THE SKITTISH OLD MAID
I believe I may consider myself a passably amiable man, and I could certainly produce ample testimony to prove I am so considered by a large variety of impartial witnesses, ranging from my baby nieces to my septuagenarian mother, and not forgetting to include my tailor. I am of equable temper, and charitably expansive in matters of opinion. I generally contrive to find excuses for the foibles and failings of my fellow-creatures, and, had I but the gift of oratory, I believe I could melt any jury to mercy, where an ordinary professional advocate for the defence would only aggravate a conviction. I am forgiving to a fault, and hence, if Pope’s dictum on the humanity of error and the divinity of forgiveness count for truth, I must surely have in me some kinship with the gods. But though I can so charitably temper my mind as to frequently regard murder from the criminal’s point of view as justifiable homicide, forgery and embezzlement as a practical protest in favour of socialism, and arson as a mere tribute to the picturesque, there is one crime I can never bring myself to contemplate with any toleration. When one person commits boredom upon another, he puts himself beyond the pale of mercy. I am an amiable man, but I cannot bear to be bored.
Now, there is a class of persons who seem to have come into the world for no other purpose than to test the patience of others. To this class Miss Kittenish most undoubtedly belongs. I cannot determine any other plausible reason for her existence. I have thought that her constant devotion to her invalid mother might have had something to do with it, her usefulness in directing the domestic affairs of the household, her eager interest in the concerns of her five unmarried sisters, her exemplary energy in parish mission-work, or her active enthusiasm in the matter of school-treats; but, praiseworthy as all this is, I can scarcely regard all or any one of these causes as the raison d’être of Miss Kittenish. She was born to be a bore, to try the temper of the amiable, to prove that we are all mortal, even the most charitable.
Bores are of two kinds—active and passive. The active are the worse, and in that category Miss Kittenish must be placed, her special aggravation being that she is so playful, and has a passion for parlour-games—a very virulent form of boredom to practise upon the amiable person. Now, be it remembered that Miss Kittenish is a spinster of a very uncertain age—so uncertain, in fact, that there is no telling what childish prank she may not be up to. But that which may be all very well when directing the rollicking festivities of a school-treat is apt to be aggressively out of place in an assembly of grown-up and presumably reasonable persons. Yet that is just what Miss Kittenish is unable to realise. The fascination of the round game seems to have stunted her mental growth, and all her friends suffer in consequence. Heaven knows, no one is more amenable than I to frivolity of any kind; no one is readier to make a fool of himself at the proper season, and under the necessary inspiration. And as for playing with children, no game is too primitive for me, nothing that they can expect me to do is too idiotic, nothing too undignified.
For the nonce I will set a fool’s cap upon my dignity, and laugh at it. I will sing, “This is the way we wash our clothes,” and act the attendant “business,” as they call it in stage-parlance, till I go perfectly hoarse in my throat. I will “hunt the slipper,” or play “puss in the corner,” and roll and romp on the floor with my little friends, and enjoy it as much as any of them. Let me loose among their toys, and witness my enthusiasm. Give me tops to spin, clockwork engines to set running, tin soldiers to shoot down with spring cannons, or a box of bricks to work my architectural fancy withal, and you shall see a transformation to which fairy lore alone can supply a parallel—you shall see thirty years fly away and leave me a child of six.
But Miss Kittenish is so playful that she is entirely unable to discriminate between the amusements of the very juvenile and the adult; and this is painfully forced upon one whenever one is weak enough to accept an invitation to a social gathering at the Kittenishes’, who, I may add, live in the suburbs. This I do periodically, because they are such old family friends—they are, indeed, a sort of heirloom from the last generation, which has to be kept up. It would sometimes be curious to trace the origin of old family friends, from the cumbersome heirloom point of view.
How I ever came to incur the obligation of visiting the Kittenishes I do not recollect. I know I was taken there as a child, and I remember that in those days there was a series of maiden aunts similar to the present brood, and I can recall playing games with them to my youthful enjoyment, so that the revived acquaintance has now become a traditional duty. But I am grown-up now, and have been so these many years, and so have Miss Kittenish and her five sisters; but it makes no difference. They invite a number of friends to spend the evening there, all of whom have entered upon the business of life, and consequently are, or should be, interested in the events or social problems of the day. Some may belong to the liberal professions, some may be votaries of the arts, others merely competitors in the race for wealth, or idle killers of time. But will these be permitted to converse under the Kittenish roof on topics which appeal to them? Emphatically, no! Miss Kittenish has taken care to leaven her guests with a few persons of her own mind, and as soon as you are on the point of learning from a Stock Exchange wiseacre whether Egyptian Unifieds are going up or down, or from an omniscient journalist the date of the next Parliamentary dissolution, the name of Tennyson’s next poem, the details of Irving’s next play, the winner of the next Derby, and the true particulars of the last Cabinet Council, Miss Kittenish approaches you with that diabolically playful expression on her face, which portends “Dumb Crambo” or something equally terrible, and asks you to go out of the room while the rest of the company thinks of something.
