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Two Men and a Maid

(by Leo Fanning)

A Cynic has said that all boardinghouses are the same boardinghouse, that all sausages are the same sausage, that all hashes are the same hash, and that all boarders are the same boarder. It is true that history does repeat itself in boardinghouses and in boarders. In a team of eight there is usually one who does his own washing, or some of it, in the bathroom on a Sunday morning; one who puts several strata of vegetables on a gobbet of meat till the prongs are all well buried—and then the face opens cavernously; one (the most experienced) who knows how to juggle twice his fair share from a dish of delicacies; one who goes to every dance within a radius of ten miles; one who brings a crayfish home on Saturday night; one who adorns the walls of his room with photographs of “flappers” and magazine and post-card pictures of actresses and vaudeville “stars”; one who bores everybody before and after meals; and one who has travelled the world.

Always a boarder has a hope of an ideal house, with perfect boarders. He moves on and on in the quest, and finishes, as a rule, in a home of his own, with a masterful wife.

The two boarders, Mr. Charles Chortle and Mr. John Gadget, of this story, were fortunate far above the average. They had found a place with this delightful limitation, “no other boarders.” Their landlady, Mrs. Hashton, who was not absolutely dependent on this business, believed rather in quality than in quantity. Her motto was: Comfortable rooms and a good table at a worth-while tariff.

Chortle and Gadget had been friends for many years. Chortle was a well-paid officer—over-paid according to his colleagues, and “sweated” according to himself—in the Civil Service, and Gadget was a land agent. They had some tastes in common—particularly on a Saturday night—but they were not alike in temperament. Chortle had the cautious reserve, with an occasional tendency to pessimism, which long years of routine may put into the most buoyant person. Gadget had the customary optimism of his class, the eye which sees level spaces in precipices, orchards in hawthorn hedges, and trout streams in drains. Each had mental reservations regarding the other's intelligence, but they liked each other. They had shared rabbit, shepherd's pie and hash together in many boardinghouses, but they believed that they had now reached the ideal home of lodgers’ dreams. They both scoffed at the notion of marriage; they agreed that they were safely past the impressionable age, and they often congratulated themselves on their escape from the cares and worries of family life.

They were in the midst of such a conversation after dinner one evening, when Mrs. Hashton came into the room. She had a nervous manner. She fidgeted with things on a mantlepiece, and spoke aimlessly about the new moon, and said she wondered whether Christmas would be wet.

Chortle and Gadget looked at each other apprehensively. Each remembered that some months before, when Mrs. Hashton had a notion of abandoning boardinghouses, she had played with knick-knacks, she had referred to the moon and had expressed a fear that Easter would be wet.

The boarders answered at random. They knew that the moon was not much in Mrs. Hashton's mind.

“I was thinking,” she said, after an awkward pause, during which a gollywog clock's career nearly closed, “that I would invite Miss Dora Templeton, the daughter of an old friend, to stay here during the Christmas and New Year holidays—at least, if you gentlemen would not object to her presence in the dining-room and sitting-room occasionally. The young lady is very well educated, and is very interesting.”

Chortle and Gadget were dumbfounded. They looked hopelessly, helplessly, at each other, at Mrs. Hashton, and at the gollywog clock which was still in peril.

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After a few seconds, which seemed a few minutes, Chortle spoke slowly. “I hardly know what to say, Mrs. Hashton,” he began. “You see, we are two such confirmed old bachelors. We are poor company for a young lady. Let us think about it.”

Mrs. Hashton withdrew sombrely. When the boarders heard sounds of work in the kitchen, they spoke in low tones of either giving notice or living elsewhere till the prospective intruder departed. However, they knew that mrs. Hashton was independent, and they did not wish to run a risk of losing a very comfortable residence. Finally they compromised on an attitude of injury and cold acceptance of the inevitable.

Chortle dined out next evening. After a solitary meal, Gadget was having a quiet pipe in the sitting-room when Mrs. Hashton came in.

“Has Mr. Chortle said anything special to you about the young lady?” she asked.

“Well, he has said things,” replied Gadget, cautiously, “but nothing personal.”

“He did not say that he knew Miss Templeton very well?”

“No, he did not; he certainly did not.”

“Can you keep a secret?”

