GEORGE SHAW - Collected Works

Miss Wilson now set down the man as one of those keen, half-witted country fellows, contemptuously styled originals, who unintentionally make themselves popular by flattering the sense of sanity in those whose faculties are better adapted to circumstances.

“You have a bad memory, Mr. Smilash,” she said good-humoredly. “You never give the same account of yourself twice.”

“I am well aware that I do not express myself with exactability. Ladies and gentlemen have that power over words that they can always say what they mean, but a common man like me can’t. Words don’t come natural to him. He has more thoughts than words, and what words he has don’t fit his thoughts. Might I take a turn with the roller, and make myself useful about the place until nightfall, for ninepence?”

Miss Wilson, who was expecting more than her usual Saturday visitors, considered the proposition and assented. “And remember,” she said, “that as you are a stranger here, your character in Lyvern depends upon the use you make of this opportunity.”

“I am grateful to your noble ladyship. May your ladyship’s goodness sew up the hole which is in the pocket where I carry my character, and which has caused me to lose it so frequent. It’s a bad place for men to keep their characters in; but such is the fashion. And so hurray for the glorious nineteenth century!”

He took off his coat, seized the roller, and began to pull it with an energy foreign to the measured millhorse manner of the accustomed laborer. Miss Wilson looked doubtfully at him, but, being in haste, went indoors without further comment. The girls mistrusting his eccentricity, kept aloof. Agatha determined to have another and better look at him. Racket in hand, she walked slowly across the grass and came close to him just as he, unaware of her approach, uttered a groan of exhaustion and sat down to rest.

“Tired already, Mr. Smilash?” she said mockingly.

He looked up deliberately, took off one of his washleather gloves, fanned himself with it, displaying a white and fine hand, and at last replied, in the tone and with the accent of a gentleman:

“Very.”

Agatha recoiled. He fanned himself without the least concern.

“You—you are not a laborer,” she said at last.

“Obviously not.”

“I thought not.”

He nodded.

“Suppose I tell on you,” she said, growing bolder as she recollected that she was not alone with him.

“If you do I shall get out of it just as I got out of the half-crowns, and Miss Wilson will begin to think that you are mad.”

“Then I really did not give you the seven and sixpence,” she said, relieved.

“What is your own opinion?” he answered, taking three pennies from his pocket, jingling them in his palm. “What is your name?”

“I shall not tell you,” said Agatha with dignity.

He shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps you are right,” he said. “I would not tell you mine if you asked me.”

“I have not the slightest intention of asking you.”

“No? Then Smilash shall do for you, and Agatha will do for me.”

“You had better take care.”

“Of what?”

“Of what you say, and—are you not afraid of being found out?”

“I am found out already—by you, and I am none the worse.”

“Suppose the police find you out!”

“Not they. Besides, I am not hiding from the police. I have a right to wear corduroy if I prefer it to broadcloth. Consider the advantages of it! It has procured me admission to Alton College, and the pleasure of your acquaintance. Will you excuse me if I go on with my rolling, just to keep up appearances? I can talk as I roll.”

“You may, if you are fond of soliloquizing,” she said, turning away as he rose.

“Seriously, Agatha, you must not tell the others about me.”

“Do not call me Agatha,” she said impetuously. “What shall I call you, then?”

“You need not address me at all.”

“I need, and will. Don’t be ill-natured.”

“But I don’t know you. I wonder at your—” she hesitated at the word which occurred to her, but, being unable to think of a better one, used it—“at your cheek.”

He laughed, and she watched him take a couple of turns with the roller. Presently, refreshing himself by a look at her, he caught her looking at him, and smiled. His smile was commonplace in comparison with the one she gave him in return, in which her eyes, her teeth, and the golden grain in her complexion seemed to flash simultaneously. He stopped rolling immediately, and rested his chin on the handle of the roller.

“If you neglect your work,” said she maliciously, “you won’t have the grass ready when the people come.”

“What people?” he said, taken aback.

“Oh, lots of people. Most likely some who know you. There are visitors coming from London: my guardian, my guardianess, their daughter, my mother, and about a hundred more.”

“Four in all. What are they coming for? To see you?”

“To take me away,” she replied, watching for signs of disappointment on his part.

They were at once forthcoming. “What the deuce are they going to take you away for?” he said. “Is your education finished?”

“No. I have behaved badly, and I am going to be expelled.”

He laughed again. “Come!” he said, “you are beginning to invent in the Smilash manner. What have you done?”

“I don’t see why I should tell you. What have you done?”

“I! Oh, I have done nothing. I am only an unromantic gentleman, hiding from a romantic lady who is in love with me.”

“Poor thing,” said Agatha sarcastically. “Of course, she has proposed to you, and you have refused.”

“On the contrary, I proposed, and she accepted. That is why I have to hide.”

“You tell stories charmingly,” said Agatha. “Good-bye. Here is Miss Carpenter coming to hear what we are taking about.”

“Good-bye. That story of your being expelled beats—Might a common man make so bold as to inquire where the whitening machine is, Miss?”

This was addressed to Jane, who had come up with some of the others. Agatha expected to see Smilash presently discovered, for his disguise now seemed transparent; she wondered how the rest could be imposed on by it. Two o’clock, striking just then, reminded her of the impending interview with her guardian. A tremor shook her, and she felt a craving for some solitary hiding-place in which to await the summons. But it was a point of honor with her to appear perfectly indifferent to her trouble, so she stayed with the girls, laughing and chatting as they watched Smilash intently marking out the courts and setting up the nets. She made the others laugh too, for her hidden excitement, sharpened by irrepressible shootings of dread, stimulated her, and the romance of Smilash’s disguise gave her a sensation of dreaming. Her imagination was already busy upon a drama, of which she was the heroine and Smilash the hero, though, with the real man before her, she could not indulge herself by attributing to him quite as much gloomy grandeur of character as to a wholly ideal personage. The plot was simple, and an old favorite with her. One of them was to love the other and to die broken-hearted because the loved one would not requite the passion. For Agatha, prompt to ridicule sentimentality in her companions, and gifted with an infectious spirit of farce, secretly turned for imaginative luxury to visions of despair and death; and often endured the mortification of the successful clown who believes, whilst the public roar with laughter at him, that he was born a tragedian. There was much in her nature, she felt, that did not find expression in her popular representation of the soldier in the chimney.

By three o’clock the local visitors had arrived, and tennis was proceeding in four courts, rolled and prepared by Smilash. The two curates were there, with a few lay gentlemen. Mrs. Miller, the vicar, and some mothers and other chaperons looked on and consumed light refreshments, which were brought out upon trays by Smilash, who had borrowed and put on a large white apron, and was making himself officiously busy.