"Did I walk into you?" he asked surprised.

"Well, not right in," I answered, "I if we are to be literal. You walked on to me; if I had not stopped you, I suppose you would have walked over me."

"It is this confounded Christmas business," he explained. "It drives me off my head."

"I have heard Christmas advanced as an excuse for many things," I replied, "but not early in September."

"Oh, you know what I mean," he answered, "we are in the middle of our Christmas number. I am working day and night upon it. By the bye," he added, "that puts me in mind. I am arranging a symposium, and I want you to join. "Should Christmas,""--I interrupted him.

"My dear fellow," I said, "I commenced my journalistic career when I was eighteen, and I have continued it at intervals ever since. I have written about Christmas from the sentimental point of view; I have a.n.a.lyzed it from the philosophical point of view; and I have scarified it from the sarcastic standpoint. I have treated Christmas humorously for the Comics, and sympathetically for the Provincial Weeklies. I have said all that is worth saying on the subject of Christmas--maybe a trifle more. I have told the new-fashioned Christmas story--you know the sort of thing: your heroine tries to understand herself, and, failing, runs off with the man who began as the hero; your good woman turns out to be really bad when one comes to know her; while the villain, the only decent person in the story, dies with an enigmatic sentence on his lips that looks as if it meant something, but which you yourself would be sorry to have to explain. I have also written the old-fashioned Christmas story--you know that also: you begin with a good old-fashioned snowstorm; you have a good old-fashioned squire, and he lives in a good old-fashioned Hall; you work in a good old-fashioned murder; and end up with a good old-fashioned Christmas dinner. I have gathered Christmas guests together round the crackling logs to tell ghost stories to each other on Christmas Eve, while without the wind howled, as it always does on these occasions, at its proper cue. I have sent children to Heaven on Christmas Eve--it must be quite a busy time for St. Peter, Christmas morning, so many good children die on Christmas Eve. It has always been a popular night with them.--I have revivified dead lovers and brought them back well and jolly, just in time to sit down to the Christmas dinner. I am not ashamed of having done these things. At the time I thought them good. I once loved currant wine and girls with towzley hair. One"s views change as one grows older. I have discussed Christmas as a religious festival. I have arraigned it as a social incubus. If there be any joke connected with Christmas that I have not already made I should be glad to hear it. I have trotted out the indigestion jokes till the sight of one of them gives me indigestion myself. I have ridiculed the family gathering. I have scoffed at the Christmas present.

I have made witty use of paterfamilias and his bills. I have--"

"Did I ever show you," I broke off to ask as we were crossing the Haymarket, "that little parody of mine on Poe"s poem of "The Bells"? It begins--" He interrupted me in his turn--

"Bills, bills, bills," he repeated.

"You are quite right," I admitted. "I forgot I ever showed it to you."

"You never did," he replied.

"Then how do you know how it begins?" I asked.

"I don"t know for certain," he admitted, "but I get, on an average, sixty-five a year submitted to me, and they all begin that way. I thought, perhaps, yours did also."

"I don"t see how else it could begin," I retorted. He had rather annoyed me. "Besides, it doesn"t matter how a poem begins, it is how it goes on that is the important thing and anyhow, I"m not going to write you anything about Christmas. Ask me to make you a new joke about a plumber; suggest my inventing something original and not too shocking for a child to say about heaven; propose my running you off a dog story that can be believed by a man of average determination and we may come to terms. But on the subject of Christmas I am taking a rest."

By this time we had reached Piccadilly Circus.

"I don"t blame you," he said, "if you are as sick of the subject as I am. So soon as these Christmas numbers are off my mind, and Christmas is over till next June at the office, I shall begin it at home. The housekeeping is gone up a pound a week already. I know what that means.

The dear little woman is saving up to give me an expensive present that I don"t want. I think the presents are the worst part of Christmas. Emma will give me a water-colour that she has painted herself. She always does. There would be no harm in that if she did not expect me to hang it in the drawing room. Have you ever seen my cousin Emma"s water-colours?"

he asked.

