Copyright Story. The Ideal Eye-Glass.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXX, Issue XV, 11 April 1903, Page 1034

Copyright Story. The Ideal Eye-Glass.

By

W. PETT RIDGE.

(Author of “ Mord Em’ly," “ A Breaker of Laws,” etc.)

The new customer was so very dark of complexion that his shining silk hat Beemed drab by comparison; he gleamed Beross the counter at Mr Hibbert in the manner of a dentist’s show case. “You want a fresh rim fixed,” said Mr Hibbert. “Not one of our make, is it?” The coloured gentleman replied that as a matter of fact the eyeglass had not been manufactured by the eminent firm which had the advantage of Mr Hibbert's services. “Thought not!” remarked the youth’ confidently. “Peculiar style of thing altogether. Now if I were you I should strongly advise- ” With sudden acerbity the dark customer intimated that he was in no need of counsel. All he wanted Mr Hibbert to do was to follow out the instructions given. “’Name and address,” said Ml’ Hibbert, not to be out-done in curtness. “Quick as ever you like.” He took a large book from the desk near, and as the customer brought some letters from the inside breast pocket in order to write the information, he took from him an envelope bearing a foreign stamp: Prince Colonna, 151, Torrington Square. London, England, W.C. It appeared that the customer had intended to give another address, for he exhibited signs of fury at Mr Hibbert’s action; snatched the envelope back, and giving a fierce tap to his silk hat strode out of the shop into Great Portlandstrect. Mr Hibbert called out that the eye-glass would be ready on the following Friday, and the customer retorted with a foreign ejaculation that sounded like the language of a bull. “Who’s your Mohawk Minstrel friend, Hib?” asked one of his colleagues at the counter opposite. “Hoping you’d get him to do a cake-walk.” “He’s got a queer taste in eyeglasses, ” replied Mr Hibbert. “Makes everything look coloured somehow.” Mr Hibbert was trying it. “If you were a lady’s man, Hib,” said the colleague, “which you’re not, you’d lead the girls a fine dance with that in your eye. They’d all be running after you.” “Heaven forbid! I loathe the very sight of a ” An elderly lady entered the shop, and, dropping the glass, he put on his most ingratiating smile. “More weather, madam. Not quite -what one expects in May. Pray be seated. And now ” It is with some young men a pose to declare themselves adamant as far as the other sex is concerned, and to go through life, chin well up, and on their face a haughty sneer whenever womenfolk are referred to in terms of compliment. Of these was Mr Hibbert, and when the optician's closed that evening he went straight to evening classes at the Polytechnic in Regent-street, and, the two hours of work over, walked by the most direct route home, looking nt no one on the way, to his rooms in Mornington Crescent. There the Misses Cann respected him because of his attitude of courteous reserve, and a lady boarder, who was a shorthand writer down West, and had the third floor back, secretly worshipped him because lie never chaffed her. The other two male boarders, by the frequency with which they fell in love, and their extraordinarily trying behaviour when in this situation, were the crosses which the Misses Cann had to bear, and not infra, qucntly, the labours of the flay over, and the two ladies able to find recrea-

tion in such fancy work as darning, they concluded the debate on their various troubles by the happy reileetion that Mr Hibbert, at any rate, had given them not a moment’s worry since he first entered the house. “If they were only all like him ” said the elder Miss Cann. And sighed. The admirable Mr Hibbert and tha shorthand girl met at the door of the house in Mornington Crescent, and the shorthand girl thought with something of regret that either of the two male boarders would have engaged her in sprightly conversation. “Still busy?” she remarked pleasantly. “Are you never going to stop learning?” “The more one studies,” said the optician’s assistant solemnly, “the more one finds out how little one knows.” “I’d rather keep ignorant, then,” she retorted. “There’s such a thing as overdoing it.” “I see no strong tendency in the present age in that direction.” “I should have thought,” went on the shorthand girl, placing her umbrella in the decorated drain pipe that stood in the corner of the hall, “that there were other ways a young gentleman could spend his evenings now the summer is coming on. Do you,” she coughed slightly, “do you never take anvbodv out for a walk?” “Why should I?” “Well, lots of young gentlemen do. And if you don’t care for walking, there’s a Wood Green tram that takes you goodness knows how far for threepence.” “Whilst there are so many masterpieces of English literature to read,” said young Hibbert, looking at one of the books under his arm, “it seems a waste of time to go riding about on a tram all alone.” “You needn’t go all alone,” said the shorthand girl. “Don’t see any great catch in taking anybody with me.” “Indeed!” said the young woman. She gave a short, sharp laugh. “Don’t let me keep you from your masterpieces,” she said, caustically. “I won’t,” replied Mr Hibbert. “Goodnight.” The uncommon eyeglass was late in being returned from the workshop because the man who had been entrusted with it had suddenly disappeared, eloping with a widow and five children. The eyeglass was at this workman’s lodgings in Marylebone, and the lad sent for it failing to return to the shop in Great Portland-street, search for him was made, and he was found stalking a piano organ all over Paddington and demanding of the Italian lady in charge (old enough to be his aunt and sufficiently plain of feature to frighten birds) her hand in marriage. Thus it was that Friday had come ere the eyeglass was ready, and Mr Hibbert, waiting on myoptic customers and testing their powers of reading at sight, looked nervously at the swing doors each time that they opened, fearful that the coloured gentleman might arrive in furious temper. For Mr Hibbert liked a quiet life and guarded himself always against the risk of encountering excitement. But the strange customer did not call, and the eyeglass with its black rim, rescued from the possession of the amative messenger, was placed in the glass-covered counter ready for the call of its owner. A week went by and still this gentleman did not appear. Mr Hibbert, noting the fact, determined one evening to take it round to the address in Torrington Square on his way home; he slipped it in his waistcoat pocket and informed his colleagues of his proposed action; they ridiculed him for this ex-

