Novel Notes

“Will it ever be ready?”

“Well, mum,” replied Amenda, in a tone of genial frankness, “to tell you the truth, I don’t think it ever will.”

“What’s the reason? Won’t the fire light?”

“Oh yes, it lights all right.”

“Well, then, why can’t you cook the breakfast?”

“Because before you can turn yourself round it goes out again.”

Amenda never volunteered statements. She answered the question put to her and then stopped dead. I called downstairs to her on one occasion, before I understood her peculiarities, to ask her if she knew the time. She replied, “Yes, sir,” and disappeared into the back kitchen. At the end of thirty seconds or so, I called down again. “I asked you, Amenda,” I said reproachfully, “to tell me the time about ten minutes ago.”

“Oh, did you?” she called back pleasantly. “I beg your pardon. I thought you asked me if I knew it – it’s half-past four.”

Ethelbertha inquired – to return to our fire – if she had tried lighting it again.

“Oh yes, mum,” answered the girl. “I’ve tried four times.” Then she added cheerfully, “I’ll try again if you like, mum.”

Amenda was the most willing servant we ever paid wages to.

Ethelbertha said she would step down and light the fire herself, and told Amenda to follow her and watch how she did it. I felt interested in the experiment, and followed also. Ethelbertha tucked up her frock and set to work. Amenda and I stood around and looked on.

At the end of half an hour Ethelbertha retired from the contest, hot, dirty, and a trifle irritable. The fireplace retained the same cold, cynical expression with which it had greeted our entrance.

Then I tried. I honestly tried my best. I was eager and anxious to succeed. For one reason, I wanted my breakfast. For another, I wanted to be able to say that I had done this thing. It seemed to me that for any human being to light a fire, laid as that fire was laid, would be a feat to be proud of. To light a fire even under ordinary circumstances is not too easy a task: to do so, handicapped by MacShaughnassy’s rules, would, I felt, be an achievement pleasant to look back upon. My idea, had I succeeded, would have been to go round the neighbourhood and brag about it.

However, I did not succeed. I lit various other things, including the kitchen carpet and the cat, who would come sniffing about, but the materials within the stove appeared to be fire-proof.

Ethelbertha and I sat down, one each side of our cheerless hearth, and looked at one another, and thought of MacShaughnassy, until Amenda chimed in on our despair with one of those practical suggestions of hers that she occasionally threw out for us to accept or not, as we chose.

“Maybe,” said she, “I’d better light it in the old way just for to-day.”

“Do, Amenda,” said Ethelbertha, rising. And then she added, “I think we’ll always have them lighted in the old way, Amenda, if you please.”

Another time he showed us how to make coffee – according to the Arabian method. Arabia must be a very untidy country if they made coffee often over there. He dirtied two saucepans, three jugs, one tablecloth, one nutmeg-grater, one hearthrug, three cups, and himself. This made coffee for two – what would have been necessary in the case of a party, one dares not think.

That we did not like the coffee when made, MacShaughnassy attributed to our debased taste – the result of long indulgence in an inferior article. He drank both cups himself, and afterwards went home in a cab.

He had an aunt in those days, I remember, a mysterious old lady, who lived in some secluded retreat from where she wrought incalculable mischief upon MacShaughnassy’s friends. What he did not know – the one or two things that he was not an authority upon – this aunt of his knew. “No,” he would say with engaging candour – “no, that is a thing I cannot advise you about myself. But,” he would add, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll write to my aunt and ask her.” And a day or two afterwards he would call again, bringing his aunt’s advice with him; and, if you were young and inexperienced, or a natural born fool, you might possibly follow it.

She sent us a recipe on one occasion, through MacShaughnassy, for the extermination of blackbeetles. We occupied a very picturesque old house; but, as with most picturesque old houses, its advantages were chiefly external. There were many holes and cracks and crevices within its creaking framework. Frogs, who had lost their way and taken the wrong turning, would suddenly discover themselves in the middle of our dining-room, apparently quite as much to their own surprise and annoyance as to ours. A numerous company of rats and mice, remarkably fond of physical exercise, had fitted the place up as a gymnasium for themselves; and our kitchen, after ten o’clock, was turned into a blackbeetles’ club. They came up through the floor and out through the walls, and gambolled there in their light-hearted, reckless way till daylight.

The rats and mice Amenda did not object to. She said she liked to watch them. But against the blackbeetles she was prejudiced. Therefore, when my wife informed her that MacShaughnassy’s aunt had given us an infallible recipe for their annihilation, she rejoiced.

We purchased the materials, manufactured the mixture, and put it about. The beetles came and ate it. They seemed to like it. They finished it all up, and were evidently vexed that there was not more. But they did not die.

We told these facts to MacShaughnassy. He smiled, a very grim smile, and said in a low tone, full of meaning, “Let them eat!”

It appeared that this was one of those slow, insidious poisons. It did not kill the beetle off immediately, but it undermined his constitution. Day by day he would sink and droop without being able to tell what was the matter with himself, until one morning we should enter the kitchen to find him lying cold and very still.

