MRS. KORNER SINS HER MERCIES
By JEROME K. JEROME
"I do mean it," declared Mrs. Korner, "I like a man to be a man."
"But you would not like Christopher--I mean Mr. Korner--to be that
sort of man," suggested her bosom friend.
"I don't mean that I should like it if he did it often. But I should
like to feel that he was able to be that sort of man.--Have you told
your master that breakfast is ready?" demanded Mrs. Korner of the
domestic staff, entering at the moment with three boiled eggs and a
teapot.
"Yus, I've told 'im," replied the staff indignantly.
The
domestic staff at Acacia Villa, Ravenscourt Park, lived in a state
of
indignation. It could be heard of mornings and evenings
saying its
prayers indignantly.
"What did he say?"
"Said 'e'11 be down the moment 'e's dressed."
"Nobody wants him to come before," commented Mrs. Korner. "Answered
me that he was putting on his
collar when I called up to him five
minutes ago."
"Answer yer the same thing now, if yer called up to 'im agen, I
'spect," was the opinion of the staff. "Was on 'is 'ands and knees
when I looked in, scooping round under the bed for 'is
collar stud."
Mrs. Korner paused with the teapot in her hand. "Was he talking?"
"Talkin'? Nobody there to talk to; I 锟絘dn't got no time to stop and
chatter."
"I mean to himself," explained Mrs. Korner. "He--he wasn't swearing?"
There was a note of
eagerness, almost of hope, in Mrs. Korner's voice.
"Swearin'! 'E! Why, 'e don't know any."
"Thank you," said Mrs. Korner. "That will do, Harriet; you may go."
Mrs Korner put down the teapot with a bang. "The very girl," said
Mrs. Korner
bitterly, "the very girl despises him."
"Perhaps," suggested Miss Greene, "he had been swearing and had
finished."
But Mrs. Korner was not to be comforted. "Finished! Any other man
would have been swearing all the time."
"Perhaps," suggested the kindly bosom friend, ever the one to plead
the cause of the transgressor, "perhaps he was swearing, and she did
not hear him. You see, if he had his head well
underneath the bed--"
The door opened.
"Sorry I am late," said Mr. Korner, bursting
cheerfully" target="_blank" title="ad.高兴地,愉快地">
cheerfully into the room.
It was a point with Mr. Korner always to be
cheerful in the morning.
"Greet the day with a smile and it will leave you with a blessing,"
was the motto Mrs. Korner, this day a married woman of six months and
three weeks
standing had heard her husband murmur before getting out
of bed on
precisely two hundred and two occasions. The Motto entered
largely into the
scheme of Mr. Korner's life. Written in fine
copperplate upon cards all of the same size, a choice selection
counselled him each morning from the rim of his shaving-glass.
"Did you find it?" asked Mrs. Korner.
"It is most extraordinary," replied Mr. Korner, as he seated himself
at the breakfast-table. "I saw it go under the bed with my own eyes.
Perhaps--"
"Don't ask me to look for it," interrupted Mrs. Korner. "Crawling
about on their hands and knees, knocking their heads against iron
bedsteads, would be enough to make some people swear." The emphasis
was on the "some."
"It is not bad training for the character," hinted Mr. Korner,
"
occasionally to force oneself to perform
patiently tasks
calculated--"
"If you get tied up in one of those long sentences of yours, you will
never get out in time to eat your breakfast," was the fear of Mrs.
Korner.
"I should be sorry for anything to happen to it," remarked Mr. Korner,
"its intrinsic value may perhaps--"
"I will look for it after breakfast," volunteered the
amiable Miss
Greene. "I am good at
finding things."
"I can well believe it," the
gallant Mr. Korner
assured her, as with
the handle of his spoon he peeled his egg. "From such bright eyes as
yours, few--"
"You've only got ten minutes," his wife reminded him. "Do get on with
your breakfast."
"I should like," said Mr. Korner, "to finish a speech
occasionally."
"You never would," asserted Mrs. Korner.
"I should like to try," sighed Mr. Korner, "one of these days--"
"How did you sleep, dear? I forgot to ask you," questioned Mrs.
Korner of the bosom friend.
"I am always
restless in a strange bed the first night," explained
Miss Greene. "I daresay, too, I was a little excited."
"I could have wished," said Mr. Korner, "it had been a better example
of the
delightful art of the
dramatist. When one goes but seldom to
the theatre--"
"One wants to enjoy oneself" interrupted Mrs. Korner.
"I really do not think," said the bosom friend, "that I have ever
laughed so much in all my life."
"It was
amusing. I laughed myself," admitted Mr. Korner. "At the
same time I cannot help thinking that to treat
drunkenness as a
theme--"
"He wasn't drunk," argued Mrs. Korner, "he was just jovial."
"My dear!" Mr. Korner Corrected her, "he simply couldn't stand."
"He was much more
amusing than some people who can," retorted Mrs.
Korner.
"It is possible, my dear Aimee," her husband
pointed out to her, "for
a man to be
amusing without being drunk; also for a man to be drunk
without--"
"Oh, a man is all the better," declared Mrs. Korner, "for letting
himself go
occasionally."
"My dear--"
"You, Christopher, would be all the better for letting yourself
go--
occasionally."
"I wish," said Mr. Korner, as he passed his empty cup, "you would not
say things you do not mean. Anyone
hearing you--"
"If there's one thing makes me more angry than another," said Mrs.
Korner, "it is being told I say things that I do not mean."
"Why say them then?" suggested Mr. Korner.
