Of course there is in Mallingham, as in every other country town, a first set and a second set—perhaps even a third, but that must be very close indeed to the unclassed tradesmen set, which is no set at all. And here it may be mentioned that the tradesmen's families are, as a rule, very much more refined and almost invariably better educated than the families of the first or second sets. Some years ago there was an amateur performance of one of Mr. Sutro's delightful plays given in aid of some deserving charity. Charity performances cover, as does Charity itself, a multitude of sins, but the leading lady did not need to make any appeal for leniency, so ably did she represent the part of the refined woman who was not quite sure whether she loved her husband or not. She was the daughter of a professional man, but had never succeeded in getting into the first set; for it must be remembered that there is no graduating from one set to another: one is either accepted or rejected at once. A couple of years later, however, the play was repeated, only this time it was under the highest patronage, so the management resolved to get the real thing. They managed to secure the services of a lady of title for the chief part, and the result was appalling. The refinement had vanished from the part, so had the correct pronunciation of the English language, so had the good taste in the toilettes worn, so had every vestige of intelligence. In place of these we were shown a pert young person with a voice like that of a barmaid in a country inn and a taste in dress to correspond. In the matter of memory for the words of the dialogue also the advantage was certainly on the side of the humbler representative of the part. In one of Mr. Henry James' most delightful short stories the catastrophe of “The Real Thing” is depicted. It was not more pronounced than that of the second representation of the comedy.
It is really very difficult to understand what are the qualifications for the best set in Mallingham; but somehow people usually find themselves in the set that suits them, and very seldom do the rulers of the social grades in Mallingham make a mistake. They have now and again sailed very close to the wind, however; for that was a nasty rub they got when they hastened to call upon a stranger, with the title of Baroness, who had taken a house in the new part of the town and kept a man-servant. As the story was told me, the ladies jammed one another in the doorway in their anxiety to be the first caller upon the Baroness, or Madame la Baronne, as the wife of a retired Indian civil servant called her, having studied the idioms of the Comédie française. Madame la Baronne was indeed a lady of great personal charm, and she was invited everywhere—even to the villa of the wife of the leading brewer, which represented a sort of Distinguished Strangers' Gallery in Mallingham. The competition among the most select for the presence of Madame at their houses was strenuous; and as she was in such demand it really should not have been regarded as so surprising that a London magistrate should send her a peremptory invitation by the hand of two detectives to come to the court over which he presided. His messengers would take no denial, he wanted her so badly, so she had perforce to throw over her local engagements and grant the magistrate the favour which he requested of her.
Her portrait was in the Daily Mirror the next day, in connection with a startling series of headlines, beginning, “The Bogus Baroness Again—Arrest at Mallingham.” She was one of the most notorious swindlers that France ever returned to her native shore, after a series of exploits in Paris.
The ladies of Mallingham ran up against one another in the porch of her villa in their haste to get back the cards they had left upon her.
That was what might be termed “a close call” upon the dignity and discrimination of the leaders of Society in Mallingham, and this was possibly why they held back when a man and his wife bearing the name Stanwell took a house in the town. The lady seemed quite nice and the man was passable, and before they had “settled down” it was noised abroad that they had a car: it need scarcely be said that to “have a car” is in country districts nowadays as sure a sign of respectability as “driving a gig” was in the 'thirties. There seemed to be no reason why these people should not be called upon by the leaders of Mallingham Society; but the leaders were getting more cautious than ever since the Baroness' scandal, and they hung back, none of them wishing to take a step which it would be impossible to recall, and every day the question of to call or not to call was informally discussed. It was just at this critical moment, when the fate of the Stanwells was trembling in the balance, so to speak, that one of the leaders was visited by a London friend, and on the name Stanwell being mentioned, this person asked, “Is that Herbert Stanwell, the author? It must be. I heard that he was leaving London and going to live in the country. They are all going. Soon we shall not have an author left in London; though I remember the time when they all lived there.”
“This Mr. Stanwell has a car, I hear,” was the “feeling” suggestion made by the Mallingham lady.
“So has Herbert Stanwell—he has been photographed in it dozens of times. Dear me! To think of Herbert Stanwell coming down here!” was the exclamation of the visitor; and the moment that she had gone back to London her hostess rushed round to her partners in the government of social Mallingham, and breathlessly announced that she had discovered that Mr. Stanwell was an author and that Mrs. Stanwell was his wife.
