I shall never forget dinner on the first night after our arrival. I was standing at the sideboard, trying to draw a cork (which subsequently came out of its own accord, and broke three glasses and part of the butler), when I heard JONES ask STANLEY PETTIGREW to think of a number.
His adversary turned pale, and a gleam of suspicion appeared in his eye.
"Double it," went on JONES relentlessly. "Have you doubled it?"
"Yes," growled the baffled wretch.
"Add two. Take away the number you first thought of. Double it. Add three. Divide half the first number (minus eighteen) by four. Subtract seven. Multiply by three hundred and sixteen, and the result is the number you first thought of minus four hundred and five."
"Really?" said STANLEY PETTIGREW with assumed indifference.
"My dear JONES, how——?" I began admiringly.
JONES flashed a warning glance at me. Miss PETTIGREW saved the situation with magnificent tact.
"JOHN," she said, "you forget yourself. Leave the room."
I was therefore deprived of the pleasure of witnessing the subsequent struggles which, to judge from the account JONES gave me in my room afterwards, must have been magnificent.
"After the fish," said JONES, "he began—as I had suspected that he would—to tell dog-stories. For once, however, he had found his match. My habit of going out at odd moments during the day to see men about dogs has rendered me peculiarly fitted to cope with that type of attack. I had it all my own way. Miss PETTIGREW, poor girl, fainted after about twenty minutes of it, and had to be carried out. I foresee that this will be a rapid affair, WUDDUS."
But it was not. On the contrary, after the first shock of meeting a powerful rival so unexpectedly, STANLEY PETTIGREW began to hold his own, and soon to have the better of it.
"I tell you what it is, WUDDUS," said JONES to me one night, after a fierce encounter had ended decidedly in his rival's favour, "a little more of this and I shall have to own myself defeated. He nearly put me to sleep in the third round to-night, and I was in Queer Street all the time. I never met such a bore in my life."
But it is the unexpected that happens. Three days later, STANLEY PETTIGREW came down to breakfast, looking haggard and careworn. JONES saw his opportunity.
"Talking of amusing anecdotes of children," he said (the conversation up to this point had dealt exclusively with the weather), "reminds me of a peculiarly smart thing a little nephew of mine said the other day. A bright little chap of two. It was like this——"
He concluded the anecdote, and looked across at his rival with a challenge in his eye. STANLEY PETTIGREW was silent, and apparently in pain.
JONES followed up his advantage. He told stories of adventure on Swiss mountains. A bad Switzerland bore is the deadliest type known to scientists.
JONES was a peerless Switzerland bore. His opponent's head sank onto his chest, and he grew very pale.
"And positively," concluded JONES, "old FRANZ WILHELM, the guide, you know, a true son of the mountains, assured us that if we had decided to go for a climb that day instead of staying in the smoking-room, and the rope had broken at the exact moment when we were crossing the Thingummy glacier, we should in all probability have been killed on the spot. Positively on the spot, my dear Sir. He said that we should all have been killed on the spot."
He paused. No reply came from PETTIGREW. The silence became uncanny. I hurried to his side, and placed a hand upon his heart. I felt in vain. Like a superannuated policeman, the heart was no longer on its beat. STANLEY PETTIGREW (it follows, of course) was dead.
JONES looked thoughtfully at the body, and helped himself to another egg.
"He was a bad man," he said quietly, "and he won't be missed. R.S.V.P."
A brief post-mortem examination revealed the fact that he had fallen into the pit which he had digged for another. He had been bored to death.
"Why, JONES," said I, as we sprang into the midnight mail that was to take us back to town, "did deceased collapse in that extraordinary manner?"
"I will tell you. Listen. After our duel had been in progress some days, it was gradually borne in upon me that this STANLEY PETTIGREW must have some secret reservoir of matter to draw upon in case of need. I searched his room."
"JONES!"
"And under the bed I found a large case literally crammed with tip- books. I abstracted the books and filled the box with bricks. Deprived of all his resources, he collapsed. That's all."
"But—" I began.
"If you ask any more questions, WUDDUS," said JONES, "I shall begin to suspect that you are developing into a bore yourself. Pass the morphia and don't say another word till we get to London."
MISUNDERSTOOD (A STORY OF THE STONE AGE)
Of all the young bachelors in his tribe not one was more highly esteemed than Ug, the son of Zug. He was one of the nicest young prehistoric men that ever sprang seven feet into the air to avoid the impulsive bite of a sabre-tooth tiger, or cheered the hearts of brave elders searching for inter-tribal talent by his lightning sprints in front of excitable mammoths. Everybody liked Ug, and it was a matter of surprise to his friends that he had never married.
One bright day, however, they were interested to observe that he had begun to exhibit all the symptoms. He brooded apart. Twice in succession he refused a second help of pterodactyl at the tribal luncheon table. And there were those who claimed to have come upon him laboriously writing poetry on the walls of distant caves.
It should be understood that in those days only the most powerful motive, such as a whole-hearted love, could drive a man to writing poetry; for it was not the ridiculously simple task which it is to- day. The alphabet had not yet been invented, and the only method by which a young man could express himself was by carving or writing on stone a series of pictures, each of which conveyed the sense of some word or phrase. Thus, where the modern bard takes but a few seconds to write, "You made me love you. I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to do it", Ug, the son of Zug, had to sit up night after night till he had carved three trees, a plesiosaurus, four kinds of fish, a star-shaped rock, eleven different varieties of flowering shrub, and a more or less lifelike representation of a mammoth surprised while bathing. It is little wonder that the youth of the period, ever impetuous, looked askance at this method of revealing their passion, and preferred to give proof of their sincerity and fervour by waiting for the lady of their affections behind a rock and stunning her with a club.
But the refined and sensitive nature of Ug, the son of Zug, shrank from this brusque form of wooing. He was shy with women. To him there was something a little coarse, almost ungentlemanly, in the orthodox form of proposal; and he had made up his mind that, if ever he should happen to fall in love, he would propose by ideograph.
It was shortly after he had come to this decision that, at a boy-and- girl dance given by a popular hostess, he met the divinest creature he had ever seen. Her name was Wug, the daughter of Glug; and from the moment of their introduction he realised that she was the one girl in the world for him. It only remained to compose the ideograph.
Having steadied himself as far as possible by carving a few poems, as described above, he addressed himself to the really important task of the proposal.
It was extraordinarily difficult, for Ug had not had a very good education. All he knew he had picked up in the give and take of tribal life. For this reason he felt it would be better to keep the thing short. But it was hard to condense all he felt into a brief note. For a long time he thought in vain, then one night, as he tossed sleeplessly on his bed of rocks, he came to a decision. He would just ideograph, "Dear Wug, I love you. Yours faithfully, Ug. P.S. R.S.V.P.", and leave it at that. So in the morning he got to work, and by the end of the week the ideograph was completed. It consisted of a rising sun, two cave-bears, a walrus, seventeen shin- bones of the lesser rib-nosed baboon, a brontosaurus, three sand-eels, and a pterodactyl devouring a mangold-worzel. It was an uncommonly neat piece of work, he considered, for one who had never attended an art-school. He was pleased with it. It would, he flattered himself, be a queer sort of girl who could stand out against that. For the first time for weeks he slept soundly and peacefully.