第11章

Investigation proved the surmise correct.Fortunately I was still alone, and in consequence was able, a few minutes later, to meet my hostess with calm and dignity.I said nothing about the rocking-chair.As a matter of fact, I was hoping to have the pleasure, before I went, of seeing some other guest arrive and sample it: I had purposely replaced it in the most prominent and convenient position.But though I felt capable of schooling myself to silence, I found myself unable to agree with my hostess when she called for my admiration of the thing.My recent experiences had too deeply embittered me.

"Willie made it himself," explained the fond mother."Don't you think it was very clever of him?""Oh yes, it was clever," I replied, "I am willing to admit that.""He made it out of some old beer barrels," she continued; she seemed proud of it.

My resentment, though I tried to keep it under control, was mounting higher.

"Oh! did he?" I said; "I should have thought he might have found something better to do with them.""What?" she asked.

"Oh! well, many things," I retorted."He might have filled them again with beer."My hostess looked at me astonished.I felt some reason for my tone was expected.

"You see," I explained, "it is not a well-made chair.These rockers are too short, and they are too curved, and one of them, if you notice, is higher than the other and of a smaller radius; the back is at too obtuse an angle.When it is occupied the centre of gravity becomes--"My hostess interrupted me.

"You have been sitting on it," she said.

"Not for long," I assured her.

Her tone changed.She became apologetic.

"I am so sorry," she said."It looks all right.""It does," I agreed; "that is where the dear lad's cleverness displays itself.Its appearance disarms suspicion.With judgment that chair might be made to serve a really useful purpose.There are mutual acquaintances of ours--I mention no names, you will know them--pompous, self-satisfied, superior persons who would be improved by that chair.If I were Willie I should disguise the mechanism with some artistic drapery, bait the thing with a couple of exceptionally inviting cushions, and employ it to inculcate modesty and diffidence.I defy any human being to get out of that chair, feeling as important as when he got into it.What the dear boy has done has been to construct an automatic exponent of the transitory nature of human greatness.As a moral agency that chair should prove a blessing in disguise."My hostess smiled feebly; more, I fear, from politeness than genuine enjoyment.

"I think you are too severe," she said."When you remember that the boy has never tried his hand at anything of the kind before, that he has no knowledge and no experience, it really is not so bad."Considering the matter from that point of view I was bound to concur.I did not like to suggest to her that before entering upon a difficult task it would be better for young men to ACQUIREknowledge and experience: that is so unpopular a theory.

But the thing that The Amateur put in the front and foremost of its propaganda was the manufacture of household furniture out of egg-boxes.Why egg-boxes I have never been able to understand, but egg-boxes, according to the prescription of The Amateur, formed the foundation of household existence.With a sufficient supply of egg-boxes, and what The Amateur termed a "natural deftness," no young couple need hesitate to face the furnishing problem.Three egg-boxes made a writing-table; on another egg-box you sat to write;your books were ranged in egg-boxes around you--and there was your study, complete.

For the dining-room two egg-boxes made an overmantel; four egg-boxes and a piece of looking-glass a sideboard; while six egg-boxes, with some wadding and a yard or so of cretonne, constituted a so-called "cosy corner." About the "corner" there could be no possible doubt.

You sat on a corner, you leant against a corner; whichever way you moved you struck a fresh corner.The "cosiness," however, I deny.

Egg-boxes I admit can be made useful; I am even prepared to imagine them ornamental; but "cosy," no.I have sampled egg-boxes in many shapes.I speak of years ago, when the world and we were younger, when our fortune was the Future; secure in which, we hesitated not to set up house upon incomes folks with lesser expectations might have deemed insufficient.Under such circumstances, the sole alternative to the egg-box, or similar school of furniture, would have been the strictly classical, consisting of a doorway joined to architectural proportions.

I have from Saturday to Monday, as honoured guest, hung my clothes in egg-boxes.

I have sat on an egg-box at an egg-box to take my dish of tea.Ihave made love on egg-boxes.--Aye, and to feel again the blood running through my veins as then it ran, I would be content to sit only on egg-boxes till the time should come when I could be buried in an egg-box, with an egg-box reared above me as tombstone.--I have spent many an evening on an egg-box; I have gone to bed in egg-boxes.They have their points--I am intending no pun--but to claim for them cosiness would be but to deceive.