"Well," replied Jephson, taking the pipe from between his lips, and speaking in that soothingly melancholy tone of voice that he never varies, whether telling a joke about a wedding or an anecdote relating to a funeral, "not altogether bad. Bad, with good instincts, the good instincts well under control."
"I wonder why it is," murmured MacShaughna.s.sy reflectively, "that bad people are so much more interesting than good."
"I don"t think the reason is very difficult to find," answered Jephson.
"There"s more uncertainty about them. They keep you more on the alert.
It"s like the difference between riding a well-broken, steady-going hack and a lively young colt with ideas of his own. The one is comfortable to travel on, but the other provides you with more exercise. If you start off with a thoroughly good woman for your heroine you give your story away in the first chapter. Everybody knows precisely how she will behave under every conceivable combination of circ.u.mstances in which you can place her. On every occasion she will do the same thing--that is the right thing.
"With a bad heroine, on the other hand, you can never be quite sure what is going to happen. Out of the fifty or so courses open to her, she may take the right one, or she may take one of the forty-nine wrong ones, and you watch her with curiosity to see which it will be."
"But surely there are plenty of good heroines who are interesting," I said.
"At intervals--when they do something wrong," answered Jephson. "A consistently irreproachable heroine is as irritating as Socrates must have been to Xantippe, or as the model boy at school is to all the other lads. Take the stock heroine of the eighteenth-century romance. She never met her lover except for the purpose of telling him that she could not be his, and she generally wept steadily throughout the interview. She never forgot to turn pale at the sight of blood, nor to faint in his arms at the most inconvenient moment possible. She was determined never to marry without her father"s consent, and was equally resolved never to marry anybody but the one particular person she was convinced he would never agree to her marrying. She was an excellent young woman, and nearly as uninteresting as a celebrity at home."
"Ah, but you"re not talking about good women now," I observed. "You"re talking about some silly person"s idea of a good woman."
"I quite admit it," replied Jephson. "Nor, indeed, am I prepared to say what is a good woman. I consider the subject too deep and too complicated for any mere human being to give judgment upon. But I _am_ talking of the women who conformed to the popular idea of maidenly goodness in the age when these books were written. You must remember goodness is not a known quant.i.ty. It varies with every age and every locality, and it is, generally speaking, your "silly persons" who are responsible for its varying standards. In j.a.pan, a "good" girl would be a girl who would sell her honour in order to afford little luxuries to her aged parents. In certain hospitable islands of the torrid zone the "good" wife goes to lengths that we should deem altogether unnecessary in making her husband"s guest feel himself at home. In ancient Hebraic days, Jael was accounted a good woman for murdering a sleeping man, and Sarai stood in no danger of losing the respect of her little world when she led Hagar unto Abraham. In eighteenth-century England, supernatural stupidity and dulness of a degree that must have been difficult to attain, were held to be feminine virtues--indeed, they are so still--and authors, who are always among the most servile followers of public opinion, fashioned their puppets accordingly. Nowadays "slumming" is the most applauded virtue, and so all our best heroines go slumming, and are "good to the poor.""
"How useful "the poor" are," remarked MacShaughna.s.sy, somewhat abruptly, placing his feet on the mantelpiece, and tilting his chair back till it stood at an angle that caused us to rivet our attention upon it with hopeful interest. "I don"t think we scribbling fellows ever fully grasp how much we owe to "the poor." Where would our angelic heroines and our n.o.ble-hearted heroes be if it were not for "the poor"? We want to show that the dear girl is as good as she is beautiful. What do we do? We put a basket full of chickens and bottles of wine on her arm, a fetching little sun-bonnet on her head, and send her round among the poor. How do we prove that our apparent scamp of a hero is really a n.o.ble young man at heart? Why, by explaining that he is good to the poor.
"They are as useful in real life as they are in Bookland. What is it consoles the tradesman when the actor, earning eighty pounds a week, cannot pay his debts? Why, reading in the theatrical newspapers gushing accounts of the dear fellow"s invariable generosity to the poor. What is it stills the small but irritating voice of conscience when we have successfully accomplished some extra big feat of swindling? Why, the n.o.ble resolve to give ten per cent of the net profits to the poor.
"What does a man do when he finds himself growing old, and feels that it is time for him to think seriously about securing his position in the next world? Why, he becomes suddenly good to the poor. If the poor were not there for him to be good to, what could he do? He would be unable to reform at all. It"s a great comfort to think that the poor will always be with us. They are the ladder by which we climb into heaven."