travagant attention to duty, calling him a pushful sycophant and other vague terms of opprobrium. “I’d rather get rid of it,” urged Mr Hibbert. “Somehow the very sight of the tiling makes me uneasy.” In going across Gower-street he met one of the firm’s customers; a middleaged gentleman who had achieved something like notoriety by wearing an eyeglass and a silk hat with a flat brim. Mr Hibbert recognised the air of distinction that the customer gained from the monocle and, without thinking, took the glass from his waistcoat pocket and fixed it, w'ith aid from a shop window, in his right eye. It flitted so well that he was wearing it when he turned into the square; it was still in his eye when he knocked at the door. “Prince Colonna?” “Gone,” said the servant, “thanks be!” “Do you happen to know,” asked Mr Hibbert, looking at her with admiration, “his present address?” “No,” said the girl, sharply. “Nor want!” She was a round-faced girl with small eyes; not prepossessing but young Mr Hibbert, as he looked at her through the eye-glass, thought she was the personification of angelic beauty* “Any more information?” “Yes,” gasped Mr Hibbert, “I want to ask—to ask if your heart is free?” “Not half so free as your manners,” replied the servant. “Let,go my hand this minute. I should look .pretty if any of the others saw me.” “You would look pretty,” he declared fervently, “under any circumstances. I never saw anyone so beautiful.” “I don’t care for vulgar chaff, thank you.” “But really —you don’t understand me.” He spoke with great earnestness. “I wish I knew your Christian name.” “If you must know,” said the girl, looking apprehensively over her shoulder at the staircase, “it’s Dorothy. But they call me Sarah ’ere.” “What does the name matter,” cried young Mr Hibbert, “when the fair creature herself has reached perfection? Of what account is a mere title ” “I don’t believe he was a Prince,” whispered the girl, “judging by the way he carried on. Was he a friend of yours?” “You must and shall be mine,” he cried rapturously. “Life is but an empty thing without you. When, where, how can I see you again?” “Next Sunday’s my day out.”

“Till then, fairest and sweetest of your sex, till then ” ‘‘Oh yon must be off really,” interrupted the girl. “There’s somebody coming down from the drawing-room. You’re as bad as the Indian gentleman you was asking for; he was always proposing to every—Good-night, sir!’ She closed the door hurriedly, and he found himself out on the whitened dazed with the concentrated excitement of the last few minutes. He started to walk south instead of north, and went confusedly three times round Torrington Square, before he recovered lucidity of thought and set out in a direct line for home. It was growing dusk and as he went’ along Cardington-street he kept his eyes on the ground, trying to realise that for the first time in his life, he, Charles W. Hibbert, was in love. He stepped lightly, and his mind was crowded with the exultant astonishment that comes to men who make their first acquaintance with this form of happiness. The amazing good luck that had enabled him to meet this adorable creature made him sure that he was the most fortunate man in the world. “That you, Mr Hibbert?” asked the eldest Miss Cann from the first landing. »“Yes,” he replied in a new voice. “And oh, v Miss Cann, lam so happy. This is the first day of my life. Hitherto I have merely existed; to-day I begin to live.” “Fancy that!” said the elder Miss Cann. (“He’s had a glass I expect,” she whispered to her sister. “Not being used to it, it’s taken effect.”) “Miss Cann!” cried young Hibbert up the stairs ecstatically, “let me tell you all about it. My heart is so full of delight ” “Stay where you are, sir,” counselled the elder Miss Cann, in a motherly way. “I’ll come down and I’ll open a small soda. That’ll do you more good than anything.” The younger Miss Cann (who would be tiie last person in this world to tell an untruth, or even to exaggerate, being indeed a very excellent Wesleyan Methodist and a perfect tower of strength where bazaars are concerned) has assured all of her lady friends, in the strictest confidence, that when half an hour later she went downstairs for a reel of thread she found the poor gentleman on one knee, begging her sister to fly with him to some distant island and talking generally, “like a book!” The younger Miss Cann, with great presence of mind, light-

