Part 20

“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.