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_ I'm not going to discuss the Fiscal Question (said Reginald);
I wish to be original. At the same time, I think one suffers
more than one realises from the system of free imports. I
should like, for instance, a really prohibitive duty put upon
the partner who declares on a weak red suit and hopes for the
best. Even a free outlet for compressed verbiage doesn't
balance matters. And I think there should be a sort of
bounty-fed export (is that the right expression?) of the
people who impress on you that you ought to take life
seriously. There are only two classes that really can't help
taking life seriously--schoolgirls of thirteen and
Hohenzollerns; they might be exempt. Albanians come under
another heading; they take life whenever they get the
opportunity. The one Albanian that I was ever on speaking
terms with was rather a decadent example. He was a Christian
and a grocer, and I don't fancy he had ever killed anybody.
I didn't like to question him on the subject--that showed my
delicacy. Mrs. Nicorax says I have no delicacy; she hasn't
forgiven me about the mice. You see, when I was staying down
there, a mouse used to cake-walk about my room half the
night, and none of their silly patent traps seemed to take
its fancy as a bijou residence, so I determined to appeal to
the better side of it--which with mice is the inside. So I
called it Percy, and put little delicacies down near its hole
every night, and that kept it quiet while I read Max Nordau's
Degeneration and other reproving literature, and went to
sleep. And now she says there is a whole colony of mice in
that room.
That isn't where the indelicacy comes in. She went out
riding with me, which was entirely her own suggestion, and as
we were coming home through some meadows she made a quite
unnecessary attempt to see if her pony would jump a rather
messy sort of brook that was there. It wouldn't. It went
with her as far as the water's edge, and from that point Mrs.
Nicorax went on alone. Of course I had to fish her out from
the bank, and my riding-breeches are not cut with a view to
salmon-fishing--it's rather an art even to ride in them. Her
habit-skirt was one of those open questions that need not be
adhered to in emergencies, and on this occasion it remained
behind in some water-weeds. She wanted me to fish about for
that too, but I felt I had done enough Pharaoh's daughter
business for an October afternoon, and I was beginning to
want my tea. So I bundled her up on to her pony, and gave
her a lead towards home as fast as I cared to go. What with
the wet and the unusual responsibility, her abridged costume
did not stand the pace particularly well, and she got quite
querulous when I shouted back that I had no pins with me--and
no string. Some women expect so much from a fellow. When we
got into the drive she wanted to go up the back way to the
stables, but the ponies KNOW they always get sugar at the
front door, and I never attempt to hold a pulling pony; as
for Mrs. Nicorax, it took her all she knew to keep a firm
hand on her seceding garments, which, as her maid remarked
afterwards, were more tout than ensemble. Of course nearly
the whole house-party were out on the lawn watching the
sunset--the only day this month that it's occurred to the sun
to show itself, as Mrs. Nic. viciously observed--and I shall
never forget the expression on her husband's face as we
pulled up. "My darling, this is too much!" was his first
spoken comment; taking into consideration the state of her
toilet, it was the most brilliant thing I had ever heard him
say, and I went into the library to be alone and scream.
Mrs. Nicorax says I have no delicacy.
Talking about tariffs, the lift-boy, who reads extensively
between the landings, says it won't do to tax raw
commodities. What, exactly, is a raw commodity? Mrs. Van
Challaby says men are raw commodities till you marry them;
after they've struck Mrs. Van C., I can fancy they pretty
soon become a finished article. Certainly she's had a good
deal of experience to support her opinion. She lost one
husband in a railway accident, and mislaid another in the
Divorce Court, and the current one has just got himself
squeezed in a Beef Trust. "What was he doing in a Beef
Trust, anyway?" she asked tearfully, and I suggested that
perhaps he had an unhappy home. I only said it for the sake
of making conversation; which it did. Mrs. Van Challaby said
things about me which in her calmer moments she would have
hesitated to spell. It's a pity people can't discuss fiscal
matters without getting wild. However, she wrote next day to
ask if I could get her a Yorkshire terrier of the size and
shade that's being worn now, and that's as near as a woman
can be expected to get to owning herself in the wrong. And
she will tie a salmon-pink bow to its collar, and call it
"Reggie," and take it with her everywhere--like poor Miriam
Klopstock, who WOULD take her Chow with her to the bathroom,
and while she was bathing it was playing at she-bears with
her garments. Miriam is always late for breakfast, and she
wasn't really missed till the middle of lunch.
However, I'm not going any further into the Fiscal Question.
Only I should like to be protected from the partner with a
weak red tendency. _
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