“Good heavens!” was the whispered exclamation from the syndicate. “Who would have believed it? And we were actually thinking of calling upon them! And they look quite respectable.”
“And have a car!”
“Car, or no car, what I tell you is the truth. Is he not 'H. Stanwell?' and the authors name is Herbert. There's no doubt about it. And my friend, who knows everybody in London, said that Herbert Stanwell was about to live in the country.”
She assumed the pose of a Princess Hohenstïel Schwangau, saviour of Society, and she and her friends talked of how providential were certain incidents, let scoffers say what they might; for if she had not by the merest accident—ah, a providential accident!—mentioned the name of the Stanwells, no one would have known anything about them, and they might have been visited quite in good faith.
They parted, feeling that Providence was, very properly, mindful of the best interests of Mallingham; and so it was decreed that the newcomers—that pair who had made the attempt to get within the citadel of Mallingham's exclusiveness, not storming it boldly, but by the insidious device of concealing the fact that at least one of them was the author of over twenty novels—were not to be called on, although they had a car.
Before a month had passed, however, The Happy Home, a magazine widely circulated at Mallingham on account of its admirable paper patterns, contained an interview with Herbert Wilfred Stanwell, giving an excellent protrait of the distinguished author sitting (as usual) in his motor-car, with his favourite Chow, Ming, beside him; and the “letterpress” stated that he was unmarried, and that he had just taken a charming cottage at Henley (illustrated), on the lawn of which (illustrated), it might be taken for granted, all that was illustrious in Literature, Art, and the Drama would be found at week-ends during the summer, Mr. Stanwell's hospitality being proverbial.
The next day cards were left upon Mr. H. Stanwell and his wife, and it was universally admitted that they formed quite a congenial addition to Mailing-ham Society. He was a pleasant man and she was a charming woman. They came to Mallingham with a clean bill of health. Neither of them had done anything in the world, and the only time their names had appeared in the newspapers was when they had been married. They were nonentities to their finger-tips, and they soon took a high place among the nonentities of Mallingham.
Mr. Stanwell sorrowfully admits that more than once he has been asked in hotels in France and Italy if he was any relation to Herbert Stanwell, the great author. It is very annoying, he says, but he hopes to live it down. If he continues to live at Mallingham, he may be assured that his hopes run every chance of being realised.
It is greatly to be feared that the leading “note” of Mallingham is not literature. It is Thurswell that occasionally lays claim to be a great reading centre. It was in the most friendly spirit of honest patronage that a lady addressed a letter to George Eliot, commending some of the characters in The Mill on the Floss, but regretting that the story had not a happy ending.
“But it never reached him,” she said. “I had sent it under cover to the publishers, but they returned it to me, with a scrawl across it, evidently done by a clerk, saying, 'Present address of George Eliot not known, so, after all my trouble, it never reached him.”
Having mentioned The Mill on the Floss, I feel bound to say that neither in Thurswell nor Mallingham did the sporting innkeeper live who, on seeing a cheap edition of the book advertised, at once sent for it and read the greater part of it before he found out that he had been too hasty in taking for granted that it was written round a prizefight. A “mill” meant to him primarily such an incident, and his excursions into the magic realms of literature had practically been confined to the spirited accounts given incertain weekly papers of such encounters. A mill as an industrial building conveyed quite a secondary idea to him. He admitted to a friend of mine who found the book in the bar parlour, and wondered how it got he had been “had” over it, and his faith in the accuracy of literary advertisements got a severe jar. How was he to tell, he asked, that the chap meant another sort of mill?
How, indeed?
ONE OF THE PECULIARITIES OF MALLINGHAM is the Mayor, for Mallingham has a Mayor all to itself, except when, by virtue of his office, he spends a happy day on various County Benches, joining with the representatives of local county families in the administration of Petty Sessions justice—Petty Sessions justice is founded on “good Crowner's Quest law”—otherwise he is usually a very worthy man, and lays no specious claim to popularity. He is never ostentatious or self-assertive, and in spite of the position which he occupies, he is in private life as sound an exponent of domestic virtue as if he were an ordinary simple citizen. The eminence to which he has risen never makes him lose his head or forget that kind hearts are more than coronets, and only very little inferior to a Mayoral Chain of office. It was the proud but very proper boast of a Mayor of Mallingham that although he had been proprietor of a provision business in the very centre of the town for over forty years, and had worn the chain for two consecutive terms, he was still just as approachable as any man in the kingdom.
