“I never knew Polly do anything actually unusual,” I said to Mrs. Spicer, “but she seems to do the usual things because they have just occurred to her for the first time as a good thing to do; not because there is nothing else she can do.”
“Just fancy!” said Polly, coming back; “Reginald says that the Henrys are dreadfully upset because their cook is going to marry the chauffeur, and she won’t be able to stay on with them. It is just what always happens, isn’t it?”
“Just the usual,” I agreed, “unless you care to go to the expense of a Morganatic alliance for the chauffeur.”
We all agreed that there was no other way out of it.
CHAPTER XIII: HOW NAUGHTY
The deliberate pursuit of naughtiness may seem absurd to those who have a natural superfluity of it, but, all the same, it is much in vogue. And, as in other matters besides naughtiness, the amateurs who most wish to excel are those who are the least likely to do anything of the sort. Every one knows theoretically that possession is nine points of desire, that in love there is always l’un qui baise et l’autre qui tend la joue, but how many have realized that the Evil one is also human, and pursues those who shun him, while he turns a deaf ear to those who really long to be naughty. It is the nice, mousy dears whom he runs after with some brilliant new devilment in his pocket. When the young desperado or the middle-aged lady with nothing in particular to do runs up to him and exclaims, “Oh, Mr. Satan, do let us have some of your lovely, wicked suggestions!” he turns green, and says, “Go away to a supper club. I will send my junior assistant to you there.” And off he flies to refresh himself at the nearest rectory.
Equally incomprehensible are certain other folk who, themselves incapable of any vice, set forth armed to the teeth against a spiritual enemy who knows them not; just as innocent old ladies in silk mantles cling together at railway stations for fear of being abducted to San Francisco. Many sensitive young clergymen have been known to speak in an uncommonly plucky way about a hot bath as if it were a sporting enterprise; showing no delicacy whatever on the subject, but attacking it as man to man, without any of that nonsensical reserve which, as they say, drives so many good people out of the Church. It is difficult to explain why boasting of having had a hot bath should imply a defensive attitude towards Satan; but, in fact, these heroes seem to cry aloud, “Parsons are not such old ladies as you think. I could ruffle it with the best of you dog foxes if I chose, and, as it is, a feller gets jolly hot sprintin’ round the parish if he’s not in good condition, I can tell you.” When they behave in this wild fashion they are consciously playing with danger. Not exactly ringing Satan’s front-door bell and then running away as one type of woman does, but rather showing how, properly armed, one may walk through his domains and take no harm. But suppose that after coming down from the heights of the life apart, and proclaiming himself an ordinary person, he should discover that he may walk in “the flesh” all day and be as safe as if he were in the Albert Hall. If it is “influence” that he wants, shall we suggest that man’s respect is more easily roused by something different from himself than by a half-baked imitation; that non-churchgoers are not really surprised into admiration by learning that a clergyman washes more than his hands; and that a sailor who is already intimate with the reckless elements will not believe more readily in God because His exponent has been seen to gather up his petticoats and play football or to take a hand at whist? In fact, if details of the toilet are to come into it at all, a verminous hermit must seem almost more spiritually detached than a young gentleman who makes such a fuss about “boiling himself” after a game of tennis.
This dare-devil attitude has perhaps been adopted by some men who have taken to the profession of the Church partly because their natural inclination is towards a life so harmless that they might feel it to be not quite manly unless it were supposed to be compulsory. So they hide their mildness by eating a bun as if it were horseflesh, assuring the bad boys that their own tastes are extremely dashing, but that they have chosen to throw away the forbidden fruit and keep only the skin; to reject the germinating kernel and nibble the husks, which are really most enjoyable. The truth being that the fruit as the boys eat it would give our friends “with no nonsense about them” the most horrible indigestion. There are of course others who passionately loved the fruit and threw it away deliberately; but you never find them nibbling the husks, any more than Brutus would have had his son whom he sacrificed stuffed for a drawing-room ornament. It is quite one thing for a lion to find a baby in its path, and to refuse, from conscientious motives, to eat it, and another for a chicken to plume itself on having had such a jolly run after the cat without killing it.
We have referred, in passing, to the lady who rings Satan’s front-door bell and then runs away. In considering what Miss Corelli has taught us to call the “Sorrows of Satan,” even so small an annoyance as this very hackneyed trick must have its place. The ladies who practise it are those who make an appointment with a man whom they know to be in love with them, and then—turn up with a chaperon. They are the ladies who like their relatives to be respectable and their friends to be disreputable, so that they may have all the fun and none of the responsibility; who devour all the indecent books they can get hold of during the week, and then go to church on Sunday; who would run miles to be introduced to a murderer at dinner, but would feel really hurt if their parlour-maid so much as cracked the commandment which comes next to the one about murder.
