They and I. Jerome Klapka Jerome

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СКАЧАТЬ for it. I wrote a poem once – a simple thing, but instinct with longing – while sitting under a tree and listening to the cooing of a pigeon. But that was in the afternoon. My only longing now was for a gun. Three times I got out of bed and “shoo’d” them away. The third time I remained by the window till I had got it firmly into their heads that I really did not want them. My behaviour on the former two occasions they had evidently judged to be mere playfulness. I had just got back to bed again when an owl began to screech. That is another sound I used to think attractive – so weird, so mysterious. It is Swinburne, I think, who says that you never get the desired one and the time and the place all right together. If the beloved one is with you, it is the wrong place or at the wrong time; and if the time and the place happen to be right, then it is the party that is wrong. The owl was all right: I like owls. The place was all right. He had struck the wrong time, that was all. Eleven o’clock at night, when you can’t see him, and naturally feel that you want to, is the proper time for an owl. Perched on the roof of a cow-shed in the early dawn he looks silly. He clung there, flapping his wings and screeching at the top of his voice. What it was he wanted I am sure I don’t know; and anyhow it didn’t seem the way to get it. He came to this conclusion himself at the end of twenty minutes, and shut himself up and went home. I thought I was going to have at last some peace, when a corncrake – a creature upon whom Nature has bestowed a song like to the tearing of calico-sheets mingled with the sharpening of saws – settled somewhere in the garden and set to work to praise its Maker according to its lights. I have a friend, a poet, who lives just off the Strand, and spends his evenings at the Garrick Club. He writes occasional verse for the evening papers, and talks about the “silent country, drowsy with the weight of languors.” One of these times I’ll lure him down for a Saturday to Monday and let him find out what the country really is – let him hear it. He is becoming too much of a dreamer: it will do him good, wake him up a bit. The corncrake after awhile stopped quite suddenly with a jerk, and for quite five minutes there was silence.

      “If this continues for another five,” I said to myself, “I’ll be asleep.” I felt it coming over me. I had hardly murmured the words when the cow turned up again. I should say she had been somewhere and had had a drink. She was in better voice than ever.

      It occurred to me that this would be an opportunity to make a few notes on the sunrise. The literary man is looked to for occasional description of the sunrise. The earnest reader who has heard about this sunrise thirsts for full particulars. Myself, for purposes of observation, I have generally chosen December or the early part of January. But one never knows. Maybe one of these days I’ll want a summer sunrise, with birds and dew-besprinkled flowers: it goes well with the rustic heroine, the miller’s daughter, or the girl who brings up chickens and has dreams. I met a brother author once at seven o’clock in the morning in Kensington Gardens. He looked half asleep and so disagreeable that I hesitated for awhile to speak to him: he is a man that as a rule breakfasts at eleven. But I summoned my courage and accosted him.

      “This is early for you,” I said.

      “It’s early for anyone but a born fool,” he answered.

      “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Can’t you sleep?”

      “Can’t I sleep?” he retorted indignantly. “Why, I daren’t sit down upon a seat, I daren’t lean up against a tree. If I did I’d be asleep in half a second.”

      “What’s the idea?” I persisted. “Been reading Smiles’s ‘Self Help and the Secret of Success’? Don’t be absurd,” I advised him. “You’ll be going to Sunday school next and keeping a diary. You have left it too late: we don’t reform at forty. Go home and go to bed.” I could see he was doing himself no good.

      “I’m going to bed,” he answered, “I’m going to bed for a month when I’ve finished this confounded novel that I’m on. Take my advice,” he said – he laid his hand upon my shoulder – “Never choose a colonial girl for your heroine. At our age it is simple madness.”

      “She’s a fine girl,” he continued, “and good. Has a heart of gold. She’s wearing me to a shadow. I wanted something fresh and unconventional. I didn’t grasp what it was going to do. She’s the girl that gets up early in the morning and rides bare-back – the horse, I mean, of course; don’t be so silly. Over in New South Wales it didn’t matter. I threw in the usual local colour – the eucalyptus-tree and the kangaroo – and let her ride. It is now that she is over here in London that I wish I had never thought of her. She gets up at five and wanders about the silent city. That means, of course, that I have to get up at five in order to record her impressions. I have walked six miles this morning. First to St. Paul’s Cathedral; she likes it when there’s nobody about. You’d think it wasn’t big enough for her to see if anybody else was in the street. She thinks of it as of a mother watching over her sleeping children; she’s full of all that sort of thing. And from there to Westminster Bridge. She sits on the parapet and reads Wordsworth, till the policeman turns her off. This is another of her favourite spots.” He indicated with a look of concentrated disgust the avenue where we were standing. “This is where she likes to finish up. She comes here to listen to a blackbird.”

      “Well, you are through with it now,” I said to console him. “You’ve done it; and it’s over.”

      “Through with it!” he laughed bitterly. “I’m just beginning it. There’s the entire East End to be done yet: she’s got to meet a fellow there as big a crank as herself. And walking isn’t the worst. She’s going to have a horse; you can guess what that means. – Hyde Park will be no good to her. She’ll find out Richmond and Ham Common. I’ve got to describe the scenery and the mad joy of the thing.”

      “Can’t you imagine it?” I suggested.

      “I’m going to imagine all the enjoyable part of it,” he answered. “I must have a groundwork to go upon. She’s got to have feelings come to her upon this horse. You can’t enter into a rider’s feelings when you’ve almost forgotten which side of the horse you get up.”

      I walked with him to the Serpentine. I had been wondering how it was he had grown stout so suddenly. He had a bath towel round him underneath his coat.

      “It’ll give me my death of cold, I know it will,” he chattered while unlacing his boots.

      “Can’t you leave it till the summer-time,” I suggested, “and take her to Ostend?”

      “It wouldn’t be unconventional,” he growled. “She wouldn’t take an interest in it.”

      “But do they allow ladies to bathe in the Serpentine?” I persisted.

      “It won’t be the Serpentine,” he explained. “It’s going to be the Thames at Greenwich. But it must be the same sort of feeling. She’s got to tell them all about it during a lunch in Queen’s Gate, and shock them all. That’s all she does it for, in my opinion.”

      He emerged a mottled blue. I helped him into his clothes, and he was fortunate enough to find an early cab. The book appeared at Christmas. The critics agreed that the heroine was a delightful creation. Some of them said they would like to have known her.

      Remembering my poor friend, it occurred to me that by going out now and making a few notes about the morning, I might be saving myself trouble later on. I slipped on a few things – nothing elaborate – put a notebook in my pocket, opened the door and went down.

      Perhaps it would be more correct to say “opened the door and was down.” It was my own fault, I admit. We had talked this thing over before going to bed, and I myself had impressed upon Veronica the need for caution. The architect of the country cottage does not waste space. He dispenses with landings; the bedroom door opens on to the top stair. It does not do to walk out of your bedroom, СКАЧАТЬ