第33章

"How was I to know yer wanted to go to Putney? Yer sings out Putney, and I stops and in yer jumps.""And for what d'ye think I called out Putney thin?""'Cause it's my name, or rayther the bus's name.This 'ere IS a Putney.""How can it be a Putney whin it isn't goin' to Putney, ye gomerhawk?""Ain't you an Hirishwoman?" retorted the conductor."Course yer are.But yer aren't always goin' to Ireland.We're goin' to Putney in time, only we're a-going to Liverpool Street fust.'Igher up, Jim."The bus moved on, and I was about cross the road, when a man, muttering savagely to himself, walked into me.He would have swept past me had I not, recognizing him, arrested him.It was my friend B-----, a busy editor of magazines and journals.It was some seconds before he appeared able to struggle out of his abstraction, and remember himself."Halloo," he then said, "who would have thought of seeing YOU here?""To judge by the way you were walking," I replied, "one would imagine the Strand the last place in which you expected to see any human being.Do you ever walk into a short-tempered, muscular man?""Did I walk into you?" he asked surprised.

"Well, not right in," I answered, "I if we are to be literal.You walked on to me; if I had not stopped you, I suppose you would have walked over me.""It is this confounded Christmas business," he explained."It drives me off my head.""I have heard Christmas advanced as an excuse for many things," Ireplied, "but not early in September."

"Oh, you know what I mean," he answered, "we are in the middle of our Christmas number.I am working day and night upon it.By the bye," he added, "that puts me in mind.I am arranging a symposium, and I want you to join.'Should Christmas,'"--I interrupted him.

"My dear fellow," I said, "I commenced my journalistic career when Iwas eighteen, and I have continued it at intervals ever since.Ihave written about Christmas from the sentimental point of view; Ihave analyzed it from the philosophical point of view; and I have scarified it from the sarcastic standpoint.I have treated Christmas humorously for the Comics, and sympathetically for the Provincial Weeklies.I have said all that is worth saying on the subject of Christmas--maybe a trifle more.I have told the new-fashioned Christmas story--you know the sort of thing: your heroine tries to understand herself, and, failing, runs off with the man who began as the hero; your good woman turns out to be really bad when one comes to know her; while the villain, the only decent person in the story, dies with an enigmatic sentence on his lips that looks as if it meant something, but which you yourself would be sorry to have to explain.I have also written the old-fashioned Christmas story--you know that also: you begin with a good old-fashioned snowstorm; you have a good old-fashioned squire, and he lives in a good old-fashioned Hall; you work in a good old-fashioned murder; and end up with a good old-fashioned Christmas dinner.I have gathered Christmas guests together round the crackling logs to tell ghost stories to each other on Christmas Eve, while without the wind howled, as it always does on these occasions, at its proper cue.I have sent children to Heaven on Christmas Eve--it must be quite a busy time for St.Peter, Christmas morning, so many good children die on Christmas Eve.It has always been a popular night with them.--I have revivified dead lovers and brought them back well and jolly, just in time to sit down to the Christmas dinner.I am not ashamed of having done these things.At the time I thought them good.I once loved currant wine and girls with towzley hair.One's views change as one grows older.I have discussed Christmas as a religious festival.I have arraigned it as a social incubus.If there be any joke connected with Christmas that I have not already made I should be glad to hear it.I have trotted out the indigestion jokes till the sight of one of them gives me indigestion myself.I have ridiculed the family gathering.

I have scoffed at the Christmas present.I have made witty use of paterfamilias and his bills.I have--""Did I ever show you," I broke off to ask as we were crossing the Haymarket, "that little parody of mine on Poe's poem of 'The Bells'?

It begins--" He interrupted me in his turn--"Bills, bills, bills," he repeated.

"You are quite right," I admitted."I forgot I ever showed it to you.""You never did," he replied.

"Then how do you know how it begins?" I asked.

"I don't know for certain," he admitted, "but I get, on an average, sixty-five a year submitted to me, and they all begin that way.Ithought, perhaps, yours did also."

"I don't see how else it could begin," I retorted.He had rather annoyed me."Besides, it doesn't matter how a poem begins, it is how it goes on that is the important thing and anyhow, I'm not going to write you anything about Christmas.Ask me to make you a new joke about a plumber; suggest my inventing something original and not too shocking for a child to say about heaven; propose my running you off a dog story that can be believed by a man of average determination and we may come to terms.But on the subject of Christmas I am taking a rest."By this time we had reached Piccadilly Circus.

"I don't blame you," he said, "if you are as sick of the subject as I am.So soon as these Christmas numbers are off my mind, and Christmas is over till next June at the office, I shall begin it at home.The housekeeping is gone up a pound a week already.I know what that means.The dear little woman is saving up to give me an expensive present that I don't want.I think the presents are the worst part of Christmas.Emma will give me a water-colour that she has painted herself.She always does.There would be no harm in that if she did not expect me to hang it in the drawing room.Have you ever seen my cousin Emma's water-colours?" he asked.

"I think I have," I replied.

"There's no thinking about it," he retorted angrily."They're not the sort of water-colours you forget."He apostrophized the Circus generally.