ALBERT THEODORE PARISH.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 230, 26 September 1903, Page 5 (Supplement)

ALBERT THEODORE PARISH.

By BAKRY PAIN, Author of "The Octave of Claudius,"

„ Henry Ferar who introduced ltfftt hlS, Albert Theodore Par- ? e years afterwards I asked him the bad done it. Bee should have all of drUasgSally gloomy. As a tid little, but 1 have known «*Si eloquent on the subject of JLt Theodore Parish. Ferar was by *** bein" a very superior person, and £SIS wondered why he did not oner to reform Par--7 and put him right. ? ... well aware of Parish's little S lSses and yet I have known Fer"KS hour while Parish was talk- * Ind talking, and talking, and listen 1 , melancholy smile, and never mHβ or tell him to stop. And at the „ time Ferar was frequently allowSfosdf to be superior with much Sβ people-myself, for instance. Kin? I knew Ferar's vulnerable si? when he had been lording it over fid telling me that I should change SiJnd when I was a little older, I Lced myself by spelling his name L,J That always gave him acute ff!L At different times I invented Sty-eight ways of mis-spell-Si name Ferar. A few day 8 after ?had introduced me to Parish I adnssed a letter to him, "Henry Pharerr, L « and 1 told him inside why I had kit it Anybody who introduces anyody else to Albert Theodore Parish uej a base and anti-social action, and needs to be punished. Of course, in many ways Pansn was piiteanice man. He had the kindest \ hearts. He was good tempered. His rfc (he married a year after I first met M adores him. So does his baby, whose godfather I defiantly refused to ]», But, unfortunately, he was a of independent means. This gave him the opportunity to acquire many Her toye and—which is far worse —the tine to talk about them. I have known at man to talk to me for an hour about a eighteen-penny cigar-cutter. There were interludes, but they were few and unimportant. He simply couldn't get mj from that cigar-cutter. He had just bought it, and it was his aw toy. It was singularly rich in mechanical contrivances. You could tot the end of your cigar in three different ways -with it. And by touching i spring you could convert it into a pencil-case or a pair of library steps— I never cared enough about it to remember which it was. To show the full scope and resource of the instrument he produced a cigar, cut it in every one of tie different ways, and then smoked what was left. He told me the price

of it and the kind of shop where he bought it, and how he hesitated at first. I tried to make him talk of other things, and I will do him the justice to say that

he did his best; but< that new toy was too strong for him. He could not leave it for long. I had led him easily and pleasantly on to the subject of American Trusts.

Tea," he said. "A great people, the Americans. They've altered the scale of commerce—made it larger and grander.

Here rome silly idiot —I think it was

tar, but it may have been myself —

had no more sense than to say that what was remarkable in the American dimeter was the combination of laloriouaness and inventiveness.

"Ah, well!" Baid Albert Theodore Parish, "they're inventive, of course, but they've got no monopoly of that. Now that new cigar cutter of mine—that's as W a thing as I've seen for many a long day, and that's English. Invented ? U Englishman and made in Eng-land-so they told me at the shop." He wpped it out of one of hie pocketa •gain. "There you are. You've simply got to touch the spring and—" "You've told us that before." I said. rarar wore a melancholy smile and an •tt of remote superiority. "Did If Parish turned it over in {* hand lovingly. "Well, after all, I jont think that the most remarkable ™g about it isn't the price. I ask J* just to think of the amount of »boar involved." "J? , " I said, "and youVe asked us "»t before, too." Jera r went on smiling. He seemed to W seeing ne exasperated by Albert 'leodore Pariah. He must have introduc-

ii m »* to Parish Bim P l 7 t0 witnees the ""Kaon of a torture from which he jMelf had suffered. I disliked that s™* nnmeneely, and to mark my disc£ c of it I Bent him a p Ostcar d next M ? addressed "Mr H. Farrar." ant f°S 7 moment of satisfaction I got ha . ißterv 'ew was when I proe i a cigar from my case, and under to I! 7 eyM of Albert Theodore Pariah M «»« end off it. T>J? U needn 't have done that," eaid ■gjw, pathetically. "I've got that new g'-cntter of mine here, if you'd only 2, * a,ted half a moment. And you ayef avc had it cut any way you like." It «Siv , aS the kind of man Pariah was - lim iT noticed tha t l have not called word i 8 no* n «"ly big «y f°r him. For days and days he jf" ed to *c haunted by thoughts* of «t Z t°l- H ! waa capable of s° in * if \ t j kln 2 to a policeman about it the w been unaWe to flnd an yon e tedi'n. e , was more—far more—than any W( toary bore can hope to be.