Just as it was said in the Napoleonic days that every French soldier carried the bâton of a Field-Marshal in his knapsack, and as it is said in these days in the States that any citizen may one day become President—the contingency may account for the gloomy view so many American citizens take of life—so it is understood that any burgess of Mallingham may one day become Mayor. There is, however, no competition for the office, so unambitious are the majority of the burgesses; and now and again the Council find themselves face to face with the problem of how to induce any one to accept the chain of office.
Considering all that its acceptance entails upon the wearer, it can easily be understood that there should be some reluctance to have anything to do with it within the ranks of the eligible. If it were an understood thing that the burgesses of the town must buy their bacon and butter from the Mayor during his term of office, the problem of the Mayoralty might become less acute—assuming that a bacon and butter candidate were available; but no suggestion of this sort has ever been made so far as I can gather, and thus the difficulty is increasing year by year with the using up of all the available material for Mayors in the rough.
The fact is, that a great deal too much is expected from the Mayor. There is an inaugural banquet every year at which some two hundred burgesses, and several of the local gentry, and Members of Parliament, with a bishop, a rural dean, and an occasional chaplain to the forces, sit down on the invitation of the incoming Mayor.—He is expected to pay for everything, and as the feast is founded on the noblest traditions of civic catering, his bill cannot but be a heavy one. In no way is the menu inferior in interest to that to be found on the table of the Mansion House in the City of London. As a matter of fact, I believe that the turtle soup served at the Mallingham banquet is a trifle richer than that in the Mansion House, and the champagne is possibly a little sweeter. But the status of the large proportion of the guests at the one is widely different from that of the majority at the other. In Mallingham the tradesmen—gas-fitters, grocers, tobacconists, hair-cutters, newsagents, and the like—who are probably accustomed to a midday dinner of a cut from the joint, two vegetables, cheese, and a glass of ale, and want nothing better, work their way through a long and elaborate succession of dishes, between the hors d'ouvres assortis and the home-grown pineapple, drinking glass after glass of Ayala, cuvée reservée. Of course they may appreciate some of the simpler delicacies—vol-au-vent or the faysans rotis—but the most of the dishes are mysteries to them and, though very expensive, altogether obnoxious to the uneducated palate.
To be sure, the banquet is artfully meant: it is supposed to be by way of so incapacitating the diners that they are forced to listen to the speeches that follow. Only by the adoption of such stringent measures would it be possible to get a hearing for those speeches, made in all solemnity by the gentlemen at the High Table. A loyal Mayor has been known to spend twenty minutes over the Royal Family, after the King and Queen had been honoured—he took a quarter of over Their Majesties; but then the evening was comparatively young, and “The Bishops and Clergy of the Established Church,” “The Clergy of other Denominations,” “The Member of Parliament for the Division,” “The Worshipful the Mayor,” “The Corporation of Mallingham,” “The Official Staff,” “The Town and Trade of Mallingham”—all these had to be proposed and replied to in due course, and the general opinion was that in making up the accounts, with the banquet on the credit side and the speeches on the debit, a large balance remained against the Mayor.
And the inaugural banquet is merely the first of the series of entertainments which are supposed to come from the same source. Two or three balls, as many garden parties, and at least four large receptions, with refreshments, are looked for by the townspeople of all grades, for even the most exclusive of the leaders of the best set do not object to be entertained at the expense of the Mayor. They consider it their duty to attend the dances as well as the receptions; but there the transaction ends so far as they are concerned. They feel that they are honouring him by accepting his hospitality, and they do not consider that they are under the obligation to recognise him or his family if they meet in the public street, nor do they think it necessary to invite him or any member of his family to their houses. They really believe in their hearts that they lay the Mayor under an obligation to themselves by attending his receptions and his dances.
That is the attitude of these good people whose names are quite unknown outside Mallingham. They are amusing through the entire lack on their part of a sense of comedy.