“Land agents can keep secrets very well.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Hashton, solemnly, “you must promise that you will never by any word or action betray my confidence. You must not breathe a word of this conversation. Will you promise?”

“Yes, said Gadget.

“The secret is that Mr. Chortle knows Miss Templeton very well, and is pretending to be displeased.”

“Then he is a remarkably good actor,” declared Gadget, with emphasis.

Next evening, during Gadget's absence, Chortle made a similar remark about his friend. for Mrs. Hashton took an opportunity to convey a similar “confidence.”

From this time the friends had each other under suspicion. Each could see big notes of interrogation in the other's gaze, occasionally. Their manner, with its new suspicion, confirmed each in a belief that the other was hiding something.

“It's the Civil Service that makes a man secretive,” thought Gadget. “A land agency makes a man a double-dealer,” thought Chortle.

Miss Templeton arrived a week before Christmas. She was introduced to the two boarders just before dinner, and made them her humble subjects easily. She had a sunniness, a music of voice, a charm of manner, which dispelled all notions of “strike.” But the men had very little to say. Each was taking every chance to watch the other furtively. Each was alert for evidence of previous acquaintance; each was convinced that he was witnessing some of the world's best acting.

“Nice girl,” said Gadget, when Chortle and he were smoking alone after dinner.

“Not bad,” replied Chortle. “You have to beware of first impressions.”

Gadget smoked reflectively. “Yes,” he thought, “the Civil Service does make a man diabolically cunning.”

The subject was changed abruptly. They talked scrappily about politics and other petty matters. They bored each other, for the mind of each was working at the other's mysterious attitude about the girl.

At every meal, each discovered a new grace in the girl, but neither proclaimed his find to the other. They plotted for opportunities to catch the girl alone. At the outset, Gadget, as the master of his own time to some extent, had the advantage, but Chortle soon proved that the wheels of Government could revolve without him for an hour in the morning or afternoon. Each felt that he had to fight against the handicap page 24 of the other's previous acquaintance, and the struggle was strenuous.

One afternoon, when Gadget had taken Mrs. Hashton and Miss Templeton to tea, he had a chance to whisk the young lady to the seaside. Mrs. Hashton said that she had to do some shopping, and thus left the way clear for the land agent.

By the murmuring waters he artfully brought the conversation around to Chortle.

“You have been friends a long time,” remarked the girl,

“Yes,” said Gadget. “Year in and year out, we have lived very well together. Chortle is a very good chap, but, of course, he is quite a confirmed bachelor. He is the sort of fellow who fancies himself in love every now and then, but it is a ten-minute notion. He is a bachelor out-and-out. Smokes in bed, and likes to be waited on hand and foot. You know the type.”

Miss Templeton replied with a remark about Chortle's position in the Civil Service.

“He has a steady job,” said Gadget, “but you know what steady jobs do to some men. The routine kills ambition. They become dull and stodgy in time. At the best they make respectable suburban burgesses, with a little bit of garden and a pocket-handkerchief lawn, which they mow in white flannel pants, a fancy shirt, and a three-coloured belt, with a patent buckle.”

“But that would not stop a man from being a good husband,” commented Miss Templeton.

“He would be an unromantic husband,” Gadget argued. “He would read the paper at breakfast, and would be faddy about the cooking. Of course, I am not specially referring to Chortle, but to his type.”

Miss Templeton looked suddenly at her watch. “Dear me, we shall be late for dinner,” she exclaimed. “We must catch the next car.”

Gadget wished heartily that watches and cars had never been invented.

Two days later—on Friday—it was Chortle's turn to be philosopher. He had arranged with a mutual friend to telephone urgently for Gadget about the inspection of some remote sections, and then he seized the chance of persuading Miss Templeton to take a stroll on the white, winding roads above Wellington harbour.

Chortle was determined to “draw” the girl on the subject of Gadget. “Here is one of Gadget's signboards,” he said. “It's a pity that a man like Gadget is a land agent.”

The girl seemed surprised. “Why?” she asked.

“That work makes a man too imaginative,” said Chortle. “Besides, it's too uncertain. An agent is up to-day and down to-morrow. A boom inflates him, and a slump bursts him. The wife of a land agent must be fearfully worried sometimes. However, it is extremely unlikely that Gadget will marry. He is a chronic bachelor. Some men are born bachelors; once a bachelor, always a bachelor. In a year or two he will have the customary little round smoking cap, with a tassel, and a very round waist. I'm sure Gadget will run to fat.”

