Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (466 page)

It struck me as pathetic, the picture of these American widows leaving their native land, coming over in shiploads to spend the rest of their blighted lives in exile. The mere thought of America, I took it, had for ever become to them distasteful. The ground that once his feet had pressed! The old familiar places once lighted by his smile! Everything in America would remind them of him. Snatching their babes to their heaving bosoms they would leave the country where lay buried all the joy of their lives, seek in the retirement of Paris, Florence or Vienna, oblivion of the past.

Also, it struck me as beautiful, the noble resignation with which they bore their grief, hiding their sorrow from the indifferent stranger. Some widows make a fuss, go about for weeks looking gloomy and depressed, making not the slightest effort to be merry. These fourteen widows — I knew them personally, all of them, I lived in the same street — what a brave show of cheerfulness they put on! What a lesson to the common or European widow, the humpy type of widow! One could spend whole days in their company — I had done it — commencing quite early in the morning with a sleighing excursion, finishing up quite late in the evening with a little supper party, followed by an impromptu dance; and never detect from their outward manner that they were not thoroughly enjoying themselves.

From the mothers I turned my admiring eyes towards the children. This is the secret of American success, said I to myself; this high-spirited courage, this Spartan contempt for suffering. Look at them! the gallant little men and women. Who would think that they had lost a father? Why, I have seen a British child more upset at losing sixpence.

Talking to a little girl one day, I enquired of her concerning the health of her father. The next moment I could have bitten my tongue out, remembering that there wasn’t such a thing as a father — not an American father — in the whole street. She did not burst into tears as they do in the story-books. She said:

“He is quite well, thank you,” simply, pathetically, just like that.

“I am sure of it,” I replied with fervour, “well and happy as he deserves to be, and one day you will find him again; you will go to him.”

“Ah, yes,” she answered, a shining light, it seemed to me, upon her fair young face. “Momma says she is getting just a bit tired of this one-horse sort of place. She is quite looking forward to seeing him again.”

It touched me very deeply: this weary woman, tired of her long bereavement, actually looking forward to the fearsome passage leading to where her loved one waited for her in a better land.

For one bright breezy creature I grew to feel a real regard. All the months that I had known her, seen her almost daily, never once had I heard a single cry of pain escape her lips, never once had I heard her cursing fate. Of the many who called upon her in her charming flat, not one had ever, to my knowledge, offered her consolation or condolence. It seemed to me cruel, callous. The over-burdened heart, finding no outlet for its imprisoned grief, finding no sympathetic ear into which to pour its tale of woe, breaks, we are told; anyhow, it isn’t good for it. I decided — no one else seeming keen — that I would supply that sympathetic ear. The very next time I found myself alone with her I introduced the subject.

“You have been living here in Dresden a long time, have you not?” I asked.

“About five years,” she answered, “on and off.”

“And all alone,” I commented, with a sigh intended to invite to confidence.

“Well, hardly alone,” she corrected me, while a look of patient resignation added dignity to her piquant features. “You see, there are the dear children always round about me, during the holidays.”

“Besides,” she added, “the people here are real kind to me; they hardly ever let me feel myself alone. We make up little parties, you know, picnics and excursions. And then, of course, there is the Opera and the Symphony Concerts, and the subscription dances. The dear old king has been doing a good deal this winter, too; and I must say the Embassy folks have been most thoughtful, so far as I am concerned. No, it would not be right for me to complain of loneliness, not now that I have got to know a few people, as it were.”

“But don’t you miss your husband?” I suggested.

A cloud passed over her usually sunny face. “Oh, please don’t talk of him,” she said, “it makes me feel real sad, thinking about him.”

But having commenced, I was determined that my sympathy should not be left to waste.

“What did he die of?” I asked.

She gave me a look the pathos of which I shall never forget.

“Say, young man,” she cried, “are you trying to break it to me gently? Because if so, I’d rather you told me straight out. What did he die of?”

“Then isn’t he dead?” I asked, “I mean so far as you know.”