ed the gas and asked the infatuated Mr Hibbert what was the matter with his eye, whereupon the youth went to the mirror bordered with green tissue paper to investigate and took out the eye-glass. Then he glanced at the two middleaged ladies, laughed in a nervous way, said, “Good-night!” and going out into the hall took his candlestick and went upstairs. The Misses Cann told the shorthand girl that same evening all about it, and the shorthand girl cried herself to sleep. The Misses Cann, as I have liinted, had, in their experience, encountered vagaries on the part of male boarders and this induced them to prophecy that Mr Hibbert would be very silent at breakfast, that he would eat little or nothing, that he would consume thirstily an inordinate quantity of tea. These anticipations were partly realised. He was quiet and reserved of manner at the morning meal, but then he was usually quiet and reserved; he evidently remembered the incident of the previous evening, for he avoided meeting the eye of the elder Miss Cann at the top of the table and dared to speak only to her sister at the other end, and to the shorthand girl opposite. The other two male boarders were always late for breakfast. “Are you always going to wear one now, Mr Hibbert?” asked the younger Miss Cann. “Let me fill up your cup again. I always think it is the making of a gentleman.” “Wear what?” he inquired. “Why you know.” “If I did I shouldn’t ask!” “Why surely you remember that you were wearing an eye-glass when you came home yesterday evening.” “Was I?” With astonishment. “Oh you young men,” said the younger Miss Cann rallyingly. “You all want somebody to look after you. What say you, Miss Mansell?” The shorthand girl looked up ly“Wonder where I put it?” said Mr Hibbert, puzzled. He felt in his waistcoat pocket without success. “Where did you place it last?” “I suppose I must have left it up on the dressing table. Excuse me will you whilst I run up and see. It belongs to one of our customers.” The ladies glanced at each other when the young man had left the room, but they spoke no word until he returned. “Yes,” sighed Mr Hibbert, answering the inquiry desolately. “I’ve got it!” “Let Miss Mansell see you with it on. She can decide whether it really suits you or not. It’s all a matter of taste, of course, but I think —” “Do you mind,” said Mr Hibbert, excitedly to the shorthand girl as she looked across to judge the effect, “do you mind if I walk down with you this morning?” “I was going to tram,” she said, “but—” “Do me the favour,” he begged. She consented, but made a provision that he should wear the eye-glass (which she thought admirably suited to him) and that wearing it he should see her to the door of her office. Mr Hibbert, gazing at her with rapt adoration, said with enthusiasm that he would do anything and everything she asked him to do. The average mind understands things more clearly in the morning than at a later and more jaded part of the day, and Mr Hibbert, as he put on his light overcoat in the hall and waited, realised

that it was the eye-glass which enabled him to realise the beauty of character, the nobility of feature, and the general charm of manner that belonged to the shorthand girl. It seemed that the monocle idealised everybody. Without it, he had been blind to the girl’s attractions; with it, he had the feeling that life was unendurable unless she shared it. He remembered uneasily that the servant at Torrington Square and the elder Miss Cann had on the previous evening inspired him with like sentiments, and he was beginning to puzzle this out when an angelic figure in grey tweed (who was the shorthand girl) came down the staircase. He took her arm as they walked out into Hampsteadroad and she protested gently, but he showed a new spirit of masterfulness, and to her great content declined to listen. “I want to be quite straightforward with you,” he said, looking into her eyes as they went south. “You are the dearest and sweetest girl that ever was since the world began.” She shook her head doubtfully, but refrained from speaking a word of interruption. “I’m earning a hundred and twenty a year and you, I believe, rake in about eighty. Is there any reason that you know of why we shouldn’t take a nice little house out in the country at Highgate and furnish it and get married?” The two almost danced to the terminus of the tram lines, and quiet, dismal folk hastening to work turned to look at them with curiosity and envy. Mr Hilbert saw her to the door of her office, and despite the fact that her colleagues were looking through the wire blind, claimed, in broad day, the right of an engaged man and kissed her lips. The shorthand girl went inside, a proud and happy girl. “Hi!” cried Mr Hibbert, starting suddenly to run along the pavement at a rate that frightened the passers-by. “Stop him! I want him!” “Which one?” demanded some loafers, excited into a desire for labour by Mr Hibbert’s energy. “The white man or the—?” A constable, infected by the stir, joined in the running, and the coloured gentleman looking over his shoulder and recognising that he was being pursued took to his heels. They caught him, just by Peter Robinson’s and held him, despite his struggles, until Mr Hibbert arrived, panting. “Has he got anything of yours?” asked the constable. “No,” replied Mr Hibbert breathlessly, “I—l’ve got something of his.” “Well, but,” urged the constable, “you can’t give him in charge for that.” The crowd endorsed this legal view of the situation. “Here’s your eye-glass, sir,” said Mr Hibbert. “One and six to pay.” The coloured gentleman found himself [released, and turning to the crowd expressed a heated opinion of them and their country. Then declaring that the eye-glass had made for him nothing but trouble, he took it and threw it down violently on the kerb. The glass smashed into small pieces. Nothing to add, except that Mr and Mrs Hibbert are quite happy at Highgate, and when (as is the case in every household) there come domestic jars, Mr Hibbert remembers how she last appeared to him through the magic eye-glass, and whatever the subject of dispute may be, promptly admits that the fault is his.