CHAPTER XI

ON THE GENTLE ART OF WASTING OTHER PEOPLE'S TIME

On the last day of the house-party we decided to hold a family gathering in the evening, to which each guest must bring a written sketch of some member of the household. It was to be a very short sketch, not to consume over ten minutes in the reading, and no one was to get angry, and no one was to get his feelings hurt.

Aubrey had to go into New York to attend a dress rehearsal of his new play, but he promised to write something on the train, and have it ready. His absence left me at once to play hostess and to receive the queer, curious, and inconsequent persons who flock to the door of the successful playwright, with every wish from obtaining his autograph to an offer to stage his plays.

My time was all taken up until eleven o'clock, in ordering and setting the servants at work, righting their wrongs, and pottering around among my large family. At three I had an engagement. This left me but a short time in which to write my sketch. I begged Bee to help me out, but never yet have I succeeded in impressing Bee with any respect for my working hours. For this reason I laid down the law with open energy to Billy, hoping that Bee would see that I meant her.

I began the campaign at breakfast. Bee and Billy and I were alone.

"At eleven o'clock I am going to begin to write," I announced, firmly, "and, Billy, I want you distinctly to understand that you are not to run your engine in my hall. Do you hear?"

"Um--huh," said Billy, smiling at me like a cherub.

Bee leaned over and wiped the b.u.t.ter off Billy's chin.

"Before I go to town to-day I want to talk over that blue silk with you," she said. "I don't know how much to get, and Eugenie is so extravagant unless I get the stuff and tell her I got all there was in the piece. Then she makes it do. Would you have it made up with lace?"

"Now, look here, Bee," I said, "I am not going to get my head all muddled with dressmaking before I begin to write. I have all my ideas ready to write that article for to-night. I am going to tell about Mr.

and Mrs. Jimmie at Canterbury. Don't you remember what happened? You know if you side-track me on clothes I simply cannot do a thing."

"I know," said Bee, placidly. "No, Billy, not another lump of sugar.

Be quiet while mamma talks to Tattah. I know, but it seems to me you might have selected another day to write. You know I wanted to consult you about the dinner Thursday."

"I didn't select the day. The day selected me."

"Why didn't you write yesterday?"

"I didn't have any time."

"Why don't you wait until afternoon?"

"You know they are to be read tonight."

"Oh, very well, go ahead, and I won't bother you. I dare say the dinner will be all right. But if you would just tell me which to use, lace or chiffon with the blue?"

"Lace," I said, in desperation.

Bee half-way closed her eyes and took Billy's hand out of the cream-pitcher.

"I think I'll use chiffon," she said.

The only use my advice is to Bee is to fasten her on to the opposite thing. She says I help her to decide because I am always wrong.

"Now will you keep Billy away and excuse me to all visitors, and don't come near my door for three hours and send my luncheon up at one o'clock, and _don't send after the tray_! Leave it there until I have finished writing."

"It is so untidy," murmured Bee.

"Well, who will see it?"

I am one of those who cleanse the outside of the desk and the bureau.

"Now, Billy, my precious, if you will keep away from Tattah all the morning, I will give you some candy directly after dinner. You will find it on the sconce just where I always put it," I said.

The sconce is where Billy and I put things for each other. He is only three and a half--"thrippence, ha'penny," he says if you ask him, but beguiling--oh, as beguiling as Cleopatra, or the serpent in the Garden of Eden, or--or as his mother!

Billy and I went to look at the sconce on my way up-stairs, and he called me back twice, saying, "Tattah, I want to kiss you," which I could but feel was something due to the promised candy on the sconce.

I sat down and began to write:

_Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie at Canterbury_.

Mrs. Jimmie, having been presented at the Court of St. James, always has more to do in London than she can attend to. As Jimmie hates functions with all the hatred of the American business man who looks upon gloves as for warmth only, this leaves Jimmie and me to roam around London at will. Mrs. Jimmie loathes the top of a "'bus" and absolutely draws the line at "The Cheshire Cheese." She lunches at Scott's and dines at the Savoy, while Jimmie and I are never so happy as in the grill-room at the Trocadero or in a hansom, threading the mazes of the City, bound for a plate of beefsteak pie at "The Cheshire Cheese" or on top of a 'bus on Sat.u.r.day night, going through the Whitechapel region, creepy with horrors of "Jack the Ripper."