“Never heard a word about his being dead till you started the idea,” she retorted. “So far as I know he’s alive and well.”

I said that I was sorry. I went on to explain that I did not mean I was sorry to hear that in all probability he was alive and well. What I meant was I was sorry I had introduced a painful subject.

“What’s a painful subject?”

“Why, your husband,” I replied.

“But why should you call him a painful subject?”

I had an idea she was getting angry with me. She did not say so. I gathered it. But I had to explain myself somehow.

“Well,” I answered, “I take it, you didn’t get on well together, and I am sure it must have been his fault.”

“Now look here,” she said, “don’t you breathe a word against my husband or we shall quarrel. A nicer, dearer fellow never lived.”

“Then what did you divorce him for?” I asked. It was impertinent, it was unjustifiable. My excuse is that the mystery surrounding the American husband had been worrying me for months. Here had I stumbled upon the opportunity of solving it. Instinctively I clung to my advantage.

“There hasn’t been any divorce,” she said. “There isn’t going to be any divorce. You’ll make me cross in another minute.”

But I was becoming reckless. “He is not dead. You are not divorced from him. Where is he?” I demanded with some heat.

“Where is he?” she replied, astonished. “Where should he be? At home, of course.”

I looked around the luxuriously-furnished room with its air of cosy comfort, of substantial restfulness.

“What home?” I asked.

“What home! Why, our home, in Detroit.”

“What is he doing there?” I had become so much in earnest that my voice had assumed unconsciously an authoritative tone. Presumably, it hypnotised her, for she answered my questions as though she had been in the witness-box.

“How do I know? How can I possibly tell you what he is doing? What do people usually do at home?”

“Answer the questions, madam, don’t ask them. What are you doing here? Quite truthfully, if you please.” My eyes were fixed upon her.

“Enjoying myself. He likes me to enjoy myself. Besides, I am educating the children.”

“You mean they are here at boarding-school while you are gadding about. What is wrong with American education? When did you see your husband last?”

“Last? Let me see. No, last Christmas I was in Berlin. It must have been the Christmas before, I think.”

“If he is the dear kind fellow you say he is, how is it you haven’t seen him for two years?”

“Because, as I tell you, he is at home, in Detroit. How can I see him when I am here in Dresden and he is in Detroit? You do ask foolish questions. He means to try and come over in the summer, if he can spare the time, and then, of course —

“Answer my questions, please. I’ve spoken to you once about it. Do you think you are performing your duty as a wife, enjoying yourself in Dresden and Berlin while your husband is working hard in Detroit?”

“He was quite willing for me to come. The American husband is a good fellow who likes his wife to enjoy herself.”

“I am not asking for your views on the American husband. I am asking your views on the American wife — on yourself. The American husband appears to be a sort of stained-glass saint, and you American wives are imposing upon him. It is doing you no good, and it won’t go on for ever. There will come a day when the American husband will wake up to the fact he is making a fool of himself, and by over-indulgence, over-devotion, turning the American woman into a heartless, selfish creature. What sort of a home do you think it is in Detroit, with you and the children over here? Tell me, is the American husband made entirely of driven snow, with blood distilled from moonbeams, or is he composed of the ordinary ingredients? Because, if the latter, you take my advice and get back home. I take it that in America, proper, there are millions of real homes where the woman does her duty and plays the game. But also it is quite clear there are thousands of homes in America, mere echoing rooms, where the man walks by himself, his wife and children scattered over Europe. It isn’t going to work, it isn’t right that it should work.”

“You take the advice of a sincere friend. Pack up — you and the children — and get home.”

I left. It was growing late. I felt it was time to leave. Whether she took my counsel I cannot say. I only know that there still remain in Europe a goodly number of American wives to whom it is applicable.

DOES THE YOUNG MAN KNOW EVERYTHING WORTH KNOWING?

