THEY AND I(他们和我)

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THEY AND I

by Jerome K. Jerome

THEY AND I

CHAPTER I

"It is not a large house," I said. "We don't want a large house. Two

spare bedrooms, and the little three-cornered place you see marked there

on the plan, next to the bathroom, and which will just do for a bachelor,

will be all we shall require--at all events, for the present. Later on, if I

ever get rich, we can throw out a wing. The kitchen I shall have to break to

your mother gently. Whatever the original architect could have been

thinking of--"

"Never mind the kitchen," said Dick: "what about the billiard-

room?"

The way children nowadays will interrupt a parent is nothing short of a

national disgrace. I also wish Dick would not sit on the table, swinging

his legs. It is not respectful. "Why, when I was a boy," as I said to him,

"I should as soon have thought of sitting on a table, interrupting my father-

"What's this thing in the middle of the hall, that looks like a grating?"

demanded Robina.

"She means the stairs," explained Dick.

"Then why don't they look like stairs?" commented Robina.

"They do," replied Dick, "to people with sense."

"They don't," persisted Robina, "they look like a grating." Robina,

with the plan spread out across her knee, was sitting balanced on the arm

of an easy-chair. Really, I hardly see the use of buying chairs for these

people. Nobody seems to know what they are for--except it be one or

another of the dogs. Perches are all they want.

"If we threw the drawing-room into the hall and could do away with

the stairs," thought Robina, "we should be able to give a dance now and

then."

"Perhaps," I suggested, "you would like to clear out the house

altogether, leaving nothing but the four bare walls. That would give us

still more room, that would. For just living in, we could fix up a shed in

the garden; or--"

THEY AND I

"I'm talking seriously," said Robina: "what's the good of a drawing-

room? One only wants it to show the sort of people into that one wishes

hadn't come. They'd sit about, looking miserable, just as well anywhere

else. If we could only get rid of the stairs--"

"Oh, of course! we could get rid of the stairs," I agreed. "It would be

a bit awkward at first, when we wanted to go to bed. But I daresay we

should get used to it. We could have a ladder and climb up to our rooms

through the windows. Or we might adopt the Norwegian method and

have the stairs outside."

"I wish you would be sensible," said Robin.

"I am trying to be," I explained; "and I am also trying to put a little

sense into you. At present you are crazy about dancing. If you had

your way, you would turn the house into a dancing-saloon with primitive

sleeping-accommodation attached. It will last six months, your dancing

craze. Then you will want the house transformed into a swimming-bath,

or a skating-rink, or cleared out for hockey. My idea may be

conventional. I don't expect you to sympathise with it. My notion is

just an ordinary Christian house, not a gymnasium. There are going to be

bedrooms in this house, and there's going to be a staircase leading to them.

It may strike you as sordid, but there is also going to be a kitchen:

though why when building the house they should have put the kitchen -

"Don't forget the billiard-room," said Dick.

"If you thought more of your future career and less about billiards,"

Robin pointed out to him, "perhaps you'd get through your Little-go in the

course of the next few years. If Pa only had sense--I mean if he wasn't so

absurdly indulgent wherever you are concerned, he would not have a

billiard-table in the house."

"You talk like that," retorted Dick, "merely because you can't play."

"I can beat you, anyhow," retorted Robin.

"Once," admitted Dick--"once in six weeks."

"Twice," corrected Robin.

"You don't play," Dick explained to her; "you just whack round and

trust to Providence."

"I don't whack round," said Robin; "I always aim at something.

THEY AND I

When you try and it doesn't come off, you say it's 'hard luck;' and when I

try and it does come off, you say it's fluking. So like a man."

"You both of you," I said, "attach too much importance to the score.

When you try for a cannon off the white and hit it on the wrong side and

send it into a pocket, and your own ball travels on and makes a losing

hazard off the red, instead of being vexed with yourselves--"

"If you get a really good table, governor," said Dick, "I'll teach you

billiards."

I do believe Dick really thinks he can play. It is the same with golf.

Beginners are invariably lucky. "I think I shall like it," they tell you; "I

seem to have the game in me, if you understand."

