Fancies and Goodnights, стр. 74

ROMANCE LINGERS ADVENTURE LIVES

There is a great deal of devilry in a bright and windy midnight in the month of March. A little naked moon rides high over Fairlawn Avenue in the heart of the Sweetholme building development. The new houses are chalk-masked by its light, except for their darkened windows, which glare broodingly, like deep-set eyes, or the sockets of eyes. There are some young almond trees, which ordinarily look as if drawn by a childish hand. Now, as the wind sets their weak branches gibbering, they seem like shamanistic scratches on the white bone of the brittle bright night.

The wind causes a man to tuck his chin into his coat collar, to become a mere rag, curved against the wind. His bowler-hatted moon-shadow, apparently cut from a sheet of tin, scythes its way implacably through the asphalt, and seems the better man of the two, probably the real man, the genuine Mr. Watkins. Around the bend, just out of sight, comes another figure, bowler-hatted also, scythe-curved also, also chopping its way through the icy air. It might be the shadow of the shadow. It might be Death. It is, however, only Mr. Gosport.

The carriage from which he alighted out of the midnight train was the farthest from the station barrier. Also, his shoelace came undone. There is an explanation for everything: sometimes two explanations. These two explain why Mr. Gosport was a hundred yards or so behind Mr. Wat-kins.

Mr. Watkins, with his little grin slipped in like a scarf-pin behind his upturned lapels, observed with a stare of desolate and hopeless superiority the monotony of the houses of Fairlawn Avenue. This was the vilest ingratitude, for the uniformity was due to the fact that each was the best possible house at the figure. Watkins, however, having drunk and sung away the Saturday evening in exclusively male company, was full of blood and villainy, intolerant of caution and incapable of gratitude. He decided that on Monday he would rob the bank at which he was employed, and fly to South America, where he would set up a seraglio.

How different were the thoughts of Mr. Gosport, as out of sight, around the bend, he sheared his way into the wind and also regarded the monotony of Fairlawn Avenue! The good Gosport fully realized that each house was the best possible at the price; he knew that each chalky bump was a vertebra in the backbone of the country; he had read that the life of the little man was as full of romance and high adventure as that of any buccaneer of old; columnists had told him that the Fairlawn Avenues of the world are its very jewels, its necklaces of simple joys and sorrows, its rosaries in which each well matched home is a pearl. The only trouble was, he had no great fondness for jewelry, and wished that he was dead. «I am unfit to appreciate the best of all possible lives in the best of all possible building developments,» said he. «Tomorrow I will put my affairs in order, and be specially nice to Milly. On Monday I will go far away, to where there are trees larger than these little almond trees, and I will hang myself upon the branch of one of them.»

Watkins, away ahead, roller-coastered in imagination over the curves of his future seraglio. He was brought to a halt by the appearance of a dim light behind a hall door. «Here we are,» said he. He went up the little path and opened the door, and was at once received into the warmth of domesticity and greeted by the beauty of a three-piece hallway set of a pattern very popular on Fairlawn Avenue.

In a moment, the vigorous Watkins had hung hat and coat upon the peg, switched out the hall light, and was creeping up the stairs to bed.

Still out in the cold, still shearing with sensitive nose the arctic currents of the wind, Mr. Gosport passed the now darkened house. Four doors farther up, his watering eyes perceived a dim light behind a hall-door pane. «Here I am!» said he with a sigh.

Upstairs in the first house, treading soft so as not to wake his sleeping wife, Watkins flung off his clothing, expanded his chest, scratched his rump, donned his pyjamas, and slipped into the bed. His wife acknowledged his entry with a muted whinny.

Here were two human caterpillars, immobile in a cotton cocoon, awaiting the pupescence of sleep, the wings of dream.

There is, however, a great deal of devilry at midnight on a Saturday. What was the influence that drew the lady up from sleep like Sheba's queen from glowing Africa, and reclaimed the gentleman like Solomon from the contemplation of his seraglio? Was it that which had been moribund three years, or was it something totally different? It felt like something totally different.

Something very much the same — that is to say, something totally different — was happening at the very same time to Mr. Gosport.

Both couples slept late on Sunday morning, and when they woke the ladies did what they had not done since honeymoon days. That is to say, they rose smiling in the darkness of the curtained rooms, and hastened downstairs to prepare a morning cup of coffee.

Watkins, waking to full consciousness, heard the clink of the crockery below. He smiled, stretched, sniffed, expanded his chest, and with a coy smile abandoned himself to a warm flood of happiness. This, like a Gulf Stream, bore his thoughts away from South America and set the almonds all ablossoming on Fairlawn Avenue.

Watkins descended the stairs, and entered the little kitchen. There was the steaming coffee; there was a beloved figure in a fresh and flowery wrapper, bending over the gas stove. He bestowed a jovial but appreciative pinch, and took up the newspaper.

«How manly!» thought she.

At the same moment Mr. Gosport was descending the stairs, and in a similar mood. To him also was accorded the scent of new-made coffee, and the sight of a sweet figure in flowered wrapper bending over the stove. He bestowed a lingering and grateful kiss just where the hair twirls in little tendrils at the back of the neck, and took up the newspaper.

«How refined!» thought she.

«Hey, what's this?» said Mr. Watkins, when he had sipped his coffee, and skimmed smilingly over an account of a fugitive bank clerk being arrested at Southampton. «Hey, what's this? Where is the true detective story feature in this Sunday's Telegram?»

«That is not the Telegram,» said the lady, turning in surprise from the stove. «And you,» said she on a rising note, «And you are not my husband.»

With that she fell to the floor, in a faint of the third intensity. «I got into the wrong house last night,» murmured Watkins. «I had better get off home.»

He quickly assembled his clothes and left the house. On his way along the Avenue he passed Mr. Gosport, with whom he was unacquainted. Each was too busy concocting an excuse for staying in town overnight, to take any notice of the other.

Mr. Watkins found Mrs. Watkins, and Mr. Gosport found Mrs. Gosport, highly agitated at the unaccountable absence of their husbands, and too relieved at their return to scrutinize very closely the likelihood of the excuses they made.

They each had a nice cut of beef for their Sunday lunch, and after lunch they took a nap, while their wives looked out of the window. Their dreams were not unpleasant, and when they woke, Fairlawn Avenue no longer seemed so monotonous as to justify resort to crime or suicide. How long this cheerful mood would have lasted without reinforcement it is impossible to say. Fortunately Mrs. Gosport shortly afterwards made the acquaintance of Mrs. Watkins while seeking a strayed kitten, and the two families became the greatest of friends, and spent most of their evenings, their week ends, and their summer holidays together.

This happy relationship altogether banished monotony from Fairlawn Avenue, and it would have persisted to this day, had not a slight coolness arisen last spring owing to Mr. Gosport refusing Mr. Watkins the loan of his lawn mower.