And this, to my terror and alarm, Dan persisted in doing. Jarman entered into the spirit of the joke with gusto. So far as he was concerned, our guests, from the beginning to the end, were one and all, I am confident, deceived. The more he swaggered, the more he boasted, the more he talked about himself--and it was a failing he was prone to--the greater was his success. At the persistent endeavours of Dan's journalistic acquaintances to excite his cupidity by visions of new journals, to be started with a mere couple of thousand pounds and by the inherent merit of their ideas to command at once a circulation of hundreds of thousands, I could afford to laugh. But watching the tremendous efforts of my actress friends to fascinate him--luring him into corners, gazing at him with languishing eyes, trotting out all their little tricks for his exclusive benefit, quarrelling about him among themselves--my conscience would prick me, lest our jest should end in a contretemps. Fortunately, Jarman himself, was a gentleman of uncommon sense, or my fears might have been realised. I should have been sorry myself to have been asked to remain stone under the blandishments of girls young and old, of women handsome and once, no doubt, good looking, showered upon him during that winter. But Jarman, as I think I have explained, was no slave to female charms. He enjoyed his good time while it lasted, and eventually married the eldest daughter of a small blacking factory.
She was a plain girl, but pleasant, and later brought to Jarman possession of the factory. When I meet him--he is now stout and rubicund--he gives me the idea of a man who has attained to his ideals.
With Minikin we had more trouble. People turned up possessed of scientific smattering. We had to explain that the Professor never talked shop. Others were owners of unexpected knowledge of German, which they insisted upon airing. We had to explain that the Herr Professor was in London to learn English, and had taken a vow during his residence neither to speak nor listen to his native tongue. It was remarked that his acquaintance with colloquial English slang, for a foreigner, was quite unusual. Occasionally he was too rude, even for a scientist, informing ladies, clamouring to know how he liked English women, that he didn't like them silly; telling one gentleman, a friend of Dan, a rather important man who once asked him, referring to his yard of ribbon, what he got it for, that he got it for fourpence. We had to explain him as a gentleman who had been soured by a love disappointment. The ladies forgave him; the gentlemen said it was a damned lucky thing for the girl. Altogether, Minikin took a good deal of explaining.
Lady Peedles, our guests decided among themselves, must be the widow of some one in the City who had been knighted in a crowd. They made fun of her behind her back, but to her face were most effusive. "My dear Lady Peedles" was the phrase most often heard in our rooms whenever she was present. At the theatre "my friend Lady Peedles" became a person much spoken of--generally in loud tones. My own social position I found decidedly improved by reason of her ladyship's evident liking for myself. It went abroad that I was her presumptive heir. I was courted as a gentleman of expectations.
The fishy-eyed young man became one of our regular guests. Dan won his heart by never laughing at him.
"I like talking to you," said the fishy-eyed young man one afternoon to Dan. "You don't go into fits of laughter when I remark that it has been a fine day; most people do. Of course, on the stage I don't mind. I know I am a funny little devil. I get my living by being a funny little devil. There is a photograph of me hanging in the theatre lobby. I saw a workman stop and look at it the other day as he passed; I was just behind him. He burst into a roar of laughter.
'Little--! He makes me laugh to look at him!' he cluttered to himself. Well, that's all right; I want the man in the gallery to think me funny, but it annoys me when people laugh at me off the stage. If I am out to dinner anywhere and ask somebody to pass the mustard, I never get it; instead, they burst out laughing. I don't want people to laugh at me when I am having my dinner. I want my dinner. It makes me very angry sometimes."
"I know," agreed Dan, sympathetically. "The world never grasps the fact that man is a collection, not a single exhibit. I remember being at a house once where the chief guest happened to be a great Hebrew scholar. One tea time, a Miss Henman, passing the butter to some one in a hurry, let it slip out of her hand. 'Why is Miss Henman like a caterpillar?' asked our learned guest in a sepulchral voice. Nobody appeared to know. 'Because she makes the butter fly.' It never occurred to any one of us that the Doctor could possibly joke. There was dead silence for about a minute. Then our hostess, looking grave, remarked: 'Oh, do you really think so?'"
"If I were to enter a room full of people," said the fishy-eyed young man, "and tell them that my mother had been run over by an omnibus, they would think it the funniest story they had heard in years."
He was playing a principal part now in the opera, and it was he undoubtedly who was drawing the house. But he was not happy.
"I am not a comic actor, really," he explained. "I could play Romeo, so far as feeling is concerned, and play it damned well. There is a fine vein of poetry in me. But of course it's no good to me with this face of mine."
"But are you not sinning your mercies, you fellows?" Dan replied.
"There is young Kelver here. At school it was always his trouble that he could give us a good time and make us laugh, which nobody else in the whole school could do. His ambition was to kick a ball as well as a hundred other fellows could kick it. He could tell us a good story now if he would only write what the Almighty intended him to write, instead of gloomy rigmaroles about suffering Princesses in Welsh caves. I don't say it's bad, but a hundred others could write the same sort of thing better."
