Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (393 page)

I guessed what was coming in a moment. I tried to kick him under the table. I do not mean, of course, that I tried to kick him there altogether; though I am not at all sure whether, under the circumstances, I should not have been justified in going even to that length. What I mean is, that the attempt to kick him took place under the table.

It failed, however. True, I did kick somebody; but it evidently could not have been Skittles, for he remained unmoved. In all probability it was the bride, who was sitting next to him. I did not try again; and he started, uninterfered with, on his favourite theme.

“Friends,” he commenced, his voice trembling with emotion, while a tear glistened in his eye, “before we part — some of us perhaps never to meet again on earth — before this guileless young couple who have this day taken upon themselves the manifold trials and troubles of married life, quit the peaceful fold, as it were, to face the bitter griefs and disappointments of this weary life, there is one toast, hitherto undrunk, that I would wish to propose.”

Here he wiped away the before-mentioned tear, and the people looked solemn and endeavoured to crack nuts without making a noise.

“Friends,” he went on, growing more and more impressive and dejected in his tones, “there are few of us here who have not at some time or other known what it is to lose, through death or travel, a dear beloved one — maybe two or three.”

At this point, he stifled a sob; and the bridegroom’s aunt, at the bottom of the table, whose eldest son had lately left the country at the expense of his relations, upon the clear understanding that he would never again return, began to cry quietly into the ice-pudding.

“The fair young maiden at my side,” continued Skittles, clearing his throat, and laying his hand tenderly on the bride’s shoulder, “as you are all aware, was, a few years ago, bereft of her mother. Ladies and gentlemen, what can be more sad than the death of a mother?”

This, of course, had the effect of starting the bride off sobbing. The bridegroom, meaning well, but, naturally, under the circmustances, nervous and excited, sought to console her by murmuring that he felt sure it had all happened for the best, and that no one who had ever known the old lady would for a moment wish her back again; upon which he was indignantly informed by his newly made wife that if he was so very pleased at her mother’s death, it was a pity he had not told her so before, and she would never have married him — and he sank into thoughtful silence.

On my looking up, which I had hitherto carefully abstained from doing, my eyes unfortunately encountered those of a brother journalist who was sitting at the other side of the table, and we both burst out laughing, thereupon gaining a reputation for callousness that I do not suppose either of us has outlived to this day.

Skittles, the only human being at that once festive board that did not appear to be wishing he were anywhere else, droned on, with evident satisfaction:

“Friends,”, he said, “shall that dear mother be forgotten at this joyous gathering? Shall the lost mother, father, brother, sister, child, friend of any of us be forgotten? No, ladies and gentlemen! Let us, amid our merriment, still think of those lost, wandering souls: let us, amid the wine-cup and the blithesome jest, remember—’Absent Friends.’”

The toast was drunk to the accompaniment of suppressed sobs and low moans, and the wedding guests left the table to bathe their faces and calm their thoughts. The bride, rejecting the proffered assistance of the groom, was assisted into the carriage by her father, and departed, evidently full of misgivings as to her chance of future happiness in the society of such a heartless monster as her husband had just shown himself to be!

Skittles has been an “absent friend” himself at that house since then.

But I am not getting on with my pathetic story.

“Do not be late with it,” our editor had said. “Let me have it by the end of August, certain. I mean to be early with the Christmas number this time. We didn’t get it out till October last year, you know. I don’t want the
Clipper
to be before us again!”

“Oh, that will be all right,” I had answered airily. “I shall soon run that off. I’ve nothing much to do this week. I’ll start it at once.”

So, as I went home, I cast about in my mind for a pathetic subject to work on, but not a pathetic idea could I think of. Comic fancies crowded in upon me, until my brain began to give way under the strain of holding them; and, if I had not calmed myself down with a last week’s
Punch
, I should, in all probability, have gone off in a fit.

“Oh, I’m evidently not in the humour for pathos,” I said to myself. “It is no use trying to force it. I’ve got plenty of time. I will wait till I feel sad.”

But as the days went on, I merely grew more and more cheerful. By the middle of August, matters were becoming serious. If I could not, by some means or other, contrive to get myself into a state of the blues during the next week or ten days, there would be nothing in the Christmas number of the ——
Weekly Journal
to make the British public wretched, and its reputation as a high-class paper for the family circle would be irretrievably ruined!

I was a conscientious young man in those days. I had undertaken to write a four-and-a-half column pathetic story by the end of August; and if — no matter at what mental or physical cost to myself — the task could be accomplished, those four columns and a half should be ready.

I have generally found indigestion a good breeder of sorrowful thoughts. Accordingly, for a couple of days I lived upon an exclusive diet of hot boiled pork, Yorkshire pudding, and assorted pastry, with lobster salad for supper. It gave me comic nightmare. I dreamed of elephants trying to climb trees, and of church wardens being caught playing pitch-and-toss on Sundays, and woke up shaking with laughter!

