No. III.—JOANNA OF THE CROSS WAYS.
(By GEORGE VERIMYTH, Author of "Richard's Several Editions," "The Aphorist," "Shampoo's Shaving-Pot.")
[With this story came a long, explanatory letter. The story, however, is itself so clear and easy to understand (as is all the work of this master), that the accompanying commentary is unnecessary.]
CHAPTER I.
In the earlier portion of the lives of all of us there is a time, heaven-given without doubt, for all things, as we know, draw their origin thence, if only in our blundering, ill-conditioned way we trace them back far enough with the finger of fate pointing to us as in mockery of all striving of ours on this rough bosom of our mother earth, a time there comes when the senses rebel, first faintly, and then with ever-increasing vehemence, panting, beating, buffeting and breasting the torrent of necessity, against the parental decree that would drench our inmost being in the remedial powder of a Gregorian doctor, famous, I doubt not, in his day, and much bepraised by them that walked delicately in the light of pure reason and the healthful flow of an untainted soul, but now cast out and abhorred of childhood soaring on uplifted wing through the vast blue of the modern pharmacopoeia. Yet to them is there not comfort too in the symbolic outpourings of a primæval wisdom which, embodied for all time in imperishable verse, are chanted in the haunts of the very young like the soft lappings of the incoming tide on a beach where rounded pebble disputes with shining sand the mastery of the foreshore?
So, too, while the infant chariot with its slow motion of treble wheels advances obedient to the hand of the wimpled maid who from the rear directs its ambiguous progress, the dozing occupant may not always understand, but, hearing, cannot fail to be moved to tears by the simple tale of JOANNA crossed in all her depth and scope of free vigorous life by him that should have stood her friend. For the man had wedded her. Of that there can be no doubt, since the chronicles have handed down the date of it. Wedded her with the fatal "yes" that binds a trusting soul in the world's chains. A man, too. A reckless, mutton-munching, beer-swilling animal! And yet a man. A dear, brave, human heart, as it should have been; capable, it may be, of unselfishness and devotion; but, alas! how sadly twisted to the devil's purposes on earth, an image of perpetual chatter, like the putty-faced street-pictures of morning soapsuds. His names stand in full in the verse. JOHN, shortened familiarly, but not without a hint of contempt, to JACK, stares at you in all the bravery of a Christian name. And SPRATT follows with a breath of musty antiquity. SPRATT that is indeed a SPRATT, sunk in the oil of a slothful imagination and bearing no impress of the sirname that should raise its owner to cloudy peaks of despotic magnificence.
But of the lady's names no hint is given. We may conjecture SPRATT to have been hers too, poor young soul that should have been dancing instead of fastened to a table in front of an eternal platter. And of all names to precede it the fittest surely is JOANNA. For what is that but the glorification with many feminine thrills of the unromantic chawbacon JOHN masticating at home in semi-privacy the husks of contentment, the lean scrapings of the divine dish which is offered once in every life to all. So JOANNA she shall be and is, and as JOANNA shall her story be told.
CHAPTER II.
Many are the tales concerning JOANNA's flashing wit. There appeared many years back, in a modest shape that excited small interest amongst the reviewing herd, a booklet whereof the title furnished little if any indication to the contents. The Spinster's Reticule, for so the name ran, came forth with no blare of journalistic trumpets challenging approval from the towers of critical sagacity. It appeared and lived. But between its cardboard covers the bruised heart of JOANNA beats before the world. She shines most in these aphorisms. Her private talk, too, has its own brilliancy, spun, as it was here and there, out of a museful mind at the cooking of the dinner or of the family accounts. She said of love that "it is the sputter of grease in a frying-pan; where it falls the fire burns with a higher flame to consume it."[1] Of man, that "he may navigate Mormon Bay, but he cannot sail to Khiva Point." The meaning is too obvious it may be, but the thought is well imaged.
She is delightful when she touches on life. "Two," she says, "may sit at a feast, but the feast is not thereby doubled." And, again, "Passion may lift us to Himalaya heights, but the hams are smoked in a chimney." And this of the soul, "He who fashions a waterproof prevents not the clouds from dripping moisture." Of stockings she observes that, "The knitting-needles are long, but the turn of the heel is a teaser." Here there is a delightful irony of which matrons and maids may take note.