I am inclined to think, however, that the attitude of a son of one of these First Families, in respect of an incident that came under my notice, might be more definitely described. He had been invited by a man who was in a far better social position than himself to have a day with the partridges in a shooting which he leased; the youth accepted, and on the morning of the day named appeared in a dog-cart, bringing with him a friend with another gun. They passed the man who had given the invitation, and who was walking to the first field and had still a mile or so to go before reaching it; but though there was a vacant seat in the dog-cart he was not asked to take it. They drove gaily on, and did not even wait for him to come up with his dogs to begin operations. One of them was walking up one side of the field and the other was walking up the parallel side. The lessee of the shooting, on arriving, found himself taking rather a back place, the fact being that he had no acquaintance with his friend's friend, and his friend apparently not thinking it necessary to introduce him. The shoot went on, however, and, save for a little grumbling at the working of the dogs, it was successful enough. On getting round to the dog-cart, after walking through the last field, the visitors collected the birds that they had shot and tucked them under the back seat, and mounting to the front called out a cheery “good-bye” to the man who had entertained them. They were about to drive off, but the breaking strain of the other's politeness had been passed.
“I shouldn't mind a lift from you,” he suggested.
“Sorry,” explained the one with the reins; “but you see how rough the lane is, and really the machine is too heavy as it is. Ta-ta.”
“On minute,” said the pedestrian. “If it's too heavy I'll jolly soon remedy that,” and he took a step to the dog-cart and pulled out the birds. “Pity you didn't think of that before. Now it's lighter. Off you go, and the next time you are offered a day's shooting you just inquire, from some one who knows, how you should behave. You will in that way be prevented from appearing a complete bounder.”
For some time afterwards there was a sort of coldness between that man and the First Family, whose representative had been prevented by him from adding three brace of partridges to their menu for the next week.
For a plentiful lack of good manners the representatives of the “best set” in Mallingham could scarcely be surpassed in any community. The youth probably was quite sincere in his belief that he was conferring a conspicuous favour upon the man who had invited him to an afternoon among the partridges. How could it be expected that he should think differently when he had seen his mother and sisters feasting at the Mayoral ball one night, and cutting the Mayor the next day when they met him in the street?
It was not a Mayoress of Mallingham, but of a much more important municipality—one, in fact, of so great importance as to have a Lord Mayor and a Lady Mayoress—who had the privilege of entertaining a certain elderly offshoot of the Royal Family upon the occasion of the laying of the foundation-stone of a new hospital in the town. This particular minor Royalty is well known (in certain circles) for her ample appreciation of the dignity of her exalted position, and, like all such ladies, she is gracious in proportion to such dust of the earth as Mayoresses and Presidents of Colleges and Chairmen of Hospital Boards; and she made herself so pleasant to the Lady Mayoress who was entertaining her, that the latter determined to keep up the acquaintance, so she made it a point to pay her a visit in her private capacity. She drove up the stately avenue to the mansion, and inquired if Her Royal Highness were at home, just as if Her Royal Highness had been the wife of the vicar. She was admitted—as far as a certain room—and after an interval of long waiting there entered, not Her Royal Highness, but a stranger, a member of the “Household” of the minor Royalty, and they had a chilly chat together.
And the friendship so auspiciously begun at the opening of the municipal hospital made no advance beyond this interview, though it is understood that the lady of the Household was as polite as if she were Her Royal Highness herself.
There is nothing that the best set in Mallingham so resent as pretentiousness, or the semblance of pretentiousness, on the part of any one who does not belong to the best set. A few years ago a Mrs. Latimer, who lives in a delightful old house close to our village of Thurswell and is a widow, married one of her two pretty and accomplished daughters to a young man who was beginning to make a name for himself at the Bar. He had been at Uppingham and Oxford, and was altogether the sort of person by whose side the most fastidious young woman would not shrink from meeting her enemy in the Gate. The wedding was made an event of more than usual importance, for the girl and her mother were greatly liked, and on the mother's side were connections of actual county rank. The list of names in the county newspaper of the wedding guests and of the numerous presents was an imposing one: among the former was the widow of a Baronet, a County Court Judge, a Major-General (retired), and a Master of Hounds; and among the latter, a diamond and sapphire necklace (the gift of the bridegroom), a cheque (from the bride's uncle), a silver-mounted dressing-bag (from the bride's sister), and the usual silver-backed brushes, button-hooks, shoe-lifters, blotters, and nondescript articles. When the late Dr. Schliemann exhibited the result of his excavations at the supposed site of Troy, there were to be seen several articles to which no use could possibly be assigned. No one seemed to perceive that these must have been wedding presents.
