“An Irishman once on being asked by his master to buy a morning paper said in his usual witty way, ‘Arrah and begorrah and I will be after wishing you the top of the morning.’”
No joke sounds quite so good the second time it is told, it seems to lose something of its essence, but Watkyn-Jones was not prepared for the awful stillness with which this one was received; nobody smiled; and it had killed twenty-two men. The joke was bad, devilish bad; counsel for the defence was frowning, and an usher was looking in a little bag for something the judge wanted. And at this moment, as though from far away, without his wishing it, there entered into the prisoner’s head, and shone there and would not go, this old bad proverb: “As well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.” The jury seemed just about to retire. “I have another joke,” said Watkyn-Jones, and then and there he read from the second slip of paper. He watched the paper curiously to see if it would go blank, occupying his mind with so slight a thing as men in dire distress very often do, and the words were almost immediately expunged, swept swiftly as if by a hand, and he saw the paper before him as blank as the first. And they were laughing this time, judge, jury, counsel for the prosecution, audience and all, and the grim men that watched him upon either side. There was no mistake about this joke.
He did not stay to see the end, and walked out with his eyes fixed on the ground, unable to bear a glance to the right or left. And since then he has wandered, avoiding ports and roaming lonely places. Two years have known him on the Highland roads, often hungry, always friendless, always changing his district, wandering lonely on with his deadly joke.
Sometimes for a moment he will enter inns, driven by cold and hunger, and hear men in the evening telling jokes and even challenging him; but he sits desolate and silent, lest his only weapon should escape from him and his last joke spread mourning in a hundred cots. His beard has grown and turned grey and is mixed with moss and weeds, so that no one, I think, not even the police, would recognise him now for that tout that sold The Briton Dictionary of Electricity in such a different land.
He paused, his story told, and then his lip quivered as though he would say more, and I believe he intended then and there to yield up his deadly joke on that Highland road and to go forth then with his three blank slips of paper, perhaps to a felon’s cell, with one more murder added to his crimes, but harmless at last to man. I therefore hurried on, and only heard him mumbling sadly behind me, standing bowed and broken, all alone in the twilight, perhaps telling over and over even then the last infernal joke.
The Guest
A young man came into an ornate restaurant at eight o’clock in London.
He was alone, but two places had been laid at the table which was reserved for him. He had chosen the dinner very carefully, by letter a week before.
A waiter asked him about the other guest.
“You probably won’t see him till the coffee comes,” the young man told him; so he was served alone.
Those at adjacent tables might have noticed the young man continually addressing the empty chair and carrying on a monologue with it throughout his elaborate dinner.
“I think you knew my father,” he said to it over the soup. “I sent for you this evening,” he continued, “because I want you to do me a good turn; in fact I must insist on it.”
There was nothing eccentric about the man except for this habit of addressing an empty chair, certainly he was eating as good a dinner as any sane man could wish for.
After the Burgundy had been served he became more voluble in his monologue, not that he spoiled his wine by drinking excessively.
“We have several acquaintances in common,” he said. “I met King Seti a year ago in Thebes. I think he has altered very little since you knew him. I thought his forehead a little low for a king’s. Cheops has left the house that he built for your reception, he must have prepared for you years and years. I suppose you have seldom been entertained like that. I ordered this dinner over a week ago. I thought then that a lady might come with me, but as she wouldn’t I’ve asked you. She may not after all be as lovely as Helen of Troy. Was Helen very lovely? Not when you knew her, perhaps. You were lucky in Cleopatra, you must have known her when she was in her prime.
“You never knew the mermaids nor the fairies nor the lovely goddesses of long ago, that’s where we have the best of you.”
He was silent when the waiters came to his table, but rambled merrily on as soon as they left, still turned to the empty chair.
“You know I saw you here in London only the other day. You were on a motor bus going down Ludgate Hill. It was going much too fast. London is a good place. But I shall be glad enough to leave it. It was in London that I met the lady I that was speaking about. If it hadn’t been for London I probably shouldn’t have met her, and if it hadn’t been for London she probably wouldn’t have had so much besides me to amuse her. It cuts both ways.”
He paused once to order coffee, gazing earnestly at the waiter and putting a sovereign in his hand. “Don’t let it be chicory,” said he.
The waiter brought the coffee, and the young man dropped a tabloid of some sort into his cup.
“I don’t suppose you come here very often,” he went on. “Well, you probably want to be going. I haven’t taken you much out of your way, there is plenty for you to do in London.”
Then having drunk his coffee he fell on the floor by a foot of the empty chair, and a doctor who was dining in the room bent over him and announced to the anxious manager the visible presence of the young man’s guest.
Thirteen at Table
In front of a spacious fireplace of the old kind, when the logs were well alight, and men with pipes and glasses were gathered before it in great easeful chairs, and the wild weather outside and the comfort that was within, and the season of the year — for it was Christmas — and the hour of the night, all called for the weird or uncanny, then out spoke the ex-master of foxhounds and told this tale.
I once had an odd experience too. It was when I had the Bromley and Sydenham, the year I gave them up — as a matter of fact it was the last day of the season. It was no use going on because there were no foxes left in the county, and London was sweeping down on us. You could see it from the kennels all along the skyline like a terrible army in grey, and masses of villas every year came skirmishing down our valleys. Our coverts were mostly on the hills, and as the town came down upon the valleys the foxes used to leave them and go right away out of the county and they never returned. I think they went by night and moved great distances. Well it was early April and we had drawn blank all day, and at the last draw of all, the very last of the season, we found a fox. He left the covert with his back to London and its railways and villas and wire and slipped away towards the chalk country and open Kent. I felt as I once felt as a child on one summer’s day when I found a door in a garden where I played luckily left ajar, and I pushed it open and the wide lands were before me and waving fields of corn.
We settled down into a steady gallop and the fields began to drift by under us, and a great wind arose full of fresh breath. We left the clay lands where the bracken grows and came to a valley at the edge of the chalk. As we went down into it we saw the fox go up the other side like a shadow that crosses the evening, and glide into a wood that stood on the top. We saw a flash of primroses in the wood and we were out the other side, hounds hunting perfectly and the fox still going absolutely straight. It began to dawn on me then that we were in for a great hunt, I took a deep breath when I thought of it; the taste of the air of that perfect Spring afternoon as it came to one galloping, and the thought of a great run, were together like some old rare wine. Our faces now were to another valley, large fields led down to it, with easy hedges, at the bottom of it a bright blue stream went singing and a rambling village smoked, the sunlight on the opposite slopes danced like a fairy; and all along the top old woods were frowning, but they dreamed of Spring. The “field” had fallen off and were far behind and my only human companion