So we made more stuff and laid it round each night, and the blackbeetles from all about the parish swarmed to it. Each night they came in greater quantities. They fetched up all their friends and relations. Strange beetles – beetles from other families, with no claim on us whatever – got to hear about the thing, and came in hordes, and tried to rob our blackbeetles of it. By the end of a week we had lured into our kitchen every beetle that wasn’t lame for miles round.

MacShaughnassy said it was a good thing. We should clear the suburb at one swoop. The beetles had now been eating this poison steadily for ten days, and he said that the end could not be far off. I was glad to hear it, because I was beginning to find this unlimited hospitality expensive. It was a dear poison that we were giving them, and they were hearty eaters.

We went downstairs to see how they were getting on. MacShaughnassy thought they seemed queer, and was of opinion that they were breaking up. Speaking for myself, I can only say that a healthier-looking lot of beetles I never wish to see.

One, it is true, did die that very evening. He was detected in the act of trying to make off with an unfairly large portion of the poison, and three or four of the others set upon him savagely and killed him.

But he was the only one, so far as I could ever discover, to whom MacShaughnassy’s recipe proved fatal. As for the others, they grew fat and sleek upon it. Some of them, indeed, began to acquire quite a figure. We lessened their numbers eventually by the help of some common oil-shop stuff. But such vast numbers, attracted by MacShaughnassy’s poison, had settled in the house, that to finally exterminate them now was hopeless.

I have not heard of MacShaughnassy’s aunt lately. Possibly, one of MacShaughnassy’s bosom friends has found out her address and has gone down and murdered her. If so, I should like to thank him.

I tried a little while ago to cure MacShaughnassy of his fatal passion for advice-giving, by repeating to him a very sad story that was told to me by a gentleman I met in an American railway car. I was travelling from Buffalo to New York, and, during the day, it suddenly occurred to me that I might make the journey more interesting by leaving the cars at Albany and completing the distance by water. But I did not know how the boats ran, and I had no guide-book with me. I glanced about for some one to question. A mild-looking, elderly gentleman sat by the next window reading a book, the cover of which was familiar to me. I deemed him to be intelligent, and approached him.

“I beg your pardon for interrupting you,” I said, sitting down opposite to him, “but could you give me any information about the boats between Albany and New York?”

“Well,” he answered, looking up with a pleasant smile, “there are three lines of boats altogether. There is the Heggarty line, but they only go as far as Catskill. Then there are the Poughkeepsie boats, which go every other day. Or there is what we call the canal boat.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well now, which would you advise me to – ”

He jumped to his feet with a cry, and stood glaring down at me with a gleam in his eyes which was positively murderous.

“You villain!” he hissed in low tones of concentrated fury, “so that’s your game, is it? I’ll give you something that you’ll want advice about,” and he whipped out a six-chambered revolver.

I felt hurt. I also felt that if the interview were prolonged I might feel even more hurt. So I left him without a word, and drifted over to the other end of the car, where I took up a position between a stout lady and the door.

I was still musing upon the incident, when, looking up, I observed my elderly friend making towards me. I rose and laid my hand upon the door-knob. He should not find me unprepared. He smiled, reassuringly, however, and held out his hand.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said, “that maybe I was a little rude just now. I should like, if you will let me, to explain. I think, when you have heard my story, you will understand, and forgive me.”

There was that about him which made me trust him. We found a quiet corner in the smoking-car. I had a “whiskey sour,” and he prescribed for himself a strange thing of his own invention. Then we lighted our cigars, and he talked.

“Thirty years ago,” said he, “I was a young man with a healthy belief in myself, and a desire to do good to others. I did not imagine myself a genius. I did not even consider myself exceptionally brilliant or talented. But it did seem to me, and the more I noted the doings of my fellow-men and women, the more assured did I become of it, that I possessed plain, practical common sense to an unusual and remarkable degree. Conscious of this, I wrote a little book, which I entitled How to be Happy, Wealthy, and Wise, and published it at my own expense. I did not seek for profit. I merely wished to be useful.

“The book did not make the stir that I had anticipated. Some two or three hundred copies went off, and then the sale practically ceased.

“I confess that at first I was disappointed. But after a while, I reflected that, if people would not take my advice, it was more their loss than mine, and I dismissed the matter from my mind.

“One morning, about a twelvemonth afterwards, I was sitting in my study, when the servant entered to say that there was a man downstairs who wanted very much to see me.

“I gave instructions that he should be sent up, and up accordingly he came.

“He was a common man, but he had an open, intelligent countenance, and his manner was most respectful. I motioned him to be seated. He selected a chair, and sat down on the extreme edge of it.

“‘I hope you’ll pard’n this intrusion, sir,’ he began, speaking deliberately, and twirling his hat the while; ‘but I’ve come more’n two hundred miles to see you, sir.’

“I expressed myself as pleased, and he continued: ‘They tell me, sir, as you’re the gentleman as wrote that little book, How to be Happy, Wealthy, and Wise.”