Odds and ends

by B. M. Croker

All their friends crowded to call. The bride, though poor, was well connected, the bridegroom a popular celebrity, and the newly-married couple lived in a perpetual round of dinners and social entertainment. Serle had a large circle of distinguished contemporaries: philosophers, men of letters, and men of affairs.

This agreeable condition continued for months. Helen Serle was so hospitable and attractive that visitors invaded the flat from morning to night. She was invited to theatres, concerts, lectures, and dances, yet never neglected her home or husband, but wrote and typed industriously—that is to say, when Julian had a working fit—and found ample leisure for music, theatres, and other pleasures.

The Professor had at first joined con amore in the social whirl—he was a man who did nothing by halves. Lately he had been seized by a feverish inspiration, and was engrossed in a book, “The Life of Semiramis,” on which he had worked fitfully for years, in the hope that it would be his magnum opus. Resolved to secure leisure, he turned his back upon London, let the flat for six months, and retired to Brighton. But here his fate was no better! Helen had such a faculty for picking up acquaintances and coming across friends, that his precious time was broken into for hours and days and weeks!

From Brighton he fled to the Athens of the North. Here, alas, matters were worse, for literary society fell upon the author, so to speak, as one man! Dinners, from which he could not absent himself, were given in his honour. He was invited to read papers, and to lecture on his most notable subjects—“Sardinapolis,” and “Alexander the Great in Assyria.”

In short, his work was absolutely at a standstill. Summer was coming, but “The Life of Semiramis,” and her reign of forty-two years, was not advancing to any appreciable degree. Strong measures were his only resource. And in response to an advertisement, he secured a temporary home in a far-distant village in the south of England. It was off a main line, and buried in the country. Servants, dog, poultry, and pony were included with a most delightful furnished cottage. Helen Serle was enchanted. Edinburgh was a little bit too literary for her; she enjoyed the change from the thunder of trams in Princes Street to the cooing of pigeons in the woods, and fell in love at first sight with the cottage, the garden, and the village. Alas, in a place whose name he had never heard till he had rented “Meadow-sweet,” the Professor encountered an acquaintance—Canon Simpson, an old college friend, who happened to be staying at the Rectory.

“I say, fancy seeing you here, Serle!” he exclaimed, as he held out an eager hand. “I caught sight of you in church; and when I told the Rector who you were, he was most frightfully excited. He and his wife hope to see a lot of you. You know he has been to the Holy Land, and to Nineveh. Everyone for miles round is coming to call on Mrs. Serle.”

For the moment Mrs. Serle’s husband felt paralysed and speechless. Like the dove from the ark, would he never find a place for the sole of his foot? When he thought of his book, his notes, his elaborate bits of description, all clamouring to be copied out, and polished up, he was struck with a brain storm. “Desperate ills require desperate remedies.” If the whole country was threatening to call, and the cottage was to be overrun with visitors, there were precisely two alternatives: one to return to Meadow-sweet, and begin to pack—the other ... and the other he seized on. Clenching his hand on his stick, with his guilty eyes fastened on the ground, he jerked out:

“Er—ah! Strictly between ourselves, my dear old fellow, we don’t want any visitors; or rather visitors—er—are not likely to want us! The lady who is staying with me is——” Here the colour mounted to his hair. “Well, I need say no more.” And with a shrug of his shoulders, the celebrity turned away.

To do his conscience justice, Julian Serle felt miserably hot and uncomfortable, as he faced towards home; he had insinuated a most terrible lie—but there was nothing else for it! He would allow the neighbours to suppose that Helen was his mistress—since no other defence would secure complete privacy and isolation. After all, what did it matter in this God-forsaken part of the world, where they did not know a soul? And it was only for three months. Then Helen could return home, meet all her old friends, and as many new ones as she liked!

At first Mrs. Serle was supremely indifferent to the lack of callers. In fact, she never gave them a thought. The pony and trap, the dog, the garden and the poultry, kept her delightfully engaged. She had a weekly box from Mudie’s, some interesting embroidery, plenty of correspondence, and half a dozen new songs. After two or three weeks these pleasures began to pall, and she realised the want of a companion of her own sex, with whom to discuss new stitches, new novels, and new songs. Julian, plunged in the records of Semiramis and her times, and surrounded by stacks of musty old books, had no thought for anything but his absorbing work, and—as an occasional relaxation—a little trout-fishing.