Joking apart

The deliberate pursuit of naughtiness may seem absurd to those who have a natural superfluity of it, but, all the same, it is much in vogue. And, as in other matters besides naughtiness, the amateurs who most wish to excel are those who are the least likely to do anything of the sort. Every one knows theoretically that possession is nine points of desire, that in love there is always l’un qui baise et l’autre qui tend la joue, but how many have realized that the Evil one is also human, and pursues those who shun him, while he turns a deaf ear to those who really long to be naughty. It is the nice, mousy dears whom he runs after with some brilliant new devilment in his pocket. When the young desperado or the middle-aged lady with nothing in particular to do runs up to him and exclaims, “Oh, Mr. Satan, do let us have some of your lovely, wicked suggestions!” he turns green, and says, “Go away to a supper club. I will send my junior assistant to you there.” And off he flies to refresh himself at the nearest rectory.

Equally incomprehensible are certain other folk who, themselves incapable of any vice, set forth armed to the teeth against a spiritual enemy who knows them not; just as innocent old ladies in silk mantles cling together at railway stations for fear of being abducted to San Francisco. Many sensitive young clergymen have been known to speak in an uncommonly plucky way about a hot bath as if it were a sporting enterprise; showing no delicacy whatever on the subject, but attacking it as man to man, without any of that nonsensical reserve which, as they say, drives so many good people out of the Church. It is difficult to explain why boasting of having had a hot bath should imply a defensive attitude towards Satan; but, in fact, these heroes seem to cry aloud, “Parsons are not such old ladies as you think. I could ruffle it with the best of you dog foxes if I chose, and, as it is, a feller gets jolly hot sprintin’ round the parish if he’s not in good condition, I can tell you.” When they behave in this wild fashion they are consciously playing with danger. Not exactly ringing Satan’s front-door bell and then running away as one type of woman does, but rather showing how, properly armed, one may walk through his domains and take no harm. But suppose that after coming down from the heights of the life apart, and proclaiming himself an ordinary person, he should discover that he may walk in “the flesh” all day and be as safe as if he were in the Albert Hall. If it is “influence” that he wants, shall we suggest that man’s respect is more easily roused by something different from himself than by a half-baked imitation; that non-churchgoers are not really surprised into admiration by learning that a clergyman washes more than his hands; and that a sailor who is already intimate with the reckless elements will not believe more readily in God because His exponent has been seen to gather up his petticoats and play football or to take a hand at whist? In fact, if details of the toilet are to come into it at all, a verminous hermit must seem almost more spiritually detached than a young gentleman who makes such a fuss about “boiling himself” after a game of tennis.

This dare-devil attitude has perhaps been adopted by some men who have taken to the profession of the Church partly because their natural inclination is towards a life so harmless that they might feel it to be not quite manly unless it were supposed to be compulsory. So they hide their mildness by eating a bun as if it were horseflesh, assuring the bad boys that their own tastes are extremely dashing, but that they have chosen to throw away the forbidden fruit and keep only the skin; to reject the germinating kernel and nibble the husks, which are really most enjoyable. The truth being that the fruit as the boys eat it would give our friends “with no nonsense about them” the most horrible indigestion. There are of course others who passionately loved the fruit and threw it away deliberately; but you never find them nibbling the husks, any more than Brutus would have had his son whom he sacrificed stuffed for a drawing-room ornament. It is quite one thing for a lion to find a baby in its path, and to refuse, from conscientious motives, to eat it, and another for a chicken to plume itself on having had such a jolly run after the cat without killing it.

We have referred, in passing, to the lady who rings Satan’s front-door bell and then runs away. In considering what Miss Corelli has taught us to call the “Sorrows of Satan,” even so small an annoyance as this very hackneyed trick must have its place. The ladies who practise it are those who make an appointment with a man whom they know to be in love with them, and then—turn up with a chaperon. They are the ladies who like their relatives to be respectable and their friends to be disreputable, so that they may have all the fun and none of the responsibility; who devour all the indecent books they can get hold of during the week, and then go to church on Sunday; who would run miles to be introduced to a murderer at dinner, but would feel really hurt if their parlour-maid so much as cracked the commandment which comes next to the one about murder.

