But all the same I did. What led up to it I hardly know. It was at the ptarmigan stage, I remember—or was it a capercailzie?—and young Mr Hump had commented upon the great joy of living in England, where one could enjoy delicious game all the year round, instead of in a country like America, where the inhabitants notoriously had nothing but fried salt pork to eat for many months at a time. Perhaps it was not worth while, but I ventured the correcting remark that there was no season of the year when one couldn’t have eighteen edible varieties of wild birds in America for every one that England has ever heard of. Mr Hump preened his chin about on the summit of his collar and smiled with superior incredulity. The others looked grave. Mrs Grundy whispered to me warningly, over her left shoulder, that Mr Hump had made America his special subject, and wrote most vigorous and comminatory articles about it almost every week. I was painfully conscious that Miss Wallaby’s cold right shoulder had been still further withdrawn from me.
Well, it was at this grotesquely inauspicious moment that I told my story. It is easy enough now to see that it was sheer folly, madness if you like, to do so. I was only too bitterly conscious of that when I reviewed the events of the evening in my homeward cab. It was apropos of nothing under the wide sky. But at the moment, I suppose, I hoped that it would relieve the situation. In one sense it did.
Baldly summarised, this is the tale. Years ago the admirable Nate Salsbury was on a “one-night-stand” tour with his bright little company of comedians through the least urban districts of Indiana, and came upon South Bend, which is an important centre of the wagon-making industry, but is not precisely a focussing point of dramatic traditions and culture.
In the vestibule of the small theatre that evening there paced up and down a tall, middle-aged, weasel-backed citizen, his hands plunged deep in his pockets, doubt and irresolution written all over his face. As others paid their money and passed in he would watch them with obvious longing; then he would go and study once more the attractive coloured bill of the Company, with its bevy of pretty girls in skirts just short enough to disclose most enticing little ankles; then once more he would resume his perplexed walk to and fro. At last he made up his mind, and approached Salsbury with diffidence. “Mister,” he said, “air you the boss of this show?” “What can I do for you?” asked Nate. “Well—no offence meant—but—can I—that is to say—will it be all right to bring a lady to your show?” “That, sir, depends!” responded the manager firmly. “Well,” the citizen went on, “what I was gittin’ at is this—can I be perfectly safe in bringin’ my wife here?”
“Sir,” said Salsbury with dignity, and an eye trained to abstain from twinkling, “it is no portion of my business to inquire whether she is your wife or not, but if she comes in here she’s got to behave herself!”
A solitary note of laughter fell upon the air when I had told this story, and on the instant Uncle Dudley, perceiving that he had made a mistake, dropped his napkin, and came up from fishing for it on the floor red-faced and dumb. All else was deadly silence.
“I—I suppose they really weren’t married at all?” said the curate, after a chilling pause.
“Marriage, I regret to say, means next to nothing in most parts of America,” remarked Mr Hump, judicially. “The most sacred ties are there habitually made the subject of ribald jests. I have been assured by a person who spent nearly three weeks in the United States some years since that it is an extremely rare experience to meet an adult American who has not been divorced at least once. This fact made a vivid impression on my mind at the time, and I—ahem!—have written frequently upon it since.”
“I suppose the trouble arises from their all living in hotels—having no home life whatever,” said Mrs Albert, with a kindly air of coming to my rescue.
“Who on earth told you that?” I began, but was cut short.