"What in all the world is a beefsteak pie?" she asked us, when she heard our unctuous exclamations.

"Why, it is a huge meat pie, made out of ham and larks and pigeons and beef, with a delicious gravy or sauce and a divine pastry. And you eat it in a little old kitchen with a sanded floor and deal tables, and where the bread is cut in chunks and where the steins are so thick that it is like drinking your beer over a stone wall, and where Dr. Samuel Johnson used to sit so often that the oil from his hair has made a lovely dirty spot on the wall, and they have it under gla.s.s with a tablet to his memory, so that if you like you can go and kneel down and worship before it, with your knees grinding into the sand of the floor," I said.

"Dear me," said Mrs. Jimmie, faintly. "Couldn't they have cleaned it off?"

At this juncture Bee came in with her hat on. "Excuse me for interrupting you," she said, with a far-away look in her eyes. "But do you mind if I copy that pink negligee? It hangs so much better than those I got in Paris. I won't take a moment. Just stand up and let me see. You needn't look so despairing, I am not going to stay. No, Billy, you stay there. Mother will be down directly. Oh, baby, why will you step on poor Tattah's gown? See, you hurt her. Didn't I tell you to stay with Norah? Six, eight, ten--don't, Billy. Don't touch any of Tattah's papers. Twelve--and four times seven--I think thirty yards of lace--Billy, take your engine off the piano. Oh, I forgot to tell you that d.i.c.k just telephoned, and wants us to make up a party for the theatre, with a supper afterward, next Monday. I telephoned to Freddie and asked him, and he is delighted, and so I told d.i.c.k that we would all come with pleasure. Now come, Billy, we must not interrupt Tattah. This is one of the days when she must not be disturbed."

She closed the door with the softness one uses in closing the door of a death-chamber, in order, I suppose, "not to disturb" me. I pulled myself together, and went on.

_Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie at Canterbury_.

"Clean it off? What sacrilege! Why, there are persons who would like to buy the whole wall, as Taffy tried to buy the wall on which Little Billee had drawn Trilby's foot," I exclaimed.

Mrs. Jimmie looked incredulous. She is so deliciously lacking in a sense of humour that in the frivolous society of Jimmie and me she is as much out of place as the Venus de Milo would be in vaudeville.

"We had such a delightful day at Stoke Pogis Monday, how would you like to spend Sunday at Canterbury?" she said. "It seems to me that it would be a most restful thing to wander through that lovely old cathedral on Sunday."

Before I could reply, Jimmie dug his hands down in his pockets, thrust his legs out in front of him, dropped his chin on his shirt-bosom and chuckled.

"What I like are cheerful excursions," he said. "On Monday we went to Stoke Pogis. It rained, and we had to wear overshoes, and we carried umbrellas. We lunched at a nasty little inn where we had to eat cold ham and cold mutton and cold beef, when we were wet and frozen to start with. What I wanted was a hot Scotch and a hot chop and hot potatoes--everything _hot_. Then--"

"Wait," I cried. "It was the inn where John Storm and Glory Quayle lunched that day when she led him such a dance."

"John Fiddlesticks!" said Jimmie. "As if that counted against that cold lunch! Then we arranged to go in the wagonette, but you got into such a hot argument with me--"

"I thought you said we didn't have anything hot," I murmured.

"Then we missed the wagonette, and spent an hour finding a cab. Then when we got there we were waylaid by an old woman in a little cottage, who showed us a register of tourists, and who artfully mentioned the sums they had given toward the restoration of Stoke Pogis, and you made me give more than the day's excursion cost. Then we went along a wet, bushy lane that muddied my trousers, and when we arrived at Gray's grave, you found the solemn yew-tree, and perched yourself on a wet, cold gravestone, and read Gray's Elegy aloud, while I held an umbrella over your heads and enjoyed myself. Now you want to put in Sunday at Canterbury, where, if it isn't more cheerful, you will probably have to bury me."