People of such various types, those who wheedle the Devil for no particular purpose, those who assume the defensive when the poor fellow wasn’t looking at them, and those who call him down from his study to answer the bell and then make a bolt for sanctuary, are examples of a class whom the Evil one leaves to his subordinates.

A promising young assistant of his works, disguised as a waiter, at one of the supper clubs to which we have supposed the naughty ladies to be so contemptuously relegated. I caught his eye one night when he was cynically winding up the strands of coloured paper that are sometimes thrown about at the end of the proceedings. “Another evening wasted!” he exclaimed with uncontrollable displeasure, “They might be a lot of blooming anarchists for all the harm they’ve done to-night. And here am I, who have waited on the House of Commons from its earliest years, and put ’em up to all their best tricks, literally throwing myself away.” He stopped to brush aside a yellowish tear. “Mr. Satan himself,” he continued, “won’t come down here at all; he says they’re not worth it. Look at that there innocent mother of a family a-dancing the Tango! We’ll never do any good with her, yet she likes to come here and waste my time a-calling for cigarettes. Look at her and her party now, Miss—turn your head so—now then you see? One of our clients is there, with the bald head, behind the pillar. We’d have had him anyhow, without the club, so it doesn’t even pay us that way. Hair, did you say, Miss? No, the gentlemen with a good deal of hair aren’t as a rule much good to us, and they encourage the women.”

“Encourage them in what?” I asked.

“Toasting their toes at the mouth of hell, they thinks, Miss, though it’s nothing of the kind really; it’s just pestering Mr. Satan something awful.”

“Then where does your real work lie?” I asked. “Where is hell?”

It was some moments before I could get an answer, as the noise suddenly became terrific. A negro at the piano had begun to play, accompanied by guitars, tambourines, and a howling chorus of tired-looking equatorials of some sort. Three or four scandalous old women, with transformations on their heads, and trophies from the bargain sales on their backs, were joylessly smoking and applauding in a frightful state of nerves. They looked fish-out-of-wool-shops, and my heart ached to pop them gently back behind the counter and draw down the blinds while they had a little nap. My friend was very busy opening bottles of champagne. Presently he stood beside me once more, napkin on arm.

“What was that you asked me just now, Miss?” he said.

“I asked you where hell was,” I replied.

“Well, I couldn’t say exactly, Miss. Mr. Satan, like, he takes the interesting cases—very quiet folk mostly; you’d hardly believe what a powerful lot of harm they do in a lifetime. A different lot altogether from these ’ere naughty cards, Miss. They ain’t no manner of good to us.”

He disappeared then, but I met him again later. He was still a waiter, brought in on the occasion of a small dinner-party in the suburbs of London. I thought he looked much happier, but I wondered what he found worth his attention in the present company. My host I knew to be an angel, scarcely disguised, as incorruptible as fire. The guests seemed nothing in particular. They left at the hour decreed by good taste; we left an hour later. I had a moment’s conversation in the hall with my friend, while my husband was saying his last “Well now, look here,” over a drink.

“Who is it to-night?” I said. “Do tell me before they come out.”

“A gentleman as Mr. Satan has set his heart on, Miss,” he replied, with a careful eye on the open door of the smoking-room. “Third on your left as you sat at dinner. [I remembered his face after we got home, a blue-eyed, nervous little father with a drooping moustache.] He’s a gentleman in business, Miss, and would like to do right, I feel sure of that. That’s why I’ve been sent. Fortunately for us his trade’s a speculative one, in which it’s easy to make suggestions. A little intelligence is all that’s needed, and that, as a rule, they haven’t got. Mr. Satan’s a good deal interested in this case because of the gentleman’s principles. He’s been brought up with a great fear of anything like dishonesty. I’m afraid it’s upsetting his health a good deal. Good night, Miss; here they come. Your carriage up now, sir.”