toe day Fcrar came up* to me at the •llr-u» mnly and importantly. "Ife TJtatW- , WeS'f v nd ' A,bert Theodore Parish, ™" * trouble us any more." amd W 5611 ' 1 "-? o,l ™' if 7° u don,t Dead?" the matter with him * fe'!?^ l,7 - He ' s and will parried in two months?" "ows that going to help us?" nth * . 9pend nearl y all the time deed 4 glrl It>3 a ye bad case inftt an WOT,,t have the inclination to L? y new toya, and to worry us with aisproportionate enthusiasm about

c 7 cs pect Fera T was right Alarm Odore wa3 ye deeply smitteTi, But I3Pl 3P x ent but little time the club. »ag» tinie he did B Pend there he I* worse and more tedious than be had »ifc < BVer - ore ' You see > his future j,, W">[in the position of a new toy to "** i will not say that he ccmtaitted

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(Copyright Story.)

the indecency of talking of her directly; I have never denied that he may have had some of the rudiments of good feeling about him. But he talked of love. Albert Theodore Parish on the eubject of love was very beautiful and monumental. He told you all the things about it that you had previously got tired of seeing in penny stories; and he brought them all out with a fine air of discovery, as if he had just made them in his own model factory. And he never talked about anything else whatever. "It seems to me a marvellous thing," he said one night—he got through a good deal of marvelling in the course of his mis-spent life-^—"the meeting of kindred souls —when you come to think that for any man there is only one woman in the world whom he cowli really love. Don't you think so?" "N0. ,, "And why not?" "Because for any man there are several millions of women for whom he could work up the same illusion." "Ah! ,, sighed Parish. "A cynical speech like that only shows your inexperience. No man who had ever loved would speak like that; it Is only when he first loves that a man learns to read the lanbuage of a woman's eyes, and to —" "Albert Theodore Parish," I said, interrupting him.'Tm young and not strong. Conversation of this kind is altogether too rich for my blood./ Stop it before you make me very, very ill." This was—l confess it —rather rude. But we suffered terribly from Albert Theodore in those days just before his marriage, and occasionally I got desperate. But I gave him silver menustands (and remarkably cheap they were), and I was present at the wedding. When it was over, Ferar and I felt that we could breathe again. Parish and his wife would be away for two months. For two solid months we should be delivered from Parish on the subject of kindred souls. It seemed almost too good to be true. But still better remained for us.

When Albert Theodore returned from his honeymoon, he seemed to be quite cured. As will be seen, the cure was temporary, but I confess that for a period of rather more than a year I came within an appreciable distance of rather liking Pariah than not His idea that conversation consisted of Albert Theodore Parish preaching at great length, and with misplaced enthusiasm to an admiring audience on his newest acquisition, seemed to have entirely disappeared. Jle no longer bored us with descriptions of his latest and least interesting purchases. He no longer filled us up with fiftieth-hand sentimentalities about love. He had become normal and ordinary. He had acquired some sort of a sense of proportion. He was immensely improved. Ferar assigned the improvement to Mrs Parish. He said definitely that ou the honeymoon—one calm night in Venice, as they floated in their gondola under the stars—Mrs Parish turned to her husband and said: "Albert, for the last threequarters of an hour you have been talking to me about your new patent cork-screw. And you have been talking just as if the whole world revolved round it, whereas nothing whatever revolves round it, except the cork in due course. And do you know, darlingest, thia habit of yours of excessive enthusiasm, with its lamentable conversational results, is just the one little flaw in the snowy brilliance of your nature? And won't you, for my sake, try to get over it?" I do not believe this pleasing scene ever took place. Mrs Parish does not talk like that. Besides, if it ever did take place, who told Ferar about it? I Em quite certain that it was not Parish or his wife. Of course the gondolier may have written an account and posted it to Ferar, but it does not seem likely. No; this was merely a piece of Ferar's disordered imagination. But I thiuk it likely that Mrs Parish, who was a nice, sensible woman, had been the causo of the improvement; of tha-t there was some evidence.

■ • ■ • The breakdown came, as I have said, rather more than a year later, when the advertisement column of the "Morning Post" announced to the general public, "the wife of Albert Theodore Parish of a son."