The girl smiled. “How beautiful the bay is to-day,” she said.

Chortle scowled at the blue water. He was unmistakably irritated. “Yes, it's a beautiful bay,” he said; “a blue bay, a red, white and blue bay, and a green bay. It is a bay of bays, the bayest bay I know. It reminds me of a line in a parody of Swinburne; I don't remember it exactly, but it's something like this: ‘O Noon of Naples, I bathe in thine beauty, by thee embayed.’”

A look of fright came into the girl's eyes, and she edged away from Chortle. His mood quickly passed to one of placation, but it was of no avail. The frightened look remained, and it was a sad return for Chortle to the boardinghouse.

By no stratagem could he manage during the next day to steal a moment alone with Miss Templeton, but he had the satisfaction of observing that Gadget's plans were similarly frustrated. Yet soon they felt some sympathy with each other; each apparently had something on his mind, a burden which he wished to lift. At last came confessions.

“I told her,” said Gadget, “that there was a little lunacy in your family. Of course, I took care to explain that it was extremely improbable you would go raving mad, but that you might become eccentric, walk in your sleep, eat peas with a knife, and so on.”

“I could shoot you, Gadget,” said Chortle, “if I had not committed a similar sin. I told her you were subject to fits of melancholia for weeks at a time, and that people like you had gradually lapsed into a harmless imbecility, or had become habitual drunkards. Of course, I explained that you were not at present addicted to drink.”

Chortle's mind flew back to the Sunday. He felt that the girl had regarded his outburst about the bay as a sign of incipient insanity.

“We'll both tell her,” said Chortle, “that in a mood of jealousy we maligned each other.”

“What then?” asked Gadget. “We can't both marry the girl.”

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“We'll play the game fairly,” said Chortle, “and let the girl decide.”

Miss Templeton laughed merrily when the truth was given to her about the fabrications.

Then the wooing went on persistently. The two men read books, ancient and modern, on love; they fossicked among friends for helpful hints. In lonely places they practised recitations of sentimental verse and lovelorn gestures. But always the girl managed to indicate that she was not conquered by these arts. Yet sometimes there was a warm light in her eyes on which the wooers built fresh hopes—which were always cast down, and replaced by others.

After lunch on the day when Miss Templeton's visit was due to close, Chortle remarked to Mrs. Hashton (in the absence of the girl) that the young lady was not one who would marry in a hurry.

“I don't know,” said Mrs. Hashton, “that it will be a long engagement. I fancy the arrangements have been made for a wedding at Easter.”

“Wedding?” gasped Chortle. Has Gadget—”

“Oh, no,” said Mrs. Hashton. “Miss Templeton's fiancé is in Auckland. I thought Miss Templeton would have told you as a matter of course. I assumed you must have known from the first day.”

“No ring,” murmured Chortle.

“Miss Templeton is a modern. She does not believe in engagement rings,” replied Mrs. Hashton.

Gadget and Chortle sat up late that night.

“I wish I could tell you something I heard in confidence from Mrs. Hashton,” said Chortle.

“No need,” replied Gadget, with a grin. “I can guess it. We are a pair of ‘mugs.’”

‘Confirmed bachelors, I think,” said Gadget.

“Chronic,” said Chortle.

They shook hands.

“We've lost the girl, but we've restored our characters to each other,” said Gadget.

“That's something,” laughed Chortle. “But I think that in this Land of Laws there should be a statute compelling affianced girls to wear engagement rings. Also, there should be another law abolishing dimples and kiss-curls and soul-enslaving voices, and roguish eyes. You and I shall have to start a Confirmed Bachelors’ Protection Society.”

“Yes,” Gadget agreed, “we need some protection by the paternal Government. Do you think the maintenance of our dignity requires us to move on from this place of delusion and illusion, disenchantment and disappointment in love. I believe that Mrs. Hashton and Miss Templeton conspired to enjoy the fun of stirring up two hard-shelled bachelors.”

“So do I,” said Chortle. “My soul is sore about it. But Mrs. Haston does know how to make and cook fritters, croquettes, rissoles, and other things in all the delightful permutations and combinations dear to men of discernment.”

“She does,” echoed Gadget, heartily.

They stayed.