I abandoned the dyspeptic scheme, and took to reading all the pathetic literature I could collect together. But it was of no use. The little girl in Wordsworth’s “We are Seven” only irritated me; I wanted to slap her. Byron’s blighted pirates bored me. When, in a novel, the heroine died, I was glad; and when the author told me that the hero never smiled again on earth, I did not believe it.

As a last resource, I re-perused one or two of my own concoctions. They made me feel ashamed of myself, but not exactly miserable — at least not miserable in the way I wanted to be miserable.

Then I bought all the standard works of wit and humour that had ever been published, and waded steadily through the lot. They lowered me a good deal, but not sufficiently. My cheerfulness seemed proof against everything.

One Saturday evening I went out and hired a man to come in and sing sentimental ballads to me. He earned his money (five shillings). He sang me everything dismal there was in English, Scotch, Irish, and Welsh, together with a few translations from the German; and, after the first hour and a half, I found myself unconsciously trying to dance to the different tunes. I invented some really pretty steps for “Auld Robin Grey,” winding up with a quaint flourish of the left leg at the end of each verse.

At the beginning of the last week, I went to my editor and laid the case before him.

“Why, what’s the matter with you?” he said. “You used to be so good at that sort of thing! Have you thought of the poor girl who loves the young man that goes away and never comes back, and she waits and waits, and never marries, and nobody knows that her heart is breaking?”

“Of course I have!” I retorted, rather irritably. “Do you think I don’t know the rudiments of my profession?”

Well,” he remarked, “won’t it do?” No,” I answered. “With marriage such a failure as it seems to be all round nowadays, how can you pump up sorrow for any one lucky enough to keep out of it?”

“Um,” he mused, “how about the child that tells everybody not to cry, and then dies?”

“Oh, and a good riddance to it!” I replied, peevishly. “There are too many children in this world. Look what a noise they make, and what a lot of money they cost in boots!”

My editor agreed that I did not appear to be in the proper spirit to write a pathetic child-story.

He inquired if I had thought of the old man who wept over the faded love-letters on Christmas-eve; and I said that I had, and that I considered him an old idiot.

“Would a dog story do?” he continued: “something about a dead dog; that’s always popular.”

“Not Chrismassy enough,” I argued.

The betrayed maiden was suggested; but dismissed, on reflection, as being too broad a subject for the pages of a “Companion for the Home Circle” — our sub-title.

“Well, think it over for another day,” said my editor. “I don’t want to have to go to Jenks. He can only be pathetic as a costermonger, and our lady readers don’t always like the expressions.”

I thought I would go and ask the advice of a friend of mine — a very famous and popular author; in fact, one of the
most
famous and popular authors of the day. I was very proud of his friendship, because he was a very great man indeed; not great, perhaps, in the earnest meaning of the word; not great like the greatest men — the men who do not know that they are great — but decidedly great, according to the practical standard. When he wrote a book, a hundred thousand copies would be sold during the first week; and when a play of his was produced, the theatre was crammed for five hundred nights. And of each new work it was said that it was more clever and grand and glorious than were even the works he had written before.

Wherever the English language was spoken, his name was an honoured household word. Wherever he went, he was feted and lionized and cheered. Descriptions of his charming house, of his charming sayings and doings, of his charming self, were in every newspaper.

Shakespeare was not one-half so famous in his way as —— is in his.

Fortunately, he happened to be still in town; and on being ushered into his sumptuously-furnished study, I found him sitting before one of the windows, smoking an after-dinner cigar.

He offered me one from the same box. — ––’s cigars are not to be refused. I know he pays half-a-crown apiece for them by the hundred; so I accepted, lit up, and, sitting down opposite to him, told him my trouble.

He did not answer immediately after I had finished; and I was just beginning to think that he could not have been listening, when — with his eyes looking out through the open window to where, beyond the smoky city, it seemed as if the sun, in passing through, had left the gates of the sky ajar behind him — he took his cigar from his lips, and said:

“Do you want a real pathetic story? I can tell you one if you do. It is not very long, but it is sad enough.”

He spoke in so serious a tone that almost any reply seemed out of place, and I remained silent.

“It is the story of a man who lost his own self,” he continued, still looking out upon the dying light, as though he read the story there, “who stood by the death-bed of himself, and saw himself slowly die, and knew that he was dead — forever.

“Once upon a time there lived a poor boy. He had little in common with other children. He loved to wander by himself, to think and dream all day. It was not that he was morose, or did not care for his comrades, only that something within kept whispering to his childish heart that he had deeper lessons to comprehend than his schoolmates had. And an unseen hand would lead him away into the solitude where alone he could learn their meaning.