"I don't. I do--I mean I do mean them," explained Mrs. Korner.
"You can hardly mean, my dear," persisted her husband, "that you
really think I should be all the better for getting drunk--even
occasionally."
"I didn't say drunk; I said 'going it.'"
"But I do 'go it' in moderation," pleaded Mr. Korner, "'Moderation in
all things,' that is my motto."
"I know it," returned Mrs. Korner.
"A little of everything and nothing--" this time Mr. Korner
interrupted himself. "I fear," said Mr. Korner, rising, "we must
postpone the further
discussion of this interesting topic. If you
would not mind stepping out with me into the passage, dear, there are
one or two little matters connected with the house--"
Host and
hostess squeezed past the
visitor and closed the door behind
them. The
visitor continued eating.
"I do mean it,"
repeated Mrs. Korner, for the third time, reseating
herself a minute later at the table. "I would give
anything--anything," reiterated the lady recklessly, "to see
Christopher more like the ordinary sort of man."
"But he has always been the sort--the sort of man he is," her bosom
friend reminded her.
"Oh, during the
engagement, of course, one expects a man to be
perfect. I didn't think he was going to keep it up."
"He seems to me," said Miss Greene, "a dear, good fellow. You are one
of those people who never know when they are well off."
"I know he is a good fellow," agreed Mrs. Korner, "and I am very fond
of him. It is just because I am fond of him that I hate feeling
ashamed of him. I want him to be a manly man, to do the things that
other men do."
"Do all the ordinary sort of men swear and get
occasionally drunk?"
"Of course they do," asserted Mrs. Korner, in a tone of authority.
"One does not want a man to be a milksop."
"Have you ever seen a
drunken man?" inquired the bosom friend, who was
nibbling sugar.
"Heaps," replied Mrs. Korner, who was sucking marmalade off her
fingers.
By which Mrs. Korner meant that some half a dozen times in her life
she had visited the play, choosing by
preference the lighter form of
British drama. The first time she witnessed the real thing, which
happened just
precisely a month later, long after the conversation
here recorded had been forgotten by the parties most
concerned, no one
could have been more utterly astonished than was Mrs. Korner.
How it came about Mr. Korner was never able to fully satisfy himself.
Mr. Korner was not the type that serves the purpose of the temperance
lecturer. His "first glass" he had drunk more years ago than he could
recollect, and since had tasted the
variedcontents of many others.
But never before had Mr. Korner exceeded, nor been tempted to exceed,
the limits of his favourite
virtue, moderation.
"We had one bottle of claret between us," Mr. Korner would often
recall to his mind, "of which he drank the greater part. And then he
brought out the little green flask. He said it was made from
pears--that in Peru they kept it
specially for Children's parties. Of
course, that may have been his joke; but in any case I cannot see how
just one glass--I wonder could I have taken more than one glass while
he was talking." It was a point that worried Mr. Korner.
The "he" who had talked, possibly, to such bad effect was a distant
cousin of Mr. Korner's, one Bill Damon, chief mate of the steamship
_La Fortuna_. Until their chance meeting that afternoon in Leadenhall
Street, they had not seen each other since they were boys together.
The _Fortuna_ was leaving St. Katherine's Docks early the next morning
bound for South America, and it might be years before they met again.
As Mr. Damon
pointed out, Fate, by thus throwing them into each
other's arms, clearly intended they should have a cosy dinner together
that very evening in the captain's cabin of the _Fortuna_.
Mr. Korner, returning to the office, despatched to Ravenscourt Park an
express letter, announcing the strange news that he might not be home
that evening much before ten, and at half-past six, for the first time
since his marriage, directed his steps away from home and Mrs. Korner.
The two friends talked of many things. And later on they spoke of
sweethearts and of wives. Mate Damon's experiences had apparently
been wide and
varied. They talked--or, rather, the mate talked, and
Mr. Korner listened--of the olive-tinted beauties of the Spanish Main,
of the dark-eyed
passionate" target="_blank" title="a.易动情的;易怒的">
passionate creoles, of the blond Junos of the
Californian valleys. The mate had theories
concerning the care and
management of women: theories that, if the mate's word could be
relied upon, had stood the test of
studiedapplication. A new world
opened out to Mr. Korner; a world where lovely women worshipped with
doglike
devotion men who, though
loving them in return, knew how to be
their masters. Mr. Korner, warmed gradually from cold
disapproval to
bubbling
appreciation, sat entranced. Time alone set a limit to the
recital of the mate's adventures. At eleven o'clock the cook reminded
them that the captain and the pilot might be
aboard at any moment.
Mr. Korner, surprised at the lateness of the hour, took a long and
tender
farewell of his cousin, and found St. Katherine's Docks one of
the most bewildering places out of which he had ever tried to escape.
Under a lamp-post in the Minories, it suddenly occurred to Mr. Korner
that he was an unappreciated man. Mrs. Korner never said and did the
sort of things by means of which the beauties of the Southern Main
endeavoured
feebly to express their consuming
passion for gentlemen
superior in no way--as far as he could see--to Mr. Korner himself.
Thinking over the sort of things Mrs. Korner did say and did do, tears
sprung into Mr. Korner's eyes. Noticing that a
policeman was eyeing
him with
curiosity, he dashed them aside and
hurried on. Pacing the
platform of the Mansion House Station, where it is always draughty,
the thought of his wrongs returned to him with renewed force. Why was
there no trace of doglike
devotion about Mrs. Korner? The fault--so
he
bitterly told himself--the fault was his. "A woman loves her