"I think I have," I replied.

"There"s no thinking about it," he retorted angrily. "They"re not the sort of water-colours you forget."

He apostrophized the Circus generally.

"Why do people do these things?" he demanded. "Even an amateur artist must have SOME sense. Can"t they see what is happening? There"s that thing of hers hanging in the pa.s.sage. I put it in the pa.s.sage because there"s not much light in the pa.s.sage. She"s labelled it Reverie. If she had called it Influenza I could have understood it. I asked her where she got the idea from, and she said she saw the sky like that one evening in Norfolk. Great Heavens! then why didn"t she shut her eyes or go home and hide behind the bed-curtains? If I had seen a sky like that in Norfolk I should have taken the first train back to London. I suppose the poor girl can"t help seeing these things, but why paint them?"

I said, "I suppose painting is a necessity to some natures."

"But why give the things to me?" he pleaded.

I could offer him no adequate reason.

"The idiotic presents that people give you!" he continued. "I said I"d like Tennyson"s poems one year. They had worried me to know what I did want. I didn"t want anything really; that was the only thing I could think of that I wasn"t dead sure I didn"t want. Well, they clubbed together, four of them, and gave me Tennyson in twelve volumes, ill.u.s.trated with coloured photographs. They meant kindly, of course. If you suggest a tobacco-pouch they give you a blue velvet bag capable of holding about a pound, embroidered with flowers, life-size. The only way one could use it would be to put a strap to it and wear it as a satchel.

Would you believe it, I have got a velvet smoking-jacket, ornamented with forget-me-nots and b.u.t.terflies in coloured silk; I"m not joking.

And they ask me why I never wear it. I"ll bring it down to the Club one of these nights and wake the place up a bit: it needs it."

We had arrived by this at the steps of the "Devonshire."

"And I"m just as bad," he went on, "when I give presents. I never give them what they want. I never hit upon anything that is of any use to anybody. If I give Jane a chinchilla tippet, you may be certain chinchilla is the most out-of-date fur that any woman could wear. "Oh!

that is nice of you," she says; "now that is just the very thing I wanted. I will keep it by me till chinchilla comes in again." I give the girls watch-chains when n.o.body is wearing watch-chains. When watch-chains are all the rage I give them ear-rings, and they thank me, and suggest my taking them to a fancy-dress ball, that being their only chance to wear the confounded things. I waste money on white gloves with black backs, to find that white gloves with black backs stamp a woman as suburban. I believe all the shop-keepers in London save their old stock to palm it off on me at Christmas time. And why does it always take half-a-dozen people to serve you with a pair of gloves, I"d like to know? Only last week Jane asked me to get her some gloves for that last Mansion House affair. I was feeling amiable, and I thought I would do the thing handsomely. I hate going into a draper"s shop; everybody stares at a man as if he were forcing his way into the ladies"

department of a Turkish bath. One of those marionette sort of men came up to me and said it was a fine morning. What the devil did I want to talk about the morning to him for? I said I wanted some gloves. I described them to the best of my recollection. I said, "I want them four b.u.t.tons, but they are not to be b.u.t.ton-gloves; the b.u.t.tons are in the middle and they reach up to the elbow, if you know what I mean." He bowed, and said he understood exactly what I meant, which was a d.a.m.ned sight more than I did. I told him I wanted three pair cream and three pair fawn-coloured, and the fawn-coloured were to be swedes. He corrected me. He said I meant "Suede." I dare say he was right, but the interruption put me off, and I had to begin over again. He listened attentively until I had finished. I guess I was about five minutes standing with him there close to the door. He said, "Is that all you require, sir, this morning?" I said it was.

"" Thank you, sir," he replied. "This way, please, sir."

"He took me into another room, and there we met a man named Jansen, to whom he briefly introduced me as a gentleman who "desired gloves." "Yes, sir," said Mr. Jansen; and what sort of gloves do you desire?"