It was, however, generally allowed that the wedding had been a very pretty one, that the bride had looked her best, and that the bridegroom appeared a good fellow; and in addition to the column and a half devoted to the affair by a generous newspaper, there appeared the usual announcement: Weston—Latimer.—On the 2nd inst., at Thurswell Church, by the Rev. Theophilas Watson, B.A.Oxon, Vicar of Thurswell, late Incumbent of St. Michael and All Angels, Bardswell, and Rural Dean, assisted by the Rev. Anselm Sigurd Mott, M. A., late Fellow of King's College, London, and Senior Curate of St. James the Less, Brindlington, William Henry, eldest son of the late John Weston of King's Elms, Leicestershire, to Ida Evelyn, elder daughter of the late George Cruikshank Latimer, of Todderwell, and Susan Prescott Latimer, of Grange Lodge, Thurswell.
This was the advertised notice in the Telegraph, as well as in the local paper, on the day after the wedding.
Three or four days later, however, there appeared, in the corresponding column of the Post, an amended version of the same announcement—Weston—Latimer.—On the 2nd inst., at Thurswell Parish Church, William Henry Weston, eldest son of the late John Weston, Attorney's Clerk, King's Elms, Leicestershire, to Ida, daughter of the late George C. Latimer, Farmer, Todderwell.
This piece of feline malevolence was easily traced to a lady with a highly marriageable daughter who had been posing for several years as one of the guardians of “exclusiveness” of Mallingham. An adroit lady had only to pay her a visit, ostensibly to call her attention to the delightful announcement—“the cleverest thing that had ever been done,” she called it—to invite a return of confidence, and, with sparkling eyes, the perpetrator accepted the credit of thinking out the scheme for the humiliation of her neighbour for her arrogance in making so much of the wedding.
And the most melancholy part of the contemptible affair was that the greater number of the best set actually talked over it as a properly administered blow to the Latimers, and chuckled over it for many days.
But the very next year Mrs. Latimer's other daughter got married to the heir to a baronetcy; the wedding took place in St. George's, Hanover Square, and the Post gave an account of it to the extent of half a column, and the Mirror gave photographs of the bride and bridegroom.
It would scarcely be believed, except by some one acquainted with the best society at Mallingham, that upon this occasion the lady who had displayed her skill in snubbing the Latimers sent a two-guinea present to the bride. It was understood that the list of presents would appear in the Post; but when this list appeared the name of the donor of this special gift was absent from it: the two-guinea gift had been promptly returned by the mother of the bride.
And here is another touch: the valuable cake basket was returned with a heavy dinge in one place, which the jeweller affirms was not there when he packed it in tissue paper and shavings in its box with the card bearing the inscription: “To dear Constance, with best wishes from————” That is why he refused to take it back.
It was the son of this lady whose generosity was so spurned who, on leaving the rather second-class public school at which he received a sort of education, gravely said to another boy from Mallingham who had also just been finished—
“I suppose I'll often see you at Mallingham, old chap, as we are both living there, and I'm sure that I should be very glad to have a chat with you now and then; but, of course, you won't expect me to acknowledge you if I am walking with my mother or sister.”
“Why not?” asked the other boy.
“Oh, my dear fellow, can't you see that it would never do?” said the first. “You know that your people are not in our set. You can't expect that because we happen to have been three years in the same house, we are in the same social position at home. But, as you know, there's nothing of the snob about me, and any time that we meet in one of the side streets, and even at the unfashionable end of High Street, I'll certainly nod to you. But that's the farthest that I can be expected to go.”
The other boy certainly expected him to go very much farther even than the unfashionable end of the High Street, and ventured to delimitate the boundaries of the place, and to say a word or two respecting its climate and the fitness of his companions and all his family for a permanent residence there. Being a biggish lad, and enjoying a reputation for being opposed to peace at any price, he could express his inmost feelings without being deterred by any inconvenient reprisals.
The other did not even respond to his exuberance upon this occasion. He sulked in the corner of the railway carriage where the conversation took place, and he has been sulking ever since.
It was a gentleman who travelled in the latest styles in soft goods who was heard to affirm that Mallingham was not a town: it was a dormitory.
