“Do you really care about mine?” she asked wistfully.
“My dear,” said I, dropping on one knee by the sofa, and taking her hand, “I’ve been longing for it for six weeks.” And I counted the weeks on her fingers.
This put her in a good humour. Now that I come to think of it, there is something adorably infantile in grown up women. Shall man ever understand them? I have seen babies (not many, I am glad to say) crow with delight at having their toes pulled, with a “this little pig went to market,” and so forth; Judith almost crowed at having the weeks told off on her fingers. Queer!
An hour was taken up with the account of her doings in Paris. She had met all the nicest and naughtiest people. She had been courted and flattered. An artist in a slouch hat, baggy corduroy breeches, floppy tie and general 1830 misfit had made love to her on the top of the Eiffel Tower.
“And he said,” laughed Judith, “‘Partons ensemble. Comme on dit en Anglais—fly with me!’ I remarked that our state when we got to the Champs de Mars would be an effective disguise. He didn’t understand, and it was delicious!”
I laughed. “All the same,” I observed, “I can’t see the fun of making jokes which the person to whom you make them doesn’t see the point of.”
“Why, that’s your own peculiar form of humour,” she retorted. “I caught the trick from you.”
Perhaps she is right. I have noticed that people are slow in their appreciation of my witticisms. I must really be a very dull dog. If she were not fond of me I don’t see how a bright woman like Judith could tolerate my society for half an hour.
I don’t think I contribute to the world’s humour; but the world’s humour contributes much to my own entertainment, and things which appear amusing to me do not appeal, when I point them out, to the risible faculties of another. Every individual, I suppose, like every civilisation, must have his own standard of humour. If I were a Roman (instead of an English) Epicurean, I should have died with laughter at the sight of a fat Christian martyr scudding round the arena while chased by a hungry lion. At present I should faint with horror. Indeed, I always feel tainted with savagery and enjoying a vicarious lust, when I smile at the oft-repeated tale of the poor tiger in Dore’s picture that hadn’t got a Christian. On the other hand, it tickles me immensely to behold a plethoric commonplace Briton roar himself purple with impassioned platitude at a political meeting; but I perceive that all my neighbours take him with the utmost seriousness. Again, your literary journalist professes to wriggle in his chair over the humour of Jane Austen; to me she is the dullest lady that ever faithfully photographed the trivial. Years ago I happened to be crossing Putney Bridge, in a frock-coat and silk hat, when a passing member of the proletariat dug his elbows in his comrade’s ribs and, quoting a music-hall tag of the period, shouted “He’s got ‘em on!” whereupon both burst into peals of robustious but inane laughter. Now, if I had turned to them, and said, “He would be funnier if I hadn’t,” and paraphrased, however wittily, Carlyle’s ironical picture of a nude court of St. James’s, they would have punched my head under the confused idea that I was trying to bamboozle them. Which brings me to my point of departure, my remark to Judith as to the futility of jesting to unpercipient ears.
I did not take up her retort.