There was silence for a few moments, while MacShaughna.s.sy puffed away vigorously, and almost savagely, at his pipe, and then Brown said: "I can tell you rather a quaint incident, bearing very aptly on the subject. A cousin of mine was a land-agent in a small country town, and among the houses on his list was a fine old mansion that had remained vacant for many years. He had despaired of ever selling it, when one day an elderly lady, very richly dressed, drove up to the office and made inquiries about it. She said she had come across it accidentally while travelling through that part of the country the previous autumn, and had been much struck by its beauty and picturesqueness. She added she was looking out for some quiet spot where she could settle down and peacefully pa.s.s the remainder of her days, and thought this place might possibly prove to be the very thing for her.
"My cousin, delighted with the chance of a purchaser, at once drove her across to the estate, which was about eight miles distant from the town, and they went over it together. My cousin waxed eloquent upon the subject of its advantages. He dwelt upon its quiet and seclusion, its proximity--but not too close proximity--to the church, its convenient distance from the village.
"Everything pointed to a satisfactory conclusion of the business. The lady was charmed with the situation and the surroundings, and delighted with the house and grounds. She considered the price moderate.
""And now, Mr. Brown," said she, as they stood by the lodge gate, "tell me, what cla.s.s of poor have you got round about?"
""Poor?" answered my cousin; "there are no poor."
""No poor!" exclaimed the lady. "No poor people in the village, or anywhere near?"
""You won"t find a poor person within five miles of the estate," he replied proudly. "You see, my dear madam, this is a thinly populated and exceedingly prosperous county: this particular district especially so.
There is not a family in it that is not, comparatively speaking, well-to- do."
""I"m sorry to hear that," said the lady, in a tone of disappointment.
"The place would have suited me so admirably but for that."
""But surely, madam," cried my cousin, to whom a demand for poor persons was an entirely new idea, "you don"t mean to say that you _want_ poor people! Why, we"ve always considered it one of the chief attractions of the property--nothing to shock the eye or wound the susceptibilities of the most tender-hearted occupant."
""My dear Mr. Brown," replied the lady, "I will be perfectly frank with you. I am becoming an old woman, and my past life has not, perhaps, been altogether too well spent. It is my desire to atone for the--er--follies of my youth by an old age of well-doing, and to that end it is essential that I should be surrounded by a certain number of deserving poor. I had hoped to find in this charming neighbourhood of yours the customary proportion of poverty and misery, in which case I should have taken the house without hesitation. As it is, I must seek elsewhere."
"My cousin was perplexed, and sad. "There are plenty of poor people in the town," he said, "many of them most interesting cases, and you could have the entire care of them all. There"d be no opposition whatever, I"m positive."
""Thank you," replied the lady, "but I really couldn"t go as far as the town. They must be within easy driving distance or they are no good."
"My cousin cudgelled his brains again. He did not intend to let a purchaser slip through his fingers if he could help it. At last a bright thought flashed into his mind. "I"ll tell you what we could do," he said. "There"s a piece of waste land the other end of the village that we"ve never been able to do much with, in consequence of its being so swampy. If you liked, we could run you up a dozen cottages on that, cheap--it would be all the better their being a bit ramshackle and unhealthy--and get some poor people for you, and put into them."
"The lady reflected upon the idea, and it struck her as a good one.
""You see," continued my cousin, pushing his advantage, "by adopting this method you would be able to select your own poor. We would get you some nice, clean, grateful poor, and make the thing pleasant for you."
"It ended in the lady"s accepting my cousin"s offer, and giving him a list of the poor people she would like to have. She selected one bedridden old woman (Church of England preferred); one paralytic old man; one blind girl who would want to be read aloud to; one poor atheist, willing to be converted; two cripples; one drunken father who would consent to be talked to seriously; one disagreeable old fellow, needing much patience; two large families, and four ordinary a.s.sorted couples.
"My cousin experienced some difficulty in securing the drunken father.
Most of the drunken fathers he interviewed upon the subject had a rooted objection to being talked to at all. After a long search, however, he discovered a mild little man, who, upon the lady"s requirements and charitable intentions being explained to him, undertook to qualify himself for the vacancy by getting intoxicated at least once a week. He said he could not promise more than once a week at first, he unfortunately possessing a strong natural distaste for all alcoholic liquors, which it would be necessary for him to overcome. As he got more used to them, he would do better.