He doubtless spoke from the horizon line of soft goods, having in his eye certain of those firms who still do business in the concave side of ancient bay windows, and have not yet been lured on to fortnightly cheap sales behind a sheet of plate-glass. A commercial traveller takes some time to recover his selfrespect after importuning a possible client in the con-cavity of an eighteenth-century window of what was once a dainty parlour, but is now a dingy shop.
But, as a matter of fact, there is a deep and pellucid well of enterprise in the centre of commercial circles in Mallingham, and it only wants an occasional stir to irrigate the dead levels of the town. For instance, there is published by a stationer in the High Street the Mallingham Almanac, an annual work which gives a large amount of interesting information valuable to many persons in an agricultural district, such as the list of fair days in all the villages in the county, the hours of the rising and setting of the sun (of undoubted interest to farmers), the changes of the moon (also very important to have noted down to the very second), the equation of time from day to day (without which we could hardly get on at all), the time of high water at London Bridge, and the variation of the compass (indispensable to agriculturists). A graver note is, however, sounded in the pages devoted to prophecy, after the style of the ever veracious Francis Moore, where readers, born when Mercury was in the Fourth House, are warned against eating uncooked horse-chestnuts on a Friday, and the general public are told that as, in a certain month, Mars and Neptune are in opposition—perhaps it should be apposition—news will be published regarding the German Emperor.
Then there are pages given over wholly to poetry, like Ephraim and his idols.
The spirit of enterprise which flutters—I am afraid that I referred to it in an earlier paragraph in a way that suggested water which really does not flutter,—as a moth round a flame, round a good advertising medium in Mallingham, is shown by the pages of business cards scattered throughout the sheets of this almanac.
In his Address to his Subscribers which prefaces the last issue, the publisher, who is also the editor, recognises in a handsome way the support which he has received from his numerous advertisers and expresses the earnest hope that they may all, individually and collectively, find that their business will rapidly increase as a reward for their enterprise.
On the opposite page may be read the business cards of three undertakers.
Mallingham is certainly not a dormitory so far as the possibilities of trade are concerned. It may safely be said that every business house will undertake undertaking in all its branches and the removal of furniture. No matter how small may be the apparent connection between the business professed on the shop sign and the undertaking industry or the removal industry, you will find on inquiry the utmost willingness expressed to meet your wishes in either direction.
The qualification of a dealer in antiques to carry out such a contract is not immediately apparent, but it is certainly more apparent than that of an auctioneer; at least, if you need to be buried, it is not to an auctioneer you will go in the first instance. To be sure, if you read Othello carefully you will find that there is quite an intimate connection between “removals” and undertaking; but, as a rule, for business purposes each of the two trades is regarded as distinct from the other.
But in Mallingham you not only find them amalgamated, but both are run (decorously) in association with hardware, upholstery, blind-making, carpetbeating, life and fire assurance (not at all so extraordinary this last named), crockery, and soft goods. It is rumoured that the largest business in the “lines” referred to is in the hands of a rag and bone merchant and a dyer.
It is pleasant to be able to record that no one has yet been known to accept the suggestion of the pun in regard to the aptitude of the dyer in such a connection, and it is certain that Shakespeare himself would not have been able to resist the temptation. But Shakespeare has said many things that no one in Mallingham would care to invent or even to repeat.
One of the most notable instances of the professional enterprise of Mallingham was told to me by its victim. He was a clergyman, and the curate of one of the parishes. Now there are curates who are as fully qualified to discharge the duties of their calling as is a Rector, or even a Rural Dean: some of those whom we find in the country have “walked the hospitals,” so to speak, having been for years labouring in the slums of a large town; but some are what might be termed only “first aid” men, and it was a “first aid” curate who, on taking up his duties in Mallingham, set about a zealous house-to-house visitation, being determined to become personally acquainted with every member of his flock.
He had already made some headway in the course he had mapped out for himself, and was becoming greatly liked for his sociability before he had reached the letter R in his visiting list, at the head of which was the name of Mr. Walter Ritchie, the dentist, a gentleman who, in addition to enjoying an excellent practice as a destructive rather than a constructive artist, was a good Churchman. It was between the hours of twelve and one that the zealous curate found it convenient to call upon him, and he was promptly shown into the waiting-room, where there was an elderly lady with a slightly swollen face studying the pages of a very soiled Graphic of three weeks old. Of her company he was, however, bereft within the space of a few minutes, and the Graphic was available for his entertainment for the next quarter of an hour. Then the maid returned and said that Mr. Ritchie would see him now, and he followed her across the passage and was shown into the usual operating room of the second-class practitioner of the country town.