I am usually the first victim, being known for an amiable man—how I wish I had cultivated ferocity from my cradle—and after making a feeble defence to the effect that I am so stupid at that kind of thing, I am led away like a lamb to the slaughter. After a few chilly minutes on the landing, during which I vainly contemplate means of escape, I am called back into the room, and find myself in the centre of a circle of presumably intelligent persons waiting to be asked a number of inconsequent questions. All the Kittenish girls are keenly on the alert, but Miss Kittenish is the mistress of the ceremonies; she explains my duties, and I proceed resignedly. Of course I have not the least idea what it is all about, and when, after the dismal proceedings, I am asked to guess the word or proverb or whatever it was, I make a series of random guesses which are so extravagantly absurd that they provoke roars of laughter, and I am voted most amusing—a fatal success.
Miss Kittenish is now all bustle and playfulness, and she once more takes advantage of my amiability, and I am called upon to act in a charade, then to play “Dumb Crambo,” and eventually to sit cross-legged upon a broomstick poised upon two chairs, an abominable torture if you succeed, while if you do not, you fall with a sudden bump to the ground. In any case you afford boisterous merriment to the spectators, who are neither on the broomstick nor on the ground. After this my amiability is conquered by my increasing mental depression, aided by the bodily torture involved in the fiendish broomstick trick, and I make all sorts of excuses to elude Miss Kittenish in her fresh devices. She is, however, untiring, and her resource in the matter of parlour-games and tricks is positively amazing. Of course, it is impossible to adopt all her suggestions on a single evening. I diplomatically propose that we should keep some novelties for Christmas; but there is no escape, and, after we are physically wearied by the more active games, paper and pencils are handed round, and we are set to play “consequences,” then to write doggerel verses, then to remember as many towns and countries beginning with G as we can in a given number of minutes, and other equally aimless occupations. And what annoys me is that the majority of sycophantic guests actually encourage Miss Kittenish in these suburban atrocities, pretending they are amused, while I am doomed to endure this boredom now and again by family tradition.
If I were not so amiable, I would break from it. I would never go there again, and then I should be accused of inconstancy to old friends. This is chaining myself to a sentiment, certainly; but I would Miss Kittenish were not so playful, or that she confined her volatile spirits to the parish schoolroom, or the seaside boarding-house, where she is quite an acquisition and in her element.
To one of these establishments at Eastbourne Miss Kittenish sometimes accompanies her invalid mother, and the announcement that “Miss Kittenish is coming” produces as much pleasurable excitement as the preliminary announcement of a visit from Sanger’s Circus to the town of Sleepy Hollow. A vision of abnormal festivities and something new in parlour-games is immediately conjured up, while it is well known that Miss Kittenish is a perfect mine of conundrums, old and new. For years past she has collected them in manuscript.
But the skittish propensities of Miss Kittenish do not confine themselves to these mild sports. She is of opinion that her personal charms are peculiarly attractive to men, and it is impossible to talk to her without becoming conscious that she is endeavouring to construe your conversation into a flirtation. She really imagines that she is in a chronic state of defence against siege from our sex, and the various ruses of primitive coquetry by which she endeavours to bring on a general engagement are amusing to watch for a little while, though their sameness soon palls. She perpetually asserts her determination never to marry, until one begins naturally to wonder why she finds it necessary to be so emphatic. I believe there is sufficient chivalry still left among us to protect Miss Kittenish from being forced to any step so avowedly repugnant to her feelings. Yet she will take pains to tell you what pretty things this young man said to her, what attention that old man paid her, and to insinuate that no party is really considered complete unless she graces it. Her enthusiastic eagerness for entertainment is perfectly amazing; offer her tickets for anything, and she will accept them, be it only an amateur theatrical performance, or a dramatic recital at a local institute. Of course, if she be the happy possessor of gratuitous orders for the theatre, she is almost as proud as if she knew an actor off the stage, which, I need hardly say, is considered, in suburban circles, a very high distinction.
Miss Kittenish still looks to attain to this, however, for a friend of the curate’s with whom, of course, she is associated in Sunday-school matters, has promised to bring to their next social gathering an actor who is a member of his angling club. Though he is not perhaps a leading actor, and he still lives domestically with his wife and children, he did once play “Claude Melnotte,” and is now a low comedian at a West-end theatre, so that Miss Kittenish will be quite justified in talking with casual impressiveness of her new acquaintance, when the introduction is an accomplished fact. She and her sisters will lionise him, and make him play games, and expect him to do all sorts of funny things, so that their friends will go away and tell everybody how they met Shoppy, the actor, at the Kittenishes’, and how amusing he was, and how he told them all about “behind the scenes,” the way he studied his own parts and taught all the other actors theirs, and showed the dramatist how to make his play a success, the manager how to produce it, and the leading actress how to act, and then said such clever things about the injustice of the critics. Miss Kittenish has her ambitions and her hero-worship, you see, and she always says that her proper vocation is the stage. Perhaps she will take to it yet, who knows? She is for ever volatile, and she never tires of playing charades.
But I often wonder what Miss Kittenish thinks about when she is alone. She can hardly ask herself conundrums. Can she really persuade herself that she is yet young and fascinating? Can she, at her time of life, find self-delusion so easy? Or does she know the truth, and realise it in solitude? There must be an infinite pathos in the lonely meditations of this skittish old maid, in spite of her invulnerable good nature. And perhaps, after all, one should look with charity upon the parlour-games and the conundrums, for I’m sure Miss Kittenish means well. Nothing bores her.