'There is a friend of mine, an old sea-captain. He is the sort of man

that when the three balls are lying in a straight line, tucked up under the

cushion, looks pleased; because then he knows he can make a cannon and

leave the red just where he wants it. An Irish youngster named Malooney,

a college chum of Dick's, was staying with us; and the afternoon being wet,

the Captain said he would explain it to Malooney, how a young man might

practise billiards without any danger of cutting the cloth. He taught him

how to hold the cue, and he told him how to make a bridge. Malooney

was grateful, and worked for about an hour. He did not show much

promise. He is a powerfully built young man, and he didn't seem able to

get it into his head that he wasn't playing cricket. Whenever he hit a little

low the result was generally lost ball. To save time--and damage to

furniture--Dick and I fielded for him. Dick stood at long-stop, and I was

short slip. It was dangerous work, however, and when Dick had caught

him out twice running, we agreed that we had won, and took him in to tea.

In the evening--none of the rest of us being keen to try our luck a second

time--the Captain said, that just for the joke of the thing he would give

Malooney eighty-five and play him a hundred up. To confess the truth, I

find no particular fun myself in playing billiards with the Captain. The

game consists, as far as I am concerned, in walking round the table,

throwing him back the balls, and saying "Good!" By the time my turn

comes I don't seem to care what happens: everything seems against me.

He is a kind old gentleman and he means well, but the tone in which he

THEY AND I

says "Hard lines!" whenever I miss an easy stroke irritates me. I feel I'd

like to throw the balls at his head and fling the table out of window. I

suppose it is that I am in a fretful state of mind, but the mere way in which

he chalks his cue aggravates me. He carries his own chalk in his

waistcoat pocket--as if our chalk wasn't good enough for him-- and when

he has finished chalking, he smooths the tip round with his finger and

thumb and taps the cue against the table. "Oh! go on with the game," I

want to say to him; "don't be so full of tricks."

The Captain led off with a miss in baulk. Malooney gripped his cue,

drew in a deep breath, and let fly. The result was ten: a cannon and all

three balls in the same pocket. As a matter of fact he made the cannon

twice; but the second time, as we explained to him, of course did not

count.

"Good beginning!" said the Captain.

Malooney seemed pleased with himself, and took off his coat.

Malooney's ball missed the red on its first journey up the table by

about a foot, but found it later on and sent it into a pocket.

"Ninety-nine plays nothing," said Dick, who was marking. "Better

make it a hundred and fifty, hadn't we, Captain?"

"Well, I'd like to get in a shot," said the Captain, "before the game is

over. Perhaps we had better make it a hundred and fifty, if Mr. Malooney

has no objection."

"Whatever you think right, sir," said Rory Malooney.

Malooney finished his break for twenty-two, leaving himself hanging

over the middle pocket and the red tucked up in baulk.

"Nothing plays a hundred and eight," said Dick.

"When I want the score," said the Captain, "I'll ask for it."

"Beg pardon, sir," said Dick.

"I hate a noisy game," said the Captain.

The Captain, making up his mind without much waste of time, sent his

ball under the cushion, six inches outside baulk.

"What will I do here?" asked Malooney.

"I don't know what you will do," said the Captain; "I'm waiting to see."

Owing to the position of the ball, Malooney was unable to employ his

THEY AND I

whole strength. All he did that turn was to pocket the Captain's ball and

leave himself under the bottom cushion, four inches from the red. The

Captain said a nautical word, and gave another miss. Malooney squared up

to the balls for the third time. They flew before him, panic-stricken.

They banged against one another, came back and hit one another again for

no reason whatever. The red, in particular, Malooney had succeeded

apparently in frightening out of its wits. It is a stupid ball, generally

speaking, our red--its one idea to get under a cushion and watch the game.

With Malooney it soon found it was safe nowhere on the table. Its only

hope was pockets. I may have been mistaken, my eye may have been

deceived by the rapidity of the play, but it seemed to me that the red never

waited to be hit. When it saw Malooney's ball coming for it at the rate of

forty miles an hour, it just made for the nearest pocket. It rushed round

the table looking for pockets. If in its excitement, it passed an empty

pocket, it turned back and crawled in. There were times when in its

terror it jumped the table and took shelter under the sofa or behind the

sideboard. One began to feel sorry for the red.

The Captain had scored a legitimate thirty-eight, and Malooney had

given him twenty-four, when it really seemed as if the Captain's chance

had come. I could have scored myself as the balls were then.