Mr. Ritchie greeted him warmly and so volubly as saved the clergyman the need for introducing any of the professional inanities which are supposed to smooth the way to an honourable rapprochement be-ween a pastor and an unknown member of his pastorate. The parson had not really a word to say when Mr. Ritchie got upon the topic of teeth, and warned his visitor that he must be very careful in his use of the Mallingham water until he should get accustomed to it. It had an injurious effect upon the natural enamel of the teeth of the lower jaw, he said.
“I will explain to you what I mean, if you will kindly sit here,” he added, pointing to the iron-framed chair, the shape of which expresses the most excruciating comfort to a dentist's clientele. The curate, wishing to be all things to all men, though he had no intention of being a dentist's “example,” smiled and seated himself. In an instant Mr. Ritchie had him in his power; bending over him, he gently scraped away some of the “enamel” from one of his front teeth and, exhibiting a speck on the end of the steel scraper, explained the chemical changes which an unguarded use of the chalky water of the town supply would have upon that substance, though it made no difference to the secretions of the glands of the upper jaw.
This was very interesting and civil, if somewhat “shoppy,” of Mr. Ritchie, the clergyman thought, and once more opened his mouth to allow of the dentist's obtaining a sample of the alkaline deposit to which he had alluded. But the moment his jaws were apart Mr. Ritchie made a sound as of a sudden indrawing of his breath.
“Ha, what have we here?” he cried. “Nasty, nasty! but not too far gone—no, I sincerely hope, not too far gone. One moment.” He had inserted a little shield-shaped mirror in the curate's mouth and was pressing it gently against an upper tooth. “Ah yes, as I thought—a little stuffing will save it. Nerve exposed. You are quite right to come to me at once. A stitch in time, you know. It will hardly require any drilling—only at the rough edges.”
The clergyman was not the man to protest against Mr. Ritchie's civilities. He admitted that the tooth had given him some trouble the previous year, but he had not thought it worth consulting a dentist about.
“That's the mistake that people make,” said Mr. Ritchie mournfully. “They usually associate a visit to their dentist with some atrocity—some moments of agony—that was the result of the old tradition, dating back to John Leech's days. Of course, in those dark ages dentists did not exist, whereas now—— I think I would do well to do a little crown work between the tooth I am stopping and the next: the gap between the two is certain to work mischief before many months are over, and the back of the nearest molar has become so worn through the pressure of that overgrown one below it that, if not checked in time, it will break off with you some fine day. I'm glad that you came to me to-day. I will make a new man of you.”
He had the little ingenious emery drill working away before the clergyman remembered that he had not come to pay a professional visit to the dentist—that is to say, he had meant that his visit should be a professional one so far as his own profession went, but not that it should be a professional one so far as the profession of the other man went. But it seemed to him that the dentist was fast approaching the moment when he, the dentist, would not be amenable to the convenances of the parochial visit, but would become completely absorbed in the nuances of dental science which every revolution of the emery drill seemed to be revealing. He could say nothing. He was in an unaccustomed posture for speech. He was lying in the steely embrace of that highly nickelised chair, with his face looking up to the ceiling—exactly the reverse of the attitude in which he felt so fluent every Sunday evening. With his head bending over the top of his pulpit, he felt that he was equal to explaining everything in heaven above or the earth beneath; but sprawling back, with his eyes on the ceiling, and a thing whizzing like a cockchafer in his mouth, he was incapable of protest, even when he had recovered himself sufficiently to feel that a protest might be judicious, if not actually effective.
He submitted.
For the next four weeks he was, off and on, in the hands of Mr. Ritchie. It seemed as he went on that he had not a really sound tooth in his head, though he told me, almost tearfully, that previously he had always prided himself on his excellent teeth.
“I think Mr. Ritchie went too far in the end,” he added, recapitulating the main incidents of his indictment of the dentist. “I dare say a couple of my molars were showing signs of wear and tear, and so were all the better for being filled in properly; and it is quite likely that the gulf between the other two was the better for being bridged over—possibly a flake or two needed to be ground away from one of the grinders at the back—but I am sure that the time occupied in correcting some of the other irregularities which he perceived, but which had never caused me a moment's inconvenience, might have been better spent. I often thought so; but I said nothing until he calmly advised me to have six of my upper jaw painlessly extracted, apparently for no other reason than to show me how the new system of injecting cocaine, or something, worked, and that he could do what he called 'crown work' with the best dentists at Brindlington—then I thought it time to speak out, and I did speak out.”