1 was ready to make allowances. I was quite willing that for a few days Albert Theodore should so talk and comport himself as if he were the first and only father in the world, and aa if there would never be another, he having secured -the couyright at great expense. 1 had met young fathers before, and I am not an unreasonable man. When Parish told me that the boy weighed eight pounds nine ounces at birth, and that the doctor had assured him (these doctors know their business) that he had never seen a finer or healthier child, I hope that I simulated a decent interest and satisfaction. But Parish went far beyond that; he went beyond anything imaginable. Mrs Parish had insisted that her husband should find for himself some regular employment! and he managed to be a kind of quasi-secretary to some sort of insignificant politician. I do not think he did very much work, but it necessitated his lunching at the club every day. He would come swooping down on the table where Ferar and 1 were sitting, and tell us all about the chemicai constituents of different kinds of baby foods. He said that it was by no means so easy a matter to wash a baby as we might think, and we had to explain to him that we did not think about such things. He said that babies had a complete language, and that every sound they made signified something. Soma sounds, such as "aah-goo," which meant contentment, had been classified. Others had not. He then gave imitations (as to the accuracy of which I am not in a position to speak) of different baby sounds which had classified. He attracted a good deal of attention from men in the room, and a waiter gave notice the next day on the score of illhealth. He had probably been injured internally by suppressed laughter. Albert Theodore Parish also lectured to us on the gradual development of co-

ordinated movement in male infanta, and on their digestive derangements.

He gave an imitation on the way in which his boy squinted when suffering from internal pain. And Ferar observed that if the child really did look like that, it would probably be kinder to put it out of its misery.

In reply, Albert Theodore Parish pulled out a large illustrated circular, re cently forwarded -to nim by a perambulator merchant, and asked us to say which perambulator we liked best. This kind of thing could not possibly go on. It was more than tedious; it was indecent. Ferar said gloomily that he would call on Mrs Parish, and complain to her; she had put Albert Theodore right before, and she might possibly do it again. I saw him on his return. Hβ seemed deeply depressed, and it was obvious that he had failed. "No good?" I asked. "None whatever. She's caught it from him." "What do you mean?" "I mean that she's a changed woman. I mean that she is now every bit as bad as he is. I mean that she has talked baby—all baby and nothing but babyto me for the last hour and a half. Dn you know that I have held that infant in my arms and said that it had its mother's eyes? Do you know that 1 have consented to be one of its godfathers?" "Then it conies to this, Ferar—you must have completely lost your nerve." "Try it yourself, then. I tell you it's no use though. The only person in the world who would have reclaimed him was his wife, and now sne's gone the same way. If anything, she's a shade worse than he is. You're to be a godfather too." "I won't," I said, and I kept my word. Some weeks elapsed, during the whole of which Parish talked beautiful baby boy to us on every possible opportunity, and a few that were quite impossible. * Then Ferar came to me one day and said: "I've done a wicked thing." "Naturally. What is it?" "I've led Albert Theodore Parish on, and aided and abetted, and encouraged him to buy a motor. He'd got some odd hundreds lying in the bank that he thought he ought to do something with, and has has bought a motor. He intends to drive himself always, and he has had lessons to that end from an engineer. He is now quite sure that he can drive," "Can t-e?" "No. I've never seen him at it, but I am quite sure that he is not the man for that kind of thing. He will take out his wife and the nurse and the baby on that motor, and he will go whizzing down a hill into a brick wall, and kill the lot of them, himself included."

"Well," I said, "you must not look only at the dark side of things. If that does happen, this club will be very greatly improved."

"True," said Ferar. "All the same I rather wish it that it could have been done without actual murder. There is no evidence of course on which the law could hang me, but the moral guilt will be mine. Parish said to me: *Now shall I get that motor or shall I not?' And I let him get it. I might easily have stopped him, but I was too selfish. You're all right. You will get the joy of freedom from Albert Theodore, and will not have the feeling that you are a criminal. But I—well, I have done wrong, and I am convinced that I' shall be punished for it"

He was punished foT It, but not in the way that he had supposed. And I—who was perfectly innocent—have to share his punishment.

Parish is acknowledged to be an expert driver, and it is unlikely that he will have a fatal accident. But if I do not know the many points in which Parish's motor ta superior to all other motors, it is not because I have not been told. I have been told It all many hundreds of times, told It) until my senses reeled, told it by Parish himself. He often goes for a long drive on that motor. Then he comes back and tells me all about that run three times over. There is never any accident in the run of a character that could interest anybody except perhaps Parish himself. Briefly, he is as bad about the motor as he was about the baby. I have given up trusting to Ferar, and shall always spell his name wrong in future. And I should be glad if somebody would tell me what on earth lam to do.