Such, then, was our JOANNA—JOANNA MERESIA SPRATT, to give her that full name by which posterity is to know her—an ardent, bubbling, bacon-loving girl-nature, with hands reaching from earth to the stars, that blinked egregiously at the sight of her innocent beauty, and hid themselves in winding clouds for very love of her.
CHAPTER III.
Sir JOHN SPRATT had fashions that were peculiarly his own. Vain it were to inquire how, from the long-perished SPRATTS that went before him, he drew that form of human mind which was his. Laws that are hidden from our prying eyes ordain that a man shall be the visible exemplar of vanished ages, offering here and there a hook of remembrance, on which a philosopher may hang a theory for the world's admiring gaze. Far back in the misty past, of which the fabulists bear record, there have swum SPRATTS within this human ocean, and of these the ultimate and proudest was he with whose life-story we are concerned. It was his habit to carry with him on all journeys a bulky note-book, the store in which he laid by for occasions of use the thoughts that thronged upon him, now feverishly, as with the exultant leap of a rough-coated canine companion, released from the thraldom of chain and kennel, and eager to seek the Serpentine haunts of water-nymphs, and of sticks that fell with a splash, and are brought back time and again whilst the shaken spray bedews the onlookers; now with the staid and solemn progression that is beloved of the equine drawers of four-wheeled chariots, protesting with many growls against a load of occupants.
He had met JOANNA. They had conversed. "An empty table, is it not?" said she. "Nowhere!" said he, and they proceeded. His "Nowhere!" had a penetrating significance—the more significant for the sense that it left vague.
And so the marriage was arranged, the word that was to make one of those who had hitherto been two had been spoken, and the celebrating gifts came pouring in to the pair.
Sir JOHN walked home with triumph swelling high in his heart. Overhead the storm-clouds gathered ominously. First with a patter, then with a drenching flood, the prisoned rain burst its bars, and dashed clamouring down to the free earth. He paused, umbrellaless, under a glimmering lamp-post. The hurrying steeds of a carriage, passing at great speed, dashed the gathered slush of the street over his dark-blue Melton over-coat. The imprecations of the coachman and his jeers mingled strangely with the elemental roar. Sir JOHN heeded them not. He stood moveless for a space, then slowly drawing forth his note-book, and sharpening his pencil, he wrote the following phrase:—"Laid Brother to Banjo, one, two, three, 5 to 4."
CHAPTER IV.
A year had gone by, and with the spring that whispered softly in the blossoming hedge-rows, and the melancholy cry of the female fowl calling to her downy brood, JOANNA had learnt new lessons of a beneficent life, and had crystallised them in aphorisms, shaken like dew from the morning leaf of her teeming fancy.
They sat at table together. BINNS, the butler, who himself dabbled in aphorism, and had sucked wisdom from the privy perusal of Sir JOHN's note-book, had laid before them a dish on which reposed a small but well-boiled leg of one that had trod the Southdowns but a week before in all the pride of lusty life. There was a silence for a moment.
"You will, as usual, take the fat?" queried Sir JOHN.
"Lean for me to-day," retorted JOANNA, with one of her bright flashes.
"Nay, nay," said her husband, "that were against tradition, which assigns to you the fat."
JOANNA pouted. Her mind rebelled against dictation. Besides, were not her aphorisms superior to those of her husband? The cold face of Sir JOHN grew eloquent in protest. She paused, and then with one wave of her stately arm swept mutton, platter, knife, fork, and caper sauce into the lap of Sir JOHN, whence the astonished BINNS, gasping in pain, with much labour rescued them. JOANNA had disappeared in a flame of mocking laughter, and was heard above calling on her maid for salts. But Sir JOHN ere yet the sauce had been fairly scraped from him, unclasped his note-book, and with trembling fingers wrote therein, "POOLE's master-pieces are ever at the mercy of an angry woman."
CHAPTER V.
But the world is hard, and there was little mercy shown for JOANNA's freak. Her husband had slain her. That was all. She with her flashes, her gaiety, her laughter, was consigned to dust. But in Sir JOHN's note-book it was written that, "The hob-nailed boot is but a bungling weapon. The drawing-room poker is better."
THE END.
Footnote 1: [(return)]
I guarantee all these remarks to be intensely humorous and brilliant. If you can't see it, so much the worse for you. They are screamers.—G.V.