"Sixty-two plays one hundred and twenty-eight. Now then, Captain,

game in your hands," said Dick.

We gathered round. The children left their play. It was a pretty

picture: the bright young faces, eager with expectation, the old worn

veteran squinting down his cue, as if afraid that watching Malooney's play

might have given it the squirms.

"Now follow this," I whispered to Malooney. "Don't notice merely

what he does, but try and understand why he does it. Any fool--after a

little practice, that is--can hit a ball. But why do you hit it? What

happens after you've hit it? What--"

"Hush," said Dick.

The Captain drew his cue back and gently pushed it forward.

"Pretty stroke," I whispered to Malooney; "now, that's the sort--"

I offer, by way of explanation, that the Captain by this time was

THEY AND I

probably too full of bottled-up language to be master of his nerves. The

ball travelled slowly past the red. Dick said afterwards that you couldn't

have put so much as a sheet of paper between them. It comforts a man,

sometimes, when you tell him this; and at other times it only makes him

madder. It travelled on and passed the white--you could have put quite a

lot of paper between it and the white--and dropped with a contented thud

into the top left-hand pocket.

"Why does he do that?" Malooney whispered. Malooney has a

singularly hearty whisper.

Dick and I got the women and children out of the room as quickly as

we could, but of course Veronica managed to tumble over something on

the way--Veronica would find something to tumble over in the desert of

Sahara; and a few days later I overheard expressions, scorching their way

through the nursery door, that made my hair rise up. I entered, and found

Veronica standing on the table. Jumbo was sitting upon the music-stool.

The poor dog himself was looking scared, though he must have heard a bit

of language in his time, one way and another.

"Veronica," I said, "are you not ashamed of yourself? You wicked

child, how dare you--"

"It's all right," said Veronica. "I don't really mean any harm. He's a

sailor, and I have to talk to him like that, else he don't know he's being

talked to."

I pay hard-working, conscientious ladies to teach this child things right

and proper for her to know. They tell her clever things that Julius Caesar

said; observations made by Marcus Aurelius that, pondered over, might

help her to become a beautiful character. She complains that it produces

a strange buzzy feeling in her head; and her mother argues that perhaps her

brain is of the creative order, not intended to remember much--thinks that

perhaps she is going to be something. A good round-dozen oaths the

Captain must have let fly before Dick and I succeeded in rolling her out of

the room. She had only heard them once, yet, so far as I could judge, she

had got them letter perfect.

The Captain, now no longer under the necessity of employing all his

energies to suppress his natural instincts, gradually recovered form, and

THEY AND I

eventually the game stood at one hundred and forty-nine all, Malooney to

play. The Captain had left the balls in a position that would have

disheartened any other opponent than Malooney. To any other opponent

than Malooney the Captain would have offered irritating sympathy.

"Afraid the balls are not rolling well for you to-night," the Captain would

have said; or, "Sorry, sir, I don't seem to have left you very much." To-

night the Captain wasn't feeling playful.

"Well, if he scores off that!" said Dick.

"Short of locking up the balls and turning out the lights, I don't myself

see how one is going to stop him," sighed the Captain.

The Captain's ball was in hand. Malooney went for the red and hit--

perhaps it would be more correct to say, frightened--it into a pocket.

Malooney's ball, with the table to itself, then gave a solo performance, and

ended up by breaking a window. It was what the lawyers call a nice

point. What was the effect upon the score?

Malooney argued that, seeing he had pocketed the red before his own

ball left the table, his three should be counted first, and that therefore he

had won. Dick maintained that a ball that had ended up in a flower-bed

couldn't be deemed to have scored anything. The Captain declined to

assist. He said that, although he had been playing billiards for upwards

of forty years, the incident was new to him. My own feeling was that of

thankfulness that we had got through the game without anybody being

really injured. We agreed that the person to decide the point would be

the editor of The Field.

It remains still undecided. The Captain came into my study the next

morning. He said: "If you haven't written that letter to The Field, don't

mention my name. They know me on The Field. I would rather it did

not get about that I have been playing with a man who cannot keep his ball

within the four walls of a billiard-room."

"Well," I answered, "I know most of the fellows on The Field myself.

