to summon the whole
ship's company on deck, and then making them a short speech, I could
not think. Minnie said she could not bear it any longer, and
retired to the ladies' cabin. She went off crying. Her trouble was
attributed by crew and passengers to my coldness. One fool planted
himself opposite me with his legs apart, and shook his head at me.

"Go down and comfort her," he began. "Take an old man's advice.
Put your arms around her. " (He was one of those sentimental
idiots.) "Tell her that you love her."

I told him to go and hang himself, with so much vigour that he all
but fell overboard. He was saved by a poultry crate: I had no luck
that day.

At Ryde the guard, by superhuman effort, contrived to keep us a
carriage to ourselves. I gave him a shilling, because I did not
know what else to do. I would have made it half-a-sovereign if he
had put eight other passengers in with us. At every station people
came to the window to look in at us.

I handed Minnie over to her father on Ventnor platform; and I took
the first train the next morning, to London. I felt I did not want
to see her again for a little while; and I felt convinced she could
do without a visit from me. Our next meeting took place the week
before her marriage.

"Where are you going to spend your honeymoon?" I asked her; "in the
New Forest?"

"No," she replied; "nor in the Isle of Wight."

To enjoy the humour of an incident one must be at some distance from
it either in time or relationship. I remember watching an amusing
scene in Whitefield Street, just off Tottenham Court Road, one
winter's Saturday night. A woman--a rather respectable looking
woman, had her hat only been on straight--had just been shot out of
a public-house. She was very dignified, and very drunk. A
policeman requested her to move on. She called him "Fellow," and
demanded to know of him if he considered that was the proper tone in
which to address a lady. She threatened to report him to her
cousin, the Lord Chancellor.

"Yes; this way to the Lord Chancellor," retorted the policeman.
"You come along with me; " and he caught hold of her by the arm.

She gave a lurch, and nearly fell. To save her the man put his arm
round her waist. She clasped him round the neck, and together they
spun round two or three times; while at the very moment a piano-
organ at the opposite corner struck up a waltz.

"Choose your partners, gentlemen, for the next dance," shouted a
wag, and the crowd roared.

I was laughing myself, for the situation was undeniably comical, the
constable's expression of disgust being quite Hogarthian, when the
sight of a child's face beneath the gas-lamp stayed me. Her look
was so full of terror that I tried to comfort her.

"It's only a drunken woman," I said; "he's not going to hurt her."

"Please, sir," was the answer, "it's my mother."

Our joke is generally another's pain. The man who sits down on the
tin-tack rarely joins in the laugh

ON THE MINDING OF OTHER PEOPLE'S BUSINESS

I walked one bright September morning in the Strand. I love London
best in the autumn. Then only can one see the gleam of its white
pavements, the bold, unbroken outline of its streets. I love the
cool vistas one comes across of mornings in the parks, the soft
twilights that linger in the empty bye-streets. In June the
restaurant manager is off-hand with me; I feel I am but in his way.
In August he spreads for me the table by the window, pours out for
me my wine with his own fat hands. I cannot doubt his regard for
me: my foolish jealousies are stilled. Do I care for a drive after
dinner through the caressing night air, I can climb the omnibus
stair without a preliminary fight upon the curb, can sit with easy
conscience and unsquashed body, not feeling I have deprived some
hot, tired woman of a seat. Do I desire the play, no harsh,
forbidding "House full" board repels me from the door. During her
season, London, a harassed hostess, has no time for us, her
intimates. Her rooms are overcrowded, her servants overworked, her
dinners hurriedly cooked, her tone insincere. In the spring, to be
truthful, the great lady condescends to be somewhat vulgar--noisy
and ostentatious. Not till the guests are departed is she herself
again, the London that we, her children, love.

Have you, gentle Reader, ever seen London--not the London of the
waking day, coated with crawling life, as a blossom with blight, but
the London of the morning, freed from her rags, the patient city,
clad in mists? Get you up with the dawn one Sunday in summer time.
Wake none else, but creep down stealthily into the kitchen, and make
your own tea and toast.

Be careful you stumble not over the cat. She will worm herself
insidiously between your legs. It is her way; she means it in
friendship. Neither bark your shins against the coal-box. Why the
kitchen coal-box has its fixed place in the direct line between the
kitchen door and the gas-bracket I cannot say. I merely know it as
an universal law; and I would that you escaped that coal-box, lest
the frame of mind I desire for you on this Sabbath morning be
dissipated.

A spoon to stir your tea, I fear you must dispense with. Knives and
forks you will discover in plenty; blacking brushes you will put
your hand upon in every drawer; of emery paper, did one require it,
there are reams; but it is a point with every housekeeper that the
spoons be hidden in a different place each night. If anybody
excepting herself can find them in the morning, it is a slur upon
her. No matter, a stick of firewood, sharpened at one end, makes an
excellent substitute.

Your breakfast done, turn out the gas, remount the stairs quietly,
open gently the front door and slip out. You will find yourself in
an unknown land. A strange city grown round you in the night.

The sweet long streets lie silent in sunlight. Not a living thing
is to be seen save some lean Tom that slinks from his gutter feast
as you approach. From some tree there will sound perhaps a fretful
chirp: but the London sparrow is no early riser; he is but talking
in his sleep. The slow tramp of unseen policeman draws near or dies
away. The clatter of your own footsteps goes with you, troubling
you. You find yourself trying to walk softly, as one does in
echoing cathedrals. A voice is everywhere about you whispering to
you "Hush." Is this million-breasted City then some tender Artemis,
seeking to keep her babes asleep? "Hush, you careless wayfarer; do
not waken them. Walk lighter; they are so tired, these myriad
children of mine, sleeping in my thousand arms. They are
over-worked and over-worried; so many of them are sick, so many
fretful, many of them, alas, so full of naughtiness. But all of
them so tired. Hush! they worry me with their noise and riot when
they are awake. They are so good now they are asleep. Walk
lightly, let them rest."