"Over the disagreeable old man, my cousin also had trouble. It was hard to hit the right degree of disagreeableness. Some of them were so very unpleasant. He eventually made choice of a decayed cab-driver with advanced Radical opinions, who insisted on a three years" contract.
"The plan worked exceedingly well, and does so, my cousin tells me, to this day. The drunken father has completely conquered his dislike to strong drink. He has not been sober now for over three weeks, and has lately taken to knocking his wife about. The disagreeable fellow is most conscientious in fulfilling his part of the bargain, and makes himself a perfect curse to the whole village. The others have dropped into their respective positions and are working well. The lady visits them all every afternoon, and is most charitable. They call her Lady Bountiful, and everybody blesses her."
Brown rose as he finished speaking, and mixed himself a gla.s.s of whisky and water with the self-satisfied air of a benevolent man about to reward somebody for having done a good deed; and MacShaughna.s.sy lifted up his voice and talked.
"I know a story bearing on the subject, too," he said. "It happened in a tiny Yorkshire village--a peaceful, respectable spot, where folks found life a bit slow. One day, however, a new curate arrived, and that woke things up considerably. He was a nice young man, and, having a large private income of his own, was altogether a most desirable catch. Every unmarried female in the place went for him with one accord.
"But ordinary feminine blandishments appeared to have no effect upon him.
He was a seriously inclined young man, and once, in the course of a casual conversation upon the subject of love, he was heard to say that he himself should never be attracted by mere beauty and charm. What would appeal to him, he said, would be a woman"s goodness--her charity and kindliness to the poor.
"Well, that set the petticoats all thinking. They saw that in studying fashion plates and practising expressions they had been going upon the wrong tack. The card for them to play was "the poor." But here a serious difficulty arose. There was only one poor person in the whole parish, a cantankerous old fellow who lived in a tumble-down cottage at the back of the church, and fifteen able-bodied women (eleven girls, three old maids, and a widow) wanted to be "good" to him.
"Miss Simmonds, one of the old maids, got hold of him first, and commenced feeding him twice a day with beef-tea; and then the widow boarded him with port wine and oysters. Later in the week others of the party drifted in upon him, and wanted to cram him with jelly and chickens.
"The old man couldn"t understand it. He was accustomed to a small sack of coals now and then, accompanied by a long lecture on his sins, and an occasional bottle of dandelion tea. This sudden spurt on the part of Providence puzzled him. He said nothing, however, but continued to take in as much of everything as he could hold. At the end of a month he was too fat to get through his own back door.
"The compet.i.tion among the women-folk grew keener every day, and at last the old man began to give himself airs, and to make the place hard for them. He made them clean his cottage out, and cook his meals, and when he was tired of having them about the house, he set them to work in the garden.
"They grumbled a good deal, and there was a talk at one time of a sort of a strike, but what could they do? He was the only pauper for miles round, and knew it. He had the monopoly, and, like all monopolises, he abused his position.
"He made them run errands. He sent them out to buy his "baccy," at their own expense. On one occasion he sent Miss Simmonds out with a jug to get his supper beer. She indignantly refused at first, but he told her that if she gave him any of her stuck-up airs out she would go, and never come into his house again. If she wouldn"t do it there were plenty of others who would. She knew it and went.
"They had been in the habit of reading to him--good books with an elevating tendency. But now he put his foot down upon that sort of thing. He said he didn"t want Sunday-school rubbish at his time of life.
What he liked was something spicy. And he made them read him French novels and seafaring tales, containing realistic language. And they didn"t have to skip anything either, or he"d know the reason why.
"He said he liked music, so a few of them clubbed together and bought him a harmonium. Their idea was that they would sing hymns and play high- cla.s.s melodies, but it wasn"t his. His idea was--"Keeping up the old girl"s birthday" and "She winked the other eye," with chorus and skirt dance, and that"s what they sang.
"To what lengths his tyranny would have gone it is difficult to say, had not an event happened that brought his power to a premature collapse.
This was the curate"s sudden and somewhat unexpected marriage with a very beautiful burlesque actress who had lately been performing in a neighbouring town. He gave up the Church on his engagement, in consequence of his _fiancee"s_ objection to becoming a minister"s wife.
She said she could never "tumble to" the district visiting.
"With the curate"s wedding the old pauper"s brief career of prosperity ended. They packed him off to the workhouse after that, and made him break stones."
At the end of the telling of his tale, MacShaughna.s.sy lifted his feet off the mantelpiece, and set to work to wake up his legs; and Jephson took a hand, and began to spin us stories.