I am told that American professors are “mourning the lack of ideals” at Columbia University — possibly also at other universities scattered through the United States. If it be any consolation to these mourning American professors, I can assure them that they do not mourn alone. I live not far from Oxford, and enjoy the advantage of occasionally listening to the jeremiads of English University professors. More than once a German professor has done me the honour to employ me as an object on which to sharpen his English. He also has mourned similar lack of ideals at Heidelberg, at Bonn. Youth is youth all the world over; it has its own ideals; they are not those of the University professor. The explanation is tolerably simple. Youth is young, and the University professor, generally speaking, is middle-aged.

I can sympathise with the mourning professor. I, in my time, have suffered like despair. I remember the day so well; it was my twelfth birthday. I recall the unholy joy with which I reflected that for the future my unfortunate parents would be called upon to pay for me full railway fare; it marked a decided step towards manhood. I was now in my teens. That very afternoon there came to visit us a relative of ours. She brought with her three small children: a girl, aged six; a precious, golden-haired thing in a lace collar that called itself a boy, aged five; and a third still smaller creature, it might have been male, it might have been female; I could not have told you at the time, I cannot tell you now. This collection of atoms was handed over to me.

“Now, show yourself a man,” said my dear mother, “remember you are in your teens. Take them out for a walk and amuse them; and mind nothing happens to them.”

To the children themselves their own mother gave instructions that they were to do everything that I told them, and not to tear their clothes or make themselves untidy. These directions, even to myself, at the time, appeared contradictory. But I said nothing. And out into the wilds the four of us departed.

I was an only child. My own infancy had passed from my memory. To me, at twelve, the ideas of six were as incomprehensible as are those of twenty to the University professor of forty. I wanted to be a pirate. Round the corner and across the road building operations were in progress. Planks and poles lay ready to one’s hand. Nature, in the neighbourhood, had placed conveniently a shallow pond. It was Saturday afternoon. The nearest public-house was a mile away. Immunity from interference by the British workman was thus assured. It occurred to me that by placing my three depressed looking relatives on one raft, attacking them myself from another, taking the eldest girl’s sixpence away from her, disabling their raft, and leaving them to drift without a rudder, innocent amusement would be provided for half an hour at least.

They did not want to play at pirates. At first sight of the pond the thing that called itself a boy began to cry. The six-year-old lady said she did not like the smell of it. Not even after I had explained the game to them were they any the more enthusiastic for it.

I proposed Red Indians. They could go to sleep in the unfinished building upon a sack of lime, I would creep up through the grass, set fire to the house, and dance round it, whooping and waving my tomahawk, watching with fiendish delight the frantic but futile efforts of the palefaces to escape their doom.

It did not “catch on” — not even that. The precious thing in the lace collar began to cry again. The creature concerning whom I could not have told you whether it was male or female made no attempt at argument, but started to run; it seemed to have taken a dislike to this particular field. It stumbled over a scaffolding pole, and then it also began to cry. What could one do to amuse such people? I left it to them to propose something. They thought they would like to play at “Mothers” — not in this field, but in some other field.

The eldest girl would be mother. The other two would represent her children. They had been taken suddenly ill. “Waterworks,” as I had christened him, was to hold his hands to his middle and groan. His face brightened up at the suggestion. The nondescript had the toothache. It took up its part without a moment’s hesitation, and set to work to scream. I could be the doctor and look at their tongues.

That was their “ideal” game. As I have said, remembering that afternoon, I can sympathise with the University professor mourning the absence of University ideals in youth. Possibly at six my own ideal game may have been “Mothers.” Looking back from the pile of birthdays upon which I now stand, it occurs to me that very probably it was. But from the perspective of twelve, the reflection that there were beings in the world who could find recreation in such fooling saddened me.

Eight years later, his father not being able to afford the time, I conducted Master “Waterworks,” now a healthy, uninteresting, gawky lad, to a school in Switzerland. It was my first Continental trip. I should have enjoyed it better had he not been with me. He thought Paris a “beastly hole.” He did not share my admiration for the Frenchwoman; he even thought her badly dressed.