Simon the Jester | Page 7

soul abhors tabulation. It would make even six months' life as
jocular as Bradshaw's Railway Guide or the dietary of a prison. I prefer
to look on what is before me as a high adventure, and with that
prospect in view I propose to jot down my experiences from time to
time, so that when I am wandering, a pale shade by Acheron, young
Dale Kynnersley may have not only documentary evidence wherewith
to convince my friends and relations that my latter actions were not
those of a lunatic, but also, at the same time, an up-to-date version of
Jeremy Taylor's edifying though humour-lacking treatise on the act of
dying, which I am sorely tempted to label "The Rule and Example of
Eumoiriety." I shall resist the temptation, however. Dale Kynnersley--
such is the ignorance of the new generation--would have no sense of
the allusion. He would shake his head and say, "Dotty, poor old chap,
dotty!" I can hear him. And if, in order to prepare him, I gave him a
copy of the "Meditations," he would fling the book across the room and
qualify Marcus Aurelius as a "rotter."
Dale is a very shrewd fellow, and will make an admirable legislator
when his time comes. Although his highest intellectual recreation is
reiterated attendance at the musical comedy that has caught his fancy
for the moment and his favourite literature the sporting pages of the
daily papers, he has a curious feline pounce on the salient facts of a
political situation, and can thread the mazes of statistics with the
certainty of a Hampton Court guide. His enthusiastic researches (on my
behalf) into pauper lunacy are remarkable in one so young. I foresee
him an invaluable chairman of committee. But he will never become a
statesman. He has too passionate a faith in facts and figures, and has
not cultivated a sense of humour at the expense of the philosophers.
Young men who do not read them lose a great deal of fun.
Well, to-morrow I leave Murglebed for ever; it has my benison.
Democritus returns to London.

CHAPTER II

I was at breakfast on the morning after my arrival in London, when
Dale Kynnersley rushed in and seized me violently by the hand.
"By Jove, here you are at last!"
I smoothed my crushed fingers. "You have such a vehement manner of
proclaiming the obvious, my dear Dale."
"Oh, rot!" he said. "Here, Rogers, give me some tea--and I think I'll
have some toast and marmalade."
"Haven't you breakfasted?"
A cloud overspread his ingenuous countenance.
"I came down late, and everything was cold and mother was on edge.
The girls are always doing the wrong things and I never do the right
ones --you know the mater--so I swallowed a tepid kidney and rushed
off."
"Save for her worries over you urchins," said I, "I hope Lady
Kynnersley is well?"
He filled his mouth with toast and marmalade, and nodded. He is a
good-looking boy, four-and-twenty--idyllic age! He has sleek black
hair brushed back from his forehead over his head, an olive complexion,
and a keen, open, clean-shaven face. He wore a dark-brown lounge suit
and a wine-coloured tie, and looked immaculate. I remember him as the
grubbiest little wretch that ever disgraced Harrow.
He swallowed his mouthful and drank some tea.
"Recovered your sanity?" he asked.
"The dangerous symptoms have passed over," I replied. "I undertake
not to bite."
He regarded me as though he were not quite certain, and asked in his
pronounless way whether I was glad to be back in London.

"Yes," said I. "Rogers is the only human creature who can properly
wax the ends of my moustache. It got horribly limp in the air of
Murglebed. That is the one and only disadvantage of the place."
"Doesn't seem to have done you much good," he remarked, scanning
me critically. "You are as white as you were before you went away.
Why the blazes you didn't go to Madeira, or the South of France, or
South Africa I can't imagine."
"I don't suppose you can," said I. "Any news?"
"I should think I have! But first let me go through the appointments."
He consulted a pocket-book. On December 2nd I was to dine with
Tanners' Company and reply to the toast of "The House of Commons."
On the 4th my constituency claimed me for the opening of a bazaar at
Wymington. A little later I was to speak somewhere in the North of
England at a by-election in support of the party candidate.
"It will be fought on Tariff Reform, about which I know nothing," I
objected.
"I know everything," he declared. "I'll see you through. You must buck
up a bit, Simon, and get your name better known about the country.
And this