"I told him I wanted six pairs altogether--three suede, fawn-coloured, and three cream-coloured--kids.

"He said, "Do you mean kid gloves, sir, or gloves for children?"

"He made me angry by that. I told him I was not in the habit of using slang. Nor am I when buying gloves. He said he was sorry. I explained to him about the b.u.t.tons, so far as I could understand it myself, and about the length. I asked him to see to it that the b.u.t.tons were sewn on firmly, and that the st.i.tching everywhere was perfect, adding that the last gloves my wife had had of his firm had been most unsatisfactory.

Jane had impressed upon me to add that. She said it would make them more careful.

"He listened to me in rapt ecstacy. I might have been music.

""And what size, sir?" he asked.

"I had forgotten that. "Oh, sixes," I answered, "unless they are very stretchy indeed, in which case they had better be five and three-quarter."

""Oh, and the st.i.tching on the cream is to be black," I added. That was another thing I had forgotten.

""Thank you very much," said Mr. Jansen; "is there anything else that you require this morning?"

""No, thank you," I replied, "not this morning." I was beginning to like the man.

"He took me for quite a walk, and wherever we went everybody left off what they were doing to stare at me. I was getting tired when we reached the glove department. He marched me up to a young man who was sticking pins into himself. He said "Gloves," and disappeared through a curtain.

The young man left off sticking pins into himself, and leant across the counter.

""Ladies" gloves or gentlemen"s gloves?" he said.

"Well, I was pretty mad by this time, as you can guess. It is funny when you come to think of it afterwards, but the wonder then was that I didn"t punch his head.

"I said, "Are you ever busy in this shop? Does there ever come a time when you feel you would like to get your work done, instead of lingering over it and spinning it out for pure love of the thing?"

"He did not appear to understand me. I said, "I met a man at your door a quarter of an hour ago, and we talked about these gloves that I want, and I told him all my ideas on the subject. He took me to your Mr.

Jansen, and Mr. Jansen and I went over the whole business again. Now Mr. Jansen leaves it with you--you who do not even know whether I want ladies" or gentlemen"s gloves. Before I go over this story for the third time, I want to know whether you are the man who is going to serve me, or whether you are merely a listener, because personally I am tired of the subject?"

"Well, this was the right man at last, and I got my gloves from him. But what is the explanation--what is the idea? I was in that shop from first to last five-and-thirty minutes. And then a fool took me out the wrong way to show me a special line in sleeping-socks. I told him I was not requiring any. He said he didn"t want me to buy, he only wanted me to see them. No wonder the drapers have had to start luncheon and tea-rooms. They"ll fix up small furnished flats soon, where a woman can live for a week."

I said it was very trying, shopping. I also said, as he invited me, and as he appeared determined to go on talking, that I would have a brandy-and-soda. We were in the smoke-room by this time.

"There ought to be an a.s.sociation," he continued, "a kind of clearing-house for the collection and distribution of Christmas presents. One would give them a list of the people from whom to collect presents, and of the people to whom to send. Suppose they collected on my account twenty Christmas presents, value, say, ten pounds, while on the other hand they sent out for me thirty presents at a cost of fifteen pounds. They would debit me with the balance of five pounds, together with a small commission. I should pay it cheerfully, and there would be no further trouble. Perhaps one might even make a profit. The idea might include birthdays and weddings. A firm would do the business thoroughly.

They would see that all your friends paid up--I mean sent presents; and they would not forget to send to your most important relative. There is only one member of our family capable of leaving a shilling; and of course if I forget to send to any one it is to him. When I remember him I generally make a muddle of the business. Two years ago I gave him a bath--I don"t mean I washed him--an india-rubber thing, that he could pack in his portmanteau. I thought he would find it useful for travelling. Would you believe it, he took it as a personal affront, and wouldn"t speak to me for a month, the snuffy old idiot."