REGINALD ON TARIFFS
I'm not going to discuss the Fiscal Question (said
Reginald); I wish to be original. At the same time, I think
one suffers more than one realizes from the system of free
imports. I should like, for instance, a really prohibitive
duty put upon the partner who declares on a weak red suit
and hopes for the best. Even a free outlet for compressed
verbiage doesn't balance matters. And I think there should
be a sort of bounty-fed export (is that the right
expression?) of the people who impress on you that you ought
to take life seriously. There are only two classes that
really can't help taking life seriously—schoolgirls of
thirteen and Hohenzollerns; they might be exempt. Albanians
come under another heading; they take life whenever they get
the opportunity. The one Albanian that I was ever on
speaking terms with was rather a decadent example. He was a
Christian and a grocer, and I don't fancy he had ever killed
anybody. I didn't
like to question him on the subject—
that showed my delicacy. Mrs. Nicorax says I have no
delicacy; she hasn't forgiven me about the mice. You see,
when I was staying down there, a mouse used to cake-walk
about my room half the night, and none of their silly patent
traps seemed to take its fancy as a bijou residence, so I
determined to appeal to the better side of it—which with
mice is the inside. So I called it Percy, and put little
delicacies down near its hole every night, and that kept it
quiet while I read Max Nordau's
Degeneration and other
reproving literature, and went to sleep. And now she says
there is a whole colony of mice in that room.
That isn't where the indelicacy comes in. She went out
riding with me, which was entirely her own suggestion, and
as we were coming home through some meadows she made a quite
unnecessary attempt to see if her pony would jump a rather
messy sort of brook that was there. It wouldn't. It went
with her as far as the water's edge, and from that point
Mrs. Nicorax went on alone. Of course I had to fish her out
from the bank, and my riding-breeches are not cut with a
view to salmon-fishing—it's rather an art
even to ride in
them. Her habit-skirt was one of those open questions that
need not be adhered to in emergencies, and on this occasion
it remained behind in some water-weeds. She wanted me to
fish about for that too, but I felt I had done enough
Pharaoh's daughter business for an October afternoon, and I
was beginning to want my tea. So I bundled her up on to her
pony, and gave her a lead towards home as fast as I cared to
go. What with the wet and the unusual responsibility, her
abridged costume did not stand the pace particularly well,
and she got quite querulous when I shouted back that I had
no pins with me—and no string. Some women expect so much
from a fellow. When we got into the drive she wanted to go
up the back way to the stables, but the ponies
know they
always get sugar at the front door, and I never attempt to
hold a pulling pony; as for Mrs. Nicorax it took her all she
knew to keep a firm hand on her seceding garments, which, as
her maid remarked afterwards, were more
tout than
ensemble. Of course nearly the whole house-party were out
on the lawn watching the sunset—the only day this month
that it's occurred to the sun to show itself, as Mrs. Nic.
viciously
observed—and I shall never forget the expression
on her husband's face as we pulled up. "My darling, this is
too much!" was his first spoken comment; taking into
consideration the state of her toilet, it was the most
brilliant thing I had ever heard him say, and I went into
the library to be alone and scream. Mrs. Nicorax says I
have no delicacy.
Talking about tariffs, the lift-boy, who reads extensively
between the landings, says it won't do to tax raw
commodities. What, exactly, is a raw commodity? Mrs. Van
Challaby says men are raw commodities till you marry them;
after they've struck Mrs. Van C., I can fancy they pretty
soon become a finished article. Certainly she's had a good
deal of experience to support her opinion. She lost one
husband in a railway accident, and mislaid another in the
Divorce Court, and the current one has just got himself
squeezed in a Beef Trust. "What was he doing in a Beef
Trust, anyway?" she asked tearfully, and I suggested that
perhaps he had an unhappy home. I only said it for the sake
of making conversation; which it did. Mrs. Van Challaby
said things about me which in her calmer moments she
would
have hesitated to spell. It's a pity people can't discuss
fiscal matters without getting wild. However, she wrote
next day to ask if I could get her a Yorkshire terrier of
the size and shade that's being worn now, and that's as near
as a woman can be expected to get to owning herself in the
wrong. And she will tie a salmon-pink bow to its collar,
and call it "Reggie," and take it with her
everywhere—like poor Miriam Klopstock, who
would take
her Chow with her to the bathroom, and while she was bathing
it was playing at she-bears with her garments. Miriam is
always late for breakfast, and she wasn't really missed till
the middle of lunch.
However, I'm not going any further into the Fiscal
Question. Only I should like to be protected from the
partner with a weak red tendency.