They don't often get hold of anything novel in the way of a story. When

they do, they are apt to harp upon it. My idea was to keep my own name

out of it altogether."

"It is not a point likely to crop up often," said the Captain. "I'd let it

THEY AND I

rest if I were you."

I should like to have had it settled. In the end, I wrote the editor a

careful letter, in a disguised hand, giving a false name and address. But

if any answer ever appeared I must have missed it.

Myself I have a sort of consciousness that somewhere inside me there

is quite a good player, if only I could persuade him to come out. He is

shy, that is all. He does not seem able to play when people are looking

on. The shots he misses when people are looking on would give you a

wrong idea of him. When nobody is about, a prettier game you do not

often see. If some folks who fancy themselves could see me when there

is nobody about, it might take the conceit out of them. Only once I played

up to what I feel is my real form, and then it led to argument. I was

staying at an hotel in Switzerland, and the second evening a pleasant-

spoken young fellow, who said he had read all my books--later, he

appeared surprised on learning I had written more than two--asked me if I

would care to play a hundred up. We played even, and I paid for the

table. The next evening he said he thought it would make a better game

if he gave me forty and I broke. It was a fairly close finish, and afterwards

he suggested that I should put down my name for the handicap they were

arranging.

"I am afraid," I answered, "that I hardly play well enough. Just a

quiet game with you is one thing; but in a handicap with a crowd looking

on--"

"I should not let that trouble you," he said; "there are some here who

play worse than you--just one or two. It passes the evening."

It was merely a friendly affair. I paid my twenty marks, and was

given plus a hundred. I drew for my first game a chatty type of man,

who started minus twenty. We neither of us did much for the first five

minutes, and then I made a break of forty-four.

There was not a fluke in it from beginning to end. I was never more

astonished in my life. It seemed to me it was the cue was doing it.

Minus Twenty was even more astonished. I heard him as I passed:

"Who handicapped this man?" he asked.

"I did," said the pleasant-spoken youngster.

THEY AND I

"Oh," said Minus Twenty--"friend of yours, I presume?"

There are evenings that seem to belong to you. We finished that two

hundred and fifty under the three-quarters of an hour. I explained to

Minus Twenty--he was plus sixty-three at the end--that my play that night

had been exceptional. He said that he had heard of cases similar. I left

him talking volubly to the committee. He was not a nice man at all.

After that I did not care to win; and that of course was fatal. The less

I tried, the more impossible it seemed for me to do wrong. I was left in

at the last with a man from another hotel. But for that I am convinced I

should have carried off the handicap. Our hotel didn't, anyhow, want the

other hotel to win. So they gathered round me, and offered me sound

advice, and begged me to be careful; with the natural result that I went

back to my usual form quite suddenly.

Never before or since have I played as I played that week. But it

showed me what I could do. I shall get a new table, with proper pockets

this time. There is something wrong about our pockets. The balls go

into them and then come out again. You would think they had seen

something there to frighten them. They come out trembling and hold on

to the cushion.

I shall also get a new red ball. I fancy it must be a very old ball, our

red. It seems to me to be always tired.

"The billiard-room," I said to Dick, "I see my way to easily enough.

Adding another ten feet to what is now the dairy will give us twenty- eight

by twenty. I am hopeful that will be sufficient even for your friend

Malooney. The drawing-room is too small to be of any use. I may

decide--as Robina has suggested--to 'throw it into the hall.' But the stairs

will remain. For dancing, private theatricals--things to keep you children

out of mischief--I have an idea I will explain to you later on. The

kitchen--"

"Can I have a room to myself?" asked Veronica.

Veronica was sitting on the floor, staring into the fire, her chin

supported by her hand. Veronica, in those rare moments when she is

resting from her troubles, wears a holy, far-away expression apt to mislead

the stranger. Governesses, new to her, have their doubts whether on

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THEYANDI1THEYANDIbyJeromeK.JeromeTHEYANDI2CHAPTERI"Itisnotalargehouse,"Isaid."Wedon'twantalargehouse.Twosparebedrooms,andthelittlethree-corneredplaceyouseemarkedthereontheplan,nexttothebathroom,andwhichwilljustdoforabachelor,willbeallweshallrequire--atallevents,forthepresent.Lateron,ifIevergetrich,w...

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