The Tartan Trousers.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIX, Issue 16, 16 April 1913, Page 53

The Tartan Trousers.

IBy JAMES DOUGLAS, in the “Daily News."’) When he walked into the drawingroom wearing them there was a vague tremor of embarrassment discreetly veiled by an attempt to look away and to think about something else. Jf he had come in wearing none at all he could hardly have perturbed us more deeply. The odd thing was that he knew we were ill at ease. He could see how hard it was for us to avert our eyes from them. He could divine the struggle between our courtesy and our curiosity. As are looked at his face he could surprise our glance side-slipping, as it were, and furtively gliding downwards. As we chattered about trifles, he could watch our thoughts straying towards them, and we could watch his thoughts pursuing ours. The suspense was really painful. It was painful because it was ridiculous. M by on earth should half a dozen eager spirits, priding themselves upon their emancipation from convention, be eompelled to think secretly and furiously about anything so absurdly unimportant as a pair of trousers’ It would have been a natural relief to speak out frankly and brutally, but for us all that was quite impossible. It would have helped us to get rid of them if he had dared to talk about them. But people do not talk about trousers, or ask for explanations of trousers, or debate the symbolism of trousers. Trousers are things that we must take as they are without daring to utter the thoughts about them that arise in us.

If he had bravely bearded the trouble, and told us why he was wearing them, we could all have been quite happy. But although he was almost flagrantly conscious of them as he stood sipping his tea, he did not venture to allude to them even elliptieally. And although we were almost impudently aware of them, we did not dare to congratulate him upon their effect. The trousers were ruled out of our conversation, although they dominated our mind. So powerful was their tyranny that it blighted our talk. Nobody could do more than feign an interest in other themes. As the moments passed we all grew more and more artificial in our manner, and he grew more and more triumphant. He planted his feet firmly upon the hearthrug, and janiled with bland cruelty upon our stiff constraint. Doubtless he had come on from some other devastated drawing-room Which they had stricken with astonishment. Doubtless he was going on to some other unsuspecting tea-party, with the implacable intention of smiting tittle-tattle into a frozen state of amazement. But he seemed to be quite callous, and even flippant, wearing them as if they were harmless and benevolent trousers such as the ordinary man ordinarily wears. Indeed, we thought that now and then a swift gleam of malignant exultation shot from his eyes as he saw the execution they were doing—a gleam like that which lights up the eyes of the gunner who sees his shell bursting accurately. Well, we all went on talking shop and thinking trousers for what seemed to be an eternity. He could not get them out of his head, and we could not get them out of ours. Having punished us sufficiently, I think he seriously tried to forget them ami to help us to forget them. •We were grateful to him for this mark of respect and ruth, and we tried to meet him half-way, but it was no use. He failed and we failed. The very effort to forget them fixed them more firmly in our consciousness. He and we made one heroic and hercHlean struggle to overcome the obsession or succubus or nightmare. We gave a long pull and a strong pull ami a pull together—a pull which ought really to have sufficed to pull them clean off. But they never budged. There they stood by themselves, each vertical crease as hard as the steel 'bow of a battleship. They cut clean through our conversation; we could almost see the wash of words flowing by and backward. 'Tils personality Is by no means drab and flabby. It is, on the contrary, a flamboyant and orchidaceous personality. But those terrible trousers demolished it. He ceased to be himself, and became for us all only an epic pair of trousers towering above the carpet before the fire. His placid voice grew fainter and fainter until we heard only a distant droning hum. His smile faded away into the background. His eyes Jost their light and shade, and turned

into glassy orbs stuck in a mask. His very bands grew wooden like the hands of a doll. Nothing was left of him but the triumphing trousers. As he bade us good-bye we felt that we were parting from them rather than from him. And when he had gone we saw them in a ghostly fashion looming up like a pillared phantom.

And yet they were not very audacious or very outrageous. They were, it is true, wide in the leg, so wide that they looked like rigid oblongs with no knees or calves bracing or girdering them up and out. But their colour was not violent. They were not yellow or pink or purple. They were not even green. They were merely shepherd's plaid trousers, a plain, modest, and bashful black and 'white tartan check. But they were plangently unexpected. We were used to trousers attuned to a low note of sombreness—dull black or dull grey, with a nearly impalpable stripe. But they were resonantly strident in their unusualness, seen below the dull black coat and waistcoat. Their black and white rang out like the blasts of a trumpet and made us irrationally ashamed for him and for ourselves.

Long after they had departed we thought ruefully of the time when we, in a fit of valour, had gone in for tartan trousers. We were younger than we are now, but our youthful courage melted away before the fire of feminine criticism. We were told that they would not do, and very humbly and regretfully we put them away with their virgin creases unbroken and unbent. For years they lay in their bright freshness. Now and then, when the spring returned, we took them out and looked at them, and reverently put them back with a sigh. Finally, they were given away to the man who cleans the windows. Often we saw them aloft on the window-sill, and mourned their unworthy fate. Wlieu the window-cleaner wore them no more We were glad, but when we saw them on a crossing-sweeper we turned away sick at heart.

Verily men are cowards and poltroons in the matter of trousers. They lack that reckless valour of womanhood which glories in every hue and tint and due. Perhaps it is as well, for if we were to express ourselves in trousers the serious business of life would never get itself done.