“And what did you say to him?” I inquired, for I longed to be put in touch with the phraseology of a “first aid” parson when speaking out.
“I didn't spare him: I told him just what I thought of him.”
“And what did that amount to? Nothing grossly offensive, I hope.”
“I wasn't careful of my words; I did not weigh them. If they sounded offensive to him I cannot help it.”
“What did you say to him, as nearly as you can recollect? I'm rather a connoisseur of language and I may be able to relieve your mind, if you have any uneasiness on the subject of the man's feelings when you had done with him. What did you say to him?”
“I told him plainly that I thought he had gone too far; and now, looking at the whole transaction from a purely impersonal standpoint, I am not disposed to withdraw a single word of what I said. He did go too far—I honestly believe it. You will understand that it is not easy for one to take up an attitude of complete detachment in considering a matter such as this in all its bearings; but I think that I have disciplined myself sufficiently to be able to consider it in an unprejudiced spirit, and really I do believe that he went too far.”
“If he did, you certainly did not,” said I. “Has he sent you in his bill?”
“It is not his bill that matters—it only comes to £5, 11s. 6d. What I objected to was his implication that I had not a sound tooth in my head—I that have been accustomed during the past five years to crack nuts—not mere filberts, mind, but the sort that come from Brazil—at all the school feasts without the need for crackers! Just think of it! Oh yes, he certainly went too far.”
I agreed with him; I had no idea that there was so much enterprise in all Mallingham.
The general idea that prevails in regard to Mallingham is that it has remained stagnant—except for its aspirations after plate-glass—during the past four or five hundred years of its existence. A dog of some sort lies asleep at midday under almost every shop window, and cats of all sorts may be seen crossing the High Street at almost any hour. That is how it comes that the town seems so charming to visitors, and to those of its inhabitants who are not engaged in business.
This being so, I was disposed to laugh at the sly humour of a man and his wife—they were Russian nobles who motored across from Brindlington to lunch with us at Thurswell—who said they had enjoyed the drive exceedingly, until they had come to Mallingham. “A horrid, rowdy place, like the East End of London on Saturday night,” were the exact words those visitors employed, and I had actually begun to laugh at their ironical humour when I saw that they were meant to be in earnest. For some time I was in a state of perplexity; but then the truth suddenly flashed upon me: it was the day of the Mallingham Races—one of the three days of the year when the dogs are not allowed to sleep in the streets and when the cats remain indoors, when the High Street is for a full hour after the arrival of the train crowded with all that it disgorges, and when there is a stream of vehicles carrying to the picturesque racecourse on the Downs the usual supporters of the turf, with redfaced bookmakers and their “pitches,” as objectionable a crew as may be encountered in the streets of any country town at any season.
It was clear that my friends had reached the High Street of Mallingham a few minutes after the arrival of the train, and not being aware of the exceptional circumstances which had galvanised the place into life for a brief twenty minutes, they had assumed that this was the normal aspect of the town! I did my best to remove from Mallingham the reproach of being the great centre of bustling life that it had seemed to these strangers; but I could see that I did not altogether succeed in convincing them that, except for four days out of the year, nothing happens in Mallingham—three days of races and one night of loyal revelry—for even the holding of the Assizes three times a year does not cause the town to awake from its immemorial repose. The trumpets sound as the judge drives up to the County Hall with a mounted escort, and the shopkeepers come to their doors and glance down the street; the sleeping dogs jump up and begin to bark in a half-hearted way, but settle themselves comfortably down again before the last note of the fanfare has passed away, and, except for an occasional glimpse of a man in a wig crossing the street to the hotel, the Assize week passes much the same as any other week of the uneventful year. Three hundred years have passed since anything happened in Mallingham, and then it was nothing worth talking about. One must go back seven hundred years to find the town the centre of an historical incident of importance.
But the rumour is that Messrs. Williamson & Rubble, drapers and outfitters, are about to have a new plate-glass front made for both their shops, with convex corners and roll-up shutters; so Mallingham marches onward from century to century—slowly.