Where the ebbing tide flows softly through worn arches to the sea,
you may hear the stone-faced City talking to the restless waters:
"Why will you never stay with me? Why come but to go?"

"I cannot say, I do not understand. From the deep sea I come, but
only as a bird loosed from a child's hand with a cord. When she
calls I must return."

"It is so with these children of mine. They come to me, I know not
whence. I nurse them for a little while, till a hand I do not see
plucks them back. And others take their place."

Through the still air there passes a ripple of sound. The sleeping
City stirs with a faint sigh. A distant milk-cart rattling by
raises a thousand echoes; it is the vanguard of a yoked army. Soon
from every street there rises the soothing cry,
"Mee'hilk--mee'hilk."

London like some Gargantuan babe, is awake, crying for its milk.
These be the white-smocked nurses hastening with its morning
nourishment. The early church bells ring. "You have had your milk,
little London. Now come and say your prayers. Another week has
just begun, baby London. God knows what will happen, say your
prayers."

One by one the little creatures creep from behind the blinds into
the streets. The brooding tenderness is vanished from the City's
face. The fretful noises of the day have come again. Silence, her
lover of the night, kisses her stone lips, and steals away. And
you, gentle Reader, return home, garlanded with the self-sufficiency
of the early riser.

But it was of a certain week-day morning, in the Strand that I was
thinking. I was standing outside Gatti's Restaurant, where I had
just breakfasted, listening leisurely to an argument between an
indignant lady passenger, presumably of Irish extraction, and an
omnibus conductor.

"For what d'ye want thin to paint Putney on ye'r bus, if ye don't GO
to Putney?" said the, lady.

"We DO go to Putney," said the conductor.

"Thin why did ye put me out here?"

"I didn't put you out, yer got out."

"Shure, didn't the gintleman in the corner tell me I was comin'
further away from Putney ivery minit?"

"Wal, and so yer was."

"Thin whoy didn't you tell me?"

"How was I to know yer wanted to go to Putney? Yer sings out
Putney, and I stops and in yer jumps."

"And for what d'ye think I called out Putney thin?"

"'Cause it's my name, or rayther the bus's name. This 'ere IS a
Putney."

"How can it be a Putney whin it isn't goin' to Putney, ye
gomerhawk?"

"Ain't you an Hirishwoman?" retorted the conductor. "Course yer
are. But yer aren't always goin' to Ireland. We're goin' to Putney
in time, only we're a-going to Liverpool Street fust. 'Igher up,
Jim."

The bus moved on, and I was about cross the road, when a man,
muttering savagely to himself, walked into me. He would have swept
past me had I not, recognizing him, arrested him. It was my friend
B-----, a busy editor of magazines and journals. It was some
seconds before he appeared able to struggle out of his abstraction,
and remember himself. "Halloo," he then said, "who would have
thought of seeing YOU here?"

"To judge by the way you were walking," I replied, "one would
imagine the Strand the last place in which you expected to see any
human being. Do you ever walk into a short-tempered, muscular man?"

"Did I walk into you?" he asked surprised.

"Well, not right in," I answered, "I if we are to be literal. You
walked on to me; if I had not stopped you, I suppose you would have
walked over me."

"It is this confounded Christmas business," he explained. "It
drives me off my head."

"I have heard Christmas advanced as an excuse for many things," I
replied, "but not early in September."

"Oh, you know what I mean," he answered, "we are in the middle of
our Christmas number. I am working day and night upon it. By the
bye," he added, "that puts me in mind. I am arranging a symposium,
and I want you to join. 'Should Christmas,'"--I interrupted him.

"My dear fellow," I said, "I commenced my journalistic career when I
was eighteen, and I have continued it at intervals ever since. I
have written about Christmas from the sentimental point of view; I
have analyzed it from the philosophical point of view; and I have
scarified it from the sarcastic standpoint. I have treated
Christmas humorously for the Comics, and sympathetically for the
Provincial Weeklies. I have said all that is worth saying on the
subject of Christmas--maybe a trifle more. I have told the
new-fashioned Christmas story--you know the sort of thing: your
heroine tries to understand herself, and, failing, runs off with the
man who began as the hero; your good woman turns out to be really
bad when one comes to know her; while the villain, the only decent
person in the story, dies with an enigmatic sentence on his lips
that looks as if it meant something, but which you yourself would be
sorry to have to explain. I have also written the old-fashioned
Christmas story--you know that also: you begin with a good
old-fashioned snowstorm; you have a good old-fashioned squire, and
he lives in a good old-fashioned Hall; you work in a good
old-fashioned murder; and end up with a good old-fashioned Christmas
dinner. I have gathered Christmas guests together round the
crackling logs to tell ghost stories to each other on Christmas Eve,
while without the wind howled, as it always does on these occasions,
at its proper cue. I have sent children to Heaven on Christmas
Eve--it must be quite a busy time for St. Peter, Christmas morning,
so many good children die on Christmas Eve. It has always been a
popular night with them.--I have revivified dead lovers and brought
them back well and jolly, just in time to sit down to the Christmas
dinner. I am not ashamed of having done these things. At the time
I thought them good. I once loved currant wine and girls with
towzley hair. One's views change as one grows older. I have
discussed Christmas as a religious festival. I have arraigned it as
a social incubus. If there be any joke connected with Christmas
that I have not already made I should be glad to hear it. I have
trotted out the indigestion jokes till the sight of one of them
gives me indigestion myself. I have ridiculed the family gathering.
I have scoffed at the Christmas present. I have made witty use of
paterfamilias and his bills. I have--"

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